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Posts Tagged ‘Obama’

US Healthcare Loses Again

23 Jun

As presented in the 2010 version of the annual Commonwealth Fund comparison of the U.S. health system with those in other industrialized nations, United States once again comes out on the bottom as far as healthcare issues go.

The United States ranked last in comparison with Australia, the Netherlands,Canada, New Zealand, Germany and the United Kingdom. In my mind this is clear evidence that a country who claims to be the only superpower in the world and spends more than half of its budget on defense is doing absolutely very little for its own people.

At $7,290 in annual spending per person in 2007, the U.S. also dwarfed second-place Canada at $3,895 and third-place Netherlands at $3,837. Out of the above countries, infant mortality was the highest in the United States, with Germany and the Netherlands being the best places to be born.

As for access to healthcare the United States tied for last place with Australia. This included late-night care, getting prescriptions filled, and worry that the patients did not have the money to pay for prescriptions. The one area that the United States did excel in as far as access goes, was getting to see a specialist in under four weeks. I’m glad that many people can see a specialist in four weeks, a year ago I had to see a specialist because my doctor had concerns that I may have cancer. The entire ordeal took almost 3 months, from the time that I requested an appointment with my doctor to finally getting the tests and seeing a specialist to diagnose the results. I can’t say that I’m glad that I didn’t have cancer and that it didn’t have three months to grow.

As far as quality care went, the United States ranked four out of six in receiving effective care and in patient centered care. In the safety care category we ranked seventh and in the coordinated care we ranked sixth. The United States did right forth in reporting getting infections in the hospitals. Which is better than seventh which is where New Zealand ended up. Major concerns in safety were receiving the wrong medicines, the wrong diagnosis and too much time relaxing between notification of abnormal test results.

There is a section known as equity. The United States placed dead here for various reasons. many people not seen the doctor’s or dentist because they could not afford it,and having to wait too long to get an appointment.

There are other categories that the viewer may read for himself but each time the result is pretty much the same. I think that Europe is so much further ahead of us in the lack of greed and not doing things because of the cost. There has to come a time when needs and requirements overcome the cost. And what is more important on this entire earth then your health? the United States seems to want to prove that you are here simply for people who have money and to make stockholders rich. If the United States considers itself to be a Christian nation than the reverse should be true.

I consider myself lucky as I have an incredible Dr. who comes from Argentina. He is very intuitive and always listens to me. As I now have no insurance he has worked with me on the cost of coming to see him and getting the deep discounts at my local pharmacy for generic drugs. I usually don’t have to wait too long for appointment with him, however a few schedules me for a specialist I am at that specialist’s mercy as far as getting an appointment and how long I have to wait for it.

It’s time for America to come up in the civilized world. The civilized world doesn’t concentrate on war nor spend its money on wars. Its people are the only golden property that are its highest priority. the healthcare bill that was passed may not be the best, but it is a start to becoming civilized.

All figures and facts from here

And here: Commonwealth Fund comparison

 
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Republicans And Blackwater

04 Mar

or otherwise entitled you are who you hang around with. This is incredibly pathetic. There is no doubt in my mind that the Republican Party is pushing for the destruction of representation in this country and for the type of rule that Pres. Cheney wanted when he was in office. Total presidential control and nothing Congress can do about it.

From Raw Story

Update at bottom: RNC fundraiser hoping to raise $60,000 will take place at Blackwater compound“What can you sell when you do not have the White House, the House, or the Senate?” asks a Republican National Committee PowerPoint presentation.

Answer: “Save the country from trending toward Socialism!”

That — along with a heavy dose of fear-mongering about President Barack Obama, sums up the Republican Party’s strategy heading into the 2010 mid-term elections, according to documents obtained by Politico.

In a presentation delivered to donors and fundraisers in Florida on Feb. 18, RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart made it clear what the 2010 race was going to be about for the GOP: Creating a caricature of President Obama and the Democrats meant to help the Republicans recoup their losses from the last two election cycles.

One PowerPoint slide, entitled “Evil Empire,” shows the famous (or infamous) sketch of Obama painted up to look like the Joker from The Dark Knight. Underneath are cartoons of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, with the title “Cruella DeVille and Scooby-Doo.”
The whole presentation can be found here.

