Take This Bill and Shove It

According to a front page article in today's Washington Post (read the full article by clicking on the title above), "After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate's health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it."

Well, yes, of course, because the Democrats are not sure they have the votes to pass the Senate bill, such is the strident opposition to it by Republicans both in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

And the American public supposedly doesn't want the bill because they have been soured on it by critics who say it is too expensive or would jeopardize what benefits they do have. Or else, the more extreme accusations, because President Obama and his Democratic cronies want "to pull the plug on Grandma" or bring Socialist medicine to the United States, the nation that the deluded think has "the best health care system in the world" -- indeed, friends, it is the best system in the world, . . . er, if you can afford it. You can have all the latest tests and procedures. Save up, Americans! Keep playing the numbers! Pray to your fuzzy dice.

How Ridiculous!!!! Of course all Americans want Good Health Care!!!!!! And Health Care Reform, if Americans did but know it, would be Good for them. Swallow that medicine, America. We all know medicine can taste nasty. But it makes you better. . . in the end.

My friends, isn't it more likely that the citizenry have been brainwashed and misled by the vested interests and fat cats who love their health care and don't care for the rest of us who can't afford health care???? And people who have been denied by insurance companies because of "pre-existing conditions" as the industry notoriously does. Oh, dear. Will President Obama and his allies be able to deliver health care or not? Aaaaargh. Stay tuned.



All for Oil and Allah

Jihad Jane and G.I. Joe got on down, created
a clutch of blue-eyed G.I.-Jihad terrorists,

a mixture we found both unexpected and unsettling.
What happened to racial profiling: the filthy Arab,

the raghead, the stereotypical Jihadist?
Don't tell us you're right here among us,

in suicide vests, ready to detonate
as we kiss each other's cheeks.

Christopher T. George


























Homage to Holy Frijoles

I'm in Hampden* to pick up our fajitas
because Holy Frijoles won't deliver,
they’re one of those go-to-places for
burritos, chimichangas, refried beans.

I'm waiting for them to finalize the order,
wonder if I should chug a beer at the bar,
a cool Dos Equis, Corona with wedge of lime
but instead I skulk around back with my cell-

phone camera, still with your ABBA CD ringing
in my ears (SOS!) that I heard on the drive over:
imagine I'm decked in turquoise spandex
and platform boots as I photograph detritus

left from the snow -- a crushed Bud can, myriad
cigarette butts and some mysterious eye graffiti
by the sign where the bank threatens to tow my car.
Finally, stroll back down the side of Frijoles, snap

the pictographs on the wall of the Aztecs
who used to populate Hampden centuries ago.

Christopher T. George

* Hampden is a working class area of Baltimore, maybe a bit akin to Wavertree in Liverpool, to characterize it for my Merseyside and British friends and other readers of this blog. The area has recently become yuppified with trendy restaurants, clothing boutiques, antique stores.

The neighborhood is a favorite place of movie maker and schlockmeister John Waters. He and I live about the same distance from the place. Johnny boy and his artsy thin moustache live just up the street from Donna and myself in an old carriage house. That's envy speaking.

But we can be the poor Waters neighbors. After all Donna put those two plastic purple flamingoes out on our balcony. :-)