Spintested: 11/27/10

I Am Thankful for TSA Workers

Saturday, November 27, 2010

There is nobody more supportive than I, rabid really, of collective bargaining rights for workers, but when it comes to the TSA, I'm more concerned about Americans' civil rights and the health risks that continuing these searches pose:

TSA agents often do not change their latex gloves between pat-downs! With these pat-down reaching into your pants, feeling your genitals, and sweeping bare armpits and buttocks, those latex gloves being worn by the TSA agents are obviously teeming with germs.

And yet TSA agents often don't change gloves between patting down passengers. They're often using the same gloves on you and your crotch as they were using on the previous passenger's exploratory crotch feel.

This means, of course, that the TSA is now engaged in extremely risky behavior that could spread sexually-transmitted disease, cold viruses, skin fungi (such as ringworm), and even contribute to a pandemic outbreak.

So now, while the TSA claims to be protecting your safety, they could actually be infecting you with pandemic disease at the same time.

The scanners are no safer.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

I Am Thankful for TSA Workers

A rogue moderator scrubbing comments here?

How not surprising.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

I Am Thankful for TSA Workers

There is nobody more supportive, rabid really, of collective bargaining rights for workers, but when it comes to the TSA, I'm more concerned about Americans' civil rights and the health risks that continuing these searches pose:

TSA agents often do not change their latex gloves between pat-downs! With these pat-down reaching into your pants, feeling your genitals, and sweeping bare armpits and buttocks, those latex gloves being worn by the TSA agents are obviously teeming with germs.

And yet TSA agents often don't change gloves between patting down passengers. They're often using the same gloves on you and your crotch as they were using on the previous passenger's exploratory crotch feel.

This means, of course, that the TSA is now engaged in extremely risky behavior that could spread sexually-transmitted disease, cold viruses, skin fungi (such as ringworm), and even contribute to a pandemic outbreak.

So now, while the TSA claims to be protecting your safety, they could actually be infecting you with pandemic disease at the same time.

The scanners are no safer.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

I Am Thankful for TSA Workers

DERRICK JENSEN: And then another problem—There’s this absolutely extraordinary book called The Nazi Doctors by Robert Jay Lifton, and in this book he describes how it was that men who had taken the Hippocratic Oath could work in Nazi death camps. What he found was that many of the doctors who worked in the death camps actually cared very deeply for the health of the inmates. Mengele was horrible. But a lot of the sort of straight-line doctors were just—they would do whatever they could, they would give inmates an extra scrap of potato to eat or they would hide them from the selection officers who were going to kill them. Or they would—

AMY GOODMAN: To keep their experiments going?

DERRICK JENSEN: No, no, no. They would hide them from the selection officers who were going to kill them. They would do this to protect the inmate for that day. They would put them to bed (in hospital). If they were in pain, they would give them aspirin to lick. They would do what they could to help, except for the most important thing of all, which is they wouldn’t question the existence of the entire death camp itself. So they would find themselves working within the rules, however they could, to try to improve conditions marginally. And in retrospect, of course, that’s just not sufficient. As a longtime activist, I see myself and other activists doing the same thing, that what we do is we do everything that is allowed by those in power to attempt to stop their destruction. But the problem is, whenever we figure out a way to use their rules to actually stop them, they change the rules.

About Thanksgiving
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

I Am Thankful for TSA Workers

An interview on Democracy Now! with activist Derrick Jensen that Mike Elk and all those who are "thankful" to 'good civil servants' should read:

DERRICK JENSEN: I think a lot of us are increasingly recognizing that the dominant culture is killing the planet. We can argue about whether there will be a few bacteria left, but when 90 percent of the large fish in the oceans are gone, when there’s six to ten times as much plastic as phytoplankton in parts of the ocean, when there’s dioxin in every mother’s breast milk, when background rates of extinction are a thousand to ten thousand times background rates, it’s sort of just playing with numbers to talk about whether it’s killing the planet or simply mortally wounding it. And I think it’s very important for us to start to build a culture of resistance, because what we’re doing isn’t working, clearly.

I ask a lot of times why it is that environmentalists lose so often. And there’s a couple of answers that really speak to me. One of them is that I think a lot of us don’t really know what it is we want, and we don’t think strategically very much. So what do you want?

I do know what I want, which is I want to live in a world that has more wild salmon every year than the year before, and I want to live in a world that has less dioxin in every mother’s breast milk every year than the year before, and a world that has more migratory songbirds every year than the year before.

