The Rude Pundit: Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Huff Nitrous Oxide

[meegbear]

What is that line up there outside the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, just across the way from the Coliseum for? Phineas and Ferb on Ice? Extra USC football tickets? No, but it does involve children and the University of Southern California.

See, volunteers from the schools of medicine and dentistry at USC, partnered with the organization Care Harbor, are currently giving free health and dental care to people who come to the L.A. arena. It started yesterday and will continue through Sunday.

Oh, the line-sitters? They aren't waiting to get in to see a doctor or a dentist. No, that only began Thusday. That line is from Monday, when they started handing out wristbands so that nearly 5000 people without insurance could get that lump checked or that cavity filled. Especially the latter, since many people who have health insurance don't have dental, the two things oddly not linked by most insurers.

People started lining up last Friday, sleeping out so that they could have a chance to see medical professionals. In one of the biggest cities in the United States in the year 2012. Whenever someone talks about people in other countries being "savages" or uncivilized, the Rude Pundit thinks of sights like this:



It looks like an evacuation center for a storm. But it's just thousands of people, probably most of them Americans, a good many of them children, getting the charity that Republicans like to talk so much about.

One last thing: the reason people lined up so early? That's obvious. Because the clinic only had so much time and so many volunteers. And people, sick people, hurting people, dying people, were turned away.

Elections have consequences. Once upon a time Mitt Romney would have said he had a solution to this problem. He doesn't claim so now. President Obama's solution, which certainly won't solve everything, but would get us a hell of a lot closer, is slowly coming into action.

Maybe, sometimes, it's a moral issue that moves a person, a feeling of disgust and despair that puts one in the mind of the poor and disempowered in our society. You don't wait three nights outside for a chance to see a doctor a few days later because taxes are too high or because Israel's prime minister is feeling neglected or because government-run health care won't give you your choice of doctors or whatever. You sleep in that line because you don't have anywhere else to go, except here, in one of of the biggest cities. In America. Right now.

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2012/09/photos-that-make-rude-pundit-want-to.html

[hifiguy]

1. Ed Schultz picked up where KO left off doing

fundraising for these free clinics. Is Big Eddie still doing that?

[oldhippydude]

22. that was my first thought... where's K. O. when you need him

don't think Ed has followed trough, i try to watch daily, but may have missed it.. also Lawrence hasn't plugged his desks for a while..

i realize we are in the midst of a historic election... but seems to me Keith would have found time.. indeed Keith helped solicit a lot of funds from his program..

[heliarc]

40. Where's Keith when you need him?

Complaining about limo services and draining the investigative budget of Current TV dry.

[Scurrilous]

2. K & R

[democrat_patriot]

3. I would like to recommend this 1,000,000 times. This would be good for Obama to show.

What's Mitt's plan to help these people? Because I haven't heard it. Oh yeah, they should all just go to the emergency room.

This is what emergency rooms will look like under ROmney-Ryan.

GOTV.

[arcane1]

5. According to Mitt, it's not his job to worry about them

[n2doc]

4. One of his best ever. n/t

[nichomachus]

6. We had one in our area

And the local right-wing rag covered it like it was a good thing that thousands of people had to line up at a once-a-year clinic to get health care.

[donquijoterocket]

12. that would be

In the same vein as former president Bush telling a young woman it was a good deal she had three jobs."Uniquely American" was IIRC his appraisal( although he was right about that, just not quite in the way he meant). The whole bunch is just so tone deaf and blinded by their ideology that good sense and good ideas have little chance of breaking through.

[Scuba]

7. Welcome to the wealthiest nation on earth.

Props to the volunteers who provide this service. Thanks for the post too!

[tblue37]

15. Unfortunately, many doctors, dentists, and other

professionals who would like to offer services to the poor and underserved as their primary career end up having to do otherwise because they have to earn a lot of money to pay down their crushing school loans. Thus they end up putting a bandaid on a gaping wound by just serving as volunteers for a few days at temporary clincs like this one.

