Friday Afternoon Rants

The FDA is still trying to intimidate doctors into not prescribing strong pain medication for their patients by having drugmakers create risk management plans.  Since I'm allergic to all of the drugs mentioned in the article I won't be affected, but many people who are in chronic pain will.  I know what it's like to be in constant pain with no relief in sight and it isn't pretty.  Too bad the FDA wasn't interfering when Rush Limbaugh was scoring oxycontin with his secretary's help.  It might have saved him a few brain cells and then he wouldn't run around making stupid statements like the poor have no right to health care because they can't afford it.

We don't want them either.

I was thinking the same thing.  It was okay for them to sleep with a married man, accept his gifts and travel on his dime but now they want money to keep quiet.  Prostitutes have more class.

Oreo.  He certainly made sure bankers can afford to live on their segregated estates while the help live under the bridge.

Aetna only made a 7% profit this year so they are going to raise their rates and eliminate about 600,000 people from their health insurance plans.  What will it take for teabaggers to wake up and realize that the only death panels are located in insurance companies and while teabaggers are purportedly worrying about single payer health care killing grandma that corporations have been robbing the taxpayers blind? Or as commenter Chernynkaya so artfully put it:

I am so s!ck of hearing from the Right how we liberals are always looking for a government “handout.” Here’s what the government has the money to do for CORPORATIONS:
-- subsidies and other direct grants;

-- tax breaks, reductions, deductions, exclusions, write-offs, exemptions, credits, loopholes, shelters, and rebates even for profitable companies;

-- letting corporations be headquartered off-shore and pay no federal income taxes;

-- large government contracts of every imaginable kind; some on a cost-plus basis with every incentive to cheat and get more;

-- discounted user fees or subsidized use of public resources (land, water, airwaves,e­¬tc.);

-- free government-funded R & D;

-- every program from the Department of Commerce, Agriculture and others underwrites it; the FDA for Big Pharma; the FCC for media and telecommunications firms; the FAA for the airlines, the Treasury and Fed for Wall Street;

-- individual tax breaks for the rich; billions offshored to tax havens; allowing corporate fraud and abuse

-- privatizing more - schools, highways, bridges, airports, prisons, public lands, utilities, parts of the military, mercenaries, and thus far a failed attempt to privatise the most important program for seniors and the disabled - Social Security;

But nothing for the basic right of LIFE (unless you haven’t yet had the nerve to be born).

Let the good times roll.

BBB

From Obscurity To Stupidity

She's no Vanessa Williams, that's for sure.  She isn't as classy, pretty, talented or graceful and she certainly isn't as natural.  She doesn't take responsibility for her actions or her words, always blaming someone else.  Which isn't really a surprise given her "beliefs".  She lied on her application and the fact that someone released a risque photo that she posed for is not an attack on her beliefs, it demonstrates that she is a hypocritical liar. It's long past the time for her to fade into obscurity, where she belongs.

Speaking of fading into obscurity, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards need to do the same.  I was a John Edwards supporter for many years but I can't and won't get past the fact that he lied and let down the people who most needed his help, his children and the poor.  The poor have been forgotten as this drama has turned into tabloid fodder.  And bad tabloid fodder at that.

Wow!  The definition of work certainly has changed.  Globetrotting workaholic?  So that's what they are calling it these days.  Spoiled floozy seems like a better description.

Cash for clunkers is a misnomer.  In order to get the cash you have to be willing to buy, and make payments on, a new car.  I don't have a job and even if I did my credit sucks, so trading in my 17mpg car is out of the question.  Actually, I'm going to have to sell it and take the money to buy food, mom's medications and pay off the deposit on the apartment.  Hopefully some enterprising person will buy it and then they can trade it in for a new car, I'll be taking the bus.

If marijuana was legalized, we wouldn't have to worry about things like this and law enforcement could concentrate on important things like finding murderers, rapists, kidnappers and thieves.  Building a fence is a stupid idea and won't close the borders to drug traffic or any other kind of traffic.

How can you protect the quality of healthcare for all Americans when significant sections of the population have none and will never be able to afford it?  You can't ration what they don't have and patients can only be a part of their healthcare decisions when they can afford to see the doctor.  Typical Republican strategy of nowadays, can't see the forest for the trees.

BBB

Rich, Bitch And Snitch

Now even the rich are whining.  Three pages worth and it's hard to read without realizing how clueless some people are.  I understand the principle, but it's hard for me to feel much sympathy since even they admit that they can afford to live there.

That's tough to do when you live in a place where the board of the country club recently approved a plan to spend $60 million in upgrades. That has caused some tenants, like Goodwin, whose annual expenses run to $80,000 for a 720-square-foot, or 67-square-meter, home, to put his property up for sale.

"It was a grandiose program that went directly into the eye of the storm," he said. "I used to be rich and by American standards, I still am. But now it is a time for people like me to hunker down."

I can almost hear tiny violins in the background.

Is Gaza like the Warsaw ghetto during the Nazi occupation?  Professor Levine offers a multitude of reasons why they are similar and one on why they are not and determines that they are not the same because not a high percentage of enough Palestinians have been killed.  Not that Mr. Levine cared when the 200,000 Rwandans were dying but they are useful now.  And here all this time I thought I was good at rationalizing anything.  Politicide, genocide, they're two sides of the same coin.  Either way it falls the Palestinians will never have anything but a below third rate status and the world will continue to watch and do nothing except say "stop that." Until it's too late.

