House leadership is looking at passing the Senate HC bill in one step instead of two. Basically since many House members simply don’t want to vote for the Senate bill the Democratic leadership is looking into a procedure called “deem and pass”. Instead of voting on the Senate HC bill and then voting on the reconciliation bill Democrats may use a parliamentary procedure where they “deem” the Senate HCR passed when “pass(ing)” the two bills together. This is done all the time in the House by Democrats and Republicans but like usual Republicans are being hypocritical and saying that the Dems aren’t voting on healthcare. Republicans would have to break 116 years of precedent to taint the procedure. It would be politically “cleaner” to use the two step procedure but the downside is that the Senate might not pass the reconciliation bill and the Senate bill with be law.

If HCR fails these are the people that will define America’s future. Most people are angry and justifiably so but some people want to channel that anger for progress and to make things better. These people are just angry and that’s a big different.

Now let’s all cover this great Beatles song with slightly revised lyrics.

Eleanor Rigby (Lennon/McCartney)

Ah, look at all the angry people
Ah, look at all the angry people

Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?

All the angry people
Where do they all come from?
All the angry people
Where do they all belong?

Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near.
Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there
What does he care?

All the angry people
Where do they all come from?
All the angry people
Where do they all belong?

Ah, look at all the angry people
Ah, look at all the angry people

Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved

All the angry people
Where do they all come from?
All the angry people
Where do they all belong?

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

- Genesis 6

I’m an ape man, I’m an ape ape man, oh I’m an ape man
– The Kinks

Recently, I wrote a post (Sade and the Body)proffering the idea that the roots of sadism, and peoples’ fascination with it in films and literature, can be found in the nature of our consciousness, specifically that we humans are acutely aware of just how much our bodies are capable of suffering, under certain unwelcome conditions. In that essay, I referred to the mind’s “hatred” of the body, a kind of psychosis arising from the mind’s  awareness of this worrisome aspect of its nature. In the interests of fairness, I would like, with this essay, to consider the human body’spredicament, the raw deal it gets from being attached to a mind that operates like no other in the animal kingdom.

As bodies go, yours and mine are nothing more than variations on a theme. They are closest in form to the chimpanzees and other higher apes, of course, but in fact they are not so different from hundreds of species having vertebrae, internal organs held within a rib cage, extenders such as arms, legs,  fingers, toes, etc. Our pinkish pigmentation can be found under the fur of numerous animals, from pigs to guinea pigs to dogs to prairie dogs. In terms of design, I think it fair to say that we have more in common with squirrels, physiologically and stylistically, than a Model T has to a Ferrari, and than either does to a bulldozer or a city bus. Our bodies are just another example of The Mammalian Success Story that has been going on since ancient cataclysms laid the dinosaurs low.

If a chimpanzee were to wake up one morning, and find it’s body transformed, a la Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, into that of a homo sapiens, leaving aside the muscular strength it would be sacrificing, we can imagine that it would be able to find its way around its new contraption fairly easily. If it felt an itch, or an urge, it would pretty much know what to do about it. And the alternative would be true for us as well. All that chimp hair may take some getting used to, as would being able to effortlessly rip doors off their hinges, but on the whole we’d probably be able to master our new equipment, eventually. Learning to function in our chimp body would probably be considerably less difficult than learning to fly an airplane or navigate a submarine.

Now, on the other hand, stick that chimpanzee’s body with a human mind and tell me it wouldn’t freak out! “What are all these…things?” They’re called abstract thoughts. “WTF am I supposed to do with them?” Uh…, this is going to take some time. Our minds, with their abstract, logical, inventive, metaphoric, etc. ways of operating represent such an anomalous feature of evolution that if even our closest relatives were to suddenly come into the possession of one they would likely go flat out insane in a matter of seconds! We, fortunately, have had all of seven million years (since we broke off from the chimps, a mere blink of an eye in the history of evolution) to get used to our minds. We’re comfortable with them, or are we?

It’s not so much the minds themselves, which, unique as they are in the Wild Kingdom, nevertheless have clearly aided our survival and expansion over the various terrains of the earth. You don’t find chimps living in harsh, dry deserts or frozen hinterlands, after all. But what we havedone with our minds, how we have shaped our environment with them, has surely put tremendous strain on our poor animal bodies. Consider our eyes, hardly different than a chimp’s, which evolved while looking at relatively few color schemes, primarily the greens of the jungle, the blues and grays of ocean and sky, the browns of the earth and mountains, etc. Seeking out the sudden stimulation that comes from finding attractive fruit, or the sudden rapid movement that alerts us that prey or predators are about. This is what our close relatives see, what they use their eyes for, up to this very day. Whereas we, on the other hand, are constantly blitzed with a mad barrage of colors, flashing images, tiny backlit characters on a computer screen that we put together to make words, etc. Other senses are similarly blitzed; our ears, certainly, to say nothing of our taste buds! We are a hyper-stimulated species, made so by the downright freakish environments we’ve built and placed ourselves in.

We spend so much time in boxes; buildings, rooms, cars, and, perhaps, that most unnatural environment of all, fifty thousand feet above the earth, in airplane cabins. Our air is conditioned, our light is electric, our drinking water comes to us through pipes. Our contact with other species is extremely limited. Our natural patterns of sleep and movement are severely compromised by the demands of the unnatural world we’ve engineered for ourselves. Oh, the poor human body! So near, by its very structure, to the natural world, and yet so distant!

