She—thanks for that. TAO, too.

When Stephen Hawking was asked, “Are you afraid for teh survival of Planet Earth?” (I am para-phrasing here..), he replied, “No. The planet wil survive, and more life will spring up. It is mankind that will be shaken off like bothersome fleas”.

I wrote an essay on it once—silly, I know. (Marine Biology, along with experience diving)But, it was , to the effect, that the eternal sea wil remain largely as she is, amd will recover quickly when man is gone. The only choice we may have now, is to decide whether the next intelligent “builders” will consider whether we were a well-meaning, but flawed species, or, the biggest destroyers of life that this planet wil ever know”!” (There are many intelligent species here, but, we are the only ones who seem to feel the need to build—and BUILD)

I know that if you see man as more than another mammal, this would not make sense to you. But, when I did some volunteer work with wild marine mammals, people used to ask, “If cetaceans are so smart, why dont they build cities?” etc. My answer was alwasy, “Why in hell should they? They play, make love (they really do—you should see it!! They are NOT shy!), eat, raise their children,and never ruin their homes. Maybe they see us as the fools!”

Just some food for thought!

Yes, Tao Walker, walker of the way, We ARE what we DO.  Well-said and well given.  Your wisdom is always appreciated, even though I try at times to fit what you say into my culture.  Like putting snow boots on over shoes.

Eventually, the Earth will reclaim itself, in its own way.  Often unnoticed, the Earth takes care of itself. It is big and humans are small.  And beyond that the Universe will take care of it, in its own way.  Humans are not mere interlopers but who are here on the Earth just as anything else is, but who will either learn to survive within the bosom of nature, or will begone.  It is as simple as that!  As conscious beings, humans can choose.  They can choose to be authentic or fakes.

This old Indian is visiting relatives for awhile on the Sunrise coast of Turtle Island.  Others here have responded helpfully to Dr. Knowitall’s concerns about the “shape” of things when this already foundering Titanic of a civilization slips beneath the tides of Time.  His worries about the fate of each “individual,” clearly sincere, are nevertheless misplaced. 

When any Living Being meets something that seeks to perpetuate its “self” by destroying everything “not” itself, that Being will respond according to His or Her given nature.  Our Mother Earth, for example, having encountered just such a thing in the shape of our tormentors, has met them with (among others) that part of her natural immune system which is what in English goes by the name “Humanity.”

The tormentors in-turn, recognizing us for what we are here, have tried to co-opt us, and convert Humans to their own purposes….much like the agent of AIDS takes over a part of a Person’s immune system and tries to turn it against the “host” body.  Also in a parallel fashion, “modern medicine” mistakes the activities of our immune system for some kind of “defense mechanism” engaged in a “life-or-death” struggle, a “zero-sum” battle with some “invading” organism.

Our tormentors don’t see, either, that the actual organic function of immune systems is to find The Way for us ALL to go on living together.  This living process can take what seems, from an “individual” human perspective, a long time….many thousands of generations, in fact.  In the course of it, and depending on how desperately “self”-contained some particular organism has become, there will be an awful lot of what might be called “attrition.”

Us free wild Human Beings don’t take any of this “personally.”  None of it is any kind of “judgement” on us as Peoples or as Persons.  This is the organic function of Humanity within the Living Arangement of our Mother Earth within the Song ‘n’Dance of Life Herownself.  We ARE what we DO.

Right now the process has engendered, among other responses, a Human one that is “six-and-a-half billion strong”....a familiar eventuality in the presence of any “infection.”  So will be whatever happens to those numbers when the “foreign” organism is either brought into balance with Life’s Way here or our Mother Earth “dies” (along with all Her Children) in the process of helping the tormentors get free of their extreme alienation.

“It’s nothing to get hurt about….”

HokaHey!

