A Sunday Show Finally Figures Out It Would Be A Good Idea To Put On Someone Interesting And Not Half-Dead

AOC has a bigger twitter following than anyone else in the House; she's up there with the big-time senators:

@AOC- 4.39 million
@SpeakerPelosi- 2.61 million

@BernieSanders- 9.32 million
@SenSanders- 8.38 million
@SenWarren- 5.07 million
@ewarren- 2.63 million
@CoryBooker- 4.26 million
@TedCruz- 3.35 million
@SenTedCruz- 1.24 million
@Kamala Harris- 2.71 million
@RandPaul- 2.49 million
@SenSchumer- 1.81 million
@SenGillibrand- 1.42 million

And no one even heard of her a year ago! The rest of these people have been building up their following for years-- if not decades! And until two days ago she had never appeared on any of the Sunday talk shows. This week she was a guest on ABC's The Week. I doubt Pelosi's office recommended her-- and I'm certain they won't recommend her again. David Axelrod would though:

So what upset Pelosi and her clique?

1- "I think that we have a very real risk of losing the presidency to Donald Trump if we do not have a presidential candidate that is fighting for true transformational change in the lives of working people in the United States. I think that if we elect a president on half-measures that the American people don't quite understand-- the agenda of a president, you know, that says we're fighting for higher wages but we don't want a $15 minimum wage, fighting for education but we don't want to make colleges tuition-free, fighting for women's rights, et cetera, but we don't want to go all the way with that, then I think we have a very real risk of losing the presidency."

2- She called impeaching the dangerous criminal in the White House a "constitutional responsibility."

3- She answered affirmatively when asked if progressive Democrats are frustrated with Pelosi. "I think it's quite real," she said. "I believe that there is a very real animus and desire to make sure that we are-- that-- that we are holding this president to account."

4- "I'm excited to be introducing a repeal of the Hyde Amendment via amendment-- we'll see where it goes-- for incarcerated women and the maternal and reproductive health care of incarcerated women is-- it should be guaranteed as it is with all women in the United States. And so I think it really depends-- and that's really what the Hyde Amendment is about."

I hope you'll watch the whole segment (above) but here are a couple of key excerpts:

JONATHAN KARL: Essentially you have 41 freshman Democrats that are in seats that were held by Republicans. And from everything I've seen, virtually all of them-- these are your majority-makers, all of them oppose moving forward with impeachment.

AOC: I would disagree with that assessment. I think that some of these dynamics are changing. I would very much not say all of them are opposed to impeachment. I think many of them are extraordinarily concerned about the misconduct coming out. You have to look at the process. There is opening an impeachment inquiry and then there's the impeachment vote itself. There may be some that are out on the impeachment vote itself, but I think that there is a growing sentiment even among many of these frontliners, as we call them, swing district Democrats that think we should at least open an inquiry and look into the abundance of evidence, 10 counts of obstruction of justice, four with rock-solid evidence, we have violations of the emoluments clause.

We need to at least open an inquiry so that we can look at what is going on. And that is what opening an-- an impeachment inquiry means.

...I think what we really need right now is a presidential candidate that is going to fight for the well being of working-class Americans and all Americans. And I think that he [Sanders] does that excellently. I think his policies do that excellently. I believe Senator Warren's policies do that excellently. And I think that that's really what we need to be looking for in terms of the agenda.

And when we talk about the agenda, for me, that agenda means the right to health care. It means a $15 minimum wage pegged to inflation. It means making sure that we can make college accessible to all people including public colleges, vocational schools, and community colleges. It means having a foreign policy that's focused on peace-building and stability. And that is what I'm looking for, really, in a candidate for the United States presidency.

KARL: So, do you believe the Democrats will lose to Donald Trump if they don't nominate somebody who is, in your mind, a true progressive along the lines you just described?

