"Murphy was an optimist!"
US could insure everyone by reducing bureaucracy May 18, 2009 10:06 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Health, Politics, Touchy Subjects, United States , add a commentBy adopting Canada’s system of administration, the cost savings would allow all uninsured people in the United States to have medical care.
USA wastes more on health care bureaucracy than it would cost to provide health care to all of the uninsured … Administrative expenses will consume at least $399.4 billion out of total health expenditures of $1,660.5 billion in 2003. Streamlining administrative overhead to Canadian levels would save approximately $286.0 billion in 2003, $6,940 for each of the 41.2 million Americans who were uninsured as of 2001. This is substantially more than would be needed to provide full insurance coverage. [Source, Medical News TODAY]
The benefit to the single payer plan is the reduced overhead and associated costs of managing the health care system. France has issues but it may be a better model for the US health care system.
The American health care model, [Houston native Jennifer Hua] says, is too expensive and too insecure. France offers her family good medical treatment, better insurance, more convenience and no worries about how to pay medical bills if her husband’s job changes.
French model encourages people to put health ahead of economic anxiety.
As America seeks a better way to provide medical care, France offers an example of a system where everyone has government-provided, basic health insurance – citizens and immigrants alike. Expenses for such chronic illnesses as cancer, diabetes and multiple sclerosis are covered entirely by the state so patients can focus on treatment rather than financial ruin.
[Source, Dallas News, Is French health system a model for U.S.?]
I personally think I’d live longer and contribute more to our society if I wasn’t constantly worrying about how I will be able to pay for my family’s health care. The worry makes me more ill than anything else.
add a commentLet’s Talk Tea April 15, 2009 1:58 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Activism, Politics, Touchy Subjects, United States , 27commentsI was going to sit this one out but there has been so much misinformation on the Tea Parties that I feel compelled to make some commentary. Let’s discuss these things:
- I love protests even if I disagree with you
- Do you really know what the hell teabagging is?
- Bob Krumm is wrong.
- The Boston Tea Party was not about eliminating or reducing taxes.
I love protests!
First off, I love a good fight. I love a good cause. And I’ll step up for my beliefs. I am an activist and happy to live in America where I have that right. I respect your right to fight for your beliefs even when I disagree with you and if I choose to protest your protest I am not saying you don’t have the right to express your views, I am just offering an opposing view (which also happens to be a freedom of speech).
Do you remember all the protests under George W Bush? Probably not because when they happened, the protesters were cordoned off away from the main activity and the press was limited in their ability to report.
Free speech zones were used in Boston at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. The free speech zones organized by the authorities in Boston were boxed in by concrete walls, invisible to the Fleet Center where the convention was held and criticized harshly as a “protest pen” … Reporters are often barred by local officials from displaying these protesters on camera or speaking to them within the zone.[Source, Wikipedia, Free speech zone]
Granted, free speech zones are not a new development. They have existed since the 1960s but were most heavily used by George W Bush’s administration.
For the record, I will not be participating in today’s Tea Parties nor will I be counter protesting. Quite frankly, I find it rather amusing that so many people are eagerly running around declaring they’ll be participating in a mass orgy of strangers plopping their nuts on each other’s faces. And that brings me to my next question.
Do you really know the definition of teabagging?
Last week I beat around the bush about the meaning of teabagging. I am betting that many of the protesters have missed the double entrendé. I think it is time to be direct.
Teabagging is a slang term for the act of a man placing his scrotum in the mouth or on or around the face (including the top of the head) of another person, often in a repeated in-and-out motion as in irrumatio. The practice vaguely resembles dipping a tea bag into a cup of tea. [Source, Wikipedia, Teabagging]
This is a vile, demeaning image and not a term that should be thrown around in mixed company and splattered all over the news in such a way that children are compelled to learn and teach their peers its meaning.
