I’m A Democrat, And I’m A Republican (Medicare For All #1)

I’m A Democrat, And I’m A Republican (Medicare For All #1)

Being dupe is just too easy.

The LOST SYMBOL

I finished reading Dan Brown’s new book, The Lost Symbol. It is in the familiar style of The Da Vinci Code with the decoding of various clues to lead to the Lost Symbol. It was great with Robert Landon leading you through the well known and the less known streets of Washington D.C. and all the secrets they hold. With a hard look at the Freemason’s and all of their secrets, I came to the conclusion that they are not the as bad as the conspiracy throngs would have you believe. Ultimately, the more the manipulators of our society and government can point you at different benign organizations, the less likelihood you’ll discover the true conspirators of our shadow government. As always Dan Brown wraps an excellent story around historical locations and events, which in my opinion is the essence of a good book. With so many of our founding fathers being Freemasons it is an interesting journey on how our Nation was built with the Free Masons beliefs and designs in mind. Was the original Capital built with a Crypt that had an eternal flame that was kept lit for over fifty years at the beginning of our Nation? Was George Washington deified into a God? Was the United States founded upon Christianity? These are just a small sample of the questions that are raised during the telling of this tale! Dan Brown delves into all the religions and the underlying essence that each possess and into the Noetic Science arena and the power of thought. The self-castrated villain, Malakh is looking for the Lost Symbol of the Free Masons which he believes will give him almost “God” like powers! Does he find it? And how does the C.I.A. get involved in this search? It’s a roller coaster ride tailing off a little at the end but still leaving you wanting more. ENJOY….

SOWING OUR OATS

I guess the American people get what they deserve, they always complain about the greed and the crooked politicians but these politicians are simply the reflection of most Americans. We like to pat ourselves on the back, especially during the holidays, to make us feel good, yet during the rest of the year we could care less about our fellow man. So when we complain about the system we must remember that we are the ones who perpetuate that system. We do not go after the people who have committed atrocities against us, they are allowed to walk around with praise being heaped upon them, these criminals who have murdered so many, we don’t want to investigate crimes of this magnitude, yet our “reality show” sensibilities make us spend hundreds of millions on a blow job investigation. Remember, we reap what we sow!

Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican

Thom Hartmann revealing radio broadcast.

 

Bernie Sanders

October 23, 2009

Unfiltered: Health Care Reform

By Bernie Sanders

“Bernie’s straight forward, simple English, is an inspiration to what People representative government should be about. Listen to the video and get a clear understanding of what needs to be done with health care in this country.” Dave Gregory

Senator Sanders Unfiltered is a weekly web program produced by Brave New Films.

Stay up-to-date with “Unfiltered” on Facebook. Follow Bernie on Twitter.

One of the reasons that I am a strong proponent of a single-payer, Medicare-for-all proposal is that it is much less complicated than what we are going to end up with in Congress. A single-payer approach saves hundreds of billions of dollars a year because you don’t end up with thousands of different health insurance programs appealing to all different kinds of people and costing a fortune to administer. I am going to continue the fight for single-payer. I am cautiously optimistic that we may end up with legislation that will allow states to go forward with single-payer if they want to.

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Author’s Website: www.sanders.senate.gov/buzz

Author’s Bio: Bernie Sanders is the independent U.S. Senator from Vermont. He is the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history. He is a member of the Senate’s Budget, Veterans, Environment, Energy, and H.E.L.P. (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) committees.

The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate

By DENNIS OVERBYE

More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot and frigid helium shut it down, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again. In December, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang.

Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, put this idea forward in a series of papers with titles like “Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal” and “Search for Future Influence From LHC,” posted on the physics Web site arXiv.org in the last year and a half.

According to the so-called Standard Model that rules almost all physics, the Higgs is responsible for imbuing other elementary particles with mass.

“It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr. Nielsen said in an e-mail message. In an unpublished essay, Dr. Nielson said of the theory, “Well, one could even almost say that we have a model for God.” It is their guess, he went on, “that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”

This malign influence from the future, they argue, could explain why the United States Superconducting Supercollider, also designed to find the Higgs, was canceled in 1993 after billions of dollars had already been spent, an event so unlikely that Dr. Nielsen calls it an “anti-miracle.”

You might think that the appearance of this theory is further proof that people have had ample time — perhaps too much time — to think about what will come out of the collider, which has been 15 years and $9 billion in the making.

The collider was built by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, to accelerate protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts around an 18-mile underground racetrack and then crash them together into primordial fireballs.

For the record, as of the middle of September, CERN engineers hope to begin to collide protons at the so-called injection energy of 450 billion electron volts in December and then ramp up the energy until the protons have 3.5 trillion electron volts of energy apiece and then, after a short Christmas break, real physics can begin.

Maybe.

