"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now."
March 31 2010 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: 'Lightweight' - It Has Been The 'Solution' To Our Problems From Fuel Efficiency To American Governance
In The News: Thanks this morning to ChrisM, my MP3Angel, for supplying the news audio file.
Due to time constraints there will be no text news synopsis this morning...
The news audio this morning is courtesy of KVMR Radio, Nevada City California
However, there IS a notable quote...
"The last time the American economy was on the ropes to the extent it is now, a whole industry of escapism grew up and produced such gems as Gold Diggers of 1933.
You might remember that the plot of that charming film was a millionaire putting on a musical that saved countless Broadway hoofers from the soup-kitchen during the Great Depression.
Barack Obama is the Busby Berkeley of modern America. He is ordained as the great choreographer who will spirit America out of its misery, using not his own millions but the billions of the taxpayer to put the country back on course.
Having listened all year to his message of "change", and being entirely unclear what it means, perhaps at last we have the answer. It is The Great Cause Of Cheering Us All Up." --Simon Heffer, Columnist, Telegraph.co.uk, Barack Obama is the Busby Berkeley of modern America
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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 and The Berne Convention on Literary and Artistic Works, Article 10, the news clippings and images used in this posting are made available without profit for research and educational purposes.
$14 Trillion Spent Annually On Trying To Look Cool
WASHINGTON—A report released Monday by the U.S. Department of Commerce revealed that Americans spend an astonishing $14 trillion a year on countless, usually failed attempts to look cool.
The amount Americans spend trying to look like they don't care how they look is greater than the GDPs of Sweden, Brazil, and Egypt combined.
Looking cool, which the report defines as "the outward projection of an appealing and often enviable image of oneself that others perceive as requiring little to no effort," appears to be a nationwide obsession.
"To put this into perspective, the amount Americans spend on cool looking haircuts is nearly 15 times greater than the total amount spent on cancer research," said Eric Gerhardt, noted economist and lead author of the report. [In Full]
...and Jim Kunstler @ Clusterfuck Nation has a not-so-funny feeling about the future of America
Clusterfuck Nation
Our Turn? by James Howard Kunstler www.kunstler.com (March 29 2010)
Comment on current events by the author of The Long Emergency (2005)
Nations go crazy. It's terrifying when it happens, especially to a major nation with the ability to project its craziness outward.
We look back on the psychotic break of Germany in 1933 and still wonder how the then-best-educated population in Europe could fall under the sway of a sociopathic political program. We behold the carnage and devastation left in the wake of that episode, and decades later you still can do little more than shake your head in bewilderment.
China had a psychotic break in the 1960s in its "cultural revolution", provoked by the mad neo-emperor Mao. He sent cadres of Chinese baby boomer youths rampaging across the land, turned every institution upside down, and let millions starve. Mao's China lacked the ability then to export this mischief, but enough of his own people suffered.
Cambodia was the next humdinger of a national nervous breakdown when the Paris-educated classic marxist Pol Pot decided to make the world's biggest omelette by cracking a million eggs. He took everybody wearing eyeglasses, everybody who appeared to have a thought in his or her head, and sent them out to the bush to be worked to death, or shot in ditches, or disposed of otherwise. The mounds of skulls remain to tell the tale.
Lately we've had the Hutu-Tutsi genocides in Rwanda, the craziness in former Yugoslavia, the cruelty of Darfur, the international suicide-bomber craze (including today's blasts in Moscow). Surely, I've left a few out ... but these are minor episodes compared to what be coming next.
Am I the only one who senses it might be America's turn to go nuts?
I don't mean a family squabble, like the Boomer-Hippie-Vietnam uproar that was essentially an adolescent rebellion against bad parenting in the national household. I mean a genuine descent into madness, with the very high probability of persecution, violence, murder, and mayhem - all more or less sponsored by various authorities and institutions.