KEEP READING

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tony Blair, Christopher Hitchens Debate Religion

JOHN LE CARRÉ: And the second question I would ask him is the really painful one, which I could not have asked if I hadn’t gone on my own journey. Have you ever seen what happens when a grenade goes off in a school? Do you really know what you’re doing when you order shock and awe? Are you prepared to kneel beside a dying soldier and tell him why he went to Iraq, or why he went to any war? I think that if anything has happened to Europe since 1945 that defines it, it is collectively Europeans do not believe in war anymore, until it comes as an absolute last resort, and then they’re going to do it rather badly. The United States, I think, still sees war as a necessary part of its existence. It’s impossible to maintain the military on that scale, a Pentagon on that scale, without turning it over.

You’ve got to have officers who are experienced in command and control. You’ve got to have troops who have been bloodied. So, we were, in that sense, at odds. I was, as a European. I was at odds with the whole notion of a preemptive strike. And I think many Europeans have that in common, of course with very many Americans, too, feel the same. So I would have tried to challenge him in that area.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tony Blair, Christopher Hitchens Debate Religion

AMY GOODMAN: David, would you go to one of Tony Blair’s events?

JOHN LE CARRÉ: No, I wouldn’t, nor would I buy the book. At the last election in which he stood, I was invited by The Guardian newspaper to interview him. And after much thought, I declined, because I did not see how I could lay a glove on him. And I’ve asked some pretty heavy-hitting journalists what questions they would have asked, in retrospect, that might have unseated him a little, that might have thrown him. And they said, almost with one voice, there’s nothing you can get passed him, there’s no way of doing it.

I think I would have asked him one question, perhaps, and I’d have asked it repeatedly. I’d have asked him about his faith, because we were told, when journalists asked about Blair’s faith, the reply was, "We don’t do God here." Well, of course, he does do God, and he reports that his actions have been put before God and confirmed, as if somehow God has signed a chit for him. I think that the question of somebody’s religious faith is absolutely central to what we think of them, if we are members of the electorate. We have to know. If it is, for example, somebody’s conviction, widely held among Christians in the United States, that the second coming of Christ is not possible 'til the Greater Israel is established, we need to know that. That's an important political perception. In Blair’s case, I would have asked him that question, and I’d have pressed him on it. I’d have asked him whether God had ever restrained him. I find it very strange that we elect a politician who then claims to serve a higher deity who guides him: "I did what I believe is right." Well, will you tell us, please, how that relates to the Christian ethic? Do you believe in war first and negotiation afterwards? Exactly how does this work?

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tony Blair, Christopher Hitchens Debate Religion

AMY GOODMAN: Is seven years after the invasion of Iraq. You’ve moved from Blair in this country, and in the United States it’s gone from Bush to Obama, who then expanded the war in Afghanistan. What is your assessment of the United States?

JOHN LE CARRÉ: I suffer from the same frustration that every decent American suffers from. That is, that you begin to wonder whether decent liberal instincts, decent humanitarian instincts, can actually penetrate the right-wing voice, get through the steering of American opinion by the mass media. I don’t know what the percentage now is, but I believe it’s still something like 65 or 70 percent of Americans believe that Saddam was involved in the Twin Towers. Am I right in that? Something like that. Well, we haven’t gone as far down that road yet, but we do have pretty horrendous manipulation of the media by our various press barons, and we have enormous intrusions into our domestic affairs by the Rupert Murdoch empire. I find that very scary—you know, former Australian, now an American, dictating to Brits what they should be thinking. I find that very, very, very unsettling, and I oppose it wherever I can. Therefore, as I say, I share the frustration, I think, of very many Americans, that when something is clear common sense, when there’s a great humanitarian need, somehow or another, it’s the conservative voice, the orthodox voice, the chauvinistic or the patriotic voice, that outshouts other people’s decent thinking processes. I thinks it’s crudely put, but it’s a very crude situation, that it’s—the feeling, I think, that many of us have of Obama is that the good things he would really like to do are being frustrated, and now his own Democratic Party is not helping or supporting him and that the corporate and other lobbies are tying his hands. I think that’s the most charitable perception that one can make.

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tony Blair, Christopher Hitchens Debate Religion

JOHN LE CARRÉ: Now you have to bear in mind also that we are creating what American media are referring to as a deep state in this country. That is, I think I read, indeed, in the Washington Post, that 890,000-odd Americans who are not in government service are cleared for top secret and above. I don’t know to what extent that situation is replicated here, but more and more I have the feeling that the power of the counterterror market is expanding and creating a wider—an ever-widening circle of those who are initiated, indoctrinated, part of the security structure, whether directly or indirectly, and those who are not. So then it makes it possible, as at the time, for example, of the parliamentary vote on whether we should go to war in Iraq, it makes it possible for a senior MP to take a neophyte aside and say, "If you’d seen the papers that I’ve seen, you would know which lobby to go into when the vote comes up." And this suggestion that there are those in the know and those not in the know, and that those not in the know are second-class citizens, is extremely dangerous to society. And I think we have to address it all the time.