[valerief]

17. It's the wealthiest nation for the wealthy. nt

[myrna minx]

8. K&R. Speechless. n/t

[Aeroette]

9. K&R

[union_maid]

10. Recommending this

This is important stuff.

[MindPilot]

11. Illegals, deadbeats and druggies no doubt

Came here from Mexico, Canada and Europe to get freebies from the greatest healthcare system in the world.

and in case it is necessary

[Mad_Dem_X]

13. K&R.

[allan01]

14. re:The Rude Pundit: Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Huff Nitrous OxideThe Rude Pundit: Phot

welcome to the poorest welfare and the richest wealthcare country in the world

[marble falls]

16. KO was a major supporter of this, and was honestly making an effort without any rolling cameras

before or during these events. G*d bless KO. I cannot believe he isn't here during the last month of the campaign.

[dembotoz]

25. miss me some ko

everyone else is just pale by comparison

[Samantha]

37. Me too

I can't get over the fact he is not calling these election events as they unfold. He is irreplaceable.

Sam

[valerief]

18. Big Kick & Rec. nt

[Grins]

19. Oh, if only we had a faith-based initiative.....

...then none of this would be happening. Religious "charities" would be able take care of all of this. Bush said so.

Thanks, George.

[fasttense]

20. Dental care is even worse than in a 3rd world country

especially in the South.

I've never seen so many people with missing, green (yes green) and rotting teeth as I have seen here in the South.

It's just so sad to see all these pretty young faces, and when these kids smile, their teeth look just so awful.

[SheilaT]

21. In the 1960's I got desperately needed dental

care through a Catholic charity clinic. For years afterwards, when I worked where they wanted you to donate to the United Way, I always earmarked my entire donation to that clinic.

I kind of recall when I went in with my mother to qualify to get the work done, that the person who filled out the paperwork and looked at mom's income and expenses, essentially said she didn't know how mom kept us kids fed. This is before food stamps.

One way we were fed was that I'd get babysitting jobs, and spent the money on food for the family, not on myself. People gave us outgrown clothing.

We were lucky in that my mom was a nurse, could always get a job, and worked whatever overtime was available. For us there was always a light at the end of the tunnel. That's not always the case with people who shoe up for the clinic in the OP.

[RoccoR5955]

23. Yeah, United Way is a big scam too

They take a cut of every donation. I NEVER give to United Way. We don't need any more high paid executives skimming off donations that I make to charities.
Next time, skip United Way, and give the whole thing to the charity. This way they get the entire thing, not just 60 or 70% of it.

[SheilaT]

38. I know. Once I learned that, I stopped giving to them.

My utter refusal to do so made me very unpopular with a supervisor in one job, because there was an expectation that all employees would donate to UW.

[RoccoR5955]

49. same here

They set a goal.
Once I told co-workers that UW takes such a large amount of your donation for administrative costs, they stopped giving to UW as well.

[porphyrian]

24. . n/t

[DaveJ]

26. That's odd, our country usually hides poor people

Our rich love to show off their luxury cars and mansions. Everyone else is usually crammed inside tenements and buses making it seem as though they hardly are there.

[mrsadm]

27. unbelievable

un-fu**ing believable, this makes the US look like a third world country.

[area51]

39. We *are* a third-world country.

We're not civilized; if we were, health care would be a basic human right.

[april]

28. hey Mitt says that they can go to the emergency room..it should be sent to Mitt so said

[tclambert]

29. What third world country were these pictures taken in?

Los An-geles? What a coincidence. We have a city of that name here in America.

[Bossy Monkey]

30. So angry he forgot to cuss. Justifiably so. K&R n/t

[Victor_c3]

31. I'm both delighted and sick by this

I'm happy that people are donating their time and resources to provide free healthcare to a very needy portion of our population. However, I'm sick that it has to come down to this for them.

