You're a fucking Jedi Knight ten steps ahead of everybody fucking else.
You KNEW what was going to happen at those town hall meetings during the slow news month of August.
You KNEW the Republicans would start feeling confident that they could knock you out while they had you on the ropes.
You KNEW whacked out Birthers and Deathers and Teabaggers were going to project their ignorant assed bullshit on everybody.
And I'll even bet you KNEW Charles "I Tweet Dumb Shit" Grassley would fucking BRAG about how he wasn't negotiating in good faith.
Well, August is now more than half over.
You already have the chief Republican negotiator for bipartisanship in health care reform saying he wasn't negotiating in good faith, AND THEN ADMITTING THERE WAS NO WAY HE'D VOTE FOR ANY BILL!
Your ducks are all in a row.
You now have every right to say, "we negotiated in good faith with the Republicans to develop health care reform legislation. You now have the chief negotiator bragging about how he wasn't negotiating in good faith but was rather using some sort of stalling tactic to slow down the legislation and even admitting there is no bill we could come up with that he'd vote for. Health care reform is simply too important for this kind of gamesmanship, so the Democratic Caucus in the Congress now has no choice but to go it alone. We'll now develop the legislation that Democrats can vote for and pass that however we have to."
With President Barack Obama heading to Martha's Vineyard for a long vacation away from touting the "success" of the Iraq War and promoting the Afghan War's escalation this weekend, he is going to be greeted with a lot of ads critical of his health care plan. And something else, or rather someone else.
This is a Howitzer-shot at our bought-&-paid-for press corps' blackout of a story which makes a JOKE of Canadian sovereignty.
Marc Emery sold viable cannabis seeds through his magazine, "Cannabis Culture," OPENLY, for YEARS, to Canada and the United States. NOT some shady back-alley enterprise, but a business which was fully open to sunlight.
Everyone knows that about half of Americans are morons who believe pot- smoking to be roughly on a par with the Jewish Holocaust, so it's no surprise that Mr. Emery's business put some hornets up a few Yank backsides.
So what did they do? Petition our government to make a law prohibiting seed sales to the US, or come in like ham-fisted Imperialists? What do you think?
If they were a HALF-civilized country, they'd have done the former. Marc Emery did not embezzle a million bucks or murder anyone. If he'd continued selling seeds to the US, then he'd be guilty of breaking Canadian law & would be subject to OUR penalties.
No, when the US DEA said, "We want to arrest a Canadian on Canadian soil and EXTRADITE him to the US for a likely life sentence in a Maximum-Security Federal prison," our Justice Quisling, Irwin Cotler, replied, "Sure, come on in boys. After all, we aren't REALLY our own country, but the 51st state."
And that's what happened. To save a couple of people who worked on the magazine with him from a similar fate, Mr. Emery agreed to be extradited & locked up for a "mere" five years. Hey, it's only FIVE years out of a man's life, in a stinking, under- funded, over-crowded US prison system where he JUST might get shanked or HIV from "inconvenient" anal-rape (God forbid).
For OPENLY selling seeds for YEARS.
My question is, why isn't the Canadian press covering this? Are we a free country or a fucking vassal-state? I can see why whores like Global TV aren't talking about it -- they do as they're told. I'm talking to YOU, CBC! If anyone's supposed to have the public interest in the crosshairs, it's you. Where's the coverage and the outrage? Where ARE you?!
You'll MAYBE mention this, with minimal information, on the day Mr. Emery is sent over to Tortureland. And Canadians will just shrug their shoulders at this "tidbit," just as our Masters ordain.
Nearly all of the Pentagon's counter-insurgency warfare doctrine has been based on distortions of the pirated theories of former president of the American Psychological Association, Prof. Martin Seligman. Now we learn that post traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) treatments for war veterans have been developed from his work as well.
