Sunday, April 01, 2018
Hang Your Head in Shame
Yes. People voted for a man who displayed this kind of unconscionable boorishness on the campaign trail.
He is the face of our national character, now.
I STILL cannot wrap my head around it.
Saturday, March 31, 2018
On Political Hell
High school students turn to political activism after being subjected to the most horrific experience--a shooting at their school that leaves 17 of their friends and mentors maimed to death by semi-automatic gunfire. And how do we, as a nation, respond?
Many of us dry our tears and march beside them in protest. But we are not the loudest voices.
A political candidate calls one of the student leaders a "skinhead lesbian."
Media personalities accuse the children of being paid "crisis actors."
A popular talk show host tweets about what a loser one of the students is because he's been rejected by three colleges.
The President of the United States leaves Washington on the day of the largest youth-led protest since the Vietnam War, and his itchy Twitter finger goes suddenly limp.
The bowels of the right wing movement come up with stories ranging from the student activists being "unrepentant bulliers" of the shooter, to the young people using this tragedy as an opportunity for self-promotion.
THESE are the loudest voices. THESE are the voices that speak of what our nation has become.
Our politics are toxic. And we have no qualms whatsoever against pouring that acid on anyone who dares to oppose our personal views. Including our own children.
We are surely going to hell.
No. We're already there.
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Will Not
As you ponder the daily outrageous antics of our juvenile idiot-in-chief, and you bang your head on your desk in frustration that, no matter what he does, he seems utterly untouchable, and inexplicably in it for the duration…. consider this:
There has been a Congress in
Washington DC led by a fractured, ineffective Grand Old Party since 2010. A group of men (and a few hapless women)
whose only objective for seven long years has been to acquire and rabidly
defend POWER.
Power used exclusively to
enhance their own fortunes, through enhancing the fortunes of those who already
have more money than they will ever need, and will use that excess to buy a government that will slavishly do their bidding.
Power that they either can
not or will not use to enrich the lives of the common American people…the
people who might still naively believe
that the Congress is beholden to them.
Power that, because of the deep
fractures within the party, cannot be harnessed for action, but can only be
laid, bulky and paralyzed, as an enormous blockade in front of the wheels of
progress.
For seven years.
Don’t forget that the only
thing, the ONLY thing, this Congress has accomplished in seven years is to impede,
to every extent possible, the ability of a duly elected president from the
opposing party to serve the people of the United States of America. This Congress’ greatest accomplishment, in 7
years, was to deny that president his Constitutionally granted right to appoint
a justice to the Supreme Court.
This is the Congress of “Can’t.”
This is the Congress of “Won’t.”
Think of that the next time
our hideous caricature of a Chief Executive does something outrageous,
preposterous, or downright dangerous, and then just skates on to his next
escapade, untouched and unimpeded by…anything.
Realize that it is in the
hands of the Congress of Won’t to keep this moron in check before he destroys
the country.
Realize that the Congress of
Won’t began destroying America seven years ago.
And they aren’t inclined to
stop now.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Satire
So here’s a story for
you. It was linked to by a liberal
friend of a friend on Facebook this morning.
While nodding your head and
snickering behind your hand, thinking privately (or not-so-privately) that we have 9/11’s and
Charlie Hebdo massacres because there exists a popular world religion so backward that it would follow
such screwy practices in the 21st century...
Ask yourself: Is this any funnier or more ridiculous than
millions of folks the world over believing that, in the midst of a mystical
ceremony with incantations and gesticulations, a flat disc of dried library
paste actually BECOMES the flesh of a long-dead Jewish prophet? And that consuming one of these wafers daily,
or at least weekly, provides essential spiritual benefit? Hilarious, no?
Hey. I’m not a bigot.
I was raised Catholic. But I outgrew it.
And I defy any Catholic who reads
this not to feel at least a molecule of anger or indignation.
Point made.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
The Only Thing We Have To Fear...
Our intrepid media are at it again.
