Obamaville March 1 - Pundits Punt on Veracity

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Apples are Oranges to Media Experts

Time goes by ever so slowly in the race for the Republican nomination but a few things are already quite obvious.  First, there is no effort for some media to hide, disguise or claim balanced coverage because media objectivity has been thrown to the winds with a little over 8 months left in the campaign.

Not that it makes a lot of difference because the public long ago assumed media bias was a new facet of journalism in America.  Of course Fox News is the conservative standard but they are not necessarily Republican leaning as no one has done more to undermine efforts by Romney to pick up conservatives than the Fox personalities.

Sometimes it seems they are in cahoots with MSNBC and their parent NBC the way they keep implying Romney is struggling to get the backing of leading conservatives.  Back in the days of honest philosophical differences all the Republican candidates used to pledge to support whomever won the nomination at the convention.

That was how Reagan was so successful in capturing cross over voters from the Democrat and Independent ranks.  Now it seems the candidates put themselves above the party by threatening to withhold support for the eventual nominee, threatening a third party candidate, and even threatening to back someone new who might be seduced into entering the race at the last minute.

Loyalty to party seems to have become a lost principle.  Accommodation of all views from conservative to moderate to liberal also seems to be lost on our present flock of politicians.  Perhaps they have hopes of demanding a litmus test on proper conservative attitudes before pledging support, a narrow minded view that has failed miserably in the past.

It would seem rather obvious from the Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush years in the presidency that America has become far more moderate than conservative conservatives might like but reality is a powerful motivator to put philosophical loyalty in the middle where it belongs if one intends to serve all Americans.

Reagan proved you could be conservative and compassionate while the Bush family and Clinton proved being moderate was the only way to survive.  No doubt the nation needs a strong dose of fiscal conservatism to get out of the mess the liberals and conservatives have left us but eliminating budget deficits, reducing the national debt and fixing the entitlement mess also requires a lot of compassion to minimize the damage on people.

On the Democrat side of the media ledger very few media outlets show any desire to be anything but an extension of the Obama press office.  In the fifteen presidential elections I can remember I've never experienced anything like the media intimidation from the White House.  Not even Johnson or Nixon had the mainstream and cable media eating out of their hands like Barack Obama.

I suspect it is partly a response to the often heavy handed treatment of the media by Bush II insiders who never trusted the media and probably for good reason.  Backing Obama gave the media a chance to get even.

There is clearly a left leaning tendency on the part of most of the media which has come to the surface as the media lost all sense of balanced coverage and objective reporting.  And of course there is the fact Obama is Black, a Democrat and clearly wants big government, all draws to a liberal media.

It has been a long time since the liberals had a chance to influence the government gravy train, to dominate the news through reporters and anchors, and to control most of the cable news talk shows where they can sell books and book speeches.

Over the past few decades there were liberal stalwarts including The New York Times and Washington Post on the print side and PBS on television but the success of cable mouthpieces, first conservatives and then liberals, broke down the objective principles of journalism and opened the floodgates to news media stars interested more in making news than reporting it.

Rush Limbaugh is one of few media stars honest enough to admit that the role of talk shows is to entertain.  I suspect most of the public still thinks they report the news, fair and balanced news, choosing to ignore the advocacy and lack of objectivity of most of the media stars.

CNN has come a long ways from the days when Ted Turner ruled falling off the cliff of objectivity into the abyss of liberalism.  Some supposedly news shows like Soledad O'Brien and others make no attempt to hide their anti-conservative bias while the prime time news tries to downplay it but always stacks the panels of "experts" with liberals and Democrats, usually liberals as well.

Well there is still one place in CNN where you get balanced news coverage, that is the HLN (Headline News) Morning Express Show with the ever bubbly Robin Meade who has gradually taken over the morning news and entertainment slot and has the only six hour time slot, 6 am until 12 noon, on television.  She is also the only news personality who is part Native American.

MSNBC might as well be located in the Obama White House because even their so called Republican voices or pretenders defend Republican principles like France fought off the German invasion in World War II.  In other words, from Joe Scarborough's ego to former GOP National Chairman Michael Steele's outsider status they are far more concerned with protecting their own personal image than defending the Republicans.

