We’ve been told Obama’s “got this” because he can shoot hoops in the WH basement with skill, and grab flies out of the air like a Kung Fu master. We’ve been told Obama’s playing “multidimensional chess” with his opponents by continuing every single one of the illegal and anti-democratic policies of his Neocon predecessor. And now, with the health insurance reform debate gone all Town Hall during recess, we are told we don’t really need health insurance reform, single payer health care, or even a public option to facilitate the expected mandate we’ll be handed that forces us to pay more money than we’ve got to the murder-by-spreadsheed for-profit industry.

We still have “state secrets” privilege on who’s lobbying in the Oval Office. We still have DADT in the military. We still have two illegal wars going, a new third front opened in Columbia, off-the-books deficits accumulated by the fact that there’s twice as many paid mercenaries in those war zones than U.S. soldiers, we’re still rendering and torturing “detainees” who haven’t been charged with any crimes and haven’t been afforded the status of POWs, and we’re still bailing out Wall Street gamblers to the tune of multiple trillions while not even beginning to address reinstating necessary regulations.

A plethora of Democratic/Progressive activist groups have sprung up to pressure Congress and the White House on these issues as well as health insurance reform, letter-writing campaigns, calls and emails to representatives and senators, mass demonstrations… You name it, it’s being done. And what we get from the WH is insults and dismissals as those of us anywhere to the left of center are repeatedly told to STFU.

Meanwhile, I am receiving between 6 and a dozen pleas for money every single day from various Democratic entities. DCCC, DLC, etc., etc., each one of them extolling me to give more to ensure that “my” interests are represented and protected by people who have amply demonstrated they don’t represent my interests or care about protecting me or my family from the corporatist policies of the Neocons who Won’t Go Away. So I have decided to take a clue from my grandson, who turned 18 last year and registered to vote for the first time. For Obama, of course.

We were originally a little piqued that he chose to register Independent instead of Democratic, but he was adamant and is perfectly happy with his choice. In our state he could still vote in the primary – one merely has to request either the Dem or Rep ballot to vote in one of them, it doesn’t matter what your own registration is. And I notice that he never gets any political mail asking for money he hasn’t got or telling him outrageous lies about what ‘his’ party’s doiing in the state or in D.C.

If the end product of this health insurance charade turns out just as it looks very strongly to be turning out, I am changing my voter registration from Democrat to Independent. Figure that the party hacks who don’t care about what I think or want can do what they do without my support or my money. They can just cross me off their list, and my email will be much more manageable. In writing this, there’s a small chance that others might consider the idea to be pretty good, and perhaps a few of them will change their registration too. If the idea catches on, a lot of people might decide to change their registration to reflect something real that nobody in D.C. seems to have noticed.

The Republicans are now marginalized to a regional sub-party status, claiming less than 20% of all voters and dominant in only 5 states. Libertarians are stronger than that. They’ve a few leftover power brokers in D.C. stonewalling all things necessary to save the country, but Democrats dominate. Dems now calll themselves the “Center-Right” party, telling us that the 79% of Americans who are center-left to progressive are insignificant. We don’t deserve representation. If they were to actually LOSE that 79% – or any considerable fraction of it – they just might have to start doing the jobs they were elected (by us) to do. And if not, we can go ahead and field candidates of our own and have a real chance of winning.

We are all the way to a single-party system in this country, all possible challengers relegated to 20% of the electorate or less. Except for the left-leaners in the dominant party, who have been told to STFU. Well, okay. We can split that coconut rather dramatically, and end up with a larger portion than they’ve got left.

Or not. I won’t be holding my breath for other progressives to catch a clue. I’m changing my registration and getting my name off their fundraising list. After more than a week of battling swine flu, it’ll make me feel much better, I’m sure. Wish me luck!

Iatrogenic, adjective
a medical disorder caused by the diagnosis, manner or treatment of a physician.

