Liberal Voices

The Flush that Failed!

Like a flush of effluents, the passing of the Bush regime, the pruning of the neocons, and the arrival of near-depression the unenlightened helped to fashion should have scuttled 24/7 politics that Bush and the neocons both served. I chose to see the emergence of a pull-together patriotic fervor that would melt away all our problems, at least eventually.

That idea was hopeful, but stupid -- and counter-productive.

I didn’t consider the ruthless grip of monolithic corporations, the right-wing think-tank kill-all-reform unity, the give-the-fat-cats-our-lunch mentality of politicians or the fourth estate that isn’t. Nor did I consider the inane “Blue-Dog Democrats” with the southern scent, the corporate cant, and the rightist slant.

And, of course, we have to include in the potential failure quotient a president who would court Attila the Hun for peaceful concessions. Joining him are liberal and moderate Democrats in Congress who expeditiously climb insignificant molehills thinking they’re meaningful mountains.

Put them all together, and the fat cats get another round of exploiting the rest of us. In fact, we invite them to dictate our quality of life, believing the circus barkers that their legal, political and media mercenaries stand behind.

We have been taught too well how to be sheep. Beaten down, battered and brain-washed, Americans have lost that almost reckless spunk we once had. We’ve ceded our government to the rich and powerful.

To cover their weakness and to tweak our pride, leaders will chant that we are the greatest nation in the world, but are loathe to mention our many failings, and never say the “r” word, responsibility, nor cite any sacrifices to maintain that greatness.

To question this bold statement is to risk being labeled unpatriotic.

A grand principle our revered forbearers taught us was that you had to work and sacrifice for those things that are important.

Conservatives have twisted that to say work longer hours without complaint to achieve the pay that your richer cousins deservedly exploited from you and your forbears. In other words, shut up and work double shifts for material things while their weasels continue to pick your pockets.

The rich are smarter and more able to tell you what is good, conservatives say. That, of course, fits into the plutocratic strategy of exploitation and control.

The same neocons who cast conspiratorial aspersions against elite foreign influence, who say you don’t apologize to foreigners, also use Fox News to besmirch their enemies.

It is ironic that Fox News, which pollutes the minds of millions, and the Wall Street Journal, a mogul mouthpiece, are both owned by a foreigner, Rupert Murdock. With his media possessions in the US, the UK, Australia and Asia he casts a huge influence, affecting our country’s lack of social reform and the growing power of plutocrats.

Amy Goodman, a true journalist, speaks of corporate media forces trying to destroy moral autonomy by characterizing voices outside the orthodox media as radical. The right-wing media  chants epithets of abuse at real journalistic sources, this while spewing fear and loathing. They themselves have reason to fear their misinformation will be exposed in news like NPR, Democracy Now, Nation Magazine and MSNBC. Their defense is to besmirch such as radical.

Frequent listeners of Fox’s mercenary luminaries like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly consume their verbal droppings and, like children, mimic Sean and Bill's mockery of progressive media.

Progressives have consistently underestimated the power of neocon demagoguery. Because attacks on progressives and on rational ideas have been so absurd, they have been often ignored.

Disdainful of a rational citizenry, conservative forces have manipulated the people into war, into voting against their own interests, and even ignoring global threats to our planet.

We are at a tipping point, in many ways. Too many vested interests want to do what is wrong for our future, not just for Americans but for the planet. Hypocrisy taints their message.

The Exxon’s, while purveyors of global CO² atmospheric pollution, talk responsibility and citizenship; the health care industry spends $1.4 million a day lobbying Congress while advertising serenity for Americans, and their heartless companies shut out the poor and infirm and welcome the healthy; national leaders speak peace and freedom while ignoring the potential global warming chaos to come; and global corporations manipulate the media while doggedly pursuing global power.

Our democracy is tipping toward corporate tyranny and our planet is spinning toward a global warming crisis, perhaps not tomorrow but in a few decades. Meanwhile the bulk of our resources go to war and military buildups.

