Displaying 4,651 To 4,680 Of 5,146 Comments Hi cher – outstanding contribution, very rich, very complex. Last week students in 34 states demonstrated against the sweeping fee hikes at public colleges and universities, and some did so with real civil disobedience. And I fear it proves what many of us have discussed before: the absence of a significant anti-war presence around Iraq and Afghanistan is directly linked to the absence of the draft. The first real student mobilization in decades was about what directly affected those students. In my entire life, only the civil rights movement seemed to engender a kind of altruistic participation. I fear that unless any person’s ox is being gored OR they fear it will be, not very many are prepared to do the hard, hard work of maintaining democracy. That leaves it to the zealots whose media mills have ginned up phony ‘victimhood’ by which to mobilize the (small but nasty) masses. Yup – too many Americans won’t act unless it’s all about them. And that’s the fastest way to lose democracy. It’s a real worry. » Posted By choicelady On March 8, 2010 @ 9:32 pm What I might do on my summer vacation It is no one thing. There was a (or several) serial killers, but definitely organ harvesting was part of it – people, including kids, missing significant body parts. Not just Hannibal type sicko stuff. Surgically removed. There is nothing under the sun that cannot be made evil. You don’t need a Satan – people do it just dandy. » Posted By choicelady On March 8, 2010 @ 7:17 pm Hell I’d do that! But I think you should make clear you have a large, extended family – KQ, e’cat, etc. – who will need to come with you. You don’t mind, do you? When I lived in upstate NY, I knew lots and lots of people who snuck over the border to get the health care they could not afford in NY, and that was when the prices on premiums were GOOD. The idea that US care is the best is just not true. It has the whizz bangs, but the outcomes are not even top rated for people WITH insurance. I have a bug up my butt about this – the post I did below on over use of competitive gizmos. But there is an even uglier side, and it has cost several friends their lives. Many cities have top rated cancer centers. But in order to attract the “consumers”, hospitals that are LESS qualified with LESS skilled medical providers are setting up competitive practices. The rates of survival are lower, but so are the costs, so if you have skinflint insurance (not necessarily cheaper, just greedier) your “affiliated” hospital MAY be one without the best care. Why? Back to the corporate competitive model. Three friends got the second rate hospital on their plans, and they all died of cancers that in other hands would have been survivable. I KNOW it’s anecdotal, but it does make one question the entire process. I am with a top rated hospital now, but what if my insurance option gets cut? It’s happened already. I may have no alternative but the second tier one, with fewer choices for treatment, and that is not MY doing but the insurance company’s decision. You know those ads for the Cancer Treatment Centers? Good luck getting there if you don’t have a PPO. You have an HMO? You go where they tell you, even if it means you die. Disgusting system. Single payer and full options. Everyone ELSE has it, why not us? Oh – the teabaggers are flooding the town halls with the recess coming up. We all need to be OUT there asking the right questions and making our feelings known. AND – if you have clergy friends who wear collars, take ’em along. Works wonders! » Posted By choicelady On March 8, 2010 @ 7:12 pm It’s serial killing, domestic violence, human trafficking AND organ harvesting. The young women could be victims of any of that. » Posted By choicelady On March 8, 2010 @ 4:17 pm He did it because he did not want to wait. Everyone in the US has to wait, unless you’re rich. That’s what the rich white folks fear – they will be like (gasp) everyone else! » Posted By choicelady On March 8, 2010 @ 4:15 pm I don’t doubt you for a second. I’ve worked long and hard on human trafficking, and this is just another disgusting aspect of the largest flow of human slavery and exploitation in history. Many people were outraged when the “missionaries” who took those kids in Haiti were arrested, but I celebrated their arrests! I have NO doubt they were up to something despicable. Doctors and so-called missionaries are not intrinsically to be trusted. Brazil, under Lula, is working hard to end these practices. They had slaves until his election (probably still do) but he has vowed (and I believe him) to end the practice. But how