Brandon: I can’t say it any better than Canning did. It’s not the “government” that runs things into the ground, it’s the PEOPLE in the government. Especially the ones in charge.

I can personally attest that the government-run system in Australia does a good job delivering health care to the citizenry. Australians are not supermen and women. Compared to the American work ethic, they’re kinda slack-arse (but well-meaning.) The latter bit is the key part. They mean to do well, as a society, to take care of the fellow members of their society. (Kinda what Michael Moore was talking about in the final clip from his film.)

Can Americans do that? Sad to say, I don’t think so. I’m sad to believe that about America.

ctbrandon, it is not government, per se, that is the problem. It is government in the hands of Republicans and those Democrats who have sold out to the corporate sector.  The hard right intentionally runs public institutions into the ground so as to reinforce its ideological goal of a thoroughly corrupt, privatized society.  As the tax cutting guru, Grover Norquist, put it, he wants to reduce the size of government to the point that it “could be drowned in a bathtub.” 

They see the sole purpose of government as being a tool by which more money and power are delivered to those who already have it.

There is nothing intrinsically “bad” about government, big or small.  The key is who is in charge—the people or corporate wealth.

while i am not entirely convinced that turning over health care to our government is a good idea (have we actually seen them do anything right?) i firmly believe that no America should ever die simply because he or she couldnt afford proper health care. National Health Care could work, but it would have to be run by us, the citizens, and not by the already corrupt government. I am a big fan of Kucinich, and would love to have to choose between him and Ron Paul in 2008.

brandon
http://www.actforyourself.org

Ernest, thank you for rating my value as equal to Voldemurdoch’s, but that swap could never happen. You see, Rupe IS the U.S. government. Or, the drooling mouth-breathers who believe the mess that craps out of his TV network and newspapers are the only people whose opinions the U.S. government cares about.

And soon he’ll control the Wall Street Journal and the illusory number known as the Dow Jones Industrial Average. If he lives long enough, Rupe-a-dupe will own as much media as Wal-Mart owns retailing. It will be like the Ministry of Truth run by George Babbitt instead of Big Brother.

Since this thread is about health care, and since I work as a hospital nurse in a system of government-run medicine, let me say that it works better here than in the U.S. Yes, people pay taxes for it. But I’ve never had a patient worry that they would not get health care because they did not have enough money. As they say here, “No worries, mate!”

As far as Kucinich. Vote your conscience. We’ve got a rigged system and everyone wants to be a winner.

By voting for the less evil, you get evil and you lose and we all lose. The ante has been raised to a level that just doesn’t allow for business as usual, and Kucinich is the only one with the depth and breadth of understanding, and the only one who has consistently been out in the forefront with bills and ammendments to support his rhetoric. He’s the only one who can stand before the American people, before the world and make the kind of comments he’s making. The rest are really frauds, playing at being something they can barely sustain in front of the mirror.

If your a progressive who understands the systemic crux of our problems, who still holds hope over cynicism, then it’s Dennis Kucinich. Beyond that we’ve got lots of work at the grass-roots to create a movement that enables the kind of transformation Kucinich is talking about.

Michael Moore has recently noted that Dennis Kucinich is the only candidate running for President you “gets it.”  Conyers-Kucinich, HR 676 does precisely what Moore proposes.  It eliminates the unnecessary heathcare insurance middle man which makes up 31% of the spiraling cost of healthcare, replacing it with a government-run, single payer system.  It also provides a means for drastically reducing the spiraling cost of prescription medications.  The sham “universal healthcare” proposals of “all” the other candidates are variable schemes to subsidize the healthcare insurance industry.

On issue-after-issue, Kucinich stands head and shoulders above the rest, yet if your only source of information came from the conglomerated corporate media, you wouldn’t even know he was there.  Go to Kucinich.us.  Encourage everyone you know to do so as well.

Bukko, while your invasion of Australia might be going swell, we’re now stuck with the Aussie transplant, Ruppert Murdoch.  I say we arrest Murdoch, seize his U.S. assets, then engage in a prisoner swap, returning you to the U.S. where we can put you in charge of Fox News.  You can then fire all their right-wing pundits, slap a muzzle over Bill O’Reilly’s big mouth and have hire real journalists like Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzales and Bill Moyers.

I think the U.S. SHOULD invade Canada. The invasion force could be made up of all the people who are so sick of the fascist takeover of America that they want to get out of the country. And once all these people cross the border, they could promptly surrender and ask for internment in a nice Canadian POW camp. Probably with better health care than they had in the U.S.

Meanwhile, my invasion of Australia is going just fine!

God bless Michael Moore for all of his movies.

I hope “Sicko” has a much bigger impact on health care in this country than “Fahrenheit 9/11” did on the 2004 selection.

And now for something completely different…..

Jon Stewart is SO part of the problem!!

Last night (6/25/07) Jon Stewart from the Daily Show had an author on who had written a book about
the history of the Pentagon. His name is Steve Vogel and the book is titled
“The Pentagon - A History”.

Towards the end of the interview Jon Stewart starts making fun of those
“crazy conspiracy theories” that a plane didn’t hit the Pentagon and he asked
Mr. Vogel to debunk those theories.

Mr Vogel goes on to say (I’m paraphrasing) that all you have to do is talk to the family members
who died on the plane or in the Pentagon and once you see that reality you know what really
happened.

My jaw just hit the floor!!  UNBELIEVABLE!!!

I don’t have a direct link because it’s a Flash video, but go here and do a search
for the video of Steve Vogel on 6/25/07.

http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/inde x.jhtml

Google videos: 9/11 Press for Truth, Loose Change 2nd Edition