The time for glitz and feel-good campaign/advertising rhetoric is over. Now we need to hear definitively what our new President is really all about.
Will he come out and support real change and reform of the health care system or will he abandon the Progressives and the people who worked so hard to get him elected last year? In short,
Will he be FDR
or will he be Grover Cleveland
It’s all up to him.
Update: Grover Cleveland it is. Very sad state of affairs.
The President needed to come out big with a definitive direction and marching orders for the Congress as a whole and the Democrats in the Senate in particular. Instead we got a lot of fairly weak support for a weak public option capped off with an attempt at the soaring rhetoric that went over so well last summer. It rang pretty hollow tonight, at least to my ears.
What I heard were code words that seemed to indicate the Presidents’ support of the non-profit, co-op plan floated by Democratic Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota. The President chastised young people who don’t usually buy health insurance because, well, they’re healthy; and he came out strong for universal mandates like auto insurance here in California. But when it came to the public option, he was not strong at all. In fact, he actually chastised Progressives, not once but twice, implying that we hold an uncompromising position that he equated to the position of the Republicans on the other side. He actually relegated the base of his party, the people who worked to get him elected, to nothing more than naive political ideologues. One way to look at this is to realize that because of the increasing costs of health care for aging Baby Boomers, young people, who have been disproportionately hit by the collapse of the economy with unemployment rates as high as 30% in their age cohorts, will now be forced upon pain of fines administered by the IRS to subsidize health care for their elders.
The President’s quest for bipartisanship with Republicans who actually heckled him during the speech is mystifying. He was vague on all things that mattered. He used code words that will be interpreted by the health insurance giants as a promise not to actually pass anything that will hurt them, in fact they will gain billions in new, forced customers. The charge for this favor will be a modicum of health insurance reform, not health care reform. Supposedly, the insurance leaches won’t be able to rescind customers for previous conditions or any other drummed up reason. Some of the worst excesses of private, for-profit insurance companies will be ruled out of bounds, but there will be no meaningful competition for them so prices will not go down. They will get millions of new young customers and absolutely nothing will be done to solve the problem of all the duplicate, competing paperwork that doctors and hospitals have to deal with from the over 1300 private plans.
To be plain, Obama’s speech had everything in it that money could buy. The vast sums of the insurance, health care services and drug companies appears to have succeeded in derailing meaningful health care reform. Instead they will actually make more money than ever before, and if costs go down at all, they will not stay down for any real amount of time. Meanwhile the most fortunate generation in history, the Baby Boomers will be subsidized by mandates on their children and grandchildren. As the American empire winds down, they will go to their graves with as little financial discomfort as possible and the wealth of the US will go with them.
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Progressives have provided an immense amount of cover for the Democrats and for the President. We’ve raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Progressive Caucus in the House to back them up in their re-election bids if they pledge to vote NO on any healthcare reform that does not include a Strong Public Option. You can go to FireDogLake to sign the petition to keep the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party strong and to donate. You can also go to ACTBlue and support the Progressive Change Campaign Committee who are also trying to counteract the millions of dollars of corporate lobbyists with small donations from real citizens, not corporate persons.
The following comes from several comments I’ve made recently on other posts about the issue of healthcare reform, Obama and the state of our government:
ARE WE A FASCIST STATE?
There’s a term for a government that ignores the wishes of well over 70% of the people for, not just a public option, but a single-payer, medicare-for-all plan that would effectively bankrupt the private, for-profit, health insurance companies. Supposedly we live in a Constitutionally Limited, Representative Democracy, but if that were true wouldn’t we be seeing a bill coming out of Congress that was essentially a Medicare-for-all style, single-payer plan which is what the vast majority of Americans want? Instead, we have massive private corporations hiring lobbyists and manipulating the media which itself is made up of massive corporate conglomerates who have interlocking boards with the health insurance, health service and drug companies. The media tells the story so it appears that there is a credible “other side” to the issue with an actual constituency despite the fact that all of the polls still show that over 70% want a single-payer system and the end of the private insurance leaches. By the way, this phantom “other side” to the issue is a favorite of the corporate media, just recall the debate over global warming. It is likely that the media manipulation of that issue in this country will end up being responsible for us failing to respond in any meaningful way to that very real issue in time. How many people will die as a result of this shameless, short term, profit seeking is anybody’s guess.
Never before has the effect of corporate money and influence been so nakedly obvious. In a Representative Democracy, 70% is a huge number and if we were a Constitutionally Limited, Representative Democracy, we would be getting a single payer bill. The fact that we are now pondering a bill without even a Public Option shows just how much more power the corporations have than the people. There is a term for a country with a government that is allied with corporations over its citizens. A country that is still engaged in two massively expensive wars against the wishes of majorities of the citizens. A country where the wage gap, already the widest in the industrialized world, continues to grow and where the richest 1% possess more wealth that the bottom 90% combined. A country with the most regressive tax structure in the industrialized world which overwhelmingly favors the rich and people who make money through casino capitalism. When a country behaves in an authoritarian manner, unilaterally invading countries on demonstrably false pretenses and imposing its will through the liberal use of over 700 military bases world-wide, what you actually have is an empire. When that same country continually goes against the wishes of its citizens and partners with massive, trans-national corporations that effectively run the government, what you have is fascism. This health care reform issue has torn away the facade of our Democracy and exposed the actual power in this country more clearly than ever before in our history. The Congress, Executive and Judicial branches have been captured by these corporatists and they willing do their bidding to the detriment of the citizens. We are operating in a type of soft fascism where corporate personhood and corporate wishes far outweigh the wishes of actual natural persons. On the outside we have the pleasant appearance of a Representative Democracy, but that only goes about as deep as the real wood veneer on a piece of IKEA furniture.
Anyone who sees this and starts to call attention to it is instantly ridiculed and relegated to obscurity by the corporate media. I work as an editor and I have been a filmmaker for more than ten years. Don’t underestimate the incredible power of the media and propaganda. No one knows this better than the advertising industry and the corporate media. It is very simple to manipulate people. Need an example? Remember Howard Dean addressing that huge crowd of extremely enthusiastic supporters in 2004. You try speaking at a rally like that and matching the enthusiasm of the crowd only to have the mic you are speaking into isolated on the mixing board and the crowd noise potted way down and then having the resultant audio played ad infinitum on the corporate media. Combine that with the tried and true ploy of asking why someone is “so angry” and implying that they might be unstable or even “crazy”(recall John McCain in 2000 when it looked like he might beat Bush) and see how far you get in your campaign. Just my writing this automatically makes me a “conspiracy theorist”, another of the favorite delegitimizing ploys of the corporate media. Just as an aside on conspiracies, can we consider the structure of corporate boards a conspiracy? Board members often sit on multiple different companies’ boards at the same time and meet in rooms where they, well, conspire to constantly increase profits for those corporations by any means possible.
