Friday: Crucial Vote on Single Payer Healthcare

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from an email from
http://www.democrats.com

One week ago, we eagerly anticipated a crucial vote on single-payer Medicare for All ( H.R.676 ) in the House Energy & Commerce Committee, sponsored by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY). But then seven BlueDogs waged a highly-publicized war against a “robust public option” and the vote was delayed for a full week.

We just learned the vote will be tomorrow ( Friday ). Based on all of your calls, we have nine single-payer Democrats: Tammy Baldwin, Michael Doyle, Eliot Engel, Anna Eshoo, Gene Green, Edward Markey, Janice Schakowsky, Anthony Weiner, and Peter Welch.

Lean Yes Diana DeGette CO01 202-225-4431 Jane Harman CA36 202-225-8220 Christopher Murphy CT05 202-225-4476 Frank Pallone NJ06 202-225-4671 @FrankPallone Bobby Rush IL01 202-225-4372

Five more Democrats are leaning single-payer but still uncommitted. Please call each one and give them one crucial reason to support single-payer from our petition:

http://www.democrats.com/single-payer-petition?cid=ZGVtczU0MTMzNGRlbXM=

(Be sure to sign our petition and forward it if you haven’t already.)

Be concise and practice in advance so you can speak quickly (or leave a voicemail) because they are getting swamped. Report the results of your calls here:

http://www.democrats.com/single-payer-committee-whip

Public Option Only (or Won’t Say) Rick Boucher VA09 202-225-3861 Bruce Braley IA01 202-225-2911 G.K. Butterfield NC01 202-225-3101 Lois Capps CA23 202-225-3601 Kathy Castor FL11 202-225-3376 John Dingell MI15 202-225-4071 Charles Gonzalez TX20 202-225-3236 Jay Inslee WA01 202-225-6311 @RepInsleeNews Doris Matsui CA05 202-225-7163 Jerry McNerney CA11 202-225-1947 John Sarbanes MD03 202-225-4016 Bart Stupak MI01 202-225-4735 Betty Sutton OH13 202-225-3401 Henry Waxman (Chair) CA30 202-225-3976

If you have more time, these 14 Democrats support a “public option” at best. But that “public option” (a new government program to compete with private insurance) was disastrously weakened this week by the BlueDogs. They banned the use of Medicare pricing to reduce costs and thereby expand availability. Try to persuade these 14 to vote for single-payer instead of a worthless BlueDog “public option.”

Don’t let anyone tell you single-payer can’t pass: the Kucinich Amendment for a single-payer “state option” passed by a shocking 25-19 bi-partisan majority in the House Education and Labor Committee on July 17. The Weiner Amendment will pass on Friday if enough Democrats vote for it!

A victory on the Weiner Amendment would make a huge difference. Please call as soon as you get this – night or day.

Thanks for all you do!

Bob Fertik

see

Weiner: Put-Up or Shut-Up + Sanders at the “Guaranteed Health Care” Rally + Follow the Money

Top Ten Ways To Tell Your President & His Party Aren’t Fighting For Health Care For Everybody by Bruce Dixon

Bernie Sanders: Mass mobilization is needed

The Daily Show: Bill Kristol admits the government can provide first-class health care + Dems may drop public option

The Truth about Socialized Medicine By Audrey Mayer

single payer healthcare HR 676 S 703

Weiner: Put-Up or Shut-Up + Sanders at the “Guaranteed Health Care” Rally + Follow the Money

Dandelion Salad

AskAnthonyWeiner
July 30, 2009

more about “Weiner Challenges the Republicans to …“, posted with vodpod

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Bernie Sanders at the “Guaranteed Health Care” Rally

Book Excerpt: ‘Empire of Illusion’ by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
July 30, 2009

Read this brilliant and humorous chapter from Chris Hedges’ new book and marvel as the Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent makes sense of reality television.

