The First African-American Candidate for President?

Many people believe that Barack Obama is the first African-American candidate for President. Of course, this is not true on two levels.

1. There were many African-American candidates for President. Shirley Chisholm (D) ran in 1972. Also, Jesse Jackson ran in 1984 and 1988. Dr. Lenora Fulani ran as an independent in 1988 and 1992. Alan Keyes (R) ran in 1996 and 2000. And Carol Mosely-Brown ran in 2004.

2. Unlike the above, Barack Obama is not actually a real "African-American". His father was African (Kenyan) and was never an American citizen. In fact, he only was in America as an exchange student, leaving as soon as his studies were completed. Barack is 50% white American and 50% Black Kenyan. There is no "slave blood" in Barack. The only part of him that is American is white. And that lineage connects to George Bush, Dick Cheney and ... Robert E. Lee!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Dunham

Looking for Rev. Right

Rev. Wright has some differences with some policies of the US government.  So, the conclusion he reaches is "God damn America".  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hPR5jnjtLo

One of his fellow Reverends was on Fox tonight with Greta explaining that it is most important that we, as Americans, focus on what separates and divides us and not on what unites us; that our differences are what is really important.  This runs counter to what DocBrain believes.  How building upon that which divides us in some way is better than building on that which unites us escapes me.  This seems to be to be counter to the message of unity that Obama has been preaching.  How could the author of "The Audacity of Hope" have a completely different take on the prime purpose of social interaction from the one who inspired this book?

We have a representative democracy, where we elect people to represent us in government.  Unfortunately, it is not a 1:1 matching, more like a 1:1,000,000 match at the federal level and 1:300,000,000 at the presidential level.  So, your specific position may not exactly match that of your representative.  The best you can hope for is to lobby for your position, to try to convince others of the supremacy of your position.  If you can convince enough people, your position will prevail.  The process itself, of representative democracy, can never be completely fair.  So, what should you do when it doesn't seem fair to you?  Shout out "God damn America"?  Or perhaps, raise the quality of your argument rather than the heat of your rhetoric?  God knows!

Important Speech

Obama recently delivered a speech in Philadelphia about race. It is a speech that only a person with acknowledged black heredity could deliver and not be ridiculed. The sentiments in the speech are commonly felt among many people I know, but rarely receive widespread coverage as they do not give a simple victim/villain/hero scenario that the press likes to report. I will not dispute some of the facts and portrayals in the speech which are meant to evoke emotion and are not entirely true to fact.

DocBrain agrees that it is time to move beyond Rev. Wright, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, the KKK, skinheads, white supremists, reparations, affirmative action, subtle segregation, and the like. It is time to put race in its place. Each of us can derive pride from our race, religion, or other inherent characteristic, but true pride can only come from accomplishment towards a goal that will enlighten, ennoble, inform and perhaps entertain others. Through making this world a better place and the human condition a little better can we make ourselves happy. Society and civilization have the duty to make this service rewarding, placing value on such activities, but not so much as to make the decision to act this way economic only. There needs to remain a moral-ethical imperitive that leads people to act in goodness for its own sake.

Whether or not the details of Obama's leadership will reflect a goal of unity or not, only time will tell. The question as to whether or not this is a ploy or a passion will be left to the future.

I'm not against you, I am just for myself

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is passionate about black. His main thrust appears to be against everything that isn't black. In these things, he sees the word "white". Any church, synagogue or other religious organization might as well have the word "white" as part of its name. Any western country (especially the USA), business, or other organization has the word "white" as part of its name, just not actually said. This leads to great passions in his rhetoric. He would probably say that it leads to orations that are meant to empower blacks. But do they also lead to an "us vs them" world view?

The difference between being proactive for yourself and being biased against others is subtle. If you use the energy of group identification to endow yourself with the positive attitude that you can make it in the world if you apply yourself, and the nature to apply yourself is part of your group identity, then it is a good thing. If you use that energy to tear down others in order to make yourself feel better, to look for bias in others, and to accentuate difference as compared to promoting commonality, you are on a mission of misery.

