Category Archives: Health care

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Putting “Bob” in a Search Engine

Robert Melendez 1You know, everybody says they “don’t believe everything” they hear. Everybody likes to think of themselves as discerning individuals who eyes can’t be covered with wool. But the truth is, most people aren’t educated, or have not taken the time to really work at what can only be termed a skill set.

Being a critical reader doesn’t come naturally. A Facebook friend of mine is busy trying to educate a few people about how to tell the questionable from the reliable. He makes a good point. You might want to ignore a source that gives you salacious or wild headlines without a corresponding story. In other words, if the headlines don’t turn out to match the actual verifiable facts in the story, well, you might want to look elsewhere.

A case in point was a recent Rachel Maddow show wherein Ms. Maddow referred to the town hall meeting that John McCain had. A woman referred to her son as having been the victim of gun violence. She wanted to know about what laws Congress might pass. McCain first expressed his condolences for the loss of the woman’s son, and then remarked that “Congress was not going to ban assault weapons.”

Now Rachel indicated that the tape of this had been edited by a local news operation, and that “it might unfairly portray Senator McCain as lacking in compassion. (the tape omitted the sentence regarding McCain’s sympathies). The tape was offered for the news that McCain was saying that the GOP was not going for any ban on assault weapons and this was before there had even been any hearings on Feinstein’s bill.

Yet, the headline from a right-wing shrill machine was something like “Rachel Maddow gleefully admits she edited tape to make GOP look bad.”

I assume you get the point.

The Daily Caller has been pushing the Melendez story. You have obviously heard about it. Melendez is accused of cavorting with paid prostitutes at a friend’s home in the Dominican Republic. The story was apparently “leaked” by GOP operatives and offered to ABC news. They declined.

The right-wingers would say, “see, the MSM is in the pocket of the Democrats. They don’t report on misconduct of one of their own.” Is that what happened? No. Not at all.

The fact is that ABC interviewed one of the “prostitutes”. When asked how she knew that the man she had only known as “Bob” was a US senator, she replied that “I put his name in a search engine and Melendez’ picture came up.”

Why, I invite you to try that and see what you get.

ABC news declined the offer as “unreliable”, which of course The Daily Caller jumped all over it. Which one do you want to use as a source of information? (And I’m not pushing ABC news since I don’t find them all that good either.)

Which brings me full circle, since yesterday I unfairly maligned a nurse quite possibly, for failing to render CPR assistance to an elderly assisted-living woman. Apparently the woman had signed a DNR and I can presume that the nurse was aware of it. Or I would expect that was possible. In any case, I admittedly relied on only what I heard on news broadcasts from MSM and failed to delve any deeper into better sources. Mea Culpa. Live and learn. Hoisted on my own petard. (please insert any another euphemism that seems appropriate)

†

I’m inclined at this point to urge the government to just put a big ole fence around the state of Texas. Now granted, they are a big state, and they have a big population, but for Jimminy Cricket’s sake, they can’t have THAT many idiots can they?

Louis the Loon Gohmert is wasting your tax dollars once again with his amendment rider to a budget bill that would prevent any “federal funds” being used to transport the President to any golf outing until “White House tours are resumed”. Louis woke up from a drug-induced dream and thought he was in Lilliputian land again. The White House suspended tours to save money ala the sequester. Louis takes up space on the planet. I vote to suspend him from a hot air balloon, attached to the capital dome.

Another dim bulb in the state Senate wants to suspend operations like Planned Parenthood from submitted sex education materials to schools that teach sex education. Although all such materials are already subject to public availability and parental veto, Ken Paxton thinks (I know, a crazy word to apply to many in Texas), that present law doesn’t go far enough.

Places like PPH should not be allowed to offer health care information because of course they have a “conflict” of interests. Being that they provide abortions, they most surely would be promoting sex by unmarried teens as a way to, you know, keep business up.  While no example of any information that does that was offered as proof, insiders believe that if you put the brochures in water with a teaspoon of sugar, the words “HAVE SEX NOW!” will appear across the top of each page.

