Last week’s health care summit completely confirmed that the GOP will say no to any Obama administration / Dem proposals on health care reform (the GOP standard line translates as “let’s start all over again so we can drag it out even more”).  Moreover, a recent poll shows that fifty-eight per cent of the American public expects and wants the Dems to do something.  Conclusion: it’s time for Mr. Obama to put on his FDR sweatshirt and ram a health care bill through Congress using reconciliation.

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As a member of that first wave of baby boomers, I like my rock music, fast cars, stereos, and so forth.  But lately it seems that it is difficult to find moments of silence when I can hear myself think.

I was at home the other morning watching ABC’s Good Morning America and was enjoying a panoramic view of some gorgeous snowfields out Montana way somewhere.  Then I was aghast to see that it was a segment about snowmobiles and the daredevils that drive them.  Those snowfields of multiple meters depth that buffered all the sounds of nature were unable to cope with the raucous decibels of the snowmobile motors.

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So now it comes out that none of the kids in the missionary fiasco in Haiti were orphans!  Apparently the missionary group from Idaho cajoled the kids’ parents into turning the kids over to them, promising them a better life in the good old U.S. of A.  My question: is it kidnapping or child abuse when parents don’t want their kids and turn them over to a religious group?  With the appropriate bureaucracy we do this all the time in our own country, so what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that the missionaries took advantage of the situation and did not play by the rules, following God knows what agenda.  Having lived in Latin America, I can testify that the poor and the desperate are easy victims to proselytizing from religious groups, some with the best of intentions, but others with the nefarious agenda of cultural destruction and recruitment to questionable causes.

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The recent pronouncements by Evgeni Plushenko and President Vladimir Putin illustrate exactly what the Olympic Games are NOT about.  These Russian representatives of unsportsmanlike conduct have made fools of themselves on the world stage, the first for his arrogant belief that he was entitled to the gold, the second for lowering himself from his lofty position to the level of a sports hooligan.

Here is my take as an interested but ignorant spectator of this strange sport:  On any given night, both Evgeni Plushenko and Evan Lysacek are quite capable of winning the gold.  They are both fantastic skaters.  It perhaps would have been more fitting if they had tied, but the judges didn’t see it that way.  It can be argued that the manner of scoring didn’t allow them to.

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Senator Evan Bayh recently announced that he will not run for re-election.  While such a choice may continue the erosion of the Democratic majority, we should analyze his stated reasons.  To quote:  “I love working for the people of Indiana…but I do not love Congress.”

Senator Chris Dodd was another recent bailout.  Are Democrats running scared?  Are they afraid that the Scott Brown sentiment of the recent Massachusetts election will become a contagious epidemic that takes hold across the U.S.?  If so, they can be comforted by the fact that the American public in general has no love for the Republican members of Congress either.  From Pelosi to Boehner and Reid to McConnell, Americans are fed up with the state of the country and especially the state of Congress.

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In my last post I touched on the topic of amendments.  The recent SC decision to allow corporations to contribute to political campaigns has spurred talk of yet another amendment.  The push is led by Senator Christopher Dodd.  He appeared on the Colbert Report (it’s a sorry state of affairs when I get important news from a comedy channel, but our country is in a sorry state of affairs).  The idea of the amendment is to overturn the SC decision, of course.

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Even in the presidential campaign, it was apparent that Mr. Obama, the Republicans, and not a few Democrats, all had different meanings for the word bipartisan.  Whereas Mr. Obama favors a “classical definition” and wants it to mean that there is a serious give-and-take in discussions of policy where each side gives up something to get something from the other side, too many in Congress give it a “newspeak definition” where the other side has to completely agree with them and then they’ll talk, or, even worse, that all sides have to disagree with Mr. Obama, that socialist and Harvard educated revolutionary trying to overturn all that’s near and dear to the special interests.  While his Harvard education might be an obstacle in general (I believe Harvard doesn’t educate, they indoctrinate), I opine that Mr. Obama wants to negotiate in good faith.  Mr. Boehner and his cronies and Ms. Pelosi and hers would rather wage the verbal war and have gridlock than to agree with anyone that doesn’t agree with them.

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The election of Mr. Scott Brown in Massachusetts has emboldened Republicans to tell President Obama and his administration to start over on health care reform.  No matter that everyone agrees with about sixty or seventy per cent of the House and Senate bills.  No matter that the Senate bill is basically the same as the Massachusetts plan, which Mr. Brown voted for.  This is typical stonewalling by the party of “Just Say No.”  Down on Main Street it shows that a lot of people are willing to vote against their own interests if, as they say, they support the Republicans in dragging their feet.

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This short novel (or long novella?) is an extrapolation to what might result if medical science progresses to the point where people live longer and longer.  In 2056 the Forty-first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is passed creating the Homeland Equitable Alliance for a Victimless Economy and Nation, or H.E.A.V.E.N.  This official program is Social Security on steroids, offering a luxurious end to life for those people who agree to an assigned date of death.

It is now 2073 on an idyllic island off the Georgia coast, an island that is part of the government’s official euthanasia program.  Sarah’s day of reckoning is coming soon in August.  Lionel, an ex-Senator, falls for her and agrees to help her escape from the appointment with the grim reaper.  A murder, partially observed by Sarah, is a major distraction.  Suspects in the murder have their own romantic interests and also contribute to solving the murder.  Ben, the robot shaped like an alligator, tries to understand all this strange human behavior and discovers himself in the process.

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The media was effusive with praise for the Grammys this year.  I don’t agree.  Call me an old curmudgeon if you want, but Las Vegas staging with dance numbers and divas and divos belting out songs aided by modern electronics so they can be heard over heavy rock orchestration doesn’t make it all music.  I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but this is why I never liked Michael Jackson.  The king of the music video was not a singer, he was a performer.  He couldn’t sing at all.

You go to Broadway and it’s more of the same.  The last three Broadway shows I’ve seen are Les Miserables, Rent, and Spamalot.  They are entertaining, but are they musicals?  One song from the first made Susan Boyle famous (and she can sing), but I walked out of that show overwhelmed by repetitive and unmemorable ballads and marches sung by people with microphones that make the women look like villains from a 1920′s silent film (oh, blessed silence) and the men like uncouth fools with something stuck in their teeth.

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