BJean

And declaring tort reform to be the answer to our horrible health care system (that is not run by the government, by the way) is one of the most ridiculous things the right wing has tossed into the ring. There is a tiny element of truth to the fact that some tort reform is needed, but the insurance companies would love for you to believe that tort reform is the answer to everything. They'd like nothing better than for the government to make it illegal to sue your negligent doctor or hospital. It's pitiful that some of you have bought into that mantra. They're leading you down the scary path to even more insurance company control of your life! You should be far more afraid of what the insurance companies and their lobbyists have up their sleeves than what the government has up its' sleeves.

Sure there are some mucked up programs in the government, but I think it is shameful that you declare that all government programs are bad and ill run. It just isn't true. We've been through this before. When you point out one badly run government program, someone else can point out one that is not only well-run but extremely beneficial to the country. To me, saying the all government is bad and all government programs are poorly run is tantamount to treason. I get to say this because people say that to criticize the military or President G.W. Bush is unpatriotic. Stands to reason is all I'm sayin...

I agree with you too, Cleo's Mom. And one of the most boring aspects of an earlier rant is the premise that people are unable to have any kind of decent moral standards without the Bible. That is hogwash, pure and simple. And further proof of the brainwashing that some people have fallen victim to.

It is absolutely correct that Americans want healthcare reform!!! The fact that Congress hasn't been able to come up with an acceptable plan simply illustrates how powerful the insurance lobbies are! Why we should put up with a system that puts an insurance company between us and our doctors is absolutely beyond me. Everybody screams about socialized medicine but very few Americans really know much about it other than what they've been told by people who stand to lose if we should adopt a decent universal health care system. There are countries who have good government run health care systems and countries whose systems do not work very well. We should be smart and learn from both models. But we are so friggin' tied up with arguments that cloud the true issues, we aren't even willing to sensibly discuss the possibilities. Rave on you anti-government people. You stand to be harmed as much as everyone else by the absurd healthcare system that we have now. One day, you will probably be harmed from being denied healthcare by your provider and you will finally understand what the rest of us already know.

My doc has been extremely conservative with fills. That's good and bad. The good is that I've only been overfilled a couple of times in the past 3 years. The bad is that I have sometimes seen him as often as every 3 or 4 weeks trying to get it right. That's a whole lot of punctures to the port. I had unrelated surgery last summer and had to have all restriction removed. I've finally been able to have 2 fills and nothing seems to get me back to a point where I am losing weight. I'm seriously tired of the whole routine. So I've been thinking about either just having it removed or getting revision to a sleeve. That seems very drastic, but I've regained nearly all the weight I originally lost and the weight I lost due to the other surgery. So I've been reading the revision stuff and it sounded like maybe you were getting to the point where you might have to do something drastic too. I'm really glad that your doctor has been able to give you some relief! Hang in there.

teachermommie I hope you're doing all right. Did you have the band removed? Did they do any revision surgery?

Don't you wonder why there are so many bandsters like us?

P.S. I do not agree with everything this president does, but I do want to give him a chance to change this country into a better place than it became under President Bush. I want middle income and poor people to have some say in what happens in this country. I am sick to death of the extremely wealthy getting wealthier while my country is financially going down the tubes... while middle income and poor people are continuing to lose their jobs, their homes, their medical insurance and every other necessity needed to live a normal life in this country. You call it "socialism" and I call it fairness and the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You seem to approve of the wealthy corporations wielding all the power in this country and the millions and millions of dollars they use to bribe our Congress to vote for legislation that will benefit them. I just for the life of me cannot understand how anyone is so blind to the truth.