AOC: Well, I think that we have a very real risk of losing the presidency to Donald Trump if we do not have a presidential candidate that is fighting for true transformational change in the lives of working people in the United States. I think that if we elect a president on half-measures that the American people don't quite understand the agenda of a president, you know, a president that says we're fighting for higher wages but we don't want a $15 minimum wage, fighting for education but we don't to make colleges tuition-free, fighting for women's rights, et cetera, but we don't want to go all the way with that, then I think we have a very real risk of losing the presidency.

...KARL: OK. Unfortunately, we're almost out of time but I got a couple of quick ones I want to get to. First, you have suggested that an economic system that has billionaires is immoral. So let me just ask you, if you had a true progressive program put in place, would Jeff Bezos still be a billionaire five, 10 years from now?

AOC: I think I spend less time thinking about Jeff Bezos and I think more time thinking about Amazon warehouse workers. I think about the outcomes that I want for those folks. So whether Jeff Bezos is a billionaire or not is less of my concern than if your average Amazon worker is making a living wage, if they have guaranteed health care and if they can send their kids to college tuition-free. And if that's the case and Jeff Bezos is still a billionaire, that's one thing. But if his being a billionaire is predicated on paying people starvation wages and stripping them of their ability to access health care, and also if his ability to be a billionaire is predicated on the fact that his workers take food stamps, so I'm paying for him to be a billionaire...

KARL: And do you think that's why he's a billionaire, because he pays his workers starvation wages and...

AOC: I think it's certainly a part of the equation when you have a very large work force and you underpay every single person and then you also participate in-- you know, in taking billions of dollars of government subsidies, I think that could be part of it. But, if he's willing to give up all of his government subsidies, if we're willing to charge fair taxes, if we're willing to pay people living wage, send people to college tuition-free, guarantee everyone health care and he's still a billionaire, then, well, that's a fight we can have another day.

She held back on Biden, although it was obvious she isn't supporting him for the nomination. One of her own supporters-- Cenk Uygur-- was less reticent when he was interviewed over the weekend. He warned Democrats: "Don’t make the same mistake we made in 2016. All of the media told you that Hillary Clinton was the more electable candidate. The polls showed the opposite but the media said, 'No, don’t believe your lying eyes, believe in my alternative facts instead.' And we were right and they were wrong."

He worries that the Democrats will nominate a status quo elitist like Hillary-- in other words: Biden. "Do not make that same mistake. Vote for a progressive who says, 'I’m going to fight for you.'"

Ryan Was On TV Yesterday With His Litany Of Lies-- And It Was A Total Disaster

Bruce Poliquin represents the "other" Maine congressional district, almost the whole state minus Portland, Augusta and the southwest coastal strip. He's got Lewiston-Auburn, Bangor and everything up to the Canadian borders on the west, north and east. Politically, it's a swing district. Obama beat McCain by 10 points and beat Romney by 9 points, Last year, though, although Maine went for Hillary, ME-02 went for Trump 51.4% to 41.1%. The Democrats nominated the same worthless EMILY's List-type mushy stooge who had lost in 2014, Emily Cain, and she lost badly-- 192,878 (54.8%) to 159,081 (45.2%). Poliquin is the last Republican in the House from New England-- and he made the mistake of voting for Ryan's TrumpCare bill last week. If you watched The Week yesterday-- or on the clip above-- you get the idea that the only New England Republican senator left-- Susan Collins-- wishes Poliquin had voted NO. As Pelosi said in closing the debate Thursday, the vote will be tattooed on the foreheads of every Republican who voted for it and "you will glow in the dark with it."

What's important to remember about this plan is that Trump and the House Republicans are willing to take health care away from 24 million Americans, slash Medicaid by $880 billion while drastically lowering health standards, hiking premiums and putting people at the mercy of the predatory, greed-driven health insurance corporations-- and why?-- to give huge tax cuts to the wealthy and to their big donors in the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.

