The "Letter" is Back

• Dear Mr. President:
  
  During my shift in the Emergency Room last night, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient whose smile revealed an expensive Shiny gold tooth, whose body was adorned with a wide assortment of elaborate and costly tattoos, who wore a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and who chatted on a new cellular telephone equipped with a popular R&B ringtone.
  
  While glancing over her Patient chart, I happened to notice that her payer status was listed as "Medicaid"! During my examination of her, the patient informed me that she smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and somehow still has money to buy pretzels and beer.
  ...
  And, you and our Congress expect me to pay for this woman's health care?
  
  I contend that our nation's "health care crisis" is not the result of a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. Rather, it is the result of a "crisis of culture", a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on luxuries and vices while refusing to take care of one's self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance.
  
  It is a culture based on the irresponsible credo that "I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me". Once you fix this "culture crisis" that rewards irresponsibility and dependency, you'll be amazed at how quickly our nation's health care difficulties will disappear.
  
  Respectfully,
  STARNER JONES, MDSee More — with Randy Wood.

  

  
  

  
  

  I saw almost the same letter to the president about two years ago, placed on Facebook by a Tea Party enthusiast. This letter elaborates and refines the doctor's complaint by claiming the cell phone is new and has a new ringtone. In this new letter, the patient says she smokes heavily, and eats pretzels and drinks beer. Seemingly, this refutes in advance a justification for the patient on the grounds that she has just fallen into poverty. 

  
  

  The careful contrivance and the fact that the letter comes from a site called "Obama Makes Me Puke," leads me to  think it's a fraud. So, does anyone know of a Doctor Starner Jones, or who Randy Wood might be? 

FEARLESS PREDICTIONS for 2013

And now it's time for FEARLESS PREDICTIONS, the feature of this blog in which I try to guess what will happen in the year to come.

Before we do that, however, let us take a quick look back at last year's predictions.

The big prediction from last year happened just as forecast. President Obama was re-elected and defeated Mitt Romney, who I called the "Stepford Republican." As we look back, it's easy to say the election result was obvious, but it seemed less so last December. Democrats kept control of the Senate and Republicans retained a majority in the House, as predicted. It's looking like more gridlock in Washington, also as the 2011 edition of this blog said it would.

On the other hand, Charlie Sheen did not marry any of the women in show business I named, or anyone's mother/daughter/sister or other relative.

So, last year's score was pretty  good, but hardly perfect. Here's this year's forecast, which I trust will be better.

First, an  easy one. There will be a natural disaster somewhere on our planet sometime in 2013. This could be an earthquake, a flood, a hurricane, or a volcanic eruption, but whatever it is, we Americans will give it scant attention unless it happens in our country. Some politician will call it God's will and blame it all on gay marriage.

Now it gets a little harder. The "financial cliff" will turn out to be much ado about nothing. A last minute deal will be reached which will allow the filthy rich to get even filthier, and the national debt will continue to grow. There will be another big fight about the debt ceiling, which most people will greet with a yawn.

President Obama will get to make another Supreme Court nomination when Ruth Bader Ginsberg retires from the court. This will bring about another fight in the Senate, but the nominee will be confirmed.

Hillary Clinton also will retire from public life and devote herself to scrap-booking.

The Keystone pipeline project will win White House approval. Construction will begin as soon as sufficient private property is condemned by state governments. There will be no appreciable effect of the project on the nation's unemployment rate, and no spills during the year, prompting conservative politicians to call environmentalists "Nervous Nellies."

The unemployment rate will fall gradually through the year and be below six percent by next December. At the same time, the stock market will go up, and the Dow will close 2013 above the 15,000 mark. Republicans will insist that's not nearly good enough.

I hate to say it, but as American soldiers are drawn out of Afghanistan the Taliban will become more and more influential there. By year's end, President Obama will have to make a difficult choice between allowing them to gain complete control over the country or making an open-ended commitment there.

Likewise, the North Korean missile program will require a concerted international response, which, as you know, never really happens. The Obama administration will try to use diplomacy and an involved carrot and stick approach with the Koreans, while Congressional saber-rattlers call for  military action against the regime there. Korean rockets capable of carrying nuclear warheads to the United States will be built by year end.

