What's in Play Right Now on Health Care Reform

Rachel Maddow provides an excellent explanation of what is in play right now. There is an enormous disconnect between what the government is calling the "public option" and what most people think is meant by that term. We have to be very careful that if we support health care reform at all, that we don't water it down so much that it is ultimately ineffective and thereby open to criticism as if we had actually given it a proper chance, when we perhaps really didn't.

This being the grotesque corporatist country that it is, I am not hopeful of meaningful reform. Reid is playing a bit of bait and switch here with his flam-flam description of what he has actually proposed.

Graft vs. Consumer Choice

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Arkansas "Democrats" Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Rep. Mike Ross - we come for you! Be the public servants your constituency demands of you or prepare to get your lives turned upside down as every crooked deal you have ever made is exposed to the daylight. The Walmart-ization of Arkansas is over. With their backs against the wall economically, the true ruling class of this country is finding its backbone. And you have made it so.

Stand tall or fall, motherfuckers!

Living in the Asylum...

...it's hard to understand that everyone - and I mean EVERYONE - from elsewhere thinks of U.S. Americans as socio-political-economic morons.

Seriously. They do. Fact.

U.S. film distributors are right to fear a Conservative Christian backlash in this case. And that is very sad. Conservative hooliganism of every stripe seems to rule the day.

We operate on the basis of some of the most dumb-ass, fucked up, political ideology ever conceived. People on the right need to stop dreaming about Capitalist-Libertarian-Conservative Christian pie in the sky. It ain't gonna happen. Not while the corporatist can skim off the top of a culture that serves them so well. And no, you aren't going to win the lottery nor become wealthy enough to join their ranks. The existing class hierarchy is incredibly rigid and people rarely move from one class to one higher up on the ladder. If anything, and given the current economic climate, there are plenty of people on their way down that ladder - so make way.

If there was an industry in which the U.S. might still - maybe - see itself as a leader it would be in the sciences and technology. But given the tactics of the radical-right I should think that there might be a dumbing down of the next American generation in the offing. Do you suppose that the folks at Genentech are Creationists? Do you imagine that we shall find cures for humanity's many ills by merely praying for them?

We were screwed the minute Europeans sent Puritans and Quakers packing to the New World. This nation is the political offspring of a people possessed of a very narrow world-view.

Mass Media Heroes: Maddow, Olbermann, Franken

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That's right, Obama. We'll fucking replace your cowardly ass.

Notice how Franken actually talks sensibly to a mob of people opposing his views. I do see a candidate as beholden to the will of his constituency, but I do also agree that they must vote in a candidate that is capable of discerning what that "will" actually happens to be. You could almost see that woman's jaw drop in the clip, but Franken's response is spot on. One could almost hear his side bar thoughts: "I am doing the will of the 80%, you tea-bagger types are so egregiously misinformed that you don't actually have either a reasoned nor a coherent viewpoint that anyone could actually represent."

The other day on HuffPo a wingnut posted something like:
"No socialized medicine! Don't touch my Medicare!"

Well, which way do you want it, buddy? Catch a fucking clue.

Rachel Maddow on Health Care Reform Politics

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Okay. So the GOP doesn't really want pizza and we should therefore not bother to negotiate with them since we can bypass anything they do via reconciliation, right? Alright, Hawaiian it is...

Rachel Maddow As Captain Obvious

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This is Rachel revealing the true professional PR consultant/corporatist membership of supposed "grassroots" GOP protest movements. I'd like to say that this is really brilliant reporting but its actually quite obvious stuff. She pulls most of her critical investigative information directly from the websites of these wingnuts. Still, Rachel is smart and that's extremely cool. Stating what is obvious and the truth is actually sort of revolutionary in the U.S. political landscape. Rachel is there most days just telling it like it is and being only slightly smug about it.

We're living in a country where something very like 50% of the population is offensively ignorant, bigoted and Christian. Maybe its just me, but there seems to be some kind of relationship between those three things that is quite hard to overcome. Personally, I think it is one of the purposes of organized religion to keep people relatively stupid. If it were otherwise people would more readily admit that creationism is just a lovely myth instead of trying to get it taught in science classes across the country opposite the teaching of the theory of evolution and the processes of natural selection.

Old-timers must be truly blinkered if they think that a single payer or public option health care system would hamper them in any way. I mean, aren't they enjoying the benefits of Medicare? Medicare is a government run system of socialized medical coverage. I guess that escapes their attention.

Here's wiki on Medicare:
Medicare is a social insurance program administered by the United States government, providing health insurance coverage to people who are aged 65 and over, or who meet other special criteria. Medicare operates as a single-payer health care system. The Social Security Act of 1965 was passed by Congress in late-spring of 1965 and signed into law on July 30, 1965, by President Lyndon B. Johnson as amendments to Social Security legislation. At the bill-signing ceremony President Johnson enrolled former President Harry S. Truman as the first Medicare beneficiary and presented him with the first Medicare card.

My thinking is that if a single payer program fails to gain any traction this time around that we should start going after Medicare and the medical benefits of congress-critters too. Let's get everyone onto the same bullshit private insurance system with which everyone else has to contend.

If everyone suffered collectively and equally under the thumb of the profiteering health insurance industry then, and perhaps only then, would we see real progress on the health care reform issue.

Klein/Maddow on Bailout

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Calling the bailout the "greatest heist in monetary history," Klein goes on to state that "the crisis on Wall Street created by deregulated capitalism is not actually being solved, it's being moved. A private sector crisis is being turned into a public sector crisis."

