Denny Crane!
It’s quite telling that Rush Limbaugh would compare getting quality health care to the relative size of one’s housing. It’s just another commodity to conservatives, just another business. If you’re rich, then you get health care, if you’re poor, then you just do us all a favor and slink away and die.
But see, Rush, that’s exactly what doesn’t happen. Viruses and bacteria don’t care how big your mansion is. Eventually, sometime, you have to go out among the public, and it benefits you in the short-term and the long-term if that public isn’t sick and dying and spreading their germs and infections to the people you love.
The very first sentence of the document that defines this country, our Founders wrote:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
I’m educated enough to know that the Founders’ “Welfare” does not equal the modern notion of “welfare”, as in “government assistance payments for food or rent”. But it does mean “health, happiness, or prosperity; well-being.” And we willingly accept government regulation and support of myriad organizations that promote the “health, happiness, or prosperity” of the general public, from student loans to public fire departments to meat inspections to small business assistance. If “general Welfare” of a nation doesn’t include its collective health, then the term is meaningless.
Rush is the cheerleader for the “I gots mine, you gets yours” amorality that infects the modern conservative movement he leads. It’s a narcissistic myopia that allows them to believe that “no man is an island” is a falsehood, that somehow a taxpayer-funded program to protect the public health is a case of Marxist distribution of wealth, and that funding basic health care for less-fortunate Americans is tantamount to cutting checks to promote laziness.
(HuffPo) The President is offering the public a series of stories that are all missing half the plot and half the characters–namely, the part of the plot that says how we got where we are (e.g., 50 million without health insurance, half a million losing their jobs every month, 1 in 8 homes foreclosed or in danger of foreclosure, 70% of our energy coming from regimes hostile to us and gas prices on the rise again even as demand has fallen)–and the characters responsible for those gaps in the stories. He is trying to sell health care reform without calling out the drug and insurance industries, whose profits have soared at our expense. He is trying to sell financial reform without pointing his finger squarely at the banks and speculators who bankrupted us. He is trying to sell energy reform without blaming the oil companies who racked up record profits as Americans racked up record debts paying for their gas. And he is trying to sell all of these essential reforms without mentioning that there’s been a party–not just nameless “naysayers”–that has been fighting every one of these reforms for decades. When the President does feel compelled on occasion to mention the people who not only put their interests above the public interest but are now funding the lobbyists and attack ads aimed at derailing his agenda, he speaks in passive voice about how “mistakes were made,” or refers to unnamed “naysayers.” The President’s hero is Abraham Lincoln, but it is the Lincoln who penned the Gettysburg Address, not the Lincoln who ordered Union troops to fire.
Roosevelt never made the mistake of letting Americans forget for one moment that the Great Depression was Hoover’s depression. And as Paul Begala noted this week on Bill Maher, Ronald Reagan, who inherited an economy in trouble and an American public that felt humiliated over our government’s inability to recover our hostages from Iran, never failed to blame Jimmy Carter for every mistake he ever made as President–and then some. We remember Reagan’s brilliant ad as “Morning in America,” when in fact, the first line of that ad was, “It’s morning again in American” (emphasis added). The ad was, indeed, inspirational in tone, but it was also relentlessly critical by contrast with the “dark night” of Carter/Mondale.
No one should have been allowed to play with our financial futures the way the banking industry did. No one should have been allowed to amass fortunes in the oil industry or in oil speculation as everyday Americans were loading themselves down with credit card debt to pay four dollars a gallon for gas. No one should have lost a job or a home because someone wanted to turn a quick buck and didn’t give a damn what the impact might be on millions of families, shareholders, or pensioners. No industry should have been incentivized to increase its profits every time it denied insurance to someone with a “pre-existing condition” or stamped “denied” on a legitimate medical claim.
Those are stories the American people need to hear. Those are stories conservative Democrats need to hear echoed from their constituents if they are going to do what’s right by them.
As the President is fond of quoting Martin Luther King, the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.
Mr. President, now is the time to make it bend. Dr. King didn’t seek conflict, but he never avoided it. It’s time to follow his example.
