“An act of political theater”
Writing by treason on Monday, 26 of March , 2007 at 12:14 pm
That’s how George W. Bush described the Democrat House’s vote on the emergency supplemental this past Friday. But, Mr. President, isn’t that redundant? Politics is theater. And some scripts just sound better than others. “Bring the troops home!” Well, hell, that sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? No one wants to be at war and no one wants our soldiers dying. So Act I is interesting enough to draw an audience; however, what precisely happens in Act II? We set a date for troop withdrawal, ship our men and women home, and then what?
And since we’re talking about scripts and spectacle, let’s bring up the curtain on this past Saturday’s production: “The Town Hall Meeting” staged at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, California. Its cast of characters: a variety of peaceniks that included the two Seans (Penn and O’Neill), District 9 Representative Barbara Lee, Betty Kano, Alameda County Board of Supervisors member Keith Carson, and, of course, The Token Cuban. They even unearthed Daniel Ellsberg for this, and when he took the stage he lamented that he didn’t live in the 9th District because he would love to have Barbara Lee representing him in Congress. No, poor Daniel lives in Kensington. A charming East Bay borough, roughly 80% white, nestled against The People’s Republic of Berkeley and two regional parks.
Look, I spent most of my life in the Bay Area, and in my final years there I lived near Alameda County, conducted much of my personal business there, and even worked there. May I submit that I have a soft spot for the city of Oakland? It has some truly lovely neighborhoods and, without a doubt, the most spectacular climate in Northern California.
But if I had the choice of walking down the street in Baghdad, or walking down the street in Oakland…uh, Green Zone, here I come.
But, having a soft spot, too, for theater, I just had to tune into this meeting in Oakland. I wanted some sense of the script, and what I heard was a patois of “universal healthcare, illegal occupation, civil war, and impeachment.”
I tried to get another sneak peek at the Dems’ script the other night when we were having a few beers with our Liberal friends. The subject was immigration and the Left side of the table was condemning the “greedy” companies who were hiring the “immigrants.” My point was that if you’re against closing the border to these illegal aliens, they’ll still keep coming, but what will they do for income exactly? No answer. It appears that part of the script hasn’t yet been written.
Is it safe to say, then, that if illegal aliens have no income they’ll turn to additional criminal activity (yes, sneaking over the border is criminal) or a government program to survive?
Isn’t everyone taking advantage of some sort of government program today? I can’t turn on the radio without hearing that ad about the grandmother who wants to spoil her grandchildren and buy them nice things, so when money’s tight and she needs to “eat right,” she gets food stamps. Say, Granny, if things are so desperate, why aren’t your grandchildren’s parents tossing a few groceries your way?
Currently I have no income or medical insurance and I’m starting to feel like a rube. Can I just give in and take advantage of some government program? I mean, my father, stepfather, and sister paid into Social Security and Medicare, died prematurely, and never collected. Can I have their share? I have produced no progeny to suck up additional government resources after I’m gone, and chances are I’ll never see a Social Security check, either. (Uh, can we at least give George Bush credit for attempting to address this?)
It’s a slippery slope, I tell you. Case in point. My eighty-three year old mother has been in assisted living for the last three and a half years. It’s all paid for out of pocket; it is extremely fortunate that she owned, then sold, a bit of property in California. But what she’s living on is limited. Because she is diabetic, has high cholesterol, and Alzheimer’s, too, she’s been prescribed a lot of pills - and she was paying for all those. In one year, she spent over $10,000 on medications that she doesn’t even know she takes.
As much as I would have liked to have told her doctor that all those meds seemed pretty useless, I dutifully stood in line at Walgreens several times each week to fill her prescriptions for Aricept, Namenda, Lipitor, and a multitude of diabetes specific tablets. With every purchase, the pharmacy tech’s eyes would get huge: “Wow. That’s expensive!”
But there was no way I wanted to mess around with that whole Medicare Part D business. It’s a mess, it’s confusing, it’s too hard to figure out, there are all those catches, and you don’t really save anything anyway. I swallowed the hype hook, line, and sinker. But one day I had to face facts. This wasn’t my money - it was hers, and I’d been entrusted to make sound financial decisions on her behalf. Do I want to spend what’s left of her finances on meds, or do I want her to have a roof over her head?
After putting it off for months, I took a few minutes to research my options, picked one, called a number, spoke to a representative, signed my mother up, and was pleasantly surprised. And then I kicked myself in the ass for not acting sooner.
Again, let me take another look at the script. I see where it says the Democrats are against the Medicare Drug Plan, yet they still want universal healthcare. A chunk of the 2008 Democrat candidates were in Vegas over the weekend, at the SEIU Health Care Forum, comparing their plans. Why, neither T nor I have had any sort of health insurance since we left our corporate jobs. We were watching the TV coverage and I caught a twinkle in T’s eye.
Me: “Now what?”
T: “You know, I’m going to have to get behind the Democrats on this universal healthcare thing.”
Me: “Excuse me?”
T: “Look, it makes sense. If they’re not going to be pro-active and protect the country from terrorism, and then suddenly bombs start going off here in the U.S. every day - hell, yes, someone else is gonna be picking up the tab when I’m full of shrapnel and lying in a hospital.”
Aaaahhhhhh. So is that Act II?
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