If there was one issue you’d think we’d all… communists,socialist,fascists,Marxist… more commonly referred to as, Republicans and Democrats, be with one on it would be pink slime. What the hell is pink slime? Oh no, you really don’t want to know, but I guess you probably need to in order to see just how out-of-fucking-whack our political climate has gotten since a black man was voted into the office of the President..
mmm…mmm… goood! Just like mom used to make.
Look, I know it’s supposed to be “safe” for us but does that mean it’s ‘good’ for us?
We have more rapes,more crimes,more illegal drug use..Why? Is there something in the water? Something in the food? I really don’t know, I don’t think anyone knows but with the shit that’s being put into our food and water? Is it any surprise?No. The surprise is, that we can’t even agree on what we should or shouldn’t be eating. Michelle Obama started a ‘get fit’ program called “Let’s Move” to help lessen childhood obesity.With that in mind, a school in Pennsylvania stopped serving so much sweet crap to their student and instead of thinking “Hey ,what a good idea”, Sarah Palin responded by going there, insulting the program by labeling it a ‘Nanny-State’ and served sugar cookies to the kids in the audience…. really? I mean.. REALLY? Is she that partisan? So partisan that when the Obama’s want to teach kids to eat healthy,get fit, and become less obese the “Right’s” answer is to call it a Nanny State and served ‘dozens and dozens’ of sugar cookies?
In the United States,the additive itself cannot legally be sold directly to consumers, but can constitute up to 15% of ground beef without additional labeling,[9] and can also be added to other meat products such as beef-based processed meats.[9]Prior to the invention of the disinfection process, beef scraps could only be sold as pet foodor as an ingredient for cooking oil.[4]
Who wants a burger?
These guys sure do…
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Brownback, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, Nebraska Lt. Gov. Rick Sheehy and South Dakota Lt. Gov. Matt Michels— all agree with the industry view that the beef has been unfairly maligned and mislabeled and issued a joint statement earlier saying the product is safe.
Afterward, Perry, Branstad and others ate burgers made from the plant’s meat at a news conference.
“It’s lean. It’s good. It’s nutritious,” Branstad said as he polished off a patty, sans bun.
Now, why did they do this? Shouldn’t we all agree that something that was, up until recently, fed only to dogs but is now being fed to Americans should probably be reconsidered? Naah, we don’t need no stinking regulations and food safety people telling us what to eat and we damn sure don’t want the beef industry to label their ingredients on their food so we can chose for ourselves what we want to eat. That’s just simple communism there folks. We don’t make big business practice fair trade here in this country. We just keep shoveling the shit they give us into our bodies and ask for more and if anyone tries to warn of us of the dangers of things like pink slime or childhood obesity, a growing, dangerous epidemic in the only civilized country without a national health insurance by the way, we’ll fly to their town and serve them sugar cookies and eat their pink slime..
“Why are we here today defending a company that has a rather sterling record dealing with making a food product that is very much needed in this country in a very safe manner? Why are we here today?” Perry said.
Because that’s whats needed in this country my friends..
Yes, it’s another look at the comment section from random websites and news stories. You might remember some of them from Comment Watch I..
-Sure sounds like we are going to experience a re run of Germany in the 1930s. Either we get rid of the Democrats in November, otherwise you might want to find a different country to live in!
-The death panels are here. My parents worked 50 years, always paid their taxes, never accepted a penny of public assistance. Since Obamacare they have been denied medical care. I read the government form letter. This is genocide and we are all accomplices standing idly by as people are allowed to perish. We are no better than the Germans who allowed so many to be erased from this world. It is that serious. When we awake it will be from the guilt and shame we all share
-This is how it starts. It’s as if Hitler himself was in charge.
It just warms the cockles of my heart to see such.. uh, patriotism? Bi-Partisan yearnings? Anti-hate speech? Sure, ok. It is what it is… Anger, mistrust,adolescences,hate, and ignorance. So you might ask, why in the hell am I highlighting it? Well, because.. because the color of our President wasn’t the only thing that change that wintry November day 2 years ago. It’s the lesser known ‘change’ that was more damaging than the erroneously perceived damage from this White House and that was the day the Right found the internet. It was the day they figured out that they could ‘comment’ on a news story and since then… the ‘net’ has been bombarded with their drool.
Look, try as they might.. it just hasn’t been the pristine ‘ground roots’ movement untouched by ‘politicians’ or ‘lobbyists’ that caused this vitriol. It didn’t just spring up on it’s own like the Right pretends. It was actually the infamous Andrew Breitbart who ‘birthed’ all these joyous comments and the direction they took. When telling the world about his delusions and paranoia of Liberals and President Obama he said
Political leftists play for keeps. They are willing to lie, perform deceptive acts in a coordinated fashion and do so in a wicked way – all in the pursuit of victory.
and he told the loyal brethren that for the Left…
The ends justify the means..
Now of course, the ‘right’ doesn’t employ these tactics. Why not you ask? Well, let’s look to the great sage Andrew and see..
The right, for the most part, embraces basic Judeo-Christian ideals and would not promote nor defend the propaganda techniques that were perfected in godless communist and socialist regimes.
See, the Right, the Conservative, they are just good Christian people who do not promote or defend propaganda because to do so is to engage in godlessness. So what are they to do to fight the Great Satan Obama and his hell-hounds known as the ‘Liberals’ or ‘Democrats’? How are they going to fight the godless socialists,communists? Does he want to fight them with God-fearing truth? Does he want to implement a Jesus-love your neighbor-style of attack? Does he hope to build a coalition of the Right, the Moral, the Just?
Nahhh… he wants to “lie, perform deceptive acts in a coordinated fashion and spread disinformation” Because you see, the ends justify the means. To him, Liberals “won the American presidency by breaking the rules of fair play.” To him “It is time to fight back, but it won’t be easy.” To him, if they want to win they must throw away their God and lie with the devils, they must “learn from its conquerors and employ similar tactics” .. and thus was born..
-The best example of a true “Racist” is Barack Obama, a/k/a/ Barry Soetoro. His wife is also a huge racist. Read the book: “OBAMA – INELIGIBLE TO SERVE – LIES, CRIMES AND DEADLY AMBITION” for the facts about Obama’s past, his family’s true origins, his racist politics, etc. It also details ALL the LEGAL FACTS that will ultimately remove Obama from office! Amazon has it – also Alibris, etc
-This guy is a redistributionist of wealth. He will ration your health care. Death panels are coming. Thanks Comrades for destroying America…
-When will the idiots that fell and voted for Obama realize that he hates our country and is trying to ruin it?He’s ruined the best health care system in the world, he’s fired the head of GM to show “he won” and has no business being president. This man has done nothing good for this country, it’s clear he hates the USA.
-Obama is KILLING this country.
-Of course he was a pure Marxist in 1980. He was a Marxist in 2008, and he is one in 2010.It is well known among conservatives and Constitutionalists that our President had the full, enthusiastic and public support of the Communist Party USA in 2008
You get the drift. “He’s calling for Death panels to kill conservatives!” “He hates this country!” Blah-blah-blah… he’s a Marxists, and Communists and a socialist who was sent here to eat the constitution and shit out socialism where all conservatives are turned into Soylent Green wafers.
It started off as comic-relief reading the musing of the insane, but then it turned into a kind of ‘terror’ when they started to grow in numbers and actually started infecting more and more of the ‘every day comment’ sections of any and all websites. After the ‘terror’ it turned surreal. But most of all, it was just plain addicting to look at. So today when I clicked a story on cnn.com with the headline that is sure to draw those uh… god-fearing conservatives..
I was shocked at the comments I found. I mean it, shocked! After 2 years of reading about the Kenyan who wasn’t our real president, who should be feared because he’s the anti-Christ, who is not just a socialist, but a Marxist and he’s racist to boot. I was floored when I got to the comments section of that article
-Little Stevie Forbes with his failed Presidential bids and telling us how we should think while he lives in his multi million dollar homes and could care less about business or the American People – only that his millions won’t get a ‘fair’ tax. What a slob.
-Forbes said it was unfair of Obama to take the excesses of some on Wall Street and punish all of them for it. But apparently it is perfectly alright for the excesses of some on Wall Street to devaste the economy of the entire country and cause of millions of people to lose their jobs, their savings, and their homes.
Regulations are not punishment. They are there only to prevent excess and abuse.
-If the President is anti-business. Then Businesses are against the American people.
Whoooaa! What? Where are my “Hate OBama!” comments? My “See, we told you he was Satan! and he hates capitalism!” Maybe if I scroll down?
-If this is Socialism,we will take it over Corporate Fascism anyday.
-…former Republican presidential hopeful…
And you would expect something constructive to be said by this guy?
-That was incredibly disingenuous, Mr. Forbes, after what Wall Street just handed America.
My taxes did not go down during the Bush years, and my pay never got raised, my bills went up and my employment choices went down.
My retirement fund was gutted.
How are YOUR finances looking Mr. Forbes?