It’s bad enough that we modify our own bodies. We have gone further, employing our minds to mould oddities of biology that Natural Selection would have, er, naturally selected for extinction tout suite. Consider the poor pug, which sounds asthmatic as it manages to breathe through a flat apparatus that was meticulously squashed from a wolf’s long snout by generations of breeding. Consider as well ears of corn with husks wrapped so tightly around the seeds they can’t possibly be dispersed. Or bananas with seeds so useless the plants must be grown by cuttings. Cows with udders so huge, and geared toward milk production, they would possibly explode without human assistance. I wonder, if the beauty, vulnerability and exquisiteness of our own human bodies was fully appreciated and honored, would such manipulations of other creatures even be thinkable?

in 1968, Erich von Daniken published a book titled Chariots of the Gods. In it, he referred to certain passages from ancient literature, such as the one I begin this essay with, as indicating that human beings are in fact manifestations of an experiment of sorts, a hybridization of terrestrial ape bodies with highly intelligent aliens (the “gods” who came by “chariots” to the earth). Whether or not there is any truth whatsoever to the claims the book makes, the metaphor of “sons of Gods” (minds) mating with “daughters of men” (animal bodies) quite poetically describes our predicament, I feel. We are, by all accounts, an oddity of nature. Ours is an uncomfortable marriage of raw, animal senses and sensitivities, to abstract, intellectual sentience. For now, our minds have succeeded in constraining our bodies within an environment and lifestyle that no stretch of the imagination could argue they were evolved, over the course of millions of years, for. One can only hope that as the human mind continues to evolve it will work out a happier medium for the animal it lives its life contained within.

Well, looky here: a Public Option in the first draft of the House reconciliation bill (un-numbered yet), pg. 116, Subtitle B, Public Health Insurance Option.

http://budget.house.gov/doc-library/FY2010/03.15.2010_reconciliation2010.PDF

I suppose, if you are like me and favor a Public Option, we shouldn’t get too excited: the vote is a whole week away and Democrats are in charge…

(and maybe we should keep this under our hats until it passes just to be on the safe side.)

Well well, I hope he is right and this definitely sets the end game for HCR which is hardly a game at all. Obviously President Obama is all in on HCR. I admire his persistence and toughness which his critics always underestimate. If Congressional Democrats want to block HCR now they are the ones who lost the battle of Waterloo by letting their General down. I just cannot understate how important it is to get HCR started, which is what this is. If the first iteration does pass the Democrats will have something to build on just like they did with the first iteration of Social Security. Every year the budget comes around Democrats in the Senate can add to the bill with a simple majority. Now even if Democrats in the Senate are not near the magic “super majority” they can make changes to the legislation.

You can read the whole story at the link by clicking here.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs stopped pulling punches when he was asked if health care reform legislation would pass the Congress and be signed by the president incoming days.

By next Sunday (March 21), Gibbs said on Fox News Sunday (March14), the new system outlined in the reform legislation “will be the law of the land.”

There may be a measure of bravado in that declaration, but it confirms that the debate about health care reform is finally getting real.

Texas has just officially doomed generations of their children to ignorance and being oddities in their grasp of history and reality…because neither of those items supported the political views of conservatives and Republicans.

I normally keep my quotes to a minimum but there is so much outrageousness here, I couldn’t pare it down:

From the NY Times:

Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change

By James C. Mckinley Jr.
March 12, 2010

After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state’s large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”

“They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians,” she said. “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”

There are seven members of the conservative bloc on the board, but they are often joined by one of the other three Republicans on crucial votes. There were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings, though some members of the conservative bloc held themselves out as experts on certain topics.

“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”

They also included a plank to ensure that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”

Dr. McLeroy, a dentist by training, pushed through a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He also made sure that textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported.

“Republicans need a little credit for that,” he said. “I think it’s going to surprise some students.”

Mr. Bradley won approval for an amendment saying students should study “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation. He also won approval for an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism.

Other changes seem aimed at tamping down criticism of the right. Conservatives passed one amendment, for instance, requiring that the history of McCarthyism include “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.” The Venona papers were transcripts of some 3,000 communications between the Soviet Union and its agents in the United States.

In economics, the revisions add Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market economic theory, among the usual list of economists to be studied, like Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. They also replaced the word “capitalism” throughout their texts with the “free-enterprise system.”

“Let’s face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation,” said one conservative member, Terri Leo. “You know, ‘capitalist pig!’ ”

In the field of sociology, another conservative member, Barbara Cargill, won passage of an amendment requiring the teaching of “the importance of personal responsibility for life choices” in a section on teenage suicide, dating violence, sexuality, drug use and eating disorders.

“The topic of sociology tends to blame society for everything,” Ms. Cargill said.

Even the course on world history did not escape the board’s scalpel.

Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)

“The Enlightenment was not the only philosophy on which these revolutions were based,” Ms. Dunbar said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html?scp=1&sq=texas%20education&st=cse

This could be a very large post, but I will try to boil it down to what I perceive as the essentials.

What is the REAL problem with health care in America?  I believe the lack of socialized medicine is not the problem.  Or, more precisely, socialized medicine is not the cure.  Here’s one tiny example of how private health care can actually work.

I recently joined a medical group on the West coast of America called Kaiser Permanente.  They are a single payer non profit system.  Given their status, they have every reason to digitize their records and introduce efficiency at every stage of the operation to save money.  To date, they have achieved their goal.  This story is about my relationship with Kaiser and how they have responded to my needs.  I make no claims that my experience is homogeneous.   I’m sure some of the more taxed Kaiser facilities will give different experiences.

That being said.  I’ve had two experiences that have molded my view of this particular organization.  The first was with my wife.

