Ft Hood which is located in the state of Texas is the largest US Army post in the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/...
It has 50,000 US military personnel stationed there, 20,000 of whom are presently deployed. This largest army installation in the world has been put on lockdown in the wake of a tragic shooting in which reports indicate at least 3 suspects, to include a US Army officer who held the rank of major, believed to have participated in the shooting deaths of 12 people, wherein another 31 people are wounded.  While it is unknown presently why the shooting has occurred, what is known is that force protection measures at the largest US Army post in the world have failed to provide adequate security to the shooting victims.

As such this action diary asks people to immediately please consider writing their member of Congress to ensure that the Congress is involved in investigating this incident, and holds hearings into why adequate force protection measures were not implemented to provide proper security and to ensure that the Congress discharges its responsibility in its oversight function to keep Americans safe.

Did you know the fact that the Stafford student loan lifetime limit hasn't been increased for 17 years since 1992, is re-engineering America politically to the right by excluding from the leadership ranks of business and government, an entire generation of working class Americans, who traditionally have been able to depend on a poverty program known as the Stafford federal student loan program in order to secure their place in graduate school.

Empirically speaking we all know that America has the lowest rate of unionized jobs of any major industrialized country. America is the only major industrialized nation in the world that doesn't have universal medical access for all of its citizens. America is the only major industrialized country in the world that doesn't offer job protected paid maternity leave by right of law to all of its expectant mothers. These facts can never been changed by the continuance of working people being excluded from earning graduate degrees by starving the lifetime limit of the federal Stafford student loan program, which to reiterate hasn't been increased since 1992.

Now you might ask what is H1N1 Swine flu TV and radio? The short answer is all you got to do is turn on your TV and select any news channel or news program and it's the same thing all day everyday, day after day, week after week. Can you imagine if we are feeling fed up with this H1N1 TV and radio coverage now, what are we gonna feel like in March, 5 months from now when the cold and flu season finally ends. To which I simply say H1N1 TV and radio if it bleeds it leads mentality, exemplifies everything that's wrong with the American for-profit corporate owned media. At which point shouldn't we ask isn't it time the American people finally adopted a publicly owned non-commerical television network that is state owned and operated, like the British Broadcasting corporation, also known as the BBC. Or the Canadian broadcasting corporation also known as the CBC.

MSNBC Keith Olbermann devoted his entire show (God bless him) to a special health care reform commentary, which is deeply personal wherein he tells the story of his own father's health care experience in the American medical system, explaining that he was fighting for his life. At which point Keith Olbermann asks in a moment of truth and touching humanity, would his father had lost his life if he were uninsured, if the Olbermann family's check book didn't have deep pockets and if their family had not been so incredibly blessed? As such this video is must see TV for anyone who is an American, for anyone who is human, for anyone who has a father.

For anyone who hasn't seen this video, this diary invites you to watch the video which is embedded in the body of this diary. For anyone who can't watch the video, we've included a partial transcript because the life saving message of this video is too important not to be heard, not to be read in it's entirety and the message is medical reform in America is necessary to keep people from dying. To prevent unnecessary human suffering, pain, death and economic devastation.

Please share this video with a friend, with 2 friends, with 10 friends, with everyone.

As President Obama today won the Nobel Peace prize will he approve the biggest ever troop increase in the 8 yr old Afghanistan war? Does winning the Nobel Peace prize put pressure on Obama not to increase troop strength to 40,000 as demanded by General McChrystal?

What will Obama do?

Also let's please remember that Gen. McChrystal is accused (for better or worse) of skipping the chain of command and playing straight to the court of public opinion in the press asking for the largest troop increase in the 8 yr Afghan war, almost forcing a MacArthur-Truman moment on the Obama administration according to press accounts. Because just like Gen. MacArthur before him who was fired by Pres. Truman for attempting to make policy for the United States, some think that McChrystal today is behaving the same way in the Afghan war as did MacArthur in the Korean war by playing to the press so as to influence US policy in the Afghan theater of operations.

Whether or not you do or don't agree with those press accounts, can we agree that as now Obama has won the Nobel Peace prize, the Obama-McChrystal issue has after with the Nobel Peace prize become even more complex and some would say even historic?

MSNBC Keith Olbermann devoted his entire show (God bless him) to a special health care reform commentary, which is deeply personal wherein he tells the story of his own father's health care experience in the American medical system, explaining that he was fighting for his life. At which point Keith Olbermann asks in a moment of truth and touching humanity, would his father had lost his life if he were uninsured, if the Olbermann family's check book didn't have deep pockets and if their family had not been so incredibly blessed? As such this video is must see TV for anyone who is an American, for anyone who is human, for anyone who has a father.

