A Day in the Life of Chaos

The King is Dead! Long Live the King.   The King of Thailand just passed.   He was eighty-eight and has been sitting on the throne since 1946 making him the longest serving monarch in the world.  I guess it is now up to Elizabeth to best his record.  He was a good king and very much beloved by the Thai people.  It is difficult to imagine having a focal point in a society like a monarch for 70+ years.  Very few Thais lived before him, making him all they have ever known.  Much of the world knows something we don't.  They know how to have institutions that unite societies rather than divide them.  America has no equivalent.  In sport it is the World Cup.  A once every four year tournament that is made up of national teams.  In America we think only of our regional favorites.  Go Cowboys... love you Gamecocks!  The Olympics is the only thing that comes close and for the most part it is a tournament of individuals.  Names we don't really know until they poke their head up

I am convinced Americans essentially fall into three categories.  The first are those that have no idea a world outside of America exits.  If asked, they can't find anything on a map.  They might aimlessly drag their finger over the various colored shapes but when asked to identify Japan they will point toward the Middle East.  These are the folks that despite tens of thousands of American war dead don't have a clue where Iraq and Afghanistan are.  They live simple lives migrating between home and work.  I don't know if their simplicity should be abhorred or admired. There is most certainly always comfort in ignorance.  I guess it wouldn't make a difference if they were not given equal power to make decisions over all of our lives through one man one vote.  They tend to be single issue voters.  The one thing most important in their lives is their gun and based on that all decisions are made.  I don't hate these people but I don't understand them either.  They f

One of the most frustrating things about being a Liberal is patience.  We are so desperate in our conviction to our beliefs that we want the world to shift over night.  We want peace, justice, compassion and civility to arrive like a torrential rain cleansing society of injustice and malaise.  We are filled with hope yet the very hope we cling to lays the ultimate seeds for much of our eventual frustration and dismay.   When we elect a candidate based on a message of hope and change we tend to envision it as if we are buying a product.  We simply have to take it home, open it up and we can sample the fruits of our labor and our money.  We hope it will be deliciously sweet, filled with all the promises that were made.  Often however, as the metaphor would come to suggest the flavor is much more complex. Little in America changes quickly. We always like to think it will yet we live in a system that for better or for worse does not allow this.  It can be frustrating at times as we se

I guess when the economy is in the toilet and so many American's are suffering it is easy to lose sight of success.  Of course success has many variations and it is difficult, perhaps nearly impossible to quantify.  There is personal success, familial success, emotional success, success in quality of life.  For most, the word success reflects monetary success. One of the reasons it is so hard to raise taxes on the rich in America is that aside from the fact that the control the levers of power, many Americans cling to the thought that someday they might be among them and wouldn't that be cutting our own throat? I decided long ago that I will never leave the 99 percent.  I don't have a business mind and I am afraid to take too many risks.  Aside from a winning lottery ticket, I will never join the ranks of the one percent.  I am a realist and to even contemplate such a monetary advance is akin to looking at your child play pee wee sports and think that some day they will

Recently as described in a previous blog I had to go to the hospital for a kidney stone.  I was pretty sure what it was but the attack came at 4 am and the ER was the only option.  In retrospect I could have stayed home and just risked not knowing the cause.  It might have turned out okay or I might have died.  Funny thing is, next time, maybe I will take the chance. Everyone in America knows the realities of health care in this country.  The maze of paperwork and policy details and fine print.  Even if you have insurance there is no guarantee it will pay for anything. Since I just went through a real world example of this I thought I would share my billing experience with Lexington Medical in beautiful South Carolina.  Two days after the visit they sent me a survey.  I guess they wanted to make sure I got it in before the bills started to arrive. So, this is my recent experience with going to the ER for two hours with my kidney stone.  They did one CT scan and gave me two shot

I used to admire the elderly.  Oh in many ways I still do.  I value their insight and their perspective.  I marvel at the world they have known in their lives and how it has changed.  How they survived the hard times and prospered.  How some just survived. Politics however has given me a different perspective.  It is a much uglier perspective and not one easily spoken of. The truly elderly are the most remarkable in my mind.  Those that have retained their minds in a late state of age.  My father recently regaled me with a tale of my grandmother's first political contribution.  She was shy to give, 10 dollars was all she could afford and she was afraid it would mean nothing.  A visiting campaign worker canvassing for a local city council candidate was present and my father interceded.  "Would ten dollars help?"  he asked. "Oh yes!" she replied.  "It takes six dollars to buy a t-shirt."  "Six dollars!" my 93 year old grandmother excla

Recently former and possibly future presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, a minster from Arkansas and darling of the conservative Christian community gave a speech about health care.  As a minister I anticipated words filled with compassion for the sick and care for the poor.  This was after all the message of Jesus.  Throw out the money changers in the temple and care for the down trodden.  Had I lived prior to 100 A.D. Jesus would have likely found me to be a great sympathizer.   Well Minister Huckabee spoke concerning the issue of the new health care reform, specifically the new law that now forbids insurance companies from not insuring a person with a preexisting condition.  No longer can an infant born with a condition be denied.  No more can a person with a medical problem be denied coverage and sentenced to either death or poverty in the face of medical bills they can't afford.  While I would think Minister Huckabee's Christian leanings would have caused him to laud

"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. THEN THEY CAME for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. THEN THEY CAME for me and by that time no one was left to speak up." Martin Niemöller We are now 6 months out from the next election cycle.  America will again look at itself in the mirror and maybe 30% of those eligible will actually vote.  The vast majority of those will vote based on their fears and misconceptions, few will vote for a vision or a future.  Negativism will overwhelm us as corporate money will flood the airwaves with messages by inauspicious sounding groups like "Citizens for a Clean America" funded quietly by the oil industry.  If there should be any lesson learned from the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, it is just how much power corporate America an