Cal: The Government Does Not Have the Answers.

Hello Again Friends and Family.

Boy, what a crazy few weeks. It appears that providence has prevented Congress from rushing through a health care reform, the details of which we were apparently not meant to know and which the supportive representatives themselves would not have read had they voted on it when they wanted. That is the first victory and great opportunity in this skirmish.

The representatives have gone home for August and actually believed they would be allowed to offer their usual non-answer platitudes to their constituents questions. Is anyone besides them surprised at the passionate responses they received? That’s how out of touch they are. We had the fragile and hapless Arlen Specter stunned by the anger, literally rolling his eyes back in his head, and Kathleen Sibelius defending him by saying he shouldn’t be blamed for not reading the bill because it hadn’t been written yet. BUT THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE VOTED ON IT ALREADY! Can these people even think?

Now, I don’t know if the protestors were plants, but they certainly didn’t look like plants. They looked like me. And I am no THUG. I am, and I personally know every recipient of this message is, reserved and gentle by nature. I’m sure all of us are uncomfortable with all the yelling. Yet, it seems to me this is a result of the fact that we have had no previous input (except for voting these people into office) and that there has little actual open discussion of the provisions of the bill, and that it has been the obvious intention of bill’s proponents to shove this thing through without due process. I am every bit as angry as the vocal protestors about that.

The rhetoric seems to be subsiding a little now, with more moderate statements on both sides. Even my local liberal Washington Post has published much more reasonable editorials and columns lately. My local conservative Washington Times has done the same. And therein lies what I believe is the golden opportunity offered by the September 12 Tea Parties.

I doubt that any of us opposes health care reform. Costs are way out of control, pre-existing condition exclusions are obscene and need to be eliminated, insurance should be portable and available across state lines, people who want health insurance (and are willing to pay for it, at least in part) should be able to get it.. Each of us should be able to purchase insurance in the same way we buy car insurance, in my opinion. All reasonable goals, I think. And I think most of the perhaps hundreds of thousands (or more) participants in the 9/12 gatherings would agree to a great extent. The extremists on the right and left are drunk on their obsessions and aren’t even listening. They blather on.

So my hope and belief is that the Tea Parties will be a meeting of reasonable people with reasonable ideas from all walks of life, politics, and ideology; that the events will serve as an expression of the justified disgust and contempt for the corrupt and cynical politicians, and that they will expose the ideological socialist radicals in congress such as Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Barney Frank and the others who believe the government should handle everything. Does Pelosi actually think the protestors are Nazis? Last I looked fascists were the politicians who stifled free expression and promoted government control of business and programs. (Most fascist movements and tendencies in the 20th century grew out of the LEFT not the right, after all. Eugenics-progressives, whose list of proponents included T. Roosevelt, W. Wilson, W. Churchhill, O. W. Holmes, L. Brandeis, H. G. Wells, G.B Shaw, and M. Sanger-Planned Parenthood—and whose research was conducted at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins; Hitler/Mussolini-progressive socialists killed 6,000,000; Stalin-communist killed 25,000,000.) Sorry for that little side trip digression down memory lane. But as Yogi Berra said: “ You could look it up.”

So I urge everyone to take part in their local Tea Party, to meet the multitudes of reasonable Americans merely exercising their God-given (not government given) constitutional rights, and to hear their reasonable ideas. Join them in demanding that the politicians re-establish and maintain transparency in government. Stop bankrupting the nation. Cut taxes, do no not raise them Congress and the White House need to hear the passionate, intelligent and measured voices of regular Americans demanding that their motivation needs to be the good of the people and not what will get them elected or strengthen their power base. This goes for both parties. The lunatic far left and the crazy far right will be conspicuous by their exile to the shadows under the elm trees lining Constitution and Independence Avenues. The real events will be held front and center, in the open, on the broad green, in front of the Capitol and the State Houses across the country. We must awaken from the slumber we have settled back into since 9/11. The nation is in peril from within and from without. Please join this watershed beginning of the taking back of our Country. We cannot allow the special interests, the lobbyists, and their stooges in the government to fool and distract us into squandering the nation’s collective outrage. We don’t get this mad very often. 9/11 was the last time and President Bush’s greatest blunder, I believe, was in letting that opportunity get away. This time we must do it ourselves! THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT HAVE THE ANSWERS! What say you?

Your friend and/or cousin+-
Cal.