Social Security doesn't need reforming.
Our government and war policy does.
www.timws.com
 
It does not matter where in the political spectrum one adheres.
The same rules of right and wrong, good and evil apply to Everyone.
Our greatest danger of extinction comes from those that think the rules do not apply to them.
RC
It doesn't matter whether you are actually paranoid of not, they are still out to get you.
"The Welfare of Each of Us is Dependent Fundamentally Upon the Welfare of All of Us," President Theodore Roosevelt
Rights exist because we do, not because government grants them to us.
The Republicans are four year olds.
The Democrats are six year olds.
There are no grownups.
"I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010. I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness."
- Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, 1999
We are being manipulated to miss the point.
The point is not whether laws have been passed to allow the spying. All governments that turn authoritarian attempt to "legalize" what they do.
The point is not whether anyone listens to the phone calls, although we have no reason whatsoever to trust that they don't/won't.
The point is not even that the FISA court is rubber stamping every single request that it receives, although this fact certainly drives home what a kangaroo court and illusion of responsible legal oversight we are dealing with here.
The point is that the Fourth Amendment REQUIRES PROBABLE CAUSE before the United States government may intrude into the privacy of citizens.
When a criminal is loose in this country, the government may not send out police officers en masse to demand entry into and search every home of millions of Americans in an attempt to find him. They need probable cause to invade your privacy...to have access to your home and your private life and information.
Our government has now outrageously decided that it has the right to preemptively demand, sweep up, and STORE the daily, detailed private activities and communication information of every American citizen. That they promise to get warrants to view or use the information after they collect it is outrageously beside the point. They have no business whatsoever collecting it and storing it for government use *in the first place.*
The propagandists are deliberately creating arguments about the circumstances under which the stored material may be viewed, or the process by which permission to view it is obtained. They are deliberately and manipulatively trying to frame the debate so that the sweeping collection/storage of our private material is a GIVEN, and we fight about the legal process that occurs afterward for use of the data.
Building surveillance files full of the private, daily activities and communication of millions of citizens is what totalitarian governments do. It creates an entire infrastructure through which the government has the means to preemptively target any citizen they consider problematic, through access to the minute details of their lives. It is an invitation to abuse and tyranny.
Read the Fourth Amendment again:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
On what probable cause does the US government have the right to demand, collect, and store the contents of YOUR daily private phone calls, emails, and internet activity, and that of millions of other Americans?
woo me with science
Source: Democratic Underground
Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America:
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Section 8.
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and PROVIDE FOR THE common defense and GENERAL WELFARE of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;..."
Twice in our Constitution it mentions "general welfare" What constitutes 'General Welfare'?
The old-age benefits provisions of the Social Security Act of 1935 is an example of providing for the 'general welfare'. Medicaid/Medicare are 2 more examples of providing for the 'general welfare'.
Government controlled, Single Payer, Universal health care for the people of the United States IS covered by the Constitution, because the relative health of our citizens does affect the general welfare of the Nation. 45,000 dead people a year are proof the profit driven, privately run systems we have in place now are not working to provide the necessary health care for our nation.
How can our present private health insurance system, with its many insurance companies (each with its own way of doing things), its own highly paid management, its own attention to the bottom line for its share holders, its own claims requirements, its own forms for submitting claims, each trying to maximize profits, etc., be more efficient than any government controlled single Payer system, with its single set of rules and forms?
We are trying to jump a chasm by playing hop-scotch across it.
Every other industrialized nation has a form of Universal Health Care. None of those other countries want to go back to what they had before. And for sure, absolutely none of them want what we have now for health care in this country.
So why is it so hard to go with the most obvious, the most humane course of action, which is what every other industrialized nation on the planet has already done?
Single Payer, Universal Health Care. The hard work has already been done by these countries. All we have to do is cherry pick what works. What is so hard about that?
