Randy Shepherd is a 36-year-old father of three who needs a transplant to replace a failing heart weakened by childhood bouts of rheumatic fever. When he was placed on a transplant waiting list last year, the prospect of resuming a normal life with a healthy donor heart helped him tolerate the fatigue, lost appetite and the inability to play sports he loved and work at the small plumbing business he founded.

But nothing prepared him for the shock of learning that Arizona’s Medicaidprogram was eliminating transplant coverage for people with his condition.

“They said I would be placed on the inactive list until I could arrange some kind of alternative financing because it is considered elective surgery,” said Shepherd, of Mesa, Ariz., who has been disabled for almost two years. The family hangs on financially with his wife Tiffany’s salary as a dental hygienist.

As the United States continues debating expanded health care access, the state of Arizona has begun rationing some care it says it cannot afford to give its poorest residents. Beginning on Oct. 1, Arizona’s Medicaid program, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, stopped covering seven types of organ transplants, including heart transplants for non-ischemic cardiomyopathy, lung transplants, pancreatic transplants, some bone marrow transplants and liver transplants for patients with hepatitis C.

Here’s the whole story.

God help us all if Obamacare is allowed to proceed.

If you read it, you will discover:

1.  A federal judge declared the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy to be unconstitutional, and ordered the military to stop enforcing it.

2.  The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is looking at that ruling.

3.  The Obama Administration today urged the Supreme Court to KEEP the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy until a federal appeals court can consider this issue.

4.  At the same time the Obama administration is asking its lawyers to defend Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell until the federal appeals court can look at the issue, President Obama has pledged to push the Senate to repeal the policy before a new Congress is sworn in.

I am very confused.  Can anybody shed any light on this situation?

As for the actual policy itself – I’ve read recently that enlisted military don’t particularly want this thing, so I think it should be gone. What do you think?

From Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC:

After several days of deliberation and discussion, I have determined that suspending Keith through and including Monday night’s program is an appropriate punishment for his violation of our policy. We look forward to having him back on the air Tuesday night.

All 2 of Olby’s fans will be happy, I’m sure.

I still have a suspicion this was about something else entirely.   Political donations were made by other NBC and MSNBC employees, with no suspension   So . . . why the suspension of Olby?  For a few days, amounting to a financial effect he won’t even notice?   All this did was cause him some embarrassment (maybe!).   Something isn’t smelling exactly right to me.

ABC News reports:

In a statement, MSNBC said its ethics policy bans journalists from making political contributions. Olbermann, perhaps the cable network’s most famous face, is known as an outspoken liberal commenter. As one of the network’s highest-paid personalities, he is central to the network’s “Lean Forward” campaign, a rebranding effort promoting progressive points of view. Thomas Roberts anchored “Countdown” on Friday night.

CNN is talking about the dangers of a “partisan media”:

In the fallout, other MSNBC personalities were also found to have given to Democratic candidates, while Media Matters uncovered the fact that more than 30 Fox News hosts and contributors had donated to conservative candidates.

Whole news networks are being transformed into little more than on-air advocates for political parties. The idea of objectivity is now increasingly dismissed as a myth rather than honored as an ideal toward which the news industry should strive.

Americans are self-segregating themselves into separate political realities — responding to the proliferation of information by consuming news that confirms their political prejudices. Loyal viewers see opinion-anchors like Olbermann or Glenn Beck as the only “truth-tellers” in town, while dismissing the rest of the media as cowardly or biased. We are devolving back to the era when newspapers were owned and operated by political parties.

The result: Partisan warfare is on the rise, and trust in media is on the decline. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press has documented the trend and concluded that “virtually every news organization or program has seen its credibility marks decline” over the past decade.

National Review writer Jay Nordlinger thinks the suspension is a crock:

I am another “Worst Person” alumnus — or whatever we should call ourselves — who thinks that the firing, or suspension, of Olbermann is a crock. Of course he supports Democratic candidates. He supports them every time he opens his mouth (unless his words backfire, which I trust they do).

And so does National Review writer Cliff May:

Is it possible that MSNBC does not realize that Keith Olbermann’s show is itself a political contribution? They don’t actually think it’s a news show, do they?

