In Other Words, an English Major

Just another reason to love Garrison Keillor . . . the September 2009 Vanity Fair features him on their end page Proust Questionnaire. Mr. Keillor was asked—"What is the quality you most like in a woman?" He responds:

High-spiritedness, wit, a love or repartee and wordplay and allusion and jokes—in other words, an English major.

As a former English major, I say God Bless you Mr. Keillor, if only more boys I knew had held you same esteem for wit and wordplay in my impressionable teens and twenties . . .

On Death and Dying

"Why would any member of Congress, especially those of us who are grandmothers, want to pull the plug on Grandma?" So sayeth Rep. Maxine Waters (D).

Valid point, one I would think many in Congress could agree on, these aren't exactly young whipper snappers, guiding our fair nation.

Meanwhile, the lion of the Senate is gone, healthcare is no further along than it was two months ago (although perhaps their is a faint light ahead, dare I dream?), and as one older, African American woman at a recent town hall, who had lost her job and had no insurance, queried the gathering only to be booed, "Aren't I an American too?"

Yes ma'am you are, and we are all deserving of care, unless you buy what the CEO of Whole Foods recently shared in an OpEd.

But I digress, a 35-year-old woman is dead of breast cancer, and more like her will die today and tomorrow. If we fix our healthcare, maybe we can save one or two of these people who are loved by so many. Maybe we can't, but isn't it better to try?

Me & Julia

A twofer! I told you I was inspired . . .

And it is all due to Mrs. Julia Child. I just saw the movie, Julie and Julia, and I found it quite charming, as well as laugh out loud funny. Mrs. Child was a remarkable woman from the looks of things, and not just because she deciphered French cooking for us crass Americans.

While I couldn't come home at 10pm and start deboning a duck, don't you fret, it is in my plans. It may appear that politics is my first love, but I would trade every pundit out there to just cook, and cook well, at will.

Points No. 1, 2 & 3

Why is it that someone who is most assuredly not a night person is so often struck by inspiration in the final dark hours of the day? Well that is a question to ponder some other day I suppose, but for now, more on healthcare.

I know, I know. I am sick of the topic too, but sometimes you have to worry over something until you are thoroughly sick of it before you see the light and can make things right. I have three points to make in that vein, so bare with me.

Point No. 1
The spouse asked me the other day if I knew what the public option was. I do not. Nor could I properly explain how that might differ from a single payer system. Admittedly, I am sure that I could dig around, do my research and come up with an answer. Hell, I could just try to muster up some common sense and make a best case scenario guess, but off the top of my head? Nope, stuck. And that seems, to me, to be a BIG problem. The spouse and I watch/read a fair bit of the news, probably I would estimate more than your average American. If we can't give a reasonable response to that question, then I would venture to say that neither could that average American. Which means (not that we didn't already suspect this) the people hollering at these town hall meetings have no clue what they are yelling about.

Point No. 2
I have a dear friend of going on 18 years who is in the process of saying goodbye to a beloved friend of hers. This woman is dying of breast cancer and most likely has but weeks to live, if that. She is not even 35. I have met her, dined at her house, and although we are in no sense of the word close, I can't shake the feeling of just how wrong this is. She is younger than me, she never had the chance to have children. She leaves a husband who never imagined he would have to say goodbye to his wife so early and so young. It does something to shake my inner bouncy ball core, which seems so resilient despite my better efforts to kill it. I don't know what the financial condition of this young woman and her husband is. I don't know what their insurance situation is either, but I do not doubt that even if they have "good" insurance there has been a significant accumulation of expense during her sickness. So not only his her husband left alone, bereft, he is left with God knows what kind of debt to handle as he is grieving. That simply seems too much for one soul to take on.

Point No. 3
To finalize, and somewhat combine the previous two points, I was just reading Jonathan Alter's Newsweek essay "Health Care as a Civil Right." In it, Alter not only makes the point that Obama & Team need to reframe the argument for healthcare reform to center it around the belief that healthcare is a RIGHT and not some ridiculous luxury afforded only to those who are not sick and who have money, but that this public option hullabaloo has overshadowed this idea and is, in fact, not central to the issue. Did you know that half of U.S. bankruptcies are a result of medical expenses? Isn't that shameful? And when Alter says, "Passage [of healthcare reform] would end the shameful era in our nation's history when we discriminated against people for no other reason that that they were sick."

Even if you are sick of the subject that is something to think about, don't you think?

The One Where Broad Loses Her Temper

Moments ago, I was blithely watching the local evening news as they interviewed people at a restaurant that was going to be part of Obama's listening tour on the healthcare issue. When what to my wandering ear should be heard, but an ignorant redneck with eight tiny brain cells. This woman was voicing her opinion that the Democrats weren't on the right track with the healthcare reform because EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE A CHOICE.

Well goddamn people (to paraphrase the gd bomb that Chris Matthews just let fly on MSNBC). Last I checked that is exactly what the freak President Obama was offering. A CHOICE. He isn't going to take away healthcare, he is going to make it so more people can have it. If you want to dither about how it is going to be paid for, fine, I got the time. I am unemployed. But don't say horseshit like the plan won't give you a choice.

I thought I couldn't abide a hypocrite, but idiots are fast getting aided to my list of things I just can't take in my dotage.

Political Terrorists and Death Panels

Once again I am compelled to say that the Democrats need to get off their asses and grow a set. Gentle reader, the nonsense that the GOP is saying in regards to the healthcare plan put out there by President Obama is crazy, and the biggest loon of them all—Sarah Palin—decided to add her measly two cents the other day on Facebook. Come on people, I thought Facebook was for sharing your thoughts on the latest box office offerings and letting your 200 closest "friends" know what you ate for lunch, not implying that the President want's to off your developmentally disabled spawn. But I have been wrong before.

