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Part of a longer film, this video is a Public Service Announcement (PSA) from the
This is a graphic, disturbing film – tough to watch even once.
Anyone using a cell phone while driving without a hands-free device should be forced to watch this video. You put yourself, your passengers, pedestrians and other drivers and passengers in grave danger. Tell your friends and family to put down the damn phone!
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Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” invited Betsy McCaughey, the founder of the “let’s kill grandma” deathers movement to discuss her position on the show. The interview/discussion ran over the allocated time and is presented below in two parts. Please excuse any opening ads – unavoidable when embedding from www.comedycentral.com as well as other sites like www.hulu.com.
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c Exclusive - Betsy McCaughey Extended Interview Pt. 1 Daily Show
Full EpisodesPolitical Humor Healthcare Protests
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c Exclusive - Betsy McCaughey Extended Interview Pt. 2 Daily Show
Full EpisodesPolitical Humor Healthcare Protests
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Reprinted from Psychology Today, 10/1/04, last reviewed 6/26/09
The Rules of Relationships
By Hara Estroff Marano
Human beings crave intimacy, need to love and be loved. Yet people have much trouble doing so.
It's clear from the many letters I get that lots of folks have no idea what a healthy relationship even looks like. Because I care about these things, and care about the environments children grow in, I'm using this space as an attempt to remedy the problem -- again.
From many sources and many experts, I have culled some basic rules of
relationships. This is by no means an exhaustive list. But it's a start. Print them out and pin them up on your refrigerator door. I won't test you on them -- but life will.
> Choose a partner wisely and well. We are attracted to people for all kinds of reasons. They remind us of someone from our past. They shower us with gifts and make us feel important. Evaluate a potential partner as you would a friend -- look at their character, personality, values, their generosity of spirit, the relationship between their words and actions, their relationships with others.
> Know your partner's beliefs about relationships. Different people have different and often conflicting beliefs about relationships. You don't want to fall in love with someone who expects lots of dishonesty in relationships -- they'll create it where it doesn't exist.
> Don't confuse sex with love. Especially in the beginning of a relationship, attraction and pleasure in sex are often mistaken for love.
> Know your needs and speak up for them clearly. A relationship is not a guessing game. Many people, men as well as women, fear stating their needs and, as a result, camouflage them. The result is disappointment at not getting what they want and anger at a partner for not having met their (unstated) needs. Closeness cannot occur without honesty. Your partner is not a mind reader.
> Respect, respect, respect. Inside and outside the relationship, act in ways so that your partner always maintains respect for you. Mutual respect is essential to a good relationship.
> View yourselves as a team, which means you are two unique individuals bringing different perspectives and strengths. That is the value of a team -- your differences.
> Know how to manage differences; it's the key to success in a relationship. Disagreements don't sink relationships. Name-calling does. Learn how to handle the negative feelings that are the unavoidable byproduct of the differences between two people. Stonewalling or avoiding conflicts is not managing them.
> If you don't understand or like something your partner is doing, ask about it and why he or she is doing it. Talk and explore, don't assume.
> Solve problems as they arise. Don't let resentments simmer. Most of what goes wrong in relationships can be traced to hurt feelings, leading partners to erect defenses against one another and to become strangers. Or enemies.
> Learn to negotiate. Modern relationships no longer rely on roles cast by the culture. Couples create their own roles, so that virtually every act requires negotiation. It works best when good will prevails. Because people's needs are fluid and change over time, and life's demands change too, good relationships are negotiated and renegotiated all the time.
> Listen, truly listen, to your partner's concerns and complaints without judgment. Much of the time, just having someone listen is all we need for solving problems. Plus it opens the door to confiding. And empathy is crucial. Look at things from your partner's perspective as well as your own.
> Work hard at maintaining closeness. Closeness doesn't happen by itself. In its absence, people drift apart and are susceptible to affairs. A good relationship isn't an end goal -- it's a lifelong process maintained through regular attention.
> Take a long-range view. A marriage is an agreement to spend a future together. Check out your dreams with each other regularly to make sure you're both on the same path. Update your dreams regularly.