The Republican Party is doing a great job in provoking such a dangerous episode by making consensual governance impossible in a time of awful practical problems and challenges. They're in the process, right now, of transforming themselves from the party of "no" to the party of no decency, no common sense, no ideas, no conception of the public interest, and no respect for the traditions that they pretend to stand for, like due process of law... [In Full]
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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 and The Berne Convention on Literary and Artistic Works, Article 10, the news clippings and images used in this posting are made available without profit for research and educational purposes.
Da' Buffalo's Google Reader Shared Items Feed is [Here] View what's current without a feed reader [Here]
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 and The Berne Convention on Literary and Artistic Works, Article 10, the news clippings and images used in this posting are made available without profit for research and educational purposes.
In The News: Thanks this morning to ChrisM, my MP3Angel, for supplying the news and commentary audio files.
Due to time constraints there will be no text news synopsis this morning...
However, there are a few news items of note:
Don't call it a 'depression'...DON'T Call it a DEPRESSION!
Personal income falls 2.5% in California Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer Friday, March 26, 2010
Personal income in California fell last year for the first time since the Great Depression, the Commerce Department said Thursday.
State income plunged even more sharply in 2009 than the similar, historic drop that occurred on a national basis, a notable reversal given that California generally has beaten the national averages throughout the 80-year history of this report.
Personal income includes wages and salaries, health and pension benefits, rents, dividends and interest, federal payments such as unemployment and Social Security, and just about every form of wealth except stock sales and other capital gains.[emphasis mine // Razer] The 2.5 percent drop in statewide personal income works out to $1,527 fewer dollars for every man, woman and child in California.
The accompanying nationwide drop of 1.7 percent works out to a $1,028 decline in per capita income for all Americans.
Prior to last year's drop, personal income in California had fallen only five times since 1929, when such record keeping began. All five of those occurrences were during the Depression... [In Full]
At least your representatives in Washington have good health insurance if anything truly stupid happens
Threats against lawmakers spread after health vote
By LAURIE KELLMAN and JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writers Thursday, March 25, 2010
Democrats and a few Republicans revealed mounting numbers and unsettling details of threats against them Thursday in the emotional aftermath of the passage of the health care overhaul.
Lawmakers uniformly condemned the harassment, but that's where the agreement ended. Democrats said Republicans were slow to condemn the vigilantism, while Republicans said Democrats were playing politics with the threats.
"By ratcheting up the rhetoric, some will only inflame these situations to dangerous levels," said House Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia. "Enough is enough. It has to stop."
At least 10 Democrats now have reported harassment, including incidents involving at least four of their offices in New York, Arizona and Kansas. More frequent have been obscenity-laced, sometime-threatening phone messages. An undisclosed number of lawmakers have been given increased police protection.
"It is unfortunate that a small but vocal group of people are using insults to convey their opinions and alarming that anyone would make threats against me or my family," said Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper, D-Pa.
On Thursday, two Republicans said they, too, had been menaced.
No arrests have been reported. A threat to assault a member of Congress in retaliation for the performance of official duties is punishable by up to a year in prison.
House historian Fred Beuttler said there have been few acts of violence against lawmakers over legislation. The worst occurred in 1954 when four Puerto Rican nationalists shot up the House chamber, wounding five members. A cross was burned on Speaker Sam Rayburn's front lawn in Texas during debate on civil rights legislation in the 1960s.
This week, hate-filled rants have been showing up in voice mails, e-mail boxes and on fax machines of lawmakers since the House approved the health care bill 219-212 Sunday night. [In Full]
Regarding the commentary, not EVERYONE is so sure that signing a treaty allowing the US greater leeway in placing alleged anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe is such a great deal:
But Russia's foreign policy community appears far more divided over the usefulness of the new START accord for Russia's long-term security, and some wonder what compromises the Kremlin might have made on Russia's insistence that a strong mechanism be embedded in the text to link the need for controls on defensive antimissile weapons with the treaty's cuts to offensive arsenals.
