President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address + transcript (2.12.13) + Jill Stein’s SOTU Green Party’s Response

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Dandelion Salad

Updated: Feb. 15, 2013; added Jill Stein’s SOTU Green Party’s Response to the end of this post.

Propaganda Alert

PBSNewsHour Feb 12, 2013

President Obama Delivers the 2013 State of the Union Address.

Inequality and Poverty America Style–In Richness and in Health by Graham Peebles

Image by Public Citizen via Flickr

by Graham Peebles
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
London
December 7, 2012

Irrespective of ones circumstances or stage of life, illness is never welcome, in America if you’re poor it can prove to be a total catastrophe, ending often in personal bankruptcy. “According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60% of the personal bankruptcies in the United States“[i]. Health care insurance an unaffordable luxury, for the 15% or 50 million people now living in ‘official’ poverty in America, anxiously relying on good luck and a poor diet to keep sickness at a bay.

Preserve Benefits: Cut Gouging and Inequities + Time to Counter the Corporate Domination by Ralph Nader

Dandelion Salad

by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
Nov. 14, 2012

Image by Glyn Lowe Photoworks via Flickr

Congress is still talking about a “Grand Bargain” that “balances” far more spending cuts than tax increases. That is another way of saying that you – the consumer of Medicare and Medicaid services, the recipient of Social Security, and the average taxpayer will take the brunt of the spending cuts, while the wealthy get their income taxes restored, not raised, to their pre-Bush modest levels. Don’t buy it!

Where’s the War on Lethal Super-bugs? by Ralph Nader

Dandelion Salad

by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
Sept. 5, 2012

Image by Microbe World via Flickr

What if two thousand U.S. soldiers were losing their lives every week in Afghanistan? Would the peddlers of the electoral politics of trivia, distraction and avoidance take notice? Of course.

Every week, two thousand Americans, or about 100,000 men, women and children a year, die from mostly preventable hospital-borne infections in the United States. The toll may even be higher (Center for Disease Control updates its figures soon).

To put this deadly disaster in perspective, hospital-induced infections kill more Americans than the combined fatalities from motor vehicle collisions, AIDs, fire and homicides combined. Additional millions more survive infections. The pain and costs are enormous.

Ralph Nader: Paul Ryan’s Speech: Deceptive, Contradictory and Hypocritical

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Dandelion Salad

with Ralph Nader

Aug 29, 2012 by WSJDigitalNetwork

Former Independent Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader criticizes Paul Ryan’s speech at the 2012 RNC Convention in Tampa, calling it deceptive, contradictory and hypocritical. Photo: Getty Images.

The Real Health Care Debate by Chris Hedges (repost)

Reposting in case you missed it.

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
April 9, 2012

Image by Public Citizen via Flickr

The debate surrounding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act illustrates the impoverishment of our political life. Here is a law that had its origin in the right-wing Heritage Foundation, was first put into practice in 2006 in Massachusetts by then-Gov. Mitt Romney and was solidified into federal law after corporate lobbyists wrote legislation with more than 2,000 pages. It is a law that forces American citizens to buy a deeply defective product from private insurance companies. It is a law that is the equivalent of the bank bailout bill—some $447 billion in subsidies for insurance interests alone—for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. It is a law that is unconstitutional.

Heart Attack Without Heart Disease: The Chickens Come Home by Cameron Salisbury + Monsanto Taking Over Global Agriculture

Image by MillionsAgainstMonsanto via Flickr

by Cameron Salisbury
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Opedinfo.com, April 29, 2012
May 1, 2012

Something strange and ominous is happening to young people, especially women but also to lesser numbers of men. They are dying of sudden heart attacks (acute myocardial infarction, AMI) without the classic symptoms of heart disease, chest pain or blocked arteries. They die quickly, as though blind-sided by a devastating accident.

