Author: glitterscale

I wander through the world somewhat clueless most of the time.  It was a big shock to me to see that the orangatan place bans conspiracy theory diaries.  I knew that they felt that concerns about voting irregularities borders on conspiracy theories.  But political speculation is rife with conspiracy theories.  For instance, I have speculated as to why Ms. Clinton got Bill to campaign for Lieberman.  (The sentence itself is an assumption that Bill didn’t come to Lieberman because he wanted to!)  Several theories were offered by others that sounded plausible.  The main one seems to be that the “establishment” is nervous about us hoi polloi making our own damn decisions about who will govern us.  I kinda like that idea, in as much as I figger that if they are nervous they at least know we are out here!
A third believe in 9/11 conspiracy

I never have believed in the Warren Commission and when I hear folks who are supposedly more intelligent than I say that it explains everything, I realize that I don’t really think they ARE more intelligent.  For one thing, nobody HAS adequately explained either Oswald or Ruby.  At least we know WHY the 9/11 suicides took place.

It has been said that people who believe conspiracy theories are genetically prone to do so.

So I have several questions for you all.  For those of you who do not believe in ANY conspiracy, why do you think that is so?  For instance, do you have so much faith and trust in leadership that you think it is impossible for any of them to conspire or do you think that you hate to think about things like that and just don’t?

For those amongst us, like myself, who see the worst in human kind and fully expect it, are you a particular conspiracy buff or do you embrace them all?

The repubs are hammering it in that we are in WW III except for one misguided soul who thinks it is WW IV!  WW II or WW IV  It is very discouraging to me that only the war mongers are getting the megaphone.  War is so not wanted, in spite of the human need for drama.  Some of the optimists think we will pull it off anyway.  My friend who deals with astrology says that Mercury is retrograde and people have communication problems right and left (punny punny!)

Whenever I get depressed it pays me to remember a simple exercise:  Take 30 minutes a day and write down what I am grateful for.
cont……
So what would your list include past family and friends?  What in this moment is precious and you would hate to see it gone?

And no, I am not talking chromosomes.  WaPo talked about the new generation as the “y” generation.  It labeled them as “passionate”.  What do you think are the labels for the various generations and where do you stand?

I am sometimes listed as a baby boomer, although I was born in ’41 before the war ended.  I don’t think of myself as a boomer, but as a transition person.

What is your story about your generation?

More on flip:
Mine is growing up in an empty country – Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico.  These three states were full of characters, (like the one legged bootlegger in Texas) but then the “yuppies” took over.  The states are brimming now with people.  And those people are colder, more uniform and less interesting in my eyes (boy, talk about prejudice!(of course it IS hard to compete with a one-legged bootlegger))  Mostly these impressions are from the ’80s which seemed to be a start on self centered thinking.

I know I am missing some categories in poll.  Let me know what they are and I will add them.  And if you feel you were a transition, i.e. not really in synch with your generation, then put yourself into one of the transition categories.

Thanks for indulging me in my curiosity.

We do not get enough information to make even informed guesses about what is going on in the world.  Our news media tends to use shorthand to proclaim this or that – liike they proclaimed Canada was going “conservative”.  Anybody care to rank Canada’s “conservatism” up against the good old USA wingnuts?   Canadian friends might tell us, but I am not sensing that they are witnessing the stark evisceration of their country’s morals as we are seeing.  Of course I am prejudiced.  I think worrying about an unborn fetus and promoting war is the height of nutness.  What is life after all and how much are we responsible for bloodshed in IRAQ?  Well wingnuts – I believe you have bought it all for us to bear.  We will be paying for iraq for a good long spell.  Thank you so much and I hope you enjoy the pain at least as much as I do.
More on the flip:
But I digress.  I was watching a story about Mexico’s election.  There the fellow painted the choices between the two leading candidates as a choice between Hugo Chavez like candidate and business as usual candidate.  And just like our 2000 election, there is a “Mexican Standoff”  with both parties coming too close to call.  But I don’t think we are getting the whole story (as if!).  How is it that Mexico can do a hand recount but aside from each party declaring victory I am not hearing the whining that goes on here about the cost of recounting.  Jeez, in the last few elections recounts have all created whining from everybody about the costs.  Get a life people!  If we have close elections, consider recounts a cost of doing business!

A lot of people on this site are concerned about affordable health care.  Some have very real, very terrifying needs concerning their health care.  I have watched as we have debated in public whether or not to have a one party pay system for health care.  And of course, Louise and Harry, brought to you by the courtesy of insurance companies fanned the fear of having impersonal health care.  And those ads killed the efforts by the Clinton administration to address health care.  Somewhat akin to the unisex bathroom idea killing equal rights for women.  

So what will be our design of choice for health care?

More on the flip.
Since then we have watched the pharm industry grip this nation’s purse strings with an iron grip!  Abramoff and his indian tribes are a joke compared to the pharm lobbying.  I live in fear of going to the doctor on some health issue and finding myself captive to some drug of this week’s choice. Doctors are inundated with propaganda from pharma and gifts as well.  Somehow or other there is also a way for pharma to track prescriptions from docs, I think, and probably some minor kick back scheme.  If nothing else, everyone knows that docs get all kinds of samples to let their patients try out.  And we all have heard the argument that the high prices for drugs are the price we pay for R&D within that industry.  

