America the FREE--as long as you can PAY for it

A friend of mine wrote me a heartfelt email about his mother, who is in assisted living. He writes,

My brothers and I are a bit wide-eyed right now in we thought our parents would do okay until they died, and now my mother and stepfather are each in assisted living. My mother's breathing is so bad, her care costs $14,000 a MONTH. She'll run out of easy cash in a few months, so we're trying to sell her house. None of us expected this, and my mother always said, "Don't worry about me. I have long-term disability insurance that will pay for 24-hour nursing at my house, if necessary. She's been paying on it for years. It turns out it'll pay up to $80 a day. You can't get hotels for that anymore. $2400 a month is not close to $14,000.

People like to think they're prepared for the future. We also liked to think we couldn't have another depression but that looks like a possibility now, too, due to the massive fraud, greed, governmental debt, lack of oversight, and just all around corruption.

In Australia all her needs would be taken care of--at home if she wanted. If you're sick or in an accident in Australia, they not only take care of you, they clean your house, cook your meals, take care of your kids.

But, according to my Republican friend, this is the terrible socialist big government we must avoid at all costs (let's not get into the reality of how Republicans create the biggest, most expensive governments, while cutting taxes to also create the biggest, most dangerous deficits--they like to have their cake and eat it too--while sending the bill to their children and grandchildren).

My Republican friend and I are having email debates, yet we're not convincing each other, because he's sure he's right.

Of course, I'm sure I'm right, too, which only makes me doubt myself--but I don't know if he ever doubts himself. He's SO sure, which is nice for him.

To him, socialism is bad. Bad. Bad. so bad you must repeat the word three times at least. Don't get into details of the difference between a socialist regime and democratic socialism, the whole idea of government helping people is a "nanny state' and is bad, unless they're spending trillions on defense, in which case it's a "daddy state" and it's good. This doesn't make sense to me--but then, I don't have all the answers and I'm not always right. Even so, it does seem hypocritical, doesn't it?

I chalk up a lot of this kind of "total assurance of the truth" to many religions, which teachers people from an early age that they are in the "right" religion, that God is on "their" side if they just follow the rules set up by the very political money and power bureaucracy that is the church. It's not just destructive, it causes many people to stop thinking for themselves--they don't have to, they've ceded their power to someone else ("a higher power" which is all fine and good if you're talking about true spirituality, but sad and empty if you're talking about organized religion, which, after all, is just a bunch of people.)

So here, in our "free country" it's free as long as you can pay for it. And my friend's mother worked all her life and paid for it--or thought she did.

Now she and her children find out now that the coverage she's paid for has profited the insurance company rather than her. And multiple families loses because of it--through worry about how to pay for it, and though the actual loss of the accrued work of their forebears.

The Republicans spout off about inheritance tax, calling it the "death tax." In reality, an estate of less than $3.5 million doesn't have this tax, so only few people pay it.

In the mean time, this shattering REAL "death tax" is that each generation is losing what the previous one built so they can pay for their care and death. That's so deeply wrong.

So don't let your fear of a word like "socialism" cloud the issue, that Americans are being bled dry by a government that does NOT help them, and would be far better off paying higher taxes to support a government that DID. A government that would help them even when they couldn't afford to help themselves.

That's the dirty little secret of socialism--it helps everyone, even when they can't pay for it. Geez, that's clearly not the way in the home of the free, is it? If you can't pay, it must be your fault and you must suffer. Right? You don't want to help no stinking loser who hasn't helped themselves.

And all that's OK, because it'll never happen to you, because you're prepared. You've paid all your life to make sure you're prepared. Right?

Except, as in the case of my friend's mother, who was a church-going, hard-working, well-compensated successful woman. She was as prepared as she could be--just as you may be. And when circumstances change, and all your work and investment and preparation isn't what you thought, isn't what all the experts told you it would be, then do you want to suffer, to have your family lose everything? Or do you want a government of good socialism to help?

That is your choice, after all. Because we still live in a democracy. Where you talk to your representatives and tell them what's important to you, whether it's "lower taxes no matter what," or "let's do what we can to help make people really taken care of."

Because, in the end, you may be the one who needs taking care of. You don't know. So it's good to have a social safety net, even if it's called socialism.

The Republican NAME GAME - it's not a serious debate

If you read the comments of my previous post, you'll see a response from my "Republican friend." He asked for an open dialog of ideas, and presented his, which included calling Obama the Messiah, and repeating the word "Sociamism" as if it was some horrifying specter that was casting a dark cloud over democracy, as if eight years of Fascism and true undermining of the constitution hadn't been the real culprit.