Dr. Nielsen and Dr. Ninomiya started laying out their case for doom in the spring of 2008. It was later that fall, of course, after the CERN collider was turned on, that a connection between two magnets vaporized, shutting down the collider for more than a year.

Dr. Nielsen called that “a funny thing that could make us to believe in the theory of ours.”

He agreed that skepticism would be in order. After all, most big science projects, including the Hubble Space Telescope, have gone through a period of seeming jinxed. At CERN, the beat goes on: Last weekend the French police arrested a particle physicist who works on one of the collider experiments, on suspicion of conspiracy with a North African wing of Al Qaeda.

Dr. Nielsen and Dr. Ninomiya have proposed a kind of test: that CERN engage in a game of chance, a “card-drawing” exercise using perhaps a random-number generator, in order to discern bad luck from the future. If the outcome was sufficiently unlikely, say drawing the one spade in a deck with 100 million hearts, the machine would either not run at all, or only at low energies unlikely to find the Higgs.

Sure, it’s crazy, and CERN should not and is not about to mortgage its investment to a coin toss. The theory was greeted on some blogs with comparisons to Harry Potter. But craziness has a fine history in a physics that talks routinely about cats being dead and alive at the same time and about anti-gravity puffing out the universe.

As Niels Bohr, Dr. Nielsen’s late countryman and one of the founders of quantum theory, once told a colleague: “We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.”

Dr. Nielsen is well-qualified in this tradition. He is known in physics as one of the founders of string theory and a deep and original thinker, “one of those extremely smart people that is willing to chase crazy ideas pretty far,” in the words of Sean Carroll, a Caltech physicist and author of a coming book about time, “From Eternity to Here.”

Another of Dr. Nielsen’s projects is an effort to show how the universe as we know it, with all its apparent regularity, could arise from pure randomness, a subject he calls “random dynamics.”

Dr. Nielsen admits that he and Dr. Ninomiya’s new theory smacks of time travel, a longtime interest, which has become a respectable research subject in recent years. While it is a paradox to go back in time and kill your grandfather, physicists agree there is no paradox if you go back in time and save him from being hit by a bus. In the case of the Higgs and the collider, it is as if something is going back in time to keep the universe from being hit by a bus. Although just why the Higgs would be a catastrophe is not clear. If we knew, presumably, we wouldn’t be trying to make one.

We always assume that the past influences the future. But that is not necessarily true in the physics of Newton or Einstein. According to physicists, all you really need to know, mathematically, to describe what happens to an apple or the 100 billion galaxies of the universe over all time are the laws that describe how things change and a statement of where things start. The latter are the so-called boundary conditions — the apple five feet over your head, or the Big Bang.

The equations work just as well, Dr. Nielsen and others point out, if the boundary conditions specify a condition in the future (the apple on your head) instead of in the past, as long as the fundamental laws of physics are reversible, which most physicists believe they are.

“For those of us who believe in physics,” Einstein once wrote to a friend, “this separation between past, present and future is only an illusion.”

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel “Sirens of Titan,” all of human history turns out to be reduced to delivering a piece of metal roughly the size and shape of a beer-can opener to an alien marooned on Saturn’s moon so he can repair his spaceship and go home.

Whether the collider has such a noble or humble fate — or any fate at all — remains to be seen. As a Red Sox fan my entire adult life, I feel I know something about jinxes.

TV SHAMS: balloon boy

By FRAZIER MOORE

 

The Associated Press
Monday, October 19, 2009; 7:49 AM

 

NEW YORK — When 6-year-old Falcon Heene threw up twice while being interviewed about his role in last week’s balloon ordeal, he summed things up for millions of onlookers.

Sickening.

Viewers had been riveted Thursday by the sight of a flyaway helium balloon feared to be carrying the child. The media wrung the story for all its suspense and tragic possibilities.

Then it turned out to be a happy mistake. Falcon was pronounced safe at home the whole time.

Then it turned out to be what authorities have called a hoax. On Sunday, days after Falcon turned to his dad during a CNN interview and declared “you said we did this for a show,” authorities said Richard and Mayumi Heene had cooked up the stunt to land themselves a TV reality series.

Sickening.

But somehow inevitable. It’s endemic of the more and more seductive urge to dismiss truth, responsibility and other traditional values in favor of hustling for fame on the genre that continues to be labeled, with less and less cause, “reality TV.”

Until last week, the most recent breakout star in “reality TV” may have been former Illinois First Lady Patti Blagojevich, who competed last June in the Costa Rican jungle as a surrogate for her husband on NBC’s reality TV series “I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!”

Though she didn’t prevail as Queen of the Jungle, her appearance was successful by other measures: She made some money, had a TV platform for defending her disgraced husband, former Gov. Rod Blagojevich (who has pleaded not guilty to wide-ranging federal charges), and emerged with more dignity than many of her fellow contestants.

