I have a simple question. When I am sick, I am a consumer. When I go to the Doctor he becomes a provider. The Doctor admits me to the hospital and the hospital becomes the provider. What vital role then does the Insurance Company play in this scenario? What value does the insurance company add to my wellness? Nothing that a single payer system couldn't provide as well or better.

AZAFVET,

I thought I heard Thom say the other day that Harry Reid said he doesn't like confrontation. (!)

When I heard a clip of Obama's NAACP address on the radio, I wondered if I was listening to Al Gore.

I think people tend to speak differently when speaking to different groups. We tend to notice it when they speak to blacks. I wonder if that's because we think of the whites and the way we speak to whites as the norm.

Randi Rhodes was very upset with Oprah (who she practically worships) when she heard her speaking at an Obama campaign event, because she was "talking black" (I don't know if Randi used that phrase, but that was her meaning).

Randi felt that Oprah was putting on a false front. I remember she said that Oprah is all about being authentic and she wasn't being the authentic Oprah at that campaign rally. Randi insisted that the authentic Oprah speaks like a news anchor and that she knows that because she's how Oprah talks at her own home. It didn't occur to Randi that she saw Oprah at her own home ON TV.

Numerous black callers tried to explain to Randi that blacks have to "talk white" for employment and other purposes, but speak differently among themselves. Randi, who imagines herself to have a closeness and understanding of blacks that she grossly overestimates, couldn't accept that concept and told her callers that they were pathetic if they weren't themselves all the time. It got to the point that the callers basically started implying or saying outright that her inability to understand their situation was because she is white. Coming back from a break, Randi said that she was so hurt by those comments that she cried on the break. I agreed with the callers.

The fact is that most white people (including "progressive" talk show hosts) have very little understanding of black people, the black experience and black culture.

Here's the first stanza from a "A Death Song", a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar an African-American poet who writes in both standard English and black vernacular. The whole poem can be found at

http://www.dunbarsite.org/gallery/ADeathSong.asp

I hope this site maintains the formatting.

Lay me down beneaf de willers in de grass,
Whah de branch 'll go a-singin' as it pass.
An' w'en I's a-layin' low,
I kin hyeah it as it go
Singin', "Sleep, my honey, tek yo' res' at las'."

Regarding the announcement by Blue-Cross Democrat Harry Reid regarding the delay in a vote on a health care bill until after the August recess, Thom said "I think that we'd be better off pushing something through NOW, that we can fix later."

I'm not sure that I agree. The Law of Unintended Consequences would indicate that pushing through a bill that's known to be flawed would be quite likely to cause a fair amount of harm before it could be "fixed".

B Roll ,
Re: your post:

Quark,

I saw that article about the “human glow” and thought.. Thom is going to think it’s proof of auras and claims by some people that they can see them.

B Roll,

I almost added the note "These are not auras" but thought, "Nahhh..."

Thom,

Here’s what Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) had to say on Democracy Now this morning about Obama saying that his administration releasing the information about who has visited the White House in regards to health care reform.

I usually don’t make long posts quoting others. I usually reserve my long posts for my own nonsense. But I’m making an exception here. The segment can be found at

http://www.thomhartmann.com/2009/07/20/thursday-july-23-2009/comment-pag...

MELANIE SLOAN: Well, we had sent a Freedom of Information Act request in June, asking for information about eighteen executives’ visits to the White House. The White House had declined to respond to that Freedom of Information Act request, or FOIA. So we, yesterday, sued them, and we, in fact, filed for a preliminary injunction, asking a judge to order that the White House deliver that information to us quite promptly. Then, late last night, right before the President’s news conference, the President—the White House released a letter naming some of the executives in our letter and listing when they had in fact visited the White House.

and

MELANIE SLOAN: Well, this, in fact, is not a response to our request, in our mind. This is a two-page letter that the White House sent over last night. But in fact what we asked for are the records, the records that the Secret Service maintains regarding these visits. This is—this information is not nearly complete. We’re allowed to see the records themselves, which will also indicate who from the White House requested that the person—that the visitor be admitted, perhaps who they were meeting with, and sometimes even the purpose of the meeting. So there’s a great deal more information that can be gleaned from the records themselves. Also, we don’t actually know if this is a complete search or not. The White House’s letter doesn’t indicate that this is complete in any way.

Finally, the White House says that this is a—they’ve released this as a matter of discretion. Well, in fact, several courts have already held—judges have held in three cases that these records are subject to the Freedom of Information Act request, and they are not just a matter of the President’s discretion to release them. They have to be required—by law they’re required to release them.

and

MELANIE SLOAN: Well, the way that you request visitor records is you have to have the names of people. You can’t just say, did a particular—“Did Citizens United come? Did SEIU come?” You need to have the name of the person you want them to seek for. So we picked a list of eighteen industry executives, trying to take from a variety of different places in the healthcare system, and this is what we got. Somebody else could of course submit a Freedom of Information Act request asking specifically, you know, how many times has Andy Stern, the president of SEIU, been to the White House, and other people like that.

and about the Secret Service records on visitors to Cheney

MELANIE SLOAN: Yes. This is a case that’s been going through the courts for quite some time. We had asked for it under the Bush administration. And then, when the administration changed, we thought perhaps the new Justice Department would give over the notes of the interview, the transcript of the interview. But, in fact, the Justice Department lawyer said in front of Judge Emmet Sullivan, “Well, just because the administration changes doesn’t mean the Department of Justice’s position changes.”

And then they tried to argue for a Daily Show exception, saying if you’re going to give over information that’s going to be used to embarrass politicians on The Daily Show, that shouldn’t be handed over.

