“You never let a good crisis go to waste.”……..Rahm Emmanuel

I have to admit a grudging respect for Rahm Emmanuel’s thought processes, even though I think he’s wrong most of the time. When he’s right he’s dead on and that quote from him says it all when it comes to the Sequester. The one time the President should have been taking his advice where he could act immediately he hasn’t done so. For months now the FBI has been warning of budget cuts that could seriously hamper its effectiveness as well as the effectiveness of local law enforcement. All it would take is for the Justice Department to declare “That’s it! It’s over! We’ve gone over budget on Boston and we can’t go any further. As of 4:15 PM April 19, all investigations are hereby closed until further notice.” The President could then declare a national emergency and force congress to repeal sequestration “or else!” While they are at it they should also pass a few background check laws before they go home.

The White House

This is not an original idea. In 1969 George Lucas had the opportunity to make an obscure movie titled THX-1138, starring Robert Duvall based on Lucas’s original story. Set in the future, the story deals with a totalitarian society where drug abuse was NOT taking drugs. By the movie’s end THX 1138 escapes to the real outside world not because he is smarter, faster or more expert in any way, but because the system computers declared that they have gone over budget and that all pursuit must stop. That’s budgetthink alright and unfortunately it’s sequesterthink as well. As my paean to George Orwell I think I’ve created two new words.

Think of it. A known terrorist is now on the loose in the Boston area and he’s known to be armed and dangerous. Where will he strike next? As I switch news channels to see who is coming up with the latest disinformation I think to myself, “Imagine the possibilities.” The problem is that our Attorney General can’t even prosecute a banker properly and our President has yet to exhibit real executive leadership, so this scenario will have to remain a figment of my imagination.

On the other hand, if he sequestered the congress during a national emergency they might also pass his budget including Social Security chained CPI and Medicare cuts, just for spite. Be afraid either of his actions or his inactions. Either way we’re screwed

“Imagination is more valuable than knowledge”…….Albert Einstein

Ship’s Captain: “Bring her around hard aport 220 with a hard rudder amidships”

Bosun:              “What’s that, Captain?”

Ship’s Captain: “MAKE A LEFT! MAKE A LEFT!

U-Boat Captain “Hmmm…He brought her around hard aport 220 with a hard rudder amidships.”

1^st mate:            “ Vas, Herr Hauptmann?”

U-Boat Captain: “HE MADE A LEFT! HE MADE A LEFT!”

With apologies to Charlie Manna’s War at Sea from his best-selling comedy album Manna Overboard.

The late Charlie Manna’s War at Sea routine was a send up of the classic WWII movie, The Enemy Below in which an American Destroyer captain and a German U-Boat captain play a cat and mouse game with each other, anticipating each other’s every move and countering each other’s offensives. It was a taut, tense drama with a not fully satisfying ending. Manna’s routine was very funny, but nothing is funny about the newest threat to our country which is traveling well below our radar, and we only know about it because of a few well isolated pings on our Sonar. We everyday Americans are at sea cruising while the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), running as silently as possible, has us in its periscope sights and the eleven or twelve member wolf pack is ready to draw blood.

To fully understand what’s happening we have to go back about twenty years ago to the early 1990’s when the Bush 41 administration had finalized NAFTA talks and was trying to “fast track” the agreement into action. NAFTA was a free trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada which was supposed to promote more and better trade between the three countries as well as open up more jobs. Most of us don’t read these things because they are voluminous beyond our attention spans and filled with words beyond our comprehension, but rest assured that giant corporations have more to do with the formation of these agreements than governments do and these corporations will do anything they can to create and protect their perceived future profits under these FTA agreements. We the people don’t really matter to them. Bush 41 wasn’t able to fast track the agreement before time ran out and Bill Clinton came into office. Clinton, the ultimate corporate Democrat had to renegotiate the agreement to assure some worker protections, which ultimately led to its passage. Clinton signed the document on Jan. 1, 1994. Clinton was quoted as saying. “NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t support this agreement.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time”

