Health Care Town Halls

After listening to at least a dozen town halls on health care, I now know why six percent of the American people still believe that our moon landing in 1969 was staged on a movie set. Now I know why 28 percent of Republicans don’t believe that President Barack Obama was “birthed” in the United States – and 30 percent are “not sure!” As that Russian comedian used to say, “What a country!”

I’ve seen town hall meetings turn into lynch mobs with health care furthest from their minds. (“My God, we have a black president: Kill him!”) These town hall lynch mobs are after the power they lost when the Republicans turned Washington money tree into a third world bush. And they lost power to a black!

This is a country that grants dogs of the rich $2 million trusts for care while the limos and the private helicopters fly by over the homeless and the sick. In a few weeks the Republican Fox network-nation will be breathlessly watching Octomom and her litter on primetime TV attempt to survive in her “home.” A few will be buying horsemeat on the Florida streets that has been chopped from living pet horses stolen from homes. Some will be listening to the looney-tunes ignorant Sarah Palin broadcast her conservative drivel-vomit, basking in the glow of 68 percent approval by Republicans running to their banks.

Will someone please take a poll which will support my contention that people who object to seat belt laws actually will listen to the likes of Sarah Palin? Jim Baxter, the president of the National Motorists Association that lobbies for freedom from seat belts, says adults should be allowed to determine whether they should click. He is dumb enough to add that seat belts don’t improve highway safety. He must be attending as many health care town halls as he can.

Will Texas Universities Offer Doctorates In Cheerleading?

What was John McCain thinking when he picked Palin to be his running mate? It’s common knowledge that McCain is a woman-chaser, but how could he pick someone so dumb? Of course, being at the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy might not have helped him. The Swift Boats are running full speed on the Potomac, financed by the lobbyists of the rich in Gucci Gulch on 17th Street.

With the latest news from Texas, the home of the Crawford village “rancher,” I fear for our nation. Just when we have to develop new ideas, products and things we don’t understand yet, the Texas Legislature has approved new standards for Texas high school graduates. Texas kids can now load up on physical education, cheerleading, sports participation, and band (marching, I presume) for one-fourth of their required high school classes! As many as seven credits can be in the PE area. Here we are, in a tough fight for our very economic and philosophical survival, and we will allow students to take 25 percent of their credits in PE? I think it’s time to move to Wobegon Island, where everyone is above average.

What kind of country has so many wealthy criminals from feeding off the poor that a new cottage industry has developed? Whether it’s Bernie Madoff, the $65 billion Ponzi guy, or some chinzy prison moll like Martha Stewart, they can get advice on how to succeed without really trying in state or federal pen life. These “consulting” firms offer lessons in how to avoid assault and rape, cope with the little daily frustrations, learn the language of the institution, and even how to avoid dirty, messy prison jobs. The fees run up to $20,000. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them even apply for student loans from some of their friends on Wall Street.

Are The Mobs At Town Halls Really Concerned About Health Care?

Having lived in the South during Jim Crow and “Separate but Equal” days I think I know a lynch mob when I see one. I have used the “Colored” and “White” drinking fountains. I have seen blacks assaulted and pushed into the streets in Jacksonville because they were walking on the sidewalks.

Corky’s sister Rose lived with us and finished her high school days at the white high school in Hampstead, N.C. It was a nice brick building. The school for “niggers” was a ramshackle collection of buildings never painted. The whites rode in the new school buses, the blacks rode in the old ones. The only library was in the whites school.

Don’t talk to me about affirmative action. You will get an earful. We were accused of trying to integrate New Topsail Beach because I had offered to throw a party for my Marine machine gun platoon if they won the division shooting contest. They did and all the black members of my outfit dirtied the Atlantic for a day, thus arousing the island’s white natives to a fever pitch. But that’s another story.

Being a news junkie I have watched many health care town halls. Most of these people with the loud voices, stretched neck muscles, bulging eyes, and the angry pointing fingers are not there to discuss health care. They are there to protest the fact that they have a black for president, that they are gradually losing the abortion and gay battles, and that whites will actually have to compete with members of other races to survive.

They know they will be a minority white by 2042 – or sooner. And these hooters, booers and yellers are not at the head of their classes. Polls show that six out of ten Republicans believe that humans were “created” in their present form only 10,000 years ago. Why is it that only six percent of scientists are Republican? The Lord only knows. It’s difficult to win an intellectual argument with a person who puts saddles on dinosaurs in a religious theme park.

Somebody Is Going To Get Killed Before “Health Care” Comes To A Vote

Did you see the picture of the NRA idiot at Obama’s town hall meeting in New Hampshire wearing a loaded Glock 9mm in a “gunslinger-Tombstone” style holster? What is this country coming to? You wear a pistol to a discussion on health care? He was also carrying a “Don’t Tread On Me” sign, implying he was ready to “shed blood” over health care.

