One issue that the people clearly want to happen and the corporations, insurance and M$M don’t is true universal health care. If you care about this very important issue for people that are struggling in our tough economy, then you have a chance to make your voice heard tomorrow at 1PM on a live webcast of a panel discussion sponsored by the Kaiser Foundation titled, “The Health Blogosphere: What It Means for Policy Debates and Journalism. The panel appears to be heavily weighted with Bush loyalists, right-wingers and faith-based nonsense proselytizers. We need to counter that by inducing people from all over the progressive and science/free-thinking segments of the blogosphere to participate, to debunk the junk that the panelists will bring.

You can get all the details by going to the Nequals1 blog site, Home of the Brave (see sig). Annie’s site title is very appropriate because on behalf of nurses, she has bravely taken on the medical establishment, not to mention some serious personal challenges that have required much bravery and perserverance.

http://revolutionredux.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/kaiser-network-hosts-health-blogosphere-live-webcast/

Gore lost 350.000 democratic votes IN FLORIDA ALONE in 2000

As you say, because they voted for Nader instead. Thereby giving Florida to Bush.

How well did that turn out for us? Tell me true!

You're not really going to stand there and tell us Gore equals Bush, are you?

Speak up. Let's hear it from you.

What are we (the majority in this country) to do with the current state of affairs? I didn’t hear a SINGLE word about the impeachment hearings in the House Judiciary Committee last Friday in the mainstream media. (MSM) Not ONE word! Having read Chalmers Johnson’s excellent article

http://www.truthout.org/article/the-military-industrial-complex-its-much-later-than-you-think

about the military-industrial complex, and its transformation over the last fifty years, and Glenn’s article, I don’t even know what we should or can do.

Johnson’s article highlights the transformation of the M-I complex due to the “privatization” of the military and intelligence communities over the last 30 years. Even during the Clinton Administration, the trend towards “outsourcing” military and intelligence operations continued, and has accelerated during the Bush Administration. As a result, there is little “knowledge” left in the hands of the government, the only institution that is accountable to us. Rather, “knowledge” has been outsourced to the private corporations, who use it in unaccountable ways.

All of this transformation is the direct result of the MSM “dumbdown” that has occurred since the Nixon Administration, the result of years of screaming about the so-called “liberal media.” Now, the MSM is unable, unwilling and incapable of bringing any kind of legitimate analysis and thought to the political scene.

For me, the Internet has been the ONLY source of legitimate news and analysis for the last several years. Beginning with the Iraq invasion in 2003, I turned to truthout and other Internet-based news and analysis sources for my news, instead of the MSM. I have seen my newspapers shrink to less than 1/3 their former size, and television news is an absolutely hopeless mess of Right Wing Noise Machine (RWNM) filth and watered-down and useless “analysis” of issues.

Unfortunately, the Internet has its bad side, as well as its good. The RWNM is primarily based on the Internet, although, unlike the majority view (center and left) side of things, gets its version of the world broadcast on the MSM. Watching the MSM gives one a very skewed version of things, which resulted in the Iraq invasion, and, if we’re not able to stop it, an invasion of Iran, which will be utterly disastrous for this country.

Obama, flawed as he is, is far better than John McCain as a Presidential candidate. If McCain is elected, the MSM will portray his election as a vindication of the last eight years of the Bush Administration, the most awful years of this country, except for the civil war. I know that Obama is smart enough to see the reasons for the disastrous state of this country, including those highlighted by Johnson and Greenwald. I only hope that he has not drunk so much of the Dino-crat Kool-aid that he will be unable to respond to matters from a progressive point of view.

While I will vote for Obama, I will not donate to his campaign, until he supports the impeachment of George Bush, to prevent Bush from pardoning himself and his cronies for the lawless activities of the administration.

Finally, I have not seen a SINGLE poll on the issue of impeachment. I suspect that a majority of this country would support impeachment if they knew that impeachment is the only thing that will stop George Bush from pre-emptively pardoning himself and others for all of the illegal activities that he and others in his administration have participated in. Lets urge pollsters to get a poll going on impeachment.

Something I've noticed is that for rightwingers, hypocrisy is not a sin. And it's a cardinal sin for liberals. But while rightwingers might not say it out loud, they are fine with, "Do as I say, not as I do." It seems beyond inconsistent to us, but they are comfortable with that cognitive dissonance.

But it makes it impossible to engage in discussion with them. They say, "Russia bad for imprisoning people without trial!"

"Well, what about Gitmo?" the liberal says. "Doesn't it make it hard for us to tell the rest of the world they need to follow due process?"

The rightwinger says, "What are you talking about Gitmo for? That's the war on terror!"

The liberal says, "So? Most of those people are apparently completely innocent. Just like the political prisoners in Russia. How can we tell Russia they're wrong to do what we're doing?"

"We're the United States. We don't have to follow any stinking UN rules. What, you wanna give up our sovereignty? What are you, a traitor?"

Sigh.

I think it would be extreme to say that Gore equals Bush indeed, I like being in teh company of great thinkers--Chomsky, Glenn, etc.--who believe that small differences in political orientation and point of view translate to large differences in governance and outcomes. I do, however, believe that there are two issues on which there may not have been much of a difference--that is Iraq and FISA. As we have seen the Democratic party has been on board with the Republican pov from the get-go. We may have believed that they didn't have the clout in the early 00's to stand against, but it becomes increasingly clear that they are not just enablers but active participants. Obama's recent ambiguous remarks concerning both issues may be more telling about teh Democratic party, than himself as a candidate. Anyway, I think it would be smarter to operate from the perspective that on major foreign policy and domestic security issues, the difference between the parties is largely cosmetic. On other issues, perhaps there are great and important differences.