Your topic Terrabell, Programming, Technology, History, Legal Issues, Law, Lists … was interesting when I found it on Saturday searching for 1001 ways to stay young…

I would like to call your attention to an interesting truth as you continue to use this sight. That is that most people who post here, whatever their political beliefs, have a healthy skepticism about government.

“Are you saying need clarification to clear your conscience?”

No, my conscience is quite clear already thank you. I asked for clarification so that I could then in good conscience destroy your points, without misunderstanding you.

“A man who claims he was classified 4F and not acceptable for military service?”

Yes that is true I actually went for my draft physical, unlike Bush who’s Daddy got him into the National Guard, or Cheney who arranged never to be called. You know those two names, right, they are the traitors whose policies you followed slavishly. Now at my physical they discovered that I had very, high blood pressure and sent me for an overnight stay at a VA hospital, where after constant monitoring and blood tests they gave me a 2Y, deferring me for one year. I went back the next year and after the same readings and process I was permanently deferred. Since I’ve now suffered from High Blood Pressure 44 years, had 3 heart attacks and congestive heart failure, they seemed to have guessed correctly.

“A man who claims what separated himself from a grunt is that he had certain talents in great demand and a Master’s Degree from an Ivy League School?”

Totally orphaned a 18, with no inheritance and being the first in my family to go to college, I had to work my way through college at a variety of what some would call menial jobs. This is also unlike the people who you seem to follow, like G.W.Bush, who came from a rich family and had it all handed to them. you took my remark out of context though because I was comparing my entry level position, to that of a military entry level position, for the purpose of the point I was making. I apologize if I wasn’t clear enough, but I think it was really the fault of your reading and not understanding a clear statement.

“A man who receiving a a good pension and great health care due to his years of service?”

This is true, but due to the fact that I began work for NYC in the 60′s, when they had a good pension plan. They had and still do have great health plans for their employees, because they pay them so little. For instance, even though I became an executive, I still had to work at a night job and my wife had to work full time so that we could support our family and our lifestyle was in no way anything but middle class. Unlike those who you apparently adore in the Republican Party hierarchy, I was born and will die a child of the lower middle class and I’ve kept my faith with those in the same boat, or lower economically.

“A man who thinks Saul Alinsky was a great man and believes it is an honor for himself to be compared to?”

That is quite true. Mike A. above explains who Alinsky was quite well, so I have no need to. My supposition though is that you don’t know a thing about Alinsky or his work, other than Republican talking points, or reading my prior references to him. You can be forgiven your ignorance, since Alinsky is not a household name, but to use it accusingly does you no credit given your ignorance of the facts.

“A man who has shown on this blog to have an over inflated academic opinion of himself?”

Given my body of writing here, I don’t think you’re correct, but you certainly have a right to your opinion.

“You don’t need clarification Mr. Spindell. Your just a bald headed asshole who knows it all, and the rest of us are just grunts.”

You are correct I am bald and since I’m anatomically whole I do have the organ you refer to, although I rather think that it is not the sum total of my body. What my baldness has to do with my worthiness/unworthiness I fail to see, but taste is in the eye of the beholder. It happens to be one of the characteristics I share with Dick Cheney, although I am not a draft dodging traitor.

Now to be honest this reply to you isn’t worth anyone’s time because your original comments weren’t worthy of discussion, but unfortunately, in a hubristic moment I did bring your response on myself and so felt obligated to do as I promised:

“Peggy,
Could you clarify your point please so I can destroy it with a clear conscience?”

You keep returning to Military Medical as the basis for all your experience but simply dismiss my claim (of a good experience in the UK – I’m an American by the way) – apparently have no interest in discussing the potential of a Public health care system because you have made your decision as is evident by you singular determination that the stock market slogan is not analogous to government.

As to your comments about police and fire – of which I am competently experienced – there are Federal guidelines, funding etc… but it is curious that you didn’t even see the potential for a Federal / State partnership. It is easy to see that you are exercising your right to “just say no!” – and that being the case – I will wish you all a fine weekend and good health.

In the stock market, they say that past performance is not an indicator of future performance. However, with our government, past performance is an Highly accurate indicator of future performance.

Being a proponent of Public Health, a veteran (corpsman), the beneficiary of military / private and public health (UK) systems – I’m forced to limit my anecdotes and focus on our broken system.

