I am gong to preface this opinion piece with two statements. One, I am a Christian. Two, if you are a Christian this article may not apply to you. (One of the callers was to Glenn's show, He was much calmer than I)

During the last two days I have heard two people come onto radio talk shows and state that the entire problem with the country is that we are not following Jesus, or we do not have Jesus in our hearts. If I hear this load of crap one more time I swear I am going to explode. So let the raving begin.

This country has a little thing called the first amendment and it states, in part, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or the free exercise thereof;” Notice it doesn't say anything about the Christian religion or for that matter the Jewish religion or Muslim religion. It say religion, meaning any religion and all religions. What gives you the right to even think that all the people in this country must believe in Christianity and that all our problems stem from this. Every time someone stands up and preaches this to the rest of us they are insulting the constitution of the United States and therefore all Americans. Tell me exactly were in the Bible it states that any earthly government should be run by a set of Christian governing rules. For that matter show me any Christian earthly governing rules in the New Testament at all. The only thing I can find is “Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's “ Mark 12:17 (NIV) That says to me that Jesus said to live under the rules of the earthly government while you are here and give your heart to God. I am no Biblical scholar, but there is nothing resembling a set of rules by which to govern.

America was founded by people running away from exactly what these people were promoting, that there is only one way to believe or to live. The Quakers came because their beliefs were different. The founders in their wisdom made sure that here in America all beliefs are accepted and given the same weight as far as the government is concerned. The fundamentalist leaning Christians have no more or less standing than any other group in the USA. Do you not understand that you are insulting all other people with this rhetoric you spawn? Is that not your main political concern that your beliefs are being run over by the politically correct liberals? So you would replace their intolerance of your point of view with your intolerance of everyone else?

Religion is a personal thing here in America, you are welcome to talk about it, practice it and even tell others about it in an effort to show them what you believe is the truth. But, just as the liberals have no right to stop you from exercising those rights, you have no right to tell the rest of us that we have no rights. Jesus may in fact be the answer to eternal life, but you have no scientific proof to stand on, any more than any other religion you deem wrong. Wake up, Jesus said turn the other cheek. Where do you see Jesus condemning anyone for not believing in Him. He gave them the choice and let them decide of their own free will. Yet here you stand, just a normal human being who claims to believe in the teaching of the Bible, many of you believing that same Bible to be the perfect word of God, preaching to other sinners as if you were the Saviour himself, even thought the Saviour never preached that way (that we have a record of).

America is great because the founders believed in the concept of the individual. That each individual gets to choose how to run their own life. They get to decide what politcs they believe in, they get to decide what kind of work they do and what they want to spend their money on. Right there in the 1^st amendment, the very first thing added to the system of government they created, was “Congress shall make no law respecting a establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” (my emphasis) Do you think they did that so you could pound your version of religion down our throats?

And what the heck, while I'm at it I might as well let this one go. For those of you who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, explain to my how the bible is the absolute word of god when history tells us this:

“The first “canon” was the Muratorian Canon, which was compiled in A.D. 170. The Muratorian Canon included all of the New Testament books except Hebrews, James, and 3 John. In A.D. 363, the Council of Laodicea stated that only the Old Testament (along with the Apocrypha) and the 27 books of the New Testament were to be read in the churches. The Council of Hippo (A.D. 393) and the Council of Carthage (A.D. 397) also affirmed the same 27 books as authoritative. “ from http://www.gotquestions.org/canon-Bible.html

I could go on and on with questions about your beliefs. My point is that you have no more authority that anyone else. That is not to say you shouldn't believe what you do, but rather given number of your beliefs that don't pass intellectual mustard, what gives you the right to thrust them on the rest of us.

Again, America was founded in the belief in all humanity has certain rights that can not be taken from him or granted to him by government and, yes, with the belief in a higher power as evidenced by the Declaration of Independence. However, notice no mention of God in the Constitution and that pesky first amendment that grants religious rights to all, not just your brand. The individual is sacred, not the collective. That is why I oppose the social justice, collectivist and by definition the fascist ideas and government policy's being jammed threw congress, but your version of tyranny in the name of God and Jesus is no better, and in many ways worse, as most of you will not hold your ideas up to intellectual scrutiny.