I was very vocal about my disagreement with George W Bush and my belief that his administration was causing long term damage to this country. My words and thoughts are immortalized in this online publishing. Although I was harsh on GW, I do not think I did anything to disparage the office of the presidency. And I will strike that out the moment someone reminds me with a link to something I wrote. We are a democracy and even though our favorite candidate does not always get into office, that person IS still the president of our country and deserves certain respects. I do not think it speaks highly of someone to say you want to put your balls on the face of the president. I do not think that speaks highly of your country!
Bob Krumm is wrong.
Bob Krumm wrote "There is no high-profile Farrakhan-type organizer or a well-funded Brady Campaign organization behind today’s protests" but Lee Fang has documented that corporate lobbyists are the driving force behind the Tea Parties as a Anti-Obama mechanism specifically Freedom Works (the GOP version of MoveOn) and Americans for Prosperity.
Despite these attempts to make the "movement" appear organic, the principle organizers of the local events are actually the lobbyist-run think tanks Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works. The two groups are heavily staffed and well funded, and are providing all the logistical and public relations work necessary for planning coast-to-coast protests. [Source, Think Progress, Spontaneous Uprising? Corporate Lobbyists Helping To Orchestrate Radical Anti-Obama Tea Party Protests]
Jane Hamsher at The Huffington Post has more explanation and commentary about the lobbyists. Momocrats has this video (note the testicular image behind the reporter) which flat out says "Not a spontaneous uprising. The people who came up with it are a familiar circle of Republicans including Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey."
They oppose Mr. Obama’s tax rates which will be lower for most of them and they oppose Mr. Obama’s tax increases for the rich whose taxes will skyrocket to about 10% less than it was under Reagan. [Source, Youtube, David Shuster GOP Going Nuts For Teabagging, But They Need A Dick Armey]
The Boston Tea Party was not about eliminating or reducing taxes.
I’m hearing people, even relatives, spout of various reasons for the Tea Parties. No one seems to be on the same base. Momocrats is also trying to figure it out. Mostly I have heard people say they do not want their taxes increased and have tried to draw a parallel to The Boston Tea Party. As the video above pointed out, The Boston Tea Party was about representation and rights.
The protest movement that culminated with the Boston Tea Party was not a dispute about high taxes. The price of legally imported tea was actually reduced by the Tea Act of 1773. Protestors were instead concerned with a variety of other issues. The familiar "no taxation without representation" argument, along with the question of the extent of Parliament’s authority in the colonies, remained prominent. Some regarded the purpose of the tax program—to make leading officials independent of colonial influence—as a dangerous infringement of colonial rights. This was especially true in Massachusetts, the only colony where the Townshend program had been fully implemented. [Source, Wikipedia, Boston Tea Party]
I also hear mutterings about Obama in his short time in office being responsible for today’s tax rates. As the video points out, this just isn’t the case.
The taxation rates that they will all be protesting are the George W Bush Republican taxation rates. [Source, Youtube, David Shuster GOP Going Nuts For Teabagging, But They Need A Dick Armey]
I think it is important to remember that TARP was a 2008 program that "allows the United States Department of the Treasury to purchase or insure up to $700 billion of "troubled" assets." That’s the mortgage bailout. The economic situation the United States faces did not start on January 20, 2009.
As you talk about the successes of your Tea Parties, please be aware that the goal of the Tea Parties is not to reduce or change taxes but to try to find a chink in the Obama armor as a means of getting the GOP back into control of the presidency in 2012.
Update: See also: Interesting discussion at Reddit- Where were the anti-tax tea parties when George Bush was wasting Billions in Iraq, on the Prescription Drug Bill, and providing handouts to Oil Companies? and Don’t Drink the Tea; Taxes Benefit Everyone.
27commentsI don’t understand tea bagging. April 9, 2009 1:47 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Activism, Politics, Regional Politics (SE), Sex, Touchy Subjects, United States , 2commentsApparently on April 15 from 3pm-6pm, Republicans and Conservatives alike (perhaps Democrats and other parties) will be meeting at the World’s Fair Park for some tea bagging. As much as I enjoy a good protest, this just doesn’t sound like my kind of thing:
Teabagging is … an erotic activity used within the context of BDSM and male dominance, with a dominant man teabagging his submissive partner, either a woman or a man, as one variation of facesitting and/or as a means of inflicting erotic humiliation. [Source, Wikipedia, Teabagging]
Just sounds like someone’s going to get themselves arrested.
