Health Insurance Companies Can Suck My Dick

After spending half a year working at the Center for Media Justice and basically deepening my distaste for the media to the point where saying FOX out loud is enough to make me projectile vomit down the nearest news anchor's open mouth, I have been reduced to scanning the headlines via Yahoo and watching CNN on the treadmill at the gym. I figure I can learn all of what I need to know in terms of distorted media biased issues reporting from one of those sources, in small spurts, without risking nausea or a brain tumor.

Today, though, I was reading an article on Yahoo that talked about the upcoming speech that Obama is planning to a joint session of Congress. First of all, joint sessions of Congress are extremely rare occurrences. The only time they happen regularly is during the State of the Union. Otherwise, they are generally reserved for things like announcing a formal declaration of war, the end of a war, the death of a someone of near God-like stature, or the annual Congress Christmas Party and Intern Rubdown.

In the aforementioned article, it happened to say, punnily, that one of the opposition points of the conservative lobby and GOPers is that they are worried about the health of private health insurance companies.

Excuse me? The HEALTH of private health insurance companies? Did United Healthcare come down with tuberculosis, AIDS, or malaria and I missed it? No? Until then shut the fuck up talking to me about some goddamn entity that exists on paper as having any health needs whatsoever. I have health needs...I need to be healthy; I need to be able to get sick and not have to worry about dying from a heart attack when I get the doctor bill; and I need to not have to decide whether or not I should spend money on electricity or Zoloft.

Health of health insurance companies. Nigga please.

This is the one time in all my life that I have heard Democrats advocating for a full on market system that will force private companies to play by the rules of capitalism by competing with a new and larger player that will force bloated, vampiric, profit mongering private health insurers to stop price gouging, price setting, and profiting from the illness, death, and misery of people and start looking at ways to keep people healthy, reduce costs and provide the most effective treatment for the lowest price. That is how the fuck you stay in business in any other damn industry...hey health care...suck my dick...I don't give a shit about the CEO of United Heath care raking in a salary of $124.8 million (and yes kiddies that is what former United Health Group CEO Bill McGuire made in 2005).

This is also the first time I have ever heard Republicans talk about protecting the market from competition. Excuse me...is Rush Limbaugh back on those pills? Is Trent Lott back to advocating for the return of the Dixiecrats? Is someone up in the Senate Office building smoking crack rock? I find it highly amusing the inviolate free market economy beliefs of Republicans are about as deeply held and inviolable as 13 year old boy at Neverland Ranch.

There is no health care reform without a public option. Period. Without a public option the health care reform becomes a minor tweak of the health care system where teeny changes will be made, that will save money in the short term, will not address the fundamental underlying problems with the system, will result in bloated health care premiums over the long term, and will inevitably lead to a return to the status quo or worse...the collapse of the U.S. economy under the burden of health care costs. States are already seeing this happen, for example, in Minnesota, the majority of every new tax dollar raised goes to offset state health care costs. When all of our money is going to pay for bloated programs that do not work and to premiums and systems that create poor care and massive numbers of underinsured or uninsured, why the hell wouldn't we do anything and everything possible to address the real issue: CREATING A HEALTH CARE PROGRAM AND SYSTEM ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYONE, AFFORDABLE TO EVERYONE, and SOLVENT!

Anticipating Obama's speech to Congress, I can feel the spirit of my Big Mama sitting with me. I am about to pull on my house coat, lube up my slippers, chew on some tobacco, and cut a switch. I am going to sit in the gallery in Congress, spitting in to my chaw bucket, and slappin' my switch menacingly on the bench...staring down at Obama and daring his narrow black ass to back off a public option. And the minute some cock-eyed, short dicked, Cadillac insurance carrying Republican member of Congress (or Blue Dog Democrat for that matter) opens his or her mouth to as much as yawn during or after the speech, I am going to lay into their asses like their Mama's should have and scream at the top of my lungs, "Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You...You Don't Like A Public Option? Then YOU PUT THE 40,000,000 uninsured on YOUR health care plan."

Don't worry GOPers and Blue Dogs...the ass whoopin' you got comin' is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.