The United States pays twice as much for health care than any other country. See chart below
And yet 45,000 people a year are still dying for lack of access to basic health care. People are losing their homes, going deep into debt, going bankrupt for basic health care.
How can we be the Greatest nation on earth,
if we can't/won't even take care of our own citizens?
How is it the same people that do not have a problem with however many wars we are engaged in at the moment, that are costing us, US, $16.5 trillion so far, have a problem with health care reform that will save us billions?
Health care in other countries is a social service. Here in the United States, it's big business. Your money or your life. No money? Die and get out of the way for someone with money.
Don't the Hoopleheads1 realize if we had Single Payer, Universal Health Care, the canon fodder we produce for our illegal wars, will be healthier and therefor able to kill more brown people for their oil? That alone should make them want real health care reform.
1Hooplehead: A member of the ignorant masses; an uneducated commoner; an idiot.
Word popularized by HBO's Deadwood.
Definition 2: a hooplehead is an ignorant, backwoods, dim-witted, slow-thinking, muddle-headed, addle-brained, dumb-ass.
Try not to use big words around the hoopleheads, it confuses them.
Editor's Note: What the Hoopleheads can't wrap their heads around is the fact they are in the same leaky boat as everyone else.
The difference is that they are supporting the people poking the holes in the the bottom of the boat and don't realize they will also go down when the boat finally sinks. The Hooples are the lead balloons and anchors of recovery.
Think of the person volunteering to help build his own gallows because his executioners promised him they'd use a new rope. That is your Hooplehead.
New word: Hooplecrite - The definition of which should be obvious by now.
We have NO real health care system care in this country. What we do have is a for profit, patchwork of coverage for some people, if they can afford it that is, and literally nothing for many millions of others. If you are too sick to work regularly or to maintain a job that does provide health insurance, then you will have most likely not be able to afford health insurance. And you most likely will remain too sick to work. That is a terrible cycle and one that this country MUST eliminate.
Why do we stand for this shoddy treatment when other governments actually take care of their people? I do not understand.
For starts, what we need to do is what other governments have done decades ago. And that was to prohibit the "Your Money or Your Life" health insurance companies from covering general health care. Why do we still allow this? Single Payer Universal Health Care.
Health costs in other industrialized countries.
Source:
Kaiser Family Foundation
The World Health Organization's ranking of the world's health systems. United States of America 37 - Canada 30 - France 1
We are #37 if, and only if, you can afford our profit driven health care. If you can't pay, it doesn't matter how good our health care is.
You ain't gettin' any!
10/31/2010 There has been an update. We are now 49th.
U.S. Life Expectancy World Ranking Dropping
The researchers report that in 1950 that America was fifth among industrialized countries in life expectancy at birth for women. But, they say, figures released just a month ago rank the U.S. 49th overall for life expectancy of men and women combined.
U.S. Life Expectancy Slows: Study Blames Sick Health Care System
Source
There is a man living under a bridge, in that pile of stuff. What you see, is his home.
Think of what Single Payer, universal Health care would do.
The money saved by not paying for corporate jets, million dollar bonuses and multimillion dollar compensation for CEO's, stock holders dividends and lobbyists paying out our premium fees as bribes to our Congress critters...
That money would stay in the pockets of the average citizen to be saved or more likely to be spent on something other than food and rent. Thereby helping the economy to get going again.
The reason we spend more and get less than the rest of the world is because we have a patchwork system of for-profit payers. Private insurers necessarily waste health dollars on things that have nothing to do with care: overhead, underwriting, billing, sales and marketing departments as well as huge profits and exorbitant executive pay. Doctors and hospitals must maintain costly administrative staffs to deal with the bureaucracy. Combined, this needless administration consumes one-third (31 percent) of Americans' health dollars.
Single-payer financing is the only way to recapture this wasted money. The potential savings on paperwork, more than $350 billion per year, are enough to provide comprehensive coverage to everyone without paying any more than we already do.
