"I can't help but be amused as the Democratic agenda on Health Care and, increasingly, "cap and trade" is picked apart by, yoiks, grassroots organizing. ((And, yes, I have heard that there is money from assorted interests in behind that organizing - so what? Move-On was not exactly unfunded.)
Obama ran a huge internet operation in his election attempt. He and his people understand how powerful you-tube and blogs and tweets have become and how lame MSM has also become. But they were under the misaprehension that the left in the US had the same hammerlock on the 'net as it does the MSM.
They have been surprised by the strength of the right and populist push back. They shouldn't have been. There is a huge, successful and self-sustaining media/web matrix on the right in the US. As Bush was clueless about the net and the Republican Party barely grasped it, the right side has evolved without any gatekeepers or talking points. There is no "townhouse" list to keep the right on message.
Now, critically, the left side of the web has been - like many other elements in the Obama victory - hemorrhaging readership since the One was elected. But the right side has been growing fast.
Expect to see more tea parties and more populists all organized using things like Twitter, Facebook and blogs. Sort of community organizing for the 00's."
Not to mention false equivalencies.
(You said....)
"....yes, I have heard that there is money from assorted interests in behind that organizing - so what? Move-On was not exactly unfunded..."
Two things.
First, the folks in MoveOn never hid their true intentions as is being done by the folks backing the wurlitzering of the deathpanel/beware nazi programs/they're gonna take away our guns! screamfests of the stoopid.
Second, the 'not exactly unfunded', but overwhelmingly truly grassroots, citizen-by- individual-citizen (majority of the) fundraising of Move On was never generated in ways that led to groups like this or this.
OK?"
"....If (Premier Gordon Campbell's former Campaign Manager Patrick) Kinsella is shown to have been working for both railways (CN and BC Rail) at the same time, the landscape of this politically charged trial will change completely.
That accusation is the lynchpin of the defence.....
{snippety doodle-dandy}
....If Kinsella did play a dual role in the deal (betweeen BC Rail and CN Rail), it would buttress the claim that Basi and Virk were only following the orders of their political masters, that the railway auction was rigged in CN's favour and that everyone knew it.
The defence argument holds that the Liberals wanted to sell the provincial freight operation to CN Rail and the troubled bidding process was designed only to legitimize the privatization; Basi and Virk were told to keep OmniTrax publicly in the running so it would appear the process was competitive rather than a fait accompli.
In return for playing along, the American firm was allegedly promised a "consolation prize" of remaining BC Rail assets....."
(stuff in brackets mine added for clarification)
Or, as we have been calling it for sometime now, the putative....
VANCOUVER, B.C. (Aug 21/2009) - Emails to and from a political insider show he had a strong relationship with CN Rail, suggesting the company was pegged to win the bid to buy Crown-owned BC Rail, says a defence lawyer.
Michael Bolton told a B.C. Supreme Court hearing Friday he wants to cross-examine Patrick Kinsella about his connection to CN Rail while he was also a consultant for BC Rail.
Bolton read a string of emails from between April and May 2004 showing Kinsella was the conduit between top-level executives for both BC Rail and CN Rail and a senior B.C. civil servant when the sale seemed to be in jeopardy.
"The way in which (BC Rail) gets answers to CN Rail is to go to Kinsella rather than directly to CN," Bolton said in a hearing related to fraud and breach of trust charges against three former government employees.
Bolton, who is defending one of the accused men, said the trio were tasked by their political masters to keep a third company in the bidding process to make it appear that the sale of BC Rail to CN Rail wasn't rigged by the Liberals.
Bolton also said lobbyists at a Victoria firm called Pilothouse, which was representing Denver-based OmniTrax, a third company bidding for BC Rail, had also known about Kinsella's involvement with CN Rail while he was working for BC Rail.
"Kinsella working for CN," said an Aug. 19, 2002 handwritten note in a journal kept by Pilothouse lobbyist Brian Kieran, defence lawyer Kevin McCullough told the court......
So.".....In 2005, Canwest contributed $50,000 to the (BC Liberal) party. But this year, there's no record of any donations. Recently, Canwest media outlets, particularly the Province newspaper, have been slapping the B.C. Liberals around over such issues as health cuts, the harmonized sales tax, and the B.C. Rail case.
But there's a rising publishing company that has stepped into the breach: Vancouver-based Glacier Media Inc.
On January 7, it handed over $100,000 to the B.C. Liberals, according to the party's disclosure to Elections B.C.
It owns community and daily papers across Western Canada, including the Whistler Question, the Squamish Chief, the Powell River Peak, the Nelson Daily News, and the Prince Rupert Daily News. It also owns Business in Vancouver, which is a weekly paper in Vancouver, as well as three papers in Ontario and Quebec....."
