The article is entitled: "No shelter from storm."

The editorial suggests Obama's Stimulus largely went to keeping unionized government employees living a life style largely being paid for by taxpayers' credit. And that should the economy continue to nose dive, a second stimulus package will have to be created to further support life style. Their reasoning: There is simply no way to cut five-billion dollars out of the state budget.

As a taxpayer who happens not to be living off of taxpayers' credit,  I wonder just how long will it take our political leaders to say enough is enough. We all must share the growing economic burden. Contract government employees must start thinking about serious wage and benefits reductions, perhaps as much as 50% or more in order to avoid a second stimulus. 

ex animo

davidfarrar

Could this be Obama's "Cronkite Moment," like when LBJ said...

"That's it. If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America."

Except of course there is no middle America any more, and the Left already lost itself.

(Kudos to tokin woody on FSZ.)

When I want to learn about something, I generally start with my good friend, the Google. Depending on how much I want to know, it can stop there, or lead me to the local public library. Sometimes, when I want to know a lot about one particular thing, I even head for one of the university libraries in town.

What I want to learn today is why climate change is bad. Apparently, that can't be learned through Google or the library. It also can't be taught with access to the most current scientific studies or personal consultation with experts in the field.  It appears to require about a hundred grand, access to airplanes, and true bi-partisanship. 

Bi-partisanship is supposed to be what it's all about, right? So when ten members of Congress (and their spouses) took an eleven-day trip to Australia and the South Pole to see for themselves what climate change is doing to the planet, it ought to warm our hearts that four of them were Republicans and six were Democrats.

And warm my heart it does. I'm so happy that they put aside their partisan bickering for the good of the country. They snorkeled together. They played with penguins together. That's just awesome. I'm so glad that both parties can talk--without irony--about cost control and deficit management when they are spending $100,000 plus (not including air transportation on military planes) on a "fact-finding" trip. I'm interested to hear about the samples that they collected and what conclusions they reached when they brought the samples back to their labs for analysis.

I'm also interested to hear about what another bi-partisan delegation, of Senators this time, learned after spending $121,000 (not including airfare) to attend the Paris Air Show. For that price, it's got to be good.

Congressional overseas travel cost the taxpayers $13 million last year, almost 10 times the amount spent in 1995.  The spouses have to pay for their own food, but not the airfare or hotel. To hear one representative tell it, if spouses didn't get to go along, either nobody would travel or marriages would end. Probably Governor Sanford didn't get that memo.

I'm not suggesting that overseas travel isn't necessary. Visiting our military installations, for example, is important. But if bi-partisan Congressional delegations are dropping more than twice what the average American makes in a year in what amounts to a vacation so that they can "learn" what I'm guessing I can find out in twenty minutes on the Internet, they should probably think twice the next time they try to convince us that universal healthcare is too expensive.

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Cross posted at Dagblog, as usual.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

OBAMACARE  = " N " WORD

The first time I had heard the term Obamacare with it's attending sneering smirk the speaker might as well said the N word.  Makes me want to cry (see previous blog). 

  I did a little local canvassing in my small Alaskan village the last couple of days and figured out a couple of things about my communities lack of interest in the health care legislation battle. What really caught my attention though was the phrase Obamacare and the blatant racism projected while uttering the word. In the office of one of my clients was a wealthy gentleman from seattle up to do some sport fishing. We were discussing health care, cash for junkers, and President Obama in general.  "You don't really want Obamacare do you?" was what he hissed .  After thinking about the tea-bager town hall invasions and all the other nastiness associated with the right wing noise machine lately I began to wonder, is all the hate and anger about race and its attending fear; power and losing some of it to another ethnicity?  At dinner tonight I dared bring up the subject with another group, though less progressive then those a few day before, and found myself attacked.  Could have just have been their Yukon Jack shots and Guinness chasers - yuck.  All evening I kept hearing the N word in different veiled ways.    They even attacked my ethnic origin.   What kept going through my mind all evening was Gabby in Blazing Saddles trying to warn the towns people of Rock Ridge about  their new sheriff   "The sheriff is a N(BONG!)".  

So, what is my point you ask?  I don't know.  I guess I am just venting really.   I know how I deal with unlearning my own modes of racism but do not have the tools to penetrate the blindness of others.