Meanwhile, we mustn’t forget (and how could we?) the summer’s depraved personalities who had their brush with reality shows. Like Brian Lee Randone, the self-proclaimed preacher who was once on a show called “America’s Sexiest Bachelor,” who in September was arraigned for allegedly torturing and murdering an ex-porn actress.

And just a few weeks earlier, Ryan Jenkins, known as a sweet-talking, suave contestant on VH1’s “Megan Wants a Millionaire,” was found dead by suicide days after his ex-model wife was discovered killed and mutilated.

Last Thursday the “reality TV” of the so-called balloon boy could have had its own dread conclusion, and the sky-high drama was instantly validated by TV’s most credible voices: news reporters and anchors.

The vision of a shiny, mushroom-shaped balloon swept aloft kept viewers spellbound, breathless and (let’s face it) titillated. On-air commentators and experts kept busy speculating on how fast and far it might fly, when it might come down, and how much damage might result when it did. Meanwhile, voices were raised that maybe the child wasn’t on board after all, raising questions of whether the boy had fallen from the balloon – introducing another potentially tragic set of circumstances.

If the sheriff who wants to charge him is correct about the scheme, Richard Heene must have felt like P.T. Barnum for a few hours, seizing the world’s attention and his position to make the most of it.

Then viewers’ memories were stirred: Wasn’t this a guy who, with his wife and three sons, had appeared on the ABC reality show “Wife Swap”? Turned out he’s a veteran of reality TV!

But then reports began to surface that Heene had approached production companies about launching his own reality series. TLC network said Heene had pitched the network on a show some months ago, but that it passed. Earlier this year, RDF USA, which produces “Wife Swap,” had had a show in development with the Heenes but in a statement Friday said “we are no longer in active development with the family.”

Now facing criminal charges, with his credibility maybe damaged forever, Heene could find to his dismay that his TV career lies in tatters.

But when did deceit or misbehavior give pause to reality TV?

Nearly a decade ago, the Fox special “Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?” rode bad taste and bad faith to huge ratings. Only later did former Air Force nurse Darva Conger admit she took part in the “Multimillionaire” matchup as a lark, then fibbed her way through her marriage vows, declaring she “was playing a role.”

And Rick Rockwell, the would-be actor-comic whose very status as a multimillionaire was being questioned only days after the broadcast, turned out to have had a restraining order issued against him years earlier after an ex-girlfriend accused him of striking her.

Their marriage was almost instantly annulled. But reality TV was in it for the long haul.

Now, whatever legal woes Richard Heene may face, he’s known around the world. In the hands of the right producer, he’s promotable and marketable. Never mind that the boy in the balloon wasn’t really in the balloon. This alleged scam may have given Heene a boost beyond his wildest dreams.

“I guess with all these examples we can point to the biggest sham of this century, and that is, of course, the attack on the Twin Towers. Supposedly from terrorists, who the majority, came from Saudi Arabia, these Saudis were able to bring down 3 skyscrapers, with one building never being hit by anything! Never mind that in the history of the world there has never been  a skyscraper collapsing from fire! Never mind that the melting temperature of steel is over 2700 degrees and jet fuel maximum burn temperature is 1800! Never mind the witnesses who heard the explosions, the explosions that actually brought down the buildings, were never called to testify before Congress! Never mind that when Bush and Cheney finally agreed to go before the Commission, it had to be together, off the record and behind close doors! Never mind that 99% of the evidence was hauled off to China! Never mind it took over 400 days before the Commission to investigate 911 was set up! Never mind that reporters on the scene, at the Towers and the Pentagon have changed their stories from their original telecasts! Never mind that the Israel Mossaud “assets” were in the city to film and witness the attacks! The list goes on, there is enough evidence of all the different smoking guns to fill volumes, never mind all that!”

“All of the circumstances that resulted from 911 are predicated on falsehoods! All the lives lost, all the continued lost of life are the result from corruption at the highest level of our government and the corporate world whose lackeys do their bid within the government. It’s a overwhelming cancer that has engulfed most of our elected representatives and it’s death grasp is nearly complete.”  Dave Gregory

GOP’S MANTRA OF HATE

Corporate America’s Republican pundits and those Democrats, who have fallen, don’t support our Nation, our People, or our Servicemen. When they deride one of these elements of our Nation, they are deriding the Nation as a whole, totally UNAMERICAN and totally unacceptable. United we stand is an alien term to the GOP. In one breath they scream support our troops, whom they have put in harm’s way by crimes, falsehoods, and with less than adequate equipment, in the next breath they scream our people don’t deserve health-care, at least not as good as the government run health-care that our servicemen, which is the best, get.

