Obama Biden USA

August 28, 2009

Senator Dianne Feinstein
United States Senate
331 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Senator Feinstein:
We are at a turning point in American history and you have the rarest of opportunities to take your place in this rich history.

Will you vigorously and openly support President Obama’s efforts for a public option in health care reform, or will you take the path of weaker, lesser human beings and cave into the lies and distortions being trumpeted hysterically from every media outlet the Republicans and Big Health and Big Pharm. can access?

Millions of Americans who are ready and financially ready to retire would do so if they had access to affordable health care.  This would open up millions of employment opportunities for unemployed and underemployed Americans.  When Americans no longer fear being bankrupted by exorbitant medical costs, they will do what  Americans secure in their jobs and secure in their ability to pay their bills have always done:  spend on necessities and other consumer goods, thereby stimulating our economic recovery in the healthiest and most effective way.

With recently strengthened consumer credit and banking regulations, no longer will working Americans fear having all they have worked for and saved for wiped out as a result of immoral, and what used to be illegal, financial manipulations.  But more needs to be done.

Affordable government sponsored universal health care for all Americans, paid for by the contributions of all working Americans, can be a reality.  You have an opportunity to assume an active leadership role in implementing legislation to this effect.

As a constituent, I urge you to speak out strongly, clearly, and quickly on what I believe is the most important issue of our lifetime.

I am one of the fortunate ones whose employer, upon my retirement, covered my health care premiums, at obscene rates, until I become officially a medicare recipient on September 1, 2009.  As you know, my Medicare is not free.  But the cost is fair and reasonable and the care is excellent.  What a shame and a pity that all Americans do not have such an opportunity.

Your vote on the Iraq war can be understood considering the magnitude of the campaign of lies and deception promulgated by the previous administration.  But  this time the lies and deception are easily exposed. I assure you that when this issue is resolved with universal single-payer health care made available to all Americans,  and the huge benefits to our country and our society as a whole begin to be realized, those who failed to champion the cause because of fear, lack of integrity, or personal financial or political gain will be forever be remembered for the spineless charlatans they proved to be.

Who will be the heroes?

There is a program on The History Channel, Medal of Honor, that chronicles the actions that many soldiers took while under intense pressure and enemy fire to earn our country’s highest military honor.  Acting unselfishly and without regard for their personal safety, they took the least desirable or personally beneficial course of action, and instead did “the right thing.”

You, too, are under hostile fire.  Lead the charge for a public health care option for all Americans now!  Regardless of the result, you will be forever proud and honored for having done “the right thing.”

Sincerely,

MJM

The phrase ‘only in America would this be possible’ is often said in gratitude by immigrants born into a class system or Americans born into poverty when they are acknowledged as leading citizens, and asked to share their story.  These iconic stories of  ’success earned, as it should be’ re-tell us that the American Dream lives & we are still ‘the land of opportunity’.  America’s founding documents declare that in our country there are no positions at birth that impede great achievements, but instead a bill of guaranteed rights to a life of equally available opportunities.  An immigrant born into a hierarchy can work hard in our country’s free-market system and earn not just money but stature and respect in the business community. He can earn his citizenship as well. Success in business is calculated impersonally, by summing assets, material value & profit margins.  Community respect & admiration are accorded for hard work, self-reliance & dedication.  A child born into poverty can learn the value of education & utilize public resources to earn not just scholastic achievement, but a position at the highest level in any field or practice imagined. She or he is accorded esteem as a living example that many great Americans share humble beginnings. Personal success rising from disadvantaged circumstances can be of purely personal value or, like the immigrant, measured by material wealth. The immigrant begins by selling oranges from a cart & becomes a billionaire, inventing a wildly popular orange beverage. The kid raised on food stamps begins with an education in organizing skills & becomes President of the United States of America. The latter forgoes fortune because the opportunities granted in this nation are priceless & the chance to serve its people is an honor. Only in America, both would say, would this be possible. Neither path to success or measure of achievement is applicable to the other endeavor. We experience a deeper national pride in the latter story of success; against all odds the scrappy individual finds opportunities he is told his country provides, he prevails with determination, confidence, ambition & courage. It is the story of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, and Oprah Winfrey and has the potential power, with no financial equal, to shift societal priorities & redefine the core values of a nation. Both kinds of success are encouraged in America because we begin with the belief we are created equal, with certain inalienable rights including the pursuit of a subjectively defined happiness. We all agree that America is uniquely blessed and characterized by these ideals. We do not all agree that all success is measured financially, and yet we all know some things should not be subject to free-market unlimited profit taking.