Cindy is my wife.  One night, she woke me from sleep writhing in agony.  She felt like she wanted to vomit and her whole body was cramping.  It was horrible to witness.  I walked her out to my car and drove her to the Hayward emergency Kaiser facility.  Not 10 minutes away.  I slid her Kaiser ID card through the magnetic reader and the printer spit out a tag that I wrapped around her wrist.   Within 5 minutes, a nurse guided us into a private room where we were asked a series of questions including how much pain was being experienced and where.  Immediately, the nurse directed us out a door opposite the one we came in which was the emergency room proper.  Cindy was laid down on a gurney and administered morphine.  Then a cart came with an ultrasound device and they checked the area where she was experiencing pain.   It turns out she had an attack of pancreatitis (sic?).  During all this, her primary care physician was contacted at home and was administering advice on how to deal with this including an immediate MRI.  Cindy got the MRI and after all was said and done, she was fine and the pain was gone.  This all happened in a period of about four hours.

I challenge a for profit hospital to do the same thing as efficiently.

My next experience was with myself.  I had a bad blood sugar attack one day that led me to the Dr’s.  My hyperglycemia was wreaking havoc with my system causing me to be confused.  I was concerned that I was getting adult onset diabetes.   So, I approached my Dr and using a computer he prescribed an entire blood analysis.  He checked off everything from liver and kidney function to blood sugar and cholesterol.  Oh, and he threw in vitamin D deficiency among others.  I walked out of the Dr office and across the court to the lab and waited five minutes for my name to be called.  Then they took three blood tests and had me deliver a urine sample.

This is where the genius of Kaiser comes in.  within two hours, my blood tests started streaming into my email box.  The exact test results along with what is considered acceptable ranges.  Also, a hotlink to a web site that explains the test itself.  These tests are also copied to my Dr who then calls me and follows up with solutions to my health problems.  ALL AUTOMATICALLY.

Kaiser is a machine.  The perfect example of how health care needs to be ran in this country.

Kaiser is affordable.  Kaiser has no limits on what kind of service you can have and for how long.  Kaiser delivers it’s own meds so it controls costs.  It’s perfect.  One time I actually emailed my Dr when my lower back went out and he simply electronically ordered vicodin and a muscle relaxer delivered to the pharmacy.  No Dr visit needed.

The whole point of this is this:  If government sponsored health care was this efficient, they could cover everyone for little to no cost.   The fantastical solution to our health care problems doesn’t need to be an elaborate capital hill solution.  it just needs to be ran in an efficient manner by efficient people.

Yes this ad trying to destroy the democratic process was actually linked on a so called progressive website. I could be wrong but I doubt even people who want to kill the bill out of principle on the left don’t want to block the democratic process. I really don’t know what to say but this is way too over the top.

Please keep this in Speakers Corner.

I read the latest update on the HCR talks. Based on the president’s latest push and congressional responses, I’m now in the cautiously optimistic category that HCR will pass but that’s not the only news that caught my eye. It seems that Dem leadership is trying to put a major part of Student Loan reform in the reconciliation package as well.

Click here to read the whole update on HCR talks.

Pelosi and other House Democrats want to include Obama’s proposed overhaul of the nation’s student loan programs in the second, fix-it health care bill. The measure would require the Education Department to originate all student assistance loans, effectively eliminating a role for banks and private lenders.

That idea has run into opposition from several Senate Democrats, and while officials said the controversy was debated at length in a closed-door meeting Tuesday night, no decision was made.

Like usual the conservadems are trying to block progress and I know loans would be underwritten by private banks but this move would reverse some of the changes Republicans made to the Student Loan system in the past couple of decades.

OK I refuse to watch Beck but from what I heard about Massa’s interview with him it was just strange in some ways. I know very little about Massa and he’s innocent until anything is proven but wow one of his answers sounded just like the excuses men who harass women in the work place make all the time.

Click here to read whole article.

In a one-hour interview with Beck that had much of the journalism world gawking and twittering in amazement, Massa offered a series of bizarre, even inexplicable explanations for his abrupt departure from office. Coming just hours after news broke that the he was under investigation for groping multiple male staffers, Massa insisted that the interactions were playful in nature, though inappropriate in retrospect.

“Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn’t breathe,” he said. “I should have never allowed myself to be as familiar with my staff as I was… I own this misbehavior.”

If that wasn’t enough of a head-scratcher, Massa grew even more cryptic and bizarre when the topic turned to his insistence that Democratic forces had forced him out of office — because they were so worried that he would derail health care reform. He did say that the decision “not to run again” was his and his alone — but he still pegged his immediate resignation to White House brow-beating.

And yet, the only evidence he could summon was basic and formulaic types of political pressure.

“It literally keeps me awake at night,” he said. “Glenn, I have had people come to me, union leaders — and I’m a union guy and I know you’re not — who look at me and said, ‘If you don’t support this health care bill, I will not contribute to your campaign’. Glenn that’s a bribe.”

Even Beck wasn’t buying it, pointing out that what Massa was talking about was, in fact, just lobbying.

His last comment sounds equally as strange. If labour unions can’t lobby to fight corporations than we are surely finished. ChoiceLady may have some insight into lobbying by left leaning and truly non-partisan organizations.

I will never quite understand the emotional reaction toward wolves.

There are people in the West who hate wolves. And I do mean hate. Pathological hate. It simply defies logic and reason.

There are people in the Rockies who believe — with all of their heart and soul — that wolves are quite literally evil.

Wolves are a huge controversy in the Rocky Mountains. Honestly, if you don’t live here, you have no idea how vitriolic it really is. It is something that runs deep in the Mountain Time Zone, psyche, and while I love Montana, this is something about the state I simply don’t understand … and probably never will. The wolf represents something totemic.

