This Is What Happens When You Don't Have Health Insurance

I am a single woman who ran her own business for almost 17 years.  It was a small business but it kept the roof over my head and food in the tummy.  And that's about it.  I applied to several insurance companies for coverage and was turned down to preexisting conditions.  There was one HMO that was willing to cover me but it was only for catastrophic care and it cost more than the rent for my office.  I ended up receiving health care by way of the emergency room.

This was okay in my thirties and forties, not so good for my fifties.  Then I moved to Reno and one of the guys at the dog park told me that I would probably be able to receive care from the VA.  I checked, and lo and behold, I was eligible.  Serving my country was finally worth something other than the pride I felt wearing the uniform.

The morning before you see your doctor for the first time you show up at the lab and they draw blood and urine samples.  The doctor has the results before you see him and is prepared to discuss with you your symptoms and ailments.  I left the VA that afternoon with blood pressure medicine, a new type of asthma inhaler and thyroid replacement hormone.  Nothing for pain as I am allergic to almost everything except Demerol.

Last week I had low back pain that was radiating down my legs and up my back and the on call nurse suggested that I come into the emergency room because it was becoming hard for me to breathe.  It was about ten pm and there were only a few people there and none of them were in the waiting room.  They immediately took me into a room and started an EKG.  My heart was okay but my breathing wasn't so they gave me an asthma treatment right away.  Then they sent me for X-rays for my low back.

My doctor called the next day with the results and prescribed a muscle relaxer to help reduce the pain and increase movement and asked me to make an appointment. Before I even saw him the nurse gave me my H1N1 and pneumonia shots. Then the doctor scheduled MRIs for my low back and neck.

The VA has a new program that directly targets female veterans and as I left his office they snatched me up, did an intake and performed all those girl specific tests.  That doctor suggested that I get an ultrasound and abdominal CAT scan.

All test were performed this Wednesday and Thursday.  The MRIs were first and my doctor called me that afternoon with the results.  There is some impingement in the low back, but the neck is a crisis area.  According to the MRI there is very little spinal fluid from C5 down and very little space for the nerves to pass through comfortably which is why my hands go to sleep whenever I type or hold something as small as a book.  He suggested that I immediately go get a cervical collar while I waited for an appointment with a neurologist.

The CAT scans and ultrasound were performed on Thursday and even I could tell there was something wrong from just looking at the monitors.  Although my mammogram and Pap smear were normal, the rest of the girlie parts aren't and they are inhibiting the function of other organs in the abdomen.  I had surgery in that area in 1990 and it looks like they will have to perform another one to remove said girlie parts.  Oh joy.

All of this could have been prevented if I had had medical coverage.  Now everything is at a crisis level that can only be addressed by surgery.  As an acupuncturist I am offended because most of this could have been avoided with preventative health care and as a patient I am uncomfortable with the possible outcomes.  As I used to tell my patients, waiting until you are thirsty to dig a well is not efficient.  Or smart.

American health care is always touted as the best in the world, but that only applies if you can afford it.  If you can't, then you are reduced to using the emergency room which is much more expensive than preventative care.  Luckily, I happen to be a veteran and will have health care for the rest of my life unless the GOP gets its way and starts eliminating services for veterans like they did under Reagan.

America has become so polarized that individuals and their needs are being lost in the "debate".  A single payer system would be the best option for the people, but not for the insurance companies that like to hike premiums whenever they want and on whoever they want and then deny needed services until the patient dies or gives up.  Meanwhile the GOP distorts the truth and inflames their base by inventing bogeymen and blaming everything except global warming on those who are not melanin impaired and innocent people are dying due to lack of services.  How is that the best in the world?

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Going To The Dogs

Wow!  Republicans really are willing to cut off their nose to spite their face.  The comments are fascinating.  No matter how the NY-23 race turns out the GOP is dissolving from within.  I almost feel sorry for the them but it's their own fault.  They embraced the wackos last year, they tolerated and encouraged the fringe to express their anger, rage and hatred during the campaign and as with any rabid animal, it's biting the hand that feeds them.

They don't need another job, they need to live within their means.  I'm sorry that one can't live comfortably on $93K a year and while I admire the work ethic of getting another job to support your lifestyle instead of doing what the rest of us do which is to cut back or eliminate expenses, taking a minimum wage job that might keep a family on the lower end of the economic spectrum from becoming homeless, is part of why we are in the economic mess we are all suffering through.  Those that have always think they deserve more or that they shouldn't have to sacrifice.  Marie Antoinette would be so impressed.

The kerfuffle about the Obama boy's club amuses me.  I tried warning people that he had little to no respect for women and their opinions, so it doesn't surprise me at all that women are being cockblocked while decisions are being made in circumstances that have no official record.

Somebody has been watching a little too much television.  The story never says why the owner had to steal his dog from the pound under the cover of night instead of picking him up during normal business hours.  It doesn't sound like the dog's behavior was a problem since the animal society released the dog to a friend of the owner.

Speaking of dogs, is this normal sleeping behavior?

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What Are They Thinking?

The absolute cluelessness of the GOP continues to either reach new heights or plumb deeper depths, I can't decide which.  Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina used the GOP radio address to tar and feather government run health care by claiming that it would cause delays in treatment that would threaten our health.  Using her own breast cancer as an example she complains that it took "took six doctors, three mammograms and one ultrasound before they finally they found my cancer. This process took only a few weeks."  Most citizens only have one doctor and the uninsured have none.  Crystal Lee Sutton, also from North Carolina and known to the rest of the world as Norma Rae, had health insurance and died of brain cancer.  Her insurance company withheld authorization for chemotherapy medication for two months and the normally slow growing cancer spread at a rapid pace.  I'm sure she would have rather had Rep. Myrick's government run access to treatment, but I'm not so sure Ms. Sutton would complain about it saving her life on national radio.