M.  Paul

A provision in President Obama's health care reform bill encourages "end-of- life" counseling for seniors -- sparking euthanasia fears among some of the legislation's critics and leading others to believe that the White House is looking to save money by pressuring insurers to provide less coverage to seniors. 

The provision, tucked deep within the House bill, would provide Medicare coverage for an end-of-life consultation every five years, and more frequent sessions if a person is suffering a life-threatening disease. 

Health providers would be required to explain to seniors the end-of-life services available, including "palliative care and hospice." 

"This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law," House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich. said in a statement last month.

But the sessions are not required...

Two items this past week emphasized American partisan polarity even as the Sotomayor confirmation offered a lonely counter-example: the GOP has used US Chamber of Commerce tactics and fuzzy facts to smear President Barack Obama, and the NY Times did a partisan sniper job on Ben Stein for doing a commercial that is tangential to the content of his former column there.

GOP donors don't want health care reform imposed by government unless the government imposes the draft penned by top GOP donors. That's not big news. What seems like news to everyone is what those donors spread through the communication mill without their signature on it. They issue talking points (propaganda) that requires enough detailed factual checking and correction to create an irresolute fog around the subject and kill reform efforts. They've a right to do it, however, they'd be more effective in getting their points across if they spent their huge war chests on finding and stating the middle ground facts (where facts usually fall).

Just as the US Chamber and like lobbyists routinely deceive small business to get their donations without telling them the Chamber stands for their massive competitors on nearly every issue in which small businesses conflict with large, they also tell the public how disastrous and socialist the Obama Administration is despite that the Chamber screamed for socialist bailout of the financial sector to begin with. In this, the Chamber camp (GOP) engages in hypocrisy without shame.

It is good to check and balance the Obama Administration to be sure they do not give into their own solicitous, euphemistic snake oil talking-point donors (Planned Parenthood, NARAL and others) to slowly cook their eugenic notions into this country's legal system as they have been striving to do in the young social and cultural life of the country. Even so, my perception of President Barack Obama has not been of someone taking a knee jerk Leftward approach to a host of issues even as I continue to deeply dissent from his abortion advocacy and all of its false ideological, pseudo-scientific premises.

On Ben Stein, it is so clear what happened to him as to be transparent. He has angered those who would impose a scientific theory as speech (including intellectual freedom) law. For those so disposed, the floor cannot remain open in publicly funded educational institutions for professors, teachers, researchers, students and others to investigate or attempt to find a modified method to investigate any and every alternative view, theory, or possible theory to evolution-as-is that borders or relates to multiple disciplines, say physics, biology and religious studies. The point is, there are limits to scientific method, but not all knowledge is scientific. While hybrid attempts or inquiries should not unseat or threaten purely-tailored scientific experimentation, neither should purely tailored scientific experimentation foreclose hybrid epistemological efforts even if it may from time to time comment on aspects of them.

Stein is disfavored because he's a traditional monotheist versus someone like Deepak Chopra whose speculations on the confluence of religion, spirituality and science do not offend because he doesn't belong to the monotheist groups which remain demographically Republican and anger Leftward politicians and grassroots simply by violating their speech restrictions.

Stein has never been for the abolition of the strictly tailored scientific method so long as it was not intellectually limiting of other approaches. Stein is for free inquiry. It is not surprising that Stein's activity or access should be cut by the NY Times on the pretext of conflict of interest when the NY Times itself is built on conflicts of interest. There is no doubt that the NY Times is a left-leaning ideological periodical. To pretend that there is no ideological conflict of interest in its reporting while claiming Stein has one is hypocrisy without shame. The NY Times definitely tailors its content to sell newspapers and boost advertisement: is that not a bias for money and business?

President Barack Obama and Ben Stein are casualties in this country's increasingly irresponsible partisan polarization rooted in special interest bank accounts. You can see the AP's bias here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090808/ap_en_ot/us_people_ben_stein

by its emaciated (almost anti-bio) they give Stein versus his actual resume, here:

http://www.benstein.com/bio.html

where we learn that he has been an economist, lawyer, poverty lawyer, civil rights advocate, journalist on business ethics, speech writer and more. As he is under siege by the left, it seems he is fighting to keep his work alive because of politically oriented dirty tricks. The NY Times should show which article he's written which puts his column into the conflict of interest category any more than the Times itself is in conflict.