can he stop all of it when we cannot- or will not? Nothing can stop movement of people under cover of night except a willingness to do so. » Posted By choicelady On March 8, 2010 @ 4:13 pm Can your Mum adopt E’cat? » Posted By choicelady On March 8, 2010 @ 4:08 pm E-cat – what about staying home, NOT subsidizing the horrific organ harvesting practices, and finding a good dental school in a cheap city? You probably could work out a pretty equitable cost balance? I have a friend, victim of domestic violence, who lost front teeth, and despite her degrees and intelligence, she could NOT get a job until she went to a dental school and got that fixed. But it was wonderful for her! Cost VERY little. The problem, of course, is finding someplace where you can get it done in one or two sessions and then go home, but I bet you could work it out. Being a guinea pig for up and coming dentists is not risky – they are carefully supervised! » Posted By choicelady On March 8, 2010 @ 4:06 pm I think the issue if I understand, BT is that one subsidizes the other? That well may be true, especially in seriously underdeveloped nations, but I think it may be MORE true in the US than we’d ever like to think. That said, I’m not sure it would hold up for dental work. I think things can exist in different ways all at the same time. MORE to the point – why in HELL should she HAVE to go overseas for good dental care? » Posted By choicelady On March 8, 2010 @ 4:02 pm Hi Es – cannot speak for India, but can speak for our own borders. I work with refugee programs who first alerted me to this horror. It was, once, mentioned in a horrific story about the young women who work in the maquiladoras. They get locked OUT if they are a few seconds late, and they cannot go back to their boarding houses either. They then become sitting ducks to be kidnapped and either pressed into sex slavery or murdered for their body parts. That is NOT hype. It IS the truth. » Posted By choicelady On March 8, 2010 @ 10:54 am Hi Blues T. This horrific development is present in the US, at least at the borders. Hundreds of women and children have been found dead missing body parts, and it’s not at all clear where the parts go, but anyone with bucks apparently does not have to worry about jumping to the head of the line for organ donations here in the US. We turn a blind eye to this blood curdling practice. No one, to my knowledge, has fully examined US medical costs inside the hospitals. It’s certainly not due to lavish pay for nurses on down the chain! It has a lot to do with the over-consumption by hospitals of big ticket items such as CAT scanners because we’ve imposed the business model on medicine so “competing” for sick people (insured, of course) means your hospital cannot be without all the bells and whistles. In Omaha, NE, there is a huge medical complex downtown with several hospitals more or less converging on one corner (I exaggerate but not by much). They each have the gizmos. One “chain” Bergen Mercy, has a suburban facility about 30 minutes west that ALSO has the CAT scanner. My mother needed one and got sent there where she waited an hour for someone to run the thing, during which time it sat idle. God forbid they’d have sent her DOWNTOWN for one. Nope – have to have the bells and whistles even if it will not ever pay for itself with use. And heaven forbid hospitals should SHARE equipment! So you want reasons why things are so high here? That has a huge part of it all – the business model, the poor planning, the failure to see medicine as a life issue rather than a business issue. That said, it does not rule out the artificial cheapness overseas and perhaps south of our borders of subsidies to us from ghoulish and disgusting practices of human organ harvesting. We need to be mindful of what we’re doing and what impact it might have on the lives of already embattled people. At the end of the day, we would indeed have ‘rationing’ if the US had a single payer plan – but the rationing would not be on PEOPLE it would be on wasteful hospital practices. THAT is the part the medical industry does not wish to discuss, and we buy into what we DO discuss with the fear that if there are two CAT scanner in a city instead of eight, we will be denied care. We have bought the competitive rationale and the belief that everything is a zero sum game, hook, line, and sinker. » Posted By choicelady On March 8, 2010 @ 10:45 am Message from a Snob to the Rest of You As an equal snob (Mayflower roots, doncha know) I love this, Marion! We keep coming back to the passivity of the Dems, writ large, who seem to have believed that once they broke