btchakir's blog

I listened to a Congressman from Alabama give the Republican's weekly statement (after the President's weekly statement) on NBC this morning and was told that despite what Pelosi and Reid want, despite the threat of using reconciliation to push the Health Care bill through, the American People don't want the Health Care bill as it has been debated and argued over the past year. He said the American People want Congress and The President to "start over on a new page."

Here in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, about as American a location as you can find, I sit watching this knowing that I WANT a Health Care bill to be passed NOW. I know that if the government starts on a NEW PAGE it will be in the face of a rate-raising, highly profitable private insurance system and a 10-to-1 ratio of lobbyists who are NOT starting on a new page, who will work day and night to weaken any progress.

Do I want to allow this to happen? Do I not want to see the potential for Health Care plans that will be made available for 30 million more people, that will allow insurance companies to cancel existing plans or not let folks with pre-existing conditions (like little ol' diabetic me) sign up if they change jobs? Am I not an American Person?

I asked my wife, who also wants to see Health Care passed NOW if she was an American Person. Oddly enough, she said she was. Last night we sat in a lounge with friends from the Philadelphia area (they are pretty American, too, and all 4 were People) and they had the same feelings about Health Care politics that we had.

Yet the Republicans keep pointing out that the American People want things to start again on a NEW Page.

Well, as an official American Person, in contact with lots of other American People, may I say that WE DON'T WANT TO START ON A NEW PAGE. We want the Health Care plan to go through NOW. We have too many other things to get to and we don't want to throw away all the work that has been done so far. And we don't want the Insurance Industry and the Lobbyists to be given still another advantage in the debate.

No Republicans have asked me for my opinion, yet, as an American Person, they are willing to form their opinion as reported words from my mouth. Maybe they should get on board with the rest of us and put America ahead of Party Politics.

http://underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com

Let's hear it for Annabel Park of Silver Spring, MD, who, when really upset by the Tea Party Movement and it's Fox News promoters, started a response movement in her living room: The Coffee Party Movement. And, wonder of wonders, it has caught on... enough so that I've added Coffee Party to my blog rolls.

Here's the Coffee Party Mission Statement:
The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.

And here is Annabel on how she started it all:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO_5HvnFEv0&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Interested? Then go HERE and join the Coffee Party Movement. I did.

Under The LobsterScope

This is the Holiday which, as far as I can tell, is designed for Car Dealers more than it is to revere the men who made our country great.

When I was growing up we had separate holidays for Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s Birthday. The first honored the man who was our first President and who led us through the military activities of the Revolution. We also remembered every year that he voluntarily stepped down after two terms when he could easily have become a lifetime American King. The second holiday honored the man who kept our nation together, freed the slaves and suffered assassination.

These holidays were originally held on actual birthdates, no matter where in the week they fell. Then, as holidays and long weekends became inextricably connected in order to satisfy labor demands, they were moved to nearest Mondays on a regular basis. When it became clear from our corporate citizens (as defined by the Supreme Court last month) that we had too many holidays throwing business off… and wanting to make room for a holiday for Martin Luther King (highly deserved, btw), the birthdays of the two Presidents were combined into President’s Day.

Without a particular focus on a particular President, the holiday was easily co-opted by automobile dealers as the big sale holiday designed to get folks to part with money in the bleak month of February, thus cleaning out inventories before the Spring announcement of new models for the coming year. And that seems to be where we have stayed.

So happy President’s Day. Take the kids who are out of school with you to run around the showrooms (that will act as necessary protective measure… salesmen will get to their price more quickly just to get the little devils out of their sales area) as you shop for new wheels.

Have a good time.

Under The LobsterScope

...and we in the good ole USA don't, encountering stories like the one about artist Tom Fowler that Cary Tennis tells in Salon makes us regret the corrupt political/commercial alliances that have given us our current situation.