 Monte Drebenstedt

Owner: Shine on Studios

Founder: Freedom and Common Sense Party

current mood: annoyed

A comparison showing Mannie Garcia’s photograph of Obama next to Shepard Fairey’s ‘Progress’ and ‘Hope’ posters. The portrait of Obama by Shepard Fairey is a stencil portrait. Fairey created a stencil over a scanned and enlarged version of the photograph that was slightly tilted according to various articles. Fairey and a gallery that represents him has stated that he did in fact use the Garcia photograph as the base image for his Obama posters according to news articles. The Assosicated Press claims to own the copyright to Garcia's photograph and  desire compensation from Shepard Fairey. Fairey's lawyer states that Fairey did nothing wrong and that is use of the image falls under fair use. Do you think his use of the image falls under fair use? Since the photograph itself is not widely known some lawyers have suggested that Fairey's use does not fall under fair use. In order for it to be fair use there must be a dialogue between the old work and the new work that is obvious to the viewer-- obvious to the majority of the public. Unfortunatey for Shepard the majority of people, including Garcia and the AP, did not make the connection between Garcia's photograph and Fairey's Obama posters. So did Fairey fail at fair use? If so, did he willfully infringe on the photograph? Could former members of the Obama campaign be responsible for the infringement?

I have posted several articles about Shepard Fairey and fair use that might be of interest to some of you. My thoughts, http://www.myartspace.com/blog/2009/02/art-law-professionals-weigh-in-on.html

GLENN: I want to thank Pat for filling in for me. I called him, like, at 4:00 in the morning to roust him out of bed and see if he would fill in. I had just finished giving a speech at a fundraiser on Wednesday night and I came home and Joe, who's a new researcher, he actually came over to the house and we were going to finish up some work after this speech and my wife and I were -- we came into the house and Joe was with us and there was something downstairs in the basement that she wanted to show us. She's like, "I just cleaned up the whole basement." I'm like, "That's great, honey, I've got to see that." So I started going down the stairs and I was the first to go down the stairs and I got to the top stair and I slipped all the way down a flight of stairs and was in the hospital.

You know, there's one place that should have valet parking. It's at the hospital. Don't you think? I mean, don't you think you should pull up in the emergency room and go, valet, help me. Please take the keys from me. I'm just thinking that maybe that would be a good place, but no.

So I laid down at the bottom of the stairs for a while and the thought, "Help, I can't get up" did come to mind. Luckily my wife and my friend were with me and so I sat there for about 20 minutes and had that typical debate, you know what I mean? Have you ever had that debate in your head like, "I really should go to the hospital, but, oh, that will be a pain in the neck." Ever had that debate where you know you should be going to the hospital. I mean, there was a moment there I thought I was having internal bleeding and I was still thinking, no, I don't want to go sit in that emergency room. So I debated back and forth whether I should go and finally my wife just said, we're getting the keys; you're going to the hospital. "No, no, I think I'm fine, I can almost -- nope, nope, can't get up yet."

So we piled into the car and my wife drove around trying to find a parking space, which was always -- I'm really kind of stuck on the valet parking thing at the hospitals. I really think they should have that. But anyway, we got inside and they walked me to a little room and said, take off all your clothes. "All right. If you have a knife, you can just cut them off me, please." So then told me to pee in a cup right away, which -- all right, I know this is more information than you need about me, but I'm very shy like things like that and I just looked at the nurse and I said, that ain't going to happen with all you people standing around. You know what I'm saying? I'm sorry. And the doctor came in and immediately gave me a ultrasound, and it's never really good when you hear the doctor behind you say, "There's a lot of liquid there, a lot of fluid. I don't know what that -- we should get him to a CAT scan right away." "Excuse me, Doc, what did you just say?" "Nothing, you're great, nothing. Are you feeling really cold right now?" "No." "Okay, just lay here. Whatever you do, don't walk towards the light."

So I go get a CAT scan and I was happy to know that it was being read in India and I said, pardon me? He said, "Yeah, we ship it to India to look at." I said, "You can't look at the CAT scan and figure out?" No, no, no, they're much better over there. After 11:00 at night, everything's read in India. I don't know if I feel comfortable with that. I mean, is this the same guy that's reading it that I call up and can't fix my computer? "Hello, it's me, Bob, yes, I just tried to fix..." no, I don't think I feel comfortable. Who is reading it over in India? "I don't know, some guy, Bob. He is also working on our computer as well."

