National Nurses Movement Action Diary

URGENT ACTION NEEDED - CALL NOW!

Your calls are needed to keep single payer amendments alive in the U.S. House of Representatives. The message is simple: "Keep the Kucinich Amendment!"

• Speaker Nancy Pelosi:
  DC 202.225.4965 - SF 415.556.4862
  
  
• Representative George Miller:
  DC 202.225.2095 - Concord 925.602.1880
  
• Representative Henry Waxman:
  DC 202.225.3976 - LA 323.651.1040
  
  
• Read the National Nurses Blog Post

And don't forget to rec up that dKos diary and leave a comment thanking them for all the National Nurses Movement does if you are a member there.

If you are like most Single Payer supporters...

I think you'll find the following links are the bomb!

Weiner Amendment || Kucinich Amendment || Public Option || Healthcare Reform || Republican Healthcare Plan || Democratic Healthcare Plan || Doctors on Healthcare Reform || Nurses on Healthcare Reform

Don't be shy to click on them and feel free to copy and paste them everywhere. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink...

And, ain't it funny what news of the CBO scoring Single Payer can do?

How do you know Obama's health care plan is bad for YOU?

When the Big Pharma pushers try to sell it to you:

Conceding that it has long been viewed as Republican-dominated, the industry's lobbying arm plans to spend tens of millions of dollars on an advertising blitz promoting Obama-style health coverage for every American. The first spot -- sponsored by the drug lobby, consumer and labor groups, and health providers -- will be unveiled today.

Stop buying crap from dope heads...

Nothing less than H.R. 676, single payer universal health care, will solve our problems.

Everyone knows this is true.
----------------------------------

Single Payer Health Care Would Help Auto Industry

While I originally wrote this in January of 2007, concerning the cost of health care to consumers and service provided, it is equally applicable to the savings for the auto industry. And that is not my opinion, that is the opinion of the successful auto industry management. The ones that aren't asking for a bailout. At the time I wrote this in 2007, each vehicle assembled in the United States cost GM $1,525 for health care; those made in Canada cost GM $197. Probably more savings now since this was written nearly two years ago:

In U.S., it's pay more, get less - Universal Health Care
Why is this man smiling?

In U.S., it's pay more, get less:
"A RELATIVE BARGAIN: George Mercieca, a worker at a GM assembly plant in Oshawa, Ontario, shows off his Canadian health care card. GM spends an average of $1,385 a year on medical bills for hourly workers in Canada. An American autoworker costs the company about $5,000, but studies show Americans are no healthier than their foreign counterparts."

He is smiling because he has a great job with better medical benefits than most Americans could ever hope for under our failed health care for profit system. The kind of job that Connecticut , and the USA as a whole, can never hope to attract under our current system. If you do not believe me then ask yourself "what does the manufacturing industry have to say about this?"

While training issues are less of a problem here in Connecticut, because we have a decent educational system, health care is cited as a major issue for Toyota's decision to chose Ontario as the location of a new factory for their Rav-4s slated to open in 2008:

"The level of the workforce in general is so high that the training program you need for people, even for people who have not worked in a Toyota plant before, is minimal compared to what you have to go through in the southeastern United States," said Gerry Fedchun, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, whose members will see increased business with the new plant.

Acknowledging it was the "worst-kept secret" throughout Ontario's automotive industry, Toyota confirmed months of speculation Thursday by announcing plans to build a 1,300-worker factory in the southwestern Ontario city.

"Welcome to Woodstock - that's something I've been waiting a long time to say," Ray Tanguay, president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, told hundreds gathered at a high school gymnasium.

The plant will produce the RAV-4, dubbed by some as a "mini sport-utility vehicle" that Toyota currently makes only in Japan. It plans to build 100,000 vehicles annually.

The factory will cost $800 million to build, with the federal and provincial governments kicking in $125 million of that to help cover research, training and infrastructure costs.

Several U.S. states were reportedly prepared to offer more than double that amount of subsidy. But Fedchun said much of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project.

He said Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.

"The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario," Fedchun said.

In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson.

"Most people don't think of our health-care system as being a competitive advantage," he said.

It is clearly an advantage for any company that wants to open up a business in any industry... A 4 to 5 dollar per hour advantage. An advantage so great that any state that passes true-single-payer Universal Health care first will be positioned to become a mecca for any company considering opening any kind of business.

We already have an educational advantage over the most of the USA, having a highly rated school system and a high rate of college graduates. Why the hold up on giving these businesses the real money savings that Universal Health Care would provide and the other best reason to set up shop in Connecticut?

Because of lobbying from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. We need to take them out of the loop in the decision making process for this issue since we know they will fight it tooth-and-nail. We need to look at what is best for the people of Connecticut and for all industries, not just those two lobbying behemoths.

And just how much more is health care costing us?

Medical bills soar

Divide the nation's medical bill evenly across the population, and each of us paid $6,102 in 2004, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That's 50 percent more than the residents of the country with the next-highest health care bill, Switzerland ($4,077), and more than double the average for industrialized nations ($2,546).

...snip...

Those countries provide health care for all their residents for less money than the United State spends while it leaves an estimated 46 million without insurance.

That's contradicted by studies conducted by Gerard Anderson, director of the Center for Hospital Finance and Management at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. "We have about the same number of MRIs and CT scanners as Canada, the U.K. and France, and far fewer than Japan," Anderson said. "We have the same number of doctors, doctor visits, hospitals and inpatient days at hospitals.

"The difference is we pay two to 2 1/2 times more for virtually identical services."

The average U.S. physician earned $180,000 in 2004, Anderson said; in Canada, it was $100,000 (in U.S. dollars).

Even after adjusting for the higher income of U.S. residents, Americans pay on average $2,000 more per year for health care than the residents of the next-highest paying country, Anderson said.

One out of every seven dollars spent today in the United States goes for health care -- a record 15.3 percent of the gross domestic product in 2004, the latest year for which statistics are available. By comparison, Canada spends 9.9 percent of its GDP; Japan spends 8.0 percent.

By 2015, one out of every five dollars spent in the United States will go for health care, according to projections by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. If those projections hold, the average American's share for medical needs alone will be a staggering $12,320.

For all that money, you would expect Americans to be healthier than their foreign friends. The opposite is true.

