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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

What Passes For News

As the Thanksgiving holiday rapidly approaches, we're giving thanks that our regular employers and clients won't be forcing us to work on the holiday this year, like so many retailers are doing to their employees. In fact, most of our staff members have been trying to keep up with the "Month of Thankfulness" theme happening on Facebook, in which people try to post something different each day they're thankful for.

One thing we know we're all thankful for is a small but measurable group of journalists and writers who - unlike much of the political media - haven't completely abandoned their professional ethics in favor of dumping dramatic dreck, gunk, and garbage.

In case you'd missed it, the majority of sell-out whores of the journalism field have been gleefully piling on the right-wing propaganda wagon, claiming ridiculous baloney like "Obamacare is on Life Support" or saying it's "The Beginning of The End for Obama." Frankly, wading through their lies has been worse than opening the newspaper to find an accidental surprise from the dog.

Thankfully, there are those like Greg SargentJoan WalshJamelle Bouie, the Jonathans - Cohn, Chait, and Bernstein - and a few key others who've been paying attention to what's really been happening with the rollout of Obamacare.

Indeed, as we touched on Monday, as Joan Walsh nailed last Friday, and as Ezra Klein hit perfectly yesterday, Obamacare's flaws are not like Hurricane Katrina. Anyone who is being intellectually honest should stop comparing the two right now.

Of course, the right wing has been effectively hyperventilating about the idea that the messy rollout of Obamacare would be a disaster, as Jonathan Chait noted on Monday. Paul Waldman of The Prospect even warned the Obamacare panic could be entering an even stupider phase - though Kevin Drum at Mother Jones believes the Obamacare hysteria bubble is about to burst.

The truth is, as Jonathan Bernstein noted, that Democrats are not turning against the Affordable Care Act. Greg Sargent has also been spelling it out clearly at The Plum Line Blog for some time now, that the problems with Obamacare aren't the path to political salvation that many on the right wing are wishing for.

Of course, if our media colleagues on the sell-out side of aisle had done their research, as Johnathan Cohn did, it would become obvious that a massive amount of attention is being given to the problems of relatively few Americans trying to get health insurance under the new rules of the ACA. Those who have signed up, and aren't just regurgitating the talking points they've gotten from Fox, agree that signing up for insurance now wasn't super easy - but it was certainly more than worth any trouble they ran into.

What's more, as Jamelle Bouie points out, without all of the problems created by Republicans at both the state and Federal levels, Obamacare would be in MUCH better shape. Republicans can't honestly complain about the rollout of the ACA going poorly because they're the ones that are responsible for many of the complications they're complaining about.

For all the negative hyperbole, hype, and gunk dripping out of the news about Obamacare, the facts still remain: Since the right has no viable health insurance alternative, it's time they stop trying to pass off their oozing hatred of President Obama and his signature legislation as news.

We get it. They hate the black guy in the White House.

That's not news to anyone.

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