Here We Go Again

I had a follow-up visit with my pulmonary specialist the other day. While it looks like I am in remission, there are still cat-scans that need to be done to make sure that nothing new is growing. At the very least, he needs to check the damage from the sarcoidosis, and see if any scars have disappeared, or it they have remained the same. Without insurance it is impossible for me to have this done. And I must have this done every 6 months.

This is not a disease that should be taken lightly. It requires monitoring. How many other people are out there just like me, who need tests and cannot have them done? And that fat tub of lard Limbaugh actually says that “no one is dying because of lack of insurance”. Guess again, Rush, you self-serving blow-hard.

My doctor does not belong to the AMA. He believes it to be a corrupt organization, in bed with the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies, and he is right. My doctor also saw me at no charge – twice – due to my lack of insurance. Dean and I were touched by his genuine concern for my health and well-being, and by his dedication to serving and helping others.

Similarly, my plastic surgeon, upon learning that I had no insurance, cut her rate in ½ when she removed the basal cell carcinoma from the end of my nose. She never told me she was doing so – I simply received a bill with a notation on it. This, too, is a caring and dedicated doctor.
I am so very grateful to these two individuals for their help.

But we shouldn’t have to rely on someone actually not being paid for their services. We shouldn’t have to pray and hope that our doctors and hospitals will somehow help us to have the work done that we need in order to stay alive. We shouldn’t have to rely on prayer and hope. There should be affordable insurance for those of us who do not qualify for Medicaid due to ridiculous and antiquated Government guidelines. There should be insurance for those of us who are working for salaries that were barely adequate in 1990. There should be insurance for those of us who are working without any medical benefits being offered.

There should be a public option. Please, if you understand nothing else about it, understand this: we need the public option. Without it, without affordable insurance, people will die. People will go bankrupt. People will be refused care and help and tests that they desperately need because an accountant or a CEO at an insurance company has set the rules.

For those of you fortunate enough to have medical and health care coverage: how is it even remotely ok that you have paid many many dollars to an insurance company and that company gets to decide whether or not it will in turn cover your tests, your surgery?

You know it is not ok. You know it is not right.

Now we’re being told that we may get the public option with states being able to opt out. Why in the name of God would you opt out?

I do not know how this will end. All I know is that I will continue to make my voice heard to affect the end that we all need.

Rush Limbaugh Really IS a Big Fat Idiot

He is also treasonous. What would have happened to any of us during the Bush/Cheney years had we said even half of the things that this porcine creep spews out on the air? It makes me physically ill to hear, much less look at him. Unfortunately, I can’t always avoid it, try though I may.

He hopes Obama fails. He repeatedly refers to him as Barack HUSSEIN Obama, and emphasizes the middle name, thus revealing his deep-seated prejudice and bigotry. He rejoiced in the United States not getting the Olympics venue. Now he finds fault with our President being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

I have seldom seen such a lack of patriotism in any one. Ever. Yet he and his fellow tea-baggers, deathers and birthers will tell you they are the real patriots. They are not. They are committing treason with every idiotic utterance, with every sign they carry – a patriot does not want to see his country fail, or his president fail. Even with the disgust I felt toward W, I wanted him to succeed, to do well, to prove me wrong. If he did well, my country did well, and that is what a true patriot wants.

I love my country. It is the best on the planet. There are some very real problems that need to be addressed and fixed. And the reason I and my friends and acquaintances want to see this? I refer you back to my first sentence in this paragraph. Because I love my country.

When I first heard Tubbo mocking Obama in a sing-song voice, “Barack HUSSEIN Obama, mmm, mmm, mmm” – it was as though I were listening to a sixth-grade bully taunting someone whom he knows to be somehow better than he is. For that is what all bullies do, how they all operate – out of fear that they are somehow going to be overlooked because they are somehow inferior. That is their own self-esteem issue, and there are psychologists to help with this. Never the less, it still made me sick to hear it. What an immature, vicious, ugly way to be. But this is all he knows. Ugly is as ugly does.