I'm fine with an open dialog of ideas, which is why I posted his reply, and am now debating his points.

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Why is it, that when Republicans let corporations control the country, give them massive tax breaks and also funnel billions to them--the very definition of FASCISM, this is somehow OK.

But when Democrats advance a stimulus package which is not all that different, except it includes more support for individuals, and government oversight to prevent 20 billion from being given away to a few in Bonuses--TWENTY BILLION--that money could build countless schools, bridges, homes... suddenly, that's "socialism." ?

I'd rather have socialism than fascism any day, because at least in socialism it's the citizens in control, not the corporations, and the citizens who benefit, not just a few high up in the corporate and financial food chain--like royalty--while most of the people in the country suffer the greatest depression since 1929.

Socialism is, in fact, far more democratic than Fascism--which by definition strips the people of their power and rights.

Why is there such a complete double-standard based on who is doing the giving and who it goes to?

When it comes from a Republican president and goes to the same Wall Street wizards who got us into this mess--without oversight--and billions go to a few, that's OK.

But when Detroit automakers want money then the unions and workers are blamed and all asked to take pay CUTS. Pay cuts that amount to less than the money that the Wall Street wizards just stole in unwarranted bonuses taken directly from Federal aid. Or when the money is going to actual infrastructure, the way FDR did SO SUCCESSFULLY in the past, that's socialism--as if it's a dirty word.

Explain to that to me, if you can.

As for this whole "Obama Messiah" NONSENSE, it's absurd, ridiculous, and even insulting. Did anyone call the previous president (who's name I won't mention at your request, but his initial was "W") that after 9/11 when he was going to be our big savior from the rest of the world?

When he was standing for his photo ops aboard aircraft carriers announcing "mission accomplished" and he was our great white hope?

No, you know why? Because Democrats may sometimes be lame, but they aren't childish name-callers. Yet Republicans have, consistently over the years, made personal attacks and resorted to name-calling to Democrats.

As for the so-called Liberal media--they were 100% behind bush, from the time they allowed him to take office without being duly elected to not offering ANY criticism of him for years. Yet did anyone every call him "our fearless leader" or "el Capitan" or any other made up stupid insulting name? No.

When he started a war without probably cause--STARTED a war, a "holy" war, in fact, did anyone call him a savior or messiah, even though his ACTIONS were, in fact, messianic?

We called his words and actions stupid--which they clearly were. That was an actual criticism of his words and actions--not some cutesy slander, or quasi-religious smear, as if anyone thought Obama was greater than God.

To even suggest that is merely playing into the hands of those who want to create fear and hate.

NAME CALLING IS NOT adding to a "serious dialog" as you call it.

And yes, once again, somehow the magical double standard comes into play and if people are merely HOPEFUL that Obama will help--that he is actually TRYING to help, after years of a Government that did nothing but PILLAGING the resources of the country--the treasury and the people, somehow it's not OK to hope and be positive without being mocked as being mindless messiahs.

I take offense at that and don't see it as at all constructive in a serious dialog.

Now--I agree that the Democrats could have TRIED harder, during the previous administration--but, if you will remember, during the "one party" years, Republicans simply shut them out--they weren't even allowed to see legislation before votes, and the Republican majority was such that it didn't matter if all the Democrats banded together to vote against it...

And so, the "blame game" as Republicans LOVE to call it, is apt in this case, because at some point our so-called representatives must take responsibility for their actions, and we are suffering for their actions right now.

Should the Democrats have grown a set and made a fuss--yes, they should have. Should they have tried to use the press as ruthlessly (and effectively!) as the Republicans to get their message across? Yes.

But does that make the Democratic minority, which did not set the agenda or create the rules, into the people to blame? No, and yet now YOU are playing the blame game against them.

Once again, it's a double standard, my friend. Where Republican buzz-words mask the truth behind a wall of words. And they claim the Democrats are "elite" while attending the same schools and using far more sophisticated and utterly calculated linguistics to distort and manipulate. Republicans have been geniuses at manipulating the language in their favor, to the point where they made "liberal," a word our founding fathers found a powerful force for good, into a "dirty word" they sneered at.

As for the individual actions of members of Obama's cabinet--let he who has never had a tax problem throw the first stone. Maybe it's you, in which case, fire away. If we want to start counting the number of scandals among people in the Bush administration then we're going to waste a long time arguing about this. Nobody is perfect--not even Obama, and nobody should expect them to be.

There are real crimes (Blagojevich, Cheney--yes, I must mention him for his war crimes and organized rape of the treasury), and then there are trivial personal ones.

