And I don’t mind you giving your take on it at all. It’s good to get another perspective. You found something else in it that I didn’t, and that additional input is good for everyone reading.

And if you’re interested, you’re welcome to write a post or two of your own and if you want, I’ll post it here under your name. Let me know if you’re interested. I’m sure a lot of the people who read this wouldn’t mind getting the opinion of a doctor who deals with patients all day long and sees the problems with our system.

Where you say that I missed your point about “dishonest debate”, it’s not so much that I ‘missed’ that, it’s just that, when I ‘watched’ this debate (I feel like I saw it from reading your blog), what bothered me more than the dishonesty of the interviewee (although it does bother me) was the lack of ‘debate’ by Megyn. The point I guess I was trying to make is that it really WASN’T a debate! It was a more of a cross-examination by a lawyer (which I believe Megyn is by training?). In a debate there are TWO sides, but in this ‘debate’ there was only ONE — Bernie’s, and it was under attack. There was no Megyn’s side (which was my point in my comment). You might read this comment I just made and say, of course it’s a cross-examination! That’s her job for cryin’ out loud! She’s a journalist and a very good one! Well, then, if that’s what you say and you agree with me, that this wasn’t a debate but rather a solid interview or cross-examination by Megyn Kelly, then change the title of this blog entry from “Dishonest Debate” to “Dishonest Interviewee”, or “Dishonest Spin” or something like that.

Ok — so maybe I am being ridiculously picky (or maybe not) — because here is a very well written blog by a very thoughtful and intelligent friend of mine and I am giving him a hard time about the title of it. Well — maybe I am being a little ridiculous if that’s the case, but my original point was not so much that your title is not appropriate, but that my take on the interview in terms of what bothered ME about it, was different than what bothered YOU about it. It’s kind of like Roger and Ebert (Roger RIP) — they both see a movie and might have TWO totally different takes on it. Not that they disagree with each other’s takes, it’s just that their takes are apples and oranges. So maybe my take was just totally different than yours, and not that I disagreed with yours (I actually agreed on your points in general), it’s just it bothered me differently than it bothered you. I suppose since this is your blog, I should give feedback and commentary only to your blog entries directly, but in this case I didn’t so much disagree with what you said perse’, I just felt compelled to give my own take on the same interview, what bothered ME about it. I have not gotten ‘the memo’ on blog etiquette, but I figured that writing about my take on this interview would still be welcome in your blog, even though my ‘debate’ isn’t so much directly against your comments themselves as much as it is against Megyn Kelly and Fox, in this case.

As a final thought, one thing I like sometimes about Bill O’Reilly (I watch and listen to him sometimes) is that he really tries to actually debate on his shows and when you watch, you see BOTH sides of the issues — this is more fun for me, and more educational. When he interviews someone, it’s really more of a debate than a cross-examination. In this Megyn Kelly – Bernie Sanders interview, I suppose if you are against what Bernie Sanders is promoting (and very much pro-Fox), then you might enjoy watching Bernie get attacked, you might enjoy commenting about how dishonest and evasive he was, and how great Megyn was in getting him good. But I would rather have seen a debate, and I expected a debate when I read your title.

You did miss the criticism of Kelly — she misused the 60% tax rate and overstated her case, and I called her out on it.

Kelly is a television news show host. Maybe your idea of her job description is different from mine, but I don’t think it’s her job to design health care policy. It’s her job to ask the people proposing it about the ramifications of the bills for which they are going to vote. If she had in fact said “what about doing X, Y and Z,” which would be the counter-proposals probably by Republicans, then you’d be saying she was a shill for the Republican party. Right now she’s being a skeptic, which is what every good interviewer should be — Tim Russert was great at it. He’d ask a question and if he didn’t get an answer, he’d keep asking until he got one or made it abundantly clear to the audience that the person was being non-responsive, which is an answer in itself (as Megyn does here with the tax rate question). Remember when, after the Iraq war didn’t turn out like we hoped it would, everyone was saying we maybe should have been more skeptical? When it was something the Bush administration wanted to do, being skeptical was being patriotic. But now being skeptical of a bill that will reorganize 15% of our economy is not the appropriate role for a journalist? I didn’t get that memo.