Adapted from “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle,” available from Nation Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2009.

order here

Celebrity worship banishes reality. And this adulation is pervasive. It is dressed up in the language of the Christian Right, which builds around its leaders, people like Pat Robertson or Joel Olsteen, the aura of stardom, fame and celebrity power. These Christian celebrities travel in private jets and limousines. They are surrounded by retinues of bodyguards, have television programs where they cultivate the same false intimacy with the audience, and, like all successful celebrities, amass personal fortunes. The frenzy around political messiahs, or the devotion of millions of women to Oprah Winfrey, is all part of the yearning to see ourselves in those we worship. We seek to be like them. We seek to make them like us. If Jesus and The Purpose Driven Life won’t make us a celebrity, then Tony Robbins or positive psychologists or reality television will. We are waiting for our cue to walk onstage and be admired and envied, to become known and celebrated.

Three Good Reasons To Liquidate Our Empire By Chalmers Johnson

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By Chalmers Johnson
TomDispatch (Tom Engelhardt)
July 30, 2009

And Ten Steps to Take to Do So

However ambitious President Barack Obama’s domestic plans, one unacknowledged issue has the potential to destroy any reform efforts he might launch. Think of it as the 800-pound gorilla in the American living room: our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in our relations with other countries and the vast, potentially ruinous global empire of bases that goes with it. The failure to begin to deal with our bloated military establishment and the profligate use of it in missions for which it is hopelessly inappropriate will, sooner rather than later, condemn the United States to a devastating trio of consequences: imperial overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency, leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the former Soviet Union.

According to the 2008 official Pentagon inventory of our military bases around the world, our empire consists of 865 facilities in more than 40 countries and overseas U.S. territories. We deploy over 190,000 troops in 46 countries and territories. In just one such country, Japan, at the end of March 2008, we still had 99,295 people connected to U.S. military forces living and working there — 49,364 members of our armed services, 45,753 dependent family members, and 4,178 civilian employees. Some 13,975 of these were crowded into the small island of Okinawa, the largest concentration of foreign troops anywhere in Japan.

[...]

via Tomgram: Chalmers Johnson, Dismantling the Empire

see

Chalmers Johnson on the Cost of Empire

The Hell of War Comes Home: Newspaper Series Documents Murder, Suicide, Kidnappings by Iraq Vets

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Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org
July 30, 2009

The Hell of War Comes Home: Newspaper Series Documents Murder, Suicide, Kidnappings by Iraq Vets

A startling two-part series published in the Gazette newspaper of Colorado Springs titled “Casualties of War” examines a part of war seldom discussed by the media or government officials: the difficulty of returning to civilian life after being trained to be a killer. The story focuses on a single battalion based at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, the 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment. Soldiers from the brigade have have been involved in brawls, beatings, rapes, drunk driving, drug deals, domestic violence, shootings, stabbings, kidnapping and suicides. The Army unit’s murder rate is 114 times the rate for Colorado Springs. We speak with the reporter who broke the story and get the Army’s response.

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video The Hell of War Comes Home: Newspaper Series Documents Murder, Suicide, Kidnappings by Iraq Vets

Guests:

Dave Philipps, reporter with the Colorado Springs Gazette. He wrote the two-part series “Casualties of War.”

Col. Jimmie Keenan, Commander of the Evans Army Community Hospital in Colorado Springs. She is the former chief of staff for the Army’s Warrior Care and Transition Office in Arlington, Va.

Military Hotline: 1-800-342-9647
Website: Militaryonesource.com

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to a startling two-part series that has just been published in the Gazette newspaper of Colorado Springs called “Casualties of War.” It examines a part of war seldom discussed by the media or government officials: the difficulty of returning to civilian life after being trained to be a killer.

S. Ossetia under fire from Georgian territory

Dandelion Salad

RussiaToday
July 30, 2009

The South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali has come under fire. Two shells were reportedly fired from around five kilometers away near the Georgian town of Nikozi during the night.

more about “S. Ossetia under fire from Georgian t…“, posted with vodpod

see

Georgia-Russia on Dandelion Salad

Manuel Zelaya Speaks from Nicaraguan Border on Who’s Behind the Coup

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Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org
July 30, 2009

EXCLUSIVE: Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya Speaks from Nicaraguan Border on Who’s Behind the Coup, His Attempts to Return Home, the Role of the United States and More