So did Prohibition, at the time. The trouble is that when you research these things from other that a human nature perspective Murphy’s Law kicks in full force and something bad is bound to happen. In the almost twenty years since the enactment of NAFTA American jobs have yet to make any kind of impact, Mexico’s farm communities have been devastated and Canada isn’t so happy with it either. The only people it has benefitted are the actual corporations who are doing the trading. In fact, it’s even worse than that. Buried somewhere in these agreements are regulations that supersede actual laws of the countries involved. In other words if something a corporate entity does is considered to be illegal by a country or a state it can be overruled by the terms of the agreement. The agreement allows for NAFTA to pick its own arbiters, usually corporate lawyers to determine the outcome, even over and above a Supreme Court ruling. One case in point is The Canadian Parliament banning the use of MMT, a gasoline additive in 1997. Ethyl Corp., based in Virginia, notified the government of Canada of its intent to sue under NAFTA’s Investment chapter. Ridiculous, right? Nope! The Corporate lawyer NAFTA panel rejected Canada’s argument and a year later Canada was compelled to reverse its decision on MMT and to add insult to injury Canada also had to pay out $13 million in fines and corporate profit losses. In 2012 Canada was again in the gunsights of the Eli Lilly Company because of Canada’s restrictions on granting medical patents to Lilly. Lilly filed for $100million in  the NAFTA investor court. So far, over $365,000,000 has been paid out on submitted claims and there are 19 other actions under review worth 14 billion dollars. The worst part of this is that this has nothing to do with trade issues; this has to do with environmental and public health issues.

I remember discussing NAFTA with my son’s friend, Morgan who was an AFL-CIO organizer in South Florida back in the mid Nineties. At the time I was not against NAFTA because I believed that Clinton was sincere about how NAFTA would work. Morgan took the opposite view and said that it’s the worst thing that could happen to American labor. I pointed out the worker protection clauses that Clinton had inserted, and Morgan just said “that’s just never going to happen. It’s a ruse.” As it turns out Morgan was right. NAFTA is an unmitigated disaster unless you are the corporations doing the business, and there’s nothing that our government can or will do about it.

“If at first you don’t succeed”

So, what do you do when you see NAFTA is not working out? That’s easy. You expand it to include Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic making it more dangerous that before, after all, why shouldn’t some of our Latin American and Caribbean friends feel our pain as well. This was the work of the neocons in 2005 in the Bush 43 administration. There was a lot of contention in congress over CAFTA and it was only ratified by one vote in the House of Representatives. Again workers lost protection and American jobs were sent overseas. Environmental and health concerns were overlooked and the corporations made a fortune. Combining that with the Bush Tax Cuts we were screwed again.

“Try, try again.”

Not satisfied with enriching their corporate friends and damaging the average taxpayer more than ever, the Bush 43 people entered into talks to create a Pacific Basin partnership originally encompassing nine countries, including The United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. The US entered the negotiations in March of 2008 which places it during the Bush 43 administration. Since that time other countries have expressed interest including Canada, Mexico, Taiwan, The Philippines, Japan, Colombia, Laos and Costa Rica. The US is aggressively pushing South Korea to join. Since the original meeting back in 2004 there have been 16 rounds of talks, the last one taking place in Singapore back in March 4-16^th of this year. A seventeenth round is scheduled from May 15-24 in Lima, Peru.

Having experienced the difficulties in both NAFTA and CAFTA the US participation in these talks has gone covert. No one talks about it. There is almost a 100% blackout of information in the corporately controlled news media, and what information is available has been gotten through leaks and whistleblowers, and you know what happens with whistleblowers. There is no transparency in these negotiations and from what we can ascertain only 2 chapters of the agreement actually have something to do with trade itself. Much of it has to do with intellectual property, and a lot of it has to do with circumventing labor, environmental and public health issues. What we do know is that the Obama Administration has embraced the TPP and is doing what it can to fast track it. On April 15, Secretary of State John Kerry was in Japan and gave a speech at Tokyo Tech waxing eloquently about the advantages of the TPP. Activist Cherie Faircloth, a contributor to WONO actually called the White House and got through to Robert Spitzer, Senior Trade Policy Advisor with the USDA. In her conversation with Spitzer, he admitted that there were too few corporate agricultural advisors in Florida and he was looking for more. Her article appeared on Feb. 26, 2013.

Back in Early March a group of activists attended an anti TPP rally in the Ybor city section of Tampa. You can find the links to the videos Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. The message is pretty clear. We’re in Submarine Alley and all those torpedoes are set to fire on us. Since we know about it we can do something about it. Even though many politicians will deny that they have knowledge of it there are some who are aware of it including Senator Bill Nelson of Florida. Action needs to be taken in the congress to not allow the fast track and to ultimately defeat the US participation in the TPP. You can get more involved by researching the TPP and going to Public Citizen. Org. Maybe we can avoid the torpedoes. Just watch out for the minefields.