We have no idea. We don’t have a spokesman for these intelligence services, either one of them, either one of the three main intelligence services. We have inspired leaks. We have people who seem to speak with authority. But when somebody tells us suddenly that we’ve gone on to red alert, and there are tanks outside London Airport, or whatever it is, we don’t know by what process this definition reaches us. It’s very easy inside an intelligence service to develop a capsule mentality. You live inside the bubble. The one thing you begin to lose is common sense, a sense of balance. And particularly when it’s men, all together, men in a room. I always think that was the awful secret of the Bay of Pigs catastrophe. It was actually the guys telling each other who they were, and they were frightfully clever men, and they’d done amazing things, some of them horrible things, in Vietnam, and they were together, and they were conspiring, and there was nobody there to say, "Boys, just take it down a bit. Just step back. Is this sensible? Do we really believe the Cubans are going to rush down and embrace our troops when they land on the beach?"

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tony Blair, Christopher Hitchens Debate Religion

Tragic that this debate was between two pro-war figures.

A clip of a Democracy Now! interview with John Le Carre about Tony Blair and the war in Iraq:

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk, David Cornwell, aka John le Carré, about what’s happening with Tony Blair with his new book out, with event after event being canceled, eggs being thrown at him, the anger on the streets?

And as I think I said earlier in the interview, for me, there are very few absolutes about human behavior. But I think a leader who does take his country to war under false pretenses is simply not an acceptable person. I don’t think that we should be weighing the rights and wrongs of that. It seems to me to be quite simply wrong.

JOHN LE CARRÉ: Well, I don’t know what the level of protest was in the United States by the time you went to war in Iraq, but here I think an aggregate of about three million people marched in Britain. The first march in which I took part must have numbered something like a million. And so, the—and I remember we stopped, this huge crowd, which was being really very crudely manhandled by the police at the edges. We stopped. We were all wedged together and looking into Downing Street, where the Prime Minister’s residency is. And nobody seemed to speak, but a kind of feral roar of popular will rose. And I tried to imagine what is must have been like for Blair sitting inside that building and hearing that sound. It was like a huge cry that goes up at a football game or something like that, where you actually—it is no longer verbalized. It’s just this animal seething noise. And I think it will always be remembered of him that he took us to war, as most people perceive, on the strength of lies.

KEEP READING

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Iran Nabs Would-Be Hijacker On Plane Carrying Lawmakers

A clip from a Democracy Now interview with John Le Carre:

DENIS MOYNIHAN: January of 2003, one of the largest antiwar marches in world history happened just behind us here.

JOHN LE CARRÉ: I took part in it, yeah.

DENIS MOYNIHAN: And what are your reflections now?

JOHN LE CARRÉ: Well, I think that my anger still stands. I can’t understand that Blair has an afterlife at all. It seems to me that any politician who takes his country to war under false pretenses has committed the ultimate sin. I think that a war in which we refuse to accept the body count of those that we kill is also a war of which we should be ashamed. We’ve always got to be careful of that. I think that—I wasn’t speaking as a prophet, I was just speaking as an angry citizen, I suppose. I think it’s true that we’ve caused irreparable damage in the Middle East. I think we shall pay for it for a long time.

One of the problems, surely, is that victims never forget, and the winners do. And they forget very quickly. If people knew basically, for example, what we had done in Iran when we ousted Mosaddeq through the CIA and the Secret Service here across the way and installed the Shah and trained his ghastly secret police force in all the black arts, the SAVAC, if people understood the extent to which we had humiliated Iran, then they would understand the later developments in Iran and Iran’s posture now. If people would look at the map and see the extent to which Iran is encircled by nuclear powers, they wouldn’t take it perhaps quite so seriously that Iran is seeking to arm itself with—if it is—with nuclear weapons.

I remain terrified of the capacity of the media, the capacity of spin doctors, here and abroad, particularly the United States media, to perpetuate false lies, perpetuate lies. Mussolini, I think, defined fascism as the moment when you couldn’t put a cigarette paper between political and corporate power. He assumed, when he offered that definition, that media power was already his. But I worry terribly that the absence of serious critical argument is going to produce a new kind of fanaticism, the new simplicities that are as dangerous as the ones which caused us to march against Iraq and as misunderstood.