The little that DocBrain has heard, probably specifically chosen by the media (white media the Reverend would say) seems to suggest that the Reverend needs a little more passion of peace and love. Obama would be wise to distance himself from hate.

Can I get an "Amen"?

Banning pleasures

Skittles http://www.skittles.com/ a popular candy, led to the suspension of an 8th grader and being stripped from office. At least he didn't pay $80,000 for the bag of candy!

Of course, this young man and all of us are harmed by his actions. Repeated eating of empty calories can lead to obesity, which can lead to health risk factors such as diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and obstructive sleep apnea, to name a few. These can lead to heart attacks, strokes, auto accidents, and peripheral vascular disease. And these can lead to job loss, disability, and additional strain on the social welfare system, not to mention the cost in personal life satisfaction and happiness. It is a typical example of a short term pleasure being chosen instead of long term happiness.

So, it all boils down to the questions: when, where, and how should society enact laws that limit the individual's right to choose short term pleasures over long term happiness? Every short term pleasure has the potential of producing some long term reduction in happiness and some long term costs. Just ask Elliot Spitzer!

Here are a few examples.

Some people like to drive for fun. DadBrain used to like to just take a drive in the country. This used precious gas, polluted the atmosphere, and ran the risk of us being involved in an auto accident. All for the short term pleasure of seeing nature.

BrotherBrain likes to exercise. He runs. He does it because he likes how it makes him feel. With each breath he reduces the oxygen in the atmosphere replacing it with the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Certainly, he would cause much less environmental damage if he would just sit at home!

DocBrain likes to take showers. One a day. Without knowing for sure exactly how dirty he is. It is for the pleasure of feeling clean, not the actual knowledge of the bacterial count on his skin. Wasting precious water, gas to heat the water.

With a little imagination, victims can be found for each of these endeavors.

We need a little common sense in our society to go with the great desire to bend others to our will. DocBrain thinks that too many restrictions are more dangerous than not enough, as it prevents people from developing their own good judgement.

Conservative Clinton? Identity politics

Who is the most conservative candidate? Here is a case made for Hillary Clinton:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/634493/a_conservative_case_for_hillary_clinton.html

McCain, by virtue of being a republican, is considered to be most conservative, but he does have a strong liberal bent.

Obama talks of unification, centrist positioning, but has no record of that in his past, which is strongly left of center.

On another note, identity politics is finally reaching mainstream. When Joe Lieberman ran as vice president in 2000, 80% of Jews voted for the Gore-Lieberman ticket. However, 80% of Jews usually vote Democrat anyways, so there was little effect of this in the national election. Whether or not identity politics played a role in voters decisions was unclear in this instance, but it did produce a sense of pride and acceptance in many Jews I know, whether or not they voted for Gore-Lieberman.

In the current primaries, 90% of blacks are voting for Obama. While Jews consist of about 2-3% of the vote, blacks make up 12% of the population. This means that Obama will have 11% of the national vote by virtue of his race. Normally, blacks vote Democrat at about 80%, so this will have the effect of increasing the Democrat vote nationally by 1-2%. If Obama does win (and I expect he will), the question will be whether he and other blacks attribute his victory to his black support or whether they see it as acceptance of a black by whites, the end of racism.

Lastly, it is interesting that women do not see their sex as their greatest identity politically. They do not feel as strong a compulsion to vote for Hillary as Jews for Lieberman or especially blacks for Obama. Both Jews and blacks have felt persecution, while women have been excluded but not persecuted in the past. Women want power because they never had it. Blacks and Jews want power to prevent abuses against them. Should Obama win, this would be a strong signal that race is not as big an issue for whites as blacks may still believe it is. Then, blacks could move from racial identity to a more advanced one.

Obama is my man, Hilary is my woman, McCain is my man

Why are people supporting Obama for president? Here is a short list from the internet.

