The Super Bowl Coaches

.

Long Time Friends and Former Teammates

While much has been written about the Super Bowl I can share with you my personal experience and it concerns the two coaches of the Super Bowl gladiators. Back in the decade of the 1980's I had the pleasure of working for Tom Kean, Governor of New Jersey.

It was during that time newly opened Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands Sports complex was home to the New York Giants and Jets and the Giants, who had struggled for years to regain the stature of past teams, recruited a young New Jersey native Bill Parcells to lead the team back to greatness.

Indeed he did leading them to Super Bowl championships in 1987 and 1991 before moving on to the Dallas Cowboys and then New England Patriots. Since the Giants stadium was owned by the State of New Jerseyand the governor and designated state commissioners were on the Meadowlands Board on occasion I got to represent the governor at meetings during the first Super Bowl season.

Through this unusual opportunity I also got to meet Coach Parcells on several occasions and his assistant coaches. Over the years I became great fans of Parcells, along with two of his many successful assistant coaches Bill Belichick and Tom Coughlin.

These are the same people who are now head coaches for this year's Super Bowl teams, the New England Patriots and New York Giants. Their individual success stands as a testament to Bill Parcells and the many assistants who went on to head coaching and successful careers. All should and will be in the NFL Hall of Fame.

They once worked toward the same goals: Win a Super Bowl as an assistant coach. Become a head coach. Become a Super Bowl-winning head coach.

For Patriots coach Bill Belichick and Giants coach Tom Coughlin, those were yesterday’s dreams. Based on their successes, each has had to readjust their career objectives.

On Sunday, they will again have the same achievement in mind. However, only one will leave Indianapolissatisfied.

“He’s a good friend of mine that I’ve been with a long time,” Belichick said last week when asked about Coughlin.

For three years, from 1988 through 1990, they worked together on Coach Bill Parcells’ Giants staff. Belichick, who had been with New York since 1979, was the defensive coordinator, while Coughlin acted as the wide receivers coach on a staff that included the likes of Romeo Crennel, Charlie Weis and Al Groh.

Following a Super Bowl XXV victory over the heavily favored Bills in January 1991, each jumped to head coaching positions: Coughlin to Boston College, Belichick to the Cleveland Browns.

Twenty-one years later, they meet in the Super Bowl for the second time, branches of Parcells’ coaching tree getting tangled up once again. They first met in 2008 when Coughlin's Giants stunned the odds makers and beat the Patriots.

The three coaches will have coached in 10 Super Bowls, winning 6 after this game, a remarkable record for three members of the same Giants coaching staff.

Right now, one man sits alone among NFL head coaches in the Super Bowl era. That man is Chuck Noll, the legendary former head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the only NFL coach to win four Super Bowls.

Enter Bill Belichick.

Even if he loses Super Bowl XLVI and never wins another game, Belichick's legacy will still be strong. With a victory this weekend, the Patriots' coach will tie Noll with four Super Bowl wins, and, in essence, elevate himself to a status only Noll has known.
.
.

Spirits in the Sky - Remembering Legends

.

Buddy Holly - The Day the Music Died

Pioneering rock 'n' roll musician Charles Hardin Holley, known as Buddy Holly, was born in Lubbock, Texas on September 7, 1936. He died in 1959 in a plane crash in Iowa. The youngest of four children of Lawrence and Ella (Drake) Holley, Buddy became one of the greatest legends of rock music.

His father worked as a tailor and salesman in a Lubbock clothing store, and though Lawrence did not play an instrument, he and Buddy's mom encouraged their children's musical skills.

At age five, Buddy appeared with his brothers in a talent show in the neighboring town of County Line. They won five dollars singing "Down the River of Memories." At age eleven Buddy took piano lessons, but quit after nine months. He started studying steel guitar, but eventually taught himself to play on acoustic guitar. At Hutchinson Junior High he and a friend, Bob Montgomery, formed a country music duo that later performed rock-and-roll music.

In the autumn of 1953, the duo added bass player Larry Welborn and started playing weekly on Lubbock radio station KDAV. The program was called "Sunday Party." At Lubbock High, Holly studied printing and drafting. He also worked part-time at Panhandle Steel Products. He stayed focused on his dream, however, of making his living as a musician.

In 1954 and 1955 the band made some demo records in Wichita Falls, but in 1956 Decca offered only Buddy a contract. Decca tried to turn him into a country artist. Two unsuccessful singles later, the label and Buddy parted ways.

