SeniorJunior

Me, John Edwards, John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich All four agree that the way to a fair and universal health plan for America is to DO AWAY WITH FOR-PROFIT HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES. We don't want "socialized medicine" with the government running the health biz. We don't want health care to be "free." We want every penny to be paid by the recipients of the care, just on a progressive ability-to-pay, non-profit insurance basis. The House Bill (HR 676) that describes this approach is called "The New Medicare" or "Medicare for All." (If Edwards were still in the Senate, I betcha there would be a Senate Bill.) OK, great idea . Over some years, we gradually phase out the for-profit insurance companies, and transition to the Medicare-like system with tiny administrative costs comparatively. Nearly all the health care money goes to actual health care providers. What a concept! Inherent in this plan is an absolutely HUGE news story ...

An honest Rather mistake Dan Rather's $70 mil lawsuit against CBS might be something of a biggie in terms of defining "the corporate media," it seems. I strongly feel this label needs defining, since the Right blithely labels the very same companies "the liberal media." (Talk jockey Rush Limbaugh calls them the "drive-by media," confusing all but hardcore dittoheads.) The most exhaustive review of the whole Rather/CBS/Whitehouse/Pentagon substance is in Salon today (Sept 27, '07) as Sidney Blumenthal gets after it in gate . He addresses the point that has seriously bugged me ever since the "W stiffs his National Guard Service" story was smothered under allegations of one piece of evidence being bogus, the memo allegedly from Col. Jerry Killian. That point is that the story about Bush skipping his duty was true and proven by many other pieces of evidence. In the context of the whole "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" dirty tr...

Things Are Looking Up When National Public Radio launched its re-make of Edward R. Morrow’s “ This I Believe ,” I was almost motivated to take a shot at making an entry. I say almost because I just never got around to doing it. I thought about it a bunch. Even my subject and position were clear in my head. Never happened. Darn. Not to let a well formed idea go totally unpublished, here ‘tis. It’s simple. Things are getting better. Generally speaking and on a long time scale, that is. Of course some things are getting worse; they always are, but most of the downers are on shorter time scales. And any such judgment on the better/worse balance has to reflect a cosmic perspective, no small task in our quarter-to-quarter, Wall Streetish culture. I have to admit, attaining cosmicity hasn’t been my strong suit. If you riffle through all the posts on this blog, you can’t help but note that I’ve been much more vocal on worsenings than betterings. Drought, wars, political chicanery,...

It all started as I was grinding my teeth yesterday, listening to RWR (right wing radio). Senator James Inhofe was a guest on the Sean Hannity program. Inhofe is the "flat earth" senator from Oklahoma. He was saying environmentally-oriented people worried about global warming "want us to give up our cars, stop building new homes and buildings, sacrifice our way of life for this hoax they call global warming." Etc. So I was thinking, what's an uninformed person to think? Probably "Is this true? Damn those lefty tree huggers." I mean he IS a U.S. Senator. Would he lie? Well you betcha, but unless you know his history, how would you know? Can you believe, for instance, when a critic of the Iraq war says there has been huge fraud and theft by war profiteers? Maybe they are all liars, righties and lefties, saying whatever it takes to make their points. I still believe that solid Journalism is the antidote to this kind of debilitating cynicism. The Wall Stre...