A Few Christmas Thoughts

It's that time of year. A time for all of us to come together in peace and good will and express our love for each other and all of humanity. In that regard, here are a few Christmas (not "Holiday," CHRISTMAS) thoughts I'd like to share:


Do They Know It's Healthcare After All? I've been watching this health care debate for months, through the Great Teabagger Debates, through the name-calling across both sides of the aisle, through the political wranglings with the Olympia Snowes, the Joe Liebermans, the Ben Nelsons, through the lying, hyperbolic Party of No's ("PON") talking heads, the Palins, the McCains, the McConnells, decrying the Death Panels, abortion subsidies, and profligate spending in what they have deemed "Obamacare." I've seen that $260 million insurance company lobby money in action, opposing any change to the status quo that is bankrupting this country. I watched it all. And now, here we are, on the cusp of a Senate bill that is something like 2000 pages long, that no Republican deigned to vote for, a bill that still needs to be combined with a House bill that has some fundamental differences, and which won't take effect until 2014 at the earliest.

Where do I come down on this leviathan, this laughably watered down version of what I originally wanted for this country, this bill that was written in substantial part by the insurance companies and their lobbies? I'm for it. I wanted a public option. Nay, I actually wanted a single payer system with a private option. I think health care is a right, not a privilege. I feel that health care is a fundamental benchmark by which any country should be judged. I also don't feel it should be driven by a profit motive. That's just my philosophy. The United States pays more for its health care on average than any country in the world. It is ranked 37th in the world in quality of health care. It also has a shorter life expectancy than many countries who spend far less. It has 40 million people who are not insured. There's something fundamentally wrong with that.

I wanted a lot of things. I wanted caps on what insurance companies could charge to customers. I wanted checks on hospital expenses and unnecessary tests. Yes, I could have gone for some tort reform as well. The Senate health care reform bill, passed only by Democrats, addresses some of these problems, too few, in my opinion. But it's better than nothing. It's better than the status quo. It's better than the Big Zero we got from Republicans who held power for eight years after they obliterated Bill Clinton's attempt to pass health care reform in 1995. They did absolutely nothing on this issue. Zero. And now they're pissing all over the first attempt at major transformative legislation that we've had in this country in decades. The PONs nauseate me, I'm not going to lie. Talk about not putting the country first, they wrote the book. And I'd throw plenty of Democrats in there with them. That's why we got the bill we got instead of the bill we should have had. It's not easy to get the 60 votes that were needed to overcome a Republican filibuster. In fact, it's nearly impossible. That's why they're trying to jam this thing through so fast, before the numbers change and the PONs prevent any change from happening at all.

We're going to hear a lot in the coming months about how Democrats "own" this bill; how it costs too much money; how it contains x or y or z provision, which is going to sound ridiculous to a lot of people. Most of that criticism is going to come from the PONs, who have something like a 17% approval rating, and whose sole ambition is to regain power and prevent Obama from declaring any form of victory on any front, save Afghanistan. My response to them will be a series of questions: "What were you proposing?" "What did you do to help pass a better bill?" "What compromises did you propose to the Democrats?" "What were you willing to accept from the other side?" And when it comes to money, how much this thing is going to cost, I will ask: "How much did the drug bill you passed under Bush cost the country?" "How much did the Iraq War add to the deficit?" "Was that money well spent?"

The fact that we're remotely close to health care reform in this country is a remarkable feat in itself, given our decades of failure on this issue. And I'm a pragmatist at heart. I don't love what will eventually pass, I don't know every single detail of the Senate bill -- no one does -- but one thing is certain: it contains provisions that improve on the status quo, which is untenable by any measure. No more denials for pre-existing conditions. National competition among private insurers, which should lower costs for all of us. Tax breaks for small businesses to make health care more affordable for them to provide. 31 million previously uninsured will now have the chance to have health care. That's something. It's better than what we have now.

Do You Hear What I Hear? Deer Tick: Born on Flag Day. Buy it. A few song recommendations on the album: Friday XIII, Easy, and Houston, TX. If you like gravelly-voiced singers with a little country edge, you'll like these guys. It's good for long drives or subway rides, as the case may be.

Another choice: Edward Sharpe and the Magnificent Zeros. Songs: "Home," "Janglin', and "Come in Please."

Silent Night, Holy Night. If you ever want to feel like you're in your own music video, strap on a pair of sound-free Bose headphones, the kind that go on your ears, not in them, plug them into your musical device of choice, hit play on your favorite song, and start walking the streets of New York City. I'm telling you, it's just like being in your own video. I'm not saying it's completely safe -- it helps to be able to hear things around you when you're walking in New York, particularly in intersections and on subways -- but it's worth trying, even for a few minutes.

Blue Christmas. How bad do you think Christmas is going to be for Tiger Woods this year? Damn, talk about a self-implosion. How do you chase that kind of poon (and a skanky category of poon it is!) for that long, that publicly, and not expect to get caught? Why do people that famous, who have that kind of sexual appetite bother getting married at all? Personally, I hate golf and could never understand the masturbatory fawning over Tiger Woods at all.

HE'S A FUCKING GOLFER! GOLFERS ARE NO MORE ATHLETIC THAN PEOPLE WHO SHOOT POOL OR THROW HORSESHOES. MINNESOTA FATS WAS A LEGENDARY POOL PLAYER. GOLF IS A SKILL, NOT A SPORT. GOLFERS ARE SKILLED GAMEPLAYERS, NOT ATHLETES.

