Welcome to a community supported and guest-produced edition of the Best of the Left podcast, with clips

today from the Al Franken show, The Colbert Report, NPR's On Point, The Sam Cedar Show, The

Rachel Maddo Show, NPR's All Things Considered, and A Speech by Martin Luther King Jr.

He talked about healthcare last night, and leading up to the member Andy, they said that the

president really had to explain this thing.

Yeah, I mean, it's a complicated bit of policy, and he's using it to try to have this

be a new domestic initiative that takes attention away from all the failed ones and all the

failed foreign initiatives he's been engaged in.

The challenge, all the puns it said, was he's going to have to find a way to explain

this sort of arcane health policy change clearly enough that people go, okay, I understand

this is something I want.

So he and all his high-price speech writers sat in a room in the state of the union, you

work on for weeks, months even, they hand it out the language, they talked with all the

policy advisors, and this is what they came up with.

This is the clear and concise discussion with the American people about what he wants

to do.

So let's play this and see how you understand this.

First, I propose a standard tax deduction for health insurance that will be like the

standard tax deduction for dependents.

Families with health insurance will pay no income on payroll taxes or payroll taxes on

$15,000 of their income.

Single Americans with health insurance will pay no income or payroll taxes on $7,500

...