What frustrates single payer advocates the most is how they have been sidelined from the national health finance reform debate. People who support single payer, or enhanced and improved Medicare for All, have long waited for the chance to present their case to the American people for real health care reform via a single payer method. With the ever increasing cost of care, and the growing number of uninsured and under insured Americans, single payer advocates view inclusion of proposals that support a one payer system for financing health care an essential part of the debate.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Journalistic solipsism requires that outside phenomena be treated with clinical detachment but those within the industry be screamed with lights and sirens. For instance, enormous nationwide job losses are dispassionately reported but high double digit layoffs in a newsroom are greeted with bold, caps, updates and overheated rhetoric. It also explains the myopia over what troubles the industry. We are in a recession, so it seems obvious that newspapers would be in the doldrums too. Yet the internet is the focus of their ire. Why? Nothing is on the scene now that wasn't around five years ago. If the economy tanks then looking at your online operations should be part of weathering the storm, but why make it the primary focus?

Artist General

Industry reps offer $2 trillion in health savings (AP)
Top representatives of the health care industry plan to offer $2 trillion in cost reductions over 10 years in a bid to help pass President Barack Obama's health overhaul, a source familiar with the negotiations said Sunday. Industry officials representing health insurers, hospitals, doctors, drug makers and a major labor union plan to be at White House on Monday to present the offer.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Anti-Hillary Birthday card still on super market shelves (by NewHampster at Partizane)
WTF? I saw this back during the primary but one assumes things like this and the Hillary Nutcracker* would be gone by now. I was getting a birthday card for my 92 year old dad when this card just jumped off the shelf. Nearly a year since she withdrew and American Greetings and Shaw’s see fit to keep this crap on the shelf…

I hope folks … write the people in charge.
American Greetings Consumer Relations consumer [dot] relations [at] amgreetings [dot] com
Shaw’s Super Markets feedback [at] shaws [dot] com

[Welcome, Do-Bees! --lambert]

Obama Orders Burger With Elitist European Condiment (by Pareene at Gawker)

Dream (by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)
I was talking to a friend, and he said, “You know what I dream? That one day the Democrats will control both houses of Congress and the White House, and then we’ll stop the war, get all the money out of politics and have single-payer healthcare.” Hah. Keep dreaming.

Black Agenda Report

I Cannot Make This Up (by Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors)
I was stunned when I got off the plane in Minneapolis St. Paul and found myself face-to-face with a Fox News store. Yes, they had souvenirs, no, I did not buy any.

Tengrain had just attended a conference in honor of the 100th anniversary of The Progressive magazine. I’m told that there were a lot of expressions of unhappiness with Obama, maybe something like this below:
Buying Brand Obama (by Chris Hedges at Truthdig)

Nation Ready To Be Lied To About Economy Again (The Onion)
'From now on, just tell me the bullshit I want to hear,' one Ohio resident said. 'Tell me my savings are safe, everybody has a job, and we're No. 1 again.'
Do I have to tell you it’s a satire? I get in trouble when I don’t. But then, I get in trouble a lot, anyway.—Caro

Jamiol’s World

Robert Reich on Power (by David Leonhardt, New York Times)
I received a thought-provoking e-mail message from Robert Reich, who served as labor secretary under President Bill Clinton, advised the Obama campaign and teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. Referring to my interview with President Obama in this Sunday’s issue of The New York Times Magazine, Mr. Reich writes: “Neither he nor you mentioned power — how concentrated it has become in our society as income and wealth have concentrated… [S]urely the huge financial supermarkets that are ‘too big to fail’ will flex their muscles and avoid the kind of Canadian regulation Obama looks to.”

Except that the banks are REDUCING their lobbying:
Recipients of Federal Funds Cut Down On Federal Lobbying (Capital Eye, OpenSecrets.org)
Although the lobbying industry doesn't seem to have taken a hit in the first three months of 2009 compared to the same time last year, recipients of cash from the federal government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) handed out less money to lobbyists than they had in any quarter of 2008. The Center for Responsive Politics has found that TARP recipients have spent $13.9 million on lobbying so far this year, compared to $20.2 million in January through March of last year and $17.8 million in the last three months of 2008.

Yesterday was my birthday, so I took the day off. My birthday present to me was a webcam, so if I can ever figure out how to get YouTube to accept an upload, we may have some visits from Granny Bee.—Caro

Most See Obama as Different Type of Politician (Political Wire)
New York Times/CBS News Poll: "More than two-thirds of the poll's respondents call Mr. Obama a different kind of politician, while just 1 in 4 say he is a typical politician. When those who called him different were asked what sets him apart, most said it was more a matter of his style of governing and his personal qualities than his policies."
Because it doesn’t matter what you do, it only matters how you act and what you say.—Caro

And what others say about you:
OBAMA'S FIRST 100 DAYS: How the President Fared In the Press vs. Clinton and Bush (Project for Excellence in Journalism)
As he marks his 100th day in office, President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George Bush during their first months in the White House, according to a new study of press coverage.

Greenpeace (thanks to a tip from Alegre)

After an Off Year, Wall Street Pay Is Bouncing Back? (New York Times)

Larry Summers falls asleep during Obama’s meeting with credit card executives. (Think Progress)
[Thursday] President Obama met with credit card industry officials at the White House. After the meeting, he pledged to push for a law that would offer "strong and reliable" protections for credit card users in the United States. He called the session with the industry executives "open and productive conversation." However, one person who seemed less than interested in the meeting was White House economic adviser Larry Summers, who fell asleep.

