If you think otherwise, you absolutely are not paying attention.

I was live tweeting during the State of the Union speech last week and thinking about how much I have come to dislike or outright despise nearly everyone in that chamber, from the President on out, how insufferably arrogant and completely out of touch they are about the lives most Americans are leading.

The one exception to that was Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who tendered her resignation because she needs to focus on her rehabilitation and because unlike most of the people in the chamber, she really does have her constituents’ best interests at heart.

But the rest of them?

It was difficult to listen to President Obama without screaming. And having to watch the alternately smug, disgruntled and smirking face of Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) for over an hour was also unbearable. I should have done what Vice President Biden did and take a nap instead.

The SOTU speech is supposed to give the American people an update on what the President is doing for the nation. It’s required by the Constitution because the Founding Fathers did not want the President to try and sneak in any extra-constitutional activities. It’s supposed to provide transparency.

We wish.

That was then, this is now. President Obama and his predecessor, George W. Bush, have each given themselves powers that are not only extra-constitutional, but, if we had a less apathetic electorate, would have been cause for impeachment of both men.

Maybe.

One of those extra-constitutional acts–the right to assassinate that Obama granted himself last year–was one of only three things that got applause from both sides of the aisle during the SOTU. (U.S. presidents don’t actually have the power to assassinate anyone, of course. It’s not in the Constitution. It’s just something President Obama decided he’d like to do. The ACLU is pretty upset about it, and so should you be.)

Yes, we all wanted to see Osama bin Laden brought to justice. But the President went into a sovereign nation, Pakistan, with which we are not officially at war (even though we kill their citizens on a regular basis in drone attacks, which if someone did it to us–like on 9/11–we would consider it war), and had him killed. Not exactly playing by international rules set by us with the Geneva Convention.

The President also authorized the assassination of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. Also not in the Constitution. Nor is indefinite detention of American citizens, which Obama just signed into law last month.

You probably think, as do many Americans, that these guys had it coming. But if the Philadelphia Police Department decided to start killing alleged criminals on the streets of Philadelphia, would you think that was okay, too? Some of you might, but isn’t that what we used to call a slippery slope? When the President decides to become judge, jury and executioner–even if we agree emotionally with the decision–it’s dangerous for all of us. It means the President can act on his own, with impunity. Unfortunately, then any one of us could end up on the wrong side of assassination or indefinite detention in Guantanamo (which he promised to close three years ago) or in a federal prison in the U.S., like Pvt. Bradley Manning.

Because the war on terror will never be over. T

his is why we have a Constitution and rules of law. Yet the extra-Constitutional assassination of bin Laden was the biggest applause line of the night, even from the disgruntled Mr. Speaker and his Republican cohort.

Another line that got big applause was Obama’s declaration about more jobs, because even the Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats have to applaud more jobs in a recession. Except the President’s plan for more jobs doesn’t deserve applause, because the President’s plan is deeply, deeply flawed.

Someone needs to tell the President what year it is. It’s 2012, not 1912. We live in an era of globalization. Thus, while even supporters of Ron Paul isolationism can applaud Obama’s “keep jobs in America and keep foreign products out!” those aren’t the rules we play by any more. Yes, we should all buy American and we should all boycott cheap Chinese products.

Except that if we do that, the Chinese will do it, too. And American industry cannot survive on U.S. sales alone. We need to sell our wares to other countries. China is the world’s largest economy and the fastest growing one. Where are we going to sell our products? Greece?

 It’s short-sighted and naive to think that America can be just American in the 21st century. Yes, we want to keep as many jobs in the U.S. as possible. But we also want to lure foreign trade and businesses here. We can’t have it both ways. But that’s what the President proposed. Big tax breaks for corporations (do they really need more tax breaks?) that keep jobs here. Punishment for corporations that take jobs abroad.

The President also promised two million new jobs. Except we’ve lost eight million jobs and currently there are 17 million Americans who are either unemployed or underemployed. And that doesn’t count Americans who have stopped looking for work. In addition, the jobs being proposed are not the jobs that have been lost.

This is one of the most critical elements of America’s current economic crisis and one which no one–not President Obama nor any of the Republican candidates for president–is discussing. The jobs Obama is promising to bring back–against every economist’s best odds–are manufacturing jobs. But again, this is not 1912, it’s 2012. And while it would be helpful to have more manufacturing jobs, these are not the jobs we have recently lost. Those jobs have been gone for decades. The jobs we need back are middle-class jobs, not factory jobs.

We don’t have a shrinking working class in America, we have a shrinking middle class. The gap between the rich and the poor in America is growing in large part because the middle class are becoming poorer. In previous generations the poor worked their way up the economic ladder and became middle class. Obama talked about providing career-advancing training for workers, but again, this would be for low-level jobs, not middle-level income jobs.

What’s more, we need jobs for our graduating students. We already have a huge jobs deficit for people 25 and under. While the unemployment rate is hovering around eight percent for the total population, it’s closer to 25 percent for younger workers.

We need a bigger, bolder, 21st century plan, not the self-congratulatory small-strokes plan the President outlined. Mitt Romney has a 57 point plan, of which some points even make sense. But neither of these men, the current president or the likely Republican nominee, is looking at the big picture of America’s future.

The jobs crisis isn’t a one- or two- or even five-year problem. It’s a 21st century-long problem. There is no short-term fix, it has to be a long-term plan. And no one seems to get that, except the economists on both sides of the aisle who are all tearing out their hair and screaming, like I was while watching the SOTU.

Eighty years ago, when Franklin D. Roosevelt began trying to staunch the economic hemorrhage that was the Great Depression, he had vision and singleness of purpose. When his Republican opposition tried to stop him, he ignored them and pushed on for the good of the country. There are some Republicans who still grumble over FDR, but he, like Lincoln, preserved the Union, albeit in different ways.

America in 2012 doesn’t have 30 percent unemployment like there was during the Great Depression, but we do have one in seven people on food stamps–one in three in Philadelphia–and we do have an evisceration of the middle class that is the real thing strangling the American economy.

The declining middle class in America is comprised of people whose mortgages are being foreclosed upon, who can’t afford their health care, who can’t afford to send their kids to college or whose kids have graduated from college and moved back home because they can’t find jobs. There are no more pensions, 401Ks have lost value due to stock market fluctuations, Social Security is at risk and the retirement age is rising every year because people can’t afford to stop working, if they are lucky enough to have a job.

The President addressed none of these painful realities in the SOTU, nor is he addressing them on the campaign trail, nor has he addressed them in his presidency. Yet if Obama can grant himself the executive power to assassinate people and get applause from both sides of the aisle, then why can’t he grant himself the executive power to go big on fixing the American economy, like FDR did during the last depression?