Charlie Sheen will finish 2013 still single. Lindsey Lohan will have more trouble with the law, but her very expensive attorneys will keep her out of jail.

"Lincoln" will sweep the Oscars, winning all four of the most important awards.

The Powerball lottery will have its first billion dollar prize. I'll buy five tickets, but not one of my numbers will be a winner.

Despite re-stocking their team, the Boston Red Sox will finish the baseball season with a losing record. Ditto the Colorado Rockies.  The 2013 World Series will see the Toronto Blue Jays defeat the Atlanta Braves.

Violet Baker Baril will go through "terrible twos," and emerge by year's end as a delightful child. (She's always delightful to me, but I recognize that my opinion might not be entirely objective.)

The Curiosity rover on Mars will discover more complex molecules, but no definitive evidence of life there. Many more exoplanets will be found, including several "Goldilocks" ones, capable of engendering life more or less as we know it.

All of Kris' cats will survive 2013. None of them will require expensive medical care.

My children, nieces and nephews will all be gainfully employed for most of 2013.

We're going to have a white Christmas here in Colorado, with snow on Christmas day.

Kris and I will make a trip east during the year, and will journey to Nevada for our anniversary and to Hawaii for her sixtieth birthday in December. (The trips are already booked, so this is an easy one.)

I plan to leave my library job, and will devote myself to volunteer work.

Newtown Connecticut

The terrible shooting deaths at an elementary school in Connecticut have been much in the news the last few days, and almost everyone has weighed in with an opinion about how to stop such awful carnage. Personally, I am nearly in despair about the bloodshed and the deaths of little children, and have hesitated to say  anything about it myself because the bitterness and cynicism I am feeling would shock my family and friends, possibly including me.

Some time ago, in another post, I mentioned that the first funeral I ever attended was for a kindergarten boy who had shot himself to death with his father's gun, carelessly left in a dresser drawer. It happened just about this time of year, and I recall Sister John commenting to us about how sad that family would be on Christmas day without their child. Multiply that by all the devastated families in Newtown, and Aurora, and in Wisconsin, and I can't even remember the other places where there has been horrible violence committed with firearms.

Everyone seems to have an opinion concerning why this happens in America, and why it doesn't  happen so often in other places. Reactions vary across a spectrum. I saw a Facebook comment that said, "Fuck the Constitution. Twenty children are dead!" Another writer, using mostly capital letters, insisted "Gun control doesn't work and is not the answer!" Still others note the presumed autism of the murderer and claim that better public mental health care would have prevented the tragedy.

Pushing other agendas, there have been comments that banning prayer in public schools is responsible for these mass shootings, or that the deaths of inoffensive children is somehow God's judgement on America for allowing gay people to marry. The nincompoops of the Westboro Kansas Baptist Church plan to picket funerals to argue that point.

The sad fact is that although we will fulminate about these deaths and accuse each other of all kinds of base motives, nothing will change and there will be another massacre next year that will prompt more finger pointing and recriminations and the same the same horror will play out time after time until we are all under ground. (There. Is that bitter and cynical enough for everyone?)

I can't write any more about this and will have to wait a day or two before deciding whether to post it.

Remembering Lincoln

Last weekend, Kris and I went to the movies to see "Lincoln," the biopic directed by Stephen Spielberg, with Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Fields as the title couple. The movie focuses on the last three months of Abraham Lincoln's life and his fight to get the proposed Thirteenth Amendment through the House of Representatives. In addition, the Lincoln's had to confront the desire of their oldest son, Robert, to enlist in the Union army.

Much of the material for the movie comes from Doris Kearns Goodwin's massive history of Lincoln, Team of Rivals. Principal among the erstwhile rivals was William Seward, played in the movie by David  Strathairn. Early in the Lincoln presidency, Seward had learned that Lincoln was a superior politician, and by 1865 had developed an important but subservient role in the president's administration. In the movie, he is Lincoln's foil, giving sensible advice that Lincoln considers but rejects in order to pursue longer range objectives.