a sweat for Obama, they never had to do anything again. Students, angry armchair critics, NY Times readers who never move – there are too many who do NOT pay attention to kesmarn’s and Mightywoof’s observation about the Right – they vote. I know I keep pounding this drumbeat, but how do progressives think the world changes? It’s not by sneering then doing nothing. I swear from the anti-war days on, too many progressives think all they’re called to do is gripe or pontificate! Intellectual critic Randolph Bourne wrote of the Parisian left intellectuals between WW I and WW II. He made reference to those who, during a massive workers railroad strike in France, showed their “support” by sauntering down to the nearest cafe wearing the railroad workers’ striped cap. There they held court on the importance of the movement and their solidarity with the workers – while drinking and smoking and never once getting off their collective butts. Le plus change… » Posted By choicelady On March 8, 2010 @ 11:10 am Let’s be our OWN “Moral Majority” LOL!!!! » Posted By choicelady On March 7, 2010 @ 10:13 pm BTW – you’d be a great Assembly or Senate member, but you’d run screaming from the building! No one can legislate thanks to the dysfunction built into the entire system from all the frigging propositions that have legislators tying themselves into knots. Then add in the party extremism. Legislators today are unable to even TALK to one another since the party won’t let you cross the aisle anymore. No – you keep your sanity, good new friend. I like you better not babbling in a rubber room!!!! » Posted By choicelady On March 7, 2010 @ 10:10 pm Oh I’m sure there IS a C Street type place, though the “minister” actually commutes up to hold Bible study IN the Capitol (as do the Catholics and Jews – only the liberal Protestants – me – do not.) We support the Military Religious Freedom Foundation’s work to purge the religious evangelism from the military. Waaaay too many places where commanding officers are telling enlistees and even officers they are “fighting for Jesus”. The foundation behind this RW extremism to make the military into Christian warriors is the Christian Embassy – and its west coast leader is down in the Delta in Rio Vista! Had a letter in the Bee, and I about plotzed. Creeeeepy! » Posted By choicelady On March 7, 2010 @ 10:04 pm Khirad, dear – don’t go overboard here! Newt STILL is one of the BAD GUYS! Remember he went on Pat Robertson and said, OK I schtupped two women (that I’m admitting to) in adultery, but I’m just fine because Jesus forgave me, so I’m not a hypocrite for pointing fingers at Bill Clinton. (A friend said that this “Jesus forgave me” stuff is really NOT their call…) He may not (yet) be a tea bag person, but I think he’s definitely in the school of Christian whoremongers. It’s one think to get nostalgic. It’s another to get amnesia!!!! I understand you’re going for hyperbole, but that made my blood run cold! Yeeeek! » Posted By choicelady On March 7, 2010 @ 9:58 pm Brilliantly said, Sue! If you all think this won’t happen, you have SO missed the fervor of these people! They have four solid seats on the Supreme Court. Wait until they get five. The intent is to take us over, round up all of us who have free minds, and make SURE there is no way we will ever get control back. It CAN happen here if we give away the votes for even wobbly Dems. There is no such thing as a liberal or progressive Republican any more. » Posted By choicelady On March 7, 2010 @ 9:53 pm Yup – I do agree!!! If Weird Jerry gets elected Guv again, at least the state motor pool will shrink since his appointees will be deprived of cars again,I bet. The point was that no one in elected service should be out of pocket by having to maintain two homes, two cars, etc., but honestly the thing has gotten waaaaay out of hand. I agree, Sue – ENOUGH! And anyway – if you’re going to be caught in flagrante, is it not better NOT to do so in a state car? So tacky! » Posted By choicelady On March 7, 2010 @ 9:31 pm Let me see if I can work out my own thoughts about the religious right’s domination of the Reeps. My liberal side says “all views are worthy” but my pragmatic side says, “Who you kidding?” I don’t want to wade through a whole history of religion (and y’all know I CAN) but bottom line – the religious right is actually a teeeeeeeny minority view of Christianity. Sure, they and the Catholics sometimes agree on abortion and same sex marriage, but that is the beginning and the end. The RW Dominionists (end times believers who think you have to ‘perfect’ the world so Christ can come again meaning get rid of