Archive for July, 2009

In the fight against the lunacy of the Birthers, I was shocked to the very core of my being to see who was on the front lines.

That’s right. Bill O’Reilly is utilizing his patented style of belittling the opposition for the forces of good. I know it feels like you need to take a shower, but you don’t really have to. You’re still on the light side of the force, Padawan. It’s just that sometimes people say things that are so outlandish that even the wingnuts feel the need to cement themselves in reality. And really, can you think of anyone more suited to dish out adolescent ridicule?

It makes my stomach turn that I’d actually have to post on this subject, but it seems no matter where I go I can’t get away from these Birthers. What are “Birthers” you ask? Well the name comes from a derivative of the so-called “9/11 Truthers” who are conspiracy theorists about what happened on 9/11. Most folks basically write them off with the same folks who claim the moon landing 40 years ago was staged.

But these Birthers are a step above your run-of-the-mill whackjobs. Their main drive is to spread the lunacy that Barack Obama can’t be the President because they claim that he was born in Kenya. This is, of course, a complete fallacy that was debunked back during the Democratic Primaries, when most of these crazy stories are handled. But that has not stopped Orly Taitz and her merry band of nincompoops from filing legal papers and instilling clearly crazy people to accost their Republican Congressman at town hall meetings set up to talk about Obama’s Healthcare plans. (Way to waste your time, but I digress.)

Now I have been mulling over how to post about this. There is literally so much evidence that Obama is an American citizen that it’s staggering. I don’t have as much proof of my birth readily available as he does. They actually dug up the birth announcements from the local Hawaii newspapers for christssakes! But, as usual, Jon Stewart completely eviscerated the birther movement for me.

So, Birthers, now that your credibility is less than that of a serial baby killer, can you please find something constructive to do for this country?

As Obama’s Healthcare reform is bandied about in your given choice of media coverage, I think the most important thing to remember is that while there’s an awful lot of hyperbole flying around. Not surprisingly the lion’s share of this rhetoric is coming from the right-wing media. Or at least the loudest is. Glenn Beck had another meltdown yesterday decrying the “socialist” path that America is traveling. Nothing new — a man trying to maintain his public persona in order to keep his ratings up.

What is missing from the debate are the countless stories that we all know about our current healthcare system. Anyone — and I do mean anyone — who doesn’t see the inequities of it is a liar. There’s no nice way of saying that. They’re either lying to themselves or lying to others. Our healthcare system is in dire need of a good reformation. And one only needs to look at personal experiences to get a good idea of what’s what. I’ll share a couple of my own.

A few years ago I was diagnosed with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in both hands and I needed surgery to correct it. As with these types of ailments, Worker’s Compensation was immediately flagged since my job was sitting behind a keyboard. Upon investigating my medical history just after the surgery on my right wrist, the insurance agent let me know that I had broken my left hand according to my medical records. This was certainly news to me. I had an accident a few years prior where I had fallen and my poor hand was pretty much skinned, swollen to the point where I had to remove my wedding ring and x-rayed for good measure the next day, but there was no mention of a break. As it turned out I had a hairline fracture. Thankfully the injury was high enough on my hand that it didn’t interfere with my Worker’s Comp claim. Why is it that an insurance company was aware of this injury and I wasn’t? Probably because I was mainly financially responsible for my insurance co-pays and my insurance was on the hook for the rest.

Another example: Recently my eyelid had swollen shut for no apparent reason. I awoke at 5 in the morning and looked in the mirror at the Raging Bull-like visage and concluded that if it was some kind of pinkeye infection it would be best if I stayed home and went to the doctor for treatment. In fact many workplaces and all K-12 educational institutions will send you home if you bring a highly infectious ailment like conjunctivitis in with you. Normally you have to wait for a period of a day of treatment with drops before you can return. So I called in to work and then called my clinic only to be confronted by the fact that I couldn’t get in that day. After about 10 minutes of working with the very helpful scheduling nurse, I was told that I could go to another clinic which was further away, or I could just go to my clinic’s Urgent Care when it opened in the afternoon, both opportunities were at the same time oddly. But if I were to go to Urgent Care, my co-pay would increase substantially. I can’t imagine that a business would want emphasize that since it would immediately impact their bottom line if more patients made that decision.

Lastly, a friend of mine recently had heart palpitations that affected her so much that she immediately left work and drove to the hospital. She was then scolded for making the drive herself. I assume that her insurance would’ve covered the ambulance without a second thought. All sarcasm aside, I can recall several people in my life who, when faced with the costs of emergency transportation, have opted for other means despite the potential risks to their own health.

