October 23, 2009 • 3:26 pm Comments Off
Being a starry-eyed minion of Dostoevsky and Turgenev I don’t go much for modern fiction.
I tried two years ago with “Bearing the Body” which I found via the NYT Top 10 list of new fiction fro 2007.
I’m trying again with “Crossers” by Philip Caputo.
Seems like an interesting read.
Filed under: Concepts
October 22, 2009 • 10:14 am 1
I was gonna argue with Ged about his recent health care post by posting this link about the Democratic senators who control the fate of the reform in Congress, but then I scrolled down and found this cool visualization of Beethoven’s 5th and all that political stuff seemed unimportant.
October 15, 2009 • 2:50 pm 2
There are more than one million things I could say about the last week, the death of my mother and the outcome of the recent local election.
I think what is most on my mind is the death of my mother and the endless amount of odd juxtapositions I’ve witnessed in the recent past.
I’ve decided to title this post “I am trying to break your heart” because that is how I feel about any efforts on my part to write openly about what has taken place.
I wanted to run for local office for two core reasons: one was to give voice to the issues going unaddressed in this city and the second was to prove to myself and others that I could run a positive campaign based on ideas and not on attacking my opponents. I get sick of that in politics.
Many of my family and friends were surprised that I would run for office given the wave of negativity attached to my name by the events of 2005 and 2007. Not to mention 1996.
But my message to them was that this was something I had to do to get it out of my system, to prove to myself that I could stand up to the scrutiny of the full public, to be weighed on the scale of public opinion and accept their judgment.
From the beginning, both of my parents and my extended family let me know they were proud of me for stepping out of my comfort zone. My mother in particular was very supportive.
The campaign went about as good as it could have gone. I steadied myself for public scrutiny and was prepared to answer the hard questions about my criminal record, my struggle with depression and any other kink in the armor folks wanted to ask me about.
Those questions never came in public. I consider that a blessing. One interested voter, a retired judge who lives in my neighborhood, did ask me directly and firmly about my criminal record, my personal demeanor and my rather conservative views on taxes and social programs. We had a good conversation standing on his porch and I was thankful for his time.
The campaign began on Aug. 21 and by Oct. 2 I felt that I had achieved what I set out to do. All I had to do was get through the weekend and finish strong on election day. I knew a win would be a long shot. I felt that anything besides last place would be a good showing. My birthday had passed earlier in the week and so on Friday afternoon my small family went out to eat. The weather was nice and I felt like relaxing so I bought some Sierra Nevada and took it home to enjoy on my patio.
The evening was uneventful until the phone rang about 10pm. It was a good friend from the local Republican Party, a man much older than me, whom I have studied under as I learned about the local party and local politics. In short, he said that an email smear had hit late Friday and that he was concerned about it.
I’ll not go into all the details of that conversation. But the email smear he said was related to a post I wrote on my old blog about my struggle with depression, my efforts to learn to deal with the cauldron of emotions that swell within me from time to time, and how difficult it is to move forward after failure. My friend was rather upset that I had written about these things and thought it would be most “damaging” to me on election day. He said “you are making it very hard for the people who are supporting you for this important office.”
That call ended with me asking him what he wanted me to do about it four days before an election? He had no answer for that other than to say it was very bad. The conversation ended with me feeling as if he were washing his hands of our friendship. I felt very alone and down and struggled to get to sleep a few hours later. I was still tossing and turning about 230 am when the phone began to ring in the other room. I figured it was a prank caller following up on the email smear and so I ignored the phone. About the fifth time it began to ring I got up and went to look at my cell phone and the display said “Mom cell”.
I sat down and steadied myself because I was certain it was my mom calling to tell me my grandmother had passed away. At 87 and having survived three strokes and breast cancer we have all been prepared for my grandmother’s passing, but hoping she would live to be 130.
I had been left two messages so I checked the first one and my heart broke in to little pieces. It was my sister calling in an hysterical voice saying my mom had a stroke and they were on the way to the hospital. I got her on the phone and she was just pulling into the ER behind the ambulance. I told her to call me back. My cousin called at 5am to tell my that my mom had a stroke and they were in ER.
