Nukes don't kill people

It is rumored that the NRA is getting ready to launch a campaign in opposition to the President's policy towards Iran. It is suggested that some members feel that Iran should be able to have nuclear weapons if it wants them

The reasoning goes like this. Guns don't kill. People kill. We allow people to carry their guns into places where liquor is served for an obvious reason. Most fights begin when men have been drinking, so a bar is precisely the place where a freedom loving gun owner is most likely to need to defend himself. A citizen who carries his AK47 into the neighborhood bar will be able to drink in peace.

Similarly some NRA members reason that Nuclear Bombs don't kill. People who fire them kill. The Iranian leadership is just as rational as drunken Americans, quite similar in fact. So letting the Iranians have nuclear weapons is in principle no worse than letting drunken people have guns.

I hope this rumor is true. It would show real consistency in defense of the right to bear arms.

Supreme Court: Only Psychopaths need apply

Empathy is the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings and thoughts of another without having to be told. So people with empathy feel what it is like to have a sick wife or child and no health insurance even though they themselves feel secure in their own insurance. We sit in our living rooms watching television on our wide screen TVs and feel what it is like to have no food for hungry children or to sleep on a side walk. In the 1860s empathy was the quality that made some white men willing to die to make black men free. Lack of empathy (or selective empathy) prevented some white men from recognizing any moral problem in that institution.

Psychopaths have no empathy. Jonah Lehrer in his book “How we decide” says Modern Psychiatrists have determined that many of the people who perpetrate terrible crimes are psychopaths. John Wayne Gacy was such a person. He could murder a young boy, go to bed with his wife and sleep like a baby. He had no perception of other people’s pain. Many psychopaths have brilliant, logical minds. But psychopaths are dangerous, because they have damaged emotional brains. Although they are prone to violence, most will not run afoul of the law.

The Republicans have always shown empathy for the rich and well-connected . I can never forget the spectacle of Bob Dole, on national television, in near tears when the Clinton administration succeeded in raising the marginal tax rates of the wealthiest tax payers. On the other hand few Republicans seem overly concerned about the tens of thousands of Americans who die each year for lack of healthcare.They empathize with weapons manufacturers and multinational corporations. They will push for continuing to spend billions on the totally unnecessary F22 fighter plane while arguing that we cannot afford to provide for the thousands of their fellow Americans who are dying for lack of healthcare.


They cannot conceive that an individual can have empathy for the suffering of all mankind. This is most evident in their perception of Obama himself. They cannot accept that this black looking man could have empathy for the feelings of white people even though they know he was raised and beloved by white grandparents. For Republicans empathy is a partisan thing, restricted to people just like themselves.


This is ironic. These guys, who bear their religion on their chests like military decorations, forget that Jesus greatest contribution to moral philosophy was His extension of the concept of “neighbor” to include all of mankind, including even enemies. This is why Republicans distrust empathy in others.

Obama, the Chess Master

Recently Henry Kissinger compared Obama's approach to foreign policy to a chess master playing simultaneous games with lesser players. Some members of the Moscow press seem to think their leaders were completely outplayed. Here is part of a summary in the Moscow Times.

"U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Moscow was a master class par excellence in presidential leadership. He knew exactly why he was coming to Russia and took away with him everything he had wanted. Even while lavishing praise on the Russian leaders, Obama did not give ground on a single position. He achieved what was on his agenda in his negotiations with President Dmitry Medvedev while at the same time giving tremendous support to Russia’s civil society. This is not just a new president. This is a completely new type of global leadership. If Obama is able to manage the unprecedented challenges facing him, and if luck goes his way, he has a chance of becoming one of the greatest presidents in U.S. history. "
To read the rest of the article, click on http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/1016/42/379421.htm

If you read carefully, you will see that while in Moscow, The Chess Master was also deftly playing his game with Iran and his game with our neocons.

Refunding Campaign Contributions with Tax Payer Dollars

Dear Sir,
Health Care Public Option
I never was able to understand why you voted to prevent Medicare from bargaining with the pharmaceutical companies for better prices, as part of the legislation creating a prescription benefit for seniors. On the face of it, it seemed like refunding campaign contributions with tax payer dollars . I have tried hard to believe you weren’t acting out of personal obligation.
Now you are faced with a vote on the public option in Health Care. I have been on Medicare for fifteen years. I have been through Cancer as well as major surgery. The system has worked exactly as advertised, and flawlessly.

I happen to have excellent catastrophic insurance from my from my former employer, which self insures. But I get angry when I read of the suffering of others at the hands of private insurers. We need a public option as a safeguard, otherwise healthcare reform will be one more give-away to the Health Care Industry . I would not mind paying another percentage point of taxes to ensure everyone was covered, but not if the money is going to greedy CEOs in private companies. Without the public option, it will take an army of bureaucrats to keep these greedy bastards on the straight and narrow.
Please disregard campaign contributions and try doing the right thing. You may be surprised how good that makes you feel. To be honest, I would respect you a lot more. I might even vote for you.
Yours truly,

Mark Sanford is hopelessly in love with Maria.

