Category: Things that make you say hmmm?

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Silly Sheeple, Tricks are for Karl

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I’ve been amused for the past couple of days over Karl Rove’s remarks about Hillary Clinton.

The headlines have been funny.

Karl Rove faces backlash on Hillary Clinton remarks. Did he go too far?

Karl Rove Suggests Hillary Clinton has Brain Damage

Karl Rove didn’t go too far, he went EXACTLY far enough.  He manipulated the main stream media into propagating a discussion he wanted to put in front of the American People. He brilliantly used Hillary Clintons previous escape hatch from the Benghazi hearings to do it.

In chess this is called checkmate.

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Hillary will spend the rest of her Campaign (if she decides to run) answering questions about her health.

It’s very much like the Dr Who episode where The Doctor is angry at Prime Minister Harriet Jones. He tells her “I can bring you down with just six words.”

The words he whispers in the ear of her assistant are;

“Don’t you think she looks tired?”

She is brought down amid rumors of ill health and finally a vote of no confidence.

Life imitates art I guess.

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The Main stream media will continue to churn and regurgitate the question until Karl Roves part in the affair is forgotten and only the question remains. The question will take on a life of its own and will morph into an assumed “Fact” that Hillary has health issues and it will drag on her campaign.

Even now on Foxews.com there’s a piece titled

Clintons seek to show new vigor amid age worries 

Rove may be a Dark Lord, but DAMN! he’s good at it!

Hillary’s supporters spun up all of Tuesday trashing Rove, but in each and every piece, they explained what Rove said that made them so angry.  There was someone once who said  something like “Even bad publicity is publicity”.

The Hillary supporters, in one day, without realizing it gave Rove exactly what he wanted. Wide Distribution!  They can badmouth him all they want, but to do it, they have to repeat the message he wanted to get out. “Hillary may not be healthy enough for a Campaign or the Presidency.”  Hillary’s supporters are working for Karl Rove for FREE.

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Let’s be honest, isn’t the fear of poor health what killed John McCain’s run for the presidency?

No-one had a problem with McCain. The fear was that if he died in office, Sarah Palin would be President.

The Media had done such a wonderful job of character assassination on her, that people voted for Obama rather than risk the wild card of Palin being President.

Rove simply used the Democratic play book. I think the brilliance is that he’s gotten so far out in front, that Hillary’s campaign will be dogged by health rumors for the next two years.

Hillary can’t have so much as a simple cold.

I’m not suggesting that this is enough to end Ms Clinton’s campaign run, I’m saying that it adds stress to the campaign and that stress is going to be exhausting over the next two years.

I’ve no pity for Ms. Clinton. I don’t think she’s a particularly good person, and I think she’d be a really bad President. There are too many questions about her role in shady dealings starting with the Whitewater scandal and ending with the Benghazi attack.

Karl Rove may be a bastard, but I respect his brand of evil!

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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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I read this article, then in disgust, I watched Idiocracy

Draining reservoir after urination incident show tenuous grasp of science.

Idiocracy made more sense, and I felt better.

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David Shaff of the Portland water bureau should be fired immediately.

This is the guy who’s decided to toss 38 million gallons of water from an open air reservoir because one teenager pissed in it.

By the way this is the second time in three years Portland has done this over urine.

Let me stress, this is an open air reservoir.

As in open to the sky, as in open to birds flying over it; we all know what our cars look like during bird migrations. Not to mention all the dust, plant debris, dirt, insects and anything else that may fly over the reservoir and fall in.  I don’t even want to think about the mess that ducks & geese leave behind, you do know that most all birds void their bowels prior to taking flight right? Mr Shaff should be a hell of a lot more concerned about that.

Lets not forget the algae, and bacteria, that inevitably live in this body of water.

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 Even if this body of water wasn’t open to the sky, let’s assume is was somehow sealed and sterile.

The concentration of urine distributed across that volume of water would be so small as to be irrelevant. In fact, Mr Shaff would get more urine in his mouth performing oral sex with his spouse.

But, and I must stress this, this reservoir is open to the sky.

Since I have no doubt that there is an ecosystem of microscopic plants & animals in the reservoir I suspect that the material from the teenager’s few ounces of piss have already been metabolized into a generation or 100, of paramecium, or caused a minor algae bloom. In other words, the urine is gone, long gone. Consumed by the natural processes occurring in any large body of water.

The Portland water bureau should be more concerned about treating the water for waterborne illnesses than whether one guy pissed in it.  

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This whole stupid mess begs another question.

How do people with this level of idiocy manage to keep their jobs?

I’m sure Mr. Shaff has all the right papers, and diplomas. Clearly he learned all the fact and figures to pass his exams, what he apparently didn’t learn was common sense.

Instead of calling for people to be fired because of their honestly held religious or political beliefs, perhaps a better use of our time would be to call for the firing of people that demonstrate repeated incompetence.

Just Sayin…