BJean

loserbob, do I understand that you are in the process of deciding whether to get the lapband? I've had mine for over 3 years. My advice is that you listen very well to those who speak of complications. I don't know the percentage of people who have developed complications after several years of having the band vs. those who have never had a complication after having the band for several years. But it is something to consider... I'm just sayin'. I totally understand why you need change from the current health care system - we do too. We're small business owners and have a similar story to yours. People are begging for some relief.

Now THAT by jove, is rude. I'll leave it to kartman to straighten you out on this issue. Not that you will listen to reasonable people...

cleo's: "That must be that same convoluted thinking that allows Matalin, Perino and Guiliani to say that 9/11 didn't happen under bush." It's their effort to re-write history. They're all on the same page - trying to fix it so that Americans will forget what all really happened under the Bush administration.

About the health care change issue before Congress, we'll see how this thing winds up. But if you think that people are going to be satisfied with the current system from now on, you're sadly mistaken. People are fed up and they need and want change. Change is acomin' no matter who is in the majority in Congress. It may take longer with the Republican obstructionists fighting it all the way, but it has to happen. As for the Fox network, and all its' viewers agreeing with them, I'm gonna call a B.S. on that. I don't agree with them but I do watch from time to time just to see what new outlandish thing they're "reporting" and discussing." Just because you agree with them and just because they have many viewers, doesn't mean that the majority of voters agree with them. It might mean that people just like to watch people like Glenn Beck put on a show. Everybody I know agrees that he's hilarious, even if he's pathetic and his thinking is skewed. Although the word "skewed" doesn't really described how nutty he is. Of course he's laughing all the way to the bank. Can you imagine what he says behind closed doors about people who believe him? Bet it's a laugh riot.

And we should kick their buns out of office at the first opportunity.

Well I'm going to be the flag police. If they don't wear them in their lapels, they're going to be deported!

I think the more people learn, the more likely they will support the proposed changes. People just didn't know what was in the bills when this all started and the Republicans made so many outrageous claims that it has taken some time for people to learn more about the possibilities for a better health care system. I don't think very many Americans are freaked out about "socialized" medicine anymore or "death panels" and most Americans know that our system sucks big time. We pay outlandish premiums and in so many cases we don't get to choose our doctor except from an "approved" list and our meds and treatments are sometimes denied by our insurer. It has to get better and we expect our legislators to do whatever it takes to make improvements. I hope that the Republicans aren't able to stand in the way of change and I hope that once changes begin happening, voters will have a clearer view of what's been going on and will vote accordingly.

That is what the extremists said when Bush was in office. If we criticized any of Bush's decisions (as if he actually made any) we were unpatriotic and really bad people. I believe it was suggested that we should move elsewhere.

Patty: "It is mainly through the governing authorities that God imposes the death penalty. And it is not the authorities that Jesus is representing at this time." You believe this? It is simply mind-blowing. What a fairy tale world you live in for you to say that the governing authorities are being used by God to impose the death penalty. And that Jesus has nothing to say on the subject? I'm never ceased to be amazed. Surely you're saying these things to get attention and to be able to rant as you love to do. Otherwise I am completely bumfuzzled by your statements above.

Doesn't Rupert Murdoch tell them all what to say? He's their guru and money source, right?

I know many horror stories about adoptions. I won't enumerate them or discuss the specifics here. But I know that a lot of people regret having babies and giving them up for adoption. I haven't spoken with any woman who has admitted that she had an abortion who would like to turn back time and do it differently. They all know that the decision to abort was the best decision they could make. I will tell you about one good friend of mine who decided that she didn't want to have an abortion and opted to go away (in high school) and have her child, whom she gave up for adoption. She wound up finishing high school, going to college, getting married and getting pregnant. The child she had after she got married was born with Down's Syndrome. You think that she didn't regret giving up that healthy beautiful baby when she was too young to be having children? Of course she did. She loved her little Down's Syndrome boy with all her heart, but she has always wished she didn't know that her other healthy child is out there somewhere... without her. Her Down's Syndrome child died some time ago. There will always be people who regret decisions. When it is life and death and goodby forever, of course people will look back and wonder if they did the right thing. But I would wager that fewer women regret having an abortion than women who regret giving up a baby for adoption. But I do not claim to know the answer and until an extremely thorough and well-thought out study is done, no one else knows either.

patty: "That was really uncalled for. I think you should apologize for that." Thank you patty, I accept your apology.

Corliss you are right on. The best way to prevent unwanted pregnancies is to provide comprehensive sex education to young people and make birth control readily available to them.

patty: "I believe that all men who rape children should not be allowed the priviledge to have sex ever again. They should be surgically castrated after they do their time. No exceptions. If our laws were harder on these criminals, there would be less of them." Ok and then your next change in the law, following your logic, would be to cut off the hand of a person who writes a hot check. As someone noted above, capital punishment is not a very effective deterrent to murder. A person in a rage or with a gun in his hand is not usually pondering whether they will be caught, convicted and sentence to death. They're in the moment. A rapist isn't thinking about the consequences of his actions, he's mentally deranged and acting out based on a compulsion. People must understand that misfits in society need to be treated for whatever problem they need to get resolved. Only until you learn whether they are not able to be helped, do you lock them up and throw away the key. Unless your answer is to just kill everybody who commits murder or rape, simply throwing them in jail only makes them worse. And our jails are already going to be over crowded with all those women who have gotten an abortion, eh? __________________

She's gonna be right there with Glenn Beck who admits he's just entertainment - not a real news reporter or legitimate commentator. It'll be nice to know where she is instead of worrying that she's out shooting some beautiful beast in the wildes of Alaska. Or shooting her mouth off when she should be working, like she was supposed to when she was Governor. Now we know where she's shooting her mouth off and we can laugh at her like we do Glenn Beck and the other mindless tools at Fox.