Speaking of rationalizing, Kathleen Pender thinks the job cuts announced this month should be put into perspective.  That it isn't really that bad when you look at the percentages.  Maybe she should sit outside some of the major retailers and see how full the parking lots and the baskets that come out of them, aren't.

Two weeks after a fellow officer shot an unarmed, handcuffed, lying face down on the cement, man in the back the story is that the victim was trying to kick him in the nuts so that's why he hit him in the head and then had him in the position so his fellow officer could use what he now swears he thought was his taser to shoot a man who was already subdued.   They are trying this case in the media and just like with rape victims they are trying to use the victim's past against them.  And the cop who did the shooting has been granted bail.  It might be $3 million but it still brings to mind an interesting question.  Why do cops get granted bail at all?  If I committed murder I wouldn't be granted bail and neither would anyone else I know.  Being rich has its advantages also, just ask Phil Spector.  Yup, she walked in the door of his mansion where she had never been before, grabbed his gun and committed suicide.  Next thing you know I'll be believing in fairy godmothers.

So Michael Phelps likes to get stoned when he isn't competing.  There is nothing wrong with that since in no way is pot a performance enhancing drug, but you shouldn't let people take photos of you hitting the bong.  And to the person who did it for the money, shame on you!

BBB

We're Not Worthy

How come they never share the good drugs with us, the common people?  The economist's version of Mother's Little Helper must pack quite a punch in order to come to the conclusions they did.  How in the hell is the economy going to get better since we don't make anything and most importantly of all, we don't make anything that anyone wants to buy?  Including us.

If the dominoes fall the right way, the economy should bottom out and start growing again in small steps by July, according to the December survey of 50 professional forecasters by Blue Chip Economic Indicators. Investors seemed to be in a similarly optimistic mood on Friday, bidding up stocks by about 3 percent.

If is an awfully big word to have only two letters.  Or as my ex used to say, "if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle."  Or as the rest of us put it, "if I only had a job I could pay my bills (on time even!), keep my house and be able to send my children to a good college."  Oh well, they have those professional degrees and they've been right so far,  haven't they?   Plus, is there a domino competition we don't know about?

Why is this being allowed to continue?  The Middle East will never settle down, certain parties in all countries are making sure of that.  Why is it that the US invaded a sovereign state, deposed its ruler for crimes against humanity (since there weren't any WMDs) and yet continues to ignore tragedies such as Darfur (is it because we got our butts kicked in Somalia?) and the innocent people of Gaza.  Could it be that the truth is unimportant in the grand scheme of things?

Bushisms over the years.  If they weren't so stupid they would be even harder to read.  No wonder Gerald Ford (and not his Chevy Chase impressionist) thought that Bush was on the wrong track.  Actually Bush was in the caboose they left at some station no one has ever heard of.  Unless you believe in unreality.

Yup, as Americans go, we just don't get it.

BBB

As Some Of You May Have Surmised

I have lost my interest in what passes for politics in this country.  It's the same old thing everyday, except worse. Issues are passe. Logical thinking has gone out the window and all that is left are lies, innuendo, cover-ups, stupidity, name calling, and downright bullshit.  We are going to have four more years of the same old shit, except that the country will be in worse shape than it is now.

In another four years, this country will be so unrecognizable that they will probably change the name, just like they do with any other product that has lost its market share and the crew without a clue will think that the citizenry will fall for anything pretty and shiny.  Which we do. Our country will effectively be the New Coke.  And we all know how well that didn't turn out.

While Fannie, Freddie, and Bear Stearns get bailouts for playing with the country's future and making tons of money for their executives, the rest of us are quickly sinking in quicksand.  I'm down to my nose at this point, which has the advantage of blocking the smell of the crap flying through the air, but breathing is becoming difficult and eating is out of the question.

Freedom isn't the last thing you lose, hope is.  I always thought I would be immune since I come from stock that was either ruled by one of the world's worst dictators (Hitler), and on the other side trampled underfoot by a country that disregards the achievements of those who are not considered white. I was wrong. I'm drowning in a Depression (like a good portion of America) that was specifically engineered to make those at the top rich and happy while creating a stable bottom of an uneducated underclass that will toil for the rest of their short lives (due to poor medical care they can't afford and schooling that consists of a book of fiction handed down for generations under the guise of religion) until they are replaced by younger versions of themselves with even less thinking ability.

Many years ago my father asked me if the blacks in Africa were smarter than the blacks in America.  I, being a true blue American, answered the blacks in America were smarter because we had education and opportunities that Africans lacked.  His response was that any slaves in America that showed initiative or intelligence were culled from the herd so their genes wouldn't be passed down.  It's now forty years later and the proof is in the pudding.  Even without the nose ring we are being led down the path of our destruction, placing the stones so the next generation will have an easier slide downhill. And the sad part? You don't have to be black to be considered one of the untouchables.

The Republicans got what they wanted, a black candidate to run against.  They didn't want to run against Hillary because there was nothing they could throw at her that hadn't already been thrown.  For the last eight years what passes for news has been preoccupied with pretty white women who have disappeared and now they have a candidate who fits all their criteria for newsworthiness except that she isn't missing and is being touted as a savior from the black Messiah.  And guess who's falling for it, the average television watcher who hasn't had an original thought in the last eight years that wasn't spoon fed to them from some pundit that was being paid by the administration.

I've watched my life go up in flames while I was busy doing all the things (getting my Masters with a school loan I can't repay) they said would give me a good career and enable me to be part of the ownership society.  Little did I know that what they really wanted was for me to be so far in debt ($99K and counting for a skill that I can't use) that slavery would look good by comparison and that I would be the one who was owned, not an owner.  It says a lot about the loss of the American dream when one hopes that their mother passes before she has to spend the end of her life under the same conditions in which she came into the world.  A major Depression, a nutjob for a leader and a country that has lost its way so badly that it couldn't find the way back to the American dream with a map, two hands and a flashlight.

