Mark my words, it won't be six months before the world
Posted By: Lu on 2008-11-05
In Reply to:
tests Obama like they did John Kennedy.
"Watch. We're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."
-- Joe Biden
Is Biden saying that America's current enemies - sorely aware of Obama's inexperience - plan to test a President Obama with similar crises, to see what he's made of?
I guess we all know how JFK's test turned out. "Bay of pigs" ring any bells.
Biden has also commented Obama's inexperience and said the job of the Presidency "does not lend itself to on the job training." He's also said Obama's "going to need help."
Well, I guess 'ol Joe has his foot in the door and that's all he really wanted. I don't believe he's changed his mind about our new President Elect. I think he saw his way into the White House and jumped on the bandwagon.
Great! We've got a totally inexperienced, slick snake set to run this country and the man who knows Obama will fail, has announced the Obama will be tested and fail, and probably wants Obama to fail, so he can come out smelling like a rose.
Well, buckle up. It's going to be a bumpy ride.
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Mark my words...this is a hoax!
All you have to do is look at the picture and see the backwards "B" on her cheek. By the way, she was working at a McCain/Palin call center just before this alleged attack took place.
Those types of words are unnecessary and actually ARE racist words. sm
Those types of phrases are offensive and are intended to be offensive. This election should not be about race. If it is about race for you, then you are probably one of the ignorant people using those words. Very rude!!
Right on the mark.
It's simply unbelievable to me that Americans must hope for help from Hugo Chavez in a time of crisis while their own federal government is taking a long leisurely yawn while deciding whether or not help its own suffering people.
Never thought I'd see that day in America.
Mark 8:38
"Folks haven't been reading their Bibles." ~~ Barack Obama
Your post is off the mark...
Your post doesn't make sense and is erroneous in many areas. Obviously you have never listened to the lyrics of the song and you are not familiar with the content of the Neil Young song it addresses. And I agree, it's a great rock and roll song lyrics aside, but I just can't always put those lyrics aside. I also never said folks from the south weren't intelligent - you implied that, not me. As for hating it up north, well, you're incorrect. Me and most of the community love it here. People often move south for various reasons, some monetary but quite often due to the weather.
By the way, do your black friends enjoy your waving the confederate flag (I hope you don't wave it literally, but one never knows) and loving George Wallace? Probably not.
By the way, I was born in Virginia and also lived in southern Indiana and have friends/relatives all over the south. I am also an avid student of the history of the south. So I am fairly well educated regarding the cultural, socioeconomic problems currently facing the south, albeit some parts regions than others. So you see, I am dealing with it and find the best to way to "deal with it" is to seek the truth.
You are so off the mark it isn't even funny
you are so incensed you are stating Jesus' political status like it was written in the Bible. I'm not talking to people who want to bash me....you don't even read my posts....goodbye.
Oy vey Mr/Ms. Question mark
You are so frightened by the term socialism - does it occur to you that at least the French citizens have not forgotten how to stand up to their government?
Please take just a moment and open your mind (that means turn OFF the Limbaughs out there)
Is this femnist off the mark? I think so...sm
First of all, there is NOTHING, I repeat NOTHING wrong with standing behind your husband. Did any feminists go bonkers when Hillary did it. To some degree this article challenges marriage.
****
Michelle Obama's sacrifice
It had to be hard for the high-achieving candidate's wife to give up her career -- and I'm in a feminist fury about it.
By Debra Dickerson
Michelle Obama, wife of Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, speaks April 16 at a Women for Obama luncheon in Chicago.
May 21, 2007 | You knew it had to happen.
Damn it all, Michelle Obama has quit her $215,000 dream job and demoted herself to queen. Though the party line is that she's only scaled back to a 20 percent workload, I doubt her former co-workers will bother alerting her to many staff meetings. She's traded in her solid gold résumé, high-octane talent and role as vice president of community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals to be a professional wife and hostess.
Now, the energy and drive that had her up jogging before dawn and a gratifying day of work and family will mainly be spent smiling for the cameras. Just as we watch curvy, healthy-looking singers and actresses like Lindsay Lohan become anorexic too-blonde hoochies before our very eyes, so we're now in danger of having to watch the political version of that process: Any day now, Michelle Obama's handlers will have her glued into one of those Sunday-go-to-meeting Baptist grandma crown hats while smiling vapidly for hours at a time. When, of course, she's not staring moonstruck, à la Nancy Reagan, at her moon doggie god-husband who's not one bit smarter than she is.