> Never underestimate the power of good grooming.
> Sex is good. Pillow talk is better. Sex is easy, intimacy is difficult. It requires honesty, openness, self-disclosure, confiding concerns, fears, sadnesses as well as hopes and dreams.
> Never go to sleep angry. Try a little tenderness.
> Apologize, apologize, apologize. Anyone can make a mistake. Repair attempts are crucial and highly predictive of marital happiness. They can be clumsy or funny, even sarcastic -- but willingness to make up after an argument is central to every happy marriage.
> Some dependency is good, but complete dependency on a partner for all one's needs is an invitation to unhappiness for both partners. We're all dependent to a degree -- on friends, mentors, spouses. This is true of men as well as women.
> Maintain self-respect and self-esteem. It's easier for someone to like you and to be around you when you like yourself. Research has shown that the more roles people fill, the more sources of self-esteem they have. Meaningful work -- paid or volunteer -- has long been one of the most important ways to exercise and fortify a sense of self.
> Enrich your relationship by bringing into it new interests from outside the relationship. The more passions in life you have and share, the richer your relationship will be. It is unrealistic to expect one person to meet all of your needs in life.
> Cooperate, cooperate, cooperate. Share responsibilities. Relationships work only when they are two-way streets, with much give and take.
> Stay open to spontaneity.
> Maintain your energy. Stay healthy.
> Recognize that all relationships have their ups and downs and do not ride at a continuous high all the time. Working together through the hard times will make the relationship stronger.
> Make good sense of a bad relationship by examining it as a reflection of your beliefs about yourself. Don't just run away from a bad relationship; you'll only repeat it with the next partner. Use it as a mirror to look at yourself, to understand what in you is creating this relationship. Change yourself before you change your
relationship.
> Understand that love is not an absolute, not a limited commodity that you're in of or out of. It's a feeling that ebbs and flows depending on how you treat each other. If you learn new ways to interact, the feelings can come flowing back, often stronger than before.
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In Mein Kampf Hitler wrote that the best lie is the big lie – a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously". As explained by the
That’s what the anti-health care people are doing – the big lies. Sarah Palin brought the “let’s kill Grandma” lie to a head with her “Obama death panels” imagery. That’s just one of the big lies, right along with socialism, bureaucrats not doctors making medical decisions, killing children, cutting VA benefits, paying for abortions, government taking over healthcare, etc. Why is this all happening? Because the Republican Party has no leaders. The Party has allowed the vacuum to be filled by its lunatic fringe like Limbaugh, Palin and Steele, supplemented by the healthcare industry lobbyists. The latter includes the folks who brought us the Kerry swiftboating – a healthcare industry which has contributed many millions to a myriad of senators and congressmen. The GOP lawmakers just mimic the lies and deceptions, going along with their default nut job leaders and healthcare donors like pathetic nay-saying sheep.
It’s disgusting what the Republican Party is doing to this country by ceding its leadership and voice to those eager to spread the big lies. The most popular of these is the elderly being brought before the “Obama death panel” which decides whether they will live or die. One healthcare industry person – yes, just one – manufactured this lie from one provision of proposed legislation: The government will pay for end of life counseling should a patient choose to seek such counseling. So, if a patient and his family choose to meet with counselors and doctors to discuss end of life plans the government will pay for such counseling. Simple as that.
Yet, the healthcare industry and its pawns have turned this provision on its head to spread fear among ordinary Americans. This is not a matter of interpreting a provision of proposed legislation; it is a matter of spreading a big lie to benefit those who have huge financial interests in killing a public option for healthcare in
Who started this fear-mongering lie? Betsy McCaughey, the director of a medical device company called Cantel Medical Corp., started and fomented its spread around the fringes of the far right. It is a big lie – claiming precisely the opposite of what the bill’s language states. And so it and its fear spread like wildfire not only among ordinary Americans but up to our lawmakers. Yes, senators are believing it or at least spouting it for political expediency. Take Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa who, at his town hall meeting responding to concerns evoked by the fear-mongering, stated as follows:
Senator Grassley: There is some fear because in the House bill, there's counseling for end-of-life.