With those words, and many others that you have posted at LBT, you have convinced me that you are a very extreme individual who does not pay any attention to the truth. You make up your own truth. You and Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Rupert Murdock and other extremists. It has been admitted by Murdock that he tells his employees what they can say and what they must say. If a person is being interviewed on air and Murdock (and his employees/screeners) do not like what the person being interviewed is saying, they lower the volume on that person and up the volume on their employee/show host. And that is only one of the tricks they play on people like you. It is almost amusing to watch extremists waving signs that say: NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, and the BBC are all left wing organizations who don't report the real news. Amusing because it is so ludicrous! There is one television station that people like you agree with: Fox. Everybody else is telling lies. What foolishness. What folly. At least it would be if it weren't so dangerous. Because Fox preaches (yes, preaches) hate. They don't just slant the news, they actually manipulate their entire broadcasts. They have been known to lie. They certainly misrepresent facts. And it's very obvious to everyone but those people who like the lies, the ones who agree with the hate and the venom that spews from that station. And their devotees are convinced to take to the streets with signs and even guns. They show up and they scream hate slogans. They claim that the president isn't a citizen of the U.S. They hold our president responsible for things that a riled up minister said. They hold the president responsible for actions that a man who in his early years was a radical who demonstrated against things that the government at the time was doing. How are Bill Ayers or Rev. Wright any worse than the likes of you? The difference between them and you is that they have apologized and admitted that they were wrong. You sure won't do that. You won't see that you are just as guilty of radicalism as they have been. You won't try to learn the truth behind the false claims that you hear coming from the right wing. You just join in the fray and bellow about how bad our president is and you even go so far as to compare him to Hitler. That proves, beyond a doubt, that you are an extremist. You are incapable of understanding the truth. You do not allow the truth to get in the way of your hate for our president and what he is trying to do. That is such a pity and so irritating in light of the fact that you were one of the ones who said that, during the former president's tenure, that if we didn't respect our president that it was akin to treason. You accused those of us who vocally disagreed with President Bush, of being unpatriotic and unAmerican. Well guess what that makes you... right now!!

Haven't read the book patty, but I am certain that God is not a right winger! I wish He were able to post here. I think you'd be very surprised at the things He would post to enlighten us all - I believe that the right wingers would be the most surprised at His views in these discussions.

Thanks for the link, Nancy. And I hope you continue to have really good results from your RNY!

Oh yeah, I remember now that your daughter was having GB and that you were considering it. I remember asking why you were doing that instead of the sleeve and then I learned that the sleeve is just a different version of GB. It is my understanding that there is a gland or something that they remove when they do the sleeve and GB that is normally a trigger for appetite. Without it, people are generally more successful. I do think that for some people the LB is the perfect thing for them. I don't know if it is because I am older and have had too many years of binge eating that I haven't been able to get it to work for me. That, coupled with my inability to do strenuous exercise because of my arthritic knees. In the beginning, I just knew the band would work for me. I've always been able to stay on a diet religiously. The problem was always that once I got off a diet, I would regain the lost weight and more. Well, this has been no different. I initially lost about 45 lbs. and of course, that did not take me to my goal. I maintained that weight until I had emergency surgery and had to have all the restriction removed. After a year without restriction, I have regained most of what I lost. I am also one of those people who has always felt a little creepy about having the band in me. I know other people who think of their band as their friend and would never want it removed. I only wish that were the case for me. I am so happy to hear that your revision is working well for you! I can't help but be a tad envious. Maybe I will bite the bullet and do something soon. At least I should level with my doctor and get his advice. I'm pretty sure he's knife happy, so I imagine he'll think I should get the sleeve or something. We'll see. Thanks a bunch for answering my questions.

When he was president, people complained about George W. Bush's policies and decisions, and they were told in no uncertain terms that to criticize the President was unpatriotic and unAmerican. They ranted that people should respect the president and the office, even if we disagreed with the president's decisions. They said, after all, he's our duly elected president! Besides, to criticize our president during time of war was akin to treason and that we were blatantly disrespecting our troops. Funny how they've conveniently forgotten those claims, now that they don't like the president and his decisions.

Nanook, I remember you saying you had complications and had to have your LB removed. I didn't know that you'd had revision surgery. Did you have a sleeve or mini gastric bypass? Are they one and the same? How do the experiences compare? I believe I am going to have to do something, and I really don't want to, but this is honestly not working for me. (Or I'm not working for it.) BJean

Good job, Cleo's mum!