Pretty darn good, I’d guess.
I am.. speechless.
Ok, not really speechless.. if that was true the blog would be over, but I am floored. I didn’t just pick those comments out of a pile of comments by the uh, god-fearing ones.. those are in consecutive order and it’s not just that story, which should have brought all a massive influx of crazy, it’s quite a few of them. What is going on? Breitbart created the ‘right-wing fanatics’ invasion of the web a month after this President was inaugurated and they have been hitting the comments section like a zombies searching for more brains and the Left just seemed to acquiesce to them. Could it be that Breitbart’s “Sherrod” fiction was final straw? The final piece of lying filth that the Left needed to take back the internet?
Could this be a sign of the re-awaken of the Left? The fact that it’s now proven beyond a shadow of doubt that the Right will make it up, will distort it, will edit and photo-shop it and when caught red handed, will blame it on the President for believing they had some kind of integrity?
Maybe, maybe the Left has finally taken enough and are finally ready to say so. Maybe they are finally ready to remind everyone of the realities of the Bush administration and the abuse of deregulation instead of allowing the fairy-tale of prosperity under Bush to continue. Maybe they finally feel their voices can out shout the rambling delusions of the insane. The first 35 comments on the Forbes story seem to say “Yes we can!” Maybe it’s finally time for the Left to remind everyone where we were and where will we go back if we allow the Right to spin their falsehoods unchallenged ….
[Howard] Dean is just as nuts now as when he was running for office. He needs to be put in a rubber room.
or maybe the God-Fearing are still in church and haven’t had time to drown out the voices of the Godless.
Either way, I didn’t get my “lies,hate, and delusion’ ‘fix’ today so I will look again tomorrow…
[Re:Fox News]Any station that reports ALL the news is not a “news station” to the apologists on the left fringe. How about some news coverage of the Mexican thugs who have taken over the ranches in Loredo, TX? The so called “news stations” at CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN are strangely quiet.
Hmmm… so much for the rumor mill, but the way the scumbag Marxist NWO teleprompter-reading jackass in the White House is protecting the borders it’s a wonder that Los Zetas aren’t running the entire Beltway corruption machine by now.
Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle surpassed more than a dozen GOP candidates to become the Republican nominee
Tea Party favorite Nikki Haleynabbed a majority of votes in the South Carolina GOP gubernatorial primary..thanks to endorsements from the Tea Party in general, and Sarah Palinin particular.
Tea Party supporters also nabbed a victory in the contested runoff in Georgia, where former state representative Tom Graves defeated former state House member Lee Hawkinsin a special election for the U.S.
Carly Fiorina [California] defeated Rep. Tom Campbell and state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore in the race to challenge incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxerin November. Fiorina, as with Haley in South Carolina, received an unexpected endorsement from Palin even though DeVore has been supported by Tea Party groups.
Drudge calls it, Republican Women Dominate... No, it’s not ‘Republican woman’, the ‘GOP’ was running their own candidates in some of those races and they lost to .. “Sarah Palin’s Tea Party Women”.
At this point I don’t know whether to be encourage or discourage. It’s encouraging because some of these candidates are pretty outside the mainstream, so outside the mainstream that the people who chose them as the nominee are totally against they platform they are running on..Take for instance Sharron Angle will be running against Harry Reid. Angle is an anti-tax crusader and an uncompromising conservative. She favors abolishing the Departments of Education and Energy, phasing out Social Security and Medicare, and removing the United States from the United Nations. That doesn’t exactly match up with the ‘Keep your hands off my medicare’ and “Save Social Security” people who founded the Tea-Party in response to the Democrats health reform. It also does nothing for the talking heads and moderate constituency crying for bi-partisanship when they nominate an ‘uncompromising conservative’. As for wanting to abolish the Department of Education and Energy . Well that’s stupid no matter who you are, the extreme anti-tax rhetoric becoming a reality will take care of that because the Department of Education will close it’s doors anyway from lack of funding. Ok, so will State Department,Department of the Interior, EPA,FCC,FAA and pretty much everything else except for the Defense Department, but I don’t think that Tea-party crowd would mind that too much.
But then, who will police the MTV Movie awards and censor their use of the “F-word”? Who will people complain to when the President lowers the office to that of pond scum by using the horrible ‘ass’? Oh my !
It doesn’t matter, the Church will teach our children since the Department of Education is gone and MTV will become more of a gospel network anyway.
And that’s where we cross over into ‘discouraging’. It’s discouraging because some of these candidates are pretty outside the mainstream, so outside the mainstream that the people who chose them as the nominee are totally against they platform they are running on and either they don’t know this so they are still thinking that when they say… “Well, when I say I want fewer taxes I don’t mean I want my social security and medicare cut off, I mean I want other peoples welfare cut off” that will protect their government entitlements. They are so blinded in hate and confusion that they aren’t seeing clearly.. or worse, they don’t see it and cannot connect it because they are unable to think for themselves in a 1+1 manor.
Naivety or stupidity.. not great choices .
The Tea-Party wants lower taxes, even though they admit their taxes are within reason. They don’t want socialized medicine even though they want their medicare. They don’t want government subsidizing incomes even though they rely on their social security. Yeah, that’s why I’m discourage, these people don’t know what they want they just know things went a little bit crazy here a couple years ago, the stock market collapsed,the banking sector turned out to be thieves, the top echelon turned out to be overpaid with multimillion dollar bonuses for jobs like running 100 year old establishments into oblivion. Years of their ignorance forced the car companies to falter, the same years forced us to drill baby drill in deeper and deeper territories without caring about the consequences of cutting corners. The invention of derivatives that was born through de-regulation, created a global collapse that put some countries out of business. Things went crazy, and they had no where to turn in their blame. There ultra-partisan ideological world that was living out there couldn’t look to the Bush administration for blame, they had spent too many hours defending justified torture, illegal wire-taps looking for terrorists, accidental outings of undercover spies and their ‘covers’. They couldn’t just turn on that which they had allowed to flourish and spent countless hours forgiving and defending… This conflict ‘crashed’ their minds and they have had to shed all major programs in order to re-boot in ‘Safe Mode’. The inability to look at their creation over those 8 years and the damage it created, has them living in a ‘critical systems only’ world right now where logic and reason have been jettisoned in order to survive.
I’ve seen welfare recipients whose only search for a job is to peruse Monster.Com for 5 minutes every morning, slam socialized medicine and food stamps. Not for them mind you, but for those people who are lazy and refuse to get out there and look for a job.
There simply is no reason or logic in that.
When this is pointed out to them? Even better.. “well I paid into it”.. um, so? You are also out there saying no one should have to pay into it because you are also screaming for less taxes. If you get your ‘less taxes’, true you won’t have to pay into it, but you also won’t get it when you’re the one on your ass looking for someone to pick you up and dust you off.
Naivety or stupidity?.. you chose.
The party dujour, looks at the ‘no fly’ list and questions how a ‘terrorist’ can be missed and allowed on a plane because hey, it says right there this guy is dangerous, but they defend his right to buy a gun because it’s our god given right! Second Amendment FTW!
They want the freedom to walk about in their lives unmolested by government intrusion, but they also want the government checking the birth certificates of any ‘non-american-looking’, citizen or not, just to be sure they belong here.
They want the EPA to stay out of their business, but want government to wait around with oil-spill booms and equipment when the private sectors causes a catastrophe .
Most of all the government they want is one that gets it’s funding from leprechauns and not by taxing it’s citizens.
Naivety or stupidity?
The extremism they demand, when laid out before them, will cause some re-boot again after the critical system scan tells them everything checks out. Those few will join the rest of us who understand what the fundamentalist will do to this country if given the chance.
No government in our private sector, instead the extreme religion policing of what we do behind closed doors.
No government in our health care, instead religion telling us what we can and can’t do with our bodies.
No government interfering with the private sector regulations or doling out welfare to the undeserving , instead the Church will feed us and God will end greed since it’s one of the seven deadly sins.
No government in our schools, instead our kids will be educated by the church or in church funded public schools because that is all that is left.
No government opening up the monopoly conservative radio has on our airwaves and instead allowing the Church to decide what we see, hear, watch, read and download.
The world they will create, will no longer have Freedom of speech because we don’t like what all people say or Freedom of religion because some of them practice non-Christians faith.
The Tea-party was a creation of the GOP to take on the Democrats in the mid-term. The GOP is learning a hard lesson this morning, when they allow a monster to grow unchecked and even aided by a so called ‘News’ channel, that monsters grow so big it eats it’s own. Don’t fool yourself, the GOP is more afraid of this monster than any Democrat. They court the religious and the militia, but they do it for their money and not because they believe in them. Those in the GOP who are still asleep and feeding the monster will awake one day to a world that they never intended to create, they just wanted to beat that Muslim and those Hollywood liberals. What they will see when they do rise from their slumber is a country ruled by extremism and turning more and more into Europe, only not the ‘liberal,socialized’ Europe they fear but worse, the Europe of the dark ages where freedoms,safety,wealth and status were given only to the church and the monarchy and the rest of us, including those who slept for so long, are only here to make those bishops and kings lives more comfortable.. at the expense of our own.