David Gill, the Blue America-endorsed congressional candidate in Illinois' 13th district, an emergency room doctor who has been pushing for Medicare-For-All for two decades. He saw right through Ryan's lies Sunday. "Speaker Ryan," he told us, "spewed a great deal verbiage in attempting to defend his party's passage of TrumpCare on This Week. But no matter how many times the Republicans provide us with their talking points, they can't escape these basic facts: their 'health care' bill will provide nearly $1 trillion in tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans; it will further enrich insurance companies which have fed like gluttons off American consumers for the past several decades; and it will strip care and/or reduce access to care for large numbers of Americans. Ryan states that we ought not have a 'one size fits all' health care system. As an Emergency Department physician who has practiced medicine for nearly 30 years, I reply 'Why not?' Why not stop picking and choosing who gets the care they need? Why not stop having providers cherry-pick their patients, selecting the well-insured over the most impoverished? Such a statement is not intended to cast aspersions on my fellow doctors-- it is not a moral failing, when given the choice between receiving $6 or receiving $100 for doing the exact same work, to select the $100 figure. But when we finally have Single-Payer health care here in America, such choices will be things of the past.  When EVERYONE has a U.S. Health Care card, we'll all be better off, both medically and economically. The presence or absence of pre-existing conditions will at last be a moot point. And we'll save nearly $1 trillion each year, the money the insurance companies currently suck out of the system WHILE PROVIDING NO HEALTH CARE. I look forward to leading the charge to Single-Payer when I get to Congress in January, 2019."

Watch Paul Ryan look into the camera and repeat all the focus-group-tested lies the Republicans are all running around repeating over and over again. The premise-- "Obamacare is collapsing"-- is false, although Trump and the GOP are doing their best to sabotage it, bringing misery to millions for their own political ends. And then his claims about what his TrumpCare bills is overwhelmingly false. Deceitfully, he claimed that "Under this bill, no matter what, you cannot be denied coverage for preexisting conditions." That sounds good, right? Not really. Ryan;s talking about access, not about affordability. And as Susna Collins explained, "If the coverage is unaffordable, that doesn't do any good."

Ryan insists "we're proud of this." But Joy Reid contacted the offices of all 217 Republicans who voted for it to invited one to come on her MSNBC show this weekend and not a single one would come on and share their "pride." Justin Amash (R-MI) voted for the bill-- reluctantly. He explained his "pride" on his Facebook page.

This is not the bill we promised the American people. For the past seven years, Republicans have run for Congress on a commitment to repeal Obamacare. But it is increasingly clear that a bill to repeal Obamacare will not come to the floor in this Congress or in the foreseeable future.

When Republican leaders first unveiled the American Health Care Act, a Democratic friend and colleague joked to me that the bill wasn’t a new health care proposal; it was plagiarism. He was right.

The AHCA repeals fewer than 10 percent of the provisions in the Affordable Care Act. It is an amendment to the ACA that deliberately maintains Obamacare’s framework. It reformulates but keeps tax credits to subsidize premiums. Instead of an individual mandate to purchase insurance, it mandates a premium surcharge of 30 percent for one year following a lapse of coverage. And the bill continues to preserve coverage for dependents up to age 26 and people with pre-existing conditions.

I want to emphasize that last point. The bill does not change the ACA’s federal requirements on guaranteed issue (prohibition on policy denial), essential health benefits (minimum coverage), or community rating (prohibition on pricing based on health status). In short, Obamacare’s pre-existing conditions provisions are retained.

The latest version of the AHCA does allow any state to seek a waiver from certain insurance mandates, but such waivers are limited in scope. Guaranteed issue cannot be waived. Nobody can be treated differently based on gender. And any person who has continuous coverage-- no lapse for more than 62 days-- cannot be charged more regardless of health status.

Consider what this means: Even in a state that waives as much as possible, a person with a pre-existing condition cannot be prevented from purchasing insurance at the same rate as a healthy person. The only requirement is that the person with the pre-existing condition get coverage-- any insurer, any plan-- within 62 days of losing any prior coverage.