It reminds me of when I was a kid, people thought Killer whales were actually evil. They were killers, they ate people. When people learned more about them, they realized they are NOT evil (well, at least not the wild ones), and now killer whales are just about the most beloved animal in the Pacific Northwest. I have literally seen people burst into tears at the site of an orca.

National Geographic did an article this month that touched on the issue relatively well. I hope everyone checks it out. Though I think that article just kind of scraped the tip of the iceberg of the emotionalism (and lack of rationalism sometimes) in the West when it comes to wolves.

Personally, I love wolves. I think they’re cool. I think they’re beautiful. My first experience with wolves was when I was a little kid. We were fishing on Lac La Ronge in northern Saskatchewan and putt-putting past an island late in the evening near dusk. (It never gets completely dark in midsummer in northern Saskatchewan). On an island was a pack of wolves, all howling. To be perfectly honest, it terrified me. I was scared to death of those wolves, staring at us going by with their gleaming yellow eyes. There does seem to be something visceral there. Something buried deep within our DNA. Maybe it’s their yellow eyes. Something not rational. It was just wolves howling, nothing more. Maybe that explains the illogical hate that still goes on.

My second experience with a wolf was about 10 years ago. I was driving through central Oregon on one of the most empty highways on the planet between John Day and Burns, and a wolf ran across the road in front of me. I literally couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought it must have been a big German shepherd, way out in the Strawberry Range in the middle of nowhere, but its legs had been much too long. A German shepherd would not be 30 miles from the nearest town running around on stilts. It was definitely a wolf. There weren’t supposed to be any wolves yet in Oregon, but in the next few months, I started reading about wolf sightings in eastern Oregon, then finally I read about wolf sightings near Burns. I was one of the first people to ever spot a wolf in Oregon!

Wolves were removed from the Endangered Species List last year except in Wyoming — because Wyoming refuses to impose a valid wolf management plan. When wolves were briefly removed from the ESA protected list in Wyoming a year or two ago, Wyoming’s “management plan” turned out to be, “shoot all wolves on sight — NOW.” I am quite literally not exaggerating.

Montana’s system is more sane, though I believe hunters are being allowed to harvest too many wolves.
What isn’t sane is the rhetoric you see in the letters to the editor. Here are a few examples:

I recently received e-mails from friends showing mother cows with their rectums and female organs torn from their bodies by the wolves. These cows were lying down and the blood and raw meat trailed down on their legs. You could tell they were in awful pain. I am sure hundreds of our deer and elk are suffering the same way.
All you wolf lovers should take a good look at these pictures and share them with your families and your children, show them what these savage animals are really all about. Anyone that supports these evil acts are evil themselves. Society would not allow a domestic dog or a human to do these tortuous acts with out punishment.

“The only way is to get rid of them. We’re complaining about a ‘land piranha’ that was dumped on us and kills everything.”

At nights when I let my small dogs and cats out to do their business, I hear the howl of the packs from east and west. It scares the hell out my dogs and cats but generates true fear in me; what have we become, a sacrifice zone?

What about the ranch near Dillon, where last July wolves killed 26 domestic sheep in one night? In August they returned to “surplus kill” another 122 head. Since they didn’t eat them, we must assume they “honed” their instincts pretty well on those two occasions. Because we are now told they don’t kill for fun, must we assume that the wolves didn’t enjoy these killing rampages?
The uninformed may buy some of their poppycock, but the facts are that wolves are intelligent, capable killing machines that seem to enjoy doing what they do best – kill. Sometimes they even eat what they kill!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I actually have some sympathy for the ranchers who lose sheep or calves to wolves. Their losses are legitimate. There are legitimate questions about what is the “right” number of wolves in the Rocky Mountains and how well that coincides with ranching. Remember, some of these people have had their farms and ranches for over 100 years and I’m not looking to drive ranchers out of business. Truth be told, though, ranchers probably still lose more head to mountain lions, coyotes and loose dogs than they do to wolves.

I don’t have as much sympathy for hunters bitching about wolves taking elk. Big deal, when you buy a hunting license, that doesn’t give you a “right” to a kill. It gives you a right to “try.” Most biologists will tell you there are actually too many elk in the Rockies (there are definitely too many deer), but the bitchy hunters just want to make an easy kill while sitting in their backs of their pickups. Geez, they might actually have to hike a mile or two to bag an elk. And they might not bag one at all. Tough. I’m OK with hunting and hunters, but not whiny hunters bitching about wolves that are taking the elk they seem to think they’re entitled to.

But, it’s the rhetoric that wolves are somehow quite literally “evil,” that bugs me. The rhetoric that they’re completely obliterating the elk and deer (Oh, how did the elk and deer ever manage to survive for millennia around those devious wolves?); that wolves kill purely for pleasure; that they gonna start breaking into homes and eating babies next. And I am serious. I have actually heard things like that said.
Wolves are animals. Nothing more. They are predators. They eat meat. They don’t kill for pleasure. Killing is their job; it’s their niche. They’re very good at it. They’ve had about 500,000 years of evolution to learn how to do it.

Wolves are way down the list for most dangerous animals. A dog runnng loose in the neighbourhood represents more danger to you than a wolf. Wolves quite simply don’t kill people. It’s not in their DNA.

One person in recorded history has been killed by wolves (In northern Saskatchewan about 10 years ago, a guy was killed by a pack of wolves.) One. In recorded history. In the past 150 years. Meanwhile, hundreds of people have been killed by mountain lions and bears. In that time span, thousands of people have been killed by domestic dogs. Probably hundreds have been killed by horses. The only animals I am afraid of when I go into the backcountry are mountain lions and grizzlies. Black bears are essentially wimps and don’t scare me too much, unless you get a sow and a cub, and wolves, I don’t have the slightest fear of. I really hope I have another experience with a wolf in the backcountry before my time is done.

