How about we set Glenn Beck's show to the tune of "Goin' off the rails on a crazy train?"

By Ellipses

Summary:
1. All of America's problems are caused by atheists.

2 Children are being taught to sing songs set to the tune of other songs and that is bad.

3. America is the only country on earth that recognizes God's authority

4. We don't need Social Justice, we need Eternal Justice

Rebuttal:
1. How many self-identifying atheists are there in government?

2. Did you know that you can sing Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" to the tune of "Oh My Darlin'?" Try it, it's awesome.

3. You (Glenn) are a fucking retard.

4. You (Glenn) are a fucking retard.

Dry those tears, pussy, that's why your mom killed herself.

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The Mad Doctors and Single Payer

by Cylinsier

I went to a town hall rally for health care last night. This one was in support of a specific bill, HR 676, which I have mentioned before on this blog. The rally was centered around a group of Doctors, mostly from Oregon, who call themselves the Mad as Hell Doctors. These doctors have been driving from Oregon to DC over the past three weeks, making stops to talk to people about single payer health care coverage and why they support it. Today, they end in DC with one more rally after which they will hand a petition to Barack Obama in support of HR 676.

What follows is my best attempt to put into words the argument that the Doctors made in favor of single payer. I will preface that by telling you that the doctors come from different areas of practice, four of them are former vets, all of them had at least 25 years in medicine, and they made a ton of good points.

The overlying message was that these doctors strongly believed that the only way to save the health care coverage situation in this country is through single payer. They made the strong argument that a public option would not work because it does not take enough power from private insurers. Rather, it creates a system that is doomed to fail and when it does, it will be hung around the neck of the health care reform movement as an albatross, a sign that government fails at running health care.

Instead, these doctors support a system that reforms Medicare and expands it to cover everyone. Part of this reform would involve consolidating health care records to conserve on paperwork costs, reducing costs by creating a network in which everyone is covered and thus no one becomes a burden on the system when they seek emergency care uninsured, increasing the focus on preventative medicine, eliminating pharmaceutical marketing, and tort reform.

One of the doctors argued that we have patients going to too many doctors and taking too many medications. He said that this is a result of the fear of being sued; anything that could possible be wrong has to be tested or referred to someone else. In a single payer system, there would have to be tort reform, but this doctor also made a brilliant point: people sue their doctors for malpractice because, for the most part, they are in fear of the future medical bills they will have to pay to fix whatever is wrong with them. They sue because the private health care industry has created an atmosphere in which they must sue to stay afloat. In universal coverage, your doctor's visits will basically be covered for life. No getting dropped, no change in rates. So even if one doctor does something wrong, you won't need thousands of dollars to have another doctor fix it. This eliminates a huge amount of the incentive to sue.

In the US, we spend $7,000 per person per year on health care. That's the most expensive in the world. The second most expensive is $3,600, essentially half. Where does this cost come from? A lot of places. A huge amount of it is insurance paperwork. Another big offender is pharmaceuticals. A major argument against some reform is that it will eliminate creativity and ingenuity in the health care industry. The doctors debunked this claim by examining pharmaceutical profits and breaking down where they go. The top 5 pharma companies in this country (Merck and Pfizer are two of the biggest) pull in 500 billion dollars a year. 32 billion goes to research and development. Where does the other 468 billion go? A large chunk goes to advertising. Those stupid commercials you see on TV. Shouldn't your doctor be telling you what medication you need, not the other way around? These commercials serve no purpose. Another big chunk of that money lines the pockets of the executives who run the pharmaceutical companies. There is a huge amount of money there that shouldn't be leaving your wallet.

Audience members told stories about their ordeals with private health insurance. One woman, a nurse, told the story of having to amputate the leg of a diabetic patient. He didn't have insurance and had gone ten years without any kind of doctor's visit, which is why when he finally came in, they couldn't save his leg. The damage could have been prevented if caught earlier. Now, the man is on disability, the burden of you and me, when it would have been much cheaper to cover him under single payer and keep him healthy and working. Others spoke about friends and family members who were insured but were dropped when they got sick or had their care, GASP, rationed to them by their insurer. Many of these people died as a result of being left out in the cold by these companies that had taken their money. I heard probably twenty stories just from the hundred or so people there last night. That's about one in five people by my count that have been screwed over by the insurance industry.

The doctors reminded us that the Declaration of Independence recognizes the inalienable right to life, that Martin Luther King Jr. said, "of all forms of inequality, injustice of health care is the most shocking and inhumane," and that the United Nations, an organization that this nation is a member of and whose rules and declarations we helped write, recognizes that health care is a basic human right. Why then are so many in this country only interested in themselves?

