Is Obama Whistling Past the Graveyard on
Afghanistan

Russ Feingold says it[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2009/07/24/afghanistan-whistling/

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Restating The Obvious

There was a chart in one of my email news feeds a couple of days ago that compared the performance of the health care systems in the US and Canada, Canada being the example the corporate lackeys in our congress haul out most often to brag about the fantastic health care we receive here in comparison to other countries.

The US lags Canada in every single metric.  I can't tell you if different methods of measurement are applied in the two countries or anything of that nature but I would tend to think not in this case.  It would need to have been reconciled as to statistical methods and be a direct comparison to have any meaning at all and I suspect that this was the case.

But anyway, the point they're trying to make is that our health care SYSTEM is not as great as the health care INDUSTRY wants people to believe it is (especially considering the costs involved in delivering services) and Canada's is nowhere near as bad as they make it out to be.  I believe most thinking people understand this but it isn't the thinking people who get all the exposure and air play in the M$M so it doesn't hurt to keep driving the point home.

At one time, we might have HAD the greatest health care system in the world, but that stopped.  It stopped along with just about everything else that made this country truly great at about the time that Ronald Reagan and his behind the curtain controllers launched their war against the poor and/or working class.  That's when they made profit for the corporations and the upward flow of wealth the overriding priorities in the formulation of our economic policies, using deregulation and the dismantling of the regulatory agencies that had made the system at least somewhat workable as their primary tools.  

Since then, virtually the only thing that HASN'T actually suffered is the rate of increase in the incomes of the richest companies and people in the country.  And that increase in the flow of wealth upward means an almost exponential increase in suffering for the ever increasing number of people that are doomed always to be left out of any equation derived by the nobility and their government lap dogs.  Nowhere is this more illustrated than by the current state of health care, which has rightfully become the number one issue facing us today.  

Excessive profits and huge dividends for the corporations and the Wall Street bloodsuckers  do NOT indicate a "booming economy" as we were told we had "enjoyed" every year for eight years, nor do they do anything to make a country great.  Hell, even that babbling gaggle of orangutans we call congress has to know that.

Yet they were still telling us that everything was under control three days before Bear Stearns took its dive into oblivion.  (Actually I believe that to be true and that things WERE under their control, but not the way they were trying to spin it.)
A truly robust economy means a general upturn the benefits of which are spread over the population of the country as a whole, NOT just the top 1 to 5 percent while everyone else either stagnates or actually loses ground.  For eight years we were told that our economy was "robust" and that there was more wealth flowing than ever before.  

In the meantime our Gross Domestic Product was either shrinking or undergoing huge decreases in the rate of growth while it's sources of derivation were being shifted from areas like manufacturing and services to the financial sector and more and more investments were being made in the economies and infrastructures of other countries at the expense of our own and our trade deficits and foreign debt ballooned.  

But naturally, the rat bastards running the show never mentioned into whose pockets all that perceived wealth was flowing or where a large portion of it derived from, which was of course through picking the pockets of the ordinary citizens to make up for the loss of traditional revenues that they had failed utterly to maintain.  To a large degree, all they were doing... all they've CONTINUED to do, really... was/is shifting more of the existing domestic wealth upward and then pointing to obscenely bloated profits for the various industries involved as "proof" that the economy was doing great in their hands.

That's the status quo that the Republicans, the traitorous Blue Dogs, the right wing talking heads and the corporate controlled agenda driven M$M are fighting to maintain.  The conservation and improvement of the "lifestyles of the rich and famous" is now pretty much the ultimate national goal for an entire country and the main purpose for existence of the vast majority of its 300 million people.

Can anything be done?  Who knows?  That's going to depend on how many people WANT to do anything.  The predators have still got a pretty good sized chunk of the fat and complacent middle class to gnaw through. It's going to take these docile and compliant little sheep a while to realize that the wolves are simply eating their way through the food chain from the bottom up and that the middle class is also destined to be lunch.  May be too late by then, if it isn't already and Orwell may well have had it pegged except in his estimate of how long it would take them.

