"Tenpa Rinpoche" and Other Urban Legends

"If you do not tell the truth about yourself,
then you cannot tell it about other people."
~ Virginia Woolfe

In the 3.5 years since I was diagnosed with Wegener's Granulomatosis, I've seen more doctors than I can count. I've been hospitalized about 20 times and long ago lost count of my ER visits. Some of these doctors have been excellent-- truly exceptional in all ways. Others have ranged from great all the way to downright awful. That's to be expected with such a large sample size of physicians.

Treating a rare disease like Wegener's is unbelievably difficult, and I have a pretty tough case according to my doctors. Even my lousiest of lousy doctors from the past acknowledged the complexity of treating me.

All except one.

Ah, but that statement implies he was a doctor and not just someone pretending to be one, doesn't it?

I've kept a particular chapter of my life off this blog. The individual I'm about to discuss lives a dark, mean life-- one seeped in the cruel desire to knowingly inflict harm. I've wanted to protect my readers from his nastiness. I'm only posting it now because 1) I fear for others who are being deceived by him and 2) he's now decided to post lies about me on his blog and on Twitter.

I don't like bullies. Never have. I'm just not the cowering type. I have been known to be overly trusting, though, and have a very hard time believing that someone could actually want to hurt and deceive me. And due to that, I was totally blind-sided.

So (sigh) here goes... In late 2007, a man who calls himself Tenpa Rinpoche contacted one of our monks in Mongolia. He claimed to be a reincarnated lama-- a tulku-- who blogged about Jetsunma and our temple in a favorable way. (Red Flag #1--Hi, I'm a lama you've never heard of) In Tibetan Buddhism, tulkus are treated with great respect. "Tenpa Rinpoche" claimed that his recognition as an American tulku was kept secret. (Red Flag #2--We had never heard of any other Tulku whose recognition was kept secret) He told us which authentic Lamas recognized him, and we took him at his word. (Red Flag #3-- All the Lamas he listed were conveniently dead and couldn't attest to or deny his claim.) We didn't ask to see his credentials/ official recognition documents.

He also told us he was a physician trained as a Tibetan Medical Doctor-- a wholistic approach similar to Chinese Medicine. I have deep respect for Tibetan Medicine, knowing the complex training true practitioners must undergo, as well as its curative and restorative powers.

The man who calls himself Tenpa Rinpoche also told us he had Stage IV lung cancer and didn't have long to live. He claimed to be living alone in the California desert without proper medical care or the ability to care for himself. Jetsunma, with ceaseless compassion, invited him to join her at our Arizona retreat land called Dakini Valley.

While they were there, I had a dream about him in which he helped me. The next day I told another monk about the dream. He passed the letter on to "Tenpa Rinpoche," who said he could definitely help me, and I should come to Dakini Valley right away.

At that point in time, I had been on oxygen for 1.5 years and was extremely debilitated. The initial course of treatment had failed and I'd had a non-stop stream of complications-- some life-threatening. I had a couple of good doctors, but even they were stumped as to what to do next, as they were not specialists in treating Wegener's. I hadn't been able to return to work in 1.5 yrs and couldn't even walk my dogs. I was in despair. The idea of a Tibetan Medicine Doctor who was also a tulku treating me was a ray of hope.

I went to see him within a couple of days. Thankfully-- and I cannot say "thankfully" with enough emphasis-- Jetsunma was there with me the whole time. He pretended to read my pulses and scolded me quite harshly for taking chemo, even though it is the standard of care for treating Wegener's. He gave me traditional Tibetan medicine which is quite famous for clearing the subtle energies of the body. It is so powerful that even a dying person would feel better to some degree. He assured me that it wouldn't interfere with my medications, though he mocked me for continuing to take them.

I followed his instructions over the course of the next 3 weeks, and I did notice an improvement in my energy and strength. I had sat in the presence of my Lama that entire day-- at times enveloped in her arms as she consoled me. It is an immeasurable blessing to spend time with one's Lama. A pure Lama such as Jetsunma can remove many obstacles to one's health.

I believed "Tenpa Rinpoche's" claims to be a real Tulku and a real physician, so I wrote him and thanked him profusely for what I thought were his blessings.

Within a couple months however, it was clear that my health was seriously declining. I was extremely short of breath, weak and in excruciating pain. All the symptoms that indicated a major Wegener's flare. By then, our sangha had taken "Tenpa Rinpoche" into a sangha member's home and were providing him with 24-hour care. We thought he was dying. He heard that I was in bad shape and offered to treat me again.

I explained that the increased energy and strength had been temporary and that I was declining rapidly. He again pretended to read my pulses. Then he told me I was "perfectly healthy" and "cured." When I expressed my doubts, he made the remarkable claim that I was faking my illness and should be back at work instead of "wasting [his] time." I could barely walk 5 feet unassisted. He also told me to stop taking my medications-- that they were weakening me and convincing me I was still sick.

Even through the cloud of pain, I realized he was wrong. I knew I'd die if I went off the meds. I stood on the brink of death and had the good sense to take a step back.

Within a few weeks, "Tenpa Rinpoche" asked me to open a wholistic practice with him-- I as a chiropractor and he as a Tibetan Medical Doctor. Then he proceeded to explain what kind of a practice he envisioned, which is when I felt the floor fall out below me. He said we'd first find a lawyer who would agree to send us Personal Injury and Worker's Comp cases that we could "bilk for money." He explained that my Chiropractic license would allow us to bill insurance. He said, "I'll meet with the lawyer alone and we'll have us a talk. That's a conversation you don't want to know about, believe me." I told him that my office was a 100% cash practice (ie no insurance), a sweet family practice that specialized in prenatal and pediatric care. I never did PI or WC because I don't like it. (You often have to deal with sleazy lawyers, bought-off doctors and malingering patients.) He replied "Those days are over." I became nauseous, my knees felt weak and I felt faint. I have strong ethics and the thought of working like this was inconceivable to me.

I was nowhere near being able to work and he was (I believed) a dying man, so I allowed him to talk about this imaginary practice over the course of the next couple weeks. He told me my opposition to the idea was because I had "concepts" about the way I practiced, and those needed to be cut. This is another way he hooked me into believing him-- by preying on my desire to change.

Nothing came of it, and within a couple months the jig was up, as they say.

In that time, we discovered his real identity is William Cassidy. He's neither a tulku nor a physician, and he certainly doesn't have lung cancer. Actually, he's a convicted felon who was in violation of his probation at the time. Before he darkened our doorstep, William Cassidy had been charged with raping his wife, first-degree arson and attempted battery constituting domestic violence. He had pleaded guilty to arson and attempted battery and was released on probation after serving part of his sentence in Nevada. When it was discovered that he had violated the terms of his probation, it was revoked and he was returned to prison to serve out his remaining sentence.

By the time he was released, he was one angry guy. He had stolen financial records from our Buddhist organization while we were caring for him and didn't like that we called him on it. Because of all this, and because we had discovered his true identity, he began a campaign to defame my Lama, our organization, our practitioners, the monks and nuns, you name it. He has used his blog to spread hatred and lies. It's been a pretty ugly couple of years. You can read about the rest of it here.

Yesterday on Twitter someone referred to him as "Tenpa Rinpoche." They seemed to think he was really a tulku, so I told them about his real identity. Today he wrote a pretty horrific blog about me as a result.

He claims that I was "up and running in [my] medical practice" the last time he saw me (in early 2008). That's all news to me! For one, I'm not a medical doctor, I'm a chiropractor. So I had a Chiropractic practice, not a medical one. That's not just a technicality, it's a matter of training and licensing. Furthermore, all of my patients, friends, sangha members and physicians know that I haven't been able to return to work since I was diagnosed in June, 2006. I moved to Maryland a year ago and am still nowhere near being able to work.

He claims that I "gleefully explained all the ways it is possible to cheat insurance companies." I guess when he decided to lie, he forgot that I never dealt with insurance. I'd have no idea how to work with them, much less deceive them.