The doctors want to be heard so they can make their argument to as many people as possible. They as that you go to their site (link above) and use the option to email the President requesting that he talk to them. You can also send emails to various TV shows suggesting they invite one of them on as a guest.

The Daily Show: thedailyshow@comedycentral.com
Oprah: http://www.oprah.com/contactus
Olbermann: countdown@msnbc.com

Or any other you can think of. Supporters of the public option should really check this out; you might find you like it. The Senate has a similar bill, S703, that you can also check out. And the doctors are prepared to strongly back state efforts to establish single payer systems if a federal effort fails. In my state, Pennsylvania, two bills exist for this purpose: HB1660 and SB400. Write your state and federal representatives if you are interested and tell them.

UPDATE: CNN has a nice piece up that has the stories of several people from all different walks of life explaining why they are tired of the sad excuse for health care coverage we have in this country.

UPDATE 2: An interesting blog by a guy from the UK. He compares his health care experiences living in the US with his experiences across the pond. Worth a read. Sphere: Related Content

What is White Culture?

By Ellipses

Glenn had a hell of time defining "White Culture." Let me help:

The Twenty Pillars of "White Culture"

1. Sex with non-spousal relatives
2. Mayonnaise sandwiches
3. Flannel
4. NASCAR
5. Cars on blocks
6. Rebel Flags
7. Beer that tastes the same coming out as it did going in
8. Jesus
9. Distrust of Ay-rabs, Mexicans, Chinamen, Blacks, and assorted other furriners
10. Your balls smell like sheep pussy
11. "Ham" is a flavor of spread
12. Don't own nothin' faggy
13. Hoopin' an' hollerin'
14. Eagle Tattoos
15. Baby Jesus (This is different than number 8)
16. Velcro shoes
17. Camouflage
18. Soldier of Fortune Magazine
19. Aerosol cheese
20. Lee Greenwood

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Carly Fiorina embarasses self, loses support of web designers for life

by Cylinsier

It seems Barbara Boxer has a challenger in her upcoming Senate race (2010). Should she worry? Apparently not. Carly Fiorina is getting laughed at all across the internet by both liberal and conservative commentators alike. In case you don't know, Carly is an ex-businesswoman trying to make a go at the political theater. She was the CEO of Hewlett-Packard until they fired her ass for incompetence in 2005 (technically a forced resignation). She was the first woman to lead a fortune 20 company, which should be applauded, and that makes it that much more unfortunate that she sucked at it. Of course, she got hers before leaving; a $42 million severance package.

But this is not why Carly is currently a minor laughing stock in political circles. Her campaign site is. A red background with an email subscriber function and a high school quality flash presentation is all there is to see. The slogans are inane; go look for yourself. Democrats wasted no time tearing into it. The Huffington Post lead the charge. But as CNN points out, Republicans also found it to be sub-par. Me? Well, I don't pretend to be a particularly skilled Flash developer but I am a web developer and I do use Flash pretty regularly and if I was responsible for that mess, I would be pretty embarrassed.

Carly, you've got to be fucking kidding me.

Look, design aside, where is the information on her platform? Where does she stand on issue A, B, and C? Give me one reason why I should vote for her based on this site (not that I could anyway since I'm not from Cali, but you know what I mean). The site fails in both design and content, and what else is there to judge it on? If Carly Fiorina has any hope of unseating Boxer, who won her last election by a pretty solid margin, it starts with her taking down this teaser piece of crap and putting up something at least informative. The design improvements can come later. Otherwise, her political aspirations aren't going to look much better than her business record. Sphere: Related Content

In the news...

by Cylinsier

Just a few quick thoughts on several different stories floating around in the news right now.

• The Massachusetts State Senate got a law passed allowing the Governor to appoint someone to Ted Kennedy's seat as an interim Senator until an election can be held in January to find a permanent replacement. A lot of conservatives will no doubt scoff at this move and claim it is blatantly political, pointing out what I myself noted in an earlier blog post: that this same Senate created the old law in the first place back in 2004 to protect John Kerry's potential seat vacancy from a Republican appointment. Well, the original move was blatantly and embarrassingly political, but this one is not. The law should be what they've changed it to be. The Senate does not need to have a vacant seat for such a long time. The law shouldn't have been changed in the first place but changing it again was the right thing to do.


