Comparing Healthcare

This is a link to Kaiser's comparison charts for the '08 presidential candidates' healthcare programs. I haven't had a chance to evaluate each candidate's stand myself, but this is an interesting tool.

http://www.health08.org/sidebyside.cfm

Many Rivers to Cross - A Boomer's Remorse

Leadership, the River and the Promised Land

Somewhere we got the idea that an age of fulfilled promise and hope is beyond our grasp. How many opportunities do we have in a lifetime to change the direction of a government? How many times do we have in a lifetime to impose the will of fair, honest policy, of truly new vision, on an awkwardly political and corrupt system?

In 1968, when passion moved both reverends and radicals to march together to change the outcome of failing social and political processes, we had Abbie Hoffman and Tom Hayden to radicalize us, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy to point out the way and Eugene McCarthy to take us down the road. We looked to them as agents we could count on to force change.

For forty years we have wandered in the wilderness of post industrialism, replacing the carefree excesses of free love with the careless excesses of conspicuous consumption. It's as if the will to fight for our dreams died on a motel balcony in Memphis, or in a hotel ballroom in Los Angeles, or behind a cloud of teargas, billy-clubs and bayonets on the streets of Chicago.

When we had opportunities to grow, we shrank back; when we had opportunities to move forward, we shuffled in place; when we had opportunities to apply the wisdom of organization, of raising consciousness, of being in action to create change, we remained in ignorant bliss, watching MTV, buying PDAs and and investing in the dot-com boom.

Well now I wonder. Our Moses has "been to the mountaintop" and "seen the promised land," and while many believe that was the end of it, it was not over. We actually have the ability to move forward across the Jordan.

(Please indulge me this biblical exploration, my friends. I've only a little more to go.)

Yes, we elected a new congress, one that we thought would lead us in a new direction. But they were like the ten doubtful spies that returned after exploring the Promised Land. Their minds were hardened by the old ways of Egypt, that even after all we have witnessed in the past forty years, even the battles of the last seven years, they doubt the strength of the faithful. They bow instead to the establishment, to the milquetoast centrism preached by the priests of the Democratic Leadership Council.

Yet some do know. I believe that, like Joshua and Caleb, Barack Obama and Dennis Kucinich can lead us away from those who would sacrifice principles for the purse. But it does not have to be them. In fact, there is no them without us. We the people inherit the land. We the people create the change. Once more, we must wade into the river. Once more, we must be faithful that the water will abate until we are safely across. Once more, into the breach.

Who would have thought we would have another opportunity to overcome? Let's not let this one pass.

-PBG

Surge Plus 365

A War Going Better Is Not a Better War

Here we are, a year after Bush announced the Surge. Brave men and women have fought and died and many parts of Iraq have settled down, but the flaccid influence of America continues to slowly stir the morass of dysfunctional politics around the world.

Instead of being a banner of freedom we have become the hammer of destruction. It's like slamming a country over the head, and when it raises its bruised and beaten face, Uncle Sam says, "See? I told you freedom wasn't free."

-PBG

Something New Comes Along

Just when I think there is nothing left to be old, something new comes along.

I wonder what creates a memory. When I wake in the morning, and there is nothing left to hold, nothing new to see, to comprehend, to learn, when there is nothing left to remember about time, will I really be awake or will I actually be dead? Is that the final samadhi I see before me, or just another aimless hallway lined with the disposable images of a past I watched while in repose in front of my television?

I spent the past week in the DC area, and went to the National Portrait Gallery one day. There we saw portraits of presidents, Civil War personalities and other American icons, like Jimi Hendrix and Gore Vidal, Jackie O. and Josephine Baker, Angela Davis and Katherine Hepburn. I remember a lot of the individuals, captured in paint pigment and photo emulsion, from my own lifetime. Here they are with the legends of a young nation, captured in time as if they too were cornerstones of proud nationalism and not temporary soda pop bubbles rendered into Styrofoam pylons supporting an age of plastic time. How Warholian!


So this is how history is written now. As 2007 slips into 2008, I guess we all need to pay better attention. The dimly lit Chinese restaurant on the neighborhood street corner, or the half-moon hanging over the leafless-tree that grows from the broken concrete stoop of a run down tenement, are all images I carry with me that - in some future context - could hold historical value, and those are only a couple of the ones my mind captured in the last 48 hours!

That anything from our living past can become grist for the historical mill is both ridiculous and overwhelming. For example, one could say it is ridiculous that 2007 could be remembered as a the year when a well run football team's glory will overshadow the glaring mismanagement of a poorly run nation. Likewise, it is overwhelming that tragic events, from Darfur to Pakistan, can crack the shell of our otherwise oblivious Humpty Dumpty lives, so that by the time we muster our horses and men, we will have fallen off the wall, leaving the hungry inconsolably weak, the weak uncontrollably desperate, and the desperate unalterably dangerous.

I'm sorry. It's hard not to be cynical. There's a lot of possibility for 2008, though. I don't know if hope alone is enough, or experience, or justice, but I do believe that we can move to heal the inconsolable, the uncontrollable, the unalterable, if we first resolve to heal ourselves.

Revolution only succeeds through resolution. The only way to create a new story is to commit to being a force for changing the current story.

Look at a recent picture of your family. Is there anything you could do to change the current story of your relationship to them?

Look at your bank statement. Is there anything you can commit to, to change the story of your relationship to money?

Look at your front lawn. Is there anything you can choose to do that will change your relationship to landscaping?

If you resolve to create change in your life in those or any small, personal area, then you can choose to play bigger in your next commitment. The new revolves when the old resolves. Rather than revering the past for its own sake, maybe we should venerate it only as the source for what we have become, are becoming, can become.

As we approach the fortieth anniversary of a notable year of joy and horror, it is appropriate to quote Bobby K. (also in the National Gallery) in his famous call to action, as a way to help us add context to history, "There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were and ask why not."

Happy New Year! Why not make it a historical one?

-PBG