At 9am I talked to my aunt, a veteran nurse for more than 40 years. She was in tears trying to explain the detail. They went something like this: my mom had a massive stroke in the right side of her brain. She was paralyzed in the left side and unconscious. My aunt said it was very bad and that I should be prepared. I began to cry. I’m trying not to cry now.
I got to Winston in the afternoon and got to the hospital just as the doctor was giving my brother, aunt and cousin their first update since mom moved to ICU. My sister had had to leave to take my nephew home because no one under 18 was allowed in the hospital.
I passed a room beside where the group was gathered and saw my mom hooked to the tubes and IVs. The left side of her face was slumped. I said “Oh, Jesus Christ.”
When I arrived, they were looking at a CT scan which I found very odd because all one could see was solid gray, as opposed to the multi colors and depth perception of a normal CT scan. The doctor, head of neurology at Forsyth, said that the gray was very bad because it was fluid from swelling as the brain tried to heal itself. She said the swelling was very aggressive for being less than a 24 hours from the stroke event. She said normally such swelling occurs 2-3 days after and is the critical phase of the survival/recovery question. She made it clear we were in the survival phase.
Being a direct person, I began to ask direct questions. Would my mother live? What chance did she have to overcome paralysis? How would we know if she began to slide away in the coming hours?
The doctor made these things clear: My mother’s survival was very much in doubt. If the brain swelling continued it would put pressure on the brain stem. If that happened, self-regulating functions such as breathing, swallowing and digestion would be compromised. Did my mother have a living will? If so, we needed to get it and bring it back. If my mother survived, the brain damage would be permanent and likely the most we could hope for would be a feeding tube, a colostomy sack and not much more than that.
I went in to look at my mother and speak to her. It was devastating. More so than anything I have ever experienced. All I could say was “I’m sorry mama.” I pulled the bed sheet down to cover her feet, which were sticking out in the cold of the ICU.
We left about 5pm with the plan of gathering back at 830pm when ICU visitation resumed. We planned to get my grandmother, my sister and my mother’s pastors.
I could not stop crying once we got to my mom’s place. I can’t tell you a lot about my family yet because most of them are still living. My family has the same dysfunctions as many families, poverty, alcoholism, depression, internecine animosity lingering from one generation to the next. My mom bore the brunt of all of that for most of her life. She supported a generation before her and two generations after her in the last 10 years. She worked and yet had nothing. She labored and yet lacked for many of the basics we take for granted. She lost herself in this world in the promise of love and eternity in the next. I had to sit outside while we waited for 830 to roll around. Every time I looked to the sky at the creeping darkness and the huge harvest moon rising above the industrial park across the field from the place my mom lived the last 10 years the tears fell heavy.
We gathered back at the hospital at 830. My grandmother is in the early stages of losing her lucidity. She did not understand or refused to understand what was happening. My cousin and I went in to see my mom to make sure my grandmother could handle it.
I will never forget what happened next.
I was pretty much speechless and my cousin said for me to talk to my mom. I began to talk but could not. My cousin began to talk to her and told her that “mema” was outside and wanted to see her. He told her who else was there and as he did my mom opened her eyes, which were spinning in 10 different directions.
She tried to move her head. She moaned in a loud voice and then lay back down with her eyes closed.
It was five seconds at most. But those five second ripped my heart out, eviscerated my thin belief in the eternal and reinforced my belief in personal responsibility. Her feet were sticking out again, and so I moved the sheet over her toes. He gown was disheveled now and her upper chest was exposed. I tried to fix her gown the best I could.
We brought my grandmother in to talk to mom. It was a difficult scene. My grandmother spoke to mom and asked her to get up. She told her she needed her. To help her. To go out to eat. (can you believe “Babe” by Styx is playing right now in the background as I try to write this?) She kept saying “Get up Mick” as she rubbed my mom’s face and her arm underneath the thin hospital gown. She could only stand for a few minutes and would fall back into her wheel chair.
