The phrase ‘only in America would this be possible’ is often said in gratitude by immigrants born into a class system or Americans born into poverty when they are acknowledged as leading citizens, and asked to share their story. These iconic stories of ’success earned, as it should be’ re-tell us that the American Dream lives & we are still ‘the land of opportunity’. America’s founding documents declare that in our country there are no positions at birth that impede great achievements, but instead a bill of guaranteed rights to a life of equally available opportunities. An immigrant born into a hierarchy can work hard in our country’s free-market system and earn not just money but stature and respect in the business community. He can earn his citizenship as well. Success in business is calculated impersonally, by summing assets, material value & profit margins. Community respect & admiration are accorded for hard work, self-reliance & dedication. A child born into poverty can learn the value of education & utilize public resources to earn not just scholastic achievement, but a position at the highest level in any field or practice imagined. She or he is accorded esteem as a living example that many great Americans share humble beginnings. Personal success rising from disadvantaged circumstances can be of purely personal value or, like the immigrant, measured by material wealth. The immigrant begins by selling oranges from a cart & becomes a billionaire, inventing a wildly popular orange beverage. The kid raised on food stamps begins with an education in organizing skills & becomes President of the United States of America. The latter forgoes fortune because the opportunities granted in this nation are priceless & the chance to serve its people is an honor. Only in America, both would say, would this be possible. Neither path to success or measure of achievement is applicable to the other endeavor. We experience a deeper national pride in the latter story of success; against all odds the scrappy individual finds opportunities he is told his country provides, he prevails with determination, confidence, ambition & courage. It is the story of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, and Oprah Winfrey and has the potential power, with no financial equal, to shift societal priorities & redefine the core values of a nation. Both kinds of success are encouraged in America because we begin with the belief we are created equal, with certain inalienable rights including the pursuit of a subjectively defined happiness. We all agree that America is uniquely blessed and characterized by these ideals. We do not all agree that all success is measured financially, and yet we all know some things should not be subject to free-market unlimited profit taking.
That said, I don’t agree that those who oppose healthcare insurance reform stand for nothing, or simply say “NO” on this issue. They are adamant in their commitment to principles that Americans hold dear. The principles the opposition stands FOR is the fundamental flaw in their argument against the reform of healthcare insurance practices. They are vociferously FOR protecting free-market capitalism, FOR supply & demand pricing, FOR drug company ‘agreements’ protecting pricing and patents* and FOR principles of capitalism in which money is exchanged for goods by agreement of both parties, without coercion or threat of physical force. What the opposition is FOR is not applicable to, or remotely related to a successful healthcare system. It’s a red-herring.
We have allowed healthcare insurers to cut coverage, reject quality over cost, cap pay-outs, dump ill human beings & fix prices for profit, so they can remaincompetitive with each other. Our sickness, our illnesses, & our treatments suck-up their profits. Ipso facto, our health and well-being are costly and the item of least concern to a profit-driven health insurance business. It was a mistake to allow the health of the nation’s citizens to be the basis for business opportunity, and a mistake to allow it to continue. Congressional opposition to reform howls about Socialism galloping over American economic principles, as if this mistaken application has squatter’s rights to the territory of healthcare insurance; the health of citizens be damned.
Private and public grade schools, universities, churches, the US Military and firefighters are not listed on the stock market because their success is not measured financially, for good reason. Those who oppose reform know this, and either know this is the flaw in their argument or are hereby notified. Healthcare insurance reform is necessary to correct an oversight. We let for-profit practices substitute for quality health care and did not foresee the need to project the unintended consequences of these misapplied practices & their inappropriate measures of success.
Of this we can be certain: no insurer will be denied treatment or die because their pay-out is capped, due to insurance reform. This is a pre-existing condition that is draining our economy, and we must treat it as it should be treated, for the health of our nation. A malignant cancer does not check your stock portfolio, your place in history or your financial assets before it proliferates in your body. Senator Kennedy knew this. He received the care of the world’s finest doctors, his suffering was eased & he benefited from experimental treatments that defied his initial prognosis for survival. We are all thankful for this, but Senator Kennedy publicly lamented that he received the finest treatment because he was born Edward Moore Kennedy, of wealth and fame, & had excellent government subsidized healthcare coverage. He said it as often as he could over 14 months: everyone should be treated with the quality care that he was treated. Everyone is created equal. Our founders wrote it as creed, and the Kennedy family worked for, stood for and lived for that principle. An oft-used pronouncement by many who oppose reform rings very true here, to we who support reform: every life is precious.
