Good News!

I'm happy to report that everything is going to be fine. I was deeply in debt with no hope for recovery, thinking seriously about bankruptcy, but the green shoots are sprouting now!

And the solution was so simple! I got a new credit card and paid off all my debts with it. The interest rate is high, but that's OK.

I forecast that I will get a new, higher paying job, and I'll be able to pay my debts. It's important to visualize my goal because we all know that the economy runs on optimism. When people quit believing, the economy collapses. So I have hope and faith and belief. I also forecast that I will hold a yard sale every Saturday and get extra money to help with my expenses, cause, gosh darn it, I'm worth it!

This Saturday I plan to sell an old kitchen chair that I don't use anymore, because it's falling apart and the seat is ripped. I forecast that I will get $500 for it, because that's what I need to pay this week's bills.

Then next Saturday I will sell my broken down lawnmower for $1000, because property taxes are coming due. I'll have to sell something else to make up the difference. Perhaps I'll sell my old shoes. I forecast that that will pay my taxes.

The greatest thing is that I don't have to pay off all of the credit card. There's a clause in it that holds my children responsible! And any future grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I forecast that they will be very wealthy, so it shouldn't be a problem for them to pay off my debts.

It sure is a relief to know that my finances are under control. I was starting to think that I was going to have to live within my means!

Played 4 Suckas

You have to admire the ability of the ruling class to manipulate public opinion. I know many people who think of themselves as liberal, and they are indignant about the right wing protestors who are disrupting health insurance meetings and demonstating against "socialism".

This has caused many good hearted people to support the Congresspeople who are pushing the health insurance bill, under the belief that if crazy right wing screamers are against it, it must be a good bill.

Suckas! You are being played.

The bill is a bad bill. It is forced insurance company payments, by penalty of law, with tax money going to poor people to be funneled to insurance companies. How is this progressive? It's not. So instead of having a debate on the bill, liberals are being suckered into blind support by the massive corporate coverage of frothing haters, some even armed, which really pisses off people who remember liberals thrown into jail for wearing T-shirts.

Do not be distracted! Nick Skala, a young, articulate spokesperson for single payer, was not. Asked to speak in support of the so-called "public option" to the Progressive Caucus of the Congress, he stuck to his guns. See his interview about what happened on afterdowningstreet.org.

Nick Skala came to Carbondale to give a presentation 2 years ago, and we used his presentation in June again at a health care meeting.

Nick was found dead this weekend of unknown causes at age 27. This is a terrible loss for our side.

In honor of his memory, do not fall for the corporate manipulation of your emotions. The health care bill is a sham and a massive corporate giveaway. It should be opposed.

Chutzpah

The classic definition of chutzpah is the man who kills both of his parents and then asks for mercy because he is an orphan.

But how about a country which blocks intervention to stop a massacre and then uses the ensuing slaughter as an excuse to invade other countries? And then tries to overthrow established international law in order to continue expanding its empire, under the guise of humanitarian intervention?

The United States, like all other countries, dresses its aggression in pretty words and excuses. They used to "defend democracy", but that was beginning to lose its luster, as the blatancy of US support for brutal dictatorships and overthrow of elected governments gave the lie to its occasional professed concern for democracy.

So now we have concern for human rights and ethnic minorities. This should be laughed off, as the US has the greatest income disparity of all industrialized countries, more prisoners than any other country and the descendants of our original people who live on reservations in South Dakota have a life expectancy of 58 years, while many African Americans, descendants of slaves, live in slums in conditions of extreme poverty.

A country which holds prisoners for years without charge and openly tortures can choose to invade other countries to uphold human rights?

It's absurd. But Americans are raised from birth with the belief that we are the best country on Earth, and ingest the idea of American exceptionalism with our mother's milk, or the BGH laced formula our babysitters feed us with our BPA lined bottles. As we celebrate the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, note that the majority of Americans have no moral qualms to this day about the morality of incinerating hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Europe used to have brutal wars because of moral concerns, mostly about those who weren't the right Christians, or who weren't Christian at all, so could be burned, flayed, hung or butchered with God's approval. The Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 put an end to that, at least in Europe, and established the concept of national sovereignty.