If a person chooses not to get coverage within 62 days, then that person can be charged more (or less) based on health status for up to one year, but only (1) in lieu of the 30 percent penalty (see above), (2) if the person lives in a state that has established a program to assist individuals with pre-existing conditions, and (3) if that state has sought and obtained the relevant waiver. Here in Michigan, our Republican governor has already stated he won’t seek such a waiver, according to reports.

In an interview with IFLScience, Dr. Jason Westin, an award-winning cancer research expert and a candidate for Congress in a swingy Houston-based seat held by TrumpCare supporter John Culberson, he got right to the heart of what Ryan's plan really is: "The TrumpCare bill is not designed to make Americans healthier. It is designed to cuts costs to give a massive tax cut for the richest Americans. As a doctor, I took an oath to first do no harm. This bill will do a lot of harm to a lot of people, and will make America sicker. I've seen first-hand the pain that is inflicted on good people with insurance problems. This bill will multiply those problems, not make them better. My patients all have pre-existing conditions, and they and millions more are very worried about what happens next to their healthcare."

The IFLScience piece goes on to point out that "before the ACA became law, insurance companies could charge people a lot more for their insurance, or deny it to them outright, if they had a long-running medical issue of some kind. Now, it’s illegal to do so, but the AHCA wants to insidiously reverse that. Here’s a selection of just a few pre-existing conditions, at least one of which almost a third of adults under the age of 65 have:

• Breast Cancer
• HIV/AIDS
• Coronary Heart Disease
• A form of paralysis
• Alzheimer’s/Dementia
• Epilepsy
• A transplanted organ
• Transsexualism
• Psychological disorders
• Sexual assault
• A cesarean section
• Victim of domestic violence
• Being pregnant

"As has been rightly pointed out by many," they add, "many of these pre-existing conditions are those experienced by women, so the bill is inherently and ludicrously misogynistic. It’s extremely difficult to argue against the fact that this bill is a vicious assault on the less well-off, the elderly, and women. The AHCA, just as an example, essentially states that, if you report being sexually assaulted, or you are pregnant, you will be asked to pay more for your health insurance if you are allowed to keep it--a lot more, in fact. 'The present proposal would still increase costs, reduce coverage, and cut benefits, putting health, independence, and quality of life at risk for all of us as we age,' Nancy Lundebjerg, the Chief Executive Officer of the American Geriatric Society, said in a statement. One recent costing suggests that a 40-year-old with an average type of health insurance will end up having to pay $4,000 more per year if they have asthma, $5,500 extra for diabetes, $17,000 if they are pregnant, and up to $143,000 if they have an advanced form of cancer."

As our old pal Marianne Williamson explained in her essay for HuffPo over the weekend-- without even mentioning Paul Ryan (or Trump)-- "Political propaganda seeks to affect the way people perceive the world in order to affect the way they behave. Political propaganda is the biggest tool in the extremist’s arsenal. It’s at an all-time high today in terms of sophistication and effectiveness, as Madison Avenue public relations acumen has been insidiously and nefariously applied to the political sphere. Our problem is not just that some politicians flat out lie; our bigger problem is the power of their propaganda to dismantle the ability within many people’s minds to even realize they’re being lied to. People are vulnerable to extremism not because they like extremism, but because in too many cases today extremism is hugely successful at posing as something else... Whether or not a Big Lie has been proven to be false seems to have minimal bearing on whether or not it is believed. It is the conviction and consistency with which the Big Lie is stated, not the proven accuracy or inaccuracy of its claim, that determines its effect on voters’ minds and thus the way that they vote."

Eric Ferhnstrom Probably Won't Be On TV With Paul Krugman Again-- Will ANY Romney Surrogate?

