Life's Inanities and Ironies

President Barack Obama claimed during his Wednesday night press conference that there are 47 million Americans without health insurance. A simple check with the U.S. Census Bureau would have told him otherwise. Mr. Obama said: " This is not just about the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance ." That assertion conflicts with data in the Census Bureau report "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007." The report was issued in August 2008 and contains the most up-to-date official data on the number of uninsured in the U.S. The report discloses that there were 45.65 million people in the U.S. who did not have health insurance in 2007. However, it also reveals that there were 9.73 million foreigners — foreign-born non-citizens who were in the country in 2007 — included in that number. So the number of uninsured Americans was actually 35.92 million. And of those, "there were also 9.1 million people making more than $75,...

I received this in the last couple of days as an email and I have to say it is one of the best plays on an old story that I have read in awhile. The first time I read this was in one of Sir Richard Burton's,(No...NOT the actor...Come on people), translations of an Arabian Nights story. It used as its characters a king and merchant, but in that one the merchant was the "villain" so to speak. Once again it all boils down to perspective. I don't know the author of this version, but I see the dark and foreboding truth in this brilliant adaptation of the parable. "Once upon a time, I was invited to the White House for a private dinner with the President. I am a respected businessman, with a factory that produces memory chips for computers and portable electronics. There was some talk that my industry was being scrutinized by the administration, but I paid it no mind. I live in a free country. There's nothing that the government can do to me if I...