Category Archives: politics

Is this how the moral Germans felt?

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While Hitler was spewing his hateful lies and masterminding the most horrific manipulations of all times, the good and powerless German people who understood and feared what he was trying to do must have felt the way that some of us do these days. Nothing we say or write or do seems to deter the crooks and liars who are so fiercely opposing the kind of Universal Health Care system that would save lives and ultimately save money as well. The right-wing conservatives are railroading to its certain death the ability of this country to keep its citizens healthy.

How viciously ironic that the Right/eous portray President Obama as a Hitler figure, when it is they, his opponents, who are copying Hitler’s tactics of spreading distortions and disinformation, manipulating and inventing language that totally misrepresents the truth and stirs up the most primal fears of those who adhere to the right-wing’s philosophy and values

This from an article in The Nation: Reverse Reverse Nazism and the War on Universal Healthcare

The spinmeisters of the right have done quite a job with what used to be straightforward English etymology. Thanks to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, “integration” was inverted to mean “takeover” and “colorblindness” is code for abandoning the advances of the civil rights movement, which itself is synonymous with an “industry” of exclusion. It’s no surprise, then, that whenever a piece of progressive legislation comes to the table, the same manipulations come into play from right-wing pundits who shamelessly profess their desire to see the Obama presidency fail. Thus it is that America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 is being turned upside down as the neat equivalent of Germany’s Bankrupting Forced Death Act of 1939.

Like the Nazis, the Right/eous are playing to the fears of people are afraid that change will somehow mean that they will get less because someone else will get more. They are the same people who were afraid of integration and feminism, and they follow the leaders who validate their fears and keep them riled up and misinformed.

From the article cited above (read the entire piece here):

But if you listen as though deciphering pig Latin and realize that this demographic is speaking from a well-managed, near-hypnotic looking-glass world where every word from the mouth of a Democrat (or a liberal, or a Latina, or a Canadian) is a lie, a betrayal… then it all makes sense. Their world truly has been turned inside out, by the election, by the economy, by the precarious conditions that threaten us all. But for those whose sense of identity has been premised on a raced, masculinist, conservative Christian hierarchy of American power, the world must seem even more emotionally terrifying than any actual facts would indicate.

I am afraid. They are afraid. If the Health Care legislation doesn’t pass, I think ALL of our fears will be realized. They will get less of what they already have. I will be OK because I have health benefits from a government job, but my adult son and the millions (yes, I said MILLIONS) like him will still go without.

This is the time for strong moral leadership to step up and take some risks and vehemently press for a Universal Health Care System that, when enacted, will alleviate all of our fears.

I am inclined to ask here, “What Would Jesus Do?” Certainly not support the profiteers of the for-profit health care industry.

C’mon President Obama. Rise to the position of leadership that we put you on and press for the changes we so desperately need.

a time to disbelieve

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This quote from Talking Points Memo.

Rightwing fearmongers and demagogues
thrive only to the extent the mainstream media
believes they’re thriving.

It’s all a matter of persistent marketing, isn’t it? Say something loud enough and often enough and pretty soon it will be believed.

The leaders of the Right/eous (both political and religious) know and use this strategy well. And, in many cases these days, various Right/eous factions have banded together to strategically defeat a health care plan for America that will both save lives and money.

While there is evidence from other countries regarding how well a single payer national health plan can and does work there is no evidence showing that it won’t work here in America. There is only the persistent and consistent marketing message from Right/eous telling us to believe that it won’t work and that any health care reform has to come about very slowly.

What is this, “faith-based politics”?

The TPM piece cited above ends with this:

Sometimes reform has to occur in a big way, everything or nothing, if it’s to happen at all. That’s the way it is with health care reform at this stage. Every moving piece is related to every other one. That’s also why a public option is necessary.

So forget the authoritative sources. Mobilize and organize. We can get comprehensive, meaningful health care reform if we push hard enough. And we must.

we’ve been punked; wake up Mr. Pres.

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Now, politics is the art of the possible. Mr. Obama was never going to get everything his supporters wanted.

But there’s a point at which realism shades over into weakness, and progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of that line. It seems as if there is nothing Republicans can do that will draw an administration rebuke: Senator Charles E. Grassley feeds the death panel smear, warning that reform will “pull the plug on grandma,” and two days later the White House declares that it’s still committed to working with him.

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

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

The above from Paul Krugman’s piece in the Times.

