A lost lexicon June 17, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : culture, Government, Media , add a commentWhen up is down and right is left
I have long held and written on the fact that our current President out-democratted the democrats in most areas of his first two campaigns and administrations. The major exception which gave him a voting block of Catholics and Evangelicals was his pro-life stance (which he violated in approving the morning after pill under heavy legislative pressure spearheaded by Senator Clinton ) and his pro-Israel stance, and willingness to risk an Armageddon and bring on the end of the world.
Today it seems like the descriptive terms of conservative and liberal are all confused and the entire political lexicon is skewed, making it difficult to hold an intelligent political conversation with any historic perspective.
Conservatives love war, empire, and the military-industrial complex. They abhor peace, the sole and rightful property of liberals. Right? Wrong.
According to Bill Kauffman, true conservatives have always resisted the imperial and military impulse: it drains the treasury, curtails domestic liberties, breaks down families, and vulgarizes culture. From the Federalists who opposed the War of 1812, to the striving of Robert Taft (known as “Mr. Republican”) to keep the United States out of Korea, to the latter-day libertarian critics of the Iraq war, there has historically been nothing unusual about anti-war activists on the political right.
And while these critics of U.S. military crusades have been vilified by the party of George W. Bush, their conservative vision of a peaceful, decentralized, and noninterventionist America gives us a glimpse of the country we could have had—and might yet attain.
Passionate and witty, Ain’t My America is an eye-opening exploration of the forgotten history of right-wing peace movements—and a clarion call to anti-war conservatives of today.
Watch the Event in Real Video
Download a Podcast of the Event (MP3)
For balance, Michael Tomasky, the former executive editor of the American Prospect who now edits the Guardian newspaper’s American online edition, begs to differ.
In years past, it was the Republicans who got us out of wars, but since the Bush Republicanism has redefined the party it is now the Republicans who gets us into them.
A National Healthcare Mandate? May 22, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : Government, Media , add a comment
The questions asked in this video (link ) should be taken to actually cover any “national healthcare” plan, similar to how social security works, a forced deduction from your pay check. Do you like how government has raped the social security trust fund? Do you want to trust them with even more of your money? Or your health?
Trust every medical professional with your medical records?
Lower Health Care Costs by Investing in Electronic Information Technology Systems: A key feature of Barack Obama’s health care plan is the use of technology to lower the cost of health care. Most medical records are still stored on paper, which makes them difficult to use to coordinate care, measure quality, or reduce medical errors. Processing paper claims also costs twice as much as processing electronic claims. Barack Obama will invest $10 billion a year over the next five years to move the U.S. health care system to broad adoption of standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records. He will also phase in requirements for full implementation of health IT and commit the necessary federal resources to make it happen. Obama will ensure that these systems are developed in coordination with providers and frontline workers, including those in rural and underserved areas. Obama will ensure that patients’ privacy is protected. A study by the Rand Corporation found that if most hospitals and doctors offices adopted electronic health records, up to $77 billion of savings would be realized each year through improvements such as reduced hospital stays, avoidance of duplicative and unnecessary testing, more appropriate drug utilization, and other efficiencies.
Let’s jump to the real world , outside the utopian bubble . Think about the credit bureau report that is maintained on you buy the three/four CRA’s.
- All your information is available to anyone with access to the system.
- How many times are there errors in the information?
- How many times is the system breeched?
Now look at Obama’s plan here again; “avoidance of duplicative and unnecessary testing”
- Have you ever tried to get a error corrected on your credit file ( if you knew it was there) ?
- Have you ever sought enforcement for unauthorized access to your credit file by a hostile party?
An error on your medical records because of a transcription error, and the government saying you cant have the test again, or that test is unnecessary, again places the government in the physicians role. And the selling of some comfort that your rights will be protected is a pipe dream too.
Trust the government with your life?
Plan Would Bar Treatment of Elderly, Chronically Ill in Medical Disasters
By Associated Press
CNSNews.com
May 05, 2008(Chicago/AP) - Doctors know some patients needing lifesaving care won’t get it in a flu pandemic or other disaster. The gut-wrenching dilemma will be deciding who to let die.
Now, an influential group of physicians has drafted a grimly specific list of recommendations for which patients wouldn’t be treated. They include the very elderly, seriously hurt trauma victims, severely burned patients and those with severe dementia.
The suggested list was compiled by a task force whose members come from prestigious universities, medical groups, the military and government agencies. They include the Department of Homeland Security, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services.