August 28, 2009
Senator Dianne FeinsteinUnited States Senate331 Hart Senate Office BuildingWashington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senator Feinstein:We are at a turning point in American history and you have the rarest of opportunities to take your place in this rich history.
Will you vigorously and openly support President Obama’s efforts for a public option in health care reform, or will you take the path of weaker, lesser human beings and cave into the lies and distortions being trumpeted hysterically from every media outlet the Republicans and Big Health and Big Pharm. can access?
Millions of Americans who are ready and financially ready to retire would do so if they had access to affordable health care. This would open up millions of employment opportunities for unemployed and underemployed Americans. When Americans no longer fear being bankrupted by exorbitant medical costs, they will do what Americans secure in their jobs and secure in their ability to pay their bills have always done: spend on necessities and other consumer goods, thereby stimulating our economic recovery in the healthiest and most effective way.
With recently strengthened consumer credit and banking regulations, no longer will working Americans fear having all they have worked for and saved for wiped out as a result of immoral, and what used to be illegal, financial manipulations. But more needs to be done.
Affordable government sponsored universal health care for all Americans, paid for by the contributions of all working Americans, can be a reality. You have an opportunity to assume an active leadership role in implementing legislation to this effect.
As a constituent, I urge you to speak out strongly, clearly, and quickly on what I believe is the most important issue of our lifetime.
I am one of the fortunate ones whose employer, upon my retirement, covered my health care premiums, at obscene rates, until I become officially a medicare recipient on September 1, 2009. As you know, my Medicare is not free. But the cost is fair and reasonable and the care is excellent. What a shame and a pity that all Americans do not have such an opportunity.
Your vote on the Iraq war can be understood considering the magnitude of the campaign of lies and deception promulgated by the previous administration. But this time the lies and deception are easily exposed. I assure you that when this issue is resolved with universal single-payer health care made available to all Americans, and the huge benefits to our country and our society as a whole begin to be realized, those who failed to champion the cause because of fear, lack of integrity, or personal financial or political gain will be forever be remembered for the spineless charlatans they proved to be.
Who will be the heroes?
There is a program on The History Channel, Medal of Honor, that chronicles the actions that many soldiers took while under intense pressure and enemy fire to earn our country’s highest military honor. Acting unselfishly and without regard for their personal safety, they took the least desirable or personally beneficial course of action, and instead did “the right thing.”
You, too, are under hostile fire. Lead the charge for a public health care option for all Americans now! Regardless of the result, you will be forever proud and honored for having done “the right thing.”
Sincerely,
MJM
originally posted: http://www.obamabidenusa.org/
Andy Card should apologize for his own stupidity. He said that President Obama is disrespecting the Constitution (insert irony) and Democracy (again, twisted irony) by not wearing a jacket in the Oval Office. He should apologize with his underpants around his ankles, because that is how I will always imagine him (and real tiny too). Quite simply,
‘If Jackets & Ties Made the Bush Administration Do What They Did, Then I Vote For Full Nudity In the Oval Office & on Air Force One, Immediately!’
What evil scheme are they cooking up without their jackets on?
How long do we have to put up with this graceless lack of patriotism from GOP has-beens, their cynical predictions of failure for we the people, President Obama & his administration, dis-respecting the will of the majority, a hopeful majority, hurling inane insults & the same lame fear-mongering we rejected in November? Two words of advice to Andy Card and Dick Cheney, SHUT UP! The country is in crisis, you jokers caused it and now you distract the A.D.D. media who should not, for one moment, publicize this petty crap. Andy and Dick do not live in my country, the one I helped change on the ground. They are capital, we are labor. As Lincoln said,
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
Snap! Obama got that right. We stood up first, took off the ties, rolled up our sleeves, put on the boots and the fruit came pouring in. So Andy, the best you can do is look a fool and attribute national values to Obama’s clothing, to the items he is not wearing? And Dickster, you proclaim President Obama’s lack of national values are clear because he has pledged to respect the US Constitution? What a wimp you are, to have had to wipe your bald pate off with the founding documents, as if they’d gone missing, in order to have your way. No, you could never play by the rules and get any job done. You do not have a single drop of greatness in your blood, and that is as it will remain. I am still confused about WTF you people were trying to do, and how you f**ked it up so stupendously with all that bad-ass experience you had. It must be hard for you to live in a country whose citizens turned on a dime and saw, 180 degrees away from where ever you were standing, their country. Over there, where the young organizer, jacketless, was describing that what he saw in his country, was what he hoped he would see. This country had