Perhaps both are half-mindedly in preparation for the global disruptions that will come from problems we do not have the intelligence or the will to resolve.

We do know there will be death, displacement, hunger, famine, and drought.  We have already seen it on smaller scales.

Politicians and business executives stumble over the word long term (beyond six months). Knee-jerk reaction to problems they didn’t see coming is the best they can do.

Certainly the economic meltdown is one example of their myopia.

Contrary to their arrogance and even some of their claims, God can’t bestow that wisdom to their atrophied minds or feeling to their leather hearts

Instead, an Old Testament God, whom many of them quote, could very well draw the curtain on our non-evolved civilization.

The Horror

Last week, President Obama told the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) that fighting the war in Afghanistan is absolutely essential. He said, “This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”

If it is so fundamental, why are so few of us making the ultimate sacrifice?

Perhaps Obama recognized this when he said, “We are a country of more than 300 million Americans. Less than 1 percent wears the uniform.”

While that statement might be innocent in its intent, it also tends to understate the extent of our commitment in both Iraq and Afghanistan. After all we have some 250,000 not in uniform serving in both countries, representing the Bush heritage of an army for hire, working for companies like Blackwater/Xe, KBR, & Triple Canopy. Obama is continuing the practice in Iraq by replacing uniformed personnel with mercenaries.

Nevertheless, many in this cadre have made the ultimate sacrifice and have gotten little or no media coverage. In fact, many of us don’t even know that they exist. Even Obama has been conspicuously silent about their continuing role, making one wonder if that secrecy is intended.

I would never expect the Obama administration to even approach the secrecy and the corruption of the Bush administration, but since power can corrupt, we must do our part to point out his shortcomings. Unfortunately, from the perception of the progressive, they are numerous.

But let’s focus on the wars. The health care reform – that isn’t -- fiasco seems to have diverted our attention.

Death, terror, maiming and gut-wrenching suffering are the chief byproducts of the vain-glory and jingoism thrown out in early Bush times, but now it is dispelled by distractions of recession, unemployment and Republican loud voices.

If you don’t believe it, look at “2^nd Tour, Hope I Don’t Die.” It is a recent book of color photos about the on-the-ground horror of Afghanistan and Iraq. Peter van Agtmael’s lens cover our wars in both countries from 2006-2008. You might say it is our 21^st century pictorial Heart of Darkness.

After almost eight years of dogged war first in Afghanistan, now in both Afghanistan and Iraq, do we still have the capacity to see and feel its suffering? If you feel a responsibility to see and feel that misery, look at the scenes in the book.

It is in the eyes, the faces and the weary poses of the victims -- they are all victims: those who are seemingly whole reveal a hollowness the horror of war has brought, and those without limbs struggle for the will to live. It has left all maimed in mind, heart and body. Each picture is a roadmap to hearts that have been darkened by the horror they have seen.

There is the Army medical captain standing forlorn and exhausted, drained and almost oblivious to the blood-slicked floor of a combat support hospital in Baghdad.

There is the US soldier lying on a cot, the location Kumar, Afghanistan, in 2007 -- his face, bedeviled, his sad eyes watching a movie on a laptop. There is a fresh grave in the snow of Arlington National Cemetary. There is Raymond in Wisconsin, 2007, playing with Star Wars light-sabers with his sons Brady and Riley. Raymond has an artificial leg.

In Nuristan, Afghanistan, 2007, Looking down into his eyes, Flight medic Michael Julio holds the hand of a grievously wounded American soldier on the flight to the nearest hospital.

Photos show parents with anguished looks, giving their children and spouses a final hug before leaving. For many it would be their third or fourth tour into the war zones.

