The Beast Destroys Us

To:-- Truthout

Re:-- Robert Reich criticizing government bailouts as the source of our woes.

Reich misses the point. It is not that the Dow is up because government is "helping out" Mega Corp. Inc. It's that MegaCorp Inc is PLUNDERING the public treasury.

In other words, in addition to plundering each of us as individuals these same predators are plundering all of us collectively

Cheney happily called "destroying the beast" -- what he really meant is that he and the forces he represents want to destroy America and they are succeeding.

They will continue to succeed until the American people pull their hands out of theiz CheezO bags and do something else with them.

.

Moloch's Maw of Health Care

To:-- San Francisco Chronicle

Re:-- Medical Tourism and Comparative Health Care Costs, reporting on the immense price differential for treatment in the United States and just about anywhere else.

Once again, more proof of the utter depravity of the US for profit medical system, doctors included.

Back in July I moved to Canada. I knew our whores in congress would not achieve a rotten thing, and I was right.

The Canadian system proves how the Molochs Maw of avarice is at the root of evil. Medical care (which is state regulated and provided) is affordable; dental care which is not regulated is as expensive as the U.S. But at least Canada joins the whole rest of the world in accepting that medical care is a human right.

All US doctors need to be shipped to Cuba for spiritual reorientation and moral retraining. Medical Insurance companies if they are allowed to exist at all should be subjected to the thumb screws of regulation. Congress needs to be purged, and the Senate abolished.

I'll say it again: the US is in a state of economic, political and moral degeneracy. The health care obscenity is only a part. Wake up people Reclaim your vision and your destiny.

.

The Great Sign Robbery

To:-- San Francisco Chronicle

Re:-- "Auschwitz to Beef Up Security" - in wake of theft of "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign which the article "explains" cynically meant "work sets you free". A reader commented on the headline.

Very funny, Finn Fish.... the headline is "spooky"

Well ... the phrase was NOT invented by the Nazis. It had been in use for at least a century and was the correlative to "idleness is the devil's handiwork". The phrase was adopted in 1928 by the Weimar government as a slogan extolling the effects of their desired policy of large-scale public works programmes to end unemployment." The Nazis continued using it as one of their slogans well before 1942 when Auschwitz was first opened.

Ever notice how these stories start getting reported around Christmas time? There were two concentration-camp stories earlier this month, plus articles on Demjanjuk. This Great Sign Robbery has made headlines three days in a row.

What will Christmas Eve bring? More tales bearing grief and atonement?
.

Medi-Profit's Maw

To:-- San Francisco Chronicle

Re:-- Medical Tourism (12/21/09), reporting on the pricing of medical procedures in other countries and detailing the beyond belief price gouging and chicanery of the US medico-insurance establishment.


Once again, more proof of the utter depravity of the US for profit medical systeml, doctors included.

Back in July I moved to Canada. I knew our whores in congress would not achieve a rotten thing, and I was right.

The Canadian system proves how the Molochs Maw of avarice is at the root of evil. Medical care (which is state regulated and provided) is affordable; dental care which is not regulated is as expensive as the U.S. But at least Canada joins the whole rest of the world in accepting that medical care is a human right.

All US doctors need to be shipped to Cuba for spiritual reorientation and moral retraining. Medical Insurance companies if they are allowed to exist at all should be subjected to the thumb screws of regulation. Congress needs to be purged, and the Senate abolished.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the US is in a state of economic, political and moral degeneracy. The health care obscenity is only a part. Wake up people! Reclaim your vision and your destiny.

.

A Caveman Approach to Housing

To: -- San Francisco Chronicle

Re: -- Big Win for Tenants reporting on Mayor Newsom's promise to veto legislation extending for equal rent control standards to all rental units.

Welcome to Neanderthal Nation. Not only is the United States the only "developed" country in the world not to have universal health care, it is also the only one not to have universal tenant rights. Figures. Needless to say the neanderthals are proud of their primitiveness. Uggghaa Ugghhha Ughhaa Thump Thump Thump

No person's abode should be subject to the vicistudes of the market, much less the idocyncratic vicistudes of landlord moods. Every person deserves security of habitation.

Habitation, no less than health care, should not be an excuse for profiteering. People who want "freedom to play the market" should find other things to invest in.

Of course, landlords are entitled to a reasonable, regulated return on their investment and this includes factoring in the cost, value and condition of the unit. Landlords also require effective protections against having their property trashed.

The way to insure a proper balance is to take landlord tenant issues OUT of our inane and antiquated "justice" system and into a truly impartial adminisrative arbitration board that allows for quick and accessible resolutions of disputes (without lawyers).

A substantial measure of the injustice in landlord-tenant relations is due to the courts themselves with their imbecilic and antiquated procedural requirements to say nothing of paperwork and costs. Courts work only for vested interests and those with money enough to hire lawyers. Most tenants and a substantial number of small landlords have no effective access to the courts and this gives rise to uncertainty, self help and the perceived need for pre-emptive protections against the other side. Obviously such a system is inherently dysfunctional.

Just as obviously, yet another pseudo progressive demorat shows his true colours as go-fer for Big Buck.

.

The Fetish of the Health Care Product

To: Truthout
Re: Health Care Should be driven by Mission / Phillip Casper MD,
___describing the corporatization-for-profit of health care in the U.S.

Although Dr. Casper falls into the prevailing habit of describing phenomena in their moral aspect, he is not romanticising anything. At bottom, he is simply describing the effects of what Marx called the Fetish of the Commodity -- i.e., the way in which the capitalist exchange system perpetuates itself by becoming a mental fetish.

Not only do people (including Obama) believe a whole bunch of ridiculous mantras -- such as the "magic of the market place" and the like -- they actually see the world as a matrix of for- profit exchanges and they actually believe that this perception emanates from an unalterable objective reality. Last but not least they believe that this system -- the object of their beholding -- is capable of producing goodness and joy.

The Catholic theologian Von Balthasar went deeper and attributed our moral dysfunctionality to the ruthless reductionism of Cartesian thought, which his mentor, Pope Benedict has written produces pathologies of thought which end up being both unscientific and immoral.

Alas the American mind (such as it is) is incapable of grasping anything larger than a pea. It thinks it can "fix" health care "within the system" without revolutionizing the system of which the broken health care "product" is a manifestation. This atomization of thought produces little more than political heteronomy in which everyone chases willy-nilly after his or her object of desire and personal-validation issue without grasping or dealing with the whole.

By the time the country figures anything out it will be far too late. The US has become a colossal, obnoxious, boring failure. The sooner it self-destructs (which it is doing) the better for all concerned.

.

Holo Witch Hunt

To:-- San Francisco Chronicle

Re:-- War Crimes Trial of Demjanuk

This trial is an obscenity - nothing more than holo-witch hunt instigated by Jewish interest groups and inflamed by a willing press.

The US Justice Department already prosecuted Demjanjuk for being a sadistic guard ("Ivan") at another camp. The DOJ did so on the basis of knowingly false testimony. The U.S. Sixth Dist. Court of Appeal found that the DOJ (sic) comitted "fraud on the court" and threw out the conviction.

The DOJ then got its contacts in Israel to bring another case charging Demjanjuk with being a guard at Sobibor. His alleged peripheral participation in genocide is based on vague statements in a confession obtained by Soviet interrogators.

The ISRAELI SUPREME COURT threw out this case because it violated basic principles of Double Jeopardy. It also rejected the DOJ's excuse that it had never heard (sic!) of Sobibor.

But the guilt ridden Germans can always be persuaded & so we all get to watch the nauseating drama of "Witchunt on 34th Street". Merry Xmas
.