Saturday, February 28, 2009

Doctors Without (Ethical) Borders


"(Health Care) is a cost that now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds. By the end of the year, it could cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes...It is one of the major reasons why small businesses close their doors and corporations ship jobs overseas...Given these facts, we can no longer afford to put health care reform on hold. So let there be no doubt: (it) cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year."
Barack Obama: Address to Joint Session of Congress 2/24/09

Considering that I have lived without health insurance for seventeen years, last week's check-up was pretty good. When I told the doctor that I was excited about the prospect of finally obtaining insurance, he replied that he hoped Obama "wouldn't make him into a federal employee." I would have argued with him, but he was examining my prostate at the time. The doctor knows better than to believe he is about to be drafted into some triage system for the wretched, but he defended his ground because he has been a part of the problem. And the problem has existed for thirty years. Doctors are sort of like truckers: once, a long time ago, they were courteous. Since I am now a "retail" patient, who's insurance cannot be exploited, I have received second-class treatment and taken my seat in the back of the medical bus. I have to enter a doctor's office, hat in hand, and ask for favors and discounts, and thus, have not received the same treatment as an insured patient. Melody urges me to go to the Church Health Center, but I feel I would be taking the place of someone who is truly destitute. I can afford insurance, but the HMOs have determined me "uninsurable." I can't buy it at any price.

Since all the current institutional and infrastructural decay can be traced back to the Reagan administration, that's when the crisis in health care began as well. The nation voted for "less government," and that's what we got. Reagan, the Great De-regulator, was saying it was "Morning in America," but that was mainly for opportunistic capitalists who could see their dreams of unfettered greed finally realized. So the big insurance companies, in collusion with the medical/hospital industry, and the American Medical Association, allowed the formation of the HMO and began herding all citizens into groups of managed care. That was the Conservatives' version of "socialized medicine." I recall having to join the National Council of Jewish Women to get a group rate, but the premiums grew so astronomically that the insurer finally thought better of paying the medical costs for a bunch of elderly, Jewish woman, and dropped the whole group.

Since then, I have been considered an "untouchable." Millions of people take anti-depressants and still obtain insurance. Because mine was initially prescribed by a psychiatrist, I have what is considered a "pre-existing mental condition," which disqualifies me from consideration by the beancounters who decide who's a bad risk for the insurance company. My internist told me to transfer all my records to him and he would prescribe the medication, allowing me the extreme Freudian pleasure of firing my psychiatrist. But when I again applied for coverage, the doctor sent in the same old records and I got the same old answer. So, I am one of those people who fear a catastrophic illness, only more financially than physically. It amazes me that those who can get health insurance are granted it through the workplace, or otherwise have to prove themselves healthy, while others who actually need medical attention are routinely denied. But as long as those papers kept shuffling between doctor's offices, insurance companies, and the government, it was a sweet deal for everyone but the patient. Doctors were so well compensated, they began to think more about Medicare payments and profits than patients. That's why, when you walk into a doctor's office, the first thing they examine is your wallet. And why is it that every time you're in the waiting room, a tight-dressed, spike-heeled, drug representative pulling perks on wheels gets ushered right in?

While the Medical/Pharmaceutical Complex was pulling in huge profits, they failed to re-invest any of it in the upkeep of hospitals. Once the avant-guarde of innovation, hospitals across the country lie in states of decay with antiquated equipment and intrusive devises that are monitored from an understaffed nurses' desk. How could hospitals become the last institutions to embrace new technologies? Confining the ill to be monitored may be a convenience for the doctor, but it has become the equivalent of checking into a seedy hotel for the patient. The last time a relative was at Baptist East, they charged extra for cable on that Motel 6 TV that's been mounted in the corner since 1972. The understaffing is another result of greed within the industry. I'm of an age to have observed several loved ones go through the hospital "system," and their halls are full of only bad memories for me. I only hope that if I'm incapacitated, rather than be hooked up to all that pre-historic shit and left to linger, that I be allowed to go home and die in my own bed. Of course, the technology exists where you could be monitored from home, but where's the profit in that?