shaped his family and that family valued education, they cultivated a wisdom beyond years, and a comprehensive world view untroubled by complexity but with a comfort and recognition that this facet of life allows for unimaginable possibilities. The call for self-reliance and community effort, national pride and global citizenry, made sense. It’s American! We’re the home of the free, the land of the brave. The genius of Barack Obama is in offering as anodyne for years of threats and warnings, an appeal to our American Spirit to labor for, not against, the impossible, a brave new future across a long rickety bridge. When we are no longer in crisis, no one will look back in longing at the dark and dreary country you created, gents. We are an accomplished people, generous and optimistic. You’re not. I admit that I did enjoy watching Keith Olberman on fire last nightin his special comment about Dick’s lowing, mutated remarks to Politico in a February 4th interview regarding President Obama’s proclamation against torture and other Un-Constitutional acts, as the founding fathers intended. You can’t look at these documents like one of your freaky oil contracts, with hidden clauses and contingencies you play to your advantage so you win and, therefore, the other party loses. Kid stuff Dick, frat boy crap at best. The difficult thing is to succeed by the principles of fairness set forth; liberty and justice for all. If you are scared Dick, to live in our country with President Obama as Commander In Chief, you are free to leave. That silly rag we call the Constitution didn’t get in your way as you pissed on the world like it was your fire-hydrant, just take your gun if you pass by the Hague in your travels. The ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ you used on the US Congress (on your buddy Dick Armey, for example) and on the good citizens of these United States to dupe* many into supporting your murderous invasion of a sovereign nation seems like some demented chess-game that you and Rummy never had a chance to finish back in the day. You anticipated, with little regret, the slaughter of not only the innocent people of Iraq, but also of our military men and women without a second thought. Everyone is worth sacrificing for your own small and vicious desires. What are they again? You said ‘to be respected’ is important, so thuggishness and slaughter renders respect for you? Is that cauldron of hatred so fetid inside you that you can no longer even recognize good ?
And Andy Card is so small I can’t even go there (I said tiny already, right?). But you heard it straight from Andy’s A*s, Neckties & Jackets = Democracy. May I suggest that Intelligence & Compassion = Humanity, and that Humility & Fairness= Equality , six things you can’t buy at Brooks Brothers, Andy. And the will of free people, to exercise their right to select and form a better government, the arc that bends toward justice. . . never mind. Go f**k-up the Union Pacific Railroad, Andy. I am sure with your priorities, you can make that failing institution die quickly, and in a coat and tie.
BTW, Huffington Post has slide show that shows Jesus Reagan in the Oval Office, in a RED cowboy shirt. That’s RED. I don’t have to tell you what red means.
*On the duping: President Obama (State Senator of Illinois at the time) wasn’t duped by your fear mongering Cheney, millions of us weren’t duped, including me. I have a letter that Congressman Berman (D-CA) wrote to me in response to my letter asking he not vote to authorize President Cheney’s request to use force in Iraq. I’m still waiting for an apology that is as considered as his defense of the invasion was. I received a non-sensical, platitude-ridden email from Senator Dianne Feinstein, who voted in favor of using force, and it reads as if she had no choice, as if there had been no Levin Ammendment, which would have changed the authorization process completely and could have halted the invasion. The text of Senator Levin’s brief amendment is easy to find online, as is the list of Senators who admitted to not reading the NIE Report entirely. I mean, reading is tedious, and it’s not as if this vote meant the END OF THE WORLD.
With that, I am pleading for the maximum funding for new schools, new teaching tools, regular refresher courses for teachers, and a balanced and more comprehensive education for all citizens. It’s all of a sudden “San Francisco” to want the highest standards of education achievable? Oh please let them filibuster in coats and ties while we go to San Francisco in our Birkenstocks to read books.
Tiny Andy
For more posts with pictures see my ObamaBidenUSA blog. Working to backfill that site with archived, perhaps blog-worthy, posts, photos and episodes from the trail (or trial), but there are simply too many current events to comment on to allow for that now.
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This from October 11:
Requested Zeiss Starmaster; unfunded by Congress
If we find an answer to that [why it is that we and the universe exist], it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God.
There is not now, nor has there ever been, a greater source of imaginative space than the idea of the universe, the heavens, the galaxies, the cosmos, the Biblical “world without end”, our outer space. International efforts to explore space involve unprecedented levels of capital investment, an unselfish exchange of intelligence in anticipation of conditions and goals that, literally beyond us, cannot be defined. Manifestly these explorations affirm that we are one planet, Shakespeare’s “pendent world”, with a unique set of natural laws and a unique place in the universe. Symbolically, without any standard measure of return value, space exploration is an investment in hope, innovation, cooperation and curiosity.