So our people suffer because Corporate America would rather have the billions going to fight made up wars, just so their billionaire Military-Industrial Complex friends can continue to rake in the trillions of dollars, with no end in sight and be damned to the people. Can’t you see what’s wrong with this? Who do they think makes up America? It’s the people, it’s the people who fight and die for their military adventures where profit is the only motivation. It’s the people who pay for all their military toys that enrich their friends, through your hard earned incomes.

They hide under this mantra of hate, hoping with enough derisive bemoaning they will avoid the light of truth and be able to continue their lies and scams which has robbed this country of its wealth, its youth, and its heart. Divide and Conquer is their weapon of choice, be damned to the Nation. The good people have silently stood by for years while these scoundrels have raped and pillage our Nation. This can no longer be the case. We have seen what has happened, look at the history, look at the cause and effect, and you will discover that the evil empire has been the United States and how it has been controlled by the Military-Industrial Complex through their paid lackeys and their puppet master, the C.I.A.

They wish the worst for our country. They have demonstrated this on so many occasions, on so many levels. The most recent was celebrating the United States losing the Olympic bid, then they ridicule the President winning the Nobel Peace Prize! A cause to celebrate for any other Nation, yet these fascist corporate goons ridicule this high honor. Make no mistake they celebrate every failure that befalls this country, from losing men on the battle field to the economic depression, the people realized they were one the ones responsible for these catastrophes and voted them out of office yet they cannot understand that their paid representation of fascist corporate ideology will be their ultimate downfall because the people have spoken and their next call casting will be in the courtroom to answer for their crimes. Remember there is no statute of limitations for murder! They are evil and their disguise is disappearing.

OBAMA’S FORBIDDEN Health Care Video

Do not open this FORBIDDEN HEALTH CARE VIDEO, it is not to be seen, do not forward it, do not speak about it. Under no circumstances should the truth be let out on Obama’s Health Care proposals! They are out to get you if you do!

America’s Awakening Part 3 Video by Wanted: Patriots, anyone left out there? – MySpace Video

America’s Awakening Part 3, revealing the traitors who put the money changers plans into operation.

more about “America’s Awakening Part 3 Video by W…“, posted with vodpod

Remember?

I’m sure those of you my age, I’m a baby boomer, born in 1950, can remember some of the politics of our youth. The first President I distinctly remember was Dwight Eisenhower; in fact, I remember several, “Weekly Readers” at school, having articles about the President of our Nation. Then, of course, I remember John Kennedy and the bright future that that young man brought to our Nation and how cowardly it was removed from our grasp. I remember the politicians could disagree with each other but still possessed a modicum of respect for their political rival. That has totally disappeared in our society today and there are many reasons that have come together to move our culture and the rest of the world into the Dark Ages of the 21st Century.

As soon as this Great Experiment emerge from the Revolutionary War it was attacked, much like a new born baby that emerges from its mother womb soon to be assaulted from many sides from disease and viruses. This new baby, this Democratic Republic was assailed from the beginning by those seeking to grasp control of the new infant. The baby put up a valiant fight, but in much like the spread of Cancer, its days are numbered. Two hundred thirty three years is a relatively young age for a Nation, but we all know of someone who has died in their youth, never to have realized their full potential, and this would seem to be the course for the United States. So it will not be just the passing of a Nation that never realized its potential but also that of a people, a people that have been blinded by the dreaded disease of Cancer and do not even realize they have it, until ultimately, it will be too late.

But why would this new experiment of granting ordinary men freedom, the rights to choose the way they live their lives, why would this be opposed or at least, blunted to such an extent to ultimately vanquish their freedoms? One reason is that the manipulators, the ultra rich, do not believe that ordinary people can govern themselves, they are not educated enough, they lack the proper grooming; they are just not their equals. Yet even with these beliefs, do they try to do anything that would make them, in their eyes, more acceptable to govern themselves? No, just the opposite is true, which reveals their underlying belief that no one is their equal and their goal is to make the bottom line, their bottom line, in whatever particular corporate enterprise they are concerned with, the most profitable it can possible be, regardless, of safety, health, or even life and deaths concerns. Be damn to you and the earth, our moment is now to enjoy and prosper from, to run amok among the Gods, we are the Gods, just look how we have manipulated world events and people’s minds, certainly they can never be our equal!

The corruption that came about in government was not born of the men who had the high ideals to form and serve this Nation, programs that were passed, to help people, became corrupt when corporations and banks got their hands into it and basically tried to screw the government out of every dime they could get from us (toilet seats $200, hammers $100, etc). Then these same individuals, managed to persuade the masses, the ordinary people that the problem was with government and not them. The masses were duped into taking government out of the equation and letting private enterprise run our business, these same people, the foxes, who had been wining, dining, and corrupting our political leaders in the first place, were then put in charge of the hen house.