Whoa! They are healthier than us, and they pay less? And it is not just a monetary cost:

If you're born in the United States, chances are that you'll die younger than people born in other industrialized nations. The United States has the lowest life expectancy of 14 nations measured by the World Health Organization. U.S. life expectancy in 2001 was 77.1; Canada, 79.7; Italy, 79.8; Japan, 81.5

The infant mortality rate is higher in the United States than in other industrialized nations. In 2003, seven infants died for every 1,000 live births in the United States -- the worst rate of 19 countries measured by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

I am thinking that anyone that is really PRO-LIFE, and not just talking about it for political reasons, would have to be shocked by those infant mortality rates. Why aren't they screaming about this issue? If they are really honest about being pro-life than they should be our allies on true Universal Heath Care.

As for manufacturers, just how much profit margin can health care open up for them?

Those vehicles, often parked on the same dealer lot as identical vehicles produced in U.S. plants, have one notable difference: Each vehicle assembled in the United States cost GM $1,525 for health care; those made in Canada cost GM $197.

The higher salaries of Canadian autoworkers offset much of the health care savings for the company, said Jim Cameron, labor relations director for GM Canada. But at the cash-strapped automaker, such a huge health care cost differential is hard to ignore. The difference is primarily a result of Canada's national health care system, in which most medical bills are paid by the government. Most countries have similar systems.

WHAT THE FUCK!!! The GM employees get higher wages up there too? And GM still racks up more profits from production up north in Canada then they can down here? How much more of this are you Nutmeggers willing to take?

Can you imagine the shockwave across the nation if a car manufacturer or some other large industry chose to locate in Connecticut over other states or countries... And it could happen.

Do you want to continue to pay more just to get less? Less healthy workers, less money, less jobs, less profit for industry as a whole.

Why not get more? More people that actually have coverage? More healthy workers that are more productive? More savings in health care for us and for industry? More manufacturers picking Connecticut as their destination of choice? More smiles on Nutmeggers' faces.

Universal Health Care is the answer to everyone getting more.

_______________

It might be the answer to save US industry.

There is an off the shelf answer sitting there getting dusty. Ask Rep. John Conyers, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and the other cosigners about H.R. 676. It would be a huge step towards helping every industry in this nation become competitive.

If you need to know about a health care plan that can fix many of the problems with our privatized ripoff:

The United States National Health Insurance Act

H.R. 676

"Expanded & Improved Medicare For All"

*introduced by Reps. John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich, Jim McDermott and Donna Christensen

"National health insurance is not only the best answer,

it is the only answer to eliminating health disparities."

If you live in CT-05 you may want to know that Rep. Chris Murphy has yet to sign up as a co-sponsor to this bill. Ya think it is time to remind him how important H.R. 676 is to all Americans?

Rep. Chris Murphy's contact info

Chris Murphy
(202) 225-4476,
1 Grove Street, New Britain CT 06053

If you live elsewhere, you might want to consider contacting your own Congress critters, as well.

_______________

(here are some reactions from a recent re-posting of this diary from around the internet added to it below.)

Some more actions we can take to bring this change, via Bruce Dixon at the Black Agenda Report:

What We Can Do to Protect US Jobs, Accomplish Universal Health Care, and Hold the New President Accountable.

1. Get the information about single payer health care and spread what the corporate media won't.

   Be a frequent visitor at the web site of Physicians for a National Health Care Plan, http://pnhp.org. There you will find research material, talking points, frequently asked questions and answers, press releases and new information every day, enough to answer anybody's questions on single payer, and to provide answers to all the lies and propaganda spread by the insurance companies. This is the stuff to write about, to blog about, to send and forward to everyone on your email list.
   

2. Email, call and visit your member of Congress about single payer health care and saving US jobs.

   Whether they already support HR 676 or not, remind your elected representative that US industries cannot compete with those in societies which offer free health care. Demand that single payer health care ought to be part of any legislative deal to save US auto companies.

   Phone calls and emails are good. Letters and faxees are better. But group visits of five or more people to district offices are the most potent weapons of persuasion. Organize one. Nearly all members of congress have open hours during which constituents can make an appointment with or drop in on the Great Man or Woman to discuss issues of importance. If you video any of these visits, we will be happy to post them here, and in some cases if you organize the visit, we can arrange to shoot the video. Email us for details.

3. Call a public meeting or teach-in at your school or neighborhood to talk about single payer health care.

   Pnhp.org and others can help you arrange authoritative and knowledgeable speakers. Video that too so others not present at the event can see it.

   This is not the time to lay back, to wait and see what the new administration does or wants to do. Every day we wait before organizing to inform each other and publicly pressure the new president and his party to keep their promises is a day that the parasitic private health insurers enjoy unrestricted and unfettered access to the new administration behind the scenes. Elite pressure occurs behind the scenes. Pressure in the public interest is --- well --- public.

   This won't be easy. Nearly every Democratic president since Harry Truman has aimed at some kind of solution to the health care mess. Producing an aroused public makes it easier for the new administration and its party to do the right thing. But if we don't get loud about the link between saving jobs and delivering health care early in an Obama administration, a precious opportunity will be lost that we may never see again.

And... Just to be clear on what the auto industry really thinks about single payer universal health care, from tiggers thotful spot at TPM:

Yes, (The best way to 'rescue' General Motors is single payer health care) great minds think alike.

This is from a letter that the Big Three executives SENT to the Canadian govt:

The public health care system significantly reduces total labour costs for automobile manufacturing firms, compared to the cost of equivalent private insurance services purchased by U.S.-based automakers; these health insurance savings can amount to several dollars per hour of labour worked. Publicly funded health care thus accounts for a significant portion of Canada's overall labour cost advantage in auto assembly, versus the U.S., which in turn has been a significant factor in maintaining and attracting new auto investment to Canada...

For both employers and workers in the auto industry, it is vitally important that the publicly funded health care system be preserved and renewed, on the existing principles of universality, accessibility, portability, comprehensiveness, and public administration...

From Ozzie, a couple of videos discussing single payer health care:

Nick Skala, formerly of PNHP and co-founder of Health Care for All Illinois details quite a bit.

Part 2 here.

From Imavehmontah on savings with single payer universal health care:

Single payer healthcare means replacing the present patchwork quilt of payment mechanisms for the cost of health care with a single point source payer. That single payer is responsible for defining the benefits package that is covered, actuarial predictions of what the cost would be for those services, collecting the money required to cover those costs, and disbursement of the money. The single payer obviously has a great amount of power and responsibility for health care. There may or may not be the addition of other payers for services that are outside of the benefits package chosen by the single payer. Some single payer systems have also allowed people to "opt-out" of being covered by a single payer system and go it alone, with or without the help of other insurance companies or plans.

Why is single payer advantageous? There are a number of ways that single payer plans (can potentially) improve care and reduce costs:

When all people are in a large common pool, the single payer has enormous leverage to negotiate prices.