"It's always wonderful to see friendly handshakes all around," says Pyotr Roman, an expert with the official RIA-Novosti news agency. "But for those of us who remember the late cold-war era, when (Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev made concessions to meet American interests, in order to break the ice, there's a wait-and-see feeling about this." [In Full]
Here's an 'alt' view from a European citizen
Having served in both Administrations, U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates related to The New York Times the unfolding of events. It was Gates who, in December 2006, had recommended that the United States deploy 10 interceptors in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic. It was again Gates who, in September 2009, prompted President Obama to scrap the plan in favour of a "more suitable" one. His conclusion is that "We are in the process of enhancing, not abandoning, our missile defense programme in Europe".
In the initial stage which will be completed by 2011, the United States will deploy SM-3 missile interceptors aboard war ships. In the following stage, to become operational around 2015, it will field an upgraded land-based version of these missiles in Central and Southern Europe. Romania and Bulgaria have already agreed to play host. In Poland, the deployment of a Patriot missile battery is already underway. It is operated by a crew of 100 GI’s in the Baltic town of Morag, roughly 50 km away from the Russian border. Next will be the arrival of the SM-3s aboard US vessels for deployment in the Baltic Sea, followed by the more powerful land-based missiles. The fixed radar, previously slated to be set up in the Czeck Republic, will be replaced by an upgraded system combining planes, satellites and ground sensors. Italy, too, will most probably host missiles and other components of the U.S. "shield". This was directly confirmed by Gates himself when he alluded to their deployment in Southern Europe. It should be recalled that Italy acceded to the "shield" plan through an agreement signed in February 2007 by the government of Romano Prodi.
Is the anti-ballistic missile "shield" system, that the United States intends to deploy in Europe, defensive or offensive? [In Full]
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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 and The Berne Convention on Literary and Artistic Works, Article 10, the news clippings and images used in this posting are made available without profit for research and educational purposes.
In The News: Thanks this morning to ChrisM, my MP3Angel, for supplying the news audio file.
The news audio this morning is courtesy of KVMR Radio, Nevada City California
Due to technical difficulties there will be no commentary via KPIG this morning...
However, there are a few OTHER news items worth noting:
The Party of Cruelty Clusterfuck Nation by James Howard Kunstler
It was amusing to see the Republican party inveigh against health insurance reform as if they were a synod of Presbyterian necromancers girding the nation for a takeover by the spawn of hell.
This was the same gang, by the way, who championed the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, then regarded as the most reckless giveaway of public funds in human history. Along the way, they enlisted an army of nay-sayers representing everything dark, disgraceful, and ignorant in the American character. If the Republicans keep going this way, they'll end up with something worse than Naziism: a party that hates everything but believes in absolutely nothing.
The most striking elements of so-called health care in America these days is how cruel and unjust it is, and in taking a stand against reforming it the Republican party appeared to be firmly in support of cruelty and injustice. This would be well within the historical tradition of other religious crusades which turned political -- such as the Spanish Inquisition and the seventeenth century war against witchcraft. In Full @ Clusterfuck Nation
Actual socialist weighs in on "socialist" health bill from Salon: War Room by Alex Koppelman
If you listen to damn near everyone on the right these days, you'll hear that the healthcare reform bill that the House passed last night is "socialism," or "creeping socialism" at the very least. In reality, that claim just doesn't hold up. Just ask a socialist, like Billy Wharton, who's the co-chair of the Socialist Party USA.
The Socialist Party just e-mailed reporters a statement from Wharton in which he slams the bill, saying it's not reform but is "instead a corporate restructuring of the American healthcare system designed to enhance the profits of private health insurance companies disguised with the language of reform." . . . Co-chair of the Socialist Party USA, Billy Wharton, opposes the healthcare bill passed yesterday by the House of Representatives and scheduled to be signed into law by President Barack Obama on Tuesday. Wharton's opposition is based on the belief that this bill is not a reform. Instead, it is a corporate restructuring of the health insurance industry created to protect the profit margins of private insurance companies.