Why bother to have elections if you’re not going to use the authority that voters delivered? When a winning campaign is based on the theme of change, then change, dammit. The Democrats want to buckle under to the status quo special interests and win over Republican support. To hell with that folks. Look at the numbers which leave little doubt about which direction Americans want. More on the NYTimes/CBS News poll:
The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.
Yet the survey also revealed considerable unease about the impact of heightened government involvement, on both the economy and the quality of the respondents’ own medical care. While 85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt, 77 percent said they were very or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their own care.
Because our elections have become, by and large, a ball of yarn for the kittens, a useful distraction, an illusion of some say in how this country is run. Banking interests own the Senate, Health Care interests own the House; we’re never going to see Wall Street CEOs do perp walks and we’re never going to see a reasonable health care system in this country that doesn’t chain the wage-slave to his job.
I literally believe there are businessmen at the top levels of all industries who strongarm our government into getting what they want by threatening to just pull the plug on the economy and bankrupting this nation. They and their families and friends have enough money to live anywhere in the world in the lap of luxury; why would they care if they had to sink one of their companies and can a whole bunch of workers in Representative Spineless’s district or Senator Blowhard’s state. The Rep. or Sen. is the one who the people will fire, not CEO Douchebag.
This is the only way I can reconcile the health care issue. Take my small niche, marijuana. In 2004, Barack Obama is running for Senate and saying things like our war on drugs is “an utter failure” and that “our marijuana laws need to be decriminalized”. By 2009, he’s laughing at marijuana law reform even as support for legalization is topping 50% in some polls, decriminalization enjoys 70% support, and medical marijuana enjoys 80% support. So what changed? I imagine the pharmaceutical arm of the health care industry, making bank on 20,000%-to-500,000% markup on the top-five best-selling anti-depressants and addicted return customers for the top-three opioid painkillers, doesn’t like the idea of people growing a bush in their backyard for free and cutting demand for those pills by 50%-to-75%.
Whenever you have a question about this country in the form “Why the hell does X happen when the people obviously want Y?” the answer is inevitably “Because wealthy people obviously want X.” And by “wealthy”, I mean that in the Chris Rock sense (i.e., “not rich, wealthy. Shaquille O’Neal is rich, the white man who signs Shaq’s checks is wealthy.”)
After pointing out that George W. Bush left us with 71% more unemployment, 2% less median income, 37% less value in the stock market, 13% less domestic oil production and 13% more foreign oil imports, and an 86% higher national debt, Devilstower at DailyKos points out that it’s not because Bush was a bad president, but because he was a perfect Republican.
Bush wasn’t just a Republican president, he was the Republican president. Bush was the guy who took everything on the GOP platform seriously. He went to bat for every idea that ever got the official elephant nuts seal of approval. The record that resulted isn’t just a measure of Bush’s incompetence, it’s a measure of just how bad Republican ideas are in practice.
Republican insistence that the market could be self regulating wrecked the market… as it has every time it’s been tried.
Republican insistence that rewarding folks who already had loads of cash was the best way to spark the economy failed to make things better for the average American and widened the gap between rich and poor… as it has every time it’s been tried.
Republican insistence that giving the oil companies billions would result in a burst of domestic production failed… as it has every time it’s been tried.
Republican insistence that the market alone would position us for our energy future left us more vulnerable to those who control overseas oil resources… as it has every time it’s been tried.
The Financial Times reported that Merrill Lynch accelerated its normal time schedule for awarding bonuses and distributed $ 4 billion dollars on Dec 29, just 3 days before its takeover by Bank of America. At the same time Merrill posted $15 billion in losses for the fourth quarter. The total compensation for Merrill Lynch employees in 2008 was $15 billion.
That’s way more than just an outsized sense of entitlement, that’s flat-out stealing. And the money for this comes from, you guessed it, the US government. The Bank of America was prepared to back out of the deal once the size of the Merrill Lynch loss became apparent. The deal was completed only after guarantees of government money by the US Treasury.
What’s more, because Congress is so up close and personal with all their friends on Wall Street who donate so generously to their re-election campaigns, those bonuses are not subject to payroll tax and are treated as long term capital gains income, taxed at a mere 15%. Since the payroll tax is just over 15% (half paid by the employer), they essentially are paying less tax on their income than minimum income wage slaves.
