May 2009, and the famous "American Dream" is just about dead,,,

Who killed the "American Dream" of being in the fairly paid middle-income/'middle class' and being able to afford your own home in the US of A ? The Republican Party sure did not help us. And Congress. And most of the last 5-6 Presidents,,,

More people are loosing their jobs now than in the so-called great depression,,,and 'the unemployed' is still a flawed statistic that only counts those that are still looking for work, even in company towns with no work, or the dying rust belt,,,

Medical care is the shits. Back just in the 1980s most SF employers would give you the choice of hospitals and doctors in their medical plans, with dental and optical. Now you get kaiser, which is very poor medical care and expensive for what you get!!

35 banks have failed and been taken over by the FDIC , just so far this year. And next year how many of the small bank shareholders will lose everything while the large bank shareholders ,like Citibank, will be unfairly bailed out by the taxpayers ,without their permission.

Our industrial base has been abandoned,left to rust, and or shipped overseas, even to our southern border on the mexican side with very dirty polluting factories called macilladoros. Like Iceland, we were told by the experts that all we needed was a big unregulated profit-churning Wall Street and high finance in the United States, not old school factories that actually made stuff. Boy, were they wrong.

How else will our tax money be wasted? Distant foreign wars with no hope , no chance of success, and terrible terrible costs in American lives and disabled Americans, and of course billions and trillions of tax dollars,,,such as the 'Korean War'(against China) and the Viet Nam war(against Chinese communists again,,,get it?) and Somalia,,,and the various Gulf wars that should not have been our blood, but the Saudis and other arabs to fight,,,and Afghanistan,,,creating more and more terrorists by having our bases where we are not welcome and do not have a vital interest, an economic interest maybe, but not a vital interest. What is N.Korea(backed by China,,,) goes nuclear?

Now we have 8-9 thousand people on the verge of losing their homes because of banker's toxic unfair mortgages,,,and the Congress is too busy procrastinating with the unethical and irresponsible banker lobbyists, who just ruined our national economy and the big three auto makers, oh and the international finance system.

So forget about a middle cash/class in America. And forget about owning your own home, unless you are part of the small minority rich and superrich. And the working poor can pretty much forget about Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid,,,oh, and pensions of the 'db' variety,,,and lousy idea of 401k retirement plans that don't have professional management,,,and forget about 'retirement' cuz they keep raising the 'senior' age and it will probably be 99 by the time the last baby boomer gets there.

Also forget the successful and rich giving a hoot / damn about you less fortunate or as they see it, 'lazy' and 'making bad choices' and definitely 'not hard working like us'. I know and limo drive alot of rich and superrich people and it is always amazing how easily hooked on making more and more money when they have millions and many houses it is for the 'successful' superrich and rich. They don't think luck or limited room at the top has anything to do with it because their egos are so inflated. They equate rich with personal success and being good/doing good and being useful in life; So shallow !!

Yep, there they go ignoring their families to make another 10 million. There they go with their tax shelters not paying their fair share. There they go doing as little as possible to give back to their community(what's that?!!), their family and their Nation. All the while patting themselves on their back, thinking they can buy their way into Heaven with a big funeral gift to some charity after a very selfish life.

And the president, congress and the public are encouraging them, fascinated with just being rich,,,what an american trajedy. Whether this was done intentionally or by accident , this is a terrible time to live in the USA.

Teenagers think that trying cigarettes, underage drinking, and casual drugs are the dangerous forbidden experiments in adulthood

But if you can't go into a drug store and buy condoms, take them home and know how to put them on or on a banana in the dark(yes, there is a top and a bottom/inside and outside to a condom children,,,), and are not yet private solitary experts at masturbation, you kids have no business(especially when you can't have a job paying at least $75,000 to cover the consequences,,,) trying to have underage sex, or before your 20s , as you just are not mature enough to handle the interpersonal responsibilities and the possible(vd/std,,,a baby/2,,,hurt feelings,,,suicide,,,rejection,,,being called a 'slut' at school,,,) consequences !!

If you can't masturbate in less than 60 seconds in the shower , in bed either face up or face down, then you don't know your own sexuality well enough to involve anyone else.

If you have not read at least 3 books on pregnancy, then you have absolutely no business having sex, even if you are in college. It is shocking how ignorant not only boys are but girls ,who have to carry the baby inside, are usually unread on the subject by even one book !! This is a national disgrace !! We don't have parenting classes in high school because most adults like my 2 university educated parents are too afraid to talk about sexuality, and as a direct result , we have ignorant unprepared and lousy, lots of lousy, parents !!

So if you can't talk to your parents or grandparents or relatives about sex, you are too immature to have partner sex!! Get pregnant ,and you don't get to be an irresponsible kid any more, just a you-laughed-at adult , with huge serious responsibilities. No more childhood, PERIOD !!