The greatest way to achieve total control is by remaining in the background, remaining relatively unseen, but controlling events and media to get the desired effects. They acquired knowledge by trial and error; they experimented and became the wizards of perception manipulation.  They became so good at it, they kill a President in front of thousands, then years later, they brought down the twin towers on TV.

The actual processes are demonstrated through Ivan Pavlov experiments with dogs and with B.F. Skinner experiments with rats in the realm of behavioral modification and his well known, Skinner’s box experiments, it is important to note, that the era I am referring to is the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. The knowledge, although in its infancy, was there for the 3rd successful attempt at gaining control of our government, during the 1913 Christmas holidays, the money trusts from around the world culminated their efforts in forming the FEDERAL RESERVE. Their own Banking Cartel that would control the fundamental policies of the United States, irrespective of which political party that happened to be in power. Although their Skinner’s box of the time was not as powerful as their omnipotent media control of today, it was this Cancer that would take away our Freedoms while laying the blame on the poorer sectors of our Nation. What better way to hide blame than to create scapegoats who could be blamed for all the problems within the Nation while you robbed the country blind.

Divide and conquer a lesson learned from history that has been successfully employed for over 100 years, disintegrating our culture as a whole. It is evident everyday in the newspapers, the TV shows, the movies, and in the displays of acrimony between our political representatives. With all these examples of how society should operate is it any wonder why there is such decadence within?

Because the ultra elite learned the processes of behavioral conditioning or modification so well, which Pavlov and Skinner experiments demonstrate, behavioral modification has occurred to the masses over many, many, years, it is the same conditions that occur in a cult, but on a much smaller scale, there have been rescued cult members who have been deprogrammed and brought back to reality. It is a monumental challenge for deprogramming cult members and it is next to impossible to deprogram the masses that have fallen within Corporate America “Skinner’s Box”, today’s media!

The answer is, of course, to join together, unite to face those who manipulate and control, Remember our forefathers who had it right, get rid of the tyrants of the Federal Reserve and the Reserve itself. If peace would break out around the world these war mongers would lose everything and the billions being spent on warfare could be spent on actually taking care of people. All the terrorists out there, wake up, stop being played by the war machine, let peace break out world-wide. I know the machine will do things to try and prevent this, but the resolve you show in creating carnage needs to be shown with peace, then the people of the world would know who is pulling all the strings. The war machine has sponsored both sides at one time or another throughout modern times, their aim is world conflict. The most harm that could be done them is peace. Peace with your fellow man, doesn’t have to be religiously motivated, just has to be implemented in order to preserve the human race. Because one day, we will have to face a much bigger and more ominous threat, a threat much greater than anything this world can pose.

Angel Food Ministries

In these trying times this is a good organization to help you meet you food costs, click on the picture above and you’ll be taken to their site. Angel Food Ministries is nearly nationwide, when you get to their site just put in your zip code and find the nearest outlet to pick up your food.

THE DIFFERENCE

President Obama’s agenda could be obtained by demonstrating more fortitude with the opposition. So many for so long have gotten away with misdeeds and out and out crimes. If those issues were addressed there would be less idiomatical outbursts to deal with and the true needs of the American people could be met. The rule of law must again become the backbone of our Nation. Letting off those who flagrantly violated so many laws was and will be the ruination of our Nation. This is not Russia and we expect more from our leaders, not less. Corporate America’s strangle hold on this government must be ended. It took decades to reach this point and in that fact, it is the cancer that forebodes the death mill of the Great Experiment called the United States.

Missing Richard Nixon

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Many of the retrospectives on Ted Kennedy’s life mention his regret that he didn’t accept Richard Nixon’s offer of a bipartisan health care deal. The moral some commentators take from that regret is that today’s health care reformers should do what Mr. Kennedy balked at doing back then, and reach out to the other side.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Paul Krugman

 But it’s a bad analogy, because today’s political scene is nothing like that of the early 1970s. In fact, surveying current politics, I find myself missing Richard Nixon.

No, I haven’t lost my mind. Nixon was surely the worst person other than Dick Cheney ever to control the executive branch.

But the Nixon era was a time in which leading figures in both parties were capable of speaking rationally about policy, and in which policy decisions weren’t as warped by corporate cash as they are now. America is a better country in many ways than it was 35 years ago, but our political system’s ability to deal with real problems has been degraded to such an extent that I sometimes wonder whether the country is still governable.

As many people have pointed out, Nixon’s proposal for health care reform looks a lot like Democratic proposals today. In fact, in some ways it was stronger. Right now, Republicans are balking at the idea of requiring that large employers offer health insurance to their workers; Nixon proposed requiring that all employers, not just large companies, offer insurance.

Nixon also embraced tighter regulation of insurers, calling on states to “approve specific plans, oversee rates, ensure adequate disclosure, require an annual audit and take other appropriate measures.” No illusions there about how the magic of the marketplace solves all problems.

