The US Healthcare system is the most expensive of the developed nations. While there may be numerous reasons for this, let's examine just one for now.

In mid-January, Bernie Sander's proposal to make drug imports from Canada legal was voted down in the Senate 52-46, with 13 Democrats voting against his bill. Notable among the Democrats was Corey Booker, who also happens to be one of the largest recipients of Big Pharma campaign contributions.

According to the post in Jesse's Cafe Americain site, "Booker used the Big Pharma talking point that 'the bill did not include provisions requiring the protections of the FDA.'

Oh really? We think that the Canadian government's regulation of medicine is weaker than in the US? Please, Cory, tell us exactly where they fall down on the job.

And oh by the way, most it not all of those drugs are the same drugs being sold in the US by the same manufacturers, so the point could be moot. Just allow the imports of drugs the FDA has already approved.

But a real solution, which appears to be far too much for our pampered plutocrats, would be to repeal the US law that prohibits Medicare from negotiating drug prices as is done by the government health services in Canada. But I would not expect the US political establishment to seriously consider overturning that sweet monopoly deal with the drug companies."

Take a look at the chart below compiled by Bernie Sanders comparing drug prices for identical drugs sold here in the US vs. Canada. If this does not make your blood boil, then I suggest you no longer have a pulse!

Check out the short video by the "Young Turks" as they discuss this issue singling out for special mention "€œthat weasel Cory Booker" and his "€œtreachery." https://youtu.be/BEAB9aXXcwU

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Great video Eagleye13. The statement made by General Wesley Clark at the 19:00 minute mark 10 days after 9-11 should be enough for every thinking, aware American to appreciate this problem for what it is.

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard just returned from a secret trip to Syria and gave an interview to Jake Tapper at infamous CNN. There are NO MODERATE rebel groups in Syria.

https://youtu.be/NRVcLS-EHJU

"We are a nation of immigrants.. but we are a nation of laws"

"Our nation is rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country...

Illegal immigrants take jobs from citizens or legal immigrants, they impose burdens on our taxpayers...

That is why we are doubling the number of border guards, deporting more illegal immigrants than ever before, cracking down on illegal hiring, barring benefits to illegal aliens, and we will do more to speed the deportation of illegal immigrants arrest for crimes...

It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws that has occurred in the last few years.. and we must do more to stop it."


OK now..... who made these statements?

[quote=roadster]Voter Fraud? Another who do you listen to? Certainly, a review of our Constitution, including Amendments, with a little (uncommon) common-sense and we could come-up with an answer.

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Roadster,
In addition to the previous issues that I raised previously, I would like to know if you watched the video "Hacking Democracy". If not, I urge you to watch a brief segment at this link. https://youtu.be/t75xvZ3osFg

Here is what the video will discuss: "The disturbingly shocking HBO documentary HACKING DEMOCRACY bravely tangles with our nation’s ills at the heart of democracy. The film the Diebold corporation doesn’t want you to see, this revelatory journey follows tenacious Seattle grandmother Bev Harris and her band of extraordinary citizen-activists as they set out to ask one simple question: How does America count its votes? From Florida and California to Ohio and Washington State, filmmakers Simon Ardizzone, Russell Michaels and Robert Cohen starkly reveal a broken system riddled with secrecy, incompetent election officials, and electronic voting machines that can be programmed to steal elections. Equipped only with a powerful sense of righteous outrage, the activists take on voting machine industry, exposing alarming security holes in America’s trusted voting machines. They even go dumpster diving at a county election official’s office in Florida, uncovering incendiary evidence of miscounted votes. But proving our votes can be stolen without a trace culminates in a duel between Diebold voting machines and a computer hacker from Finland – with America’s democracy at stake."

If this does not convince you that we have a real problem with our voting process, then I urge you to watch the short video called "Fraction Magic" which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/8ezmpqwVEnM

You should also check out the site BlackBoxVoting.org ( http://blackboxvoting.org/fraction-magic-1/ ). Here is a summary of what they have found:

"This report summarizes the results of our review of the GEMS election management system, which counts approximately 25 percent of all votes in the United States. The results of this study demonstrate that a fractional vote feature is embedded in each GEMS application which can be used to invisibly, yet radically, alter election outcomes by pre-setting desired vote percentages to redistribute votes. This tampering is not visible to election observers, even if they are standing in the room and watching the computer. Use of the decimalized vote feature is unlikely to be detected by auditing or canvass procedures, and can be applied across large jurisdictions in less than 60 seconds.

gems-usaGEMS vote-counting systems are and have been operated under five trade names: Global Election Systems, Diebold Election Systems, Premier Election Systems, Dominion Voting Systems, and Election Systems & Software, in addition to a number of private regional subcontractors. At the time of this writing, this system is used statewide in Alaska, Connecticut, Georgia, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Utah and Vermont, and for counties in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming. It is also used in Canada.