So they come back and now the two doctors walk in at the same time. Only time I heard them was, "I don't know, that might be a small toy somewhere near his -- I think that's his liver and a small toy." And they both walk in and, "You're the luckiest guy alive." "Pardon me?" "Yeah, when you came in, we looked at each other and thought, oh, boy, this is going to be a bad one." Okay, you didn't tell me that. You just said don't walk towards the light. I don't even have a bruise on me today. I hurt like crazy. I bruised my ribs as I came down. Didn't break anything. My elbow was the size -- I mean, I looked like a -- you know, I walked in and I was like, "I am not an animal. I am a human being." You know, I kind of had that whole kind of John Merrick thing going for me, at least in the elbow area and the back area. So I slept all day yesterday but wanted to be here, wanted to be here for you. Bullcrap, they would cut my salary if I don't show up. "I wanted to be here for you." So I'm glad I'm -- well, I don't know. I was going to say I'm glad I'm alive but then again, have you seen gas prices lately?

So Harry Reid comes out and says John McCain, his plan to start offshore drilling is just the, you know, more of the same old ideas. I love that line. Failed policies of the past, the same old ideas. Drilling is? Really? "Oh, same old ideas." I don't think so. I don't think we've been doing that an awful lot. In fact, Harry, if I may be so bold, we're drilling and pumping out oil as fast now as we were in the 1940s. Same old ideas? We haven't built anything new here since Gerald Ford was in office. I think these -- when you say "Same old ideas," yeah, they are older than Jerry Ford but I don't remember all those gas price problems back before Jerry Ford. Sure, there was the -- oh, wait a minute. This time -- this is weird. The time that Saudi Arabia was holding us hostage back in the early Seventies. But before that there wasn't really an oil shortage problem, you know? It's weird, same old ideas.

You want to talk about the same old ideas, how about not drilling and putting on a sweater. That kind of sounds like Jimmy Carter. And if my memory serves right, I think I would rather have Jerry Ford as the President than Jimmy Carter, but what do I know. You know what I'm saying? I may have a small toy in my liver. So don't look at me for answers.

Glenn, you've been having a bad luck streak lately! Stay the hell off the stairs and not get hurt!

Last week I made a video on YouTube and I didn't think that it would be something that would be so huge. I didn't think that it would be -- you know, it was the number two video watched over the last few days on YouTube. I mean, why, I don't know. Maybe because I was honest in a world where most people aren't, I guess. Most people like me, I'm honest, and I shared with you a bit of the story of what happened to me. I believe if I haven't had listened to promptings, I'd be dead today. I also learned an awful lot about compassion. I went into the hospital and -- well, let me give you the story from the beginning.

It was the day after Christmas. I went in for just regular surgery and I went into a place that's not even -- I mean, this used to be a two- or three-day hospital stay but because better living through pharmaceuticals, I'm sorry, better living through HMOs, we no longer put people in the hospital for this. Nothing has changed. We just don't pay for it anymore. So congratulations on that. You get to go home right after the surgery.

So I went to this place and I'm going to name names. My doctors are Littlejohn and McClain from Stamford, Connecticut and they are the best of the best. These guys are absolutely amazing. I have the best team of doctors you can imagine. So Littlejohn and McClain, I go in and they're performing the surgery and McClain is, you know, the guy with the knife and the anesthesiologist, he's there and he puts me under and I'm at this place called the Tully Hall Center. The nurse, when I first walk in, the first thing I say to her after about ten minutes of talking to me, I said, can I tell you something? Already this experience is the best experience because I am so nervous about all of this stuff and you've made me feel so good about everything. She was just fantastic. And I had a great experience. I go in, I go under.

Now, this is where it starts to go awry. Starts to go awry after the surgery. The anesthesiologist told me later, he said, I didn't want  want to say anything but this is the worst case I've ever seen. He said, and I've never had anybody wake up on the table before. He said, as soon as I turned you off, as soon as I turned all the juice off because we were done, he said, you woke up and turned around and said, I'm in pain. He said, so I turned everything back on. It took three hours to stabilize me on pain.

This is where it went bad. I was on morphine, fentanyl which I found out later is an end-of-life drug, Toradol, percocet, and a morphine pump, some sort of -- it started with an N. I don't remember what it was but something else that they gave me with a pump every six minutes I could take it. Morphine, fentanyl, Toradol, percocet every two hours and a morphine pump. I was screwed up.

