Thank you, President Obama

     This is for all you ObamaCare-haters. I just got off the phone with an old friend of mine.  She's a fit, athletic young woman, clean bill of health, self-employed, worked hard all her life but, like so many Americans, had one minor "pre-existing" medical condition -- not life threatening, not serious, but "pre-existing" so she wasn't able to get any kind of health insurance that was even in the realm of her budget. None.  
     She certainly wasn't alone.  Prior to ObamaCare, she had millions of Americans with minor "pre-existing conditions" in the same boat to keep her company.  So, like those millions, she struggled along, rarely seeing a doctor even though a few years ago certain alarming symptoms cropped up.  Since she couldn't afford to get treatment (no insurance available to her) she struggled along.
     Finally, here came ObamaCare and its mandated insurance pools and requirements on insurance companies to stop cherry-picking, or denying coverage & etc, and she was finally able to buy insurance.  Her individual policy wasn't cheap and she had (and paid) a high deductible, but she was finally able to get insurance. 
     And so she went to the doctor to see about those alarming symptoms, which turned out to be fixable if caught early, but catastrophic and/or deadly if ignored because, oh, say, you didn't have insurance or couldn't get insurance because ObamaCare didn't exist.
     So, thank you President Obama. Because of your efforts, my friend will have a long, healthy, productive life paying taxes into the system and contributing to our society, instead of being a permanently disabled drain on society's resources due to lack of proper medical care due to lack of insurance due to a broken health system driven by rapacious greed and penny-wise, pound-foolish stupidity.   
     And to ObamaCare critics, No, it ain't perfect -- it was cobbled together with too many special interests tacking on too many special interests -- and it needs a whole lot of work to get it back on track to focus on maximum patient wellness, not maximum profit, but it's a start. 
     And if any of you have friends in the same boat as my friend, perhaps you need to think about what will happen to your friend should ObamaCare get repealed.
     I'm just sayin'

A Modest Proposal 
     There's a very funny Ann Romney parody on You Tube 
 http://youtube.com/watch?v=bzHjH7ZTQQA .  
     Funny, no?  But here's the modest proposal:  Wouldn't it be grand if every politician did what that parody was doing: Tell the truth.  Flat out.  No fear, no favor, no fudging. Quel refreshing! 
     Instead we get weasels flip-flopping, turning themselves inside out, using code and dog-whistle language, making stuff up, making stuff up and getting caught, then making more stuff up.  
     I mean, our PAC-fueled political ads have already jumped the shark and are now into pure Parody Land anyway, so this election has slipped into one long Trash-Talk Fest.  Yo' Mammas all 'round.  
     Which must mean that Americans have now gotten to the point of viewing politics as nothing but the lowest common denominator Fake Reality Show filled with profoundly stupid people doing dumb things that the viewer can laugh at. Washington as Klown Kar or Paul Ryan's Oscar Meyer Wiener Mobile. Too dumb for words. 
     Ah, but think of how wonderful it all would be if everyone did what this You Tube spoof did: Spill all the beans, just like that, right out on the floor, SPLAT! So what? Ya wanna make something of it?  Yes, I'm richer than God and you aren't so I can do anything I want.  Who's gonna stop me?  You? Yeah, I lied about that.  So? Sure my numbers are fake but I like putting made up stuff on whiteboards in order to look like I know what I'm talking about.  I don't.  So, sue me. Sure we're engaging in voter suppression.  So? Hey, politics ain't beanbag, ya gotta win by any means necessary.  Yeah, we're gonna make sure that we end up with a corporatocracy. The rich OWN America anyway, so what else is new?  You can't have a lot of unwashed poor people voting.  What do they know?  It'd be chaos.  Karl Rove's right.  He's worked for years to get a Republican-controlled House, Senate, Presidency and Supreme Court from this point forward. Who needs a "democracy," anyway?  Not us.
     Imagine. How wonderful would that be? No need to read between the lines or translate the code or waste time denying anything.  There it all would be, all right there on the kitchen floor. And you wouldn't need a Mexican maid to try to clean it up or sweep it under the rug. 

Calling Amory Lovins 
      Interesting story by Kevin Begos (AP): "Carbon dioxide emissions at 20-year low."  
Seems that the "shift away from coal is reason for 'cautious optimism' about potential ways to deal with climate change.  He [Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University] said it demonstrates that 'ultimately people follow their wallets' on global warming. 
     " 'There's a very clear lesson here.  What it shows is that if you make a cleaner energy source cheaper, you will displace dirtier sources,' said Roger Pielke Jr. a climate expert at the University of Colorado."

     Which is exactly what Amory Lovins has been saying for years: Put the right price on pollution and you've solved the problem. 
      Also, some research interesting papers coming up (so says the author of "Carbon Nation") interviewed on Bill Maher's, "Real Time" show.  Seems that by properly managing grazing land,(i.e. getting rid of cattle-feed lots and keeping the cows on grass,) the soil in healthy grasslands can act as a huge carbon sink, and can stay greener longer, and so help buffer against drought.  Once again, the message is, we don't have to rely on troglodytes in Washington who still have their fingers up their collective behinds (actually, doing the bidding of their Coal/oil Masters) to start new local projects that can actually get things moving in the right direction.  All of which Lovins has known for years.