I was delighted to hear President Obama announce that health care reform was among his priorities. The Conservatives can scream "socialized medicine" all they like, but that's exactly where we were going with health management organizations that had nothing to do with health, and everything to do with maximizing profits on the backs of the ill. The Right can't tolerate socialistic ideas because they believe they all lead right to Mussolini. But the Bush regime's hands-off, business first policy created no incentive for reform and so health care costs have exploded during the past eight years. Bush's statement that "Too many good docs are getting out of business...Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women across this country," wasn't out of concern for doctors or their patients, he was defending the insurance companies.

Now that we're all in a mid-sociological bungee jump, I wonder how that first big drop is treating everyone's stomach? I first developed stomach problems several years ago and when the doctor asked if I was experiencing any unusual stress, I told him, "I don't know Doc, but it didn't hurt during the Clinton administration." Since then, I've experienced enough invasive procedures to add a wing to his clinic, but they found nothing and since I had no insurance they wanted to spare me the expense of an Ultrasound. Ultimately, the Ultrasound I was forced to purchase turned up an ulcer so aggravated, it even surprised the doctor. It's been treated, but I've been left with a gastric condition that was further enflamed by the stress of no health insurance and no hope of getting it under the previous administration. I can't afford any more "oscopies," so I live with the condition. I have, however, named my pain. So until I am able, and hopefully soon, to obtain some health care coverage, when I am stricken with sudden gastric distress and have to excuse myself, I plan to say, "Pardon me. I have to go take a Bush."

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

Randy,
Do you expect doctors to read this on their day off? BD

Anonymous said...

Why don't you just go to a doctor in Canada?

Anonymous said...

Turn health care over to the government? Are you shitting me? If government were to suddenly morp into a single organism it would become a tapeworm, and a rather ineffectual one at that.

Anonymous said...

I find the very existence of for-profit health insurance companies morally repugnant. How can you make decisions regarding a person's well being when you are also beholden to your stock owners? It's simply wrong.

We were told that belonging to HMOs would lower our health care costs. HAH!

And shut up about Canada and England. We're the ONLY industrialized country without socialized medicine. Try looking at a few other countries.

And take a look at Michael Moore's "Sicko," Even if you throw half of it out because it is the bombastic Moore, the other half is shocking enough.

Anonymous said...

Like someone said, the U.S.S.R. has disappeared, just as the U.S.S.A. is being born. And the irony is that the Russian president himself has issued warnings to America not to follow in the footsteps of Russia, but we are disregarding those warnings and moving full throttle to socialism. Where are we going to get money after the producing class is too demoralized to produce any more? For that matter, what are we going to do for money when China eventually pulls the rug out from under us by not buying our debt any more. Margaret Thatcher said that socialism always fails, because it eventually runs out of money to squander. America is beginning to look like a very poor investment risk, and under the leadership of Obama and the far left, America will be so incumbered by debt that no one, not even Americans, are going to be willing to put their money at risk any longer. And there are folks who want the U.S. government to manage our banks, businesses, and health care? Ha! Ha! Ha! I guess sick humor will never go out of style. The far left is in effect telling America that it will be beaten until its morale improves. Wall St. is showing us the results of this approach.

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Anonymous said...

Free market capitalism was not designed to encourage or reward losers. It was designed to provide an environment in which achievers could produce goods and services in accord with their abilities and to profit from the fruit of their labors accordingly. The Democratic party is comprised of every kind of loser and taker imaginable. They represent a collective that have discovered that they can elect representatives who will sap the lifeblood from the producers and give that lifeblood to them. The problem with this state of affairs is that parasites wind up eventually killing their host, thereby ensuring their own eventual demise. This scenario is now being played out on a national scale. It looks like the Parasite Party (Democrats) will by sheer force of numbers stay in control and bleed the nation dry. It is just the ancient cycle of the rise and fall of nations playing itself out. Congrats to you guys, because you have won the battle, but you will find that it is a Pyrrhic victory. You may enjoy for a while the subsidized living standard for which you have been fighting, but you rats will sink with the ship that you have destroyed in the end. Check your biology texts and you will find that this is the foreordained fate of all parasites.