My heart breaks for her just thinking about it. Being president will be hard. So will being first lady for the brilliant Michelle -- imagine, having to begin all your sentences with My husband and I...
I'm in a feminist fury about Michelle (I'll use her first name to avoid confusion with her husband) feeling forced to quit, but make no mistake: I'm not blaming her. Few could stand up to the pressure she's facing, especially from blacks, to sacrifice herself on the altar of her husband's ambition. He could be the first black president, you know! Also, she must be beside herself trying to hold things together for her daughters. I'm blaming the world and every man, woman, child and border collie in it who helps send the message that women's lives must be subordinate to everyone else's.
No doubt her modern, progressive husband assured her she didn't have to quit -- probably even tried to dissuade her. It's also quite likely she's making this sacrifice so her children will have at least one parent available. But the result is the same. Our daughters grow up knowing that their freedom to work at hard-won, beloved careers hinges on the doings of their husbands.
Still, there's an opportunity in this setback. Now is the time for feminism to reach out to black women via the contingent of Obama-esque overachievers out there who ought to be chilled to the bone by Michelle's retirement from work of her own. Given Secretary Rice's, not to mention Oprah's, persistent singleness, black women who have earned high status may well wonder why they should bother trying to both date and develop successful careers if one's going to cancel out the other. No other group is less likely to marry. Given the innate conservatism of the black community, the burden to tend to hearth and home falls disproportionately on its women, sending the message to ambitious black girls that they can't have both fulfilling careers and families.
It would be one thing if Michelle had tired of working, but she's clearly ambivalent about leaving paid employment, as the Washington Post's recent coverage made clear:
Every other month [since] I've had children I've struggled with the notion of 'Am I being a good parent? Can I stay home? Should I stay home? How do I balance it all?' she said. I have gone back and forth every year about whether I should work. When she finally winds down her duties as vice president of community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals in the days ahead..., she said, it will be the first time that I haven't gotten up and gone to a job. It's a bit disconcerting, she said. But it's not like I'll be bored.
No, you'll have your well-manicured hands full being your husband's hostess in chief. Funny how she didn't mention her husband's parental angst; there have been whispers that he's been pretty busy, too, what with being the great black hope and all. Wonder what finally made her decide to quit.
While I'm not blaming Michelle, I am issuing a challenge: This political and professional sutee won't end until women refuse to step into the fire, disapproval be damned. Sen. Clinton can't do everything: The rest of us women must stand our ground. Whatever else you think of Clinton, you can't deny that she blazed a trail for women's right to work and, like, be smart in public. And, man, what a beatdown she got. Since it was bringing about the end of the civilization as we know it, she caved, took her husband's name and gave up a public policy role; she had to wait, like a good girl, until her husband couldn't run for anything else. Valuable years of productivity, wasted. But at least giving up her career wasn't Hillary Clinton's first choice, as it is for most of the elite women who are abandoning their careers.
Linda Hirshman was an early observer of the phenomenon of top-tier women leading the retreat back to the kitchen. Following up a controversial article, Homeward Bound, with an equally controversial book, Get to Work, she harshly chastised elite, well-educated women for choosing not to work once they married high earners. Using census data and interviews, she argues that:
As a result of feminist efforts -- and larger economic trends -- the percentage of [working] women ... rose robustly through the 1980s and early '90s. But then the pace slowed. The census numbers for all working mothers leveled off around 1990 and have fallen modestly since 1998. In interviews, women with enough money to quit work say they are choosing to opt out. Their words conceal a crucial reality: the belief that women are responsible for child-rearing and homemaking was largely untouched by decades of workplace feminism ... Among the affluent-educated-married population, women are letting their careers slide to tend the home fires. If my interviewees are working, they work largely part time, and their part-time careers are not putting them in the executive suite.
I am not saying Michelle Obama is just another member of the so-called opt-out revolution; clearly, her reasons for leaving her job are historic -- and even so, she clearly seems pained to do it. And I hate to add to Michelle's load, but even though she's made the choice to leave work, I hope she'll keep her role in women's history in mind and increase the tiny inroad political wives have made into something approaching women's freedom of choice. With her personal wealth (albeit obtained by marriage) Theresa Heinz laid some groundwork, speaking her mind on the campaign trail and generally refusing to be mealy-mouthed and dull. Kudos to Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean, too, for refusing to give up saving lives to chat up reporters on her husband's tour bus. But until more women who want to work feel free to do just that, they'll continue to be mere appendages of their men, and the American workplace will remain just as family-unfriendly as it is now.