I read another blogger who had compared the financial bailout to the incident of Colin Powell waving around the vial of anthrax. There was no anthrax, but boy, the fear of the anthrax made everyone forget commonsense and asking questions and taking things slowly. Same with the Wall Street “crisis”, waving around these “toxic securities” like anthrax, screaming that if we didn’t do something immediately there would be grave consequences, right now, no questions asked, give us money, no oversight!
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Richardson bows out of cabinet, Israel/Gaza conflict with Saleem Siddiqui from HotConflict.com, compromising with a failed ideology.
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Torture Prosecutor Tops 70,000 Questions for Obama on Change.Gov
A whopping 70,000 questions poured into Change.gov over the past week, in response to the Obama transition team’s call for citizen queries to the President-Elect. After votes from about 100,000 people, the top ranked question asks Obama whether he will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of torture and illegal surveillance by the U.S. government.
The national press corps has not raised this issue with Obama since his victory. (When it surfaced in April, Obama said he would order his attorney general to “immediately review” the potential crimes.) And while the leading question in the last Change.gov forum was dispatched breezily — Will you legalize marijuana? No. — this one is far more challenging, both substantively and politically.
The Times notes that Obama’s team has “not said” whether it will even answer [the torture prosecutions] question, though ignoring the question that came in first out of 74,000 would turn this exercise into a farce. A terse, evasive answer would be similarly unacceptable. After all, there would be little point in this online dialogue if it reiterates things we already know, (Obama is not in N.O.R.M.L.), and refuses to provide new information.
Yeah, let’s see if the call for Patrick Fitzgerald as an special prosecutor investigating allegations of torture gets this eleven-word response:
President-Elect Obama is not in favor of the investigation of torture.
I doubt it. I believe it will get a very thoughtful, reasoned response, much like the other four questions that were answered in the first round. Which just goes further in showing us how marginalized the drug war discussion is in Washington.
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CNN’s Sanjay Gupta Is Approached for Surgeon General Job – NYTimes.com
WASHINGTON — Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon and CNN health reporter, is the leading contender to become the next surgeon general, a pick that will give the moribund office a higher profile but one that has received a mixed reaction among public health advocates.
If Dr. Gupta is picked for the post, he would be the nation’s leading medical advocate. His experience in the media would be beneficial in bringing the Surgeon General’s office back to the prominence it held when C. Everett Koop was successfully battling tobacco smoking.
But is Dr. Gupta ready to deliver the Obama Administration’s promised end to the politicization of science and medicine? More specifically, will Dr. Gupta toe the federal line that cannabis is lacking in any medical value, or will he recognize what thirteen US states and the past twelve years of research prove — that cannabis is a beneficial medicine for some people and an intoxicant far less harmful than alcohol for others?
In 2002, Dr. Gupta was more than willing to echo the outrageous claims that smoking pot would lead to psychosis, depression, and schizophrenia:
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Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com
It is worth remembering that the Democrats who are going to exert dominant political control are the same ones who have provoked so much scorn — rightfully so — over the last several years, and particularly since 2006.  This is the same Democratic Party leadership which funded the Iraq War without conditions and voted to authorize it in the first place; massively expanded the Presidents warrantless eavesdropping powers; immunized lawbreaking telecoms; enacted the Patriot Act and then renewed it with virtually no changes; didnt even bother to mount a filibuster to stop the Military Commissions Act; refrained from pursuing any meaningful investigations of Bush lawbreaking; confirmed every last extremist Bush nominee, from Michael McConnell to Michael Mukasey; acquiesced to even the worst and most lawless Bush policies when they were briefed on them; and on and on and on.  None of that has changed.  That is still who they are.
The Democrats have at least 57 (check that, Alaska, 58!) votes in the Senate, a bigger lead in the House, and the presidency. Â And yet, Democrats in the Senate are just about ready to reward Holy Joe Lieberman for speaking at the Republican Convention and maligning, impugning, and slandering Barack Obama by letting him keep his chairmanship of the Homeland Security committee, where he failed to convene any oversight hearings for Bush’s major failings in homeland security!
