Speaking of right-wing crazies, I'll be spending a large part of my day preparing for Michele Bachmann's first town hall mtg. on health care, tomorrow here in the northern burbs of Minneapolis. She's dragging along Rep. Michael Burgess M.D., (Repub of 26th district, Texas) to lend a helping hand. There is an interesting You tube of him on August 10th basically admitting that their true purpose in the debate is to poke holes in any Democratic Party plan for health care. He also reveals that their plan was created because: "you can't fight something with nothing". Even with these revelations from her cohort ,(Burgess), Bachmann is selling her town hall meeting as a good faith effort to fix health care. I'm going to put on a NASCAR "T" shirt and hope to be called on at her town hall. I would welcome any suggestions for the perfect question. If properly crafted, it could result in one of her hyperbolic responses. Any help out there? Liberals like me will be in the minority there but I aint scared. It would be fun to lure her into a you-tube moment. Send campaign donations to Tarryl Clark, who, with help, can defeat Michele next fall. That would be a service to all Americans.

The New Republican Plan to Bankrupt America

Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, this week revealed a secret Republican plan that would end up eliminating all federal farm subsidies; closing down Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks; selling off the interstate highway system; and canceling Head Start, subsidized school lunches and the entire college loan program.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/25/AR200908...

I would prefer a single-payer solution, but a Medicare-for-all idea would be a good second choice. The only problem I see, Mr Hartmann, is your statement that "everybody knows what Medicare is." I saw a recent study showing that 39% of Americans didn't even know that Medicare is a government program:

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_National_819513.pdf

No matter what idea we put forth, it must be accompanied by a certain degree of education.

Just a quick note to Thom, Louise and Crew to compliment you all on the great daily e-newsletter. I really enjoy getting it. Thanks for a good thing!

We keep hearing how the Republicans are winning the minds of the American people on health care reform. I do believe that they are. Why??? Obama was elected and he gave us great hope but he appears to be another Bush with better language skills. HE CANNOT BE TRUSTED.

I would like to share with you a concern. It is the American education system. Texas publishing companies want to re-write history and highlighting the names of Reichwingers. Our son works with many foreign educated workers. In fact he appears to be the only American educated worker in his office. His company will not hire Americans. WHY? Let me share with you that European educated workers have language skills in several languages. The close proximity to different countries is a good reason. Every worker in his building must speak English. Our son speaks English, fluent Japanese, and a working knowledge of Spanish and French. Americans cannot compete with foreigners. There are also many very good universities in Europe and Asia.

I don’t know why I occasionally tune into Coast-to-Coast, except perhaps the fascination in how far “out there” is. The other night, George Noory had a Dr. Len Horowitz as guest. The subject was the World Health Organization’s swine flu pandemic alert, and how it was all a scam with a decidedly sinister agenda. Now, to say that the powers behind the WHO’s swine flu vaccination plot is the pharmaceutical industry, and behind them is the Rockefellers and their “front” organization, the United Nations, may have a small sliver of plausibility. And Horowitz does have a seductively (for the progressive) intriguing humanitarian slant, and has written about the evils of eugenics, white-collar criminals and the propaganda and policies of the Bush administration.

The trouble began with Horowitz started talking about the swine flu vaccination program—or any vaccination program, for that matter. According to Horowitz, it is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy to depopulate the world. The Rockefellers, it seems, have conspired with the UN to establish a mass eugenics program, with the intent—with the help of the pharmaceuticals using the WHO as front group—to induce mass death, or failing that, mass sterilization. This would certainly make a good movie or novel. Throw in fears of martial law and rounding-up people who refuse to be vaccinated and putting them in concentration camps, and things get even more exciting. Callers left and right couldn’t get enough of this apocalyptic vision. It didn’t occur to anyone to ask that if it the agenda was to depopulate the earth, would not outright discontinuing vaccinating people against disease achieve the same result?

Just when things started to get really over-heated, the whole fantastic edifice came crumbling down to earth. The doctor, it seems, has his own agenda, and it has something to do with making money off gullible people. The last part of the hour was devoted to Horowitz pushing a product he created, which I won’t name, which would be a “natural” vaccine in place of the poisonous substances being pushed by the international eugenics conspirators. There are a lot of people pushing this and that “natural” healing products, but Horowitz went beyond the usual snake oil salesmanship pitch by providing a small caveat: His product would not have the desired effect unless you added prayer into the mix. Getting down on your knees and praying would cause some fluctuation in the energy field (or something) that activates the healing powers of this vaccine substitute. It would also be useful to pray for a miracle, and family and friends are enjoined to help in this fashion. Frankly it would be more useful to pray that some other nutjob would go away, who's source of news is apparently tabloid stories written by people who admit they don't actually know if what they are "reporting" is true or not.

It is too bad that people like the doctor, who may be sincere in their concerns about what they see as powerful elites pushing a sinister agenda to oppress the masses, allow credibility to take an early exit by offering nothing but magic potions and miracles.

'Just came across this. Even with miles between us, we can be positive forces in each others' lives:

"Online Canasta Player Saves Woman's Life"

http://news.aol.com/article/tulsa-woman-saves-nebraska-woman-through/638460?icid=main|htmlws-main-tarana|dl5|link2|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Ftulsa-woman-saves-nebraska-woman-through%2F638460

I wonder if anyone remembers the Sidney Lumet film "Network" from over 30 years back. It told of a struggling network that had been sold to a corporation. The news department was told that taking a loss simply for editorial integrity was out; it too had to make a profit. The only way to do this, apparently, was to transform itself into an "entertainment" entity. It also had to take care of any insinuation that foreign countries might be influencing the slant of American news reporting; the corporation was being invested in by the Saudis. Since this film was a satirical in nature, many viewers took it with a grain of salt. Today, of course, it seems all too prophetic.

The human animal is communal. The human mind is forged of language. Language is agreed upon codex that allows two or more human animals to communicate concepts.

The very act of communication invalidates Libertarian concepts. Heck, the very thought of Libertarian concepts invalidates because the concepts are framed in language.

This is a smart idea until we have single payer, indeed.

Blackwater - it seems to be that President Obama has a pattern of keeping the bastards that got us into this mess on board...........we can only hope it is to uncover the dead bodies...........where are our new attorneys? On board to get Rove and cooperate with that investigation. This is so scary. Per Braveheart Character, [not the cradle robber MG!] Hold.....Hold..........Hold...........!!!

Where is a link to the speech by the Canadian about health care? Video? Anything?
This stuff needs to be easily accessed, immediately if possible, so when I hear it on the radio, I can run to my Facebook and throw it on there...before I forget! :)