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Quark,
I believe why Europe became more humane centers around the fact that their nations were so close to each other and differences were easily seen and a war flared up from time to time. They came to realize that these wars were stupid ways of settling differences. We have two oceans between us and Europe and Asia. We do not feel the true extent of a war or wars and so through propoganda war has become portrayed as a video game. Our foreign policy and our domestic policy is to create chaos, a crisis, and fear that someone wants to take away our freedoms. We fail to understand by our government and our corporations creating problems around the world it is a way to take away our freedoms anrights. For some reason Americans fail to learn the lessons of history. American rulers have a lust for control and power. We are only cannon fodder for the rulers.
Gerald Socha,
I keep wondering that, too. Maybe he is putting too much trust in his generals. (After all, they wouldn't willingly admit defeat.)
That was Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips quoted on the Ohio voting.
This ACORN business has the rather strong aroma of hypocrisy, since unlike the voter suppression that swung the presidential elections in 2000 and 2004 to Bush, ACORN’s failures in oversight had little or no impact on 2008 presidential election. The corporate-run media, which utterly failed in its responsibility to expose the voter suppression tactics deployed by Republican operatives—most notably in Florida and Ohio—seems quite at ease with the disenfranchisement of minority and low-income voters in Democratic-leaning districts, but when it comes to efforts to enfranchise them, this is cause for wild consternation.
It was the BBC that uncovered the “secret” communiqués revealin gthe Republican use of caging lists, voter intimidation (such as private detectives hired to sit in dark-tinted cars outside of polling places), and voters baldly challenged by alleged “poll workers.” There were also claims of faulty polling booths, and shortages of booths in Democratic-leaning (mostly minority) districts. After claims of voter suppression in Ohio in 2004, the House Judiciary committee was “allowed” by the Republicans to conduct an investigation—as long as it did not conclude that voting irregularities changed the election result.
Dr. Richard Hayes from the University of Oregon, who wrote a book on the 2004 Ohio election fraud, and was a key witness at the committee hearings, stated that:
"It is my professional opinion that John Kerry's margins of victory were wrongly reduced by 22,000 votes in Cleveland, by 17,000 votes in Columbus, and by as many as 7,000 votes in Toledo. It is my further professional opinion that John Kerry's margins of defeat in Warren, Butler, and Clermont Counties were inflated by as many as 37,000 votes in the aggregate, and in Miami County by as many as 6,000 votes. There are still 92,672 uncounted regular ballots that, based upon the analysis set forth of the election results from Dayton and Cincinnati, may be expected to break for John Kerry by an overwhelming margin. And there are still 14,441 uncounted provisional ballots."
Doubtless Ohio was not the only state where this occurred, and doubtless it continued in the 2008 election. However, the Judiciary committee’s report on the massive fraud in Ohio passed virtually unnoticed by the corporate mainstream media, yet now the ACORN “controversy” is made to appear as if it is a “fraud” on an unimaginable, heinous scale. The mendacity runs thick and heavy indeed.
Quark,
you may be right in the thought that women are the disciplinarians. But, why is he willing to keep the Middle East wars alive?
Gerald Socha,
Maybe we are too "young" a nation. Too spoiled, too wealthy, too arrogant, too ambitious. When European "world powers" like Spain, the Netherlands, etc. settled down, didn't they become more humane?
We are about to become poor, but we are still ruled by bad actors (NOT an Emmy joke!)
Quark,
our nation has many great thinkers and great writers. It is beyond my comprehension why our country cannot have more love, mercy, and forgiveness in her heart.
When I read Stephan Lendman's article, "A Culture of Violence," our violent nature must be deep and widespread.
Gerald Socha,
Maybe women are the disciplinarians in Obama's world view!
Gerald Socha,
Yes, even on a much simpler level, a good parent knows that he must teach his children that there are consequences to their actions. Basic stuff!
