G99 is composed of citizens under the age of 29 who effectively catalyzed their protests at the conduct of their government and its officials into political organizing. The results are both interesting and compelling: where does civil society and civic engagement determine and support an election? The recent news out of the country seems to be pointing towards the usual problems associated with voting discrepancies, corruption and apathy. What will be critical is how we learn from this process. What methods can employ to better spread democratic processes abroad and inspire countries, communities and citizens to take control of their own political fates?

Meet Erin Mazursky, grass roots organizing consultant for the G99 Party. Through twitter, blogging and updates, Erin has kept abreast of all the developments and used her own experience from the Obama campaign to provide witness, counsel and analysis to G99 and Albania’s youth. With the elections there drawing to an eventful close, I urge you to peruse her blog for its critical analysis and for a passenger side view on the spread of democracy and grass roots organizing.

I thought David Gregory was supposed to be the moderator of a policy debate. Instead, he acted as a pitch man for the Republican infomercial. Gregory had plenty of opportunities to ask a decent follow-up question but instead he asked none. Here's a few follow-up questions I would have asked:

• Gov., you stated that in Massachusetts you have a model that "worked." Exactly what you mean by "worked"? Massachusetts has a system that is spending 33% more on health care than the national average. Why is that?


• Why would driving private options out of the healthcare industry be disastrous for America?


• By expanding Medicare and Medicaid to cover the poorest people in Massachusetts haven't you selected the healthiest people to be covered by private health insurance?


• Aren't some of the very high profile hospitals in Massachusetts getting paid more to do the same procedures are smaller hospitals? Why is this? How does this help decrease costs?


• Finally, you said "we can get the cost of health care down" but in your state healthcare has done nothing but increase since the instituting of this reform program. Healthcare costs have increased since 2006 by 42%. How do you plan on controlling costs if you can't even do it in the small state of Massachusetts?

• Eliminate insurance costs. This saves $700 billion.


• Negotiate drug prices. Give pharmaceutical companies longer patent times so they have the ability to recuperate their R&D costs.


• Fund research to find the best medical options for the most common diseases which include congestive heart failure, peripheral vascular disease, hypertension, diabetes and others.


• Pay primary care physicians and hospitals differently. Hospitals and primary care physicians should each take care of a population of patients. This eliminates the incentive to see patients over and over and over again. Instead, we should increase incentives to see patients once and get it right the first time.


• Truly look at medical products (wheelchairs, scooters, CT scanners and lab machines). The government working with physicians and other medical personnel should come up with guidelines for all of these devices. Who truly needs a scooter? Does every hospital need a CT scanner?


• Fix the immigration problem. By closing our borders, and only letting in people that we want in this country, we can decrease the strain on the emergency rooms across the country.


• Business saves. Businesses don't have to spend any money trying to figure out healthcare plans. Instead, they can use that money to increase salaries and to increase investment into their business.


• End of life. We have to begin to discuss end-of-life issues.

Obama talks about this bill in weekly Video address. Watch the video:

When Michael Jackson's Off the Wall album (yep, it was an album back then, 1979) came out, I bought it the first week it was out. I was in college. MTV was just starting. Off the Wall's first hit was "Don't Stop Until You Get Enough." This was a hit... a huge hit. This began Michael's best time as a creative performer. He did the voice track for ET and won a Grammy for it.

MTV was getting big. "Billie Jean" was released. As I recall, the song was just doing okay. Nothing big. Nothing huge. At the time, there was almost no Black artists being played on MTV. Whether is was Michael Jackson putting pressure on MTV or CBS threating to pull all of their videos, I don't know. I do know that MTV played the video. Michael being on MTV was HUGE. Blacks were starting to boycott MTV because of their unwillingness to play RnB/Soul/Funk music. The "Billie Jean" video was slick. It was more than some guy with big hair sticking his tongue out at the camera for three minutes. Was it video's answer to nuclear physics? NO but it was a huge breakthrough.