all of us here) HATE Catholics with a passion. So the universe is actually very much smaller. Stupak is part of yet another fringe movement – The Family. There is really no characterizing them since they believe in almost nothing other than their own power. He is Catholic, and he hates abortion, but beyond that he has no core beliefs. That said, they are a source of REAL worry. The reason why the RW is so dangerous is – it believes in nothing. It has NO principles. It rests on three legs: anti-abortion, anti-gay/lesbian, no taxes. You simply cannot run a nation on those three things. You can run a reich, not a nation. I guess you could throw in American unilateral power, but frankly they don’t give a rip about the US so much as they want any geographic base from which to exercise their control over the world in their own interests. Blue Dogs infuriate me, but they can be moved. Stupak – not clear. If he is willing (and he has 9 others) to kill people to save embryos (who are not being killed by the health care bill, BTW) he is SO without morals that it is sickening. But I don’t know him and whether he can be moved on health care. That really is the bottom line. Is what you are proposing moral? Does it HELP people? Or is it your hobby horse for your own personal and political aggrandizement? That’s where the RW has gone. I don’t know any Republicans anymore who would have sacrificed the nation the way this group is doing. Back in the “old days” my brother applied for CO status during Vietnam. My family were devoted Dems in an overwhelmingly Reep district (and non-Christians in hard right Christian territory to boot. Not fun growing up there.) My brother appealed to the Republican Senator, Chuck Percy, who SUPPORTED my brother’s request for conscientious objector status. A Republican! Supported him! You’d not find that much today. I knew John Chaffee – part of that same Old Guard. Good people. Did not agree with lots they believed, but when push came to shove, they’d be honorable. Today too many of us have poor choices – wobbly Dems, rabid Republicans, tea baggers. We need to keep our eyes on the prize – if we want progressive ideas to grow, we have to VOTE for the people who have half a chance of believing in them. If we stop voting, we go back to ‘default’ Republicanism and a nation that will shatter under their incredible ignorance adn venality. This is Weimar. The progressives sat that out, did not become engaged, preferred politicial arguments in cafes to actual engagement, and they got Hitler. It CAN happen here, and even when we don’t like a Dem (unless it’s Stupak) we mostly need to vote for them to give them moral courage and hold the line. It does matter terribly. So with the exception of Stupak (and the other 9 whose identities I don’t know) I think we must vote, we must vote for the Dems, and we must become deeply engaged with those Dems to try to move them leftward. It’s slow going, but that IS how the religious right took over. We cannot do any less. I honestly don’t know about Stupak, but he IS good on other issues, so he might become someone you could win over. Or not. Cannot say. I just think the Reep would be a disaster in terms of House control. And if the Reeps in the pockets of the religious right get back in – where will MY organization, MY principles, MY work be? I truly fear limits on religious freedom FROM the religious right! They want a theocracy, and trust me folks, we ain’t it. I could see that happening with the current Supremes and a Reep/teabag dominated Congress. The Repubs were bad enough under Bush. If they get any control back, they have moved SO far right into the Teabagger arena, they will be dangerous beyond belief. At the moment ideological purity among Dems is of less concern to me than just having a party with some intelligence and lack of Brown Shirts. Maybe I’ve been doing this too long, but I think we’ve rarely seen such horrible goings on. We just cannot go through the upheavals of the 50s again. Or worse. We need to keep our nation safe from extremism, and if that means compromise with DEMS, then that is what we must do. » Posted By choicelady On March 7, 2010 @ 9:26 pm KQ – it’s you I keep in my heart when I lobby on health care. I am a die hard single payer supporter – who knows it ain’t happening today. What I want is what will help YOU, KQ. I want the many things that Obama has gotten passed from the Lilly Ledbetter law to SCHIP to all the things listed earlier here that make me know that many people won’t starve tonight, won’t go cold tonight, won’t be tortured tonight. These things MATTER. Obama is also restoring