A special rant on Limbaugh

I know I'm supposed to be "on hiatus" from my usual ramblings and rants for a few more weeks, but unfortunately events sometimes require me to step in and unload with a special one.

Talk Radio host Rush Limbaugh, considered by some to be the unofficial populist leader of the GOP, was rushed to the hospital yesterday evening while vacationing in Hawaii. Curiously, this is the same state where President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are staying. I'm sure all parties are screaming "COINCIDENCE!" about this somewhat convenient travel plan between political opposites.

No doubt Limbaugh is receiving the best of care in the Queen's Medical Center after being admitted there complaining of chest pains.

But his plight probably did not have to go through all the complications that my parents and I had to go through.

My father is a three-time cancer survivor. We're talking colon cancer, skin cancer, and a rare deep-tissue cancer that the doctors initially couldn't find. Fortunately the doctors managed to treat and eradicate all three forms.

During his recovery from colon cancer, however, there were some complications. Scar tissue from the surgery developed inside his intestines instead of the outside. In other words, his insides were being closed shut. What would normally go through the bottom of his stomach to be further absorbed was being forced back up.

My mother and I had to rush my father to the hospital thirty minutes away instead of the one only five minutes away from the house. Why? Because that is where his doctor is located.

Once we walked him into the Emergency Room entrance, we had to wait for HOURS until someone could take him into an examining room.

Mind you, during this time my father was sitting there with a bucket in his hands quite literally puking out of his mouth what would normally go out the other end of his body. And there was nothing that I or my mother could do other than to sit there with him as he went through this FOR HOURS.

And sitting there in that same room also awaiting help were people wrapped up in bandages, screaming children with ear infections, people in splints and crutches and wheelchairs, people who were in obvious pain and agony, like my father, who also had to sit there and suffer.

How long did Rush have to wait in the Emergency Room in Queen's Medical Center before someone attended to him? Was it hours, like my father had to go through, sitting amidst all of the other people who were hurt and in agony? Or was it nanoseconds?

Of course it's easy to haggle about the fact that Rush Limbaugh is a huge media celebrity who makes millions from his syndicated radio show and his numerous book sales and speaking appearances, and I’m sure he’s worth every penny.

But I also have to wonder if his position on healthcare and reforming the current system would be different if he had to wait alongside my father in that Emergency Room, having to watch him retch and moan in agony, and hear the endless screams and groans and moans of other patients for hours on in.

When the subject is about healthcare and health reform, I don’t have the luxury of doing so while covered by some cushy platinum VIP benefits package that guarantees me immediate care by the best that money can buy. I have to look at this subject in the same way that millions of other hard-working Americans HAVE to look at it… by the four hours of waiting around the Emergency Room amidst all of the other people who needed care and could not get it at their beck-and-call like Rush Limbaugh is currently receiving. By the frustration of my father, who had to sit there with a bucket between his legs, moaning in agony as his intestines closed up and everything that should be going down was being forced back up his throat. By the frustration of my mother, who had to sit there sorting through insurance cards trying to make sure she could present the hospital administrators the right ones to supposedly “hasten” a process that was anything but. And by the needless anguish from both parents as they spend the following weeks trying to coordinate between the hospital and the insurance providers to make sure that checks are cut and payments are made from a multi-billion-dollar bureaucratic process that intentionally has more complications than the initial surgery itself.

THIS is what healthcare is about, Mister Limbaugh. Not the scary tactics generated by your friends like Sarah Palin and Chuck Grassley. Not this delusional fantasy that government would come between you and your doctor, who, in my father's case didn't even bother to show up at the hospital until AFTER he was already undergoing tests, and after being in agony for several HOURS. It's about the people who have to sit in the emergency room for HOURS in pain and agony just to be treated, and then the absolute frustration that comes weeks if not months later as the bills come due and the insurance company executives decide whether or not they should fulfill their part of the deal and pay the parts that they are supposed to cover.

THAT is what the REAL hard-working Americans have to put up with.

Isn't it nice to know, then, Mister Limbaugh, that you and all your friends in Washington and your friends who run the Tea Party meetings don't have to worry about those little details?

So get well soon, Mister Limbaugh, so you can go back on the air and crow about the kind of medical coverage you got, and spin the continual fantasy that you received the kind of care that every other hard-working American currently gets. Just don’t expect people like myself to buy into your mirage and drink the sand that you claim is champagne.

catching up...

