The Republican Takeover and Repealing Health Care Reform

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n the day that Republican Leadership in DC renounces their own lavish health insurance benefit program is the very day I will be happy to listen to legitimate arguments about why it's necessary to repeal the lame, watered-down, verging on piss-poor, lobbyist dictated program afforded to the people of America, which, by the way, contain less than half the benefits of people throughout the rest of the world.  Not to mention the fact that, more than 70% percent of Americans, left and right, are strongly against any tampering with the health care reform bill as it is.  Hey, the bill Congress finally did pass at least leaves the insurance companies still standing.  That is a lot more than I would have done were I to rule the world for even half an hour.

It is simply immoral and unethical to rip big profits off of anybodies' health.  Yeah, that's right, to reap obscene profit and bonuses from health care for the working class is just that---an obscenity!  Not only do Americans, in general, oppose this proposed repeal but so do more than 90% of the medical community.

Here is where the Republicans have got it all wrong:  3% of Americans say that the deficit should be paid for by eliminating Social Security.  4% percent say Medicare is the problem.  But 61% of Americans say we must raise the taxes on the rich.  That's an awfully big gap, there.  And just why is it that the Repukes insist on this extension of the tax cut for the richest Americans anyway? We know that they are little more than lackeys for rich corporations.  But most of the rich are fair minded people who say they would not mind paying more in taxes. Something does not add up!

We have seen too much damage to America brought about entirely by health insurance companies trading on Wall Street promising to pump out profits for investors.  Capitalism is antithetical to Christianity.  For all practical purposes, the GOP is the party, not merely of NO, but the party of the true Anti-Christ!    

Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand and all the lobbyists on K Street, can suck my cock!

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Common Good

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he phrase, the common good, is everywhere these days.  My wife brought home a container of eggnog and on the side, in the self-promotion copy, there it is:  even the dairy farmers are using ringing phrases such as The Common Good. The commercial use of the phrase took me aback. True the dairy farm is an organic farm.  The use of the word Organic is certainly code for liberalism.  A liberal farmer is almost a contradiction of terms.  The usual farmer is one who feels that paying taxes is a form of socialism or communism, and those who believe in that stuff are thieves who are trying to pilfer money from the farmers pocket.

But now, this commercial use of the phrase opens the door for corporations to use the phrase which we have taken as our shibboleth for liberalism.  But if John Boehner can claim that he speaks on behalf of the American people, and it is a stretch to think that this might have even a grain of truth, I worry that banks can claim that they too, are working for the Common Good, even though it is all too apparent that the banksters are working for their own individual self-interest and to that end feel entirely free to be the ones who are actually lifting the farmer's wallet.  Come to think of it, Fox News has made such an issue of this Common Good thing that no right winger would ever use it for any reason.

If you think that my statement about the thievery of banks is too un-generous, consider that the farmers of North Dakota formed their own state bank.  Why?  Because the banks were too aggressively giving the farmers a raw deal over too long a time. Check it out.  Banks will steal anything not nailed down.      

I first came to be introduced to the phrase one night at dinner at a restaurant, on a recent visit  to Rome, Italy with 2 Jesuits.  Quite liberal Jesuits, at that.  Obama had just been elected.  Europeans were giving us, my wife, Marian and me, thumbs up, because they loved the idea of Obama as president. We all were euphoric.   My brother, Jim, the other Jesuit, got us settled in our rooms in the 17th Century pallazzo Papal owned Jesuit residence.  Then he and his fellow, Jesuit, David, took us out for dinner at one of those sublime little bistros just around the corner, in Rome.  In the course of conversation it became apparent that in America, as well as the rest of the world, Capitalism has failed us miserably.  These are the death throes of a corrupt crony capitalism.  And the reason, it also became all too crystal clear,  was, or is greed, or overweening self interest.  "Where's mine?" and "what will happen to me?" are the whimper and whine of the self-absorbed.  
As the light dawned on me that the paradigm was worn out and a new paradigm is needed, I groped for a word or phrase.  David, the Jesuit from Scotland, handed the phrase to me.

