snail mail to president obama

Dear Mr. President,

I have never felt compelled to write to someone in your office before, but after hearing you speak to Congress on health care this evening, I simply had to put pen to paper (well, fingers to keyboard, anyway).

I am 32 years old, in overall good health. My brother, J, however, is very ill. Just 30 years old, he suffers from a rare and serious form of multiple sclerosis. Every day is a struggle; there are times when he literally cannot move his limbs, and when the most basic of tasks are impossible. For the last four years, J has endured a cocktail of drugs, from daily injections to monthly infusions of steroids and other chemicals that have helped with the MS but ravaged his body in other ways.

For the moment, my brother enjoys a good job that accommodates his physical ailments and provides private health insurance. But even so, his medical bills are extremely high. He has been denied various treatments despite his desperate state, and he is often forced to go to the emergency room, where out-of-pocket costs are exorbitant. But perhaps scariest of all, Mr. President, is that my brother lives in Massachusetts, the one state in the Union that assures health insurance for all. What of all the other Americans, suffering day in and day out as he does, who can’t get any coverage at all based on their condition, which will never go away and will therefore be “pre-existing” for the rest of their lives?

To be sure, I didn’t write to burden you with another sob story. What I am writing with is my message that you must pass this health care bill. This may be the fight of our time, but it is one that simply cannot fail. I urge you to continue to reach out to our young people, to educate them about how government works for them. One of the biggest problems I see with American politics today is that the right aims to keep its followers down. They want to keep information out of the hands of those who most need it. You and I both know that it’s the poor and uneducated who have most at stake with this bill—and who least understand it. It’s an unfortunate state of affairs when fear is the driving factor holding up as important a bill as this one. And so I urge you to keep fighting the good fight.

Thank you for all the hope you inspire in so many of us.

Sincerely,

MW

you say goodbye, i say hello

It's official! Yesterday, President-elect Barack Obama revealed his brand spanking new presidential portrait—apparently the first to be taken with a digital camera. Talk about a regime change!

By the way, I thought I'd share my favorite line from a recent Gail Collins column, in which it was noted that during President Bush's final press conference this week, our fearless leader couldn't refrain from using one of his favorite malapropisms ("misunderestimate"): "We are about to enter a world in which our commander in chief speaks in full sentences, and I do not know what we’re going to do to divert ourselves on slow days."

Well, I'm sure I can think of a few things (live puppy cam comes to mind), but it's true that an era of political comedy is about to ride off into the sunset. Unless, of course, you live in New York, in which case you can catch W. on Broadway for the next few months. By the way, if you're really wanting to get into the spirit of the inauguration next Tuesday, New York beauty salons are offering "Say Goodbye to Bush" bikini waxing specials! Woo hoo! &infin

the future of nasa

Over the past month, there has been much speculation about the future direction of America's space program. During the Bush administration, it seemed as though internal squabbles at NASA were a dime a dozen and that mismanagement was more rule than exception. For evidence of that, look no further than the op-ed pages of The New York Times, where former science administrator Alan Stern recently wrote a scathing article about the agency after resigning from his post. (You can check out some responses here.)

To outsiders, it has often seemed like NASA has mostly been treading water these past eight years. Despite several well-publicized spacecraft missions (often, it should be noted, planned well before Bush took office), the shuttle program suffered some major setbacks—especially after the Columbia breakup disaster in 2003. And the question of overall vision for what we should (or shouldn't) be doing next for human spaceflight has essentially remained unanswered.

Sadly, the issue got relatively little play during the presidential campaigning this year. And so far, evidence suggests that the Obama team hasn't exactly formulated a coherent plan that's much better than the current one. But one thing that seems pretty clear is that Obama is going to kill the Constellation project—Bush's plan to send humans back to the moon in preparation for eventually going to Mars—at least in the near term. It's hard to blame him; there have been many critics of the Constellation program from both outside and within NASA.