No wonder the “Democrats are weak” theme sticks so well. Â Holy Joe was rejected by the Democrats of his own state, so he said “screw them, I know better” ran as Republicrat and won. Â Holy Joe repeatedly screwed over Democrats in his cheerleading for the Bush war machine. Â Holy Joe even screwed over Barack Obama, not by supporting his friend McCain, but by actively tearing down the nominee of his own (supposed) party!
And Dems are going to let him just get away with it, again, with absolutely no consequences for his treachery.
You wondered what there would be to rant about after the end of the Bush Administration?  Oh, what will the shrieking lefty talkers have to screech about without Bush?  Just you wait.  With Bush, the actions were egregious, but expected, because hey, it’s a son of a Bush.  But with Obama and the congressional Dems, with no excuse of being the minority party or facing presidential veto, you expect better.  I believe there will be plenty to talk about in the coming years… but at least it will be disappointment in an administration not doing enough good instead of the terror of an administration doing far too much evil.
I spent the evening at an election-watching party sponsored by a local auto dealer who is a huge supporter of progressive talk radio. What fun it was, for once, to be in a room full of cheering, crying people who weren’t dressed in Green Bay Packers clothing. Out here in Portland, we all counted down from :45 seconds to 8pm our time, because we knew that would be the moment CNN would call the election for Barack Hussein Obama.
(Now that he’s elected, I will be calling him “Barack Hussein Obama” because it will will irritate the righties and not saying his middle name, when we routinely do that for every other president, gives that anti-Muslim smear more power than it deserves. I’m proud of our president Barack Hussein Obama and his middle name, too!)
We’re biting our nails still over Merkley/Smith in the Senate. Smith lieads by about 1,000, but votes from Multnomah (Portland Metro – strongly Merkley) haven’t all been counted yet. I’m biting my nails for Al Franken in Minnesota, because while we’ve had Actor-Americans in government (Fred Grandy, Fred Thompson, Ronald Reagan) and Athlete-Americans (Steve Largent, Jack Kemp) and Former Cokehead-Americans (George W. Bush) in office, I believe Franken will be our first Former Cokehead-Actor-Comedian-American to sit in the Senate.
Oregon passed Measure 57 and Measure 61, so Measure 61 failed. If you said, “Huh?”, welcome to Oregon initiative politics. Our rightwing nutjobs sponsored 61, which increases mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes, which will cost us up to $400 million to build new prisons. So the legislature sponsored 57, which increases mandatory minimums on fewer certain crimes, which will cost us up to $200 million to build new prisons, but if 57 passes with more votes than 61, 61 is invalidated. This is how Oregon fights an awful bill, by proposing a less-awful counter bill, instead of just fighting the awful bill.
Michigan passed it’s medical marijuana measure with 63% of the vote and Massachusetts passed it’s marijuana decriminalization measure. 13 states with 1/4th the US population now recognize and protect medical users of marijuana, and 13 states now no longer arrest and incarcerate social users of marijuana (six states do both).
And yet, California, where I had just been three weeks ago, sitting in a downtown dispensary enjoying a gourmet choice of vaporized cannabis without fear of law enforcement…
California, the capital of the worldwide pornography industry, thanks to lenient laws…
California, where I can buy hundred-proof liquor store on the shelves of the local grocery store…
Californians voted to amend their constitution to revoke a right from people already granted that right – the right to marry for gays and lesbians.
Wow. What a precedent. So, like, if enough Californians decided to do it, they could revoke just about anybody’s right to do anything, couldn’t they? Well, no, not if that right were something protected in the US Constitution. They couldn’t, for example, create an amendment to define marriage as only between one man and one woman of the same race, religion, or ethnicity.
Civil rights groups are petitioning the California Supreme Court, saying that you can’t really use the initiative process to take away people’s constitutional rights. Good luck with that.
And there are the other anti-gay marriage and anti-gay adoption amendments that passed this time around in other states. It’s going to keep happening like this, election after election, as homophobic majorities will keep voting to discriminate against LGBT.
This can only be solved federally. Either federal legislation, constitutional amendment, or Supreme Court decision. You’re not likely to get #1, even less likely to get #2. Maybe President Barack Hussein Obama will get us the Justices on the bench to give us #3.
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