Paracelsus, what if eugenics and euthanasia is requested by someone?  Then no one is taking any authority over another but acquiescing to someone’ s wants.  What if there is no judgment involved other than the one who wants to die because the pain is unbearable. and another helps them out?  Let’s put all the past injustices aside.  They obviously support your opening statement.  But if that is not the case, the Great Chain of Being was a big philosophical lie, and it is because it is simply a metaphor for a hierarchical linking from basic physical elements to a deity, or prime mover and we all just don’t accept that idea even though Milton in Paradise Lost ranked angels, etc.  The main idea is that everything one can imagine fits into the chain and that gives order and meaning to the universe.  It is a patriarchal model that I know free-thinking women would not accept for one thing.  It is the main argument for the existence of god.  Any argument against the Great Chain then is an argument against god.  There are several of those. Dawkins and Dennett are two who argue persuasively.  However, Darwinism does not support the argument either way.  Contrary to popular belief the Darwin studies neither proves nor disproves the existence of god.

If someone does not want their life managed in any way for some collective good, then it is only ethical that they leave the collective.  The reason there is a collective is for its good.  Morals are collectively established.  Without the collective there is no need of morals.  If everyman (or woman) was for themselves, then there is no collective.  One does not need to be a herd animal to be part of a collective and want that collective to be healthy.  Morals help provide health to a collective.  Morals have to be carved out of perceptions and understandings of human value.  Those morals are what becomes values in the plural. 

I have not made up my mind as to the value of humans.  My gut tells me every human has a worth and I have given it a great deal of thought.  Does consciousness give mankind the right to life more than anything else?  But then when I think about the millions upon millions of humans whose conscious lives have been ended by wars and personal greeds of men, I often think what was it like for even just one of those murdered to be alive, all those anonymouses.  Was it just to be murdered?  To have a life then not have a life?  Then all the millions upon millions throughout the history of humankind who have died by natural disasters, or diseases, or malnutrition, what was it like for those people, what was their life like or worth?  What was it like for them the moment before death?  There are millions upon millions who have died that hardly anybody ever knew about, or nobody knew they even died.  I sometimes see in my mind’s eye those piles of human dead the result of some oppression, natural or man-made.  Seems like once a human is born, they are entitled to have a decent and nourishing life.  But is that true?  Do all men seek and deserve happiness?  I think they do, but is it true?  How do we decide?  Religions give various answers, science gives others. If there is randomness to living or dying then what possible reason would a deity have to create that scene?  Seems like as rational beings we need to talk about this more in open forums like this.

KDelphi,

I agree that ‘annoy’ should not equal ‘ban’. I haven’t visited the Common Dreams site is several months now, if only because time is limited for me. I pretty much confine myself to my first favorite, - truthout.org and here at Truthdig.

I also think these are good questions that you’ve proposed, (ones I had myself) in terms of the medical care coverage. In one respect, you’ve possibly counted on more coverage than there might be available. That would be in respect to those who are SO poor that they are on Medicaid. Well, not ALL of those that poor ARE on Medicaid.

I was without ANY coverage when I lost my job, and became disabled, even though I had ZERO income. I applied for Medicaid at the time, but I was turned down. (no real answer as to why). As it turned out, that’s right when I needed a whole bunch of medical care, including major surgeries to survive cancer. I did get medical treatment at the County.

Now, as for the thing about not being able to utilize any of these tax credits, I admittedly thought the same thing myself, because I’m not required to pay taxes on my Social Security Disability income. However, I’ve been learning more on that lately. Just because people on Social Security aren’t usually required to pay taxes or file a return doesn’t mean that they CAN’T file and get a refund, even if they HAVEN’T paid taxes, which is what McCAIN’S plan would supposedly allow for. (You said Obama’s plan involves tax credits, and I’m not sure how correct that is. It may involve some credits for specific groups, but his plan is simpler than that.) One can either keep the coverage they have, and pay less for the premiums. Or, they can purchase a plan from the government. If they can’t afford either, then I guess they stay on Medicaid as you’ve said. But, that’s not the same as having ZERO coverage or health care.

Anyway, I’m gonna check out more on this tax credit thing. I’ve honestly not considered it because of what you’ve already said. Most people on Social Security, (at least the kind they’ve paid into all of their employed lives) don’t pay taxes.  But, I’ve been told that tax credits do allow them to file a tax return if they choose, in order to receive these credits.

Meantime, I don’t think anyone has ever suggested that the US ‘CANNOT do’ what Canada has done in terms of it’s medical coverage, so you don’t have to be convinced of that. I think the only think you have to consider (along with everything else) is that the US is NOT Canada!! We’re just not Canada anymore than we are Cuba, or France, or Germany, or Sweden, or the UK or any other place that operates a different system.

