BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 01:40 PM

Health care reform is fine- BUT that does not mean that THIS health care reform is.

I'll wait for one that the people voting on it actually bother to read.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 01:38 PM

Ok. I'm convinced. I'll continue to go without any access to health care and die an early death, but at least I won't be in any danger of anything going wrong with my health care. (!)

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 01:36 PM

"Somebody summed up ObamaCare very neatly. In an e-mail that was forwarded to me, it said: "Let me get this straight. We're going to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose head said he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that didn't read it but exempts them from abiding by it, signed by a President who smokes and is also exempted, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that's nearly broke. What could possibly go wrong?" "

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bprelutsky/2009/08/27/re-arranging-the-deck-chairs-on-the-titanic/

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Greg F.
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 12:43 PM

No, this immigration fixation is just his personal hobbyhorse. Perhaps he should re-establish the Know Nothing Party.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 12:41 PM

No, we don't think that way here. We really do believe we're the best, and we consider anger the appropriate response to any challenges to that belief. And we have guns to back it up.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 12:39 PM

I suppose the fact that so few Americans ever go abroad is a factor in enabling people to believe the USA is "the greatest country on Earth", superior in every way.

Except that if they really did believe that to be the case I rather suspect there wouldn't be this touchiness about the suggestion that it ain't always the case. The response to any such suggestion would be one of amusement rather than anger.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 12:13 PM

Yes...I know this. What is the relevance? Are we supposed to intuit that 'strict immigration restrictions' are required for good health?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 11:35 AM

"Japan has about the lowest per capita health care costs among the advanced nations of the world, and its population is the healthiest."

                And Japan has very strict immigration restrictions.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 11:25 AM

To be fair, there are some problems with the Japanese system in some areas....but the basic model seems like one that should be studied for general approach.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 11:21 AM

I just ran onto this article from the New York Times: (I added the bold type)


"Japan has about the lowest per capita health care costs among the advanced nations of the world, and its population is the healthiest. That is largely due to lifestyle factors, such as low rates of obesity and violence, but the widespread availability of high-quality health care is also important. Everyone in Japan is covered by insurance for medical and dental care and drugs. People pay premiums proportional to their income to join the insurance pool determined by their place of work or residence. Insurers do not compete, and they all cover the same services and drugs for the same price, so the paperwork is minimal. Patients freely choose their providers, and doctors freely choose the procedures, tests and medications for their patients.

Reimbursement rates to doctors and hospitals are negotiated and set every two years. The fees are quite low, often one-third to one-half of prices in the United States. Relatively speaking, primary care is more profitable than highly specialized care, so Japanese doctors face different incentives than U.S. doctors. As a result, the Japanese are three times more likely than Americans to go to the doctor, but they receive many fewer surgical operations. "

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 09:30 AM

The other thing they appeal to is peoples' egos. That's a big part of it and is the reason people in this country are so attached to the idea that we have the best everything and are the best everything in the world. I would say that ego is probably even more powerful of a lever than greed or selfishness, and equally powerful as fear.

We may be more intelligent than monkeys, but we still have our little reptilian brain buried inside of the rest of our brain. The reptilian brain has the ability to override the more sophisticated brain in quite a lot of people, apparently, especially when our fears and our egos are being targeted. And it helps to start the brainwashing when we are very young. That way, people have no frame of reference other than that created by the brainwashing, so they don't even know that there are other possible ways of seeing things. All they know is what they've been brainwashed to think.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 07:54 AM

Little Hawk, your analogy of a monkey in a cage is right on and more and more I find myself in agreement with CarolC. I also understand how a propaganda program can warp peoples minds. International borders are but artificial barriers to isolate people of the world. One reason that the monkey accepts and even welcomes the cage is a belief that the bars protect him from those on the outside. 911 scared the monkey into demanding an even stronger cage. Patriotism and religion have used similar tactics throughout the ages to control the populace, so brainwashing goes back for eons.
However, we are surely more intelligent than monkeys, but often I wonder........?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 01:48 AM

You're absolutely right, Carol, and there is your answer, Sandy.