The national grassroots, party affiliation aside, needs to take time to check the facts on health care options in general, Obama's specific proposals (read them), and those among his opposition on the Hill. They also need to measure the NY Times by the same scale it uses to squelch diverse voices in its pages.

Since President Obama said Sergeant Crowley acted "stupidly" when he arrested Professor Gates, what do you think he is thinking about the "truthers", the "birthers", and the "town hall terrorists" who are all coming out of the wood work these days?

I'll go with "these mother******'s are stupider than I thought!"

Because the TRUTH is, all this manufactured outrage about where OUR (as all the citizens of the United States) black president was born has got me thinking about is the old D.W. Griffith movie BIRTH OF A NATION - then again, maybe some studio is remaking it, because these people TERRORIZING the healthcare town hall meetings could stand in as extras for the mob scenes without any coaching at all.

I've been meaning to get around to doing a piece on the absurdity that is the Glen Beck phenomenon, whose presence on CNN is so negative, the cable news network could run "Black In America" specials five days a week and it wouldn't balance it out what has to be the "stupidest" son of a biscuit eater on the air.

Beck makes Michelle Malkin and Rush Limbaugh look like the right wing actors they are as they join the fray, whipping the herds of town hall terrorists out there into a frenzy, directing their followers in the art of creating pandemonium...

...all so they can keep ALL OF THE PEOPLE, including themselves, from getting a better health insurance deal than they have now.

If we can all agree that our nation's insurance companies are peeing on our heads and telling us it's raining - then why is anyone who is NOT a CEO in the healthcare industry or major shareholder in one of these companies even thinking about keeping things the way they are?

If the president is able to get health insurance companies to actually do what they claim to be doing, and less of the denying of coverage to the people who pay the premiums that keep these insurance company doors open, while providing an alternative source of health care coverage for those of us who would throw off the statistics in any actuarial pool, an alternative source that will drastically cut back our emergency and trauma center costs - which seems from most angles to look suspiciously like something right out of the pages of the old Good Book my Christian citizens are ready to raise in the air whenever their motivations are questioned - why is this seen as such a terrible apostasy?

Doesn't the phrase "promote the general Welfare" come right out of the Preamble to our own Constitution?

I mean - what would Jesus do?

I don't remember Jesus standing with the money changers or the "wealth creators".

As a matter of fact, I believe he is best known for feeding the hungry and healing the sick.

Healing the sick was seen as a miracle two thousand years ago.

Today, we call it "modern medicine".

I can guarantee it would cost us less - much, much less - to "heal the sick" than the trillions we've spent keeping those "wealth builders" in Connecticut and Westchester and Ossining rich.

Just think about this - there was a time, years ago, when the effort to make seatbelt usage mandatory was just beginning, when some of us protested that too.

Amazingly, with all the disorderly conduct that has been going on at these town hall meetings - the charge of disorderly conduct, we have learned in the last two weeks, covers most kinds of public unruly or disturbing behaviors which acts to provoke a disturbance - not one of these non-professorial, non-Harvardites has been arrested.

This is , or was, on the home page of TPM:

Palin: Obama ‘Death Panel’ Might Euthanize My Baby

Seriously: how sad is that?

Without regard to how utterly whack it is; without speculation for any root(s) it may have in post-partum depression (common enough;after all, she did carry her baby to term, under circumstances of self-imposed difficulty to the point of endangering her life and that of the fetus during her plane trip back to Alaska during labor)…but just as a statement of belief: how sad is that?

Here she is, a mom grappling with the difficulty she sees facing her child. I don’t know what she feels about that; I can’t see into her head, nor remotely assess her feelings; but she’s expressed her belief quite clearly.

Because her child has little, if any, chance of:

1) Learning to play the piano
2) Composing poetry
3) Developing a more-or-less normal emotional IQ

In short, because her child will not have what is generally conceived [1]as a normal life in a modern to post-modern nation, she has opined the falsehood that for our common good, her child should be aborted or even euthanized.

And she really, truly, believes it. She’s not being a demagogue. She genuinely believes that someone like her will be called before some sort of Star Chamber to answer for, apparently, her failure to breed successfully.

How sad is that?

What kind of index can be used to describe that depth. that extent, of sadness?

