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Thank you!
Nick
| Nick Dupree blogs for social justice and Torah |
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Welcome to my dark and haunted mind's musings on this bizarre and beautiful world, college, disability rights work, politics, life, the universe and everything.
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Thursday, April 23, 2009
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This Blog Has Moved! |
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Wednesday, November 05, 2008
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Obama Victory A Great Moment, Now The Hard Work BeginsWow! What an amazing night.When NBC News abruptly announced that Barack Obama had become the 44th President of the United States, I was watching with my girlfriend. We were yelling with joy. I yelled "VIRGINIA IS BLUE!!! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! VIRGINIA!! IS! BLUUUUE!!!!!!" Outside the hospital room door, we could hear the staff shouting in happiness and surprise (one of the very Christian nurse's aides voted and fasted and prayed to Jesus for this win). It was an incredible moment of spontaneous elation like I've never experienced. Me and my soulmate sharing the excitement of sudden new hope our lives and the lives of all Americans could actually improve was one of the happiest times of my life. I'll never forget it. And wow, the tally is amazing... 349 electoral vote OBAMA LANDSLIDE! (and climbing) This wasn't remotely close. This is an electoral blowout. Obama became the first Democrat to win Virginia in 44 years. A black man won the Virginia of Loving v. Virginia infamy. Even my grandfather in Virginia Beach voted Obama. also RECORD-SHATTERING YOUTH TURNOUT!! And, our first post-boomer, post-culture war president. UNPRECEDENTED CLEAN SWEEP of the midwest. Obama won Ohio and Indiana ...he won Florida and handily flipped (over 60%) several Bush counties in Central FL. Obama won North Carolina, Virginia, the heart of the Confederacy. This is a HISTORIC NATIONAL REALIGNMENT. I'm so lucky and happy I witnessed this moment. I'm so glad we finally have a president who isn't openly resented by minorities and the poor (e.g. me). I'm so glad we have a city-oriented president (this is our first president basing himself directly from a big city since Kennedy in 1960). More and more people live in cities, and our public policy should shift accordingly (more light-rail funding pls, kthx). And most of all, I'm so glad we finally have a president who is free of the unAmerican can't do attitude that has metastasized over the past eight years. Improve health care? Sorry. Can't do. Modernize our crumbling infrastructure? Sorry. Can't do. Fund research breakthroughs? Sorry. Can't do. Finish a war in a shorter time than WWII? Sorry. Can't do. Encourage alternative energy sources? Can't do (unless it's inefficient corn ethanol, cynically subsidized to placate Iowa caucus interests). Build an effective levee system? Sorry. Can't do. We're the people who put a man on the moon; we can do anything. Surely we can nation-build in our own country. Now it can be: Make health care suck less - YES WE CAN. End a costly Iraq occupation - YES WE CAN. Overhaul our infrastructure - YES WE CAN. Produce green technology and invest in alternative energy - YES WE CAN. Create lots of good jobs rebuilding infrastructure and making green technology - YES WE CAN. Shore up some levees - YES WE CAN. "Anything is possible" - Barack Obama In 77 days, the Obama Administration begins, and the hard work of making possibilities into realities begins anew. It won't be easy to say the least. It will take a LOT of work to get anything good out of this corrupt Congress. But for the first time in my adult life I have hope some good changes can be accomplished. Let's get started. Nick |
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Tuesday, November 04, 2008
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Why I Voted For ObamaToday, November 4th is the big General Election in the United States.Last week I mailed in my absentee ballot and voted for Barack Obama for president. Why? Here's why: While it's always a bit difficult for me to vote for one of the two dominant parties (whose incompetence, lack of principle or outright corruption got us in this mess in the first place) I just can't support any of our current third-party options. All the third-party candidates I've seen so far are scumbags, crackpots or extremists on the Lunatic Fringe who I don't want near the White House, because most of their ideas are incredibly dangerous to the general welfare. Instead of third-parties, I strongly support this concept: we sane, common sense people must HIJACK both parties and rebuild the system. Rebuild the system!! Our infrastructure is shamefully decrepit. If you look at infrastructure and train stations in Germany and compare to ones here, you may mistakenly think the Germans won WWII. The people are willing to pay to modernize this country. Americans want to nation-build, but we don't want to nation-build in Iraq on the other side of the globe anymore, we