So Palin says that the healthcare plan will create death panels that will determine whether the infirmed or disabled will be allowed to live or die. Hogwash. The stuff that Palin and her buddies in the Republican party are coming up with are so off base as to be laughable, but the problem is the Democrats aren't busting their chops on this. Maybe they are waiting for the lunacy to die down, but meanwhile, the lunatics are growing in number.

Take for instant these town hall meetings where middle aged, lower to middle class white people are asking for their country back. Well I have to agree with Mr. Maher on this one, what they mean is they want their country back from the black guy. Nice, huh?

But speaking of growing a set, the Dems could take a page from Hillary Clinton who when questioned recently about John Bolton's response to her husband's efforts to return the two American journalist being held in N. Korea, laughed uproariously, and then said basically that what had been done was far from out of the ordinary. See for yourself below:



Now that is what I call balls, ladies and gentleman. More democrats need to pay attention to her easy, breezy way of just blowing off the GOP as ridiculous fossils that are out of touch with reality.

But getting to the political terrorists part of things. Steven Pearlstein wrote recently in The Washington Post, about the Republican's efforts to derail heathcare efforts:

The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.

The Congress may be taking a break, but this ain't over yet. Far from it.

RIP John Hughes

"Sweetheart, you couldn't ignore me if you tried."

And with that, my heart was forever stolen by the groups of dysfunctional, Chicago-based teens that traipsed through John Hughes movies. From Sixteen Candles to The Breakfast Club to Ferris Bueller's Day Off, my coming of age happened to the images that Mr. Hughes placed before me on the big screen. I wanted to be the princess and the basket case, I wanted to have the balls to escape and have the adventure of a lifetime in one day, and I longed to construct my own prom gown from vintage dresses and roar off in my pink Kharman Ghia (still a fantasy to this day). Unfortunately, none of that was to be. But I did pierce my ear a second time in homage to Molly Ringwald, I did studiously court the bad boys until I realized that it was no longer in my best interest hoping one would turn into Judd Nelson, and I did pretend I was daring by the occasional attempt at a Chinese firedrill on a deserted road.

So rest in peace John Hughes, this is one Gen-Xer that will miss you.

Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong, but we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain...and an athlete...and a basket case...a princess...and a criminal.

Does that answer your question?... Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.

Good for Wall Street

So I was watching Real Time with Bill Maher from last Friday (full disclosure, you know I dvr'ed and watched it on Sunday, but same difference). And he has this writer on there Joe Queenan who right off strikes me as a serious asshat (and no he wasn't a conservative—he was a liberal, see I am not a blanket love all my lefty-types gal after all). I will say that he made several good points, but he got my dander up when Bill asked the panel to grade President Obama.

Queenan said that if the stock market had closed on Friday over 9,000 (I believe this was his number) he would give Obama a 90-something (aka an A), but that if it closed under he gave him an 87 or a B.

What Mr. Queenan was oh-so-less than subtely implying was that if Wall Street is happy the rest of us are doing OK. Uh, dude? Not so much. I mean yahoo and all that Goldman and Bank of America are making money, but that doesn't mean that the REAL America, the folks I see in the grocery day in and day out are hunky dory. Corporate America and therefore the stock market is doing well and making money because THEY ARE LAYING PEOPLE OFF. STILL. I can't say that with enough implied screaming.

I would never say that my life or little world is indicative of how the rest of the country is going, but chew on this little tidbit gentle readers, I live on a corner, two houses down from me one member of that household has been laid off for at least six months now. My immediate neighbor just got laid off on Friday and of course I was laid off the end of April. So three houses in a row, all have members who have been a victim of this recession. And don't even get me started on how all three are women. Nothing funny afoot there at all.

So Mr. Queenan, you can take your stock market rally and shove it up your sanctimonious ass, as far as I am concerned. That is not to say that I don't believe that a lot of what Obama has done is good, I do. But some of it ain't, mostly as it pertains to the money the banks got and the fact that there weren't enough rules and regulations placed on how they had to use that money. But you know the stock market closed over 9,000, why aren't we all happier?

Yes Virginia, You Are a Douchecanoe

Healthcare is a problem. A big problem. I think that there are serious issues with the idea of someone making a buck over whether or not someone lives or dies. Our system frankly sucks. As one of the unemployed masses, having your healthcare tied to your job just ain't cool, and makes a trying time that much more scary and dangerous. Lose coverage because you can't afford it and you won't be able to get covered again if you have pre-existing conditions. And with insurance companies today, a freakin' hang nail is considered a pre-existing condition I believe.

I know that the Republicans like to say that universal healthcare is evil and that the Europeans and Canadians have to wait for care, etc. That may be true, but if you ask them about whether or not they are happy with their plans, the majority are. For instance, 78% of the French say they are happy with their healthcare. But we wouldn't want to be like the French. Canadians seem equally pleased. Ninety two percent (yep 92%) would recommend their family doctor, and 85% of the population over 12 have a family doctor. Yes there are issues, but that seems pretty good to me. I doubt the same could be said of Americans.

I don't doubt that there are issues and problems with President Obama's health plan. Nothing is perfect, certainly not our system currently. So I say "good for the dems for at least TRYING." But as usual that isn't enough for the GOP. Not that they have a plan, at least not one that I have heard articulated.

And there there is Virginia Foxx. Who had this to say about Obama's plan last week:

"Republicans have a better solution that won't put the government in charge of people's health care," she said. "(The plan) is pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government."

Thank God I am not in the district this woman represents, although Lord knows I have enough to apologize for having been born in that area that would elect her I suppose.