We see Sgt. Joshua Jump in the Baghdad ER, face and body covered with blood after being wounded by a roadside bomb. Although shrapnel had torn his flesh through most of the length of his body, he was mostly silent during treatment. Months later he requested a copy of his picture. He said he didn’t really get the chance to see his injuries before he healed.

There’s a picture of Cpt. Kearns, a nurse in the 10^th Combat Support Hospital. Head down and body bowed, he’s almost staggered against a hospital bed. On the floor to his left is bloody debris, left after they lost a soldier in ER.

To distance themselves from the carnage, medics gave the worst casualties nicknames. One soldier melted by fire from an IED blast was called “Goo Man.” After certain casualties, especially injured children, some resort to using painkillers to help blot out the horrific images.

For many the images never go away. To convince others of the horror, a horror they did not want to recreate, but which their minds had to process, soldiers ultimately urged van Agtmael to show what was going on in their world to convince others what really happened, but perhaps also to convince their addled brains that the horror of their nightmares was real.

Critical Needs Forgotten

I know. We don’t want to hear more bad news. But the news regarding unemployment is not good, and it’s not just the nearly 10% national unemployment rate but its long-range impact.

Oh, no, do we have to think beyond next week?

 For politicians and plutocrats with a personal agenda, no issue calls for thought or real solutions. It’s a matter of what you want. Their technique regresses to childhood. To get your way you yell, scream, and shake fists at those who are working on solutions, whatever they may be.

It is sad, if not pathetic, that some people are so stirred up and angry that like baited roosters or enraged bulls, they attack in directions provided by those who gain from their verbal violence and spectacle – for sport, for power, or for money, whether media, business, or government.

In people terms, the roosters and the bulls are otherwise called the birthers, the deathers, and the tea-baggers. Corporate monoliths supply the funds and the targets. Republicans fan the spectacle. Too many Democrats act like flat-footed fools.

It is a ploy that may be working to stop vital health care reform. In fact, this ploy can be used for any plutocratic need. The tools of fear and disruption have been an effective conservative weapon to stop the clock of progress, perhaps to even turn it back.

The narcissistic force of leadership has such a wide girth and such tunnel vision that even the most critical of problems are not seen by their jaundiced eyes: for example, the problem of poverty or structural unemployment.

The country has lost more than 7 million jobs since last December. The stop-gap, short-term unemployment compensation will run out for many states this year. The Democratic Congress, figuratively sitting on its collective hands, watches and waits.

A burgeoning unemployment rate and dour prospects for good jobs threaten our economic lifeblood. Spurring employment seems to be one of the secrets to bringing our economy out of the doldrums. After all, 70% of our economy in the measure of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is consumption. If the people have no money to spend, consumption goes in the toilet.

Thirty million Americans, or 19% of the overall work force are unemployed or underemployed. Yes, I know, the official jobless rate is only 9.4 %. There are the 9.4% who are officially looking for work.  There are those who are working part time because they can’t find full-time work. There are those who are not actively looking for work because they have become discouraged. That makes about 30 million Americans, or about 19% of the work force.

Moreover, the chasm between the rich and the poor is widening, with worker wages either stagnant or falling. New jobs, if there are any, will usually pay less for workers. Declining income for all but the top 10% will assure a prolonged recession, but this prospect gets little attention.

Meanwhile the baited roosters (birthers, deathers, teabaggers and heaven knows who else) are targeting good people who are trying to bring health care to the growing legions of uninsured Americans, some of which you’ll see getting free medical attention at the LA’s free clinic.

There are sly snakes hidden behind the fear and verbal mayhem? Under this propaganda rock are health care industry lobbyists. That’s right, bought and paid for by the fat cats of health care. It’s the continuing greedfest of pharmaceuticals and giant medical groups.

As if people don’t have enough trouble putting food on the table, what with unemployment benefits running out, health care taken away and real prospects for employment almost nonexistent, the health care giants are doing their number.

The unemployed are almost forgotten with the health care spectacle lobbyists-for-hire have produced.