The US military has totally embraced Seligman's controversial theories, twisting them to suit their deadly purposes, basing their computer-modeled psyops plans, plans for homeland security, even their recruitment strategies, upon his theories of "learned helplessness," looking for ways to bring-about its most debilitating form, learned hopelessness. Every one of these programs is geared towards finding and exploiting the human breaking point.
Seligman's core observation is that people and animals tend to basically just give-up, when besieged by inescapable pain and cruel, relentless uncertainty—to quote another controversial work, "Silent Weapons for a Quiet War," they reached a point of "capitulation." (for those who categorically dismiss this "conspiracy theory" document, because of its iffy history, it nevertheless remains the defining explanation of the theory of econometric warfare and the accompanying psychological concept of "capitulation.")
Investigative journalist Jane Mayer (author of The Dark Side) has revealed that Seligman's work also inspired the CIA's controversial torture/interrogation program. Mayer has traced the lineage of the ideas behind the "water-boarding" mentality (specifically, the electro-shocking of prisoners and treating them like dogs), proving that they were reverse-engineered from Seligman's work.
"You have patiently traced the torture techniques used by the CIA back to two psychologists, James Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen—you describe them as "good looking, clean-cut, polite Mormons"—who reverse-engineered their techniques out of the SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, escape) program used to train U.S. pilots in self-defense. In Dark Side, you identify an approach called "Learned Helplessness" as the model they used, and you note that its author, Prof. Martin Seligman, made a visit to the SERE school…
Seligman and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania pioneered work on a theory he called "Learned Helplessness." He did experiments with dogs in which he used electric shocks to destroy their will to escape…
He and colleagues conducted experiments on caged dogs, in which they used electric charges to shock them randomly. He discovered that the random mistreatment destroyed the dogs emotionally to the point where they no longer had the will to escape, even when offered a way out.
Seligman's theories were cited admiringly soon after by James Mitchell, the psychologist whom the CIA put on contract to advise on its secret interrogation protocol. Eyewitnesses describe Mitchell as quoting Seligman's theories of "Learned Helplessness" as useful in showing how to break the resistance of detainees' to interrogation. One source recounts Mitchell specifically touting the experiments done on dogs in the context of how to treat detainees…the detainees have described other ways in which they were treated like dogs—the use of dog cages and of a collar and leash."
Now the Army has begun a traumatic shock and stress-related treatment program for all servicemen, based on Seligman's treatment for "learned helplessness," which basically amounts to a system for teaching auto-suggestion to the troops. It is teaching the opposite of helplessness, teaching the troops and their families to unlearn human nature and the exhaustion brought-on by the siege.
In the video above I speak with Charles Brown, legal counsel for the Consumers for Dental Choice, which is a nonprofit corporation whose purpose is to educate the public about the health and environmental dangers of mercury fillings, and to ensure more effective government oversight on amalgam. Charles discusses the processes he's been undertaking for the last 10 years to get dangerous mercury fillings removed from the market, and brings you up to speed on where we are today with the FDA's most recent, atrocious ruling.
The U.S. FDA has issued a final regulation classifying dental amalgam without calling for stringent precautions for pregnant women and children -- even though last June a court settlement filed by the Consumers for Dental Choice required the FDA to withdraw claims of mercury amalgam's safety from its Web site and issue an advisory indicating:
"Dental amalgams contain mercury, which may have neurotoxic effects on the nervous systems of developing children and fetuses."
Instead, the FDA has classified the fillings as class II devices, meaning the agency is claiming that they are completely harmless. This stands in direct contradiction of the conclusions of the FDA's own panel of scientific experts, and the findings of the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology (IAOMT).
In fact, mercury dental fillings contribute 2 to 3 times as much mercury to the human body as all dietary and environmental sources combined. IAOMT is urging the FDA to change the ruling, ban dental amalgam from commerce and issue a mandatory recall on the product.
Charles Brown says:
"FDA broke its contract and broke its word that it would put warnings for children and unborn children for neurological damage. Bowing to the dental products industry, FDA for the first time in its history pulled a warning about neurological harm to children."
