the way things work...

'Money is the root of all evil'...

you've heard it, and we'll get into it, but check it—

...say what you will about this dude,

but he took a bullet for you today...

Barack Obama our President, and occasional Boom Boom Washington impersonator, took his health care plan and hit the bricks. He went in front of people—real folk and did his best to take one for the team...

what Obama did wasn't just shill a health care plan that has Wall Street rethinking its commitment to the Health Care Industry as much as go toe to toe with capitalism. Meanwhile, his former colleagues shit their pants compromising on a re-worked bill that takes it easy on the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies that have been taking our life's blood since the last time somebody tried to call them out (see Hillary Clinton circa 1993, you know, when the Health Care Lobby and their 'Contract With America era Republicans took her out in a drive by)...

years ago my father used to sit us down when he was summarily pissed at my brothers and i for our choices, or lack thereof. He would speak of 'the game' and how you play it. Stay out of trouble, go to college, get a good job, collect a paycheck, buy American, you know, play the game. The eldest, he's knee deep in the game, doing the job of three people, trapped in a part of town where the grass won't grow for years, singing praise to the game. The other one has had his life split in half and won't admit the shit is getting to him, the game will have you talking to yourself. And me, well if you've read here regular, you know my tale— years of running from the game until the day I played it, only to have them change the rules. And rules have changed. The world is very different now...

my father, and i love him, will never understand, when i was hopped up on nuclear waste and prednisone, that I had a birds-eye view of the game. Listening to him haggle with his insurance company on my behalf. Cutting deals with my doctors to take the 80%, and eat the co-pay. Cursing in the name of every part of the student loan establishment. Watching less qualified yokels rise up the ladder in front of him. Yeah, he loved the game, but i decided long ago, i wasn't having it...

your government doesn't care about you, there is no money in it. Make no mistake, you'll hear a lot over the next few weeks about blue dogs and public option and employee mandates and other what not, forget it. When the day is done its about the free market. The Health Care Lobby has their hands in the pockets of most major politicians. Money for campaigns, campaigns for the free market. This is the way things work. Money is the root of all evil...

i had a conversation with my Aunt's husband over wine at Christmas. He is a SVP at a large finance firm. We were discussing how the recession would eventually cause a redistribution of wealth. My argument was that after people in his position and higher (and lower) made decisions to distort the natural rules of economics (supply and demand) that a natural correction was inevitable, he agreed. i brought forth the point that because of such corrections that the break between rich and poor increased and the middle class was being stretched to one side or the other. That the government needed to step in and help support families in need, especially middle class families that had chased the dragon of what his colleagues had created. He called it socialism, i laughed. Financiers, economists, and pro-business politicians preach the word of the free market. Let it correct itself, they say. Well, a year ago when the bottom was dropping out of their bottom lines they pleaded for bailouts—'Save our investment bank the free market is coming to destroy us!!'...

now that's socialism...

the free market is at work here. While fostering competition it also condones cannibalism. A company that performs poorly, gets swallowed up. This happens over and over again until there are only three or four conglomerates supplying the market with its product or service. The Health Care Industry is no different, so their lobby has been burning up the phone lines getting their senators and congressmen and women to shit all over a plan that would throw Medicaid rates into the plan. I once was fortunate to be on Medicaid, in my day of guerrilla health insurance, and it was the best health plan I had ever been on. If the market has to compete with Medicaid, it will lose its profit margin. Less junkets, less boat outings, less walking on the backs of meek and mild...

congress said today that they are near a compromise on the bill. A compromise that 'the American people are asking for.' Is that like 4 out of 5 dentists agree? Sounds like 'the game' to me...

so there was Obama, taking it on the chin for you today. Fighting capitalism head up. He's going to lose, they always do. Capitalism will be the end of this Republic, be sure of that. But I love it when some one's willing to fight...

Barry, do me a favor, when this compromised bill shows up on your desk, veto the shit out of it. You convinced a ton of people to jump off a bridge with you, lets do it, lets change the way it works...

Yeaaah Boyeeee!!...