Open Letter to my Federal Representatives

Hello,

I just wanted to contact you to share my opinion on the health care debate. For statistical reasons, I'm 39, permanently disabled due to SMA, use an electric wheelchair full-time, unable to find work, dependent on SSDI, Medicaid, and Medicare.

I support comprehensive health care reform. I believe it is the moral thing to do today. I am not religious, but I don't feel we should continue to treat our fellow man's total health according to profit motive. I believe it is time to take care of each other's needs as best as we can.

Believe me, I align my political views with the libertarians and would ultimately love to see a small Federal government, but since neither major party today is supporting that goal, the least we could do is use the power the government has to help people.

I don't like what the current bill has become, and I would rather support the public option, but I'm afraid of what will happen if we do nothing right now. People are dying for no better reason than because someone can make a dollar off of it.

Thankfully, myself, and my immediate family have good enough health care coverage, but many of my friends are forced to live without coverage, and many others are forced to keep working at terrible jobs just so they don't lose there coverage. I hear many say that government should stay out of our health care decisions, but government is already there in so many ways it isn't funny.

Government has shaped the current problems we find ourselves in by choosing to get involved in health care coverage decisions since the 40's; by selectively choosing to support employer-based coverage via tax breaks, by starting Medicare and allowing insurance companies to dump all of their covered people at age 65 on the government, and by selectively allowing certain evil insurance practices to continue simply because of money in politics and campaign contributions. Since these government forces continue to shape health care decisions, government alone is the only force left to turn them around for the positive.

In conclusion, I stand on the side of comprehensive reform with a single payer system ala Anthony Weiner's Medicare for all proposal. If that can't happen right now, I support competitive reform with the public option. If even that can't happen, I still support some minimal reform to stop the most evil practices done by the insurance companies today.

So, I ask you to choose for the common good in the decisions ahead. I hope that all members of the congress and senate consider the impact they can have for the good of all Americans in the few days.

Robert Stump Jr.

Must we be this scared of Obama?

http://www.star-telegram.com/242/story/1590670.html

Ok, maybe a slippery slope exists where we can fall from desiring simple health care reform... all the way to the government conspiring to killing our poor Grandmas, but I haven't seen it in my 38 years of living in the USA.

I get it... we are scared of repeating 1940 again. But, haven't we advanced as a society since then? Are we really so gullible as those living in Germany at that time? Wouldn't reason take over, or perhaps Fox News if we started to see documented cases that our old people were being sent to their death prematurely?

Really? We can't even talk about making our health care system better without accusations of secret death chambers in the works? I understand that big government is scary, and something to be leary of, but do we truly think that 1940 could ever happen again? Really? In this advanced age where information flows so freely and we truly are living in the age of freedom as never experienced before in human history... in this age, could Obama really be bringing back the SS and the extermination of an entire class by what he is proposing? Really?

Now, it has extended to the children. Some of our citizens have gone so far to not even want their children to listen to a speech from our elected president of these "United States" concerning the importance of staying in school and having a good education. They have demanded that their local school district NOT subject their children to this type of brain washing.

I weep along with those who wonder what happened to ideas, freedom, justice, and compassion for the less fortunate. This is what the health care debate is all about.

I speak as one of those who has pretty good coverage right now. However, I know deep down that this system can not continue as is. The number of people with "good" coverage will continue to shrink year after year... perhaps significantly. Should we really bury our heads in the sand and hope that this problem fixes itself? It seems so wrong to do so... think of the suffering that will occur by the millions of Americans if we wait until the whole system explodes and we are forced to fix the entire health care system at once. How many people will die when that happens?

So, I ask again... must we be this scared of Obama?

Joe Dallesandro

A good friend of mine has an infatuation (potentially unhealthy, but who am I to judge?) with a bi-sexual semi-star of the 60's and 70's who came out of the Andy Warhol Factory. He got cast in many small roles in some really obscure films, and he was generally known at the time as a hunk with beautiful long hair and a tendency to be found on camera completely naked with tranvestites.

I don't know why, but my friend is... ok, I'll say it... obsessed with Joe Dallesandro. Fortunately, she admits it, and doesn't care who knows! So, to feed the fire (being the good friend I am), I helped her put together a tribute video montage. It just got completed, and she quickly fired it off to Joe himself via his myspace page hoping to hear back from him. Not sure if he will, but in the meantime you can enjoy it yourself!

Fantasies of Joe

Alaska Poop?

Something strange is going on in the ocean waters near Alaska. There is a 15 mile stretch of... goo-like substance, kinda algae-like, kinda smelly, kinda oil-like... just floating there killing jellyfish and apparently a goose.

Were we so easily distracted with Michael Jackson's death that we didn't notice an alien taking a dump on us?

Huge blob of Arctic goo floats past Slope communities

Where I find myself

Hello, my name is Bob, and I have a ......... problem. That is why I'm here. I'll start by sharing a little about myself, and some of my thoughts I hope to put out into the cloud we collectively call the Internet.

I am a white male, currently 38 years old, single, and a wheelchair user. My particular disability is Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type II (SMA) and it has pretty much defined my life up to this point, and continues to steer me in many ways I don't want to go. Through many devious (and some completely unexpected) means, it has prevented me from walking, driving, playing most sports, and interacting with most people. Of course, it had some help along the way... my other stumbling block is shyness, and I have discovered that these 2 issues are deadly when combined.

So, I find myself today in a place I don't want to be... and it doesn't help at all when I see endless chatter of "amazing stories" of people who have overcome their disability and have such a positive outlook on life, and are able to thank god for their trials and tribulations... ugh... that crap gets very old and makes me want to puke... mostly because that is how I USED TO BE and I get pissed that I haven't been able to remember why I ever had those thoughts. But, I digress... I do recognize that the vast majority of people find themselves on a path in life they didn't want, and I know that there are many worse places or situations I could find myself in. This won't be a continuous "woe is me" diatribe, believe me, but I do hope to share some honesty and some larger thoughts and feelings along the way.

So, I have begun...