"This contemptuous attitude toward children and the unborn will not go unanswered," said Brown. "We will see FDA in court."
On my 21st birthday, I woke up in the morning and drove to Dairy Queen. I got soft serve vanilla ice cream with strawberry topping and I ate it for breakfast. Why? When I was a child I asked once if I could have ice cream for breakfast, and my mother said, "You can have ice cream for breakfast when you're 21." And so I did.
My father spent his 21st birthday in a prisoner of war camp. Deaf in one ear, and completely flat-footed, he could have easily been a "4-F" and escaped service for medical reasons. He was a peaceful man but he, like so many of his generation, felt the need to serve his country, and to fight against the fascism that was threatening to engulf the democratic nations of Western Europe, and had even attacked the United States.
When he was 20 years old, he'd been taken prisoner by the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge, was marched for miles, imprisoned, and starved. Like many men of his generation, veterans of World War II, he didn't talk about it much. He held his memories close to his chest. If he talked to anyone about them, I didn't know. It was only many years after his service and just before his death that he shared some of those memories with me.
Starvation does strange things to people. He told me that after a while in the camp, he had the same recurring dream, every night – a stack of pancakes topped with two fried eggs, sunny-side up. He'd dream that dream over and over, a still frame, a picture of a breakfast that never came. He told me that his fellow prisoners got so hungry that once they had killed and eaten a cat that had strayed into the camp. You don't forget a story like that.
Or the story of the man in the camp, who snapped. In peace time, we'd have called him a boy. Suddenly and without warning in the middle of the day, out in the yard, his mind went. He ran for the fence in a desperate effort to escape. There was nowhere to go, and in broad daylight with armed guards everywhere, he didn't stand a chance. My father, who was quick to pick up languages, had learned some German. "Don't shoot! He's crazy! He's lost his mind! He doesn't know what he's doing!" my father called out to the guards as he ran out in the yard waving his arms. The man kept running for the fence, and he climbed, and the guards didn't shoot. They waited until he reached the top. And then they shot him. They left him there for three days as a warning to anyone else who might have been thinking about escape.
Any survivor of World War II has stories. Millions were never able to tell them. Their lives ended on battlefields, and in gas chambers, at the hands of the Nazis. My dad was able to tell me some of his experiences, but most of those memories died with him, like they died with many vets and victims of the war. I didn't even know he'd received a Purple Heart until after his death. But he survived. He survived to marry the girl he left at home, to buy a house, to get a college degree, to start his own company, and to raise a family of five children.
I asked my dad if he ever got his stack of pancakes with the fried eggs on top. I imagined it being his first meal after the Russians had liberated the camp. The Germans had heard that the Russians were coming, and they left quickly in the night. The prisoners hadn't known what was happening until two days later when the Russian army came and let them out, confused and near death. No, he told me, he never did have the pancakes and eggs. It took months in the hospital to build his system back up to where he could eat normally. He began at 5′11″ weighing less than 100 pounds, and started with an IV, then a liquid diet, then cream of wheat, and finally solids. A fellow prisoner, he said, on his way from the camp to the hospital in France had managed to get a hold of a box of donuts and had gorged himself. He died a free man, but still a victim. By the time my dad was able to eat that stack of pancakes and eggs, the desire had passed.
I remember as a child I was not allowed to watch Hogan's Heroes. It wasn't a joke in my house. There was nothing funny about prisoner of war camps. There were no handsome well-fed prisoners with secret tunnels under their bunks, and pirate radio equipment who always managed to play their captors for the fool. There were frightened, emaciated young men whose minds and bodies were broken an ocean away from home, who were shot on fences , and who ate cats, and watched their friends die. There was nothing to laugh about. Those were Nazis.
As time passes, and as the greatest generation becomes a memory, passing into history one soul at a time, it is up to the generations that follow them to keep "Hitler" and "Nazi" out of the clutches of those who would make them political buzzwords for people they don't like, or policies they don't understand.
