Joseph A. Sheridan: Progressive blogs

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:20:30 GMT

ARISTOPHANES, THE GREEK PLAYWRIGHT CALLED THE “FATHER OF COMEDY,” WROTE "YOUTH AGES, IMMATURITY IS OUTGROWN, IGNORANCE CAN BE EDUCATED, DRUNKENNESS SOBERED, BUT STUPID LASTS FOREVER.”

AND THAT MY FRIENDS IS WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND THE BLUE DOG DEMOCRATS ARE TODAY—STUPID!

THEY [GOP] VOTED AGAINST SOCIAL SECURITY, AGAINST MEDICARE, AGAINST MEDICAID AND WITH ONE EXCEPTION [JOSEPH CAO [R-LA-2] AGAINST HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL IN THE HOUSE!

Joseph Cao [LA2-R] was the only Republican demonstrating the kind of courage and insight that reflects the essence of the party of Abraham Lincoln.

Writing early in his career, Lincoln penned this profound declaration:

“Government should do for people what they cannot do for themselves or do so well.”

That sentence is loaded with common sense. That is precisely what the founding fathers had in mind for the role of the federal government. That is precisely what is absent from the ranting and raving of the lunacy expressed by the Republican Party of the 21^st century.

Its leadership is as weak as an eighty year old nun’s arm wrestling proficiency. Boehner is a disgrace and McConnell has all of the charisma of road kill. Not only are they void of personality, they too are void of intelligent and viable alternatives on the issues fundamental to our nation’s future.

They did not recognize that their own president and his advisors were leading this nation down a dead end ally when discussing the war in Iraq. The Republican leadership held no meaningful hearings to investigate the validity of the administration’s claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to the United States.

Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, was a lap dog for George W. Bush. It is doubtful that throughout the entire episode prior and leading up to our preemptive invasion of Iraq that the number one diplomat in the Bush administration once questioned the advisability, the morality, and the ethics entailed in such an invasion.

Not one member of the Republican caucus in the Congress raised a voice of doubt about the prudence of the invasion, the cost [military projection of the cost of the invasion and the occupation [$50 billion all of which would be paid for out of our profits from the sale of Iraqi oil], the nearly total devastation of the Baghdad and other major cities whose infrastructure will require billions of dollars to restore, the loss of life of our American soldiers, the massive loss of life of Iraqi civilians nor the 1400 year old battle between the Kurds, Shiites and the Sunnis that could possibly break out into a vision and deadly insurgency, and finally a cost to the taxpayers of this country in the mid trillions before it is all over and all the hidden costs are uncovered and tallied up.

The media stood silently by as immense planes loaded down with bombs took off for Bagdad and few, if any reporters, asked noteworthy questions of the administration. The media remained silent, almost speechless, as the young American women and men who comprised our boots on the ground boarded planes headed into harm’s way.

“We came, we saw and we conquered,” Or put another way, "Veni, vidi, vici" is a phrase attributed Julius Caesar when he wrote a letter to the Roman Senate after, the first assault when he defeated King Pharnaces in the battle of Zela which was in Asia Minor known today as Turkey, in 47 BC. .

Bush, on May 1, 2003 aboard the U. S. S. Abraham Lincoln, standing beneath a gigantic banner that said in intrepid letters”MISSION ACCOMPLISHED,” the president announced the war was for all practical purposes over and we were the victors—“veni, vidi, vici.”

But as was so often the case during the eight years of the Bush/Cheney administration, he was thoroughly wrong. American soldiers in November, 2009 remain in Iraq and while the combat troops are no longer fighting the insurgents, they are attempting to train both the soldiers and the police so that they can bring a semblance of order to a nation that our bombs and soldiers very nearly destroyed.

These same brainless legislators under the foolhardy and mindless leadership of Boehner and McConnell stood quietly on the sidelines as the administration turned the federal regulatory agencies into impotent tools of a cunning administration. No oversight. No investigation of banking and insurances practices in violation of federal laws. No supervision of the tax-payers money invested in these institutions to insure its safety; nothing from a party that believes that “free market” means freedom to do as you damn well please.

The entire Great Recession of 2007-2009 was a result of an free-for-all stock market, unfettered banking system and an unregulated insurance industry brought to the American people by the political party holding fast to the antiquated concept of a “free market.” The tragedy is that there is no such thing as a free market—not as long as industries can buy the influence to pass legislation that gives them the right to rob, cheat and steal—such as the health insurance, banking, energy, and brokerage industries.

We all remember the infamous meeting that Vice-President Dick Cheney held in secret in Washington of all of the major players in the energy business. They were gathered to write the legislation that would oversee their industry. In other words, the energy people wrote their own rule book that they wanted to live by and the Republican Vice-President who came to the office from an energy related company made it possible at the expense of the American people.

We all know that the market has been under the influence of government tax benefits for special interests of every department of government and whole industries including the health insurance cabal and through the use of massive campaign contributions that have been free to hose the investors, the insured, and the account holders of banks and investment firms.

In this present battle for health care reform, it is the Republican Party and the Blue Dog Democrats who are also “free marketers” have received the vast amount of financial contributions from this special interest group in the general field of medical care.

If you ask me, they should be forced to recuse themselves from the health care debate for a serious conflict of interest. Voted into office to serve the people, paid once in the office with millions of dollars to serve the special interests, some of our Senators are strictly in it for the money. To hell with the people who are worried to death about getting sick.

It is rumored that Evan Bayh receives seven figures in contributions from health insurance companies, his wife is employed by one of the biggest health care companies and they both allegedly hold considerable stock in that company which just happens to be one of the reasons why the Senator from Indiana has been vehemently opposed to the “public option.”

Would someone please tell me how this man can serve the thousands of people in Indiana who are without health insurance while serving a health insurance company for which his wife works and both husband and wife hold serious stock holdings?

According to BioMed, “Statistics have shown that since 1994, the number of people without insurance coverage [in the Hoosier state] has shot up by 223,680. This has affected the prevailing rates of insurance premiums, which have gone up due to the growing population and increase of uninsured people. As a consequence, there have been delays in emergency care as well as dearth of job opportunities.”

Bayh is not alone. Many of those in both parties sitting in the legislative chambers of our national Congress are on the take for campaign funds. And they do not have to go far. The nearest health insurance company will give until it hurts as long as they can keep their deadly hold on the health of the people of this country; as long as they can charge whatever their cold heart demands; as long as they can turn down people with prior health conditions that make them a risk; as long as they can drop any of the insured for becoming seriously ill, or changing jobs, or moving to a new state—they will give and give and give because it will never hurt as much as the lose of their company’s profits hurts more. And by some weird set of circumstances, should their profits drop, they can always increase the already absurdly high premiums that they charge their policy holders.

One of the Senators who openly opposes the public option is Senator Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat from the state of Arkansas, the home state of Bill and Hillary Clinton who launched their health care reform campaign in 1993. “I would not support a solely government-funded public option. We can’t afford that,” Lincoln said. The senior Arkansas senator is also the 2nd highest recipient of campaign contributions from the health industry among senators this year.

Rep. Joseph Cao, the only Republican Congressmen to support the Health Care Reform Bill recently passed by the House, told the press that he “voted his conscience.” Would it not be wonderful if we had more Representatives in Washington who voted their conscience rather than the whims of the special interest groups that fill their campaign coffers such as Senator Blanche Lincoln from Arkansas mentioned above.

Health Care Reform is critical to our country. The public option that has caused so much fury from the hard right and the health insurance industry is vital because it is the only way to reduce the ridiculous costs of health care in 2009.

Not only should Republicans study the issue and vote their conscience, but some of the uninformed, stupid, lemmings who went to town hall meetings because they were paid and trained by the Republican Party and the health insurance industry only to make fools of themselves should overcome “stupid” before they vote against their own self interests.

Remember the words of Aristophanes—ignorance can be educated, but stupidity lasts forever.

JOE SHERIDAN’S BOOK—

JESUS WAS A LIBERAL/A Blogger’s Bold Opinions on Politics and Religion

IS AVAILABLE FOR HIS READERS

AMAZON.COM & AUTHORHOUSE.COM HAVE ALL VERSIONS [hard cover, paperback and E.book] IN STOCK

OR IT CAN BE ORDERED FROM BARNES AND NOBLE, BORDERS, WALDEN, BOOKS-A-MILLION AND OTHER LEADING BOOK STORES

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:02:56 GMT

AND NOW TO THE SENATE—HEALTH CARE AND THE FINAL HURDLE

The real test for the Democratic leadership and its caucus! Deliver or die in the 2010 and 2012 elections.

THE PEOPLE WILL WAIT NO LONGER FOR RELIEF FROM THE DREADFUL HURT THAT OUR PRESENT HEALTH CARE SYSTEM THAT FILLS THE POCKETS OF HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES WITH THE COIN OF THE REALM WHILE BANKRUPTING AND EVEN KILLING THOUSANDS OF OUR VERY OWN CITIZENS SIMPLY BECAUSE OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS IN WASHINGTON ARE COWARDS, CALLOUS, AND PAWNS OF THOSE WHO BUY AND PAY FOR THEIR SOULS--IF NOT WORSE.

A friend of mine asked a very poignant question recently; how can these SOBs in the Senate take for themselves the finest health care insurance program available to human anywhere in the world, how can they vote billions and even trillions of dollars on defense that is conducting wars in countries that pose no threat to our nation or its people; how can these bastards watch the flag draped caskets of soldiers killed in the wars they voted to start and refuse to see that the underlying cause for the death of forty four thousand American citizens who die every year-- lack of health insurance--must be rectified.

He went even further--How can that little wimp from Tennessee, Lindsey Graham get on television on the very day that the House passed the Health Care Reform Bill, and proudly announce that it was dead on arrival in the Senate?

“If it weren’t for the fact that these jerks had the most sumptuous health coverage package for themselves and their families for life; and the health insurance companies were pouring millions of dollars into their campaign coffers they would be a little more sensitive to the voice of the people.”

Sometimes when sitting in the lap of luxury people looking down from their penthouses are oblivious to the hurt and the pain that human beings on the street below are enduring.

I join with my friend. I am shocked at the number of U. S. Senators who refuse to bow to the will of the people. Someday, in the not too distant future, these pompous asses will get voted out of office and men and women that still believe in government of the people by the people and for the people, will take their places. And the American people will take their rightful places in the pyramid of power.

It looks as if the Republican Party, in general, and some Blue Dog Democrats, in particular, are heartless, callous, cold-blooded people who serve their own interests and the special interests that keep them in office at the expense of the needs of the people.

It amazes me that anyone could be a Republican today after the last 29 years of GOP dominance in the White House and from time to time in the Congress. Reagan, who is the Deity of the hard right members of what used to be known as the Grand Old Party, looked compassionate, sounded compassionate, but in reality did very little to improve the quality of life for the vast majority of the American people.

While today’s core Republicans are looking for a Reaganesque type candidate, they forget that he failed miserably. After sincerely guaranteeing to make the federal government smaller and more effective, to balance the federal budget within the first four years of his presidency--he failed.

In fact, there is a new book by Will Bunch entitled,” “Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future.”

When Reagan came into office as the 40^th president, all 39 of his predecessors in total had garnered a deficit of $300 billion. When Reagan left office, rather than balancing the budget as he so arrogantly promised while simultaneously disparaging the “tax and spend” Democrats that preceded him, left this nation with a $2.7 trillion dollar debt.

As I listen to the ruthless criticism launched by the Republican leadership in the 111^th Congress at Barack Obama, I would remind them that the deficit we face today is not as large as the one their beloved Reagan left behind and is being utilized to clean up the mess that John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and their president, George W. Bush left behind in the whirlwind of his failed economic policies that nearly bankrupted the entire nation and financially sank our ship of state. I recommend that these incompetent leaders that have dragged the once great party of Abraham Lincoln to its knees in public loathing should simply shut their mouths and be grateful that someone of Obama’s strength is at the helm.

Bill Clinton the only Democrat to interrupt the Republican Party’s 29 year reign was the only president in decades to balance the budget. When Clinton came into office, he inherited the Reagan and Bush debts totaling $4.5 trillion. When he turned the presidency over to George W. Bush, Clinton left him a budget surplus of $559 billion. Eight years later, George W. Bush left Obama with a debt of $5 trillion.

All of the gnashing of teeth by the Republicans over Obama’s debt is nothing but a deception on their part. He [Obama] was forced to clean up the flood of debt the George W. left behind due to wars in Afghanistan and a completely unwarranted war in Iraq, plus a massive tax cut exclusively for the top 1% of America’s tax payers [or to put in prospective, all of Bush’s friends]. This was one failure from which George H. W. Bush could not extricate his son George W. Bush. All of his less than successful life, the old man saved his son’s ass from being dragged through the streets of financial ruin. His presidency’s mistakes were too great; his old man, or whom he had very little respect, could not save him or the country from near disaster

The hard right wants to kill the Health Care Reform bill because of the debt its implementation will thrust upon our future over a period of 10 years. If, as projected, it cost the country $1 trillion over ten years that is nothing compared to the debt the 43^rd president, George Bush has burdened us with via wars and tax cuts. They [the Republican members of Congress] did not want to kill the war in Iraq that costs 2.5 times the debt that Health Care could accumulate in 10 years. They did not want to kill the tax cut for the rich that caused more debt than Health Care Reform will accrue in 10 years.

When Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Grassley, Jon Kyl, Orrin Hatch, Kit Bond, Richard Shelby, Jess Sessions, Jim Bunning, John Thune, Lamar Alexander and all of the rest of the forty [40] Republicans in the Senate knock health care because of the cost [debt] they are putting a price tag on human life that is immoral, at the very least, and unchristian at the worst. When we ask the ancient inquiry—“What would Jesus do in this case?” The answer is as clear as church bell tolling on a lovely, cloudless spring day. Pass Obama’s health care reform and pass it now.

There are some Blue Dog Democrats that need to decide “whom they will serve!” Their opposition to Health Care Reform forces me to conclude that they must be half-breed Democrats. Our party and its adherents have been pushing for health care reform for decades and now that we are on the verge of passing the most important piece of legislation some of these half-breeds are balking.

Founded in 1994, this group of conservative Democrats felt alienated from the power source in the party and formed a group dedicated to a more old-fashioned view of the Democratic message.

For example, the best single source of finance for this rogue group of Demos and their Political Action Committee is the health care industry. According to Wikipedia, it was members of this group of centrist Blue Dogs “who were committee members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee [that] successfully delayed the House vote on the [recent] Health Insurance Reform Bill [HR32] until after the summer recess.”

It was this same “Blue Dog Coalition [that] voted 32-4 in favor of the bill to limit access to bankruptcy protection. [S 256]”

An additional 16 Blue Dogs have not paid any money to the DCCC but were exempt from party-mandated contributions because they were top GOP targets for defeat in 2008. One reason for the party-dues boycott is contained in remarks made by Rep. primary challenges to any Democrat who does not vote to end the war in Iraq. Woolsey later stated that she was misunderstood, but the Blue Dogs have continued with the boycott. Donations to party Congressional Committees are an important source of funding for the party committees, permitting millions of dollars to be funneled back into close races [Wikipedia]

The Senate contact information for reaching out to this group of rascal Blue Dogs who, in fact, vote very closely with the Republicans that bother me deeply in this health care mêlée. Their obsession with the misinformation about the debt and the over all cost providing affordable health care for all Americans is hitting the nail squarely on the thumb. Their fixation with cost and debt could water down the most important piece of legislation in this century and turn health care reform into another piece of meaningless twitter.

Write, email, call, fax, i.e. use whatever form of communication you the office of this group of mutinous Senators and tell them exactly how you feel about the health care issue and the public option so vital to reducing the cost of health insurance for all of us.

Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) 202-224-4041 – fax 202-224-9750
Email (http://lieberman.senate.gov/contact/)

Thomas Carper (D-DE) 202-224-2441, fax 202-228-2190
Email (http://carper.senate.gov/contact/)

Bill Nelson (D-FL) 202-224-5274
Email (http://billnelson.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm)

Johnny Isakson (R-GA) 202-224-3643, fax 202-0228-0724
Email (http://isakson.senate.gov/contact.cfm)

Evan Bayh (D-IN) 202-224-5623, fax 202-228-1377
Email (http://bayh.senate.gov/contact/email/)

Mary Landrieu (D-LA) 202-224-5824, fax 202-224-9735
Email (http://landrieu.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm)

Susan Collins (R-ME) 202-224-2523, fax 202-224-2693
Email(http://collins.senate.gov/public/continue.cfm?FuseAction=ContactSenatorCollins.EmailIssue)

Olympia Snowe (R-ME) fax 202-224-1946
(http://snowe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactSenatorSnowe)

Max Baucus (D-MT) 202-224-2651, fax 202-224-9412
Email http://baucus.senate.gov/contact/

John Tester (D-MT) 202-224-2644, fax 202-224-8594
Email (http://tester.senate.gov/Contact/index.cfm)

Kent Conrad (D-ND) 202-224-2043, fax 202-224-7776
Email(http://conrad.senate.gov/contact/webform.cfm)

Ben Nelson (D-NE) 202-224-6551, fax 202-228-0012
Email (http://bennelson.senate.gov/contact-me.cfm)

Ron Wyden (D-OR) 202-224-5244, fax 202-228-2717
Email (http://wyden.senate.gov/contact/)

Herb Kohl (D-WI) 202-224-5653, fax 202-224-9787
Email (http://kohl.senate.gov/contact.cfm)

Robert Byrd (D-WV) 202-224-3954, fax 202-228-0002
Email (http://byrd.senate.gov/contacts/)

Mark Warner (D-VA) 202- 224-2023, fax 202-224-6295
Email (http://warner.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Contact)

Tim Johnson (D-SD) 202-224-5842
Email (http://johnson.senate.gov/contact/)

On November 11, 2009, one of the country’s great humorists, Garrison Keillor wrote a marvelous piece entitled, “No fount of Wisdom for Senate GOP/ Health care is too complicated for the Congress.

“The Founding Fathers intended the Senate to be fount of wisdom flowing but when you consider Saxby Chambliss and Jim Bunning, John Ensign, Jim DeMint, James Inhofe, who look as if they’ve been banged on the head too many times, and the moon-faced Mitch McConnell, your faith in democracy is challenged severely. Any legislative in which 41 senators from rural states that together represent 10 percent of the people can stop 90 percent, it’s like driving a bus with a brake pedal for each passenger: That’s why Congress has a public approval rating of 25 percent.

Health care is much too complicated for Congress. The whole issue should’ve been handed over to a blue–ribbon commission of economists—let them draw up a plan and defend it and stand up to the ranters and rug-chewers—and let Congress do what it does best, which is to uphold virtue and decency and to denounce narrow self-interest and partisanship, and then go to lunch.”

When you look at the names of the Republicans Garrison mentioned in his piece, one has to give thanks to God Almighty that we have survived this long as a nation. The contemporary version of the party of Abraham Lincoln is the most embarrassing cloistered group ever to take up perfectly good seats in the great hall of our upper chamber.

My friend, who started this discussion went on to say, I shake my head in disbelief that people that appear to be intelligent and caring, continue to vote for Republicans. After Bush, I will not vote for that party as long as there is breathe within my body.

Amen to that! There was one vote on the GOP side in the House cast by the representative from New Orleans, Joseph Cao who simply said, “My people need this health care reform bill.” Oh, that there were more intelligent, caring, constituent-sensitive Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats,

We must pass this Health Care Reform legislation or the Democrats in the Congress will get their majorities stolen from them by an angry mob of of members of their own party; yes, that’s right--Democrats.

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:45:00 GMT

REPUBLICAN GUBERNATORIAL VICTORIES IN NEW JERSEY AND VIRGINIA ARE NOT A REFLECTION ON OBAMA, BUT ON THE POPULARITY OF THE CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR

The Republican Party, nationally, continues to have a miserable 20% approval rating due in large part best described by Bill Maher this week on Late Night: “The Democrats have moved to the right and the Republicans have moved into the insane asylum.” We have seen the biggest exhibition of imbeciles at fake Tea Parties, Rigged Town Hall Meetings, comments by senile old Republicans coached to shout out mindless remarks about Obama as a Fascist, a Communist, a Socialist, a non-citizen,

HOWEVER, IT IS NOT TIME FOR THE OBAMA POLITICAL TEAM TO TAKE FOR GRANTED THEY CAN HOLD THE HOUSE AND SENATE IN 2010.

The two primaries held the week of November 3 in New Jersey and Virginia contrary to the expected celebration on Fox News [Bill Krystol, Sean Hannity, Dick Morris, the several anchors on Fox’s morning and afternoon Fox News that I never watch, Bill O’Reilly] and, of course, the always disconcerting Chairman of the RNC, Michael Steele [their token minority leader] etc.went into a tizzy like a bunch of kids at a high school party on ecstasy.

My advice to my Republican friends is that you should not become too excited about victories in New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races in 2009. There were too many conflicting local issues to blame this one on Obama.

Besides, in the case of Bill Krystol as Jon Stewart of The Daily Show likes to remind him when he is a guest of the Stewart show as the man who “Is always wrong.” And, in fact, Stewart is correct.

Krystol, editor of the very right wing The Weekly Standard is a neo-conservative which if they aren’t they should be a major embarrassment to the Republican Party. He fought like the devil to invade Iraq in order to establish an island of democracy from which the U. S. could operate to convert every other Middle Eastern nation to democracy. Every election held outside of Israel under the banner of democracy has elected parties in opposition to America and Israel and more often than not selected an aggressive Islamic Party prepared to kill, kill, kill. Thanks Bill, we really appreciate the brilliant analysis you and your fellow neo-conservatives have offered on the state of affairs in the Middle East.

They promised us that the people of Iraq would hurl bouquets of flowers at our soldiers’ feet, and that we would pay for the war from the proceeds of the sale of Iraqi oil. To date we have not received one $.01 from that oil, but we have watched as over 4,000 of our young men and women were slaughtered by IEDs and car bombers, and we have/will spend close to $2 trillion dollars all told before this, the greatest miscalculation in the history of U. S. diplomacy and strategic defense is over. Weapons of mass destruction that threatened the very existence of the U. S. and touted by the one of the least qualified Secretaries of State to ever hold the office, Condoleezza Rice, were never found anywhere in Iraq. Nonetheless, she warned that we could well see a mushroom shaped cloud hovering over our major cities in the near future.

The Republican’s neo-conservatives started this war on a big fat lie and will end it with out nation near bankruptcy because he spent far more than the $50 billion projected the war hawks and on top of that mountain of foolishness, they gave a massive tax break to the top 1% of the American people.

We could go on and on and on, but the fact remains is that the group of clowns that had the audaciousness to go television after the election results were in to declare that Barack Obama’s entire presidency had been kicked to the curb by these two elections should tell us something about the stupidity of this group of do-nothing Republicans.

On November 5, 2009 a group of right wing, ill-informed kooks organized by the mentally challenged Congresswoman from Minnesota’s 6^th District, Michele Bachmann, protested in front of the U. S. Capitol against Health Care Reform.

Some of the unknown [to me] Congressmen literally threw the bill into the wind and were applauded by some senior citizens and mentally old people who fail to recognize that we have arrived in the twenty-first century and that 44,000 people are still dying annually for lack of health insurance.

Bachmann is a wonder to behold. I could tell she was a stranger on the planet earth when I real in her biography that she attended Oral Roberts University and was a member of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod a wildly conservative cousin of the Lutheran Church of America. When you meet an adherent to the preaching of Oral Roberts or any Evangelical offspring of mainstream Christianity you can rest assured you are on the far right of the faith that the vast majority of the Christians throughout the world hold true.

She was very active in local pseudo-political activities while practicing law. In 1993 Bachmann and other associates opened the New Heights Charter School. However, imposing her personal, right wing beliefs upon the curriculum and the faculty, a group of parents of the children who elected to attend that school along with the public school district complained vociferously about Bachmann’s people inserting Christianity into the school’s curriculum which to them amounted to the use of public funds for a religious school.

Denise Stephens, longtime Republican accused the school’s board of directors which included Michele Bachmann “of trying to set up classes of Creationism and advocating that the school include in its program something called twelve [12] Christian principles. ….”

Further, the school officials banned such movies such as Walt Disney’s Aladdin making the horrendous claim that this popular children’s movie “endorsed witchcraft and paganism.”

During a heated school meeting Bachmann, according to Stephens, became angry and asked, “Are you going to question my integrity?” and along with four other likeminded school board members resigned on the spot.

When Mark Kennedy the 6th District Congressman chose to run for the U. S. Senate seat vacated by Mark Dayton of Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party [DFL], Bachmann jumped into the fray; and she came loaded for bear. Because of her hard right credentials, the religious right pours millions into her campaign coffers:

According to Bloomberg.com news, evangelical conservative leader James Dobson put the resources of his organization behind her 2006 campaign. Dobson's Focus on the Family planned to distribute 250,000 voter guides in Minnesota churches to reach social conservatives, according to Tom Prichard, president of the Minnesota Family Council, a local affiliate of Dobson's group. In addition to Minnesota, Dobson’s group also organized turnout drives in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey and Montana.^[16]

During a debate televised by WCCO on October 28, 2006, news reporter Pat Kessler quoted a story that appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune and asked Bachmann whether it was true that the church she belonged to taught that the Pope is the Anti-Christ. Bachmann stated that her church "does not believe that the Pope is the Anti-Christ, that's absolutely false... I'm very grateful that my pastor has come out and been very clear on this matter, and I think it's patently absurd and it's a false statement."^[17] Bachmann is a member of a church that is part of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, whose doctrine teaches that the Roman Catholic papacy is the Antichrist identified in Scripture.^[18]

After being elected to Congress, Bachmann appeared on Chris Matthew’s Hardball, during which she joined the chorus of other out-of-control Republicans by criticizing Barack Obama and his association with his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright and a fellow board member of a prominent Chicago charity, Bill Ayers. “…Usually we associate with people who have similar ideas to us, and it seems that it calls into questions what Barack Obama’s true beliefs, and values, and thoughts are.”

When Matthews asked her “How many people in the Congress of the United States do you suspect as being anti-American?” she replied, “What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would [the news media] would they would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America…”

At the protest Bachmann organized in opposition to the Obama Health Care bill before the Congress, she enticed several little known Republican Congressman who no one of importance has ever heard of before to speak. Several of them took copies of the bill and tossed them off the platform like trash. For those of us who have fought for health care reform, for the 50 million people without any health insurance, for the 44 million who die each year for lack of health insurance, for those who have been forced to file bankruptcy because of ridiculously high medical bills, and for those who can not afford to pay one more penny for premiums than they already pay, these Congressmen and Michele Bachmann should go to hell, straight to hell and do not pass go.

John Boehner, one of the most heartless and least charismatic Republicans [nearly has bad as Mitch McConnell] and top leader in the House Republican caucus, also spoke. Very dramatically he produced a booklet from his suit coat and waved it ostentatiously. “This is my personal copy of the constitution.” And he began to read: “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the ...”

The only problem is that Boehner was not reading from the Constitution which he esteems, but without knowing it, the leader of the Republicans in the U. S. Congress was reading from the Declaration of Independence. What a fool! Cincinnati, Ohio can surely find a person to run for Congress who knows something about government, especially about the Constitution.

And to top off a day of total disaster, the person who led the Pledge of Allegiance got the words totally screwed up.

Now you know why the Republican Party has a twenty [20%] percent approval rating by the American people.

The most absurd exploit of the week was Boehner’s introduction of the Republican Party’s version of health reform. 130 days after they said they would present their version of health care, a bill was finally introduced. Evaluated by the Congressional Budget Office, it was determined that the Republican version would increase the number of uninsured—yes, you read it correctly—would increase the number of uninsured from 47 million to 69 million and increase the deficit by $84 billion.

After all of the town hall meetings planned and paid for by the insurance companies and the Republican Party design to make Obama’s health care reform look ridiculous, too expensive, too much deficit, too much debt and laced with the lies about death panels, cutting Medicare and Medicaid, radically increasing premiums, rationing health services, and implementing a government operated health insurance program called the public option, this crowd of bozos come up with their version of a health plan 130 days late, with an increase in the number of uninsured than we have now by 29 million and a larger debt by $84 billion than proposed by the president. If it were not so tragic it would be humorous. If it were not so stupid, it would laughable.

To be sure that I am fair and balanced, I will take a minute to speak of the Democrats.

This does not mean that Obama and the Democrats should rest in the shade of the victory of 2008. I can run off a list of things I wish that Obama had done differently.

1. I wish he would not have appointed the former employees of Goldman Sachs—the very company that lead the way for Bush’s Great Recession. It looks bad and people are pissed off that Obama is acting like George W. Bush II

2. I wish the Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner would move faster to get some of the $700 billion dollars into the companies that are going to hire lots of people fast.

3. Geithner needs to get some new rules and regulations out to banks that not only puts a cap on their bonus’s and benefits, but forces them to loan money to worthy creditors, particularly if they are creating jobs.

4. Do not compromise on the Health Care Reform with those who have been enemies of this legislation for decades and are in the hip pockets of the insurance business.

5. Don’t give General Stanley McChrystal the 40,000 troops he is seeking. 40,000 more troops will not win that conflict for the U. S. and he is too steeped in traditional military tactics to put together a creative approach to a war that nobody in history has really been able to win.

6. Obama attempted to write a bi-partisan health care reform bill to no avail. As I said in my posting, “Screw bi-partisanship” Republicans can neither spell nor practice it.

7. Through Executive Order, pan the “don’t ask, don’t tell” before you become a victim of what appears to be a strong need on your part to be liked by everyone.

8. Kick Geithner’s ass and get this country going again. Listen to Paul Volcker who is probably the best advisor you have to trust and lean on.

9. Give Hillary lots of attention and responsibility; she is a superb Secretary of State.

10. Gibbs is only an average Press Secretary; by the way, the Fox News scenario was a mistake. Do not mention the word Fox anywhere to anyone. Maybe silence really is golden and will make that miserable crew go away.

11. I hope the president’s political strategists are in gear of 2010 and 2012 because things are going to get tougher including you, Mr. President.

JOE SHERIDAN’S BOOK—

JESUS WAS A LIBERAL/A Blogger’s Bold Opinions on Politics and Religion

IS AVAILABLE FOR HIS READERS

AMAZON.COM & AUTHORHOUSE.COM HAVE ALL VERSIONS [hard cover, paperback and E.book] IN STOCK

OR IT CAN BE ORDERED FROM BARNES AND NOBLE, BORDERS, WALDEN, BOOKS-A-MILLION AND OTHER LEADING BOOK STORES

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:38:49 GMT

WE URGE ALL AMERICANS WHO GENUINELY CARE ABOUT HEALTH CARE REFORM TO WRITE A LETTER TO THEIR CONGRESSMEN AND SENATORS IMMEDIATELY.

A LETTER SIMILAR TO THE ONE SHOWN BELOW WAS SENT TO THE DEMOCRATIC SENATORS [PLUS ONE INDEPENDENT] WHO ARE ON THE FENCE ABOUT THE “PUBLIC OPTION” WHICH IS VITAL IF HEALTH CARE COSTS ARE TO BE REDUCED TO A REASONABLE LEVEL.

Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
Senator Tom Carper (D-DE)
Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR)
Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL)
Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
Senator Kay Hagan (D-NC)
Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND)
Senator Max Baucus (D-MT)

Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE)

JOSEPH A. AND RITA J. SHERIDAN

Barrington, IL 60010

jasltd1@sbcglobal.net

Winter Home (December thru May)

Bradenton, FL

SENATOR JOSEPH LIEBERMAN:

DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU!

THIS NATION'S PEOPLE HAVE WAITED FOR AN INORDINATE PERIOD OF TIME FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE DYING EACH YEAR FOR LACK OF HEALTH INSURANCE [MORE THAN THE WARS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN BOTH OF WHICH YOU SUPPORTED].