These are all examples of the direct results of our healthcare system as it stands now. As a firm believer that one’s medical care is a right and not a privilege in this day and age, I cannot understand how anyone doesn’t see the need to disempower insurance companies from the process. It is a fact that many former insurance adjusters have come forward and gone on the record to state that insurance companies have literally let people die because it would hurt them too much financially to put forth the resources that would’ve otherwise allowed them to live. And having seen what hospitals charge for simple over-the-counter medications like ibuprofen to individuals under their care, it’s plainly obvious that they are padding the costs. But, to be frank, it’s in their interest to do so since the mechanism is in place.

That said, no one is really blaming the doctors. I would hope that no one is really blaming the patients. It’s just a question of everyone in between them that has a very keen financial interest involved. And as much I am for a healthy capitalistic society, this is needlessly costing the lives of people every day.

So the next time you hear Glenn Beck or anyone else railing against government-sponsored healthcare, try to remember your own experiences with the system in place and put it in the proper context. And try to remember that Glenn Beck has absolutely no personal experience with the healthcare system of Canada. And also try to remember that his paycheck depends on how much controversy he can stir up. He can yell, scream, rant and cry all he wants — it’s part of his self-authored job description that made him a top ratings grabber. He’s not a journalist, he’s a jester for Rupert Murdoch.

I maintain to this day that if you really want to understand how the United States got so involved and subsequently fucked over by the so-called “War on Terror”, one of the best things you could read is Sy Hersch’s Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. In fact, if you want to know the minutia of detail on any given subject that Hersh has written about, it’s probably a good idea you pick it up. Though he is ridiculed by the right-wing he always seems to be correct in his reporting. Most recently he spoke back in March at the University of Minnesota at a “Great Conversations” event, where he detailed his latest bombshell that Dick Cheney, while acting as Vice President of the United States, was directing secret “Assassination Squads” against perceived enemies of the state. The right-wing did what they always do — attacked Hersh for not naming sources and by association undercutting the reporting. Well, as usual, Hersh was correct. (In fact it may be this very story in which Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was under fire for calling out the CIA for lying to congress, but that’s another post altogether.)

To be honest, I would’ve been surprised if such a program didn’t exist. In our action-movie perception of US foreign policy, it’s not exactly stretching imagination to envision it. Bond, Bourne…pick your poison. Americans eat that shit up. And if I could go out on a limb, if the program targets people who target innocent Americans, then do it. I don’t think that’s being argued. But the real point of the story is that this was done under specific orders of the Executive branch not to inform congress, which in case you didn’t know violates the National Security Act of 1947 that founded the CIA in the first place. It can be done so long as you let congress have oversight of the program.

So let’s just say it clearly: Dick Cheney broke the law. (Again.)

Cue the troll; As when the Dick Cheney method of how to fuck up a country’s foreign policy by starting illegal wars of choice, Lynn Cheney, the daughter of the Dark Overlord, has been dispatched to every talk show that is guaranteed not to question her bullshit statements thoroughly. According to the troll, congressional Democrats are looking to politicize their arguments that Bush/Cheney lied to us for the past eight fucking years. The favorite argument is that President Obama wants to keep looking forward and why must congressional Democrats continue to drag up the past? (Um, I’ll take “Suicidally Bad Precedents” for $1000, Alex.)

I really want to see Lynn Cheney on a program where she’s not allowed to talk over anyone who challenges her spin. Violations of this rule are punishable by the very tactics she’s so quick to defend that her father ordered to question terrorist suspects. It has literally come to a point where if I see her on television, I change the channel. Her monotone and uninterrupted insistence of creating alternate realities where her father is the beneficent statesmen who fought tooth and nail to protect the very foundation of America, and not a man who has failed at each and every juncture of his public service career to the point of directly violating the Constitution and should be rotting in jail, is nothing short of a blood-boiling to me. It should almost be illegal in itself, like a hatecrime.

So something to keep in mind as Lynn Cheney makes yet another couple rounds on through the media is that she’s only doing it for, now, two reasons:

1. She’s proving her own bona fides as an electable politician.
2. She’s protecting her father from going to prison, where he belongs.

Any deviation from the latter is to protect the former. No honor among Cheneys.

I have disabled the ability to register new accounts since it appears to be all to easy to bypass the CAPTCHA for bot accounts. Until WordPress can institute a better solution, this feature will be disabled. Sorry about this, but I’m getting tired of housecleaning.

Never mind — I’ve got some new stuff up now.