So how can we have reform without attending to those issues?

I propose that we drain the money making out of health care.  We allow insurance companies to become the niche marketer.  There are all kinds of areas for this to happen – cosmetic surgery, experimental techniques for various ailments, etc.  While we let basic health care stand on its own as a single payer through the government.  All drugs through that system are negotiated down to the rock bottom price.  Drugs for the other areas can float to whatever the people (and insurance companies) can bear.  Along with the single payer system we also support things like YMCA where exercise is a firm part of creating a healthy nation along with meditation, yoga and other forms of integrating body and mind and emotions and spirit.  Within the basic system, I believe that acupuncture should be a basic part.  It is better than surgery for a lot of ailments and can work with pain management better than some drugs.  However it works we need to have real R&D and not just window dressing for health care needs.  No R&D for basic health care should be funded by any medical or pharma group or affiliate or insurance group.  This should be viewed as strictly consumer and health alone.

How do we define “basic health care”?  I submit to you that it means life saving measures, check ups and some quality of life measures.  The latter we would have to negotiate over time.  Prosthetics, for example, are part of the latter and we would expect to get those, but motorized and computerized stuff might be part of the niche market.  Fertility issues would be split as well – day to day care such as birth control, abortion and pregnancies would be part of basic (yes abortion as it is part of the management of health).  While IVF and other extraordinary efforts would be part of the niche.

I submit to you that if we have true research into causes of disease free from corporate meddling, we might find some surprising answers to health care issues.

from their email:

GREENS CALL A NEW DIRECTION IN NATIONAL HEALTH POLICY: SINGLE-PAYER
COVERAGE; REPEAL OF ABSTINENCE-BASED HIV AND HPV PREVENTION

Greens identify the enemies of sound health policy: profit-based HMO,
insurance, and drug firms, and right-wing religious lobbies.

More from their email on the flip:
Again from their email:

“The Medicare reform bill passed in November, 2003,
benefited pharmaceutical companies while gutting
coverage for millions of working people and making
coverage difficult and confusing for many older
Americans,” said Jody Grage Haug, co-chair of the
Green Party of the United States.  Ms. Haug turns 70
in January.  “With the growing public realization that
we’ve been conned out of health care, now is the time
for a popular demand and legislative action to
introduce single payer.”

The dems have been silent about healthcare lately.  It seems that this issue would be theirs, not an environmental party.  But they are running away from all kinds of good issues lately.  

I happen to like what the greens are saying.

like this:

Health coverage in general, and AIDS/HIV treatment in particular, have
suffered because of cuts in services under the Bush Administration, said
Greens.  Party leaders also stressed that abstinence-only education, in
the U.S. and abroad (i.e., in nations receiving U.S. aid) under pressure
from the Bush White House, has placed even more lives at risk.  Many
women have no control over the conditions in which they have sex; these
policies leave them especially vulnerable to infection.
Greens noted recent attempts by Republicans to block a
new vaccine against cervical cancers caused by the
human papilloma virus (HPV), and compared it to the
prolonged Republican assault on condoms, including
measures to to obstruct availability and an FDA
requirement to place ‘warning’ labels on condom
packages.

“The justification is that making the cervical cancer
vaccine and condoms widely available ‘sends the wrong
message’ that sex outside of a monogamous marriage is permissable,” said
Rebecca Rotzler, national co-chair of the Green Party and Deputy Mayor
of New Paltz, New York.  “The message behind Bush policies that deny
information and prevention is that those who don’t conform to certain
faith-based standards deserve illness and death.”

They have this for additional information:
MORE INFORMATION

Green Party of the United States
http://www.gp.org
1700 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 404
Washington, DC 20009.
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
Fax 202-319-7193

Health Insurance Costs Exceed Annual Minimum-Wage
Earnings
By Debora Vrana, The Los Angeles Times, September 14,
2005
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-091405health_lat,0,4868032.story?coll
=la-story-footer&track=morenews

Physicians for a National Health Program
http://www.pnhp.org

According to some reports on the radio, Morrison switched parties so that he had a better chance of getting to the general election.  It seems that for the primaries only the wing nuts with issues come out for the votes and the moderates wait for the generals.  If you are even half way close to being a moderate and you want to run against a nut like Kline, going dem was a smart thing to do.  Of course, people will be scratching their heads in KS but they have elected a dem gov and at least one dem rep so the fellow has a good shot at making his mark in the election.

However, just as Dkos has become more and more “conservative” it is possible that the dems will likely tinge that way if the overflow of “moderates” comes into our party.  And this country is already so far right it veers into fascism.  What is a progressive to do?

