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?

Win One for Teddy

Lots of political pundits and talking heads (who have entirely too much air time to talk) are advancing the theory that the death of Senator Edward Kennedy will spur the congress on to victory on the health care issue.

Meanwhile it seems that those who are against health care are also those that hated Teddy (and probably most liberals). Statistics are being bantered about concerning the number of Americans opposed to health care reform. These all have to be taken with a grain of salt (or the whole shaker) given the lies also advanced by the loyal opposition.

If we go with those Americans that have ample health insurance as the core to those which what no reform we arrive at a 40% figure. This is by no means the majority of Americans as the Republicans would have us believe. And I am willing to advance some theories about that 40%: 1) they have never been seriously ill, 2) they have not lost their jobs and wound up paying for insurance on Cobra, 3) they have not had the company they work for change carriers or coverage or co-pays, 4) they have not had their insurance carrier changed by the company they work for or because they took another job, 5) they do not have a pre-existing condition which limits their freedom to change jobs.

Ten years ago those insured people that fit that parameter was a lot more. Now companies because of the cost of insurance coverage are cutting back on the "frills" or raising the amount their employees have to pay to be in the plan for themselves or their significant other. And during the current economic downturn in the US more companies went bankrupt and/or laid off workers. And a higher percentage of employees job hop.

Health care insurance coverage costs has risen 400% in that ten years. And medical costs have followed right along. Those costs are so above the rest of the civilized world that there is a huge boom in medical tourism. I can get my shoulder rebuilt in Thailand for less than the copay here in the US and that is with air fare.

What that 40% opposed to health care reform does not know yet is insurance and medical care reform is not necessary for just the "have nots" but in the not too distant future it will be necessary for them too. Time to get your heads out of the sand and see the writing on the wall. This is not about insuring the uninsured. This is about keeping America competitive with the rest of the world before we are left in the dust.

Passing of a Time

I had the opportunity in my life to meet all three of the Kennedy brothers: Jack, Robert and Ted. My mother was Democratic precinct chairwoman when Jack F Kennedy was first campaigning for President.

I met Robert when I was working on his political campaign for President.

And Ted I knew while putting together a symposium on defense spending when working for the National Council of Churches in Washington. DC.

In my two years of seeing if I could make the government work from the inside out (the anti-Vietnam-War era) I met and mingled with a lot of the Washington movers and shakers. I started on the staff of Senator Charles Goodell appointed to replace the assassinated Senator Robert Kennedy. A former Republican conservative congressman he became a liberal Senator and joined with Senator Jacob Javits on an amendment to end the conflict in Vietnam.

I got to see a lot of the inner workings of our government and to know that it certainly has the capacity to work correctly given men of high moral conviction and sense of service, and an involved populace that takes the time to become informed on the issues and write to let their representatives in Washington know their views.

I developed a yardstick by which to measure the elected: The devotion of their staffs. The staff people get to know them best. Senator Goodell had inherited Robert Kennedy's staff and they were devoted to his memory and to his successor. President Richard Nixon's staff was devoted but on the level of Hitler's inner circle: blind devotion. Ted Kennedy's staff was devoted. And they were good people. They did not cheat at soft ball (there was a capital hill league).

I came to respect the opinions of legislators who I felt were in government service for all the right reasons. And reporters that felt obligated to report the truth. There are a lot of good men I knew but briefly that are gone now: Goodell, Javits, Novak, Buckley, Cronkite, and Jack, Robert and Ted. And until President Obama I felt there is nobody to carry on properly and vote their conscious. And if that is the case we doomed.

But I like to think God abhors a vacuum and the leaders of this new era we so desperately need to survive as a nation and people have just yet to be identified.

Monster in the Closet

I had a little brother when I was growing up that delighted in building on all my fears. We don't talk anymore because I got tired of being belittled all the time but I think he must have grown up to be a Republican.

