Obama’s Corporate Health Care Scam By Timothy V. Gatto

By Timothy V. Gatto
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
liberalpro.blogspot.com
August 18, 2009

The health care debacle has gone exactly the way I pictured it would. It seems that every day that passes brings with it a new concession to the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry and the health providers. It probably would have been a less painful experience if the government just would have asked these interests to build a health care plan with no governmental interference. There is no doubt in my mind that we would have gotten essentially the same plan.

President Obama claims that “pressure” has forced him to reconsider the “public option”. I’d like to know exactly what pressures have made him rethink that strategy. Obviously the pressure must be coming from inside the Democratic Party because Republicans have no power. I wish he would let us in on exactly who is exerting this pressure. Maybe it is time Americans found out the truth about the Democrats and the Republicans. Let them see that they work to protect and enhance corporate power.

Health Care Wanted: Dead or Alive by Dennis Kucinich

from an email

by Dennis Kucinich

The masquerade is over! The “public option” is … dead.

Health care reform is now a private option: WHICH FOR PROFIT INSURANCE COMPANY DO YOU WANT? You have to choose. And you have to pay. If you have a low income, under HR3200 government will subsidize the private insurance companies and you will still have to pay premiums, co-pays and deductibles.

The Administration plan requires that everyone must have health insurance, so it is delivering tens of millions of new “customers” to the insurance companies. Health care? Not really. Insurance care! Absolutely. Cost controls? No chance.

Why Single-Payer is the ONLY Sensible Health Care Reform (Explained in Plain English)

By Carmen Yarrusso
August 18, 2009 “Information Clearing House”

Health care services are in a special category of “services”. Unlike almost all other services in our “free market” economy, most health care services (just like police and fire services) are necessary for all residents—often a matter of life and death.

Incredibly, we treat most health care services as if they were optional for some residents. The extreme costs, the multiple inefficiencies, and the shameful injustice of our current health care system are the guaranteed results of treating heath care services as optional for some residents.

As a civilized nation, we would never tolerate a system where police or fire services were treated as optional for some residents. To understand how utterly absurd our private health care system is, imagine life in America if we treated police and fire services the way we now treat most health care services.

If police and fire services were optional for some

Exclusive: Rob Us if You Must, But Socialism Scares Us by Gary Sudborough

by Gary Sudborough
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Aug 18, 2009

In the past 30 years Americans have been openly robbed by capitalists so many times that it is difficult to keep track of all of them. There was the Savings and Loan heist, the fraudulent accounting schemes of Arthur Andersen and others, which led to a stock market crash and wiped out people’s savings, there was the blatant thievery of Enron and the rest of the energy companies, costing billions of dollars in public money, and finally, there was the sub prime mortgage debacle, which put the whole world into a depression, cost millions of jobs and made numerous people homeless and penniless.

The President Exhibits Crazy Speech Patterns by Cindy Sheehan

By Cindy Sheehan
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
August 18, 2009

As I listened to clips of Obama’s speech to the VFW on August 17th, 2009, I was wondering if his speechwriters were on vacation and they just recycled an old Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice speech.

While the so-called left is focused on the health care debacle and is allowing the so-called right to define the debate when it should be: Medicare for all, and all for Medicare; Obama and his neocon foreign policy team are preparing for a decades long, bloody foray in Af-Pak.

As Yael T. Abouhalkah, an editorial writer for the Kansas City Star, put it:

Robert Novak: Feared political columnist, harsh critic of Israel + Bob Novak dies of cancer

By Ron Kampeas
JTA
August 18, 2009
OBITUARY
WASHINGTON

Robert Novak, the conservative columnist whose scoops broke many a career, made his reputation as a journalist by being unafraid to attack his ideological brethren.

The same dynamic underlay the contentious and at times ugly relationship he had with fellow Jews.

Novak died Tuesday in Washington after an extended struggle with brain cancer. He was 78.

[…]

But it was an effort to defend the Iraq invasion that almost railroaded Novak’s career: He was the first to publish the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame, as part of the Bush administration’s retaliatory campaign against her huband, Iraq War critic Joseph Wilson. Novak’s role in the affair contributed to the end of his long CNN career.

[…]

Novak’s attacks on the pro-Israel community repeatedly veered into the conspiratorial; he helped purvey the notion that the Iraq War was fought in Israel’s interest. He also was a rare mainstream voice endorsing the widely rejected claim that Israeli forces had intentionally attacked a U.S. naval ship in the Mediterranean Sea during the Six-Day War in 1967.

[…]

via Robert Novak: Feared political columnist, harsh critic of Israel | JTA – Jewish & Israel News

***

Bob Novak dies of cancer — and his right-wing pals rush to lie about his role in the Plame case

Anthony Weiner Leaves Scarborogh “Speechless”

AskAnthonyWeiner
August 18, 2009

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Tony Benn Condemns Escalation of War in Afghanistan & Defends Britain’s Socialized Healthcare System

Democracy Now!
August 18, 2009

British Politician Tony Benn Condemns Escalation of War in Afghanistan & Defends Britain’s Socialized Healthcare System

While President Obama defended his escalation of the war in Afghanistan on Monday, in Britain, America’s closest ally, antiwar sentiment is growing. This week, the number of British troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001 surpassed 200. Yesterday in central London, protesters read the names of the 200 British soldiers, as well as the names 200 Afghan citizens killed in the war. The demonstration in Whitehall was led by former British MP Tony Benn, who is currently the president of the Stop the War Coalition. He is a former cabinet minister and the longest-serving MP in the history of the British Labour Party.

