Town Hall Tyranny

"Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas." -Helen Keller

Margaret and Helen on Town Hall Misbehavior

HT to Grandmère Mimi @ Wounded Bird

for linking to this under the title:
At Least Comb Your Hair!

Margaret, I don’t know what plans you’ve made up there with Howard, but down here with Harold, we have living wills to determine how we will leave this world when the time comes.

Mine states that unless the feeding tube is large enough for a piece of pie, I don’t want to be hooked up to it. Harold, of course, says his can only be connected to him if the other end is connected to a bottle of single malt scotch.

Read their whole take HERE. As always, Margaret and Helen are a HOOT!

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Local Take on Health Care "Death Panels"

Local Democratic leader, blogger and
activist Stephen Handwerk's blog in The Daily Advertiser is an interesting local liberal take on "death panels" and other distortions:

“But Stephen, Democrats are the ones who are killing this – Those Blue Dogs, right?” In fact the Blue Dogs are working very hard to SOLVE this issue and they, like me, want whatever program we have to be PAID FOR. There is nothing wrong with that. I think we do that by simply opening up Medicare to those whose premiums top 12% of their yearly income. But Blue Dogs are looking at other ways. So why am I taking it to the Republicans so hard? – Simply because they are clearly the party of no. We have heard Congressman Boustany go on the record on KPEL making statements that we have the best healthcare in the world – Clearly not true. And while he talks a good game on where the needs exist, the fact is that neither he nor the Republican leadership in congress is making any meaningful contributions to building legislation that accomplishes these “supposedly shared goals.” Instead they are nitpicking around the edges on these ridiculous claims and leaving these crazy claims of “Death Panels” go unchallenged (some are even repeating them).

I don’t blame the insurance companies from wanting to make a profit, but ramming the conversation in this fake “astro-turf” way is quite disgusting. Especially when you learn that in the past 7 years, the Health Insurance Industries profits have nearly septupled. In 2000 the SEC reported that the Health Insurance industry profited $2.4 Billion – and in 2007 they profited $12.7 Billion. Now that is some business to be in! If this wasn’t such a shady business industry to begin with (please see my previous columns on this issue) and if they were not fighting so “dirty” in the streets perhaps we could have a more professional and productive conversation. But as these matters are being exposed, hopefully the American People are going to see who is really behind all of this and what they are really fighting for – it seems clear they are not fighting for the people – but for the profits.

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Health Care Death Panels

via Crooks&Liars:

We already have 'Death Panels":

You're Sent Home to Die from Hospital if you can't pay

From Southern Beale, a very important point:

Don’t talk to me about death panels, Sarah Palin.

You, who so carelessly bolstered a lie about healthcare reform to score a cheap political point; you, the most craven of political opportunists, who fearmongers about some dystopian socialist/fascist fantasyland; you, who earlier this year were only too happy to accept free medical, dental and veterinary care from the U.S. military for Alaska’s remote villages; you, dear lady, are an idiot.

In your free market wonderland everyone somehow manages to get healthcare, even those who are poor or live in isolated areas, though the poor and isolated in your own state required assistance from the federal government.

And despite all of this, you appear blithely unaware that the free market healthcare system we have now does, indeed, have “death panels.” I’ve been part of a death panel conversation. I know about death panels.

You have no idea what it’s like to be called into a sterile conference room with a hospital administrator you’ve never met before and be told that your mother’s insurance policy will only pay for 30 days in ICU. You can't imagine what it's like to be advised that you need to “make some decisions,” like whether your mother should be released “HTD” which is hospital parlance for “home to die,” or if you want to pay out of pocket to keep her in the ICU another week. And when you ask how much that would cost you are given a number so impossibly large that you realize there really are no decisions to make. The decision has been made for you. "Living will" or no, it doesn't matter. The bank account and the insurance policy have trumped any legal document.

If this isn’t a “death panel” I don’t know what is.

Amen.

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~~~~~~~Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein~~~~~~ on Health Care Reform

" Can there be anyone more two-faced than the Republican leaders who in one breath rail against the evils of government-run health care and in another propose a government-subsidized high-risk pool for people with chronic illness, government-subsidized community health centers for the uninsured, and opening up Medicare to people at age 55?

Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society -- whether we can trust ourselves to embrace the big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off. Republican leaders are eager to see us fail that test. We need to show them that no matter how many lies they tell or how many scare tactics they concoct, Americans will come together and get this done.

If health reform is to be anyone's Waterloo, let it be theirs. "

Read the entire commentary HERE, its not too long!

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Stand Out Story of the Week

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Parody of Birther Madness

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Today in Gay History

Happy 166th Birthday

Charles Warren Stoddard (August 7, 1843-1909)
Poet, Novelist

Credit all the following to glbtq:

A pioneering California writer, Charles Warren Stoddard is best known for his homoerotic tales collected as South-Sea Idyls and The Island of Tranquil Delights.. . .

During the 1860s, after he had quit school and dedicated himself to a literary career, Stoddard joined San Francisco's journalistic and Bohemian circles, and he established enduring relationships with Ambrose Bierce, Ina Coolbrith, Bret Harte, and Samuel Clemens.

Beloved for his wit and amiability, Stoddard had a genius for friendship; his large literary acquaintance ultimately included both contemporary and younger writers. . .

Raised a Protestant, Stoddard converted to Roman Catholicism soon after the appearance of his Poems in 1867. Stoddard remained devout in his faith--among his most popular books was a spiritual autobiography, A Troubled Heart (1885)--and he cherished the companionship of priests, including Father Damien, missionary to the lepers of Molokai. He is listed in the Catholic Encyclopedia, but of course, no mention of his "gayness" there.

As a respected man of letters, Stoddard was recruited to academic positions at prominent Catholic institutions: Notre Dame, where he clashed with colleagues over his attentions to the students and resigned after three semesters; and the Catholic University of America, where he taught from 1889 to 1901.

Inspired to sexual self-awareness by reading Whitman's "Calamus" poems, Stoddard gained his first experience with the natives of Hawaii and Tahiti, about whom he wrote his best stories, those collected in South-Sea Idyls (1874, 1892) and The Island of Tranquil Delights (1904) . . .

Stoddard fell in love with the painter Frank Millet during the 1870s and lived with him in Venice. But he usually favored youthful companions. Of his several "kids," as he called them, the most important was Kenneth O'Connor, aged fifteen in 1895, when Stoddard unofficially adopted him and took him home to his Washington "Bungalow."

In 1903, his health failing and his relationship with the younger Kenneth deteriorating, Stoddard returned to California. After a triumphal visit to San Francisco, where he was feted as a pioneering California writer, he settled in Monterey, where he died of a heart attack on April 23, 1909.

Stoddard's modest literary reputation had already faded before his collected Poems appeared posthumously in 1917. The gayest of the island stories have been collected in Cruising the South Seas (1987).

Congratulations Justice Sotomayor!

Meanwhile, Democrats are calling the hand of the Repulicons:

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