As the new year (2010) dawns, lots to be thankful for and a wish that we would look homeward…

New Year’s Eve Day 2009 — almost 2010 . I should be writing about New Year’s resolutions or an assessment of the past year, but I cannot think of much to say other than I have pretty much taken to living life day by day after coming back from a period in which I truly thought I was facing doom within weeks or months or few short years — and I still don’t really know about that since I have a relatively rare form of cancer which is incurable.

 

I have felt well enough to go back to work, although the work is not really what I would like to be doing, but then again, I am just glad to be alive and that is why I have gone to taking each day as it comes and trying to get some enjoyment out of it. I never was much for the long-range approach anyway, other than the fact I spent most of my 60 years so far thinking that things would improve in the future or living for the future. Well, you know, the future came, and now sometimes I almost long for the past.

 

But of course I do have a whole lot to be thankful for. I have a wife who has stood by me and was certainly there for me when things looked the worst (a year or so ago), we have a new grandchild and at only a few months old he is quite the character — I have never seen such a happy and alert and active baby. And we have two other lovely grandchildren, as well.

  I still have my mom, who is alert and interested in world events and art and literature, at the age of 99. 

I have siblings who have been there for me. 

Have two daughters who love me (least that’s what they tell me). 

And back to the job. At a time when so many do not have jobs I have to be pretty grateful for that. I’m doing over- the-road trucking, and although I’m with what you might call a “regional” carrier and get by home often, it is not often enough, and it pretty well consumes every waking hour. I spend a lot of time waiting for the loads and waiting to get unloaded, so with this new computer I can at least blog now. That’s a good thing for me. 

But it isn’t all about me, as my wife often reminds me. 

I have to think about this nation in which I live. I think and I even hope we are going though a transitional stage that although painful, what with the economic crisis, may in the long run force us to re-organize our economy into some more efficient system (and I’m not talking about straying from capitalism) that is more productive and supplies the most for the most amount of people, rather than creates an ever-wider gulf between haves and have nots. At present and in the recent past too much emphasis has been put on money games that produce nothing but quick dollars for a few. We need to be productive and produce things and provide real services that enrich the lives of all. 

In what little Christmas shopping I did I was astounded by the fact — although I really already knew it — that it is nearly impossible to buy anything made in America. And even if it were to say so, that is the tags said “made in America”, I am not sure it would be true. I know years ago Walmart prided itself in a made in America promotion and then it was discovered that some of the stuff touted as being made in America wasn’t after all, at least that’s what I read at the time. Soon thereafter Walmart dropped that promotion and made no pretense of worrying about whether stuff was made here at home. In fact, Walmart went to China to open stores there — to sell folks in China stuff made in their own country, now that I think that one out. 

Now I know that the Wall Street money changers are not going to quit plying their trade, and I suppose there is a place and a reason for them — capital and God work in mysterious ways . And I don’t think we should go into complete protectionism with ultra-high tariffs on all incoming goods — although a little protectionism would not hurt — but for the life of me I hope that in this new year the powers that be might look homeward and realize that although we are in a global economy, it’s the folks right here at home who come first. 

Somewhere — NPR ? I don’t recall, I heard that we are making special trade concessions in the Middle East to win favor with the people there — I guess so they won’t breed so many terrorists to come and attack us. 

I wished that instead of trying to buy the rest of the world off we could do for ourselves. 

Sure we want good relations with the rest of the world and sure we want to trade goods back and forth in the world market place, but it has become too one-sided and we are finely paying the price. 

With so many people suffering from the current super recession and with the tightening of credit and so many people not able to charge things anymore because they maxed out their cards, there are signs that Americans have become more careful and prudent shoppers and are being more frugal and they are looking for value — at least that is what I hear. That’s a good thing. 

Sure retailers were used to selling shoddy merchandise and a lot of it and the prevailing wisdom was as long as consumers were on a buying binge the economy would hum along and it was good for everyone. Well the bubble burst. 

But maybe in this new year of 2010 we will start to move toward production of quality home grown goods. Who knows? We might actually return to the idea of craftsmanship. 

And now that I am on a ramble I want to suggest that wouldn’t it be nice if all those billions that the money changers throw around could be invested in something like health care for everyone and cancer and other medical research instead of making bets on runaway real estate inflation? 