As I read Marianne Williamson's quotes, I felt that Obama means well when he says we should look forward and not back. The problem I have is that forgiveness is very important but we still must investigate the slaughter of people committed by Bush II and Cheney. They should serve time for their crimes against humanity. Once we know the extent of their crimes, we can then determine what we can forgive. For our nation to be above the law will not serve us well in the present or in the future.
Gerald Socha,
Thank you for introducing me to her work. To my knowledge, I've never read anything she's written until now.
Quark,
I have known about Marianne Williamson for the past several years but for some reason I forgot her name until today. Here are some of her quotes.
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/marianne_williamson/
Gerald Socha,
What a blessing... Thanks for the inspiring words.
Quark,
Let us hope that we can make it better!!!
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
----from A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson.
Gerald Socha,
Beautiful. More great info. for me to forward to others!
- - - - from Healing the Soul of America, by Marianne Williamson, 1998
America's first principles are inscribed not only in the Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution but also in Lincoln's Gettysburg address. President Lincoln declared at Gettysburg that "this nation....shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." What a radical concept that is - a government of the people, by the people, for the people. It means, of course, that not only will the government consist of our citizens, elected by our citizens, but that its mission shall be to serve our citizens.
We should take a good look at that sentence - especially that part that reads "for the people" - and ask ourselves if we have decided to be the generation to repudiate Lincoln's words. President Rutherford B. Hayes once lamented that we were becoming a government "of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations." So what's new?
If ours were a government for the People, wouldn't our children receive the best education in the world? If ours were a government for the people, wouldn't we have universal health insurance? If ours were a government for the people, wouldn't we have massively committed to clean energy sources by now?
America's most fundamental problem is a crisis of our democratic process. We are being asked, as we were asked over two hundred years ago, to decide for ourselves and our children what it is worth to us to govern ourselves. While it appears that we have problems very different from those faced by earlier generations, in fact it is not the complexity of our current problems but rather the simple drama behind them all that should be garnering our attention. What we call the issues are not the issue. The issue is the disengagement of the average American's heart and mind from the democratic process. We have stopped participating in droves, and in our absence, forces not always in favor of the greatest good for the greatest number have exercised their own rights, often leaving the average American at a distinct disadvantage in our own country.
In 1864 Abraham Lincoln wrote these words:
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
The great issue of our time is not taxes, a balanced budget, social security or medicare. Those are all rather elaborate red herrings. The great issue that confronts us, as it confronted Jefferson's generation and Lincoln's generation and every generation to some degree, is this: Is America to be ruled by all of us and for all of us - or has the American government in fact become a government of, by and for a relative few?
Gerald Socha,
I am not optimistic, either. I keep looking for the "cracks" in our system that I could work on to make a little larger, 'til it breaks (to be replaced with something much better.)
Quark,
there are corporations that rule over some countries. In the US we have fascism. Corporations and our government are working together to take control over our lives.
Thom, I have three comments to make. I want to commend you for your show on racism. Racism in the US is alive and sick.
Even though we will never have a single payer health care plan, please keep stressing single payer health care.
It is my understanding that more troops will be sent to Afghanistan to prop up a corrupt government. More American soldiers will be killed.
Quark,
I would want to be more positive about America's future but the amount of racism, hatred, corruption, and lies are just overwhelming me. I have this endless gagging feeling in my throat.
"On the cost-efficiency side, private insurance has very high administrative costs related to billing, contracting, reviewing utilization, and marketing because of the large infrastructure required to assess risk, set premiums, design complex benefit packages, review claims, and pay (or deny) individual claims. Moreover, the tax subsidies used to encourage coverage through private insurance and the use of tax revenue to cover the poorest (and generally sickest) people in society are both inefficient and highly regressive (Mossialos and Dixon 2002).
"A single-payer system is more efficient because it is administered by a single agent that is either the government or a body delegated by the government. This means that substantial resources are not wasted in processing insurance claim forms from multiple companies. It also means that providers – particularly physicians and their employees – avoid the overhead required to collect bills from their patients.