That said, I don’t agree that those who oppose healthcare insurance reform stand for nothing, or simply say “NO” on this issue. They are adamant in their commitment to principles that Americans hold dear. The principles the opposition stands FOR is the fundamental flaw in their argument against the reform of healthcare insurance practices. They are vociferously FOR protecting free-market capitalism, FOR supply & demand pricing, FOR drug company ‘agreements’ protecting pricing and patents* and FOR principles of capitalism in which money is exchanged for goods by agreement of both parties, without coercion or threat of physical force. What the opposition is FOR is not applicable to, or remotely related to a successful healthcare system. It’s a red-herring.

We have allowed healthcare insurers to cut coverage, reject quality over cost, cap pay-outs, dump ill human beings & fix prices for profit, so they can remain competitive with each other. Our sickness, our illnesses, & our treatments suck-up their profits.  Ipso facto, our health and well-being are costly and the item of least concern to a profit-driven health insurance business.  It was a mistake to allow the health of the nation’s citizens to be the basis for business opportunity, and a mistake to allow it to continue. Congressional opposition to reform howls about Socialism galloping over American economic principles, as if this mistaken application has squatter’s rights to the territory of healthcare insurance; the health of citizens be damned.

Private and public grade schools, universities, churches, the US Military and firefighters are not listed on the stock market because their success is not measured financially, for good reason. Those who oppose reform know this, and either know this is the flaw in their argument or are hereby notified. Healthcare insurance reform is necessary to correct an oversight.  We let for-profit practices substitute for quality health care and did not foresee the need to project the unintended consequences of these misapplied practices & their inappropriate measures of success.

Of this we can be certain: no insurer will be denied treatment or die because their pay-out is capped, due to insurance reform. This is a pre-existing condition that is draining our economy, and we must treat it as it should be treated, for the health of our nation.  A malignant cancer does not check your stock portfolio, your place in history or your financial assets before it proliferates in your body. Senator Kennedy knew this. He received the care of the world’s finest doctors, his suffering was eased & he benefited from experimental treatments that defied his initial prognosis for survival. We are all thankful for this, but Senator Kennedy publicly lamented that he received the finest treatment because he was born Edward Moore Kennedy, of wealth and fame, & had excellent government subsidized healthcare coverage.  He said it as often as he could over 14 months:  everyone should be treated with the quality care that he was treated.  Everyone is created equal.  Our founders wrote it as creed, and the Kennedy family worked for, stood for and lived for that principle.  An oft-used pronouncement by many who oppose reform rings very true here, to we who support reform: every life is precious.

*note: the patent is a government protection and antithetical to free-market capitalism

Owlbama!

He is the one we have been waiting for out here.

Today, President Obama shelved a Bush-era rule that weakened protections for wildlife.

“We should be looking for ways to improve it, not weaken it,” Obama said of the Endangered Species Act.

You can hear the call of the Spotted Owl, “Strix occidentalis” thanking President Obama, on behalf of all species, here:

http://www.owlpages.com/sounds/Strix-occidentalis-1.mp3

Thanks for standing up for those who cannot speak for themselves President Obama. For all you’ve done and are doing, I am forever grateful you asked for my help and, mostly, that I uncharacteristically jumped into your campaign.

—

First, please read President Obama’s Opinion piece in today’s Washington Post.

Some things haven’t changed and the GOP’s divisive tactics continue, in spite of  what we voted for on November 4, 2008. 