What can Michelle do? If Obama wins, she should go for it and take on a meaningful public policy role, à la Hillary Clinton's healthcare work. Just a lot more carefully. Why on earth should such an accomplished woman just arrange white-tie dinners? Until then, she should become more outspoken, building on her husband's willingness to confront dysfunction in the black community -- a black mother can get away with what no one else could. Obama has chastised blacks for apathy, for crime, for equating achievement with acting white, for allowing their neighborhoods to deteriorate; Michelle's street cred as a churchgoing, round the way sister who made good makes her ghetto pass (her ability to operate as an insider) irrevocable. There will be no discussion of whether or not she's black.
Since the Obamas are liberals, Michelle is bullet proof. Anyone who dares to insult her with the same level of vitriol as has been visited on Hillary Clinton and leading white Democrats like Nancy Pelosi or Dianne Feinstein will be trampled by a herd of black ministers, civil rights leaders and church ladies in big hats. (Condoleezza Rice doesn't get the same protection.) In a post-Imus world, any critiques of Michelle had best be worded very carefully. She could also build on her husband's interfaith pioneering with mainstream organizations to bring the resources of those well-endowed communities to bear on black problems.
Of course, black problems are really American problems; having the golden couple spearheading the fight will make it sexy to help blacks with their systemic problems (education and entrepreneurship, to name two). The two Obamas can de-race these issues (here is where she can use her fancy education) and help America understand that black progress is American progress.
Most important, though, I hope Michelle will bring feminism to black women.
Feminism is rightfully criticized for being irrelevant to black women and ignoring their issues. When it's not plain arrogant, that is. An excellent example of mainstream feminism's high-handedness is Maureen Dowd's recent petty bitching about Michelle's jabs at her husband on the campaign trail. She sounded like a 1940s white woman reprimanding a sassy black maid. But feminism's failure to engage with black women is only partly its own fault; black men have worked hard to reinforce the image of feminism as not just white, not just lesbian, not just a plot to make contented black women unhappy with their lot but also (as usual) a war against black men. This black male victimology has been so successful at changing the subject whenever black women complain that, 20 years after Anita Hill was successfully demonized as a tool of white feminists for daring to bring down a prominent black man, here's Michelle's tortured answer to the Washington Post's F-question:
You know, I'm not that into labels ... So probably, if you laid out a feminist agenda, I would probably agree with a large portion of it, she said. I wouldn't identify as a feminist just like I probably wouldn't identify as a liberal or a progressive.
How difficult it must be for someone so whip smart and so famously blunt, according to insiders, to have to mouth these political pieties. But if we know nothing else about Michelle Obama, we know she's determined to live in the world the way it is, not the way it should be. But she's in a prime position to help change all that.
Now is the perfect opportunity for the movement to reach out to black women by embracing Michelle and black women's causes in general. Progressive women should be working their way toward the middle ground a political wife must occupy and politely engineer ways in which Michelle can put her postelection time, win or lose, to worthy causes important to the black community -- welfare-to-work, hiring and job training, for example.
But even as I seek silver linings, I'm still sad for Michelle. As the Times reports, She expresses no regret about scaling down her job ... where colleagues say she excels at tackling thorny problems. But this winter, after spotting a book on the Obamas' coffee table celebrating Mr. Obama's Senate victory, her staff created a matching volume of her accomplishments. Mrs. Obama wept when she saw it.
Problems don't come much thornier than this. You've got a right to sing the blues, Michelle, so go ahead and cry. Then take action.
I agree she is off the mark...
and most off the mark because who is she to critcize Michelle Obama's life decisions? She is a grown woman and fully capable of making decisions for her own life. It is that same old thing...if you don't fit into the *mold* you are fair game. It is, frankly, none of this woman's business what Michelle Obama does with her life, and if she chooses to change her career to supporting her husband's run for the Presidency and support her children through the process too, all I say is good for her. She is an adult and has made her choice and certainly does not have to answer to feminists for it. It is not unheard of for a woman to choose family AS a career at some point in her life, or as the career OF her life, and she is no less a woman, no less a person, for that choice. This gal sounds like a lot of other disgruntled feminists I have read or heard speak....railing against what they secretly wish THEY had. My guess is that Michelle Obama is much more comfortable with her life and her decisions than this gal will EVER be.