Anonymous said...

Remember when you were a kid, back in the stone age, and you got sick at night and your parents just called the Doctor and he came right over. Gave you a BIG shot of pennicillian in your ass and Bam, in the morning you were better.Damn, those were the days. Hell, you get sick now and a doctor would laugh at you to think you would even have the balls to call him or her on off hours.Oh well, I guess that will be something to tell my grandchildren about ( of course I would have to have some first, you kids listening?)Who would have thunk it.

Anonymous said...

Hi. Double boarded Internal Medicine and Emergency Medicine doc here. Wide awake and ready to kill some germs here on Saturday morning. Got germs? They diggin holes in your gall bladder? Making you pee 15x a night? You got a coronary artery that's got a little sludge in it and a granddaughter who is two years old and so cute you'd like to maybe see her graduate from college? Got a funny heart beat (due to no fault of your own) and you're forming a little sludge in your right atrium to boot. How's about that clot flipping out into one of your carotid arteries and then you being paralyzed and you being able to drool but not really being able to make any Howdoyoudo's come out of your mouth for 20 years?

Yes, indeedie. We do have a problem here. Turns out that these human beings who were in the same sixth grade class as you; who liked having their genitals rubbed as much as you did; who, as they got older, learned how to do something and enjoyed it just like you enjoyed learning how to do what you do well; turns out that what this group learned how to do was to keep you alive when you have a hole in your chest, kill the bacteria that are on their way to eating all your heart valves or the alveoli in your right lung and which would turn your heart and/or lung into a colander, adjust your dose of your insulin so that you don't fly unexpectedly from Death Valley to Mount McKinley and back again in a metaphoric pair of ill fitting shorts and red Yankees cap that won't really protect you very well from those kinds of harsh condition changes----in short, people get sick, sometimes they die, lots of times they'd rather not die at that specific time, and they'd rather not get sick at all.

What's a civilization to do?

No hay problema. I'd say that there are certainly a lot of boys and girls out there who are gouging their patients. I know a few. Don't like them very much. Have given testimony in court so that they are sent down to the "get your ass kicked every day for the rest of your life" farm and am glad to have gotten their sorry butts off the street and out of the hospital. Most doctors (and this really does mean MOST) want to cure disease, help the human beings who are their patients to feel good, avoid illness, and especially avoid catastrophe. These "MOST doctors" also have children, parents, friends, and maybe more than anything else.....they have their own health and their own anxieties about their own health to deal with. Some of these folks die. Some of them get sick. Not unusual. So I'm suggesting that the broad stroke of the big brush that paints the characterization of the insulated, unfeeling, unmotivated (beyond that which enhances their own lives and pocketbooks) doktor may be a bit of a projection of frustration that finds nourishment from a deeper level.

Please continue to read.

Anyway, the problem (and where all the money is stolen) is in paying a middle man 700 billion dollars a year to pass money from your hand to the doctor's. What does the insurance industry do? What is their purpose? Why do we have a for-profit big board traded group of companies who are moved to make a bottom line dictated by a share price that a group of angry stockholders believe should go up and not down? Why is a guy who is working for one reason and one reason only....to make a profit....allowed to take money from the hand of the patient and then after putting a large chunk into his own pocket give a piece to the guy/gal who provided the service. That's ok when you sell cars or TVs or baseball games. Not ok to make a commodity out of medical care. This is one of those inalienable rights we are so fond of. Can't trade it on the exchange. Not something that capitalism can make better. It screws it up. Too many people who are getting paid....for NO service to the patient. Truly stupid. Worse, truly dehumanizing.

We need Single Payor Medical Insurance in this country. Everybody is covered. Nobody makes a profit by administering it nor should they. Doctors may make less money. That's ok. Relatively speaking they make a lot. We can talk about the relative merits of pay for work-product some other time. It just has always seemed that the guy who knew how to put the bark and weeds and Susie's spit and some hair off of his left knee together in a brew and could cure the Chief's son's asthma never worried if was going to have a hot meal. Such is life. I'd pay for it, too, if I was the Chief or even the Chief's shoeshiner. And I'd make sure the guy was around when I or my family needed him. Hell, that only makes sense.