After a few minutes the nurse made all but two of us leave. My grandmother and I stayed. A few minutes later I asked the pastor to come back in with the rest of the family and we prayed over my mother. We prayed for healing or mercy. We cried. The nurse told us again only two were allowed. We lingered and filtered out one by one until my grandmother and I were left. I knelt down beside my mom’s bed and prayed to God in thanks for these two women, the rocks of my life, the guides who carried me across trouble and were there to help me stand up after I fell time after time after time. I asked God to grant my mother peace, the peace and acceptance she had been looking for her entire life. I wiped the tears away, stood up and wheeled my grandmother out of the ICU.
My mom died 10 hours later and all I could say was “I’m sorry mama” as I kissed her cold forehead for the last time. When I was small she used to lean over me and kiss me goodnight in the warmth of my bed in our average brown house on a dead end road outside an average town that I used to think was paradise.
Nasty, brutish and short is the phrase that kept coming to my mind as I walked the long corridor from ICU to the front lobby. I’m very bitter and very sad.
My mother died a needlessly harsh death. She played a large role in that by the lifestyle choices she made. But there is one anecdote I think is appropriate. Not to cast blame, but as an example of the sickness that plagues our society.
My mom typed depositions off and on for more than 30 years. She also worked for years as a legal secretary for a major law firm. In the last 10 years she has typed the depositions full time. They have always paid her as an independent contractor on her invoices as she turned them in. In the last year the company changed their payment method so that the typists only got paid once the company got paid by the law firms. So if my mother did $2,000 worth of work in a month she might only get paid a few hundred dollars at the end of that month under the new system.
This caused my mother a great deal of stress. Stress that she talked openly about. A month or so ago, she only received $184 from the company despite the fact that they owed her more than $2,000. My mom told my sister during the week before she died that she “felt like she was falling off the edge of the earth” and didn’t know what she could do about it.
On Tuesday after my mom died, the company owner called my sister asking to come over and look at my mom’s computer and see what she might be working on. My sister called me and I called him back and told him he was not welcome at my mom’s place. I also told him that we did not appreciate the squeeze being put on the typists in recent months. He started to say something and I told him not to bother. His mother ran the company for many years and he took it over recently. My mom said often that things had changed for the worse and she was looking for a second job. She had recently found one. My mom had been friends with the former owner, we will call her Tammy.
Tammy called me and said she was sorry for my loss, that she had been a friend of my mom’s for many years. She said she was sorry about the pay squeeze, but that law firms had stopped paying them on time and they had to make the change in order to stay in business. She asked if she could come over and get my mom’s work from her computer. I said yes.
Tammy arrived at my mom’s small trailer driving a Mercedes Benz convertible. She looked like she came fresh from a Botox injection and had the biggest fake lips I have ever seen. She also brought me a check for the amount of money they owed my mother.
I found that real strange as I stood in the squalor of my mother’s poverty looking at this fake little person from Charlotte. My mom was probably in Charlotte at that same hour being cremated. I guess Tammy felt better after she handed me the check. My brother and I both wondered if mom would still be alive if they had paid her on time for the work she performed.
Filed under: Concepts
August 18, 2009 • 10:20 am Comments Off
Let me get this straight. Some overzealous Second Amendment disciples think it is ok to take a firearm near the POTUSA?
That is ridiculous, in my opinion. I am all for the Second Amendment, but in a violent society such as ours, believe that there may be some validity to tougher laws against bearing arms while not on your private property.
Taking an assault rifle, or a pistol strapped to your leg, anywhere near the POTUSA is just not something I can’t understand the purpose of.
August 15, 2009 • 9:33 pm 2
A visual interpretation of The Road to Serfdom from a 1950 issue of Look magazine.
In the book, Hayek addresses the pre-Nazi development of the idea of national socialism in Chapter 12.
Filed under: Concepts
August 14, 2009 • 11:17 pm Comments Off
A self-important leftist religious leader in Greensboro wrote a column last week decrying the use of certain words and phrases in the national health care debate because it was hurtful to members of his particular religion.
He wasn’t complaining about outright persecution. No, just a perspective he did not like.
Forget the fact that the first element of his argument depends on him using Goodwin’s Law to argue against certain words he does not like. No, we will give Fred a pass on that because lord knows you can’t have discussion with some people without them pulling out the Holocaust and beating you over the head with it.
Anyway.