It’s one of many questions American voters should be asking between now and November.

I felt that shock on Monday while listening to NPR as I do every day and heard WHYY News Director Chris Satullo’s editorial about former PA senator and presidential hopeful Rick Santorum.

One might have expected an excoriating screed on NPR. After all, it’s the one remaining liberal voice on the radio airwaves and does nothing to disguise that center-left-leaning bias. But Satullo, previously editorial page editor at the Inquirer, gave a paean to Santorum, saying, “he is a thoughtful, ethical person.”

Satullo ended with this caveat: “I know my gay friends will never agree. How could they, given Santorum’s iron stance against homosexuality? But in Rick Santorum, there is an intellectual consistency deserving of respect. I don’t expect his moment of success on the presidential trail to last, but I’m glad it happened.”

Insert the sound of my screaming here.

Alas, our own community deserves some blame for this editorial embrace of homophobia. Even as President Obama repeatedly fought against the overturning of DADT (which he now takes full credit for, even though it was Congress who repealed it), continues to joke about his “continuing to evolve” on marriage equality and holds Bradley Manning in indefinite detention, we act like he’s not a bigot, but our ally. So why wouldn’t Satullo think it was okay to salute Santorum as “ethical” and act, along with Obama, like it is us queers who are at fault for expecting more?

It’s not just Satullo’s “gay friends” who should disagree with him–it’s every non-bigot in the listening audience. You can’t have a “stance against homosexuality” without dismissing a full ten percent or more of the population. This isn’t arguing over school vouchers or meatless Mondays in the cafeteria. It’s the civil rights of an entire community.

Bigotry is not okay. Not the blatant bigotry of Santorum, the jocular bigotry of Obama nor the some-of-my-best-friends-are bigotry of Satullo. Were a white president to jokes about “still evolving” on black civil rights or an NPR exec to editorialize on the ethics of a racist or a presidential candidate to proclaim that people of color were the same as animals, would it be tolerated? Of course not. Yet that’s what all three of these guys are doing, at our expense.

The moral relativism that Santorum, Obama and Satullo are using to disguise or excuse their bigotry is hardly ethical and deserves a level of outrage that goes beyond the occasional glitter bomb or sweater-vest jibe. Why do we make excuses for straight people who claim to be our allies? Satullo is right: Santorum is honest about his bigotry; he doesn’t put it back on us, making us think our belief that we deserve equality is a collective character flaw.

We should call for Satullo’s resignation. NPR pundit Juan Williams was fired for just implying that Muslims were terrorists. How is this different?

Raise the bar, people. In our eagerness to be mainstreamed we seem to forget that casual, off-hand bigotry like Satullo’s or Obama’s is no different from the blatant sort expounded by Santorum. If we’re going to boo Santorum off the stage, then we shouldn’t vote for Obama again and we should call for Satullo’s ouster.

There’s no such thing as a little bit of bigotry. If you wouldn’t say it about your own kind, then don’t say it about mine. Satullo insulted every LGBT person in America with his commentary. Does he have a First Amendment right to be a bigot? Sure. But let him promote his admiration of a hater from a street corner instead of from a six figure post at NPR.

I’ll insert my disclaimer here: I am pro-life. I would like to see abortion become as rare as possible. As a consequence, I am a strong supporter of Plan B and have been for some time. I think every woman/girl who is physically able to get pregnant, whether she’s my age or the age of my 12-year-old niece, should have Plan B in her dresser drawer for emergencies. (A contraceptive emergency is everything from rape and incest to consensual sex without contraception.)

Plan B is not an abortifacient, nor is it dangerous. The FDA has established that. Plan B is, however, a simple, painless way to prevent an unwanted/unplanned pregnancy from happening and at about $40 per pill, affordable. It can also be purchased at any pharmacy or chain drugstore. Plan B is also about as private a means of preventing a pregnancy (other than regular, consistent use of contraception) as possible. It is ideal for women and girls who feel too shamed, embarrassed or frightened by an unwanted/unplanned pregnancy to deal with decision-making until it is too late for an abortion.

Abortion is complicated, harder and harder to get, especially for poor women, teenagers and women living in rural areas, as well as painful and expensive. Plus, abortion does kill the fetus. With Plan B there never is a fetus because fertilization never takes place.

Every woman in America should be disturbed by these political actions last week. As a woman who has yet to go into menopause but who definitely has no interest in having a child in middle age, I know I would not want to be faced with an unplanned pregnancy. Nine years ago, before Plan B was available, I was raped. Fortunately, I was not among the percentage of rape victims who is impregnated by her rapist. But had I been, I would have had to make the awful choice between carrying the child of my rapist or having an abortion. Many women face these choices every day. The option of Plan B is a tremendous relief.

Pennsylvania bill SB732 was ostensibly in response to the horrific scene uncovered earlier this year at the West Philadelphia Women’s Clinic run by Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his wife. Gosnell was operating outside pretty much every law in place for free-standing ) abortion clinics (that is, a clinic not associated with a hospital, Planned Parenthood or other oversight agency). He was allegedly dispensing drugs illegally and he was allegedly performing third-trimester abortions, which are not legal outside a surgical center or hospital setting because they require that a woman go into actual labor and the complications are manifold and the woman’s health is at tremendous risk.

He was also committing murder. Gosnell is charged with killing seven live infants by snipping their spinal cords and brain stems with scissors. Bodies of infants and fetuses were found in storage at the clinic, which was also filthy. Conditions at the clinic came to light when a woman died from complications of a third-trimester abortion. Gosnell is also charged with her murder. No one can argue that the Gosnell clinic was serving women. Gosnell made money off desperate women, like the one he is accused of killing, who was an immigrant who had tried to get a late-stage abortion in Maryland before coming to Philadelphia.

SB 732 places new licensing and other restrictions on independent clinics that are supposed to protect women from predatory health care providers like Gosnell. But if the Department of Health had been performing regular inspections as required by already existing laws, the Gosnell clinic would likely have been closed down before any of the eight murders attributed to Gosnell were perpetrated.

SB 732 is unnecessary. What is necessary is having health inspectors do the required checks on all health clinics, including those that primarily perform abortions, to make sure that patients are getting the appropriate standard of care in a safe, clean, antiseptic environment with trained personnel. (The Grand Jury found that among other illegalities, the Gosnells’ clinic was staffed predominately with high-school students who often administered anesthesia.)

Pennsylvania already has the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation. In addition, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, only ten counties (out of 67) have abortion providers and there are only 20 independent clinics in the state. Which means poor women–and Pennsylvania is largely rural and has a significant poverty demographic–are the least likely to be able to access abortions.