Holly returned to Lubbock still determined to make it big in the music business. In February 1957 Holly, Welborn, who was later replaced by Joe B. Mauldin, Jerry Allison on drums, and Niki Sullivan on guitar went to the studio of an independent producer. Norman Petty's studio in Clovis, New Mexico, is where the band adopted the name the Crickets and formed its unique style. Holly's upbeat, pop sound became the transition between the raw rockabilly of Sun Records and the sophisticated pop rock music that would follow in the decades to come.

The Crickets soon signed a contract with Brunswick Records and Buddy signed a solo contract with Brunswick's Coral label. Holly's vocal style, with hiccup-like patterns, extra syllables, abrupt changes of pitch, and what one critic termed a playfully ironic, childlike quality. The Crickets first single, "That'll Be the Day," with "I'm Looking for Someone to Love" on the flip side, was released May 27, 1957. By June, it charted third on the pop charts and second on the rhythm and blues charts. It made Holly virtually an overnight success. His popularity quickly rivaled that of Elvis Presley.

Holly and his band were thought to be black by those who only heard them. In 1957, they traveled with black artists and performed at predominantly black theaters like the Apollo in New York and the Howard in Washington, D.C. The Apollo audience was indifferent at first. But on the third day there, the Crickets started with a "Bo Diddley" song which thrilled the crowd.

The band was soon on television's "American Bandstand," "The Arthur Murray Dance Party," and "The Ed Sullivan Show" and on tour with the biggest rock music acts. Holly's second solo single, "Peggy Sue," with "Everyday" on the flip side, topped out at third on the charts. The Crickets' second single, "Oh Boy!," with "Not Fade Away," sold nearly a million copies.

Guitarist Niki Sullivan quit the band, and the Crickets toured Australia, Florida, and Great Britain as a trio before a new guitarist, Tommy Allsup, joined them. Their third single, "Maybe Baby," with "Tell Me How" on side two, charted in the top 100.

In the summer of 1958 Holly met Maria Elena Santiago, a receptionist at a music company. Buddy asked her to marry him on their first dinner date that night. She accepted. The wedding was on August 15, 1958 in Lubbock.

Late 1958 brought a slow period in Holly's career. In October, he decided to move to New York City. Allison and Mauldin wanted to stay with Norman Petty in Clovis. Holly agreed to break up the Crickets and go solo. But in January 1959, Holly was accompanied on a tour by Allsup, bassist Waylon Jennings, an old Lubbock friend who became a country music star, and drummer Charlie Bunch. Promoters falsely billed them as the Crickets.

After a February 2 show in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly and his band, along with Ritchie Valens, and J. P. (the Big Bopper) Richardson, were to take a tour bus on a 430-mile trip to Moorhead, Minnesota, but Holly chartered a plane to fly him and his band to Fargo, North Dakota, near Moorhead. Jennings and Allsup gave up their seats to Richardson and Valens.

The red Beechcraft Bonanza, named "Miss American Pie," took off from Mason City, ten miles east of Clear Lake, at around 1:50 AM on February 3, 1959. The weather was cold and snowy. The plane crashed just after taking off, eight miles from the Mason City airport. The pilot, Valens, Richardson, and Holly, who was found twenty feet from the point of impact, died.

Shortly following Holly's funeral in Lubbock, his pregnant widow, Maria, had a miscarriage. The last Buddy Holly single, "It Doesn't Matter Anymore," with "Raining in My Heart" on the reverse side, which had been released a few weeks earlier on January 5, hit the Top 100 on the day of the crash.

Holly's music was a major influence for such rock music legends as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Linda Ronstadt, Bruce Springsteen, and Elvis Costello. In 1971, Don McLean released a song calling February 3, 1959, "the day the music died." The song was called "American Pie," and it became a number one hit. The following quote is just a sample of its lengthy, poignant lyrics:

A long, long time ago,
I can still remember how that music used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance,
And maybe they’d be happy for a while.
But February made me shiver
With every paper I’d deliver.
Bad news on the doorstep.
I couldn't take one more step.

I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride.
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died.
So, bye bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levy
But the levy was dry
And them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye, singin’:
This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die.

The movie The Buddy Holly Story was released in 1978. This movie version of his life and contribution to music started a major revival of Holly's short, influential career. The city of Lubbock soon realized the financial benefits of promoting Buddy Holly's hometown as a tourist attraction.

