Diary
This was a roller coaster. I am sure there will be lawsuits challenging the bill, but it looks like that America is becoming a modern country when it comes to providing health care. Watch this short video summary of the past 48 hours. Obama delivered in the end. NY Times 3 min Video on the Battle to ComeHistoric Health Care Bill passes after 48 Hours of Drama
Diary
After watching the film “Atonement”, the name “Ian McEwan” is burned into my mind. His recent story in the New Yorker starts out very strong and was a pleasure to read. It surprised no one to learn that Michael Beard had been an only child, and he would have been the first to concede that he’d never quite got the hang of brotherly feeling. His mother, Angela, was an angular beauty who doted on him, and the medium of her love was food. She bottle-fed him with passion, surplus to demand. Some four decades before he won the Nobel Prize in Physics, he came top in the Cold Norton and District Baby Competition, birth-to-six-months class.Fiction: The Use of Poetry
Diary
DAVID BROOKS (NY Times) responds the last week’s column by Frank Rich and explains why it is so difficult for Obama to create on overarching narrative. The poltical odds seem to have changed. Right now the money is on health care passing. Who is Barack Obama?Getting Obama Right
If you ask a conservative Republican, you are likely to hear that Obama is a skilled politician who campaigned as a centrist but is governing as a big-government liberal. He plays by ruthless, Chicago politics rules. He is arrogant toward foes, condescending toward allies and runs a partisan political machine.
Diary
The money in Washington is on Health Care legislation not passing this year. FRANK RICH is hedging his bets on this issue. But he articulates forcefully that Obama needs to create an overarching narrative before it is too late for his presidency. WEDNESDAY’S health care rally was one of President Obama’s finest hours. It was so fine it couldn’t be blighted even by his preposterous backdrop, a cohort of white-jacketed medical workers large enough to staff a hospital in one of the daytime soaps that refused to be pre-empted by the White House show.The Up-or-Down Vote on Obama’s Presidency
Obama’s urgent script didn’t need such cheesy theatrics. At last he took ownership of what he called “my proposal,” stating concisely three concrete ways the bill would improve America’s broken health care system. At last he pushed for a majority-rule, up-or-down vote in Congress. At last he conceded that bipartisan agreement between two parties with “honest and substantial differences” on fundamental principles wasn’t happening. At last he mobilized his rhetoric against a villain everyone could hiss—insurance companies. In a brief address, he mentioned these malefactors of great greed 13 times.
Diary, Curious News
David Brooks reports an amazing Nordic Tale that I want to see made into a movie. The Hard and the Soft (NY Times) The United States, a nation of 300 million, won nine gold medals this year in the Winter Olympics. Norway, a nation of 4.7 million, also won nine. This was no anomaly. Over the years, Norwegians have won more gold medals in Winter Games, and more Winter Olympics medals over all, than people from any other nation.An Amazing Nordic Tale
Diary
by Mary Dow Brine The woman was old and ragged and graySomebody’s Mother
And bent with the chill of the Winter’s day.
The street was wet with a recent snow
And the woman’s feet were aged and slow.
She stood at the crossing and waited long,
Alone, uncared for, amid the throng
Of human beings who passed her by
Nor heeded the glance of her anxious eye.
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