Big Problems In ObamaCareLand

Everyone is aware of the problems with the roll out of ObamaCare, the ACA (Affordable Care Act) and how the Federal website just didn't work right and all.

Everyone can be happy now because the website works well.  We tried it today and it was a snap.

What everyone seems not to recognise is that the Federal site only was available to cover the people in those States that refused to comply with the ACA and set up their own exchanges.
So all the problems were in GOP governed states.  The states that set up their own exchanges had success from day one, with a few minor politically motivated obstructionist burps.

I am a proponent of single-payer health care aka Medicare For All, but we don't have that.

What we do have is a plan that pretends to provide for the poor specifically - those who could not afford or otherwise qualify for health insurance.

The ACA however has it's "plans for the poor" designed by rich idiots I guess.

There is no way a poor person can afford the premiums on even their most basic plan, much less the co-pays and $10,000 per year deductible.

This article in the Detroit Free Press explores this a little further.

 

Affordable Care Act won't solve all our health care problem

 

Part of the HealthCare.gov website is photographed in Washington on Nov. 29, 2013. / Associated Press

 

    
By Mary Ellen Howard
December 14, 2013
Detroit Free Press guest writer

 Many people in the community — even those close to our clinic — are asking what will be the effect of the Affordable Care Act on the Cabrini Clinic and other providers of charitable care around the state. Some wonder whether we will continue to be needed, and whether they should still support us.

There are a lot of myths out there about health care reform. But here are some facts. In 2014, the ACA will offer two new opportunities for insurance coverage:
■ One is to purchase insurance through the exchange. Small businesses and anyone whose income is below 400% of the federal poverty level may receive a tax subsidy to help them buy coverage. However, most of our patients at the Cabrini Clinic are too poor to take advantage of this option.
■ The second is Medicaid expansion, and that is more likely to affect the uninsured people served by free clinics. Up until now, many have been excluded from Medicaid, not because they have too much income, but because they are childless adults. Under the ACA, childless adults become eligible for Medicaid. In Michigan, this take effect in April.
Michigan is one of the 25 states where the legislature voted for Medicaid expansion, albeit reluctantly. Statewide, it is estimated that more than 400,000 of Michigan’s 1.3 million uninsured will people become eligible for Medicaid.
I was hopeful that about 80% of the uninsured patients we see at Cabrini Clinic would be among them. However, the Michigan Legislature asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for waivers on the program that it is calling Healthy Michigan. Federal approval is required because the Michigan plan varies from the Medicaid expansion outlined in the Affordable Care Act.
For the uninsured poor, these waivers will pose barriers. They require enrollees in Healthy Michigan to establish a health savings account from which the state will deduct an income-based monthly premium for those earning between 100 and 133% of the federal poverty level.
The premiums can be reduced through healthy behaviors. The plan also requires co-pays for basic services. These premiums and co-pays will be a barrier to poor people who need care. I wonder how many will actually sign up. I am beginning to think that my 80% projection was wildly optimistic.
To make matters worse, Michigan plans to seek a second waiver in the future, imposing a soft cap on coverage at 48-months, at which point recipients would be cut off from Medicaid for life.
Michigan still has not received a ruling from the federal government on the waivers, so we are stuck with a lot of unanswered questions.
What if the feds say “no” to Michigan’s requested waivers? Do we become the 26th state to refuse the opportunity to expand Medicaid? Enrollment is to begin in April. Now is when we should be educating the 1.3 million uninsured Michiganders regarding Medicaid expansion — what is coming, what it will mean, who is eligible, what do I have to do to enroll and what will it cost? Instead, we have no answers.
There are many unknowns, but the future of free clinics for the uninsured is not one of them. In fact, it appears that we are needed more than ever.

Mary Ellen Howard, RSM, is executive director of St. Frances Cabrini Clinic of Most Holy Trinity Church in Detroit.

21 Ways the Canadian Health Care System is Better than Obamacare

Single Payer Insurance or Medicare For All is the only reasonable and rational way to provide health stability to our communities.  Everything else we do just makes more profits for corporations at the expense of public health and economy.  There is a link at the end of this article that will tell you more about Single Payer.

Often people consider the Golden Rule to be too simplistic.  It's not.
But on some occasions, Jesus decides to extrapolate on the application of this perspective that He says must underlay all the Law and all the teachings of the Prophets.

 <sup>Luke 10:25-37 
King James Version (KJV) 

25</sup> And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

²⁶ He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?

²⁷ And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.

²⁸ And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.

²⁹ But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?

³⁰ And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.

³¹ And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
³² And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.

³³ But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,
³⁴ And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

³⁵ And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.

³⁶ Which...of these three,...was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?

³⁷ And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. 
                        Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

Single Payer Health Care is nothing more or less than putting this teaching into the practice of governance.
Taking care of our neighbors just makes sense. 

Doc

Published on Friday, November 22, 2013 by Common Dreams

21 Ways the Canadian Health Care System is Better than Obamacare

by Ralph Nader

Dear America:
Costly complexity is baked into Obamacare. No health insurance system is without problems but Canadian style single-payer full Medicare for all is simple, affordable, comprehensive and universal.
In the early 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson enrolled 20 million elderly Americans into Medicare in six months. There were no websites. They did it with index cards!
Below please find 21 Ways the Canadian Health Care System is Better than Obamacare.
Repeal Obamacare and replace it with the much more efficient single-payer, everybody in, nobody out, free choice of doctor and hospital.
Love, Canada
Number 21:
In Canada, everyone is covered automatically at birth – everybody in, nobody out.
In the United States, under Obamacare, 31 million Americans will still be uninsured by 2023 and millions more will remain underinsured.
Number 20:
In Canada, the health system is designed to put people, not profits, first.
In the United States, Obamacare will do little to curb insurance industry profits and will actually enhance insurance industry profits.
Number 19:
In Canada, coverage is not tied to a job or dependent on your income – rich and poor are in the same system, the best guaranty of quality.
In the United States, under Obamacare, much still depends on your job or income. Lose your job or lose your income, and you might lose your existing health insurance or have to settle for lesser coverage.
Number 18:
In Canada, health care coverage stays with you for your entire life.
In the United States, under Obamacare, for tens of millions of Americans, health care coverage stays with you for as long as you can afford your share.
Number 17:
In Canada, you can freely choose your doctors and hospitals and keep them. There are no lists of “in-network” vendors and no extra hidden charges for going “out of network.”
In the United States, under Obamacare, the in-network list of places where you can get treated is shrinking – thus restricting freedom of choice – and if you want to go out of network, you pay for it.
Number 16:
In Canada, the health care system is funded by income, sales and corporate taxes that, combined, are much lower than what Americans pay in premiums.
In the United States, under Obamacare, for thousands of Americans, it’s pay or die – if you can’t pay, you die. That’s why many thousands will still die every year under Obamacare from lack of health insurance to get diagnosed and treated in time.
Number 15:
In Canada, there are no complex hospital or doctor bills. In fact, usually you don’t even see a bill.
In the United States, under Obamacare, hospital and doctor bills will still be terribly complex, making it impossible to discover the many costly overcharges.
Number 14:
In Canada, costs are controlled. Canada pays 10 percent of its GDP for its health care system, covering everyone.
In the United States, under Obamacare, costs continue to skyrocket. The U.S. currently pays 18 percent of its GDP and still doesn’t cover tens of millions of people.
Number 13:
In Canada, it is unheard of for anyone to go bankrupt due to health care costs.
In the United States, under Obamacare, health care driven bankruptcy will continue to plague Americans.
Number 12:
In Canada, simplicity leads to major savings in administrative costs and overhead.
In the United States, under Obamacare, complexity will lead to ratcheting up administrative costs and overhead.
Number 11:
In Canada, when you go to a doctor or hospital the first thing they ask you is: “What’s wrong?”
In the United States, the first thing they ask you is: “What kind of insurance do you have?”
Number 10:
In Canada, the government negotiates drug prices so they are more affordable.
In the United States, under Obamacare, Congress made it specifically illegal for the government to negotiate drug prices for volume purchases, so they remain unaffordable.
Number 9:
In Canada, the government health care funds are not profitably diverted to the top one percent.
In the United States, under Obamacare, health care funds will continue to flow to the top. In 2012, CEOs at six of the largest insurance companies in the U.S. received a total of $83.3 million in pay, plus benefits.
Number 8:
In Canada, there are no necessary co-pays or deductibles.
In the United States, under Obamacare, the deductibles and co-pays will continue to be unaffordable for many millions of Americans.
Number 7:
In Canada, the health care system contributes to social solidarity and national pride.
In the United States, Obamacare is divisive, with rich and poor in different systems and tens of millions left out or with sorely limited benefits.
Number 6:
In Canada, delays in health care are not due to the cost of insurance.
In the United States, under Obamacare, patients without health insurance or who are underinsured will continue to delay or forgo care and put their lives at risk.
Number 5:
In Canada, nobody dies due to lack of health insurance.
In the United States, under Obamacare, many thousands will continue to die every year due to lack of health insurance.
Number 4:
In Canada, an increasing majority supports their health care system, which costs half as much, per person, as in the United States. And in Canada, everyone is covered.
In the United States, a majority – many for different reasons – oppose Obamacare.
Number 3:
In Canada, the tax payments to fund the health care system are progressive – the lowest 20 percent pays 6 percent of income into the system while the highest 20 percent pays 8 percent.
In the United States, under Obamacare, the poor pay a larger share of their income for health care than the affluent.
Number 2:
In Canada, the administration of the system is simple. You get a health care card when you are born. And you swipe it when you go to a doctor or hospital. End of story.
In the United States, Obamacare’s 2,500 pages plus regulations (the Canadian Medicare Bill was 13 pages) is so complex that then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said before passage “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
Number 1:
In Canada, the majority of citizens love their health care system.
In the United States, the majority of citizens, physicians, and nurses prefer the Canadian type system – single-payer, free choice of doctor and hospital , everybody in, nobody out.
For more information see Single Payer Action.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His latest book is The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future. Other recent books include, The Seventeen Traditions: Lessons from an American Childhood, Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win, and "Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us" (a novel).