It's time to put things in perspective, stop wasting time on the trivial and start looking at the big stuff.

As for the lobbyists, they are experienced people who worked in previous administrations (from both parties, mind you), and now they've had to sign an agreement that says they won't lobby this administration if they leave--that's the difference between this and previous administrations (of both parties).

You don't not use experienced people simply because they've been a lobbyist, which is the job of choice for former officials. But you do ensure that there is no current conflict of interest, and that in the future they don't use their pull in the same area.

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Socialism. Socialism. Socialism. Sigh. Is that all you've got? You keep clinging to that as if it's the most horrible thing you can think of.

By your definition--there are plenty of happily democratic socialistic countries in the world. Let's include Australia in that--where if you are sick or hurt for any reason your medical bills are taken care of, someone will take care of your kids in your house if you can't do it, and you don't have to worry about going bankrupt because you were injured or sick.

That's GOOD socialism.

Compare that to here, where for-profit insurance companies tell you what medical procedures you can and can't have, where they can reject valid claims for care, and where, often, you simply can't get insurance, so you can lose your house and life savings trying to pay for care that is simply a "right" in every other industrialized nation on the planet. Every one. But ours.

Again--good Socialism.

So stop trying to turn it into a dirty word--it's not.

And, like I said, I'll take socialism over fascism any day. We've had eight years of fascism (much of it out and out unconstitutional), so democratic socialism offer a HUGE IMPROVEMENT to the lives of citizens, and the health and well being of our constitution.

Stop playing the name game, my friend, and start recognizing that at a time like this, when the country and world have been thrown into such serious trouble by the uncontrolled fascist power of a few, the hope and hard work of the many is what's needed. Everybody working together for the common good is good! That's not blind faith or any of the names you're calling it.

It's the American Dream, hard at work again, after 8 years of suffocation.

Bipartisanship - REPUBICANS ARE THE PARTY OF "NO"

A recent piece in the WSJ by that bastion of Truth Justice and the Pharmaceutical way, Rush Limbaugh, suggested that to be truly bipartisan, 46% of the stimulus package should be controlled by him (as if anybody elected him) to give away as tax cuts--starting with corporations.

A Republican friend sent this to me and said "This is funny!" and I replied, "this would be funny if by you mean funny as "something smells funny."

If tax cuts could prevent the current problem, then we wouldn't have it, as Bush did a lot of tax cutting to a lot of people who could well afford the taxes. Didn't help anything but the income of the upper 2%.

If this kind of stimulus bill is so bad, then why is it what Bush and his financial people started-only in their case they started it without any kind of oversight, which has already lead to top CEOs giving themselves millions of dollars while they lay off thousands of people. At least this new bill has some oversight to make sure the money isn't being wasted.

"Supply side" economics has never actually stimulated the economy, it has only taken money from the future and moved it to the present via deficits, which is what Regan created the largest of, until Bush came along.

FDR's plans DID take the country out of the depression by creating work--and creating infrastructure that's still used in this country today. The WPA and CCC and other programs were extremely effective at creating jobs that actually created things the country needed, schools, roads, bridges. Tax cuts build nothing. Create no lasting legacy. If they did, then the Bush years would have been years of growth, rather than recession.

As for corporate tax, that's the joke. In 1960 corporations paid 80% of all the tax in this country--and yet, somehow, they made profits, they hired new workers, and business grew and grew. All that with high corporate taxes.

Now individuals pay 80% of the tax and corporations pay 20%, and corporations complain they can't make a go of it, and their way out is to give millions to the CEOs who ran them into the ground, while firing tens of thousands of employees. That's not about taxes, that's about greed and mismanagement, and, in some cases, the massive corporate burden of a health care system designed for insurance and pharma companies, rather than patients and doctors.

As for bipartisanship--Obama made concessions about tax cuts for the Republicans. And NOT A SINGLE ONE VOTED FOR THE PLAN, WITH THE FEATURES THEY DEMANDED. Not one. That's no bipartisanship. That's counter-productive, playing politics, without a care for their country or constituents. They voted for it when Bush proposed it, but not when Obama did it--with more input from them. That's childish, like little children crying when they don't get their way.

Well, guess what Republican party, you didn't get your way because you made such a horrible mess of things when you got your way--with the one-party system you had for almost eight years.

You messed up as badly as any other president and congress in the history of this country and because we somehow still managed to be a democracy, the citizens, your employers, FIRED YOU.

They voted AGAINST YOU. YOU LOST, REPUBLICANS.

