First it was the little babies who never had an  – “option”  –  Now it is the Seniors who may have the option …  of going to the drug store for their diagnostic workup – that is if they are conscious enough to verbalize an option …. 

Ricardo Alfonso Zaldivar;       Thursday 2/1412019; Blaze TV Local 12   Washington (AP)  “Medicare wants to change how it pays for emergency ambulance service to give seniors more options besides going to a hospital emergency department, officials said Thursday.

It’s just a pilot project for now, but if adopted nationwide the idea could save Medicare more than $500 million a year and allow local fire departments and ambulance services to focus the time and energy of first responders on the most serious emergencies.

Some advocates for patients welcomed the plan, but said it needs careful review and supervision.

“We definitely think this is intriguing and exciting, but it really does need to be monitored very closely,” said Julie Carter, a federal policy expert with the Medicare Rights Center, which advocates on behalf of beneficiaries. “We see this as a potential opportunity to keep people out of the ER when they don’t need to be there.”

Medicare officials said nothing’s going to change overnight, and they pledged the pilot program would be closely evaluated.  Patients will retain the option of going to a hospital emergency room if that’s their wish.

Later this year, Medicare will announce up to 40 grants available to local governments or agencies that operate 911 dispatch centers.  The pilot program would start early next year and run for two years.

If the pilot program is successful, it could be adopted nationwide.  Medicare says it wants to get state Medicaid programs and private insurance companies interested in the approach.

The idea caame out of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, created under the Obama health care law to improve quality and reduce wasteful spending in the two giant health care programs.  Although President Donald Trump tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act, his administration has now tapped thecenter in its own efforts to cut costs and help patients become more knowledgeable consumers of services.

Unveiling the ambulance proposal at a Washington, D.C., fire station, Adam Boehler, the innovation center director, said he was astounded to learn that under current rules Medicare will only pay for emergency ambulance services if the patient is going to a hospital, in most cases.

Transportation to rehab centers or nursing homes, as well as dialysis facilities, is also allowed.

“I thought that was a joke,” said Boehler, a former health care entrepreneur who ran a company providing in-home medical care to seriously ill patients.  He called Medicare’s current policy a ‘ridiculous incentive’ to funnel patients to the most high-cost setting.  Most private insurance plans discourage emergency room use by imposing higher copays, and some state Medicaid plans are trying similar tactics.

Appearing at the same event, the chief medical officer for the New York City fire department endorsed Medicare’s experiment.  Dr. David Prezant said his agency is overwhelmed with non-emergency calls and transporting patients to a hospital is a time-consuming process that keeps ambulance crews needlessly tied up.

“If only 20 percent of our calls no longer required transport to an ED (emergency department), we would save lives in cases when every second counts” Prezant.

 

Is this the prelude to ‘Medicare For All’ ????

“Folks, I know that you are really angry. The depth of ugly you see in the news is often not nearly as deep as the ugly that some priest see.  You are surely and rightly angry.  Do you think that we priests are not?

I have to remind myself that when Our Lord cursed the fig tree before His Passion, that wasn’t the model that we priests should employ when it comes to homosexual predator priests.

And let’s be perfectly clear.  This scandal is about HOMOSEXUALITY.

Some of these homosexual predators are, I think, possessed.  Think about it.  If you know anything about demonic activity, and this is something that lay people should not get too involved with, then you know that certain demons specialize in certain kinds of sin.  They will attach themselves like spiritual lampreys to the souls of people who commit them and also to the places where the sins were committed.  Once a demon gets hold, they claim the right to be there, until the layers of their connection are broken one by one.  That’s what exorcism rites do:  they break the legalistic claims of the Enemy to be there.

Homosexual sins are particularly grave and their demonic force is concomitantly vile.  And these sins also involve the young or those who are subject to the authority or power of the predator.  Millstones are not enough.  If you wonder about the Lord and capital punishment, HE spoke of the millstone before the Church did.

That’s the supernatural side.  There is also the natural side.  It seems to me that men with these strong disordered inclinations don’t … how to put this … act like other men.  They think differently.  I know.  I know.  But that’s my sense of things.  It’s hard to articulate.

To explain another issue, I have a couple of anecdotes.

First, way back when, as a seminarian, I remember the pastor of my parish telling us young guys not to write our name in our breviaries or prayer books. He explained that were we to lose the book, someone could claim it was found in a “house of assignation.”  Some of the guys thought that was funny.

I didn’t.  My folks were cops.

I grew up hearing about and seeing photos of the ugliest human circumstances imaginable.  I figured out “blackmail” and co”compromise” waaaay back.  Also, if you talk to cops who have been on the job awhile, they will confirm that male on male “violence” is among the worst that they see.  Ask cops if you know any pretty well.  Ask ER docs and nurses what they see come in and how it was inflicted.

