The Obama Doctrine

Alas, I wasn’t able to make it to Oslo for the ceremonies surrounding Barak Obama’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday. So I printed out a copy of the speech and took it with me when I went to give blood. I had a chance to read it through several times while I was hooked up to the pheresis machine and then later I watched parts of the resulting commentary by the talking heads online.

As a result I was pretty well versed in what he had to say when I chose to share segments of it with Joan Thursday evening. I was surprised, nevertheless, when I became overwhelmed with emotion reading it to her. All of which is to say that I find it to be a powerful and important statement, not just of American foreign policy under this President, but of how we as humans might learn to address and resolve conflicts.

I have been working on an essay about principles of nonviolence that King used in his efforts on behalf of civil rights in America so I was already primed for those themes. To have a President, especially one who is increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan, cite King (and Gandhi) as models to follow and to do so in a way that is coherent and carefully considered illuminates the reasons Obama got the award. That he received it saying so many things that so many of his liberal supporters find disagreeable makes it only more remarkable.

I myself didn’t agree with everything he had to say. But my disagreement has mostly to do with his use of the term nonviolence in ways that, while consistent with popular usage, limits the meaning to a set of tactics appropriate to actions taken by oppressed persons addressing grievances against an authority which is morally sensitive. If we limit the term in that way then he is right, it wouldn’t have worked against the Nazis and it won’t work with al Qaeda.

But if we are looking not so much at the tactics as at the philosophy that undergirds it, and think more creatively about how conflicts can be resolved, then we discover some important principles that unite Nonviolence and the Obama Doctrine. Among them:

· We are all connected in a great web of care and concern. What affects one of us affects all of us.

· Passivity or patience in the face of oppression is not only an abandonment of our moral responsibility but is also an invitation to greater violence.

· The road to peace is through a process of relationship building with those with whom we disagree.

· Justice is not simply about the rule of law but is also about the equitable distribution of rights and resources, but such equity is not possible without the rule of law.

· We cannot allow the fact that others abandon righteous behavior to allow us to depart from the values we hold.

These are all examples of the kinds of principles which I hope to celebrate and promote through the promulgation of Creative Conflict Resolution and through Just Conflict.

Integral Politics II

And here is the second post in the series.  View the other one first as it explains concepts used in this presentation.

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Presentation:      Barack and McCain-Looking Through the Talking Points
Presenter:          Clint Fuhs - Operations Manager
URL Link:
http://integrallife.com/files/articulate/Barack and McCain-Seeing Through the Talking Points/player.html
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Integral Politics

Hey Bro,

I just stumbled across this slide show. I think it has relevance for our blog.  I don’t know if the links will translate but I am going to give it a try.

This is a presentation of an integral perspective on politics and comes informed by the philosophy of Ken Wilber.

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Presentation:      A Tale of Four Americas
Presenter:          Clint Fuhs - Operations Manager
URL Link:
http://integrallife.com/files/articulate/A Tale of Four Americas/player.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Obama and Liberals

If we lived in a world where people are exactly pigeon-holed as liberal or conservative, we might be able to characterize an Obama voter as a liberal, etc. But, as you correctly note, people fit on a spectrum not into a hole. So, a given person might be "liberal" on abortion, yet conservative on gay marriage. So, when it comes to a choice in the voting booth, a person might just vote on feelings rather than their traditional political alignment. In the last governor's race, I voted for a candidate I strongly respected rather than one I agreed with.
In the last Presidential election, I characterized Obama as a liberal rather than a progressive and came very close to voting for him. He made noises like a liberal, didn't he? I suggest further that many voters rejected the McCain / Palin ticket because they wanted change and Obama promised change.
I submit that the members of your church fit the modern mold of conservatives even though they voted for a the somewhat more liberal candidate. Their contribution is more characteristic of the Christian right. Can you just imagine Nancy Pelosi or Al Gore working in a soup kitchen? These folks in the church voted their conscience rather than their label.
The folks that insist on indoctrination as the price of food are not even on the liberal-conservative spectrum, they are just kooks.

