I Love Rain. It Makes Me Feel Like Dancin'.

Insurance Companies Bludgeon Consumers In Advance Of Health Care "Reform" Bill

Well, they warned us. The insurance companies are apparently thrilled to learn that the Democrats not only will not put into place any price controls for health insurance, but they will also legally compel people to buy health insurance no matter what the cost.

I just got a call from my health insurance carrier telling me that my premiums are being raised from $364/month to $501/month. Why? Because they can. The agent told me that the insurance company refuses to provide any explanation for the increase, but they are raising rates up to 47% for some people.

Thanks a whole heck of a lot, Democrats, for screwing all of us. Now I really hope that nudie dude wins in Massachusetts and the Democrats are forced to go back and pass real healthcare reform. This is so unbelievable to me that not only am I getting screwed on my premiums, but the government has a gun to my head to force me to pay. And in the meantime, the CEOs of the insurance companies will be kicking back enormous bribes to the Democrats.

What I will probably end up doing (I've requested quotes to see what the alternatives are) is increasing my deductible. And, like the Florida representative said, just hope that if I get sick, I die fast.

Hats Off To The Courageous And Dedicated Search And Rescue Teams, Doctors And Nurses In Haiti

Is the United States government capable of doing anything other than waging war and murdering people? This situation in Haiti is a disgrace. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush preening in front of the cameras in their thousand dollar suits saying they're going to divert money from humanitarian relief and funnel it into some development fortune to be used to re-make Haiti for the benefit of the wealthy and the multinational corporations. Don't send them a penny. If Bill Clinton or George W. Bush want to help, they could raise money (and how about if they donate some of their own millions) and turn it immediately over to the well-established international relief agencies who might actually help the people of Haiti.


For example, turn it over to Habitat for Humanity and let them go into Haiti and train the citizens in construction plus help build housing for the people. Give the money to Doctors Without Borders (Medicines Sans Frontieres) and let them use it to build hospitals and clinics, and staff them, and buy the equipment and medical supplies needed to keep them going for decades. But no, the money raised by Clinton and Bush will undoubtedly go to pay Blackwater to send in private mercenary squads, and to pay Halliburton to go in and build prisons.


Everyone being interviewed on the news tells the same story. As Anderson Cooper said, he got a commercial flight into the Dominican Republican and drove to Port au Prince. So if he could do it, why hasn't the U.S. sent in teams of doctors with medical supplies by the same route? Why did the U.S. government take control of the only major airport, then refuse to allow Doctors Without Borders to land there with their portable hospitals and supplies, and doctors, who are immediately available to save lives? Why are life-saving flights being turned away in favor of U.S. military flights? Once again, our government is disgracing us while our people are pitching in generously trying to help the poor people in Haiti. It's an embarrassment. And thousands more are going to die because of it.


But hats off to the search and rescue teams who have gone straight into Port au Price to try to save lives. These are teams from all over the world. I think Iceland was the first country to get search and rescue teams into Port au Prince. Not the U.S., mind you, the closest and richest nation near Haiti. But Iceland. And China. Some team from Virginia is there, along with teams from Los Angeles and New York City. When I heard that the U.N. building in Haiti had been demolished I figured the Israelis must be there, because they always bomb the U.N. headquarters when they invade and attack their neighbors. But admittedly, the Israelis have sent a team to help out, so give them credit where due. I'm sure the people of Israel aren't as horrible as their government is, just like the people of the U.S. aren't as heartless as our government is in failing to do much of anything to help save people's lives.


I was thinking that some of these people who were buried in rubble but somehow ended up in a pocket, and were eventually rescued, must have thought they were dead. Inside the dark with little but dust and sand, drifting in and out of consciousness, waiting to die. Then suddenly there is light, there is a bottle of water, and there are hands and people in orange or blue jumpsuits speaking some strange language, lots of hands lifting these people out of the void and darkness and into the light. To look up and see Chinese people, or white people, or really really pale white people, speaking some unknown language. I wonder if these rescued people think that this is heaven, and the angels are all Chinese or Americans with funny accents.