He claims that insurance companies are "cheating [me]" since I moved to Maryland. I have no idea what this means. My insurance is paying for my medical treatment with no arguments. I champion health care reform because everyone deserves the excellent coverage that I have.

He also spends a little time in familiar, cruel territory--telling me my Lama is harmful to me, that I've broken my vows, that my speaking the truth about him is "unseemly," that my lungs and kidneys are "collapsing," that I don't have long to live, and that I will be reborn as a two-headed snake.

Golly.

Though it feels like it's soiling my blog to post it, I'm copying his entire post here for you to read.

Holy (Sweet) Not Always

(The post begins with a giant picture of a real two-headed snake.)

Here is a letter that I received almost two years ago to the day:

Dear Tulku Tenpa Rinpoche,

I must apologize for interrupting what I hope is still a beautiful day in California. I hope you are doing well, finding restoration in the ocean air. I lived in southern California for some time, spent a lot of time on the beach. Even today I find that remembering the waves washing in and out-- the way they swell out of nowhere, crash thunderously, and the impossibly tiny fizzy sound produced as the last bit of water is drawn back from the sand--brings a cleansing kind of energy to my mind. And though your mind has no need of cleansing, may it be the perfect medicine for your body.

I am not a gifted writer, so I recognize a complete lack of segue here.... please forgive me. I wanted to give you an update on how I'm doing. With a few ups and downs, I feel just great! There was an immediate sparkle back in my eyes. I could call it "chi" or "life force" or my "giddy-up," but whatever it is, I feel alive again. I have been shedding the skin of a sick person-- most happy to be leaving it behind-- and remembering what vitality feels like. I've even had actual dreams of doing physical activities I used to enjoy. My mental clarity is coming back, too. In all, I feel quite like I'm rising out of a deep sleep (maybe more like a coma!).

I'm doing my best to receive your many blessings, to really work with what you told me and change. (While it can sometimes be a negative habitual tendency, I am quite tenacious when given a challenge!) Rinpoche, I am so grateful to have received such a blessing. Even my puny mind can recognize some part of the enormity of what you did for me. The tenderness with which you and Jetsunma cared for me still makes me cry. I am still with you, with Jetsunma, as though none of us have left that room. When you have a moment, please guide me as to where to go from here.

More importantly, though, please take care and nurture yourself back to excellent health. I make this plea to you on behalf of all sentient beings : Please stay. Please remain strong. Please hold back the darkness and help us find our way out.

Much love,

(signed)

Sedona, Arizona

With that thought in mind, it is of singular interest to me when I see that same individual -- now in Maryland -- tweeting and posting all sorts of ridiculous nonsense, hither and yon. So, since the above letter contains the specific request, "guide me as to where to go from here," I do believe I will respond.

Dear Suffering Human Being In Samsara:

The best place to go from here is examination of the completely developed result of the actions your cohort has ordered you to perform.

You have engaged in verbally abusing someone. "Verbal abuse" is defined by a specific person who is addressed, harsh speech to that person, and that person's resultant discomfort. The types of verbal abuse are described as (1) public speech that exposes someone's faults, (2) indirect speech that wounds someone, and (3) private speech that wounds someone. The completely developed result of verbal abuse is rebirth as a sentient being in hell. If born as a human, the result is to enjoy engaging in harsh speech. One will hear unpleasant words and sounds. One will be constantly criticized. Even if one tries to make amends, this will become the cause of further criticism. The environment will be hot and dry, with numerous diseases, and poor water.

You have also directly engaged in divisive speech, defined by two people who are either neutral or in harmony, speech intended to divide the parties, and actual discord between the parties because of said speech. Divisive speech is described as (1) public speech, directly addressed to the parties, (2) indirect speech, and (3) private speech. The completely developed result of divisive speech is rebirth as a sentient being in hell. If born as a human, the result will be to enjoy discord, and to live an exceedingly lonely life. There will be numerous family quarrels, and one's family will be broken. The environment will be inhospitable, and travel will be difficult.

Engaging in verbal abuse and divisive speech is unseemly conduct for someone who has taken vows as a nun. It is made even more unseemly when one has taken vows as a physician, and finally, it approaches the level of mindlessly reckless behavior when one is as close to death as you are.

Indeed, when I encounter someone who professes to keep the vows of a Buddhist nun, and those of a physician, who openly and notoriously engages in verbal abuse and divisive speech -- even to the extent of addressing such speech to the Nirmanakaya -- I am left with the impression that this person runs a very real danger of being reborn as a two-headed snake.

So, what to do? At this point, it is not enough to refrain from such unwholesome conduct, nor is it enough to practice the opposite, wholesome conduct. Even confession has its limitations -- after all, we are not Catholics here.

Permit me to suggest that what might be enough is to carefully examine the view that permits such speech to take place, albeit in a fashion that transcends care and examination.

It is an interesting situation, don't you think? Your precious teacher, incapable of fault, literally brings you to me. She tells you to believe one version of reality. You have one sort of view at this juncture, and with a kind of shorthand, we will call this your "positive" view. You believe you have been helped, and helped by a mighty power.

Subsequently, your precious teacher, incapable of fault, literally tears you away from me. She tells you to believe another, opposite version of reality. You have another sort of view at this juncture, which we will call your "negative" view. You believe you have been harmed, and harmed by a mighty power.

Lets take your precious teacher, incapable of fault, out of this equation for a moment, shall we? Lets concentrate on you.

What determines your "positive" and "negative" views? On what do you base your beliefs? If your views are based on the fallacy of whatever people tell you, and your beliefs based on your views, then your conduct, which is based on such beliefs, is also fallacious, is it not? What is the point in connecting view and conduct?

Speaking in terms of Wegener's granulomatosis, which will soon kill you unless you wake up, what determines your "hot" days and "cold" days? In strict Tibetan medical terms, the disease is said to have its ultimate origin in the nexus of attachment and aversion. If this disease arises in dualism, and your relationship with this disease is governed by dualism, then any reinforcement of dualistic thinking will accomplish precisely what?

Interesting to me that you were up and practicing medicine when last I saw you, gleefully explaining to me all the ways in which it is possible to cheat insurance companies. Interesting to me that when you moved back to Maryland, you were the one being practiced upon, and the insurance companies were cheating you.

Before your kidneys and lungs collapse, why not collapse the boundaries between your positives, negatives, help, harm, hot, and cold, and come to some understanding of the nature of your own mind?

If today, you tell the world that you love me, and that I have helped you, that is part of your affliction and has no effect upon me. If today, you tell the world that you hate me, and that I have harmed you, that is part of your affliction, and has no effect upon me. Fabrication has no effect on anything that just simply is.

This fabricated love and hate spring from the same fabricated water -- Lake Subject-Object -- that drowns you in fabricated samsara and drowns you in your fabricated illness. Many, many times I already tell you: don't swim in mirages!

Every day, since the day I first heard of you -- since your cohorts sent me your photograph, which I still have -- every single day since then, no matter where I was or what I was doing, I have dedicated twenty-one recitations of the Medicine Buddha mantra exclusively to your well-being.

This, I will continue to do... as you say... as though none of us have left that room.

Yours in the Dharma,

Tenpa

So there we have it. Rainstorms, and cyclones, and clouds come and go through the sky. Stars fall through the sky, and planets move through the sky, but the sky is always the sky. None of these things change or in any way alter the sky's essential nature. Ultimately, this is true, although conventionally speaking, it is best to discourage rebirth as a two-headed snake if at all possible. The opportunity to hear the dharma in such circumstances seems almost as rare as human rebirth.

Almost.

William Cassidy spends his days spewing hatred, venom and deceit into a world that is already overflowing with suffering. He creates and fights imaginary demons on his blog, convincing himself of his intellectual superiority.

It must consume hours of his life every single day. Maybe they don't have good tv reception where he lives?