For months, while the ebola plague raged on in West Africa,
American media titillated our gawkers-at-a-train-wreck mentality with a
constant stream of little articles insinuating that the disease was poised to
pounce upon the United States, and what were we going to do when that happened? The annoying and non-factual speculation did
nothing positive…was in fact designed
to do nothing positive. It was designed
to sell soap.
It was designed to stir up fear among a population arrogantly
ignorant about many things—infectious disease included (anti-vaxxers, anyone?)—and
entice millions of clicks to non-articles about the disease and the
threat. To pages lined with ads, of
course. Fear does indeed sell soap.
Unfortunately, it also creates a public prone to over-reaction,
finger-pointing, xenophobia and mob mentality.
The kind of mentality that would allow a politician’s tweet—that the best control for the disease would be to execute anyone testing
positive for it—to fade into the background of heinous statements and speculation
splattered all over the internet concerning this unfamiliar disease and our
irrational fear of it.
But then, lo and behold, the virus DID make it to our
shores, as it was bound to do in this shrunken world of international air
travel. This presented a golden
opportunity for our media to fear-monger, and they took full advantage of it. For a couple of weeks, the top five stories
on any news outlet centered upon ebola, the fear, the quarantines, the outcry…
And the mistakes. This
is where it gets interesting.
Has anyone but me noticed how the ebola story has suddenly
seemed to burn itself out?
Ebolaebolaebola!!!!! is no longer screaming at us from every
available news outlet. This morning, MSNBC
has one ebola story in their top ten—and it’s ranked number 6. CBS features one story on its home page,
which you have to scroll down to see.
ABC news features links to a couple of stories in their sidebar—one about
an international travel ban and one featuring good news about one of the
ebola-infected US nurses. And, very
tellingly, not one ebola story appears on Fox News’ home page this morning.
So what’s going on? Has the ADD American public gotten over
the whole ebola thing and begun to wander the airwaves in search of the next
new sensation? Have American news
outlets conceded that they over-covered the story and that there is other news
going on in the world? Or have they
finally decided they’ve done enough fear mongering and are now taking the high
road in an altruistic effort to practice responsible journalism and NOT create
more panic?
Dream on.
Sure, there are a few ebola stories still floating around. But there are almost none concerning the topic that should be front and
center of the discussion: the glaring inadequacies
of our for-profit medical culture. The
culture that puts profits before patients, cash before care, corporations
before individuals. The culture that has
made our health “care” system an unnavigable tangle of red tape, referrals,
inadequate diagnostics and botched communication. The “treat ‘em and street ‘em” mentality that
saves shareholders money (and endangers the public health) by putting very sick
people back out on the streets.
This culture has latched on to the idea that medical care is
one of the few services left stateside that cannot be outsourced. And as one of the last remaining American
industries where there are still actual jobs to be had, it has become partners
with another expanding American entrepreneurial effort—for-profit educational institutions. These “colleges” provide our health “care”
system with a steady stream of poorly-trained warm bodies, churned out as
quickly as they can be inadequately vetted and licensed. Who are then unleashed upon an unsuspecting
public, were they are given an increasing number of life-or-death responsibilities
for which they have not been properly trained and for which they have no visceral
understanding or respect.
Yep…our national nod to capitalism has turned our health “care”
system into one huge profit center. One
that is never going to go away—because people will always need medical care.
Unfortunately, it has also compromised the system so badly
that it has become a gigantic money-making, compassionless juggernaut that has little to do with "health," nothing to do with “care” and everything to do with profit.
This has been going on for years. American medicine has descended not too
gradually into a hellish system designed to facilitate the ring of the cash
register, at the ultimate expense of the effectiveness of the system.