Yes, this seems to be the year of the woman, the Sarah Palin,pit bull with lipstick woman. The Democrats have harbored their own fear of that woman, and by voicing it over and over and over ad nauseum created their own monster. No, not a more powerful Palin, that would be the more acceptable of the choices, because what’s been created now is not a single Palin but and army of them spreading through the country and running for seats in Government. And is you think a Muslim, Nazi, Kenyan is taking this country to extremes just wait until the neighborhood good ole christian busy body, Gladys Kravitz’s take over and decide how we live.
Interesting post, EKG. It’s nice to see the left has found a new target for its vitriol now that George W. Bush is out of the picture.
“Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.”
-Eric Hoffer, THE TRUE BELIEVER (1951)
I’m sure Palin-bashing is a pleasant distraction from President Obama’s serial failures. At the very least, hatred for her has provided the faithful with a rallying point.
I ignored his glossing over of President Obama being a target of vitriol himself and asked him to enumerate Obama’s ’serial failures’. His reply was
Failure to get his health care bill and Waxman/Markey passed, even with total Democratic control of Congress; extraordinarily high unemployment rates; a rapidly rising deficit (over and above what was “inherited”); failure to close Guantanamo; take your pick. You can throw in failure to secure the Olympics for Chicago and declining poll numbers too.
as I started to answer him, I realized that these questions and answers deserve more space than the comments section of another blog-post. So I decided to answer them here….
First off, John.. I don’t know you. I don’t know if you are an extreme right winger, I don’t know if you are unbend-able in your opinions, I don’t know if you tow the party line no matter where it takes you. I know you are a friend of Mike’s, but I don’t know if you are as obstinately against looking at things from another perspective as he is or not. Because of this… uncertainty, I am answering with the assumption that you can see a different way of viewing things if shown, or explained.. I’m assuming that you are moderate and not hard-extreme like Mike.
No one likes to be blamed and no one likes their party to be blamed… but no one likes the other party to actually be at fault and share none of the blame and instead pile it all on one side. Of course I am going to place blame with the GOP on many issues, what I will wait to see from your reply to this is if you can see why I would blame them.. maybe not that you agree that they are to blame for alot of it, but maybe..hopefully.. you will admit that they do share, alot, in what is going on today. This is not a ‘well he did it first’ kind of blame. I believe I am laying out a valid argument. I hope to get more than “well you did it first” or the condescending “LOL” and “eyerolls” from you in your reply.
Now, on with the blog.
I agree with you John, it is Obama’s failure that Health reform has stagnated. He took it on faith that when Grassley, Snowe and other (R) said they were willing to work on a bi-partisan solution,they meant it. The rest of us were hearing Grassley call it a ‘death panel’ and how people should fear Obama’s health reform and how he’d never vote for it when he was home on the weekends, but the ‘bubble’ Obama lives in, the same that all Presidents live in, prevented him from hearing that “weekend, rally the base” talk.
I don’t think it was until Lieberman’s extreme, blatant and almost joyful bragging of this ‘partisan ‘obstruction’ that Obama finally wised up. When Lieberman, who just a few years ago ran on his “medcare for 55″ policy and was saying everywhere he could that this was the only solution he would support…immediately turned against it because, as he said, ‘well since liberals like my plan, I’m against it now’, I think the President started seeing what he was up against, and what he was up against was illogical and unreasonable opposition. Do you atleast agree that Lieberman’s flip on his own idea and the reason he gave, prove this illogical and unreasonable position?
Even if you don’t think it was illogical or unreasonable, how can you fault President Obama for not getting things done in that kind of atmosphere? We aren’t talking about anything rational that can be explained or even expected. Republicans and that includes Lieberman(I), were turning on their own plans, things they had campaigned on, the second after President Obama said “Hey, you know what.. your way does sound better so let’s include it”
At least you gave blame to Bush for the 1.2 trillion of it..
The CBO – which provides the official estimates of the budgetary impact of legislation and events such as wars and recessions – cites the housing market collapse and the financial market turmoil as the main culprits for the shortfall. The federal government has tried to combat the crisis by so far committing $7.2 trillion in investments and loans primarily to financial institutions.
The current recession “will probably be the longest and the deepest since World War II,” the CBO said. The economic deterioration since September, which was the last time CBO made deficit projections, is the biggest contributor to a sharp decline in tax revenue projections. The CBO expects tax revenue in 2009 to fall by $166 billion, or 6.6%, from the previous year’s collection.
That revenue decline, in turn, is the biggest reason for the worsening outlook over the next decade, said Diane Lim Rogers, chief economist at the Concord Coalition, a deficit watchdog group. “The revenue effect is huge.”
and Obama does own his own share.. But we know that he does not ‘own’ the entire problem. Why is it then that he is saddled with it? Where was this outcry of ‘budget deficits’ going back 3 years and more? How is this President Obama’s doing? He added to what was there yes, but what was the alternative when he stepped into the Oval on day one? You and I along with McCain and so so many others, know that had he won, McCain would have had to do the same exact things Obama did and would have had the same exact deficit today.. This really isn’t an Obama issue.. we all know this but since it’s going on under his watch-he gets the blame..Ok fine, but then we do have to put blame on the person who did create it. No, this isn’t a “he did it so I can to” this is a ‘I really had nothing to do with all of it, so stop blaming it all on me argument and that is based in reality, not GOP partisan amnesia and fantasy.
When Obama stepped into office he had to deal with 2 unpaid wars, unpaid tax cuts, a wall street collapse, a housing market collapse, an infrastructure that had been neglected for 10 years. The Bush budget deficit projections never included the war price, when Obama put it into his, like it should have been done in the 1st place.. it didn’t help his numbers at all, but atleast it was honest. Unlike those who are supposed to give us ‘fair and balanced’ news..
During the April 3 edition of Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, on-screen text repeatedly falsely claimed that President Obama’s $3.6 trillion fiscal year 2010 budget is “4x bigger than Bush’s costliest plan.” However, President Bush submitted a $3.1 trillion budget for FY 2009. For FY 2008, Bush submitted a $2.9 trillion budget.
But Obama deserves the blame for all this hiding, collapse and the unpaid bills that all came due just a few short days before he came into office? Which turned out to be more than anyone.. anyone ever expected as more came to light in the coming days after his inauguration? If you truly feel this blames lays on President Obama’s lap, can you explain how you came to that decision?
High unemployment
Yes.. there is.. but you can’t look at 700,000 jobs lost per month when he got there to 11,000 in December 2009 and call that a failure.. and you can’t look at the numbers we were at, are still at now and expect it to change the next day.. or even the next year, not if you’re also not going to allow a larger stimulus bill/recovery act. So Obama was wrong on his optimism those 1st days that the unemployment numbers wouldn’t rise past a certain level, fine. But is he to blame that the numbers rose to that level or just to blame for not realizing just how bad things were a split second after he got there?
Is it the loss of jobs you blame him for or the bad prediction on jobs lost?
Like it, love it, hate it… when no one else is spending any money… the government has to. For the Government to also stop spending money is a catastrophe on a scale that we’ve never seen before. When no one, banks, businesses,people on the street are spending anything.. the government has to. It has to beg,borrow and yes, steal to spend money in order to get people spending money spending again. McCain,Romney,Huckabee.. Reagan.. all would have had no choice, given the exact same circumstance, but to do the same. Or they would have watched while the country crumbled into oblivion the way Nero did. The ones like Mike, who argue that no, the government shouldn’t have spent a penny, can’t prove that their way would have been the right way or that we’d be any better off. They can’t prove it because there isn’t a time machine to take us back. So to me this argument is one of pure partisan fantasy. It cannot be proven and yet the GOP swears their way was the correct way. What’s worse is, they make 1/2 the country believe in this unprovable feary-tale. This is where the ‘faith’ and almost ‘religious like’ belief comes into play and it is the cornerstone of a lot of the GOP’s argument..
You can’t prove God doesn’t exist therefore he must be real.
They can’t prove no stimulus or Tarp would have worked better, therefore it must be true.
I call bullshit on both accounts… You want me to believe we shouldn’t have spent the money on the banks and on the recovery act, then prove it to me. Prove to me that not spending it would have worked better, that we would be in a better place, telling me you are right only because you say so doesn’t work, I am not a believer in your religion I need more proof than that.
By the way, John.. Most of the “YOU” I use are not directed at YOU.. it is a general term used when speaking. I hope you understand that.