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This site is now on par (and even better than) many mainstream radio websites!!

Happy Holidays

(And Frack You Bill O'Reilly!)


I hate to see the Visa bill on this wrapping project!

Holiday bailout?

It's sad when you look at this...


It's sad because we ALL seem to be victims of this cruel hoax.

And the solution? A Neo-Con wet dream? THAT'S the solution to get Yule going again? That certainly was last year's wet dream, and it apparently is this year's wet dream as well.

This describes it

2009 - Worst Ever?

I can relate...


I can give a few more numbers...
100 - the number of times this past year I played the lottery
0 - the number of times I actually WON playing the lottery
2 - the number of consecutive months I had to hear about "family values" politicians who got caught cheating on their wives
0 - the number of days that I even thought I had a chance at a relationship
3 - the number of times I wanted to punch out my HDTV after hearing about South Carolina Governor Sanford gush about his "soulmate" while still wanting to mend things with his scorned wife
31 - the number of years that have gone by that I have never EVER been in a relationship, never mind have a "soulmate".

Now I'm in trouble...

Oh, wait, it's Onion... whew!

SyFy Pulled A TV-Level Suck

I am really learning to hate "Made For TV" movies. I don't know what it is... maybe it's the poor storylines... the emphasis on dramatic side-stories instead of action... the poor storylines... this asinine idea that you can stretch out ten seconds into two minutes by a bunch of extreme zoom-ins... the poor storylines... the idea that you can't go wrong if you have a cast member of a popular TV show appearing it... the poor storylines... the hidden agendas incorporated into the show... Oh, I know! It's the poor storylines!

My cat can produce better-quality crap than some of these "Made For TV" screenwriters, and he can squeeze them out in the litter box about three-to-five times a day!

The latest film that sucks is SyFy's "Annihilation Earth".

The film stars Luke Goss as a scientist in charge of a near-future program that utilizes supercolliders as an energy source. Yes, supercolliders, plural. We have a hard enough time talking about ONE of them, but apparently in this hypothetical near-future, three of them can power the whole European continent without a single drop of fossil fuels, and have been for ten years by the time the film begins. And now the plan is to expand on this and share the grid with every nation in the world... EXCEPT... yeah, except for the ARAB world. Why? Why not? The Arabs lorded the world with oil, and now some bureaucrat (played by "Star Trek" star Marina Sirtis) with a really bad Southern drawl decides that the Arab world should suffer.

Just minutes into this, one of the scientists who was responsible for this project is suspended. No reason why other than his account was hacked. Oh, and, yeah, he's also an ARAB. (No bigotry here, right guys?)

Meanwhile the actual ARAB bad guy (again, no stereotyping here, right?) has snagged our pretend super-genius' voice and thumbprint, and has used it to sabotage the collider in the French city of Orleans. It goes MEGA-nuclear and takes out Paris and damages most of the cities in Europe. But our paper-pushing bureaucrat with a bad Southern drawl wants to blame it all on the scapegoat ARAB, who is now on the run, which is exactly what our bureaucrat WANTS to have happen.

Now, for the next hour we get our pretend super-genius getting his little crack team of hand-wringers scouring the European non-nuclear wasteland as the world goes mad, planes start crashing, satellites start falling, the Northern Lights move south, and we hear a long repetitious diatribe about something called "The Doomsday Equation", which can be summed up as "we need to keep the other colliders running no matter what or else we're all DEAD". We even have the scapegoat ARAB meeting with the bad guy ARAB, with our delusional bad guy saying he's doing everything for the glory of the Arab world and the scapegoat saying that if he goes through with it then there wouldn't BE a world for the Arabs to rule over. AND THEN, after all that, we spend the LAST few minutes in an actual debate over whether or not the colliders SHOULD be shut down to save the International Space Station, which ends up coming down ANYWAY while our characters discuss it.

I won't spoil the ending here. It does that all by itself. I will say that even if the ending didn't happen the way that it did, it still would have been LAME.

I have always enjoyed Marina Sirtis' acting before now, but this has become the exception. I'm sorry, Ms. Sirtis, but you can't do a southern drawl with a British accent to highlight an ice queen character. The three things just don't work together.

Next... the "Arabs are evil" and "Arabs can't be trusted" and "Payback's a bitch, Arabs" excuses may make good talking points for talk radio, but not for a sound energy policy that is talking about supposedly providing clean and safe energy for everyone. I mean, give clean and safe energy for third world nations, but NOT to Arab states and then complain about the threat of TERRORISM? That's like giving billions to the banks and then acting surprised when they use that money on themselves. You'd pretty much get that of ANY nation that is singled out.

