Today I cried while sitting in front of the TV. Some commercial played a clip of Ronald Regan saying, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" and the tears just poured down my face. Look what's happened to our country since then: crushing debt, vast unfunded entitlement programs, a lingering recession and a wobbling, jobless recovery, an juvenile President who has thrown honesty and honor to the side in pursuit of one of the worst bills ever to pass through Congress simply to prop up his wavering Presidency and a Congress riddled with vice, greed, lies, sexual misbehavior and that appears set on passing a bill into law without a vote, in blatant disregard to our Constitution.
I have spent the last couple of days feeling just incredible outrage. It is entirely possible to reform health care without this bill. Every time I hear a Democrat saying some version of "The debate is over, it's time to cast a vote for health care or for the American people," I want to throw something at the TV. Preferably a rotten egg.
The debate never even frickin' started. There were no market based solutions considered. There was no upfront talk about what actually causes the high price of health care, about the distinctions between health care reform and health insurance reform, or why we purchase our insurance from employers and how that impacts price and how separate states have state mandated coverage and how that impacts price.
There was no debate. There was fear mongering, there was impassioned speeches, there was number twisting, there was shifting focus from various imagined evils, first doctors and then insurance companies. There were closed door deals right out the gate, when the President himself cut a deal with Big Pharma.
It stinks. The whole thing stinks on ice. When and if this passes, for the first time the United States of America will force Americans to purchase something as a prerequisite for citizenship. How is that compatible with a Republic?
They will expand the IRS to keep up with the new amount of paperwork necessary to penalize us for not purchases insurance. There will be a vast expansion of bureaucracy, there will be years of regulation writing, there will be increased taxes, there will be endless haggling over financing, there will be waste and fraud.
I keep wanting to end this on a positive note so I can go on and talk about other things, but I just can't seem to. The only thing good I can think of is that the country is actually turning away from this progressive path. I hope that despite the addictive qualities of entitlement programs, the growing awareness of the cost both in personal liberties and in economic growth will continue to sway the American people away from this course and back to a more traditional, American way of governing.
I think that the November elections will be the first indication of this movement. Also, we are simply reaching a point where we must reform the entitlement programs or face economic ruin. There's no more leisure to push the consequences off until another day.
Sadly, the other thing I want to talk about is also annoying the crap out of me and that would be sewing. It's also probably equally boring to read about; my apologies.
So. Yesterday, after ripping out the shoulder straps a total of four times and the entire upper bodice seam twice, I gave up and called it a night. Over night I had an epiphany which allowed me to finally put together the entire bodice and shoulder straps this afternoon.
Shortly thereafter, I entered into a very confusing discussion about under stitching with Mom. Hours later and after some serious mutual googling for diagrams, light dawned over marble head and I went ahead and stitched the seams to the lining of the bodice from the inside.
Now I realize that I should have cut out the lining for the midriff pieces as well, from my dwindling supply of left over fabric scraps. Great.
I knew sewing a dress would be vastly different from sewing pillows and curtains, but seriously. It's no wonder clothes cost a lot. And Project Runway? That show now blows my mind.