Under a single-payer system, all Americans would be covered for all medically necessary services, including: doctor, hospital, preventive, long-term care, mental health, reproductive health care, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs. Patients would regain free choice of doctor and hospital, and doctors would regain autonomy over patient care.
Single-Payer National Health Insurance
Socialized Medicine and what Michele Bachmann really wants to eliminate, not in any way what she thinks
The proper definition of socialized medicine, and it's only proper use, is to define a system where the governments OWNS the hospitals, and where physicians and staff are CIVIL SERVANTS ( I.E. the government tells them where to work and when they work and who their patients are).
When hospitals are not owned by the government and physicians are in private practice, this is not socialized medicine, whether hospital and physician bills are paid by the government or by an insurance company death panel.
When the government pays physician and hospitals bills while hospitals are not owned by that government and physicians are in private practice, this is a single payer system, NOT socialized medicine.
This means that:
Medicare is a single payer system and not socialized medicine. Physicians and patients make medical decisions. Patients choose their doctors.
Medicaid is a single payer system and not socialized medicine. Physicians and patients make medical decisions. Patients choose their doctors.
Canadian health care is a single payer system and not socialized medicine. Physicians and patients make medical decisions. Patients choose their doctors.
The Affordable Care Act is neither a single payer system nor socialized medicine, since insurance company bureaucrats are still wedged between Americans and American physicians. Insurance company bureaucrats still make the medical decisions for those Americans and still overrule the medical opinions of those American physicians. Insurance company bureaucrats still decide which few Americans can see a physician and which physician they can see, if any, and who gets treated and what treatment they get.
Insurance-run health care is a system where insurance company bureaucrats are wedged between Americans and American physicians. Insurance company bureaucrats make the medical decisions for those Americans and overrule the medical opinions of those American physicians. Insurance company bureaucrats decide which few Americans can see a physician, which, if any, physician they can see, insurance company bureaucrats decide which Americans get treated, and insurance company bureaucrats decide what treatment that Americans get.
The only socialized medicine in North America, and thus, the only thing that Michele Bachmann says she'll eliminate, is American military and DVA health care, leaving the military and Veterans to die or to go to Canada to get health care, as 2 million Americans already do, because insurance company bureaucrats say that they can't see a doctor in the United States or insurance company bureaucrats say that they can't get the health care they need in the United States.
It is a lie that any more than a handful of Canadians each year go to the United States for health care. It is the truth that over 2 million Americans a year stream across the border into Canada to get the health care that insurance company bureaucrats deny them in the United States.
Having American insurance company bureaucrats wedged between Americans and American physicians is the main, and almost only, reason why Canadians live 3 to 4 years longer than Americans.
Having American insurance company bureaucrats wedged between Americans and American physicians kills 45,000 Americans each year, who would be alive if they lived in Canada, where every single Canadian can see a doctor in Canada, and every single Canadian can, and does, get whatever health care they need in Canada.
Every Canadian, rich or poor, and regardless of age, get far better health care in Canada than the average middle class American gets in the United States, accounting for the fact that Canadians are healthier and live longer than Americans.
Notable: (source US Central Intelligence Agency Fact Book- 2010)
From a E-mail I recieved 12/12/2011
Canadians, What do you think of Your Health Care System?
Responses
Regulators Reject Proposal That Would Bring Fox-Style News to Canada
Posted: February 28, 2011 09:54 PM
"Harper's attempts to make lying legal on Canadian television is a stark admission that right wing political ideology can only dominate national debate through dishonest propaganda."
"Canada's Radio Act requires that "a licenser may not broadcast....any false or misleading news." The provision has kept Fox News and right wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom."
