COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Sunday, September 14, 2008

The World We Live In



I try to be an optimist. I try to see the good in people but then I receive an email like this:
Subject: FW: Shreveport Shelter

You that are not from Louisiana do not understand that you can't do enough to help these people, the more you do-- the more they expect you to do, Gimme-gimme-gimme and yes I meant to spell it that way. Volunteers work long hrs and they get spit on--yelled at--cursed.

Hey folks this is just one copy of this letter that a colleague of mine sent to the national media. Let me just say that this lady travels the world doing medical missions and found Old Sams in S'port scarrier than the 3rd world countries she has visited. Just thought you might like 2 hear what things were really like and this letter doesn't even begin 2 cover it


Subject: Louisiana Evacuations & Shelters
Date: Sat, 06 Sep 2008 05:3 1:31 +0000


Hello Mr. O'Reilly

I am a nurse who has just completed working approximately 120 hours as the clinic director in a Hurricane Gustav evacuation shelter in Shreveport, Louisiana over the last 7 days. I would love to see someone look at the evacuee situation from a new perspective. Local and national news channels have covered the evacuation and "horrible" conditions the evacuees had to
endure during Hurricane Gustav.

True - some things were not optimal for the evacuation and the shelters need some modification. At any point, does anyone address the responsibility (or irresponsibility) of the evacuees? Does it seem wrong that one would remember their cell phone, charger,cigarettes an d lighter but forget their child's insulin?

Is something amiss when an evacuee gets off the bus, walks immediately to the medical area, and requests immediate free refills on all medicines for which they cannot provide a prescription or current bottle (most of which are narcotics)?

Isn't the system flawed when an evacuee says they cannot afford a $3 co pay for a refill that will be delivered to them in the shelter yet they can take a city-provided bus to Wal-mart, buy 5 bottles of Vodka, and return to consume them secretly in the shelter?

Is it fair to stop performing luggage checks on incoming evacuees so as not to delay the registration process but endanger the volunteer staff and other persons with the very realistic truth of drugs, alcohol and weapons being brought into the shelter?

Am I less than compassionate when it frustrates me to scrub emesis from the floor near a nauseated child while his mother lies nearby, watching me work 26 hours straight, not even raising her head from the pillow to comfort her own son?

Why does it insense me to hear a man say "I ain't goin' home 'til I get my FEMA check" when I would love to just go home and see my daughters who I have only seen 3 times this week?

Is the system flawed when the privately insured patient must find a way to get to the pharmacy, fill his prescription and pay his copay while the FEMA declaration allows the uninsured person to acquire free medications under the disaster rules?

Does it seem odd that the nurse volunteering at the shelter is paying for childcare while the evacuee sits on a cot during the day as the shelter provides a "day care"?

Have government entitlements created this mentality and am I facilitating it with my work? Will I be a bad person, merciless nurse or poor Christian if I hesitate to work at the next shelter because I have worked for 7 days being called every curse word imaginable, felt threatened and feared for my personal safety in the shelter?


Exhausted and battered but hopefully pithy,
Sherri Hagerhjelm, RN
What a shame!

37 comments:

  1. Well, Whit, if they win the election, they'll think they own the government, as well as feeling entitled, so we have that to possibly look forward to.

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  2. They already own it in many respects, Bob.

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  3. After wasting most of the day finding which gifts I got from MS Update were trashing my Vista Computer, I fired up an old mp3 on the Dell while I uninstalled these defective Gems.
    (can I whine, since I paid for it, and Micro$oft ain't really your local nurse, right?)
    Anyhow the mp3 was Rush the day after the convention and he was commenting how absurd it is that the GOP is now Paranoid about the weather, since they are held accountable for it now by the Dems and MSM.

    The EB should have an impoundment area on a remote Island for Human Malware, starting with Charlie Gibson.

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  4. Imagine the collapse of the medical system in ever large city when healthcare is "free."

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  5. I really don't think it's a 'red-eyed moth', I think it must be some kind of miniturized Air Force surveilance UAV

    Sun 09.14 >> C2C tonight
    Ian Punnett welcomes aerospace and defense systems developer Sir Charles Shults for a discussion on alternative energy systems, as well as how solar and other technologies play into the geopolitical climate.

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  6. Idaho is talking about it's first medical school, down at Boise. You need a certain population level to support a medical school, and we're getting there, now.

    The medical system around here is a light year from what it used to be, back when I had my tonsils out, twice, with chloroform as the aenesthetic.

    I think it was chloroform. I remember Doc Lohrer putting the rag over my face, and waking up, sick as a dog, not recovering for a day and a half.