Even the Nobel Peace Prize is fodder for mocking the President. I promise you, if Jesus himself came down from the Heavens and declared on NBC that Obama was his pick for the Nobel Prize, Fatso would find fault with it; Rush would say, “Obama caused Jesus to abandon the recently departed who need his guidance.”

The other day, I caught an interview in which Limbaugh said, basically, that he would say and do anything for ratings, and for money. (Apparently food is also high on the list, although it wasn’t mentioned.) What does this tell you? What do his rabid followers make of this? Did they miss that he is saying that he is a whore? That he is selling out all of his delusional, lemming-like fans? (My apologies to lemmings everywhere). If he truly is saying anything for money and ratings, then he needs to be re-defined as a satirist, although satirists are possessed of a certain intelligence the he seems to lack. The only saving grace I saw and heard was when he said that the Republican Party should not be listening to him, using him as a spokesperson, or authority figure.

Neither should any one else.

The Double Standard Is Alive and Well

For months now we have had to listen to idiots like Bachman and Grassley making the most outrageous statements in order to put forth their agenda. The list of representatives and senators, to say nothing of talk-show hosts masquerading as journalists is simply too numerous to name names individually. We all know who they are and the list grows daily. It includes the former governor of Alaska, who started the whole “death panel” thing.

Why did no one ever call upon these cretins to retract their statements, let alone demand an apology? They were simply allowed to vomit their lies on the American public without ever being called out for it. The lies ranged from claiming that our president is not an American citizen, to claiming that the sick and disabled and elderly will be put to death, to declaring that we will be forced to give up our current doctors (those of us who are lucky enough to have healthcare, and as you all know, I am not one of those people) for those dictated to us by the government. Not once has a Democrat demanded that they apologize for lying, let alone lying to further their nefarious agenda of bringing down the President, and seeing that he fails, while protecting the big corporations. And make no mistake; it is the corporations who own the Republican Party.

Now we have Rep. Grayson from Florida being told that he was out of line and inappropriate and that he MUST apologize for his statement that the Republican party wants you to die quickly should you get sick. I say we should give this guy a medal for having the guts to tell it like it is. Why does he have to apologize? Why?

The Republicans are equating this with the Wilson embarrassment. It is not the same thing. Wilson showed an utter lack of respect for the President, for the occasion, for the venue. What he did was unquestionably wrong and he should have been made to atone for it. The Republicans are saying that he DID apologize to the President. Well, no, not exactly: he apologized to Emanuel and then only because he was told to. That’s not really apologizing, and he was not actually sorry. The mother of any three year old knows this.

If not one of these morally bankrupt senators or congressmen have ever been called to task for their lies, then Mr. Grayson does not need to. I applaud him for his courage. There is a sizable difference between interrupting the President of the United States during an address to Congress, calling him a liar in the process, and exhibiting over-the-top behavior to make a point during a session of Congress. It is not the same thing.

Close to 45,000 people will die this year because of lack of health insurance. In spite of what Rush Limbaugh says, this is the horrific truth. What is NOT true is all this foaming at the mouth about death panels, being forced to switch doctors and plans, abortion/sex clinics, ad nauseum. These are the real lies. Limbaugh’s drugs are all paid for by his plan. What about my medication, which I actually need in order to maintain a certain already compromised level of health? I am now paying out of pocket for surgery to remove a skin cancer. I have ignored one much needed prescription this month because I simply could not afford to pay my other bills, and pay for this. Again, the “sliding scale” did not make enough of a difference in order to help.
Why Limbaugh and Beck are allowed to remain on the air is beyond me. It is just that so many sponsors pulled out of Beck’s dog and pony show, but it is not enough. These two hate mongers need to go. They can always find a forum at white supremacy meetings. As for the people in office who perpetrate such lies? If they believe what they say, then they are so stupid that they need to be removed from office, or they know they are lying, in which case they should be removed from office.