When all people are in a common pool, the single payer can prospectively look at the relative values provided by different modes of treatment and decide which modalities are most cost effective for the populace at large.

The single payer can preferentially fund and reward preventive care (which may even include preventions typically not thought of as "health care" like smoking cessation), which frees up resources that may otherwise be wasted.

The single payer can reduce greatly the amount of resources required to get reimbursement for service provided, freeing those resources to be used for other health care services.

The single payer can reduce geographic maldistribution of health care resources.

The single payer has no fear that money invested in services that keep people healthy will become a reward for someone else down the line as people change health care plans.

Being involved in a single payer system raised the awareness and accountability of all of participants in the system. It quickly becomes clear that it is in your interest to make sure that your neighbors take advantage of preventive services and behaviors because everybody wins.

A single payer plan can (if properly designed) be more responsive to local needs and variations, and more locally accountable.

A single payer system can improve the use of health care technology for information use that will give us a clearer picture of how to allocate resources for the best return on investment.

A single payer system can greatly reduce the percentage of the total GNP that health care consumes, benefitting all industry.

Now, there are going to be a lot of anecdotal replies to this about this description. I admit that not all single payer implementations realize these potentials. But nonetheless these are the possible benefits in a well designed system.

neroden on systems eliminated by single payer universal health care:

I'll count Medicare (parts A and B) as continuing to exist, because they would likely form the basis of the single payer system. If the single-payer system was "built fresh" they would go away too.

(1) All private insurance companies, including all HMOs and PPOs. There might be a small number left to provide "supplemental" insurance.

(2) Medicaid. Subsumed by single-payer.

(3) S-CHIP. Subsumed by single-payer.

(4) Medicare [Dis]Advantage. This is private companies.

(5) Medicare Part D. Elimination of private companies.

(6) Health care compensation from auto insurance. (Compensation for lost wages and "quality of life" would continue, but would be much simpler to adjudicate; premiums would drop).

(7) Health care compensation for 'worker's comp'. (Compensation for lost wages and "quality of life" would continue, but would be much simpler to adjudicate; premiums would drop.)

(8) "preferred providers", doctors accepting some insurances and not others, and all similar doctors' office paperwork. Every doctor would either be "in the national system" or not, and very few would not.

(9) State and local health insurance systems for their employees. Subsumed by single-payer.

(10) Self-funded insurance schemes from corporations (like GM) and universities (like Cornell). Subsumed by single-payer.

(11) Special "flu clinics" and other such schemes for getting basic preventative medicine to everyone. Everyone would have a regular doctor in the system and that doctor would offer preventative medicine for free.

(12) Health care aspect of disability insurance for business. (Compensation for lost wages would continue, but would be much simpler to adjudicate; premiums would drop.)

(13) Federal government employees insurance system. Subsumed by single-payer.

(14) Charity care budgets at emergency rooms. Subsumed by single-payer.

It would instantly save many corporations, hospitals, and individuals from bankruptcy.

Current estimates are that the tax increase needed would be very small. The administrative savings from combining Medicare, Medicaid, S-CHIP, and the Government Employees insurance program is substantial; the savings from pricing power are large; and the government already covers all the people with the highest health care costs (children, the elderly, the poor, and the military), so adding all the "cheap" people costs a lot less proportionally. Estimates are that the government already pays 7/8 of all health care spending in the country, so that gives you a good sense of the necessary increase.

People relatively well-to-do would presumably see their taxes go up slightly, as would well-to-do businesses. However, almost anyone who is actually paying for their insurance would end up saving money. Only people who are uninsured and healthy (who benefit by getting coverage), or who have their insurance entirely paid for by employers (which is very rare these days) would have a net increase in costs.

What it would require is firing a lot of people -- the people working for the health insurance companies, or working in other offices to deal with the health insurance companies. That's where the out-of-pocket savings for most Americans would come from: the fired paper-pushers. That is the actual downside: elimination of jobs, but since they're wasteful make-work, or even make-trouble, jobs, I think it's worth it. We could come up with a job placement program for them.

While it would eliminate insurance company jobs that PRODUCE NOTHING (except for the leeching effect off of our paychecks) these jobs would be replaced by more productive jobs in the health care industry. More Doctors, Nurses, technicians and other supporting jobs for hospitals, clinics and industries that produce health care products.

Jobs that would be more beneficial to individuals, industry and to society as a whole.

Single Payer Health Care Would Help Auto Industry

While I originally wrote this in January of 2007, concerning the cost of health care to consumers and service provided, it is equally applicable to the savings for the auto industry. And that is not my opinion, that is the opinion of the successful auto industry management. The ones that aren't asking for a bailout. At the time I wrote this in 2007, each vehicle assembled in the United States cost GM $1,525 for health care; those made in Canada cost GM $197. Probably more savings now since this was written nearly two years ago:

In U.S., it's pay more, get less - Universal Health Care

Why is this man smiling?

In U.S., it's pay more, get less:

"A RELATIVE BARGAIN: George Mercieca, a worker at a GM assembly plant in Oshawa, Ontario, shows off his Canadian health care card. GM spends an average of $1,385 a year on medical bills for hourly workers in Canada. An American autoworker costs the company about $5,000, but studies show Americans are no healthier than their foreign counterparts."

He is smiling because he has a great job with better medical benefits than most Americans could ever hope for under our failed healthcare for profit system. The kind of job that Connecticut , and the USA as a whole, can never hope to attract under our current system. If you do not believe me than ask yourself "what does the manufacturing industry have to say about this?"

While training issues are less of a problem here in Connecticut, because we have a decent educational system, health care is cited as a major issue for Toyota's decision to choose Ontario as the location of a new factory for their Rav-4s slated to open in 2008:

"The level of the workforce in general is so high that the training program you need for people, even for people who have not worked in a Toyota plant before, is minimal compared to what you have to go through in the southeastern United States," said Gerry Fedchun, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, whose members will see increased business with the new plant.

Acknowledging it was the "worst-kept secret" throughout Ontario's automotive industry, Toyota confirmed months of speculation Thursday by announcing plans to build a 1,300-worker factory in the southwestern Ontario city.

"Welcome to Woodstock - that's something I've been waiting a long time to say," Ray Tanguay, president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, told hundreds gathered at a high school gymnasium.

The plant will produce the RAV-4, dubbed by some as a "mini sport-utility vehicle" that Toyota currently makes only in Japan. It plans to build 100,000 vehicles annually.

The factory will cost $800 million to build, with the federal and provincial governments kicking in $125 million of that to help cover research, training and infrastructure costs.