Okay, I added that last part.

And people talk about the misuse of taxes.

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I’m On Planet Quaintly Backward, Yes?

NURSEI would sure like to know who drugs me and transports me without my agreement to these other planets in the galaxy. I mean, I go to sleep one place, and get up and everything seems normal.

Until of course something so outrageously insane happens, and I look skyward, knowing of course that that sun up there is not my sun, but rays down upon this alien landscape that just looks like my earth.

How do I tell?

Oh. It’s the outrageously insane thing that happens. I mean it ain’t human the thing that happens. It belongs to a foreign and utterly insane race of people who do the opposite of anything any NORMAL human would do. I pity that poor planet. It’s not like mine.

On this planet, a “nurse” who works at a senior assisted living facility, calls emergency services (oddly also called 911 here) to announce that an 80-something lady has collapsed in the dining area and is “barely” breathing. The operator, sends off help and then instructs the nurse to go over and begin doing CPR (apparently they have a similar heart-lung circulatory system as we do). The nurse refuses telling the operator that the company she works for doesn’t allow her to do that.

We are told that the facility doesn’t “do” medical care as part of its services, and prohibits the nurse (whose purpose there is never explained) from rendering assistance to a resident in distress. The operator becomes more and more excited, begging the nurse to find “somebody” who can. The nurse says nobody (except presumably her) knows how to do it. The operator says that’s fine, she can teach them over the phone. The nurse says the company doesn’t allow that either.

The woman of course dies.

The state (also oddly enough called California) has a law that says one is not required to come to the assistance of another. There are plenty of states with such a rule. There are also states that have rules that are called “good Samaritan” laws that protect well-meaning people who help from being sued for causing harm during the helping.

It begs the question I guess to wonder if a nurse has a duty beyond “obeying orders” that might be above the inhuman (obviously because this planet’s inhabitants must not be human like us), order of a company who cares nothing more than for the bottom line–profits shall not be diluted by lawsuits.  It begs the question too why there is a “nurse” employed in the first place if not to at least imply to residents and their families that medical care is only a “step away.”

I sure was glad to learn that I had been secretly kidnapped to this draconian planet. Nothing like this could happen on my earth, and certainly not in my country. Nobody would be that cold and, well, inhuman. No, never in my America.

If that wasn’t enough to assure me that I was no longer in Kansas or anywhere nearby, I saw another thing on this nutsy planet that make it clear it was not mine.

I heard a guy (I swear this is true) who called himself Jeb Bush, just like our Jeb Bush  in America. Only this one, he didn’t have any love for the Latinos like our Jeb. No this one, (not sure he is married to a Latino woman likes ours) he is against allowing undocumented workers a path to citizenship. He is, (believe it or not) in favor of creating them as a permanent underclass in this country they call America, although I think the correct spelling is AmerIKA. No citizenship for them, for as he put it, the last time they did amnesty, why a whole bunch of them didn’t take advantage of it anyway, so they must not really want to be citizens, doncha know.

Yeah, he didn’t mention that maybe some of them were still afraid, and many even more couldn’t afford to pay those fines that you had to pay first to apply.

Our Jeb would never think of such a thing. He’s the smarter of the Bushes (yes they have a passel of  Bushes here too) and that is such an ugly idea that nobody who cares about immigrants would ever suggest that we start defining a whole class as some slave labor reservoir.

They say that this Jeb here, why he is thinking about running for president in 2016. And they tell me that a tiny minority of really nasty mean people hate Latinos for all kinds of imagined things, and this Jeb is courting them for votes.

Our Jeb ain’t like that. He has principles. That Jeb could learn a thing or two from our Jeb.

So, anyway, I gotta run. I’m heading down to the airport and find the next transport back to the third rock from the sun. I sure hope to be back by tomorrow. The food here sucks.