In a Democracy Now! national broadcast exclusive, ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya joins us from the Nicaragua-Honduras border for a wide-ranging interview on his attempts to return home, who’s behind the coup, the role of the United States, and much more. “I think the United States is going to lose a great deal of influence in Latin America if it does not turn the coup d’état around,” Zeleya says. “It will not be able to put forth its idea about democracy. It won’t be credible before anyone.” On his message to the Honduran people, Zelaya says they should “maintain their resistance against those who want to take their rights away…so that no one will be able to disrespect them, which is what the coup regime is doing today.” [includes rush transcript]

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video: EXCLUSIVE: Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya Speaks from Nicaraguan Border on Who’s Behind the Coup, His Attempts to Return Home, the Role of the United States and More

transcript

AMY GOODMAN: Governments around the world should continue sanctions against the coup regime in Honduras. Those are the comments of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who’s trying to mediate negotiations between ousted Honduran president and the coup leaders. He was speaking at a Latin American summit in Costa Rica a day after the US State Department’s decision Tuesday to revoke the visas of four Honduran coup officials, though the US has not cut off more than $180 million in economic aid.

Dennis Kucinich: We Need To Set A Time To Get Out Of Iraq! FOR REAL!

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CSPANJUNKIEdotORG
July 30, 2009

http://earth2obama.org/

July 29, 2009 C-SPAN

more about “Dennis Kucinich: We Need To Set A Tim…“, posted with vodpod

Top Ten Ways To Tell Your President & His Party Aren’t Fighting For Health Care For Everybody by Bruce Dixon

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by BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon
Black Agenda Report
July 29, 2009

Barack Obama and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate were swept into office on a promise they would deliver affordable and accessible health care for all Americans. But the corporate media journalism limits the national health care conversation to what insurance companies, drug companies, for-profit health care professionals, their executives, lobbyists and politicians of both parties and other hirelings have to say. So it isn’t as easy as it ought to be to tell what the politicians are doing about accomplishing health care for everybody. Hence we offer these ten points. This is how you can tell whether your president and his party are fighting for the health care you deserve.

1. Their plan doesn’t cover the uninsured till at least 2013.

   2013 isn’t “day one.” It’s not even after the midterm election. It’s clear after the president’s second term, if he gets one. Congress passed Medicare in 1965 and president Lyndon Johnson rolled out coverage for millions of seniors in eleven months, back in the days before they even had computers.

   22,000 Americans now perish each year because they can’t get or can’t afford medical care, and this year three quarter million personal bankruptcies will be triggered by unpayable medical bills. Why this president and these Democrats are in such a hurry to pass health care now that doesn’t take effect till two elections down the road doesn’t make sense in any kind of good way.

[...]

via Top Ten Ways To Tell Your President & His Party Aren’t Fighting For Health Care For Everybody | Black Agenda Report

h/t: Connie

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“Public Option” Makes It Through One More Round Of Negotiations

by Dolores M Bernal
NEWS JUNKIE POST
Jul 29, 2009

EDITOR’S NOTE (1): An earlier headline for the article implied that the public option may have been removed from the House’s bill. That is not the case, even though the amendment may have been weakened (according to the Huff Post).

A deal was reached on Wednesday in the House Energy and Commerce Committee between Blue Dog democrats and Democrats supportive of the Henry Waxman healthcare bill, but very progressive members of Congress didn’t seem very happy with the deal.

[...]

Progressive organizations are urging people to call their representatives in the House to tell them to support a strong public option amendment, which was added by Dennis Kucinich this month. The amendment is the closest that Americans will get to a single payer health care system. This legislation could be voted on by the full U.S. House of Representatives before the end of the week even though Democratic leaders promised the full House would not vote on the measure until September.

