By David Swanson

What it would have cost us to publicly fund independent media that would have prevented the invasion of Iraq wouldn't amount, in a year, to what we spend on a month of occupying that country.

Diverting the cost of a month of war to a year of giving substance to our "freedom of the press" would mean that the last time someone asked you about the Teabaggers' genius in being smart enough to talk dumb enough to persuade everyone to be racists would, in fact, be the LAST time anyone would ask you how a creation of the corporate media manages to get coverage from the corporate media.

Obama has suspicious number of letter-writing fans named 'Ellie Light'

In recent weeks, Light has published virtually identical “Letters to the Editor” in support of President Barack Obama in more than a dozen newspapers.Every letter claimed a different residence for Light that happened to be in the newspaper’s circulation area.

Glenn Greenwald

By now everyone who isn't living under a rock has heard about the new movie "Avatar," a very visually impressive movie that is a testament to just how hard it's going to be in the future to tell "real" from "fake" on glowing boxes everywhere. I've seen it twice now, and given how rarely I get to go out to the movies, I thought I'd share my thoughts and get your reactions. Bottom line: go see it. For no other reason than this: it pisses off Republicans. Be petty for once, and know there's a good chance you may even have a good time. It doesn't really make a difference if you see it in 3-D or not (I've done both ways) and anyway how often does Furry Culture get blockbuster status like this? Spoilers below:

Paul Krugman is quickly becoming a shadow of his formerly credible self. For the love of Jeebus, Paul, stop talking about health reform before you become as much of a joke as paid propagandists Keith Obamaman or Rachel Maddow.
Here's the sentence that really stuck in my craw:

A last general point: we really don’t know what it will take to rein in health costs, but that’s a reason to try every plausible idea that experts have proposed. Limiting tax deductibility is definitely one of those ideas.

Crossed Crocodiles has a long post about the break down of public discourse and how it blocks any truthful discussion about foreign policy. Quoting Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff:

In the United States today, the rift between reality and reporting has peaked. There is no longer a mere credibility gap, but rather a literal Truth Emergency in which the most important information affecting people is concealed from view. ...

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

The bumbling Nigerian “terrorist” who set his lap on fire on board an airliner in Detroit Christmas day will provide days or weeks of conveniently hysterical headlines, along with excuses to target West Africa and Yemen for extra special attention from the American military, and the usual host of justifications for existing US policies in what used to be called 'the war on terror'. But the similarities between his case, and that of incompetent “terrorists” in Fort Dix New Jersey, in Miami's Liberty City and elsewhere raise serious questions about the whole incident.

If you cannot see the video above, click here.

More fear mongering from the White House Blog:
Opponents of Reform Cry "Repeal," Vow to Fight On for the Insurance Industry

Yesterday POLITICO reported that, before it even becomes law, opponents of health care reform – including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich – are already talking about repealing it. Certainly there is a fundamental disagreement here, since many opponents of reform – again including Gingrich – appear to think that insurance companies can do no wrong.

First, it does seem like another example of opposition at any cost to want to repeal a law before its even enacted.

The White House blog has a very imaginative history of the beginnings of the process of their health care reform effort. It particularly misrepresents the house parties. I hope Kip Sullivan and others will deconstruct this. I especially invite Corrente readers to have at it.

[with apologies to The Bard]

Actually, it would appear that neither economists nor journalists should be allowed anywhere near the subject of health care.

Case in point: Paul Krugman and Jonathan Chait.

In his post Noo Yawk Roolz! Krugman has a few random thoughts:

You’re Invited: Health Action 2010

It's that time of year again. The temperature is dropping, the days are getting shorter, people are getting in the holiday spirit, and the staff at Families USA is busy preparing for our annual conference, Health Action 2010. We hope you can join us!

With health reform on the horizon, Health Action 2010 promises to be exciting! It will be a fantastic opportunity to learn more about health reform legislation, next steps, and how health reform will affect Americans.

Maybe our good friends at Mobilize for Health Care will throw up a picket line.

This is a copy of the long reply that Maggie Mahar made to my post "Why Is Maggie Mahar Lying About Health Reform?" at TPMCafe. I've now gone through in turn and posted responses to her statements. I will not have time to do another round of replies, but hopefully this will be enough. I suggest that people show up to the Firedoglake book salon on November 9 and ask her to stop saying that the public "option" is anything at all like "Medicare E (for everyone)."

I am, of course, not lying about Health Care reform.

On November 9, Maggie Mahar is doing a book salon at Firedoglake on her book Money-Driven Medicine. I think it probably contains many useful facts, and even decided to order it last week from Amazon. For example, it correctly points out that the largest problems in the American health care system today are unnecessary procedures and overpayment for services. However, I now know that I will need to closely scrutinize its every word before accepting it as true. Why will it be hard to take this book at face value? Because Mahar has lately engaged in a complete flight of fancy about the proposed "public option."

That's the kindest explanation I can think of.

Bloggeth the formerly-liberal perfesser a few days ago:

What this suggests is that the really important thing, for reformers, is to get the principle of universality established. Once that happens, there’s no going back.

Yeah, well, I guess it helps if you define universe.

If it were really Medicare for Everybody we would just pass HR 676. Whatever they are talking about, it isn't everybody in, nobody out. Do we have a policy expert that can deconstruct this for us?

