Category: GOP / DEM

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I watched CSPAN yesterday.

Uhhh OHHHH!

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I continue to be disgusted by the machinations of Elijah Cummings.  I can’t help but think of him as doing nothing more than obfuscating and obstructing the truth.  

I’m not so naive as to believe that the Republicans are saints, THEY AREN’T but in the Lois Lerner affair I think it’s completely reasonable for her to be held in contempt of congress, if for nothing else, than the fact that she ignored a Congressional subpoena. 

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When I was growing up, you didn’t ignore a subpoena of any kind, much less one from Congress. 

I think it’s appropriate to ask for the justice department to evaluate Ms. Lerner’s use of her 5th amendment right, in her testimony before Congress.  

It’s reasonable to ask why Ms Lerner was, and is cooperating with the justice department. But refuses to provide information to a Congressional subcommittee.

I’d personally like to understand why, if there was no wrong doing, she invoked her 5th amendment right the moment she sat down in the Congressional hearing.

No I’m not going to hold my breath that we will ever hear the truth in this matter.

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I was particularly disgusted that Cummings talked about wasting money in pursuing the truth. The implication was that at some point the truth takes a back seat to economics.

By extension, this says if you hold out long enough no matter what you’ve done wrong you can get away with it.

I don’t subscribe to that theory.

I think that after Ms. Lerner’s second spectacularly disrespectful appearance before congress that she should have been carted off to jail.

Not for invoking her 5th amendment right, but because she so clearly held the members of the Congressional committee in Contempt.

I’ve always thought if I were called to testify about anything before congress, I’d be in trouble. I doubt that I could keep my personal contempt for some of the congressional members in check. I’ve always assumed that I’d find myself in a jail cell. I was surprised they let her out of the hearing room.

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Back on the phone with Anthem BlueCross

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This is what, the 12th time I’ve had to call these people in 4 months?

Today it’s about receiving a couple of bills that make absolutely not fucking sense. I’m sooooo Tired of dealing with this bullshit!

Then there’s the little annoyances that tend to get you (alright ME!) amped up before you’ve even gotten into a hold queue wating for an agent that will probably fuck your shit up worse than it already is.

I swear every time I speak to one of these people they claim that everything is happy and good to go and then a month later I get something generated from a computer that makes it obvious something is still horrifically fucked up.

So in order to blow off steam before I actually talk to a human, here are the irritations in the order of encountering them.

Item One

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Bills (one each) for portions of a policy. Contained within these 3 page bills is one page with explainations of how I can have an interpreter and a phone number for the Department of Insurance.

This page is printed in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Korean, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, Armenian, Punjabi, Khmer, Hmong, and Persian.

The main bill is all printed in English and I’ve identified as being an English speaker, so I’m somewhat annoyed by the waste of 3 pieces of paper every month.

Actually it’s 9 pieces of paper every month because they are supposed to be billing this directly from my checking account.

What they’ve been doing is billing my account then sending me 9 pieces of paper telling me that they’ve billed my account.

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Item Two

Of course nowhere on this bill do they have a phone number to call if you have questions about billing. Instead they say you’re supposed to call the Member Number on the back of your insurance card. Only problem is:

THERE IS NO MEMBER PHONE NUMBER!

There is however a customer service number that puts you into the insanity of a voice prompted computer system that doesn’t understand standard spoken English.

Eventually I just start hammering around on random numbers until I get into a hold queue.

Item Three

The reminder that all representatives are still busy played every 30 seconds. Yeah I kinda figured out that you guys are busy BECAUSE I was on hold listening to shitty hold music! How about extending that notice to once every 90 seconds?

Then I hear someone answer the phone. Wow! I was only on hold for 45 minutes this time.

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I get to a very nice man in the Philippines. Yeah, the Philippines who is able to answer my questions. Really?

The folks in the Philippines are a very nice and gracious people but why aren’t we talking to Americans?

You know out of work Americans who are struggling to feed themselves and THEIR families?

Item Four

Anyway, the nice man explains that the two bills I have saying that payment is immediately due are because Anthem failed to debit my checking account again.

Apparently these bills are trying to catch up for 2 months of payments that are in arrears. He offers to bring the accounts up to date but wants to do it via a credit card.

I decline. I’m growing more suspicious of Anthem.

