Ralph Nader is running for President.

He's on MTP.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/national.html

Pay close attention.

8

The Repubs are just desperate. I barely was able to even watch Bill Maher the other night with the two idiots on...former Dumbya Bu$h speechwriter David Frum and the other Repig hick, Rep. Jack Kingston, from Georgia. They were saying stuff that the lying email that has been sent out recently about Barack Obama has been saying. Just out and out lying propaganda bullshit. No wonder Maher doesn't have many Cons on his show. Hillary showed a ray of hope at debate the other night, when she closed with her nice comments. But this weekend, it looks like business as usual in the Clinton campaign. Hillary, you got some BOOS the other night for "dirty" politics. People react the same way with your speeches and commercials that use those same tactics. The human side of you is what people react positively to. You obviously haven't learned that lesson yet. Or people on your staff like Mark Penn and Howard Wolfson haven't figured that out yet.

I just discovered that this comments system is so broken that if you refresh the page, you can flag whatever you flagged before, again. You should try it. You can flag CommieNazi at least 12 times on this page alone.

Barack Obama as the son of an immigrant father who left his family when he was two years old has overcome incredible odds. He is a man of obvious intellect and integrity. From a mixed racial background to President of the Harvard law review, to community organizer, to U.S. Senator, to President of the United States. This story is the American Dream in real life.

I watched that video of him not putting his hand over his heart. And frankly it's no big deal. The TRULY disrespectdful thing happening at that event was the way our national anthem was being sung. Did you listen to it? It wasn't even recognizable! If I were him I'd have been cupping my ears!

Here is a link to the excellent article in the NY Times today by Frank Rich entitled "The Audacity of Hopelessness".

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/opinion/24rich.html

(on a personal note: $1200 a month on Dunkin Donuts alone??? Damn! )

You see both candidates are just proposing what the industry is proposing

http://www.hiaa.org/

1,300 companies

Health care dollars, more than $1,000 per person per year, went to health care administrative costs.

Or $300 billion in short.

One would have thought that was better spent on treatment and preventative heath care, rather than for profit companies.

We were treated to the verklepmt Hillary ahead on the New Hampshire Primary because her handlers said she appeared cold and calculating. She's cold, then she's warm and conciliatory. She's for the war then against the war. She supported NAFTA now denies having been for it. She said she won't split the party, but insiders say she will make a play for the Florida and Michigan delegates. She used Bill shamelessly to work the crowds and conjure up votes. Now he's back in his cage deemed a liability.
Only the Chicago weather changes more often than Hil's positions.

On SNL last night....

"Bitch is the New Black"

As much I dislike the extremism on both sides in the democratic race both sides are entitled to their opinions. It the hope of future politics that our generation is once again so impassioned about beliefs and the people who embody them that we are willing to transmute that energy into political action. I think we are now on the verge of a new era as the post refers to where the people remove their gags and speak to power the truth they want to come to pass. No crisis or obstacle should rob a people of their freedoms in anyway but deem them more precious. The Peshwar article shows a glimpse of what happens when a people throw off oppression of their own accord and become everything they knew they could be.

I don't give a damn...

I give Hillary props for showing up at Tavis's event yesterday where she already knew her reception would not be warm..and wasn't.

She's got bigger balls than GWB that's for sure -- who would NEVER appear before an unfriendly crowd.

She compares well to the fella with the halo too.

Her husband put the final nail in her coffin. Thanks Bill!

I am posting a very well written and informative article about HR Clinton's Health Care Reform theories. Please take the time to read up on her recent history and then decide how to cast your vote. Thank you.

Hillary's Past Leadership Failure in Health Care Repeated In Plan for Universal Insurance Company Prosperity.

by R. Queisser

http://www.opednews.com Feb 24, 2008



Hillary’s Past Leadership Failure in Health Care Repeated In Plan for Universal Insurance Company Prosperity.