Fractionalized vote:
Instead of “1” the vote is allowed to be 1/2, or 1+7/8, or any other value that is not a whole number.
What fractionalized votes can do:

They allow “weighting” of races. Weighting a race removes the principle of “one person-one vote” to allow some votes to be counted as less than one or more than one. Regardless of what the real votes are, candidates can receive a set percentage of votes. Results can be controlled. For example, Candidate A can be assigned 44% of the votes, Candidate B 51%, and Candidate C the rest.
GEMS fractionalizes votes in three places:

The “Summary” vote tally, which provides overall election totals for each race on Election Night
The “Statement of Votes Cast”, which provides detailed results by precinct and voting method (ie. Polling, absentee, early, provisional)

The “undervote” count

Fractions in results reports are not visible.Votes containing decimals are reported as whole numbers unless specifically instructed to reveal decimals (which is not the default setting). All evidence that fractional values ever existed can be removed instantly even from the underlying database using a setting in the GEMS data tables, in which case even instructing GEMS to show the decimals will fail to reveal they were used.

Source code: Instructions to treat votes as decimal values instead of whole numbers are inserted multiple times in the GEMS source code itself; thus, this feature cannot have been created by accident.

Fractionalizing the votes which create the Summary Results allows alteration of Election Night Web results and results sent to the Secretary of State, as well as results available at and local election officials.
Fractionalizing the “Statement of Votes Cast” allows an extraordinary amount of precision, enabling alteration of results by specific voting machine, absentee batch, or precinct. Vote results can be altered for polling places in predominantly Black neighborhoods, and can parse out precincts within a mixed batch of early or absentee votes.

Fractionalizing the undervote category allows reallocation of valid votes into undervotes.

Voting rights abomination

According to programmer notes, a weighted race feature was designed which not only gives some votes more weight than others, but does so based on the voter’s identity. Ballots are connected to voters, weights are assigned to each voter per race, stored in an external table not visible in GEMS. Our testing shows that one vote can be counted 25 times, another only one one-thousandth of a time, effectively converting some votes to zero.

The study was prompted by two issues: (1) Anomalies in elections in Shelby County, Tennessee, which uses the GEMS election management system, in which inconsistencies were observed in reporting of results by GEMS; and (2) Concerns raised regarding the presence of middlemen during the election process, such that a single individual gains remote access to the election management program, in some cases in multiple jurisdictions.

The questions we examine are these:
Can election outcomes be controlled with enough versatility to allow a national impact? Does any mechanism exist that would enable a political consultant or technician to capture elections for repeat customers?
If the necessary features exist within the election management system to facilitate this:
Were such features embedded accidentally or on purpose; for what stated purpose were such features installed; if a reason was given, is that reason justifiable?

Bottom line, we need a thorough investigation and a plan of action on how to make our voting process secure, and unable to be hacked or affected by fraud.

Pennylynn wrote:
It is time to review voter registration and require identification for voting. And it is constitutional: In Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2007), the Supreme Court upheld an Indiana state law that required all voters to present a photo ID. The majority opinion found that the burden placed on voters was “offset by the benefit of reducing the risk of fraud” and that the law was “eminently reasonable.”

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I am very much in agreement with you on this. I personally would be in favor of requiring a fingerprint and or picture of each voter that could be tied back into his or her vote. This would by itself reduce fraud because there would be a paper trail in which violators could be prosecuted for voter fraud.

I cannot understand why any law abiding citizen would object to such a common sense requirement. After all, you need to show ID proof to get a drivers license, why not do the same when you vote.

I hear and read calls from minorities claiming that this is voter intimidation. If you are one of those individuals, please explain to me your rationale. I cannot understand that fear or concern, and I really want to know your basis for objecting to what Pennylynn or I would be suggesting.

Dr.Dross wrote:
A gesture of good faith is a daily occurrence in o... (show quote)

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You make a good point. I personally believe that Trump should have released his tax return information during the campaign, irrespective of his audit situation. At this point however, he has been elected president of the United States. What would be the purpose of those seeking this information now? I suspect that it would be to find something, anything, in which to criticize, demean, or an attempt to diminish his standing with the American public.

Can you honestly say that is not the hidden motive behind most of these calls for financial transparency?

It is a shame that our country has become so polarized that politics has become a blood sport. Perhaps it has always been that way.