The corporate-controlled mass media in the USA are in the business of moulding public opinion all the time. They do so by slanted and misleading coverage which creates a general impression in the minds of millions of Americans that any kind of "socialism" is dangerous and evil, and keeps them misinformed and ignorant of what is really happening to them and all around them.

It's very much like the society George Orwell envisioned in "1984", only it's being done through a vigorous capitalist marketing mode rather than a dour form of quasi-Stalinism. People can far more easily be snared through mass marketing by targeting their greed, their selfishness, and their self-indulgence.

Consumer marketing and the glitzy modern "news" shows are a far more effective means of brainwashing a people than having red flags hung all over the place, big military parades, and long lines waiting at a few stores for a miserably poor selection of goods. ;-)

That's why one corrupt system (Soviet Communism) eventually fell to another equally corrupt system (western mass marketing by increasingly enormous corporate entities in a few wealthy hands).

It's clever. You snare people through their own desires for convenience, shallow entertainment, sexual titillation, addictions, and lots of cheap consumer goods (made in China), and you feed them an endless diet of absolutely unreal views on their own society and the world.

You convince the monkey in the cage that there is no cage by giving him lots of food and lots of toys and plenty of distractions. You tell the monkey that OTHER monkeys in other places around the world are worse off than he is! (It's a lie, but he'll believe it, because he's PROUD to be an American monkey living in the "greatest country on Earth".) He wants to believe it.

You appeal to his patriotism and zenophobia and the self-doubts that lurk under his facade of proud certainty about his country being "the best in the world".

He is already eager to believe that no one else in the world could possibly have as good a health care system as the USA....so he will just get angry if he is presented with strong evidence of superior health care in Canada or the UK. He'll deny it. He'll change the channel and find some other program that tells him what he wants to hear, and that's all he'll listen to.

That's how the Nazis did it too. That's how they bamboozled millions of Germans into fighting most of the world. They just fed them a daily diet of super-patriotism, fear, and disinformation. That's how ANY such lying system does it. By a constant flow of disinformation through the mass media.

It works. The majority of people are fooled by such a propaganda program...until things get REALLY bad (as they did for the Germans from about mid-1944). Things have not yet gotten REALLY bad in the USA. Somewhat bad for a fairly large number of people, yes...REALLY bad for a minority of people...but not REALLY bad for just about everyone.

That is what it would take to wake the monkey up to the fact that he's been had, and THEN he'd see the bars and he'd realize he's living in a cage.

By then it would probably be too late. It certainly was for the Germans.

People who object to the above analogy because the USA at present is not equivalent to Nazi Germany will be missing my point entirely. I'm not saying it's equivalent to Nazi Germany. The analogy is not meant to be taken in literal all or nothing terms. It is an analogy of a certain harmful direction that any society can move in through a flow of false propaganada, that's all, and these things happen by degrees. They happen a bit at a time. And they don't necessarily happen exactly the same way as they did in some other historical case, because every situation is unique to its own time and circumstances.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 12:09 AM

I would say the reason is the very powerful and effective propaganda machine we have here in the US.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 12:06 AM

As a Canadian who has lived most of his life under universal health care I can not comprehend why anyone would want a private insurance for hundreds of dollars a month. I have many American friends and relatives and know them to be an intelligent and compassionate people. Why are they so blindly stupid on this issue?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 11:34 PM

Oh, we would definitely be here. If that weren't the case, we would have had universal health care long before immigration from Mexico was perceived as a problem in this country. The problem is that the insurance cartels make a lot of money off of denying care to those who need it and they don't want anyone cutting in on their action, and we don't have a free and independent media in this country, but rather media that is bought and paid for by big business. It's as simple as that.

On the subject of people who don't care - yes, a lot of them don't realize they very well may be next to lose their health care, although the individual on this thread who is benefiting from socialized health care in the form of medicare is probably not in any danger of losing his health care. Just goes to show that sometimes socialism does a much better job of getting peoples' needs met. The irony, of course, being that that individual believes that socialism is evil. This is especially ironic seeing as how that person has benefited greatly in his life from socialism in the form of at least one job he has held that was paid for by the taxpayers, and his social security and medicare. But brainwashing is a powerful tool, and big business really knows how to use it to help their bottom line.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 11:02 PM

The real problem with healthcare reform in America remains unspoken. Older people see how their government has let them down when it came to stopping illegal immigration. Now they see the demographics changing, and they don't think a bunch of young Hispanics have any interest in supporting a bunch of old white people. It all goes back to Reagan's stupid 1986 amnesty bill. If he'd carried out the inforcement part of the program, we would not be here.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 10:33 PM

But CarolC, one point that Moore stresses is that people who think that they have coverage are being cut off to maximize the corporate bottom line of the HMO's. If they can't find it in their heart to care for others they may at some point find themselves on the outside looking in as well!

