She of the "spiritual war" mentality. Sho 'nuff we pagans will probably make the un-American top ten wanted along with the commie socialists, subversive peacemongers and marijuana smokers.

It's always been about what property they can confiscate and how much they can drive us underground. Killing 'on suspicion' is an old trick and one I'm not happy to see contemplated by the powers-that-be. As Obama doesn't seem to be reeling in the imperial presidency of Bush2, these tools will remain for someone of Palin's ilk to exploit in the future.

I can't go back into the broom closet. It's tattooed on my body in indelible ink and all the lasers of araby aren't enough to whiten this little arm... (with apologies to will shakespeare...)

Arthur Miller likened the Anti-communist furor of the fifties to the 'witchcraft' trials at Salem. It is an apt metaphor, and I (for one pagan) am not so comfortable with our past history being safely 'in the past' anymore.

I've been having to work on it for two weeks (6-8 hours a day), just managed to see a community clinic doc today, because it ain't getting better. She said nothing could be ascertained without an MRI, but I can't afford it, even with sliding scale. I couldn't get pain meds, because as we all know, poor people aren't to be trusted with such things. At least she gave me some flexeril and offered to write me a note to get out of work for two weeks-which I can't do because I am the only person in the fam working right now.


AND they thought I was nuts when I asked about physical therapy. That's right, my community clinic will refer me to a surgeon (if I could afford it) but told me to look up PT's my own damn self. And I wonder what will happen if I need joint replacement surgery (like my grandma did) down the line, especially now that having talked to a doc about my knees makes it a 'pre-existing' condition. (Or may I say, tried to. I am worried my knees going out every few years is indicative of a family weakness that needs investigation, and they are just involved in triage, basically, patch me up so I can go back to the front...)

Fuck him, fuck the war, fuck our government sideways with a chainsaw.

And may all of the cheerleaders wind up with community clinic healthcare. It'll be all they deserve.

Wanna REALLY support community clinics as our backdoor to better things?

Then give them TEETH!

Make sure that equal resources are alloted at every level. Community clinics should do everything in house that a normal clinic does, and any referrals should be subject to the same sliding fee scale. Make those clinics 100% percent UncleSamgovt owned and not extensions of the 'faith-based' octopus that is attempting to eat out public education. Fight against any exclusions of gay partners, and any exclusions for women, or discrimination account of age. Make sure the poverty level as measured in this country is brought up to a standard that guarantees a basic income in this country including protections for the worker and make medicare requirements nationally reflect that standard.

We need to start shaping the community clinics NOW, sending a message to our congresspeople that blatant discrepancies in care based on income are not going to fly, especially as more and more middle class are forced to use these clinics due to the sliding scale and medicare assistance. We need to jump now before the spin, before the hands go out for the funding. We need to keep this from becoming a faith-based morass like education is becoming. We need to do this for us.

No ghettoization of treatment! No double-standard two-tier system! I don't wish the experiences I've had with bottom-tier health care on any of you, so lets make it better for all building a strong support for a future universal system of care. I think all reasonable people no matter their take on the bill can agree that we can work together to insure fair treatment for all. The next life you save may be your own.

However, I really am dissappointed by the quality of trolling on DU. Amateurs all, they not being paid and it shows...you trolls (and U know who who are) are the most pathetic and boring trolls that ever walked the internets and you have a long way to go before anyone will pay for your pathetic attempts. The same pic over and over? The same post over and over? Lame, lame, lame. Boring, boring, boring.

Trolls aren't supposed to be boring, but it is a common amateur mistake that is easily rectified. If you want a real protip, go hang out on 4 chan for awhile and gain some insight and intestinal fortitude. They have some wonderful instructional materials on trolling over there, wonderful resources. If you go to 4 chan be sure to ask the /b/tards about the trolling instructional classic 'two girls one cup', I'm sure they will be happy to show you around and get you aquainted with the art of deep trolling. They're very friendly and helpful like that.


As for the OP, I'm glad you were able to post this again. The knowledge, no matter how painful, must always be considered superior to ignorance.

Workman's comp does nothing to cover you if you just get worn out by repetitive motion. Believe me, someone very close to me is living this reality. Sad thing is, he retrained 15 years ago and took on a shitload of student loan detritus for jobs that are now almost impossible to find in this country due to outsourcing. He's had to go back to manual labor in the only field he knows-besides the defunct one that he still owes money for- and is slowly crippling himself.