Random thoughts while driving to the Celebration of 2012 at the GLBT Center……

It has been a long struggle. The world has not treated the gay community kindly for practically forever. Up until the Stonewall riots in 1969 the gay community sort of lived with it in quiet desperation. After Stonewall, things were not the same. That first taste of fighting back almost forty five years ago awakened the fighting spirit and gave rise to vigorous gay activism which is now stronger than ever. One of the reasons was the cultural revolution of the sixties in music, fashion, and the arts, a far cry from the conformist 1950’s. The most famous gay activist, Harvey Milk, born into a middle class Jewish family in 1930 lived (outwardly) a normal life for almost 35 years, graduating college with a degree in mathematics and even serving as an officer in the US Navy during the Korean War.

The GLBT community was at first mocked and ignored, which is how society usually treats people who are different, labeling them “misfits”. In literature and the arts it was rare that gays were regarded as anything but “odd”, or “eccentric”. The punishment for breaking these rules was brutal, witness the sad plight of literary giant Oscar Wilde.

Wilde was the very successful author of The Picture of Dorian Gray, a strikingly dark novel which had some homosexual allusions, and at one point had three hit plays running at the same time in London. He was widely known for his intellect, sharp wit, and biting remarks. He was a married man and the father of two children. He was also “that way” (that’s what they called it back then). In Victorian England there was an active community of people who were “that way” only nobody talked about it. Wilde was enamored of Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, the son of the Marquess of Queensberry, a real macho man. Bosie reciprocated and the affair began. The Marquess, being the macho man he was, publicly denounced Wilde and constantly harangued him. Wilde sued for libel rather than quietly ignoring the situation. Evidence discovered during the trial compelled Wilde to drop the charges, but not before the damage was done. Wilde was arrested and convicted (after three trials) of “gross indecency” with other men. He spent two years in prison which ruined his health and died at the age of 46 in 1900.

In American culture for the first half of the Twentieth Century there was hardly any mention of gays. There were many American artists and writers living abroad, notably Gertrude Stein, who found acceptance in Paris and other European capitals. Gay artists who lived here kept it hidden. Composers and lyricists like Cole Porter, Aaron Copland, Lorenz Hart and Leonard Bernstein.  Actors, writers and artists of all disciplines stayed in the closet. In 1934 Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, set at an all girl boarding school broke new ground. A rumor started by a student, uncorroborated, about the two owners having an illicit affair causes the school to close. The play captivated audiences and caused the end of a law in New York that made it illegal to mention homosexuality on stage. In the movies, pre code there were a few portrayals but nothing overwhelming, however t he picture of Marlene Dietrich in top hat and tuxedo was a powerful image of the decadence happening in Berlin. Greta Garbo’s portrayal of Queen Christina was a rare departure from the conventional perceptions in film. Lesbians were usually portrayed as old maid aunts, busybodies or sadistic matrons like Judith Anderson’s Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca or Cornelia Otis Skinner’s Miss Holloway in The Uninvited, or Hope Emerson in Caged.

Men fared a little better. Actors like Edward Everett Horton, Donald Meek, Franklin Pangborn and Eric Blore worked constantly in films, usually as comic sidekicks or as officious department store managers who looked down on their customers and staff. They were never essential to the plot, and when they were their characters usually looked and acted like Peter Lorre’s portrayal of Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon. One of the only openly gay Actors who could carry a film by himself whose characters appealed to mainstream audiences was Clifton Webb. He horrified us in Laura. He made us cry in The Razor’s Edge and he made us laugh as Mr. Belvedere all while playing himself, an effete snob. In the play Tea and Sympathy, later made into a movie,

The central character at a boy’s prep school is perceived and taunted by the others as gay, which he is not. The story is about being different and how people’s ignorance perceives that difference.

After the 1950’s things gradually began to change. In 1962 Advise and Consent featured a Senator who had a gay past. The transition was gradual, but gay themes and characters in the movies and television have come full circle and today hardly raise any eyebrows. Our culture has advanced equality on all fronts, save some die-hard churches and certain conservative politicians. Even the Boy Scouts are taking a second look at admitting gays. They had better, because their ranks might be thinning out too much.