But don't think that the bloom is completely off the Lotuslandian monopolistic media rose.
Here's Mr. Smith again:"....Glacier's chairman, Sam Grippo, used to run Hollinger's community newspapers in Metro Vancouver. Glacier, which keeps a relatively low profile, has remained profitable despite a downturn in newspaper advertising. For the six months ending June 30, it posted a profit of $11.1 million on revenues of $118 million.
It's worth keeping an eye on Glacier because it, along with Black Press and Torstar, could one day be in the running to buy Canwest assets....."
"VANCOUVER, B.C. (Tues Aug 18/09)— The search for potential evidence in the BC Rail corruption case is apparently taxing the staff at the B.C. legislature in Victoria as they prepare for a new session that starts Monday.
A lawyer for Speaker Bill Barisoff told B.C. Supreme Court Judge Elizabeth Bennett that the Speaker's staff have worked weekends and given up vacations to fulfil a defence request to unearth old MLA emails that may be related to the case....."
“The most relevant periods are missing,” defence lawyer Michael Bolton complained outside court....."
They want the consultant, who worked for BC Rail on contract between 2001 and 2005, subpoenaed. They contend Kinsella is intimate with the divestiture and was the "go-to guy" or conduit to CN Rail.
Notes from two key Crown witnesses, according to the lawyers, say Kinsella, long a confidant of the premier, was in fact working for CN, ultimately the successful bidder......"
".....Mr. Kinsella has declined to answer questions about the role he may have been playing with CN or whether he was even employed by the rail company to give strategic advice related to the BC Rail sale. CN has not answered questions either.
This is interesting. Because when I heard that Mr. Kinsella was working for the financial institution connected to the proposed sale of another part of BC Rail's holdings in 2004, I phoned his lawyer, James Sullivan, to get it confirmed. Mr. Sullivan said Mr. Kinsella denied working for TD Securities in connection with the ultimately aborted sale of the BC Rail spur line.
So, why wouldn't he deny working for CN in the sale of BC Rail if it wasn't true?...."
Why, indeed?
".....The defence team is frustrated in its attempts to obtain information it claims is vital to a fair trial, especially e-mails from current and former MLAs, including Premier Gordon Campbell.
The court heard that there is a complicated process of classifying and retaining government documents including emails, technical problems recovering some digital data and continuing debate about privacy and privilege concerns.
It still may be weeks before anyone knows what emails exist, which might have been destroyed, which might be relevant and which might ultimately be produced. Discussions over those issues will continue....."
Look"....According to The Associated Press, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is suggesting the White House is ready to accept nonprofit insurance cooperatives instead of a government-run public option in a health overhaul plan.
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Ms. Sebelius says Mr. Obama still believes there should be choice and competition” in the health insurance market — but that a public option is “not the essential element...."
"What I think folks (in the States) need to realize is that, regardless future political situations (ie. even with a hammerhead majority in both houses and the WH), if you all lose on this one based on the ’successful’ use of the tactics used here….
Well.
You’ll never win.
____
(In Canada, we did not get Universal Healthcare because of the federal government of the day rammed it through…..Instead, we got it because a very vocal progressive minority pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed in just one province against all odds…..And guess what, the guy leading that minority was Jack Bauer’s grandfather!)
____
Amy Goodman talked about the KSutherland/TDouglas Connection recently here."
Hi Folks.
RossK. here again...
I'm a Canadian who used to live in the States and started my family down there with y'all before I came home again.
So I know how Healthcare works on both sides of the border.
I also wrote quite extensively about a fellow Canadian, and Universal Healthcare Haters' Club Inc. shill, Ms. Shona Holmes here, here and here.
But today I want to tell you about my Grandma who died not long ago at the age of 91 after a long and full life that might have ended much earlier if it hadn't been for the Canadian Healthcare system...
Why?
Because my Grandma E. was 76 years old when she had her aortic aneurysm.
****
Now, I'm sure you all know the story of another much more famous Canadian, Neil Young, who also had an aneurysm, which is essentially the ballooning out of a blood vessel.
It happens when the wall of the vessel weakens due to disease, old age or, in the case of Mr. Young, because of a congenital abnormality.
'Congenital' means that you were born with it.
Which also means that it is a pre-existing condition.
Of course, despite the fact that he now lives in the States, Mr. Young didn't have to worry about any of that 'pre-existing condition' business because he is rich.
****
My Grandma E. was most definitely not rich.