We have a profit-driven health insurance industry that has added no less than two (and usually three) layers of overhead / profit to every health care dollar – and an immeasurable impediment to the delivery of basic services by design.

Most health care professionals – not actuaries and health industry executives (the new buzz word for representatives of the administrative siphoning of the publics buying power) but real health care professionals, physicians, nurses and other caregivers. Overwhelmingly they support at minimum a single payer system, however my personal interviews of each yielded overwhelming consideration of a public health service not unlike the UK. If the profit is removed from health care, as it is from Police, Fire, water and sewer – which appear to work very well – shouldn’t we, at the very least, have a more comprehensive discussion about public health instead of creating horror story vignettes before there is actually a public health practice ??

There are numerous reasons for not having a public health program. Most of them reside in the stockholder reports of insurance companies and the health businesses they own.

What I gather from your experience, and as you should from ours shared here, is that you did not receive completed care in that you are still questioning what happened 17 years ago and why.

That would be most unlikely to occur in my practice.

Military doctors are not subject to the same private, civil (mal)practice standards.

However, this is why I am TOTALLY against Nationalized medical care. Right now, as a civilian, I can just go somewhere else and file a complaint for misbehavior or stupidity. I’m not stuck. A nationalized medical system, you are kind of stuck and certainly less options and more apt to have to deal with crap like this. I can only tell you what I have had to deal with in this kind of system. Do what you will. Don’t complain if it happens.

Dunno. There may have been a reaon.

Unfortunately perhaps, I wasn’t there and you were not my patient.

You have the right to refuse any type of medical treatment. You can say that you think a pelvic exam is unecessary when getting treated for a respiratory infection. No one can force you to do anything to your body that you do not want them to do.

My husband sliced his hand on a piece of glass and went in to get a tetanus shot. They further cleaned the wound and said that he should get an x-ray to see if there was any glass in his hand. And he said thanks, but I’ll let it work itself out if there is any glass in there. He turned them down. And no one jumped on him and held his hand in place to take an x-ray.

Stand up for yourself, amazing things will happen

Also, since when do you need a pelvic exam for a respiratory infection like broncitis. That was another situation I had to tollerate while I was in. uuuggg. I have so many others. Eight years in, I can fill a book.

The VA MODEL for health care is not useful in this discussion.

You are right. JT has asked people to not make personal attacks. If someone doesn’t like what someone else posts on this blog either ignore it or counter it with an actual argument. Otherwise, please post to a different blog where personal attacks are fine.

I am also a former General Liability Insurance ie Bodily Inury/Property Damage claims professional which included my involvement in the Surplus and Excess Lines area.

I am a lawyer, as well.

I wasn’t talking about VA as VA medical (not medal), is worse than the military medical. Out of two vets that have commented just in this particular blog (this includes my comments), both with life threatening illnesses were grossly overlooked or misdiagnosed because of the incompetancy of the medical personnel. VA suffers from a lack of funding. Remember about a year ago when it was reported that Veterians weren’t getting treated at Walter Reed, that was because of a lack of funding.

Mr. Spindel probably received good health care because of his rank. The average person is the one that get crapped on. So if you have good health care now before nationalization as just a normal citizen on the street, it will surely get worse. Yes, I can compare how the government handles medical care for these services because that is more than likely how they will handle this new nationalized health care.

I’m not old enough to get medicare, so I can’t speak from a personal point of view; however, I have heard similar complaints in that system as well. Maybe you are just lucky for receiving good service.

They have all gone on to contribute significantly in other meaningful ways.

Mike S. IS who he claims to be, and even if he weren’t his arguments would still trump yours any day of the week.

As for health care, don’t compare the VA model any longer with Medicare. Medicare ‘works’ and is THE model we should be looking at.

In order for any new plan to work for everybody universally, everybody, universally, has to give up something, unfortunately.

The situation has reached critical mass. It’s bullet-biting time for insurance companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, as well as many individuals.

When you start calling others crude names, you only make yourself look bad. And the points you try to make have less meaning

Are you saying need clarification to clear your conscience?

A man who claims he was classified 4F and not acceptable for military service?

A man who claims what separated himself from a grunt is that he had certain talents in great demand and a Master’s Degree from an Ivy League School?

A man who receiving a a good pension and great health care due to his years of service?