So what happened to the days when a Republican president could sound so nonideological, and offer such a reasonable proposal?

Part of the answer is that the right-wing fringe, which has always been around — as an article by the historian Rick Perlstein puts it, “crazy is a pre-existing condition” — has now, in effect, taken over one of our two major parties. Moderate Republicans, the sort of people with whom one might have been able to negotiate a health care deal, have either been driven out of the party or intimidated into silence. Whom are Democrats supposed to reach out to, when Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who was supposed to be the linchpin of any deal, helped feed the “death panel” lies?

But there’s another reason health care reform is much harder now than it would have been under Nixon: the vast expansion of corporate influence.

We tend to think of the way things are now, with a huge army of lobbyists permanently camped in the corridors of power, with corporations prepared to unleash misleading ads and organize fake grass-roots protests against any legislation that threatens their bottom line, as the way it always was. But our corporate-cash-dominated system is a relatively recent creation, dating mainly from the late 1970s.

And now that this system exists, reform of any kind has become extremely difficult. That’s especially true for health care, where growing spending has made the vested interests far more powerful than they were in Nixon’s day. The health insurance industry, in particular, saw its premiums go from 1.5 percent of G.D.P. in 1970 to 5.5 percent in 2007, so that a once minor player has become a political behemoth, one that is currently spending $1.4 million a day lobbying Congress.

That spending fuels debates that otherwise seem incomprehensible. Why are “centrist” Democrats like Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota so opposed to letting a public plan, in which Americans can buy their insurance directly from the government, compete with private insurers? Never mind their often incoherent arguments; what it comes down to is the money.

Given the combination of G.O.P. extremism and corporate power, it’s now doubtful whether health reform, even if we get it — which is by no means certain — will be anywhere near as good as Nixon’s proposal, even though Democrats control the White House and have a large Congressional majority.

And what about other challenges? Every desperately needed reform I can think of, from controlling greenhouse gases to restoring fiscal balance, will have to run the same gantlet of lobbying and lies.

I’m not saying that reformers should give up. They do, however, have to realize what they’re up against. There was a lot of talk last year about how Barack Obama would be a “transformational” president — but true transformation, it turns out, requires a lot more than electing one telegenic leader. Actually turning this country around is going to take years of siege warfare against deeply entrenched interests, defending a deeply dysfunctional political system.

Health Care Sad Stories

“This is an email I received depicting our horror stricken health-care system, this story is commonplace, but that does not make it any less tragic.” Dave

Dear David:

 

I want to tell you about my only sibling, my brother Eric De La Cruz.¹Diagnosed with Severe Dilated Cardiomyopathy five years ago and in need of a heart transplant, my brother Eric passed away far too early this July 4th. All because the health care insurance system in the United States is broken.

Click here to attend an event to support real reform – reform with a public health insurance option that prohibits discrimination or denial based on pre-existing conditions. We need to tell Congress to get it done.

You see, unlike most of us (but like millions of others), Eric couldn’t get private insurance. His employer didn’t offer it as a benefit. And his heart condition, while treatable, was a pre-existing condition that no private insurers would cover. Sadly, there was no affordable, public option to protect Eric. So he remained excluded from the basic right to life-saving treatment that all people deserve. Although a heart transplant would save him, without coverage, Eric’s condition needlessly and slowly deteriorated.People don’t realize how vulnerable they are to the devastating costs – both in dollars and in human life – of an insurance industry concerned with one thing: profit. As a TV journalist and correspondent, I’ve enjoyed a public platform few have, but when it came to the health and well-being of my family, I’m as susceptible as everyone else. Despite a national online campaign and celebrity fund-raising that amassed nearly $1 million, and emotional and political support from thousands of strangers, Eric couldn’t beat this broken system. If it can happen to us, with all of THAT support, it truly can happen to anyone. In fact, sadly, it IS happening to thousands all over the country right now. 

 

Click here to sign up to attend an event to support health insurance reform – reform with a public health insurance option to keep the insurance companies honest.

After Eric’s death, I went to Washington this August. I met in the offices of many Senators and Representatives to ask why there is even a debate about passing a strong health care reform bill that would provide all Americans with affordable, guaranteed health care coverage – a bill that would help control the spira

ling health care costs that are bankrupting countless families and forcing people to choose between their money and their lives.Everyone on Capitol Hill was sympathetic to Eric’s story, and most were supportive of legislation including a strong public option, but few seem convinced the American people would lean hard enough on Congress to make sure it happened. We must convince them now.

At this critical time, we need you to stand up for reform that would have benefited my brother Eric, and the thousands just like him who are waiting for help now. Click here to attend an event in your area and help win reform now.

