My Whatever World in Maine

Bill O'Reilly:The More Things Change...

...the more they stay the same.

Congrats, Ellen

Ellen DeGeneres has decided to join the millions of America who have decided to tie the knot (around their neck, as Prof. Higgins would say) with longtime partner Portia de Rossi. I've heard it rumored they will be doing so in the set of Ellen's TV show now that gay marriage is legal again in California. Well, good for her. I'm not a big fan of Ellen's in general-afternoon talk shows bore me-but if she wants to get married and do so in a public forum, more power to her. It's her show, after all, and she should be allowed to marry a monkey there if she feels like it.

What is alternately amusing and pathetic is all the righteous indignation that has once again stirred up amongst some of those those who call themselves "conservative Christians" (and probably Muslims, too, although as Richard Land reminds us time and again, "we are a Christian nation." So, fuck the Muslim indignation). They are utterly convinced that the god of their bible (who, in his name, enables ethnic cleansing, commits infanticide, and throws his own son under the bus) gets all riled up over who we have sex with or marry. It's just insanity, especially when in general they base their antipathy on a couple of passages from the Holiness Codes in Leviticus and the letters of Paul-very conveniently ignoring the fact that the Holiness Codes also contain indications that, according to god, a field can't be harvested to the edge, tattoos are forbidden, and you can't weave two types of yarn into the same cloth. Bigamy, however, is ok. Christians also tactfully overlook the fact that Paul himself had some long and, shall we say, apparently quite intimate relationships with men a bit younger than himself. They probably weren't really very bright, but oh, they had great pecs and long eyelashes.

Hypocritical garbage. Bottom line? It's really all bullshit, more about mind control and the control of sexual behavior than religion. Besides, conservative Christians, isn't Ellen going to hell for this anyway? Shouldn't that be punishment enough for you all?   

Al Qaeda in Iran?

Sen. John McCain, speaking in Jordan today:

“We continue to be concerned about Iranian taking Al Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back. Well, it’s common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran. That’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.”

Sen. Joe Lieberman, whispering frantically in Sen. McCain's ear:

"Jesus Christ, John, what the fuck are you talking about? How many more times are you going to fucking say this? There are no fucking Al Qaeda training camps in Iran! The Iranian are training Shi'ite extremists, not Sunnis! You're making us look fucking stupid! Say something, you idiot!"

Sen. John McCain, looking chagrined:

“I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not Al Qaeda.”

Sen. Joe Lieberman, thinking:

"What a moron. Fuck."

LOL...that's why they call it Al Qaeda in Iraq, John...not Al Qaeda in Iran.

Leiberman's right. McCain's an idiot.

John McBush

(Ben Sargent cartoon)

William F. Buckley Dies

I'll mourn the old McCarthyite about as much as I did Jerry Falwell. Good riddance.

Natural Selection?

A man in England, filming waves pounding a seafront in England, makes his bid to become a 2008 Darwin Award winner.

Photo courtesy of MSNBC.

Maine Goes For Mitt

Maine Republicans, in a nonbinding caucus vote, expressed a "preference" that Mitt Romney be the Republican nominee.

What a bunch of morons. It's no secret that I think anybody who is a registered Republican is pretty much the definition of idiot (and if you're not a registered Republican and you've ever voted for a Republican, then you might as well renounce all rights to your brain.) But there is a special type of hell reserved for a person who thinks Mitt Romney has what it takes to be president, and apparently the majority of my Republican neighbors are going there.

However, I think that the only good thing you can say about John McCain in this race is that he's not Mitt Romney. With the right-wing wannabee savior Fred Thompson out of the race, the lunatic fringe of the GOP has been really lowering their standards, figuring out that Romney is less objectionable than McCain, who-gasp!-doesn't actually want to make being a brown catholic in the US a capital crime, for instance. I've been watching "Meet the Press," and Mary Matalin is actually sitting there saying John McCain needs to tell Mike Huckabee needs to get out of the race so that Mitt Romney can win. Clue up, Mary-if that were actually possible, don't you think Al Gore would have said it to Ralph Nader? She's alos saying now that McCain needs to flip flop on his previously stated positions on things that make the knuckledragging neocons apoplectic, like campaign finance reform. Just tell us what we want to hear, even if it's not the truth. Even if in '04 we wore out the tape of "I voted for it before I voted against it." What a bunch of freaking hypocrites.  

Democrats in Maine will be holding our caucuses next weekend, and I expect to be there. 

Stephen Moore Thinks You're Doing Great

...because you can walk into Circuit City and see a gross of different types of flat-screen TVs on  display.

