Nation Building Begins At Home

Image via Wikipedia

Obama is now thinking about whether or not to send another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan. I say forget that, we need health care here at home.

We are losing 45,000 people every year due to lack of insurance, that’s 15 times the number of people that were killed in the one, single event that was 9/11. Yet everyone went batshit crazy over 9/11 and is STILL crazy about it, but no one gives a damn about 15 times that many dying every year - not in a single event but every, single year; year after year. That means 405,000 dead Americans since those 3,000 people died in 9/11.

We have spent at least 1 trillion dollars on Iraq and Afghanistan in the last 9 years at the most conservative estimate, it was likely quite a bit more than that. And it doesn’t count the aftercosts - like the medical bills for all the wounded vets and replacing all the equipment that got used up by the bombs and desert sands.

Enough to provide health care - WITH a public option - for the next ten years. Yet every one is going crazy on the second trillion but don’t seem the least bit upset about the first trillion. In fact, they want to spend still more and I don’t hear anyone complaining about our debt when it comes to wars overseas.

We have spent one trillion dollars to avenge 3,000 people, but we can’t spend that same amount to save 405,000 of our own citizens.

No enemy can ever inflict as much damage on us as we do to ourselves. America is one sick country.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Right's Looming Foreign Policy War (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• While ordinary Americans lose their jobs and homes, the 400 richest Americans line their pockets with $30 Billion (iflizwerequeen.com)
• Who sentences more people to die each year than George Bush or Rick Perry? (iflizwerequeen.com)

Poor Farrah

Michael Jackson via last.fm

Farrah Fawcett died 2 days ago on June 27th. You all heard about that, right? Or did you miss it? I heard a brief mention and then all the news shows were only about Michael Jackson's death because of the unfortunate and incredible event of both of them dying on the same day. What are the odds?

OK, Michael was the bigger star and touched more lives in more profound ways than Farrah, but hell, a person only dies once. Too bad she didn't get her due. She had that film of her dying shown on TV, twice, so I guess she's gotten some.

Of course, I never liked Michael - or Farrah either for that matter. Still, Farrah fought cancer and took a long time dying, showing courage in the face of adversity. Michael just lived badly and that bad living knocked him off in an instant. But in all of this the one person who really ticked me off was Ryan O'Neal. On TV he had to say in a mournful voice; "Why did they have to take MY girl?" Fucking publicity whore, stick a camera in his face and he can't resist milking it for all it's worth, even if it means using his girl's agonizing death struggle to make himself look like the noble victim.

Hey, they took MY girl too, Ryan, but I never tried to say that to anyone, even myself.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Ed Martin: Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett: How They Changed Television (huffingtonpost.com)
• Farrah Fawcett, Charlie's Angel, Remembered (pinkisthenewblog.com)
• Mike Hegedus: 'Thriller' Gone, ABC & NBC 'Bad', They 'Beat It' (huffingtonpost.com)