Iatros is the Greek word for physician. -genic means induced by. Iatrogenic disease is a disease caused by a physician. Given the sheer complexity and technological wonders of modern Western [allopathic] medicine have led to some stretching of the strict meaning of the term, which is now applied to ANY adverse effect associated with ANY medical practitioner or treatment. Thus it can be used to describe the cancers caused (years down the line) by radiation and radioactive isotopes used to treat initial problems, prescription errors, hospital-contracted infections, problems caused when a surgeon leaves an instrument or two in the patient, a chiropractor who breaks the patient’s neck, etc., etc.

When I was busy educating myself as much as possible when my daughter determined to have her baby at home, I discovered that the nations that have the best statistical outcomes – fewest maternal and infant deaths or injuries – actually encourage home births because hospitals are dangerous places to both mothers and infants. They’re dangerous places for anyone these days, it seems. According to statistics compiled by OurCivilization.com, there are 8.9 million “unnecessary” hospitalizations every year in this country, which lead directly to 1.78 million “Iatrogenic Events.” Of 7.5 million “unnecessary” procedures ordered annually by physicians, another 1.3 million patients suffer direct harm. That adds up to 16.4 million people channeled into a harmful situation by their medical providers every year, and 3.8 million cases of direct harm to those people that they otherwise would not have suffered.

The same source estimates annual deaths caused by various leading iatrogenic factors, reaching a total of 783,936 deaths at a cost of $282 billion. Every year, and that’s not the highest estimate available. A simple extrapolation on the statistics gives us a projected 10-year death rate of 7,841,360 people, more people than have been killed in all the wars the United States ever fought over its entire history.

Medical insurance reform – which is the most we’ll ever get from Congress, and that’s likely to be a simple mandate to buy junk insurance – does not even begin to address what’s wrong with the health care system in this country. All it will do is put more people in harm’s way, given that medical care is now the third leading cause of death in the U.S. The American iatrogenic Association [AiA] is working to make the truth known to the general public, and to promote policies that will begin to address the serious issues. I encourage everyone concerned about the health care situation in this country – both access and quality of care – to check out their website and the collection of articles, essays, studies and book excerpts they offer.

The Truth is that at least 12,000 people die every year of unnecessary surgeries. Another 7,000 die to medication errors in hospitals. 20,000 die due to other errors in hospitals. Hospital-acquired infections, many resistant to known antibiotics, kill another 80,000. 106,000 die of those nifty “bad effects” of drugs their doctor prescribed, often for no better reason than that some hypnotized medically-obsessed junkie saw it advertised on TV and just HAD to have it. Only heart disease and cancer beat the medical system in this country on number of victims every year. You can bet that many of those the medical system kills were there because they were diagnosed with one of those issues, but their doctor or hospital killed them before their disease could.

This unacceptable situation SHOULD inform us that more access to the system for more people is not going to cure what ails us. All that is just more money for the players in that nasty futures market in human suffering. I read about a woman the other day who had her baby taken away from her because she resisted a doctor’s insistence that she submit to C-section (dangerous major surgery), at a hospital with a C-section rate approaching 50% of all births. What the hell kind of quality control is going on there? C-section is medically indicated – to save the life of mother or child in an extreme situation – for fewer than 6% of all births. I for one do not consider a doctor’s tee-off date to be an extreme situation threatening the life of mother or child. I DO consider unnecessary surgery to be a direct threat to life and limb, and so should everyone else in the world!

So when your least-favorite WingNut starts ranting about “ObamaCare” and euthanasia for poor old Granny, respond with some REAL statistics about what’s way more likely to kill off Granny and everyone else in the family before their time – that which passes for “health care” in this, the supposedly richest country the world has ever known. If all our government can do is offer more citizens the ‘right’ to access the killing floor, we’re better off without it.

So. Just wanted to continue with a theme, because I think it’s extremely useful as a means of keeping our heads about us while dealing with clinically insane bizonker-birthers who can’t tell their asses from their outhouse in this so-called “Health Care Debate.” Nobody anywhere is really doing anything about what’s actually wrong with health care in this country, and they will continue to do nothing about it until we’re all dead of it (or maybe just old age). NONE of them are addressing the problems.