With the right determined to occupy the outer fringe, the center has become the new right.  Obama was already right of center and that he is acquiescing to pressure and moving further right is not much of a surprise.  It's tough to balance when everything is on one end, eventually things tip over.  At what point will the issues of the people who elected him be addressed?

According to a gentleman on the Texas Board of Education, that august body responsible for influencing what's in the textbooks of tomorrow, as a minority female I should be grateful to white men for the rights I currently have.  Wow, it's nice to know that being human isn't enough to qualify for basic civil rights.  No wonder we can't have a rational discussion on health care.

But here we run into a terrible problem.  The health care debate cannot be understood in historic context because many Americans have never heard of Thomas Jefferson.  Extrapolating from state surveys, only 14% of American high school students can name who wrote the Declaration of Independence.   Nearly 75% do not know that George Washington was our first president.  More than 90% could not pass the exam given to immigrants who wish to become citizens.   No wonder that Jay Leno has so much material for his Jay Walking segment.  We can say that our educational system has failed when the vast majority of American students do not know enough to pass an exam to qualify as American citizens

On my last few trips to California I had the misfortune to eat at both a Denny's and a Marie Callender's.  They both had a laminated sheet with the nutritional information of the menu and they are going to have to change their menus if people start reading them on a regular basis.  While Marie's had a more appetizing breakfast menu, you know you're in trouble when the healthiest item on the menu are in the pancake section.  I settled on the breakfast quiche special because it had less sodium and that was still one third of my daily requirement.  Healthy options?  It would take more time to find the one or two relatively healthy items than the server is likely to give you.

The GOP can't really be this clueless, can they? 

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Saturday Morning Observations

Sometimes you hear things that are so funny they are referred to as knee slappers.  Nothing had ever struck me like that until I read this.  I must have snickered for half an hour.  Webster's is going to have to redefine the definition of crazy.  It should be pretty easy, all they need is Bachmann's picture and a link to any news article that quotes her.  She almost makes Palin sound sane.  In Chinese Medicine the unnatural sheen to her eyes would make a practitioner refer to her as "shen disturbed" or as it's known in western medicine "bat-shit crazy". Malkin also has that glassy eyed look when she's ranting, ma belle they are not.

Joining them in the bat-shit crazy department is GOP Congressman Paul Broun.  He thinks the President is on his way to enacting a dictatorship.  Warrantless wiretapping, imprisoning people for years without a trial, torture and the destruction of civil liberties didn't bother him during the Bush administration but a civilian disaster response team, nonexistent gun control, and a national press corp that consistently reports and repeats the Rushpublican mantra as gospel give him the vapors.  The devil really did go down to Georgia and after he lost the golden fiddle he stayed once he realized that the politicians would sell their soul to keep their fellow man in poverty and despair while pretending it in the little people's best interests.

So the President wants the liberals to be good soldiers about abandoning the public option.  The country would be better served if he would man up and support the public option that two thirds of this country wants instead of pandering to lunatics, lobbyists and legislators who don't have a clue what it's like to try and survive during the jobless recovery.  First of all I already have been a good soldier but I'm not eligible for Veteran's healthcare.  Secondly, while I do have preexisting conditions (asthma and kidney problems) and have been turned down several times for insurance in the past, who cares if insurance companies will cover me when I can't afford the premiums, the out of pocket expenses or the co-pays?  If by some misfortune I develop a disease that requires more expensive medication what makes anyone think $300 a month for drugs is feasible?  Instead of the liberals compromising why don't you do what we want and what you promised during the election?  I barely voted for Obama in the first place, I will be more than happy to vote against him in a primary.

Interesting how bankers and economists are worried about consumers not contributing to the economic recovery and gloss over the fact that more employed people have to use food stamps in order to survive.  They seem to have missed the point that it's awfully hard to buy stuff when you don't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.  9.7% unemployment and that doesn't take into account the underemployed or people who have dropped off the grid completely.  Remember, it's always dark before it goes completely black and any light you see at the end of the tunnel is likely to be the headlamp of an oncoming train.

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Monday Morning Musings

How much more study is needed before the soldiers get the help they need?  When ten guys from one unit have been accused of murder, attempted murder, and manslaughter, maybe more study isn't needed and the next step should be admitting there is a problem and doing something to change it for the better.

Almost all those soldiers were kids, too young to buy a beer, when they volunteered for one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Almost none had serious criminal backgrounds. Many were awarded medals for good conduct.

Obviously the military brass learned nothing from the aftermath of the Vietnam War.   What these kids were asked to do time after time against a dehumanized enemy will affect them and everyone around them for the rest of their lives.  And with the loyalty that the chickenhawks don't have, these kids will be he recipients of the next "we must be tough on crime" wave and spend the rest of their lives in a physical prison to go along with the prison of their minds.

I've been a Cincinnati Reds fan for most of my life.  I started with the Big Red Machine because I had a crush on Johnny Bench and thought that Joe Morgan, Ken Griffey, Tony Perez and Dave Concepcion were the best teammates in the world.  And Tom Seaver was pretty darn cute.  For the record, I never liked Pete Rose and that had nothing to due with his abilities.  It had to do with the sneer he always seemed to have, not very attractive.  While I may not like him personally, he was a great ball player and deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.  Gambling had nothing to do with his skills or performance and he should be recognized for them.  Considering the antics of what passes for a star nowadays, maybe it's time for the Hall of Shame to be reviewed.

