Is The Democratic Party Going The Way Of The Dinosaur?

So, what is the county Dem party up to these days? Oh, defending it's fearless leader's vote against a GLBT center in Racine. Fucking brilliant move on their part, eh? And, I'm pretty sure they're still passing around acrimony like hors d' oevers at the meetings. Then there's this e-mail going around that includes this passage, "We must not get caught up in our personal ambition and singular dogma."-- you know, so you don't lose sight of the bigger picture. *cough* I almost spit water out my nose on that one.
The county dem party refuses to discuss having a women's committee (chairman Mao Mike Shields told me to my face in_no_un-certain_terms he would not allow a women's committee or any committee based on gender or race or anything else that divided people into groups. Odd coming from the now head of Racine's NAACP, isn't it? Also, I hope he sent that meme to the state to inform them that the state women's caucus might be insulting to his delicate sensibilities). Ooo, it just occurred to me that there is also a college dems GLBT group, perhaps they should be alerted also?
It also refuses to use the internet to send out an e-newsletter to save money and paper, I'm thinking environmental or tech committees at this point would be just too funny to propose. don't even think about explaining to the leaders what an e-mail blast is or how to text to a large group. Also, it's funny because they don't seem to want to use the intertubes but somehow always know what I'm posting on here........a lurker I assume.

So, here's MHO.....if the party can't depend on it's leaders to put aside their personal ambitions in order to defend GLBT rights, can't grasp the use of the intertubes, thinks women don't have gender specific issues they don't want to share with men, has to wrestle with having 22 executive board members while only 5 make the actual decisions, can't have one meeting without some sort of dreary drivel about by-laws or why someone can't do something on their own without top officer clearance they might as well throw themselves into the nearest tar pit now. Because they are dinosaurs.
But, hey, that's just my personal take on what's what with this party. Of course I'm far from the only one who thinks this, but it appears I'm the only one who really doesn't give a shit about what they say about me anymore and "keeping it in the family" mentality has that all too familiar ring of keeping nasty family secrets to the detriment of some family members.

BACK TO BLUE RACINE

Politics and Death and Irony cont.

I made burgers on the grill and made one for her so she wouldn't have to cook. I gave her a burger and some coleslaw at about 5:30. I went back to my apartment to eat with my husband and take a quick shower. When I went back to ask my mom how she liked the burger and if there was anything else she wanted she was in a full blown stroke seizure. I'm not going to go into details other than half her body was contorted and seizing and the other side was limp. I held her grasping hand in my left hand while I called 911 with my right hand. I was pretty cool considering what was going on. I gave them the address, her age and that I thought it was a stroke and described the symptoms.

The police arrived very quickly, the ambulance did not. We heard it getting nearer and then farther away.......I knew instantly they were lost because of our street being blocked off over 10 years ago by the expansion of the local school and it caused many people to get lost getting here. But, when I told the cops to call the EMTs to tell them how to get here they said, "They're local volunteers. They know this area."

I was trying hard to stay cool while holding onto mom and telling her things were going to be okay knowing it was already turning into a worst case scenario. By this time my husband was out on the front lawn because he knew the same thing as me, they were lost. We heard the ambulance approaching again and then moving away, again. This time I let go of my mom's hand to go out the front door to demand that the sheriffs call them. One was already doing so.

When they finally got here it was a terrible scene of too many people with too many amateur medics and not enough-if any- full time professionals.

I told them it was most likely a stroke and to move her immediately. They didn't.

When they did decide to move her I told them to let my husband and I move her recliner into the center of the room so they could lift her evenly. They didn't. They half dragged her out of her chair by her left arm, the one that was broken less than two years ago.

I asked why they got lost. They told me their mapping system hadn't been updated to show the closing of Center St. A street closure that happened over 10 years ago.

We got to the local hospital before the ambulance. We were forced to wait for a CT scan before the doctor would see her. It was a stroke. The one long shot immediate treatment is ATP therapy. By the time I was told this my son and his wife were there. They had driven from the UWM area all the way to Burlington before we even got to talk to a doctor. The window for using ATP is 3 hours.

The Burlington hospital is not equipped to administer it. Flight for life had to be called to take mom to St Lukes in Milwaukee and the on board EMTs started the ATP in flight. Hours after I called 911.

