I wrote that on a little card that stays on my desk as a reminder when I start stressing too much over the bobbleheads and politicos who forget that their games affect real people. I admit I'm not always successful in finding love and kindness in my heart. Especially for someone like Glenn Beck, who seems to want to instigate violence. Van Jones has even more reason to not find love or kindness towards Beck. After all, it was Beck who led the charge to get Jones out of the White House. But if you think that Van Jones is going to give Beck the satisfaction of being nasty, you got another think coming:
Despite the best efforts of Glenn Beck to ruin Van Jones, Jones is back, standing tall, a righteous man vindicated.
While receiving a prestigious award Friday night from the NAACP, Jones refused to lower himself to Beck’s level. Rather than giving Beck the tongue lashing he so richly deserved; Jones rose above the ugly, divisive, mean spirited little man that is Glenn Beck.
Last thing I want to say is this: To my fellow countryman, Mr. Glenn Beck. I see you, and I love you, brother. I love you, and you cannot do anything about it. I love you, and you cannot do anything about it. Let’s be one country! Let’s be one country! Let’s get the job done!
With that short, brief, powerful message of love and redemption, hope and promise, Jones destroyed Beck. The contrast could not be stronger: Beck is a petty and vicious snake in the grass, a vile serpent, a vessel of rumor, innuendo, and evil; while Jones is a hero, maligned but resolute, rising above Beck and the filth of the right wing smear machine.
Some times, the best revenge is turning the other cheek.
(Disclosure: I'm working with Brave New Films on their Sick For Profit campaign, exposing insurance industry practices. Check us out on Facebook.)
The New York Times published a very nice press release from the desk of Humana, one of the nation's largest health insurance companies. The reporter interviewed a bunch of employees at Humana, all of whom were horrified to see themselves depicted as "villains" in the health care debate. I agree with Yves Smith, this is an absurd angle for a story, an extreme example of selection bias. The people who work at Humana probably have a sense that their employer, um, pays their salary, and thusly, what's good for the employer is probably good for them. Similarly, most people hold a favorable opinion of themselves just as a matter of getting through the day. Not to mention the fact that their understanding of the functioning of Humana is limited to their job description. It is not possible to gain much of a perspective on the health care debate or industry practices by asking a midlevel manager "Do you think you're the worst person alive?"
Since when is it legitimate, much the less newsworthy, to get a company's perception on its embattled status, at least without introducing either some contrary opinion or better yet, facts, to counter the views of people who will inevitably see what they are doing as right? I hate to draw an extreme comparison to make the point, but staff in Nazi concentration camps also thought they were good people. It is well documented that for all save the depressed, people's assessments of their own behavior is biased in their favor.
There is some revelatory stuff in the article, however. David Sirota flags one employee saying that Humana believes in keeping down costs by "controlling utilization":
Now, I know we're supposed to think that private for-profit health care companies don't ration care, while government-run programs like Medicare do - but as the insurance industry admits right here for all to see, that's just not the case. The obvious truth is that the health insurance industry works hard to "control utilization" - that is, it works hard to make sure that when you need a costly medical service, you are "controlled" (read: prevented) from getting it.
Sure, we're all against excessive testing - and there are good ways to deal with those inefficiencies. But that's not what the insurance industry is talking about. It is talking about its practice of rationing care - and now that reality is right there in black and white for all to see.
The truth of the matter is that many of the charges that insurance companies like WellPoint level at the public option and regulatory changes sought in the health reform bill mirror accepted industry practices. WellPoint, which emailed its own customers yesterday attacking the Democratic plan, claimed that health reform will “increase the premiums of those with private coverage.” Yet WellPoint routinely hikes their own premium prices by close to double digits annually, leading to ever-increasing profits. The email stated that millions of Americans would lose their private coverage and be forced onto a government-run option if the Democratic bill passed (nothing could be further from the truth); yet WellPoint routinely uses the practice of rescission to drop their own customers from coverage if they ever try to use it, and they've admitted they would continue doing so unless forced to stop by law.