The entire interview can be seen here.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

'Decision Points' Review: 'New Yorker' Blasts George Bush Book

A clip from a Democracy Now interview with John Le Carre:

DENIS MOYNIHAN: January of 2003, one of the largest antiwar marches in world history happened just behind us here.

JOHN LE CARRÉ: I took part in it, yeah.

DENIS MOYNIHAN: And what are your reflections now?

JOHN LE CARRÉ: Well, I think that my anger still stands. I can’t understand that Blair has an afterlife at all. It seems to me that any politician who takes his country to war under false pretenses has committed the ultimate sin. I think that a war in which we refuse to accept the body count of those that we kill is also a war of which we should be ashamed. We’ve always got to be careful of that. I think that—I wasn’t speaking as a prophet, I was just speaking as an angry citizen, I suppose. I think it’s true that we’ve caused irreparable damage in the Middle East. I think we shall pay for it for a long time.

One of the problems, surely, is that victims never forget, and the winners do. And they forget very quickly. If people knew basically, for example, what we had done in Iran when we ousted Mosaddeq through the CIA and the Secret Service here across the way and installed the Shah and trained his ghastly secret police force in all the black arts, the SAVAC, if people understood the extent to which we had humiliated Iran, then they would understand the later developments in Iran and Iran’s posture now. If people would look at the map and see the extent to which Iran is encircled by nuclear powers, they wouldn’t take it perhaps quite so seriously that Iran is seeking to arm itself with—if it is—with nuclear weapons.

I remain terrified of the capacity of the media, the capacity of spin doctors, here and abroad, particularly the United States media, to perpetuate false lies, perpetuate lies. Mussolini, I think, defined fascism as the moment when you couldn’t put a cigarette paper between political and corporate power. He assumed, when he offered that definition, that media power was already his. But I worry terribly that the absence of serious critical argument is going to produce a new kind of fanaticism, the new simplicities that are as dangerous as the ones which caused us to march against Iraq and as misunderstood.

The entire interview can be seen here.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Global Crises Overshadow Obama's Economic Message

A clip from a Democracy Now interview with John Le Carre:

DENIS MOYNIHAN: January of 2003, one of the largest antiwar marches in world history happened just behind us here.

JOHN LE CARRÉ: I took part in it, yeah.

DENIS MOYNIHAN: And what are your reflections now?

JOHN LE CARRÉ: Well, I think that my anger still stands. I can’t understand that Blair has an afterlife at all. It seems to me that any politician who takes his country to war under false pretenses has committed the ultimate sin. I think that a war in which we refuse to accept the body count of those that we kill is also a war of which we should be ashamed. We’ve always got to be careful of that. I think that—I wasn’t speaking as a prophet, I was just speaking as an angry citizen, I suppose. I think it’s true that we’ve caused irreparable damage in the Middle East. I think we shall pay for it for a long time.

One of the problems, surely, is that victims never forget, and the winners do. And they forget very quickly. If people knew basically, for example, what we had done in Iran when we ousted Mosaddeq through the CIA and the Secret Service here across the way and installed the Shah and trained his ghastly secret police force in all the black arts, the SAVAC, if people understood the extent to which we had humiliated Iran, then they would understand the later developments in Iran and Iran’s posture now. If people would look at the map and see the extent to which Iran is encircled by nuclear powers, they wouldn’t take it perhaps quite so seriously that Iran is seeking to arm itself with—if it is—with nuclear weapons.

I remain terrified of the capacity of the media, the capacity of spin doctors, here and abroad, particularly the United States media, to perpetuate false lies, perpetuate lies. Mussolini, I think, defined fascism as the moment when you couldn’t put a cigarette paper between political and corporate power. He assumed, when he offered that definition, that media power was already his. But I worry terribly that the absence of serious critical argument is going to produce a new kind of fanaticism, the new simplicities that are as dangerous as the ones which caused us to march against Iraq and as misunderstood.

The entire interview can be seen here.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Global Crises Overshadow Obama's Economic Message

I can't recommend this enough:

British Novelist John le Carré on the Iraq War, Corporate Power, the Exploitation of Africa and His New Novel, "Our Kind of Traitor" on Democracy Now! - http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/25/british_novelist_john_le_carr_on
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Global Crises Overshadow Obama's Economic Message

People ask me, "What can I do?"

If you want to make a difference, support Free Speech TV.

Do it now.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Comeback? Aides See 'Makings Of A Serious Potential Rebound'

I think the President has to pander to corporate interests, just as Congress does. I think he's trying to get whatever good he can out of the system.