While government can certainly thwart economic growth and get in the way of good old capitalism, sometimes there is a place for it, sometimes only it can or will do some of the things that need to be done, some of those things that help humanity but may not turn the quick buck. 

And let me ramble some more. Barack Obama came in with great promise. He was so reasonable and so willing to work with all sides. Well that was good, to an extent. But he may come to realize — I can only hope — that all of those he has tried to work with are not necessarily reasonable — some of them have ulterior motives — you think? 

Also I would hope that in the new year that he would learn that you don’t fix Wall Street by recruiting its own members, insiders who are so tied to the system that they can’t help but perpetuate it, and you can’t fix the inequities in health care insurance by letting the insurance companies write the new rules. 

And while diplomacy on the world stage is always in order, sometimes it is best not to say too much or admit guilt — what you say can will be used against you. 

I ramble some more: All this military effort and expense  overseas — you know, so we can fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here — would be better spent right here at home. 

We sure found out how bad it is to have too many National Guard (the old Home Guard there for local emergencies) tied up overseas a few years back when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Our response to help our own people back here at home was pathetic. Contrast that with the response the Chinese government had to a more recent earthquake there — and please don’t accuse me of being a commie and tell me: why don’t I go there to live? 

And wouldn’t it be nice to see interaction that saw children — and adults — actually interacting face to face rather than on Myspace or Twitter (and I really know little to nothing about those two phenomena ) or cell phones. We’ve taken the humanity out of human relations — I write this in my blog on a computer that goes out on the internet and I spend most of my hours with a blue tooth earphone in my ear talking to my wife while I am out on the road or talking to the dispatchers and shippers and receivers. No I wouldn’t stop the advance of technology, that is not as long as it really is advancing us to something good or improving the quality of life. 

But most of all I just wish everyone a Happy New Year!!!!!

Planning a road trip…

I might not be posting a blog for some days because I plan to be out on the road. If I were more advanced – this is the computer age and this is a blog – I would just blog from the road. But I have to get a little upgrade to do that and I plan to as soon as I can.

But I’ll be blogging more soon about what happened out on the road and my take on current events and other things.

Please check back.

Franken good enough and smart enough and doggone it enough people liked him after all

“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it people like me,” that’s what Al Franken can say  — just like his Saturday Night Live character Stuart Smalley — now that he has finally been declared once and for all to be the new junior U.S. Senator from Minnesota.

And while he claimed in acceptance today of his new position that he does not consider himself the 60^th vote (for a Democratic majority), but the second vote for Minnesota, Democratic liberal pundits I am hearing now on MSNBC as I blog this say there’s no reason now for President Obama to not push through everything and cut out the compromise, and go for things such as the public option for health care.

Franken has been in a fight with former Sen. and Republican Norm Coleman since last November’s election for the disputed seat. But the Minnesota state Supreme Court finally declared Franken the winner today, by 312 votes.

While I don’t know much about Franken, other than I liked him better on Saturday Night Live than on his former radio show on Air America, he is liberal. So here is a gigantic victory for Democratic liberals who want Obama to keep campaign promises and not be afraid to be liberal. They’re not in a mood for compromise and they often ask: what did Bush do when he had the edge? Not much compromise there – he was the “decider”, even though he once remarked tongue in cheek (or maybe not) “it would be a lot easier if I was a dictator”.

Franken told his home-staters though that he would represent the interests of Minnesota first and compromise where necessary. But with 60 votes I’m wondering how often he’ll find it necessary. Of course not all Democrats necessarily are going to vote the same all the time. But 60 votes will remove the cover some middle of the road to conservative Democrats might otherwise take.

ADD 1:

Just read a story that reminds me that Franken’s additional vote in a way is more like a 58-vote majority (not enough to cut off debate) than 60 because Senators Kennedy and Byrd have medical problems and cannot always be there to vote.

We head down the old road of single industry when we should be diversifying…

While I have not agreed with President Obama’s auto company bailouts, with GM going into bankruptcy but propped up by billions of taxpayer dollars and a 72 percent government ownership stake (60 percent U.S. and 12 percent Canadian), and Chrysler coming out of a relative quick bankruptcy – propped up by the government bailout program as well, I sure hope it all works out.

The government has loaned GM nearly $21 billion, but to no avail so the company filed for bankruptcy on Monday and the taxpayers are left with a majority ownership of a failing business.