Single Payor. No more back office (behind the examining room) full of people who are paid lots of money by every doctor in the country to make sure that the insurance companies actually pay the doctor for taking out their patient's appendix. Do you have any idea what goes on in order to get paid?....the price of care has to go up in order to pay for the boatload of people newly on the payroll for no other reason than to chase the FELONS.

Those dollars aren't even being counted. The Insurance companies are felons..large fines every year..all of them...the kind of "not our fault but we'll gladly pay the 50 million dollar fine"....ALL FELONS...who are paid billions of dollars every year for withholding money from doctors, not paying claims to patients, even stealing from Bernie Madoff. Yay, capitalism. A middle man's dream. No muss no fuss no product just profit.

So. You have a headache. It's been going on for two days. No sleep. You puked. Now your right arm is feeling unlike your left arm and unlike anything you remember it ever feeling like before. You come to me. I say, "answer me a few questions, if you don't mind." You do. I poke around a bit, ask a few more questions. I say, "nurse Glenda, give this gentleman some of this and some of that." I look at your wife/mother/daughter/husband/etc and I say, "Don't worry. No stroke. No slow bleed into his extremely and appropriately anxious brain. No, sir. No, ma'am. This is a complicated migraine. I expect, if I'm right, and I believe that I am, that this'll all be gone like me leaving the room right now in 35 minutes."

Gone in 35 minutes. Whew!! Thankkk Youuuuu!!

That'll be $100.

Thankkkk Youuuu!!! again, dok!

Y'all go on home. I don't expect this to come back today. Sign this one form. It goes right to the Central Single Payor computer. It is owned by you and me and everybody else in this whole stupid country. It will trigger a payment to my bank account. It costs you nothing. I don't have to pay anybody to make sure I get it. It is a helluva lot less than what it was when there were about 20 people standing in line to take their piece before it got to me. Maybe a trillion or so dollars/year. Now, it's just you and me again. I've got to maintain my credentials every few years to make sure that I am as good as I can be and so that you get the best medicine you can get. I'd expect nothing less from you.

And when I have a tree that I'm afraid is going to fall down on Junior's bedroom in the middle of the night the next time a good blow comes through from the Northeast and could take off his left leg and leave him a pitiful cripple for the rest of his natural life, I expect the same honest treatment for your tree husbandry services at that time. Get that big dead limb off of that goddam tree....I'll pay.

Hospitals aren't crooks, either..at least most of them. The way the payer system is structured most of them are barely making their expenses and this because they get paid less than the COST of their services for a good chunk of the people who use them. Single Payor would cover that as well.

Why are they understaffed? Why are we in a depression right now? Same reason. We all wanted more and more. We all got more and more. That would include the nursing staff, the kitchen staff, the maintenance crew, the radiology techs, etc., of the hospitals. But, when the revenues go south and the salaries are on their way to the Yukon what do you think is going to happen?

No more car dealership down the street. No more dress shop on Main Street. Nobody buying anything. However, whoops, everybody keeps buying medical care. But..........a lot of people aren't paying for it. And all those folks that GM and Dell and Microsoft can lay off, can't be so easily laid off at I'll Fix You Up General. Nope. That would be...and appropriately so....malpractice.

Single Payor. Get rid of the locusts, ticks, and leeches. We should be smarter than that by now.

And this totally ignorant bullshit that the "Government" is getting into medicine or the "Government" is getting into the examining room and Sooshalism!!! It's like Joe McCarthy's boys still have sway. The overhead of Medicare is about 2-3%. The overhead of the Cignas, Aetnas, United's, Blue Cross's of the world is more like 30-35%. Nobody from Medicare tells me what to do with my patients. They do have new rules that require me to give an aspirin in the ED for any new heart attack. They do require me to give an antibiotic to someone with pneumonia WHILE THEY ARE IN THE ER in order to be paid. Of course, we have studies that show that those two treatments save thousands of lives and prevent progression of disease. So, hell, we want to provide those treatments. And, if we don't, we're wrong and should be penalized to direct better treatment in the future........Could be my kid, or my mother, next time. Right?

