Camera stencil via nolifebeforecoffee. Classic.

On Friday at Netroots Nation, Digby, Marcy and I had lunch at a restaurant near the convention center. At one point, we were laughing so loudly at our table that I was certain we’d end up as someone’s "drunken bloggers" tweet from the restaurant (although we were having iced tea and water to drink because we had panels to contend with later).

What set off the laughter? 

We were reminiscing about the media freak show absurdities the last time around during the Clinton years.  And talking about the current circus side show atmosphere of the moment.

Digby had us howling about the Clinton years, when the media obsessed about whether Bill Clinton’s penis really did hook to the left as Paula Jones averred, and then had endless "guests" on to hold up pictures of what the Presidential penis might look like.   But when Marcy says "blowjob" on television?  The whole world as we know it was coming to an end in medialand.

It’s the titillation/pearl clutching media paradox.

And now?  We have a Schiavo redux going on in the worst sense of the words on healthcare, and the media is happily playing right along.  Again.  Via Digby:

…these right wing neanderthals want to make sure that doesn’t change. These hysterics don’t care what the elderly actually want — if these poor people have to spend weeks hooked up to machines in sterile hospitals, in misery and horrible suffering, alive only in the most expansive definition of the term, it’s worth it because Obama is a Kenyan Hitler and they have to "break him."

We just went through a lot of this with Mr. ReddHedd’s parents in the last year during their lengthy hospital and rehab stays. It’s a difficult maze of paperwork and care protocols to navigate, and we’re both lawyers. I cannot imagine having to go through all the contract and legal considerations on power of attorney, medical care, etc., when you aren’t familiar with the terminology. Because at the same time you are trying to deal with all of this paperwork? You are also facing the emotional nightmare of potentially losing a very ill and beloved parent.

To gin this up into a political issue is unconscionable, especially as a scare tactic for the elderly.

But, as Rick Pearlstein explains, it’s not exactly new for the right wing to sink into the orchestrated outrage gutter:

So the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the town hall hecklers — these are "either" the genuine grass roots or evil conspirators staging scenes for YouTube? The quiver on the lips of the man pushing the wheelchair, the crazed risk of carrying a pistol around a president — too heartfelt to be an act. The lockstep strangeness of the mad lies on the protesters’ signs — too uniform to be spontaneous. They are both. If you don’t understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can’t understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests. . . . (more…)

Writing a letter via a.drian. Lovely shot.

I’m contemplating a restart of the "You Work For Us Summer Tour."

Last time, the issue was FISA.  And all of us were seriously, seriously pissed.  And there was a unified front on pushing better government and accountability from everyone all at once.

This time?  Health care is on the plate in a big way in the national discussion prior to the August recess. 

What I sense is a unified feeling of disgust and dismay from everyone.  But not a central purpose and demand for action in terms of what ought to be done legislatively.

So, here’s my thought:  LizH had a fantastic idea about meeting face to face with legislators and with staffers to tell individual stories about health care issues we’ve all had:

Do you think we could arrange a nationwide day/week to stand in line at your representative’s office? Everybody come armed with a health story and a demand that a public option be available to every citizen.

I guess I’d like to ruin their vacation, as so many lives have been ruined from the shameful lack of health care coverage in this country. I want what they have – health care.

She provided a link to something that NAMI has done on that in the past as an example of what could be done. While I’d love to work on a single day of action, I don’t think it is practical given that the right wing has big finances behind shoving "socialism" down the national throat as a rebuttal point for the rest of the summer.

Here’s the thing: we are the last line of defense on health care. If we want something better, it is up to all of us to push for it. And push hard.

We’ don’t have Dick Armey’s PAC money financing us, all we have is our own will to make things better. But, honestly? I’d match our determination and gumption against Freedomworks slick bullshit maneuvers any day if we all got off our asses and did something together.

The big question is? Will we.

It is awfully easy to sit on the sidelines and grouse about things not being perfect. It’s harder to get up and do something about them. And what I’m asking — before I put the rest of my summer’s effort into this — is: are you willing to make the effort for better health care? (more…)

MIKE ROSS: …You know, we have been trying to get healthcare reform done since Harry Truman, and our objective is to get healthcare reform done this year; that was the President’s original objective. And somewhere along the way, people started imposing this artificial deadline of get it done by August 1. We’ve done a lot this year. The American people are ready for us to slow down and to actually take the time to think about what we are voting on, to read what we are voting on, and by waiting until September, this gives every member of Congress, Democrat and Republican, the opportunity to go home and listen to their constituents, to make sure that we’re getting this right.

The American people are ready for you to slow down, cut the knees out from under the public option and water down the health care reform bill? Really?!?

Let’s take a look at a lot of America’s reality:

The grassy parking lot is full. Beyond the fence, the cars are stacked up for miles. A snake of headlights is visible in the semi-dark along the curvy length of Hurricane Road, waiting to access the Wise County Fairgrounds.

These are the modern-day breadlines: people desperate not for food, but for health care.

“We are working taxpaying jobs, paying taxes, and we can’t get insurance because we make $6.55 an hour,” said Laura Head, 32, of Rogersville, Tenn., the first person in line Friday for the first day of the Remote Area Medical clinic, an annual three-day event offering free medical care. “This is really a great beneficial thing, but it doesn’t have to be this way; we could all have insurance.”

A single mother of three who mows yards and moves trailers for a living, Head said she arrived at the fairgrounds Tuesday, to camp out at the fairgrounds until the health fair began Friday morning. Her motivation was simple: severe, constant pain.

Close to two years ago, her boyfriend smashed her teeth, she said – but, without the $6,000 needed to have the teeth pulled she has endured infection after infection, making literally 100 visits to the emergency room for antibiotics and pain medication.

At $6.55 an hour, Laura Head can’t afford to buy a lobbyist to stroll the halls of Congress, ply the media with tasty morsels and hang out in Max Baucus’s offices, now can she?

If Mike Ross and the Blue Dogs want to use the August recess to hear from constituents, what say we give them — all of them — an earful?

Last March, 60 Minutes had a story on rural health care volunteers that really floored me.Marty Tankersley came with his wife and his daughter, asleep behind the front seats. Tankersley says he drove some 200 miles to get to the clinic and slept in the parking lot for hours.

“Just to have this done?” Pelley asked.

Why is it in this country that it feels like we continually back people into a corner. Sometimes of our own making, sometimes of theirs, but oft times a combination of both. And then we bitch about them being in that damned corner. But we never really bother contemplating how they got there in the first place.

According to the official WH schedule, President Obama is having Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Max Baucus over to the WH for a meeting this morning. You think health care might come up? My favorite touch on this is that Reid and Baucus will be meeting in the Oval Office. Talk about your home court advantage.

AHIP, the insurance industry interest group that lobbies for insurance interests on the Hill and elsewhere, is launching its first PR salvo into the health care debate. According to Politico, they are spending seven figures to do it.

And they’ve launched a super-swell website touting an “American Solution” to healthcare that, inadvertently I’m sure, fails to mention any public option or single payer perspective.

Nikki White was 32 years of age when she died of complications from lupus. But her journey from her diagnosis to her death is a perfect illustration of why current “health care” is neither good for our nation’s health nor geared toward care.