By the way, has anyone ever done a study directly comparing the costs to the Canadian government in delivering universal health care to it's citizens... to the overall costs to the public in our own system?  In other words, does the Canadian system pay more in taxes to support his/her health care system that the average American pays in increased costs for services, the maintenance of current profit levels for health care providers and insurers, "rewards" to upper level executives in all sectors of the industry, increased drug prices, lobbying, AND the amount of service provided to indigents and the uninsured at taxpayer expense anyway... for a system in which far from having universality, 40-50 million people are unable to afford adequate coverage or indeed any coverage at all?

Just wondering.

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheyGaveUsARepublic-FrontPage/~3/cUSSlETwIrU/resta
ting-the-obvious

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Restating The Obvious

There was a chart in one of my email news feeds a couple of days ago that compared the performance of the health care systems in the US and Canada, Canada being the example the corporate lackeys in our congress haul out most often to brag about the fantastic health care we receive here in comparison to other countries.

The US lags Canada in every single metric.  I can't tell you if different methods of measurement are applied in the two countries or anything of that nature but I would tend to think not in this case.  It would need to have been reconciled as to statistical methods to be a direct comparison to have any meaning at all and I suspect that was the case.

But anyway, the point they're trying to make is that our health care SYSTEM is not as great as the health care INDUSTRY wants people to believe it is (especially considering the costs involved in delivering services) and Canada's is nowhere near as bad as they make it out to be.  I believe most thinking people understand this but it isn't the thinking people who get all the exposure and air play in the M$M so it doesn't hurt to keep driving the point home.

At one time, we might have HAD the greatest health care system in the world, but that stopped.  It stopped along with just about everything else that made this country truly great at about the time that Ronald Reagan and his behind the curtain controllers launched their war against the poor and/or working class.  That's when they made profit for the corporations and the upward flow of wealth the overriding priorities in the formulation of our economic policies, using deregulation and the dismantling of the regulatory agencies that had made the system at least somewhat workable as their primary tools.  

Since then, virtually the only thing that HASN'T actually suffered is the rate of increase in the incomes of the richest companies and people in the country.  And that increase in the flow of wealth upward means an almost exponential increase in suffering for the ever increasing number of people that are doomed always to be left out of any equation derived by the nobility and their government lap dogs.  Nowhere is this more illustrated than by the current state of health care, which has rightfully become the number one issue facing us today.  

Excessive profits and huge dividends for the corporations and the Wall Street bloodsuckers  do NOT indicate a "booming economy" as we were told we had "enjoyed" every year for eight years, nor do they do anything to make a country great.  Hell, even the herd of orangutans we call congress has to know that, yet they were still telling us that everything was under control three days before Bear Stearns took its dive into oblivion.  (Actually I believe that to be true and that things WERE under their control, but not the way they were trying to spin it.)
A truly robust economy means a general upturn the benefits of which are spread over the population of the country as a whole, NOT just the top 1 to 5 percent while everyone else either stagnates or actually loses ground.  For eight years we were told that our economy was "robust" and that there was more wealth flowing than ever before.  

In the meantime our Gross Domestic Product was either shrinking or undergoing huge decreases in the rate of growth while it's sources of derivation were being shifted from areas like manufacturing and services to the financial sector and more and more investments were being made in the economies and infrastructures of other countries at the expense of our own and our trade deficits and foreign debt ballooned.  

But naturally, the rat bastards running the show never mentioned into whose pockets all that perceived wealth was flowing or where a large portion of it derived from, which was of course through picking the pockets of the ordinary citizens to make up for the loss of traditional revenues that they had failed utterly to maintain.  To a large degree, all they were doing... all they've CONTINUED to do, really... was/is shifting more of the existing domestic wealth upward and then pointing to obscenely bloated profits for the various industries involved as "proof" that the economy was doing great in their hands.

