March 25, 2010 archive

The long and winding road…

Tuesday last week his doctors gave him one to two days. Thanks to all of you, I was on a plane the next morning, my sister met my flight, and we had a couple of good days of visiting with him.

He was in and out of lucidity, but he did remember that summer day in 1961 or ’62  when I was about ten and my eight year old brother and I found a great big snapping turtle in a creek in the woods behind the house in Arlington, VA, and we couldn’t get it out of the creek ourselves so we ran home and he came with us back into the woods, fished it out with a stick, and we carried it back home and kept it fed and happy for a few days, and the memory made him smile.

He was a good dad like that. He used to take us camping up in the mountains along the Shenandoah River in the summers. They were good summer days…

After he remembered all that he smiled weakly up at me and said “thanks for coming, but go home now and do your work, there is nothing more you can do here…“.

Now we’re just waiting within earshot of the telephone, but he’s proved them wrong for more than a week now, and maybe he’ll continue for awhile to prove them wrong, but today the hospital called his wife and suggested that she get there quickly, that his pulse rate is dropping pretty fast.

The Nut-Bags On The Left… ish

Holy fucking Moley, Batman! They’ve all gone batshit crazy over there!!!

Yeah, I’m talking GOS, and at least one person I used to think might be halfway sane when encountered here, but have now had to re-think that assumption. Gonna have to re-tune my empathy-o-meter some.

The Kabuki is all the way to high dudgeon today, they’re playing at “who’s more baggy than the Teabaggers” with a huge overtone of “head for the hills!” and “Mama, fetch the gun!” and all sorts slapstick looniness and FEAR, FEAR, FEAR!!!!!

No wonder I gave up on ’em way back last year. Guess I’m gonna have to give up on ’em again. Sigh. Think I’ll go plant more peas…

Afternoon Edition

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Pope accused of inaction in US child abuse case

by Michele Leridon, AFP

Thu Mar 25, 10:44 am ET

VATICAN CITY (AFP) – The Vatican hit back Thursday at new paedophilia revelations, defending Pope Benedict XVI against an allegation that he failed to act over a US priest accused of molesting up to 200 deaf children in the 1970s.

The Roman Catholic Church’s morals watchdog then headed by the future pope was reportedly alerted twice by the archbishop of Wisconsin of the accusations against Reverend Lawrence Murphy.

Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, did not respond to the letters, and a secret canonical trial authorised by his deputy was halted after Murphy wrote a pleading letter to the future pope, the New York Times said, citing documents provided by victims’ lawyers.

Las Damas de Blanco now w Live Video link

UPDATED with LIVE video at the Miami Herald.  Habla espanol?

UPDATE 2: 6:45 PM ET… Gloria speaking now, both Spanish and English. Nice speech re freedom….

“we are here to honor the ladies in white who have walked peacefuly for the last 7 years to defend freedom…  white is the color of hope, of peace,…. Freedom belongs to every human being…. gracias…”

Her English not exactly same as the Spanish but my Spanish isnt that good…lol.

MSNBC just had a brief report on this News.

Gloria Estefan Leads Damas March Today

A march in support of Cuban peace activist group Las Damas de Blanco happens tonight at 6 p.m. in Calle Ocho, Miami Florida.

At 6 p.m., Gloria Estefan will lead a group of peaceful protestors in a march to support Las Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White), a group of wives and mothers whose relatives are in prison for opposing Fidel Castro’s government.

After the march, which will begin at Beacom Blvd. between 7th and 8th Streets and go from 22nd to 27th Avenues, Estefan is expected to thank participants, read a poem and sing the Cuban and U.S. national anthems.

Anyone participating is aked to where white and walk in silence. Shirts, which will be replicas of the ones used in Cuba by the Damas de Blanco, will also be made.

Who…?

So it begins.

Daily Kos’ Nyceve has an article up talking about how AHIP is kicking “sick kids to the curb”:

So, now we’re being told HHS will issue some clarifying language. Great.  Then the parents with the sick kids will attempt to enroll the kid in an insurance plan. The poor parent will be on her own, fighting the corporation to comply with the law.  And what will this insurance cost?  Does anyone think the insurers are going to stand down? Of course not, the fines for violating the law are negligible, they’ll take the fine.

According to Firedoglake, however,

This bill is almost identical to the plan written by AHIP, the insurance company trade association, in 2009.

The original Senate Finance Committee bill was authored by a former Wellpoint VP. Since Congress released the first of its health care bills on October 30, 2009, health care stocks have risen 28.35%.

If you were one of those people who supported the “Health Insurance Reform” act supported by the Democrats and President Obama, you were, in effect, supporting AHIP.

Remember what I wrote, a little while ago, about enforcement?

When it comes to whether the government will enforce these putative and “tough” regulations of the murder by spreadsheet people, will anyone go to jail?  If they get fined for not complying with these tough new regulations, will anyone even notice?  Will any enforcement be done that the insurance companies, using their paid lackeys in Congress, will not stop if it gets in any way onerous?

Don’t let that stop anyone’s triumphalizing partying, though, that enforcement and dastardly acts are being discussed only days after this piece of crap passed.  Yet that those same people who supported this bill so strongly (not nyceve, I think) now find this to be an immediate, surprising problem .. I guess no one could have predicted, huh.  

That didn’t take long.

Let the sternly worded letters begin.

