Sunday, September 20, 2009

THE DEMON POSSESED BALWIN BROTHER (STEPHEN) APPEARED IN D.C.


The right wing oughta loves this- 'God Bless The Great White Right'-and all of the (my dad should love this)imps, John Boehner, Eric Cantor (when is he going to come out of the closet????) Carrie Prejean at the "values voter summit" as though no one has values unless they're banging their choir director...or has fake boobs, or can bring a gun to a Presidential Meeting...you should be proud right wing: now we all know how you operate, and we should make sure we watch you closely...
Peace-

Thursday, September 17, 2009

AND HERE'S A GOOD STORY-MAKE THE INSURANCE COMPANIES PAY UP

UPDATE: I DROPPED THE REST OF THE STORY, I'VE ADDED IT.

This is why health care reform is so desperately needed in the U.S. Please get in touch with your Congressperson for true and real reform...

The South Carolina Supreme Court has ordered an insurance company to pay $10 million for wrongly revoking the insurance policy of a 17-year-old college student after he tested positive for HIV. The court called the 2002 decision by the insurance company "reprehensible."

That appears to be the most an insurance company has ever been ordered to pay in a case involving the practice known as rescission, in which insurance companies retroactively cancel coverage for policyholders based on alleged misstatements - sometimes right after diagnoses of life-threatening diseases.

The ruling emerges from a conservative Southern state with one of the most pro-business climates in the country. And it comes as progressive Democrats on Capitol Hill are pressing for health care reforms, such as a public insurance option, that reflect wariness about the private insurance industry's motives.

The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a lower court's verdict against Fortis Insurance, now known as Assurant. The trial jury had awarded the former college student, Jerome Mitchell, $15 million in punitive damages; the Supreme Court reduced that amount by $5 million.

Mitchell learned that he had HIV when, while heading to college, he donated blood. Fortis then rescinded his coverage, citing what turned out to be an erroneous note from a nurse in his medical records that indicated that he might have been diagnosed prior to his obtaining his insurance policy.

Before the cancellation of the policy, an underwriter working for Fortis wrote to a committee considering whether or not to rescind his policy: "Technically, we do not have the results of the HIV tests. This is the only entry in the medical records regarding HIV status. Is it sufficient?"

The underwriter's concerns were ignored and the rescission went forward.In the ruling, Chief Justice Jean Hoefer Toal wrote: "We find ample support in the record that Fortis' conduct was reprehensible ... Fortis demonstrated an indifference to Mitchell's life and a reckless disregard to his health and safety."

An investigation this summer by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and earlier ones by state regulators in California, New York and Connecticut, found that thousands of vulnerable and seriously ill policyholders have had their coverage canceled by many of the nation's largest insurance companies without any legal basis. The congressional committee found that three insurance companies alone made at least $300 million over five years from rescission. One of those three companies was Assurant.

In Febuary 2008, a private arbitration judge in Los Angeles ordered Health Net Inc. to pay more than $9 million to a breast cancer patient whose health insurance it revoked shortly after her diagnosis and while she was undergoing chemotherapy. The plaintiff in that case, Patsy Bates, a then-52-year-old grandmother and hair-salon owner, was unable to continue her chemotherapy for several months.

During the case, evidence emerged that Health Net had paid bonuses to employees to reward them based on the number of policyholders they had rescinded. The judge who awarded Bates the $9 million said in his decision: "It's difficult to imagine a policy more reprehensible than tying bonuses to encourage the rescission of health insurance that keeps the public well and alive."

William Shernoff, the attorney who represented Bates, said in an interview Wednesday that he was not unhappy that there was a new verdict larger than the one he won for Bates. "I am glad to see that the courts in other parts of the country are coming down hard on this reprehensible practice of dumping sick patients," he said. "It has been a practice going on decades, is widespread, and ruins lives."

Shernoff currently said he has more than 100 pending cases against California insurance companies on behalf of patients he alleges were wrongly rescinded. He said he has already settled about 90 similar cases over the last three years.

President Obama cited other cases of rescission in his recent speech before a joint session of Congress as a major reason that health reform is necessary.

Obama cited the case of a retired Texas nurse, Robin Beaton, who had her heath insurance canceled by her insurance company as she was about to undergo breast cancer surgery. As a result, Beaton had to delay her surgery for five months. In the interim, the size of the mass of her tumor had grown from 2 centimeters to 7 centimeters, greatly reducing her chances of survival.

A "woman from Texas was about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne," the President asserted in his speech, "By the time she had insurance reinstated, her breast cancer more then doubled in size. This is heart breaking. It is wrong. And no one should be treated that way in the United States of America."

