How does it feel?

It's tempting to make all kinds of comparisons between the angry arrest of Professor Gates and the not so angry exchange between the scruffy looking 68 year old police found strolling through a minority neighborhood of Longbranch New Jersey last month. They had received a call from a resident concerned that a suspicious looking white man was wandering around. The funny part though is that even after confronting him, the two officers in the New Jersey Police squad car didn't seem to know who Bob Dylan was.

The experience of growing old sometimes only feels like everyone else is growing younger and you hear quips about knowing it's happening to you when the police, your doctor and all the other "authority" figures turn into children. I wouldn't necessarily expect a 24 year old to know all the much about the seminal figures of 20th century culture, but Bob Dylan? Who else looks or sounds like Bob Dylan?

The elderly gentleman accompanied the two officers whose combined age is less than three quarters of his own, back to the Ocean Place Resort and Spa where the tour was staying -- where he was identified by the no doubt amazed roadies.

There's no information about whether the police asked for an autograph, but I doubt it. They thanked him for his cooperation, but it's not like he was any kind of celebrity after all.

Death Panels never die

I haven't heard a peep in the news about this being VJ Day; the day when WWII was over and the last military victory the US ever had. Sure, we've blown many things up and lost tens of thousands of our soldiers and killed millions of people, but those weren't so much wars as attempts at interfering in other countries that had not declared war on us, some of them based on invented scenarios.

I tuned in to MSNBC this afternoon wondering if this country of born-yesterday geniuses would bother to remember the end of the largest, deadliest war in human history, but what I got was a panel of simpletons trying to lend dignity to the idea that having Medicare pay a consultation fee to your doctor should you happen to seek counseling about what to do if you have a fatal disease will lead to summary executions.

"It's the slippery slope argument - it's easy to see how you can go from the government being involved in health care decisions to the government executing you."

say the smug voices. No it isn't actually, not even if you're currently hospitalized with paranoid delusions. It isn't because paying your doctor bill is not getting involved in the decision making. It isn't because there is no slippery slope argument, only a slippery slope fallacy unless you can establish that paying someone's bill gives you the right to kill him - and you can't.

Yesterday I replied to yet another viral e-mail purporting to show how Barak Obama is insisting that Our military personnel should "pay their own damned insurance since they're volunteers." It was followed by endless expressions of undying hate. Of course it's another fraud -- I've yet to get one that wasn't -- but in return for my polite reply showing how the words came not from Obama but from the comedy writers at the Daily Show, I got an e-mail so hideous and grotesque with hatred of "liberls like me" it was quite incomprehensible.

When it gets to the point where ordinary Americans with ordinary, respectable lives and credentials are less coherent, more hate filled and more willing to believe the utterly preposterous simply because our president had a black father, there is reason for the reasonable to worry. There is great temptation for many of us simply to wash our hands of this dirt and let the country go the way of the Third Reich.

"The Death Panel idea has legs because it's easy to understand"

said the Republican apologist on MSNBC. Lies are designed that way, the truth just is what it is. Let's hope the country is more than it seems.

BY THE TIME WE GOT TO WOODSTOCK

40 years ago, on August 15th 1969 a most extraordinary event was taking place in the farm country of upper New York State. Thousands of young people were converging on Max Yaeger’s farm where they were promised three days of peace, love and rock n roll! The town is named Bethel but it will be remembered forever as simply Woodstock. The number of attendees was estimated at half a million young people and yet there were no fights, no vandalism, no injury inflicted by one person onto another. The worst problems were the lack of food, the rain and the bad acid trips.

The traffic situation was insurmountable; the New York Thruway was in gridlock. People were abandoning their vehicles on the sides of the road and hiking in. And what colorful vehicles they were!

All the top names of the music scene were there; Hendrix, Joplin, Havens, Guthrie, Santana, Alvin Bishop…. they were all there making history. So were the attendees, sharing food and blankets, taking care of each other and conducting themselves in a surprisingly peaceful manner (surprising to the older generation anyway).

We were a generation embattled over the Viet Nam War, civil rights and human rights. But in that time and place, it really did seem that we could change the world with our message of peace and love.