Which brings me back to President Obama’s anti-science/election year decision last week to over-rule the FDA on making Plan B available to girls under 18. In supporting HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s decision to go against the FDA’s ruling, Obama noted that he didn’t want his daughters finding Plan B “next to the bubble gum and band aids.” This is the kind of rabid, anti-science statement one would expect from someone on the extremist right, not a Democratic president who campaigned on standing for science.

First, Plan B won’t be anywhere near “bubble gum and band aids” in any pharmacy. And the Malia and Sasha Obama are not likely to be the girls who would need it. But if the president ever left his insular meet and greets to actually come to the inner city like my neighborhood, or the poverty-stricken rural areas of America, like Mississippi where teen pregnancy is pandemic, he would know why Plan B is so important and why its availability to girls between 12 and 17 is essential.

Fifteen years ago I taught in a program at Lutheran Settlement for pregnant teenagers. The girls took GED and other high school equivalency courses in the morning and in the afternoons they were taught life skills. My students ranged in age from 12 to 17. The 17-year-old was on her third baby. The 12-year-old implied in several talks with me that the father of her baby was her own father. Statistics show that the women most likely to seek out a late-stage abortion for reasons that are non-medical are teenagers. Plan B might not be a panacea that will stop all teen pregnancies, but it is one more stop-gap and also one more safe way to prevent abortions.

In the debate over who controls women’s bodies, women lose. President Obama’s daughters may be in the age range covered by the FDA’s ruling, but they are not the demographic that needs access to Plan B. When Sebelius and Obama both say that parents need to be involved in the decisions regarding their child’s health, they ignore the realities: there are many drugs available over the counter to kids that actually are dangerous, including Tylenol, aspirin and cough medicines. Yet Sebelius and Obama are not suggesting restricting those to people over 18. What’s more, when these two upper-middle-class parents talk about parental involvement, they pre-suppose two things: first, that a teenage girl’s parents care enough to be involved and second, that a teenage girl’s parents aren’t part of the reason she’s had unprotected sex.

 One in four girls is a victim of sexual abuse before she turns 18. Many of the perpetrators are family members. Shouldn’t she be allowed access to Plan B rather than being forced to bear the child of one of her male relatives? The Plan B decision was 100 percent political, as was the 155-44 vote passing SB 732. These were not decisions based on science or protecting women, but politically motivated dictates meant to interfere in women’s personal lives and make a statement to voters in an election year.

Here’s what politicians on both sides of the aisle should be considering rather than votes: No woman wants to have an abortion. Women who choose abortion do so because they feel it is their only option, and so it should be accessible and safe. But Plan B also gives many women a safe, inexpensive, reliable and accessible alternative that is also guilt-free.

Every pro-life advocate should be a huge supporter of Plan B. I’d be handing Plan B (and condoms) out in the schools, if I could. But if Plan B is not an option because too much time has passed, then abortion–which has been legal for nearly 40 years–should be made as accessible as possible. Women don’t make the abortion decision lightly. Making abortion difficult for them only adds an unnecessary burden of shame and guilt. Meanwhile, making first trimester abortions–which are reasonably safe and in which the fetus is not viable–accessible, women are less likely to be forced to have second or even third-trimester abortions where there is a viable fetus and there is also great risk to the health of the woman. Making early abortions more difficult to obtain only means there will be more late-term abortions. If a woman wants an abortion, she will find one–if not at a real clinic, then at the kind of over-priced butcher shop Gosnell was running.

As for Plan B, Obama implies that kids under 18 are not having sex. He seems to forget his own mother was a pregnant teenager before she married his father–and that was 50 years ago when teen pregnancy was considered shameful, rather than the commonplace it has become in 2011.

Yet common as it now is, what we know about teen pregnancy is all bad. Girls who have babies before they are 20 are the least likely to finish school, get a secondary education or be able to find a good job. One baby before a girl is 20 is almost always followed by a second. Children of teenage mothers are at risk physically from health issues, but are also then twice as likely to drop out of school and/or become teen parents themselves.

Teen pregnancy benefits no one. And as so-called abstinence programs have proven, teens will have sex, regardless of what parents or peers say. While the President believes his daughters will never be those girls, he really can’t know for sure. Over 70 percent of girls have had sex by the time they turn 17.

Last week was a bad week for women with these two decisions. And neither will lead where the politicians involved want. Obama’s anti-science rhetoric won’t stop teenagers from having sex, but it may mean that some will be forced to have abortions and others babies, rather than have access to a simple pill. The Pennsylvania legislature can sit back smugly, noting that they are saving women’s lives, but the artificial restrictions it has placed on abortion clinics is likely to create more Gosnells, not punish them. Extremist, anti-science politics–whether purveyed by a Republicans or Democrats–benefit no one. But they have the potential to hurt millions of women. Turning back the reproductive clock is impossible but the results of these continued efforts will be nothing less than catastrophic.

 follow me on Twitter @VABVOX

I’ve heard similar remarks from friends and colleagues about the Occupy movement. Perhaps because I am under-employed and the recession has hit me really hard, I feel both solidarity and sympathy with the Occupy movement. I went down to the protest site at City Hall one recent chilly night and wandered through. I took some notes and some photos. I admit I liked the call and response nature of the “non-hierarchical structure.” And while another friend says “It’s just like a big be-in,” it seems like more than that to me.

It may not be like the European protests against the austerity programs in the U.K., Spain and Greece. Those protests have resulted in many arrests and a fair amount of violence. And it’s no American version of the Arab spring, either. There weren’t cell phone charging tents in Tahrir Square.

But it’s not nothing.

The Occupy movement–be it in New York or Philadelphia or Los Angeles–is a statement. It’s a statement about where many of us feel we stand in this double-dip recession. We hear President Obama reiterating that it’s much better than it was, even if we don’t feel it yet and the jobs are coming as long as we all want to do construction work and don’t mind that 99 percent of the jobs have gone to men.

The Republicans keep saying jobs are important, but we have to protect the tax cuts for the rich or there won’t be any jobs because there’s a link we don’t understand between those two things.

Then everyone gets back on their Canadian-made campaign buses and moves on.

But we’re still here. We’re still suffering. And as the holidays loom closer, those of us who are now chronically under-employed or in the second year without a job or down-sized or among the 47 million Americans now collecting food stamps, we envision those Wall Street holiday bonuses while many of us will be getting holiday lay-off slips.

The placards the Occupy folks carry are declarative in their messy, not-slick way. The average American feels ignored, co-opted and abused by our local and federal governments. The Occupy movement reflects that.