Look out Paula! Looks like you've got some competition. Although, I confess to being curious: which of you will be better hunting down embarrassing blog comments posted by your boss' political enemies? Shutting down bloggers focused upon issues the rest of the media ignores? Cause that's really what all this mostly unConstitutional and anti-democratic domestic spying monitoring is all about.

The Democrats are now pushing the public option as "Medicare for Everyone" despite the fact that the public option proposals will not be available to everyone and won't result in universal coverage. The timing of this with the planned scoring of HR 676 is simply shameless.

We said it last summer, now Atrios and Yglesias are saying it. Democrats on Capitol Hill need to turn off the damn TV.

Update: Well, at least they don't hate me because I'm queer. Whew. I feel so much better:

In an email to the Huffington Post on Monday, Harwood clarified that the quote was not meant to convey any displeasure on the part of the administration for the gay community's public advocacy.

"My comments quoting an Obama adviser about liberal bloggers/pajamas weren't about the LGBT community or the marchers," he wrote. "They referred more broadly to those grumbling on the left about an array of issues in addition to gay rights, including the war in Afghanistan and health care and Guantanamo -- and whether all that added up to trouble with Obama's liberal base..."

I have a writing assignment due today. I'm going to make the deadline, but I just looked at the time and I'm sort of amazed at how quickly the morning got away from me. Because I've been reading original sources, analysis and commentary from many different places all morning, and even though I'm a fast reader, it has still taken some time. It's too important to me, a pajama wearing blogger, to check and double source my facts and otherwise make sure what I'm about to write is reality-based and correct, to prepare my pieces any other way.

If I were employed by the mainstream press, I wouldn't have to do any of those things. I could just toss off an anonymously sourced playground insult and add some snotty, insider comment, and call it day.

I wonder if the next Blogger Ethics Conference will have a panel on the latest in fleece and microfiber jammies. I hope so.

Ken Bern's America's National Parks just finished a week long run. The parks are either beautiful or important, The parks were established on Indian land and the Indians living there for millennia were evicted, discarded like old shoes. The parks were not discovered by us; the Indians knew about them and respected them.

Aren't we beautiful and moral people? We can tell evryone how to behave.

AP has the following calming health care reform article: When Medicare is the piggy bank. Rob Peter to pay Blue Cross.

The CBO confirms today my long-held suspicion that the vaunted "public option" is not much more than a high-risk pool and forecasts that premiums will actually be slightly higher than private offerings.

Currently, private health insurance is available via the following mechanisms:



1. Large employer group coverage

2. Small group market (small business)

3. Individual market (self-employed, unattached)
  Read more…

Beck was brought to Faux because of his ability to be an American version of radio Rwanda. Murdoch is deliberately trying to destabilize our country, what I don’t get is why we are letting him get away with it.

First of all, kudos to all of those who worked on persuading Beck’s advertisers to drop him. Make no mistake, NewsCorp is vulnerable to this sort of tactic.

PhillyBurbs.com

He also repeatedly told seniors that he does not support a Medicare-for-all type health system.

"We can't have a single-payer system," he said. "We can't afford it."

As you know this is a lie. HR 676 would SAVE the taxpayers $400 billion a year.

If you live in Murphy's district, please contact Murphy and tell him that HR 676 would save us $400 billion a year. Please write a letter to the local newspapers explaining the same.

[Welcome, Lubbock bloggers! -- lambert]

The GOP is in retreat across the land. They don't want to admit it, but they are. So they're responding with ratcheting up their rhetoric and trying to dodge the truth via dissembling, distraction, and pretty pictures.

They remind me of academics fighting over whose name goes first on a paper.To give you an example of that kind of infighting: Niall Ferguson and Paul Krugman are feuding.

The tone of the discussion is ... .

One of them is a “poseur”. The other is “patronising”. One suffers from “verbal diarrhoea”. The other is a “whiner”.

A bust-up on the set of High School Musical 4 perhaps? A scrap behind the catwalk at a Milan fashion show? No. Those accusations were slung round in an increasingly bitter public row between two of the world’s most distinguished commentators on global finance and economics, professors Paul Krugman and Niall Ferguson, of Princeton and Harvard, respectively.

It started as an argument about bond prices. But last week it blew up into a row about racism, printing money, spending our way out of recession, and the fate of the global economy.

Nice to see that economists can be as well-behaved as United States Senators.

Perhaps constituents can evolve toward more professional treatment of one another than their Senators and Congressional Representatives indulged themselves in over the slavery that, the North will tell you, provoked the Civil War.
Today, at least, a few of us seemed able to avoid beating each other with sticks on the floor of a town hall meeting to discuss health care reform.

Not that there weren't comments and statements designed to provoke reaction aplenty.

I could cherry-pick the phrasing for the code, but if I give you just one example perhaps you can fill in the rest for yourselves. One pro-Republican audience member summed up his objections to the socialism emanating from Washington this way:

"When you've got a coon up a tree, bark at him!!"

That's Lubbock. In 2009. You can probably find out a fair amount more at lubbockleft.com. I met the blogger from that platform today, and several other progressives, liberals, Democrats, and folks who had questions for Congressman Randy Neugebauer.

A friend of mine pointed out recently that a post which doesn't stir up comment -- and rebuttal -- is an inefficient use of space

Fox Fabricates 'Death Book' for Vets

So when do we start filing complaints with the FCC in a systematic effort to get Murdoch's FCC license pulled? And when do we start to contact his institutional investors and bond holders and suggest that investing in lies might not be consistent with their fiduciary responsibility? When do we start to exact a serious price for this sort of editorial subversion?