[...]

via “Public Option” Makes It Through One More Round Of Negotiations | NEWS JUNKIE POST.

see also

Is the Obama Health Care Plan Really Better Than Nothing? | Black Agenda Report

see

Bernie Sanders: Mass mobilization is needed

The Daily Show: Bill Kristol admits the government can provide first-class health care + Dems may drop public option

The Truth about Socialized Medicine By Audrey Mayer

single payer healthcare HR 676 S 703

Capitalism, Fascism and World War 2 by Gary Sudborough

by Gary Sudborough
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
30 July 2009

Most Americans know enough about the Nazi holocaust to thoroughly despise the horrible events that occurred-the torture, executions, concentration camps, forced starvation, gas chambers and the attempted extermination of the Jews. I wonder what Americans would think if they knew that the part of this Nazi terror apparatus which operated on the Russian front was incorporated into the CIA after World War 2. The Nazi SS officer was Reinhard Gehlen, and he and his group were employed by the CIA for their knowledge of the Soviet Union. The SS death squads called Einsatzgruppen that followed the German advance into the Soviet Union were very brutal, killing any communists and Jews they found and conducting mass executions. The CIA used Nazi war criminals like Klaus Barbie, Walter Rauff, Otto Skorzeny and others in South America to impart their knowledge of torture techniques and concentration camps to the police and military forces there. Klaus Barbie was involved in the 1980 Bolivian coup known as the “cocaine coup” that is described in former DEA agent Michael Levine’s book The Big White Lie.

The Day the President Turned Black (But has he turned back?) By Greg Palast

Dandelion Salad

By Greg Palast
Wednesday July 29, 2009

for The Huffington Post

He’s in hot water now. For a moment, on national television, the President of the United States turned black!

Last week, when his buddy “Skip” Gates got busted for being Black in Boston, Barack Obama forgot his official role: to soothe America’s conscience with the happy fairy tale that his election marked the end of racism in the USA.

Instead, Obama, the excruciatingly middle-of-the-road President, was seized by Barack the militant State Senator from the South Side of Chicago, who reminded us that cops bust Black guys for no goddamn good reason all the goddamn time.

[...]

via Greg Palast » The Day the President Turned Black But has he turned back?

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Stupid to Arrest Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates?

LiberalViewer
July 27, 2009

more about “Stupid to Arrest Harvard Prof. Henry …“, posted with vodpod

US Torture Under Scrutiny In British Courts by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
29 July 2009

Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, reports on three important court cases in the UK this week, focusing on “extraordinary rendition” and torture in the “War on Terror.” These cases have implications not only for the complicity of the British government in the Bush administration’s flight from the law, but also for the Obama administration, which, on a number of fronts, appears to be doing all in its power to either maintain Bush-era policies or to shield the previous administration from accountability for its actions.

Binyam Mohamed and Jeppesen, “The CIA’s Travel Agent”

Christopher Pyle on Military Spying of Olympia Peace Activists

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Democracy Now!
www.democracynow.org
July 29, 2009

Christopher Pyle, Whistleblower Who Sparked Church Hearings of 1970s, on Military Spying of Olympia Peace Activists

The news of peace activists in Olympia, Washington exposing Army spying, infiltration and intelligence gathering on their groups may strengthen congressional demands for a full-scale investigation of US intelligence activities like those of the 1970s. We speak with law professor and former Army whistleblower Christopher Pyle, whose 1970 disclosure of the military’s widespread surveillance of civilian groups triggered scores of congressional probes, including the Church Committee hearings, where he served as an investigator.

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Guest:

Christopher Pyle, teaches constitutional law and civil liberties at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. In 1970, as a captain in Army intelligence, he disclosed the military’s surveillance of civilian groups. He went on to work for Senator Sam Ervin’s Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights and Senator Frank Church’s Select Committee on Intelligence. He is the author of four books; his most recent is Getting Away with Torture.

Naomi Wolf: I had a vision of Jesus (2006)

Dandelion Salad

[Note: the first article is a repost from my old blog.]

by Torcuil Crichton
www.sundayherald.com, UK, Jan. 22, 2006
http://www.religionnewsblog.com
Wednesday January 25, 2006

Naomi Wolf, one of America’s foremost feminist thinkers, has found a spiritual awakening in God after experiencing a “mystical encounter” with Jesus.

Wolf, best known as the author of the Beauty Myth, a groundbreaking 1991 polemic against the cosmetics industry that radicalised a generation of young women, revealed the cause of a hitherto unexplained mid-life crisis that set her on a “spiritual path”.