Let’s just take one companies’ board for example and go only one degree in to see what boards of other companies and institutions those board members also sit on. Let’s go big and take everybody’s least favorite oil company, Exxon Mobil. You remember them, they were the most profitable corporation in the history of humankind in 2008 when gas prices touched $5/gal. Exxon Mobil has a large board, but for purposes of our example I will only focus on the ten board members who sit on more than just the Exxon Mobil board of directors. In addition to their control of the worlds number one profit taker for 2008, these board members also have a hand in controlling the two largest communication companies in the country, one of the largest steel fabricators and the largest glass and ceramics fabricator, two oil and natural gas service and extraction companies, one of the largest electrical generation companies and the largest electrical transmission company, one of the largest paper companies, the largest database company and the third largest software company, Campbell Soup, Macy’s, Harvard University and MIT. In addition to these companies and institutions, the Exxon Mobil board members also sit on the boards of the first and third largest Banking and Financial Services companies(the guys who got the bailouts from the taxpayers and thee $8 Trillion + from The Fed), the insurance giant Met Life and last but certainly not least, two of the largest pharmaceuticals and health products companies – Pfizer and Wyeth. Those last three have spent more than $16 million dollars on lobbying Congress so far this year. Interestingly, in this first degree of separation for the Exxon Mobil board members, there are no media companies represented. However, one doesn’t have to go far in the second degree of separation to find the links to the media. In fact, Exxon Mobil is connected to Time Warner Inc., Viacom, Walt Disney, Tribune and the New York Times. So, if the board of Exxon Mobil wants to reach out and effect the op/ed page of the New York Times, all they need do is dispatch board member Philip E. Lippincott to his seat on the board of Campbell Soup where he sits next to Donald M. Stewart and they have a friendly chat about business and their mutual interests in getting the New York Times to feature a story about climate change denials and Mr. Stewart simply goes to his seat on the board of the New York Times and suggests that the “other side” of the global warming debate should get more coverage. Of course, that would be assuming that these people that know each other and work closely together also talk. And remember, this is just one company here. I wonder how much interlocking United Health Care has with the media. I guess now I really am theorizing about conspiracies.
You can see all these links on the great and entertaining website They Rule. Unfortunately, all of the board member information is about five years out of date, but I’m sure you’re getting the drift. Another great site is Muckety, though I think their news sight might be skewed right.
The following came from a piece that Fred Rothenberg posted last weekend:
Political Aikido?
Fred, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, I feel your pain. I think your point is that Obama is getting hit from all sides, even us liberals.
The implication of your piece, however, appears to be that you want to see Progressives give him a break or perhaps that both sides are equally wrong. Your post doesn’t say that outright, I know, I’m just extrapolating from the judtapositionsing of the rapid, irrational, right, represented here by violet rose, with your flaming liberal friend at the dinner party.
I totally agree that the corporate media(and I definitely include NPR here) is skewed against Obama and Healthcare Reform. That’s not surprising considering their corporate owners. I also agree that the arguments and logic being used by the right are at best factually inaccurate, and more likely deliberately misleading. However, I would disagree that the progressive arguments and rising ire with the President are on a par with this corporatist, side-show from the right.
Obama campaigned on healthcare reform including a strong public option at the very least. Now, DLC operatives like chief-of-staff Rham Emmanuel and corporatist, Democrat In Name Only(DINO), blue-dogs are trying to shove a bill down our throats that would include mandates backed up by fines for not purchasing insurance while at the same time providing NO competitive alternative to the for-profit, leach health insurance companies. In short, a multi-billion dollar gift to the failed health care industry. This cannot be allowed to happen. And I don’t really believe that it is.
To be honest, I’m a little confused by the Presidents strategy here. From a political strategy stand point, there are really only two options. Either Obama is not at all who we thought he was and he really is a DLC, corporatist who never actually intended to challenge corporate power or he is playing a very subtle game. The former is simply a suicide mission. The Democratic Party cannot survive another Clintonesq betrayal a la GATT, NAFTA, etc. If a bill comes out of Congress and is signed by President Obama without at least a strong public option, the Democratic Majority in the House and Senate are doomed in 2010 and the President is unlikely to be re-elected in 2012. For this reason, I don’t think President Obama is planning on doing this to us.
It behooves us to recall that we are talking about a consummate political operator who beat Hillary Clinton in the primaries and succeeded in winning the Presidency despite the fact that he is a black man with the name Barack Hussein Obama. Perhaps I’m just being optimistic, something I’m not often accused of, but I think President Obama is playing this thing from an oblique angle. Coming at this issue head on would have inspired the corporate media and the vast fortunes of the insurance and drug companies to attack full force. Instead we have seen a sneaky, astroturf, freak fest that has succeeded in nauseating most rational Americans. Meanwhile, in all serious polls, the vast majority STILL want a single-payer, medicare-for-all style system, and the push back from the Progressives has been immense. This teabagger display is not working on the majority of voters in this county and Obama knows it. The media, television, is totally unreal and most of us know it. Certainly the mandate majority that elected Barack Obama last November knows this, just consider that a comedy show like The Daily Show is a more trusted source of news than is the rest of the corporate media. Further, the astroturf organizations like Freedom Works hired by PR and lobbyist firms for the seven largest, for-profit health insurance leaches have ginned up these Teabaggers who have behaved so badly that most Americans are totally disgusted. Their overt racism and “brown shirt” tactics like shouting down any and all rational discussion is not winning them friends and influencing people. On the contrary, they are highlighting prejudices and behaviors that most hope and believe should belong to a bygone era of lynchings and Jim Crow, not the Twenty-First Century.
Meanwhile the Progressives have been activated and are having a real effect. The petition circulated by FireDogLake and ActBlue have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Progressive Caucus in the House enabling them to pledge to vote NO on any bill that does not contain a strong public option. This strategy on the part of the Progressives has been so successful that even champion political triangulater, Nancy Pelosi, joined the Progressive Caucus in pledging to vote against any bill in the house that doesn’t have a public option. Now the job is to define what strong means as a modifier of public option. All of this requires attention and dedication, something that wasn’t altogether there before Obama started acting as though he would capitulate.
So I ask, was this his strategy all along. A kind of political Akido? I can hope, at least until Wednesday when he’s supposed to tell us what’s up.
{ 78 comments… read them below or add one }
your long-winded, Sean,
but all nonsense. the fascists don’t manipulate the media,
they own it. and EVERY other institution in the Western World.
and Obama can be nothing other than Obama, the Great 21st Century Suck.
the government, the education institutions, the media — by Law — can ONLY deceive, only thieve, only prey upon humanity and the Earth.
they are owned by the Aristocracy, by the Security State, as is everything, as are every-one.
if you can’t be honest about our World Body ‘Poli-Tick’, how can you expect others to be so?
quick kissing up to the government Sean, and the Corporate State. tell the truth of the Security State, and their ‘brain-washed-cattle’ Serf Herd/Populations …
Wow Sean! This is a long analysis…will read a litte at a time.
I did listen to our Presidents speech … I tried to follow it, see the logic in it… toward the end I dozed off …
“I will not back down…we will provide you with a choice.”
- President Obama
I don’t think he knows what he is doing. I think he finds himself suddenly thrust into a position he doesn’t know how to handle-no surprise as he has no experience in anything and is a consummate liar and con artist. He is dividing the country and will never be able to bring it together. Who knows where this country is headed? He doesn’t.
meet the new boss, same as the old boss…
So is Obama the socialist-communist-fascist who will kill your grandparents and indoctrinate your kids with his evil plans?
Or is he an in-over-his-head, inexperienced divider who has no clue what he’s doing?
Or, is he the man who was democratically elected by a wide margin, despite being black with the middle name Hussein, and who has been enacting policies that are largely consistent with his statements made during one of the most effective, disciplined, well-organized campaigns in US history?
Really wish you would make up your mind, so I knew what to be afraid of.
From a President who was supposed to put intelligent policy for the common good back in vogue, this is worse than disappointing.
Let’s remember: There is a silver lining in the fact that the U.S. has failed for so many decades to address health care. The silver lining is the fact that we can now look at the decades of experience of other countries with various policies. And when we do that, what in the world would drive us to consider a Switzerland-style individual mandate, private insurance run plan, over the proven superior single payer systems?
The model Obama and the industry now push is the Swiss, Dutch and Massachusetts model. Switzerland is the only one of the three with any real experience with such a plan, as the Dutch and Massachusetts have not had their plans long enough to provide reliable data (not even considering that the Massachusetts plan is already failing and requiring cutback, and the Dutch insurers all are losing massive amounts of money in an effort to grab market share and be the last insurer standing).