The fact that no one knows exactly how to respond to this broad-based, no-specific-agenda movement is exactly what makes it noteworthy. The first protest was Sept. 17 in New York. Five weeks later, there are Occupy encampments nationwide and across Europe, including the one outside City Hall on Dilworth Plaza.

Politicians don’t know what to say in the face of this movement which polls show a majority of Americans approve of. Democrats have tried to embrace the Occupy movement, but the Obama Administration has given Wall Street everything it ever wanted, so they are hardly in concert with the Occupy ideals.

Republicans haven’t been sure how to address it, either, though some of the presidential candidates have done the same pseudo embrace the Democratic hierarchy has attempted.

But Eric Cantor called the Occupiers “mobs.” They are anything but. In fact, a prime complaint from many Progressives is that the Occupy protesters aren’t the least bit mobbish, but are placid and noncommittal.

Thus when Cantor refused to speak at Penn last week because he “feared” the Occupy folks, it just seemed silly. What was there to fear? If Cantor was scheduled to talk to Philadelphians about important political issues, why would questions from the local citizenry be a problem?

Conversely, if Obama and his cadre really do agree with the Occupy protests (which is contraindicated by their own policies and the fact that Obama has taken three times as much campaign money from Wall Streeters this year than Mitt Romney and twice what George W. Bush took in 2004), then why hasn’t any of the Obama Administration’s hierarchy gone to one of the sites to talk with the protestors?

Next Tuesday is Election Day in Philadelphia. Like most Philadelphia elections it will be regrettably pro-forma. I could write the results now and they wouldn’t be any different from what will be printed in the newspaper the day after the votes are tallied.

One of the basic precepts of the Occupy movement has been the lack of affiliation with either of the two main political parties (although Ron Paul does seem to be an outlier favorite of the young protestors; his campaign signs are the only ones in evidence).

As someone who has become utterly disenchanted with the two-party system–or the one party system as it is in Philadelphia–I want to Occupy the vote. I checked out the sample ballot before I sat down to write this and I saw only one candidate I truly want to vote for: Cheri Honkala for Sheriff.

Weird choice? Not really. Honkala started the original Occupy movement in Philadelphia 20 years ago. Honkala, who founded and ran the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), built a tent city in Kensington and organized to take over buildings that were vacant to house homeless women and families.

Honkala is running as the Green Party candidate for Sheriff and I will be voting for her. In fact, her presence on the ballot makes me eager to vote–it’s one vote I will cast with no trepidation or regret. Because Honkala is a true activist. She has worked for the citizenry of Philadelphia since she came here with her infant son from Minneapolis nearly three decades ago. Honkala has a plan for re-organizing the Sheriff’s office (one of the more corrupt offices in the city system) and Honkala will do everything in her power to create change if she’s elected. Honkala wants to alter the system to keep people in their houses, stop evictions wherever possible and get vacant properties filled with homeless families.

I’d like to get everyone camped out at Dilworth Plaza to rock the vote for Honkala. She’s earned her place on the ballot more than most of the people on it and if the Occupy folks want to create some change and make some serious political noise, then getting Honkala elected would be fantastic.

There are few candidates running outside the Democratic and Republican parties. A handful of Green and Independent candidates. In the 8^th District, Brian Rudnick, a Chestnut Hill attorney and librarian is running as a Green Party candidate challenging Cindy Bass, the Democrat.

There are five Republicans running for the City Council at Large seats. I’m too far to the left politically to suggest voting for one of them, but isn’t it time Philadelphia had an Asian council person in a city with such a large Asian demographic? David Oh should win one of the two minority vote seats for Republicans.

A lot of what’s wrong with City Council will be gone by the end of the year–Donna Reed Miller being, for those of us in the 8^th District, the worst offender. But has anyone from Council, any of the incoming candidates or those vying for the at-large seats ventured outside City Hall onto Dilworth Plaza to talk with the Occupy protesters?

Throughout my years in Philadelphia, city government has run at cross-purposes with the citizenry. Is there another city that has had as many City Council persons and state legislators come under indictment or actually end up in prison?

It’s easy to say Philadelphia is a corrupt town. It is and has been for generations. With each new administration and Council revamping we hope for a better city, a city more in tune with the needs of its citizens, a city less lining the pockets of the pay-to-players.

The people encamped at Dilworth Plaza are asking for exactly that: That our government and financial institutions, police departments and housing developers all work in concert for the people, rather than for themselves and their own agendas.

Is that an unformed, unfocused, undeliberated concept? I think not. I think that what Occupy Philly’s people are saying is that those who run the hierarchy of society are not meeting the needs of those within that society.

So how do we do it? Do the five million people who live in Philadelphia and environs make a run on City Hall? Do we walk by the protestors and drop off a few dollars or some medical supplies or some cans of food with a wink and a nod? Or do we just plod on and hope for the best?

I’d like to see that run on City Hall, myself, but that ain’t happening. In lieu of that I’d like to see Cheri Honkala grab that Sheriff’s seat with an activist’s vengeance. I’d like to see the Independent candidate for mayor, Wali Rahman, get a sizeable number of votes. I’d like to see some cages rattled and some teeth set on edge and some status quo unseated.

The Occupy Philly people say they are there for the duration. I’m not sure what that means–if it means the first really cold night, the first big snow, the approach of the holidays or if they will indeed still be there for next November’s election.

What I do know is that regardless of whether you think their presence is stupid or right on, unfocused or anarchistic, costing taxpayers money in police protection that is better spent elsewhere or worth every cent, the Occupy Philly people are a visible, physical reminder of what we aren’t getting from the men and women we elect–or let others elect while we sit home.

On Oct. 24^th Tunisians went out to vote in their first free election. They were the first nation to begin the wave of the Arab spring. The lines were endlessly long and people waited in them for hours. Ninety percent of the people voted.

If ninety percent of Philadelphians voted–ever–we would have a different ballot and a different city.

Occupy Philly isn’t the Arab spring, but we can be our own Arab spring. We just have to really want change more than we want the ease of the status quo.

We just really have to ask ourselves how much longer we are willing to accommodate and accept and ignore and concede. Or if we will at least make an effort with our votes on election day.

visit my political blog at victoriabrownworth.com or follow me on Twitter @VABVOX.

OCCUPY (THE VOTE) PHILLY

by Victoria A. Brownworth

I’ve been watching the Occupy Philly actions with avid attention over the past few weeks. I’m in that middle-age demographic that has mostly been complaining that there’s no focus, no leadership, no direction, no end game to the protest. As one friend explained, “These are middle-class kids with the privilege to hang out night and day and say the economy sucks. And sure, it’s bad that you went to college and can’t get a job. But where is the actual protest? Where is the civil disobedience? Why don’t they try registering people to vote if they want to create change? Sit down in front of the Stock Exchange and refuse to move until you are arrested en masse–that will do something.”