Hey, we are all scared of the unknown whether we admit it or not. When we are kids it is the beast under the bed or the monster in the closet at night. Hey, sometimes my closet still scares me. When we grow up and become adults we are scared of the unknown like where the money is coming for the car insurance payment. Or, heaven forbid, the car needing major repairs. Or needing major repairs ourselves.

And those opposed to medical insurance reform are praying on those fears like my brother did when I was a kid. They are telling us all sorts of horrible things about the monster in the closet. Stephen King in his non-fiction look at horror films and fiction - Danse Macabre - explains that the monster we cannot see is always more scary than the monster we can. And who can "see" all the details of their medical insurance or what horrible illness might lead to them confronting it.

We are told that the health care system we have at the moment is the best in the world. Wrong. We are actually about 49th or so. Though we lead in costs for that system. And only the haves can afford it. We are told that if Obama's system goes into effect there will be government panels telling the sick they cannot get coverage. And that is different from your HMO refusing to cover your latest bill how?

I just went through this with a friend. He ended up having half his foot amputated because the infection ran wild while his insurance company debated the costs of prescriptions doctors wanted to stem the spread of the bone eating bacteria he most likely picked up in a hospital being treated for pneumonia. And yet Republican Senators and Congressman with the best medical coverage in this country want you to believe Obama will ruin yours. Sarah Palin, who does not read any major papers, claims the plan includes "death panels" (tell me again why it is we listen to this woman to begin with).

The loyal opposition has us running scared like when we were kids cowering in the bed under the covers. But that is nothing new. They did that for the eight years of the Bush administration only then the monster was 9/11. They invoked its name everytime the polls showed lack of support for some new democracy crushing measure.

So get out from under the covers and turn on the light and open that closet door. Call your insurance company (if you have one) and ask if they approve hospice care. Ask if you need to purchase supplemental insurance to cover cancer treatment. Check on their "approval" process for "extreme" measures. And ask who owns them. (It could be the same people that have owned all your other insurance companies.) Hey, get a definition from them about what they consider extreme. I am betting you won't like their answers.

Could it be that our current health care system is the monster in the closet? The one we refuse to confront while whistling in the dark.

The Fellowship of The Family

I caught an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night and happened to see his interview with Jeff Sharlet who wrote the book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.

This book is, to quote publisher Harper Collins, "A journalist's penetrating look at the untold story of christian fundamentalism's most elite organization, a self-described invisible network dedicated to a religion of power for the powerful." And definitely reason to be scared. I know I was so I dashed home to Google this new group. ( Wikipedia has a good background article with history.)

My first surprise is that this powerful group is not new. In fact it has been around since 1935 and is responsible for the National Prayer Breakfast at which every United States president, including Barack Obama, must speak when asked. It has been known in the past as The Fellowship and The International Foundation and the C Street Group. It seems to eschew any one name in an effort to not be pinned down and examined. It has even officially changed its name from time to time. The Family generally eschews publicity. Core members and associates have denied that the Family exists. It has been caught in the spotlight lately because of South Carolina's governor Mark Sanford's affair and his declaration of the right to have that affair.

The Family's leader, Douglas Coe, has said that the group aims to create a worldwide "family of friends" by spreading the words of Jesus Christ to powerful men and women. Coe and his followers teach that these elite are chosen by God and must learn to wield power according to the divine plan. They are chosen by the Family and groomed and supported to positions of power.

All sounds rather nice and innocent into you look into their teachings in more depth which Jeff Sharlet did by going undercover in the group. First they believe that women should be subservient to men. And they believe that the New Testament does not speak to the poor and downtrodden but to the powerful. It is a message, they say, to the powerful to pick up the reins of leadership and rule. The tout Hitler, Stalin and Mao as the three world leaders that most understood the TRUE message of the New Testament of the Bible. Even the Christian Fundamentalists are becoming alarmed at this religious right group. And so should we all because they want to change America into a theocracy and control the world through the "teachings of Jesus" as they define them.

The only problems with the word of God is the use to which men put their less than divine interpretations.