He's been sucking up to the insurance and financial "services" industries so enthusiastically that he might as well wear a giant "fuck the people" icon on the chest of his fashionable Saipan-made T-shirt. Sarcasm aside, insurance "reform" was a pathetic exercise in capitulation and back-stabbing -- single-payer off the table from the outset and the so-called "public option" dealt away early on. What we got was a huge cheer from the administration as they pretended to serve their human consti...

Yup. The objectives of the ruling elites aren't even connected to those of the rest of us. Every business wants to bring down labor costs as close to zero as possible. That's the bottom line, which is why Wall St. bumps the stock prices of any company that lays off significant numbers of US workers. Bonus points if they can bust a union at the same time. They don't give a shit if people can "...survive, raise their families, pay their medical bills, etc. if income remains flat while infla...

...by characterizing Egyptian revolutionaries as "protesters," you repeat the MSM meme. According to US mass media, the "protesters" would be happy to simply see Mubarak go so they can quickly return to their normal lives of subservience to the rich and powerful. Protesters want to fix things by tinkering around the edges; revolutionaries seek to end the conditions that created those flaws around the edges. For example, massive Vietnam era anti-war protests targeted a specific US foreign poli...

... the purpose being to continue pretending that all that racial profiling of muslims makes any kind of sense. If you admit publicly that something is very wrong in the bowels of this country, then you have to publicly do something about it. Is the FBI, BATF et al really ready to launch an all-out war on home-grown right wing extremists who use the so-called Tea Party as cover for domestic terrorism? Far easier to preserve the fiction that the country is under constant threat from brown pe...

.. and not just the ditch digging kind, but the ones FDR's administration created to get writers writing, artists painting and sculpting, actors acting and so forth. In other words, support creativity rather than simply create a new generation of draft animals for the corporate fuckos to exploit, ala the prison-industrial complex. Saint Raygun was a genius at making it fashionable to hate the poor. And I know it's damn near impossible to climb out of the poverty hole if you actually internali...

Health benefits also act as social control mechanisms used by corporations to increase the level of insecurity their employees have to live with. And a scared employee -- thrown to the wolves as an overwhelmed individual rather than as a member of a union or some other organized counter-weight to full corporate totalitarianism -- is the perfect wage/debt slave and will do whatever he/she is told to avoid increasing their already suffocating levels of uncertainty and insecurity. Just one more...

...before he was a US senator. Too bad he started hanging around with assholes like Lieberman, Reid and Clinton instead of Senator Bernie. where, as a state senator, he's all for single-payer. That's followed by a marvelous tap dancing routine by US senator and presidential candidate Obama from last year's endless campaign. I think his recent speeches and actions as president speak for themselves regarding his new-found distaste for a humanist-oriented health care system that necessitates, ...

... and S. Korean gov'ts." Of course they are. And here's how the invitations were delivered -- by the book, using SOP straight from the pages of the US State Dept. Manual of Preemptive Intervention. (Image) By gum, that really IS a tad silly. More so if it weren't so spot on. sf On edit: Getting that damn apostrophe in "gov'ts" right

... all but two of whom died between "the events of 9/11"(tm) and Feb. 5, 2005. There may be more by now, but this is the most comprehensive list I could find. It's called, with unparalleled respect for the deceased, An impressive list, I'm told, although I have absolutely no idea who any of them are/were before the fact. Here's the brief bio on Kelly: July 18, 2003: Dr. David Kelly, 59 --Expertise: Biological warfare weapons specialist, senior post at the Ministry of Defense, an expert on...

 
Americans behave like a conquered, pacified population -- much like Vichy France in WW II. The Bushies milked the maximum out of "the events of 9/11"(tm), their own personal Reichstag Fire, and that's one of the most convenient, if completely predictable, outcomes. "Convenient" if you're a corporatist thug, that is -- a term that fits so many, many members of the Bushies' Flaming Nazi Fourth Reich Soul Review and International Crime Cartel, LLC. How else do you explain the sad fact that a...

