{Five years from now, in the Year of our Lord, 2014}

It seemed odd that the doctor followed me to radiology, but there was a sense of urgency in his stride, which was reassuring given his apparent weariness.  I stood compliantly as the x-ray technician moved my hip to enable them to obtain the right view of my hip,.  I found found it odd that he had not asked me to remove my pants or my wallet from my front packet before this study was taken.  Just my shirt, shoes and socks.  The technician walked over to his place at the keyboard and looked through the glass to be sure I had not moved.  The doctor walked to the other side of the machine itself.

Beep-Beep-Bepp-Beep-Beep-Beep

"Okay, feel free to move now," stated the technician.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

The Rrrring sound was new to me, and as I peered around the corner, the x-ray machine had turned into an ATM.  Five $20 bills slid out of the slit and the doctor eagerly grabbed them, folded them, and put them in his breast pocket.  Then he left without saying a word.

"That's it!  You can dress and go to your car?" came the voice from behind the glass.

"What?"  This was disconcerting.  "Aren't we going to know what the test results were today?  How's my hip?"

The reply was equally disconcerting.  "Oh, ummm, we'll get back to you with that," he said, but from the tone of his voice, it seemed unlikely I would hear from him.

"Don't I need to stop by the front desk and pay?"

"That was an x-ray of your wallet.  We have the numbers on all of you credit cards?  Usually one card is insufficient to meet our demands for payment."

As I put on my clothes and went down the hallway, I saw my doctor blowing the heat off the top of a fresh grande from Starbucks.  he held a muffin in his other hand.  I stopped him and gave him my impression of the x-ray technician and asked, "Will I ever hear the results of the x-ray?"

The doctor replied, "Of course, when you see the Explanation Of Benefits(EOB), but don't worry, we will have been paid by then from your credit cards ... for your convenience of course."

"Doctor, you already took $100 dollars from the x-ray machine!   I have an excellent insurance provider, why would there be more charges?"

"The process has changed since the health care reform efforts failed.  Your insurance won't be paying for any of this.  It is considered unrelated to your health as the results of the exam show you are in good health, physically AND financially, which is good for me , ... ummm, I mean, good for you. But since there is nothing wrong with you, your insurance believes the exam was gratuitous and unnecessary.  The charges on your EOB are for the exam, " he explained.  "Your prostate exam went wonderfully!"  His voice was a bit too sultry to actually feel good about that either.

"Then why did you take an x-ray of my hip?!? Was that necessary?"

"It was crucial," he replied.  I left my wallet in the car when I came to work and really needed this cup of coffee.  Oh, and thanks for the muffin.  I didn't realize how hungry I was either.  Can you coem back next week?  There's a new anti-depressants and the sales rep will be here Monday.  He called and said he would be bringing a ton of samples and I'm eager to see if they work.  Are you feeling depressed at all?"

"I am now!"

There is a playful spirit aplay here at the Cafe!  We were brought back to that "Dark and Stormy Night", and joy is spreading through the posts.  I believe it is a natural response to the residuals of the agitators from the Reich.  Even when they arrive armed and angry, the result is that few people bother to hear their point of view and listen more keenly to the Left.  The more absurdly they characterize healthcare, the more people say to themselves, "I know there are no Death Panels, so what are they?" and then people go and look for what is real.  Ultimately, they end up finding the Left and as the saying goes, the Right hand does not know what the Left hand is doing.

Now to perpetuate the playfulness, and help out our friends on the Right. Please provide an absurd feature of the one, mythical, this-is-the-only-one-we-are-voting-on, healthcare bill.  The Right is having a hard time getting people's attention and suspect if they only have a bigger tantrum people will then realize the sky IS falling.  Oh, and a proposal as to what the result of the change will be might also be included.

Here's a few of my own:

With public healthcare, the government can come into my bathroom cabinet and take my aspirin.

With public healthcare, we are all going to have to use generic band-aids that peel off when they get wet!!!

With public healthcare, the average national breast will be enhanced to a "C" cup and landfills will be plugged with the discarded bras from formerly flat-chested women. 

If 23 million American men get insurance, there won't be any Viagra at the pharmacy for months and what will I ... ummm, ... nevermind....    

Disclaimer:  Destor started it! 

Here:  http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/destor23/2009/08/barack-obamas-secret-plan.php?ref=reccafe ] 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/06/AR2009080603863_2.html?sid=ST2009080604028

Check this out!  Sure, the article tends to report on the "poor" employees getting pressured by management and their unions to write their Congress critters, but another angle might be to see how important labor is to an organization and how, when they work together and acknowledge their common interests, that labor and management both wish to achieve success and better returns on their investments of labor or money, they can be a powerful force together.

