by Paul Craig Roberts

This concise, succinct analysis of the current state of health care reform was posted on Counterpunch (9/14) and Global research (9/15)

I think it will add to our clarity on the subject.

So I post it with the kind permission of Paul Craig Roberts, beyond the fold…

Glen Ford, Editor of Black Agenda Report wrote this radio commentary, published in BAR on 8/12/09.  I reprint the article here with the permission of Glen Ford.

I have sensed the difficulty we/some/who knows who/liberals who hoped — have had in criticizing Barack. It is evident in many areas, blogs, MSM, many places.  We had the audacity of hope and are trying to deal with the reality of now, of seven months since the inauguration.  And we are struggling with the disparity between our hopes and what is happening.

How do we balance our very real hope and our very real sense of hearing him speak the right words, the feeling that he understands the deep underbelly of this society— how do we balance that with the Faustian reality of the deal which must be made with the power elites, the corporate massahs, if there is to be any chance of ascending in the structure to the point where some modicum of righteous benefit might accrue to the people, might just be possible.  

We the people wanted to hear the truth. We were so painfully long overdue for the truth in 2008 that we soaked up the truth Obama spoke like dry sponges.  

The Ruling class, however, the corporate elites wanted him only to speak the truth; they were not about to tolerate the truth spoken to be carried into action.  And Obama, probably in good faith, tried to do the juggling act.  But it hasn’t worked.  It is not working.  And I think it is up to us.  Either we take our democracy back now or we agree to acqiesce into decades more of injustice.  Except, this time we don’t have the time to make any more mistakes in the evolution of the human race, human consciousness and the survival of the planet.  We need to see the reality and push Obama in the direction of survival, of evolution.

Glen Ford’s “Obama Kidnapped by Ruling Class” commentary is beyond the fold. Please come along….  

I posted this diary a year ago, July 17, 2008 as part of the “Writing in the Raw” series.  This is the most recent writing I have done on evolution.  A few people here at DD have asked for more on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Evolution.  

Since I seem to be an ever-procrastinating lazy critter and haven’t come up with anything new and haven’t posted anything this year on those seminal events in the formation of the Evolutionary Imperative, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I repost the essay here with a few changes, mainly in format.  

This is especially for Lady Lib. For any who are truly intersted in this subject, I recommend going to my original post The Evolutionary Imperative — Writing in the Raw and read the truly cogent comments to see how others here are thinking about evolution and our current conundrum.  I begin with my poem:

URANIUM 235 / WHAT GOD SAID

                 by Sydney Vilen

What they remember is the light

Those scientists in the desert night

Ghostly iridescence, unearthly light

No color, merely shades of white.

Trinity Test at Alamogordo

Three…Two…One…Zero

Instantly into the still dark land

The light grew over the sand

Galactic secrets in the predawn night

Galactic secrets in atomic rite

And the light grew

Brighter than the light of twenty noons

And still it grew

An x-ray of the testing crew.

Trinity Test at Alamogordo

Three…Two…One…Zero

Shiva Yahweh Buddha Zeus

Father Son and Holy Goose

Humanity with its head in the noose

Glimpsed its form as god.

[Please glimpse consciousness as gods, beyond the fold]—  

Bernie Sanders is circulating a petition advocating Single Payer.  Here’s what the good Senator has to say about it in his e-mail.  

Please read it and go to his web site and show your support for Single Payer.  We may have to settle for the fall-back position of a Public Option, but we should show them our true desires anyway.  

A PETITION TO CONGRESS

Supporting Single-Payer Health Care

Our current private health insurance system is the most costly, wasteful, complicated and bureaucratic in the world. Today, 46 million people have no health insurance. Even more are underinsured with high deductibles and co-payments. Close to 20,000 Americans die each year because they don’t have regular access to a doctor.  

The time is now for our nation to address the most profound moral and economic issue we face.  

The time is now for our country to join the rest of the industrialized world and provide cost-effective, comprehensive quality health care to every man, woman and child in our country.  

The time is now to take on the powerful special interests in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and pass a single-payer national health care program.

Sign the petition

Tell Bernie your experience with health care and insurance.

For more background information, see my diary from a few days ago Healthcare: The Big Issue, The Big Test for Obama

We’ve got to keep pushing, keep yelling, keep demanding.  YYEELLLL!!!

