Percentage change since 2002 in average premiums paid to large US health-insurance companies: +87%
Percentage change in the profits of the top ten insurance companies: +428%
Chances that an American bankrupted by medical bills has health insurance: 7 in 10
- Harper's Index, September 2009
Capitalists, as my friend Father Michael Doyle says, should never be allowed near a health care system. They hold sick children hostage as they force parents to bankrupt themselves in the desperate scramble to pay for medical care. The sick do not have a choice. Medical care is not a consumable good. We can choose to buy a used car or a new car, shop at a boutique or a thrift store, but there is no choice between illness and health. And any debate about health care must acknowledge that the for-profit health care industry is the problem and must be destroyed. This is an industry that hires doctors and analysts to deny care to patients in order to increase profits. It is an industry that causes half of all bankruptcies. And the 20,000 Americans who died last year because they did not receive adequate care condemn these corporations as complicit in murder.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/24-1
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Is our legal system only a pretense?
Keep reading: http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2009/08/is-our-legal-system-only-pretense.html
Check out Bill Moyers Journal this week as it covers the plight of three seriously ill Americans who although they work hard and pay their taxes had to face their illnesses without insurance. Then imagine how it must feel to be without insurance when you or a close family member gets seriously sick and what a struggle it is to even find medical care. And then imagine what it must feel like to be dying while getting collection agency calls from the creditors looking for their money and knowing that your family will get those calls without relief long after you are dead. Does this not count as torture?
Thus while Senator Joe Lieberman talks about how it is just too bad we cannot fix this problem right now because after all we have more important things to do (keeping the obscene profits going for those who feed off the sick), in my opinion, a just God would make sure he and his fellow heartless senators could also enjoy their last days with collection agents dunning their families for impossibly large sums of money (enough to bankrupt the family for generations) while they lie dying. Perhaps then it might become important enough to do something to solve this problem without any more delay.
And in a Lieberman-related story ...
"You know, make my day..."
— Sen. Joe Lieberman, interviewed on CNN, about reports that actor Alec Baldwin could challenge him in 2012.
or this...
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Obama golfed with UBS president today
One of President Obama's golfing buddies Monday was a top donor to his campaign and the president of a bank at the center of a U.S. investigation into illegal tax shelters.This does explain a few mysteries about the soft handling of the banks who trashed our global economy.
Robert Wolf, the president of UBS Americas, a Swiss-based bank, joined Obama at the elite, and difficult, Farm Neck Golf Club in Oak Bluffs. Deputy press secretary Bill Burton described the two men as "friends."
If you want to have inexpensive solar cells, you will be buying them from a Chinese company.
Chalk up another win for the party of Neanderthals.
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Refreshing news: not all of corporate America wants to be associated with unhinged lunatics
Beck and Fox lose another:
The Clorox Co., a former Beck advertiser, now says that "we do not want to be associated with inflammatory speech used by either liberal or conservative talk show hosts." The maker of bleach and household cleaners said in a statement that it has decided not to advertise on political talk shows.
Conan, from last night's show:
"Fox News host Glenn Beck has lost over thirty sponsors since he called President Obama a racist, and the latest sponsor that he just lost is Clorox Bleach. Isn't that weird? It's amazing! Even a company whose sole purpose is to make things whiter thinks Glenn Beck has gone too far."
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Message to wingnut dumbshits who don't know that Hawaii is a state: Why, then, did you think that the show was called "Hawaii Five O"?
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Mike Huckabee, scientist
It just doesn't get much better than this.
What would you do if one of those rogue nations that Chimpy and Blam-Blam were always going on about, what would you do if one of them attacked the United States with an electromagnetic pulse that potentially could destroy all of our electronics in the entire country, permanently destroy the electric grid, and basically turn us into a third-world country? Who would you turn to?
Mike Huckabee, of course.
Yes, Gomer, the man who thinks he gets cell phone calls from God, is going to be the headline speaker at something called the Electromagnetic Pulse Conference, because in a doomsday scenario you really want to have some goober from Jeebus-stan tell you how to fry-up a mess of squirrel.
Via the Washington Independent
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Happy 9/11, comrade, please pass the sprouts
As September 11 comes around, the curdled, bitter, and malignant heart of Wingnuttia prepares for their festive dance of death and the macabre hate-a-thon and fear mongering of all who are not straight, white, male, and Xristian, this year they have a new rallying cry. You see, the Citizen of Kenya, Language-of-the-Koran-speaking, Closet-Muslim, socialist, magic-negro overlord and re-education camp counselor signed a proclamation declaring September 11 to be a National Day of Service, but the American Spectator knows better: Obama's Plan to Desecrate 9/11.
The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry.
This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year's election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but it's not likely many lawmakers thought this meant that day was going to be turned into a celebration of ethanol, carbon emission controls, and radical community organizing.
We all might as well be French.
Talk about desecrating: repukes, your "day of fear" was exploited time and time again by your own party, used as a political sledgehammer to silence dissent, go to war in Iraq, subvert our Constitution and help your asshole candidate stay in office. So excuse me now if I say STFU, you miserable nutjobs.
What Prez Obama should have done was designate August 6th as Cuttin' Brush with Bush Day, Ah'd Rather Be Readin' 'Muh Pet Goat' day or even The Day GW Bush Failed America, in honor of then-pretzeldent Drinky Disastermonkey totally blowing off his PDB entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the US." That would have been awesome.
