Meanwhile, Obama gives good speech. He could end this shutdown this minute with an executive order. But he won’t. He’s part of it. In the end, he’ll bargain and give away more things important to his base. That’s who he is.
Health care reform, day two
Some additional points on the health care crisis and Obamacare:
- Access to health care has never been a problem in the upper reaches of our society, but the model, private insurance, is held together by government glue at its weak points, access by seniors and the poor, who are unprofitable.
- The free enterprise model, which only exists on chalk boards, cannot provide expensive products to poor people. In the muddled minds of its adherents, it has to be the fault of the poor, who are left to die.
- The same for us seniors, but we are mostly financially better off and white, and so have enough clout that Medicare came into being.
- Medicaid, the remedy for the poor, has always been under attack, and the fact that it even exists is a tribute to progressives of a bygone era.
- For so long as the poor are visible, Medicaid will exist. Most people have consciences.
- Obama was hired (in part) to rescue the private insurance system. He did so by the only possible means: protect it from competition (no public option), and subsidize it.
Will it work? Of course not. But more importantly, even as it does not work, will it continue to exist? For a time yes. Democrats, blinded by party politics, will see to that. And for so long as they do that, they will prevent us from solving our health care problems with the only workable solution: Single Payer.
I say “only.” Some systems, like Britain’s and the VA, are government-owned and run. They work well, though Britain’s is under unrelenting attack from it’s right wing. Only it’s mass support keeps it running. Switzerland, which uses private insurance, is workable, but only because their insurance companies are so heavily regulated that they are virtual slaves to the system. So single payer is not the only solution, but in the US, the only workable one because it can be embedded in our patchwork private care system, as are Medicare and Medicaid.
Both of those systems are strained, as they cannot control outside costs imposed by an unworkable private care system with its hundreds of cost-shifting mechanisms, everyone running around trying to dump their costs on others. (VA is exempt from that, and so is remarkably efficient.) So single payer, when it comes to the US, will not be a shining model of efficiency. It will take decades to rid this system of its internal contradictions.
But this needs to be understood: we need to build a platform on which our society can function and where families, especially our young people, have a fighting chance. That platform will guarantee everyone two things: access to health care, and access to education. That’s what they do out there in the civilized world.
Those two societal functions are being eaten alive by the scavengers of the so-called free enterprise system. Until we cage them, we are nothing but chattel. Our youth, those who have jobs, are chained to their desks by student loans and the need for health care, and so are virtual slaves to employers.
We are not a free people. But the remedies are before our eyes. If real leaders step forward, and if the CIA doesn’t murder them, we can fix these problems.
Black Tuesday
Yeah, I’m kind of bitter. It is hard to watch people get sucked into perception management games while having their pockets picked. Is anyone really paying attention to anything? Anyone?
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Doubt, you silly fools. Doubt!
By fearing whom I trust I find my way
To truth; by trusting wholly I betray
The trust of wisdom; better far is doubt
Which brings the false into the light of day.
Abdallah al-Ma’arri (973-1057)
I get flack from some quarters regarding state of mind, as in “he’s a little off-center,” getting old,” “on a tangent” … and a “conspiracy theorist” as the suggestion goes. It’s a little difficult to explain, and a problem – if I were crazy, I would be the last to know it.
Continue reading “Doubt, you silly fools. Doubt!”
Get over it …
The pictures below the fold are from a post from last week, and have stayed in my mind. They are of Mohammad Atta, one of the great criminal conspirators of the new century. He was the one, we were told, who led the 19 hijackers to their meeting with big buildings.
Continue reading “Get over it …”
Masked Bundy’s
The Syria standoff has been a source of hope. I’m encouraged that the US attack on civilization that started in September of 2011 may have lost its steam. If I were religious, this would be my prayer.
One of the indications is the new public posture the Russians have taken. They have assumed the moral high ground. In his New York Times op-ed, Vladimir Putin lectured the US administration about democracy, the United Nations charter, and made reference to God in his closing lines.