Am I depressed?  You betcha.  Will drugs help?  No, but they might prevent me from caring so much.  But that is all beside the point, with no job, no health insurance and no prospects, I wouldn't be able to afford them anyway. All I have that lets me know I'm alive are the incessant phone calls from creditors (those will stop soon, once the phone is turned off), the bills beseeching threatening me with dire consequences to pay them when my bank balance is negative ($-37.46 at the moment and for the next few weeks), no gas in the car (it's just below E and I don't think that means enough) and watching my passive aggressive mother slip deeper into dementia. If I'm gone longer than an hour or two, the mischief she creates undoes any relaxation I might have found. You know your life is teetering on the edge of a precipice when you consider grocery shopping to be relaxation and the tons of email you get consist of thousands of payday loan applications. And you read them hoping they will help. No wonder loan sharks are going out of business. Even they think 200% interest is a little high.

Was my life better off eight years ago? Yes, yes, yes. I was doing so well that I was able to afford the $857 a month to pay off my school loan. Now, I don't even make $857 a month. Maybe in another state I could afford to live on so little, but California isn't one of them. And it isn't wise to upset a person with dementia (at the moment that would be mom, but something tells me I'm not going to be far behind) with a new environment.

Change is definitely coming, but people have forgotten that change isn't always good. And that getting what you think you want, isn't always as good for you as you think it is.

What I wouldn't give to have a good laugh, one that isn't at anybody's expense and truly comes from the heart.

BBB

Who Knew?

Every soldier that has died in Iraq could have been used to quell the Taliban in Afghanistan and catch Osama bin Laden.  Years ago.  After almost seven years of constant war and not much has been accomplished except spreading the pain of loss to more of our military families.  So much for making the instigators pay for 9/11.  Bin Laden looks like the winner in this contest.  One man holding out against the might of the United States for seven years.  There is something just not kosher about this situation.

Ferengi Rule #269. Trying to please an enemy makes you the loser every time. Too bad the Demowienies haven't learned that. They seem more comfortable operating by Ferengi Rule #28. What's in it for me?

Living on the poor side of town is about to get slightly easier since Macy's, Wal-Mart and a British grocery chain discovered that there is money in those neighborhoods.

Officer Nugent sounds like a person who must have put his fingers in the electric sockets many times if he believed that a man could survive six 50,000 volt taser shocks in three minutes.  And then three more a few minutes later.  He sounds like the kind of person who laughed every time he watched don't tase me bro.

Absolutely unconscionable.  Raising the price of a drug that needs to be used as soon as possible in order to prevent mental retardation in affected infants from $1,800 a dose to $23,000 smacks of a "let's make money mentality" as opposed to a "let's use this drug to help children", especially since they didn't have to do research and development on it.  Shameful.  On the bright side, Hopkins proved that there was a $15 alternative that worked equally well.  The universe can work in mysterious ways.

Search engines can be another indicator of an economy that isn't doing so well.  Searches for pizza (Dominos by 980%) are up and sit-down restauraants are declining.  U-Haul and Motel 6 are popular again while Macy's has dropped almost out of the top 50.

BBB

Bankruptcy, Drugs And Idiots

At least breathing while black didn't get him killed, but the UK police aren't quite as trigger happy as a US cops.  Yet.  At this rate the world will become one great police state, united in the fear of others that don't look like them and in subjugation to whichever multinational corporation runs their government.

Sammy Hagar may not be able to drive 55, but the rest of us should.  Mom and I took a trip and I set the cruise control at 64 mph.  I passed one car in 150 miles,  everyone else passed me.  Trucks and SUVs were whipping past me so fast it looked I like I was standing still, but my gas mileage was much improved.  If it wasn't so dangerous I would go 55 mph but it's against the law to go more than 5 mph less than the speed limit and I'm likely to get rear ended by someone not paying attention.

The current bankruptcy law definitely needs to be repealed, and not just for those harmed by repeated involutary tours to Iraq and Afghanistan or those who had the misfortune to become ill in a country that let's people die in the emergency room while waiting for help.  What about people who have had to lower their standard of living to the poverty level in order to take care of an aging parent?   I'm having to take (and pay for) classes to teach me how to handle money I don't have.  What a crock or crap that is.  And the filing fee has taken months to save up for from a budget that already doesn't pay my bills.  Meanwhile Capital One took a bill that was only $600 and turned it into $2160 and is taking me to court to get a judgment even though I'm in the midst of declaring bankruptcy.    If they had debtors prison like they did under King George III, I'd be in it and my mom would be living on the street with no way to take care of herself.

My dad used to say that as soon as they found a way to tax it, it would be legal.  With state budgets being what they are,  more states should follow suit.

Free speech my ass.  If a parent burned a cross into their kid's arm, they would go to jail for child abuse.  If he had kissed his students he would be out of a job, why is chemically burning a cross into an eighth graders arm not considered a crime?

What a novel idea.  Locking the barn door after the horse has escaped.  It's nice to know that the crew without a clue haven't changed how they operate.

Oh boy, the pot calling the kettle black. Every time Bush meets other leaders he gives the people of the world new opportunities to be embarrassed for the American people.