Here’s a few things we know about the Swiss model: It has the highest per capita health care cost in Europe. Outcomes are not better than the single payer countries, adjusted for age and demographics. And, it is enforced with a regime that includes minimum wages equivalent to approximately $20/hour, a very strong social safety net, subsidies for premiums for people who would be considered upper middle class here based on income, etc. etc. Something tells me the people pushing the private insurance, individual mandate plan here have no intention of adopting it with the bells and whistles that have made it “work” in Switzerland. (That’s assuming we say something that delivers at best equal results at greater cost is considered to “work”.)
I never expected Obama to be an FDR. I did expect him to eschew proven inferior policies that serve only ideology and failed industries, in favor of superior policies that have been proven to work. Nothing radical there.
Obama seemed to have no trouble machine-gunning Detroit, which had its problems but is a model of efficiency and social utility compared to our private health insurance industry. Haven’t decades of experience proven that even if ultimately we are to adopt a Swiss-style plan, it must start from scratch, without these failed current “insurers” who are institutionally incapable of doing their job? How can we be considering anything that involves today’s U.S. insurance companies?
Way too many words, on TV last night and also in here.
The Prez is a leftie. He told us that before he was elected. You folks are getting exactly the guy you wanted.
But he has run smack into the wall of Reality. Wilson was right, he’s a liar. But not a very good liar. In fact, he’s proving to be not very good at anything. He can’t even give an exciting speech anymore.
A word of wisdom from Dennis Kucinich:
“The President’s health care policy speech was brilliant but when you get into the details another picture emerges.
Unfortunately, at this point, the proposal outlined last night is the ultimate corporate giveaway. It’s not health care, it’s insurance care.
As many as thirty million new customers for an insurance industry which makes money not providing health care.
The only way this country will see true health is by investing in real health care. That is the essence of HR676, the single payer bill.
The President opened his speech speaking of how we have solved the economic crisis – how? By rewarding those who caused the crash!
Is this the way we solve the health care crisis? Rewarding the insurance companies? Helping insurance and pharmaceutical stock to soar, propping up markets while skimping on health care?
The very same system which caused the health care crisis is being rewarded with the guarantee of tens of millions of new customers mandated – by law – to have health care.
The latest plan rewards the very companies that have denied treatment, denied care, denied drug coverage while their profits grow daily.
The only way this country will see true sustainable economic recovery is through investment in the real economy, priming the pump through job creation. The only way this country will see true health is by investing in real health care.
The “public option” has been relegated to insignificance. What we will now get is yet another “private option”, not a public option, because single-payer is “off the table.”
We the people deserve better. We have been faced with general warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan – multi-trillion dollar ballouts for arms merchants, $12 trillion in bailouts for Wall Street, bailouts to coal and nuclear industries, and now proposed huge subsidies for the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
What’s wrong with this picture? Everything!”
Tat and Anon #7, please don’t mistake my disappointment with President Obama’s decision to coddle the insurance companies with even a particle of agreement with your irrational, right wing, logic and name calling. Tat, I think he knows exactly what he’s doing and I do not think he is a con artist. Anon #7, I’m not really surprised you find reading “so many words” difficult. “Leftie”, seriously? Since when did maintaining the status quo for private, for profit insurance companies a leftist principle, please.
Tyler, I think your comment was more aimed at Tat and her/his ridiculous ascertains than it was at me, perhaps I’m wrong. I do not think Obama is a fascist, just that the action of the entire system is best described as fascist when you consider that the vast majority of citizens what one thing and the system provides the exact opposite. Our government has been captured by corporate interests and it has never before been so obvious as it is with this issue. Obama is most definitely not a socialist and according to my understanding of Marx, there has never been an actual communist on earth–yet. I would disagree that the policy Obama almost outlined last night during his speech is consistent with statements he made during the election. Oh, how I wish that were true. During the campaign he called for a strong public option to compete with the insurance companies. That is not what he said last night, though it was difficult to tell because he was fairly unclear on the point. The buzz words he did use seem to indicate that he is for the weak co-op idea, not a strong public option that would in any way threaten the private corporations and their profits.
MT – SEAN is all nonsense?
Tat – you forgot the “w” in your signature!
Suza, I’m with you – I haven’t had time to read the whole commentary but look forward to doing so in just a bit (even though I know I am much more optimistic than SPK on this)
SPK – I look forward to reading your post in its entirety!
Tyler – spot on as always…
Anonymous – very enlightening (as always), but are you not jumping the gun? I didn’t hear definitively that Obama was throwing Public Option under the bus.
Call me naive, but I remain optimistic that last night’s speech was a good sign that we are back on track….
From Dennis Kucinch:
For more background on how Obama abandoned the public option last night during his speech go here.
LTOR … you are not naive … though you fake it. you are wholly intentionally a mouthpiece for the legal/scientific/corporate/government cointel mafia … and quite ‘comfortable’ there, in your ‘high’ chair …
My point is simply this. I’ve read both articles (by Kucinich and Truthdig) and I understand the argument. I just – at this moment in time – didn’t see last night’s speech as a definitive move away from a public option component of reform. Obviously, he did not come out as strongly as we would have liked, but (again, call me naive) but couldn’t this equivocation just be political gamemanship or trying to appeal / sell to a wider audience? I got the feeling from Boxer and others who were on TV last night that a government option was still VERY much alive and well on Capitol Hill. Am I completely off base?
MT, when you are ready to come down off your high horse and want to engage with mortals like me who live, work and raise family here on planet Earth – who struggle every day with complex issues, who grapple with the moral choices we all have to make and who are compassionate about the plight of others (even – gasp! – average, everyday middle-class Americans), then I’d love to get into a discussion with you. Right now, after the all the toxic, vitriolic and dangerous energy that is swirling around this country – you and your tired, aimless rhetoric bore the sh*t out of me! (Sorry! Nothing personal!)
LTOR, last night was the time for the President to tell us where he stood. His own facebook account is busy claiming he did just that. The only problem is, if you listened to the speech you heard him denigrate the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party and ensure the insurance industry that there would be no meaningful public option. Plain and simple. We can not go back to pretending this President is one thing when he is clearly the other. He can no longer be coy with us. I know it sucks to realize that he is not who we thought/hoped he was, but he made that almost clear last night.
That said, there is still hope because the Progressives are not going to vote yes on any bill that does not have a strong Public Option. No public option, no mandates. plain and simple. If you want to see real health care reform rather than the health insurance reform that the President outlined last night, go to the links to FireDogLake and ActBlue that I put in my long rambling post above.
BTW MT, it was nice meeting you and your wife the other evening. Oh, and I haven’t heard anything like thoughtful critique of what I say above… yet.
Yeah SPK, I get what you are saying….
I love Jane Hamsher! At your suggestion, I’ll check out ActBlue…
Thanks for keeping this issue at the forefront here on the OP…
Just because you can’t have the frosting on the cake, you choose to forego the whole cake. I’ll take the cake, or if only, the crumbs, for I know later I’ll have more coming my way when those who made the cake and those who saw it consumed not to choke anyone, shall want to improve the recipe. When those who were unsure or unmoved in the beginning shall be contributing immensely even if only to protect their seats in their respective districts due to the newly popular healthcare reality.
…so spk, you agree he’s not a good liar? You’re making progress. That GED was certainly worth your time.
too many words/anon #7- That’s your comeback? Still no meaningful criticism.
Dana – cake? I’m not really following your metaphor. Care to elucidate.
Sean wrote:
“providing NO competitive alternative to the for-profit, leach health insurance companies. In short, a multi-billion dollar gift to the failed health care industry …”
actually your “health” insurance companies have nothing to do with health … and never did …
ditto the “failed health care industry” … it was never about health or medicine; the medicos have always about murder and creating guinea pigs and victims, and body parts for the aristocracy ….
dana, what are you trying to say?
