The US Health Care system is a complete mess. Whether you have great coverage, no coverage, or somewhere in the middle, you aren't getting the most for your money, and the main reason is that the Health Care market is simply designed wrong.
Let's take a look at how Health Care works today, and examine why this causes the problems we see every day, like spiraling costs and lack of access.
Thanks to everyone who helped make this day a reality!
Regardless of your party affiliation, I am asking everyone to stop a moment and think about the things you love that make this country great. I bet after you think a while, it all boils down to being able to live your live making your own choices and live what we think of as a normal life free of fear for making those choices: whether to be religious and how, having any kind of conversation with anyone, whether or not to own a gun, what kind of job you want, where you want to live, the kind of job or career you have, etc.
Let freedom ring again thoughout our great United States! For the last several years, we have been ruled by an administration that has instilled fear in us in order to rule us, an administration that has degraded the liberties guaranteed in our Constitution. Living in fear is not a free life and is instead a weakening of our great democratic republic. I ask you to contact your representatives and add your voice to mine. Say to them we want freedom, not fear, and demand they act to protect our freedoms. I share the below with you not to inspire fear, but instead to inspire patriotism.
I have recently heard some very disturbing news. On October 1st, what is sometimes called the Bush Brigade (brigade = 3000 - 4000 soldiers) was deployed somewhere inside the United States. this brigade reports directly to the president. In any other administration, I would give this action the benefit of the doubt. But our current president has shown that he has repeatedly been willing to lie to us and take illegal actions. Below is an excerpt from Naomi Wolfe's article on Huffington Post yesterday:
"First, the founding generation set a bright line to keep military from policing our streets in 1807 because they knew from their own experience how easily military forces -- King George's -- could subdue civilian society. The First Brigade is Bush's force: they are not answerable to Congress or to the Governors of states: they are answerable to the Commander in Chief. In an Alternet posting, I interviewed Air Force Colonel (retired) David Antoon who noted that the troops must obey the president, even if he asks them to arrest Congress or fire on civilians or attack media outlets. If they do not obey orders, he notes, they face five years in prison.
We should not have to remind ourselves that these scenarios are unlikely to understand that this power is dangerous. Antoon himself calls the deployment 'ominous.' Troops on our streets makes us something less than a democracy: one definition of a police state is when a leader sends his own military units into civilian streets. Meanwhile the civilian policing of citizens is becoming more brutal. Hundreds of preemptive arrests took place in St Paul, dozens of journalists were arrested."
It is supposed to be illegal for these troops to enforce civil laws, but the president put a signing statement on the law that basically says he's going to ignore that portion of the law (found what I think is a conspiracy site after following a few links in the articles above, but the text quoted is directly from law documents). I'm not saying he has already used these troops, but the potential is there based on his disregard for personal liberties thus far:
"The use of U.S. troops in law enforcment duties is a complete violation of the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act, which substantially limit the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement unless under precise and extreme circumstances.
Section 1385 of the Posse Comitatus Act states, “Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”
Under the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Bush on October 17, 2006, the law was changed to state, “The President may employ the armed forces to restore public order in any State of the United States the President determines hinders the execution of laws or deprives people of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law or opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”
However, these changes were repealed in their entirety by HR 4986: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, reverting back to the original state of the Insurrection Act of 1807. Despite this repeal, President Bush attached a signing statement saying that he did not feel bound by the repeal.
The original text of the Insurrection Act severely limits the power of the President to deploy troops within the United States.
For troops to be deployed, a condition has to exist that, '(1) So hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or (2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws. In any situation covered by clause (1), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.'”
Again, I share this information not to cause panic or fear. I have faith in our people and our democracy, and we can choose to make a difference. Please support our lawful government, and contact your representatives.
Contrafalsy: a false controversy created to distract people from the more important issues at hand.
With the smears being laid thicker than usual by the McCain/Palin campaign in recent days, I had to coin a new term for them. And it's something that sadly, the McCain campaign might even proud of... Their VP candidate has become an expert at contrafalsy in record time.
Saw a lovely comment on MSNBC's First Read today that I just had to share:
Tackman San Diego, CA (Sent Tuesday, October 07, 2008 9:50 AM)
This has truly been a wonders experience helping to turn this state blue but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out something that something has gotten under my skin since April 2007. That being the complete misinformation given to Georgia students centered on voter registration status and permanent residency status.
I have witnessed firsthand that school administrators, teachers and even financial aid councilors from Georgia HBCU’s practically don’t seem to grasp there is legally a difference between voter status and permanent residency status when related to Pell grants and out of state scholarship requirements.
Surprise, there is a difference and Surprise, many of these school administrators, teachers and even financial aid councilors while they have good intentions have been some of the key persons that have hampered our voter drive operations by encouraging their out of state students not to register to vote in Georgia for fear of losing out of state Pell Grants, Loans and Scholarships.
