Friday, July 31, 2009

From Birthers to Deathers Healthcare Reform ,Racism and Class Warfare

Health Care racism & class warfare Joan Walsh at Salon.com
G.Gordon Liddy a Birther not dissuaded by facts or reality
Lou Dobbs unrepentant in his underhanded nuanced racist attacks on Obama's authenticity as the legal president of America

Once again the Republicans and their propagandists in the media are resorting to calling Obama a racist or that he is not an American citizen & is therefore not the real president so they can launch an all out attack on him .Republicans and their "Echo-chamber distort the facts about Obama's birth along with accusing him of a hidden agenda to destroy traditional America by giving more benefits to blacks than to whites. They also make up stuff and pass it around as if it were facts such as claiming Obama's Healthcare Bill is being used to promote abortions and euthanasia. But if abortion is a legal medical procedure why shouldn't its cost be covered along with other medical procedures even some liberals think abortion shouldn't be covered.

As a Canadian citizen the debates over healthcare seem rather ridiculous why shouldn't every citizen have the right to the best Healthcare that can be offered. Why should American citizens be forced to remortgage their house or go bankrupt because of Healthcare costs.

I know we Canadian or at least many of us believe Healthcare like basic education is not a privilege but a right. But wealthy American citizens believe that the best Healthcare should only be available to the wealthy who are a privileged class who are Exceptional after all .

For what's the point of being wealthy they claim if any ordinary citizen is able to get the best Healthcare possible . The Rich and upper class in America believe that only they should be able to see the best doctors and specialists and benefit from the advances in medicine & medical technology.

These wealthy Americans dread the thought of of some poor white person or a poor black American or poor Hispanic American being able to access decent Healthcare rather than basically relying on clinics & hospitals which are understaffed and underequipped which are essentially Clinics for Paupers . As William Blake once said " Pity would be no more/if there were no poor"- How else could Americans gauge their success if there were not millions going without decent healthcare or education, or proper nutrition or decent housing. As John Hagee who represents a rather nasty side of the American psyche said about the poor, the mentally ill or even Veterans who live on the streets- he said " Let them Starve" this is what passes these days for Christianity in America.

The point is that other western industrialized countries believe in " human Rights" for all citizens and not just the rich and powerful or the upper Middle Class who faun over the The Rich and Powerful hoping to join their ranks one day or at least be invited to their Garden Parties or allowed into their exclusive country clubs and schools and universities or even their fancy hospitals.

It is no wonder the United States has such a high mortality rate compared to other industrialized nations.
America has also a second rate education system compared to other nations but don't ever tell an American that they believe their country is the best in everything, This is not so except when it comes to having more Nukes than other countries. They are also among the top five when it comes to Capital Punishment and no. 2 when it comes to executing children and the Mentally Retarded or even when it comes to having the most outdated draconian unjust drug laws.

"Is GOP using race to block Obama agenda? Ya think?" by Joan Walsh at Salon.com, July 30, 2009

...Matthews led into our segment, mainly focusing on Glenn Beck's nutty claim that Obama is racist, by noting that Obama's poll numbers are dropping on healthcare, and I took the opportunity to point out that there's a connection between the organized campaign to label him some kind of racist alien socialist who's ineligible to be president, and his difficulties getting his social and economic agenda passed...




and Joan Walsh continues:

There is no question in my mind, and I doubt there's much in Mfume's either, that these divide-and-conquer tactics stay in use because, well, they still work. Beck and Limbaugh won't convince a majority of Americans that Obama is either racist or Kenyan, but the dirty fog of their constant smears has to tarnish Obama at least a little. The irony is the last 50 years have seen brutal class warfare in which the forces behind the wealthy transferred income and privilege consistently upward. Yet now the forces of reaction are claiming Obama is the class warrior, and the race warrior, declaring war on whites, and trying to snatch the status-quo privileges -- like healthcare, allegedly -- from the haves, to provide for unworthy have nots.

