Are you bitter?

If you've been following the news this past week, you may have noticed that it's been a very sloooooow news week; the biggest news story is Hilary Clinton and John McCain knocking on Barack Obama for calling voters in small Pennsylvania towns, bitter. This is a serious story? Are people bitter? I would think so, there is a reason that entire region is known as the "Rust Belt". I don't even live in a small town where the entire economic foundation collapsed and I would say that I'm bitter. Groceries have gone up in price (dramatically), gas has gone up, the Dow is down about 1500 pts from its late 2007 high, my investment portfolio & 401k and most people's investments are tanking, my raise doesn't match inflation, I can't afford a house, I mean let's be honest, who isn't bitter? Saying we aren't in a recession doesn't make it so, and saying that disgruntled people aren't doesn't make it so either. So what's wrong with Obama saying people are bitter. Fox News went on the streets of Allentown PA to ask; the best reaction is the anchor getting frustrated and asking the optician why he doesn't just move. OR

Fox News Anchor: Do you think that people are bitter because of the situation at hand?
John@Diner: I know they are.
LOLZ.

Joe Lieberman. Far Right in Disguise

I published this online May 2006; due to technical issues with Blogger 2 years ago, the post itself did not receive a permanent link, and was instead bundled into a monthly archive. I was and still am in strong agreement with everything I wrote in the aforementioned post and the essay I wrote (linked below) for my 'ethics in medicine' class that I took with Dr. Jeffrey Blustein of the Montefiore Bioethics Center, Professor of Bioethics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and adjunct Associate Professor of Philosophy, Barnard College. I am re-posting it for posterity and because I was reminded of Joe Lieberman the other day. In 2006 during the Senate race between Lieberman and Ned Lamont, the Lieberman website crashed and the campaign pointed fingers at the Lamont campaign and even went so far as to file a complaint with the US Attorney's Office. A Freedom of Information Act request revealed that the FBI found that the cause of the crash was due to the use of a crappy $15/month hosting site and a misconfigured server. Onwards!

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A few months ago Joe Lieberman spoke out in defense of Catholic hospitals' right to turn away rape, sexual assault, and incest victims who were seeking emergency contraception. "hospitals that refuse to give contraceptives to rape victims for 'principled reasons' shouldn't be forced to do so… In Connecticut, it shouldn't take more than a short ride to get to another hospital”. In a way he's right, in another way he's callous and very much not right. Look around at the hospitals in New York City, in your town, in your suburb, how many hospitals are Catholic; how many have merged with the Catholic Church and you don't even know about it?

The Catholic Church is a huge financial power that controls more than a few hospitals across our nation. As the largest non-profit provider of healthcare, they have the financial resources to keep hospitals afloat that other organizations could not. More and more hospitals are either selling to the Catholic Church or affiliating themselves with them. Does your hospital provide EC? It's hard to know these days.

Lieberman justifies the Catholic position saying that there are plenty of other hospitals in Connecticut you could go to. That's fine for Connecticut, that's not fine for the many counties and cities where the Catholic hospital is the sole provider of healthcare and residents have no alternative.

Furthermore, what an insensitive comment. If you are a rape victim, I'm sure the last thing you need is to drive to the hospital in a state if duress only to be turned away. What are Americans to do when there is no procreative freedom, our morals are being governed by an organization that represents about 25% of our population and less than 10% in many of the states where the Catholic hospital has been deemed a "sole-provider". America was founded by those seeking to escape religious oppression, look around though, here we are again.

Follow the link: CLICK ME! essay I wrote for "Ethics and Medicine" examining the ethics of the Catholic healthcare system.

I've said it once, I've said it a million times...

worth the read.
http://www.columbiaspectator.com/webfeatures/elhaj.pdf

What's Wrong With Kids These Days?

Uhhhh...

Apparently getting a concussion, hearing loss, and vision loss is what you get these days for talking trash on the internet, on MySpace.

Mercades Nichols' Mother's comments: "don't waste your time on myspace going back and forth talking, saying all these nasty things about people. I don't see why she would do that if she didn't have the nerve to back up what she was saying."

Some comments from the accused when asked if they felt any remorse: “None at all,... Guess we’re not going to go to the beach on this spring break"
"Am I going to be released in time to go to cheerleading practice tomorrow?”

Exhibit 1:

Teen Beating, Victoria Lindsay, Video
Uploaded by guanabee



Exhibit 2:

One the girls' Myspace pages. Look at it and feel your brain hurt. Expand the image to see some what she's all about.

Update 4/11/08: The screenshots below which was allegedly Mercades Nichols' myspace page, is not necessarily her page. See blog and comments @ Republican Ranting. That blog that I linked to is interesting in that the permanent link is titled "myspace-of-mercades-nichols-the-girl-who-kidnapped-and-beat-victoria-lindsay-reveals-that-she-is-anything-but-sorry/" and the title of the article that appears on the post is "Fake Myspace of Mercades Nichols (the Girl Who Kidnapped and Beat Victoria Lindsay) Shows that People Have No Decency". Sounds like someone else on the internet had a change of heart, I admit that I did not give her the benefit of the doubt.. Anyways, the point of this update is that the myspace address of the "real" page is rodeo_chick_0413 and the "fake" one is rodeo_chick_413 (has been removed). Are they both her pages? Was the offensive page faked? They were both last updated on 4/8/08. Is the removed page a fake and what instigated the whole event in the first place? Either way, the page I took the screenshots from made Mercades seem to be a pretty awful person, rubbing salt into a wound that was already pretty bad. Due to its unbelievably racist content on all levels, I'm inclined to agree that it's a fake. Whoever created the page... is pretty awful regardless of the circumstances surrounding this whole thing. Again the pages below, probably fake.