The bill passed by the House yesterday would mandate all Americans to purchase health insurance coverage or face a fine. It would also create health insurance exchanges, an idea crafted by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, where people would purchase insurance from private companies. Those not eligible for Medicaid but who still could not afford to purchase insurance would receive public funds from the federal government to purchase bare bones coverage insurance plans from private insurers... In Full
Some info on the buying of elections by our corporatocracy from And, yes, I DO take it personally by profmarcus
Democrats in Congress have proposed a bill intended to stop the flood of corporate money into elections. This is an incredibly urgent issue since the Supreme Court legalized unlimited political spending by big corporations.
Unfortunately, this bill would require most corporations to only report how many millions they spend. History shows that transparency alone won't stop big corporations from buying our elections.
We put together this chart make the point. If enough people understand why a "transparency-only" plan won't work, we can convince Congress to push for a stronger bill, like the Fair Elections Now Act.
Da' Buffalo's Google Reader Shared Items Feed is [Here] View what's current without a feed reader [Here]
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 and The Berne Convention on Literary and Artistic Works, Article 10, the news clippings and images used in this posting are made available without profit for research and educational purposes.
In The News: Thanks this morning to ChrisM, my MP3Angel, for supplying audio files of the news and commentary.
The news audio this morning is courtesy of KVMR Radio, Nevada City California
Due to time constraints there will be no text news synopsis this morning...
However, there are a few news items of note:
Dateline Marja Afghanistan... "Marja now has one coalition soldier or policeman for every eight residents," but "...The government and international forces cannot defend anyone even one kilometre from their bases." after dark. More
Click on the picture of a ravaged land or Utah's quote (One address of note here... Chase Bank) for more on how mountaintop Coal mining is despoiling the land.
Three Blackwater Mercenary Co. executives face federal weapons charges for illegally stockpiling of automatic rifles (AK-47s) at Blackwater's North Carolina headquarters. There is a draft indictment in the works against Gary Jackson, the company's former president, Andrew Howell, former company attorney, and an un-named third person who worked at the company's armory.
...and that's just their behavior in the continental US...
A former Blackwater employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the investigation includes a look at whether Blackwater shipped weapons from its Moyock headquarters to Iraq hidden in pallets wrapped tightly in shrink wrap. . . “In December, the prosecutors obtained guilty pleas from two former Blackwater employees, Kenneth Wayne Cashwell of Virginia Beach, Va., and William Ellsworth “Max” Grumiaux of Clemmons, N.C." [In Full]
"Nose to spite face" - Constance McMillen, the gay high school student from Mississippi who won a federal lawsuit allowing her to attend the senior prom with her same-sex significant other may not get to attend at all, along with the rest of her fellow students, as that same US District Court has ruled that the vengefully cancelled-in-the-wake-of-the-ruling event cannot be forced to happen.
When the prom at the Itawamba county MS school was cancelled, one pundit noted it seems to be an American trait to despoil other people's way-of-being, with these words:
"It’s not just "I’ve got mine, fuck you" that’s dragging this country down; it’s also "I don’t care if I get mine, as long as I get to say fuck you."
See "The Nose Cutters" @ Firedoglake for more philosophizing on 'exceptionally American callousness'
Speaking of children... pollinating Honeybees currently receive more protection than children in California when it comes to the spraying of pesticides. A 'wider buffer zone' of a half mile between schools and the spraying of massive quantities of agricultural pesticides is being sought. A about a decade ago where I live on the Central Coast, the Watsonville School Distinct fought for a 'wider buffer' and managed to garner a 300 foot zone... Of course the children who attend these schools net to California's fields tend to be of a color other than White. California's ag industry opposes the bill, AB 1721, saying it is 'needlessly broad' and 'would jeopardize farming operations in urbanized counties'.
In 1996 two dozen people were sickened when pesticides sprayed into an adjacent field drifted into a California school yard.
Behind the Shady World of Marketing Junk Food to Children
March 23, 2010
Seven-year-old Marley loves Happy Meals from McDonald's. She used to get Chicken McNuggets, but now she chooses a cheeseburger to go with her fries and Sprite.... Her father, Patrick, is a chef, trained at the Culinary Institute of America, but Marley prefers McDonald's to his cooking. After a trip to McDonald's, Marley eagerly surfs onto McWorld.com, where she can enter a code from her meal to get a "behind-the-scenes look at iCarly," a kids' TV show (boys can use their code for a Star Wars promotion).