Forty-three percent (43%) of Americans say it’s a bad idea for President Obama to go overseas at this time to help Chicago make its final presentation to the International Olympic Committee
“Listen I think it’s a great idea to promote Chicago but he’s the president of the United States, not the mayor of Chicago,” Boehner said. “And the problems we have here at home affect all Americans and that’s where his attention ought to be.”
and every night they were rewarded with their opinions by the likes of the GOP and Fox news telling them how bad it would crush us, how much money it would take, how horrible it would be. How dangerous Chicago is
Yes, Fox news is a factor when they have the massive viewer ratings they have, add them into Rush’s 20 million people a week rating and all of them chiming in on the evil that is the Olympics and why would we get it over a country literally begging to have to it because they want it?
But ok, Obama didn’t get the Olympics… that’s a failure on his part. But is that really something to hold against him? out of everything… is that an issue that truly pisses you off and just sticks in your craw?
Gitmo.
I’ve thought about this. Was Obama the naive one to think he could wave his ‘magic negro’ wand and close Gitmo? Or were we the naive ones to think he could wave his ‘magic negro’ wand and close Gitmo? I think it was both. I think a lot of us listened to his speeches and felt the inspiration and hope in that new era he talked about bringing. I think those of us who didn’t roll our eyes and didn’t decide that election night to do everything we possibly could to make his life hell and oppose everything.. everything he tried, actually believed this was the guy to change Rome back into the days of it’s purity,prosperity,glory and power. We (wrongly) assumed that Washington was also sick on the status quo, that Washington wanted to move on to a better place. That the country didn’t care if it was a Republican or Democrat, man or woman, black or white in office, we just wanted hope and change and not more of the same thing we had had for so long. We were all naive.
President Obama owns the failure to close Gitmo, but he doesn’t have sole ownership. Jesus, trust me I know it’s like a broken record to say the GOP also owns this since they stood in the way and did everything in the power to make sure 1/2 the country was against closing Gitmo and bringing the detainees here..but it is the truth. Through fear mongering and out right lies, GOP congressmen,governors,speakers,pundits went out to their communities , viewers, listeners and said “No way! Not in my yard, these guys are dangerous,these guys can’t be held in our prisons, these guys are super-powers that can only be controlled in Cuba” and we both know, hell we all know this is factually untrue. We are holding terrorists right now on our soil, we are holding terrorist right now in our prisons, we have been holding them for years. We are holding people who are worse! We, as Americans, have some of the most dangerous criminals in the world in our prisons right now. We have brain-eaters,baby-rapers,kidnappers,tortures,sex-slave traffickers ,abusers,bombers,pyromaniacs,serial killers, mass murders.. and we have extremely smart and devious criminals like Madoff, Abramoff and hunderds of others. But somehow we’re ill equip to incarcerate men who have probably never had running water until they got to our prision camp?
That’s the most bogus of all feary-tales ever told. This idea that America is too weak, too incompetent and unable to imprison anyone is incredulous. If this is your belief, that we are just unable to rise to meet this ‘danger’ can you explain your reasoning to me, explain it without “Because they should be in a military tribunal”
All of this leads to a drop in polls. You’ve seen the link to the numbers of Fox and just Rush, that doesn’t include Beck and all the other conservative radio. When they are all, from top to bottom on the same line in the play book, all condemning,ridiculing, mocking, lying,inflating.. all giving out the worst of the wosrt bias,slanted partsian spin.. add that in with an entire section of Congress that doesn’t just stand in the way, but also makes up feary-tales and they believe it, polls are going to decline. How could they not?
And what about that anyway. Isn’t it normal for Presidential numbers to come back down to a reasonable level?
The other day I was reading the comments on a reputable news sources story about this Baradar capture, 75% of them were things like “Well, now that we can’t waterboard the guy the CIA will never get anything out him, Thanks Obama for ruining this country once again!” If the only tool in the CIA arsenal is waterboarding… then we really are fucked. Because it’s the opinion that begs the conclusion that the CIA has always and only water-boarded prisoners to get information and it was just the 2-3 years that they were legally allowed to that the were able to function at full capacity in the light of day. The point I’m making is, somehow people think that CIA doesn’t know how to get information from anyone without waterboarding them? Is this not the most insane thing you’ve ever seen? Why is this?Where did they get the idea that this was the only tool the CIA had? If you can truthfully answer that, they you should be able to understand most, if not all of what it is I’m trying to show you.
Who is to blame for this? Not Obama.. but it is what he must fight against. The problem is you cannot argue with someone with that mindset. Their belief is again, religous like.. and cannot be changed,altered or enlightened.
Finally, I saved the best for last… “even with the democrats in control of congress”.. This is the most used response that I see for pretty much everything. This idea that just because the Democrats had a filibuster proof margine and didn’t use and some how it’s their fault is ridiculous . Listen, I’m going to tell you a secret that could get my liberal-card revoked ( ) unlike the GOP, there are different levels of (D). We don’t all think with one brain, we don’t all follow the leader like a flock of birds, that is what makes us ‘liberal’ or the favorite slam of the GOP, ‘radical’ . We think for ourselves and decide accordingly and not according to party/leader doctrine. We are just not that ‘religious-like’ in our faith and the following of party ‘dogma’. There are Democrats who don’t believe in abortion, there are some like me who believe in the death penalty and guns rights. To condem anyone.. any party for not just towing the party-line is asinine and to blindly follow the party-line used to be a bad thing.. but today, with the entire GOP saying “You can’t even get your party to all vote the same way and use that fillibuster proof majority” is so exquisitely sad, but still not as sad wanting and forcing any one party to act that way. I just can’t believe anyone, anywhere would want and encourage people to just blindly vote all (D) or all (R) depending on their party and then ridcule and condem anyone when they didn’t.
Besides any of that, this isn’t a one party system, the other side is supposed to help govern also!
This excuse…“Hey, you guys control congress.. it’s not our fault” and those using it are right though, the problem is the next thing they say to their audience,readers,constituents… and the next thing is invariably
“The Democrats need to listen to the country and work bi-partisanly”
In one hand there is a dare to use the majority, in the other.. a crying to all who will listen that if we don’t do something…have rallies, write letters, send in campaign money.. the Democrats will use their majority. It’s insane! They are literally damned for not using it by the GOP and some of their own and damned if the think about using it.
So John, what would you have them do? Which ‘evil’ do the Democrats pick? Do they follow in the last administrations path and issue Executive Orders, recess appointements, signing statements and push through everything the President says to push through no matter the consequence and just hope that the GOP won’t cry about it too much? Do they forget their own values and beliefs and just vote (D) all the way down the ballot like the GOP does and is encouraging, or really, daring them to do? What is your solution to this? When one party refuses to even come to the table don’t they force the other party to act as a single mind? Force the other party to do it all on their own, with their own philosophies?
Maybe the GOP is comfortable using a single-mind, but this is not and has never been the “Democratic” (party or poltical system.) way..
The GOP has blanketed the world with this falsehood that they want bi-partsanship on every issue, and yet just last week when invited to a health care summit, an ‘exachange of ideas’.. quite a few high ranking GOP’ers said they might be willing to come to the table…. just come to the table now, not vote a certain way or concede a certain point, but they might show up to the President’s bipartisan effort for health reform meeting but only if the Democrats dropped their health reform idea and adopted the GOP version. Eric Cantor flat out said that the “only way to bipartisan cooperation is if the Democrats fully embrace the GOP plan!” What? How is that bipartisan? How is that anything other than a great big “Screw you, It’s my way or no way and that’s the only bipartisan I agree with.. do it yourself if you don’t like it! Just remember I will blame you for doing it yourself if you do”
You cannot, as the losing party give that kind of demand.. that kind of close-fist demand.. and then claim you are the bipartisan party, yet they do, and no one calls them on it. So I ask you once again, is this really an OBama failure and where is any ire at the party that is actually holding bipartsianship hostage?
To me President Obama failures are..
He has moved away from a public option. He promised me a public option and I believed him. He has let the message on this and so many other issues get away from him. He had the advantage and he expected to find ‘Statesmen’ and ‘Adults’ in congress who wouldn’t bastardize everything they could to score a political point and while he’s finally decided to come out swingng and get the truth out.. he’s wasted vaulable time and his ‘capitol’ in the interim.
I see it as a failure that he is still giving contracts to the likes of Blackwater and doing it even though we know they are the evil of all evil. Why do we need to privately fund any war with a bunch of mercenaries? Why do we need them for private security? Why can’t we use the money and build up our military and pay our troops more? Atleast they have rules,laws and codes they must follow. Blackwater and the likes do things with our money and in our names that I do not think the majoirty of us want done in our name. I do not agree at all with their continued government funding. Bring the military back to do the jobs in our name with the honor and integrity that they will bring with them.
I see President Obama’s lack of authority with Wall Street as another failure. He needs to force those CEO’s to either get their sweet-ass to the proverbial ‘come to Jesus’ meeting.. or risk immediate stripping of the ‘handout, even if that means selling off part of the company to get back the money given to them. I don’t know who these people think they are, but when the President of the United States tells you to come to a meeting.. your sorry ‘hand-out-taking’ ass better get there before the ink is dry on the invitations. I don’t care if it was ‘foggy’ or not, take the damn train.