Differentiating Liberals and Conservatives

The whole notion of how one might distinguish a conservative from a liberal has long fascinated me.  Nevertheless, I can’t say I am making much progress in deepening that ability.  I agree that Haidt’s model doesn’t ring true for me in many respects and that the moral foundation of people throughout the political spectrum (if, indeed, it is really a spectrum) is rather a constant.  Points of emphasis may be different, but we all care about being seen as good and we all want the wellbeing of all.  Loyalty, integrity, prudence, thrift are all values we all hold to, although some hold tighter than others and some are more able to be who they aspire to be better than others.

I disagree about your characterization of liberals.  All of the volunteers at the Pilgrim Community Soup Kitchen were strongly for Obama except for one African-American man who recently retired from a career working for the city (and St. Louis has always been Democrat).  They are liberals who volunteer at a local charity.  The conservative groups who give away prepared food require that the recipient hear a message designed to reform and redeem the benighted souls.

As for the role and size of government: I don’t know anyone who wants big government.  My liberal friends want smaller everything (Small is Beautiful) and that would include government if we could find a better way to provide the services we think should be universally available.  There are some things which just aren’t going to happen if government doesn't do them.  (The guy whose efforts ultimately resulted in the birth of the Internet—no, not Al Gore—worked for the Defense Department but took the idea to IBM and someone else and got turned down before he got government to pony up the development money.)

We both seem to be unclear about the differences between liberals and conservative, left and right, red and blue.  We can discern Republican and Democrat but that is because folks make their own choices.  What is the conservative position on climate change?  That seems to depend on which conservative you ask.  Certainly a conservative is not the same as a conservationist.

Liberals and Conservatives

The conservatives I hang out with do not fit the model. Actually, I find the moral foundation of liberals and conservatives to be much the same. The difference then becomes the methods of turning these values into action. The liberals I know volunteer for fund raising events for local charities while the conservatives volunteer at the local charities. Liberals believe that money and government action are the solutions to social issues while conservatives favor personal involvement.
Liberals then have a more visible footprint where social programs are concerned. They may well think conservatives are opposed to social causes because conservatives oppose large government programs supporting those causes. Conservatives channel resources directly to the causes they support while liberals channel resources through the government.
We could say, "What difference does it make whether funding comes directly from the community or through the government?" The distinction is that organizations dependent upon government for resources must design and continually redesign themselves to appeal to agencies. They generate monstrous piles of paperwork. Not only is there significant waste involved but the agency designs itself to work with more with government than with people. The closer I work with local agencies the more I see how the growth of government negatively impacts the ability of local agencies to provide services.

What Liberals and Conservatives care about

A recent article by Tom Jacobs of Miller-McCune reviews the work of Jonathan Haidt, a moral philosopher and psychologist at the University of Virginia.  He has a very interesting take on what distinguishes liberal and conservatives.  He suggests that there are five fundamental moral impulses:

Harm/care: It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering.

Fairness/reciprocity: Justice and fairness are good; people have certain rights that need to be upheld in social interactions.

In-group loyalty: People should be true to their group and be wary of threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty, and patriotism are virtues; betrayal is bad.

Authority/respect: People should respect social hierarchy; social order is necessary for human life.

Purity/sanctity: The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, are all good. Pollution, contamination, and the associated character traits of lust and greed are all bad.

Put briefly, liberals focus on the first two and conservatives on the last three.  I recommend the review.

Common Ground, At Last

Edison Lee tells it like it is.

Civil Discourse III

With regard to truth: That which is true is that which accurately reflects reality. Falsehood is a bad map with which to build meaning. It leads us to do things which don’t work for us. They are not useful. They don’t solve the problem.

With regard to facts and opinions: A fact is that form of data which appears to be fully objective. Facts are observation that can be verified. The problem with facts is that they are often not true. Opinions can be true but they can’t be verified the way facts can. Opinions are not less important, just less verifiable.

With regard to conflict: I take pains in my book to suggest that conflicts are the circumstances of others not being as we want them to be, not the strategies we use to try to resolve them. A conflict is not the same as a fight. I don’t know that the conflict is personal, but you certainly see the world differently from the way Frank Rich does and, for that matter, I suspect you see it differently than Glenn Beck does.