Updated:And Back to the House We Go After Senate’s Pryor,Nelson,Lincoln Vote NO

David Dayen at Lake du Fire Dogs has been watching the Senate vote on the Reconciliation side car “fix” to the Health Insurance Bailout bill this morning.

http://news.firedoglake.com/20…

It passed, 56 to 43.  V.P.  Joe Biden was there, indicating that the administration didn’t quite trust the Democratic Senators to behave themselves. Senators Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Mark Pryor of Arkansas (OPEC API IPAA, Mellon Scaife, & Koch Oil, Mutual of Omaha, & Walmart, LLC)  voted against the reconciliation bill.  

Surprise ! It has to now go back to the House again for another vote, saith the Parliamentarian      

Remember when there was talk of how the amendment process in the Senate would only need a simple 50 vote majority under the rules of reconciliation, and therefore some Senator could offer an amendment with a Public Option, and there was Sen. Bennett’s (D, CO) letter http://bennet.senate.gov/newsr…        going around with the signatures, and the People in Charge said Absolutely Not, we are taking no amendments on this because we can’t risk the Republicans delaying with their own ?  An everybody got into line?

Surprise !   They were just kidding.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

How about putting it in the year 2011 Budget, Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota ?


“I’d be unwilling to kick up dust on some new matter before we’ve resolved this one,” he told reporters.

A status quo You Can Believe In.

They say over 25 million Americans will be left out of coverage. It’s more.   They’re wrong, there’s 300 million who were planning on the Constitution covering them, and it’s still random, depending on which state you reside in.

But only the Democratic Party could try to get away with it, having drawn such courage from watching the Republicans cheer them on as they continue to thumb their noses at the core constituency who actually voted to put them in office, and had bothered to read the quaint old thing.

_______________

update:

AHIP Already kicking sick kids to the curb

nyceve has posted this story about America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP, think Karen Ignagni the lobbyist) which wrote much of the bill incognito, saying that it intreprets the new law as not requiring insurers to cover all child applicants this year.  They would prefer to wait until 2014.

This bill is being “sold” as finally making insurance available for all children (except non legal residents) this year. Supposedly the Sec of HHS is going to issue a sternly worded clarification, or something.  But insurers can jack up rates in the meantime-

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

The Last Throes of Fundamentalism

Please don’t think that I think this will be easy or by any means quick (thus the Cheney parody)….we are talking generations, and we may not have time for that.

On the other hand we may!

IF, and man is that a BIG if, the human race can get its shit together to rise above the ridiculous pettiness that allows us to watch our planet dying while we argue over what can only be considered minutiae in comparison…

Then we could be on “the verge” (in anthropological time) of seeing Fundamentalism as a societal force self marginalize to the point where it takes its proper statistical place in the panoply of human beliefs and forces. Iow scaled back to the approximately 10% of crazy humans believing in ‘it’ that believe in other crazy shit. It is my belief that 10% of humanity always believes some variation of crazy shit or another. Again….statistics.

Are We Destined for the Endangered Species list?

Bee Pictures, Images and Photos

This morning’s headlines included a feature story by ABC News, onimously entitled, “Honeybees Dying: Scientists Wonder Why, and Worry About Food Supply.”

Albert Einstein was once quoted as warning, in reference to the importance of honeybees…

“If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination … no more men!”

There are a number of sites on the web disputing the validity of this quotation, however, whatever the truth of the matter, the precipitous decline of our honeybee populations is at best cause for grave concern.

Bush-league pecksniffery.

Obama’s no longer even trying.

On Suharto’s human rights abuses:

We have to acknowledge that those past human rights abuses existed.  We can’t go forward without looking backwards . . . .

On Bush’s & Obama’s human rights abuses:

I’m a strong believer that it’s important to look forward and not backwards, and to remind ourselves that we do have very real security threats out there.

Now that he’s got healthcare, he can’t even bother phoning it in.  He’s not even changing the words.  Just their syntax.

I suppose his staunch supporters consider that sham holiness “ambidextrous,” and to his credit.   He’ll be wiping his hands on someone’s shirt before November.

On the other hand, our cruel overlords are smiling at such unconscionable and grotesquely advertised lack of accountability.  So, at least someone’s happy.

Holy shit.  The dude is literally George W. Bush!

Open Parrish

Photobucket

OTW: Champagne Taste (edit)

PhotobucketWell, when I started this series, I promised little more than that I’d share whatever was rolling around my brain at the time. I make good on my promises whenever possible! ha! I’ve got something else on a back burner, but when I saw this U.S. News item  pop up in my newsy yahoo spot, I decided to share. Because… my response is basically: w.t.f.

Assessing Your Middle-Class Status

Despite the so-called recovery, many families continue to struggle, with income and other living standards slipping below thresholds that typically represent middle-class quality of life. We’ve assembled a variety of metrics to help determine whether you’re getting ahead, holding steady, or slipping further than most.  more>>>

It’s a quick read, you can just go look at it. Well, I don’t know about you, but… the champagne ain’t exactly flowin’ at my house.

Rules for radicals

I am not sure how many here at Docudharma are familiar with Saul D. Alinsky.

He was an organizer in the middle of the last century.. he organized communities predominantly.   He was considered one of the best.  A great deal of what he said is pertinant to todays struggle…..

I am going to share parts from a book I have been reading and rereading lately…..

I do not offer this as some sort of truth rather as a point of diparture…

I think many of us r coming to the conclusion that to get the change we want we are going to have to do something different….

become uncomfortable……

so I offer this as food for thought…..

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