I think she is saying that we shouldn’t be so quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater, should a public option not come to pass. And that the speech was a success because it swayed a healthy chunk of people (fence sitters) and many Republicans in Congress would now be compelled to get with the program and pass a bill, a bill that could be improved and added to later….
That’s what I read anyway…for what it’s worth.
Dana?
mayhaps Pelosi cum Obama cum Obiden hain’t actually the occupants of yo White House … mayhaps it’s yo G8, Golly 8, or G20, GeeWhiz 20 …
naturley they’se only the puppets, the guv’mints … not the Queenies and Kingies and Thingies running yo show …
course I’se only a no-account, never been to school, so I don’t git nothin’ out of makin believe the’re somethin’ …
now come on, Huck,
how many times has I told you you got to just play along,
and kiss their hands, and eat their grub?
ain’t it good their vittles?
and didn’t I tell you they was going to give you a REAL gun, and let you join a REAL army?
you just got to play it simple …
For those who haven’t seen it: Olbermann’s Special Comment on Joe Wilson – one of his best ever!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#32790023
All I say is Huck, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they’re a mighty conning lot. It’s the way they’re raised.
I’ve hesitated to jump into this fray, but this, MT?
“ditto the “failed health care industry” … it was never about health or medicine; the medicos have always about murder and creating guinea pigs and victims, and body parts for the aristocracy ”
Come on! That’s incredibly rude and completely untrue. I spent the day in the ER on Sunday and can assure you that NO ONE there trying to put my face back together again was up for murder, guinea pigs, victims, or body parts.
Incredibly insulting to the people who have spent their lives actually working to try and make other people’s lives better, more comfortable, more healthy, longer, you name it.
A far more worthy endeavor than standing on the sidelines and lobbing shit from some screwed up place of abject paranoia, anger, and fear.
Does Congress even have the authority to require citizens to purchase the defective product of a private, for profit industry?
Congress can tax. But can Congress impose a special tax penalty on people who do not buy a private company’s product?
Congress can regulate interstate commerce. But is tax penalty on people who do not purchase a private company’s product “regulation of interstate commerce”?
Congress currently favors people who buy private mortgage products and many other things with tax breaks. But it is one thing to withhold a favor, another to impose an affirmative burden. Can Congress actually impose a tax penalty on us if we refuse to buy some private, for profit company’s defective product?
Unfortunately, with our current Supreme Court and their reactionary judicial activism, we can rest assured Scalia will find that the Founders originally intended the Constitution to grant Congress the power to force people to buy whatever favored crony corporation’s defective product is the offering du jour.
But Constitutionality aside, isn’t there something wrong with the idea of being forced to buy some private company’s defective product, at whatever price they want to charge, without even having a nonprofit, public option for purchase of a non-defective version of the product priced at cost?
#27 ya, it’s called tyranny.
I agree that without a public option, mandates are an enormous boon to the insurance agencies and, like SPK wrote, very punitive to young people unless there are protections in place (i.e. public option!!!)to keep these costs truly affordable. But Obama likened this requirement to the one enforcing the purchase of car insurance…I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t be able to enforce this legally.
And Brian – I can give you a list of countries to visit if you really want to know what TRUE tyranny is, my friend! Stop with the ridiculous hyperbole, already!
I’m a-trembling, Tom, because I know I got to decide, forever, betwixt two things. So I’m studyin’ a minute, ya know holding my breath, and then sayin’ to myself: “All right, then, I’ll GO to hell.”
I for one am glad that we are finally having this conversation in this country. I believe that Obama (and the Democrats) are truly trying to grapple with this contentious issue. They are NOT going to please everyone. And like it or not, this country is not entirely ready for some of the more progressive ideas. It is a beginning.
Leigh wrote:
“Incredibly insulting to the people who have spent their lives actually working to try and make other people’s lives better, more comfortable, more healthy, longer, you name it.”
~~
~~~
of the thousands of those in the medical establishment I have worked with the last four decades … I never met a one working for their own health, or the health of others. like you, Leigh, they — every single one — were willing victims and victimizers.
You, for example, (‘CongressWoman’?) Leigh … could go now to DC …
and find any number of jobs, per your mission as bovine apologist for the corporate murder state …
and further their (current) G20 worldwide campaign of adding 100 Million per year to those in poverty, pushing another 100 Million per year into starvation … and, apparently, now adding another 100 Million per year to be murdered by the Medical/Pharmaceutical mafia …
bovine apologist?!
Ok, someone here is really losing it…
But I just noticed that I missed your post, Leigh. Right on, my friend.
And I truly hope you are well and on to a quick recovery!
(I am not in Ojai now or would offer more assistance – but I trust you are in good hands.) All my best!
Hey LTOR — thanks! On all counts. (My post got hung up ’cause I swore at MT, I think, but the brave Tyler forwarded it on when he had a chance.)
I now can see out of both eyes, so I’m making progress…
MT — I’ve realized that yours are the babblings of a mad man and I’m not going to waste any more time with you. I’m sorry that you are as unhappy and unbalanced as you obviously are, but attempting a rational conversation with you is pointless. Paranoid delusions are not rational thought.
(One of the ironies with this, of course, is how much you could obviously benefit from some mental health support, but hey — that’s part of the evil machine, so heaven knows you wouldn’t want any of that!)
Moo.
Tom and Huck – Do you imagine you’re accomplishing something here? Are you even two different people?
LTOR, since I last commented you’ve had what looks to be two contradictory comments. One where you seem to say that passing anything is preferable to passing nothing, even if it contains mandates and no meaningful competition for the private, for profit insurance leaches. Of course, I respectfully disagree. Health Insurance Reform is fine and I’m all for curbing the more criminal behaviors of the for profit insurance industry. But no mandates can be attached that bill.
Basically, NO Public Option – NO Mandates. As luck would have it, we have the Progressive Caucus in the House that will block any bill that does not have a strong public option but does contain mandates. Once again, go to FireDogLake and ActBLUE(links above) to help with the Progressive effort. They are the only people in the people’s House still working for us. In the coming weeks watch for the Progressive Caucus to be vilified as obstructionists. This despite the fact that 26 members of the Democrat In Name Only(DINO) Blue Dogs have come out and said that they will vote NO on everything–just like their Republican cousins. They, Rahm’s good friends, are not going to be vilified. Just the people trying to protect the citizens and not the corporations. Don’t fall for that and if you care about this issue support the Progressives, the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party. What we are seeing is a fight in the Democratic Party between those for the citizens and those who are a wholly owned subsidiary of the corporations. This is NOT a Republican versus Democrat issue. The Republicans, despite or perhaps because of their freakish behavior, have been relegated to obscurity. The Democratic party controls all of the levers of power in the government. If this thing fails, it is their fault.
MT, sometimes you’re almost right. But you act as though there is no way to deal with the current state of the empire using democracy. You call names from the sidelines and act as though there is no one else working to make the world better. It’s insulting.
SPK, no I did not say that. Initially, I was saying that I am more optimistic and think that Obama’s speech did NOT necessarily throw public option under a bus.
Perhaps my later statment where I was trying to decipher what you all were asking Dana is what you are refering to? Those were her sentiments not mine.
I say: No Public Option = No Bill!!!! I also say – the Democrats in the House can do this without Republican support. Obama (and I know you disagree) needs to try to court all sides – at least publically to try to sell ANY type of reform to a large number of Americans who are squeamish about the whole thing. I would like to think he knows what he is doing and knows how to get it.
