By request, our segment dedicated to the ladies on International Women’s Day. The Snark Factor Players present- Faux Aaron Neville singing “She’s Like the Wind.”
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Phil Kerpen, the Author of Democracy Denied joined us on The Snark Factor Tuesday. There is a great video promoting the book. Watch the video, then buy the book. Good stuff!
My mom past away early this morning. While she fought a long and courageous battle with cancer, we thought we would have a little more time with her. In the end, she wasn’t in any pain and left on her own terms.
I just want to thank everyone that wrote us a nice message here, or sent me a note on Facebook or Twitter. The support my family received from friends and strangers online was more than we ever expected, and it was a big help.
I couldn’t have asked for a better mother. Love you mom.
This was the first live Snark Factor. My guests were Gina Loudon, Ben Howe, Caleb Howe and John Brodigan. We talked Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin and Sarah Palin. My apologies for the sound quality, it is a little hot.
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So this is delicious. In a complete kill the messenger moment, the Twitter has been blowing up over a Daily Caller piece regarding disgusting comments that Mike Tyson made about Sarah Palin. To read Tyson’s comments, check out Jeff Poor’s column here.
This got many Palinistas hysterical. But the target of their hysterical, liberal like over- reaction wasn’t the bat shit crazy Mike Tyson–no it was The Daily Caller. Why the Daily Caller? For printing his comments.
That’s right. New memo to everyone that writes stuff on the internets–you can not report anything that is said about Sarah Palin without a Palinista signing off on it…ever! If you do write about Palin without approval, it can only be a fluff column–you know, stories that her mere presence in a room can cure Scurvy and prevent the gum disease Gingivitis (you get the idea).
I could post links to several blog posts by several Palinistas who are outraged by The Daily Caller, but I am still trying to recover from my massive eye-roll (I will not even get into their tweets).
But of all the blog posts I have seen regarding TuckerGate, the worst offender was Greta Van Susteran. Her blog post was a peach. This is just the first paragraph:
I really don’t understand my friend Tucker Carlson. He owns the website The Daily Caller and it currently has on its front page the most vile story — referring to a sex act with Governor Sarah Palin as a “womb shifter.” It is even the headline. Do you know what that means? Figure it out It is really vile. It is not just smut…this is violence against women.
Talk about winning the 2011 Hyper-Sensitive Award for Hyper-Sensitiveness (I am a wordsmith).
Greta, you sound like a liberal. The faux-outrage here is sickening. You want to play the over the top outrage game? Okay, I can play too.
Greta, I like you. I really do. But you have a career in broadcasting based on your work as a legal analyst for CNN during the O.J. Simpson trial. (For those of you too young to remember the original O.J. Simpson trial, CNN covered it ad nauseum. It turned a double murder trial into a game, picking daily winners and losers. Greta, you remember that right?)
You want to talk about violence against women? Someone (O.J.) brutally murdered Nicole Brown Simpson by repeatedly stabbing her to death. I could go further into the details, but writing about such events would make me a smut peddler–and would condone violence against women…or something.
CNN sensationalized a brutal double murder. They did so because they wanted more viewers. They were ratings whores.
You profited from a double murder based on CNN’s wall to wall, almost cartoonish coverage of that trial.
You got a career from that…own it.
And now you are outraged by a website that printed (but didn’t glorify) comments made by a world famous athlete? Hypocrisy much?
For someone like Greta Van Susteran to criticize the Daily Caller for sensationalizing a story when she has made a career doing the very same thing is gross. If it were not for shows like Greta’s, Casey Anthony would not be a household name.
There. My liberal like, hyper-sensitive moment is over.
So we were all just supposed to ignore the fact that a former heavyweight champion of the world made ugly comments about Sarah Palin? Really?
Did we ignore Wanda Sykes when she said of Rush Limbaugh–”I hope his kidneys fail”?
Did we ignore a British film company when it made a mockumentary about the fictional assassination of President George W. Bush?
I can go on and on with examples of ugliness spewed at conservatives that we didn’t ignore, but I would need a nap.
The Daily Caller did nothing wrong.
Unreal.
Oh, and P.S.
Greta. If he would agree to it, you would have Mike Tyson on tonight to discuss his disgusting comments. But I suppose that’s okay, because it’s on Fox News.
I don’t wish what my mother has been through the last two weeks on anyone. It has been hell: Intense chemotherapy, four days in the oncology ward, emergency rooms, the ICU and now the cardiac ward. She has been poked and prodded, had blood tests, X-Rays, MRI’s and has about five tubes in her arm.
Mom is still fighting the two infections that put her back in the hospital five days ago. Doctors have also discovered a grape sized tumor in her heart (lymphoma) that they hope will shrink as a result of her chemotherapy. The last sixteen days have been a roller coaster ride of emotions. They have been both depressing and inspirational.
This latest episode started with her trip to the cancer center here in Ann Arbor a little over two weeks ago. That was an intense chemotherapy session–the last treatment took twenty four hours to complete. She got through that session like a champ–and was released from the hospital after just four days.
If you ever want a sobering experience, take a five minute walk through a cancer center.
What I have seen in oncology are things that I will never forget. For me the one thing that really sticks out–was seeing children that were bald, as young as five years old, laughing and playing in the waiting room. Witnessing that scene ripped my heart out and made me smile all at the same time.
After a five day stay at home we realized something was wrong with mom, so we rushed her to the local ER. After getting her stable, the hospital staff made the decision to transport her to Ann Arbor (90 miles from home).