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You don't need a trojan horse when Troy is your home
New from Joe Bageant:
Almost a year after the Great Giddy Swarming of the Obamians last November, some of the revelers are waking up with one booger of a hangover. And they are asking themselves, "What were we thinking when we had that 10th drink of Democratic Party Kool-Aid?" It was a clear cut case of seduction and date rape. The spike in the drink was of course, hope. Poor pathetic American liberals. Forever doomed to be naive freshmen at the senior beer bash.
We try to take comfort in that we won't have to listen to or look at John McCain or Sarah Palin for four years, except in the American Legion Magazine and in Palin's case, as a centerfold in the next issue of Middle Aged Skin. OK, we really are grateful. But could the pathetic McCain-Palin clown act possibly have created much more havoc than what we are seeing?
Case in point: I got up this morning to the headline: "Social Security Checks to Shrink." Surely this makes a slew of generation Xers cackle with glee. But some of us are trying to stay drunk on that check until our date with a heart attack or one of those death panels the Republicans are yammering about. Since January I've been telling my wife we could expect Social Security to start shrinking. Ever the concerned citizen, she replies "Cant you find another jag to get on? Eight months for god sake!"
Keep reading, really: http://susiemadrak.com/2009/08/25/08/18/you-dont-need-a-trojan-horse-when-troy-is-your-home/#more-40971
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The stupid...It burns...The College Republicans at the University of Toledo will hold their first meeting of the school year Tuesday, and guess who will be in attendance to help them plot their strategy to "take back the campus"? That's right. Joe the Plumber. I'm sure he'll be a natural in an academic setting...
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Taking care of someone else
Mr. Jensen, the mayor, said Mr. Obama received about 60% of the votes here in the 2008 presidential election. But Mr. Jensen estimated that 90% of this town of about 4,500 people were leaning against significant health-care reform because of the potential cost.
"People have worked hard here all their lives," Mr. Jensen said. "They see this as having to pay to take care of someone else."
Mr. Jensen, I know what you mean. Why, I've been taking care of defense contractors all my life. And farmers, and oil companies, and a whole bunch of other special interests. For the past eight years, I've paid for a war that's been nothing but a minus for this country.
I'm paying for kids to go to public schools that my kids stopped using 15 years ago. I pay for a fire department even though I've never had a fire, and I pay for police protection that I've rarely needed. I pay for roads I'll probably never even see.
I'm also paying for the senior citizens in your town - you know, the ones who don't want to pay for anyone else? They have that luxury because of people like me who are still paying for people like them. Without our Social Security taxes, your seniors would be in sad shape.
So it saddens me to hear the "every man for himself" attitude expressed by your townspeople. That's simply not true. We're all connected. Helping each other not only makes sense, it's the right thing to do. And if the citizens of Pocohantas, Iowa don't understand that, I'd have to say as mayor, you're just not doing your job.
Love,
SG
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CIA interrogators threatened to kill the children and sexually assault the mother of a key terror suspect.
Also, CIA report describes waterboarding as 'poignant'
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The reality TV guy who may have killed his ex-wife before killing himself was "corrupted by fame," alleges his grieving father, which is a nice sentiment but had anybody outside of a small sliver of VH1 viewers even heard of this man before his ex-wife's body turned up in a suitcase? Telegraph
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Mavericky!
STEPHANOPOULOS: That's not in the bill.
MCCAIN: Wharrrgarrbl
STEPHANOPOULOS: I don't think that's correct, Senator.
MCCAIN: Wharrrrrgarrrrbl
STEPHANOPOULOS: But that's not a death panel.
MCCAIN: Hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Partisan asshat John McCain joins the "government healthcare will kill you" brigade. Forgets to mention he's had government healthcare since turned 18.
MCCAIN: Well, I think that what we are talking about here is do -- are we going to have groups that actually advise people as these decisions are made later in life and …
STEPHANOPOULOS: That's not in the bill.
MCCAIN: But -- it's been taken out, but the way that it was written made it a little bit ambiguous.
Touchhole. In a related story, prior to the election McCain said he had a plan to capture bin Laden. Well? What's he waiting for? Does he hate America?
At a town hall meeting last week, Rep. Wally Herger's (R-CAca) put political discourse and facts aside for fear-mongering and partisan pandering. Of course he got a standing O from his ignorant, crazed, dittomonkey constituents.
Herger did not hold back on his opinion of the health care plan and the administration's appointment of "czars" to head various departments and task forces.
"Our democracy has never been threatened as much as it is today," Herger said to a loud standing ovation.
The audience also loudly cheered a man who stood up and declared himself to be "a proud right wing terrorist."
"Amen, God bless you," Herger responded. "There is a great American."
Nobody would have tolerated this shit when Bush was in office. Homeland Security would've kicked down your door and hauled your ass to prison. You'd've gotten audited by the IRS and put on the no-fly list. Your family would've been stalked by Malkin & O'Reilly goon squads. Shit, you couldn't even wear an anti-Bush t-shirt without being called a traitor, or in some cases, getting arrested.
So who are the anti-American terrorists again?
Oh, fun fact: though he was pretty extreme in stating why he's against the health care plan, he was kinda squirrelly in providing his own ideas:
"There are many things we can do," Herger responded without going into specifics.
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