America's Congressional GOP - Illegal, Immoral, UnAmerican

Thanks to Common Dreams.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/09/19-4
Published on Thursday, September 19, 2013 by Campaign for America’s Future Blog

The House’s Un-American Activities

by Richard Eskow

The Constitution does an admirable job of describing the way our government is supposed to operate, and nowhere does it say the House of Representatives has the power to shut it down in order to revoke a law that displeases it. In fact, it makes it clear that this is not how our system works.Boehner and Cantor (AP Photo)
And yet that’s exactly what House Republicans under John Boehner and Eric Cantor are attempting to do, through a series of arcane procedural maneuvers that involve a continuing resolution this Friday and an upcoming fight over the government’s debt ceiling. The Republicans are attempting to use these administrative processes to revoke or neutralize duly enacted legislation, and perhaps to hijack the governance process in other ways as well.
The Constitution doesn’t give the House that kind of unilateral power. It does, however, include these words: “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned … and all executive and judicial Officers … shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.”
What the Republicans are attempting to do is, therefore, both unconstitutional and a violation of their own sworn promise – an oath sworn on the Bible they claim to revere. Their consciences must decide whether their behavior is un-Godly, but the Constitution they swore to uphold makes it pretty plain that it’s un-American.
Veterans of Cold War red-baiting will remember the emotional charge carried by the phrase “un-American,” so we’ll define it carefully here: Working within our system of governance is, by definition, “American.” Opposing or impeding it is therefore un-American.
The last time the Republicans threatened to shut down the government they insisted we were in a “fiscal emergency,” which they erroneously claimed had been brought on by federal deficits. Republicans have never really been concerned about government debt, which is why it skyrocketed under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. But deficits can be a useful rhetorical gambit for politicians pushing tax breaks for the wealthy.
The GOP’s shutdown blackmail was unconstitutional the last time they tried it, and it’s unconstitutional now. The nation is now discovering what many people suspected all along: If you give in to the demands of blackmailers, they’ll just keep asking for more and more.
Republicans certainly got what they were demanding the last time around. The deficit’s plunging at a faster rate than at any time since the massive demobilization that followed World War II, and is projected to be slightly more than half of what it was in 2009. That’s a Pyrrhic victory no politician should celebrate, since it has led to both higher unemployment and a lower gross domestic product.
This year Republicans aren’t even pretending to tie their shutdown threats to government spending. Instead they’re holding the government hostage over health care policy. Once you get beyond the rhetoric, that’s what “Obamacare” is: health care policy.
Health policy is now the issue over which Republicans are prepared to violate a sworn oath – and, depending on your personal beliefs, perhaps to endanger their immortal souls.
Fortunately, President Obama and his fellow Democrats appear to be standing firm this time and insisting that there will be no negotiations. They’re right – not because of the specific policy in question, but because they’re honoring their oaths to protect the Constitution.
If you’re a Republican and you’re tempted to write something heated right now, stop for a moment and consider: What if Nancy Pelosi’s House had threatened to shut down the entire federal government unless President Bush and the Senate agreed to implement government-funded universal health care?
Would you have been okay with that?
Many people think government-administered health care for all is smart policy. Every other developed nation on Earth has a system like that, after all, and every one of them pays far less in health care costs for much better coverage than we do. The economic data suggests that most Americans, and most private enterprises, would be much better off if Pelosi’s Democrats had done exactly that.
But I suspect that most of us who support single-payer health care are nevertheless glad it wasn’t imposed through a legislative coup d’état like the one Republicans are trying to orchestrate.
We don’t know yet how this latest GOP gambit will play out. The extremists who run the Republican Party may or may not win Friday’s vote. Or they may concede on the continuing resolution, only to defer the hostage-taking to the upcoming debt-ceiling fight. Whatever happens, let’s hope the Democrats keep refusing to negotiate. The Constitution demands no less of them.
The Republicans lost. They lost the health care debate, which is why the law was passed. They lost two out of three branches of government in the 2012 election. (They lost the House too, by 1.4 million votes, but gerrymandering kept them in power.) They’ve lost politically, and they’ve lost constitutionally. They must not be allowed to trample on our system of government, to win by cheating what they lost under our system of government.
The cynical extremists running the GOP may very well think that elected officials who respect our country’s democratic processes are suckers, Marquis of Queensbury fighters who don’t know how to win. They’re wrong. They won’t win this way. They won’t win morally, and in the end they won’t win politically. There’s another, better word for the kind of people who prefer to play by the Constitution’s rules:
Americans.

© 2013 Campaign for America’s Future

Richard (RJ) Eskow is a well-known blogger and writer, a former Wall Street executive, an experienced consultant, and a former musician. He has experience in health insurance and economics, occupational health, benefits, risk management, finance, and information technology. Richard has consulting experience in the US and over 20 countries.

Police State America

Welcome to the new America!

Police Arrest, Assault Family For Refusing To Open Home for Stakeout

A Nevada family is now suing the police department after they were raided, shot with “Pepperball rounds” and arrested for refusing to allow the police to set up a stake out in their home.