"The Common Good," David said, "is what you are looking for." He said it simply and quietly. But as I was ready to hear it, perhaps for the first time, he might as well have been shouting it from the roof top.  The Common Good thundered into my ear.  And has never left.      

But now, that it is being bandied about in the interests of commerce, what is to stop the evil corporations, indeed, all of Wall Street, from using the phrase.  To draw the unsuspecting in.  The old fable of the wolf in sheep's clothing.  They lie about everything else, so why would they not lie about the use of this phrase.

We will have to, at some point define the term--- narrowly.  To please the critics.  Though clearly many Republicans dislike the phrase.  There is a video on YouTube where the Republicans on Fox News immediately yell "Socialism!" at the mention of The Common Good!  But, on the other hand, let them yell their loudest.  I am a socialist.  A Democratic Socialist.  People without morals, without ethics, who are utterly devoid of real humanity are not worth listening to.  Indeed they only listen to each other.  Truth is that which is so.  That which is not truth is not so.  So---Who would not say these beings are self-destroying ciphers and liars?  They not only are against the common good, but they are against everything that is decent and wholesome.  Like the Bush regime, they will lie, steal and murder anyone who should be so unlucky as to get in their way.  Is this not the way of the Anti-Christ?

At the very least, are they not The Hollow Men T.S. Elliot warned us about?

I am sorry to have to say this,  but the truth is I put these videos on the page in precisely the reverse order.  So if you watch the last one first and the fist one last they will make more sense.♦

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Lewis Black on Glenn Beck's Nazi Tourettes

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henever Lewis Black gets angry, I seem to lose control and slip to the floor; rolling back and forth, laughing hysterically.  Black consistently delivers one of the very funniest, and most explosive, monologues to be found. He is one of life's most frustrated critics.  In this video he takes on the foibles of Glenn Beck, and points out how frequently and with what ease Beck kicks over the traces of logic in his zest to Nazi-fy anybody he doesn't like; and perhaps, anybody who is standing around, nearby.  The Beckster hates Obama--- so he finds a similarity to Hitler; and bingo, Obama is Hitler.  Beck doesn't care how far he has to reach, nor how tortured the logic, if he doesn't like you you're a Nazi.  You have a mustache; Hitler had a mustache; therefore, you are Hitler.  Personally, I would say, "Hey, Glenn, say whatever you wish to say in the privacy of your own watercloset in front of your own mirror.  But when you broadcast such garbage to the nation on a channel which insists that it is a news channel, well, you're asking for it."

And when you write and publish a book,  the cover plastered with a ludicrous photograph of yourself in pseudo Nazi-drag, and all you are missing is the riding crop and the monocle, you're asking for all sorts of commentary, none of it positive.  Jon Stewart's on-air deconstructions of the Beck broadcasts, are very funny, too.  As well as spot on.  Breathtakingly so.  The thing is, that Beck, himself, is so over the top with his political madness, that it is hard for comedians to match him for the lurid, not lucid, yet madly comic take on Glenn Beck's twisted version of reality.  I once watched Beck being interviewed by Bill O'Reilley.  It was an astounding revelation to observe how sane O'Reilley looked next to poor old crazy Beck.

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  Jon Stewart Exposes Glenn Beck as a Puppet of George Soros Part !

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Health Care Reform Repeal?

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s it turns out, the Health Care Insurance plan signed into being by then-Republican Governor Mitt Romney, is a winner.  More than 98% of the Massachusetts population is now insured.  That's a very impressive number however you cut it.  And the percentage of children now fully covered is even higher.

Without raising taxes.

So why is it that Congress gave us a lame, corrupt version of a health care reform package which was, in fact, written by the insurance lobbyists?  What a question!  How ungrateful.