Cocktails!  I'm seeing something from the Star Trek Universe.  A sleek black tablet with a touchscreen and the ability to look up information, play music and relay messages sounds like a good start.

As the saying goes, if all you is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.  One of the problems with letting everyone have guns, is that everyone has guns.  Even people with known anger problems.  And this has a tendency to end in the deaths of police officers.  While I may think that the police have strayed from their mission of "to protect and serve", they don't deserve to die serving a warrant.

Of course he is.  Opposing Roberts and Alito was portrayed as partisan and being a bad sport, but opposing Sotomayor is okay because he has concerns about her positions on gun rights and white firefighters who like to sue their employers.  Sessions needs a session with mental health care provider.

My personal favorite of the beer labels banned in Maine is the last one.  Nut-Browned Ale sounds a little toasty, doesn't it?


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Stoking The Wingnut Ire And Other Interests

Yippee!  Greasemonkey has finally been updated to work with FF 3.5b4 and a few other extensions I like to use have been updated as well.  I really missed Colorful List View for Google Reader, it makes it much easier on the eyes when you have a 166 feeds.  And now that Google Reader Subscriber Count is working again, I find that I have more readers than a few months ago.  Thanks guys, I really appreciate it.  I may not be one of the big boys in the blogging world but at least I don't feel like I'm yelling into a void.

Folk hero? Umm, no.  He's a cold blooded murderer.  I think I'm safe when a guy is lying on the ground bleeding from a bullet wound to the head.  I wouldn't find it necessary to get another gun a minute or two later and fire five more bullets into him.  But then, I don't scare easily.  And since it's Oklahoma if it had been a black guy who shot and deliberately killed a white thief, he would be in jail and no anonymous donor would have posted bail, as if bail would have been an option.

Box said that another person might have reacted differently, but he asked: "When do you turn off that adrenaline switch? When do you think you're safe? I think that's going to be the ultimate issue."

As much as I dislike the man this is ridiculous.  Obama has a date night on Broadway with the wife and the GOP goes nuts (rapidly becoming their default state) because the country is in economic freefall and Le Prez shouldn't be relaxing.  Meanwhile Bush spent 487 days at Camp David and 490 day in Crawford, several of them while the Gulf Coast was drowning during Katrina, and not a peep was heard.  Two and a half years on vacation in an eight year term is okay but a night on the town is a no no.  And let's not forget that Condi was buying shoes and enjoying a Broadway show while a major city was underwater and the GOP said...nothing.  IOKIYAR applies to more than sex crimes, wow what a concept.

If you are homeless you shouldn't have computer access because you should be focused on getting a job according to a good proportion of the commenters at the WSJ.  Totally missing from these holier than thou people is the fact that most jobs are posted online and that if you submit an application for a job and don't have a home address or phone number that if you have an email address you can be reached for a job interview.  And that out of a 24 hour day only eight to ten hours are good for job hunting and the weekends are useless.  But they must suffer because they are homeless, they shouldn't be watching movies or enjoying music.  Personally, if I was an employer (not that there are many nowadays) I would look for enterprising people like these who are determined to stay connected and have figured out a way to do it without a permanent roof over their heads or a reliable source of electricity.

Since arriving in Reno I sneeze every day, at least twenty times and usually more.  When I first got here I had to take Benadryl constantly but the last week has been a little better.  I'm still sniffly and my eyes itch but my asthma is back under control and I can breathe through my nose most of the time.  Although I'm not the only one suffering I wish I knew what it was I'm allergic to.  Or it could be that my body is reacting to breathing air instead of San Jose smog.  Whatever it is I hope it goes away soon, I've blown thru several boxes of Kleenex  and I haven't had an uninterrupted nights sleep in a long time.  Supposedly the pollen count is on its way down.

The suffering, the trauma. It seems that the Chosen don't like it when they don't get everything they want and the world doesn't bow to their wishes.  Their idea of construction is we take what you had, you go live in a ghetto that we won't let you leave so we can bomb you at will.  When I was growing up I was told you could catch more bees with honey than you could with vinegar, nowadays it's all about killing the bees instead.  And as we are now finding out bees are important to survival, maybe the Palestinians are too.

The Fourth Estate Continues To Fail

There isn't a doubt in my mind that the national press are incompetent at best and bordering on treasonous at worst.  An independent Fourth Estate they most definitely are not.  For the last fifteen years they have persisted in reporting one side of the story, the GOP side, no matter what the circumstances and no matter what the story.  Fair, balanced and objective no longer seem to be the operating requirements for "journalists".  In depth reporting has gone the way of the dinosaur and bloggers have had to take up the slack.

The press, along with what passes for Congress for that matter, breathlessly reports in glowing terms or jumps to do the bidding of anything that the GOP wants.  Virtually without exception and definitely without question.  There have been a few that haven't followed the party line but it's more like throwing a few slices of bread to the masses and then they "see the light" and fall back into line.

I've watched in amazement and with quite a bit of disgust as they hang on to every word that anyone named Cheney utters, determined to anoint them as the second coming of the GOP.  Torture? Not a problem for anyone except what they term the liberal left or foreigners that don't know what they are talking about because they didn't suffer through 9/11 and therefore don't know anything about the effects of terrorism.  Heaven forbid that they should accurately report what torture is or that it is against the law in the United States and around the world and that it doesn't make us safer but it does make us less trusted.