Forget the Catholic Church on this one,as they are still ,still, protecting priests who have molested children ,,,for centuries !! We should also be blaming them for the Inquisition, and the 600 years of social stagnation known at the Dark Ages. And for always opposing reason and science, even burning and killing respected scientists,,,and supposedly witchy women by the 1000s,,,and social injustices throughout the ages, on and on.

good news,,,recommend the tv show "Lost in Austen",,,

,,,if you like all the PBS stuff, you might like the star telling Darcy to 'get a job' !! Fun-ny

Let's give Jay Leno a Big sendoff from 17 year of the Tonight Show,,,with every American leaving their tv on, even if you have to go to sleep and turn

,,,the volume off !!

Great job, Mr. Lemo !!

Another good S.F. Bay Area clean-up idea: Use Hunter's Point in S.E. San Francisco (a WW2 Navy toxic site,,,still) to clean-up the Delta Mothball ,,,

,,,Fleet(sloughing tons of toxic paint into the Bay,for decades,,,). Then, once all those old ,useless metal ships are cut up by the local unemployed with cutting torches for scrap and loaded on a train for a smelter, you can finally clean up the eyesore and toxic Hunter's Point !!

May 2009, When,,,when,,,when,,,are we commoner going to get some cellphone plan relief,,,and be able to buy any phone for any network, like Europe !!?

America's levels of government , from city to county to regional special districts to state to federal, are well known for systemic constipation, go slower than a turtle dsl inertia, and couldn't-care-less-about-the-public bad attitude. Watch ,for instance, the state of California's Caltrans use several large trucks to sweep the massive amounts of litter along most state and national highways,,,pushing it to the median wall or right soundwall,,,and then leaving it in a long trash ridge !!

Or take city of san jose's traffic department--please, anybody, take these civil service shirkers away!!--who couldn't time a boulevard or expressway for even a mile,,,even if their lives/jobs depended on it!!

Same for the Feds; You might as well expect to wait ,,,and wait,,,and wait,,,and then wait some more. They have your tax money,,,and lots of lobbyist payola,,,and an expensive lunch reservation,,,so why the hell do you think they give a damn about you? 8 million Americans on the verge of losing their homes due to toxic loans and foreclosure,,,ehhh, so what,,,GIVE THE BANKER BOZOS BILLIONS,,,we're eating and sleeping with the banker sluts.

"Top Gun" and casting,,,imagine how much more money it would have made with an EQUALLY HOT FEMALE LEAD?11?

Like LC/lauren of "the Hills", a smoking hot beauty, now with a history of badboylover choices, but a good girl.

Or Jessica Beil,,,there are sooo many better choices,,,

How could a director and producer and studio pass off on such a never-in-a-1000-lifetimes!! matching ,,,so that every time you see this film, it is cause to couple-flinch ?? Scary.

"Risky Business" was good match casting,,,believable,,,intriguing,,,

The Democrats, May 2009, seem to be 3 strikes against LEADING the Nation with their 1, silence on the Nevada Mtn. nuclear low level waste site,2, the

campaign promise to 'close Guantanamo', and 3, allowing the Republicans and their NRA to attach a rider to the 9month delayed--weak in the knees?--vital and necessary correction to credit card theft by the banks in the USA for far too long.

Nevada has taken millions of our National tax dollars,,,and now says it would rather not have low level waste stored there?!! Let us put Nevada in its place.

And not closing Guantanamo is leaving the door open for further bad press,,,and more unfriendly international relations, not that most of us give a darn what the world thinks of us,,,and those irresponsible, fraudulent risk taking bankers that are in the process of ruining the international financial systemic structure. Oh, bankers will be boys !! Aren't they cute,,,,?

The 100 day honeymoon is over, so when is the President going to step up and start dealing with all our neglected-for-8-years problems, like taking the tax cap off salaries for Social Security ?!

The visit by "Burn the Floor" to Dancing with the Stars, week 7, results, of Season 8,,,was not nearly as good as their show

So hopefully you were not unimpressed or not adequately impressed. My favorite dancers, redhead and black hair with tattoo on back and 2 blondes, were not there,,,and the song choice was weak and not in the show i saw in San Francisco. So if you have a chance , go to the show and i think you will enjoy it MUCH more than this unfortunate weak showing.

Tuesday, 19 May 2009, on David Letterman tonight are the PIEDMONT BIRD CALLERS !!

Do not miss this, as this is a 'MUST SEE' of the year on David's show !!

The USA is pulling out of Iraq this year, but staying and going bigger into Afganistan for 4+ years??!! Is this what we want,,,and voted for??

We were chumped into going into Iraq. Senators are now saying how they screwed up in not being vocal opponents of the Iraq Wars before it got started. How much bigger chumps/suckers do we have to be to want +60,000 American soldiers in Afganistan, with sicko Pakistan breeding terrorists next door and taking us for over $1 Billion in aid?? 'Weapons of mass destruction' and 'links to al queda' turned out to be big fat political lies,,,

It will keep our military and state department busy, but is this the best use of scarce assets, especially American lives?
Some just don't care that we might be making more terrorist by meddling where we are not wanted in the Arab world, on the other side of the world. Well, don't expect much improvement on any other federal program, like social security or federal clean water, air and food standards.

