Stop Me Before I Vote Again

"Yesterday morning, eight doctors, lawyers and other activists stood up to Senator Max Baucus, the private health insurance industry, and the corporate liberals in Congress..... "

for ralph this must seem like
a dream come true
merit class biz suited
nonviolent commmmmandos

worthy
of the civil rights
lunch counter movement

"Faxing, writing,
and e-mailing
is not getting it done.
Enough is enough.
Time for action"

Let's hear it for faith, change, hope and letting the cops break a guy's leg and/or ankle and then leaving him to lie on a hard floor handcuffed for several minutes while they mill around courageously warning the rabble not to block the door!

Well, we all know those filthy protesters just did it to make the President look bad! Why, look how evil and dangerous they are! They WANTED their bones broken! Shameful.

I wonder what "action" Ralph has in mind? The time is certainly ripe. What national org is pushing single payer? Where are the pressure points for big pharma and big insurance?

Anyone here have any ideas?

"Time for action," says Ralph.
Sure.
When even the shitkickers have better bumperstickers than the "left" ("Think globally, drink locally" beats that stupid 1.12.09 nonsense,) I refuse any individual's claim that there are any conditions for any kind of social change. Here, that is.
Only a generation ago Europe saw continental mass murder, bullets in the brains of civilians, minorities, women, babies, on a scale of tens of millions. Africa has seen horrific, epic killing, and the Middle East also, constant and undiluted killing of humans, by humans, for spectacularly no reasons of any consequence. America -we've had our share of genocide, aided our shares of genocide, and now do full spectrum dominance with a cultural anthropology veneer. Great.
With that as backdrop (It isn't? We simply ignore our recent history? We content ourselves with doomed reform bake sales?), unsuccessful scourge/ascetic Mr. Ralph wants to conquer a $400 Billion middleman operation with something more powerful than an e-mail campaign. Like what- rattling walkers together? Refusing to pay our co-pays until a week before the due date?

I second mjosef's brilliant notion.

We should all sit by and just watch the world hurtle into the abyss.

Above all, all people of conscience should strictly refrain from speaking out, acting, agitating, educating, etc. That will absolutely ENSURE the victory of barbarism and vindicate mjosef's prescience.

rising unemployment, the accompanying loss of medical insurance and attendant rise in personal bankrupty all have the potential to increase the number of flies in the DC ointment very soon...

by the way, go to minute 1:40 on this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKP05AyfRsI

where's a demagogic populist like Huey Long when you need him:

"[A] mob is coming to hang the other ninety-five of you damn scoundrels and I'm undecided whether to stick here with you or go out and lead them."

I grew up in Montana and my parents and brother still live there. For long as I can remember, Max Baucus has been a "corporate liberal" (Ralph's enunciations often miss, but that's a good one) slimeball. A couple of weeks ago he was on the record as saying that single-payer wouldn't work in the US b/c the US is a "big country." The transparency of that prevarication was staggering.

Van, thanks for your response, one that was terse, articulate and a challenge.

As you can see by my very act of "commenting" in a blog, I think speaking out in proper forums is necessary and fun. However, "speaking out" should incorporate 1)ultra-refined notions of social power 2) balanced self-criticism 3) proper adjustments to social reality.

"Acting, agitating, educating, etc." can and should occur with an eye not just to the glory of your own individual brilliance and moral glory, but with an appreciation for the lives of your fellow masses of humans.

"Barbarism" and the "hurtling into the abyss," are carrying the day, despite the American liberal's faith beliefs in education, toleration, sitting in classrooms, sitting in pews, being the change you want to be, speaking truth to power, another world is possible, you can be anything you want to be, clapping boxed-in protest parades, hopped-up shouters at the microphone, management unionism - the van Mungo Experience, in other words.

So, enough being enough, it is time to arrest our own contributions to this futile racket. Time to remove the pie plates out of the sky, and develop a understanding of elite control and intent, and the predilections of the ensnared common worker/unemployee. Hasn't the record of the supersystem been evidence to you of the futility of good intentions?

Time for action? But what action--where, who, how? We need some guidance. WHERE IS IT?