You are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist

By JG Vibes
Intellihub.com
July 5, 2013
According to the family filing the lawsuit the police first called the residence to ask permission to occupy their home to gain a “tactical advantage” in a domestic dispute that occurred at a neighbors house. When the resident refused, the police bashed in the door shot “pepperball rounds” at him and his dog, then later arrested him and his elderly parents for “obstructing justice”.
According to the complaint:
Anthony Mitchell and his parents Michael and Linda Mitchell sued the City of Henderson, its Police Chief Jutta Chambers, Officers Garret Poiner, Ronald Feola, Ramona Walls, Angela Walker, and Christopher Worley, and City of North Las Vegas and its Police Chief Joseph Chronister, in Federal Court.
Henderson, pop. 257,000, is a suburb of Las Vegas.
The Mitchell family’s claim includes Third Amendment violations, a rare claim in the United States. The Third Amendment prohibits quartering soldiers in citizens’ homes in times of peace without the consent of the owner.
“On the morning of July 10th, 2011, officers from the Henderson Police Department responded to a domestic violence call at a neighbor’s residence,” the Mitchells say in the complaint.
It continues: “At 10:45 a.m. defendant Officer Christopher Worley (HPD) contacted plaintiff Anthony Mitchell via his telephone. Worley told plaintiff that police needed to occupy his home in order to gain a ‘tactical advantage’ against the occupant of the neighboring house. Anthony Mitchell told the officer that he did not want to become involved and that he did not want police to enter his residence. Although Worley continued to insist that plaintiff should leave his residence, plaintiff clearly explained that he did not intend to leave his home or to allow police to occupy his home. Worley then ended the phone call.
Mitchell claims that defendant officers, including Cawthorn and Worley and Sgt. Michael Waller then “conspired among themselves to force Anthony Mitchell out of his residence and to occupy his home for their own use.” (Waller is identified as a defendant in the body of the complaint, but not in the heading of it.)
The complaint continues: “Defendant Officer David Cawthorn outlined the defendants’ plan in his official report: ‘It was determined to move to 367 Evening Side and attempt to contact Mitchell. If Mitchell answered the door he would be asked to leave. If he refused to leave he would be arrested for Obstructing a Police Officer. If Mitchell refused to answer the door, force entry would be made and Mitchell would be arrested.’”
At a few minutes before noon, at least five defendant officers “arrayed themselves in front of plaintiff Anthony Mitchell’s house and prepared to execute their plan,” the complaint states.
It continues: “The officers banged forcefully on the door and loudly commanded Anthony Mitchell to open the door to his residence.
“Surprised and perturbed, plaintiff Anthony Mitchell immediately called his mother (plaintiff Linda Mitchell) on the phone, exclaiming to her that the police were beating on his front door.
“Seconds later, officers, including Officer Rockwell, smashed open plaintiff Anthony Mitchell’s front door with a metal ram as plaintiff stood in his living room.
“As plaintiff Anthony Mitchell stood in shock, the officers aimed their weapons at Anthony Mitchell and shouted obscenities at him and ordered him to lie down on the floor.
“Fearing for his life, plaintiff Anthony Mitchell dropped his phone and prostrated himself onto the floor of his living room, covering his face and hands.
“Addressing plaintiff as ‘asshole’, officers, including Officer Snyder, shouted conflicting orders at Anthony Mitchell, commanding him to both shut off his phone, which was on the floor in front of his head, and simultaneously commanding him to ‘crawl’ toward the officers.
“Confused and terrified, plaintiff Anthony Mitchell remained curled on the floor of his living room, with his hands over his face, and made no movement.
“Although plaintiff Anthony Mitchell was lying motionless on the ground and posed no threat, officers, including Officer David Cawthorn, then fired multiple ‘pepperball’ rounds at plaintiff as he lay defenseless on the floor of his living room. Anthony Mitchell was struck at least three times by shots fired from close range, injuring him and causing him severe pain.” (Parentheses in complaint.)
Officers then arrested him for obstructing a police officer, searched the house and moved furniture without his permission and set up a place in his home for a lookout, Mitchell says in the complaint.
He says they also hurt his pet dog for no reason whatsoever: “Plaintiff Anthony Mitchell’s pet, a female dog named ‘Sam,’ was cowering in the corner when officers smashed through the front door. Although the terrified animal posed no threat to officers, they gratuitously shot it with one or more pepperball rounds. The panicked animal howled in fear and pain and fled from the residence.
Sam was subsequently left trapped outside in a fenced alcove without access to water, food, or shelter from the sun for much of the day, while temperatures outside soared to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.”
Anthony and his parents live in separate houses, close to one another on the same street. He claims that police treated his parents the same way.
“Meanwhile, starting at approximately 10:45 a.m., police officers entered the back yard of plaintiffs Michael Mitchell and Linda Mitchell’s residence at 362 Eveningside Avenue. The officers asked plaintiff Michael Mitchell if he would be willing to vacate his residence and accompany them to their ‘command center’ under the guise that the officers wanted Michael Mitchell’s assistance in negotiating the surrender of the neighboring suspect at 363 Eveningside Avenue. Plaintiff Michael Mitchell reluctantly agreed to follow the officers from his back yard to the HPD command center, which was approximately one quarter mile away,” the complaint states.
“When plaintiff Michael Mitchell arrived at the HPD command center, he was informed that the suspect was ‘not taking any calls’ and that plaintiff Michael Mitchell would not be permitted to call the suspect neighbor from his own phone. At that time, Mr. Mitchell realized that the request to accompany officers to the HPD command center was a tactic to remove him from his house. He waited approximately ten minutes at the HPD command center and was told he could not return to his home.
“Plaintiff Michael Mitchell then left HPD command center and walked down Mauve Street toward the exit of the neighborhood. After walking for less than five minutes, an HPD car pulled up next to him. He was told that his wife, Linda Mitchell, had ‘left the house’ and would meet him at the HPD command center. Michael Mitchell then walked back up Mauve Street to the HPD command center. He called his son, James Mitchell, to pick him up at the HPD command center. When plaintiff Michael Mitchell attempted to leave the HPD command center to meet James, he was arrested, handcuffed and placed in the back of a marked police car.
“Officers had no reasonable grounds to detain plaintiff Michael Mitchell, nor probable
cause to suspect him of committing any crime.
“At approximately 1:45 p.m., a group of officers entered the backyard of plaintiffs Michael Mitchell and Linda Mitchell’s residence at 362 Eveningside Avenue. They banged on the back door of the house and demanded that plaintiff Linda Mitchell open the door.
“Plaintiff Linda Mitchell complied and opened the door to her home. When she told officers that they could not enter her home without a warrant, the officers ignored her. One officer, defendant Doe 1, seized her by the arm, and other officers entered her home without permission.
“Defendant Doe 1 then forcibly pulled plaintiff Linda Mitchell out of her house.
“Another unidentified officer, defendant Doe 2, then seized plaintiff Linda Mitchell’s purse and began rummaging through it, without permission, consent, or a warrant.
“Defendant Doe 1 then escorted Linda Mitchell at a brisk pace through her yard and
up the hill toward the ‘Command Post’ while maintaining a firm grip on her upper arm. Plaintiff Linda Mitchell is physically frail and had difficulty breathing due to the heat and the swift pace.
However, Doe 1 ignored her pleas to be released or to at least slow down, and refused to provide any explanation for why she was being treated in such a manner.
“In the meantime, the officers searched and occupied plaintiffs Michael Mitchell and Linda Mitchell’s house.
When plaintiff Linda Mitchell returned to her home, the cabinets and closet doors throughout the house had been left open and their contents moved about. Water had been consumed from their water dispenser. Even the refrigerator door had been left ajar and mustard and mayonnaise had been left on their kitchen floor.”
Police took Anthony and Michael Mitchell to jail and booked them for obstructing an officer. They were jailed for at least nine hours before they bailed out, they say in the complaint.
All criminal charges were dismissed with prejudice. They claim the defendants filed the baseless criminal charges “to provide cover for defendants’ wrongful actions, to frustrate and impede plaintiffs’ ability to seek relief for those actions, and to further intimidate and retaliate against plaintiffs.”
None of the officers were ever subjected to official discipline or even inquiry, the complaint states.
The Mitchells seek punitive damages for violations of the third, fourth and 14th Amendments, assault and battery, conspiracy, defamation, abuse of process, malicious prosecution, negligence and emotional distress.
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J.G. Vibes is the author of an 87 chapter counter-culture textbook called Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance, a staff writer, reporter for Intellihub.com and Executive Producer of the Bob Tuskin Radio Show. You can keep up with his work, which includes free podcasts, free e-books & free audiobooks at his website www.aotmr.com

Obama Expected To Approve Environmental Fiasco-In-Waiting

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow has been one nearly lone media voice speaking out consistently against the Keystone Pipeline, tar sands and fracking.