So, where do politics come into this horrible nightmare I will live with forever? Here's where. Waterford can't afford a full time professional EMT staff large enough to go to more than one event at a time. High taxes aren't high enough. There is no federal money to spread around to communities like ours because of many factors.

One is that we spend way too much on the military compared to what we spend on local emergency systems. I don't know about you but I'm a whole lot more concerned about having a serious accident or a heart attack over some terrorist cell bombing my neighborhood. You fall off a roof or have a seizure knowing homeland security is spending billions on reading e-mails isn't very comforting.

Another, more insidious reason, is that people are so indoctrinated into thinking that all taxes are bad and evil they don't understand that higher taxes mean a better shot at saving real lives. The lives of our loved ones and ourselves. And, the irony of all ironies is that overwhelmingly the people who claim to value human life over all else are the ones most apt to vote against any tax increases. Even to increase emergency medical services.

The ambulance got lost? Their mapping system isn't up to date? Well, try using fucking MapQuest or Google maps. Here is a huge systemic problem. We have people holding public office that don't even try to grasp the technologies we have at our disposal for free........and they always vote to not raise taxes so they can get re-elected. More irony. Mapquest, Google and Yahoo maps all show exactly where our house is located.

No ATP if you go to the wrong hospital. Have a stoke in the Waterford-Burlington area - sucks for you. Why? Because hospitals long ago melted under the heat of having to show profit margins over showing successful rates of saving lives. Wait for how long for that CT scan? Not enough staff on duty to handle something like this is my guess. Hello politics again. It's called privatization in the medical field. Thanks so much Ronald Reagan.

If all that wasn't enough for me to suffer through the worst part had yet to come. I had to give the order to deny my own mother a feeding tube or any other form of life support. She did have a living will. Unfortunately, after the famous Terri Schiavo case medical facilities have to make sure that the family is all okay with the patients own request.

I was very lucky because my mom had an excellent neurosurgeon at St Lukes and he insisted that I contact my brothers so I would not have to ever deal with knowing it was my sole direction. Even with that my fear of doing the wrong thing made ask my daughter-in-law to look at the CT scans to confirm the amount of damage so I could avoid a total breakdown from guilt. So, here I go having to give due acknowledgement to those assholes in congress that turned the Schiavo case into a game of political one-upsmanship therefore making countless people a lot more miserable during the hardest times of their lives.

Ninety years ago my grandmother held her two year old daughter, Apolonia Eva, in her arms while pressing the split skull together with rags after Apolonia fell into a concrete window well. There was no ER close by. There was no 911. My mom told me grandma never recovered from that loss and worse my grandfather suffered nightmares over the death the remainder of his life.

Here we are 90 years later and you can live somewhere where you can get DSL with streaming video, iPods and high def TV but you may not survive the wrong medical event.

What's wrong with this picture? Where have the priorities of our government officials gone? Where have society's priorities gone? Finance Wall Street but leave people, including children, the elderly and the needy, without access to state of the art medical care. "Corporate bailouts" have become a regular part of our vocabulary but avoided being tied to taxes. Meanwhile talk of any medical facility not turning a nice profit seems to be comparable to evil incarnate.

BACK TO BLUE RACINE

Mad Dog Mac's Budget Cuts

He lists reasons that I find rather interesting coming from an extreme right winger:

1)Higher costs—e.g., for food and fuel—just to maintain present service levels. Now why do I find that odd coming from him? See my article below and know that this guy is one heckova minion for big oil. He worked very hard to get Bush two terms in the White House by winning Racine county for the GOP-- not that WI was carried by the GOP, but Racine county was. Did he not know that when big oil took over we were going to get gouged in every orifice? Is he that stupid? Or was this an excellent reason to eliminate county jobs so that they could be replaced by the private sector later on? Hmm?

2)Lower non-tax revenues—e.g., permit fees, real property registration fees, and interest on county investments. It's called a recession, republicans just can't say that out loud. Or he's a fucking moron. Personally I'm going with the "one more heartless bastard that only cares about lining his own pockets" Mad Mac.

3) Reduced funding from State and Federal sources—e.g., for law enforcement, workforce development, and child support enforcement. Hey, reduced funding? Isn't that what the republicans are all about? They say they are. They say they want to cut off funding to all of the above so they can lower your taxes (just ask Robin "My belt always matches my shoes" Vos - also Mac's BFF- because he will tell you that nothing is more important than lower taxes-- NOTHING). See, when the Fed gives the states less money that means that the state can't pass that along as state money...........so when you support a Fed government that doesn't tax the rich on the same scale as the working class the country tends to run short on cash, particularly when that same big government is handing out corporate welfare and corporate bailouts and generally just letting big business run the whole damn country.