democracy, checks and balances, and civility, and none of that comes easily in a nation that is so polarized. I also have real problems and have had since 1980 with progressives “too good” to vote for a candidate with basically good stands but who makes compromises. I’m unyielding in my upsets with Carter but could easily see how many people in 1981 would starve, go cold, be lied to, have their unions busted, and be thrown onto their own if Reagan was elected. I do want more progressive action from the Dems – it’s NOT just Obama. We are a nation of hate mongers on one side and too many cowards on the other, but it’s NOT all Obama. It’s where we are historically. I LOVE most of what Obama has accomplished, and while I do not love the health care plan, it WILL offer you, KQ, a chance to take care of yourself without being driven into bankruptcy. You and your family are my touchstones for what is worthy. What Obama is doing is worthy, and your family will be honored and cared for by it. That matters. That is REAL. YOU are real. We have to drop ideological purity that stands between you and decent health care. Between your family and decent labor laws. Between the middle class and honorable financial transactions. We have just started. Now is NOT the time to abandon hope! » Posted By choicelady On March 7, 2010 @ 8:55 pm My Ex. Director and I (since I’m a lobbyist and am supporting one of this man’s bills – it’s actually GOOD) are debating writing him and saying we’re here if he needs us. We are totally pro-GLBTQ rights on all issues, from a solidly faith grounding, so it might help him to know we don’t think he’s evil? But we’re undecided. What say ye? » Posted By choicelady On March 7, 2010 @ 8:43 pm Ok – TOTALLY off the point, but what with one of our utlra-conservative anti-gay-voting state Senators having been picked up for drunk driving after coming from “Faces”, the premier gay bar in Sacramento, I HAVE to address the big tent issue. Someone wrote that the Republicans don’t need a big tent. They need a bigger closet. I have not stopped laughing. » Posted By choicelady On March 7, 2010 @ 8:29 pm As long as there is rent paid and it is the same for each and every group, it’s not a problem for the separation issue. It does not intrude since the religious groups is “speaking to its own” – so to speak. » Posted By choicelady On March 7, 2010 @ 8:24 pm Escriba and Kes – thank you! Those are lovely words. I do hope I’ve helped keep the notion of FAITH as opposed to RELIGION alive. One is active for justice. The other is smug self indulgence. I hope we keep moving forward together. There is SO much good happening that it is not the time to get faint of heart. We’re just starting what I think will be a wave of solid progressive changes. We need all hands on deck as we make the sea changes. (And please everyone – give me credit for at least this once having kept my cliches in order. I’m really bad for mixing sayings!) » Posted By choicelady On March 7, 2010 @ 8:22 pm Hi Blues Tiger and KQ- First, I would vote again for Obama because a whole lot of really great stuff is occurring because of his election. Never did think he walked on water, and saw him as a progressive on issues but dedicated to moderation with respect to something SO important – trying to unite this nation once again. I think the past year has been limited in big policy accomplishments, very successful with stuff that matters hugely to people in need, and worth the doing – trying to bring Reeps and Dems together. Well, it’s only on the latter that he has “failed” – in the sense that it did not happen. I hear from progressives all the time that Obama is no damned good. Yes, actually , he is GREAT. He’s not ideological and won’t give all of us what we want, but – remember what we’ve had over the last THIRTY years, and say that he’s not better. He is. Now that I’ve said my say, Blues T. – KQ is one of the coolest people on this blog. He is most respectful of us all, and he and I do not agree on many things, but I learn from him, and I feel welcomed by him to have my say. I like your posts, Blue – I think they’re often interesting and thought provoking. I’d say I don’t agree with you on NOT voting for Obama because I think we’ve not remotely seen what this statesman can do yet. But I also have a bug up MY butt about progressives being “too good” to vote for mainstream Dems. That’s how we got Reagan – people too good to vote for Carter. But if you’re on welfare, if you’re sick, if you have real economic problems, man – you WANT Obama (Carter? Not so much!) because he is slowly and steadfastly moving us along to a much healthier