(And I have to ask why American taxpayers have to fund this whole thing when Chrysler is merging with the Italian car maker Fiat. Also I heard the president say that the government was the only entity that could come up with enough money to bail out GM. And that is probably true since only the government can essentially print its own money – how much that phony stuff will be worth in the long run is hard to know. We are looking at heavy inflation down the road, I’m quite confident.)

I know in times way past I often heard something to the effect that our economy is driven by car production, but it always kind of whizzed by me like so much freeway traffic.

Seems like a lot of us were thunderstruck a year or so ago when we realized that the U.S. economy was virtually totally dependent upon car and light truck production and a super-inflated real-estate market that suddenly deflated.

Going forward it sure seems we need to diversify – never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket as the old adage goes. Surely we can produce a lot more than cars. We used to.

Rather than go down that wrong road again by bailing out the failing automakers, it seems government efforts would be better spent promoting highly diversified industry for this country, everything from tennis shoe making to highly technical so-called green energy projects. We need to produce things and get people working. How are we going to support the unemployed when too few are employed?

We have come to this pass via the evolving global economy. So many saw the global economy as a panacea, that is as long as the U.S. controlled it, selling Coca-Cola, cigarettes, and cars around the world.

But somehow we lost control of the whole thing. Through inflated real estate values and maybe to some extent inflated wages (and I wish I could have gotten in on more of that) we became a nation of consumers more than a nation of producers.

One of the reasons for all of this no doubt is that capital by itself is not patriotic. Those who have it may or may not be in their own right, but the rules they play by have nothing to do with the interest of their own nation. You invest capital to make more capital. And generalizing here, those with the money found it more profitable is so many cases to invest outside of our borders because labor in less developed nations was cheap. I knew we were in trouble when we no longer made our own Levis here and not even cowboy boots. If memory serves me correctly, Levi Strauss, a company with a proud uniquely American heritage, closed down its last plant in El Paso, Texas and moved south of the border. Justin Boots also moved its production outside the country, as well.

The car production things seems to have gone something like this: American car manufacturers over the years seemed to have decided that the reality of the market and of production costs meant that they would be better off pushing essentially bigger muscle cars and trucks to satisfy a large demand here in the USA and in order to be able to make more money on each unit. They ceded most of the small car market to primarily Asian producers.

And I just heard an auto company CEO concede something we already knew, the Japanese beat us on car quality a long time ago. He claimed, though, that now American manufacturers are catching up (a few decades too late perhaps). To me it is not that we could not produce quality, it is that the automakers did not want to. Planned obsolescence and making money on repairs was long the game plan out of Detroit and its environs and at the old dealership, so many of which have now been closed down.

And I’ve read that investors, such as these so-called hedge funds, look to quick and big profits rolling in each quarter – they’re not big on long-term planning or research and development. As I stated earlier, capital does not think in terms of what is good for the country.

And then there is the consumer. People want what they want. In the case of the United States with the high standard of living it was enjoying, large numbers of consumers went for comfort and did not consider things like gas mileage too much except when fuel prices would spike. The spike last summer really did it. Gasoline approaching or at or more than $5 per gallon, combined with increasing unemployment or fear of unemployment or reduced wages gave the consumer a dose of reality of now and future.

But now I read that although the Obama administration aims to force car producers by way of policy and law ( not to mention ownership – even if Obama vows not to run the companies) to produce smaller and more fuel efficient vehicles, if gas prices don’t go up too much, it might be hard to get folks to buy vehicles smaller than they are used to. And notice, I automatically combined SMALLER and FUEL EFFICIENT. That’s because the assumption always seems to be that in order to get to fuel efficient we have to go smaller.

Well we probably need to go smaller than a main battle tank in the U.S. Army or one of those civilian Hummers you see on the road or those oversized or supersized pickups and SUVs.

But something I would like to look into is just what kind of gas mileage did your average, say, 1956 Chevy get? The reason I ask that is that to me the 1950s really seems the golden age of American cars. I was only a little kid in the 50s, and my folks had a ‘53 Studebaker – kinda small, but more or less a regular sized family car. But seems to me those Chevies and Fords of that era were plenty big for a family and were comfortable to ride – I just am at a loss of what the gas mileage was (see end of blog).

Of course I know they were heavy. They were actually all steel – you had something solid – instead of so much fiberglass.