There was just a hint of BET (Black Entertainment Television) at this time. Most houses couldn't get BET. There was no satellite (DirecTV or Dish Network). Cable was still really young. WGN and TNT were the main channels on cable. HBO and Showtime were the only movie channels that I can remember at that time.

So, May of 1983. Motown is going to have their 25th anniversary show. I'm running around with graduation from college duties. I miss the special. Everyone who saw it was amazed at Michael's performance. This performance, if I'm not mistaken, wins Michael an Emmy. The combination of the video and the live performance caused Michael Jackson to blow up. He was HUGE.

Michael and Quincy Jones, the producer who really was responsible for the sound, cleaned up at the Grammys that year. They won eight.

Just a few words about this performance. There are two new dance moves that Michael breaks out for this performance that floors the crowd and became two legendary Michael Jackson moves. He does the moonwalk for the first time. He also does the thing where he goes up on his toes. I have no idea what that's called. But he was so fluid, and moved so well, that the audience just stares at one point. Also, watch the passion in Jackson's face.

No one was as big as Michael Jackson, in my opinion. No single performer. Maybe a group was bigger. The Beatles? Maybe. The Stones? Maybe. Elvis? Nope. Here's why I say this. Michael Jackson was popular all over the world. With TV and truly world tours, he had the ability to be worldwide like no other performer. Thriller, which was the zenith of his popularity, sold over 104 million copies.

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Everyone is talking about throwing trillions of dollars at healthcare. Look, as a trauma surgeon, I am happy to make more money. You can throw as much money in me as you would like. What many people are talking about, many progressives, is universal healthcare. This means you eliminate insurance costs from the equation. This frees up $700 billion. Somebody go get a calculator. We spend just over $7,000 per person in the United States. We have 46 million Americans who are currently not covered by any insurance. We can use this $700 billion and cover all 46 million Americans. No extra cost.

Joe Scarborough is trying to split the argument into two pieces. First he wants to talk about taking care of the 46 million Americans because, as he says it, "it is a moral issue." Secondly, he has no idea how we get a control exploding costs. Well, Jack Welch threw out some words without actually throwing out a coherent argument of how to control costs. Here's how we control costs:

-- the Healthcare Board must evaluate all medical products. There are literally thousands of medical products. This market includes everything from titanium orthopedic rods which stabilize fractures, to examination tables, to mammogram machines to those scooters. Scooters are an excellent example of an explosion of a product. 15 years ago, there were no scooters. Sales in wheelchairs and scooters top $3.2 billion in 2005. These costs need to be controlled. Along the same lines, does every hospital need a 64 slice CT scanner which has the ability through sophisticated software to show physicians a three-dimensional image of the heart and spin that image in space? Does every hospital need magnetic resonance imaging? Currently market forces are pushing hospitals to buy more and more technology. This is driving up costs. It is unclear whether it is driving up quality (I'm pretty sure that it is not). The Healthcare Board through scientific evaluation can curb these expenses.

-- hospitals should be paid along the same lines. Hospitals should be paid to take care of a group of patients. Hospitals will be penalized for pressuring doctors to discharge patients early. On the other hand, hospitals should be given bonuses for adhering to the "best practices."

Finally, there are some odds and ends in this discussion that I should clean up. Medicare and Medicaid patients will be rolled into this new universal healthcare. Universal healthcare will offer the same benefits that Medicare offers currently. Payroll taxes will be taking out of workers checks in order to pay for this system just as Medicare is currently taken out of our checks. Business should save billions of dollars by not having to deal with health care and health care costs. States should save money by not having to shell out money and personnel to deal with state health benefits. State taxes should fall!! Insurance companies will not go away. Instead they will probably offer supplemental healthcare insurance.

Do not buy the malarkey that we have to spend trillions of more dollars on health care. This is a lie. We currently spend 16% of our GDP on health care. That is plenty. We need to use the money that we have -- we just need to use a better.

You can download the podcast at these links: (iTunes / XML feed / MP3).