**I learned after the posting of this that the woman in the first instance may have signed a DNR order and may well have been informed that staff were prohibited from offering any medical assistance. I am wrong to castigate the nurse in question if that is so, although I find it odd that she made no mention of this fact when talking to the 911 operator. I apologize to anyone I offended by my attempt at humor. I will not withdraw the post since it’s important to publicly admit one’s errors and not try to erase them in my opinion. I stand by my opinion that the company should have no such “rule” in place.

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Searching for the Gem

Estate saleAre you a junkie?

“Psst, come over here so we can whisper.”

Does your heart go pit-a-pat at the idea of buying other people’s stuff at bargain prices?

Yeah, I know. It’s just too good to pass up.

I like estate sales way more than auctions. I hate to wait for hours for “my” item to come up and then the bidding starts about a kazillion more than I could ever pay in the first place.

Estate sales are neat and tidy. Everything is already marked.

We went yesterday to a great one. Chock full of lawn and garden this and thats. I mean stuffed with planters and statues, chairs and tables. Just stuffed. We bought a bear carved from a log with a welcome sign. That went at the front door, hoping to distract from the lovely? piece of patio stone with the words “The Payton” carefully painted on it, a gift from our handyman. Of course it’s Peyton and not Payton and it should have an ‘s at the end. We must of course show it. We would not be rude.

We also got “Juanita” a two-foot terra-cotta Indian woman with long braids and an ample girth. She’s in the living room hopefully giving off good vibes. Then I splurged on a copper sculpture that is a series of rings mounted on a disk. I guess I should take a picture, but anyway it’s a piece of authentic art produced by a sculptor here in Las Cruces. I also picked up a glorious leather purse on the cheap which is the perfect size.

We are going back today when things are “half price” an ultimately “best offer” to gather up some garden urns and perhaps some wall artwork.

Sequester-Army-KnifeI am so freakin’ tired of the word, and all it entails.

I am so tired of idiots.

Boehner looks more and more the boob as one-trick pony. If he says, “it’s time to get serious about spending cuts,” I may hire a thug to go to DC and beat him to a pulp.

It’s time to get serious about kicking your ass to the curb.

It’s time to get serious about kicking the Tea Bibbers to the curb, permanently.

It’s time to require a basic test to anyone who wants to run for a government office. Prove that you can read. Prove that you can think. Prove that you can count to 100. I don’t know, something. I’ve heard more stupid from people who got people to actually vote for them for some office than I care to remember.

Seriously, my dog could do the job. Seriously, I think he could.

Just-MarriedI really think this is gonna happen.

I mean I really do.

I think the Supreme Court will overturn California’s anti-gay marriage legislation.

About 30 other states have similar ones. They should fall too.

If the Court does invalidate it, hopefully it will be on a denial of equal protection under the law, a constitutional precept. Us constitutional law trumps and any state law or constitutional provision.

Game over.

Then perhaps we can get on with other issues rather than continuing our relentless attempts to punish people who aren’t like us.

The same will probably not be said for the Voting Rights Act and section five. That is probably going to fall. And that is a shame. Instead it ought to be upheld and broadened to cover the entire country. And it ought to prohibit any attempt that tries to disenfranchise any group of people, be their students, the elderly, or ethnic minorities. Voting is our most precious right. We should bend over backwards to make sure than everyone who wants to can. And maybe we should mandate that everyone does.

ObamacareThe GOP assured us that they would NEVER go willingly into the land of Obamacare.

They would kick and scream, they would throw themselves upon grenades if need be.

No never!

But political realities have a way of changing stubborn minds. Fearing that his time in office is limited, Governor Scott of Florida has had a change of heart. Chris Christie saw the logic of the situation as well.

Bobby Jindal has not. Which is a pity, since he counseled that the GOP must stop being the party of stupid. He’s the one of stupid for continuing his hold out. I mean who wants to be in the same camp as Ricky Perry from the grand old state of delusion, Texas? I mean Bobby, you still have New Orleans! You are not in Mississippi or Alabama, fighting for your very IQ life. I mean really Bobby.

whichwayWell it just ain’t about Obamacare though.