That's the status quo that the Republicans, the traitorous Blue Dogs, the right wing talking heads and the corporate controlled agenda driven M$M are fighting to maintain.  The conservation and improvement of the "lifestyles of the rich and famous" is now pretty much the ultimate national goal for an entire country and the main purpose for existence of the vast majority of its 300 million people.

Can anything be done?  Who knows?  That's going to depend on how many people WANT to do anything.  The predators have still got a pretty good sized chunk of the fat and complacent middle class to gnaw through. It's going to take these docile and compliant little sheep a while to realize that the wolves are simply eating their way through the food chain from the bottom up and that the middle class is also destined to be lunch.  May be too late by then, if it isn't already and Orwell may well have had it pegged except in his estimate of how long it would take them.

By the way, has anyone ever done a study directly comparing the costs to the Canadian government in delivering universal health care to it's citizens... to the overall costs to the public in our own system?  In other words, does the Canadian system pay more in taxes to support his/her health care system that the average American pays in increased costs for services, the maintenance of current profit levels for health care providers and insurers, "rewards" to upper level executives in all sectors of the industry, increased drug prices, lobbying, AND the amount of service provided to indigents and the uninsured at taxpayer expense anyway... for a system in which far from having universality, 40-50 million people are unable to afford adequate coverage or indeed any coverage at all?

Just wondering.

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheyGaveUsARepublic-FrontPage/~3/cUSSlETwIrU/resta
ting-the-obvious

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There's A National Crisis in Our Tattered
Unemployment System, Victim of Tax Cut Mania

This is the legacy of the Reagan era: keep hacking away at vital parts of the safety net so politicians can proclaim they didn't raise taxes. It makes as much sense as selling your car's spare tire and jack.

Republicans used tax cuts as a way to bludgeon Democratic opponents, and instead of making voters understand how vital these government services are, Democrats far too often agreed with the Republicans and raced to cut everything they could. And now, when we need it most, the unemployment system is literally falling apart.

Who could have predicted that if you keep slicing vital services, you wouldn't have them when you need them?

WASHINGTON ? Years of state and federal neglect have hobbled the nation?s unemployment system just as a brutal recession has doubled the number of jobless Americans seeking aid.

In a program that values timeliness above all else, decisions involving more than a million applicants have been slowed, and hundreds of thousands of needy people have waited months for checks.

And with benefit funds at dangerous lows even before the recession began, states are taking on billions in debt, increasing the pressure to raise taxes or cut aid, just as either would inflict maximum pain.

Sixteen states, with exhausted funds, are now paying benefits with borrowed cash, and their number could double by the year?s end.

Call centers and Web sites have been overwhelmed, leaving frustrated workers sometimes fighting for days to file an application.

While the strained program still makes more than 80 percent of initial payments within three weeks ? slightly below the standard set under federal law ? cases that require individual review are especially prone to delay. Thirty-eight states are failing to make those decisions within the federal deadline.

For workers who survive a paycheck at a time, even a week?s delay can mean a missed rent payment or foregone meals.

This is the part of the article that sets my blood boiling:

?Lower tax rates make it easier to attract business,? said Doug Holmes, president of UWC, a group that advocates on behalf of employers. ?We don?t want to spend a whole lot of time beating ourselves up because we didn?t raise taxes enough. Nobody anticipated a recession this size.?

Yeah, nobody except a couple of Nobel Prize-winning economists and a bunch of dirty hippies with computers.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/national-crisis-tattered-unemployment

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Saturday Hate mail-apalooza

Roddy McCorley, in last week's roundup edition of this series, made the following observation in the comments about the hate mail:

The one thing that jumps out at me from all the hate mail is the amount of "arguments" constructed on things like "you probably...", "I bet you...", "I'm sure you...", and the like.  Assumption is piled on supposition, mixed with profanity, and sprinkled with invective, in an endless series of virtuoso displays of muddled thinking.

