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Thursday, August 27, 2009

Sen. Coburn and the Gospel of Profit

18 comments:

  1. First off, to be fair, Sen. Coburn isn’t the government. He’s one of George H.W. Bush’s “Thousand Points of Light.”

    Secondly … traumatic brain injury is known as the “signature injury” of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Which means the government doesn’t give a flying fuck about you or your fucking traumatic brain injury, okay? So, suck it up.

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  2. All that the good and kind senator from Oklahoma is suggesting is that government is useless, and he should be fired for taking money from taxpayers to continue his participation in the farce. He's really just there to...he's in government because...well, because he wants to help people who, as a senator, he shouldn't help, because that would be the government helping...and that would be wrong. So very, very wrong.

    I shake my head in awe and wonder.

    ++++

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  3. Jivester, shouldn't that last be "Shock and Awe"?

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  4. WTF, Can't a neighborhood chip in and at least attempt to raise $800,000 (give or take) with a cookie sale?

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  5. You see, it's all very simple. Rather than noisome government socialifacismunissm, you just need to knock on your neighbors door to find someone willing to provide your health care. Hey, we've all seen House and ER episodes, right? How hard can it be?
    As for myself, I am looking forward to my first 'guerilla' style emergency appendectomy on the kitchen table.
    Don't be such pussies, people.

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  6. Now I remember why I have such a hard time at the Gen'rul's: there's NO way I can figger how to have a laff at these things.

    Maybe I'm just a constipated old poop.

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  7. Alex Petersen: What about live organ transplants? That’s what I’m waiting for.

    Joe V: That’s because you’ve been deluded into thinking a single-payer health care system won’t cause the death of Trig, the illicit love child of Caribou Barbie and Stephen Hawking. You heartless bastard.

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  8. ... I'll just crawl back under my rock ...

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  9. MOJoe: perhaps "schtick & gall?" Or "shit y'all?" "Stick it & crawl?" "Crock & flaw?" "Big & Tall?"

    Coburn could have a second career singing Groucho's Whatever it is, I'm against it in summer stock. A laugh riot, that guy.

    ++++

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  10. Of course, Joe, I mean “heartless bastard” only in the best possible way.

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  11. Counsellor von Ebers:

    Thanks for the "heads up" re: the asshole.

    General, Sir:

    Is there something in the air or groundwater, like fallout from all those Nu-Q-Lar tests back during the 50's that make all of the Okie senaturds nuty?

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  12. Genral, Sir:

    I plaigarized this from myself. I wrote it over at "No Blood For Hubris" house, but I wanted to have it "go veneral on the intertubez", so I'm putting it here too, also.

    "I know it's unevolved to ask for bad things to happen to people. So I won't do that.

    I hope that Sen. Coburn gets some insight into the awful plight of people like this woman's husband. It would involve his maybe having a massive stroke and not being able to wipe his own ass. Oh, I almost forgot, it would also involve his not having that terrific healthcare plan that he is currenly enjoying.

    I think it would be good for him and help him to develop compassion, if not in this incarnation than in whatever one he next comes back as human."

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  13. Joe V: you don't have to laff, Just shake yer head and slowly keep on walking.

    But we'd really like to hear what you really think.

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  14. Now you got me preening like a cockatoo, Seattle Tammy.

    I think for all the sorely hobble federation Americans have, and that the right wing (including the Libertarians) can't bring themselves to trust, there's nonetheless a pressing demand to make the modest social mechanism of universal healthcare work for a western democracy.

    It's unfortunate that too many reasonable social initiatives are so easily waylayed in your system; perhaps the sooner it's made into a court case (and so, taken out of the usually deadlocked hands of your government) the sooner you'll see universal healthcare happen. Just hope the majority of the Supreme Court judges are progressive and conscientious, or you wont see it then either.

    Perhaps the groundswell of public opinion is the only truly viable way for Americans to see this kind of progression, which means that for every one of you that understands why healthcare is imperative, you'll have to convince the great unthinking masses, and this is an onerous job: How do you change an unthinking man's mind?

    For the record, I can tell you how that conundrum has been dealt with historically:

    1) You kill him
    2) You almost kill him

    While the first answer is true, it's also useless. The second solution is far easier to implement, particularly in regards to healthcare.

    For every person lying in a hospital bed, suffering the ravages of whatever ailment brought them there, if they don't have any kind of healthcare, then they are also being racked by enormous stress knowing that every minute they lie in that bed, brings their family closer to ruin, and chances are their kids (should they have any) will never see an education beyond what the public system allows.

    Ask THEM how they feel about universal healthcare. While horribly manipulative and insensitive, it's one of the rare times that they'll 'get it.'

    As an aside from an outsider, I can't help but think that in the long run, it might be better to evolve the American system abit, say, turn the Senate into an appointed house that's charged with making the House of Reps proposed legislation work though hearings and extensive consultation, and since they aren't elected and they know it, they're obliged to work WITH the government's wishes, not simply be dismissive as they can be now.

    This would put serious public policy authoring back in the hands of the government, instead of being off-loaded onto the judiciary.

    This has been shamelessly cribbed from the Canadian system, and I'll beg you to forgive my presumptuousness, but 300 million Americans deserve a system that works better than your present one. It doesn't need to be modeled on ours, but I'm arguing you're sorely overdue for some kind of evolution.

    Sorry for the long note.

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  15. I saw an update on this story this evening.

    The woman in the video is Ann Yokum. She did meet with Coburn's staff for about two hours after the meeting. They did not comment about her husband's medical condition. But, they did say that they would try to help her obtain all government services that her husband is entitled to. Contrary to Senator Coburn's statements, his staff is going to help her rely on receiving government assistance.

    Hopefully, she will get some help soon.

    Sincerely,
    Mrs. Ted Nancy

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  16. Mrs. Ted Nancy:

    So, Coburn postures for the (brain)freebasers and then does a little "constituent service" so he can trot that out later? Fuck him.

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  17. Why doesn't this woman follow the wise Senator's advice and rely on her neighbours indeed?

    I mean, I'm on a first-name basis with 300 or so people who live around me. After I get home from work -- sometimes I'm on a morning shift, sometimes I'm on evenings, and my days off vary from week to week -- Mrs. El-Shabaab from three blocks over comes to ask if I can do a tube-feeding and oropharyngeal suctioning on her son Rifaat, who was born with cerebral palsy and can't swallow. Then I'm over to the O'Douls', where it's a 240-ml PEG-feed bolus on Jennifer, who's been paralysed from the C-4 down since the car crash in 2003. Mrs. White, who's got Parkinson's disease and dementia, pulls out her nasogastric tube two or three times a week when she gets agitated, so I'm over there all the time re-inserting one. It's just what neighbours do! Neighbours like Kevin Zelinski over on Milton Street, who wheels over his portable X-Ray machine after each time I put the NG tube down to make sure I've got it in Mrs. White's stomach and not her lungs.

    And that's just the feedings in my area -- don't even get me started on the debilitated folks who need incontinence care because they're bed-bound and have lost control of their bowels and bladder. It's what everybody does for the people around them, who we all know so well, and are willing to share the most intimate details of life and death, every single day of the year.

    Yeah, who needs that socialist government health care for silly little things like people with traumatic brain injuries who need tube-feeding? All you need is neighbours!

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  18. Bukko in Australia:

    That story sounds like you done gone "The Full Commie". And if theys anything I hates more than commies it's commies with expertise in the field they's talkin' on.

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We'll try dumping haloscan and see how it works.