When I was in the recovery room, the nurse who was watching me, I would hear alarm bells and she would say, "Mr. Beck, breathe, Mr. Beck, just take a deep breath." I was not breathing. I was so under the influence of drugs that I kept going under and just, I'd stop breathing. And the doctor worked his -- he was fantastic. He worked his brains out to try to keep me out of pain but alive. Well, that evening he wanted to put me into the hospital and the last place I wanted to go was the hospital and my wife, much to her chagrin, let me make the decision on going to the hospital and I didn't, and I went home for about two hours. I went home and I got a blessing from a member of my church and then I got back into the car and I went back to the hospital. 

This is where things went really awry because this is where I came to encounter our healthcare system as it stands today. And by the end of the story you will hear, after this story hit the Drudge Report on Friday, the head of the hospital called me and he was all freaked out. I'll tell you where this guy just doesn't get it but you have to wait for the end of the story. You'll get it right away because I'm betting that you've had experiences just like this.

I went back to the hospital and before we left the house, the doctors said, you call me and we will call in advance to make sure they're all ready for you. So we did. Now, I'm in massive, massive pain. I still have these patches on me, these fentanyl patches which is at the end of life when you have been on morphine for a very long time and you have cancer and you're going to die from it, they put these fentanyl patches on you. I found out later, or I read the directions on the box that they stop your breathing. They can kill you. They're as serious as you can possibly get. I'm still in agonizing pain. I'm still taking percocet on top of it.

I go to the hospital because I can't take the pain anymore and I also can't go to the bathroom. So I have to be catheterized. I get to the hospital, I walk through the front door. I shouldn't say that. Impractically carried by my wife. She's helping me into the front desk, the reception area. The lady barely looks at me at the front desk. Now, I'm crying. I know that's unusual, you know, for me. I'm crying. My wife is holding me up and she says, my husband's doctor called, they're expecting him, he needs to have a catheter put in and he needs pain medication right away; he needs to be admitted. She said, okay, well, have a seat. And I just looked at her with tears in my eyes and I said, I don't think I can. She said, oh, yeah, hang on just a second. So she went back, she came back and said, somebody will be with you in a second. So we waited. She went back behind the counter and she talked to the two other nurses that were standing there and they talked about the things that they were going to do that weekend and, you know, what their holidays were like, et cetera, et cetera. They were having a pleasant old time. Meanwhile my wife is holding me up still waiting for the nurse to come back. Finally I said, excuse me, ma'am, is somebody coming for us? What is the latest? She said, jeez, I'll check, let me look, I'll go to triage and I'll look. 

She went and she looked into a window that was about 15, 20 feet away from us. She looked into a window and said, he's with somebody right now, he'll be with you in a moment. Just then the door opened up and he came out, the triage nurse. And he looked at me and I'm still weeping, clearly in pain, can't sit down. My doctor has called and I said, yes, my doctor has called. He said, just a minute. Next? He called somebody else who was sitting down. He went in. My wife said to me, "Honey, go lay down on the couch." I said, "Honey, I'll never get back up." She said, come on. So she went, she took me over to the couch and she laid me down on the couch there.

  This is where it's a good thing that some of us don't carry handguns all the time because this is where I about lost my mind. As I laid down on the couch, few minutes go by. The triage nurse then comes in and he says, okay, Mr. Beck. Now, I'm trying to get up off of this couch. My wife, who weighs half of what I weigh, is trying to help me up. This guy, this triage nurse, is 250, 300 pounds, big guy. Not only does he not go to help my wife help me up, he actually had the audacity to stand there and drum his fingers against the door and look at us like, come on, come on, come on. He never made eye contact with me during the whole time. He had his back to me most of the time. I went in, he gave the triage and he walked me back to the back. I'm sorry. He didn't walk me back. My wife practically carried me to the back. He kept looking at us. He got way ahead of us. He kept looking at us like, come on, keep up.

Finally a nurse who is about half my size, a guy, he turned around and he saw us come into the emergency room and he said, oh, my gosh, do you need help? He was the first guy, after about 40 minutes of somebody saying, do you need help. Don't talk to me about healthcare. Don't talk to me about HMOs. Don't talk to me about anything else. Don't talk to me about how you need a new CAT scan. Don't talk to me about how you need a new facility. Talk to me about how you could have a hospital full of people that don't see people in pain. When he said to me, "Do you need help," I immediately broke out again in gratitude for that guy not because I was in pain but for the compassion that he showed not to me but to my wife. My wife was suffering just as much as I was. My wife was trying to put on a brave face, was trying to help her husband walk, and he was the only guy that caught it.

