Not a Healthy Bill

The Congress is on its way to passing what everybody keeps calling health care reform. Yet in order to appease Republicans (who weren't going to vote for it no matter what), all of the truly bold items have been stripped out of it. The public option is gone. Coverage for abortions is gone. Preventative medicine is gone. All of which was done to satiate people that wouldn't approve any way.

What is left is the government mandating that we purchase a private product.

As much as I approve of the goal- doing something about the potentially catastrophic medical bills- I hate the means. If the government wanted everybody to have insurance, it should have just provided it. This is a bad, bad compromise.

Timing is everything

The recent climate change talks in Copenhagen were mired down and uninspired. No real change happened, just a promise to do something vague in the future. The media outlets barely noticed.

Could it be because they are talking about global warming in Scandinavia in winter? Whose bright idea was that?

Want to get some results? Schedule the next meeting in Egypt in the heat, or one of these island nations that is only a couple of feet above sea level. I bet they become amazingly motivated when they have to worry if each wave is getting bigger...

Hypocrisy

A local politician criticized the catholic church for opposing health care reform because of the issue of abortion. Some loudmouths have been proclaiming that they don't want their tax money spent on abortions (even though that is already prohibited).

As life-affirming catholics, why aren't they protesting that they don't want their tax dollars spent on warfare? I certainly don't want my money spent killing civilians. And since more people are killed in war than in medical procedures, and since unwanted children are often born into dire circumstances bad for child and mother, I would much rather have free, no-questions-asked for anyone abortions, than a decade-long war for nebulous reasons.

If I were cynical, I'd suggest that it is because the church feels it is okay to kill muslims.

Loyal Opposition?

The necessity of health care is one of the big topics lately.

One of the arguments the Republicans are making is that they do not want government involved in your health care decisions.

I am having trouble believing my ears. It was the Republicans that spearheaded the effort to insert the government into the health-care decisions of the Terri Schiavo family. They convened a special session of Congress. Only Republicans voted on the bill after hours, and President Bush left vacation early to sign it on Palm Sunday. At the time they said it was too important a matter to leave it up to the states.

Are they hypocrites? Do they think we have no memory? Or are they simply against anything that President Obama wants?

Years To Think It Over

In California recently, a young woman was rescued after 18 years of captivity. She was abducted off the street when she was 11, kept in a shed in the suspect's back yard, and had children by him. This is disturbing in and of itself.

But it also sounds distressingly similar to the case in Austria recently, where the girl was kept captive in the basement for years, bearing children of her captor. The thought that there could be two such depraved individuals in recent memory is alarming.

But what truly upsets me- what I'm having trouble getting my head around- is that in both cases the captor had a wife.

How could they not have known? How could they not have done something?

Is the dating scene really so bad? Is this really the best they could have done? What could ever possess a woman to stand by her man to such a degree?

Because there is no way that they couldn't have known. This isn't a case of seeing him go into your daughter's room at night, and convincing yourself that it is for an innocent reason. What happened to the maternal instinct? Hell, what happened to human decency? They had to have known that it was happening. Is the trick that it wasn't their own children, that they think they are protecting their own by directing the man to someone else? (That can't be it; the girl in Austria was the man's daughter) Do they, god forbid, approve of the situation?

How is there any way that this makes sense?

The Boy Who Cried Racist

There are a few facts that everybody seems to agree on.

The black Harvard professor forgot his keys and when he returned from a trip had to break into his own house. A concerned neighbor called the police. The officer that arrived ascertained that he lived there.

And then things get interesting. The officer claims that the professor got abusive and was arrested for being disorderly. The professor claims that he was arrested because they didn't believe a black person could live there. President Obama stated that the cops acted stupidly.

it doesn't sound as though race was a factor. I'm sure that after such a long trip, anybody would be tense. But even so, you don't harass cops. I recently had state police point their guns at me after a misunderstanding. I didn't take offense; I knew they were doing their job.

What I find curious is the people that think every bad thing that happens to them is because of racism. If the cops had taken too long to respond- or hadn't responded at all- the same charge would have been levied. Instead, the cops quickly and thoroughly arrived and did their job, only to hear the same complaints.

I'm pleased that the officer has refused to apologize. And I caution people that if they cry racism at every slight, we won't believe you when it actually happens.

Circle of Life

How appropriate that it began with an orange.

I was recently contacted by an old friend through the power of the internet (itself run by little 1s and 0s). I met him in high school when a mutual female friend tried to get my authoritative opinion. He was eating an orange as though it were an apple- taking a big bite right through the rind and all. Instead of criticizing, I shrugged. We became instant good friends.

Our circle of friends constricted a bit into a triangle with the aforementioned girl. And then it constricted again when I gave her a ring. He found his own girl and we regretfully went separate ways.

I wish I could say the ways we went were separate but equal. They were, if you consider that we both made big circles. I moved away and back home several times. I went from married to single and around again. I went from what I studied in college to a hated job that paid the bills and now am back in film.

He only needed the one ring for a woman. His Navy tours took him under the North Pole, in a big loop around the Pacific, and back again. He went through the Mediterranean, and came back. He moved from the east coast to the west coast, and now is back again.

After two decades of us traveling, moving, and changing our lives, we met up a couple of towns over from where we first met.

And, of course, he was a little more orange-shaped, which was gratifying.