What Joan Walsh actually wrote in Salon.

[No Elephants]

Lot of controversy over this and Walsh has doing damage control.

This is what she said.

As predictably as night follows day, on Monday the media establishment pivoted away from obsessing about GOP extremism and the party’s alleged “civil war” to the “train wreck” that is, allegedly, the Affordable Care Act.

And liberals helped lead the pivot.

Don’t get me wrong: The problems with Healthcare.gov are real, and disturbing, and must be fixed asap. (Think Progress has a dispassionate assessment here.) But excuse me if I believe the president knows that without my telling him. It’s like watching the 21st century version of the rise of the Democratic Leadership Council, and I feel the way I did back then: On the one hand, yes, it’s important for Democrats to acknowledge when government screws up, and to fix it.

On the other hand, when liberals rush conscientiously to do that, they only encourage the completely unbalanced and unhinged coverage of whatever the problem may be.

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/21/liberal_pundit_fail_rush_to_attack_obamacare_site_only_aids_unhinged_right/

It's really hard to discern what she actually is saying, but, she apparently thinks that "liberals" should go easy on Obama (whom she apparently labels a liberal--which I think is the most dishonest part of her blurb). Does she try to temper that plea? Yes, but if she wants liberals to be as free to criticize Obama as they are to criticize Republicans, what is her point? Her blurb does not focus as much on proportionality as she now claims.

Here's the thing: regardless of the subject, are liberals who try to silence other people really liberals in the first place?

I was taught that the antidote to speech you don't like is speech you do like, not silencing others.

And Walsh, not only has Salon and MSNBC as platforms for speech she does like, but she is editor of Salon, and therefore has some degree of control of what gets published in Salon.

Do I support her right to try to tell other people, who don't even have platforms as big as hers, to sit down and shut up? Yes, but I also support my right to say she is wrong. That is not how the First Amendment is supposed to work.

Meanwhile, buried in the article as a throwaway line is the one thing an honest liberal should be talking about, if Walsh weren't so busy worrying about defending a joke of a website:

Again, Lizza and Klein are describing real problems with the Healthcare.gov site, and it’s enough to make those of us who wanted a single-payer system say, “I told you so.” All the biggest problems with the ACA have to do with its commitment to working mostly through the existing patchwork of private insurance programs. That’s also the only way it could have gotten through Congress in 2010, though, so saying I told you so is satisfying but politically irrelevant.

Where's that article, Ms. Walsh?

[Enthusiast]

1. I understand and sympathize with her position.

There is 24/7 mainstream media condemnation of the ACA for any reason they can come up with. I consider this to be quite enough criticism, just for the sake of criticism. I mean, what is the point of "liberals" adding more noise about the messed up website? WTF? I agree with the President, the website is not the ACA. And I seldom agree with the President.

In a media that has hardly mentioned the Bush Administration's lying us into a war with Iraq I hardly see this media feeding frenzy over the ACA website as essential reporting. Every liberal needs to stand up and condemn the President and the ACA website? I don't think it is at all necessary. The President deserves criticism over a number of issues, like the proposed TPP, but he didn't design the website.

[No Elephants]

2. Medicare for all would not have caused problems. That's the real story.

Her point about the source of the difficulties with the website being the interface with private companies is also a good one. Undercuts the "government can't do anything right" meme.

Then again, government didn't design the software for the ACA website, either--another point getting lost in the noise.

I am of the view that everyone in media should try their damndest to tell the public the truth about everything, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, whether they are liberal or conservative or somewhere in between.

For one thing, that is the only way to credibility with all sides.

The reason this story even came to my attention, since I don't watch much MSNBC anymore, and I don't read Salon much, is a local PBS TV show called "Beat the Press."

Keller, a local Republican whom I've mentioned before as a partisan who pretends to be objective, used this story to beat up Walsh, Salon and Obama. And, I can't say he was wrong as to Salon and Walsh. They are not journalists, they are advocates. Yet Walsh is denying that she was an advocate when she made this statement; and that denial is ridiculous. So, the hypocrisy bothers me as well.