For Kyler

Forgive me if this post is choppy, poorly written or seems hastily put together. It's midnight and I've just learned about a 5 year-old boy in New Jersey named Kyler VanNocker who urgently needs your help.

When Kyler was 2-1/2 years old he was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma, a rare childhood cancer. He was in remission for roughly a year. Recently his parents learned that the cancer has returned with a vengeance. There's only one treatment option left for Kyler, but his insurance refuses to cover it, not because it's overly expensive, but because of a technicality-- it's in clinical trial. In fact, all the standard of care treatments for neuroblastoma are clinical trials. His insurance would rather let him die than pay for the only chance he has at survival.

Thankfully, the parents of kids with neuroblastoma watch over each other. A couple of the moms have taken the matter into their own hands and are asking everyone who learns about Kyler to send $1 to his family and spread the word.

If you'd like to help save Kyler's life, you can send your donation to :

Paul and Maria VanNocker
115 East Franklin Ave
Edgewater Park, New Jersey 08010

The Philadelphia Daily News did a story on Kyler. Here it is, in case the link expires.

Insurance vs. Kyler

By Ronnie Polaneczky
Philadelphia Daily News

Daily News Columnist

LOOKING at Kyler VanNocker, whose fifth birthday was Monday, it's impossible to fathom that he could die from the disease he's battling.

He's bright-eyed and energetic as he tears around the house he shares in Edgewater Park, N.J., with his parents, Paul and Maria, and siblings Kaden, 6, and Anelise, 3. He's just as active at pre-school, where he's learning his numbers and the alphabet.

But the truth is, Kyler has neuroblastoma, a rare and deadly form of childhood cancer that attacks the nervous system, creating tumors throughout the body. Diagnosed at 2 1/2, he endured more than a year of treatment at both St. Christopher's Hospital for Children and at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

His longest hospital stay lasted almost seven months, during which he nearly died twice from complications that caused kidney failure, as well as heart, lung and liver disease. Finally, he went into remission in September 2008 and reveled in a healthy year blessed with the mundane miracles of childhood.

And Paul and Maria allowed themselves to exhale.

Ten weeks ago, routine follow-up tests indicated that Kyler's cancer had returned. This time, his treatment options are few, since recurrent neuroblastoma brings with it an entirely different set of medical considerations than the ones associated with an initial diagnosis.

Kyler's CHOP oncologist, Stephan Grupp, says that Kyler needs a treatment called MIBG therapy, in which a radioactive drug, delivered intravenously, travels to tumor sites, slamming them with radiation.

Depending on how Kyler responds, he may need up to three rounds of MIBG to knock his cancer back into remission.

MIBG is "less toxic than chemotherapy, and is usually tolerated well by patients," says Grupp, a world expert in neuroblastoma, thanks to CHOP's status as a national referral center for kids with the rare disease. MIBG therapy is the only effective treatment available to Kyler at this stage of his illness. Without it, he won't live to see his sixth birthday.

Unbelievably, Kyler's insurance carrier, Harrisburg-based HealthAmerica, has denied coverage for the treatment, which it considers "investigational/experimental" because there is "inadequate evidence in the peer-reviewed published clinical literature regarding its effectiveness."

The therapy is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, another criterion that HealthAmerica requires.

"It's considered experimental because not enough kids with recurring neuroblastoma live long enough" to become candidates for MIBG, says Paul VanNocker, 44, a heavy-industrial-equipment salesman (Maria, 37, is a homemaker). "So, really, all treatment at this stage of Kyler's disease is considered experimental."

Only about 650 children in the United States are diagnosed each year with neuroblastoma. Half of them, including Kyler, have the most lethal form of the disease. So it's tough to study a large enough cohort of patients like Kyler to yield research results that HealthAmerica might consider valid.

But that doesn't mean MIBG is ineffective.

"It's considered the standard of care in Europe and the United States for recurrent neuroblastoma," says Grupp. "It's not an unproven treatment with no basis in medical science. Actually, the results are often very good."

Paul VanNocker appealed HealthAmerica's decision, which once again denied MIBG.

"They have a plan for Kyler," says Paul angrily. "Their plan is for him to die."

HealthAmerica spokeswoman Kendall Marcocci told me that she was not permitted to divulge the amount of money the company has paid so far for Kyler's treatment, but Paul VanNocker says that the figure is between $1.6 million and $1.8 million. He was not sure what Kyler's MIBG therapy would cost, since it's unclear how many MIBG treatments Kyler might require, but Grupp says that the treatment is actually less expensive than other cancer therapies.

Which seems to support Marcocci's contention that HealthAmerica has declined Kyler's MIBG therapy not because of its cost, but because of its experimental nature. Marcocci wouldn't discuss specifics of Kyler's case but said the company isn't in the business of treating patients; it instead applies a "medical-based-evidence approach" to determining whether a requested treatment is a covered benefit. Except that, by denying the only effective treatment available to Kyler, HealthAmerica has usurped the opinion of the doctor who knows what Kyler needs to survive.

Sorry, but that absolutely puts the company in the business of treating patients.

I have to say, when I hear people fret that a public insurance option would take medical decisions out of doctors' hands and place them in the mitts of bloodless bureaucrats, I have to scratch my head.

Do they not understand that bloodless bureaucrats are already in control? And that the "death panels" everyone fears already exist in the insurance industry?

To deny Kyler coverage is to prescribe his death.

Last week, CHOP agreed to proceed with Kyler's first MIBG procedure, assuming that Medi-caid will pick up the tab. He withstood the procedure well and is back at school, happy to be among his playmates again.

If Medicaid doesn't come through, the VanNockers have no savings to pay for additional MIBG procedures that Kyler might need to stay alive, because the out-of-pocket costs associated with Kyler's illness have left them bankrupt. Paul estimates that he and Maria have spent "well over $60,000" of their own money - exhausting cash savings, IRAs and almost every asset but their home to pay expenses not covered by insurance.

"If Kyler can't have MIBG, he will have to enter hospice care," says Paul. "He'll have a good month, and then he will lose the ability to walk. Then he will become bedridden. And then he will die a slow, agonizing death."

MIBG is the only option to postpone that terrible possibility for as long as possible.

But the death panel's decision, it seems, is final.

Coming Home from the Graveyard

This morning filmmaker and author Michael Moore wrote an Open Letter for President Obama regarding Afghanistan-- a brilliantly written piece that I've copied below. Increasing troops in Afghanistan is not what I voted for--not what any Obama supporter I know voted for. Please take action as he indicates at the end of his article.

November 30th, 2009 3:44 AM

An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That's the way General Washington insisted it must be. That's what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. "You're fired!," said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in' hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea -- "Let's invade Afghanistan!" Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.

There's a reason they don't call Afghanistan the "Garden State" (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan's nickname is the "Graveyard of Empires." If you don't believe it, give the British a call. I'd have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev's number though. It's + 41 22 789 1662. I'm sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you're about to commit.

With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the "war president." Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line -- and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.

Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn't have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.

I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush's Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.

Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you're doing it so you can "end the war") will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you've said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone -- and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout "tea bag!"

Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.

We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can't take it anymore. We can't take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of "landslide victory" don't you understand?

Don't be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn't be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can't change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.

The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can't be won over by abandoning the rest of us.

President Obama, it's time to come home. Ask your neighbors in Chicago and the parents of the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan. Do you think they will say, "No, we don't need health care, we don't need jobs, we don't need homes. You go on ahead, Mr. President, and send our wealth and our sons and daughters overseas, 'cause we don't need them, either."

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that's what they'd do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.

All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam "might" be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish -- the full terror of which we scarcely know.

When we elected you we didn't expect miracles. We didn't even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn't even function as a nation and never, ever has.

Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God's sake, stop.

Tonight we still have hope.

Tomorrow, we shall see. The ball is in your court. You DON'T have to do this. You can be a profile in courage. You can be your mother's son.

We're counting on you.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. There's still time to have your voice heard. Call the White House at 202-456-1111 or email the President.