I’ve heard similar remarks from friends and colleagues about the Occupy movement. Perhaps because I am under-employed and the recession has hit me really hard, I feel both solidarity and sympathy with the Occupy movement. I went down to the protest site at City Hall one recent chilly night and wandered through. I took some notes and some photos. I admit I liked the call and response nature of the “non-hierarchical structure.” And while another friend says “It’s just like a big be-in,” it seems like more than that to me.

It may not be like the European protests against the austerity programs in the U.K., Spain and Greece. Those protests have resulted in many arrests and a fair amount of violence. And it’s no American version of the Arab spring, either. There weren’t cell phone charging tents in Tahrir Square.

But it’s not nothing.

The Occupy movement–be it in New York or Philadelphia or Los Angeles–is a statement. It’s a statement about where many of us feel we stand in this double-dip recession. We hear President Obama reiterating that it’s much better than it was, even if we don’t feel it yet and the jobs are coming as long as we all want to do construction work and don’t mind that 99 percent of the jobs have gone to men.

The Republicans keep saying jobs are important, but we have to protect the tax cuts for the rich or there won’t be any jobs because there’s a link we don’t understand between those two things.

Then everyone gets back on their Canadian-made campaign buses and moves on.

But we’re still here. We’re still suffering. And as the holidays loom closer, those of us who are now chronically under-employed or in the second year without a job or down-sized or among the 47 million Americans now collecting food stamps, we envision those Wall Street holiday bonuses while many of us will be getting holiday lay-off slips.

The placards the Occupy folks carry are declarative in their messy, not-slick way. The average American feels ignored, co-opted and abused by our local and federal governments. The Occupy movement reflects that.

The fact that no one knows exactly how to respond to this broad-based, no-specific-agenda movement is exactly what makes it noteworthy. The first protest was Sept. 17 in New York. Five weeks later, there are Occupy encampments nationwide and across Europe, including the one outside City Hall on Dilworth Plaza.

Politicians don’t know what to say in the face of this movement which polls show a majority of Americans approve of. Democrats have tried to embrace the Occupy movement, but the Obama Administration has given Wall Street everything it ever wanted, so they are hardly in concert with the Occupy ideals.

Republicans haven’t been sure how to address it, either, though some of the presidential candidates have done the same pseudo embrace the Democratic hierarchy has attempted.

But Eric Cantor called the Occupiers “mobs.” They are anything but. In fact, a prime complaint from many Progressives is that the Occupy protesters aren’t the least bit mobbish, but are placid and noncommittal.

Thus when Cantor refused to speak at Penn last week because he “feared” the Occupy folks, it just seemed silly. What was there to fear? If Cantor was scheduled to talk to Philadelphians about important political issues, why would questions from the local citizenry be a problem?

Conversely, if Obama and his cadre really do agree with the Occupy protests (which is contraindicated by their own policies and the fact that Obama has taken three times as much campaign money from Wall Streeters this year than Mitt Romney and twice what George W. Bush took in 2004), then why hasn’t any of the Obama Administration’s hierarchy gone to one of the sites to talk with the protestors?

Next Tuesday is Election Day in Philadelphia. Like most Philadelphia elections it will be regrettably pro-forma. I could write the results now and they wouldn’t be any different from what will be printed in the newspaper the day after the votes are tallied.

One of the basic precepts of the Occupy movement has been the lack of affiliation with either of the two main political parties (although Ron Paul does seem to be an outlier favorite of the young protestors; his campaign signs are the only ones in evidence).

As someone who has become utterly disenchanted with the two-party system–or the one party system as it is in Philadelphia–I want to Occupy the vote. I checked out the sample ballot before I sat down to write this and I saw only one candidate I truly want to vote for: Cheri Honkala for Sheriff.

Weird choice? Not really. Honkala started the original Occupy movement in Philadelphia 20 years ago. Honkala, who founded and ran the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), built a tent city in Kensington and organized to take over buildings that were vacant to house homeless women and families.

Honkala is running as the Green Party candidate for Sheriff and I will be voting for her. In fact, her presence on the ballot makes me eager to vote–it’s one vote I will cast with no trepidation or regret. Because Honkala is a true activist. She has worked for the citizenry of Philadelphia since she came here with her infant son from Minneapolis nearly three decades ago. Honkala has a plan for re-organizing the Sheriff’s office (one of the more corrupt offices in the city system) and Honkala will do everything in her power to create change if she’s elected. Honkala wants to alter the system to keep people in their houses, stop evictions wherever possible and get vacant properties filled with homeless families.

I’d like to get everyone camped out at Dilworth Plaza to rock the vote for Honkala. She’s earned her place on the ballot more than most of the people on it and if the Occupy folks want to create some change and make some serious political noise, then getting Honkala elected would be fantastic.

There are few candidates running outside the Democratic and Republican parties. A handful of Green and Independent candidates. In the 8^th District, Brian Rudnick, a Chestnut Hill attorney and librarian is running as a Green Party candidate challenging Cindy Bass, the Democrat.

There are five Republicans running for the City Council at Large seats. I’m too far to the left politically to suggest voting for one of them, but isn’t it time Philadelphia had an Asian council person in a city with such a large Asian demographic? David Oh should win one of the two minority vote seats for Republicans.

A lot of what’s wrong with City Council will be gone by the end of the year–Donna Reed Miller being, for those of us in the 8^th District, the worst offender. But has anyone from Council, any of the incoming candidates or those vying for the at-large seats ventured outside City Hall onto Dilworth Plaza to talk with the Occupy protesters?

Throughout my years in Philadelphia, city government has run at cross-purposes with the citizenry. Is there another city that has had as many City Council persons and state legislators come under indictment or actually end up in prison?

It’s easy to say Philadelphia is a corrupt town. It is and has been for generations. With each new administration and Council revamping we hope for a better city, a city more in tune with the needs of its citizens, a city less lining the pockets of the pay-to-players.

The people encamped at Dilworth Plaza are asking for exactly that: That our government and financial institutions, police departments and housing developers all work in concert for the people, rather than for themselves and their own agendas.

Is that an unformed, unfocused, undeliberated concept? I think not. I think that what Occupy Philly’s people are saying is that those who run the hierarchy of society are not meeting the needs of those within that society.

So how do we do it? Do the five million people who live in Philadelphia and environs make a run on City Hall? Do we walk by the protestors and drop off a few dollars or some medical supplies or some cans of food with a wink and a nod? Or do we just plod on and hope for the best?