WE ARE PAYING OUTLANDISH PREMIUMS FOR SECOND CLASS HEALTH CARE AND THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE VOTERS ARE DEMANDING A PUBLIC OPTION IN THE SENATE BILL AS A MEANS OF GIVING THE HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES THAT HAVE OBVIOUSLY BOUGHT AND PAID FOR YOUR VOTE, THE COMPETITION NECESSARY TO MAKE INSURANCE AFFORDABLE.

68% OF THE PEOPLE RESIDING IN CONNECTICUT WHO HAVE TAKEN THE TIME TO UNDERSTAND IT ARE IN FAVOR OF A PUBLIC OPTION. THESE ARE THE PEOPLE YOU WERE ELECTED TO SERVE.CONTRARY TO YOUR ACTIONS YOU WORK FOR THE GOOD PEOPLE OF CT. AND NOT THE SPECIAL INTERESTS FOR WHICH YOU ARE NOW FIGHTING.

AND AS THE NATION STANDS ON THE THRESHOLD OF ITS FIRST REAL HEALTH CARE REFORM LEGISLATION, YOU HAVE ELECTED TO VOTE WITH THE REPUBLICANS TO ALLOW A FILIBUSTER THAT COULD VERY WELL DESTROY THE PUBLIC OPTION WHICH FOR ME WOULD RIP THE GUTS OUT OF ANY SO-CALLED REFORM AND IS A COMPROMISE FOR THE PREFERRED SINGLE PAYER INSURANCE PROGRAM THAT WE SHOULD BE PURSUING..

I WANT TO ASSURE YOU THAT THOUSANDS OF US ARE GOING TO INVEST OUR TREASURE TO VOTE YOUR ASS OUT OF OFFICE FOR EVER AND EVER WORLD WITHOUT END IF YOU MAKE THIS DREADFUL MISTAKE.

YOU ARE A TRAITOR TO THE VERY PRINCIPLES THE PEOPLE OF CONNECTICUT SENT YOU TO WASHINGTON TO REPRESENT AND DEFEND. BY THIS ACTION YOU HAVE LOST WHATEVER SUPPORT YOU ONCE ENJOYED.

IF YOU VOTE FOR THE FILIBUSTER YOU MUST AT LEAST HAVE THE DECENCY TO RESIGN YOUR CHAIRMANSHIP OF THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND RELINQUISH WHATEVER SENIORITY YOU HAVE SO GENEROUSLY BEEN GIVEN BY THE LEADERSHIP OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY FOR WHOM YOU WILL CAST YOUR VOTE! OR AS JON STEWART, THE HOST OF COMEDY CENTRAL'S THE DALY SHOW, LIKES TO SAY, "YOUR BOOK" GIVES IT A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT TWIST--"CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY WHOM YOU WILL SERVE--THE PEOPLE OR THE SPECIAL INTERESTS. THERE IS STILL TIME TO SAVE YOUR SOUL ON THIS ISSUE.

JOSEPH A. AND RITA J. SHERIDAN

JOE SHERIDAN’S BOOK—

JESUS WAS A LIBERAL/A Blogger’s Bold Opinions on Politics and Religion

IS AVAILABLE FOR HIS READERS

AMAZON.COM & AUTHORHOUSE.COM HAVE ALL VERSIONS [hard cover, paperback and E.book] IN STOCK

OR IT CAN BE ORDERED FROM BARNES AND NOBLE, BORDERS, WALDEN, BOOKS-A-MILLION AND OTHER LEADING BOOK STORES

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:48:46 GMT

THE OUTRAGEOUS FRINGE OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN SOCIETY IS NOT A NEW PHENOMENA

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER SPOKE RECENTLY AT THE CARTER CENTER IN ATLANTA ABOUT THE HARSH, NEARLY CRUEL TREATMENT OUR FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT IS RECEIVING FROM THE FAR RIGHT, THOSE WHO BELIEVE THEMSELVES TO BE DISENFRANCHISED AND, OF COURSE, THE PERPETUALLY ALIENATED REPUBLICAN PARTY AND WRONG HEADED DEMOCRATS WHO SUFFER FROM A MOUNTAIN OF UNEXPRESSED HOSTILITY

THE REPUBLICANS, HAVE FASTENED THEIR FUTURE TO THE FANTASIES THEY HAVE CREATED ABOUT THE CALAMITY THIS AFRICAN AMERICAN MAN IS ABOUT TO BRING TO IMPOSE UPON OUR NATION.

During the 2008 presidential campaign I encountered some of the most despicable criticisms of my liberal perspective on the campaign I could imagine, especially coming from people with whom I attended high school in Fairborn, Ohio.

Over the years I have idealized my high school years to a far greater extent than I could ever have imagined. It seems from the point of view that fifty years of separation has given, the actual events that I once believed were true were in reality nothing but wishful thinking and those with whom I had some form of a relationship in many cases was a delusion of my own creation.

High School is a rapidly changing phase of one’s life. We are attempting to prepare ourselves for the life we hope to live. Our minds are hurriedly expanding with the knowledge we must have in order to be accepted into the college of our choice and our bodies are rushing hastily toward adulthood as sex becomes more and more the driving force, particularly in the minds of men.

I simply did not realize the depths of the alienation of people who live in isolation, i.e. who never venture outside the cocoon in which they were born and never launch an inquiry into the details of their religious faith or their parents’ political fallacies. They still believe what they believed in 1950 although the world has changed dramatically in the past 60 years.

Science has advanced far beyond our most spectacular dreams. Medicine has added 20 years onto the length of the average person’s life and it has created drugs that ease the pain and agony that diseases fifty years ago inflicted upon us.

We can receive a transplant for nearly every organ in the body except the penis, although I am certain that young males in the future will be able to design the length, width, and shape of the most important organ their bodies [or at least the one with which he spends the majority of his time.]

We have marvelous cars, planes, rockets, and ships that can carry us the deepest depths of the oceans and the uppermost corners of this magnificent Milky Way. When we compare our life with those who are born in darkest Africa, with the people of Somalia, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya or even the countries of the Middle East, i.e. Palestine, Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Iran we have to stand back in utter awe that our forefathers were able to build such a prosperous nation of such grandeur and personal freedom and individual liberty.

On November 8, 2008, we proved to the world that, in fact, we were “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.” We were the first nation in the western world to elect a man of African ancestry as president of the United States.

Throughout the campaign, because of the Republican Party’s divisive battle and its lack of leaders who demanded that its followers pay respect and high regard to a man brilliant enough, eloquent enough, wise enough and idealistic enough to run one of the most successful campaign’s for the presidency in history. Its candidate for Vice-President provoke those in her audience whose prejudice was eking out through the language on their signs, the words that slipped out of their mouths, and their chanting of derogatory slogans at rally’s across much of the South and some of the Mid-West.

The Bible belt did not practice what it preaches every Sunday in its Baptists and Methodist churches whose white crosses dot the landscape of South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. Not far behind the socially retarded South is the southern Mid-West.

In fact, Yahoo News did a study southwestern Ohio in towns like Springfield, Dayton, Fairborn, Miamisburg, Wilmington, and London and unearthed a massive pit of racial prejudice as they spoke to farmers in cafes, and blue collar workers [many of whom were out of work]. The racial bigotry was pervasive.

One man in a small rural area in central Ohio stated quite openly and unashamedly that “we just don’t vote for black men in this part of the country.”

I attempted to call the man a day later to conduct a telephone interview. I called three times and no one answered. Shortly thereafter I received a call from a young lady who asked if I had been trying to reach the gentleman. I explained who I was and that I was calling to conduct a telephone interview about his comments on Yahoo News the day before.

She said that he was giving no interviews and when I pressed, “I won’t take much of his time. Since I was born in the general area of Ohio where he lived, I was interested in what were the primary influences that caused him to believe that he should never vote for a black man for public office.

After she was comfortable with the fact that I was a blogger, a writer and was not out to do him harm she explained that his home was literally surrounded by media vans, that people had been driving by the previous evening throwing bricks into his windows until they called the local sheriff who closed the road and detoured traffic away from his home.

She went on to say that he was receiving threatening calls one after the other which was the reason the local sheriff called in the FBI. She went on to say “I am with the FBI and our entire local staff is here to provide protection for the man.”

While I did not follow up, I am certain that in a few days the heat of the moment cooled and things went back to normal.

But in interviews in café’s and clubs, Yahoo did not have to look far to find racially intolerant people. It was everywhere according to the author of the story.

I was shocked since I was born in a town not far from where this gentleman lives and in my home no racially insensitive talk was allowed. While we had friends and some member of our extended family who would use the “n” word, I would have gotten my butt beat if I tried to denigrate another race of people. Part of that comes from the fact that my mother’s side of the family had some Shawnee Indian blood. In fact, as a small boy I met my mother’s great, great grandmother who looked exactly like an American Indian pictured in the history books.

But the most deplorable and disappointing aspect of this bigotry is the number of people from my high school class that I have subsequently discovered are intolerant of anyone of a different race, political party or religious perspective.

After I sent an e-mail praising Barack Obama’s selection of Joe Biden as his running mate, I received an email from a guy in my class that I remember, but with whom I had only a passing acquaintance. When he discovered that I was working for Obama, writing for Obama, supporting Obama, he wrote me the most frightening letter I have ever received from what I believe to be a sane man [although after reading the letter I can not be certain]. Maybe he has Alzheimer’s, maybe he is just senile or suffers from some form of dementia, but he is convinced that if Obama is elected to the presidency the country will be destroyed. I can only wish that his health improves once a health care reform bill is passed.

Another letter came from a guy in my high school class, but never as a friend and he along with a large number of my classmates either were associated with the military or went into the military as a career. He made me feel that my endorsement of Obama was unpatriotic. I find that some [not all] who have served in the armed forces end up being hyper-patriotic.

However, the most hurtful came primarily from the wife one of my good friends in high school who was someone I could share my adolescent quandaries on a whole repertoire of subjects from the most personal aspects of sex, to college, dating, and, of course, girls in the general sense of the word.

To be honest, I think his wife wrote this truly nasty letter because while she was younger than we were by several years, I did not know her or even feel that I met her back all those years ago. We did visit each other in their Florida home one winter many years ago, but they moved to Tennessee and have spent decades in one of the most southern of southern states.

But it was all in her email. She is subtly intolerant of other races, other countries, and other ideologies.

I receive hundreds of emails from friends or members of their families who have lost their minds in the political marshland that has seeped into many parts of our nation.

These people never seem to free themselves of the prejudice and bigotry of their family of origin. They have not grown beyond their early years or even thought outside the boundaries of their parents’ politics, religion and social interaction. They are still adolescent philosophers caught up in the social alienation of the place where they spend the vast majority of their lives.

Did you hear the number of people that continue to believe that Barack Obama is not a citizen of the United States? His birth certificate has been posted on the internet for months as well as his birth announcement in the Honolulu newspapers and letters from the Governor of Hawaii and other government officials. Still, arguably smart people called “birthers” held fast to the myth that he is not a certified American citizen. These people aren’t birthers they are idiots.

During this long and unnecessarily drawn out debate on health care reform, I have seen the evils of politics at work. The Health insurance companies and their surrogates in the form of PR firms, PACs, Republican Operatives, planned and paid for the hiring of willing liars to attend the town hall meetings all over the country, to shout out loud phrases that impinge upon the veracity of the Obama health care proposal, carry signs that picture the president as Hitler with mustache and abominable names printed across the sign—Fascist, Communist and Socialist.

Either these people do not know the meaning of the words that scream out of the cardboard signs they carry, or they are just frauds.

They were hired by insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and other groups including the Republican Party and paid to disseminate white sheets of paper printed with black lies all over them.

More importantly these events were heavily promoted by Fox News Network which rather than being fair and balanced became the last thing a news operation should be--terribly partisan.

Right to Life groups paid for by the anti-abortionists in the Roman Catholic Church including some of their rogue Archbishops, Bishops, and priests who refuse to be satisfied by accepting their unabridged right to “no” abortion at any time, in any manner, but insist that the entire country the majority of which totally disagrees with them, must also cease this controversial procedure.

The Roman Catholic Church along with Fundamentalists, Pentecostals, Southern Baptists and others of like stripe are marching, tying up town hall meetings with questions about the one issue they care about—abortion. Does this health care bill allow for abortion; if so, they are opposed regardless of the number of uninsured, regardless of the 44,000 people who die each year for lack of health insurance and regardless of the physical condition of the mother at the time of birth. These are the real Fascists who want to impose their will upon the entire country without the country’s consent.

Webster gives us this definition of Fascism: “A governmental system led by a dictator having complete power forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc. and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.”

Now for God’s sake will all of the groups mentioned above, who are nothing if not ignoramuses, cease and desist calling President Obama a Fascist.

Dante’s inferno has seven [for most] and nine [for others] layers of hell. A friend of mine and fellow professor from time to time was at a meeting recently with a dear friend. She was told by her friend that the Republican Party was so bad it was creating an eighth or tenth layer of hell!

Hmmm - Dante's inferno may shed some light on that projection for you. There are 9 layers of hell in total not seven:
1 - Limbo
2 - The Lustful
3 - The Gluttonous
4 - Hoarders & Wasters
5 - The Wrathful
6 - The Heretics
7 - The Violent
8 - The Fraudulent
9 - The Treacherous (Satan)

10- [THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND ITS SURROGATES]

Isn’t it ironic that the GOP already fits well into two of Dante’s nine levels of hell without designing a new one just for them--the [5] Wrathful and [8] the Fraudulent both a characteristics of neo-conservative and right wing Republicans. With all of the sex scandals they have faced from the Governor of South Carolina, to the Senator from Idaho, and Congressman Foley from Florida and the young men who work as capital pages, perhaps [2] Lustful should be added.

They certainly are Hoarders and Wasters [4] of the tax dollars placed into their care by the electorate only to waste it on military projects that never saw the light of day, Neither Reagan, George H. W. Bush or George Bush never saw a deficit they did not like contrary to popular opinion.

They could surely be considered Violent [7] for the Afghanistan, the war they refuse to finish and the Iraq war which was a preemptive invasion where we simply captured and occupied a sovereign nation which posed about as much danger to us as a pack of mice.

That still leaves us with a name for 10th level of hell. We must give it some very serious thought, but I am leaning toward the word “heartless”.

JOE SHERIDAN’S BOOK—

JESUS WAS A LIBERAL/A Blogger’s Bold Opinions on Politics and Religion

IS AVAILABLE FOR HIS READERS

AMAZON.COM & AUTHORHOUSE.COM HAVE ALL VERSIONS [hard cover, paperback and E.book] IN STOCK

OR IT CAN BE ORDERED FROM BARNES AND NOBLE, BORDERS, WALDEN, BOOKS-A-MILLION AND OTHER LEADING BOOK STORES

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:44:19 GMT

DAMN THE REPUBLICANS [AND JOE LIEBERMAN AND EVAN BAYH AND OTHER BLUE DOG DEMOCRATS WHO ARE TRYING TO LOSE THE 2010 CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS] AND ALL OF THEIR VICIOUS ATTACKS ON HEALTH CARE REFORM

THEIR RECENT SHAMEFUL PLAN IS TO RECRUIT CREWS OF RIGHT WING SUPPORTERS TO TRAVEL ACROSS THE COUNTRY, ATTEND THE TOWN HALL MEETINGS OF DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMEN WHO ARE EITHER READY TO VOTE IN FAVOR OF THE HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL OR THOSE WHO REMAIN UNCOMMITTED--TO HARASS, EMBARRASS, FRUSTRATE OR BAFFLE THE CONGRESSMEN BY ASKING INANE QUESTIONS.

THIS, MY FRIENDS, IS THE SAME BUNCH OF REPUBLICAN HOOLIGANS WITH WHOM PRESIDENT OBAMA IS ATTEMPTING TO ESTABLISH A BI-PARTISAN APPROACH ON HEALTH CARE.

OBAMA IS WASTING HIS TIME AND THE ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF ENERGY NECESSARY TO PERSUADE REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS TO SUPPORT HIS AMBITIOUS AGENDA.

The president must never forget that it was the abject neglect of this country’s domestic issues by the Republican presidents and the Republican Congresses that controlled this nation’s agenda for the better part of thirty [30] years that places this nation so far behind all other civilized nations in the area of health care.!

THIS PLOY PLACES THE GOP AND ITS LEADERSHIP AT THE TOP OF THE LIST OF POLITICAL OF AMERICA’S MOST DIM-WITTED AND HARDHEARTED CITIZENS. THEY DISRUPTED THE TOWN HALL MEETINGS, CREATED BOISTROUS NOISES THAT DISTRACTED THE AUDIENCE FROM HEARING THE FACTS ABOUT THE MOST VITAL ISSUE CONFRONTING THIS NATION IN THE PAST 50 YEARS, TO WALK UP AND DOWN THE AISLES TO AGITATE THE AUDIENCE AND FURTHER CONFUSE THE VOTERS, AND IN GENERAL, LIVE UP TO THEIR REPUTATION AS AN INSANE, RUTHLESS HERD OF PITILESS EGO-CENTRIC ASSES!

Unfortunately, Senators like Chuck Grassley from Iowa, returned to Washington only to conclude that his constitutes were actually afraid of losing their present health care benefits. Instead of clearing up their misconception, Grassley gave into the fear and intimated he did not want anybody grandmother to have to appears before a “death panel” or have the “plug pulled” on her life support system.

GRASSELY, NOTHING EVEN CLOSE TO A DEATH PANEL APPEARS IN ANY BILL BEFORE THE CONGRESS AND YOU LIKE THE WHIMP THAT YOU ARE ALSO THE TITLE COWARD TO YOU’RE LIST OF NEGATIVES THAT SHOULD EARN YOU EARLY RETIREMENT FROM THE U. S. SENATE IN THE NEXT ELECTION.

Everyone knew that health care reform would be the MOST difficult “change” on Barack Obama’s agenda that called for throughout his campaign for the presidency. However, because the polls clearly reflected that somewhere between 72-80% of the American people wanted reform in what has become the most important factor in the lives of many people--HEALTH.

Everyone knew that around 50 million of our country’s 300 million citizens were without any form of health insurance that results in well over 120,000 people die each year due to inadequate health care engendered by inadequate health insurance.

The Republican diehards are playing every dirty trick in their repertoire to do what Rush Limbaugh and Fox News has repeatedly called for---“Kill the health care bill” for the sole purpose of hurting Barack Obama.

Everyone knew that the cost of health care had increased 3 times the rate of their income and was endangering their life style of choice, the possibility of sending their children to college, paying down their mortgages, in many cases forcing them to choose between paying medical bills and buying food for their table.

Everyone knew that 60% of all bankruptcies are a result of medical bills emanating from serious health problems with long term medical complications that cost them their jobs, their only source of income and was threatening their very lives.

Everyone knew that as the unemployment rate skyrocketed because of the Great Recession [the legacy of George W. Bush and the Republicans in Congress], more and more were losing their health insurance and falling through the cracks of adequate and affordable health care.

Really, I was naïve enough to believe that after the Republican Party had its elephant’s ass handed to them on a platter at the polls on November, 8, 2008 that they would have learned a lesson that they should have learned in the 1960’s commencing with the Reagan administration who for years had preached the same message, “Government cannot solve the problem; government is the problem.” Reagan was wrong then; and the Republican Party of 2009 is equally erroneous today.

There are some things that government and government alone can do. Without the government, we could not have created Social Security which to millions is the safety net that keeps them alive during the winter of their lives. Without government, one of the most revered programs ever passed by Congress and signed by the president would never have become the life line for literally millions of senior citizens—“the single payer” health insurance program called Medicare.

A Democrat, Representative Anthony Weiner, introduced to his House committee on Energy and Commerce and amendment to abolish Medicare. Anxious to determine just how committed the Republicans were to their perpetual mantra that “the less government, is the best government,” Weiner went on to say. “This is your opportunity…to eliminate the Medicare Act once and for all, stamp out the scourge of public, government –run, government administered, single payer health care. This is your chance… I dare ya. I double dare ya’ and then go home and explain it to your constituents…” NOT ONE REPUBLICAN VOTED FOR THE AMENDMENT.

You mistrust, hate, or attempt to overthrow the government the people have duly elected to office, at your own risk. The one institution in our nation that has the capacity to take on gargantuan undertakings for our collective survival such as defense, building our interstate highways, Social Security and Medicare, is the U. S. government; health care reform is one of undertakings and it is the only unattended right which the Republican continue to treat as a privilege for the well-off and only the well-off.

The American people have spoken out clearly and indisputably. In fact, for some time, their voices have been raised in favor of a program that would bring under the federal insurance umbrella, the nearly 50 million people who are without insurance coverage [simply because taxpayers pay out significantly more money when these people go to the emergency room at an average cost of $1,000 per visit], to eliminate the stumbling blocks the insurance companies have obstinately placed in the way of those who endure pre-existing illnesses when changing jobs, who suffer from catastrophic illnesses, who are refused coverage recommended by their primary health care physicians because of cost, and to include those unemployed children beyond the age of 18 who were refused extended coverage by the Republicans and the Bush administration.

Republican and Blue Dog Democratic Congresspersons and Senators who are recipients of copious campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical and health insurance companies are at this moment fighting vociferously to insure that the millions of campaign dollars from these bloodsucking worms in the extraordinarily profitable insurance game continue to pour into their coffers. The Republicans, in particular, and the Blue Dog Democrats in general, are not fighting for their constituents’, they are fighting for themselves and the campaign money that will keep them in office to receive their handsome salaries and the best health insurance coverage of anyone in the country.

The opponents of authentic insurance health care reform who are paper tigers that are, in reality, nothing but reactionaries whose minds have failed to escape from the 19^th century while they continue to cling to the outmoded philosophy of “individualism” and “free market economics” at all costs are bought and paid for by the special interest groups that control health care in this nation.

An anonymous author wrote the following words that ring true when we talk of reactionaries: “Insects sting, not from malice, but because they want to live. It is the same with critics—they desire our blood, not our pain”

The facts are that the Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats simply do not want to make decisions that will cause them pain should insurance companies and others in the medical field elect not to fund the ever-increasing costs they face on the campaign trail.

IT WOULD TRULY BE PATRIOTIC FOR A FEW OF THE PEOPLE ON THE REPUBLICAN SIDE TO DRAG THEIR ANTIQUATED MENTALITY INTO THE 21^ST AND TO MUSTER ENOUGH COURAGE AND INTEGRITY TO PROVIDE THEIR CONSTITUENTS THE BEST HEALTH CARE THAT EVERY OTHER NATION IS PROVIDING ITS CITIZENS, EVEN IF ITCOSTS THEM A FEW MILLION DOLLARS IN CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS.

One of most vocal opponents of health care reform is House Republican Leader, John Boehner of Ohio. Boehner hails from near Cincinnati, OH. I, too, am a Buckeye, but obviously have an entirely different point of view than Boehner.

According to the Associated Press, Boehner claimed on July 23, 2009 that the House bill for health care reform, [misrepresentation#1] “…may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia.” LIE! LIE! LIE!

Another Republican, former New York Lt. Governor, Betsy McCaughey, on July17, 2009, wrote, [falsification #2] “One troubling provision of the House bill compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years…about alternatives for end-of-life care.” LIE! LIE! LIE!

The truth is: The House bill would require Medicare to pay for advance directive consultations with health care professions. BUT IT WOULD NOT REQUIRE ANYONE TO USE THE BENEFIT.”

Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council falsely reports in a video prepared by his organizations, “Unless Congress states otherwise, under a government takeover of health care [misrepresentation#2], taxpayers will be forced to fund abortions for the first time in over three decades.” LIE! LIE! LIE!

However, let us be clear, the majority of Americans who favor “choice” over the rigid invasion of one’s right to practice their religion as they see fit, would encourage the Congress to include the right of abortion in the bill they pass.

Many critics are claiming that the passage of the Obama health reform bill will force many people to change doctors and, perhaps, insurance companies [falsification #4]. LIE! LIE! LIE!

The legislation under consideration would not require people to change doctors or insurance providers.

Claims are being made by many Republican legislators in Washington and many right-wing pundits, i.e. Fox News, Bill Kristol [editor of The Weekly Standard], Ann Coulter [all around Republican nuisance] and hosts of others that an Obama passed health reform bill “will lead to rationing” of medical services to the American people. In fact, the lunatic fringe is saying overtly that should the health reform in its present form that the government will determine what medical procedures the patient may have. LIE! LIE! LIE!

The infamously right-wing Washington Times’ Michael Cannon has written [falsification #5], “Expanding health programs will hasten the day that government rations medical care to seniors.” LIE! LIE! LIE!

It is a known and widely accepted fact in the medical community that there are often too many tests being prescribed for patients of all ages. Every time a senior sees a new doctor, the same tests ordered by his or her previous four or five doctors, will be ordered once again. I have personally experienced this waste of money and time. When a national data bank is completed, a new doctor will simply pull up the patients records and know not only what tests other medical professionals have requested, but the results of those tests. That is not rationing, that is the wise use of government money expended on medical services. What Michael Cannon does not seem to comprehend is that medical care has been rationed for years, not by the government, but by the insurance companies.!

The next [falsification #6] issue being tossed around by the Republican devotees is the claim that by reforming health care the federal debt will be increased over time. The president has assured the American people and the Congress that he will not sign a bill that is not debt free, i.e. will not add to the national debt.

In fact, contrary to the claims by such Neanderthals as Lieberman of CT, the Congressional Budget Office recently declared that the inclusion of a “government option” in the final health reform bill will reduce the deficit.

Every opponent of health care reform jumped on the report that the chairman of the Congressional Budget Office [CBO], Douglas Elmendorf gave to the House Ways and Means Committee in which he made very clear, if the critics of health care reform would only read it, that because he and his staff did not have the sources of funding for the program, he could only base his evaluation on the information at hand without taking into account any source of unknown financing.

Elmendorf made several conclusions on questions about which he and his staff have very limited knowledge. However, they believe that the president and the Congress need to put in place a board that would oversee the expenditures and root out waste that now exists by the billions in present practices and procedures.

For example, the insurance industry’s administrative costs presently are approximately 20-30 % of its income from premiums, while Medicare’s administrative costs are between 2-4%. Granted individual policies have higher administrative expenses than group programs, but the truth here is that Medicare runs a tight ship in the face of the perpetual criticism from those who say that government can do nothing right. THOSE WHO SAY THAT GOVERNMENT CAN DO NOTHING RIGHT NEED TO RECOGNIZE THAT SOME OF THE MOST EFFECTIVELY RUN AGENCIES OF THE U. S. GOVERNMENT INCLUDE: MEDICARE, THE VETERAN’S ADMINISTRATION MEDICAL CARE AND MEDICAID.

I found it very interesting recently, when the ever pompous and always obnoxious Bill Kristol, Editor of The Weekly Standard was forced to concede on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart that the Veterans’ Administration ran the finest medical program in the country. Proving again that the government can do things right, the little neo-conservative was pounded on the question of health care reform by the sharp wit of Jon Stewart who always seems to skewer Kristol whenever he appears on the show. In fact, during his last visit, Stewart asked Kristol if he had ever been right.

In my humble opinion [which many would argue does not exist], the Republicans goofed by organizing these protests at the Town Hall meetings held throughout the country during the August recess.

Contrary to the propaganda pouring out of the Republican National Committee, these are not spontaneous protests. These are organized in the same manner the protests at the Florida recount locations were prearranged after the 2000 presidential election that ended with Bush being appointed the U. S. Supreme Court the president over the will of the people including the people in Florida.

Rachel Maddow did us all a favor by identifying the names and faces of the protestors who crowded into the offices used for recounting the Florida votes with the people who are organizing and staffing these protests. The woman who stood up in Pennsylvania last week and made a fool of herself by flashing her birth certificate in the air and calling on the president to do the same thing, was a plant by the Republican Party.

The fact is, the president went one step further and published a copy of his birth certificate on the internet for the entire nation to view along with copies of the Honolulu newspapers that carried his birth announcement. He has widely circulated letters from high government officials including the Governor verifying the validity of his birth. In- deed, he has done more than any other president to verify his American citizenship. NOW FOR THE GOOD OF THE COUNTRY, WOULD YOU MISERABLY ILL SOB’S PUT YOUR PARANOIA BACK IN YOUR BAG OF TRICKS AND STOP BRINGING UP AN ISSUE THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN RERESOLVED TO THE SATISFACTION OF 99% OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

By the way, those of you who still have an open mind, the only reason the Republican Party, the groups organized and funded by the insurance companies and others opposed to health care reform, the only reason that Obama’s citizenship and his birthplace are being brought up time and time again is for the sole purpose of distracting the attention of the American people from the issue of health care reform.

Erin Zorn of the Chicago Tribune wrote in his column on August 7, 2009 entitled Calling those bluffs about health care, “…Medicare—along with comprehensive coverage for active military, veterans and American Indians—‘is not only government –run health care, but it’s remarkably efficient,’” according to Congressman Anthony Weiner [D-NY].

The Congressmen went on to insist that while Medicare was not perfect, it is “a pretty darn good model of what a public plan [covering everyone] might look like.”

Last month, the Harris/Decima poll, found that 82% if Canadians who have single payer, government operated health insurance, prefer their nation’s health care delivery system to ours.

In 2008, the Globe and Mail newspaper along with the CTV Television Network Canada commissioned a poll that found that 91% of Canadians agree with the Harris /Decima findings.

Ipso/McClatchy poll, last month revealed that 65% of Canadians concurred with this statement, “I currently have access to all of the health-care services I need without it costing me more than I can afford.’

These polls did find that 74% of the Canadians believed they had to wait longer than they would like when referred to a specialist.

Zorn concluded his article with this very impressive fact. In the 1960’s Tommy Douglas who led the fight for universal health care in Canada was considered THE GREATEST CANADIAN OF ALL TIME.

Someday soon, America will have such a hero and we can only pray that it will be 2009.

JOE SHERIDAN’S BOOK—

JESUS WAS A LIBERAL/A Blogger’s Bold Opinions on Politics and Religion

IS AVAILABLE FOR HIS READERS

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Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:41:32 GMT

DUE TO TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES BEYOND THE CONTROL OF THIS AUTHOR, WE HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO POST SINCE OCTOBER 16, 2009. WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INTERRUPTION!

THE RECENTLY RELEASED BLACKSTRONE REPORT BLAMES BOTH THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT AND HAMAS FOR THE EXTENSIVE DEVASTATION INFLICTED UPON GAZA DURING THE RECENT ISRAELI INVASION

ISRAEL’S NETANYAHU GOVERNMENT REJECTS OUT OF HAND THE BLAME HOISTED UPON THEM.

MANY AMERICAN JEWS FEEL STRONGLY THAT THE NETANYAHU EMPLOYED “DISPROPORATIONATE FORCE” THEREBY EXCESSIVELY DESTROYING GAZA’S INFRASTRUCTURE, INNOCENT GAZANS HOMES, HOSPITALS, SCHOOLS AND COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS.

EVEN TODAY BECAUSE OF BLOCKADES IMPOSED BY ISRAEL THOUSANDS OF GAZANS ARE PREVENTED FROM REBUILDING THEIR DEMOLISHED HOMES, THOUSANDS MORE ARE WITHOUT WATER, OTHERS HAVE ELECTRIC POWER FOR ONLY 10 HOURS A DAY—ALL OF WHICH HAS PLACED AN ALREADY DISTRESSED PEOPLE MORE DEEPLY INTO THE DARK HOVEL OF DESPAIR.

The whole world knew that with the election of Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s Prime Minister the promise of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement would be jeopardized if not completely shattered. The reason is simple: Netanyahu is an Orthodox Jew who believes that all of the land between the Euphrates and the Nile is their “promised land.”