Then there are fear-mongering commercials sponsored by wholesome-sounding organizations like Sixty-Plus Association, arch-conservatives calling themselves non-profit corporations, but actually shills for the pharmaceutical industry. Their felonious TV ads scare vulnerable seniors by suggesting Obama’s plan is a secret plot to kill them.

You can bet that reforms costing monolithic companies billions in profits and executives tens of millions in compensation will be attacked viciously. The best weapon is fear. Bush used it by staging national security alerts, as revealed by Tom Ridge’s recent book.

Using the corrupt hands of Bush, corporate leaders took our money and even our freedoms. The Bush regime stole our trust in government by corrupting its every move. Used and cynical, most Americans find it difficult to believe the new occupant of a office that Bush defamed.

Meanwhile the need for jobs to help rebuild our economy is pushed aside and demeaned as the health care monoliths spread fear to seniors and discord to the rest of us.

The corporate monoliths like United Healthcare, Pfizer, Exxon, and Goldman Sachs will continue to dictate terms of change, that is as long as we allow fear and loathing to dictate our actions and our voting.

We are not animals – baited roosters fighting one another or riled bulls charging at corporate capes. For primitive man fear prompted action without reason. The hired corporate guns must use emotional tools that rile and scare, especially against the weak, the deprived and the angry. Truth and principle is not on their sides.

What we must do is use reason that is informed by truth and principle. That is the route to government by the people. Otherwise the proto-fascist techniques will work.

Save Affordable Health Care!

It’s not too late to save the public insurance option for health care reform. Without it there is no real reform, and without affordable health care there is no equal opportunity for Americans.

Flood the phones, mail boxes, and emails of our so-called elected representatives and be constructive as the “healthsavers.” Combat the destructive and misdirected anger that health care lobbyists have inflamed among the injured and the vulnerable.

A website for contacting your elected representatives follows:

• http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

Americans spend one-sixth of their incomes on health care. A great bulk of that expenditure is for private insurance and drug companies, which are generally unregulated and have little or no competition. Thus they can gouge Americans to the point of making the choice of health or necessities like food. Critical illness often brings bankruptcy.

Almost 50 million men, women, and children are uninsured. Another 40 million are underinsured. That number will grow with unemployment.

The global competition difficulty of American businesses is another issue. Any reform will not address the expense of employee health care coverage for businesses like GM.

Afraid of the risk to his re-election and/or of failure, President Obama is bowing to the fat cats in health care and to their administrative costs of 31%, which takes away from real patient care. Comparatively, Medicare and the VA administrative costs are less than 6%.

Do you really believe that health care costs will come down without the public option? It is like saying, “Will United Health Care cut prices to the public without pressure, or will top health care executives cut their millions in compensation just because people are suffering.”

Even the public option, Medicare prescription costs cannot be bargained down under the 2003 Medicare prescription plan. In effect, it was welfare for drug companies.

Even if health care reform overcomes the lobbying of the health care special interests, it might cover the uninsured; but without public insurance competition, health care costs will burgeon in the near future to the point of cuts in coverage and more taxes to cover the obscene profits, the unconstrained drug prices and the exorbitant administrative costs of private insurance.

This is a vital issue for all Americans. It is easy to be drawn into the me-first lobbyist crowds or the lobbyist-directed targets of anger and resentment.

Be a health-saver, not a health-wrecker.

I know. It sound like a commercial.

Murder as Collateral Damage

In a myriad of ways, Republicans are purposefully driving a violent wedge between right-wing and left-wing forces, hoping that those in the middle (impacted for the next election) will succumb to the hate they’re pitching. Enabled by an irresponsible media and the mess left by the Bush administration, they are engaging in a dangerous game of polarization, resentment, and hatred.

While President Obama holds out his hand in friendship, conservative forces only see him and Democrats as a target at which to divert American frustration and anger. Hypocrites and bigots with no plan of their own, Republicans disrupt reform, point to the lack of progress, while characterizing the reforms as evil or deadly to ill-natured crowds.