If Eric Ferhnstrom is the best Romney can do in terms of surrogates, maybe Obama can win this thing after all-- at least if anyone watches chat shows like This Week. Sunday's particular episode, however, is worth watching, as Paul Krugman roasted Ferhnstrom over a spit while Obama Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter basted him with a mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, shopped garlic and a dash of rosemary. Oddly, George Will brought along some lovely black Cypriot finishing salt when he insisted that poor befuddled Ferhnstrom respond to the question of Romney's support for Paul Ryan's vision of a society based on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, generally referred to as the "Ryan Budget." After first ducking the question, Romney's surrogate admitted-- perhaps forgetting Paul Krugman was sitting at the table with access to a mike-- that Romney is for the Ryan budget. Now's the time to get the popcorn:

FEHRNSTROM: Oh, he's for-- he's for-- he's for the Ryan plan. He believes it goes in the right direction. The governor has also put forward a plan to reduce spending by $500 billion by the year 2016. In fact, he's put details on the table about how exactly he would achieve that. So to say he doesn't have a plan to-- a plan to restrain government spending is just not true.

KRUGMAN: Can I say, the Ryan plan-- and I guess this is what counts as a personal attack-- but it isn't. It's not an attack on the person; it's an attack on the plan. The plan's a fraud. The plan is a big bunch of tax cuts, some specified spending cuts, basically for poor people, and then a huge magic asterisk which is supposed to turn into a deficit reduction plan, but, in fact, if you look what's actually in it, it's a deficit-increasing plan.

And so to say that-- just tell the truth that there is really no plan there, neither from Ryan, nor from Governor Romney, is just the truth. That's not-- if that's-- if that's being harsh and partisan, gosh, then I guess the truth is anti-bipartisanship.

FEHRNSTROM: So may I ask you, Paul, do you prefer the president's plan?

KRUGMAN: Oh, yeah. I mean, the president-- at least it's-- you know, I don't approve of everything, but there are no gigantic mystery numbers in his stuff. We do know what he's talking about. His numbers are-- you know, all economic forecasts are wrong, but his are not-- are not insane. These are - these are just imaginary.

I might add at this point that I'm reading Stephen Goldstein's fantastic new book, Atlas Drugged which should be the perfect reparative therapy for Paul Ryan's staffers who were forced to read the Ayn Rand novels that he claims animated his political career. Described as "the long-overdue obituary for the unbridled greed glorified by Atlas Shrugged, I find myself rationing the book so I can savor it without finishing it all in one gulp. Great review from Anthony Orlando in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

Stephen Goldstein does to Ayn Rand acolytes what Stephen Colbert does to Bill O'Reilly. Atlas Drugged is the most unflinching satire of the Right I've ever read. Goldstein has a mellifluous voice, and he puts it to deliciously ruthless use. Conservatives and libertarians will complain that it's unrealistically over-the-top, and so-called 'centrists' will complain that it's unnecessarily partisan, but as shown in recent interviews with and stories about the true Randites in the top 1 percent, this book is closer to nonfiction than... well, than any of us should be comfortable with. And that's the point. You shouldn't be comfortable with the status quo. You shouldn't condone sociopathic greed, much less succumb to it. To do so is to violate the very moral precepts that make our civilization possible. Goldstein's achievement here is to show us a world without those precepts and to challenge us to prevent it from becoming a reality.

Contest time! What will they teach at UC Berkeley's new center for studying right-wing movements?

Will there be a "C Street for Dummies" class?

by Ken

Disclaimer. I don't read The Week. I'm not entirely sure I know what exactly The Week is, beyond its motto: "EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS."

[Insert your own joke here. (Why should I do all the work? Isn't it enough that I do my daily shift shoveling coal -- clean coal, of course -- to keep the blog going?) Feel free to share it in the comments section.]

However, somebody from The Week sent me word about the current version of their weekly reader contest, which concerns the new Center for the Comparative Study of Right-wing Movements, established this past February at the University of California at Berkeley with the mission:

to encourage and nurture comparative scholarship on right-wing movements in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and other regions of the world over the past hundred years. The Center is especially interested in supporting research that examines the diversity of right-wing movements and their respective emphasis on social and religious issues, nationalism and race, and economic doctrines. The Center promotes research, offers mini-grants, fellowships, and training opportunities to Berkeley students, publishes findings, and brings together leading scholars through conferences, colloquia, and other public events in order to engage in a comparative and interdisciplinary dialogue on right-wing ideology, politics, and organizational forms and their likely directions in the 21st century.

