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I keep thinking the key is to get the docs in this country active in this fight, as Obama's former M.D. said to Thom in a recent interview.
He said that the insurance industry would be no match for this country's doctors.
Good old Bushbama - every day a little more Bush and a little less Obama...
Question for Mad as Hell Dr - Do you think Obama is purposely allowing these hooligans to reveal themselves at town meetings? We would certainly kill a number of birds with one stone- think of how many people are realizing FOX news reports falsehoods and hopefully turning to MSNBC.
@DRichards -
1) "Is it possible that the democratic party uses the progressives in much the same way?"
I doubt it - progressives tend have that pesky "critical thinking" thing goin' on.
2) "If Obama turns out to be a corporate front man with a friendlier, more articulate persona (than the previous one - Bush) ... "
Let's not forget about all the corporate shills before GWB - Reagan, GHWB, and Clinton!
This helps make the point from my first post today - you need media in your corner to get anywhere, and corporatists own the media.
Here is now what is in my back car window:
Health Care Reform - What would Jesus do?
mstaggerlee.
Do you feel punked yet?
Internal Memo Confirms Big Giveaways In White House Deal With Big Pharma
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/13/internal-memo-confirms-bi_n_258...
In case anyone has any doubts about the Rethuglican agenda regarding Health Care reform, let me tell you about a caller on Randi Rhodes' show yesterday.
A fairly urbane-sounding guy (from LA, maybe?) made a call to Senator Chuck Grassley's office. The Republican from Kansas is the minority leader on Max Baucus's Senate Finance Committee. Unfortunately, the conversation was not recorded. The caller put on a semi-convincing southern accent and asked the woman who answered the phone if there was a euthanasia clause in the new health care law (not his exact words, but that was the gist of the question). She answered "Yes, sir, that's right!"
The rest of the exhange is more or less verbatim, starting with our caller -
"Y'all mean if my gran'ma gets too sick, some Washington bureaucrat can tell her doctor to pull the plug on her?!"
"That's correct, sir."
"Tell me, ma'am, is the Senator a good, Christian man?"
"Why, yes, sir, he certainly is."
At this point, our caller drops the phony accent and asks "Then how come he instructed you to LIE about this??!!"
The staffer then hung up, as if the phone had suddenly become to hot to handle.
It just really pisses me off that all the other major industrialized countries in the world solved the healthcare issue LONG AGO and we are still enslaved to the corporations.
mstaggerlee,
Yes, I see the wisdom (and necessity) of being pragmatic --- one achievable step at a time.
As I say, I keep hoping... (and working for change)
DRichards,
If Obama turns out to be a corporate front man with a friendlier, more articulate persona (than the previous one - Bush), I hope the progressives break off and start a third party. They need to expose the corporatists and separate themselves from that group.
It seems to me that the republican party uses the fundamentalist as a voting block, yet the fundamentalist are oblivious to it. Is it possible that the democratic party uses the progressive in much the same way? If it is, are we bright enough to figure it out?
@DRichards -
Maybe I'm a cockeyed optimist, but I'm not so sure on the "punking" issue.
The mainstream media, whose boards of directors are hopelessly interlocked with those of the insurance elite and Pharma, lead the idiot masses by the nose. While all this foolishness apparently has a large portion of the public kicking and screaming AGAINST reform, Obama can't hope to make anything useful happen.
He needs allies, STRONG ones, who can, in some measure, reverse the spin of the MSM whirlpool. You and I DO NOT have sufficient power. Thom and the progressive media really don't either.
Pharma DOES. Most of us in this TINY community understand that those advertisements we see on the TV for prescription medications are NOT about selling pills, but about leveraging the media to shape the message. If Obama can get some help with his agenda from them, more power to him.
Quark,
Re: the behavior by Obama that makes me suspect he is punking us. I keep hoping I am wrong.
I suspect that is what was said about Bill Clinton.
I am greatly disappointed, but we might as well call it what it is and deal with it.
If we have to dismiss the third party option, and are stuck with the democrat & republican parties, is there really any hope of change? I really think it is a pipe dream to think that we can take control from the corporations who own the republican & democratic parties.
Howard Dean is on MSNBC right now saying that, if the healthcare reform bill doesn't have a genuine public option, it's just a $60 billion give-away to the insurance industry --- and progressives will oppose it.
DRichards,
You've highlighted exactly the behavior by Obama that makes me suspect he is punking us. I keep hoping I am wrong.
LOCK AND LOAD. IT'S TOWN MEETING TIME.*
It's too bad the shouters at the town meetings can't meet THESE people, who line up at free healthcare events because they have no healthcare otherwise:
"Thousands Line Up for Promise of Free Health Care"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/health/13clinic.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
*From Gail Collins' NYTimes column today, "Gunning for Healthcare." (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/opinion/13collins.html?ref=opinion)
Does this sound like checkers?