The proposed guidelines are designed to be a blueprint for hospitals “so that everybody will be thinking in the same way” when pandemic flu or another widespread health care disaster hits, said Dr. Asha Devereaux. She is a critical care specialist in San Diego and lead writer of the task force report.
The idea is to try to make sure that scarce resources — including ventilators, medicine and doctors and nurses — are used in a uniform, objective way, task force members said.
Their recommendations appear in a report appearing Monday in the May edition of Chest , the medical journal of the American College of Chest Physicians.
“If a mass casualty critical care event were to occur tomorrow, many people with clinical conditions that are survivable under usual health care system conditions may have to forgo life-sustaining interventions owing to deficiencies in supply or staffing,” the report states.
To prepare, hospitals should designate a triage team with the Godlike task of deciding who will and who won’t get lifesaving care, the task force wrote. Those out of luck are the people at high risk of death and a slim chance of long-term survival. But the recommendations get much more specific, and include:
– people older than 85.
– those with severe trauma, which could include critical injuries from car crashes and shootings.
– severely burned patients older than 60.
– those with severe mental impairment, which could include advanced Alzheimer’s disease.
– those with a severe chronic disease, such as advanced heart failure, lung disease or poorly controlled diabetes.
Dr. Kevin Yeskey, director of the preparedness and emergency operations office at the Department of Health and Human Services, was on the task force. He said the report would be among many the agency reviews as part of preparedness efforts.
Public health law expert Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University called the report an important initiative but also “a political minefield and a legal minefield.”
The recommendations would probably violate federal laws against age discrimination and disability discrimination, said Gostin, who was not on the task force.
If followed to a tee, such rules could exclude care for the poorest, most disadvantaged citizens who suffer disproportionately from chronic disease and disability, he said. While health care rationing will be necessary in a mass disaster, “there are some real ethical concerns here.”
James Bentley, a senior vice president at American Hospital Association, said the report will give guidance to hospitals in shaping their own preparedness plans even if they don’t follow all the suggestions.
He said the proposals resemble a battlefield approach in which limited health care resources are reserved for those most likely to survive.
Bentley said it’s not the first time this type of approach has been recommended for a catastrophic pandemic, but that “this is the most detailed one I have seen from a professional group.”
While the notion of rationing health care is unpleasant, the report could help the public understand that it will be necessary, Bentley said.
Devereaux said compiling the list “was emotionally difficult for everyone.”
That’s partly because members believe it’s just a matter of time before such a health care disaster hits, she said.
“You never know,” Devereaux said. “SARS took a lot of folks by surprise. We didn’t even know it existed.”
History of US Health Insurance
‘During the Great Depression, hospitals and doctors organized their own insurance companies, known respectively as Blue Cross and Blue Shield (or “the Blues”). The Blues lobbied and convinced the states to treat them as nonprofit charity corporations rather than “for-profit” insurance companies, on the grounds that they were organized by doctors and hospitals. The Blues also requested and received tax-exempt status from the federal government. In return for their nonprofit status, the Blues agreed to offer health insurance on the basis of “community rating,” which meant that every customer would pay the same premium, regardless of age, sex, health history, lifestyle choices, or regional demographics. (This was occasionally modified to reflect different premiums for age and location and was then called “modified community rating.”)
The primary goal of the Blues was to obtain steady income for their member doctors and hospitals by guaranteeing that they received payment for all the services they provided. Their strategy was to provide coverage for all expenses—even routine, ordinary, easily affordable medical services. In contrast to the original purpose of health insurance—which was to protect against rare, unforeseen, catastrophic expenses that could bankrupt a family—the Blues turned health insurance into a form of pre-paid medical care in which the insurance company (rather than patients) would pay doctors and hospitals for all medical services—catastrophic, routine, and everything in between—on a cost-plus basis.
The model created by the Blues was not the result of free-market thinking and competition. It was a direct result of government meddling and intervention, giving preferential treatment and economic advantages to one insurer (and its health plans) over others. This initial distortion of the health insurance market was exacerbated by the 1942 Stabilization Act, passed during World War II. This act froze wages nationwide but allowed employers to provide or increase employee benefits such as health insurance, since benefits were not considered wages under the Act. In 1943, in response to the Act, the IRS decreed that health insurance premiums paid by employers are not taxable income to employees and are therefore exempt from federal income tax. The IRS further decreed that health insurance premiums are a legitimate cost of doing business and can be deducted from the employer’s taxable income.