You're so far off the mark..........
@
I think you missed the mark again
did you mean could NOT get by? You actually type for a living?
Gov. Mark Sanford....(sm)
It seems this guy likes to go on "mystery vacations," not telling anyone where he's going and being unreachable. And this guy is a potential candidate for 2012? Oh boy. My guess is that he went on one of his "trips" because he was just beaten to death in court for trying to use stimulus funds to pay off state debt instead of using it for it's intended purpose, or course...that being after he tried to refuse it altogether. Yeah...let's put him in the White House. Then we could have a president that goes MIA. LOL.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/06/22/2009-06-22_awol_gov_sanford_has_south_carolina_in_tizzy.html
You're right....words are just words...so are Obama's...
...and don't/won't mean anything to many people, myself included.
He is no MLK.
It is a historic moment, of that I have no doubt. And yes, he has come far.
However, one still needs to have strength of character to back the words up for true meaning, and he is sadly lacking in that area.
Isn't this the first time either of them has broken the 50-mark?
nm
He's right on the mark about the martial law thing....
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iGM8kWMV6Kd2LoM80UvPXeeBJkqAD96N3GCG0
He's right on the mark about the martial law thing....
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iGM8kWMV6Kd2LoM80UvPXeeBJkqAD96N3GCG0
Oh yeah...so how did you totally miss the mark? LOL
I know R. Bennett was Clinton's attorney at one time. Therefore I never said one word about partisan and never even tagged him as a Republican. Hard to know in that case what wide open moment you're referring to - care to share? Hehe.
Great Mark Morford article
The guy can write and he's right on as usual.
Fun Bits About American Torture
In many ways, the U.S. is now just as inhumane and brutal as any Third World regime. Oh well?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, December 16, 2005
We do not torture. Remember it, write it in red crayon on the bathroom wall, tattoo it onto your acid tongue because those very words rang throughout the land like a bleak bell, like a low scream in the night, like a cheese grater rubbing against the teeth of common sense when Dubya mumbled them during a speech not long ago, and it was, at once, hilarious and nauseating and it took all the self-control in the world for everyone in the room not to burst out in disgusted laughter and throw their chairs at his duplicitous little head.
Oh my God, yes, yes we do torture, America that is, and we do it a lot, and we do it in ways that would make you sick to hear about, and we're doing it right now, all over the world, the CIA and the U.S. military, perhaps more often and more brutally than at any time in recent history and we use the exact same kind of techniques and excuses for it our numb-minded president cited as reasons we should declare war and oust the dictator of a defenseless pip-squeak nation that happened to be sitting on our oil.
This is something we must know, acknowledge, take to heart and not simply file away as some sort of murky, disquieting unknowable that's best left to scummy lords of the government underworld. We must not don the blinders and think America is always, without fail, the land of the perky and the free and the benevolent. Horrific torture is very much a part of who we are, right now. Deny it at your peril. Accept it at your deep discontent.
Torture is in. Torture is the tittering buzzword of the Bush administration, bandied about like secret candy, like a hot whisper from Dick Cheney's gnarled tongue into Rumsfeld's pointed ear and then dumped deep into Dubya's Big Vat o' Denial.
The cruel abuse of terror suspects is sanctioned and approved from on high, and we employed it in Abu Ghraib (the worst evidence of which -- the rapes and assaults and savage beatings -- we will likely never see), and we use it in Eastern Europe and Guantánamo and in secret prisons and it has caused deaths of countless detainees. And Rumsfeld's insane level of Defense Department secrecy means we may never even know exactly how brutal we have become.
Torture is right now being discussed in all manner of high-minded articles and forums wherein the finer points of what amount of torture should be allowable under what particular horrific (and hugely unlikely) circumstances, and all falling under the aegis of the new and pending McCain anti-torture legislation that would outlaw any and all degrading, inhumane treatment whatsoever by any American CIA or military personnel at any time whatsoever, more or less.
All while, ironically, over in Iraq, our military is right now inflicting more pain and death upon more lives than any torture chamber in the last hundred years, and where we have recently discovered the fledgling government that the United States helped erect in Saddam's absence, the Iraqi Interior Ministry, well, they appear to be so giddy about torture they might as well be Donald Rumsfeld's love children. But, you know, quibbling.
