Who will take on the mantle of Teddy Kennedy?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Billionaires for Wealthcare
This is fantastic; check out the teabaggers who have no idea they're being punked. Click on the title for large screen view.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Publicity Hogging Squirrel
This couple, vacationing in Banff National Park in Canada, had an unexpected subject in their timed photo.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
And now I indulge in some personal introspection.
I haven't seen my therapist, Michael, for a while, but I think I've internalized him on the familiar issues we've talked about over the years. So I know what he would say about the recent communication with my sister. I got an email from her today, no personal message, just a forwarded long-winded screed (from my other sister) about all the horrible things Obama has done in his first 5 months in office, and suggesting that GW Bush never would have gotten away with so many gaffes and so much incompetence. It's kind of funny really. It's goes to show what an altered universe is Fox News. So I bounced the email back to her unanswered and contemplated, for a fraction of a second, writing a thoughtful and sincere response, asking her to disengage from conflict, try to agree to relate on some other level--civilly, gently. Which brings me back to my therapist, who would say, at this moment, "Ah, I see you're holding out hope again." Which I know is futile. The sisterly relationship I've always wanted was never there, so I'm not longing for something I've lost, but something I never had. And, in truth, I have a great life. My husband loves me, and I him. My daughters are incredible, independent, competent, loving, compassionate women. What more could I ask for?
As for my sister, it's not that I can't abide someone with different political views, but rather that there is no common ground on which she is willing to engage without competition and disagreement. Why is it that some people seem to live for conflict? Why the compulsion to insult, to denigrate, to engage with someone only to abuse them? I suppose it's nothing more than garden-variety bullying. And that's why my inner Michael advises me to disengage, cut my losses, move on, be grateful that the family I have is the one I've built, not the one I was born into.
As for my sister, it's not that I can't abide someone with different political views, but rather that there is no common ground on which she is willing to engage without competition and disagreement. Why is it that some people seem to live for conflict? Why the compulsion to insult, to denigrate, to engage with someone only to abuse them? I suppose it's nothing more than garden-variety bullying. And that's why my inner Michael advises me to disengage, cut my losses, move on, be grateful that the family I have is the one I've built, not the one I was born into.
Let's give the apoplectic town-hall screamers what they want on health care
From dailykos.com (click on the title of this post to read the complete article):
Alright Republicans, We Give Up.
by Stroszek
Sun Aug 09, 2009 at 12:48:52 PM PDT
In accordance with your cogent and potent criticisms, these are the terms of our concession:
1. We will not euthanize your grandmother.
2. Rahm Emanuel's brother will not kill Sarah Palin's baby.
3. The government will not nationalize hospitals and other health service providers.
4. We will make the health care reform bill available for all Americans to read as soon as possible.
5. We will not subsidize abortions with your hard-earned tax dollars.
6. We will not allow the government to have direct access to your bank account.
7. We will not provide illegal immigrants with unlimited free health care.
8. Private health insurance will not be eliminated.
9. You will not be issued a "National Health Insurance ID."
10. There will be no super-secret-awesome health care program for ACORN employees.
With these concessions having been made, I trust that we can now move forward on health care reform with a broad, bipartisan consensus. Blue Dogs and Republicans, you can now rest easy knowing that the concerns of the town hall protesters have been met. While the progressive dream of a nation in which old people are slaughtered to pay for the abortions of ACORN-employed illegal immigrants will again have to be deferred, we are willing to settle for a bill without these measures in the name of bipartisanship.
Congratulations, Republicans. You've won this round.
