Friday, August 7, 2009
Surprising, but maybe not so surprising. Bush was just trying to fulfill biblical prophesy??
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=haught_29_5
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Saturday, August 1, 2009
More on the health care debate, thanks to my sister as told to her by Fox News
This is the final post in the debate between my sister and me on health care, as I wrote about a few days ago:
"No, I never received any public assistance. I applied but was turned down. No problem if I was an illegal! So I am paying everything out of pocket. [My husband's] union cancelled all our insurance the moment he died. [My son] was right in the middle of a root canal the day [his dad] died and the union stopped paying. So that was another grand I had to pay. We definitely have to change our health system! But Government run health care is not the answer! I don't want the government to tell me what doctor I will see and what treatment they feel is best. Ask [our cousin] Debbie about the health care she received in Europe. The military wouldn't treat her cancer and she had to be treated by 'European Government run health care'. She is still suffering from the mistakes they made and not having the treatment she needed because she wasn't 'important enough'. There are a lot more people trying to get into the U.S. for health care then people leaving to get health care elsewhere."
The remarkable thing about this post is that she's saying that the military, for whom my cousin (a computer programmer) works as a contractor, would not pay for cancer treatment, yet the "European Government run health care" system did. (I hate to sound like an elitist over-educated liberal, but I feel compelled to inform her, if by chance she reads this blog, which I doubt, that Europe, like Africa, is actually made up of separate countries; each with their own health care system). Apparently this issue of American military contract workers not getting treatment is a big problem. Who insures them? Not the U.S. military or another government run health care system, but private insurers, like AIG, contracted by the military. I'm posting a link to an L.A. Times article about this issue. The article focuses on contractors with injuries sustained in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan; how much more likely is it that a non-combat employee, like my cousin, would be denied coverage? I guess my cousin wasn't "important enough" to the private insurer who denied her care.
"No, I never received any public assistance. I applied but was turned down. No problem if I was an illegal! So I am paying everything out of pocket. [My husband's] union cancelled all our insurance the moment he died. [My son] was right in the middle of a root canal the day [his dad] died and the union stopped paying. So that was another grand I had to pay. We definitely have to change our health system! But Government run health care is not the answer! I don't want the government to tell me what doctor I will see and what treatment they feel is best. Ask [our cousin] Debbie about the health care she received in Europe. The military wouldn't treat her cancer and she had to be treated by 'European Government run health care'. She is still suffering from the mistakes they made and not having the treatment she needed because she wasn't 'important enough'. There are a lot more people trying to get into the U.S. for health care then people leaving to get health care elsewhere."
The remarkable thing about this post is that she's saying that the military, for whom my cousin (a computer programmer) works as a contractor, would not pay for cancer treatment, yet the "European Government run health care" system did. (I hate to sound like an elitist over-educated liberal, but I feel compelled to inform her, if by chance she reads this blog, which I doubt, that Europe, like Africa, is actually made up of separate countries; each with their own health care system). Apparently this issue of American military contract workers not getting treatment is a big problem. Who insures them? Not the U.S. military or another government run health care system, but private insurers, like AIG, contracted by the military. I'm posting a link to an L.A. Times article about this issue. The article focuses on contractors with injuries sustained in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan; how much more likely is it that a non-combat employee, like my cousin, would be denied coverage? I guess my cousin wasn't "important enough" to the private insurer who denied her care.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Does every family have their own embarrassing Sarah Palin in the closet?
Is "de-friended" a word or not? Either way, I have de-friended my sister on Facebook. This feels terrific. She had not spoken to me for a couple of years after my parents' estate was settled, but called about a year ago to inform me that she was in poor health with a heart condition. She wrote: "My heart mussel is very week. It is just barley pumping out the blood." She has no health insurance, but vehemently opposes a national health care system based on the advice of her friends at Fox News.
I feel a little bad about shutting her out, but her posts to me had begun to take on a snarky, offensive tone that brought back the pain of her abusiveness in childhood and on into adulthood. Her personal invective is much like that which she relentlessly delivered throughout the painful months (actually, years, all told) it took to settle my parents' estate, though she admitted to me last year, to my amazement, that she had not then, nor since, bothered to read the Will or Trust or settlement documents which she was arguing about. She and my other sister think that I act like I know more than they do, that I rely too much on things I read in books rather than "common sense" (which they apparently possess, in their estimation, unencumbered by study or reading, including legal documents which they are signing).
So I am, once again, moving on. I hope that the health care thing works out for her down there in Texas, where she has plenty of like-minded compatriots for her anti-immigrant ravings, and she can join in on some tea-parties and Sarah Palin 2012 rallies. She's right at home there, and I have nothing to offer her. We both drive each other crazy.
Actually, I like to think I'm not crazy yet, but I'm not willing to tempt fate by perpetuating the relationship.
I feel a little bad about shutting her out, but her posts to me had begun to take on a snarky, offensive tone that brought back the pain of her abusiveness in childhood and on into adulthood. Her personal invective is much like that which she relentlessly delivered throughout the painful months (actually, years, all told) it took to settle my parents' estate, though she admitted to me last year, to my amazement, that she had not then, nor since, bothered to read the Will or Trust or settlement documents which she was arguing about. She and my other sister think that I act like I know more than they do, that I rely too much on things I read in books rather than "common sense" (which they apparently possess, in their estimation, unencumbered by study or reading, including legal documents which they are signing).
So I am, once again, moving on. I hope that the health care thing works out for her down there in Texas, where she has plenty of like-minded compatriots for her anti-immigrant ravings, and she can join in on some tea-parties and Sarah Palin 2012 rallies. She's right at home there, and I have nothing to offer her. We both drive each other crazy.
Actually, I like to think I'm not crazy yet, but I'm not willing to tempt fate by perpetuating the relationship.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Crackpots and local politics
If you've ever attended a local public governmental board meeting, this will look familiar. It's funnier when it isn't your town. . .
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)