Wow! There’s no place to park!

OK, that broke my train of thought and here I am at the center. My first impression from outside was that there were an awful lot of people inside, and yes, there were, at least two hundred. It was a real celebration. Many local politicians were there and gave speeches. After all, this celebration was for them. These were the people that the GLBT community backed and they were celebrating those victories. Speakers were Orange County Tax Collector Scott Randolph, Orange County Property Appraiser Rick Singh, State Senator Darren Soto, State Representative Victor Torres, County Commissioner Tiffany Moore Russell among several others. Joe Saunders, one of the two openly gay representatives in the Florida House was unable to attend due to a last minute emergency. The highlight of the evening was the premiere of the video Get Tested which features prominent politicians and sports stars urging people to get tested for HIV infection. Testing is free and confidential and worth doing. The idea originated with The Center’s Director, Randy Stephens, who asked Rita Ashton, wife of State Attorney Jeff Ashton to help out. She did the entire project from start to finish, securing cameras, and crew and post production through her network of professionals who all volunteered their time. The video is on the Center’s facebook page, GLBT Community Center of Central Florida.

This was one of those occasions where few people left early. There was plenty of time to meet and mingle with the politicos as well as old friends. The cash bar was active and the food was plentiful and tasty. The politicians were completely accessible and didn’t show signs of that defensive wall that they can put up. I spoke for several minutes with Rita and Jeff Ashton, mainly about her video however, I couldn’t resist congratulating him on his decision to investigate the texting scandal. He looked at me and said “come on, that was a no-brainer!” His utter candidness made me decide to not ask him the follow up question.

The evening’s events, speeches and tone showed the immense gains that have been made in recent years. I have two thoughts about it: to paraphrase a Virginia Slim slogan, “We’ve come a long way, baby,” and in the words of Oscar Brown, Jr. “But we’ve still got so terribly far to go.”  It is my hope that someday we’ll only identify people by their names. And so the journey continues.

Soul Warrior

Throughout recorded history and throughout all of literature human beings have been subjected to temptation in myriad forms. Starting in Genesis temptation takes the form of a serpent who seduces eve to taste the forbidden fruit. Throughout the Old Testament temptation then takes the form of a woman; witness Delilah, Jezebel and others who drove men to commit acts that they otherwise would not do. The men paid for these transgressions in various ways, but pay for them they did. Throw in the manifest form of the Devil and now we have a drama that plays out every day in some peoples’ lives.  Forgetting the bible, history is full of heroes, who with feet of clay, yielded to temptation and paid dearly for it. Julius Caesar and Marc Antony were both seduced by the same woman, Cleopatra, which in turn brought down the demise of the Republic, and then the complete collapse of Egypt. Even today sports figures like Lance Armstrong and a bunch of baseball players yielded to temptation to make them faster, stronger, etc. at the cost of their integrity and the sporting world’s ire. As a result Armstrong has been stripped of his titles and these major leaguers may never get the chance to be in the Hall of Fame. Democratic politicians who yielded to temptation include Bill Clinton, John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer, men who should have known better. If one looks at the devil as the purveyor of immoral things, one should also know that those things have a cost. They are not free, and while you may not die because of them the devil still extracts a very dear price.

In literature the most famous example of this is Faust. Two years ago I wrote an article about Congressman Dan Webster and yielded to the temptation to title it The Devil and Dan Webster doing a word play on Stephen Vincent Benet’s short story, who stole the story from Washington Irving’s The Devil and Tom Walker. Wow! Talk about temptation! Talk about chutzpah! My temptation was that this was probably the only time in my life that I could use that title. Modern authors don’t condemn their Fausts to damnation, but they do make them suffer their consequences. Back in 1954 Douglass Wallop wrote The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, which was adapted into the Broadway musical Damn Yankees. The story line is simple- average Joe sells his soul to the devil to help the hapless Washington Senators beat the Yankees and go on to the World Series. The difference was that this average Joe, being a business type, demanded an escape clause just in case things go wrong. To insure that Joe doesn’t break the contract, the devil, Mr. Applegate, sends his chief seductress, Lola to tempt Joe and keep him in line. Joe eventually does escape his fate but not before going through a lot of turmoil. Wallopchose a bad year. Cleveland won the pennant in 1954 and lost in 4 straight to the Giants.