I don’t care about GOP crying that “OBama hates capitalism .. Obama is an enemy to buisness” because it’s a load of crap, what we had leading up to this meltdown was not capitalism .. it was rape pure and simple. It’s time Obama starts acting like the President he is and do something about these guys.
And finally.. He has failed at installing a new way of doing it, he has failed at starting a new era of bi-partsianship. He hasn’t failed for the lack of trying, he’s failed for the lack of realism. He believed he could change the climate of hate that is the US congress. Not a single congressman from either house or either party can say or do anything without checking a poll 1st. They are not there to govern like Obama is, they are there for the power and the paycheck. It is President Obama’s failure to not see this that irks me the most. It is his failure to not see that, no matter which way he goes the entire Right side will be against him as proven time and time again, even by adopting their own policies.. they will go against him. They will and have cut off their noses to spite their face.
President Obama is already lambasted as a socialist even when he’s cut taxes and wasn’t the one to create the largest ’socialist program’ in a generation or more. Well, if they are going to call him one anyway, then why not use that and go more radical on his ideas. We just proved a lot of the country is pro-radical change, even our supreme court is. So it is a failure on Obama’s part not to use the gift he’s been given by the Right. He will be slaughtered and lied about by them no matter what he does.. so he might as well do as he wants.
John, thank you for your comments.. I hope I have addressed them in a way that maybe didn’t change your mind.. but atleast gave you a different point of view and a way to look at it
Legally barred from discriminating against individuals who submit large claims, the New York-based insurer simply canceled lines of coverage altogether in entire states to avoid paying high-cost claims like Mr. Pearl's.
In an e-mail, one Guardian Life Insurance Co. executive called high-cost patients such as Mr. Pearl "dogs" that the company could "get rid of."
That's right, Mr. Pearl, is a "Dog" that the company needs to "Get rid of"
Let's put this is perspective for just a second. I told you about a friend of mine recently to try and put a face many of us know on this healthcare debate. I wanted Chuck's story to be on everyone's mind as they were regurgitating the latest poison from Glenn Beck's mouth. I wanted people to have a visual of the person they were condemning in their almost orgasmic need to have a United States President fail. A failure that some of these people dream of, masturbate to...pray for every chance they get. "At all costs" is the motto, "At any cost" is the pledge.
I failed of course, not even the plight of a great man and amazing friend to many of us made a scratch in the shell that surrounds these ideologues.
So I will try again.
Instead of Mr. Pearl, who has the same condition as Chuck, I want to you again put Chuck's name, his face, his interaction with you, his "self".. put him in this story. Does that do anything for you ideologues? Can you sit there and hear that Chuck is just a "Dog" who needs to be gotten "rid of" because he dared to buy an insurance policy, he dared to pay it, he dared to get a debilitating degenerative disease and most of all he dared to not die quickly enough? The company that waspaid to cover health costs can't cancel one 'dog' because it would be against the law, so they just cancel an entire state of 'dogs'. Is there any face I can put on this problem that will make a dent?
You may say "Oh but Kelly, I'm sure the courts will stop the insurance company from canceling everyone with this kind if policy. I'm sure a judge will see that this man, Mr. Pearl will die if this insurance company is allowed to cancel his policy." But you would be wrong.
A federal court quickly ruled that the company's actions were legal, so on Dec. 1, barring an order by the federal Department of Health and Human Services, Mr. Pearl will lose his benefits.
So much for that 'check and balance'.
For those that abhor government intervention, will you cry with Glenn Beck if the Health "Czar" Kathleen Sebelius orders the company to live up to it's contract.
Sadly, we all know the answer to that... Yes, yes you will.
Will those of you who even thought about trying to explain just how President Obama was creating "Death Panels" care to pick up your pitchfork against this actual 'death panel'? Mr. Pearl needs 24 hr nursing care, he is on a ventilator and needs hourly breathing treatments and continuous intravenous medication. Without this he will die, here is your Death Panel Sara Palin, will you 'tweet' about how evil this is? Will you take hundreds of thousand of dollars for a speech on this kind of injustice, will the people who aped your stupidity write Mr. Pearl or even Chuck's name on a sign and demand they not be forgotten?
Sadly, we know the answer to that is.. no, no you won't.
Guardian, a 150-year-old mutual company, reported profits of $437 million last year, a 50 percent increase over $292 million in 2007. It paid dividends of $723 million to policyholders and had $4.3 billion in capital reserves, according to its annual report. The company's investment income totaled $1.5 billion that year, a small increase from the year earlier.
This is who you protect with your hatred of a President. This is who you protect with your 'at any cost' ideologue.
"In an e-mail to four other Guardian executives entered into evidence in the Pearls' suit, company Vice President Tim Birely discussed how the company could"eliminate this entire block to get rid of the few dogs."
.. and don't think you can get away with the argument of "Well, you Democrats are in power now and we can't do anything stop you." It's condescending, it's insincere and it's bullshit. Most insulting of all.. you know it, snicker and use it anyway.
20 years ago a friend of mine took a ride with a person he had just recently started hanging around. He didn't know him too well but he seemed cool and they got along. That night the new guy told my friend he was going to rob a local mom & pop grocer for some extra cash. My friend wasn't a violent person, he wasn't a criminal, he wasn't a bad person in any way... but he because he was 17 and stupid he didn't speak up.
The new guy went into the store while my friend waited in the car, he could have left at that point but for whatever reason he didn't. After a few minutes the new guy came running back out, jumped in the car and away they went. They never spoke of what went on inside the store and it wasn't until the next morning when the police showed up at his parents house to arrest him that my friend found out that the store owner had been shot and killed by the new guy. My friend was tried and convicted as an accessory to the crime and is on death row awaiting his date with the executioner. Does he deserve to die for a crime he had no part in? Some would say yes he does, but then again.. they would also be the ones to tell Mr. Pearl to go out and get a job if he wants health care.
The real "Dog" here isn't Mr. Pearl and it isn't Chuck or any of the other poor souls who have paid their premiums each month only to have them canceled because they did not die quick enough. The real "dogs" are the insurance company who cares more about an enormous bottom line over the lives they are supposed to be protecting. You all fighting reform at all costs.. at any cost, this is the dog you have allowed into your bed by not saying anything even when you know what they are doing is not only wrong, dangerous and against humanity, but could possibly be murderous. Just like the saying "Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas" this is on you whether you like it or not.
The beast you fed,nurtured, appeased every step of the way while pretending "that's not what my belief..it's theirs".. and "Hey, you guys are in power not us".. that beast is self-aware and is devouring your party. That is who your next leaders will have no choice but to cater to. The metaphorically date with the executioner that you await for being an accessory to the crime, would be justice in and of itself if so many truly innocent people weren't being punished along with you. Don't believe there are 'truly innocent' people being punished? Well, I give you one final story
Underwriters, the people who are in charge of assessing risk for insurance companies, have decided that baby Alex's pre-existing condition — obesity — makes him a high-risk patient and have denied him coverage.
His parents were shocked.
"I could understand if we could control what he's eating. But he's 4 months old. He's breast-feeding. We can't put him on the Atkins diet or on a treadmill," joked his frustrated father, Bernie Lange, a part-time news anchor at KKCO-TV in Grand Junction. "There is just something absurd about denying an infant."
The beast you continue to actively support or just ignore because the end is justified by the means for you... denied a 4 month old, breastfed baby for the pre-existing condition of obesity.
This was brought up on the MucheDumbre forum today in regards to a government involvement in healthcare..
Essentially, that is my problem with all of this. I already have a problem with the FDA and AMA being owned by drug companies, why make the problem bigger?
If this is how you feel, that private companies already have too many fingers in the political arena and are turning policy in their favor, then the only option for you is the public option.
As it stands now all healthcare options are owned,regulated,price marked and everything else relating to them by thefor-profit health insurance companies. Your doctor doesn’t decide his fee, Cigna,Aetna,BCBS decide what and if they will pay him.It is the insurance company who decides what they will pay, who they will pay, where they will pay.. who can get their product and who can keep their product even after paying for it for decades. Without a public option, the way it is now will look like the ‘better’ way in 5 years..
Think about it for second… A not-for-profit public option that would be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects, going from the Government to thehealthcare provider(i.e.. doctor,clinic,hospital) is a direct line to the ones doing the service. Yet, this has been deemed evil,socialistic,freedom robbing and bad because it is the government who is collecting the money and giving it out to the providers…
The other alternative is that we subsidized[pay for] not just the >5% who would chose a public option but all 45 million uninsured American with a credit that comes from private and public funds{i.e. taxpayers}. The difference is that the money goesdirectly to the insurance company where they take their 30% cut and then decide whether to pay the doctors/hospitals the rest. It is a mainline from your wallet into the wallets of the same types you say you are against, the private companies- NOT the doctors and hospitals proving your care.