Some critics—who are largely ignored and given little
credence—estimate that over 200,000 American lives are lost through medical mistakes each year. I’ll bet that if you
take a moment to think about it, you personally know at least one patient who
has been dangerously misdiagnosed, or whose treatment has been complicated or
botched by miscommunication, specialist-hopping and/or buck-passing. Off the top of my head I can think of one woman—my
sister’s sister-in-law—who was scheduled for a tonsillectomy by a doctor who
was unaware that she was on blood-thinners for a heart condition; the surgery
would have killed her. Luckily, they discovered
the error the day before she was scheduled to go under the knife.
But how many people don’t get so lucky? How lucky will we ALL be if a real infectious disease threat descends
upon our health “care” system, which demonstrated in spades earlier this month
its complete cluelessness in handling such a menace?
And yet, our media have not merely dropped the ball on this
story. They have actively thrown it down
a well and poured concrete on it.
Ask yourself why.
The answer that comes to mind should probably have something
to do with 90% of American media being under the control of six large
corporations. Corporations which have
the power to disseminate the exact messages they want the public to hear. And kill the ones they don’t. Ask yourself in whose best interests it would
be not to raise questions that might
cause the cash registers at hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices and pharmacies
to stop ringing with merry abandon. You
can’t really wonder what happened to
investigative reporting here in the good ole U S of A, can you?
Unfortunately, this—not
ebola, or terrorism, or imagined WMD in some Muslim country—is what could ultimately
be the death of us:
What we don’t know.
What we don’t want to know.
What we are not allowed
to know.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
On Flu Shots and Health "Care"
For anyone who believes there’s
nothing amiss in the American health care system:
A five-year-old in Eugene
receives a flu shot in September. Three
months later, his parents, who did not get flu shots, both come down with the flu. When the boy becomes ill, nobody—not his
parents, not his pediatrician, not a hospital Emergency Room—entertain the
notion that he might have the flu. Because he got a flu shot. Right?
I have never been on board
with the whole “flu shot” song and dance. Call me a die-hard skeptic, but it has always
seemed suspicious to me that the media whip up an annual frenzy of
influenza-phobia, which then give rise to those cute little TV commercials
where sincere adults look meaningfully at the camera and pontificate about how
being a good parent means you have to protect your family—everybody gets a flu
shot!
It seems to me that five or
six years ago, flu shots were only recommended for “high risk” patients—the elderly,
the chronically ill—and health care workers to whom these patients would be
exposed. Fast forward half a decade, and
suddenly they’re doling out flu shots at Walmart and Target like Halloween
candy. The entire population is cajoled,
frightened or guilted into lining up and sticking out their arms. To get injected with a vial full of this
miracle fluid…that may or may not prevent
them from getting the flu. After all,
any one vaccine can only cover three strains of flu. Vaccine recipients are just as susceptible to
any other strain as someone who never got a flu shot. Add this to the fact that one is warned when
one receives the vaccine that one might actually GET the flu from it, and I
have to wonder exactly how stupid the American public can be.
And who is making money off
all this…
The drug companies, of
course.
But my opinion of the
efficacy of flu shots is not really the point I wanted to communicate here.
The story of this little boy
who dies of the flu has the parents, after being assured by their pediatrician
that the boy has “the croup” (is that even a legitimate medical term in the 21st
century?) rushing him to the ER because he’s having serious trouble
breathing. The hospital does a “soft-tissue
x-ray” and “noticed that his airway is a little collapsed.” They then proceed to tell the mother that
this is “nothing too disconcerting” and send them home. A few hours later, the boy collapses and
basically dies on the floor of his home—or he would have died had CPR not
eventually got his heart beating so they could take him to a hospital and put
him on machines to support his now brain-dead little body.
Am I the only person in the world
who looks at this story and screams “Why in God’s name was a boy with a
partially collapsed airway not admitted to the hospital?!?” They sent this dangerously ill child home…why?
H1N1 didn’t kill this
boy. The hellish quagmire that is the
American “health care” system did.