House minority whip Eric Cantor explains how he supports Rush Limbaugh as the Republican Party’s leading economist, with some really great “ideas.” Like cutting taxes for corporations and wealthy Americans, while slashing government spending on Medicare and Medicaid. Now, why didn’t Republicans think of this when they had complete control of the government over the last eight years? Oops… they did.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports in One in 10 Americans receiving food stamps that indeed, a record 32.2 million Americans are now receiving food assistance to the tune of just over $112 a month. This reflects the latest unemployment figures, 8.1% in February, the highest in a quarter century. Luckily, under President Obama’s stimulus plan, food stamp recipients will be getting a temporary 13% increase which still won’t actually feed a person for a whole month given rapid inflation of food prices, but will stretch the budget a little farther.

DKos diarist Dartagnan offers the Republican response to the situation of so many Americans finding themselves in need of assistance from the government to cover something so basic as food. It won’t surprise you any more than Limbaugh’s not-new “ideas” about how to keep the rich from having to pay their fair share toward the public good.

Seems Craig Blair, a state legislator in one of America’s poorest states – West Virginia – has introduced a bill that will require recipients of food stamps or any other form of government assistance to submit to random drug testing. He includes unemployment benefits in his plan, reflecting once again the tired old Republican worldview that insists that people down on their luck and in need of assistance are just lazy, drug-addicted bums that don’t deserve a handout (even if they’ve been paying for unemployment insurance for many years). That this testing would add an entire layer of bureaucracy and hoop-jumping doesn’t seem to bother him, nor does the additional millions of dollars it will cost the state to test those long lines of people at the unemployment office. Jerkwad.

But West Virginia wingnuts aren’t the only ones on the New Eugenics bandwagon. Lawmakers in 10 states are now considering the very same type of legislation. They tried this in both Michigan and Arizona, but those laws were either struck down in court or found to be so expensive they were unworkable. In Tennessee, state representative Susan Lynn introduced similar drug testing legislation, justifying it with the usual Repuglican sense of social justice…

“Taxpayers are concerned that they might be funding the monster of drug addiction, and they don’t want that,” Lynn said. “This is really no different than what people are used to.”

Wow. I didn’t know you could buy pot with food stamps! Did you? Can Rush Limbaugh use them to buy Oxycontin?

Amazing…

Janis Joplin once sang someone else’s song very poignantly – “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose…” – and that’s semi-true in my experience. We all make choices about what’s important in our lives, and usually become enslaved to that which we choose. At the low end of the scale there’s never enough, just paying the bills is a constant struggle. At the high end of the scale there is also never enough. The thirst for more and more and more rules lives and ruins them too.

As Wall Street melts down we’re suddenly informed we must Spend, Spend, Spend!!! They can never make up their minds. Either we’re not saving enough or we’re not spending enough, it’s always our fault. I call bullshit. Slave wages have not even kept up with the cost of living, they can’t have it both ways.

I read about a 50-something day care worker yesterday who a coworker noticed sitting in the corner crying. When asked what’s wrong, she finally said she couldn’t feel her face. The coworker was alarmed, saw one side of her face drooping as they were talking, speech slurring. She drove her friend to the hospital, but the woman just cried harder and wouldn’t get out of the car. Said yes, she must be having a stroke, but if she walked in the door she’d lose everything – house, car, meager income (job)… she was terrified. Her friend finally talked her into going, she is still in the hospital and her coworkers are trying very hard to raise the tens of thousands she’ll need to pay for the care. There is no insurance at that end of the scale.

Some people on that discussion board from Europe and Australia were horrified. Simply trying to imagine what it must be like to face utter ruin just because you need to see a doctor – when you might be dying. Where dying is the “reasonable” choice, just so your children aren’t left bankrupt. Every other civilized country in the world provides basic health care for their citizens. Only in America…

This is wrong. We all work, much harder than the greed-head capitalists who skim the wealth we create for themselves. There are only so many hours in a day, and humans need sleep. If two full-time minimum wage jobs or three part-time minimum wage jobs – 16 hours a day, the kids are home alone – can’t provide a decent income, it’s NOT because these people are “lazy” or “shiftless” or anything. That’s wrong too. Now that Wall Street has cashed-out, millions who are very much willing to work won’t have jobs – there won’t be any. Great Depression v2.0. This is what unfettered ‘free market capitalism’ has wrought. It’s not pretty, and I sincerely doubt Jesus would approve.