want to nation-build IN AMERICA. How about giving all the poor people a job rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure? I've met very few Americans who want a handout. Most want a good job where they can actually contribute. Let's create jobs repairing it, and building the transportation network of the future (MagLev anyone?) Rebuild the system!! For example, a good way to fix the health care crisis would be for a strong supporter of consumer choice and a dogged opponent of profiteering middle-men to take over at Department of HHS and spearhead a total redesign of the system with COMMON SENSE reforms. Can Obama hijack the party and get stuff done? I'll be pressuring him as much as I can to start. Amputating both the Clinton and Bush platforms from our politics is a very important first step, and I will give no quarter until I see a full exorcism of those dangerous old ideas. I'm afraid of old, failed policies hanging around and sapping our country's strength further. Pro-war "conservatives" do not support the amount of sacrifice required to make their foreign policy plans financially feasible (instead they fight tooth and nail against paying the tab they ran up) which will doom this country to insolvency. They want a grandiose foreign policy, but don't want to pay for it. Wars are very expensive, always have been, and always will be. War debt has driven numerous nations to economic collapse (ask the Russians about the Soviet-Afghan war). Read David McCullough's books on early U.S. history, they make it clear how serious war debt can be. After the Revolutionary War, the United States government had to seize people's houses to pay off the war debt, which led to armed revolt in Massachusetts. I wish pro-war advocates realized just how financially untenable their "two land wars in Asia plus no paying the tab" policies are. This can ruin your child's quality of life, they'll be the ones forced to pay up. Eventually. you've got to pay the piper. My biggest problem with John McCain the neo-cons isn't that their "Team America: World Police"-style foreign policy is immoral and doomed to failure (though this is close second). My biggest problem is that they won't pay for it, and I'm very worried that in 5, 10, 15 years when we must choose either to gut Medicare and Medicaid or not make good on our interest payments to China and risk an international incident, America's (and my) quality of life will be ruined. It's WRONG, deeply unfair to put your fellow Americans in that position. I don't want to be punished for policies I hate and never supported (of course, upcoming administrations will be blamed because the Republicans wouldn't pay the piper, and that's unfair too). Check out this great case study of the Missouri battleground in TIME Magazine. It seems the heartland is hurting, and hurting badly economically, and for pretty much everyone interviewed for this story, that's meant a tidal wave of emotion against the Republican brand, and support for Obama (even among former Bush voters). After reading articles like this one, you can almost feel a 1932-style landslide afoot. But this election is just the beginning of the battle. It will take extraordinary pressure, people DEMANDING real change, for any meaningful reforms to get past Congress, and it will be especially difficult with the next president hemmed in by events, but it can happen. I believe. But Americans can't just poke a voting booth, then go back to loafing on the couch and expect the government to fix itself. It won't work that way. Nick |
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Thursday, October 16, 2008
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Hey Everyone, I Almost Died ... AgainWow. Last Thursday was my first CODE BLUE since February 1992.Human error + clogged lung = over 10 min hypoxic and unconscious. And it led to a not-so-happy jaunt to Bellevue ER which was ultimately pointless aside from the observations gleaned, and my first sight of the Empire State Building from the back of the ambulance. What triggered all this? My airway became totally occluded by mucous. Suctioning didn't fix it. The vent was unable to get air to me. At home, we know to BAG BAG BAG if the vent's normal operations are being blocked. I TYPED AMBU. The nurse said "ambu?" then, DIDN'T AMBU! Shortly after that, everything went black. Then I felt oddly disconnected from corporealNick; not like sleep--this was a near death experience. Then a split second later, I open my eyes, and the RT with the big Goliath beard is bagging me. As soon as someone AMBUed and oxygen started reaching my brain again, I woke up. It felt like a split second later, but the clock was indicating 10+ min later! It was around 4:15am. Mohammad is bagging me, Tony the RT is also there, the on-call doctor is there, the nurse is there and also several people I've never met are there. I realize a code blue had been called (your patient is blue? CODE BLUE!!) though they canceled it once they realized my pulse had never stopped and I was pretty easy to revive (just bag me, dammit!) Tony dumps a bullet of albuterol solution direct to my trach. The young on-call doctor is