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 09:26 PM

The people who care have probably all watched Sicko. Those who haven't watched it probably don't care. After all, they've got theirs, so why should they care?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 09:20 PM

Early in this thread I posted a suggestion that people rent and watch the movie "Sicko" because it addresses almost all of the concerns expressed. I fear that few followed that advice because arguments are long and repetitive and highly uninformed. On YouTube there are many parts of Sicko available for watching without any cost or much bother. In his movie Michael Moore gives deep and true insight
into the systems in Canada, The USA, Britain, Cuba, France etc.
Please take the time to view a few of them.

SICKO

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 08:35 PM

As if Canadian doctors don't make enough money, for heaven's sake! It's still one of the best paid jobs you can get. I haven't seen a doctor yet around here who wasn't doing just fine financially, thank you very much.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: steve in ottawa
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 08:21 PM

I guess I should also mention: two of my uncles are doctors, both of whom were pissed off at being made into civil servants and both of whom eventually went down to the States. Each returned to Canada within two years of leaving (mostly for social reasons) and still practice medicine here.

Doctors DO make more money in America. But they make enough money in socialized Canadian medicine that their lives are pretty comfortable.

No country can afford to do all that is beneficial to the health of its citizens. But it's pretty obvious from all around the developed world that free basic healthcare is cheaper than the American system, and more effective.

Now if only a few countries had the gumption to demonstrate that protecting some local manufacturing was a good idea...

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: steve in ottawa
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 06:42 PM

The opening weeks of the recent war in Iraq gave me my first glimpse of how the American media could be narrow-minded about some issues. 24 hour coverage, but it was weak, with many facts and points of view were utterly absent. It was the first time I ever noticed a startling difference between American, Canadian, and British television reporting of a major ongoing news story.

Health care? Face it: the billionaire owners of American news media don't want socialized health care. In most countries, that has led to single-tier systems that risk the lives of the wealthy and their dependents. Average Americans suspect it would be much better for most Americans, but when they hear, over and over again from the TV that it's somehow "risky" the average Joe begins to believe: hmmm...it's risky.

The quality of care that is available to rich people in the States is better than what is available to rich people in Canada. Period. Most recently, I heard a story about a CBC reporter who cut her leg in post-Katrina New Orleans and woke up in "a spa" - a near empty, beautifully appointed hospital that her health insurance could afford, but which refused to serve the multitude of injured just outside in the city. The care delivered, overall in Canada, is better AND much cheaper, but NOT for the rich people. Doctors here CANNOT charge extra for procedures that are covered by the public health plans. Yeah, I think it's rotten that we've forced our doctors to become civil servants, but if the alternative is the American system, well, I'd just as soon limit my country to doctors whose greatest goal in life wasn't to make as much money as possible.

Bureaucracy? The bureaucracy in a PRIVATE system can lead to $7+ charges to provide a single aspirin. And that DOESN'T include the cost of the middleman - the private insurance company. PUBLIC systems are simply MORE efficient. The billionaire-owned US media tries to say the reverse is true.

From Sept. 2009 Harper's Index:
Percentage change since 2002 in average premiums paid to large U.S. health-insurance companies : +87
Percentage change in the profits of the top ten insurance companies : +428
Chances that an American bankrupted by medical bills has health insurance : 7 in 10
Portion of its membership that Washington State's subsidized health plan intends to lose this year : 1/3
Average percentage by which it is raising premiums in order to do so : 70

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 06:10 PM

$12,000???? Good lord!

In Canada about 10% of our yearly federal budget covers health care. That means I paid about $750 in taxes last year to get FULL health coverage for a whole year under the Canadian system. I got all hospital, doctor, and medical care FREE for a year after paying just $750 out of my income tax for my share of national health care.