Hillary Clinton frequently portrays herself as “ready on day one.” In fact, her “Health Care” platform proves she has no better skills today about how to lead health care change than she had in 1993, when her ineptness destroyed the chance to reform U.S. health care.



Recall those heady days of 1992-93, when Bill Clinton took office on the wave of national disgust over George H.W. Bush’s ballooning deficit and shallow world view. As a health care executive, I was thrilled to think that U.S. health care might soon become more comprehensive in scope and funded far more rationally.

On January 25, 1993, President Clinton announced the formation of The President's Task Force on National Health Reform. The job of the Task Force, he said, was to "prepare health care reform legislation to be submitted to Congress within one hundred days of our taking office." He also announced that Hillary would head the task force and that Ira Magaziner would be its day-to-day operating head.

Well, that was how it started. Never mind that Hillary’s only related job experiences were as congressional staff attorney and partner in a private law firm. Forget that Ira Magaziner was a “business” consultant, not a health policy expert, not even a provider. Ah, we had such naïve hopes!

Hillary and Magaziner Were Blind-Sided by Predictable Reaction of Vested Interests

Any leader, executive or manager understands that planning and implementing organizational change are among the primary challenges of leadership. Innovation, anticipating issues, co-opting parties with differing perspectives, finding winnable compromises, shaping coalitions for change—these are all bread-and-butter skills that differentiate real leaders from “bosses”.

But in 1993 Hillary Clinton and Ira Magaziner chose to exclude any physician, hospital, insurance and pharmaceutical industry players from their preliminary discussions. Guess what? Faced with exclusion from the discussions, these powerful industries marshaled massive advertising and lobbying campaigns to protect their vested interests.

The resulting debacle was both predictable and avoidable. Experienced leaders would have anticipated and planned for the inevitable reaction, but not Hillary and Ira. Instead, they were flattened by the “Harry & Louise” ads and the ridiculous phrase, “They choose, we lose.”

Hillary and Magaziner Were Blind-Sided AGAIN by Predictable Resistance from Congressional Interests

Inside Washington, Hillary & Ira Magaziner similarly failed to implement a plan for reform. For example, they were blind-sided by Sen. Robert Byrd, whom they should have prepared for the omnibus reconciliation budget approach they chose to use, and they were again blind-sided by Rep. Pete Stark’s (Ways & Means) temper tantrum when he was briefed on their fait accompli financing plan. Rather than consulting Congressional power brokers, Hillary and Ira naively tried the amateur’s end-run, and predictably failed in their implementation.

By the way, Hillary had three consultants helping [sic] her with this debacle in 1993: Mandy Grunwald, James Carville, and Paul Begala. Sound familiar, right?

Today’s Plan Institutionalizes Insurance Industry Costs, Avoids Funding Reforms, And Leaves Vested Interests in Complete Control

Hillary’s plan for health care includes very few health-related elements. Instead, its basic focus is on keeping your insurance plan, if you like it. Her only “big idea” is to offer the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP) to all Americans—through commercial insurance brokers, of course. (But that was really John Edwards’ big idea.)

The few medically relevant points in the plan are quoted in these sample phrases from Hillary’s health care platform HillaryForPresident.comm) below:

(1) “Providers: will work collaboratively with patients and businesses to deliver high-quality, affordable care;”


(2) “Strengthen Medicaid and CHIP: The Plan will fix the holes in the safety net to ensure that the most vulnerable populations receive affordable, quality care;”

(3) “Create an Independent "Best Practices" Institute to Empower Consumers, Providers and Health Plans to Make the Right Care Choices;” and,


(4) “Implement Smart Purchasing Initiatives to Constrain Excess Prescription Drug and Managed Care Expenditures.”

(5) Elsewhere in her plan, I found reference to training more nurses and nursing professors and to funding more research on HIV/AIDS. Not much to cheer about, but way better than the nullity of McCain’s plan!

