When I was a child, attending public school in the USA, I was taught to hold my hand over my heart and repeat a pledge that included, “with liberty and justice for all.” I was told that our entire way of life was governed by the Constitution of the United States and I was told that we had the freest press in the world. Forty years after I was born, I found these “truths” to be far from self evident.
As I listened to 14 month old Analeigha Rivera's tiny heart in the Reliant Center in Houston, I could hear the murmur interrupting her regular rhythm as blood swished through a hole between the main chambers of the heart. An echocardiogram confirmed the diagnosis, so I could show her mother Victoria exactly where the problem was and explained to her that if little Analeigha didn't get supervised care by a pediatric cardiologist, we might miss our window to prevent life-threatening damage. I looked in her mother's tear-stained eyes and heard the same story that hundreds of others have recounted to me -- Victoria had a job but had lost her insurance. So Analeigha had nowhere to go. After I explained to her that we had resources on-site to help plan the next steps, one of my staff took me aside and told me we had just broken the record for the most people seen in a free clinic in one day. That's when my spirit sank a little.
Read the rest of what Dr. Mehmet Oz, M.D. had to say about the lack of health care in the USA here the the Huffington Post
"I can't tell you how many foreign leaders who are heads of center-right governments say to me, I don't understand why people would call you socialist. In my country, you'd be considered a conservative." -- President Obama, Sept. 20, 2009
There have always been two basic arguments for health insurance reform: one based in morality, the other self-interest. For a documented 45,000 persons to die prematurely in America each year because they can't afford proper care is a national disgrace. Almost everybody apart from "conservatives" whose moral imagination is limited to judging other people's sex lives understands that.
The current cruel, wasteful system is indefensible. Surely that's why almost three-quarters of physicians polled by the New England Journal of Medicine favor genuine reform. About 63 percent of doctors surveyed nationwide support a public option; 10 percent would prefer a single-payer system, basically Medicare for everybody.
For all the hullabaloo, it appears alarmist rhetoric hasn't scared ordinary people as much as it has cable TV anchors. A Bloomberg poll asked which right-wing objections people found legitimate, and which were "scare tactics." Basically, voters rejected GOP rhetoric almost 2-to-1. About 63 percent think Sarah Palin's "death panels" are a distortion, versus 30 percent who fear them. It's 61 to 33 percent on the claim that health reform means government-paid abortions, 58 to 37 percent on the false claim that illegal aliens will get subsidized insurance, etc.
In short, hardcore opposition is mainly confined to the Republican "base," itself increasingly confined to the South. Why has Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, started making conciliatory noises? Consider these remarkable statistics from a Research 2000 poll: Voters in the Northeast overwhelmingly dislike congressional Republicans. The party's favorability rating there is a minuscule 7, yes 7, percent. Moreover, it's a paltry 13 percent in the Midwest; 14 percent in the West. Only in the South is the GOP politically relevant, with a 50 to 37 percent advantage over Democrats.
read all of Gene Lyons's article here at Salon.com
"WE'RE SCREWED": MEDIA HEIST BLANKETS CITY WITH "SPECIAL EDITION" NEW YORK POST Tabloid Tells Truth About Climate Change and How It Will Affect City, World
Early this morning, nearly a million New Yorkers were stunned by the appearance of a "special edition" New York Post blaring headlines that their city could face deadly heat waves, extreme flooding, and other lethal effects of global warming within the next few decades. The most alarming thing about it: the news came from an official City report.
Distributed by over 2000 volunteers throughout New York City, the paper has been created by The Yes Men and a coalition of activists as a wake-up call to action on climate change. It appears one day before a UN summit where Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will push 100 world leaders to make serious commitments to reduce carbon emissions in the lead-up to the Copenhagen climate conference in December. Ban has said that the world has "less than 10 years to halt (the) global rise in greenhouse gas emissions if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences for people and the planet," adding that Copenhagen is a "once-in-a-generation opportunity."
Although the 32-page New York Post is a fake, everything in it is 100% true, with all facts carefully checked by a team of editors and climate change experts.
"This could be, and should be, a real New York Post," said Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men. "Climate change is the biggest threat civilization has ever faced, and it should be in the headlines of every paper, every day until we solve the problem."
The fake Post's cover story ("We're Screwed") reports the frightening conclusions of a blue-ribbon panel of scientists commissioned by the mayor's office to determine the potential effects of climate change on the City. That report was released in February of this year, but received very little press at the time. Other lead articles describe the Pentagon's alarmed response to global warming ("Clear & Present Disaster"), the U.S. government's sadly minuscule response to the crisis ("Congress Cops Out on Climate"), China's alternative energy program ("ChinaÕs Green Leap Forward Overtakes U.S."), and how if the US doesn't quickly pass a strong climate bill, the crucial Copenhagen climate talks this December could be a "Flopenhagen."