Bad Day at the Mall?

I know, I know. You're slumped in your chair pouting because by the time you got there, all the really cool stuff had already been swooped up at the mall.

Well, here's something to take the slump away-- an amazing music video put together by sangha brother Chris (aka Bowdawg). The music is Jetsunma's, and the devotion and creativity is pure Chris.

Two Black Friday Gifts for You

In the short time that I've used it, I've learned that Twitter is an amazing way to spread love and compassion throughout the world. Today I received two Tweets that I wanted to share with you.

The first is from Jetsunma-- a video of a guided meditation she taught in 1995.



Whenever we engage in meritorious activity such as meditation, it's appropriate to dedicate the merit to others. How perfect that Ani Palmo Tweeted a dedication prayer soon after!

Jetsunma taught this dedication prayer to the children at our temple many years ago, but like all her teachings to children, this one ain't just for the kiddies.

Children's Dedication Prayer

I dedicate this merit to the liberation and salvation of all sentient beings.
May I come to know them all as my family,
and may I save them from suffering in this
and every future lifetime.
May all sentient beings no longer suffer.
May I bring them food to eat,
clothing to keep them warm,
houses to make them safe,
and love to make them strong.
In this way, may all my mothers and fathers be happy
and practice Dharma until they are all free.
~ Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Tears for Nepal

(Photo copied from the Facebook page of Tibetan Volunteers for Animals)

The past couple days were especially dark days on our tiny planet. In southern Nepal a huge Hindu celebration took place, in which half a million animals were ritually slaughtered to appease the goddess Gadhimai.

People and organizations from all over the world tried in vain to stop the Gadhimai sacrifice, known as the largest animal sacrifice in the world. They begged and petitioned the Nepalese government to intervene. They suggested alternatives to the slaughter, like offering flowers, incense or even food. Anything but innocent lives. Not wanting to interfere with religious practices, the government allowed the sacrifice to proceed.

Though this enormous sacrifice occurs every 5 years, many are wondering why it never received such press before. It's doubtful that it will ever fall into anonymity again.

A Nepalese man named Jagdish Aarohi wrote this appeal in a Republica Op-ed piece :

Twenty years ago, I first visited Gadhimai Jatra, a festival that is held every five years in my native Bara district. I was interested in photography and wanted to take some good pictures of Nepal’s indigenous culture. I did not fulfill my mission. Instead, I became a tireless campaigner for the abolishment of animal sacrifice.

I was not born a campaigner. I was born in Kalaiya, headquarters of Bara, in a vegetarian, quiet, middle-class farming family. I mainly worked as a farmer but enjoyed doing a little bit of social work in my free time. I never thought I would be the one to carry placards and distribute leaflet to devotees at the world’s largest killing fields of sacrificial beasts.

The first thing I witnessed at Gadhimai was the killing of five different kinds of animals as in panchabali: Buffaloes, goats, pigs, roosters and rats. The animals’ throats are slit with a knife. It is not done quickly. The animals die a slow and extremely cruel, violent death while the priests sprinkle the blood across the image of the deity and its surroundings. Legend has it that the longer it takes for the animal to die, the happier the goddess will be.

The whole affair stunned and nauseated me. I never knew that such kind of cruelty existed. But the worst was yet to come. Right after the completion of panchabali sacrifice comes the buffaloes’ turn. Drunken slaughterers—they are made to drink as a sane person cannot do such a task—enter the fenced yard where around 20,000 buffaloes are kept. Wielding swords, axe and khukuris, the men start randomly hacking the buffaloes’ necks.

The sword-bearers cannot chop off the buffaloes´ heads at one go because of the thick size of its necks. To make their task easier, the hackers first cut the buffaloes’ hind legs after which the animal falls on the ground. They then start hacking the neck until the head is separated from the body. It takes 20 to 25 swing of the sword to annihilate a big buffalo. The suffering the animals go through is unimaginable.

After witnessing the Gadhimai carnage, I started having terrible nightmares. I would see blood wherever I turned to look.

After I regained my senses, I vowed to campaign against such killings at all cost. Come what may, I would not give up. True to my vow, I have been campaigning and voluntarily working to improve the conditions of animals for the past 15 years.

If the Gadhimai organizers have their way, one can encounter the horrendous scenes on November 24 and 25. This time, the organizers want to set a world record by killing half a million animals. The unfortunate animals will include 20,000 buffaloes, goats, pigs, chickens, ducks and pigeons as well as mice and rats. According to the rules of the Gadhimai festival, all creatures that are brought here must be killed within two days.

The last Gadhimai festival held in 2004 saw 20,000 buffaloes sacrificed. Interestingly, the Gadhimai committee keeps the record of the number of sacrificial buffaloes because the devotees have to pay to get their animals beheaded. This year, the committee expects this number to cross the 25,000 mark. The committee, however, does not keep records of other animals or birds because of the sheer overwhelming numbers.

No sane person can endure such barbaric killings. But that is not all. Three to four days after the massacre, people start fleeing the Gadhimai venue because of the nauseating smell that starts to emit. Cars, rickshaws and cyclist start taking alternative routes. It is the people living in nearby localities who suffer the most. While the temple area turns into a breeding ground for disease, many fall sick. It takes months for the smell to go away.

I think there is hardly any other country that can be compared with Nepal when it comes to gruesome killings and bloodshed of animals. The extreme cruelty has been going on unabated. There are many other smaller-scale festivals like Gadhimai where panchabali and mass sacrifice is practiced. These are not even reported in the media....

...Why is the civil society keeping mum about the issue? Where are the role models who stop animal sacrifice in their own family, clan or neighborhood? Should we let our leaders get away by letting them say: ‘Gadhimai is too sensitive an issue to address’?

Animals cannot speak for themselves. Until now, it has been the priests speaking for them: Bring more, kill more animals. Few seem to realize that the Gadhimai organizers plan to raise millions through tenders and beheading fees. Animal sacrifice is a big business. For how long will we remain mute and let this inhuman killings in the name of religion continue?

Some of you might know that Jetsunma is now on Twitter. As we learned about the sacrifice, she began a string of Tweets inviting everyone to join us in prayers and commenting on the utter cruelty of such a festival. Her last few Tweets about it yesterday :

Now that all the thousands of animals have been murdered in Nepal, do the people feel better? Happier? Blessed? What ever happened to Karma?

What about the terrible suffering of 500,000 animals! Does their suffering make anyone a better person? Will the people and the land benefit?

How can purposefully causing suffering help anyone? Here in US we have horrific animal suffering too. Neglected, abused;such suffering!

A reasonable or compassionate person of ANY faith must be appalled! I think the skies WEEP for sorrow at the sight of horror inflicted!

As Buddhists, we pray for all involved. Certainly the animals have suffered unimaginable pain and terror. We also consider the horrific karma created by the people involved--those who did the killing, those who encouraged or permitted it, those who used the killings to raise money, those who offered their animals, those who did not rise in opposition, those who enjoyed themselves, those who felt satisfaction. We consider the children who were permanently scarred by witnessing such atrocities.

Karma is exacting. To whatever degree they participated, they have created the karma to experience the same exact suffering as they inflicted. It may not be in this lifetime. And that is the biggest obstacle. For if any of us immediately experienced the karma we created, atrocities like this would never, ever take place. Ultimately this 2-day celebration will result in eons of suffering--- in the perpetuation of the karmic interplay between killer and victim. Just as war cannot bring about peace, neither can slaughter bring about blessings.

May all such karmic cycles end for all beings.

Wow!

This is just hilarious.

Pea Soup for Brains

I apologize for not having written much lately. I think the prednisone is affecting the part of my brain where creativity usually percolates. Lately it feels more like it's sputtering, like when you heat up split pea soup.

Brains are so...complicated. Only certain areas seem to be involved. I can focus fairly well and just finished reading a long novel (which kind of stunk but I hung in there for the absolute worst ending ever). But when it comes to creating something--gathering together the bits and pieces of a story I have in mind and stitching them together into sentences, paragraphs and a post-- it just isn't happening.

