Here is a suggestion for what to say when callers like "Bob" insist that a public option will put private companies out of business. Forget about pointing out that their argument is illogical. Instead, just say, "Oh, sure, just like the Post Office put UPS and Fedex out of business. Just like public schools put private schools out of business. Just like police departments put private security firms out of business." I'd like to hear what their response is to that.

With health care I do not want competition; I want competence and care when needed. An HMO is not competent to decide what care is needed. That is a matter between the patient and the doctor.
To consider health care as a business is another circumstance in which humans are treated as objects of profit just as they are considered expendable in their jobs.
I am fortunate to benefit from health care in France where I reside. I choose my doctor and received excellent care after heart surgery ten years ago, two weeks in the hospital and a month in a specialized center for recovery , exercise, pool, dieticien and medical care.
This care is not free. We pay for it out of salaries and retirement benefits and the employer pays his share into the Medical fund that insures everyone.
We are not furniture, we are human beings and we deserve human care.

We not only are working on Democratic (?) Senator Nelson for health care but we visited Senator Mike Johanns office in Kearney, NE yesterday. Don't know how much good we did, but we tried.

Who is standing between me and my doctor?? I don't have a doctor, because I've never had health insurance. So I guess the Republicans (and a few Demorats) are the ones standing in the way.

No one believes that gov can do a better job- then why are the insurance companies so freaked out about a public option?

Bottom line, in the private industry, there is an incentive to keep people ill so as to keep charging them for treatments and pills etc.

Mark,

I have heard similar stories from my son. When he was in high school, he was running with the "wrong crowd." (He was depressed, having trouble with school, I was away for months or weeks at a time because of regular critical episodes in my mother's terminal disease, and my husband worked long hours and just didn't see our son's need for help.) Apparently, frequent run-ins with cops and my son and the people he hung out with sensitized my son so that he was immediately aware of any cops in the area. He was wary of them, which, I imagine, made them even more aware and suspiscious of him. (That is, if you LOOK guilty, you must BE guilty, in the cops' way of thinking.) So, he suffered harrassment, as a result. On one occasion, he was arrested, threatened, and physically roughed up at the police station. (He is white and looks Scandinavian or northern European.) I thank God that he made a life-changing decision and is on a different path today.

Mark, the WA cops you describe sound monstrous. Is there anywhere you can go to address this problem? Is there an ACLU group there that could help or advise you? My first inclination is to contact people on the city council or the state representative for your area. Of course you are angry and suspicious --- I would be, too. (I have struggled with authority figures since my abuse as a child.)

Maybe you aren't asking for suggestions. I wish I could help, though. I'm so sorry for all you have endured.

btw, your narratives are so moving and articulate, you seem to have a gift as a writer. Any possibility of doing some writing for your local paper, especially on these issues?

Dignity as a human being seems so little to ask. It's hard to get from those who have none themselves.

Here is my latest dispatch from war zone where the ongoing struggle for human dignity continues. One of the least respected rights of a civilian, especially if he is a minority, by police is protection from arbitrary harassment, especially if motivated by race or appearance. Take for instance reading a book while sitting on a park bench on a sunny afternoon. A cop on a fishing expedition comes up to you and asks you what you are doing. Doesn’t this cop have eyes, or have advanced past the fourth grade, or the playground bully stage? Isn’t being a cop an occupation that requires an IQ somewhere in the “normal” range? You say “What does it look like I’m doing?” The cop responds by saying “Oh, oh, an attitude.” Having an “attitude” is all the excuse a cop needs to abuse you.

One of most routinely ignored rights a citizen has from police abuse is not being stopped and/or required to produce your identification for any arbitrary reason, including race or appearance. That is until the Hebiil case in which the fascist five on the Supreme Court once again trampled on a person’s Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. Police are now allowed to stop anyone or demand ID on mere “reasonable suspicion.” What does “reasonable suspicion” mean? I know what “reasonable suspicion” means to bigoted whites, and by extension their police. Skin color or “ethnicity,” walking alone, speaking a different language, reading a book—these are all sufficient “reasons” for “suspicion.” When a Port of Seattle cop singled me out of scores of others waiting at a bus stop and demanded that I show him “where my name was” on my laptop, it was clear that there is not a low standard for “reasonable suspicion” or even “probable cause”—there is no standard at all that applies to police.

Last week, the power adapter on my over-priced Sony laptop suddenly decided it didn’t want to work anymore, and instead of shelling-out $150 for a new one I went to the nearest used PC parts and repair shop, this one located in Tukwilla, WA. The proprietor had only one that would work for the Sony brand, a very old and very bulky adaptor which he would sell to me for $50. If it worked I was fine with that, but I wasn’t expecting to pay that much and didn’t have the money on me, so I left to go the bank a couple blocks away. I withdrew some money from an ATM, and walked back toward the shop. I stopped at a cross walk to go the side of the street the shop was on. That’s when the “trouble” started.

While I was waiting for the walk sign, a Tukwilla police car was crawling toward me; the officer inside was staring at me, obviously hoping I would make some furtive movement that would give him an excuse to “rough” me-up. It was so obvious a ploy but also quite maddening; when he drove past me he turned his head and kept his eyes trained on me; in response I shook my head. This caused him to laugh and grab his radio mike; he spoke to someone briefly, then made a u-turn. Before I could cross the street he parked the car on the side of the street near to me and told me to stay put. I asked him what he wanted; he asked me what I wanted, that I had gestured to him that I wanted to talk to him. Quite perturbed by this falsehood I told him I didn’t want anything. He then proceeded to tell three more rather bizarre fabrications, even for a policeman:

I had stopped him in order to inform him of the location of stolen goods.
That it had just been reported that someone who “looked” like me was a suspect for something he didn’t explain. In frustration I informed of what I had been doing for the past hour; the fact that the officer didn’t feel justified to repeat his claim spoke for its lack of veracity.