President Trump has claimed that he would have won the popular vote had it not been for the fact of 3-5 million illegal votes in favor of Hillary Clinton.

The Think Progress web site however states: "The notion that voter fraud exists on a significant scale is one of the Trump administration’s “alternative facts.” According to a Washington Post analysis, out of the more than 135 million voters cast in the 2016 presidential election, just four cases of voter fraud were found — and three of the culprits voted Republican."

OK folks, we have a pretty wide disparity of opinion on the issue of "Voter Fraud" and the need for "Voter Registration Reform.

Here is what a 2012 press release by Pew Center on the States (a division of the Pew Charitable Trust, a "nonprofit organization that applies a rigorous, analytical approach to improve public policy, inform the public, and stimulate civic life") had to say on this problem back in 2012:

* Approximately 24 million voter registrations in the United States—one of every eight—are no longer valid or have significant inaccuracies, according to the Pew Center on the States’ Election Initiatives.

* At least 51 million eligible citizens remain unregistered—more than 24 percent of the eligible population.

* Nearly 2 million deceased individuals are listed as voters.

* Approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.

* About 12 million records have incorrect addresses, meaning either the voters moved, or errors in the information make it unlikely any mailings can reach them.

“Voter registration is the gateway to participating in our democracy, but these antiquated, paper-based systems are plagued with errors and inefficiencies,” said David Becker, director of Election Initiatives at the Pew Center on the States. “These problems waste taxpayer dollars, undermine voter confidence, and fuel partisan disputes over the integrity of our elections.”

What has our government done to correct the fraud and voter registration issues cited in this report since 2012. You guessed it - very, very little.

Is President Trump correct in his statement concerning the 3-5 million illegal votes? Maybe, we simply do not really know the extent of the problem, and we should.

His call for an investigation and recommendation on action to correct the flaws in our current system is warranted. The integrity of the voting process is critical to the proper functioning of our representative democracy.


https://web.archive.org/web/20120303020411/http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=85899370596

Raylan Wolfe wrote:
1/27/2017: TRUMP starts in the hole as US voters disapprove; Quinnipiac Poll finds Obama and Reagan are the best presidents in 70yrs!

That just goes to show how clueless the majority of the American public is, and how ignorant they are of foreign affairs. "Throughout his eight years as President of the United States, Obama exhibited many symptoms of PMSP (Political Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy)- both abroad and in the US. For his cynical crimes, he was awarded the ‘Nobel Peace Prize’ among other honors.

Each of Obama’s relentless military interventions, including Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and especially Syria, were characterized by the deliberate and total destruction of the means of normal civilized social existence for defenseless civilians - the bombing of homes, factories, markets, weddings, funerals, schools, hospitals - leading to the deaths of many thousands and the uprooting of millions into desperate flight. In each case, Obama would proclaim that he was saving the victims from imminent genocide by an abusive ruler or ethnic group. He would rush in to provide a few baskets of relief and a few blankets to some bedraggled survivors of his own bombing campaigns and bask in the glowing praise of mass media propagandists and fellow imperialists. Choreographed applause and adulation would seem to follow America’s First Black President everywhere.
Obama’s bombs, arms and mercenaries drove hundreds of thousands of families into the streets, into the mountains and most horrifically onto rickety, overloaded boats on the seas. In each series of destruction and chaos, he would calculate the point at which his ‘humanitarian intervention’ would most effectively reflect on his heroism.

He destroyed the entire nation of Libya, shredded its institutions and infrastructure, bombed its cities and villages, even deliberately sending a deadly missile into the home sheltering a half dozen of President Muammar Gadaffi’s small grandchildren and finally ended up with the public death by torture of the wounded Libyan president sodomized by stakes documented in a imperial-pornographic snuff film that should have revolted the entire world. That the main victims of Obama’s ‘liberation of Libya’ were hundreds of thousands of black Libyan citizens and sub-Saharan African workers did little to detract from his public persona as the first ‘African American’ world hero. The capsized boatloads of fleeing black Libyans and the bloated bodies washing ashore on the beaches of Spain and Italy were never linked to the criminal policies of our Nobel Prize recipient! He even urged Europe to accept the miserable refugees fleeing his war - in a gesture of supreme PMSP. He could do no wrong. This serial political killer had an unquenchable thirst for sympathy and admiration - and a wholly corrupt propaganda machine to polish his halo."

And this is the man that the poll finds to be one of the best presidents in the past 70 years. Really pathetic!

To all those Obama supporters - please feel free to comment on his statement that we are better off now than 8 years ago. Please document your sources.

