Today: Ken Burns and the latest on the health care fight.
Talking to Death
Rachel started us off with the news that today is going to be an exciting day for health care reform, assuming you can count deliberate foot-dragging and obstructionism as “exciting.”
Senators Jay Rockefeller (D — West Virginia) and Charles Schumer (D — New York) will introduce public option amendments to the health care bill that is currently in the Senate Finance Committee, and they intend to get all bad-ass and ask for roll call votes.
Rachel noted that it should be a welcome (if brief) break from the attempts to kill the bill through sheer delaying tactics. Opponents of health care reform are doing everything from talking… like… this… to insisting that all new amendments be spelled out in snail trails.
Census Worker Found Dead
The sad, strange case of part-time census worker Bill Sparkman’s death has gotten even stranger. Details are leaking out even as authorities have said that some aspects of the initial Associated Press report are inaccurate, but won’t say which ones.
It’s not clear whether Sparkman was supposed to be doing census work in Clay County, where his body was found, and there was apparently something odd about his hanging.
Theories about Sparkman’s death still include the possibility of anti-government anger, but Rachel also noted that he may have been going door-to-door during the time of year when local marijuana growers tend to harvest their crops.
The Truth about the Lies about ACORN
As you may have noticed, some politicians on the right have a problem with ACORN.
Rachel has a problem with corporate hit jobs and shoddy fact-checking.
I am going to go out on a limb here and predict that this will not be the last time we see a story about lobbyist Richard Berman on Rachel’s show.
I wonder if he’s going to try to brazen it out, go on the show, and try to fake-smile while Rachel very politely slices him up into handy bite-sized nuggets, or if he’s going to try to dodge it and hope she’ll leave him alone.
He might as well just go ahead and apply for the Mars colony.
“America’s Best Idea”
Rachel gave us a quick refresher on the Civilian Conservation Corps, a part of a big government stimulus package that helped pull us out of the Great Depression and, oh, yes, brought roads and campsites and trails to our state and national parks, making them much more accessible for the millions of people who now visit them every year.
Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns dropped in to talk about America’s Best Idea, his new PBS miniseries about the parks, and to show some of the amazing Sasquatch footage he managed to catch.
Oh, all right, fine: He brought amazing non-Sasquatch footage. The clip is worth watching nevertheless.