Several U.S. states were reportedly prepared to offer more than double that amount of subsidy. But Fedchun said much of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project.

He said Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.

"The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario," Fedchun said.

In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson.

"Most people don't think of our health-care system as being a competitive advantage," he said.

It is clearly an advantage for any company that wants to open up a business in any industry... A 4 to 5 dollar per hour advantage. An advantage so great that any state that passes true-single-payer Universal Health Care first will be positioned to become a mecca for any company considering opening any kind of business.

We already have an educational advantage over the most of the USA, having a highly rated school system and a high rate of college graduates. Why the hold up on giving these businesses the real money savings that Universal Health Care would provide and the other best reason to set up shop in Connecticut?

Because of lobbying from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. We need to take them out of the loop in the decision making process for this issue since we know they will fight it tooth-and-nail. We need to look at what is best for the people of Connecticut and for all industries, not just those two lobbying behemoths.

And just how much more is health care costing us?

Medical bills soar

Divide the nation's medical bill evenly across the population, and each of us paid $6,102 in 2004, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That's 50 percent more than the residents of the country with the next-highest health care bill, Switzerland ($4,077), and more than double the average for industrialized nations ($2,546).

...snip...

Those countries provide health care for all their residents for less money than the United State spends while it leaves an estimated 46 million without insurance.

That's contradicted by studies conducted by Gerard Anderson, director of the Center for Hospital Finance and Management at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. "We have about the same number of MRIs and CT scanners as Canada, the U.K. and France, and far fewer than Japan," Anderson said. "We have the same number of doctors, doctor visits, hospitals and inpatient days at hospitals.

"The difference is we pay two to 2 1/2 times more for virtually identical services."

The average U.S. physician earned $180,000 in 2004, Anderson said; in Canada, it was $100,000 (in U.S. dollars).

Even after adjusting for the higher income of U.S. residents, Americans pay on average $2,000 more per year for health care than the residents of the next-highest paying country, Anderson said.

One out of every seven dollars spent today in the United States goes for health care -- a record 15.3 percent of the gross domestic product in 2004, the latest year for which statistics are available. By comparison, Canada spends 9.9 percent of its GDP; Japan spends 8.0 percent.

By 2015, one out of every five dollars spent in the United States will go for health care, according to projections by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. If those projections hold, the average American's share for medical needs alone will be a staggering $12,320.

For all that money, you would expect Americans to be healthier than their foreign friends. The opposite is true.

Whoa! They are healthier than us, and they pay less? And it is not just a monetary cost:

# If you're born in the United States, chances are that you'll die younger than people born in other industrialized nations. The United States has the lowest life expectancy of 14 nations measured by the World Health Organization. U.S. life expectancy in 2001 was 77.1; Canada, 79.7; Italy, 79.8; Japan, 81.5

# The infant mortality rate is higher in the United States than in other industrialized nations. In 2003, seven infants died for every 1,000 live births in the United States -- the worst rate of 19 countries measured by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

I am thinking that anyone that is really PRO-LIFE, and not just talking about it for political reasons, would have to be shocked by those infant mortality rates. Why aren't they screaming about this issue? If they are really honest about being pro-life than they should be our allies on true Universal Heathcare.

A s for manufacturers, just how much profit margin can health care open up for them?

Those vehicles, often parked on the same dealer lot as identical vehicles produced in U.S. plants, have one notable difference: Each vehicle assembled in the United States cost GM $1,525 for health care; those made in Canada cost GM $197.

The higher salaries of Canadian autoworkers offset much of the health care savings for the company, said Jim Cameron, labor relations director for GM Canada. But at the cash-strapped automaker, such a huge health care cost differential is hard to ignore. The difference is primarily a result of Canada's national health care system, in which most medical bills are paid by the government. Most countries have similar systems.

WHAT THE FUCK!!! They get higher wages up there too? And GM still racks up more profits from production up north in Canada then they can down here? How much more of this are you Nutmeggers willing to take?

Can you imagine the shock wave across the nation if a car manufacturer or some other large industry chose to locate in Connecticut over other states or countries... And it could happen.

Do you want to continue to pay more just to get less? Less healthy workers, less money, less jobs, less profit for industry as a whole.

Why not get more? More people that actually have coverage? More healthy workers that are more productive? More savings in health care for us and for industry? More manufacturers picking Connecticut as their destination of choice? More smiles on Nutmeggers' faces.

Universal Health Care is the answer to everyone getting more.

_________________

It might be the answer to save US industry.

There is an off the shelf answer sitting there getting dusty. Ask Rep. John Conyers, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and the other cosigners about H.R. 676. It would be a huge step towards helping every industry in this nation become competitive.

If you need to know about a health care plan that can fix many of the problems with our privatized ripoff:

The United States National Health Insurance Act

H.R. 676

"Expanded & Improved Medicare For All"

*introduced by Reps. John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich, Jim McDermott and Donna Christensen

"National health insurance is not only the best answer,

it is the only answer to eliminating health disparities."

If you live in CT-05 you may want to know that Rep. Chris Murphy has yet to sign up as a co-sponsor to this bill. Ya think it is time to remind him how important H.R. 676 is to all Americans?

Rep. Chris Murphy's contact info

Chris Murphy
(202) 225-4476,
1 Grove Street, New Britain CT 06053

Kucinich: More Than 100,000 Signed On For Impeachment

Last week, Congressman Dennis Kucinich delivered a petition bearing more than 100,000 names to the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, urging that impeachment proceedings begin:



Add your name to the petition... If you haven't already?

Bush Impeachment Will Go To Committee

And this time it doesn't look like they are sending it there to bury it:

Kucinich Says Unidentified Foreign Official
Wants to Speak at Impeachment Talks

An unidentified government official of a U.S. ally wants to participate if and when Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich makes his case to impeach President Bush before the House Judiciary Committee, according to the Ohio Democrat.

The House voted, 238-180, on Tuesday to send Kucinich’s latest impeachment effort (H Res 1345) to the Judiciary Committee.

Chairman John Conyers Jr. said he will hold a broad hearing on the general topic of abuses of power by the Bush administration.

“There’s never been one [hearing] that accumulated all the things that constitute an imperial presidency,” Conyers said, explaining that the anticipated hearing would review more than a year of committee inquiry into such matters as the firing of U.S. attorneys, the leak of the identity of former CIA operative Valerie Plame and the information provided to Congress in the run-up to the Iraq War.

Read on... But before you go to read that, why is torture not on that list? It should be.

Kucinich on Impeaching Bush

Kucinich announces that he will
introduce articles of impeachment in the
House against bush on January 28th.