Goddammit. The information's sitting in databases all over the world. All you have to do is dip a ladle into the stew and dish some out. For example, I just posted a bunch of stuff directly above your post that debunks half the garbage these malevolent propagandist bullshitters have been tossing out for decades. Took maybe a half an hour to locate it, and another few minutes to post it for the world to see. But if nobody bothers to do their own research, what the hell good is raw data uns...

...remain uninvestigated, unprosecuted and breathing the air of free men. The crumbs left over after seven straight years of war profiteering and sleazy investment fund manipulating, with the $750 BILLION financial coup de gras (just a down payment, mind you) administered as the Bushies were finally getting the hell out of town, wouldn't feed a robin for a month. Then there's the raw fact that the entire planet detests this country for its hypocrisy; its 100 percent record of perfection in bac...

... dripping with extra cholesterol-producing ingredients and hand-delivered each evening by attractive, telegenic young women (and men) wearing the standard "stroll" uniform. That's T-E-L-E-G-E-N-I-C, as in b-roll delivered by courier to your local TV assignments editor's desk just as the day's editorial/production meetings are starting. And don't forget the subscriptions to kiddie porn magazines, bogus internet accounts, various introductory membership specials redeemable in certain Georg...

And just who the fuck are you to be dissing one of maybe a couple dozen remaining members of congress -- and that's a generous guess -- who have managed to stay out of the same pockets that have bought and paid for the rest of the miserable swine? The current crop of Democrats in both chambers can't be relied upon to support anything remotely progressive. Since most are wholly owned subsidiaries of the same businesses that fund the GOP, it's hardly surprising that they espouse the same corporat...

... but am I the only one getting a little damn sick and tired of petitioning, begging, pleading, whining and sniveling at these goddamn obstructionist, bought-and-paid-for corporate employees rather than DEMANDING WHAT'S ALREADY OURS IN THE FIRST DAMN PLACE? Health care is a right, not a privilege. Only a pure sociopath would argue in favor of the current profits-uber-alles obscenity that triages on bank balances rather than on medical need. So aren't you getting a little past the point of q...

But... But... if everybody had equal access to quality goods and services... ... what fun would it be to be rich? How would they keep score? How would we all know our betters from the peasant classes? None of that nonsense in our utopian meritocracy, where anybody can grow up to be a CEO or some other kind of corporate titan. Or even a US president, if they have off-the-charts levels of megalomania combined with lack of self-esteem necessary to subject themselves to months and even years of...

Or, less crudely put, like Diogenes looking for the last honest man -- and finding only knaves and scoundrels. Same result, same inevitable disappointment. They're pretty much sleaze personified and -- when not boffing young campaign workers or setting girlfriends up in high-end condos (which they then write off as a business expense) or doing the airport stall two-step -- they're hard at work on behalf of their corporate sugar daddies, which is almost inevitably counter to the interests of the...

The term police state describes a state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population. A police state typically exhibits elements of totalitarianism and social control, and there is usually little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive. The inhabitants of a police state experience restrictions on their mobility, and on their freedom to express or communicate politic...

An average of 60 people are being killed in this country EVERY DAY because they lack access to quality medical care -- That's apparently the price 137,000 people from 2000 through 2006 (with a statistically probable 44,000 more the past two years) this society has decided is OK, as long as we don't have to give up our slavish obeisance to the non-existent free market. That's the price we're willing to pay to keep our greedy Friedman-esque economic philosophers and their selfish acolytes we...

... women can go to exercise their LEGAL right to choose. Plus which, in virtually all civilized countries -- i.e., those not chained to the ideological wheel of Ayn Randian rugged individualism and the "me-first" isolationist bullshit it spawns -- it's standard procedure to subsidize kids from K through post-doc as long as their academic attainments warrant continued subsidization. Why would any culture want to do this? Because they acknowledge that there's more important and sensible wa...