C’mon, Mr. Pres. You can’t be that naive, and I hope that you’re not as wishy washy as you’re starting to seem.

C’mon, Mr. Pres. Time to conjure up FDR’s ghost and put some spine in your stand. He might not have looked like he had it, but he had it when it counted.

We voted for change when we voted to you, Mr. Pres. Not small change, either.

They all might be right-wingers, but you were in the right when you promised to push the single payer plan.

Hold your single payer line, Mr. Pres. If not you, who?

I just paid more than $160 for a month’s supply of Nexium because United Health Care does not have that med on its list of drugs that it will cover. (That’s $160 even with a coupon that got me a 20% discount.) I’ve tried three other substitute drugs that are on the list, but none of them work on my GERD problem.

Now, it’s not as though I have a fatal illness or some precondition that my health care insurance refuses to provide medication or other coverage for. But I do pay premiums for which I, obviously, am not getting the benefits I used to get.

And it ain’t going to get any better because the system, as it is, sucks.

Stop letting the ignorant/greedy/selfish (take your pick or add more descriptors) right-wingers nickel and dime us all to death, Mr.Pres.

We voted for change.

CHANGE OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM TO SINGLE PAYER!

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW???

onward to single payer

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That’s the Single Payer health plan supported by everyone who understands how the system can work.

Anyone who wants to can easily find out the truths about the health care issue by doing a reality check.

I just don’t understand why people think that corporate-run health care will look out for their interests. Corporations, by their very nature, are in it to make a profit. So, logically corporate run health care needs to maximize premiums and minimize payments so that they can make a profit. Health care corporations

A thoughtful article in The New Republic calls the right-wings manipulations of the health care reform issues similar to the Swift Boat machinations that torpedoed John Kerry’s bid for the presidency in 2004.

Snippets from that article:

Exhibit number one is the treatment of Eziekel Emanuel, the distinguished oncologist and bioethicist who is working on health reform at the Office of Management and Budget. In the course of his writings, which span academia and popular publications, he has argued forcefully and clearly against physician-assisted suicide. Yet somehow Emanuel finds himself accused of–wait for it–advocating physician assisted suicide.

Every year, millions of families struggle to get affordable medical care for themselves or their loved ones–and end up in financial ruin, going without medical care, or some combination of the two. Many of these cases involve diseases like cerebral palsy or Parkinson’s–or other conditions that require ongoing, expensive care.

Insurance companies try their best to avoid taking on these people. Apply for an individual policy with one of these pre-existing conditions and an insurer will reject you if it can. If it can’t–if, say, you’re lucky enough to get coverage through an employer–you may well find the insurance doesn’t cover what you need.

It’d be one thing if the lunatics on the right had a coherent argument for why these initiatives might be ineffective or counterproductive. But they don’t even bother to acknowledge them, preferring instead to throw out scare quotes like this one from Palin: “Who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course.”

Of course, not all conservatives stoop to this level. You can have a rational, if still contentious, debate over health reform with the likes of Stuart Butler (who studies health policy at the Heritage Foundation) or Gail Wilensky (who ran Medicare for George H.W. Bush). But Butler, Wilensky, and others like them aren’t driving the conversation right now. Palin, Bachmann, and their allies are.

We’re stuck in what Josh Marshall has called a “nonsense feedback loop”–a conversation in which Zeke Emanuel wants to kill grandma, health care reform is bad for the people who can’t get health care, and Stephen Hawking has been snuffed out by the British National Health System. Instead of arguments that are unrelated to reality, we’re getting arguments that are the very opposite of reality.

Vehement right-wing opposition to government reform (fueled by those who have nothing to gain from such reform because they gain a great deal from the status quo) is not new. A piece in the Washington Post, In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting Condition shines a spotlight on this pattern of right-wing disinformation dissemination. It’s the old “don’t confuse me with the truth; I know what I believe” syndrome.

The instigation is always the familiar litany: expansion of the commonweal to empower new communities, accommodation to internationalism, the heightened influence of cosmopolitans and the persecution complex of conservatives who can’t stand losing an argument. My personal favorite? The federal government expanded mental health services in the Kennedy era, and one bill provided for a new facility in Alaska. One of the most widely listened-to right-wing radio programs in the country, hosted by a former FBI agent, had millions of Americans believing it was being built to intern political dissidents, just like in the Soviet Union.

