Rants: the American edition
Jan. 26th, 2005 07:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyWow, what a lot of responses. You guys secretly like it when I get incoherent, don't you?
::waddles to fridge and pops a KLB::
That should help with the babbling. Okay, first, an update. The young man mentioned in the previous entry is charged, among other things, with theft under $5000. What is there to steal at a protest, you might ask? It turns out that he allegedly stole a police officer's hat. I'm not sure whether that chutzpah or stupidity, but I find it really, really funny.
On to the rants. First up is![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
_flyonthewall_.
"I would like to hear you rant about how the city of Toronto shipps "all" of its garbage into Michigan (to a dump about 20 miles from my town). grrrr! damn Canadians! I'm going to go digging through that pile o' trash one day and if I find anything with with Rachel Rosen on it.... oh man! Heads will roll! :)"
Maybe you haven't figured it out yet, but one of the recurring themes in my LJ is that America is always wrong and Canada -- with the exception of Alberta -- is always right. If the dispute is between cities, Toronto is always right and everyone else is wrong. Therefore, no matter how wasteful, filthy, and environmentally destructive it is, Toronto is perfectly justified in dumping its trash anywhere south of the border.
Look, so we've given you a bit of garbage. So what? Bleeding-heart leftists like Mayor Miller might care, but should the rest of us? I know that two wrongs don't make a right, but look at the amount of trash America has dumped in Canada.
I'm not talking about air emissions or polluting the Great Lakes or refusing to implement the Kyoto Protocol, or even flying nuclear warheads over Inuit land. No, I'm talking about Britney Spears, Jerry Springer, those Olson Twin movies, and Survivor. You think that refuse stops at the 42nd parallel? No. It seeps into our country and pollutes our cultural landscape. There are even mullets here now. And Republicans! Emperor George II recently made an appearance in our capital city, and if that wasn't bad enough, dared showed his face into Halifax. Consider our garbage disposal practices a form of exchange, trade even.
Kids, you really have to keep your junk within your own borders, or we're not just going to dump our garbage in your backyard. We'll burn down your White House again.
Next issarars.
What is this? A trick question? I've just proved my callous disregard and ignorance of all things American. It's like an episode of Talking to Americans in reverse.
So I Googled it, and it turns out that Echo Park is a historic area that's being -- like so many other cool neighbourhoods -- invaded by yuppies. Fucking yuppies. I am a yuppie, and even I can't stand them.
Anyway, I have a solution for the residents of Echo Park. Just volunteer to take Toronto's trash from Michigan. Spread it all around your homes, and I can guarantee you that no yuppie will want to move there. You'll have the neighbourhood back again in no time! Michigan will be happy, because it won't smell like Hogtown anymore, and Toronto will be happy because we won't have to actually worry about the disgusting amount of shit that we consume and throw away.
Who ischris_crust? I don't know. He's friends with xol0tl, though, so he's probably cool. He wants to know what I think about "the fact that the public mental health provider in Phoenix is a for profit company."
I thought that all health care in the US was for profit with the exception of public clinics and university hospitals. I don't get that. I'm of the opinion that one shouldn't have to pay for health care of any sort (or more realistically, that everyone should share the cost of health care), and apparently the scourge of a laissez-faire approach to life and death has spread even farther in Phoenix.
Now, we all know what profit motive is. I'm a prison abolitionist, but let's assume for a moment that a prison is paid for by the taxpayers. It's in everyone's interest to rehabilitate prisoners instead of locking them away and throwing away the key, because it costs us all money to keep them in there. If a prison is run by a corporation, it's in the interest of that company to make sure that prisoners serve long sentences and then re-offend, because they're making money on each person.
If we extend this analogy to health care, it makes the commie system we have up here look really good. Since we all pay for it when someone gets thrown in the loony bin, it's in the public interest to get them relatively sane and functional as soon as possible. (Or, you know, to get them to jump off a bridge.) But a for-profit company? They have a good reason to make sure that no one ever gets too sane. They'd lose all of their customers.
Could make Phoenix a pretty entertaining city, I must say.
Last one for tonight:gordonzola.
People actually do that? I thought it was an urban myth or something. Not that I can blame you guys or anything, but you need to stop that.
There's a reason that Americans sew little Canadian flags to their backpacks. Actually, there are three:
1. A lot of you guys are completely rude, expect everyone you meet to speak English, and want a McDonalds on every corner.