If the press had done their job objectively before the 2000 election the outcome would have been much different.  If they had done their job after 9/11 the United States would not have been hoodwinked into invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 (I'm sorry but I can't use 9/11 twenty five times in one article), had no weapons of mass destruction and wasn't a threat to the United States.  But they didn't and as a result hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children either died or are suffering miserably.  And that includes citizens and taxpayers of the United States.

If the press were doing their job objectively today, Cheney and his family would not receive the exposure they are getting and it most certainly wouldn't be as positive.  Last week there were not dueling speeches between the President and a former Vice President, there was a Presidential speech (that I didn't bother listening to because it wasn't necessary) and a rant from an angry, fearful coward who knows he broke the law and doesn't want to go to jail.  But not to the press, not even remotely.  Cheney is being held up as the man who has our national security interests at heart and Obama doesn't.

When I was a young girl in the sixties, the New York Times was the paper of record and in the seventies the Washington Post was the leader in exposing the Watergate scandal.  Today neither one can be depended upon for objective reporting and then they wonder why newspapers are folding for lack of readership.  They can blame it on Craigslist or Twitter but the truth of the matter is that the press doesn't do their job of reporting the news, they are too busy trying to make the news into something that pleases their masters.   Which amounts to inane babble that informs no one and prevents the truth from being revealed.

The press spends their time carrying water for people who only care about themselves and their so-called legacy and refuse to see that they are repeating the mistakes that got us into the Iraq debacle in the first place.  Once again while the US is preoccupied with straw men, North Korea is not only rattling it's saber, it's testing nuclear weapons and threatening its neighbors.  And the press?  They are concerned with how wonderful Cheney is and why the Obama administration relies on background briefings instead of giving them every name, rank and serial number of their sources.  As if the Bush administration was as open as possible.  Is Jennifer Loven serious?  I don't remember any complaints when Bush and Cheney quoted unnamed sources stating that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or when Jeff Gannon was masquerading as a reporter.  If I was President Obama I would start calling on the smaller news outlets exclusively and ignore the hypocritical Cheney ass kissers such as the AP, NY Times and the Washington Post.  And that isn't arrogance, it's common sense since the press is going to make up the story they want anyway.  Just like they have done for the last fifteen years.

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Will The Democrats Screw Up?

Wow, how clueless do you have to be?  Of course the Dumocrats are going to screw up.  Unfortunately for the Repubs it won't be as bad as they themselves have done in the last eight years.  William Jacobson. a law professor from Cornell (I thought you had to be smart to attend there much less teach) sets out his reasons why the Specter defection will turn out to have a silver lining for the GOP.

So I'm not depressed about the long-term future of the country, although the next few years will be tough politically. The Democrats will screw up big time, as they did during the Carter years, and the damage they cause will be generational. But the clean-up is worth looking forward to, even if the mess is not.

How...kind of him.  As if the problems created by the last eight years aren't going to be generational.

His first argument is no surprise because I've been saying the same thing for years. The first duty of a politician is to get themselves reelected, preferably to higher office but staying in the Senate is a no brainer if you can't be President.  And just like any other party, if your date gets obnoxiously drunk it is better to go home with someone else.  Especially if you plan on getting there in one piece.

Now, in regard to the torture hearings, if America sits on its ass and does nothing to rectify or show shame about the situation, it will give those who hate us even more ammunition, not less.  As my father pointed out to me in 1967, the people in America have short memories and the people in the Middle East have extremely long ones.  The Turkish-Armenian situation is but one sad example.  Plus, and this is a big one, they are willing to die for their beliefs.  The majority of Americans aren't and our recent behavior more than makes this clear.

To accuse the Democrats of being the isolationist party is one of the most laughable arguments I've heard in years.  I was a Republican because I was an isolationist and a fiscal conservative until they lost their freaking minds.  Republicans ran up the national debt, like they always do, and went nuts on immigration.  If you were born brown and out of town you became the reason that everything went wrong in America.  Sheesh, get a grip.

Last time I checked we were a Republic, not a dynasty.  As history (there's that word again) has shown many times, the balance of power shifts across the globe pretty frequently.  Maybe if we hadn't spent all our resources, wasted our good will and destroyed our military in two useless wars we wouldn't be in the position of having to watch other countries pick up where we left off before we had our mental breakdown.  America is no longer a free society.  Our phones are tapped, there are surveillance cameras in almost every town, the police become more like the military every day and while the Second Amendment is in no danger, the First, Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth definitely are.

The national debt was way out of control before the Democrats were elected to power.  It got that way while the Republicans held sway and decided that the rich needed to be richer at the expense of everyone else.  Young people aren't stupid and since recent studies show that math scores are increasing they will be able to do the arithmetic.  A simple math problem might consist of something like this.  In 2000 there was a surplus and in 2008 there wasn't.  By a wide margin.  Yes, the deficit is going to be bigger for the next couple of years but that wouldn't have happened if the GOP hadn't engaged in a reverse Robin Hood scheme for the last eight years while at the same time increasing the size of government with duplicate agencies that contained their unqualified cronies.

Human rights, that's rich.  And who says it's only three members of al-Qaeda that were tortured?  It's much more widespread than that and everyone knows it.   Pregnant women wouldn't have joined the cause to blow themselves up if they and their baby had something to live for.  They don't.  We have turned their homes, fields and farms into one gigantic war zone in an effort to get revenge on people who are already dead.  Human rights belong to everyone, even if you're brown from out of town.  Other countries, who are much smaller than us geographically, have survived terrorism for years.  We have one instance of terrorism and now the nation wears diapers and cries for mommy.  They aren't destroying us, we are doing it ourselves.