Attached file:
(Download)

You probably have heard all the spin on how much the information that Chelsea Manning leaked to Wikileaks hurt US National Security. All the news heads talked about lives being lost, and assets compromised. But in his court martial, no evidence was ever presented about any lives being lost by the information Manning turned over to Wikileaks .

The real story that is overlooked by the media is the coverup by the US military of war crimes and atrocities that our government does not want you to know about, or think about. After all, if you really thought about the possible 2 million lives lost by US actions in the mid-east, you might have a real problem with that. Or perhaps not. Perhaps you drape yourself with the US flag, and take the attitude, US right or wrong. I'll just close my eyes and pretend that these things did not really happen.

The other real story that is not being covered is the war on whistle-blowers, without which we would never be aware of what Wikileaks reported. During Obama's presidency, he prosecuted 8 whistle-blowers. While it is still to early to make a judgement on Trump, prior statements by Trump on Manning and Snowden suggest that he will be no different from president Obama.

Listen to this 16 minute recap of what Manning brought to the attention of the American public. He spent 7 years of his life in jail for bring this to your attention. What would you have done in his place, seeing what he was seeing, and knowing that these crimes against humanity were being covered up, and shoved under the rug.

http://www.newsbud.com/2017/01/26/chelsea-manning-the-war-crimes-of-empire/

Good one!

[quote=PeterS]I was listening to the news today two union officials, one with steel and the other transportation, were both glowing with praise for our fearless leader. I have to say, while I have trouble stomaching the POS that we elected president, I have to say his embrace of unions is appreciated.

I am pleased to read your post. You are fair enough to compliment Trump on an action that he has taken that is beneficial to our economy, it's citizens, and the nation. I have mixed feelings on Unions in general. Their purpose is admirable, but like most bureaucracies, the devil is in the details. When the teacher's union protects demonstratively bad teachers, or the police union does the same for a bad cop, that is not good for society. When they employ archaic work rules to needlessly pad employees pay, that is not good for society. Having said that, the strongest and healthiest societies are ones in which ALL members of that society can fairly and justly share in the economic fruits of their labor.

In the past, CEO's of large corporations might have enjoyed a salary 8 or 9 times that of it's lowest paid worker. Today, that number may be 400 or 500 times that of it's lowest paid worker. It is a sad commentary today that both husband and wife need to work full time jobs to maintain a decent family lifestyle. Years ago, a wife had the ability if she wished to stay at home, raise the children, and prepare and enjoy a home cooked meal with the family. I think our society was stronger, and I know our children benefited more by the love, time, and attention they received from a nurturing mother at home. Very few families have the ability to make that same choice today.

I hope that Trump is successful in bringing more highly paid jobs back to the US. We need to reverse the trend in the loss of manufacturing jobs, and begin a serious attempt at improving the infrastructure of our nation.

"To economists, free trade means the absence of government interference with trade: no tariffs, quotas, subsidies, or other interventions, explicit or implicit."

"To politicians, "free-trade" means a complex set of managed trade policies to "write the rules for global trade," which is something either our government does or a foreign government does. Which imports will be taxed, and at what rates? Which exports will be subsidized, and at what levels? How will labor, environmental, and social policies be enforced by domestic and foreign governments? For government officials, countries are engaged in "free trade" when they agree on a complex package of explicit and implicit taxes and subsidies such that neither has a special advantage over the other, nor is disadvantaged relative to some other trading partner (however such advantages are defined)."

As Murray Rothbard once wrote,

"If authentic free trade ever looms on the policy horizon, there’ll be one sure way to tell. The government/media/big-business complex will oppose it tooth and nail.

We’ll see a string of op-eds “warning" about the imminent return of the 19th century. Media pundits and academics will raise all the old canards against the free market, that it’s exploitative and anarchic without government “coordination.”

"In truth," as Rothbard noted, "the bipartisan establishment’s trumpeting of 'free trade' since World War II fosters the opposite of genuine freedom of exchange." The Bretton Woods organizations (the World Bank and IMF) and modern trade agreements are based on the mercantilist ideas that exports make a country wealthy, imports make it poorer. (Indeed, Gardner in the interview above worried specifically that a collapse of the EU would make it harder for US manufacturers to sell their goods in Europe, but said nothing about the advantages to US and European consumers of a reduced supra-national government). That's why governments have little interest in genuine free trade.

The establishment would react to instituting true free trade about as enthusiastically as it would to repealing the income tax."

These are selected excerpts from the following article: https://mises.org/blog/free-trade-versus-free-trade

[quote=Boomer.Consumer]...If you don't care, why do you bother to respond?

Boomer.....If they do not raise a legitimate question or make a reasonable, rational statement..... simply ignore them.