He will never support the establishment of a Palestinian state and will never relinquish one foot of the land he and his Orthodox brethren believe was given to them by Yahweh as the Holy Land for his Chosen people.

I was one America who was extremely pleased that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appealed to Netanyahu to refrain from building new settlements on the land that the U. N. in 1948 designated as the home of the new Palestinian state. There are roughly 130 settlements already constructed in each colony with a cadre of military and police protection surrounding them. There are an estimated 276,440 Jews presently residing in this West Bank conclave right in the midst of what one day will be the home of the Palestinians.

Obama is the first president since George H. W. Bush’s administration that has made an overture for Israel to cease and desist the construction or even the expansion of these communities. The fact of the matter is that the first settlements were built with the authorization of the Labor government between 1968 and 1977. Later, the Likud government began offering stipends to encourage more settlers and their families to reside in this newly established land of “milk and honey.”

The second surge of settlements “[was] the first of the ideological settlers who believed that Israel’s victory in 1967 was an act of God and indicated divine providence that the historic Land of Israel should be restored to the Jewish people…” When Menachem Begin took power, “his government and subsequent Likud governments provided what I earlier defined as financial incentives for Jews to move to parts of Judea and Samaria…Their purpose was to solidify Israel’s hold on the territory that was part of the biblical and historical Palestine/Israel [minus the nearly four-fifths of Palestine Great Britain severed in 1921 to create Transjordan] and preempt the creation of a Palestinian state.” [Wikipedia].

A third swell of settlements “moved to the West Bank primarily for economic reasons, that is, the government provided financial incentives to live there [primarily because] the towns were close to their jobs.”

I visited Jerusalem in 1960 and could see widespread evidence of the implied threat that Orthodox Judaism posed for the already impoverished and politically impotent Palestinians. There were large signs attached to the side of buildings and stretched across the streets of cities flaunting the ancient adage that the Holy Land incorporated everything from the Euphrates to the Nile and was the property of the “chosen people” of Israel.

The Palestinians and the entire Arab world were fearful of both the political and financial support coming into Israel from Europe and the United States. They looked on in dread from afar as the millions, even billions, of U. S. dollars poured into the country. Israel was planning to repossess all of the territory their widely advertized declarations incorporated and the final result would be the end of the dream for a United Nations promise of a Palestinian state.

The American people and its politicians have all been blind supporters of Israel primarily because of the very large, well-funded and extremely effective Israeli lobbying efforts in the nation’s capital.

It is commonly said that Israel is America’s only democratically elected ally in the Middle East and that because of the treaties between the two countries, the massive amount of aid the U. S. has poured into Tel Aviv [Israel’s capital] from the U. S. government, contributions from the religious right and individual members of American Judaism that they had or would soon have enough money to wage a war to end all wars between these two ancient friends who now were enemies.

The U. S. gave Israel atomic bomb and provided them with the wherewithal to build one of the most impressive armies in the world.

Meanwhile, over the 60 years that Israel was becoming a very powerful and financially robust nation, the Palestinians lacked the leadership necessary to build a nation, the money to build an army and the financial wherewithal to develop their territory commercially.

Netanyahu’s invasion of Gaza and its massive destruction of Gaza are costing Israel a much larger price than the loss of life and the loss of its military machinery. It is beginning to lose one of what has been its most dependable supporters since 1948, the undying backing of American Judaism, the might of the U. S. government and the financial support that has been invested in the nation’s commercial and industrial base.

The Israeli armed forces pounded Gaza from the last part of December, 2008, through January 17. 2009, causing many throughout the world and even some of its most devoted supporters in the American Jewish community to denounce the government in general and its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu in particular, for using “disproportionate force.”

I have been receiving a regular email from a group of Israelis who are fighting for peace. Sydney Levy of the Jewish Voice for Peace has been sharing with me and hundreds of others around the world who seek peace in the Middle East the story of the Shministim. This is a dedicated group of young men and women who are refusing to serve in the military service and are being sent to prison for their tenacious refusal to fight in a war in which they no longer believe. They want peace. They want a real Palestinian state and they are willing to spend time locked in a damp, musty prison cell where they are forced to sleep on a concrete floor to prove the depth of their commitment.

I read few articles that applauded the Israeli invasion. One was Andy Ostroy, a political analyst from New York who wrote a piece for The Huffington Post entitled, “Why Israel was Right to Invade Gaza.”

The questions that haunt many the world-over is why did Israel’s physically and overwhelming powerful military forces remain so long in Gaza against an enemy that while a nuisance in no way endangered their army’s might? Why did it destroy so much of the public and private property? Why did they kill or injure so many Gazan people who reside in the territory and are already on the brink of national and personal annihilation?

Dan Lieberman of the web site, the CounterCurrent.org wrote the following:

Although casualties are always disputed, most reports indicate that the inability to deter Israel’s attack resulted in the deaths of more than 1300 Palestinians, wounding of more than 5400, damage to more then 22,000 buildings, including United Nation’s structures, mosques, universities, a medical school and almost every police station. Predictions have Gaza's flimsy gross domestic product being reduced by 85 percent or almost to nothing.

The alleged reason articulated by the Israeli government and echoed across its land, America and all other nations that are its supporters by newspapers and other media [none of whom pretend to hide their prejudice in favor of Israel and against the duly elected government that came to power out of the pressure the Bush administration placed on the PLO to hold democratic elections], was the persistent launching of rockets by Hamas into the periphery of Israel’s borders.

Nobody in Washington, nobody anywhere else in the human world thought that Hamas would be the victor in the democratic election that George W. Bush and his neo-conservative colleagues were convinced would bring peace and order to this mutinous part of the world.

The election of Hamas, an Islamic faction devoted to the destruction of Israel and a consistent opponent of the U. S. Unfortunately, that only illustrates to all of us how very little we know about the actual conditions under which the Palestinian people reside and have resided for the past sixty years; and how little the neo-conservatives know of the real dilemma virulently facing the region.

The people turned to Hamas not because they believe in their fanatical form of Islam, but because Hamas had played the game of “all politics is local” to the hilt. They provided food to those families who were hungry, medicine to those who were sick, water to those who were without water and shelter to those who were homeless just like the political bosses of old in the U. S. took care of “their people in the days when Tammany Hall in New York and the Pendergast machine in Kansas City, MO from 1890 to the 1930’s.”

Hamas provided the necessities of a very marginal life to those who were prisoners of the squalor and disgust of the sordid ghetto. Unfortunately, the Fatah and the PLO [the other political enemies of Hamas and the beneficiaries of the West’s backing] just never got around to taking care of all of the years they were in power. The people of Palestine voted for Hamas because they served them and fulfilled their basis human needs.

Dan Lieberman of Counter Current goes on:

They attacked a largely innocent country that is more or less defenseless against some of the most well equipped military in the world. Now there is a massive humanity tragedy in play. Israel has the rights to self defense but I think to bring the military offensive so widespread into innocent civilian areas are a crime against humanity. I do not understand Hamas, the rocket attacks on Israel really does nothing significance, but Israelis' response was extremely damaging especially to the innocent and helpless Palestinian civilian population. It is best for both sides to stop their acts of aggression and talk peace on the tables. They may hate each other but for the sake of the innocent civilians, please talk rather than fight.

Another writer who traveled to Gaza following Israel’s pull out on January 17 came away with these comments:

Digging through the pulverized ruins of Gaza revealed the extent of damage to the Palestinian community. Still not revealed are exact reasons for Israel’s attack, its sudden willingness to halt the damage and what awaits a shaken Middle East in the future. Clues that contradict the given reason for the attack - rockets hitting Israeli soil – are: (1) rockets have been hitting southern Israel since 2002, (2) the initial rocket barrage caused no casualties, and (3) the intensive emphasis on the rocket attacks as the reason for Israel’s overly aggressive counterpunch, with almost all Israelis and foreign newspapers reciting that theme, seemed too arranged, more like concerted propaganda, and an attempt to divert attention from more valid explanations.

Rabbi Brant Rosen, a well known and widely heralded supporter of the Palestinian cause wrote in an article in the Chicago Tribune on September 27. 2009 entitled “A call to moral accounting? Yom Kippur is far more than a day of physical discipline for Jews.” The Rabbi at the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, IL believes that many Jews are more than ready to look at the good they do, but fail to repent of the harm they do. The Gaza invasion and the terrible harm Israel propelled upon the unknowing heads of the Palestinian people requires a deep and solemn repentance by the Jewish people.

Rosen reminds his readers that in Isaiah, we find the words of the prophet that must act as the guide for kind of conduct Judaism must employ as a means to their repentance during Yom Kippur; that Yahweh requires of those who would dare call themselves the “chosen people” of their God:

“Is such the fast I desire, a day for people to starve their bodies? No, this is the fast I desire: To unlock the fetters of wickedness and untie the cords of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free.”

He went on, “Let this be the Yom Kippur on which American Jews choose not just to starve their bodies, but also to unlock the fetters and untie the cords—let this be the Yom Kippur on which we act on the Scriptural imperative to ‘seek peace and pursue it,’ by calling ourselves and Israel to account.”

In Deuteronomy 13: Moses who is considered by all Jewish people as the hero of the Exodus said, ‘He would bless the Jews if they showed their love for him by accepting the “prophet” whose teachings would be required of them.’

There is a great deal for which the Israel people and its elected government should repent. They have failed to live up to 90% of all United Nations resolutions concerning affairs of its relationship with the Palestinians. In nearly all of these instances [very close to 300] the United States in both Democratic and Republican administrations have used the “power of the veto” to kill these resolutions from going to the General Assembly or Security Council of the U. N. America has repentance to perform due to its unending support of Israel at the expense of the Palestinians and the many Christians who reside there.

It is shameful for the U. S. to unequivocally back Israel when it is wrong and simultaneously, shameful for Israel to persistently violate international law at the expense of the Palestinian people. Less-partisan governments are able to comprehend when is has crossed the bounds of law and their moral imperative and appropriately react by voting against Israel. But it appears that the United States is blind to the facts and far often—silent to Israel’s infringement upon the people of Palestine.

During the recent invasion of Gaza, Israel allowed only 80 trucks with food, fuel, medication and other supplies for over one million people to enter Gaza. Not only did Israel nearly destroy the whole of Gaza with bombs and tanks, and kill thousands of its people, but it apparently attempted to starve most of those that were left behind in dust and dirt of its shambles.

There is little electricity [approximately 10 hours per day], little uncontaminated water and the absence of shelter for thousands has left them homeless and will continue to leave them homeless for a very long period of time.

It has been estimated that for every Israeli that was killed in this incursion over 150 Palestinians are dead. According to some international organizations the Israeli have killed the largest number of civilian people in the shortest period of time by another government’s war machinery--even more than all terrorists acts put together.

And the U. S. Senate passed a resolution supporting Israel. “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken America’s legislature?”

THE ENTIRE U. S. CONGRESS, THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT AND THE WHITE HOUSE STAFF MUST READ THE BLACKSTONE REPORT IF THEY HAVE NOT. WE CANNOT CONTINUE OUR POLICY IN THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT FOR THE BETTERMENT OF OUR OWN FOREIGN POLICY GOALS FOR THE REGION.

JOE SHERIDAN’S BOOK—

JESUS WAS A LIBERAL/A BLOGGER’S BOLD OPIINIONS ON POLITICS AND RELIGION –

IS AVAILABLE FOR HIS READERS

AMAZON.COM & AUTHORHOUSE.COM HAVE ALL VERSIONS OF THE BOOK IN STOCK OR IT CAN BE ORDERED FROM BARNES AND NOBLE, BORDERS, WALDEN, BOOKS-A-MILLION AND OTHER LEADING BOOK STORES

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 02:02:08 GMT

THE COMMITMENT OF ADDITIONAL FORCES IN AFGHANISTAN LOOKS LIKE A LOSING PROPOSITION FOR U.S.

WE ARE COMBATING AN ELUSIVE AND UNTRACEABLE ENEMY THAT FIGHTS BY DIFFERENT RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

IN DEFENSE OF A GOVERNMENT [ACTUALLY TWO—AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN] RACKED WITH CORRUPTION AND HELD IN CONTEMPT BY ITS CITIZENS

It has got to be nearly impossible to win a conflict when the people of that land hate foreigners “occupying” their sacred soil and simultaneously believe the “occupier” to be in cahoots with a government they know is thoroughly corrupt, that does not have their best interest at heart and is ripping off every dollar of foreign aid designed to improve their lives for the sole purpose of the top dogs in leadership positions.

If, indeed, this is a battle against our sworn enemy, al Qaeda, and its leader Osama bin Laden, why do they successfully regain control of areas of the country from which we drove them and their sponsors, the Taliban, out but a few years ago?

Yes, Yes, we all want to see al Qaeda destroyed, broken into irreplaceable little pieces never to be put back together again.

Like the rhyme Humpty Dumpty tells us—

“Humpty Dumpty sat of a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All of the king’s horses,

And all the king’s men,

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.”

That is precisely what most Americans would like to see. After all, these infidels, these godless villains killed nearly 3,000 innocent people on 9/11in the very interior of our largest city. We will never forget that day and the shock that spread across this land like black, ferociously swirling cone shaped tornado that landed deep in the very heart of every one of us. Because other than Pearl Harbor, no enemy of this nation had ever successfully attacked us; a handful of crazy young men who no longer cared about living, and, in fact, looked forward to dying with great anticipation where they were convinced they would be the proud inheritors of seventy (70) young virgins and be given a seat of honor at the table of Allah

From 9/11 I have supported the war President Bush instigated against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Few American argued with the Bush administration’s decision to pursue the murderous enemies whose organization was responsible for the deaths of nearly 3,000 citizens in New York’s World Trade Center.

What we did not comprehend and probably never will, was why American soldiers and our massive war machine was suddenly redeployed to Iraq with a hurried invasion of the kingdom of Saddam Hussein in his capital of Baghdad.

Suddenly, the authentic enemies, the genuine invaders, the legally responsible murderers were left to their old ways of killing innocent people believed to be their opponents, of raising money for a major event that kills hundreds of blameless victims in a major complex somewhere in a unsuspecting city al Qaeda deems to be an adversary.

After eight years of fruitless fighting and bloodshed we have deemed it time to withdraw our forces from Iraq and dispatch some of them, i.e. men and war gear to Afghanistan and the remainder to other military locations around the world [and for some unwarranted reason we have at least 1000 military installations today].

Let us all remember that the surge so widely heralded as an overwhelming victory—was no such thing. The war between Sunni and Shiites will go on as long as the earth circles the sun. Fourteen hundred years of hatred cannot be erased with the cessation of “occupation’ by the U. S. or the redeployment of one hundred and thirty thousand American troops off of what to them—is their sacred soil.

I do not have the same confidence in Commanding General Stanley McChrystal and particularly in his proposed strategy that I had in General David Petraeus. And while the Petraeus did not bring an end to the killing in Iraq [even today, a roadside IED killed dozens of people in Iraq] nor did he bring an end to the conflict between the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shiites, the quantity of deaths have decreased dramatically since the U. S. pullback. However, the religious “war,” the ancient loathing between the three Islamic sects will never vanish which, if true, means that killings will be written into the future of Iraq’s history as long as the nation exists.

We are being asked by McChrystal to send 20,000, then 40,000, and from time to time I have heard reports that he is requesting as many as 80,000 additional troops. To be candid, I do not care if he sends anything less than 300,000 troops (which we do not have available) and place them strategically on the Afghanistan-Pakistani border which we know al Qaeda considers its private domain and are permitted to do so because neither the Afghanistan military nor the Pakistan Army invest enough military power to stop the back and forth traffic on these narrow, mountainous, dusty roads al Qaeda’s adherents traverse on a daily basis.

We can not defeat al Qaeda in a way American’s are accustomed to comprehending the word “defeat.” There will never be a winner. Al Qaeda will never disappear. There are too many embittered people who live in countries in the Middle East and Asia where governments are in power that have done nothing but steal from the poor to give to the rich, where few politicians, if any in any country, are committed to enhancing the lives of the millions who suffer under their reign.

These people see massive corruption in all levels of government, justice comes at a terrible price if it comes at all [not too unlike how justice is doled out in the good old U. S. A.] and the basic needs—shelter, water, power, medical facilities, schools, and the like are so far down on the list of their politicians’ “to do list” that they are barely noticed.

How can 20 or 40 or 80,000 troops make a difference if we do not work both sides of Afghan/Pakistani boundaries? And how can we even dream of creating a truly democratic country when the president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the president of Pakistani People’s Party and President of Pakistan are both up to their necks in corruption. That is the only way this part of the world operates.

And the corruption which the people see every day of their lives, which has inhabited the streets and alleys of both Islamabad and Kabul and most other capitals of the region forever gives no solace to the average man who is forced to live in a mud hut with a straw roof if he lives in a rural area and survives because of the generosity not of the government, but of al Qaeda and other political and religious groups vying for his support.

In the cities, the families of the average man on the street literally lives on the streets or in uninhabited rooms that are crowded with as many people as they can cram into a small space in a old building with broken glass windows, slabs of paint [if the space and hallways are painted at all] is falling from the ceilings and walls, dirt more often than not is the carpet of necessity, and they eat what little food they can beg, borrow or steal.

This brand of warfare requires “special forces” trained to function particularly in this type of topography, to sustain themselves in this type of life style that drop in and out of the cracks and crevasses the al Qaeda forces call home. It is not in the numbers of troops, it is in the training of the troops.

Meanwhile, we need sophisticated trainers to teach in rapid fire order how to fight this brand of war and to see that they are paid sufficiently to have an incentive to fight for their corrupted and undeserving countries.

The U. S. should not invest one more dollar or the life of one more of our soldiers while the wholly corrupt government of President Karzai of Afghanistan is in office. We cannot win friends and influence the minds of the people of that country as long as they believe that we are partners in crime with Karzai. Obama knows that. McChrystal knows that. It sounds to me like this general is trying to wage the old fashioned war that is not longer winnable.

I was pleased to see that Obama committed $7.5 billion to Pakistan. But we must have advisors with their eye on every dollar to insure that it is spent for the betterment of the people, the training and pay of the military and does not go within 100 feet of any government official’s pocket.

President Zardari of Pakistan is the husband of Benazir Bhutto who was assassinated by what is believed to be an arm of al Qaeda. While he has been up to his neck in suspicious activity, he is probably more trustworthy than any other of the leading Pakistani politicians.

The investment that Obama is making in Pakistan is a very smart move. Pakistan is a far more vital link in our war with al Qaeda than Afghanistan. As Fareed Zakaria, an international columnist for NewsWeek Magazine wrote in his piece in the October 19, 2009 issue, “Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen recently acknowledged what U. S. intelligence and all independent observers have long said: Al Qaeda is in Pakistan, as is the leadership of the hard-core Afghan Taliban…All attacks against Western targets that have emanated from the region in the past eight years have come from Pakistan and not Afghanistan.”

And yet, until Obama’s recent move, the U. S. was spending $30 in Afghanistan for every dollar in Pakistan.

Zakaria persuasively that the U. S. is not failing in Afghanistan. We had one main objective, he says, “to deny Al Qaeda the means to reconstitute, train, and plan major terror attacks. This mission has been largely successful for the past eight years. Al Qaeda is dispersed, on the run, and unable to direct attacks of the kind it planned and executed routinely in the 1990’s. Fourteen of the top 20 leaders of the group have been killed by drone attacks. Its funding sources are drying up and its political appeal is at an all-time low…”

William Polk, in an article in The Nation’s October 19, 2009 edition entitled “An Open Letter to President Obama.” makes this quite interesting statement: “Afghanistan has always baffled foreign invaders. After three attempts from 1842 to 1919 to rule it, the British gave up; at the end of a decade of costly war, the Russians did as well. Neither understood the complex social and political makeup of the country Without doing so, we cannot hope to accomplish our objectives, so let me highlight the main points.”

“As insurgents, the Taliban remain formidable foes. Our chances of defeating them are poor. Indeed, some independent observers believe they are becoming more popular while we are becoming less popular. They, and many non-Taliban Afghans, regard us, as they regarded the Russians, as foreign, anti-Muslim invaders. Moreover, they see that the government we are backing is corrupt and rapacious. Observers report that it is deeply involved in the drug trade, stealing aid money and even selling U. S. supplied arms to the Taliban (as the South Vietnamese government did to the Vietcong). Moreover, it is ineffective: its writ hardly runs outside Kabul. Most of the country is in the hands of brutal, predatory warlords. The Karzai government will not last long after our withdrawal—that was the fate of the Soviet puppet government there and of our puppet government in Saigon. Forced to choose between warlords and the Taliban, Afghans are likely to choose the Taliban. As Gen. Stanley McChrystal has said, ‘Key groups have become nostalgic for the security and justice Taliban rule provided.’ Thus, we are courting long-term strategic defeat.”

Polk makes another very crucial statement: “Even in the tactical short run, I believe, trying to defeat the Taliban is not in America’s interest. The harder we try, the more likely terrorism will be to increase and spread. As the history of every insurgency demonstrates, the more foreign boots there are on the ground and the harder the foreigners fight, the more hatred they endanger.”

He concluded with this profound statement:”…as long as we are there, the war will continue, with disastrous consequences for the things you [President Obama] want to do and we Americans need you to do. We must not follow Britain and Russia into Afghanistan’s quicksand.”

The president is about to make one of the most important decisions of his presidency. Of course, the military wants more troops because ignorant of history and driven by the deeply imbedded need to “win the war,” it is hard to find any general who will contradict the field commander. However, the president is the Commander-in-Chief and he is the president of all of the people. If he says “no” to McChrystal the right wing and the hard right wing will go into hysteria. Remember, these are the people who dragged us into Iraq.

Remember also that we are in a serious financial crisis; we cannot afford the $3-6 trillion some have estimated it will cost us to successfully take the war to the al Qaeda and that is without winning.

JOE SHERIDAN’S BOOK—

JESUS WAS A LIBERAL/A BLOGGER’S BOLD OPIINIONS ON POLITICS AND RELIGION –

IS AVAILABLE FOR HIS READERS

AMAZON.COM & AUTHORHOUSE.COM HAVE ALL VERSIONS OF THE BOOK IN STOCK OR IT CAN BE ORDERED FROM BARNES AND NOBLE, BORDERS, WALDEN, BOOKS-A-MILLION AND OTHER LEADING BOOK STORES

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:03:22 GMT

THE INMATES [THE CONSERVATIVES OF BOTH PARTIES] ARE WORKING ARDUOUSLY TO TAKE OVER THE INSANE ASYLUM [CONGRESS]

WITH THE FINANCE COMMITTEE FINALLY VOTING ON THEIR VERSION OF THE HEALTH CARE REFORM, THERE IS MUCH TO BE DONE TO GET THE QUALITY OF HEALTH CARE REFORM THIS NATION REQUIRES [BEYOND THE PROVISIONS OF THE SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE BILL].

I am senior citizen and have never heard such vitriolic language used against a president or a program as vital as health care reform is for the overwhelming number of Americans.

Unfortunately, it appears that some of those who need universal health care the most, are such blind, loyal followers of the right wing fools in the Republican Party, Fox News and talk radio that they believe these unreliably motivated talking heads who are nothing more than puppets of the enemies of health care reform are actually telling the truth.

If only these old fools who keep howling like horny coyotes about losing their Medicare, a government take over of health care, death panels, and rationing will wait until the final bill comes out of the Congress, i.e. if they will only wait until there is a bill voted on by both Houses of the Congresses and heading for the oval office for the signature of the president, will they know precisely what is in the final draft of the legislation. Right now they are fighting phantoms that are creatures of the special interest.

On this I will be more than happy to wager—there will be no loss of Medicare coverage, no government take-over even if a public option is included, absolutely no death panels, and the only thing that will be rationed will be those tests which are given over and over again for the benefit of no one except the medical professionals and the insurance companies--by one doctor and then another doctor, and another, and another; one hospital and then another, an another, and another. In other words, the wasted money presently expended on tests that are nothing more than duplications of the same procedure because doctors and hospitals often do not share medical records and tests already taken on the patients’ behalf.

Actually, this entire charade against health care has been vigorously organized by the Republican Party, Fox News, uninformed right wing talk radio hosts and, of course, the insurance and related corporations that have huge profits at stake with the outcome of this legislation. Unfortunately, these people do not play well with others, do not play on behalf of the needs of a majority of the American people, and have little or no interest in the urgent health needs of those who are slaves to the health insurance industry.

In some states, one insurance company controls 80% or more of all health insurance available in that state and therefore, is free to charge whatever they damn well please, turn down coverage for any and all previous health conditions, and/or deny coverage to those whose health could, in the future, cost the insurance company dollars that detract from their profit margins.

Insurance company management is fighting only for its shareholders, its balance sheets and their future as successful executives accustomed to hauling in enormous salaries and benefit packages using every tool at their disposal to mislead, deceive, hoodwink, pull the wool over the eyes of those who will benefit from reform, but lack the intellect, the insight or the educational background to see it.

I have heard senior citizens argue that they are opposed to “death panels” when no death panels or anything like a death panel exists in any version of the several bills presently under consideration in the Congress.

Henchmen for the insurance companies take front seats at Town Hall meetings because they are paid to and begin to shout obnoxiously gargantuan lies that old fools too dumb to question or too full of anger toward the “government” to look beyond their own baseless prejudices to their own welfare. The people who are loyal followers of Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh are those in our country who have yet to have enough self-worth and self-esteem to think for themselves and all too ready and too vulnerable to accept whatever lies about Washington and the intentions of Obama that these demagogues disgorge. They have pushed this crusade against health care reform under the disguise of misinformation, blatant lies, and a bold display of ignorance.

And now we have to face the fact that even some Democratic Senators who chair committees responsible for developing the reform sought by a vast majority of the America citizenry, have passed a counterfeit bill that is falsely labeled “reform” out of the Senate Finance Committee chaired by Senator Max Baucus of Montana that will do nothing to reign in the outlandish costs inherent in the present health care policy while pouring millions of additional dollars into the pockets of health insurance companies that have given Baucus over $4 million dollars in campaign funds.

If Montanans have any sense they will throw this horse’s ass out of the Senate faster than a greased pig shot out of a cannon. This jerk held up the approval of this bill for two months giving his buddies in the insurance ample time to use the month of August to chip away at what was once widespread support this bill enjoyed prior to the August Congressional recess.

Baucus looks and talks like the wimp that he is and even further the double agent he is to the Democrats who voted Obama into the presidency and gave the Demos a majority in the Senate and a whopping majority in the House. And this idiot from Montana is threatening the passage of a bona fide reform bill for health care, but is personally engineering major Republican gains in the 2010 elections. This man should be horse whipped on the main street of Billings [Montana that is] at noon.

And Kent Conrad, another blue dog Democrat is giving the enemies of health care reform all of the support they need in his obstinate refusal to give this nation the “public option” it must have if it is to stop insurance companies from gauging Americans for every health benefit they receive.

I would like to introduce you to the members of the Senate Finance Committee who cast the most destructive vote of their public careers when they chose to vote against a “public option” for the health care reform legislation presently before the Senate committee.

This is a list of those Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee who voted against the “option.”

CHUCK GRASSLEY, [R-IA]

ORRIN G. HATCH, [R-UT]

OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, [R-ME]
JON KYL, [R-AZ]
JIM BUNNING, [R-KY]
MIKE CRAPO, [R-ID]
PAT ROBERTS, [R-KS]
JOHN ENSIGN, [R-NV]
MIKE ENZI, [R-WY]
JOHN CORNYN, [R-TX]

And on the Democratic side of the aisle—four rogue Senators voted against the “public option.”

MAX BAUCUS, [D-MT]

THOMAS CARPER [D-DE]

KENT CONRAD [D-ND]

BLANCHE LINCOLN [D-AR]

There is absolutely no way to bring health care costs down if we do not force health insurance companies to compete for our business. The sole purpose of the “public option” was to give the giant health insurance money machines competition in the pricing of coverage.

The list above are the beneficiaries of huge sums of campaign funds from special interest groups associated with the industry that provides us health care and are the very reason why the United States of America pays twice as much for health care as any other nation in the western world and receives quality health care far below many of those same countries.

As long as those Senators listed above are agents for the health care industry and not agents of the citizens who sent them to Congress to vote in their best interests, Americans will pay out of the nose for sub-par health care.

However, the citizens of this country, seventy percent [70%] of whom support the public option, were attacked from two [2] sides. The Republicans and the “free enterprise” freaks who believe that our country will crumble if health insurance does not remain under the auspices of big business and believe me, the health insurance industry is really big business. That is the very reason why they have flooded the public air waves, the town hall meetings and talk radio with advocates who knowingly lie when they call Obama is a Socialist, a Nazi, a Communist and falsely indict those who support the public option of attempting a “government takeover,” of the health insurance industry by inserting the “public option” into the health care reform bill. The option’s sole purpose is to bring down your health insurance costs and those who cannot see for the very simple reason that they are “blinded by the right,” to borrow a phrase from the title of former Republican David Brock’s book.

It is time for the American people to see the naked truth—this is no longer “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

It is a government of special interests because nearly all Republicans and far too many Democratic representatives in the Congress are bought and paid for by special interests.

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:42:41 GMT

AMERICANS HAVE EVERY REASON IN THE WORLD TO BE PROUD THAT OUR PRESIDENT HAS BEEN DECLARED THE WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR PEACE.

CONTRARY TO THE OPINION OF THE ANTI-OBAMA CONSERVATIVES, THE DAY THE U.S. ELECTED OBAMA PRESIDENT, THE WORLD BEGAN TO SEE AMERICA IN A NEW AND POSITIVE LIGHT.

There have been two elections in my life that made me extraordinarily proud of this country and the wisdom of our people. The first was the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960. I was a graduate student in Washington, D. C. and worked hard on the Kennedy campaign.

Having recently returned from a lecture tour around the world, my mind was still filled with the immense amount of anti-American feeling that I encountered primarily on college campuses where I spoke. The dominate question that cropped up in every question and answer period was, “Who will be the next president of the United States.?” And on every occasion I answered confidently that it was my belief that the next American Commander-in-Chief would be John F. Kennedy, the junior Senator from the state of Massachusetts.

I came home and worked diligently on the Kennedy campaign on campus. I was in Washington and was able to see the first presidential debate at the NBC broadcast studios only blocks from the campus of Wesley Theological Seminary on the American University campus.

In addition to chairing the Kennedy for President Committee, I participated in student debates, handed out leaflets and marched at rallies. After the first debate I felt certain that Kennedy would win despite the strong opposition posed by the right wing of the Republican Party and the religious right that was convinced his Catholicism would taint his presidency.

On election night, I stayed up watching the results pour in, and for those old enough to remember, it seemed on that occasion the vote count would never stop. It was close. The final count found Nixon and Kennedy so close that a small margin separated them in the final tally. But the dynamic young Senator overcame the strong opposition and slide across the threshold of victory by the skin of his teeth.

My counter part, the chairman of the Nixon for President Committee came into my room early the next morning to congratulate me. Unfortunately, he could not force the words out his mouth before he broke down and began to sob. He was convinced that Kennedy was going to be a puppet of the Pope and that he was so inexperienced he would destroy our country and all the precious values upon which it was founded.

Kennedy turned the face of the world to the United States and with the gracious aid of his beautiful wife, Jackie; they became the symbol of all that was good about this country.

When they visited Europe the crowds poured into the streets by the hundreds of thousands. When the president spoke to the German people near the Brandenburg Gate the people were overwhelmed with enthusiasm and deeply inspired by the words he spoke that day.

Throughout the recent presidential campaign, Barack Obama made an even more profound impression because the first African American was running for the highest office in our land. When he spoke in Berlin three hundred thousand Germans filled the venue just to see and hear this young, dynamic and oratorically gifted American speak. As an American, I was thrilled. I was proud that our country had the insight and the wisdom to nominate the first African-American to the Oval Office.

