Random Ideas

The wonderful land of the Scotts has now been revealed to either be run by morons, or run by BP sell-outs. The “terminally ill” murderer of Lockerbie has now been revealed to be in wonderful health. How could the Dr. make such a mistake? Maybe his equipment malfunctioned? Could the samples been mixed up? No. He was simply paid off by a Lyban sympathetic BP. WHy would BP work with a country with such a history of evil and pay for the release of a man who is evil incarnate? Oil. Plain and simple. It’s the same thing that has lead Sarah Palin to sell out the great state of Alaska. It’s the money gotten from oil that has lead the Republicans and some Democrats to accuse our government of being too hard on the company that has, trough penny pinching and other unethical measures, destroyed a huge part of our ecosystem. The same company who created the worst oil disaster in history… Wouldn’t it be scary if they were the same ones who bought the freedom of a mass murderer in Scotland… Oh, wait, IT IS! I am finding it hard to think of a more evil company outside of the tobacco industry.

If these acts of evil bother you, act on it. No, do not throw mud. Do not throw anything or break anything. Simply pull across the street and buy gas at another place. The consumer has the power to kill a company by choking off their income. Vote with dead presidents.

As many of you may have seen, there is a great deal of posturing and name calling about immigration lately. For the record, I was always told that breaking a law was a criminal act and made one a criminal in the eyes of society. So, if a person enters the United States in a way that breaks the law, that person is a CRIMINAL. Not an “undocumented worker”. Somehow people have fallen for a line of faulty logic that says that these people, many of whom commit even more crimes while in this country, are being persecuted. That is a BAD spelling error. It’s not that they are “persecuted”, it’s that they need to be PROSECUTED! Now there is a group that is pushing for a moratorium on deportations. They are clearly insane.

Who do you think is really victimized when a person enters our country illegally? Big business could not be less interested in stopping it. They save untold millions a year by using workers that can be paid illegal slave wages and treated worse than livestock. Is it the middle class? Those folks who get unionized and non-unionized jobs in jobs for big corporations at various levels of the businesses? They rarely see anything but cheaper products at big chain stores and cheap day labor for landscaping around the house as the effects. Maybe it’s the people who worked for years to gain LEGAL access to this country, looked for jobs, and found that most of them involved working under the table and living in conditions no other American would willingly endure… Maybe it’s the poor guy who goes looking for an honest job in the city, only to find that most of the employers will not hire him because they have to pay him a fair wage. Maybe it’s the grandmother who is killed one night by a person who broke into her home to get the money to pay for fake documents. Maybe it’s the college student suddenly denied financial aid and put into massive debt because their identity has been stolen and used by 15 different people to get valid jobs, and then run up bills that will never be paid.

Arizona may have been ham handed when they started making new laws to handle illegal immigrants. Still, just by being in the country, these people are criminals. Try sneaking into any other country. You will find that you are not “given amnesty” or treated as a hero trying to seek asylum. You will be deported and treated like the criminal you are. I dare you to break into Russia, Japan, China, or Germany without a passport and visa. Unless you have more money than a major industry CEO, you will NOT like how you are treated.

Maybe we need to remember that our laws should be respected, especially by people who wish to live here!

As someone who knows people in crisis with their health, and as a person working in a major medical institution, I am shocked. Republicans are the ones I expect to screw the little guy, not Democrats… Now, it’s hard to tell them apart. I know a family with four kids, one part time income, and the father (the only one working) is a type 1 diabetic. They have no supplies for him right now and no cash. They are waiting for paperwork to go through for medicare. Make no mistake, a type 1 diabetic without his insulin is a walking dead man. Right now, the only thing keeping him alive is a family friend who gave him some of their insulin. This is not an isolated thing. Many people in our country have to choose between feeding their families and having the life saving medication they need. I know a type 2 diabetic who is having to not buy medicine so she can avoid losing her home and becoming homeless. She’s not able to get medicare until next fall.

It makes me ill to realize that we, the richest country in the world, can not care for our sick. We send millions of dollars in aid to other countries in both government and private money, but we fail the people who live on our own streets. Evil corporations move every job they can to India, Mexico, and China to avoid paying enough for people to live on. Other companies hire people who have entered the country so that they can work them like animals and treat them like slaves. Just the money that legal employees would feed into our system by paying taxes would pay for a large portion of any “public option”.

All the people who have no insurance become a burden on our emergency care systems and clinics as well. ER’s can’t turn you away for be uninsured… If the type 1 diabetic I mentioned dies, the government will foot the bill not only for his burial, but also for the continued care and feeding of the family he leaves behind. Over the next 17+ years that will add up…

I say we all watch for who votes down the “public Option” and we make sure NOT to vote for them when they run again. Remember, in the end, WE are the bosses. WE should fire politicians who are not doing the best job for us.

You know, it’s funny. Fundamentalist groups are always protesting movies over odd little details in movies. They even raised a stink about the mannish ugly step sister in Shrek because they chose to see her as a transvestite. Watching a children’s movie with my daughter, I realized that the holy rollers had missed a big one. After all, bees don’t have males who travel outside of the hive. That would mean that the bee character in the move was in fact female. Shouldn’t they be protesting and raising a stink about a lesbian couple in a child’s movie? This just goes to show, these people are very uneven in the application of their rules. What about the gay penguins? Not a word from the fundies on that one. Of course, one of them went straight… Maybe that’s why they were not bothered. Bisexual penguins and gay bees, maybe the fundamentalists are calming down. Maybe, in a few years and with enough alternative lifestyle animals, they will join in on a gay/lesbian parade…

Well, now we know how hard Scotland is on terrorists… The aren’t! It seems that, if you want to blow up innocent women and children, the smart terrorist does it in Scotland. “He was  terminally ill!” you say? What has that got to do with his crime? Does it make his victims any less dead? Maybe his victims now suffer less pain? No, his crime has not changed. The only change is the additional pain inflicted by an idiotic government on the families of the victims. Now, he dies as a hero, praised in his country and pampered for the rest of his life. Now he inspires more maniacs. One more reason for terrorist organizations to laugh at our concept of justice. Open season has now been declared by the stupidity of the Scottish government. I say, “Hang on to your kilts guys! The suicide bombers know where to go!”