As for Tort Reform, it is not the answer to the health care debate in this country. It just will not fix the problem. It is simply clouding the issues that are before Congress. And it is a gambit on the part of insurance companies to get people like you to think that if we only reform our tort process, you won't have to be tapped for tax dollars. Don't buy into it. We may need to do some tort reform, but we'd be stupid to take away individuals' right to sue for malpractice. Needless to say, that's what the insurance companies are lobbying for.

patty: "You may feel that the war was unjustified, but when the decision to go to war was made, everyone felt it was the right one." WRONG!!! Why do you keep repeating that? You've been doing it for months. You are totally wrong!! Lots of people (even people in Congress) thought it was wrong. President Obama knew it was wrong and voted his conscience. Turned out that the man was right. Why do you refuse to give him credit for it? patty: "When someone can't purchase food, they cancel the cable bill to enable themselves to but food." Are you THAT out of touch with reality, really? Really? I can't imagine that you mean this. Obviously millions of people cannot afford cable, thanks to the extremely wealthy folks (Ted Turner) who gouged the public in order to reap billions of dollars for providing cable. And you think that people who can't afford food can afford cable and that to eat they just need to cancel cable so they can afford to buy food? What planet are you living on? A very affluent one, I imagine. Patty: "I believe that an unborn baby has just as much a right to live as any other human being..." A person should take care of themself, and their community and make their own decisions like you said, unless it involves the killing of a seperate person." Oh but we do agree... the key words being "killing of a separate person" which an embryo is not. An embryo is tissue growing inside a host (woman) and will not survive without a host. It is not a separate human being - it is human tissue which can only become a separate human being when it is separate from its' host. So it looks like you and I totally agree because we definitely shouldn't be in the business of killing separate human beings. patty: "Having sex is an action that we can choose to participate in or choose to refrain from. It's just like gluttony." OMG!! No wonder you think that homosexuality is behavior someone chooses, if you equate it to gluttony. I could understand if you compared gluttony to sexual addiction, but homosexuality? No way. And eating to stay alive is quite different from gluttony. And homosexuality is quite different from sexual addiction. You might want to go read up on it before you make such ill-informed statements. Although I think you're probably just parrotting what you hear the right wingnuts saying about homosexuality, which is quite discriminatory and ignorant. patty: "If our government wants to recognize a civil union between 2 men or 2 women, they can call it anything but 'marriage'". I agree that if the government called the joining of two people for legal purposes, "a civil union" it would be appropriate. But the fact is, the government doesn't call it a civil union - they call it "marriage." So as long as that is the case, homosexuals should not be barred from the governmental right of marriage under the law. You're welcome to bar them from your church and ban them from getting married there, but you have no right to ban them from legal civil unions, even when the government calls it marriage. patty: "The government shouldn't pay for private schools or unnecessary wars, or any kind of sex education at all. The Republicans have always wanted the government to subsidize private (religious based) schools. At least since my children were young and attending Catholic schools. patty: "Parents and parents ONLY should teach their children about sex. This has added to the lack of parental responsibility in this country." The problem is that generally parents do NOT teach their children about sex. If they did, it wouldn't be necessary for public schools to do it. Ignorance about all things sexual is costing Americans a lot and you should be for sex education because in the long run, it would save the govenrment millions. And as for it contributing to parents lack of responsibility, you're completely wrong. Parents either take responsibility for their children or they don't. You can't blame that on the government! The fact is, most families find it necessary for both parents to work in order to provide for their families in this country. That lack of supervision and attention to America's children, could fall back on the enormous greed in this country. Greed on the part of corporations who take advanatage of their workers. Do some homework and you'll learn that the upper echelons of corporations are making a killing and their workers have little job security and in many cases are having to do the work of two people and get the pay of one person. The numbers of billionaires has grown by leaps and bounds whereas workers in America have lost their jobs by leaps and bounds. With this kind of stress on parents, our children suffer. And last but not least, you said that "tax cuts for the rich is not spending" - and that is not the point. TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH IS UNFAIR!!!!! The only possible way that you can justify the wealthy getting more tax breaks than the middle class is if you believe in the "trickle down" theory. And it has been proven, year after year after year, that it does not work to give tax cuts to wealthy in order to help the middle class. Please see my remarks above about wealthy corporate bigwigs NOT helping their workers - and in fact, becoming so greedy that they are MEGA, MEGA wealthy and the middle class has been reduced to our having nearly no huge middle class in America like we used to have. You might take a look at the Mexican economy (or at least how it used to be there) when you had either the very wealthy or the very poor. And look where that has gotten the non-wealthy people in Mexico... in many cases they either wind up fleeing the country to seek a way to survive, or they become corrupt and commit heinous crimes to survive. I hope you're not advocating the same thing for the United States. Although I do see a whole lot of people moving out of the country to places that are more affordable and in many cases, safer and more pleasant than much of the United States. The really beautiful places to live in the U.S. have become too expensive except for the very wealthy. Is beautiful Connecticut an example of that? Or are the extremely beautiful places in Connecticut affordable for everyone? And you say that folks can just go take a walk in the forest. Right. We don't need no stinking parks. Let the kids play in the streets or take a walk in the local forest... what the heck are you smoking?

