Dennis and Michael were right when they told us that WMDs didn't exist, Saddam was not behind 9/11, and the Iraq War was a mistake, which has since cost hundreds of thousands of lives, injured and maimed even more, and left depleted uranium in its wake to cause cancer and birth defects to countless yet unborn.
The DINOs were wrong.
Dennis and Michael were right that the bailouts were throwing good money after bad and that our Treasury was basically transferring billions of our tax dollars up to Wall Street tycoons/banksters who caused the economic crisis.
The DINOs were wrong.
Dennis and Michael were right about not passing the Patriot Act, which gutted our Constitutional right to privacy.
The DINOs were wrong.
Now, Dennis and Michael are right that this HCR bill is a travesty, because it mandates poor Americans to purchase lousy insurance that will not offer them the coverage they need, but will increase the profits of the health care industry, whose stock went up precipitously once the PO was removed.
Michael Moore, Dennis Kucinich, Jane Hamsher, Howard Dean, Arianna Huffington, Adam Green, etc are looking out for the millions of uninsured Americans, because they have been fighting for the public option, which will offer Americans insurance that is independent of the insurance industry and provide better health care for much less $$$.
Guess what?
President Obama agreed with them, and if you listen to this video, you will hear the crowd roar their approval of the public option.
President Obama believed that the public option would give Americans an option that would compete with the health care industry, which would promote lower premiums and better service.
These men and women have been trying to protect the uninsured from being forced to pay for mandated substandard insurance or pay a fine for refusing to pay for mandated substandard insurance.
If it weren't for Michael Moore, creator of "Sicko," the majority of Americans would still be propagandized by the insurance industry/big pharma fear mongers into believing in death panels, how awful national health care is, and how our privatized insurance is the best there is. His movie showed us that in America a man had to choose which finger to have sewn back onto his hand, because he could only afford to keep one, but in Canada a man had his whole hand, with all 5 fingers, reattached, at no extra cost. Michael Moore is not "whining," he is advocating for real health care reform, not a bill that increases health insurance and big pharma stock at our expense.
Before you criticize Dennis Kucinich for voting his conscience and refusing to vote for this health care bill that was written in large part by the insurance industry to increase their huge profits at the expense of the 31 million uninsured, who don't yet pay them heaps of money through mandates, have you ever written a diary criticizing Joe Lieberman for threatening to filibuster the public option?
Why not slam the army of health insurance/big pharma lobbyists who buy our Congress critters' votes to leave the public option on the cutting room floor and force mandates for junk insurance and overpriced meds down our throats?
Why, indeed.
It isn't only "liberals" who are passionately for the public option, it's the majority of the American people. Demonizing the left is so FOX News, and it doesn't fool anyone these days, especially the uninsured and the underinsured, who desperately need the public option.
People are going bankrupt due to the inadequate health insurance they have and don't have. They are following their own best interest demanding a stronger bill that contains a public option. They know that the French, Brits, Germans, Canadians, etc, have better and less costly health care than we do, and they want real reform, not faux HC reform that makes the insurance industry's stock go sky high.
People want a real public option, not "the very existence of this legislative process," which is anything but a victory for the American people, but a boondoggle for the insurance industry.
Single payer national health insurance is what Dennis has fought for all along, and the "public option" is a watered down version of that, but far better than having no other option than corporate health insurance. The public option is in itself a compromise with health care corporations. The removal of the public option is much worse than mere compromise, but total capitulation to the health care industry and a complete abrogation of serving the American public.
This bill funnels a large part of the proposed $200 billion into health insurance industry's coffers through mandated insurance, which is why their stock soared once the PO was removed. And guess what? Anything at all good in this bill came from progressives like Dennis Kucinich refusing to back down earlier in the process!
And please stop saying "PROGRESSIVES" or "LIBERALS." It's disingenuous. It's the MAJORITY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE who want the PO.
Also, please stop saying the public options is
currently unattainable.
We were told that Barack Obama was
currently unattainable.
The proponents of this gutted and throughly padded HCR bill claim that Dennis and Michael may hurt Democrats' chances if this shell of a bill doesn't get passed, but what will the Democrats have to show for themselves come Election Day? How will the 31 million vote when they find out that they have to pay for junk insurance and do not have the public option? What else have the Democrats capitulated on at their expense?
Are the Democrats working on regulating Wall Street? Are they working on investigating the fraud that brought our economy to its knees? Are they demanding repayment? Are they ending the wars?