Patrick pulled the plug on his television a few months ago, in part to shield his two young daughters from advertising, but the McDonald's marketing execs have reached Marley all the same. Because he's health- and environmentally-conscious, Patrick does not take her to McDonald's often, but after a long day of school and extra-curricular activities, sometimes a little nagging is all it takes for Marley to convince her dad that she's hungry now and only food served at a drive-thru will do.
Marley and Patrick are normal, apart from his cooking skills and their home's lack of TV.
Approximately one out of three fast food trips occur due to a child's nagging -- a fact that does not elude junk food marketers, who advertise to kids with the very goal of getting kids to nag their parents for the advertised product. It's not by accident that foods marketed to children come with toys or in boxes plastered with popular cartoon characters, located strategically at children's eye level... [In Full
...and finally, Juan Cole, professor of Persian history at the University of Michigan and well known Middle East issues blogger is "Mad as hell and he isn't going to take anymore":
Wednesday, March 17, 2010 Cpl. Jeffrey Goldberg, Guarding the Prison of the Nationalist Mind
As a Middle East expert who lived in the Muslim world for nearly 10 years, travels widely there, speaks the languages, writes history from archives and manuscripts, and follows current affairs, I found that none of that counted for much when I entered the public arena in the United States.
It isn't that I am thin-skinned or can't dish it out as good as I get it. Rather, it is like being a professional baseball player ready for the World Series, who gets in the van and instead of being delivered to Yankee Stadium is blindfolded and taken to a secret fight club where people are betting on whether he can go 12 rounds with a giant James Bond villain. And he says, "But I'm not a boxer, I bat .400." And they sneer, "You will pay for insulting our great aunt."
This is an arena where vehement partisans are honored as "journalists," where ability to speak languages or engage in cultural interaction counts for nothing, and where rich and powerful patrons make reputations rather than any real knowledge.
NYT columnist David Brooks slammed me for not having recognized Ariel Sharon's potential as a peace-maker with the Palestinians and for not seeing how positive the Iraq War was for resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. (???)
I was routinely denounced by David Horowitz, who used to be an insufferable leftist in the 60s when he edited Ramparts and now is an insufferable rightwinger, but who knows nothing at all about the Middle East (and what he thinks he knows is wrong).
Marty Peretz, who married into the Singer Sewing Machine fortune and then used his wife's money to buy and ruin The New Republic, turning it into pro-Contra, pro-war rag, was annoyed to see me on television because of his vast fund of knowledge about Arabic hollow verbs.
Michael Oren, a bad, partisan historian and Israeli army reservist (who fought in the Gaza War); who revived the Gobineau Orientalist tradition in his book on the US and the Middle East; and who is now the Israeli ambassador to Washington-- weighed in against my receiving an appointment to the Yale History Department.
Princeton-trained Martin Kramer until recently of Tel Aviv University, who recently advocated using the Gaza blockade to force small families on the half-starving Palestinians, made a cottage industry of snarky and mostly false remarks about Informed Comment; and has a relationship with the so-called "Middle East Forum", which runs the McCarthyite 'campus watch' and which was part of a scheme to have me cyber-stalked and massively spammed.
More recently I have provoked the ire of a burly former Israeli military prison guard at the notorious Ketziot detention camp during the first Intifada, who is among our foremost journalists of the Middle East and given a prominent perch at The Atlantic magazine-- Jeffrey Goldberg... [In Full]
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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 and The Berne Convention on Literary and Artistic Works, Article 10, the news clippings and images used in this posting are made available without profit for research and educational purposes.
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now."
March 23 2010 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished - Republican Obstructionism... From Civil Rights In The Sixties To Heath Reform Today
In The News: Thanks this morning to ChrisM, my MP3Angel, for supplying audio files of the news and commentary.
The news audio this morning is courtesy of KVMR Radio, Nevada City California
Due to time constraints there will be no text news synopsis this morning...