UPS is a behemouth of a company with, as reported in the article, nearly a quarter million employees.  Wikipedia indicates UPS has 425,000  employees.  Bear in mind, these are Teamsters, organized labor employees. Now how can the Right cry about how labor kills companies when UPS is this monstrosity and the envy of pretty much any other company?  FedEx is this competitor with special privileges that enable it to compete, although if one were to remove the special treatment, they might not be the contender they appear to be.  According to Wikipedia, FedEx has 280,000 employees.  The government considers FedEx an airline, as though they have passengers on their planes!  UPS is considered a trucking firm.  So the rules of engagement, the rules related to strikes, are different. 

Here's something to ponder!  FedEx has managed to be the contender with these things in their favor, but they are STILL not the organization UPS is.  UPS has an operating income of 3 billion dollars while FedEx is only 2.75 billion.  A lot of money, to be sure, but not as much.  So the question is, how is it that with the advantage of lower wages and lower benefits FedEx cannot achieve dominance in this market?  Simple, they do not work WITH labor, they work against them.  At UPS, there are Teamsters, and it is an adversarial relationship at times, but they do work together.  It's a family at UPS.  They are all brothers and brothers fight, but they know they are all related and have the same name.  At FedEx?  Well, labor gets turned over quite easily.  There is no union steward or organization to check management that may be unfair to a tried and true employee whose luck took a bad turn. 

Bottom line, it is better to have to fight labor face-to-face to increase profits then it is to be able to simply dominate them. UPS can really feel the pulse of their labor, while FedEx can simply ignore it, and it is at their own peril that they do, and at the peril of any organization.  It's a short term success to dominate labor that cannot be sustained.  Relationships grow when both parties learn to communicate.  It's why working together will always accomplish more.   Organized labor is the barometer of a company's health.  It provides real feedback to how management is doing.   I could get into healthcare right about now, but I'll just leave this with the reader to consider.  That's another post.

Sometimes when people want to go to the extreme, you just have to let them, enourrage them, help them see what it is they are saying.  Often times when they actually get to the place they wished to go, they discover they really did not want to be there.

Many months ago, I suggested that, if Rush Limbaugh declared he was the Leader of the GOP and no one denied it, then we should announce our agreement that Rush Limbaugh was Leader of the GOP!  Within days Rahmn Emanuel said as much, it caught fire, and now Rush doesn't go there anymore.  Although there are still no challengers to his authority as Leader of the GOP.  No one has yet declare Rush Limbaugh is not their Fearless Leader without calling up his show to apologize later.   So I'm not sure he is not their leader.  Now, I'm not saying Rahm Emanuel stole my idea either ... I'm just sayin'.  Letting the Right maintain their poorly planned paths can have a positive effect once they see how silly they look when they get there.  Let's not hold them back.  Give them what they want!

What I think is relevant now, is to allow the agitators at the town halls to go farther down that road of Obama as Hitler, the Democratic Party as Nazis.  No, no, no, I'm not suggesting we dress up as Nazis, and march in goose step, although that sure seems absurd, but maybe, in their eagerness to be the victim and oppressed, we can provide them with the grey striped pajamas that victims of the Holocaust were provided in the real Death Camps.  It is what they are suggesting to the American public, after all.

When I considered this idea, to give the agitators the apparel of the real victims of the Nazis, I asked my self, what kind of symbol do we put on their shirt?  Do they get a yellow Star of David?  Well, while there certainly are Jewish people among the agitators, being Jewish is certainly not representative of these people.  Do they get the symbol of being gay?  No, they are neither sexually oriented to being gay, nor do they have either a gay or cheerful demeanor.  How about the symbol for the intellectuals or local politicians?  That doesn't fit either.  It seems that these agitators lack the intellectual curiousity that is required to be considered an intellectual.  They appear to limit their exposure to a small network of sources and then only to accept a very limited set of answers.  Socialists!  That 's it!  No, it's really not.  The Left are the socialists, which is another one of the accusations the Right makes when they get tired of saying Nazi.  Socialists, historically speaking, were actually also victims of the Holocaust.  Socialists and nazis just did not get along. 

So we could end the debate here, but let's take it a bit further, just to rule out any possibility the Decmocrats are Nazis.  Stay with me.  This is important.  Let's keep asking questions.  Are the agitators of Slavic ethnic origin, the half-human Eastern Europeans.  No, the protesters do not appear to be of that region either in any predominant way.  Hmmm. 