Somehow the government paying the insurance company with taxpayer’s money instead of the provider being paid with the fees that those in the option have paid for is the better option for some. How it’s better or less socialist for the government to subsidize the insurance companies is something I haven’t had explained to me even though I keep asking,but let’s keep moving.
Not only will the government subsidize the insurance company, but without regulation or something in the market competing with them, the insurance companies can get their ‘asking price’ for any policy they offer, meaning they can start charging the government whatever they want for the healthcare the government is buying from them..while still retaining the right to decide how much they will reimburse the doctors,hospitals or if they even will reimburse them.
What is being asked for here to control this is the choice of a public option, for less than 5% of the uninsured in the United States . Less than 5% of those uninsured now, not 20% of the entire population, 50% all of the United States of America, but >5% of the 18% who are without insurance..
I’m not being a smart-ass.. but read that again before moving on…
“Let me be clear — it would only be an option for those who don’t have insurance,” he said.
“No one would be forced to choose it, and it would not impact those of you who already have insurance. In fact, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates,
we believe that less than 5 percent of Americans would
we’re talking millions of people yes, but single digit millions.
The not-for-profit public option will force these unregulated companies to atleast keep their fees reasonable. It won’t put them out of business, the creation of any reform will ensure 45 million more people buy their product. That’s not taking money away from them… that is a windfall of fat cash coming their direction.
The not-for-profit public option will force these companies to own up to their contracts and actually pay out more claims, because to deny someone coverage because of a preexisting condition will become illegal. It will force them to become a better product than they are right now, because right now the ‘free market’ is allowing them to have all the marbles whether those be taxpayers marbles or private marbles. It is allowing them to collect whatever amount of money they want while choosing when and who to pay it out to. You purchased your insurance plan to cover your medical costs, you didn’t purchase it so they company you chose could have complete autonomy to do with your money as they saw fit and thus leaving you responsible for the doctor bill at the same time.
Again, read this again. You pay the insurance company to cover your health care costs.. if they deem your claim unworthy, you are still responsible for the payment to the doctor/clinic or hospital who treated you. So now you have paid the insurance company to keep your money and the doctor to treat you. Seriously people, if you just want to send your money to someone while still being responsible for your bills, I’ll be glad to accept it instead.
To put it simply, there are only two choices here.. .We either pay the insurance companies to insure the uninsured and thus, paying their fee for doing this or we pay the doctors directly to treat the uninsured. If you don’t like big Pharma being involved in the politics and decision making, then you can’t be against something that takes big insurance out of the politics and decision making on people lives.
What is wrong with giving the overwhelming majority of the people a choice of what is out there? That’s all, a choice.
I found a quote from Bill Moyers on another blog that said
“we should be treating health as a condition, not a commodity.”
I can’t imagine it being put into simpler terms.
If you are wondering just how much around the fingers of the insurance CEO’s the politicians have wrapped themselves, there are calls for ‘tort reform’. This will in essence regulate how much money a lawyer can be paid for his services. Why are we so against providers of the actual services being reimbursed for their product and so much in favor of the companies who offer no other service than to hold our money and decide who or if they will pay with it. If the doctors and lawyers charge too much, isn’t one of the tenents of ‘free market capitalism’ that they will be weeded out as their competitors offered the same for less? Isn’t government imposing the will of a select few companies, who service is solely to pay these doctors and lawyers the money you gave them, isn’t imposing those companies will over the will of the ones doing the service you hired them for, more detrimental to the idea of Capitalism?
Anecdotal evidence is never a game-changer unless the subject of the evidence is a great friend who has accomplished so many things in his life and has made the best out of a crappy hand life dealt him. Then, sometimes.. not always but sometimes.. that kind of evidence strikes the right cord in the right people and then change really does come.
I’ve tried to give you guys the examples of people I knew, in the hopes that you may have known people like them and/or could feel the desperation of their situation and maybe want to find a way to help them, but I failed in bringing the people I was targeting over to just the idea that change is needed, much less my idea of what that change should be. But maybe this time, with the example being someone we all know, we all respect and care for.. maybe this is the straw that breaks the camels back for some people and maybe some of those will go on to help fight for what is desperately needed in this country, instead of trying to kill any hope at all of a reprieve for those that are stuck in a situation they had no control over.
Even though he gave me permission, I still thought about changing the name in this piece and just sticking to the story. I knew that even with omitting the name most of us would know who I was talking about with just one or 2 words about him so there was no need for him to be anything other than anonymous to the rest, but I don’t want him to be just another blind example, I want you to say his name in your head when you are fighting against health care reform. When you look at the words of the President
But what we can do is make sure that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that’s not making anybody’s mom better, that is loading up on additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care, that at least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what? Maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.
I want the name Chuck Conners aka Uselesslegs in your thoughts when you blithely mock this very real problem in our very broken system. I want Chuck’s story in the forefront of your brain, when you argue that we have the best care anywhere, that there is no such thing as that silly concept of doctors charging for a surgery when you only need a pill.. I want you to tell Chuck’s story to a friend or family member, and then explain to them why President OBama and the Democrats are just trying to kill this country and kill our ‘wonderful’ healthcare.
Before I continue, after Chuck told me his story and I started writing it I realized that this is the story for not having a public option, this is the reason why the government shouldn’t be in the medical insurance field. I know that there are blind loyalists out there who will miss the point of this story and only latch on to the easy part of the problem, they’ll do this because they don’t have the intellect to see the big picture, they are the ‘death panelists’.. and ‘birthers’…the ideologue, to them I will just nod and say “Yes Dear”.. I was worried about writing this because the lack of brain mass some of these people have is more than made up by their vocal abilities and abhorrent behavior, but if I want to be true, if I want to be honest.. this type of story should never happen. It should not happen with private or government run care. We need reform and anyone not seeing that, or not seeing that this is also a problem in the private sector needs to just go build another sign and leave the serious matters to the adults to figure out.
First a little back story for those that don’t know. Chuck has muscular dystrophy and it has progressed so over the past few years that he is completely dependent on a wheelchair to get around and someone to help him in and out of it. At 42, he’s already lived well past anyone’s guess…and he’s done so with a kind of dignity,humility and humor that I never knew existed. Chuck understands that people are uncomfortable with the disabled, we don’t know how to act, where to look, what to say, so Chuck takes it upon himself to break that uncomfortable moment with a self deprecating joke or a well-rehearsed fart noise. My oldest daughter was one of the people he endeared himself to immediately with his ‘ice-breaking’. She knew of him and his disability, but she didn’t know of his humor..yet. When he called my house and she answered, she very innocently asked “How ya doing Chuck?”.. His reply was a simple scream “I”m in a wheelchair.. HOW DO YOU THINK I’M DOING!”. She immediately stared to cry because she thought she had done something to offend him, she was in the act of throwing the phone at me and spilling the story out when I couldn’t control my laughing any longer, I told her to listen to the phone, and there was Chuck laughing while at the same time trying to soothe her into knowing he was just kidding around with her. He hadn’t joked with her to be mean to her, but he knew, like all people in his or similar situations know, that us ‘normal’ people just don’t know how to react to them. He taught not only her, but my younger daughter, that it’s ok to look at someone in a wheelchair, or someone who is disabled, it’s ok to talk with them and be relaxed around them.. He taught them that it’s ok to treat them as normal and to laugh with and enjoy them just as they would anyone else. For that I say Thank you, because I didn’t learn this ease and comfort until I was much much older and Chuck was the one who taught it to me also.
But, the perfect example of Chuck and the way he looks at life is right there on the back of his car, his registration tag, which simply reads…. “Gimpy”. The humor in that one word sums up the man that’s sitting the wheelchair inside that van.
When you hear Chucks life story, you can’t help but wonder what it would have been had he been physically ‘normal’, personally I don’t think he would have been as colorful, as funny.. and unique, what God took, he gave back in other ways. The stories he can tell you about how his father scared him with a tarantula, how because of the ‘fear’ practical jokes his father would play on him, he ‘accidentally’ hit his father in the head with hammer to save his older brother, the teenage girl who peed on his couch when a stuffed squirrel was thrown at her, and my family’s favorite.. when his poncho got stuck in the wheels of his wheelchair and he was stuck going in circles until his companions could stop laughing long enough to extricate him.. These are the stories that make him who he is and had he not had a debilitating disease, I wonder if would he have had the same sense of humor?
At one time Chuck was THE Jerry’s Kid. His face graced many a magazine and poster. Not only was he part of the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon’s we all used to sit around and watch all weekend, but he was also the youngest Jaycee and was an honorary member of the VFW. He’s made the best of what was given to him, but even with all of the support he was given by all of these great and selfless people and an amazing organization, if it wasn’t for the Medicaid/Medicare program, he wouldn’t have lived past his early teens. The Muscular Dystrophy Association helps with what they can, but they are not equipped to deal with it all.
