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Don’t forget that he wants to kill babies, too, and eat fetuses with dijon mustard.

TJ: Canada City is now officially out of recession, says the Bank of Canada.

@rptrcub:
No jobs though. Hard to be thriving if our biggest customer, US America, has no money.

@ManchuCandidate: If I buy a six of Molson, will that help?

Meanwhile, my Senator Marie Antoinette DiFi, fresh off of telling Arnie and her state constituents “Drop Dead! I’m not asking Barry and the feds to help out your sorry asses” has now told people without health care to suck it.

What is so fucking hard about lowering the age on Medicare?

@SanFranLefty: Isn’t there anyone credible who can primary her ass?

@blogenfreude: Who? Attorney General Moonbeam? Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez? SF Mayor McDreamy? State Comptroller John Chiang? None of the Dems would dream of taking her on.

@blogenfreude: A half ounce of Northern Lights?

The comments on this ad from Glock World regarding A Nation in Distress and flying the flag upside down are depressing. I wish they would just ship me my backordered .22 LR conversion kit* for my 9mm Glock 19 so I don’t have to read their shit anymore (although the tactical bacon ad and the Easter Bunny things were cool).

http://www.glockworld.com/Article.aspx?AKey=Nation_In_Distress&NID=434

At least one guy got it right:

“You all sound like a bunch of red neck asshole that have no respect for your presidency. It seems you idiots would be more happy with Bush selling the Soul of America to foreign countries for the profit of the Republican party better then Obama coming in to try and fix the last 8 years of poor precidency. What world are you prejudice assholes from. You talk about Hitler like he is some to be praised…Dah!”

* been waiting four months and don’t want to lose my place in line because they are just not available anywhere due to the hoarding of anything firearms related since last fall. I guess I need to cancel my order and find an alternative supplier so I don’t give these assholes my money.

One thing I don’t understand: praps y’all can help.

Hospice care. I take it that the Republicans don’t know about it otherwise they would have a: privatized it, or b: declared it promotes abortions and banned it. When my mother was living through her final weeks her doctor got her home hospice care which was simply wonderful. They brought all the equipment we needed and when she entered her final couple of days they delivered breathing equipment and super strong drugs at 9 pm. What they don’t do – can’t do – is provide full-time nursing. We had a nurse come once a week – or as needed in an emergency – and a nurse’s aide 3 times a week. But it really shows you what a well-run public health program can be.

She died very early in the morning and after we’d sat with her for a while I called the hospice and they arranged for someone to be there within a half-hour to issue a death certificate and to help us clean up. They also called the funeral home. These are not things we plan for but when you need them it’s enormously comforting to have people around who know how to get things done.

I just read Ivan Ilych and was struck by how closely my mother’s death paralleled his. Apart from the pain. But the description of a body shutting down is remarkably detailed and struck a chord with me.

Having lived through this experience is what has made me so hysterical about long-term care. People seem to have no idea what it costs to have round-the-clock nursing. Or even part of the day nursing. And I’ve been advised against buying long-term care insurance. Apart from it being very expensive there’s no guarrantee that the company from which you buy a policy will still be in business come the time you need it. NY State has a kind of partnership plan that, while still expensive, is at least possible to afford. It’s the kind of insurance one hopes never to need but unless one has some provision for it it is ruinously expensive. It literally makes one penniless.

The Tolstoy piece, for all its mastery, was somewhat dismaying for its moralizing finale. I wonder if it’s the first instance of someone going ‘into the light’ as they die? Its structure and detail were, of course, stunning as was the peculiar ‘unadorned’ style common to his last works. And I suppose that if Tolstoy wants to tell me an edifying story I should shut up and be grateful. Which is what I was. I must say, I thought Kreutzer Sonata a truly great piece of writing; one that seems to pull away from its own time and seem fresh and new today. So does that miracle story about the lottery ticket the title of which I never remember. That one made me run about the room like a fool. So thanks for that idea, I was very glad to have read it and, as I said, its structure is masterful. Talk about in media res.

It’s turning into By Any Means Necessary time, methinks.

Incidentally, folks, that provision is about seniors providing instruction as to what should happen to them should they become brain-dead or lapse into a coma- basically making sure that providers know if an individual wants to be kept alive on life-support or not. It has nothing to do with euthanasia whatsoever.

I know you knew they were lying, but I thought I’d just point out how.

@Benedick:

Having gone through the end of both my sister’s life, and my grandfather’s, I have to voice some support for your point about palliative care. Seriously, folks, if you have access to a long-term-care insurance program, think about it. It’s not so much about what happens with you, it’s about making the people around you comfortable and keeping them focused on what’s important when your time finally comes. The mouse spoils me, so I pay about $30 a month for a program that will pay for $200.00 a day in in-home care when I get the call. Plus, these programs are structured so that the younger you are, the less the premium, and the rate only increases with inflation as time goes on. Additionally, if you break a leg or something non-fatal but want the help, you can use the benefit for that. It’s a good deal.