See also: Teabagging Congress.
Update 12April2009: Seen on The Huffington Post- “Tea Bagging” Rallies Ruthlessly Mocked On Maddow Show
Update: From Paul Krugman:
2commentsthe G.O.P. looked as crazy 10 or 15 years ago as it does now. That didn’t stop Republicans from taking control of both Congress and the White House. [Source, The New York Times, Tea Parties Forever ]
Active Thermite at WTC to Fuel Conspiracy Theories April 5, 2009 10:21 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Conspiracy, Politics, Touchy Subjects, United States, World Politics , 3commentsLike the questions surrounding JFK’s assassination, I don’t think we will ever have definitive answers to what happened on September 11, 2001. Scientists, some who have since been released from their university or laboratory jobs, have released a paper "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe" which will likely have conspiracy theorists once again presenting their arguments that the plane alone could not have destroyed the World Trade Center.
We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center. Examination of four of these samples, collected from separate sites, is reported in this paper. These red/gray chips show marked similarities in all four samples. One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC Tower, two the next day, and a fourth about a week later. … The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic. [Source, Bentham Open Access,Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe]
For more information on the super-thermite, read The Raw Deal.
Today on Reddit, the question was posed "2,740 Americans died in 9/11, justifying the removal/restrictions of many of our freedoms. How many people died to give us those rights in the first place?" Within the answers, this illuminating comment:
It’s sort of a nationalistic cliche to say that soldiers fight for our freedom but what they really fight for is the sovereignty of our government, which happens to guarantee us certain freedoms.
When we say a soldier died fighting for our freedoms, what we really mean is that he died in a war which threatened the loss of some or all of American sovereignty to a foreign or domestic power which would likely guarantee less rights than the present government.
This distinction is important because in the history of American wars, very few have definitively fallen under that category - and even in those cases, preserving the rights of American citizens was ancillary to sustaining or expanding the sovereign power of the U.S. government.
We now live with a generation that has never known the feeling, the freedoms, we had prior to September 11, 2001. There is a different feeling. I felt more secure! I wish my youngest children could know that feeling and could experience true trust. I have lived with a tension since 9/11 that I had not known prior. The tension is not from a fear of terrorists; they’ve always been around (well, at least from the 1960s First U.S. Aircraft Hijacked, May 1, 1961 and at least 1800BC for the rest of the world). The fear is from my own government! Prior to 9/11 the police were different; now everyone should fear the police.
Question: “The police are here. They want to talk to me. What should I do?”
Answer: “Make no statement to the police under any circumstances.”
- Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson
[Source, Brasscheck TV, Why you should
never talk to cops
without a lawyer]
The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics.
The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.
And we’re doing exactly what the terrorists want.
[Source, Bruce Schneier - Security Expert, Refuse to be Terrorized]
Whether the terrible incident of September 11, 2001 was foreign or domestic terrorism, whether it was solely the plane or the plane timed with well placed explosives is irrelevant. Our society has dramatically changed, some say irrevocably. We were a better America when we could trust our government. We were a better America when the police were not the enemy. We were a better America before Civil liberties were taken away.
See also: Timeline of Terrorism dating back to 1800BC and History of Terrorism 70s to 2001.
See also: Professor Says "Cutter Charges" Brought Down WTC Buildings (Issue #18 & 19, May 1 & 8, 2006)
Best thing seen on the Internet today January 25, 2009 8:30 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Humor, Politics, Touchy Subjects, United States , add a commentSeen in the popular section of Popurls.com: "Haha! I’m about to Pwn you in my speech."
add a commentAre you bemoaning the $160 million inauguration? January 18, 2009 9:15 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Politics, Touchy Subjects, United States , 11commentsWell Bush’s inauguration cost $157 million.