NH Recount - 5th Ward Way Off After Hand Count

As the hand recount begins at Dennis Kucinich's request, The Brad Blog was going through recount results as they were coming in:

As mentioned earlier today, NH SoS Bill Gardner told WMUR in NH that "We did nine of the 12 wards in Manchester, and a lot of the votes were exactly the same...Some went up by a vote or two." He didn't, of course, note that a lot of the vote counts (most of them) were off by 5 or more.

And now, the rest of the numbers from the rest of the Manchester wards are coming on. And get a load of Ward 5:

	Diebold Result	Hand Count
CLINTON	683	619
EDWARDS	255	217
OBAMA	404	365

All of the other candidates seem to have lost votes as well. No clue who received them instead...

From another of his posts, and after media reports that "a lot of the votes were exactly the same":

But many more vote counts were not at all the same, ranging anywhere from 5 to 8 votes off in regular cases, across almost all candidates.

And before you say that's no big deal, we'll remind you that in 2004, had just 6 votes per precinct been registered in Ohio for John Kerry instead of George W. Bush, we'd have a different person sitting in the White House right now.

So far, this is not looking very pretty. Not in retrospect, nor in looking forward...

Peak Inside Howard Dean's Email Inbox

Mary McElveen is trying to get you to send notice to the Democratic party concerning disgust with the media's censorship of candidates views:

By Mary MacElveen
January 16, 2008

To Chairman Howard Dean,

When you were running for president back in 2004, you stated that the people “had the power to take back their country” Well in light of former Senator Mike Gravel being omitted from past debates and now with Congressman Dennis Kucinich being barred from an upcoming debate: Where is the power of the people to decide who they get to hear from? I do not see it, Chairman Dean. This is surely not democracy, but censoring the words coming from both candidates.

Read the rest and sign on if you believe the media has no right to decide which candidates are supposedly viable.

If you aren't up to speed on what this is all about, here is the most recent episode in which the media is trying to dictate which candidates the people are allowed to hear about and from:

Just announced, the Nevada Supreme court is kicking the public right to hear all of the candidates' views in the teeth:

MSNBC reports that the Nevada Supreme Court has ruled that NBC can block Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) from tonight’s presidential debate in Las Vegas, overturning an earlier ruling by a Clark County District Judge. NBC had uninvited Kucinich after changing its participation criteria.

Previously brewed here:

Kucinich Wins Nevada Debate

At least, in court, he wins the debate on whether he will get an invitation to the debate, OR ELSE:

“A judge in Nevada has just ordered MSNBC to include Rep. Dennis Kucinich in Tuesday’s Democratic Party presidential debate in Las Vegas or he will cancel the forum. Senior Clark County District Court Judge Charles Thompson vowed to issue an injunction halting the nationally televised debate if MSNBC failed to comply. Kucinich had filed a lawsuit seeking to be included just this morning.”

Good for Dennis Kucinich, and great for Democracy! And a hearty "Thank you!" to Judge Thompson...

When will the media leave it up to the voters, and only the voters, which candidates are viable? Since when did the media become the rule makers for a political party's primary?

The media needs to learn its place is to report and fact check. Not to cheer lead and blackout.

Connecticut Bob has a few choice words (and pics) to describe this recent news...

Both Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich have been completely shafted by the media. And John Edwards seems to suffer from a similar problem. Even though they do allow Edwards to participate in the debates, he gets little press beyond that. And when they do cover Edwards, it is usually addressing how angry he is supposed to be, or concerning his haircuts.

Honestly? I don't give a damn how much Edwards' haircuts cost, and when I have seen him talk he has seemed upbeat most of the time, and at other times grave, solemn or concerned, but never really angry. If you want angry, look at the corrupt and enraged (deranged too?) Dick "Go FV@K Yourself!" Cheney, or the average citizen that has had to suffer the complete failure of the media on about every front in the last couple of decades.

And make no mistakes about this: The media in America is failing BIG TIME. And they are dragging the rest of the country down with them.

Kucincich Loses Nevada Debate Now

Just announced, the Nevada Supreme court is kicking the public right to hear all of the candidates' views in the teeth:

MSNBC reports that the Nevada Supreme Court has ruled that NBC can block Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) from tonight’s presidential debate in Las Vegas, overturning an earlier ruling by a Clark County District Judge. NBC had uninvited Kucinich after changing its participation criteria.

Previously brewed here:

Kucinich Wins Nevada Debate

At least, in court, he wins the debate on whether he will get an invitation to the debate, OR ELSE:

“A judge in Nevada has just ordered MSNBC to include Rep. Dennis Kucinich in Tuesday’s Democratic Party presidential debate in Las Vegas or he will cancel the forum. Senior Clark County District Court Judge Charles Thompson vowed to issue an injunction halting the nationally televised debate if MSNBC failed to comply. Kucinich had filed a lawsuit seeking to be included just this morning.”

Good for Dennis Kucinich, and great for Democracy! And a hearty "Thank you!" to Judge Thompson...

When will the media leave it up to the voters, and only the voters, which candidates are viable? Since when did the media become the rule makers for a political party's primary?

The media needs to learn its place is to report and fact check. Not to cheer lead and blackout.

Connecticut Bob has a few choice words (and pics) to describe this recent news...

Kucincich Wins Nevada Debate

At least, in court, he wins the debate on whether he will get an invitation to the debate, OR ELSE:

“A judge in Nevada has just ordered MSNBC to include Rep. Dennis Kucinich in Tuesday’s Democratic Party presidential debate in Las Vegas or he will cancel the forum. Senior Clark County District Court Judge Charles Thompson vowed to issue an injunction halting the nationally televised debate if MSNBC failed to comply. Kucinich had filed a lawsuit seeking to be included just this morning.”

Good for Dennis Kucinich, and great for Democracy! And a hearty "Thank you!" to Judge Thompson...

Candidate Matchup Test

How do the candidates line up with your views?

I was clicking around the net slightly aimlessly and came across this "Candidate Matchup" diary leading to a test that matches up candidates with your issues... So, being a lazy Saturday I took the test:

95% Dennis Kucinich
93% Mike Gravel
87% John Edwards
84% Chris Dodd
84% Barack Obama
80% Hillary Clinton
77% Joe Biden
77% Bill Richardson
35% Rudy Giuliani
25% John McCain
21% Ron Paul
20% Mike Huckabee
18% Tom Tancredo
17% Mitt Romney
10% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

I don't put too much faith in tests like this, in as far as their accuracy goes, because they usually don't cover every possible issue that people may be interested in. In this test's case there is a total disregard of religious issues like the separation of church and state, which is an issue that can provide a huge defining line between party and candidate support. And it does not address the issue of "Single Payer" universal healthcare head on, only universal healthcare ("We need a national health insurance system that makes sure everyone is covered."), but the candidates have never had a chance to vote on that issue so it would be hard to match up a person with a candidate. Nor does this test completely address some of the very real racial and gender issues, which would mark some serious differences beyond just GLBT issues and immigration issues that are highlighted in the media and by candidates, IMHO.