For people like Chuck, the idea of a private insurance is laughable.. to them, the idea that a government run system would destroy what this country was built on, is an insanity. It’s because of medicaid/medicare that people like Chuck aren’t regulated to some orphanage or ditch out behind the woodshed. It’s Medicare/Medicaid that pays for his medicine, his doctors, his wheelchair. It was medicaid that came into his house recently and installed rails on his ceiling for a ‘body lift’ that can take him from his bed, to his toilet, to his bath. Until that day earlier this year when the rail was installed, Chuck hasn’t had an actual “bath” in years. Showers and sponge baths, sure, but a tub bath? No. He doesn’t measure life in grand increments, he’s never been able to, but to be able to finally sit down in a tub was a grand day for him.
It wasn’t until the other day that Chuck also found out just how horrible our system really is. Government run or not, he found himself in a pile of shit with no way out of it. The sad part is that I’m not exaggerating or hyper-ventilating hyperbole..
Chuck’s mother moved in with him some years ago when it became apparent that he was going to start needing more intensive around the clock care. He’s been able to do for himself for so many years, but his disease isn’t one that goes into remission or gets better over time, even the strongest or most lucky eventually fall victim to disappearing strength due the shrinking muscles. It’s because of his mother that he doesn’t need a daily visiting nurse, or God-forbid to live in an assisted living facility. It’s also in my opinion what has kept him going all these years, had she been like other parents who just couldn’t do it anymore and put him in a state run, or if by some stroke of luck, privately funded assisted living care, disease and disregard would have killed him years ago. It’s not that these places would have necessarily treated him poorly, but it’s just the nature of the beast that they zap your will to live in small increments over time and then there is the spread of colds,flu’s and other disease that affects someone like Chuck so detrimentally and are so rampant in the close confines of these homes. Yes, it’s my belief that his mothers sacrifice all these years has lead to his longevity, not just in the extended years of his life, but in the life he has lived over the years. A nursing home would have curb his spirit, his joy, his imagination.. it would have killed what makes Chuck, Chuck.
A couple of weeks ago Chuck’s mom was struck by an acute illness that required emergency surgery, which required an extended hospital stay and a long convalescence at home. In other words, now she needed to be cared for and not only was Chuck unable to do this in return for her sacrifice all these years for him, but his physical capabilities have deteriorated so much that he was left wondering who was going to care for him. He knew that his brother would come up and help him once, maybe twice a week, but he was also painfully aware that there were going to be times when he would be in need of assistance and no one would be there to help. I don’t mean in need of showers or baths, cooking food to eat, or help getting into bed. No, Chuck has learned to go without a bath or shower and use a washcloth, he’s learned to eat whatever is handy in his line of reach, and as for sleeping.. well he can just roll his chair up to the dining room table and rest his head on his arms and get a few winks that way. Things we all take for granted, things that are the extreme of simple to us.. well, he’s found his way to enjoy also. No, the help I am talking about is our own basic body functions.. urination and defecation. Chuck has found a way around those too, he just stops eating and drinking. But even this is not perfection.
Because he knew that he was going to need just a few minutes help each week until his mother had recovered, he called his medicaid office to ask for a visiting nurse or nursing assistant to come out 30 minutes a week to help him. Before I go any farther I want you to think about that. Try for a minute to think if you could limit yourself to a bathroom break at a predestined time, once or maybe twice during a 7 day period. Do you have that kind of control, do you think it would be easy on a Monday to just say to yourself “Ok, I can’t poop again until Thursday at 9am” . Welcome to Chuck’s world.
When he made his request to the insurance office, he didn’t ask for someone to come out every other day and bathe him, or every day to help him on the toilet. Like I said, those things he’s been able to curb by not eating or drinking. But even the best starvation doesn’t keep you from having to use the bathroom for an entire week and he knew that. So Chuck’s humble request was for someone to come out once a week and help him with that problem, the rest of the time he would ration his food and drink and ‘hold it’ until his brother could come up on the weekend. The medicaid representative was very helpful, she understood what he needed and told him she had just the thing for him.. a 90 day stay in an assisted living facility. Now, besides this being a death sentence for someone in Chucks condition, it was an absurdity to him because he didn’t need that kind of help, he just needed someone to come out and help him in and out of his chair for a couple minutes a week. He explained this again to the woman on the phone, but as sympathetic as she was, she couldn’t give him a visiting nurse or CNA.. she could only give him a 90 stay at his local old-folks home. Chuck, understandable upset, refused and then started the process of limiting his food,water and ‘holding it’…. and he almost made it.
It had only been a few days, he’d gone longer in the past, but whether it was something he ate that didn’t agree with him or whether nature just had to take it’s course, he failed in his attempted to not soil himself. It wasn’t much, just a little bit of a bowel movement, but it was enough that he knew he was sitting in his own shit and worse than that, there was nothing he could do about it anytime soon. Even if his brother came up right then, he was an hour away and Chuck would be sitting there in his own mess the whole time, and that is exactly what happened.
I’ve noticed that even the most ’shy’ of us reach a point where it doesn’t matter who sees or smells what, we just need help and we need it right then. That’s the place were Chuck was, sitting in his own shit, waiting for his brother to come up and help wash him up. Help wash the area on Chuck off, was his clothes off and wash his chair off. What a humbling experience this must have been, it had to have the most humbling hour of his life. But it eventually came to the point where he didn’t care who came in and saw or smelled what… he just wanted help. He found out those moments waiting for his brother to come up and clean him, just what it meant that he was disabled. I’m know that through the years there had to be many other moments that came up and made him realize this fact, but I’m not sure that any humiliated him the way this time did.
The next day he again called and begged the insurance company for 1-30 minute visit a week so he could avoid a repeat of the day before, he was again denied. They would of course be happy to spend tens of thousands of dollars for him to unnecessarily stay in a 24 hr facility for 90 days, but no. .. they would not under any circumstances pay $50-$75 a week for 5-6 weeks for a nurse to come to his home.
…and people say reform is not needed, that there is no waste in healthcare, that to cut any unnecessary procedures means a ‘rationing’ of care, that doctors don’t prescribe that which is unnecessary over that which is needed in the name of greed and the all mighty dollar?
Chuck’s story has ended well, he finally got a hold of a worker who would listened to his sense that he didn’t need a 90 day,thousands of dollars treatment… he just need a 30 minute weekly visit. She set him up with not one, but 2 visits a week.
Whether it’s medicare,medicaid or private insurance.. reform is needed. Had Chuck decided to take the medicaid office up on it’s offer, thousands of dollars would have been wasted when only a couple hundred were all that was needed. Those thousands could have gone to someone else care instead, someone who didn’t have insurance.. or 100 someone’s without insurance but in need of a flu shot this season. There are a million different ways that money could have been used properly, but because it is a Democrat asking for that reform, the psycho ‘right’ has an apoplectic fit about him wanting to pull the plug on grandma, him wanting to stop seniors from getting hip-replacements and heart surgery or him wanting to kill of the ‘damaged’ children of our society.
When a party says that the President who wants to talk to kids about the value of eduction and to stay in school is really trying to ‘indoctrinate’ them into a new version of ‘Hitler’s Youth’.. it’s time the adults stand up and tell these crazies to shut the fuck up already…the adults on both sides of the aisle. The sad part is the GOP’s lack of caring in all that is going on. Some know that the fringe they are courting and allowing into the debate field are as bat-shit crazy as they come, but they know that they are also so desperate for an answer that if the Liberals are distracted enough by the insanity, they themselves will have time to actually come up with that answer. The crazies will eventually be throw out of the party, the Conservatives aren’t that stupid, but until then the rest of will just sit in our chairs… not eating.. not drinking.. and praying that we don’t shit ourselves before our brother comes to rescue us from situation that we can’t just ‘pull our boot-straps up’ and get out of on our own.
This whole Sarah Palin thing irks the hell out of me and not for the reasons you would think. All of a sudden I find myself feeling sorry for her and the attention paid to her over the last few months and it bothers the hell of out of me to feel sorry for the woman…
I do not blame the MSM or Dave Letterman though for the attention paid to her though… I blame Bush..
huh?
oops, sorry.. after 8 years it’s just a force of habit!
But seriously, I blame John McCain and Sarah Palin’s hubris.
I cannot for the life of me fathom the thought process that went through John McCain’s heads and ended up producing the statement “I choose Sarah Palin as my Vice Presidential running mate”… and the thoughts that must have gone through his head saying “..and no body will question who she is, where she comes from,her political history,her family dirt,her sanity..or mine, because she just so darn pretty”
On what planet did either of them really think an absolute 100% no name… could run, with an amazing chance at success at becoming the 1st woman Vice President.. and not a single person in the world wouldn’t say.. “Hey, who’s the new girl?”
Mike was right when he said“The amount of poor and incorrect information on this woman is frankly incredible.” Of course he’s talking about me, Howie and the MSM for this.. but it was not us who thrust this already, damaged flower onto the open market and demanded that she be accepted as leader of our country in the event of a Presidential disaster all because she and John McCain said so. As if that wasn’t enough, then she opened her mouth and we truly had reasons to fear.