I do recall that through unfortunate circumstances, an accident with the Studebaker (it survived), we wound up with a second car, a Plymouth station wagon, that began as a temporary replacement car and stayed on as a second car. It was comfortable, had more room, but not so good on gas mileage, I’m sure.

But it seems to me that the consumer ought to be in the driver’s seat when it comes to deciding what the car market should be. Individual car buyers will and should be able to decide what they want and what they need and what they can afford. As for fuel mileage and other environmental concerns, let’s take that on one at a time. We know from last summer’s big fuel spike what it takes for Americans to go for more fuel efficient vehicles and/or cut down on unnecessary driving. – of course we have an indication they will tend to turn the other way when fuel prices go the other way. But on fuel mileage, letting the market dictate seems to have a pretty powerful effect. As for other environmental concerns, such as the amount of pollutants cars put out, the market will not control that, the government does have to set some standards. But those standards have to be realistic and based on hard science and should not be based on some congressman’s idea of, say, pushing corn based ethanol (which really does no good for the environment) because he’s from Iowa.

And standards should be set by the federal government, not states, so that they are uniform across the nation. Once the automakers, to include foreign makers, know what the standards are, they will produce cars that meet those standards – they have no choice.

Something tells me that private enterprise in competition will likely do a better job of meeting consumer demand and meeting pollution standards, that is making cars people will and can buy and use to their best advantage, rather than a government one-size-fits all approach.

I think competition from foreign car makers, to include ones who assemble right here in the U.S., can be healthy for our own homegrown industry. But as long as the government is there to prop up industry, the corporate powers that be will not learn how to compete.

The government set a bad precedent back in 1979 when it propped up Chrysler with loan guarantees. “We’ll do better”, they promised at the time — what happened?

I can only hope we haven’t fallen for that same line again.

P.s.

As to what the gas mileage was on your average 1950s model family car, my oldest brother said his resident expert suggests about 15 to 22 mpg. I’ll bet we could produce cars just as roomy with slightly better or even far better mileage (partly because we use lighter weight materials nowadays) even using the existing internal combustion engine model, with just some slight tweaking. I’m sure we will evolve into another technology, but we need to consider does it really save energy and what unforseen effects might there be on the environment when all things are considered and what it will take to provide the infrastructure (you know, things like electrical outlets to plug your car into and how to make it all affordable).

Swine flu statistics still hard to follow, but my local count is 1 case, 0 deaths…

It seems difficult to get accurate swine flu statistics off the web. The numbers don’t always add up and each story or each site seems to list things differently. But I think I have a handle so far on the statistics in the town and county in which I live, at the north end of California’s Sacramento Valley: Cases, 1 reported and one confirmed (the same case, so the number is 1); Deaths, 0. (This local case was just officially confirmed today.)

Worldwide, I’ll just go with the current Wikipedia count of 6,042 cases and 63 deaths, with 58 of them reported out of Mexico, 3 in the U.S. and 1 in Canada and 1 in Costa Rica (and as I have previously noted, statistics get jumbled between suspected, reported – by whom? – and confirmed).

There was also a somewhat bizarre report out of Canada that pigs caught swine flu from a human who had just returned from Canada, but at last report, none died (pigs that is). But I guess in Egypt they overreacted and slaughtered thousands of swine for no apparent reason, except for the name “swine flu”. Meanwhile, the last I heard it had not been determined whether the so-called swine flu in Mexico, thought to be the nation of origin in the current epidemic, had actually originated from pigs. And the official name for the current brand of swine flu is Influenza A (H1N1). The swine industry, and maybe others, I suppose, had pushed for a name change.

The local case to which I referred involved a resident who had just returned from a trip to Mexico. The local TV news just said he is now completely recovered. The first report of him going to a local hospital emergency room was only a few days ago.

This current swine flu epidemic (or pandemic?) was not officially confirmed as such until about mid April. I can see that from what we know now about this fairly steady but slow-moving and so far not terribly deadly virus, sealing off the Mexico-U.S. Border probably would have been an overreaction (I had blogged that it should at least be seriously considered). But the contention by officials that it would not do any good seems to be belied by the fact that had not this local individual been allowed to cross in and out of Mexico we would not have had this particular local swine flu case.

But this is all way out of my league. I don’t mind so much opinionating on politics and such, but how to handle health emergencies I’ll leave up to the professionals (for the most part).