President Obama did not play politics with his economic stimulus plan because, he presumed there existed Congressional bipartisan desire to help our citizens in  dire  straits, and that a spirit of ‘good will’ would allow him to present an honest* plan,  that is generously complete with a dedicated 1/3rd  in corporate  and other tax cuts that the GOP support, even though the President (and we) know those cuts are rarely put directly into the economy.  It is ye olde  trickle-down theory that never works very well, and never fast enough.  We face a tremendous crisis!  That is a surprise to no one! It requires both short and long-term solutions.  The President incorporated the GOP’s favored tax-cuts without a hint of placation, & wrote the rest of the plan aimed squarely at energy independence and  job creation as well as debt relief for those who would immediately stimulate the economy with spending.

As the GOP clusters-up again, always reserving their energy to use against someone or something, as it seems to be their comfort zone, while change clearly disrupts their willfully stagnant  thinking, remember well and long the ginormous olive branch of trickle-down, ineffective tax cuts, that President Obama & Speaker Pelosi included, as the President had promised to be genuinely bipartisan, to a fault, without prompts. His honest intention to be generously, not niggardly, inclusive of the GOP’s anticipated requests for their beloved hand-outs to the wealthy, which suck up 1/3rd of the stimulus plan,  is not a starting point for negotiation. President Obama did not expect the worst from the GOP & yet the GOP appear to be intractable spikes, rusted in place. I’m talkin’ to you, Lindsey Graham.  How many times do you require an invite to exchange your ideas, any ideas, preferably ‘better’ ideas, not the same ones that got us here, only to declare that ‘the President is AWOL’ b/c you had no ideas to offer the President in lieu of his own plan, be it over cocktails,  at 2 meetings or during lunch at the White House.  So you blame civil banter or ‘lunch’ as the insubstantial factor, rather than that your well is empty of new, multi-purpose ideas that fit a 21st century collapse. You claim that the President is all talk, as if that charge will stick now like it did not in November.  But if there are no ideas in his plan, then why do you have so many objections to tiny bits of it, about 1% of the spending?  Do you object to his increase in defense spending too?  If his plan is the void you claim it is then pull out those twinkies, put them on display with your buddy John McCain and then pack the plan  with smart stuff that  gets us off foreign oil, creates jobs and increases national security - simultaneously.  You’ve had months to ponder a plan,  and what the hell have you been doing with your time, Lindsey?  Weren’t you tools readying your demands, mimicking Bill Clinton by taking the ideas listed above and ‘owning’ them?  All I’ve heard is  Senator Kyl laying it on Speaker Pelosi, as if the President is her puppet, and from the rest of you, a resounding, “No! We want more than a third of a trillion in tax cuts & you haven’t given in since you put it on the table.” This isn’t poker, gals and fellas, it is the lives and livelihoods of the millions of people who pay for your comfy salaries and benefits.  But what is left of the GOP  does not recognize honest compromise or inclusion; a third for the left, a third for the right, a third down the middle.  It is called fairness and they have never seen it, at least not as defined by either President Obama or the O.E.D.. As citizens lose their jobs by the thousands, these devoted partisans stall and hope that the President and, thereby,  even more citizens, will fail. Healthcare will be delayed as they stall and industries will leave the US forever. They want their country to fail but our President is too noble to say it and too good a person to perhaps even believe it. But I am  starting to hear the urgency in his voice. There is not a single reporter on the Hill who, when asked (Fox News doesn’t ask),  has seen a glimmer of a flash of  a spirit of attempted bipartisanism from any GOP members other than Snowe and Collins, as usual. There is, to put it very nicely, no tacit agreement in the  GOP to compromise or concede a point b/c in their cruel world, they could not imagine any President sincerely proclaiming a significant success as a result of a bipartisan effort.  Bill Clinton played them on their own game-board and that is what they expect, at best.  It is saddening when the country’s biggest skeptics, including me, see in a President what they wish they could be. Ye Olde GOPs have no intention of going large, or being productive b/c they cannot see the world Obama spoke of for 14 months.   As another economic horror report is due out tomorrow, think of this excerpted quote by Abraham Lincoln, addressed to the  Southern people, “ if they would listen - as I suppose they will not” in 1860.  ’But you say you are conservative - eminently conservative - while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. . . Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge or destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations.”