Keep up the good work, Nancy!

And that's exactly why tort reform is such a bad idea for people. Good for insurance companies, bad for victims. I was a victim of a crazy nurse who we guess wanted access to the drugs she wanted to give me. Never mind that I had just come out of major surgery and had no business taking an oral medication. She gave me two huge pain relievers with a glass of water. Nearly killed me. We tried to find out what happened to the nurse but they protected her and we never saw her again. And I'm just one tiny little case in a hospital in little ole' Texas. How many other people fight for their lives every day against bad medical care and bad medicine? We'll never know! My mother might be alive today if it weren't for the negligence of her GP. Who doesn't have someone in their family who as been a victim of bad medical practices? Speak up all you lucky people.

Sometimes it takes a racist to know a racist.

Patty: "The video I posted was by a doctor who wants to bring the reality of what abortion actually really does to a baby in the womb. If you felt it was disgusting I need to ask why? If it's just a blob in there, then what's so disgusting about yanking on it with forceps or clamping down on the brain and pulling it out? See, when you just 'talk' about the baby as if it's not really a baby, you don't really get that it is. But get down and real and actually be present in the doctors place and see for yourself what the process entails and it's another story. If it's just a blob of tissue, and not a living human baby, then what's so disguting about watching the abortion? And, it wasn't even a real baby in the video,* it was a plastic replica that they used to show what happens in an abortion. Imagine if it was the real thing? * Emphasis mine. Your logic defies the imagination. What in the world makes you think that just because some of us believe that women should be able to make their own decisions, that we don't know what is involved in an abortion? That makes no sense to me. You've also said that women choose abortion because it is a convenience and because they don't believe that a fertilized egg is a part of human life and good merciful heavens you make all sorts of outlandish assumptions that women make their decisions based on wholly frivolous notions. The fact is that you know nothing about why women choose abortions. You are assuming you know because it is what makes you feel okay about ignoring their condition or the reason that they felt it was necessary. You can't know because like the rest of us, we don't know all the women who make that choice and we sure haven't heard their stories. We have no desire to look at graphic abortion videos. But guess what? We have no desire to look at grisley rapes. We have no desire to look at a video of a woman being butchered with a coat hanger in some back street alley. We don't want to see a movie where a desperate woman tries to induce her own abortion in a hot tub of water with a coat hanger either. Do you? No? I didn't think so. And it breaks my heart to know that there are women on this thread who have had to face the decision. But I am so happy that they were able to make the decision that they needed to make at the time, legally and in a safe environment. And hopefully without the kind of guilt that anti-choice people try to heap on them. If the extremist right wing has their way, Roe v. Wade will be overturned and things will go back to being hellish in America for women. The extremists will stop at nothing to cause that very thing. Please don't think for one minute that Roe v. Wade is the end of the abolishment of women's right to choose. They have taken the fight to the state level and they have a very strong lobby and a lot of funding to see that they get their way. Do not drop your guard or take anything for granted just because of the Roe v. Wade decision.

Rude? Crude? Socially unacceptable? Hey listen, if you really want to start the name-calling game, I have been thinkin' of some that I've been itchin' to use. You've already started, but take another shot at it. Go girl! Have at it! Knock yourself out.

Thanks, C'sM. If the anti-choice people would spend as much energy and time on saving the world's children, we wouldn't have to worry about them at all. Wouldn't that be something?

It's like you're saying there's this big boogie man - President Obama - and he's on this huge quest to do everything in secret to turn this country into a socialist republic. It's friggin' hilarious! You want to observe secrecy? Just try to open up the Bush administration to scrutiny. President Obama has been the most open president we've had in a long time. For you to accuse him of being secretive is amazing. And you all have been saying from day one that the Democrats want socialized medicine. That argument wouldn't fly because it is so incredibly stupid and wrong that you all got embarrassed and shut up about it - finally. Now once again you're trying to say that the President has a secret plan to give us socialized medicine. I have a sneaking suspicion that you don't even know what socialism really is. If you did you wouldn't use the term in nearly every argument you make, because read my lips (to quote a Bush) it just doesn't make any sense.

patty your thinking is skewed. No wonder you keep coming up with "analogies" that just don't work. It's like you want to make something support your argument so whether it makes sense or not is immaterial to you. You just use it anyway.

Nope because I'd probably have to click on the box and I don't trust any anti-choice person to post something that won't be grim and bloody. And I don't need a lesson in human anatomy and physiology or reproduction. All this argument over when a fertilized egg becomes a viable human being is totally beside the point. The government really should never be in control of women and their reproductive organs. That's what I believe because I know it is right. I have no doubt that women will make whatever decision they must make. They make the decision because it is their body and they have physical control over it. They and they alone know what the repercussions will be if they allow a fertilized egg to grow in their womb. The government and you and I have no way of knowing. We cannot know each and every complication that a woman may have to deal with. We have no way of knowing the mental health of a woman who has been raped or whose birth control has failed. So how can the government or we make such an all-important decision for every woman? Bringing babies into the world is far too important for the government to set itself up as the arbiter of every case of pregnancy. And it is just as wrong for you or I to do it. Besides, it is virtually impossible and arguing for it is like blowing in the wind.

Amen. That's exactly what I read in her story.