Hilarious observation.

But this week installment isn't really that much fun, to be honest. With race a sudden hot topic, and with Republicans like Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan stoking racial tensions, you can imagine what's below the fold. The ugliest week yet.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/tar0KGdp9bE/-Saturday-Hate-mail-ap
alooza

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Grassley: Obama Has ‘Said To Me
Privately’ That He Is Willing To Drop A Robust Public Option

On Bloomberg’s Political Capital this weekend, host Al Hunt asked Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) what he thought of the “tone and substance” of President Obama’s press conference this week. Like he has said before, Grassley underscored his opposition to a public health insurance option.

In a call with progressive bloggers a day before the press conference, Obama said he continues to “believe that a robust public option would be the best way to go.” In the press conference itself, Obama said a public option is necessary “to keep the insurance companies honest” and his view that by taking “some of the profit motive out,” you can get a “better deal” for consumers.

But in his interview with Hunt, Grassley claimed that Obama has told him privately that he is willing to consider “reasonable alternatives” to a robust public option:

GRASSLEY: One of the most controversial things we are facing — and one that the House does and Senator Kennedy’s committee does — is bring a government health insurance program into existence. He still spoke highly about that. And that’s not going to get bipartisan support.

And it would have been good if he had said to the entire country what he said to me privately — that he would look to alternatives for that. And we have a very good alternative by going with cooperatives because we’ve known them for 150 years in America. And allowing them to sell health insurance for more competition.

HUNT: Do you think the President could support that?

GRASSLEY: All I can tell you is — but he didn’t say this that night and he should have said it — that he’s looking for reasonable alternatives. And I think we have a reasonable bipartisan alternative in co-ops.

Watch it:

video details and more

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has previously indicated a willingness to support a co-op proposal. But as former Gov. Howard Dean has said, the co-ops would be “too small to compete with the big, private insurance companies.” As Dean notes, co-ops are a solution “for the Senate problem,” but not a fix for “the American problem” of getting affordable coverage for all. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has said that “this co-op idea doesn?t come close to satisfying anyone who wants a public plan.?

Carl McDonald and James Naklicki at Oppenheimer’s Equity Research department write, ?As the co-ops are currently described, we think they would be a big positive for the managed care group, but it seems to us that they would be destined to fail from the moment of creation.? Co-ops would also take decades to set up, according to experts.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/25/grassley-obama-public-plan/

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Bush considered sending troops to Buffalo, NY

Those were different times, right after September 11, but still. This is how great nations descend into... well, something else.

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Americablog/~3/qlOzOQ4JB5A/bush-considered-sending
-troops-to.html

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TPMDC Saturday Roundup

Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele warns that Democratic government intervention in health care will be even worse than the Schiavo case. Huh? That and other political news in today's TPMDC Saturday Roundup.[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/hnWTveYF4eE/tpmdc_saturday_
roundup_24.php

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Open Thread: CSPI is suing Denny's

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is suing Denny's. CSPI wants Denny's to list sodium content of their meals on the menus, and place a warning alongside. 

A number of years ago, CSPI went after Fettuccine Alfredo. This was probably 15 years ago. It was listed as one of the ten worst foods for its fat content. If memory serves, they said something to the effect that eating Fettuccine Alfredo would cause your arteries to clog on the spot.

I've disliked them ever since. 

I stick with my basic position that if tobacco, transfats, salt, alcohol, cell-phones-while-driving, and all the rest are so bad: ban them outright. Make it as illegal to use these things as it is to set off a nuclear device. 

But I don't think that's the answer: legislating these things out of existence is not a good idea.  Take Fettuccine Alfredo. I'll admit, I'm a fan. The butter, the cheese, the comfort. Do I eat it often? No, once, maybe twice a year. Would I be willing to eat ersatz Fettuccine Alfredo? With light cheese and light margarine? OF COURSE NOT! What would be the point? Would I eat it on a regular basis? No. I know my cholesterol would triple. 