It was a time of free love, drug use and spiritual awakening, but in forty years, HIV has curbed enthusiasm for casual sex and the war on drugs has managed to put a boatload of drug users behind bars and the religious enclaves have come front and center. But instead of peace and caring and sharing, we now have hate and death and destruction - a world gone mad.

But I will always hold on to the belief that it is never too late to change the world. So today, I will take a break from all the disturbing violence and disruptive mayhem and simply wish you all…

Peace & Love,

Rocky

Rationing, Death Panels and Takeovers, Oh my!

Is it a lack of determination that keeps me at this? There are times I just want to sail away into the sunset and forget about our idiot's Republic that seems hell bent to destroy itself in an orgy of irrational anger -- but I don't. Sometimes it takes only a word to start me off again and this time the word was "rationing."

On thing that's consistent about American politics is the practice of hiding your worst vices by preemptively accusing your opposition of it. If your practice of rationing health care to maximize profits hangs around your neck like a decomposing albatross, if you let people die because your top executives need their 20 million dollar salaries and the lobbyists and Congressmen need to be kept rich and happy, you make up a story about Obama and rationing and you stage public events where people pretend to be furious at it until eventually people do become furious enough that they stop thinking and start screaming.

Ask Wendell Potter, former vice president of CIGNA quit his job at Corporate Communications because of the company's decision that the life of 17 year old Nataline Sarkisyan was not worth saving: the liver transplant cost too much so the CIGNA Death Panel refused, calling it "experimental." Although outcry from the public and organizations such as the California Nurses Association caused CIGNA to re-focus on how much the bad publicity was costing them and relented, it was too late and the girl died.

Now rationing is the thing with transplants. The supply is severely limited and systems are in place that attempt to make distribution equitable, but it's not based on the cost. That's not the case at CIGNA nor is it indeed in American health care. Our "system" if you can call it that, will decide how much your life is worth to them and whether or not you've paid your premiums, they will refuse treatment if it will eat into profitability. They will do so even though profitability is growing rapidly. Rationing of health care: it's nothing personal, it's just business and it's just about profits.

"I know from personal experience that members of Congress and the public have good reason to question the honesty and trustworthiness of the insurance industry."

testified Potter to the Senate Commerce Committee last month. He related how unprofitable companies were purged, to maximize profits and he's now telling CNN that the buzz words and hackneyed phrases being shouted at Town Hall meetings come straight from the wordsmiths of the Insurers.

"People talk about the government takeover of the system ... that's a buzz term that comes straight out of the insurance industry," says Potter.

Rationing of treatment is not new, nor has it anything to do with who's providing it. When resources are limited, it has to occur, whether it's because there aren't enough organs or operating rooms or surgeons or equipment. Indeed when kidney dialysis was developed in the early 1960's, a committee was set up in Seattle's Artificial Kidney Center for instance, to ration the use of their machinery. I hesitate to call it a death panel, but if you needed time on the machines, a group consisting of a minister, a banker, a labor leader and a housewife picked by the Center would ration it based on such criteria as your record of Church attendance, net worth and marital status. In other words private parties could decide what your life was worth and factor their profit into the equation. It wasn't until the "government takeover" which was Medicare that opened up access to almost everyone in need and perhaps lessened the ability of insurers to indulge in profit based rationing. They sure as hell don't want much more of that at CIGNA.

A great deal of thought goes into choosing words like "death panel" and "rationing" and "takeover." They are chosen with surgical precision so that using by them as accusations, the corporate death panels, the corporate rationing of health care and the monopolistic trusts that indulge in them are protected from the truth.

Now contemplating just how dumb are the people plugged into the corporate matrix, I'm back to wanting to give it all up and let the country sell itself deeper into slavery and dependency on those who see the American People as sheep to be fleeced.

READING HR 3200 - THE SECOND INSTALLMENT

I'm still reading -

Section 164 – Reinsurance program for retirees – this deals with people who have retired but are not old enough to qualify for Medicare and are insured by their former employer. The gist of this section is to provide some government assistance to the employer so said employer can comply with the cost restrictions that will be established in this health care bill.

The next part of the bill, starting with Section 201 through Section 208 and covering 43 pages – is devoted to the establishment and provisions of a health insurance exchange.