A clip:
Tom had died. He had gotten a toothache. He had gotten a toothache but had not gone to the dentist because he didn't have health insurance to pay for the dentist. He lived with it. Then he got sick but thought he was OK. Then he collapsed and the emergency medical people came and they told him he should go right into the hospital. But after reviving he said he'd be OK and he went home and made himself some soup. He lasted a couple of more days like that. Then he got really, really sick and they put him in the hospital but by that point the infection that had begun in a tooth had spread massively throughout his body and despite the doctors' best efforts Tom could not be saved.

He died because he didn't go to the dentist and didn't go to the doctor because he was trying to be an artist and didn't have health insurance and didn't think it would kill him.

The stupidity of our system is so obvious, yet we are unable to move in the direction that would cure our ills and save our society. We are herded into our corrals by Big Pharma and Monster Insurance Companies and other Corporate Entities which are, by the grace of the Supreme Court, participating citizens in our government... and by politicians whose major goals are 1.) get reelected, 2.) bow to your big donors, and 3.) pretend that you will fix things...soon. Decades go by and the attempts by the few naive and well intentioned amateurs to bring us up to the Rest Of The World Standard in Health Care that appear from time to time get chewed up and spit out and (as Republicans say) we'd better slow down... we're moving too fast. What's the Rush?

It has given us our season of distrust. We elected a man on the assumption that things would change. We gave a Congress the majority it needed to make that change. We heard promises and patter designed to keep us believing that something would change. But, in the long run, all we have been is screwed.

And my wife asks me if I didn't wish we lived in Canada.

Under The LobsterScope

C-Span has been running the videos from the Tea Party Convention in Nashville all night, and I started watching when I got up in the morning... and, believe me, this is scary stuff. I especially was taken by one Joseph Farah, who is the Founder, CEO and Editor In Chief of WorldNetDaily.

This is scathing stuff about the country's move to Socialism over 90 or so years, the Marxist description of President Obama, and the focus on changing our underlying culture with its non-political organizations away from the socialist-leaning entities that, he says, they have become.

It is particularly frightening to me because Theatre is one of the areas (Entertainment Industry) that Farah fingers and encourages his followers to overcome.

He ties everything together with ACORN (which he seems to think is an openly Obama-operated organization) and uses that connection to attack the poor, the immigrant population, etc., with the notion of "turning make believe crises into real crises... and why?... to take away our freedom and the American Way of life.

Is it dangerous to have this stuff up on TV... even at 6 in the morning? You bet it is. But, if like me, you believe in free speech, which I don't think Farah does, you have to let this crap go on. If you want to accept his notion that Obama is using Government to replace God for Americans (and here I will go beyond my own non-religion base), then you will see that he is calling for an Above The Government control of the population.

If you see, as he does, that our elected leaders are a judgment on us and that we have to find tea-party-related leaders to elect, then you are already removed from freedom.

Time to actively work against these monsters.

Under The LobsterScope

I have personally created several corporations in my time, and never once have I thought any of them to be separate "people" - if I had I would have been granting myself more than the "one man, one vote" concept of our Constitution and all related laws.

Now we have the Supreme Court allowing Corporations (and, yes, Labor Unions - also not separate "people") the ability to spend unregulated amounts of money on elections... because they are "people" within the law.

This is scary. In his weekly radio address, President Obama said:
"This ruling opens the floodgates for an unlimited amount of special interest money into our democracy. It gives the special interest lobbyists new leverage to spend millions on advertising to persuade elected officials to vote their way -- or to punish those who don't.

---

"I can't think of anything more devastating to the public interest. The last thing we need to do is hand more influence to the lobbyists in Washington or more power to the special interests to tip the outcome of elections."

(You can get all of Obama's comments in his weekly address HERE.)

I believe one of the main issues that the Conservatives have claimed to have brought to the Supreme Court is the idea that they do not make law, but only interpret the Constitution.

Well, they have not only made law here, they have overturned laws that have served us well since the Teddy Roosevelt Administration in 1907 - 102 years. During that century-plus, the law was updated, improved, added to by both Democrats and Republicans and made consistently better, all in an effort to guarantee our citizens (ie: human beings not organizations) the absolute power of "one man, one vote" without overpaid arm bending and potential blackmail by corporate interests.