The kind looking gentleman in the picture above is the man Rabbi Fred claims to have “confronted” in Raleigh a few weeks ago. I think Fred might be astroturfing his claims. The kind looking gentleman, a soft spoken man named Hans whose family members from Germany and America died resisting and fighting Nazis during World War II, said that Fred came up to him in an aggressive manner, with an angry look on his face and began to berate him for his sign. Hans said he listened to Fred and then mentioned to him a few of his own perspectives to which Fred had no response.
Hans said he goes to these protests and stands near the groups of people who support the president’s plans in order to “ruin their photo op.” He said he was standing alone amidst all the liberal supporters of the president when brave Fred began to “confront” him.
Hans was kind and thoughtful and not in the least bit egoistic like some leftist in Greensboro who think the world revolves around their world view.
The reason Fred and Ed have no credibility on this matter is that their leftist brothers and sisters have attacked Ronald Reagan, GHWB and GWB relentlessly with depictions of them as Hitler over the years. Selective unleashing of your Jewish Nazi outrage sort of does a disservice to the sentiment you are trying to express.
Filed under: Concepts, North Carolina
August 11, 2009 • 10:09 pm Comments Off
The man I loved the most in life died suddenly when I was 12 years old and my psyche has never fully recovered. Roy Lawson was my grandmother’s second husband and I called him Roy, not grandpa, but he was the guiding light of my life up until that dreary October week in 1982 when both my parents went to Utah to pick up my grandmother, who was visiting her family, and bring Roy’s body home to Winston-Salem.
To be honest, my Papa Ransome died in 1981 and my Papa Sykes died a few years later in 1984, but Roy’s death traumatized me because we had been inseparable. No one will ever understand the esteem I have for old men, how much I love talking with them, hearing their stories, asking them about their lives. I can see clearly that I replaced my grandfathers with politicians in the mid-1980s, transferring my love for my family to love for my country and the idea of America and the two dominant defenders of her freedom in that time period: Jesse Helms and Ronald Reagan.
Some liberals, especially those I know who come from privilege, like to make fun of my dedication to traditional values, to conservative politics and to the notion of something irreplaceable lost by a metamorphosis of value in the post-modern age.
Psychologically I think it comes from watching the crushing effect the deaths of these men had on the people around me. My parents, my siblings, my cousins, and my grandmothers.
Losing something irreplaceable is a traumatic thing, especially when the thing lost is near and dear to your heart.
My heart has never fully recovered from Roy’s death 27 years ago. With my grandmother pushing 87 and drifting into the last days of her glorious autumn, a lot of these memories and emotions are coming back as I watch her struggle with the loss of freedom and mobility, which for an independent woman who has been on her own since she was a teenager set adrift from her Mormon home place in Utah for being single and pregnant in the early 1940s is equal to liberty itself.
She lashes out at those around her in one moment and reflects on a beautiful memory the next. She knows she needs help for the smallest thing but will stubbornly tell you to leave her alone as she struggles to maintain her balance, stubbornly damning the walker as she makes her way down the hall.
She talks more about Roy these days. Their days at RJ Reynolds. Travelling to Martinsville and Eden to see blue grass musicians. How kind and loving he was. I too think more about him and those jogs on the beach after his first heart attack, pulling weeds and eating turnips in his garden along Baux Mountain Road in Forsyth County. The time he handed me a glass of Coke wrapped in a paper towel and I let the glass slip out of my hands, shattering on the floor and spreading sticky mess everywhere. “It’s all right, precious, it’s all right,” he told me.
It is tough to experience loss. It’s tougher to live so long with the pain of loss.
I think a lot of Americans are feeling as if they are about to lose something precious. A certain undefinable characteristic of their existence. They don’t know how to pinpoint the uncertainty, but they know it is there.
Dismissing those concerns, and even worse labelling them as weak, hysterical, ignorant or slavish, is among the most inhuman and callous acts of cold political rationality I am aware of.
Those who would scorn the feelings of uncertainty their fellow Americans are experiencing do so at great risk to the future health of our nation.
