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avivajazz  jazzaviva

Shake your fists, then get real | @Karoli on the "death" of healthcare reform, and my r... - 0 views

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    Lots of good points, @Karoli; much to meditate on. Would love clarification on the following comment, though: "Can anyone familiar with history point to any time where a bill has made it this far, been pulled back by proponents, and lived as a stronger version of itself?" How is it a "stronger version of itself?" I don't follow Congressional maneuvers with the same background knowledge or attention to detail that you do; I'm probably missing some key information that would clarify your meaning. Really like your myth-busting data. It's refreshing to see a recap of details that can easily escape us. In some cases, your data gives me a point of departure for further research, so I can come to my own conclusions. Without your article, sorting out the key questions to investigate would be much harder for me. Also, I agree that waiting for a better bill, with so many "people hanging by a thread," is a luxury that only the well-heeled can afford. For many legislators, insulated from financial woes, much of this healthcare debate is about anything and everything except healthcare reform. All that said, I'm obviously an idealist who yearns for global, systemic change. I would want to change the fundamental nature of dance competition's culture, if my daughter were involved. It would be hard for me to keep my eye on the pragmatic truths: deep, systemic change of any cultural institution (socioeconomic, sociocultural, or sociopolitical) is a project for centuries, for eons. It's evolutionary. For today, how does your daughter keep following her passion in a system that's unfair? For today, how do we facilitate efforts to get as many health insurance benefits for the most people in a system that's unjust? I'm not sure I entirely buy your solution―but overall, it's a hell of a lot more practical than the one I was about to employ: sinking into helplessness, hopelessness, and depression... In fact, it's a hell of a lot more idealistic than sinking into despair, too! I fe
avivajazz  jazzaviva

Google Moderator | Brainstorm, Discuss, Vote, Collaborate, Create, Organize in Online D... - 0 views

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    What should our priorities be for the Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight? What hearings would you like to see? What contract or program needs additional oversight? What laws, regulations, and policies need to be changed? I'll need all the suggestions and support I can get -- I'll draw heavily on your input as we move forward toward a system that better serves the government and the taxpayer. -Senator Claire McCaskill
avivajazz  jazzaviva

"Bush-Era" Search Policy for Travelers Unchanged by Obama - 0 views

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    The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search (and copy) -- without suspicion of wrongdoing -- the contents of a traveler's laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.\n\nThe policy, disclosed Thursday in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush administration the procedures by which travelers' laptops, iPods, cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they cross a U.S. border. And it sets time limits for completing searches.\n\nBut representatives of civil liberties and travelers groups say they see little substantive difference between the Bush-era policy, which prompted controversy, and this one.\n\n"It's a disappointing ratification of the suspicionless search policy put in place by the Bush administration," said Catherine Crump, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It provides a lot of procedural safeguards, but it doesn't deal with the fundamental problem, which is that under the policy, government officials are free to search people's laptops and cellphones for any reason whatsoever."
avivajazz  jazzaviva

Health-care bill wouldn't bring real reform | Howard Dean | Dec 17, 2009 - 0 views

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    "Health-care bill wouldn't bring real reform TOOLBOX Resize Print E-mail Yahoo! Buzz ad_icon COMMENT 248 Comments | View All » POST A COMMENT You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register Why Do I Have to Log In Again? Log In Again? CLOSE We've made some updates to washingtonpost.com's Groups, MyPost and comment pages. We need you to verify your MyPost ID by logging in before you can post to the new pages. We apologize for the inconvenience. Discussion Policy Your browser's settings may be preventing you from commenting on and viewing comments about this item. See instructions for fixing the problem. Discussion Policy CLOSE Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post. Who's Blogging » Links to this article By Howard Dean Thursday, December 17"
avivajazz  jazzaviva

Daily Kos: Open Letter: Call me a BOZO, I'm for Health Reform: UPDATE 4X w/POLL - 0 views