Again, Dana’s cake analogy (and sentiments therein) was her own – not mine.
hey Sean,
I’m glad you’re insulted. And I hope Leigh and LTOR are too. we all need to admit to our emotional dependency on programmed immorality, on the war against people and planet. [As adolescent Leighway notes, if you aren't yet politically-correct, our Psychiatrists, Psycholo-'gists' and Medicos can MAKE you so, real soon ...]
unlike my friend LTOR, I don’t work for the Lawyers … and even when I did I did not support, endorse, or speak for their (legal) murderous ways. [ditto when I worked 'with' the aerospace industry; when they insisted I specialize in Market Development for Military/Nuclear Space, rather than civilian / peaceful space applications, I spent an hour puking in the lavatory stall ... then handed in my resignation.]
that’s the difference between me and you, and Leigh and LTOR … unlike the Congress and the Medicos and the Banksters ad nauseum, I do not orchestrate murder as a way of life … and, again, unlike you and Leigh and LTOR I do not condone the institution of murder, of victimization, of impoverishment, of feigned ignorance … I do not further it by being part of it.
nice thing about this era of Global Consciousness, the Aquarian Age, the returned Satya Yuga … is the truth is plain for all to see … even the willing cattle, and their willing ‘Cattle-Women’ …
I’m trying to post from work, so maybe I have muddled my comments / thoughts. SPK, I think we are actually on the same page as far as public option is concerned. I support Anthony Weiner, Howard Dean et al – I think they are the best advocates out there and are certainly doing a great job of articulating just what is at stake.
I will certainly try to become more involved with those two sites!
This country needs more education – obviously! We ALL do! I’m glad you are doing your part here…
LTOR, got ya. But when you say large numbers of American’s you are referring to 23% in the latest polls who do not like the idea of a single-payer plan. Arguably you will never ever make that particular group of 20% happy. They are often the ones who wore white outfits with pointy hoods or more recently showed up at town halls screaming and carrying guns. There will always be 1/5 of the population here in the US that is just Palin, (oooops) plain crazy. Their opinion on this issue is not what is stopping the Democraticly Controlled Congress from doing the right thing. It’s the corporations. I do not believe that the Democratic Party should be allowed the cover of bipartisanship or of trying to reach out to the 20% of seriously f’d up loons.
The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning is giving a group of students a tour of a factory that produces human beings and conditions them for their predestined roles in the World State. He explains to the boys that human beings no longer produce living offspring. Instead, surgically removed ovaries produce ova that are fertilized in artificial receptacles and incubated in specially designed bottles.
The Hatchery destines each fetus for a particular caste in the World State. The five castes are Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon undergo the Bokanovsky Process, which involves shocking an egg so that it divides to form up to ninety-six identical embryos, which then develop into ninety-six identical human beings. The Alpha and Beta embryos never undergo this dividing process, which can weaken the embryos. The Director explains that the Bokanovsky Process facilitates social stability because the clones it produces are predestined to perform identical tasks at identical machines. The cloning process is one of the tools the World State uses to implement its guiding motto: “Community, Identity, Stability.” Aldous Huxley
I bet the bovine apologist could spin the above scenario into gold with Long Time cheering her along…
Agree 100% about the 20% wingnut faction out there, SPK. They (and their loaded guns, plethora of misinformation, swastikas and hidden racist agendas) have proven that they have no place in this debate! They and all the Republicans (save the brave 2) in Congress (the true obstructionists!) shouldn’t even be part of this equation as far as Democratic strategy is concerned. Actually, I’m talking about the (correct me if I’m wrong here) 14% or so who did indeed change their minds on reform after the speech. (14% out of those who watched the speech anyway) There are plenty of mainstream people out there (like dianne alluded to) who just need to be given an intelligent, uncomplicated, easy-to-swallow “soft” sell on this. I think at this point to shine these people on is a huge mistake – and I think Obama knows that. Let him play the Good Cop for a while. The House Democrats – I literally pray to God – will be the ones to ram this through by any means necessary.
P.S. A heads up to you all – Bill Maher has (among others) Anthony Weiner on tonight. He seems to have become the de facto voice for Public Option these past few weeks. Seems to be a really whip smart, articulate guy who is perfect to dog and pony show the Progressive agenda out in front of the country. (Oh, and Kathy Griffin is on as well! I’m giddy!)
H’aint we got all the sheep in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?
SPK: After all the post above, how could you have time to read my come-back. BTW, some of those above are so well thought out. What I was trying to say (hastily in 3 min) born from my impression of your writing my feeling that you were calling to the mat, Obama, for his basic withdraw on some issues particularly healthcare. Also my impression is that you want all or nothing, within this debate around the country. I have to side with you on so many fronts or critisms you mention. Yet, in my little understanding of this debate and the characters involved (those who actually decide the outcome-for now) it is impossible to get the public option-the crumbs- through, let alone the chatter of single payer-the frosting, this go around. Obama knows this all to well. You can hold his heels to the fire but, in the end, we end up with compromise-the cake, as it should be. As it should be for no one side gets all they want at once in our system. It will take some more time for our country to come around and see healthcare as a true right, as I do. We move a little that way each time the issue comes up and as the succesive laws are passed. Medicare is one of those programs in law that my parents, while children, didn’t exist, yet they lived to benifit from it in their old age. (BTW, how many right wingers kept their aged parents from taking part in medicare due to their anti-gov. mediling posture?) There is no win win in this debate, just a crumb here now, again later in the next session of congress until the frosting of single payer become more digestible to the whole of the public rather than just the enlightened few.
Geez Dana, that is surely aiming too low.
In 1910, when “progressives” were first proposing an amendment to the Constitution to permit Congress to impose an income tax, a huge part of the reason was so that Congress would have the money to provide single payer, universal health care.
In 1916, when it passed, without the universal health care, people said, let’s take this crumb now, it will set the stage so we can put in universal health care in short order.
In the ensuing near century, every other Western country has implemented a system of universal health care of right. This country is only a couple decades over two hundred years old. How long do we wait?
When you say “nobody gets everything they want” in our system, history proves you wrong. The absolute worst elements of our society, the proven leeches and society destroyers, get every little thing they want. And more. Now, in the name of “health care reform,” they are about to get a universal mandate, enforced by government prosecution, that you buy their defective product. Funny how that is happening just as more and more people are awakening to the fact that their product is defective, and are refusing to buy it voluntarily…
SPK is right, we have become indistinguishable from a fascist state. Hopeful Americans thought it was an anomaly of the Bush years, something we would leave behind, and by God we went out and campaigned for change, and thought we would get it. What happened?
Crumbs indeed.
Why does Obama lie? Why does Nancy Pelosi lie? Why does Gore lie? Why did the Cheneyed/Bush lie? Why did New York, the SEC and the Military Produce/Direct/Perform the 911 Stock Play?
Money and Power ($10 Trillion looted just this last year), through Secrecy and Violence …
Who dies for ‘Democracy’s’ lies …
Why does Obama lie? Why does Nancy Pelosi lie? Why does Gore lie? Why did the Cheneyed/Bush lie? Why did New York, the SEC and the Military Produce/Direct/Perform the 911 Stock Play?
Money and Power ($10 Trillion looted just this last year), through Secrecy and Violence …
Who dies for ‘Democracy’s’ lies …
My sister went to the hospital to visit her daughter-in-law after her surgery yesterday. She had come out of surgery and in the afternoon had some chicken noodle soup and jello. Then for dinner she ordered the roast beef sandwich on white bread, mashed potatoes and gravy and chocolate pudding.
Aren’t fruits and vegetables allowed into a hospital?
Ya gotta love our health care!
you said she ordered these meals…why didn’t she ask for fruits and vegetables?