When one side with its cool analysis of averages and statistics decides their view of loss is more rational than the passions which drive men simultaneously to greatness and defeat, we have crossed into the dangerous territory of value judgements being made by people who have no dedication left to the experiences, emotions and passions that make us unique as humans.
Filed under: Concepts
• 8:56 am Comments Off
The government is merely a servant — merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.
Filed under: Concepts , Mark Twain
August 10, 2009 • 6:36 pm Comments Off
Does anybody else think it strange to hear advocates of expanded government control of health care cite Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security as a rational for more government?
Isn’t that the essence of gradualism, thus proving the point that expanding social welfare is a path that has no end?
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureacracy.
Filed under: Concepts , gradualism, health care reform
August 7, 2009 • 7:37 am Comments Off
A lot of blogs like mine are one sided, with little feedback or discussion. So I want to try something new.
I would like to challenge any supporter of the Democrat’s health care reform bill to show me one item at a time, with links and documentation, that will solve a challenge facing our health care system.
I don’t want a bunch of rhetoric.
Point me to one provision that solves one challenge and state the expected outcome.
If this type of reform does pass, I would like to have a record stating the expected outcomes in clear language. That way we can judge the success or failure of any reform measures passed.
I also expect to learn a thing or two from your posts.
Coversation and experience are two of life’s best teachers.
Filed under: Concepts
August 6, 2009 • 2:46 pm Comments Off
It kills me to think that leftists fail to realize that the majority of your Tea Party Patriots are retirees, seniors, veterans and housewives.
Radical right-wing kooks, all of ‘em.
Filed under: Concepts
• 2:25 pm Comments Off
Also, does anyone else find it curious that the national Democratic Party would allow itself to be distracted from its goal of transforming the health care industry by a couple of youtube videos?
I think that speaks volumes about the credibility of their plan and the commitment most liberals have to real reform that has a postive impact on society as opposed to passing some burdensome piece of legislation and claiming victory.
Do you really have no arguments in favor of your party’s plan other than “Birthers!” “Mob rule” “Right-wing kooks”?
Any argumetns about the current plans inability to reduce costs over the long term?
No, but you’ll demonize our friends and neigbhbors in the insurance business.
Any arguments about your party’s plan and its impact on the federal budget deficit?
No, but you don’t hesitate to change the subject.
It’s a weak argument.
I like the three points in your leader’s advocacy page.
Let’s say we judge your party’s legislation in Congress by item one with a caveat that it be paid for and not add to the deficit.
If you can do that, I might be willing to listen to arguments about a single payer system.
Otherwise, it remains an unfunded expansion of social entitlement.
Filed under: Concepts, National , Democratic Party, single payer, universal health care
• 1:12 pm Comments Off
I personally wonder what today’s apologist for the current president’s failed health care reform push would have said about our forefather’s revolt against the British?
Nutty right-wing kooks?
Mob rule?
Resistance to the Townshend Acts?
Today’s leftists would have a cow.
A teenager at lunch told me he thinks the left’s pushback against the criticism of the current health care plan is backfiring.
He said it makes leftists out to be just like their caricature of latte sipping ninnies who can’t stand up for their beliefs without crying “racism” or “mob rule” at the first sign of resistance to their ideas.
I kind of agree with him.
Oh. And we both think Organizing for America is similar to the brownshirts and Hitler Youth so there.
Filed under: Concepts
July 30, 2009 • 11:14 am Comments Off
I really don’t understand why we can’t move forward with ideas like residential pv energy without having to create some incredibly complicated bill like cap and trade.
What’s the hold up?
Filed under: Concepts , photovoltaic, solar electricity
July 17, 2009 • 12:56 pm 1
Progressive Pulse has a story about state-employee Jerry and a recent chronic illness that Jerry had. Their post states that “Jerry is a 30 year state employee and Vietnam vet. This shouldn’t have to happen – we need a public health care plan option for everyone.”
I posted a few questions:
I am sorry that Jerry had a recent chronic illness, but who do you suggest absorb the cost differential between what Jerry was charged for services rendered and the rate morally acceptable to the progressive mindset?
Where is the floor for the “morally acceptable” rate and do you believe the quality of our health care will remain the same once profitability has been removed from the equation?