Sen. Kent Conrad (Democrat -- North Dakota) has floated a plan which uses customer health cooperatives or co-ops. These co-ops would operate at the state level or even the regional level. They would be not-for-profit. They would provide coverage for individuals or small businesses (with less than 10 employees). State rules and laws would apply to these plans. There would be "strong governance standards" which should help focus on the customer.

I'm sorry, what the hell is this? How does this improve healthcare one iota? In order to improve healthcare we need to pay primary care providers differently. They should be paid to keep a group of Americans healthy. The medical literature needs to focus on what is the "best" medical practice. Once that practice is decided those physicians who adhere to the "best" practices should be financially rewarded. How do these health co-ops get us any closer to this goal?

Americans spend an overwhelming amount of money (over $280 billion) on pharmaceuticals and medical durable products (bedside commodes, pacemakers, examination tables, syringes,titanium orthopedic rods are just a few of these products). How do we control these costs with the combination of large insurance companies and these small health co-ops? I'm not sure who this post be fooled by this proposal. Lawmakers. The American people. Or both.

The answer to fixing our health care problem is very simple. We need universal healthcare. We need the government to have the ability to negotiate prices. What a government run system be a panacea? No, but with the right legislation, it could be the right solution for all Americans.

From TP:

This morning on MSNBC, former Gov. Howard Dean rejected Conrad's proposal, saying it is "not a real compromise." "This is a fix for the Senate problem," he said, "this doesn't fix the American problem." After heaping praise on Conrad, Dean explained:

He's wrong about this. The co-ops are too small to compete with the big, private insurance companies. They will kill the co-ops completely by undercutting them, using their financial clout to do it. In the small states like mine and like Senator Conrad's, you're never gonna get to the 500,000 number signed up in the co-op that you need to in order for them to have any marketing [power].

This is a compromise designed to deal with problems in the Senate. But it doesn't deal with problems in America. And I think it's time for the Senate to stop playing politics, do what has to be done. ... If the Republicans don't want to get on board, then we can do this without the Republicans.

You can download the podcast at these links: (iTunes / XML feed / MP3).

FBI interrogator Ali Soufan, who interrogated Abu Zubaydah before he was taken away by the CIA, was called into question Al-Qahtani. He got a lot of information in a short period time. He even identified a sleeper cell located in Chicago. This wasn't enough information for US officials, who "knew" that Al Qahtani was holding out. Tougher measures were needed. My question is why would officials assume that a low-level screw-up who'd been captured twice in less than six months would have a treasure trove of information? I'm just asking. It is clear that there was a lot of outside pressure being placed on US officials. In April of 2002 there was a terrorist attack on a synagogue in Tunisia. The US Consulate in Karachi was attacked in June.

What did we learn from these harsh interrogations of Al-Qahtani? Nothing. The process was slow and time-consuming. I'm forced to scratch my head and ask the question, "Why?" We learned nothing. We should've known he knew nothing. Now my question is, how do we try this guy? How do we put him in jail, where he belongs, for the rest of his life?

Americans spend $2.2 trillion on health care. That is a huge chunk of money. Pharmaceutical companies and product makers have to carve out their part. On the good side, there are many drugs which did not exist for decades ago which make our lives better. Clot busting drugs can reverse the effects of a heart attack if given early enough. Patients with early signs and symptoms of a stroke can be given these drugs and 24 hours later they can walk out of the hospital like nothing happened. On the bad side, these drugs are ridiculously expensive. In 2007 Americans spent over $227 billion in prescription drugs. Drug companies saw their profits increase by $8 billion in the first half of last year!

If we look back to the 1960s when President Lyndon Johnson was proposing Medicare who opposed this revolutionary program, at that time? Physicians. Physicians were afraid that their reimbursement would be cut in order to save money. The American Medical Association (AMA) led the charge against Pres. Lyndon Johnson's revolutionary idea. It was only after an agreement between the White House and the AMA was made to the bill moves through Congress. Lawmakers would not make any effort to curtail physician charges. For approximately 10 years, Congress and the White House kept their promise. Starting at approximately 1980, a huge effort was made to control the healthcare costs by cutting physician reimbursement. Many physicians and the American Medical Association currently oppose healthcare reform. They fear, and rightly so, that budget shortfalls will be corrected by cutting physician's reimbursement once again. Over the last 20 years, many physician salaries have been cut in half secondary to these reimbursement cuts. Cardiothoracic surgeons, radiologists and anesthesiologists have been hit particularly hard.