A few weeks ago when the prednisone dose was really high, my mind was like being in one of those game show booths filled with money when they turn on the fan. I couldn't grab hold of any thought for very long.

This is different. This is driving in the fog. You can see parts of the road, but it's the parts you can't see that unnerve you. (Wait a sec. "Unnerved" is too dramatic a word to describe how I feel. Something between "unnerved" and "unfazed" is what I'm looking for. Ugh, I'm just not finding the right word in my head. Where did all the words go?)

See what I mean?

Veteran's Day Prayer

With gratitude for those who have risked their lives
hoping to protect others
I pray
for all existing wars to end
for all new wars to be averted
for all people to know peace
in their minds
in their hearts
and in every fiber of their being

There never was a good war or a bad peace.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Republicans on Charade

Today I watched this MSNBC.com video of somber, "concerned" Republicans in the House of Representatives taking pot-shots at the Democrat's health care reform bill while trying to bolster support for the "Hey We Got One, Too!" Republican bill. They were unconvincing, to say the least.

Rep. Mike Pense tried his best to look gravely concerned. He was near tears as he described an upcoming meeting with WWII veterans, telling how he'd make sure to spend time shaking every hand and thank them for risking their lives for protecting our freedom. He tried to link that somehow to Democrats who might vote with Republicans. (I don't get the connection. And given their abysmal track record with veteran's affairs, I really don't think Republicans should be bringing up the subject.)

Rep John Boehner spent the most time talking. I was curious about his voting record on health issues and looked it up on Project Vote Smart :

2008 Supported the interests of the Academy of General Dentistry 0%

2007-2008 Supported the interests of the National Breast Cancer Coalition 25%

2007-2008 St. Joseph Health System gave Rep. Boehner a grade of 0.

2007-2008 Supported the interests of the The Children's Health Fund 20%

2007 Supported the interests of the Alliance for Headache Disorders Advocacy 50%

2007 Supported the interests of the American Academy of Family Physicians 0%

2007 Supported the interests of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology 0%

2007 Supported the interests of the Assoc. of University Centers on Disabilities 0%

2007 Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance gave Rep. Boehner a rating of 50.

2007 Supported the interests of the League of Women Voters 0%

2007 On the votes that The Children's Health Fund considered to be the most important, Rep. Boehner voted their preferred position 0% of the time.

OpenSecrets.org reports that in this last election cycle Rep. Boehner received $445,000 from the health care industry-- 88% of it from Health Insurance and Pharmaceutical Manufacturers. In fact, during this same period, Rep. Boehner was the #2 Top Recipient of Contributions from the Pharmaceutical Industry in the entire House of Representatives.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor also chimed in, so I took a look at his voting record as well :

2008 Supported the interests of the Academy of General Dentistry 0%

2007-2008 Supported the interests of the National Breast Cancer Coalition 0%

2007-2008 St. Joseph Health System gave Rep. Cantor a grade of 8.

2007-2008 Supported the interests of the The Children's Health Fund 30%

2007 Supported the interests of the Academy of General Dentistry 0%

2007 Supported the interests of the Alliance for Headache Disorders Advocacy 100%

2007 Supported the interests of the American Academy of Family Physicians 0%

2007 Supported the interests of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology 0%

2007 Supported the interests of the Assoc. of University Centers on Disabilities 0%

2007 Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance gave Rep. Cantor a rating of 50.

2007 Supported the interests of the League of Women Voters 20%

2007 On the votes that The Children's Health Fund considered to be the most important, Rep. Cantor voted their preferred position 0% of the time.

Rep. Cantor accepted $341,000 from the health insurance industry for his last election--the second largest industry to support his campaign.

At the end of the charade, when they had grown tired of feigning outrage and promising to protect Americans, Rep. Boehner said, "The American people do not want this." Rep. Boehner, you are absolutely right. We don't.

Life at 30,000 Feet

Wegener's and the drugs used to treat it are like flying into a big cloud. You lose all sense of direction, often not having any idea if you're getting better or worse. All the usual visual cues are gone, and it can be very disorienting. You have to rely on flight instruments-- diagnostic indicators in the case of Weg's-- knowing full well they're often not reliable. And you can be flying along just fine and suddenly hit turbulence. It's invisible-- no way to brace yourself ahead of time, no way to guess when it might end. Sometimes a suitcase falls out of the overhead bin and hits you on the head, too.

This is an ongoing issue with Wegener's. I've gotten better at being comfortable with uncertainty. Better. Not expert.

A few weeks ago I flew straight into a new cloud. The chemo I was on for four months failed to control the Weg's and almost killed me in the process. That was a cloud I've flown into before, though. (I knew it was weakening me. Thankfully my awesome Hopkins doc agreed and issued a parachute before the plane went into a tailspin.)

The new cloud is a new drug--Rituximab, for those in the know. It's a genetically-engineered antibody. Unlike all the other drugs I've been on, I have no idea how to work with this one. Symptoms (or side effects, who can tell?) flare up and recede without warning, and I generally feel like a pile of suitcases has fallen on top of me. I daydream about running for the emergency exit, sliding down the big, inflatable slidy thing and shouting, "I'm out! I'm out!"

I know so many Weggies and other people who also live in the clouds of incurable and/or unpredictable disease. So many of them have it far worse than me. Please say a prayer for them, that all may see sunny skies again.

Life and Death, Part 4

The final part to Keith Olbermann's "Special Comment" :

So far we've covered our collective unwillingness to admit that this isn't a health care debate. We are talking, ultimately, about pain, and life and death. I've recapped my own father's trip through our health care system. And we've looked at the horrible statistics that this country is 19th world-wide in preventable deaths, worse than Portugal. And how, if the current gap between the insured and the uninsured continues to grow, at this pace, by the year 2020, the uninsured will be 53 percent more likely to die than will the insured, a number that matches exactly, the increased mortality rate for the poor in the England of Charles Dickens.

What do we do?

I do not know who the two women were, yet they are indelibly burned into my memory. They stood outside, on a crisp New York morning last week, middle-aged, short, looking more than a little weary. They were wearing lab coats, and they were leaning against what those coats told me was their place of employment, the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Research Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

The women in the cancer researcher's lab coats were smoking cigarettes. I have seen a lot of startling things in my more-than-40 days and 40 nights alongside my ailing father inside this nation's fractured health care system, but nothing seemed to better symbolize the futility, the ram-your-head-against-a-wall futility, of this gigantic medical entity that we have created, that seems to have not only broken free from human control, but has, to some great measure, enslaved us.

Twenty-three stories tall, built partly with a 100-million dollar gift from the publisher of the New York Daily News, and U-S News Magazine, and two of the cancer researchers are standing in front smoking. That isn't the only picture that haunts my dreams.

A man walking out of another hospital, casual, purposeful, in control. The red stitches on the left side of his shaved head outlining a space as big as a large potato and at least an inch higher than the rest of his skull. I don't know if he was getting better or he was getting worse. I don't know if he had gotten good news or bad. I don't know if tonight he's healthy, or he's dead.

Months ago I got in a line at a drug store here. A woman ahead of me, obviously a familiar figure to the young pharmacist behind the counter, trying with mixed success to take in the gentle explanation. "You've maxed out your prescriptions on that insurance," the professional said slowly, "I can't give it to you." The customer shook her head in resignation.

It was like the Medieval Courts of Chancery, where if you were poor, you could take your lawsuit against the rich or the government, and hope when they picked the handful of cases to be heard, they'd somehow pick yours. If they didn't, you could try again next year, or, in some cases, every year for twenty next years.

