While I was in the shower Election eve, I heard on my portable radio that Martha Coakley called Scott Brown to congratulate him on winning the Massachusetts Senate Race. The right-wing talk shows I dropped in on were the first to announce it, and were madly celebrating while the "progressive" pundits on WBUR were still arguing over whether Martha or the White House should be blamed if she lost. (Coakley reportedly “leaked” a memo to Politico yesterday blaming Obama).

“It was a cold and snowy night in December 2008, when the insurance company Executive Officer sat alone in his brightly lit office suite. He himself was all a glow with warm fuzzy feelings as he composed a memo to his staff advising them of his planned absences from corporate headquarters over the next several months. None other than the President-elect of the United States had personally called and invited him to Washington DC to help design a new health care reform policy. Yes, he’d be spending a lot of time in his new office at the nation’s capitol—several days or weeks a month. Of course, he would be one of several other CEOs from the largest health insurance corporations in the nation also working on the reform plan. But tonight, he needed to compose a staff memorandum stressing the importance of his role in advising the new President during these times of economic instability. A brief memo that would assure his staff, yet impress them with the significance of his mission on behalf of their corporation and the entire insurance industry.” Fiction or Fact??

The health reform endgame is over for low-income senior citizens, but the national hoax continues. Seniors in the state where I live don’t have to wait for the finale of “what is expected to be a bruising, full-scale health care debate after Thanksgiving” to find out how their health care costs and benefits will be impacted. (AP/Espo, 11/21/09) No, the low-income elderly in Massachusetts already got notices in the mail, weeks ago, from their Medicare Advantage insurance providers announcing big premium increases for 2010.

“While investigators probe for a motive behind the mass shooting at the Fort Hood military base in Texas Thursday, in which an army psychiatrist is suspected of killing 13 people, military personnel at the base are in shock as the incident ‘brings the war home’… Tragically, Fort Hood has also born much of the brunt from its heavy involvement in both occupations. Fort Hood soldiers have accounted for more suicides than any other Army post since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. In this year alone, the base is averaging over 10 suicides each month - at least 75 have been recorded through July of this year alone.” (Dahr Jamail, Inter Press Service, 11/6/09)



“The parents of US Army Reserve Specialist Chancellor Keesling, an Iraq war veteran, received a letter yesterday from the VA asking that their son complete his ‘Post Deployment Adjustment.’ The only problem is, Chance Keesling had killed himself in Iraq nearly five months ago….” The father of Chancellor Keesling stated “I don’t think as a country we understand mental health…as we go through the longest war in our history since Viet Nam, and multiple deployments, using civilian soldiers like reservists and the Guard in ways we have never used them in this country before…we have to be very conscious that mental health issues are going to impact these soldiers.” (DemocracyNow.org 11/1l/09)



Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist accused of shooting to death 13 people and wounding 30 others on November 5, 2009, was responsible for treating a heavy caseload of PTSD patients whose severely disabling trauma symptoms result from horrendous combat experiences in the ongoing bloody and violent occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Major is opposed to US military invasions of those two countries. He is also a practicing Muslim, who also feels it is wrong for Muslims to kill Muslims. This much we all now know.

The Great Orwellian Debate over healthcare reform blunders on. Radio talk shows like NPR’s “On Point” continue to present a narrow view of opinions on the subject, while trying to stir up excitement over so-called right-wing propaganda, and fabricated Democrat vs. Republican discord. I have several times attempted to call-in a comment to clarify the “doublespeak” going on with regard to the $500 billion cut in Medicare Advantage programs that the President and Congress agree is planned. Each time I call “On Point,” I have been told by the program telephone censor, “Those are very good points, but we just aren’t going to get to it this hour.”

Even at this late hour it seems progressives do not understand the goal of Obamacare. They keep repeating the mantra (on every “liberal” talk show from Democracy Now to NPR’s On Point) that the cuts in Medicare will only be from the “wasteful” programs like Medicare Advantage.

That’s right! Medicare Advantage: The plans that make Medicare affordable for most of us senior citizens. The original Medicare A & B do not begin to cover basic medical needs. I would be living in a shelter and begging on the streets if I had to depend on Medicare A & B or Medigap (the program that covers the 20% of costs not paid for by Medicare A&B) for my weekly medical expenses and doctor visits.

Somerville, MA - Saying that Americans already are paying more in taxes (and private insurance premiums) for medical care than any other country in the world but having worse “health outcomes” than citizens of other western industrialized nations, Dr. Rachel Nardin, President of the MA chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, explained Monday why her organization thinks a “single payer, universal coverage” type plan must be adopted as soon as possible.

Dear Bill Keller and Clark Hoyt – For the first time in the span of a generation, national health care reform is back on the horizon, and I’m writing to you to step back for a moment into the history of the Times’s reporting on health care reform. Last year I began a research project with two researchers from Harvard Medical School, Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, to look at the history of major state health reforms such as TennCare, the Oregon Health Plan, MinnesotaCare, and many others. A sweeping health reform bill had been passed into law in Massachusetts in 2006 that was being hailed as a unique, first-of-its-kind bipartisan strategy to achieve universal or near-universal health coverage without raising taxes or adding new regulations on the health care industry. We initially set out to find how unique the Massachusetts health reform law really was compared to previous state efforts, and to see if by analyzing the outcomes of those earlier reform efforts we could learn some lessons about what to expect in Massachusetts.

Kerby Trevelus decapitated one of his sisters, stabbed another to death, and injured a third. Robert Stewart slaughtered eight people in a nursing home, and wounded another three. In the days leading up to the massacre of four police officers, Lovelle Mixon told relatives that he felt depressed and angry, an uncle noticing that he was emotionally withdrawn. Michael McLendon killed five family members and five other people before shooting himself. In the days leading up to the massacre, he told a friend that he was depressed. Tim Kretschmer murdered fifteen people before shooting himself. Between April and September of 2008, Kretschmer had five outpatient “therapy” sessions for depression. Devan Kalathat shot to death six family members, wounded his wife, and committed suicide. Jiverly Voong is reported to have been depressed, angry, and to have hated the U.S. Depression seems to have impaired his work performance, leading to the loss of his job.

Having written several articles and letters debunking the “consumer-driven economy” myth, I recently swore off further attempts. I thought.