She spent six hours in the ER in Ann Arbor. Patients were separated by curtains and there was little privacy. It was packed, but there were two men that were in a lot of pain. One man fell off a ladder, and I could hear him arguing with the hospital staff, certain that he was neither in Ann Arbor or in the hospital.
I stepped out to make a phone call when paramedics brought in another man on a stretcher. He looked like he was the victim of a pretty bad car accident. He had dreadful head wounds and had what looked like a tube down his throat. His eyes were slightly open but were rolled up into his head. The ER crew whisked him away and I never saw him again.
The ER staff had to get mom’s resting heart rate down–while trying to get her blood pressure up. It was a difficult task. In addition, they discovered a terrible infection that needed to be treated. After they got her condition stabilized (six hours later), they transferred her to the ICU.
When it comes to depressing places, if there is a place that rivals the cancer center it is the ICU. The ICU staff got mom’s heart rate and blood pressure stabilized. They also discovered that she has E. coli, and started pumping her with five different antibiotics. One of the side effects of chemotherapy is that it attacks the patient’s white blood cells, which inhibits the body from fighting infection on its own.
On many occasions I had to go into the waiting room while the nursing staff had to perform routine procedures on my mom. There was one family that was a fixture in the waiting room and, I could tell that things were not going their way. When they were there, you could cut the emotion in that room with a knife.
The last day my mom was in ICU there must have been fifteen family members and friends of that patient in the waiting room…crying. Right before I said goodbye to my mother (I had to go back to Indy), I glanced down the hall two rooms down where all fifteen people were crammed into the patient’s room. Many were crying. My heart ached for them.
I returned to Ann Arbor three days later after they transferred my mom out of ICU and into the cardiac ward. Speculation of a tumor in her heart was confirmed by an MRI. As of now she still has E. coli (and one other infection), her white cell count is still low, her heart is strong but beating irregularly, she hasn’t eaten a meal in 9 days and she is weak. But… she is still with us. We are truly thankful.
Of my experience the last 16 days (which matters little compared to that of my mom’s) I can say the following:
This hospital is a microcosm of what is best about humanity: People with kindness in their hearts helping out folks that really need it most. I have seen it in hospital staff, in family, friends and complete strangers. Everyone here has treated the sick with grace, dignity and respect.
What I have witnessed here the last two weeks has been awe inspiring.
And once my mother is out of here I hope to never see it again.
Words can not adequately express the appreciation that my family and I have for the outpouring of support that has been shown to my mother not only here, but on Twitter and Facebook as well. We will never forget how amazing you all have been to us. So we thank you!
My mom checks into the hospital today to begin hardcore chemotherapy. She will be there for seven days. Please continue to pray for her as this will not be an easy week.
Thank you,
Fingers
As many of you know, I don’t write or talk about my family. I just have never felt comfortable doing so–it’s the Internet. There are a lot of crazy people on here. I prefer to keep my private life…private.
But I felt the need to share this with you. My mother(Joeann) has been battling Lymphoma now for almost a year. She went through 6 chemotherapy sessions and over 30 radiation treatments to get rid of a grapefruit sized tumor under her arm. Last week she went to the hospital for a scan to see if the cancer had gone into remission.
We got bad news today. Unfortunately the cancer has spread. It is now on her liver, stomach, in her breast, under her knee cap and on her rib cage. The good news is that these are all little tumors, and they are all Lymphoma. The bad news is that this type of Lymphoma is very aggressive.
She will be admitted into the hospital on Wednesday for seven days of aggressive chemotherapy. She is in her 70′s and this will take a heavy toll on her body. In later weeks, this treatment will expand to include an experimental treatment for Lymphoma that her doctors said has produced encouraging results in other patients.
Obviously she is devastated. Today she went in hoping to find out that her cancer had gone into remission. This was not the news that we had hoped to hear.
I ask you for these two favors.
1) Please pray for her.
2) Obviously she reads this blog. If you could drop her a quick note of encouragement in the comment section I will be forever grateful.
Thank you,
Fingers
Look I am a free trade guy. But if a government contract is up for grabs and it is between an American company and a Brazilian company that is heavily subsidized by the Brazilian government, I really don’t feel like we are talking about free trade anymore.
The Department of Defense wants a new plane that can be counted on to provide light attack duty and reconnaissance work. They narrowed the bids down to two companies- the American Hawker Beechcraft and the Brazilian Embraer. More on this from American Legislative Exchange Council:
As early as June 2011, the Department of Defense will decide between two competing aircraft to conduct light attack and armed reconnaissance (LAAR) and light air support (LAS) missions – the Hawker Beechcraft AT-6 and the Embraer Super Tucano. From the perspective of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) the decision is clear. Both aircraft are mission appropriate and cost roughly the same. However the acquisition of Hawker Beechcraft’s AT-6 has the added benefit of upholding ALEC’s free-market principles and creating significantly more American jobs – 1,400 spread across 18 states…
Hawker Beechcraft is an American company headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, while Embraer is a Brazilian company.
…Embraer is heavily subsidized by the Brazilian government and is being supported by their Financing Agency for Studies and Projects (FINEP), which is helping to fund the research and development of this fleet.
So, if the cost is roughly the same, as is the quality and effectiveness of the planes–this should be a pretty easy decision to make. I hope that the Department of Defense does the right thing and picks Hawker Beechcraft.
New video from Snark Factor Studios. A tribute to all those who lost their lives defending our great country…
