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(Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan - At every turn, some new loose cannon)

We talk about how unhinged and fear-driven the Republican "base" is lately, but seem to forget there is a long history that goes with it. One that goes back for decades if not longer.

I almost forgot how freely and how often President Reagan invoked the Evil Empire theme and played on fears of how Russia was superior militarily to the U.S. - how we were unprepared for a nuclear threat and how a threat could come at any time.

It was the fear then and it's the fear now. Fear, it would seem, is the driving force behind the Right wing agenda and the mainstream media.

So when Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was interviewed on Face The Nation in April 4, 1982, he displayed a goodly amount of disbelief over the lack of responsibility Reagan was showing by proclaiming the U.S. no match for a Soviet showdown during a recent Press Conference.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “There is a leakage of reality in this Administration. The Commander-in-Chief, what Commander-In-Chief has ever told the world that the United States is inferior to an adversary? And why would anyone say that when it isn’t even so?”

It's interesting to note that CBS Correspondent George Herman attempts to cover over the situation by claiming Reagan "wasn't really serious in his estimation" of his statement - the Mainstream Media, as always are more than willing to join in the reality leak.

. . and speaking of joining . .

So the pressure we brought to bear on Harry Reid's office over the weekend did have some effect. The bill does have a public option, despite mutterings from unnamed sources that the mythic and coveted 60 votes would be a whole lot easier without the public option. But we're not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot.

Now we get to see the Republicans really ramp up the scare tactics--telling the gullible and easily frightened that this is just one step behind the evil Soviet Empire that St. Ronnie slayed, with its government-run health care, all evidence to the contrary. Up until this point, Obama has kept the Senate dealings at arm's length, a political calculus that made some sense, looking at what happened to Clinton's attempt to get health care passed. But it's going to take some seriously strong political leadership now to make it untenable for any member of the Senate to vote against health care reform. As Mike Lux says, "Game On":

We don't yet know whether we will get the best version of the public option in the House bill, and the Senate version is not as strong as progressives have been pushing for. But strengthening the form of the public option can be negotiated over in conference committee, once we get there.

For now, we can thank Harry Reid (HCAN has a page here) and Nancy Pelosi for their gutsy leadership, and fight like hungry dogs to win the floor fight and deliver on this hope. In the coming weeks we will have an all-hands-on-deck, all out public war with the insurance industry over whether we finally pass comprehensive health care reform or once again fall short at the bitter end after coming so far.

Here's where things are as we head into the floor fight:

1. White House staffers confirmed for me this afternoon that they are backing Harry Reid's decision "100 percent." Now that's not to say they aren't a little nervous about it. I suspect that there are still some feelings by some people working in that building that progressives should have given up and rolled over, and let them cut a deal with Olympia Snowe on her trigger-written-never-to-trigger. That would have been easier than sweating what will undoubtedly be a very tough battle to get all 60 Democrats to go along with the rest of the party. But us irritating progressive folk got in the way of doing that, and now Obama knows it's time to stand and deliver. I believe my friends at the White House when they say they will do an all-out fight for this bill. They know that starting down this path, and not being able to pull it off, would be a huge embarrassment and destroy all the momentum we've built by making it this far. They are all-in, and know how much is at stake. Rahm Emanuel and Jim Messina are famous for twisting arms and doing everything in their power to get the votes that are needed, and now is their time to deliver.

That's where you come in. Progressive Change has a petition for you to sign to ask President Obama to stand firm and fight:

"Every day, insurance companies deny care and let people die. Getting one Republican senator's vote is not worth delaying reform -- too many real lives are at stake. We need you to fight and state clearly that anything less than a strong public option is not change we can believe in."

Go. Sign. Make phone calls. Let your voice be heard.

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(Blessed Are The Duped for they shall inherit the Shitstorm)

I was reminded just how insidious the Health Insurance Industry can be when it comes to potentially losing profits and power. In 1988 Congress passed a piece of legislation called the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act. It was regarded as a great leap in expanded healthcare coverage for seniors on Medicare. But then . . .