We sat in that ER with no pain medication, after my doctor called, with no pain medication and my bladder fully extended. Your bladder usually holds about 400ccs. My bladder, when they finally emptied it, was 1500. It was so stretched out they had to keep me on a catheter for days to be able to bring it back into line. Took almost two hours before I got any help. Then when I went up and I was checked in, I insisted that my wife go home. They checked me in. It was about 4:00 in the morning now. I said to the nurse, I said, I'm having problems breathing. You've got to help me with the breathing. My anesthesiologist said that you need to monitor me. She looked at me and said, you look like you're breathing fine to me. Handed me a pillow and wished me good night. Wasn't until the next morning, I tried to stay awake as much as I could. My doctor came in and said, you haven't used the morphine pump at all. Are you feeling better? I said no; I'm afraid I'm going to die.

It wasn't until there was a nurse change before the doctor came in. She went on her own. She went and she got oxygen to put oxygen on my face. She monitored, on her own while the other nurse hadn't. Every time I closed my eyes, I was afraid I wasn't going to open my eyes up again.

Later that turned into something much more dark. I was in the hospital for five days. They had me on this medication for five days. I got into the hospital after coming off of a huge tour, the most successful tour we've ever done, most spiritually uplifting tour we've done. We just finished, we're what, our book has been number one or number two on the New York Times list now for six weeks? Bigger success than we could possibly imagine. Television is a huge success, radio is a huge success. I went into the hospital on a Thursday, feeling pretty good. By Saturday night I was ready to kill myself. And not from pain but because I was absolutely void of all hope. There was no hope. Darkness surrounded me like it had never surrounded me before, from things that I swear to you are right out of the movie Saw. The things I saw in my mind's eye over those few days and how it miraculously turned around coming up in just a second.

Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck returned to the airwaves Monday night with a stern message for the health-care industry, after a recent routine outpatient procedure turned into a medical nightmare and had a severe impact on his mental state.

Beck went in for hemorrhoid surgery and experienced breathing problems while he was at the outpatient facility. His doctors put him on a drug cocktail to ease his pain.

"I had the best doctors," Beck said on "Good Morning America" today. "I had problem with medications."

The doctors warned Beck he only had two options.

"You've got a choice: more pain or more drugs," Beck said his doctors told him. At the time Beck wasn't aware of all the medications he was ingesting.

"I had a drug in me that was 80 times stronger than morphine," he said.

The cocktail had an impact on Beck's mental state.

"I had been convinced that life wasn't going to change. It was just not worth living. It was scary place," he said.

Every time Beck shut his eyes, haunting, horror-movielike images plagued him.

"It's the only time in my life that could have come out of the movie' Saw' — the things coming out of my head, much drug induced with the medication that they had me on in the hospital," a bedridden Beck said on video posted on his Web site. "I had one of the darker moments of my life."

"I was full-fledged suicidal," Beck added. "If they would have come into that room with a handgun. … I would have taken the handgun and ended it all."

Beck's wife, Tania, said she could hear in her husband's voice something was awry when she called home one day to check up on him.

"I could just hear it in his voice that something wasn't right," she said. "He was in and out of sleep a lot just because of all the medication."

In a matter of days, Beck's pain intensified so much, his wife rushed him to a hospital overnight, where Beck said he was shocked to see the lack of understanding hospital employees had for him and his wife.

Tania carried her husband and held him up as they waited for help, Beck said. Two nurses briefly came out and spoke to the couple. Then an exacerbated triage nurse greeted the two, Beck added.

"He never even made eye contact with me," Beck said.

Finally another nurse, who noticed Tania carrying her spouse, rushed to the couple and asked them whether they needed help.

"I started to cry not because I needed help, but because somebody had compassion for my wife," Beck said.

He added his wife was there to help him get through the difficult time, but worries about those, like the elderly, who go in alone and have no outside support.

Somebody needs to be a strong advocate for the patients, he said.

"People connecting with people, let's emphasize the word care in health care." 


Here what he said on his radio show on Monday:

"This is where it went bad. I was on morphine, fentanyl which I found out later is an end-of-life drug, Toradol, percocet, and a morphine pump...I was screwed up. When I was in the recovery room, the nurse who was watching me, I would hear alarm bells and she would say, 'Mr. Beck, breathe, Mr. Beck, just take a deep breath.' I was not breathing. I was so under the influence of drugs that I kept going under and just, I'd stop breathing."