RT from my friend Dave @Grobleski …

For the second day in a row, thousands of people lined up for free dental, medical and vision services in South Los Angeles courtesy of a nonprofit group that provides mobile health care for the rural poor.

Remote Area Medical set up for eight days of care at the Forum in L.A.  The enormous response to the free care was a stark contrast to recent videos of Glenn Beck-watching Tea Baggers screaming at town hall meetings in opposition to proposed health insurance reform.

Thousands Line Up for Promise of Free Health Care – NYTimes.com.

A short animated clip made by Trey Parker & Matt Stone featuring a small segment of an Alan Watts lecture.

YouTube – Alan Watts – “Music and Life”.

I had a little scare today.  Last night I was feeling a little run down after work.  I had trouble sleeping but when I finally did fall asleep I woke up and couldn’t breathe.   This wasn’t the first time, after my bout with bronchitis earlier this year the doc at the walk-in clinic told me I might have asthma and he referred me to a specialist.

Problem is, I don’t have health insurance.

So what do you do when you wake up and can’t breathe?  I headed to the emergency room, with a quick side trip to the ATM to get out some cash.  I pulled out $600, my daily max.

There are 4000 asthma-related deaths every year in the United States, many of them uninsured (or under-insured) children.  Asthma is the most common chronic disease among children.  Asthma is treatable, but the most common  treatment (inhaled corticosteroids) costs over $100 per month, which is way beyond what many families can afford.

4000 preventable deaths a year…more than all the people who died on September 11th.   EVERY YEAR.

Except they aren’t being killed by foreign terrorists, it’s something much more sinister. Our own failed health care system is just letting them die.

This is why I support health insurance reform.  Not because I think it’s going fix everything that’s wrong, but we have to do something.  Because I know that there’s not always an extra $600 in my account.  What if the bill was $4000?  or $40,000?  Is that when I just become another death statistic?

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, right?

PEOPLE….IT’S THE FIRST ONE!!!!!!

http://www.whitehouse.gov/health-insurance-consumer-protections/

It’s getting increasingly difficult for me to have any respect for anyone who doesn’t support universal health care for all.  We are the richest country in the history of the world, and yet we do not take care of our own sick citizens.  

The United States is the only developed nation that does not have a comprehensive national health care plan for all its citizens.

Who are these people that hate health care?   Why do they hate America so much?  Why do they want to continue in a system that gives financial incentives to KEEP PEOPLE SICK?

Sarah Palin said (in a Facebook posting) that Obama’s proposed health plan “is evil” and would create a “death panel” that would deny care to the neediest Americans.   She’s like a character out of a Oliver Stone movie.

Rush Limbagh recently said the proposed health care logo was similar to a Nazi symbol.  Nice one, you bloated pill popping prick.

The web site “Tea Party Patriots” circulated instructions to anti-health fanatics to attend Obama Town hall meetings and  “Yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early.  Get him off his prepared script and agenda,” the memo continued. “Stand up and shout and sit right back down.”

The sad part is that Fox is reporting all of this like it is news.  If you watch Fox regularly as a source for your news,  you need to get your head checked out.

But then again, I don’t think any health insurance plan covers ignorance.

Now I’ll go back to tea-bagging your mom.

NYT: Health debate turns hostile at meetings – The New York Times- msnbc.com.

Some gems from a brilliant post by Bill Maher in the Huffington Post:

“This country is like a college chick after two Long Island Iced Teas: we can be talked into anything.”

“Here’s one fun fact you can take away: did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That’s right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.

“James Madison wrote that “pure democracy” doesn’t work because “there is nothing to check… an obnoxious individual.” Then, in the margins, he doodled a picture of Joe the Plumber.

“A smart guy named Chesterton once said: “My country, right or wrong is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying… It is like saying ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’ To which most Americans would respond: “Are you calling my mother a drunk?”

Excerpts From – Bill Maher: New Rule: Smart President ≠ Smart Country.

Deaths from street drug overdoses dropped from around 400 to 290 annually, and the number of new HIV cases caused by using dirty needles to inject heroin, cocaine and other illegal substances plummeted from nearly 1,400 in 2000 to about 400 in 2006, according to a report released recently by the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C, libertarian think tank.

via 5 Years After: Portugal’s Drug Decriminalization Policy Shows Positive Results: Scientific American.

“We can’t imagine ourselves without the alphabet and writing, and so in the same way we’re going to not be able to imagine ourselves without this other machine…”

YouTube – Kevin Kelly: Predicting the next 5,000 days of the web.

Thus is the central question of the film “Shall We Kiss“  (“Un baiser s’il vous plaît”).   Sometimes a kiss is just not worth the risk.   Many times it is.

This is a 2007 French  comedy with english subtitles, so immediately I hate it.  But it’s cute, in a french Woody Allen-ish sorta way.  It has some of the least sexy sex scenes I’ve ever seen, including Woody Allen’s entire body of work.   But I think that’s the point.

The “story within a story within a story” technique was clever but perhaps a bit tedious.   There’s probably nobody in it that you’ll recognize.   But the classical soundtrack was fantastic (but only if you’re into Schubert and Tchaikovsky).

Really, if you’re only going to see one French film with English subtitles this year, this is probably the one to see.   It’s playing at the Enzian this weekend…I’d check the movie website to see if it’s coming anywhere near you.  Shall We Kiss Website

Here’s what Roger Ebert had to say:  Roger Ebert “Shall We Kiss” Review

YouTube – Shall We Kiss Trailer.

Rick Sanchez (@RickSanchezCnn) at one point said, “It’s like in the 80′s…everyone thought Ted Turner was crazy to start a 24-hour news network. Who needs 24-hour news???”

That’s how most people feel about Twitter.

“I don’t get it,” they say.

I didn’t either. I didn’t start “getting it” until about 6 months ago.  And I really didn’t fully grok it until I attended Jeff Pulver’s (@JeffPulver) inaugural 140 Characters Conference this week in New York.

I’m not a celebrity, my blog doesn’t garner hundreds of thousands of hits. I’m just a guy who plays piano and writes stuff on his website. I knew something was happening with Twitter, but I didn’t know what.   I wanted to find out, so I went to the Woodstock of Tweetups:  The 140 Characters Conference.

“This is not like the change from radio to television…this is something different.” – Jeff Pulver, Founder 140 Characters Conference

The transformative power of Twitter is not about the celebrities, it’s really about connecting with regular people.   It’s not about what Ashton Kutcher had for breakfast…nobody REALLY cares about that.

It’s about what’s happening NOW.

It’s a real live international conversation, between people of varying cultures, backgrounds, educations, philosophies, religions, sexual preferences, nationalities.  It’s an open forum where the only limitation is the number of characters you can use in each message.

From a distance, it all looks like noise (and most of it is).  Chatter.  But from the chatter bubbles trends and topics.  Not just the topics that the “talking heads” tell us about on the news, or the newspapers or websites tell us about, but the topics the Twitterverse finds important.

Unlike Google Analytics, which can tell us what people are searching for, Twitter shows us what people are talking about.

And what are they talking about?  Most recently the Elections in Iran.   The conversation about the Iran Elections (#IranElections) was deemed so important that the State Department asked Twitter to not perform a scheduled maintenance this week to keep the discussion going.

And that’s what it is…a tool.  How we wield this tool can change the world.  And it is.

And you can choose to be a part of it, if you want.  Get on Twitter.  Follow some people.  If you don’t know who to follow, follow me:  @JohnnyDiggz.

I’ll be gentle, I promise

YouTube – Thinking about the 140 Characters Conference.