In fighting for Eric’s life, thousands of people joined forces to get him on Medicare, get him into a transplant facility and raise enough money to pay for his treatment. He just ran out of time. But the clock has not stopped for you.Though Eric has passed away, he has not been silenced. Your voice can make the difference. By simply clicking on any of the links in this email, you’ll help ensure what happened to Eric doesn’t happen to your friend, your brother, your neighbor…or you.   

Please don’t forget your insurance can disappear when you least expect it, because insurance companies CAN rescind policies. If you get sick and don’t have insurance now, insurance companies CAN deny you coverage for a pre-existing condition. If you get sick tomorrow, your life can be turned upside down because of your failing health AND runaway medical bills that can force you into bankruptcy. I know you think this could never happen to you. But it can. It happened to us.  We need to get a simple message to Senators: Join with the majority of Americans to support an affordable public option to lower costs, keep insurance companies honest and include everyone, regardless of pre-existing conditions or income.

At this critical time, can you help support reform that the American people want and need? Click here sign up to attend an event in your area.

Help put a stop to these injustices.Fight to make a difference, not just for you, but for future generations.

Thank you,

Veronica De La Cruz

 

 

HealthCare change is needed by everyone

America’s Awakening!

Stop wondering why this Nation is where it is, at this place in history, instead learn how we got here! This is the first part of America’s Awakening, spread the word.

Failure to prosecute: why Obama is having trouble passing health care reform

By Don Smith

President Obama apparently believes that prosecuting Bush Administration officials for torture and other crimes would be a “distraction” from more important matters, such as health care reform.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The reason President Obama and the Democrats are having so much trouble passing health care reform is that they failed to hold conservatives accountable for their many misdeeds. The Democrats thereby empowered conservatives to continue their ample mischief. (I write “conservatives” rather than “Republicans” because some Democrats are amongst the conservatives who promoted harmful policies.)

Conservative misdeeds range from the unspeakably evil — such as torture, rendition, lying about the reasons for going to war, and the deaths of up to a million or more civilians — to the merely despicable — such as politically motivated prosecutions, reckless deregulation, suppression of evidence, tax cuts for rich folks, stolen elections, inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina, dirty tricks, and rampant corruption.

Had Democrats pursued impeachment early on they would have exposed the many lies, crimes, and dirty tricks of the conservatives to the light of day. Democrats would have even bigger majorities in Congress, and the ability of conservatives to influence public opinion would have been greatly diminished.

Instead, the Democrats, and President Obama in particular, have tried to be “bipartisan”.

What a stupid policy!

Conservatives in Congress have no intention of compromising on health care reform or on any other substantive issue. They continue to defend Bush Administration officials and policies in order to protect themselves and the GOP. This was discussed in Bipartisanship porn and Obama’s Trust Problem, where Paul Krugman writes:

It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.

Indeed, no sooner were there reports that the administration might accept co-ops as an alternative to the public option than G.O.P. leaders announced that co-ops, too, were unacceptable.

The Democrats will continue to have trouble passing a reform agenda until they decisively confront the misdeeds of the recent past by rejecting bipartisanship and pursuing prosecution of Bush-era officials. This will have the triple effect of (1) bringing criminals to justice, (2) exposing the truth to the public, and (3) weakening the influence of conservative politicians and ideology.

Alas, failure to prosecute may not be the main reason why Obama and the Democrats are having trouble passing health care reform. There is evidence that the Democrat leadership never intended to pass real health care reform. This grim conclusion was sketched in Squandered Opportunity and Follow the Money. The Democrats may be too corrupted by money and power to follow through on their promises.

Progressives’ impatience with Obama is reaching a boiling point, not just over accountability but also over the bailouts, health care reform, militarism, and other issues. As Paul Krugman observes, “A backlash in the progressive base — which pushed President Obama over the top in the Democratic primary and played a major role in his general election victory — has been building for months.”

Indeed, we progressives have power over Obama. We are his base. If we turn against him — or, better yet perhaps, just threaten to turn against him — the news media will pick up on the story and Obama will be in trouble. Let us use that power wisely. If progressives appear too pushy, the effort might backfire. Recall that Congress voted to condemn MoveOn.org in 2007 when the group published their ill-fated New York Times ad questioning whether Gen. David Petraeus would “betray us” (MoveOn.org ad controversy).

For years progressives have been criticizing Democrats for appeasement. Maybe it’s time for progressives to follow our own advice and hold Obama accountable by saying, basically: either you stop protecting these torturers, stop continuing Bush era policies, and stop compromising on health care reform, or we on the left will withdraw our support and condemn you too. Progressives need to tread carefully, lest they be dismissed as radicals, but they need to demand their due.

“I want you to hold our government accountable. I want you to hold me accountable” — Barack Obama (September, 2008). Let us hold him accountable. Let us do our part to get the word out about how America is being screwed. And let us do our utmost to ensure that progressive Democrats such as Dennis Kucinich and brave independents such as Bernie Sanders prevail.