So, crazier then, or crazier now? Actually, the similarities across decades are uncanny. When Adlai Stevenson spoke at a 1963 United Nations Day observance in Dallas, the Indignation forces thronged the hall, sweating and furious, shrieking down the speaker for the television cameras. Then, when Stevenson was walked to his limousine, a grimacing and wild-eyed lady thwacked him with a picket sign. Stevenson was baffled. “What’s the matter, madam?” he asked. “What can I do for you?” The woman responded with self-righteous fury: “Well, if you don’t know I can’t help you.”

A comment left on the It’s Your Times website by “Wise Merlin” pretty much covers all the problems with the current health care system in America in language that even the least literate right-wingers can understand.

Meanwhile, closet right-wingers are popping up in the least expected places. According to Alternet.org, John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods has launched a major campaign to defeat a single payer national health insurance system.

Whole Foods, “Primo hangout of liberal Democratic yuppies,” should be boycotted, the article goes on to say.

Mackey leads his Wall Street Journal diatribe against national health insurance with a quote from one of his heroines – Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

And the problem with Mackey’s campaign is that it results in the deaths of 60 Americans every day due to lack of health insurance.

Mackey is responsible for these deaths as much as anyone.

And we are responsible for putting money into his Whole Food bank account so that he can continue his campaign without resistance.

I know that this boycott of Whole Foods will upset many liberal Democrats.

Where will they buy their organic wines?

And cheeses?

And tofu?

There are options.

Your local health food co-op.

Farmers’ markets.

Community supported agriculture.

Other corporate chains like Trader Joe’s.

So, please, join the Single Payer Action Boycott of Whole Foods.

Don’t cross the picket lines.

Don’t spend another penny at Whole Foods until John Mackey and his right wing friends are defeated.

And single payer is enacted.

Onward to single payer.

Just as in the times of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President Obama is faced with two connected but separate American crises: the recession/depression of this greedy capitalist economy and the struggle of ordinary citizens to survive on various fronts (health, jobs, education etc.)

According this article:

FDR was not able to solve the economic/capitalist problems of the Great Depression. World War II did that. [Obama is faced with finding a less drastic solution.]

But FDR did make life better for America’s not-wealthy citizens, focusing his New Deal on relief for individuals who through no fault of their own were unable to provide for themselves; recovery of the economy so that business would be able to start hiring people again; and reform of the government and the economy to avoid the recurrence of problems that had risen persistently during the industrial age.

His list of enacted legislation included the Social Security Act and the Wagner Act, which enabled the formation of labor unions.

Highly paid corporate executives, who can afford to sock away millions that slip through tax loopholes and who see labor unions as depriving their businesses of additional profit, don’t believe that FDR’s New Deal was that much of a big deal. And so neither do they support Obama’s administration’s efforts to fix the same kinds of problems that FDR faced. After all, those are the problems of the “common man” and have nothing to do with them.

It is time for us common people to rise up and take our country back from the greedy and self-centered who really have no stake in improving the quality of our lives and our health care.

ONWARD TO SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE.

PS. For those who need a visual aid for health care reform, here’s a great one.

hey you anti-universal health care people!

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Wake up! You’re being manipulated by those who can afford to pay for their own most expensive health care.

From here, where’s there are more links to truthful information.

Top Five Health Care Reform Lies—and How to Fight Back

Lie #1: President Obama wants to euthanize your grandma!!!

The truth: These accusations—of “death panels” and forced euthanasia—are, of course, flatly untrue. As an article from the Associated Press puts it: “No ‘death panel’ in health care bill.”1 What’s the real deal? Reform legislation includes a provision, supported by the AARP, to offer senior citizens access to a professional medical counselor who will provide them with information on preparing a living will and other issues facing older Americans.2

If you’d like to read the actual section of the legislation that spawned these outrageous claims (Section 1233 of H.R. 3200) for yourself, here it is. It’s pretty boring stuff, which is why the accusations that it creates “death panels” is so absurd. But don’t take our word for it, read it yourself.

Lie #2: Democrats are going to outlaw private insurance and force you into a government plan!!!

The truth: With reform, choices will increase, not decrease. Obama’s reform plans will create a health insurance exchange, a one-stop shopping marketplace for affordable, high-quality insurance options.3 Included in the exchange is the public health insurance option—a nationwide plan with a broad network of providers—that will operate alongside private insurance companies, injecting competition into the market to drive quality up and costs down.4 If you’re happy with your coverage and doctors, you can keep them.5 But the new public plan will expand choices to millions of businesses or individuals who choose to opt into it, including many who simply can’t afford health care now.