For all those who keep harping about how they don’t want a government run single payer healthcare system, this is the section that provides for private health insurance along with a public option. Please note the word “option” as opposed to the word “mandatory.”

What this bill proposes to do is set a standard for health care where people can choose their level of coverage but where the insurance companies have to play by a FAIR set of rules. For instance, plans will be tiered with every company providing a basic health plan. In order for a company to be able to offer the next tiered Enhanced Plan, they must offer a Basic Plan. If a company wants to offer a Premium Plan they must also offer a Basic Plan and an Enhanced Plan. This is to keep the risk pool balanced and thereby keep costs down. This section also allows for individual states to set up a health insurance exchange.

BTW – throughout this document there are mandates for studies and reports to be conducted from day 1 in order to make necessary changes in the event of unanticipated problems and with a project this big, there are bound to be problems.

The next section is devoted to the dastardly, bastardly Public Health Insurance Option. Again, let me call attention to the word OPTION. You will NOT be required to take public health insurance. This is to ensure that ALL Americans have affordable health coverage. There will be income limits for eligibility, once again, debunking the myth that this bill is trying to set up single payer socialized medicine.
Did you also notice I wrote “All Americans?”
Carefully note the last entry in this section:

SEC. 246. NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED
ALIENS.
Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments
for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are
not lawfully present in the United States.

Only 873 pages left to go…

Enough is Enough

Years ago my mother was convinced that Medicare would turn the USA into a communist country. Now, at 91, she uses it gratefully. My recently deceased father-in-law was the same; swore Medicare would make us all communists, but then swore by it when it helped extend his life to 90.

I, on the other hand, spent one year with minimal health care. Fortunately, I was able to change jobs in 1984 to obtain adequate health insurance for my family. I had a disabled daughter and flimsy medical coverage that paid for little of her care at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Luckily, I was able to find a job with a good private health care plan. Millions, however, are unable to obtain any health care and are sick or dying as a result. They would be well served to have a national health program as an option.

Where are the outcries about deaths caused by a society unwilling to see that everyone has health care? Where is the outrage about the needless suffering of so many fellow Americans?

Why aren’t the radicals out there screaming “murder” when a young uninsured woman dies of cancer? Or when a middle aged uninsured man dies of kidney disease? Where is the hype to stop “murdering” so many of our uninsured citizens? The private sector insurance business has failed these people miserably while some private insurance executives have rolled big time in the money we pay as premiums. It is time to try something different.

We spend more on health care now than any nation in the world, yet rank 37th out of 191 countries in health care according to the World Health Organization. Canadians outlive Americans by two years, despite all of the American criticisms about socialized medicine. True, we are better service providers and insurers for certain specialty diseases than any other country. But then, aren’t we smart enough to overhaul the system so it is accessible to all, yet retain our excellent specialty care? Aren’t we obligated to do just that if we are, as we claim, the most moral country on Earth?

The time is now to act outrageously indignant that any American anywhere would shout out against giving another American a fair chance at life saving health care. I am fed up with ignorant people rudely interrupting health care town hall meetings geared to helping tweak the President’s health care plan. Those of us in favor of the plan, including myself, are screaming back: “Haters, move out of the way. We want good health care now for all Americans. We will not be stopped by your ignorance.”

Sometimes is Heard an Encouraging Word

Just a quick post on President Obama's town hall meeting today. I found it refreshing to see him get out and do some explaining to an audience. The reason? He is usually his own best public-relations team. When we see him in action, we recall why he won the election. The same vulgar subset currently shouting down others at town halls were around during the election in 2008, but their childish howlings, paranoid delusions, and racist conniption fits failed to hinder the will of the majority in November. It's worth remembering this.

When Obama takes the podium, such opposition (aside from more rational kinds of opposition, I take care to add) stands little chance. He is obviously a well-intentioned, honest and intelligent person, and those qualities shine through. His presence carries an authenticity that goes beyond the office he holds (in itself a considerable factor), and he cannot afford to leave the public-relations campaign entirely up to Democratic senators and congresspeople.

Reading HR 3200 once again.