I call on fellow educators, the intellectually curious, the believers in ingenuity, those dwellers in the unknown and purveyors of creativity to protest the suffocation of the American imagination as promoted by John McCain and Sarah Palin. Their dismissive ignorance of poetic and scientific curiosity is an affront to progress and a promise to further erode America’s once unchallenged leadership in technological and creative innovation. In repudiation of McCain’s embarrassing and disdainful rant against the “3 million dollar ‘overhead projector’” for the Adler Planetarium that Barack Obama supported (with a bipartisan group of Congressional representatives from Illinois), we must declare, “Enough! Enough of your embodied support of arrogant stupidity, your fear of research, your vow to manifest a lack of education.”
Just as McCain/Palin have a right to adhere to their own narrative of the creation of the universe, with no further exploration desired, we have a right to expand our knowledge of the natural world and explore uncharted territories both literal and poetic. I dare them, in their myopic world-view, to reject as non-existent what they simply have no ability to imagine. I riot on behalf of those who hold that ability sacred.
Our inner cities with occluded night skies and insular pockets of poverty hold extant venerable institutions built to share the kind of knowledge that metaphorically transports, and we should take pride in upgrading them to standards that dignify the information they present. None are more iconic than Chicago’s Museum Campus, and the Adler Planetarium, the oldest planetarium in the western hemisphere with its 40 year-old projector. Planetariums alone, as convincing simulacra, powerfully showcase the achievements of space exploration and feed the imaginations of curious visitors including millions of school children from whom the next American visionaries will likely emerge.
The planetarium experience is unlike any other, a world view made possible by the insistent commitment of centuries of visionaries, and actualized through the initiative of a few leaders willing to gamble on potential. The return on the gamble is a sure bet - that by acknowledging that all courageous advances are first conceived of in the limitlessness space of the human imagination - future innovators are encouraged to reach for the stars.
McPuppet Show: The Rapture We've Been Waiting For ---
9/11 never mattered so much as when I pondered Sarah Palin's ABC interview with Charles Gibson. As David Brooks said, her political talent is real. But this is not 'Idol'. I remind myself that Palin did not select herself, but ask, “Who did?” It is still our tradition, at least in the Democratic Party, to assume the potential POTUS selected her/his own VPOTUS. The choice of Palin for next in line in 2008 is evidence that Rover smelled defeat. A blatant jettisoning of the GOP's bedrock claim to be the party that "keeps us safe", it's more credible as a suicide pact, readying for a kind of Rapture, if only as political purge.Alas, McProp is revealed. Gathering up the flocky evangelical vote, the GOP has set about showing the happily uncomfortable McCain the door, be it in 2 months or 4+ years. I have a few suggestions for the Democrats:Calling Senator Clinton. The next time Palin is used as an auto-indignification response™, Hillary, you should jump right in. Whether the cynics are right, that you want Obama to lose, or not, you may not have another near-term opportunity to showcase your strengths and effect a solution. Direct your Fight, full-throttle, from the position you are being simultaneously lauded and used for, by the GOP. Calling Joe Biden. McCain's National Security Card, and any pretense that National Security matters, vanished with that silly Fear Card, which apparently expired at almost exactly 7 years. But National Security does matter. It's not everything, as they have been saying, pointing at the sky for 7 years, but lack of it is. Showtime, Joe. Your debate with Palin is the near-term defining event of your long career. Numb us with salient facts. No, 'with all due respect, I'm gonna hit a girl' wincing, no fawning, no condescension, just show us your awareness and command of the protean complexities of world politics. Then, move on to the fallacy of drilling in ANWR, how OPEC really works, and the plan for job creation in green energy industries. Finally, calling Barack Obama. You gotta keep getting up, rookie. 52 days left. Remind us of what you enumerated in that speech you made in Denver. Something about health care, education, that our economic security, national security and stewardship of the environment are connected, sensible troop rotations and deployments, right? You had plans for us, we were asked to do our part, not walk alone, and then BOOM! Upstaged by the audacity of nope! So, please repeat the promise. No one had time to consider it. The sequence was like savoring a delicate lobster mousse, whisked away in favor of an urgent, steaming bowl of Velveeta and corn-flake casserole; I don't remember what the first course was. I've got news for you Barack Obama. Lots of us out here are holding you to the hope we confess. So say it again.