Entire nation to be completely stoned, complacent, impotent "real soon now"
By Mark Morford
Hey, want a fun thing to do when you're just sittin' 'round the zeitgeist, waiting for a bolt of enlightenment or maybe just the apocalypse to rain down destruction and locusts and Godspit on your sinful little head? Something to do whilst you're nakedly sipping some fine sake and wondering when the melting icecaps will raise the oceans sufficiently that you can start taking a boat to work?
Extrapolate. That's what you can do. Draw it out. Take it to its natural conclusion. Grab hold of a juicy piece of ripe, low-hanging news and lick it and stroke it and promise to make it breakfast, and let it coo and whimper and whisper its wicked secrets in your hungry little id. Hey, it beats fornication. Oh wait, no it doesn't. Never mind.
Here's a good piece to start you off: Did you know that the use of prescription antidepressants in America has literally doubled in a mere 10 years? It's true.
From about '96 to '05, they say the number of your fellow patriots taking behavioral meds jumped from 13 million to a whopping 27 million, which is fully 10 percent of the American population, not including babies and cats and the Duggars. And that's only through '05. The actual number is probably far closer to 15 or even 20 percent by now.
Are you amazed? The slightest bit surprised? Taken aback? Of course you're not.
This is where you do it. This is where you get to load up your satire gun, fire up your dour prognosticator and crank your extrapolator to full power, and draw some nifty, if dubious, conclusions.
Because, do you know what this means? It means that, very soon now, maybe three, four or 30 years hence, just about every American and most of the planet, too, will be on some sort of narcotic, behavioral med, modifier, zinger or zapper or calmer or leveler designed to mollify or numb or dry up all your saliva, give you some really weird dreams and make you never want to have sex. It's not all that tough to imagine, really.
But why stop there? Extrapolate a bit further. Because if you look at it just right, this also means all depression and unhappiness will soon be coming to an end. Isn't that great? No more depression! At last! No more war. No more road rage. No more gangs. No more screaming at the dog or yelling at your spouse about the general lack of oral sex in your morning routine. Imagine.
Not quite convinced? Fine. Let us dissect. Let us perform a dangerous feat of only semi-drunken math to verify it all and keep your extrapolator well lubed and pumping hard. Ready?
Let's see: 13 million in 10 years translates into a little more than one million new antidepressant users every year, correct? That breaks down to about 90,000 per month, or 3,000 new users every 24 hours, which is about 125 every hour, or roughly two Americans jumping on the antidepressant train every single minute, 24 hours a day, every day of the week, nonstop forever and ever until we all die happy and narcotized and free. Praise Jesus.
We may look down on all the primitive peoples who are confused by lightning and think thunder is the voice of the gods, but the truth is to this very day there are natural phenomena that our scientists still don't being to understand.
We're talking about events that are witnessed by thousands, photographed, well-documented and yet are utterly baffling. Such as...
#7.
Naga Fireballs
What would you do if you were walking along a tropical river at night and it suddenly began burping up egg-sized balls of red light? It happens every year in October along the Mekong river (the same one featured in classic Vietnam movies like Rambo II and the flashbacks from Rambo III). The phenomenon is known as the Naga Fireballs, and experts agree that it is "just weird as shit."
"'Weird as shit,' I said, I don't understand what other questions you could have."
What happens is this: starting under water, tens to thousands of glowing red lights are seen rising out from the bottom of the river, then lifting hundreds of feet into the sky before disappearing.
It literally appears that the river is spitting out flaming M&Ms. They have never harmed anyone, and don't even seem to touch anything let alone set anything on fire. However, both of those facts were probably unavailable to dull the ferocity of the pant-crapping that took place when the event was first witnessed.
The Naga Fireballs are viewed by thousands of people every year, and a healthy number of videos documenting the phenomenon are hosted on YouTube, which is the most reliable scientific journal on the Internet next to Wikipedia.