Another NRA idiot carrying a concealed weapon attended a town hall in Memphis run by Rep. Steve Cohen. Another NRA genius showed up at an Arizona health care meeting held in a supermarket carrying a pistol in an armpit holster. He was ushered out by police after the pistol dropped out of his holster and landed on the tile floor. In that some pistols are so poorly made they go off if dropped on a hard surface, the guy was lucky it didn’t fire. Another pistol-packin’ nut was arrested when he was caught lurking in a high school in Portsmouth, Va. where Obama was scheduled to speak.

The disturbing reality is that since Obama was elected, the private militias, the white supremacist-KKK style nuts, and the old Patriot and Minutemen groups are growing in numbers. They are snoopin’ and poopin’ through southern woods, training to take on the government. The atmosphere is electric, particularly with the media showing the same town hall lynch mobs over and over again. These groups hate Obama because he is black. (Well, he’s really half-white, but, you know, one drop of “nigger” blood makes him black.) I’m afraid somebody is going to get killed before this is over.

Near San Diego the militia nuts listen to discussions of how the global banking system is controlled by the Illuminati, an ancient secret society of Jews. They also believe that an Egyptian cult devoted to the god of afterlife , Osiris, is operating within NASA and is organizing an extraterrestial hostile takeover of earth!! Can we depend on these people to come up with a good health care plan?

Fox News and its bloviator cast of Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck continue to poison the atmosphere. Glenn Beck says Obama “has a deep-seated hatred for white people.” The president hates his own mother and grandmother?!! These guys push the idea that Obama was actually born in Kenya because his Kenya birth certificate was distributed on the Internet. The birth certificate did have the seal “Republic of Kenya.” One problem: Kenya did not exist when Obama was born.

These guys should work on the fact that only 28 percent of Americans have favorable views of Republicans, but their intellectual level is not great. They are not even rocket scientists. Of course, then we have the vitriolic Mobfather Trash Limbo comparing the Democratic Party to the Nazi Party, adding that their health care logo resembled a swastika.

What’s Happening In The Land With “The Best Health Care In The World?”

The Remote Area Medical, a Tennessee-based organization that supplies health care to rural and poor areas, is now in Los Angeles providing medical and dental care to thousands of poor and uninsured, and in some cases, the poorly insured. On the first day of eight in LA, the organization was overwhelmed by 1,500 people who couldn’t afford to pay for health care. At the first day’s end, 500 people in the country with “The Best Health Care In The World” had to wait over to the next day. Thousands slept in cars and on the bleachers in the LA Forum so they could get health care.

This was not Zimbabwe, or Bangladesh, or Afghanistan or Nigeria – this was Los Angeles, California. We should be ashamed. Why should the richest country in the world need a “Doctors Without Borders” program for its poor and disabled? Governor Arnold Schwarzeneggergroper should be ashamed that it’s happening in his own bankrupt state, but perhaps he was busy trying to sell his 12 Hummers to some members of The Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity.

Another funny thing is happening in the land with “The Best Health Care In The World.” Insurance companies are now attacking doctors for overpricing! Researchers at America’s Health Insurance Plans have discovered some obscene bills submitted by greedy doctors to greedy insurance companies. It’s a titanic struggle between these groups to see who is going to get “more.”

A Long Island surgeon charged a patient $23,500 for an emergency appendectomy. The normal charge is about $4,600. I love this one. The mother of the vice-president of the California Association of Health Plans, a lobbying firm, got a $90,000 bill for less than a week’s stay in a hospital. Nothing major was discovered.

The four-year-old son of a respiratory therapist on Long Island fell and cut the inside of his mouth. A primary doctor was not comfortable sewing the wound so a plastic surgeon was called in. The total bill for the three stitches was $6,000 – $300 for the emergency room and $5,700 for the three stitches. Let’s see. That’s comes to $1,900 a stitch!

An Illinois patient was charged $12,712 for cataract surgery. Medicare pays $675 for the same procedure. A California patient was charged $20,120 for an operation Medicare pays $584 for. A New Jersey patient had a $72,000 spinal fusion procedure for which Medicare normally pays $1,629.

When Hypocrisy Trumps Hippocrates

At a recent Senator Byron Dorgan town hall, a West Fargo man said he couldn’t afford health insurance for his family – but he didn’t want the government involved in health care. He was also opposed to a public option to compete with high-priced private insurers. He added he believed that the “free market” would solve all problems, and to quote the Fargo Forum article: “hard work and prayer” would better his situation and that government “leaves too many chances for abuse.”

But then he said his two children were covered under the federal government’s Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)! Why doesn’t he remove his children from the fed program and allow the “free market” to take care of them? It certainly would be the “right” thing to do.

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