I'd ask the people opposed to public healthcare if they feel we'd be better off without public education either, but I'm worried that the answer would be yes.

Yeah, for quite a lot of them it would be.

I'm writing my senators and representative. My two senators are female Democrats. My rep is a man named Doc.

What freaks me out and annoys the crap out of me is that my EMPLOYER sent me postcards already written and signed by "ME" and addressed to those same senators and MY representative explaining how "I" feel that we should keep our employer based healthcare. And urged me to send in these postcards, etc etc. I was like "OH FUCK NO"

I'd ask the people opposed to public healthcare if they feel we'd be better off without public education either, but I'm worried that the answer would be yes.

The people disrupting these meetings? I'm pretty sure you're right.

Betsy H-P linked to this on her LJ: [link]

And despite all of this, you appear blithely unaware that the free market healthcare system we have now does, indeed, have “death panels.” I’ve been part of a death panel conversation. I know about death panels.

You have no idea what it’s like to be called into a sterile conference room with a hospital administrator you’ve never met before and be told that your mother’s insurance policy will only pay for 30 days in ICU. You can't imagine what it's like to be advised that you need to “make some decisions,” like whether your mother should be released “HTD” which is hospital parlance for “home to die,” or if you want to pay out of pocket to keep her in the ICU another week. And when you ask how much that would cost you are given a number so impossibly large that you realize there really are no decisions to make. The decision has been made for you. "Living will" or no, it doesn't matter. The bank account and the insurance policy have trumped any legal document.

If this isn’t a “death panel” I don’t know what is.

But it is creepy recognizing dating techniques from "The Gift of Fear"

Right?

Jesse's right, I am suddenly all full of rage. Of course I've been a bit ragey about the health care stuff for at least a week or so. This is the first I've heard of the PUA movement. I have to say, I find it puzzling in the same way I found The Rules puzzling.

Oh and while the conversation has moved on from Empowered eating, my guess as to the reason it's "toast" and not toast is that it's a raw food restaurant. So it's not really bread, much less bread that's been toasted. Which brings me to another thing I find puzzling, which is the need to call vegan and vegetarian food things that it's not, like vegetarian chicken.

PUA is just recycling the same old shit: [link]

But if a stranger walked up and said something like that, I'd think, who the fuck are you, and why do you think it's okay to talk to me in a manner that assumes a pre-existing intimate relationship with me, and also fuck right the hell off.

see, y'all lost me at "a stranger walked up and said somthing". My dislike of people I don't know pretty much ensures that anyone doing the above will get cut off before completing a sentence with "please leave me alone", "go away", and/or repulsion face. If not in an enclosed space I most likely will just walk quickly away without even committing to uttering a word myself. And I test extreme extrovert.

What freaks me out and annoys the crap out of me is that my EMPLOYER sent me postcards already written and signed by "ME" and addressed to those same senators and MY representative explaining how "I" feel that we should keep our employer based healthcare. And urged me to send in these postcards, etc etc. I was like "OH FUCK NO"

That doesn't even make any sense! Oh man, i've got a rage headache now.

And I think the problem with the PUA business is the same as any system of belief -- there are people who take it the right way and get some benefit, and crazy people who distort it and use it for evil.

Of course there are men who need concrete tips about how to start a conversation with a woman, and take that knowledge to build actual relationships. And then there are men who think they can learn how to trick women into having sex with them.