The email is an example of the astroturf practices from the industry, including, no doubt, pitching to the New York Times a story putting the human face on insurers. Many of these astroturf efforts spring from the same sources as the corporate lobby groups activating the tea party protests at town hall meetings throughout the country this August. They're trying to change the subject, away from facts, like how they're spending less of their premium revenue on medical care over the years, from 90% in the early 1990s to around 80% today. Or how they use rescission and pre-existing condition to make profits off cherry-picking the healthy and denying everyone else care. House and Senate leaders have requested more and more information about insurance company practices; Dennis Kucinich has joined that effort. But the insurance industry, while nominally siding with reform, wants to keep the focus on efforts against it, in service to de-fanging it.
Glenn Beck had a glass of wine with Nancy Pelosi last night.
Of course, it wasn't actually Pelosi. It was some poor Fox employee made to sit across the desk from Beck with a cardboard Pelosi mask, holding a glass of juice of some kind that was serving as a stand-in for wine.
It was all meant to spoof Pelosi for supposedly listening only to "millionaire contributors" instead of her constituents.
But then he tossed in a little "joke":
Beck: I just want you to drink it. Drink it. [Laughs] Drink it! I really just wanted to thank you for having us over here to wine country. You know, to be invited, I thought you had to be a major Democratic donor or longtime friend of yours, which I'm not. Oh, ah, by the way, I put poison in your -- no I --
Funny, it seems like only a couple of days ago Beck was imploring his viewers not to resort to acts of violence. (It was.) And now he's encouraging violence by joking about poisoning the Speaker of the House.
The most urgent question is the meaning of economic conservatism. Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, a conservative who keeps a bust of Reagan on his desk, surprised me by declaring that the Reagan era is over. "Marginal tax rates are the lowest they've been in generations, and all we can talk about is tax cuts," he said. "The people's desires have changed, but we're still stuck in our old issue set."
I give it one day. Once Rush mentions it on the radio, McHenry will be bowing and scraping before his altar.
Chris Wallace had Senators Trent Lott and Chuck Schumer on to discuss the recent SCHIP bill headed for the President's desk for a expected veto.
Is it me, or does Lott contradict himself about 17 times trying to boast about the Republican's role in SCHIP? Why does he keep saying there was no compromise to the bill when there clearly was?
Freddie's dead (and cold) but his wife is a live one. Has the alpha male turned into a mutt? So much depends upon a red truck and it looks like Fred Thompson turned right and crashed in a ditch.
(Nicole: We also want to send congratulations and blessings to our favorite crank caller, Mike from Calling All Wingnuts and his wife, who welcomed a new baby boy on 7/7/07.)
Send hot links to The Heretik at joe.ivory.mattingly AT gmail DOT com.
There have been so many lunatic ideas coming out of the mouths of insane people lately that I'm surprised I found something new and exciting. Want to protect your kids at school? Arm them with text book shields: via Right Wing Watch
Bill Crozier, a Union City Republican going against incumbent Democrat Sandy Garrett, said he believes old textbooks could be used to stop bullets shot from weapons wielded by school intruders. If elected, he said he would put thick used textbooks under every desk for students to use in self-defense. (video ) "The bullet did not penetrate the book."
He seems to think that kids will be able to block an assailant armed with an AK-47 by shielding themselves. Ummm....this isn't TJ Hooker, I'm not trying to rain on his parade, but I think a nut might be able to aim at a few different spots. I'm just saying.
The National Interest : Michael Scheuer, the former head of the bin Laden desk at the CIA, interprets the National Intelligence Estimate document on the global terrorist threat
Two weeks after telling police that her son had been snatched from his crib, Melinda Duckett found herself reeling in an interview with TV's famously prosecutorial Nancy Grace. Before it was over, Grace was pounding her desk and loudly demanding to know: "Where were you? Why aren't you telling us where you were that day?" A day after the taping, Duckett, 21, shot herself to death, deepening the mystery of what happened to the boy.
There have been so many lunatic ideas coming out of the 