There is right now this amazing little story over at the London Guardian, a fascinating item all about a group of hardy hobbyists known as planespotters, folks whose solitary, dedicated pastime is to sit outside the various airports of the world and watch the runway action and make intricate logs and post their data and photos to planespotter Web sites. It's a bit like bird-watching, but without the chirping and the nature and with a lot more deafening engine roar and poisonous fumes.
These people, they are not spies and they are not liberals and they are not necessarily trying to reveal anything covert or ugly or illegal, but of course that is often exactly what they do, because these days, as it turns out, some of those planes these guys photograph are involved in clandestine CIA operations, in what are called extraordinary renditions, the abduction of suspects who are taken to lands unknown so we may beat and maul and torture the living crap out of them and not be held accountable to any sort of pesky international law. Fun!
It is for us to know, to try and comprehend. The United States has the most WMD of anyone in the world. We imprison and kill more of our own citizens than any other civilized nation on the planet. We still employ horrific, napalm-like chemical weapons.
And yes, under the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld regime, we abuse and torture prisoners at least as horrifically as any Islamic fundamentalist, as any terrorist cell, to serve our agenda and meet our goals -- and whether you think those goals are justifiable because they contain the words freedom or democracy is, in many ways, beside the point.
Go ahead, equivocate your heart out. It is a bit like justifying known poisons in your food. Sure mercury is a known cancer-causing agent. Sure the body will recoil and soon become violently ill and die. But gosh, it sure does taste good. Shrug.
Maybe you don't care, maybe you're like Rumsfeld and Cheney and the rest who think, well sure, if they're terrorists and if they'd just as willingly suck the eyeballs out of my cat and rip out my fingernails with a pair of pliers as look at me, well, they deserve to be tortured, beaten, abused in ways you and I cannot imagine. Especially if (and this is the eternal argument) by their torture we can prevent the deaths of innocents.
Maybe you are one of these people. Eye for an eye. Water torture for an explosive device. Does this mean that you are, of course, exactly like those being tortured, willing to go to extremes to get what you want? That you are on the same level morally, energetically, politically and, like Cheney and Rumsfeld, you are dragging the nation down into a hole with you? You might think. After all, fundamentalists terrorize to further a lopsided and religious-based agenda. We torture to protect ours. Same coin, different side.
It is mandatory that we all acknowledge where we are as a nation, right now, how low we have fallen, how thuggish and heartless and internationally disrespected we have become, the ugly trajectory we are following.
Because here's the sad kicker: Torture works. It gets results. It might very well save some lives. But it also requires a moral and spiritual sacrifice the likes of which would make Bush's own Jesus recoil in absolute horror. Yet this is what's happening, right now. And our current position demands a reply to one bitter, overarching question: What sort of nation are we, really?
Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.
Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate and in the Datebook section of the SF Chronicle. To get on the e-mail list for this column, please click here and remove one article of clothing. Mark's column also has an RSS feed and an archive of past columns, which includes a tiny photo of Mark probably insufficient for you to recognize him in the street and give him gifts.
As if that weren't enough, Mark also contributes to the hot, spankin' SF Gate Culture Blog.
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/12/16/notes121605.DTL
©2005 SF Gate
Mark Fiore's Minister of Fear sm
This is a little old, but a funny short animation on Homeland Security's fear-mongering.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0428,fiore,55135,9.html
Bush wants to 'leave his mark' on his term in office.
He'll probably do his best to continue skrooing up this country right down to the very last seconds he is officially able to sign anything.
Did you notice the question mark at the end of the article's title?
Do you understand the meaning of "potential?" Imagine that. Judges have a "natural predisposition" toward complying with the DEMOCRATIC WILL OF THE PEOPLE. What a crazy and novel idea.
The truth has been out there for quite a while now. There is no THERE there. This is sheer lunacy, but hey, knock yourselves out. Nobody's listening to this garbage and the entire nation has much more pressing issues to worry about, but to remind you of them here would be a complete waste of time, in view of this myopic obsessive fixation of a marginalized tiny fringe minority of the GOP (which has been recently denounced by other, more intelligent republicans).
to listen to this video, click on the red check mark
in the square.
Slaughter of Foreigners in Yemen Bears Mark of Former Gitmo Detainee
The fate of three of nine foreigners abducted in Yemen last week is known — their bodies were found, shot execution style. The whereabouts of the other six — including three children under the age of 6 — remain a mystery.
