THE PASSAGE OF TIME BRINGS

MORAL CLARITY OF VITAL ISSUES

Today as one looks over the political scene, a sense of mental clarity is descending on some. Certain things just seem more obvious now. Twenty years ago all we knew about Afghanistan was that they were “the god guys” warding off the Soviet Empire from its attempted domination. Today we see Afghan society as a place of the oppression of women, yearning to be free. They are no longer content to live with their despotic husbands. But when they run away after being beaten they are either imprisoned, or worse yet, taken out and stoned. The concept of women’s rights is spreading world wide. Today in the stock market we can tell a real recovery from a phoney one. They say this whole stock rally was generated by “belt tightening” and increased productivity and efficiency. I alerted my readers to this phenomenon a few postings back, and now the media is finally catching up. But a real recovery can’t begin till the consumer gets back into the market buying goods and services. All this government belt tightening is having the perverse effect of retarding an already languid recovery. Other issues we see more clearly today is that war doesn’t solve everything, and sometimes it doesn’t solve anything. War is more of an addictive pastime than the sort of moral crusade people like Ronald Reagan invisioned it as. People look at the evidence of global warming and find that what was so clear in Al Gore’s movie, can prove quite illusive to document in scientific data. We know we will have to do something about it. But we also know that fixing this economy is far more urgent and this is the clear and present “reality” we have to deal with right now. Besides, since our economy is so depressed we know that energy consumption is being cut by the mere fact of being in a recession- - in many cases more than it would be cut by cumbersome conservation measures that may be more trouble than they are worth.

Further back in this file I was commenting on Ronald Reagan’s speech in 1964. But if you were to step into a time machine and go back only twenty years you’d be amazed at the similarities to today. Personally I wouldn’t mind one bit going back to 1989 if me and all the people I knew would be twenty years younger like we were then. Nobody my age would mind that one bit. People who say they are happier in their late fifties than their late thirties must be - -smoking something that ought to be illegal. I think all the polls on this issue are nuts, saying there is anything positive about aging those twenty years. A UFO alien would be hard put to tell the difference - - in terms of just stepping out of his space craft and looking around. The tastes of the American people have changed amazingly little, and what changes there have been are for the worse, like cell phone devices everywhere. A space alien would notice a lot less the increased use of personal computers. What he would much more likely notice was how little we progressed in space exploration and technology these twenty years, and changes in commercial aircraft would be minimal, except people are more paranoid now. Then as now the Republicans seemed to have the “upper hand” in media coverage slanting stories their way. The clothing people wear wouldn’t be much different. The buildings would only appear different if you knew what to look for because nowdays they do the old ball and chain routine to relatively new buildings. A space alien would see a lot of “needless” changes in Sports stadium locations. Music on the radio is indistinguishable from today. There have been no musical innovations in twenty years. Yes, they had rap in 1989. It had been around a couple years. Democrats then as now were on the defensive. Then as now you had Rush Limbaugh on the radio, with his viewers believing every word he says. And were you to ask whether the people of 1989 were “ready” for federalized health insurance the answer would come back a resounding “No”. Just like we weren’t ready in 1948 when the democrats had the issue in their party platform.

Health Insurance continues to be the big news of the week. There is this week a “counter-tide” of people on the left rising up and saying “Don’t take away our public option”. The liberals have boiled it down to three requirements. Any medical plan must contain a public option, to increase price competition and “keep the insurance companies honist”. Conservatives bemoan this in saying that the liberal’s goal is to eliminate private medical insurance entirely. I ask, “Would this be such a bad thing?” Certain issues are shall we say “clearer” than they were twenty years. The abuses of the Executive Branch are the most notable. It is clear that many people can no longer afford medical insurance whether they would like to have it or not. Young people find it too expensive. Others have been dropped by their insurance plans. There is the “overhead” which is in excess of thirty percent for private insurers. They say profits over the last ten years for insurance companies are up several hundred percent. Rates are unaffordable. Cutting off people for having a “pre existing condition” is unacceptable. All the paper work these companies put doctors through is unacceptable. Thom Hartman points out that private insurance companies are not accountable to anyone the way a “public” government servent is. If you picket their office you won’t be arrested. These medical insurance companies appear to be without a moral compass of continence. Not only this but Ronald Reagan could never have foreseen the vast amounts of money changing hands as congressmen routinely take bribes to secure their favorable vote. Such explicit “lobbying” ought to be illegal, and would be in most European countries. The “Free Market” system is broken. Drug companies will go to any length to sell you on a drug whether it’s way overpriced or ineffective or dangerous, or not. President Obama appears to be in bed with the drug companies. Our President says that the public option is only a “sliver” of the whole health care program. But in truth – without the public option you have nothing but a big pile of bullshit. I’m disappointed that our President can’t tell a program that will do something about our health care problems- - he can’t tell that from bullshit. The fact is we have to do something, some time soon about health care in America, because we just can’t go on the way they are now, and if we ignore the problem we know it’s getting worse all the time. Perhaps it’s time to scrap the entire current bill and start with a simple premise- - such as letting people under 62 enroll in medi-care. We need some sort of reasonably priced program that the average American citizen can actually afford. It doesn’t have to be this year, but soon. We can’t afford to wait another fifteen years, which is what the conservatives would like us to do. President Obama used to speak of “the urgency of NOW”. What steps does our President want done NOW? Why doesn’t out President get on television and pitch the basic provisions of a bill he can endorse- - to the American People, in plain and simple terms they can relate to- - much as Ronald Reagan used to do while he was still a democrat. I have seen astonishingly little real “Leadership” of the type we used to routinely expect of our Presidents. He seems much happier putting his finger to the political brease and adopting his positions accordingly. Even if you are not now a follower of Obama, a good speech should be able to win a lot of people over to his side. This is what President John Kennedy used to do.