With regard to being “mean spirited:” While the banter is no doubt good for business, I see being mean as associated with doing something which is harmful to another while being fully able to see that the harm is being done. It isn’t mean if it is an accident, but if I do something which is harmful to another and I have every reason to know my choices may do harm, I am being mean.

So, does it make sense to you that someone listening to Glenn Beck might come to the conclusion that President Obama is racist, is fascist, and is a communist? Does it seem like Beck is building a case that supports those opinions? And does it seem that doing so could be understood to be harmful to the President?

Civil Discourse II

An engineer looks at his world through the eyes of an engineer. Pastors and counselors will look at the same scene and see it perhaps differently. As I look at the world I see truth as good, right and useful. I see 'not true' as flawed, failed and without merit.
So, when I read Frank Rich's piece in the Times, I breezed past his opinions without much reaction. Opinions are not about fact; they are just interesting. What I choked on was the mis-statement of fact. My own experience is different from that of Mr. Rich. I call his experience flawed and declare that he failed as an observer. I see no personal conflict here at all with him. I merely point out his error. I prefer suggesting he was not paying attention to the broadcast than to say he lied. Perhaps he read the work of someone else rather than do his own research. Perhaps the paper told him to say that.
Frank Rich and Glenn Beck frequently toss barbs at each other, each sharing his own opinion. I can see this as "conflict" although the word seems a bit too strong. Since neither is mean spirited, it seems more like banter than anything else. I'm sure the continued dialog is good for both mens' business.

Civil Discourse

Bruce, you and I have been having a conversation by email that I want to carry onto the blog.  For our readers, here is the conversation so far.

Knowing that Bruce is a follower of Glenn Beck and not a fan of the New York Times I was struck by a recent column by Frank Rich. Rich has been with the NYT for nearly 30 years, the last 15 of which he has been writing opinion columns for them.  His column was actually somewhat sympathetic, to my way of thinking, to the concerns Beck raises and which energize his followers.

Bruce’s response was to point out how much the NYT gets Beck wrong and even suggested that they didn’t even watch the show in which Beck allegedly accused Obama of being racist, fascist, and communist.  If they had they would have known that he only accused Obama’s associates of being so.

During the show, Beck questioned Obama’s true political beliefs in that he had surrounded himself with black nationalists, avowed fascists, and Communists.  He stopped short of accusing the President of being a racist, but not very short. [email by Bruce to Mark]

I doubt that we are going to have agreement about what a racist, a fascist, or a communist even is, much less, who is one.  My concern has more to do with the observation that even Frank Rich is acknowledging the high level of anger and distrust that is present in these conversations.  I am wondering if we would like to have a discourse which leads to a productive use of anger and the construction of greater trust?

To my way of thinking we would do better to try to resolve the conflict.  That would require us to have a sense of what the conflict is about and what it would take to resolve it.  I must say, I don’t know what the conflict is about.  The government is making choices which scare and hurt people, and those people are reacting in anger.  But I am not sure that even the people who are angry know clearly how it is they are being harmed. 

If we can clarify the issue, then the next question is, “What would it take to resolve the conflict?  What do we mean by resolution?”

If what we mean is that my side makes the other side lose, then name calling makes sense.  It is a way of making the other look bad or silly.  But if what we mean is that we come to a way of working together that gets everyone what they need, then name calling is just another way of picking a fight.  What we would find as a more constructive strategy would be to see if we can each see the validity of the other’s perspective, even when it is not one we hold to ourselves.  This is what I see Frank Rich trying to do.  He is trying to appreciate the validity of the point of view of Beck and his followers.  As hard as that is to do, I think it is a much more constructive tactic than calling people names.

1. America really is good

Saying this does not imply that other countries are not good or that every individual or societal decision is "good." It does acknowledge the fundamental value that we all have. Too often, we become convinced that our shortcomings make us "bad." Those who might wish to oppress or surpress us have to first convince us that we are not good. Some suggest that our society must "pay" for the wrongs our citizens committed in the past. We don't insist that we are perfect, just good and worthy of God's love.