So it’s come to this on the eve of a possible passage of healthcare reform, arguably the most important and far-reaching legislation to be passed by Congress since Civil Rights and Medicare came into being in the mid-1960s.

The passage of the Senate Bill in the House hangs by the thread of Denis Kucinich’s vote, whilst celebrity blogger, Jane Hamsher, weighs in with a clarion call for the resignation of Lynne Woolsey, co-chair of the Progressive Caucus in the House and one of the most liberal members in that body.

Kucinich, who voted against the House bill, itself, siding with the Republicans, in early November, is holding out and tilting at windmills for nothing less than a single-payer program to be implemented. Hamsher’s demand for Woolsey’s resignation is a result of Woolsey, another Representative who voted with the Opposition in November, having held her nose and indicated that she would pass the Senate bill on the understanding that a possible public option might be considered on reconciliation.

She compromised, which is what a great deal of our politics – indeed, most politics in the civilised world – is all about: debate, discuss and compromise. She recognised the importance of not wimping out on the one-yard line. She accepted the fact that most pieces of important legislation begin life as a base on which better legislation can be built.

But that’s not enough for Hamsher, who’s not averse to crawling into political bed with the likes of Grover Norquist, spiritual father-confessor of the Teabagging Movement, in an attempt to kill the healthcare bill. In doing this, Hamsher naively thinks that the whole of the Congress, with the President dancing attendance, will sit down again and consider that single-payer is the only route to healthcare the country can afford to take.

Maybe it is. Maybe it’s not. I’ve lived with a single-payer system in the UK  for almost 29 years. I’ve seen it at its best, and I’ve seen it at its worst. Is the quality of care comparable to anything we have in the US? Quite honestly, I have to say no – considering the private health insurance that I carried when I taught school in the States, no. Sometimes, you luck out here and get good nurses, doctors who’ll spend time with you and answer your questions and efficient bureaucracy.  Sometimes shit happens.

At the moment, corporate influence is worming its way into the system in the shape and form of the genial figure of Richard Branson. Gordon Brown has allowed him to buy into however many medical practices that he can afford – and being Richard Branson, that will be a lot – becoming, effectively, a sleeping partner and investing in the running costs and salaries of officials associated with those medical practices. These will be renamed, collectively, Virgin Health (along with Virgin Travel, Virgin Money, Virgin Communications, Virgin Television and Virgin Broadband). I suspect this means that other tycoons will take over other medical practices and before you can sneeze, we’ll be paying handsomely (and privately) to see our GP, to have various and sundry tests run, which - under the old National Health – would have all been free at source.

It’s a sneaky way to cut services offered, whilst increasing the extra tax charged here to fund healthcare, the National Insurance. Everyone pays proportionate to their income. At least, Maggie Thatcher was honest enough to say outright that she was cutting dentistry and optical care out of the package.

I’m also still American enough to know that a single-payer system - indeed, any universal healthcare system – will, inevitably, mean an increase in taxes, overall – something that sticks in the craw of most Americans of any political persuasion.

Suffice it to say that single-payer is a non-starter; but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it won’t happen, for better or for worse.

Hamsher made waves a few months ago, when the Senate was preparing to pass its healthcare bill when she infamously joined forces Norquist in an effort to kill the Healthcare bill. This was grandstanding at its worst and, also, incredibly naive; for Hamsher thought that, almost immediately, this would force Congress to sit down at a table and start again from scratch with healthcare reform, effectively hammering through a single-player plan.

As if.

The last time healthcare got bitch-slapped into submission (and by a Democratic Congress) was when Bill Clinton despatched Hillary to the Hill with a fully formulated healthcare plan to place before their hallowed portals.

She got pretty short shrift, and that was almost 17 years ago.

Within the political system, itself, we now hear that Nancy Pelosi is redoubling all efforts, with the help of the President, in trying to convince a recalcitrant Denis Kucinich to support passage of this bill.

I’m not the biggest fan of Kucinich, but I admire him as a man of principle. He seems to be one of the few serving politicos who’s remained true to his core beliefs. However, this is a seminal moment in United States political history.

We are about to be presented with an actual healthcare program, which would ensure coverage of an additional 30,000,000 people, making this almost universal in concept. Is it a great piece of legislation? No. It’s not perfect, but – as everyone’s said endlessly – neither was Social Security in its original form. But it gives us a platform, a foundation upon which to build – and legislation, in the form of an amendment tacked onto an existing law, is something that only requires 51 Senate votes in order to bring it into being.

That Kucinich has now become the Lieberman of the House, holding out on a hiding to nothing in a quixotic attempt to force single-payer into the equation – single-payer not the ubiquitous public option – ceases to be harmless windmill tilting and becomes, in its stead, the proverbial straw that’s going to break the camel’s back of healthcare reform in the United States.

This begs the question, cynic that I am, of when, exactly, one’s ego overrides one’s principles, at the expense of one’s constituents? Because politicos of all persuasion, to have even arrived at the door of the national legislative body, need an ego of considerable dimensions. A situation like this would put the most milquetoast of men in a position to wield enormous power with equally enormous demands, should he choose. We all remember Joe Lieberman’s and Ben Nelson’s antics.