Are we tired of flogging this dead horse yet? Her career is dead. Rumor says her marriage is in ruin. Her family life is forever the subject of questionable late night humor. I think that speculation about this train wreck of a woman should have ended when she admitted that she was not even qualified for the job she already had, much less the VP of the United States. Just let her fade into obscurity.

Let’s face some basic facts. Our president wants to make it so that Americans can get health care. Republicans have moved heaven and earth to stop him. Why? It’s quite simple. Between medical and pharma corporations, the cost of medical care in this country has gone up by leaps and bounds every year for decades. Medicines that cost pennies in other countries cost thousands here. Lately, even insurance companies have started sending patients to other countries to get treatment. Doctors and nurses are not making the price go up. Corporations are raising the costs. Can you guess who contributes big money to republican electoral runs? Who pays for the army of lobbyists (other than the tobacco industry)? The Republicans are bad mouthing a provision for a public health care system of any kind. Why? After all, every country in the world that has such a system has lower death rates, lower infant mortality rates, and less of their per capita as well as GNP spent on health care. Too bad the Republican’s buddies (who contribute to their elections) make their money on the inflated costs charged to the consumer for basic health care.

How is it possible that a republican is against the costitution? A certain Paul Broun has found himself directly opposed to a fundamental part of our most basic precepts as a society. He wants 2010 to be “The Year of the Bible”… What bible would that be? Our Jewish friends would say the Hebrew bible works for them… I’ve met those who perfer the Satanic Bible. The Quran is technically a bible. Maybe the UNIX Systems Administrator’s Bible? I have two of the latter. Our Mormon buddies have one of their own as well…

My point is this, he is ramming his personal ideals down the throats of people who have a right to their own opinions. As soon as we give him that power, we give it to others. What if the next guy comes up with “2013, Year of the KKK”? They played a key role in forming our identity as a nation too. Maybe 2014 can be the year of the Nazi? He is induging in an abuse of power and perverting the trust placed in him by the public if he subverts our constitution by blatantly ignoring a core element of who we are as a nation.

A particular faith can not be endorsed by our government without harming the very ideals that we all aspire to. I know that Rep. Paul Broun means well. He thinks that by doing this, he is sharing a special thing with people who are unaware of a great truth. He has good intentions… I think we all know the destination of the road he is paving…

I just don’t get it. An admittedly beautiful woman gets up and answers a question about her opinion, and everybody goes nuts. On the one hand, people who disagree with her want her to be stripped (of all prestige and power) for life. On the other hand, people who agree with her are on fire like her saying something publicly makes it the most important thing in the world.

Opinions are like arm pits. We all have at least one and they all stink! Besides, when did a ball of blond, Californian, fluff have this much clout? Let’s face it, no beauty queen has solved world hunger or provided world peace. That makes them failures, right? She is no more likely to actually change anything about the status of gay marriage in either direction no matter how big a stink she makes of it either way. In a few more months, she will be just another bimbo with half naked pictures of her on the internet.

There was an email that went out today from a major medical teaching and treatment center. I have removed certain information that they may consider private to them. Please read it and take action.

Subject: New York State Budget Negotiations – Impact on Hospitals

WE NEED YOUR HELP: The New York State Legislature and the Governor’s Office are now in negotiations regarding the State Budget. While negotiations are on-going, under the current proposals the Medical Center stands to lose significant resources. Other medical centers would also experience significant losses. Cuts of this magnitude will seriously jeopardize our ability to meet the needs of some of the patients who come through our doors each year by forcing cuts in essential healthcare services, as well as limit our ability to invest in the latest medical technologies and make much-needed improvements to our infrastructure.

I urge you to send an email from your personal computer and personal email address to Governor Paterson and key Members of the New York State Legislature, opposing the proposed cuts to Graduate Medical Education (GME) funds to our Medical Center and the gross receipts tax (a tax on our total revenues). The email can simply say:

“Please oppose cuts to Graduate Medical Education and the imposition of a gross receipts tax, as proposed in the New York State Budget discussions.”

Please send your email in opposition as soon as possible to:

Governor David Paterson- www.ny.gov/governor/index.html and go to the bottom of the page and click on “Contact the Governor”.

Speaker Sheldon Silver- Speaker@assembly.state.ny.us

Assembly Health Chair, Richard Gottfried- gottfrr@assembly.state.ny.us

Assembly Member Jonathan Bing- bingj@assembly.state.ny.us

Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh- kavanaghb@assembly.state.ny.us

Senate Health Chair, Tom Duane- duane@senate.state.ny.us 

Senator Liz Krueger:  lizkrueger@gmail.com

You may also want to email your own Assembly Member and Senator about these proposed cuts and ask them to oppose the cuts too. To find your Assembly Member and Senator you can go to the website of the Healthcare Association of New York State at http://capwiz.com/hanys/state/main/?state=NY and put in your zip code.

Your support on this issue can make a big difference in the outcome of the budget negotiations. Thank you for taking the time to voice your views on these important issues.