=============================================

If you really believe that, then turn out the lights and shut the door, Gladys, because this noble experiment is really truly over.

This nation was founded to reject corporate interests having any role in government.

The public will remain passive and supine as long as there are people like you spreading that false meme, that a "President has to pander to corporate interests".

Hedges called it right, about Obama having sold out. The list of evidence is long. The documentation is everywhere. Read my comment history.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

you were the one who referenced my son in a response to my post.

================================================

You were the one who brought up your son. You first did so when you wrote this:

I am glad that my son, will be able to remain on our insurance plan until he is 26

You later wrote this:

Please post what the specific ways that his "son" could have had health care without his job,

That, along with your inability to remain on point in this discussion ("Child, the downfall of people with your prospective is that they often misjudge, or underestimate people that they are debating", and other admitted"digressions" by you) caused me to wonder if, perhaps, you were drinking or had someone other than 'you' (the person originally in this discussion I was having) had replaced 'you'.

It was about the same time that you began "seeing" a whole lot of things in my comments (including, but not limited to "bigotry" and "superiority") that weren't there nor implied.

When I said, "Obama didn't get to be the first black president",
it was in the context of that posted comment. That more Americans voted for him than ever voted for any other presidential candidate in the history of the US. They did it because of his ability to persuade that he was going to change the system, end the corporatocracy, lobbyism in government -- He was going to be the People's president, not a corporate t00I.

You do know, don't you that, 1) just mentioning someone's r@ce isn't r@c!st, and 2) you don't own the subject of r@c!sm, prejudice and bigotry, or the black experience?
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

It's seeping through....I am not a "one" with I am the "woman" with; as in "That One" I presume.

And yes, I am THE WOMAN, with a son. You make many assumptions. I knew of President Obama, before he campaigned for Senator. I do not think that he had a "slick" campaign, but a "smart" campaign. Again, you have made assumptions in underestimating my involvement in politics or even who I know, who knows whom, personally. (six degrees of separation) or how and if I've communicated my feelings, yay or nay, to the White house?. Moreover, are you trying to discourage me from voting at all? How many politicians have you KNOWN PERSONALLY, that you have voted for? Or, should I assume by your comment that you do not vote because you have to know the person personally?

And, do I detect a hint of "supremacy" as you attempt to lecture me on the role of a politician? Again, it appears as if you've assumed that I am ignorant, unsophicated politically, and could it be because of me being African American? (especially after the "unique" oratory skills comment).

Regarding the media, you have assumed again that I am not an active participant in my assimulation of media information.

I've READ quite a bit in your thread. Quite a bit!

======================================

The only thing that you can and should read into my comment is that I think you're either drunk/psychologically impaired or that someone else is sitting at your keyboard writing as you and has forgotten your gender, because if it was you sitting at the keyboard, if you are a woman (with an actual son instead of a a son created for the sole purpose of making a point on the internet, you wouldn't refer to your own son as "his son".
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

And, as the Bill is used, it will be reformed and made better.
=============================================

How?

Step-by-step. How?

If you can't lay it out, if you can't explain exactly how you think that's going to happen, you can't use it. Because the legislation goes in the wrong direction -- It's going to end all public health care, not expand it. I've already explained how it's going to do that. Now it's your turn -- How do you think it won't?
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

And I couldn't possibly comment on your "sister" without knowing the whole circumstances first hand, and not just what you, some anonymous person on the internet, claims to be true.

What you're doing, by the way, is considered very bad form in internet discussions. But, that's you.
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

To believe, and to repeat again, that the Democratic party wanted the outburst at the Town Hall meetings is absurd. I certainly didn't see bus loads of Progressives going to Town Hall meetings and being as vocal to "counter" the Teabaggers and the organized effort of the Republican Party to kill HCR, which according to you, they "secretly" support.
========================================

You still just won't accept that the legislation that passed is the insurance industry's wet dream. You don't have to take my word for it, but it seems you won't take anybody's word for it, whether it's industry insiders or government insiders.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/16/wendell_potter_on_deadly_spin_an

"K!lling" healthcare legislation wasn't what Obama and DLC-Democrats intended; kj!lling real reform, the kind of legislation that Obama and Democrats were put into power to achieve is what Obama and the DLC-Democrats intended.