Rosemary et al.--

For starters--since the original topic of this thread was taking on the HMOs and the corporate liberals to win the fight for single-payer Medicare for all--here are some terrific organizations who are gearing up for this battle. We should all check them out, hook up with them, take our own initiatives, etc., etc.

So--one issue at a time, mjosef. We can't undo the whole mess at one stroke. Winning single payer would be a mighty blow against the corruption and injustice of the status quo, and will embolden toward further steps. Here are the groups, in my subjective estimated order of overall preference:

www.singlepayeraction.org
www.pnhp.org
http://www.healthcare-now.org/
http://www.1payer.net/

So--check 'em all out, educate, organize, act. SPREAD THE WORD. Tell everyone you know about these groups--urge them to donate time and/or money. Above all, do something rather than nothing. The movement for single payer is heating up--it's an ideal wedge issue for exposing the massing of corporate power against the will and interests of the American people, and for that reason it's a winnable fight. But people have to act.

Thanks, Van M! I agree it's a perfect wedge issue. The right has made it that, always fretting about creeping "socialism". It's time to make socialism not a dirty word, but a shining vision of the city on the hill.

Wedge issue it is

Open defiance of the popular will
By its elected agents
Because corporate donors rule

Much will emerge from this battle

But lobbying the hill prolly needs so very strong mischief directed at the hmo's and drug companies

Hands off. Congress

Not sure a pure play on the dembot
Quislings gives maximum. Pressure

My daughter is in the dirty anti corporate tricks department of a union
They hammer on both fronts

The goal in a reform movement is to win something

Not create reds or even pinks
In my estimation if we aready have 100 k ready to roll pinks activists numbers isn't the telling constraint

Super al made the point
The votin' majority will vote in dembot quislings knowingly on lesser evil grounds
After all petain was bad
But he wasn't hitler

Here's a searing image of the brutal market-bred rationing we already have in the U.S. healthcare system--and that Beltway Paine thinks we should sustain with the phony "hybrid" plan being cooked up by his fellow DLC-bots in Washington:

May 7, 2009
A Doctor's Letter to Senator Baucus
Why We Need a Single-Payer Health Care System

By ANA M. MALINOW, MD

Honorable Senator Baucus:

Last week, in the public clinic where I work, I treated a 6-year-old girl who had visited the emergency room for cellulitis, an infection of the skin, over her hand. Usually a relatively minor condition that is easily treated with a 10-day course of antibiotics, cellulitis can sometimes cause severe consequences, including life-threatening sepsis, if not treated promptly.

The reason this patient was notable was because she was uninsured and had been sent home with a prescription that her mother tried to fill but was unable to afford. How much did the antibiotic suspension cost? $500.

When I saw her three days after her ER visit, her hand was swollen twice the normal size, purple, tender and warm to the touch, with a red streak (signifying an extension of the infection from the skin to the bloodstream) up to her elbow. I took one look at her and quickly made the decision to admit her for IV antibiotics, including a consultation with pediatric surgery to ensure that the infection had not spread between the deep layers of her skin.

What struck me most about this visit, other than the child's deformed hand, was the mother's shame at not being able to afford her child's medication. I assured her that I did not blame her, that our health care system was unconscionable, and that we needed a health care system where everyone was included and everyone paid according to his or her ability to pay. She agreed.

I'm not surprised she agreed. From 1943 to today, opinion polls consistently show that a stable majority of Americans favor a government role in the financing of health care. In the lead-up to President Truman's national health care proposal, 82 percent of Americans agreed that something needed to be done to make health bills easier to afford.

Today, 65 percent of Americans, including 59 percent of U.S. physicians, support a tax-financed national health insurance plan. Why wouldn't my patient's mother support national health care?

What she probably doesn't know is how much she already pays for the health care her child does not get, or gets late. Her uninsured family pays an extra 10 percent out of its paycheck in taxes to pay for our health care system. Her daughter's hospitalization will be covered by emergency Medicaid, for which she pays through her sales taxes, income taxes, property taxes and other hidden taxes. She will still have many out-of-pocket costs, of course.

I was struck by your remarks this week during the Senate Finance Commitee hearings as physicians were carted away. "We need more police." No, Mr. Senator, we need true health care reform.

