With Heavy Military and Congressional Support for Afghanistan, you can not Blame only Obama for that Situation

There are apparently a grand total of two large industries that are still growing in the US: military and health. Congress, which keep in mind in theory still has the real decision over deploying forces, has and is continuing to demonstrate that they are whores for both of those remaining industries.

Obama has most of the generals telling him to send in more troops, and he has the Congress APPROVING the war. So actually I'm not all that angry at Obama in this particular case, at least compared to other issues. Obama has totally screwed up job creation and health, and he is very much to blame for those failures.

The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.

Unity-Progress Music: Luciano: Over the Hills

Michael Moore: Laugh out Loud

Games Without Frontiers: how the Worst Possible (Approximately) new Health Law will Pass

I think I see through this game at this point. The ones who would refuse to vote with Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama unless the public option is removed are serious about refusing their vote. They would support the Republican filibuster if the public option is left in. Therefore, the public option will most likely come completely out.

Meanwhile, the "progressives," who since they remain in a right wing party (the Democrats) are by no means full scale or truly serious progressives, are not truly serious about their vote. Because all they will do is vote against the final passage, when only 51 votes are required for passage. So it won't matter when they do that. Since there are at best half a dozen senators who will vote against the bill unless it has the public option, it will still pass, with roughly 55 votes.

The main point is, unlike the serious, very right wing, no public option senators, the "progressive" senators will not be refusing to vote for the bill when their vote really packs power, when 60 votes are needed, at the filibuster or cloture stage. They will only make a symbolic no vote when their vote can not change the final result, at the final passage vote.

SUMMARY: YOUR PROGRAM GUIDE TO THE NEXT SCENE IN THE DOG AND PONY PLAY
ACT ONE: The right wing senators insist on stripping the public option at the filibuster level (when they have real power.)

ACT TWO: The "progressive" senators insist on the public option, but are really just playing a public relations game, so they don't attempt to enforce the public option via the filibuster. They vote against final passage when there is no public option, but it is a symbolic, meaningless vote, because only 51 votes are needed for passage at that stage.

This is how one of the worst laws in World history will soon be coming to a country near you.

the above was written in response to this news article about Bernie Sanders at Common Dreams.

The Health Reform (or Deform) is Unconstitutional: a 2009 Introduction

That the health insurance law being debated right now is unconstitutional will become obvious in the coming years, when the courts are deluged with suits by damaged parties in search of relief, and when at least several dozen separate, detailed legal arguments are made that the law is unconstitutional, not all of which could possibly be incorrect. I mean, where there is a huge amount of smoke, there is a fire or something very close to a fire, I can assure you.

This was an essay I wrote in less than one hour flat in response to someone asking about the subject on Common Dreams. I almost never write an essay that quickly. The only time I write that quickly is when I am literally 100% convinced that what I am writing is true and correct in every way....

Well it obviously is unconstitutional since it violates the spirit and, indeed, the basic reason for the Constitution and thus why the US broke off from England: there shall be no more arbitrary laws, taxes, and regulations promulgated from on high (by the King or Queen of England back in those days) without true representation. Technically, though, many revolutionaries would have wanted to break off from England even if the English monarchy had provided a democracy and full representation for the colonials.

This law is obviously unconstitutional in a very fundamental sense. It reestablishes exactly what the Revolution and the Constitution banned, which is subjection to taxation, laws, and regulations without due process and without real representation. The executives and employees of the health insurance companies are foisted upon the people as their health care representatives by this law. The obvious problem is, these are private sector, profit seeking individuals. These health insurance people can not be voted out of office. Their objective and their only duty is to make more money for themselves and for their shareholders. They have no true legal duty or even moral responsibility to make sure you get the health care you might need. Whereas by contrast, in other countries, Government officials operating community-based health systems are legally and morally responsible for the health of the tax paying citizens.

The health insurance executives and employees can not even be exposed in the media as incompetent the way government officials can and often are. They can be UNOFFICIALLY exposed as incompetent at lower traffic internet sites, but the health insurance executives and employees can not be officially and authoritatively exposed as incompetent in the largest media outlets which, like it or not, are the ones that are considered to have the most credibility, and also the most power to change things, in the current right wing US system.

Moreover, the representation in the current US system, as most people here know, is a fake representation. For one thing, there is literally no representation other than right of center representation. Workers and non-right-wingers obviously have essentially no real representation in the US system since roughly 1980.

While essentially all reputable countries in the World, from roughly 1920 to 2000, established real representation for non-right-wingers, the US went in the opposite direction after 1980 if not before that, and eliminated representation for them.

Whether someone has or does not have due process is a major constitutional standard that is ubiquitous throughout the Constitution. The lack of due process in the health care deform would be taking away most of the liberty of people to decide how to arrange for their health care needs. People are funneled into this or that mechanism based on their income and on certain status aspects closely related to income, and they literally have no choice in this regard. (They may have trivial choices within a quite narrow range of choice.)

The health care mechanisms themselves are widely disparate, up to and including very different survival rates. If your income is such and such you are forced into this health care with this survival rate. If your income is this other amount, you are forced into this other health care, with this other survival rate, and which is totally different from what the guy with the other income gets.

