darethefuture.us

Earlier this week, ‘we the people’, experienced a challenge, that may long be remembered as the tipping moment in US history. After a year of hope and doubt and fervent opposition, a national health care bill, was passed by Congress and became a law, whereby we became the last of the world’s industrial nations to guarantee adequate healthcare for each person. There were no losers, no revolution. Opposition leaders had expected their strategic efforts to shape a tide of public opinion that would kill the bill.

After Congress voted the bill into law, the opponents in Congress and the thousands of opposition voices throughout the land were quiet. The members of Congress and members of the public who supported the new law were thrilled, but they respected the opponents. It was as if Americans on both sides of the issue had realized that humanity’s Creator had truly endowed each of us to understand that we are the government, that it is up to us to secure each American’s right to a healthy life; one that will give us the willingness to make the effort to pursue our happiness.

It was as if many of us had begun to realize that an awesome task lies ahead that will claim our attention and require our individual efforts to shape our government to achieve the vision of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.

I anticipated the disappointment that many opponents would likely feel if the bill passed. I had experienced the emotion of being on the losing side many times in my life and understood what many losers in this Congressional duel would likely experience. For several preceding months, I had watched the struggle develop, concerning the issues of the bill. I read and listened to the discussions of the bill on the news and views of the Internet. The temper of the opponents threatened Congress if it failed to oppose the bill.

I had been thinking that a healing of feelings was needed now for many people in the US who had supported the losing side in the vote. It so happened, that one of my emails offered a website address that presented about a hundred performances of famous musical artists, including some of my favorites. I had recently written a post that noted our need to find the good things about the new law and the need for all of us to help the bill succeed in improving our right to adequate health care in America.

Lo and behold, somehow, I came to this website, listed below.

It contains 100 great Johnny Mercer tunes; including “Accentuate the Positive”. In fact, there were three great versions of that tune by different artists. The one that impressed me most is the easiest to find. Click on the link below.  I’ll bet a hole in a doughnut that it will fill your spirit with the emotional high that will help you confidently build your pursuit of happiness. I bet you will also replay it, at least once.

- W J Anthony

http://www.youtube.com/user/JohnnyMercer100#p/f/94/4IP9h40z0sk

After 60 years, might this law work

for all of us ?

The healthcare bill has passed in Congress, and all the efforts of the conservative right to defeat the bill failed to persuade enough members of Congress to kill the bill.

The Republicans had hoped to defeat the bill, elect a Republican majority in Congress in 2010, and then defeat Obama in the 2012 election.

Since the first step in that plan failed, it should be worth asking what aroused the opposition to the bill in the past 14 months.

If my neighbor were to ask me to answer that question, I would list in the order of importance the concerns that I heard on TV news or read on Internet websites.

Number one seemed to be the loss of freedom to choose your doctor or health provider. Second seemed to be a concern that increased taxes would be required to cover the healthcare costs of millions of Americans and new immigrants who have no healthcare insurance. Third seemed to be the widespread objection to include coverage for abortions. Fourth seemed to be the widespread concern of senior citizens that they would be denied appropriate healthcare when they needed it, and they would be required to adhere to a plan that would arrange for their death.

There were probably other issues, such as the quality of special care that might not be available. Some opponents feel the law would prevent the freedom of doctors to decide which treatment would be best. Some opponents worry about the treatment for newborns. Many people fear that a multitude of illegal immigrants would be covered at the expense of taxpayers. Some expect the possible refusal of doctors to participate in the national healthcare plan. There are other situations that could be included, but for this article, I am unfortunately limited to what comes to mind.

The fear of increased taxes to cover the health care plan seems to be based, not on the cost of the treatment that you or I would require, but on the cost of treatment required by immigrants. That seems to be a valid point, but reality suggests that our own newborn children and our adolescents might require significant treatments that also cost, but are not treated because parents can’t afford such treatments. That includes those 30 or 40 million Americans who are not covered by health insurance.

Which brings us to the third expense, the process of medical abortions. The religious condemnation of abortion is well founded and has been widely explained. The issue centers on the fact that killing unborn children is a moral crime. Execution of an adult has been acceptable for many pro-life people because they believe adults are responsible for their deeds, whereas an unborn child is not guilty of anything.