Really. I'm serious. I heard it with my own ears on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer last night. That's what Moore, the senior economics writer for the Murdoch Neocon Suck Up Rag (AKA the Wall Street Journal) said when Margaret Warner asked him why middle class people were increasingly anxious over the economic slowdown. First of all, he can't understand why, in this time of "very high economic growth," people just don't see how good they have it. "I mean, you just go into Circuit City today and you see low-priced things, like flat-top computers and large-screen TVs, and all of these things....there are more cars than people in America today. There are more TVs than people in America today."

Computers and TVs. Ok. The fact that there's a lot of cheap shit from China available for purchase from a slum retailer is equivalent to an all out economic boon in the eyes of the Wall Street Journal economics writer. Yikes.

Of course, what he fails to mention, aside from the fact that everyone has a car and a TV, that the average American household spends $102 for every $100 it takes in so they can afford that extra car and TV. He then goes on to say "So the middle class actually has, in my opinion, a significantly higher living standard than they did even as recently as 1980. But for some reason, people are still very anxious. And they don't feel it."

Well, maybe we don't feel it, Steve, because we're going broke just trying to meet our monthly expenses, cars and TVs notwithstanding. According to the Middle Class Security Index:

• One in four middle-class families match the profile for being at high risk of slipping out of the middle class altogether.
• Only 31 percent of families who would be considered middle-class by income are financially secure.
• More than half of middle-class families have no net financial assets whatsoever.
• Middle-class families have median debt of $3,500 and at least half of them have no assets.
• Only 13 percent of middle-class families are secure in their asset levels—meaning that they have enough to cover most of their living expenses for nine months should their regular income cease; 79 percent are “at risk” in this category, meaning they could not cover the majority of their expenses for even three months. Another 9 percent are “borderline.”
• Twenty-one percent of middle-class families have less than $100 per week ($5,000 per year) remaining after meeting essential living expenses. These families are living from paycheck to paycheck with very little margin of security.

But hey, if we can buy TVs and cars with deferred payments and no moeny down, who's worrying about debt and disposable income, right?

The he just tells a flat out lie. "...the media continually has this drumbeat that the middle class is falling behind when, in fact, they're not."

Umm, Stephen? Publicly available data tells us that's not true-in fact, it's really far less ludicrous to say that Winnie the Pooh sells cars on the side to finance his crack addiction than that. The fact is, the bottom 40 percent of the country actually has less wealth now than they did in the recent past. The poor and middle class are going into more debt because the standards they have to meet now are more expensive, including those cars you kept harping on and the fact that the average home price has skyrocketed since 1980. Despite this, middle class people have about the same real income that they had about 30 years ago-they're forced to buy much more with a lot less. The savings rate for the past couple of years has been in the negatives.

And yet we keep electing people whose most sincere goal in life is to make their big donors richer. Why? Why don't we wield our political power in a way that benefits us? Partially, I think it's because most of us don't want to admit how bad off we really are, but the bigger part of it is that since Ronald Reagan, we've been indoctrinated to believe that it's every man for himself in this country, and if you're in dire straits, you've got no one to blame but yourself. And don't look to the government to bail you out! It's not government policies and the uneven distribution of wealth that's dragging me down, it's the welfare queens. Or the brown Catholics. We'll vote for the ones who will deal with them the harshest!

So, Mr. Moore lied on national TV (how can you tell when conservatives lie? Their lips move!) and that wimpy Margaret Warner didn't call him out on it. Nobody ever calls out conservatives on their lies. This drives me crazy-why does the news media feel the need to give everybody's views equal weight, especially when they're easily refuted with facts? Daniel Gross from Slate does get a nice little dig in at the end there, calling Mr. Moore's former employer a member of "Club for Greed."

If you're all fired up and you want to read more, I found this bog on the web while surfing for this post, and this book.

In Defense of Healthcare, or: Glenn Beck is a Moron

Glenn Beck once again shows us why he's one of the stupidest people God ever blew breath into, as if we needed more proof. He's now spouting off that it's the healthcare workers that are the underlying problem in this country, not the system itself. Check this out over on CNN.com:

At the hospital I was often treated more like a number than a patient. At times, staff members literally turned their back on my cries of pain and pleas for help. In one case a nurse even stood by tapping his fingers as if he was bored while my tiny wife struggled to lift me off a waiting room couch.

I've now seen our system at its very best and I've also experienced it at its very worst. But in each case, the difference had nothing to do with whether the hospital had the latest equipment or whether it looked like the Taj Mahal. It had to do with compassion. It had to do with respect. It had to do with treating people the way you'd want to be treated when going through something unfamiliar and frightening.

That's why I don't want to hear anymore about universal health care or HMOs or the evils of insurance companies until each and every hospital in this country can look me in the eye and tell me that they their staff is full of truly compassionate people who treat their visitors like patients, not products. Hire and train the right people, and then and only then come talk to me about everything else you need.