Hats off to these search and rescue people. I would not step on that unstable rubble, which could collapse at any moment and kill them all. I would not step on it never mind lower myself on a rope into an opening inside the rubble, which is what some of them do. Amazing people. Unimaginable courage. And how do they deal with the endless failure and death they must face in a disaster such as this?


Once again, Anderson Cooper is on the scene reporting under the most miserable conditions. Why is it that he can get into the middle of Port au Prince but the U.S. government is incapable of going there to deliver food or water? Same thing as happened in New Orleans: Anderson Cooper was there, but the U.S. government was not. Some people diminish Anderson Cooper's reporting because he grew up in a very privileged family. And he's really cute. But let's acknowledge that his very privilege would be a great excuse for him to refuse an assignment that involved any discomfort. But that's not what he does. The U.S. aid agencies are afraid to go into Port au Prince to help the people. But there goes Anderson, right into the thick of things. My hat is off to him as well. Also, he made the comment that his favorite charity is Doctors Without Borders, and they are always the first into the thick of things in any disaster. So I like him for that too.


http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/

Republican Candidate for Senate, Family-Values Reactionary Moron Scott Brown, Nude Photos

In 1982, Scott Brown, the current Republican candidate for Senate from Massachusetts, posed nude in that noted foreign-policy periodical girly-mag "Cosmopolitan."

This neocon right-wing fascist family-values dude peddled photos of his tiny little self for a few bucks. If he wins the election, just think, he'll be able to peddle his whole ass to the lobbyists in D.C. That's what I'd call a real good career move.

Cuba Has Been Helping Haiti All Along, But The U.S. Media Refuses To Mention Them

As a few progressive blogs and radio people [Mike Malloy] have noted, the Cubans have been helping Haiti all along, but the U.S. media refuses to even mention the Cubans. For example, not only does Cuba regularly send doctors to Haiti to help the people, but Cuba also brings Haitians to Cuba to educate them and train them to become doctors.

Here's a link to a Cuban periodical, Granma. It includes a pull-down menu that allows the reader to select the preferred language. If you want to read about what the Cubans are really doing to try to help the Haitians, you might want to read Granma.
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/index.html

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Opposition To The War In Vietnam

After the U.S. Civil War, when the slaves were freed, the southern whites continued to deny that black people, slave or free, were citizens of the U.S. They reasoned that just because a person was not a "slave" did not necessarily mean they were a "citizen."

In response to the continued oppression of black Americans, Congress passed a series of laws and amendments to the Constitution to explicitly state that the slaves were citizens, and entitled to equal rights and the equal protection of all the laws of our nation.

Despite these Constitutional rights and guarantees, the black citizens of this country, particularly those in the south, continued to be denied all basic human rights of citizens. One of the tactics developed in the south was segregation "de jure" (which means as a matter of law). Segregation "de facto" (in fact, without legal compulsion) was the norm in the northern parts of our country.

So, for example, in the south the black children were legally compelled to attend a black-only school, and legally forbidden from attending the white-only schools in the same towns. In the north, there was no law that prevented black students from attending a majority white school, but in an effort to maintain segregation, people recorded declarations in deeds against property making it illegal to sell a home in certain neighborhoods to a black person, then passed laws saying that only the residents of certain neighborhoods could attend a certain school.

In the south, segregation existed at all public levels. When the civil rights movement of the 1950s began, its preliminary goal was to end segregation de jure, to eliminate the laws which forbade black people from sitting in the front of the public bus, from attending certain schools, from eating in certain parts of a restaurant. They also attacked the laws which had been developed in the south to prevent black people from being able to vote.

The Ku Klux Klan and other racist organizations immediately resorted to violence and terrorism in an effort to prevent the black people from joining the civil rights organizers. Black churches were bombed. Black people were drug from their homes in the middle of the night and beaten, sometimes murdered. Crosses were burned in the yards of black people. There are famous photos of southern police and sheriffs siding with the racists and against the civil rights workers, turning police dogs loose to attack the black people, using fire hoses to knock down old ladies walking peacefully on the sidewalks. And the nightly news across the nation showed white southerners lining sidewalks and spitting on little black children who were trying to make their way to school.