GOT IT!!!  The agitators are the mentally and physically challenged.  Those are the targets of these Nazi/Democrats.  Sarah Palin just declared the healthcare reformers are after her son, Trig.  They want to take his life.  What symbol was assigned to their death camp uniforms?  I don't know, but Sarah referenced a Death Panel! Death Camp, Death Panel, I think I'm onto something here!  Yes, this is it!  I knew it!  Oh.... wait..., who was that Kennedy that just passed away, Eunice Kennedy Shriver.  Didn't she found the Special Olympics?  That organization is not about exterminating the handicapped but celebrating their lives.  The Special Olympics encourages the handicapped to come out and live large, to leave their confines and enter society.  I guess that doesn't fit either.  okay, I'm done.

It is not my intention to diminish the horror of the Holocaust.  It is inappropriate, in my humble opinion, to characterize the healthcare reform, or anything less then wholesale genocide, as in any way resembling Hitler, the Nazis, and the Holocaust.  But I believe it might help people see just how absurd and deceitful the Right has been in their attempts to label the Left as having any resemblance at all to those atrocities.  Adopting those clothes would only revive the unprecedented insult the Holocaust inflicted on the better angels of our humanity.  If the agitators were to portray themselves as the actual victims of the Holocaust, in their clothes, people would realize those grey striped pajamas do not fit them at all and we have not yet formed the word to describe how absurd that notion truly is. 

Then maybe we can have a reasonable discussion regarding how to obtain better healthcare for the people in this country.

Democrats are so terrified of their own power it's really disappointing to see them flailing about crying the sky is falling when they actually have the power to stop it.  The GOP has this nearly impotent minority and are wagging the Rottweiler into convulsions.  "What do we do?  What do we do?!?!?"  Man up!  Girl up!  Put on your big boy pants and git 'er done!!!  That is what you do!

This is a golden opportunity for the Democrats.  They have the capacity to pass healthcare reform legislation, but appear to lack the organization and determination.  They could bring universal healthcare to this country and deserve decades of gratitude for doing so, or they can collapse, which would be extremely unfortunate.  I do not wish to see the Dems slinking back into the shadows as the nation, with its short memory, returns the GOP to prominence as though the GOP would do a better job.  The GOP history does not support that notion.

It is surprising, though, when one steps back to consider it, that the history of the Democratic Party DOES support the notion that they can do a terrific job with this.  Yes, none of the current Representatives were there when Medicare, or Social Security, were passed.  But they were the ones who SAVED Social Security not that long ago.  They need to understand this is crisis time, right now!  They either bring this to fruition, or their rising stars will begin their descent much too soon. There is some truth to the suggestion that if this fails, the rest of Obama's term will be irrelevant and reelection improbable.  There is also much truth to the proposition that the party will mirror the fate of the Obama Administration.  So, here it is!  Sink or swim!  Rise or fall!  Win or lose!  We are playing for all the marbles.

If the Dems do not understand that failure will be theirs if there is no reform, they need to ask themselves one very important question, "Now that the health insurance industry has spent  tens of millions of dollars fighting healthcare reform, who is going to restore their treasuries after the dust settles?"  Did they guess the consumer, their constituents, all of them?  Whether they were agitators or not, everyone with insurance will be made to pay those bills?  Do they understand how monumental a loss this will be when people will again have the insurance companies reach deeper into their wages and salaries to pay for the opposition to healthcare reform?  Make no mistake, the fault is going to be tied around the necks of the Democrats like a millstone. 

Forget about it!  Forget failure!  It is not an option!  When you return to Congress after the recess, git 'er done!!!   Get something meaningful passed that will be reflected in the pocketbooks of tens of millions of Americans, the under-insured!  Do something that will enhance the lives of tens of millions of Americans, those with no healthcare.  Stake your claims as the Party that brought this nation Medicare and Social Security and the party that recently saved Social Security.   These are examples of what we can do together and universal healthcare can have the same success and bring the Democratic Party back to the respected Party they were when these programs were first implemented.  That success gave the Democratic Party control of Congress for decades.  If you want it to be that way again, then healthcare reform must be passed and it must be meaningful. 

The only way a positive long term result can be achieved is if the insurance companies are facing competition from the State going forward, a public option.  As many have suggested, the insurance companies will gradually dissolve after that, and they should.  People will come to see healthcare as a right for ALL, not just senior citizens.  They will see it as a part of America just as Social Security is a part of America.  At the end of the day, it is social security that has remained unwavering during this economic collapse.  This cannot be said of those with 401ks and IRAs.  The Democrats are losing the PR war at the moment, but it's when Congress reconvenes that the issue must be resolved.  Be the one who changes people's lives for a better, healthier future, and the reward is yours for years to come.  Forget about the agitators and noise makers.  Make it happen!