Do Words Have Meaning President Obama?

From the moment we begin speaking as infants in our mother tongue we accept the obvious reality that words do mean something. Each word in every language has a specific or range of meanings that become accepted by the general population. When we speak to one another we can determine what is meant and if there is any uncertainty can have it clarified. Likewise the content of the written word generally enable us to understand what the meaning "is". Except when "it depends what "is, is?", as a past US president said when he was caught with his pants down.

For the last eight years ambiguity of language and the written word has flourished as our government attempted to justify our nation's apparent disregard of the meaning of the Geneva Convention Treaty governing humane treatment of enemy combatants who are captured. We have been told that the Geneva Convention does not apply to suspected terrorists even when they are called enemy combatants. We are being told now by ex-Vice President Cheney that all torture is acceptable if an appointed lawyer or he says so, and he says so. What then do these word from the Geneva Convention Treaty mean, Mr Cheney?

"Captured combatants and civilians who find themselves under the authority of the adverse party are entitled to respect for their lives, their dignity, their personal rights and their political, religious and other convictions. They must be protected against all acts of violence or reprisal. They are entitled to exchange news with their families and receive aid. They must enjoy basic judicial guarantees."

Whatever the consequences of violating these words are or should be is up to the judicial process to determine. Mr. Cheney admits that the words of the Geneva Convention were disobeyed by him and others in the Bush Administration. The meaning of the Geneva Convention is indisputable. There is no acceptable reason to claim misunderstanding of these simple words. The laws flowing from the violation of the Geneva Convention are also as clear as can be and those of us who are old enough remember the Nuremberg Trials at which many Nazi leaders were convicted of war crimes and sentenced to long imprisonments or executed for violations of the Geneva Convention Treaty.

Words do mean something Mr. Cheney and you are certainly aware of that fact. Your admission of our Country and you yourself violating the words of the Geneva Convention should have judicial consequences.

It is now up to the Obama administration to mean what Candidate Obama so often said: "There must be accountability for actions." Individuals in the bush Administration violated the Geneva Convention Treaty that is law in over 190 of the counties on Earth, including the USA. The meaning of the words in the Geneva Convention Treaty are not ambiguous. The words mean exactly what they state in any language on Earth.

If the individuals in the Bush Administration violated the Geneva Convention Treaty, as Mr. Cheney admits, then the guilty individuals must be tried for crimes against humanity just as were the Nazis at Nuremberg.

The Obama Administration cannot ignore what took place during the Bush Administration and simply brush it off by saying "let by gones be by gones". By so doing he would admit that words have no meaning and they are always subject to interpretation and exception. If so how can your words, President Obama, be relied upon and judged?

The Malady of Effervescent Greed Must be Stopped

The financial and unemployment turmoil that we are in the midst of is a symptom of a disease that if allowed to spread will become an incurable plague. The financial turmoil originated when banks were allowed to participate in unregulated investment ploys that amounted to Ponzi schemes that makes Maddoff seem like a piker. Most banks allowed no down payment loans assuming that the prices of real estate would never decline and their loans would always be covered by foreclosures. Then banks and insurance companies participated in another scheme to make money that was even more baseless. They sold insurance or derivatives to individuals that assured payoff even if the loan borrower defaulted. This madness was akin a disease that spread to the brains of everyone participating causing effervescent greed to froth from the mouths of the avaricious money mongers. The average person who is now wallowing in debt and unable to find work represents the innocent victim of this hoax that they believed in because as we have all been told by our leaders that more is better, and the more that you consume the better. Well, the bankers and investment gurus swallowed their own propaganda as did the politicians, and led us all down an unregulated path of economic misery. Can tweaking the system that caused the disease change the outcome? Maybe for the short term, but not for the long haul.

We cannot cure the disease of greed by turning off one spigot while allowing many others to continue to spew polluted water. Temporary measures will slow the greed disease in banking and investments, but only long enough to curtail the economic decline. Then the cycle will resume because we have been conditioned to the not so subliminal message that more consumption cures everything. In other words, the more you spend the better, unless what it costs is greater than all your asset values combined. Then you are told that you are not qualified. I am referring to the priceless asset, your health. If you are destitute or barely below the poverty line, you may get rudimentary health care, if you can find it nearby. If you are middle class and have lost your job and depend upon unemployment insurance you are probably unqualified for Medicaid or equivalent care. The millions of recently unemployed who had rudimentary health care will soon have nothing.

Our health care system that denies life-saving and preventive care to at least one quarter of our people, and rations it (by having HMO administrators decide the care you are entitled to, not doctors telling you what you need) to most of the rest of us, is another example of effervescent greed that is about to cause the next great crisis in the USA.