This is how we carry on the fight: Call 202-224-3121 (or 866-544-7573) and leave a message for your senator. Even if your senator supports the plan, make sure they don’t agree to further conservative demands that have failed us for decades and have kept us without a real energy plan because they cannot abide real change. If you don’t know who your Senators are, go to this link to find out:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Painting the town blue

Tireless, tireless.  Don’t let this slacker [Sarcast-Insert™] put you to shame!  As the man in seat 20A from LAX to Dulles said to me, en route to the Inauguration, “Obama’s still never done a thing!”. And Obama is proving that again, suspiciously creating a ‘National Day of Service’ on MLK Day and, like Tom Sawyer, he is working, visiting injured soldiers, painting a teen shelter, and making it look fun in order to sucker millions of us into helping him fix the country.  For shame.

———-

Obama issued a statement declaring, “King’s was a life lived in loving service to others. As we honor that legacy, it’s not a day just to pause and reflect — it’s a day to act.”

At Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the president-elect visited 14 veterans injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Then his motorcade headed for the Sasha Bruce House, a facility for homeless teens, where he grabbed a paint roller and helped volunteers who were fixing up rooms.

“We can’t allow any idle hands,” he said. “Everybody’s got to be involved.”

Later, Obama joined his wife at a high school where they greeted 300 volunteers who were writing letters to U.S. troops and doing other volunteer work.

The president-elect thanked them and said, “If we’re waiting for somebody else to do something, it never gets done. We’re going to have to take responsibility, all of us. This is not just a one-day affair.”

—————————-

This sounds exactly like his game plan for winning the election.  Don’t even think someone else is doing what needs to be done.  Do it yourself.  That’s what millions of us did just so he could prove his point that it is about us, he’s just the man with the plan leading by example.

1. While things get more dire economically, Obama’s favorability numbers continue to rise as his unfavs continue to drop. The graph below is through 11/28. Barack should hope his approval rating trends like this when he is paid to work for us.

Results through November 28, 2008

2. I’d like to note, in case I’m the first, that Obama doesn’t have an official job right now and he is working his tail off. He’s probably paying for his own press conferences knowing we need a leader and the one getting the paycheck has gone AWOL, or even more AWOL than usual.  Doesn’t this make Barack the ‘World’s Best Volunteer Ever?’   I hereby nominate him for that and I’ll never complain about volunteering for him again. 

3. Finally, helping your country by shopping has been soundly rejected once and for all. It’s not just being spoon-fed paternalistic pablum by every administration since Jimmy Carter that is now distasteful but, in contrast to calling upon our charity and courage as Obama has, George Bush’s vapid advice ’to shop’  is now spot-lit as the poverty of purpose it has always been. Many bummer consumer stats here and one telling graph below.  The silk lining may well be that we are ready to pitch in and work off our national malaise of powerlessness by powerfully working toward solving our problems. Living modestly, conserving in all things, volunteering to help ourselves, each other, our communities, the country and our fellow earthlings toward a sustainable future will be a good thing.  As the great American proponent of ‘Self-Reliance’, Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.”

k

l

Barack Obama’s Free-Market Fundraising Totals Cause Otherwise Flaming Laissez-Faire Capitalists To Call For The De-Regulation Of Everything Unless It’s The Obama Campaign.

———-

October 19, 2008 - Today the Obama Campaign announced fundraising totals of $150 million for the month of September.  ’It’s amazing what those damn kids can do when they pool their allowances,’ said someone.  Another said, ‘I’d give a sawbuck to hear Andrew Jackson and Alan Greenspan react to this outrageous breach of decorum.’

A Dynamic Duo of Hapless Disenfranchisement, each leaving one if not several 'Great Depressions(s)' in their wake, former gold standard supporters Andrew Jackson and Alan Greenspan stare smugly past we little people (2004).

“I have always been afraid of banks.” 

“I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you’ve probably misunderstood what I’ve said.”

“What Washington needs is adult supervision.”