The truth is that my sister’s daughter-in-law ordered these meals because she is a Midwestern girl who weighs probably 250 lbs, and has only known a Standard American Diet. An incident sticks in my mind of the time that her daughter was balking at eating her dinner (which if I recall was a burger and fries from McDonald’s) and she said to her, “Well, at least eat your meat,” as if that was the healthiest part of the meal.
I feel sorry for these people that are just following along with what they have learned from either TV commercials, or meat and dairy influenced textbooks in health class, or what’s readily available to them (fast food) as low income people.
BUT A HOSPITAL SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF SERVING THAT KIND OF FOOD AND CALLING IT “HEALTH CARE!”
Excellent point, Sharon. I remember Michael Moore pointing out in one interview that the reason he gained so much weight years ago was that he was often struggling financially and you can’t beat the dollar menu at Mickey D’s!
This is a crisis that most certainly needs to be addressed.
blessed Sharon, LTOR!
you have revealed the epiphany of today, `now` …
the WE we have always known, and did never ‘know’ ’til today,
the Emerged Butterfly of who we ARE, the diety who was self-creating in our chrysalis-cocoon …
the Divine Feminine Consciousness.
before WE could not speak of this, of our advertisers who program us in sickness, and our insurance/medical industry pyramid who grow rich our our chronically-maintained sickness …
which unconscious old paradigm the Obamanable-Democrats are seeking to memorialize in a concrete monument honoring the god of death.
no true/actual healer requires money or servitude to assist you, none that I have ever known who actually produce healing ever ask for money … if you are truly seeking/willing healing, they know as well as you that they are seeking to uplift, complete, fulfill you … not diminish or hurt or enslave you.
health and healing, beauty and bliss, were the losers in the old economy of competition, conquest, enslavement, and plunder.
we are all addicted to our pains, our past … our oceans of candida, our armies of bacilli and cocci, dependent fluke-parasite families … and the sugar, toxins, chemicals and drugs that go with the fast, unconscious, ‘life’-economy.
that old ‘lifeless’-economy required that the beautiful become ugly, the intelligent be dumb, the healthy become sick — in order to fend off the predatory legal, merchant, banking, professional, corporate and government classes.
so how ~now~ today — understanding WE are one body, heart/mind/consciousness divine — and sick — how do we realize the remedy, healing, beauty which needs and requires ALL of us, Each and Every One, of us to be protected, nurtured, healed, empowered … not a one broken and dumbed-down … each of us ~now~ knowing that your happiness, your well-being, is my and our happiness and well-being, our health.
Our, returned, beauty and bliss,
child singing
Dana, well said, but I don’t want all or nothing. I have specific policy goals and associations. Like the vast majority of citizens in this Constitutionally Limited Representative Democracy I want to see health care as a right and I want to see a single payer, medicare-for-all system. Further, like all of the other industrialized countries in the world, I would like to see Congress enact a law where it is illegal for a for-profit company or entity to provide primary health care. The for-profit companies can provide special insurance for elective surgeries or first class hospital rooms, but not for primary care.
Now, despite the corporate media putting inordinate attention on the 20% that behave so poorly, the depth and breadth of support for these simple, straightforward ideas should mean it would be easy to pass these policies. Especially when the “liberal” party controls the House, the Senate and the Executive. The fact that we are even talking about crumbs highlights my central premiss that our country operates more like a fascist state controlled by corporate interests than an actual Representative Democracy.
Since, as the President says, the policy choice that the majority of citizens wants would be “too disruptive” to the corporations that are spending(READ giving) as much as $1.4 million a day on lobbying Congress, we are being asked to settle for Health Insurance Reform rather than Health Care Reform. I have no problem with Health Insurance Reform. I would like to see it pass. Health Insurance leaches should not be able to raise rates so freely. They shouldn’t be able to collect premiums from people for twenty, thirty years and then rescind them from coverage as soon as they actually need to use the insurance. They shouldn’t put undue stress on the system with over complicated paperwork and foot dragging when it comes time to pay the doctors who are the ones who provide the actual health care. Their CEO’s shouldn’t get so much in compensation and stock options. I’m in favor of health insurance reform. But under no circumstances do I support the inclusion of MANDATES as part of Health Insurance Reform.
The health insurance leaches have made unbelievable amounts of money with their criminal business practices over the years, the very same business practices that are being targeted by Health Insurance Reform and that even a bipartisan majority in Congress agree needs to be stopped. The health insurance leaches know which way the wind is blowing. They’ve been preparing for this since the last attempt in 1993 to reform health care in this country. One of the main lobbyists for the leaches, AHIP(America’s Health Insurance Plans), has come up with a plan stop those oh so lucrative business practices while at the same time increase profits. AHIP has actually had the temerity to offer and lobby for a solution where they would support the dropping of rescission, etc., but they demand that Congress provide them with millions of new customers/victims by imposing MANDATES.
So let’s consider, the insurance industry has made billions through what should be illegal business practices which have made medical expenses the number one cause of bankruptcy in this country. 60% of the people who file for bankruptcy citing medical bills actually HAD insurance when they became ill! Now clearly the insurance companies have failed as an industry when the previous is true; but they haven’t failed as a for-profit company because they are making unbelievable amounts of money. They are converting their customers insurance premiums, not into health care for those same customers, but into profits for their CEOs and their shareholders on Wall Street. Now that their abuses have caused a level of ire and loathing in this country so great that their very existence as an industry is threatened in every poll, AHIP comes back and offers to stop these criminal practices, but they demand a quid pro quo where Congress imposes mandates. These mandates would make these leaches more money then ever before.
I want Health Care Reform. I’m not alone in this, but apparently 77% isn’t a sufficient majority of citizens for our Congress to enact Heath Care Reform because it would threaten the interests of their true constituents, the Corporations. Fine. I’ll settle for Health Insurance Reform to stop the practices that harm so many. But I will not settle for the inclusion of MANDATES in Health Insurance Reform.
No Public Option / No Mandates
A fun and cheeky video to remind us that we are #37 (!!!!) on the World Health’s Organizition’s list of countries regarding healthcare!
(Sorry, for some reason I no longer know how to post live links….)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVgOl3cETb4
Excellent comments, SPK. I agree with you 100%!
Can I use this elsewhere? (crediting you, of course)
No public option/No mandates-I like that, it should be one of the mantras’ in this debate. One above sugested I was aiming too low in this debate. I’m simply being practical. We have Democrats who will not vote for a public option this go around, I don’t think they are going to change their minds, regardless of what spk, myself or the refered to poster say but, in the next go around, I really think we will see more of a shift towards that direction. As for we are a nation two decades beyond two centuries, how long must we wait-in part age is a factor in a nation’s maturity, but is it not the psychology of a nation that we are dealing with? Who would argue the U.S. is anything like any other European Nation State, some of which whose histories go back over two Millennia. Quite ahead start over our Blip into this world. As to getting all they “leeches” wanted, I’m still not convinced but they do have extraodinary power ($$$$$) to influence the vote-welcome to real life politics. We see what happens in California when initiatives get passed that are too one-sided written with out much thought and most importantly without, consensus among the opposing coalitions. We do not have cohesion in this debate-did I need to say that but, if we are to have progress, we have to have members in the congress from the middle to agree on a package. It won’t happen if it has single payer-a dead issue this go around-or the less controversial public option.
