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What Happened to the Middle East? Going back a few thousands of years, the middle east, including Persia was the intellectual center of the Western World. Even the Greeks owed most of their early knowledge to this area of the World. The Greek Pythagoreans got most of their mathematical knowledge from Babylonia, including the fabled Pythagorean Theorem. Nearly 6,000 years before Cristobol Colon “proved” the the world was round, a man in Egypt had determined the roundness of the Earth and calculated its circumference quite accurately. More accurately than the estimates used by Chris several thousands of years later for his trip. So what happened? During the period that Sumeria, Babylon and the Persian Empires flourished Religion and Science existed side by side without much too much interference between the two. But then Religion was less dogmatic and less authoritarian than it later became. Judaism began somewhere around 1500 BC or so, but did not have much of a following until around 200 BC. Judaism may or may not be the first of the Authoritarian Religions, but it certainly was one. So, IMO, somewhere around 200 BC when Judaism became the dominate Religion in the Middle East, it was able to suppress all learning which was not in accord with the Jewish Doctrine. In other words the primary source of all knowledge became the Religious establishment not the scholars! Thus the learning of ages, past and future, was destroyed by Jehovah, Rabis, Priests, Ayatollahs and of course the Pope. Tags: religion
Current Location: South Park
Current Mood: apothetic
Current Music: None
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Oboma is well meaning, sincerely interested in his fellow human beings, and almost completely useless as a President. He is not a leader! He is not capable of confronting anyone. He seeks to lead by persuasion, rather than by doing. He lacks the courage to challenge the Republicans and as a result the Republicans are and will continue to run roughshod over him. I am beginning to think that Oboma is nothing more than Jimmy Carter with a different ethnicity. Many people voted for him because he favoured liberal causes and in particular "Socialized Medicine." Instead of pushing Socialized medicine he has backed off. He is not pushing his ideas, but he is instead trying to defend them. In doing this, he appears to be admitting that his ideas are flawed, or at least that is how it appears to me. My prediction is that due primarily to Oboma's lack of leadership, the United States will end up with a health care system that is even more flawed than than the present system and will make even more money for the Insurance Companies, Drug Companies and the medical Establishment all at the expense of the vast majority of Americans. All this at the expense of the common people of the United States, those very people that put Oboma in office. The war in Afghanistan will likely end up another Vietnam. Even though it was started by the Republicans it will go down in the minds of the citizenry as a failure of the Democrats. This largely because the generals appear to be able to push Oboma into what ever they want. IMO the only intelligent course of action at this point, is a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan. I am very sorry that I voted for Oboma and, although I hope that I am wrong, I believe that he has and will set back progressive liberal causes for decades to come. Jake Tags: oboma
Current Location: South Park
Current Mood: despair
Current Music: NPR News soon to be Jazz
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I was very disappointed in the much heralded speech. His approach seems to be, that if he kisses enough Asses in congress he will eventually be able to get something through the system. But we don't need something, we need a medical system that works! And I doubt that the patch work that he is suggesting will even come close to working. The problems with the Current Patient-Insurer-Doctor-Hospital-Pharmaceutical System are many.
Preexisting conditions. The Obama plan will not change any of that. By forcing the private insurance companies to take preexisting conditions, it will only cause premiums to go up. Think of how many people are out there without insurance with aids, MS, bad hearts, bad livers and so on. If these people want treatment, they should get treatment, but to putting them in to the private insurance system will cause premiums to go to out of sight! So such cases must be handled by the government, period.
And of course supposedly illegal immigrants will not be covered. So what are we going to do? Just watch them die. Well the republicans might like doing that, but I suspect it will bother the rest of us. Too many people in the medical food chain are making too large a profit! Doctors, Hospitals and insurance companies. Profits must be regulated as they are in most Public Utility Systems, and the health care system is a public utility. You are forced to go to them, try removing your wife's appendix and see what happens!
The insurance companies provide little or no value added, but yet add considerable cost to the chain. Their CEOs get millions of dollars in bonuses and in at least one case Billions! Doctors make way too much money, again because they have a monopoly. The cry is always they went to school for xx years.. BFD. College professors go to school for many years, even the lowly computer programmer, goes to school and then has a long learning process after. But doctors have such responsibility! Well how about the computer programmer that wrote the code that fires the ballistic missiles, or wrote the code that controls the train that you are riding in or controls the electric grid or the programmer that wrote the code controlling the MRI machine, that you are about to take a ride through. And of course then there is the Air Force Pilot who is flying the airplane over your house with an Atomic Bomb in its belly and even the truck driver with a load of hot asphalt that is rapidly closing on your car from behind.
And the Hospitals which used to be non-profit, mostly run by the Catholics, people got well in them very nicely, thank you. Now you pay over a thousand dollars a day for an uncomfortable bed, an unresponsive nurse and inedible food. Million Dollar bonuses are not uncommon for hospital CEOs.
The single payer system works in Europe and provides the Europeans with better medical care at a lower cost than what we have in the US of A, so what the Hell is there to think about?
Jake, Citizen of the Formerly Late Great US of ATags: medical_system
Current Location: South Park
Current Mood: pissed
Current Music: Bad Music from NPR
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Certainly the Government's overall structure lends itself to democracy, but is the system actually democratic? IMO opinion a country can only be Democratic if it has an Intelligent, Interested, Informed and Empowered Populous as well as having a government whose structure lends itself to Democracy. Intelligent? Certainly the US population is intelligent. Interested? This is more difficult but I would say the the populous is still interested in the Government, but are they interested enough. In speaking to the various people that I know I find that their knowledge of what the government is doing is fairly shallow. Mostly just a high level overview with a bit more detail where it specifically effects them as individuals. Informed? As noted in the last item the general populous is only superficially informed. They seem to have very little in depth knowledge or interest. Empowered? This IMO is the critical area where the populous can not meet its responsibilities. To be empowered you must have the ear of those that are doing the business of government. So does the general populous have the ear of Congress? No I think Not. A congressman can spend a half hour or so with a lobbyist and go away with from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars, which to the Congressman, when used for advertising, represents hundreds to hundreds of thousands of potential votes. While the individual represents only a single vote. So who has the congressman's ear, certainly not the individual voter. The same arguments apply to the President. So is the US a Democracy? The answer is that it may be in form, but for all practical purposes it is not. So what is it? I would say that it is. for all practical purposes, an Oligarchy. So what is being done about it? As best I can see nothing. Obama promised to eliminate the lobbyists and has he done anything? No, but it really isn't in his power, it is in the power of Congress. So why did he make the promise? Simple he thought it might help him be elected, the promises and the actions are rarely, if ever, connected. The Solution? Difficult, very difficult. Maybe a few good leaders that could fire up the people to where they might demand changes. It would take many, many people because of the small voice each of us as individuals have. Tags: us_democracy?
Current Location: South Park
Current Mood: perplexed
Current Music: Jazz
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