calling an ambulance and calling the number on the "next of kin" form (my mom) and telling her it could be a pulmonary embolism or heart attack or stroke. He didn't think someone could be that blue, and that unconscious for so long, from just a mucous plug, and wanted people in acute care to rule out serious problems, so off I went to the ER at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. The ambulance left Roosevelt Island and all types of tall buildings, complete and incomplete, blurred past. Going to Bellevue ER was rather pointless. The ER doctor said "he's not hypoxic," which was true, and after that they pretty much ignored me (to focus on patients who are actual in crisis). . Bellevue is better than USA hospital in Creighton in Mobile, where gangsters with gunshot wounds bleed beside you in the waiting room or occasionally wander in and shoot their friends, but not by much. It is the same genre of place, a "last resort"-type hospital for the city's uninsured, though it seemed a lot better funded than USA (most everywhere is). But it's definitely not as bad as NYPD Blue depicted Bellevue on TV, putting violent people in cages, etc. (maybe that's upstairs). Some staff were friendly, others, as my girlfriend put it, had "a false veneer of helpfulness," and lots of others just ignored me because they were too busy dealing with the city's drunks, criminals and psychos. The dude across from me drank a brewery and ran afoul of the law and the NYPD brought him in and brought him out. Aside from observing interesting things like that, spending my day in the Bellevue ER was a total waste of time. My girlfriend (thank G-d she was there to help me communicate) and I sat there for eight hours while they did nothing they couldn't have done here at Coler (an EKG and an x-ray). They can do this here, and did! As I returned to Coler via ambulance, I got a great view of the Empire State Building from the back window, right before we turned into a tunnel. That was cool. I was so glad to get back to my room and the nurses who are familiar with what I need, and very happy to be alive after all that. But later that night, I did break down psychologically some. It was so scary, so close to death, so close to losing everything I want so much. It was too much. But I am okay now, physically and mentally intact. Monday, one of the Filipino RNs (insights often come from unexpected places) mentioned I almost died on The Day Of Atonement. "On that day, The Powerful One decides who goes," she said. "You stayed. This is a good omen for the New Year." I hope that's true. This is like my hundredth second chance. I feel the pressure. I can't waste this chance, not even for a day. Nick |
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Wednesday, October 01, 2008
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Providing A Soft, Pillowy Landing For Stupid CEOs?AP: Economists see financial bailout as necessaryO RLY?? 
Full article: The Fall of the Gilded Age IS BAILING OUT LEHMAN REALLY NECESSARY? Shouldn't we wait until their CEO had to sell one of his three luxury homes before bailing out Lehman? It really seems like we're rewarding these guys instead of letting them naturally get picked clean and displaced by smarter competitors. Obviously we do need to do something to restore confidence in our banking system. I recently overheard nurses talking about pulling their money out of banks and hiding it at home (1930s-style) for fear it'd disappear in a bank collapse. That's how serious the problem is getting. I'm not saying do nothing. I don't have an issue with helping out banks like IndyMac or Washington Mutual, but bailing out rich Wall Street investment firms seems a whole 'nother animal. The $700 Billion financial "bail out" bill seems to be all about providing a soft, pillowy landing for stupid decision-makers at taxpayer expense. They keep their three luxury homes, and we pay the price for their idiocy. And articles like this only highlight the unfairness:
Full article: 7 Questions About the $700 Billion Bailout If this disaster really requires $700 BILLION worth of government intervention, who is paying for it? My first instinct when corporations harm us, is TRUST-BUSTING! And this meltdown is a screw up of unprecedented magnitude, with harm to the public of historic proportions. Where are the CONSEQUENCES for bad, stupid leadership? Can anyone tell me why, as part of this bill, the Treasury Department isn't seizing CEO yachts and mansions to pay for this debacle? Why is demanding real consequences worse than paying nearly one trillion ourselves? We'd rather foot the bill in their stead? WHY?? If these idiotic decisions by Wall Street have no real consequences, and the dumbasses responsible keep their three estates and golden parachutes, no real lessons have been learned, we're basically incentivizing even more stupidity down the line. And now Congress has weighed in. They are saying:  I'm not saying do nothing. But clearly we have to do something different. The original Paulson plan isn't going to fly. We can't afford a cushy deal for the uber-rich. Nick |
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