Seriously, check it out. Not to be a salesman, but when my grandfather died, we had a nurse with him that helped us through it, and when my sister went, we didn’t, and the difference is like night and day.

@chicago bureau: The pigfucker revolution approaches? Like a rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem?

@Prommie:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
Bill O’Reilley cannot hear his producer through his earpiece;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
We have to do it live!
Barack Obama is loosed upon the world,
The commie-tide is loosed, and everywhere
The promise-keepers bro-mance pledge is drowned;
The rich ones lack support for Sarah Palin, while the hillbillies
Are full of passionate intensity, but lost their car keys in the barcalounger.

Surely some mouth-breather revelation is at hand;
Surely Ronald Reagan 2.0 is at hand!
The Ronald Regan 2.0! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of The New Republic
Troubles my sight; somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with the rhetorical power of Bobby Jindahl and the head of Mike Huckabee,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its fat thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of indignant desert harpies, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter!
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That a year or so of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what wingnut beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Washington to be born?

@Tommmcatt Floats: bravo!

@Tommmcatt Floats: Excellent. Should replace the Pledge of Allegiance.

Prommie: If they’re rolling up to fight over the inclusion of hospice care in the government part of the plan, then everything’s on board. Proposed equity in contraceptive coverage? Funding for trips to the shrink? Failure to insert a rider proclaiming that apple pie is a tasty dessert? THE BILL MUST DIE!

[Slightly off-topic: the next time somebody says “socialist” in order to attack Barry should be followed by photographic evidence of gulags / re-education camps / self-criticism sessions in the United States. Srsly: PROOF OR GTFO.]

@chicago bureau: They don’t seem to have any desire to actually fight over actual policy, they just seemed to focus on this provision in order to scare up the elders with the “Hussein Obama wants you to die to save money” thing. Barack did, not very wisely, mention the fact that 90% of the average person’s total lifetime medicare benefits are paid out in the last 30 days of their life. So, like, if we are spending 90% (or whatever amazingly high percentage it is) just to give everyone 30 days, maybe we should somehow deal with this issue. I was all like “Shhhhh, Barry, all us wonks know this shit, but you politicos ain’t supposed to say it in public, you’ll scare the olds.”

@redmanlaw: Order cancelled. At lease *those* right wing shit heads won’t be getting my money.

@redmanlaw: Wow, that’s quite a comment thread. The screeching kinda burns, doesn’t it.

Could someone please explain to me why it’s wrong to have hospice care, much less physician-assisted suicide, for the dying and terminally ill in order to ease their suffering and that of their families, and why it’s wrong to provide a life-saving late-term abortion to a woman, but it’s perfectly OK when a couple of mouth-breathing Jeebus-freaks allow their 15-month-old daughter to die painfully over the course of several days of an entirely treatable case of pneumonia, while they prayed for her instead of, say, calling a doctor or going to the ER when she couldn’t breathe? Where was that child’s “right to life”? Where was the state’s “interest in the preservation of human life” in her case, huh? [Oregon parents’ manslaughter trial for said death ended today in acquittal for her (she, being the woman, was only following the orders of her Head-of-the-household husband) and a slap on the wrist for “endangering the welfare” for him. My head is asploding.]
Apparently we just need to say that we’re not depriving our elderly of life-prolonging care, we’re just praying over them and leaving it in God’s hands, O ye of little faith.

@Mistress Cynica:
Because rich interests don’t make money based on simple human compassion.

@Prommie: They don’t seem to have any desire to actually fight over actual policy, they just seemed to focus on this provision in order to scare up the elders with the “Hussein Obama wants you to die to save money” thing.

I told Ma Nabisco last night that we’re watching the same war of attrition against ObamaCare that we suffered in the early Clinton years – and very possibly to the same failed result. I’m terribly mopey, not hopey.

@Nabisco: It’s worse. The banks have come up with debt instruments for medical expenditures. Now you have the doctors, insurance companies, hospitals AND wall street all shrieking that the world will explode if anything but for-profit medicine is ever practiced in the US. You can hear the cackling from the product design offices of the big banks. “Lookit! Lines of credit for medical care! Better rates if you have a house with a discharged mortgage and use it collateralize the loan. Ha.Hahaha.Hahahahahahahaha. Call our Congressman and tell him we’ll disembowel him if he votes for Obamacare.” The financial services people see this as a greenfield opportunity. As soon as someone reaches the point where they can pay off their mortgages, they can look forward to crushing debt for medical expenses.

Mistress Cynica: Odd story from the Trib the other day about a doctor whose sole job is to operate on Jehovah’s Witnesses (who have a thing against blood transfusions). Most hospitals won’t admit Jehovah’s Witnesses, or operate on them, for fear of being sued.

Me? Prayer is fine. Prayer with copious amounts of pharmaceuticals and trained professionals, in a sanitary and relaxed atmosphere, is much better.