Back from Netroots Nation, Holder as Worst AG in History, Advice From Howard Dean on Single Payer
By Rob Kall
I just got back from the netrootsnation conference. It was excellent. Can't imagine missing it next year. It was excellent both for the networking and productive connections I made and the content-- I learned a lot, chatted with some very interesting people and came up with some ideas and actions that could make a difference.
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It was great to be able to go the meeting,
knowing that OEN's ranking on technorati.com, which ranks blogs, was
climbing dramatically. Today, out of over 150 million blogs, we're
ranked 170. Figure that this number includes tech, cooking, paris
hilton, etc., and it puts us among the top 20 political and progressive
blogs. Our visibility and reach was apparent at netrootsnation, where
OEN trusted author Jerry Policoff and I were repeatedly heartily
welcomed with recognition and appreciation.
I stayed in
Pittsburgh at the home of famed Medical Examiner and Attorney, Cyril
Wecht-- a friend of Jerry. And had lunch on Saturday with Jerry, Dr.
Wecht, Gov. Don Siegelman, his daughter, director John McTiernan (who
directed Die Hard 1 and 3, Predator and Hunt for Red October)Gail
Sistrunk, a former college president who gave a powerful presentation
on Dept of Justice abuses, and a few
others.
I met and chatted with Howard Dean, Markos Moulitsas of Dailykos, John Byrne of Raw Story, and dozens of other bloggers.
I attended presentations on activism, organizing, feminist blogging,
the Judiciary Dept. Attorney scandal, progressive "whip" organizing,
twitter (realized I'm ahead of most of the twitterverse) and more.
The
conference gave me a lot of ideas we'll be implementing here, some
ideas for presentations I'll be proposing for next year, and a good
feel for how OEN is doing.
There was a report that when Obama top aide, Valerie Jarrett spoke,
there was some booing. Well, Jerry and I didn't boo, but we did speak
out a few times, like when she told us to "trust Obama." Or when she
told us to take it easy in our ciriticism. Frankly, on the way out to
Pittsburgh, while I was packing my trunk for the six+ hour trip, I
noticed I had an Obama sticker on my bumper and tore it off. Obama's
been a disappointment so far-- his appointees, his health care plan,
his signing statements, Guantanamo, refusal to release photos , failure
to fire Rove vetted, Bush appointed DOJ attorneys, failure to
investigate, all kinds of things Rahm Emanuel does. That's just a short
list. I was talking to one of our managing editors last night, Linda
Milazzo, and she'd told me she had put a list together too. I think a
lot of people have either put one together or could easily reel off a
long list of reasons to be disappointed in Obama.
I know it's still early, but there's no excuse for his not firing the
Bush appointed attorneys. As both Governor Don Siegelman and Dr. Cyril
Wecht said, keeping these Rove vetted people in power is enabling them
to continue to harm america and destroy people's lives.
Eric Holder is at risk of becoming the WORST ATTORNEY GENERAL IN US
HISTORY. That's right. If he fails to right the wrongs, investigate the
crimes that Gonzales perpetrated and allowed under his watch, and even
allows Bush appointees to continue, and allows the prosecutorial
misconduct engaged in under Bush to stand, Holder could go down in
history as WORSE than Gonzales-- the worst Attorney General in American
history. So far, he is on track for that designation. Someone on MSNBC
should do a daily count on Holder and Obama, like Keith Olbermann does
with the Iraq war, counting how many days Holder and Obama have still
allowed the Rove-vetted, Bush appointed DOJ prosecuting attorneys to
have their jobs. The counts should include updates on abuses by this
batch of partisan abusers of democracy. Cyril Wecht suggested that
since the Attorney General usually retains some of the appointees of
the past president, Eric Holder should re-hire the 9 attorneys that
were involved in the attorney firing scandal, because they refused to
engage in partisan political prosecutions. Then Holder could fire ALL
of the other Bush appointees. The crowd cheered at that suggestion. In
my personal conversations with Wecht and Siegelman, they both
repeatedly pointed out Obama's and Holder's failure to fire the Bush
prosecutors who had bedeviled them with prosecutorial misconduct. We
need to get these truly evil people out of positions of power.
I had a chance to speak with Alaskan blogger Shannyn Moore, who we
started reprinting on OEN last summer, who's been on the Olbermann
program lately, and she said she'd pitch the idea to him. I'm guessing
it would be a great count for Ed Schultz or Rachel Maddow. Feel free to
drop them a note and suggest it to them.
Turning up the Heat Under Obama's Feet We knew, the day Obama was elected, that we would have to really
put his feet to the fire to make him keep his promises and to make him
do the right thing, in terms of undoing the wrongs of the Bush
administration. Obama has repeatedly said that we need to push him.
It's becoming clear we have to raise the temperature of the fire.
I haven't given up on Obama, but he MUST be pushed and pushed hard. We
need to play hardball, just like his bad cop, Rahm Emanuel has been
doing. Never forget that when Emanuel plays mean, nasty,
anti-progressive bad guy, he is working for Obama. One of the goals of progressives should be to force the removal of
Emanuel from the White house.
I Get Advice on Single Payer from Howard Dean I spoke with Howard Dean at a reception. I told him how I've been
thinking that it would really help single payer health care advocate
efforts if the GAO did an accounting estimate on the ten year cost of
single payer. Most in the movement believe it would cost less than the
Obama plan. He replied that a member of congress can ask the GAO to do
a study, and suggested that John Conyers could ask. Conyers is the
sponsor of the HR676 single payer bill. I'll be contacting his office
tomorrow about this. Anyone else?
At a press conference, OEN writer Jerry Policoff asked Joe Sestak about
his position on single payer. Sestak replied that he opposed Kucinich's
amendment because of a sentence that ruled out for profit options, but
that he supported single payer. Jerry, who's putting in full time
working on single payer, tells me that Sestak's answer made it clear
that he wasn't yet fully up to speed, Sestak told him to get in touch.
We're going to try to get a meeting with Sestak so we can get him up to
speed on how single payer works. Not to be uneven handed, Jerry
challenged Arlen Specter, at a Town Hall, in July, for using Republican
anti- health care reform talking points in his responses and talks. To
his credit, Specter changed his tune and has, since that time, talked
about keeping single payer on the table. I want to know why, if he says
that, he hasn't signed on to the senate bill supporting single payer.
The great thing is, both candidates are open to discussion. I told Joe
Sestak I wanted to talk to him about single payer and he told me he'd
appear as a guest on my radio show. I'm hoping he and his policy aide
will have that meeting with Jerry Policoff before my show.
BTW, I'm hoping to have the writer and director of the video; THE
POLITICAL PROSECUTIONS OF KARL ROVE on my radio show this wednesday,
John McTiernan (director of Die Hard 1 and 3 and Hunt for Red October,)
and former college president Gail Sistrunk.
"The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove"
A video by Project Save Justice
"The
Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove" highlights only a very small
number of many cases across the country where tactics used by the
Department of Justice are questionable, if not illegal.
It is necessary to examine not only the methods....but the motives.
It was great to be able to make the drive to netrootsnation, great that
I had a free place to stay and had virtually ALL my meals covered, once
I got there, so the costs were very low, just sharing the cost of gas
and tolls. But I couldn't have made the trip if I'd had to fly and pay
for a hotel. Things are tight at OEN. We do an amazing lot with very
little. Our funding comes from you. That $25 or $5 or $200 you send in
is what keeps us going. If you love what we do and know we're doing
important work, if you see that our reach has given us access to not
only interview, but engage with people who are making a difference,
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Warm Regards,
Rob Kall
Authors Bio:
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.
To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.