He was brilliant. He was eloquent and his mind was filled with the kind of fresh, vibrant ideas I not heard from a candidate for president in nearly fifty years.

Unfortunately, most of the world became disenchanted with America and with democracy because of the bewildering leadership provided us by Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. Our invasion of Iraq drew the disparagement of much of the world. Our go-it-alone foreign policy instituted by George W. and Dick Cheney alienated even those who had been our allies since the Second World War. In the end, George W. ended up with the lowest approval rating of any American president in modern times. Only seventeen percent [17%] of the European people approved of Bush as president and the number was dropping more precipitously every week.

On election night, massive numbers of people flocked into the streets of every major city in Europe, Africa and even Asia as Barack Hussein Obama handily defeated the pathetic performance of John McCain and the totally ill-prepared Governor of Alaska—Sarah Palin.

Hundreds of thousands of people filled Millennium Park in Chicago to garner one of the first glimpses of the president-elect and his beautiful family along with vice-president-elect Biden and his wife. The world was looking for change and this man represented the kind of change for which millions of Americans had been longing.

Wherever the new president goes, wherever he speaks, whether Cairo, London or Ankara, he is telling the world that America has changed direction and that we are reaching out with an open hand rather than the clinched fist that became the insufferable symbol of the Bush/Cheney administration.

Granted, Obama has been in office for only nine short months and he has not had time to accomplish many of the programs he had planned for our country and its relationship with the remainder of the world.

He was nominated for this honor just weeks after being sworn in as the forty-fourth president of the United States. Therefore, it is obvious that Barack Obama was selected for this unique tribute not because of what he had accomplished, but for the hope, the promise and the sense of pride the whole world felt when the most powerful nation in the world elected to the highest office in the land the first African-American.

He has put an entirely new face on our nation and has done more in those few short months to let the whole wide world know that America will be its partner for peace and open the door even to those who are our sworn enemies to honest, accessible conversations; that diplomacy will be our weapon of choice and that as long as we can candidly work together, we will labor arduously to gain the trust necessary to build a more peaceful world.

Contrary to some of the unwarranted criticism launched at him when speaking abroad, America has much for which it should apologize and he did. Unfortunately, we are not the chosen people of God, we are not always “good” and almost never “great,” but Obama has made us a worthy world neighbor and a leader in world events absent of the immoral and unethical behavior so often expressed in the past eight years.

The right-wing of the Republican Party is a vicious, vindictive horde of people who are enamored with our power and our financial strength. They will never know just how much hatred the world felt for our policies over the years. Obama has begun to build bridges that will allow for a more hospitable international arena in which to operate.

Obama deserves to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace because of the hope he has planted in the hearts of most of the world’s people and because of his foreign policy of dialogue with all governments who wish to talk with candor and honor.

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:05:53 GMT

TO THE RELENTLESS GOVERNMENT CRITICS WHO BELIEVE NOTHING GOOD COMES OUT OF WASHINGTON

AND TO THOSE WHO DETEST EVERYTHING THE GOVERNMENT DOES---

THE FORMER PUBLIC EDITOR OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, AND NOW A PROFESSOR AT LOYOLA UNIVERSITY--DON WYCLIFF HAS WRITTEN A CONVINCING RETORT

“AT A TIME OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT TELLING THE TRUTH IS A REVOLUTIONARY ACT.”

GEORGE ORWELL

If ever there was a time of “universal deceit” it is now. Over the past few years or so as the entire issue of health care reform has come to the forefront of our national debate, I have heard more deception, half truths, falsehoods and outrageous mendacity proliferated by opponents to the issue than on any issue since the very same process was used to persuade the American people we must preemptively invade Iraq for our own security and safety.

And unfortunately, the propagandists are the very same people who lied their way into an unwarranted war. These people hate government except for the purpose of waging war and filling their coffers with millions of dollars that accrue to the military industrial complex that prosper only in times of conflict.

There is a whole gaggle of anti-government geese who despise everything that the federal government does and has little or no hope that it can do anything for the good of the people even after the disaster the recent “free market” crash forced upon millions of American by the failure of the “free market” zealots to remedy their policies and their own irresponsible behavior; and to employ the kind of sanity and sobriety the handling of other’s life savings demands.

The voices of doom [primarily right wing Republicans, libertarians and disingenuous Blue Dog Democrats] have been jacking up their voices at town hall meetings, creating pandemonium, shouting lies, pointing accusatory finger at men and women who are working hard to bring to the last nation in the civilized world to pass universal health care legislation, who are employed [bought and paid for] by the insurance giants, the colossal pharmaceutical entities, twisted arms of the special interest groups who businesses are one way or the other tied to the health care field.

Let us be clear. There has been no bill passed by both Houses of Congress at this juncture. There is truly nothing to argue about yet. Granted their will be.

I will not hide behind my façade—I want a single payer system that is based on our present Medicare plan, but that is under the management and supervision of a Federal Reserve prototype whereby medical experts and patients serve on a board with the Chairman [from the private sector] appointed by the president, but beyond the control of both the president and the Congress.

The only true way to save money is to put serious oversight on the shenanigans of the health insurance companies that have been benefiting mightily from the freedom to charge whatever “their little hearts desire,” with the fearful support of the Republicans who are the key lobbyists for the entire medical and medically related fields.

Don Wycliffe, using the very effective tools of sarcasm and derision to answer the major questions confronting the Congress as they wrestle with the most important issue of this century—health care reform.

Wycliffe asks—“SO YOU REALLY WANT THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF THE HEALTH CARE?”

If any of you have had the nerve to listen to some of these town hall meetings primarily populated by organizations representing the health care field and especially the health insurance business, we surely have noted that the individuals who were most vociferous in their noise making were sitting in the front, they held the questions they were asking on sheets of paper they held in their miserable little paws and they were surrounded by a crowd of like-minded souls all of whom were recruited by special interest lobbies.

In other words, these protests were organized by groups stridently opposed to the Kennedy-Obama version of the health care reform legislation [none of which has passed either body of the Congress].

But they flagrantly drew the attention away from health care issues and brazenly began to shout should outlandish and exploitive words as “Socialism,” “Nazis,” “Hitler,” “dictator,” and other terms that had no place in a town hall meeting whose purpose it is to share the crowds thoughts and ideas on health care and not to obliterate the good reputation and highly respected character of your opponents.

If is true that you really want government out of the business of health care, Wycliff suggests that we do it:

· ELIMINATE MEDICARE—Let the elderly fend for themselves. Wycliff suggests that our elderly “deserve better than to be subjected to a system created in Washington by venal politicians and administered by incompetent bureaucrats [Is that an oxymoron?] … These are parents and grandparents we’re talking about. Surely if we do away with this government program, there will be private entities clamoring to serve this segment of the market –at lower prices with higher quality to boot. Surely?

I was having this discussion with an eighty-three year old man at my health club recently. He believes that the greatest waste in government spending is in the health care field. Not the military, now the war in Iraq, not the war in Afghanistan, but in the field of health care particularly in Medicare and Medicaid.

He suggested to me that the U. S. government was interfering with God’s divine destiny for man by keeping people alive longer than God intended [now that is free market carried to the extreme]. We should let mea and women die when they get sick instead of trying to keep them alive. If people had their own money to pay for the treatment that would extend their lives, that would be fine, but he did not feel it was his civic duty to pay to extend the lives of others.

This is precisely the argument many of the right-wing Conservative Republicans want. That old fool from Texas, Dick Armey is suing the government to get out of Medicare. I say let him out, but for God’s sake and the Country’s do not let him back in regardless of the severity of his illness.

· “So, if you really want government out of the business of health care, Wycliff goes on, ELIMINATE MEDICAID including its various offshoots for children. There is no reason we should subject the poor—especially poor children—to inferior health care of the sort delivered by the government. Let them find quality health care in the private marketplace, just like their economic betters.”

People that are attending town hall meetings for the singular purpose of disrupting the interaction between the Congressperson and those who come with a sincere desire to learn the truth about the subject, are enemies of democracy, enemies of the freedom of speech, enemies of the freedom to assemble and certainly enemies of universal health care for all.

These people are particularly repulsive when we consider that most of those who are acting as disruptive agents of lobbying groups representing health care related industries, agents of the health insurance cabal striving with all of their might to save the immense profits they are making off of the illness of the American people, especially our impoverished children. Somehow there ought to be a very special retribution for the executives of these insurance giants that are eating meat off of the dead bodies, if you will, the skeletons of those who die without the availability of appropriate health care. And to that list of those who deserve retribution, we should add the list of Congresspersons who vote against either a single payer system or a public option that will have the desired effect of reigning in the gargantuan profits being taken home by the insurance moguls and their companies.

I recommend that they be drawn and quartered, i.e. have a horse tied to each leg and each arm and at the sound of the bugler’s horn playing taps, each horse, headed in a different direction receive a harsh whip across its hind quarters, as the limbs of these thieves of the public’s access to affordable health care are painfully severed from the bodies of those guilty of destroying the lives of millions of Americans.

Too harsh, you think; maybe but if we inject poison into the veins of a convicted killer causing him to die, what can we possibly do to men and women and Congresspersons who have knowingly voted against universal, affordable health care for all that is portable regardless of where the insured goes, and that cannot be denied to anyone for pre-existing conditions. What can we possibly do to punish those who pray the Christian mantra of “love thy neighbor as you love yourself,” and still deny their fellow citizens the very health care required to save their lives and of which they inconsiderately consume?

· Wycliff moves on to one of the more interesting facets for those who sincerely proclaim yes to the next proposition, “So you really want government out of the business of health care?” ELIMINATE THE TAX DEDUCTION FOR EMPLOYER PAYMENTS OF PREMIUMS FOR EMPLOYEE HEALTH INSURANCE. Some people will argue that his is not direct government involvement in health care. But what could be more direct—and pernicious—than the government’s putting its thumb on the scale to virtually force employers to spend money on health care as opposed to higher employee salaries, or higher executive salaries, or higher dividends for investors, or any of the myriad other things an employer could elect to spend its money on? It is an unconscionable interference in the free market that diminishes the quality of ordinary Americans’ lives by propping up sub-par providers of health are.

· Wycliff—in his effort to answer the quandary, “So you really want government of the business of health care? ELIMINATE THE VETERANS HEALTH-CARE SYSTEM. We do our veterans no favor by subjecting them to a system that, virtually by definition, forces them to accept substandard care.

“If we have any continuing debt to veterans after their service is over, let them find quality care providers and quality insurers in the private marketplace.”

According to recently released opinions by numerous military medical experts nearly one-third of our soldiers are returning home only to suffer for months if not years from what once was referred to as “battle fatigue,” but today is known as “post-traumatic stress syndrome.” It takes the very life out of a soldier’s sole. The perpetual fear one confronts walking through the dusty, dirty and dangerous streets of Iraq and Afghanistan never knowing if your foot will trigger a roadside bomb, more correctly referred to as an “improvised explosive device” which the terrorist manufacture in the back rooms of their bombed out homes, or in the shells of structures that were once business enterprises.

When one calculates the cost of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cost of medical care for all Americans seems like but a dot on the page of history. One had to account for the fact, that the Bush Administration and did everything it could to hide the true cost of the wars they fought so vigorously and the Republican Congresses, excusing themselves from the brutal task of overseeing the actual costs of the two wars never allowed the budgets to be incorporated in their annual budgets.

However two economists, applying the minds of brilliant mathematicians to the cost of war, did not believe the figures being tossed about by the Congressional Budget Office.

Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes calculated in 2006 [three years ago] as best they could without full disclosure from the government of the real expenses, estimated at that time the U. S. had spent $3 trillion dollars by now that figure has nearly doubled.

Why do Republicans and Red Dog Democrats feel that one billion dollars added to the deficit by the health care of 300 million Americans is too high a price to pay?

However, in January, 2005, the government estimated that over 1 million men and women had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today [over four and a half years later] that number has increased to well over 1.5 million. If the 30% figure hold true and approximately 500,000 soldiers will require some kind of medical treatment either physically or from post traumatic stress syndrome, we would be in serious trouble if Wycliff next answer to the quandary: “So you really want government out of the business of health care”

· ELIMINATE MILITARY HOSPITALS AND HEALTH CARE FACILITIES.

Think about! If, indeed, over 500,000 troops required medical care, what in the hell would we do without the military hospitals and health care facility?

It is too absurd to even consider such a move. Almost has absurd as to oppose health care reform that this nation has been begging our Congressmen and Presidents to pass since the 1940’s.

Nearly seventy years and yet even today Grassley of Iowa, DeMint from South Carolina, McConnell from Kentucky, Boehner from Ohio, Shelby from Alabama, Kyl and McCain from Arizona, etc. etc. etc.

· ELIMINATE INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE. I happen to be one of those Americans that are mostly Irish and German, but partially Indian. Somewhere along the way one of my ancestors took a little roll in the hay with a beautifully Indian lady. In fact, my mother’s grandmother whom I saw several times as a young child looked exactly like an Indian. If ever there was a group in American that seldom has been introduced the lady of justice, it is the American Indian. If there ever was a group of people who lost everything at the hands of a cruel and unreasonable federal government it is the native Americans. Obviously, while most remain in the vindictive hands of poverty, to take what little health care they receive from the U. S. government would be the death knell for thousands.

· Wycliff also sardonically recommended to those who fall under the umbrella of “So you really want government out of the business of health care” that we should ELIMINATE THE OFFICES OF THE SURGEON GENERAL! “How much longer”, the author asks, will we subject the American people to medical busybodies on the federal payroll hectoring us about the things like the dangers of smoking, obesity, unprotected sex?

Surely, in the minds of those who have such a low opinion of government and the causes it embraces the fact that the Office of the Surgeon General spearheaded the demise of the cigarette industry is a crime for which it will never be forgiven. There are some, I surmise, on the other hand, who believe that without the force and persistence of the Surgeon General’s Office our nation’s lungs would be significantly more diseased and are therefore grateful for the money and time the office spent to reduce smoking in this country. In fact, in hundreds of other ways, this office brings to the public’s attention potential epidemics that could cause the death of millions of our people were they not alerted to dangers ahead.

· And finally, Wycliff urges those who adhere to the philosophy “So you really want government out of the business of health care? To “ELIMINIATE SUCH AGENCIES AS THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION, THE NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH AND OTHERS THAT TO DO UNBIASED, SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND EVALUATION BUT REALLY HAVE DARKER SINISTER POLITICIAL AGENDAS AD THAT, IN ANY CASE, CANNOT POSSIBLY BE AS HELPFUL AND ESSENTIAL AS THEY HAVE HOODWINKED SO MANY INTO BELIEVING THEY ARE BECAUSE. . .WELL, BECAUSE THEY ARE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENCIES.

Those who are filling town hall meeting with their mindless questions of suspicion, their questions supplied to them by organizations that are virulently opposed to any measure of reform to the health care system, the insurance companies paying the expenses of the throngs they have gathered together and seated in the front row of the town hall meetings with their hands full of propaganda supplied by the agents opposed to reform, by special interests groups that will fight to the death to say whatever must be said to disrupt the meetings, scream out the insane questions that they are paid to ask by the sponsors of the “kill health care” movement reflecting the mindlessness of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News regardless of how inane the words they speak or how distasteful or how untruthful the implications of what they say about the president or the health care reform issue.

Those of you who stand up in town hall meetings and downgrade the federal government, who deny government’s ability to do anything right, who believe the government is interfering into your precious, personal life, would find out very quickly just how good our government does some things should suddenly there was no Social Security, no Medicare, no Medicaid, not VA hospitals, no veterans health, no Indian Health Services, no Centers for Disease Control, or National Institutes of Health, etc.

While those who are blessed with the best health care insurance available to human beings anywhere, the members of the U. S. Congress, trivialize the major issues that surround health care reform, not only are their nearly 50 million without access to health insurance there are millions more whose discretionary income is robbed of the good things of adult life such as their children’s college education, home repairs, continuing education, vacations, healthier but more expensive food for their dinner table because they are paying outlandish premiums to health insurance companies that have bought and paid for Congresspersons and Senators who are paid to represent the people, but in fact are representing their special interests that are pouring millions of dollars into their reelection bank accounts.

It is clear that the Blue Dog Democrats truly do not want to face up to the fact that voters in their districts are making personal sacrifices to insure themselves and their families have decent health care. It ought not to be that way and in the vast majority of the industrialized world it is not that way.

Why can’t Senators from miniature states like Montana and North Dakota and Senators such as Baucus and Conrad see that every penny we spend on health care will be returned to us many times over in reduced future medical costs, a healthier work force, happier and more productive employees and students more physically prepared to take on the challenges of today’s educational morass.

Why are these men from insignificant states unable to appreciate the major cities and states of this country are overpopulated with millions of people on the very edge of fiscal and physical disaster that are dependent on their leadership to bring health to them and their families.

Think about it—those who answer “yes” to the question Wycliff posed, “So you really want government out of the business of health care?”

· ELIMINATE MEDICARE

· ELIMINATE MEDICAID

· ELIMINATE THE TAX DEDUCTIONS FOR EXPLOYERS PAYMENTS OF PREMIUMS FOR EMPLOYEE HEALTH INSURANCE

· ELIMINATE THE VETERANS HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

· ELIMINATE MILITARY HOSPITALS AND HEALTH CARE FACILITIES

· ELIMINATE INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE AND OTHER SUCH HEALTH PROVIDER PROGRAMS FOR SPECIAL POPULATIONS

· ELIMINATE THE OFFICE OF THE SURGEION GENERAL

· ELIMINATE SUCH AGENCIES AS THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION, THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF HEALTH. . .

Be careful of what you wish for, you may get it.

“AT A TIME OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH IS A REVOLUTIONARY ACT.” George Orwell

JOE SHERIDAN’S BOOK—

JESUS WAS A LIBERAL/A BLOGGER’S BOLD OPIINIONS ON POLITICS AND RELIGION –

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Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:22:53 GMT

SCREW BI-PARTISANSHIP!

OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS WERE ELECTED ON A PROMISE OF HEALTH CARE REFORM. IF THEY DO NOT DELIVER, THE PEOPLE WILL TAKE MATTERS IN THEIR OWN HANDS COME 2010.

THE REPUBLICANS, ON THE OTHER HAND, HAVE ONLY ONE MOTIVE IN MIND WHEN IT COMES TO HEALTH CARE, AND IT SURE IN HELL IS NOT REFORM

PERHAPS, THE NOW INFAMOUS WORDS OF THE FOOLISH SENATOR FROM SOUTH CAROLINA, JIM DEMINT TELLS US THE REAL INTENTIONS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY:

“Speaking about health care, Senator DeMint said, ‘If we are to stop Obama on this, it would be his Waterloo. It will break him.’”

IN OTHER WORDS, REPUBLICANS HAVE ONLY ONE GOAL IN MIND AND THAT IS TO DESTROY OBAMA.

That is precisely why they have been acting like a band of gorillas making some of the stupidest moves against Obama I have heard from any political party since the dying days of the Whigs.

How purely stupid does one have to be to question the motives behind what has become the tradition for the president to speak to America’s school children on the first day of school.

As a good conservative Republican friend of mine said after hearing Obama’s speech on November 8, 2009, “Well, Obama did it to us again; he made a total fool out of the Republicans. He gave a super speech with no hint of trying to recruit students to do anything, but to become the very best persons they could become.”

The first fool in this case was Jim Greer, Chairman of the Florida Republican Party who accused Obama of trying to solicit our children to become supporters of his Socialist agenda. This Greer fellow was joined in his charade against the presidential speech by the head gorilla, Rush Limbaugh, the know-nothing Fox anchor, Sean Hannity and CNN’s old blow hard and “birther” Lou Dobbs, and, of course, the emotionally challenged, Glen Beck.

Dobbs, Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh obviously did not know that during President H. W. Bush’s speech to the Alice Deal Junior High School he asked the kids to send him letters to express their opinion on what he should be doing as president.

The school speech was just one of several ploys the Republicans have deployed to turn the nation’s attention away from the health care issue and to concentrate on totally irrelevant issue. Dobbs and others are still pushing the envelope on Obama’s birth certificate even though the state officials have verified his Hawaiian birth. Let’s face it, enough B.S. is enough. It is time for these infiltrators to crawl back under their rocks and allow the president get on with the very important business he must conduct on the nation’s behalf.

Greer dug up the farcical accusation that Obama is a Socialist. First all, Greer does not know what the word, “Socialist” means [nor do Coulter, Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh, and many of the Senators and Congressmen who have been throwing the word in the face of our president at regular intervals since he first assumed office.

Nazis is another favorite epithet of the lunatic fringe of the GOP. Please give us a break. You stupid idiots who think you are being so patriotic by throwing verbal stones at first African-American president are a disgrace to the nation, to the high ideals this nation stands for and to the God you so proudly pretend to serve when in fact, you are not even as good as the Pharisees who arrested, tried and killed Jesus of Galilee and whom Jesus disliked with passion and referred to as “hypocrites.”

The former Lt. Gov. of New York, Dr. Betsy McCaughey, allegedly coined the phrase “death panels” which was picked up by the former Governor of Alaska and former Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin and posted on her FaceBook page. The lie these two tawdrily ladies propagated became the mantra of the GOP including Senator Chuck Grassley [R-IA] who stood before a crowd of Iowans and echoed this same lie. A U. S. Senator, Grassley knew he was telling his constituents a total untruth; simultaneously, he was spreading this falsehood across the country and because of his long tenure in the Senate gave it credence in the process.

Rep. Joe Wilson [R-SC-2] harshly bellowed out in the House Chamber in the midst of the president’s Health Care Reform speech after he stated that no undocumented aliens will receive health insurance under his proposal.

It was Wilson who was lying and not the president. This miserable, small-minded Congressman from South Carolina owes my president and, and by the way, his president a very sincere and widely broadcast apology.

According to The Center for Immigration Center the Obama bill makes it very clear that undocumented immigrants will not be covered by his proposed health care reform; "Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States." (See Section 246.)

Wilson also appears to be a “birther” [does not believe Obama was born in America]. Why are there so many kooks in politics in the otherwise great state of South Carolina—Wilson, DeMint, Sanford and Congresspersons too numerous to mention?

The Republicans apparently hold no compassion for those millions of American citizens who endure life without health insurance coverage:

· WHO ARE STUCK WITH INSURANCE THAT IS TOO EXPENSIVE

· WHO HAVE BEEN FORCED TO FILE BANKRUPTCY DUE TO GARGANTUAN MEDICAL BILLS

· WHO HAVE BEEN DENIED INSURANCE DUE TO PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS

· WHO HAVE BEEN DEPRIVED OF HEALTH INSURNCE COVERAGE DUE TO LOSS OF THEIR JOB

· WHO COULD NOT CARRY THEIR INSURANCE COVERAGE WITH THEM WHEN CHANGING JOBS?

In other words, the GOP does not want health care reform simply because they do not want the Democrats and President Obama to receive credit for doing something about health care costs that the voters have been demanding since the 1940’s.

I simply cannot believe what I have been hearing out of the mouths of Republican leaders and their like-minded pundits. The faces of DeMint [R-SC], Kyl [R-AZ] McConnell [R-KY], McCain [R-AZ], Cantor (R-VA) etc. and Fox News’ Hannity, Beck, Krauthammer, Barnes, Coulter, and Rove,

The Obama proposal is “not a government takeover” of the health care insurance, you will be able to keep your present health insurance, if you like it, no one will be forced to change doctors, there will be no health insurance for undocumented immigrants, no “death panels” to dictate whether grandma lives or dies and no funding of abortions.

After the president spoke on [September 9, 2009] the Republicans response was negative by Louisiana Congressmen, Rep. Charles Boustany who suggested on behalf of the GOP that we needed to start all over again. How can a Congressman who knows full well that health care was first introduced by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1913. How long does it take the Republicans to respond to the needs of the people? The answer, of course, is forever! They do not serve the people, they serve only the special interests, big business, or contributors to their campaign coffers.

Now is the time. Obama gave a brilliant speech on the most important issue facing this nation in this century. If the character of this country has any good left in its soul, we must approve universal health care. 96 years is long enough. A Republican president had the right idea in 1913, and modern day Republicans have lost much of the best that was the Republican Party. Lincoln and Roosevelt were surely the cream of the GOP crop and nothing good has come out of the Grand Old Party in 1913. In fact, for nearly thirty years they have taken the country backward. It has been so long since the Republicans have had a good idea, a new idea, a constructive concept to enhance the lives of our people. We certainly know what they oppose; hopefully in the decades ahead once we have a few high class funerals and rid the party of the dead wait they have carrying around for years, a new generation will implant flesh and blood onto the skeleton of the Republican ideology that once was the home of Abraham Lincoln.

If they elect not to support this health care issue as the president has laid it out, the Democrats, all of the Democrats [including the Blue Dog Democrats] better face up to this fact, the Americans made up their minds last November that they wanted Obama as their president and, simultaneously, they made it clear they want health care reform now.

Send out the word, if the Republicans do not wish to support health care, screw them.

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:52:02 GMT

PARENTS OBJECTING TO THEIR CHILDREN HEARING THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES ADDRESS THE NATION’S SCHOOL KIDS ARE A DISGRACE TO OUR REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY, OUR EVERLASTING FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND THE NATION’S EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM DESIGNED TO PREPARE OUR YOUTH FOR THE WORLD BEFORE THEM

THE CONTEMPTIBLE CHAIRMAN OF THE FLORIDA REPUBLICAN PARTY, JIM GREER, SET OFF A WILD STORM WHEN HE MADE THE APPALLING ALLEGATION THAT THE PRESIDENT WAS ATTEMPTING TO EMPLOY THE SUPPORT OF SCHOOL CHILDREN TO MOVE HIS ADDENDA FORWARD AND ENCOURAGED OTHER PARENTS TO KEEP THEIR CHILDREN AT HOME OR AWAY FROM THE TV SET.

I HAVE A SECOND HOME IN FLORIDA AND THIS MAN MAKES ME ASHAMED TO ASSOCIATE WITH ANY STATE THAT ELECTS SUCH A REPREHENSIBLE MAN TO LEAD A POLITICAL PARTY

Every president since Ronald Reagan has given an address to the children of our nation’s schools. It has become the way our nation’s leader can encourage and cajole our country’s school to get the most out of their educational opportunity, to remain in school through graduation and for those so inclined to prepare themselves for college or advanced study.

Even though every president represents one political party or the other, no president uses this opportunity to make political points with our youth.

In this case, Chairman Greer threw the race card up against the wall hoping it would stick and, in some way, degrade our first African-American president.

His criticism not only discredited Barack Obama, he discredited the office of the presidency to the youth of our nation many of whom will be assuming positions of leadership in the future. As a nation, we should encourage their participation in government, their interest in politics and their knowledge of how our political system works.

Jim Greer did none of the above.

And the other parents, buoyed by Greer’s comments, wrote letters to the schools of their children, while very small in number, exhibited the same shocking disregard for our president and the office of the presidency.

And those principals in a small number of schools that sent letters home to parents inviting them to excuse their children from viewing the president’s speech if they so desired, did little to correct an inexcusable idea that is obviously another Republican ploy to downgrade one of the most intelligent men to occupy the oval office, and certainly a splendid example of a person who rose above the poverty into which he was born to the highest office in the land.

He deserves our praise, not our cynical obfuscations! In the vast majority of the world, this man has resurrected our national image out of the repugnant sewers the former president had dragged it; and simultaneously, our country has won the applause of peoples everywhere for electing an African-American to the presidency of the most powerful nation in the world.

The Republican Party has been dishonoring this man and his office ever since he was inaugurated. And while he fruitlessly attempted to form a bi-partisan agenda for our country’s future, the Grand Old Party looks every bit the heartless, calloused, and useless party that is so far behind in its thinking and its style of leadership, it helps me understand why they would select Jim Greer, chairman of its Florida party.

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Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:24:18 GMT

JOE SHERIDAN RESPONDS TO A BLOG BY CJ THAT APPEARED IN THE MILITARY PERSPECTIVE ON SEPTEMBER 4, 2008

Why I Despise Liberals

September 4th, 2008 by CJ

I didn't think about this until after I had written the post, but I have been unable to do anything about it since I've been at work all day. I want to make clear that I do not despise ALL liberals. I have many liberal friends, some of which are here. As a matter of fact, I really like NY David - a liberal. I work with some DOD civilians who are liberals and disagree with me on practically everything political, but I consider them good friends. I don't want to link you wonderful liberals with the idiot extremists that I speak about here. I apologize for not making that point originally and hope I didn't offend those of you who consider me a friend. Just as there are extreme conservatives that I can't stand for their extreme, this post was meant to highlight the extremist in your midst.

I sat patiently and watched the Democratic National Convention. I sat patiently and watched the Republican National Convention. I really try hard not to bring politics onto this site unless it relates to military topics, but I can't keep my mouth shut about this.

Not once…NOT ONCE…during Barack Obama's speech was he interrupted by right wing conservatives at his convention. Conservatives in attendance, if allowed to be in attendance at all, listened intently to what the candidate had to say. There were no chants, no cat calls, and no disruptions. What the hell is wrong with liberals that they have to continuously interrupt John McCain during his speech?!

It started with the idiots, yes IDIOTS, from IVAW. I realize they're fellow Soldiers, but they're morons! Anyone listening to my radio podcast last night heard me rail against those that don't agree with me. I got an email because a fellow veteran didn't like my opinion about giving a medal to Soldiers with PTSD. I discussed how much I love and respect all Soldiers for their service, but that doesn't give them a free pass to do and say stupid things. It's one thing to have an opinion as long as it's an informed opinion. Just because IVAW doesn't agree with the war, doesn't mean they can make a mockery of the process. Oh yeah, freedom of speech, blah blah. Time and place, that's all I have to say.

Then the even bigger idiots - bigger than IVAW - of Code Pink had to have their say and interrupt his speech. Not once, but twice! I loved how those in attendance started shouting "U.S.A." every time they wanted to pipe up, but it still interrupted his speech. I'll keep to myself my opinion about what was said at either convention, that's not for here. I will remark on the stark difference that I noticed between the two conventions:

Republican chant: "U.S.A."
Democratic chant: "Yes, we can" and "Si, se puede"

Republican military tributes: 3, not counting John McCain's
Democratic military tributes: 0

Medal of Honor guests at RNC: 5, plus the family of MoH Recipient Michael Monsoor
Medal of Honor guests at DNC: 0

Number of mainstream media reports of war protests and demonstrations at RNC: numerous
Number of mainstream media reports of war protests and demonstrations at DNC: none; only blogs and special interest sites

This despite the fact that the virtually the same people were at both. Why do I bring this up? Because to the uninformed viewer, it appears as if people are only angry at the RNC and that the DNC has no problems and agrees with ALL Americans. IVAW was at both.

If liberals ever want to be taken seriously, they need to find respectful ways of getting out their message. The problem is that liberals only respect themselves. They don't care about listening to the other side. They only care about furthering their own ignorant agenda of defeat against terrorists and conservatives. I'll be honest, I really liked Obama's speech (I liked Palin's more!). He's a truly remarkable public speaker. And he didn't have to worry about being interrupted by rightwing nuts. Grow up, people!

Posted in Military Perspective

Response from Joseph A. Sheridan

CEO and Publisher of

THE LIBERAL PERSECTIVE/Joe Sheridan’s Radio Weblog.

First of all, I am one of those Liberals you deplore. I can see from the outset that if you think Sarah Palin's speech was better than Barack Obama's that you and I have very little to talk about.

But as you can readily see from the polls and the election results most Americans do not agree with your perspective.

The eight years of the Bush administration has nearly permanently destroyed our country, its civil liberties and its economy.

