Back at it?

After a long hiatus, I have decided to get back into the publishing game. Woo Hoo. Did you miss me?

More to come . . .

The Orangutan and the Hound Dog

Three Cups of Tea

[Paraphrased from the Flyleaf of the book.]

Three Cups of Tea is the title of a book by and about Greg Mortenson, a climber who failed in his attempt to ascend K2 in Pakistan, and drifted cold, hungry and tired into the village of Korphe. So thankful to the villagers for their hospitality and friendship, Mr. Mortenson promised to build a school for its children. Not only did he complete the school for Korphe, over the next decade he had completed fifty-five schools especially for girls.

"If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways," Haji Ali said, blowing on his bowl. "The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die," he said, laying his hand warmly on Mortenson's own . . .

HIGHLY Recommended.

RIP, Mary Travers

My BAD

The President's plan does offer a public option. My information from Huffington Post was that it would not. My bad.

I should believe, shouldn't I?

Obama sells out!

We the people elected Barack Obama on the promise of a public-option for healthcare. What we get is "insurance exchanges":

Now, if you're one of the tens of millions of Americans who don't currently have health insurance, the second part of this plan will finally offer you quality, affordable choices. If you lose your job or change your job, you will be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage. We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange - a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices. Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers. As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage. This is how large companies and government employees get affordable insurance. It's how everyone in this Congress gets affordable insurance. And it's time to give every American the same opportunity that we've given ourselves.

So, tell me Mr. President, how is an insurance exchange going to provide affordable healthcare for someone with a pre-existing condition? It's not going to happen.

Disappointed I am.

He Said, She Said

In today's Washington Post, Rick Perlstein notes, as we have seen, that today's "librul media" has fallen off the horse and does not speak the truth when confronted by crazy talk. From "Crazy as a Pre-Existing Condition":

Conservatives have become adept at playing the media for suckers, getting inside the heads of editors and reporters, haunting them with the thought that maybe they are out-of-touch cosmopolitans and that their duty as tribunes of the people's voices means they should treat Obama's creation of "death panels" as just another justiciable political claim . . .

It used to be different. You never heard the late Walter Cronkite taking time on the evening news to "debunk" claims that a proposed mental health clinic in Alaska is actually a dumping ground for right-wing critics of the president's program, or giving the people who made those claims time to explain themselves on the air. The media didn't adjudicate the ever-present underbrush of American paranoia as a set of "conservative claims" to weigh, horse-race-style, against liberal claims. Back then, a more confident media unequivocally labeled the civic outrage represented by such discourse as "extremist" -- out of bounds.

The tree of crazy is an ever-present aspect of America's flora. Only now, it's being watered by misguided he-said-she-said reporting and taking over the forest. Latest word is that the enlightened and mild provision in the draft legislation to help elderly people who want living wills -- the one hysterics turned into the "death panel" canard -- is losing favor, according to the Wall Street Journal, because of "complaints over the provision."

Good thing our leaders weren't so cowardly in 1964, or we would never have passed a civil rights bill -- because of complaints over the provisions in it that would enslave whites.