• Obama is the smartest candidate
• I am young and he will make me proud of my country and my president
• I believe it is time for a black president and he is black
• He seems more emotionally stable than Hilary
• He has overcome adversity in his personal life
• He has the ability to motivate and inspire
• He has not yet been corrupted by Washington
• He is interested in global warming
• He is nonconfrontational
• He is honest

Why are people supporting Hillary for president? Here is a short list from the internet:

• It would just be awesome to have a woman president
• She is mean. She could get a lot done
• She is smart and outspoken
• She is the smartest candidate with the highest IQ
• She has experience
• She will bring us universal health care
• She will protect the working class

Why are people supporting McCain for president? Here is a short list from the internet:

• He showed character when he was a POW in Vietnam
• He tells the truth
• He has strength of character; he is a decent person
• He is a reformer and challenges authority
• He is not afraid
• He is funny and brave
• He is a maverick
• He will do what is right, not what the party platform tells him to do
• He clearly loves this country

When it comes to winning an election, issues don't matter. It is more of how you want to feel and if that candidate resonates with you.

Love of country = McCain

Anger over the old ways and a passion for change = Obama

Comfort of a woman who has experience in the White House = Hillary

I'm not really a socialist, I just play one in the Senate

The above tag line is what Obama would have the voters believe. With a wife who has made money through capitalism and his personal accumulation of wealth, he is not living a new age Fidel lifestyle. His political positions have been far left in spite of his personal capitalistic involvement, including a nice home.

The big question is who he will play as President.

What can red, white and blue do for you?

Citizens of the USA are quite lucky. We have a representative democracy. We have capitalism. We have freedom to live nearly anyway we want as long as we do not harm others. We have a net of welfare services to support those who have temporarily become unable to provide for their basic needs. We even have a system that supports those who are disabled. We have a strong military to protect us. We have courts and juries of our peers.

And yet, some people are unhappy. Even worse, some of them think that they can be made to be happier by acting within the political process. They think that new laws will make them happier. That is why some people express unbridled passion towards their candidate.

All government can do is slightly nudge wealth and opportunity. Happiness comes mainly from within. Authors such as Dr. Martin Seligman have clearly identified that unhappiness is a state of mind, not a state of being.

http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx

DocBrain has no problems with Democrats who believe that some altering of priorities to change the distribution of wealth and opportunity are needed. Redistributed wealth can do good things if done properly. However, DocBrain has a big problem with Democrats who believe that government can produce happiness.

DocBrain's personal observation is that most Republicans he knows take responsibility for their own happiness, while most Democrats see happiness as being tied to the government. Unhappy people just have not gotten enough from the government to make them happy, seems to be their credo. You are poor and living in the inner city and part of a gang? Well, you probably are unhappy and hopeless. More money from Uncle Sam can fix that. Not true.

The external things that can fix unhappiness are actually quite cheap, but quite dear. Strong families. Belief in principles to live by. Respect for self and others. Picking a good partner to have a child with (criminal minds beget criminal minds). Having a large social network. Doing things that are win-win.

These externals do not hinge on government. The only thing government can do is make these things harder to acquire by removing safety, liberty and justice.

The dedication to government as a source of happiness is the one great weakness and fallacy of the Democrat party. Many of those attracted to that party are often unhappy and see government as the one "easy button" for happiness. This is particularly true in the rabid Obama rallies. "Change will make you happy" could be their motto. No one would scream hysterically when a politician blew his nose if the message was "Change will give you a few extra bucks in your pocket or an extra chicken in your pot".

Science, the God of the Democrats, has proven that government cannot produce happiness. And yet, they irrationally still worship their leaders. Paging Thomas Jefferson, STAT!

Who can you trust?

A recent survey suggested that 85% of Americans trust their physician. However, there are problems for health care providers.