And, hey, how about that plotline of the bad guy? Kidnap the scapegoat and force him to give the access code to shut down the second collider. Why not just repeat what you did the first time around when you blew up the Orleans collider? You had access to that reactor, you could have very easily made the adjustments that you wanted to make and just blew the collider up and gotten the destruction you yearned for! Oh, wait a minute, that would involve better WRITERS! Details, details, DETAILS!

This was a waste of two hours, and, yes, that includes the commercials. Not on the same caliber as the waste of time that NBC and CBS spew with their monstrosities, though... because let's face it, if this ended up on NBC or CBS then it would have been an over-hyped TWO-NIGHT SPECIAL MINI-SERIES, and it would have featured Dean Cain, Shannon Doherty, and Beau Bridges, with Christopher Lee or Frank Langella added for good measure!

Come on Badly-Revamped-Rebranded Network! You're supposed to challenge us to "Imagine Greater", not imagine THAT the junk you're putting out there is greater! Is that too much to ask for?

My point exactly!

WHY IS IT that the air-fluffed ego-driven media is busy going after Tiger Woods, complete with computer animated recreations from "The Sims 3", while our elected grifters and shysters are getting ignored?

Tiger is a marketing brand. He is a tool for sponsors. He doesn't write laws or dictate policies that we ALL have to obey. Meanwhile the career criminals in Washington get away with their blatant hypocrisy and still retains positions of power and influence.



THANK YOU SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE for remembering!

How it SHOULD have gone...

Nobel Peace Price award ceremony.

Gotcha!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Beck - Not So Mellow Gold
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Gotcha you slimy little FoxWorm!

The Great Theist Fear

Come on guys, it's the ONION!

Special Message For NeoCons!

ATTENTION ALL CONSERVATIVES AND NEO-CONSERVATIVES!

Did you get upset and flustered because the President of the United States of America DARED to interrupt YOUR scheduled viewing of a holiday classic like the Charlie Brown Christmas Special to talk about some stupid plan for Afghanistan? Were you fuming about the fact that a man that YOU CLAIM was NEVER ELECTED to office, that is secretly some Muslim foreigner, and who is put in office to carry out the socio-communist agenda, DARED to waste a whole hour discussing some fantasy military program that YOU KNOW would never work in the first place instead of letting the networks air good, decent, WHOLESOME, CHRISTIAN programming like the Charlie Brown Christmas Special?

Well now you don't have to worry about fuming on Facebook and looking like a dumbass! In fact, you can show those GAWD-less progressives in the liberal media what REAL CHRISTIANS feel is important by watching the Charlie Brown Christmas Special on YOUR SCHEDULE!

Yes! Why wait until those GAWD-less leftists decide when they will air the wholesome CHRISTIAN special that has served this country well for four decades? And why be forced to spend twenty bucks to some store that benefits COMMUNIST regimes like China just to have the special on DVD? No, watch the special on YOUR schedule for as long as you want to... FOR FREE!

How, you ask? One word... HULU!

Yes, Hulu now has the Charlie Brown Christmas Special available for you to watch at any time between now and January 1st, 2010! This is not a joke! This is not a hoax! And unlike all the other paragraphs in this post, this is SERIOUS!

So what are you doing here? Why aren't you over at Hulu now? Go on over there and show those pinko-commies what you would RATHER see on TV!

Oh, and lay off the Facebook posts. They're just making you look stupid.

Brutally Honest on ShockNet - 12/05/09 Show Notes

Wow, the year is just about at an end. 

But I do have one more show to do, and it's tonight.  I have some news, some wingnuts on parade, a double-shot from the Brutally Honest Archive, and a rather blunt wrap-up of the year's events.  Is this REALLY the "Decade from Hell"?  Find out what I have to say about that.

So join me THIS SATURDAY (12/05) right here one more time on ShockNet Radio at 7pm Eastern Time (6pm Norman time and 4pm Hefner Time) over at www.shocknetradio.com and also at Apple's iTunes Radio Player under the "Classic Rock" category!

And don't forget that I will also be in the "Brutally Honest" chatroom at www.shocknetradio.com during the show, so I hope to see you there!

Brutally Honest: The New Heresy Begins Here!