So, it’s not that we CAN’T, but that people who have voted in the past, and held all of the sway, have chosen NOT to make the health of their fellow citizens a priority. (and that of course IS stupid, but that’s not how they see it).

It’s a way of discriminating against whomever cannot afford whatever it is. It’s social Darwinism at its core.

In short, why would people, (particularly racists) want a dime of their tax dollars spent on the upkeep of others they’d just as soon see in the cemetaries anyway? (or at the bottom of the Ocean?)

So again, it’s not because we CAN’T provide more coverage to more people. It’s because the ones with the money don’t want to pay for it, and nothing is free. That’s a US mentality that has so far prevented us from having such a structure. It hasn’t ALWAYS been this way. This has come about in the past 30 or so years, because of the greed and the deregulation.

I don’t see how we can really put this in the ‘Blame Obama’ column, even though his fix is not the most preferred. It’s a step at getting us to where we need to be in terms of single payer medical care coverage. And again, I don’t think it’s *his* plan that relies on tax credits.

Here are some stats on the homeless mess—I’m sure it is worse. I am having trouble finding anything more recent than 2004—when it was at 3% or 8 million.

http://www.policyalmanac.org/social_welfare/homeless.shtml

And here are stats on how many are considered “mentally ill”. http://www.nchv.org/background.cfm

http://www.samhsa.gov/matrix/statistics_homeless.aspx

These are stats on how many are veterans (800,000) and 45 % of those are classified as “mentaly ill”

http://www.nchv.org/background.cfm

10% of them are elderly

http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/facts/ elderly.html

Children account for 39%:

http://lahsc.org/wordpress/educate/statistics/unite d-states-homeless-statistics/

Anyone who has a “problem” with the “re-distribution of wealth” (mostly ill-gotten, anyway—NOBODY deserves “$100 million” anyway), should think hard about those statistics.
If we have no “middle class”, we have no democracy.

How many “need to just get a job” (how many are working poor)

http://salt.claretianpubs.org/stats/homeless/home.html

19%, it seems. I cannot imagine getting up off of the ground, with no water, shower or coffee, to go to work at some greasy spoon. How can they ever advance??

And “near-honmelessness” ia an even bigger problem people living in sub-standard housing, vermin infested low income housing, ramshackle trailers and without plumbing, say, in Appalachia, as well as poor urban areas

http://74.125.45.104/search?q=cache:hasLNFQCoH8J:www.t hriventbuilds.com/media/files/Stats.doc+Statistics+on+homel essness+and+substandard+housing&hl=en&ct=clnk&c d=1&gl=us

Try 95 million. “substandard housing”—overcrowded, unsafe, and they wil all die too young. This is what supply side capitalism has produced. The fairly lame discussion of a slightly more progressive tax system, shoudl be NOTHING to any US citizen who has a home, food, heat, plumbing, and a reasonable expectation of medical care—even if only in an emergency.

As to the “assissted suicide” issue—no one should have to ask the doctor to “kill” anyone—he can leave the means with the person who wishes to end their life without considerable pain. (The movie “The Sea Inside” was a good example)YOu have to realize that no one asked to be born. No one asks to be born where they are or in their circumtances.

cyrena—I se what you are saying, but “annoy” should not equal “ban”. If people do not like what others are saying—scroll past it.Obama’s plan involves tax credits. If you do not make enough money to pay taxes—what woudl it do for you? If you do not have enough income to “buy” ANY plan—how wil it help you? If you are so poor taht you are on Medicaid, you wil just stay there. And you wil not be abl to work, nor bring in any money. You wil have to continue with your lousy Med. HMO. If you pay $12,000 a yr for a plan, but , make only about $40,000—$2500 is not going to do squat. You cant take it off if you dont pay taxes.

The key word, I guess is “BUY”—there are a whole lot of people who just cannot BUY health care. I have no problem at all, esp. in regards to the recent total theft of the middle class by the elites,with taxing the rich to give SOMETHING back to the country which allowed them to pursue empty profits in the name of “freedom”.I stil am unconvinced that the uS “cannot” do what Canada ,etc. does. Like JFK said, “Some men see things as they are and say why. Some see things as they arent and say ‘why not’?” THAT, I submit, is what annoys people—because, every civilized country on the planet does some form of it, and the answers to why not are just not believable anymore. It is that “educating themselves about the world ” traveling people are doing more of—if they have the money

I wish people would just say, “We do not WANT to do it”. (I am not saying that that is you, cyrena)Like I said to the “guy” on CD—I would almost rather have a neo-con say to me, “Look, I dont give a damn”, then to go through years of tweaking, while peopel die needlessly.