When Obama is presidential, he’s at his best…

Just watched President Barack Obama’s news conference and left the TV so I would not hear the pundits sum it up. That way I can give my own personal reaction without fear that I was influenced by the pack.

I have watched presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to John Kennedy to Ronald Reagan to the vapid George W. Bush, and I can say that this one, Mr. Obama, handles himself better in public in this type of formal situation than any of his predecessors. (Don’t care so much for the informal, such as on Jay Leno, but that is more because of my bias against presidents as entertainers).

Maybe I’m just a sucker for a slicked tongue politician, but I don’t think so. His answers are complete and seem to be instructive and he seems to not depend upon platitudes (not so much anyway) or just the usual political rhetoric.

As far as his personal performance on the job, I think he is doing fine in the face of probably the biggest challenge any president has ever faced, the real possibility that not only our own but the world’s economy could almost immediately collapse. I think what we face now and have been facing for the past several months, beginning in the waning months of the Bush administration, is a crisis in many respects much deeper than the Great Depression, although our social programs – unemployment, Social Security, for example – have softened things somewhat so far.

I do not approve of the way Mr. Obama and his administration have handled the banking and AIG crisis, but populist pressure is checking that mess, along with a new force that is a band of moderate to conservative Democrats in Congress. So where Mr. Obama might go too far, he may be kept in check somewhat by his own party.

As for the Republicans, they are still in disarray and have not shown yet that they have any answer. They have not presented any comprehensive alternative program. It is to their political advantage to carp and complain and hope that Mr. Obama stumbles.

For his part, I believe, Mr. Obama needs to keep up his effort to enlist the support of the American people. But rather than demean himself by appearing on late night TV and running the risk of making gaffes as those situations seem to produce, I think he should give personal addresses to the people from the oval office and perhaps make more formal presidential appearances elsewhere around the nation.

(Copyright 2009)

Obama walks on Leno cool, leaves not so cool…

I actually stayed up to watch President Obama on the Tonight Show, but turned the TV off sometime after midnight and while he was still talking.

What I missed was his Joe Biden foot-in-his-mouth moment. I found out this morning about his  gaffe about the Special Olympics (I saw the video replay). He equated his own lack of bowling skills with the Special Olympics. And indeed a lot of developmentally disabled people bowl and get exercise and have great fun doing it. They do not need overly cool and overly intellectual folks poking fun at them before national and world audiences. We all make such goofs and are no doubt later ashamed of them, but the good thing is we don’t all have such large audiences. 

In my last blog I opined that for the President of the United States to go on a late-night comedy/interview show seemed something “undignified” for the leader of the free world to do.

I should have also observed that it is dangerous for someone in Mr. Obama’s position to do because one tends to let one’s guard down in such situations.

And how do you apologize? Sure you are sorry you said it. But why did you say it in the first place? The idea of making fun of those less gifted must have seemed acceptable at the moment he made the remark. The indication is that he said exactly what was on his mind at the moment or, worse yet, he was just going for the laughs at anyone’s expense (well, Republicans would have been acceptable to me).

While I believe in honesty — sometimes it is best for proper decorum not to go to extremes.

Me thinks Mr. Obama has lost some of his cool.

I would not want him to go to the opposite extreme as some presidents do and refuse to talk to the common people other than in empty platitudes; I just want him to realize who he is now — the most powerful man in the world!

Mr. Obama has great intellect and has demonstrated he can multitask and can see the big picture.

While I do not agree with all of his methods, he seems to demonstrate that he has the potential for being one of the greatest presidents the nation has ever had.

I hope he can keep his good humor but I also hope he is not like Bill Clinton who always seemed or seems to want everyone to idolize him. Bill Clinton also has a short fuse.

ABC’s Gibson condescending; President undignified…

The condescension by anchor Charlie Gibson and the ABC evening news broadcast was palpable. Gibson wondered why such an uproar over a few million dollars in bonuses when the whole bailout package is in the trillions of dollars.

Well Mr. Multi-million dollar salary Gibson, I doubt that if you could even wonder such a thing that I could explain it to your erudite and quite insulated from the common world self.

Yes it’s politics and a sensational story, but it also goes way beyond that.

For all of you out there, if there are any, who don’t see anything wrong with the government bailing out failing banks and insurance companies and other businesses with taxpayer money and then letting them pay out bonuses (made possible by that money), some as high as a million dollars or more, sometimes to the very people who through imprudence, skulduggery, and outright greed and no concern for customers or the public or the soldiers who protect their fat asses, lost all the money and threatened to take down the world economy with them, what part of shocks the conscience and violates public decency do you not understand?