A man who thinks Saul Alinsky was a great man and believes it is an honor for himself to be compared to?

A man who has shown on this blog to have an over inflated academic opinion of himself?

You don’t need clarification Mr. Spindell. Your just a bald headed asshole who knows it all, and the rest of us are just grunts.

“News flash politicians write the laws”

lobbyists write the laws. I worked for one for about 6 months and they have staff lawyers that write the laws and send it to the hill and the staffers go over it and take a bit here or there and add a little something or combine it with some other groups wish list.

It is all a bunch of BS and these little putz’s (the lobbyists) are such dim witted dip sticks. And the senators and congressmen, most of the ones I met werent fit to run a 7-11.

Oh and honorarium big word big deal, $2,000 bucks from a group and you can get a congresman to do the hokey pokey with an ugly mule.

That being said – Pelosi decided to take her stand, pretty much, on a pile of jello. Investigative reporters of all feather have been waiting for this opportunity for a while – because they have implied that there was a go-along to get-along in Congress for long time. The ‘Don’t ask / Don’t tell’ of Congress if you will.

Panetta was forced to extricate politics from the Intelligence service and the best way he could do that is not going to make the ACLU, citizens with pointy sticks (I’m in this group) or watchdog groups focused on retribution (not because that’s bad) for crimes. The last group is routinely huddled into the Constitutional Law umbrella – and Rules of Law camps that often speak here and elsewhere in the shadow of the authority of the Constitution. This is wonderful. Others are pragmatists that after observing how laws can be manipulated and ultimately abrogated think sometimes that the Rules of the law – can often be not much different than the Bible. That is to say, conveniently interpreted to make a point that may not have been the original intent of the precept or authors.

We are in tumultuous times and a loud dissonant cacophony of politics, governance, leadership, constitutional conformity are actually playing second fiddle to a Global economic storm that not unlike the swine flu – may have very well have the United States in a direct path of causation.

It seems to me, that Nancy Pelosi has chosen to respond to Republican attacks – with considerably less skill than one would imagine coming from the individual that unseated Dick Gephardt and jumped Steny Hoyer effortlessly. As far as I’m concerned her public persona is a negative – and I like her – but she’s not at risk because of the powerful dynamism in our American National Government – not because there aren’t stronger and considerably more talented individuals in Congress. I have a difficult time becoming a cheerleader or defender of any politician any longer. Just because I’m very progressive doesn’t mean that I’m not a formidable capitalist that believes in accountability.

Likewise, I’m not believing many of my friends here about their interest in American Democracy or the perishability of the US Constitution when it comes to expediently adjudicating any and all involved with the most unfortunate and reprehensible acts of torture in our names. We aren’t a Nation of Laws – that’s a jingoistic BS slogan. We are a nation of people, of citizens of human beings. Laws are for crowd control – and laws get changed almost as easily as politicians.

Nancy Pelosi is on her own as far as I’m concerned – and I too remember Dennis Kucinich bravely standing alone on the stage – while Democrats snicker because he didn’t have nice hair like John Edwards. Let’s not forget we’re a nation of people and we’re fickle as hell.

Mr. Spindell is likely telling the truth.

Mike,

Yes, you and I most likely differ politically. That’s okay. Having differences is always good. It helps keep a healthy perspective of this world. I’m usually well liked, so I assume that people find me to be a nice person, especially since I don’t have much else, like money or fame. My political views have stemmed more from what I have lived through. I have worked since I was 14, paid my own way through college, bought my own cars, I’m a single parent and work very hard. I pay my bills and try to do right by people. I’ve never had anything handed to me. My parents weren’t rich or even close to middle class. We didn’t have medical insurance.

I am very conservative. I don’t believe in nationalized health care because of my time in the military. Nationalized health care may work in other countries, but our country can’t handle the military, so why on earth would we think they could handle the entire population. I don’t believe that the government should have their hands in private business. I believe in fair wages and caring for those who can’t care for themselves. I just have different ideas of how that should be done. I don’t believe the govenment is capable. These are only a few areas that I am sure that we differ in. I don’t really care what the media has to say about it. What the media says isn’t always representative of reality, just someone’s biased point of view.

I do feel that the Congress and Senate need to be cleaned out and new people in those positions. People of integrity. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

“What separated me from a grunt is that I had certain talents in great demand and a Master’s Degree from an Ivy League School.”

