Grown Ups Talking

I did my bit last night. I went along to a “Health Care Vigil” in Central Park. This was MoveOn.org’s answer to the manic townhallers who bellow that health care reform is the devil’s work.

Frankly it was a bit tedious. Speakers got up and read aloud reports that had been sent in about individuals who have been denied hospital care, or charged exhorbitantly. And though dreary to listen to, it’s all too true.

Being denied care is a horror. One 26-year-old had a heart condition and couldn’t quite make the insurance payments, but he made too much money and didn’t qualify for Medicaid. A lot of people are stuck in this worrying limbo.

This kind of common situation creates a whole class of uneasy worriers — middle class types who have decent jobs but still can’t afford to pay for health insurance. These people will never be free of nagging worries that when sickness strikes, your whole life will go up in flames.

Unhappily, the slipper and I are fast approaching this situation. We are — knock on wood — healthy at the moment, but keeping up with insurance premiums is becoming unaffordable.

So we may soon need to rely on the Knock On Wood health plan. Hope for the best and pretend everything is OK. Many thousands of Americans are already on the KOW plan. You could call this psychosis, denial, unhealthy psychological displacement activity, and you’d be right. The next move, in the truly American way, would be to go to a shrink. But I think KOW only covers a stiff drink and a sympathetic bartender.

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. We need universal health care.—Pomerol

Sadly, our summer is winding down and New York beckons. Next week I will be wending my way westwards, with a day in London to see pals. Despite generally gray weather, it has been a relaxing fun time, lots of painting, enough freelance to pay for the ticket home, slipper in a good mood because of local English-style pub, what more could you want?

Living in different cultures is something everyone should do at one time or another. Even if you all speak the same language there’s no guarantee that you will be understood. For a Wine in the communication business (graphic design that is) it’s a useful exercise to need to try hard to get your point across.

In The Great Health Care Debate, the forces of evil seem to have grabbed the national spotlight. Using scare tactics, political meetings have become shouting matches where hysterical middle Americans say things like,"Tell the government to keep it’s hands off my Medicare!” as if Medicare was not a government program.

Where are the Democrats? Are they going to make this work, or what? Does anyone honestly want health care to go on the way it is right now? Apparently yes. This is not good enough.

They need to grab the spotlight, make the argument, try really hard to make it understood. I would suggest they all come to France for a training course, but they are probably here already, sunning themselves in Provence.

With my lousy healthcare package, and the $10,000 a year bill, I think we need more out of our elected representatives.—Pomerol

Sitting in the back of beyond, life reverts to simple things. Food, drink, fluctuating weather, the price of milk, these become the major concerns of daily living. It also makes you realize eventually that you are turning into a sheep.

Sheep have a simple life. They eat and sleep, get shorn and occasionally get turned into dinner. They all do what each other is doing and rarely suffer from depression.

In order to jolt myself from this rural stupor, I indulge in the BBC longwave service, where you can get quite good international news.

The issues that strike me the most involve simple things: Courage, and Greed.

Greed keeps popping up. There are the Wall Street/CEO/Jersey politician-rabbis. There are the Rovian Neo-cons who scare civilians into thinking that single-payer healthcare will destroy civilization as we know it — for massive fees and pharmaceutical industry stock options. And there’s power-mongering lunatics like Ahmadenijad, Mugabe, the Burmese Generals.

Then there’s Courage. There’s the Iran protesters risking “medieval torture” to get their grotesque government to accept the real results of their recent election. There’s Aung San Suu Kyi being trotted out for her surreal and evil show-trial in Burma. There’s Lubna Ahmed Hussein in the Sudan who could have avoided arrest through her United Nations job, but chose to quit and go on trial for wearing trousers and risk 40 lashes. Apparently this is commonplace in that country.

Most of us are sheep, we follow the herd. Some stand out as true heroes. Some just want to burn down the farm.—Pomerol

French food has laid me low for longer than is reasonable. I’m now gingerly back in the saddle, though beer may be out of the question for a while.

Work has been thin on the ground, but a new class may be in the offing, nothing groundbreaking, but a further small hedge against economic collapse.

Being in France, all the news tends to be Brit-o-centric, and occassionally Paddy-o’centric. News in French seems to come in short bursts on the radio, in between nonsensical studio banter and truly anodyne French “Rock". So we veer towards BBC Longwave and a newly-found Irish station that mysteriously broadcasts this far.

But the New York Times website has been coming to the fore for checking out the latest Yank-o-centric follies. Most of it seems taken up with Sotomayor’s hearings. They have “How Will This Affect Future Possible Judges”, “Don’t Mess With The Judge”, and an almost plaintive, “Is This A Big Waste Of Time?” among others.

A bit of overkill, yes, but nice to know a gal is dominating the news, particularly since she isn’t Sarah Palin.

Happy July. — Pomerol

As I write, I am hearing about Al Franken winning the Minnesota senatorship. This is great news for President Obama. He can theoretically do an end-run around a filibuster as long as Arlen Spector plays ball and the blue dogs stay with the pack.

So good news, but no guarantees. This means the democrats will still have to make their case. Not a bad thing in a democracy.

Also nice to have a sense of humor in politics.

Congrats Senator Al.—Pomerol