It’s about everything these days.

It’s about immigration, and gay rights. It’s about women’s rights. It’s about taxes, and loopholes.

How to rid themselves of TEA! When all the respectable Republicans (assuming they exist) just want a cuppa joe.

Boehner looks sad most of the time.

He must weep a lot at night.

The Tea Bibbers on the other hand, are all gleeful. They are too stupid to know any better.

I tell ya, it is so unfair to elephants to have them embarrassed this way in association with jackasses. I mean is that an irony or what?

We’re hitting around 70 degrees here today. I mean that is enough to make a heart sing is it not?

brave-but-dumb

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Whose Ox Is Getting Gored Today?

Bullfighter Jose Tomas With some folks, freedom and all that fuzzy patriotic stuff can be, shall we say, relative. Much like fundamentalists and their rather astute manner in taking what they like in the Bible quite literally (even when that is not the actual meaning) and ignoring that which they don’t agree with, it seems that our more loudmouthed extremists on the right do the same thing.

You don’t have to watch it. Suffice it to say that our Hannity of Faux News is busy calling Mayor Bloomberg a nanny for his efforts to help his constituents stop ingesting such awful fake food into their bodies.

Now you can agree or not agree with Bloomberg on this. I tend to agree, but I also recognize that it’s very hard to impose such things on people who are addicted to the high sugar, high fat, no nutrient value of a lot of fast food and drink. And there is this other thing–it is an impingement in a sense on one’s right to kill themselves if they so choose.

Note we are not talking about school lunches and the right of school officials to help children develop good eating habits in the first place. That is a laudable goal, and schools provide the opportunity for some children to get the only decent meal they get all day.

But juxtapose Hannity’s silly outrage at Bloomberg’s behavior with that of Nikki Halley’s attempt to limit food stamp usage in her state to only “healthy” food items, meaning that you can’t use them to buy chips and soda and stuff like that I presume. Is she now to be called “nanny” Halley? I’m sure Republicans support her efforts to reduce “obesity” in her state, or is it just possible there is some other motive involved?

I recently had a conversation with a man who hates government programs like food stamps, precisely because he has “stood behind people in line who had food stamps and they weren’t buying good food, but stuff that was unhealthy, and “stuff I wouldn’t be buying if I was allegedly that poor” The real motive being–I want to control charity to others so I can make sure it goes to the “right” people and is used in the “right” way. He had early objected when he offered some leftover pizza to a man who asked for a couple of bucks. When the man reiterated that he’s just like the two bucks, the guy grew incensed, since “he wanted the money, obviously for something other than hunger relief.”

This raises the ugly specter of folks that think they have the right to control those people who they deign to give help to. I you think I’m assuming a bit too much here, I invite you to the case of Florida and Governor Scott’s attempt to impose drug testing on welfare applicants. 

A federal district court ruled Scott’s attempt blatantly unconstitutional, and a Federal appellate court agreed, finding unanimously that the attempt to monitor citizens in this fashion violated their 4th Amendment rights. Note the assumption made here by Scott and Republicans: that welfare recipients necessarily pose a significantly higher threat of drug usage than other citizens. Such is neither warranted by the facts or commons sense, and bespeaks a racist overtone that is apparent to at least me.

Now, I’m told that the conservative seeks to remove government from interfering in the lives of individuals. These examples, serve I think to suggest that that is nothing but balderdash to use a quaint conservative term. It all depends it seems on whose freedoms are at stake–the tiny minority of fellow-traveling extremists, or all those “others” who we don’t really like simply because they ain’t like us.

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What to know the ugly truth of why health care costs are so high? It’s because they charge ten times more for stuff and you get stuck with it. They give you a Tylenol and the charge is more than a whole bottle would be at the drugstore. There is a major exposé in Time this week and you can read it here. Thanks to Squatlo Rant for the link up.

