Health care

We are getting lesser care and paying more and the health care giants are getting richer and doing less. 

Is everyone so afraid of changing the status quo? 

Yet, everyone is dissatisfied with the status quo. 

Am I scared that the public option will be a lumbering giant and people will get lost in the system?  Hell, yeah.  But people are already lost in the current system and something has to change.  Health insurance companies are too entrenched in government and in our lives. 

We have to do something big and bold. 

I am not telling my son that I was too scared to support change to the intolerable status quo.

I stand with President Obama. Do it for your children. Make them proud.

Jon Cronkite Stewart

Someone wrote somewhere: push the panic button when Obama loses Jon Stewart.  LBJ knew he lost the confidence of this nation to fight the Vietnam War when Walter Cronkite essentially called it an unwinnable quagmire.

Jon Stewart wondered aloud whether Obama is ten steps ahead of us or if health care is kicking his butt.

According to random and anecdotal polls, Jon Stewart is today’s most trusted name in news.  (Psssst, CNN: stop claiming that honor — you are a weak also-ran at best.)

Here is the crazy part:  wait for it, wait for it, here it comes . . .

He does fake news for Comedy Central. 

That should tell us and the politicians that we are living and thinking in an alternate universe.  The jokesters are the prophets and the leaders are their very own caricatures.

Jon Stewart is just a comedian, but the times make a person.  For now, the times demand that he keeps politicians and talking heads honest within a corrupted system (but only if he is funny, because otherwise no one will watch).

He should get the Presidential Medal of Honesty and Comedy (a quasi military honor known in the military argot as PRE-MED-HAC, which Stewart probably was before he failed Organic Chemistry).

But he should get this high honor only on a president’s last day in office, so it doesn’t interfere with his lampooning.

Still bothering me

Cheney says the statute of limitations has run on his secrets.

Does that mean that the statute of limitations has run on the classified “secrets” relating to renditions, the exposure of Valerie Plame, the panel of “oil executive environmentalists” who helped shape our energy policy, the behind the scenes deals giving Halliburton no-bid contracts and the lies and half-truths in the run up to war in Iraq?

If Cheney can tell secrets, then the secrets about him should be open for viewing.

Take that Bubba — Webb visits Suu Kyi and gets a Stupid American released

Uh oh.  There is a throw-down happening between between Bubba Clinton and all other politicians and ambassadors.  Sen. Webb, a decorated veteran, went to Burma and freed an idiotic American.  (If he was a US government operative, then we should save him.)

More importantly he spoke to Suu Kyi who is the democratically elected leader of Burma and has been prevented from governing by the oppressive military regime.  Ok, a publicity stunt for the military regime.

Americans have many freedoms.  One is to be as stupid as you want.  But don’t expect the government to intercede when you swim into Burma to see Suu Kyi who was already under house arrest and ruled by an oppressive regime.  All this American did was cause more problems for Suu Kyi and our government. The US government shouldn’t use its diplomatic capital to help this stupid guy whose only goal was a “scoop” and the fame it would bring him.  I think Sen. Webb was wrong.

Stupidity at this level should be a felony.

 

updated 27 minutes ago — Associated Press

YANGON, Myanmar – U.S. Sen. Jim Webb won the release Saturday of an American prisoner convicted in Myanmar and sentenced to seven years in prison for swimming secretly to the residence of detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the senator’s office said.

During his visit to Myanmar — the first by a member of the U.S. Congress in more than a decade — the senator also secured a rare visit with Suu Kyi, who was convicted along with Yettaw and sentenced to 18 more months of house arrest.

Kiss today goodbye

Today:

in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act.  This was a day of celebration for my grandfather who grew up in Czarist Russia and came of age during the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

In 1945, Japan surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, ending World War II.

In 1980, Lech Walesa led workers on a strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland, leading to the creation of the Solidarity labor movement.

In 2009, Barack Obama, our President, goes to Montana to fight for affordable health care.

Another GOP protest instigator gets caught

Dick Armey hasn’t used his given name, Richard, in a long time because, well, Dick really fits the man he is.

Let’s see, he is stoking and organizing faux protesters to spread baseless rumors and instill fear of health care reform in order to serve the health care industry.  Well, I am not going to quarrel with his not using Richard.

From Politico:

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) is resigning from DLA Piper law firm amid a wave of negative attention his grassroots organization, Freedom Works, has drawn for helping to organize protesters at health care town hall meetings with members of Congress.

In an interview with POLITCO Armey said that he was concerned about the media scrutiny the health care protests were drawing to the firm he has been associated with since retiring from Congress.

On Aug. 7 MSNBC host Rachel Maddow raised questions about the law firm’s potential role in the protests.