These income tax laws are largely responsible for the explosive growth in employer-purchased health insurance. In 1939, only 6 percent of the population had health insurance of any kind, and only a small fraction of those insured had employer-sponsored health insurance. By 1960, 18 percent of the population was insured under an employer group plan, and that percentage grew to almost 70 percent of the insured by 1980.The percentage has since declined, but even today about 60 percent of insured Americans obtain health insurance through their employer”
Think very hard with your mind
Government today is trying to figure out what we are going to do come 2019 with Medicare going bankrupt and at 2040 with Social Security (even though they continue to rape the fund today). This is our forced government pension fund and our government medical care for senior citizens. The last thing done to stabilize it was to increase taxes during the Reagan administration to offset this but Congress has continued to rape the fund year after year and it is in trouble.
If we can’t trust them with our retirement funds why would any rational human think they should be given even more control over our lives and our money when they have proven they could not be trusted with what they already have?
This is like having your stock broker steal all your money from your 401 k and instead of holding him responsible, let him sell you health insurance too. Has the nation lost its collective mind?
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Currently Listening Breakfast in America By Supertramp The Logical Song see related |
Senator Byrd makes Hillary’s case for her May 20, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : Government, Media , add a commentIs the democratic party law of unintended consequences kicking in? (again)
I am well aware that Robert Byrd did not endorse Hillary Clinton despite Hillary Clinton’s 41 point win in his state. In fact, that is my point.
If there was ever a case to be made to take this to the convention and fight it out, Robert Byrd just made it for Hillary Clinton.
Here is an excerpt from the Washington Wire of Wall Street Journal (link):
In a statement, the 90-year old-Senate legend lauded Obama as a “shining young statesman” a “noble-hearted patriot” and a “humble Christian.” In particular, Byrd said that his shared opposition to the Iraq war with Obama was a key factor in his decision.
“After a great deal of thought, consideration and prayer over the situation in Iraq, I have decided that, as a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention, I will cast my vote for Senator Barack Obama for president,” Byrd said, adding that Obama “possesses the personal temperament and courage necessary to extricate our country from this costly misadventure in Iraq.”
His announcement came less than one week after the Illinois senator lost Byrd’s state by a 41-point margin to rival Sen. Hillary Clinton. As the senior democratic statesman for the United States Senate, he dissed his own states popular vote and delegates on his personal feelings and liking.
I bet Senator Obama does not view this as selection , rather than election. Did Senator Byrd lose his bearings? Whether he did or not, I believe the law of unintended consequences kicked in. What say you?
EPA says Climate Change Bill will raise gas prices $1.50 a gallon. May 16, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : Government, Media , add a comment“[L]et me tell you what’s heading down the tracks. In a few weeks, we expect that the cap-and-trade legislation that’s been voted out of Sen. Barbara Boxer’s (D-Calif.) Environment and Public Works Committee will be on the floor and according to the Environmental Protection Agency it will increase gas prices by $1.50. The National Association of Manufacturers says it will increase it as much as $5 per gallon,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) says. (video link)
Congress must be seeing if they can get their approval rate to drop even further
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Quinnipiac RV |
5/8-12/08 | 16 | 76 | 8 | -60 | |
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5/8-11/08 | 18 | 76 | 6 | -58 | |
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| NPR LV | 5/7-8, 10/08 | 22 | 73 | 4 | -51 | |
The theme of this campaign has been change, and I agree. It is time to dump the incumbants. Remember Congress went Democratic in 2006 and since we have had the Housing Crisis and now the Gas crisis, and their solution is to push legislation through that the EPA says will raise our gas prices 1.50 a gallon and promise the tax cuts will expire in 2011. If this is representation, who needs enemies?
I agree it is time for change and so does America.If this is a forecast of the type of change that people are hoping for theycan keep it. It has all failed in Europe and it WILL fail here too. Our Congress is either intentionally weakening this nation or they are just incompetent. Neither is acceptable
Compared to Congress President Bush is wildly popular among the folks!
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| Quinnipiac RV | 5/8-12/08 | 28 | 67 | 5 | -39 | |
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| ABC/Washington Post | 5/8-11/08 | 31 | 66 | 2 | -35 | |
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| NPR LV | 5/7-8,10/08 | 33 | 65 | 3 | -32 | |
source:
http://pollingreport.com/CongJob.htm
http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm
It is time for change, but not the type that we are being offered. You need to contact your congressman and let them know if they vote for this bill you will remember to vote against them on election day.
