In a Just World the Bullies Wouldn't Win

Sticks and stones my break my bones but words will never hurt me. Mother taught me that when I came home crying from school after being teased mercilessly. She was wrong. She was also wrong about those teasing me secretly wanted to be my friends. She was right that I was too thin skinned.

I have never gone into politics other than in the background because of that thin skin. Who really wants to make themselves that miserable. I can get all emotional about my chosen candidate getting called names even.

I have not blogged here on my "political" blog of late because I have not even been able to objectively watch the news with all the unreasonable anger and name calling going on over the health care issue. Aren't adults suppose to be able to sit down at the table and talk in a reasoned tone of voice? Okay, maybe there are no adults in congress.

Yesterday, because my own personal life was going relatively well, I got on my objective observer hat and took a tour through the health care debate (actually my speech teacher would have never used the word debate for a shouting match) again. A couple truths (or as I see it) stood out: All Republicans are shouting these days, and they are not shouting logical arguments.

Republicans, be they on the floor of the house or in town halls or just in front of a Fox camera being egged on by a Fox reporter (did you by chance see that brief clip on CNN before it was pulled from the internet?), are bullies. They are the type of people that used to make me run home from the fifth grade (it reached an all time high that year) in tears and develop a tummy ache for the next week. I even knew the foods I was allergic to that I could eat and break out in hives. Just anything to not got to school and have to face their shouted names and cruel innuendos (none of them would have known what that word meant).

And so why I became a writer. It gives me distance. And here on blogland ultimate power. I can delete your abusive comments. But what I want is reasoned debate. An open forum for logic. The impossible. Republicans are bullies. Democrats know the meaning of words like innuendo. And most liberals I know are frightfully thinned skinned. I guess we are always going to lose in what my father (ever more truthful than Mom) would have called a pissing match.

Shut off the TV and the streaming videos and read only the reasoned articles on the subject and then write your congressman. We need health care reform and all the name calling led by Rush and Fox news won't change that.

Seems Like Yesterday

Seems like just yesterday when the goose of government laid all those golden eggs for the financial institutions that got us to the brink of a greater depression than the Great Depression. In hind sight some economists have even battered around the term "total global economic collapse." But I was reminded by NPR this morning that it has only been a year.

At the time the Republican dominated congress approved the request of the Republican administration for $750 billion to bailout the people that brought us to the brink there was a lot of noise about a total make over of the financial system in the United States. The dream of GW and his cronies of a free market with no restrictions had failed.

Economists say the recession is over. Despite $750 billion being doled out with no records of where, and another like amount distributed with more care by the new Democratic administration the common man is yet to see the results of this back from the brinkmanship. It will be a long time before unemployment is no longer a concern. And we have yet to see one single piece of legislation dealing with regulation of those investment banks and insurance companies that brought us so low.

Now we are being warned that if an overhaul of our financial systems is not law by Christmas we may be in for an even bigger fall in our economy. The banks and financial institutions too big to fail are still too big. Nothing has been done to regulate their size or how they play with money on the global market place.

Congress is still debating the health insurance reform. Note insurance companies are involved with that like Lehman Brothers was involved with the financial collapse. So maybe Congress ought to be involved in the breakup of the big five insurance companies that handle all health insurance and are major players in the investment market. They are not the geese that laid the golden eggs. They are the geese that just laid eggs that almost brought us down. Nothing golden about them.

What I Heard?

I watched President Obama's address to the joint session of congress last night on health care reform. Today all the talking heads and bloggers are taking apart his speech line by line. I read a few before tackling this blog. Yahoo News has one: What he said, what he meant. As if they know what he meant.

I am not going to discuss the pros and cons of his speech here. Nor am I again going to address the various health care plans. Been there and done that.

I have also attended more than one joint session of congress. As a spectator in the gallery when I lived in Washington, DC and worked for a US Senator. And quite frankly I was abhorred when Rep. Wilson (Republican of South Carolina) yelled out, "You Lie" in the middle of the President's speech. Bad manners. Democrats sat through eight years of GW Bush without once doing that. Admittedly his speaking style was so boring the opposition may have fallen asleep but nobody snored let alone heckled. For Shame!

I had fully intended to watch the Republican response but that little episode and the scowling faces of a handful of Republicans put quit to my interest to be bipartisan. Ram it through, Obama, I don't give a damn if they like it.

And would everyone please just grow up. Sarah Palin, GW Bush, and Cheney lowered the level in politics and nobody among the Republicans has been able to rise above it since. But please can't we at least have good manners?