Good morning everyone. I entered the Senate the same year that Representative Gabby Gfords was shot. I knew then that the state of political rhetoric was encouraging violence. I think it’s imperative now more than ever that the leaders in our country disavow violence and lead by example. Through the years, I’ve personally been exposed multiple times to political violence. I was in the right field batting cage when the craze shooter unleashed nearly 200 shots at our congressional baseball practice. I’ll never forget Steve’s police valiantly dragging trying to drag his body away as the gunman continued.
Later that year, a Trump-hating felon attacked me from behind in my yard. I was just straightening up from picking up a tree limb. I was wearing noise cancellation headphones. Never saw him coming. running pelmemell down the hill. I was struck in the back. The force of the blow sent us through the air nearly 10 feet down the hill until a shoulder impaled me as we hit the ground. Six of my ribs were broken. Three of the ribs were completely separated such that for weeks the ends of the ribs would grind upon each other. My lung was damaged.
For weeks I could inhale but not have the rib strength to exhale. I developed two pneumonas. The pain was such that I could only sit up in bed by tying a rope to the foot of the bed and pulling myself up. But even then, the pain was that of a thousand knives. Over the year of recovery, I began to cough up blood. I underwent removal of part of my lung. Complications led to an infection in the space between my lung and chest wall.
I spent a week in the hospital having the infection lavaged every six hours through a chest tube. Recently, Senator Mullen, if you have time to listen, you were confronted by constituents that were angry because you voted against my amendment to stop all funding for refugee welfare programs. Instead of explaining your vote to continue these welfare programs for refugees, you decided to transfer the blame. You told the media that I was a freaking snake and that you completely understood why I had been assaulted.
I was shocked that you would justify and celebrate this violent assault that caused me so much pain and my family so much pain. I I I just wonder if someone who applauds violence against their political opponents is the right person to lead an agency that has struggled to accept limits to the proper use of force. You might argue you were mad and upset about being confronted by your constituents. But Senator Mullen, your constituents are justifiably upset with you. By now, most of America knows that the Somali welfare fraud in Minnesota stole over $9 billion.
But instead of defending your vote, you took to continue the vote to continue these refugee welfare programs, you chose to lash out at me. You went on to brag that you had already told me to my face that you completely understood and approved of the assault. Well, that’s a lie. You got a chance today. You can either continue to lie or you can correct the record. You have never had the courage to look me in the eye and tell me that the assault was justified.
So today you’ll have your chance. Today I’ll give you that chance to clear the record. Tell it to my face if that’s what you believe. Tell it to me today. Tell the world why you believe I deserve to be assaulted from behind, have six ribs broken, and a damaged lung. Tell me to my face why you think I deserved it. And while you’re at it, explain to the American public why they should trust a man with anger issues to set the proper example for ICE and Border Patrol agents. Explain to the American public how a man who has no regrets about brawling in a Senate committee can set a proper example for over 250,000 men and women who work at the Department of Homeland Security.
Are there really such big differences in the quality of surgery between the U.S. and countries with socialized healthcare, like the UK, especially for things like cochlear implants?
There is no such thing as socialized medicine. Socialized medicine is only US slang, which means nothing.
These nations either have universal health care or universal single payer health care and that is the only things they are called.
There are really big differences in the quality of surgery.
The US has the worst health care, the worst medical treatment, the worst medical outcomes, the shortest lifespans, and the worst doctors in the developed world, so surgery in the US is absolutely awful to impossible to have. People in the United States can’t afford to have cochlear implants.
Republicans like Senator Rand Paul, Senator Ted Cruz, and Sarah Palin have all had to come to Canada for treatment and surgery they couldn’t have because of insurance run health care in the United States.
The quality of surgery is vastly better in the UK and in other nations with universal single payer health care than it can and could ever possibly be in the inferior United States, with their inferior insurance run health care.. Cochlear implants are done in the UK and in nations with universal single payer health care, but cochlear implants are impossible to have with insurance run health care in the United States.