October 5, 2008
Ed Tubbs
Reno, NV
I admit it: I just don’t get it; any of it..
I’m going to make two wagers here. If you discovered you had a malignant brain tumor, or perhaps a heart valve that was flipping haywire, you would want the most ‘elite’ neurologist or coronary specialist who graduated at the top of the class from the most elite med school on the planet; if you could afford him or her. What you most certainly would not want is some folksy ‘maverick’ with less than two years general medical experience and a degree from some offshore Caribbean med school responding to your question about the seriousness of your ailment with, “In what way, Charlie?” or “You becha.”
You would want the very best. That’s one wager. And you would not want mediocre, regardless how folksy, or how much you might be able to identify with that physician’s early struggles. That’s wager number two. And as a corollary wager, I’m betting the very last thing you’d want is a doctor with a rep for being wildly erratic, having a hair trigger temper, who graduated at the bottom .006 of his or her class, and who is self-advertised as a ‘maverick’ who would get in there and really shake things up.
That analogy was to your personal health. How is it so different, so less important, electing the person who will have the responsibility to decide whether to send your son or daughter, or you, into a situation where death and/or mutilation is a natural byproduct, and where complete evisceration of your total net worth is at stake?
Here we find ourselves folks. Our military is broken. Both personnel and equipment have literally been run into the ground to the point we really do not have many options for dealing seriously with potential serious exigencies that might (and probably will) arise. And if you consider the ‘economy’ as consisting of housing values and auto sales and wages and jobs, all dropping like an Olympic weight lifter’s barbells, and consumer prices and medical care and the national debt, all rising like a rocket from the lift pad, the economy is in a shambles.
And approximately half the US electorate continues to want . . . an angry old man and “I’ll hafta go gecha some”???? I admit it: I just don’ get it.
It’s all a bit much like watching one of those clichéd nail-biter dramas, where the hero, sweating profusely in horrible, coffin-cramped quarters, has a pair of pliers in his grip, trying to decide whether to snip the white wire or the red, to disarm the ticking time-bomb that threatens to blow up the fully loaded, but circling the air port on near empty, passenger jumbo jet. I don’t know about you, but in my clichéd drama I do not want Archie Bunker to be the fellow gripping the pliers, nor do I want his ditzy daughter Gloria to be the one waiting to take over, if Archie has a heart attack.
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Mixed treats from the Palin jaw-breaker candy jar:
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“With the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that, as governor, I was the first governor to form a climate change sub-cabinet to start dealing with the impacts.”
“You know, there are man’s activities that can be contributed to the issues that we’re dealing with now, with these impacts.”
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