STATE OF THE UNION--

What is Bush going to say tomorrow?. "Our strong economy is having a hiccup, and will respond to my stimulous package". The remedy for the hiccups is to blow into a paper bag.. We can see that the Decider knows just the trick to set things right. He can deliver the "blow" but the bag seems to have hole in it. It is sad that the Promiser has so far been promising the moon but delivering only moldy green cheese.

From the blogs I read the consensus is that the cooperative (synchophantic) media and the corporate lobbyists have many times the influence the average citizen has. Real issues such as foreign policy changes that could ameliorate international turmoil are never asked by the press or brought up by the candidates. Those critical matters are what have to be addressed. The health care fiasco issue is smothered by the bogeyman of "socialized medicine". The most efficient way to eliminate the overburden of administrative costs (huge salaries and bonuses for CEOs of health care plans) is to develop a single payer system. (Shudder!!!) But don't we already have at least part of one? It's called Medicare and Medicaid. Just move the age requirement down from 65 to 0 and you have it. Then reign in the pharmaceutical scam by changing the present law to make drugs competitive. The argument about high costs of research are countered by pointing out that advertising budgets are a multiple of research expenditures. The drug ads are atrocious anyway. Their aim is to induce fear much more than inform. Their curtailment would go far to reduce many symptoms that they induce. These matters seem too sensitive to get into the discussion.
That is exactly why they should be dicussed.

The campaigns are getting testier and nastier. Sure signs that panic is setting in.
The money is on Clinton vs. McCain. If McCain chooses Lieberman as a running mate and Hillary chooses Obama I think I'd have to go with the latter. Call it a double revolution, a female and a black. That is some change.

First Iowa then New Hampshire

The polls were terribly wrong. It is not the first time nor will it be the last. The media goes into a feeding frenzy on the latest news story and grabs whatever is available. The pollsters are happy to sell their wares regardless of quality or, in this case, timeliness. They missed the real story because it occurred so late and precipitously. The News Hour's Jim Lehrer called his correspondents to task for missing the boat, but in a jocular fashion. The media does a poor job of bringing out the important issues but rather goes with the flow of what is currently the apparent BIG story. Judy Woodruff claimed that the paucity of manpower was to blame for not being in the right place at the right time. Success has many fathers but failure is an orphan.

The so called "debates" were more humorous than enlightening. I take that back. Huckaby vowed to make the U.S. so strong no power would dare to attack it. American history tells us that a ragtag bunch of farmers took on the most powerful nation in the world at the time and wrested independence from England. Then Ron Paul correctly pointed out that our foreign policy in the M.E. was largely to blame for bin Laden's attack on the U.S. Foreign policy expert Guliani immediately said "foreign policy doesn't have anything to do with it". These guys want to lead the world and they can't find their own back side.

A strange item popped up in the news. A conference in Norman, OK that discussed "bipartisanship". There is a novel idea. They took the radical stand that our elected representatives should work together harmoniously and intelligently for the good of the country. How naive can they be? Do they think that the National Rifle Assoc. and other big corporate lobbyist are going to allow their, bought and paid for, stooges to waste time on such nonsense?.

The word of the campaign so far has been "change". That is a shibboleth that means different things to different people. It however allows the voter to put his or her own slant on it. Then the question becomes, how sincerely do you come across when you say it?

On top of all the rhetoric is our concern for the economy and how we are going to cope with ever increasing prices on our basic needs such as food, health care and the price of energy. Added to this administration's and Congress's misdeeds is the current policy of subsidizing corn production and its diversion to production of ethanol. Basically I think ethanol produced with corn is inefficient and costly. Secondly it has skewed the price of all food products dependent on corn because of corn's inflated price. Iowa farmers love it as does ADM and other huge corporate agri-businesses but the cost goes to the consumer-- us.

Health care in the U.S. is proving to be not only too expensive it is not of high quality. Again, Guliani claims our health care is the best in the world. He's wrong.
Statistics show the U.S. lags behind most industrialized nations in several categories. Health care has become commoditized. The basic elements of health care have been overlain with administrative costs that multiply the consumer's cost. It all started when the idea of "pre-paid health care" came into being way back at least to the 30s. In the blue collar neighborhood I grew up in there were two physicians within a block of us. Believe it or not, they made house calls. They weren't always paid in cash. Sometimes it was in vegetables or milk, and sometimes nothing. then came health insurance plans with cash set aside for medical bills. The MDs noted this pot of gold sitting there and gradually increased the size of the handfuls they extracted. Over the years those MDs moved out of the neighborhood and into high priced enclaves and office suites where they couldn't afford to take the time to make house calls. The "premiums" for the health care plans began an accelerated rise as the rate of increase in medical care steadily rose. Entrepreneurs saw the opportunity in bundling health care and marketing it as one does any commodity. The pharmaceutical industry also recognized the opportunity to capitalize on the business. Recently they counted a coup when a bill was passed outlawing negotiated drug purchases and drug purchases from foreign countries. All these goodies are paid for by lobbyist influencing legislators with contributions (free speech). Then those contributions come back to the corporations many times over, paid for by --us.

Obviously the situation is not as simplistic as I've outlined but the basic elements are there. Somewhere down the line (over the dead body of Mitch McConnel) the money influence will have to be eliminated. The anemic McCain-Feingold Bill does very little to stem the flow of "influence cash" to legislators. What is especially galling to me is the steady stream of solicitations I get from organizations that are fighting to get the government to do what it is supposed, by law, to be doing. The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Act, are all violated continuously by the government that is supposed to enforce them. That corruption shit has to stop. If "change" is meant to deal with this problem I'm all for it.