It was 20 odd years ago that I availed myself of teh single payer system in Europe—if someone had told me that, at this late date.. the uS would stil being trying to “tweak” “free mkt. capitsliam”—I would have never come back! It is unfair, Peopl e are dying needlessly. We need to pass HR 676, and subsidize those that cannot pay.

That is what I think.,

My aversion to eugenics and euthanasia has to do with those who think they have the authority to decide for whomever what is a good birth or a good death. To assume such a judgment is to have the power of a god. In the past kings and queens through the divine right to rule determined who lived and died. This was unquestioned for the most part in medieval times, because all life was part of the Great Chain of Being. Notice that the social ladder is a recent innovation of the modern era. Chains of their own nature are immutable. Once born at a certain link of the natural order, most people died at no higher rank than chain they were born into. So our betters used religion as a basis to cull their populations through warfare. Now we have the more certain and inevitable faith of science to intervene against individual will. We begin with the right to birth control and the right to die, but under the most propitious crisises we could see that rational utility theory would require that certain people not reproduce as duty, and submit themselves to death as duty to the state, for the individual is only a unit of an organic state, whose health overall is paramount. Whether such a death or sterilization is beneficial to bottom line of a health care corporation or is required as patriotic fealty to the state, the result is that the individual is disparaged and the collective is honored. Taking a hit for the team is not merely a cliche, it is a pledge of allegiance.

Such sentiments are antithetical to my libertarian loyalties. I am not a herd animal. I will not have my life managed for some collective good.

The 2001 article The Dutch Way of Death, criticizes socialized medicine.  It asks humankind to think about the value of human life.  Does euthanasia have a place in human society?  If we put aside the question of god and religion, which in a world where such ideas are not uniform and hence cannot drive the discourse, then we are forced to use our human consciousness to determine whether or not there is ever a moral moment when one may take one’s own life (suicide) or end life for another (euthanasia).  It is a question of morality and whether human suffering because ending suffering through direct action are moral issues.  If they are moral issues, then our community, our society, that makes the moral rules, must also decide the condition for morals.  It also includes a discussion of what sufferiing means.  All these are difficult matters to consider, but if such articles are thrown into the fray so to speak, then serious thought and vision of consequences are demanded.  It is not meant to be simple.  If it were simple, then there would be no need for the article nor our consideration of it.

What is the value of human life becomes a broad stroke question with different strands.  For instance, not only inflicted dying for those who are extremely ill, but sending people to war for ideological reasons that change as regimes change and thus nullifies firm reason for such social killing, and it is social killing since the community does not stop the deaths due to war.  Capital punishment is another reason for the legal taking of a life and whether it is ever moral for the community to take a life.  The question of abortion falls in the same category as euthanasia and alleviant suicide, if it may be called that, but for very different reasons, although illness may be one of them.  Reasons for abortion are not singular and needs to be discussed within the scope of what I call Death by Society.  For a working definition, alleviant suicide is when the self-inflicting fatal act is due to suffering beyond bearableness. 

So these are questions that need dialogue.  And there is no better place than this forum.  Since Paracelsus brought this into the forum with the 2001 article, it is my thought that he ought to start the discussion with a question. 

The only suggestion I would make to those who would engage in such discussion, a symposium as it were, is that reasons be given for any position taken, and that they not include religious reasons since that will force you to confront your own deep psychological reasons:  Why you hold that position.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.htm l?id=95000390

The Dutch Way of Death
Socialized medicine helped turn doctors into killers.

by RICHARD MINITER
Saturday, April 28, 2001 12:01 A.M. EDT

AMSTERDAM—Seven years ago, Dr. Niko Wolswinkel was asked to kill someone.

On a Monday morning that he will never forget, the Dutch physician’s patient, a 77-year old woman dying from cancer, asked him to kill her.