For anyone who hasn't seen this video, this diary invites you to watch the video which is embedded in the body of this diary. For anyone who can't watch the video, we've included a partial transcript because the life saving message of this video is too important not to be heard, not to be read in it's entirety and the message is medical reform in America is necessary to keep people from dying. To prevent unnecessary human suffering, pain, death and economic devastation.

Please share this video with a friend, with 2 friends, with 10 friends, with everyone.

As October is domestic violence awareness month, I want to take this opportunity to make you aware of an ongoing issue in health care reform wherein 8 states and the District of Columbia have laws on the books which permit the defacto exclusion of victims of domestic violence from being able to purchase medical insurance because it is considered to be a pre-existing condition.

As such America is the only country in the world that prevents victims of domestic violence from receiving medical insurance coverage. This is a clear human rights violation. As such this is one more reason why we should all support the Obama administration's sponsorship of the public option as an issue in health care reform.

This diary lists the 8 states and the District of Columbia that allow domestic violence to be used as a pre-existing condition for the purpose of exclusion of medical insurance. Additionally it provides for insightful quotes from Senator Patty Murray and Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

CNN reporter Rick Sanchez in the video below, cites a startling statistic which is that threats against President Obama have gone up by 400% since his inauguration.

Based on Rick Sanchez's CNN news report, this diary asks you to please consider writing to your member of Congress to request that extra funding be approved by the US Congress for the US Secret Service in order to provide extra protection for President Obama in order to ensure his safety. Please consider writing to your member of Congress today. Thank you. (God bless America and God bless President Obama!)

PS: A word of thanks to the great men and women of the US Secret Service, who are doing an outstanding job. You're a group of great Americans. God bless you for your service. We hope that the US Congress will increase the funding to your all American organization.

[Republished at reader's request]
An American Expat's view living in the EU compiled from EU news sources not available in the U.S.
The power elite heavy hitters in the U.K. include David Cameron leader of the British Conservative Party have taken their gloves off in a slugfest royale with the GOP claims calling the British National Health Service as "evil, Orwellian and full of death panels" as reported by British ITN news. In the video below David Cameron who is the leader of the British Conservative Party bashes a British conservative Daniel Hannan for his support of the GOP in attacking the British health care system. Cameron pledged that under a conservative government the British National Health Service would get even more money calling it a cherished British institution.  

An American expat's view from the European Union:
If the American medical system is really the best medical system in the world as the GOP talking points claim, then how come it can't compete with public medical option systems around the world? Isn't that the real reason why they've never been able to export the American health care model. Isn't that also the real reason why they oppose the Obama public option in medical reform, because they know historically they've never been able to successfully compete with public health care models anywhere in the world.  

The fact is that unregulated Yankee capitalism has been a fucking disaster for the American people. Not only did unregulated Yankee capitalism nearly crash the US economy on Wall St., but unregulated Yankee capitalism has given us the most expensive medical system that leaves 50 million Americans uninsured. Yet the GOP claims the for-profit American medical system is the best in the world. If so how come it can't be successfully franchised across the world like McDonalds, Walmart or even Levi blue jeans, or Hollywood movies? All of which have vast worldwide market shares. If you've never heard that issue raised before, you might want to read this diary....

Do you know how many tens of thousands of American expat health care refugees there are in the world today? If you don't know the answer to that question you're in good company, because no one else knows the answer to that question either, because no one will fund a study to determine their number. To which this diary suggests that this is not by accident but by design. After all who would want to read the lascivious, incestuous tale of how the American for-profit health care industry is porking its own citizens to the point of making them economic war refugees sentenced to permanent medical exile. What are the deleterious effects when you have to flee for your very life and limb due to the carnage of the for-profit health care industry? What post-traumatic stress disorder scars does that leave behind on these economic war refugees and their families, many of whom are often torn for life from their extended families, because due to pre-existing conditions they can never reside back in the US, as they are permanently medically uninsurable.
 
This diary asks you at the Kos community to support them. To that end everyone is invited to post on this diary if they would please, so as to raise such a shout that it will even be heard in the halls of Congress, as they consider health care reform.  

As an American expat I've seen some pretty amazing things. I've seen that working women in virtually every country in Western Europe unlike in the US get job protected paid maternity leave by right of law. I've seen those same parents receive a monthly child allowance unlike in the US, irrespective of their level of income. Everyone I see is medically insured from cradle to grave unlike in the US. I've seen unemployment benefit packages wherein the unemployment insurance system never runs out, because when the regular unemployment insurance payments stop, the unemployment assistance payments start. I've seen workers who while unemployed continue to have the state pay for their health care benefits and if they have a family they cover the entire family's health care benefits. I've seen that virtually every country in Western Europe provides workers with 20 to 30 days paid vacation a year, as well as a low income rental subsidy allowance.

