Health Care: Obama's Speech

I just finished watching Obama's address, and talking about it with my brother. If you didn't already see it I highly recommend watching it, so here is MSNBC's full length video:

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I was very moved by his address, but I suppose that is not surprising. I AM wondering what my Republican friends' responses will be. It felt to me that President Obama was very open to hearing and considering bipartisan ideas. I love that he is looking for the best ideas no matter which "side" the idea is from, but will it feel that way from "the other side?" I don't know.

I do know that when I got the email from Organizing for America (yes, I'm on the list) I clicked the link and asked my representatives to support health reform. Here are the personal comments I added to the form letter:

I am a mother who had to make the choice to take my eleven-year-old son for a diagnostic kidney biopsy all the way to Argentina. My husband and I were self employed and could not afford the cost of health coverage. We usually paid cash for whatever health care we received, or made payments on larger costs, but the biopsy was estimated at $9000. Much to high a cost for us, especially because that would not be the end of the care he needed. We now have excellent coverage which I pay 50% of as a part time teacher's assistant, but when President Obama mentioned parents who are unable to afford health care for their children it brought a stream of tears to my eyes. No parent should be in that position. I understand that Oregon has now promised to insure all the children here, and I am thrilled, but your votes affect the children in the rest of our United States as well! Please support health reform in 2009! The status quo is unacceptable!

Will you agree with me? Maybe, maybe not, but I do hope that we can all talk about the issues facing our country, and the options available to remedy our current situation, in calm, intelligent, open-minded ways.

Overstuffed Ballot Box!

I was home sick with the flu, and thought I was going to cough up a lung, but finally the antibiotics started to kick in and I decided to finish filling out my ballot.

In case you're not familiar with Oregon voting, it is ALL done by mail in ballots. So, after filling it out, I stuffed it in its secrecy envelope, and then into the signature confirmation envelope.


I just had to document it for historic purposes! And then my husband and I drove down to the local police department.

That's where the Official Ballot Deposit Box is located, and usually I go there because I procrastinate till the last day. Tonight, I just wanted to make sure nothing happened to it on the way.

I dropped it in the box, but when I peeked in to make sure it had dropped all the way in - IT WAS JAMMED! I could see at least four other ballots sticking up! I almost stuck my hand in to shove them down, but I could see the officers inside looking my way. All my picture taking must have caught their attention. I walked my wrinkly, sick self down into the station and told them what was going on. They said they would call the County, and send an officer out to push them in. I decided to document the stuffed box, and snapped this before the officer got there.


I thought it was my ballot sitting there, but on closer inspection of the photo at home, I realized it was not. The signature was illegible to me, but just in case others might recognize it, I've pixelized it. It looks like there's GREAT voter turnout this year! Is your vote included?

James Dobson - Prophet?

The Matthew 25 website sent out a request to respond to the letter put out by the Focus on the Family Action website. Honestly, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

This letter, from an imaginary Christian in 2012, is so insanely biased and fear based, that anyone who takes it seriously would certainly not be voting for Obama to begin with.

On the other hand, I can see how many Christians could have their eyes opened to the spirit of fear spread by James Dobson. Perhaps this would give them a reason to look more closely at what Obama has actually said? Or perhaps that is just wishful thinking.

I listened to Focus on the Family's radio program when I was a young mother, but completely quit when I heard him laughing about the surprised look in a boy's eye when his shoulder was pinched in Dobson's recommended surprise discipline method. I know how much it hurts...I've had it used on me a couple of times. I understand that discipline is important, but laughing at a child's pain passes the line of acceptability in my book.

The following quote is not exactly the one I heard on the radio in 1996, but it describes the same act:

Dobson obviously enjoys the power that goes with authority, and, as we have seen, a bit of sadism is evident in his depictions of experiments on animals. We catch of whiff of it too, in relation to punishing kids, especially when they are teen-agers. His anatomically detailed instructions on how to squeeze a particular muscle in a toddler’s shoulder to administer a bolt of pain is inexplicably decked out with a gratuitous anecdote about how he himself (with his “rather large hands”) used the technique on some rowdy adolescents—this story reads like a soft core Death Wish script.

Perhaps because I am familiar with his "love of dicipline" I am particularly drawn to the passage in his 2012 letter that describes the horrors of liberals delving out punishment of their own: "The Justice Department soon began to file civil and criminal charges against nearly every Bush administration official who had any involvement in the Iraq war."

This is a bad thing? If evil was done in the dark, and hidden in secret papers, Dobson who proclaimes to work for a just and loving God, would surely rejoice when justice brought the wrongdoers to light! And why else would the Bush administration sign an "executive order that [has] prevented presidential papers from being released," unless they had something to hide?

I for one, hope that in this one instance, James Dobson's word is prophetic.

Woe to those who go to great depths
to hide their plans from the LORD,
who do their work in darkness and think,
"Who sees us? Who will know?"
Isaiah 29:15

The Funnies!

I find Doonesbury awesomely logical:

And with the stories of faulty voting machines The Wizard of Id rings too true:

Don't forget to vote!

A colleague sent me this great video:

Isn't that hilarious? I sent a version of it to my sister and got back this great response:

....[that's] so funny! I am a permanent absentee voter & I've already half filled out my ballot. As a matter of fact, I'm so involved in this election that I drove Will at 11:15 pm at night to the San Diego Registrar of Voters to register with our new address on the very last day you could! We felt it was something we would be telling our grandkids:

"Your grandfather made me watch political television for 6 months before the election. On the very last day to register to vote he realized that he hadn't registered yet. So we left in the dark of the night to drive through the quiet streets to the registrar of voters before it closed at midnight. On the way there we were stunned that the freeway was closed! So we had to detour to get there. We thought the republicans had done it on purpose! When we got to the registrar of voters we were stunned because there was a line to park - at 11:30 pm! The registrars were still outside the building helping people to register. The majority of people registering were young & ethnic. We knew at that point that Obama would win the election!"

:-)