Leeches. Ticks. Locust. Liars. Felons. Insurance/HMO. The people who thought that GWB was the greatest thing since the invention of balls and the tubes that lead from them to the head of a penis... the same people who think that the self serving demogoguery of the fat cigar smoking devil-serving radio schmuck's overly loud stupidity is just soooo sooo smart and on target....these folks are the ones to whom you can sell anything.

They're the ones who are in the way of a better medical care system. They believe the "Conservative" crap. I say..Get the hell out of the way. A la Senator Ribicoff, "have you no decency?" Or better, don't you understand the fundamentals that are needed to construct decency and a medical system that is humane to the people who are paying for it?

There can be no profit incentive in the deliver of medical care.

We shouldn't be talking about "affordable" health care while referring to the humans who need it, as if they themselves have to figure out how they are going to manage to pay for it. We should be talking about the how the country that provides it to its citizens is going to make it affordable to itself.



There can be no profit incentive for the police department. None for the fire department. None for the people who fix the streets. Not for the first lieutenant, the midshipman. Doesn't work. Gets in the way of providing what they have to provide without thought as to what they are going to make in the deal. The payment for all that is ours. We pay gladly.

This is easy. Get rid of the leeches.

Anonymous said...

Sounds good to me, Gregg. But, how do we implement your ideas using an incompetent and ineffectual government? Due to the failure of government, most folks can't travel across town after nightfall without worrying about their mortality. We can't trust government to spend our tax money wisely. It has been said that the government squanders as much as 50% of every dollar and I bet that figure is low. Look at what government has done with public education. Don't you find it interesting that Obama, the Clinton's, and every other government official with a grain of sense sends their kids to private schools? I am now retired, but I spent my life working in government and have countless appalling tales to tell regarding what I have seen and heard. I have absolutely no respect or confidence in government, not because I am a heartless bastard, but because I cannot deny what I have witnessed for decades. I wouldn't trust the government on any level to do any job economically and efficiently. The basic problems are that they spend other people's money and no one can be fired no matter how incompetent they are. That being the case, how can we trust the government with health care. I am sure that you have heard the horror stories of nationalized health care in other countries. Having worked in government, I shudder at the thought. On the other side of the coin, we used to be able to rely on competition to keep the private sector honest, but that even seems to have broken down. They say that a civilization is sustained by its character. If that is true then we are in big trouble all the way around.

Anonymous said...

There are horror stories wherever two legged animals have ever tread. We call the report of these horrors "anecdotes" and they are potent to make a point but dissolve when the larger problem is seen from far enough away. A perfect system of anything is not a possibility when human beings are involved. We all know that. So, we can't use that as part of an argument against any kind of institution just because it will have the inborn frailties of all human institutions...especially if, and this is a big "if", we are unable to supply a particular society wide need without an institution....with all its problems.

We know that there are bad cops. Would anybody say that we should do away with the Police Departments because you can't "trust" "them". We've heard stories about the cops in Toledo. We don't want "that" here. We'll just "police" ourselves.

Do you really think that the "horror" stories relative to the medical care delivery in Holland or France or Denmark are any more devastating than the "horror" stories of the millions of people in the USA who can't buy their meds, can't see a doctor because nobody other than the community health center will accept their "State" insurance. These clinics are backed up for months with overworked providers bursting with people trying to be treated with the windows crammed with the people who just want to get in to be seen.

I see them. An ED always says yes. You don't know. Universal Health Care with Single Payer Insurance slid into the Medicare apparatus will reduce the "horror" stories logarithmically.

Obama spoke correctly and I paraphrase....don't let the impossible ideal of perfection screw up the best solution we can develop at present.

Randy Haspel said...