NBC as a matter of principle still seems to project the GE party line which means you give homage to anyone who gets you $9 billion in tax free profits a year and Obama did just that.  Yet sometime NBC contributor Tom Brokaw and Meet the Press anchor David Gregory have both continued to avoid being caught up in the liberal stampede.

CNBC, the financial news network, is the exception to the rule in the NBC family as any blatant liberal bias would cost them their dominate position as the financial news source of America.  Of course their preoccupation with Warren Buffett, staunch billionaire Obama backer, who gets more CNBC air time than anyone on the globe, is an ongoing source of aggravation to conservatives but Buffett always has some common sense financial advice, not to mention he is the most successful investor on Wall Street over the past 50 years so he deserves to be heard no matter what his political beliefs.  No one can say he is not a successful capitalist.

CBS used to be the most liberal network but NBC might have stolen the crown away.  At ABC you at least have a balance between anchor Diane Sawyer from the Republican battlefields and George Stephanopoulos, a Clinton/Obama creation, although George has far more air time to promote the liberal cause with other ABC news programs.

Ironically, if you really want balanced news coverage of politics in America your only hope is to turn to BBC whose world news coverage dwarfs anything on American networks and whose political coverage of America may sometimes be bewildered by the bizarre political and campaign process, but always seem to give it objective coverage.

Now you still have one last choice when it comes to the mainstream and cable news coverage and that is to turn off the television.  You might even do it for health reasons.  It would certainly lower your blood pressure.  It would keep you from believing all those lies.  And it might give you a chance to find out what your kid is doing on the Internet social media.

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Solving Social Issues - The Most Tragic of all Issues - Abortion in USA

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Abortion Policy - Where Choice can end Life

Abortion is perhaps the most complex of all social issues.  A way to accommodate both sides of the Pro-Life and Pro-Choice movements must be found that does not make our young girls and women victims between factions.

The Facts

54,559,615

Total abortions since 1973

Based on numbers reported by the Guttmacher Institute 1973-2008,

with estimates of 1,212,400 for 2009-2011. GI estimates a possible

3% under reporting rate, which is factored into the total.

Race                Abortions                  Population

White             19.6 million              211.4 million

Hispanic        13.6 million                46.8 million

Black              16.4 million                38.1 million

Other races     4.9 million                  3.7 million

Total               54.5 million              310.0 million

Just the sheer volume of abortions are staggering.  In the USA 55.4 million since 1973, worldwide 1.7 billion.  Those are millions and billions of incidents.  Yet there are also disturbing trends in those statistics that represent real lives.

Most abortions are from unwanted pregnancy, as if that would not be obvious.  However, abortion was never intended to be just another form of contraceptive.  Yet analysis now shows that as many as half of all women receiving abortions have had a previous abortion.  Are abortions so readily available that women are using the abortion to exploit sexual promiscuity at the government expense?  What does this say about the value of life in America? 

Annually the number of abortions has ranged from about 1.6 million to 1.2 million since 1990.  Only four cities in the United States have a higher population than the annual abortions, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston.

Since the automobile was invented and records started in 1900, one hundred and eleven years ago, there have been 3.5 million killed in America.  Since 1973 there have been 15 times as many abortions as auto deaths since 1900.

There have been almost as many abortions in the US as the total number of people living in Great Britain, France or Italy, men, women and children combined.

Compared to Worst Health Disasters in History

Between 1348 and 1350 the Black Death or bubonic plague is estimated to have killed 30–60 percent of Europe's population, more than 50 million people, reducing the world population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million in the 14th century. 

The Great Influenza, 1918 - 1919, also known as the Spanish Flu, the Great Influenza was most likely the deadliest plague in history. The extremely virulent influenza virus killed an estimated 50 million or more people in the space of just six months.  The world’s population at the time was just 1.8 billion.

For comparison, the total abortions in America equaled the total world deaths from either of the two worst disease outbreaks in history, the Black Death and Spanish Influenza.