"Over a decade ago, Woolhandler and Himmelstein (1991) estimated that Canadians spent two-thirds less than Americans on health care administration. Their analysis was largely confirmed by the U.S. General Accounting Office (1991) and the Congressional Budget Office (1991). Their most recent work (Woolhandler et al. 2002) concludes that each Canadian pays $325 per year (out of a total health administration bill of almost $10 billion) compared to $1,151 paid by each American per year (out of a total health administration bill of $320 billion)." -- Page 61, HCC Final Report
Gazmik,
Thanks for that last post. I'm going to send that info. to my congressmen plus others.
John Lott mentioned that the health care costs to the citizens in Canada that Thom was talking about ignored the taxes that they paid that helped cover the costs. He doesn't have much room to talk.
In 2002 in Canada, The Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada did a report on what changes were needed in the Canadian health care system. Some of their findings are interesting:
"While most wealthy countries rely heavily on public funding for health care, private insurance plays a significant role in funding health care in the United States. Private insurance in the United States is supported by tax breaks known as 'tax expenditure subsidies.' These subsidies exist, but to a much lesser extent, in all the comparison countries. Since these subsidies are not generally included when public health care expenditures are tallied, they are difficult to trace and are therefore referred to as 'covert' expenditures (Mossialos and Dixon 2002). In fact, tax subsidies play an enormous role in providing health care coverage in the United States. When these tax breaks are taken into account, the public share of health care spending in the United States increases to nearly 60% of its total health care spending (Woolhandler and Himmelstein 2002). This changes the common perception that the United States has a predominantly private system of health care.
"Even without including tax subsidies, the extraordinarily high level of total health care spending in the United States translates into far more spending per capita than in Canada and the other OECD countries. This has been described as tantamount to paying for national health insurance and, in return, getting a fragmented system with significant gaps in coverage – the worst of both worlds. While the United States’ 'health care system is usually portrayed as largely private,' a more apt description is '[p]ublic money, private control' (Woolhandler and Himmelstein 2002, 22). Indeed, the larger the public share of health care financing beyond tax expenditure subsidies, the more total health expenditures are capable of being controlled. In contrast, the larger the private share of health care financing, the more difficult it is to control health care expenditures (Majnoni d’Intignano 2001)." -- Page 27, HCC Final Report
http://www.cbc.ca/healthcare/final_report.pdf
Woman dies at 99, leaves behind 1,400 descendents
One of Jerusalemite Rachel Krishevsky's grandchildren says with pride, 'Grandma knew all of her descendents'
Nissan Shtrauchler
Published: 09.17.09, 12:24 / Israel News
The commandment to "be fruitful and multiply" the Krishevsky family follows quite closely. Last Saturday, the great grandmother, Rachel Krishevsky passed away at the age of 99, leaving behind no less than 1,400 children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and even great-great-grandchildren...
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3778275,00.html
I must have accidentally posted this on the wrong day's post the first time.
It goes primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary. I don't know of any terms past those.
mstaggerlee
I hope you don't mind but I like you just fine as mstaggerlee. I'd like to be more hopeful too, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of difference between the foreign policies of the Obama administration and previous administrations.
Examples:
VP Biden was in Iraq last week telling their government we want them to not have a referendum on whether the U.S. should withdraw its troops one year earlier than agreed and to offer more incentives to foreign companies to invest in Iraq (i.e., better deals for foreign oil companies).
The U.S has expanded it's war in Afghanistan. A recent report says that 90% of the funding in that effort is for military.
The U.S. just negotiated for 5 military bases in Colombia against the wishes of the other countries in the region.
The U.S. continues to try to expand its military presence in Africa.
The Obama administration has decided to maintain the embargo against Cuba.
etc, etc etc
So as wish I'll call you Pollyanna just this one time.
Hey Pollyanna, what up!!!
Interesting blog (with music clips). I recommend skipping the first story,though (with parasite video.) UGH!
"Suburban Guerrilla
Keeping a jaundiced eye on the corporate media."
http://susiemadrak.com/