As a purely legal matter, he knew he could do it. While euthanasia had not yet been officially decriminalized in the Netherlands—that happened earlier this month—in practice, it had. A string of high-profile court rulings in the 1980s made it nearly impossible for prosecutors to win euthanasia cases, and in the few instances in which doctors were convicted, their sentences were suspended. The Royal Dutch Medical Association had publicly approved of euthanasia, which was common even then. All that stood between euthanasia and his patient, Dr. Wolswinkel knew, was his own willingness to comply.

On that day, he searched his conscience. “It is very hard to speak of these things,” Dr. Wolswinkel said, with a quiet sadness in his voice. “Thirty years ago, this was something that people didn’t ask for.”

He couldn’t bring himself to kill his patient; doctors are supposed to be healers, not killers. And, as a Christian, he believed it was wrong to take into his hands the power of God. A few days later, his patient died naturally.

Most Dutchmen have come to a different conclusion; more than 80% favor “voluntary euthanasia,” according to recent polls. The Dutch Parliament recently passed a measure completely decriminalizing euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide. The Netherlands is now the first democratic nation on earth to permit, under law, doctors to kill their patients.

And they may be accustomed to doing so. Of the 130,000 Dutchmen who died in 1990, some 11,800 were killed or helped to die by their doctors, according to a 1991 report by the attorney general of the High Council of the Netherlands. (The 1991 report is the only complete report on euthanasia practices by the Dutch government.)

Some of these deaths are the classic cases cited by right-to-die advocates: A terminally ill patient, in agony, demanding to “die with dignity.” But many are not. An estimated 5,981 people—an average of 16 per day—were killed by their doctors without their consent, according to the Dutch government report.
...

Many old people now fear Dutch hospitals. More than 10% of senior citizens who responded to a recent survey, which did not mention euthanasia, volunteered that they feared being killed by their doctors without their consent. One senior-citizen group printed up wallet cards that tell doctors that the cardholder opposes euthanasia.

...

Some suggest that Dutch doctors are naturally more inclined toward euthanasia. That seems unlikely. In contrast to the physicians of every other Nazi-occupied country, Dutch doctors never recommended or participated in a single euthanasia during World War II, according to a 1949 New England Journal of Medicine article. Even Nazi orders not to treat the old or those with little chance of recovery were disobeyed. It only took a generation, essayist Malcolm Muggeridge noted, “to transform a war crime into an act of compassion.”

**********************************

If you trust the government to serve your best interests then give socialized medicine a try. What is strange is that you can die by euthanasia under the private system or the public system. “They” give you a choice, and that choice gives you all the sense of freedom in the world! LOL

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KDelphi,

Sorry to hear about all of the hassles and stress with the blogosphere as well as the family. I can only offer that these are such stressful times, for so many of us…I’d say the majority even. It produces I would suggest, different responses from all of us, both individually and collectively. In other words, we might not all be “affected” in the same way, or for the same reasons, (say like experience with the failed health care system of the past 3 decades at least). We might not even consciously KNOW what it is that produces these results that are the ‘symptoms’ of being in what has become an increasingly destabilized (and declining) society.

It’s been occurring across the land, and while we may not be experiencing the exact same components in each location, or at the same time, we’re all catching hell these days, and of course it’s been like that for much longer, for so many. So, I get what you mean here:

•  “I told him I thought it was totally inappropriate to ask us to back a health care plan that wouldnt cov er so many, in honor of someone—it seemed like a guilt trip! I told him I had lost plenty of friends and family to this capitalist health system.”

So have I, (lost loved ones). And yeah, the system is horrific. It’s been developing that way in the past 30 years. It didn’t really start out that way, but that’s what it’s come to. It won’t fix overnight.

HOWEVER, on a slightly different note, (but not really) I’m more tuned in to what you are actually considering when you speak of a “health care plan that WOULD NOT cover so many”…

That’s like the key focus for me here, because I’m not sure which ‘specifics’ about the health care plan from Obama, LEADS YOU TO BELIEVE, that it would somehow FAIL to cover many people. It seems like a sort of very vague and general complaint, which may have some truth to it, but we don’t know without the details, and we don’t know if you’re talking about anything that compares to anything else.