Then again, I am one of the very few who refuses to look through either the red prism or the blue prism (or even the green prism). One of those crazy people who think principles should still matter and we will never get out of this mess unless we we all put down our respecitve prisms and face reality.

When DU2 wasn't too highly trafficked to show tag lines, mine included a quote from Dr. Phil, whom I don't like all that much. Nonetheless, the particular saying I quoted was something in which I believe. It went something like. "If you misdiagnose, you mistreat. If you mistreat, you reduce chances of improvement." (The actual saying was zingier, but I'm too lazy right now to look it up in my profile.)

I believe that and I'd like improvement. So, I favor discerning reality as much as I can.

None of the colored prisms is useful when it comes to discerning reality. If I have any prism, it's the 99%.

I agree totally on TPP, but it's not getting as much press from anywhere in the MSM, is it? And that is because everyone is one side or the other--either right or establishment (as if there is much of a difference anymore anyway.)

I read somewhere that Ed Shultz has been trying his best to sound the alarm, within the parameters of the constraints MSNBC puts on its show hosts. And, it's pretty brave of him, given that he's returned only recently from the weekend, just before MSNBC resumes its weekend prison programming.

Problem is, government has ceased responding to us, if ever it did.

Maybe we should all reciprocate, say every April 15.

[Enthusiast]

4. I can't disagree with a word.

Discerning reality has become difficult in the face of this massive effort to mislead.

I am sick to death over this massive spying/propaganda bullshit. Snowden forgot to tell us about the huge propaganda mechanism that is equal to the surveillance effort.

There are sock puppets on DU3 arguing that Chained CPI wouldn't be so bad. They are also telling us that TPP isn't so bad. This is very much like the army of sock puppets that told us we must strike Syria.

MSNBC is more dangerous than the rest because they carry the false mantle they are more liberal and unbiased. I bet we will find Ed will abandon his anti-TPP stance. Either that or he'll find himself on ESPN like Olbermann.

[No Elephants]

7. I can't disagree with a word of your post, either.

[Enthusiast]

6. Of course, medicare for all is the single viable answer.

But we would hear, "But Medicare is going broke as it is already!" This little gem would be coming directly from the insurance/health care services industry lobby. Medicare for all could come in at less than 50% of the current American health care costs. Everyone that knows anything knows this. During the health care debate the President actually said, "Single payer would be too expensive." lol. He couldn't have actually believed that, no fucking way.

[No Elephants]

8. During the 2008 campaign, Obama said single payer would not work in the US

because "we already have all these systems in place."

Baloney. Every country with single payer or something comparable, had at the time it changed, "all these systems" already in place. Ditto the US before OASDI and Medicare.

Existing systems aren't sacred or immutable. That's why we don't still bleed sick people with leeches, to mention just one thing.

When you actually want change (for something other than a campaign slogan), you make the change and modify or eliminate existing systems.

At that time, too, he made a derisive remark about not wanting government to run health care. Now, he can't possibly be that dumb. Medicare is government-run health insurance, not government-run health care. Government run health care is government owning hospitals, hiring doctors, etc. That is not even close to single payer.


And then, to add gratuitous insult to injury, he snickered, "like the Post Office." The burdens that the 2006 postal "reform" act put on the post office were insane. Nonetheless, I can mail a letter this morning at my own doorstep, and have it go across country to the home of the recipient, within two or three days and all for under half a dollar. I wish the WH and Cabinet ran that reliably and cost effectively.

Why this man ever wanted to register Democrat is beyond me.

"This little gem would be coming directly from the insurance/health care services." Yes, but also from our crap elected "representatives"--and not only Republicans, either.

[stevenleser]

3. Hey, how come you folks don't join us in DU3?

Just curious.

[Enthusiast]

5. I post there. Madfloridian posts on DU3.

Leopold's Ghost posts on DU3. There are others. We are less likely to encounter sock puppets here on the defunct DU2. DU3 might not like No Elephants because she refuses to subscribe to the agreed upon official mythology.

I could not access DU3 for a long time after the start up. Was it DU3 blocking me? Was it the NSA? I had been very critical of the President. One day the blocking was over. I changed nothing on my end.