At the time this story took place, she lived in a one bedroom apartment and owned a very well maintained 21 year-old Plymouth Valiant that she and her husband, my Grandpa A., bought the year he dropped dead of a heart attack while mowing the front lawn of my parents' new house one spring evening while I, a reportedly precocious six year old at the time, was inside watching the latest episode of Adam West as Batman on the television.
****
Neil Young also had another advantage over my Grandma E.
Which is that his balloon was small, just 8 millimeters long (less than half an inch), which meant that the surgeons could seal it off with tiny coils.
There was no way they could do that kind of minimally invasive procedure for my Grandma because her balloon was gigantic.
And it was located in the largest artery in the body - the aorta, which is pounded constantly, every time the heart beats, by the highest of high blood pressure there is given that it is the vessel that comes directly out of the heart and sends blood everywhere.
Oh, and I should also mention that when the doctors discovered Grandma E's balloon it was leaking internally into her chest and abdominal cavities.
Which meant that she was very, very sick and in big, big trouble.
****
I was in Gradual School* away from home when all this happened, but I went home immediately for all kinds of reasons, including the fact that my family had to talk with the doctors a lot and, because of my science-geek training, I knew a little bit about anatomy and medical stuff.
Now, I guess, if you were so inclined, you could call these confabs we had with the doctors 'panels'.
So.
What did we talk about in all those 'panels' you might be wondering?
Well....
We talked constantly about what was best for her.
And about what procedures or treatments would be best for her and what her quality of life would be when all was said and done.
If she even survived.
And I want to be very clear about the following....
There were no discussions of Economics....
Or Costs....
Or Euthanasia.
And there were most definitely NO BUREAUCRATS involved.
In the end, we, the family, talked to at length with my very weak, barely conscious Grandmother and, together, we, and we alone, made our decision.
And our collective decision was to take the riskiest course, which was the one with the biggest upside.**
Major surgery....
The biggest risk of which was the possibility that Grandma E. would die instantly on the operating table because the weak-walled aorta could have exploded the moment the surgeons touched it.
It did not..... And they managed to sew it up and stent it during a surgery that was interminable as we waited and waited and waited, with regular updates from the nurses.
There was also the risk that Grandma E. would die soon after the surgery due to heart failure and/or lung congestion.
She did not.....It was scary for awhile, watching her struggle for breath as her feet and legs swelled, but she had never smoked, she was not obese, and she pulled through with the assistance of a constantly monitored arsenal of cardiovascular modifying pharmaceuticals.
It was also possible that sepsis or peritonitis could have taken her due to all that bleeding that had occurred inside her, but the massive, longterm doses of antibiotics worked there too.
And then, there was also the possibility that, in the end, the balloon would just move on down the vessel and the whole thing would start all over again.
It did not.
And a month later, my Grandma E. left the hospital.
And she moved back into her appartment where she had a nurse come and visit every day until she got better and started driving that Valiant again (which she eventually gave to my brother when her eyesight finally failed a few years later).
And why didn't I mention the bill for all this?
Well, because, of course, under Universal Healthcare that everyone supports and pays for, there wasn't one.
****
Grandma E. lived for another 15 years after her 'big surgery'.
And when she finally passed away of natural causes at the age of 91 it was a long, slow drift into peacefulness as her breathing slowed bit-by-bit and then, just like that........ finally......... stopped.
And I was sitting at her side holding her hand when she went.
I will love her forever.
______
*'Gradual School' is a term that was coined by one of my kids, who is one of Grandma E's great-grandaughters that she got to know and love years after her surgery was just a distant memory. The term, which the kids I now teach refers to graduate school as a place where you go and go and go (and go) until gradually decide you want to stop.
**Of course, all that surgery was also the most costly option.
.
For those of you who have never read it, the Vancouver Courier’s Kudos & Kvetches column, which I believe is written after hours by random groups of staffers who have altered their consciousnesses chemically, is one of the last funny corners of journalism in a city far too weighed down with Serious Columnists Trying to Be Important or At The Very Least More Hysterical and Shrill Than Anyone Else.
If you haven’t read their description of the Vancouver city council’s inauguration ceremony last December, you have missed a truly Pantagruelian account of the festivities. (One word: giant perogies. Oh, that’s two.)..."
So....."The provincial government was advised last December to pursue a harmonized sales tax – five months before the provincial election – but cautioned that it would be politically explosive.
A report from the B.C. Progress Board called on Victoria to adopt an HST "as soon as possible" on grounds it would improve productivity over the long term and boost business investment.
The premier and finance minister have been accused of hiding their intentions from voters and both have claimed the HST wasn't on their radar as an idea until after the May election....."
What you talkin' bout Willis?
That bird can sing ! ! ! !
It's all good RossK.