What’s happening right now in the Florida Democratic Party is nothing less than the classic struggle for its soul. State party elections are scheduled for Jan. 26 at which time there are two completely opposite candidates for chair. Usually things like this are pretty cut and dried with party leaders choosing among themselves who will occupy these offices, but not this year. Alan Clendenin, a Tampa area activist is fed up with FDP inertia which for fourteen years has not produced a Democratic governor and few statewide office holders since Jeb Bush was elected. That notwithstanding, the party has lost legislative seats in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by almost one million registered voters. Clendenin asserts that party insiders are comfortable with their positions and don’t care about winning elections. Clendenin has an impressive work history and his resume’ covers a lot of territory. His career as an air traffic controller and union organizer took him to the heights of his profession. Politically he has held positions in county and state party offices and he has served as a member of the Democratic National Committee.

the flea bag smart shop

What compels people to stand in line for hours on end to be able to buy something strictly because they can save a little money? What compels them to endure the abuse of not only the store managers but the insensitive and aggressive crowds that push and shove and occasionally assail them over a place in line or an item in short supply without their regard to health and safety? Are these the same people that complain about our lousy economy yet buy foreign made products from uncaring retailers that keep American workers from either having jobs or having constantly low paying jobs?

I haven’t paid a whole lot of attention to the Black Friday sales and no one in my family would ever shop at a retail chain on the day after Thanksgiving anyway. There are numerous Wal-Mart protests and strikes going on and I’ve read many of those reports. Lots of union involvement in them and that’s a good thing. What strikes me as odd is that the employees of other big box retailers aren’t walking out in sympathy and solidarity for their retail brothers and sisters. Voting and thinking with your wallet is a smart way to be. Let all of these marketing companies (and that is really what they are) know that you’re not going to be manipulated by them any longer.

What changed things for me was Bernie Marcus. Marcus is co-founder and former CEO of The Home Depot, a very successful Home improvement store chain. Back in 2008 Marcus castigated other retailers for not contributing to right wing causes and for not advocating for Republican candidates. Since that time he has been a relentless critic of the Obama administration, much of it unwarranted, and he has been extremely vocal in his opinions. When I was active in the scenic art business I used to buy $30,000.00 to $60,000.00 per year from Home Depot alone. Over a 15 year period that adds up to a tidy sum. Once Marcus opened his mouth I cut them off and have not bought a single item from them since. I found their competitor, Lowes, to be a better store to deal with. Lowes has a better overall quality of product, employees who actually treat you with respect and they display knowledge of product far superior to those at Home Depot, so I would have switched anyway. I’m also using locally owned Ace Hardware and other similar stores that support my local economy.

I wrote Home Depot that I would no longer buy from them because of Marcus’s outrageous statements. They did reply to me that Marcus no longer has anything to do with the management or direction of the company and his opinions are strictly his own. Not good enough I told them. Marcus is still a major stockholder and therefore gets a major share of the company profits. I also told them that as long as he lives I will not be a customer of theirs. He’s now 83 and I hope he lives to be at least 110.

Clint Eastwood defies description. Most people remember him as either the two fisted action hero of the 1960’s spaghetti westerns or as “Dirty Harry” Callahan. It’s easy to understand why; his characters embodied what frustrated people wanted to do when they sensed injustice. He was the next generation of hero as delineated by John Wayne. To be sure there are big differences between the two icons in both style and intent. Nobody would ever accuse Wayne of being the strong silent type that Eastwood would come to typify, and Wayne’s characters most of the time played by the rules. When they didn’t they were roundly punished for their indiscretions. Wayne’s characters paid the price for those indiscretions in films like Reap the Wild Wind, The Fighting Seabees, Wake of the Red Witch, The Sea Chase and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Of all of Eastwood’s films I can’t recall his dying in more than two, whether his character deserved it or not. The only other major Hollywood star who died less, if at all was Cary Grant, but I digress.

There was much more to Clint Eastwood than being a mere actor. The part of him that I admired was his artistry as a director, and his passion for the arts, especially music. So, I found it intriguing that he even chose to speak, unscripted to an invisible representation of the president at the RNC. A man who appreciates and plays (rather well) the music of Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson and others of that era should know better than to unintentionally and subliminally embody  the main themes of Ralph Ellison’s landmark novel, Invisible Man, but he did, and not very well. That little bit sent an undeniably coded message to the 93% white voters in the Republican Party exactly why they should be voting for voter suppression policies, and why they should be denying any kind of social safety net help for anyone except themselves. What also intrigues me is that civil rights people have not picked up on this. Other than a fleeting reference on Melissa Harris Perry’s show on Saturday nothing else has been said about it. I’ve searched the major blogs and news services and I can’t find any mention of it.