[irrelevant comment from audience]
Senator Grassley: And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear. You shouldn't have counseling at the end of life. You ought to have counseling 20 years before you're going to die. And we should not have a government program that determines you're going to pull the plug on grandma.
Could the GOP stoop lower? Not only does it abdicate sensible debate in favor of hired gun, lie-spreading, fear-mongering public relations firms, but actively spreads the big lie to constituents. I believe that Senator Grassley knows exactly what the bill provides. No Senator could be that stupid and/or uninformed. Yet out of fear, pandering or both he chose to propagate the lies fomented by the lunatic fringe of the Party affectionately called the “Deathers”.
How can a miniscule minority of evil liars change policy? It just did. Reimbursement for end of life counseling originally sponsored by Republicans is now out of the bill and off the table.
It is past time for President Obama and his surrogates to take off the gloves and beat the shit out of the fear-mongering liars with nothing more than the truth. Maybe today’s town hall in
See http://aboutnothing-doug.blogspot.com/2009/08/real-fear-factor-in-healthcare-reform.html
The Obama administration never saw the liars coming. Our president is a quick learner and it’s only August 14. President Obama must use his political skills to win a public option.
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From NEWSWEEK by Sharon Begley its science editor. Stay with this piece – it comes together as you go along. Made me think. But then again I’m prone to thinking about this sort of stuff.
What’s in a Word?
Language may shape our thoughts.
By Sharon Begley | NEWSWEEK
Published Jul 9, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Jul 20, 2009
When the Viaduct de Millau opened in the south of
A psychologist at Stanford University, she has long been intrigued by an age-old question whose modern form dates to 1956, when linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf asked whether the language we speak shapes the way we think and see the world. If so, then language is not merely a means of expressing thought, but a constraint on it, too. Although philosophers, anthropologists, and others have weighed in, with most concluding that language does not shape thought in any significant way, the field has been notable for a distressing lack of empiricism—as in testable hypotheses and actual data.
That's where Boroditsky comes in. In a series of clever experiments guided by pointed questions, she is amassing evidence that, yes, language shapes thought. The effect is powerful enough, she says, that "the private mental lives of speakers of different languages may differ dramatically," not only when they are thinking in order to speak, "but in all manner of cognitive tasks," including basic sensory perception. "Even a small fluke of grammar"—the gender of nouns—"can have an effect on how people think about things in the world," she says.
As in that bridge. In German, the noun for bridge, Brücke, is feminine. In French, pont is masculine. German speakers saw prototypically female features; French speakers, masculine ones. Similarly, Germans describe keys (Schlüssel) with words such as hard, heavy, jagged, and metal, while to Spaniards keys (llaves) are golden, intricate, little, and lovely. Guess which language construes key as masculine and which as feminine? Grammatical gender also shapes how we construe abstractions. In 85 percent of artistic depictions of death and victory, for instance, the idea is represented by a man if the noun is masculine and a woman if it is feminine, says Boroditsky. Germans tend to paint death as male, and Russians tend to paint it as female.
Language even shapes what we see. People have a better memory for colors if different shades have distinct names—not English's light blue and dark blue, for instance, but Russian's goluboy and sinly. Skeptics of the language-shapes-thought claim have argued that that's a trivial finding, showing only that people remember what they saw in both a visual form and a verbal one, but not proving that they actually see the hues differently. In an ingenious experiment, however, Boroditsky and colleagues showed volunteers three color swatches and asked them which of the bottom two was the same as the top one. Native Russian speakers were faster than English speakers when the colors had distinct names, suggesting that having a name for something allows you to perceive it more sharply. Similarly, Korean uses one word for "in" when one object is in another snugly (a letter in an envelope), and a different one when an object is in something loosely (an apple in a bowl). Sure enough, Korean adults are better than English speakers at distinguishing tight fit from loose fit.