economy, polity, and society. We ALL wanted the bravdo of FDR, but frankly, the nation was not in bad enough shape. We wanted an LBJ – but WE brought him down over Vietnam, ignoring the absolutely magnificent social programs he’d developed, that were killed off by Nixon and successors. So we at the Planet have been discussing this for several months. And we do believe that there is a tendency for progressives who have no skin in the game – not unemployed, do have health insurance, not in college with fees soaring – to be ideological at the expense of realistic. We mostly believe that mature reflection on Obama shows he is making huge changes. That what both nervous progressives and nervous teabaggers share is the fear of “might”. “Might happen”. So we’d ask you to keep working WITH us to look at the steps that have been done well, to keep the pressure on Obama AND Congress to do the best things, and for us NOT to snipe at one another. KQ is the means test for a good America – you may not know his history (and it’s his to tell), but he is the American story in the 21st Century personified. And he’s a really good person as well! So hang in there. We’re very cool. We welcome you, but we want you to understand where we are coming from. And oh – by the way – NOW I will tell you I work for a major progressive FAITH organization. The Planteers got over their shock to discover I’m VERY cool, and I hope you will too!! » Posted By choicelady On March 7, 2010 @ 7:46 pm I think this is where I have to say my head hurts. I find the universe and infinity fascinating but am too limited to wrap my mind around it. The notion that there are NOT other intelligent lives (beginning with the perhaps faulty belief we ARE intelligent) is simply unbelieveable. How could we be the ONLY ones in infinity? I also can’t accept that life has to be carbon based. I got a taste of my own possibilities when some science show focused on a weird tubular animal life that flourishes on the sea bottom near sulphur-spewing fissures and that can live ONLY on that sulphur, not on oxygen and our traditional bases for all other life. Well, if that exists in our own ocean, why not elsewhere? But if we met some form of life other than what was familiar (like the perfect English speakers that at least moderately appear human on all the ‘Star Trek’ episodes) would we even recognize it WAS alive and WAS intelligent? The musical tones of “Close Encounters” also presumes that intelligent life would recognize Pi and thus its mathematical formula AND music connected thereto. Why? We have no idea what would be the basis of intelligent thought in other worlds. Things undreamed of by us may be common to others, and vice versa. Well, we’re giving our best shot, but there may be no common denominators between human life and other forms. I am also more inclined to think of the possibility that we are surrounded by millions of planets – all just too tiny for us to see. At the core of my wonderment lies the possibility that Dr. Seuss’s Horton found the answer – other worlds are microscopic, not distant. At least that would justify my not dusting. Who’d want to be responsible for upsetting millions and millions of tiny worlds? » Posted By choicelady On March 5, 2010 @ 10:33 pm A Coalition of Church and State – Introduction KQ – the only hope is taking up any food after meals. And then you have to live with the pitiful meowing of a clearly starving cat. If that negatively impacts Penny – if she’s a nibbler – then that won’t work. I guess I’d go back to the un-diet food and see if ironically he eats less. I have two cats with the same problem – the male is a Maine Coon BUT is also porky – and have no real solution. I think mine does need to be checked for worms, but it sounds as if King Arthur is just a glutton. Hard to control =- good luck! » Posted By choicelady On March 10, 2010 @ 7:34 am Is there some reason she does not move? Will her make up crack or something? It’s very weird. I mean above the obvious weirdness. » Posted By choicelady On March 9, 2010 @ 9:43 pm I don’t know, he might be on to something? Maybe there is no judge and we self-select by the degree of our stupid hypocrisy. The world we inhabit perhaps has a trap door that tips open under the weight of self righteousness? Or make up. » Posted By choicelady On March 9, 2010 @ 9:40 pm You notice she says “give it to God” – but apparently she is the intermediary. What would God do with money? Bet he doesn’t have pockets. Bet she does… » Posted By choicelady On March 9, 2010 @ 9:35 pmComments Posted By choicelady
Or both.
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