He's just dancing with thems that brung him. And that specifically excludes me and thee. I keep writing and blathering about how campaign finance reform is the single lynchpin that's blocking complete, top to bottom reform of this entire banana republic-like corporatocracy. Just watch these tortured, twisted, illogical Texas two-steps they do when trying to justify the concept that their Cadillac health care plans -- which will follow them and their extended families around for life -- are ...

everything else is bullshit. In this case, we all know goddamn good and well that the US marines have been killing civilians in that war-besotted country since 2001 -- mostly women, children and old people just looking for a little place in the sun at the end of their miserable war-torn lives. Before that, it was the Taliban; before that the so-called Northern Alliance -- all happily blowing up their own countrymen. Before that it was the Russians. And before that, maybe Venusians or Satur...

How about supplying sleeping bags and urns of hot coffee? How about supplying the freelance video crews to record it all for posterity -- and for the current news cycle as well? Maybe a priority FedEx delivery of adult-sized diapers for Vitter and some tap dancing shoes for the honorable gentleman from Idaho? How about treating these loons with the precise level of respect they've so richly earned? How about putting the whole country on notice that they've been taking their marching orders f...

... or start realizing that, without public financing of campaigns, there's nothing -- literally nothing -- progressive individuals can do to see their agenda(s) addressed in congress or the executive branch. And until the Scalias and Alitos of the world start dying off -- and not just on the SCOTUS, but throughout ranks of Federalist Society-vetted judges -- the judiciary is useless, too. So start pooling those quarters and dollars and fives and 20s, decided among any of maybe a dozen effec...

For decades, the GOP has been proud to be the planet's largest hatchery for world-class assholes. And they've got plenty of company. They're very appealing to the tens of millions of natural born assholes who infest this country like nowhere else I've ever been. You know that jerkoff down the road with the mullet and the truck and the Confederate battle flags? He's an asshole and he loves it when the GOPiggies screw the dems again and again. But only before he's had his daily 12-pack of Bud lit...

Just keep repeating it and maybe it'll eventually lose its sting. But not its effects on the great American death toll. Overall quality, fairness of access to and effectiveness of medical system -- 37th -- just ahead of that medical nirvana, Slovenia and behind Costa Rica, where there may not be an ATM in every little wide spot in the road, but there's nearly always a medical clinic, open to all, regardless of ability to pay -- Annual per capita cost of funding medical system -- 1st (arou...

How about trying to follow the civilized countries of the world for a change -- the western European social democracies come to mind, along with the former Brit colonies Canada and Australia. New Zealand's doing well, at least until some snooping petro-geologist discovers OUR OIL in a sub-oceanic puddle 20 miles off the North Island's western coast. Then they're fucked, along with the "rag heads" and "sand Ni**ers" of the middle east. Africa's next, and Nigeria looks like it's being meas...

... And as such, it's the perfect template for the so-called "War on Terror." The physical and legal infrastructure's already there; the American people are already conquered and pacified to an extent far greater than that achieved by the Third Reich in WW II Vichy France. Aerial and satellite surveillance has been a fact of life for decades, particularly in rural areas. Zero tolerance means they can steal your stuff for absolutely no reason, and indeterminate sentencing makes sure that eit...

... I just can't buy the finality of that depressing statement. Do you really feel "We have no choice," as your post is slugged? Or that we seal the deal ourselves by continuing to accept the unacceptable from our so-called leaders, then claiming that you can't fight city hall? Not singling you out or anything, but that's just a lousy and self-defeating excuse for refusing to accept the obvious truth: 300 million people have the power of numbers required to make their own choices. It...

... because the sad fact is these vermin have more in common with the Bushies and the slime creatures they fronted for than they do with the people who granted them overwhelming majorities in both houses -- a position of rare political omnipotence that neither Reid nor Pelosi seem to have the slightest idea what to do with. Dems even got the White House, along with control of all House and Senate committees, and note how well the alleged effort to end our disgraceful for-profit medical scam is ...