The costs come from the service providers and facilities. How is government run insurance going to reduce those costs for Jerry?
Filed under: Concepts, National, North Carolina , health care reform, Public Choice Option, universal health care
July 16, 2009 • 5:39 pm Comments Off
I came across this article today, written by the founder of the Ayn Rand Institute:
Most people who oppose socialized medicine do so on the grounds that it is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical; i.e., it is a noble idea—which just somehow does not work. I do not agree that socialized medicine is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical. Of course, it is impractical—it does not work—but I hold that it is impractical because it is immoral. This is not a case of noble in theory but a failure in practice; it is a case of vicious in theory and therefore a disaster in practice. I want to focus on the moral issue at stake. So long as people believe that socialized medicine is a noble plan, there is no way to fight it. You cannot stop a noble plan—not if it really is noble. The only way you can defeat it is to unmask it—to show that it is the very opposite of noble. Then at least you have a fighting chance.
What is morality in this context? The American concept of it is officially stated in the Declaration of Independence. It upholds man’s unalienable, individual rights. The term “rights,” note, is a moral (not just a political) term; it tells us that a certain course of behavior is right, sanctioned, proper, a prerogative to be respected by others, not interfered with—and that anyone who violates a man’s rights is: wrong, morally wrong, unsanctioned, evil.
Now our only rights, the American viewpoint continues, are the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. That’s all. According to the Founding Fathers, we are not born with a right to a trip to Disneyland, or a meal at McDonald’s, or a kidney dialysis (nor with the 18th-century equivalent of these things). We have certain specific rights—and only these.
Filed under: Concepts , health care reform, Public Choice Option, universal health care
• 11:38 am Comments Off
A bioethics professor examines the idea of rationing health care.
Rationing health care means getting value for the billions we are spending by setting limits on which treatments should be paid for from the public purse. If we ration we won’t be writing blank checks to pharmaceutical companies for their patented drugs, nor paying for whatever procedures doctors choose to recommend. When public funds subsidize health care or provide it directly, it is crazy not to try to get value for money. The debate over health care reform in the United States should start from the premise that some form of health care rationing is both inescapable and desirable. Then we can ask, What is the best way to do it?
Offered comment free because I’ve yet to read the entire thing, but is seems like an important article.
Filed under: Concepts, National , health insurance premiums, Peter Singer, Public Choice Option, rationing health care, universal health care
• 7:09 am Comments Off
I sent out a mass email to all the contacts I have gathered in recent years promoting my petition to Kay Hagan opposing the public choice option.
There were probably 600 emails in all. I’ve gotten three negative responses, two of which trashed me personally, which is ok, but moving beyond that to their argument for government health care is sort of terrifying.
I posted one last night.
Here is a sample of the other two:
Beth writes:
I disagree with you totally. If we don’t get some help with the current health care system that allows the greedy insurance and medical companies to rape us regularly then we’re in worse shape than we were when W was prez. I have a master’s degree, and I’m barely hanging on. The US gov. has run us into the ground the last 8 years. It’s way past time for some major changes, including health care. The current system may work fine for you, but that would mean you make good to indecent money. The rest of us are hanging by a thread, so this administration needs to get real, as it is trying to do.
Please take me off your list. You are wrong.
The next one is from someone whose name I don’t know, but he’s been in my local contacts for some time:
The gentleman writes:
Hagan will oppose the plan since she has heavy contributors in the hospital and health care industry. No need for a petition. Of course, the bill can be worded so it sounds like one things, but will actuall be a way of getting money back to the greedy health care indiustry that we now have. Do I completely trust the government to effectively run health care..No, not entirely, But the system we have now is sadly deficient. Even though my wfie and I had insurance, our copay for her chemo and radiation treatments a few years back drove us to the brink of bankruptcy. My brother is a self employed craftsman in good health and health insurance for him would be an additional $500 a month….not feasible. He recently btoke his leg and his bills BEFORE his surgery this week were $16,000! Thius included charging $40 each for the same elastic bandage that cost $4.95 at WalMart! Price gouging? You bet! We NEED a universal system that removes the for profit providers from the equation. Doctors and other professionals deserve to make good salaries, but why do hospitals have to have thousands, or usually hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in television ads, billboards, color brochures, etec. Not for patient care, but to earn money for the stockholders, not medical professionals.