Meanwhile, fear and suspicion have been whipped up so much by conservative media sources that gun sales have reached record levels in spite of a deep recession. Right-wing propaganda has convinced many – with absolutely no evidence -- that the Obama administration would confiscate guns.

Republicans, especially with their role as underdogs in the last few elections, have recharged their effort to divert the resentment, fear, and anger tied to unemployment, stagnant wages, financial crisis, outsourced jobs and an uncaring government. These dark forces, Republicans intend to direct at Democrats and their supporters.

The tie of these conditions to the Bush era has been lost as Republicans have organized an assortment of protester activities that attack Democrats. Understandably, the ranks of malcontents has grown as they see the rich thrive, many responsible for the economic crisis, using taxpayer money and their political influence against us.

 Pent-up emotions among the victims of an uncaring, plutocratic government have been tapped and exploited by Republican politicians and now by conservative Democrats. The more recent bandwagon-to-violence offerings include hooligans, tea-baggers, deathers, and birthers – and they are not characters from Wizard of Oz.  

You might say it is a somewhat natural progression of the John McCain-Sarah Palin presidential campaign, with then, mainly Barack Obama the target of lies and slander. In a few cases they stirred up crowds angry enough to yell, “Kill him.”

 In fact, if you want to use the fear of terror right-wingers love to use, you could easily see it as building sleeper agents, assassins who in the future might be activated by a right-wing hate speech on radio or television, a hooligan rally, a birther belching hate, or a deather acting out a health care lobbyist plan, one of the many plans hatched and planted in the heads of the vulnerable.  

Think of the lies about Barack Obama that have been repeated a million times by our own homegrown American right-wing -- that he is a brainwashed Manchurian candidate of Radical Islam, he is a Marxist, he won't say the Pledge of Allegiance, he swears on the Koran or he is not an American. We could laugh these fabrications off, but it's no laughing matter if you believe this stuff -- and some percentage of Americans do, some of them disturbed.

There seems to be a racial quality in the hate-mongering as well: Rush Limbaugh often played “Barack, the magic Negro” on his talk show during the 2008 presidential election; now the birthers suggest he isn’t one of us.

Conservatives have no sense of stewardship, no Christian principles, and no fairness in their game plan. If a source of inspiration could be cited, it would be Machiavelli. The end (right-wing domination) justifies any means to achieve it. Even murder can be justified as collateral damage.

A strong statement, but we have examples of right-wing hate inspiring acts of murder.

Over a decade ago, 168 men, women, and children were murdered in the Oklahoma City bombing by an anti-federal-government fanatic, at the height of strident right-wing propaganda against Clinton in general and the FBI handling of Waco specifically

A few months ago, Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller, was assassinated in church. His name -- and nickname, "Tiller the Baby-Killer" -- should be familiar to viewers of Fox News' "O'Reilly Factor." Salon's Gabriel Winant reported that Bill O'Reilly had maligned Tiller on 29 episodes since 2005, the most recent, last April.

Scott Roeder, the alleged murderer, told the Associated Press that he knows of similar events planned as long as abortion remains legal.

Conservatives approve of -- indeed work in concert with -- the right-wing hate-media behind them. Fox News has a squadron of mercenaries, a new breed of merchants who sell a right-wing agenda. Together, they personify circus barkers or snake oil salesmen, a political media extension of the right-wingers. Their mantra is right-wing rancor, while calling it news.

Just before the Democratic National Convention in Denver, the right-wing mercenary radical, Rush Limbaugh, said that riots were a good thing for not electing Democrats. When people called in to protest his reckless words, he said, “I’m dreaming about riots, I’m not inciting them.”