Lie #3: President Obama wants to implement Soviet-style rationing!!!

The truth: Health care reform will expand access to high-quality health insurance, and give individuals, families, and businesses more choices for coverage. Right now, big corporations decide whether to give you coverage, what doctors you get to see, and whether a particular procedure or medicine is covered—that is rationed care. And a big part of reform is to stop that.

Health care reform will do away with some of the most nefarious aspects of this rationing: discrimination for pre-existing conditions, insurers that cancel coverage when you get sick, gender discrimination, and lifetime and yearly limits on coverage.6 And outside of that, as noted above, reform will increase insurance options, not force anyone into a rationed situation.

Lie #4: Obama is secretly plotting to cut senior citizens’ Medicare benefits!!!

The truth: Health care reform plans will not reduce Medicare benefits.7 Reform includes savings from Medicare that are unrelated to patient care In fact, the savings comes from cutting billions of dollars in overpayments to insurance companies and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.8

Lie #5: Obama’s health care plan will bankrupt America!!!

The truth: We need health care reform now in order to prevent bankruptcy—to control spiraling costs that affect individuals, families, small businesses, and the American economy. Right now, we spend more than $2 trillion dollars a year on health care.9 The average family premium is projected to rise to over $22,000 in the next decade10—and each year, nearly a million people face bankruptcy because of medical expenses.11 Reform, with an affordable, high-quality public option that can spur competition, is necessary to bring down skyrocketing costs. Also, President Obama’s reform plans would be fully paid for over 10 years and not add a penny to the deficit.

I’m looking at the photos that b!X took and posted on Flickr of the emotionally charged gathering in Portland OR regarding the health care issue. We are, indeed, a country manipulated into being divided. What a shame.

when comics were king and we didn’t worry

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It was the 40s. Comic books were 10 cents, and Mr. Wellman, who owned the news stand down the block from my house had a wall full of constantly updated comic books, which he let me read for free while I sat on the bench and munched on penny candy.

On the way back from visiting my mother yesterday, I listened to a piece on NPR about Harvey Kurtzman the creator and driving force behind Mad Comics and later, Mad Magazine.

By the time the 50s arrived, my interests were moving away from comic books and more toward True Confessions and Mad Magazine.

From Wikipedia:

Comics historian Tom Spurgeon picked Mad as the medium’s top series of all time, writing, “At the height of its influence, Mad was The Simpsons, The Daily Show and The Onion combined.”[1] Graydon Carter chose it as the sixth best magazine of any sort ever, describing Mad’s mission as being “ever ready to pounce on the illogical, hypocritical, self-serious and ludicrous” before concluding, “Nowadays, it’s part of the oxygen we breathe.”[2] Joyce Carol Oates called it “wonderfully inventive, irresistibly irreverent and intermittently ingenious American.”[3] Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam wrote, “Mad became the Bible for me and my whole generation.”[4

Irreverence and ingenuity. They sort of go together.

There is something endearingly irreverent about Alfred E. Neuman, the poster boy for Mad Magazine, and his philosophy of “What, me worry?”

Alfred E.Neuman

It was the 50s, and I didn’t worry about much.

Nothing good lasts forever.

Alfred E. Bush

Except maybe irreverence.

Here’s a great comparison of the sayings of Alfred E. Neuman and George Bush, asking “Who would you trust?”

Irreverence.

Alfred Obama

One of the many great things about Obama is his ability to be irreverent about himself.

Yesterday, when I walked in the door of my now home after visiting my mother, I was greeted with a scene that was a far cry from the 50s. My son in law was ironing his shirts for the work week and my grandson was imitating him, using his toy iron on one of his own shirts laid out on a tray table.

There are lots of good things about it not being the 50s, even though we all do worry a lot.,

look for me at TGB

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I’m Ronni’s guest blogger today at Time Goes By, as she spends a couple of weeks in NYC at work and play, including participating in the Age Boom Academy.

From an 04/02/09 Time magazine editorial:

For the past several years, I’ve been harboring a fantasy, a last political crusade for the baby-boom generation. We, who started on the path of righteousness, marching for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam, need to find an appropriately high-minded approach to life’s exit ramp. In this case, I mean the high-minded part literally. And so, a deal: give us drugs, after a certain age – say, 80 – all drugs, any drugs we want. In return, we will give you our driver’s licenses. (I mean, can you imagine how terrifying a nation of decrepit, solipsistic 90-year-old boomers behind the wheel would be?) We’ll let you proceed with your lives – much of which will be spent paying for our retirement, in any case – without having to hear us complain about our every ache and reflux. We’ll be too busy exploring altered states of consciousness. I even have a slogan for the campaign: “Tune in, turn on, drop dead.”