But terrorism experts say their abductors and killers are almost certainly not a mystery. They say the crimes bear the mark of AL Qaeda, and they fear they are the handiwork of the international terror organization's No. 2 man in the Arabian Peninsula: Said Ali al-Shihri, an Islamic extremist who once was in American custody — but who was released from the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Link for full story: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,527868,00.html
Nothing but words hon, and we know how Obama's words
nm
And this was only a few months ago
:?
About 2 to 3 months ago, someone tried
to break into my house with me home working. They purposely tried to scare me. They went around my house banging on the walls and windows. As we live in the country, I do have a gun in my office. As I was calling 911, they were trying to get in the front door. I yelled at them that if they went any further, I was going to shoot and the police were on their way. Thankfully, this did stop them. But if they would have come through the door, I really believe I would have shot them. I still have problems sleeping!
We have only had a dem congress for 18 months. nm
.
No, this just happened in the last 2 months.
It was WALL STREET, FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC that did it, not Bush. He had nothing to do with this.
3 months in barracks for everyone 18-25!!!!!! nm
x
Six months to a year
I'd like see what happens in six months to a year when our economy is still in the toilet, more and more people are still without jobs and losing them if the sheeple will still be saying Obama is the answer to their prayers. Their eyes will be open then but it will be too late.
Last year, it took 5 months before
we could call our money ours. Not 3 months. Soon, we will just be getting a weekly allowance if all the crap keeps going.
Look what he has done to the deficit in 2 months....
something it took Bush 8 years, and attack on this country and a war to do. No one has attacked us, and he has managed to double the debt in 2 months. Just think what he can do in 4...6...MONTHS, not years. And he won't be able to fix it just taxing the "rich." So, along with the promise to get all the troops out of Iraq (reneged already), along with the promise to do a line-by-line and stop earmarks (there were only 900+ on the bill he just signed - reneged already), will be the "I'm sorry, but the economy is lookin better and we have to raise taxes"...that will be the next one he reneges on. Unless of course you are in that bracket who gets refunds when you don't even pay taxes...is that where you are? No wonder you love him. All hail the great and powerful 0. lol.
The Doctor Will See You—In Three Months
The health-care reform debate is in full roar with the arrival of Michael Moore's documentary Sicko, which compares the U.S. system unfavorably with single-payer systems around the world. Critics of the film are quick to trot out a common defense of the American way: For all its problems, they say, U.S. patients at least don't have to endure the endless waits for medical care endemic to government-run systems. The lobbying group America's Health Insurance Plans spells it out in a rebuttal to Sicko: "The American people do not support a government takeover of the entire health-care system because they know that means long waits for rationed care."
In reality, both data and anecdotes show that the American people are already waiting as long or longer than patients living with universal health-care systems. Take Susan M., a 54-year-old human resources executive in New York City. She faithfully makes an appointment for a mammogram every April, knowing the wait will be at least six weeks. She went in for her routine screening at the end of May, then had another because the first wasn't clear. That second X-ray showed an abnormality, and the doctor wanted to perform a needle biopsy, an outpatient procedure. His first available date: mid-August. "I completely freaked out," Susan says. "I couldn't imagine spending the summer with this hanging over my head." After many calls to five different facilities, she found a clinic that agreed to read her existing mammograms on June 25 and promised to schedule a follow-up MRI and biopsy if needed within 10 days. A full month had passed since the first suspicious X-rays. Ultimately, she was told the abnormality was nothing to worry about, but she should have another mammogram in six months. Taking no chances, she made an appointment on the spot. "The system is clearly broken," she laments.
It's not just broken for breast exams. If you find a suspicious-looking mole and want to see a dermatologist, you can expect an average wait of 38 days in the U.S., and up to 73 days if you live in Boston, according to researchers at the University of California at San Francisco who studied the matter. Got a knee injury? A 2004 survey by medical recruitment firm Merritt, Hawkins & Associates found the average time needed to see an orthopedic surgeon ranges from 8 days in Atlanta to 43 days in Los Angeles. Nationwide, the average is 17 days. "Waiting is definitely a problem in the U.S., especially for basic care," says Karen Davis, president of the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund, which studies health-care policy.
All this time spent "queuing," as other nations call it, stems from too much demand and too little supply. Only one-third of U.S. doctors are general practitioners, compared with half in most European countries. On top of that, only 40% of U.S. doctors have arrangements for after-hours care, vs. 75% in the rest of the industrialized world. Consequently, some 26% of U.S. adults in one survey went to an emergency room in the past two years because they couldn't get in to see their regular doctor, a significantly higher rate than in other countries.