We still have unsecured borders, and unsecured ports, so why are we looking for an impossible 'win' on the other side of the world? There is no way we can control the future of Iraq, Afganistan, or Pakistan,,,yet we continue to waste American lives with generals use to impossible missions like Somalia and Viet Nam.

So how long are you going to sit still and be a chump for this waste of lives and taxes and military machines ?!? Don't just vote, but write phone and march !!

17 May 2009, Sunday, the 98th "Bay to Breakers",,,was NEVER for me about the professional runners who won BMWs and $37,000 for racing 33 minutes

Bay to Breakers is a public event in San Francisco, and if SF does not want the million$ it makes on having all these 50-80,000 people in town, i am sure the public can find another venue ,like Pacifica(outside SF county) to Half Moon Bay on the coast road highway 1,,,or Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and Tiburon, with ferries back to SF,,,

This year there was some race organizer who thought this was a formal, full of rules, you can't run naked one day out of the year, no beer kegger shopping carts, no garden hoses blasting cooling water on the runners from peoples front yards, no loud speakers hanging out of Victorians with different music every block encouraging those of us who don't flaggelate ourselves everyday but just once or twice a year(Wharf to Wharf in Santa Cruz), and no unauthorized bands every few blocks for one day out of the entire stinking year,no x-rated costumes,,, some kind of closet drill instructor. What a buzz-killer !! Do we really need or want more unnecessary-rules-fascists in the world ?? SF is full of 'nimbys' and neighborhoods claiming and getting special favors ,if you have never lived there like i have. It is such a messed up , disorganized, poorly designed(streets that go straight up hills for horse carriages in the late 1800s before cars, so lots of broken hores legs, market street is the clashing of 2 grids that don't even mesh just look at a map!, and originally they were too lazy to name the streets so had 3 sets of numbered streets and 2 sets of lettered streets, oh, and the idiot who laid out the city set all lots at the same size of 25ft on the sidewalk,,,more? take a tour) and poorly run (the SFPD does not do parking or traffic enforcement and usually are not polite or helpful or smiling-friendly as they should be to the #1 city biz of tourists, and controlled all the illegal rackets in Prohibition, like prostitution,booze,drugs,,,,so where is all that illegal gain money, coppers??, and the public health department with 3000 restaurants is a joke of weak enforcement,,,and the 2 state highways thru town ,1 and 101 , are no longer timed stoplights to the speed limit, and and and,,,) but we still LOVE it, as just another unique fraudulent illegal corrupt historic westcoast town like LA , Portland, and Seattle.

I ran, jogged, walked the B2B for years in the 70s and 80s and it is a 'fun run', a rite of Spring, a chance for the masses to celebrate life under terrible current economic circumstances caused by the rich and powerful few and suffered disproportionately by the many of us, a chance to enjoy the 42-43 hills of SF all under 1000 ft tall and the views before the chilly summer fog starts rolling in, and a chance to be with each other outside work and the daily grind for one day out of the entire year to thumb our noses at convention and wear a costume, or walk the whole course with the baby carriage, or have a beer at every bar we pass before we pass out on riptide dangerous Ocean Beach or the shabby grass of the Polo Field in Golden Gate Park.

This event is not not not about some corporate sponsor, or one man and one woman winning the race, or who did or did not register and pay the fee to get the t-shirt ,,,as some wrongly think. This is an event for the public, the masses, the common man/woman, anyone and everyone can walk it or wheelchair it, and look forward to it every year. Lord knows, we poor bastards by the Congress and banker's hand need something to look forward to !!

So thank you to channel 7 for the live, 2 jabbers, fed,,,and thank you to all the volunteers who make this event/gathering possible, like the free concert every year in Golden Gate Park in the first week of October, and thank you to the bumbling bungling stumbling city of San Francisco that provides such a great canvas for this public participatory 'fun' ,leave your buzzkiller at home, famous festivity !!

Curious to see how much rampant white collar crime the new Obama Administration lets Wall Street and CorporateAmerica get away with

Are the Bush43 shortened statute of limitations making it easy for more and more financial fraud criminals to get away, thanks to the new President's weakness in dealing with the leftover Republican fiasco financial disaster,,,and the historical spineless weakness of the Democratic Party, sold out to the lobbyists just as badly as the sleazoid Republicans?

Why have civil and criminal charges not been investigated and filed against the financial rating agencies ,like Standard and Moody's , that have already admitted publicly to selling soft,better but dishonest ratings for more money?

How much longer will the public be silent about the stumblers and fumblers and bs-ers from the Bush years who are still around trying ineffectually to con us into believing that real progress and 'change' has occurred, when all most of us see is more pandering to the rich and powerful and too risky to cover their own bets, bankers and too large insurance companies like AIG with horrid reputations,,,that need to be dismantled and made smaller for the amount of reserves they do have to cover their own tragic messes?