And Politico notes that the presentation displayed “an air of disdain for the party’s donors that is usually confined to the barroom conversations of political operatives.”
The strategy was detailed in a confidential party fundraising presentation, obtained by POLITICO, which also outlines how “ego-driven” wealthy donors can be tapped with offers of access and “tchochkes.”

Manipulating donors with crude caricatures and playing on their fears is hardly unique to Republicans or to the RNC – Democrats raised millions off George W. Bush in similar terms – but rarely is it practiced in such cartoonish terms.
Politico says it obtained the PowerPoint presentation from “a Democrat who said a hard copy had been left in the hotel hosting the … retreat.”

Faced with financial shortfalls and general discontent with the leadership of RNC Chairman Michael Steele, the GOP has been experimenting with some novel fundraising ideas of late. One, which drew some sharp criticism, involved mailing out fundraising letters disguised as a US census form.

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Sarah Palin The Dems Best Friend

08 Feb

Sarah Palin is turning into the Democrat’s best friend.

The things that she is saying do not make a bit of sense. First she wants, or tries to intimidate that she wants Pres. Obama to go to war with Iran to protect Israel. I certainly hope that that’s part of her campaign which he runs for office because it’s apparent that she doesn’t realize that a war platform is not the right platform in these times. The United States supports Israel and Obama has sworn to protect them. Why she is saying the things she is saying is just totally not understandable.

In a time when she is talking about smaller government and less taxes, she is now stating she wants war. Simply to protect Israel. She wants to spend another trillion taking over the Iranian government yet she will not spend that same amount of money for Americans. Nor does she seem to understand that going to war with Iran is going to cost a great deal of money which means taxes will have to be raised. This is the Republican Party for you.

There will never be a time again in our history when we will see smaller government. And no matter which party is in office they will continue to spend in order to please the people. And they will continue to raise taxes no matter what platform they run on. We have to pay for the spending of the Republicans during the Bush term and we will be spending for the Democrats and the Obama term in our future. Someone seems to have forgotten that with the amount of people out of work all revenues are considerably smaller. And that is why it is so funny that the tea party people and Sarah Palin are pandering about talking about less taxes.

What got the Dems elected?  War and the total lack of truth.  She has about as much chance of getting elected as I do.

In other news from the tea party, former Sen. Tom Tancredo called for the return of a civics test to prove that you are good enough to vote in the United States elections. This is the same type of test that Like people from voting for over 70 years, in the same type of thing that Lyndon Johnson tried to do away with. It’s bad enough that Tancredo came up with that subject, even worse than you receive a warm welcome from the tea party audience. Proving to me that this is more of a racist organization that it is political.

The tea partiers talk about less government and less taxes, but during the upcoming elections when they are asked how the war and TARP bailouts will be paid for they will have no answer other than the fact that we should not elect a Pres. Obama because people voted who shouldn’t have been voting. They will have no answers other than to stand on the stage and say we should have less government and less taxes.

 
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Trying To Pretend We Are Not At War

30 Dec

From our former beloved Pres. Dick Cheney, the one who got us into two wars and lost both of them comes another silly speech.

“As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of Sept. 11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war.”

Despite the fact that he was not equal to the task as he waited most of his life for, he really has no right to slam Pres. Obama. Especially given the fact that Obama did not immediately attack someone as Cheney and McCain would’ve done.

Pres. Obama has increased the number of troops in Afghanistan and proven that he knows we are at war. President Cheney is just upset over the fact that he totally lost the Afghanistan war. By walking away from it he thinks he is now an expert on who we are at war with.Pres. Obama has vowed to get to the bottom of whoever planned this and get them. That is pretty much an indication in my mind that Obama knows we are at war.

I wish there was a way to get into Pres. Cheney’s face and let him know what fool he is. He wholeheartedly supported Rumsfeld as he murdered thousands of our own troops and now he seems to want to be an expert on warfare. He might want to consider he is pretty lucky that he is not in prison, the same way that his English counterpart Tony Blair might soon be.