patty I do not doubt that you believe everything you say. However please know that some of us believe just about everything you say is too extreme and too exclusionary. We're talking about politics and the government. You're talking about the Bible and God. We're on two different planes. The government is guided by laws and rules. These rules were created so that we can live with each other in peace. God and the Bible do not have a corner on rules or laws. People who do not know God or the Bible still know right from wrong. What you must not realize or accept is the fact that the government is in the business of protecting people's rights and freedoms and the Bible has no part in that. The Bible and God are a part of spirituality and/or religion. That is personal and each citizen is able to decide for him or herself what they believe with regard to religion. However when it comes to living in this country and living in peace within our borders; getting along with each other on a daily basis; taking care not to infringe on others' rights to freedom and religious beliefs, none of that can be dictated strictly by one religion or the Bible. It is our government, the non-discriminatory laws created to protect each citizen, that must do that for us. It is fine and good for you to believe what you believe and practice whatever religion you choose. And you should abide by those beliefs and be happy and rejoice in them. But you may not tell the rest of us that we must believe what you believe and worship the way you worship or believe in the Bible as a strictly true account of history or what God may or may not have said. You just cannot do that. Our laws prevent you from being able to do that. You must abide by our laws just as everyone else does. For instance, your religion does not give you the right to say that marriage is only to be between a man and a woman because the Bible says so, except when you're referring to your religious beliefs. But as it pertains to our governmental laws, marriage is between two people who cannot be discriminated against for any reason and therefore, the laws that govern marriage in this country should not exclude same sex marriages. Now if your church doesn't believe in same sex marriage, they should not allow same sex couples to be wed in your church. The government does not prohibit your church from discriminating against people if that is what your religion teaches. That's the beauty of freedom of religion. You can believe that same sex marriage is wrong and live peacefully believing that. And no one can force you or your church to believe differently, according to our form of government. But by the same token, you are not free to set your religious rules up within our government so as to discriminate against any segment of our population. It's against everything the founding fathers promised us and set forth in our Bill of Rights. If you wish to live in a country with a theocratic form of government, you're in the wrong place. And we're all beating our heads against the wall having these political discussions when we're on a completely different plane. You're discussing religion, we're discussing government. They are mutually exclusive, which is as they should be.

Did anyone say that anyone who opposes President Obama is a terrorist? Except for you saying it, no they did not. They said people with extremist beliefs that incite brutality and mayhem are like terrorists. Fundamentalist Christians can be really extreme in their beliefs also. Just like Muslims who are extreme in their beliefs. But nobody is saying that all Republicans are extremists or fundamental Christians or that anybody who opposes the President is a terrorist, or that everyone who is Christian and believes in the Bible are extremists and terrorists and/or fundamentalists. YOU are the one who is lumping everyone in a group. And doing that is no better than saying all white people are good and all black people are bad and all Mexicans are illegals, and all Asians are brilliant. Which as we all know is just plain ignorant. I hope you can see the difference between saying that some fundamentalist Christians who are very extreme in their beliefs and who show up at political forums with guns and those wackos who are on the Fox network who are trying to incite people to hate, are like terrorists - and that saying what you're saying - that ALL right wingers are this and ALL of those progressives who lean to the left are (fill in the blank), is something entirely different.

Never been a huge fan of Bob Dole, but in contrast to today's right wing extremist Republicans, he looks mighty good to me. Swartzenegger has always had one foot angled a little to the left, so it's not surprising that he might be one voice of reason. Maybe the two of them and a few other level-headed Republicans can bring some sanity back to the GOP.