Here’s a not so little factoid for you:  In Italian, a derogatory term for a homosexual male is “froccio”, which etymologically comes from Latin ferox, “savage”.  Are all that way?  Of course not.  But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t those who are.

Next, still as a seminarian, over breakfast a then-auxiliary bishop told me that when he reported on something to the archbishop, he was shut down.  “If I know about it, I might have to do something about it!”  Then the auxiliary said, “Remember, John, there are old women of both sexes.”  That would be confirmed countless times in the next years.  When I went to the seminary rector to complain about the things I was hearing through the walls, their treatment of me only worsened and I got thrown out the second time.  That’s how I got to Rome.

In Rome, because I was in the unusual position of curial work and seminary, because of my youth, etc., I was subtly warned of certain well-placed people who would offer this or that, to open this door, to invite into that circle, to climb more quickly, to gain some favors, etc.

I was being warned, mainly, about two groups.

The Mafia and homosexuals.

Both groups-along with Masons … but I think they were both these other tribes … wanted insiders, and I was perceived at the time as having the potential to be advanced.  Sure enough, every once in a while I would get an invitation, a gift out of the blue, a strong suggestion that X might be a good choice to get ahead.  Years later I read of one of them, a gentiluomo di Sua Santita, found tied up with his head bashed in and homosexual porno video in the VCR.  I had met him at the Lateran University, where he for some reason was taking courses with the seminarians. My “gaydar” is strong, so this guy didn’t get far with me.  But some of my classmates ……

As a priest, I quickly figured out that, if you were on the wrong side of things, you would be subtly and not so subtly targeted for persecution, of course, but also for compromise, be it homosexual, heterosexual, money, drugs, ambition, whatever your weakness might be.  They would set honey traps for you

If you think about it, if you try to think like the Enemy, doesn’t that make sense?  If you can get someone to join you in your slime, but you suspect he has your number, you try to get something on him.  Many years ago now, a woman told me about a meeting she went to of some pro-choice feminist organization or other.  She said that one of the things they talked about, after the more public meeting was over, was figuring out which one of them could target for seduction certain priests in the diocese who were overtly preaching against contraception and abortion

One of them would do it or they could hire hookers and set honey traps.

It’s classic spycraft, really.  Compromise the guy to shut him up.

The problem is, most priests are compassionate guys who, when faced with a woman in distress, might let their guard down.  Face facts.  Women, who are wired in certain ways, think differently than men.  They can wrap guys around their lipstick case if they aren’t wary, and men often are not wary enough.  Some tears and a little GBH can work wonders on the naive.  That technique goes for the  “gay” predators as well.  This is one reason why I think that homosexual predators of young men think differently, apart from the help of the demons in their heads.

Also, as a priest, there are the truly sacrilegious ways that some of these agents of Hell will work to shut up priests who don’t and won’t putt from the ruff.  They use the Seal of the confessional against the solid non-queer priest confessor. They go to confession to a good confessor to bind him by the Seal.  Of course that is pretty underhanded, satanic even.

It is a horrible sacrilege.

A lot of good priests know that if they hear something in the confessional they must never ever talk about it.  They don’t know what to do, and, in prudence, they clam up about their brethren.  This one reason why the Church’s law discourages a superior of hearing the confessions of those under his authority.

I know guys who simply couldn’t take it anymore and quit.

There have been moments when I’ve thought about it myself.  But then my cold Prussian fury and stubbornness flares and, I’m sure, the grace to stick it out for whatever I am destined to do or endure.

Dear readers … this is all out war.  It is war on every level, human and supernatural.  The Enemy of the soul is a really good general, a relentless and malevolent tactician of destruction of souls and long view stragegist.  The Enemy preys on human weakness.  War is horrible, vicious and seriously ugly.  Spiritual war is worse than material.

Even now, I was texting with a friend about this new wave of dreck.  He wrote:

“These bastards have not only violated countless innocents and stained the Catholic name.  They have set in motion the process that will lead good ment to suffer greatly to defend celibacy and the seal of confession.  It would be so easy to feed a few certified perverts to the secular justice and gain time to ascertain the facts on all others.  Because, make no mistake, innocents will be accused and it will be IMPOSSIBLE to talk about burden of the proof without accusations of cover up.  Innocents will have again to pay the price of reform the hard way.

They will sho good will by targeting the good guys.  They’ll find a degenerate in an otherwise sound group and, there, fixed!

The media, and of course bishops, are downplaying the distinctive tract of all these stories, the vice of most offenders.  CNN even presents it with a pic of a woman crying.