Pharmaceutical companies make PROFITS that are only exceeded by the oil companies. Their cry that this income is used for reserach and development is completely false. I have friends in Sweden, Germany, England and Canada. The stories by the talking heads on Fox news and other right wing bloviators don’t bear much relationship to what I hear from folks who actually live there. True, their systems will not spend several hundred thousand dollars in a vain attempt to save a terminal patient in order to gain a month or two more of life, especially if the patient will be in agony for the additional month or so. Boob jobs and nose jobs are VERY expensive in other other countries, not counting third world clinics.
Laser surgery to clear up unsightly veins is not covered, nor many other unneccesary procedures.
I don’t think the government will do a great job, but a bureaucrat for a profitable insurance company is about as hardcore as you can get for turning people down.
There is no need for a country with the resources of the US to have little jars on the counters of convenience stores asking for money to help with cancer patients.
Now, I know that you don’t like to be disagreed with, but be aware that, I. too, am a big ol’ boy. (I didn’t find this traumatic as a child…I enjoyed it, since it kept people from messing with me..It gave a layer of immunity from harassment.) I’ve never had a felony conviction and managed to keep the same job until I retired, but I am a bit concerned, knowing of your penchant for violent behavior, that you will want to whoop up on me.
I sincerely hope that no one in your family gets seriously ill and you have to bear the expense that will be placed on you by a corrupt money-grubbing health care industry. I don’t fear carefully controlled socialism as much as the greed that comes with the ubercapitalists that run many of our major corporations….The prevailing American belief is that if it makes lots of money, it must be good!
Good luck Jeff! You need to get busy with a real full-time job. It’s really quite satisfying!
Sykes responds:
The Great Leap Forward.
Now I tend to sympathize with the gentleman’s experience with his loved one’s cancer treatments. Such an experience is taxing on the emotions. I know from multiple experiences with family members and cancer.
But there is no utopia. That’s why I can’t understand. How do these folks actually believe that a government system will alleviate their debt burden? If the cost is drastically reduced, who absorbs that loss? The facility? The provider? The drug companies?
I’m not against reform of the system. Lord knows I have my medical bills, tiny though they are in comparison to some.
What I am against is America’s Great Leap Forward to a state run economy. Some say you fear what you don’t know. The problem here is that I know far too much about the impact of collectivization across the course of history.
Filed under: Concepts, National , health care reform, Kay Hagan, Public Choice Option, universal health care
July 15, 2009 • 5:25 pm 11
UPDATED AUGUST 5, 2009: Thanks for all the page views. This campaign is going well. We are steadily collecting signatures every day. If you live in North Carolina please get all your like minded friends to sign this petition. My deadline now is Sept. 15. Signatures from out of state welcome. Thanks. Jeff ##
If you want to join my effort to make Kay Hagan hear our opposition to government health care, please take the text below and pass it to your friends or post it as comments on various newspaper sites in North Carolina.
We’ve gotten almost 100 signatures today alone!
Please change out my name for yours if you want to when you post.
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Hello: My name is Jeff Sykes. I live in Reidsville, N.C. I’ve started this online petition against government run health care. You do not have to join the site to sign the petition. Just fill in the required fields. Please pass to all your friends in North Carolina who might agree with us. I am trying to get 10,000 signatures in North Carolina by July 31, 2009.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/no-to-government-healthcare
Send this note to your friends:
I’ve signed this online petition addressed to Kay Hagan stating opposition to the public option plan now in Congress.
I am doing this as a grassroots effort to make my voice heard.
If you live in NC and agree with my petition, please sign it and let your friends know about it.
Filed under: Concepts, National, North Carolina , health care reform, jeffrey sykes, Kay Hagan, Public Choice Option
• 9:55 am Comments Off
I wouldn’t go to Candy Mountain if I were you Charlie.
Filed under: Concepts , Candy Mountain, Charlie the Unicorn
• 9:29 am Comments Off
Because I’m a graduate student and my husband is a cook at a restaurant, we don’t have great-paying jobs. But we make too much money to qualify for assistance with the bill. We’ve discussed whether one of us should quit in order to qualify for assistance.