Workman's comp doesn't guarantee continuity of care beyond the acute phase. This same person also has an unhealable cracked vertebrae in his spine. It was treated by workman's comp originally , but he has had no long term care availible. Lack of primary follow-up care combined with the reluctance of clinics in the US to prescibe medicineto uninsured people that is sold OTC in other countries, he lives in constant pain and has problems sleeping. In the end, workman's comp only goes so far.

You cannot sue for injury with this stuff for the most part, there being no 'incident' (other than years of work) to pin it all on. Many like myself are itinerant journeymen, we don't have 10 years at any particular employer to point to as a cause. Besides, I know people who are crippled from actual accident/incident injuries who are still trying to get compensation and SS 10 years later, people you would think couldn't be turned down. The system is set up to work against us, plain and simple.

I think you probably know most of this, but I spell it out for those who have no personal experience of such things.

And yes, I agree with you. this is exactly why I and most working class heroes of my aquaintance want single payer. We want parity of care and coverage regardless of economic class. So it doesn't matter what your injury is or where you got it, they are all treated to the best of modern medicine's ability. It doesn't seem to be too much to ask, considering we do society's heavy lifting.

the sausage on the other end might be firmer and not stink so much.

To mix a metaphor.

I started poking into this a little last night. I hadn't paid attention to this trial before, it just seemed like a 'missing white girl' item, but I happened to hear about the 'occult angle' and, having read 'Monster of Florence' last summer, something sort of tripped in my head regarding the similarities. I go poking around at some other sites and whattya know, here's all these not-so-weird coinkydinks that aren't being discussed.

For example here's a bit of background I stumbled upon.

Luther Blissett.

Luther Blissett is not a real person. Luther Blissett is a mostly European anonymus collective. In the late 90's they played an eleborate prank in central Italy.
(From a wiki article: )


There's a lot there. I'm doing some more research on this and am thinking of posting an article for sh*ts and g*ggles. Knox seems to be a little weird herself, and who knows maybe it was a fair cop, but certain Italians seem to be riding social sentiment and a lazy tabloid media for attention, money and power. They certainly are displaying a very particular MO and a fondness for repeating it with americans who speak little Italian.

Besides graphic crimes tinged with twisted puerinency- oh, and a couple of americans in Italy?

How about the rantings of a religious 'psychic' who sees the devil behind everything? And the same proscecutor as well.


Masonic theory that put Knox in the dock

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/eu...



The Monster of Florence

http://www.prestonchild.com/solonovels/pre... /




Today interview with Douglas Preston.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/...

His interview begins about 7:29.

This case is probably not as open and shut as some would like to believe.

That is not hyperbole nor do I bandy that term about lightly. I say that with full comprehension of the word based on his disingenuousity on the Ugandan issue and his track record 'til now as major spokesprick.

He is fucking EEEEEEEVIL! Jesus cast out unclean things such as his white sepulchered ass.

Follow the money. How is Africa benefitting Rick the Dick? Inquiring minds want to know.

Why don't we just dust medcicare off and improve THAT? Why is medicare, this wonderful program that has been gradually improved over the years suddenly cast in quick setting redi-mix concrete?...well why aren't we improving that now, instead of re-inventing the wheel? WHY? Because the goddamn insurance co's are 'too big to fail' and have billions of dollars at their disposal to warp the fabric of our democracy. That's why.

This bill is a chimera of laundry lists, it is an incohesive monster that will harm more people than it helps. I could be wrong, I often am, but I remember my dissappointment in Clinton's administration for NAFTA and Welfare deform, and I have the same nasty feeling now as I had then.

BOHICA is a wonderful modifying adjective for this angst.

I was shocked to see (in a thread about food stamps and other poverty programs) people who would comment that they've never known anybody who had to have FS, etc. Another claimed that those programs couldn't be TOO onerous, after all just look at all the people who were on them.

Apparently many here have no idea what it is like to actually use those government programs, the means testing, the waiting times while employers, landlords, and gatekeepers drag their feet on required paperwork, the conditions that are set financially and life-wise on one who is getting them. And that's not to mention bad apple social workers who play from their own meager places of power and act as if every last benefit is theirs to withhold or wield at will. The upper crust here seem to think that one day, someone wakes up and says, "I need some food, let's go get some FS. It's quick, easy and fun."

All I know is that if medicare is funded up to 133% of poverty and $5000 of assets, I will just happen to have an income of 134% of poverty and $5001 by their reckoning. And for all the talk of subsidies the only numbers I have seen are the costs of premiums and a vague assurance that 'we will take care of you'.