Not Into It Today

I miss George Carlin. I first saw him on the Flip Wilson show and had enjoyed him ever since.. Everyone posted the Seven Words you can't say on tv, but my favorite skit was the fractured Nursery Rhymes. Especially the Seven Dwarfs. Thank you for all the years of laughs. Rest in peace George, you will be missed. Greatly.

Eight drugs that doctors in the know never take.

That's the way it works in America.

No job, no prospects, no way to feed the family. Of course the food banks are being overwhelmed.

No child left behind is having serious consequences. According to Time, fewer kids are pursuing tech degrees. That's what you get with rote memorization and continuous testing. People that don't know how to think logically or creatively. The corporations don't care, they can always get someone from India or China to do the job.

Papers please. Plus your fingerprints and first born child.

The Sky Is Falling

Alert the media. The illusion that they call pulling oneself up by the bootstrap is under attack. From politics to the weather, people have no control. The middle of the country is underwater, the west is on fire and the east's power grid is unstable. A major bridge fell into the water, New Orleans is still under nominal repair, the economy is tanking, the choice between buying food or buying gas so you can get to work before they lay you off is consuming household budgets and now the press is worried. Funny how they don't mention the destruction of the Constitution or the growing disparity between the have nots and have mores.

This probably isn't clear to those who aren't living in Iraq, but after seven years of war, their husbands and children killed arbitrarily, maybe, just maybe, they don't feel like life is worth living.

The opinion pages are busy this morning. Pointing out the obvious. Of course we need to reduce our dependence on oil instead of a stupid plan that will take years to complete and only benefits the oil companies while doing nothing to prepare us for a future without oil. Where were these guys when we were preparing to trudge off to war?

No. Really? I hadn't noticed. Does America dislike black people more than old people? Some days it's hard to tell, they treat both groups with disdain. Overrepresent the interests of African Americans. Are they serious? The only thing Obama is going to overrepresent is himself. His track record for defending the Constitution is pretty weak, so I'm not expecting him to take care of the little guy. Unless it suits his needs at the time.

This would be funny, if it wasn't so sad. Most men like to have sex with women. This means that there must be a somewhat equal supply of women in order to do that. Then they want to marry a virgin, so now women are opting for surgical intervention in an effort to fulfill a male fantasy and to keep from being a spinster or being killed. Totally missing the obvious in that once you have experience, it's pretty hard to hide it. And what is wrong with women having sex? I thought we settled that question in the sixties.

Good grief! How many drugs do you have to do to get emphysema at 24? Heck, I have asthma and still have more lung function. My mom has smoked since she was eleven and still hasn't been officially diagnosed with emphysema, they're calling it COPD instead. Amy Winehouse is going to die like my friend Jill. Neither one of them was able to give up their bad habits and opted to party until the end. And that's just plain sad.

BBB

Random Thoughts

Who cares? That's not the point. We were promised dead or alive and so far we have neither. Which is typical of the crew without a clue, never finish a job while you can make excuses for why it doesn't need to be done. They must think we are stupid as they are deceitful.

Haloscan is having issues. Or maybe it's Blogger. Methinks it's Haloscan.

No kidding. Military tribunals aren't working? JAG has only been off the air for a few years, but these show trials have never been about justice, they've been about revenge. Against people who have already met their maker so there must be someone who pays.

Like this guy. Poor schmuck might as well be at Gitmo for all the justice he isn't getting. Wow, prosecutors can openly defy the Supreme Court and that bastion of conservatism seems to think he's innocent. The prosecutors are determined to have him die in jail, that way they won't have to find the real killer.

Waterpipe tobacco smoking isn't safer than smoking cigarettes. Are they sure the kids were smoking tobacco? That isn't the usual drug of choice for a bong waterpipe. Or at least it wasn't when I was that age.

Oh boy, another smoking gun. Too bad it isn't on an episode of CSI or Law and Order because someone would be going to jail. A lot of someones. I guess the big house is only for the little people.

Gee, I'm not alone. Being multi-racial is the way of the future, only designer babies will have all the recessive genes. While the almost never right worries about illegal immigrants, the natives are changing the landscape to a more colorful version.

Momentary Lapse Of Reason

If only it was momentary, but this is more like falling into the event horizon of a black hole. It keeps going on and on, like a really bad dream. A moment of remembrance to pay tribute to our veterans. Could this President (and I use that term extremely loosely) blow it out his ass any more? No raises, no G.I. Bill, limited benefits that the injured have to beg for, stop-loss as a way of life, inadequate armor, a Green Zone that isn't safe and all they get is a moment of remembrance for their sacrifice? With a little luck nobody will remember this schmuck except as a monument to the stupidity of the crew without a clue. That is either swept up in an monstrous twister or disappears when another levee breaks.

Bush had several suggestions for how to honor the sacrifices of those who have fought for the United States — place a flag at a veteran's grave, go to a battlefield or say a prayer. He said the moment of remembrance would be marked Monday at 3 p.m. local time.

"At that moment, Major League Baseball games will pause, the National Memorial Day parade will halt, Amtrak trains will blow their whistles and buglers in military cemeteries will play taps," he said Saturday in his weekly radio address.

If only our long national nightmare was over. That would be a great headline for January 20,2009, wouldn't it? Somehow I just don't see Bubble Boy following the Constitution then since he hasn't followed it for the last eight years.

Oops! Famous people and lawmakers are being caught up in the foreclosure crisis. Another one of things that the crew without a clue couldn't have foreseen.

Double oops! Racism in Alabama, now who would have ever thought that was still happening. I'm sure Harper Lee is just thrilled. Empty minds indeed.