Abortion is used to avoid the sexual responsibility of women and their partners who cannot or do not choose to rear the unborn child after its birth. Various reasons to justify abortion exist but most are based on the inconvenience that a baby would bring to the potential mother or father. Some use it as a method of contraception. The claim of a woman to a right to choose the birth or the death of an unborn child has been approved by the Supreme Court decision, in opposition to the teachings of Biblical scriptures.

The realization that the taxes of pro-lifers will be used to fund abortions may be a key point of opposition. Many if not most abortions are committed on low or no income racial minority women. It has been claimed that irresponsible sexual behavior causes those abortions, and those women should have used contraception to prevent their conceptions. The fact that tax money of non-minority taxpayers will fund such abortions seems to be a main cause of their anger, rather than a concern for the sacredness of the life of unborn children of racial minority women.

Which brings to mind the options that exist or should exist for supporting the unwed mothers with appropriate care. Some such services do exist through private organizations and some adoption services arrange to find parents for unwanted newborn children.

It might be possible for Congress to add a provision to the new healthcare law that would offer applicants for abortions the opportunity to have the personal living costs of a pregnant woman be borne by the government, during the time of their pregnancy, if she were to choose to give birth instead of abortion. Support for such a provision would validate the claim of pro-life advocates and would provide babies for adoption by infertile couples. It would solve the dilemma of women who mistakenly become pregnant and have no means to support a newborn child.

It is evident that the legitimate concern of senior citizens is that, they will probably need assisted healthcare at some time, which is expensive and unaffordable for those with limited retirement income. The need for healthcare increases as we get old and the consequences of our lifestyles tend to appear at that time. The proof that good lifestyles may avoid costly medical care has been proven, but lifestyles are not prescribed by law, and our concept of personal freedom claims a right to eat what we want, practice activities that we want, and follow diets that we want. Many of us do just that rather than what has been proven by social and medical advisors to support healthy outcomes.

Here, too, a right seems to exist in our belief that we can behave in whatever way we choose to treat our health. The truth is that as we grow older the probability of needing assisted medical care is a genuine reality, whether our age is sixty or one hundred. When we are young and robust, we seem to act as though we are not vulnerable and we expect our prime of life will last without end. But, realistically after the wedding bells of our mature youth have ended, the factual insights creep into the back of our mind and we realize that our strength and handsome traits are gradually diminishing.

So, what can we expect and hope will result with the healthcare law? Some commentators claim our lives will be grim or even ruined and dominated by a totalitarian government, which will electronically control every part of our lives. That might be possible, if we the people allow our government to become destructive of our rights.

We need to watch how the new law is practiced. That will take time because the provisions of the law will need to be implemented in relation to the people it will serve. There are many uncertain aspects that need to be clarified when it comes to day-by-day practice. Some things will be found to be non-binding, some nonessential, others nonfunctional or maybe non-legal. It will require changes that were not anticipated. We will need to be patient. Good things will emerge; bad procedures will need to be replaced with good policies.

Instead of this law causing the end of American freedom, it may be a step in recovering our unalienable right to have government serve the purpose that was described in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: “to secure these (unalienable) rights, Governments are instituted among men.”

If we successfully arrange our government to serve our right to healthcare, then we can also successfully arrange our government to secure what is appropriate to serve our unalienable right to pursue happiness. What will that require?

To accomplish that, we might do well to remember the advice in Luke 6:31,

“As you would that men should do to you, do you also to them likewise.”

- WJ Anthony

During the preceding months of commentary about “the Health Care bill”, we frequently heard mention of the millions of Americans that are not covered by health insurance. We may be amiss, but wasn’t it shown that important questions had not been answered by our present medical system?

Did 30 or 40 million Americans have no health insurance coverage?

Did half of all Americans, who had health insurance, not have adequate coverage for their health care needs?

Did Insurance plans refuse to cover Americans who had preceding health problems?

Was the treatment of healthcare needs unavailable for unemployed American adults and their minor-age children?

At the same time, did some patriotic Americans hold a reverence for freedom that applied to illness and accidental injuries, such as the freedom to suffer, freedom to go bankrupt by unprecedented health care costs, freedom to become infected with preventable environmental contaminants in energy production, public water sources, food products, hazardous wastes, and industrial sewage and air pollution?