So the haters are busy whipping up more hate. Buzzwords like “socialism,” taxing the rich, scary black people, gays and terrorists around every corner… “God’s Voter Guide.” That’s f***ing obscene! Dogs and cats living together, total chaos!!! Booga Booga, blah, blah, blah, Osama bin Laden, blah, blah, blah, Barack HUSSEIN Obama, blah, blah, blah. Disgusting.

We need change, not hate. Hate’s not going to help anyone, it’s just going to cause more pain. Maybe if the so-called Christians spewing hate 24-7 and worshipping golden bulls on Wall Street were exposed as the liars, posers and hypocrites they truly are, we could finally all work together to improve our nation and everyone’s lives. As if this were the United States of America, sans secessionists and domestic terrorists in the White House.

There’s a difference between “socialism” that has the government working for the people, and “socialism” that has government working for the corporate greed-heads. One is how the rest of the free world functions these days. The other is fascism. Things can’t go on like this, so when the dust clears which choice will we make? Valueless money is just mammon. Belongs to Caesar, not to God (who is pennyless). Our nation is drowning in it. If We the People ever come to our senses, we’d realize there are way more of “us” than “them.” So I hope. Right now that’s pretty much all there is, and a great many others are hoping too…

Happy Halloween – Booga Booga!!!

Okay, I have to make a couple of observations about this whole economic meltdown thing. Before they vote to bail out the system – and they will – just not on Paulson’s terms.

First, despite the desperation that brought Paulson to beg for money right now or the sky will fall tomorrow, the sky didn’t fall tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next week. Sure the markets are “adjusting” with big swings up and down (obviously someone still has money), banks are continuing to fail, and now the credit market is frozen. But the world is still turning, the billionaires are buying up bargains on their own (infusing ready cash here and there), and the dollar still remains stronger than it will be after we print another trillion of them.

Second, it’s beginning to look like it really was an end game scam, one last big robbery before their power runs out. Paulson isn’t going to get the absolute power he tried to grab, nor is he going to get any waivers on oversight or blanket immunity from judicial review. Which means he can’t just pass out billions to his cronies and benefactors. The robbery didn’t go off as planned.

The “assets” we have already bought – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – are riddled with evidence of felonious behavior and the FBI is hot on the case. AIG’s books don’t look to be any less felonious, they’re being investigated as well. People will likely go to jail.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There will be a bailout because the economy must keep going. The rich will get way more than they deserve, the rest of us get stiffed as usual. So don’t believe any of them when they claim to care about We the People. They don’t. One of these days wwe might decide to inform them in no uncertain terms that we don’t care about them either. Until then, best of luck to us!

Secretary of the Treasury and ex-CEO of Goldman-Sachs Henry Paulson called Congressional leadership for a get-together. He tells them something – no doubt using charts and graphs – so horrifying, so absolutely terrifying that they all come out looking like Moses (er… Charlton Heston) after meeting the burning bush. Hair’s grown a foot and is stark white, their beards fall to their bellies, they’ve all got that far-away look in their red-rimmed eyes, and their hands are shaking. None dare breathe the edict: Set My People Free!

So. What was it, exactly, that Paulson told them? Gee, we dunno. Nor are we allowed to know. Just as if this were top secret intelligence pinpointing WMDs that don’t exist right in Saddam’s palace, we don’t get to find out. Even though it’s supposedly OUR trillion or three or four they MUST have right now to bail themselves out. With a laughable “emergency” plan that, Deputy Admin press secretary Tony Fratto said just today, was drawn up over the course of months.

Months. Not days or even weeks. They sure as shit knew it was coming, and simply waited for just the right moment of panic to spring it on us as if the end of the world is mere hours away. Ah, the lively tune reverberates in my mind…

“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!”