Source
Posted Posted: 10/14/2011 PM
Fox News' Lies Keep Them Out of Canada
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Reader Supported News
01 March 11
As America's middle class battles for its survival on the Wisconsin barricades - against various Koch Oil surrogates and the corporate toadies at Fox News - fans of enlightenment, democracy and justice can take comfort from a significant victory north of the Wisconsin border. Fox News will not be moving into Canada after all! The reason: Canadian regulators announced last week they would reject efforts by Canada's right-wing Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to repeal a law that forbids lying on broadcast news.
Canada's Radio Act requires that "a licenser may not broadcast ... any false or misleading news." The provision has kept Fox News and right-wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom. As a result of that law, Canadians enjoy high quality news coverage, including the kind of foreign affairs and investigative journalism that flourished in this country before Ronald Reagan abolished the "Fairness Doctrine" in 1987. Political dialogue in Canada is marked by civility, modesty, honesty, collegiality, and idealism that have pretty much disappeared on the US airwaves. When Stephen Harper moved to abolish the anti-lying provision of the Radio Act, Canadians rose up to oppose him fearing that their tradition of honest non-partisan news would be replaced by the toxic, overtly partisan, biased and dishonest news coverage familiar to American citizens who listen to Fox News and talk radio. Harper's proposal was timed to facilitate the launch of a new right-wing network, "Sun TV News" which Canadians call "Fox News North."
Harper, often referred to as "George W. Bush's Mini Me," is known for having mounted a Bush-like war on government scientists, data collectors, transparency, and enlightenment in general. He is a wizard of all the familiar tools of demagoguery; false patriotism, bigotry, fear, selfishness and belligerent religiosity.
Harper's attempts to make lying legal on Canadian television are a stark admission that right-wing political ideology can only dominate national debate through dishonest propaganda. Since corporate profit-taking is not an attractive vessel for populism, a political party or broadcast network that makes itself the tool of corporate and financial elites must lie to make its agenda popular with the public. In the Unites States, Fox News and talk radio, the sock puppets of billionaires and corporate robber barons, have become the masters of propaganda and distortion on the public airwaves. Fox News' notoriously biased and dishonest coverage of the Wisconsin's protests is a prime example of the brand of news coverage Canada has smartly avoided.
Source
03/29/2010
Oh, Hell No!
We had eight years of Bush and Cheney, Now you get mad!
You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and
appointed a President..
You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate
energy policy.
You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got ousted.
You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.
You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to
us.
You didn't get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said
illegal war.
You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.
You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.
You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.
You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.
You didn't get mad when we let a major US city drown.
You didn't get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.
You didn't get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.
You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America
deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies,
corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all
okay with you, but helping other Americans... oh hell no.
Source: walldude Democrat Underground
Single Payer, Universal Health Care for ALL.
Brief Summary of the Legislation
The United States National Health Care Act establishes a unique American national universal health insurance program. The bill would create a publicly financed, privately delivered healthcare system that uses the already existing Medicare program by expanding and improving it to all U.S. residents, and all residents living in U.S. territories. The goal of the legislation is to ensure that all Americans will have access, guaranteed by law, to the highest quality and most cost effective healthcare services regardless of their employment, income, or healthcare status. With over 45-75 million uninsured Americans, and another 50 million who are under- insured, the time has come to change our inefficient and costly fragmented non-healthcare system.
The United States National Health Care Act, H.R. 676
H.R.676 - United States National Health Care Act or the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act PDF
Friday, December 4, 2009
The Need for National Health Reform
Mr. President, I would like to spend a few minutes discussing why the health reform bill is so important to all Americans and, in particular, the people of my home state of New Mexico.
First, I'd like to discuss the context for this health reform bill -the very serious problems that we currently face and the significant cost to the nation if we, as a Congress, fail to act.
As this chart demonstrates, the cost of healthcare continues to escalate at an unsustainable rate. Currently, America spends more on healthcare than any other nation. According to projections from the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. is spending over $2.5 trillion annually on healthcare, more than 16 percent of our Gross Domestic Product. This threatens the fiscal health of the U.S. government, American families, and American businesses.