In other words, how do we know that this plan ‘won’t cover so many’? Why shouldn’t it? What he’s offering is something very much on the order of what we have now as medicare. At least that’s the best comparison that I can make. In short, anybody currently covered under whatever they wanna be covered under, can keep it. (and believe it or not, there actually IS excellent health care being provided in some areas of the nation, at reasonable costs, and some folks are actually OK with the plans they have) That’s the first part. They can keep what they’ve got through their employers or however else, if they want, and they can look forward to a reduction in the amount of their premiums with Obama’s plan.

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The 2nd part, (or additional option) is for those who don’t HAVE any insurance at all, and they will have the opportunity to buy into an excellent plan, (the kind that other civil servants have access to) at affordable sums of money. Affordable may (or may not, since I’m thinking of this as an example) be something like what Medicare recipients pay for their optional Part B health care coverage. Part A is included for Medicare recipients, and there is no charge for that part, which covers hospitalization related expenses. Part B is an optional plan that Medicare recipients can choose to purchase if they want. It amount’s to something around $100.00 a month (it’s been increasing) and that portion of the plan covers most of the other care (doctors/office visits/diagnostics/preventive care/etc).

A similar system would allow ANYONE to purchase this coverage, from the government. (which in effect is what Medicare is). It may cost more than what Medicare recipients pay, just because that system is connected to a state/public pension plan – Social Security…left over from the New Deal, and system that a huge portion of the population (boomers) are depending on. But, I think we’ve heard a guarantee that those premiums aren’t going to be anywhere near the outrageous and obscene sums that people are paying now, if they can pay anything at all. I spoke to a woman in the laundry room last week, he told me that she and her husband, (both retired after 40 years) are paying $800.000 a month for health care coverage. This is absurd.

So I said all of that to say this…How do we really KNOW that this will leave so many people still uncovered? I’m just asking and thinking out loud as part of the same exercise, because I can certainly see how it could still fail to cover a whole lot of people who have nothing through their employer, because they don’t have an employer, and therefore they don’t have any money to pay for premiums, no matter how ‘affordable’ they supposedly are. If you have no job, you probably have no money. That’s sort of just basic.

So, considering that there is NO plan on the table for covering those with NO money, and ALL of their children, there need to be some other programs that fill in the gaps until a new system can be phased in. Those are in place in many states and municipalities within them. Independent and non-partisan citizen groups haven’t waited on this. They’ve organized themselves and cut many of their own deals.

Having said all of that, I guess my point is that I believe the plans will continue to be tweaked over a long period of time, in order to ‘evolve’ into one that will service the overwhelming majority (not the simple majority) the overwhelming majority of the time. (none of this slipping through the cracks of a broken system). And, I think this is a damn good start to that decades’ overdue correction that we need.

I’m not claiming that this fixes it, or comes close, but I also know that people can, have, and should organize themselves as well, in conjunction with whatever the state intends to provide. THAT is the way to get the most coverage for the most people. It has to happen on more than one level, and it’s not such a simple operation, but it is doable.

I can understand that some may have become annoyed with your suggestion/comparison of what many of the European nations have done. We just aren’t them, size wise or in terms of government structure. Those are the kinds of logistical facts that cannot be escaped. If you want something closer to what those countries have, then the focus should be at your state level. That should be the case with all of us.

Meantime, as important as health care is, it is still only one of many crucial things to consider in casting a vote. Considering that, I admit I’m having a hard time understanding why at this point, there is still any question of Obama being the only choice.

She—Yes, it feels especially wierd, getting censored by people who used to belong to SDS or now belong to PDA.

It is not effective. Nor is it good for their tax exempt status!

I have not yet tried to log in—I wil let you know. I am happily reading the articles again—but dont tell them. It may be a mistake.! lol

Yeah, I’m going to go have a near beer (I’m diabetic) in honor of somebody’s birthday on another TD forum.  But yeah, that CD thing sounds very very weird.  Why would the webmaster even be involved on a forum site?  There is something rotten in Denmark about that.  I think I will write a letter to the CD Site Managers.  I’ve done it before.  How dare that webmaster!  I am really pissed.  I know TD throws people off now and then.  Even if I was an opponent of some of them I think they have a right to be on the forum as much as anybody.  I’ve written to TD about that.  Course people just come back as somebody else.  The whole thing is kind of silly.  If I have a challenge with anybody I think I should have to defend my own ideas, I don’t want some website editing or banning my or anybody else’s remarks. I think there should be personal regard and respect.  And sometimes when I feel insulted or disrespected, man I get really testy and bitchy.  But I’m really a nice girl. Ha ha.  Just an old chess player who hates to lose.  Gotta go have that beer.  Are you allowed back in to CD?  Yeah, we’ll gang up on the next incident.