11commentsthe Obama figure of $160 million that got repeated in the press included security costs associated with the massive event. But the Bush tab of $42 million left out those enormous costs [Source, Media Matters, The media myth about the cost of Obama's inauguration]
Robin Williams on Obama’s Election January 2, 2009 10:01 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Humor, Philosophy, Politics, Touchy Subjects, United States , 2commentsHow did I miss this! 2,584,449 views at the time of posting which probably means Youtube will pull it soon.
Seen on Political Irony.
2commentsThank you for throwing your shoe site December 19, 2008 1:44 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Politics, Touchy Subjects, United States, World Politics , 5commentsAlthough it has scrolled from the page, I have continued to update the Iraqi Reporter Throws Reddit Alien at Bush post with related shoe throwing news. Today I added a link to a new website called http://www.thankyouforthrowingyourshoe.com/ which is a gallery of images from people holding up their shoe for Muntadar al-Zeidi. I have to agree with this statement from the website:
5commentsWe don’t condone shoe throwing, but we prefer it to war.
Iraqi Reporter Throws Reddit Alien at Bush December 15, 2008 11:40 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Politics, Touchy Subjects, United States, World Politics , 6commentsBush sober enough to dodge it.
Iraqis rally for Bush shoe attacker.
Update: The shoe thrower has been beaten while in custody.
Update: Shoe thrower faces up to 7 years.
Update: Egyptian offers 20 year old daughter in marriage to shoe thrower.
Update: Shoe-thrower sorry for ‘ugly act’
Update: Thank you for throwing your shoe.
Update: December 31 trial date for shoe-hurling Iraqi reporter aka he had expected to be shot after hurling his first shoe.
This is going to be a good 4/8 years! December 12, 2008 10:52 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Politics, Touchy Subjects, United States , add a comment
Update: Appears to be a Dec 2007 picture by Jim Cole of the Associated Press.
add a commentM*A*S*H the sequel - cancelled December 5, 2008 9:03 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Humor, Politics, Touchy Subjects, United States , 1 comment so far
Looking at my stats I see someone came to Reality Me by searching "norht korea poster" which took them to this poster I created in July of 2006. Totally had forgotten about that!
1 comment so far
Prop 8 - The Musical December 3, 2008 10:54 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Humor, Politics, Publishing, Touchy Subjects, United States, Video , add a comment
Election Night Drinking Games November 4, 2008 9:35 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Politics, Touchy Subjects, United States , 2commentsShouldn’t we be drinking tonight? Say, every time one of the news guys says that a state has gone to the other guy take a drink. Every time the news guys point out that they are making judgments on very low percentages of returns, take a drink. Every time a state flips, take a drink. Every time CNN puts up that "holograph," take a drink. (Actually its pretty cool in the way that Star Wars knocked our socks off in 1977 but makes us cry today). Every time Wolf Blitzer makes it evident that he wants McCain to win, take a drink.
2commentsI congratulated a first time voter November 4, 2008 8:35 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Politics, Touchy Subjects, United States , add a comment
We shared some laughs, talked about the lines at the polls, celebrated her first time at the polls, and wished each other luck in the express lane at Kroger.
add a commentVote and get free stuff November 4, 2008 12:02 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Bargains, Of Interest, Politics, Touchy Subjects, United States , 3commentsAfter you vote, run over to Starbucks for a free cup of coffee. Take your coffee over to Krispy Kreme for a free doughnut. Grab some Chick-fil-a for an early dinner.Unconfirmed Then have a free ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s for desert (5-8pm). Then for 2nd deserts head over to Baskin Robbins from 5pm-8pm for another free scoop.Unconfirmed…I think the person who told me this one was confusing it with Ben & Jerry’s. (I am trying to get links for confirmations but my machine isn’t cooperating. I can personally confirm that Starbucks is giving away free coffee.)
Update: You can also get a free sex toy if you live in New York City or Seattle. And just in case you aren’t reading what you are clicking, that link isn’t safe for work.
3comments