Where was I? Oh yes, Christmas spirit. Tiger Woods. As disinterested as I am in his profession and public persona, I'm very interested in the Shakespearean tragedy of his classic fall from grace. It is epic. Watching commercial sponsors like Accenture (a company with its own history of public fuckups, see, e.g., Arthur Andersen, its former incarnation), who previously elevated this talented GOLFER to regal heights, now scurry away from him like cockroaches tasting the first scent of a can of RAID, has been hilarious. Tag Heuer - gone. I think only Nike is standing by him. I like that. Nikes don't fit me very well -- my feet are too wide so I tend to go with New Balance -- but I admire Nike's loyalty. That takes guts. It will be interesting to see where Tiger ends up now. Like Dennis Rodman said on Larry King last night (yes, we've sunk that far -- Dennis Rodman is now the voice of reason on shit like this), Americans like redemption. They like to give second and third chances to people. Hell, this country was FOUNDED on second chances! The Puritans, who were kicked out of England and helped colonize this country, were the embodiment of the Second Chance. We even gave a second chance to the American Indians we massacred and displaced. We stuck them in reservations where they'd have a chance to prosper by building casinos where Americans down on their luck could have, you guessed it, a second chance, by putting it all on red at the Roulette table.

Rodman thinks Tiger will come back stronger than ever. I tend to agree. Probably a few more Blue Christmases for him in the near future though. As for his beautiful wife, Elin? The future for her is so bright, she's got to wear shades. She's going to cash in on a divorce settlement and will be rich for the rest of her life. From what I've read, she's very smart. Her decision to leave this troubled guy (and swing a mean golf club in the process) certainly speaks volumes about her integrity and class. She's gorgeous and will have more than her share of wealthy and eligible suitors. Once the emotional pain and embarrassment of this debacle wear off, she's going to come out in the pole position on all of this. (No pun intended. Okay, actually it was.) Maybe she'll go on Oprah, write a book, et al.

And what of the Skanky Hoors Tiger passed the time with? Who gives a fuck? Those glorified escorts have gotten enough press already. Enjoy the 15 minutes. I'm not going to give them more air time in this obscure blog of mine.

White Christmas. Since I've resigned myself to the fact that the Earth will eventually go the way of Mars climate-wise and the human race is too selfish and shortsighted to do anything about it, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. I only want to address a single point. People who STILL claim that there is no global warming going on, in the face of an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence to the contrary, point to every stupid snowstorm or cold snap as irrefutable proof that our climate is operating the same as it ever did. What these idiots fail to understand is that extreme changes in weather, including snow and cold, are a part of the overall change in climate that has become more pronounced in the past fifty years. Overall the planet is warming at an alarming rate. That is measurable and undeniable. In the process, we're having more extreme weather changes than in recent history. As a kid growing up four hours north of New York City, I never remember having to wait until nearly January for the first snowstorm. We just got ours in New York yesterday, December 19th. It was so warm some days in November, it felt like California. I also don't remember the transition seasons being so similar. Spring and fall now are almost the same. The only thing that's different is the color of the leaves on the trees.

So to hear fools like Senator Inhofe exclaim that everything is operating normally is not only wrong, it's unconscionable. The right wing likes to gnash its teeth over how the left is mortgaging our children's future by spending all this money on health care and TARP. Why don't they apply this same mentality to the environment? A huge fucking deficit and a national bankruptcy in 2140 won't matter a damn if we have a desert in Iowa and the East and West Sides of New York City are flooded with water. Speaking of water, if you think the wars we're fighting over oil today are bad, I'd hate to be a soldier fighting the Great Water War of 2180. Water is tomorrow's oil. And unlike oil, human beings need water to survive.

If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I hope I'm reborn on an alien planet with beings who bear a more selfless, intelligent view of the good of ALL of their kind. Human beings? Earth? They've got a short shelf life. I really don't want to come back here, eat sand for dinner, and starve to death before I'm five years old.

Wonderful Christmastime. Let's try to end this on a good note, shall we? As I've gotten older, the more I've come to realize that Christmas is more about family than anything else. It used to be about the prezzies. Not anymore. This year my family made the decision -- and a wise one I think -- to buy Christmas presents for my nephew and nieces rather than each other. As our family has grown, Christmas had become more stressful, unwieldy and expensive. This decision took the pressure off of all of us, at a time when we all have less money to spend. And it's brought us back to the real purpose of Christmas, expressing love for each other and spending time together.

The thing I'm looking most forward to this Christmas is some quality time with my nephew and nieces, my significant other (our first X-mas together :) ), my parents, my sisters, and brothers in law. I'll enjoy seeing the kids open what I got them. And I'll enjoy experiencing another Christmas with my parents. My grandmother's death reminded me that we are all getting older. There are only so many Christmases left for us to enjoy in good health, with all of us here. My father and mother will not live forever, and there will come a time, hopefully in the distant future but who really knows, when my father's Alzheimers progresses to the point where he becomes so changed that the version of him we are experiencing is a pale comparison to the man we always knew. That time has not yet come, but it will, sadly.

One thing I love about photography is that it is one of the only ways we can capture a moment in time in this life. A picture freezes time. It takes us back to a moment in our past, a feeling, a place. By looking at a picture, we're able to taste it again, albeit in a less intense way.

That's all I want this Christmas. To freeze time, if only for a day or two. To share memories of Christmases past and make new ones with my family. To share my love with them and let them know how I feel about all of them. That's enough for me. That's all I need. It's all I want.

So... to all of my readers, who have stuck by this blog in the face of more intermittent entries, where I sometimes go weeks without an entry due to work and other commitments, I want to thank you for your loyalty, for continuing to read and exchange your thoughts with me. My sincere best wishes to all of you and to your families for a safe and Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year in 2010.

T.