Medical care in our country use to be available to virtually everyone when family doctors provided care and non-profit hospitals dominated the scene. Doctors made house calls and took care of the poor and needy even if they could not pay. Then, in the late 1950's the practice of medicine started to change. Corporate entities and insurance companies decided that they were missing a gargantuan profit opportunity. Health Maintenance Organizations started to replace the family doctor and profit-making hospitals replaced non-profit ones. Medical specialization grew exponentially and even doctors decided that more profit was very nice. House calls ceased. The needy and poor were left to get sick and were denied life-saving treatments that they could not pay for. As the profit making motive drove medical care the price consumers paid for treatments and care also increased at a rate that far exceeded the general rate of inflation. Prices for doctors and hospital care escalated by at least twice the compounded rate of general inflation.

The escalating costs to companies who offered health care benefits to their employees became too expensive for the employers so they introduced co-payments and monthly deductions from pay checks to help cover their costs and loss of profits.Some companies dropped health plans completely. Retiree health benefits were often eliminated even though they were promised upon employment. Wile all these changes occurred fewer people were able to pay for their medical care and the state and federal government provided aid for those who could not pay. Eventually government aid became insufficient to overcome the profit-driven medical industry prices that had the most influential lobby in Washington DC and state capitols.

The CEO's and executives of the major HMO's and pharmaceutical companies thrived as did their top executives and large stock investors as the profits ballooned. HMO executive pay and bonuses went sky high as they are now. Some of the highest paid corporate executives are CEO's of HMO's many of whom are paid over $100 million dollars annually plus stock options and bonuses. The health care industry is now one of the most profitable businesses in the USA simply because it has morphed from care based upon the Hippocratic oath to care based upon maximizing profits. Major corporation control doctors who are often paid bonuses by restricting the extent of care. Most doctors are now employees or managed by HMO's and insurance companies whose real purpose is to generate profits, and health care is secondary.

The consequences of this transformation of health care in our country is that about 100 million of our people are provided inadequate medical care or no health care at all, and the number is growing daily. This is the result of the same effervescent greed that has devastated our economic wellbeing. We are on the precipice of becoming engulfed in an even more devastating disaster, one that truly determines the balance between life and death: affordable health care for all citizens. If greed is allowed to continue to dominate health care as it has for banking and investments we will soon see our sick country becoming sicker and more destitute than any financial upheaval could ever cause.

What can the average citizen do to prevent profit from deciding your health? Stop the HMO's, drug companies, and their armies of lobbyists from dictating the future of health care. Demand that the profit motive be removed from our health care delivery system and insist that a universal health care plan be created that provides health care for all citizens regardless of economic status. Return health care to the days when the Hippocratic Oath was the driving force and the purpose of medicine. Stop profit making corporations and organizations from spreading the "Malady of Effervescent Greed" that has already done irreparable harm to many millions of our people. Millions more will soon lose whatever health care coverage they had as Cobra is terminated or becomes too expensive to pay for without a job.

Act now. Call your elected representatives in the House and Senate. Contact President Obama. Start organizing and participate in a "People's March on Washington for Universal, Non-Profit, Health Care". Tell the politicians that you won't allow any more back-room deals with the health care lobbyists and their profit-driven health-care corporations! We the people must win our right to have Universal Health Care without greedy profit making corporations determining your eligibility and amount of care.

Is There a Long Term Upside to the Present Economic Downside?

Today the world is plagued by a serious economic down turn for about one third of the world's population. Another one third are experiencing slight economic decline. One third remains in abject poverty and that has not changed for a long time. The so-called advanced economic sector of the world economy of which the USA is a part, is entering, arguably, the second Depression in a slightly more than 75 years. We had been told by our political leaders since FDR that steady economic growth interrupted by periodic "corrective recessions" of very short duration was the norm. Now it is appropriate to question this premise.

The capitalistic system is based upon the assumption that individual decisions, unfettered by government regulations, within open competition to supply products will result in the highest standard of living for everyone. The most efficient producer will always provide the consumer with the lowest cost product if the same rules of competition applies to all. This idyllic dream has long ago become a fairy tale. International monopolies control the production of virtually all consumer products. These monopolies produce products where labor cost is the lowest and where regulations and unionized labor is forbidden. Open and free competition no longer exists in the so-called advance countries in the world that sells to the rest of the world.

Furthermore, the concept of consumption of all and any products is the fundamental basis of economic growth is another fairy tale that is totally bankrupt. This concept is rooted in the archaic belief that resources are unlimited and that more of everything is the best possible gauge of human progress.We have been sold this bill of goods for more than 150 years (in the USA. These hollow words of politicians and corporate leaders have been debunked by reality. The working people of the world are now suffering because of the doomed illusion that prosperity is assured by consumption of more material goods, that are not essential for a good life, but indispensable nonetheless. We have been duped by our political and corporate advocates of profit based upon raw greed. The current economic turbulence will not be brief nor reversible if we continue to follow the path that unbridled consumption by the wealthiest countries is necessary to revive the economic fortunes of the world's populations. Unfortunately we are being told this by virtually all world leaders. Open your eyes and ears and use your God-given brain to cut through all this beguiling baloney.

