At long last a Health Care Reform bill has been signed by the President. It is far weaker than I had hoped, but it is on the right path. It was a big relief after all the fear-mongering and hate talk across the Nation for many many months.

However, the spiteful rhetoric continues. Almost unabated, in fact. I am still struggling to understand how so much fear can be generated by trying to secure the common good for all Americans. As our Constitution preamble states we should provide for a: more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

I am positive our deist founding fathers would never intend for us to step over the dying bodies of our neighbors who cannot obtain health insurance on our way to the grocery store. They believed in conserving our planet, caring for the less fortunate and holding our freedoms dear, to the point of sacrificing our lives for the right. They were never spiteful and fearful in the face of change.

No where in our founding documents or in the twenty-seven amendments will you find any hint of “All for me and you get your own!” mentality. As a nation we have tried to “form a more perfect union” which implies a work in progress, not a static un-changing state that cares not for the tired, hungry and homeless. America’s core values are much ballyhooed these days. If we are such a great and powerful nation, someone needs to explain how the core values of hatefulness and selfishness have taken over the American heart.

Preachers teach that Christianity will bring you wealth on This Earth, that Christians are blessed above all others. Perhaps this where we have gone wrong: twisting Christ’s teachings on the Mount from the “meek shall inherit the earth” to “take all you want. God has chosen you to reap all the riches and let everyone else fend for themselves.”

Yikes.

At least that is the rhetoric I hear across the land. When sitting with a perfectly normal looking couple the other day, I was astonished to hear incredibly hateful invectives fired at anyone who dares to help families care for their children with “handouts” from the government. Everything that I believe in is anathema to them. As I watched the woman expound on dismantling the Social Security system because they should not have to pay a tax for something she didn’t want and only stupid lazy people would need, I actually gasped at the look on her face: sheer hatred. She was irate, full of righteous indignation. Amazing! I must confess I was struck dumb in the full force and fury of her ire. I realized I could not communicate with her or her husband. We do not share the same language!

A sorry state of affairs.

Ok, Mr President, you are beginning to freak me out! Why, oh why, the soft response to Joe Wilson’s calling you a liar? And, what on earth is happening when a liar calling someone a liar gets the non-lying person to change their perfectly sane and legal stance on an issue, i.e., immigration and health care.

Besides which, what will medical providers do when an injured child shows up on their doorsteps requiring immediate medical attention or death? Ask for his documentation? Or attend to the injuries?

In my world, they had better attend to the injuries and worry about documents later. As, I believe, this is the actual law of the land! I cannot understand why you bend to these insane people! This is not the person I elected who promised me there would be Change I could believe in. Do you know where that person went?

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Sent to Obama on 09/12/09 at 7:46AM via White House Contact Page

Quiet. Sunny. And, fresh coffee.

No newspaper this morning.

Don’t really miss it anyway as most news comes to me via the Net these days. I would seriously consider dropping the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle altogether except that the Husband enjoys reading the Sporting Green. (We stopped getting the daily issues years ago when the suburban delivery failed to arrive before we had to leave for our commute.)

It is not that we no longer support news organizations and expect to get our information for “free.” We both have paid subscriptions to the WSJ. I also pay for digital subscriptions to The Nation and Salon.com. I have at least 40 sources of free news in my bookmarks that I peruse every morning over coffee. Everything from Google to Politico to AlterNet as well as many professional blogs. I think I am more informed than ever. When I see an article that brings up something I am not familiar with, I can do a quick “background check” to get up to speed. Sometimes it can feel like almost too much information. But I would not go back to the “old” way willingly.

Most television news is unwatchable and inaccurate IMO. The days of watching Walter Cronkite and knowing you were informed are long gone. And, now with his death, there is no one living who will tell it like it is on that particular medium. Which is why I head over to the nearest browser to read people like Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Sullivan and sites like Media Matters and FactCheck.org for clarification of the headlines and the secrets behind them.

Yes, there are days I cannot bear to see one more headline regarding the darling Ms Sarah. There does seem to be this tendency to excess on the Web, no excuses there. Still it is difficult seeing the newspaper and television news sources ever being more than they have become: mouthpieces for corporate America. (Or is that Corporate america?)