Common citizens and even most uncommon citizens do not get bailouts from the government – well they did send us $600 apiece awhile back but that was not asked for.

But $600 to an individual, I guess sent out to spur a consumer buying frenzy or as what my mom might have called “mad money”, is not $1 million to an individual.

It is apparent that President Barack Obama and his administration (as the one before him) are: A. In awe of the Wall Street financial crowd or B. Intimidated by them or C. All of the above.

So they, the masters of the universe, can say “we lost all of our money in a crap shoot, give us more and don’t stop till we say so, and we will lavish it upon ourselves and if you object we will take the whole national and international finance system (the economy) down with us.”

And the idea that we have to retain or hire back many of the same people who led us into this mess because, well hold your nose, but they are the only folks with the knowledge to save us, should be seen as complete nonsense on its face. Aren’t a lot of financial types unemployed at the moment?

As for Mr. Gibson who likes to look down over his reading glasses at us, he is not really a journalist as much as an actor and news reader, but to the extent he considers himself a journalist, he is a prime reason why the best journalists may not be in the jet set. You have to retain some connection with the citizenry. You have to retain some empathy for those who toil for modest salaries, but make up the broad audience upon whom you draw your whole reason for being.

And now for a further indignity, my president is appearing on the Tonight Show with comedian Jay Leno. While candidates as far back as Richard Nixon in 1968 have appeared on non news and non-serious TV shows (Laugh In for Nixon), I believe this is the first time a sitting president has done so.

Somehow I think such an appearance is beneath the dignity of the office. And it’s a sad state of affairs when we may well get more answers from a comedian than the show biz folks who call themselves broadcast journalists these days.

Back to the bailouts: let’s pay down that national debt and if we must do extraordinary spending (and borrowing) let’s have the government buy up toxic assets for pennies on the dollar directly. It would be far cheaper in the long run than being suckered into sending the dollars to the crooks who took us all for a ride in the first place. (And I don’t discount greed of the victims in all of this, but I do put the heaviest burden of blame on those who had the knowledge and along with it the public trust as their positions dictated – from politicians to high financiers.)

While government is a necessary part of the framework and an arbiter of disputes and must be the watchdog over the financial and whole economic system, I am believing more than ever it should not try to run the economy or businesses any more than it should run the lives of individuals. And in return, we should only ask the government for help in things such as natural emergencies. Of course we depend upon government to provide for the national defense too.

In our representative democracy we can provide for our own social programs, to include a social safety net and Social Security, and even health benefits, as the majority sees fit, but overall we must protect the right to succeed and the right to fail (and the second part is a necessary evil because if nothing else logic demands an opposite condition and failure can be instructive).

Although it does not apply to me, I have always liked the quote: “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor and I’d choose rich every time.”

P.s.

So, am I turning into a Republican? I would hope not. In fact, that will never happen. I may lean a little Libertarian at times, but as I have written before in this blog space, most of the professed Libertarians I have ever met seemed a tad eccentric and some a little off their rockers. I might be a bit of the former, but hopefully not the latter.

(Copyright 2009)

Keeping an open mind about Indian doctors

In a followup to my how do I find a non-India Indian type doctor post, I can report that I met with my new Indian (India) oncologist today and I can understand him and he seems interested in helping me and indicates he will give my problems a thorough study. He talked with me, and my wife, for a long time.

While my frustration has been real after dealing with two previous doctors from that mystical place half way round the world, I appreciate whatever they may have done to help me. And I am willing to give it a try one more time.

Apparently there is more motivation and brain power available on the Indian subcontinent than in the United States right now when it comes to medicine – no offense to our existing homegrown medical professionals intended.

I went most of my life without having to deal with doctors – only a few exceptions. What I have come to believe after being diagnosed with in June of 2007 with a form of cancer known as Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia or WM (a non-Hodgkins lymphoma) is that it is up to you as a patient to make sure your doctors (primary and specialists) are willing and able to communicate with you. Far better to take a chance and get second, third and so on opinions than be railroaded into treatments you do not fully understand the consequences of.  And I quickly add that I am not saying exactly that such has been the case with me. I’m just saying be picky about doctors. It’s your life.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that the number of opinions you get will likely correspond to the number of doctors you talk to.