It’s moments like these when I think that the US Congress – and, in particular, this fractured Democratic Party – would benefit from a stronger ‘whip’ system, which is used in the British House of Commons. The political whips actually do figuratively whip their party members into a situation where they are compelled to vote the party line. To refuse to do so, for whatever principle, results in what is known as a withdrawal of the whip. Put bluntly, the recalcitrant member is unceremoniously kicked out of his respective party. He can still serve as an elected member, but the next time there’s a general election, he has to find a new group of playmates or beg forgiveness of his party leaders. It happened to George Galloway. It happened to Clare Short. No one is too big for the party.

I’ve no doubt that Kucinich is devoted to the principle of seeing single-payer firmly ensconced as a Third Rail in the American healthcare system. Bernie Sanders is also, but Sanders, a real Independent, knows that sometimes it’s mete to swallow hard and be pragmatic – one of the rules of political life you’d think a seasoned campaigner like Kucinich would know. Yet I also can’t help wonder how much this incident is Kucinich’s big moment in the spotlight, his chance to be Napoleon for the day, and which might turn into his jump-the-shark moment.

On a Napoleonic scale, he’d do well to remember that Jim DeMint, NOPer extraordinaire, has sworn to make healthcare reform Obama’s Waterloo. The House bill which passed in November did so on the strength of 5 votes, and one of those didn’t belong to Kucinich. Since that time, the lone Republican who voted for the bill has been bullied into seeing sense by his political ‘betters.’ Jack Murtha has died. Another Congressman switched parties and a fourth resigned. If the one vote that’s the difference between healthcare and health hell is Denis Kucinich, imagine the irony of this Democratic Napoleon effecting his own party’s Waterloo.

From that moment onward, Obama would become a lame duck President, and the Democratic Party would be seen to be shallow, divided and incapable (as well as unworthy) of governing.

Jane Hamsher is a private citizen. As such, she – like any other private citizen – is entitled to call for the resignation of any public official. That’s her right, just as it’s the official’s right to ignore the demand. But the demand got her the attention (and her blogsite, the clicks) she sought. With that in mind, I’d like to call for the resignation of the 5 conservative members of the Supreme Court, who have played god to create corporate personhood, my Congressman, Frank Wolf, for spending most of his spare time on his knees in the C Street cathouse, and Eric Cantor, because I don’t like the smirk on his face, as well as his politics.

But it ain’t gonna happen, is it?

It’s unfortunate that the single-payer option was never in the running to be adopted as the universal healthcare system in the US, but if the entire healthcare reform process is derailed because of the stubborn pride masqueraded and paraded as an unbending principle of a United States Congressman, then that’s more than unfortunate. It’s a totally unmitigated tragedy.

The pride of a high-profiled Leftie like Hamsher and a Democratic Congressman of Kucinich’s ilk goeth mightily before a fall of a political party, which might find itself in the wilderness of opposition for the far and foreseeable future.

At the end of the day, I hope both Kucinich and Hamsher won’t miss the noses they’ve cut off their faces much. At least, they’ll be spared the stench that comes with a Republican administration – or the smell of mooseburgers roasting on the White House barbecue.

I’ve been thinking about how far we as the Human race will need to go to combat greed, corruption, ignorance, and good old fashioned violence.   Will we turn on the pain machine for yet another bloody global war to eradicate all governments with “the crazies”?  Will we continue to push the mass proliferation of information with the hopes it will eventually help us overcome our lesser base instincts?  If global climate change does what scientists fear in our lifetimes…will it be enough to drive us in a positive direction?

What will it take?

In this short video movie, we see one possible solution: Mr Green.

http://www.futurestates.tv/episodes/mister-green

I recently saw a vid on why we haven’t encountered any signs of intelligent life in the universe.  I can’t cite any reference on the web regarding this information (sorry to say).  Hopefully one of the commenters can fill in the gaps.

Regardless, the gist of the vid was this:  The reason why we haven’t detected signs of (hyper) intelligent life is because they suffer the same problems we do:  planned organic obsolescence.  The vid referenced a concept that Ray Kurzweil had thrown forth: all universal life goes through a series of evolutionary stages.

* Stage 0: Biological evolution.  Chaos.  Where we are right now.

* Stage 1: Complete mastery of planetary energy

* Stage 2: Complete mastery of the solar system energy

* Stage 3: Complete mastery of galactic energy

* Stage4: Complete mastery of universal energy

Stage 1 is the most interesting to us as a species.  Mastery of planetary energy does not refer only to raw energy production.  It also refers to human capability.  In other words, if all humans suddenly began working in unison, destroyed all borders, and removed all racial/social constructs, what could we achieve?

In this theory, the reason we haven’t seen any signs of intelligent life is because all life in the universe suffers from the same inane issues we do: pettiness, greed, corruption, competition, and ignorance.  Just as the Romans, the British, The Mongols, Aztecs, Mayans, etc etc etc, we keep falling backwards.  We never reach the level of unity required to reach Stage 1.

Why can’t we, as a species, achieve stage 1?  Considering the awesome benefits which would be at our finger tips, why do we avoid transcendence with such vigor?  I suggest the reason may be that we are biologically motivated to not step beyond our self imposed boundaries.  It’s a very convenient way to keep the territories of animals in tact with nature.  Fear of the unknown.  Fear of our own success.  Fear.  How do we rid ourselves of fear?

That is what I’ve been pondering.  How do we rid ourselves of, well, human nature?  Where do we attack the problem?  What exactly is the problem?  How do we achieve Stage 1?   Do we want to?  So many questions and no answers.

One thing is for sure, we have no direction.  We think from day to day while genus’s like Kurzweil see what we do not…hope.