Another ad promotes civil disobedience, encouraging readers to visit BeyondTalk.net and pledge to risk arrest in a planned global action November 30, just before the conference in Copenhagen.
"We need strong action on climate change," said David Solnit of Mobilization for Climate Justice West, one of the partners in BeyondTalk.net. "But history shows that leaders act only when people take to the streets to demand it. That's what needs to happen now."
This paper is one of 2500 initiatives taking place in more than 130 countries as a response to the "Global Wake-up Call" on climate change. For more information, visit tcktcktck.org/wakeup
Israeli soldiers laugh as they bulldoze family shacks of non-Jews in Israel. Good chance that that bulldozer was funded with US tax payers money. Good chance it was made by a US corporation. There is little sicker to me than this. And it was done with my money. The "blood" is on my hands.
Fanatic right-wing fear mongers are not unique to Fox. Pressure is on CNN to drop Lou Dobbs, who is not only a birther (spreads the idea that Obama was not born in the USA), but has come up with a conspiracy theory that illegal Mexican immigrants will spread leprosy throughout America. A certified nutter.
First you have Gov. Mark Sanford telling his wife (and four kids) he is going on a solo hike on the Appalachian Trail but instead flies to Argentina to have an affair, now you have representative Joe Wilson redefining disrespect by yelling out at a joint meeting calling our president a liar.
First off, Obama did not lie about tax money not going to undocumented people if this bill passes, but to call out like this during a speech by any president is out of order. What is up with South Carolina? The GOP?
Joe Wilson's website was down yesterday, I'm assuming from people trying to email him about his uninformed outburst... or maybe it was even more ignorant, racist right wingers writing to congratulate him. I don't doubt anything in this time of Fox News/Palin/Townhall madness.
Here is 5 minutes and 18 seconds of what one of our smartest men and greatest journalists has to say about health care reform and the nuts fighting against it. Below is a bit of text from the transcript. The video is here.
...we've posted on our website an essay by the media scholar Henry Giroux. He describes the growing domination of hate radio as one of the crucial elements in a "culture of cruelty" increasingly marked by overt racism, hostility and disdain for others, coupled with a simmering threat of mob violence toward any political figure who believes health care reform is the most vital of safety nets, especially now that the central issue of life and politics is no longer about working to get ahead, but struggling simply to survive.
So here we are, wallowing in our dysfunction. Governed — if you listen to the rabble rousers — by a black nationalist from Kenya smuggled into the United States to kill Sarah Palin's baby. And yes, I could almost buy their belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, only I think he shipped them to Washington, where they've been recycled as lobbyists and trained in the alchemy of money laundering, which turns an old-fashioned bribe into a First Amendment right.
Where have the intelligent conservatives gone? Have they all become Libertarians?
I saw a woman on TV crying because our president was going to talk to our school children. Please, get a grip. What exactly is at the core of your hatred for Obama? Really. Here are a few notable past presidents who personally addressed our school children:
President Regan 1988 (who talked to the children about the importance of cutting taxes!) President Bush Sr. 1991 President Bush Jr. 2001 was reading to school kids on 9/11
Please, please, please stop listening to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, Michael Savage and Ann Coulter. They are misleading you and making you dumber. If you must bunker yourself down in purely partisan politics, read/listen to those on the right such as Tony Blankley and David Frum. These people are smart, not to mention sane. Hell, even Bill Kristol is better than the above mentioned nut cases, though his predictions are often wrong and I question his sanity sometimes.
Here is the real question to ask the Fox News Republicans: What are you really scared of? If you are a conservative, please try to answer these questions:
Do you believe Obama is a Nazi? Do you believe Obama wishes the USA to be Socialist? Do you believe Obama was born in Kenya?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, it is strongly in your best interest to stop watching all Fox programming except the Simpsons. The lunatic fringe on this network who are trying to delegitimize our president and publicly treat him with disrespect are not helping you or our country. Truthfully, I don't believe any of these people believe Obama is a Communist, Nazi, Muslim, Socialist or Kenyan. But these pundits use fear to make you hate this man.
What are they really afraid of? I ask you to try to answer that question. The answer seems simple to me.
Sheri Fink, reporter for ProPublica, and a doctor, had this piece published in the New York Times Magazine that on the cover said, “The floodwaters from Katrina had knocked out the power. Doctors and nurses were overstretched and overtired, patients were dying and the evacuation of many of the sickest seemed impossible. “Injecting drugs was one answer that some members of the medical staff decided on. Were they trying to comfort those patients—or hasten their [demise]?”
This article is about 18 patients who may have been "killed" with lethal injection by hospital attendants because hospital workers thought the patients could not be evacuated after the power went out because of floods after Katrina. Are the doctors and nurses responsible? Or is George Bush, who could barely be bothered to leave one of his many vacations (this one a month long) during one of America's worst "natural" disasters.
These excerpts are from Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! where the whole interview with Sheri Fink can be heard or read.
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