I just got through skimming the latest Bill Moyers Journal and once again
I think he and his panel of scholars miss the boat by a few.

A wise man once said to me "Don't listen to that someone is saying. Listen
to what he/she is trying to tell you." And beneath all the din of "Death Panels"
and health rationing lies the real message. Listen closely and you will hear
"That G*d D*mn N**** ain't gonna tell me what to do. " "That d*mn N**** ain't
my president" "Then d*mn yankies ain't gonna shove this down my throat."
and on and on.

That my friends is the real message. But they can't say that because if they
did it would be obvious to anyone within earshot that all they are is more KKK
and white supremacist radicals. And may even attract the attention of the Feds
or some other agency. And worst of all...nobody would listen to them.

And the Limbaugh and O'Riley and Beck can't say it either because their shows
would be toast if they did. So they build up this straw man to hide their racist
beliefs behind but make no mistake that straw man is black.

C

And they are happening every day in hospitals.

Keeping Dad company in the hospital for five
weeks had left me befuddled. How can a facility
featuring state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment
use less-sophisticated information technology
than my local sushi bar? How can the ICU stress
the importance of sterility when its trash is
picked up once daily, and only after flowing
onto the floor of a patient's room? Considering
the importance of a patient's frame of mind to
recovery, why are the rooms so cheerless and
uncomfortable? In whose interest is the bizarre
scheduling of hospital shifts, so that a
five-week stay brings an endless string of new
personnel assigned to a patient's care? Why, in
other words, has this technologically advanced
hospital missed out on the revolution in quality
control and customer service that has swept all
other consumer-facing industries in the past two
generations?

I'm a businessman, and in no sense a health-care
expert. But the persistence of bad industry
practices-from long lines at the doctor's office
to ever-rising prices to astonishing numbers of
preventable deaths-seems beyond all normal
logic, and must have an underlying cause. There
needs to be a business reason why an industry,
year in and year out, would be able to get away
with poor customer service, unaffordable prices,
and uneven results-a reason my father and so
many others are unnecessarily killed.

Like every grieving family member, I looked for
someone to blame for my father's death. But my
dad's doctors weren't incompetent-on the
contrary, his hospital physicians were smart,
thoughtful, and hard-working. Nor is he dead
because of indifferent nursing-without
exception, his nurses were dedicated and
compassionate. Nor from financial limitations-he
was a Medicare patient, and the issue of expense
was never once raised. There were no greedy
pharmaceutical companies, evil health insurers,
or other popular villains in his particular
tragedy.

Indeed, I suspect that our collective search for
villains-for someone to blame-has distracted us
and our political leaders from addressing the
fundamental causes of our nation's health-care
crisis. All of the actors in health care-from
doctors to insurers to pharmaceutical
companies-work in a heavily regulated, massively
subsidized industry full of structural
distortions. They all want to serve patients
well. But they also all behave rationally in
response to the economic incentives those
distortions create. Accidentally, but
relentlessly, America has built a health-care
system with incentives that inexorably generate
terrible and perverse results. Incentives that
emphasize health care over any other aspect of
health and well-being. That emphasize treatment
over prevention. That disguise true costs. That
favor complexity, and discourage transparent
competition based on price or quality. That
result in a generational pyramid scheme rather
than sustainable financing. And that-most
important-remove consumers from our
irreplaceable role as the ultimate ensurer of
value.

These are the real tragedies of our healthcare system and they
are all perfectly preventable.

C

I republican walks into a bar and orders a beer and pays for it. While
drinking it down...slowly..the bartender says "Ya know...I don't get
very many republicans in here." Where in the republican replies
"Well at 20 dollars a glass for warm flat beer, I guess not."

The bartender says "I don't see why you should complain. After all it
was your legislation that allows me to charge 20 dollars a glass for
warm flat beer." "But" asks the republican, "how do you stay in business
with such a lousy product." "Well I get a lot of libertarians in here for
happy hour and they think it is their constitutional right to be able to
pay 20 bucks for warm flat beer." says the bar keep.

"I guess you don't get any democrats then" says the republican. "Well no
we don't." says the bar keep. "They gather at my place up the street and
drink stale lattes."

"How much do you charge for those" asks the republican. "20 dollars" replies
the bark keep.

C

 

Remember all those toxic loans that the banks have on their books ?
They're still here.

More than 150 publicly traded U.S.
lenders own nonperforming loans that
equal 5 percent or more of their
holdings, a level that former
regulators say can wipe out a
bank's equity and threaten its
survival.

The number of banks exceeding the
threshold more than doubled in the
year through June, according to data
compiled by Bloomberg, as real estate
and credit-card defaults surged.
Almost 300 reported 3 percent or more
of their loans were nonperforming, a
term for commercial and consumer debt
that has stopped collecting interest
or will no longer be paid in full.

Yes. Amid all the party noise about health care drowning
out their their bad jokes. These uninvited guests are still
with us and may force about 150 party goers to leave
the fun prematurely.

C

The golden Rule:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Think about this for a moment......meditate on this on and all it
implies.

Done ?

What it implies is also that we expect to be treated the way we
other people. Good or Bad.

This is a pretty heavy concept. We either consciously or subconsciously
use it every day when dealing with other people. It is in my opinion one
of the roots to our behavior around others. We will treat people nicely
because we expect to be treated that same in return and when this
expectation is not met we are hurt and disappointed.

There is also a dark side to this concept as well. We will treat others badly
because we were treated badly as well and sometimes because we expect
to be treated badly. And we expect this because we have in some way
already judged them to be inferior to us in some way. I know there are those
who will insist that "Oh NO !!! I only judge their actions...etc." BULL !