Despite even the efforts of the Georgia Republican Secretary of State, putting out information to the contrary these persons continue to fill the heads of American future brain trust with nonsense, for example out of state students honor at Atlanta’s Clark Atlanta University being told if they registered to vote in Georgia they would lose their presidential scholarships because they had to be registered in New York State.
Or my favorite one, a school financial aid councilor informed a group of Delaware students registering to vote in Georgia and not the state they are from is a felony. Now these are the men and women we Americans have entrusted with the future brain trust and they can’t even get this simple fact straight how are they going to prepare them for the workforce?
Tomfoolery at its best.
Deanie Mills makes some interesting observations about the qualities of fictional and factual leaders Huggington Post today:
"The seriousness of our situation has forced the media narrative to reflect reality for the first time, maybe, in a decade or more. The language of leadership is changing in a way that expresses that.
This is a moment in our history that will tell the true tale of our national character. Will we continue to indulge our weakness for mythology, or will we step up to who we really are as a people? We are made of much sterner stuff than it has seemed in recent years. Our politics has been dominated by the silly and the surreal, but those days are over.
That is not, as Obama says, who we are.
We are still the same people who struggled to settle a brutal new land, who fought against an occupying army for our independence, who bled and died to preserve the union and end slavery, who rode to the rescue of our allies in two terrible world wars, and who led the world in space-age innovation and crackling creativity.
We don't need fake heroes anymore. We are our own heroes. We've had enough drama and theatrics, and we know it. We're ready for a real leader, and we're ready to do our part to help save ourselves.
That is who we are. Not who the myth-makers pretend we are."
My hat's off to Carrie Dan of NBC and National Journal for an article that explored an angle of politics I hadn't thought to wonder about... what are people really searching for about the candidates? Carrie Dan was emulating Russert in her let the facts tell the tale approach to this article. Thank you, Carrie Dann, for such a refreshingly professional piece of journalism!
The facts she reports present a very interesting narrative of the recent campaign season. See below for an excerpt...
"Fact versus Fiction Yet web users' sometimes perverse pursuits provide an unfair picture of the legitimate issues and even bold questions sometimes asked of search engines' sophisticated logarithms.
During the week of September 13, for example, as America's economic underpinnings were starting to become un-pinned, the term "Obama view on economy" clocked in as one of the "fastest moving" (aka increasingly popular) searches driving traffic to Obama's website.
Last week, "John McCain Spain" debuted at number 10 on the list of "John McCain" search terms after the senator offered an unexpected answer to a Spanish-language radio host who asked if he would agree to meet with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero. (McCain's unusually cool response led some to wonder if the candidate confused Zapatero with the leader of another country.)
The vast majority of searches for each candidate's name appear to be exploratory in nature, with general terms like "John McCain issues" or "Joe Biden info" acting as portals for information for users starting from scratch to learn more about the White House nominees.
Biographical information is also in high demand, particularly for Barack Obama, whose mother, father, sister, and wife are also all popular subjects for searches. Almost 20% of the top 100 search terms for Obama in the past month were ones seeking information on his age, family, and upbringing.
But interestingly, Obama is the only one of the four nominees for whom "affair" is not a popular search.
Hitwise data for the same time period showed that web users wondered feverishly about the extramarital exploits of Palin (rank No. 7 on her search term list), McCain (No. 29), and to a lesser extent Biden (No. 294). Web users also appear to be fascinated with McCain's first wife, whom he divorced after an overlapping courtship of the much younger Cindy McCain."
Just saw this posted:
Here's the site: http://www.bigeddieradio.com/
I don't know about you, but I've thought for a while that Palin didn't have near the experience even in campaigning to be vice president. As a woman, I'm insulted that McCain chose Palin when there were ever so many more experienced Republican women that could have been selected.
So, if what I've shown above is true, the McCain debate gambit seems to make much more sense... pospone the first presidential debate to the time for the vp debate, and then whoops... so sorry we can't find a date that works for the VP debate and Palin gets her get out of debate free card.
Your thoughts?
Lets play a game of Guess Who! Won't we be blessed to have him behind the controls?
A 72 year old senator who is widely regarded as an expert on foreign policy however was caught on tape stating that Al Qaeda (Sunni) regularly crosses the border into Iran (Shia) to receive weapons training [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6GBdyws5YU ] and that the hotbed of terrorist activity takes place along the Iraq/Pakistan border. [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC0Y7zMcn_4 ] He also constantly makes references to the country of Czechoslovakia even though it has not existed since 1993 [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW-yr3UYr_w ] and during a recent radio interview seemed to imply that Spain was part Latin America instead of Europe and the Prime Minister of that country is a potential adversary to the United States even though they were part of the Coalition of the Willing and at one time had troops fighting in Iraq.
