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Saturday, November 6
Farewell by Linda Thieman
by
Linda Thieman
on Sat 06 Nov 2004 04:05 PM CST
 Farewell
by Linda Thieman
Well,
the time has come for me to take my leave. I’ve been trying to
get away for several days now, but running Blog for Iowa is
addictive. I check my sources, get that “a ha!” spark when I see
some information that I just have to post, and before you know it, I
have spent several hours setting up three more posts. Kind of
like Al Pacino in “The Godfather Part III,” where he keeps trying to
get out and they keep pulling him back in. Perhaps that’s not the
best analogy.
I have
loved running Blog for Iowa. I have appreciated those of you who
have spread the word. Because of you, our readership has exploded
once again. I’ve adjusted the stats for a little glitch on
October 23 and 24; there was a 26-hour time period during which all
Blog Harbor stats stopped being recorded and over that two-day period,
posted nothing but zeros. We never got that lost information back. So, that being said, I believe we
actually reached 50,000 page views for the first time in October.
During the last two weeks of October, we averaged 1,010 readers per day
(distinct hosts served). That surprised me because I had expected
that as people became more and more consumed with the final days of the
campaign, readership would drop off. It didn’t.
The stats
for the first 5 days of November have been surprising, too. We
have averaged 1,400 readers per day. And, thanks to Dawn Mueller
posting links to Blog for Iowa over at Kos during an Iowa candidates
thread, we had our biggest day ever on October 11, with 2,170 readers
and 2,777 page views. (We did have one day with higher page
views; October 19 hit 2820 page views.) Truly amazing.
I’m sure
we all realize that the progressive movement is in its infancy. I
am proud of how hard we’ve worked. But if my leaving grants me
the right to offer one piece of advice, let it be this. We are in
this for the long haul. It took the neo-cons 35 years to set up
the structure that now poisons our democracy. It’s going to take
us a considerable length of time to repair it. So, pace
yourselves. Take the down time you need. Get some
rest. Find a way to make the movement a consistent part of your
life in a way that you will be less likely to suffer burn out. We
need you, and more important, we need you to take good care of
yourself.
Now that
we don’t have a national election hanging over our heads, we can focus
on what is most important, and that, of course, is building the
progressive movement from the ground up in Iowa. Iowa is where
it’s at because this is where we live. You may have heard the
rumors that the DNC is thinking of taking the first-in-the-nation
status away from Iowa because Kerry didn’t “win.” Well, if they
do, that’s the breaks. Would it kill us to let some other poor
souls give up two years of their lives every time the presidential
rolls around? Whatever happens, our top priority must still be
Iowa.
I have
just added some Writers’ Guidelines to the right sidebar of Blog for
Iowa. We welcome contributions about the progressive movement, in
general, or pertaining to the progressive movement in Iowa, in
particular. I’ve set up two links. Click on the top link to
read the Guidelines on the web; click on the bottom link to download
the Guidelines.
I don’t
know what my plans are or how long I’ll be AWOL – if it’s a short
period of time, this big goodbye is going to look pretty silly.
Anyhoo, I’d like to take this opportunity to say some thank yous.
Dr. Alta
Price: Alta and her enthusiasm drive Democracy for Iowa.
She’s the one who got the ball rolling. She’s the one who funds
Blog for Iowa. And you’ll probably see her at your door asking
for your input as Democracy for Iowa works on some bylaws and
endorsement procedures. Keep your eye on this gal. She’s a
go-getter.
Darrell
Lewis and Molly Regan: This one is rather personal, so if those
kinds of things tend to make you blush, skip to the next
paragraph. During the last seven and a half months that I worked
to set up and run Blog for Iowa, long periods of time passed when folks
remembered to read the blog but seemed to forget I was here. If
it weren’t for the moral support I received from Darrell and Molly, I
would have quit long ago.
Darrell
Lewis, Dave Inbody, and Dick Stater: Once when I was talking to
Alta, she commented that she thought it was funny that she and I were
“co-founders” of Democracy for Iowa because she didn’t know any two
people who knew less about politics than we did. That cracked me
up because it was so true. So, that being the case, I would like
to thank these three gentlemen for teaching me everything I actually
now know about politics. You’ve been kind and patient teachers.
Our
Regular Contributors: I’d like to thank our regular Blog for Iowa
contributors for their hard work and fine contributions, including
Connie Wilson, Ira Lacher, Darrell Lewis, Ted Remington, Andrew Smith,
Christina Butts, and the non-partisan Iowa Policy Project. (If I forgot someone, drop me a line and I'll add their name!)