I listened to the patronising musings of the press, bewildered by his latest confessions. Don't you get it? The man is hoplessly in love with Maria and using you to shout it from the housetops.


Here is the gist of what he said to the Associated Press:
1. I may have flirted too physically with a handfull of women since my marriage, but never since I met Maria. (Up for Maria, Down for Wife)

2. Maria is my soul mate, the love of my life, and no matter what happens I am glad I have had the wonderful experience of loving her and being loved by her. Few men are fortunate enough to experience love like this.

3. (I know my duty) I am going to try to fall in love with my wife all over again.


It seems he is tired of subterfuge and is being completely honest about at least one thing, his emotions. He is not even pretending to feeling guilty. The only person whose feelings and dignity he preserves at all costs is Maria. Neither political career nor wife can be allowed to interfere. Furthermore statement 3 above closes off his wife's options. To keep her self respect she now has little choice but to cut him loose.
This is probably what he wants and expects.

Fraud in the Private Healthcare Industry

Senator Bernie Sanders wrote a piece on Huffington Post about fraud by some of the largest players in the Health Care Industry. He listed huge fines paid by some well known names for fraudulent charges against Medicare and others.

Please read his article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/we-must-stop-the-rampant_b_222510.html

We spend more than 2x Britain per citizen on Health Care

Britain spends less than half as much per person as we do on health care. According to the CBS evening news, they spend an average of $2700 for each man, woman and child living there. Yet 90% of Britons rate the care they get as excellent. Just consider how good their health care could be if they spent an average of say $5000.

But even this figure would be much less than the average of $6700 that we spend. In spite of spending so lavishly our privately controlled system leaves 47 million without any medical insurance coverage and bankrupts many thousands more every year.

Obama's failure to emphasize the effectiveness of single payer systems has been a big mistake. This has left room for the Republicans to paint the loss of private insurance as public disaster when it would clearly be a blessing. The public is watching. He is not leading boldly. We will not be impressed with some fig leaf that turns out to be a bonanza for the health care industry.

Gays are upset with Obama

I heard Jim Fouratt on The Colbert Report last night. He told us how upset the homosexual community is that the new president has not given their issues the priority they think they have earned by voting for him.
I don't think they were listening. On the campaign trail Senator Obama promised to be the president of the whole country. That means giving priority to urgent issues that concern the whole country rather than issues of special interest groups. So the president has given priority to rescuing the economy, healthcare reform, financial reform, the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea. He has been criticized for attempting to do too much at once and is obviously at full stretch in his first five months in office. Which one of these issues does Mr. Fouratt think should take second place to pushing congress to repeal the marriage act.

Mr. Fouratt compares the civil rights situation of Gays to the situation of African Americans before 1968. This is patently absurd. Gays as individuals have the same rights as the rest of us. There are no "separate but equal facilities for Gays". Black and white Gays mingle without danger of being lynched.

Many of the facilities like health insurance protection, were extended by the state and employers on the presumption that the earning potential of a wife would be limited by childbearing and child rearing. The producing and raising of future citizens is a public service.
Where this does not happen, the state is in danger of decline. That is the situation in Russia today.

Gay couples by and large do not make this contribution to the state and escape the associated responsiblities. Therefore, it is hard to see why the same family related benefits should be extended to them except perhaps in cases where they have adopted children.

In any case, I think it is time for us to stop obfuscating on this marriage issue. No right thinking person wants to place gay couples at a practical disadvantage financially or legally. The problem lies at deeper level. The gay community wants the religous community to recognize their unions as the moral equivalent of traditional heterosexual marriages. However, the fundamental basis of traditional marriage is the raising of a family. Indeed the Catholic church considers it a sin for a married couple to have even one sexual encounter which was not open to the possibility of conception. To the religous community, heterosexual behavior entails responsibilities Gays escape. So in my opinion, this demand for moral equivalence is not a reasonable demand.

Iran hearing President Obama

I said in my previous blog that I hoped the Iranians heard the threat implicit in the President's comment that Iran's relationship with the West would be influenced by the way its leaders treated peaceful protesters.

It seems they heard. Ahmadin.... has angrily attacked the President for interfering in Iranian affairs and their diplomats are trying to frame the CIA for the infamous murder of Neda Soltan. Unfortunately for them, the Iranian doctor who tried to save her life is now safely in England where he declared emphatically that the killer was a member of the security forces.

The president's skillful approach may be having some restraining influence.

Iran-The Presdent's threat

"There is a peaceful path.. to legitimacy" Obama said " and we hope they take it." He continued that Iran's "faith, sovereignty and traditions" can be accepted while the country's government nevertheless adheres to a set of "international norms and principles" regarding violence and the right of peaceful dissent.
I noted that the press did not grasp the severity of the threat implicit in the President's statement. Let me translate. If the Iranians do not treat the demonstrators humanely (within what the President regards as the norms of democratic society), all offers are off the table. This includes most notably America's offer of respectful treatment as an equal in the search for a solution to outstanding issues and normalization of relations. He reserves the right to chart a new course.
I hope the Iranian leadership get this. It was carefully said in a way that does not seek to humiliate them.

