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James' Forum
My Stream Of Consciousness Blatherings
Posted By: James
Date: Tuesday, 25 January 2005, at 10:06 p.m.
I miss Bill Clinton.
Bill used to be going all over the world praising the folks he met and encouraging investment in America. Sure, there was corruption in high places, but there always is. The economy was booming and the budget was balanced. More folks than today had good jobs and they had money to spend. Somehow, knowing that Bill was a "Golden Rule" boy at heart, made the problems of the 90’s seem smaller than today. Those days are now over.
Today President Bush never leaves the country for long , and when he does, he moves very quickly and no one knows anything until he's safely back inside a tank disguised as a limo.
Meanwhile U.S. soldiers are driving around Baghdad in HumVees made out of sheet metal and canvas.
Did anyone watch C-Span on Monday? It's shocking what is happening. Americans are spending a fortune on health insurance and health care and the companies that provide it are getting incredibly rich on a lot of older American folks who, essentially, are sick and dying.
One, if not the biggest consumer of prescription drugs in the whole world is the U.S. Government via the Veterans Administration. The U.S. Veterans Administration operates more hospitals and clinics than any private company and they buy so many drugs that they can actually force the drug companies to give them a good deal. The VA is a government agency so that means it is run poorly, but still it is big and powerful.
Bush wants to curtail the buying power of the V.A. but the only way to do this is to sharply reduce the amount of money the V.A. gets from the government to operate.
So the V.A. has to close hospitals and reduce services and we all know who suffers, the Veterans and their dependents... who wind up with a disability check and are put out on the street. We owe our veterans more than that.
Yes, the V.A. is still providing good service to many but the over all picture is bad and everyone at the Veterans Administration sees the writing on the wall. The pharmaceutical industry wants the V.A. to be crippled.
The average HMO CEO makes 15 million a year and the highest paid CEO maked 26 million last year. You would think that they would be satisfied but they aren't.
The reason is because they are greedy bastards.
It's a simple answer but it's true. Bush is a slave to greed. His whole administration serves because of either greed, avarice, or blind devotion. It reminds me of the Nixon and Reagan days. A lot of the democrats are in on it too.
Lately I have started watching two of the info-tainment channels, CNN and MSNBC. I now feel I can watch them dispassionately and deal with the absurdity of the propaganda without getting too pissed off.
The new message about Iraq this week is that the military has made significant progress in Iraq just in time for the election, but this progress has come only because the U.S. military is ruthlessly and mercilessly going after any and all threats.
I wish the Iraqis good luck with their democracy but the sad truth is that Saddam has reduced Iraq to a nation of cowed and ignorant people. Can they govern themselves? Can the level of national corruption be reduced to the point where the people can have some hope for a better day? How many American soldiers must die before it is over? If our commitment to Iraq is long-term why are we not flooding them with aid? Why are we not agressively pumping money into the economy. Why are we not giving Iraqi companies special trade concessions and creating closer ties with American commerce?
The Iraqis need a respected national figure to lead them out of chaos. They need someone with the charisma of Bill Clinton bit they also need a leader with a good moral character and the will to unite the Iraqi people. That man does not exist. Perhaps it could be a woman... Now it seems even more hopeless.
One of the biggest fiasco's recently was the flu shot scare. The vaccine manufacturers have been pushing their products via the news media for the last few years and they decided to try a new tactic last year by creating the perception that there was a shortage of flu vaccine.
The plan was that they could then increase the price of the vaccine and frighten everyone into a frenzy of vaccinations. Then the unexpected happened. Folks, like myself, decided that if there wasn't enough vaccine for everyone that we would just skip the shot, save $20, and let the folks who really need it get it. A lot of other folks did the same and now there's plenty of vaccine and the media is tentatively exploring the "fear of influenza" waters by warning folks that the flu season hasn't started yet and looks to be worse than last year, so be afraid and run out and get the shot. NOW! No thanks.
Bush went to Canada recently and received his typical foul reception from the Canadian people.
