Census worker Bill Sparkman found hanged in Kentucky
Despite what Ronald Reagan claimed, the government is not our enemy; it’s us. We elect it. It attempts to provide what we’re looking for. If it doesn’t, we vote the bad guys out and try again. If we don’t do that, it’s our own fault and we get what we get. Eight years of George W. Bush, for example.
Every once in a while I get an email mourning the demise of Common Sense. The latest one purports to be an obituary from the London Times and says, in part:
Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.
Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.
Can I bitch here a minute?
I like the idea of common sense. I even try to use it in my daily life.
But why do the emails along these lines always seem to focus on the stupidity of the overprotective idiots on the left, and never mention the stupidity of the controlling idiots on the right?
The list goes on and on. But it never seems to appear in these recirculating Libertarian moanings.
Seems to me that it’s just common sense: nobody has an exclusive lock on that particular commodity.
Why on earth, you may ask, would anyone in their right mind want healthcare costs to continue to rise? Why would they want over 40 million people to stay uninsured? Why would they think it’s okay for people to lose their life savings because they happened to get sick?
And the answer, ladies and gentlemen, is that those people are making lots and lots and lots of money off the current system.
There are few things more powerful than the status quo. Especially when the campaign to protect it is funded to the tune of $1.4 million every single day.
Latest wave: the coordination and funding of the pseudo-grassroots “movement” to heckle congressmen and senators when they try to hold a discussion, or explain their views, at public events.
With an instruction manual produced by Dick Armey, and funding from the folks who brought you the Swift Boat and the Tea Bag, these thugs are garnering big-time media coverage and creating the impression that “the people” are against healthcare.
That’s simply ridiculous. Obama won partly on his promise to address this issue. So did many of those senators and representatives. Nobody, on the other hand, voted Blue Cross and Blue Shield as our elected officials.
My sense is that this whole fake protest is going to blow up in their faces as the word gets out. And that the people like me, and like a lot of conservative friends as well, are sick to death of being sick to death. We need to fix this system and get some parity with the citizens of the rest of the developed world.
Nobody should go bankrupt because they’re sick. Except, perhaps, the greed-based corporations that leech off their misery.
Within days, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and now Citigroup are revealing not just profits, but profits in the billions of dollars.
I’m glad our business climate isn’t going completely down the tubes, but this seems obscene.
Didn’t we just give them billions of dollars a few months ago? Aren’t people still losing their houses and their jobs, going bankrupt from credit card debt at record rates?
I sure hope the companies are planning to pay us taxpayers back with all that loose change in their pockets. But my guess is they’re using the money to lobby against universal healthcare instead.
Actually, it seems that this big bump is only temporary. Revenue and credit card activity are still way down. But it gives me pause to see those huge numbers when the rest of the world is in so much financial pain.
The video clip below contains a stunning revelation: “the admission by a top health insurance executive that the disinformation and attacks on Michael Moore and the film Sicko were extensive and well-planned. Their job was to stop the movie from reaching a wide audience and, more importantly, from having the widespread political impact the industry feared Sicko would have.
“Wendell Potter, former Head of Corporate Communications at CIGNA (which provides health insurance to nearly 70 percent of the Fortune 100 companies) admits that, in fact, Sicko ‘hit the nail on the head’ and told the real truth about how much better people in other countries have it when it comes to their health care.”
This is appalling, but not surprising. I’m just so happy it’s being reported.
We can’t let the insurance companies decide who gets cared for and who doesn’t. It’s disastrous for our country economically, socially and morally. People should not lose everything just because they become ill.
Yet 46 million Americans face that reality. More, really, because the health insurance we do have is so awful. We can’t let these companies get away with distorting the truth and undermining the will of the voters who gave Obama a mandate to fix health insurance now.
Watch and become outraged.
Posted in politics
Tagged CIGNA, Democrats, healthcare, Michael Moore, Sicko, vdeo, Wendell Potter
It will come as no surprise that I can’t stand hearing Dick Cheney tout the success of his torture policy and the effectiveness of the last administration’s strategy to deal with terrorism. But it’s a lot more surpising to read the words of Colonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson, the Chief of Staff of the Department of State under Colin Powell. A staunch Republican, Wilkerson is pissed off. And he writes about it with passion here.
I’ve included his conclusion below, but, really, you oughta read the article: The Truth About Richard Bruce Cheney.
Less important but still busting my chops as a Republican, is the damage that the Sith Lord Cheney is doing to my political party.
He and Rush Limbaugh seem to be its leaders now. Lindsay Graham, John McCain, John Boehner, and all other Republicans of note seem to be either so enamored of Cheney-Limbaugh (or fearful of them?) or, on the other hand, so appalled by them, that the cat has their tongues. And meanwhile fewer Americans identify as Republicans than at any time since WWII. We’re at 21% and falling–right in line with the number of cranks, reprobates, and loonies in the country.
When will we hear from those in my party who give a damn about their country and about the party of Lincoln?
When will someone of stature tell Dick Cheney that enough is enough? Go home. Spend your 70 million. Luxuriate in your Eastern Shore mansion. Shoot quail with your friends–and your friends.
Stay out of our way as we try to repair the extensive damage you’ve done–to the country and to its Republican Party.
The other day I was listening to a podcast of Bill Maher’s interview with Gore Vidal. They were talking about William F. Buckley, which led to a discussion of conservatives (Vidal claims he’s the true conservative) and of the GOP in general.
Vidal made the point that the Republican party is the party of anger. I never thought about it that way. After all, they’re always claiming that we’re members of the Angry Left — shrill and cornered, with our claws unsheathed.
Yet they are the ones who are constantly pissed off, and their anger seems to drive every decision and every policy.
The list could go on and on. But there rarely seems to be a constructive side to it — just fear, fury and rejection.
Personally, I’m proud to be on the side of “let’s stay calm”, “let’s work it out”, “let’s help our fellow citizens”, “let’s not take away people’s rights”, “let’s stop global warming” and “let’s do whatever it takes to revive the economy”.
And I’m angry as hell that anyone would dare to disagree with me. 