• Scientists are optimistic about some small signs of success in an HIV vaccine. The trials are being done in Thailand and involve over 16,000 participants. Read about it here.
  


• The G-20 is underway here in Pittsburgh and so far, nothing terrible has happened. From what I can tell, the protests have been mostly under control, suffice it to say I'm not going to go up there and see for myself first hand. Apparently, one unruly group had to be dispersed with tear gas, but other than that its been basically what was expected.
  


• Scientists have found water on the moon. Obviously a surprise.
  


• Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the House is still debating on a bill they can all agree on to send to the Senate. And by "they," I mean Democrats. The Republicans are apparently officially being left out of negotiations. For the record, all currently proposed House bills include a public option.
  


• As the New Orleans rebuilding effort continues, visitors might notice more changes than just new buildings. Apparently there has been a huge influx of Latinos to the area. It seems they came to help rebuild and stayed to live and open businesses. New Orleans used to be a Spanish colony, so its somewhat fitting.
  

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Glenn Beck blows a gasket

Thanks to commenter Onidinita for bringing this to my attention. Glenn Beck drops an intellectual deuce on the air in response to a caller supporting health care reform.



Listen to the whole thing to get the context or just skip to 3:10 for the hilarity. Sphere: Related Content

We Need to PROTECT Insurance Companies

By Ellipses

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

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Glenn Beck is All Over the Map

By Ellipses


Watch CBS Videos Online Sphere: Related Content

Pittsburgh welcomes a few world leaders and a bunch of unhappy people

by Cylinsier

The G-20 is coming to Pittsburgh. But what is the G-20? Well, the history goes a little something like this...

In the 90's, during the G Funk Era, Warren G established the organization so that he could better Regulate...things. Over the years, several new members joined: Kenny G, all of G-Unit, the Low G Man, G-Man, G Fresh, the G-Force (both the five youths dressed as anthropomorphic bird people and the three talking guinea pigs), and HG Wells (reanimated by the G-Virus). The virus counts as the twentieth member.

Okay, not really. The G-20 is the top twenty economies in the world. They are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union, so its really more than twenty countries cheating to look like twenty. They're getting together in charming Pittsburgh to discuss money. Lots of money. Because that's what the G-20 always talks about. One of the main topics will be the International Monetary Fund.

However, for those of us residing in Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas, the main event will be the protests. Many different groups will be coming. Some will be protesting the lack of jobs, some foreign wars, some environmental awareness, and probably a slew of other things. I myself will be leading a one-man protest of protesters who can't get on the same page. And also, pretty much the whole city will be in lock down. Getting into the city will be a chore and considering what will be there (only protesters and foreign leaders since everything else will be closed) probably not worth it.

Hopefully some relatively interesting stuff will happen and you'll see us blogging about this more as the week continues. For now, it amounts to giving me an excuse to work from home later this week and an attempt at setting the world record for most pop culture references that rely on the letter "G." Sphere: Related Content

Max Baucus's epic failure

by Cylinsier

Just a quickie drive-by thought. Max Baucus was supposed to emerge from his meeting-of-the-middle with the answer to the question, "Will Republicans and Democrats agree on a health care bill?" Well he did, but it wasn't the answer he was looking for.

All we've heard is how Republicans won't agree on anything with a public option because the gubment will kill old people and make babies go away. Baucus, the Senate's Don Quixote, grabbed a couple of his homies and three Republicans who made nice like they were going to reach across the aisle (and by reach across I mean shake the hands of Democrats who come all the way across the aisle to them) so long as the six of them came up with bipartisan legislation. Read my post below about HR 676 to see my thoughts on what a "compromise" for this bill should be.

At any rate, Baucus dropped his pants, bent over and took it hard from the GOP, neutering and essentially dismembering health care reform for them in a naive attempt to create something that would make Republicans happy (no public option and some shitty attempt at non-profits). So, after toiling for weeks over this, he produces his GOP placation bill and the GOP tells him to shove it up his ass. Bravo, Max, bravo.

I only hope this serves as a lesson to the majority party: the Republicans are liars and will not pass anything related to health care reform. Any words otherwise are just a ruse to make you waste more time trying to figure out where the football is so you can try to kick it, only for them to snatch it away at the last second again. Every day that goes by is a day closer to when the GOP hopes to take a few seats out of that Democratic majority and seal the deal on meaningful reform indefinitely. Get it through your thick skulls, Democrats. The only health care bill that will get passed that reforms anything will be done in spite of the GOP, not with them. Sphere: Related Content