This Can't Be Happening!

If this were the democracy that the Founding Fathers thought they were creating, word from CIA Director Leon Panetta that his agency had lied to Congress and specifically that it had lied repeatedly from 9-11-2001 through the end of 2008 concerning an as-yet undisclosed secret program, would have virtually every member of Congress in a state of rebellion, demanding answers.

All you need to really know about the Obama health “reform” initiative is that it is being supported by retail giant Wal-Mart.

My family and I just spent an incredible 11 days on Hawai'i's Big Island, climbing the sacred 13,790-foot mountain of Mauna Kea, hiking to rain-forest blanketed canyons with thousand-foot waterfalls, watching 2700-degree lava cascade off hundred-foot cliffs to explode in the surging surf, and swimming with tropical reef fish.

I was struck--even taken aback sometimes--by the generally calm, friendly and peaceful attitude of people on the island--shop-owners who stopped to talk, drivers who waited patiently without honking as a stranger from the mainland in a rental car

When it comes to reforming America’s disastrous health care “system,” there are two issues that need to be considered: access and cost.

The so-called reform proposals being offered by the Obama White House, the House and the Senate, are failing on both counts, and deserve to die.

No progressives should allow themselves to be suckered into promoting one or the other.

Reports are starting to appear suggesting that laid-off or underemployed Americans, and the long-term unemployed, are losing patience with the Obama administration’s and Congress’ economic stimulus plan, which thus far has not done anything to arrest the growth of unemployment, now at close to 20 percent of the US workforce, at least as unemployment used to honestly be counted in the 1970s and early 1980s.

The Obama administration and the Congressional Democrats are finally hitting the inevitable wall that was bound to confront them because of the president’s congenital inability to be a bold leader, and because of the party’s toxic decades-old decision to betray its working class New Deal base in favor of wholesale corporate whoredom.

The wall is health care reform, which both Barack Obama and the Democratic Party had hoped would be the ticket for them to ride to victory in the 2010 Congressional elections and the 2012 presidential election.

President Barack Obama, referring to the violent attacks on protesters against the controversial election results in Iran’s just-completed presidential election, this week lectured Iran’s government, saying, “Peaceful dissent should never be subject to violence.”

Referring to the tens and hundreds of thousands of frustrated and angry Iranians who have taken to the streets accusing Iranian authorities of rigging the election in favor of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Obama said that “the Iranian people and their voices should be heard and respected."

If you want to fix the disaster that is called the American healthcare system, the first thing to do is to clearly point out what its major failings are, and there are two of these.

The first is cost. America is one of the most expensive places, or possibly the most expensive place, in the world to get sick or injured. The corollary of that is that it is one of the best places to make a killing if you are in the medical business, whether as a doctor, a hospital company, a pharmaceutical firm or a nursing home owner.

My bank, a small regional institution that was not involved in sub-prime lending, and that was not a recipient of any TARP bailout money, cut off my home equity line of credit two weeks ago. They did it abruptly, with no notice—I only discovered it had happened when I tried to get a $500 advance from it to cover a payment I was making on my credit card. When I asked what was going on, the local branch manager informed me that “we are closing out a lot of credit lines while we reassess the value of houses in this region, which have been falling.”

I got an important reminder today that at least where the country’s economic crisis is concerned, it’s really mostly just about stuff.

The reminder came in the form of a very large limb, about two feet in diameter, projecting out over my driveway from an ancient horse chestnut tree. The limb suddenly decided it had been hanging around long enough, and it just broke off, unannounced, and landed on top of my car.

I heard an enormous cracking sound out my window, looked out, and where there had been a car, there was an enormous pile of branches and leaves.