You say you don’t see how anyone could be happy with the status quo and imply that Megyn Kelly is. Now you’re being dishonest, Stevo. She never said things are good the way they are. In fact, when Sanders said we needed to do “something,” she said, “So now we’re on the same page about something,” and then talked about the downside to doing this bill specifically. If she had had a Republican on that was saying we shouldn’t do anything at all, I have a feeling she would be bringing up other statistics and talking about what needs to be done to fix the problems that would occur if we did nothing. Find me an interview with Megyn Kelly where she’s talking to a Republican who says we should do nothing, and if she doesn’t probe that and talk about the downside to it, then I’ll retract that statement.

Despite the fact that Sanders says Republicans want to do nothing (click the link in the post for the plan they just proposed a few days ago in response to the Democrat House bill), nobody I know is saying we should just maintain the status quo. The questions are: how to you change things, and how do you pay for it? Anybody that proposes a plan has to be prepared to answer those questions.

I think some of what you’re seeing by Fox and Republicans about the spending on this is a response to the massive deficits and the insane debt position we’re going into now. Obama’s answer to the economy was the stimulus bill, and it’s not working. He sticks by it, saying it’s working just as planned and he wouldn’t go back and change a thing — while at the same time saying we underestimated the size of the problem. (So was the bill too big to begin with and now it’s the perfect size given our worsened economic state, or is he happy with unemployment approaching 10% when he said it wouldn’t hit 8%? It has to be one or the other.) Her point is not that we shouldn’t do anything, and she stated that, so you’re unfairly misrepresenting her position, just as Sanders was misrepresenting the Republican position. She addressed two things: a) should we do THIS specifically and what happens if we do, and b) should we do this RIGHT NOW when we’re in a recession and people are losing jobs, when this would raise taxes on a lot of people who create jobs, namely small businesses. If all you got from this interview was that Megyn Kelly wants to do nothing, then I think you’re being just as biased as you’re accusing Fox of being.

She started out really only asking him two basic questions: how do you respond to the CBO’s report, and what do you think about the top tax rate being so high? He answered the first question just fine (except for the two lies he told, of course). But when he got to the second question, he instantly turned it into “it’s all Wall Street bankers and they deserve it because they got us into this mess and they got tax breaks under Bush.” If he had just said, “Yes, I know it’s going to have an impact on some hard-working honest people, but we’re in a tough spot and there’s no easy solution to this,” (which is probably more along the lines of what Obama would say) that would have been just fine. If he had said that yes, this “something” has some downsided, but every other “something” he’s seen has adverse impacts too, but we can’t maintain the status quo and we need to move on it, I could respect that. But instead of doing that, he lies and doesn’t answer questions.

I think your impression of my post was different than what I was trying to convey. This was not a post about health care reform. This is about debating honestly, which Sanders does not do. He lies and avoids answering questions. If it were a Republican doing it, I would think it was just as dishonest. But if you know anything about Bernie Sanders, or if you’ve ever seen him, this is what he does all the time. When he was on Bill Maher’s show a while back, he made some of the same points, but Bill is on his side politically so he was never asked hard follow-up questions, which is basically what Megyn did here. He spouts political philosophy and then when confronted with any facts counter to his position, he avoids them and lies about them. In the Fox interview, Sanders got out his side of the story and made all his points up front, and then when asked about the implications of his policies, he doesn’t want to answer. Whether it was about health care reform, education, welfare, or national defense, it’s a dishonest tactic and when you’re an elected representative of the people, you have to be held accountable for it. Last I checked, nobody elected Megyn Kelly to anything. (Just as my last post was not about abortion, although some have tried to take the discussion to that area. It was about how inconsistencies in the law arise when competing principles are thrown together; it’s inevitable.) This was about our elected representatives lying to the public (which he did on a few occasions) and not answering direct questions; the backdrop for it just happened to be health care. And since I’ve always wanted to say this but never had such a perfect situation for it, here goes: Don’t get it twisted.