But these tests do give you an idea of candidates that are close to your ideology, as imperfect as they are.

Previously, I had posted on the Political Compass:

How Does Your Candidate Measure up?

Many of us are familiar with the Political Compass. Some at MLN even had their compass score in their signatures for a while, and even took the time to chart some of their own personal scores in March. But do you know where the 2008 Presidential Candidates sit on this political chart?

You should:

My kingdom for a real progressive candidate!

Perhaps you've heard of the Political Compass website, where you can take a test that places you on a grid based on the degree to which you are "left" or "right" on the economic scale as well as how socially libertarian or authoritarian you are.

I'm damn near as moonbatty as it gets: -6.50, -6.67, which puts me in, for lack of a better term, the "deep Southwest" of the grid.

Anyway, thanks to a recent article on London's TimesOnline, we can see how the 2008 U.S. presidential candidates fit on the grid.

This should worry those on the left, and I know that many at MLN scored even further left than I did (I am a Liberal, but I am a moderate Liberal), as they watch the next candidate chosen for the Democratic party who is nothing less than a conservative. That is, if they chose anyone other than Kucinich or Gravel. And right now they aren't even counted in the top 3 contenders.

This is where the Democratic party is failing miserably. They are not really providing any different ideology than the GOP, just a moderate version of it, if they choose any of those conservative candidates on that chart.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden... They are all conservatives, as moderate as some of them may be, they are conservatives nonetheless.

These tests often elicit surprising responses from people:

MattW: "I find it hard to believe that I'm actually 3 times more liberal and libertarian than Dennis Kucinich."

Well Matt? You probably are... The problem is that moderate conservative candidates, and ones that are somewhat authoritarian to boot, have been labeled as "Liberals" for so long by the corporate owned MSM it has skewered the views of the American people to accept candidates that are far more conservative than many of the American people really are.

IOW: People have been conditioned to reject candidates that would better represent their own views through years of propaganda.

This is a direct result of the MSM's incompetence in addressing real issues and, instead, sticking to their scripts of Horse Races, Manipulation of Polling Popularity Contests, Who Smells the Best, The Prettiest Face, Masculintity, The Money Game, Crying Games and a myriad of other exercises in avoidance and misdirection from the real issues that are truly important and could do a lot to shape your support based on what is actually best for you, the voter.

Information is the best weapon you have to fight this propaganda:

Click on Pic to Enlarge

So it is left up to you to seek out the important information, at least, until the media finally meets our demands that they AND the candidates address the issues honestly.

The short version of this post?

"Media: Do. Your. Job."

Because We The People are getting tired of doing all of the heavy lifting.

[update] edited and rewritten a few times - CM1

Kucinich Asks for Recount of New Hampshire

Via Donailin at the Booman Tribune, Dennis Kucinich wants a recount of the New Hampshire primaries to assure voters of the integrity of the vote:

from the detroit business wire

DETROIT--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, the most outspoken advocate in the Presidential field and in Congress for election integrity, paper-ballot elections, and campaign finance reform, has sent a letter to the New Hampshire Secretary of State asking for a recount of Tuesday's election because of "unexplained disparities between hand-counted ballots and machine-counted ballots."

"I am not making this request in the expectation that a recount will significantly affect the number of votes that were cast on my behalf," Kucinich stressed in a letter to Secretary of State William M. Gardner. But, "Serious and credible reports, allegations, and rumors have surfaced in the past few days...It is imperative that these questions be addressed in the interest of public confidence in the integrity of the election process and the election machinery - not just in New Hampshire, but in every other state that conducts a primary election."

He added, "Ever since the 2000 election - and even before - the American people have been losing faith in the belief that their votes were actually counted. This recount isn't about who won 39% of 36% or even 1%. It's about establishing whether 100% of the voters had 100% of their votes counted exactly the way they cast them."

Kucinich, who drew about 1.4% of the New Hampshire Democratic primary vote, wrote, "This is not about my candidacy or any other individual candidacy. It is about the integrity of the election process."

This is excellent news. This matter needs to be settled. Anyone with any common sense would agree we should verify the vote when the results are wildly off all predictions by every pollster that worked NH.

BooMan adds his reasons why, even if there appears to be only minor discrepancies in results of polls and the actual vote and there are already some rational explanations for them, it is worth doing this integrity check.

Also, from Connecticut Bob, we have this interview with Kucinich on the night of the New Hampshire Primary:

I was very lucky to get a moment to ask Rep. Kucinich (DK2008.COM) a brief question about impeachment at Jillian's Pub where his campaign was set up to watch the returns from the New Hampshire primary.

Transcript of interview is available here.

[update] Welcome to Buzz Tracker readers and thanks for linking in!

[update deux] From the AP:

Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan said Kucinich is entitled to a statewide recount. But, under New Hampshire law, Kucinich will have to pay for it. Scanlan said he had "every confidence" the results are accurate.

Candidates who lose by 3 percentage or less are entitled to a recount for a $2,000 fee. Candidates who lose by more must pay for the full cost. Kucinich's campaign said it was sending the $2,000 fee to start the recount.

Scanlon said his office had received several phone calls since Tuesday, mostly from outside the state, questioning the results. New Hampshire's voting machines are not linked in any way, which Scanlon says reduce the likelihood of tampering with results on a statewide level. Also, the results can be checked against paper ballots.

Kucinich may need a few bucks to help pay for this little integrity check... And just in case you are wondering if it is only the left side that does not trust these machines:

Both Republican and Democratic candidates have asked the state of New Hampshire to conduct a hand recount of all primary ballots statewide, citing internet rumors about vote discrepancies and voting machine fraud in the primary results.

Democratic presidential nominee candidate Kucinich was the first to make headlines in calling for a statewide recount of the Democratic primary results in response to the internet fury around a post made by a woman named Lori Price that compares votes counted by optical scan machines made by Diebold Election Systems (now re-named Premier Election Solutions) to votes counted by hand.

Today the New Hampshire secretary of state's office announced that Republican presidential nominee candidate Albert Howard also asked for a statewide recount of the Republican primary results.

