The Real Situation

Right now some of our senators are meeting and trying to hammer out a health care reform bill the President has promised will be completed by Christmas.

The probable bill will not seriously expand the health care benefits of American citizens as much as it will significantly enhance the profit-making of the corporations, mega-corporations, that have been contributing millions of dollars to our representatives in both the House and the Senate, and also to the President.

FWIW: This is a fast and personal anecdote.

This past Thursday morning, my brother’s mother-in-law, who is having serious health problems, received an early morning phone call from a young woman claiming she was her only granddaughter, with whom she had just recently spent the Thanksgiving holiday. The girl excitedly explained she was in trouble and could Grandma and Grandpa rescue her? Her voice certainly did not sound to my brother’s mother-in-law like her granddaughter’s.

The young woman went on to claim she was calling from Montreal. My niece goes to college in California and her grandmother knew that is where she should be. The young woman emotionally related that she had been in a car accident and had damaged the rental car. In essence the message: please, please, please Grandma, I don’t want to tell Mom and Dad … I only have $400 in my checking account right now. Could you, please, and Grandpa, wire me $2400 for the damages to the car?

http://www.creators.com/opinion/paul-craig-roberts.html?columnsName=pcr

Paul Craig Roberts refers to the U.S. as a “failed state”. The Democratic party has abandoned the people – its true, now betrayed, constituency. The reverse Robin Hoodism going on he defines as “trickle-up” economics.

1) Paul Craig Roberts (“Trickle-up Economics”)

In a failed state, the government’s priorities are totally separate from those of the people. The U.S. can’t afford health care or a bailout for jobless homeowners, but it can afford a pointless war and multimillion-dollar bonuses for banksters who wrecked the economy. Millions of laid-off workers lost their health insurance subsidies on Dec. 1, the day President Obama announced a $30 billion “surge” in Afghanistan.

Why does President Obama think the U.S. can afford a war in Afghanistan when the U.S. economy is falling apart? Massive joblessness. Massive homelessness. Millions of Americans without medical care.

[snip]

This is called “trickle-up” economics. You tax the little guy and give the money to the armaments companies.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/matt-mccarten/news/headlines.cfm?a_id=284

1) Matt McCarten (“Afghan Election Scam a Terrifying Tragedy”)

Claims that we are sending troops to Afghanistan to make it secure and to keep the world safe from terrorism are blatant lies. The so-called Afghan “election result” last week is a contemptible fraud. The President’s brother is a well-known drug runner. The two Vice-Presidents are known as criminal warlords. One of them imprisoned his enemies in a truck container, resulting in them being cooked alive.

The President only won the election because he bribed bandit warlords with money and political positions in his new Western-backed government. Hundreds of polling booths never existed, although they apparently received hundreds of thousands of votes. The long list of allegations would be laughable if they weren’t so tragic.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/17/why-i-threw-shoe-bush

1) Muntazer al-Zaidi (from “Why I Threw the Shoe”)

Over recent years, more than a million martyrs have fallen by the bullets of the occupation and Iraq is now filled with more than five million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. Many millions are homeless inside and outside the country.

We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shia would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ. This despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than a decade.

FWIW, a “statistics stew”. I was sorting through articles, mostly from Information Clearing House, wanting to write something provocative before Obama gives his Tuesday Afghanistan War address. I think this random collection of statistics sums up things better than I could put into words:

THE HUNGER CRISIS:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24016.htm

In the next 60 seconds, 10 children will die of hunger

For the first time in humanity, over 1 billion people are chronically hungry.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture released a report Monday stating that in 2008 one in six households in the U.S. was “food insecure,” the highest number since the figures were first gathered in 1995.

The reason people go hungry is because of poverty.

Jacques Diouf, director-general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, … has estimated that it would take $44 billion per year to end hunger globally …

Apparently David Ray Griffin has written a little book that asks a big question, “Is Osama bin Laden dead or alive?”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23691.htm

In March of 2009, former Foreign Service officer Angelo Codevilla published an essay in the American Spectator entitled “Osama bin Elvis.” Explaining his title, Codevilla wrote: “Seven years after Osama bin Laden’s last verifiable appearance among the living, there is more evidence for Elvis’s presence among us than for his.”

I just caught a radio interview of Florida Congressman Alan Grayson on Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s “Ring of Fire” Air America program this afternoon.

I was distracted, working on something that required focus, but the things I caught Grayson saying were so penetrating I kept grabbing a pen and jotting them down. I would like to hear the show again, maybe find the podcast, with my full focus, but before his points drift out of my mind or I lose my scribblings or can no longer decipher them, let me share. Keep in mind, this is me paraphrasing his points. So these are not quotes. These are my interpretations!

So what if we lived in a society in which fire departments only responded to emergency calls from those citizens who “could afford it”? What if the police protected from criminals only those citizens who “could afford it”? What if the firepersons and police persons were not financially eligible for the very life-risking services they were rendering for well-heeled others? What if you called in your emergency and your financial status had to be accessed to determine if you would be helped or left to your own bad luck crisis?

http://www.healthcare-now.org/lieberman-gets-another-visit-from-the-grassroots-for-single-payer/

Dr. Margaret Flowers of PNHP:

“As a movement, it’s important for us to continue to educate people that this is not enough, it’s not sufficient, it’s not addressing the problem that we have, it’s not going to be universal or financially sustainable,” said Dr. Margaret Flowers, who is with Physicians for a National Health Program. “And, at this point, it’s important to turn our attention to the Senate. We still have an opportunity at the very least to try and get the Sanders single-payer amendment that would allow states to pass single-payer legislation.”