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  7. "They" own it

    Whether it is the FEMA check or one for "per diem" expenses, for the Federal "volunteers".

    Each gotta get their entitlements.

    So, as it was, it'll always be.

    Bread and circuses.
    At home and abroad.

    The World as it's always been

    We'll all be Ukrainians, soon
    Learn it, Live it, Love it.
    McCain '08

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  8. How Homer Simpson-(listen up, OJ, when recovering sports memoribilia)-beat the sexual-harassment rap, with a little help from his friend, Groundskeeper Willie.

    And, advice to politicians like Sarah, in our modern day America.

    Bring Your Own Camera To The Interview, Post Entirety On YouTube

    It's come to this.

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  9. The proof that the rebranding of Team Maverick is just another ruse.
    No talk of what Mrs Palin's portfolio will contain, but the staff around her ...


    McCain Taps Lobbyist for Transition
    By Michael Scherer/WASHINGTON
    ...the McCain campaign to conduct a study in preparation for the presidential transition should John McCain win the election, according to sources familiar with the process.

    William E. Timmons Sr. is a Washington institution, having worked in the Nixon and Ford administrations as an aide for congressional relations and having assisted the transition teams of both Ronald Reagan in 1980 and George W. Bush in 2000. He was also a senior adviser to both Vice President George Bush in 1988 and Senator Bob Dole in 1996.

    Timmons is the chairman emeritus of Timmons and Company, a small but influential lobbying firm he founded in 1975 shortly after leaving the White House. According to Senate records, he registered to lobby in 2008 for a wide range of companies and trade groups, including the American Petroleum Institute, the American Medical Association, Chrysler, Freddie Mac, Visa USA and Anheuser-Busch.

    His registrations include work on a number of issues that have become flashpoints in the presidential campaign. He has registered to work on bills that deal with the regulations of troubled mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, a bill to provide farm subsidies and bills that regulate domestic oil-drilling.

    By tapping Timmons, McCain has turned to one of Washington's steadiest and most senior inside players to guide him in the event of a victory — but also to someone who represents the antithesis of the kind of outside-of-Washington change he has recently been promising.



    ... will be the "goood old boys" she routed in Alaska, not fellow reformers.

    Maverick'll have redecorating the Naval Observatory, while she presides over the Senate.

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  10. Maverick'll have HER redecorating the Naval Observatory, while she presides over the Senate, waiting for a tie vote.

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  11. Cheer up, Rat. Alaskan Sarah is the closest thing we're gonna have to a libertarian President in our lifetimes, and in only four years too, I predict. If we last that long. I just can't see the country putting up with McCain for 8 years--he's be eighty at the end--with young vibrant Sarah sitting in the wings. Youthful spring will push out old man winter, if the myths mean anything.

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  12. I cheer myself up by keeping my eye on the guy we're not, hopefully, going to have as President, B O himself.

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  13. You can take heart in this, bob, from RCP

    Obama/Biden 207
    157 Solid 50 Leaning

    McCain/Palin 227
    172 Solid 55 Leaning

    Toss Up 104


    But not to much good cheer, because they also report that without "Leaners" it's
    Obama/Biden 273 McCain/Palin 265

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  14. The Palin bounce has not swung a State, though it has cemented some.

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  15. Ernest Hemingway's 'After The Storm'

    Always liked that story.

    "Even the birds got more out of it than I did."

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  17. Beginning to see some McCain yard signs, but Obama scores with bumper sickers.

    My travels do not take me into Obama country, though. If there were many Obama house signs on my route, I'd be shocked.

    But the transients, those traveling through my little part of the Global Village, Obamaoids.

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  18. How does a frigging English Major still get "affect" wrong?

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  19. I'm going to call the local Republican office next week, see if I can get a bumper sticker or two. Around here, I don't have to worry about the antenna being torn off, except around the U of Idaho, maybe.

    It's kind of funny around the U of Idaho. All sorts of new fuel efficient cars with all sorts of 'causes' plastered on the back. Save this, do that, support this, oppose that. Some of them mutually exclusive. Like 'Save Darfur' and 'Bring The Troops Home' and 'Stop Global Warming' and 'Stop Nuclear Power'.

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  20. WASHINGTON (AP) — Alan Greenspan says the country can't afford tax cuts of the magnitude proposed by Republican presidential contender John McCain — at least not without a corresponding reduction in government spending.
    "Unless we cut spending, no," the former Federal Reserve chairman said Friday when asked about McCain's proposed tax cuts, pegged in some estimates at $3.3 trillion.

