Open Thread

Oh, and as for health insurance, Legion, I really, really resent you, or anyone else who doesn’t know what they are talking about, telling me, or other people, what we can and cannot afford, and acting as if the millions of us who are uninsured are somehow too cheap, or too shortsighted, or too uninterested in our healthcare to go out and get our own insurance. Millions of people do not make the choice to be uninsured the way one chooses between buying 2 kinds of melons at the market. It’s more of a choice between eating and not eating. We cannot afford it. I’m just thanking God I am relatively healthy, and live in fear of an accident, catching some kind of virulent virus, or getting an age related disease. And I’m a single person, without kids or anyone else to worry about. Most uninsured families live in constant fear. It’s really easy to sit on your insured, well paid, high horse, and pronounce what people should and shouldn’t do, and the reasons for why they don’t have insurance. You have no clue.

My fervent hope is that after all the misinformation, the lies and greedy bullsh*t is over, legislation is enacted to enable anyone who needs it, the ability to go to a decent doctor and get primary care, so I don’t have to wait until symptoms put me in the hospital, to find out that I have a disease that could have been caught early and dealt with, instead of having to have aggressive care to save my life, or worse, a couple of months to live. That is the case with far too many people. It costs more, costs more lives, and basically determines who is worthy of life and who isn’t. That’s a decision that money, or the luck of having a job with insurance, should NOT be a factor in.

I’m back….

Was out of town for a couple of days for a family wedding. Did I miss much?

Sixyears,
Williams County is close to a fast growing region of oil production (the Bakken shale play if you want to investigate further). It has seen massive new interest in the past 3-4 years because of higher oil prices and the application of new techniques.

From the NAACP web site:”The NAACP was formed partly in response to the continuing horrific practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, the capital of Illinois and birthplace of President Abraham Lincoln.
Appalled at the violence that was committed against blacks, a group of white liberals that included Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard, both the descendants of abolitionists, William English Walling and Dr. Henry Moscowitz issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial justice. Some 60 people, seven of whom were African American (including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell), signed the call, which was released on the centennial of Lincoln’s birth.” “some” were Republican.

The party of Lincoln would no longer be recognizable to him- or to anyone in fact who remembers what were its finest moments. And before you wax too nostalgic over the illustrious party of Lincoln, read your history- the Civil War was not fought over slavery. It was fought over money and to keep the union together. You’ll find quite a few compromises on slavery agreed to by both the Republicans and the Democrats in the years before the Civil War. Cliff Notes do not give you the whole story.

I won’t get into the health care issue with you again- you fell for the kool-aid and are in serious denial about the facts.I will say this- NOTHING- and I mean NOTHING excuses the behavior of protesters at Town Hall meetings. The name calling, the insults, the violence- Right wing Republicans have clearly been feeding it and supporting it. One schmuck carried a gun (oh sure. legal in NH, yadda yadda yadda) to a protest Obama was to be attending- Palin carries on about death panels- trust me, nutjobs eat this stuff up. It takes just one to act on it and this country will be in complete chaos. Then I would love for you to say again, the Republicans are the party of Lincoln. The Republicans who made up the party of Lincoln are long gone- but if they were alive today, they’d be Democrats.