OBL DEAD.

I’m not sad he is dead, murdered even, but I’ve written several emails this morning to different friends, friends heading to India and Australia, asking them not to go. My brother is in China. He is due home this weekend. I’ll be relieved when he returns, as will his gf. No one looks more like an American than my brother. I can pass for Persian or Latino — depending, but he might as well wear a sign.

I wonder where this all ends? Do we leave Afghanistan, save us some soldiers and some money?

What of Libya? The whole killing kids in Libya thing is hard to swallow. Though I’d have to be morally lethargic not to have visions of the innocents Gaddafi has been murdering for decades when hearing of “the collateral murder” of the children, I can’t stomach it. I still retain some hope of it not being true.

Now can we work on making health insurance/health care not only available, but affordable — in case you hadn’t noticed the cost of health insurance has tripled in some states over the last three years. You wimped on a national plan, and now more people are on that insidious high deductible plan, the one the insurance companies are making billions from because the small biz owner with two kids and a family plan deductible of $2700.00 can’t always come up with that cash. Consequently, these adults skip going to the doctor for check-ups for those “little things”, things that turn out to be a curable cancer that is no longer treatable because they waited too long. Exactly what the insurance companies knew would happen.

Gas now over four dollars a gallon, amalgamation of communications and the financial industry continue to destroy the middle class and now we need to concern ourselves with shortages (real or fabricated for profit), and price gouging for medicines, as WAPO tells us there are Shortages of key drugs .

Sure, I know they will call you socialist, but they will always call you something. A lot of people can’t wait until after your reelection when don’t give a hoot about the financial powers backing you. The brave thing is to actually do something before you are reelected the second time.

I had to watch this morning. I didn’t get to go, as somehow my invitation got lost in the mail again.

Seth Myers is funnier, check it out.

I’ve always thought this ridiculous rush was unnecessary. It is not good enough to claim victory, be it in the passing or or the blocking of legislation. Victory either way does not ensure subsequent success. Victory is a means to an end for politicians, but their end is the victory itself, when it is the likely result of that victory that matters to the citizenry.

I caught this on my reader today and thought I’d share. If you’re so inclined, pass it on.

The Mad as Hell Doctors have hit the road. They will be traveling across the country, having had their first request to meet with the president to present their plan, they are not giving up. They’re heading to Washington, D.C. to bring the message of single-payer universal health care to leaders in Washington. They hope to put the idea of the single-payer back into the public discourse. They will arrive on September 30, and hold a demonstration on October 1 at the Capital. They hope to get a meeting with President Obama.

What they want?

Slow things down
Don’t calculate political wins and losses.
Give health care reform the time it needs.
We want to help.

Paul Hochfield is heading the delegation. An emergency room physician who believes that the insurance and big pharmaceutical companies have undue influence on the health care discussion.

“What I’m mad about is not health care,” he says. “What I’m mad about is the way our political process is being manipulated by the industry.”

Meet the Mad as Hell Doctors, see where they come from, and why they are Mad As hell.