Alright Republicans, We Give Up.
by Stroszek
Sun Aug 09, 2009 at 12:48:52 PM PDT
In accordance with your cogent and potent criticisms, these are the terms of our concession:
1. We will not euthanize your grandmother.
2. Rahm Emanuel's brother will not kill Sarah Palin's baby.
3. The government will not nationalize hospitals and other health service providers.
4. We will make the health care reform bill available for all Americans to read as soon as possible.
5. We will not subsidize abortions with your hard-earned tax dollars.
6. We will not allow the government to have direct access to your bank account.
7. We will not provide illegal immigrants with unlimited free health care.
8. Private health insurance will not be eliminated.
9. You will not be issued a "National Health Insurance ID."
10. There will be no super-secret-awesome health care program for ACORN employees.
With these concessions having been made, I trust that we can now move forward on health care reform with a broad, bipartisan consensus. Blue Dogs and Republicans, you can now rest easy knowing that the concerns of the town hall protesters have been met. While the progressive dream of a nation in which old people are slaughtered to pay for the abortions of ACORN-employed illegal immigrants will again have to be deferred, we are willing to settle for a bill without these measures in the name of bipartisanship.
Congratulations, Republicans. You've won this round.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Surprising, but maybe not so surprising. Bush was just trying to fulfill biblical prophesy??
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=haught_29_5
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Saturday, August 1, 2009
More on the health care debate, thanks to my sister as told to her by Fox News
This is the final post in the debate between my sister and me on health care, as I wrote about a few days ago:
"No, I never received any public assistance. I applied but was turned down. No problem if I was an illegal! So I am paying everything out of pocket. [My husband's] union cancelled all our insurance the moment he died. [My son] was right in the middle of a root canal the day [his dad] died and the union stopped paying. So that was another grand I had to pay. We definitely have to change our health system! But Government run health care is not the answer! I don't want the government to tell me what doctor I will see and what treatment they feel is best. Ask [our cousin] Debbie about the health care she received in Europe. The military wouldn't treat her cancer and she had to be treated by 'European Government run health care'. She is still suffering from the mistakes they made and not having the treatment she needed because she wasn't 'important enough'. There are a lot more people trying to get into the U.S. for health care then people leaving to get health care elsewhere."
The remarkable thing about this post is that she's saying that the military, for whom my cousin (a computer programmer) works as a contractor, would not pay for cancer treatment, yet the "European Government run health care" system did. (I hate to sound like an elitist over-educated liberal, but I feel compelled to inform her, if by chance she reads this blog, which I doubt, that Europe, like Africa, is actually made up of separate countries; each with their own health care system). Apparently this issue of American military contract workers not getting treatment is a big problem. Who insures them? Not the U.S. military or another government run health care system, but private insurers, like AIG, contracted by the military. I'm posting a link to an L.A. Times article about this issue. The article focuses on contractors with injuries sustained in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan; how much more likely is it that a non-combat employee, like my cousin, would be denied coverage? I guess my cousin wasn't "important enough" to the private insurer who denied her care.
"No, I never received any public assistance. I applied but was turned down. No problem if I was an illegal! So I am paying everything out of pocket. [My husband's] union cancelled all our insurance the moment he died. [My son] was right in the middle of a root canal the day [his dad] died and the union stopped paying. So that was another grand I had to pay. We definitely have to change our health system! But Government run health care is not the answer! I don't want the government to tell me what doctor I will see and what treatment they feel is best. Ask [our cousin] Debbie about the health care she received in Europe. The military wouldn't treat her cancer and she had to be treated by 'European Government run health care'. She is still suffering from the mistakes they made and not having the treatment she needed because she wasn't 'important enough'. There are a lot more people trying to get into the U.S. for health care then people leaving to get health care elsewhere."
The remarkable thing about this post is that she's saying that the military, for whom my cousin (a computer programmer) works as a contractor, would not pay for cancer treatment, yet the "European Government run health care" system did. (I hate to sound like an elitist over-educated liberal, but I feel compelled to inform her, if by chance she reads this blog, which I doubt, that Europe, like Africa, is actually made up of separate countries; each with their own health care system). Apparently this issue of American military contract workers not getting treatment is a big problem. Who insures them? Not the U.S. military or another government run health care system, but private insurers, like AIG, contracted by the military. I'm posting a link to an L.A. Times article about this issue. The article focuses on contractors with injuries sustained in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan; how much more likely is it that a non-combat employee, like my cousin, would be denied coverage? I guess my cousin wasn't "important enough" to the private insurer who denied her care.
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