I know there are some people listening who believe that our voting machines are rigged, so their votes don’t count.  I’m here to tell you that if we vote really huge numbers, there’s no way they can flip the results!  That said, there are lots of intrepid souls working to fix the broken voting system like Brad Friedman, Greg Palast, Bobby Kennedy and others…  So, with that in mind…

This morning, I hosted the second in our series of truly progressive congressional candidates who need our help.  Working in conjunction with our friends at the Blue America PAC, we feature a different candidate each Monday morning, the day before they appear for a chat on Crooks and Liars (each Tuesday at 11amPT/1pm ET).

This morning, we headed west to Southern California’s 25th Congressional district to talk with Dr. Lee Rogers. Yes, he’s a podiatrist, and has some very distinct ideas on what’s wrong with our health care system – including the Affordable Care Act.

From Howie Klein, Digby and John Amato (the Blue America PAC team) on Lee Rogers:

In the last few weeks Dr. Lee Rogers has been talking a lot with us about ending the occupation of Afghanistan and about ending the occupation of American politics by the 1%. But what first drew our attention to his race was his approach, as a renowned surgeon and author, to health care reform.

The incumbent in this newly redrawn Los Angeles district, CA-25 (Santa Clarita, Porter Ranch, Simi Valley and the Antelope Valley), is Buck McKeon. McKeon, notorious as one of the Mormon financiers of the hateful, homophobic Prop 8 jihad, is now drowning in several scandals and under investigation by the House Ethics Committee. McKeon, a devout and dedicated warmonger chairing the House Armed Services Committee, may be one of the worst Members of Congress– and one of the most strategic targets to defeat in November– but it wasn’t McKeon that has caused Blue America to endorse Dr. Rogers. It was Dr. Rogers; let’s call him Lee from now on.

When Digby, John and I first met him in person we were intrigued by his opposition to the healthcare bill. He was one of the Democrats– and a doctor no less– who felt it should be better, much better.

“The current version of health reform,” he told us that night, “while an improvement in some areas, leaves much to be desired in the way of affordability and accessibility. We need caps on insurance rate hikes. We need protections for women’s health. We need aggressive comprehensive coverage of preventative medicine for expensive avoidable diseases.”

Will you consider giving what you can to help Rogers beat a nasty, corrupt, Republican incumbent?

A fellow podiatrist he knows– albeit a Republican– just defeated Mean Jean Schmidt in Ohio. That doctor and Lee agree on almost nothing politically but they do see the need for a single payer system, even if the Ohio doctor will never admit it to Republican audiences. Lee talks eloquently and realistically about it:

There are many fears of a single-payer system, from insurers, doctors, some patients, and certainly many Republicans. A single-payer system will drastically reduce the amount of profit going to big insurers, who are big campaign donors. But the single-payer system will increase the number of covered patients seeking care from doctors and hospitals which will be reimbursed. It will reduce the numerous insurance middlemen who impede the productivity of health providers and syphon off large profits that should be going into actual care. Patients will have seamless coverage. Employers will eliminate their second largest expense, health insurance. No system is perfect, but when one truly evaluates all the benefits of a single-payer healthcare, it is a desirable system where most come out winning.

That’s not a polemic; that’s a motivation for Lee getting into the race against an incumbent with more money from war contractors and armaments manufacturers than anyone else in the House. Lee knows it’s a tough race but he’s an energetic and idealistic young father– he and his wife, Susan, just had his second daughter last week– who is determined to try to make this country and this world a better place. He’ll be joining us Tuesday at Crooks and Liars (11AM, PT) for a live blogging session. We sure hope you can come over and meet him. And if you’d like to help his grassroots campaign, please consider a contribution here at the Blue America ActBlue page.

Again, we must elect real progressives to Congress if we plan on making any type of progress in this country.

Every Monday morning, Nicole Belle joins me from her perch at Crooks and Liars to tell us what we missed by not watching the Sunday talking head shows in a segment we call Fools on the Hill©:

My eighth grader is working on a team project in her social studies class. Her teacher listed what she thought were the biggest problems facing us today. The students broke into teams to research and brainstorm possible solutions to the following problems:

  • Global Warming
  • Education
  • Foreign Policy
  • Economy

When my kid came home to talk about this project, I couldn’t help myself from saying, “You know how you solve these problems? Stop electing Republicans.” Seriously. Problems solved.


But upon reflection, I think it’s even simpler than that: We need to stop listening to Republicans. We need to stop letting them dominate the conversation. Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be happening on the Sunday shows. They continue to frame the discussion and the hosts continue to let them.

So that’s why you have little Ricky Santorum tell David Gregory that even though he’d need to win 80% of the upcoming primaries to mathematically be able to do so, which we can all agree has a very high improbability rate. Nevertheless, Santorum knows how he can win: he’d like everyone to get out of the race. Alrighty then.

Congressperson Marsha Blackburn bemoaned the lack of civility in political discourse on Meet the Press. Pot, meet kettle. (2 videos at link)

A mind-blowing bit of revisionist history came from John McCain—the Sunday show producers’ favorite guest–who insisted that 1) Sarah Palin was the *best* qualified candidate (holy cow, what an indictment on the GOP if that was true) and that despite not watching HBO’s “Game Change” he felt that Ed Harris’ portrayal was a little too profane and that he doesn’t use coarse language that often. I guess all those articles on McCain’s hot temper and tendency to explode at others were all figments of our imagination.

Speaking of a figment of an imagination, Mary Matalin insisted today on the This Week panel that Mitt Romney has the “heart and soul” of an average American. There are no words for how insulting this is to the intelligence of the average American.

And finally, Stephanie Miller and Michael Medved were on Reliable Sources to discuss the ongoing Rush Limbaugh scandal, and I have to give Miller credit for trying to control the conversation, even though it was for all intents and purposes a two-against-one discussion with the ever-patronizing Medved and Howard Kurtz.

And, since I brought it up on the show, here are the two videos about Kony 2012…  My 12-year old daughter came home from school the other day and asked if I’d buy her a “Kony Kit”.  Honestly, I hadn’t paid much attention up to that point, but then decided to do my homework.  Unfortunately, things aren’t always as they seem.

Please read this great piece about who’s behind the Invisible Children.  (If you don’t follow the link, just know it’s the usual right wing anti-LGBT, pro evangelical suspects)….  Following is the much viewed and ballyhooed – and very slick – production… and then a response from a young girl whose parents were born in Uganda.  Decide for yourself.

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