Worldwide abortion deaths of 1.7 billion are more than three times the total world population in 1350, and nearly equal to the entire world population in 1919, the years of the health disasters.

The debate over Abortion - Choice or Life or both

By all public opinion measures Abortion is the most volatile and controversial of all social issues in America.  The Pro-Choice (Pro-Abortion) movement defends the right of women to control their body while the Pro-Life movement defends the right of the unborn human life.

Roe versus Wade in 1973 set the standard for federal law on abortion yet it is often wrongly credited with also legalizing abortion at any time during the nine months of pregnancy.  In fact it was limited to the question of personal rights versus legitimate government rights.

Specifically what is the government's legitimate interest in protecting the rights of the embryo or fetus?  Since an embryo or fetus do not have rights themselves then what determines when they are human persons?

In 1973 medical science and forensics was far from the level of sophistication of today in being able to determine the moment life begins and when the fetus acquires human rights.

Four decades have passed since the landmark ruling.

During that time Pro-Life and Pro-Choice movements have become rich and powerful and abortion continues to be one of the most decisive issues of the day.  The special interests in the abortion debate are every bit as powerful and demanding as any from the financial or other sectors.

Yet there is something different about abortion than most social issues.  It is the only one in which there is a living entity as the victim and thus it elevates the issue to a real matter of life or death depending on your definition.

Now I don't know of anyone in the Pro-Choice or Pro-Life movements who would say any baby can be aborted.  The dispute is over when they are a human person, which allows a fetus to not be considered a human.  I don't think anyone wants to be seen as a baby killer.

When Does Human Life Begin?

The problem is determining the moment life begins, at least in the eyes of the courts.  That is what Roe versus Wade did nearly 40 years ago.  Science has now proven otherwise.

Advocates claimed abortion was needed in three cases, rape or incest, a threat to the health of the baby, or a threat to the health of the mother. History has proven them wrong. Multiple studies performed with the advantage of actual statistics show only 1% of all abortions resulted from rape or incest, just 2% resulted because of the health of the baby, and 2% resulted from the threat to the health of the mother. In other words the three major causes for passing Roe versus Wade actually represented no more than 5% of the total abortions performed.

Based on the claims in the debate over Roe versus Wade we should not even have a law since so few abortions performed meet the primary needs used to justify the law. However, there is another reason to reconsider the language of the law besides 50 million deaths and no justification for the law, that is what the law did do in the first place.

Roe versus Wade was a ruling by the Supreme Court that centrally held that a mother may abort her pregnancy for any reason, up until the "point at which the fetus becomes ‘viable'". The Court defined viable as being potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid. In 1973 viability usually occurred at about seven months (28 weeks) but might occur earlier, even at 24 weeks. Medical breakthroughs since the ruling and prenatal advances have demonstrated that the ability of the fetus to live outside the mother's womb can come at a much earlier time.

In fact in recent years the youngest baby in history was delivered in Florida at 21 weeks and 6 days, survived and has now gone home to live a normal life.  She is living proof that Roe versus Wade is scientifically wrong, a baby can survive at 21 weeks, not 28 weeks.

Clearly the language of the law is flawed, so what should it be? Here is the test for all pro abortion groups who claim they really aren't advocating taking lives.   If you are sincere in wanting to protect human lives while pursuing an abortion option, then you should have no problem accepting the newest scientific evidence of when life begins.

Scientific Proof of Life versus Death

 There is one medical test widely accepted and upheld by the courts to establish that a human is legally alive or dead.  All 50 states have used this test for over 30 years.

The Uniform Determination of Death Act, promulgated in 1980 and supported by the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, has served as a model statute for the adoption of state legislation that defines death. The act asserts: “An individual, who has sustained either irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brainstem, is dead. A determination of death must be made in accordance with accepted medical standards.”

Since brain activity is the legal measure for the cessation of life, then it must also be the legally accepted measure of the beginning of life. A fetus becomes a living baby when brain activity can be first measured. According to established science with the use of an electroencephalogram, or EEG, activity in the brain can be detected as early as six weeks gestational age (6). Whether brain activity begins at this time or started earlier but becomes detectable at this time is uncertain; it is known that neural connections begin forming as soon as neurons begin forming, as early as 14 days gestation.