So what do we do with a law-making Supreme Court that clearly has a majority of its members firmly planted in corporate pockets? Dahlia Lithwick, in Slate, has called the Supreme Court's action The Pinocchio Project - they have turned the concept of the corporation into a "real, live boy." Justice Stevens, in his partial dissent, commented that the Framers of the Constitution kept a "cautious view of corporate power" - something the current Supreme Court seems to be not only uncautious of but supportive of.

Can Congress create law to overturn this decision? I don't know. What we need is the unlikely event that will throw the Court's majority back to a more centrist (or, dare I say it, more progressive) majority. Remember, Justice Earl Warren, who brought a truly Constitutional view of Civil Rights to the Court in the 50s and 60s, was a Conservative Republican when appointed. There is the odd chance that a right-leaning Justice will actually see the error that was made here and turn the Court around.

It's possible. It's unlikely.

Under The LobsterScope

The move by President Obama to follow the ideas of Pal Volcker seems to push directly into the face of heretofore financial advisor Larry Summers.

Summers was not in favor of ANY of the things Volcker has brought into view. He did not want to regulate the banks. He did not want all things happening in the open. And he certainly didn't want to put any size restrictions on banks that become "Too big to fail."

So what will be Summera' position now? Certainly he can't be trusted with getting anywhere near the economy. And Bernanke is getting hit by Bernie Sanders who is standing in the way of his reappointment to the Fed. To quote Sanders:
"There is a growing understanding that our economy is in severe distress, a greater appreciation that people are disgusted with the never-ending greed on Wall Street, and a better recognition that we need a new direction at the Fed."
And underneath all of this is Geithner, who is trying to get Congress to do more TARP money... which they are now not likely to do.

This seems to call for a real turnover which would be in Obama's best interest... and might lead him back to his campaign promises.

Under The LobsterScope

Every Vote Matters. You can either ignore the decades of work by Ted Kennedy to get Health Care for all Americans, you can ignore the two terms of George W. Bush and the six years of Republican led Congress that brought us to the dismal near-Depression that the Obama Administration has been busting a tail to get us away from, you can fall for the cries of the wealthy and the Corporations that taxes are coming (for them... not 95% of you)... or you can buy into the lies that have been told by Scotty Brown to suck up to the Teabaggers.

If you are a woman who needs womens health coverage, if you are unemployed and know it was the Republicans and the Banks and operations like AIG that got us there, if you are a Union member who forgets that the number of Union members in the USA is half of what it was when we started all this Conservative crap under Reagan and continued it right through George W. Bush... Then you better be ready to Vote For Coakley.

If you don't get out there and do it, we weaken the Senate that we need to make America strong for ALL of us again.

Under The LobsterScope

When FDR said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” he could have been summing up what faces Americans today. The TV news networks are all pushing interviews with Senators and Congressmen (mostly Republicans) who tell us that the Christmas Eve flight bombing attempt, the shutting down of our Yemen Embassy (apparently not abandoned by cut off fro any visitors), the killing of CIA people in Afghanistan and other events and rumors of events are reasons not to close Gitmo and to increase military presence in…gosh, how many countries?…Yemen and other spots.

After watching all of the Adam Curtis documentary, The Power of Nightmares, that I put up yesterday on Under The LobsterScope it is clear that we are being sold nightmares to get us all riled up over uncountable numbers of Al Q’aeda operatives (of which there are probably very few.)

If we can avoid succumbing to fear and realize that these are political moves to keep us in our middle-class constraints, perhaps we can focus back on curing what’s wrong with our economy, our health care system, and so many other things.

We need to GET OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST. Period. We cannot afford to be the world’s bodyguard and we must realize that not everyone wants to be like us. If the do, they will pull it off themselves in an overwhelming manner (it’s about to happen in Iran without any of our help… just watch.)