Teabaggers disrupting townhalls served toward that end. Most members of Congress cancelled townhalls back home with their constituents last summer. It got members of Congress out of some very sticky and pointed confrontations with voters.
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

I did not believe for a minute that electing President Obama was going to be the panacea to end all of corporations grip on America, which has existed for 400 years, beginning with the East India Tea Company. And to believe that because an African American was elected, in a country that has a very complicated history with the African American, should have been "COMPREHENDED," by the historically educated American.
=======================================

You really are playing the race card. Amazing. It's insulting, too, to all people, not just those of color. Race plays no role in this, and you do Obama a real disservice trying to tie him to it. Shame on you.

Obama ran on a campaign of HOPE and CHANGE, changing the way that business and politics was done in Washington. It had nothing to do with race, either his or anyone else's.

The point I make is that Obama never even tried. And he didn't try because it was all BS. He's a tool. A corporate t00l.

Richard Wolffe did speak some truths while out peddling his book about Obama, which is a product of his special access to the White House. I doubt it will make any impression on you, but I think it will for others reading this.
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

I must also mention, what is so "unique," regarding his ability to communicate? Do I detect a hint of "bigotry,?" But, I digress...

=============================================

Yes, you certainly do digress. By trying to play the race card yet. Sleazy.
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

Child, the downfall of people with your prospective is that they often misjudge, or underestimate people that they are debating.

========================================

I've got grandchildren older than your son, 'Child'.
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

Yes, that's the 'company line' on why Obama watered down Democratic legislation, why he had Democrats who had just won a decisive election on healthcare and finance reforms (and with a Democratically-controlled Congress, a filibuster-proof Senate -- 60 in the Democratic Caucus that he could lose any moment because 2 were at de@th's door) sloooooooow down the works and write Republican legislation.

Voters didn't put Republicans in the majority. Republicans didn't run on healthcare reform, or finance reform.

What Obama did doesn't make any sense because it doesn't do what voters put Democrats into power to achieve: Affordable, quality medical treatment for everyone. The only sense to what Obama has done is as a great big corporate giveaway that does NOT reform healthcare.

The insurance industry has no role in the medical care system, except to prevent it (medical care) and skim profits.
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

Obama and the DLC have worked their butts off to PREVENT more progressives/liberals from getting elected. Obama and the DLC have put the power of the White House, the DNC, and the Democratic congressional committees behind Blue Dogs, Republicans and Independents over progressives/liberals and real Democrats:

Blue Dog Blanche Lincoln over progressive Democrat Lt. Governor Bill Halter.

Republican -turned-In dependent Arlen Specter over progressive Democrat Joe Sestak.

Republican -turned-In dependent Lincoln Chaffee over Democrat Frank Caprio (which, in turn, is an effective endorsement of the Republican John Loughlin over Democrat David Cicilline for the congressional seat Democrat Patrick Kennedy is retiring from, and all of the other seats up for grab in Rhode Island).

Republican -turned-In dependent Charlie Crist over liberal Democrat Kendrick Meek.

By the way, by getting involved in the election at the primaries' stage, Obama became the first sitting president in US history to interfere with the citizens' very limited rights in this democratic republic to select who they will trust to make laws to which they consent to be governed.

Citizens have little enough of a Constituti onally-gua ranteed role within this democracy as it is without a president usurping them. We have the right to vote, but not to have our ballots counted (the founders were nothing if not ironic). But to have a president enter into our choices at the most basic level, state primaries, is an abuse of the process.

They've all got to go, along with mushy middle-of-the-road thinking like yours. You need to get better informed, and cultivating some real Democratic convictions wouldn't hurt either. Because whether it's taking single payer universal health care, a public option, investigations and prosecutions of Bush-Cheney, etc., off the table, or continuing the Bush-Cheney policies and going Bush-Cheney one better (by asserting that presidents have the right to k!ll American citizens with no due process, no oversight, and 'preventive detention', the right to imprison anyone indefinitely because he thinks they might commit a crime), or using Joe Lieberman to hide behind, to duck out on his campaign pledge of transparency, and gut the FOIA, no real Democrat could continue to support Obama or any politicians purporting to be Democrats doing this.

Now, about your style of discussion: It's abusive and not much different than Sarah Palin's or Republicans. If you want serious people to talk with you, stop talking like Mark Levin and every other Republican on hate radio.
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

I think it's time we start blaming people like you who clearly are aiding and abetting those who are preventing meaningful reform with your LURVE for Obama and the rest of the pro-corporate t00ls in government.
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

And yet reconciliation was very much a "part of the scene" for passing this legislation.

Because it DOES have to do with the federal budget.
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

Please post what the specific ways that his "son" could have had health care without his job, and with an income above the poverty level (which obama has just risen so that more people can access many types of aid).

===========================================

I don't understand what you're trying to say here? Are you drinking or has someone else taken over your keyboard? I thought you were the one with the "son".