A Constitutional lawyer like President Obama should embrace scientific advances that have proven when brain activity is detected, at six weeks, and since the courts accept brain activity as a reliable measure of life or death, then life can be scientifically proven at six weeks.

As science improves, the brain wave activity will consistently be detected some time between 14 days and six weeks.  All hospitals are equipped with EEG machines and they could be adapted to complete these tests for pregnant women.

Roe versus Wade Needs a Scientific Overhaul

Roe versus Wade, adopted nearly four decades ago, is medically and scientifically obsolete in the determination that life begins at 28 weeks. Responsible members of Congress and the White House should advocate, in the interest of scientific accuracy, a change in the law to reflect the latest scientific advances. With nearly 55 million abortions already performed, do we really want to keep terminating the lives of babies we know are living beings?

Abortion is not a matter of pro choice when the baby being aborted is a living, human being in the eyes of science. Pro Life and Pro Choice advocates should join in seeking this correction of a flawed law and the Obama Administration and Congress should make it the law of the land.

Implementing the New Scientific Findings

In the end this could be the easiest huge policy change regarding a volatile social issue in history.  It would not appear to require any action by Congress or the President.  Since the courts have recognized The Uniform Determination of Death Act as the national standard for scientifically proving death over life, then the same standard and same tests, can determine when the fetus becomes a "human" life or person, when life begins according to science and the courts.

Most governors or state attorney generals could find a way to incorporate the missing language from Roe versus Wade, the lack of a court tested determination of the difference between life and death, through executive order or the many remedies used in the judicial process.

Another option to clarify this issue would be for a legislature to amend whatever their determination of death law to use it as a determination of life or death.  There are many avenues open to those who really want to end the debate and protect those children who are not protected under the current flawed laws.

Get your governor or state attorney general to act and act now and this debate can be brought to a close.  We will have a scientific determination of when life begins and ends, and we will stop using abortion as just another form birth control to terminate unwanted pregnancies.


Most of all, we will all agree on life.
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Obamaville, February 14 - Obamanomics Center of Budget Debate

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 The Wizard of Washington on Economics

This week President Obama unveiled a record $3.8 trillion budget, promising $4 trillion in deficit savings the next ten years while sticking it to the rich.  Of course most of the cuts are from mandatory budget cuts resulting from the inaction of Obama and Congress on reaching any agreement on the budget.  Other cuts came from ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Didn't stop the administration from taking credit for it.

Obamanomics did not include anything new to cut federal spending, fix Social Security, make Medicare sound, reduce the national debt, lower health care costs or most other things he, the GOP and Democrats promised.  Imagine that, broken promises from politicians.

One wonders if the fact he dumped his entire economic team that guided him through the first three years had anything to do with the lack of details and failure to address national priorities.

Congress and the White House will now spend the rest of the election year blaming each other or the political parties for all their failures that have been and are yet to come even though no one has done anything to find solutions.

The failure to address long term debt and deficit issues is turning their back on all of our youth because the systems will be broke long before today's youth have finished paying their fair share.

Sometimes it seems as if the only solution to our problems, which are caused by political expediency, greed, waste and abuse, would be to throw them all out of office.  It might make things interesting if Washington, D.C. was filled with new faces.

We already know how to survive an inexperienced president and no one seems to know what Congress is even doing.  Perhaps it would be wise for Congress to just take a vacation for the year thus ending the name calling and back stabbing so much a part of our political process.

One thing no one wants to discuss is why are we trying to raise billions of dollars in taxes on anyone when we are already wasting billions of dollars on everyone.

When nothing is getting done what have we got to lose?

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Health Care in America - Where Politicians Fear to Tread

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The Broken American Health Care System

Do you notice something wrong with the following statistics?