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    *I've been very critical of HCR (1+ / 0-)Obama, and the whole process and what appears that the end result will be.  What would be enough for the democrats opposed to the bill to support it? Personally speaking, I recognize that it's never going to be perfect.  But the sticking point is forcing people to buy a product from a private company without any effective cost control measures.  That's it, anything else I can work with. So for me, I would need either the mandate taken out, strict cost regulation added, or a non-profit pulic option added. What about the rest of you? by Skellen on Tue Mar 09, 2010 at 11:59:13 AM PST[ Reply to This | Recommend ] REPLY by .@avivao: Mandate to buy private insurance? (0 / 0)Exactly. A mandate to buy from private insurers (who're already raising rates in advance of the bill's passage--a way of gaming medical loss ratios, etc.) must be counterbalanced by a substantive public plan (Medicare for All or Medicare for More would be the most expeditious way to go, I suspect). Also, the mandate will surely cause suffering "down the road" unless regulation of insurers is actually enforceable. Still, we must pass this #HCR bill, I think. I'm extremely worried about (1) passing it with a unilateral mandate; (2) not passing it because of a unilateral mandate. How did we get trapped like this? What went wrong? Sure; a lot has gone right. I don't deny it. I'm glad. But we're backed into a corner now on passing this health bill. If we don't pass it, the news is very, very bad. If we do pass it, the news is probably very,very bad (for a different constellation of reasons). I say: #PassTheDamnBill. But I'm very disturbed by the potential consequences of doing so. There are many benefits to this bill; I pray that the liabilities don't outweigh them. We'll see. by avivagabriel on Wed Mar 10, 2010 at 11:56:59 AM PST[ Parent | Reply to This ]
avivajazz  jazzaviva

Need To Know | Pentagon v. CIA on Iraq | The New Republic - 0 views

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    A frmer CIA analyst says, "Not since Vietnam has there been as deep a divide over intelligence as to enemy capabilities as you are seeing now in Iraq." 
avivajazz  jazzaviva

Occupy Wall Street finally releases their one demand « OntheWilderSide - 0 views

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    KW writes: My goodness. In a wise, creative, and mischievous response to the nasty rhetoric of the press, the Occupy Wall Street folks have answered propaganda with poetry. What a graceful maneuver in the struggle for social change. Beautiful and heartwarming! For a discussion on the media's quest for one, clear demand from the Wall Street protesters, the group created the following consensus document: A Message From Occupied Wall Street (Day Five) Published 2011-09-22 07:51:42 UTC by OccupyWallSt at OccupyWallStreet.org This is the fifth communiqué from the 99 percent. We are occupying Wall Street. On September 21st, 2011, Troy Davis, an innocent man, was murdered by the state of Georgia. Troy Davis was one of the 99 percent. Ending capital punishment is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, four of our members were arrested on baseless charges. Ending police intimidation is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, the richest 400 Americans owned more than half of the country's population. Ending wealth inequality is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, we determined that Yahoo lied about occupywallst.org being in spam filters. Ending corporate censorship is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, roughly eighty percent of Americans thought the country was on the wrong track. Ending the modern gilded age is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, roughly 15% of Americans approved of the job Congress was doing. Ending political corruption is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, roughly one sixth of Americans did not have work. Ending joblessness is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, roughly one sixth of America lived in poverty. Ending poverty is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, roughly fifty million Americans were without health insurance. Ending health-profiteering is our one demand. On September 21st, 2011, America had military bases in around one hundred and thirty out of one hundred and sixty-five countrie
Anne Hulthen

How JFK Fathered The Modern Presidential Campaign : NPR - 0 views

  • "In 1960, when he ran for the presidency, first of all, if he won, he was going to be the youngest man ever elected to the White House," Dallek says. "Secondly, he was going to be the first Catholic, so there was something fresh and new, and this is what he spun out in the campaign. He called his potential administration the 'new frontier,' and he said the torch was being passed to a new generation."
    • Anne Hulthen
       
      Novelty. The media loves an underdog and Kennedy used this to his advantage. His Youth and "Catholicism" also played in to the imaginations of Americans. Did they want to see themselves as different and unique, American culture as accepting and permissive? Did this reflect American values or is it merely the novelty?
  • energetic
    • Anne Hulthen
       