As this chart demonstrates, according to the Congressional Budget Office if Congress does not act to change current law, federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid combined will grow from roughly 5 percent of GDP today to almost 10 percent by 2035. By 2080, the government would be spending almost as much, as a share of the economy, on just its two major health care programs as it has spent on all of its programs and services in recent years.
As this next chart demonstrates, most of this increase is not the result of our aging population, but instead is categorized as excess cost growth. Such spending is unsustainable and has led CBO to say that "slowing the growth rate of outlays for Medicare and Medicaid is the central long-term challenge for fiscal policy."
Moreover, across the country premiums continue to increase and are becoming more and more unaffordable for individuals and businesses. According to an August report by the Commonwealth Fund, nationally, family premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance increased 119 percent between 1999 and 2008, and -- if cost growth continues on its current course -- could increase another 94 percent to an average $23,842 per family by 2020.
Source: http://bingaman.senate.gov/news/20091204-01.cfm
December 30, 2009
Editorial
The Case for Reform
Reforming this country's broken health care system is an urgent and essential task. Given all of the fabrications and distortions from Republican critics, and the squabbling among Democratic supporters, it is no surprise that many Americans still have doubts.
President Obama and Democratic leaders have a strong case. They need to make it now. Here are compelling reasons for all Americans to root for the reform effort to succeed and urge Congress to complete the job:
THE HEALTH OF MILLIONS OF AMERICANS The fact that 46 million people in this country have no health insurance should be intolerable. Every other major industrial country guarantees health coverage to its citizens, yet the United States, the richest of them all, does not.
Claims that the uninsured can always go to an emergency room for charity care ignore the fact that American taxpayers pay a high price for that care. And it ignores the abundant evidence that people who lack insurance don't get necessary preventive care or screening tests, and suffer gravely when they finally do seek treatment because their diseases have become critical.
Full Article
www.nytimes.com/2009/12/30/opinion/30wed2.html?_r=1
PDF of article The Case for Reform
Links for more information:
Single-Payer FAQ
National Health Care for the Homeless Council
The Case For Single Payer, Universal Health Care For The United States
Universal Health Care Action Network
What is Single Payer?
Healthcare For the People and By the People
Obama, the healthcare Riddler
The Citizens Alliance for National Health Insurance
Overview of the Canada Health Act
Health Care Spending
www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/index.cfm">
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The Only Normal People
are the Ones You
Don't Know Very Well
Joe Ancis
The Cost of War
National Pirorities
Where do your tax Dollars go?
Deepwater Horizon
Oil Rape
Think the PB "Oil Spill" has been taken care of? Think again.
Click on this link for proof.
It has just been buried, covered up. This is far from over.
Up-dated 08/18/2011
Riki Ott on the Gulf: "These people have oil in their bodies."
In this interview with Rose Aguilar, Riki Ott talks about the health crisis caused by the BP oil disaster in the Gulf. She says she's currently dealing with three or four autopsies and knows of people who are down to 4.7% of their lung capacity and have enlarged hearts. "These people have oil in their bodies," she said.
She believes four to five million people in the Gulf were exposed to either acute or intermediate levels of oil at dangerous levels.
Rose spoke with Riki Ott on the sixth-month anniversary of the BP oil disaster -- one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history.
In 1989, Ott, a marine toxicologist who lives in Cordova, Alaska, experienced firsthand the devastating effects of the Exxon Valdex oil disaster.
She's spent five of the past six months traveling back and forth between Louisiana and Florida to gather information about what's really happening in the Gulf and share the lessons she learned about long-term illnesses and deaths of clean-up workers and residents. She's planning to return in January.
"We are trying to perform a service to the public here to coordinate smart people who know their stuff with other people who want to learn about what's going on."
From the The Oil Drum blog
Some information to fuel your night mares
More than you want to know about BP and the Gusher that's on it's way around the world.