Ha ha ha ha ha, oh jeez, i guess you can’t make this stuff up, or can you.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0509/Boehner_didnt_always_defend_CIA.html?showall

I’m in a kind of picky mood today so forgive me in advance if I offend

The congressman you mentioned is Barney Frank, not Franks. Since you wrote Franks twice I assumed it was not a typo.

Mike

I don’t dislike Nancy Pelosi at all. I think she has been put in an impossible situation with this CIA/torture stuff. If I could vote for her I would. What I don’t get, and have not been able to wrap my head around since the Monica Lewinsky thing is what business it is of anyone who does what at the end of their work day. I get that elected officials work for us, but I don’t want the responsibility of telling them what they should do in their off hours. They are entitled to act foolishly, to say and do as they please, to eat dessert before their entree. Just because Speaker Pelosi got her job as the result of a popular election rather than a few interviews with a hiring manager and HR doesn’t mean that she owes all her time to the public.
Yeah, I know that other Speakers have been forced to resign for criminal behavior so far this is not the case with Speaker Pelosi.
If it turns out that she is guilty of an actual crime, then include me in calling for her resignation.

My sister in law lives in the CA-50th and her former congressman Randy Cunningham is doing time for mail fraud, tax evasion and for receiving bribes. He only got 8+ years and has to pay $1.5 million in restitution. The guy who succeeded him is an empty suit who seems to think he can do nothing at all except stay out of jail and will continue to be re-elected. I’ve pretty much decided to go down there and work for any democrat who will take this guy on in 2010. I have a few friends in CA democratic politics and I’m looking to see if the DCCC is interested in getting this seat. It’s not like they need it…

Few people disagree more with Mike S. than I do, but I’m telling you make your arguments without personal attacks or don’t make them at all. Personal attacks are the sign of a weak argument.

“I am curious about something… when did her or anyone else’s marital fidelity become a concern with regard to their job performance?”

“And at the and of the day what we have are a bunch of people calling the Speaker a whore, a liar”

GWLSM,
Excellent points and may I underline that the infidelity accusation came from a post talking about a rumor. I’m not a Pelosi fan and you’ve said your aren’t either, but some of the stuff being written here is way over the top.

Matthew N,
I like your intelligence and the clarity with which you express yourself. People who automatically downgrade the depth of intelligence of people from the military are usually revealing their own invalid pre-judgments.

Patty C.,
Great catch, I missed that. Certainly the original statement did not contain those words. Interesting though, how in the heat of debate on this thread some people treat allusions as facts? I did, to the detriment of my point.

CCD,
You are a pretty classy mensch, yourself. You always seem to make your points with logic and without rancor.

I knew you’d express it better than I could.

For my part, I feel that anyone that thinks you can be heretical to the Cult of JT misses one the points.

I wrote the above to contrast my problems in a hierarchy, with those problems faced by ordinary soldiers who try to make the military their career. The consequences of disobeying an illegal order are great and the retribution is
frightening. I hear that loud and clear from you and from Matthew. In my case even if I was discharged I would have done fairly well. For a soldier the consequences of a conditional or dishonorable discharge are a disaster for their future, as you made perfectly clear. I may have had a history of not following illegal orders and while it did cost me, the price was nowhere near what would be paid by an ordinary soldier. People thinking it is an easy choice for a career soldier to make, are picking and choosing where to bestow their compassion and empathy. The deal with any bureaucracy, for all of history, has been when the crap hits the fan, blame it on the people at the bottom. Hence at Abu Gharib, the only ones punished were those low on the totem pole and not those on high who gave the orders.

Now the argument that certain people will have about this would be the Nuremberg Trials, which hung people for following illegal orders. This argument I believe is specious and by the way I’m a very Jewish guy. Yes at Nuremberg they hung some of the big shots, except for one of the worst Albert Speer, but then they concentrated on the lower level people. These were people who wouldn’t have been court martialed for following illegal orders under the Nazi’s, they would have been shot, perhaps along with their families. While it sounds quite brave to assert that “I would never have done such a thing,” when faced with your death, or your families I wonder how many people would have stuck to their convictions? The other reason that Nuremberg quickly focused on the lower level people was that the US was recruiting many high ranking Nazi’s, Werner Von Braun for one, to come to America and work against the Soviets. These recruits including some very high ranking SS Officers.