• Those who look up information on the internet are less likely to trust their physicians. This self diagnosis and treatment can lead to biases. Usually, the internet information is incomplete and needs to be considered in a complete framework.
• Health care insurance, including medicare and medicaid, are expensive. The public naturally suspects that all this money goes to greedy "fat cat" doctors. The truth is that most of the money goes elsewhere, with physician providers, on average, getting much less of the insurance dollar than the administration costs.
• Bad apples spoiling the bunch. Occasional bad physicians are caught truly cheating the system or actually harming patients. Some people then believe that most or all physicians are cheating, but only a few get caught. Their passion for justice rises against these cheaters.
• Physicians are often conspicuous consumers. Fancy cars, nice houses, and the like all inspire contempt and beliefs in greedy motives behind any and all physician activities.
• Criteria for reimbursement are complicated, leading to confusion and spotty compliance in documentation of services. Even though these services are both needed and appropriately provided, an incomplete documentation is not by the book and a bureaucracy always runs by the book. In a tight financial climate, CMS has begun to go after providers who make errors of omission in documentation. As simple an error as using one wrong word in a multipage report can lead to a denial of payment and a charge of fraud. Review of a single chart can take a reviewer up to an hour. A physician cannot spend that amount of time making sure all the I's are dotted and T's crossed. There are too many sick people. The result is the presence of minor charting infractions on almost every medical record and occasional errors by almost every physician. CMS labels this as fraud and abuse, and bureaucratic minded people will agree.
• In spite of extremely expensive health care, people die. They die at home after being seen in the ER. They die in the hospitals, sometimes without even getting properly diagnosed. They die from the effects of surgery or medications. The system of reimbursement is based upon paying for services provided, not for outcome. Those who have lost a loved one only to get an astronomic bill are upset by the "greed" they perceive as being behind the bill.
• When people go to the doctor, they think they get too many tests. They believe doctors are trying to milk the insurance company by overtesting. Yet, if something is missed, no matter how unlikely, a trip to the malpractice attorney is often on the patient's agenda.
• There will always be a few kooks who believe that a giant conspiracy exists among doctors.

Doctors have to maintain the trust and respect of their patients and of society as a whole. Perhaps by following the latest internet reports, living less large, making patients take responsibility for missed diagnoses due to incomplete workups, cutting the obvious failures (dead patients) some financial break, and developing EMR/EHR/form based reports that cover all the bases of arcane documentation, doctors can again regain the trust of at least some of their patients.

Who is the bad guy?

http://news.aol.com/health/story/_a/audits-sting-hospitals-physicians/20080301073809990001

The old days:

• No health insurance. Doctors charged the rich more, the poor less, and gave charity care to the destitute.
• No government intrusion. Medications developed that were not the safest, but at least they worked when nothing else did. Sulfas, penicillin, phenobarbital, morphine and phenytoin come to mind as major contributions to the care of many at the health harm of the few.
• No law suits. Bad things happened, but the presumption of good intent and personal service to those in need led to legal immunity for providers except in the most extreme circumstances.

Now:

• Health insurance pays according to policy and procedure. Charity is replaced by government insurance for the poor, based in part on the proven false belief that the destitute will use health care more appropriately if it is paid for. The need to be in control of costs leads to a concerted effort to portray providers, physicians and hospitals, as trying to defraud the system. To prove fraud, documentation of what was done becomes paramount, as it is the only proof that a service (other than the word of the patient and physician, which cannot be trusted) has been provided. The documentation becomes more and more arcane and complex as the need to increase insurance profits and reduce waste increases. Hired guns are employed to find "fraud and abuse" which includes occasional cases of real fraud and abuse used as a way to justify an all out attack on physicians and hospitals.
• Government controls the insurance industry, directly through the administration of Medicare and Medicaid, and indirectly through insurance commissions. The incestuous relationship eventually brings in large health care providers that develop their own insurance companies. Costs continue to rise in spite of reduced provider reimbursement. Scapegoats are needed and the providers continue to take the heat.
• Malpractice law becomes a thriving specialty as disgruntled patients sue for outlandish sums awarded by juries manned by other disgruntled patients. Communities where disgruntled patients are common become popular sites for change of venue. The field becomes strongly adversarial, and instead of leading to improved care, actually impedes improvement by causing entrenchment.

The future?

• A few bad hospitals and doctors are used to justify a pogrom against all doctors and hospitals.
• Doctors, hospitals and pharma need to stand up to the insurance-government-malpractice lawyer triumvirate, the true axis of evil when it comes to cost, quality, availability and answerability in health care.