Glenn is wrong, as usual. This is just an extension of the usual ugly, mean-spirited conservative dogma that if something is wrong, or not working well, it's the sole fault of the individuals involved and it's their burden to fix it. It doesn't matter to them if we're talking about people living in poverty or healthcare workers struggling to survive in a system designed to take its' money out of their hides. As someone who has worked in healthcare for over 20 years, first as a clinician and now as an instructor, let me tell you this point-blank: It's not the people.  We went into it with the idea that we were going to do something to help. But somewhere along the way, we were told that wasn't really our job anymore-our primary job is now to practice our craft in such a manner as to promote the financial solvency of whatever institution we work for. Period. Until a system is in place that promotes the an OPTIMAL level of care-the way in which we are trained to do and want to do-instead of a mediocre one, this won't get better. Hospitals remain understaffed and even doctors are becoming in short supply in many areas because the delivery of even substandard care has become such a burden. Most nurses, who didn't start out jaded, are now just counting the days until they retire or get a job away from bedside care because of the exhausting hours, low pay, and disrespect from both patients and management. "Acuity systems" used in most hospitals to figure out staffing needs are woefully inadequate and designed as an excuse to understaff. Hospitals and other areas where health care is delivered actually LOSE money taking care of the sickest patients, and god forbid a physician wants to keep a patient in a hospital bed a day longer than the spreadsheets say is necessary for someone with that diagnosis. There is a shortage of qualified applicants for direct care jobs because the working conditions are so horrible in most hospitals, and that can be linked directly back to reimbursement practices by the HMOs and insurance companies that Mr. Beck would love to let off the hook here. Survey after survey show that most nurses-and therapists, I'm sure, and other care providers-are demoralized by situations that practically ensure they aren't able to give basic care, by feeling that no one cares if they can't give basic care, and that alone is enough to cut "compassion" off at the knees. Read this nurse's story, Mr. Beck, and then tell me that insurance companies and HMOs don't play a huge role in the dissatisfaction and spotty level of care you experienced. Tell me that with a straight face.

And I defy Glenn to spend time in the shoes of the people he ridicules and blames in this pathetic, ignorant column. LOL, yeah, sure. The over/under on that would be less than five minutes.

EDIT: A lot of the commenters on this article stood up for the people who choose to commit themselves to this work, and for that I am very grateful.

I can't speak for Mr. Beck, but when I was in the hospital for two weeks for abdominal surgery, the nurses were fantastic. They busted their backs during a long shift with (usually) no break of any kind. They were always kind and attentive and tried to put me at ease during a truely frightening and life-threatening experience.
I'm sure that Mr. Beck was always the most cooperative and respectful patient, but a kind word (on both sides) goes a long way.-david

You want "every hospital" to commit to caring but hospitals are being bought up by corporations that run them for the bottom line not for caring. A national health care system will create a more coherent system that will enable more caring and one that is based on people rather than profits.-Stewart

This is probably the best, most articulate one of the bunch. John, will you marry me?

Glenn, your conservative ideology (and for the love of God, please don't deny that!) blinds you to the point: the system creates the conditions, a system that is more about saving money and improving profits, not caring for patients. Nurses have been complaining for years consistently low pay and an ever-increasing patient load that threatens safety. Doctors - many struggling to pay off massive student loans brought on by America's systematic disinvestment in public universities - are told to limit the time they spend with patients; again, to serve the bottom line. Not to mention the endless headaches of dealing with the insurance companies.

Psychologists will tell you that people's reactions and emotions are heavily influenced by the system in which they operate. Capitalism's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness: a cold eyed, hard-hearted pursuit of maximum profits. Compassion withers in this environment, so the "compassion professions" - for instance, health care and education, to cite the two best examples - cannot flourish. You can't have it both ways, Glenn.-John Werth

Ask Mitt Anything

Why not? He's inviting us to.

Ok, so in no particular order, these are the things I would like to ask Mitt Romney:

1. Is it just a coincidence that you've never really spoken out against the Mormon Church's history of institutionalized racism AND that you received the endorsement of Bob Jones University? Or am I reading too much into that?

2. So, were you a hunter in the figurative sense as well? Like, you put out some mouse traps once? Or did someone try to feed you a rat?

3. How do you feel about the floor dropping out from underneath you thanks to Elmer Gantry himself, Gov. Mike Huckabee, a guy with no money and no real message except a subliminal cross? That's got to be driving you insane. How dare he? He doesn't even have perfect hair. Or a private jet.

4. Speaking of Huckabee, I'm wondering just how well you knew his wife back in the day, Governor? Just because it seems that you and David Huckabee have a lot in common. Would you care to comment on that? How about you, Mrs. Huckabee? 

5. And last but not least....why in the name of all that is good and holy would anybody vote for you, you miserable, flip-flopping, pandering liar?

Ok, that's all I've got. Who's next?