From racism to sexism. Girl does better than boys, parents demand she not be allowed to play with the boys. The boys didn't mind having her in the league. Oh yeah, this country is advanced alright. Into the Dark Ages.

Pot has been back in the news with the typical governmental scare tactics and I've tried to ignore the stories, but when the truly uninformed write an article and say things like

One thing has changed: Pot packs a bigger wallop now than it did in the '70s. Today's leaves are up to five times as potent. So, says Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, still-developing brains, which are "more plastic, more sensitive to being modified," are exposed to higher doses of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis.

Two things spring immediately to mind. One, they know nothing about pot, people don't smoke the leaves, they smoke the buds. And two, why don't they worry about all the prescription drugs they pump into these developing brains to make them conform to a societal standard of behavior? Oh that's right, they were prescribed and it's okay if kids are turned into unthinking automatons that do everything they are told without questioning.

Clinton must stop campaigning, according to all the pundits and people who don't believe in a true democratic process, you know the one where everyone gets a nominal say in the process. Meanwhile, Ron Paul and his supporters haven't given up running against a stumbling McCain campaign and the NY Times has an article up today that might as well be a love letter. Granted it was in the Fashion & Style section, but it's still better treatment than Hillary has gotten.

Big Brass Blog

An Open Letter To Work Comp

This is a personal rant and if one of the Barbarians could bring a printed copy to our next outing, I would greatly appreciate it. I don't have a printer and need a copy for my records. Plus, I need to vent.

My worker's comp representative never returns my phone calls and after leaving her a message last week about the latest refusal to hire me for a job that I really wanted, and which could have substantially improved the quality of my life, I finally received the doctor's determination yesterday and I have to say that I disagree. Not only did it not address my issues, but after two years and a private investigator, they are still trying to blame it on a previous injury. One I have never had. And just for the record, I have never complained about my ankle. It has never been twisted or strained, was never mentioned as part of the work comp injury and I really don't understand why it was included in the QME report. I read for a hobby, I don't ski, play tennis or basketball, jog or do any type of high impact sports. I have never had a broken bone.

Work comp believes that my toe (the one that's fused with two screws in it) is only 5% disabled. The toe itself may be only 5%, but it affects the quality of my life every day, both waking and sleeping. The weight of the covers on the toe wakes me up at least five times a night. And heaven forbid that I get twisted under the covers. That pain is a real eye opener, complete with stars.

Previous to the injury I walked my dog daily, could move quickly through Costco at least 25 times a shift and had successfully taken off 50 pounds. Just by walking daily. Since the accident I have been unable to walk my dog around the park without my knee swelling and my toe becoming numb, red and I am unable to stand in an anatomically correct manner. I have always had good posture (courtesy of the Army) until recently but now I find that I balance most of the weight on my left leg and hip which is causing its own little problems with my back. I am constantly shifting my weight from side to side and if forced to stand more than a few minutes (like in a grocery line) I look for ways to prop my right foot higher than the left.

I have also regained 45 of the 50 pounds (and my dog has gained five), can no longer walk more than a mile without pain and have to use a step stool to get things off the back of my kitchen shelves since I can't stand on my toes. It's a good think I'm not a ballerina. It's a bad thing that I am 5'1".

My work and everything that I have been trained to do requires that I stand for 8 to 9 hours with constant walking in between, so saying that I am fully able to return to work is a crock and is a decision made by someone who thinks that walking to their car constitutes getting around. Who cares if I can't and could never do squats? As I told Dr. B, this was first noticed at fourteen (not 17) when my dad came back from Korea and was showing us how the natives sat. I now walk on the outside of my foot because my big toe only contacts the ground if I deliberately force it by rolling my foot to the inside with every step and then my knee has sharp lances of pain horizontally across the kneecap. In what way am I capable of working a 10 hour shift on my feet, carrying an average of 40 pounds at the same time and then do it all over again the next day? And the day after that.

Previous to the injury I wore a size 6 shoe, a 6 1/2 if they were of the skinny variety. Now I require a 7 to 7 1/2. They must be completely flat with a hard sole, a rounded toe and a large toe box to accommodate the angle the toe is fused at. For some reason, the scar from the fusion is exactly where the edge of the top flap of the shoe presses on the foot and the pain located on the ball of the foot, where most people put pressure while walking or running. Any type of heel is totally out of the question. I have taken witnesses (you should try shopping for these requirements if you don't believe me) to show the difficulty of buying shoes. I usually spend about three hours, seven or eight stores and end up with a pair of sneakers or sandals with an adjustable strap across the top of the foot. The sneakers have soft tops and don't put pressure on the fusion. Sandals are for casual summer wear.

The shoes the doctors recommend start at $250 a pair and are not covered by work comp, (but work comp is willing to pay me $230 a week, which I use for rent, food and gas. All my other bills obviously fell by the wayside and I'm still trying to get the money together to declare bankruptcy), they still look like sneakers and none of them are appropriate for dress wear. You know, the stuff you are supposed to wear when you go to an important function or, in my case, job interviews. I have been told to my face that my footwear is not appropriate for work. Or interviews. Isn't that special, to say nothing of embarrassing. When I was in the Army, my platoon sergeant used to try and match the shine on his jump boots with mine. Now I wish long dresses were in again so I can hide my shoes.

Previous to this injury I had my own personal chef business. I was only doing the weekend work for Aidell's to try and get my foot in the door (Rachael Ray and Martha Stewart started somewhere) and to earn a little extra money for my 50th birthday. Well, my personal chef business is history, all the money I spent training, buying extra equipment, designing and running my own web page has been wasted. For my birthday I was poor and in pain and the birthday this coming Monday doesn't look much better and in many ways worse because now I have no savings at all. Cooking holiday dinners (something I've done for most of my life) for family and friends practically destroys me. I have to take way too many breaks which makes dinner later than usual and the next two days I lay around taking aspirin, icing the knee and toe and moaning in pain.

