Advance Care Planning Initiative Kills Trees Not People

The debate over whether advance care planning is actually another way to describe death panels is rearing its ugly head again since regulation started January 1^st. The few folks who are still fuzzy on exactly what the intent of the regulation is are claiming that it will cause some folks who are facing some tough decisions, such as whether or not to continue life-sustaining treatment, to just say the heck with it and have their caregivers pull the plug.

While that is not the case at all with this particular piece of legislation, what most people should be concerned with is how many trees are going to be killed by going forward with the initiative. Yes, I said trees will die and plenty of them, which will probably get the anti-tree huggers folks all riled up with their discourse on hippies and climate change weirdos, but that is a debate for another time.

The point I’m trying to make is that the real losers in any piece of historical legislation are always the trees. Just to start the process, you need bills, and bills are always written with the least amount of brevity because, let’s face it, everyone has an opinion as to what they want the bill to say and Senators and Representatives are no exception. Speaking of which, you don’t have one bill, you have a House bill and you have a Senate bill on the same subject. In the case of this proposed legislation, each of those initial bills counted out at over a thousand pages each.

Then you have the combined bill which finally came out to around 2700 plus pages, give or take a subsection. I’ve worked at law firms all my life, and I’ve seen one draft of a brief of say 30 pages get sometimes up to ten or more re-writes before it is filed with the court. If two or three attorneys are working on the case, each of them has to have a copy of the brief and subsequent drafts. Let’s just say that at the end of the day, it is no longer considered a brief.

But let’s get back to the end-of-life planning phase of the Health Care Reform Bill. To start the process, there are pamphlets to give out at doctors’ offices to inform patients of their rights. One can only imagine the hundreds of man hours it took to come up with just the right wording on that pamphlet and the re-writes to get it just so. Telling someone they have options when it comes to dying can be a tricky business. It’s not something you jot down on a cocktail napkin the night before at Joe’s bar and then go into work the next day and punch it up for your editor’s approval.

After perusing the pamphlet, a patient may make the decision to take advantage of their options, in which case, there are forms to fill out. Consider this. Just filling out the forms to become a patient at a doctor’s office entails filling out and reading about a dozen forms, so imagine the paperwork involved in deciding whether or not you want to continue living when it comes time to make that decision. It would be insensitive to offer less paperwork to allow someone to make a right-to-death decision than it does to visit say a proctologist would it not?

 The doctors who care for the patients have to fill out more paperwork to advise governmental authorities of their involvement with the plan, and, of course, insurance companies will want to be informed of what’s going on, considering the windfall they get if someone decides to cut short their drain on resources to keep them alive.

All of this paperwork should have the trees of the world shaking in their roots. With all the advanced technology we have these days, you still see multiple thousand-page plus bills sitting on legislators’ desks waiting to be read. And we’re not just talking health care, we’re talking about finance reform, DADT regulations being changed, etc. If you’ve been hospitalized lately, you know that it takes the equivalent of time from just after breakfast to the noon hour to sort through all the paperwork the hospital administrators load you down with upon arrival at their facility to make sure they will get their money before your departure. And when you do check out, assuming you didn’t check the end-of-life box on the aforementioned forms, there are inch-thick piles of yet more forms to sign before they wheelchair you out of there.

Next time you want to talk death, take a moment to remember the living things that are giving their lives every day for our propensity to change something for nothing more sometimes than a misspelled word. “The Heath Care Reform Act—Senate Version”…there goes another couple thousand acres of forest.

Obama Ready to Open Big Can of Whup Ass

New York, NY – Talking like he was getting ready for the biggest basketball game of his life, President Barack Obama made it perfectly clear Tuesday morning on the Today Show that he is contemplating opening that big can of whup ass he has stored in his desk drawer and unleashing it on whoever is responsible for the oil spill.

Most people claim it is BP who should get their asses whupped, but Obama is cautious. “Whup Ass is expensive, people. You can’t just open up the can and take the chance that all the air will leak out before we’re able to unleash that whup ass power. We have to make sure of two things when using whup ass (1) that we know who the target is; and (2) when the right time comes, we open that can and kick some serious ass right then and there. With whup ass, there’s no margin for error.”

Most people don’t realize the down side of using whup ass. Sure, it is effective when used properly, but say you use whup ass on someone who has lots of lawyers armed to the hilt with legal precedent that say if you ruin their reputation for instance and it turns out you’re wrong about their involvement in the oil spill, well, you not only waste an expensive can of whup ass, but you end up on the wrong side of a lawsuit.

Said Obama, “make no mistake, America, I will find out whose ass to kick and when I do, I won’t hesitate to open my can of whup ass. And on the off chance that there is more than one ass to kick, I’ve already got the procurement office looking into the cost of purchasing several more cans of whup ass just in case.”

Obama Vows to Kick Lobbyists Out of Washington Offices

Plans on Turning K Street into a Giant Dunk Tank

Washington, DC – Today, President Barack Obama took one of his strongest stands to date against the corporate interests dogging his efforts to bring true change to America. Not only is he planning on issuing a mandate that sends all the corporate lobbyists with offices on K Street packing, but he intends to do something no other President before him has had the guts to do. Obama is going to make each and every one of them pay for the shameful way they’ve attempted to openly buy off the American people but also the government of the United States of America.