It’s not just Sarah Palin, either. It’s not just Rush Limbaugh. And that is where the extent index begins to be relevant.

Do we really loathe ourselves so completely that we will refuse to care for our own bodies? That we will decline to acknowledge our common good as encompassing our bodies and their developmental arc?

Beginning to see from this perspective, we ken why the global insurance industries rely on the dis-ease[2] model of doing business.

[1] Not the general society; no no no: by her. Dim as Sarah Palin is, she is (probably) still enough of a mom to know that her child will not have the full life she desired; notwithstanding her statement of how much the world can learn from a Down’s Syndrome child. That statement is just an attempt to displace sadness with hope.

[2] Yes, both senses: disease, of the body or mind, defined as a physical pathology, ranging from allergies to cancer or HIV; and dis-ease, defined briefly as removing comfort and a general feeling of safe belonging. Note that I say removing, not absence; and we can see that process of removal in the insurance industries contemporaneous, and by now well-documented, activities. If the metaphor of the body politic is used, then you, gentle reader, can define to your satisfaction what those mobs are.

Recently, we have seen examples of an anomalously high "recommend" rate for posts that appear to express views that would seem less than deserving on the basis of objective evidence and the perspectives of most TPM participants.  I don't know the explanation, but we may be seeing the equivalent of the "astroturf" phenomenon - i.e., an organized effort to recruit participants to push a particular ideological agenda.

Whether that's true of not, I wonder whether TPM might not consider altering the "recommend" policy, so that anyone clicking on "recommend" would also be required to comment on the post under discussion.  The comment could be as simple as "Recommended", but it would discourage commenters from hiding behind anonymity while being anything but hidden in promoting their ideology.  Letters to the editor in the print media, and the reader comments section of blogs, generally require some identification.   Here, it needn't be a real life identity, but it should at least be traceable to a specified individual.

If simply stating "recommend" is all that is required, even timid participants should not feel intimidated.

Don't you just love hearing the Republicans claim they think the kind of reform we really need is to attain a MARKET BASED HEALTH CARE SYSTEM? 

I mean really folks......isn't that exactly what we currently have. 

Based on their plan for reform...it would be THEIR plan that could eventually eliminate Medicare, the Veterans Health Care system and Medicaid.  Market based means exactly that - not government controlled.

Under their plan it's the insurance industry, medical profession and employers that would decide which plan is best for you --- you wouldn't be the one choosing, they would be.

Due to the success of Cash for Clunkers, your government has instituted a new program to stimulate new home sales:

(f) Qualifying transactions ($350,000 Credit).

(1) The new domicile is a rowhouse or triple-decker with a commute distance of no more than 5 miles. The eligible trade-in domicile has a commute distance of 18 miles or more and is a garden townhome, detached, 3,500 SF single-family dwelling, or restored farmette, and the commute distance of the new domicile is at least 9 miles, but less than 20 miles closer to the owner's source of employment than the eligible trade-in domicile.

(g) Qualifying transactions ($650,000 Credit).

(1) The new domicile is an urban condominium with a commute distance of no more than 2 miles, adjacent to walkable streets, shops, public transit. The eligible trade-in domicile has a commute distance of 28 miles or more and is a gated-community townhome, detached, 4,700 SF single-family house, or second-income horse farm in the rolling hills, and the commute distance of the new domicile is at least 20 miles closer to the owner's source of employment than the eligible trade-in domicile.

Well what a surprise for Floridians on Friday when Senator Mel Martinez resigned. Good ole Mel had already announced that he would not run for re-election in 2010. With Governor Charlie Crist (R-closeted) already running for the 2010 seat and with the ability to appoint Martinez's replacement, many wondered if Crist would be our new interim Senator.

Governor Crist, also late Friday, announced he would not appoint himself and would proceed through a vigorous vetting process for Martinez's replacement and would have an appointment prior to the end of the August recess.

With Crist leading in the polls for taking the actual Senate election in 2010, who would he pick as an interim that wouldn't eventually be a challenger to himself?

Perhaps the Republicans are going to focus longer term and use the interim appointment to polish a candidate to face Senator Bill Nelson (D-moderate) in 2012. Looking back at the 2006 republican primary that determined Senator Nelson's last challenger you will find that the Palinesque Katherine Harris won the primary and then was easily defeated by Senator Nelson.