Some health care bill opponents state that America’s high tech medical culture impacts, maybe a third or more of America’s economy in one way or another. That, apparently, convinces them to oppose the use of the ‘self-executing rule’ by Democrats in Congress because the ‘self-executing rule’ should not be used for important legislation and healthcare affects a third of the US economy. Evidence shows that the same ‘self-executing rule’ has been used many times before in Congress going back a hundred years or more, for various purposes by Republicans and Democrats.

Which brings to mind a comparison of the health care bill with the Bush wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Congress voted to authorize President Bush to order the illegal attack, invasion and killing of many thousands of innocent Afghan men, women and children.

The Congress also voted to authorize President Bush to order the illegal attack, invasion and killing of well over a million innocent Iraqi people, to depose and execute their President, leaving hundreds of thousands of injured innocent Iraqi men, women and children.

Congress, in effect, authorized the consequent deaths of thousands of American troops and the permanent serious wounds of many thousands of American troops and the suffering of their families.

Did those patriotic Americans, who object to the use of the ‘self-executing rule’ to pass the Healthcare bill, agree with those illegal Bush wars, because Congress voted to approve the illegal Bush wars of 911?

Those Congressional votes about 911 acts affected American lives in very serious economic, social and political ways, such as affecting the costs of America’s healthcare, the loss of jobs, and education of American children.

Those Congressional votes misled some patriotic Americans to forget the meaning of liberty, as described in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.

When the Declaration spoke of unalienable Rights it associated all men with those rights; it stated that the purpose of governments was to secure the unalienable Rights of all men. That whenever any form of government became destructive of those rights, it was the right of the people to alter or abolish such a government and institute a new government founded on such principles, and organized with such powers, that would affect the Safety and Happiness of the people.

The Declaration’s second paragraph informs us that our liberty to pursue safety and happiness is only possible if we the people agree to cooperate in instituting government policies that combine our labor talents and consent to participate in accomplishing our safety and happiness.

America’s experience shows all of us that private enterprise is not able to provide for the safety and happiness of all people because it does not and cannot, by itself, assume the responsibility to secure the unalienable rights of all people to safety and happiness. That is only possible by instituting a government to assume that task.

It is true in a government by the consent of the people, as it is true in the personal lives of we the people, that “hard heads make a soft behind” meaning we cause ourselves to kick against our best good when we fail in our efforts to use our heart and minds in achieving what is good for us. It is up to all of ‘we the people’ to make the healthcare bill become a blessing to all of us – each and every one of us. Anger and hatred do not heal.

Someone once said, We are at our best when we are willing to help others.

This is the week we’ve been waiting for — the week when members of the House of Representatives choose to stand with us or the insurance companies.

The insurance industry operatives and Republican talking heads you see on cable TV say we need to start over and spend another year — or another decade — before we pass reform. They twist the facts to say that the public opposes reform, but what the public really opposes are attempts to water down or kill reform to keep the insurance companies happy.

AFSCME members like you are fighting the good fight and have been a critical voice for the past year in the health insurance reform debate. Together, we’ve made literally tens of thousands of phone calls and sent even more emails to our senators and representatives. The insurance industry has deep pockets and is doing all it can to kill reform — but we won’t let them win. This is our moment.

The bill that the House will soon vote on would end the ability of insurance companies to deny coverage to those who have pre-existing conditions — or deny coverage when you get sick. It would require insurance companies to pay for preventive care. It would also allow parents to keep their unemployed children on their policies until they turn 26. And it would end taxpayer funded subsidies to Big Insurance.

The historic nature of this moment cannot be overstated. The opportunity to end insurance company abuses is a moment for which we have worked long and hard. It is a vote that will affect our children, and their children. Please take a moment now to contact your member of Congress. Tell him/her the time has come to stand up to the insurance companies. The time has come to pass health care reform.

Please go to: http://www.unionvoice.org/cam paign/stand_up_for_reform

Thanks to you, when the history books are written on this struggle, they will read: AFSCME was there.

In solidarity,

Gerald W. McEntee
International President

Jesse Ventura’s Censored 9/11 Commentary

By Jesse Ventura

Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 01:08 PM

Editor’s Note: The following column by former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura was removed by Huffington Post after it was published March 9 and replaced with a note that states the site “prohibits the promotion and promulgation of conspiracy theories — including those about 9/11.”