Referring to the difference between Washington insiders and most polls over the stimulus package, President Obama's advisor, David Axelrod said, "This town talks to itself and whips itself into a frenzy with its own theories that are completely at odds with what the rest of America is thinking." The moral, he said, is "not just that Washington is too insular but that the American people are a lot smarter than people in Washington think."

I agree. As I talk about a single-payer national health program across Texas (yes, Texas!) and other states, I am repeatedly amazed by the ability of Americans to understand the complex issues of health reform if it is adequately explained to them. People quickly understand that a sustainable solution will come only when we contain costs and eliminate fragmentation.

The more I listen, the more I hear that all Americans want a health care system that is affordable, accountable, accessible, comprehensive, universal and just - not another Band-Aid that will condemn thousands of us to unnecessary pain, suffering, bankruptcy and death. Listen for yourself, and you will hear Americans clamoring for true health care reform.

By Washington standards, single payer is politically unfeasible. But step outside the beltway and you will be surprised by the genuine support that exists for a publicly funded, privately delivered, expanded and improved Medicare for all.

This mother should not be made to feel ashamed. Nor should her child be relegated to suffer like a Third World beggar. Your compromise plan that keeps the private, for-profit insurance industry in the game will perpetuate the shame and the begging. Already, there is a grassroots movement building against private health insurance and for single payer. It will reach Washington, whether Washington is ready or not.

Sincerely yours,
Ana M. Malinow, MD

Pediatrician in Houston, Texas
Past president, Physicians for a National Health Program
Co-founder, Health Care for All Texas

For links to the fax options discussed below, go to the URL at the bottom of this page:

New Tools and Continuing Campaigns
Stuff You Can Do. Free. Easy. Free and Easy.
NOW
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
New Tool for Phone Calling Campaign.
Until this morning, we had to transcribe the 200-300 voice mails we get each day from callers to our 800-578-4171 number. After transcription, we faxed the messages to the White House and each member of the Senate Finance Committee. Today, for instance, I sent a 36 page fax of closely printed voicemails from May 6.

But starting at 0900 EST today, we went live with a system that converts each overnight voice message to a phone call, dialing the White House and Sen. Baucus automatically, waiting for a human to answer, then playing the message and hanging up. And then dialing again to deliver the next message in the queue. And the next. And so on. So this morning we delivered 500 phone messages to the White House and Sen. Baucus at the rate of one or two a minute.

You can join the fun. Call 1-800-578-4171 and press 0 for the White House or 1 for Sen. Baucus. Or call during the day and be transferred directly to the live White House operator. Or call tonite and tomorrow and tomorrow nite and . . .
Continuing Campaign Update
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
fax You are still sending faxes and lots of them. This morning we had sent about 22 thousand faxes to the White House and members of Congress. You can take your pick of faxes, from chastising Republicans for intransigent obstructionism to asking Obama to do the right thing. Each one allows you to add your comments. Each one is sent immediately. Each one is free to you.

Click here and pick a fax to send. Or pick several. Or pick all.
And remember, when we work together, we can overwhelm the fax machines in Washington. We did it before. We can do it again.

http://campaign.constantcontact.com/render?v=0014Ki0vCaOmqrDUyCikIJow0lHQNUU264PechV6GCM_BBNMNDUpPhfOtNHEcyU8GzeGn-Bp4LFdCNVIBdg-FwgMgo8YueH02118yUwiGJ8bg8utXAYlSFljfyeg1H2qso7cpKdmxDMuN4%3D

One of the things that frustrates me about Nader and everyone to his left is the chronic resistance to strategic thinking. It seems to me the single-payer thing is already off on the wrong foot since it appears to be proceeding with an emphasis on the federal level without anything significant happening at the state level anywhere.

Gay marriage, though increasingly uncontroversial, nevertheless enjoys far less popular support than single-payer health care. But with Iowa and Maine now falling to the Lavendar Menace it is quite close to being a cultural juggernaut. This is probably due in no small part to the fact that gay political types, while dutifully voting least-worst each election cycle, have come to expect precisely zero from the Federal government and so wisely point their limited resources and clout into state and municipal lobbying campaigns. Classic grass roots stuff that will undoubtedly lead to reforms higher up in the tree.