I wish I could see Obama’s FISA vote as just an election-mode calculation, rather than a warning about his true view of the US Constitution, but I have seen no sign that his vote is anything but irresponsible. Obama stated that we should trust that, when he is POTUS, he won’t abuse this illegal power he has handed to George W. Bush for the next 6 months. Firstly, I trust Obama to be many things, but a reliable soothsayer is not one of them. Secondly, what if the November election does not result as Obama foresees? I suggest Obama reexamine the US presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. And thirdly, what is it about the Bush administration that leads Obama to believe they won’t abuse this power over the next 6 months? The point is that we the people, including Barack Obama, are now legally spied upon by the federal government and its agents, no matter who is POTUS. We the people pay the price for election-mode calculations gone awry, often in the form of legislation, authorizations and resolutions. If Obama had admitted a real reason he voted this way, I could live with it in disagreement if it sounded like the truth, and not the usual pabulum I am embarrassed to hear coming from him. He did not bother to give a full and honest explanation to we ‘research-based voters’. I guess it looks good to have the so-called ‘left’ angry at you, but what about we pesky Libertarians and Constitutionalists? It’s a profound miscalculation to not only willingly sacrifice the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, but also to glibly ‘dare’ a large part of his foundation of support, to no longer support him. Obama stands to lose a lot more than my enthusiasm. College students for example, active in politics for the first time in generations, are easily bored by politics, and they know when they’ve been used. FISA has no expiration date and the pressure to vote ‘yes’, in the interest of national security, is another example of the Bush administration’s fear-mongering in order to protect wealthy corporate lap-dogs, to amalgamate executive power, and to steal yet another ‘inalienable right’ from the people. In the Colonial era, illegal search and seizure was a significant offense committed by the British Government and was one cause of the American Revolution. Government exists primarily to defend our rights, as posited by the founders and as defined in the US Constitution; not to take them away. Bush administration fear-mongering is a familiar shell game to expose, and a game most Americans have agreed they are tired of. Obama’s ability to call upon the strength of the American people, against our fears, was a powerful subcurrent of his candidacy during the Democratic Primary. Obama’s recent forays to the right of center have been enough. Shredding his “Constitutional Law Scholar” bonafides with the FISA vote wasn’t necessary, but shred he did. Antonin Scalia must be smiling. On this matter, we are not hearing from Obama “what we need to know” as he promised, but what Obama wants us to believe.
In hindsight, after February 5, If Hillary Clinton had any strategic sense, she could have recognized that she had an opportunity to publicly cut her ties with what, in her judgment was bad advice, rise up and lead her campaign with her strengths, which are considerable. The benefit from an action like this would have been to show us things we have never seen from her: a demonstrated ability to publicly admit a mistake, a sharp eye for identifying a flawed strategy, and skill at management and correction. She would have gained supporters, another look by Obama-skeptics, and respect for taking charge. But the compounding narrative of unwise choices she has made in this campaign make me question if she has, ever had, or ever will have the skill-set to lead a country. Barack Obama's opponents embody exactly the kind of reactionary temperament that is dangerous in a leader. Obama continually defines what I want in a president, in part because he is able to continually adapt using his remarkable abilities to intuit what's called for. Every experience has been a learning one for him. He's been an organizer, a teacher, a father, a grandson, a husband, an almost-black man, an almost-white man, a black man, a privileged man, a politician, a team-mate, a loner, a traveler, a writer, a fatherless child. Oh, he indeed occasionally displays conceit, but more often than not his delusions are confined to minor vanities, like his abilities on the basketball court. No one running for President of the United States should come to the door without an ego, or enter without self-assuredness. A key characteristic a great leader must have is the ability to objectively self-examine and to recognize honest and intelligent criticism.
I thought the Lee Hamilton endorsement of Obama would be, should be, big news for Obama-skeptics and maybe still will be if Hamilton works out in Indiana. I hope Hamilton will campaign for Obama vs. McCain and expose McCain’s questionable judgment in supporting a war vs. Iraq after 9/11 instead of focusing on Al Quaeda. This goes directly to McCain's inability to interpret an NIE correctly before sending in our troops. That should completely expose him where he thinks he’s bulletproof; as Commander-In-Chief.
While endorsements shouldn't be such a big deal, especially late ones, the Clintons themselves turned Bill Richardson's support of Obama into a big news cycle event. People may look back and call it a turning point. I can't figure out if their intent was to push the Bosnia exaggeration off the page, which it did only halfway and not for long, or to stoke fear in others who they believe owe them. That also did not go down as planned; fear is no longer a effective tool, it is the weapon of choice for bullies, something used to paralyze us. Strength and courage are no longer just words.
