Ever since the crazy birthers started showing up at town hall meetings to insist President Obama isn't legally President, and up till Congressman Joe Wilson's outburst during the President's speech to The Congress, a black friend of mine has asked plaintively: where is the black leadership in the country? Why are they not pushing back?
He's right. There's been nary a whimper*. I suggested that perhaps the Obama Administration is loathe to allow his presidency to be turned into a black/white struggle, so hard did he try to make it a post-racial one. Perhaps they've messaged the old-guard African-American leadership, telling them to shut up. "This is not the time for marches," they might have said, "because that would play into the hands of those who want to make sure Barack fails." It
is hard to imagine what effect a huge march on Washington to support the president would have, especially if there were mostly black faces in the crowds.
Another possibility is that there is black disenchantment with the Obama Administration's policies, some of which virtually mirror those of the Bush Administration. Or maybe the veteran black leadership is jealous that it wasn't them elected to the White House.
Whatever the reason:
---The birthers insist he's not a citizen? Silence.
---Protesters brand him a Hitler with "death panels"? Silence.
---A plan to kill health care reform so Obama himself will fail? Silence.
---And good old Confederate Joe Wilson shouts out. Silence.
In her column today in the N.Y. Times, Maureen Dowd says all that was missing from Wilson's loud objection was one word. "Boy".
If he had used it, would that have rallied the troops?
[*NOTE: Jesse Jackson was a guest on MSNBC on Friday, and he was asked about race being a factor in the continued assault on Obama, but even he seemed subdued.]
Only folks trying to inject race into this is the liberals.
ReplyDeleteWhy bring race into Tim? Can't two people disagree without it being about the color of their skin?
ReplyDeleteThe color of a man's skin - it's still a measure of the content of his character! (So some would have us believe.)
ReplyDeleteMuch of this rabble-rousing is directly attributable to drug addicts - you know, folks like Rush "I'm deaf from hydrocodone abuse by doctor-shopping" Limbaugh.
Civility in discourse is lower, and frankly, more than outright cynicism exists. And "Limbaugh" first started the "death panels" diatribe.
Let's put this in perspective, shall we?
Suppose you're in a horrible car wreck. Your neck is broken at the 3d cervical vertebra, intubated, on a respirator, and other life support. You had to be "jump started" because your heart stopped after the impact. Your brain is swelling and intra-cranial pressures are out the wazoo. You're non-responsive even to noxious stimuli (pain), with decorticate posturing, fed by a bag through your veins, your kidneys have shut down requiring CVVHD, and things simply don't look good.
Essentially, were the "belts, tubes and hoses" removed, your body would do what it would do naturally... expire. But you're being kept alive artificially. There is no prognosis or recovery potential.
Because you've NOT given ANY Advance Medical Directive (there is no record of it anywhere), physicians attending your life (or the remains of it) are spending TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS DAILY to keep you artificially alive. Otherwise, had you given Advance Medical Directive, they would have complied with your requests to withhold any drastic measures to sustain life in such a case.
Is that a "death panel”?
But even if you have EXCELLENT insurance, you're gonna' go to court with your company, the other company, and anyone else that has deep pockets.
Why?
Well, it'$ actually kinda' $imple. At $10,000/day, in one month, you're gonna' eat up $300,000 worth of care. And de$pite all the "warm and fuzzie$," in$urance companie$ try to adverti$e to you, they don't exi$t to make you feel good about your$elf. They exi$t to meet Wall $treet profit expectation$ and make money for their executive$ and major $tockholder$.
In the mean time, Critical Care staff get to look at your bloated body, and the weeping fluids, excretions and filth that exude from every pore and hole in your body, the stench of infection that inevitably sets in, and the putrid effluvia of liquid stool that oozes from around the rectal tube to catch what pours from your colon... if you have any remaining.
Not only that, but your family gets the wonderful surprise that you're not going to live... after every other machine now keeping you alive is disconnected, thus allowing your body to to expire naturally.
Talk about suffering?
You're not suffering. You're getting a constant morphine drip that would kill a horse. Your family is suffering watching your mangled body heave with every phase of the ventilator when they're allowed to visit for 15 minutes every hour, two people at a time.
Death panel? They're called "family."
And what about the foreign national visitor that is involved in a car wreck or industrial accident?
Should we withhold life-saving services simply because we can't figure out if he's here legally or not? A citizen or not?
What about your granny? She doesn't have a driver license or any other government-issued ID. Is she illegal? We're waiting until we get word from Washington about her nationality status before we apply the cardiac defibrillator.
She died? Too bad. She had no record of nationality on file.
Chest pains?
Call 9-1-1!
Wait! Instead of the operator asking, "Where's the location of your emergency?" They ask, "What's your national citizenship number?"
It's not that way now. Hopefully, it never will be. But if some had their way, it would.
Stupid, or what!?!
It's not as if our nation's system does NOT need regulation and reform in healthcare delivery, for it certainly does.
But it's time for rational, reasoned dialogue... not the screaming and diabolical name calling that we have from the village idiots.