Compare that to the $12,000 Carol and JtS had to spend for a year's policy with a high deductible and co-pay in the USA.

And there, in a nutshell, is the difference. Americans are being robbed. (and a great many of them apparently don't even know it)

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 05:57 PM

We paid about $12,000 in premiums the last year we had insurance. And that was for a policy with a high deductible and co-pay.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Peace
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 04:15 PM

CarolC: you NOT having health care available to you is inhuman, imo. Makes me sick to my stomach. In some ways I think that we take it for granted here. And we shouldn't. I really do think the only way to get it will be to have sit-ins in hospitals and clinics a la '60s. Cops carrying away thousands of people and court systems tied up like there's no tomorrow.

I have often mentioned Thomas Clement Douglas (Tommy Douglas in Canada, because he was always Tommy even when he was the Premier of saskatchewn or a Member of the House of Commons) who 'forced' Medicare on Canadians. He fought for it for years. Never gave up.

When my late nephew died (leukemia) there was no way his mom and dad could have handled the payment that would have been due were it not for Medicare. The final 'bill' (Quebec used to--and maybe still does--send out a bill with the amount owing as $0.00 regardless of the cost. That was also itemized on the bill. His treatments came to a little over $500,000 if I recall correctly.)

Asking ordinary people to come up with that kind of cash is unconscionable, as is the lack of Universal Health Care in the USA. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but people MUST firm their resolve and force the US Government to institute a Medicare program, free to those who cannot pay and maybe $1000/year to cover a family. I have heard complaints from single folks who say that having to pay about $700/year when families only pay about $1000 is unfair. That type of thinking usually doesn't last much longer than an illness. THEN the lights go on. In the course of my life I have paid about $20,000 in premiums for Medicare. Just looking at cost/benefit: The hip alone would have run me $7000. Three emergency surgeries at about $5000 each = $15000. Long stay in hospita about $3000. Various other visits including a few broken bones and a knife wound about $2000. I don't really need to do the math to see that either $700 or $1000/year is a bargain. For those who seldom use hospitals, well, they helped my nephew. And members of my family who didn't use theirs helped someone else.

I know you are fighing for it and I know you'll win. Eventually. Keep it up. It's right, and that's what really matters.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 03:01 PM

I suspect, Carol, that Doctor Day was given substantial remuneration by American insurance company lobbyists after having been told exactly what kind of testimony would result in him receiving the promised rewards...and what NOT to say about the Canadian health care system. (meaning: the truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing but the truth)

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 12:59 PM

I'm guessing a lot of the Canadian doctors who come to the US to make more money are feeling a little disappointed in their decision these days. It's getting harder every day for doctors to get reimbursed by insurance companies and there are far fewer people these days who can afford frivolous cosmetic surgery.

The second to last doctor I had before I lost access to health insurance dropped all of his patients who couldn't pay cash (ie: all of his patients who relied on private insurance to pay for their care). He said the insurance companies didn't pay enough for him to justify keeping those kinds of patients. His plan was to just take patients who could pay cash for their botox treatments and their breast implants, and things like that. Since the economy went down the tube, I'm guessing he's wishing he had some of his old patients again. Of course, a lot of those people probably no longer have insurance because they got laid off or their insurance company dropped them because they got sick.

If things keep going as they have been in the US lately, most likely US doctors are going to start migrating to Canada so they can make more money than they can here.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Peace
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 12:47 PM

The wait time depends on the medical problem that the patient has. I waited six months for a hip replacement. Not bad considering I'd needed on for about ten years, and I was able to have it done by a doc who'd done literally hundreds in the course of his career. A person with the sniffles may have to wait a week, by which time the sniffles are usually gone.

People who oppose public health care (read universal) don't HAVE facts. It's anecdotal stuff and not really worth much. Opinions are like . . . .

A definite problem in Canada is the number of doctors who go to the US because they can make more money. I'm aware that medical degrees are expensive, but then any degree is expensive. Mine (B Ed) cost me about $120,000. That's what I would have made had I kept working at the job I had (sales). That was 25 years ago. The schooling was only $4500/year. It's become about money for most folks. And that includes doctors. Too bad.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 12:37 PM

I've been on the road for a few weeks, and I haven't had time to read what's been posted since I left. Has anyone posted any documentation to back up the accusations about ACORN and the unions?