Thank you, Dr. Gregg, for clearing that up. Of course I always intended to exclude you from the list of doctors that specialize in cash, checks, or money order. Those guys follow the first tenet of the Hippocratic Oath, "First, do no harm," in the office, while they outsource the harm to an insurance salesman. Not you though, pal. In the words of Rep. Michelle Bachman, "You be da man."

Anonymous said...

Gregg, you speak of what people tell of their experiences of nationalized health care as 'anecdotal' and as invalid. After spending decades of my life in public education, I have countless 'anecdotal' tales of my experiences that would cause you people to stick your fingers in your ears and scream in denial, because those experiences would not conform to your prejudices. For the last 16 years I worked as something of an 'insider' with my principal and was privy to lots of issues in regard to teachers, students, parents, special education, etc. I know why government education is dysfunctional, but I would never give voice to any of my experiences and insights on this blog, because liberals are impervious to facts that don't accord with their preconceived notions and I would only stir up anger and vitriol. Now, you can call the relating of my experiences 'anecdotal' and according to you invalid. The biggest thing that freaks me out about some liberals is their fascination with big government. There is no need for me to make any more comments about government. One either sees the problems with it or one doesn't. I brought up the fact that few politicians would send their children to public schools and that is because they have the best interests of their children at heart. By the same reasoning, if we have nationalized health care these same politicians won't be using it and for similar reasons. They know that the government delivers an inferior product and they expect everyone but themselves to use government services. And the reason for that is that they know how bogus government products are. These services are for the unwashed masses that politicians have nothing to do with other than to ask for their votes to keep themselves in power. Think of John Edwards, the Champion of the Unwashed Masses. He is nothing more than an elitist hypocrite who uses those in poverty to advance his own personal ambitions, like most politicians. And, having lived in the belly of the beast, I could never recommend public education to anyone that I cared about (there are a very few exceptions, though). Let the unwashed masses uses public services. People that know better will go elsewhere.

Anonymous said...

Spiritually speaking I was born a hippie and a rebel. I had difficulty fitting in as I grew up because of this. It was difficult for me to play the requisite social games in order to be deemed 'cool' as that was defined at the time. In the fall of 1968 I went to a hippie coming out party at the old Guild theater on Poplar Ave. They showed Woody Allen's 'I Love You, Alice B. Toklas', followed by a hippie band and a light show. That night opened up a world for which I had been waiting all of my life. I was spiritually and psychologically made for hippiedom. My primary role models were and still are H.D. Thoreau and the primitve Christians. I had found my element and spent what still remains as my happiest days in that culture. I am still heart-sick that the whole phenomenon is practically extinct. It has been replaced with gangs, hip-hop music, and unspeakable violence. This is a travesty that the hippie culture of the time could never have conceived as a follow-up. My niche was the apolitical, spiritual, New Age wing of the movement. I am now retired and residing in a mountainous, rural part of the country that is one of the remaining refuges for old hippies. It is a defacto libertarian, folkish society with lots of crafters, festivals, acoustic music, and natural beauty abounds. It is a mecca for those of hippie bent. And it is refreshingly apolitical. No offense, but the reading of the highly politicized issues in this blog seem to me to run counter to most everything that hippie culture, at least as I experienced it, stood for, and is quite a bring down as we used to say. But, as some of you know, I am occasionally tempted to enter into the fray, mainly because I am so anti-government. After all I was born a rebel. I am so relieved to have left the city and to have immersed myself in the natural. It is like washing the scum and excrement of city living off and re-entering a vestige of what the 60's hippie culture offered for a while before the whole thing lost its way and imploded into squabbling political factions. But, to each his own. I'm sitting on my deck listening to the creek below, watching the mountains beyond, and listening to some excellent Celtic instrumentals. If you get out of the city into such a place you might just be re-born into something of the pleasant space we all used to occupy long ago. I would recommend parts of Colorado, northern California, some areas of rural New York, some areas of the Appalachians, or the Ozarks for those who may be interested. But, I know that city living and its corresponding negativity and corrupting influences can be addicting. To that I say, 'Break on through to the other side', if you are able.

Anonymous said...

Add to the list of old hippie refuges coastal Oregon. It is exquisitely beautiful, but the rain may be a bother.