So, What do the Smart People Think is Happening?
The number one theory suggests that fermented sediment in the river, things such as decomposing remains and animal waste, release bubbles of self-immolating gas that rise to the surface and combust. That's right, the best explanation science has come up with for the Naga fireballs is essentially that it eats too much meat. Suspiciously absent from this theory is a reason why the phenomenon occurs around the same time every year. Unless the Mekong eats a regimented diet of Activia yogurt, those meat eaters among us have to be somewhat suspicious of such a regular rate of expulsion.
The locals are simply unwilling to accept any scientific explanation for the Naga Fireballs, preferring to preserve a sense of mysticism. Scooby-Doo could roll up in the Mystery Machine and uncover a giant underwater cannon shooting phosphorous balls into the sky and he'd probably be told to fuck off. Also, they would probably eat him.
#6.
Star Jelly
It is no surprise that shit falls from the sky during a meteor shower (that's pretty much 90 percent of the definition). But sometimes what rockets to the Earth is not what you would expect. Rather than a big hunk of stone or metal, sometimes people find what looks like a jellyfish that splattered down from outer space.
Or a ballistic space dildo.
There have been reports for over a century of people finding what the Germans call sternenrotz (which literally means "star snot") in conjunction with meteors falling from the sky. It's usually clear or yellowish, smells awful and disintegrates after being handled, much like one of our erections. Despite being described thoroughly in numerous newspaper and police accounts for over 150 years, no one has ever really been able to study it in depth because the substance falls apart too quickly to allow for a sample to be obtained.
Case in point: in 1950, four Philadelphia police men found a six-foot lump of star jelly outside of town. When they tried to pick it up, it dissolved into "odorless, sticky scum." No doubt they all took a shower afterward and couldn't look each other in the eye ever again.
So, What do the Smart People Think is Happening?
Most scientists are more than happy to say witnesses are full of shit and leave it at that, but some at least try to explain it. The glob found by the policemen in Philadelphia was a half mile away from the Philadelphia gas works, so some assert that it was a discharge of some sort (which is simultaneously plausible and just as unlikely as space boogers).
Other theories have included bird vomit, frog spawn vomited up by other animals and generally a bunch of other vomit-related ideas. The goo could also be mundane types of algae slimes that people just happen to notice around the time of a meteor fall. By far the most ball-crushingly awesome theory claims that star jelly is the remains of atmospheric beasts, mythical creatures that some claim float around in the atmosphere. Why we're not constantly scraping such creatures from the windshields of airliners is not explained.
#5.
Blue Jets and Red Sprites
While they may sound like two squads of a gay relay team, blue jets and red sprites are actually the names of what occurs above the clouds during a lightning storm. Only visible from space or from an airplane (or from a space airplane), these things look like the exhaust ports on a Megazord and we are totally putting them on our Christmas list.
Sprites and jets are always associated with lightning storms. Sprites are red most of the time and happen as high as 50 miles off the surface of the ground, while jets shoot directly out of the tops of storm clouds, sometimes traveling as far as 30 miles up into the Ionosphere.
So, What Do the Smart People Think is Happening?
Top minds are pretty sure the phenomena has something to do with whatever is causing the lightning we see in every storm, but beyond that, they don't seem to know. They know the sprites kick off as a result of a lightning strike on the ground, but the jets seem to fire whenever they goddamn please.
Jets also sometimes come in the form of the imaginatively named gigantic jets, which can shoot up as high as 43 miles above the cloud cover and look like something you uppercut your opponent into after a spirited game of Mortal Kombat. For now, science is content to shrug its shoulders and see what else is on The Discovery Channel.
#4.
Earthquake Lights
As far back as 373 BC people have claimed to see weird lights in the sky during earthquakes, and sometimes for minutes before the shaking actually starts, as seen in this video:
They seem to occur in China quite often, probably because the government only permits people to see a rainbow if they are moments from cataclysmic natural destruction. The lights were also witnessed during the recent earthquakes in Peru.