Speaking of pain, let me reiterate this one more time since the doctors seem to have a hard time reading a chart or listening when they ask you what your allergies are. I am ALLERGIC to NSAIDS (they affect my breathing adversely), I am also ALLERGIC to morphine codeine, tylenol, hydrocodone, oxycodone, fentanyl, tramadol (Ultram), talwin, and amesec, to name a few. I don't make a big fuss about my pain because there isn't anything other than demerol that works on me and I would prefer to save that for something like a car accident or other major trauma. So no, low dose NSAIDs and opioids aren't an option.

After the tsunami in the Indian Ocean I wondered if I would be able to run fast in an emergency. Due to the size of my breasts, this was impossible so I opted to have them reduced. While now it doesn't hurt my chest to run, I still can't move in a hurry because I can no longer push off with the injured foot. As a matter of fact, anything that requires stretching the leg and pointing the toe causes painful cramps and spasms in the calf and directly behind the knee. None of this was an issue before my accident. By the way, have you spoken with my former supervisor who saw me within 30 minutes of the accident and can testify that the knee was swollen, purple and immobile? Or that I used to move quite quickly while at work?

When work comp decided not to approve acupuncture as a modality, it put me out of business. Yes, I am an Acupuncturist and used to be licensed by the State of California. At one time it was determined that acupuncturists weren't capable of running a case appropriately. Well, I was the primary care on a few cases and believe me, I ran a much tighter ship than the one I've been sinking on for the last two years. Pain was assessed every time, you guys didn't do that for me for six months and then again briefly during the QME. My "treatment" consisted of being told to go home and stay off it to see if it would get better. Period. Well, it didn't and it got progressively worse. If proper procedures had been followed there would have been a record of my pain, what made it worse, what made it better. But none of those questions were asked of me. Six months after the accident the foot was authorized for surgery and Dr. N and I discussed that wearing the walking boot while healing from the foot surgery would aggravate my knee but it had to be done. From that point on, the knee became worse and nothing was done until the following May, nine months later. When I asked for physical therapy to help rebuild the calf muscle after being in a cast for several months, Dr. J wasn't that helpful, didn't think I needed it even though the right calf was just a stick and the left calf was muscular. I finally got physical therapy which consisted of telling me to ride a bike, spread my toes and lift my heel off the floor ten times a day. Whoop de doo.

I finally saved up enough money to buy a bike and rode it faithfully because Dr. P said it would help build up my quads and that would take pressure off my knee. The knee felt pretty good (I was up to almost 20 miles a day), but I started to develop problems with the foot. I told Dr. P in August that I was having trouble and he told me to continue riding and to come back in a month. By the end of September the toe was constantly swollen. The beginning of October he expressed surprise that I had a fusion and told me to quit riding the bike because how one puts pressure on the pedal was exactly where the fusion was and that I should take up the elliptical machine instead. I joined the YMCA at the cost of $52 per month, had a personal trainer work out a program to strengthen my legs as Dr. P suggested and I still have pain. But now I can no longer afford to attend the gym and buying a home system is completely out of the question.

I quit riding the bike but the toe was still swollen and numb. On October 10, 2007 my foot slipped off the brake and back onto the accelerator while I was parking and the police determined the swelling in my right foot to be the cause of the car accident. This accident totaled my car and caused me to jump through several hoops for the Department of Motor Vehicles in order to get my license back. It took almost three weeks to get an appointment with my work comp doctor and by then I had been taking aspirin four times a day and icing the foot to get the swelling down. It looked pretty normal by then, but the damage to my life and my car was done. Now instead of driving the just paid off car that got 35mpg, I drive an eight year older car that gets 18 mpg and my car insurance has doubled.

I used to make several thousand dollars a month, now I make less than one. Instead of giving me a lump sum, you want to stretch it out so that it is basically useless to me, other than to keep my head barely above water, until I have used up the $3K that you think destroying my life was worth. Then I am on my own, for the rest of my life. In pain and with difficulty walking. Problems I did not have before the accident. I can't go back to being a massage therapist because I can't push off with my right foot, it's painful and then my knee buckles. I can't go back to practicing acupuncture because I don't have the money for the license fees (now that acupuncture is accepted by work comp again) or the continuing education credits that are required.

This small, part-time job and the ensuing accident have had seriously negative consequences for my life. Everything that I have been trained to do ($100K for the AP degree), my hobby of cooking that I was turning into a profession and now the ability to find a job that will allow me to survive in today's economy, are further out of reach than they were when I was twelve. I'd like to say thank you, but I usually require a kiss when I'm being... shafted.

Oh, and by the way, Dr. B spent 19 minutes with me as actual face time, not the hour that he says. It took me longer to get back and forth to the X-Ray place than he spent talking, or more importantly, listening to me. If I could afford a lawyer, they would be the one writing this letter and handling this case from this point on.

3Bs and IIRTZ.

Dumb Schmuck

Well, I guess it's pretty clear why Gary Dourdan (Warrick Brown) is leaving CSI. Heroin? Ecstasy? Cocaine? Asleep in your car at 5 in the morning? What the heck has been happening in his life to go off the deep end like that?

He needs intervention from Robert Downey, Jr.

Is Soylent Green In Our Future?