I've been buying foreign cars for years and Detroit has been the reason.  As a woman I require that my car be dependable and affordable.  As an example in 1987 my brother and I got new cars at the same time.  I got a Honda CRX and my brother got a Pontiac Fiero.  He sold his car at the end of six months because it had spent three of those months in the shop and still didn't run right.  I drove the Honda for fourteen years and was grateful every day that I got over 40 mpg.  Detroit's solution was to build bigger and more unstable gas guzzlers.  And now there's no more Pontiac.  The government certainly can't do any worse than the auto execs did.  Unless it's run by people who say their goal is to drown it in a bathtub.

Health care.  Don't make me puke.  I grew up on Air Force bases using military healthcare.  It was nowhere near as bad as going to the doctor today.  Oops, I don't go to the doctor, I can't afford it and I don't qualify for health insurance because I have a preexisting condition called asthma.  The emergency room is my fallback for when it gets out of control and I think I'm going to suffocate.  We won't even go into that dental and vision thing, they don't seem to be on the radar of the entitled so why bring up another problem that those who have everything they need would like to ignore.  Oh yeah, that argument about waiting months for a surgical procedure?  Maybe you should talk to all the people who have health insurance and been denied procedures so the insurance companies can give their executives and shareholders enormous bonuses and dividends.

I'm black, there is racism, get over it.  When you have black communities in states where local governments have built services around them and they didn't have running water like their neighbors did for the last fifty years, that's racism.  When things like education and skills are equal and blacks and Latinos are earning less (provided they got hired) than their melanin impaired compatriots, that's racism.  When you cut essential school programs in poorer districts that are predominately black and politically mrginalized, that's racism.  When prisons are filled to the brim with people of color who have committed petty crimes against themselves while rich melanin impaired executives who destroyed the lives of millions go free, that's racism.  Those are facts and they aren't going away.

The GOP is in trouble for a reason and the reason is this.  They are out of touch with the average American.  Their base consists of angry people who vote on single issues by claiming that the Bible disapproves of certain behaviors they deem immoral while ignoring the rest of the Bible teachings that encourage them to take care of their fellow man and to have compassion and pity for those who are suffering.  The elite of the party are just that.  Elite and as far removed from their base as they can get in their personal lives as they can manage and not get outed.

The party of Lincoln is falling apart and the more they scream about how unfair it is and the more rabid they are to return to a time that only exists in their imaginations, the further from the mainstream they will be.  As so many other Republicans have said before me, I didn't leave the party the party left me.

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Obstructionist Republicans

Federal or state, it makes no difference.  Republicans in Congress continue to crow about not supporting the stimulus bill and California Republicans continue to stand in the corner and hold their breath.  Why is it so hard for the media to point out that even though California has a Democratic legislature that it is Republicans, and Republicans only, who will not compromise on the budget issue?  Even though this budget isn't the best for those who don't have money, those who have been laid off or disabled, those who don't have health insurance and those who don't want to buy a new house, something must be done before the state grinds to a halt.

Businesses will receive a 1 billion dollar permanent tax cut, I guess they need it more than the average citizen.  Way back in 1978 when I voted for Prop. 13 I had no idea that businesses were going to benefit from the property tax bill also.  There are buildings that have stood empty for years because the company doesn't want to sell the land and make the tax rate increase.  Which means that lower property taxes are paid and revenues have not kept pace with inflation.  Meanwhile a good proportion of the people who this proposition was designed to protect have either moved or passed away.  There are a few left and they should be protected but the business protections need to be eliminated.

Gray Davis was recalled over a budget crisis and Arnold Schwarzenegger took over and immediately proceeded to try and balance the budget on the backs of the little people.  Several years later and they are still using the little people to try and balance the books repeating ad nauseam  the tired old canard that Republicans have used for years.  If businesses have to pay more taxes, a higher minimum wage or let their employees have breaks for lunch and get paid for overtime, then the whole business structure will collapse.  What a load of hooey.  Slavery was supposedly abolished in 1865, let's keep it that way.

Businesses use the roads, their employees use the emergency room in lieu of preventative healthcare.  Corporations have the ear of the governor, their employees have the sound of silence.  Corporate taxes go down, employee benefits disappear.  The elderly paid taxes at a higher rate than we do now during their earning years, now they are treated as disposable and considered to be a drain on the economy.  If it wasn't for them this state would never have achieved the greatness it did, now they are being punished for being old and are portrayed as leeches for using services that everyone else imagines are theirs.

We are one of the few nations on earth that treats its elderly as disposable.  Which is interesting since we all grow old eventually.  If you're lucky, otherwise it's just people's memories of you that get old.  Growing old gracefully is not a privilege reserved for the rich, it's a right that everyone is entitled to.  Too bad the Republicans have no respect for their elders.

Ten thousand people could permanently lose their jobs if this crisis isn't resolved.  Just what the state needs.  More unemployed.  As I have reason to know, rents are not cheap in the Bay area so cutting a disabled person's income by thirty dollars will increase the homeless population and why should someone who through no fault of their own be forced to survive on the street while the fat cats continue to be driven around on the taxpayer's dime?  If we can't afford to help the weakest among us what makes us think we are so great?

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Monday Morning Quickies

Surreal comment of the day.

With more than 265,000 people tracking his messages, President Barack Obama has the most Twitter followers even though neither he nor his staff have tweeted since he moved into the White House last month.