No it ain't. Bend over and take it bitches. Cuz you have earned this whoopin', and I hope Obama tears your fat asses up.

I Hate Perez Hilton

I pretty much hate Perez Hilton. Well, hate may be a strong word, but I hate the entire concept of celebrity spokes people that are spokespeople for an entire community based on...well...their celebrity.

Yesterday, I was in the midst of my daily combination of cardio torture and CNN, when Miss California took the stage. It was like watching a toddler pulling a giant booger out of his nose. You watch in horror as the juicy, green, jiggling gelatinous mass makes its way from the kids nostril slowly into the child's mouth, where he slowly chews the mucus gum before swallowing. You know it is a hideous and disgusting habit, but you can't turn away even as your face tries to pull away from its bones and your stomach begins to roil. That is the exact look that CNN Newsroom anchor Tony Harris had on his face when, after a few minutes, he cut back to the newsroom saying, “I think that is quite enough of that.”

I couldn't agree more...except....EXCEPT...Perez Hilton's crazy ass was on CNN last night pushing again for Miss California to respond further regarding her comments regarding gay marriage. Listen up Perez...the woman is against gay marriage. She didn't get crowned Miss America. She almost lost her Miss California crown. She only continues to have importance because YOU-- a jumped up member of the paparazzi-- continue to give her importance. She is vacuous flesh bag that is entitled to her opinion, no matter how wrong it may be, but by continuing to bring her into the public spotlight you take valuable air time from shit that really matters. As a matter of fact, I would rather watch a video of the kid eating the booger on infinite loop on every channel on the planet than see Perez Hilton's face on ANY news source from CNN to TMZ ever again.

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If you think I am resentful, you should have seen the look on Tony Harris' face.

Basically, this is why I am not pleased: once again a quasi intelligent human being with a talent (his happens to be semi-witty commentary on tinsel town glitterati) has somehow been catapulted into a position where he is the face of a movement. I have never seen Perez Hilton in a room wondering how to get young people to a lobby day or making sandwiches to pack for a cross country bus trip to the U.S. Social Forum. I have never seen him on the streets or in a room of organizers wondering how to best respond to the latest murder of a trans person. He has no credibility with the community yet, by virtue of sucking dick and a good publicist, he is all of a sudden supposed to represent our community? Who the hell vetted him? Cher?

(My apologies to Cher. I actually love you, and I would be proud to have you represent me in Congress.)

This actually smells like something Karl Rove cooked up. I am going to look into that.

And, really, if the media needed a celebrity spokesperson to bring issues of importance of the queer community into a public conversation...why oh why couldn't they have gone with Wanda Sykes. There is a woman who is actually funny, politically savvy, has a deep grasp of current events, and understands and TALKS about the intersection of race, poverty, and sexuality. Oh wait...I know why...she's black. And, she's a she. Curses...foiled by sexism and racism again! .

Tell you what...Perez Hilton can do the White House Correspondents dinner next year. Put his ass in front of people who actually know something about some shit...let him make a fool out of himself...and then banish him back to his blog and to judging the occasional beauty pageant. BUT, put one of those dog shock collars with a satellite tracer on him...so if he even THINKS about talking about queer politics...we can push a button and buzz his ass on the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro if need be.

Actually, Perez, I don't hate you. I just hate what you do. I hate that our system is set up so that those that are actually fighting the good fight and have a broad based analysis of how this nation and this world really works and have thought strategically about how to change it for the better (deep breath....continue please) are the ones that can't get the local cable access station to cover an event. But a pastel gay boy with no particular analysis of social change can manage to get a CNN anchor to grimace with disgust but still cover his unsavvy and unstrategic ramblings. You are not helping anyone, and you are providing credibility to the inanities of a dumb ass blond that never would have had a forum if not for you.

(P.S. I understand that Perez is Cuban...as a white Cuban aka a person of color with white skin privilege he has an even GREATER responsibility to use his celebrity responsibly and in the service of justice...instead of just milking his access and his ability to pass in order to self-aggrandize and make a buck)