So, really Mad Dog Mac should be dancing in the streets right now, and he probably is somewhere doing just that. He's probably dancing naked and howling at the moon he's so happy because this is what he has wanted for a very long time.........just ask any county worker.

So, with the assistance of his hired brain, Geoff "The Gravedigger"Greiveldinger we should be getting this rammed down our throats on Sept. 30th at the county board meeting where they shall present the budget that shall save us tons of money in taxes and the crippled shall walk straight and birds will sing in rejoice.

And, don't forget! The next time you fill your gas tank, buy groceries, pay your local taxes, or just about anytime you spend money on necessities thank a republican just like Mad Dog Mac, king of Racine county and his little friends like Vos and the Gravedigger, for the prices.

1st CD convention

People have asked me too many times to count why I'm not frustrated over the Hillary & Barack race or why I don't think it's that big a deal that it's gone on this long. Those people should live in my CD to appreciate what it's like to have a really complicated race with various candidates.

This should be most interesting. I hope I can keep up. Meanwhile, I am going to warn people I take very slim minutes and everyone must identify themselves if they speak and that if anyone is going to give a speech I need a copy of it for the records........that should shut up the peanut gallery that quibbles over commas in resolutions......oh, yeah, we're doing resolutions too. And, I have been present when people spent long times discussing commas, and word counts (all resolutions have to be in certain format and the words have to be counted).

I'm thinking that the resolutions are going to go pretty quickly and we will be moving on to the business of tossing Ryan out for the majority of the convention. On here I get to put on my "individual citizen" hat and endorse Marge Krupp (who has just passed the $80,000 mark in fund raising for a citizen candidate!) and my "blogger" hat. Tomorrow I will be an officer and I will not show any from of favoritism. I'll also be all business. Crazy as that sounds, I really can be very "all business" and kind of hard assed about rules. You have to be able to turn it on and turn it off. I'm generally very good at doing that......so good it's almost scary.

Then we also have a few elections for CD officers scheduled. My first convention doing minutes and we have three major things going on. Whew, I will need a good meal, drinks, and rest after that.

This is one of those things that most people who vote Dem but don't bother to get involved with should. Really. Because this is where the state party takes it's direction in the language of the DPW constitution. It's our platform and you can have an impact if you really want to. It's not easy, it's boring and tedious. But, if you don't participate, you really should never complain about the party. At least not to me. I kick.

I will taking photos and posting them on the Democratic Party of Racine County's website (blog).

Question of Recession? continued

The highest insured unemployment rates in the week ending March 15 were in Alaska (4.9 percent), Michigan (4.4), Rhode Island (4.0), Pennsylvania (3.8), Wisconsin (3.6), Idaho (3.5), California (3.4), New Jersey (3.4), Oregon (3.4), and Vermont (3.4).

The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending March 22 were in Pennsylvania (+2,904), Wisconsin (+1,526) , Georgia (+1,481), New York (+1,478), and Iowa (+916), while the largest decreases were in Michigan (-7,660), Ohio (-5,992), North Carolina (-5,584), Puerto Rico (-2,854), and Texas (-2,547).

In March the highest unemployment rate in Wisconsin, by metropolitan area, was Racine. A staggering 6.3%, and that was an improvement over the previous month, going down .4%. Figures taken from here. I don't know about how other people figure recessions, but for me there's a helluva one in Racine.

Now the POTUS says the Economic Stimulus package is going to help us out enormously. It appears that parts of the government think that sending us checks for $300- $1,200 is going to make a substantial difference. Say what? Is this deja vu all over again? Because I seem to remember getting one of those tax rebates checks compliments of GW a bit back and it didn't seem to do much then. How did it work out for you? Didn't work much for me. What's it going to do for the people in foreclosure? Make one or one and half house payments, in some cases only a partial one month payment? My friend Diane likes to say, "You can't spend the same nickel twice." So, all this talk about people racing out to spend that money is hogwash for the most part. If you can afford to use that cash to buy any non-essentials you didn't need it. And, the people who do need it, it's going to pay for something they already have or need. Most likely paying off bills. Money already spent -- just not transferred.