Universal health care is necessary for the working poor. Hospital bills are enough to drown us. Corporations and individuals may fear universal health care reform, but change must happen soon.
No one else should be blind-sided by a medical emergency and face such a financially precarious future.
As I said recently, I had a pretty good argument with a friend of my mom’s back in the fall because this person told my mom to vote for the current president because “he is going to give us health care.”
This LTE belies a similar mentality. Dig how the writer is a PhD student at UNCG and considers herself working poor.
Here’s something, cut your expenses and pay your bills.
We all have to do it. Or at least we used to.
PLEASE SIGN MY PETITION TO KAY HAGAN AGAINST THE PUBLIC OPTION PLAN IN CONGRESS.
Filed under: Concepts, National, North Carolina , liberal social policy, universal health care
July 12, 2009 • 10:51 am Comments Off
maybe its what i been should have doing all along. using the
energy with a clear mind. take action. make action, step to the mike.
speak your mind with clarity and release the energy.
dont stop. dont think. make it move. move with it. move toward the clear.
yes i said it and no i’m not. but it makes sense.
it makes sense to me and to a number of people i admire.
it’s not my thing, but this concept is clear.
reference chick.
Filed under: Concepts , Chick Corea
June 3, 2009 • 12:48 pm Comments Off
Tank Man
We have two historical anniversaries this week that exemplify bravery and the spirit of the individual overcoming the coldness of the machine.
D-Day is later this week and there’s not a lot I can add to what’s already been said over the years.
In my lifetime, though, the image of a lone, white shirted man standing in front of a line of Chinese tanks bound for the killing floor at Tiananmen Square easily stands out as the bravest thing I have ever seen.
I’ve often wondered if I could be brave enough to stand up for what I believe in despite the societal implications that might follow. This fellow, unknown to this day, did just that.
It’s kind of strange to admire someone so unknown. I hope that his act resulted in some good for himself or the cause he stood for.
We need many more people like this lone Chinese student who stood in the way of a column of tanks 20 years ago.
The NY Times has a great article about the incident and the thoughts of four photographers who captured the moment.
Filed under: Concepts, International , bravery, tank man, Tiananmen Square
April 11, 2009 • 1:59 pm 1
This is a video project I made in 1999 for a AV class I was taking. As a history major and a huge fan of Jimi Hendrix, it seemed like a good fit to research video of the turmoil of the late 60s and make a video collage set to the solo from “Machine Gun”
This was a huge learning process for me at a time when digital video was in its infancy. I spent most of my time capturing and cataloging clips from VHS tapes I found in the school library. Once I got them on the cpu, I visualized a cauldron of chaos, protests and violence to represent what I felt Hendrix was trying to express through this song and the most powerful solo of his career.
Filed under: Concepts, Music , Chicago 1968, Jimi Hendrix, protest movements, Vietnam
February 25, 2009 • 1:52 pm 5
Miracle at St. Anna
I watched Miracle at St. Anna this past weekend. I had been excited to see the movie for some time, but being one who refuses to pay Hollywood rates to see a movie in a theatre, I had to wait for it to come out on DVD.
The wait was worthwhile. What a great movie.
In brief, Spike Lee did an incredible job of threading together a host of elements in a patchwork story taking place in a small Italian village during the closing days of World War II.
The premise of the story is four black soldiers who survive a river crossing in the face of entrenched Nazi positions make their way to a barn where they come across a lone Italian boy. One of the soldiers, Train, lovingly described by a superior as “the biggest negro you’ve ever seen in your life”, is hauling a large marble statue head in a net bag around his waist.
All the soldiers seem tentative as they cross a field to the river, but the steely Sergeant Stamps and a medic named Hector, urge them forward. In the barn, Train discovers the small boy buried under some rubble after a shell hit the structure. He rescues the boy and the adventure begins with four black soldiers, an Italian boy and a miraculous statue head making their way to a small Italian village. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Concepts, National , buffalo soldiers, Miracle at St. Anna, segregation, Spike Lee
Of Interest
Talking about it