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Best news of the day? Oh by far it’s that Tom Latham, (R-IA) has determined not to run for Tom Harkin’s senate seat. Latham is a true conservative, but he’s not insane. This leaves the pathway wide open for the one and only truly insane candidate on the extremity of the Republican Right little toe—-our favorite idiot Steve King.

And that means that Bruce Braley, an excellent Democratic candidate who is already “in” for running, is sure to win this seat.

I cannot wait to watch this one. King, who is so famous for not debating his opponent, won’t get away with it this time. It should be fun.

Dear Karl of course was threatening to send in his money against King, which hopefully only will make him want it all the more, and that is all she wrote, said the spider to the fly.

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Gimme What I Want! Just Give Me A Second to Decide What That Is!

Lindsey Graham Flings his poo

Lindsey Graham Flings his poo

Yes, our little Lord Fauntleroy is having another tantrum. Lindsey has apparently missed the fact that (a) the election is over and his side lost and (b) the tea baggers are not sophisticated to understand that he is no longer a MODERATE and is one of them, (at least until his next election). He continues to wring his hands with plenty of “oh what to do, what to do” as his hankie waves desperately.

Usually it’s enough that Johnny S tells him what to do and Lindsey dutifully says, “yes Johnny boy, whatever you say, oh you cute old grumpy drawers,” but as they say, fear is a powerful thing. Faced with the serious threat of being “primaried” Lindsey has looked down and started to see a Johnson actually peeping out of his nether regions. It may be a tiny Johnson, but according to the pictures he’s seen (on THOSE sites on the Intertubes), he’s pretty sure it’s  a real Johnson all right.

And well, he is in a full-blown episode of the vapors. “Lawdy, lawdy, what ever shall I do without that fine old office to nap in on the Hill?” What would Truman Capote do at a time like this? Write a book?

Anyway, dear old Lindsey is threatening to hold up the nominations of EVERYBODY until he gets his way. After all, he’s can’t come up with anything else to raise cain about since nobody has yet called for him to come down and ride the Queen’s float in the Mardi Gras festivities. It is apparently also insufficient that Lindsey has been named as the proof positive that Darwin was wrong. The Smithsonian has promised his brain front and center status at his demise, or sooner since he has little use for it anyway.

In the end, we see, Republicans are in such a feeding frenzy of their own, that all good people globally need only sit back and watch the festivities. Popcorn anyone?

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Meanwhile, over in the United State of Zooniville (once referred to as Arizona), the good Sheriff of Stupidham, Joe Arpaio, who arms anybody who shows up and calls them “volunteer deputies”, has set aside the important business of birther investigation (well he MIGHT try for a third term ya know), and has taken up the cause of “protectin’ the lit’lins in our scools”. Yes, none other than ACTOR Steven Segal, ACTOR if I forgot to mention, has been called upon  to LEARN the gun-happy volunteers how to strap on up, and catch them some crazy. Maricopa county, Zooniville now has some 3,500 of these folks, loaded with clips and weaponry sneakin’ around every public place, demanding “lemme see your hands! On your knees! Spread ‘em”.

If you contemplate a vacation in the area?

NO!

Darwin you LIAR!

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The NRA may be one of the greater collections of sub-human examples of what Darwin got wrong. Beyond La Pee Pee Pierre, there is this delightful jackass who spoke at the NRA Wisconsin State Convention, one Bob Welch.

Welch is mighty darn sure that there will be no gun legislation of any kind, because of course, that can’t happen until it’s okayed by them, and they are not okaying a damn thing except more rhetoric that you all better keep buying every gun in sight, cuz, well, you know why.

We have a strong agenda coming up for next year, but of course a lot of that’s going to be delayed as the “Connecticut effect” has to go through the process. [...] What’s even more telling is the people who don’t like guns pretty much realize that they can’t do a thing unless they talk to us. After Connecticut I had one of the leading Democrats in the legislature—he was with us most of the time, not all the time—he came to me and said, “Bob, I got all these people in my caucus that really want to ban guns and do all this bad stuff, we gotta give them something. How about we close this gun show loophole? Wouldn’t that be good?” And I said, “no, we’re not going to do that.” And so far, nothing’s happened on that.