All while the rest of us are told to suffer unnecesary foreclosures and another unnecesary year of unfair and abusive bank and credit card practices !!? How long will the average American put up with this unequal justice where the super-rich are spared the pain that is put on the average American?

With home losses and job losses and dislocation, soup kitchen lines, how long until there are nationwide demonstrations to remind the Congress and President that there is a better, more just, fairer way to handle this mess? Martin Weiss says that deflation would be better than inflation. But it looks like the Fed Govt is still ,after 8 total failure years of Bush43, bent on ruining the national debt and the dollar.

What if Conan O'Brien really Bombs on the West Coast?

I hope they give Carson a try.

And to Jimmy Kimmel, you are doing great !! So calm and considerate and confident and funny,,,

To Jimmy Fallon, you are smart enough and funny enough, just lay off the coffee after lunch and drink more milk, as you seem too nervous or hyper still,,,think Dean Martin cool and fun. Good luck !!

To Jon Stewart,,,you are amazing,,, so funny and inventive, smart !!

To Craig Ferguson,,,still ,,,not laughing,,,

To Jay Leno,,,no wonder you are the current #1, in the fashion of Jack Paar and Steve Allen greats.

To Will Ferrell,,,still not laughing since you left SNL,,,

To Howie Mandell,,,not interested.

To Charlie Rose,,,can you be a bigger brown nose to your unlabeled guests?

To all the soap operas and the soap scum shows like all the judge shows and Wilkos and Jerry Springer and Maury,,,there is no way i am ever going to watch your trash shows,,,you have to be a social sicko to like these!

To Ellen GeGeneres,,,you showed them all ,,,and continue with a positive, humanitarian, fun -who else dances to start the show, what a brilliant idea!!- caring show,,,keep up the good work,,,

To Rachel Ray,,,great cooking and guests and fun set,,,how do you do it all?,,,best wishes,,,

To Oprah,,,you have lost some of your edge,,,why not more discussions on how to help women become more self-aware and honest and less self destructive,,,how not to date as a bystander but an engaged participant,,,how not to marry mainly for money and cold-heartedly walk out of a marriage quickly for the new bigger house, new car and most of the cash,,,etc etc etc,,,women,your main audience, still are far from comfortable in their own skin and the world and able to make good decisions,,,my sisters still do not understand how a car works because they can always use my dad as a cheap/free mechanic,,,and the sisters still do not drive a car well or even maintain a car's tire air pressure, oil level, and tire tread depth, or even remember to put gas in the tank,,,why??

To Ben Stiller,,,still,,,not laughing,,,but may see the 2 Smithsonian movies in spite of you being a lead actor,,,

To Steve Carell,,,still,,,not laughing,,,not once.

First torpedo hit to the Obama Presidency and Democratic Congress majority, May 2009, S.J. Mercury News, "Anti-foreclosure bill defeated in Senate",,,

means that Congress is still 'owned' by the bankers that are 'too big to fail' and other lobbyists that DO NOT HAVE THE PUBLIC INTEREST AT HEART !! Thousands of homeowners need the Fed to help them get into Fed fixed mortgages and out of fraudulent adjustable mortgages,that have STILL not yet been outlawed,,,

So ,again, the Senate and Congress let the Banker pigs feed at the public trough of tax money,,,and to hell with the public good !!
This is a major tragedy for the new hopeful President Obama, but looks like the Democrats and Republicans have ,again, forgotten 'us' in the USA. Until we clean up all the dirty slush money from the lobbyists in Wash.,D.C. with PUBLICLY FUNDED FEDERAL AND STATE ELECTIONS, we can pretty much kiss goodbye any realistic expectation of the Feds doing the 'right thing'.

What NONSENSE to allow companies to 'patent' the human genome/map !!

Will someone, anyone, please wake up our sleepy lazy dolittle Congress and get them or the U.S. Supreme Court to outlaw such idiocy and allowing a company to own the knowledge of what 'G-C-T-A' organic molecule sequence controls what human organ/process/trait, since now 20% of the human genetic map is in private hands.

Would you allow a business to own the knowledge that your arm is the three main bones of the humerus connected to the radius and ulna forearm bones ?? This is more Capitalism gone amuck with Republican-worshipped 'Deregulation', now proven to be a total failure by the USA fiscal and financial crisis spreading internationally.

Unless this is stopped and overturned quickly it will stall human progress and medical advances that could save thousands and millions in the future. Yes, i know there are political and religious quacks of many persuasions who want us to return to the hopeless 600 years of the Dark Ages of civilization. There will always be extremists with crazy ideas.

