Am I My Brother’s Keeper?

This is a departure for me, but I with all the talk about healthcare reform and all the rumors, lies, and confusion out there, I felt I could get away from programming for a bit to talk about this most important issue.  I hope you’ll bear with me.

I continue to be amazed by those, particularly on the right. You know who I’m talking about. Most of them call themselves Christians. They rail against healthcare reform saying it’s too expensive or that they shouldn’t have to pay for those unfortunate enough to not have coverage. People, we are our brothers’/sisters’ keepers. If we don’t invest in them, who will? Remember the first Christians lived a communal life. We read in Acts 4:32-37 that they sold their possessions and share the proceeds so that no one among them was wanting for anything. I for one believe that in the greatest country in the world, with all our advances and resources, every American, even the least among us, is entitled to basic healthcare at the very least. We don’t get ahead at the expense of others. We move forward together or not at all. If we don’t invest in our own people, we have wasted our most precious resource. Reform will cost money, a lot of it. There’s no doubt about that. But I believe it is money well spent. I am fortunate enough to have health insurance that provides for me and my family. I don’t worry when my child gets sick or if I should suddenly develop a heart condition. I have absolutely no problem paying more in taxes, whatever the cost, so that the uninsured may have the same peace of mind. I do however worry that if I should become too sick, that my insurance provider could simply drop me, making care much more difficult to get. Again I have no problem paying more, whatever the cost, if it takes that worry away. People need to get over themselves. Our taxes go for programs and purposes we disagree with every single day. That will never stop. I think we can all agree that it is absolutely ridiculous that the greatest country on earth can’t be a leader in healthcare even though we have the most advanced medical technology and pharmaceutical research, the best medicines and doctors. It’s time we start acting like the leader that we are.

Congratulations Team USA

Order in the basketball universe has been restored. Congrats to the ReDream Team and to all the athletes of Team USA. Well done.

To Jaques Rogge, President of the IOC, please get off your high horse and stop sounding like a hypocrite. Why criticize Usain Bolt of Jamaica who ran the most amazing 100M dash most of us have ever seen? So what he celebrated, maybe even a bit too much. Did you by chance catch women’s beach volleyball? 5-10 minutes of rolling around in the sand, jumping up and down, and dancing before making it to congratulate the opponent. But then again these are women in bikinis, so I guess that makes it OK.

A moment of silence please…

My inherited 6 year old Powerbook is dead. At least the hard drive is. I started noticing it freezing up requiring me to remove the battery and power cable to reboot. Toward the end, a loud clicking in the hard drive usually signalled a lockup. This was probably a bonehead move on my part but I decided to try to reinstall Tiger. I got 95% through and it locked up. Now I can’t even get at my files. Luckily, I do have a backup of most of my files. A trip to the Apple store started out hopeful, but in the end I was told the machine is so old, that Apple doesn’t stock parts to repair. I’m well aware that I can easily get a new hard drive in any number of places and I actually plan to do just that. However, I think I’m going to replace the hard drive, reinstall the OS, make sure all is in working order and then sell it to help finance the purchase of a new MacBook.

Team USA Announced

I digress for a bit from my usuall talk about the wonderful world of ColdFusion and web application development to sports. Team USA was announced yesterday and includes: Carmello Anthony, Carlos Boozer, Chris Bosh, Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Lebron James, Jason Kidd, Chris Paul, Tayshaun Prince, Michael Redd, Dwayne Wade, and Deron Williams. As much as I try to ignore Michael Wilbon, I have to agree with his assessment in today’s Washington Post.

Juneteenth

I know it’s a few days early, but I felt the desire to write this today. Sitting at Mass today, I had the opportunity to listen to my dad, who is a Permanent Deacon in the Catholic Church, preach the homily. It was not the first time I’ve heard my dad preach, but being Father’s Day, today’s homily made me more proud than normal to call this man my father. During his homily, he spoke on Father’s Day.