Ashamed And Embarrassed

On October 1, 2013, the United States federal government entered a government shutdown, forcing furloughs of 800,000 workers and suspension of services not exempted by the Antideficiency Act. Because Congress did not enact regular appropriations or a continuing resolution for the 2014 fiscal year, appropriations have lapsed and about 800,000 federal employees were indefinitely furloughed without pay, while another 1.3 million were required to report to work without pay until an appropriations bill is passed or their function is no longer excepted. The most recent previous U.S. federal government shutdown was in 1995–96.
A "funding gap" was created when the two chambers of Congress failed to agree to a compromise continuing resolution. The Republican-led House of Representatives offered several continuing resolutions with language delaying or defunding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as "Obamacare"). The Democratic-led Senate, offered several "clean" continuing resolutions. Political fights on this and other issues between the GOP House on one side and President Barack Obama and the Senate on the other have led to a budget impasse which threatens massive disruption.
The fight centered on the Continuing Appropriations Resolution of 2014 which was passed by the House of Representatives on September 20, 2013.The Senate stripped the bill of the measures related to the Affordable Care Act, and passed it in revised form on Friday, September 27, 2013. The House put the measures back and passed it again in the early morning hours on Sunday, September 29. The Senate refused to pass the bill while it still had measures to delay the Affordable Care Act, and the two sides could not develop a compromise bill by midnight on Monday, September 30, 2013, causing the federal government to shut down due to a lack of appropriated funds.
The first day of the 2014 federal fiscal year, October 1, 2013, was also when many of the Affordable Care Act's measures took effect.The health insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act launched as scheduled on October 1.
A fiery Sen. John McCain urged fellow lawmakers to resolve the shutdown crisis during a passionate speech Tuesday on the Senate floor, saying they should all be “ashamed” over denying military death benefits.
“Shouldn’t we as a body –Republican or Democrat–shouldn’t we be embarrassed? Ashamed? What do American people think when they see that death benefit for those who served and sacrifice- they’re not eligible?” He added, “I’m ashamed! I’m embarrassed. All of us should be.”
The so-called “death gratuity,” which the government sends to families of active duty service members within three days of their death, has been suspended as a result of the ongoing government shutdown. These payments help cover the immediate cost of funeral services, travel expenses to meet the coffins and give families some financial cushioning before life benefits kick into effect.
The Arizona Republican spread the blame across party lines, but took a specific dig at members of his own party for refusing to fund the government over President Obama’s health care reform law. “Somehow to think that we were going to repeal Obamacare was false and did people a great disservice!"

You know what? I'm ashamed and embarrassed of you, Mister John McCain. I'm ashamed and embarrassed  of ALL of you. I'm to the point where I think it would be okay if we took everybody out of their respective positions and put someone else in. Somebody who can see that ObamaCare is is a faux pa, but that the DEBT CEILING IS QUICKLY APPROACHING! Get that figured out, and then carry on with your temper tantrum, you moronic toddlers. ObamaCare is NOT what you think it is. Obamacare’s employer mandate incentivizes smaller companies to shift their workers to part-time status because employers are not required to provide health coverage to part-time workers.

According to a study completed by the Association of American Medical Colleges, America is projected to have a shortage of 91,500 doctors by the year 2020 due in part to an overwhelming negative view that many of them have on Obamacare. In fact, a survey completed by The Doctors Company, found that 60% of doctors feel that the pressure to reduce costs, increase volume, and improve quality will have a negative effect on patient care, causing 43% of physicians to also contemplate early retirement.

Obamacare is really happening. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll, 42% of Americans in general are unaware that the law is being implemented, while 51% of Americans ages 18-29 are unaware that the bill was signed into law in March 2010. The most commonly cited sources of information about the law were from friends and family (named by 40%), “newspapers, radio or other online news” (36%), and cable news (30%). About 10% of Americans report getting any information from a health insurance company, their doctor, an employer, or a non-profit, and few name any of these as their most important source of information about the law or how the exchanges will affect their health plans. The public remains divided on how they view the overall goals of Obamacare, with 35% reporting a favorable view, 40% an unfavorable view, and a full 24% reporting they have no opinion on the law.

Rape Culture

This is what rape culture is like:

Imagine you have a Rolex watch. Nice fancy Rolex, you bought it because you like the way it looks and you wanted to treat yourself. And then you get beaten and mugged and your Rolex is stolen. So you go to the police. Only, instead of investigating the crime, the police want to know why you were wearing a Rolex instead of a regular watch. Have you ever given a Rolex to anyone else? Is it possible you wanted to be mugged? Why didn’t you wear long sleeves to cover up the Rolex if you didn’t want to be mugged?