I want to try to take buhdy’s essay, “Obama uses his Loud Voice on Health Care” one step further into activism.  So often on this blog, we ask, “But what can we do?”  I want to offer an answer to this question.

We must get Obama’s back on this issue.  In massive, massive numbers, with really loud voices, we must get behind him and push, massively, loudly, strongly.  I want every person on this blog to reach out to friends, family, e lists, and every contact we have to move folks in the direction of REAL healthcare reform.

Buhdy correctly identifies this as the defining issue.  This is the issue Obama wishes to succeed.  If he can win on healthcare reform, if we can keep his back on healthcare reform so that he can win, then we will have a solid basis for further progressive successes in the future.  

Please continue beyond the fold—

I’m a U. S. citizen.  I was born here.  I was born into the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

So it was a complete, dis-orienting shock when I got a brief glimmer of the fact that my government was trying to kill me.  That was 1984.  Since then, I have seen, repeatedly, the undeniable reality of this situation.  

Yes, my government is trying to kill me.  Not consciously, not through intention nor plan; my government is trying to kill me in absentia, through total denial of responsibility, through attrition.

Attrition!  A vague, amorphous assignation of causation to indeterminate factors far removed from individual, human accounting.  Noone is to blame.  Noone is responsible.  It is a random act of the universe.  It is attrition!

But as you try to kill me, try to state your plausible reasons…

Something inside me rises up, even against the fatal blow, and says,  “No!  This is a lie! You will not kill me in a lying deceit.”  I will withstand long enough to call your fraud, your devious bluff.

You are killing me because I am inconvenient for you, because our species has exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet and something must be done to relieve the over-population problem.  You are killing me, out of attrition, because you cannot admit the magnitude of your great mistakes.

You think you must reduce the excess population you allowed, as quickly and as quietly as is possible.

But your random attribution calculations of expendibility did not forsee nor calculate  the fact of highly intelligent, highly evolved beings who could and would see right through your machinations to maintain “residual” control.  Yet many of us remain, and will not lightly acquiesce to your inability to honor life.

I do not acquisce to your desire to silence me.  I, and others like me, will rise up to contest the error of your ways.

I opened my regular email from PDA this morning to find a very cogent statement, a kitteh (being cuddled by Paul Krugman) and a wonderful YouTube video song.

         We told you so.

Dear Sydney,

Many Americans have been disappointed that President Obama’s cabinet is filled up with corporate-oriented establishment types–while smart, progressive experts have been ignored for these powerful positions.

Check out this video by one disgruntled citizen singing his disappointment:

on this great you tube video

“blah blah blah” right here

Michael Phelps missed a stellar chance to be a real hero and move the country forward from our far too long-abiding Puritan legacy and rotting livers.  If Michael had had the guts to stand up for what’s right, for moving the planet forward, he would have been worth another 8 gold medals for a total of 16.

But no, he copped to the “prevailing” lack of wisdom.  He said he had been ‘wrong’ to smoke pot, that he’d made a ‘stupid,’ immature  mistake.  Oh Michael!  You could have said how much kinder pot is to the body than alcohol, what an immensely better high it is, with far fewer damaging effects, including healthier livers.  

But no.  The prevailing lack of wisdom prevailed.  You spoke the trite platitudes of established conformity.  Too bad.  Better luck next time.

Congratulations on your swimming accomplishments however.

I am in pain.  This diary will not be a reasoned presentation of fact.  I do not want to make a reasoned statement of fact, even if I could, which is doubtful.  

The very title of this diary is not a reasonable statement of fact.  

It is the slogan which has been used for well over a century to justify the “supposedly” reasonable Jewish takeover, invasion, acquisition, domination of Palestine.  Palestine is seen as “…a land without a people…”, an empty space which the Jewish people, the “…people without a land…”, can claim as their own and set up the state of Israel.

The FACT that this mode of thinking continues into the 21st century is a profound tragedy and a frightening indication that the human species might become extinct.  This mode of thinking, of seeing others as less than human, less important, non-existent even, is the basis of war and injustice.  

Einstein refered to this mode of thinking when he said that — with the splitting of the atom, everything has changed save man’s [sic] way of thinking and thus we drift toward unimaginable peril —   to a space where we must ask along with the Palestinian poet:  

          Where shall the birds fly after the last sky?

                                                by Mahmoud Darwish

                                                1941– 2008  

Please fly on beneath the fold…