      Energy!! This is a big part of the 1960s culture. We were just beginning to enter the age of idealization of American culture. Specifically ambition, intelligence, culture, worldliness and glamour that defined the American dreams of the 1960s. This was a lot different than the 50s which favored conformity and the status quo rather than striving to achieve greatness. Kennedy represented the youthful energy that flowed through the air during the 60s.
  • But when you toss in the rise of television and the way Kennedy harnessed the new medium's power
    • Anne Hulthen
       
      One of the first uses of mass media. However's Kennedy's use of this medium reflects the Kennedy's campaigns strategy of Youth and being in touch with the Youth generation. Almost like Obama. This also reflects the 60s which was really the age of Youth and Newness.
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  • when Kennedy came across as presidential
  • who was witty, charming, handsome
  • Filmmaker Robert Drew was given up-close access to Kennedy in Wisconsin to produce a documentary
  • JFK also tapped into popular culture to appeal to voters. His ads moved beyond the stodginess of past campaigns. There was no bigger star than Frank Sinatra, who reworked one of his big hits into a JFK jingle:
    • Anne Hulthen
       
      Pop culture. This was another big thing in the late 50s, early 60s, the development of pocket change and rapid consumption of culture as a commodity. Perhaps JFK's biggest achievement in his presidential campaign was treating his presidency as a commodity, something he needed to commercialize and sell to the American people. Hence Frank Sinatra, a marketable aspect.
  • "They understood that when you run a campaign like this," Dallek says, "you not only have to present yourself as attractive, appealing, effective, promising, but you also have to show that your opponent has terrible weaknesses, things that you wouldn't want to see in the White House."
  • The Kennedy campaign also featured a strong outreach to Hispanic voters, presenting an ad with the candidate's wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, speaking in Spanish.
    • Anne Hulthen
       
      He really courted all demographics of the American population.
Anne Hulthen

John F. Kennedy and the Press - John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum - 0 views

  • The public loved John F. Kennedy's press conferences, although some of his advisors worried about the risk of mistakes by the president and others thought the press showed insufficient respect for the dignity of his office
    • Anne Hulthen
       
      He's making himself not only seem more relatable but more attainable as though we, ourselves, could become friends with the president. As if we were of his same class and he was speaking to us. Given the aspirational nature of late 50s/ early 60s society, it makes sense that this would be a greatly affective strategy. He was also making himself not only a public figure, but a celebrity. Seen on the screen nearly as often as Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart.
  • 65 million people
    • Anne Hulthen
       
      Here is the example of celebrity and glamour. By presenting himself to the public on his own terms, he therebye marketed himself to them and chose how he would portray himself instead of the media. 18 million watched him on average which is an incredible number. He had some draw that pulled them in, a quintessential thing that made everyone relate to him. Hope? Idealism? Can you commercialize these? Can intangible ideas be marketed?
  • even though we disapprove, there isn't any doubt that we could not
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  • President Kennedy helped to significantly enlarge the role of television as a news medium,
  • but he continued to be a voracious consumer of print journalism
  • Oh, yes. No, no, I think it is invaluable, even though it may cause you—it is never pleasant to be reading things that are not agreeable news, but I would say that it is an invaluable arm of the presidency, as a check really on what is going on in the administration, and more things come to my attention that cause me concern or give me information.
    • Anne Hulthen
       
      Appears educated and Sophisticated. Perhaps this was another aspect of the Kennedy appeal. Sophistication and Education were really two ideals of modern American life during the 1960s. The whole Kennedy family had this air of sophistication which captured the whole of America. They had this image of royalty. In the 60s, we see the image of the sophisticated family, who all read and discussed politics. America was changing it's image from vulgar to glamorous, Seeking to aquire a culture that the rest of the world always seemed to think we lacked. Kennedy played into our own ego's by presenting himself as a man of the world, ready to promote American intelligence and competence at home and abroad. His wife, Jackie, who spoke French and Spanish, added to this air of worldly appeal.
Anne Hulthen

Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - 1 - 0 views

  • He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish;
    • Anne Hulthen
       
      This is kind of like Jimmy Carter, How sometimes the best person doesn't make the best president, because they lack the ability to persuade the caucus or play the politician.
  • All machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. 
  • "This principle being admitted, the justice of every particular case of resistance is reduced to a computation of the quantity of the danger and grievance on the one side, and of the probability and expense of redressing it on the other."(
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  • there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump.(15) There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do,
  •  It is not so important that many should be as good as you, as that
  • Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may.
  •   All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it.
  • There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves.
  • "I should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico; — see if I would go";
  • ow many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one. Does not America offer any inducement for men to settle here? The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow (17) — one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness, and a manifest lack of intellect and cheerful self-reliance; whose first and chief concern,
  • and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute
ken meece

AlterNet: Is the Constitution Suited to Today's Church/State Issues? - 0 views

  • The government increasingly sees citizens as pastoral-care clients, as persons in need of spiritual care, and I want to describe the law that makes this possible.
  • how religion is being regulated in hospitals and, more generally, how chaplaincies are multiplying in this country: municipal chaplaincies, crisis chaplaincies, hospital chaplaincies, even school and workplace chaplaincies.
  • people are understanding themselves in terms of a new revival of a holistic image of the human being as, in some sense, basically spiritual.
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  • It's a next step in the radical disestablishment of religion in this country.
  • The exclusivity of materialist/medicalized understandings of the entire range of human capabilities and experience, as well as ecclesiastical capacity to insist on orthodoxy and particularity, are both fast eroding
  • We have so much religious diversity, and we don't have the history of an established church that can provide a location and an umbrella under which to reinvent ourselves as a multireligious society, as progressive reformers in Britain are trying to do. On the one hand, I want to remind religious folks of that. On the other, I want to say to the secularists that, look, you have lost the game. You didn't provide a language and an understanding of the human person that's adequate. So, to a certain extent, these religious reformers are right. Personal transformation, particularly in Americans' eyes, is understood as something that is spiritual or religious. It's about more than fixing people in an engineering sense. I think that secularists are going to have to make bridges toward these spiritual communities and languages. People get better when they're treated as whole human beings, and religion is one way in which that wholeness is imagined, culturally.
  • We have so much religious diversity, and we don't have the history of an established church that can provide a location and an umbrella under which to reinvent ourselves as a multireligious society, as progressive reformers in Britain are trying to do. On the one hand, I want to remind religious folks of that. On the other, I want to say to the secularists that, look, you have lost the game. You didn't provide a language and an understanding of the human person that's adequate. So, to a certain extent, these religious reformers are right. Personal transformation, particularly in Americans' eyes, is understood as something that is spiritual or religious. It's about more than fixing people in an engineering sense. I think that secularists are going to have to make bridges toward these spiritual communities and languages. People get better when they're treated as whole human beings, and religion is one way in which that wholeness is imagined, culturally.
  • We have so much religious diversity, and we don't have the history of an established church that can provide a location and an umbrella under which to reinvent ourselves as a multireligious society, as progressive reformers in Britain are trying to do. On the one hand, I want to remind religious folks of that. On the other, I want to say to the secularists that, look, you have lost the game. You didn't provide a language and an understanding of the human person that's adequate. So, to a certain extent, these religious reformers are right. Personal transformation, particularly in Americans' eyes, is understood as something that is spiritual or religious. It's about more than fixing people in an engineering sense. I think that secularists are going to have to make bridges toward these spiritual communities and languages. People get better when they're treated as whole human beings, and religion is one way in which that wholeness is imagined, culturally.
  • We have so much religious diversity, and we don't have the history of an established church that can provide a location and an umbrella under which to reinvent ourselves as a multireligious society, as progressive reformers in Britain are trying to do. On the one hand, I want to remind religious folks of that. On the other, I want to say to the secularists that, look, you have lost the game. You didn't provide a language and an understanding of the human person that's adequate. So, to a certain extent, these religious reformers are right. Personal transformation, particularly in Americans' eyes, is understood as something that is spiritual or religious. It's about more than fixing people in an engineering sense. I think that secularists are going to have to make bridges toward these spiritual communities and languages. People get better when they're treated as whole human beings, and religion is one way in which that wholeness is imagined, culturally.
avivajazz  jazzaviva

The Human Cost of War: The Images the Corporate Media Doesn't Want You to See - 0 views

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    Robert Greenwald's important new documentary, Rethink Afghanistan
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