Why the op-ed was even allowed to appear is another thread, as it indicates a crack in the fissure of our oligarchical structure. Power is cloaked and resides in various centers, and here one center sent a message in coded form to the White House to stand down. Putin might be a player or a pawn, but the message was clear. In Syria, they had been outfoxed.
Putin also publicly called John Kerry a liar. I took some encouragement from that, for even though all politicians lie and diplomacy is just another form, Kerry seems an especially despicable man. Like George H.W. Bush and Dick Cheney, he’s creepy down to his shoes, some kind of Ted Bundy-like monster residing within. Nonetheless, in diplomatic circles, using the “l” word is usually a sign of retreat. In this case the US so overplayed its hand that it signaled a victory dance.
That was colossal stupidity by the US players, and no doubt Kerry is done, Obama is gelded, and the world is safer for a while as the US formulates new plans for chaos and searches for new domestic actors.
Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov recently said that the situation in Syria was “guided chaos,” and that the US is currently trying to “bribe” Russia into agreeing to a military attack on Syria. The Russians have presented evidence to UN inspectors that the shells used in the attack were Soviet-made from back in the 1970’s. Since Syria possesses far more sophisticated weaponry made in the 1990’s, they labeled use of these shells as a crude attempt to lay blame on the Assad regime for a what was really deliberate act of false-flag terrorism.
Elsewhere Russian sources noted that the victims that appeared in footage shown to US audiences were not to be found as inspectors examined the scene, and wondered with all of the dead children shown why there were no parents around.
That’s where it gets really creepy, as the US reveals its Bundy-ness. Rebel terrorists had earlier attacked remote villages and kidnapped a large group of children, according to the Russians, who listed the names of the missing kids. The suggestion is that the children in the footage, dead or alive, were props from that incident. That could be a Russian lie, but when they occupy the moral high ground, they can pull it off.
That’s your country, folks. Our political leaders hide behind human masks for the American public, and our state-controlled media protects them, but they are puppets fronting for world-class psychopaths and criminals.
My take on Syrian agitprop failure
This is a response from me to Polish Wolf over at his Intelligent Discontent blog. We’ve had a long back-and-forth, and it takes so much time to answer him that my urge to write is gone for the day. This is my take on events as they have played out with the Syrian confrontation.
Continue reading “My take on Syrian agitprop failure”
Facing our inner demons
[Note: Presented throughout are images of evil demons presented to us by our government, offset by photos of those people in reality – quite harmless.]
One of the hardest things to grasp regarding 9/11 is people’s attitude about it. I’m just coming around to having some understanding of it, and it wasn’t 9/11 that helped me along.
The mystery is this: A rational person cannot look at the evidence for the official story of that day and do anything but laugh. It’s absurd.
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9/11 update
I have not debased myself by publicly doubting the official 9/11 story for some time now. It’s time for a progress report. Here’s what I have learned in the subsequent months since I ‘came out.’
- The “Truth” movement is itself a PSYOP. Those who planned the events of that day were also smart enough to plan a cover-up, and the Truth Movement is part of it.
- Leaders of that movement include “gatekeepers,” among them Richard Gage of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, who has led people down the blind alley of “controlled demolition.”
- Another is Stephen Jones, the former BYU physics professor whose particular blind alley is nano-thermites.
Continue reading “9/11 update”
Tester goes peacenik on us … eesh!
Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) has joined Montana Congressman Steve Daines (R-MT) in saying that will oppose proposed military action against Syria.
Tester released a statement on Thursday afternoon explaining his decision to vote against President Obama’s proposal to use force in the light of the recent use of chemical weapons in the Middle Eastern country’s civil war.
“The use of chemical weapons is deplorable. After weighing the facts and listening to Montanans, I’m convinced a military strike at this time will only make the situation worse. The best solution here is to keep putting international pressure on Syria to give up its chemical weapons.”
Piece of Mindful 