In 1979 the city commissioned a bronze statue of Holly by sculptor Grant Speed. It was unveiled in 1980, near the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center. Lubbock later celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Buddy Holly's birth with a concert featuring Bo Diddley and Bobby Vee.

A 1990 auction of Holly memorabilia in New York raised over $703,000. Gary Busey, who played Buddy in The Buddy Holly Story, bought his guitar for $242,000. The Hard Rock Cafe bought Holly's trademark eyeglasses for $45,100.

Bibliography: Ron Tyler, ed., The New Handbook of Texas, Vol. 3 (Austin, Texas: Texas State Historical Association, 1996) pp. 666-67. The Ultimate American Pie Website, American Pie by Don McClean. National Public Radio report on the 40th anniversary of Buddy Holly's death, February 3, 1999. Michael Bane, Who's Who in Rock (New York: Facts on File, 1981) p. 99.

The Holy Trinity of GOP Politics?

.

Not so fast Newt.  I'm with Romney and you've been Trumped.

So what does the President think?

Can Corporate America Help Defend America? If They Care About America!

.

Can the incompetence of Congress, the indifference of the Obama administration and the impotency of the political parties, both Democrat and Republican, open the door for the American capitalist system to do what the others choose to neglect?

Two things are clear this election cycle.  First, politicians have no intention of stopping the influx of millions and millions of corporate and union dollars into the political process through Super Pacs and all the other gimmicks that have been left untouched by our elected representatives in Washington, D.C.

In spite of the universal complaints by leaders of both parties about our broken campaign financing system, nothing is being done about it and nothing will be done about it this year because the same politicians expect to benefit from the Super Pacs.

The second thing clear this election cycle is that the news media, especially network and cable television and the vast Internet, have totally crossed the line between defending the First Amendment right to a free press and using the free press argument to distort the news media reporting.

In other words, our TV and Internet companies have dropped all pretense of being fair and balanced in their coverage and instead have become ideological piranhas whose defense of their particular liberal or conservative philosophy sees no problem in distorting stories, taking any statement out of context, and smearing anyone they don't like in an effort to destroy their career.

Like it or not the media has decided they want to manufacture your news just like the politicians want to manufacture what you should believe about government.

Congress was supposed to be a watchdog for the people to keep an eye on government.

The political parties were supposed to be the watchdog for the people to make sure political partisanship did not dominate fair government.

The news media was supposed to be the watchdog for the people to make sure the politicians and political parties were not manipulating government for their own partisan purposes.

All now have their own agenda, it is not fair and balanced, and it is entirely self-serving.  Who is going to protect the people from all our toothless watchdogs?

The lesson is clear, MONEY now rules in America.  The politicians, political parties and news media are hopelessly addicted to money and live to serve money.  Much of the private sector is a willing partner to this national disgrace and use the politicians and parties to get what they want, that is make more money.

For example, we have all heard the Democrats and ideological news media like NBC or the NBC puppets like MSNBC use an endless stream of liberal reporters and outcast conservatives who have sold out the conservative cause to maul Mitt Romney, the only candidate for president who is neither a professional politician nor dependent on the government or media to make money.

The way every word Romney says is taken out of context and every policy is distorted by the NBC mouthpieces is ludicrous and the various NBC programs proudly interview a select gang of liberal assassins to annihilate the Republican frontrunner.

Yet the very same NBC is owned by General Electric who made $15 billion profit last year and paid not one dollar in taxes.  Romney made $21 million personally and paid 15% in taxes, then gave 15% more to charitable causes.

How can he be a suspicious rich elitist in the eyes of the NBC media and many others like CNN when he pays far more in taxes than the corporate giant that owns NBC, who made $15 billion and paid NO TAXES?

Who is it that most benefits from the Obama administration and their push for "Green" environmental and energy causes while refusing to fix our ridiculous tax code that gives unconscionable tax breaks to corporate America?  President Barack Obama, who made the CEO of General Electric his appointed liaison to the business community.

The statutory federal tax rate for big corporations in America is 35%, among the highest in the world.  GE makes a $15 billion profit so, if the federal tax law was really the law, GE would pay $5.2 billion in taxes, 35%.  Yet thanks to Congress and our benevolent president they pay NOTHING.