The woman who needed the prescription spoke even more slowly than the pharmacist had. She had almost no hope in her voice. "Try the Cigna. Please." Another drug store, late at night. The pharmacist was a friend of mine. "You have to do something about this," he said as he handed me my refill and then reached for somebody else's prescription. "You see this? Anti-fungal cream. I just filled this. You know what this costs wholesale? Four dollars. You know what I have to sell it for? Two hundred and sixty-three dollars. I sell it for less and I get fired and maybe we lose our license."

And last Saturday, I leave my father, 24 hours after serious surgery that probably saved his life, serious enough that he's still under sedation and it'd be another 24 hours before he knew where he was or who I was, and yet I know he's okay because I've gotten him the best care in the world.

Literally, his surgeon is considered one of the top five guys in his field alive today and even I can tell he absolutely nailed the operation. And I know that after my father wakes up, when post-operative fluids get into his lungs, and he has trouble breathing, and he has to inhale after every word, they have a drug called Lasix that will start to drain the fluids and within five minutes he'll be breathing easier and within fifteen it'll be like nothing was ever wrong and this is just one of twenty drugs they can use on him not just to make him better long-term, but just as importantly and twice as imperatively, to stop his pain short-term.

And I marvel that we have come so far that you can barely take care of your health, like he has for 80 years, you can even be as dumb as those two women outside the cancer research center, smoking away and there is still a kaleidoscope of drugs and therapies and nurses and diagnosticians and psychiatrists and x-ray techs and surgeons, and all of them are capable of undoing the pain and curing the sickness and forestalling death.

And as I walk down the hallway from my Dad's room I allow myself a brief moment of selfishness. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm happy that I can spend whatever it takes to help my Dad get better, to keep him around, but maybe I can atone for that selfishness by making this case, tonight, to you, to whoever sees this, that we have to make these wonders of life and health and peace of mind and the control of pain available to everybody. And this is boiling in my brain and I take the shortcut out to the street, through the Emergency Room, and that's when I hear my name called.

And it's a man, roughly my age, and he looks worried to death. And I haven't seen him in 32 years. He was the nephew of the two brothers from Brooklyn who used to run the baseball card shows when we were both kids, and his uncles were the businessmen but he, like me, collected mostly for the fun of it, and it's amazing to see him again, joyous almost, for the sake of the continuity that the accident of us running into each other provides to us both. And he asks what I'm doing there and I tell him and he smiles because my father used to go to those card shows with me and Mike remembers him. And then I ask Mike why he's there.

"My daughter's in ICU," he says. "Three weeks now." The worried look returns to his face. "Lyme Disease. It's one thing, they knock it down, then it's another." There's a brief pause.

"Tomorrow I have to sell my farm. Did you know I had a farm?" I don't have to ask him why he's selling it. He then goes the next step. "Hey, you wanna buy my card collection? I've got some great stuff."

We must reform a system that lets my father get better care than yours does, or better care than Mike's daughter does, because by the accident of life, I make more money than he does, or my checkbook can hold out longer than his does, or yours does, as the bills come endlessly like some evil version of the enchanted water buckets in Fantasia.

The resources exist for your father and mine to get the same treatment to have the same chance and to both not have to lie there worried about whether or not they can afford to live!

Afford to live? Are we at that point? Are we so heartless that we let the rich live and the poor die and everybody in between become wracked with fear — fear not of disease but of Deductibles? Right now, right now, somebody's father is dying because they don't have that dollar to spend. And the means by which the playing field is leveled, and the costs that are just as inflated to me as they are to you are reduced, and the money that I don't have to spend any more on saving my father can go instead to saving your father that's called health care reform!

Death is the issue! How can we not be unified against death? I want my government helping my father to fight death! I want my government to spend taxpayer money to help my father fight to live and I want my government to spend taxpayer money to help your father fight to live! I want it to spend my money first on fighting death. Not on war! Not on banks! Not on high speed rail!

Spend our money, spend my money, first: on the chance to live!

And we must be unanimous in this, not to achieve some political triumph for one side against the other, but to save the man or the woman or the child who will be dead by morning, in this country, in this century, on our watch, because we are not spending that money tonight. I will not settle for a compromise bill and I will extend my hand to those who are scared of the inevitability of death but have been told they are scared of reform, those who have been exploited by the others, paid, or forced, to defend the status quo.

And we must recognize the enemy here: an enemy capable of perverting reform meant for you and me, into its own ATM that mandates only that more of us become the slaves to the insurance companies. The monied interests that have bled their customers white, and used their customers' money to buy the system, to buy the politicians, to buy the press, cannot now even be checked by the government.

Ordinarily the solution would be obvious: we would have to do it for the government. We would have to bring the insurance companies to their knees to organize, to pick a date, to say enough to, at a given hour, on a given day, to stop paying the premiums. An insurance strike.

But the insurance companies' stranglehold on us is so complete that lives would be risked, lives would be lost by the very act of protest. What parent could risk the cancellation of their child's insurance? What adult could risk giving his insurer the chance to claim that everything wrong with him on the day of an Insurance Strike was suddenly a pre-existing condition?

Even as the pay-outs move inexorably downwards, to being less than what you have paid in over the years, we are such serfs to the insurance companies that just to invoke the true spirit of the founding of this nation, is to give them more power, not less.

So I propose tonight one act with two purposes. I propose we, all of us, embrace the selfless individuals at the National Association of Free Clinics. You know them, they conducted the mass health care free clinic in Houston that served 1,500 people. I want a mass health care free clinic every week in the principle cities of the states of the six senators key to defeating a filibuster against health care reform in the Senate.

I want Sens. Lincoln and Pryor to see what health care poverty is really like in Little Rock. I want Sen. Baucus to see it in Butte. I want Sen. Ben Nelson to see it in Lincoln. I want Sen. Landro to see it in Baton Rouge. I want Sen. Reid to see it in Las Vegas.

I'll donate. How much will you donate? We enable thousands of our neighbors to have just a portion of the bounty of good health, and we make a statement to the politicians, forgive me, William Jennings Bryan, "you shall not press down upon the brow of America this crown of insurance, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of blue."

We think these events will be firmed up presently. You will be able to link from our website.

Trust me, I'll remind you. Because in one party, in one demographic, in one protest movement, we are all brothers and sisters. We are united in membership in the party that insists that every chance at life be afforded to every American seeking that chance.

We are united in membership in the party that insists on the right of everyone to the startling, transcendent blessings of the technological advance of medical science. We are united in membership in the party that is for life, that is against death, that is for lower premiums, that is against higher deductibles, that is for the peace of mind that can be provided only by the elimination of the fear that cost will decide whether we live or we die!

Because that's the point, isn't it? It is hard enough to recover, to fight past pain and to stave off death, if just for a season or a week or a day. It is so hard, that eventually for you, for me, for this president, for these blue dogs, for these protesters it is so hard to recover, that for all of us there will come a time when we will not recover. So, why are we making it harder?

Life and Death, Part 3

Keith Olbermann's "Special Comment" continues :

Dr. Albert Sabin was by his own description, pretty full of himself when he managed to temporarily stop the testing of the Salk Polio Vaccine after a bad batch sickened and killed some children early in the first tests in the 1950s. Sabin recounted this in a television interview in the '80s. He was weeping. He had believed he was doing right. He had convinced himself that the fact that Salk's vaccine, the so-called "inactivated polio vaccine," had been chosen for use instead of Sabin's own "live polio vaccine," was irrelevant to his efforts.

He was weeping as he recounted this, too. Ultimately there proved nothing wrong with Salk's vaccine, the one batch had been improperly handled and manufactured. But Sabin and others, delayed all further testing for weeks. Sabin was weeping as he remembered. In 1983, Sabin had contracted a rare disease of his own. Surgeons operated, relieved the intense pain and muscle weakness, and then ten days later it came back, ten times worse, enough for him to be yelling and crying, virtually all the time.

The pain, he said, "made me want to die." And Dr. Albert Sabin suddenly remembered that the stopping of the Salk Vaccine experiments had led to death. Death of children. More immediately, it had led to pain, physical and emotional, for the children, and the parents.