The Prisoners in Gaza – Their Blackout Nightmare by Ralph Nader + Why Gaza’s Healthcare Fails Thousands of Injured

Dandelion Salad

Updated: April 23, 2012 added a video

by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
April 19, 2012

Image by gloucester2gaza via Flickr

Have you heard much lately about the 1.5 million Palestinians illegally imprisoned by the Israeli government in the world’s largest open-air Gulag? Their dire living conditions, worsened by a selective Israeli siege limiting the importation of necessities of life – medical items, food, water, building materials, and fuel to list a few – has resulted in an 80 percent unemployment rate and widespread suffering from unlawful punishment, arbitrary arrests and imprisonment in Israeli jails.

Ending the War on Drug Users by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted on Buzzflash.com
April 17, 2012

Image by iVoryTowerz via Flickr

On April 8, 2012, our esteemed Editor/Publisher at BuzzFlash@Truthout, my good friend Mark Karlin, published a column entitled “The US War on Drug Cartels in Mexico Is a Deadly Failure” (1). In his column he noted that: “Approximately 50,000 or more Mexicans have been killed since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a so-called war on drug cartels. (In a recent appearance in Toronto, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta claimed 150,000 people have died in the drug war in Mexico, but the timeline Panetta was referring to was unclear, as was the origin of the figure he cited.).” Mark went on to say:

The Real Health Care Debate by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
April 9, 2012

Image by Public Citizen via Flickr

The debate surrounding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act illustrates the impoverishment of our political life. Here is a law that had its origin in the right-wing Heritage Foundation, was first put into practice in 2006 in Massachusetts by then-Gov. Mitt Romney and was solidified into federal law after corporate lobbyists wrote legislation with more than 2,000 pages. It is a law that forces American citizens to buy a deeply defective product from private insurance companies. It is a law that is the equivalent of the bank bailout bill—some $447 billion in subsidies for insurance interests alone—for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. It is a law that is unconstitutional.

Fracking: Pennsylvania Gags Physicians, Part 1 by Walter Brasch

by Walter Brasch
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
March 18, 2012

A new Pennsylvania law endangers public health by forbidding health care professionals from sharing information they learn about certain chemicals and procedures used in high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing. The procedure is commonly known as fracking.

Fracking is the controversial method of forcing water, gases, and chemicals at tremendous pressure of up to 15,000 pounds per square inch into a rock formation as much as 10,000 feet below the earth’s surface to open channels and force out natural gas and fossil fuels.

Chris Hedges: Civil disobedience is the only way to put pressure on the centers of power

with Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
March 6, 2012

Image by Cocoloco Photography via Flickr

KPBS Mobile
Feb. 28, 2012

Every year, the Writers Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene College, brings an eclectic mix of celebrated authors to San Diego. It’s our pleasure to welcome one of those authors to Midday Edition.

Free Market Health Care: True Stories by Michael Parenti

by Michael Parenti
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Michael Parenti Blog
www.michaelparenti.org
2 March 2012

Image by Public Citizen via Flickr

I recently wrote an article about my personal experiences in dealing with the medical system while undergoing surgery (“Free Market Medicine: A Personal Account“). In response, a number of readers sent me accounts of their own experiences trying to get well in America.

Health care in this country is hailed by conservative boosters as “the best medical system in the world.” It certainly is the most expensive, most profitable, and most complicated system in the world, leaving millions of Americans in shock.

Follow the Bills by Ralph Nader

Image by Public Citizen via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
February 1, 2012

Looking at millions of individual bills that makeup the 2.7 trillion dollars of annual health care costs opens a gigantic window on the massive waste, redundancy, profiteering, fraud and sometimes criminal over-billing.

Here is a partial example of what I mean, in the words of Philip M. Boffey, the estimable science writer for the New York Times:

Barack, Ya Coulda Been A Contender! by Philip A. Farruggio

by Philip A. Farruggio
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Feb. 1, 2012

OK, Barack, from one Brooklyn guy to one Chicago guy, let’s talk straight and pull no punches. I don’t care how nice of a guy you may be, or how intelligent and articulate… ya blew it kiddo! Just like with your predecessors, especially Clinton and Junior Bush, you simply are a stooge of the wizards who control this empire. Now, having said that, I’m no fool Barack. I realize that a president does not have the power that our phony media and our hot air academics have been selling to us for who knows how long.