When the government has to start sending cash out to citizens to try to keep a gloomy economy from taking it's last breath, it's a recession. I can see a depression on the horizon soon. How do we stop it? We get mean. We get tough. We show the government just how pissed we are at the overwhelming advantages big business were given over the working class and how that harmed us. We do it with phone calls and letters. We do with blogs and talking to people directly anywhere you meet them. We kick Paul Ryan out! That would send a huge message to the great halls of power.

Frontline - Sick Around the World cont.

Reid reports next from Japan, the world's second largest economy and the country boasting the best health statistics. The Japanese go to the doctor three times as often as Americans, have more than twice as many MRIs, use more drugs, and spend more days in the hospital, yet Japan spends about half as much per capita as the United States. Reid finds out the secrets of the nation's success: By law, everyone must buy health insurance--either through an employer or a community plan--and unlike in the U.S., insurers cannot turn down a patient for a pre-existing illness, nor are they allowed to make a profit.

Reid's journey then takes him to Germany, the country that invented the concept of a national health care system. For it's 80 million people, Germany offers universal health care, including medical, dental, mental health, homeopathy and spa treatment. Professor Karl Lauterbach, M.D., a member of the German parliament, describes it as "a system where the rich pay for the poor and where the ill are covered by the healthy. It is ... highly accepted by the population." As they do in Japan, medical providers must charge standard prices which are negotiated with the government every year. As a consequence, physicians in Germany earn between half and two-thirds as much as their U.S. counterparts.

Taiwan researched many health care systems before settling on one where the government runs the financing, but Reid finds the delivery of health care is left to the market. Taiwanese health care offers medical, dental, mental and Chinese medicine, with no waiting time and for less that half of what we pay in the United States. Every person in Taiwan has a "smart card" containing all of his or her relevant health information, and bills are paid automatically. But what Reid finds is that the Taiwanese spend too little to sustain their health care system. According to Princeton's Tsung-Mei Cheng, who advised the Taiwanese government, "As we speak, the government is borrowing from banks to pay what there isn't enough to pay the providers."

Reid's final destination is Switzerland, a country whose health care system suffered from some America's problems until, in 1994, the country attempted a major reform. Despite a huge private insurance business, a law called LAMal was passed, which set up a universal health care system that, among other things, restricted insurance companies from making a profit on basic medical care. Today, Swiss politicians from the political right and left enthusiastically support universal health care. Pascal Couchepin, the president of the Swiss Federation, argues: "Everybody has a right to health care. ... It is a profound need for people to be sure that if they are struck by destiny ... they can have a good health system.

"Sick Around the World is a FRONTLINE co-production with Palfreman Film Group. The film's correspondent is T.R. Reid. The writers are Jon Palfreman and T.R. Reid. The producer and director is Jon Palfreman. FRONTLINE is produced by WGBH Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers. Major funding for FRONTLINE is provided by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Additional series funding is provided by the Park Foundation. Additional funding for Sick Around the World is provided by The Colorado Health Foundation, The Commonwealth Fund and The Colorado Trust. FRONTLINE is closed-captioned for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers and described for people who are blind or visually impaired by the Media Access Group at WGBH. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. The senior producer is Raney Aronson. The executive producer of FRONTLINE is David Fanning.

WoW

The game now has over 10 million subscribers. Yes, you have to subscribe and pay to play. They're adding a new class now, Death Knights. I've always been very open minded about gaming........but, now I am maybe getting old? Now I'm beginning to wonder just how many young men played this game, or the older first person shooter games and ended up signing up for military duty thinking that it was going to be very "game like". I mean, 18 yr old men aren't exactly known for their intellect in the first place.
I think I can say pretty confidently my son never wanted to join the army and go play war after playing these games. But, then again, when he wasn't driving me crazy with gaming he was reading. He also had real life friends and was/is very liberal minded politically. But, what of the kids who come from families where war is romanticized? Perhaps homes where there is domestic violence?
Maybe my paranoia is kicking in here. But, sometimes I think these games have replaced the old Hollywood movies made to encourage men to "join up" because it was their duty. Movies where the good guys always won, John Wayne was always a bigger than life hero. You know the ones. Then came the post Vietnam movies that gave us a deeper look into the realities of war and I'm sure Saving Private Ryan didn't drive the numbers of young men to rush out to be an army of one. Just maybe these new games have replaced the old romantic war movies?
What's your thoughts? Am I paranoid? Am I onto something?