Saturday, July 24, 2010

Night Of The Living Bush

I knew it would happen. It was as inevitable as a Glenn Beck weep-athon or a UTube video catching Sarah Palin tripping over her own tongue. In a country like America, one that is overflowing with attention span challenged, brain damaged yoo-hoos, it was only a matter of time till George The Lesser was resurrected from the dead.

From Paul Krugman's latest op-ed I give you:

There’s now a concerted effort under way to rehabilitate Mr. Bush’s image on at least three fronts: the economy, the deficit and the war.

On the economy: Last week Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, declared that “there’s no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue, because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy.” So now the word is that the Bush-era economy was characterized by “vibrancy.”

I guess it depends on the meaning of the word “vibrant.” The actual record of the Bush years was (i) two and half years of declining employment, followed by (ii) four and a half years of modest job growth, at a pace significantly below the eight-year average under Bill Clinton, followed by (iii) a year of economic catastrophe. In 2007, at the height of the “Bush boom,” such as it was, median household income, adjusted for inflation, was still lower than it had been in 2000.

But the Bush apologists hope that you won’t remember all that. And they also have a theory, which I’ve been hearing more and more — namely, that President Obama, though not yet in office or even elected, caused the 2008 slump. You see, people were worried in advance about his future policies, and that’s what caused the economy to tank. Seriously.

On the deficit: Republicans are now claiming that the Bush administration was actually a paragon of fiscal responsibility, and that the deficit is Mr. Obama’s fault. “The last year of the Bush administration,” said Mr. McConnell recently, “the deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product was 3.2 percent, well within the range of what most economists think is manageable. A year and a half later, it’s almost 10 percent.”

But that 3.2 percent figure, it turns out, is for fiscal 2008 — which wasn’t the last year of the Bush administration, because it ended in September of 2008. In other words, it ended just as the failure of Lehman Brothers — on Mr. Bush’s watch — was triggering a broad financial and economic collapse. This collapse caused the deficit to soar: By the first quarter of 2009 — with only a trickle of stimulus funds flowing — federal borrowing had already reached almost 9 percent of G.D.P. To some of us, this says that the economic crisis that began under Mr. Bush is responsible for the great bulk of our current deficit. But the Republican Party is having none of it.

Finally, on the war: For most Americans, the whole debate about the war is old if painful news — but not for those obsessed with refurbishing the Bush image. Karl Rove now claims that his biggest mistake was letting Democrats get away with the “shameful” claim that the Bush administration hyped the case for invading Iraq. Let the whitewashing begin!

Again, Republicans aren’t trying to rescue George W. Bush’s reputation for sentimental reasons; they’re trying to clear the way for a return to Bush policies. And this carries a message for anyone hoping that the next time Republicans are in power, they’ll behave differently. If you believe that they’ve learned something — say, about fiscal prudence or the importance of effective regulation — you’re kidding yourself. You might as well face it: they’re addicted to Bush.


I've no doubt that they'll succeed. They did it with Reagan & they can do it with GW.
I don't know, maybe Americans, lacking any appreciable brain matter, think they'll be immune from the rabid hoards of blood thirsty brain eating Republican zombies that are milling about in malls & Sarah Palin book signings, just waiting for an opportunity to sink their capped & bleached teeth into fresh meat.





See what I mean?

Personally, I have to blame the Liberal media & their misleading portrayals of zombie cuisine choices.



The idea that they'll stop with our brains is just so 80s.
The 21st century Republican zombie knows Americans don't have any brains left.
We've made that fact glaringly apparent over the last decade.

1st, they gave us this:



& this:



Then we gave them this:



Then they gave us this:



& watched as we blamed someone else:



Gee, where have I seen this before?

Oh yeah:



So, nibbling on American brain pate can't be the impetus anymore.
Then again, do zombies really need a reason?

Hell, I think good old fashioned zombies would be refreshing.
Instead, what we'll get is this:




Remember, you have been warned.

25 comments:

Morocco Bama said...

Can we have another planet, please. Really, I mean it. Another planet for those of us who have the awful habit of thinking and just want to live an unencumbered, joyful life in peace and harmony. They have have this shit hole they've created and want to destroy. They thrive on turning paradise into a cesspool. We should not have to pay the price. Give us our own planet, please. We can't live with these freaks any longer.

just_another_dick said...

I wish Shrub.
Just my savings on headache meds alone would benefit me immensely.

I had to take my kids to piano lessons for the first time last week (my wife usually does it) and the father of the teacher is a die-hard Republican from New Hampshire.
He immediately asked my thoughts on "Obamacare."

I told him it would probably end up being another money pit like Bush's War On Terror. On the upside, at least we're not using it to bomb the crap out of somebody.

I thought his head was going to explode.

While it was amusing, I was taken aback a bit because I thought I was being pretty damn fair.
He acted like I just pissed on a flag & wiped my ass with the original copy of the Constitution.