I understand your passion on the subject, Stevo, and I appreciate it. You have a good point about the hypocrisy some people for spending money: spend it on what we like and it’s fine, spend it on what we don’t and it’s irresponsible wasteful government pork. But Republicans are hardly the only ones doing that.

P.S. I’m not for the status quo either, BTW, as you should know by the previous discussions we’ve had about it.

My critique of Megyn is that she really didn’t offer any ideas of her own for healthcare reform. It’s as if she is completely happy with the status quo. Yet even if she is happy in general with the status quo, she didn’t really defend why. All she did pretty much was attack Bernie. She never made a case for why things are good left as is. And I lose a lot of respect for people who can’t see ANY need for improvement in something as important and as imperfect (to say the least) as healthcare is in the US. She can’t find ANYTHING wrong with healthcare? I’m sure kindergarten-age children could find SOMETHING wrong with it! I would have a lot more respect for Megyn if she said that she supports SOME change of some kind, like even something as simple as saying that she supports more IT in healthcare. Just because she doesn’t agree with Bernie doesn’t mean she can’t have some of her own ideas or even a little common ground. And repeatedly dwelling and focusing on the spending aspect of it, and not the healthcare aspect of it, the human or societal impact of it, is a bit disgusting for me. There is a lot more to healthcare than just dollars and cents.

Needless to say, it seems like all Fox is doing these days is attacking democrats / liberals / Obama supporters. I watch Fox a lot, and I, believe it or not, do share some views with Fox (I am not for most if not all corporate bailouts for example), but I am tired of watching it just to see attack after attack. They call themselves “fair and balanced”, but lately this overwhelming negativity is getting a bit depressing. One more thing about Fox — they seem to always support our wars very well — which is in a way to me paradoxical. They support our government SPENDING tons of money for violence against other countries (yes, I know, wars are of course to defend and protect our people, etc., but by nature they are usually violent), but they (Fox) don’t support our government spending money for HELPING our own people (healthcare for example). How can you be SO for war and at the same time SO anti helping your OWN people!? And to say you are anti BIG GOVERNMENT is not true — Fox is anti BIG GOVERNMENT as long as it involves helping its own people, but they are FOR BIG GOVERNMENT when it comes to war (although they don’t refer to it as BIG GOVERNMENT then because they don’t want to sound hypocritical).

And, speaking of our government, why is it good for our government to act to control the spread of swine flu to protect the health of our citizens (via efforts of state and local health depts, CDC, etc.), but if an uninsured person (an individual) came down with swine flu symptoms, he / she might be SOL (sh** out of luck) in terms of being able to actually see a doctor? Oh yeah, I forgot, any American can get care in the ER where it costs taxpayers a fortune (if the patient can’t afford to pay), but any American can’t get regular, preventive or non-emergent care. This is smart?!

I propose one BIG idea for healthcare reform. As long as we keep it private and profit-driven (private insurance companies), then we should no longer call it healthCARE. Take the “CARE” out of healthcare. Because if it is private and profit-driven, then profit is the main driver (correct me if I am wrong here — you’re the economist), not caring for people. Wall Street in this case is the number one priority, NOT the health of the customers (citizens or patients). I suppose we could call it health services, or simply the health industry, or something like that. Make it more generic, but take out the care part. We certainly don’t call the car insurance industry “transportation-CARE” or “driver-CARE”. Homeowner’s insurance does not relate to “home-CARE”. Just my two cents. And no, I don’t think the problem is a simple one. The devil is always in the details, but if anything, I am definitely NOT for status quo on this.