Martin Luther King, Jr. had a heavy burden when he assumed a leadership role in the black civil rights movement in this country. But he was helped by the fact that his position was right and just, and much of the nation soon came to see that these things must change.

Towards the end of his too-short life, Martin Luther King, Jr. expanded his areas of concern to include the relationship of the U.S. with other countries in the world. An international consciousness had begun to develop among some black civil rights leaders who saw that their circumstances shared much in common with other oppressed people in the world.

See Chris Hedges' 1/17/10 article at Truthdig, "Turning King's Dream Into A Nightmare," http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/turning_kings_dream_into_a_nightmare_20100117/ excerpt below:

“King began to see that Malcolm [X] was right in what he was saying about white people,” [quoting Professor James Cone, of the Union Theological Seminary in New York, author of the book Martin & Malcolm & America]. “Malcolm saw that white people did not have a conscience that could be appealed to to bring justice for African-Americans. King realized that near the end of his life. He began to call most whites ‘unconscious racists.’ ”

"The crude racist rhetoric of the past is now considered impolite. We pretend there is equality and equal opportunity while ignoring the institutional and economic racism that infects our inner cities and fills our prisons, where a staggering one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 are incarcerated. There are more African-American men behind bars than in college. 'The cell block has replaced the auction block,' the poet Yusef Komunyakaa writes."

"The fact that prison and urban ghettos are populated primarily with people of color is not an accident. It is a calculated decision by those who wield economic and political control. For the bottom third of African-Americans, many of whom live in these segregated enclaves of misery and deprivation, little has changed over the past few decades; indeed, life has often gotten worse."

"In the last months of his life, King began to appropriate Malcolm’s [Malcolm X's] language, reminding listeners that the ghetto was a 'system of internal colonialism.' 'The purpose of the slum,' King said in a speech at the Chicago Freedom Festival, 'is to confine those who have no power and perpetuate their powerlessness. … The slum is little more than a domestic colony which leaves its inhabitants dominated politically, exploited economically, segregated and humiliated at every turn.' The chief problem is economic, King concluded, and the solution is to restructure the whole society."

"Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were, as King and Malcolm knew, meaningless slogans if there was no possibility of a decent education, a safe neighborhood, a job or a living wage. King and Malcolm were also acutely aware that the permanent war economy was directly linked to the perpetuation of racism and poverty at home and often abroad."

"In a speech titled 'Beyond Vietnam' [video below] he gave at Riverside Church a year before his assassination, King called America the 'greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,' a quote that won’t make it into many Martin Luther King Day celebrations. King’s strident denunciation of the Vietnam War and economic injustice at the end of his life saw many white liberals, members of his own staff, as well as allies within the political power structure, turn against him. King and Malcolm, in the final days of their lives, were lonely men."


Many of the young men from this country who were drafted and sent to war, and killed, were black. By denying black people opportunity, the country created a ready-made class of unemployed youth who had little choice but to join the military and be sent off to fight wars on foreign soils. Many of the black veterans who returned from Vietnam began talking to their neighbors, and telling them that they had no fight with the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese had never lynched their grandfathers, never called them the N Word, never spit on their children just for trying to go to school.

Martin Luther King, Jr. began to speak out against the war in Vietnam very shortly before he was murdered. His consciousness of the injustice towards black people in this country inevitably led him to oppose injustice towards people in other nations. In particular, to oppose the slaughter of the people of Vietnam, a very poor country which had never threatened or attacked the U.S., but a country in which the U.S. would eventually murder two million of their residents. He began to see that true justice, equality and peace could only come about if all the oppressed people of the world stood together to fight against the oppressors, the rich and the war-mongers of the world.

