Day: July 2, 2010

Spies To The Left……

From the desk of the Scriptorium

Have you seen the hottie that is being accused of spying for Russia?  Of course you have.  Come on…let’s be honest…..she could get your ATM pin number without much effort…..that is okay, I would be smiling as I called my bank to change the number….I like red heads!

Sorry about that….I just had to digress for a moment….

The Economist is reporting:

According to the documents provided by the FBI to the courts, the suspects were “illegal” agents of the Russian Foreign Intelligence agency (SVR), a descendant of the KGB, who had mostly lived in “deep cover” since the 1990s in sleepy suburbs of New York, Boston and Washington, DC.

In fact, the spies were not even successful enough to have espionage charges brought against them. Their task, it seems, was to infiltrate influential political circles in America and find out their thinking on Russia and Barack Obama’s intentions for last year’s summit in Moscow, but there is no sign that they succeeded beyond what could have been gleaned from reading the better papers. (One of the alleged moles, Vicky Pelaez, was, in fact, a left-leaning columnist for El Diario, New York’s largest Spanish language newspaper.)

By now the whole country is talking and even laughing at the Russian spies now in US custody…..yes, I said laughing…why?  Some think that they were just silly exercising some lame Cold War tactic that could not have gleamed much intel at all….

The media is STUPID!  They were doing what “real” spies do…..in the days before the emphasis on the techno geek side of intel gathering….a spy went into the culture and society to pin point people that could be used to gather the intel for them….people with lavish lifestyles or vulnerable in other ways…..these people were doing what spies use to do…..work on the ground building relationships and NOT staring at some monitor at Langley…..

All I am saying is that it is great to see spies working like spies and not some techno geek that only speaks computer-ese….okay, technology is a wonderful thing, but like in war….you cannot win without troops on the ground….and so it is with espionage…..

So, You Thought You Had Heard It All?

From the VOMITORIUM

You thought you heard some weird sh*t during the health reform debate…..just wait it gets better….

This would be tragic if it were not so godd*mn funny…..

First, I will give a little history lesson….on 30 August 2005, Hurricane Katrina kicked the shit out of the Mississippi Gulf Coast…and then during the clean up and repair, on 26 December 2005, I was thrown from a ladder onto concrete and broke my right leg in 5 places….and until recently I have been under the care of Worker’s Comp…after 2 operations and a piece of metal the size of Rhode Island…I still have pain issues and have been under the care of a pain management doctor for about a year…in this past month I have settled with the insurance company and now I am on my own…as far as the medical care goes……I have too much for Medicaid and not old enough for Medicare….and I am a high risk patient to other insurance companies……why?  Pre-existing condition…remember that from the past health reform debate?

I tell you a bit of my life to set the stage for this piece of news…..today I went for my appointment with pain management as a private citizen that will be footing the bill on my own dime….I will be paying the doctor and the medication out of my own money….cool right?

After my session with the doctor, I was told that I would need to get some sort of insurance if my doctor was going to continue to treat me…that they do NOT accept self-pay patients.  I was aghast!  Why I asked?  He said that the possibility the an addict would come in pop down the cash and get scripts for drugs was high.  I understand that he is trying to protect himself from future lawsuits…but what the Hell?  He said to treat me properly he needs to have some other tests run on me, like a psych eval and others, to be sure that I am not some sort of addict or pusher in hiding…….WTF?

Just how f*cked up is American health care when you cannot pay cash for services?

I mean come on….are you trying to tell me that you do not accept cash?  Hit it on the head, bubba!  So now I must search for an insurance company that will cover me for my medical needs…Good luck with that, Chuq-ie boy!