This Would Be Funny if it Wasn't So Pathetic

The House of Representatives of the United States has at last passed a universal health care bill. It is only one step on a very long road to passage of a measure to be sent to President Obama for signature. But it is one step further than any president in the history of our country has gotten.

We have been trying to pass something for decades. We are the only developed nation in the world without universal health care. And we are the one with the highest medical costs in the world. I won't go into all the reasons why we should be writing our representatives and urging them to move forward with this. I have written lots of blogs on the subject. But just yesterday I was talking to a long time and very dear friend of mine. We have remained friends inspite of the fact she listens to and believes Rush Limbaugh. We just avoid the subject of politics. But every once in a while some subject we are discussing sidles into forbidden ground and it did so yesterday.

I have been busy (too busy to even keep up on this blog - mea culpa) and have not made myself check in on the extreme right. So rather than stop the conversation yesterday I just let her ramble on about what is being said in the dungeons about health care reform. Frankly, I was rather stunned. The AARP and the American Medical Medical Association have deserted the conservatives and endorsed this "socialistic plot." The end of the world as we know it is close. Oh, so close. Well, according to my extreme liberal friends (studiers of the Mayan Calendar) it is suppose to end in 2012 anyway. I think it would be nice to have good and cheap health care for the last couple of years.

I always rather wonder if my friend has it right - what she says they say. It always sounds so obsurd so I tripped off to various Internet sites after the conversation (why I did not get as much painting done as I wanted) and found out it is even worse then she reported. Being intelligent she naturally threw out a few extreme claims of the right.

I have an ex-husband who loves to reuse key phrases to skip over large sections of background information he knows I am aware of. It is one way to move the conversation forward rapidly. One of his favorite is: What are they thinking? To which I generally reply: Isn't it clear they are not thinking?

In fact, having exhausted all meaningful argments regardless of how innane, they have moved on to pure scare tactics. The dreaded monster in the closet approach of GW Bush. It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

But the really, really, really scary part is there are people out there that believe in that monster.

Just Unplug

As of April 15th I will have disconnected from my satellite server. I have blogged about my feelings on this before but without a definite resolution until just recently.

I am one of the disadvantaged rural people that cannot get the television channels like ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS with just a standard antenna. And while a lot has been touted about how great digital broadcasting will be nobody has said that it will make areas without television reception more able to receive local channels without paying a satellite or cable service for this privilege enjoyed by most citizens of this country. I cannot even get a daily local paper where I live but I can get Internet with a satellite which I also pay for.

It bothers me that I have to pay to find out what is happening in the world around me. But it brothers me even more that I do not get choices of what I pay for. The satellite and cable providers (pimps) claim they package channels to save me money but I argue with this. They want me to pay for 250 channels (235 of which I will not watch) to be able to get the 15 I will. And while single senior women are a large and growing segment of our society there is no package that does not include Disney, ESPN and an ample sprinkling of religious channels of faiths I resent supporting. I have e-mailed AARP on this issue and they are supposedly in talks with the satellite services (fear dealers) to develop a package aimed at us. Frankly, I believe as long as they can sell us 250 channels so we can get CNN, TNT and local news they will not change.

My response to this is to just say NO. NO television. NO satellite television service. I will get my news from Internet Websites. Weather that way too. I will watch DVD's for entertainment (without commercials trying to sell me something). I will read. And I will think. And one of the things I have been thinking about is where has the FCC been in all this? When did broadcast television cease to be a way to keep our population informed and start being a way of blackmailing them into compliance.