Saying that at any given time 1 or 2 million Canadians are waiting for care is a pretty meaningless thing to say. What the doctor apparently didn't say is how long they've been waiting. 1 or 2 million waiting for care is a perfectly reasonable number if they made their appointments yesterday and are waiting until tomorrow to receive care. The doctor doesn't specify if those waiting are waiting the same amount of time people wait here in the US or if they're having to wait a significantly longer period of time. Looks to me like Dr. Day is being very dishonest.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 12:11 PM

Probably because most people are almost incapable of not responding to something that pushes their emotional buttons. ;-D

And that is what drives contentious threads to several hundred posts.

Ever seen 2 dogs barking at one another? Which one will stop first? And how soon? And what will be achieved by it?

Anything useful? ;-)

****

Don Firth - You have misinterpreted what I meant when I said, "It's a no-win scenario. (Unless you are the Oligarchy.)"

What I meant was that if we (people in general) waste our own energy just blaming other people for everything that's wrong and attacking other people in various hurtful ways....then THAT is a no-win situation for everyone except the Oligarchy. The Oligarchy benefits from our disunity and mutual hostility.

I did not mean that we are living in a no-win situation. I meant that being addicted to attacking and fighting with each other instead of doing something positive with our time...THAT is a no-win situation.

There are always good solutions available for people who are willing to be positive. There is no good solution for someone who lives to condemn, attack others, and express hatred.

In this respect, I am very much in agreement with Obama's typical philosophical approach to things (his rhetoric, I mean). I'm not necessarily in agreement with some of his recent decisions in foreign and domestic policy.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Greg F.
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 08:27 AM

If I hadn't read the post, why would I have responded to it?

Because you're a jackass???

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 11:12 PM

Once again, Reagan is the problem!

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: DougR
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 08:08 PM

"Meanwhile the right wing is playing hardball and urging people to violently overthrow the government, etc, etc."

Horse pucky! Some evidence proving that statement would be appreciated.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: DougR
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 07:59 PM

McGrath: If I hadn't read the post, why would I have responded to it? Perhaps I Misread the post.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 07:58 PM

""While the kettle is calling the frying pan "black" or a "socialist fascist tyrant"""

One of the finest oxymorons of all time, with the accent on the "moron".

Don T

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: romanyman
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 06:53 PM

until the over the pond brigade stand up and say no, i aint payin, refuse to take out medical insurance so the money dries up, and insurance companies go bust, and cant afford no back handers to the politicos,they will soon wonder who is right, but hey it will never happen, so best stop moanin and pay up,

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don Firth
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 02:31 PM

"It's a no-win scenario. (Unless you are the Oligarchy.)"

That sounds pretty defeatist to me, Little Hawk. You're not suggesting that we just throw up our hands and give up, are you? Have you nothing a bit more positive to suggest?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Peace
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 01:55 PM

McG of H is right, imo.

The 'right' is somewhere next to John Birch and the 'left' is right next to Bush. The average "don't look too good" from here.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 01:53 PM

That actually does appear to be Obama's approach.   The downside is that it can involve giving too much away. The halfway position between a liberal conservative (such as Obama) and extreme rightwingers is not going to be a moderate position in any normal sense of the word.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 11:53 AM

There you go again :) Little Hawk - and others - you give them way too much credit.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 01:24 AM

A day without irrational fear would be wonderful. A week without it far better. A year without it much better yet. I'm all for it. People who do not fear one another are people who can find common ground and get along reasonably.

Yes, Donuel, there are a few very dangerous people on the Far Right who have been duped or pandered to by the Divide and Conquer strategy....and there are fanatical and self-righteous prats (if I may use the British slang term which means a very fatuous person) on the Left who have been duped or pandered to by the Divide and Conquer strategy too. Each serves as a lightning rod for the other...almost a symbiotic relationship, but in a very destructive symbiosis.

It is in the interests of the great Divide and Conquer strategy to keep those people fighting with each other ever more viciously and hatefully and encourage them toward every possible form of character attack, provocation, mutual contempt, and even outright violence. The harder the pot of discontent and division boils in the nation, the easier it is for the Oligarchs at the top to tighten the screws and reduce people's civil rights and move in the direction of authoritarian rule.

