Truthers, Birthers And Town Hall Terrorists

Since President Obama said Sergeant Crowley acted "stupidly" when he arrested Professor Gates, what do you think he is thinking about the "truthers", the "birthers", and the "town hall terrorists" who are all coming out of the wood work these days?

I'll go with "these mother******'s are stupider than I thought!"

Because the TRUTH is, all this manufactured outrage about where OUR (as all the citizens of the United States) black president was born has got me thinking about is the old D.W. Griffith movie BIRTH OF A NATION - then again, maybe some studio is remaking it, because these people TERRORIZING the healthcare town hall meetings could stand in as extras for the mob scenes without any coaching at all.

I've been meaning to get around to doing a piece on the absurdity that is the Glen Beck phenomenon, whose presence on CNN FOX is so negative, the cable news network CNN could run "Black In America" specials five days a week and it wouldn't balance it out what has to be the "stupidest" son of a biscuit eater on the air.

Beck makes Michelle Malkin and Rush Limbaugh look like the right wing actors they are as they join the fray, whipping the herds of town hall terrorists out there into a frenzy, directing their followers in the art of creating pandemonium...

...all so they can keep ALL OF THE PEOPLE, including themselves, from getting a better health insurance deal than they have now.

If we can all agree that our nation's insurance companies are peeing on our heads and telling us it's raining - then why is anyone who is NOT a CEO in the healthcare industry or major shareholder in one of these companies even thinking about keeping things the way they are?

If the president is able to get health insurance companies to actually do what they claim to be doing, and less of the denying of coverage to the people who pay the premiums that keep these insurance company doors open, while providing an alternative source of health care coverage for those of us who would throw off the statistics in any actuarial pool, an alternative source that will drastically cut back our emergency and trauma center costs - which seems from most angles to look suspiciously like something right out of the pages of the old Good Book my Christian citizens are ready to raise in the air whenever their motivations are questioned - why is this seen as such a terrible apostasy?

Doesn't the phrase "promote the general Welfare" come right out of the Preamble to our own Constitution?

I mean - what would Jesus do?

I don't remember Jesus standing with the money changers or the "wealth creators".

As a matter of fact, I believe he is best known for feeding the hungry and healing the sick.

Healing the sick was seen as a miracle two thousand years ago.

Today, we call it "modern medicine".

I can guarantee it would cost us less - much, much less - to "heal the sick" than the trillions we've spent keeping those "wealth builders" in Connecticut and Westchester and Ossining rich.

Just think about this. There was a time, years ago, when the effort to make seatbelt usage mandatory was just beginning, when some of us protested that too.

Amazingly, with all the disorderly conduct that has been going on at these town hall meetings - the charge of disorderly conduct, we have learned in the last two weeks, covers most kinds of public unruly or disturbing behaviors which act to provoke a disturbance - not one of these non-professorial, non-Harvardites has been arrested.

The Inconvenience Of Absolute Truth

Suppose you were a congressman who tried to get legislation passed - lets say a federal law - that 2 + 2 = 4.

Sounds simple.

Before you know it, though, the nation would split into its usual factions.

Right wing groups would claim that making two plus two equal four is tantamount to affirmative action - "why, if God wanted twos to be equal to fours, he would have made them fours in the first place.

Left wing groups would put world renowned mathematicians on the job around the clock, generating every known numerical combination that could equal four - "because singling out the number two for special treatment, when we know there are other combinations of numbers, both whole and fractional, that add up to four - that is discrimination."

Think tanks would fill the airwaves and the internet with new releases hourly showing how this would affect the environment, or how the whole thing was an exercise in futility.

Political pundits would parse such nuances as the validity of the number theory - "is two really the description of a finite quantity, or is it the arbitrary designation of an abstract theory that is not based on scientific fact?"

All of these machinations, however, would pale in comparison to the efforts our vaunted media would put into depicting this brouhaha in the news.

"Two Plus Two Equals Disaster For The Left"

"Right Math Produces Wrong Total"

"56% Of Americans Do Not Believe 2 + 2 = 4"



As absurd as this sounds, it isn't much different from a lot of what I read in the paper everyday. We see sound bites, deliberately designed to wrest any semblance of logic from the words the speaker says, republished and regurgitated hourly.

The absolute truth is prevention is less expensive by far than emergency room intervention at the last minute. The absolute truth is that most of our big city trauma hospitals will sound their own siren in the next couple of months, declaring that they are again broke before the end of the year because of all the indigent and uninsured patients they have to serve. The absolute truth is that many procedures are performed in order to prevent lawsuits or generate revenue. The absolute truth is that our health insurance companies have designed their policies, for those who can afford them, to provide the minimum benefits for the maximum cost.

"(w + x)/y = z" is probably closer to what needed to be dealt with, if w,x, and y were the absolute truths I listed above. But you will never see anything with so many unknown variables put before Congress. Which means a third grader could do as good a job as the people you elect to represent you now.

When we can get to the point where we are not afraid to deal with multiple unknowns simultaneously, when we can have the guts, both as a government and as a nation, to let the outcome of an effort like this healthcare initiative fall where it may, instead of insisting on hammering our square peg problem through a round hole of a solution, maybe we can make some real progress.

"Juggling Major National Issues Should Only Be Attempted By A Professional"

The warning on fire juggling equipment websites read "fire juggling should only be attempted by a professional juggler."

If you've ever watched a juggler in action, you’ve probably done what I've done - wonder what it is that makes something that looks so simple so hard for the average person to do.

I've seen professional jugglers at the circus as a child and on TV as an adult. They all pretty much start off the same way - by standing next to a row of items they intend to juggle and picking the items off of the row one by one. The first two items they toss into the air to get their rhythm going make the action look deceptively simple. And while you're watching, they smoothly snatch another item from the pile and add it to the ones they are already circulating from hand to hand and into the air.

The next thing you know, they've got four items in the circuit - two in the air, with the other two in their hands. This, you figure, you could probably do as well, if you had time to practice a bit. It isn't until they begin juggling five or six items that you have to admit that this guy knows what he is doing.

If you watch him while he's juggling, you will see, even if he is plying his audience with a steady line of patter, that his eyes are intent on the trajectory and the height of the balls in the air.

Imagine these items are torches, the kind you set on fire.

When you see a juggler begin to light his juggling torches, any idea you may have had of your prowess matching the juggler's skills one day vanishes. At that point, you figure the juggler has lost his mind – he cannot possibly be planning to juggle torches that are actually flaming.

The most amazing act I've ever seen involved juggling lit torches.

President Obama is a fire juggler.

In some ways, he is making the balancing act he's maintaining as his administration juggles decision making on the economy, healthcare, the banking bailout, the environment, education and America’s infrastructure look too easy. Most of us, aware of our own limitations, figure we would be sweating bullets if we tried to take on any three of these at once.

The critics, who are legion, are not professional jugglers. They are a lot like you and me - the kind of people who would be afraid of even tossing lit torches into the air. President Obama may not be one yet either, but he seems to be willing, like has has in all the other endeavors he's committed to accomplishing in his life, to be giving it his undivided attention.