In
Science has only scratched the surface of how language affects thought. In Russian, verb forms indicate whether the action was completed or not—as in "she ate [and finished] the pizza." In Turkish, verbs indicate whether the action was observed or merely rumored. Boroditsky would love to run an experiment testing whether native Russian speakers are better than others at noticing if an action is completed, and if Turks have a heightened sensitivity to fact versus hearsay. Similarly, while English says "she broke the bowl" even if it smashed accidentally (she dropped something on it, say), Spanish and Japanese describe the same event more like "the bowl broke itself." "When we show people video of the same event," says Boroditsky, "English speakers remember who was to blame even in an accident, but Spanish and Japanese speakers remember it less well than they do intentional actions. It raises questions about whether language affects even something as basic as how we construct our ideas of causality."
Begley is NEWSWEEK's science editor.
Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/205985
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You don’t smell this type of fear. This type of fear is measured by the dollars poured into quelling it. The lobbies opposing the public option as part of healthcare reform are spending approximately $1,300,000 every day to spread fear-mongering lies to the American people. Add to that the volunteer efforts of those organized to disrupt congressmen’s local healthcare town meetings with the lies propagated by the multi-million dollar lobbying effort. See:
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/08/05/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5217554.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/08/04/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5213270.shtml
Who’s behind this disinformation campaign? Those who are raking it in through their control of the multi-faceted American healthcare industry – insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, doctors (AMA), dentists (ADA), nursing homes, et al. It’s the full panoply of interests making money like crazy as components of the vast scope of the healthcare business in this country. All these companies have huge vested financial interests in keeping thing exactly as they are. Sure, they’ll reform a bit here and there as long as they retain control. Why have the insurance companies compromised on preconditions and other reforms? Because they’re gambling everything on defeating the public option.
Keith Olbermann’s special commentary on August 3 included a lengthy list of senators and congressmen, Republicans and Democrats who have received monumental campaign contributions from companies in the healthcare industry. We’re talking millions of dollars for each congressman or senator.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32284299/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann/
How many members of Congress will cast a vote for the public benefit and against his personal financial interests? Far too few, as witnessed by those in Congress opposing the public option for healthcare.
Two of the more popular lies are 1) that the government will be killing the elderly; and 2) this is unacceptable socialism leading to a full government takeover of healthcare. In my opinion both are ludicrous and do not merit discussion.
One argument against the public option designed to appeal to those less gullible or ignorant is picturing a typical government bureaucrat sitting at his typical bureaucrat desk between you and your doctors, deciding what sort of care you’re going to get. From that picture sprung the two lies mentioned above. The very idea of a suit in a tower somewhere who doesn’t know you from Adam (or Eve) evaluating your medical care is simply galling, and understandably so.
For that argument you must assume that when you, your doctor or hospital submits a claim to your benevolent insurance company, it is offered up to the medical gods for blessing and then approved as in your best interests as prescribed by your doctors (doctors worried about malpractice suits for “under” practicing). Well, that’s not it at all. Not even close. I mean that is totally not the way it is when your insurance company is asked to pay out on your claim, i.e., pay some of its own money to someone.
The person examining your claim is your average Joe or Josephine, making an average salary for an in-office insurance adjuster. He reviews what you submit against claims-paying guidelines issued by his employer insurance company. He then determines the amount of money the company will pay on your claim. Paying claims takes away from the profit margin, so the less paid out on your claim the better it is for the insurance company as it’s looking to make a buck in the business. On the other hand there’s a government employee with equal training also deciding how much to pay on your claim based on the government’s claims paying guidelines. Contrary to the private company, the government is not looking to make a profit in the healthcare biz.
Which entity through its claims paying guidelines and practices is more likely to pay more, if at all, on your claim – the non-profit or for-profit?
This is a first for American healthcare – the private sector competing with the public sector for customers, featuring the potential of competition in service and efficiency. The previously untouched interlocking and interdependent amalgam which is the American healthcare industry is about to be challenged and it doesn’t like it one bit.
Rachel Maddow explains all this in greater depth. Please take a few minutes to learn how it works.
[N.B. The cost of a public option is a separate issue, more of a “how to” question. The initial question is whether a public option should exist in the first place. It is this issue which is fraught with greed and self interest in Congress and the entire healthcare industry.]
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