Trish
Nelson and Ellen Ballas: I’d like to thank the co-coordinators of
Rapid Response – Iowa and everyone on the stellar team they worked so
hard to create for never letting up in the fight to hold the media
accountable. I’d also like to mention a special thank you to
Trish Nelson for setting up a system that allowed us to send out press
releases in an efficient manner.
Our
Candidates: I’d like to thank our beloved progressive candidates
for putting themselves out there to give voice to progressive
values. Personally, I think there is nothing harder than being a
candidate, unless you’re a Republican incumbent, and then you just hide
out and sit on your behind during the whole campaign season, until the
last two weeks, during which the Rove manual instructs you to do radio
and TV ads and mailings smearing and lying about the reputations of
your hard-working Democratic opponent. But, I digress.
The
Campaign Staffers: I’d like to thank all the campaign staffers
who helped keep Blog for Iowa in touch with what was going on with our
candidates. And I’d like to thank all the campaign staffers, in
general, for giving your all to get the word out about your/our
candidates.
The Meet
Up Hosts: A special thank you to the Iowa Meet Up hosts who have
kept the ground game going: Dennis and Robin Roseman in Iowa City, Alta
Price and Molly Regan in the QC, Dick Stater and Sue Astley in Cedar
Rapids, and Colleen Jennings in Des Moines.
And last
but not least, I would like to thank Cliff Day for taking over Blog for
Iowa for me. It’s a big job, Cliff. Always remember,
running the control panel is nearly impossible if you use Internet
Explorer. Mozilla it must be! And, of course, I’d like to
thank Howard Dean for awakening a movement, a movement that allowed us
to network extensively with folks who understand what’s what.
This thing is bigger than anyone realizes. We just haven't reached critical mass yet.
Just in
case you didn’t know it, ALL the articles ever posted on Blog for Iowa
can be accessed through the search feature on the left sidebar.
I've made 788 posts, and some have links to as many as five other
sources.
AND A BIG
THANK YOU to all the readers of Blog for Iowa (including our good
friends from Nebraska and Wisconsin).
There now. I think
that’s enough self-indulgence for today.
Linda Thieman
Hey, Let's Outsource Health Care to India!
by
Linda Thieman
on Sat 06 Nov 2004 10:32 AM CST
 Hey, Let's Outsource Health Care to India!
by Susan Dentzer, Health Correspondent for "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" on PBS
The Washington Post
October 31, 2004
It's the Taj Mahal of Health Insurance Schemes
By Susan Dentzer
(Following
are excerpts from Susan Dentzer's response to a Washington Post news
story of an uninsured carpenter from Durham, N.C. who outsourced his
own heart surgery to India, at a cost of $10,000, including
transportation. He could not afford the $200,000 his surgery would have
cost in this country.)
Good
grief, why didn't someone think of this earlier! Forty-five million
Americans lack health insurance, and covering every one of them would
be costly. Why not outsource them all to India?
Opponents
will immediately say this idea is impractical. I say, don't be health
coverage girlie men! First, not all the uninsured would have to travel
to India to get health care. For example, when an uninsured person
first got the sniffles, he or she could pick up the phone and talk with
someone at a call center in, say, Bangalore. An Indian nurse making $10
a day would listen (sympathetically, of course) and offer advice.
For
those uninsured in need of hands-on medical care, here's an idea: What
if some of those failing U.S. airlines converted to running medical air
shuttle services between, say, New York and New Delhi, or Boston and
Bombay? Uncle Sam could hire them as private contractors, then pay them
to ferry the uninsured back and forth.
The more
I think about this idea, the better I like it. Just imagine all the
problems it would solve: No more overcrowded emergency rooms choked
with uninsured patients. No more worries about a nursing shortage; by
transferring our patients to India, we'd outsource nursing care there,
too. Hospitals and doctors here would be freed up to do what makes most
sense for them economically: treat well-insured patients at steep
prices - even to the point of giving them care that they probably don't
need! Perform the most lucrative elective surgeries on relatively
healthy patients, rather than giving high-cost care to the sickest loss
leaders!
We all
know the uninsured are a terrible problem, an embarrassment, really,
for such a rich country as ours. Every other major industrialized
nation has figured out how to provide health coverage to most, if not
all, of its citizens. At last, here's a twist on globalization that
could really work for everybody. So let's get started. Who says
Americans can't take care of their own?
Greg Palast: An Election Spoiled Rotten
by
Linda Thieman
on Sat 06 Nov 2004 04:29 AM CST
 An Election Spoiled Rotten
by Greg Palast
45% of Americans
believe the presidential election of 2000 was stolen. According to CNN Headline News, a
smaller number, 13%, believe the junta was successful in stealing
another presidential election this week. You weigh the facts.
