Woz is always ahead of us...

September 24, 2009 3:35 AM

woz said:

Monkey Magic - no doubt you will bounce back to us after this surgery or treatment to your beautiful heart.

I'm sending out my best recovery aussie thoughts and songs to encourage you through this journey. My hopeless sense of direction is well known so I'm sending them simultaneously in all directions at all times day and night so that some of them will connect and make you smile and feel better.

I look forward to hearing that all is well with you and that you are in full swing once more.

We join her in sending our best wishes for a speedy recovery to monkey!

And all of us at the DCP also send our best wishes for speedy recoveries to Christy and Woz who have been suffering through their own health issues.

Take care all of you! We need a lot more people swinging from those trees and keeping Monkey company!

The time has come for the Republican Party to find their own Lieberman. Though Lieberman only had to take a stand against Presidential bj's, the Republicans need to find someone to take a stand against racism, violence, hate speech, and gun-carrying-killers.

Like these.

"Edward M. Kennedy, the husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle we loved so deeply, died late Tuesday night at home in Hyannis Port (Massachusetts)," the Kennedy family said in a statement early on Wednesday.

Rest in Peace, Senator Kennedy.

Eek, eek! monkey here, throwin' a thread out to the masses in hopes of creating a technicolor dreamcoat!

As ya know, I've been harping endlessly on the hypocrisy of the religious right for years as it applies to some pretty important national issues, not the least of which has been war and torture, and how their positions on such matters just doesn't fall in line with the basic teachings that are central to their claims of who they model their lives after.

I see the health care reform "debate", and I use the term loosely, as no different.

Finally yesterday, the president made an attempt to appeal to not just the religious right, but to a wide swath of faith-based groups.

My question to Believers in a higher power, of which I consider myself one, is... do you/We put country first, personal interests first, or do you/We indeed act as the Good Book guides us to act?

Metaphorically speaking, do we as a nation simply walk past the Samaritan woman drawing water from the well in the searing heat of the mid-day sun?

Is that the "christian" thing to do?

Grace Matters!

Cue the Prez...
President Obama appealed Wednesday to faith-based groups to help garner support for his plan to overhaul the nation's health care system.

"I need you to knock on doors, talk to neighbors, spread the facts and speak the truth," he told religious leaders and reporters on a conference call that was streamed over the Web at faithforhealth.org.

"This debate over health care goes to the heart of who we are as a people," he said. "I believe that nobody in America should be denied basic health care because he or she lacks health insurance."

Some 140,000 people participated in the call, the coalition of more than 30 faith-based groups that organized the event said in a written statement.

Obama urged the listeners to reject misinformation about his plans, noting, "There are some folks out there who are, frankly, bearing false witness."

He referred to some assertions as "ludicrous," and cited as an example rumors that the government is planning to set up "death panels" to determine the fate of the nation's elderly.

"That is just an extraordinary lie," he said, adding that it was based on a provision in the House legislation that would allow Medicare to reimburse someone who voluntarily sought counseling on how to set up a living will for the end of life.

"It gives an option that people who can afford fancy lawyers already experience," the Harvard-trained lawyer said.

In addition, the plan does not provide health insurance to illegal aliens, it does not represent a government takeover of health care and it would not lead to government funding of abortion, he said.

"These are all fabrications that have been put out there in order to discourage people from meeting what I consider to be a core ethical and moral obligation: that is, that we look out for one another; that is, I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper. And in the wealthiest nation in the world right now we are neglecting to live up to that call."

Obama, who took no questions, said the opposition was no surprise. "Throughout history, whenever we have sought to change this country for the better, there have always been those who wanted to preserve the status quo," he said. "These always boil down to a contest between hope and fear."

Lately, the debate over health care insurance reform has lost it's way in policy wonk and disagreements over the myths and lies from the media and some standard bearers of the Republican party. Lost in the lies is the basic truth about medical insurance reform and why we need it.

• Fifty people a day will die due to lack of insurance and early intervention.
• More than half of US bankruptcies are caused by medical problems, even amongst those who have insurance.
• A large portion of our countrymen do not have insurance and/or are under insured, and more are losing it each day as businesses eliminate full-time jobs with benefits for temp workers or part timers.

So what are we to do?

Ministry of Truth and War on Error at Daily Kos beseech all of us to tell our health care horror stories, and they will have a repository reflecting the human pain and suffering to this issue and not only the wonky side.

I encourage you to create an account there and share your horror story if you have one to share. It's simple. I've mashed their ideas together to describe what they want you to do. Here goes...:

My Health Care Horror Story

In the spirit and tradition of the IGTNT series and the GUS series, among other and many fine DKos traditions, I propose a series of diaries that detail the very personal costs that our for-profit health care system takes from American families in order to give profits to the Medical/Insurance/Complex. (snip)We should share our stories and e-mail them to the White House and our Congressmembers.

Simply begin your diary with the words My Health Care Horror Story

And then share your tale. Let the Intro be a brief overview of how the insured has been abused and suffers. The Body can be a brief listing of their out of pocket expenses or something, and state how reform can help you and your loved ones, as well as our nation.

The more personal a story is, the more others can relate to it.

In the meantime, I want to share a few stories of my own. I have been working on this for a few weeks already but never felt like it was quite ready to publish. The original idea was to share my own personal health insurance nightmare, but I discovered that I couldn't comfortably share it in such a public forum.

So instead, I have permission to share a few of my friends' stories.

Hattip to IndyBend for this video.

A woman who is a cancer survivor thanks Lyndon Johnson for government run health care. This video says it all.

Submitted by Wendy Lohse and reprinted with much thanks!!!

This is not about nurturing the intellect. It’s not for politics or education or health or economics. Nope. Not even climate change and the environment are of special consequence with regard to this piece.

This one is to nourish the spirit. Please don’t leave me to embarrass myself all alone here.

I invite you to drop in to the DCP and share a coffee or a tea; a chat and a laugh; a poem or a story. I’ll try and keep the biscuit tin refilled. I might do the same with a “cookie jar” if I had one.

There will be no intellectual value in anecdotes or poems that I contribute. But please, feel free to up the tone if you wish. My intention is to laugh and have fun. It’s been really hard to choose a piece because I have truckloads of dreadful writing from my early life.

Welcome to August, folks. What we are doing on our summer vacation (?) is writing, thinking, walking in the woods, picking up trash on the almost-pristine beach at the end of our road, and eating a lot of lobsters and cinnamon-strawberry rhubarb buns.

We surely wish we could share the lobsters, buns, and beach with you, but you’ll have to get yourselves up here to Musquodoboit Harbour (45 minutes from Halifax!) for that. In the meantime, let me share what we have been researching and writing about.

Legibility. Change. And heat.

We're going to keep things light and easy here for our favorite Monkey.

The theme of the thread is heart songs. Post your favorite heart songs (or heart puns) here. Save all the serious discussion for the previous thread.

Monkey is going through a difficult time right now and we want to turn the DCP into a joyful, supportive place for him. Our heart belongs to you, Monkey.

Nothing is better to keep the heart pumping than Elvis Costello in "Pump it up"--per Monkey's request.

Rock on...

No words. Just listen...

What do you think about what Michael Savage asked his audience to do? (Gotcha! You gotta listen to the whole thing to hear it!)

Now watch what Ed Schultz said about it.

Is this representative of our Freedom of Speech or is this an invitation towards something more violent? Do we need to protect Savage's right to say what he did or should there be some limitations on it?

What do you think?