Assassinations of Progressive Leaders in the U.S., 1963 - 1984

This is not a comprehensive list, just some of the most well-known. Some people who came of political age in the 1960s came to believe that whenever a leader would step forward to organize people to defend themselves and to demand their equal rights as citizens, that leader would simply be assassinated.

After the assassination, the U.S. government would take control of the scene of the crime and the corpse, turn the corpse over to U.S. goverment-controlled doctors, interview any witnesses then classify their statements as "top secret" to prevent public access, and issue an "official" version of the crime which always concluded a lone-nut gunman did the killing, acting on his own.

But for most of these people, the organizations that hounded them, spied on them, maintained enormous dossiers of their every word, their every act, planted spies inside their inner circles, and had squads of trained mercenaries and assassins on their payroll, was the FBI under the leadership of the cross-dressing J. Edgar Hoover.

Did the FBI kill these people? Did it hire or direct those who actually did the deed, pulled the trigger? Are these people actually a list of prominent Americans murdered by the U.S. government? Those are questions that continue to be asked, at least partly because the U.S. goverment has shown its willingness to direct assassinations around the world, and partly because of the secrecy and lies that surround the investigations of these murders.

This is not an exhaustive list. And I'm not sure every name is of a person who can properly be called "progressive." But they were seen as progressive by the right-wing in this country, and that perception undoubtedly contributed to the environment in which the right-wing publicly called for their deaths.

Much like the environment we have today in which the drug addict on the radio and all the rent-boys who work at Rupert Murdoch's Whorehouse create a frenzy of hatred among their brain-damaged listeners, encouraging them to believe that people on "the other side" should be murdered.

And the same evironment spread from the pulpits through TV and radio by such people as that fat slob (now dead) Jerry Falwell who crowed on 9/11 that the U.S. deserved to be attacked and have thousands of our citizens murdered because the country allowed people like "feminists" to walk freely on the land. And the same enviroment spread from the pulpit by that ignorant cracker Pat Robertson who just gleefully celebrated that earthquake in Haiti and death of over 100,000 of those poor people by saying they deserved it because they were not part of his church. They are papists, mackerel-snappers, Pope-lovers, Catholics, which Robertson claims are devil-worshippers so he dances on their mass graves.

The right-wing always historically promotes their lunatic followers to murder progressives. We have no similar list of right-wingers assassinated under a progressive government. Assassination is a tool of the right-wing. And unfortunately is a tool of the U.S. government which openly kidnaps, tortures, and murders people around the world, and apologizes to no one for those murders.




When John F. Kennedy was murdered, Malcolm X said that it was a case of the chickens come home to roost, and he was roundly condemned across the country by those who interpreted his comments to mean that he supported the assassination. But what he really said was that the U.S. had a policy of using violence against so many other countries in the rest of the world that it was inevitable the violence would return to haunt us one day. Of course he himself was assassinated a little over a year later.

Each of these people were insightful, energetic, creative, intelligent, and likely could have provided critical leadership for our people in trying to move towards a more just and perfect union. Each of these people was murdered for one purpose: to silence them. That is why it is so important for all of us to use our voices, speak up publicly in favor of justice and against privilege and oppression, in favor of peace and against war, in favor of fairness inside our country and a new co-operative approach to our neighbors and countries around the world. Peace.

June 12, 1963
Medgar Evers, U.S. civil rights activist

November 22, 1963
John F. Kennedy, President of the United States

February 21, 1965
Malcolm X, black leader with an international perspective, Muslim

April 4, 1968
Martin Luther King, Jr., black civil rights activist

June 5, 1968
Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. Senator, Candidate for Democratic nomination for President 1968, brother of assassinated President John F. Kennedy

(1969)
Fred Hampton, Deputy Chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party

(1976)
Orlando Letelier, Chilean ambassador to the United States under the administration of Salvador Allende

(1978)
George Moscone, Mayor of San Francisco

(1978)
Harvey Milk, gay rights activist, San Francisco City Supervisor

(1980)
John Lennon, British musician, founder of the Beatles.

(1984)
Alan Berg, radio talk-show host, killed by Neo-nazis