Evil on a Saturday

Yesterday, on two separate occasions, I came in contact with what I perceived to be evil. The first was when I opened my computer to news that Mike Huckabee believes that if we had had the 'Obamaplan' for our health care system, that Senator Ted Kennedy would have been encouraged to end his life earlier. What rude garbage--and this from a Baptist minister! Only proves the saying that the Lord (his lord, I presume--not mine) moves in mysterious ways! The second occasion was very close to home. Sitting in a lawn chair watching a soccer match (granddaughter is 9 and on the team) with my husband, two daughters, one of my daughter's best friends and husband and the father and mother of the best friend's husband. Stay with me here. The opposing team has a little boy named Victor on the team. Victor is about 9 and knows his soccer. He plays his heart out and he is a joy to watch. I noticed that the father of the best friend's husband is upset and keeps saying that the boy is doing something wrong (amazingly, the ref's just don't see it like this guy does). Then he gets up and walks around to my husband and I and says 'That's all those people know how to do, you know--just sports. I work with them and they don't work. They are lazy. I am not prejudice (this statement always brings up red flags!), but I work with them.' I am simply staring at him, aghast, but find my voice to say, Yes, I can tell you aren't prejudiced (sarcasm dripping). He is talking about Victor whose family is Hispanic (and, by the way, sitting close enough to hear). Victor is a beautiful little boy with a very supportive family (who, by the way, speaks perfect English). His mother was cheering the way all mothers do, but she happened to be cheering in Spanish and that really ticked the bastard off! Anyway, when he did not get the required agreement from my husband and I (or anyone else within earshot), he stomped off only to return a few minutes later to say to his wife (who either must be used to the ass or has kow-towed all of her life) and said gruffly 'Are you ready to go? Let's go' and stomped away. I guess we didn't join his little hate group and he was mad. Probably thinks we are some of those bleeding heart liberals who think he is upset because his poor, little white male world is crumbling and he has to have someone to take the blame. Yup!

Decent, Affordable Health Care -are you rich enough to deserve it?

I have had no time to blog since gardening and our farmer's market went into full swing, but I am taking this time today because I have not been so enraged at my own people since we allowed President Doofus to invade Iraq. I have never seen so much absolute crap come out of the propaganda mills as I have seen concerning one of the most important issues of our time--health care reform. Garbage from 'pulling the plug' on grandma (who we would obviously rather see starve since we don't care that she won't be able to pay for health care AND food) to 'standing in line for medical care like those foreigners in Europe who have (oh my god, dare we say it) SOCIALIZED medicine'. Like we don't stand in line now! The difference is that when Frenchmen and Englishmen stand in line they know that at the end of the line they can get good health care that will not throw them into a foreclosure if they can't pay for it (never mind if they insurance or not. I have insurance and I know better than to think that my deductibles will save me from the streets). We don't have that luxury. Here in the rural areas, we don't even know if we have a doctor within 20 miles, let alone at the end of the line. And here is the real clincher---even those of us with insurance have deductibles and out of pocket expenses that we can't afford. So, besides the fact that millions of our people cannot afford health insurance, the issue is not making sure everyone has insurance, but making sure that we can even afford the insurance that we might be 'lucky' enough to have. In the past month, I have heard on 2 separate occasions that people in high places (generally means people with money who think that somehow they have worked 'harder' for their money than those with less money) have blatantly said that 'poor people do not DESERVE good health care'. That by virtue of the fact that these fat cats were in the right place at the right time OR inherited well that somehow that makes them DESERVE good affordable health care. And of course, the appeal to the ordinary American who doesn't know socialism from raisin pie that somehow government supported health care would be the undoing of all of our freedoms-- not wanting to recognize that Social Security and Medicare are government supported programs, pretending not to know that military health care insurance and health care insurance for members of our Congress (by their own admission, the best in the world) has always been government-run.

I really don't want to believe that there are those in my country of supposedly humanitarian values (dare I say 'Christian' values--their true colors are showing), with the opportunity at least of self-education would let a bunch of rich right-wing idiots tell them that somehow decent, affordable health care--the kind that every other industrialized country in the world recognizes is important for their citizens-- is somehow not important for themselves and their children and would be too expensive to 'waste' on the common ordinary citizen. But I've seen us do some pretty stupid things--see 1st sentence in this blog issue--and use a whole lot more money. Would this venture into 'the right thing to do' be more expensive than an immoral war that has run on for 6 years? I think not.