It may be possible that consumer confidence may be a better indicator than polls regarding Mr. Bush’s performance.  For one thing, we are still at war and a good segment may not want to badmouth a sitting president at such a time.  But confidence about the future is a telling indicator.  Probably Bush’s minions will want to dismantle such an indicator pretty shortly as they have with all other things that might shed any light on their dark ops.
Confidence Sinks in September on Katrina  Yahoo News story.

…consumer confidence sank to 61.5 in September, the lowest since early March 2003, when confidence dropped to 61.4 as a nervous country hunkered down for the start of the
Iraq war.
September’s decline — the third straight month that confidence fell — followed a reading of 72.6 in August. The latest showing also underscored just how much consumers’ confidence has deteriorated compared with a year ago. In September 2004, consumer confidence was a robust 103.4.

So all the pres’s men managed to convince people that things were peachy keeno, even though violence was on the uptick in Iraq, but now, faced with disaster and no plans (as if the man understood plans!) people are finding out how bad the man is here at HOME.
Update [2005-9-9 13:32:6 by glitterscale]: Other polls showing Bush down as well.
Bush breaks through 40 percent floor

Bush has been an obsession with me for at least 6 years now. So I decided to look at his life from his pov (although it is also through my filters):

from Bush’s point of view:
I was born to a wealthy family.
My sister died from Leukemia but the family behaved as if nothing happened.  But we don’t talk about that.
I went to school at Yale and was a mediocre student, but it didn’t matter as my family had money.  But we don’t talk about that.
I was hooked on cocaine and booze for a while and I had some kind of “religious” experience, but we don’t talk about that.
I signed up for the national guard and took flight lessons.  I really did learn to fly a plane but I gave all that up for many reasons, some public, some not.  We don’t talk about that.

I worked on other people’s campaigns.
I was able to get on a couple of businesses but I was a failure at it all.  But I got some great contacts and we don’t talk about the failures.
I married a woman who had an accident herself and killed her old boyfriend.  But we don’t talk about that.
We’ve had two daughters, both of whom are just like me.
I was governor of Texas and I executed people but they were all guilty.
I became President of the United States thanks mostly to the judges my dad and the GOP appointed to the SCOTUS.  But we don’t talk about that.
I “won” a second term, although it may have been due mostly to friends in Florida and Ohio.  But we don’t talk about that.
I was President when the Terrorists hit New York with domestic airline planes and brought down huge buildings know as the Twin Towers.
I started a war in Afghanistan supposedly to get Bin Laden, although I am friends with a number of Bin Laden’s family.  But Bin Laden is still running lose.  But we don’t talk about that.
I then started a war in Iraq using doctored and false intelligence claiming Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction!  But we don’t talk about that.
During the campaign before my first term I claimed that I did not want to do any “nation building”.  But we don’t talk about that.   Now I am proud that Afghanistan has a new constitution and has voted and that Iraq has voted for people and is now working on a new constitution.  I am working very hard to suppress press stories here in the US about the Iraqis in general.  Thanks to the violence there reporters have not reported human interest stories in either Iraq or Afghanistan, thank goodness.  But we don’t talk about that.
I have created a gulag in Gitmo for “detainees”.  This has been quite satisfying as it has proven my powers as a president.  We have had some flack about torture in prisons, including Gitmo, but I have a lot of supporters who appreciate being tough and hard.  But we don’t talk about that.
I am currently President dealing with the aftermath of a Category 4 hurricane – Katrina.  I have hired a man for FEMA who has few credentials for the job.  There is no death count and I am working hard to suppress any speculation of what the death count might be in Louisiana.  But I am hoping that my supporters will be happy that a number of poor black folk are now not a problem to the coffers of the United States.  But we don’t talk about that.
I view the Katrina thing as a great opportunity for my vice president Cheney to again enrich his old company.  We are again going to give out unbid contracts to a Halliburton subsidiary.  But we don’t talk about that.
In addition the oil companies are going to be able to raise prices without me being charged with complicity.  Refinery production has been cut by at least 12 percent so energy prices will start to go through the roof.  I am quite satisfied that the winter heating costs will boost those oil companies coffers greatly.  I owe those boys big time for all their campaign money.  But we don’t talk about that.

So here is a man who has learned “not to talk about it” on most everything.  But his handlers give him “9/11” sprinkled throughout every speech.  But perhaps this is the reason he had a box on his back.  Without coaching he literally has nothing to talk about!

[From the diaries by susanhu, with addition below.] After Hastert’s insensitive comments about bulldozing NO, he failed to show up to vote on the $10.5B aid package. Instead he was off to another of those incessant Repub events — fundraising. Then he took the afternoon off to look at antique cars I believe. MoveOn or Louis Slaughter, where are you for one of those petitions for the man to GO! Don’t go away mad and don’t let the door hit you on the butt. Just GO.
(From WaPo: “Hastert Tries Damage Control.”)

In Syracuse, N.Y., former president Bill Clinton was discussing New Orleans’s dilemma when someone described the speaker’s comments. Had they been in the same place when the remarks were made, Clinton said, “I’m afraid I would have assaulted him.” — Same WaPo Story (Thanks to BooMan for e-mailing Clinton’s comment to me.)