And then after that, everywhere you go, there are constant jokes about stealing your Rolex. People you don’t even know whistle at your Rolex and make jokes about cutting your hand off to get it. The media doesn’t help either; it portrays people who wear Rolexes as flamboyant assholes who secretly just want someone to come along and take that Rolex off their hands. When damn, all you wanted was to wear a nice watch without getting harassed for it. When you complain that you are starting to feel unsafe, people laugh you off and say that you are too uptight. Never mind you got violently attacked for the crime of wearing a friggin time piece.

Imagining all that? It sucks, doesn’t it.

Now imagine you could never take the Rolex off.

Murder Or Relieving Someone Of Suffering: Where Do We Draw The Line?

Euthanasia is the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering.
There are different euthanasia laws in each country. The British House of Lords Select Committee on Medical Ethics defines euthanasia as "a deliberate intervention undertaken with the express intention of ending a life, to relieve intractable suffering". In the Netherlands, euthanasia is understood as "termination of life by a doctor at the request of a patient".
Euthanasia is categorized in different ways, which include voluntary, non-voluntary, or involuntary. Assisted-suicide is legal in several jurisdictions, including Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland and four American states (Oregon, Washington, Vermont and Montana).Non-voluntary euthanasia is illegal in all countries. Involuntary euthanasia is usually considered murder.
So hopefully we all know who Jack Kevorkian is, "Dr. Death" is pretty famous I'd say. His work is the very reason I wonder where we draw the line of murder, and the right to die. Rebecca Badger, a patient of Kevorkian's and a mentally troubled drug abuser, had been mistakenly diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The report also stated that Janet Adkins, Kevorkian's first patient, had been chosen without Kevorkian ever speaking to her, only with her husband, and that when Kevorkian first met Adkins two days before her assisted suicide he "made no real effort to discover whether Ms. Adkins wished to end her life," as the Michigan Court of Appeals put it in a 1995 ruling upholding an order against Kevorkian's activity.According to The Economist: "Studies of those who sought out Dr. Kevorkian, however, suggest that though many had a worsening illness ... it was not usually terminal. Autopsies showed five people had no disease at all. ... Little over a third were in pain. Some presumably suffered from no more than hypochondria or depression."
"What difference does it make if someone is terminal? We are all terminal." Jack claimed. Well yes I suppose, but why exactly do we need help committing suicide? I'm more than sure that people are capable of committing suicide on their own. For instance, Oregon requires a physician to prescribe medication but it must be self-administered. What happens when your patient can barely remember how to hold a spoon let alone remember what the hell you said five minutes ago? Even if they do consent, what if they don't remember it?? I just have this feeling that there are too many variables to somehow make this okay

He Speaks, But Is He Really Saying Anything?

For generations, homosexuality has largely been a taboo topic for the Vatican, ignored altogether or treated as “an intrinsic moral evil,” in the words of the previous pope.In that context, brief remarks by Pope Francis suggesting that he would not judge priests for their sexual orientation, made aboard the papal airplane on the way back from his first foreign trip, to Brazil, resonated through the church. Never veering from church doctrine opposing homosexuality, Francis did strike a more compassionate tone than that of his predecessors, some of whom had largely avoided even saying the more colloquial “gay.”

“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis told reporters, speaking in Italian but using the English word “gay.”

Francis’s words could not have been more different from those of Benedict XVI, who in 2005 wrote that homosexuality was “a strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil,” and an “objective disorder.” The church document said men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” should not become priests.

Vatican experts were quick to point out that Francis was not suggesting that the priests or anyone else should act on their homosexual tendencies, which the church considers a sin. But the fact that he made such comments — and used the word “gay” — was nevertheless revolutionary, and likely to generate significant discussion in local dioceses, where bishops are divided over whether to accept priests who are gay but celibate.

Yeah okay great. Does anybody realize that the Pope is not actually saying anything. "Gays are okay" yes obviously. So being labelled as gay is okay, but if you engage in homosexual acts that's not okay apparently. So essentially we are back to square one. That's like saying it's okay to be called Christian, but it's not okay to participate in something trivial like going to church. Way to not actually say anything Mr. Pope.

Egg Girl and the Yahoo Answers Fail

WARNING NOT FOR CHILDREN!!


So the other day I was on tumblr and saw a yahoo answers question that said: "Masturbation question? please help!?
Ok you guys just listen to what i have to say. I am really confused ok so a while ago I was masturbating with an egg and I was just about to orgasm when all of a sudden my vag just like sucked it up. It was like a vacuum, and not just a regular vacuum it was like a hoover or a dyson. You know, the ones where the guy talks about the vacuum never losing suction? Yeah, my vag is a dyson.
Anyway, I was so scared and spent the rest of the night trying to queef out that egg but it wouldn't come out.
So the other day I was playing basketball in the gym and the egg fell out! Into my gitch! I was too afraid to take it out and people probably though I was growing a penis or something. So I didn't take it out of my underwear until I got home and the ***** was hardboiled. My vagina is a vacuum and a pot of boiling water. It hardboiled an egg! Im not done! So I put it in the fridge because I didn't know what else to do. A couple hours later, my dad was eating an egg salad sandwich!"