It is my opinion that we cannot go forward with universal health care reform until we can figure out a way to get the majority of physicians on board. Again, the White House will probably need to make a deal with physicians in order to get some sort of public option through Congress.

There are other players in the healthcare game they're making serious money but aren't as high profile as physicians. There are nursing homes and hospitals along with product manufacturers (scooters, walkers, titanium orthopedic rods and many others). Combined, Americans spent close to $850 billion paying for these healthcare services in 2007.

We can't pretend that this is going to be easy. We can't pretend that some people, if not most people, aren't going to loose some skin in this game. We, Americans, cannot continue to spend 16% of our gross domestic product on health care. We need to spend money on education, infrastructure and other important needs. I'm not saying that Healthcare isn't important. I'm saying that we have a finite amount of money. We need to spend it wisely to get the most bang for our buck.

It seems as if the election of President Barack Obama has allowed Pandora's box to open and all the crazies have fallen out of the box. There was the cop shooting in Pittsburgh. The shooter had some bizarre conspiracy theory. We had the shooting of Dr. Tiller in Kansas by an anti-abortion terrorist. We had some guy in Utah threaten the President in front of a bank teller. There may be a pattern here.

I am extremely saddened that somebody had to die before we could stop this hatemonger. Many news outlets are reporting that the security guard, 39-year-old Stephen Tyronne Johns, was killed. Johns had worked at the Holocaust Memorial Museum for over six years. DK has a nice post saluting Mr. Johns.

From the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Von Brunn is the author of the 1999 book, “Kill the Best Gentiles,” a racist and anti-Semitic tome that argues that whites are seeing “today on the world stage a tragedy of enormous proportions: the calculated destruction of the White Race and the incomparable culture it represents. Europe, former fortress of the West, is now over-run by hordes of non-Whites and mongrels.” A raging anti-Semite, von Brunn blames “The Jews” for the destruction of the West. The book is dedicated to prominent neo-Nazis and racists including Revilo Oliver and Wilmot Robertson.

In 2003, AP reported that von Brunn had painted a portrait of Rear Adm. John Crommelin, a raging anti-Semite who was a close associate of neo-Nazi William Pierce, whose book The Turner Diaries inspired Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.

On his website, von Brunn also claims that in 1981, while wearing a “London Fog raincoat to conceal his weapons,” he attempted to put the whole Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve under “legal, non-violent citizens-arrest.” He wanted “to bind their hands and persuade them to appear on television.” The website says he was sentenced to 11 years for his actions. (more...)

Update from Political Animal:

Fox News spent much of April hyperventilating about a report from the Department of Homeland Security, warning of possible threats posed by violent radicals, specifically from anti-abortion and anti-Semitic extremists.

The DHS report, which Republicans spent weeks trying to exploit for partisan gain, looks considerably different now. On Fox News this afternoon, while the story at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was still unfolding, Shep Smith referenced the memo, saying he remembered the report "warning, 'look out for crazy extremists out there, about to do weirdness,' and here we are."

Catherine Herridge, a domestic security correspondent for the Fox News, said this is "an excellent point to bring up." She added, "[W]e have to now see those two intelligence assessments that were released by Homeland Security earlier this year -- one dealt with left-wing extremists, the other dealt with right-wing extremists -- you have to see them in a somewhat different light."

Greg Sargent added, "If this gunman proves to be an anti-government zealot and white supremacist, there will be tons of cable chatter and mea culpa-ing to the effect that the DHS was doing exactly what it was supposed to be doing in issuing that report. Right?"

We'll see.

Shep Smith added that the DHS report "was a warning to us all, and it appears now they were right."