After giving the gay marriage movement a glance, health reform advocates should then look north to Canada, where, as with gay rights here, the adoption of single-payer national health insurance followed the adoption by several provinces of single-payer state health insurance.

The fact is, Ralph Nader is a good guy and a born loser. He wouldn't know a grass root if it bit him in the ass. He also a lousy writer and speaker and increasingly looks and sounds the part of a tired old crank. A recent poll said more than 30% of all young Americans think socialism is better than capitalism. We can't change the world overnight but jesus, there is reason to believe we can do a whole lot better than we are doing.

Typo in my post above. Should read "adoption by several provinces of single-payer provincial health insurance" instead of "single-payer state health insurance".

Mikey--
Your post is so chockablock with misconceptions and distortions, one hardly knows where to begin. Let's try, though.

1. Resistance to strategic thinking by "Nader and everyone to his left." First, let's define whom you are talking about. It sounds like you mean everyone on the left except . . . the prescient Mikey himself, right? Anyone else partake of your strategic brilliance? Not one other person? Do tell.

2. Your conception of "strategic thinking" is to abandon the fight for single-payer at the federal level and go at it state by state.

Lessee, now: there are a half dozen or so competing health-care reform bills in Congress right now, the Senate Finance Committee is holding hearings on health care reform, Obama has declared health care reform to be one of his most urgent priorities, the current federal system is flying apart because of runaway costs and huge gaps in coverage, there is a single-payer bill in the House that has 76 co-sponsoers and another just proposed in the Senate, and . . . the left should just IGNORE this simmering political volcano at the federal level, where the whole health-care reform game is coming to a boil, and hunker down state by state for . . . the next twenty-five years or so while 600,000 more Americans each month lose their employer-based insurance and millions more risk bankruptcy, illness, and death, from exorbitant costs and inadequate coverage. Do I have this right, Mikey?

Wowee . . . I see what you mean, Mikey--strategic adroitness like that doesn't just fall off of trees. It takes a true visionary to see the virtue in such perverse immunity to the scale of the battle shaping up on the federal level RIGHT NOW.

3. Ralph Nader is a "born loser." First of all, there are about six major organizations pushing for single payer at BOTH the state and federal levels; Nader is directly involved in only one of them, Single Payer Action.

That aside, let's discuss this "loser" business. OK, Mikey--I guess that means that you're a winner! So let's compare your political resume to that of "loser" Nader.

Nader's organizing efforts were instrumental in the passing of the following legislation:

* Clean Air Act
* Clean Water Act
* Consumer credit disclosure law
* Consumer Product Safety Act
* Co-Op Bank Bill
* Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act
* Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
* Freedom of Information Act
* Funeral home cost disclosure law
* Law establishing Environmental Protection Agency
* Medical Devices safety
* Mine Health and Safety Act
* Mobile home safety
* National Automobile and Highway Traffic Safety Act
* National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act
* Natural Gas Pipeline Safety Act
* Nuclear power safety
* Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA)
* Pension protection law
* Safe Water Drinking Act
* Tire safety & grading disclosure law
* Whistleblower Protection Act
* Wholesome Meat Act
* Wholesome Poultry Product Act

Just some of the organizations Ralph Nader founded or helped start:

* American Antitrust Institute
* Appleseed Foundation
* Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest
* Aviation Consumer Action Project
* Buyers Up
* Capitol Hill News Service
* Center for Auto Safety
* Center for Insurance Research
* Center for Justice and Democracy
* Center for Science in the Public Interest
* Center for Study of Responsive Law
* Center for Women Policy Studies
* Citizen Action Group
* Citizen Advocacy Center
* Citizen Utility Boards
* Citizen Works
* Clean Water Action Project
* Congress Project
* Congress Watch
* Connecticut Citizen Action Group
* Corporate Accountability Research Group
* Critical Mass Energy Project
* Democracy Rising
* Disability Rights Center
* Equal Justice Foundation
* Essential Information
* FANS (Fight to Advance the Nation's Sports)
* Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumer Rights
* Freedom of Information Clearinghouse
* Georgia Legal Watch
* Global Trade Watch
* Health Research Group
* Litigation Group
* Multinational Monitor
* National Citizen's Coalition for Nursing Home Reform
* National Coalition for Universities in the Public Interest
* National Insurance Consumer Organization
* Ohio Public Interest Action Group
* Organization for Competitive Markets
* Pension Rights Center
* Princeton Project 55
* PROD - truck safety
* Public Citizen
* Retired Professionals Action Group
* Shafeek Nader Trust for the Community Interest
* Student Public Interest Research Groups nationwide
* Tax Reform Research Group
* Telecommunications Research and Action Center
* The Visitor's Center
* Trial Lawyers for Public Justice

