The suggested task this week at Splendeed was to contact your rep. and voice your opinion on health care....what ever your opinion is...I knew my congresswoman (Diane Watson) and Senators (Feinstein/Boxer) but realized I had no real idea who my state reps were. I had a vague sense that I'd voted for someone...but couldn't name them...AND my city council rep was also vague to me - as it's changed a few time recently due to people moving on...my ignorance was sad but true...So I did my research and now all are clearly posted on my fridge. Now you:
Not doing a lunch post today. But we MUST have some music. The USC football team has made Bill Wither's song Lean On Me their theme for the season. Below is Wither's singing his classic and a clip of his "prank" visit to the USC football team this year that ends with everyone singing...Lean On Me's sweet simplicity ranks it near Let It Be as one of the 20th Century Pop songs that people will be singing forever...
I am seriously. Go read Cine's post on healthcare. In the previous post I said Obi Wan's head fakes about the wars was the most duplicitous aspect of his campaign. The health care train wreck currently unfolding in D.C. is surely the most sickening Obama event post 1/20/09.
A majority of Americans want a single payer federally mandated health care system. A majority of Americans are being ignored by their "representatives". No shock there. One of Pelosi's minions even had the temerity to say "make us" put single payer on the table. What followed was a fax shitstorm in Madam Perma-Smile's office. But what is really galling are the words "make us". As if the majority of Americans are unruly teens who must act up to force mommy and daddy in Congress to interrupt their key party with the big money insurance pimps who they service with their mouths and our cash. We shouldn't have to "make them" do anything. They work for us...for God's sake.
Anyway, Cine breaks it all down with a style and skill I envy. With the added bonus of the tag she uses for Pelosi: Nasty Pancakes.
Dee Lish Us.
My God, I wish I'd come up with that slice of perfection.
Throughout the trauma inflicted on the Democratic Party by Obama, his pod people, and the media last year, my personal politics stayed largely intact. 2008 did not radicalize me, or stoke any reactionary impulses. What the on going self immolation of the Democrats has done is open up a willingness on my part to at least listen to the other side. I did not vote for either side. There are, believe it or not, other options on the ballot.
The first 2 months of the Obama Admin. may be different. I am questioning my politics now. In a series of decisions Obama has proven to be as greasy a politician as we have ever seen. The direction he is taking us is at best odd and at worst disastrous. It is increasingly clear that neither of the traditional parties has solutions anymore. I am not even sure either side is interested in solutions any more.
I am beginning to see the libertarians as a corrective....whether I like all of what they say or not is beside the point. The normal corrective processes have been usurped and obliterated. It is possible that the only viable counterpoint is an upsurge in libertarianism. Obama does seem determined to "community organize" all of us into something else. Not quite American, not quite European. Ameripean. Though I don't fear "the European model" - I just don't think we are, finally, like them. In the long run "community organizing" the entire country is much more likely to highlight factionalism. States refusing stimulus money can be seen as a foreshadowing of this.
Listen closely to those on the right, left, middle, outer political reaches, and the politically disinterested - and "Don't tread on me" can be heard in one form or another. For most Americans it takes under 5 minutes to get to some version of "Don't Tread on Me". The only places in the U.S. this is not the All-American "final answer"? Nancy Pelosi's head and Chicago. Another reason to look wearily on any thing that comes out of the Obama/Emmanuel White House.
I have never seen the Federal government so disconnected from the people it governs. Polls aside, the cascade of our money being thrown at the people who caused the mess is nothing if not contemptuous. They don't care about us. Frankly, they barely even act like they do anymore. Our representatives did not even read the bill that spent 700 billion of our dollars. And gave AIG executives the green light to hand out obscene bonuses.
They did not read the bill. That is the core of the problem. They did not read the bill.
We should call this what it is - contempt.
Neither party is capable of seeing past the next fundraiser. Neither party can be trusted. Nor should they be.
Within the system we now have I see no way out of the current era. And the era is ending. This does not mean there is not a way out within in the system. It would just take a sea change in the attitudes of our leadership that is unlikely to occur.
The system is not broken. It is working just fine for those who run it. It is broken for the rest of us. And it should go. A season of libertarianism tempered by common sense and a dollop of compassion may be the only viable, American option to counteract the community organizer - in - chief, and his merry band of Ameripeans.