A few days ago police officers calmed down an unruly crowd outside a health care reform forum in Tampa, Florida. The mobs, tied to well-heeled interest groups, involved Astroturf (fake grass-roots) organizations, one being former House majority leader, Dick Armey’s Freedom Works and another headed by Rick Scott. Scott is a disgraced former head of Columbia/HCA, a for-profit hospital chain, which overbilled government health plans and settled for a $1.7 billion payment. Fox News’ Glenn Beck’s 9-12 Project also helped to turn out the activists in Florida.

Last year, after murdering members of a Unitarian congregation in Tennessee, Jim David Adkisson said all liberals are targets. Adkisson was a loyal listener to hate-merchants like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. He said that his prime targets were liberal members of Congress and President Obama, but he settled for his family and members of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, where his murdered wife attended.

“Why can’t hate-mongers be prosecuted?” you might ask. Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), which involved a KKK leader inciting hatred against blacks, requires that  perpetrators like Limbaugh,  Palin or Bill O’Reilly have to urge their audience to perform a specific and imminent illegal action. This ruling allowed G. Gordon Liddy to discuss the best way of killing BATF agents on his radio show (suggesting a head shot) and Ann Coulter to discuss exterminating liberals.

So like the chill of a coming winter, all the dangerous ingredients have come together for violence and murder: more nervous gun owners, the resentful and the unstable listening to hate radio, and an atmosphere of fear and suspicion.

Shouldn’t conservatives know that they are not just playing with dynamite but perhaps directing it, or do they consider it the collateral damage of winning elections?

Hooligans and Spectators

Corporate health care lobbyists must be worried, for they are now behind “hooligan” tactics to kill health care reform – and seem to be proud of it. Recent news stories indicate an all-out effort to kill the public option, knowing that a public option could very well drive out their outrageously expensive and demonstrably heartless plans.

It is reminiscent of the Bush campaign dispatching thugs to Florida in November of 2000, when hand-picked Republican hooligans were flown in from Washington. Their mission was to add muscle to the legal maneuvering by intimidating vote counters and cheer on the conservative media. Bush sought to reject a full recount and the Supreme Court ultimately awarded Bush the presidency, stopping the recount. Media studies later revealed that Gore would have won.

The plan this time is to squelch debate on health care reform, hoping to dispatch all reform, but especially the public option.

The media aids the health care industry’s corporate effort, claiming the thugs are right-wing activists, when in truth they are corporate shills.

Blue Dog Democrats and conservatives are only too happy to disrupt health care progress and besmirch Democrats in the process, especially President Obama. They did their part in delaying progress on reform bills, suggesting representatives in Congress will go to their constituents to discuss their efforts in town hall meetings.

The next step in the health care lobbyist plan was to send trained “hooligans” with scripted disruptions for town hall meetings designed to intimidate any voices calling for reform.

We have seen such tactics in fascist countries. Be assured fascist leaders have more direct control over media stories.

However, the American media paradigm is quickly becoming the gladiator forum of visual and verbal images. The few corporate executives who run the media exercise “emperor” power in calling the games, defining the action and controlling the forum.

They pick the news and present their reality to American spectators who have come to expect conflict, violence, anger and resentment in their big-screen, stories, blending into the images of car chases, murders, and celebrity watches.

 The health care arm of the power elite has furnished the verbal violence and an angry truth that is packaged with the ingredients that the corporate news seeks: anger, conflict, and violence. But don’t bother if you’re protesting the war or defending rights. No news cameras will appear. Denigrating President Obama and mocking serious discussion is real news.

The gladiator games is more than thugs or hooligans, but be assured they aren’t really games. They are serious efforts, engineered by the powerful, to get into the heads of voters and, in this case, beat down health care reform.

Their attack is not a single thrust. It also includes “deathers” who are sending spurious reports through any media source compromised enough to cooperate. Their message is that the government plan will require seniors to report in for counseling every five years to determine their willingness to be euthanized, saying that euthanasia is part of the public plan.

