I’ve been extremely inactive the last few months – translation: I simply haven’t posted a thing.  I hope to rectify that situation in the coming months.  So for now let me leave you with something that is hopefully of interest.

Let me address the current debate over medical reform in the United States.  Journalist Bill Moyers – of Bill Moyers’ Journal on PBS – has consistently, and by far, been the best American journalist to cover this issue over the last few months.  Nearly every week he dedicates significant portions of his program to the issue and, as always, speaks with clarity and empathy.  Moyers is truly an American treasure. I recommend watching this very recent essay of his on the subject of healthcare reform to get a taste of genuine journalism.

In this, Moyers clearly exposes the dishonest tactics of the American right regarding the reform debate and demonstrates, among other things, how hate radio and right-wing astroturf organizations promote an obstructionist, do-nothing tactic with regards to this most pressing matter.  Countering the false assertions of a far-too-left Obama Administration, he professes from the left, while warning against the likely outcome of where we’re  headed, that, “as it is, we’re about to get healthcare reform [under Obama] that measures human beings only in corporate terms of a cost-benefit analysis.”  In other words, regardless of nonsensical cries of socialism, the healthcare “reform” plan that is likely to pass will be one benefiting and strengthening the status quo, where insurance and drug companies will profit to an even greater degree, and the poorest and weakest amoung us will continue to be left out.

I’d recommend checking out more of Bill Moyers’ Journal if you get a chance.

Technorati Tags: Bill Moyers, healthcare reform

Here is an interview with the extremely perceptive American thinker and intellectual Kevin Philips that is well worth watching.  It’s from a recent Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, where Philips discusses a wide-range of issues surrounding the most recent US election and the possible direction America is heading.  His main conclusion, “we are in an age of disappointment.”

Technorati Tags: Bill Moyers, Capitalism, Election 2008, Kevin Philips

So it’s been six years since the US Senate voted to authorize the president to invade Iraq.  It’s worth reviewing that time right now.  It was then that Congress – with many Democrats joining the Republican push – relinquished much of their power and played an essential role in establishing an imperial presidency.  As we well know any dissent was ignored or attacked as anti-American and unpatriotic.  Those were fearful times indeed.

Bill Moyers recently covered what was happening at the time.  Watch his video essay on the subject:

Technorati Tags: Bill Moyers, Democrats, Iraq, Iraq war authorization, Journal, war