Everyone does this to some extent or another. In the military it is almost
required. The recruit is told from the get go that the enemy is inferior to him.
This is necessary in order for the soldier to be able to kill the enemy. And
he or she comes to expect this behavior to be returned.

Religions also in engage in this reverse of the Golden Rule by implying that
anyone who does not believe as they do is inferior in some way. The more
extreme the belief, the more inferior the non-believer.

I would also say that this applies to nearly every social, political, economic
racial and gender group there is. We see it trough out history. One group
demonizes another. Hitler the Jews. Romans the Christians. The Christians
....well nearly anyone who wasn't Christian.  Capitalists the Communists.
(And visa versa) Whites....anyone who is not white.

Psychologically this is a necessity. They will caricatureize the group as
subhuman.  This make it a lot easier to degrade, brutalize and kill with out
feeling remorse or pity for the other person. 

This lack of remorse play a large role in the penalty for murder.  If the guilty
party shows remorse for his or her actions, they are more likely to get
a lighter sentence and someone who does not. That person will more likely
receive the death penalty.

Now we have people who are being told that some detached body will determine
the life or death of them or some one close to them. This is so unlikely to
happen as to be laughable. For one thing the medical establishment would never
allow it. No physician that I know is willing to make that determination by
themselves let alone in a group willingly.  They currently will not even be a
participant in a legally sanctioned  execution of an prison inmate.

And even in those countries such as the Netherlands and Belgium where assisted
suicide is legal, fewer and fewer doctors are willing to engage in it. Preferring to
use CDS ( continuous deep sedation) instead. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8184108.stm

The truth is that killing is in general abhorrent to most people even under circumstance
where it would be considered a humane act. Even to make the decision to
remove life support can be emotionally traumatic to people. I know because
a friend of mine had to make this decision about one of his parents. Even though
a living will stated very clearly what was to be done. He still questions the decision.

Now I am not naive enough to believe that there are not those who would
make the decision to hasten the death of another for monetary reasons. Or prolong
life for the same reasons. I am sure there are. But I do believe that most
people under normal circumstances would have a very difficult time taking
the life of another by any means or even making the decision to do so.

And yet those of us not emotionally involved will find the use of extraordinary
measures to prolong a life to be equally miss guided as well.

So to those who would accuse others of being evil and murderous for what ever
reason. You yourself have already made the judgment that they are sub human,
setting your own selves up to their level and the behavior you have accused them
of.

C

Flying under the radar but soon to land is the continuing story
of the so called Swine Flu aka H1N1. And this could be either
a deal maker or deal breaker.

The virus could cause nothing more than a
typical flu season for the Northern
Hemisphere this winter. But many experts
suspect the second wave could be more severe
than an average flu season, which
hospitalizes an estimated 200,000 Americans
and contributes to 36,000 deaths. Because the
virus is new, most people are not immune to
it.

"This epidemic will transmit faster than
usual, because the population is more
susceptible," said Marc Lipsitch, a professor
of epidemiology at the Harvard School of
Public Health who has been helping the CDC
project the severity of the upcoming wave.
"It's fair to say there will be tens of
millions of illnesses and hundreds of
thousands of hospitalizations, and tens of
thousands of deaths. That's not atypical. It
just depends on how many tens of thousands."

Perhaps more important, in every country
where the virus has spread, it has continued
to affect children and young adults much more
commonly than typical flu viruses.

[Emphasis mine]
And this is the problem. Those that are the most susceptible
are the ones who are least likely to have health insurance because
they are usually the healthiest.  On top of that any pandemic
could overwhelm our medical facilities.

This would be nearly certain to facilitate a government response
regardless of the politics involved.

C

Why does anybody waist time by replying to this brain damaged clown
any way ? Just ignore him.

C

While reading about all propaganda and turbulence surrounding the
health-care issue, I get a call from a friend of mine. A pretty nice guy,
in his mid fourtys. I have know him about 15 years or so. He got married
about three years ago...his first marriage. Complete with kids and the
typical middle class life. He has his MBA and works in insurance for a
fairly large company.

But when it even comes to the smallest tasks around the house, he is
completely clueless. Even though he grew up in Iowa on a farm. I do
have to say that his family did not work the farm, they leased out the
land.  He was having problems with his pressure washer and I had to
explain to him how to get it to work the way he wanted it to.

He is not unintelligent, just lacking in life experience. He is willing and wants
to learn but has little to start with since he never had to deal with any
of this stuff while growing up. Not molly coddled - just that his father
did everything or hired someone else to do the basic tasks.

The reason I bring this up is that he is not an exception to his generation,
but rather the very epitome of it. At least one whole generation who never
had to learn these skills,. It was all done for them.

In contrast when I was in my mid to late teens I lived in southwest Florida.
I had a friend there who move down with his family from Akron Ohio.
He had a little motor bike that he worked on,  knew how to fix cars, stuff
around the house....most of the life tasks the most kids I knew had some
experience with.  He was fairly well off as his family moved their to retire
but he was expected to know this stuff and be able to do it. I helped him
get a job at the TV/Stereo shop I worked at and even though he was no
techie by any stretch of the imagination, he was able to pick up the skills
needed to help around the shop and on installations. Why ? Because he
already had some life skills to begin with and to build on.

The point I am trying to make here is that to me it is not surprising for find
a large number of people who simply do not get it. Not just with health-care
but with the economy and nearly everything else that is going on. They had
been - in essence - raised in a bubble. And for some continue to live their
lives in a bubble. Blissful ignorance. That when challenged causes them
great discomfort and apprehension.  They do not understand because their
lack of life experience renders them incapable of understanding. So they
lash out at anything that appears to be a threat even though it only appears
as a threat because they are incapable of grasping it.

C