What does our president says about this.  NOTHING.  But he does say billionaire Warren Buffett's secretary pays more taxes than her billionaire boss.  To be correct, she pays a higher rate but no where near as much in taxes as Buffett.  If Obama compared what she pays to what his political corporate benefactor GE pays it might be a little more honest.

Now corporate America can change the way business is done in the media.  It can help protect the people from the politicians, political parties and news media.  There is no law that forces corporate America to spend advertising dollars with the very media who are trying to control the national agenda.

America, even the liberal media, are dependent on advertising dollars to keep their stranglehold on the direction of this country.  Corporate America should use the most valuable contribution they have to make, their money, to balance the political playing field.

Stop advertising on media that distort the news.  Stop patronizing networks whose agenda is undermining the principles of freedom in AMERICA.  Stop underwriting the Internet social networks that are stealing every last freedom in America by trampling on citizens rights to privacy.

Corporate America is being painted as a villain by liberals because of their money, so use the money to bring fair and balanced news and reporting back to America.  Stop advertising and you will stop the bitter politics, stop the lies and distortions that now dominate our political debate, and stop the hijacking of America.

Defending freedom is not just the responsibility of the people, or the military on behalf of the people.  It is also the responsibility of corporate America who benefits from the capitalist system empowered by capitalism, which is empowered by our Constitution.

.

Nine Years Ago Today the Columbia Shuttle Exploded

.

Last Launch of Columbia 2003

From The New York Times

When the first space shuttle, Columbia, blasted off in 1981, the craft were meant by NASA to be the workhorses of a new era in space exploration. When the program came to an end in 2011, the shuttles had come to be synonymous with tragedy — the accidents that destroyed the Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003 — and a great leap forward in our ability to understand the universe.

Unlike the rockets that brought astronauts to the moon, the shuttles were orbiters designed for repeated use on missions into space. Each shuttle also had the ability to carry satellites and other large payloads into space, and could transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

After decades of use, the shuttles had just about reached the end of their useful lives. The Bush administration announced in 2004 that it would bring the program to a close.

First Shuttle Launch 1981 - Columbia

The end came as the space shuttle Atlantis rolled to a stop just before 6 a.m. on July 21, 2011. During its 13-day mission, Atlantis had ferried 8,000 pounds of supplies and spare parts to the International Space Station; with the retirement of the shuttles, the space station will now rely on Russian, European and Japanese rockets to bring up supplies.

In all, NASA built five shuttles for space flight — Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour. The first flight was made by Columbia on April 12, 1981. Three of the shuttles still exist today.

Columbia Explodes Before Landing

The Challenger exploded after takeoff on its 10th mission in 1986, killing all seven astronauts on board, including a New Hampshire civilian. And the Columbia broke apart as it was reentering the atmosphere in 2003, also killing its seven astronauts. After both disasters, review panels issued scathing reports, saying that pressures to complete missions and a more general culture of complacency had led officials to underestimate risks.

End of an Era

The program leaves behind a giant question mark over the future of manned space flight, with a replacement a distant reality.
.

At the direction of the Obama administration and Congress, NASA is developing a large new rocket to send deep into space. No destination has been selected, however, and money is tight. NASA is also trying to nurture a commercial industry that will loft astronauts toward the stars. But the ventures, which involve partnerships with private-sector companies like SpaceX and Boeing, focus on hardware development and so far have no declared goals beyond low orbits around the planet. The shuttles did that for decades, starting in 1981.

NASA is also counting on two commercial companies, the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation of Hawthorne, Calif., and the Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va., to begin cargo flights in 2012.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz - She's No Sarah Palin

.

Obama's Democrat Mouthpiece Toes the Obama Line

If you are not a professional politician or member of the Lame Street Media then by now you must be missing the over-shadowing presence of one Sarah Palin from the daily campaign scene.  No one politician has ever rattled the cages of the establishment and liberal media like Palin and it did not matter if she did or said anything.  As long as she was a viable spokesperson for the Tea Party, the Momma Grizzlies or any other group of anti-establishment people, she riled the liberal media and Democrats like no one could.

By the end of the 2008 campaign the GOP lost the election but by only 7% of the vote.  With Obama running against the most unpopular president in history, the economy in a shambles, America in decline, two endless wars killing our youth, millions losing jobs and millions more losing their homes, it is hard to believe Obama could not win by a landslide.

Palin was most responsible for keeping the GOP ticket in the race, a fact that will never be agreed to by the media and Democrats whose faces still turn red with hatred or envy when they think of this shotgun toting Alaska firecracker.