There is no systemized collection of data on wait times in the U.S. That makes it difficult to draw comparisons with countries that have national health systems, where wait times are not only tracked but made public. However, a 2005 survey by the Commonwealth Fund of sick adults in six nations found that only 47% of U.S. patients could get a same- or next-day appointment for a medical problem, worse than every other country except Canada.
The Commonwealth survey did find that U.S. patients had the second-shortest wait times if they wished to see a specialist or have nonemergency surgery, such as a hip replacement or cataract operation (Germany, which has national health care, came in first on both measures). But Gerard F. Anderson, a health policy expert at Johns Hopkins University, says doctors in countries where there are lengthy queues for elective surgeries put at-risk patients on the list long before their need is critical. "Their wait might be uncomfortable, but it makes very little clinical difference," he says.
The Commonwealth study did find one area where the U.S. was first by a wide margin: 51% of sick Americans surveyed did not visit a doctor, get a needed test, or fill a prescription within the past two years because of cost. No other country came close.
Few solutions have been proposed for lengthy waits in the U.S., in part, say policy experts, because the problem is rarely acknowledged. But the market is beginning to address the issue with the rise of walk-in medical clinics. Hundreds have sprung up in CVS, Wal-Mart (WMT ), Pathmark, (PTMK ) and other stores—so many that the American Medical Assn. just adopted a resolution urging state and federal agencies to investigate such clinics as a conflict of interest if housed in stores with pharmacies. These retail clinics promise rapid care for minor medical problems, usually getting patients in and out in 30 minutes. The slogan for CVS's Minute Clinics says it all: "You're sick. We're quick."
Are 4 months enough to judge O, especially in these
so difficult times?
It is said that the economy is already in a slight upswing and the unemployment rate went down bit.
I guess we have to give O at least 1 year to be able to judge his decisions and actions.
In four short months
(1/3 of a year, 1/12 of his term) O has put this country further in debt than any previous president. With the complicity of congress he is printing money like a drunken counterfeiter. He has stood the US on its head and emptied its pockets. He is actually running some of its businesses as well. He has his eye on controlling healthcare. He is trying hard to disarm and silence dissenters, subtly at first, but this will become more heavy-handed as time passes.
Do the math. Must we really wait a full year (let along his full term) to figure how much deeper this hole is going to get? The laws of economics have not been suspended just because of his miraculous election. Government is not the answer, it is the problem.
Let's try this experiment: I'll keep doing what I've been doing (laying in food supplies, planting a garden, stacking firewood, saving money, storing other necessities, preparing to care for and defend my own family) and the rest of you keep doing what you've been doing (waiting for Obama's ''plan'' to work or for him to take care of you). We'll check back in a year and see who's preparations worked better. Okay?
ANWR would only supply us for six months...
at our current rate of usage - it's basically a drop in the bucket. And to get all the equipment in place to extract it and refine it would take approximately four years or more.
And that "desolate wasteland" is one of the last pristine areas left in the world. Does man really have to desecrate every square foot of this earth to satisfy his own greed and consumption? Guess so.
It chronicles the first few months of 2003...
because the director of the movie is of the opinion that there were some bad decisions made at the get-go and the rest was a domino effect, and had those first few bad decisions not been made it might be a different story in Iraq. The director of this film was actually for going into Iraq...he just blames the bad decisions he illustrates for what is happening now. I saw him interviewed; I can't remember the show. But there are several articles on the net where he was interviewed and explains his position. At any rate...that is why only a few months are chronicled.
Excuse me. If we are to accept 20 months as
by population and the 6 years as the mayor of a hamlet in Alaska with population of 5000 (at the time of her administration), then surely we should not be expected to overlook the 7 years he served in the state senate in Illinois in the 5th largest state in the union by population, some 13,000,000 people. More importantly, check out SP's 8 stated positions on political issues and how well they stack up with the 139 positions O has on the same issues as posted here: http://www.ontheissues.org/default.htm
What I am looking for is somebody who was paying attention while they were building their resumes.
I did. A week vs 18 months? Laughable.
nm
The DNC has been protecting Obama for 18 months....
they have not let him do an interview with anyone who didn't either get a thrill up their leg talking to him or were so enraptured with him they softballed every question. When he went on O'Reilly was the first time he went into an interview with someone who was not going to softball him, and he did not do much better than she did...and that is with 18 months surrounded by hundreds of advisors.