Spring 2009, as the summer travel season heats up, beware of many travel sites calling the scary Tenderloin SW of Union Square in San Francisco "West

Union Square". If you are not familiar with SF you might be shocked, scared, horrified by how quickly the neighborhood goes downhill as you go west and southwest of Union Square. Beware of the Tenderloin(drug addicts and legally insane former state mental patients we call euphemistically the 'homeless'), South of Market(drunks and drug addicts,also filthy greasy dirty pee-d on sidewalks like the Tenderloin), and Western Addition(black poor high-crime projects-ghetto) neighborhoods. Instead, consider on the north side the Cow Hollow neighborhood with the shopping streets nearby of Lombard, Union, Hyde and Chestnut,,,plus the good mass transit,,,quieter hotels just off busy Lombard,,,and great hostel at Fort Mason,,,and beautiful park on the north end call the Marina Green. This is a much safer and more attractive neighborhood.

And generally you might want to stay out of the entire SE quarter, called Third Street, as it is mostly black poor high crime and very scary looking with big buildings with broken windows for decades, junk yards, terrible pothole streets, drunks and drug addicts, rock tossers at passing cars,high pollution from old dirty power plants and toxic ww2 navy shipyard Hunter's Point and especially the area around the Cow Palace projects for the poor know as Sunnydale and called 'shooter's alley'. Instead, stay in the northern half of the city. Gang violence is becoming more of a problem in the SW.

What happened to 'tastes good' at MacD's , BurgerKiing, and Togo's ,,,!???

I went to college in the 60s and 'lived' off of the first Togo's it was sooo delicious. Nowadays, eating one of their sandwiches is like eating cardboard. It looks good, but tastes not so good. What the hell happened Togo's that you would sacrifice taste for profit, or whatever ?

I can remember as a teenager going with my friends to the first MacD's in town and scarfing down multiple hamburgers. Nowadays i can't even eat my one last favorite the fish sandwich,,,is it cod or is it what? The shakes have tasted like plastic ,non-dairy for decades, but now most of the food, even the buns, make me sick with their bad taste.

And what happened to you, BurgerKiing? Service is so slow ,as usual, and corporate does not seem to care,,,ok, but now the food is loosing its 'tastes good' !! Will Taco Beell and Carll's be next !??

There is so much bland or bad tasting food out there, especially in the fast food lanes.
Even in supermarkets ,upscale MollyStoone's sells 'extra sour sourdough bread' made in texas that tastes like cardboard. I tried one of the diet meals they sell on tv and it too tasted bland and plastic,with salt and pepper.

All this Tom Brokaw blather about Bill Gate's Microsoft fortune,,, just remember

that 1=Microsoft has never been considered safer than Apple,,,and there are lots of different kinds of viruses and worms,etc.

2= it has always been harder to use than Apple,,,what a pain in the neck most times !!,,,

3=there is little or no customer service included with Microsoft, especially compared to Apple,,,TALK ABOUT SHORT-CHANGED FRUSTRATING !?!?

4=there have been many many instances of both domestic and foreign ,accused and settled/guilty cases of UNFAIR TRADE MONOPOLY PRACTICES,,,

and in spite of the enormous size of the Gates fortune, he has yet to do one signifigant thing with it, like cure a minor disease or make all college text books free online to those who can least afford it or giving the best available computer, the Apple, to every elementary school classroom in the USA or,,,. So basically we are talking about a huge fortune, with little social-benefit merit.

Tom Brokaw, hell's bells,,,can't you find someone more worthy to talk about?? You went from ww2 veterans,,,to this !!??

"WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR?" was a crucial movie-dvd with a huge gaping hole, an explanation from our Federal Govt. as to why they did this stupid

thing !!

There are some things even our new, African- American !!, President, so popular for now, can not sweep under the National rug, like the issue of responsibility for torture,,,and the lack of while collar law enforcement concerning our current national fiscal and financial crisis leading to an international crisis.

Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld were so extreme in their behavior in power to break long-standing USA tradition against torture, especially after the horrible torture many Americans suffer from the Vietnamese and Chinese in that stupid wasteful ill-conceived and ill-planned Viet Nam War. The same goes for our current economic woes in that for you to believe that no one is responsible---even Greenspan has apologized sort of for being too trusting is his economic theory--and this is /was just a natural normal economic "cycle" or "bubble", boy o boy have they got you fooled while they pay for others mistakes out of your back pocket !!

Greenspan's name and words were "golden" and now they are seen as some jealot's religious sect of economics that went horribly wrong. He went from being constantly on the cover of Time to being one of the biggest foolers of all time, like Nixon, so wrong, pathetic and out of touch with reality.

Congress has ,for decades, gotten fat and so lazy with doing as little as possible. Let's see if there is lots of REAL "change", as promised. It won't be easy. (The lobbyists are still in control of our future.)

Caltrans is COMPLETELY replacing parts of HIGHWAY 80 over Donner Pass, but to what LOW STANDARD??!!

Longterm, is it cheaper to let Caltrans continue to build California freeways to too low a standard,,,or should we have a higher standard of construction that results in freeways running smoother longer, especially with all these longer and heavier trucks ? Look at the German autobans for excellence...and maybe elsewhere, NOT here in California !!