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Tony Benn, former cabinet minister and the longest-serving MP in the history of the Labour Party. He is also president of the Stop the War Coalition.

via British Politician Tony Benn Condemns Escalation of War in Afghanistan & Defends Britain’s Socialized Healthcare System

see also:

Eight Years After Orchestrating Massacre at Dasht-e-Leili, Afghan Warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum Returns to Afghanistan to Campaign for Karzai (Democracy Now!)

see

Tony Benn: Democracy (must-see)

Obama’s Health Insurance Plan Channels…The Heritage Foundation?

Rachel Maddow: No We Can’t! with Matt Taibbi

Obama’s compromise on healthcare reform

Mad as Hell Doctor Dr. Paul Hochfeld (w/Adam Klugman) joins Thom

How do we stop the sociopathic CEOs from killing us?

For Nick Skala (9.16.81 – 8.8.09)

UK Twitter campaign defends National Health

single payer healthcare HR 676 S 703

Afghanistan on Dandelion Salad

from the archives:

The Convoy of Death: Will Obama Investigate The Afghan Massacre Of November 2001? by Andy Worthington

Guantánamo And The Courts (Part Three): Obama’s Continuing Shame by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
18 Aug. 2009

In the first part of this three-part series examining the Guantánamo prisoners’ attempts to secure their release via the US courts, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, looked at how, after the Supreme Court’s ruling, in June 2008, that the prisoners had constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus rights, the Bush administration lost 23 of the 26 cases reviewed in the District Courts. The second part examined the Obama administration’s record, in its first four months in office, revealing how the new government behaved as though Bush was still in power, obstructing the defense teams, angering judges, and humiliating itself in court, and this final part brings the story up to date, explaining how, incredibly, the Obama administration has learned nothing from its humiliation, and continues to present worthless and unwinnable cases to District Court judges, perpetuating the injustice at Guantánamo, to the dismay of those who thought that it would thoroughly repudiate the discredited policies of the Bush administration.

A “mosaic” of intelligence is not evidence

Canadians Bare Their Asses In Protest Of U.S. Surveillance

Just don’t do this in Amerika, or you’ll end up on a sex offenders list and living under a bridge for the rest of your life. ~ DS

MoxNewsDotCom
August 17, 2009

http://MOXNews.com/
August 16, 2009 CBC Sunday

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more about “Canadians Bare Their Asses In Protest…“, posted with vodpod

see

Police State on Dandelion Salad

A Letter to the Church by Shawn Grandstaff

by Shawn S. Grandstaff
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
August 18, 2009

With all the political rhetoric that we hear today and the high-jacking of pure Christianity, which is saturated with the Love of God, not judgment, I may come off a little strong at times with some righteous indignation. Reason being, the so-called educated elites on both sides are trying to run everything by defining what they think civilized life is when they’re not too civilized themselves. Meanwhile, American Christianity has turned the church into a fast-food chain with a drive-thru for Jesus because it’s been created by corporations. My desire is that you will hear my heart. I really can’t express that enough. The words you’re about to read are not just ranting and raving from some angry individual, but heartfelt passion for humanity, those who are starving and have AIDS and have no other way to live but that which has been set before them; the ones we know or at least act like we know, but honestly, it seems we have forgotten and left behind; I’m speaking of the world, the one for which Jesus died. The main reason for the world’s situation is due in large part to the oppressive system that Jesus has set us free from. We must quit using certain misinterpreted Scriptures to justify why we don’t help and just begin to see whether it is their fault from some past generational curse (which is always the copout for not being involved) or if it’s really an oppressive system, the kingdom of this world that is causing hell on earth.

Obama’s Health Insurance Plan Channels…The Heritage Foundation?

By Stephanie Mencimer
Mother Jones
Thu August 13, 2009 1:41 PM PST

During his New Hampshire town hall meeting on health care reform in mid-August, Obama explained that under his plan, people who lack health insurance would be able to purchase it in a new exchange that offered a similar “menu of options that I used to have as a member of Congress.” Obama said that by creating a big pool of potential customers, the exchange would allow the uninsured and even small businesses to shop around, easily compare various private health care plans and get a better deal than they could on their own.

Most of the health care reform bills circulating in Congress contain some form of this concept. The exchange, in fact, is now the centerpiece of proposed plans drafted mainly by Democrats. It’s a curious development, because the concept was largely popularized by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank best known in recent years for advocating Social Security privatization during the Bush administration. Its track record ought to make Americans more wary of Obama’s proposals than any talk of “socialized medicine.”

[…]

via Obama’s Health Insurance Plan Channels…The Heritage Foundation? | Mother Jones

h/t: Dr. Connie

see

Rachel Maddow: No We Can’t! with Matt Taibbi

A Healthcare Proposal That Solves Obama’s Problems (Except for Campaign Funding) by Thom Hartmann

Money is God, Greed is King and Corruption Runs the Game By Siv O’Neall

Why Aren’t Progressives Disrupting ObamaCare Town Halls? by Dave Lindorff

“Now Make Me Do It” by Ralph Nader

single payer healthcare HR 676 S 703