You don’t often get a piece of cable TV this good, so it’s worth transcribing and posting in its entirety. In a rare and contentious eight minute cable news segment, Glenn Greenwald decided to set the record straight with Eliot Spitzer on MSNBC regarding the Gaza flotilla.

The biggest problem here is that the reconciliation bills passed by the House and Senate are almost certain to differ, and setting up a conference report would subject the fixes to the filibuster that the reconciliation process was designed to circumvent. One way or another, the House will have to eat some bad provisions, unless the Senate installs major party discipline on everything not already worked out by agreement.

I fully agree with this sentiment and think the public option deserves an up-or-down vote as part of reconciliation. In fact, I spelled out the strategy for how just one determined Democratic senator could likely force an up-or-down vote on a public option amendment to any reconciliation sidecar bill. But, while I can only write about this stuff, Anthony Weiner, as a member of Congress, can actually do something about it–beyond writing op-eds.

Today on CBS’s “Washington Unplugged,” Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Anthony Weiner (D-NY) threw some very cold water on the current plan of having the House pass the Senate bill unchanged, followed by the passing of some “fixes” through reconciliation. Stupak said, “I don’t think they have ten votes for the Senate bill.”

Despite claiming the current plan to pass health care reform with the House acting first on the Senate bill would not get enough votes in the House, Stupak sounded rather upbeat about the possibility of passing health care reform with what sounds like a reconciliation-only strategy. If this becomes the preferred strategy for passing something called health care reform, it would represent a significant change in direction.

There’s a major push by House leaders today to judge the health care bill a fait accompli and ensure everyone that the deal put together by both chambers of Congress and the White House, which could be topped off in the next few days, will have no problem passing the House. Expect to see a run on words like “perfect,” “enemy” and “good.”

I’ve been casting around for suggestions from people I trust about what kind of a platform we should ask Medicare for All candidates to agree upon. We want to avoid the problem we have right now — people like Charles Rangel who are cosponsors of H.R. 676 until it doesn’t matter. I’m sure the $1.4 million he’s taken from insurance interests has nothing to do with it.

Here are the initial suggestions. Please add yours in the comments.

We don’t know what the restrictions on access to Medicare will be, so I question why anyone is out there promoting a pig in a poke.

Rep. Weiner has published a list of 55 Republicans who are opposed to the public option, even though they all are on Medicare.