The basic point is that rather than legislating, EDUCATE. Teach people that if they eat well most of the time, a plate of fettuccine,  or a slice of cake, or even a transfat laden donut won't hurt them on a rare occasion. 

I believe in government action to make the world better, not to tell me how to think.

So here's the Saturday afternoon open thread question set:

• Do you think the government should tell you what to eat?
• Do you have a "guilty pleasure" food? 
• And finally - it's a beautiful afternoon - why aren't you outside working off that guilty pleasure food?

Read The Full Article:
http://www.Demconwatchblog.com/diary/2075/open-thread-cspi-is-suing-dennys

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Here's one tip I've been meaning to offer to
caregivers for declining elders

by Ken

Earlier today I mentioned that I've written a bunch of initial drafts of never-finished posts based on my trip to Florida last month for my mother's 90th birthday. The one I most regret not being able to complete had the working title:

TIP FOR CAREGIVERS FOR THE ELDERLY

Here's as much as I actually wrote in the most extended draft. (Note that "my journey into the Land of Aging and Decline" refers not to my trip to Florida, as one might easily presume given the present context, but my experience trying to help my mother since she suffered -- and survived! -- a brain hemorrhage 13 years ago, only a couple of years after my stepfather's merciful death ended the five years or so she had spent as sole caregiver to an Alzheimer's sufferer, with no resources beyond Social Security and a small amount of savings.)

TIP FOR CAREGIVERS FOR THE ELDERLY

I sure haven't learned much from my journey into the Land of Aging and Decline. One thing you have to stop being constantly surprised by is that you've ventured into a territory where everyone you deal with, by virtue of dealing with the subject on a daily basis, knows everything about it and you know nothing. The people you deal with will generally fall into one of three categories:

* Many of them simply forget the knowledge gap and simply assume that you know what they do. In my (admittedly abject) experience, the chances aren't good of correcting this misimpression -- it usually seems as if they've "forgotten" for good reason. Nevertheless, it's worth pointing out that they are masters of this universe while you are a pathetic ignorant wretch and throw yourself at their mercy. I don't recall that it ever worked for me, but you never know.

* And then there are the sharps who know perfectly well that they've got you over a knowledge barrel and take full advantage of it.

* And then, every once in a while, you encounter someone who understands exactly what it's like to be in your position and offers up his/her (more likely her) knowledge. Take merciless advantage. Some of what you're told could be (a) correct and (b) useful.

I did promise you an actual tip, though, and here it is.

Growing old is another of those walks of life where a sharp separation is enforced between Them What Can Pay and Them What Can't. You can't change the ultimate destination, but at every step along the way it makes the most astounding difference if you can pay to cushion the trip. Assuming you're in the overcrowded bus, or perhaps troop transport, with the rest of us who can't buy our way through, however, and assuming your loved one reaches the all-too-common point where you have to find full-time care for him/her, you may think you have no choice but to submit to the horror of a Medicaid application to cover the cost of a nursing home.

I know, I know, you don't want to hear the words "nursing home." Again, if you're really loaded, your experience of nursing homes is going to be different, but for most of us, while there are undoubtedly worse and less worse ones, it's the ultimate betrayal of the loved one, consigning him/her to warehousing. I know, because I had reached that point, I thought, and I went through those Medicaid application horrors.

EXAMPLE OF MEDICAID APPLICATION HORRORS

My mother is, or was (she isn't so much now, alas), the kind of person who years ago, I guess after my stepfather died, dug deep into her pretty bare pockets to fund a "pre-needs" contract with a funeral home that should cover all the costs associated with that inevitable eventuality, thereby sparing my ever having to negotiate all of that. I bless her for it. (And there's no point being sentimentally superstitious about it. It's not as if there's some way she's going to avoid making use of the deal.) However, when it comes to a Medicaid application, you discover, unless such a contract is clearly indicated as being "irrevocable," it qualifies as -- and I hope you're ready for this, because I sure wasn't -- an asset! Because, you see, you could cash it in. And I guess you could.