Has MSNBC laid off all their producers? May 15, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : Government, Media , add a commentDid anyone see the KO rant about President Bush? link Listen, I am no “fan” of the president but this was just a rant.
Is MSNBC having serious rating issues that demands going over the top? Why is the guy who could not cut it on the sports channel a political expert on MSNBC?
A Presidential mindset? May 12, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : Government, Media , add a comment“If black nationalism would uplift the race, then the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites, or the inner turmoil it caused people like me, would be of little consequence.” - Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father, (about his attraction to his pastor’s church as a vehicle for social change.)
First class spin bought hook, line and sinker May 9, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : Government, Media , 6commentsI have been in awe and amazement at the blatant disrespect of viewers and dishonesty in the primary coverage this year. Some cable news networks have been nothing more than ooh and aah sessions and cheerleading for candidates of their choice. The media has driven this primary like none other I can ever remember. Just two weeks ago, while Obama was “on a losing streak”, finally the media admitted the bias in coverage . (video)
Of course, if everyone’s buying the spin and parroting the lines, why should they stop? Now, the same dynamic was going on to a lesser extent in the RNC primary, but the voters didn’t vote as instructed (for Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson or Rudy). In the RNC campaign, we did hear talk about winning the correct states , but in the DNC campaign it seems that is off limits. Perhaps that is because the RNC structures their delegate system fairly similar to the electoral college system. If Obama was the RNC candidate and won the states he did, he would not win the primary.
Ten days ago, The media was reporting a wane in the momentum of Senator Obama’s campaign, and that he just couldn’t close the deal. They talked about how last minute voters were breaking for Clinton in every primary.On Tuesday, the senators split states and now the media declares the game is all but over for Senator Clinton . I can not be the only person in America who sees the electoral college standard is one that must be considered.At this point in the race, one begins to ask when is an honest assessment of the electoral results going to be discussed? How much longer are democratic primaries going to be detached from electoral realities?
For example, if today was the general election and Senator Obama wins every state he won to date in the primary (not likely) he would have 212 electoral votes and if he took the remaining states of WV, KY, OR, SD and MT, he would have 238 electoral votes. 270 are needed to win the election, so he would lose the general election.
Senator Clinton on the other hand currently has 297 electoral votes in the states she has won to date. If you subtract Michigan’s 17 delegates she still has 280 electoral votes . Please remember Senator Obama withdrew his name from the ballot, it was “on there” and then he had it removed.
None of this is secret or new information and I simply do not understand how people can not do the simple mathmatics and realize if this was a presidential contest Clinton won already and Obama could not mathmatically win, but yet we hear this is “how we figure delegates” and the real winner of the election doesn’t have enough delegates by democrats standards? What kind of rank idiots are running the party anyway? Is this who we are to trust change to?.
Does anyone see a correlation between how the Democrats system is not based in reality and continually losing presidential elections? Does anyone else see a leadership gap in the DNC ? If the Democrats want to be taken seriously as the party of change, shouldn’t change begin in the Democratic Party ? Shouldn’t we see they can run a primary without major problems that they created themselves? Dean’s attitude toward the voters of states he needs to win the general election should be reserved for other politicians. How can Democrats be taken seriously if they plan to disenfranchisie Florida (and Michigan) voters who had nothing to do with the decision on when to vote, especially after crying for 8 years about the 2000 election? Where has Howard Dean’s leadership been? Have any of the democratic candidates called for his resignation publically? Now that would show a sign of intestinal fortitude and leadership. video
If the best the Democratic Party has to offer for leadership, or as a foretaste of what is to come, what kind of change is that? We keep hearing that we want to get beyond politics and beyond race but what do we have, politics, spin and race coming out of both campaigns. In fact, how much more old politics can you get than Howard Dean? Listen to him-not me !
The North Carolina primary showed that America has not gotten beyond race. Maybe post-racial is supposed to be defined as describing whites being post-racial ? When I hear Barack talk condescending about white voters, it certainly can not apply to him. He keeps telling white folks what our predispositions are. I have even heard Hillary lambasted for mentioning that white blue collar workers tend to support her. If we are so post-racial, why is stating a polling result biased or wrong? Why can one candidate mention attributes of a race and it be fine while another can not mention race at all? To pretend race is not an issue in Harlem, the Bronx, LA, Philadelphia, The Loop, South Side Chicago, Trinity United Church of Christ, Boise, Miami, Matha’s Vineyard or Coral Gables is to be detached from reality. Have peoples attitudes changed drastically? Sure they have.
