I’ll see the doc in a couple of hours. Prepared for the worst. Drop me a few shekels if you can. Hopefully this won’t be another vague “something is wrong but we don’t know what it is go do some more expensive tests” deal. I’ll probably get canned next week if they don’t come up with something, and that means I lose my health insurance.
The mind reels when speculating how creationists and other Old Testament literalists might spin this one. For the rest of us, it’s just fascinating scientific detective work: geo-astronomers have confirmed a healthy sized comet lit Egypt on fire millions of years ago. If they’re right it would have made the 1908 Tungaska Event look like a shoe-bomb: [Read more…]
A new poll showing a jaw dropping plunge in popularity for a notable Teaparty shutter could be an ominous portent for Republicans who got dragged into the shutdown mess by Ted Cruz. The poll conducted by the Center For the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University using a rigorous methodology in one of the most conservative states in the nation shows Cruz sidekick Mike Lee losing favorability in a big way. [Read more…]
Yes, I’m sweating out a possible cancer diagnosis and in desperate need of a few bucks to get through the next few doc appointments. I have health insurance, but there’s copays and now my employer is threatening to cut me off next week.
Watching Teaparty Republicans, who ran in part on shutting down the government and, we now know, were funded by at least one meaty tentacle of the rabid, brainless Kochawhorus intent on obstruction and shuttering, claim they don’t want a government shutdown is a good introduction for any new student into crazy modern day US politics. We have a slightly center left party with components that are corrupt, slimy, and spineless, and we have a party that is bug-fuck crazy and completely reliant on a suite of zombie lies. But the non bug-fuckers may have felt enough pain on the shutdown and looming debt ceiling that they’re offering Obama a shitty but potentially fruitful deal: [Read more…]
Update: I got a few donations but I need a couple more. Sorry to bother you with this.
On some of the tests I’ve had to take over the last few weeks … They called me in to discuss the results of one of them. They wouldn’t tell me over the phone and I’m pretty good at judging voices. My guess is it’s not going to be great news. They didn’t admit me to the hospital or anything, and they didn’t rush the appointment to discuss the results, which is about the only thin reed of hope I’m holding onto.
I had texted my supe with an update earlier this week. Right on cue, there was a threatening email in my inbox from someone I’ve never heard of telling me I’ll be fired soon, probably next week. I’m out of FMLA because of the heart attack and the subsequent complication, which had the bad timing of happening at the start of the year and that started the FMLA clock in January. Because health insurance in America is tied to your employer, losing your job for being sick, being in chemo, whatever, means losing that health insurance when you need it most. There’s an option called COBRA that can extend it after being separated from service, but it will be 700 or 800 dollars a month for me. If anyone wants to drop a few bucks in the Paypal till, have at it above.
I don’t know, this is just a guess, but if I had to make that guess, I’d say it’s going to be lymphoma or leukemia something like that. Lymphoma and leukemia are treatable, especially when caught early. But without health insurance either one would be a certain death sentence. If this really goes south I’ll probably have to beg my executive editors at Daily Kos for some kind of life saving fund raiser. A disease like that could run into thousands, maybe tens of thousands of dollars, in out of pocket expenses even with insurance. And I will have the distinction of having suffered a major heart and unrelated cancer in less than a year. Our employer sponsored group health insurance system in the US is just not set up for that kind of thing.
Slate has a couple of new polls showing a precipitous drop for the GOP, click the image for that article. At this point, the number of people who approve of the GOP roughly match only those who identify with the Teaparty. The rest are gone. Although dems showed a very slight down tick in the same category, dems ticked up slightly toward the good on another, related question while Republicans saw a near identical delta in the opposite direction.
Data like this shows the issue is solidly against the Republicans in the minds of the public. Which may help explain why the Kochwhores, under attack for this NYT piece reporting they enabled the shutdown strategy, sent out a tepid release distancing themselves from the shutdown: [Read more…]
To get checked for lymphoma and a bunch of other nasty shit. Which I probably don’t have, could possibly have, but if I do I’m told it’s highly treatable. See you soon godless heathens! But I look pretty damn healthy for 51 years-old, eh?
Crazy or craven? Either way Michelle Bachmann announces we are in the end times. Her reasoning, for lack of a better word, is purely political and aimed at guess who’s ‘support of Al Qaeda’? Who else!? [Read more…]
The Republicans were warned, again and again and again, that it was bad politics to shutdown the government or risk a default. Many clearly knew that was true or they wouldn’t have spent so much time trying to blame Harry Reid and Obama. But the tragic flaw for people who think facts don’t count is they don’t listen to facts. In the case of the government shutdown, the Teaparty wing dragged the rest of the GOP into a suicide mission and now they’re all paying the price: [Read more…]