He said it had not occurred to him that the first thing doctors must do, the first thing a health care system must do, is stop pain. He vowed to spend the rest of his life relieving pain. His own searing agony, and paralysis, gradually, inexplicably, faded.

They moved my father this afternoon. I don't mean they moved him to another hospital. They moved him. In his bed. Into a different position. It was agony for him. Agony enough that he could barely see us. Agony enough that they had to give him all the pain-killer he could handle. Then he couldn't talk any more. Another moment when somebody like me wonders about what it would be like if he was going through that, and I was watching it, worrying about whether we could afford the pain-killers.

Or the doctors. Or that hospital. Or any treatment at all. And what kind of society we live in, where millions of us face questions like that, and politicians glibly talk about incremental improvements while they slowly re-shape new laws that are supposed to reduce the number of us faced with pain untreated due to money, into laws that take more money out of our pockets and give it to the corporations who are profiting off health care without contributing one second to the relief of pain or the curing of disease, the pimps of the equation, taking their 20 percent off the top the health insurance cartels.

How would our politicians react if there were millions Americans in pain, getting insufficient care to relieve that pain, because of interference from insurance corporations and those millions had just been injured in a natural disaster, or an attack on this country? How fast would they rush their portable podiums to the driveways outside the emergency rooms? How quickly would the money come?

You know the answer. And you know what the answer has been about rushing to help those millions of Americans in pain tonight attacked not by another country or a terrorist or even a flood but attacked merely by life. Half of the politicians are dedicated to protecting the corporations against having to help our relatives and neighbors in pain.

The other half are calculating how far they can anger our Insurance Over-lords before our Insurance Over-lords stop contributing to their campaigns. Might all their CEOs, might all the wavering political frauds, get ten minutes of Dr. Sabin's pain. Or my father's. That's another part of this story I just haven't seen. The doctors.

For all the jokes over all the years, these guys really are on our side in this, especially the ones in the hospitals, especially the ones without whose skills you'd heal up just as fast in a bowling alley as in the best of the medical centers. The man who took my appendix out two years ago, a messy, dangerous job that took more than two hours, from which I recovered fast enough that I only missed four days of work, and who left three little scars one of which I can't find any more, I wrote all the checks. I know how much he got out of the whole price. About ten percent.

A very good friend of mine is a doctor in California. He wrote me the other day. "You can see why doctors, who want to make a living or cover increasing costs, labor, overhead, etc., have only one choice: see more patients, spend less time, answer fewer calls, because there is no other way to increase revenue.

"Plus," he wrote, "if you order tests, patients think they are getting better care (and) doctors thinking that testing, saves them time in thinking or talking with people. 'You have chest pain?' Instead of asking you questions, why don't we go ahead and do this stress test - that I get paid much more than some little office visit to do - and make sure it's not your heart.'"

And so like us the doctors are slaves to insurance. And that's not even talking about malpractice. We have to help them on that. Maybe we do need to cap damages. But do it where everybody benefits. Set the cap wherever it works out to be now, then lower it each year by exactly how much the entire cost of a patient's health care is lowered in this country. Incentivize doctors to help make health care available to everybody.

We patients and the doctors have to be on the same side again to stop pain, to heal disease, not to be customers and salesmen. And to help, thinking long-term. "People do want to discuss their end-of-life preferences prospectively," my friend the doc says, "and doctors should be paid to have these discussions." And then he wrote something that hadn't occurred to me. "We spend a lot of money on doing things that people would not have wanted us... to do to them."

Oh, that hit home. My mother died in the spring. Bless her, she lived without symptoms till nearly two weeks before she went. And we had all talked about what to do, and when to do it, and what not to do. And so when they said there's breast cancer, and there's five lesions in her brain, and there's nothing we can do that will wake her, but we can do a lot to lessen her pain or we can do things that might extend her life but also won't cure her and also won't wake her, but might be hurting her, we can't tell.

It took five seconds to decide. And then I thought of all the people who never had that discussion with their mother or father, who don't know that those are the choices they might face. And how it might help to have a doctor who says, here it all is. And you say: Doc thanks, I've decided I still want you to keep me alive forever even if I'm suffering and comatose, and he says, you got it.

Only now he could send you a bill and you could have insurance pay you back for it, so your mother and you will know, when the time comes, exactly what each choice would bring. And some buffoon decided to call that a "death panel." On the list of preventable deaths diabetes, stroke, ulcers, appendix, pneumonia we are 19th. Canada is 6th, England 16th, we're 19th. Portugal is 18th. You're better off in Portugal.

Death panels? We have them now. They're called WellPoint and Cigna and United Health Care and all the rest. Ask not for whom the insurance company's cash register bell tolls. It tolls for thee. What you and I might able to do about all this, when my Special Comment continues.

To be continued....

Life and Death, Part 2

Keith Olbermann's "Special Comment" continues :

Some time around one o'clock in the morning on Saturday the 22nd of August of this year, my father, struggling with knee problems, some generalized weakness, lack of appetite, and lethargy, tried to use the portable urinal he kept by his bed to limit those middle-of-the-night trips to the toilet. Sounds a little gross, but certainly not when the alternative is a 20-minute ordeal of struggling to the bathroom and wondering what in the hell you're going to do if you don't make it there in time.

But that night there was an additional problem. He was having trouble going. He tried to adjust his position sitting on the edge of the bed. Suddenly the mattress shifted underneath him and deposited him gently on the floor. He might have been in nothing more threatening than a seated position there, but with his knees as bad as they are, there was almost no chance he was going to get out of it without help. For reasons that would later become apparent, my father would pretend to himself that that wasn't true. He decided to believe that soon he'd feel better and be able to get up, on his own.

He thinks he dozed much of the night. As it got light, he realized his cell phone was within grasp and he called me, not to say he was in trouble, but only about the move we were planning for him, to his own place closer to me. He never mentioned the precariousness of his position. He had now been stuck on the floor around seven hours.

Some time in the afternoon, between the dehydration and the exhaustion, the hallucinations started. He heard my sister and her family in the hallway outside his bedroom. He could feel the vibration of the footsteps of his grand-kids running up and down. In a startling tribute to the imagination's ability to make a hallucination like this one completely self-contained and impervious, he heard his daughter say "don't bother Grandpa, he's resting." He thinks he smelled cooking. My sister and her kids were, in fact, in Rochester, New York at the time.

My Dad found himself increasingly angry and finally, sometime after midnight on the morning of Sunday August 23rd, he phoned her and demanded to know why she had been in the house without so much as giving him the courtesy of peeking her head in to see if he was all right. Only after her repeated insistences that she was 330 miles away and had been, all day, did reality regain control. My father apologized. My sister called his neighbor. The neighbor called the cops.

There was never an official diagnosis of just the one incident that night, but I have gone into such excruciating detail because of what I was told that night by the doctors at the ER at which I joined my father, and what I've been told by other health professionals since. The hallucinations almost certainly were provoked by dehydration and if not renal failure per se, then certainly a kind of temporary shut down. By the time he got there, it had been more than 24 hours since he had triggered this cascade of problems by trying to adjust the position of his body so he could urinate. And he still had not done so.

My father's kidneys were in trouble. Considering kidney disease was what killed his father, this was very bad news. We heard just yesterday about kidneys and insurance. The Waddington brothers, Travis of New York; Michael of Santa Fe. As the New York Times reported, their Dad, David, needed a kidney transplant because of a congenital renal disease.

Each of his sons was ready to donate. But they were warned not even to get tested to see if they matched. For if they did transplant or not they would conceivably be denied insurance for the rest of their lives, because they might test positive for that same congenital renal disease that threatened their father. And thus would they have a pre-existing condition.

And still the Waddingtons and their Dad and my Dad were all luckier than at least 45,000 Americans. Because as discovered in a new study conducted by Harvard University and the Cambridge Health Alliance, that's how many of us are dying, each year, because we don't have insurance.