We depend on the bottom tier of our society (including illegal immigrants) to perform all of the menial jobs that the rest of us don't want to have anything to do with. I'm sorry to offend any republicans out there who view these people as mooches, but we need to be able to provide these people with means to sufficiently support their family - especially the kids. It's not their fault they came out of the wrong vagina and weren't born into a rich family.

Being rich shouldn't be viewed as being a bad thing, but when you are rich you have to know that your wealth came out of the backs of the bottom and middle parts of our society. Yes, you do owe society for your affluence and you should pay more taxes as a result. Obviously you benefit the most from our society if you are rich. We (the rest of us who aren't rich) made you rich from our labor. The least you can do is help provide more than a subsistance wage and a sufficient means for us to be able to care for our families.

[calimary]

46. I know what you mean. So gratified that there are people with hearts big enough, and

consciences well-developed enough, to offer this service, but very discouraged to think that there even has to be such a grave need for it. In America, we're talking. In America this is going on, and this is the level of need, and this is the level of neglect, and this is the level of class warfare and shortage of empathy and compassion. Too many of us in and out of power obsessed with coddling and comforting the already plenty well-coddled and well-comforted.

I always was taught - "much blessed, much obligated." If you had more, you were expected to do more. You were supposed to help more. In the same manner as - if you were stronger or had broader shoulders, you were expected to lift more. If you're more fortunate and you're able to help and make a difference, then dammit, you're OBLIGATED. You're just frickin' OBLIGATED. Obligated to your community, your country, and your fellow man. Your brothers and sisters. If there's a need, and you're able to meet it, or some of it, then because you are more blessed, you need to just shut up and step up. And CONTRIBUTE, goddammit! That's your obligation for all those blessings. You're just frickin' OBLIGATED. That's the invoice God sends you when you're blessed that richly. Those gifts and blessings are also invoices. They're yours, but you use them to do for others, or help others, or enrich or nourish others.

The teabaggers and other assorted CONS always remind me of very young and poorly-disciplined brat-children. Spoiled into a healthy and well-nurtured sense of class-engendered entitlement. THESE types are more "ENTITLED" than ANYONE in wrongney's 47%! They were never taught to see or consider the value and/or equal worth of anything outside themselves and their own interests. Never taught to share and therefore see no reason why they should have to. Encouraged to be selfish and short-sighted and smug and self-absorbed, because, of course, they're simply THE BEST and most worthy, by the birthright that's conferred mainly by the proper shade of skin as well as size of family treasury. And now throwing tantrums because they're no longer getting their way.

[jsr]

32. Remote Area Medical (RAM) has been doing this for years

all over the U.S. Thousands camp out and wait and wait - just like a Third World medical mission.

[Delphinus]

47. I remember seeing

this on 60 Minutes and trying to get folks fired up about it.

[nashville_brook]

33. i hope we had people out there doing voter registration and outreach.

[Smilo]

34. This makes me cry

I live in the greatest country in the world - but it saddens me that this country believes military might is more important than healthcare for all.

[SmileyRose]

41. Makes me smile

If the fucking fucks that fucked up this country can't be bothered to make sure people have access to basic necessities of life (that part makes me mad) than thank goodness someone is stepping in to at least try to get it done. (that part makes me smile)

[Historic NY]

35. Hey Pukes need heathcare much...your fellow citizens do....

if we had national health care scenes like this would be rare.

[RainDog]

36. k&r n/t

[Tnliberallee]

42. Thank you Lee Papa

from "lee is Tennessee:.....

[olegramps]

43. Well, all this evidence confirms it. Romney is right on.

Just a bunch of free loaders looking for a handout. You see, Romney says, there isn't any problem of people getting medical care. Do I need the little sarcasm thingy?

[mikelewis]

44. Freeloaders

[lonestarnot]

45. Holy cow!

[jsr]

48. Over 1,200 people pre-registered for today's giant health clinic at Dallas Convention Center

http://healthblog.dallasnews.com/2012/09/dallas-convention-center-gets-ready-for-giant-free-health-clinic.html/