"Hey, check out the rainbow!" "Yea, that's cool. The garage just fell on grandpa, by the way."
So, What Do the Smart People Think is Happening?
There are a number of theories surrounding earthquake lights, but unfortunately none of them are very conclusive. One suggests that the imminent earthquake releases gases that are electrically charged in the air, while another says that the tectonic stress fucks with the magnetic field of the earth and creates an aurora.
Yet another claims that the ground beneath contains a lot of quartz, which sparks up like Blanka from Street Fighter 2 when shaken by a tremor. Not one of these theories has a shred of evidence to back it up, though, so really we would accept any theory as long as we can tie it to some kind of fighting game reference.
According to the Wal-Mart flier, it's almost time for young people to return to school. Personally, I'll be happy to get them off my lawn and out of sight.
It occurs to me that a great deal has changed since I was a lad and preparing to return to the classroom.
Take the school knapsack for example.
Back in my day, this was standard issue for a young man heading off to school:
Wholesome, decent, all-American knapsacks for decent, red-blooded boys.
Compare that to the contents of an average young man's knapsack today:
God damned sad if you ask me. But the knapsacks speak for themselves.
Every day I get letters asking me to weigh in on the healthcare fracas. As if a redneck writer armed with a keyboard, a pack of smokes and all the misinformation and vitriol available on the Internet could contribute anything to the crap storm already in progress. Besides that, my unreasoned but noisy take on this issue is often about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit. None of which has ever stopped me from making a fool of myself in the past. So here goes.
There ain't any healthcare debate going on, Bubba. What is going on are mob negotiations about insurance, and which mob gets the biggest chunk of the dough, be it our taxpayer dough or the geet that isn't in ole Jim's impoverished purse. The hoo-ha is about the insurance racket, not the delivery of healthcare to human beings. It's simply another form of extorting the people regarding a fundamental need -- health.
Unfortunately, the people have been mesmerized by our theater state's purposefully distracting and dramatic media productions for so long they've been mutated toward helplessness. Consequently, they are incapable of asking themselves a simple question: If insurance corporation profits are one third of the cost of healthcare, and all insurance corporations do is deliver our money to healthcare providers for us (or actually, do everything in their power to keep the money for themselves), why do we need insurance companies at all? Answer: Because Wall Street gets a big piece of the action. And nobody messes with the Wall Street Mob (as the bailout extortion money proved). Better (and worse) presidents have tried. Some made a genuine effort to push it through Congress. Others expressed the desire publicly, but after getting privately muscled by the healthcare industry, decided to back off from the idea. For instance:
Franklin Roosevelt wanted universal healthcare.
Harry Truman wanted universal healthcare.
Dwight Eisenhower wanted universal healthcare.
Richard Nixon wanted universal healthcare.
Lyndon Johnson wanted universal healthcare.
Bill Clinton wanted -- well we can't definitely say because he made sure that if the issue blew up on him, which it did, Hillary would be left holding the turd. Is it any wonder that woman gets so snappy at the slightest provocation? First getting left to hold the bag on healthcare, then the spots on that blue dress.
So why did American liberals believe Obama would bring home the healthcare bacon? Because they live in an ideological cupcake land. It's a big neighborhood, a very special place where "Your vote is important," and "by electing the right candidate, you can change our beloved nation." Most of America lives in that neighborhood, even though they've never personally met. It's a place where the shrubbery and flowerbeds of such things as "values" and "hope" bloom. Hope that our desires coupled with the efforts of a good and decent president can affect "change." Evidently these voters never heard the old adage, "Hope in one hand and piss in the other, and see which one fills up first."