If that’s not a scam just waiting on the Greek chorus to sing the dirge I sure don’t know what is. They don’t care what I have to say about it, but I say “No.” If it turns out that nobody’s bothered to keep track of where all the paper went, then nobody really owns the lien on my house. It’s mine, free and clear (if they can’t produce the lien, they’ve got no claim). Except for the annual taxes I pay to my LOCAL government. Which I don’t mind paying at all since it supports the fire department, rescue squad, county hospital, roads, bridges, schools and libraries.

Looks to me like they’re trying to salvage the prime and just slightly sub-prime mortgage market by putting in a claim to the Treasury because if we were ever to figure out that our actual loans have been so fragmented and bundled and bought and sold that nobody bothered to keep the dead trees anywhere, we ALL own our properties free and clear and nobody who thinks they own the paper gets paid!

Which, btw, is just fine with me. Wall Street can crash, I don’t mind. I’m sure there are capable players just waiting in the wings to kick-start things when the wind dies down. Real estate’s still a good income investment and can be had cheap right now. Hold the liens yourself on just two or three houses and you’re guaranteed steady income for the entire life of the loans – even at straight interest of 8-10% non-compounded, you’re still earning the premium. And if they default, the property goes back to you and you just sell it all over again. Wall Street may fall, but Main Street will survive. For the most part, anyway…

Ahoy, mateys! Ye olde Jolly Roger is flying high o’er the poopdeck this blustery Talk Like a Pirate Day, sun’s high atop the meridian and it looks like clear sailing from here to Zanzibar (where we get to meet the Zanzibarbarians)!

Of course, that flag’s been flying off the deck atop the mizzen gib since the Fourth of July, our old Old Glory having been ceremoniously burned on the beach at Tortuga some time ago due to unraveled edges and holey star-field. Roger was the only flag we had left to fly, so we did.

As it looks like those scurvy bilge rats privateering for effete Frenchies have managed to once again rob the Armada blind by stealing the fabled treasure of Wall Street, we of the honorable fellowship of brigands and pirates vow to take it back in the name of Good King Barry-O, our one-eyed Cap’n, in his bid to earn full knight-ship by saving the fleet from mass plank-walking.

Arrrr! Un-pantaloon yer blunderbusses, mates! We be makin’ for those Outer Banks before dawn! Weigh anchor, unfold the sheets – it’s on to glory and booty!

Stephanie Woolhandler, M.D. of Harvard Medical School testified before the President’s Council on Bioethics this past week about her experiences with [non]health care in Amerika. The council was created in 2001 to ‘advise’ the president on bioethical issues arising from advances in biomedical science and technology. 

Single-payer, “Medicare for All” type reform is drastically needed as the US falls farther and farther away from the so-called ‘Modern World’ in terms of the general health, life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality rates, and the sheer number of hard-working citizens who will die without any medical care at all because they simply have no access and cannot afford it.

“I’ve seen people die because of co-payments and deductibles.”

There are an estimated 47 million Americans with no insurance. And as more and more of them are losing their jobs and their homes as the economy descends into depression, that number will rise dramatically. An estimated 18,000 Americans Die every year because they have no health insurance or money to pay thousands of dollars’ worth of deductibles and co-pays for the junk insurance they do have. Fully one half of personal bankruptcies in this country are the result of getting sick or injured. 76% of those filers HAD insurance when they got sick or injured, but the deductibles and co-pays bankrupted them anyway.

America doesn’t need health insurance. It doesn’t need more junk health insurance. It doesn’t need to force businesses to be non-competitive in the world markets because they have to provide health care (via insurance) to those lucky enough to have jobs that offer it…

What America needs is health care.

Tomorrow – July 30 – is the 40th anniversary of Medicare. As an action item, LtEs and letters of complaint/support can be sent to the NY Times in response to Blumenthal’s opinion piece, to AHIP the insurance industry lobby, and/or to The President’s Council on Bioethics.

American citizens are dying right now for lack of health care, at the rate of at least 50 per day. Is killing men, women and children in Iraq MORE important than treating people right here at home?

As the economy continues to slip deeper into recession and the Presidential race becomes ever more one-sided in favor of real change, America’s Health Insurance Plans [AHIP] are hitting the road to defend their practice of “Murder By Spreadsheet.” Or, as one energetic activist calls the offensive, the Deceive America Tour.