Anonymous said...

H.D. Thoreau added an addendum to the proverbial 'That government is best which governs the least'. He said, 'That government is best which governs not at all, and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have'. To illustrate this point, the county in which I live has no law enforcement presence from Sunday through Thursday and only one squad car on the roads on Friday and Saturday nights. This is because the people govern themselves, commit no crime to speak of, and have no need to be 'all watched over by machines (and government officials) of loving grace'. I know that this must sound like heresy to those of you of the 'cradle to grave' government nannyism persuasion. He goes on to say that 'government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of the way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in the way'. I will periodically be injecting some of Thoreau's sanity into the commentary on this government infatuated blog. I am quite sure that he would be appalled that some have degenerated to the level of many of the participants on this blog who can't seem to get enough of the government take over of this country. The original hippies were quite hip to Thoreau and were a freedom loving people. What happened along the way? I have always thought that the name of this blog, 'Born Again Hippies' was a misnomer. 'Born Again Commies' would have been more appropos.

Father Farken said...

BAH Community...let us lift our hearts to the Lord!
For our beloved President Barack O'Bama! That he may continue to serve as president and forget about any notion to rule as King Huss. LORD HEAR OUR PRAYER! That he may realize, that though he is a gifted, inspirational & charismatic leader, that most of us voted for him because the change that we wanted more than anything was to get the other mofo out of the White House!
LORD HEAR OUR PRAYER!
That he may realize that we are a shallow people & because of his marketing skills that we would have voted for him even if he had the political philosophy of Bay Buchanan!
Lord hear our prayer!
That he may realize that America is not that shallow...that you can't BS a BS er....& that because of our communal ADHD we get tired of our presidents in about 6 years no matter how good they are!
LORD HEAR OUR PRAYER!
& Lord that as our beloved president is trying to stimulate our economy by manipulating everything he can think of... that he try to stimulate America's music scene as well by genetically engineering the offspring of Jakob Dylan & Lisa Marie Presley! For it will take some sort of a shaky legged Elvis Zimmerman to lead this EXODOUS!
LORD HEAR OUR PRAYER!
And Lord I thank you for Sputnik & Muddy & all the diversity & genius that comes from great characters like ghg & Mr.Natural & so many others! What talent! And let's really do pray for our president & our country and each other! All of you are officially on my prayer list! You no whats funny! I would love a guided tour to Mr. Natural's Hippiedom! Maybe we could have a Celtic Mass there! The Peace of the Lord! May G*d truly bless you! Fr. Farken

Anonymous said...

Mr. Natural's hippie mecca will forever remain a secret, especially from liberals. Call a place paradise, then you can kiss it goodbye. Especially if liberals take a mind to come and make 'improvements'. Actually, it wouldn't appeal to lots of liberals, because the employment opportunities practically all involve manual labor and there is not much to steal. Also, they might have a hard time dealing with the freedom here. There are no government officials here in charge of wiping their butts. That alone would probably cause them to move back to the cities.

Anonymous said...

Red alert! This is in response to Mr. Natural's contention that there are no government officials in his area to relieve the citizenry of the onerous and unfair task of having to wipe their own butts. The Obama administration has just announced the formation of a new government bureaucracy to be called the Department of Butt Wiping and Nose Picking. The goal is to have a government official to visit each home at least once a day to wipe the butts and pick the noses of the citizens of this country. It has been suspected that this vital service has not been offered before due to a vast right wing conspiracy which believes that the citizens should actually have to performs these dehumanizing tasks for themselves. Nominations are now being considered for the cabinet level position on Butt Wiping and Nose Picking Czar. It has been estimated that this vital service will cost the taxpayers no more than $900 billion per year and is considered to be a bargain by the Obama administration. More such services are in the planning stages. The Democratic constituency is eagerly awaiting further announcements. Among other services hoped for is pre-chewed food and governmental assistance in bowel movement.

Anonymous said...

I am amazed at how your life is controlled by which party is in charge of the country.

You should be in charge of your own life but you obviously are not.
Like all good democrats you are looking for the next excuse.