A Huffington Post writer says the suspension is justified:

The fact that MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann is a progressive liberal Democrat should come as no surprise to American news viewers. Nonetheless, NBC News policy, which also applies to MSNBC, clearly says that donating money to any candidate is a violation, as, “these activities jeopardize his or her standing as an impartial journalist because they may create the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

Olbermann’s political contributions reflect badly on all of NBC News. Therefore, his suspension without pay is necessary.

 

MSNBC host Keith Olbermann was put on indefinite suspension Friday after bosses at the cable news network learned that he had donated to three Democratic candidates, including one who had appeared on his show on the same day, in violation of the network’s rules.

Is there anyone, anyone at all, who could listen to Olbermann and believe he was non-partisan?

I would be ROFL if I found anyone who thought that.

The NBC policy on this looks like a “may” rule, not a “shall” rule.  In uses the term “should report”, instead of “must report”

I wonder, truly, what’s going on behind-the-scenes, what the real reason is for this suspension.  I’m not convinced (yet) that this is the real reason.

Yahoo’s The Upshot blog takes the cake for distortions today with this headline:  Republicans Take Aim at Obama’s Trip to India.

Reading the article reveals it is only two republicans, Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee, citing these figures, yet the headline would have you think it’s the entire republican party. . . .

Here’s the Yahoo article referred to.

The highlights are below:

Contrary to Harry Reid’s notorious comment that “I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican,” the most notable Hispanic winners Tuesday were Republicans – and immigration hawks. Senator-elect Marco Rubio of Florida and Governors-elect Susana Martinez of New Mexico and Brian Sandoval of Nevada all support Arizona’s SB1070 and other measures to clamp down on illegal immigration.

Likewise in the House of Representatives. Bill Flores, also listed by Numbers USA as a “true reformer,” wiped out 20-year incumbent and amnesty supporter Chet Edwards, who’d earned a grade of D-minus on immigration, in a district that stretches between Dallas and Houston.

In Texas’s 23rd district, which includes the western half of the state’s border with Mexico, Quico Conseco — who hasn’t filled out Numbers USA’s survey but is pretty hawkish on immigration and border issues — defeated Ciro Rodriguez, who’d earned a D-plus grade on immigration this past Congress.

In southwest Washington State, Republican immigration hawk Jaime Herrera beat Democrat Denny Heck, who was apparently so wary of the issue he didn’t even mention border security or illegal immigration on his website. Likewise with Raul Labrador in Idaho, who beat freshman Blue Dog Walt Minnick, who’d earned a respectable B from Numbers USA but unsuccessfully ran for even more cover by promising to back restrictionists on almost all issues.

. . .

In fact, for all of Harry Reid’s demagoguery, he got almost exactly the same percentage of the Hispanic vote this time (68 percent) as he did in2004 (67 percent). And Barbara Boxer got only 65 percent of the Hispanic vote this time, compared with 73 percent in 2004.

. . .

But let me end on a cautionary note. None of these encouraging results changes the fact that continued mass immigration guarantees the doom of conservatism (as I spell out in detail in my Encounter Broadside on the subject). The cause of limited government cannot succeed in the long term, even if the GOP does somewhat better among Hispanic voters, so long as the federal immigration program continues to admit a million-plus newcomers a year.And the overwhelming Hispanic preference for Democrats is not something that can be addressed with tweaks to immigration policy — even if such tweaks would do any good, which evidence suggests they wouldn’t.

I happen to like David Frum a lot.  He’s a conservative, and he’s sane, rational and logical.   Lots of folks call him a RINO.   Lots of folks will think I’m a RINO.   So be it.

I am not a big fan of the Tea Party movement.   For those who may not realize it, the first “Tea Parties” were a Ron Paul idea, and they started there.   After Obama’s election, others joined in.

Most of the folks attending the Tea Party functions are regular, normal folks like you, like me.  But some of the Tea Party functions have had what I consider some over-the-top rhetoric, and honestly, there has been what I see as a racist bent in some of the events.

I’ll also come out right now and admit I was a HUGE Palin fan for quite awhile; then she quit her Governor’s job (disappointment! I didn’t think of her as a quitter), and then she started talking and honestly, she sounded a bit garbled.

OK, so where is this leading?  It’s leading up to a link to an article by David Frum, the Tea-Party Backlash, where David Frum argues that although Republicans made gains yesterday, the tea-party radical insurgents lost some easily winnable seats, giving the Republican Party moderates an opportunity to begin to lead again.   I hope he’s right.