[update trois] Kucinich has an appeal up to help pay the costs of the recount:

Dennis Kucinich has asked for a recount of the New Hampshire Primary vote and we need your help to raise the funds for this important action. Dennis is asking for a recount of Tuesday’s election because of "unexplained disparities between hand-counted ballots and machine-counted ballots."

Please help with a contribution. Thank you

Will Clinton Be Third Wheel in Iowa?

Hillary Clinton's campaign may be bracing for this possibility:

As the presidential candidates engage in furious pre-caucus spin, one of Sen. Hillary Clinton's most prominent Iowa supporters said Wednesday that she's already accomplished what she needs to in Iowa and can declare success even if she finishes in third place.

Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack told ABC News that Clinton has shown that she can appeal to a wide swath of Democrats, which is what she came to Iowa to do.

Sure... We are certain she was planning on this all along.

With Dennis Kucinich recently giving a codified endorsement to Barak Obama and Ralph Nader giving an endorsement to John Edwards - and depending on whether or not you give those endorsements any credibility - there is a possibility of Obama and Edwards getting a little more traction from the left.

I view this more as the reality that while the media had pre-ordained Queen Con as the Democratic party front runner from the get go, the people that actually vote in this - the democratic party members - have never bought the media propaganda and think of Hillary Clinton as something between a moderate conservative and a full blown Joe Neocon Lieberman wingnut Republican. Her biggest problem? She did very little to dispel that perception of herself both before and during the primary campaign. In fact, she seemed to try and re-enforce that perception with some of the idiotic votes, positions and statements.

Even with all of the campaign money in the world...
You cannot buy credibility.

Who Do You Endorse?

And why?

Blue Gal over at C&L gives a shortlist on Democratic endorsements:

• Blue Hampshire endorses Chris Dodd.
  
  
• The Nation endorses Dennis Kucinich.
  
  
• The SEIU Union is funding advertising for John Edwards.

There is absolutely nothing worth looking at over on the Republican side, as it is a foregone conclusion that they are picking a candidate to try and lose gracefully with. If they really wanted to win, and if they really wanted to bring the change that is demanded by the people, all of their candidates would be slamming George W. Bush for being the worst president ever in the history of the USA, and they would be running from his legacy, not trying to sweep it under the carpet by ignoring the last seven years as if bush didn't exist and they didn't support him. If they really wanted to win, Republicans would all sound like Ron Paul on the key issues of our time.

As it is, Republicans seem to be content to hand the reigns over to the Democratic party. And they seem more interested in trying to influence the Democratic party's choice of candidates through their media spin cycles.

All I know is that the happier the media is with a candidate, the more I know that candidate is a piece of junk. The media would be happy if they could turn the trick of getting the people to vote for another conservative Democratic candidate that would continue the Corporate successes, and people's failures, of the last few decades.

None of these candidates would give the media and their right wing corporate masters the full satisfaction they crave:

• Blue Hampshire endorses Chris Dodd.
  
  
• The Nation endorses Dennis Kucinich.
  
  
• The SEIU Union is funding advertising for John Edwards.

And so they will continue to be maligned by the media and the right wing lunatics on the fringe side of the internet. And make no mistake about this, the left Blogosphere is the truest representative of mainstream and populist ideals in America today.

We are are all about protecting your rights under the Constitution, and the GOP and conservatives in general are all against you and your rights. The GOP has led this country into the abyss of Corporatism:

In the recently released annual survey of worldwide privacy rights by Privacy International and EPIC, the United States has been downgraded from “Extensive Surveillance Society” to “Endemic Surveillance Society.” As Glenn Greenwald notes, this is “the worst possible category there is for privacy protections, the category also occupied by countries such as China, Russia, Singapore and Malaysia.” In general, “the 2007 rankings indicate an overall worsening of privacy protection across the world, reflecting an increase in surveillance and a declining performance of privacy safeguards.”

And the media, what used to be the Fourth Estate in the balance of power, has silently sat by and watched this happen.

The USA is now a Corporatist country with no more freedoms than some of the worst Communist offenders.

This is another of the very real end results of the "Great Republican Experiment" and you can thank the GOP and their partners in crime, the media and their punditocracy echo chamber of non news right wing ignorance, for the current downfall of the USA.

This is an unusually large excerpt from C&L's Barbara O'Brien from about a year ago:

A (Pretty) Short History of Wingnutism:
"By now you probably see where we’re going. “American Way” conservatism was the dominant political philosophy in the 1920s, and the nation was governed by its principles through the Harding and Coolidge administrations, from 1921 to 1929. Some historians call this decade “the Republican Era.” The vigorous progressivism of 1900-1916 was vanquished, and the labor union movement lost ground. In fact, the longer one looks at America in the 1920s, the more familiar it gets — corporate profits rising faster than worker earnings; a crackdown on immigration; culture wars led by an aggressive Christian fundamentalist movement; and tax cuts galore. If they’d had iPods back then, you’d hardly know the difference.

Of course, it would come to pass that the Republican who won the 1928 presidential election by a landslide, Herbert Hoover, was probably sorry he won. The stock market crashed in October 1929, which marked the beginning of the Great Depression. The Depression was caused by a number of interacting factors, and since it was a worldwide phenomenon you can’t blame the Republicans for all of it. But in the United States many of those factors were created, directly or indirectly, by “American Way” conservative policies. Among these factors were a wildly overheated stock market (security regulation was socialism, after all) and the maldistribution of wealth that resulted from laissez-faire business policies. Since President Herbert Hoover was a tried-and-true “American Way” conservative, he mostly was at a loss to solve the nation’s economic problems, even though he had almost all of his four-year term to do so. In 1932 the nation turned to a liberal Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt, to make things right.

Righties are quick to point out that the New Deal had a limited impact on the Depression, and that the nation’s economy didn’t really pull out of the slump until the industrialization of World War II — over which FDR also presided. (This is just one of many examples of righties taunting lefties for not cleaning up rightie messes they couldn’t clean up themselves; Iraq is another.) But New Deal programs had a longer-term success in fostering economic stability. Federal deposit insurance, unemployment insurance, Social Security, increased government oversight of securities, and other New Deal innovations made Americans’ economic lives more secure and created a buffer against many of the factors that cause economic depressions.

And considering that rightie counter-arguments to the New Deal usually advocate returning to the same governing philosophy that allowed the Depression to happen, you’ll forgive me if I don’t take them seriously.

Anyway, after the FDR landslide in 1932 it was clear the right wing had fallen from grace. Righties spent the rest of the 1930s seething with resentment and planning a comeback. And just when they had a shot at re-taking the White House — bam, World War II happened. And this made the American Right look doubly stupid, because for the most part righties in the 1930s were isolationists who had not only pooh-poohed the threat of the Third Reich but had actually admired Mussolini.

