Sour Milk Sea

As this recession heads into its third year it's understandable that some people's tempers may be getting a little short, as mine did yesterday in my remarks in Word. I am deleting but one sentence from that in this reposting because it was an over the top remark I have formerly reserved exclusively for Evangelists. But I will be honest in that I have a bias against bloated government, and this Health Care bill before congress vastly expands the size of government and will increase the deficet by literally trillions of dollars. What I find most offensive about this bill, which I didn't even touch upon yesterday, was its dishonest accounting. You get taxed right away for services, but those services are not forthcoming till the year 2014. No wonder that Obama can claim that in the short term it reduces the deficit. Formerly Republicans were the only ones guilty of this practice. But also I don't like all of this "whistling in the dark" stuff of just hoping against hope that whatever is wrong with this bill will get "fixed" down the road. You pro gay advocates out there who have been waiting for "Don't Ask Don't Tell" to be "fixed" have been waiting a long time. Some people who didn't like the Clinton 1996 welfare bill have been waiting for a long time for that to be "fixed". How long did it take for Plecy verses Ferguson to be "fixed"? Hillary Clinton did well to point out that Martin Luther King would not have been such a potent force were there not a Lyndon Johnson to enact his dreams into law. If I were Senator Lloyd Benson I might say "I knew Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson was a friend of mine. And Mr. President, you're no Lyndon Johnson." When Johnson passed Medi-Care in 1965 he did a bold thing. But this current Health bill is anything but bold. About the closest parrellel I cam come up with is the Impeachment of President Clinton by the Republicans. They did it just to prove they could do it, but other than that the whole thing just wasted an awful lot of Congress' time. And now here are the remarks from yesterday

This is after dinner on Tuesday December 22, 2009, the second day of winter. We had some strange casserole and pasta concoction tonight for which there were no seconds with refried beans and green beans. I had two helpings of bread pudding with chocolate icing on it. I went to the bakery for coffee that was actually hot from the pot. Today I would like to talk about a few general principles. At three o clock Ron Reagan dedicated most of the hour (after his right wing idiots gallery of horrors) to discussing the Obama Health Care bill. How many out there are ready for “Obama Care”? I’m not. And were I a California senator I would vote an emphatic “No” on the final bill. Everybody appreciates a strait shooter. But today our host was jerking his audience around with a misleading promo. He said he was going to run down the ten reasons for voting Against the Obama bill that some lady had written in an editorial. That is not what happened. Instead he had a “guest” who like an over-zealous evangelist, did most of the talking throughout the hour. He appealed to highly infantile logic in saying why Obama Care is something every American should embrace. I was taken back to the time when I myself got on welfare, that is Social Security. It’s kind of a period in my life, like Homer Simpson’s grunge period that I haven’t talked about much, as though by ignoring it I could deny that it even happened. I had a lot of fierce arguments with parents, who were the chief protagonists in seeking this government hand-out. All you had to do was to see a couple of doctors who rubber stamped documents and said that you were unemployable. What Obama Care does is require young healthy Americans to take a “leap in Faith” only in this case a leap downward. It’s like a guy who was afraid to dive off a thirty foot spring board into a pool, blindfolded. But one day the protagonist sees old Charlie ascending the ladder to the diving board. And then he sees him jump, and he turns to his friend, “I hope he knows there’s no water in the pool. He said he was afraid into diving in a pool filled with water so I thought "If he's afraid of water, I'll take the water out - - taking the water out might allay his fears.” You remember that story about the little girl who was going to do acrobatics on a high bar at school wearing a dress. And an adult says “I don’t know if you want to do that, people might see your underwear” and the girl responds, “Oh, that’s OK, I’m not wearing any”. People are afraid of shelling out eight percent of their annual income on health insurance they will probably never use. But it’s OK. Just to up the ante, it’s not really a government program. You are doing it with a private insurance company with all of its inefficiencies and CEO salaries. Nobody has figured in the human cost of psychological devaluation. I am reminded of that example from Star Trek in an episode where Scottie was in it, and he was talking with Captain Piccard, who relates the time when a paracitic organism latched on to the Ship and was sucking on the fuel system to gain nutrients. And Captain Piccard tells him “We got shed of that creature by the old trick of souring the milk”. They made it so undesirable and counter productive to engage in that activity he finally gave it up. Healthy Americans who are young and healthy now by virtue of just being alive and breathing air that Al Gore isn’t charging them for yet, now has to take that leap in faith saying “Well I just might get lucky. I might come down with a horrible illness worth eight percent of my income”. For those who extol the virtues of "sharing the risk among the many" I say that the drug and insurance companies have a great little gaming operation going and to quote from "War Games" the 1983 movie, "The only way to win is - Not To Play". Of course there are taxes laid on the middle class including taxes on Union dues used for health care, so I understand. And of course they have to pay top dollar for any medications they get. And if their insurance isn’t adequate, in order to get what is called a Cadillac plan, they are taxed more money. One reason why I always admired Malcolm X more than Martin Luther King, is because the former never denigrated the Black man saying he should see himself as poor and needy. King, especially in his later years, alas, did this more and more. No wonder that if the assasenation of Malcolm X was a comspiracy between J Edger Hoover and Elijah Mohamed, it is Elijah Mohamed who is guilty of the greater betrayal. Hoover knew that if King’s teachings tended to make the Black man dependant and the teachings of Malcolm made the Black man strong, that Malcolm was the greater of the two men to be feared. The radio program promised that they would examine all ten reasons why the Obama Care health bill is such a bad idea, and I would like to have heard that. Unfortunately so much time was expended in making excuses for President Obama’s blanket sell-out, that completion of the roster of reasons was impossible. This whole argument about “getting your foot in the door” is nonsense.