I mean really, if they can’t keep it straight that I’ve given them permission to take their payments right out of my checking account; this is the 4th time they’ve screwed this up since November, can I really trust them to pay for services to my Doctor?

Item Five

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The nice man tells me that one of the bills is for Dental insurance.

Uhhh, I cancelled that back in Feb. Then he explains… It’s for pediatric dentistry.

SAY WHAT? I thought that’s why my damn medical insurance when up after the fucked up implementation of Obamacare!

(I swear, if ever there was something that needed to be aborted, Obamacare fits the bill).

But since they’re sending me a bill for it separately, It occurs to me that I can refuse to pay the bill.

Item Six

As I’m thinking over this insanity It occurs to me the cost of my meds is 300 a month without insurance. If I go to Tijuana or use a Canadian pharmacy I could perhaps get my generic drugs cheaper. Even if I stayed in the American pharmacies I’d still save money.

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I wonder if I were to simply cancel the whole damn shebang and let our fucked up government BILL me for not having insurance if I’d be better off paying out of pocket.

I wonder if I can get a catastrophic policy just in case I end up in the hospital?

I find myself thinking of tropical beaches out of the US once a year taking a “Medical Vacation” to Indonesia, or Curacao.

The thought of a once a year checkup combined with warm sand and excellent diving is a cloying one.

I wonder if the math would work out.

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I’ve got till the 10th to decide what I want to do. I suppose I’ll think it over and run some math. Perhaps I’ll shop around for another private insurer who actually can keep the payment and billing straight on a month to month basis.

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A slow news day…

This morning over my morning coffee I noticed that the News feeds hadn’t changed their headlines much.

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The news lead on Google is about the botched execution where the inmate later died of a heart attack. 

While that’s an important issue I’m somewhat disinterested. The inmate died. That was, after all the desired result of the execution.

That the inmate died in a way that was not according to plan and obviously less than peacefully isn’t something I’m particularly worried about. I presume that his victim(s) didn’t die peacefully either. Perhaps this was simply Karma playing out.

I’m ambivalent about the death penalty.

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I used to be a staunch supporter, but now I’m not as sure as I once was. I’m not in favor of the death penalty today because there have been so many instances where the person convicted of a crime had their conviction overturned by DNA or witnesses recanting their stories.

Given these occurrences, I’m not sure that taking another persons life is truly the best solution. Death is final, conviction of a capital crime, on the other hand, may not be.

Regardless of where you stand on the death penalty, we as a society all bear the responsibility for throwing the switch.

Each of us is taking another person’s life by proxy. That responsibility is something that I am not convinced I should accept. 

As a result, I have voted NO in recent elections where the Death Penalty was on the ballot. Even with my NO vote, if executions are still being carried out in the name of the society (of which I’m a member) I still bear responsibility for taking another’s life.

On the other hand, if I were to see someone kill another human being during the commission of a crime with my own eyes… 

Sorry… Mr Killer, you’re a dead man.

My thoughts on this subject may be confusing to some, but this logic illustrates a point.

You don’t have to be 100% in either the liberal or conservative camp. You can use your mind and information to decide what you think is right or wrong from either side of the political coin.

In general I think our “News” organizations are failing us and that they have all become so biased as to be unreliable.

Cases in point

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Why hasn’t the media picked up on the recently retired Representative Keith Farnham (D) from Illinois being charged with possessing child pornography?

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From Breitbart, Why haven’t the Media Outlets reported the other cases of BLM overreach? There’s an interesting article here  discussing a “Land Grab” in California. Essentially the property owner has had his property value reduced to zero because he can’t build, subdivide, or sell the property to anyone except an organization that will then turn the land over to the BLM.

This guys had this kind of thing happen to him twice with two different pieces of land! 

There’s another piece on Breitbart about the BLM that further illustrates government overreach.

This stuff is Newsworthy. 

These articles are exactly why the media is supposed to be unbiased. Without the media, these kinds of abuses go on every day and allow our government to become more powerful, more abusive, and less American every day.

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Conservatism is no longer he ravings of a few disgruntled rich, fat, white men, or the lunatic fringe whose poster boy is Rush Limbaugh.

Each and every one of us should be concerned and taking notice. If a low level organization like the BLM can get away with this kind of thing, it begs the question;

What can higher level organizations get away with?