Connecticut effect huh? Human’s call it GRIEF you sick bastard.

And guess what?

reagangunAnd in 1999, you blowheads were ADVOCATING complete and full background checks.

Tell us again that this is not about your conspiracy-under-every-bed ideas that the Black guy in the White House is gonna declare himself king and take away all your guns? Tell us that, huh?

Go do that impossible thing to yourself will ya?

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While we have plenty of examples of private industry attempting to lower the number of hours worked by their employees to under 30 hours so that they can avoid providing health care (Applebees, Olive Garden, etc), the state of Virginia through its budget plan seeks to do the same thing. This appears to be the first incidence of a Republican led state intending to hurt its citizens in order to vent its anger at Obamacare.

As citizens of those states see that their counterparts in other states continue to receive health care, I believe that Mr. McDonnell and his band of Republican light-heads will rue the day they tried this little trick.

Republicans have long forgotten exactly WHY they are elected in the first place.

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I gotta tell ya, my phone has been ringing off the hook ever since the news hit.

What new?

Oh the pope is taking early retirement.

Yeah, he’s heading off to soak up the sun along the Riviera.

Anyway, everyone is begging me to give ‘em the scoop on who will be the new Pope.

Seein’ as how I’m Catholic and all, and well Bennie calls me nearly every week. . . .

Well, il papa John Paul II, was an ultra conservative, and while clutching the throne of Peter, he hugely enlarged the College of Cardinals, and made sure that all his new Cardinals were of a similar right-wing persuasion.

So, unless the Holy Spirit jumps into the fray as in Vatican II (now gutted by humans who of course KNOW better than God), expect that the next pope will not be any more friendly than the last two when it comes to contraception, gay marriage, women’s ordination,  or anything along those lines.

You heard it here.

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And You Thought Things Would Be Different?

inaugeraladdressOne of the best things of a second term, is that the President is no longer looking over his shoulder to a second term, and tempering his remarks accordingly. That this is so, is perhaps a fact of life that is regrettable, but it would be a lie to suggest that first-term presidents don’t.

That said, there is much disagreement depending on whose ox is being gored. From the left, and I think fairly from the middle one hears that the Inaugural speech was masterful, and depending on his success, it may go down as one of the best given. Mr. Obama painted a picture that surely speaks to the heart of most of us. We have problems, indeed we do, but the solutions should never be placed upon the backs of any one segment of the population. The poor, the old, and the suffering should not bear the burden of our answers to grave problems, at least no more so than those who shoulders are sturdier, broader, and relatively unburdened.

For many of us, the President’s call for real efforts to help cure our environmental ills comes woefully late, but still is welcomed. The naysayers, propped up by the coal and oil industry “think tanks”, will squawk that this is all a hoax, and the Christianists will point to self-servingly-interpreted vague pieces of scripture and suggest that it would be an affront to God to presume to be causally involved in the destruction of our planet, but the evidence is strong and uniformly speaks with one voice–humans have seriously compromised the health of this planet.

On the Right, of course one hears the laments of the loser–”I heard no statement of wanting to reach across the aisle,” whines Senator John McCain. One might respond, “well Senator, tell us once in the last four years when you have done one thing other than complain that WHATEVER was contemplated by the Administration was wrong.” Yes do tell us Senator.

The Right found themselves shut out and they are pouting. Well, they have shut themselves out and it is clear that whatever is done at this point will be done by revising the filibuster rules so that a majority can once again actually pass legislation in the Senate. It will be done if at all, by the House, if Representative Boehner has the moral fortitude to begin bringing legislation to the floor absent the Hastert Rule, an arbitrary rule which says, “thou shalt not bring before the chamber a bill for which you don’t have a majority approval of your own caucus.” In other words, we will pass no legislation with bipartisan support, but only if we, the majority agree as a majority.