You didn’t see anything about it in the mainstream media, but at a recent conference in San Francisco, more than 1,000 architects and engineers signed a petition demanding that Congress begin a new investigation into the destruction of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9-11.

That’s right, these people put their reputations in potential jeopardy — because they don’t buy the government’s version of events. They want to know how 200,000 tons of steel disintegrated and fell to the ground in 11 seconds. They question whether the hijacked planes were responsible or whether it could have been a controlled demolition from inside that brought down the twin towers and WTC Building 7.

Richard Gage, a member of the American Institute of Architects and the founder of Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth, put it like this: “The official Federal Emergency Management [Agency] and National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST] reports provide insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers’ destruction.”

He’s especially disturbed by Building 7, whose 47 stories came down in “pure free-fall acceleration” that afternoon, even though it was never hit by an aircraft. This is a subject I take up in my new book, American Conspiracies, published by Skyhorse. An excerpt follows: Some people have argued that the twin towers went down, within a half hour of one another, because of the way they were constructed. Well, those 425,000 cubic yards of concrete and 200,000 tons of steel were designed to hold up against a Boeing 707, the largest plane built at the time the towers were completed in 1973. Analysis had shown that a 707 traveling at 600 miles an hour (and those had four engines) would not cause major damage. The twin-engine Boeing 757s that hit on 9-11 were going 440 and 550 mph.

Still, we are told that a molten, highly intense fuel mixture from the planes brought down these two steel-framed skyscrapers. Keep in mind that no other such skyscraper in history had ever been known to collapse completely due to fire damage. So could it actually have been the result of a controlled demolition from inside the buildings?

I don’t claim expertise about this, but I did work four years as part of the Navy’s underwater demolition teams, where we were trained to blow things to hell and high water. And my staff talked at some length with a prominent physicist, Steven E. Jones, who says that a “gravity driven collapse” without demolition charges defies the laws of physics.

These buildings fell, at nearly the rate of free-fall, straight down into their own footprint, in approximately 10 seconds. An object dropped from the roof of the 110-story-tall towers would reach the ground in about 9.2 seconds. Then there’s the fact that steel beams that weighed as much as 200,000 pounds got tossed laterally as far as 500 feet.

NIST started its investigation on Aug. 21, 2002. When their 10,000-page-long report came out three years later, the spokesman said there was no evidence to suggest a controlled demolition. But Jones also says that molten metal found underground weeks later is proof that jet fuel couldn’t have been all that was responsible. I visited the site about three weeks after 9-11, with Gov. Pataki and my wife Terry. It didn’t mean anything to me at the time, but they had to suspend digging that day because they were running into heat pockets of huge temperatures. These fires kept burning for more than three months, the longest-burning structure blaze ever.

And this was all due to jet fuel? We’re talking molten metal more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Probably the most conclusive evidence about a controlled demolition is a research paper (two years, nine authors) published in the peer-reviewed Open Chemical Physics Journal in April 2009. In studying dust samples from the site, these scientists found chips of nano-thermite, which is a high-tech incendiary/explosive. Here’s what the paper’s lead author, Dr. Niels Harrit of the University of Copenhagen’s chemistry department, had to say about the explosive that he’s convinced brought down the twin towers and the nearby Building 7:

“Thermite itself dates back to 1893. It is a mixture of aluminum and rust powder, which react to create intense heat. The reaction produces iron, heated to 2,500 degrees Centigrade [4,532 degrees Fahrenheit]. This can be used to do welding. It can also be used to melt other iron. So in nano-thermite, this powder from 1893 is reduced to tiny particles, perfectly mixed. When these react, the intense heat develops much more quickly. Nano-thermite can be mixed with additives to give off intense heat, or serve as a very effective explosive. It contains more energy than dynamite, and can be used as rocket fuel.”

Gage is one of hundreds of credentialed architects and structural engineers who have put their careers on the line to point out the detailed anomalies and many implications of controlled demolition in the building collapses. As he puts it bluntly: “Once you get to the science, it’s indisputable.”

A former Navy Seal, professional wrestler and actor Jesse Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota on the Reform Party ticket in 1998 where he served until 2002. Today, Ventura is best known for hosting the popular television show Conspiracy Theory, which airs on cable television. He is also the author of five books.