Now here's the real question for you: Why on earth would you trust and believe a politician you don't personally know, who came to your attention through a slick national campaign for the presidency during which he broke pledges, over healthcare activists and organizations that have been working on behalf of the People for decades?

Why didn't you, and why aren't you, demanding the media press the White House for action and answers?

I think we both know the reason -- You don't know what to ask. You don't what it is that you don't know. So you get taken in by some fancy talking, about legislation that isn't going to kick in for years.

Why do you stand for being treated so shabbily? Politicians work for YOU, not the other way around.
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

Obama and the DLC-controlled Democratic Party got the healthcare legislation through that the insurance industry and PhRma wanted.

Amy Goodman interviewed whistleblower Wendell Potter, former CIGNA executive, last week:

AMY GOODMAN: But don’t the insurance companies like this legislation?

WENDELL POTTER: They do. And that’s why this will not be repealed. They like a lot about it. This legislation, we call it "healthcare reform," but it doesn’t really reform the system. There are a lot of good things in there that does make some of the practices of the insurance industry illegal, things that should have been made illegal a long time ago, so that—

AMY GOODMAN: Like?

WENDELL POTTER:—for that matter, there are good things here. But it doesn’t reform the system. It is built around our health insurance system, as the President said. And they want to keep it in place, because it also guarantees that they will have a lot of new members and billions of dollars in new revenue in the years to come.

AMY GOODMAN: How does it ensure that?

WENDELL POTTER: One of the—the core component of this—and it’s kind of ironic, but the one thing that the Republicans and conservatives are saying they want to repeal is the provision that we all have to buy coverage from private insurance companies.

AMY GOODMAN: Like we do for auto insurance.

WENDELL POTTER: Exactly, right. And they’re citing or they’re saying that that’s unconstitutional. That’s also all for show, because it is just an effort to try to, in a sense, turn people away from the idea of reform. It sounds complicated, but it’s part of the insurance companies’ strategy.

Read the entire interview here.
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

In the Bill, the insurance company cannot arbitrarily raise your rents, and co-pays because of pre-existing conditions.

==================================

I assume you meant to say "rates" and not "rents".

Of course insurance companies can raise your rates, arbitrarily or not. They won't admit it's arbitrary, but arbitrary it will be.

On Countdown with Keith Olbermann, whistleblower Wendell Potter talks with Lawrence O'Donnell about where the con game (medical loss ratio, the amount of money insurers must spend on health care) is in the Senate healthcare bill, and how it will enable insurance companies to continue to price gauge and keep obscene profits instead of delivering affordable and quality medical care to policy-holders.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd6GTgUlNWs

Insurance companies have already figured out the way around the restrictions in the bill.

KEEP READING
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

You make statements regarding "deals," made by the President without posting links regarding what those "deals" were not assumptions.

=================================================

Do you only read the articles here that support your preconceived ideas?

I've only posted this about 300 times. Others have done it thousands of times. Where have you been?

How Obama went to work making sure that there would be no public healthcare options to control Big Insurance's profit-making:

Through the Senate Finance Committee's chairman, Max Baucus, Obama set the terms for the bill that would ultimately be adopted into law, by eliminating single payer universal health care from consideration and all advocates of public health care. No seat at the table.

And THEN, Obama cut secret deals with hospitals, insurance companies and PhRma on profits, and L!ED about it when it was discovered:

http://www.nbc11news.com/home/headlines/53311447.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31464689/ns/politics-white_house

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124567211118336815.html

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/health/jan-june09/pharma_06-22.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/13/internal-memo-confirms-bi_n_258285.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/health/policy/13health.html?_r=3&hp

http://www.alternet.org/story/141856/obama's_$80_billion_deal_with_pharma_is_a_very_bad_deal _for_us/

Are you now going to defend Obama for what is indefensible, or disappear like every other 0bamab0t has done when proven wrong?
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

Did Obama, who ran a pitch-perfect campaign to victory in 2008, use his oratorical skill to shape the healthcare debate?

Did he use his unique ability to communicate, an ability that got more voters than ever before in the history of the nation to vote for him (a black man, in good old rac!st America, because they believed he could end corporations' grip on government & return the government to the People), to intervene & interrupt these kinds of disruptive tactics, and bring reason and order and humanity to the decision-making process?:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ik4f1dRbP8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwiKGjM5tHU

He didn't because what teabaggers were doing at Town Halls was what he & the DLC-controlled Democratic Party wanted to have happen. To get the pro-insurance & pharmaceutical industries kind of healthcare legislation that was passed, and not the real healthcare reform that he & Democrats were put into power to achieve.