After World War II righties rebounded with a fury. They did this in large part by taking the issue of national security away from the Democrats. It’s important to understand that the Right managed this not because of anything they actually accomplished, but through a “compilation of hysterical charges and bald-faced lies,” to quote Kevin Baker in this Harper’s article, “Stabbed in the Back,” which I vigorously urge you to read.

Much of the Red Scare and McCarthyist hysteria of the late 1940s and 1950s were as much about slapping down liberals and Democrats as it was about national security. See the Kevin Baker article for details. See also Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (Vintage/Random House, 1962), in particular pp. 41-42 (emphasis added):

The inquisitors were trying to give satisfaction against liberals, New Dealers, reformers, internationalists, intellectuals, and finally even against a Republican administration that failed to reserve liberal policies. What was involved, above all, was a set of political hostilities in which the New Deal was linked to the welfare state, the welfare state to socialism, and socialism to Communism. In this crusade Communism was not the target but the weapon, and it is for this reason that so many of the most ardent hunters of impotent domestic Communists were altogether indifferent to efforts to meet the power of International Communism where it really mattered — in the area of world politics."

Go read it. See if you can easily pick out the parallels to many of the problems of today, and maybe begin to realize that not only has "The Great Republican Experiment" failed miserably, but that now is not the first time it has failed miserably.

Which candidates truly represent a change in course from the decades of Conservative failure?

• Blue Hampshire endorses Chris Dodd.
  
  
• The Nation endorses Dennis Kucinich.
  
  
• The SEIU Union is funding advertising for John Edwards.

None of them are perfect candidates, but none of them exhibit the grossest of failures that the media presents as the top tier candidates on either side of "the conservative candidates list."

Each of them have voiced support for AND/OR led in the recent battles for the little guys.

And the media and their right wing corporate masters hate them, malign them, marginalize them, trivialize them and belittle them for that.

And there is your clue as to why, IMHO, they are the best candidates to lead this country out of the ashes of The Failed Republican Experiment.

Dodd on FISA Victory

We won this battle but the GOP war against The Constitution and The Bill of Rights is still on. Meanwhile, Dodd sends a message to the hundreds of thousands of people that supported his efforts:



There is only one other Presidential candidate that has taken these Constitutional battles as seriously as Dodd by actually walking the walk. That is Dennis Kucinich, with Kucinich leading the charge on the Impeachment front and a myriad of other liberal/progressive issues. Other candidates merely pay lip service to these issues, or fall in line after the real leaders break ground on these issues.

Matt over at Dodd's Blog points out the obvious:

One of my recently discovered favorite blogs is Lead or Get Out of the Way. It's authors write under pseudonyms pulled from Revolutionary era patriots - their goal is to help promote more and better Democrats. One of the coolest features of their site is that they use two tag clouds to sort out who is leading the most and who most needs to get out of the way.

Take one guess who they see as leading the most?

Chris Dodd.

Remember that we must step up the pressure on Congress critters if we are ever going to effect real change. Send a message of thanks to Dodd here and/or fiscally REWARD outstanding behavior here...

As a side note: Here is some coverage of the other liberal New England Senator, Ted Kennedy, that was caught doing something good on this issue as well. And here is another Senator's personal take on the battle, as Russ Feingold Blogs over at TPM Cafe.

A Mega Dose of Reality From a Surprising Source

From the media:

On issue after issue, says Richard Wolffe of Newsweek, Dennis Kucinich's views have gone from fringe to mainstream. That pattern became apparent again at NPR's Democratic presidential debate yesterday, Wolffe says.

Kucinich notions that once seemed crazy to the Democratic Party ended up front and center Tuesday, Wolffe says, and NPR's debate format gave the Ohio congressman a chance to shine. Kucinich is generally considered among the darkest of dark horses in the race. Yesterday, he spoke out about his opposition to liberalized trade with China and to the war in Iraq.

"We're borrowing money from China to finance the war in Iraq," Kucinich argued.

Wolffe says the idea of a Kucinich administration makes no sense to him, but he can't help noticing a new vogue for Kucinich's opinions.

"Think what you like about Kucinich and UFOs, but this Democratic field has essentially moved to the Kucinich position on trade, on Iraq, on a whole range of things where people thought he was a real outlier," he says. "They're all pretty much in agreement now, when it comes to some of these big issues like trade, like diplomacy and war. And they are where Dennis Kucinich is."

Some candidates have slowly moved over his way on their own, others have been dragged there reluctantly by activists, and there are still a few others that are incompetent and refuse to wake up to reality. But Dennis Kucinich has always been where he is, leading the way.

Who will Ron Paul support?

That is, if Ron Paul, the closest thing to a real conservative - being a right tilted libertarian - in the GOP, weren't in the running?

Last month, during a Republican debate, Ron Paul was asked whether he promised to support the GOP nominee next year, no matter who emerges from the primary process. “Not right now I don’t,” Paul said, “not unless they’re willing to end the war and bring our troops home.”

Apparently, in the ensuing weeks, “not right now” has become “no.”

Paul called his Republican presidential rivals, including frontrunner Rudy Giuliani, “neo-conservatives” whom he couldn’t support in the general election should his own bid fail.

“They think we’re supposed to spread our goodness through force,” Paul said. For example, none will pledge not to wage war on Iran, he said. “How could I support something like that?”

Apparently, he can’t. But it means that of the top seven candidates in the Republican field, Paul is the only one who isn’t prepared to support the party’s eventual nominee. It’s not the kind of thing that will go over well within the party, but then again, Paul’s interest in the Republican Party appears nominal — it’s a venue for him to advance his ideas and agenda, not necessarily an opportunity for him to lead the party.

We know it isn't any republican candidate that is in the running right now. We can take a guess on whom he would support based on past statements:

The conservative Senator Chuck Hagel would be one choice, if he were running (obviously), and Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

There is a reason that both, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, enjoy a large base of support from activists on the left and right, and are both derided consistently by the corporate owned media. It is because of their commitments to saying what they stand for and believe, their constant fights against the illegal occupation of Iraq, and actually voting by the standards of their public statements.

But Paul and Kucinich are both labeled wackos and fringe candidates by the media standards.

Go figure?

This kind of populist type backlash from grassroots in the left and right sure as hell isn't because people think that the media darlings and self-fulfilling-prophesied "top tier candidates" are competent, honest, have integrity, or are even relatively sane judging by their patchwork of flip-flops, twisting of truths, and circle-jerk logic demonstrated by their votes and statements and resulting in continued failures for Democracy, and for America.