Obama made sense to an American population that is hurting badly. Many of us believe the war you are fighting was not waged for the safety and security of our country, but from some clandestine motive yet to be revealed.

There are billion and billions of dollars needed at home to repair a rapidly deteriorating infrastructure which has been ignored far too long.

Bush's market driven economics has allowed our governmental agencies to operate without supervision and thus permitted deleterious policies to nearly bankrupt the country.

Bailouts of banks and brokerage houses and now consumer mortgages that cannot be paid off from incompetent oversight of the economic capacity of buyers to pay down their debt is getting a shot of $700 billion dollars in the arm. Another $800 billion was interjected into the economy yesterday November 25, 2008, for a loan to Citigroup and other companies on the brink of insolvency. Your children, if you have or plan to have any, will pay for this their entire lives.

The Bush administration's free market philosophy has given birth to bonuses of millions of dollars to the executives who have driven theses institution into massive debt. Without demanding results, corporations can not successfully operate.

The corruption that has penetrated much of the Bush administration from Halliburton's rip off of the government through their contractual negligence in Iraq was not only tolerated, but by the failure of the government to impose appropriate penalties upon Halliburton and to investigate the relationship of this company with its former CEO, Dick Cheney, they are signaling to other government contractors (and there are many) that corruption of massive proportions will be tolerated.

Young man, you are suffering from a lack of an educated understanding of what the conservatives have done to our nation.

You need to read more, study more and let someone who comprehends the reality of the past eight years to write the blog. You are not prepared for such a daunting task.

You comments relative to the crowd reactions at the two conventions, hit the nail squarely on the thumb. Obviously, you did not see or hear the terrible responses of crowds on the McCain campaign trail that shouted out loud and clear “KILL HIM,” relative to Obama, “Nigger,” “Celebrity,” “Socialist,” “Communists,” “Marxist,” “Muslim,” “Anti-Christ,” and, unfortunately for McCain, most of those vicious comments came from audiences in which Sarah Palin was the speaker, and was the one who encouraged such malicious remarks.

She accused Obama of “palling around with domestic terrorists,” which everyone who took the time to study the circumstances know was a gigantic lie that the Republican Party, McCain and Palin conjured up to put Obama down. Fortunately for America, it did not work this time.

McCain repeated time and again throughout the campaign that Obama was not qualified to be president, that he did not have the experience to be president implying that only McCain had the experience and the qualification.

After all he was a war hero that is recognized by the voters as a deeply appreciated contribution to the freedom of this country, but lying in a cage in the Hanoi Hilton does not give you the qualifications or the experience to become Commander-in-Chief of the United States. And as for his twenty-six years in the U. S. Congress, in his case what it means is one year of experience twenty six times over.

“There is nothing that can take the place of experience, unless it is talent.” These words spoken by an unidentified football coach could not capture the truth more accurately. Obama, perhaps, is the most talented presidential candidate since Thomas Jefferson and John F. Kennedy.

Toward the end of the campaign when McCain became erratic and appeared to modify his campaign strategy every other day, he too uttered absolute lies to make his point. He was bitter. He was negative. He made promises that not even God could produce.

And the American people perceived, especially during the economic collapse, that McCain had no well thought through solutions to the collapse of the housing market, the failure of major banking and insurance institutions while Obama approached the crisis with calm thoughtfulness, and professional candor that gave the clear impression that not only was he qualified to be president, but he was set on a course that could make him a great president.

If you did not see the people dancing in the streets in major cities across the country or the millions that gathered in cities in Europe and Asia, you missed the telling point of why this election has turned the tarnished image of America into a symbol of hope, and reason and compassion.

Barack Obama’s election is the biggest boost to our standing in the world than anything since the Marshall Plan after World War II.

Joseph a. Sheridan
jasltd1@sbcglobal.net

THE LIBERAL PERSPECTIVE/Joe Sheridan's Radio Weblog http:/blogs.salon.com/0004320

JOE SHERIDAN’S BOOK-- JESUS WAS A LIBERAL/A BLOGGER’S BOLD OPIINIONS ON POLITICS AND RELIGION --IS AVAILABLE FOR HIS READERS AT

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Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:05:05 GMT

PRESIDENT OBAMA MUST INSERT HIMSELF MORE CONVINCINGLY INTO THE UPCOMING BATTLE OVER HEALTH CARE REFORM

IT IS OBVIOUS THAT A BI-PARTISAN SOLUTION WILL NOT EVOLVE WITH THE PRESENT LEADERSHIP IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY CONTRIBUTING NOTHING BUT ANTIQUATED, WORN OUT IDEAS THAT DO NOTHING TO REDUCE THE UNACCEPTABLELY SOARING COSTS OF HEALTH CARE [BOTH INSURANCE AND TREATMENT].

If IT RESTS STRICTLY ON THE SHOULDERS OF DEMOCRATS TO PASS UNIVERSAL, AFFORDABLE, PORTABLE, HEALTH CARE REFORM WITHOUT EXCLUSIONS FOR PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS, THEN SO BE IT AND EVERY BLUE DOG AND REGULAR DEMOCRAT MUST ENROLL IN THE BATTLE OR FEAR FOR THEIR SEATS COME THE 20010 ELECTION!

President Obama has received severe criticism for his “lack of involvement in the “Health Care Reform” debacle that is brewing in Congress.

Those of us who were alive and aware during the Clinton fiasco in 1994 when she and a select committee of health care experts wrote a 1,000 page bill that was literally handed to the Congress by the then first lady, [Mrs.] Clinton and her committee.

Congress was hostile; particularly the far right side of the chambers [Republican], so vigorously opposed to any reform of health insurance then, even as they are today even before they know what is included in the new bill that has yet to come out of the various committees in both Houses working on the project.

One of the reasons Congress never seems to get anything accomplished in a short period of time is that there are so many fingers in the legislative pie that by the time a bill emerges there is nothing left but a broken crust.

Obama elected, this time around, to let the Congress write the bill to get as far away as possible from the accusation that the new administration was attempting to arbitrarily shove a bill with pre-determined conditions down their throats.

Obviously, the Obama approach isn’t working well either. It is because there are such deeply imbedded irreconcilable differences between the two political parties it would take forever and a day to resolve the deep abyss that divides them and will perhaps forever. The Democrats have nothing in common with a heartless, free market, special interest oriented GOP.

The Republicans hate anything that smells of government involvement because they are still feeding on the spoiled milk of Ronald Reagan’s idiotic philosophy of government who sincerely felt that “government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problems.” Reagan was wrong then and his adherents are equally wrong today.

Like it or hate it, Social Security and Medicare are life-savers for millions of Americans who are inauspicious enough not to inherit a fortune from their ancestors, or unlucky enough to work for a company that forfeited its employees pensions so laboriously earned over many years of employment with the company when it filed bankruptcy due to appallingly bad management.

The Republicans learned nothing from the recent Great Recession of 2007-8 and the abject failure of their “free market” economic policies that did not make the grade when it came to oversight of the banking, insurance and brokerage business as they played losing games with the people’s money and left millions without retirement funds, their savings or any form of equity.

To allow health care to exist in the same failed “free market” environment would not only be unsuccessful in reducing health care costs, it would give the insurance, pharmaceutical and medical treatment personnel the right to continue to charge more for the product or service, it would drive millions to the edge of bankruptcy and equally important would rob the average American family of the ever decreasing amount of disposable income they have at the end of the month after all bills are paid; not to mention the medical care their families require.

Obama has got to gird his loins for a serious battle not for insurance companies, not for pharmaceutical companies, not for doctors and hospitals, but for the American people who have been left high and dry for nearly thirty years when the “free market” freaks took care of the rich and abandoned the needs of the remaining 98% of the American people.

If the Democrats cannot get together, if the Blue Dog Democrats persist in their opposition to the “public option” or better yet a “single payer” program and continue to pursue an “insurance cooperative” with the authority to control the absurd escalation of insurance premiums and will leave only a handful of mammoth insurance companies to play in the really minute and untested world of coop insurance.

Obama must come out of the Labor Day Week-end swinging on behalf of the policies that he wants. He must be specific about what he wants in the bill and he must twist some arms of some of these Blue Dogs with carrots and sticks and to use the stick when the carrot fails to persuade them.

Those who vote against the Obama plan will be penalized by major contributors to the Obama campaign including labor, teachers, and millions of citizens who voted Democrats into office with the assurance that a health care reform would be passed and signed into law.

And by the way, we do not want some half-assed version of reform that is possible; we want real health care reform that is required now. And not as Senator Lieberman [I-CT] suggested last week--that we take small steps and prove to Republicans that the reform the Democrats want will work.

You could live for one [1] hundred years and never get Republicans to agree on what the progressives in the Democratic Party know we must do to reform a broken and intolerable health care program not just for the uninsured, but for nearly all Americans finding harder and harder to pay the outrageous cost of health insurance and health care in general.

Dr. Drew Westen, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory Univer4sity made a poignant point on The Huffington Post: “Public sentiment for genuine reform -- not a Botox bill, which will momentarily cover up the wrinkles in the pained face of our health care system long enough for a smiling Rose Garden ceremony -- may not.”

But we need the president’s voice, his muscle and his power. He will never be loved by everyone. He need not be liked by anyone. With the Republican Party over-populated with a horde of truly cynical, prejudiced and obsolete minds, the Democrats, including President Obama, will have to work in the opposite direction of the party [GOP] that despite the calendar continues to live in times of yore and at the same time work aggressively to convince the American people of today of the workability and viability of their proposals.

“Mr. President—get mad and get tough!” Do not let the Republicans cause you to go down in the flames of defeat on the most vital issue of this century and the very heart of your campaign for the presidency.

Prove the miserable and foolish Senator from South Carolina along with all of his ultra-conservative colleagues that they truly are so far to the right on the issue of health care reform that they are perfectly wrong and are about to slide down the mountain to oblivion and take with them the few reputable members of their party down with them!

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Sun, 30 Aug 2009 20:48:15 GMT

THE CONSERVATIVE WARNING RELATIVE TO THE KENNEDY FUNERAL DESERVES OUR TOTAL REVULSION!

DON’T TELL THE DEMOCRATS HOW TO MOURN THEIR HEROES AND WE WILL NOT TELL YOU HOW TO MOURN YOUR DEITY!

DO YOU THINK THE REAGAN FUNERAL WAS ANYTHING OTHER THAN CALL TO POLITICAL ACTION BY THE FOOLS WHO CONTINUE TO SEEK A CLONE TO REPLACE THE 40^TH PRESIDENT?

At first, I thought that perhaps “by the grace of God and a big wooden spoon,” the Conservative were going to take a few days off from their persistent barrage of lies, misconceptions, and misinformation about the Obama health care reform plan, and pay their respects, their condolences, their gratitude for the assurance Senator Ted Kennedy’s life had given to the American people who have been deprived of the rights, their justice, their equal access to opportunity that the rest of us cherish. Many highly regarded Republicans did just that. Michael Steele stepped down from his partisan podium and made this remarkable statement: “For close to five decades, Sen. Ted Kennedy followed in his family’s long tradition and served his country with great distinction. His legacy should serve as an inspiration to anyone interested in public service.”

Similar praise flowed from former President H. W. Bush, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, former first lady Nancy Reagan and a chorus of congressional Republicans.

While many names were missing from the list of those praising Senator Kennedy, they were not the Republicans of the highest degree of integrity. In fact, those who “came not to praise” Kennedy tend to live most of their miserable lives in the scum of negative criticism for their rivals and because they are so tainted with their persistently slanderous comments about their opponents, respectable Republicans simply hang their heads in shame.

However, when I read this subhead in today’s newspapers, I really became quite distressed—“Conservatives warn of 'Wellstone effect' for Kennedy!

Who in the GOP has the audacity to tell followers and supporters of one of, if not the, greatest U. S. Senator ever to occupy a seat in the Upper Chamber for forty-seven [47] years how to mourn his loss?

Who in the GOP has the audaciousness to say to those who come to mourn the death and celebrate the life of Edward Moore Kennedy whose name appears on 2500 pieces of legislation passed by the Senator of the United States and signed into law by the president that they must restrain their mourning and their celebration?

Who in the GOP has the temerity to demand that one of the great leaders of a party not of their own brand should modulate their tears for his passing and rejoice in the life he so abundantly lived?

Who in the GOP has the audacity to demand that the Democrats who supported the Senator, friends who did not agree with him, but held him in high regard, and those who disagreed with him fiercely from a political perspective, but loved him as a man, a senator and a human being who knew how to tell a great joke, laugh at those things he felt to be profoundly humorous and sing the great Irish melodies with the colossal strength and power he often employed in his speeches before the Senate on those occasions when he roundly chastised the Republicans for their uncaring hearts and displaced allegiance?

Who in the GOP has the impudence to decry our right to boisterously celebrate this great and marvelously productive life lived for the rights of all, for justice for all, for civil liberties for all no matter their race, color, politics, religious affiliation or sexual preference?

The answer to the question “who in the GOP” would dare tarnish this period of mourning for the death of the “Lion of the Senate” could come from only a very few dark, dank corners of the conservative lunatics.

"Placing [Kennedy’s] name on a health-care bill, in memoriam, or using his name as a sympathy ploy to advance a health care bill that would deny Americans the choices Sen. Kennedy had is an insult and is supreme hypocrisy,” the talk show host Rush Limbaugh said Wednesday. 'The senator's passing is going to give them the opportunity to use the sympathy play to get as much done in his name as possible."

"No government was a partner with God in Ted Kennedy's death. To put his name on this current health-care bill would be to insult what he stood for,” Limbaugh said.

Another leading conservative media figure, Sean Hannity, recalled the Wellstone memorial.

“Remember Paul Wellstone's death? You know, 'Let's do everything for Paul.' And we're now being implored to get behind Obamacare because it's what Ted Kennedy would have wanted,” he said, according to the liberal media monitor Media Matters, which is in turn suggesting that conservatives have crossed the line with allegations of politicization.

The H.S.A. Coalition, a lobbying group devoted to tax-free health savings accounts — championed by conservatives as a health care solution — warned supporters to “watch for the Wellstone effect.”

“The Democrats should remember their experience with the Sen. Wellstone funeral,” wrote the group’s president, Dan Perrin. “While I disagreed with almost everything Sen. Kennedy stood for, the MSM [mainstream media] subjecting the country to a Sen. Wellstone-type funeral experience, would be using him like a cheap suit.”

Former Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer, who now heads the socially conservative group American Values, echoed Limbaugh’s charge in an e-mail to supporters Wednesday.

“The first news most Americans heard this morning was the announcement that Sen. Ted Kennedy had passed away after his 15-month battle with brain cancer. The second thing most Americans heard was a shameless attempt by Big Media 'talking heads' and liberal politicians to exploit his death by suggesting that America should honor the senator by stopping the debate and passing ‘health care reform,’” he wrote. “No one who was against another Big Government power grab when Ted Kennedy was alive should now toss their principles out of the window and cave in just because he has passed away. In fact, the left and their media shills should be ashamed of themselves for exploiting his death in such a crass and cynical way.”

The Chicago Tribune, in an article entitled “GOP reaction shows deep political divide,” The most contemptible and disgraceful remark came from a relatively unknown blogger for The Washington Times --a voice of the far right emerged out from under his rock long enough yesterday to make this statement: The Tribune article by Mark Z. Barabak and Jim Tankersley wrote: ”But a far different message echoed amid the cacophony of talk radio and across the blogosphere, where Kennedy was excoriated for is liberal politics and especially, the 1969 death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick Island, MA.”

“Some said good riddance, “If you can’s say something nice about a person, then say mean things about them instead,” wrote Andrew Breitbard, a Washington Times columnist and leading conservative blogger. “Especially if they are unapologetic manslaughterers.”

Politico carried another perspective. “Bill Hillsman, an independent political consultant in Minnesota who did ads for Wellstone in 1990, said he didn’t think the charges would stick.

"I'm not sure [conservatives] are going to have the same traction here as they did with Wellstone's memorial," he said. "That memorial really did turn into a cheerleading session to elect Walter Mondale. I don't think Ted Kennedy's memorial is going to be a cheerleading session for health care."

Those are some of the vicious voices and displaced minds within the Republican Party that even in times of death and mourning allow the snake inside their souls to hiss its poisonous verbiage.

I wonder if this unknown [until today] Washington Times pencil pusher Andrew Breitbard has ever heard of the word, “forgiveness” and if he has ever refreshed his obviously failing memory with the facts. Kennedy apologized in public and many times over the years in complete privacy expressed his disdain for his own behavior at Chappaquiddick Island.

You Pharisees [die hard fanatical Conservatives] and your failure to comprehend in your heart the essence of “forgiveness” is precisely what provoked Jesus to refer to the cold hearted souls the need to put down their stones at a time like this and answer the question that Jesus put to those who were about to carry out the repugnant Jewish law and stone to death a woman caught in the act of adultery—“Let him who is without sin, cast the first stone!”

Those who fail to see the true greatness in Teddy Kennedy above and beyond his many failures. This man had a heart of purely refined and hallmarked gold that reached out every week to the twenty-nine [29] nieces and nephews who had lost their father—his brothers John and Robert- the children of his sisters and to other relatives and friends in times of loss or injury, and to constituents who depended upon him to solve their problems with government agencies. He was there. He reached across the aisle and taught not only his son, Edward, “to like Republicans, but practiced it in his own life” Some of his best friends included GOP colleagues such as the ultra-conservative, Orrin Hatch, Senator from Utah, and others whose opinion he respected even after he pounded his desk and raised his baritone voice in opposition to the political positions he found to be wrong.

He faced great tragedy. He lost three brothers—Joseph, Jr. in the war, John F by assassination, Robert F, by assassination, a sister in World War II, another sister was diagnosed as retarded and was hospitalized most of her life; he experienced two major air crashes one in South Hampton, MA that broke his back kept him hospitalized for months.

His oldest son, Edward Kennedy, Jr. at the age of 12, had his leg amputated due to cancer, Kara, the Senator’s daughter was diagnosed with lung cancer and while told at first she had but one year to live, the Senator found the best expert he could locate, and performed the surgery necessary to remove the cancer. Five years later she was running five miles a day and was going strong... He lost his father, mother and came to the aid of family and friends who confronted difficulties whether physical, legal or psychological.

It was the suffering and the learned ability to fall, get backup and resume the fight that made him the powerful and brilliantly successful Senator he became. Many have concluded that he accomplished more in the Senate than most Presidents’ realize in their White House term.

The Senate will never experience another Senator any time soon who can replace this brilliant man who many believe was one of the greatest Senator’s in the history of Congresses’ Upper Chamber.

Children, veterans, women, minorities and all those who lives were negatively impacted by the actions of government or the failure of government to act, were the benefactors of his heart and soul over the forty-seven [47] years he served in the U. S. Senate.

JOE SHERIDAN’S BOOK-- JESUS WAS A LIBERAL/A BLOGGER’S BOLD OPIINIONS ON POLITICS AND RELIGION --IS AVAILABLE FOR HIS READERS AT

AMAZON.COM AND AUTHORHOUSE.COM IN ALL THREE VERSIONS--HARD COVER, SOFT COVER AND E-BOOK

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 21:34:58 GMT

TEDDY KENNEDY IS DEAD, BUT CAMELOT WILL LIVE FOREVER!

I HAD THE UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY OF SPENDING A FEW DAYS WITH THE YOUNG SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS IN 1955 NAMED JOHN F. KENNEDY

JOHN, LIKE HIS BROTHER TEDDY, WAS LOVED BY ALL WHO KNEW HIM

One of the honors that accompanied my election as Youth Governor of Ohio in 1955 was to spend a few days in Washington, D. C. with the junior senator from Massachusetts, John Kennedy. As I sat in the Senate waiting room off the floor of the U. S. Senate Chamber waiting to meet the most talked about Senator in Democratic circles, I was surprised as this handsome, charming, smiling young man bounced down the stairs to the waiting room, reaching out his hand and saying, “Governor Sheridan, welcome to the Senate of the United States!”

Over the next few days, I had the chance to meet with him from time to time and found to be one of the most likeable men I had ever met. He was direct, open and possessed a sense of humor that allowed those around him to feel his inner warmth and real love for the human race.

One my final day in Washington, as the Senator and I took the elevator to the Senate floor, we said our good-byes, and he walked out onto the room off the Senate floor where Senators gather to rest and to chat with their fellow legislators.

As the doors closed, the lady operating the elevator turned to me and said softly, but oh so sincerely, “That is the finest man in the U. S. Senate. Every time he rides my elevator, he asks about my children by name. Such a fine gentleman,” she said quietly. “Such a fine gentleman,” she repeated as though she felt obliged to be sure I heard her words of praise and admiration.

Teddy Kennedy I never had the privilege to meet, but from my friends in Massachusetts, I understand that he shared the same qualities that made his brother such a great human being. Senator Orrin Hatch [R-UT], one of Kennedy’s best friends spoke last evening on every TV channel and cable station in the country about his love and admiration for Kennedy who served in the U. S. Senate for forty-seven [47] years, the third longest tenure of any Senator in the history of the country.

His legacy, however, will not be the number of years he served; it will be contained in the 2500 pieces of legislation he sponsored or co-sponsored over that impressive span of time. Every piece of social legislation that has been passed by the Congress since 1962 carries the name of Senator Edward Kennedy and because he passed this way, made his way to the U. S. Senate by the people of Massachusetts, he was able to change the face of this nation for women, poverty-stricken children, unemployed, underemployed, of every race, color and creed--all were benefactors of his sympathy for and understanding of the people of this country who were ignored when they passed out money, education, and good health.

There are more Kennedy’s on the horizon and I am sure that the influence of the Patriarch of the Kennedy Clan, Joseph P. Kennedy, will make its impact felt upon the next generation even has it did in Joe’s own children.

Joe Kennedy was Ambassador to the United Kingdom, the first Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Born in Boston, Joe Kennedy was a staunch Democrat, a die-hard Irishman and a strong Roman Catholic. The influence of these three facets of his life were strictly imposed upon the sub-conscious of every one of his ten [10] children. In Joe’s mind, his oldest son, Joseph, was destined to be the politician of the family, but his death in World War II brought that dream to nothing. However, in his place, a young, skinny, but very bright brother, John F. Kennedy, came to the fore in 1947 when he ran for the U. S. House of Representatives for the 11^th District of Massachusetts. In 1953 he ran for and won the U. S. Senate seat for the state of Massachusetts and in 1960 was elected President of the United States.

Making a very controversial move, the youngest of Joe Kennedy’s tribe, Edward Moore Kennedy, decide to run for his brother’s U. S. Senate seat in 1962 at the youthful age of thirty [30]. Teddy played football at Harvard and was a broad shouldered young man with the infamously handsome Kennedy face whose physical features of strength and confidence were carried over in his personality. His ability to get along with anybody and everybody also made his the “perfect” Senator. Over the years, his capacity to cross the aisle of the Upper Chambers and talk and negotiate with Senators from the Republican persuasion and often make compromises that were necessary at times to make progress in passing key legislation.

Historians, on the day of his death were quick to say, that Edward M. Kennedy will rank among the most talented, gifted and successful men ever to sit in the Upper House of the U. S. Congress.

We will miss Ted Kennedy terribly, particularly at this critical moment as the Congress wrestles with the controversial and complex issues surrounding Health Care Reform. But every Democrat who sits in the House or the Senate owes the beloved “Teddy” one last favor, passing a health care reform bill that is truly reform and not some watered down piece of legislation not worthy of the paper upon which it is written. Universal health coverage, with a public option that will give real teeth to the competition insurance companies must have if we are to bring medical costs in line and reduce health care expenditures.

I would prefer to see a single payer program like Medicare [which to you old fogies about my age have yet to learn is a single payer program that is government run].

God Speed, Ted Kennedy, and give us the honor of watching over us as this recalcitrant and often mean spirited Congress works to bring the people what they want most from his session of Congress.

God bless you and know that we are grateful for all of the great battles you have fought for civil liberties, human rights and health care. Now it our turn to take up the ball you have dropped at our feet and carry it across the goal line to score one for one of the greatest Senators of our history.

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 02:03:15 GMT

OBAMA AND THE WHITE HOUSE STAFF ARE COMPROMISING FAR TOO MUCH AND FAR TOO HURRIEDLY WITH THE ADVERSARIES OF HIS HEALTH CARE REFORM

FOR EXAMPLE--WHY IN HELL DID THE PRESIDENT EVER AGREE NOT TO NEGOTIATE DISCOUNTS WITH PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES FOR MEDICARE AND OTHER GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE PROGRAMS FOR THEIR COLLABORATION ON REFORM

IF THAT IS THE PRICE HE HAD TO PAY FOR THEIR SUPPORT FOR HIS HEALTH CARE REFORM, IT IS A PRICE FAR TOO COSTLY—AT LEAST FOR THE TAXPAYERS!

Why would anyone even hint that they are willing to give up on the “public option” before a bill has even emerged from the Congress. First of all, the “public option” is but a poor substitute for a “single payer system” that, in the end, is the only legitimate way that we will be able to actually cut health care costs significantly.

It seems that every time some half-assed right winger yells “Socialism” at least half of the Democrats in Congress hide under their desks. Why do we insist on dealing in labels, especially when the vast majority of the people who are yelling have no idea what “Socialism” truly is?

Obama should never have abandoned the “single payer option” before the debate even began. The Democrats have a majority and while the House is cluttered with these so called Blue Dog Democrats [allegedly fifty-two] who may vote with the Republicans, However, I believe in the end, when it comes right down to casting their votes, these wayward Democrats will vote against any Obama proposal only with the greatest trepidation imaginable.

These Blue Dogs and those who are overtly critical of the president’s plan because it costs too much, considerably increase the deficit, or will be detrimental to Medicare recipients, will give their opposition a second thought in the face of momentous drop in support from many Democratic stalwarts. Many such as AFL- CIO, United Steel Workers, NEA, American Federation of Teachers, million of liberal and progressive voters who overwhelmingly support a “public option” [even a single payer option] plus the millions of Americans who are fed up with the failure of Congress to deliver a universal health care for decades, have already openly suggested that they will run strong and well-financed campaigns against Congressmen and Senators who refuse to support the president’s plan.

This time around the people voted for a president who ran aggressively on the promise of health care reform. Every poll taken prior to the smear campaign of lies, misinformation and intimidation instituted and executed by the Republican Party and its financiers in the insurance industry over seventy [70] percent of the American people were wildly in favor of health care reform. Reform is what the people want. In other words, a vote against health care reform, affordable insurance, portability from one job to the next, elimination of pre-existing conditions, these Blue Dogs and their Republican colleagues could very well cost them re-election.

We do not yet have a health care reform bill of any kind. Those in town hall meetings are arguing over provisions in a bill that do not exist. The elderly fearful of losing Medicare benefits are crying over milk that has not been spilled. Those yelling Socialism, Fascism, government control such as the lunatics like Rush Limbaugh who deserves to be taken to the woodshed for distorting the provisions of this nonexistent piece of legislation, lying about rationing that does not appear in a bill yet to be written, using provocative language for the sole purpose of spreading fear and anxiety to those who have neither the intelligence, the time, or interest to study the issues for themselves. In other words, your friend, Mr. Limbaugh is pulling his BS right of the bodily part designed to dispose of waste.

The president should fight hard for those portions of a health care bill that succeed in doing everything he promised he would do during his campaign—a portable insurance plan allowing employees who lose jobs to take their insurance policy with them, reduction of overall costs in both premiums and medical procedures, elimination of pre-existing conditions as a reason for denying people insurance coverage, i.e. in other words, deliver what he promised without compromise. A Health Care Reform Bill without all of the “bells and whistles” candidate Obama promised will be worthless for his political future.

One of the major reasons health insurance companies have successfully increased premiums so dramatically over the past decade is the very serious reduction in competition. Some states have only a single carrier, others have but two.

Regardless, as the Associated Press’s Ricardo Alonso-Zalkivar reported his article on August 22, 2009, “Critics say monopolistic conditions drive up premiums paid by employers and individuals.”

Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine represents one of the states with the highest insurance costs in the nation. She said recently, according to AP, “There is a serious problem with the lack of competition among insurers…The impact on the consumer is significant.” In fact, the Senator’s words comprise one of the biggest understatements on the subject.

In her own state, WellPoint, Inc. has captured seventy-one {71} percent of the entire state leaving Aetna with a mere twelve [12] percent.

The AP article goes on to include “A study by the Urban Institute Public Policy Center [which] estimated that a public plan could save taxpayers from $224 billion to $400 billion over ten [10] years by lowering the cost of proposed subsidies for the uninsured, while preserving private coverage for most people.”

The co-author of the Center’s study, economist Linda Blumberg says, “Right now, there’s no incentive for insurers or big hospital groups to negotiate with each other, because they can pass higher payments on through premiums. A public plan would have the leverage to set lower payment rates and get providers to participate at those rates.”

“The health insurance industry maximizes their profits by delivering as little care as they can legally get away with, or for that matter, illegally [get away with].”

If the Congress were correctly doing its job, it would be looking behind the façade of the insurance industry and determine how much money the industry is earning and how much of those earnings were derived from services for which the industry should have performed, but failed to perform to improve their price per earnings ratio.

If Congress, and in particular, Senators Conrad, and Baucus chairmen of the two key committees charged with writing this health care reform legislation for the Senate, fail to include at the very least a “public option” in the version of the bill that finally emerges from the legislative chambers, they are condemning those of us who buy health insurance to a wild ride up a steep mountain of ever increasing premiums and a precipitous, nearly vertical decrease in services provided; in other words, Conrad and Baucus with their miserable idea for an insurance co-op, will give the giants of the health care industry the right to charge us “blind.”

Katha Pollitt of The Nation, wrote in the August 31-September 7, 2009 issue, a question all members of Congress had better ask before casting their vote on any health care reform bill that appears on their desk, “Ok…what are insurance co-ops? I poked around online for fifteen minutes and discovered that they’re untested, small, unregulated, that they exist in twenty states and that Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota really likes them—but I didn’t discover what they actually are.”

The USA Today ran an article in August 17, 2009 entitled “What is a Health Insurance Co-op anyway?” The following quote comes from Anne Underwood’s article:

The idea that the public plan will dominate the market, I don’t see that. As the president said, we have a post office, Federal Express and U.P.S. I use all three. The idea [of relying solely on private insurers] is like saying we’ll abolish the post office and give people vouchers to send letters with Federal Express. That’s what we’re doing if we don’t have a public plan.

Who knows? Maybe some consumers might put together a co-op that would survive. But the idea that co-ops will provide competition in the private market that would have effect on cost is an illusion. We’re talking about using taxpayer money to pay money to private insurers without any competition. How crazy is that?

Every expert I have read agrees that the substitute offered by these two Senators from far west, an insurance exchange, will not have the power to force reduced rates which is one of the key elements of reducing overall health care cost. More importantly, only the very largest health insurance operators will be able to participate in the exchange, i.e. UnitedHealth Group, WellPoint, and Aetna leaving them the power to determine premiums without the restraint of a “public option,” let alone the vehicle offering the most widely accepted savings that would be derived from a “single payer system.”

Every American and especially every Congressperson had better know precisely what these insurance co-ops really are about before we allow twp Senators [one from North Dakota and the other from Montana] and their other four Senators who are bought and paid for by the insurance industry get us into serious trouble. And reform is nothing more than the Congress once again selling out to those who pay their campaign bills.

If the Congress was truly doing the work of the people, and if we were not so overly populated by a crowd of people who have no idea what the word Socialism truly means, we might be able to pass a health insurance and care reform based upon the very same formula as Medicare which is working fine for me [I am seventy-two years old and have seven years of experience with Medicare]. By the way, to those of you who do not know, Medicare is a single-payer system.

