Steven C. Day

By Steven C. Day

The chorus to Pete Seeger's famous protest song, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," ends with these haunting words:

When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Seeger was, of course, speaking to the deadly serious business of the futility of war, but his words apply almost as well to the current debate over healthcare reform - itself a deadly serious matter for millions of Americans. Because one has to wonder: when will Democrats ever learn that giving in to bullies never works - never - not in a million election cycles. As every schoolyard victim knows all too well, when you give in to a bully he or she will just keep coming back, continually upping the ante - until, finally, after much misery, the victim is left with no choice but to either accept the pain and humiliation indefinitely or to finally fight back.

Bullying, of course, has been the right wing's political weapon of choice for well over a decade, but rarely has it been more starkly on display than in the last few weeks. The town hall bullies, backed up by both corporate special interests and the right wing noise machine, have been making quite a splash. Recent polling suggests that their lies, as transparently foolish as they seem to those of us on the left, may actually be carrying the day.

The granddaddy of all these lies, of course, is the absurd claim that the healthcare reform bill passed out of the House would create "death panels," committees of federal bureaucrats tasked with deciding whose grandmother (or Down syndrome child) will live and whose will be required to die.

As you, no doubt, already know, the geneses of this nonsense is a provision in the bill which - quite reasonably - provides a mechanism for paying health care providers, under Medicare, to provide information and counseling to patients regarding end of life issues such as advance directives and living wills. So absurd (and hurtful given the importance of end of life planning) is this lie, it actually did something unthinkable for a time, fracturing (at least a little) the usually rock solid unity of the right wing attack machine, with some Republicans openly denouncing the fraud. Although, alas, the party leadership seems in the end to be coming down on the side of the nuts, as per the usual.

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By Steven C. Day

Since depressing things often aren’t surprising, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that Americans seem to be “cooling” to the issue of global warming. According to the fun loving folks at Gallup, economic fears related to the Great Recession are crowding out green consciousness. The number of global warming doubters is going up, while the number of Americans willing to sacrifice to save the planet is going down.

I guess there’s nothing like a little economic hardship to make people want to tell future generations to take a piss in the wind. "I’ve got rent to pay today, so screw your apocalypse tomorrow." 

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BUZZFLASH'S LAST CHANCE DEMOCRACY CAFE

By Steven C. Day

God knows this country desperately needs to have a good health care reform package passed into law. But it’s becoming increasingly obvious that may not happen — the good part that is — unless progressives make it clear they’re willing to kill a bad “reform” package.

Let’s look at some of the recent evidence: Senator Dick Durbin, generally one of the good guys, just announced a willingness to dump the public option to get a bill passed. Meanwhile, we learn that the White House has entered into a deal with Big Pharma to oppose the government using its purchasing power to negotiate lower prices for prescription medicines. 

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BUZZFLASH'S LAST CHANCE DEMOCRACY CAFE

By Steven C. Day

As Steven Pearlstein recently demonstrated in the Washington Post, Republicans have been spreading blatant lies in their opposition to health care reform.

And as Paul Krugman noted in response in his blog at The New York Times, this is hardly a surprising development, given that lying about important public policy issues has been the GOP’s consistent modus operandi for well over a decade.

So let’s stop to consider this for a moment: our nation faces huge challenges — challenges we stand little chance of successfully addressing without an open and honest public dialogue toward that end. Yet, one of the nation’s two “great” political parties has adopted, as its primary operating strategy, a policy of consistently thwarting all attempts at achieving such a dialogue.

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