“In addition to fronting [FreedomWorks], Dick Armey is a senior policy adviser at a law firm called DLA Piper. DLA Piper just happens to have received $830,000 this year, so far, from a giant pharmaceutical firm called Medicines Company. This after the $1.5 million Medicines Company paid Mr. Armey’s firm last year.

“The fact that Dick Armey and FreedomWorks are standing alongside regular Joes like Rick Scott to lead the charge against health care reform could be just a coincidence. Or it could be a stark reminder of who we’re dealing with here. Who is actively organizing the campaign against health care reform? Scaring real Americans with increasingly paranoid and kooky lies about health care and then providing a script for how to express that fear.”

The reason why I watch Jon Stewart

Dan Rather wrote a book entitled, “The Camera Never Blinks”.  Now, with the Internet, nothing is ever lost.

Last night, Jon Stewart showed Glenn Beck railing against the health care system when he was a CNN host and now saying that health care is awesome as a FOX News host.  During Glenn’s time at CNN, he experienced the health care system first hand, with a botched hemorrhoid procedure.  Hypocrisy revealed.

Jon Stewart took aim at Hillary Clinton’s outburst and Blagojevich’s downfall, so he is not a Democratic partisan hack.  In fact, I understand that he would have voted for McCain in 2000.  But let’s face it, Republicans are doing such stupid things these days that dumb Democrats rarely get any coverage.

I know, I know, Jon Stewart is just a comedian.  A political satirist.  And so funny.

Health Care Lobbyists on Capitol Hill

According to Bloomberg, there are FIVE lobbyists for every one member of Congress and the ratio is growing.  These lobbyists fall along the entire health care spectrum.

The burning question is:  Is this our legislative body or an episode of HBO’s Entourage?

Reckless Indifference to the Truth

If Sarah Palin believed what she says, then, ok, people can disagree on things. 

End of life issues are difficult, emotionally, culturally, religiously and not for the undecisive. 

But unless Sarah Palin wants to explain in Kerry-like fashion how she was for it before she was against it, I think she is just using anything to burnish her image as the true neo-con leader for 2012.

Why? because a Google search shows the text of her proclamation supporting end of life and quality of life decision-making:

spacerState of Alaska > Governor > Proclamations > Proclamations Archive

Healthcare Decisions Day  Print Now Printer Friendly

WHEREAS, Healthcare Decisions Day is designed to raise public awareness of the need to plan ahead for healthcare decisions, related to end of life care and medical decision-making whenever patients are unable to speak for themselves and to encourage the specific use of advance directives to communicate these important healthcare decisions.

WHEREAS, in Alaska, Alaska Statute 13.52 provides the specifics of the advance directives law and offers a model form for patient use.  

WHEREAS, it is estimated that only about 20 percent of people in Alaska have executed an advance directive. Moreover, it is estimated that less than 50 percent of severely or terminally ill patients have an advance directive.

WHEREAS, it is likely that a significant reason for these low percentages is that there is both a lack of knowledge and considerable confusion in the public about Advance Directives.

WHEREAS, one of the principal goals of Healthcare Decisions Day is to encourage hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, continuing care retirement communities, and hospices to participate in a statewide effort to provide clear and consistent information to the public about advance directives, as well as to encourage medical professionals and lawyers to volunteer their time and efforts to improve public knowledge and increase the number of Alaska’s citizens with advance directives.

WHEREAS, the Foundation for End of Life Care in Juneau, Alaska, and other organizations throughout the United States have endorsed this event and are committed to educating the public about the importance of discussing healthcare choices and executing advance directives.

WHEREAS, as a result of April 16, 2008, being recognized as Healthcare Decisions Day in Alaska, more citizens will have conversations about their healthcare decisions; more citizens will execute advance directives to make their wishes known; and fewer families and healthcare providers will have to struggle with making difficult healthcare decisions in the absence of guidance from the patient.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Sarah Palin, Governor of the state of Alaska, do hereby proclaim April 16, 2008, as:

Healthcare Decisions Day in Alaska, and I call this observance to the attention of all our citizens.

Dated: April 16, 2008

The only thing being murdered is the truth.

Cheney is writing a tell-all book

Wow, isn’t he the man who believed in secrets and disparaged those former insiders who wrote books about their time in government? 

Actually, it makes sense in Cheney-think. 

Rules don’t apply to the self-anointed Nietzsche uber-mensch, except that Cheney has all of the hubris of the “overman” but lacks the essential element of one who risks all for the sake of enhancement of humanity.  (Hint: waterboarding doesn’t advance humanity.)

In real-world-think, he is just another egomaniacal hack.