I haven't heard President Obama make high chirping noises either.

If your vehicle was worth hundreds of millions of pounds or euros you would think that someone would have been watching where they were going instead of driving by Braille.

Britain's government "needs to explain how it is possible for a submarine carrying weapons of mass destruction to collide with another submarine carrying weapons of mass destruction in the middle of the world's second-largest ocean," lawmaker Angus Robertson of the opposition Scottish National Party said.

Everybody knows California is having a budget crisis, but how many people know that it is because a 2/3 majority vote is needed and that the Republicans consistently refuse to see reason?  Even given the opportunity to shaft the poor, disabled and elderly, Republicans stood their ground, refusing to sign anything with a tax increase because they are math challenged.  Are they upset that the bill was drafted by five people behind closed doors and no one knows everything that is in the bill?  No!  Are they happy that businesses are going to receive a permanent tax cut?  No!  One of them has an even better reason for not supporting the budget that a Republican governor is trying to shove down our throats.

Maldonado and Schwarzenegger have a tense relationship: In 2006, the senator publicly criticized the governor for not backing his unsuccessful campaign for state controller.

"Where was he when I needed him?" Maldonado said of Schwarzenegger on Sunday. As for Cogdill, who helped negotiate the budget plan, Maldonado said: "There's a difference between managing a caucus and leading a caucus."

What?  The million dollar makeover of the state controller's office wasn't enough to buy him off?  The state is imploding and these guys are playing games because they want to be reelected by their conservative constituents.  Reelected to what is not entirely clear.  The longer they dawdle, the more dire the budget crisis becomes until the state is completely bankrupt.  Then they will be like the rest of us.  Unemployed.

There really is an App for everything.  Hmm, and all this time I thought that was illegal.

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Soup Lines, Bread Lines, Unemployment Lines

What a Corker!  And the right hand said to the left hand "I don't need your help to jerk myself off, I'm going to show you how to be a fiscal conservative again.  We won't even need tissue paper."  Meanwhile, what's left of the American Automobile industry is flushed down the toilet.  And why don't the Republicans in Congress care?  That's way too easy to answer.

Because they have a salary that's way too high for the job they aren't even trying to accomplish; they have health care for when their ulcers (that they might not be reelected or any other physical problems that affect "normal" people and then the taxpayer so nicely pays it for them without ever seeing a bill to make sure they aren't being overcharged!) goes bad; because they really don't realize that it is their constituents who are the ones in major financial trouble (and who gives a flying fig about them since most of the Senators aren't up for election for the next two to four years and they know American memories are short, name the last 10 Presidents in under ten seconds) and they know that after the inauguration they will still be able to go on a junket vacation on the taxpayers few remaining dimes.  Because we all know that the solution to this problem is to cut back everyone's wages and eliminate all pensions except for those in government and the problem will magically solve itself using the free market system.  Of stupidity.  Whatever happened to making government so small it could be drowned in a bathtub?  Or did Katrina show that little plan wasn't going to work?

As I sit here and watch the country I was willing to bleed and die for, I wonder why it took me so long to realize that my country truly is apple shaped and that we are well on our way to a fatal heart attack or stroke.  Then I realized that the people currently in power think all those stories about soup lines (great link with pictures and everything!) and The Grapes of Wrath were just brilliant works of fiction to make the have nots not feel so alone and that it really was never that bad, will never be that bad and it was probably made up in the first place to give the photographers something to do.  Methinks that sometime soon the crew without a clue will finally realize what the Second Amendment was really about...and that it had nothing to do with owning guns just because you wanted to.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

It has everything to do with making sure that once again the have mores will understand that the have nots have had about as much not as they can take and still call themselves men and women instead of slaves.  We may not have taxation without representation, but we certainly have had representation without repercussions to the perpetrators of our current mess.

If we all work together, we just might get both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights back into the positions of authority that they held for hundreds of years before this bunch of bozos decided to drive the Escalade over the Grand Canyon to see if it could fly.

Without wings, a pilot or parachute for anyone other than the owners.

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Hubris Usually Precedes A Fall Unless IOKIYAR

So much for  constituents having a say in who represents them.  And you thought the Daley years were bad.  At least the Longs of Louisiana had interesting accents, but Blagojevich wins the award for political stupidity this year and probably the decade.  I never thought anyone would top Bush's "heckuva job, Brownie," but I was wrong." 

It's amazing how fast some politicians end up in jail and how quickly legislators in some states try to remove them from office while politicians who have been convicted on seven counts are still out wandering around, pandering and receiving sympathy.   Of course he's not Don Siegelman  or a black guy with a fake pistol robbing a 7/11 so he's still likely to get off.

Maybe if his stance had been a little less wide somebody might have believed him.  On the other hand, Larry Craig isn't Mark Foley.

While three Illinois Governors have gone to the Big House (just not the one they were elected for) did you know that three out of four (Madeline Albright, Condeleeza Rice and more than likely Hilary Clinton) of the last Secretary's of State have been women?  I guess one could draw their own conclusion on how important the position is any more.)  And so far they have all  managed to stay out of jail even though Colin Powell (the token guy in the group who has manged to avoid most of the mudslinging about his false testimony on those WMDs that were hidden so well that the Road Runner couldn't find them.)  No matter how hard Ken Starr tried to ruin the Clintons, she's still standing.

I have a friend that lives in the area and I haven't heard from her.  I'm worried because as unlucky as I am, she has the unfortunate luck to be in the wrong place most of the time.  I really hope she's all right.