Caltrans has already fumbled and cost all of us California taxpayers at least $6 BILLION DOLLARS, by their direct incompetence in the replacing of the east half of the Bay Bridge. And the Governor Arnold and state govt don't seem to concerned. So how far off leash will we let Caltrans go now,,,and how much MORE is this misplaced trust going to cost us in the future ?

TWC/The Weather Channel is dumbing down and getting simpler and less informative. The solution: amateur TWC and educational-professsional TWC

On TWC , we seldom see high and low pressure centers, fronts and isobars. So for most Ameicans who never graduated high school and just want the high temps, man, lets have a simple color-coded version for idiots, with cute men and women bla bla bla-ing about not much. You can talk to them like they are children.

Then for those of us who value an education and want to learn more, there can be a edu-pro version of TWC that has the last 24hr of rainfall and also the last week, last month, and year to date. Plus , we want to daily see the jet stream activity in the north Pacific and the fronts and what might be coming our way on the west coast. We don't care how cute the wxfolk are, we will even take the crazy Dr. Wx from LA , we just want to be informed, educated, and learn !! We want to be talked to like we have half a brain, adults that have the capacity to learn ,,,and want to learn ,or refresh our college meterology class.

Kaiser markets "Thrive" or "You Rock", but what really happens there

I had an accident and needed stitches, so HAD TO use my employer-employee paid 'medical insurance', not that i wanted to. I actually considered if an outpaitient clinic could sew it up.

It took from 9pm to 3am to get it done at the ER. I gave my card to the woman in the reception glassed-in booth and she gave my card and a page admission back. Then i stood and bleed for awhile. Now i did call and tell them i was being driven in and expected a wheelchair at the curb on a clear night, but no such luck with Kaiser. So i stood there,,,and stood there,,,and bleed.

The next nurse/staff person in a stall was still doing the last persons paperwork when i was asked to sit down. Then she had to leave and find a ream of copy paper for the printer,,,wait and wait, and wait some more. Then she wanted to see the injury and i took off the 3 blood soaked towels. I felt a little dizzy /lightheaded like i was going to faint/pass out but hung in there. This person tried to put a new bandage on, but i quickly bled through it, so it was way inadequate. This is Kaiser.

Finally someone came with a wheelchair and wheeled me to an exam room, my 3rd stop, where we waited and waited and were brought papers to sign. I paid my $100 for the sew job but could not find out how much the crutches were, and still don't know, but am sure i will get the bill in the end. I must have had 2 doctors and 3 nurses come in and had to explain to each the injury, SO embarassing, but i guess entertaining for the bored late night staff walking around in circles. What really bugged me was that i had to sign mandatory arbitration and had about four people bring in four different sets of paperwork, when i could have done all that paperwork at stop #1 or #2.

Plus they kept asking me when i had my last tetanus booster, when ONCE would have been more considerate of an injured person with no liquids to drink for hours and a swelling and growing more painful wound. I was told my records had been 'digitized' but then they would have know in Kaiser at Kaiser ,at the same Kaiser, that i had had a flu shot and a tetanus booster 6 months ago !!

I kept apologizing to my driver for waiting so long for what was very inefficient; i have never seen so many 'drifty' people since the Navy !! They tired to sell me on staying overnight and risking a hospital infection for $400 more, but i said i would crawl/cab it !!,,,they said taxicabs were not allowed. So my driver and i waited and waited for these slow pokes.

The staff who gave me the lidocaine injections at the injury site, kept moving the syringe with the flexible needle vs keeping it straight for what seemed more painful injections,,,ouch.

I stayed conscious for the surgery with an iv as additional pain relief. Six hours was way too long. But then Kaiser never ever seems to get out of 1st gear. I brought mis sis in once, when she was in pain from migranes and uterine surgery, and Kaiser was not impressed to see her curled up on the reception room floor , in pain, and crying for 45 minutes, while she waited for her appointment time.

And when i came back in 3 days for a new bandage, one of two nurses/MAs , not expensive RNs, made the very big sanitary mistake of taking part of my bloody bandage off with her bare hands and then going back to the pc keyboard, so i suggested she best wash her hands BEFORE , and pause, it was like, how do i use these sink controls? scary. After THAT i watched every set of hands that touched my nasty wound to make sure they were freshly gloved !!

And my employer is pissed i am unavailable just when work is getting busy,,, and he has been paying about $400/month for his part, for years, for this low level of coverage and care. Another employee is out and has had to pay $29,000 in hospital copays,he is now broke and without any savings or investment money, which is not 'medical insurance' to me !! I have asked him to go back to another medical plan so i can go to UCSF medical school, rated in the top 10 in the USA, but he says this is all he can afford or will pay for in this terrible economy.