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYF_wopmViY ]
I just wrote a letter to the Obama campaign thanking them for their hard work on behalf of our candidate but asking them to be careful with their choices in advertising during the rest of the campaign.
What prompted this was an inaccurate Spanish language advertisement that I saw today. In the ad, it equated Rush Limbaugh's immigration policy with John McCain's. Now I'm not at all a John McCain fan, but I have to speak the truth here: Their policies are completely different, so different that it was why Limbaugh didn't initially support John McCain. To equate the two is a distortion of the facts, and honestly, I'm disappointed to see this tactic used by our campaign.
John McCain and his campaign have made too many blunders, lies and memory lapses for our campaign to need to use McCain's tactics of lies, distortion and taking things out of context. For once, the mainstream media has finally started calling McCain on his lies and distortions, so I asked the Obama campaign to please make sure the media don't have a reason to call us on the same carpet.
I am a passionate supporter of Barack Obama in part because of his promise to run a different kind of campaign, and I think the general public is beginning to see that Barack is focused on the issues, while McCain is focused on saying whatever he can that he thinks will get him elected.
So Obama campaign, let's continue what Barack has been doing this week on the campaign trail: staying focused on the important issues to all Americans and at the same time calling McCain on his lies or lapses. As you see, we have plenty to choose from: fundamentals of the economy are strong, Palin and her earmarks, Sunni/Shia confusion, Obama raising taxes, againat AIG bailout then for it, etc. These and the very many others are the reason John McCain doesn't have the judgment to be a good president.
We don't need to use John McCain's tactics against him... His own words will work just fine.
If you feel as I do, please contact our Obama campaign and share your views with them and ask your friends to do the same. Thanks and have a wonderful day!
I stumbled upon this post at The Seferm Post that is also calling out McCain on his lies:
"If McCain were a blogger, he would have had to retract by now. But he's running for president of the United States, so he can say anything, lie about anything and not have to answer for it. Yesterday, John McCain lied on national television about something that no one disputes in the public record.
He was challenged by the only serious journalists on television right now - the hosts of 'The View' - about the large number of pork barrel earmarks Sarah Palin sought and secured as governor of Alaska, including the "Bridge to Nowhere" that Palin and McCain lied about and are still lying about in public. Here was his clear and irrefutable statement:
It has now been a day since McCain lied this explicitly in public. And he hasn't yet retracted his lie. This AP piece is dated as of this afternoon. Why not?"
I join him in asking why not. Why has there not been a widespread demand for a retraction from McCain?
Why is McCain still not being grilled on why he has continually confused Shia and Sunni groups in Iraq?
Those are but a few of McCain's mistakes. Why is he not be held accountable for them?
Paul Krugman, thanks for calling a spade a spade in your op-ed in the NY Times today.
I sincerely hope the Obama campaign takes his words to heart and finds a way to really share this viewpoint... that is, that the way someone campaigns can give you insight into how they will govern. Below is an excerpt:
"...how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern.
I’m not talking about the theory, often advanced as a defense of horse-race political reporting, that the skills needed to run a winning campaign are the same as those needed to run the country. The contrast between the Bush political team’s ruthless effectiveness and the heckuva job done by the Bush administration is living, breathing, bumbling, and, in the case of the emerging Interior Department scandal, coke-snorting and bed-hopping proof to the contrary.
I’m talking, instead, about the relationship between the character of a campaign and that of the administration that follows. Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts.
And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?
What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse."
I wholeheartedly agree with Krugman's hypothesis that McCain/Palin would be much worse than what we've seen the last 7 years.
If Joe (and others) only read the blogs, they'd come across the occassional good idea (yes, I'm self praising :-P )
On the stump, he needs to drive home 1 MAJOR point with the "continuation of a Bush 3rd term" argument.....you ready Joe? Here's your zinger....this will get you some front page cover...in the arguement that McCain/Palin don't represent real change, list out all the things that they stand with the Bush administration on...top it off with the direct quote of McCain bragging about his 90% voting record with Bush on Fox News...and sum it up with the homerun zinger:
Insanity:Doing the same thing and expecting a different result
Your welcome, Joe :)
We simply can't keep losing the media battles....I want to call to action everyone to push and spread the word that there should be a Countdown timer set for McCain to appear on Countdown w/ Keith Olberman on MSNBC. Now that Barack has given in to O'Reilly (and helping legitimize him...which is a joke, alone) - Keith should demand the same of McCain and call him out for every single day that he does not appear. How does McCain claim to cross party lines when it's Obama appearing on O'Reilly but we can't find "Mr Maverick" on Countdown?
Someone get this to those people in the know....we must not continue to lose these media battles time and time again. McCain shouldn't get a free ride.
