CALLING ON GOD

I was not in favor of Obama's health insurance bill that passed the Senate last night. I don't like the idea of being forced to have to buy a insurance policy from the big corporations if I don't want to. I have always supported a single-payer health care program. For me there is nothing better.

I've been to Cuba three times and have seen their health care system. In the perfect metaphor, Cuba's primary teaching hospital in Havana is inside what was once to be the biggest bank in Cuba where the Mafia was going to put its drug and gambling money. In our country today the Mafia is the corporate powers that are bleeding us dry.

With all that said I found a story in the Washington Post this morning that struck me. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) was the last vote to put the Dems over the top with 60 votes in favor of the bill. He has been quite ill and obviously it was not an easy task for him to get to the Senate when they have just had a snow storm dump two feet of snow on Washington.

As it turns out the Post reported: At 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon -- nine hours before the 1 a.m. vote that would effectively clinch the legislation's passage -- Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) went to the Senate floor to propose a prayer. "What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can't make the vote tonight," he said. "That's what they ought to pray."

It was difficult to escape the conclusion that Coburn was referring to the 92-year-old, wheelchair-bound Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) who has been in and out of hospitals and lay at home ailing. It would not be easy for Byrd to get out of bed in the wee hours with deep snow on the ground and ice on the roads -- but without his vote, Democrats wouldn't have the 60 they needed.

Sen. Byrd made it and pumped his left fist in defiance after his vote.

It's kind of a sad thing though that the Republicans have to pray that Byrd will either die or be too sick to make the vote. It's a perfect example of how the so-called Christians have taken over that party and they use god to try to cover for their very sick attitudes.

I too, for very different reasons than the Republicans, wanted to see the bill defeated. But believing in real democracy I don't need to call on god to help me "defeat" my rivals. The "good Christian Republicans" sound more and more like the Taliban every day.

My grandmother had polio and spent practically her whole life in a wheelchair. I don't find it acceptable that sleazy politicians want their rivals, especially those who are ill, to have misfortune.

I pray that some day we will have a real single-payer health care system and that the American people will soon force the government to get the insurance corporations out of health care. Health care is a human right and should not be a profit making business.