2. Your foreign policy sucks.
3. You're embarrassed about 1. and 2., and you don't want anyone to judge you because of that.
Okay, fair enough. And I know that the Americans who try to pass as Canadians are not the same Americans who voted Bush in. It's all the liberal blue state folks who feel really, really bad about the war. And they really do not fit the stereotype of the Ugly American or anything like that. Boo-hoo. We don't care. If you're embarrassed about your country's foreign policy (and you should be), do something about it. Go pull a John Wilkes Booth on Bush, but keep our flag off your knapsack. Because you're still going to order a McBeer when you go to Italy (you can't help yourselves), and frankly, we don't want to be associated with that.
Or better yet, don't put a flag on your backpack at all. Europeans are sick of nationalistic bullshit, and so am I.
This has been an episode of My Drunken Opinion To Which You Are All Entitled. Thanks, and have a good night.
::waddles to fridge and pops a KLB::
That should help with the babbling. Okay, first, an update. The young man mentioned in the previous entry is charged, among other things, with theft under $5000. What is there to steal at a protest, you might ask? It turns out that he allegedly stole a police officer's hat. I'm not sure whether that chutzpah or stupidity, but I find it really, really funny.
On to the rants. First up is
_flyonthewall_."I would like to hear you rant about how the city of Toronto shipps "all" of its garbage into Michigan (to a dump about 20 miles from my town). grrrr! damn Canadians! I'm going to go digging through that pile o' trash one day and if I find anything with with Rachel Rosen on it.... oh man! Heads will roll! :)"
Maybe you haven't figured it out yet, but one of the recurring themes in my LJ is that America is always wrong and Canada -- with the exception of Alberta -- is always right. If the dispute is between cities, Toronto is always right and everyone else is wrong. Therefore, no matter how wasteful, filthy, and environmentally destructive it is, Toronto is perfectly justified in dumping its trash anywhere south of the border.
Look, so we've given you a bit of garbage. So what? Bleeding-heart leftists like Mayor Miller might care, but should the rest of us? I know that two wrongs don't make a right, but look at the amount of trash America has dumped in Canada.
I'm not talking about air emissions or polluting the Great Lakes or refusing to implement the Kyoto Protocol, or even flying nuclear warheads over Inuit land. No, I'm talking about Britney Spears, Jerry Springer, those Olson Twin movies, and Survivor. You think that refuse stops at the 42nd parallel? No. It seeps into our country and pollutes our cultural landscape. There are even mullets here now. And Republicans! Emperor George II recently made an appearance in our capital city, and if that wasn't bad enough, dared showed his face into Halifax. Consider our garbage disposal practices a form of exchange, trade even.
Kids, you really have to keep your junk within your own borders, or we're not just going to dump our garbage in your backyard. We'll burn down your White House again.
Next is
sarars.What is this? A trick question? I've just proved my callous disregard and ignorance of all things American. It's like an episode of Talking to Americans in reverse.
So I Googled it, and it turns out that Echo Park is a historic area that's being -- like so many other cool neighbourhoods -- invaded by yuppies. Fucking yuppies. I am a yuppie, and even I can't stand them.
Anyway, I have a solution for the residents of Echo Park. Just volunteer to take Toronto's trash from Michigan. Spread it all around your homes, and I can guarantee you that no yuppie will want to move there. You'll have the neighbourhood back again in no time! Michigan will be happy, because it won't smell like Hogtown anymore, and Toronto will be happy because we won't have to actually worry about the disgusting amount of shit that we consume and throw away.
Who is
chris_crust? I don't know. He's friends with xol0tl, though, so he's probably cool. He wants to know what I think about "the fact that the public mental health provider in Phoenix is a for profit company."I thought that all health care in the US was for profit with the exception of public clinics and university hospitals. I don't get that. I'm of the opinion that one shouldn't have to pay for health care of any sort (or more realistically, that everyone should share the cost of health care), and apparently the scourge of a laissez-faire approach to life and death has spread even farther in Phoenix.
Now, we all know what profit motive is. I'm a prison abolitionist, but let's assume for a moment that a prison is paid for by the taxpayers. It's in everyone's interest to rehabilitate prisoners instead of locking them away and throwing away the key, because it costs us all money to keep them in there. If a prison is run by a corporation, it's in the interest of that company to make sure that prisoners serve long sentences and then re-offend, because they're making money on each person.
If we extend this analogy to health care, it makes the commie system we have up here look really good. Since we all pay for it when someone gets thrown in the loony bin, it's in the public interest to get them relatively sane and functional as soon as possible. (Or, you know, to get them to jump off a bridge.) But a for-profit company? They have a good reason to make sure that no one ever gets too sane. They'd lose all of their customers.