Go figure.

Anonymous said...

* First premise: “Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units.”
* Second premise: “Anything can be true if somebody says it loudly enough.”
* Third premise: “Fact is that which enough people believe.”

In the end we may blame preachers and charlatans, but it is the media that carry the message. We simply cannot blame the media, however. The media “acted with the tacit approval of its audience. We leave ourselves on automatic pilot and realize, too late, what happens when we do.”

That is worth remembering. I belong to a group with the slogan “Dare to Think.” We ought to do that more often.

Skeptical Inquirer book review by Keith Taylor March/April 2010

It's the ability to boast about something. Who cares if it is disinformation. This is fun to do in America.

The newly published book The Treatment Trap: How The Overuse of Medical Care is Wrecking Your Health and What You Can Do To Prevent It states in the Foreword:

From various corners of our culture we hear concerns that the assumptions we have made about health and our health-care system are incorrect. There is a growing sense that something else is influencing health care... Authors Gibson and Singh bring these valid concerns down to the individual consumer level as they tell the stories of Americans who trusted their health-care providers and the health-care delivery system only to find that they received care they did not need, at times with disastrous consequences.

Buried in medical journals and documents are a few of the many following facts:

1/3 of people who were told they needed heart bypass surgery did not need it, according to research conducted by doctors at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Rand Corporation.
I add that these facts are also found in other major medical universities journals in the U.S.

Nearly 300,000 (what?) women have healthy ovaries removed unnecessarily each year during a hysterectomy, according to a study published in the journal of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Tens of thousands of people have back surgery for chronic back pain when evidence for surgical success is virtually nonexistent, according to researchers at the Dartmouth Medical School.

etc..

Millions of Americans have become victims of The Treatment Trap. This book helps the reader be more alert when deciding to receive medical care that will benefit oneself.

As doctors, we don't want to see the cruelty and pain we inflict on people. If we took the time to look, we would stop inflicting pain. But we don't stop to look... The dehumanization begins in medical school. We are trained not to look at the pain we inflict, or the pain we feel when we inflict pain on others.

Dr. Lucian Leape of the Harvard School of Public Health says, "It is quite obvious that the cause of the abuse and overuse is a system that rewards people for the more they do...It is time to speak up...

just_another_dick said...

Mr. B., I could give you my own examples.

Recently a client I used to assist a few years back began to develop fairly frequent instances of aspiration pneumonia. The institution I work at decided to have a stomach tube inserted in him. The hospital did the operation, but, rather than following normal procedure, didn't keep him for observation. They immediately sent him back to us. 2 days later he collapsed in the restroom. During the operation the doctor inadvertently perforated his bowel. This led to seepage which led to 3 separate types of sepsis infecting his body.

He's now at the hospital, strapped to the bed, intubated, & swollen to 4 times his normal size.
Apparently the sepsis caused his kidneys to fail. It appears that he will not return to us, instead going to a place that handles severe medical problems.

A month ago the guy was walking around fine. He'd get a few cases of aspiration pneumonia a year but the rest of the time he'd be fine.
Would the pneumonia have killed him? Probably, over time. But he would have had a life, even if it was a life that was a pale shadow of ours.

Now, just infirmity, then death.

A few years ago they tubed a guy then, one day, someone just decided he could eat again. No barium swallow was done. They just decided.
Within a month his lungs had collapsed. He then spent weeks in hospital before returning to us to die shortly after.

There's a client who I have written about before. A holy terror who used to bite, kick, punch, spit, shit on the floor & in his pants continuously, throw his shit at you, & shred his clothes at an amazing rate (one month he went through 300 pairs of sweatpants.
Then they put him on Lithium. For a good year he slept about 22 hours a day. He has since acclimated himself to it to a degree, and his behaviors are almost caricatures of his former fierceness, but he has developed this palsied tremor and his breathing has deteriorated to the point that he needs a wheelchair for transportation.

While I wasn't a big fan of his old behavior, it was at least interesting. Now he is a fucking trembling zombie.

Anonymous said...

U.S. health care costs twice as much per person as health care in Canada (Maceda 2010), which has universal coverage and a single-payer system. If health care in the U.S. was twice as good as that in Canada, one could conclude that the systems are of equal value. All-in-all, close examinations support the systems being roughly equivalent in quality of care (FactCheck.org 2009c). There are some drawbacks in Canada, such as longer waits for elective procedures.

I add which may be unnecessary anyway.

The disinformation machinery would contend that Canada has socialized medicine and prevents people from choosing their own doctor. In Canada, people have free choice of their physician (Rachlis 2009). The U.S., on the other hand, forces people to chose a doctor within their insurance plan. And yes, the private health insurance industry in the U.S. would fight tooth and nail to prevent a single-payer system from being enacted, because it would put them out of business.