I don’t believe that Eastwood is a bigot. I know his politics are conservative and that’s OK. I do question his judgment. It’s one thing to praise your nominee, but on live TV there’s no time for another take. He certainly didn’t do Mitt Romney any good and all he did was to reinforce the Republicans as a non-inclusive party. From what I hear, Romney and Co. wanted Clint the icon to speak. We’ll, they got what they deserved. Ralph Ellison is spinning in his grave.

Aug. 27, 6:49 AM. Random thoughts while in the hospital waiting room as my wife is undergoing the final phase of reconstruction.

Yesterday several people I know went to Tampa to take part in a planned protest of the GOP, its candidates and its policy positions. It might have made 10 seconds on the TV news and a couple of small columns in the papers. So, what? The GOP doesn’t care. No amount of protest will have any impact on them and they are not going to change as long as they have access to big money.

What will make a difference is if the same people who spent significant time and money to get to Tampa actually went into their own local neighborhoods and started registering people to vote in positive reaction to voter suppression laws, and then getting the vote out for progressive candidates. Actions like that will have a much bigger and lasting impact on the GOP than any mere protest.

7:30 AM. She’s just been wheeled into the OR. There’s plenty of time for me to grab something to eat in the cafeteria, and then try and be busy doing something or other.

The last eighteen months have been like a nightmare. In January of 2011 her primary care physician of seventeen years informed her that he would not accept her as a patient anymore over one disputed bill which she had paid. Her Gynecologist, a year earlier told her he would accept cash but not Medicare. What I should have done is publish both SOB’s names all over the internet and I might yet do that. In early February she was rushed to the hospital and treated for five days for pneumonia and other complications. As a result of this we got another primary care physician who does accept Medicare and has a much better bedside manner. In March she was diagnosed with cancer in both breasts and her surgeon tried a lumpectomy that was mostly successful yet there was enough doubt in all of our minds as to what would happen later. She decided to schedule another surgery for a double mastectomy. It was the right choice and she has been cancer free for over a year. In April she started reconstruction and so far so good. Everything has gone off like clockwork. Today’s surgery is the final step. Hey! Did I mention that we’re on Medicare (with a good supplemental plan)? You know, Medicare, the health care plan for seniors that we’ve been paying into since its inception. Guess what? It didn’t cost us an arm and a leg; no, we didn’t have to mortgage the farm to pay any of the resulting bills (yawn). I (yawn) really ought to……zzz…snkxx..zzzzzz…..

9.15 AM. I felt the doctor robustly tapping me on the shoulder awakening me from my nap. He assured me that everything went well and that she’s going to be OK. I would be able to see her in about a half an hour.

(Big yawn) Oh, yes….where was I?  Well, considering that we were paying $1400.00 per month prior to going on Medicare it certainly doesn’t make sense to go with a private insurer. We’re also both on Social Security, which is also under the gun from the GOP. This Republican caused ( and maintained) economy we’re in has reduced our business to 30% of what it was, so we’re grateful for the help; of course we both have been paying in since the late 1950s, so it’s not exactly an entitlement.

Five hospitalizations and four surgeries in eighteen months is nothing to sneeze (sic) at. Without the safety net in place I shudder to think what would have happened to us. Worse yet, what’s going to happen to our children and grandchildren in the future? That alone is reason for me to never trust a Republican. Even thinking about vouchers or privatization nauseates me. We’re supposed to provide a better life for our kids, something the current system is not allowing for.

No, the RNC Convention, platform and candidates are not anything I want to watch. The thought of Grand Nagus Mitt and Grand Inquisitor Ryan taking center stage is too much to bear. Protest if you want but it’ll get you nowhere. Go out and do something about it.

Register non voters, or canvass for campaigns. If you act you’re part of the solution: If you don’t act you’re part of the problem.

10:15 AM. “Mr. Waxman, you may see your wife now” said the nurse. She was in good spirits and ready to go home. She was discharged at 11:15 and we were home by noon.