9. The government works for me.

The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.

Which why this is our government. We are the government. We control it, it doesn’t control us. We are a democracy.

But again, who is the them. A government is an institution, not a group of people. It is the laws and the policies and the agencies we create for our common welfare. Making the government into our enemy denies our responsibility for having created this mess in the first place. It allows us to claim that this mess is someone else’s fault.

It seems to me that the relationship we have with the government is not so much one of authority in which someone has the right to tell someone else what to do, as it is a kind of mutual accountability. The government can tell me that I have to pay my payroll taxes and if I don’t, I am going to experience consequences. I want to live in a society in which there are clear rules and everyone has to abide by them equally [see #5]. But that means that the government can control me. I have to answer to the government.

On the other hand, I am one of the owners of the system. It serves at my pleasure as I vote for it and pay for it. I am the boss… as is everyone else. We share that title equally, regardless of class, or race, or gender, or ethnicity. I love this country.

8. It is not un-American

It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.

As I said before, this is a no-brainer. I don’t get why this is a principle of a protest movement. The only people I have heard voice a different opinion were those who said things like, “America, love it or leave it.” They opposed protest but they were all conservatives.

7. I work hard for what I have

I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.

Well, I don’t know how hard I have worked. Actually it seems pretty easy given my privilege. Nevertheless, I am happy to share it as I can. I am not aware of the government forcing me to be charitable. As I say, I am happy to be charitable, but I just don’t notice anyone forcing it.

Are we talking about taxes here? Because I don’t see taxes as having anything to do with charity. It seems to me that paying taxes is the price one pays for living in a free society.

As to whether we pay too much in taxes, I just don’t see that as the issue either. I have paid $30 for a meal and thought I got a great bargain and I have paid $10 for a meal and felt ripped off. The issue is the value, not the cost. Where we have waste we should trim it. But we pay a lot less in taxes than they do in Europe.

There are some things I would prefer to buy with my taxes than to have to shell out every time I need it. There in Kansas you have a turnpike for a part of the Interstate system. You have to pay a toll. We have to pay gas taxes here in Missouri. Maybe if I lived in Kansas and I never took the turnpike I would think I was getting a good deal, but it seems like a bother. I drive in Chicago sometimes and the toll roads there are an absolute pain.

One of the things I am happy to pay taxes for is public schools. That is how we got our education, but beyond that, I really want to live in a society of well educated people. People who are not well educated can easily fall prey to all sorts of charlatans who get wrapped up in appealing to the baser nature of folks and have them following conspiracy theories like rats after the Pied Piper. Better that we should have a well educated populace who knows more about what they want than about what they don’t want.

6. I have a right to life, liberty

I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.

So this one took me to the web site ‘cause I really can’t tell what it means. I didn’t find anything there that explains it.

I don’t know anyone who is against life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness. I think the issue is the equal results guarantee. As nearly as I can tell, this is about some people thinking that there should be a level playing field.

Bruce, you and I are first world white males who grew up in an upper middle class neighborhood which was safe and clean. We went to excellent schools which were well staffed and well funded. We had a grandfather who paid our way through college and his bequest got me half the way through graduate school. No student loans. No work study. Our parents read books and challenged us to expand our vocabularies. They remained in a stable and happy marriage until Dad died. We continue to have the support of our mother into our 60’s. We are so incredibly privileged.

Some people didn’t have that ladder to stand on. They will have to work really hard to attain what we were handed. There is no guarantee of equal results.

5. If you break the law

If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.

I don’t know if Justice is blind. It seems to me that wealthy white folks get a much better deal than people who are poor or have some pigment. Maybe what they mean is that Justice should be blind, but I don’t know that I like that either. It seems to me the Justice needs all of her faculties if she is going to set things straight.

If this means that the legal system should be a force for making the crooked straight and the high places low, I am all for that. Some see that as judicial activism, but I see it as the creation of justice, not just the rote enforcement of laws. But maybe they do mean they want blind justice. So do they want Justice to be blind or not. Again, I’m confused.

4. The family is sacred.

The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.