While she is generally an obvious Democratic Party Tool, she does seem to strive for facts and fairness in her telling of our tale and while she misses a lot, still seems to stand for social justice, equality and (some) environmental protection - certainly so when it comes to oil production pollution.

With President Obama's decision to approve the Keystone Pipeline (KXL) imminent, she presents another excellent report on the dangers of his anticipated approval of this dastardly project.

Please watch this report and call, email or visit the White House to protest KXL.

Um....Civil Rights? I Don't Think So!

Published on Thursday, June 6, 2013 by Common Dreams

'Beyond Orwellian': Outrage Follows Revelations of Vast Domestic Spying Program

FISA court order 'broadest surveillance order ever issued' against private citizens

- Jon Queally, staff writer

Outrage and rebuke are flying after explosive news broke late Wednesday that the National Security Agency, claiming authority under the Patriot Act and using a secret court order, has demanded (and been receiving) millions of phone records from Verizon which include all the company's "telephony metadata" for all its US-based customers over a three month period.
The "metadata" being provided to the NSA does not provide individual names for each record, but is a blanket order that allows the government spy agency access to all call information for any Verizon Business Network Services customer, including the phone dialed from and to, the location from which the call was made, and the duration of the call.
Civil rights groups, privacy advocates, and others expressed shock at the extent of the order signed by the government's secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court, a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian newspaper.
Breaking the story, Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald said the document shows "for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing."
"It is beyond Orwellian, and it provides further evidence of the extent to which basic democratic rights are being surrendered in secret to the demands of unaccountable intelligence agencies." - ACLU
Though the Guardian report contains only one order from the FISA Court covering a set period, most experts agree that the program has likely been going on for years without disclosure.
Articulating the revelations in plain language, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Cindy Cohn and Mark Rofuld explain that the "order gave the NSA a record of every Verizon customer’s call history -- every call made, the location of the phone, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other 'identifying information' for the phone and call—from April 25, 2013 (the date the order was issued) to July 19, 2013.  The order does not require content or the name of any subscriber and is issued under 50 USC sec.1861, also known as section 215 of the Patriot Act."
More worrisome, write the EFF staffers is that no indications exist "that this order to Verizon was unique or novel."
"It is very likely that business records orders like this exist for every major American telecommunication company," they continued. "If you make calls in the United States, the NSA has those records. And this has been going on for at least 7 years, and probably longer."
The reaction was harsh and swift, with the ACLU and others calling for an immediate halt to the program and a large scale investigation.
What follows is a sampling of the responses from those deeply troubled—if not wholly surprised—by the program.
ACLU Calls for End to Program, Disclosure of Program’s Scope, Congressional Investigation:

"From a civil liberties perspective, the program could hardly be any more alarming. It’s a program in which some untold number of innocent people have been put under the constant surveillance of government agents," said Jameel Jaffer, American Civil Liberties Union deputy legal director. "It is beyond Orwellian, and it provides further evidence of the extent to which basic democratic rights are being surrendered in secret to the demands of unaccountable intelligence agencies."
"Since 9/11, the government has increasingly classified and concealed not just facts, but the law itself. Such extreme secrecy is inconsistent with our democratic values of open government and accountability."
The program was put in place under the Patriot Act’s Section 215, a controversial provision that authorizes the government to seek secret court orders for the production of "any tangible thing" relevant to a foreign-intelligence or terrorism investigation. Recipients of Section 215 orders, such as telecommunications companies, are prohibited from disclosing that they gave the government their customers’ records.
"Now that this unconstitutional surveillance effort has been revealed, the government should end it and disclose its full scope, and Congress should initiate a full investigation," said Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel with the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "This disclosure also highlights the growing gap between the public’s and the government’s understandings of the many sweeping surveillance authorities enacted by Congress. Since 9/11, the government has increasingly classified and concealed not just facts, but the law itself. Such extreme secrecy is inconsistent with our democratic values of open government and accountability."

Center for Constitutional Rights calls it "broadest surveillance order ever issued":

As far as we know this order from the FISA court is the broadest surveillance order to ever have been issued: it requires no level of suspicion and applies to all Verizon subscribers anywhere in the U.S. It also contains a gag order prohibiting Verizon from disclosing information about the order to anyone other than their counsel.
"The broadest surveillance order to ever have been issued: it requires no level of suspicion and applies to all Verizon subscribers anywhere in the U.S."
The Patriot Act’s incredibly broad surveillance provision purportedly authorizes an order of this sort, though its constitutionality is in question and several senators have complained about it. The Patriot Act provision requires the FBI to notify Congress about the number of such warrants, but this single order covering millions of people is a deceptive end-run around that disclosure requirement.

Electronic Frontier Foundation says NSA should "stop hiding behind legal privileges":

This type of untargeted, wholly domestic surveillance is exactly what EFF, and others have been suing about for years. In 2006, USA Today published a story disclosing that the NSA had compiled a massive database of call records from American telecommunications companies. Our case, Jewel v. NSA, challenging the legality of the NSA’s domestic spying program, has been pending since 2008, but it's predecessor, Hepting v. AT&T filed in 2006, alleged the same surveillance. In 2011, on the 10th Anniversary of the Patriot Act, we filed a FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Justice for records about the government’s use of Section 215 – the legal authority the government was relying on to perform this type of untargeted surveillance. [...]
"It’s time to end the NSA’s unconstitutional domestic surveillance program."
The American people have confirmed how the government has secretly interpreted Section 215. And we’re angry. It’s time to stop hiding behind legal privileges and to come clean about Section 215 and FISA. It’s time to start the national dialogue about our rights in the digital age. And it’s time to end the NSA’s unconstitutional domestic surveillance program.

Senator Mark Udall (D-CO), a member of the Senate Intelligence committee who has publicly, though "vaguely," warned about such a program responded to the news by telling CNET:

"While I cannot corroborate the details of this particular report, this sort of widescale surveillance should concern all of us and is the kind of government overreach I've said Americans would find shocking. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, it's why I will keep fighting for transparency and appropriate checks on the surveillance of Americans."

Former US Vice President Al Gore tweeted:
Guardian columnist James Ball details what "metadata" is and what authorities can learn about you from accessing such data through phone records:

The primary purpose of large-scale databases such as the NSA's call records is generally said to be data-mining: rather than examining individuals, algorithms are used to find patterns of unusual activity that may mark terrorism or criminal conspiracies.
However, collection and storage of this information gives government a power it's previously lacked: easy and retroactive surveillance.
If authorities become interested in an individual at a later stage, and obtain their number, officials can look back through the data and gather their movements, social network, and more – possibly for several years (although the secret court order only allows for three months of data collection).
In essence, you're being watched; the government just doesn't know your name while it's doing it.
Until now, such actions have been kept a tightly guarded and classified secret, speculated upon, suspected, and occasionally disclosed by sources, but never proven by documents.
Now the confirmation is in the open, the American public have the opportunity to decide which definition of private information they prefer: that of the privacy advocates, or that of the NSA and White House.

And Twitter:

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Democrat or Green Party! Should America Dump The Democrats?

Thanks to Sasha Brookner for posting such an interesting letter.