Oh, the humanity! Or lack thereof. Baby Boomers have been approaching this point for over 65 years and the system isn't prepared for them. Why am I not surprised?

As more of us become seniors, there will be fewer medical services available and fewer providers who are trained and willing to treat patients for a hugely discounted reimbursement rate. Meanwhile, individual costs for services continue to increase and heaven forbid that you need a prescription. Nothing like being sick, having insurance and your portion of the bill is more than you make in a month. What's the point? To prune the system of those who can no long contribute?

Private insurers began offering Tier 4 plans in response to employers who were looking for ways to keep costs down, said Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, which represents most of the nation’s health insurers. When people who need Tier 4 drugs pay more for them, other subscribers in the plan pay less for their coverage.

But the new system sticks seriously ill people with huge bills, said James Robinson, a health economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “It is very unfortunate social policy,” Dr. Robinson said. “The more the sick person pays, the less the healthy person pays.”

Traditionally, the idea of insurance was to spread the costs of paying for the sick.

“This is an erosion of the traditional concept of insurance,” Mr. Mendelson said. “Those beneficiaries who bear the burden of illness are also bearing the burden of cost.”

snip

Julie Bass, who lives near Orlando, Fla., has metastatic breast cancer, lives on Social Security disability payments, and because she is disabled, is covered by insurance through a Medicare H.M.O. Ms. Bass, 52, said she had no alternatives to her H.M.O. She said she could not afford a regular Medicare plan, which has co-payments of 20 percent for such things as emergency care, outpatient surgery and scans. That left her with a choice of two Medicare H.M.O’s that operate in her region. But of the two H.M.O’s, her doctors accept only Wellcare.

Now, she said, one drug her doctor may prescribe to control her cancer is Tykerb. But her insurer, Wellcare, classifies it as Tier 4, and she knows she cannot afford it.

Wellcare declined to say what Tykerb might cost, but its list price according to a standard source, Red Book, is $3,480 for 150 tablets, which may last a patient 21 days. Wellcare requires patients to pay a third of the cost of its Tier 4 drugs.

So why have insurance if it doesn't help you when you are down and out or on the way out? If everybody quit paying their premiums, the insurance companies would go out of business eventually and the system would have to change. While I understand about the costs of research and development, pharmaceutical companies should have to lower their prices so the average person could afford their prescriptions or is it only the rich that deserve adequate health care in this country? Once you reach a certain dollar amount, you are determined to be a drain and even though you may have contributed to the system all your life, it is more cost effective to eliminate you. Even Superman was affected by these policies. If Christopher Reeve had lived much longer, he would have used up his lifetime benefit and been left without proper coverage. Since he had a preexisting condition he could have kissed the idea of switching insurance companies goodbye.

Providing good medical care has become a business whose only concern is the bottom line, not the welfare of the patient. Hippocrates would be so proud.

BBB

Thursday Morning Ramblings

The quarterly drugs are bad for you story comes from our friends at ABC News. It seems that some enterprising (or very angry) dealer enhanced the weight of his pot with lead granules. Nice guy. But the quote from the drug professor from Kentucky was priceless, if not downright hyperbolic.

"Use of illicit drugs is then, in a sense, a bit like Russian roulette."

Well, duh! If belly fat increases your chances of Alzheimer's, then having diabetes at 50 is going to be another indicator of increased chances of dementia. Which is very unfortunate considering the rates of obesity and diabetes in America. In thirty years we'll have a generation of people who don't know who or where they are and a generation of people who never learned rational thinking. And let's not forget the physical pain of being overweight

"If a person is 10 pounds overweight and goes up the stairs, they will see 80 pounds extra weight on the knee," Paulos said. "So you can imagine the forces a knee will see if they're at 250 pounds, overweight and weak."

No, they can't imagine the forces since mathematics isn't taught in a brain friendly fashion and most people remember just enough to get out of school.

“…if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done — I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.”

Saturday Night Live had quite a few mentions on the 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches list, but they didn't include one that I thought was the funniest. Maybe because it was even more risque than the Chevy Chase/Richard Pryor word association skit. That would be Tina Fey written and Christopher Walken starring waiting for Colonel Angus skit.

That mid-life crisis can have fatal consequences, especially if you decide to start riding a motorcycle. Why people don't think it's necessary to protect your most valuable asset, your brain, baffles me. Freedom to have the wind whipping through your bald spot hair and bugs landing in your teeth, are not worth being brain injured or dead. My dad had an accident on his bike and if it hadn't been for the helmet, he would have died at 48 instead of 60. Everybody in my family has ridden a motorcycle and we have all worn helmets. It won't kill you to look dorky and it keeps your ears warm.

3Bs

Sunday Six

How do you go on strike when you have no work? Once summer arrives and the price of gas is consistently over $4 per gallon, eating locally will be necessary, not trendy. Too bad most of our food comes from somewhere else. And that most people don't know how to cook from scratch, but since they'll be unemployed they should have plenty of time to learn.

Some people have no shame, no shame at all.

What, no taser? What possible explanation could there be for trying to drive a minivan...from the roof?

Women and children first? Not anymore, they get left behind. And not in a Christian way.

Hmm, I thought the trick to successful parenting was to love your child, to spend time with them and to be a good example. $6500 in equipment, toys and fripperies when all they want is you, seems to be a little extreme don't you think? But I guess when your a status symbol, the more, the merrier.

Oh goody, now big pharma can poison us without having to worry about penalties. Botox and thalidomide, here we come.

BBB

Is It Friday Yet?

On the wrong track and headed over a cliff, another fine example of you get what you vote for. Unfortunately, the next election isn't going to change much.