Now these principles start to get a bit more complex [except for #8 which is a no-brainer].

Let’s start with sacred. This really only means “set apart” but in common usage it is a religious term which means “special” and in some contexts (like with Indiana Jones) can mean “you better not mess with this or all sorts of bad things will befall you.”

Then there is family. This is a concept which we have trouble defining clearly. Some people mean a husband and a wife and their immediate children. Some will mean any blood relative. Some mean those who reside in the same house. I wonder if the two gay white men and their adopted black son in my church fall into the category of family. Will the authors of this document hold their family sacred?

I like the use of the term spouse. That is gender neutral and applies equally to gay and lesbian marriages. I like the implication that the relationship is mutual and neither has a right to dominance over the other. No “head of the household” stuff here. But what about the ultimate authority? I thought that was God.

But I guess what they really mean here is not that the marital unit has ultimate authority but that the government doesn’t. I really like that. I don’t want anyone in the government telling anyone in my family what they can and cannot do. I especially don’t want the government telling my daughter that she can’t have an abortion if she wants one.

Nevertheless, I would just as soon have someone in the government tell my neighbors what they can and cannot do when they are having a loud party and I want to sleep.

I guess my biggest problem with this is that it suggests that the government is somehow the other. What happened to government of the people, for the people, and by the people? If we aren’t the government in a democracy, who is? Are we only talking here about those people who get a government paycheck? Are we talking bureaucrats and congressmen and judges and firefighters and cops? Are we talking about teachers? Are we talking about my wife?  But she is my spouse.  Or is she the government. I’m confused.

3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.

Now this is one I can really get behind. First of all it centers on honesty and affirms honesty as a central good and, second, it acknowledges that honesty is a skill we can build with practice. We can get better at it.

It seems to me that honesty is something we get better at as we notice that there are a series of steps we have to take to be honest. First of all, we have to recognize there is something which is the truth. Just because something is a truth claim which appears in the form of a fact doesn’t mean that it is true. I can state confidently that I am two meters tall, but that doesn’t make it true.

Second, we can discover the truth, or at the very least we can approach it. We can discover some things that are truer, or closer to true, than are others. This is hard and it takes diligence, but it is possible.

And third, we can speak the truth we discover. This takes both humility and courage, but it is possible. And we get better with practice.

What makes this hard is that what is true is often not the same as what I want to be true. Can I let go of my attachment to things being as I want them to be and simply acknowledge what they are? And can I figure out why I want things to be other than they are and, rather than insist that they are as I say, actually work to make things be more as we need them to be?

2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.

I am particularly puzzled about the use of capitals in this one. Sure, “I” and “God” get capitals, and some people think that anytime a pronoun refers to the divine principle it should be capitalized out of respect, so I guess that covers “He.” But in this context where the authors are asserting a position which they see as a contrast to that taken by “them,” it makes the He stand out as a statement that God is male. This is a position which is so gender-centric it almost seems quaint. Does anyone really think that God is more male than female? I guess so, but that sure seems to me to diminish the nature of God.

This God is in the Center of my Life, not at the periphery and not of my… what… Death? I agree that life is better lived with an awareness of our relationship to the divine at its center.  I just don’t get the caps.

So I don’t know why they didn’t capitalize believe. It seems that is the operative word here. What I am left wondering is what they believe about this God at the Center of my Life. The crucial question is not, “Do you believe in God?” but “What do you believe about God,” or even, “What God do you believe in?”

1. America is good.

Now, this is a very interesting place to start. America = good. We can look at this equation from either side. America could equal other things besides good. It could equal spoiled, or it could equal imperial, or it could equal corrupt, or any one of a number of synonyms for bad.

From the other side it could be that while America is good, Iran is bad, or maybe Pakistan, or even Israel, certainly France.

It seems that America as the term is here used refers to those people and institutions that the authors identify with. This was written by Americans so America is us. This is about healthy self-esteem.

I am concerned though that the identification is with who we are, not with what we do. Everyone is good. Not everyone does good. Some of my actions are good, and some are not so good. This affirmation that America is good seems to minimize the fact that some actions taken by Americans, or even by the nation as a whole, are not always all that good. Some actions are better than others.