Rob Armstrong: “ When the Catastrophic Healthcare Act of 1988 was passed it was hailed as a quantum leap for the nation’s elderly. But within a very short time Senior Citizens groups were up in arms about the Supplemental Insurance Premium, an escalating surtax many said would eat into their savings or force them from their homes. Members of Congress have been hit with a barrage of hostile criticism and there is little doubt the surtax will be repealed”

Sound familar?

This news item, from September 30, 1989 gives some idea of what will probably happen if a decent Healthcare Bill is passed.

Not saying for sure. But just saying . . .

The fear just doesn't stop, and it didn't stop in 1961. Before he was governor, Ronald Reagan was busy stirring up fears of Socialized Medicine, terrifying people into believing any sort of Public Health Care was a direct product of communism and government meddling.

And so, when the Medicare debate began during its first incarnation in 1961 (the bill was defeated owing to just these scare tactics and the influence of the Dixiecrats - the precursor to our Blue Dogs), people like Ronald Reagan flocked to the cause of the Insurance lobby, big Pharma and the AMA with the sole intent of scaring the living crap out of every human being within the United States.

And so the fear in 1961, as now is a misguided attempt at keeping the status quo pure by stamping out any thought an alternative may exist.

Ain't it all grand?

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("Um . . I know this is a bad time but . . . .you're not covered.")

Note: This is a re-post from June.

The endless debate on Health Care. Every time the subject is brought up, screams of "Socialized Medicine" pop up - and somewhere, the ones doing the loudest screaming appear to come from the American Medical Association. Curious, that.

Case in point - this rather historic debate between Walter Reuther (yes, that Walter Reuther) and Dr. Edward R. Annis from the AMA from February 23, 1961. The gist of the debate centered around the Kerr-Mills bill, which had been introduced as an alternative health care plan.

Reuther: “And what bothers me, instead of being against all these things, instead of calling everything socialism, why don’t you sit down with other people and see if we can’t together find a practical mechanism?”

Annis: “Mister Reuther. . . .

Reuther: “Now the Kerr bill will not do the job, because only nine states come under the Kerr Bill. In the state of Kentucky they only provide, under the Kerr bill, three days of hospitalization. Now what happens at the end of that? Well, the person is either thrown on the indignity of the Public Charity or they’re pushed off to some poor farm. This is 1961. I think that’s not a rational sensible way to meet this problem."

The case for some kind of universal Health Care has been going on since somewhere after the Stone Age. Reuther, a staunch union man, makes the case for Universal Health Care. While Annis, a man with somewhat suspicious motives, is adamantly against it. Although he doesn't come right out and say as much, his argument is peppered with the buzzword "Socialized Medicine" and it's clear where his loyalties lie.

Needless to say, he was no supporter of Medicare when it came to light in 1964 and became law in 1965. He was also no supporter of the warning on cigarette packs saying it would be bad for business if people stopped smoking. But that's another story.

There is an interesting postscript at the end of this broadcast. CBS began a series of "Letters To CBS" and Smith reads some of the letters that poured in after the first hour of the debate from two weeks earlier. One writer, a doctor who chose to remain anonymous, supplied a copy of a letter allegedly circulated by the AMA to doctors, urging letters of condemnation of CBS and the concept of Universal Health Care as a step towards Socialism.

Even then, the fear card was being played for all it was worth.

Debbie Stabenow was on CNN's State of the Union this morning and made the case for the public option.

STABENOW: Well, my first choice and very strong choice is a public option. And I have to say, Wolf, that what my friends are saying, Senator Gregg and Senator Alexander really are scare tactics that have been put forward by folks that don't want to change the system because they make a lot of money off the current system right now.

The reality for families today is if there's an insurance company bureaucrat between you and your doctor telling your doctor what they're allowed to do because of what they'll pay for, telling you what they'll pay for, putting you through all kinds of bureaucracy to try to figure out if you can get care, assuming you're not dropped if you get sick or can't get insurance if you have a pre-existing condition. So what we're talking about is putting somebody on your side, being able to make sure that the insurance company, the for profit insurance company won't provide you with a low cost insurance policy for your family that you have another choice.

(Photo by James Heaney, Philadelphia Daily News)

It seems like any time the opportunity comes up to have a real discussion about race in this country, to turn an awful situation into a teaching moment, it almost always gets reduced to this binary equation: Terrible Racist Bigots vs. Enlightened White Liberals.