   “Why As A Liberal I Am Opposed To Cap & Trade”

Being born in the 50’s I grew up learning to have “Pride in America”, to “Ask not what my country can do for me but what I can do for my country”, to “Lend a hand”, “Any boy can grow up to become a President”, and if you worked hard and minded your P’s & Q’s you could you could become or achieve anything you dreamed of. I took to heart the messages of “Please Please Don’t Be A Litter Bug”,  “Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires”, “Keep America Beautiful” and ”Give A Hoot Don’t Pollute”. I can remember participating in the very first “Earth Day” at my school by planting a Weeping Willow and Magnolia. I bought a Whole Earth Catalog… Recycled my beer and coke cans (even made beer tab chain curtains and doorway beads). Put a brick in the toilet tank… 

I still try everyday to live those principals and do my part. I own a fuel efficient Japanese pick-up, I remodeled the kitchen with “Energy Star” appliances, I shop at the local “Farmers Market” as much as possible, I cut back on my consumption of critters, I garden, I put in more energy efficient lighting, use low flush toilets, turn the thermostat up in summer and down in the winter, recycle everything possible (not quite an Ed Begely Jr. yet), walk more often, when it is affordable donate to the cause, keep my tires at recommended  pressure, pee outside every chance I get and pay my taxes… 

For some odd reason no matter how much I do it is never enough. Everyday I am told to be more responsible, more aware, more caring and pay more taxes. I am judged on the world stage not by who I am or what I do, but where I was born. I am no longer allowed to just be responsible to myself, loved ones and my local universe, I am to be responsible for everyone, every living being and everything animate or inanimate on Planet Earth, not only in the present or in my lifetime, but for the millenia…   

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 ”The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.” 1991 Club of Rome premier environmental think-tank and consultants to the United Nations.

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                                             ” Some People Call Me Maurice”

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Maurice Strong - Opening speech, Rio Earth Summit 1992, founder of the UN Environmental Program, Board Of Directors Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), Club of Rome Executive Member.

The man behind “Kyoto“. Just about everything to do with the United Nations and Global Banking connections to Global Warming, Climate Change, Carbon Exchange and the Redistribution of Wealth has been directly or indirectly influenced by Canadian Billionaire Maurice Strong’s ideals, influence or affluence. His resume’ is one of the most impressive you will ever encounter in the politics of the world. An incredible behind the scenes negotiator and deal maker that has never been elected to any office on the local, state, or national level. He served as ”Senior Adviser to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan” and was his personal envoy to North Korea from 2003-2005. It was during this period of time the infamous U.N ”Oil For Food“ scandal investigations erupted and while working for Kofi Annan in 1997 a check was issued from the Jordanian UBAF Arab American Bank  for $988,885.00 made out to Mr. M. Strong and reportaly hand delivered by Tongsun Park who was convicted of Conspiracy To Bribe U.N Officials“  in 2006… 

“Our concept of ballot-box democracy may need to be modified to produce strong governments capable of making difficult decisions “ -  Maurice Strong - 2009

Generation Investment Managment (GIM) a company heavily invested in Carbon Trading with CCX, was co-founded by Al Gore and David Blood (Global CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management 1999-2003) with the assistance of Henry Paulson. The are several other alumni of Goldman Sachs involved as Partners with GIM including Mark Ferguson, Peter Harris, Lisa Anderson, Martin Bray and David Lowish… 

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                                                       ”Sweet Home Chicago”

 The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) - According to their website is the world’s first and North America’s only voluntary, legally binding integrated greenhouse gas emissions reduction, registry and trading system. 

 The Joyce Foundation was fundamental in the formation of the CCX by issuing 2 separate grants… The first one in the amount $347,600.00 to Richard Sandor for the purpose of studying the feasibility or creating a Carbon Cap & Trade mechanism in 2000… The second grant issued in 2001 for amount of $760,100.00 to Northwestern University, working closely with Richard Sandor to form the design of CCX. President  Obama was a sitting Board Member of the Joyce Foundation from 1994-2002. Valerie Jarrett became a Board Member in 2002…

The Board Of Directors for CCX  includes:

Richard L. Sandor - Chairman and CEO -  Sandor is considered to be the primary architect of the interest-rate futures market while serving as Vice President and Chief Economist for the Chicago Board of Trade. Sandor is recognized universally as the “Father of Financial Futures” and in 2007 was named as one of Time Magazine’s “Heroes of the Environment” and is considered to be the “Father of Carbon Trading“. He is also a member of the International Advisory Council of Guanghua School of Management at Peking University. Sandor believes that creating wealth in the 21st Century will come through the commoditization of Air and Water… 

Carole Brookins -  Served from 2001-2005 as the  United States Executive Director of  The World Bank Group for the Bush administration. Brookins was appointed to the Presidents Export Council in 1990 by Bush Sr. and served under the Department of State as Chairman of  Advisory Committee on Food, Hunger and Agriculture in Developing Countries under Reagan…

Stuart E. Eizenstat - Has held several senior level positions  for the Clinton Administration including U.S. Ambassador to European Union,  Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Treasury and Under Secretary of Commerce International Trade. He currently serves as a member the International Advisory Council to APCO Worldwide and is on the Board Of Advisors of Global Panel…

Clayton Yeutter - Served as U.S. Trade Representative under the Reagan administration and was instrumental securing the U.S.- Canada Free Trade Agreement that eventually blossomed into NAFTA… 

Since it’s inception in 2002 CXX  has expanded into several affliated Joint Ventures creating a Global Monopoly on the Carbon Trading Market. Chicago Climate Futures Exchange (CCFE), Insurance Futures Exchange (IFEX), European Climate Exchange (ECX), Montreal Climate Exchange [MXeC Launch] (MCeX), Tiajin Climate Exchange in China (TCX), Envex (Australia and Asia Pacific Region), and of course currently in devolopment India Climate Exchange (ICX). CCX, ECX and CCFE fall under the ownership of Climate Exchange PLc and has been listed on the AIM of the London Stock Exchange since 2006…