Beyond this, the President will have to come to us, the public and impress upon us the need to push our own representatives in government, to get off pot and actually govern as we elected them to. That is what the Address suggested to me at least.

No minds were changed I would hazard a guess.

Mitch McConnell, cries tears, lamenting, “the age of liberalism” has returned.

Well, yes, damn it it has. We, the left are unabashed in our efforts to bring liberalism back. We glory in the liberalism of Abraham Lincoln who had that liberal idea way back when that no country could continue to exist while enslaving a portion of its people. We glory in the liberalism of Theodore Roosevelt who curbed the power of big corporations by breaking them up. We glory in the liberalism of Franklin Roosevelt who ended a depression by putting people back to work improving our infrastructure and instituting social security so that people had the piece of mind of knowing their last years were not going to be spent in grinding poverty.

We glory in the liberalism of Lyndon Johnson who finished the work started by Abraham Lincoln, giving all citizens the same ACTUAL rights previously entombed only on paper in some states.

We glory in the liberalism of Barack Obama who began what for many of us was a long quest to secure access to medical care as a basic HUMAN right, not a privilege for only those who could pay the price of ever greedy medical conglomerates and doctors.

We await the big issue of immigration where we seek to invite our Latino brothers and sisters to join us in citizenship. We await the full rights of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters coming to be across the land. We await fair wages for all. We await fair wages for women doing the same work as their male counterparts.

Yes, we are unabashed in our liberalism.

But has anything changed for the extremists and those who kneel before them? No I suspect nothing at all. If the following is any example, the Right will continue to fawn and bow before the tiny but vocal hysteria that is the howling extremism of nuttery:

Mitch McConnell sent out this frightening e-mail to his supporters near or on Inauguration day:

My friend, our freedom is under direct assault.

From those who want take your guns. From those who want to shred our Constitution, and as our good in friend Rand Paul from Kentucky says, from those who want to be King.

Let me tell you, Mitch McConnell is ready to lead the fight to protect your rights.

Nobody’s freedom is under assault Mr. McConnell, and to continue this sort of sordid partisanship is beneath the office you hold. Nobody is shredding the Constitution, and given your utter disdain for the President, if there was one single piece of information that he was, you would be moving heaven and earth to encourage a House vote of impeachment. No one is trying to take anyone’s guns Mr. McConnell, only perhaps trying to remove from the public domain weapons that have no legitimate purpose other than to kill as many PEOPLE as possible, as quickly as possible. Nobody is trying to be a King, and I would suggest that you might read up on your British history since you and Mr. Paul might be a bit limited in your understanding of  what a monarchy is. Perhaps you might read Plato and get a firmer grasp of the various sorts of governments. Just a thought.

So, no nothing is changing. Because stupid men continue to act stupidly and in their own singular interests rather than for the common good.

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Just Jumpin’ the Shark

Great-white-sharks-off-Se-007 We all know the term Jumping the Shark.

It is used to refer to a TV show that has stuck around for one season too many and has run out of original ideas. It becomes predictable and well, just silly.

The same can be said for the GOP.

Or perhaps black hole analogies are more to the point.

The current Grand Old Party (Grey Old Poops) seem trapped at the event horizon, being sucked inexorably downward into the abyss of extinction.  To the observer, the descent is slow and seemingly forever.

As they tried to find their footing after the debacle (for them) of the 2012 election, they find themselves on the wrong side of just about everything that the mainstream in this country find right and good. They cannot get it through their skulls, dulled by apparent years of playing football with each other without helmets, that MOST Americans think it right and proper that the rich pay more taxes since their percentage of the pie has reached obscene levels.

Don’t get us wrong. We believe in wealth. We believe in getting wealthy. We just don’t believe that money should be wasted on people who have so much of it that they can’t recall how many homes they have, install elevators for their cars, cover everything in 14 carat gold, and have his and her yachts. We reject people who regularly go to restaurants where the tab for two is in excess of a thousand bucks. We think it’s unnecessary for people to have four thousand dollar shoes when too much of the world is shoeless.