I'm not kidding. And it just made me wonder: why?
I guess I don't have a ton to say about this particular post but I must say that after I was done laughing I was horrified. Mostly for the Dad.
But anyway it really makes me wonder why people could be so stupid. If that wasn't enough I saw several others.
For Example: "How can I get back at my mom without shoving pizza crust up my butt-hole?
I shove pizza crust up my butt every-time me and my mom fight, so that she gets pissed because she has to take me to the emergency room....
Are there any other ways to get back at her?"

Again I'm still not kidding. I can't even keep going, but for the love of god why are people that dumb

Depressed People have a More Accurate Perception of Time

People with mild depression underestimate their talents. However, new research carried out researchers at the University of Limerick and the University of Hertfordshire shows that depressed people are more accurate when it comes to time estimation than their happier peers.




Depressed people often appear to distort the facts and view their lives more negatively than non-depressed people. Feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and worthlessness and of being out of control are some of the main symptoms of depression. For these people time seems to pass slowly and they will often use phrases such as “time seems to drag” to describe their experiences and their life. However, depressed people sometimes have a more accurate perception of reality than their happier friends and family who often look at life through rose-tinted glasses and hope for the best.



Dr Rachel Msetfi, senior lecturer in psychology, University of Limerick and one of the studies authors, said: “We found that depressed people tended to be more accurate when estimating time whereas non-depressed people tended to be less accurate. This finding, along with some of our other work, suggests that depression leads to more attention paid to time passing. Sometimes this might lead to a phenomenon known as ‘depressive realism’, though on other occasions time might seem to be moving more slowly than usual.”





In the study, volunteers, who were classified as mildly depressed or non-depressed, made estimates of the length of different time intervals of between two and sixty-five seconds. Overall, those volunteers who were mildly–depressed were more accurate in their time estimations.

Dr Msetfi noted that: “Time is a very important part of everyday experience, it flies when we are having fun or enjoying ourselves. One of the commonest experiences of depression is that people feel that time passes slowly and sometimes painfully. Our findings may help to shed a little light on how people with depression can be treated. People with depression are often encouraged to check themselves against reality, but maybe this timing skill can be harnessed to help in the treatment of mildly-depressed people. These findings may also link to successful mindfulness based treatments for depression which focus on encouraging present moment awareness.”





The paper, “Time perception and depressive realism: Judgement type, psychophysical functions and bias”, is published in PLOS ONE.

Putting The Brakes on Pain

Neuropathic pain — pain that results from a malfunction in the nervous system — is a daily reality for millions of Americans. Unlike normal pain, it doesn’t go away after the stimulus that provoked it ends, and it also behaves in a variety of other unusual and disturbing ways. Someone suffering from neuropathic pain might experience intense discomfort from a light touch, for example, or feel as though he or she were freezing in response to a slight change in temperature.

A major part of the answer to the problem of neuropathic pain, scientists believe, is found in spinal nerve cells that release a signaling chemical known as GABA. These GABA neurons act as a sort of brake on pain impulses; it’s thought that when they die or are disabled the pain system goes out of control. If GABA neurons could be kept alive and healthy after peripheral nerve or tissue injury, it’s possible that neuropathic pain could be averted.

Now, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers have found a way to, at least partially, accomplish this objective. The key, they determined, is stemming the biochemical assault by reactive oxygen species that are generated in the wake of nerve injury.

"GABA neurons are particularly susceptible to oxidative stress, and we hypothesized that reactive oxygen species contribute to neuropathic sensitization by promoting the loss of GABA neurons as well as hindering GABA functions," said UTMB professor Jin Mo Chung, senior author of a paper on the research now online in the journal Pain.

To test this hypothesis — and determine whether GABA neurons could be saved — the researchers conducted a series of experiments in mice that had been surgically altered to simulate the conditions of neuropathic pain. In one key experiment, mice treated with an antioxidant compound for a week after surgery were compared with untreated mice. The antioxidant mice showed less pain-associated behavior and were found to have far more GABA neurons than the untreated mice.

"So by giving the antioxidant we lowered the pain behavior, and when we look at the spinal cords we see the GABA neuron population is almost the same as normal," Chung said. “That suggested we prevented those neurons from dying, which is a big thing."

One complication, Chung noted, is a “moderate quantitative mismatch" between the behavioral data and the GABA-neuron counts. While the anti-oxidant mice displayed less pain behavior, their behavioral improvement wasn’t as substantial as their high number of GABA neurons would suggest. One possibility is that the surviving neurons were somehow impaired — a hypothesis supported by electrophysiological data.

Although no clinical trials are planned in the immediate future, Chung believes anti-oxidants have great potential as a treatment for neuropathic pain. “If this is true and it works in humans — well, any time you can salvage neurons, it’s a good thing," he said. “Neuropathic pain is very difficult to treat, and I think this is a possibility, a good possibility."