Let us begin our inquiry by giving the loudest and ugliest raspberry imaginable, to the Republican Party for their unerring sense of how to fuck-over the American people.  The GOP's hysteria that "Obama Care", as the conservative word-smiths insultingly named it and framed it, (so why haven't the Democrats come up with a way to frame it so it can't be used as a weapon?) would turn our Democracy into a monument to Karl Marx, is totally unfounded.  We knew the GOP leadership were scum buckets, liars and crooks, but we didn't know just how evil they really are. The only real wonder is that so many Americans have bought into Republican lies.  Republicans are nothing more than goons for money.  They offer Americans nothing but another rip-off on behalf of their corporate bosses.  And screw the voters who put them in power.  And isn't it a scream how very many working people seem to love a well-placed kick in the head?

Just to summarize for anyone who might have missed the festivities last spring and summer, Republicans hated everything about the reform bill. They took a good idea and spun it into a socialistic nightmare. The question is what kind of human being would do this?

Let's see:  it was a way to make Obama look bad.  And their number one priority is to make Obama look like the worst loser of the world.  Otherwise they can kiss the White House goodbye forever. If they allow the Dems to do a single thing to help America the GOP loses big time.

On the score of making President Obama look bad, they have won that game; with a little extra help from Obama, himself.

As things stand now, the Republican Party, the party of total corruption, has a very good chance of winning the White House in 2012.  And once they win, we can kiss any Health Care Reform, corrupt or not,  goodbye.♦

 

Daily Dropcap (Jessica Hische) / CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

             

On Nazi Israel

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ho does not remember how Vanessa Redgrave stood before the Academy Awards audience and angrily denounced the Zionists as thugs?  For that she was loudly booed.  Things have changed these days.  The world is on to the criminal Zionists.  And yet it is with faint voices that we speak out against Israeli monsters.  I have spoken out condemning Zionism.  I will continue to speak out against the gross criminality of Israeli aggression.  Their crimes are ignored and whitewashed by the American State Department and President Obama's foreign policies which do favor Israel and victimize Palestinians.  And here in the USA there is scarce mention of the inhumanity of the Zionist State toward Palestinians.  Even if there were a solid array of historical evidence which proved, unequivocally, that the land truly belongs to the Jews, and that the Palestinians' claims on the land were unsubstantial; even if that were true, and it is not,  Israel would still be guilty of Crimes against Humanity, policies of aggression and unprovoked, first strike maneuvers against the Palestinians.

For so many decades the world has allowed such atrocities to slide by.  Hey! Nobody wanted to be labeled an anti-semite!  I mean, how can you argue with the idea that God, himself, prefers Jews to all others.  The People of the Book are the Chosen of The Lord.  Right?

Well, hold on there.  Not so fast.  Let us look at some of these things.  Like the Old Testament.  Where the stories of Moses come from.  Well, new archeological evidence points to some disputes which say that many of the Biblical personnages, such as Moses, and Joseph, were in fact, Egyptian Pharaohs, whose very names are cognates of the Biblical characters. You can check this out yourself, but it's beyond the scope of this post go into it.   Also, in the case of Moses story of his birth and discovery by a princess of Egypt, the baby in a basket floating in the bullrushes and then brought up like a royal.  It turns out that is a story which actually belongs to an earlier Babylonian king by the name of Sargon.  The Jews served as slaves in Babylon until their release and then once in the wilderness they kept Sargon's story but applied it to their own hero, Moses.  Moshei!  

So a lot of fudging has been done to embellish those Hebraic stories.  And even the Ark of the Covenant may be yet another fiction elided or conflated from an earlier culture.  The Ark, after all, was kept in the Temple of Solomon.  The Temple of Solomon was burned to the ground by the Romans.  The legend of the Knights Templar is that they discovered the remains of the Temple and somehow recovered the Ark.  But that is the stuff of Hollywood.  So?

Who knows?

So that any claims made cannot be made as if  Biblical stories are factual.

Now, it's the Israelis themselves who are more anti-semitic in their actions than anyone.