Funny how a lot of this boils down to class. The ones who are still insulated are looking at keeping their doctors and being able to repurchase the insurance they were dropped from. A lot of the lower mids and poor are questioning of it will help at all. I mean, the talk of 'help' is all about premiums. For many, even if the premium is paid off, affording the $5000 or so deductable is still impossible.

May I present the living fossil.



Granted none of them have painted the sistine chapel or invented the piston engine, but, to their account, neither have they dropped nuclear weapons to kill and poison nor have they set up elaborate social systems of institutionalized slavery. They've been here far longer than us, and have a better chance of surviving after we fuck it all up and are no more.

Humans would be astounding creatures if we could only evolve past our need for violence, greed and xenophobia.

sealed the deal for me last fall.

We are in the early stages of some national mass psychosis, something to which (looking at history) we are prone to. Yes, capitalism has becoma a religion. Communism was as well, as much as people wish to pretend that men like Stalin or Mao were absolute atheists. The presence of communism kept some of the worst abuses of capitalism, if not in check, at least removed. We are now experiencing Zappa's theater moment, where the curtains lift to reveal the brick wall. Capitalism won the war, toppled one wall while building new ones around the favelas, and has become the reigning religion on the block, demanding absolute obedience.

In a democracy, regulated capitalism is given its legitimate sphere, ala Adam Smith. I don't think there is any way we can supress the entrepenurial spirit in humans, and I don't think we should try. But we are not a democracy, we are a republic sliding into oligarchy for some time now. Companies are no longer run by particular humans, but by boards, shareholders and other immortal beings. The marriage of Jesus and capitalism sealed it in some regions of this country. Capitalism (with a capitol C, the religious fanatic kind) prefers a dictatorship, it makes it all so much easier, because you have to control the variables to keep that stock rising. Fear is the easiest thing to manufacture when you own the media.

i hate humanity sometimes, we want to steal the limited hours of life itself apparently

What good are we if we are not serving them? They want to suck us dry. They want every waking moment either serving them or shopping for their products and when they can't get either we either are made slaves or allowed to die. Our time, which is so short here is the last thing of value and something I have often lived in 'genteel poverty' in order to enjoy freely.

They are vampires sucking out our lives and the finite time we have to live them.

I think we could get a pretty accurate count of men who dislike women in power by counting the SUPPORTERS of Sarah Palin as opposed to her detractors.

Let me explain.

Many of you here are old enough to remember the volumes of shiny bible stories and children's stories that accompanied every doctor or dentist's waiting area. Donated by vaguely Christian groups, I fear I sifted thru them after I ran out of Highlights and Ranger Rick.

There was always one story of female redemption in them. I will recap the single basic plot now:

The bold, independent tomboy (whom I always identified with, of course) would thru some device or another be convinced to don a skirt and make-up, do her hair and trim her hangnails. The parents all ooh-and-ah and the boy next door suddenly asks her to the prom.

Short but sweet. No pretense of finding women attractive as themselves.

Some of you also remember adolescence in the late seventies and early eighties and you will have known people whose parents sent them away to 'rehab' and 'evaluation' for a few weeks for 'acting out', 'depression', and general teenage angst. I suppose being gay would have been another cause. The girls I knew who had spent time in that kind of psych evaluation program reported pretty much the same thing to me:

The pressure exerted to have them conform to rather stereotypical sexual standards was immense. Sometimes getting released depended on donning more mainstream feminine garb, putting on make-up, styling hair, and showing a certain polite deference to anyone who thought they were in authority.

*********************************************

Here's the point. From what I can see, the supporters of Sarah Palin support her because she is the caricature that she is. It feeds into their conceptions of proper womanhood and femininity.

And they feel very safe in Todd being always at her side. I mean ALWAYS at her side. Like svengali, hand up her ample rump and tickling her overworked tonsils, at her side.

Slutty stewardess, secretary, nurse, teacher. They are all symbols of women's limited authority and professionalism. Sarah purposefully cultivates this look. It appeals viscerally to men (and some women too) who feel threatened by actual power and authority being wielded by women. She presents to them a safe image, The frontier babe, The Gov-I'd-like-to *, fertile and yielding to the patriarchal authority of scripture with a manly, masculine, man's man at her side.

People who call her out on this image are not bashing women. By cultivating this unprofessional image, this leering, butt-shaking lip-smacking horror, Palin is actively at work trying to roll back decades of our progress in the larger world. I feel no need to defend her from anyone and can only hope that her example will ultimately turn out to be a cautionary one.

She even fits another stereotype: "She looks great until she opens her mouth".


Hitting post message, running, Flame away.