Idol Chatter

We all make mistakes.

Funny thing about this unfortunate incident is that when initially confronted by a reporter on the Henry Gates Jr. incident, President Obama was correct in starting out with a comment that he wasn’t there. And had he just left it at that, the rest of the story would not have happened. Unfortunately he did render his opinion and that touched off some real strong feelings. Moreover, the policeman involved has a totally different perspective on the story which when you hear it, makes a fair amount of sense.

So who is right? I don’t know – I wasn’t there!

AP – Trying to tamp down an uproar over race, President Barack Obama said Friday he used an unfortunate choice of words in commenting on the arrest of black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and could have “calibrated those words differently.”

OK don’t shoot me here because I didn’t tape President Obama’s speech last night so I’m writing on memory but I think I’m pretty close on what our President stated in regards to healthcare.  Some of the President’s positioning and arguments seemed far from logical to me.  Here are just two examples:

When asked by a reporter why he was pushing so hard for a bill before the August recess, our President responded by informing the reporter that healthcare costs had doubled in the last ten years which outpaced the average pay increases.  Now I’m not disputing this but I felt it was kind of odd.  Odd because just because healthcare costs doubled in 10 years hardly seems a just cause to push for a bill on what is a very complicated subject in a matter of weeks.  And I also felt that while a doubling of healthcare costs sounds pretty scary, a doubling in 10 years translates to just an 8% inflation rate. 

Sure we’d like to see that decline but college tuition rates have been running just about as high according to http://www.finaid.org/savings/tuition-inflation.phtml which reports an 8% average inflation rate.  High tuition rates are shutting out many of our youth from attaining higher education and those who do leverage up with loans to make it through come out of college with a staggering amount of debt.  My point here is that sure we have issues to deal with to make our dear country the best it can be but healthcare is not our only problem.

The second comment that really caught my eye was when Obama inferred that doctors choose which care to give based on reimbursement.  I find that an insult to all the hard working physicians out there that provide the very best treatment they can.  And beyond that, the President only provided a vague argument about why his plan would force doctors to select the best treatment for a patient over the most lucrative one.

And this plan still hasn’t had it’s funding fully identified.  While the President cited a potential tax on those making over a million in income each year, I find it hard to believe that there are enough $1 million+ pre-tax income individuals out there to cover the huge gap.  I also heard, for the first time, the President say that he wanted to keep tax increases to fund this ‘primarily’ on the well to do.  It sounded like he was opening the door to taxing folks most of us would label ‘middle class’ – just a little.

We all need to research the bill emerging from the house.  If we have objections, we need to raise them with our congressmen and senators.  Don’t complain to your family and friends, complain to those who vote on the bill.

Now more than a week out from the day he passed away, the media is set to spend the entire day commemorating Mr. Jackson and covering the memorial service at the Staples center in LA.  Now I’m not suggesting that Michael in his heyday was anything short of spectacular in his artistic genius.  But that was back in the 80’s.  By the early 90’s there were issues with an alledged child molestation case settled out of court.  His appearance started to change to the bizare and his behaviour was at best described as weird.

Another alledged child molestation case and out of control spending led Mr. Jackson to close Neverland Ranch several years ago.

Mr. Jackson seemed to be a tortured genius and some of his contributions to the world of music certainly need to be acknowledged.  But a week and a half later, I grow weary of hearing more speculation on the man’s death.  I grow weary of what has been a rather one sided presentation of his life (most of the weirdness has been under reported).

Please let the man rest in peace and the rest of us move on to more productive issues.