And why are so many people unhappy? Well, 80K lost their jobs last month alone, foreclosures are up and with layoffs increasing that isn't going to change for the better, food and gas prices are up, Iraq (remember it, or has it gone the way of Osama been forgotten?) is nowhere near stable after five years of our money and what's left of our military, and everybody except the taxpayers on the bottom of the economic scale gets a helping dollar hand.

How about not arresting pot smokers and releasing the ones that are in jail? Murderers, rapists and robbers should not be released because of budget cuts, the releases should be for those who "committed" nonviolent crimes and using marijuana is nowhere near as serious as using a gun. Unless you're guarding the Twinkies.

Not content to just run Firefox in beta mode (I'm still using B4, in B5 none of my extensions worked, the most important being Adblock), now I'm trying Blogger in draft. If I had the money you just know I'd be one of those early adopters of most technological toys.

I'm against the death penalty for many reasons but when the original sniper shootings started in Virginia, I thought that the cop who found the shooters should have shot them on sight and said he was defending himself. Why not, they do it with innocent people all the time. My reasoning was that the snipers weren't human and should be put down as rabid animals. Trials, publicity and appeals would never have been an issue, and nobody would be enticed to do it again because there wouldn't be a positive payoff. Wow, I sound like a Republican. In other words, there wouldn't be any copycats. Now they are everywhere

Remember, you only get to read blogs because they let you. You have very few choices if you don't like your provider and if you want speed that approaches what Japan, Korea or Sweden have, you have to pay an exorbitant monthly fee.

BBB

There's No One Like You

OMG! Whatever happened to having a sense of humor? I've been reading (and starring) Stuff White People Like almost since it began. What a hoot! When he did the top 10 ten rap songs and I realized that I have a couple of them on my iPod, but Going Back to Cali by LL Cool J (this video is hysterical and helps to prove the point) didn't make the list I was so heartbroken I almost choked on my tea. I think I'm white but somebody forgot to inform the genes that determine how much melanin I display. As usual the commenters at ABC have gone off the deep end, proving that they come from the shallow end of the gene pool. Oops, Gato Barbieri just finished and the Scorpions are up, my German blood shows up occasionally.

Armchair warriors, indeed. On to the next milestone that people will ignore. The only thing that Cheney regrets is not being able to drop a nuclear bomb. He probably gets a stiffy just thinking about it. Noble, necessary and just. That would be my description of the war crimes that Bush and Cheney should both be charged with, not a description of an illegal and immoral war perpetrated on people who had done nothing and were capable (at the time) of doing nothing to us.

How can he go back to something he can't do in the first place?

I'm running the new Firefox Beta and while I like some aspects of it, I miss some of my extensions. Specifically Tab Mix Plus (just found a build that works), Colorful Tabs (now that one is working) and Forecastfox. There are a couple more that I wish were working, but I'll just have to wait.

Don't drink the water. Or bathe in it, brush your teeth or cook with it. No wonder people think that bottled water is better. If you live in Alamosa, CO, it is. Makes you wonder how many other city's community water systems are in trouble. Other than all the drugs and hormones that they admitted to a few weeks ago.

Selfish and stupid. Deliberately bringing a child into the world when one knows it will die shortly after it's born, usually painfully and completely unaware, is cruel. No matter what your religious beliefs, you are not putting the child's welfare ahead of your own personal interests. Purposefully having a child whose mental impairment means that someone will have to care for it for the rest of its life, is cruel. With the technologies of today, that child could outlive the parents by many years and then who is going to love them? Who is going to fight for the benefits that they will need? Because with the growing lack of compassion people have for those less fortunate, they will have a miserable and lonely life after the parents are gone. What kind of parenting is that? Maybe because I'm watching my mom lose her mind and realize that if it happens to me there will be nobody to make sure that I'm not living on the street that allows me to take the "cold" view.

I'm more than a little tired of the sexism/racism question in the race for president. For me it's empty suit against another dynasty. I can't and probably won't vote for Obama. I live in California so my vote really doesn't count. Otherwise John Edwards would be my candidate but the media made sure that wasn't an option for me.

Oh boy, another day, another stolen laptop with unencrypted patient data. No wonder people aren't as worried about their phones being tapped and their internet habits being tracked as they should be. With all the data that has been lost over the last five years it's no surprise that the average person doesn't care.

You don't say. Wow, a newspaper that states the obvious like it was a new phenomenon. Of course health costs are cutting into wages, Bush's plans have done so much to help the economy. Of his friends and cronies. Walgreen showed a profit for its second quarter, what a surprise. Not.

BBB

My Sentiments Exactly

Courtesy of Reader Rick. What a great guy!

To my friends who enjoy a glass of wine… And those who don't.

As Ben Franklin said: In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria. In a number of carefully controlled trials, scientists have demonstrated that if we drink 1 liter of water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli, (E. Coli) - bacteria found in feces. In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of poop.

However, we do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer (or tequila, rum, whiskey or other liquor) because alcohol has to go through a purification process of boiling, filtering and/or fermenting.

Remember: Water = Poop, Wine = Health

Therefore, it's better to drink wine and talk stupid, than to drink water and be full of shit.

There is no need to thank me for this valuable information: I'm doing it as a public service.

Snowblind Friend

Brilliant lyrics and still topical after all this time, which goes to show how well the war on drugs has succeeded.

He said he wanted heaven, but praying was too slow so he bought a one way ticket on an airline made of snow.

Lying on the pavement with the misery on his brain,

Sort of like the people who wrote Clinton off yesterday.

3Bs