Bush was in Canada to fix the prescription drug problem.
I believe that Bush warned the Canadians that he took this matter seriously and that he now has four years to make Canada pay dearly if she continues to allow Canadian pharmacies to sell U.S. made prescription drugs back to Americans at lower prices, through the mail.
Bush isn't having any luck convincing some state Governors to back off from making private deals with Canadian pharmacies for cheaper drugs, but now Bush is in a strong position to force the Canadian government to stop the problem at the source and he's not kidding around. The U.S. has two ways of dealing with Canada, a carrot or a stick. I think Bush used both to get the Canadians to see it his way. The situation will change to favor the pharmaceutical bigwigs because they are going at the problem from many different angles.
It is accepted that Bush is working for the pharmaceutical industry. The best investment you can make today is to buy stock in the big drug companies. The next best deal is the HMO and health insurance business. The CEO of the company that provides my health insurance made 9.5 million dollars last year. Bush is steadily working to eliminate the MediCare and MediAid systems. Like the Veterans Adminstration they have too much power in the market place and can almost dictate their prices to the drug manufactures. The pharmaceutical industry wants to take that power away. They stand to gain over a trillion dollars in the next 4 years if they succeed, so they have many plans of attack. Buying the presidency is just one tactic, buying Congress is another.
Monday was the anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision and a small group of crazies marched in Washington. Again we hear from the Anti-Women's Rights groups that they elected Bush and they want Bush to make abortion illegal again and they want it now. He owes them.
The media doesn't even bother to explain that Bush can't just make abortion illegal by issuing some kind of executive order.
His only method to accomplish this goal is to appoint new justices that are now openly anti-women's rights and can be counted upon to remain anti-women's rights once they are Supreme Court Justices.
Then someone has to initiate some kind of legal action in a lower court that results in a decision that makes it a crime for a woman to have an abortion. Then that decision has to be appealed all to way to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court has to make a ruling that is based on prior legal precedent.
The Justices must enumerate the precedents they base their rulings on. They cannot make decisions that cannot be supported by prior precedent or are based on their personal beliefs.
The only precedents that exist are the same ones that resulted on the Roe vs. Wade decision that made abortion legal, but now Roe vs. Wade is one of those precedents so the bar has been set even higher.
There is always the Constitution. They could create a constitutional amendment that makes abortion illegal, but that process is long and difficult and in the end the Supreme Court would be forced, by precedent, to strike down the amendment.
This is one of the reasons that the Pro-Choice organizations don't seem to be as vocal as they once were. There's no reason at this point to have a big Pro-Choice demonstration.
As time passes the issue becomes ever more complex. If Bush could instantly make abortion illegal he'd have to also make it a crime for a woman to leave the country to get an abortion in say Canada or Mexico so then they'd have to start testing fertile women as they leave the country and retesting them when they return. Are you still pregnant? You’d better be…
So why, considering how difficult and ultimately impossible may be, to make abortion illegal again, does the media continue to push stories about Bush supporters who demand that Bush take action now to make abortion illegal? Some of the folks who have been interviewed on television have even said that if Bush didn't start taking some action soon that the Wrath of God will fall down upon his head.
Being a Christian I cannot pray for bad things to befall Bush or anyone else. I can only pray that they eventually see the light and change their ways. As a Christian I must constantly remind myself that I have a brain for a reason. That I am not a mindless servant of God but that I have a free will and an intellect because God wants me to communicate with him and be capable of understanding the nature of the His universe.
When I think about the time in which Jesus lived it is easy to understand why people listened to His message. The God of the Jews in the time of Jesus was a frightful image locked up inside a fortress-temple, isolated from the daily trials of His creations. Jesus offered an alternative way of living and worshipping and a promise of everlasting life. He preached a philosophy of peace and brotherhood and His message was one of tolerance and inclusiveness. Today we need more of His message instead of the alternate Neo-Christian message of hate and greed that the Bush administration and a lot of Americans radiate.
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