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Tuesday Twofer

All righty then.  Don't be shy, tell us what you really think.  This guy should get to the point and say what he really means instead of tiptoeing around the subject.  I think, but I'm not absolutely sure, that he didn't like the movie.

Flailing like a dying fish out of water and eventually smelling just as fetid, Four Christmases is stiflingly unfunny. It’s rotten mistletoe over a condemned homestead’s archway. In fact, it’s such an unbridled waste, such a horrifyingly amalgamation of inept attempted laughs that you wonder what the capable cast was thinking during the filming of certain scenes. Did Favreau and Vaughn really believe the WWE-inspired physical comedy ‘smackdown’ was going to elicit anything other than groans? Was seeing Steenburgen in full Jesus freak mode (alongside a scruffy looking Dwight Yoakim as her pastor beau) supposed to be a legitimate reason to laugh. Does referring to Witherspoon’s character as “Cootie Kate” make the sequence silly, or just stupid? And how far can the whole “kids are craven and evil” thing be pushed before it borders on abuse…for all involved?

Typical.  The California GOP continues to ensure that the state hurtles towards insolvency while they hide their head in the sand and pretend that tax cuts will solve the state deficit.  It isn't enough that the poor, blind and disabled are having their benefits cut, the GOP wants more.  Heaven forbid that they should take a pay cut or reinstate a vehicle license fee that Californians paid for years when times were good, the budget must be balanced by cutting or eliminating services to those in need.  How crazy are these morons?  In San Diego they voted against a tax to increase firefighting capabilities right after some of the worst fires that the city had known.  Next year they'll be crying and moaning about their houses burning down and how inadequate their fire departments are.

Oops, five hours later I realize I forgot to push the publish button.

One More Instance Of GOP Hypocrisy

Support the troops!  Unless you're a member of the GOP and think that 25 million is too much to spend on paralyzed veterans.  A bridge to nowhere is okay, helping people who can't walk or pee without assistance is not.  And then to add insult to injury the GOP tries to use the issue to accuse the Demowienies of avoiding dealing with high gas prices.  Otherwise known as offshore drilling for their corporate buddies.

Republicans blasted the bill as an attempt to bait them and distract from measures to deal with high gas prices.

"They're using every trick to get us away from dealing with high gas prices," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Let's recap the GOP support of the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Bad armor, insufficiently armored vehicles, no plan other than shock and awe, multiple tours, poor medical care if they get back to the United States in less than pristine condition, ignoring the emotional costs of war in veterans, closing brain injury units as the incidences of brain injuries in the troops was increasing due to the IEDs that nobody "could have foreseen", obstruction of the GI Bill and now willing to let injured veterans be forever hostage to other people for help.  

The best part?  Tom Coburn has the nerve to consider himself a doctor. Unlike recently departed Randy Pasuch, not the kind that helps people.

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Fact, Fiction And Disdain

Fiction was my reading matter of choice when I was younger with an emphasis on science fiction. The internet changed all that by extending relatively instant access to all the geek articles one could want on almost any subject. No more dusty stacks or hefty subscriptions to read one or two articles. What fascinates me is how much of fiction actually comes to pass. This morening two stories illustrate the wildly different futures that could be in store for us. One is about space exploration, using technology that used to be considered fiction (ion engines) to reach new worlds. The other is about using technology to control, restrict and censor a particular point of view, which is reminiscent of a certain numerical work of fiction. Unfortunately for me, Verizon is my cell and internet provider and I'm not in a position to switch to the one with the cool phone and have them listen in on my calls and report to the government. Now it seems that the bad publicity has made Verizon change its official position. They're just sorry they got caught.

One more reason why I don't think that the 2008 elections are going to happen. Everyday that passes by, the GOP shows more and more that they don't care about their constituents or any consequences, such as unemployment. David Broder thinks they are lemmings who just can't help themselves, it's more likely to be a little more sinister than that. They had to be promised something to once again publicly reveal their contempt for those who need help the most. This is in addition to funding a war that the voters don't want. They. Just. Don't. Care. And they don't care who knows it.

No. See above.

Off The Cuff Observations

Not that I care if George Will takes offense, but his latest article was so boring that my eyes kept glazing over. If he wants to convince someone that the MoveOn.Org ad was illegal, immoral or wrong, he should come up with some snappier verbiage and quit resorting to obfuscation. Every time I tried to finish it, my brain kept thinking about how he sounds like a really old, dusty, self involved professor who is long past his prime but doesn't know what to do with himself if he retires. Maybe he could write a book on baseball.

So, I'm hanging out at Raw Story this evening and they had some pretty provocative headlines, and I thought I would respond to them the way they popped into my brain.

Bill O'Reilly is "guilty of operating on stereotypes". No kidding? You mean it isn't because he is an arrogant racist who is surprised that black people bleed red, as the Rude One so elegantly put it? I wonder if Billy boy knows that black people have sex the same way as he does? Probably without the falafel though. Like he would turn down a suddenly senile or severely drugged Halle Berry. Not likely.

Of course "bait and kill" is a war crime. For all the snipers know, people could be regarding the bait as something that needs to be removed before the bad people get it. These were living breathing people in their own country. They were neither target practice nor a video game. It's hard to believe how morally compromised we have become that anybody would think this was appropriate or legitimate behavior. We blew past shameful, took a hard right at disgusting and are hurtling downhill at breakneck speed toward lining people up at the gas chambers of evil.