The "Greens" are often put forward as ultra-left, crackpot lefties, but when you listen to Jill Stein and other Greens or read the Green Party Website about their party platform about social and political reform, what you find instead are intelligent, practical, reasonable and sustainable solutions to most of our social and political issues.  Things you never hear about from Republicans and Democrats.

The Green Party is not about super-goofy, tree hugging, nut jobs - but instead makes a strong, reasonable and practical statement about the role of government and the protection and nurture of society.

I don't belong to a political party, but I do really appreciate the perspective and ideas of the Green Party.


From Blue to Green: Why I Left the Democratic Party

The Huffington Post
March 21, 2013
by Sasha Brookner
“Of two evils, choose neither.” ~ Charles Spurgeon
In the 16th century, the Eastern Orthodox Christians had a unique aphorism: “Better the turban than the mitre.” They were referring to the preferable conquer of the Balkans by the Ottoman Turks rather than the Western Roman Catholic empire. Today, that lesser of two evil principles isn’t about maintaining freedom of religion; rather it’s used by Democrats to justify genocide, drones, Guantanamo, rendition, kill lists and cutting heat subsidizes for the poor under the past its sell-by date defense that Republicans would double these demons. It is evident that this perpetual comparative doctrine has reached steroid proportions. Although President Barack Obama may wear the “turban” when it comes to certain domestic policies, such as gay marriage and embryonic stem cell research, when it comes to foreign policy, corporate interests, and saying farewell to Magna Carta, both the Elephants and the Donkeys are wearing the Bishop’s hat.
In 2008, I complacently cast a vote for the so-called Marxist, Muslim, crypto-Mau Mau leader. At the time, I thought his rhetoric on hunting down Osama bin Laden and his cadre of non-threatening, Pashtun goat-herding boogie men was simply posturing for xenophobic independents. I mean this was a devoted peaceful father who didn’t spank his children and volunteered at soup kitchens. We’re talking about a man who turned down a lucrative corporate gig for grassroots basement community activism. Goodwin Liu was on his short list for the 9th circuit; hell, he sat in front of feminists and spoke about rescinding the Hyde Amendment. If Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels could have ever made their utopian government functional, this was the guy who could swing it. Don’t laugh at me. Over the next four years the nausea and culpability I felt for casting that less than prescient ballot and not supporting Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney would take it’s toll on my conscience and nervous system.
“He’s playing chess!” Obamacrats screamed emphatically when it was abundantly clear the Ivy Leaguer was failing horribly at checkers. While Republicans transformed into strategic tacticians taking chapters from Sun Tzu’s Art of War and marching their elephants over the Alps, Democrats were busying themselves reading Iyanla Vanzant. Obama’s bi-partisan agenda skyrocketed to epidemic proportions – apparently a pre-existing condition for which he was previously denied treatment – leaving him perpetually naked every time he walked away from the political poker table. Frustrated amidst even his moderate ideas being obstructed by the GOP, he would come out of his economic meetings and relieve his stress going H.A.M on Kabul. He even felt the need to make the stomach-turning Jonas Brothers drone joke in protection of his precious daughters – who, unlike little girls in MENA, will never come close to seeing glimpses of war. In his autobiography, Obama said, “War might be hell and still the right thing to do.” I’m sure this bit of philosophical reflection holds true only as long as it’s not his family experiencing that “war” or “hell.” Our president only has a predilection for playing commando leader with other parents’ children. And when resistance fighters return fire Michelle offers their families big bear hug condolences and rhapsodizes over how valiantly they died for our freedoms. Watching the Obamas donate money to veterans’ organizations is like watching pimps offer charity to domestic violence shelters.
Obama’s political tenure reads like acute moral fragmentation. He has ordered some of the most catastrophic cuts to our civil liberties while throwing in a couple Lily Ledbetter Acts to keep liberals placated. Congressional obstructionism was not the culprit when our president renewed the egregiously Orwellien Patriot Act via non “sunlight before signing” autopen. It was not to blame when he refused to shut down Cheney’s beloved interrogation facility in Cuba even though half the tormented water drown prisoners have been cleared. A few Wall Street bankers received “consent orders,” but no prison buddies named Bubba. Meanwhile, our heroic Bradley Manning rots away half naked in a cell, two more Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas were recently shut down and Obama’s lust for war has extended from Afghanistan to Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Mali and Yemen. We haven’t even entered into his beloved drone curriculum which makes Bush’s water boarding look compassionate. The current administration’s three billion dollar a week jingoistic kill brown people program could have easily been invested into eradicating homelessness, canceling student debts, rebuilding 98,000 elementary and 25,000 high schools, and providing superlative pro bono job training – all of which pose a much greater threat to our country than desert nomads across ocean divides who draw their diabolical plan of attack against America with sticks in the dirt. Boehner and crew’s impediments were not the issue when our chain smoker president broke his campaign promise to respect state’s rights and started hunting down medical marijuana dealers. Watching a man who consumes a product that leads to the death of 6 million users annually go after the hemp guys was like watching a drunk driver moralize to cranberry juice drinkers. Instead of learning from the preeminent philosophers throughout antiquity who preached mastery of self before mastery others, Obama has used his tenure in office having romantic affairs with the Disposition Matrix, Illegal Wars, and NDAA’s Section 1021(b)(2) which allows for indefinite detention and cold-blooded murder of U.S. citizens at his Tuesday discretion, all of which would have gotten the younger Barack laughed out of his Harvard law classes. But hey, aren’t his daughters adorable? And that Michelle she sure can Hula Hoop. I wonder how her vegetable garden is doing? And Bo! Democrats love them some Bo.
Although George W. Bush was possibly the most repugnant president in United States history next to Woodrow, Harry and Richard, the only U.S. Constitutional passage he was familiar with was the Second Amendment. Obama on the other hand is a constitutional legal eagle, meaning he’s actually heard of George Mason and the Fifth Amendment. This makes his lack of deference to the only legal text that could perhaps arguably make us “exceptional” even more egregious. Regrettably, Obama’s entire candidacy has been viewed through a lens of proportionality, the 112th and 113th Congress have been incomparable secret weapons. Contrasted against a group of anachronistic, pseudo-Christian crusaders with an ongoing agenda to criminalize 12-year-old incest victims who abort embryos, Obama would have to be Pol Pot to fall below the bar set up for him. The “liberal” party has taken to genuflecting in front of a man who can only look decent next to psychopaths.