Indeed crumbs, indeed.
that’s the sickness, the evil, of these Demofascists … they rely on the media and the professional classes to dumb-down and enforce peer-approval by their victim masses. they manufacture or borrow phrases like ‘public option’ and ‘single payer’ — and educate, browbeat, frighten “77 percent” of a ‘public’ into saying “that’s what I want” — when in fact NOT TEN PERCENT of them know what-the-devil, what sick perversity/violence/theft is going to be visited upon them by the legislation.
and of course all the buzzwords, and the words spoken by the ‘Congress-Perps’, are but red herrings. we NEVER get what they say we are going to get, only get more disquised theft and guinea pig ‘chemo-torture’.
these Boob-Tube-regurgitant scum should be sent packing along with their Re-pukelican buddies, who use the military and the courts to conduct the same nationwide “beating into submission” of their fellow family and community members.
you will never see these manipulative SPKs, Leighas, and LTORs being honest and respectful, honoring their neighbors, honoring their community — understanding that it is their neighbors, their families, their sister/brothers from whom all wisdom and blessings come from.
you will not see these sick neighbors of ours, or their billionaire-idol-desires-reflections in Washington DC — never see them using words that have meaning, and writing and honoring policies that have meaning — such as:
“no individual, whether sick or ill, is required to submit to the language, authority or power of any clinic, hospital, medical doctor, pharmarceutical purveyor, or petrochemical corporation … or any alleged ‘health’ provider. all persons seeking health and well-being are permitted to make one hundred percent of their own choices with regard to the kinds of diet, herbs, yoga, exercise, fasting, surgery, medicine, shamanism, spiritual healing or other they seek. the people can consult ANY unlicensed healer, or ANYONE at all they wish for opinions or guidance or service in their healing. they will all have EQUAL access to, and equal support from any ‘national’ healthcare system in place … and will pay ONLY what THEY believe is justified, or they can afford.”
you can quibble over the (one percent?) or so of the population who are so sick or criminally-insane that their families or the State should or have taken over their care — but most of those criminally-insane are in power now, in the Congress, in the Agencies, in the Corporations –
the bottomline is, until you are actually honest with the people, our sisters and brothers — as Obama-bin-Laughin never was — you won’t get the vast consensus of REAL and OBVIOUS emotional (overwhelming) support that we require. we require to defeat the Obama-puppets and their puppeteers, the Intelligence State.
for all our sacred relations, returning the life-giving legacy of our Mother Earth, and healing her child of “Global Human Cultural Kind” …
MT -
I think your absolutism does you a serious disservice – it doesn’t advance your agenda in any way. My opinion is that using language like you are using in #58 will turn off far more people than it turns on.
And to ignore the right wing in that first paragraph in particular is laughable.
MT: how dare you accuse in the heat of your passion: “you will never see these manipulative SPKs, Leighas, and LTORs being honest and respectful, honoring their neighbors, honoring their community — understanding that it is their neighbors, their families, their sister/brothers from whom all wisdom and blessings come from.”
DO you personally know them, have you actually ever personally talked or worked with them? I personally know that these people ARE honest and respectful, honor thier neighbors and community as evidenced by their tireless work in our community!
I hate to be “absoulte”; however, accusing people whom you’ve never had a conversation with is UNFAIR and NARROW.
Please, practice/walk/talk as you so eloquently write and post. I,too, love the Goddess/Divine, and I do enjoy your FB postings; but, your bigoted accusations on OP cause me to hide you FB postings. SHAME!
kia ora, Judy K,
Maori blessings.
yes I know these people … have for months or years. don’t believe I have met Leigh in person, but we have gotten to know each other quite well here at the Ojai Post over the last year or so.
and I have yet to hear or see them, or hear OF them, being in service to community, world, and planet.
playing the part of Big Brother Government, yes. stooges for the Legal/Corporate/Banking State, yes.
LTOR claims to have a thick skin, and SPK appears to be simply a Stone Wall of corporate complicity. Me I have no skin … the barbs and arrows penetrate all the way, and at the best of times pass through me and on into the river of our community, our world, our Mother Planet.
and, Publisher Tyler,
not sure whose agenda you are speaking of … I lost all of mine about twenty years ago, from 1986 to 1989, with the destruction of the Space Shuttle by my aerospace professional society (guild) peers, and their Covert Co-opting of the International Space Station program.
I’m not here to “turn on” the bullies and the manipulators. I am not here to feign a mono-gender or mono-personality. I am here in service to spirit, to the Women and Children of the Planet, to our Mother Earth.
I realize of course few people in the Valley, or on Earth, have my spirit-given ability to dialog, and spirit-honoring ability to honor our World Cultures, all our ancestors, all our animal/plant living relations.
don’t know what you are saying about “the right wing” — but you can be specific if you like. there hasn’t been a right, or a left, in the history of the USA since I have been around … not in Government, not in the Corporate State … only a complete ‘middle’ fascist predator on the people, on our Mother Earth.
I’ll be curious to hear about my sister LTOR’s experiences with the ‘Intelligence’ (Bankster-Operatives) ‘Agency’!
Arohanui, enfolding love …
MT -
I think that you are most effective in communication when you do share about animal/plant living relations. (even though not everyone understands you, you speak to a population with whom this language resonates, and that population on earth is growing)
I also think that when you use words like Demofascists, Re-pukelicans and Obama-bin-Laughin, and when you denigrate fellow authors and readers on the Post, you completely undermine the “living relations” language, and you turn people off.
You obviously don’t see it this way, but when you turn your language towards barbs and attacks, you are acting out of integrity as a living, harmonious being and you do disservice to the language of beauty and nature.
I am either completely offended by MT or completely baffled.
MT, I had promised myself that I would not rise to your bait any longer because it just makes me angry and sad and hurt and frustrated and I don’t like living there.
But I had to respond to this:
“yes I know these people … have for months or years. don’t believe I have met Leigh in person, but we have gotten to know each other quite well here at the Ojai Post over the last year or so.
and I have yet to hear or see them, or hear OF them, being in service to community, world, and planet.”
You don’t know me from Adam. Or Eve. Or Lilith. Or Kali. Or the Morrigan. Or whatever your vision of the divine feminine is.
And because you don’t know a dam.n thing about me, you don’t have a clue what I’ve done in my community, locally, regionally, nationally, or globally. (And actually, had you read what I’ve written here with any care, you’d have had some clues about what I’ve done in the Ojai Valley.)
And it’s just this arrogance, combined with horrible sweeping indictments of people you’ve never met, coupled with calling them names, that causes me to believe that you have major issues with violence in your psyche, even though you call for a nurturing planet. You are not nurturing! You are insulting, obsessive, abusive, and plain out wrong. You are the bully, sir.
Your “spirit-given ability to dialog?”
You’ve GOT to be kidding.
great to share, Tyler,
I know you have a FULL plate … which Song Spirit has gifted us all in bushels, in rivers, in oceans this year, 2009.
maybe you have read Marshall McLuhan, or that famous retired linguist from MIT, who you might call a ‘leftist’ commentator, or go way back, Carl Jung.
I am not saying I am emulating these authors/social-critiques — though I did decades ago when my language/song/consciousness was young.
language defines us and our world, IS us and our world, is Consciousness, the Dreamtime, the Songline … aka literally IS our divine electromagnetic mind, landscape, the land, nature, creation.
the poet, the lyricist, the Singer is the artist of creation … just as the painter creates, changes our world, through visioning of past, present and future personality …
this is why the schools and the media, the church and the state, the law and the corporations are so rigid (controlling) of language — because the language is their chief instrument of cointel, of counterintelligence … also known as disinformation, dumbing-down the population.
as long as you repeat their language, as long as you closet yourself in their media (newsprint, radio, television, university) you say nothing, you maintain their ownership of you, our economy, our sacred family. as soon as you change the words, craft the portrait, to come closer to the ~now~ … to what you are seeing/experiencing ~today~ … you honor our world … you allow others to evolve … you evolve yourself … you are a spark of divinity, creation creating.
it doesn’t require effort to be real … but enables and fosters a great peace … the Wholeness of emptiness, becoming Ful-filled with the awareness of our new personality, our new life’s work, the NEW world, NEW family, NEW community around us.