However, there are a couple of news items to note:
First, a notable quote from 'and yes, I take it personally:
"The election of Barack Obama was yet another triumph of propaganda over substance and a skillful manipulation and betrayal of the public by the mass media.
We mistook style and ethnicity – an advertising tactic pioneered by the United Colors of Benetton and Calvin Klein – for progressive politics and genuine change. We confused how we were made to feel with knowledge. But the goal, as with all brands, was to make passive consumers mistake a brand for an experience.
Obama, now a global celebrity, is a brand. He had almost no experience besides two years in the senate, lacked any moral core and was sold as all things to all people. The Obama campaign was named Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008 and edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com.
Follwing up on what passes for the (now-forgotten by the Western media) Iraqi federal elections:
Iraq's PM demands recount MEHDI LEBOUACHERA March 22, 2010
AFP - Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, locked in a tight battle with his main rival to form Iraq's next government, has called for a manual recount of votes cast in the country's March 7 polls.
The demand has been rejected by the country's election commission and slammed as a "clear threat" by the Iraqiya bloc that is neck-and-neck with the incumbent's State of Law Alliance in the race to be the biggest grouping in parliament.
Results from the election, the second since Saddam Hussein was ousted in 2003, come less than six months before the US is due to withdraw from Iraq... In Full
Backpackers, hide your stash! You ARE being watched...
US Forest Service admits putting surveillance cameras on public lands The Gates of Hell
How many hidden cameras are they using, and for what purposes? Is this surveillance in the forest an effective law enforcement tool? And what are our expectations of privacy when we camp on public land?
Officials with the Forest Service were hardly forthcoming with answers to these and other questions about their surveillance cameras. When contacted about the incident, Heitzman said "no comment," and referred other questions to Forest Service’s public affairs, who he said, "won’t know anything about it."
Heather Frebe, public affairs officer with the Forest Service in Atlanta, said the camera was part of a law enforcement investigation, but she declined to provide details.
Asked how cameras are used in general, how many are routinely deployed throughout the Forest and about the agency’s policies, Frebe also declined to discuss specifics. She said that surveillance cameras have been used for "numerous years" More
Just in case you actually believe the US federal government has done anything arguably worthwhile with the much vaunted passage of the Health Reform Bill.. A follow up from a few Alt-Sources.
Here's what has happened over the last 20 years despite throwing money at allopathic (Western) maternal medicine and the US health 'insurance' industry that serves, and will continue to serve, an almost exclusively middle-class 'cohort:
African-American women are nearly four times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than white women. These rates and disparities have not improved in more than 20 years.
But that's not all! Health Care Reform is liable to make it worse!
AlterNet
Health Care Bill Throws Women Under the Bus on Reproductive Rights
Despite the many good elements in the health care bill, it deals a heavy blow to the pro-choice movement.
By Liliana Segura March 22, 2010
Less than 24 hours after the House passed its historic health care reform bill, the mixed reaction from feminists and women's groups provides a taste of the bitter pill it forces them to swallow, even as political allies celebrate a momentous legislative victory.
Despite the many good elements in the health care bill, it deals a heavy blow to those who hoped that healthcare reform might pass without throwing women -- particularly poor women -- under the bus when it came to reproductive rights. In Full
Rising Deaths in Childbirth By William Fisher (The World According To Bill Fisher)
Despite the U.S. spending more on maternal health than any other country in the world, deaths in childbirth among American women are on the rise and already surpass the morbidity rates in most developed countries.
That’s the principal conclusion reached in a new study by Amnesty International and data from the Organization for Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO).
The Amnesty study, entitled “Deadly Delivery,” reports that deaths from pregnancy and childbirth in the United States have doubled in the past 20 years -- from 6.6 per 100,000 live births in 1987 to 13.3 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2006.
That would mean that, of the four million women who give birth each year, two to three women die each day in the U.S. from complications related to pregnancy.
While better reporting may account for some of the increase, the study speculates that it’s more likely that the figures may actually understate the problem because there are no federal requirements to report maternal deaths... In Full
Here's more information about the back door deals made with the pharmaceutical industrial complex and the insurance industry.
