Re: Canadians and others who think the US is evil

From: GMCarter (fiar_at_verizon.net)
Date: 07/30/04 

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 08:52:39 GMT

On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 16:27:26 GMT, "Mortimer Schnerd, RN"
<mschnerd@XXXX.carolina.rr.com> wrote:

>GMCarter wrote:
>>
>> Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Sounds to me that in the
>> United States, health being a central feature of life, libery and
>> happiness is a right. So healthcare IS a right. Not a privilege.
>
>
>Only in your little world. Believe me, it's a privilege.

LOL. You a nurse? God help your patients with that arrogant, ugly and
hateful attitude! Happily, most nurses I know are incredibly smart,
compassionate and committed. But there are always the aberrations and
the nurse Ratchetts of this world! And those who simply pretend.

But yes, too often in practice you are correct. Healthcare becomes a
privilege for the elite, denied the working and struggling citizen of
the United States. Some of us think that is wrong and rather evil,
don't you know. For us, healthcare is a right.

                George M. Carter

**
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/30/opinion/30krugman.html?hp
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Triumph of the Trivial
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: July 30, 2004

Under the headline "Voters Want Specifics From Kerry," The Washington
Post recently quoted a voter demanding that John Kerry and John
Edwards talk about "what they plan on doing about health care for
middle-income or lower-income people. I have to face the fact that I
will never be able to have health insurance, the way things are now.
And these millionaires don't seem to address that."

Mr. Kerry proposes spending $650 billion extending health insurance to
lower- and middle-income families. Whether you approve or not, you
can't say he hasn't addressed the issue. Why hasn't this voter heard
about it?

Well, I've been reading 60 days' worth of transcripts from the places
four out of five Americans cite as where they usually get their news:
the major cable and broadcast TV networks. Never mind the details - I
couldn't even find a clear statement that Mr. Kerry wants to roll back
recent high-income tax cuts and use the money to cover most of the
uninsured. When reports mentioned the Kerry plan at all, it was
usually horse race analysis - how it's playing, not what's in it.

On the other hand, everyone knows that Teresa Heinz Kerry told someone
to "shove it," though even there, the context was missing. Except for
a brief reference on MSNBC, none of the transcripts I've read mention
that the target of her ire works for Richard Mellon Scaife, a
billionaire who financed smear campaigns against the Clintons -
including accusations of murder. (CNN did mention Mr. Scaife on its
Web site, but described him only as a donor to "conservative causes.")
And viewers learned nothing about Mr. Scaife's long vendetta against
Mrs. Heinz Kerry herself.

There are two issues here, trivialization and bias, but they're
related.

Somewhere along the line, TV news stopped reporting on candidates'
policies, and turned instead to trivia that supposedly reveal their
personalities. We hear about Mr. Kerry's haircuts, not his health care
proposals. We hear about George Bush's brush-cutting, not his
environmental policies.

Even on its own terms, such reporting often gets it wrong, because
journalists aren't especially good at judging character. ("He is,
above all, a moralist," wrote George Will about Jack Ryan, the
Illinois Senate candidate who dropped out after embarrassing sex-club
questions.) And the character issues that dominate today's reporting
have historically had no bearing on leadership qualities. While
planning D-Day, Dwight Eisenhower had a close, though possibly
platonic, relationship with his female driver. Should that have barred
him from the White House?

And since campaign coverage as celebrity profiling has no rules, it
offers ample scope for biased reporting.

Notice the voter's reference to "these millionaires." A Columbia
Journalism Review Web site called campaigndesk.org, says its analysis
"reveals a press prone to needlessly introduce Senators Kerry and
Edwards and Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, as millionaires or
billionaires, without similar labels for President Bush or Vice
President Cheney."

As the site points out, the Bush campaign has been "hammering away
with talking points casting Kerry as out of the mainstream because of
his wealth, hoping to influence press coverage." The campaign isn't
claiming that Mr. Kerry's policies favor the rich - they manifestly
don't, while Mr. Bush's manifestly do. Instead, we're supposed to
dislike Mr. Kerry simply because he's wealthy (and not notice that his
opponent is, too). Republicans, of all people, are practicing the
politics of envy, and the media obediently go along.

In short, the triumph of the trivial is not a trivial matter. The
failure of TV news to inform the public about the policy proposals of
this year's presidential candidates is, in its own way, as serious a
journalistic betrayal as the failure to raise questions about the rush
to invade Iraq.

P.S.: Another story you may not see on TV: Jeb Bush insists that
electronic voting machines are perfectly reliable, but The St.
Petersburg Times says the Republican Party of Florida has sent out a
flier urging supporters to use absentee ballots because the machines
lack a paper trail and cannot "verify your vote."

P.P.S.: Three weeks ago, The New Republic reported that the Bush
administration was pressuring Pakistan to announce a major terrorist
capture during the Democratic convention. Hours before Mr. Kerry's
acceptance speech, Pakistan announced, several days after the fact,
that it had apprehended an important Al Qaeda operative.

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