Single Payer Action

About ten minutes into the event Rick Staggenborg MD, of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), asked Senator Wyden if he would sit down with single payer advocates.

Wyden remains steadfastly opposed to single payer, but said he would sit down with the single payer advocates.

But Senator Wyden did nothing to ensure that single payer advocates were represented in recent Senate Finance Committee hearings.

Just keep showing up, whether or not you're invited.

How many of those of you who still have health insurance through you employer would like to give it up in exchange for paying for yourself? Nobody? Well it seems that is what, wait for it, a bi-partisan group of senators have in mind.

Ezra Klein does a good job of summarizing this:

Jane Hamsher reports on the Progressive Media Summit:

Wyden: Answering a question about whether we will be moving toward single payer, Wyden says that single payer winds up devolving into an argument with people who are opposed to "too much government." But if you use the term "universal coverage" and you say that for the same amount of money everyone can have the same coverage as members of Congress, it's not so polarizing. So basically, no.

 Read more…

“No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.”

Alan Watts

++++

Image by mjs (drive around Portland, Oregon long enough and you see all sorts of things)

++++

THIS WEEK in Eugene, Oregon and the surrounding areas, there has been a lot of talk about the weather. But not in a mundane fashion, such as when you are having your gas pumped (remember that 'round here, you cannot pump your own gas, it is all full serve!) and offhandedly offer the station worker an observation about the local and eternal wintry curtain of rain.

No, the talk has been more along the lines of "what is going on with this weather?" Because the past couple of winters have brought an atypical amount of snow to this city west of the Cascade Mountains. In fact, 2008 has seen the most snowfall to hit Eugene, Oregon, since 1996.

Here's your faithful Street Team 08 Oregon rep with a short visual presentation of the latest strange winter to visit us.   Read more…

Seriously...

CLICK the pic to the left to find yourself magically transported to a page hosting my latest MTV Street Team '08 video, which was shot in Eugene, Oregon at a Martin Luther King Jr rally and march on January 21, 2008.

All shooting, editing, and sleeplessness by Nezua.

NOT BAD for a sick man working all gear and angles himself! Just a little intro vlog for my MTV gig. And hey, I only look a little bleary. Which is actually what impressed me. Aside from the fact that gettting through the entire approval process (for Street Team members, not just any member) felt like a patdown in an Israeli airport.   Read more…

SOME OF MY regular readers (I do not, at this point, necessarily refer to the bran-eating amongst us, though they are a well-stirred crew, I'm sure) remember the day back in August I casually (you should have seen me, I was sipping a mint julep as I typed) posted on the MTV Choose or Lose '08 Vlogger competition.

The Magic of Digital Night, Interstate 5, somewhere north of Grants Pass, Oregon

By day seven our trip to Oregon was winding down: we'd gotten to know Portland a little bit, just enough to make us want to come back.

Pacific Northwest Rainforest, Zigzag River, Mt. Hood, Oregon

To Oregon We Go! Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here.

On the second night of our journey we were asleep at our campsite along the Zigzag River near Mt. Hood, next to a warm and glowing fire, when our dogs began to growl around midnight...

We woke with a start to see a man standing near our outdoor bed, maybe a dozen feet from us. He was illuminated by the light from our fire--a white male, average build, thin brown hair, thirtyish, somewhat pale--his features were soft, rubbery. The man was staring at us, not speaking. "Can we help you?" asked my wife, Donna.

After a very long pause he spoke slowly, with a hint of a rural accent: "I'm trying to start a fire...you have a real nice fire."

Silver Falls State Park, Oregon

+++

My wife and I drove to Oregon late last month. Chauncy and Rudy were kind enough to join us. We have friends in Eugene we wanted to visit, but our prime motive was to see what Oregon was like, with the possibility being that we might move there and start a business. My wife and I wonder about taking chances, trying something different, and Oregon beckoned (shh! be vewy, vewy kwiet: don't tell them we're from Los Angeles), as if it had been sitting on a shelf above California in the Life Market, looming large and green and wet, calling to us as a soggy siren of the Pacific Northwest. What follows here are images from our trip.

Warning: lots of images after the fold, so for those of you who are still using a pump or hand crank for your Internets be advised. Always be advised...