Even elected Republican legislators and “blue dog” Democrats are suggesting that the public plan would do away with – they mean kill -- sick children and feeble seniors. Large campaign donations from the health care industry have been traced to these same legislators

For example, Paul Broun (R-G) script says, “This program of government option…..is going to kill people. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) has no fear of lies or slander in saying that the Republican solution (never defined) “is pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.”

In fact, a campaign on conservative talk radio has sparked fear among senior citizens that the health-care overhaul bill moving through Congress will lead to end-of-life "rationing" and even "euthanasia."

And of course Rush Limbaugh, the mercenary “dough-boy” talk show host, who never worries about truth, does a “two-fer: 1) He smears and slanders President Obama’s health care intentions; 2) He claims, “They’ll give them (seniors) pain pills and let them loop out until they die and they don’t even know what’s happened.”

It seems that American communication is being reduced to performances by paid mercenaries, somewhat like the gladiators of Ancient Rome. Perhaps we are being groomed as spectators. A growing majority of American workers receive less wages, work longer hours, receive less education and watch more television. For such a populace, the reduced use of reason and logic is perhaps welcomed by political and corporate leaders.

Certainly special interests do not favor spending more money on education for what they consider the common folk. To do so would reduce the effectiveness of the propaganda tool that the corporate world uses more and more to spread their agenda and manipulate the masses.

So we might say that restricting privilege and creating drones for consumption of pharmaceuticals, occupiers of prisons or loyal corporate chattels is the goal.

The elite want spectators, not the educated and informed people that vibrant democracies require.

The Vampires Cringe

We are hearing a lot of health care reform propaganda and a lot of so-called compromises for reform. But the viable option is the only one that no one is looking at, and it is the one that the fat-cat health care industry is totally frightened that the public option will become: a one-payer government plan.

That is why health care monoliths are paying millions to “Blue Dog Democrats” and neo-conservative Republicans. Health care fat cats know that moderates and progressives just might do the right thing, though that is not assured.

If you are not mad and motivated, think about our country’s leaders who gave themselves the best health care coverage our money could buy. And think about billions in profits that private health care companies get to deny coverage for sick Americans.

For them, at risk are stellar profits (United Health and Wellpoint at almost $10 billion in 2007), and the fat salaries of executives.

The big problem is that those with the deepest pockets are the slyest, most deceptive, the most agenda-bound, and the greediest. All these qualities make for lies, distortions, fear-mongering about the bogeymen of socialism and big government, and the praise of private industry, in whose ranks are the unregulated companies that almost sunk our whole global economy.

Deep in our hearts, we know that the best health care reform is the public one-payer option. But how do you get rid of the entrenched, engorged monster we created during Richard Nixon’s time.

The monoliths in our economy -- the United HealthCares and the WellPoints, with their 31% administrative costs and their gluttonous CEOs who make millions denying patients life-giving care -- are afraid of losing their privileged mansions.

Just keep in mind that the founder of the Blue Dog Democrats and the conservative Republicans pushed through that welfare package for drug companies and the health care industry.

You didn’t hear about that? It’s the Medicare prescription Bill in 2003. It forbade us to bargain for the lowest prescription and medical costs. In fact it banned the practice of getting drugs from other countries, including Canada.

It provided some prescription benefits for seniors but gave the bulk of benefits to the health care industry, while assuring that many seniors must still choose between buying prescription drugs or buying food to eat.

The founder of the Blue Dog Democrats is now the CEO of the health care industry company that practically wrote the Medicare prescription bill. He retired from the House after filtering our money into the pockets of drug companies and private health insurers. His reward was millions from the company he helped.

I know. There is so much propaganda and misinformation going around, you don’t know what to believe. I am not on the health care industry’s payroll. I am retired and still disgusted with the Medicare prescription bill that the new Democratic Congress still hasn’t changed.