However, there is a long term attainable goal that will provide human purpose based upon communion with nature and each other. We must become tuned to the commonness of human life and natural gifts and blend them to create a world that is based upon working for the common good of all. We must stop demanding more of everything and measure our true needs based upon necessity, not desire. We cannot sustain a world based upon consumption for the sake of consumption. The concept of a forever renewable basis of consumption is just as fraudulent as unbridled consumption. We must all accept the inevitable truth that the Earth's resources are limited and consumption cannot be unlimited. As the old saying goes, 'There is no such thing as a free lunch."

The current political climate in the world is based upon the belief that if we regain our past consumption practices the world will regain and its upward economic trajectory. If the world economy regains its upward path in this manner it will be short lived and another, and perhaps the last great Depression will befall the world and the eventual consequences will be unimaginable.

We have the power to change but only if we as a world collectively admits that generating economic wealth by resorting to unlimited consumption amounts to self destruction. The challenge that we all face is to establish a reasonable life quality for Earth's inhabitants based upon equitable use of our planet's limited natural resources. The upside of the present economic downside depends upon our ability to fundamentally change. Can we?

Allowing the Kittens and the Chicks in the Henhouse

Conventional wisdom is that you never want to allow the cat in the hen house if you want the hens to continue laying eggs. But think about this scenario. Put the kitten and chicks together in the hen house and allow them to get acquainted as they mature into grown hens and cats. My hunch is that they will become friends and learn to accept one another peacefully, if not collaboratively.

The Obama-Warren controversy can be likened to the scenario above. Is it to Obama's advantage to corral Warren in the hen house early so that later he will moderate his appetite for gay/lesbian bashing when Obama acts on his promises to promote equality for all, including gays and lesbians.

Obama is a very smart politician and he understands the value of putting the chicks and kittens in the hen house together. Both may learn to purr and cackle a more harmonious tune later as the golden eggs begin hatching.

Bush Gets the Boot and so Should We

An Iraqi reporter removed both of his shoes and threw them at President Bush as he was making his farewell speech to Iraqi government leaders and invited reporters in Iraq. The Iraqi reporter missed his target. Throwing shoes is the most demeaning insult one can imagine. He, the reporter stated that here is what Bush deserved for leaving Iraq with so many orphans caused by Bush's war. The reporter was arrested by the Iraqi government amidst swelling popular demonstrations demanding his release and supportive of his shoe-throwing action, displaying the distrust and anger against our country. Bush literally got the boot from the Iraqi people who have sustained hundreds of thousands of civilian war deaths (some estimates put the number over one million), and caused untold suffering and deaths from diseases caused by contaminated water and foods. Thousands of equally innocent American lives have been lost and tens of thousands have suffered debilitating life-long injuries because of this war based upon lies, and still supported by our current President.

We, the American people collectively deserve kicking ourselves with our own shoes for submitting to Bush war-mongering tactics for nearly 6 years. Why were we so paralyzed to accept Bush's actions without much opposition. Simple folks--the Iraqis and only a few American military volunteers were dying as a result. We were separated from the deadly havoc that reigned death daily upon the people of Iraq.

Throwing two shoes at a man, who may be considered as the first American President who could be accused as a "War Criminal", is but a minor incident. Yet the reporter was accused by the puppet American Iraqi Government of a "barbaric act" potentially subject to a death penalty by the " Democratic Iraqi Government" we have structured.

Will we ever learn from the past? Will we ever tame the wild beast that seems to inflame us during times of stress and learn to "count to ten" before reacting with a knee-jerk, go-to-war reaction? The world's innocent peoples have suffered because of compulsions to strike back even if the perceived enemy is totally innocent.

Perhaps the two shoes thrown at President Bush is symbolic of the fact that there are some among us who are sick of war for the sake of war. Let's throw our shoes instead at any boneheaded leader who believes that so-called "preventive war" is justified. Maybe the stench from our sweaty feet will make him or her think twice.

President-Elect Obama's Future Pathway--More or Less Military Actions?

Today we hear rumbles of spending hundreds of billions of our tax dollars to spur our economy. Additional hundreds of billions are being spent to salvage failing banks and investment companies. More billions will focus upon helping homeowners prevent foreclosure of their homes. Finally we are paying the piper for past corporate and individual indulgences and greed-induced behavior.

