Glenn Beck: Puts the 'douche' in 'bag'

In this "commentary" from Glenn Beck, he complains that when he went in for some elective surgery (we should all be so lucky as to be insured enough to have surgery when we wish), things went badly and he felt he was treated without compassion.  To be specific, he felt the staff (not the doctors, because they gave him an unbelievable amount of painkillers) was uncompassionate.  You know, nurses...the 'help'.

It frankly sounds to me like we've found yet another Republican who is, to be crude, a pussy. 

That combination took me to an incredibly dark place. I began having trouble breathing, and I started to hallucinate. Every time I closed my eyes it was like I entered my very own movie theater running the movie "Saw" on a loop. I would see horrific, unimaginable images of death and after two and a half days, the combination of pain and hallucinations drove me to a point where I was literally suicidal. It felt like there was no hope and, quite honestly, if I could have ended it all right at that moment I probably would have (Sorry to disappoint some of you).

Listen, pain sucks.  We all know this.  Pain from surgery can be debilitating, but what he's describing is no worse than what thousands of people go through every day - some folks have pain like this as a daily component of their lives.  But, who am I to judge?  It wasn't my pain, maybe it really was uniquely horrible and one for the ages.  What's up next, Glenn?

At the hospital I was often treated more like a number than a patient. At times, staff members literally turned their back on my cries of pain and pleas for help. In one case a nurse even stood by tapping his fingers as if he was bored while my tiny wife struggled to lift me off a waiting room couch.

Um, no.  First of all, it sounds like you were demanding a lot of attention with your cries of pain and pleas for help.  Hospitals are busy, overloaded places facing staff shortages just like everyone else, and they don't have time to baby the Glenn Beck's of the world through their difficult times.  It's tough, but they're really there to make you healthy, not sympathize with your plight.  Bedside manner is nice, but not really job one.  Further, the last sentence there has a bit too many flourishes to be believable - the nurse "tapping his fingers" while his "tiny wife struggled" to lift him?  Please. 

That's why I don't want to hear anymore about universal health care or HMOs or the evils of insurance companies until each and every hospital in this country can look me in the eye and tell me that they their staff is full of truly compassionate people who treat their visitors like patients, not products. Hire and train the right people, and then and only then come talk to me about everything else you need.

Really?  You want compassion first, care second?  That's the Beck solution to the healthcare problem?  The big, tough Republican answer to healthcare is that nurses should be nicer to you?  Again, please. 

The secret is "care." After all, at the lowest of my lows, it didn't matter to me whether the hospital had marble in its bathrooms or plasma televisions on all its walls. The only thing I cared about was finding someone who actually cared about me.

You wanted someone to bring you your Wubby and tuck you in, you baby.  Honestly, compassionate care is nice, but the priority here is to make you well.  Do you think someone who has no insurance and has to wait until they're actually in a crisis cares if the folks at the hospital are compassionate, or will they consider relief of their suffering compassion enough? 

Finally, "it didn't matter to me whether the hospital had marble in its bathrooms or plasma televisions on all its walls"?  I think your straw man fell on your head and did some damage, there, Glenn...unless you can point to which Democrats' healthcare plan calls for plasma TVs and marble restrooms, you just wrote a stupid thing. 

See, this is a circular argument.  Assuming we actually get some form of "universal" healthcare, Glenn will complain A) about the cost and B) about the lack of compassion he got for his butt surgery.  Should Democrats listen and require some form of compassion training or rigorous niceness standard, Glenn will rail in outrage at the waste of taxpayers' money - you're there to get well, not get massaged!  (they won't do this, btw, but at some point I assure you Glenn Beck will accuse them of spending money on precisely this kind of thing)

The reality is this:  It's too goddamn expensive for poor folks to get even basic preventive care in this country, much less elective butt surgeries, and REALLY much less compassionate care.  Democrats, unlike Republicans and Glenn Beck, just want people to get the basic care that any American should be able to expect - and if compassion comes in the mix, then so much the better.

The magical thinking of Republicans

<Switzernote:  This was written, apparently, in August, and never published.  I decided to go ahead and post it because...well, why not.  So, it isn't new or anything, just old thoughts.  Please make a note of it.>

Well, frick.  No sooner do I write about Bush's gas-tax blah blah blah (see post below), Devilstower at  Kos goes and does a better job of it.  Read my version if you want, but you must read DT's version.

This brain dump is about something I've been pondering for a while - the magical thinking of modern Republicans.  I keep listening for some sort of logic or proof point in their policies and public statements, but I just keep hearing the same bizarre belief that if you just don't do anything, good stuff magically happens.  They live in an evidence-free world, where the poor are happily getting rich off the government, the rich are poor, and teenagers wouldn't have sex without Democratic insistence.

• Infrastructure - no new taxes.  As long as we "prioritize", the trillions needed for our overall infrastructure will magically materialize
• The poor - no government help.  No proof of this, no study has ever shown it to be true, but they've convinced themselves that government assistance for people who can't afford food somehow forces those folks into dependence.  If you just let them starve, they'll magically find jobs and money for food.
• Healthcare - get the government out of it.  If you help folks who can't afford healthcare, they won't magically get better! 
• Sex - if we prevent kids from gaining any knowledge of how sex works, they won't have any until they're married.  Hormones are magically blocked!
• Evolution - the evidence is all wrong!  Humans were magically created from clay.  Everything else was magically created from nothing (this is the root of the Republican problem).

I can go on and on, but you see the problem.  Their solution to all problems is to either do nothing or do less.  Looking out for number one is magically seen as helping the community.  In the case of our infrastructure, Bush seriously seems to believe that it's worse to ask for a few hundred bucks from Americans than it is to see them die in repeated tragedies as bridges collapse, blackouts increase and sewers give way.