In addition, Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, has argued in a declaration that the Cheney interview shouldn’t be handed over, because handing that over will provide a chilling effect, meaning that future top White House officials won’t cooperate with criminal investigations if they can’t be guaranteed confidentiality, which you have to think is a pretty outrageous statement, that the top law enforcement officials in the country would not abide by and cooperate with a criminal investigation. Because they might be embarrassed?

and

MELANIE SLOAN: You know, the White House is refusing to provide any kind of Secret Service visitor record. So, they say that they’re reconsidering their policy now, and perhaps they are. We won’t be satisfied if the White House takes the position that they’ll just release these records on a discretionary basis, because that means some days they can release them, and some days they can not. So anytime they think it would be embarrassing to admit that a certain person visited the White House, they won’t tell us.

The fact of the matter is, there’s a law called the Freedom of Information Act that entitles citizens to know what our government is up to, and that includes knowing who’s visiting the White House and who’s influencing the administration when they’re making decisions that affect all Americans.

It looks as if this year’s budget battle in California managed to damage the unions and broach oil drilling in pristine waters. Schwarzenegger’s Propositions two years ago weren’t needed after all . . .

"The man who dies rich dies disgraced" - Andrew Carnegie

Carnegie was responsible for building 2500 libraries and most still exist today.
He understood the responsibility that we have to those that have helped us succeed in life.

"Carnegie believed in giving to the "industrious and ambitious; not those who need everything done for them, but those who, being most anxious and able to help themselves, deserve and will be benefited by help from others.""--Wiki

Andrew Carnegie, "The Best Fields for Philanthropy," The North American Review, Volume 149, Issue 397, December, 1889

In response to your guest who thinks privatization is the answer because government can't do anything right.

HOOSIERS DISCOVER THE COST OF PRIVATIZATION

It was a proud day for the governor. In December 2006, he stepped to the lectern, full of confidence: "No decision we've made," he told the assembled media, "is more clearly in the public interest."

Gosh, if that was his best decision, I'd hate to see one of his bad ones.

He's Mitch Danials, governor of Indiana and an ideological absolutist on the virtues of privatizing government, and he was announcing his hallmark plan to outsource that state's administration of food stamps, Medicaid, and other welfare benefits for poor folks. No need for all those government case workers, Daniels declared, because the needs of welfare recipients can be better met the corporate way – with efficient computers and call centers.

IBM was given a $1.1-billion contract from the state to take charge. Taxpayers, boasted the governor, will reap "a billion dollars in savings," while low-income families will enjoy the stellar service of the private sector.

Serving a public need, however, is not as easy as designing computer software. More than two years into the task, IBM's stumbles and fumbles include lost paperwork, frustrating runarounds, poorly-trained staff, inadequate equipment, and rejection of qualified applicants. The rate of mishandled food-stamp cases, for example, has more than tripled since IBM took over.

To try to fix this mess, the state has now issued a list of 200 reforms that IBM must achieve, giving it until September to shape up. The changes include hiring additional staff and managers, which will eliminate much of the highly-touted "savings" that privatization was to bring. A state official says bluntly: "It's possible we'd have to cancel the contract."

The so-called "efficiencies" of privatization are actually only achieved by shortchanging service and eliminating the personal touch – and that's no way to run a public program.

http://www.jimhightower.com

It seems to me that when any organization gets too big, either government or corporations, then quality & service suffers.

Our representatives need to be pressured to start representing all of their citizens, not just the corporate interests and those who run the corporations.

You would think based on recent history that the fallacy of the old adage "What's good for G.M. is good for America" should reflect on their justification that doing favors for corporate sponsors benefits us all.

ZIONISM = RACISM
ZIONISM = FASCISM
ZIONISM = TOTALITARIANISM

AND THOM'S ALLEGIANCE TO THE PALESTINIAN EXTERMINATION? WELL....THAT'S AN UNHINGED ALLEGIANCE TO SADISTIC MANIACAL GENOCIDAL WHITE SUPREMACY THAT HASN'T BEEN SEEN SINCE HITLER.

HERE'S SOME MORE OF ISRAEL'S ORWELLIAN HISTORICAL REVISIONISM THAT THOM (AND ANY OF HIS BOOK BUYING LISTENERS) SUPPORTS

JERUSALEM — The Israeli government will remove references to what Palestinians call the "catastrophe" of Israel's creation from textbooks for Arab schoolchildren, the education minister said Wednesday.

The reference to "al-naqba," the Arabic word catastrophe, as Palestinians call their defeat and exile in the war over Israel's 1948 creation, was inserted by a dovish Israeli education minister in 2007.

The phrase remains contentious six decades later, a symptom of the continuing divisions in Israel. Many Israeli Arabs identify politically with their Palestinian counterparts in the West Bank and Gaza. As a result, some Israeli Jews accuse Israeli Arabs of disloyalty to the country.

Israel's current government, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu and his hard-line Likud Party, includes members who favor cracking down on Israeli Arabs by ordering loyalty oaths or even moving them out of Israel.

"No other country in the world, in its official curriculum, would treat the fact of its founding as a catastrophe," Education Minister Gideon Saar of Likud told Israel's parliament on Wednesday.

Israeli Arab lawmaker Hana Sweid accused the government of "naqba denial."

"It's a major attack on the identity of the Palestinian Arab citizens of the state of Israel, on their memories and their adherence to their identity," he told the Associated Press.

Teachers will be free to discuss the personal and national tragedies that befell Palestinians during the war, Saar said, but textbooks will be revised to remove the term, he added.