Instead, it is seeming more and more likely that Obama's vision for NASA will involve more funding for science projects—and science education—rather than human spaceflight. To me, this would be a welcome change. For one thing, in order to get ourselves to a place like Mars or Europa, we need to know everything there is to know about those bodies before we go there. And since we can do quite a lot with robots (a.k.a. unmanned spacecraft and probes), we might as well send as many of them as possible to scout these places out before we invest the billions of dollars it will cost to get humans there. But also, people often forget that science research done by NASA helps us in a big way back home as well—for instance, with national security and studies on the environment. Plus, if we don't have kids getting interested in science again, we're going to fall even farther behind on space exploration.

One of the first orders of business, of course, is choosing leadership. It seems pretty obvious that the current administrator, Michael Griffin, will be out. But who will fill his shoes? And how much of a leash will this new person be on? All of this remains to be seen. I do have confidence that Obama will make space science more of a priority than his predecessor over the long term, but I can see NASA taking a serious hit of funding in the near term. Which is too bad, considering just how little NASA actually gets compared to the total U.S. budget. (This year's $700 billion bailout would have funded all of NASA 39 times over...) Still, I'm hopeful that things will change for the better over the next four years. &infin

yes we can...play more football!

A year ago, I posted a little opinion piece on the dreadful state of affairs in college football. Specifically, I mentioned that it's about time that NCAA Division I football run a proper playoff system. Well, it now appears that our new commander-
in-chief agrees with me.

In an interview with 60 Minutes this evening, President-elect Obama argued that he was going to "throw his weight around" the fact that he knows that football fans want playoffs. As it stands now, there is a complex and often inane system in place for picking the Division I teams that get to play in relatively meaningless "bowl games" at the end of the football season. Obama even came up with a plan: three weeks for eight teams to face off, similar to the way, oh, any other major sport does it at the end of their season.

In response, The New York Times interviewed Gordon Gee, the chancellor of Ohio State, about this very issue. Gordo seems to be firmly opposed—although he claims to be an "enormous" Obama fan. (I get to call him Gordo because Mr. Gee was the president of my university for all of two years before deciding he liked it better at football schools. Gee is now in his second tenure at Ohio State, and he followed his Ivy League stint with a stay at Vanderbilt. Heck, I even have photos of my fellow classmates sleeping during Gordo's rousing commencement speech. But I digress...) In response to the playoff question, Gee stated that he's looking forward to explaining to Obama why it's "not in the best interest of the academic integrity of our institutions."

I'm sorry, but that's just a lot of baloney. Everyone knows that football players already get special treatment. A playoff system isn't going to all of a sudden make them all Rhodes Scholars. Please make this happen, President-elect Obama. Sports fans of the world are counting on you! ∞

dark days of aught-eight

We're in a curious place in the race for the White House these days. Less than a month to go, and things are getting decidedly nasty. The Swift-boat style attacks on Barack Obama are in full swing. We knew the Republicans would bring it, but it's pretty disturbing how bad it's become.

Last night I heard political commentator David Gurgen describe what he saw at a recent rally: people actually calling for the murder of Barack Obama. Videos taken at GOP events have shown people in such furor that I can't help but think back to the film Mississippi Burning, which portrayed the racial hatred that permeated the Deep South in the 1960s. And McCain and Palin are doing nothing to stop it. In fact, they seem to be spurring on the spewing of hatred (and the dissemination of outright lies); Palin in particular has all but called Obama a terrorist! McCain may not have gone that far, but if his supporters want to think that way, he seems to be just fine with it.

So how did we get here? A friend of mine recently posted on his blog the idea that the Democrats are drawing on hope in this election, while the Republicans are drawing on fear. It's not the first time I've heard that equation, but especially with what we're seeing with the current financial crisis, the GOP certainly seems to be ratcheting the fear factor up a notch...and adding a certain amount of unfounded hatred to the mix.