And aside from advising activists to stand down from the health-care reform fight brewing in Congress and cede that battlefield to the HMOs, what do we find on your "winner's" political resume, Mikey?

van
let folks air views here
without your
nanny goat bleeting and absolutely prigish lecturing

"It sounds like you mean everyone on the left except . . . the prescient Mikey himself, right? Anyone else partake of your strategic brilliance? Not one other person? Do tell.Wowee . . . I see what you mean, Mikey--strategic adroitness like that doesn't just fall off of trees. It takes a true visionary to see the virtue in such perverse immunity to the scale of the battle shaping up on the federal level RIGHT NOW.

....let's discuss this "loser" business. OK, Mikey--I guess that means that you're a winner! So let's compare your political resume to that of "loser" Nader"

a list of nader orgs
like 'round here ralph needs your chield and spear ?/
look touch hole
attack any cele4braty pol or activist you want
leave the regular commenters here the fuck alone

attack me you pimple headed sour faced sadist

i like to fist it out
with the occasional stray dick weed

if we can't air views
without ass wipe strident nit wit losers
like u van flingo
with your boring rote views
and endless stale citations

i surely wish more folks jumped your pompous ass round here
but most folks have better things to do then
bash i freak autodidact merit class drop out loser

being all those things my self and some
i got nothin better to do

stick to me you fuck snot

Max speaks had a nice rule

Attack any one
Operating in the libel free zone only
Ie public persons
Otherwise he stepped in as site proprietor
To stop the "flaming"

If "flaming"is your real kick
Say because you hate the inner loser in yourself
But can't admit it to yourself...

Fine but just go after public figures

Oh and if ytou're one of those odd nanny goats
That has hero worship needs as well
Don't attack some innocent commenter
Who scoffs at your
Serious prestigious scholarly
widely respected
Board of trotsky
Approved pinko
Or what ever

Oh

And as to bad faith

Try to represent
The actual views of other commenters here
These slansky trial tactics
Save for vanguardist purge fests
And of course any big foot public figure

I suggest we all
At least knowingly never mis represent the substance of a fellow commentors substance
Except in obvious gest

2009 Hypocrite's Jaw-Dropping Absence of Self-Awareness Goes to . . . DLC Mad-Dog Paine:

"let folks air views here
without your
nanny goat bleeting and absolutely prigish lecturing"

Thanks, for the laugh, Paine. Glad you could take this much time out for your shilling for the HMOs to offer up this galling piece of unintended self-parody.

But wait . . . THERE'S MORE!

"attack me you pimple headed sour faced sadist

i like to fist it out
with the occasional stray dick weed

if we can't air views
without ass wipe strident nit wit losers
like u van flingo "

Whassamatter, Paine--you JUST CAN'T STAND IT that there are posters here who can actually command facts and logic--that just engenders too high a standard? I guess no one can compete with your increasingly unhinged, psychopathic flaming.

Get help, you doddering old Stalinoid corporate hack. Each post of yours is a glimpse inside a tormented refuse heap of a psyche. PHEW!

Paine writes: "I suggest we all
At least knowingly never mis represent the substance of a fellow commentors substance
Except in obvious gest"

But, Paine, all of your demented rambles are "obvious gests," to everyone else out here if not to your own atrophied mind.

This pious instruction comes from the jerk who "misrepresented" nearly every opponent of Paine's beloved HMO-centered corporate vampire health plan as "trots"--only about three dozen times in the space of one thread. That kind of hack-dinosaur Stalinist misrepresentation is JUST DANDY in the disoriented mind of this quacking lunatic.

OK, you frothing, ignorant blowhard--whose views did I misrepresent--citations please. I know you have a congenital aversion to facts--they get in the way of your mad-dog adjectival frenzies--but try, for once.