8 reasons why I now go Green, not the machine

1) Because Naderization Doesn’t Scare Me
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” ~ Mohandas Gandhi
If I hear another President Roseanne Barr Macadamia Nut joke, I’m going to tell the Taliban people are burning Qurans and start giving out home addresses. Our world can no longer afford to make Green Party jokes; they’re just not funny amidst our current political climate. It is offensive to think I would succumb to Spoiler Controversy extortion by the so-called progressive party whose current claim to fame is attempting to raise the minimum wage by a radical buck and a half. Now there’s a joke for anyone who’s looked at a calendar lately or skimmed through Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Considering our president can’t even pass a paltry $9/hour through Congress, he might have well have opted to start with what economists compute is the 2013 accurate livable wage sum – $21.72. Clearly over the past five years, if we’ve learned nothing at all, it’s that our presidential elect was never gifted in the art of negotiations, continuing to start every bill to exit poverty with the lowest possible numeral, eventually exiting stage left with the number below that.
Democrats have taken to blackmailing wanderers considering Green with an indictment of Ralph Nader who they contend handed over the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000, but who actually took 1% of votes equally from both Republicans and Democrats. They might as well blame the Socialist Party, the Electoral College, the quarter million Democrats in Florida who voted for Bush, eco-friendly tree huggers who wouldn’t have touched Gore with a 10 ft. long stick. Or, they could blame the real culprits – Thomas, Scalia, Kennedy, O’Connor, and Rehnquist.
In 1996, Ralph Nader spent less than $5,000 in his bid for presidency; yet he won over almost 1% of the American population. In 2000, he campaigned for roughly $300,000 and received 2.8 million votes. Imagine what numbers Jill Stein could pull if she garnered 5% support and qualified for millions of dollars in federal funding. Before clearing our memory cache, remember the original Republicans emerged as a third party back in the 1850′s with only a single issue, abolition. Unlike the early Republicans and Free Soil Party, Greens have an injustice conquer list that makes the Fair Sentencing Act look reactionary. In addition to the biotic crisis, their objectives include supporting grassroots democracy, social justice and equal opportunity, ecological wisdom, non-violence, decentralization, community based economics, feminist and gender equity, respect for diversity, personal & global responsibility, and future focus and sustainability. How could any sentient being support men obsessed with war over the Green Ten Key Values?
I know, I know this presidential election (like all since 1991) is “too important” to support the Party of Peace. I mean, think about it. If Republicans had taken the Oval Office it would have been conservative pandemonium. The Patriot Act would still be in effect; the Corpus in Habeas wouldn’t have to be produced; Guantanamo would be bustling; drone architect John O. Brennan would be appointed chief counter-terrorism advisor; Wall Street bankers would escape prosecution; Erik Prince would further his million dollar no-bid private military contracts; Planned Parenthoods would be defunded; millions of Mexican immigrants would be deported; billions of our tax dollars and military supplies would be sent to Israel to continue Gaza occupation and we would have militarily invaded and bombed the hell out of six new countries….
Oh wait.
Obama’s charm, wit, wife and ostensible liberal demeanor somehow made Democrats start liking these things again – or perhaps they were anesthetized to them to begin with and Blackwater, Fallujah and Iraqi children were just used as scapegoats when the guy they disliked was in office. Throughout the Bush regime, Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary, was a regularly sought-after anti-war speaker at Democratic events; but phone calls abruptly halted when Obama took office. Democrats play the same partisan politics as Republicans, using the ritual sacrifice of brown babies to the U.S. military industrial complex as pretexts when the Grand Ol’ Party is at the wheel. One could witness this pathology on Real Time with Bill Maher when Democrat strategist James Carville practically screamed at conservative political commentator, S.E Cupp, after she brought up her concern over drone attacks. What could be more depressing than when cold-hearted Republicans want to discuss the death of hundreds of babies while defensive Democrats shake their heads exasperatedly to shield their party’s deity from critique? I can’t imagine if the Mormon guy had used his magic underwear to catapult himself into office and left his Inaugural Ball early to bomb Yemen that Democrats and MSNBC wouldn’t be having seizures. Instead news that several Yemeni citizens died in a blast after cocktail hour was far less important than the Jason Wu gown Michele sparkled in at the Ball.
When I hear the regurgitated echo from Democrats that exercising suffrage on behalf of the Green Party is nothing but a “statement vote,” I can’t help but roll my eyes at their myopic vision and obstinate support of this Ineptocracy.
Going Green is a long-term strategy vote.
The Abolitionist and Feminist Suffrage movements knew they weren’t going to win the 13th or 19th amendment the first year, or the year after that, or hell, even 50 years down the road. The time-line of civil rights progress is never swift. How botched have our Poly-Sci classes become when self-identified liberals who denounce war still vote for it in perpetuity like meat eaters who claim they detest the killing animals, choosing to ignore the vision and growth of the Green Party as temporarily unviable. One can even cast aside those lessons from Plato, Aristotle and Machiavelli, and consider our foremothers. They didn’t bleed, sweat and cry for sixty years so we would be intimidated into exercising suffrage for a demagogue who works in the shadows of obscurity, killing off our sisters around the globe. I know for certainty Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t march in Selma and Montgomery so we would someday have a black president who would be bombing orphanages in Africa under the guise of safeguarding his beloved middle-class. Statistically speaking, I have a greater chance of being struck by lightening or gobbled up by a Carcharodon Carcharias than blown to smithereens by a man wanting to be Shaheed, according to this skewered logic we might as well pull a Jacques Cousteau and take to the oceans to kill off the great white shark population. We can even force minimum wage workers to fund the excursion, since it’s for their own benefit.
Even the recent drone sightings on American soil and the Congressional passing of the FAA Reauthorization Act projecting that 30,000 unmanned aerial vehicles will be flying our friendly skies by 2020 isn’t enough to get Democrats to tear off their tacky bumper stickers. The trite response “Well would you prefer Romney?” has become fixed in the Democrat echo chamber. No I wouldn’t prefer Romney, I would prefer liberals stop cowardly supporting mass murderers and men running our constitutional pages through Fellowes and Ativas and instead work towards assisting Jill Stein in garnering 4.6% more of the electoral vote so the Green Party can inch closer to overthrowing a corporate duopoly more concerned about catering to Goldman Sachs and Halliburton than the Bill of Rights.
Got it?
2) Because of Obama’s Cognitive Dissonance
“It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous men were thus bound together that in the agonized womb of consciousness these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How then were they dissociated?” ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Barack Obama is a member of the Chamaeleonidae family, he has more incarnations than Hindu deities and trying to measure his shape-shifting would have driven Euclid to insanity. His two-faced rules of conduct are steeped in a distorted sense of violent patriotism and delusional valiance. Dr. Jekyll’s eyes water up over senseless U.S. violence, like the mistaken identity murder of Chicago teen Hadiya Pendleton, while Mr. Hyde pre-emptively strikes any breathing foreigner rumored to dislike America with Arabic Hadiya corpses written off daily as mistaken identity collateral damage. This is indeed a strange case.
While American MQ-9 Reapers and MQ-1 Predator drones make their 24/7 rounds, Obama justifies Zionist proclivities and Gaza genocide with a straight faced outcry of “No country on Earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.” This is a fascinating statement because Obama’s prized UCAV’s have become perfectly acceptable descending upon third worlds, causing severe emotional and psychological distress to families at best, and dismemberment at worst, while Israel is the only region in the Middle East given Western permission to defend themselves.
The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once summed up “bad faith” as the belief that one individual could operate in two completely different patterns of behavior and find a way to reconcile the duplicity. That paradigm was clearly visible during Obama’s tearful vigil in the death of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in contrast to his callous indifference after he ordered the slaying of 21 children in the Bedouin village of al-Majalah on December 17, 2009. The Yemeni children didn’t even receive an admission of guilt let alone crocodile contrition, proving Obama’s moral compass doesn’t function well when pointed East. Our first black president has taken a chapter from the Antebellum, making it clear that brown foreigners are three-fifths of a person in contrast to American’s full human agency – not even worth body counts.
Obama has become the self-righteous fingerwagger of no return. He loves to moralize to Russia about their imprisonment of feminist punk-rock collective Pussy Riot, but refuses to discuss his own prison industrial complex which houses more men per capita than 196 countries. Obama was all keen on sermonizing Burma over the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, who is no more remarkable than American political prisoner exile Assata Shakur. On Syria, Obama said: “The Syrian government must stop shooting demonstrators and allow peaceful protests.” On his 99% constituents tasered and pepper sprayed by militia looking cops during Occupy Wall Street?
Crickets.
Our government’s lectures to the rest of the world’s system of jurisprudence for dissenters seem a little awkward amidst the recent arrest of Organic Consumers Association‘s Alexis Badden Mayer peacefully protesting outside of the White House and the ongoing prosecution of our truth-telling freedom fighters under obscure Acts implemented during Word War 1. Obama seems to have a great deal of outrospection about the failures of foreign governments but utterly lacks interest in curbing our own human rights abuse record.
Obama took it to a new low when he used Malala Yousafzai as a scapegoat for the Afghan war, calling her shooting “reprehensible, disgusting and tragic.” Huh? Out of all the Malalas you have been responsible for recklessly depriving life, you want to shine a spotlight on this girl and fund her medical treatment? Our Apaches didn’t land at Al-Majalah or Garani to fly any of those Malalas to top tier UK hospitals on private jets. Spare me the idea America is actually blowing up half of the Middle East on behalf of little girls trying to acquire an education. Remind me how many schools we’ve built over there again? Zero. How many have we accidentally bombed? Good question. Using the Malala logic we’d be in the Democrat Republic of the Congo right now, not best friends with the crypto-leader of the M23′s. And, please, don’t get me started on Susan Rice.
The Obama administration has shown they have a very selective commitment to human rights – not to mention an expensive habit of dropping million dollar bombs on ten dollar tents.
3) Because Insurance Run Healthcare Sucks
“We’ll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies – they’ll get a seat at the table, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN.” ~ Barack Obama
If you don’t recall a single meeting about implementing universal healthcare broadcast to the American public, it’s not because you were on the cable television network’s wrong digit. It’s evident this lack of on-camera discourse was because Obama cut a corporate friendly backroom deal before Michelle had even finished decorating the East Wing. Oh and not even a mere mention of the 2008 Hyde Amendment pledge. Obama’s appropriation of Republican Bob Dole’s aged well-being plan would ultimately be a blow job to United Health, Johnson & Johnson, Kaiser and Blue Shield providing them with 30 million additional clients of which they can appropriate 70% of patient profits. Anyone with medical coverage who has ever requested and been denied an MRI is cognizant that insurance run hospitals produce sub-par care. When we make human suffering a commodity, for-profit providers continually block expensive but necessary scans and refuse to let doctor’s inform their patients about cutting-edge modern technological advancements like VNS Therapy as to not upset their brethren anti-depressant pill market. Contrary to popular belief, Obama’s Affordable Care Act won’t lay the groundwork for Universal Healthcare; conversely it will hand over more tax dollars to these billion dollar juggernauts to use as additional funding to lobby against Vermont’s favorable Single Payer system. While Democrats had control of the House and Senate in 2009, Obama could have at least made a good faith attempt to put his campaign promise up to the floor for a vote.