TruthDig March 22, 2010
The Health Care Hindenburg Has Landed
By Chris Hedges
Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s decision to vote “yes” in Sunday’s House action on the health care bill, although he had sworn to oppose the legislation unless there was a public option, is a perfect example of why I would never be a politician. I respect Kucinich. As politicians go, he is about as good as they get, but he is still a politician. He has to run for office. He has to raise money. He has to placate the Democratic machine or risk retaliation and defeat. And so he signed on to a bill that will do nothing to ameliorate the suffering of many Americans, will force tens of millions of people to fork over a lot of money for a defective product and, in the end, will add to the ranks of our uninsured.
The claims made by the proponents of the bill are the usual deceptive corporate advertising. The bill will not expand coverage to 30 million uninsured, especially since government subsidies will not take effect until 2014. Families who cannot pay the high premiums, deductibles and co-payments, estimated to be between 15 and 18 percent of most family incomes, will have to default, increasing the number of uninsured. Insurance companies can unilaterally raise prices without ceilings or caps and monopolize local markets to shut out competitors. The $1.055 trillion spent over the next decade will add new layers of bureaucratic red tape to what is an unmanageable and ultimately unsustainable system.
The mendacity of the Democratic leadership in the face of this reality is staggering. Howard Dean, who is a doctor, said recently: “This is a vote about one thing: Are you for the insurance companies or are you for the American people?” Here is a man who once championed the public option and now has sold his soul. What is the point in supporting him or any of the other Democrats? How much more craven can they get? In Full
...and an article about what Americans WON'T get.. a choice of how they care to be treated when ill:
Health care reform bill dooms America to Pharma-dominated sickness and suffering
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
NaturalNews Editor
NaturalNews.com March 22 2010
(NaturalNews) Today the medical mafia struck another devastating blow to the health and freedom of all Americans. With the support of an inarguably corrupt Congress that has simply abandoned the real needs of the American people, the sick-care industry has locked in a high-profit scheme of disease and monopoly-priced pharmaceuticals in a nation that can ill afford either one.
And this Pharma-funded betrayal, it turns out, was led by the Democrats. Passed on a 219-212 vote that was only accomplished thanks to closed-door, last-minute secret meetings among the last holdouts, this new legislation puts America under the stranglehold of the medical mafia while doing absolutely nothing to address real health care reform. There is no mention in the bill, for example, of vitamin D for preventing cancer, or orthomolecular medicine for preventing degenerative disease. There's not even a word about protecting health freedom or ending the century of oppression that has been waged against naturopathic practitioners by the AMA, FDA and FTC.
The new legislation does, however, lock in billions of dollars in monopoly profits for the pharmaceutical companies - the same companies who spent millions of dollars pushing for its passage and who depend on the continuation of sickness and disease for their future profits.
There's only one problem with this health care reform bill: It doesn't reform health care. It has almost nothing to do with health care at all, in fact: It's really more of an effort to expand a broken sick-care system. When faced with the problem that our sick-care system doesn't work, Congress somehow decided that fixing the problem merely involved expanding the failures to include everyone! In Full
..and finally, in the "Disgruntled and doing something about it department... You've heard of TV-B-Gone... New... Improved.. Car-B-Gone!
Disgruntled hacker remotely disables 100 cars
In the college town of Austin, Texas, a disgruntled hacker apparently managed to override a remote vehicle-immobilization system called Webtech Plus, effectively shutting down dozens of cars and setting off alarms on dozens more. According to Wired News, the alleged hacker is Omar Ramos-Lopez, a 20-year-old Texas resident.
In February, Mr. Ramos-Lopez was laid off from his job at Texas Auto Center, a used car dealership. Within a week, the troubles began... In Full
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"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now."
March 22 2010 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: The United States Joins The Rest Of The Developed Nations By Providing For It's Citizen's Health Care
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March 31 2010 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: 'Lightweight' - It Has Been The 'Solution' To Our Problems From Fuel Efficiency To American Governance 