"The BP president said yesterday that the company would survive. That's like someone running over your dog and saying, 'Don't worry, my car is fine.'"
-Jimmy Fallon, on BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico
Right now we are working on a process to use "Tar Balls" to pave the beaches and then to work out from there to pave over the open seas.
Biased? Who Me?
This site has been accused of being slanted to the Left. Biased towards the Liberal side. As if that might somehow be a bad
thing. Ah, Biased? Maybe a little bit, but -
One of the reasons for this perceived slant is that we Liberals are more grounded in reality. This grounding in reality makes
Truth important. Facts are important. Because Reality is important. And in this day and age, truth can and does get twisted way
out of shape on a regular basis by our main stream media. This Liberal Media you keep hearing about is a myth. It doesn't exist. What the Right now calls the Liberal Media was in reality the real center-of-the-road, main stream news and information media, based on Truth, facts and investigative reporting. Not any more. Five Conservative companies now control it all.
Media Ownership Concentration Graphic
How is this graphic of media concentration in this country in any way depicting a Liberal media?
If you want propaganda, go to any conservative web site... or even listen or watch most any main stream national news show in this country. They are only pretending at presenting journalism. "Minimally Informational News" is a good descriptive label for our main stream news sources.
Compare what you hear there to what Liberals are saying. Notice that with Liberal sources you are more likely to find references and sources to back up the presenters' viewpoints. You are more likely to find direct quotes and not just some out-of-context rehash of what someone wants you to think was said or happened.
You are more likely to find in-context, unedited videos of events from Liberal sources. The heavily edited video of Shirley Sherrod is a good example of how the Right presents its 'Truths'.
So, comparing the two sides, the Liberal side may appear slanted, but that is because there is so much bias toward the right in this country in our national news media (radio, TV, newspapers or the Internet). So Truth actually does have a Liberal bias.
RC
Fox News even went to court and won the right to lie to their audience:
"During their appeal, Fox News asserted that there are no written rules against distorting news in the media. They argued that, under the First Amendment, broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on public airwaves."
Click here for source of quote
More information here
Fox News became the propaganda mouth piece for the White House during George W. Bush's administration. It is the number one source of propaganda for programing the unthinking droids on the extreme right. News it ain't.
Is it any wonder this site may appear slanted then?
9/20/2010
Jimmy Carter Gets Fox News
Appearing on the NBC Nightly News, former Pres. Jimmy Carter demonstrated that he still has keen insight into the state of modern media:
Brian Williams: How do you think it came to be that such high numbers of people believe that this American-born Christian President is either foreign born or a Muslim or both?
Pres. Carter: I think the number one factor is Fox News. It's totally distorting everything possible concerning the facts. And I think their constant hammering away at these false premises about our incumbent President has a major impact on the consciousness of America. A lot of well-meaning people, including many of those in the Tea Party movement, believe what is said in this constant hammering away by Glenn Beck and by others who have no regards for the truth.
www.newscorpse.com
What Lies Behind Us and Lies Before Us are Small Matters Compared to What Lies Right to our Faces.
Take all the common sense espoused by the Hoopleheads and fluff it up and it wouldn't fill a thimble. If they had the education and a firm enough grip on reality to know what they were talking about, they'd be embarrassed to say it. But they don't, so they do.
Democratic Underground
MovingOn.org
Health Care Fact Check
Profile of the Sociopath
"Yet it is eyes which blind the man"... "Because a man can see, he does not look."
- Master Po
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Women must have the right to make their own childbearing decisions -- this is our civil right. We are outraged by the Stupak amendment to the Affordable Health Care for America Act (HR3962). This unacceptable amendment prohibits women who receive federal subsidies from using their own personal, private funds to buy insurance plans that include abortion services. Presently, more than 85 percent of private insurance plans cover abortion services but the Stupak amendment makes it almost impossible for private insurance companies that become part of the new system to offer abortion coverage to women.