The 2 largest shareholders of CCX are GIM 10% and Goldman Sachs 10%…

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                             ” Nummananummunamunnanunummuna“     

   Can one be a Liberal and be opposed to Cap & Trade? I am of the belief that opposition to Cap & Trade is an issue that Liberals/Dems should be on the forefront of and have allowed the “Right” to define. Most Dems now associate opposition to Cap & Trade with the “you betcha Faux news poster girl Sarah Palin” and Senator Jim Inhofe reducing the argument to terms that equate opposition to simpleton insults. I have trouble understanding the Right’s opposition to Cap & Trade myself, other than they are  just using Al Gore to continue their love affair with Clinton Bashing. Cap & Trade is a GOP wet dream, an unregulated Free Market based system controlled by Global Corporations, Global Wall St. Banks and Billionaires. A commodity system based on Government set limits that decreases annually driving up the price of the commodity.   

“The feature of this plan that has special appeal to speculators is that the `cap’ on carbon will be continually lowered by the government, which means that carbon credits will become more and more scarce with each passing year. Which means that this is a brand-new commodities market where the main commodity to be traded is guaranteed to rise in price over time. The volume of this new market will be upwards of a trillion dollars annually; for comparison’s sake, the annual combined revenues of all electricity suppliers in the U.S. total $320 billion.”  

  Matt Taibbi - The Great American Bubble Machine - Rolling Stone 07/13/09

For the last quarter century we have been informed that the single issue that takes precedence over all other issues concerning our country and Planet Earth was the need for the drastic and immediate reduction of CO2 emissions as it correlates to Climate Change. Did we as a population see a mobilization by the Powers to Be of people, innovation and funds to address the immediacy of the crisis they warn us about? Did Billions pour into the protection of the Rain Forests? Did world leaders put aside their petty differences? Was there a “Put a man on the moon by the end of the decade” speech and a government entity created, funded and directed to recruit the best of the best to find viable solutions?  Nope, we got finger pointing, laying the blame, ignoring the crisis, lots of op-eds and articles with pictures of Polar Bears, a Secretaryof Energy who dug up Nuclear Energy from it’s 30 year grave and wants to paint every roof in America white, and the very best they could come up with, Cap & Trade Carbon Markets…

On June 26, 2009  H.R. 2485 – American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES) passed the House by the narrowest of margins 219-212 and went to the Senate on July 6th, 2009 where it has met the fate that most legislation has the last 2 sessions. A 900 page Cap & Trade bill that was supported by the ilk of Shell Oil and Dow Chemical all the while being opposed by the likes of the American Petroleum Institute, Green Peace and Friends of the Earth. As per usual Congressional leaders claim no burden on middle class and those opposed claim big burden on middle class tax payers. The CBO concludes it is tax payer friendly and deficit neutral and the Wall Street Journal claims the CBO used flawed calculations.

Enter the 3 Stooges, Lindsey, Joe & Kerry. February 24th 2010 U.S. Senator Lindsey Grahm R-SC declared Cap & Trade dead. Grahm along with John Kerry D-Mass and Joe Lieberman I-Conn. have been working on their own Carbon Bill that excludes the Carbon Market. The workings of the Bill have not been released, but I would wager it to more akin to a Carbon Tax that we will be told is working/middle class friendly. Kerry has already described it with the preferred double speak of the session “What people need to understand about this bill is this bill is a jobs bill”. I am not exactly sure what mischief the 3 Stooges are up to but I am positive it is gonna hurt more than rubber hammers. The CCX needs Cap & Trade legislation to flourish. I have trouble envisioning these 3 legislating against the coffers of Goldman Sachs.

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                                                     “Which Way To Go?                                                  Many of the critics of H.R. 2485 claim that the regulations are not strict enough to actually be effective in battling Climate Change in the timetable set before the zero hour of no going back, if we haven’t already reached that point in time. I have come to the belief that once the market was established that it became the central focus of the issue, coinciding with the immediate transfer of wealth that will occur once Cap & Trade is passed. From recent history I have no reason to believe that the people involved in CCX have the best interest of Americans in mind, or the well being of the Earth for that matter. Am I not to question the motives of Global Wall Street Bankers involved in policies that invoke entities like ENRON, Goldman Sachs, The World Bank, The United Nations, Oil for Food Scandal and put in place by the “Father of Financial Futures” who believes air and water should become commodity’s to trade and control privately?  My experience has been the working/middle class consumer will carry the burden in one form or another such as taxes, bailouts or the trickle down of increased costs because there ain’t no way the people involved with Cap & Trade Markets are going to lose money. If this legislation wasn’t tied neatly to Climate Change the Left wouldn’t be sitting on their hands with tape over their mouths. We are talking about the immediate transfer of 100’s of billions with trillions to be collected in the future. I question the motives and take a stand against War Profiteer’s, Big Insurance, Big Pharma and the actions of Global Wall Street Banks and the power grab they are making  that harms the long term well being of this country. Am I to now just believe that on this issue they are they good guy’s?  Would not the billions/trillions be put to better use in the formation of an Environmental NASA? Enough is never enough with the ilk of Goldman Sachs and if we give them control of this then certainly water will be next. Can you imagine H2O on the futures market being controlled by these people? I desire to continue to do my part to combat Climate Change and clean up the planet but I have no desire to make these Fat Cats any richer in the name of it. 

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. - Groucho Marx