Almost everything else in Hillary’s plan relates to insurance markets, assuring three toxic outcomes: (A) a genuine bonanza for the same commercial insurance companies that have caused our problems, (B) lack of reforms that might offend physicians, hospitals, trade groups, medical device manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, special interest groups (physical therapists, nursing and skilled care homes); and (C) perpetuating Americans’ need to continue paying 30%-35% more for their care than we should for insurance company profits and overhead.

What Really Drives Health Care Costs?

Hillary’s plan totally ignores other factors that have been driving health care costs for decades, including burgeoning medical technologies; obscene incomes for procedure-based specialists (e.g., ophthalmologists, cardiac surgeons, and orthopedists); grossly exaggerated profits for DME providers, implant and device makers; medical centers’ profligate investments in edifices and marketing ploys; $$billions in profit annually for pharmaceutical companies, many of which simply license pharmaceutical discoveries developed under Federal (tax-payer) grants at universities and research foundations; and the counter-productive “free-market” distribution of critical human and technological resources.

Why, for example, doesn’t Hillary’s plan confront the fact that there are more CT scanners in Seattle or Chicago than in all of Canada—yet all Canadians enjoy universal access, lower costs, and SUPERIOR MORBIDITY, MORTALITY, AND INFANT SURVIVAL RATES with respect to the United States?

Why won’t Hillary’s plan question the cost implications of hospital beds/thousand ratios in New York City and Los Angeles vs. upper New York State or rural Vermont, or the disparate ratios of primary care providers per thousand population in Wyoming vs. Florida? These are but two of the huge public health policy issues that we must examine in order to hope for a positive impact on the lives and health prospects of millions of Americans, yet Clinton’s much-touted health care plan ignores every one of them. This isn’t leadership, this is pandering to the powerful.

And, of course, the essential premise of Clinton’s insurance boondogle is that Americans would be forced to suffer the continuing absurd, employer-based strangle-hold on health insurance that now costs us easily 30% of every health care dollar we spend through employer-based insurance.

As a former hospital, ambulatory surgery center, and group practice administrator I groaned every year when budgets were developed because I could see how eliminating fee-for-service insurance billing would save my facilities 30%. I agonized over cuts in nursing, physical therapy, and many other essential services that were forced by the burdens of insurance plans’ low reimbursement policies (often as little as pennies on the dollar) and unnecessarily complex insurance claims processing requirements.

Many medical centers spend millions of dollars annually for huge computers and proprietary software designed solely to spit out insurance claims by payer type. Usually these systems come with major flaws which cost more hundreds of thousands of dollars to correct.

Why are they “necessary?” Because insurance companies routinely attempt to exclude payments for legitimate services, if possible, or at least to defer making payments in order to help their cash flow. Hospitals, physicians, nursing homes, pharmacies, physical and occupational therapists—all these groups suffer endless hassles at the hands of commercial insurance companies (e.g., Aetna, Humana, United Healthcare, John Hancock, CIGNA, etc.) and their buddies with “Blue” and “Choice” in their names.

And it is this profit-thirsty pack of unscrupulous insurance companies to whom Hillary Clinton has entrusted nearly every significant portion of her health care plan. Way to Go, Hillary!!

With a few exceptions Hillary’s plan is about tweaking insurance markets, while the terms “physician”, “hospital”, and “prescription drugs” scarcely appear at all. Health INSURANCE is often described as simply a license to hunt. In fact, having insurance does not assure obtaining care, nor does it promise optimal, cost-effective or competent care.

So on health care, Hillary’s style of “leadership” and change—both within government and outside in the “real” world—remains a dismal failure of nerve, deficient in results and devoid of real reform.

Sad. Senator Clinton hopefully can take comfort in the fact that the best candidate (herself in this case) doesn't always win. Wouldn't this country be in better shape if one of GWB's opponents had won in the Republican primary in 2000? Yes.
Howard Dean or Wesley Clark would have been a much better candidate than John Kerry in 2004.
But the media has hyped up Obama much more than he can deliver although he was played right along - I feel sorry for him - if he gets in office, they will turn on him like they have on Clinton already.