Could make Phoenix a pretty entertaining city, I must say.
Last one for tonight:
gordonzola.People actually do that? I thought it was an urban myth or something. Not that I can blame you guys or anything, but you need to stop that.
There's a reason that Americans sew little Canadian flags to their backpacks. Actually, there are three:
1. A lot of you guys are completely rude, expect everyone you meet to speak English, and want a McDonalds on every corner.
2. Your foreign policy sucks.
3. You're embarrassed about 1. and 2., and you don't want anyone to judge you because of that.
Okay, fair enough. And I know that the Americans who try to pass as Canadians are not the same Americans who voted Bush in. It's all the liberal blue state folks who feel really, really bad about the war. And they really do not fit the stereotype of the Ugly American or anything like that. Boo-hoo. We don't care. If you're embarrassed about your country's foreign policy (and you should be), do something about it. Go pull a John Wilkes Booth on Bush, but keep our flag off your knapsack. Because you're still going to order a McBeer when you go to Italy (you can't help yourselves), and frankly, we don't want to be associated with that.
Or better yet, don't put a flag on your backpack at all. Europeans are sick of nationalistic bullshit, and so am I.
This has been an episode of My Drunken Opinion To Which You Are All Entitled. Thanks, and have a good night.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 01:21 am (UTC)Ahem.
Also, Italy? Italian beer? Uh.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 02:48 pm (UTC)And Peroni is a good beer. Nice flowery hops.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 03:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 01:24 am (UTC)That's incorrect, but not so's it actually matters any.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 01:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 01:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 01:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 01:38 am (UTC)Well....
Date: 2005-01-27 05:35 am (UTC)The state I live in, Nevada has one that is basically bare bones coverage. I'm on Medicaid (medical treatment for poor and disabled) and they will pay for one doctor's appointment a month and two perscriptions a month.
If your mentally ill with no pay to pay here in Nevada, it basically sucks to be you. We have a state mental hospital that has about 150 beds and a clinic for outpaient care.
Otherwise you have to go a emergancy room if you're having a psychotic/mental breakdown, that's if your lucky.
Sadly many of the mentally ill here commit crimes while going through thier illness and end up in prison where they (again, if they are lucky) are diognosed and treated.
That another thing the prison system serves here as in the U.S., it is a holding tank for the mentally ill who happens to be poor and can't afford medical care.
Oh yeah, let me introduce myself and delurk. My name is Terry, I found you through
Re: Well....
Date: 2005-01-27 02:43 pm (UTC)Yes, and yes.
Re: Well....
Date: 2005-01-27 10:06 pm (UTC)Re: Well....
Date: 2005-01-27 05:29 pm (UTC)Re: Well....
Date: 2005-01-27 10:06 pm (UTC)http://www.mushycat.com
no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 08:00 am (UTC)*wipes away tear*
a mentally ill, uninsured person getting treatment? oh, you wacky canucks!
go to prison.
Date: 2005-01-27 05:11 pm (UTC)How HMO's work is that they pay a facility(clinic, hospital, etc) 4 times a year a lump sum and that facility signs a contract with a list of procedure codes that they will write off
for participants of that HMO plan. The facility usually doesn't make much money off this agreement, but it does ensure that schedules stay filled. However, if the treatment that you are seeking or that is being recommended to you is not on that little list, you have to pay for it out of pocket, no matter how badly you need said treatment.
A PPO is when the facility files a claim and receives a check(or a denial) from the insurance company for each procedure, but that amount is based on "usual and customary" amounts and the facility has to either bill the patient the difference or write off the difference. This is another way that Insurance companies control the industry.
Medicaid varies from state to state but in Wisconsin you MUST be employed or enrolled in a job training program to receive it, and the coverage is good except for there is no dental coverage.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 01:41 am (UTC)If you're embarrassed about your country's foreign policy (and you should be), do something about it.
I try my damndest!
no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 03:30 am (UTC)Noooooooo.
:)
no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 04:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 09:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 04:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 04:11 am (UTC)Betcha they were in disguise! :P
Nope, you're right though, there's no shortage of stupid loudmouth Canadians either. I live just off the Drunk Fratboy Party Strip in my city. You should see it on Canada Day. Asshat Central.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 04:21 am (UTC)Pure evil, I tell ya.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 03:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 02:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 01:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 02:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 03:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 09:38 pm (UTC)