While I stand by what I said in a previous post (s) about Indian doctors, I am obviously seeing yet another one and am keeping an open mind.

P.s.

For my WM fans, I plan to do a post soon to update you on my condition. But if you scroll down on this blogsite to the long post entitled: “The great Indian doctor quandary” you will get a fairly good and up-to-date-rundown.

(copyright 2009)

Limbaugh does Hitler/Mussolini impersonation…

(Copyright 2009)

While I am having some qualms about the Barack Obama administration’s policies and tremendous debt laid upon tremendous debt it is proposing and even now creating, I hate to imagine a nation led by the likes of Rush Limbaugh.

I usually don’t use his real name. But we need to recognize him and despite his buffoonism not write him off. It would be like, perhaps, those who wrote off Adolf Hitler in his early stages (Limbaugh has been at it 20 years by his own admission).

Limbaugh delivered a one and a half hour diatribe Saturday in front of a group of hard line Republican conservatives filled with mock and ridicule against the educated, the liberals (he says he did not go to college), employing the devices of demagoguery along the way.

He did some fist bumps to mock the Obamas (I got it) and he thumped his own chest and while I think he just saw that latter gesture as part of his normal buffoonish shtick, I could not help think that he looked like the famous fascist Benito Mussolini ( II Duce), complete with silly grin, on the balcony exhorting the crowds in Rome. He sweated profusely, as did Adolph Hitler, who mesmerized millions in Germany, appealing to their fears, nationalism, and the base instincts of the human psyche.

I would not feel comfortable if President Obama thumped his chest and mocked his opponents (well, except in the lightest manner), no matter what his message was. Guess I like a little more decorum in a leader.

And anyone who likes Limbaugh has already quit reading, I suppose, and it is too bad. I actually think the conservatives of the Republican Party have a fairly articulate spokesman in Limbaugh when he doesn’t get sidetracked in his demagogic showmanship that has made him millions as a radio talk show host who takes calls from frustrated sycophants who lovingly refer to themselves as “ditto heads”. They are proud to admit they do not analyze issues and do not have independent thought – they just say “ditto” (he would say liberals do the same, but I prefer liberals or moderates or even conservatives who are capable of doing critical analyses – that usually comes with formal education).

Limbaugh could sum up his attitude on government in a couple of sentences (but that would not make a radio show).

He wants every man, woman, and child to be on his or her own with no help from government and supposedly no hindrance from government (although right wingers usually like laws proscribing certain social behaviors – even though Limbaugh has had his own run ins with the law over his own prescription drug abuse). At the same time, he supports government helping businesses and anyone who can amass capital. I think that pretty well sums up his attitude.

Of course all people must pay taxes (even lower – lower than what? Republican taxes). But it would not be right for anyone but the true capitalists to get advantage from government.

It galls me when the likes of Limbaugh claim to support our military policies, but when their own lives were on the line saw fit to avoid military service. Limbaugh did that, then mocked John Kerry during his speech for his Vietnam vet status. Of course Kerry was vulnerable on that one, having played it both ways – throwing his medals out and proclaiming: “I’m a Vietnam Vet Against the War”/ then when running for president: “I am a proud war veteran”. But I think Limbaugh out to be more circumspect when dealing with someone who actually went to war (Al Gore, one he loves to lampoon), as opposed to folks like himself who only exhort others to.

I will say this: there is as never before in my lifetime the most clear distinction between Republicans (to the extent they support Limbaugh conservatism, Bush anomaly excepted) and Democrats (who have in desperation gone to something that resembles, may not be, state socialism – remember, even George W. Bush was panicked into government intervention into the economy).

Is there a civilized voice of moderation out there?

P.s.

If it seems unfair or uncalled for that I would equate Rush Limbaugh with Mussolini and Hitler, I now recall that in his remarks he joked that his body guard was Joseph Stalin, adding that the Obama fans would see Stalin and would not dare criticize him, implying that Obama supporters support Stalin and communism (no one but some baby boomers and older even know what that is all about). And to those who have ever tried to understand political science, I always am fascinated that while you have communism at the extreme left and fascism at the far right, there is no difference historically how those two types of governments act. They both use extreme authoritarianism with state control of the economy and the lives of individuals. Both types of government proclaim the interests of the “state” over the individual.