If you still want to be a victim, let the Blue Dogs and the neocons underhandedly destroy the public option which if unencumbered will compete with and drive out the private health care vampire.

It is now our only seed of hope for health care reform.

Symbolically, the public option is the cross that the health care industry cringes from and growls at, even when the moon is not full, for it knows that the public option will probably be the stake through its heart, that is, if we can find one.

Don't doubt the power of a lie

One wonders if Karl Rove has his puffy paw in the current and continuing conservative attempt to discredit President Obama through the so-called birthers.

Critics of this ridiculous charge, that Obama was not born in the US, are either making jokes about it, pointing at the media’s unwillingness to squelch it, or attacking birthers as morons.

They miss the point.

The paid mind-bending researchers for neo-conservative think tanks know how the human mind and the American media work in our modern world. We like to quote a historically-maligned Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, written eight-five years ago, and its reference to people believing a “big lie” oft repeated, but it’s deeper than that.

Psychological studies do show that young and old tend to fashion truth on the mind’s bias and upon repetition, and experiments show that denials are useless for those who want to believe the myth for their own reasons.

In the case of some 70% of Americans believing Saddam Hussein’s involvement in 9/11, the mind’s bias was set by media-supported hatred of Saddam, fired by Bush patriotic rhetoric, and the Bush administration’s repetition kept the lie going.

Think-tank scientists, and skilled practitioners like Karl Rove, know this and advise Republican operatives to fashion belief campaigns accordingly.

Thus those who repeat the lies usually know they are lies but justify these distortions by deluding themselves into believing they have a holy mission, but in reality it is the pay and the power: therefore, the Limbaughs, the Becks, the O’Reillys and the Hannitys.

But, above all, there is unity in the right-wing lie campaign. To be effective, all right-wingers must participate in dispensing and in repeating the lie. Usually media is there to push conflict and ratings. The Rove imprint has been to build a lie or series of lies over a fully-scripted period of time that covers the contest in hand. It could be a few weeks, a few months, or years.

The policy seems to be fashioned for the neocon opponent.

For the Clinton administration, it exploited Bill Clinton’s too-active libido and conservative dislike of Hillary’s intelligence and ambition. The main ingredient of the ruse is confidence-eroding suspicion, innuendo, continuing internet email campaigns, right-wing talking heads in radio and TV talk shows, and omnipresent conservative repetition of the smears and questions.

Meanwhile, to augment negativity and resentment, every event, some not even relevant, are twisted to discredit the opponent.

But for Obama, the decision was made to question his birth in America. If you doubt its success, consider that over 40% of Republicans believe he is not native born.

Such campaigns work on prejudice, a few facts and distortion of most facts. He has a Kenyan-born father studying in Hawaii at the time of his birth. His American mother worked at different foreign locations. President Obama spent time in Indonesia while he was growing up.

Many conservatives resent the fact that President Obama is African-American. Many heartland Americans have been sheltered from people of different colors and backgrounds. Prejudice still lives in many hearts.

So why not build on these mental biases and through repetition, conflict, and smear from large-audience bigots like Rush Limbaugh. The responding outrage of Progressives and the media love of conflict keep the lie going.

So months and then years of this spectacle begin imprinting on minds.

Experiments by Ruth Mayo, a cognitive social psychologist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, found that denial often helps to keep the myth going because people come to remember the lie but not the denial of it.

Ms. Mayo said that silence doesn’t work either but that a new offensive about the truth is better, which probably wouldn’t work with the issue of American birth.

So believe that this campaign was intricately planned by neo-conservatives and don’t underestimate the power of even a ridiculous lie.

This was done by Kerry regarding the Swiftboaters, by John McCain when smeared by Bush/Rove in the 2000 North Carolina primary, and by Ann Richards in Texas when a Rove/Bush campaign whispered that she was a lesbian.

Lies, propaganda and distortions sway us: Orwell predicted it years ago.

Do we want to get used to it or do something about it?