Now I'll tell you something funny. Did you know that the Bush administration started taxing American expats on social benefits received at European taxpayer expense. Let no one ever say W didn't have a sense of humor! But this diary isn't about W's sense of humor or American expats' tax burdens. It's about the social benefits provided by progressive governments to working people.

I'm an American ex-pat living in the US military community in Europe. As such this diary reflects my empirical experiences of the Stateside medical system and the medical system that I've been exposed to in Western Europe. The first thing that one is struck with over here is that literally everyone you see has medical care and is insured fully. It doesn't make any difference whether I am in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France, the Benelux countries, everyone you see irrespective of income, education or social background is insured from cradle to grave. In fact these people have never seen anyone in person or never known anyone who isn't always insured. Seeing uninsured persons for them is an oddity which they don't know how to process, because they have no experience or reference point in their experience that allows them to do that, as it is a completely foreign concept to them.

Americans however don't have that problem. We are socialized from a young age to deal with the medical and dental indigent populations by stepping over them with callous disregard as part of our overall class conscious socialization process, and that's why our politicians even in the democratic party feel they can with impunity reject any public health care option.  

There can be little doubt that Bernie Madoff is a crook and he deserves to be in prison. The question is, is 150 years enough? Shouldn't he have been given 350 years or 1,050 years. What you say he's not gonna live that long. Well that's true Madoff will not live to serve 150 year sentence, so why would the judge who sentenced him to 150 years think he would live to serve out that 150 year sentence either. Hmm did someone say the sentence is ridiculous because at his age of 71, if the judge would have given him a dozen years before being eligible for parole, in all likelihood that would have meant that he would have died behind bars anyway. But Judge Chin was more interested in political posturing and pontificating to bolster his career,than he was in passing out any kind of a just sentence.

What's the likely effect of this going to be? WEll none of the crooks out
there who have done what Madoff has done will ever surrender to the
authorities willingly again and throw themselves on the mercy of the court. They'll hide as much money as they can, and then leave the United States, because they can't expect any justice in sentencing. 150 years is what we give to mass murderers in States that don't have the death penalty.

Did you know that according to the National Academy of Sciences, approximately 18,000 Americans die annually purely because they don't have health insurance. Too many people show callous indifference to that fact and turn a blind eye concurrently to the reality that 6 times the number of Americans die annually, as did on 9/11, purely because they don't have health insurance. Therefore this equates to six 9/11's, in terms of preventable American deaths each and every year. This means at the rate of 18,000 Americans lost, simply because they did not have health insurance, that America would have suffered in the 8 years of the Bush administration, approx 144,000 preventable deaths of the uninsured. This comes close to the statistics of the number of Americans killed in action in WWII. This is therefore, in the commercial media an under-reported staggering American tragedy.  Certainly this has to be a badge of national shame on the assumption that we have not become shameless as a people to the suffering of the uninsured.  

In the ongoing saga of Letterman VS Palin now in day 2, today we have the latest installment, wherein this diary is being republished. Letterman made an off-color joke about Palin's daughter.

Letterman said quote:
"One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game during the
7th inning her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez."

Here is the YouTube clip so you can judge for yourself. Did Letterman cross the line & apply that comment to Palin's 14 yr old daughter or did he apply it to her 18 yr old daughter? You be the judge. Now in day 2 Palin is doing something no one should ever do. She is analyzing Letterman's joke. Her joke analysis is that Letterman's humor was intended to promote statutory rape of a minor child. Has Palin gone overboard?

In the ongoing saga of David Letterman VS Sarah Palin, today we have the latest installment. Wherein Letterman made an off-colored joke about Palin's daughter Bristol.

Letterman said quote:
"One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game during the
7th inning her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez."

Here is the YouTube clip so you can judge for yourself. Did Letterman cross the line & apply that comment to Palin's 14 yr old daughter or did he apply it to her 18 yr old daughter? The only thing that doesn't seem to be in dispute here is that he did apply it to Alex Rodriguez but is this a case wherein Palin, to use a line from Shakespeare uses this for her own political advantage, simply stated. Me thinks the lady doth protest too much, wherein Palin is ready to grasp any straw in order to keep herself in the lime light.

Should the tasering of senior citizens by police be outlawed? That's the primary thesis that this diary attempts to address. It's a well known fact that the tasering of persons by law enforcement has led to death. As such when law enforcement tasers non-violent senior citizens, as a matter of common sense axiomatically speaking, aren't senior citizens at a higher risk of serious injury & death caused by tasers being employed by overly aggressive police officers. As such shouldn't there be a law to protect senior citizens' lives & health from being tasered by law enforcement. If you agree with that statement please feel invited to read on. In doing so can we ask is the use of the taser by law enforcement a form of electro-shock torture against non-violent senior citizens?
(WARNING: The video below is graphic)