It's a noxious strategy, and we can't let it succeed. Obama likewise can't let Blue Dogs and allegedly "moderate" Republicans derail his agenda, either. Democrats lose because they fail to deliver on their promises to constituents. Bill Clinton delivered welfare reform, beloved by the right, but almost none of the social supports that were supposed to go along with it, and maybe most important, no healthcare reform that would have made middle-class lives easier. Obama can't make that mistake; he doesn't just need a bill, any old bill, to pass. He needs reforms that will expand healthcare to those who don't have it, bring costs down for those who do (and for the government), and reduce the incentives for profiteers to greenlight unnecessary coverage, and block needed care, all in the interest of big profits. A bad bill might be better than none.


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Racist anti-immigrant anti-Obama Lou Dobbs on his show Tells the "Uppitty" Black Man Roland Martin To Pipe Down During Obama Birther Debate.
Is Dobbs trying to remind Roland Martin that he should recognize the fact that as a black man he is privileged to be on Dobbs' show. Only white men can shout and get emotional like Dobbs or Beck or Limbaugh or Hannity etc.

Dobbs doesn't appreciate being contradicted by a black man and told that the whole Birther issue is silly nonsense. He tries to force Dobbs' hand that Dobbs is using the Birther conspiracy theory as just another means to attack Obama and raise doubts among American citizens regarding.




Gordon Liddy on Hardball with Chris Mathews.

"Hardball": Liddy Thinks Obama Is An Illegal Alien! July 23,2009

Conservative radio host G. Gordon Liddy tells Chris Matthews he wants President Obama to "present a valid birth certificate" and not a "certificate of live birth."

Liddy is then given proof by Matthews and is still not convinced. So he gets Liddy to tell him that Obama is "an illegal alien" and "should get picked up."

E. Steven Collins, who watches this exchange, then says he is "flabbergasted" by Liddy's ignorance.



MSNBC Maddow debunks MSNBC Matthew about Deathers Conspiracy Theorists



Rachel Maddow: President Obama & The "Deathers"-July 29,2009



Right wing racism on the rise. An emotional tantrum by white people who are concerned their white racial privilege in America is being undermined. They seem to believe that Health Care reform and other Obama policies are mainly to help black Americans and not white Americans.


"False Euthanasia Claims-The claim that the House health care bill pushes suicide is nonsense.FactCheck.org Documents False Euthanasia Claims, Analysis:By Jess Henig, with Lori Robertson July 30, 2009

Summary

On former Sen. Fred Thompson’s radio show, former lieutenant governor of New York Betsy McCaughey said that the House’s proposed health care bill contained a provision that would institute mandatory counseling sessions telling seniors how "to do what’s in society’s best interest … and cut your life short." House Minority Leader John Boehner made a slightly more measured statement, warning that the same provision "may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law."

In truth, that section of the bill would require Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling sessions helping seniors to plan for end-of-life medical care, including designating a health care proxy, choosing a hospice and making decisions about life-sustaining treatment. It would not require doctors to counsel that their patients refuse medical intervention.


See more in endnote below.

and from the UK on the Birthers and racism & Obama:

"Matthew Norman: The insanity and enduring racism of the American right":
The Republicans now make the Tories at their worst seem achingly inclusive" Independent .co.uk,July 30,2009


The gestation period for any conspiracy theory is far longer than that for human infants, of course, or even elephants. It tends, in fact, to be endless. It is 45 years since JFK was murdered, 40 since the first moon walk, and almost eight since the Twin Towers fell, and while the various notions (second gunman, studio mock-up, Mossad plot) were conceived almost immediately after those events, they have yet to deliver anything more substantial than lovingly nurtured insanity.

That rag-tag coalition of shock jocks, publicity hungry attorneys, the credulous and simple-minded, plain nutters and above all frustrated racists collectively known as "the birthers" have spent a year banging on about Mr Obama's arrival in this world, and their successors will be banging on about it long after he's left it for the next.

With the hissing wrath of those struggling ferociously to repress the volcanic pressure to screech "uppity nigger" at their head of state, these people conveniently conclude that Obama isn't their head of state at all. The second article of the US Constitution dictates that "no person except a natural born citizen" can be president, and the birthers argue that since Mr Obama was born in Mombasa, Kenya, he is disqualified.