Obama wasn't exactly correct in his telling of Beaton's ordeal. Beaton's insurance was canceled because a doctor wrote that she potentially had a precancerous lesion on her face. Further investigation showed that she instead had acne. But even after her physicians pointed out the error, her insurance remained rescinded. Only with the help of her congressman, was she able to pressure her insurance company to pay for her breast cancer surgery--five months later. Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/17/insurance-company-must-pa_n_289841.html


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/17/insurance-company-must-pa_n_289841.html

Shut these bastards down...

Peace-

thanks to the HuffPo for the article.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

I'M WITH RACHEL MADDOW-A PRO-PROMISCUITY ZEALOT. BEATS AMERICAN RIGHT WING CHRISTIANITY.

disclaimer: a catholic organizaton called her that. not far from flanagins christianity.

FINALLY THE CHRISTIANS IN THE UNITED STATES ARE CALLED OUT

It is about time. Check out Rachel Maddows show today.

Oh and by the way, American Christianity is utterly against Jesus' teaching. Not a big surprise. Fuck off American Right wing Christianity, it is no surprise that hate is espoused by your teachings, and by Pat Flanagins' "bible fund." Also, thanks Flanagins for giving me fodder, and trying to kill me.

Peace-and everybody cares...

fuck off pat flanagin and joe wilson...

come on with your punk ass, Pat, and Chris and hank yank yank and tasha, bring it.

COWARD SAMUEL CHRISTIAN FLANAGIN, PAT FLANAGINS' SON-COWARD


PAT, HANK, AND CHRIS FLANAGINS' ARKANSAS: IT'S ALL ABOUT THE HATE


PUNK

Should include coward, deserter of children, adulterer...

THANK GOD WE'RE ABOUT TO HAVE A PUBLIC INSURANCE OPTION.

OH AND BY THE WAY DEATH IS NOT AN OPTION, CUNT, THERE WILL BE NO GETTING OVER IT. PEACE-

Saturday, September 12, 2009

BEING ATTACKED FOR BELIEFS-

I'm down with that; it has happened before....And since my AIDS posting, I have received more hate mail than at any other time. It is not surprising that when I research where the hate is coming from I find it originates in Searcy, AR, Little Rock, AR, and Northeast and Northwest/NorthCentral Arkansas

After all, the KKK website originates from the Arkansas Section of the Bible Belt. Big Surprise.


Disclaimer: My inlaws espouse hate. I do not. They encourage hate speech such as when Samuel Christian Flanagin called me a Nigger, and violently attacked me and my wife in our home. His father, Patrick Henry Flanagin former State Representative, embraces his sons behavior. Ironically, their home state of Arkansas hosts the Ku Klux Klan in Harrison AR, according to the Klans' website: KU KLUX KLAN.

Welcome to the Bible Belt and Pat Flanagins' home state.

Get out while you can; come back when the good ole boys are shut down for ever.

Peace

INSPIRATION CONTINUED-LED ZEPPELIN: KASHMIR, SEATTLE JULY 1977

Peace and much love-

Mike

Friday, September 4, 2009

AND SOME GOOD NEWS IN THE FIGHT AGAINST AIDS

I have a friend that has been recently diagnosed with HIV, so the disease has finally touched my life in a personal way. Hillary Clinton has said HIV has become manageable in the United States, but it remains a decimating disease in other parts of the world. It is also still stigmatized in the U.S., and I believe people have become lax about protecting themselves while having sex...these two factors, and others, are contributing to the spread of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. among straight people at a rate far higher than most understand. So it's not just a gay disease. I'm looking toward the day when there is a cure for HIV and a vaccine to prevent it. And I have hope for you my friend :) Peace-

From the L.A. Times:

Antibodies found that prevent HIV from causing severe AIDS

Scientists were able to isolate two antibodies responsible for resistance to the disease in an African patient. The discovery could be key to the development of a vaccine.

By Thomas H. Maugh II

After nearly two decades of futile searching for a vaccine against the AIDS virus, researchers are reporting the tantalizing discovery of antibodies that can prevent the virus from multiplying in the body and producing severe disease.

They do not have a vaccine yet, but they may well have a road map toward the production of one.

A team based at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla reports today in the journal Science that they have isolated two so-called broadly neutralizing antibodies that can block the action of many strains of HIV, the virus responsible for AIDS.

Crucial to the discovery is the fact that the antibodies target a portion of HIV that researchers had not considered in their search for a vaccine. Moreover, the target is a relatively stable portion of the virus that does not participate in the extensive mutations that have made HIV able to escape from antiviral drugs and previous experimental vaccines.

"This is opening up a whole new area of science," said Dr. Seth F. Berkley, president and chief executive of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, which funded and coordinated the research.At least 33 million people worldwide are infected with HIV, and at least 25 million have died from AIDS, according to the World Health Organization.

Two large trials of experimental vaccines have failed -- the most recent, in 2007, because the vaccine apparently made people more susceptible to infection.

