To them ghosts that write history books
To them ghosts that write songs
Everyone asks would you write one about me
To complete my little US health care hat-trick here, a link to a op-ed piece from the New York Times, by Barack Obama himself*:Anybody volunteer to spray this on every house wall?This is what reform is about. If you don’t have health insurance, you will finally have quality, affordable options once we pass reform. If you have health insurance, we will make sure that no insurance company or government bureaucrat gets between you and the care you need. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. You will not be waiting in any lines. This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance. I don’t believe anyone should be in charge of your health care decisions but you and your doctor — not government bureaucrats, not insurance companies.
The long and vigorous debate about health care that’s been taking place over the past few months is a good thing. It’s what America’s all about.
But let’s make sure that we talk with one another, and not over one another. We are bound to disagree, but let’s disagree over issues that are real, and not wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that anyone has actually proposed. This is a complicated and critical issue, and it deserves a serious debate.
33% - percentage of people who are worried they could lose their health insurance in the next 12 months
11% - percentage of people currently not covered by any form of health insurance or health-care plan
to the east, to the east/
the road beneath my feet
to the west, to the west/
I havent got there yet
and to the north, to the north/
never to be caught
to the south, to the south/
my time is running out
"I think Andy Warhol got it wrong: in the future, so many people are going to become famous that one day everybody will end up being anonymous for 15 minutes."Banksy in an interview with Shepard Fairey. (via.)
A good, nay, great article by Jimmy Carter has made it's rounds through the blogosphere the last couple of day, either on the Guardian's platform or on Australian website the-age.com It's a worthy read; Carter explains why he severed his ties with the denomination - based on the treatment of women, - and he also comments on why non-retired Presidents seldom dare to open the padora's box of status of women in traditional religious circles.Jimmy Carter, a third-generation Southern Baptist and the first United States president to call himself a born-again Christian, has reached what he calls ''a painful decision'' to sever ties to the Southern Baptist Convention, saying that parts of its ''increasingly rigid'' doctrines violate the ''basic premises of my Christian faith.''
Mr. Carter's decision, announced on Thursday in a letter that is being mailed this week to 75,000 Baptists nationwide, comes four months after the Southern Baptist Convention, the country's largest Protestant denomination, declared its opposition to women as pastors.
There are plenty of men still in Lowell (I know some of them) who are working class guys who dig Kerouac's books and can read from them with his accent and intonations. I'd rather have heard that.