Over the last half of the 20th
century, the health insurance industry began its ascendency into the ranks of
international financial “players.” The
enormous sums of money that passed through its systems—client payments in,
claim payments out—became too much of a temptation. There was all
that money coming in. Why should
they not restrict the ways in which it could go out again? Why not keep more for the executives, the
rich investors and the stock holders?
So the insurance companies
began to call the tune for medical treatment.
They began to actually form medical practice based upon the treatments
that would or would not be covered by medical insurance. It started out with the exclusion of “pre-existing
conditions.” Then they expanded to the
exclusion of expensive treatments like brand name drugs and “experimental”
procedures. Treatment was no longer based upon what would produce the best outcome for the patient. If it was expensive, the patient was not going to get it.
Since the insurance companies managed to get away with this with relatively little public outcry, they escalated to canceling benefits for clients diagnosed with cancer or other life-threatening illnesses, and refusing outright to insure people with medical histories that indicated they would be likely to need medical insurance sooner rather than...never. Finally, a discontented rumbling could be heard in the ranks of the health-care-consuming public.
Since the insurance companies managed to get away with this with relatively little public outcry, they escalated to canceling benefits for clients diagnosed with cancer or other life-threatening illnesses, and refusing outright to insure people with medical histories that indicated they would be likely to need medical insurance sooner rather than...never. Finally, a discontented rumbling could be heard in the ranks of the health-care-consuming public.
Twenty years ago, the
American people very nearly figured out what was going on. Investigative reports were done, TV dramas
were written, about the shame of an industry that literally let people die so
the insurance companies could hold on to a buck. Not so very long ago, there was outrage about
this. We were shocked. We were incensed. But somehow, in the interim, we simply…forgot. Or were snookered into forgetfulness by an industry so rich, it had the financial chops to invest in the most monumental cover-up/misinformation campaign in the history of democracy.
This shameful perversion of “health
care” has been going on for a generation, now.
There are doctors in the field who have practiced in this system all
their professional lives. They know no
other way. They don’t know that things
used to be different. And what was shocking
and unacceptable fifteen or twenty years ago, has become…policy.
Policy. Always push the least expensive treatment
option. Cost of treatment is the number
one factor, given the greatest weight by any doctor, hospital or clinic. Treat ‘em and street ‘em. Give them a bottle of pills and send them
home. Most likely, they’ll recover.
More often than is in any way acceptable in the richest country on earth--they don’t.
I’m not sure what you have to
do to be admitted to a hospital these days, besides DIE. Or nearly die. My brother-in-law was sent home from his local
ER; two hours later, he nearly died of a heart attack in his living room
recliner. My husband was diagnosed with
dangerous blood clots in his legs, and he was sent home with syringes full of
heparin (powerful blood thinners) and told to shoot himself up twice a day and
come back to the lab every other day for blood tests. Thank god, he didn’t nearly die, but no
thanks to Kaiser Permanente. This little
boy goes to the ER unable to breathe and they send him home…he dies. He doesn't get a second chance.
And everyone cries, “Oh,
no! He died of the flu!”
I’m willing to bet serious money that he
would still be alive if he’d been in the hospital when he stopped breathing.
Medical care in America took
a serious wrong turn when we began to allow insurance companies to dictate
treatment options. This has been going
on for so long, evidently, that we don’t even recognize it for what it is anymore. How can anyone possibly pronounce our health “care”
system vital, state of the art, or anything even approaching “the best in the
world,” as right-wing opponents of the ACA continuously insist upon doing? We don’t have health care in America. We have a huge money-making, compassionless juggernaut
that has little to do with "health," nothing to do with “care” and everything to do with profit.
The ACA is a start…not the
best start, to be sure, but it is the first wobbly step in the right direction.
But things are not going to change significantly if we
continue to refuse to recognize the problem.
Sure, it will probably take years of activism and concentrated efforts
to control the insurance industry and take obscene profits out of medical treatment in order to get our health care system healthy again.
But how many more little boys
have to die in their mothers’ arms before we resolve to engage this battle in earnest?
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