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The countdown to bank nationalization continues.

Obama and congress cannot have it all ways and they cannot please everyone. The evidence shows that they will please their financial and corporate masters first.

You and yours can get fucked.

Maddow on Torture

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The take away:
Get me a confession. I don't care how you do it!

The Saddam - Al Qaeda link never existed despite the insistence of the White House. Pathetic...

What was the point of all of this? To illicite "false confessions"...

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Just how far down does the rabbit hole go? See, I don't believe in the organization labeled "Al Qaeda." Al Qaeda is a creation of the U.S. government to instill fear in its own people.

As George Orwell put it so long ago:
"Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia"

Fear is necessary in a power-grab. An identifiable enemy is therefore necessary also.

War = Oversees Contingency Operation

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Redefinition Accomplished
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Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

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Obama is just another warmongering, sniveling ass. Be warned. The newspeak continues...

Toxic assets = legacy assets.

Good fucking god!

Rachel Maddow has a different take on it all:

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But Rachel...

Do you really suppose that fiscal accountability really means anything in an era of multi-trillion dollar spending on the economic crisis? The fed is spending money we don't even know about and doing so accountable to no one. Doesn't that give the fed power over our monetary system to make or break it as they see fit?

Money no longer has an actual tangible meaning. One of the problems we are faced with is the need to find something of real value.

I am reminded of the scene in Lawrence of Arabia when Audar says: "I must find something honourable." Of the few things depicted in the film we know that Audar finds both gold and arabian horses to be honorable.

And so it was, once upon a time, in this country.

AIG Explained

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Pretty shocking really. Makes this next bit sound even worse...

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Watch CBS Videos Online


Watch CBS Videos Online


Watch CBS Videos Online


Watch CBS Videos Online

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See? The chairman of the Fed is just a regular Joe - just like you and me! He's a Main Streeter with middle-america at heart.

And pigs are capable of flight...

Thanks Stimulus!

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GOP: Obstruct, Obstruct, Obstruct!

Federal GOP:

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California GOP:

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I am not a Democrat. I am not a Republican. But I NEVER vote for Republicans. Not ever.

The GOP is ideologically blinkered and does not in any way represent my interests. And I doubt very much that they either do or even can substantively represent 99% of the people of the United States. The GOP represents the top 1% elite members of our society and them alone.

Maybe they don't represent your interests either. Don't be fooled by "fundy" issues like abortion and other Christian-right issues. You can go hang as far as the GOP is concerned. You will never get your agenda passed. Concentrate on the actual political and economic issues, religious beliefs are best handled on a household by household basis. Your beliefs in the nature of the divine are yours alone and the idea that you will get everyone to agree with you is disrespectful of the rights of others.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. You might disagree with that second point, but I defy anyone who has paid attention to the activities of the GOP over the last 50 years to dispute that last point. In short, it's a fact.

I consider the GOP the party of irrelevancy. This new era of obstruction strikes me as pointedly un-american in tone. It's as if the GOP wants to quit the sandbox and take all of its toys home with them - your toys too, if you let them get away with it.

Here's an idea:
Don't!

Selling the Stimulus

A collection of three videos:

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Obama always speaks well. He shows that yet again. Some of it is overly simplified and therefore ambiguous. But I hear him saying "...from the bottom up" and I just have to smile.

Maddow is deeply intelligent as always. She dogs her subject and never veers off course while continually appearing to be the very soul of congeniality. Ultimately, she is wickedly cruel - but so charming that it cannot possibly be held against her.

William Greider does a good job of telling it like it is. Obama and the Dems must make a true choice. I have heard that Obama owes much to individual contributions of mere dollars and that he therefore owes far less to the usual lobbying interests that normally own politicians. The question is quite simple: who does Obama serve? He cannot have two masters.

Has Obama chosen to go down in history as the man that turned it around or will he stay pat at the mere color of his skin?

Maddow Schools the GOP on the Meaning of Stimulus

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Rachel, you will be mine. Oh yes, you will be mine.

Cheap Labor Republicans

Rachel has got to be my favorite lesbian in the world. She is charming, intelligent and tenacious - and it's all served up with a slightly cruel streak that delights in stabbing wrong-doers in the heart with the steel of the truths that hurt the most. Someday I'd like her to have my kittens but I'll have to be satisfied that she will instead make someone else a very nice husband (or something like that).

She calls it exactly as it is: we are led by people whose true allegiances favor foreign powers and interests. They can dress it up as the same old ideological claptrap, but the story is still that these assholes are more interested in aiding foreign car manufacturers than supporting those at home here in the U.S. Details matter.

And this all reminds me of my friend over here:
Personal Responsibility and Wages
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/410

Less Government and Cheap Labor
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/401

I've been reading that guy for a few years now. It's often very good reading. I enjoy his continual unraveling of the hideously hypocritical and self-contradicting GOP political rhetoric. Apparently when the GOP makes no sense that's the point anyway. When the GOP gets all of its wishes fulfilled and ends good wages and unions they might as well drift away on those golden parachutes to the UAE - we'll already be done here.

For everyone to win we have to recreate the U.S. as a manufacturing powerhouse with lots of exports. The only way we'll save the middle-class is by creating good paying jobs that allow people to afford the kinds of goods that also help to support the global economy.

How long did we think we could ride the wave of watching manufacturing leave these shores? Whatever your estimate it has to be somewhat less than forever. So let's stop off-shoring good jobs tomorrow. A few days later you will wake up to a much more robust U.S. economy.

We'll be happier and people elsewhere will also be happier.