We are even more offended when some jerk with a MBA thinks that he is worth multiple millions just to do a fairly simple job (it ain’t brain surgery or nuclear physics), and  we are even more offended when other people agree to pay it. This will threatening to “close the plant” if workers don’t agree to pay cuts and benefit cuts to make that profit to pay that salary.

But the GOP in part can’t wrap its IQ-less brain around these facts. The faction known as the Tea Party, peopled largely with unwitting dupes of corporate America who are fine with wherever the anger of said TeaPeople is directed as long as not in their direction, the Tea Party is against raising taxes on their masters. I guess they fear them. They certainly aren’t going to be them, no matter what their delusions.

I have spent some considerable time listening to these inarticulate grunters and find for the most part that they can’t explain themselves. They seem to rely almost totally upon the likes Rush and Sean and Breitbart and Blaze and so forth for their “news” which is not news at all but merely the subject matter released for the day to direct their ire. The TeaPeople then spew these few “phrases of the day” in a litany of rant that seldom addresses the real issues nor makes any attempt to answer serious opinions to the contrary.

They end up just ejecting ad hominem garbage and give themselves high-fives for the effort.

Then of course we come to the tragedy at Newtown and once again, we find them on the wrong end of the spectrum.

What was eerie was their willingness to hem and haw as they awaited the puppet master’s press conference last Friday. They would not commit to any discussion that possibly GUNS might be the problem. Instead they nodded sympathetically and suggested more safe rationales such as the ever popular, “get crazy people off the street” scenarios. Except that if one assumes that America has no more “crazies” (and I’m willing to be educated that they do by the way) than the next country, then you can’t explain why violence in this country is a hundred million times more prevalent here than anywhere else.

After Wayne La  PeePee (as the Contrarian likes to refer to him), spoke, then the flood gates were opened and then parroted the phrases again and again, “I’m not sure banning guns is the answer.”

This in the face of an overwhelming response from the public that sees the sense in banning assault rifles and high-capacity clips from sale to the public. THEY recognize that the only people who really want this crap are those whose minds are a bit loose anyway and like the first victim of Newtown, was arming for  the coming collapse.

While all this has been going on, those sneaky little shits have been busy in the various states, (all blue ones by the by), in trying to push through various pieces of legislation directed as screwing unions some more and figuring out new ways to win elections by securing less than half the vote.

I ran across this little report from Think Progress which was funny as hell, unless you realize that you as the taxpayer are paying for this kind of Mr Rodgers meets Mr. Greenjeans in Ms. Piggy’s bedroom kinda silliness.

  1. Republicans in Washington state tried to ban the use of the dollar, placing the US on a pure gold and silver standard. Remember how old departed Beck loved to hawk gold on his Foxy Show? Yeah, well some of them bought it, boys and girls.
  2. Virginian GOP sillies voted to remove words like climate change and sea level from the dictionaries in their state, because words have power and if you eliminate the word, you eliminate the problem, of which there never was one to begin with since my crazy interpretation of the bible said so.
  3. Meanwhile in North Carolina, the GOP decided to just not ready any report that didn’t say what they wanted it to.
  4. In Kansas and Florida, the busy bees in the Tea-infused legislatures, passed anti-Sharia laws because you know, the Hispanics and the Africa-Americans are gonna get together to support the relatively tiny Muslim community and their even tinier right-wing element of same who wants religious based decisions from our almost lily-white jurists.
  5. In Arizona, it appears that the sun-soaked GOP wishes there to be no abortions for any woman who is 20 weeks pregnant, and they have decided that you decide that by counting from her last period. So I guess women will have to register their period dates with the state now, just in case, ya know.
  6. In Indiana, Republicans, in their gun-lovingness, make it legal for you to shoot a cop if you THINK he is trying to enter your property illegally. Given that it’s Republicans and all, I am sure they waived the “reasonable belief” standard that applies to normal people.

There is more, but hey, you have a life.