Paine tells a knee-slapper on himself:

"attack any cele4braty pol or activist you want
leave the regular commenters here the fuck alone"

Confucius Paine say: "Do as I say, not as I do."

Mikey and mjosef and others:

Please read the following report from Ralph Nader. It appears that the massive onslaught of phone calls, faxes, letters, and demonstrations (to which the likes of HMO Paine added not one jot) has taken effect: Baucus's knees have buckled, and he's going to invite a single-payer advocate to his Senate health-care roundtable on Tuesday, May 12. This is a HUGE VICTORY--just the first breach in the corporate wall of silence, however. But once breached, the wall will fall.

The tide is turning--time to push even harder. This IS a winnable fight.

Published on Saturday, May 9, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Stop the Single Payer Shut-out!

by Ralph Nader

Among the giant taboos afflicting Congress these days is the proposal to create a single payer health insurance system (often called full Medicare for everyone).

How can this be? Don't the elected politicians represent the people? Don't they always have their finger to the wind?

Well, single payer is only supported by a majority of the American people, physicians and nurses. They like the idea of public funding and private delivery. They like the free choice of doctors and hospitals that many are now denied by the HMOs.

There are also great administrative efficiencies when single player displaces the health insurance industry with its claims-denying, benefit-restricting, bureaucratically-heavy profiteering. According to leading researchers in this area, Dr. David Himmelstein and Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, single payer will save $350 billion annually.

Yet, on Capitol Hill and at the White House there are no meetings, briefings, hearings, and consultations about kinds of health care reforms that reform the basic price inflation, indifference to prevention, and discrimination of health insurers.

There is no place at the table for single payer advocates in the view of the Congressional leaders who set the agenda and muzzle dissenters.

Last month at a breakfast meeting with reporters, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) responded to a question about health care with these revealing and exasperating words: "Over and over again, we hear single payer, single payer, single payer. Well, it's not going to be a single payer."

Thus spake Speaker Pelosi, the Representative from Aetna? Never mind that 75 members of her party have signed onto H.R. 676-the Conyers single payer legislation. Never mind that in her San Francisco district, probably three out of four people want single payer. And never mind that over 20,000 people die every year, according to the Institute of Medicine, because they cannot afford health insurance.

What is more remarkable is that many more than the 75 members of the House privately believe single payer is the best option. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Ted Kennedy, and Nancy Pelosi are among them. But they all say, single payer "is not practical" so it's off the table.

What gives here? The Democrats have the procedures to pass any kind of health reform this year, including single payer. President Obama could sign it into law.

But "it's not practical" because these politicians fear the insurance and pharmaceutical industries-and seek their campaign contributions-more than they fear the American people. It comes down to the corporations, who have no votes, are organized to the teeth and the people are not.

So, when Senator Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and a large recipient of health insurance and drug company donations, held a public roundtable discussion on May 5, fifteen witnesses were preparing to deliver their statements. Not one of them was championing single payer.

As Senator Baucus started his introductory remarks, something happened. One by one, eight people in the audience, most of them physicians and lawyers, stood up to politely but insistently protest the absence of a single payer presentation.

One by one, the police came, took them out of the hearing room, arrested and handcuffed them. The charge was "disruption of Congress"-a misdemeanor.
They call themselves the "Baucus Eight". Immediately, over the internet and on C-Span, public radio, and the Associated Press, the news spread around the country. You can see the video on singlepayeraction.org.

To the many groups and individuals who have labored for single payer for decades, the Baucus Eight's protest seemed like an epiphany.

Dr. Quentin Young, a veteran leader for single payer and a founder of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) e-mailed his reaction: "For our part, when the history of this period is written, we believe your action may well be noted as the turning point from a painful, defensive position to a more appropriate offensive position vis-à-vis Senator Baucus and his health industry co-conspirators."

Webster's dictionary defines "taboo" as "a prohibition against touching, saying, or doing something for fear of a mysterious superhuman force." For both Democrats and Republicans in Congress it is a fear of a very omnipresent supercorporate force.

However, moral and evidential courage is coming. On May 12, 2009, Senator Baucus is having another roundtable discussion with thirteen more witnesses, including those from the business lobbies and their consultants. Word has it that the Senator is about to invite a leading single payer advocate to sit at the table.

