Scenes from Behind the Medicaid Cuts: Droolers

Droolers disgust me.

I don't know why.

Oh, that amounts to a lie.  I do have some ideas.

First, we humans have deep innate fears of freaks and geeks and gimps; in olden days perhaps those got shunted off to circus side shows gnawing on chicken bones while caged for spectators.  So my innate fear of a life lived in mockery scares the shit out of me.

Then, we also know in our bones that even if not born a geek, the random number table and physics applied to frail human bones and brains can turn the strong into gibbering idiots, twisted like scrap metal from an "accident" and or with mental faculties faulted, synapses and circuits burned, hands twisted, face contorted into an unfunny grin, trying to point with hands turned claw like and with speech now reduced to squawks, grunts, and moans to try to communicate our wants, needs, and desires, spittle spilling out of our mouths without our noticing., leaving us husks of our former selves.

Would I still inside my mind have full thought but just too many blocks between thinking and expressing, left grunting and squealing at the nurse before meal time because of hunger in our belly, even left like one fed through a tube in his belly to fill the stomach but never to enjoy the rich tapestry of taste while eating?  In a like manner, fear comes of knowing of kindness and compassion in the hugs and pats of loving caregivers but never the love of sleeping next to a partner on a cold winter night, of knowing another in a biblical sense, of la mort petit, of what we too easily and hurriedly call love when we really mean instants lived fully in the moments of physical selves but also grasping the ineffable and infinite.

Even the well-spoken Ronnie, a bit of a misshapen lump in his souped up electric wheel chair who has to look at you askance from his 1 good eye, drools a mite bit on his crisply pressed shirt.

So a high functioning quadriplegic like myself could fit into this adult living facility and hopefully help other residents and prove a positive example even though burn to return to a life of lonely Independence.

So every policy debate in Washington, DC, and state governments around the land come not as choices on entitlements or Medicaid but must measure against the care given those broken beyond repair.

Come and live one stinking, scary day in my wheelchair, Senator Ted Cruz, R Fantasy Land, and Representative Paul Ryan, R Austerity, then tell me what your Jesus would have you do.

Sorry, Lord, droolers disgust me for fear of becoming thus.

Saving Medicare

http://dccc.org/pages/mac

Obama?  Obama?  Obama?  Sure hope you listen to DCCC and me on this rather than come up with a Biden brokered grand compromise that cuts Medicare.

The problem lies not with me, diasbled for second time in my life but paid into Medicare for 38 years after staring work busing table at age of 15, but with a for profit medical industrial complex which means costs must inexorably rise to create more profits and Cheney administration tax cuts.

Tea Party Secrets: Old, mostly white 'ceptin' for Toms, and full of shite

[Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the {tea party} crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isn't a single black person here. The other is the truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — "Government's not the solution! Government's the problem!" — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.

"The scooters are because of Medicare," he whispers helpfully. "They have these commercials down here: 'You won't even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!' Practically everyone in Kentucky has one."

A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it.

After Palin wraps up, I race to the parking lot in search of departing Medicare-motor-scooter conservatives. I come upon an elderly couple, Janice and David Wheelock, who are fairly itching to share their views.

"I'm anti-spending and anti-government," crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. "The welfare state is out of control."

"OK," I say. "And what do you do for a living?"

"Me?" he says proudly. "Oh, I'm a property appraiser. Have been my whole life."

I frown. "Are either of you on Medicare?"

Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!

"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"


Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."

"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"

"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much." Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry's medals and Barack Obama's Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse is key to understanding what this movement is all about.]  emphasis added
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/210904

Found at Surburban Guerilla.