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This is a few minutes to six on Monday August 17, 2009. I smoked my last cigarette at a quarter to one. Randy Rhodes wasn’t on and Frances and Angela otherwise known as “Freangela” were substituting. On the soap opera now Philip has punched out Nathan for hanging around with Stephanie. Stephanie says she wasn’t want Melanie ever walking off from a situation “mad” because “she always finds a way to get even”. Well now Melanie has decided to make a play for Philip after all. Meanwhile Philip doesn’t see why Victor wants to defend Daniel. He doesn’t know all the facts, though. I went for coffee in the courtyard in the afternoon and had one cup and a part of another before she ran out. Both the morning and the afternoon coffee lines have been really long. There are a lot of addicts to service. Meanwhile Raphael’s sister let a baggie of cocaine drop at the Brady pub and Brady, like radar, saw it immediately. Meanwhile Hope and Bo are bickering under stress and now have received an official ransom note from Sierra’s kidnappers. If you think about it, even submitting a ransom note is like asking to be caught, because you can always set up a sting operation.

I had “Deal or No Deal” on at three and at 3:30 decided to switch to Oprah just for a change of pace. I was out a number of times on the patio trying to borrow a cigarette, and Larry finally let me have one. We had grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, and to my way of thinking, they were short on cheese. We had beef stew for dinner and a dinner roll and small salad. I wanted seconds because I was hungry and they said there would be no seconds. That seems to be getting more common.

I walked down to the smoke shop for one pack of menthol Santa Fe. I had to decide about my money and bill paying and decided I needed to trim two dollars off my upcoming check to the phone company. I stopped at the bakery for hot coffee from the pot. I needed something to fill me up because I was hungry.

Then I played Reagan’s 1962 speech on Medi-Care. Reagan wrongly said that all doctors would be hired by the federal government and would be assigned geographically according to need. Then I watched a 1964 speech for Goldwater in black and white. In it he spoke of farms being auctioned off because a farmer illegally planted when the government told him not to. He talked of over-priced, bloated government programs. He spoke of a new three million dollar building in Cleaveland having to be torn down because some government environmentalist said it was the wrong use for the land. It was a beguiling speech. He quoted our founding fathers quite a bit and spoke of government being evil and how when even a bad program gets instituted, it never goes away, but there’s always a new duplicate new one tacked on to it. As to the end of the speech, it was one I think Jesus Christ ought to listen to. He says is peace so dear and life so sweet that it is purchased at the expence of our liberty? This is a question Jesus should ask himself. If Jesus Christ were in Egypt he would not only refuse to free a single slave but tell the Egyptian government a good place where they can obtain even more slaves. You see classic Christianity is liberal in that it subscribes to the liberal axiom that men are basically evil and government is basically good, instead of the other way around. And since men are evil, the Jewish people were evil, they had no right to attempt to even fight for their liberty. Whereas the Roman government was at best “neutral” and hence morally superior, and at worst – the Roman government was doing God’s bidding in enslaving a people. Many of the same defeatist lines used by the liberals of Reagan’s day in 1964 have been used on me, by people claiming to be speaking for God such as “You’ll never win – why don’t you don’t just give up”. Also just as the Viet Nam war was led by people for whom victory was not even an option, so the God who has been guiding my life seems not to have any concept of trying to improve MY life or give ME victory over any of the many problems that vex me. As such I have often spoken of my own personal Spiritual Viet Nam. The thing with Medi-Care is that some on the radio are saying that the current program ought to just be extended so that it isn’t limited to people over sixty-two. The problem with this is, it will jack up hospital and service prices into the stratosphere with demand-pull inflation, so that in the end we will be no better off. As Geddy Lee said, “You don’t get something for nothing”. I agree there is a major “problem” with the insurance companies. But “paying them off” the way this current bill does, won’t solve anything. Many of the things in Ronald Reagan’s speech appeared logical and to be making sense from the vantage point of 1964. And this is exactly where Thom Hartman develops telescope vision. Because he superimposes the present of today onto the past of 1964. We know that the nation didn’t go communist, but they didn’t know that then. One socialist apparently said back then, “If Barry Goldwater is elected, it will greatly impede the progress of Socialism in this country”. That was a guaranteed applause line.