She—when you go on CD, and some webmaster enters the thread to argue with people who might be disagreeing with Obama on some issues? Well, one guy jumps in and says “Well, health care is a conundrum” and I said, “Its not in these countries” and proceeded to list them.

We went around about that and how,people like him (who was one of my old heroes ) would be ok whether we had single payer or not and that some woudl not. I said, “What about the economies of EU and UK do yo not understand?”. I got logged off.

Then, the webmaster sent me , and some others, a webmail telling us to support Obama because his wife , who had died, wanted us to! She, you know my feelings (and experiences) about health care. I went off a bit.

I told him I thought it was totally inappropriate to ask us to back a health care plan that wouldnt cov er so many, in honor of someone—it seemed like a guilt trip! I told him I had lost plenty of friends and family to this capitalist health system.

The next day, I couldnt even open the site. It said, “sorry—ISP number ,...is banned”. I couldnt even link to articles on the site from other peoples’ posts!

Just today, I can read the articles. I havent tried to click on log in. Alot of good articles are on there, and, I had “friends” there. Nobody said anything about Nader supporters or others.

I guess I am allowed back in now. I dont know. But, it hurts. I dont have to agree with every policy!

So, I’ve been angry over it. If he banns me again—for this—lets all gang up on him! LOL

It is not just me—ther are entire webgsites for people “banned” from them. It is NOT the way to win support.

I’m sure you agree. I have to go drink a beer.

KDelphi, from what other website are you banned?  That is terrible.  Bah humbug.  I’d voice a complaint if I knew which one.  Just for the hell of it.  We have to fight censorship. 

I’ve been reading your posts on Truthdig for sometime now, and over at CommonDreams and I’ve never found any of them worthy of censorship!  Sorry to hear that happened.

She—Its ok. I dont disagree—I may be taking out on you what I am experiencing at other websites. I just dont think that it helps us to shut out other voices.

I have no big argument with you. I did not mean to be mean—I never THINK that I am—but, then I look..

This election is very hard for some of us…I like Obama—who doesnt? (Well, I am starting to find out! Not anyone here—it is just , some of it, very personal ,and that is not right)We belong to Third Parties, but we dont want another GOP. We are not completeley happy with Obama—but some people are just crazy about him! And they need to let up. It seems that, if I even mention another candidate, people go ballistic.

My family actually has me crying over it. I’ll send them an email by Brian Moore or Nader—and they do all these CAPS back, about how I shouldnt be listening to anyone else, or I will “lose the vicotry for Dems”.

That is a little extreme. I have also been banned from one other website.

Peace, girl..ok?

oops, I messed up with an italicizing.  I hope this fixes it.  I might have to try again.

Paracelsus, aren’t we talking about Biden?  Or are you just using this opportunity to flood us with all your favorite websites?  Now seems to me I questioned using The Centre for Research and Globalisation as not being able to be checked out.  Are you trying to spin it a different direction now?  Oh are you a slippery boy!  You might check out my post Oct. 30, at 3:29pm again.  But no matter.  Also I am not arguing for or against Clinton.  You can do that if you want but I am not interested in Clinton.  I was not aware of what he knew or did at that time and I have not studied it in the least, so I can’t say anything about it.  I am only interested in Obama and Biden. 

Okay I checked out all the links you provided and read through all of them!  I saw all the usual suspects but not a mention of Biden.  Obama’s picture is shown twice on the Federal News Service (FNS) but I do not see the relevance of what you are talking about.  And I’m not even sure now what it is you are]/i] talking about.  Thank you for all the links, it was a lot of work for you and I appreciate your effort a great deal.  Though I am not totally convinced by the CRG resource.  I’ve checked them out before and was unable to trace their information.  I do like to be able to follow leads through to reliable sources.