Here come the people! Join this historic drive to have our country join the community of western, and some third-world, nations by adopting a state of the art single payer system.

Visit singlepayeraction.org [1] and break the taboo in your region.

Ralph Nader [2] is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book is The Seventeen Traditions [3].

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/09

Van
Let's simple notice your example
About trots and sp advocacy

Here's the deal lay off other commenters besides me until u see me
Ad hom one of them
Or mis represent their views
I bet u can not agree to that because u can't stop
The nanny goat act

I'll go further
Leave every commenter here in peace dialogue with them in a comradely fashion
And I'll not say a word a about u
No matter how hyperbolic and slimy u get toward my posts and comments

I'll take your non agreement as proof
You.re here to disrupt distort
Divert and to use an old label
Wreck this site

If all your comments were like the nader citation including your
Rallying to the cause
U could win the commenter most improved award
For the month of may

I bet you attack some one before monday morning

Prove me wrong

If you stop the nanny goat act
I'll never mention u forgot the great and mighty russian revolution of 1905
In your rush to
Oust me
Hey we all lose a revolution or two from the old memory banks

When rage causes us to fall all over ourselves
Trying to score points

Ah vanity

Paine--
You obsessive loon--you have been patronizing, sneering, attacking other posters out here for years--that's your default mode. Any other response from you is an aberration.

Stop trying to recoup your squandered credibility with your Parson Paine routine. In the wake of your foul upchuck of psychotic abuse, day after day, your comical sermons on decorum place you firmly in the same class of delusional hypocrisy occupied by Jimmy Swaggart thundering about the evils of the flesh.

I see you're last desperate gambit of self-redemption, in the face of my radical deflation of your reputation in the health-care debate, is this canard about the revolution of 1905.

Here's my theory on this: you know that you were stripped of any intellectual credibility--once and for all in that debate; several long-time posters attested to your resounding pummeling, and agreed that you are basically the functional equivalent of a shill for the HMOs. So you are now embarked on a desperate diversionary quest to restore your lost aura of listserv Grand Poobah. It's as though your life were at stake, because this is your sole claim to importance in life, and now it's gone--poof. So you frantically grasp at any straw--hailstorms of abuse, canards about mistakes, donning of the parson's robes--all the patent maneuvers of the sick, desperate mountebank grasping for lost eminence, pulling out all the stops.

As for misrepresentation--I did not "forget" to mention the revolution of 1905. That was not a socialist revolution. I was referring to the revolution that shook the world, in 1917, as I made abundantly clear in my comments at the time. This is hard for you to grasp, for two reasons: as your defense of the HMOs and the Democratic Party shows, you're not a socialist at all--therefore, the radical difference between these two revolutions is lost on you--a bourgeois-democratic revolution is actually more significant to you, just as a privatized health plan is more to your taste because of its lack of socialist "rationing."

Any time an actual fact is at play in an exchange, you react with your customary apoplexy. You're much more comfortable ladling out your boring lounge act of Cliff-Note's highbrow allusions, your wretched, pitiable fact-free, logic-free, free-form, illiterate exhibitionism, alternating with volcanic eruptions of abuse that could emerge only from the depths of a deeply troubled, corroded, debased soul.

Look at how maniacally you lash out--for what reason? What's at stake for you, Paine? Everything--that's the sad reality. Everything is at stake for you. Hence the hysterical blather at lil ole me. If I'm so insignificant, then your frantic obsession with me is all the more humiliating for you.

As George Bailey once said to Harry Potter, "In the...in the whole vast configuration of things, I'd say you were nothing but a scurvy little spider."

In this thread you've proved that far more effectively than I ever could.

You have serious emotional and psychological problems, Paine. I mean serious as in way over the top. You urgently need to get some professional help. This is not a joke.

Review your comments in this thread of today. Print them out. Show them to a psychotherapist. After the therapist recovers his composure--and if he doesn't dial 911 to summon an ambulance--maybe you can get started on the road to finding out what it means to be a decent human being who occupies a universe that does not revolve around you. Despite your delusions of grandeur, you're really just a squirmy, desperate little man, grasping at glory here in a sorry little blog.

Time to close this one down, alas -- another pissing match has, erm, spurted forth.