I’d like to see that run on City Hall, myself, but that ain’t happening. In lieu of that I’d like to see Cheri Honkala grab that Sheriff’s seat with an activist’s vengeance. I’d like to see the Independent candidate for mayor, Wali Rahman, get a sizeable number of votes. I’d like to see some cages rattled and some teeth set on edge and some status quo unseated.

The Occupy Philly people say they are there for the duration. I’m not sure what that means–if it means the first really cold night, the first big snow, the approach of the holidays or if they will indeed still be there for next November’s election.

What I do know is that regardless of whether you think their presence is stupid or right on, unfocused or anarchistic, costing taxpayers money in police protection that is better spent elsewhere or worth every cent, the Occupy Philly people are a visible, physical reminder of what we aren’t getting from the men and women we elect–or let others elect while we sit home.

On Oct. 24^th Tunisians went out to vote in their first free election. They were the first nation to begin the wave of the Arab spring. The lines were endlessly long and people waited in them for hours. Ninety percent of the people voted.

If ninety percent of Philadelphians voted–ever–we would have a different ballot and a different city.

Occupy Philly isn’t the Arab spring, but we can be our own Arab spring. We just have to really want change more than we want the ease of the status quo.

We just really have to ask ourselves how much longer we are willing to accommodate and accept and ignore and concede. Or if we will at least make an effort with our votes on election day.

Oh and it had been full of trash. Maggoty trash, since it’s been over 90 degrees in Philadelphia for all but two days of July and is likely to be the hottest month ever recorded in our city. So whoever stole the trash can took all the trash out and tossed it over my walkway and front garden. Oh and peeled the numbers and letters of my address off and tossed them on the walkway as well.

As I said, not a big thing in the larger picture except that I am poor. I live at the poverty level. Last month I got a bill for oxygen–which, I remind everyone, is air–and now I have to pay to breathe because health care reform didn’t put any caps on premiums or costs because President Obama believes in bipartisanship and didn’t think that was important, but years of being a beat reporter and before that, a bartender and a waitress, and before that a child of chain smokers ruined my lungs with second-hand smoke.

So I can’t breathe and the cost of a new trash can–$25–could be put toward oxygen.

I’m thinking that this is what President Obama means when he talks about “shared sacrifice”–that I give up breathing so that some wealthy person can get a tax break. Because he’s a millionaire and Speaker of the House John Boehner is a millionaire (although unlike the President, Boehner grew up dirt poor and thus knows what poverty feels like, which his Ivy League leader does not, which makes his repetition of the “shared sacrifice” trope even more despicable and incomprehensible.)

Clearly the person who stole my trash can thought that it was about shared sacrifice, too. I sacrifice my new trash can to his crack habit.

It’s been a rough summer. I’m really sick which makes working extra hard and I really don’t have anything else to give. Not my oxygen and not my trash can.

But the President, for whom I voted, is devoted to one thing and one thing only: This concept of giving away what little the poor and working people have to those who are so rich they barely work or may not work at all, but who like himself have plenty of money and have everything they need or want.

I can’t share anymore. Not with the guys in Washington. They have everything I want and need–including trash cans and oxygen–and my taxes pay their hefty salaries. I have worked since I was 13 and have paid taxes and paid into Social Security and I think I should at least get the latter back when I reach the retirement age that was established when I started paying into that fund.

Bipartisanship seems to be more encoded language for shared sacrifice which is more encoded language for reinstituting a feudal system in which the poor pay the rich to stay rich while they, the poor, barely survive.

I can’t get my trash can back. I’ve already gotten a new one and hope it won’t be stolen. But I want the money that I paid into Social Security in good faith all these years of my working life. And I want the man I voted for and the Speaker who I did not vote for, but who was voted in by his millionaire cohort in the House to get what poverty really means. I especially want the Democratic president to school the Republican side of the aisle that he’s not going to roll back 70 years of New Deal safety nets that are all some people have between them and the streets. 

I want the Speaker, who has to remember what it felt like to sweep the floor of the local bar for quarters when he was a poor kid, to know that poverty today means we poor people  have to choose between the most mundane of things on a daily basis: oxygen or a trash can, food or the money it costs to get to work, living and just killing ourselves.

I think shared sacrifice is a good idea, actually. But I think it’s way past time the wealthy shared and those of us just barely getting by got to stop sacrificing long enough to take a deep breath.—VAB

But in Philadelphia, a mere 90 miles and an Amtrak ride away, marriage equality remains woefully out of reach. And President Obama’s disappointing statements in New York the night before the vote clarified that he intends to do nothing to facilitate marriage equality anywhere in the U.S. Unlike other presidents on civil rights issues, Obama thinks the states should decide. Which means Pennsylvania queers may never see equality.

Ironically for me, when the vote came in, I was in the hospital for the eighth time this year. As I was lying there, I remembered a column I wrote in 1994 as a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News. I had hand-written the column from my bed in the ICU, querying why, when I was so sick, I had to fight to have my partner with me because we weren’t–and couldn’t be–married.

Fast-forward 17 years and the NY vote later and there I was in a different hospital and the question remains the same. Why can’t I have equal rights with any straight person in Pennsylvania?

According to the President, queer civil rights is an “evolving” issue, whether it’s marriage, job discrimination or serving in the military (the very day the NY vote came in, soldiers were being discharged under DADT because until Obama signs the Congress’s repeal, it remains the law).

So what about those of us who might not have time for those like Obama with a loose grasp of how evolution tracks?

Over the years the marriage equality battle has raged, I have reported on the damage wreaked by marriage segregation. I’ve written about lesbians who have stolen their children from partners unable to prove legally that they really were partners. I’ve seen other queers lose their homes in bitter break ups for the same reasons–no legal protections. I’ve seen people kept from their sick and dying partners by doctors and hospitals and families of origin.

Marriage inequity doesn’t just deny us community approbation or the security of knowing our families and homes can’t be taken from us. We are denied the economy of marriage as well: tax benefits, family leave benefits, shared health benefits and ultimately, death and estate benefits.

I am battling serious illness. I spend just under $1,000 for my HMO every month. My partner pays half that for hers. If we were married, I would be covered as her wife. We would save $800 a month–nearly $10,000 a year. Our shared tax burden would also be significantly less. And we would be treated as a married couple–not as legal strangers.

Not being able to marry costs queers a lot both by keeping us from legalizing our commitments and from protecting us if those commitments sunder.

At present, Pennsylvania queers must engage in lengthy and expensive legal battles with former partners to acquire what marriage automatically protects. It’s an outrage and one more example of our continued second-class status.

