kajota.com

This kind of ignorance just drive me up the wall. Fine, let her die and she can go hang out with Jesus.

Twice in the past two years, she has been told to prepare to die. Twice, she has been rejected for a lung transplant because her case was deemed too difficult. Twice, she has nearly been sent home to Peru because doctors told her there was nothing more they could do here, and if there were, her insurance wouldn’t pay. She refused to believe them.

Then, doctors, social workers, friends, family, priests, politicians and strangers coalesced as a veritable army of guardian angels around her. They pushed for treatment and insurance. They found loopholes, hospital beds and ventilators. They prayed. They set up a “Save Maribel” Web site and Facebook page. They called news conferences in which Perez tearfully pleaded for her life. They raised $60,000 to save her.

So it was nothing less than shattering when, miraculously, a few weeks ago, one of the world’s largest lung-transplant programs, at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, agreed to take her, and Perez said no.

Her reason had nothing to do with breath. It was because of blood.
Perez had become a Jehovah’s Witness. The religion teaches that blood is sacred, the seat of one’s soul, and that in the Bible, God specifically prohibits the consumption of blood, whether by mouth or through veins in a transfusion. Many Jehovah’s Witnesses carry cards explaining that in an emergency they are not to receive blood and that no medical practitioner will be held liable if they die as a result.

Wow, this article by Bruce Bartlett comes as close as anything to the way I feel about the current state of the Republicans and how much of a disaster Bush was as president.

I think conservative anger is misplaced. To a large extent, Obama is only cleaning up messes created by Bush. This is not to say Obama hasn’t made mistakes himself, but even they can be blamed on Bush insofar as Bush’s incompetence led to the election of a Democrat. If he had done half as good a job as most Republicans have talked themselves into believing he did, McCain would have won easily.

One of the big problems I have with the Republicans and Bush is that they did such a poor job while in power that they created an environment where a person as liberal as Obama could get elected president. If they had actually been fiscally conservative they might have been able to keep many independent voters like me. When it came time to vote my choice was between socially conservative big government and socially liberal big government. Since I don’t hate the gays, don’t believe in God and don’t wave the ‘merican flag every chance I get, I decided to vote for what I saw as the lesser of two evils.

If they had actually done a good job, I probably would have voted for McCain. (even though I think Palin is a complete moron). Through their incompetence and poor performance, the Republicans are the reason Obama is president.

Another point made in the article that seems to fly right over most conservatives heads these days:

In my opinion, conservative activists, who seem to believe that the louder they shout the more correct their beliefs must be, are less angry about Obama’s policies than they are about having lost the White House in 2008. They are primarily Republican Party hacks trying to overturn the election results, not representatives of a true grassroots revolt against liberal policies. If that were the case they would have been out demonstrating against the Medicare drug benefit, the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, and all the pork-barrel spending that Bush refused to veto.

Why weren’t all these tea-baggers out in the streets protesting when Bush & Co were spending all this money? The answer is, that they don’t really care. It’s really all about their team. They’ve picked the Republicans. For them it’s just like pulling for the Redskins or the Yankees. It’s just their team. The issues are there only to be cherry-picked when they support their side.

Since Bartlett has criticized the Republicans, he must now be a stinkin’ liberal. They don’t tolerate dissent well these days. If the Republicans maintain their current course, the best they’ll get from independent voters is that we’ll stay at home. I doubt that will be good enough however.

As far as I can tell this story was not from the opinion page of the Washington Post but you can’t tell from its tone.

On a bad day it can take hours of crawling, and as of July 21 northbound drivers will not have a rest stop to, well, rest in, or whatever else they may need to do.

Is this tone really needed for this story? The last half of that sentence is completely unnecessary.

This will save the state agency $9 million against its $2.6 billion revenue shortfall.

I could be reading a little into this sentence but it seems snarky to me. Of course there’s no context provided for this. You have to make a lot of little cuts to make up that kind of shortfall.

Caldwell will tell you that that is all well and good, but those are mid-20th century highways and these are modern times. While Gov. Tim Kaine may no longer be able to afford you a bathroom, Ronald McDonald can.

What the hell is wrong with stopping at a McDonald’s or a gas station to use the rest room? Do I have to use a government provided shitter?

Though some rest stops will be open to truckers only (no, an SUV is not a truck), the state will continue to maintain 19 open to all drivers.

Thanks asshole for letting me know that an SUV is not a truck. I would never have guessed. Could we just have the story and not interlace commentary into it? I know it’s not normally how things are written but they’re usually better at hiding it.

I’ve ridden on back roads up and down the east coast, into Canada and all over Colorado on my motorcycle. I purposefully avoid major roads. (back roads are much more fun). There are no rest stops on any of these country roads and somehow I’ve managed to survive all these rides without pissing myself.

This is a good example of why the government can never stop spending money. You can’t cut anything without someone getting all bitchy about it. Even when they should just be reporting the story.

When I finally invent time travel, before going back in time to kill Hitler , I’m going to go back in time and punch the guy who invented the speakerphone. Afterward, I’m going to go back in time and punch the mother of the asshole in my office who needs to validate his existence by the loud overuse of his speakerphone.

Look, we all know you’re a dangling nutsack of Godzilla-like proportions. There’s no need to prove it on a daily basis. Close your office door or use the handset (that thing with the speaker and microphone connected to your speaker phone with a cable- pick it up). And seriously, you’re not on stage, there’s no need to ‘project’. Even if the guy you’re talking to is on the other side of the planet, he’ll still be able to hear you if you speak at a volume less than 110 decibels.

The best I can figure, is that this snapperhead wants to make sure his boss knows he’s here. I guess ‘good morning’ won’t do. “Hey Look!, I’m talking to a customer!”.

Prick.