Read the whole piece here. and go over the TGB to get my take on it.

Paul, Ringo, the Mararishi, me, and world peace

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Yup, I did it in the 70s — took a course in Transcendental Meditation. It was, indeed, relaxing. And, after all, the Beatles were doing it.

And now Paul and Ringo, along with filmmaker David Lynch, are promoting (and funding) introducing TM to public school students, especially those who are “at-risk.”

Of course, as the above linked story indicates,

“Public schools are not supposed to be in the business of promoting religion – and that means any religion,” said Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “Advocating for a Hindu-based religious practice in public schools is the same as pushing Christianity or another faith. It’s equally unconstitutional.”

Personally, I believe that the process that is called “meditation” is a great stress-reducer and can open the meditator to attitude-altering personal insights that bubble up from the subconscious. But you don’t need a religious framework to accomplish that.

Shortly after the rise in popularity of TM, Herbert Benson wrote a book called The Relaxation Response, outlining a meditative practice that is really TM without a connection to any spiritual belief. Sort of a TM for the secularist.

From here:

The relaxation response represents a form of meditation which has been practiced for many years. The technique can be found in every major religious tradition. It is a simple technique, but it is not easy to practice or to incorporate into your life. You will find your mind wandering, and you will probably find it difficult to set aside the time to practice. It feels like setting aside 20 minutes a day to sit and do nothing.

If you do incorporate this or any relaxation technique into your life you may notice at least the following four benefits:

* You will gain increased awareness of whether you are tense or relaxed. You will be more “in touch with your body.”
* You will be better able to relax when you become stressed-out.
* You may even reduce the resting level of your autonomic nervous system – walking around more relaxed all the time.
* Your concentration may improve. By repeatedly bringing yourself back to the meditation you are strengthening the part of your mind that decides what to think about.

Devotees of Transcendental Meditation believe that if enough people participated in the practice, world peace would be achieved. Well, maybe so, if meditation really does reduce stress and, therefore, related frustration and aggression.

But maybe it also would be true that if enough people practiced the Relaxation Response every day, we would move steadily toward world peace. Or, at least have a population less stressed and more insightful.

I wonder what would happen if public schools offered a “Relaxation Club” rather than a “Meditation Club” and used David Lynch’s foundation money to pay at-risk students to attend after school. It would be an interesting study to see if the process had a beneficial effect on those students. It would be the same process as “meditation,” but presented in a different package, one more legally appropriate to the “separation of church and state” Constitutional mandate.

The Transcendental Meditation website cites the value of meditation (AKA “the relaxation response”): creativity, focus, health, happiness, success.

I don’t know about “happiness” and “success,” but three out of five ain’t bad.

The site also quotes Dr. Gary Kaplan, a neurologist at NYU’s medical school:

“The TM technique simply and naturally allows the mind to settle down to experience a state of inner coherence and calm during which time the left and right hemispheres, and the front and back of the brain, begin to work in harmony with each other. This brain wave coherence has been correlated with improvements in memory, problem-solving and decision-making abilities. This change in brain functioning also affects the rest of the physiology, reducing high blood pressure, strengthening the heart, and overall improving health.”

I really do need to meditate (whatever you want to call it), but that means I have to spend less time online.

That’s the hard part.

first we take Manhattan
then we take Berlin

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Those are words in a Leonard Cohen song that keep running through my head as I read about the religious right in Texas trying to make fundamentalist changes to the state’s Social Studies curriculum. There are terrorists and then there are terrorists.

A press release from the Texas Freedom Network examines the situation, providing

…. the names of “experts” appointed by far-right state board members. Those panelists will guide the revision of social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools. They include David Barton of the fundamentalist, Texas-based group WallBuilders, whose degree is in religious education, not the social sciences, and the Rev. Peter Marshall of Peter Marshall Ministries in Massachusetts, who suggests that California wildfires and Hurricane Katrina were divine punishments for tolerance of homosexuality.

The Texas Freedom Network is a nonprofit, grassroots organization of faith and community leaders who support public education, religious freedom and individual liberties.