Monday, November 1, 2004
- It's not even Election Day yet, and the Kerry-Edwards campaign is
already down by almost a million votes. That's because, in important
states like Ohio, Florida and New Mexico, voter names have been
systematically removed from the rolls and absentee ballots have been
overlooked — overwhelmingly in minority areas, like Rio Arriba County,
New Mexico, where Hispanic voters have a 500 percent greater chance of
their vote being "spoiled." Investigative journalist Greg Palast
reports on the trashing of the election.
Greg
Palast, contributing editor to Harper's magazine, investigated the
manipulation of the vote for BBC Television's Newsnight. The
documentary, "Bush Family Fortunes," based on his New York Times
bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, has been released this
month on DVD.
John
Kerry is down by several thousand votes in New Mexico, though not one
ballot has yet been counted. He's also losing big time in Colorado and
Ohio; and he's way down in Florida, though the votes won't be totaled
until Tuesday night.
Through
a combination of sophisticated vote rustling—ethnic cleansing of voter
rolls, absentee ballots gone AWOL, machines that "spoil" votes—John
Kerry begins with a nationwide deficit that could easily exceed one
million votes.
(Click here to read the complete article.)
Also see:
Sour Grapes, or Electoral Fraud?
None of
the facts related to the presidential election add up. Voter
registration went up from 105 million to 120 million. In Ohio alone it
went up a whopping 17%. Whenever registration has surged like this in
the past, it has always favored the challenger and precipitated a
change in government.
Not so,
this time, and Republican pollsters are eager to convince us that the
reason for this is a renewed interest among the American public for
"moral values". Is that it or are the results simply an indication of
massive (but well calculated) voter fraud?
The exit
polling was equally skewed, showing a clear victory for Kerry. Exit
polling has traditionally been a reliable way of determining the
outcome of elections. Not so in Bush-world, where vote totals are
invariably higher for Bush in the contentious areas that ultimately
decide the election.
Give
strategist Karl Rove his due; he knew what had to be done and did it.
The rest, of course, has been papered over by the pollsters, pimps and
pundits in American press corps.
CITIZENS FOR LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT Launches Investigation Into Discrepancies of 2004 'Election'
Pittsburgh, PA: November 4, 2004
CLG
Founder and Chair, Michael D. Rectenwald, Ph.D., calls for a thorough
investigation into the discrepancies of the 2004 election. At the
conclusion of its investigation, CLG may call for specified action(s)
against the system that has provided for the theft of the 2000 and 2004
elections. CLG may demand prosecution of those that have laid the
groundwork for the 2004 election, if such an investigation points to
the conclusion that a second coup d'etat took place on November 2,
2004.
Click the above link for a long list of detailed discrepencies.
Exit Polls Right, Tallies Wrong?
Alternet
The hot story in the blogosphere is that the "erroneous" exit polls
that showed Kerry carrying Florida and Ohio (among other states)
weren't erroneous at all – it was the numbers produced by paperless
voting machines that were wrong, and Kerry actually won. As more and
more analysis is done of what may (or may not) be the most massive
election fraud in the history of the world, however, it's critical that
we keep the largest issue at the forefront at all time: Why are We The
People allowing private, for-profit corporations, answerable only to
their officers and boards of directors, and loyal only to agendas and
politicians that will enhance their profitability, to handle our votes?
Kerry Won. . .
Greg Palast
November 04, 2004
Bush won
Ohio by 136,483 votes. In the United States, about 3 percent of votes
cast are voided — known as “spoilage” in election jargon — because the
ballots cast are inconclusive. Drawing on what happened in Florida and
studies of elections past, Palast argues that if Ohio’s discarded
ballots were counted, Kerry would have won the state. Today, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports
there are a total of 247,672 votes not counted in Ohio, if you add the
92,672 discarded votes plus the 155,000 provisional ballots. So far
there's no indication that Palast's hypothesis will be tested because
only the provisional ballots are being counted.
Kerry won. Here are the facts.
I know
you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung chad. But
I don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage
called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the most
votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was
John Kerry.
Most
voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. At 1:05 a.m.
Wednesday morning, CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio
women by 53 percent to 47 percent. The exit polls were later
combined with—and therefore contaminated by—the tabulated results,
ultimately becoming a mirror of the apparent actual vote. [To read
about the skewing of exit polls to conform to official results, click here.]
Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49
percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.
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