Obama on Drugs: 98% Cheney?
by Greg Palast
Thursday, August 13, 2009
For The Huffington Post
Eighty billion dollars of WHAT?
I searched all over the newspapers and TV transcripts and no one asked the President what is probably the most important question of what passes for debate on the issue of health care reform: $80 billion of WHAT?
On June 22, President Obama said he'd reached agreement with big drug companies to cut the price of medicine by $80 billion. He extended his gratitude to Big Pharma for the deal that would, "reduce the punishing inflation in health care costs."
Hey, in my neighborhood, people think $80 billion is a lot of money. But is it?
I checked out the government's health stats (at HHS.gov), put fresh batteries in my calculator and toted up US spending on prescription drugs projected by the government for the next ten years. It added up to $3.6 trillion.
In other words, Obama's big deal with Big Pharma saves $80 billion out of a total $3.6 trillion. That's 2%.
Hey thanks, Barack! You really stuck it to the big boys. You saved America from these drug lords robbing us blind. Two percent. Cool!
For perspective: Imagine you are in a Wal-Mart and there's a sign over a flat screen TV, "BIG SAVINGS!" So, you break every promise you made never to buy from that union-busting big box - and snatch up the $500 television. And when you're caught by your spouse, you say, "But, honey, look at the deal I got! It was TWO-PERCENT OFF! I saved us $10!"
But 2% is better than nothing, I suppose. Or is it?
The Big Pharma kingpins did not actually agree to cut their prices. Their promise with Obama is something a little oilier: they apparently promised that, over ten years, they will reduce the amount at which they would otherwise raise drug prices. Got that? In other words, the Obama deal locks in a doubling of drug costs, projected to rise over the period of "savings" from a quarter trillion dollars a year to half a trillion dollars a year. Minus that 2%.
We'll still get the shaft from Big Pharma, but Obama will have circumcised the increase.
And what did Obama give up in return for $80 billion? Chief drug lobbyist Billy Tauzin crowed that Obama agreed to dump his campaign pledge to bargain down prices for Medicare purchases. Furthermore, Obama's promise that we could buy cheap drugs from Canada simply went pffft!
What did that cost us? The New England Journal of Medicine notes that 13 European nations successfully regulate the price of drugs, reducing the average cost of name-brand prescription medicines by 35% to 55%. Obama gave that up for his 2%.
The Veterans Administration is able to push down the price it pays for patent medicine by 40% through bargaining power. George Bush stopped Medicare from bargaining for similar discounts, an insane ban that Obama said he'd overturn. But, once within Tauzin's hypnotic gaze, Obama agreed to lock in Bush's crazy and costly no-bargaining ban for the next decade.
What else went down in Obama's drug deal? To find out, I called C-SPAN to get a copy of the videotape of the meeting with the drug companies. I was surprised to find they didn't have such a tape despite the President's campaign promise, right there on CNN in January 2008, "These negotiations will be on C-SPAN."
This puzzled me. When Dick Cheney was caught having secret meetings with oil companies to discuss Bush's Energy Bill, we denounced the hugger-muggers as a case of foxes in the henhouse.
Cheney's secret meetings with lobbyists and industry bigshots were creepy and nasty and evil.
But the Obama crew's secret meetings with lobbyists and industry bigshots were, the President assures us, in the public interest.
We know Cheney's secret confabs were shady and corrupt because Cheney scowled out the side of his mouth.
Obama grins in your face.
See the difference?
The difference is 2%.
Still think Obama is playing Chess?
Obama Rhetoric vs. Obama Deal-Making
After Promises From White House, Industry Leaders "Not Worried"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/health/policy/13health.html?_r=1
I am not genuinely surprised very often, but I truly was last night, during a conversation with my 80+-year-old mother-in-law.
During our weekly "card party", my mother-in-law told me that she thought many seniors would be committing suicide because they were so afraid of "losing their Medicare benefits." (She lives in a community of semi-independent senior housing and is quite active within the community.)
I tried to explain that that wouldn't happen, but I don't think she really "heard" me. I need to talk more with her and assure her about this.
This confirmed for me the point that Rachel Maddow had made just the night before --- that the biggest group that has the most fear regarding Obama's healthcare reforms is the seniors.
This is sad and sick to see what the corporations are doing to this fragile, vulnerable group of people just for money.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA0gjyXG5O0&feature=related
The above link is to part three of the interview with Chris Langan. In this part he mentions Utility Maximization and Decision Theory. Although I prefer the Black Swan Theory, it would be helpful to have Thom discus these topics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_theory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ak5Lr3qkW0
The above link is to an interview with Chris Langan.It's broken up into 3 - 10 minute parts. He is the smartest man in the world. His IQ is between 190-210. He is the man whom Malcome Gladwell references in his book The Outliers. It's fascinating to hear the smartest man in the world talk about how everything in the universe is connected and absolute truth.
