We are witness to corporate GREED and WAR PR0FITEERING. When the reich-wing says we can't do universal health care that flies in the face of the success all other industrialized nations have experienced. This is a human right; this is a moral issue. AND, NEVER AGAIN DO I WANT TO HEAR "WE CAN'T AFFORD" SOMETHING THAT IS FOR THE GREATER GOOD -- NOT WHEN THIS CRIMINAL ADMINISTRATION STARTED A WAR WITH LIES AND IS SPENDS $12 BILLION A MONTH TO KEEP IT GOING. It is estimated it will be $3 TRILLION before all is done. To comprehend one trillion dollars, it would take you spending a $1,000 EVERY SECOND FOR THIRTY-TWO YEARS TO EQUAL ONE TRILLION DOLLARS. The perfect model for universal health care already exists in this nation in the Veterans Health Care system. I know. Over the last few decades I have had several surgeries and other procedures at VA hospitals with marvelous results. TIME Magazine called the VA health system "the best health care system in the nation" in the fall of 2006, and deservedly so. WE DON'T HAVE TO REINVENT THE WHEEL. We can do what is morally right with quality and do it in short order. You just need to get your representatives and senators off their lobbyist-bought asses -- and if they don't, then dammit get new representatives and senators.
I am irked by the likes of Bill Maguire, the former CEO of United Health Care, making $124.8 million a year, and retiring with a golden parachute of $2.67 Billion dollars. This is the organization that provides AARP insurance; and you wonder why our medical insurance costs are so high? I wonder if all of the claims that have been paid in the past even equal Bill Maguire's salary and compensation. Corporations are a good idea, but unchecked and uncontrolled, corporate power is both tyranny and theft. The corporations and pharmaceutical companies are the ones that would have you believe that providing health care for all Americans is "socialism" or sacrifices quality of care or makes you wait longer, when in fact all other industrialized nations of the world provide health care to their citizens without sacrificing any of the above attributes. This is simply not true. But the corporations spend billions to brainwash us so they can make bigger profits for the very very few like Maguire above, and saddly, they have been very successful at spewing out their lies. This is criminal on a moral level and treasonous on a political level as perpetrated upon our citizens who deserve better.
I am supporting Barack Obama. He gets it. He is offering a health care plan to cover all Americans and get us more in line with all the European Union countries and other industrialized nations like Japan that provide this for their citizens, because it is a moral issue.
The conservative right-wingers are frightened to death we will put a halt to their greedy capital gains. I am all for capitalism, but what is happening in our country now with the widening divide between the wealthiest and the poor is criminal and immoral, and our middle class is evaporating right before our eyes. Even the conservative Ayn Rand admitted, "The upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class its future." We are destroying our own future with unnecessary war and profiteering and other criminal acts. A purge is needed to change our course. The few have had their way for far too long to the detriment of our entire nation. I prefer to believe in a progressive, liberal heart: "Liberalism is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities, and hence, it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded on this planet. It announces the determination to share existence with the less fortunate; more than that, with those who are weak," said Jose Ortega Y Gasset.
And regarding Obama's candidacy, I'd like to offer a few statements about what has been going on recently with his opponent's statements. For one thing, I AM BITTER, if you haven't already figured that out. I am angry and bitter about what has been happening to our country these last seven and a half years. Obama speaks for me.
And, within the last week or so, I have received emails from right-wing acquaintances labeling Obama as an "elitist snob." Such labels are reminiscent of my growing up in the segregated South. These veiled attempts to diminish Obama's message of hope and inclusion and are just as bigoted as calling a black person an "uppity ni**er" who had better "learn his/her place." Make no mistake about it, there is no difference in these two sets of labels -- the latter only shows, if anything, poorly camouflaged deference to Obama's Harvard law degree (which seemingly/undoubtedly really gets under the skin of racist bigots). Don't fall for this attempt to muddy what I consider to be our best hope to move forward and depart from the hate and partisanship of the past. I call your attention to these tactics not because of any "white guilt," but because it is time we elevated the discourse about race and gender in this nation.
I went to hear Obama speak at the Salem Armory on Good Friday. I sat with a former Green Beret officer, a Vietnam era veteran same as me, and he told me his job had been to evaluate soldiers and identify the ones who exhibited leadership ability and shepherd them into positions of leadership and authority. He told me he saw a rare package in Obama, a man with an abundance of all the leadership attributes and qualities which he sought in his troops.
We talked too, of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's inflammatory comments about race and the subsequent response by Obama.
I myself had grown up in a bigoted household during segregation. Talk about culture shock: me, a 10-year old white kid in 1957 who had gone to school with blacks in Kansas all my life up to that point. For that reason, and because I questioned the logic behind segregation, I was called "ni**er-lover" in Texas where we'd moved. Name-calling and fist fights frequently ensued.
After some time in Texas, even my Dad began to use the "n-word" when referring to blacks. It made me wince, and later in life, I called him on it, asking why he'd started to use such ugly language. But Dad's only response was silence.
I fully understand Obama's reaction to the Rev. Wright's words: being disappointed, then strongly disavowing the divisiveness of the words, yet still loving the person all the same. It is the quandary I felt with Dad. To this day, almost two years after Dad's passing, I don't know if his bigotry towards people of color evolved as a result of the Alzheimer's that finally took his life, or if it is indeed indicative of the very real, virulent and infectious nature of racism in all its forms.
Ultimately, it is up to those who feel such racism within themselves to go deep within and find the root cause of those feelings of hatred and fear and address them ruthlessly at the point of origin. The questions are difficult; the answers, if they come at all, may be hard to interpret or act upon. But that doesn't mean we should not ask the questions at all. Are racism and bigotry the result of a flawed society too tolerant of such things, or are the hateful words and feelings just passed down from peers or elders, without question -- not unlike growing up to become a member of the same faith as our parents, or subscribing to the same political party as ones parents?
I think it took a high degree of courage on Obama's part to address the race issue and Rev. Wright's comments head on as he did. We have seen this courage and rock-steady purpose and determination in Obama before: when he eschewed high-paying attorney positions after Harvard to help the less fortunate, and there is, of course, the courage he first displayed when he spoke against the Iraq invasion when such sentiment was not popular in the wake of 9/11.
I agree with the Green Beret officer: Obama is indeed a "rare package," and ready to lead our nation as president.
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WARNING: Due to presidential executive orders and signing statements, and provisions passed by the previous Republican-controlled Congress, the National Security Agency may have read this posting, as well as and any other private correspondence of mine, and may listen to my private phone conversations without warrant, warning, or notice, and certainly without probable cause. They may also arrest me without telling me of any charges against me, even transport me outside the United States, and hold me secretly and indefinitely in an undisclosed location without notifying my wife or relatives, and deny me access to an attorney. They may take my property under the executive order of July 17, 2007, never to be returned. They may torture me without fear of penalty or repercussions to them for their actions. They may do all these things to me, or to you, with little or no judicial or legislative oversight. This danger became ever more apparent, and ominous, on Sept. 19, 2007, when the U.S. Senate failed to reinstate habeas corpus as an inalienable right of American citizens. I/We have no recourse nor protection save to call for the impeachment of the current president and vice-president, and voting to remove all rubber-stamp Republicans and neocons from office, as well as other elected officials acting only in their own interests instead of those of the People and the Constitution, be they occupying local, state, or national positions of authority.