Chldren 3-17 years of age ever diagnosed with ADHD: 5.2 million

Cildren now on prescription drugs to treat ADHD - 16 million

Adults with Type 2 diabetes in 2010: 25.8 million

Adults treated with Metformin HLC for diabetes: 48.3 million

Adults with chronic pain: 56 million

Adults prescribed Vicodin for chronic pain: 131.2 million

Adults with high cholesterol: 36 million

Adults prescribed Zocor for high cholesterol: 94.1 million

Adults with high blood pressure: 75 million

Adults prescribed Prinivil for high blood pressure: 87.4 million

Adults prescribed Norvasc for high blood pressure: 57.2 million

Adults prescribed Hydrodiuril for high blood pressure: 47.8 million

Adults prescribed just 3 drugs for high blood pressure: 192.4 million

We have a problem in America, a problem people and politicians do not want to hear or think about.  America spends more money than any other nation on health care, far more than most nations, yet we have a mediocre health care system.

Health care costs have been rising for several years.  Expenditures in the United States on health care surpassed $2.3 trillion in 2008, more than three times the $714 billion spent in 1990, and over eight times the $253 billion spent in 1980.

In 2008, U.S. health care spending was about $7,681 per resident and accounted for 16.2% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP); this is among the highest of all industrialized countries. Total health care expenditures grew at an annual rate of 4.4 percent in 2008, a slower rate than recent years, yet still outpacing inflation and the growth in national income.

The following chart shows how much we spend on health care.

We now spend about $2.6 trillion on health care.  The average cost of a family health insurance policy offered by employers was $13,375 this year, up 5% from 2008, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust survey found.

So where does this spending leave us in terms of the quality of our health care system compared to the rest of the world?

Here is the ranking:

Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality, less efficiency and have the least equitable system, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries -- Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found.

How about in terms of developed and undeveloped nations?

1.         France

2.         Italy

3.         San Marino

4.         Andorra

5.         Malta

6.         Singapore

7.         Spain

8.         Oman

9.         Austria

10.       Japan

11.        Norway

12.       Portugal

13.       Monaco

14.       Greece

15.       Iceland

16.       Luxemburg

17.       Netherlands

18.       United Kingdom

19.       Ireland

20.      Switzerland

21.       Belgium

22.      Columbia

23.       Sweden

24.       Cyprus

25.       Germany

26.       Saudi Arabia

27.       U.A.E.

28.      Israel

29.       Morocco

30.      Canada

31.       Finland

32.       Australia

33.       Chile

34.       Denmark

35.       Dominica

36.       Costa Rica

37.      United States

Astonishing!  Our quality of health care is not even as good as nations spending ten times less per capita as we do.  That is not a logical problem, or a cultural problem, it is a criminal problem that our profit driven health care industry and our corrupted political system perpetuate.

There are ways out of the mess.  They will not come from Washington, D.C. however.  Not when billions of dollars are being spent by the industry to protect what they own.

For the past three years and the next four years insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, HMOs and other healthcare profiteers will spend billions in advertising and more billions in lobbying to convince us that we have the BEST healthcare system in the world.  The truth is far from that claim.

That is why I am starting a series of articles on the broken American Health Care system, and what it will take to give us the quality of health care we deserve for the money we spend on health care.

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Obamaville January 25 - The State of the Union

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 No Debt or Deficit?

President Obama finally took the spotlight from the Republican debates with his third State of the Union address to the nation last night.  Once again he proved that he is a master of the teleprompter and his Harvard delivery is intact.

Our often time ethereal president softened his political attacks for the moment and changed his rhetoric about the decline and fall of our empire.  Seems his aides have finally figured out Jimmy Carter negativism does not help one get re-elected.

On the other hand, the vision he outlined for America was not real clear.  One thing about politics and politicians, there is a fine line between working up a head of steam and being lost in a fog.  On the surface they look almost the same but in truth they are opposites.  It is often hard to determine which role Obama plays.

As I predicted, his economic plan was based on the Buffett principle, not proven economic strategies or techniques.  I was a little disappointed Obama had Warren Buffett's secretary in the President's box and not Warren Buffett himself but rumor has it he was busy playing his ukulele in China.