Then since there are a lot of regressive taxation provisions where either (a) the money goes to a private for profit company instead of a community-based government and (b) the money goes to the government, PAID AS A PENALTY BY PEOPLE WHO WILL BE LEFT BEHIND WITHOUT HEALTH CARE, but is an extremely regressive penalty against those who literally can not comply, and also against some who will refuse to comply with losing their liberty to arrange for their health care without excessive and/or without irrational interference by a toxic combination of government authority and greedy and incompetent health insurance corporations.

So in summary this new law is like a snake pit of unconstitutional aspects and provisions; there must be dozens. Probably most of these numerous unconstitutional aspects and provisions will be litigated for literally decades to come, up to and including at the Supreme Court.

But you must remember about the courts:

(a) Just because something is unconstitutional does not mean that it will be ruled unconstitutional. There are "practical" (right of center) political and economics aspects that can (and will likely often in this case) trump the constitutionality. The bottom line in this regard is that the powers that be have taken the gloves off and they are clearly bent on impoverishing the general population from either lack of jobs, forced expenditure on health insurance, or both.

(b) Even if this or that specific thing is eventually ruled unconstitutional, it may be only a minor provision ruled thus. Or it may be a big provision, but you or I may be dead or almost dead, and bankrupt due to paying the health insurance execs years earlier than when that finally happens. The Supreme Court will not give refunds (or retroactive health status improvements) to every last person who was harmed by an unconstitutional law while it was in effect.

(c) In the relatively rare case where a law is plainly ruled unconstitutional, the government that passed it often makes clever cosmetic changes which do not actually make it constitutional, but then the Supreme Court will nevertheless rule it as now constitutional, as a kind of good faith gesture among and between the very top public sector elites in the country.

Note: this is merely a very basic outline of what is truly a massive subject. Much is left out here, and there are without a doubt unconstitutional aspects that I am not yet aware of (yet). But this very quick expose is good enough for a comment before the damn thing has even officially passed!

The above was written in response to a comment and in response to this article on Common Dreams.

Common Dreams is the one Internet Place you Definitely need to be

I just want to say at the moment that Common Dreams, among the well known, older progressive sites that have comments, seems to be just about the only one that is overwhelmingly against this very bad law. Congrats to everyone who comes here and doesn't bother with the highest traffic progressive sites, such as Huffington Post and Daily Kos, etc. where (I would assume, because to be honest I seldom go to them, laugh out loud) there is a complete and confusing split of opinion, which is what you expect when the principles of non-right wing politics and economics are either not fully understood or not fully accepted.

Common Dreams has NOT been left confused and split, and this is outstanding and notable.

Go to one of those sites and you will end up very and needlessly confused as to whether the law is a good one or a bad one. Laws are either good or bad, based mostly on the total amount of good and bad they do. Yet Huff Post, Daily Kos, BuzzFlash, etc. are going to be hopelessly confused and split as to whether this proposed law is good or bad. They don't fully understand economics and politics, and they like to ignore what the other countries are doing, at least when it's "crunch time", what else can I say?

So in short, screw those other sites. I hate to be blunt, but it is a fact that you are not a true progressive if you support this legislation.

I for one will not only never vote either Republican nor Democrat, but I will never be participating in the other "progressive" sites, which when all was said and done, mostly sold out, to one extent or another, to the right wing Democrats and their need to pass something, anything, so as to (in their view) avoid losing election the next time they are up.

Common Dreamers know that no law is perfect, but we also damn well know a law that is worse than nothing when we see one. And we can detect a law that is a complete sell out when we see one. Moreover, we know that things would be better off, not worse off, if nothing at all were passed instead of the turkey.

Further, we know that you technically don't even need national laws for there to be beneficial actions, such as for example the free, temporary health care clinics that used to be only in 3rd world countries but have popped up in the US lately. Or how about progressive physicians who accept cash payments on a sliding scale? The point is, if the government is incompetent or too right wing, there are many, many other ways to get the jobs that need doing done.

The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams. More precisely, though, this particular Unity-Progress article was in response to a very impressive, overwhelming rejection of the proposed and likely to pass health care reform (deform, actually) a true legislative disaster in the making

Logically, the Proposed Health law can not Pass, but...

Yes, logically, this can not pass, but as we all know, time and time again in the last 30 years, the two right wing parties have seemingly conspired together in a bizarre "dance of death" (death not for them but for their system and for the common people in it) to make sure that really bad legislation gets passed. Call it the nightmare that won't end, or the endless horror movie. Even when a bad law looks doomed to fail, it passes anyway.

Then meanwhile of course, the country goes farther and farther down the drain. Because bad laws make a country go down the drain ("duh": Homer Simpson)

Therefore, I have already been spending some time on disaster control assuming that this madness eventually passes.

The correct solution for the two right wing parties, who refuse any significant community health programs and procedures that have effectiveness, incidentally, was for them to just settle for the most basic and obvious health insurance reforms: no more rescission, no more exclusions for pre-existing conditions etc. If the right wing lawmakers do end up with nothing, it will be what they deserve (but obviously not what we deserve).

At least one and preferably both of the existing right wing parties need to implode, to be replaced by a new non-right-wing party, one that has truly marketable branding not dead on arrival due to propaganda, that will vote in single payer and other real cost controls.

The above was in reponse to this article at Common Dreams.