Beginning next week, construction will begin on a three-block long giant dunk tank with approximately 100 booths filled with water and collapsible seats. Lobbyists will be made to take turns for hours on end while ordinary citizens are welcomed to come up and take a shot at the lobbyist of their choice. There will be booths with lobbyists representing the oil, gas and coal industries, as well as the financial industry, including investment bankers, mortgage lenders, brokerage houses, and savings and loan institutes .

The NRA lobbyists will provide quite a few targets for its ability to get more and more guns on the streets and ultimately in the hands of the wrong people and fundamental Christian groups will also have a pew or two for those lobbyists who have succeeded in duct-taping politics and religion back together again and tainting our politicians with their “salvation for votes” schemes.

The hottest seats expected to draw the biggest crowds will be the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. In fact, there are expected to be so many people jockeying for a try to dunk these lobbyists that queue lines akin to those found at amusement parks will be placed in front of those dunk tanks.

Each week, President Obama plans on having a “special guest” to dunk. Hopefully, if all goes well, Dick Cheney will be the first to grace that dunk tank and tickets have already sold out for a chance at “Dunkin’ Dick.”

So, if you’ve not already made your vacation plans, you may want to consider a trip to our nation’s capital to join in on one of the more inventive ideas to come from the President in quite a while. It is sure to become the greatest show on earth.

Obama Assistant Caught E-mailing Palin as 2012 Secret Adviser

Washington, DC - Lots of people around this time of year get e-mails and cards and letters from secret admirers that profess from a safe place just how they feel about their romantic targets.

In a troubling story out of Washington though, an aide to President Obama has put quite a twist on the secret admirer thing-y and has used it as a tool against one of the President’s most fierce opponents, Sarah Palin.

Susie (Suze) Ruze was reportedly relieved of her clerical duties early Monday morning and her White House e-mail account was suspended after it was learned that she had sent over a couple dozen e-mails directly to Sarah Palin on matters that would have been classified information had they not been blatant lies. Ms. Ruze is believed to be a member of the W.A.S.P. movement, i.e. Women Against Sarah Palin.

Ms. Ruze was caught when the astute White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, put two and two together. “When I heard Palin state that she was ‘receiving daily e-mailed briefings from people in Washington on events and issues there,’ I got a little suspicious,” said Gibbs. “Then, when I went back and watched a video that had Palin saying ‘Obama could win re-election if he is seen as a tough president in a time of war... for example, that he could play ‘the war card’ by attacking Iran, or express stronger support for Israel,’ well, I knew for sure at that point that someone who must really have it in for Ms. Palin was feeding her some really stupid things to say, and she was taking the bait--hook, line and sinker--and that’s when I started looking at Obama’s own staff members for clues.

We suspected it might be Suze Ruze as she had this funny little tic over her right eye that would get going really good whenever any one of us would say the name Sarah Palin. She just went a little ballistic thinking about the woman.”

When questioned, Ruze finally admitted that she was the one who sent Palin the e-mail about Obama waging war to see just how gullible and uninformed Ms. Palin really was. “I had to think up something that Palin would run with and boy did she scoop that puppy up,” said Ruze. “I did it because she asked for it. Was it not Sarah Palin who said on Fox News that ‘Now, of course, my focus...has been enlarged. So I sure as heck better be more astute on these current events, national issues, than I was two years ago…?’ I figured, wow, what a great opportunity to help a sister out,” said Ruze, who’s eyelid was now ticking uncontrollably.

When Ruze was asked whether or not that was the first time she decided to help Ms. Palin out with a few civics, geography and current events facts, Ms. Ruze replied, “no, I had been doing it on and off long before that. I’d had enough of the ‘seein’ Alaska from her home,’ and not knowing why there were two Koreas, and though those things were pretty annoying, the straw that broke the camel’s back was hearing about her making all that damned money for a book she didn’t even write. I guess I just got carried away with wanting to give her a better understanding of how Washington works.”

But it was the e-mail that advised Palin to talk about Obama using the “war card” that finally led to Ms. Ruze being caught. “If it weren’t for the fact that Suze got bolder and bolder as she went along and went from just giving little innocuous pieces of information to make Palin look a tad unprepared and perhaps not as educated as her contemporaries, to actually telling her to say on national television that President Obama may have a chance of winning an election if he started another controversial war, well, she just went over the top on that one, and it’s the one that got her, and Palin good,” said Gibbs.

The FBI is not giving any details as to the e-mail moniker Susie Ruze used to give her misleading information to Palin, but they have now involved Google, as it appears to have come from a Gmail account both within the White House and a possible second e-mail account outside of the White House. In addition, there may also be several Twitter accounts that are involved and the FBI is looking into this possibility. Because of this, Ms. Ruze’s Blackberry has been confiscated and her account suspended until this can all be sorted out.

THIS JUST IN--President Obama Brings Tyra Banks to Tears

Tyra Banks demanded an apology from President Obama today for the hurt and shame he caused her when he declared publicly “Listen up Banks, the American people want their money back.” Banks was watching Fox News when she heard the President say, “My commitment is to recover every single dime the American people are owed by Banks.”

“What money?” cried a tearful Banks. “I don’t owe any money to the American people. Why would the President say such a thing and why is he going to tax me for money I don’t owe?” It was later cleared up when Obama personally called Tyra Banks and explained that it was the big banks that received a taxpayer handout last year, and not her, personally, he was chastising.