The number is horrible. But when it is contrasted to what faced my father that night, it is unforgivable. Because as Cambridge's summary of the findings put it: "Deaths associated with lack of health insurance now exceed those caused by many common killers such as kidney disease." My father had less to fear that night from bad kidneys than he would have if he hadn't had insurance!

And yet we let this continue.You and I. This society. Our country. Democrats and Republicans.

This is the study Congressman Grayson of Florida quoted, about which the Republicans demanded an apology when they should have been standing there shrieking, demanding we fix this. "Uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts."

People, in short, are dying for the lack… of money. Dying as surely as they did when Charles Dickens wrote about the exact same problem. Of a boy who couldn't get sufficient medical care for his affliction. Of the underprivileged, suffering not just privation but death, as the comfortable, moved silently and unseeingly through the streets of London.

The book was called "A Christmas Carol" and the boy Dickens imagined was called "Tiny Tim" and it was published on the 19th of December, 1843, and it is 166 years later and the problem is not only still with us, it is getting worse. The mortality rate among Americans under the age of 65 who are uninsured, is 40 percent higher than among those with insurance. In 1993 a similar study found the difference was only 25 percent.

We are moving backwards! We are letting people die because they do not have insurance.

What's worse is that barring meaningful health care reform, this will only grow. The difference between the surveys from 1993 and now suggest this fatal insurance gap is growing by about one percent, per year. Your chances of dying because you don't have insurance are now 40 percent higher than those who have it.

By extrapolation, three years from now your chances will be 43 percent higher. Your chances of dying because you used to smoke, compared to those who never smoked, only 42 percent higher. You heard that right. At the current rate, in 2012, you will be more fortunate, more secure, more long-lived, if you used to smoke, than if you don't have insurance. It is mind-boggling, and mind-less. This is the country you want? This is the country you will accept?

Do those other people in this country have meaning to you, or are they just extras in your movie, backgrounds in your painting, choruses in your solo? Without access to insurance for all of us and the only way we get it is with the government supplying the gaps, just like it does in flood insurance for God's sake that fatal gap will just keep growing.

A 45 percent higher likelihood of death for the uninsured compared to the insured by 2014.

By 2022, the figure will be 53 percent higher. Fifty-three percent! In the 1840s, as Dickens wrote a "Christmas Carol" - in a time at which we now look back with horror, the city of Manchester in England commissioned a crude study of mortality among its residents. A Doctor P.N. Holland categorized the sanitary conditions of the houses and streets of Manchester into three classes.

And when he compared the death rate in the First Class Houses in the First Class Streets, to the death rate in the Second Class Houses in the Third Class Streets, he found mortality in those worst locations was 53 percent higher. If we do not reverse this trend, in fourteen years' time we will not be living in the America of 2022. The shadows of the things that may be, tell us, that we will instead be living in an insurance-driven version, of the Dickensian England of 1843!

God Bless Us, everyone.

I told my father the other night that the insurance I really want to get for him and me is called Corporate-Owned-Life-Insurance. "COLI" — like in E. Coli. How fitting. With or without your consent, your employer is permitted by law to take out life insurance on you. It can, in fact, take out life insurance on everybody who works for it. Who gets the money when you die? Your employer does.

Dad pointed out that theoretically this would give them motivation to kill you. That, of course, would be for the same reason, as Michael Moore points out in his new movie "Capitalism: A Love Story," that you can't buy fire insurance on the house of the guy who lives next door to you. Golly gee, that's right, suddenly you'd have a motive to burn down his house and the world is already too much like that symbolically to make it like that in reality.

No, it's really unlikely that even the most evil corporation would think of killing you to get a payout from the COLI insurance plan. This exists for a much more mundane and passive reason. You're going to die anyway, and the tax laws of this country are such that if your company has a hundred thousand employees, it can take out small whole-life policies on everybody and just let the actuarial tables do the work for it. Ten thousand dollars here, $20,000 there, maybe $50,000 back here and all of it tax-exempt.

Oh and your employer can borrow the money to pay the premiums on the secret insurance it has on you. And the interest on that loan is tax-deductible. And your employer can, in essence, over-pay the premium it has on you and your fellow drones, and the extra money in the kitty is called "Cash Value," and it can be stuck into a pension-benefit plan or other product of the mad world of accounting. And "Cash Value" is also tax-deferred. It can be returned to your employer as a tax-free loan. And if your employer goes bankrupt, the Cash Value of those insurance policies is protected by the tax-laws - from creditors!

In short, your employer can get a tax-deductible loan to buy insurance on you that until this past June he didn't even have to tell you about, and the money is first tax-deferred and then tax-free, and when you die, the payoff it gets is tax-exempt, and when the company dies, the boss still gets to keep the money away from the creditors even if somehow you, the guy on whom your boss has surreptitiously taken an insurance policy - happen to be one of the creditors.

And even though it's based on insurance on your health and your life, all of that tax-free, tax-exempt, tax-deferred money not only doesn't go to you, it also doesn't go to the government. And so if we really are ever going to do anything about federally-supported health care as an alternative to these private insurers, there's that much less tax money to do it with.

And some of the money that isn't going to you, and isn't going to the government, is going to strengthen the already monolithic insurance companies!

And just in case this isn't a sweet enough deal, the government is almost silent about telling that employer of yours about what kind of health insurance it must give you. And year after year, the companies get smarter and more audacious about either cutting what your health insurance covers, or cutting the number of employees the health insurance covers, or both.

And if that still isn't enough, there is something called the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors. And it has a Political Action Committee, IFAPAC, and last year IFAPAC had one million, $492,000 worth of campaign money with which to buy politicians. And you'd be amazed how many of them you can buy with even one million, $492,000.

And these are the same people who are not only influencing the health care debate, spending more than a million dollars a day to defeat reform, they are also the same people, who by raising your premiums and cutting your reimbursements, who by manipulating prices at hospitals and doctor's offices for everything from tongue depressors to enemas, who by influencing health care in this country more effectively and more selfishly than a dictator could ever do these are the people who decide what kind of health care you get, how much you pay for it, and whether or not they'd rather not see you get it.

It is your skin. Literally. And it is in the hands of people, insurance companies, who can still make money by betting against your good health. There is only one comfort here and it is cold indeed. Profit while you can, insurers. Sickness and death wait not just for your customer. They also wait for you. And they are double-parked. The doctor who treats you and the pharmacist who makes you pay through your nose are not your enemies in this. It proves they are as much victims as you and I are. And the time has come to realign the battle here, so that it is not just us versus the entire medical and health care establishment, it is us, and the doctors, and the nurses, and the pharmacists, and maybe even some of the hospitals, against the real enemy: The insurance companies... the Insurance companies who are right now at war against America! That's where I'll pick it up when this Special Comment continues.

To be continued...

Tweachings

I tend to be a few steps behind techie trends. Not trailing conspicuously, like people who refuse to own a computer or use the internet. Heavens no. I've had a real cell phone for a full year now. The fact that I haven't had a tv in two years has nothing to do with technology-aversion. I just don't like the noise in my house, or the fact that I instantly become addicted to having it on all the time.

So of course I've been pretty uninterested in the social network thing. I only recently joined Twitter. I thought reading an endless stream of minutiae about peoples' lives would be like plucking nose hairs. I anticipated reading stuff like "I'm eating a tootsie roll, yum!" or "Wondering what life would be like without fabric." Thankfully, there isn't a lot of that among the people I "follow." It was okay. Not wonderful, but not horrible, either.

And then, a message I never dreamed I'd see : Jetsunma is on Twitter.

Um, what??? I thought, okay, she's just reading other people's tweets or something. But just as the lotus unfolds its petals, she began to give teachings. Every day. Many times a day! She calls them "Tweachings."

If you'd like to follow Jetsunma on Twitter, you can search for "Jetsunma" and select "ahkonlhamo." Or if you're Twitter-savvy, she's @ahkonlhamo.