It will be again a case of white hererosexual Christian men raping women and even when boys are involved it will be only because of 1)power 2)celibacy 3)culture of secrecy protecting power via seal of confession

Which is in fact what happened, only it’s the sodomite modus operandi to protect themselves and strengthen their grip over power positions with the Church

As I have written before, I do not buy the claims that a high number of priests are homosexual.  But I do indeed buy that a that percentage is higher than those who have power..  The Boys Club perpetuated itself by grooming with preferential treatment of certain likely fellows.  They made sure that they went to Rome, whoch could help a future career, or they got the chance at higher studies, the key role in the chancery, the roles that would be good on the CV when it was time to submit a terna. 

Mind you, that wasn’t all bishops or seminarians or priests.  Don’t look cross-eyed at a guy sent to Rome.  These days, I am sure that in the vast majority of cases, its better because the guy has potential to serve the Church well and that’s the best place to realize the potential.

Do no … do NOT … slip into the trap that I see in news stories and fuming posts with sloppy language:  “these bishops and priests!  They all failed us! ”  No.  They did not fail you.  Some did.

Their failures were galactic and all priests are suffering the fallout.

Don’t turn your wrath and blame on every priest and bishop.  That would surely make the devil grin.  That’s the objective, after all.

Through some, attack them all.

Tables are turning on Satan’s plans.  However, when you wonder about all this stuff going on, remember that the Enemy plays the long game.

Your calls for short term retribution or for instant action etc. will have their own repercussions down the road.  For example, even as many people call for the resignation and removal of this or that bishop, cardinal, etc., keep in mind that there is only one guy in the human sphere, who signs off on the new bishops and cardinals.  Try to picture the results over time if you get what you ask for.

Finally … please take this to heart.

This is primarily a spiritual battle that is being fought right now.  The bloody trenches and killing alleys are directly through the ranks of the Church’s priests, and they directly involve matters intimately tied into the very center of the Church’s core … priesthood and Sacraments like Penance.

No Priest.  No Eucharist.  No church

This war involves human weakness, identity perversion, and also demonic possession.  Hence, our response has to involve all of these dimensions:

Priests and bishops …                                                                                                                           Please start saying Masses and having devotions for reparation and for deliverance from the assaults of the Enemy.  We have tried and trued spiritual weapons, if only we would dust them off, polish them up, and use them.  Enough of this mealy-mouthed-excuse making and temporizing.  Enough of this rubbish about all the really important things that fill the clerical day …

like committees and meetings.

If you are going to have a meeting, meet about how we have to do reparation, who will be unlocking the church for Exposition and Rosaries and Novena and CONFESSIONS.

Priests and bishops, for the love of all that is Holy, use your mighty spiritual weapons given to you by Orders and Holy Church’s own authoritative, tried and true Tradition.

I’ll say it again and again and again … the Devil HATES LATIN.  Let’s stop fooling around.  Put the 22 long rifle away and start with the .50 cal already.  The time for the MaDeuce of our sacred liturgical worship is NOW.  Extraordinary Form, brothers.  Stop fooling around.  If you Latins out there don’t know and can’t use your whole Latin Rite, then … who the hell are you, anyway?  C’mon guys!

Meanwhile, I am implementing the personal plan I’ve been cobbling together from my convictions, experiences, resolves.  I have to be willing to stay on the Cross.  Please pray for me that I will stay up there.  In spite of my weakness, as a sinner among sinners, I will do my best to adapt, improvise and overcome the obstacles that I am sure will now hammer on me for this post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jefferson’s Quran, a 1734 translation by George Sale was intended to “to help Protestants understand the Quran so that they could argue against it. http://www.history.com/news/thomas-jefferson-quran-rashida-tlaib-keith-ellison

“Jefferson’s Quran  was a 1734 translation by a British lawyer named George Sale. It was the first direct translation of the Quran from Arabic to English (the only other English version was a translation of a French translation published in 1649), and would remain the definitive English translation of the Quran into the late 1800’s.  In his introduction, Sale wrote that the purpose of the book was to help Protestants understand the Quran so that they could argue against it.

“Whatever use an impartial version of the Koran may be of in other respects” he wrote, “it is absolutely necessary to undeceive those who, from the ignorant or unfair translations which have appeared, have entertained too favorable an opinion of the original, and also to enable us effectually to expose the imposture.”

Yet although Sale’s translation was theoretically a tool for missionary conversion, that wasn’t what English-speakers in Britain and North America used it for in Jefferson’s d

Drawn From:                                                                                                                           Why the Quran was a Bestseller Among Christians in 18th Century America           Becky Little                                                                                                                                https://history.com/news/thomas-jefferson-quran-rashida-tlaib-keith-ellison