Yet, despite the social need for these expenditures we still blindly allow two wars to suck up our tax dollars at the rate of at least $500 billion dollars a year, and swallow at least another $600 billion dollars for worldwide military expenditures. Our taxes pay for about 800 to 1,000 military bases that are manned by nearly 300,000 military personnel. Many hundreds of billions of dollars are spent for CIA operations, the Pentagon and other covert purposes. Military equipment contracts for new and replacement equipment accounts for hundreds of billions of tax dollars every year spent by military contractors. Para military corporations are hired by our government as unofficial military combatants to do dirty wok in such locations as Iraq and Afghanistan. These contracts are often masked in secrecy and their costs are unknown. Adding to this gargantuan military bounty are billions if not trillions of dollars required to provide veteran benefits and health care for years to come. It is virtually impossible to value human lives lost, so the total annual cost is beyond accurate estimation. If an accurate accounting of all military-related expenses were available the estimate of the total annual tax cost would easily exceed 2,000 billion dollars (2 trillion dollars for those of you who can visualize such a large number).

How, you may ask, can we spend about 15% of the US gross national product (US GNP) on military expenses. The world's GNP is about 63 trillion dollars, so we are essentially spending about 3% of the total world's GNP for military purposes, and virtually half of the world's total military expenses. The answer is that we borrow from counties such as China and Japan with what amounts to promissory notes to pay back, with interest, in the future. Just how much debt is really incurred annually is undoubtedly a well hidden secret, and is virtually never discussed in "polite circles" unless you want to be accused of "not putting your country first".

Well risking that association, may I ask whether we are getting our bang for the bucks spent for military? Our Constitution clearly specifies that we will maintain an army for national defense. Can we possibly justify the trillions of tax dollars and lives lost during the last eight years as spent for our country's national defense? Clearly, attacking Iraq and mounting ongoing war in Iraq and Afghanistan have neither improved the defense of our country against invading enemies (the 9/11 terror attack was not an act of war against our country by either Iraq or Afghanistan, but the nation less terrorist organization, Al Queda), nor helped our stature in the world. Yet our present government seems intent upon following the same path regardless of the consequences.

I hope that the the new Obama administration will take a distinctly different track, and not only stop our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but also reduce our military presence world wide. This could demonstrate to the world that we will foster peaceful approaches to world conflict rather than knee-jerk military responses. We would be able to divert trillions of dollars to health care, education and peaceful job creation instead of the abyss of endless military actions, loss of life, and bottomless expenses.

As our country awaits the new administration, let us all contact President-Elect Obama and urge him to fundamentally change our addiction to military solutions to ameliorate world conflict.This would not only create the possibility of an era of global peace, but would also provide some of the revenue to pay off our country's debt and to fund essential health care, educational improvements, and massive job creation. These must become the cornerstones of our true national purpose, beyond the military dominance that now prevails. Let us turn back to the principles of our Constitution and rebuild our country as "One Nation Indivisible With Liberty and Justice for All". Help us regain our way, President-Elect Obama. The American people are counting on you to help create an era of peace and humanity-driven purposes.

The Difference That Makes No Difference Makes No Difference

If you were asked what single life factor is most important to you and your loved ones, what would you answer? Think about this before you reply. How many of you would answer,"good health"? Without good health most everything else would be burdensome if not impossible regardless of how much money you have. Whoops what did I write? Money enables you to get whatever you want or need. Or does it? Ask a multi millionaire who is dying from an incurable cancer and do you believe he will answer "money"?

Ask the nearly 50 million Americans who have no health care because they cannot afford the typical $12,000 insurance policy. They may die even though no medical care at all is available. Or they may suffer from diseases that they cannot afford to have treated. Money in their cases can make a difference. But should money determine whether or not health care is available to all, regardless of your ability to pay?

Most civilized countries in the world have nationalized health care for every citizen regardless of ability to pay. Social tax provides the cost of equal access to health care independent of one's income. Our country is the only civilized country that does not assure every citizen equal access to health care for rich and poor alike. In this respect we live in the dark ages.Will we emerge soon or will we continue to disregard the right to health care even as we proclaim that the right to life is paramount. How can we be so adamant about the right to life without being equally demanding for equal health care for all? Is it alright for a child to be born into a world where health care is only the right for the privileged who can afford it?

As a new President is about to lead our country we must all voice our demand for universal health care based upon a single payer Insurance companies and HMO's and their executives must not be enriched by a new, slightly tweaked, health care policy. The working people, and the poor and needy must be included amongst the recipients of the benefits, without assuring the financial well being or bailout of more business moguls and corporations as we already have with the financial conglomerate bailouts in affect and pending. The medical practitioners must also be assured fair pay as they are in civilized countries where their people are covered by single-payer, universal health care.

If we are served another ploy, that pretends to provide universal health care under the guise of protecting the medical insurance companies, we will once again abandon the people who not only deserve equal health care, but posses the the fundamental right to such care. We cannot pretend that some minuscule variation on the current corporate medicine, managed by insurance companies, is all that is needed.

The "difference that makes no difference makes no difference". Please President-Elect Obama make a difference for all citizens. Help lead the way to universal, single-payer health care.