But, were we ‘unfair’ to her.. or were her expectation of unconditional acceptance to blame for the eventual melt-down. .. yeah, I don’t care what planet your from.. No one term govenor of an extremely large state, who ran for VP and almost won, can decide to quit their office with 2 years left in her term.. and not be seen as the antithesis of a leader on a Presidential scale. When stared down by what she calls an unfair Mainstream media, she blinked.. and blinked hard. What happens during the next cuban missle crisis while she’s President? So yes, it was a melt down.
But are we to blame or does she have a major stake in that arena?
In a campaign where even the Democratic leader’s birth certificate and religion was being eviscerated on television,blogs,papers ,pundits and me all across the land on and hourly basis.. What gave Palin or McCain the idea that she could be launched on the Presidential landscape 6 weeks before the election.. and no one would want to know who the fuck she was? Oh My God, Sotomayor’s entire adult life going back decades are being vetted before we can even have the debate as to whether we should appoint her to the Supreme Court, but we were just supposed to say “Oh, Sarah Palin.. yeah, Ok.. sure-we don’t really need to know jack-shit about the person who will be a heartbeat away from the Presidency”
No, I do not find the MSM as the culprit for all her troubles.. In fact, I think the MSM should be awarded a medal for weeding out a person who was not only unprepared for the spot-light.. but also exquisitely unprepared for the pressure that would come with the office she was asking to be trusted with. Had she actually been elected.. well, that’s a nightmare that I am glad I don’t have to witness…
Sarah Palin only has Sarah Palin and John McCain to blame for her larger than life launch onto the full court world press to her eventually crashing and burning. It was not a pretty launch on to the political field to begin with and it was bound to be an even uglier crash.
The Mainstream media did it’s job this time.. they did it at an breakneck pace to be sure.. but only because they were forced to by two people who thought they could sneak an incompetent by because maybe this country wasn’t as ready for a black man named Hussein as their opponents thought.
President Obama, you were not given the Oval office and the Congress solely for the purpose of trying to appease or make friends with the party that shut out an entire political section of the country for 8 years. It’s time to start acting like the majority elected you to act.
Yes we can!
You were elected and given the keys to your success because you promised us change during your campaign. You were given a friendly congress because we knew the losing party would do everything in their power to discredit and demonize you. To prevent the loss of any political capital, you were given massive support, money, votes and Congress… so what are you waiting for? Use the tools you’ve been given already! You have tried and failed at extending your hand across the aisle and now it is time to give them the finger. This failure, like the disastrous condition of every aspect of the government, foreign and domestic, is not your fault. You were given a ‘Handy-man’s special’ and while you’ve made some improvement just by being there, you have a long way to go before this country is back up to ‘code’
Mr. Obama, you expected to come into Washington and work with adults, only to find nothing but spoiled children running through the aisles. Every day you spend trying to bring your opponents into your circle, they are spending theirs eating your political capital like a fat girl eating chocolate flavored bacon-bits.
Change you can believe in!
Had the Holocaust Museum shooter been Muslim, your presidency would have been over. You would have not only been the country’s 1st black president, but after weeks of allowing Dick Cheney to call you every form of dangerous and venting about your lack in the ability to keep us safe, you would have become the country’s fastest Lame Duck President ever.You have let this kind of abuse go on for too long and now you are seeing a drop in your poll numbers.
I understand your strategy of letting them become the party of “NO”. I understand that the more ‘right’ they go the more ‘centered’ you look and the more Independent voters you pick up. But what I don’t understand is this need for all ‘political correctness’( so to speak) in the face of such outrageousness.
“It may include groups and individuals
that are dedicated to a single-issue,
such as opposition to abortion or immigration,”
the warning says.”
A few weeks ago your Head of Homeland Security had to apologize for a report that said ‘right-wing extremists’ were on the rise and their chatter was reaching higher levels. The GOP went apoplectic in its anger over such extreme “Liberal MSM-type” spin and accusations. Even some Democrats screamed about being ‘dumbfounded’ by this report. Michael Steele of the R.N.C told Fox news
“This is the height of insult here,I mean to segment out Americans who dissent from this administration, to segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration, and labeling them as terrorists and then to call into question the service of the men and women who are right now standing on that wall defending our freedom and linking them to terrorism while you refuse to call the terrorists — the real terrorists — terrorists, to me it’s the height of insult.”
In the height of irony, not “insults” as Mr. Steele put it,this report that the GOP went into seizures over, warned that
The Department of Homeland Security is warning law enforcement officials about a rise in “rightwing extremist activity,” saying the economic recession, the election of America’s first black president and the return of a few disgruntled war veterans could swell the ranks of white-power militias.
A footnote attached to the report by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines “rightwing extremism in the United States” as including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority
Since that report and the GOP’s temper tantrum over it, we’ve seen not one, but two atrocious acts that we were warned about. While the party of “NO” has a record in ignoring threats and warnings when given to them, that doesn’t mean you, Mr. President, should have your people apologize to them for being right.
Doctor Tiller was murdered in a sanctuary, his place of worship by exactly the person the report warned against. A week later, James Von Brunn, who was a Navy officer during World War II and after leaving his notebook with a list of places he planned to hit and a statement saying“You want my weapons – this is how you’ll get them. The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews,” decided to shoot anyone in his way.
I know saying “We told you so” is not the politically savy thing to do, but had Mr. Brunn been of Arab decent, how fast do you think Dick Cheney would have been on Fox news saying exactly that?
Misters Brunn and Roeder, Dr. Tiller’s murderer, are not the first extremists to meltdown since you took took office. As I’ve blogged about before, another unstable radical believed in the same insane,violent and dangerous rhetoric of the Right when they said you were going take away his guns. So he went out and murdered 3 police officers.
“Friends said 23 year-old Richard Poplawski feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.”
Mr. President, it’s time to put an end to this trying to reach across the aisle. As PAUL KRUGMAN of the New York times says; There is an ‘upsurge of right-wing extremism’ that is being “fed by the conservative media and political establishment.” Your ideal world in which Republican and Democrats can live in harmony is a wishful Utopia that will not exist until a generation has passed from the extreme partisanship the Bush Administration spread throughout this country.
There are some of course, like Shep Smith on the FNC channel, who see this hate and are fearful of the level in which it is being amped up to.
But just as fast as he can bring attention to this hate and anger, others paint over it by saying Smith is ‘”whining and moaning and complaining about emails”, while making it about themself and in then justifing the hate they and others spread throughout this country. You cannot reach out to these types of people. Their motives are clear, with blood on their hands from their ‘hate speech’ they only speak louder,harder, angrier. They put their hands up and say “Wasn’t me” like they haven’t been the one rattling the cages of most extreme of their extremists. They are spoiled and dangerous children who cannot be appeased by rational thought and/or actions. These are not the moderate GOP persons you want in your circle. Even those people see what is being done and are appalled by it, but they cannot stop it because they understand this ‘hate’ will spread to them next.
“If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican,
I’d go with Rush Limbaugh.
I admire your tenacity in continuously trying to bridge the partisan gap in the face of such mounting and dangerous rhetoric, but there comes a time when it’s OK to use the popularity you’ve been given. You promised change, you have been given all the tools necessary to bring about this change, you do not need 100% cooperation when 51% wins the race. We who you convinced to stand behind you, who believed in you and voted for you are still standing here waiting to support you. We are waiting for you to remember what you promised us…. Yes we can Mr. President… Yes we can.
a beef-based food additive that may be added to ground beef and beef-based processed meats as an inexpensive filler.[4][5] It consists of finely ground beef scraps, sinew, fat, and connective tissue which have been mechanically removed in a heated centrifuge at 100°F (38°C)[6] from the fat into liquid fat and a protein paste.[7][8] The recovered material is then processed, heated, and treated with ammonia gas[1] or citric acid to kill E. coli, salmonella, and other bacteria. It is finely ground, compressed into blocks and flash frozen for use as an additive to beef products
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) unlike the GOP, there are different levels of (D). We don’t all think with one brain, we don’t all follow the leader like a flock of birds, that is what makes us ‘liberal’ or the favorite slam of the GOP, ‘radical’ . We think for ourselves and decide accordingly and not according to party/leader doctrine. We are just not that ‘religious-like’ in our faith and the following of party ‘dogma’. There are Democrats who don’t believe in abortion, there are some like me who believe in the death penalty and guns rights. To condem anyone.. any party for not just towing the party-line is asinine and to blindly follow the party-line used to be a bad thing.. but today, with the entire GOP saying “You can’t even get your party to all vote the same way and use that fillibuster proof majority” is so exquisitely sad, but still not as sad wanting and forcing any one party to act that way. I just can’t believe anyone, anywhere would want and encourage people to just blindly vote all (D) or all (R) depending on their party and then ridcule and condem anyone when they didn’t.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=32fca360-1281-432a-bf18-5ea905b72c75)
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