• Barack Obama

As they reach for their nitro-glycerin tablets, the nation’s fiscal conservatives call for an investigation into Obama’s ‘Entrepreneurial Socialism’, which they consider to be a suspect entity without license or category that has nonetheless publicly disclosed unprecedented earnings from peddling pure rhetoric. The appeal was made to the USDOJ to investigate conspicuous contributions by millions of Americans resulting in net zero financial gain to any approved corporation or conglomerate in the private sector.  They further requested DOJ to identify profligate, non-tax deductible contributions to the ether as blasphemous and treasonous. God made no comment vis-a-vis blasphemy. More to follow.  [Sarcast-Insert™ by author]

* The original cronyist, Jackson legislated to benefit his wealthy friends in private banking and, ironically, adamantly renounced ‘paper’ currency in favor of gold and silver.  Jackson’s portrait famously appears on the twenty dollar bill. He has appeared on $5, $10, $50, and $10,000 bills in the past, and on  a Confederate $1,000 bill.  Jackson was a mega-slave master, holding up to 150 people as chattel, and as President authorized and implemented the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The Choctaw were the first to go; their journey is  known as the ‘Trail of Tears’. Thousands died from exposure, disease and starvation enroute from sunny Florida to Oklahoma. The forced exodus of the Seminole, the Creek, the Chickasaw, and the Cherokee followed. Shouldn’t  Jackson be on the $3 bill?

For a scary parallels between the GOP’s current platform and 1., Andrew Jackson’s ‘uncertain policy agenda beyond a vague craving for “reform” (or revenge)’ and 2., his deregulation of banking that caused the depression of 1837, go to the University of Virginia’s excellent elitist online resource: 

http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/jackson/essays/biography/4

I wish I could see Obama’s FISA vote as just an election-mode calculation, rather than a warning about his true view of the US Constitution, but I have seen no sign that his vote is anything but irresponsible. Obama stated that we should trust that, when he is POTUS, he won’t abuse this illegal power he has handed to George W. Bush for the next 6 months. Firstly, I trust Obama to be many things, but a reliable soothsayer is not one of them. Secondly, what if the November election does not result as Obama foresees?  I suggest Obama reexamine the US presidential elections of 2000 and 2004.  And thirdly, what is it about the Bush administration that leads Obama to believe they won’t abuse this power over the next 6 months? 

The point is that we the people, including Barack Obama, are now legally spied upon by the federal government and its agents, no matter who is POTUS.  We the people pay the price for election-mode calculations gone awry, often in the form of legislation, authorizations and resolutions.
 
If Obama had admitted a real reason he voted this way, I could live with it in disagreement if it sounded like the truth, and not the usual pabulum I am embarrassed to hear coming from him. He did not bother to give a full and honest explanation to we ‘research-based voters’. I guess it looks good to have the so-called ‘left’ angry at you, but what about we pesky Libertarians and Constitutionalists? It’s a profound miscalculation to not only willingly sacrifice the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, but also to glibly ‘dare’ a large part of his foundation of support, to no longer support him.  Obama stands to lose a lot more than my enthusiasm. College students for example, active in politics for the first time in generations, are easily bored by politics, and they know when they’ve been used.

FISA has no expiration date and the pressure to vote ‘yes’, in the interest of national security, is another example of the Bush administration’s fear-mongering in order to protect wealthy corporate lap-dogs, to amalgamate executive power, and to steal yet another ‘inalienable right’ from the people. In the Colonial era, illegal search and seizure was a significant offense committed by the British Government and was one cause of the American Revolution. Government exists primarily to defend our rights, as posited by the founders and as defined in the US Constitution; not to take them away.  Bush administration fear-mongering is a familiar shell game to expose, and a game most Americans have agreed they are tired of.  Obama’s ability to call upon the strength of the American people, against our fears, was a powerful subcurrent of his candidacy during the Democratic Primary.

Obama’s recent forays to the right of center have been enough. Shredding his “Constitutional Law Scholar” bonafides with the FISA vote wasn’t necessary, but shred he did. Antonin Scalia must be smiling. On this matter, we are not hearing from Obama “what we need to know” as he promised, but what Obama wants us to believe.