By January 1865, the Civil War was moving towards its end. Confederate forces in Virginia were greatly outnumbered and pinned to the trenches before Richmond and Petersburg. What forces the rebel nation could still muster in South and North  Carolina were nearly overwhelmed by the army of William Tecumseh Sherman. Still, to win a final victory would be the work of who knew how long and cost who knew how many lives.

And there hung one of Lincoln's problems. The Lincolns had produced four children in their marriage, all boys. One son, Edward, died as an adolescent in the 1850's and another, Willie, passed away after a short illness, possibly cholera, in February, 1862. Both parents were devastated by the loss. Now Robert would be risking his life, and Mary  pulls no punches telling Lincoln that she could not survive his loss, and that as president he had to prevent Robert's enlistment.

Could Lincoln use his powers as president to keep his own son from danger when so many other sons were serving in the front lines, or had already been killed or  injured? Although the movie doesn't say so explicitly, we know, and it shows, that Lincoln found a place for Robert on General Grant's staff.

In other words, Lincoln compromised. Robert was not entirely out of danger, but was not among the assault forces that finally shattered the Confederate lines in April 1865.

This was a subplot, though. The main plot line of the film dealt with Lincoln's efforts to get the proposed Thirteenth Amendment passed. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had freed all slaves in areas of the country in rebellion, but Lincoln could not be sure the Supreme Court would uphold his action once the war was over. (In fact, secession and the Confederate government were the death blow to slavery, in my opinion. Part of the absurdity of secession was that it was undertaken to preserve the "southern way of life," including slavery, but the black Americans themselves would never have stood for the "peculiar institution" if they knew they could escape to the north without any threat of being captured there.)

Almost all the Democrats and a few Republicans in the House were opposed to the Amendment. (Remember, a measure must pass both houses of Congress by a two-thirds vote and be ratified by the state legislatures of three-fourths of the states to become an amendment.) In January 1865 Lincoln and his aids judged they were twenty votes short in the House. A number of Representatives had been defeated in the 1864 elections and would be out of Congress by the end of 1865, but were still serving at the beginning of the year. Most of these were Democrats, so the logical question, posed to the president by Seward, was, why not wait for the new Congress with more Republicans, when passage would be much easier?

Lincoln decided he could not wait. If the war ended in 1865 and a measure of normality was restored, there would be endless delays in Congress. So, the horse-trading began. Lame duck congressmen were looking for jobs, and Lincoln had jobs to give. Gradually, the deficit in votes was reduced, but still Lincoln didn't have enough votes as the time for the crucial tally neared. Lincoln inserted himself directly into the process, quietly meeting reluctant congressmen to urge passage, but was rebuffed on more than one occasion.

Finally, Lincoln had to deal with Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones), congressman from Pennsylvania, who wanted to use the amendment as a springboard, to produce real racial equality in America. Lincoln knew he could never win the support of the nervous Democrats unless the amendment focused solely on the political status of black Americans, not their social status, so Stevens had to be muzzled.

Eventually, Lincoln won. He kept his own Republican party together by restricting - at least in public - the scope of the amendment, and won over enough Democrats by a combination of his persuasive powers and a little political grease. He is able to tell a delegation from the southern states that the amendment will win ratification and that slavery is ended once and for all.

There is a little postscript or epilogue. Lincoln's second inaugural is seen and Lincoln says his wonderful closing sentences, "With malice towards none, with charity for all, let us bind up the nation's wounds." A month later, he and Mary go to Ford's Theater for a pleasant evening out.

The acting performances were superb. The costuming really evoked the 1860's. Spielberg, who is known for the dazzling light effects in his movies, uses all natural light, or candle and lantern power, which adds to the feel of a bygone time. Last, I think they stayed true to the facts of the time, telling a complicated story with grace, and letting Lincoln's humor - often of the barnyard variety - show through.

Go see it. You'll be glad you did. (By the way, it's a sad commentary on our times that the vampire movie "Twilight" has been running about seven times the gate receipts of "Lincoln.")

A Reminder of the Season

Just a little reminder tonight about the spirit of  Christmas from Charles Dickens.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.
“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”
“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.
“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”
The bell struck twelve.
Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.