Oh, and i told them i would be foot-elevated recovering for the estimated 4 weeks at my parents, but where has Kaiser been calling for checkups and appointments? Yep, my 40 mile distant home phone !! What idiots. I had to change my address on my computer profile,,,and they are STILL phoning my home instead of my current address !!

I was told i needed to re-bandage my own wound daily, with a 'big bandage pack' for $10 and not a 'small pack', but they did not give me enough bandages to change the bandage daily as the doctor had done until the next week's $30 doctor re-bandaging visit ! Dumb, dumb ,dumb. SO I HAVE AFTER 8 WEEKS/8 ATTEMPTS GIVEN UP ON KAISER AND THEIR IDEA OF BANDAGES FOR A WEEK OF "DOCTOR ORDERED DAILY REBANDAGING" and go to Walgreen's instead.

I was told the wound was not healing as expected,,,and to keep it elevated,,,and maybe next week,,,or the week after that i would be given a vacuum bandage to speed healing, as i am not rich and retired with lots of idle time on my hands but am anxious to get back to work. I asked 'Why not the vacuum bandage now, not later, if it will help so much?" and was told to wait. I went to the hospitals business office-waited and waited and waited- and filed the medical leave papers for work ,since it looks like this will be not 3-4 weeks as the surgeon guessed, but 7-8 weeks. Yes, i can apply for SDI/state disability insurance. Mean while , i am paying rent and utilities on an apartment i am not using other than for storage and future occupancy,,,

So i called the 'patient advocacy' office of customer service and asked the woman there to plead my case for best care now versus waiting a week or two for this new tech. vacuum bandage. She put me on hold for over 5 minutes,,,,,i hung up in disrespected frustration, and she has never, ever phoned back. So much for Kaiser caring much ,past collecting premiums in Northern California !!

The new waiting room for podiatry and G.I. is much much too small,,,anyone notice?

At 9 weeks the staff took a picture of the wound, but covered half of it with a ruler ,,,crazy crazy crazy,,,

Being mocked over and over for having the gall to say 'i don't think i broke my leg' before the x-rays were developed,,,and being ignored when asking for a softer than the usual 4x4 gauze pad- bandage material over the bloody raw sensitive wound,,,yeah, that really recommends to "thrive" with Kaiser medical insurance.

Would it really cost/kill Kaiser to ask its in-hospital patients every day and out-patient victims every week, "How is our recommended pain medication working for you?" Oh,,,too much to ask of MDs, nurses, and hospitals, eh,,,

We have a new President, but the bungling bureauocracy of federal Washington, D.C. does not seem to have gotten the message

Examples: first, Muirwoods National Monument is remodeling the gift shop and snack stand and changing the Concessionaire business. In the old, 'government is the problem', regressive Republican-ruthless rule days it would be expected that the public would be left out of the loop and not told much or shown much.

But now with this monumental change to an African-American President,,,and Democrat and the era of "change" and a return to progress and progressive ideas, the National Park Service and it's head, Mr. Salazar , did not seem to get that news release. We still do not have even an artist's drawing to show the changes,,,and info on the change from what business to what business w/ description. We are still treated like boobs, suckers ,,,and kept in the dark.

Another example: Back in the recent dark ages since Nixon and Reagan, you got the medical care you could pay for. Period. Screw medical liability, even in California you only have a year and according to lawyers in that trade 'little or no chance'. And "standards of care" is just something archaic and non-essential in these days of scummy insurance companies and p/e ratios.

So what about nowadays, are there any signs of progressive change, is the federal government running on more than one cylinder still, and does the AMA and the Surgeon General of the U.S. have a big section on "Standard of Care" here in the god-forsaken U.S.A. ? Nope.

With the U.S. Congress still bought and paid for by the bank and other scurrilous corporate lobbyists, did we rationally ever really have a reason to hope?

Third: The 'self supporting and independent' U.S.P.S , not the old incompetent USPO i use to work for, says that they are doing away with the rolls of plastic postage-paid mailers to recycle ink jet cartridges,,,because it isn't profitable enough,,,not that it is good for the Environment. All those fat bonuses for the USPS execs and none of those fatheads can see the necessity of little small good ideas like these formerly available and free, plastic rolls of mailers to keep ink jet cartridges out of the landfills.

Fourth: The NPS is still charging $300 for every 31-27 seat bus coming into Yosemite ,even if only with a driver and ONE PASSENGER. It was in the 80s $5/car and highway 41 in the park needs to be repaved, just like back in the bad bad bad old days. They are taking donations in front of Muirwoods visitor center and Yosemite visitor center, that they will tell you go the D.C. not just the park. $20/car entrance fee nowadays to keep most of the working poor away from the Ahwahnee Hotel. Any chance such basic maintenance , besides the fluff, will get done ? Nope. Someone should fire that idiot "hanging (federal) judge" there who just got reprimanded for decorating his court room with a noose.

God save us from the bureauocrats ,,,and the lobbyist-bought Congress !!