It was only the last two callers to the show at the end of the hour that spoke the truth. It’s the Republicans who are desperate to get this bill passed, because it will give their buddies in the drug and insurance companies everything they’ve wanted. Stocks in drug and insurance companies have skyrocketed in the past few days in anticipation of this bill’s passage. This bill is their Christmas present. You know there is an adage of “Friends don’t stick it to friends”. I had who I thought was a friend “stick it” to me today, economically in a fast talking, slippery and patently unfair deal that he wasn’t going to budge from. Friends don’t deal with friends the way they deal with outsiders. You’ve heard the term of “Jewing you out of something”. Jews don’t stick it to Jews and Black people shouldn’t stick it to Black people. Too bad President Obama hasn’t learned this lesson. Of course I would add that US workers don’t “stick it” to other US workers. And frankly I think trade unionists have more loyalty to their own kind than certain Black people do. It isn’t a Unionist’s idea to give Red China these sweetheart deals that they’ve procured. Nobody is going to stick in any “buy American” clauses in any Obama deal. And nobody is going to allow the importation of Drugs on Obama’s watch. Thom Hartman pretty much put his finger on it when he said that Obama obviously sold out to the drug and insurance companies to insure their continued donations to Democratic Party politicians. In other words it was the Judas instinct. In order to preserve what you think you have to, you end up losing everything that is truly of value to you, like your integrity and the ability to look yourself in the mirror each morning. But one of these days a third party candidate is going to make it in this country. We will overcome our Third Party phobia in order to overcome a more intolerable situation, which is our two party system now where people can vote for a black progressive and get an Oreo Bush clone. Thom Hartman says much of this Afghan war escalation is because Obama has sold out to that dreaded “military industrial complex”. The president is thinking that if he can just act White enough he will somehow be able to achieve some transcendent state of White Nirvana. Is this what the President was really thinking when he wrote “The Audacity of Hope”? Hartman pointed out that those who are looking ahead to Cap and Trade, may see a similar sell-out to the establishment, and this move may be just another boomdoggle for Wall Street traders, trading these Carbon credits like securities. And I'm positively going to strangle the next person who says, "The President is playing chess while everybody else is playing checkers". My response to that one is, "The trouble is this is a Checkers championship!"