Who knew? Well, no doubt, a lot of people, but not me. Just recently I wrote about the remarkable shelfful of books we've been vouchsafed on the rise of the Loony Right. Little did I know that one of our leading universities has already made the study of right-wing movements an academic program, within its Institute for the Study of Social Change, as part of "a major interdisciplinary research program: the New Metropolis Initiative," launched in 2004.

Here's how the ISSC describes the new center:

Center for the Comparative Study of Right-wing Movements

Right-wing movements are notably diverse. Various movements focus on social or religious issues, some on nationalism or race, sometimes with militaristic tendencies, others on economic doctrines. The most successful right-wing movements manage to assemble coalitions which include elements from more than one of these categories. For most of the twentieth century, the Right in the industrialized West, including such satellite areas as Latin America, had a transcendent issue, one which easily overcame the particular claims of individual movements and points of view, and created a unified lens through which the world was perceived and which directed action. This was anti-communism. So transcendent an issue was anti-communism in the twentieth century, it also united the Right with the major political parties and movements on the center-left, parties like the Democratic Party in the USA and social democratic parties in Europe. With the end of the cold war, anti-communism was spent as a unifying force. Pent-up for decades, particular right-wing movements now spun on to the political stage with centripetal energy. In a few cases, these groups have managed to find a basis for alliance and have come to power. Others have created chaotic international hot spots.

The mission of the Center is twofold: first, to identify these movements, flesh out their twentieth-century histories—how they aligned and how they survived—and at the same time isolate what is novel in the twenty-first century; and second, to develop and apply principles of how right-wing thought, ideology and organizational capacities operate to understand the state of the contemporary Right and identify its likely directions and successes. The Center will achieve this mission by encouraging and nurturing comparative scholarship on right-wing movements both in the U.S. and abroad during the 20th and 21st centuries. The Center will promote research, publish research findings, support graduate and undergraduate training, and host conferences, colloquia and other public events that bring together leading scholars to share new research and engage in interdisciplinary dialog related to this field of study.

THE CONTEST

So here's the contest The Week has come up with:

This week’s question: The University of California at Berkeley has a new department: The Center for the Comparative Study of Right-Wing Movements. What do you suppose this most liberal of universities will title some of the classes this department teaches?

How to enter: Submissions should be e-mailed to contest@theweek.com. Please include your name, address, and daytime telephone number for verification; this week, please type “Conservative Class’’ in the subject line. Entries are due by noon, Eastern Time, Tuesday, Sept 29. The winners will appear Friday, Oct. 2 on the Puzzle Page of the magazine next week and at theweek.com/contest. Entries submitted as comments on this web page cannot be considered.

First Prize: One year’s subscription to The Week

So's you know what you're getting yourself into, here are the results of last week's contest, Dumb Update:

After hearing about the two Australian girls who fell into a storm drain and updated their Facebook status rather than dialing 911, we asked you to predict the next really dumb Facebook message. You texted:

FIRST PRIZE: Wondering why this idiot policeman is pulling me over.
Brett Cutler, Park City, UT

SECOND PRIZE: Car stalled on tracks. Loud whistle sound drowning out my iPod. Grrrrrrr.
Daisy Michael, Westminster, MD

THIRD PRIZE: My bungee cord just bro
Georgia Binns, Babylon, NY

[With lots and lots of HONORABLE MENTIONS, including:
* "Bad day—was kidnapped and am being held hostage. But at least the food is good! LOL"
* "You won’t believe this! Just been moved up to third most wanted on FBI list!"
* "Nailing my road test!"
* "OMG the smoke is sooooooooooooo thick I can barely see my screen!"
* "Just mauled by a bear. Everything going dark."
* "We’re undercover @ Tenth & State."
* "Colonoscopy is going well so far. You can link to the live video on…"
* "I am sooooo busy here at work"

Of course if you actually enter this week's contest, you may not wish to share your entry here before the deadline. This is something only you can decide.

#