It's Facinating, and I would love to hear Thom interview him!
There is a very good reason why Dan Gainor would prefer that a right-wing nutjob with a mind to “take-out” the president would see him first to stop him: It is because he knows that if someone did do violence to Obama, this would constitute proof of the violent nature of the right’s propaganda machine—and this would incontrovertibly discredit the right for years to come.
Continuing this line of discussion, I found a small thome in a book store written by someone named David Bankier, concerning German public opinion and the Final Solution. In Germany, some people did seem concerned about such “silly” regulations as Jews being forced to wear a Star of David; but when confronted with the less trivial injustices, such as destruction or expropriation of Jewish property, and reports of mass killings told by soldiers in letters or on furlough, or disseminated by Allied broadcasts and leaflets, Germans in the main were either indifferent, in denial or attempted to rationalize away feelings of guilt or remorse. “Sympathy” for the plight of Jews was uncommon, and any anger over what was happening to Jews was usually over inconveniences in daily life—for Germans. As the end the Third Reich approached, most Germans were more concerned with questions of “What will they do to us now?” than “How could we have allowed this to happen?”
But this perplexing way that moral issues are weighted isn’t just a German issue. Americans astonished the world by becoming unglued over Monicagate in the 1990s. Although moral and ethical questions were present, most Americans who fed off the Clinton-hate machine seemed more concerned with the prurient aspects of the case. Bill Clinton was impeached for what was a transgression of personal morality. Yet the enormity of the Bush administration’s crimes against the entire country, from the formulation of energy policy in secret that preceded the Enron scandal, the falsified “evidence” that led to an illegal war that has cost over 4,000 American lives, the gutting of privacy rights, the use of torture, the firing of federal prosecutors for purely political reasons etc., etc., etc., this has been sufficient to raise indignation in liberal quarters, but little elsewhere.
Thus no one should underestimate the power of seemingly obtuse intrusions into the public discourse—such as racial politics –“explaining” a country’s “ills.” When SD reports suggested a negative public reaction to certain policies or events, or when German fortunes in war took a decided downturn, the Nazi propaganda machine turned-up the anti-Jewish rhetoric, blaming the Jews for everything. In this country, brown-skinned undocumented workers—and by extension, anyone who “looks” like “them”—are often blamed for “everything,” not just from the right but from elements of the “populist” left. Of course, President Obama has been recently added to the list of “unreal” Americans to be blamed for “everything.”
In Germany, there reached a point where the brutalizing nature of the Nazi’s anti-Jewish propaganda reached a saturation point, and people began listening to it less and less. Anti-Jewish sentiment remained unchanged (thus the re-emergence of virulent anti-Semitism in Europe today should come as no surprise), but with soldiers dying in droves on the Eastern front, armies retreating, cities bombed, nightly blackouts, rationing—Germans (outside the anti-Semitic fanatics), became less and less convinced that the Jews were to blame for “everything.” After all, there were no Jews left in Germany. Perhaps this country has to “eliminate” brown-skinned people--perhaps not to send them all "home" with a bullet in their heads (as heard at one of these townhall meetings), but either symbolically by denying that they have any rights a “real” American is bound to respect (which one may argue is happening now, since they only enter the public consciousness via reports that excite a negative response) or driving them out of the country (in the 1930s, 60 percent of the 500,000 “Mexicans” repatriated to Mexico were U.S. citizens)—in order to reach a similar point of saturation.
rerewrite? 'typing too fast again...
B Roll, mstaggerlee, and Loretta,
Thanks so much for your encouraging posts. I really appreciate it!
Loretta,
I went through the some similar-sounding door-knocking exercises in a Wellstone Action workshop. I thought it was very helpful.
I forgot to mention that the ultimate goal of HCAN is the eventual adoption of single-payer healthcare. They are trying to reach that goal through achievable steps, which they identify and rerewrite as needed.
B Roll, regarding Mark's second post:
Well, I should just keep trying to remember that I shouldn't make assumptions about people. (Just one of life's lessons that I have to keep learning.)
Quark,
I just saw ur post and I'm about to log off and hit the road. You know I'm a bit of an amateur psychologist and when you disappear from the board after your last post to Mark, I figured that's exactly what happened. I didn't want to ask too soon, but I had a feeling you were upset by that exchange.
Glad you're back and in full force. I do have to admit that it's a little frightening to think of you being even more energized than you already were. Look out corporate America!
By the way, I hope you read Mark's second post on today's blog. It's the one that begins
In Seattle there is a small publication called “Real Change,”
It's Mark at his eloquent best. It seems that there are two Marks One is eloquent and insightful, the other is angry.