Kaiser Permanente insurance company-lousy substandard medical provider markets with "THRIVE", which real world translates to,,,

Spring 2009 and crummy Kaiser's advice nurse reply to "What do i do if i touch poison oak?" She ,the RN, said to "First ,rinse the area with water. Second, wash when you can with soap and water. Third, rinse with alcohol. And fourth, when you can buy a specialty soap for poison oak, use it."

The big problem with this RN -Kaiser medical advice is that nothing in #1, #2,or #3 will help , but just delay proper treatment IMMEDIATELY/within 24 hours WITH TECNU SOAP !! So if you follow Kaiser's advice you are wasting valuable time and more likely to get the painful rash of poison oak, poison ivy, or poison sumac with the usual delay of 24-48 hours.

Instead, buy TECNU at Walgreen's or RiteAid or CVS or Long's, AND KEEP IT ON HAND WHEN GOING backpacking or hiking or 'walking' in the California Coast Range or the Foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains up to about 6000 ft elevation. "Leaflets of 3 let it be!!"

Can not wait for Kaiser's version of substandard medical care to be declared 'unacceptable' by the new Federal national medical plan !! Such awful insurance companies should not be controlling our nation's medical care.

I have not had a finger prostate check in years, even tho my employer pays about $400/month and i pay a monthly co-pay 'premium',,,FOR WHAT ?!!? I have not had a PSA test in years, at an age over 50,,, My assigned physician says i have to take a day off work to come in and talk about why i have not been offered a colonoscopy in 11 years,,,before i can get the approval for one. She wants me to crap in a bag and give her a 'fecal sample'. AS IF!! ,,,i am going to loose a day of work just to talk to a lazy incompetent avoiding-AMA-standard-care physician at Kaiser!!

Does Chrysler Corporation love its car mfg. business and the cars it makes? Obviously NOT, or they would listen to Consumer Reports and make them

better every year,,,and also have an official Chrysler website where every car they ever made had a picture and detailed description and blog for owner and public comments.

Please, lets stop wasting the public's hard earmed tax money on these short sighted and incompetent car brand managers. They don't care if we Americans individually fail and go into bankruptcy, so why not "equal justice for all" (Supreme Court Building, right?),,,??

Does FMC/Ford Motor Corporation and the Ford family really LOVE their car line and the car products they sell ? Obviously not, or they would have an

,,,offfical website with pictures and detailed descriptions, blog post from public too, of every car they ever made.

Let the family buy FMC out of bankruptcy and stop wasting American taxpayer dollars on these stumbling fumbling design fools who ,for instance, destroyed the Mustang brand with inferior product in the 70s and 80s.

Does GENERAL MOTORS really love their business and their car products? Obviously NOT, or there would be on their official website pictures and

,,,descriptions of every vehicle they ever made. Those of us that went to high school in the 60's might have loved the look of the GTO, coupe or convertible. But GMC is 'closing' the Pontiac brand, instead of selling it to someone inovative who will give us the old body with a modern clean TDI v-6 engine and rear drive. GMC has never loved its cars the way its customers have !! I wanted the '51 Chevy Suburban-like with the straight 6 (tdi modern) and an interior that you could hose off with removable bench seats,,,asked for it,,,and they made the HHR with a fussy feminine expensive to detail interior !!

Let GMC go bankrupt and flush out all these overpaid short sighted,rip off the public, make a lot of show cars they will never sell ,not up to the task managers,,,and maybe someone who really loves the 60s corvettes and will remake the bodies near identical but with modern cleaner and greener guts .

It should be painfully obvious to all American Taxpayers that the current GM management, most if not all, do not love the brand and the cars they make, poorly.

CDC/Center for Disease Control in Atlanta,,,April 2009, seems to be under-counting possible 2009 Swine Flu cases,,,

like the one the last 2 weeks in San Mateo County, City of Burlingame, where my apartment manager was 'near death with a fever' and stayed home as recommended by news media like USAToday. BUT, the CDC says that unless you go into a hospital in the first 4-5 days, YOU DO NOT COUNT !!

So i called the San Mateo County Health Department and got the same 'not interested',,,strange,,,thought we voted for "change" and a more 'open government' and all we have gotten in the first 100 days honeymoon is public speech fumbles and 'we are doing this' when the Fed then goes off and instead of saving millions of homeowners from the stupidity of ARM s/adjustable rate mortgages with federal fixed low rate mortgages, they go a blow our taxpayer BILLIONS AND TRILLIONS on too rich and too fraud-criminal bankers and foreign governments !!

I have lost all trust in Summer/Sumner for his secret threaten- rumor with Bank of America,,,and same goes for any federal leader-poser who says all of the 'big banks 17-19 of them are TOO BIG TO FAIL'. What a waste to give GM and Ford and Chrysler fed-tax payer money in the BILLIONS to design and build a diesel-electric car, and then not have a contract that they must produce and sell it !! What a stupid waste with someone elses-our limited tax-payer money !!