The Bombasters-(McCain et al) endangering Iranian lives

In 1956 a communist government aligned with Moscow ruled Hungary. In that year the Hungarians grew tired of the oppression and began to agitate in the streets. Prominent politicians in the United States stood up for American Democratic principles with their mouths. The Hungarians were encouraged and their aspirations grew. Finally they overthrew the Communists and installed a more democratic government to loud cheers from our blowhards
However when the Russians invaded Hungary to restore Communist Rule, the United States did nothing to help the fledgling democracy. Tens of thousands of Hungarians died in the hopeless struggle.

When Russia invaded Georgia last year, McCain declared himself a Georgian. This did not do the Georgians a bit of good. The Russians marched all over Georgia and left when they were good and ready. They even declared two Georgian provinces free states under their protection.

As the Iranians have strained at their bonds over the past week, some of our politicians have again been issuing empty word of support, standing up for American Democratic principles. Now that blood is flowing in the streets of Teheran, what do they have to offer but more hollow words of encouragement. Meanwhile Mahommad Khatemi has just released a statement saying he is preparing himself for martyrdom.

When will these blowhards understand that bombastic references to American values can't stop bullets.? In a revolution, you have to put your life where your mouth is.

Our president has been very wise. The Supreme Leader of Iran has been unable to link the protesters with the United States. I cannot overstate the significance of this kind of association. If the Iranian authorities can portray the demonstrators as agents of foreign enemies of the state, they can justify bloody suppression.

Our blowhards are endangering the lives of these brave Iranians.

Why Single Payer is our Only Affordable Choice

Some of our Health Care institutions are the best in the world at what they do. If you want to separate conjoined twins we can do it. Technically we are the best.
But measured by outcomes, our so called health care system is one of the worst in the world. Last check impoverished Cubans have a longer life expectancy and a lower infant mortality rate than we do. Yet we spend far more per capita on health care than any other country in the world. If this is a system, it is extraordinarily inefficient.

I suggest we do not have a health care system at all. We have a number of subsystems designed to benefit limited groups of participants. The largest Government run subsystem is the Medicare System designed to care for the elderly. This is the most efficient system in the country in terms of delivering medical treatment with a low overhead cost of 3.6%. Each HMO constitutes a health care subsystem with an average overhead cost of 11.7%. The overhead cost of the Canadian Government run health care system is 1.3%. Because we spend so much more per capita, if we spent the money we now devote to health care as efficiently as Canada or Britain, every American could enjoy health care far superior to what they have.

Why then do we have this outcry about the potential cost of health care reform?! That is because all the proposals on the table keep the present system intact. Therefore the cost of covering the 45 million uninsured and filling the gaps in HMO coverage that cause many thousands of bankruptcies each year will be expenditure additional to what we already spend. That means spending much more per capita on health care than the excessive amount we now spend. Some reasonably argue that we cannot afford this extra expenditure.

In practice a system designed to guarantee health care security to everyone, that is based on payment of premiums to private insurers, would be an administrative nightmare. Suppose a participant paying his own premiums into such a system loses his job, what is the mechanism for continuing payment of premiums? One can only imagine the red tape involved in managing continuity of coverage and the endless disputes and law suits resulting from HMOs refusal to pay for illnesses during periods of unpaid premiums. Then there are the millions of chronically unemployed and casually employed who cannot contract to pay premiums. Covering the majority of those now uninsured through the private insurance industry would be a costly administrative nightmare for the Federal Government and a massive transfer of wealth from the taxpayers to the HMO industry.

Contrast this morass with the administrative simplicity of a single payer system. Every citizen and legal resident gets a “Medicare Plus Card” He takes this card to any doctor in the country and presents it for treatment. The doctor treats him and bills Medicare Plus. The patient pays an out of pocket based on income. He takes his card and his prescription to the Pharmacy. The prices of his medications have been negotiated by Medicare. He pays his out of pocket and leaves. This freedom of choice is what all Medicare patients enjoy today.

The conclusion staring us in the face is that we can only pay for universal health care by wringing the fat and profit out of the present system. Inevitably that means a single payer system like Medicare paid for by additional taxation. For a few dollars a year more in taxes we get total health care security. I don’t think this is Socialism because I understand Socialism would be bad for us while affordable universal health care would create the greatest good for the greatest number. This I believe is the ultimate objective of any democratic society.

Nevertheless, such a change would bring disaster to the HMOs, the health care insurance brokers and other dependents on the present system. The reforms in the automobile manufacturing industry have caused similar losses to the stake holders in that industry. Why should the health insurance industry fare any better?! In the free market system, disaster is what happens to industries that are unable to meet the needs of the public.