After three years in office and with little to say in terms of accomplishments on the issues of most concern to Americans, like protecting Social Security and Medicare, slashing the $15 trillion national debt, cutting the trillion dollar annual deficit, or reducing the high unemployment rate, one must embrace the ethereal to avoid the real.

There were no new or even old proposals to address any of these issues but he did offer an unusual assessment of how he had turned around all our economic problems in what must be some Harvard Business School secret code because I did not understand it.  Obama said:

"In the six months before I took office, we lost nearly four million jobs. And we lost another four million before our policies were in full effect.

Those are the facts. But so are these. In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs."

Now I realize my handicap in being from the Midwest yet I still have not figured out how losing 8 million jobs as he said, then gaining 3 million jobs as he said, which leaves us 5 million short of where we started, is a sign we have recovered from our economic problems.

He also offered some curious proposal on how he would help the millions of people who are in housing foreclose because they could not afford what they bought because of fraud in the first place, or they lost their jobs.  Some unfortunate folks have lived in homes up to two years or more without making payments.

Rather than help them move to homes they can afford, he wants Uncle Sugar to pay billions of dollars to keep them in the homes they can't afford.  Well, that means those that have made their payments and met their obligations will have to fork over even more money to subsidize those living beyond their means.

I thought the people subsidizing those who lived beyond their means was a discussion of the difference between taxpayers and politicians like the president and congress.  So I guess since we have done such a good job of subsidizing the runaway national debt of our politicians we now must pay off the mortgages for those who can't afford the homes to begin with.  I think these are the types of proposals that cause polarization.

One thing did change in his speech.  He used to define the rich at first as those making $200,000 a year, then $250,000 a year, then $1 million a year, and now it is not clear if he says the enemy are millionaires or billionaires.  We only know it is not Warren Buffett's secretary.

The fuzzy math of the White House policy was apparent also in terms of defense spending and cuts.  In his speech he said:

"That's why, working with our military leaders, I have proposed a new defense strategy that ensures we maintain the finest military in the world, while saving nearly half a trillion dollars in our budget."

And he said:

"Take the money we're no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home."

Now that sounds great but does it really mean what he said?  The failure of Congress to pass any kind of deficit reduction plan last November automatically triggered a forced budget reduction calling for cutting $1.2 trillion over the next ten years, 2013 through 2022.  Of that, about $492 billion must come from the defense department.

Wait, Obama said he and his generals worked out a half a trillion dollars in defense savings.  What he forgot to say was he had no choice.  The failure of congress and the president to pass a budget or address the deficit and debt automatically triggered the cuts, no matter what Obama and the generals had to say about it.

That is not all.  The Obama deficit is now running over $1.3 trillion a year.  Our total defense budget is about $1 trillion a year.  Does that mean we are cutting 50% of our defense budget to lower the deficit, as he seems to suggest in the speech, without sacrificing our defense capability?  That would be great but is not true.

The half a trillion in defense cuts he proudly exclaimed are over ten years, not one.  That means a cut of $50 billion a year in defense, not half a trillion.  But even that is based on a foundation of quicksand.  What it really means is the government will reduce future increases in defense spending by $50 billion a year so our actual defense budget will go up while we are cutting half a trillion dollars.

Remember, he also said half of the cuts will go to reduce the deficit.  That means $25 billion a year will go to deficit or budget reductions.  Our annual deficit is now $1.3 trillion.  It does not even make a small dent in the annual deficit.  More than that, we still have the national debt of $15 trillion.  Did he forget what got us into this mess in the first place?

If that is modern math Pythagoras would be turning over in his grave and declaring it is time for an end to the American Empire because we are so caught up in our falsehoods, misrepresentations and distortions we can no longer tell the difference between having a head of steam or being lost in the fog.

Rome burned while Nero fiddled.  Let's hope Obama doesn't take up the ukulele like Buffett and pluck away while America goes up in flames.

Will someone out there please help the people strengthen Social Security and Medicare, reduce the national debt, cut the annual budget deficit, get people back to work, and then get out of our lives thank you very much.

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