This is where it helps to realize you're not the first person who's traveled down this path. Of course the funeral home has encountered this before, and is familiar with the form for making the contract (ta-da!) irrevocable. It's just that when you're 1500 miles away, and doing the paperwork by fax, which in turn is being faxed to the hospice case worker who then has to fax it on the state agency screening the application for pre-approval

Oh wait, I guess I didn't mention that by the time of the Medicaid application my mother had already been recommended for hospice care, and I now actually had people on my team

The draft breaks off there, and I'm guessing it broke off because (a) I felt uncomfortable burdening readers with that degree of personal detail unlikely to be of interest to anyone not involved, and, worse, (b) I realized I still hadn't gotten to the damned tip!

Now, by choosing to withhold most of the personal detail, I may have left room for misunderstanding. A commenter commented on my post:

You stated

I took my frenzied two-day trip to Florida to help celebrate my mother's 90th birthday in the little assisted-living facility where she will probably live out her days

congratulations to your mom for making it to 90. You and she must be very wealthy.

I started writing a reply to the commenter, and eventually realized that I was covering the missing material from that old draft post. Here's what I wrote:

I'll take that as a friendly comment. You would have no way of knowing, nor is there any reason why you should care, the financial ordeal we've been through in recent years, or how much debt I've racked up.

I will just say that there's no way my mother, like so many seniors, could have survived without Medicare, which I'm here to tell one and all is a government program that works right well.

If you think being able to afford such a nice ALF is a sign of riches, then you should know that my mother many years ago made the decision to take out a long-term home health care insurance policy. It cost her money she could ill afford, but it went on to provide her with some form of home care when the need arose, as it has more or less continuously in the last dozen years. It's that insurance policy that is now paying for the ALF.

One of the pieces I started drafting and haven't been able to finish yet contains a couple of tips for the caregivers of elders. One of these was that if the person in question has LTC insurance, it's possible that the policy will cover an ALF, and there are now quite small ones where residents may receive the kind of individual attention my mother does in hers.

Now the first point I want to call attention to here is how totally Medicare has been woven into my mother's later years -- as indeed it was in my late stepfather's, though it offered essentially no help with the Alzheimer's ordeal. In the course of the debate on health care reform, there has been a certain amount of sneering about Medicare, and also -- I'm relieved to say -- occasional loud and proud declarations of how completely Medicare has transformed the experience of being old in the U.S. My folks also relied on their Medigap supplementary policies, but without Medicare there would have been nothing to supplement.

And then, finally, there's the tip: If your cared-for elder had the foresight to take out an LTC policy, check the policy and check with your insurer to see whether "home health care" benefits may be payable if the insured person's home becomes an assisted-living facility. It wasn't till I'd been through the nightmare of assembling all the materials for the Medicaid application -- and that was with the invaluable assistance of the hospice case worker (I don't think I could ever have done it on my own) -- that somebody mentioned this possibility to me, while also mentioning this new breed of non-warehouse-type ALFs (as far as I'm concerned, the traditional ones aren't much better than nursing homes). Our insurance company confirmed that a properly accredited ALF would indeed qualify, and the hospice social worker happened to know about this splendid one.


POSTSCRIPT

Yes, I guess we were lucky again to have the assistance of the hospice case worker and social worker. All you have to do to get that is have your doctor give up hope for your recovery, which my mother's doctor did in February 2008. I guess luck comes in many forms.

I hope the above tip (and perhaps also the testimony on behalf of Medicare) will be of help to someone somewhere. I might have gotten to it sooner if I'd been able to process the overriding reality of the trip to Florida, which is that I still don't know whether my mother knew that was me there.
#


Read The Full Article:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2009/07/heres-one-tip-ive-been-meaning-to-off
er.html

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