I have no doubt she will be fine talking to world leaders. We will never see the side of the person that talks to world leaders behind closed doors. I have as much faith in her as #2 talking to world leaders than I have with the #1 on the other ticket who wants to pander to them and frankly sell us down the river. He shows weakness...and her words were prophetic. When you face those guys, you don't blink. She made that case to Charlie Gibson, and she didn't blink. She kept eye contact way more than he did. And he had notes...she didn't. lol.
There was a comment a few months back that
a yard sale. That's my kind of gal... She's pretty and doesn't need to shop at those high end stores to look good. YOU BETCHA!!!!! 
He's been acting as the President for over two months now...
especially when it comes to the economy.
He has been undermining the sitting president since November 5th.
Your rhetoric was meaningless months ago...
and it is just as meaningless today. I supported Obama then, and I support him now, as do all of the people who voted for him. It must be miserable to live with such hate in your heart. I would pity you, but it seems that you are doing a pretty good job of that on your own.
From his own mouth on 60 Minutes a few months ago...
he will impose eminent domain in the states that he wants to erect this stuff, though, so some people won't be happy when their land is taken away. Always seems to be a drawback, doesn't there???
My sister lost her job several months ago
and she cannot find anyone hiring in her area or anywhere near her area. She is a registered nurse and is in the process of a divorce and is trying to raise 2 little girls.
Remember when RNs were needed everywhere? Now they can't even find jobs.
If 2 months haven't learnt ya,
I guess that speaks volumes as well. Keep drinking the Kool-Aid and bow to Obama!!!
my kids are 2 and 2 months, so I doubt it...
but I do know plenty of people my age (30) who did not try it. I guess maybe because I came from a very conservative small town. Don't get me wrong, I know plenty who did, but none of my friends were smoking pot. But you know what---we do make our own alcohol ;), although it is harder to do than to grow pot.
Obama is only 5 months in office! I think
he has done MORE good than not so good, ESPECIALLY regarding FORGEIN politics, in this short time.
Maybe the ones who cannot stop criticizing Obama do not even realize how smart and diplomatic Obama is.
For example, regarding the election protests in Iran: Obama is cool, and observing, as he does not want to 'mingle in', NOT YET, whereas McCain immediately stated, as he is a 'hothead' that Obama is not tough enough, not doing enough and he should respond more fiercely! WRONG ! What good can come out of this when Khatemi and the cleric council agreed to recount the votes? Isn't this what US was always accused of? Intermingling in everything, and this too early?
I am actually always AMAZED how uninformed a lot of people are when it comes to foreign politics and foreign countries in general.
Even on this forum I can count them on my fingers and some I can even name (username).
These are the ones who have an open mind, independent, tolerant, fair, just and are knowlegable.
Obama is only 5 months in office! I think
he has done MORE good than not so good, ESPECIALLY regarding FORGEIN politics, in this short time.
Maybe the ones who cannot stop criticizing Obama do not even realize how smart and diplomatic Obama is.
For example, regarding the election protests in Iran: Obama is cool, and observing, as he does not want to 'mingle in', NOT YET, whereas McCain immediately stated, as he is a 'hothead' that Obama is not tough enough, not doing enough and he should respond more fiercely! WRONG ! What good can come out of this when Khatemi and the cleric council agreed to recount the votes? Isn't this what US was always accused of? Intermingling in everything, and this too early?
I am actually always AMAZED how uninformed a lot of people are when it comes to foreign politics and foreign countries in general.
Even on this forum I can count them on my fingers and some I can even name (username).
These are the ones who have an open mind, independent, tolerant, fair, just and are knowlegable.
Bush busted again for the second time in 2 months...
by the courts for criminally violating the US Constitution. When are they going to impeach him? We get 24/7 front page JonBenet coverage (very sad story), but nothing on the crooks in the White House. All the drama with Watergate and Clinton IMO pales in comparison to what is on this President's mantle. What a mess. 
http://baltimorechronicle.com/2005/082105LINDORFF.shtml
Stop using my name. I've been posting as me for months now
Out of billions of names you use mine?
P.S. - Biden did not answer all of the questions and even the moderator had to say at one point that neither of them answered the question. Then the answers he did give didn't mean a thing. Another lawyer taking out of his you know what.
Biden lied on at least 10 occasions tonight and she had to keep pointing it out.
And he never did deny that O'No and he will raise taxes.
What's happening is that the dems are bloody mad that she did such a great job so they are flailing and don't know what to do.
As for winning the debate - time will tell.
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