How can someone feel all warm and fuzzy toward Glenn Back and Rush Limbaugh? How can any real patriotic American condone the rants and raves against their own country that Beck and Limbaugh do? They are contributing to the erosion of the office of the presidency (surprising that there is any respect for that office at all after George Bush's and Bill Clinton's terms) but these guys are doing all they can do bring this country down - to pit one American against another by lying and misstating the facts and even maligning our president in personal ways. These guys are terrorists of a kind. Because ithey incite people to carry guns to public meetings where their opposition is speaking, and they're eventually going to incite mayhem of a very real physical nature. Everybody who has a brain either thinks they are funny or probably harmless. I tend to disagree. I think they are very dangerous and I think that the people who cheer them on are sheep being led to the slaughter.

Hell to the yeah, Cleo'sMum. Republicans and right wingers look like idiots when they rant and rave about all the terrible stuff they claim our President is doing. They circulate bash and trash lies and exaggerations on the internet and on the Fox network and right wing radio stations. And what we've learned from listening to them and reading their diatribes is that they are NOT fair, they are usually intentionally misleading and at their worst they outright lie and make stuff up. Their champion, Sarah Palin is a shining example of the lying. She was the tool of the Republican right wing during the campaign and she continues down that path. And she looks very stupid, just like the rest of that group who perpetrate the lies and extremist blathering. They are fine fodder for Saturday Night Live and every legitimate fair minded talk show. The fact that SNL is an equal opportunity comedy show is right and good. If they didn't make fun of our current president, they wouldn't have any credibility when they use comedy to make a political statement. It was cool when they put Sarah Palin and John McCain on their show - they allowed them to both look ridiculous with little help from their writing staff. When I hear someone say that the president is going to lose in the next election, I am amazed. But I have to admit, the Republican party as a whole right now will do anything to win so we need to brace ourselves for something very wicked. Who would have thought they could get away with what they did with the Swift Boat campaign, and now what they're doing to a man who has been in office less than a year? We know what they're made of and nothing should surprise us anymore. Fortunately, the majority of Americans are seeing through the clap-trap and are willing to discuss and criticize (as well as praise) our government and politicians, purely on the merits of actual, valid points.

patty- if it weren't for people who served this country well in the government, the Grand Canyon wouldn't be a wonderment for you to see. It would be lined with hotels, homes of the very wealthy and probably casinos. to quote you patty: "...only the moral restraints of the bible would keep American liberty from degenerating into tyranny." There are more tyrannical governments based on religion than there are based on a secular form of government. What we must also be very careful of is having one religion dictate how everyone else must live. Religious fanatacism produces the most tyrannical-thinking people of all. I believe that your posts above certain tend to lean in that direction. I'm way more afraid of religious terrorists who operate under the guise of religion than I am of the democratic form of a secular government.

Every time I think of the Swift Boat campaign that set out to ruin a good American who served his country with honor, I want to throw up. Seriously! Nothing can justify that kind of traitorous behavior and the perpetrators of those lies and that dirty scheme should have been prosecuted.

Ok so your head's not in the sand. It's in the clouds. Dreamily swaying to the chant. God didn't GIVE us this nation. We took it. When the founding fathers decided to make it a free country where people from any other country were welcome to come here and join us and enjoy the freedoms they worked to guarantee for all of us, that set the stage for this country to be a melting pot of cultures and religions. The founding fathers did not say, "You can come here if you agree to a govrenment that is based entirely on Christian doctrine and that you must promise to follow those Christian beliefs in order to be a citizen. In fact, they said quite the opposite. They wanted to guarantee that people could come here and practice any religion that they believed in without interference from the government. If our government starting mixing religion with laws, things could change from what our founding fathers set out for us. Eventually, probably slowly, the laws would be structured to favor the Christian faith and could exclude all other faiths in the process. And the more we allowed that to happen, the closer we would could get to having a nation like Iran, where the people who do not practice a certain religion (in our case, Christianity) would be outcasts and discriminated against by the people in control of the government. We obviously have to guard against that kind of religious domination in this country. It's what our founding fathers promised and it's what our Bill of Rights and our Constitution provide for all of us. Having you repeat over and over that this is a Christian country and that the large marjority worship as Christians, doesn't make what I've said any less important. Separation of church and state is the only way this country will survive and be the nation that our founding fathers promised us. They knew that and that is exactly why they wrote those documents to ensure that any one religion did not have the power to rule over all others.