So, the latest way the wing-nut right has found to get everyone's attention is to show up heavy at healthcare town hall meetings. I don't know what loaded guns have to do with healthcare reform, but there they are, AR15's hanging on the shoulders of men in baseball caps, 9mm semi-automatic pistolas strapped, Bruce Willis-style, on their upper thighs. All loaded for ... what? Bear? Deer? Muskrats? Dingos?
Dunno. But there they are, loaded for something - prancing around with their hardware fully exposed with a, "mine is bigger than yours," swagger. And "I got a honkin' bad, uncircumcised assault rifle." (With flash supressor.)
Right wingers are always fretting about how liberals are on the verge of taking their guns away. Which makes me wonder if they realized how many liberals out here are just as well armed as they are? Because we are. And, take it from me as a life-long liberal, I know liberals far better than right wingers do and taking your guns away is not on the mainstream progressive agenda.
So, we liberal gun owners don't lay awake nights, stroking our guns, waiting for black helicopters to sweep in with storm troopers there to wrench our guns from our "cold dead fingers." We know that's not about to happen, at least as long as we don't abuse our constitutional right to keep and bear arms. (Civics Lesson: Every right in the constitution can only exist as long as those granted those rights don't abuse them... like yelling "fire" in a crowded theater --- or shooting up town hall meetings... just saying.)
Right wingers seem to think that only their kind appreciate the heft of a well-made gun. Wrong. As I already noted, many liberals own guns, often more than one. And, if I could dare to speak for fellow liberal gun-owners, here's how we view our firearm(s):
We view our gun the very same way we view the fire extinguisher we keep in case there's a fire. I'd feel pretty foolish, even irresponsible, if a fire broke out in our kitchen and I didn't have an extinguisher right at hand before it spread and burned our house down. Likewise, I'd feel pretty foolish if someone broke into my house in the middle of the night and I didn't have a way to protect myself and my family. (Knock wood, I've never had a fire or break-in, but both can and do happen, and I'm ready for either.)
Last week, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), the most conservative member of the so-called bipartisan "Gang of Six" working on the Senate Finance Committee's health care bill, stated that he preferred that Congress deal with reform incrementally. "I think the only way it will happen is we need to break it down into smaller parts than we have now and put it through one at a time," he said.
Today on CNN, Sen. Joe Lieberman (CT), an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats, embraced Enzi's idea. "Great changes in our country often have come in steps. The Civil Rights movement occurred, changes occurred in steps," he argued. Lieberman added that Congress should address the nearly 50 million uninsured at some point down the road:
LIEBERMAN: Morally, everyone of us would like to cover every American with health insurance but that's where you spend most of the trillion dollars plus, or a little less that is estimated, the estimate said this health care plan will cost. And I'm afraid we've got to think about putting a lot of that off until the economy is out of recession. There's no reason we have to do it all now.
Later, host John King asked Lieberman if he would vote with the Democrats if the reconciliation process is used to pass health care. "I think it's a real mistake to try to jam through the total health insurance reform," Lieberman said, adding, "It's just not good for the system. Frankly, it won't be good for the Obama presidency." Watch it:
Noting that the insured currently pay for the uninsured through rising premiums, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) challenged Lieberman's approach. "We've got to bring down the cost of health care," he argued. "It's difficult to do that by ignoring those who don't have health insurance today." A New York Times editorial today agreed:
If nothing is done to slow current trends, the number of people in this country without insurance or with inadequate coverage will continue to spiral upward. That would be a personal tragedy for many and a moral disgrace for the nation. It is also by no means cost-free. Any nation as rich as ours ought to guarantee health coverage for all of its residents.
Yet, Lieberman still sides with the Republicans on health care reform.
So, the latest way the wing-nut right has found to get everyone's attention is to show up heavy at healthcare town hall meetings. I don't know what loaded guns have to do with healthcare reform, but there they are, AR15's hanging on the shoulders of men in baseball caps, 9mm semi-automatic pistolas strapped, Bruce Willis-style, on their upper thighs. All loaded for ... what? Bear? Deer? Muskrats? Dingos?