Dick Cheney constantly shows us how weak and ineffective he really was. The only thing he was effective at was creating more terrorists and more terrorism.how long before he is screaming about how we should be attacking Yemen as John McCain has already done.

But Dick Cheney method was to attack Al Qaeda where they were and then follow them around and knee-jerk actions as they move from place to place when he could have stopped them in their spot to begin with. All he had to do was execute the war he started in Afghanistan properly and completely. The man is a failure.

 
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Obama & State Security Privelidge

24 Sep

The Obama administration is finally starting to cure some of the ill’s left by GWB.  fortunately he has turned away from the practices that took the Republicans out of office to start with. I’m glad to see the Atty. Gen. Holder is reviewing the policies of his office. Finally something is being done for the people of this country by the government that they own.

We will be finding out for decades exactly what the Bush Cheney train wreck did to the United States. Probably the most impotent and secretive administration of United States history, the Bush administration will never be known as the administration for the people, but will be known as almost completely parallel to the president Nixon administration.

In some situations The state security situation was used by Bush to protect corporations who went along with what Bush wanted them to do.in some cases those actions were illegal.

This is the article on Atty. Gen. Holder’s actions:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s administration on Wednesday made it more difficult for the government to suppress information on security grounds, amid allegations the power was used to cover up Bush-era excess.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced that from today he would personally review claims to state secrecy privilege, and vowed tougher standards would be put in place.

“Under the new policy, the department will now defend the assertion of the privilege only to the extent necessary to protect against the risk of significant harm to national security,” a Justice Department statement said.

“The policy requires the approval of the Attorney General prior to the invocation of the states secret privilege, except when the Attorney General is recused or unavailable.”

The administration of president George W. Bush was accused of overusing the power, invoking it to suppress information in cases dealing with controversial wiretapping and interrogation methods.

The privilege was also invoked “to stymie legitimate cases against government misconduct,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union, a rights group, citing a case against a Boeing subsidiary for alleged involvement in renditions.

In the case Boeing was accused of aiding the kidnap of five men who were secretly transferred overseas where they were “interrogated under torture” according the ACLU.

The Bush administration blocked the case by invoking state secrets on the grounds that national security was at risk.

The Justice Department committed “not to invoke the privilege for the purpose of concealing government wrongdoing or avoiding embarrassment to government agencies or officials.”

Holder described the new policy as “an important step toward rebuilding the public’s trust in the government’s use of this privilege while recognizing the imperative need to protect national security.”

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, who chairs the influential Senate Judiciary Committee, welcomed the move, which he said included key elements of legislation being discussed in Congress.

“When properly invoked, the state secrets privilege serves important goals. History shows that where it is abused, there are serious consequences,” he said.

The Bush administration did everything it could to hide everything it did. Along the way it brought nothing but just trust the government to new levels. Even the administrations of Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter who were as we should say “suspect”, didn’t bring this level of anti-Americanism from their office to the population.

I am still waiting for Pres. Cheney to be imprisoned for the murder of thousands of Americans and Iraqis

 
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Obama To UN – Its A Shared Responisbility

23 Sep

Obama is having a whirlwind week at the UN, and probably finding out its useless.

President Obama challenged the world to take a more active role in solving the world’s problems in a blunt address Wednesday to the U.N. General Assembly.

“If we are honest with ourselves, we need to admit that we are not living up to that responsibility,” Obama said in his first speech to the world body.

Obama reminded U.N. members that his administration has sought “a new era of engagement with the world” after the more unilateral foreign policy of the Bush era.

Obama stressed that means that other nations must step up to the plate.

“Those who used to chastise American for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone,” he said.

Obama outlined some of the world’s problems and the work facing the U.N.

“Extremists sowing terror in pockets of the world,” Obama said. “Protracted conflicts that grind on and on. Genocide and mass atrocities. More and more nations with nuclear weapons. Melting ice caps and ravaged populations. Persistent poverty and pandemic disease.”

Obama added, “I say this not to sow fear, but to state a fact: the magnitude of our challenges has yet to be met by the measure of our actions.”

But the president has already had a taste of just how difficult it can be to resolve problems, even with countries where the U.S. has great influence.

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