Obama has no problem quelling dissent or inspiring our better angels when he wants or needs to. And the only people Obama has ever battled are progressive and liberal Democrats.

Do you really not comprehend this? Have you been that confused and brainwashed by politicians' parsing?
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

Bush never addressed opening up the medicare to increase access to include the children who were not being covered.

=================================

And Obama never addressed opening up Medicare to increase access to people who weren/aren't being covered.

Forcing taxpayers to pay for millions of insurance policies, which will insure a few million more Americans (not all, mind you), isn't getting affordable quality medical treatment for everyone. Insurance = medical care. And what Obama did doesn't even begin to address the problems Americans had and the reason they put Obama and Democrats into power to get for them. There are no cost controls and no universality.

We didn't get healthcare reform; what Obama did was get a corporate welfare program disguised as healthcare reform past the People and into the law of the land.

I think Lawrence O'Donnell & Company explain it very well, but I can get others if these aren't to your liking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96U-7lILbXc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaKV2gGjEpk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=230taWZe3d4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tez2u5UFCqA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp6PP7R_9ls

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd6GTgUlNWs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UniUQmEeaI

KEEP READING
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

Stop with the BS.

The bill was gamed from the start to go through reconciliation, so that both parties and all players would have cover. Obama and the DLC-controlled Democrats defended losing all populist aspects of the bill, making it pro-corporate, Republican-like, to get Republicans to sign on, which in the end, NOT ONE REPUBLICAN did.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0322/After-Obama-signs-health-care-reform-bill-why-mess-with-reconciliation

This legislation is a travesty and you're a t00L. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

A caller on CSpan last week asked Richard Wolffe, who was out plugging his latest book written from his special access to the Obama White House, if we're ever going to get a public option to keep costs down.

Wolffe makes it clear that Obama and the DLC-controlled Democrats never had any intention of going with a public option or expanding public healthcare in any way (although Wolffe is mistaken when he says that Obama never ran on supporting a public option).

Not only did Obama campaign on "a public option", he campaigned on single payer, universal health care.

Here's a campaign ad featuring Obama himself. See the part where he says he has a plan to "cover everyone'? That's 'universal coverage'. There's even a graphic in the ad that says "The Obama Plan - UNIVERSAL coverage for all Americans".

Obama ran against mandates, and criticized Hillary for them in her campaign promises. Here is Candidate Obama on mandates.

Here again -- Obama campaigned on public option.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats want what they want. The DLC-controlled Democratic Party gives lip service to all populist issues (like civil rights protections, restoring habeas corpus, ending the wars, public healthcare, Wall Street reform, environmental & energy issues, etc.).

If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and R0ve were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush & R0ve were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.

Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish the Clinton machine (to get the Democratic Party's nomination) and the oldest, most experienced politicians in US history (including the R0ve machine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politicians (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep impeaching Bush and Cheney off the table, have us still reelecting them and not marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks?

Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it.

The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them despite their failure to achieve our alleged shared objectives.

Getting Democratic voters (and Obama's 'most ardent supporters') to understand that Democratic politicians have been taking us all for suckers and patsies is the most immediate problem and the challenge.
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Administration Braces For Setbacks To Health Law

The Koch brothers get a lot of press for their role in the Tea Party's rise, but the truth is that they got a lot of help from Obama, Rahm Emanuel & the DLC machine.

Obama came into the White House with Republicans not just on the ropes, but on the mat and down for the count. Obama issued a pardon and let them rise again.

After just one month in the White House, instead of going after Republicans and how their failed policies have brought us to the brink of destruction, instead of hammering Bush-Cheney-GOP for our economic woes and wars of choice, Obama and Rahm Emanuel went gvnning for Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, two people with no role in the Republican Party.

Obama and Emanuel never mentioned Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Eric Canter, Karl R0ve, George W, H.W., Jeb Bush, Cheney, NOBODY who is actually IN the Republican Party as the problem. They still don't.

The Tea Party serves Obama and the DLC-controlled Democratic Party in several ways. If they could choose any Republican to run against in 2012, it would be Palin, and elevating the Tea Party makes that more of a possibility.

It also lets Democrats keep a legislative agenda to the right of center. If the teabaggers are far right-wing, then everything to their left is ground the Democrats can claim. And that's a lot of corporate-money ground.
About Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Linkbar

Book Recommendations

Search This Blog

Spintested Twitter Feed

What I Read

Think Tanks

Blog Archive

Labels

Saturday, November 27, 2010

About This Blog