The United Nations was founded to uphold national sovereignty, as well as human rights. World War 11 showed what could happen when a powerful country used human rights (Germans living in other countries who were supposedly oppressed) as an excuse to invade other countries. The United States believes that the UN should rubberstamp and provide a figleaf for US invasions, and when the UN refused to do so in Yugoslavia and Iraq, the US came up with the idea of "responsiblity to protect". (Translation: "Protect" those who live in countries with assets the US covets.)

The absurdity of bombing people into democracy is widely recognized, so now we are told that women are treated horribly in Afghanistan, so we must kill them in order to free them. I guess that's why the US has bombed so many wedding parties, because women have no rights in marriage in Afghanistan. At least, now they don't. They did in 1978, until the US spent billions to overthrow the progressive government and replace it with religious fundamentalists.

A country whose leaders hold hands with the religious fundamentalists of Saudi Arabia, (a country in which women can't vote or drive and which holds Friday beheading rituals), has absolutely no standing to decide whether other countries are worthy enough to escape bombing and invasion.

The US is taking us back to the Dark Ages, when torture and moral-based slaughters were accepted as God's will.

Stand up for the reforms of 1648!!

Pretending

Single payer health care is off the table. Mandatory insurance company tributes are on the table.

So now the progressive media is urging us to support "health care reform" which is an absolutely outrageous form of debt bondage to the FIRE industry, apparently just because it is labeled a reform. They are distracting us with a so-called "public option" and asserting that this is an improvement.

No. It's not. It's a massive step toward futher peonage. There has never, in my knowledge, been a law that forced every American to pay private corporations tribute. All progressives should be up in arms about the enriching of the insurance companies, as well as the finance corporations.

Why do progressives fall for this? It's almost as if they think we're as dumb as Fox News viewers.

It reminds me of the elections. We know that the voting machines put in after the Help America Vote Act are compromised. We know that the Diebold owner promised Ohio to Bush. We know that Mike Connell, the man who stole the 2004 election, died in a plane crash before he could testify about it.

But progressives pretend that voting is important and spend multiple hours trying to get out the vote.

And the 2008 election was hailed as a great victory for the people. There were great celebrations, and great things were expected from the new Democratic majority. A President, 60 Senators, and a majority in the House. How's that working out for us?

Single payer is off the table. The occupations continue, 3,000,000 Pakistanis have been driven from their homes, Guantanamo prisoners are more abused, 2,300,000 Americans are in prison,the spying and secrecy continues, Goldman Sachs made record profits, and the stimulus created jobs are mostly building more roads so that the government subsized cars can continue to pollute the atmosphere. What a victory for peace and justice!

Affordable Health Care-Supply and Demand

Interesting that the right wing, which screams about letting the free market rule, and the left wing, which is willing to learn from other countries (why do they hate America?), both neglect to point out one obvious problem in American health care.

The AMA keeps the supply of doctors low, so that their pay will be high. This is a restriction of the free market, right wingers! If Cuba can have a doctor for every neighborhood, why can't we, left wingers?

I mentioned this to my co-worker the other day. He is a Syrian who went to medical school in France and then moved here for the high pay. He pointed out that the US imports 1/3 of its doctors, using other country's resources for their education and then enticing them here with high salaries, although his education didn't cost anywhere near what American medical schools cost. (The American doctors I work with frequently joined the military to save themselves from $300,000+ tuition costs). He said that they are tested more extensively than US doctors, at their own expense. And on Monday, his day off, he got 4 calls from physician recruiters.

We don't have enough doctors. The ones we have are putting in 12 to 16 hour shifts. In a country of 300 million people, you can't tell me that we don't have enough intelligent people to train as doctors.

Or dentists. Do you know how many people come to the ER for dental problems? We don't do dentristy, but people with rotting teeth are in misery.

Not many dentists take Medicaid, and uninsured people are just screwed.

Many Americans have bad teeth, especially meth addicts. Their teeth just rot out of their heads. And they have no money. Dentists seem to be pretty cold blooded. If you don't have cash, forget it.

Let's have enough doctors and dentists that there is an ample supply, and they see people for reasonable fees. It's only right.