It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.  Not that cursing the darkness is such a bad thing, it is just that lighting a candle is better. Invading Iraq turns out to not have been such a good thing. That doesn’t make us bad. It just means we had a collective lapse in judgment.

The 9/12 Project

The 9/12 rallies this weekend have been largely characterized as "anti-healthcare, anti-Obama or anti-Democrat." Surely, there were some there who fit this profile. The core of the movement, however, is concerned about growing corruption in government at all levels and from both parties.
The 9/12 project seeks to return American to the strength and values found on 9/12/01 and consists of 9 principles and 12 values. They are:

The Nine Principles

1. America is good.
2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.
3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.
4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.
5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.
8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.
9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.

The Twelve Values

1-Honesty 2-Reverence 3-Hope 4-Thrift 5-Humility 6-Charity 7-Sincerity

8-Moderation 9-Hard Work 10-Courage 11-Personal Responsibility 12-Gratitude

On the face of it, this doesn't sound too threatening or divisive. The project seeks to have all government officials sign this. It is not a Republican v. Democrat thing or a left v. right thing, just a return to the core values of the Consitutional Convention.

Health Care Heat

So what were the 9/12 demonstrations about?

CBS and NBC are perceived to be more sympathetic to Democrats and Fox is more conservative and aligned with Republicans. In a post-modern world we cannot be surprised that everyone has a perspective. But we don’t have to imagine a conspiracy to explain why people see things differently than I do.

I agree that the heat about health care reform isn’t really about health care reform. Joe Wilson didn’t yell out, “You lie!” because he hasn’t read the bill, but because he doesn’t trust that what the bill says is what will actually happen.

So how will defeating the health care bill result in a government which is more responsive and responsible? This appears to me to be a classic case of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.

Opposition to Health Care Reform

As nearly as I can tell, the issue on the table is not about health care delivery so much as about health care payment.  Those concerns are related in so far as the current consumer of services—the customer for health care—is not the patient but the payer.  The Health Care Delivery System is geared toward the needs of the insurance companies and the government (Medicare and Medicaid) not to the people who are sick or injured.

You suggest that people are opposed to altering this system.  It seems to me the problem is not that people oppose reform of the system, but that the reforms don’t actually address the problems most of us encounter with the system.  The barriers we face to health care reform at this point are from the political system itself, not from the issues we are trying to address.

One major feature of the political system that is clogging up the debate is the tendency to adopt a stance and then vilify anyone who doesn’t hold to it, rather than promote the qualities a particular stance would create.  For example, the “death panels.”

Some advocates want people to have as a part of the services they receive which are considered to be health care, support for making end of life decisions.  These are complicated and have huge implications for how we spend the last days of our life and what sort of legacy we leave (Do I want to give the gift of sight by leaving my corneas?).  Somehow this gets turned into the notion that a government bureaucrat, worse, a team of government bureaucrats will decide what services a given person may have at the end of life.  This is a straw man.  It doesn’t promote the conversation, it shouts down those we have turned into opponents.

From my point of view, how we have the conversation is as important as what we talk about.  So my hope for our conversation is that we get to the issues in a manner that respects the integrity of those who see things differently. 

Obama’s School Speech

Mark –

   The name is great.  No, I do not consider myself as arch-conservative.  Yes, I frequently throw out ideas to see what kind of thinking I can stimulate.  And, I correspond with folks holding a fair spectrum of political beliefs. 

   The whole school speech thing today was a good example of what I’ve been seeing from the White House.  Had the President just been in touch with the concerns of the population, there would have been little if any controversy.  Instead, he broke with tradition / protocol and only released the text at the last minute.  This goes back to my main concern about the man; he has no management or administrative experience at all.  Regardless of where you stand on health care legislation at the moment, you can see how his complete lack of leadership and his waffling on public option has infuriated opponents and left supporters feeling betrayed.  He complains about special interests opposing reform. Shucks, he’s already signed up the AMA, the drug companies, the unions and pharmaceuticals.  The only people yet to sign on are the American voters. 

First Post

Here we go!