Rather than to add on to the long comment stream following Reading HR 3200, I'd like to address the myth of a spontaneous movement behind the disruption of town hall meetings. Rachel Maddow does a good job here of telling you exactly which professional lobbyists are organizing it all using published data. There have been published photographs showing the same faces at these meetings that were at the Republican raid that stopped the Bush V. Gore recount in Miami in 2000 and they are not locals, but professional lobbyists. They were not there to express their opinions but to keep democracy from happening and they are not at the town hall meetings to add to the discussion, but to prevent the discussion and therefore protesting the use of unregistered lobbyists to prevent the democratic process is not an offense against free speech but a defense of it. OK? Can we end this line of discussion?

The argument that the wording of HR3200 is too obscure for the average guy and therefore "alternate" interpretations have a measurable degree of probability is a flimsy version of ad ignorantiam: I don't understand A, therefore B. Anyone should recognize this as a fallacy and recognize that you're not going to fool anyone here with it.

I don't have a lot of trouble reading the bill for what that's worth and I certainly don't have any trouble discerning that a discussion of limiting our of pocket expense for the insured doesn't mean "rationing" and the provision to pay for you doctor's time when discussing living wills isn't a "death panel." I surely don't have any trouble discounting the tirades of someone who insists these lies are true.

The only conclusion one may legitimately make from any difficulty in understanding is that one's opinion is based upon a minimum of information and most likely to reflect prejudice. If you don't understand HR 3200 don't tell me what it means and don't tell me Sarah Palin might have a point because the wording is too complex for you, OK?

Elsewhere

Ok, I give up. It's impossible to win an argument with someone as totally dishonest as Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck or as stupid as their followers. The relentless, rabid and utterly false accusations of forced euthanasia, "death panels" and health care rationing continue despite the fact that the most rigorous reading of HR 3200 reveals nothing of the sort - and indeed nothing of the other sorts of lies they're telling. You could go look, but you won't and if you're a Republican you'll read one thing and swear you saw another, just as I could roll up the president's birth certificate and shove it up your nose and you'd go on asking for it, insisting it wasn't there, you flat-Earth bozo with too few dendrites to make a synapse.

So go ahead you demented, perverted self-righteously dishonest enemies of everything good and true. Go ahead; sit in your mother's basement with the spiders and watch Fox lies. E-mail everyone you know and assure them Obama's going to murder your kids and eat your grandmother and take away your guns too because Beck says so. I don't give a shit. A country with ten people like you in it wouldn't be worth saving anyway. Take it all you deranged psychotic cretins - whatever's left. You deserve the kind of shithole country you are making this into and you can have it.

Sayonara, assholes! I'm elsewhere.

Rounding up the righteous.

Glenn Beck, that bottomless sack of snake shit, is trying to make you forget that the last administration set new highs in illegal surveillance of private citizens by referencing a small item at the Whitehouse.gov web page which asks that the endless stream of e-mail lies be forwarded. The site, if you care to look, has information and videos that attempt to disprove the mostly baseless claims. The professional liars are alarmed and so they want you to be alarmed -- and so they break out the swastikas again and try to pin them on the Democrats. "They're rounding up the conservatives, they cry, while trying not to snicker. "they've created a new 'Information Czar'" says the bullshit Czar, Glenn Beck.

People who invent psychotic scenarios and dress them up as dire warnings are "conservatives" you see and only trying to help you see that Obama is a fascistcomministmuslim and illegal alien -- conservatively speaking.

If you're like me, you've had enough of the Palin "death panel" fraud and a great many others and forwarding them to Snopes or Factcheck simply doesn't help much. Returning them with comment to the people who sent them to you doesn't help either. Depending on the Media to refute the obvious and childish fabrications is a lost hope, but it seems that Mr. Beck and Senator Cornyn and the other professional traitors and haters of honesty are afraid someone will get to the bottom of it all and trace the sabotage, the lies and the psychotic ravings back to the RNC and into their own hard drives from whence it originates.

Behold, we're now all being asked to "squeal on our neighbors" say the folks who wanted to have postal letter carriers peek in our basement windows a few years ago and encouraged librarians to spy on those of us who read. Obama is making up a list, just like Santa and he's going to put all those people who tried to warn you that Obama is Hitler into camps.

Did I mention that Poland invaded Germany? The Liberals don't want you to know.