    "I'm not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money," Greenspan said during an interview with Bloomberg Television. "I always have tied tax cuts to spending."
    ...
    Democrats pounced on Greenspan's comments, in part because McCain professed last year that he was weaker on economics than foreign affairs and was reading Greenspan's memoir, "The Age of Turbulence," to educate himself.


    Perhaps Maverick won't be sitting in Mr Greenspan's classroom much longer, go find himself a new proffessor.

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  21. That's the way it's spelled out here. Where you from?

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  22. Couldn't you efford a good spelling book?

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  23. Did everyone she the Palin Trashing in the NY Times?
    A real scumbag, she is.
    (according to the paper of record)

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  24. Ingraham is saying "efforting" a lot.
    Must be some hip thing she's making fun of, I guess.

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  25. I do not think that bumper stickers provide an accurate polling, but they do provide some entertainment.

    Like watching the obese at Walmart or the State Fair.
    Kinda funny, kinda sad.

    Sometimes see whole families of dysfunction waddling through life.

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  26. Palin + Bradley Effect = McCain/Palin win, I'm thinking.

    Anything can happen though. Still early.

    Damn I hate pedants. You knew what I meant!

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  27. Wait till you she the back of my car, Rat. You'll like it.

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  28. I'm not gonna shew it to Doug.

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  29. Reminds me of Gaza and the world's view it's a concentration camp

    http://rochester.indymedia.org/newswire/display/21738/index.php


    Blair sister-in-law: Gaza world’s largest concentration camp
    British left-wing activist Lauren Booth remains stuck in Strip after journey to 'break' Israeli naval blockade, equates situation to Holocaust, Darfur

    In a telephone interview with Ynet on Wednesday, Booth slammed Israel's policies and called Gaza "the largest concentration camp in the world today. I was startled the Israelis agreed to this.”


    http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3595097,00.html

    Despite her current predicament, Booth said she has no regrets. "My children are the ones who are suffering, because I'm being prevented from leaving and they can't see me. I don't regret it, because I wanted to come here and help these children who are suffering on a daily basis," she said.

    Booth asserted that the current siege is not the result of the policies of the Hamas government. "There's been a siege for 20 years already. Palestinians' freedom of movement has been restricted since the 80s. This is an inexcusable outrage on an international level."

    She spoke of the situation in Gaza and said, “Yesterday, I visited mothers of children under the age of five. Nutrition here has deteriorated threefold over the last two years because it is impossible to bring food through the crossings. Unemployment has risen, so people can't even afford to buy what food there is left."

    'It's as bad as Darfur'
    When asked about Israel's right to respond to incessant attacks emanating from Gaza, Booth evoked Holocaust-related rhetoric. "There is no right to punish people this way. There is no justification for this kind of collective punishment. You were in the concentration camps, and I can’t believe that you are allowing the creation of such a camp yourselves.”

    “The Palestinians’ suffering is physical, mental and emotional," she went on, "there is not a family here in which someone is not in desperate need of work, shelter or food. This is a humanitarian crisis on the scale of Darfur.


    There is a new standard of poor in the world...

    a real one that is for the UN-PC an the standard for those that can bend the press to have pity on them...

    " I haven't had a shower in days" cries the man in LA Shelter...

    What a crime....

    I cried because I had no shoes, then I saw a man with no feet...


    Sadly the people in Gaza and New Orleans are BLIND

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  30. Is Ian Punnett a pedant, a pederast, or a pudhead?

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  31. Dave:


    MIRACLE ALERT! MIRACLE ALERT!

    Check out the latest Chesler Chronicles on pjm.
    The one about Charlie Gibson and his less-than-sterling interview techniques. In the comments section there is an anti-Palin female troll “debra”. She is eloquently, passionately, rationally and articulately rebutted by our very own c4.

    We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.

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  32. THE CORNER
    This Is Actually Getting Kind Of Funny:
    Mark mentioned today's New York Times Palin story, "Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes."
    Today's front-page feature in the Washington Post is "As Mayor of Wasilla, Palin Cut Own Duties, Left Trail of Bad Blood." . . .
    Go

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  33. Doug: She is eloquently, passionately, rationally and articulately rebutted by our very own c4.

    Wow, WiO and Metuselah, did you know you had your very own Cedarford?

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  34. Cedarford in love....no other explaination.

    Palin had an Israeli flag in her state office.

    Cedarford in love....Alaskan moonlight has captured his mind.

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  35. Well it seems people will always bitch no matter what you give them or do for them....

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