They deliberately encourage divisions, hatreds, accusations, and every form of emotional negativity through sensational and provocative media coverage.

It's exactly like putting on a WWF wrestling match. The intent is to get the public very excited, angry, fearful, emotional, and in a mood for a good fight. Don't be surprised that a few genuinely crazy and violent people show up at ringside. It's inevitable that they would. That's the nature of the show that is being put on. It instigates anger and violent emotions.

To make peace, you must yourself BECOME peaceful and constructive. You must become the person you would wish others to be. That is your point of real power in changing the world...not to change others, but to change yourself.

And I'm not singling you out in any way when I say that, Donuel. I am simply speaking in general terms about the crucial choice that faces each one of us every day of our lives. We have the choice to become the positive changes we wish to see in the world...or to change nothing by wasting our own energy just blaming "the other guy" for everything that's wrong and attacking other people in various hurtful ways. As long as we do that...then war (on some level) is what we will get...and suffering is what will result.

It's a no-win scenario. (Unless you are the Oligarchy.)

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 12:37 AM

Little Hawk feels that playing the public off one another with fear is a divide and conquer strategy. He asks how great it would be if we both dropped our fears.

Perhaps we all need a fearless day proclamation.

But in the meantime the right wing is playing hardball and urging people to violently overthrow the goverment and pointing out that the best way to do that is to strike at the heart of the national socialism that has taken over the United States.

The right feels as though their militia and reverence toward the use of their guns makes them proud right wing terrorists...

IN FACT a man stood up at a town hall meeting in PA yesterday in front of Republican Congressman Hesh and shouted "I am a proud right wing terrorist" and the Congressmen quickly repoid "Now there is a proud and brave American!" followed by other remarks of admiration.

I would not have thought I would hear Republicans proudly embrace Terrorists at a town hall meeting.



The game of terrorizing politicians and viewing audiences with these antics is orchestrated and prescribed by Dick Morris, Congressmen and Clear Channel jocks. But suppose there is a crazy out there who does not see this as a scare tactic but as a heroic action?

Playing with fire over health care is ironic don't you think??????

Especially in a country as sick as America is right now. I say sick because there are now counter voices to the chanting for death.   
Where is Colin Powell
Where is Oprah"
Where is today's Walter Chronkite to tell people what they need to know instead of what they want to know?



While the kettle is calling the frying pan "black" or a "socialist fascist tyrant" the administration has kept its cool wonderfully.
Keep it up. Even if you have to keep secret the fact that there are 5 times more threats intercepted by the Secret Service as well as actual crazies who take a shot. Such reporting inspires copy cats and emboldens cowards who have no self worth.


Now lets all proclaim 9-11 as a day without irrational fear of any kind. Lets prove the terrorists did not win!

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 12:19 AM

Yes, Doug, I know Dennis Kucinich has no chance of becoming the USA's president. Naturally. He's an honest man who works for the general public, not for the corporations and banks.

Why would I be surprised that he has no chance to be elected as your president? What does surprise me a bit now and then is that he is still alive...but I guess he's just not a big enough threat to the powers that be that they would consider him necessarily "expendable" at the moment.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Greg F.
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 12:16 AM

It's best to read a post before responding to it, Doug.

Never has. Never will.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 09:15 PM

Peace - Ralph Nader was right about a whole lot of things, and it looks like he was spot-on about health care, but in America you can't get elected if you "ain't got the do re mi."

                   Sad, ain't it!

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 08:04 PM

It's best to read a post before responding to it, Doug. That Sen. Hatch quote was specifically identified by Donuel as being part of a satirical piece in The Onion, not as a genuine quote.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: DougR
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 07:52 PM

Donuel: You personally heard Sen. Hatch say that, or did you read it on a blog?

L.H.: The one politician you respect down south, the Congressman from Cleveland, has about the same chance of becoming president as Greg F. has.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Alice
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 07:51 PM

Jack, I hope you have a speedy recovery.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Peace
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 07:12 PM

Ralph Nader on Health Care. (His 2008 candidate position.)