But this pipe dream being sold is a lie. Race will always matter to many black people and white people. Reparations are still being discussed. A realistic view is that the emotinonal healing still needing to occur is among the black people. Just look at Michelle Obama, a woman who has risen to an enviable place in life is still very bitter and trying to get beyond injustices she perceives has been done to her and her people. That very language shows that we are still divided even among the leaders of the black community and those wanting to lead the country, it is still an issue.
I was glad to see this video point to the fact that his appeal is to a limited demographic, even in the primary cycle with favorable press coverage. Indiana points to the same thing. (video)
I certainly am not advocating a change of rules at this stage of primary elections, But when one considers the electoral college is the standard by which presidential elections are decided, then there is more than a compelling case for the superdelegates to nominate Hillary Clinton. It is pure electoral mathmatics and why you have a superdelegate system. The superdelegates system was put into place as a corrective.
No one is going to win the nomination without the superdelegates putting them over. The problem is fear of being called a racist if they balance this to what the electoral system is. The main problem was the system iteself, a problem Dean knew existed and did nothing about. Secondly, the next problem came when state legislatures voted to move their priomary dates up and the “party committees” wanted to show who was boss and said if you do that your votes won’t count and your delegations won’t be seated. He played chicken and the states said who do the political parites think they are to tell the states in a federal system when they can vote? But Howard Dean, is going to show the states who he is, and teach them a lesson to mess with the DNC.
Don’t people get this? These party leaders think they are gods who can order state governments around when they are just a political party. Who pays for the primary elections? Not the political parties. This whole situation just spotlights the insanity of the democratic party politics and how people don’t even question it is even worse! No wonder it is happening- people just take it.
We hear things like hope and change, but let’s see the candidates get presidential and take control of their party and have some straight talk, not politics. If this Barack Obama is about change, lets see him tell Howard Dean to take a hike for overstepping his position and disenfranchising voters. Or Hillary Clinton. If you can not take on those in your party, and clean up your own party, why should any sane person believe you can accomplish it in the country?
Huffington Post helps Mc Cain May 8, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : Government, Media , add a commentArianna Huffington is doing for Senator Mc Cain what no ad he could run may ever be able to do. She has distanced Senator Mc Cain from president Bush.
The LA Times reports:
“On her Huffington Post website Monday, the pundit said the presumptive Republican presidential nominee had confided shortly after his bitter loss nearly eight years ago that he had not voted for Bush.
McCain suffered sharp attacks from Bush supporters in the 2000 race, and his disdain for the tactics was no secret. But Huffington’s revelation, if true, would debunk the Arizona senator’s longtime stance as the loyal Republican who closed ranks behind Bush.”
Now if only his campaign would be smart enough to shut up and send her a thank you note.
In defense of his position May 1, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : culture, Ethnicity, Media, Theology , add a comment|
Dr. Manning defends his position distorted by soundbites. Notice a pattern? |
http://nofishleftbehind.blogspot.com/2008/05/pastor-manning-explains-his-position.html
Dean may want to scream! April 29, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : Government, Media , add a comment |
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DNC Chairman Dean Says Clinton or Obama Must Drop Out By June | |
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Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said Monday that either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama must drop out of the Democratic presidential race after the June primaries in order to unify the party by the convention and win the election in November. But Dean didn’t say which candidate should drop out, only that it should happen after primary voters have been to the polls. “We want the voters to have their say. That’s over on June 3,” Dean said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Dean also said that while the party rules say Democratic superdelegates can wait until the party’s August 25 convention to make up their minds, that would be too late to unify the party and defeat the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain. “We really can’t have a divided convention. If we do it’s going to be very hard to heal the party afterwards,” Dean said. “So we’ll know who the nominee is and that’ll give us an extra 2 1/2 months to get our party together, heal the wounds of having a very closely divided race and take on Senator McCain.” |
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Is his attempt to have a peaceful convention going to create even more problems?
Of course this is also Howards brainchild-misinformation that Barack Obama calls the politics of the past (but uses himself):
We released our second national television ad this morning on John McCain and Iraq. Watch it here; http://video.xanga.com/uprisingyouth/a6155729488/video.html
Thoughts?