What, me worry?

Katie Couric and CBS News Get Creative With Facebook Pages (Mashable)
Hi there, Facebookers! Katie Couric has a video challenge for you. The CBS Evening News anchor is putting the upgraded Facebook Pages to good use. In a 48 second video clip posted to her page, Couric explains that she’s going to be taking stock of President Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office, and she needs your help (and Facebook juice) to do it. The challenge, should you choose to accept, is to create a 20 second video on what Obama’s done wrong or right while in office, and post it to her Facebook Page. The best videos will be included in a live broadcast from CBSNews.com on April 29 at 7pm EST.

Matt Davies

MakeThemAccountable (thanks to diy.despair.com)

A Lexicon of Disappointment (by Naomi Klein, The Nation)

Tom Friedman (No, not THAT Tom Friedman, but it’s ironic that this work of art was created by a person with the same name as the one who wrote a book called The World Is Flat, which gave little consideration to those humans flattened by his definition of a flat world. I’ve request permission to post the work.)

Here’s what happened to THAT Tom Friedman:

Jamiol’s World

CIA fears torture prosecutions (The Times, U.K.)
THE CIA fears some of its operatives could face prosecution for torturing high-level terrorist suspects, despite President Barack Obama’s promise of legal immunity. The confidential US Department of Justice guidelines on interrogating high-level detainees, which were made public last week, provide only a small window into the secret prisons or “black sites” run by the CIA… A former senior CIA official at the time of the 9/11 attacks told The Sunday Times that there was more to uncover about the ghost prisons.

Obama Denies Habeas Corpus (video at the Colbert Report)
Barack Obama helps America escape from the Bill of Rights lovers who keep humping the leg of habeas corpus. (01:53)

Obama won't charge CIA officers for rough tactics (AP)

Obama up for Radio Mercury Award.
His presidential campaign is among seven advertisers vying for the first-ever “Marketer of the Year” award. Other nominees include Coca-Cola, Geico, Hershey’s, McDonald’s, Mercedes-Benz and Wal-Mart. The Radio Mercury Awards are set for June 17.
Sold like candy. Told ya.—Caro

The Confluence

Selling himself has made Obama rich:

The Heretik

Goldman (and other banks') "Hedges" (by Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker)
There is a rumor about Goldman Sachs flying around on the street - allegedly they are about to report their second-best quarter in history, +$12 billion or so… Gee, you don't think being paid by the taxpayer through AIG's "conduit" for losses that didn't (yet) happen at 100 cents on the dollar might have anything to do with that, do you? And further (and potentially much worse) there is the repeated statement by Goldman executives that they were "fully hedged" against a potential counterparty default by AIG. One wonders - was that "hedge" to be short the equity on AIG itself, perhaps?... [I]f that's how Goldman hedged they got paid twice and the taxpayer literally got robbed.

Matt Davies

Here's news: G-20 summit actually achieved something (by Kevin G. Hall and Steven Thomma, McClatchy)

London Calling ( by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)

Jesus, Extraterrestrials, & Teh Awesomeness (by Damon at Corrente)
I thought we'd be getting away from this fuzziness when we were faced, head on, with the realness of our economic and social situation, the dire reality that success means not only getting the economy running, again, but reconstructing it to run correctly, this time. One of the biggest false meme floating around is that this society simply needs a reset. We don't need a reset, we need a reconstruction.
A reconstruction like those suggested below, perhaps?—Caro

BREAKING: Obama apologizes to Democrats, vows to become a liberal!*
*Ha, ha, April Fool

The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest (by myiq2xu at The Confluence)
The Museum of Hoaxes lists the top 100 April Fools jokes of all time. Here’s their number one: “1957: The respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied, ‘place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.’”
Absolutely, the best. I saw it years ago, and it has always been my favorite.—Caro

Harvesting Pasta

The Rich are not different from you and me… (by Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors)
…they eat ramen noodles too. Harrod’s Pot Noodles ($43) come in a hand-flocked gold leaf cup.

America Is in Need of a Moral Bailout (by Chris Hedges at TruthDig, thanks to Susie at Suburban Guerilla)

Photo of the Day (by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)

America the Tarnished (by Paul Krugman)
[A]n article in [Saturday’s] Times about the response President Obama will receive in Europe was titled “English-Speaking Capitalism on Trial.” Now, in fairness we have to say that the United States was far from being the only nation in which banks ran wild. Many European leaders are still in denial about the continent’s economic and financial troubles, which arguably run as deep as our own — although their nations’ much stronger social safety nets mean that we’re likely to experience far more human suffering. Still, it’s a fact that the crisis has cost America much of its credibility, and with it much of its ability to lead. And that’s a very bad thing.

Despite Huge Push, Support For Obama’s Budget Slips A Bit (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
Despite the huge push by Obama and Dems to sell his budget over the past several weeks, a new Gallup poll finds that public support for it hasn’t budged and may have even slipped a bit… At the end of February, 44% of national adults hold a generally positive view of the budget; now that number stands at 39%. Gallup says this shows that support for the budget has “held steady,” probably because the shift is within the margin of error. But Gallup, interestingly, also says that there has been a “noteworthy” drop in support for it among moderates and liberals.