And if you keep up this nonsense of not even voting to help give your employers more time to switch their TVs to digital signals (who votes against that--um, Republicans!), then you are going to lose even more jobs to the point where you're going to have to come up with a whole new name for your party, and a new logo, too.

Because now--the Republican party as become THE PARTY OF "NO."

That's fine if you're consistent about no new taxes and no bigger government. But after eight years of "NO to helping citizens" and YES to helping corporations and billions in handouts to oil companies and trillions in wars, well, you can't have it both ways, my friend. At least not without what's happening now.

So when the Republicans want to be responsible again, and be consistent about smaller government and less spending and balancing the budget, then I'll first say, "Um, where were you for the eight years you ran the country?" and then I'll say, "Great idea, but first don't you think the government has some responsibility for cleaning up the mess it made in the previous 8 years?"

A Letter to a Limbaugh listening, Drudge reading friend

Your home page is the Drudge report. Your car radio is tuned to Limbaugh.

I love you too much to let you know exposing yourself to this kind of misinformation, propaganda, and outright hate speech.

One of my degrees is in journalism, so I have the background and experience to help you learn how to get the real facts, not those hand-picked by any individual or corporation.

I am not pleased with the state of all journalism myself now. It used to require two different sources to state something as fact, but somewhere along the way, someone merely spouting a "rumor of the day" (their actual term for it during an election), got reported as fact, not rumor. The corporate influence on news has been destructive, too, with corporate interests guiding news reporting. From major corporations such as GE owning NBC, to self-avowed right-wing Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch owning Fox news--and now the Wall Street Journal, when corporations skew the news it's part of fascism.

My friend, I know you that you think most major sources are part of the "liberal media" but the facts show no such thing. If they were really liberal they would not have been complicit with Bush during the first 6 years of his presidency--or even the initial election.

If you look at the coverage you will see, in fact, that the so called "media elite" were highly supportive of GWBush until his poll ratings fell so low that the media felt safe pointing out his errors.

Obviously, anchormen like Keith Obermann are overtly liberal in their views--but they are vastly in the minority, given the rise of Australian Rupert Murdoch's empire, including Fox and the WSJ, which has a corporate mandate to be right-wing propaganda tools (I know you will argue with me on this, but you can save your breathe--I know journalism, and Fox is not journalism, it's propaganda).

Murdoch's stated goal is not news, but to forward his personal viewpoints and those that will make him the most money. That is the definition of propaganda.

You're right in saying that Drudge points to a lot of sources. But given that he has a specific political slant, he picks and chooses his stories, which is fine, but you don't get the full picture this way--or by viewing the news through any other single person or corporation's point of view.

With the internet there's no longer any excuse to get your news exclusively from either US or corporate media outlets.

By reading sources across the net I knew before the US invaded Iraq that the WMD documents were forged. The absolute proof of this was available online. Because of my experience in typography I could tell they were obvious fakes. so I'm sure someone in the CIA must have figured it out, too (I would hope they're smarter than I am). But somehow the major media outlets--in the US--didn't. They did in the UK, very clearly and specifically.

So I get my news from around the world and it's fascinating to see what news outlets that don't have a vested interest in a story say, because they are obviously less biased.

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the bottom line is that to get a real view of "facts" rather than opinion (which has masqueraded as news since the start of newswriting, because reporters are people and their opinions get mixed in--much more so in recent years than in the past), you need to look at a variety of sources from around the world, including non-corporate ones.

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Finally, I want to say that I respect and uphold your right to your political opinions.

You have firm beliefs as I have mine--and that's good.

I just don't think it's good for anyone to regularly expose themselves to people with messages of intolerance or even hate.

You're a loving person, and Limbaugh is not a healthy influence on you, or your family. It's not funny, it's hate. All Coulter is another negative influence--not funny, just hate.

Yes, there are liberal hate-mongers, too (they don't get much air time but they're there). I don't listen to them. I never have.

I did not hate Bush or Cheney personally. I hated some of their actions. Yet when I listen to right wing talk radio it's so often personal attacks on people they don't like, rather than on their actions. And one of the reasons I don't listen to it that often is because I so rarely hear positive plans of action of what they feel would better the situation and the world. "Everybody's a critic," the old line goes, but if you don't work on positive plans, you don't move in positive directions.

I just hope that you will try, whenever possible, to listen to Republicans who have POSITIVE messages. The positive messages may be "we don't think this is good because..." or "someone is wrong because" but they HAVE A REAL PLAN, not just an attack, and they deliver it way that's NOT personal, nasty, destructive, mean-spirited, or negative.

You deserve better than that, because you are better than that.