We shouldn’t have to be community icons with 50 years together to be considered “real” couples, nor should we have to be in a hospital bed for people to get what marriage segregation means.

Happy as I am for my friends in New York, I wonder when will equality come to Pennsylvania where marriage segregation is the law, which makes every straight Pennsylvanian complicit in the second-class status of queers. Abrogating the civil rights of others is a crime when applied to race or religion. It should be a crime when applied to us as well.

It also costs a fortune. Health care costs are the major reason for bankruptcies in America today. And according to industry statistics, end-of-life health care costs account for more than half of all health care costs in the U.S.

When the health care debate began in earnest two years ago, President Obama chose to retreat from the discussion, a mistake that cost him the majority in the House in the Nov. 2010 election. By allowing the right to take charge of the discourse on health care, with the drumbeat of “death panels” and “rationing,” all Americans ended up with a health care reform bill that addressed almost none of the concerns most of us have. What’s more, it handed the health-care industry–which is hardly based on altruism–everything it wanted and more. No premium caps, no single-payer, no tort reform, no cost-benefit options.

Nearly all of the changes in the Health Care Reform Act don’t even go into effect until 2014. It was a payday for the industry but one more assault on the average American who will, sooner or later, be sick and/or dying.

For my father, that time came sooner rather than later and as with every sick and/or dying person in America who is not a billionaire or millionaire (like the President and every member of Congress) or who has a great health care plan for life like members of Congress, it was a very costly final illness.

In the past four months my father was hospitalized six times. Each time he was in intensive care. Each time he required blood transfusions, IV antibiotics, visits from infectious disease specialists, cardiologists and hematologists, as well as his own physician.

Because my father was in his 70s, his health care costs were covered by Medicare and Medicaid.

Every American worker pays into the coffers for Medicare and Medicaid. So it’s only fair that we get the benefit once we are old and sick. But why is it as costly as it is?

Last month I was treated in the ER for a breathing emergency. I was there for six hours. In that time I saw an actual physician for four minutes. I was on an IV with two drugs for several hours and I was given several nebulizer treatments by a nurse. Then I was sent home with the dictate to see my regular physician within 48 hours.

The cost: $17,000. In the ER. For four drugs, saline, and four minutes of physician care.

I have no idea how much my father’s week-long stays in ICU cost in Medicare and Medicaid dollars, but given my own HMO dollars, I am sure the sum was hefty. In the last four months of his life I have no doubt that the bills for my father’s various hospitalizations were $200,000 or more. Consider how many Americans over 65 are in similar circumstances and the costs are exponential.

Watching someone die makes you very aware of your own impending mortality. It also makes you aware of what works and what doesn’t in the health care system.

There’s not a lot that works and yet it’s all costly. What’s more, there is a great deal of treatment being given that the end of life that is meaningless: It’s can’t save the patient and often prolongs suffering, but it makes family members and doctors feel as if something is being done.

Is that really what we should be doing?

In most big city hospitals, the nurse to patient ratio is well below what it should be for optimal patient care. The concept of hourly rounding has been established at most hospitals, but is almost impossible to implement. I have been told by nurses giving medication at 10:30 that “this counts as the 8:30 medication.”

Two hours late is not hourly.

When it comes to end of life care, the amount of nursing time required is exponentially greater. Does that mean that younger patients with better outcomes are being short-changed?

After watching both my parents be “saved” by doctors who felt the need to do something rather than nothing (and also protect themselves against potential lawsuits), it seems that hospice care is woefully under-utilized. Patients’ families are not told the truth about their loved ones’ actual prognoses and what all this treatment means in terms of actual extension of life.

For example, while medically speaking a dying patient’s pneumonia can be cured, it doesn’t mean that she/he will actually survive the treatment or get “better.” Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is to not treat someone who is already at the end of life and allow them to die peacefully, rather than continue to treat with drugs that impact the quality of life without actually extending life.

As clients of the health care industry, we all, regardless of our ages, need to start taking responsibility for the truth about our own health and that of those we love. Sometimes people can’t be saved or they can survive, but with such a diminished quality of life that death would be preferable. Technological advances in health care have made lots of things possible, but they haven’t always caught up to the actual issue of how we want to live and just as importantly, how we want to die.

Most of us should not die in the hospital–that’s for people who have had traumatic injury and can’t be moved to hospice care. But the rest of us should die at home, surrounded by and at peace with the surroundings that give us comfort. Those last days in a hospital don’t just cost in terms of health care dollars, they cost in terms of a peaceful death. Hospitals are loud, too bright, smell antiseptic. Despite the plethora of medical staff on hand, they rarely make us feel “safe” or comforted.

The health care debate needs re-framing on many levels, but the most defining is end of life. More than half of all health care dollars go into end of life care. But if we were all willing to accept that death is inevitable and that coming to terms with death and having a comfortable death were primary issues, then we could make hospice care pre-eminent for the last six months of life. That wouldn’t just save billions, it would also facilitate better dying for almost everyone.

None of us wants to die or watch our loved ones die. But there are good deaths and bad deaths and the current system supports doing something at all costs–literally. That isn’t the way any of us wants to die and it’s costing us more than we realize.

Early endorsements are always dicey, but early endorsements of incumbents who have done little for constituents are a mistake.

I voted for Barack Obama in 2008, despite having reservations about his centrist record. But if the election were held today, I could not, in good conscience, cast another vote for President Obama. Voting for or endorsing 2011′s Obama would be a vote/endorsement for continuation of three wars and incursions into Pakistan and Yemen, torture, extraordinary rendition, civil liberties curtailment, corporate greed, environmental irresponsibility. It would be endorsement of an administration that has proven time and again that it is anti-populist, anti-poor, anti-woman and anti-queer and which feels more Republican than Democratic.

As a life-long leftist progressive, there’s no way I can support these things.

Segal calls Obama a friend to the queer community–although with no basis for comparison–and cites Gavin Newsom and Elizabeth Birch as supporters. But in the real-world queer community, outside the community of elites, disappointment with Obama is huge as the November 2010 elections proved. Newsom, a straight politician in San Francisco and Birch, a centrist capitulator, are names average queers could not care less about.

As a life-long activist, I have serious concerns about Obama’s credibility as a candidate. I would ask Segal and any other queer–or straight–American: Why does Obama deserve a second term?

Here’s why he shouldn’t. He has reneged on nearly every campaign promise he made as candidate Obama. He calls himself a fierce advocate for queers, but the only consistent advocacy during his administration has been capitulation to Republican thuggery and corporate fraud. The recent budget disaster is an indicator of Obama’s lack of leadership. The budget was due in September–when the Democrats still held a wide majority in Congress in addition to the White House. Obama was nowhere to be found. Now we have what the Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid called “Draconian cuts” to the poor and working Americans–ten percent of whom are queer.