Nuremberg was an exercise in hypocrisy, not because bad people got what they deserved, but because it was a show trial put on by the victors. My English teacher in HS was a WWII Marine in the Pacific, who talked of napalming caves where there were Japanese soldiers and shooting those who tried to surrender. I think if I was there along side of him I would have happily done the same. War is hell and those tasked to fight it are generally victims, no matter which side they are on. Only a few wars, WWII, have any real justification and sadly the “love” supposedly shown for our troops, gets quickly forgotten once the war is over.

Not all of us “ultra Leftists,” lack sympathy for the plight of a lower level military person and the hypocrisy of those who would invest time in prosecuting those in the lowest positions, while the real bastards who gave the orders and started the wars are to blame. All that being said I think some of your political views in general are not valid, but I have no doubt that you are a good person and I’m sorry some people were unable to understand your point.

Gyges,
There is so much I want to respond to on this thread that I think your comment is the right place to begin. I got that your comment was deliberately amorphous and I think that was the essence of your point. I personally don’t believe in heresy as a way of putting people into category’s. However, one of the evils of political discourse in the last 50 years has been the rise of the “sound byte” as the main means of political/moral/religious/sociological debate. People are classified by whether a particular belief fits into the beholder’s canon. Rather than hearing the full range of a person’s thoughts, this fitting then is used to categorize the communicator and their further remarks are judged by this pre-conception, rather than on their individual merits.

Take myself for instance. On the surface I would be judged to be in disagreement with Jonathan, because I believe it is too early to judge the Administration’s torture game plan.
Because of this supposed “heresy” I feel that every time I make a statement I must differentiate it with the qualifier that JT and the ACLU are fulfilling different roles, than I do as a lone commenter, with no public persona. I do this to preclude being cast as a heretic to this site.

This is the extent of how this all plays out because the anger on all sides is so palpable and all of us have become used to the “Crossfire” technique of argumentation. The reaction to Debra above I think is typical of this and I’ll deal with that in the following post.

Seams to me, they think it’s a local, internal problem when that is so wrong, and so disengeniouis to all the other countries Amrica has ‘useed’ and have been affected by 9/11 and the wwar on terror, including countries many prisoners sent to have their ‘laws’ govern the punishment and interrogation techniques on many, many prisoners, not 3 or 4. This also is a violation of the Geneva Treaty.

So much hatred in America, while the World has taken an awful hit because of America. The ‘right’ conservatism idealism is awfully misled if they think ‘that the U.S. is a law unto itself’ when they preach to others about war criminals. Such a fraudulant stance, taking God as their personal savior, yet filled with so much hate, killing, destruction, guns, weapons, racism, hate crimes, bigotry and evil.

This is why these trials with the last administration are important, otherwise, the evil fighting evil, the way it was done in past few years will continue and we are all in danger. No one mentions the attacks on Britian and Spain, only America..(as horrid as it was), other countries have suffered because they became allies with Bush/Cheney to fight terrorism, they also, like many countries lost many souls from 9/11 attacks, but nothing mentioned about or from U.K or Spain other than the ‘convictions’ of those misleading the World…………………….eg; America

Last night, I switched over to O’Reilly for a moment to see what lies were being sold on Fox, when I heard Bill O’Reilly saying he had placed a call to CIA earlier in afternoon regarding Pelosi, got a call immediately from an agent stating Pelosi is lying. This is how rotten the system and Obama must clean it up before this happens again. He is a true leader, some things however must be emphasised especially with the CIA, ‘moles’ in CIA and how anyone can say anything. Remember when Hannity let out of the bag from Rove that they get talking points directly from WH each and every day? Stupid Hannity gave himself away on national tv. But here should be laws against this type of hype restricting information or relationships that use a media source to blanket a show like Fox News.

News flash politicians write the laws. They don’t always follow existing law. In which case they should be investigated. Along with all war crime conspirators, employed with DOD, DOJ, CIA, FBI serving in Congress or having served in the Executive branch.

“We need people with more integrity.” Debra

Agreed, and thanks for your service.

Flu shots contain inactivated ie non-live viruses and are safely recommended for pregnant women.

LAIV nasal spray flu vaccines contain weakened live virus, do not cause flu but would still not be recommended for pregnant women.

Any minimally capable provider knows this.