So when I saw the well-meaning outcry against the racially-tinged ousting of a group of young Philadelphia kids from a suburban swim club, I thought to myself: Oh, here we go again.

I grew up in Philadelphia during a very troubled time. During the '60s, block-busting realtors resorted to abominable scare tactics to get white homeowners to sell, even resorting to middle-of-the-night phone calls: "You'd better get out now while your house is still worth something." There were gang fights and even a few deaths in the neighborhood.

My family wasn't one of the ones that left. My mother wouldn't dream of it, and she welcomed our new black neighbors. My brothers, however, were dealing with the changing neighborhood out on the street, where every pointless violent incident against one group was answered by another. ("West Side Story," only without the soundtrack.)

Understand, all the kids were feeling the tension. We couldn't go to the public swimming pool at the Kingsessing Rec Center that was an easy walk from our house, because it was in a black neighborhood and if we went there, we'd get harassed or even beaten up. So we walked almost three miles to the Finnegan Playground instead - a long walk on a scorching hot day for kids. It seemed to take forever.

When I saw this story in the news, I wondered why the day care program kids didn't go to the closest public pool. But then I thought, maybe it was one of the white pools and they didn't want the hassle. See, we still think that way.

***

Flash forward twenty years. I'm a single mom with two kids, and my mom is watching them while I'm at work. Part of the deal is that she spends the day with them at the local swim club.

One day, when I come to pick them up, I go to the office to reserve a barbecue pit for the weekend; I'd invited some friends from work for a cookout. The manager (who was also the mayor of the town where I lived) said, "You know you can't bring any coloreds in here, right?"

I was shocked. Speechless, really. I finally said, "As it happens, none of the people I invited are black." I left, shaking with anger. But I was also in a moral dilemma because I needed my mom's help and I knew she loved the pool. What to do?

I'm ashamed to say I did nothing. But it really bothered me, and a few weeks later, I wrote a column about it. (My parents and kids were confronted about it by other pool members.)

We live in segregated worlds, and on some level, that's by choice - whether we admit it or not. Most of us work with all kinds of people, but who do we socialize with in our private lives? We might look down our nose at a low-class neighbor who uses the N word, but maybe we wouldn't even think of going to certain bars and restaurants because there aren't any white people.

Are we ever quite as liberal as we like to think?

When you picked the place you wanted to raise your kids, did you choose a top school district that (just incidentally, of course) happened to be 98% white? Or, if you live in an integrated area, did you send your kids to private school "because they'll get a better education"? Deep down, were you relieved, thinking your kids were somehow safer? Ask yourself why.

Right now is the first time in my adult life that I haven't lived in an integrated neighborhood. Not by any intent, it just worked out that way - and sometimes I feel a little apologetic about it. And sometimes I hear neighbors say things I can hardly believe, because white people so often assume all white people agree with them. But I don't, and I let them know.

My kids went to majority-black public schools in our inner-ring suburb. It was a conscious decision by my husband and me; my Jewish mother-in-law, a retired Philadelphia school teacher, was upset and offered to send them to Catholic school instead.

"They'll be fine," we said. And mostly, they were. (Although now my grown kids tell me stories about how they were threatened and harassed by black kids because they had a Jewish last name.)

Until a few years ago, my best friend was black, and her family openly derided white people. "White people are crazy," her father always said. And even though I agreed, I'd still protest. "Hey, I'm right here," I'd say.

"Oh, Susan, you're not white," her family members would say. "You're one of us." But I wasn't. And even though I ate Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with their clan, that didn't make me black, nor could it really let me understand the life they live. (Although I do know a lot about black women's hair issues.)

But I empathize, because I'm an outsider, too. And that's why I'd much rather sit down and have a discussion with the people from that swim club than to ridicule and shame them for their ignorance. Like Anne Frank, I do believe people are good at heart, and that these swim club members reacted to a perceived threat out of fear. Because I understand they're afraid, and I feel just as sorry for them as I do for the kids who were crushed by their bigotry.

Now, if you think the best way to deal with fear is to attack the people who feel it, well, I guess you won't agree with what I just wrote.

(And just as a postscript: The pool in question does have black members, and it's possible that class was at least as big a factor as race.)