Wendell Potter, a former VP for corporate communications at Cigna, was a major witness before the Congress. According to this former insurance executive, reported that the industry is obsessed by “two key figures: earnings per share and the medical-loss ratio, or medical-benefit ratio, as the industry now terms it. That is the ratio between what the company actually pays out in claims and what it has left over to cover sales, marketing, underwriting and other administrative expenses and, of course, profits.”

Read the above sentence carefully. The health insurance industry has created a term for the money it “loses” for paying health costs of its policy holders.

Potter went on to say that the best way to reduce “medical-loss” is to stop insuring unhealthy people.

The insurance industry has embraced two policies to accomplish a lower “medical-loss”. According to Potter, “One is policy rescission. They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium.”

“Purging,” according to Potter, is where insurers rid themselves of unprofitable accounts by slapping them with ‘intentionally unrealistic rate increases.’” He gave the example of purge by Cigna when they decided to clear its books of the Entertainment Industry Group Insurance Trust in California and New Jersey by increasing the premiums for some families to $40,000 per year and giving them only three [3] months to pay up.

If a universal health insurance package comes out of Congress, the insurance industry will have approximately fifty [50] million prospective customers. These insurance barracudas must not be permitted to pick and choose or purge their policyholders under any circumstances.

In this kind of severe economic environment, as premiums run unbridled, more and more employers are forced to either cut back on benefits or drop insurance coverage altogether.

The only way to force gluttonous health insurance companies to reduce their profits and their premiums is to create a competitive atmosphere in which to operate. We should put a stop to the limitations that prevent companies from servicing customers outside the state in which they are licensed to serve, also to enhance the competitiveness of the industry.

But more importantly, members of Congress should not “roll over and play dead” on the issue of a “single payer” insurance program. Those poor souls who either can not read or will not read and do nothing but watch Fox News are totally unaware of the fact that the Medicare they love so much is precisely that—a single payer system. And more importantly, it is not socialism in action; rather, it is an effective and less expensive delivery system for the care of senior health. Administrative costs are in the range of 2-4% compared to private insurance companies which are in the 20-30% range. For that reason alone, those who believe that Congress should be representing the needs of our citizens and not the profits of our insurance companies would use their business sense to institute a “single payer” program at this propitious moment in history—a Democratic president, a Democratic Congress and the people crying out for change.

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:23:50 GMT

I AM MAD AS HELL AT DEMOCRATIC SENATORS BAUCUS AND CONRAD

TWO SENATORS FROM AMONG THE LEAST POPULATED STATES IN THE UNION [NORTH DAKOTA- POP--641,481] AND MONTANA—POP. 967,440]

BOTH OF WHOM ARE “BOUGHT AND PAID FOR” BY THE MAJOR PLAYERS IN THE HEALTH CARE FIELD HAVE “SINGLE HANDEDLY” DECIDED AGAINST A “SINGLE PAYER” OR A “PUBLIC OPTION” IN THE NEW HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL WHICH MEANS ONLY ONE THING-- “GAME, SET, MATCH—INSURANCE COMPANIES WIN AGAIN”

THE DEMOCRATS WON THE 2008 ELECTION HANDILY ONLY TO HAVE THEIR HANDS TIED BEHIND THEIR BACKS BY TWO SENATORS FROM THE PRESIDENT’S OWN PARTY, SENATORS THAT HAVE MORE POWER THAN THEIR STATES’ POPULATION WARRANTS.

RIGHT NOW, KENT CONRAD [D-ND] AND MAX BAUCUS [D-MT] SENATORS THAT CHAIR THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT COMMITTEES CONSIDERING THE HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL—THE SENATE FINANCE AND THE SENATE BUDGET COMMITTEES—ARE HOLDING UP THE ENTIRE DEBATE BECAUSE THEY ARE STOOGES FOR THE SPECIAL INTERESTS.

While the American families are being herded into bankruptcy courts due to ridiculous medical bills [62% of all bankruptcies], millions of seniors are making hard choices--skipping meds or skipping dinner; paying the rent or buying the costly drugs--Conrad and Baucus are holding the health care bill hostage strictly because they are slaves to the insurance companies and other medically related fields and because of their pitiless mindset that is preoccupied more with the budget than they are with the millions of people whose health and very life itself are at risk..

These Blue Dog Democrats are stifling the efforts of the Congress to pass the one major piece of legislation upon which their Democratic president based his entire presidential bid. Having been voted out of the oval office for twenty-two [22] of the last thirty [30] years one wonders what is in the minds of these two Senators in whom Democrats have placed their trust to not only promote the president’s agenda, but to see that it is made into law.

If Conrad and Baucus tear the testicles out of the health care bill, not only will the bill be impotent, but the Democrats may well lose control of the Congress in the 2010 election.

To pass legislation without the “public option,” is to avoid the critical quandary facing the country—how to cut the dreadful cost of health care for a country that is paying twice as much as any other nation in the modern world while receiving inferior care and dying much younger than those living in countries where insurance costs less and life is longer.

Some Senators, primarily from the Republican ilk argue that to include a public option in this health care reform bill will drive private insurers out of the business. I say, to leave the public option out of the bill, will drive millions more into bankruptcy or cause them to be forced to make choices between two vital necessities to life—medicine and primary care or food and heating oil.

In the wealthiest nation in the world the government ought not to impel their citizens into a corner with only two scandalous choices at their disposal—medicine or food!

According to a recent piece in the Daily Kos, “Only forty-two [42] percent of the residents of Montana [the home state of Mr. Baucus] and thirty-four [34] percent of the Democrats, his alleged party, favor the work Baucus has done in shepherding health care legislation through the Senate Finance Committee. Forty-four [44] percent disapprove…”

Additional questions about the health care reform bill, found that “forty-seven [47] percent supports creating a ‘public health insurance option,’ while forty-three [43] oppose it. “Looking closer at the numbers, slightly less than one quarter of Republicans [twenty-three percent] support a public plan, [forty-eight percent] of the independents and seventy-eight percent of the Democrats support the [public option] provision.”

The North Dakota side of this Senate barricade to the “public option,” Senator Conrad has more reasons to oppose it than simply voter response. He has collected over $828,000 from insurance companies’ $610,000 from health professionals, and $255,000 from pharmaceutical and health product companies Doz reports from the Center for Responsive Politics.

In other words, Conrad has 1,463,000 reasons to vote against a public option that is the one and only real way to break the hold that health insurance companies over the mammoth cost increases the nation has faced in the past decade.

Read the following list of contributors to the Conrad for the Senate campaign chest:

“In 2009 alone, Conrad has watched industry cash pour in at a high rate, according to a review of FEC filings. His Political Action Committee, DAKPAC, received a $2,500 donation from the American Medical Association; $2,000 donations from the pharmaceutical companies Merck & Company and Eli Lilly; as well as $1,000 donations from Johnson & Johnson, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, American Hospital Association, AstroZeneca, Abbott Laboratories, Boehringer Ingelheim, and the Federation of American Hospitals.

Meanwhile, a slew of prominent industry lobbyists have been donating to Conrad's leadership PAC as well.

• David Castagnetti, of the firm Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti, donated $1,000 to the Senator's PAC. Castagnetti and his firm have been paid $877,500 to lobby on behalf of America's Health Insurance Plans, including $250,000 in 2009 alone. He has also earned $825,000 ($180,000 in 2009) to lobby on behalf of PhRMA.

` John Enzi: Pharmaceuticals - $216,200 Health Professionals - $144,049
Charles Grassley: Pharmaceuticals - $127,850. Health Professionals - $211,906
Olympia Snowe: Health Professionals - $174,574
Kent Conrad: Health Professionals - $229,033
Jeff Bingamen: Health Professionals - $207,563
Max Baucus: Pharmaceuticals - $506,313 Health Professionals - $497,641

According to OpenSecrets.org, over his career he has taken donations from:

* The Insurance Industry: $1,170,313
* Health Professionals: $1,016,276
* Pharmaceuticals/Health Products Industry: $734,605
* Hospitals/Nursing Homes: $541,891
* Health Services/HMOs: $439,700

His 2008 donations from health care profiteers included:

* Insurance: $592,185
* Health Professionals: $537,141
* Pharmaceuticals/Health Products: $524,813
* Health Services/HMOs: $364,500
* Hospitals/Nursing Homes: $332,826

It is not just the chairman of the committee who has received massive donations. The full Finance Committee is a gluttonous embarrassment of campaign pay-offs. In 2008 the committee members received a total of $13,263,986 from industries affected by health care reform. Can we trust this committee to put the interests of the people before their donors?

The donations to the Finance Committee in 2008 included:

· Insurance: $5,103,900
* Pharmaceuticals/Health Products: $3,308,831
* Hospitals/Nursing Homes: $2,809,353
* Health Services/HMOs: $2,041,902

• Charles Brain, of Capitol Hill Strategies, donated $1,000 to Conrad's PAC. Both he and his firm have been paid $1.4 million to lobby on behalf of PhRMA.

· John Jonas, of the firm Patton Boggs, gave $1,000 to Conrad's PAC. ````````He `and his firm have been paid $280,000 to lobby on behalf of ````````American ```Healthcare Association in 2009, as well as $280,000 by ````````BristolMyers Squibb for lobbying this year alone.

• Brian Griffin, a lobbyist for the Duberstein Group, made a $1,000 donation to Conrad's PAC. He and his firm have earned $300,000 to lobby on behalf of AHIP in 2009, as well as $960,000 overall.
• Michael Levy, a lobbyist for the firm Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber and Schreck, donated $500 to Conrad's PAC. He and his firm have lobbied on behalf of a host of insurance and pharmaceutical companies including United Health Group, for which it was paid $110,000 in 2009.

The money from these private interests is coming in at rates greater than past cycles, even though he isn't up for re-election until 2012. But both the Senator's staff and many other who know him insist that Conrad is a true believer and that the cash doesn't unduly influence him.”

One of the key reasons the Democrats were handed an impressive victory over Republican John McCain in the 2008 election was our promise and the promise of our candidate for president, Barack Obama to deliver universal health care to the richest country in the world with the largest number of uninsured and the largest number of underinsured. In addition, the largest number of people who are paying outlandish premiums totaling twice as much as any other nation in the civilized world all of whom receive better care resulting in better health for their people.

According to Health Care for America Now, profits of the country’s largest publically traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000-2007 “while consumers paid more for less coverage.”

A recent study points the finger of blame for this massive increase in profits with the simultaneous reduction in coverage is “the lack of competition in the private health insurance industry that has led to near monopoly conditions in many markets.”

The American Medical Association declared recently that “94 percent of the insurance markets in the United States are now highly concentrated and insurers are thriving in the anti-competitive marketplace, raking in enormous profits and pay out huge CEO salaries.” The AMA report goes on:

“These mergers and consolidations have created a marketplace where a small number of larger companies use their power to raise premiums—an average of 87 percent over the past six years—restrict and reduce benefit packages and control and cut provider payments.”

The national campaign manager for Health Care for America Now [HCAN], Richard Kirsch, in concert with David Balto, former policy director of the Federal Trade Commission and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, wrote a letter to the Department of Justice’s Anti-Trust Division;

“Simply put, the private insurance companies have secured monopolies or tight oligopolies and exercised that power to put profits ahead of patients….There were no actions taken against anticompetitive conduct by health insurers in the last administration, in spite of the fact that cases by state attorneys general have secured massive fines against these insurers. A lack of antitrust enforcement has enabled insurers to acquire dominant positions in almost every metropolitan market.

Experts agree that our health care system is riddled with inefficiencies, excessive administrative expenses, inflated prices, poor management and inappropriate care, waste and fraud. These problems increase the cost of medical care associated with government health programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and health insurance for employers and workers and affect the security of families.

BELOW I HAVE INCORPORATED IN THIS POSTING RESEARCH FROM SEVERAL SOURCES THAT SHOULD GIVE THE READER AN EXCELLENT UNDERSTANDING OF THIS VERY COMPLICATED ISSUE. I ENJOIN EACH OF YOU TO CAREFULLY READ AND DIGEST THIS INFORMATION AS WE WALK SLOWLY TOWARD A FINAL DETERMINATION OF WHERE HEALTH CARE REFORM WILL GO IN 2009, IF IT IS ALLOWED TO GET OFF THE GROUND BY THE IMMOVABLE REPUBLICANS WHO FIGHT CHANGE WITHOUT COMPASSION FOR THOSE WHO SUFFER, THE BLUE DOG DEMOCRATS WHO ARE FAR MORE CONCERNED ABOUT POTENTIAL DEFICITS AND INSURANCE COMPANY PROFITS THAN THEY ARE ABOUT THE CITIZENS WHO NEED IMMEDIATE RELIEF

National Health Care Spending

National health spending is expected to reach $2.5 trillion in 2009, accounting for 17.6 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). By 2018, national health care expenditures are expected to reach $4.4 trillion—more than double 2007 spending.1
National health expenditures are expected to increase faster than the growth in GDP: between 2008 and 2018, the average increase in national health expenditures is expected to be 6.2 percent per year, while the GDP is expected to increase only 4.1 percent per year. 1
In just three years, the Medicare and Medicaid programs will account for 50 percent of all national health spending. 1
Medicare's Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund is expected to pay out more in hospital benefits and other expenditures this year than it receives in taxes and other dedicated revenues. In addition, the Medicare Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) Trust Fund that pays for physician services and the prescription drug benefit will continue to require general revenue financing and charges on beneficiaries that will grow substantially faster than the economy and beneficiary incomes over time. 2
According to one study, of the $2.1 trillion the U.S. spent on health care in 2006, nearly $650 billion was above what we would expect to spend based on the level of U.S. wealth versus other nations. These additional costs are attributable to $436 billion outpatient care and another $186 billion of spending related to high administrative costs.

Health Insurance Costs

Facts on the Cost of Health Insurance and Health Care

Health care spending continues to rise at a rapid rate forcing businesses to cut back on health insurance coverage and forcing many families to cut back on basic necessities such as food and electricity and, in some cases, shelters and homes.

National Health Care Spending

National health spending is expected to reach $2.5 trillion in 2009, accounting for 17.6 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). By 2018, national health care expenditures are expected to reach $4.4 trillion—more than double 2007 spending.1
National health expenditures are expected to increase faster than the growth in GDP: between 2008 and 2018, the average increase in national health expenditures is expected to be 6.2 percent per year, while the GDP is expected to increase only 4.1 percent per year. 1
In just three years, the Medicare and Medicaid programs will account for 50 percent of all national health spending. 1
Medicare's Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund is expected to pay out more in hospital benefits and other expenditures this year than it receives in taxes and other dedicated revenues. In addition, the Medicare Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) Trust Fund that pays for physician services and the prescription drug benefit will continue to require general revenue financing and charges on beneficiaries that will grow substantially faster than the economy and beneficiary incomes over time. 2
According to one study, of the $2.1 trillion the U.S. spent on health care in 2006, nearly $650 billion was above what we would expect to spend based on the level of U.S. wealth versus other nations. These additional costs are attributable to $436 billion outpatient care and another $186 billion of spending related to high administrative costs.

Employer and Employee Health Insurance Costs

Over the last decade, employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have increased 119 percent.

Employees have seen their share of job-based coverage increase at nearly the same rate during this period jumping from $1,543 to $3,354.

The cumulative increase in employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have raised at four times the rate of inflation and wage increases during last decade. This increase has made it much more difficult for businesses to continue to provide coverage to their employees and for those workers to afford coverage themselves.

The average employer-sponsored premium for a family of four costs close to $13,000 a year, and the employee foots about 30 percent of this cost. Health insurance costs are the fastest growing expense for employers. Employer health insurance costs overtook profits in 2008, and the gap grows steadily. 5
Total health insurance costs for employers could reach nearly $850 billion by 2019. Individual and family spending will jump considerably from $326 billion in 2009 to $550 billion in 2019.6
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that job-based health insurance could increase 100 percent over the next decade. Employer-based family insurance costs for a family of four will reach nearly $25,000 per year by 2018 absent health care reform.

The Impact of Rising Health Care Costs

Economists have found that rising health care costs correlate with significant drops in health insurance coverage, and national surveys also show that the primary reason people are uninsured is due to the high and escalating cost of health insurance coverage.
A recent study found that 62 percent of all bankruptcies filed in 2007 were linked to medical expenses. Of those who filed for bankruptcy, nearly 80 percent had health insurance.
According to another published article, about 1.5 million families lose their homes to foreclosure every year due to unaffordable medical costs.
Without health care reform, small businesses will pay nearly $2.4 trillion dollars over the next ten years in health care costs for their workers, 178,000 small business jobs will be lost by 2018 as a result of health care costs, $834 billion in small business wages will be lost due to high health care costs over the next ten years, small businesses will lose $52.1 billion in profits to high health care costs and 1.6 million small business workers will suffer “job lock“— roughly one in 16 people currently insured by their employers.

Moreover, a report by Families USA found that “insurers in the individual market sometimes maintain medical loss ratios of only 60%, retaining 40% of premium dollars for administration, marketing and profit.” “For the 10 biggest insurers in the year 2006 (the year the insurers used for the 1 cent out of every dollar depiction above), profits were anywhere from 2 to 10 percent, or two to 10 pennies on the dollar. That’s two to 10 times as much as what the insurance industry group suggests in its illustrations.”

The top five earning insurance companies averaged profits of $1.56 billion in 2008 and reported spending an average of “more than 18 percent of their revenues on marketing, administration, and profits.” That year, CEO compensation for these companies ranged from $3 million to $24 million.” Below is a partial list of insurer/CEO profits:

Insurer:	Company Profits:	CEO Total Compensation:	CEO 5 Year Compensation:
UnitedHealth Group	$2,977,000,000	$5,030,000	–
WellPoint	$2,490,700,000	$4,070,000	–
Atena	$1,384,100,000	$38,860,000	$77,860,000
Humana	$647,000,000	$2,390,000	$56,910,000
Cigna	$292,000,000	$30,016,000	$120,510,000

CEO compensation seems to be decreasing, if ever so slightly. A survey by Modern Healthcare “of compensation for the health care CEOs” failed — for the first time in seven years — to turn up a healthcare CEO who raked in more than $15 million in compensation last year.” The performance of the stock market in 2008 was a big reason that the compensation of the 30 CEOs covered by the survey was relatively low, Kaiser Health News noted. But the “relative down year” for these executives “probably won’t generate much empathy” for them because “the median compensation… was still a bit more than $4 million. Moreover, as the detailed disclosures on executive pay required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission show, every CEO has stock options that could be worth millions as the equity markets recover.”

Despite lower than expected profits, insurers are not holding back. The industry already set records from January to March, “when health-care firms and their lobbyists spent money at the rate of $1.4 million a day” on campaigns designed to influence the health care reform legislation now moving through Congress.”

Surely, when a Senator even from as far away from reality as North Dakota and Montana can deduce from the information provided above by a host of experts and organizations devoted to the health care industry, the future is less than bright for the American people and their insurance coverage.

I could not believe my eyes when I read Senator Olympia Snowe [R-ME] who is one of the three Republicans that appear to be open to a reform health reform bill say that perhaps we should give the insurance companies an opportunity to clean up their act.

I am sorry, but the insurance companies have proven that without hard regulations they will continue to commandeer all of the profits they can even at the expense of the uninsured, the underinsured, the elderly, and main stream Americans who literally have no alternative but to spend more and more of their ever shrinking paycheck for health insurance.

We truly must fight the good fight for a cause that is truly worthy of our support. We cannot allow the right-wing fanatics of both or either parties to destroy the best chance we have had in decades to bring to life an idea the rest of the world have embraced for decades—universal health care reform. I, for one, am not only in need of relief from the terrible expense of health care and see that if we do not act now, we may never have the opportunity again in my life time to conquer the insurance industry’s power over the people’s health. I, for one, trust government more than I trust profit pursing insurance giants who have set the health care agenda of this nation for far too long.

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 20:18:51 GMT

LIARS AND CROOKS IS A BLOG THAT PRIMARILY ADDRESSES THE FLAWS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

OBAMA NEEDS TO FORGET ABOUT PASSING A BI-PARTISAN HEALTH CARE REFORM AND TO PUT HIS ENERGY INTO WORKING ON THE BLUE DOGS WHERE UNDER THE RIGHT CIRCUMSTANCE HE CAN MAKE THEM REALIZE THEY WILL GET BOOTED OUT OF THE CONGRESS IF THE DEMOCRATS [RED, BLUE, WHITE OR GREEN] DO NOT PASS A SEMBLANCE OF THE OBAMA BILL.

BELOW IS WHAT THE AUTHOR OF THAT BLOG CALLS THE REPUBLICAN 10-POINT PLAN FOR HEALTH CARE:

1. 50 Million Uninsured in America

2. Another 25 Million Underinsured

3. Employer-Based Coverage Plummets Below 60%

4. Employer Health Costs to Jump by 9% in 2010

5. One in Five Americans Forced to Postpone Care

6. 62% of U.S. Bankruptcies Involve Medical Bills

7. Current Health Care Costs Already Fueling Job Losses

8. 94% of Health Insurance Markets in U.S Now "Highly Concentrated"

9. Dramatic Decline in Emergency Room Capacity

10. Perpetuating Red State Health Care Failure

In spite of the persistent claim by numerous Republican politicians and pundits that the GOP wants “health care reform”, the truth is far removed from that erroneous claim. They want health care without reform. Every item listed above by the author of Liars and Crooks is unequivocally correct about the Grand Old Party’s approach to the health care crisis in American. In other words, it is crisis the Republicans cannot see or better yet do not see because they are blinded by their ideology.

They simply do not care about the people. They are far more concerned about what will happen to the insurance companies than they are about what will happen to the poor, the unemployed, the families whose underemployment income does afford them the luxury of health care coverage.

They do not understand that average Americans are being priced out of the market and that millions are forgoing medication, doctor visits and health check-ups in favor of food.

What angers me is the manner in which the special interests and the insurance industry in particular is fighting the Obama plan. According to a guest on one of MSNBC’s talk show on August 19, 2009, a former PR man for Cigna Insurance revealed how the insurance companies are organizing groups of people, training them to shout out the slurs against Obama, write embarrassing questions for the Senator or the Congressman, conducting the town hall meeting, and instructing them to boo the speaker, to shout and in general to disturb the meeting making the audience and those watching them on TV to believe their numbers are greater than they are in reality.

Perhaps, the most revealing town hall that I have seen thus far was conducted by Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Finanical Services Committee. A lady [obviously the word lady is a term of which she is not worthy], asked Frank how he could support a health care reform bill proposed by a president who was a Nazi. I am not certain how the Republicans came up with this very obvious lie, that Obama is a Nazi, and continue to reiterate this blatantly false claim over and over as their appearances are broadcast widely on the only cable channel whose standards are low enough to cover lies and to repeat them—Fox News; however, Frank returned her punch with a right to her brain. He asked the plant what planet she lived on and went on to say that to argue with her would be like arguing with a table.

That is precisely what the Democrats need to do every time one of the “plants” paid to be there by an insurance company or its public relations firm—hold their ground and have a few cutting response ready in their hip pocket to put these fools down.

Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell [R-KY] who won reelection by a mere 100,000+ votes although he is considered one of the most powerful Republicans in the U. S. Senate may qualify for another honor—one of the dumbest members of that august body [and as the old joke goes, he is also ugly].

“… Americans don't want health care reform that "reform that denies, delays, or rations health care," which you look carefully at the list above you will readily see that 20% [i.e. 1-5] Americans TODAY, RIGHT NOW, AT THIS VERY MOMENT—are forced to postpone much needed procedures.

You will also note the undistinguished Senator from Kentucky and his fellow anti-health care reform buddies want to continue what has become known as the Red State Health Care. The states listed below [all red states but one; all voted for George W. Bush, America’s candidate for the worst president in history and one who did not lift his finger to solve this country’s health care crisis even for our Iraq and Afghanistan wounded veterans!

The Commonwealth Fund report "Aiming Higher: Results from a State Scorecard on Health System Performance," examined states' performance across 32 indicators of health care access, quality, outcomes and hospital use: placed the following states at the very bottom of the list of quality health care—The Commonwealth Fund report, phrased it this way, “Bringing up the rear were the Bush bastions”-- Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma and Mississippi. Nevada was the only Obama [blue] state on the list of worst in their quality of health care.

And look what state tops the list of states with the worst health care in the nation—Kentucky, the home of the GOP’s glorious [but dumb and ugly] Leader of the Senate.

It must be made clear that the rationing which McConnell insists will result from Obama’s health care reform is precisely what is happening today. Liars and Crooks puts it this way: “Despite Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's oft-repeated claim that Americans don't want health care reform that ‘reform that denies, delays, or rations health care,’ de facto rationing is precisely what defines the U.S. system today.”

The Report went on to say, “The extremes in health care performance are startling. For example, 30% of adults and 20% of children in Texas lacked health insurance, compared to 11% in Minnesota and 5% in Vermont, respectively. Premature death rates from preventable conditions were almost double (141.7 per 100,000 people) in Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi compared to the top performing states (74.1 per 100,000). Adults over 50 receiving preventative care topped 50% in Minnesota compared to only 33% in Idaho. Childhood immunizations reached 94% in Massachusetts, compared to just 75% in the bottom five states. As the report details, federal and state policies including insurance requirements and Medicaid incentives clearly impact health care outcomes.”

What frightens me is that the Senators from the very states that rank the lowest in the nation for quality health care are among the very Senators who are fighting to “kill” the Obama plan.

South Carolina, a state which is so far behind most of the world in everything voted for Jim DeMint who is infamous for his brainless statement that if the Congress voted against health care it would be “Obama’s Waterloo.” In other words for the wretched Senator from South Carolina, it is not what is the best interest of the people, it is not about improving the human condition, it is about politics. It is about destroying the man who represents the best in America and who is respected around the world. DeMint is a disgrace and like so many in his state, he is damn racist and if there is any dignity left in that state, this SOB should be voted out of office when he comes up for re-election, if not before.

The president will not win this battle if he and Senator Max Baucus [D-MT] who lost his valiant bi-partisan attempt to bring the two faced liar from Iowa, Senator Chuck Grassley [R-IA]continue to insist on a bi-partisan bill. Barack Obama must stop being so nice and start kicking some ass. He must get out a bill that tells his followers precisely the kind of bill he wants so they will something for which they can fight.

Political commentators are indicting that the Obama machine that worked so beautifully during the primary and general election is not being heard from during this health care debate. Ariana Huffington, of the Huffington Post, told Chris Matthews on Hardball the week of August17-21. 2009 that the reason why Obama followers were not making the big effort on the subject of health care is that there is no bill for them to support.

Obama must come forth with a bill, drop his aspiration for a non-partisan bill and give his real support something for which to fight.

I urge the White House, once a real bill is in the public domain to call upon Oprah Winfrey to do a series of shows on health care reform concentrating on the benefits, while spending correcting the lies and misinformation the right-wing of the Republican Party, the insurance companies, and the anti-government lunatics have been hurling across the air waves, the town hall meetings and the media since the outset.

But Obama must have a bill, he must stop this stuttering and stammering about what this bill and that bill will do if it passes. He must come forth with the exact bill he favors.

For God’s sake, the president must not dilute the provisions of the final health care bill to the degree that only the Republicans, the insurance companies and other special interests will profit from its adoption.

In a pamphlet entitled Spotlight, I real the words of Henri Bergson, an influential 20^th century French philosopher who wrote:

“Genius is that which forces the

inertia of humanity to learn.”

“The major task of the twentieth

century will be to explore the

unconscious, to investigate the

subsoil of the mind.”

“To exist is to change, to change

is to mature, to mature is to go on

creating oneself endlessly.”

Obama and those who are pressing for this country to turn away from its backward posture on health reform, and through his genius to bring our nation into the 21^st century where this nation cares enough about all of its citizens that it insures that for the remainder of their lives they have the security of health care is the task before them.

They do not have the time necessary to “investigate the subsoil of a mind” like Ann Coulter, or Sean Hannity and the anti-health care reform, but suffice it to say—the president is dealing with an extremely immature crowd of people whose emotional, psychological and education maturation ceased some time ago.

Beneath the surface of those who oppose it is a persistent insistence on keeping things as they are. “I have mine, to hell with those who do not.”

A friend of mine who under normal circumstances, he is a great guy, but in a recent discussion on this very subject, he made the most inhumane statement I have ever heard. He said that the trouble with American is that we are keeping our elderly alive too long. We should cease and desist employing the high tech and exceedingly expensive gadgetry to keep people alive and let them die.

When I asked him if he thought that same principle should apply to him as well, he shot back that he had enough money to pay for the services that would keep him alive as long as medicine could find ways to do it.

That is precisely the mantra of the Republican Party. They see themselves as blessed to have a sufficiently hefty bank account that they can live through any and all illnesses or injuries and to hell with those who are too lazy to earn enough money to keep them healthy in their old age.

What other motive can be driving the right-wing of the political spectrum to oppose health insurance coverage for all at a reasonable, affordable cost, to transport their insurance from one job to the other, to receive health care even in the case of pre-existing conditions, to choose their own doctor, select their own health insurance carrier and, in cases, where their income or lack there of will not permit the extravagance of paying health insurance premiums.

Who can be opposed to such a plan? Only those who are far more concerned about themselves than they are about those less affluent, less privileged, can not accept a program of this all inclusive, life long coverage.

They fear we cannot afford it. And there is not question unless the government puts some kind of cap on the profits being hauled in at the cost of the American public for insurance premiums, medication and doctor care, only the very wealthy will be able to afford to get sick in the very near future.

That is why the public option must be included in whatever bill comes out of Congress. That is the only way to put an end to the insurance rip off of America’s citizenry.

From strictly a businessman’s perspective, I would prefer a single payers’ system and I think if the people understood it and stopped listening to the lunatics who are mumbling Socialism and Fascism underneath their misguided breath, that would see that single payers system is precisely what Medicare is—a single payer system and it saves in administrative costs alone, at the very minimum of 15% of the cost of doing business.

I believe the government must consider another option--allow fools like Dick Armey, former Texas Congressman and leader of the Republican Party in the House, who has sued the federal government to allow him to drop out of Medicare to get the hell out.

For God’s sake, let him out with the understanding that regardless of what happens to him and his family in the future he will never again be permitted to become a part of Medicare. Let anyone out who wants out.

I have disliked the character of both Dick Armey and Tom DeLay the former Republican Whip of the House who has placed himself in jeopardy with a host of legal entanglements that may cause him his freedom. They hated Bill Clinton so badly during the Monica Lewinsky affair that when the president in the House Chambers to deliver his State of the Union Address, neither of these Republican men of low self-esteem and no patriotic respect for the president of the United States of American regardless of what if any charges have been thrown at him. They are scum—both of them and in time will pay for their snake-like existence.

What Obama and the Democratic Party are facing in this vicious battle over health care is, according to Ron Pollack of Families USA-- two opposite forces or what he refers to as impulses:

“There are two impulses behind health

care reform: one is altruism and one is

self-interest.”

The atruistic [a person unselfishly concerned for and devoted to the welfare of others] believers in health care reform are followers of Jesus whose definition of God, was love [agape—a self giving love that expects nothing in return].

Those who are devoted to their own self-interest—the Republican right-wing fringe in the persons of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Senator James De Mint [R-SC], Rush Limbaugh, the Fox News Network, John Kyl [R-AZ], Richard Shelby [R-AL,] Dick Armey and the organizations that have been thrown together to raise money and carry on a campaign against health reform and for the special interests to which Armey and his colleagues are so closely aligned at the expense of the American people.

There are so many other Southern and Western Republicans, and let us not forget the Blue Dog Democrats who are looking at the world through their belly buttons. If the Democrats are to win this crucial battle they will need to coax the Blue Dogs into the kennel. And the Democratic Party should use every ounce of muscle it has at its disposal to bring them into line.