The tax issue is just the tip of the iceberg. McCain and company harp so hard on the "Obama wants to raise your taxes" line, despite the fact that to his face, on two national debates, and on countless commercials, Obama has made it clear that almost everyone in the U.S. will pay FEWER taxes under him than under McCain. More disturbing are the rumors that Obama is a terrorist because of his middle name (Hussein) and/or because of his connection with a man with questionable ethics (Ayers). I mean, the hypocrisy of that, especially with Palin—who was recently found guilty of abusing her power as governor—is astounding.

But more intriguingly, I just wonder where all of this hate is getting the McCain camp. I can't help but think that some people in the Republican Party must be turned off by this level of fear-mongering. John McCain has, until this election, seemed like a sensible guy that Republicans, as well as some independents and even Democrats, could like. What is it saying about his leadership style if he and his people have to resort to the lowest of the low blows to get a win?

It's also just depressing, though, to know that this culture of fear, which has been promoted by Republicans for some time now, is propelled by a continually spiraling education system. It's no wonder that our schools are failing, that our country's collective math skills are going down the drain, and that many people consider the "intelligent elite" the scum of the earth when the Republican agenda has been to keep money out of public schools and to turn both teachers and students into zombies who can do nothing else but study for standardized tests.

I don't happen to agree that all's fair in politics. Regardless of what happens a few weeks from now, I think we're heading down a dangerous road. I only hope that we can reverse course before it's too late. ∞

Update: Looks like I'm not alone in feeling this way; this spot-on op-ed appeared the day after my post.

george w. bush 2.0

I was having a conversation with a friend today about the improbable candidacy of Sarah Palin for the position of Vice President of one of the most powerful countries in the free world. We were discussing how grossly underqualified this woman is to be the country's second-in-command, much less the proverbial heartbeat away from the oval office. But more specifically, all we could think of was that Ms. Palin is basically a clone of George W. Bush—with heels.

You could talk about political ideologies; Palin and Bush are both right-wing Christian conservatives who'd be thrilled to repeal Roe v. Wade and dozens of other cases that have empowered people in this country. And they both obviously disdain science, conservation, and reason in favor of rewarding their friends and super-rich Republican cronies. But it's the way they work that really makes them seem like they were separated at birth.

For one thing, Palin and Bush both surround themselves with people who do the talking for them. They know that errant words can and will come back to haunt them, so they've both taken every step to keep layers upon layers of press handlers, who very rarely let them speak candidly and face their accusers. Bush and Palin are also masters of changing the subject to avoid real issues.

But most of all, Bush and Palin are both compulsive about manipulation, secrecy, and personal revenge. They will both do whatever it takes to get what they want—including firing people because of personal vendettas—and they've shown that they'll abuse their power to make sure no one gets in their way.

So we have to ask ourselves: Is Sarah Palin really who we want as the second-in-command of our country? I realize that John McCain is the first name on the Republican ticket, but his selection of Palin has been a real eye-opener. I mean, McCain keeps calling himself a maverick. But Palin is the same type of leader as Bush—minus the Washington experience! So in choosing Palin, McCain is in fact embracing what Bush stands for. Talk about fuzzy math!


In the last two months, we've seen McCain try to distance himself from Bush with words, while his actions have made the case that he and his running mate are just George W. Bush 2.0. A perfect example is the recent "interview" he gave to Time magazine. His behavior makes it crystal clear that, if he wasn't there already, McCain has completely defected to the dark side.

In short, McCain and his Veep choice are more of the same old team that brought us a pointless and devastating war; who constantly sided with big business and big oil at the expense of average Americans; who set us back decades in terms of cleaning up the environment and following progressive policies to fight pollution; and who ruined our good standing in the world, both financially and ideologically. I really hope that in the coming weeks, any undecided voters will come to realize how dangerous John McCain and Sarah Palin would be for our country if elected. It's time to restore some decency and reason to the White House, and the only person who's going to do that in this election is Barack Obama. ∞