Or are they cowardly continuing to pass laws on a voice vote that take away our freedom and our right to privacy?
Are they working on ending torture and holding torturers accountable?
Or are they cowardly giving war criminals a free pass and relegating all evidence against them to be sealed for decades?
What are they doing to stop and remove landmines to protect innocent children from losing limbs? What are they doing to assist the victims of the expensive wars they voted for based on false information and lies?
What are they doing with the inmates of Gitmo? Are they allowing them to have their day in court or are they throwing out their legitimate cases to shield the heinous war criminals who tortured them, flouting international law?
These so called Democrats are taking away our public option, justice, peace, decency, and for every $ "contribution" and lucrative "job" offer they accept from lobbyists, $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ flows out of our treasury to pay for immoral wars, charlatan no bid contracts, Halliburton, Blackwater, insurance that doesn't insure all that much, banksters, Goldman Sachs, torturers, .....
and yet they dare tell us to shut up about progressive causes that they decree are
currently unattainable?
Should the African Americans who sat at lunch counters in waves in the segregated south have shut up?
Should the women who wanted the vote have shut up?
Should the people who divested from Apartheid have shut up?
Should the people who tried to tell the world what Hitler was doing have shut up?
Should Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and all the people who wrote our Constitution have shut up?
Should Gandhi have shut up?
If one reads the history books, one discovers that all of the progressive causes of their day seemed just as unattainable as the public option currently does, if not moreso.
I still have the audacity of hope, and I admire Dennis and Michael for working for truth and justice.
Years ago, I helped dramatically increase the number of people who participated in a weekly vigil on my university president's front lawn that caused him to quit his country club, which didn't permit African Americans or Jews entrance, even though people said that our goal was
currently unattainable.
The vigil was conducted by the Black Student Alliance, and most Jews were unaware that they were also excluded at the country club. I informed all of my friends that if MLK and Albert Einstein were living and the president was inviting distinguished guests for a round of golf, he would have to say, "Sorry, Marty and Albee, but you can't come." This shocked, not only my Jewish friends, but anyone who wanted our university to be respected, not written up in an unfavorable light in the Washington Post. The segregation remaining in our community made us all look ignorant. We all had a stake in putting a stop to it.
Not long after the president quit the club, the club changed its policy and admitted AAs and Jews. One key man refusing to go along with a flawed policy was all it took to affect change.
Dennis Kucinich is a key Congressman who refuses to go along with this thoroughly flawed HCR bill.
The HCR debate should include everyone, not just the uninsured and underinsured. Michael Moore did a great job in telling us how we all have a stake in this American embarassment. We have to wait too long in the ER and our 9/11 heroes aren't getting the medical attention they need for the health problems they developed at ground zero. Mandated insurance is not good enough for our great country, just like a segregated country club membership was a slap in the face of my great university. Having health insurance run by private corporations rations health care and is a tax on all of us that we cannot afford. We deserve better.
I also organized a rally on my campus (1979) that helped encourage my university to be one of the first in the nation to divest from South Africa, and they're proud of that distinction now, even though back then powerful people wanted me to get tossed out of school for protesting something that they wanted us to believe was
currently unattainable.
I have learned that shutting up is ineffective and that peacefully and respectfully, but audibly and noticeably, voicing the truth about a progressive cause is the best way to make our world a better place.
For this reason, I think that Dennis Kucinich should continue to work for a better bill that removes the lousy mandates and puts back the public option.
Standing by one's principles is not a purity fetish, as the health care industry PR machine wants us to believe, but is honest and decent governance. It's serving the American people, as our democracy was designed to do, not the special interests.
Do we need to purify our democracy from the $ of powerful special interests, who embarass us by making us do primitive and immoral things that are not in our best national interest?
Or is it okay to continue to let the special interests run our country into the ground, waging wars based on lies, permitting fraud in our financial institutions, and letting our health care be determined by corporate profits, not sound medicine?
Shooting the brave and true messengers among us, Dennis Kucinich and Michael Moore, who have consistantly been right about all of the above, says it all. The special interests have no arguments, only bars of soap...and plenty of wool to pull over our eyes and ears, so that we don't hear the truth in time, and we let them take every last nickel and dime, our jobs, and compromise our health by trading something beneficial to us, the PO, for something beneficial to them, the inadequate mandates.
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Today is my birthday, and thank you for my first time on the rec list.
This is a wonderful birthday gift.