The president of the AFL-CIO made it clear this week that those Democrats and Republicans who vote against real health care reform are going to find it impossible to get labor support in 2010.

NewsWeek magazine carried the picture of Senator Edward Kennedy on its cover with the caption, “WE ARE ALMOST THERE!” I can think of no better gift to give to one of the greatest Senators to sit in that august body than the senator from Massachusetts who fighting his own fight of this life against brain cancer. He deserves the honor of having this bill carry his name as the hallmark of his brilliant career. He was a great bi-partisan fighter for great causes, but bi-partisan or not, he would fight like hell for this health care reform package.

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 02:32:48 GMT

THE OBAMA WHITE HOUSE’ S

STRATEGY FOR HEALTH CARE REFORM WAS WRONG!

I AM A HUGE OBAMA SUPPORTER, BUT I AM ALSO A HUGE HEALTH CARE REFORM SUPPORTER.

RAHM EMANUEL AND FRIENDS DID NOT HANDLE THE MOST VITAL ISSUE OF OUR TIME AND ONE OF THE MOST CRITICAL ISSUES FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WITH THE SAME GOOD JUDGMENT THEY EMPLOYED THROUGHOUT THE CAMPAIGN

WHY DO WE, AS A PEOPLE, BECOME ALARMED WHEN HE HEAR THAT OVER 4,000 OF OUR YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN HAVE BEEN KILLED IN A USELESS WAR IN IRAQ, BUT DO NOT EXUDE THE SAME DISTRESS WHEN WE HEAR THAT 18,000 PEOPLE DIED LAST YEAR IN THIS COUNTRY FOR WANT OF ACCESS TO ADEQUATE HEALTH CARE.

SHOULDN’T THOSE WHO OPPOSE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE HOLD THEIR HEAD IN SHAME? THEY DISGUST ME; THEY SHOULD ALSO DISGUST YOU! I TRULY DO FEEL REVULSION WHEN I SPEAK WITH PEOPLE WHO HAVE THE BEST HEALTH CARE THAT THEIR MONEY CAN BUY, WHILE TURNING THEIR BACKS ON THOSE WHO EITHER CANNOT AFFORD BECAUSE OF AN INCOME TO MEAGER TO PAY FOR IT, ARE IN THE THROES OF UTTER POVERTY, ARE UNEMPLOYED DUE TO CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND THEIR CONTROL OR WHO ARE BANKRUPT BECAUSE THEIR MEDICAL BILLS DROVE THEM INTO THE OPEN ARMS OF THE COURTS.

De Tocqueville wrote after visiting our young nation for the first time: “America is great because she is good. If America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”

THINK ABOUT IT WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT UNIVERSAL HEALTH INSURANCE!

There is absolutely no question about the need for health insurance reform. Only those who wrap themselves in the flag of right-wing conservatism and the delusion of free-market economics cannot see or do not wish to see the obvious need because they care not for those without insurance or those with medical bills that are driving them to the bankruptcy court faster than cartoon’s “road runner” in high gear.

For the most part they are the pawns of the special interests groups which have been fighting real reform in the field of health care since the days of FDR, Harry Truman, and Bill Clinton. And throughout the long and strenuous history of the progressive attempt to bring to America what every other nation in the civilized world has enjoyed for decades—universal health coverage at half the price Americans are forced to pay, these groups have used the same insane tactics, the same lies, the same misinformation, and, far too often, citizens without the tools to distinguish truth from falsehood, vote against their own self-interest. It is this ignorance we see at town hall meetings. It is the organized efforts of the shortsighted Republicans who will do anything and say anything to destroy Obama for the beating he gave to them and their party and to kill the need of a majority of our people for real, honest and open reform of our ailing health care system

In the past, the enemies of reform were the health insurance companies, the pharmaceutical manufacturers, the medical profession, the nurses’ association, the national hospital association; but today, most of these very, very special interest groups who, in the past, gave so generously to the campaign coffers of those who supported their best interests, are supporting Obama’s reform.

Today, however, Obama has successfully persuaded the medical and nursing associations to collaborate with the administration in its struggle for real health care reform. Add to the mix, the backing of the Pharmaceutical companies, the American Association of Retired People [AARP], the hospital association and a long list of national associations of professionals such as teachers, government workers, labor unions, and you have a very impressive list of powerful organizations that are joining Obama on the side of history.

The bailout of gigantic banks, leviathan brokerage houses and monstrous insurance corporations, those very vermin that caused the near financial collapse of the U. S. financial structure, has left a sour taste in the mouths of many Americans.

The average man on the street felt strongly that while the banks had to be stabilized by government intervention, they were under the impression that the Bush portion of the rescue monies would go for the purpose of buying the toxic paper that poisoned the balance sheets of those banks, bundling them into parcels and, at the appropriate time, selling them to investors at a marginal profit.

Without announcing a change in strategy, the first $350 billion [half of the funds allocated] did not as originally intended, go to bny toxic paper and, therefore, did not improve the balance sheets of those institutions hurting from their self-inflicted wounds caused by issuing loans to individuals and companies who were not credit worthy. In fact, Paulson, Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury, placed no requirements on the banks that accepted the money to save them from bankruptcy, and rather than employ the funds to lend money to credit worthy customers to prime the nation’s economic pump, some invested the funds and others used the funds to buy other financial institutions.

Good God almighty, what in the hell was Paulson thinking? To think, the man who is my neighbor [in the broadest sense of the word], who lives in the same town I live in, was naïve enough to believe that the executives who did not have the acumen to restrain themselves from making loans against noxious balance sheets, would suddenly become heir to the common sense to utilize these funds in a constructive way to jump start the economy, is nothing short of gullibility.

It did not help that many of the very same people associated with those institutions that caused the crash in the first place were put to work by the new president to repair the damage done by the crash. Mr. President-- that was a bad idea!

After the additional money requested by the new president in early 2009 was approved by Congress and signed by the president, approximately a mere twelve [12] percent of the money included in the Recovery and Reinvestment program has been distributed. Why so little? Why is it taking so long to get projects in the pipe line?

Where are these shovel-ready projects about which so much was spoken by Obama and Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, and so little evidence to date that any shovel has been put to work? If there are such projects under way, tell us; tell us all. Give us some sense that recovery is in the works. Give us hope. Give us encouragement. People need it and they need it now.

In essence the voters have seen very little benefit accruing to them and little or nothing addressing their individual crisis, i.e. job creation, mortgage assistance, etc. while so much is being done for those that put us in this hole in the first place.

More importantly, how can GM and Chrysler get bailed out while mortgages are still headed for foreclosure by the thousands, real estate auctions are still being conducted “from sea to [dismally] shining sea”? People are still homeless, jobs are still being lost by the hundreds of thousands every damn month, and those bastards who are presidents and CEO’s of the companies that went broke are still making bonuses that no human being is worth, particularly when they failed at their jobs for both the employees and the shareholders.

Whose side is the president on and why has Geithner not put guidelines on the taxpayers’ money that is going to banks, insurance companies and brokerage houses?

There, indeed, may be corporations too big to fail, but there are millions of human beings too large in number to be left out to dry, that the government must assist in their hour of need.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration is looking more and more like all previous administrations—too damn slow, too damn political, and too damn considerate of the big guy and too little attentive to the needs of the masses. Yes, I said. THE LIBERAL PERSPECTIVE, the huge supporter of Barack Obama is aggravated with its man. People are frustrated. People are angry. People are up to their eyeballs with unfulfilled promises and unattended needs. He needs to get tough with the party that stubbornly refuses to come out of its narcissistic shell that neither spell nor define the word “bi-partisan.”

While we all know that the outrageous outburst of most of the Town Hall meetings are orchestrated by various extensions of the Republican Party, there are some who without giving thought to the contemptible accusations being hurled at Obama and the Health Care Reform, i.e. Obama is Hitler in the skin of a Kenyan native, that he is not a natural born American citizen and is not eligible to be president, that he is a Socialist, that reform of our fatally flawed health care system means we will no longer be able to select our own doctors, that the government will stand between the doctor and the patient [never giving credence to the present reality that insurance companies are standing squarely between the doctors and the patients], that government will determine what medical procedures we can and can not have, that veterans will lose their benefits, that the elderly will be “forced to consult with an end-of-life counselor and be given a time certain when to expire by a government appointed DEATH PANEL [I personally would like kick the ass of the former Governor of Alaska for writing bold face lies on her Face Book page], that we will lose our right to chose our own doctor, our own insurance provider—ALL OF THESE LIES ARE NOTHING BUT BULL SHIT BROUGHT TO YOU THROUGH THE AUSPICES OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST LIARS--THE Grand Old Party and their like minded minions!

Did you elderly old fools who have been standing up at town hall meetings shouting at Senators and Congressman who are working arduously for health care reform ever see or read a health care reform bill? If you have you can add the word “liar” to the phrase “elderly old fools” because no bill, not one, has been passed by either House of the Congress. You are arguing against the lies you have heard on right-wing talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and the other media bought and paid for by the Republican Party.

I can not tell you how livid I am at the right wing of the GOP for their attempt to destroy our one and only chance to bring America into the 21^st century, to bring down the cost of health care, to reduce the out-of-pocket expenditures for medication and the inordinate increase in insurance premiums. We simply cannot afford heath care at the rate it is presently increasing. Why are you foolhardy citizens protesting against your own self-interests? Why are you shouting at the very people who are attempting to help us?

If you are not a political plant by Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks, or other like organizations that are sending protestors to town hall meetings all over the country to harass, disrupt, shout obscenities, carry signs calling President Obama a Nazis, or a Socialist; if you have serious questions about health care and truly seek honest answers go to the new White House website, Reality Check which is designed to refute the lies and misleading accusations being thrown against the wall of citizens’ total lack of knowledge on the subject. It is tough for everyone to read a 1017 page bill, but here you can get simple answers to your questions from a real doctor.

I want Obama to come forth loudly and clearly with a plan he will endorse and sign into law. I want him to twist the arms of Blue Dog Democrats who are attempting to play Republican [or red dogs] when they reside in Districts that are either equally split between Democrats and Republicans or are representing those whose conservative constituents have pummeled their offices with telephone and email campaigns that give them the impression that the people who vote for them are opposed to Health Care Reform.

Obama needs to hold fast to either an insurance option that will force the insurance companies to compete with the government option or through some form of effective co-operative program will put insurance companies into competition with a government plan which we know through Medicare, etc. is far more efficient and inexpensive than the present insurance non-competitive market policies.

Obama must either get tough with the SOB’s [i.e. the SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS REPRESENTED PRIMARILY BY THE REPUBLICAN DIE-HARDS] that are trying to do what they have successfully done to every attempt to pass a health care bill since TR’s [That is Theodore Roosevelt, A Republican] time, and to asphyxiate every lie and every misleading word being thrown at the Obama proposal.

Health Care Reform is the most important issue of this century. It is vital to me and to every American who has reached the age of 65 and living on a fixed income. It is vital to every one of the 50 million Americans who are without any form of insurance. It is vital to families whose insurance premiums and medical costs are increasing precariously faster than their incomes. It is vital to the unemployed and the underemployed. It is vital to all Americans who unlike the remainder of the civilized world that has enjoyed the security of universal health care for decades; Americans do not have enough members of its Congress with the foresight or the compassion to do what the people want. Government, of, by and for the people is at stake in this issue in 2009.

If the Obama Health Care Reform proposal meets a tragic death in committee or in the chamber of either body of the Congress it be the cause of the defeat of the Democrats in the 2010 Congressional elections, and the presidential election of 2012. More importantly, it will the greatest defeat for the American people and the blood from its death will be on the hands of right-wing Neanderthals, special interests groups who will profit enormously from its defeat, blue dog Democrats who are the wrong side of history and right-wing media that is in the hip pocket of the Republican Party.

One of the U. S. Senators for which I have great respect is Vermont’s Bernie Sanders [I-VT]. The week of August 8-15, 2009, Senator Sanders made this statement on MSNBC: “With more than 47 million Americans without health insurance coverage, it is clear that we need major changes in our country’s health care system. But, health care coverage will not be enough to assure access to care. Over 55 million Americans, insured and uninsured, have trouble finding a primary care provider.”

“As orchestrated efforts continue to disrupt civil discourse on the future of health insurance coverage in America,” Sen. Bernie Sanders spoke with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann Monday night [August 9, 2009] about these tactics. Sanders talked about the staged, anti-health insurance reform protests taking place at town meetings across the country. “The fact of the matter is that these people talk about freedom, and what they are doing is trying to disrupt town meetings, which is the absolute opposite of what freedom of discussion is about. The reason for that is that they are afraid to debate the real issues, the fact that we have a disintegrating health care system…”

During that same interview, Senator Sanders reminded America that 18,000 people die each year from lack of access to health care and that 1,000,000 [that is one (1) million] people are forced into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills.

I listened to the McLaughlin Group on Saturday, August 15, 2009, and was so repulsed by what I heard, I turned the TV off. McLaughlin front loaded the show with four [4] conservatives (including himself) and one [1] progressive. Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift who had to fight like hell just to present her side of the health reform issue while the multi-millionaire owner of U. S. News and World Report, Mort Zuckerman, babbled on about how 80% of the American people had health insurance and the majority of those people liked their insurance coverage.

Mort has more insurance than God because he can afford it, but he failed to think for one moment about the 50 million people who do not have insurance, about the 18,000 who die each year for lack of access to health care, about the $1,000 taxpayers shell out for each visit to the local hospital’s emergency room by the uninsured which according to the AMA, costs in excess of $15 billion dollars a year.

According to Medical Expenditure Panel Survey 55 million Americans under the age of 65 were uninsured in 2007. When we factor in the underinsured the figures leaps to 75 million.

While there are no figures available for 2008, the uninsured has grown spectacularly because of the significant increase in the number of unemployed and the noteworthy increase in poverty over the past two (2) years.

The Institute of Medicine report found “….that 114 million people, including 30 million children, visited emergency rooms in 2003, compared with 90 million visits a decade ago. That figure has also increased in the past six years because of the impact the Great Recession has had on our economy.

There is another fundamental point that few people are talking about in the discussion on Health Care Reform. While the foundation of the health insurance in America emanates from our employers, the number of employers providing insurance for their employees has dropped to 59.7%.and will drop even more when the employers face what is projected to be a 9% increase in employer health care premiums.

Do you know what I find even more intriguing—the worst health care in the nation is in “those states that voted for George W. Bush.” In fact, at the very bottom of the list of states with the worst health care [the worst of the worst] in the country are states that voted Republican—Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma and Mississippi. Nevada was the only Obama [blue] state on the list of worst in their quality of health care.

Obama’s White House staff must attempt to reinvigorate the corps of supporters that made his campaign for the presidency one of the most beautifully organized in history, if this critical health care reform is to pass the Congress.

The very same voices of special interest groups and antiquated ideologues [Bill Kristol, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Tom DeLay, Dick Armey, Richard Mellon Scaife, the Republican right-wing Neanderthals, the nay saying Fundamentalist Christians and Anti-Abortion [Protestant and Catholic] crowd that have killed health care reform since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, are out in force to kill it again in 2009..

On the other hand, the president must not compromise “reform” away so that there is nothing left standing at the end of the debate but a revised standard version of the same old crap.

I would rather see the president veto a bill that conforms to the antiquated views of the Republican Party than to sign a bill with no genuine reform.

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:41:05 GMT

THE GOP IS GOING TO LOSE THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE ONE WAY OR THE OTHER!

GINGRICH, THE TALKING HEAD OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY JOINS SARAH PALIN IN HER CLAIM [LIE] THAT THE NEW HEALTH REFORM WILL GIVE THE GOVERNMENT THE AUTHORIZATION TO DENY ELDERLY PEOPLE THE MEDICAL PROCEDURE THEY NEED TO LIVE.

On Wednesday, August 12, Senator Chuck Grassley, to the shock of many Democrats and Independents, joined the ranks of the deceitful, double dealing Republicans by telling his constituents in Iowa they should be fearful of the clause proposed by a Georgia Republican Congressman that Medicare pay for counseling any family may seek when faced with a dying family member.

SENATOR MCCONNELL [R-KY] INSISTS THAT THE RUCKUS CREATED AT TOWN HALL MEETINGS BY PAID REPUBLICAN OPERATIVES AND VOLUNTEERS DESIGNED TO KILL HEALTH CARE AND BRING OBAMA DOWN “MEANS THE GOP IS WINNING!”

For decades, since the era of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican Party has always been the bully in the school yard brawls. They simply do not know how to play with others, to win a fight fairly and squarely because they have never been in possession of ideas big enough and valid enough in the minds of voters to win their way to national power, [i.e. the only reason George W. Bush became the 43^rd president is because he was “appointed by a Republican dominated U. S. Supreme Court” that overstepped its constitutional authority and seized the power over the election out of the hands of the State of Florida.]

In every administration since Ike, the party has been entwined in a scandal that has detracted the country’s attention away from the national agenda and has refocused the people’s attention away from crucial national problem.

Even Eisenhower had to deal with the disgrace of the Sherman Adams shenanigans.

Wikipedia describes the outrage that inundated the Washington political elites at the time. With a man in the White House who was the Great War Hero, the first Republican elected to the highest office in the world for twenty-two [22] years, and to have as his Chief of the White House staff a man under suspicion for criminal activity was more than they could tolerate.

“Adams was pressured to resign in 1958, when a House subcommittee revealed Adams had accepted an expensive vicuña overcoat and oriental rug^{from Bernard Goldfine, a Boston textile manufacturer who was being investigated for Federal Trade Commission violations. Goldfine, who had business with the federal government, was cited for contempt of Congress when he refused to answer questions regarding his relationship with Adams.[2] The story was first reported to the muckracketing journalist Jack Anderson.”}

“The vicuna is one of two South American camelids, [“Camelids are members of the biological family Camelidae, the only living family in the suborder Tylopoda. Camels, dromedaries, llamas, alpacas, vicuñas, and guanacos are in this group,”] according to Wikipedia, that reside in the alpine region of the Andes. A relative to the llama and in recent times determined to be the undomesticated cousin to the alpacas that are very popular in the U. S. and raised primarily for the fiber. “Vicunas produce small amounts of extremely fine wool, which is very expensive because the animal can only be shorn every three [3] years.’

Originally discovered by the Incas, vicuna fabric became a much sought-after commodity for its softness and its warmth.

But in the time of the Incas and, even today, vicuna is protected by law having been declared “endangered” in 1974 because only 6,000 animals were deemed to be alive.

Obviously, the Sherman Adams affair was nothing compared to the scandal the heretofore Republican moralists and upper class snobs were about to face when Eisenhowever’s Vice-President, Richard Milhouse Nixon was elected in 1968.

Most of you know everything you need to know about Nixon and the burglarizing of the Democratic National Committee’s offices in the celebrated Watergate complex by members of Nixon’s White House entourage. After months of investigation by the Senate Committee established to investigate the Watergate break-in and burglary, the Senate turned the matter over to a Special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. Nixon was forced to resign the presidency and several of his associates including John Mitchell, Nixon’s Attorney General and numerous members of his White House staff served time in prison.

“Watergate,” as it has become known was one of the darkest hours in the otherwise proud history of this country.

President Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, Reagan’s Vice-President were up to their necks in what was to be branded as the Iran-Contra scandal, Wikipedia describes this sad episode in our history as follows:

“Iran-Contra affair (1985-92), a rare non-venal political scandal in which high officials of the Reagan administration were discovered to have used funds raised by covert arms sales through Israel to Iran in order to finance the activities of the ‘Contra’ revolutionaries against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, every step of which violated declared government policy, domestic law, or international law—or all three. Ramifications included fund-raising from friendly Arab states and the employment of British mercenaries for commando raids.”

At the outset of this venture, Iran-Contra was run directly out of the White House by Reagan’s National Security Adviser, Robert McFarlane with the assistance of the Director of the CIA William J. Casey. Its unexpressed purpose was to prolong the war raging between Iraq and Iran accompanied by the anticipation that by selling arms to Iran, they would ultimately release the American hostages being held by pro-Iranian terrorists in Lebanon.

Lt. Col. Oliver North, and the successor to Robert McFarlane, [Dr.] Admiral John Poindexter, and the National Security Adviser to the President were the two major players in this direct violation of the laws passed by the U. S. Congress.

The White House frustrated by the restrictions imposed upon its

intention to successfully launch and consummate this project compounded by the rage seething through the halls of the CIA over recently imposed regulations and rampant innuendos within the beltway made North and Poindexter natural allies.

The History, Politics and Society—the U. S. Military History Companion describes the Iran-Contra affair in this manner. Iran-Contra…

”…presented the confluence of two politically controversial and arguably illegal foreign policies conducted by the Reagan administration: the arming of Nicaraguan Counterrevolutionaries (the Contras) after Congress had banned such aid, and the selling of weapons to the government of Iran in order to secure the release of U.S. citizens held hostage in Lebanon. Both policies became publicly linked following press reports on the Iranian operation in November 1986, when a Justice Department review turned up evidence that millions of dollars in profits from the sale of arms to Iran had been diverted to fund the Contra rebels.”

This burgeoned into the most explosive scandal since “Watergate.” Questions about the legal, ethical, constitutional implications of these acts were epidemic in proportion. More importantly, from the political dimension, the burning query was--how deeply involved was Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush?

The Senate embarked upon an extensive investigation into the matter, while a comparable investigation was being conducted by Special Prosecutor Lawrence E. Walsh.

Several of the participants of this subversive criminal enterprise were sentenced to prison; however, in the end, the Special Prosecutor, a life-long Republican had several of his convictions overturned by the Court of Appeals and others were granted pardons on the final day of George H. W. Bush’s presidency.

Two of Reagan’s Cabinet members, in their books, gave witness to the fact that the president was present at meetings where arms-sales-for-hostages was openly discussed, in spite of Reagan’s insistence that he knew nothing about this project. If true, which if I am to believe members of his cabinet, Reagan was either a liar or an incompetent manager of the affairs of state, either way he was an excellent candidate for impeachment.

Reagan knew about the violations of the Federal law and under different circumstances [his term came to an end too early] would be guilty of an impeachable offense along with his Vice President, George H. W. Bush. Unfortunately, time in this case was on the side of Reagan and Bush.

The most recent scandal faced the Republican Party throughout the entire George W. Bush administration. I need not itemized the innumerable violations of the law, the constitution and the ethical undergirding of our nation.

While there is no doubt that George W. Bush was the most incompetent president since Warren G. Harding, he, also, may have been the most unethical.

From the preemptive war in Iraq which should never have been taken under advisement let alone embarked upon, Bush and his White House demonstrated total disregard for the constitutional limits our founding fathers placed upon the executive branch of government. George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson did everything within their power to insure that the United States of American never was ruled by a King, by a dictator, by an autocrat. Bush and his Vice-President Dick Cheney attempted everything in their repertoire to circumvent the founders’ intentions.

They created three (3) equal branches of government—the executive, the legislative and the judiciary with the intent that never the twain shall meet.

However, with the election of 2000, the Republican nominee became the illegitimate president with his appointment by the Republican dominated Supreme Court. While his opponent, Bill Clinton’s Vice President, Albert Gore, won the popular vote by 500,000 votes, he lost the more important vote of the Electoral College because of the State of Florida whose vote counting procedures will forever fall under the dark shadows of suspicion.

The Democrats have ever forgiven Bush for stealing the election all with his accomplices Katherine Harris, Florida’s Republican Secretary of State, a mob of disconcerting right wing citizens organized and intended for the purpose of disrupting the vote counting process in Miami, and, of course, the Republican controlled U. S. Supreme Court.

To this day, I blame the Court, Harris and the Bush campaign soldiers that are responsible for stealing the election and allowing George W. Bush to sit in the chair of the most important government official in the world with neither the intelligence nor the integrity to even stand in the aura of that chair’s presence.

The years 2000-2008 were among the most devastation years in this nation’s history. Bush and Cheney together nearly shredded this country’s magnificent Constitution, but, in fact, did try to re-write some of its most vital wording.

From the day Bush stepped into the White House, members of his National Security Staff have born witness to his obsession with the destruction of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Why the obsession—we may never know, but he, by double-dealing, exaggerating, manipulating, and mendacity, he fooled the Congress and the naïve citizens of our country into over-dosing on a false prescription of patriotism that nearly killed the patient.

Cheney brought all of the heads of the energy companies in the nation together in a secret meeting in Washington to write the policies by which their corporations will be forced to operate. In other words, energy companies wrote their own federal rules with the aid and concurrence of the U. S. Vice President.

Cheney, prior to joining the Bush campaign operation was CEO of Halliburton Corporate. After becoming vice president of the U. S., and following our preemptive strike against Iraq, Halliburton received billions of dollars of non-competitive bids [contrary to federal policy], saving it from bankruptcy and making an unknown amount of profits for the company’s shareholders [all of whom were at the very least Cheney’s friends and associations, if not more…]. Let us take a quick look at a few if the violations of the law, or ethics, or government policies committed by the Bush/Cheney administration:

· Non-competitive bids for billions in federal contracts contrary to federal law;

· The termination of federal employees who tried to pull the plug on the Bush/Cheney exploitation of federal policy for the benefit of family, friends and campaign contributors;

· Tax benefits for the very rich and additional tax benefits for corporations that were major contractors for government services as well as foremost contributors to the Republican Party, Bush, Cheney and numerous Republican Senators and Congressmen such as pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies, financial giants, brokerage corporations;

· The failure of the administration to provide oversight to the agencies in the executive branch of government responsible for protecting patients, investors, et. al; and the illegal termination of political appointees who did not toe the Republican line.

· To name but a very few!

The Great Recession which presently plagues the lives of so many of our citizens because of the failure of the banking business, the real estate markets, and the insurance companies was a direct result of the breakdown of the Bush administration’s constitutional job to provide oversight of these giant companies who were friends and campaign contributors to the Bush/Cheney associates.

And now that we are in a position to face the crisis in health care squarely, and we have in office a man who is not the tool of special interests, who is bringing leadership to the issue of health care, we are inundated by a host of right wing lunatics who want to keep things as they are, to keep the special interests in charge and to pay inordinately outlandish premiums for health insurance, medical procedures and drugs.

Weeks ago, 72% to 80% of the citizens [depending on the polls] said they favored health care. 57% of those polled said they were willing to pay higher taxes for reform of the health care system.

Suddenly, the worms are crawling out from under rocks, the snakes on the right have reared their always poisonous heads and Fox News is broadcasting lies, misrepresentations, and deceitful information about the health care reform bill WHICH IS YET TO BE WRITTEN, YET TO BE VOTED UPON IN THE HOUSE, YET TO BE APPROVED BY THE SENATE AND YET TO BE SIGNED INTO LAW BY THE PRESIDENT.

What is all of this screaming, what is all of this name-calling? What is this heckling, the boos, the derision all about? There is nothing to heckle, boo or deride your Congressman about, because there is no bill.

Most of those who are making the most noise at these Town Hall meeting do not know what in the hell they are talking about. They are truly ignorant of the issues inherent in the health care arena. THEY HAVE NOT READ THE HOUSE BILL WHICH IS NOT THE FINAL BILL, NOR IS IT THE ONLY BILL THAT WILL BE CONSIDERED BY THE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT.

Those of you who are yelling “Nazi!” or “Communist!” or “Socialist!” simply have no idea what any of those terms truly mean. In fact, those of you who are shouting down others who wish to speak, or listen at these meetings are using the same tactics that Hitler’s Nazis used to disrupt meeting in Germany prior to their overthrow of the government.

A town hall meeting is designed to allow all points of view to be aired and all perspectives to be considered.

Consider, if you will, these words, from Dr. Andrew Weil in the Huffington Post on August 10, 2009:

Consider that Americans spent $8.4 billion on medicine in 1950, vs. an astonishing 2.3 trillion in 2007. That's $30,000 annually for a family of four. The bloated structure of endless, marginal-return tests; patent-protected drugs and "heroic" surgical interventions for virtually every health problem simply can't be made much cheaper due to its very nature. Costs can only be shifted in various unpalatable ways.

So, a far more salient question that must be addressed is: Are we getting good health for our trillions? Unfortunately, the answer is a resounding, "No." The U.S. ranked near the very bottom of the top 40 nations -- below Columbia, Chile, Costa Rica and Dominica -- in a rating of health systems by the World Health Organization in 2000. In short, we pay about twice as much per capita for our health care as does the rest of the developed world, and we have almost nothing to show for it.

People, I do not know about you, but there are hundreds of millions of people who either have no health care or who can no longer pay the premiums for the health care they have. There are millions more who are forced to go to their local hospital’s emergency room for evey and all illness from a cold to cancer.

All of our Republican business types should appreciate the wasted tax dollars we are spending when about 119.2 million visits were logged in U.S. emergency departments in 2006 at a cost to the tax payers of $1,000. per visit according to the American Medical association.

I am retired like so many, we are lucky enough to have excellent health insurance which has gone through the roof in cost over the past few years. When on a fixed income, or no income should you have been terminated from your job and simultaneously lost your health insurance, or have income, but the health premiums are so expensive you can no longer afford them, you know that Barack Obama is correct and that our health care system is broken.

Note that Fox News with their irrational and always bombastic on-air personalities and Rush Limbaugh, Medved, Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter and others, too numerous to name, are nothing more than the voices of the Republican right and every word that comes out of their lying mouths should be put to the acid test.

Most of these bozos have never seen the one bill that is floating around the country [remember there is not one bill that have been voted on by the House, approved by the Senate or signed by the president] . They are fighting against a paper tiger or, if you will, thin air with all of the hot air their angry voices can muster.

DO NOT BELIEVE ONE WORD OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE AN AGENDA. THEY DO NOT SPEAK IN YOUR BEST INTEREST OR MINE.

As I listned to some of the screamers yesterday, August 12, 2009, one young woman aggressively standing in the face of Senator Arlan Specter of Pennsylvania, with her script in her hand, raved on and on about not wanting her country to become Communist and she went on to incorrectly say that she always was opposed to “socializing.” [which literally means to ‘make fit for life in companionship with others].

There is nothing absolutely nothing in the version of the proposal that Obama says he will sign that even resembles “Socialism.” Which literally means, “a theory of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution of capital, land, etc, in the community as a whole.”

There is evidence enough that members of various arms of the Republican Party have organized these disruptions of Town Hall meeting with people from their own party, trained them on what they should say [note: many are saying the same words from city to city] and transported them from Town Hall to Town Hall.

That, my friends, is the work of anti-democratic forces attempting to control the discourse, the content of the discussion and to follow the instructions of Limbaugh who said, “KILL THIS BILL,” And to bring about the results that the miserable SOB, Senator DeMint of South Carolina called for when he predicted that if the Republicans could kill the health care reform, they could destroy Obama and his administration.

These are not people with whom I wish to associate myself; and I, along with millions of Americans who sincerely and urgently require health care reform for themselves and their families will fight these bastards to the very end.

I said at the beginning of this discourse, “For decades, since the era of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican Party has always been the bully in the school yard brawls. They simply do not know how to play with others, to win a fight fairly and squarely because they have never been in possession of ideas big enough and valid enough in the minds of voters to win their way to national power, [i.e. the only reason George W. Bush became the 43^rd president is because he was “appointed by a Republican dominated U. S. Supreme Court” that overstepped its constitutional authority and seized the power over the election out of the hands of the State of Florida.]

This is the scandal that the Republican Party is undertaking during their opponent’s administration. They do not have a solution for health care reform, for Medicare, for Social Security, for Medicaid or any other social problem, simply because they, like Ronald Reagan, who new biography is entitled Reagan was Wrong, believe is not the solution, but the problem,

Look at VA medical care, at Medicare [the most cost efficient insurance problem that is government run and 15-20% cheaper in administrative costs than any other insurance entity in the country] The government is not evil, or incompetent or any other the other words the Republican devotees believe it to be.