To find the neutralizing antibodies, researchers collected blood samples from more than 1,800 people in Thailand, Australia and Africa who had been infected with HIV for at least three years without the infection proceeding to severe disease. Such individuals are most likely to produce antibodies that interfere with the replication of the virus.

Researchers at Monogram Biosciences in South San Francisco studied the samples most resistant to infection, then a team from Theraclone Sciences in Seattle isolated the antibodies responsible for the resistance.

They ultimately isolated two antibodies, called PG9 and PG16, from one African patient. The antibodies were able to block the activity of about three-quarters of the 162 separate strains of HIV they tested it against.

Immunologist Dennis Burton of Scripps and his colleagues then showed that the antibodies bind to regions of two proteins on the surface of the virus, called gp120 and gp41, that help the virus invade cells. These regions had never before been considered as targets for vaccines.

Researchers still have a long way to go to produce a vaccine, however.

The antibodies themselves could potentially be used as a treatment for infected patients who develop severe disease.But the long-term hope is to find molecules, either synthetic or natural, that can stimulate the body to produce the broadly neutralizing antibodies. Such molecules could potentially be the basis for a successful vaccine.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

BACHMANN 'HEARING VOICES' OTHER THAN GOD'S, SAYS TOP DEMOCRAT


By Chris Steller 9/2/09 1:38 PM, Of the Minnesota Independent

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s talk of stopping health care reform by fasting, praying and wrist-slitting has prompted not only lefty pundits but a top Democratic colleague to question what’s going on between her ears. Jim Oberstar, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, remarked Tuesday: “I don’t think God’s talking to her anymore. I think she’s hearing other voices.”

Bachmann said in 2006 that she was running for Congress on God’s recommendation (video), and last month said she would run for president if she “felt that’s what the Lord was calling me to do.

It wasn’t a one-off gag line for Oberstar, who earlier called Bachmann “a sweet woman” but had this advice for elderly health care reform advocates in Duluth who were planning to visit her: ”Tell her that there are voices other than God that are informing her.” [Via Tom Elko]

It wasn’t immediately clear whether one of those voices is that of Rep. Ron Paul, who has Bachmann’s ear on financial policy and will appear with her at a town hall in her district this month.

Oberstar’s comments are of the sort more commonly heard from cable TV yakkers like Ed Schultz, whose show featured her “psycho talk” two days in a row, and Dan Savage, who linked God-inspired politics to hate rhetoric of the worst sort:

"When you have a party that claims to speak for God or says God is on its side, the rhetoric heats up and the anger heats up, because it’s not just a battle about ideas and positions and what’s good for the country and bad for the country. It’s a battle about what God wants and what God doesn’t want. And it’s easier to demagogue about your enemies and to despise them and to dehumanize them in this really personal and vicious way. And the religious right is fomenting this kind of hatred in this country at our peril. I really do think that the Michele Bachmanns of the world and the Glenn Becks of the world are actively and consciously, or subconsciously, trying to get — I’m just going to say it — trying to get the president killed. This kind of rhetoric — this paranoid style on the religious right, from Birchers to birthers — doesn’t usually end well. And somebody’s got to put the brakes on it. Unfortunately in the Republican Party, there’s no adults left in the room. There are only the Michele Bachmanns and the Glenn Becks and the Rush Limbaughs running the show."

Thanks to The Minnesota Independent.

A bit of commentary: the Republican Party does not have a corner of Religious Stupidity, Mrs. Searcher's father Pat the deadbeat Flanagin (and S. Chris Flanagin of Thurman and Bishop law firm, violent criminal extraordinaire) has a "bible fund" and can't keep his dick in his pants. Oh yeah, he also was in office as a Democrat. Pat Flanagin and the ever nuts Dora F. Hughes, Mrs. Searcher's aunt were part of my inspiration to vote for Bush, and until we got out of the south for a length of time, I learned that liberal democrats have a different, a better and less hateful ideology than the Christian Conservative Arkansas Democrat and his sister that have contempt for the poor, supports violent crime and hates his daughter (and she her niece) while hiding behind religion as an excuse for their abhorrent behavior. Shout out to this Democrat that has the balls to say what everyone else is thinking-these right wing bible bangers are nuts, but I know plenty of Dems that are right wing bible thumping psychos, and it's time to push them all into the sea.

Peace

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

AH YES, ARKANSAS-THE DUGGARS SUCK AND SO DOES THEIR RELIGION...


● The Duggars: Also eco-terrorists are this Arkansas couple who today were reported to have birthed their 19th child. But unlike The Gosselins or Suleman, this family isn’t horrible (not yet anyway). They’re just deplorably clueless.
click on the link for thanks, and these evangelical pentecostals are horrible as well as deplorably clueless.
Peace