...What is more intriguing about the birther "movement"... is the light it casts on the necrotic state of the American right. Concerns that the Grand Old Party would respond to Obama's near landslide by ...adhering to the ... doctrine that the only mistake was in not being nasty and insular enough, prove naïve...

Who leads them at the minute is a mystery. Some think it's Sarah Palin, others the deliriously repugnant Rush Limbaugh, who inevitably joins the other oracles of US radio and TV in keeping the birther debate bubbling. What leadership there is, so it seems to this ignorant observer across the ocean, comes from the grass roots ... the sort of God fearin', gun-totin', sister-shaggin' sweethearts who screeched "terrorist" and "kill him" when John McCain mentioned Obama on the stump. Unable to compute that America elected a black man, they have decided that he isn't their President at all. No longer can they use the "n" word or fantasise publicly about lynch mobs. But they can divert their rage into a bogus legalistic dispute, rejected time and again by the Supreme Court, as freely as they like.

...America is waking to the realisation that untold millions aren't even close to accepting the democratic will that put a black man in the White House. ... (some of them ) will kid themselves that their objection is constitutional rather than racial, and a few will be emboldened to hatch plots to uphold their patriotic ideals via an assassin's gun.

The Prez, meanwhile, is content to deal with such banalities as healthcare reform, and stay silent on the question of his birthplace. Politically speaking, this is a gift from heaven, exposing the vicious dementia of the Republican right to a degree of riducule that should help sweep him to a second term. The wider implications will please him less


McCaughey’s Scare Tactics


Many of the e-mails cite former Republican lieutenant governor of New York Betsy McCaughey’s interview on former senator and Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson’s radio show. On July 16, McCaughey, who founded a group called the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths in 2004, appeared on Thompson’s program to discuss health care. Citing page 425 of the bill, McCaughey claimed that “the Congress would make it mandatory … that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner, how to decline nutrition, how to decline being hydrated, how to go into hospice care … all to do what’s in society’s best interest … and cut your life short.” Thompson chuckled at this and said, “I’ve seen bits and parts of [the bill], Betsy, but I didn’t know that.” He hasn’t seen that bit, of course, because it doesn’t exist.

Endnote Euthanasia:

"False Euthanasia Claims-The claim that the House health care bill pushes suicide is nonsense.FactCheck.org Documents False Euthanasia Claims, Analysis:By Jess Henig, with Lori Robertson July 30, 2009


McCaughey misrepresents the content of page 425 of the bill. That section would require Medicare to pay for some end-of-life planning counseling sessions with a health care practitioner. Here’s part of the section in question.

H.R. 3200, page 425: Subject to paragraphs (3) and (4), the term ‘advance care planning consultation’ means a consultation between the individual and a practitioner described in paragraph (2) regarding advance care planning, if, subject to paragraph (3), the individual involved has not had such a consultation within the last 5 years. Such consultation shall include the following:

(A) An explanation by the practitioner of advance care planning, including key questions and considerations, important steps, and suggested people to talk to.

(B) An explanation by the practitioner of advance directives, including living wills and durable powers of attorney, and their uses.

(C) An explanation by the practitioner of the role and responsibilities of a health care proxy.

(D) The provision by the practitioner of a list of national and State-specific resources to assist consumers and their families with advance care planning … .

(E) An explanation by the practitioner of the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice, and benefits for such services and supports that are available under this title.

(F)(i) Subject to clause (ii), an explanation of orders regarding life sustaining treatment or similar orders … .

The accepted definition of end-of-life planning means thinking ahead about the care you would like to receive at the end of your life – which may include the choice to reject extraordinary measures of life support, or the choice to embrace them. For instance, the National Library of Medicine describes end-of-life services as "services [that] are available to help patients and their families deal with issues surrounding death." This can include making decisions about treatment, designating a health care proxy, choosing a hospice program and putting together a living will, all of which the bill mentions explicitly as being part of an advance care planning consultation. In a 2003 study, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality found that "[p]atients who talked with their families or physicians about their preferences for end-of-life care had less fear and anxiety, felt they had more ability to influence and direct their medical care, believed that their physicians had a better understanding of their wishes, and indicated a greater understanding and comfort level than they had before the discussion."


and so it goes,
GORD.

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