At times there are problems facing our nation that are so mammoth no body other than government is large enough to deal with it. Defense, universal education and Social Welfare are a few of these problems. Health Care surely fits in that parameter.

Do not let the very people who have brought so some many scandals over years with their fallacies about “free enterprise” and, in fact, only months ago were sinking our ship of state because of their false ideology, take us off track on the subject of universal health care. No enterprise has ever been totally free—ever! Do not let them destroy this once in many decades opportunity recalling all the while that Teddy Roosevelt introduced the subject in 1912, Franklin Roosevelt in 1940, Harry Truman in 1948 and Bill Clinton in 1993 only to have the Republican right wingers who are bought and paid for by the “special interests”-- kill it.

P. S. Forget Limaugh, Hannity, Gingrich, Beck, and all of the others who have an agenda not based on facts, or knowledge about the present day medical condition of our country—they are making millions of dollars each year with the best health care infurance money can buy.

THINK ABOUT THIS—THE OBAMA PLAN HAS BEEN ENDORSED BY THE AMA, THE AMERICAN NURSES ASSOCIATION, THE PHARMEUTICAL COMPANIES, THE NATIONAL HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION,--EVERYONE CONNECTED TO THE MEDICAL FIELD EXCEPT THE INSURANCES COMPANIES. THAT SHOULD TELL EVERY AMERICAN SOMETHING.

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 17:39:03 GMT

DAMN THE REPUBLICANS AND ALL OF THEIR VICIOUS ATTACKS ON HEALTH CARE REFORM

THEIR LATEST SHAMEFUL PLAN IS TO RECRUIT CREWS OF RIGHT WING SUPPORTERS TO TRAVEL ACROSS THE COUNTRY, ATTEND THE TOWN HALL MEETINGS OF DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMEN WHO ARE EITHER READY TO VOTE IN FAVOR OF THE HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL OR THOSE WHO REMAIN UNCOMMITTED--TO HARASS, EMBARRASS, FRUSTRATE OR BAFFLE THE CONGRESSMEN BY ASKING INANE QUESTIONS SUCH AS “HAVE YOU READ THE 1017 PAGE BILL FOR HEALTH CARE THEIR CONSTITUENTS AND MALIGN THE PRESIDENT AND HIS HEALTH CARE REFORM PROPOSALS IN THE PROCESS?

THIS, MY FRIENDS, IS THE SAME BUNCH OF REPUBLICAN HOOLIGANS PRESIDENT OBAMA IS ATTEMPTING TO ESTABLISH A BI-PARTISAN APPROACH ON HEALTH CARE.

OBAMA IS WASTING HIS TIME AND THE ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF ENERGY NECESSARY TO PERSUADE REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS TO SUPPORT HIS AMBITIOUS AGENDA.

THIS PLOY PLACES THE GOP AND ITS LEADERSHIP AT THE TOP OF THE LIST OF AMERICA’S MOST DIM-WITTED AND HARDHEARTED CITIZENS. THEY PLAN TO DISRUPT THE TOWN HALL MEETINGS, TO CREATE BOISTROUS NOISES THAT WILL DISTRACT THE AUDIENCE FROM HEARING THE FACTS ABOUT THE MOST VITAL ISSUE CONFRONTING THIS NATION IN THE PAST 50 YEARS, TO WALK UP AND DOWN THE AISLES TO AGITATE THE AUDIENCE AND FURTHER CONFUSE THE VOTERS, AND IN GENERAL, LIVE UP TO THEIR REPUTATION AS AN INSANE, RUTHLESS HERD OF PITILESS EGO-CENTRIC ASSES!

Everyone knew that around 50 million of our country’s 300 million citizens were without any form of health insurance, that well over 120,000 people die each year due to inadequate health care engendered by inadequate health insurance, the Republican diehards are playing every dirty trick in their repertoire to do what Rush Limbaugh and Fox News has repeatedly called for---“Kill the health care bill”.

Everyone knew that 60% of all bankruptcies were a result of medical bills emanating from serious health problems arising suddenly and without symptoms, long term medical complications that cost them their jobs, their only source of income and was threatening their very lives.

Everyone knew that as the unemployment rate skyrocketed because of the Great Recession, more and more were losing their health insurance and falling through the cracks of adequate and affordable health care.

You mistrust, hate, or attempt to overthrow the government the people have duly elected to office, at your own risk. The one institution in our nation that has the capacity to tackle gargantuan undertakings for our collective survival such as defense, building our interstate highways, Social Security and Medicare, is the U. S. government; health care reform is one of undertakings.

The American people have spoken out clearly and unquestionably. In fact, for some time, their voices have been raised in favor of a program that would bring under the federal insurance umbrella, the nearly 50 million people who are without insurance coverage [simply because taxpayers pay out significantly more money when these people go to the emergency room at an average cost of $1,000 per visit], to eliminate the stumbling blocks the insurance companies have obstinately placed in the way of those who endure pre-existing illnesses when changing jobs, who suffer from catastrophic illnesses, who are refused coverage recommended by their primary health care physicians because of cost, and to include those unemployed children beyond the age of 18 who were refused extended coverage by the Republicans and the Bush administration.

Republican and Blue Dog Democratic Congresspersons and Senators who are recipients of copious campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical companies are at this moment fighting vociferously to insure that the millions of campaign dollars from these bloodsucking worms in the extraordinarily profitable insurance game continue to pour into their coffers. The Republicans, in particular, and the Blue Dog Democrats in general, are not fighting for their constituents’, they are fighting for themselves and the campaign money that will keep them in office to receive their handsome salaries and the best health insurance coverage for anyone in the country.

I understand their fear. But health insurance reform is bigger than any one Congressperson or Senator. The nation will survive the loss of a Congressman from Texas or Alabama or a Senator from Nebraska or Montana, but the loss of health insurance for millions of Americans for whatever reason, is potentially a death sentence for reasons not of their making. IT WOULD TRULY BE PATRIOTIC FOR A FEW OF THE PEOPLE ON THE REPUBLICAN SIDE TO DRAG THEIR ANTIQUATED MENTALITY INTO THE 21^ST AND TO MUSTER ENOUGH COURAGE AND THE INTEGRITY TO PROVIDE THEIR CONSTITUENTS THE BEST HEALTH CARE THAT EVERY OTHER NATION IS PROVIDING ITS CITIZENS, EVEN IF ITCOSTS THEM A FEW MILLION DOLLARS IN CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS.

One of most vocal opponents of health care reform is House Republican Leader, John Boehner of Ohio. Boehner hails from near Cincinnati, OH. I, too, am a buckeye, but obviously have an entirely different point of view than Boehner.

According to the Associated Press, Boehner claimed on July 23, 2009 that the House bill for health care reform, [falsification#1] “…may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia.”

Another Republican, former New York Lt. Governor, Betsy McCaughey, on July17, 2009, wrote,[falsification #2] “One troubling provision of the House bill compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years…about alternatives for end-of-life care.”

The truth is: The House bill would require Medicare to pay for advance directive consultations with health care professions. BUT IT WOULD NOT REQUIRE ANYONE TO USE THE BENEFIT.”

Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council falsely reports in a video prepared by his organizations, “Unless Congress states otherwise, under a government takeover of health care [falsification#3] taxpayers will be forced to fund abortions for the first time in over three decades.”

THE LEGISLATION PRESENTLY BEING DELIBERATED IN THE CONGRESS WOULD IN NO WAY MODIFY THE HYDE AMENDMENT WHICH BLOCKS MEDICAID FROM PAYING FOR ABORTIONS? SHOULD THE GOVERNMENT-RUN INSURANCE PLAN BE ADOPTED PRESIDENT OBAMA TOLD CBS NEWS “THAT THE NATION SHOULD CONTINUE A TRADITION OF ‘NOT FINANCING ABORTIONS AS PART OF GOVERNMENT FUNDED HEALTH CARE.’” However, let us be clear, the majority of Americans who favor “choice” over the rigid invasion of one’s right to practice their religion as they see fit, would encourage the Congress to include the right of abortion in the bill they pass.

Many critics are claiming that the passage of the Obama health reform bill will force many people to change doctors and, perhaps, insurance companies [falsification #4]

The legislation under consideration would not require people to change doctors or insurance providers.

The infamously right-wing Washington Times’ Michael Cannon has written [falsification #5] “Expanding health programs will hasten the day that government rations medical care to seniors.”

The next [falsification #6]issue being tossed around by the Republican devotees is the claim that by reforming health care the federal debt will be increased over time. The president has assured the American people and the Congress that he will not sign a bill that is not debt free, i.e. will not add to the national debt.

For example, the insurance industry’s administrative costs presently are approximately 20-25 % of its income from premiums while Medicare administrative costs are between 2-4%. Granted individual policies have higher administrative expenses than group programs, but the truth here is that Medicare runs a tight ship in the face of the perpetual criticism from those who say that government can do nothing right. THOSE WHO SAY THAT GOVERNMENT CAN DO NOTHING RIGHT ARE THEY VERY PEOPLE ARE WRONG WHEN IT COMES TO MEDICARE, THE VETERAN’S ADMINISTRATION MEDICAL CARE AND MEDICAID.

In my humble opinion [which many would argue does not exist], the Republicans goofed by organizing these protests at the Town Hall meetings being held throughout the country during the August recess.

Contrary to the propaganda pour out of the Republican National Committee, these are not spontaneous protests. These are organized in the same manner the protests at the Florida recount locations were prearranged after the 2000 presidential election that ended with Bush being appointed the U. S. Supreme Court the president over the will of the people including the people in Florida.

Rachel Maddow did us all a favor by identifying the names and faces of the protestors who crowded into the offices used for recounting the votes with the people who are organizing and staffing these protests. The woman who stood up in Pennsylvania last week and made a fool of herself by flashing her birth certificate in the air and calling on the president to do the same thing, was a plant by the Republican Party.

The fact is, the president has done even better, he placed a copy on the internet for the entire nation to view along with copies of the Honolulu newspapers that carried his birth announcement. He has widely circulated letters from high government officials including the Governor verifying the validity of his birth. In- deed, he has done more than any other president to verify his American citizenship. NOW FOR THE GOOD OF THE COUNTRY, WOULD YOU MISERABLY ILL SOB’S PUT YOUR PARANOIA BACK IN YOUR BAG OF TRICKS AND STOP BRINGING UP AN ISSUE THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN RERESOLVED TO THE SATISFACTION OF 99% OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

The Congressmen went on to insist that while Medicare was not perfect, it is “a pretty darn good model of what a public plan [covering everyone] might look like.”

Last month, the Harris-Decima poll, found that 82% if Canadians prefer their nation’s health care delivery system to ours.

In 2008, the Globe and Mail newspaper along with the CTV Television Network Canada commissioned a poll that found that 91% of Canadians agree with the Harris Demica findings.

These polls did find that 74% of the Canadians believed they had to wait longer than they would like when referred to a specialist.

Zorn concluded his article with this very impressive fact. In the 1960’s Tommy Douglas who led the fight for universal health care in Canada was considered THE GREATEST CANADIAN OF ALL TIME

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:56:12 GMT

PREFACE

THE WAR IS ON. ANTI-HEALTH CARE REFORM FORCES ARE MARTIALING THEIR FORCES AND THE FUNDS.

IT IS BELIEVED THAT INSURANCES COMPANIES AND OTHER MEDICALLY RELATED GROUPS WILL SPEND $100 MILLION DOLLARS TO KILL THE “PUBLIC OPTION” IN THE NEW HEALTH REFORM PACKAGE.

THAT SHOULD TELL YOU TWO THINGS: [1] THEY ARE AFRAID THEY WILL BE FORCED TO COMPETE AND THUS REDUCE THEIR DISPROPORTIONATELY HIGH PRICES WHICH HAVE ALLOWED THEM TO RAKE IN HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS ANNUALLY—THANKS TO EVERY REPUBLICAN PRESDIENT SINCE RONALD REAGAN AND THE BOX CAR FULL OF TAX BREAKS THE GOP HAS SO GENEROUSLY GIVEN THE INDUSTRY AT THE EXPENSE OF THE MAN ON THE STREET. [2] THERE IS A VERY GOOD CHANCE FOR THE CONGRESS TO PASS THE OBAMA BILL THAT WILL PUT A DEFINITE CRAMP IN THEIR STYLE.

THE VERY SAME RIGHT WING NEANDERTHALS, WHO MASTERMINDED THE FRAUDULENT FLORIDA PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION RESULTS FOR BUSH IN 2000, ARE THE INSTIGATORS BEHIND THE 2009 “KILL THE HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL NOW!” CAMPAIGN.

REMEMBER THE FORTY OR FIFTY PEOPLE THAT DISRUPTED THE VOTE COUNT IN SOUTH FLORIDA? REMEMBER THEIR CONSPICULOUSLY SATISFIED LOOK AS THEY KICKED, SCEAMED AND DISLOCATE THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS IN ACTION.

LAST EVENING, RACHEL MADDOW, PLACED NUMBERS AND NAMES BESIDE NINE [9] OR SO OF THE PEOPLE WHO WERE WORKING THE PHILADELPHIA MEETING THAT 40 OUT OF 400 PEOPLE TRIED TO PREVENT THE AVERAGE CITIZENS FROM GETTING THE ANSWERS THEY SOUGHT FOR THE LINGERING QUESTIONS ABOUT THE HEALT CARE REFORM.

THIS TIME THE RIGHT WING REPUBLICANS, WITH THEIR MILLIONS OF DOLLARS READIED TO BUY TELEVISION ADS ON EVERY TELEVISION STATION IN THE COUNTRY, NOT ONLY FAILED TO DISTURB THE MEETING, BUT THEY EMBARRASSED THEMSELVES ON NATIONAL TELEVISION.

THEY ACTED MORE LIKE PRISONERS RIOTING IN THE HELL HOLE OF ONE OF STATE PRISONS THAN HONORABLE MEN AND WOMEN TRULY INTERESTED IN OBTAINING ANSWERS FOR SERIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION FACING THIS COUNTRY IN THE PAST 100 YEARS.

THEY WILL CONTINUE THEIR CAMPAIGN OF DISTURBANCE AND COMMOTION AT EVERY MEETING BETWEEN NOW AND THE DAY OF THE VOTE.

I AM SORRY TO SAY THAT THEY REMIND ME ALL TOO POIGNANTLY OF THE BROWN SHIRTS AND NAZIS FOLLOWERS OF ADOLPH HITLER WHO BROKE UP MEETINGS DESIGNED TO STOP THE COUNTRY FROM CHOOSING FREEDOM OVER DICTATORSHIP.

FREEDOM FROM INTOLERABLE HEALTH CARE COSTS, QUESTIONABLE INSURANCE PRACTICES AND CONGRESSIONAL HOSTAGES TO THE SPECIAL INTERESTS THAT ARE POURING MONEY INTO THEIR CAMPAIGN COFFERS TO BUY THEIR VOTE AND KEEP THESE SINISTER LEGISLATORS IN LINE.

FOR FAR TOO LONG OUR NATION’S ENTIRE AGENDA HAS BEEN IN THE HANDS OF BIG OIL COMPANIES, INSURANCE CONGLOMERATES, GARGANTUAN FINANCIAL CORPORATIONS THAT ARE TOO BIG TO ALLOW TO FAIL AND COLOSSAL PHARMACEUTICAL ENTITIES THAT HAVE BEEN IN CONTROL OF THE WHITE HOUSE, THE CONGRESS AND STATE CAPITALS FROM ONE END OF THE NATION TO THE OTHER. THIS MUST STOP AND OBAMA IS GETTING SUCH A HORRIFIC TIME IN HIS ATTEMPT TO BRING A HALT TO THE MONOPOLY THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX HOLDS OVER THE HEADS OF THE NATION THAT THEY WILL DO ANYTHING TO DESTROY HIS AGENDA.

BUT HIS AGENDA IS OUT AGENDA. WE MUST WORK OUR ASSES OFF TO SQUELCH THESE WEASELS AND THEIR PUBLIC RELATIONS PEOPLE ON FOX NEWS.

THE PEOPLE MUST TAKE BACK THEIR COUNTRY AND THEIR POWER. THIS NATION OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE AND FOR THE PEOPLE MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO PERISH AT THE WHIMS OF SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS.

PART THREE [3] OF A THREE [3] PART SERIES ON HEALTH CARE REFORM

THE HEALTH CARE ISSUE IS BEING ASSAILED BY THE REPUBLICAN RIGHT AND THE BLUE DOG (ULTRA CONSERVATIVE SOUTHERN AND WESTERN) DEMOCRATS WHO DO NOT GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THE UNINSURED, THE UNDERINSURED, THE UNEMPLOYED, THE SICK, THE ELDERLY OR THE MASSIVE COST INCREASES IN INSURANCE PREMIUMS FACING THE REST OF THE COUNTRY

The following defense of the public option is a remarkable rebuttal to Grassley’s study. “Grassley’s fear of 119 million Americans voting with their pocketbooks against private health insurance represents a remarkable admission of failure by the industry and its backers. It says, in effect, that the industry’s treatment of its customers has been so highhanded over the decades that the industry can only survive if Americans are left with the unappetizing choice of private coverage or no coverage”

Another opinion by a health care expert on the public option makes this point:

“Indeed, if a public option were to be piggybacked onto the existing Medicare bureaucracy, the chances for savings could be impressive for average Americans and the overall American economy.

Insurance middlemen could be eliminated; investigators who ferret out “preexisting conditions” wouldn’t be needed; doctors could save on administrative costs; the burden on U.S. industry providing health benefits could be reduced; and more money could be freed to cover the nearly 50 million uninsured or for actual doctoring.

For a nation facing multiple fiscal crises – all complicated by the costs of health care – one might think that the most sure thing in the health care debate would be to allow a cost-saving public option, which as President Barack Obama says would help keep private health insurers “honest” regarding their promises to trim waste and control premiums.”

And yet again another health care professional makes this point—“The Democrats could argue that the public option is not only popular but could save money for struggling U.S. businesses by bringing down their health insurance costs and freeing up more money for investment and for the hiring of new workers.”

Indeed, there would be defections if the insurance industry does not present a premium package that is competitive. No employee will remain with a health insurance industry that has drained his bank account dry for decades and fought him consistently by denying him the right to medical procedures vital to his well-being.

Further, if Grassley is truly representing his constituents in Iowa and not the profits or survival of the health insurance business, then he would see that insurance companies will continue to increase their premiums and collect their gigantic profits at his constituents’ expense. He, too, can be dropped by the voters of Iowa.

Here is what we are up against. In a resent study by Common Cause entitled Legislating Under the Influence “…found that the health care industry is spending $1.4 million per day to lobby Congress, and has targeted millions in campaign contributions to the committee members responsible for crafting a health care reform bill.”

Let Mr. Grassley, the entire Republican entourage, as well as the voices of the Republican Party including Rush Limbaugh, the Fox News Network and the CATO Institute that one of the key factors in forcing the American auto industry to collapse was the cost of health insurance benefits for the employees which caused the companies to increase the price of their cars thus driving them out of competition with the remainder of the auto manufactures from countries providing government controlled health insurance benefits at no cost to the auto manufacturers themselves and not included in the price of their automobiles.

Those who say that Obama is moving too fast fail to realize that every day that this bill is delayed, people are dying and opposition will have time to persist in their ruthless attacks on the bill. And most of those who want a delay are simply attempting to buy time and smother the enthusiasm the general public has for the reform.

This bill was first placed on the American agenda in 1912 by Theodore Roosevelt, later by Harry S. Truman in 1945 with many attempts including the very aggressive but failed effort by Hillary Clinton in 1993. How much longer must the American people wait to get out from under the grasp of special interests groups that have controlled this agenda for this subject for decades. How much longer must the vast majority of the American people who support health care reform [over 70%] for our politicians to get enough balls to stand up to all special interests involved in this issue including the right wing of the Republican Party and Blue Dog Democrats “who are looking at the world through their belly button.”

As the bill moves with the speed of a crippled snail on crutches through the committees of Congress, the Republicans are doing as they always do. They are bringing out the horse droppings and looking for anything to divert the concentration of voting members in the Congress and the American public from seeing the facts surrounding this issue.

`If the right-wing, anal retentive, blockers in both the Democratic and Republican Parties stop this healthcare reform package they will forever have their pictures and bios stored in the Hall of Shame. This is the best chance the American people have had in decades to obtain the healthcare they want and deserve.

David Axelrod, one of the president’s key advisers, speaking with the media had this to say--"The bottom line here is right now healthcare premiums have doubled over the last decade. Out-of-pocket costs up by a third," he said. "Health care costs are growing three times the rate of wages."

“It's an unsustainable path," Axelrod added, "and the government is being crunched by it, businesses are being crushed by it. We have to respond."

A report published on Injury.com entitled “Insuring Health or Ensuring Profit? A Look at the financial Gains of [the state of] Washington Health Insurers makes the following analysis:

“ …the big three carriers in Washington, Regence BlueShield, Premera Blue Cross and Group Health Cooperative saw profits increase from $11 million in 2002 to $243 million in 2003 and $431 million in 2006. Their cash surplus went from $833 million in 2002 to $2.2 billion (with a "B") in 2006. Interestingly enough they did it while covering fewer people. Over 2.37 million people were covered by the three in 2002 compared to 1.9 million in 2006... but the profits by private health insurance companies are rising even faster. The article shows medical costs rose 16 percent in the same period that health insurance profits went up 23 percent.

The National Health Care Coalition reports the following;

“In 2008, total national health expenditures were expected to rise 6.9 percent -- two times the rate of inflation.¹ Total spending was $2.4 TRILLION in 2007, or $7900 per person1. Total health care spending represented 17 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).

U.S. health care spending is expected to increase at similar levels for the next decade reaching $4.3 TRILLION in 2017, or 20 percent of GDP.¹

In 2008, employer health insurance premiums increased by 5.0 percent – two times the rate of inflation. The annual premium for an employer health plan covering a family of four averaged nearly $12,700. The annual premium for single coverage averaged over $4,700.²

Experts agree that our health care system is riddled with inefficiencies, excessive administrative expenses, inflated prices, poor management, and inappropriate care, waste and fraud. These problems significantly increase the cost of medical care and health insurance for employers and workers and affect the security of families.”

So much for the Republican propaganda that the Obama bill will force massive lay offs because small businesses will be forced to pay so much more in employee insurance premiums that they will be unable to pay the increases and maintain their personnel at the same time is a farce.

John Boehner, you and your propaganda squad are nothing but liars and frankly those of us who need reform in our health care system get sick just listening to your false accusations and fabricated statistics.

The Congress is blessed with one of the truly superior health insurance packages ever offered anywhere. For the rest of their lives our Representatives and Senators not only luxuriate in the finest retirement package one could want, but that retirement includes an equally untouchable health insurance package. Now the question is, if they accept the unique benefit that comes with their office, why are some of them so reluctant to make that same package available to our citizens?

The Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats insist the package is too expensive; too expensive for whom? They also believe that the price tag associated with the Obama reform package will gravely increase the debt.

This same group of right wing uncompassionate, unsympathetic and uncaring members of our Congress gladly put this country in alarming debt by supporting the Bush tax cut for the rich and by his inexcusable war in Iraq that, in the end, will cost this nation more money than any healthcare reform package. I urge Congress to get the prejudicially unfair tax cuts given to the top 2% of wager earners in America back to the 98% of Americans who have enjoyed no income increases in a decade while the richest have gotten only richer.

Why are men of this plumage [those who feel complacent satisfaction with themselves] so quick to fund wars, but so reluctant to provide vital social services such as healthcare to the sick, elderly, uninsured, underinsured, unemployed, chronically ill, or lost in the jungle of poverty?

Is it pure selfish greed? Is it calloused indifference? Is it their tendency to be so far outdated in their thinking that they believe they are always right? Or is it simply their fear of loosing the millions of dollars in campaign funds they presently receive from health care and insurance corporations?

We must urge the American citizens not vote against their own self-interest on behalf of some antiquated ideology that will pay your medical costs and prevent you from visiting the bankruptcy judge should you get hit with a major health emergency!

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:56:21 GMT

PART TWO [2] OF A THREE [3] PART SERIES ON HEALTH CARE REFORM

However the biggest threat comes from the ultra-Conservative members of the Republican Party. When founded, its leader, Abraham Lincoln wrote, “Government should do for people what they cannot do for themselves or do so well.” I have incorporated this quote into fifty blogs over the years simply because when you compare the philosophy of the first Republican President with the philosophy of those who head the party today you can readily see why they have been clobbered in recent elections. They are so out of touch with the new majority of Americans that they redefine the word irrelevant.

Senator James Demint [R-SC] struck the match that set fire to the followers of Obama and those who support the passage of the Health Reform bill this year! The detestable Senator from South Carolina encouraged Republicans to kill this bill in order to bring President Obama down. Obviously, he does not realize the number of people in his own rather poverty ridden state who are in dire need of a reform of our failed health care system. Hopefully in his next election those people will kick this idiot out of office. But when it comes to South Carolina, one never knows.

In 1993, the Republican Party employed every dirty trick their devious little minds could muster. They killed Hillary’s health care reform effort and the defeat led to control of the Congress by Republican conservatives until 2006 [which, in fact, squelched any further effort to pass this urgently needed legislation which has been dormant for 16 years.]

Now we have a leader on the Democratic side of the ledger who is also a fighter. More importantly, we have the public behind the president’s plan. According to a recent New York Times poll an amazing 72% favor health care reform, favor the public option to give insurance companies that are making more money than God some competition, and more importantly, 57% say they are willing to pay higher taxes. The Republicans and the Blue Dogs should read these polls very carefully for their future in politics depends on it.

We know that forces other than the Blue Dog Democrats and the Republican Party are at work to hasten the death of health care reform. You can bet that the insurance companies are putting millions of dollars into the effort. In addition, many in the health care professionals that are making more money than their service is worth have invested even more millions to delay, to castrate the important portions of the reform to make them unproductive . And, of course, those who are simply opposed to any program initiated by the government for the very simple reason that in their sordid minds the government cannot effectively run anything. Of course, this is the residual effect of the Reagan-Goldwater ploy to decree that the government is ineffective And, of course, on the far right there are those who fear the government will allow abortion, birth control and stem cell research to expand.

Now the Republicans are pulling out their muskets to try to shoot holes in the Obama plan:

· There was a full page ad in major newspapers on July 23, 2009 paid for by the CATO institute. Wikipedia describes CATO this way: “The Institute's stated mission is "to broaden the parameters of public policy debate to allow consideration of the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets, and peace" by striving "to achieve greater involvement of the intelligent, lay public in questions of (public) policy and the proper role of government."

· When I took the time to review the foundations that are funding this very conservative institute, I saw the name Richard Mellon Scaife, I knew it was up to no good. If you recall, it was Scaife who put up the money to destroy the presidency of Bill Clinton by paying Arkansas Highway Patrol personnel to lie about the sex life of Clinton. It was a magazine funded by Scaife—The American Spectator that initially published the article by David Brock that ultimately became the basis for The Whitewater Scandal that was investigated by Kenneth Starr, a right wing attorney who spent $70,000,000. to try kill not only Clinton’s presidency, but in particular, the polices espoused by Clinton including Health Care Reform

· In the CATO Institute’s full page ad carried in key newspaper across the country, a gigantic headline reads “YOUR NEW DOCTOR?” Below was an enormous picture of UNCLE SAME POINTING HIS FIGURE DIRECTLY INTO THE FACE OF THE READER. This lie , the first of several carried in the ad, was obviously the main message these Neanderthals wanted to send to the readers. But there were four other lies highlighted in the ad that accused the Obama’s bill of the following

LIE # 1.---REDUCE HEALTH CARE QUALITY

LIE # 2.---INCREASE COSTS

LIE # 3.---LIMIT CHOICES OF DOCTORS

LIE # 4.---INCREASE THE FEDERAL DEFICIT

· The opposition of health care reform has garnered the support of the Fox [Republican] News Network to fight the issue of every program 24/7.

a. In their news casts they fill the viewers’ minds with every kind of misconception that their staff can cook up such as the following headline: “While Obama declares he won’t sign health care reform that increases the deficit, a Republican analysis projects years of red ink

b. They divert the attention of their audience away from the facts of health care reform and on to subjects that plant suspicions of Obama U. S. citizenship and one of these right wing nuts goes so far as to introduce a bill in the Congress requiring all future presidents to provide birth certificates validating their place, date, time of birth and parent heritage.

c. Sean Hannity and Dick Morris manufacture propaganda by telling their viewer—GOVERNMENT WILL DECIDE WHAT PROCEDURES YOU CAN HAVE AND CAN DENY YOUR HEALTH CARE.

They know full well that the president has committed to a reform program that will remove the insurance companies from standing between the doctor and the patient and establish an independent, non-governmental panel of health professional to make determinations about any questionable procedure with the task of only choosing those procedures that improve the patient’s well-being.

d. On the air, continually over the past few month, Fox News has being aiding the Republican Party by practicing a form of shock journalism and frightening the American people about the deficit ”If you are concerned about a $1.7 trillion deficit…” This lie can be proven simply by looking at the report the Director of the Congressional Budget Office presented to Congress. His staff projected a cost of $1.0 trillion dollar to initiated the health care reform, but he made it plain that his staff had no way to determine whether it would contribute to the deficit since it had not taken into account any of the many bills that have been submitted to make the program deficit free by raising funds from other sources such as excluding wasteful programs and taxing extraneous items such as soda, etc.

e. Eric Cantor [R-VA] the minority Whip of the House tried to scare the living hell out of small business people who are too busy to read the actual bill and the Chairman of Congressional Budget Office’s letter to the Charles Rangel [D-NY] . Cantor is wrong. He knows he is lying, but the Republicans will do anything, say anything, and write anything they believe will defeat this bill which their major contributors in the health care and more importantly the insurance field oppose. He insinuated that the cost of health care costs proposed in this reform will force small business to lay off more and more people during this recession. Again, the good Mr. Cantor is wrong. If nothing is done to our broken system, then small businesses will be forced either to lay off employees or reduce their health benefits or force the employees to take more and more of the cost out of their pay checks.

f. The House minority leader, John Boehner, warned that a government takeover of health care will cost jobs, and drive down the quality…out of current health care. Mr. Boehner has been around long enough and is presumably intelligent enough to know that what is causing health insurance layoffs will not be the result of a “government takeover” which is not even under consideration, it is because health insurance premiums charged to small business has gotten way out of hand.

g. Rep. Jeb Hensarling [R-5 TX]: Lower costs can be attained with medical malpractice reform. Obviously Representative Hensarling has done his homework. Medical malpractice is a device used to insure patients get the best medical care possible and the doctors who administer that care are trained and professional. Modifications in the malpractice laws are needed, but the savings to the cost of health care will be minor at best.

h. Ann Coulter, the obsessed conservative pundit who makes money off of the naïveté of conservatives by writing lies and misconceptions about the president and the Democratic Party said recently that opinion polls reveal that the public is losing trust in Obama and the Democratic Party. There, indeed, has been a slight drop in the public’s view of the health care reform proposals and an even smaller decrease in Obama’s approval rating. However, there is not doubt we can attribute this slight downturn to Coulter and her friends at Fox News and the opponents of the health reform bill who have been advertising like hyenas in heat. That will change once Obama’s program has passed the Congress and his enemies have nothing more to talk about except what they can conjure up in the diminutive minds.

i. Senator Grassley [R-IA] offered up a study presumably supported by the health insurance industry that predicted that if a public option is voted into law, 119 million employees will drop their employer based insurance and sign up for the public option.

PART THREE[3] OF THIS THREE [3] PART SERIES WILL BE POSTED ON FRIDAY, JULY 31, 2009