What is happening, then, is the end of Jewery, itself.  If you constantly abide outside of the code of Judaism, then how can you claim to be what you are not?  Survivors of the most hideous concentration camps have the stamp of authenticity about them. If you survived Auschwitz, you are a Jew and nobody can say different. And your critique counts far more than those who, by virtue of the time and place of their birth, escaped the unspeakable suffering of the holocaust.  You may be a Jew by birth and inclination, but you are not a Jew like these guys are Jews.  They know what is Jewish, and what is Nazi.  And they know it like nobody else.

So what we have here, in the video below, is a survivor of crushing horror of ghastly Auschwitz, Hojo Meyer, speaking out against the appalling policies of Zionist Israel.  He goes much further, saying Israel's policies are antithetical to the entire set of principles which constitute Judaism.  And then he speaks the unspeakable:  that the state of Israel is based on the principles of the Nazis.  The only difference being that Palestinians are now the victims; and the Israelis their persecutors, as were the Nazis of the Third Reich toward the Jews.

So terribly tragic!              

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Daily Dropcap (Jessica Hische) / CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

Why does the Media Not Want to Talk About This?

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omething is very wrong about the TSA use of body scanners which are being sold to Airport Security throughout America, and the Tranportation Security Agency.  The seller is none other than Michael Chertoff, the former head of the TSA, at a cost of more than $150,000 per machine.  That is a lot of profit to Chertoff.  This is a waste of our tax dollars when you consider that bomb sniffing dogs are preferred by the FBI at their own headquarters, and by the US Army in Baghdad.  Dogs cost about $8,500 in total.

So what gives?

Is this whole issue about Michael Chertoff making a profit?  It certainly has nothing to do with making Americans safer at airports.  This video is a good one which explains what is at stake.

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Oops! Where Did I Put That Nine Trillion Dollars?

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f anyone is still asking themselves how and why Alan Grayson,  Representative from District 8 in Florida, one of the precious few men in the US Congress who asks really pertinent questions of the Federal Reserve Banks' Inspector General, was targeted by the banking lobby to bite the dust, you will see the answer in this video.

The issue he is pursuing is very simply,  what ever happened to the Nine Trillion dollars that was given to the Fed.  Yes, we know about the $700,000,000,000 of bailout money.  But what about this amount, 9 extra big ones, that's twelve zeros with a 9 before them, which nobody ever mentioned to the press; or perhaps the media just neglected to investigate.  

"9 Trill?  Hey, Ben? You know anything about that 9 trill?"   

"Uh...which 9 trillion izzat?  I don't nuffing about no 9 trillion."

"Unh...OK, then.  See that, Congressman Grayson?  Nobody don't know nuffing about no 9 trill."

Apparently such things are still not to be mentioned in polite company.  I wonder why.  

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The moron replacing Grayson, I keep forgetting his name, ah, yes, Daniel Webster, is a religious nut; believes in suppressing women, and will function as nothing more than a goon who will do as he is told by the Republican bosses.  

Obviously the big money who own the Republican and much of the Democratic Congress, couldn't leave a loose cannon like Grayson in Congress to expose their filth and lies.  So they want to play hardball.  Fine with me.  

Let them choke on this:  the capitalists, themselves, will bring about their own destruction.  Even as they fight it tooth and nail, the oligarchy will step so far over the line, that  as in Latin America, communism will become the inevitable outcome of their corruption.  And I say this with great sadness. 

We had all hoped that capitalism would work for everyone.  

That is what Adam Smith actually envisioned:  A Free Market with perfect equality and perfect freedom.  And Smith was very careful to spell out those last two conditions of a Free Market.  And for awhile it looked like it just might work out that way.  But greed is a human condition which arises whenever a person is placed next a great deal of money.  Then there can never be enough.  The rich get richer because they are driven not only to have their own legitimate money, but they are compelled to devise ways to steal from the pockets of the poor.  Smith, also, in the same book, The Wealth of Nations, said that a nation is only as wealthy as its poorest citizen.  Could this be the real reason that the minions of the crooked wealthy hate America so much?