Well Obama must have wanted his own Sarah Palin knowing that she was the only thorn in his side during the campaign so he named his answer to Sarah, a Congressional Democrat named Debbie Wasserman Schultz from Florida.

In some ways she has seemed to parrot Sarah Palin because she has demonstrated an ability to polarize the public, to annoy the Republicans with her half baked arguments against anything relating to the GOP, and with her total disregard for Republicans, Independents and reality.

However, she is just an Obama spokesperson and no Obama spokesperson is allowed to have a mind of their own or a concern for anything non-Obama.  If one were to fact check her stream of consciousness blurted out in sound bites over the liberal media every day it would take a virtual encyclopedia to correct the record.  Then again, she uses the traditional political party spokesperson model of throwing truth to the wind when talking to the people.  Forget the facts, just stick with the party line.

Wasserman Shultz is no Sarah Palin and her attempts to emulate the success and power of the conservative media star of the Tea Party have about as much chance of succeeding as the Obama economic recovery program.

Many a politician tried to control Palin and failed.  Even the McCain campaign could not silence her and her ideas on what was wrong with America.  Long after she lost the election her bitter enemies continued to try and destroy her reputation and her life but she survived attack after attack and made herself into something of a folk hero for standing up to the ruthless establishment in Washington, D.C.

Slowly the Obama party line voiced by Debbie Wasserman Schultz may just draw the real Sarah Palin back in to the presidential campaign as a counter point to the deluge of babble and we most surely could use the common sense and lightning impact of Sarah in offsetting the billion dollar re-election campaign promised by the president.

Stay tuned...

.

Obamaville - February 1 - Florida Primary Recap

.

GOP Candidates Take Aim at Obama Economy

The people spoke and once again the pundits are wrong.  Just last week The New York Times said Newt Gingrich had a 73.3% chance of winning the Florida primary.  He got buried by 14% by the Romney organization.  But the real story which should be of concern to Obama's Chicago campaign team was the breakdown of the vote.

Romney strengthened his position in nearly every important demographic including women, the Tea Party, Catholics, conservatives, Latinos and others who make up the core of the Independent vote in America.  Slowly but surely, as if a slumbering elephant coming back to life, the message of Mitt Romney is starting to resonate with the voters.

America's future is about jobs and strengthening the economy.  It is not about excuses.  It is about promises broken and policies gone wrong.  It is about a regulatory assault on small business and the American economic engine.  It is about a president who chooses to ignore the reality of capitalism and who pins his hopes on three years of failed social engineering.

It is about a track record of enthusiastic promises, followed by dismal results.  In a word, it is about the difference when the president of the United States fails to provide leadership, even when he controlled the congress.  The president blames Republicans for all his many woes yet he did nothing to change the massive problems he so successfully articulated when he controlled the House and the Senate for two years with a solid Democratic majority.

A $16 trillion national debt.  A trillion dollar budget deficit every year he has been preisdent.  No strengthening of Social Security or Medicare.  An increase in unemployment.  A recovery that has failed to restore 5 million jobs lost in the recession.  Stimulus and bailouts that failed to generate economic growth. A failuire to even address the need for energy independence.  A health care reform program, Obamacare, that has seen health care costs and health insurance premiums continue to soar.  The collapse of the housing market and failure to address the foreclosure nightmare.

For the first time in post election speeches the three major candidates focused on the president and not each other.  Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul each gave passionate and quite different attacks on the president's performance since being elected and laid out a wealth of ideas on how the president is vulnerable.

Romney won the primary handily and there is evidence the GOP is coming together in their mission to stop Obama from further damaging the America the people want to see restored.  No matter how much trivia the media and White House throw at Romney and the other candidates, no matter how negative the campaign ads may get, all Republicans and about 50% of Independents are becoming united in the determination to throw out the politicians including President Obama.

The worst fear of the president is that he might have to run on his record as president.  Because when it comes to domestic issues there is no record.  You cannot defend doing nothing and contributing to the malaise in our nation's capitol.

Stay tuned for the next efforts of the media and Obama administration to try and divert attention from the record.  The Congressional Budget Office (non-partisan) and many others keep warning us that we are far from out of the economic danger and we are doing nothing to address the long term problems facing our nation.

.  

Health Care in America - Where Politicians Fear to Tread

.

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.

.