Tag: Bill Moyers

Cross-posted at Dkos and FDL

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Tonight on Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, Moyers will present excerpts for the documentary film, The Good Soldier.

As America prepares to observe Veterans Day and President Obama weighs sending more troops to fight in Afghanistan, BILL MOYERS JOURNAL broadcasts a powerful documentary about the impact on soldiers of learning to kill – or be killed. THE GOOD SOLDIER follows four veterans – one from World War II, two from Vietnam, and the fourth from Iraq – as they reveal how the experiences of battle changed their lives.

Watch a preview here.

If you missed this on friday, The Bill Moyers Journal you may want to at least catch his essay for this week. The rest of the show would do well to watch as well, on the Death of Conservatism, the State of Unions and a read of ‘Young Workers: a Lost Decade’.

September 18, 2009

A Bill Moyers essay on the protests in Washington, D.C. and whose funding opposition to health care reform.

Bill Moyers Essay Sept 18th

Yesterday, 9.12.09, in Washington, we had this: Tea Party Protesters March on Washington extending their purely political use of the tragedy of 9/11. I’ll guess not one at the podium or with the megaphones, nor any in the crowd, even mentioned this: 5 U.S. troops among 50 killed in Afghan violence Sat Sep 12, nor much was said about all the soldiers who’ve died, or are physically and mentally injured from the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. I’ll guess also nothing was mentioned about the monetary, in billions and billions, cost of these still operational theaters of occupation!

A friend at facebook also asked the same I’ve {many have} wondered these past eight years:

Bill Moyers ended last Friday’s hour with an impassioned plea to Barry Obama. Health care is not an option. It is a requirement. Bill suggested going witha an idea that Josh over at TPM put forward: Offer Medicare to evryone under 65. You’d have to pay for it. It wouldn’t be impossible to figure out a subsidy schedule for those who couldn’t afford to pay. Every American understands Medicare. The problem is most Americans are too dumb to understand that Medicare is government health care. And it works.

It’s almost too simple, too obvious and too effective to implement.

1-202-456-1111. That’d be the WH switchboard. Call it.

Call your rep at their district offices and their DC offices. You can google them. Same goes for your senators – or senator in my case; Teddy’s passed through the veil.

Fax them. The paper industry will love you for that one.

E-mail them and be sure to ask for a response.

If you have extra time then bombard the hold-outs not in your state or district. Google a business in their district and use that address and “Ima Madzhell”. We need a firestorm to cdounteract the August mind share the wingnuts got with their town halls and death panels.

Today is the first work day after the last big summer weekend. The elected people and the K St things will all be back in DC.

The real battle begins today. This is the only chance you will ever get in your lifetime for universal health care. It’s now or never and it begins today.

Former CIGNA Exec Wendell Potter, says Michael Moore was right!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

WENDELL POTTER: I thought that he hit the nail on the head with his movie.

But the [Insurance] Industry, from the moment that the Industry learned that Michael Moore was taking on the health care industry, it was really concerned.

BILL MOYERS: What were they afraid of?

WENDELL POTTER: They were afraid that people would believe Michael Moore.

A Day In The Life Of A Georgia Lobbyist

Her phone rings. It is another board member, and he is at the Capitol.  We are off to the third floor and a day that accelerates from 0 to 60 very quickly.  Among the sea of suits, we find her guest and connect him with Rep. Stephens, who will escort him onto the floor of the House for a visit.

Immediately thereafter, we meet up with the lobbyist for the Department of Economic Development, which houses the tourism budget and serves as the state’s marketing apparatus for the industry. They discuss the House budget cuts, pending legislation and chart strategy.  During that conversation she is approached by another lobbyist from the Association County Commissioners of Georgia who relays concerns over a hotel tax bill introduced a day earlier.  Joy assures her the bill is a temporary bill and that a substitute is coming.  […]

Not much later, the lobbyist for the Georgia Municipal Association approaches Joy expressing similar concerns.  Joy again explains a substitute is coming.

Shhhh! it’s a secret!

On Bill Moyers Journal tonight, Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater, will be interviewed.

Link http://www.pbs.org/moyers/jour…

Scahill wants the United States to back up and examine its entire approach to foreign policy and, rather than analyze the number of troops to send to Afghanistan or replace the commander, ask whether the U.S. should have any troops there at all.

by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

In all the recent debate over torture, many of our Beltway pundits and politicians have twisted themselves into verbal contortions to avoid using the word at all.

During his speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute last week – immediately on the heels of President Obama’s address at the National Archives – former Vice President Dick Cheney used the euphemism “enhanced interrogation” a full dozen times.

Smothering the reality of torture in euphemism, of course, has a political value, enabling its defenders to diminish the horror and possible illegality. It also gives partisans the opening they need to divert our attention by turning the future of the prison at Guantanamo Bay into a “wedge issue,” as noted on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times.

[snip]

If we want to know what torture is, and what it does to human beings, we have to look at it squarely, without flinching. That’s just what a powerful and important film, seen by far too few Americans, does.

[snip]

As the editors of The Christian Century magazine wrote this week, “Convening a truth commission on torture would be embarrassing to the US in the short term, but in the long run it would demonstrate the strength of American democracy and confirm the nation’s adherence to the rule of law…. Understandably, [the president] wants to turn the page on torture. But Americans should not turn the page until they know what is written on it.

Read the whole thing here…

Torturing Democracy originally aired on PBS January 21st, 2009

You can watch “Torturing Democracy” here in three segments, or watch the full  one hour program below.

Bill Moyers Journal:

In an explosive interview on PBS’ Bill Moyers Journal, William K. Black, a professor of economics and law with the University of Missouri, alleged that American banks and credit agencies conspired to create a system in which so-called “liars loans” could receive AAA ratings and zero oversight, amounting to a massive “fraud” at the epicenter of US finance.

But worse still, said Black, Timothy Geithner, President Barack Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury, is currently engaged in a cover-up to keep the truth of America’s financial insolvency from its citizens.

Gosh.  Why would a Wall Street insider like Geithner be reluctant to admit that Wall Street criminals turned the US financial system into a giant Ponzi Scheme?

I’m stumped.

Fortunately, Professor Black has an explanation . . .