Surprisingly, the U.S. already publicly funds about 50% of all health care expenses through Medicare and Medicaid. All forms of efficient health care will be rationed care in some sense. It is only reasonable to ration the care of a seriously injured person over a person suffering from a cold virus. The other patient has to wait. In addition, experts on comparing U.S. and Canadian health care have argued that Canada rations on need while the U.S. rations on income (Feeny 2009).

The congressional debate rose to comedic proportions when statements submitted to the Congressional Record by more than a dozen different lawmakers were found to be identical (Pear 2009). The source of this duplication was traced to lobbyists working for a large biotechnology company called Genentech. The lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and another for Republicans. There are six health care lobbyists for every member of congress (Attkisson 2009).

Health insurance companies in the U.S. account for only 4 percent of the total health care costs. The lion's share of costs are hospitals with 31%, physicians with 21%, and pharmaceutical companies with 10% (Karl 2010). So fixating on insurance alone over-simplifies the situation.

excerpts from Skeptical Inquirer July/August 2010 Blindsided by a Culture of Disinformation article by Alan J. Scott

Anonymous said...

That is rather sad Dick. The doctors make out on this kind of business.

My father had 3 defibrillators put inside his body. They removed the original based on a recall. The second one was removed because it poked a hole in his chest and caused an infection. I suspect he has had triple bypass heart surgery that was unnecessary and his defibrillators have shocked him on 2 separate occasions. One time when he was about to give a speech before 250 people and the other time when he was about to watch the Super Bowl. Ones heart normally skips beats when one is nervous and/or excited. The electrocution of my father, I believe, was unnecessary.

The problem is not his heart. It is the technology strapped unto his heart. It is the shocks that have scared him poopless and he will never go without a defibrillator. He is convinced that the technology is necessary. I believe the defibrillators are the problem that is causing undo stress and worry.

My mother slammed her head on her steering wheel after a driver ran a stop sign and totaled my mother's automobile. She had a mouse above her left eye just after the accident. Several months later she had problems seeing out of her left eye and went to an eye doctor to get assistance. The doctor stressed that her detached retina had nothing to do with her accident. I went to Wayne State University Medical Library and found proof in the medical journals that a detached retina can be caused by a severe blow to the head. The doctor was adamant in his diagnoses. My mother had laser surgery performed that was botched and she is noticeably blind in her left eye as a result.

I guess there are a lot of stories about the medical establishment that are horrific. I hope that this will not happen to me or any one else.

Morocco Bama said...

I really do believe this is where it is all headed. Some are going to evolve, and others are going to be Left Behind. A technological evolutionary Rapture, if you will, and you and I won't be raptured, I can assure you. That leaves you expendable.

http://agimanhattanproject.com/

Also, a good read to go along with that is this book I read several years prior. This isn't sensationalism or conspiracy theory. This shit is really happening in broad daylight.

http://www.garreau.com/main.cfm?action=book&id=2

Morocco Bama said...

Here's a great documentary serving as support to the above links I have provided. It's three parts, so I am providing a link to each part.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7141762977713668208#

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7141762977713668208#docid=2258529707984107504

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7141762977713668208#docid=8945702810854373085

ericswan said...

Heads up please. In working through the longer term data, i had to go through some of the last of the immediacy stuff due to cross links. Within the immediacy data sets there are clear indications
of a major [damaging] earthquake on west coast of america (MOST likely
north america due to angular momentum issues of planetary alignment) and
more probably than not, in the PNW perhaps down to mid CA. This quake
shows as being completed with problems, *such as yet more [wedding
interruptions] by August 3, however the data accretion patterns point to the
last two days of July as the point of impact and largest number of after
shocks. Damages are indicated to include [roadways] and [bridges] such that [transportation/movement] is [restricted (in some places)] for months afterward. Water flows are also to be affected and even altered for long time (months/years) which is how i found it. By noting the odd number of longer term indicators for [water pathways change] in the data accretion patterns for November and onward in 2010. A significant majority of these traced back to something in the immediacy data that turned out to be this pending earthquake in very late July.

Probably i am wrong though. In any case thought to let y'all know. Will try to speak to George Noory about it tonight (7/26/2010) on Coast to Coast AM. Probably just because i do this, it wont happen. Here's hoping pies bake without interruption.
clif high
www.halfpasthuman.com (posted 7/26/2010)

Morocco Bama said...

Eric, so what? Seriously, so what? Can't these Catastrophe Fans realize, once and for all, that in our present system, whether a catastrophe is planned or not, natural or unnatural, it will be temporarily sensationalized then absorbed, assimilated and forgotten....quickly replaced by the next exploitable catastrophe.

Also, these dipsticks are like the Boy Who Cried Wolf. I just can't take them seriously. They average a catastrophic prediction a day and they're batting .000. Stopped clocks have a better track records then these freaks.

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