Under Obama’s tenure military rape has escalated as a study last week noted. Rapes of lesbians and straight women in the military have gone unremarked by Obama.

Also unremarked is the detention–which Amnesty International has referred to as torture–of Bradley Manning, the gay soldier alleged to have provided Wikileaks with thousands of documents. Manning is being held in solitary confinement and must spend 12 hours a day nude. Obama said simply, “The Pentagon says there’s no problem.”

Seriously?

DADT is actually still in effect, despite the January recision of it and its implementation remains at the discretion of the President and will continue until 60 days after Obama declares it’s “safe” for the straight military to cope with queer soldiers and Marines. DOMA is still the law.

These are only a few in a long list of concerns about Obama. Telling Obama now that the slate is clean and he’s our guy is no way to get what we need and want as both queers and Americans. Obama must be held accountable; endorsements 20 months before the election are rewards for a job not done.

I myself am working with other progressives to get a real Democrat running for 2012. Russ Feingold–a long-time real friend to the LGBTQ community–is the name being floated most often.

The queer community as well as the rest of real America needs a President who is working for us, not for himself. We do not yet have that in Obama.—VAB

According to the Republicans, their raison d’etre and the alleged mandate from the electorate after the November 2010 election is overturning health care reform.

Only problem: There is no health care reform. The most important elements were a public option, a premium cap and a mandate for everyone to have health insurance. Not one of those vital elements was part of the final health care reform package. The Democrats–despite having had a majority in Congress and the White House when health care reform was in play–capitulated at every turn with the end result being no public option, no premium caps and no mandate.

Instead, health care reform devolved into an handful of changes that don’t even go into effect until 2014 and 2015, respectively. In the interim, there are still 52 million Americans who are uninsured or under-insured. Throughout the country health care premiums are doubling and tripling, which will eventually mean even more uninsured, not fewer.

One of the major tenets of health care reform was supposed to be a clause the disallowed health insurers from refusing to insure people with pre-existing conditions. Except that clause doesn’t go into effect until December 2014–a full two years after the next election and more than three and a half years from now.

This gap allows health insurance companies free rein to raise premiums, cut or refuse insurance to people with pre-existing conditions and make myraid changes in health care plans altering coverage.

And how many Americans even know that health care reform is in the future, not already in effect?

In January, my health insurance premium went up as it has every year for the past 11 years. I have a standard HMO from one of the nation’s two largest insurers. I do not have dental or eye, but I do have a prescription plan which raises my premium. I pay more than $1,000 a month–a month–for the HMO.

In December 2010, my co-pay to see my primary care physician or any other doctor in the system was $5. I had no co-pay for X-rays, a $35 co-pay for a trip to the ER and a $5 co-pay for my prescriptions.

No more. It seems that in addition to raising my premium in January, my insurer also raised the rates for everything else–even though the higher premium is supposed to cover those things.

I found out about these hidden increases the hard way: By having to pay. In February, I received a call from my insurer telling me that I was late paying my bill. I explained that I simply hadn’t had enough money to pay for it yet and was there a way I could pay less.

I was told there was a far lower rate–I just had to have a thorough phyiscal to make sure I had no pre-existing conditions. I said that wasn’t legal anymore since health care reform and was told that didn’t go into effect for several more years: December 2014.

Then there were those hidden fees. At the doctor’s office the co-pay was now $20. Then yesterday I went to pick up one of my heart medications at the drugstore only to find that I could only get 30 pills at a time instead of 90. In December, I paid $15 for those 90 pills. Yesterday I paid $35 for 30.

I stood at the prescription window arguing with the pharmacy assistant who called the insurer. The change had been made in January. I just never knew about it.

Between January and now, I have spent more than $1,000 in these hidden fees added to my already raised premium.

I know I am not alone in this. Nationwide the increase in premiums has been as much as 60 percent in some states, like California and New Jersey. Meanwhile, how many hidden fees have been added to each plan? 

A totally non-scientific polling of close friends and family found that more than two-thirds had had an exponential increase in both their premiums and those hidden fees.

So for all those congressional Democrats out there crowing about health care reform—you have a lot of nerve, given your own stellar health care coverage paid for by me and other Americans. And for those Republicans still whining about health care reform–read the bill. Nothing’s happened yet.

Both parties should remember this: November 2012 is an election for everyone. And for those of us who will have paid thousands of extra dollars in the interim, or have lost our health insurance or still been unable to get it due to the fact that health care reform isn’t, do remember: We vote. —VAB

Tonight she proclaimed that President Obama had delivered a “smackdown” to GOP governors by moving up the date of the health care reform opt-out to 2014. This, she proclaimed, meant that health care reform was off the table for the 2012 election and thus no Republican governor could challenge Obama on that issue in the election.

Huh? This is still missing the point entirely, alas. But then I find the Obama apologists not much different from the Bush apologists. Except it’s always more disappointing to see people we like and admire so taken in so easily. 

Republicans don’t need to make health care reform an issue for 2012. They made it an issue for 2010 while Obama literally went on vacation and let the Republicans control the entire debate and run the table. Then he topped it off by ignoring the economy and as a consequence Republicans won overwhelmingly. 

That was a smackdown. 

All the problems we have now with the Republicans are a direct result of Obama not saying any of this in April 2009 when it mattered. When it could have made a difference. When it could have saved actual lives, since this isn’t just a little blogosphere debate between the bad Republicans and the heroic President. Yeah, Obama sure put the smackdown on them. Two years too late. Meanwhile health care reform–such as it is–will likely be dismantled by the Republican controlled  and Democratic ignored Congress by the time the election rolls around. Starting with women’s reproductive rights about which Obama has said not one word and about which Harry Reid has said not one word and about which Nancy Pelosi has only talked to her choir on the center left blogosphere.

And about which our Rachel has not held Obama responsible for one minute like he’s only the president when we like what he does but we don’t need to hold him accountable for inaction. If only all these people would apply the same standard to Obama that they did to Bush, we might get an actual Democrat as a challenger for 2012. If only.

I’m trying to become resigned to another term of Obama. But I certainly do not have to be gleeful about it like Maddow was tonight. Because some of us have memory and Obama sure didn’t smackdown the Republicans on tax cuts for the wealthy or on the budget he signed today. Somehow it’s difficult for me to see how cutting $2.5 billion in LIHEAP grants to the poor is a smackdown to the Republicans. 

It’s time to stop looking for the silver lining and tell it like it is. Which is nowhere near a smackdown to any Republican by our Republican-lite president.—VAB