There is too much undercurrent in the Eworld.  That frolicking of Palin in Nevada is curious.  I try to keep my mind on sensible questions of which nation is mad at which.  And then comes a torrent of words over civility in US politics.   How does a simple soul like me sort out what has happened to a country whose history amounts to reinventing itself?  

Take voting for example.  Originally, without property those who were not full citizens--women and slaves being among them--were given the brushoff.  

Voting was a privilege and therefore a duty, it seemed.  By force of amendments to the constitution two large groups, plus adolescents from the age of 18 to 21, were included as full-class citizens.  However, be aware if one went afoul of the law all that might change.  And residency was expected to be decently permanent.  

In the spirit of the Tea Bag Revolution, Republican attorneys general are involved in class action activity using the tactic of interposition.  

This is the same concept propounded by the legendary Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, a doctrine that clashed with that of the founder of the Republican Party, President Abraham Lincoln of Illinois.

When was the last time you heard a Republican refer to The Party of Lincoln?  In bygone years the phrase was used repeatedly at Republican Party national conventions and on the campaign trail.

This was when FDR came to power with a mandate for change.  We had a strong grassroots union movement that helped forge the way and the progressive coalition was gradually strengthened under Roosevelt's New Deal leadership.

This was before the grand emphasis of focus groups and those polite panel discussions on places like CNN that the mainstream media fobs off as representative democracy in action.

Very importantly, this was before the lobbyists held a choke hold on the democratic system that it was never compelled to release through remedial campaign reform legislation.  

We specialized humans have decided to buy our governance from the lowest bidder for our nodding assent to promises snicker-inducing in any reality but that of election campaigns.

But we're not evolved to handle the reflexiveness of the niche we've built. Darwin hasn't been around long enough, and we don't like him anyway, for pointing out we're not the crown of creation, but merely an over-adaptable self-obsessed twig on the evolutionary bush.

And bush was devolution, not easily overcome.

Now Political Cortex has been invaded by the noise machines, especially Skip MacLiar (whatever...)

Borrrrrrrrrring!

We specialized humans have decided to buy our governance from the lowest bidder for our nodding assent to promises snicker-inducing in any reality but that of election campaigns.

But we're not evolved to handle the reflexiveness of the niche we've built. Darwin hasn't been around long enough, and we don't like him anyway, for pointing out we're not the crown of creation, but merely an over-adaptable self-obsessed twig on the evolutionary bush.

And bush was devolution, not easily overcome.

Now Political Cortex has been invaded by the noise machines, especially Skip the Liar (whatever...)

Borrrrrrrrrring!

The annual cost of living increase will not rise for the first time since they began being calculated yearly for seniors on Social Security.  

This injustice has been accomplished through an accounting cheating system.  The soaring cost of health care and gas are not included within the cost of living scale, thus giving a completely false calculation.

How interesting that congressional salaries, however, have increased while Social Security payments did not.  

As if that wasn't enough to frighten senior citizens, doctors' fees are being slashed 21 percent.  What doctors would want their fees drastically cut, and then be required to take the heavy case load of Medicare patients they have been burdened with lately?

It is drastic cuts in Medicare and doctors' fees that caused such outrage at those recent town hall meetings throughout America.

On October 14, USA Today ran an incredible story revealing how some of the CEO's of A.I.G., the insurance giant the federal government bailed out with borrowed billions, was using some of the handout money now that they had become welfare wards.

Howard Dean as a doctor and former governor knows the ropes.  He  spirited a health care bill through the Vermont legislature and signed it into law.  Dean did not sound optimistic about the prospect of reform when he appeared on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC program Tuesday night.

In fact, Dean, sounding like the refreshingly candid guy so many of liked as a breath of fresh air in the political system, told Maddow point blank that a health care bill without the public option would be fraud.

How refreshingly blunt and deliciously on point.  Dean knows in ways that those self-designated experts on health care, the esteemed senators Grassley and Hatch, do not, about cost containment how crucially it factors into the picture.

When his brother President John Kennedy championed a Medicare proposal that would ultimately become law under his successor President Lyndon  Johnson its foundation rested on public policy.  Such had been the case earlier extending back to the Bull Moose Party platform of Theodore Roosevelt and comparable subsequent proposals by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

Cost containment is the engine driving the historic proposal.  Its four presidential proponents along with Senator Kennedy recognized the need to hold down costs in the private sector in order for such a proposal to succeed.  For instance, I read just this week a figure that, since 2002, the profits of health insurers burgeoned more than 400 percent.

It is with this reality in mind that it was disconcerting to learn about an agreement that President Obama allegedly reached with the same pharmaceutical giants that have driven prescription drug costs up to record levels.  

Given the recent polling data, Republicans should stop speciously pointing fingers and start asking: 1) why do most Americans view us negatively, and 2) what can we actually do to change that?

Last week's Gallup poll found that more American's trusted Democrats over Republicans to do a better overall job and to handle national security and prosperity. The new Washington Post/ABC poll results contain similarly bad news for Republicans.

We can't afford as a nation to be stupid about paying for health care anymore. alizard, 6 May 2007

It has recently struck me that those who will be most affected by our choices regarding global warming will be too young during that critical 10 years to have any say whatsoever in our choices. We decide but our children will feel the brunt of the consequences.