I wish the orientation of the Ojai Post was not politics, was not pushing and shoving, manipulating or deceiving. It is a rather true portrait of our Matilija-Ahi Valley home, both of which are evolving, gentling … perhaps significantly so this week with the flurry of posts, if not much dialog, on this OK Ojai Corral …
for all our living, beloved, nurturing relations …
who nurtured us, for a million years ….
(DOUBLE POSTING THIS HERE AS MT WILL NO DOUBT “STRIP” IT FROM HIS PAGE)
What wish?
What should that be?
Oh God of the Divine Feminine?
Oh God of all peoples?
That MT look again in a mirror..
And learn…
(though I think this task impossible for him)
And see a truth…
That his inner reality is the opposite…
Of what we all see when upon reading his words and hearing his hyperactive drivel…
Oh that this creature had but ounce of self-perception…
So sadly it is that we will continue to endure his pronouncements.
we are ALL his children. AYEEWAA do YOU see? child of broneo, yes? Do you SEE
ZZZYYYXXX? ooohiEEE!!!
– neither Health, nor Care is the intention of these gangsters in ‘their’ “Congress of Whores”, in the White House. ‘they’ simply “Don’t Care” about ‘their’ slaves, the people. When ‘they’ remove the perverse power and authority of the ‘doctors’ and ‘law-yers’, and permit us to heal ourselves, as well as go to ANY Healer, ANY Shaman, ANY Herbalist, teacher of dieting, yoga, fasting, breathing, etc. — then and only then will ‘they’ be listening to, and honoring the people, the sacred.
MT, not sure if you’ve done a lot of MDMA(commonly known as Ecstasy), but calling me “a Stone Wall of corporate complicity” sheds some light on your mental state. Too much MDMA actually puts physical holes in the structure of the brain and seriously warps the victims ability to track with reality. Also, it often leads to a sense of grandiosity. Comparing yourself and your barely coherent ramblings and appalling blank verse to McLuhan, Chomsky and Jung is just, well, sad.
If we’re finished entertaining the ravings of what I can only describe as a lunatic, those of us still concerned with the mundane, day to day world might be interested in Max Baucus’ bill from the Senate Finance Committee.
I’ve looked at it and it is an absolute stab in the back. Time for Sen. Baucus to become Mr. Baucus again, even if it means losing a Democrat in his seat or even the majority in the Senate. Here’s an ides, let’s ask Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Baucus’ state to run against him in the primary. But even if we lose the seat to a republican it’s better to have a Republican than a Democrat in Name Only who cannot be counted on.
Baucus teamed up with two other corporatist Dems and three moderate Republicans. They were dubbed the “gang of 6″ and they were in charge of the most important committee in the Senate with regards to Health Care Reform/Health Insurance Reform. Despite the fact that we have a strong majority in the House and a filibuster proof Democratic Caucus in the Senate(before the death of Ted Kennedy) Baucus thought it better to give away the store and totally ignore the idea of a single payer system that the majority of his constituents and even citizens in the country truly want. Instead of using single payer as a threat to get a strong public option that could then be turned into a single payer system on a state by state basis, he took millions from the insurance lobbyists and the drug companies and gutted Health Care Reform in the name of bipartisanship. His gang of six wrote a bill that is a threat to every man woman and child in the US, and in the end NONE of the Republicans signed on, even his pet three.
Epic Fail Senator Baucus. Time to start looking for your next job, though with the amount of money you took from the health insurance and drug lobbies to do the hit on real reform, I guess you can just retire in opulence. Fuck you very much.
MT,
You wrote…
“…permit us to heal ourselves, as well as go to ANY Healer, ANY Shaman, ANY Herbalist, teacher of dieting, yoga, fasting, breathing, etc.”
Please, we all beg you… Go…
Go to any healer…
(except yourself)
Go to any shaman…
(except yourself)
Go to any herbalist…
(except yourself)
Go to any teacher of dieting, yoga, fasting, breathing, etc.
except yourself)
More, more than any one..
More than any one I’ve know…
You, you, you need their help.
Now, now, now…
A favorite book of mine is by a Seneca shaman called Native Healer Medicine. His medicine name is Grizzly Bear.
An Amazon book review says “Grizzly Bear explains how a person is called to be a medicine man/woman, and shares some of the trials and tests of a candidate. Native Healer Medicine gives us an exciting glimpse into the world of Native American shamanism, some of Medicine Grizzly Bear’s personal experiences, and many examples of his cases involving people and their illnesses that he has successfully doctored.”
I learned a lot from his book and I think anyone including Millenium would too.
Hi Everybody,
When we are talking about healing we are talking about Energy work. But what is Energy and how can it heal?
We are made up of a multi-body system, not just the physical body. We have an Etheric Body, an Emotional Body, a Mental Body and an Astral Body. Things don’t just affect us physically; we are affected on all levels. When we think thoughts, these non-solid forms of Energy go out
into our multi system body and greatly affect us.
We all have organs in our bodies that store Energy and Energy patterns. They are called Chakras. We can have Energy Patterns stored from events that happened yesterday as well as from many years ago or from birth. Some of these patterns will be happy memories and some of them will be unpleasant and painful memories of something that happened to us.
Sometimes we stash them away deep into some recess in our Chakras and in our Auras (the Energy field around us), and try to forget about them, but they don’t really go away. Dis-ease is a manifestation of unbalanced Energy. Healing then is a way of balancing Energy. Some doctors are aware of Energy, but most are not. It usually takes a woman healer to see Energy patterns and a woman’s subtlety to guide us into our new patterns.
Tink
Wow. A comment I made this morning still hasn’t posted to my own thread. WTF?
Sean – your comment was caught in a filter. As the ensuing page should have explained, I’m not notified automatically – you have to email me. It’s freed up now.
Sean, I just wanted to say that I really appreciated your thought on no mandate/no public option — I think that makes absolute sense! Along the basic irateness I feel over the idea of mandated private, for-profit health care just in principle, I know in practice it’s a disaster — my sister lives in MA and it’s a nightmare there.
And I think you’re right on about Baucus!
Did you read Bob Cesca’s piece about him in the Huffington Post today?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/with-a-healthcare-plan-th_b_289064.html
Maybe we can actually get past this nonsense now — sounds like most Dems are not enchanted with what ole Bacchus and his party of fools put together…
ok, SPK, you are familiar with this MDMA, you say?
perhaps you can tell us all about it …
glad to see you are suggesting CongressBoy Bauc-anal-us move along — to Sing Sing possibly?
then you can also encourage the other few hundreds of ‘Congrease’ Boys and Girls to do the same?
or are you going to continue kissing their arses?
I continue to be optimistic…again Anthony Weiner was on tv last night basically saying he is convinced that there are enough votes in the House to ensure that a bill will not pass the House without some form of “cost containment” and that the only real way for that to happen is a public option component….
en la’kech, Asha,
Will look up the Grizzly Bear book … it’s not in the Vencolibrary computer … perhaps on eBay … whoaa, just found it there for $1.00 — done!
My Hungarian Grandfather, who retired to the mountains of the Shasta Trinity Alps, taught me much of the Bear wisdom when I was a child. He, and my Irish Grandmother, lived for two decades there in the total peace and beauty of the green (crawling, scratching, twittering, singing) wilderness under the stars celestial … under the guidance of a local Native Grandfather who sold them the cabin and land where they sculpted a home and orchard and garden.
We also just ordered, through eBay, the book “Giving Voice to Bear” by David Rockwell, on the recommendation of one of our local Chumash elders, Red Bear! A treatment on the Bear Shamans of North America — REALLY looking forward to exploring it!
Honoring the wisdom of our world-ancestral elders, returning the health and sanity of all our relations …