Subsequently, it would be nice if Obama fans could stop perpetually using insurance run healthcare to balance every atrocity committed under this administration. Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro and Muammar Ghaddafi provided their people with actual universal healthcare, and nobody brought it up when they were using poison gas, instituting forced labor camps or firing rockets into little girls’ bedrooms.
4) Because Democrats Are Not Saving Our Birth Canals
“For millions of women, federal programs are their only means of getting healthcare. Abortion is the only medically necessary health service excluded from Medicaid coverage. Failure to provide a service that only women need is discrimination.” ~ Barack Obama (2008)
Fast forward to Wednesday, January 21, 2009 when Women’s Reproductive Rights became a distant 100th on the Planned Parenthood minister’s “To-Do” list. He only once mentioned the organization’s name on the national stage while campaigning against Romney in 2012 – and even then it was safely in the context of cheering for mammograms and cervical cancer screenings, not abortion. Receiving pamphlets on gestational phases is not the polemic issue for religious nuts and skirting around bio-ethical conversations pertaining to our fallopian tubes has become disrespectful. The moment Democrats begin to justify Planned Parenthood clinics because they uniformly don’t offer abortion services, they appropriate Republican values, deprecating their most important and necessary function. We don’t need conversations in support of mammograms, we need full fledged, third rail electrocution conversations about the elephant in the room: terminating an embryo/fetus to reduce the number of unwanted children in this country flooding the foster care system and being raised by mothers still reading Judy Blume.
Democrats still attempt to blackmail women with the notion that if we don’t go for the lesser of two evils that feminist’s adored family planning clinics will cease to exist. Newsflash: This past month, two Planned Parenthood clinics were shut down in Texas, completely disregarding Norma McCorvey’s historical legal precedent. In Arkansas, a 12-week abortion ban is advancing in the House. In New Mexico, they’re creatively working to criminalize rape victims who abort embryos as “tampering with evidence” while mandatory delightful vaginal ultrasounds are being forced upon women in attempts to guilt them into having unwanted children. This past month, four clinics were forced to shut down in Wisconsin after losing $1.1 million in state funding. Thank god poor women have Obama in office! Even amidst Congress auditing the hell out of everything Planned Parenthood, from their suction tubes to fax cartridges, and the 50+ bills that have been brought to the floor to defund and/or criminalize the termination of pregnancies, Obama has remained mum on the subject. He hoped he could avoid the conversation by throwing $15 Ortho Tri-Cyclen scraps to middle-class women who have health insurance. It worked. And not to fret ladies of the ignored lower socio-economic class, you can continue to obtain free birth control at (yup you guessed it) Planned Parenthood.
5) Because Democrats Also Love Playing G.I. Joe
The grandiloquence War on Terror is merely a euphemism for ruthless ethnic cleansing indulged upon by a group of resource grabbing oil loving drunk with power geopoliticans who could use a good ethics of war reading from Cicero’s De Officiis and the Mahabharata.
Under Article 2 of the Geneva Code, Obama’s wars overseas does indeed constitute Genocide, defined as the “deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.” Genocide includes imposing measures intended to prevent births within a group and we can cue Robert Gibbs who justified Obama’s murder of 16 year old Abdulrahamn Anwar al-Aulaqi by his lineage empathetically issuing the quote, “He should have had a far more responsible father.” Genocide is also defined as forcibly transferring children of one group to another which is seen by the estimated 2.3 million Afghan Refugee Camp regulars.
Meanwhile Obama continues to delude the American public of his success, bragging about the 22 men with white turbans tilted over their left ears he’s wiped off the map. The only omission is, as Stanford, New York University and Policy Mic have reported, there is one Taliban death to every 50 civilians killed. When you kill a man’s child you go to war with their father it has nothing to do with Al-Qaeda; subsequently, we’ve engendered thousands more Arabs who now hate America and that 22 number starts looking a little less remarkable. In a region where the U.S. should be trying to win over supporters from jihadist influence, drones prove alienating and the pedantic Quran reader’s most effective recruiting tool. The mercurial rise of the once marginalized Muslim Brotherhood can also attribute their Arab Spring ascension to power as an alternative to Western imperialism. Hassan al-Banna’s descendants are definitely not beneficial to the Malalas. Our politician’s adrenaline pumping game of Cowboys and Indians has also precipitated military suicide rates that surpass combat deaths in 2012, hitting a 349 record number.
It is difficult for men and women who haven’t lived on the outer reaches of empire not to let war become an abstraction. The West may talk about drone warfare being “bad” or “questionable” over Frappuccinos but it rarely conjures up any genuine emotive response, less my beloved Code Pink cheerleaders. It has become abundantly clear over the past decade that a Fatima Akbar will never achieve parity to a Sally Smith.
The Scandinavian Committee who slept on Gandhi but awarded the United State’s 44th president a Nobel Peace Prize should be mortified to find out their compassionate patriarch of mankind runs a torture facility in the Wardak province of Afghanistan and incarcerates their other Peace Prize nominees. Unlike the eight African-American Nobel Peace Prize winners that came before him, Obama’s prestigious accolade has become a white elephant. Contrasted with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who in 1964 took his award as a duty said: “The Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission – a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for ‘the brotherhood of man.’”
6) Because You Tilt at Windmills
“Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, “Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.” ~ Miguel de Cervantes
What both parties keep shielded from the American public is that neither the Taliban nor Al-Qaeda own a single armored tank, let alone F-22 frequent flier mileage. Jihadists are often goat herders who reside in dirt huts with no voltage. Their lack of electronic sophistication was transparent upon a glimpse into the King of Al-Qaeda’s “lap of luxury.” Homeboy looked like he could only get reception via tin foil on the antennas of his compound’s 80′s style TV. Bin Laden’s constituents haven’t mastered basic air travel, what are they going to do, ride their camels across the Atlantic Ocean to institute Shari’s Law? In case everyone failed to notice, they had to hijack our planes for 9/11, so wouldn’t a better plan of self-preservation simply be keeping them off flights headed this way? Apparently not, because you see these guys have the combined IQ’s of Ghazali and Khaldoun and the military tactics of Saladin. This is why wardens are too terrified to have them transferred from Guantanamo to federal prison because unbeknownst to science, The Students and The Base have metal springs in their feet so they can jump over 100 ft high electrical fences. They can pass through walls by melting underneath doors then reforming on the other side. And don’t let them touch you with a Quran or you’ll instantly turn to stone, then crack. Mass propaganda has transformed these non-tech savvy nomads into the Voldemorts of the world actually capable of inciting an American holocaust of Third Reich proportions. Over the past 11 years there hasn’t been a single attempt by a Jihadists to sneak a bomb onto a plane from one U.S. city to another (CIA false flags don’t count) while polls show the majority of Afghans didn’t even know what “America” was until we started blowing up their neighborhoods.
More recently, Obama authorized millions of dollars to be sent across the globe to support the Yemeni military, even amidst our country at 10% unemployment, 650,000 estimated homeless and 40 million children not receiving adequate nourishment. Our government cut off head subsidizes for the poor in 2011, closed mental health clinics and cut funding for domestic violence shelters, but suddenly has a Carte blanche to bankroll a third world’s counter-terrorism operations because one underwear bomber hailed from the region. Yes we must defend destitute Americans from the threat of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula living in one of the driest, poorest and least developed country in the world. Patriotism is all about cutting safety nets then assuring the people who need them that our government loves them so much they will be protected from Salafism. Thank you President Obama for defending us from our 1 in 1 billionth chance of becoming victim to Yemeni terrorism – and continuing to funnel money away from struggling Americans for DARPA’s Vulture Program so we can have futuristic war robots – while the Soup Kitchen down the block is having another coat drive. Regardless of if you’re a fan of doing the impossible extermination of the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Mujahideen and anyone wearing a burka, the war against “terror” has statistically been completely counterproductive to that goal. Several years ago there were only about 150 members of AQAP. After ongoing strikes from drones, tomahawk missiles and cluster bombs there are currently 1500 members. How can Obama sophists contend this is a “smart war” or a “war of attrition” when playing Whac-a-Mole on the bad guys is doubling their membership exponentially? The misguided War on Terror has been the most dim-witted battle since the domino theory days. It’s like a war on acne and the more you pick and squeeze the more depressing your pimple problem becomes. We torture Osama’s Egyptian friends, he blows up East African U.S embassies, we bomb anti-malarial drug producing pharmacies in Sudan and then act surprised when Al-Qaeda starts issuing “America Die” manifestos. Confucius once said “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” Our target countries practices the same Code of Hammurabi as the rest of us – an eye for an eye and the Twin Towers die. Unfortunately, we’re not all as mature as Sweden who handled the 2010 Stockholm Bombings by simply stepping up their self-defense, which according to our Castle Laws, happens at home.
7) Because My Entire Life History is Stored on a Super Computer in Utah
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” ~ The Fourth Amendment
The majority of Obama’s loyal supporters have no clue that he’s ordered AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon to systematically turn over their customers’ personal correspondence. Somewhere near the Church of Latter Day Saints, there is a mega computer that has access to every single e-mail/text you’ve ever sent your friends, co-workers or weed dealer. Most simply brush it off as “Well I’m not planning a suicide bomb mission so who cares” but this invasion of privacy has very little to do with 72 Virgins. These correspondences have been handed over to NSA, FBI, CIA and every other government acronym who is now privy to any naked photo you’ve ever sent a lover, perhaps a note telling a friend you cheated on your taxes, psychiatric records that could deny you future government job opportunities and whether you have a library book check-out preference for J.D Salinger, Mark Twain or god forbid the Quran. The interesting detail about the Patriot Act’s “sneak and peak” clause is that it’s been used much more frequently to snag drug dealers than locate Jihadists. So back to those weed dealer correspondences…
8) Because I Hate Personality Cults
A few weekends ago, I was walking down Crenshaw Blvd. in South Central Los Angeles and noticed a woman selling candles with Obama’s face plastered on them, Virgin Mary style. I couldn’t help but think how eerily reminiscent it was to Kim ll-sung. The same lady selling Saint Obama candles also had some First Lady earrings for $5 a pop. I’ll pass. When Michelle’s new bangs conjure up more talk in the African-American community than the National Defense Authorization Act, it’s time to check the celebrity fan club. Personal brand narratives should be inconsequential when electing politicians and I would be embarrassed by any woman voting for Sarah Palin because her X chromosome genetic strain would provide role model status to young girls.
Obama has made war so acceptable to his loyal African-American supporters that when Lupe Fiasco argues otherwise in front of Hip-Hop crowds he’s booed off stage. Remember when anti-war songs were cool in the black community? We can never forget Bob Marley’s “War” or Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.” Black people were right there in the front row waving their hands side to side. There was never a time where Renaldo “Obie” Benson of the Four Tops got booed off a stage when he asked why our government was sending kids overseas.” In one era, Muhammad Ali could proudly be remembered saying:

“No, I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder kill and burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slave masters over dark people the world over. This is the day and age when such evil injustice must come to an end.”

Fast forward 50 years later to find the famed boxer saluting the first black president at inaugural soirees. Nowadays anyone who dares sell out by speaking up against Obama’s imperial violence, from Cornel West to Tavis Smiley, are immediately shunned by the same community that is rarely even referenced by their beloved president. This is the same community that once rallied in New York on April 4, 1967 with tearful eyes listening to Dr. King’s anti-Vietnam War speech, “A Time to Break Silence.”
Tragically, our president could bomb Uganda off the map and those who have created a fictive kinship with the first family would get more riled up if they found out Barack was cheating on Michelle with a white woman. There is something diabolical about a black man who refuses to speak on direct issues related to the black community from the Jim Crow neo-slavery prison industrial complex, police brutality, Troy Davis, Mumia Abu-Jamal and disproportionate black unemployment levels because his family’s melanin content alone is deemed sufficient. I guess you can’t expect much more from a president that admires Reagan, the man responsible for the iconic “black welfare queen.”
Cynthia McKinney calls Obama “the more effective of the two evils” perhaps because he can encourage extra judicial killings all too familiar to the African-American community and still win hearts by belting out a rendition of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” Unlike backing gay marriage for the LGBT community, birth control for Women and The Dream Act for Latinos, he doesn’t need to worry about offering one piece of legislation directly targeting African Americans because he knows he has that vote by design. He can woo Harlem fundraisers through vocal chords, then revert back to telling the black man uptown if he wants anything changed he should “take off his house slippers.” Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass would be so proud.
Jill Stein may not sing love songs from the 70′s, have a fashion savvy husband or chill with Oprah Winfrey, but legislation that directly affects me, my community and my sisters around the globe is far too important to vote for voyeurism over policy. I rather a white woman that fights on behalf of the black community, than a black man who has statistically paid less attention to race in Executive Orders and podium appearances, than John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter.
*****
When you cast a ballot for either corporate binary it’s inevitable that you’re voting in the interests of Goldman Sachs, DynCorp, Exxon Mobil and Monsanto. As both Democrats and Republicans continue to loot the U.S Treasury to fund armed forces, expand indefinite detention to ordinary U.S. citizens, nonsensically send billions of our tax dollars to corrupt foreign governments while forcing the elderly to work cash registers at K-Mart clutching defibrillators, there will be alternatively only one party left to choose from.
Hillary won’t get my vote in 2016. I’m not riding the donkey anymore.