During that race, the Republican power brokers were not Katherine Harris supporters. She defied the powers to be and ended up as the brokers predicted; a terrible candidate from the fringe. Harris' opponent in the primary William McBride would have been a much stronger challenger to Senator Nelson. Extremely Conservative in the Jeb Bush category but without the wing nut craziness of a Palin or Harris, McBride was only defeated in the primary due to the State's Republican grassroots support for the women that had given Bush the Presidency in 2000.

McBride's political office background is empty. He is a personal injury attorney from Tampa but he garnered 30% of the vote against the wide name recognition of Katherine Harris. His father owns a large Christian radio network and has deep pockets and he has recently been getting Republican power broker support for a run at Florida Attorney General in 2010. The AG office is being vacated by Democrat Alex Sink (D-female Alex) who will be running for Governor in 2010

Appointing McBride as interim Senator is a win-win for the Florida Republican party. McBride would not scare national republican leadership; he could not hope to challenge Crist in the actual Senate race; it gives McBride political office experience he lacks; it gains significant name recognition for McBride for his run at Attorney General in 2010.

In the more distant future, it positions him perfectly to win the 2012 Republican primary to challenge democratic Senator Nelson in that year's general senate election. If McBride takes the Attorney General race in 2010 he will be a real threat to Nelson with the additional experience and name recognition. He will have all of the perfect Florida Conservative demographics to win against a moderate Democrat.

The Power Broker Republicans also trust McBride to follow orders, stay in line, and wait his turn.

The alternative is that Crist is so afraid of building an opponent to his own Senate candidacy that he makes a weak pick for interim Senator. This would be damaging to him at two levels. He would lose the support of larger Republican power brokers and his pick could make him look weak as a leader by only acting in his own self interest.

There are really no other players in the Florida Republican party that make as much sense as McBride. It will be interesting to see if the Republican Party can get it together enough with Crist to make a great play with the Martinez replacement. 

   When I graduated college, the purveyors of credit cards descended on me like pigeons on popcorn in a park....When I graduated law school I was handed the keys to the credit card kingdom.........

                              At a time when the industry was much less predatory and usurious, I acted like I had received an inheritance and purchased whatever, whenever....I was doing OK.  I worked two full time jobs and had plenty of income....When my wife retrned to the workforce we were a three income family of three.  We thought we had money to burn.  But what we were really burning was plastic....And you know what comes from burning plastic, noxious toxic fumes....  

As I got older and the demands of family life became more financially cumbersome, I realized that I was working to simply pay bills and nothing more...After going through a rather painful period financially , I made it my business to disengage from the credit card traps and cycles... My motto became: "If I can't pay for it in cash, I don't NEED it."

It then dawned on me that we were moving toward a cashless society and I decided that I would do all that I could to live debt free...It is inconvenient at times...But, now I owe nothing to no one for anything, anywhere......

People like me are a threat to the financial system which has created a new kind of slavery and oppression....I don't do credit cards, direct deposit, electronic transfers or any of the other number of things that remove the freedom, latitude and flexibility that cash provides the average citizen or common person....CASH IS FREEDOM in a capitalist economy....

If we allow the banks to contol our existence by removing cash from the market place, we will have given away much of what we perceive as our independence....Down the line, those who don't have accesss to the banking system, as evidenced by some form of plastic will be sigmatized, demonized and eventually criminalized.....Law enforcement agenecies have been in the practice of profiling people who make large cash purchases as either drug dealers or terrorists for some time now......

The steady march toward the criminalization of poverty has become much more pronounced and discernable in the recent economic crisis....So I am involved in a one man crusade to hold the line against the removal of cash from our midst, because I believe that cash is one of the last great equalizers in our society/economy/culture.....The other is death.....

The banks and financial institutions are looking to remove the cash as a means of oppressing and enslaving otherwise "free"  middle class people while stigmatizing, demonzing and criminalizing poor people....

Unless we take action to halt this process, it will come to pass that failure to have a credit/debit card in your possion will cause you to be denied access to the goods and services we have taken for granted in the markeplace and the use of cash will be limited to illegal, illegitimate and  black market transactions which would subject the participants to criminal prosecution and penalties such as fines and/or incarceration....

.Can you imagine the Orwellian consequences of fining poor people for being poor....or are we already there?