Yeah, right. Of course they realize that they are collecting information on innocent Americans. At least they are innocent now. No telling what will be considered a crime in a few years.

Conspiracy theory alert! It's a whopper! And if it is even remotely true ...

Inquiring minds want to know why are GOP candidates avoiding minority voters? Um, because they didn't go out to dinner in Harlem with Bill O'Reilly and so they don't know that black people know how to behave in public even if it isn't a rap concert or welfare line? Besides, it isn't as if we have enough money to sway their votes on issues like letting the people of Washington D.C. have a say in the government that squats in their city.

Why are our troops trying to fight with undependable weapons? When I was in basic training in 1974 my M-16 would jam if you looked at it wrong. You add a little sand to the mix and it could substitute as a walking stick or a bludgeon if someone got close enough. One day it jammed three times in a little over ten minutes. Thank goodness it was just an exercise for me, I would hate to have to depend on it in a firefight. I'll bet the Blackwater guys aren't using M-16s.

Someone from the crew without a clue interfered with the Blackwater investigation? Gee, no one could have anticipated that.

Opinions, Everyone Has One

OMG! When one is spewing inflammatory rhetoric, shouldn't one have to provide some facts, some sort of justification for declaring that liberals have spent the last forty years systematically limiting free speech and free think? Something besides imagining crashing a plus size, lesbian only, pool party at Rosie's? Not one instance does he provide, he's just whipping up the fervor in an effort to raise the religious ...base. And I distinctly remember a time in America when people weren't regularly forced to endure one group's interpretation of religion and the role it played in our former greatness.

My brain felt the need for a cool rinse after reading that garbage but then I ran into Bill Kristol's version of reality. Interesting perspective, he says so himself. According to him, Bush is going to be remembered as a successful president and Bill drags out a variety of so called successes to back up his imaginary conclusion. No second terrorist strike on US soil. Nice, but what about the first one and doesn't he still have a year and a half left in his elected term? Second, a strong economy. That's true if you were rich before Bush got into office. If you weren't, the McJobs aren't enough to keep their standard of living and many people are declaring bankruptcy and mortgages are being foreclosed. Where he gets the idea that we are on our way to a successful outcome in Iraq is hard to follow. As is his belief that Americans want more of the same from their next president.

Frank Luntz believes that it will be difficult for the GOP to retain the presidency, but that it can be done. It would require a perfect confluence of events so maybe one shouldn't count on it. A message of hope? How the heck are they going to do that? Now that the majority is waking up to the reality that their lives are all about work and the lack of reward that comes with it, it might be a little harder to convince them that more of the same will make their lives better.

Keeping It Simple

Please tell me that no one is surprised by the verdict in the Hussein trial? This has been a foregone conclusion since day one, carefully orchestrated to give Bush and the gay old party something to crow about before the elections. They still have two days to pull Osama bin Forgotten out of their nether regions.

Revenge and retribution won't be immediate but the Iraqis and the world will know it when it comes. We have consistently underestimated the terrorists in the past and I don't see that changing anytime soon. They are innovative and we are reactionary. We've been playing a bad game of catch-up for the last five years and we are so far behind we are about to get lapped. Again.

Fingerprinting elementary school students. Ostensibly it is to save time and paperwork but you know it will be used for tracking. Train them young, mark them forever and control is so much easier in the future.

Unusual advertising, they must have been stoned when this came up as an idea. Brilliant and accurate, something the White House has yet to show the nation.

I agree. When I first moved to the Bay area I couldn't find a decent sushi restaurant and I still compromise. Some of the reasons I like to eat sushi are the freshness of the ingredients, the beauty of presentation and the ability to introduce me to different flavors. A good sushi chef can do this but once again capitalism has taken over and now most places expect you to pick your sushi from plates that travel around in a moat, with other people having access before it gets to you. Gross. And I don't even want to think of how much Benihana's has changed, it is now bland and the traditional Japanese chefs are no more. Now it's an assembly line.

How to drink and not get drunk, the Russian way. I think I would like to go to one of their parties.

Witch on a broomstick was more appropriate than this kid knew. I think the "w" can be safely swapped out for a "b". Once again no child left behind, does.

Terror, Corruption and Stupidity

Heaven forbid that a candidate should win based on the issues facing the voters. Unfortunately that is no longer what running and serving in Congress means. It is all about the power.

If you are a Republican and can't win based on your merits, Karl Rove will rush money from the U.S. Treasury to buy off your constituents. He will use the resources of the Federal Government for political gain according to this article. The political machine has moved from shameful to illegal while embracing immorality in between. All in the pursuit of power. How Christian.

Really? The best thing that has happened to the Pentagon in the last 25 years? I think the boots in the ground might view it a little differently. What a boner.

Maybe al-Qaeda is being quiet because they are planning something and don't want us to know about it? Maybe they are sitting back and watching for the entertainment value, realizing that the election isn't really going to make a difference. Maybe they haven't received their orders from Karl Rove. Yet.

Five Years Later

And anything that goes wrong is still Clinton's fault. When is the GOP going to take responsibility for anything? They are quick to grab the credit for things that they did not set in motion but not so quick to say they made a mistake. Next thing you know Clinton will be responsible for Mark Foley's inability to comprehend that teenagers are tall children, not short adults.

Mr. McCain you should be ashamed of yourself. You say you want to be president. Here's a unique idea. Why don't you come up with a solution instead of blaming someone in the past for today's precarious political climate that was created by the current resident of the White House. Show some initiative instead of whining that it isn't the fault of the people who have been in power for five years. It might look more presidential.

Just a thought.