Stuff I didn't comment on at McDonald's...

Because I was outnumbered, I decided to save my comments for this Blog...Now you have to understand that I consider myself 'politically' conservative, and 'socially' liberal. I suppose this puts me in the middle of the road sort of. Hopefully I won't get run over.

That being said, this mornings rantings had to do with the job that our President is doing (not doing was actually the comment) in Washington. First, there was anger because he 'tried to be a comedian' last night. I read what he actually said (in USA Today) and thought that it was pretty much OK, but not hilarious.

The second thing that got some people shouting and pounding the table was our slippery slide into socialism as evidenced by the potential health care reforms. The cry was 'Socialized Medicine!' OMG save us from that! I have not seen anything out there that looks like government run insurance or health care. So far the focus seems to be on reforming the private insurance companies. The private insurance companies have almost agreed to not charge women more for insurance, to insure people who have illnesses, and not charge more to people who have used their insurance. This is Not Government run health care. It is an attempt by the insurance companies to appear to be caring for the insured. We know that insurance companies only care about profit, or that has been the case in the past. It seems to me that those changes that should have been made long ago. In fact, they are not enough. There will be still many people who cannot get quality health care because they cannot afford insurance. It is a beginning but only a beginning.

The next complaint was about the stimulus package and how expensive it is... and how this whole economic situation is the fault of Mr. Obama. And once again the word 'socialism' reared it's ugly head. Somehow it has been forgotten that the bank bailout of 700 Billion Dollars was signed into law by Mr Bush, and that the banks failed during that administration. It seemed that it was OK to spend Billions and Billions of dollars to bail out the banks which are private businesses, but not OK to spend money on regular people. In the latter case it is socialism, but in the former it is protecting business. My question is 'What?'. Spending billions on the banks is not socialism, but on the citizens is? Is this logical? Not at all

I farmed for over 30 years. I tried not to get involved with the government payments that were available. I had really bad experiences in dealing with the Department of Agriculture. But really the farm payments are 'socialism'...and I know that most farmers don't think of them that way. Whenever the government pays out money to a group or an individual the label of socialism fits.

The United States has been 'socialized' for years, at least since the Great Depression. Many of the programs in effect today were started back in those days. Today they are a fact of life, many groups of people depend on some government payments to make their endeavors successful. Some depend on them to for their daily nutrition. Somehow or other we seem to forget these 'socialistic' programs, like Social Security, Aid to Dependent Children, farm payments, workers compensation, and unemployment payments to name just some of the government programs being used already today. But these do exist, here and now.

So we are a 'socialized' country. And that is pretty much the way it is, and no one is really complaining about what already is, or at least not very much. Maybe the problem is the capital letter 'S' on 'Socialism' which makes it a political philosophy rather than a program. I don't know for sure about that, but I suspect that is the real problem. I say give it a rest people, or else give up the government payments you already have! That is Not going to happen!

Kevin said, on 'Incoming', John Phipps blogspot, 'socialism is the outcry when you get a gov't check and I don't' Maybe he has it right?

I'm sure that I will have more to say on this subject.