"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

Now I don't know what you're stance on publicly regulated health care is but did you see this video shot by the Columbus Dispatch? I did but I don't get it.

It came out on Tuesday I think and I missed it, but thanks to YouTube I've been ablt to catch up to everyone else. Although, I don't really think that it's unique. It's probably the same type of thing that's going on all over America. It is the same kind of action or reaction that you saw when congressmen and women had their town meetings in order to explain their position of health care reform. It is the same kind of angst that you saw and felt when people compared President Obama to Hitler or Josef Stalin or some sort of "Manchurian Candidate" last year.



Very few things shock me anymore, but to see a man throw dollar bills at another man suffering from Parkinson's Disease as if he was a cheap stripper on a pole where you could see the marks left by the heroin needle in her arm and the sordid and loose looking pussy lips that had seen tighter and better days, makes me kind of pause. Not that anyone has a right to treat strippers that way, but where do people like this protester in his awfully clean white shirt come from? Are they the same ones that sent millions of dollars to Haiti and other areas in need of relief or are they ones that burn crosses in the middle of the woods or the lawns of other people? Why is there such a dichotomy in being an American.

Health Care for All

I can’t believe it was just this past Wednesday that I was complaining to myself that for the almost 3 weeks that I had spent in Florida that the temperature had not gotten above 78F. Now that I’m back in Jersey, it’s cold and wet and a light snow on the ground and I’m starting to realize just how lucky I was. But this isn’t about me ever being satisfied, at least not about the weather but rather about the health care system in this country.

I was outside of the old City Hall in Tampa last week being thoroughly bored when I noticed one bum sitting on a bench examining the pictures of the pair and walk away all the while wondering to myself if this was that status swollen foot of another. Without trying to be obtrusive, I was able to sneak in 2quo that the Republicans really wanted to maintain. Did they really want doctors and medical visits for the rich and those of us lucky enough to have medical insurance provided by our jobs while the rest of the population deals with their issues the best way that they can? I don’t know, but somehow it just doesn’t seem right.

Fun at the Town Hall Meeting

I think that if you are looking for drama, suspense and maybe even a little action, you can’t go wrong by heading to your local town hall meeting where a congressman or senator will be discussing the virtues and or evils, depending on your political persuasion, of health care reform this summer.


Now I’m not talking about the type of telephone town hall meeting that Bob Andrews, congressman for the district I live in is having where everyone is picked in advance and the questions are screened and the answers are formulated well in advance of the entire thing. I'm talking about the kind of town meeting that Arlen Specter, senior senator for PA does. The ones where old white people come orchestrated with their white paper in hand and their carefully scripted questions ready to shout and scream that there will be a special place in Hell for the President and all the socialist, elite, Kenyan lackeys that follow him.

Of course Sen. Specter’s meetings might not be a good example since I think he may be experiencing a backlash for changing his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and, in the eyes of some, may be seen as a traitor to their cause. But there are other politicians that have experienced that same kind of virulent outburst that will bring a member of the House almost to tears as they try to explain that the government has no intention of creating a single payer health care system. They will shake at the knees and look peevishly at security as they tell their constituents that the government will not create death panels in order to kill off old people and save money. Naturally this kind of town hall meeting doesn’t happen when the President is having one himself. I would think that the secret service would put an end to that kind of behavior even before they took the offenders outside and beat them to a pulp.

However, I’m starting to wonder if these protest meetings are really about stopping health care reform or more about having President Obama, as that one congressman said, face his Waterloo. When people are showing up at meetings with posters ridiculing a man who has been in office less than a year and comparing him to Hitler or the Joker, I have to wonder if the disruptions are really about saving the welfare of the nation and its citizens, or about correcting a perceived mistake that was done at the last election? Is this the meaning of what being post-racial is all about?

Regardless, last year I thought that it was the most thrilling political year that I had ever experienced. This year, tops last year in spades and it’s just August. I wonder what will happen next year. Will the revolution be televised this time?

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I'm Not Mad

I don’t think I am as mad as hell. I think I can take a little bit more in fact. I don’t why that is, I don’t have any special hidden reserves or caches of loot buried in a Swiss account or a bank in the Bahamas or wherever rich people keep their funds. I don’t have a wife who hasn’t worked a day in her life but somehow says that $160 million is hers and that whatever I may have done illegally has nothing to do with her assets. I am no more secure in my life or situation than anyone else I know, and yet as the world seems to be on the edge of heading into the abyss, I am not mad about it and I wonder why.

I think I should be mad. I see the value of my property fall as well as those around me. I see my debts rise in proportion to the hike in local taxes that are coming and the increase in insurance premiums. I also see my ability to cover those obligations decrease more and more while I receive less and less in services that I pay for. We only have 6 police officers in my town and 2 of them are part timers. At night the police station closes and if something happens you have to call the City of Camden, the county seat, and have them dispatch someone. I should be mad, but I’m not.

There are a lot of people who are upset and or up in arms about the bonuses that some executives received at AIG after fucking up the company and the economy. I am not. I see them as people who have learned to look after number 1 and I can’t fault them for that. If truth be told, in my next life I want to come back as one of them or at least have whoever represented them in their contract and compensation negotiations represent me.

I say if Congress or the Administration didn’t bother to care before about what the company would do with the money that they were given, or think that they wouldn’t do a Merrill Lynch shuffle board play on them, then why should I? You may answer because you and I will have to pay for it, but I would say that I’ll be long dead by the time that thing is paid for. I mean isn’t that we have done before, what we do now? Don’t we just pass on our obligations and the results of our actions on to those who come behind us? Isn’t that what things like global warming, national debt and social secuity all about?

For years now, corporate executives have made a ridiculous multiple in earnings of their average employee, and no one said anything; probably because people were just waiting for the opportunity to get the chance to make that amount of money for themselves. And now that things are going sour, people act like the inspector in the movie Casablanca, shocked to find out that there is gambling going on in the premise, but I’m not mad.

Really I’m not mad. I think like a worker bee, like a drone, I just shovel shit from one hole to another and wait for the next shoe to drop. I’m resigned to it.

I taped a copy of this movie years ago when I first saw it. But I’m not sure I know where it is now and it seems to be so appropriate at this time. Although I know I’m not at that stage yet, but I'll let you know when I am.

Video Quickie

Did you ever wonder why health insurance rates are so high?

Alright so I'm a facist, but he has no shame. Who among us is perfect?

Healthcare, or No Care At All?

Okay, there probably isn't anything more that I could say that anyone else hasn't said already about the Esmine Green case, the woman who died in Brooklyn's, King's County Hospital probably due to neglect. So I won't. I will just list these videos that I found, out of many, on Youtube and let the commentator of one of them say pretty much what I feel about the whole thing. Just another example of how we allow the weakest amongst us to be treated.