After calling him on these falsehoods, He wanted to see ID; I have often wondered what would happened if I refused to do this, but now wasn’t the time and I had things to before I went to jail on principle. A dispatcher informed him in one of those code numbers that they had nothing on me. Still insisting on acting the clever/stupid cop, he asked me about the robbery I wanted to “report.” This really upset me, and I amused several bystanders while gesturing with my arms and telling the cop to “stop lying.” The cop informed the dispatcher that he was letting me go, and that I was, well, angry.

Of course, there was a fourth lie, which was the fact that looking like a “Mexican” had nothing to do with his initial interest in me. Anyways, while I proceeded on my way to the shop, I noticed this officer and another pulled into a parking lot further down the road. As I was walking by, the cop rolled down his window and asked me if I hadn’t just told him I was going to the bank. I informed him I had just been to the bank (as I had told him before), pointing in the direction I had just come from. I informed him that I thought his behavior was “sick.”

Enough my ongoing struggles for dignity. A few months ago a jury found a Kent cop and the city not liable for violating the civil rights of man who had been wounded during a shooting spree by a Kent cop who claimed his life had been in danger. The man was a passenger in a car that unbeknownst to him was stolen; video showed that the cop’s life was in no way “imperiled” when he fired the shots that wounded this victim. Of course, we may ask when it became customary for police to shoot people in moving cars rather than trying to disable the vehicle (like blowing out tires), especially when a head shot is what they are aiming for. Now there are reports that one juror, the wife of a police officer, bullied the other jurors with the usual police paranoia and alibis. Even the trial judge reportedly disagrees with the original verdict, and there may be a retrial.

As an aside, it is interesting to note that the victim only had civil rights to defend because he was alive. If he was dead, he would have no need for civil rights.

Still, I give the Kent police a slight edge over the Tukwilla police for level of thuggery; the Kent police are, after all, more “proficient” with lethal force, the victim just spoken of notwithstanding. Of course, speaking out like this only invites more abuse than I’ve already received. But like I told one of those bystanders who was laughing, I am not afraid of cops. Why should a law-abiding citizen be afraid of cops? Or should they be?

On DRUGGING CHILDREN:

Wouldn't it be better to find out what is wrong? Could it be that these children are the canaries in the mine of the Education System, telling us that our teaching techniques and environment are NOT working, have become TOO regimented, crowded, uncreative, or one-dimensional (brain-centered memorization, lacking in physical integration, mind-body skill development), Is the problem the intolerant adults, who now require exact obedience and machine-like precision and timing and cannot accept the diversity of personal uniqueness in the approach to an individual's brain development?

If a child differs from an adult because the child's brain in not yet mature, how does drugging a child affect real brain development?

Why are these behavioral problems happening now when they did not happen in the past? Is something CAUSING this? Is it the television flicker pattern, or the presence of microwaves or radiowaves in the atmosphere now or while developing in the womb, changing brain chemistry? Is it the pregnant mother's diet or child's diet?

There's got to be a cause if this problem never existed before.

But it doesn't seem like these drugs are a solution, only the usual "treat the symptoms" approach. That is not fair to these children OR the next generations of children either. They deserve BETTER. They deserve to get the CAUSE addressed so real healing (or even acceptance of human uniqueness) can take place. In the meantime, the Pharmaceutical Industry continues to rake in the big bucks!

And really -- what is cheaper??? Improving the situation through decent research into the cause? Adopting smaller class sizes? Or paying Big Pharma obscene profits for the lifetime of every child???

Phone Sex for Plants

OK… I’ll admit that my first response was to be skeptical about this story. It seemed like one of these “crackpot” science stories (my point of view) that Thom is constantly drawn to. So I Googled – women talking to plants. What did I find?

I found http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/5602419/Womens-voices-make-pl... an article in the from the online version of the Telegraph in the UK

My reading of the article convinced me that my original opinion was pretty much right on. The study the article talks about was very loose science.

First of all, the scope of the “experiment” was very small. It only involved 10 plants and 10 people who “talked” to the plants. At best that would be a preliminary test and not conclusive. The time covered by the experiment was fairly short, only one month.

I don’t recall if Thom mentioned this, but the people didn’t actually speak to the plants. They recorded “excerpts from John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night Dream and Darwin's On the Origin of Species” and the recordings were played for the plants through headsets attached to the pots the plants were in.

Is that what you thought the experiment was like when Thom reported the story?

It’s disturbing that people get excited about stories before they really look into them.

Well, I'm gonna go outside now and yell at the tangerine tree. I blame her for everything and she seems to like it. Looks like a bumper crop this year.

Is there anything to this article?

CIA has Distributed 400 Million Dollars Inside Iran to Evoke a Revolution
Former Pakistani Army General Mirza Aslam Beig claims the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has distributed 400 million dollars inside Iran to evoke a revolution.

In a phone interview with the Pashto Radio on Monday, General Beig said that there is undisputed intelligence proving the US interference in Iran.

“The documents prove that the CIA spent 400 million dollars inside Iran to prop up a colorful-hollow revolution following the election,” he added.

http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/cia-has-distributed-400-million...

ADHD . . . & MGM (Mentally Gifted Morons . . . Sorry . . . Minors)

The worse part is having kids in this situation with Mensa level IQs. In the 60s & 70s, most of us survived by hiding or hyper-excelling or finding a avocation/subject we could immerse ourselves in. Kids don’t have that option anymore. Teaching the ‘three R’s to beat a test is farging kids up like crazy.