AHIP is the trade and political lobbying association of DC insiders and overpaid executives for the health insurance industry. The industry that has wrecked health care delivery by bankrupting public hospitals, been targeted for racketeering suits under RICO, routinely refuses to pay claims while throwing families into bankruptcy, and continues to cripple American business competition in foreign trade with nations whose businesses do not hold primary responsibility for citizens’ health care costs.

2007 estimates of the number of uninsured Americans reached more than 75 million adults – 42% of all adults age 19 to 64 were uninsured or ‘underinsured’ – and the US has fallen to 47th in the world on life expectancy at birth. This week AHIP launched its Campaign for an American Solution tour in Columbus, Ohio, purporting to have A Plan to cure America’s health care woes without having to pay for any sick people’s actual health care or forego their profit margins, golden parachutes, luxury limousines and multi-million dollar salaries.

AHIP calls it a “listening tour” outreach, which means they’re quite likely to encounter some loud protests wherever they go in this effort to protect their bottom lines from reality. The speculative futures market in human suffering is just far too lucrative to lose, and the insurance hacks illegally practicing medicine these days have no intention of backing down.

Please check out the tour schedule for when these folks will be coming to your area, then you may wish to contact one of the single-payer activist groups listed below to lend your presence to the protests. It’s well past time for America to join the modern world.

National Organizations:

Physicians for National Health Program
Guaranteed Health Care [California Nurses Assn/Nat. Nurses Organizing Committee]
Health Care Now
Everybody In & Nobody Out

Everybody In & Nobody Out supports state organizations working at the grassroots level for universal care, and offers links to those state organizations. You can also find lists of state groups in your state at the other national organization sites.

For those of us who find Rush Limbaugh more offensive than funny, who have encountered his hoards of dumbass “Ditto-heads” with double-digit IQs, and who have suspected for years that there’s some weird kind of connection between butt-boils, Oxy-induced head cheese and those 4+ hour Viagra erections (what a Rush… hahaha), his graduation into the rarified realm of genuine comedy was a little bit surprising.

I mean, it’s not like his fans are capable of getting the joke, even though it is aimed at their sub-sub-average ‘least common denominator’ and all. But there it is on the June 24th transcript in all its deliberately offensive glory. Which those of us with more than two brain cells to rub together will certainly appreciate in the midst of our grief for George Carlin’s recent death.

It’s sort of a parody of the many talking heads out there on ‘real’ TV who keep race-baiting but aren’t quite sure how to do so without ending up like Imus. About 2/3 down the transcript page you get the full act, Limbaugh and his fictional sidekick character Bo Snerdley (“Official Obama Criticizer) on whether Obama’s got any “slave blood” in his veins. My favorite clip…

SNERDLEY: Yes, yes. And! I have Irish blood coursing through my vanes (sic) as well. It shows up under the microscope. All of them, different ones, they show up.

RUSH: You’ve actually had your blood microscoped?

SNERDLEY: Yes, and they identified the slave blood.

RUSH: This was part of the process?

SNERDLEY: Yes. We identified the different segments.

RUSH: True. Why did you…?

SNERDLEY: African blood, there. Slave blood, there. Indian blood, there.

RUSH: There is separate slave blood hemoglobin that you can see in the microscope?

*SNERDLEY: Yes. They’re chained differently. Leave that alone.

RUSH: Had no idea. And the Irish blood?

*SNERDLEY: Oh, yes! It’s a little bit more red at the top.

It goes on and on, of course, but I’ve gotta admit that Snerdley’s punch lines (signified by asterisks in this short excerpt) are deadly. So while we know Limbaugh’s too old and fat and crippled by his butt-boils (that’s how he got out of service during Vietnam) to do actual stand-up comedy, maybe he and Snerdley can do a stand-up/sit-down routine on the circuit. It would definitely be a step up the ’success’ ladder for Limbaugh, and let’s face it…

The country could use a good laugh.

So check out the link at Rushlimbaugh.com and be amazed at the possible value of turning to true humor after having been such a hate-mongering jerk for so many years.