Charlie Crist appoints old Campaign Manager

by Eric Jotkoff
Today, Charlie Crist appointed his old campaign manager and political crony George LeMieux to the United States Senate. While the U.S. Senate is taking up important legislation focusing on our economy, global warming, and health insurance reform – Floridians needed Charlie Crist to appoint a Senator who would fight for us in Washington. Unfortunately, by appointing LeMieux, Crist once again put his own political ambition above doing what is right for Florida.
For the past several years, LeMieux has been a special interest lobbyist who has made millions of dollars selling access to Crist to the highest corporate bidders in Tallahassee. Because he has never been elected to any office, “Senator” LeMieux has only ever been beholden to Charlie Crist, Republican Party donors, and his special interest clients – not the people of Florida.
This is just one more example of the Republican leadership in Tallahassee putting cronyism and corruption above the people of our state. From Ray Sansom, to former lobbyist Bill McCollum, to George LeMieux, it is clear that we must stand together and pledge to end the Republican culture of cronyism and corruption in Tallahassee:
http://www.fladems.com/repubcronyism
In Tallahassee, the Republican culture of cronyism and corruption has run amuck.
Not only is Charlie Crist playing political games rather than working on behalf of the people of Florida, with the latest example
being his pick for U.S. Senate, but LeMieux’s appointment is just another in a long line of the cronyism and corruption from Republicans
in Tallahassee.
After Republican Speaker Ray Samson’s indictment and revelations about the Republican Party of Florida’s AmEx slush fund, now Charlie Crist taps his friend and campaign manager to go to the U.S. Senate. The shady, backroom dealings that have led to such a culture of corruption and cronyism have got to stop!
That’s why we need you to stand up against the culture of cronyism and corruption. Join me in standing against Charlie Crist’s appointment of
his crony, lobbyist George LeMieux and all the backroom deals that have become the status quo in Tallahassee.

Oil lobby to fund campaign against Obama’s climate change strategy

The US oil and gas lobby are planning to stage public events to give the appearance of a groundswell of public opinion against legislation that is key to Barack Obama’s climate change strategy, according to campaigners.A key lobbying group will bankroll and organise 20 ”energy citizen” rallies in 20 states. In an email obtained by Greenpeace, Jack Gerard, the president of the American Petroleum Institute (API), outlined what he called a “sensitive” plan to stage events during the August congressional recess to put a “human face” on opposition to climate and energy reform.After the clamour over healthcare, the memo raises the possibility of a new round of protests against a key Obama issue.”Our goal is to energise people and show them that they are not alone,” said Cathy Landry, for API, who confirmed that the memo was authentic.The email from Gerard lays out ambitious plans to stage a series of lunchtime rallies to try to shape the climate bill that was passed by the house in June and will come before the Senate in September. “We must move aggressively,” it reads.The API strategy also extends to a PR drive. Gerard cites polls to test the effectiveness of its arguments against climate change legislation. It offers up the “energy citizen” rallies as ready-made events, noting that allies – which include manufacturing and farm alliances as well as 400 oil and gas member organizations – will have to do little more than turn up.”API will provide the up-front resources,” the email said. “This includes contracting with a highly experienced events management company that has produced successful rallies for presidential campaigns.”However, it said member organizations should encourage employees to attend to command the attention of senators. “In the 11 states with an industry core, our member company local leadership – including your facility manager’s commitment to provide significant attendance – is essential,” said the email.Greenpeace described the meetings as “astroturfing” – events intended to exert pressure on legislators by giving the impression of a groundswell of public opinion. Kert Davies, its research director, said: “It is the behind the scenes plan to disrupt the debate and weaken political support for climate regulation.”The rally sites were chosen to exert maximum pressure on Democrats in conservative areas. The API also included talking points for the rallies – including figures on the costs of energy reform that were refuted weeks ago by the congressional budget office.The API drive also points to a possible fracturing of the US Climate Action Partnership (Uscap), a broad coalition of corporations and energy organizations which was instrumental in drafting the Waxman-Markey climate change bill that passed in the House of Representatives in June.Passage of the legislation is seen as crucial to the prospects of getting the world to sign on to a climate change treaty at Copenhagen next December.Five members of Uscap are also in API, including BP which said its employees were aware of the rallies. Conoco Phillips, which was also a member of the climate action partnership, has also turned against climate change, warning on its website that the legislation will put jobs at risk, and compromise America’s energy security. The company is also advertising the energy rallies on its website, urging readers: “Make your voice heard.”However, Shell, also a member of both groups, said it did not support the rallies. Bill Tenner, a spokesman, said: “We are not participating.”

Once again it will remain to be seen how many of the blind followers will jump on Corporate America’s bandwagon? Your interests ARE NOT theirs!