Spending too much time on the internet makes it so easy to think of people in "broad brushes".  I need to get a life, and I have. I’ve gone back to my old job doing voter registration, so I won’t have as much time to kill online.  After the things that have happened to me, and the things I just read, I didn’t know how to make sense of it, and I was afraid to talk about it, because I didn’t want to make an ass out of myself in the real world. Without talking about something, especially something that emotional, it’s easy to draw ridicules conclusions.  I posted my last diary because I knew it needed a reality check.

I needed to be reminded that the real divide isn’t Black/Jewish, but the people who want reconciliation vs. the people who don’t.  Some of the commenters’ were willing to acknowledge the problem, and that it needed to be addressed. Others would claim that no one should be associated with another’s actions unless they were directly or indirectly responsible for them, a philosophy which is a solution in of its self.  Those are the people interested in promoting reconciliation.

Coming from a predominantly Jewish neighborhood and doing community organizing work in predominately Black neighborhoods, the relationship between the Black and Jewish communities has been a pet issue of mine for some time.  I’ve never been able to get to the bottom of it, it’s like a key puzzle piece in their unease with each other was missing from my understanding; I knew the Black community had committed a grave offense against the Jewish community because the historical sensitivity which had been aggravated was one of the first things I could discern with any certainty, and it was a part of Jewish history, not Black history. It's odd how I was fully aware of an event's effects before I was aware of the event it's self.

Obama says he wants to mend the relationship between the Black and Jewish communities, but we cannot do that without acknowledging and understanding the depth & rudiment of the problem.

This has nothing to do with race, god, guns, abortion, or anything Wright said, that's a list of excuses. It's about strategy. It was the predominately Black urban areas Obama didn't do well enough in that killed him. Another diarist pointed out he did better in rural areas than he expected to. Democrats win PA with a proportionally larger turnout in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia than in rural areas. Obama didn't get the proportionally larger turnout in urban areas he needed; that cost him the primary and will cost him the general.

Only Pennsylvanians can win Pennsylvania. We were fighting a 3 way battle here; Obama's people, his supporters in PA who are used to running things, and Hillary's lead. We've won this state by fighting the Republicans with everything we have; we know how to win here, it takes 110%, and we can't do it without autonomy and unconditional support from National. Applying a bit of cultural relativism here would go a long way; we already know how to win here.  Don't tell us to do something else and be surprised whey you lose. You can never win PA doing things your way, but we can win it for you if you let us do things right, and play by our rules.

The Obama campaign has run out of signs in Pittsburgh; so many local polling places have no Obama signs.   If you have an Obama yard sign, and your local polling place does not have an Obama sign, please bring yours and place it there.  The signs are needed where they will do the most good, and they will do much more good outside of a polling place than in your yard.

All signs must be at least 50 feet away from polling places, use other political signs as a guide for this.  If you have questions about where you are allowed to put the sign, ask a volunteer or one of the officials at the polling place.

Please call your friends who have Obama signs, and ask them to bring their signs to their polling places as well.  If you bring a sign to a polling place that already has one, the more the better, or just bring it back home.

Violence = Fear = Stupidity = Hate
To perpetuate any of these is to perpetuate them all.

How can this cycle be broken?
How do the wounds of history hurt?
Can we ever recover from attempted genocide?

I know this; human nature is static, it does not change with time, with race, with money, or religion.  There are good people, bad people, and everything in between, of every color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, class, in every nation on this Earth, in the past, in the present, and into the future.  This is human nature.  Culture, community, and family change the way we express these qualities, but they do not change the qualities themselves.  We are all intrinsically separate, prisoners within our own minds, unable to comprehend anything outside of our perception, and yet we are a part of a whole greater than ourselves, forever bound together in the ever shifting interdependent web of humanity.  What happens when we tear this web with violence, fear, stupidity and hate?  Can it ever be repaired?

I've been a Clinton supporter until this morning, but lately I've been on the fence between Clinton and Obama.  Just last night I was thinking I wouldn't vote at all at all because I like them both.  Primaries are a political Chinese finger trap; the harder you pull the more stuck you get; both Clinton or Obama would be unimaginably better than the hole there now.  I've been a Clinton supporter until now because I believe in playing to win, and with these people that means playing dirty. Up till now my attitude towards national elections has been "screw morality; the stakes are too high.  In doesn't matter what it takes, we can't let them win again.  There is nothing we could possible do in the campaign worse than losing, so far as anything and everything else is concerned the means justify the ends."  Hillary seemed like the kind of politician who could beat Rove at his own game, and that's what we needed.  The biggest lie a politician can ever tell is that they are telling the truth; it's their job to lie, to tell us we want to hear, to react to polls.

I'm willing to bet Bush, Rove, Cheney, Rice, and the rest of those scum haven't kept their money in dollars for some time now. They intentionally crashed the dollar because they were in a position to do so, and they could make money from it. Someone really ought to investigate what currency they keep their personal accounts in. I wonder if their being caught with foreign bank accounts, in currencies other than the dollar, before the dollar crashed, would be enough to get them impeached? Doing such a thing would amount to treason at this point; as it would indicate they purposely crashed the dollar for their own financial benefit. Much like a sports player who bets on another team, with the intention of making their team lose, so they can profit.

Think the oil we put in our cars has nothing to do with the obesity epidemic?  Think again.  Instead of burning fatty oils in our bodies while we get around using man power, we burn oil from the Middle East to power our cars and let the natural fats in our bodies build up until they kill us.  Riding a bicycle to school or work is the fastest why to get in shape and it is the most environmentally responsible form of transportation.  Public Transit also forces you to walk and get at least some cardiovascular exercise while having only a minimal effect on the environment.

to help with the rescue effort.  I'm a little distraught at the moment, so the clarity of the following might be sub par, but here's what I know about the situation...

Several years ago two of my friends were victims of a hate crime in their junior high, and nothing was done about it. Their classmate beat the shit out of them in front of two teachers who watched and did nothing.  This happened after over a year of physical and physiological abuse by their classmates.  Why was this ignored?  They were gay.   Had this attack happened anywhere else, it probably would have been prosecuted as a hate crime, but since they and their attackers were so young it was ignored completely.  They have never recovered emotionally.

The single payer system I propose is different from every other single payer system in the world because it would have three levels of public insurance, deductible, basic, and premium. Premium public insurance would be available to everyone at a higher tax rate than basic public insurance. All types of insurance would cover all preexisting conditions, prescription drugs, any and all medically necessary tests or procedures, and cover preventive care (Basic and Premium with no deductible). Premium insurance would have lower copays, not require referrals, and have a few other perks compared to basic insurance. Since the cost of premium insurance would be based on percentage of income, not charged at a flat rate, it will be an option for everyone. Deductible insurance is discussed below.  In creating several levels of public insurance we solve the debate over lower taxes vs. more benefits by letting each individual chose for themselves which they prefer.

Economic theory proves healthcare can never work in the open market. It is literally a divide by zero equation, resulting in price increasing towards infinity.  

Let's face it, the Republicans couldn't care less how many people our healthcare system kills.  All they care about is themselves, and their pocket books.

Tomorrow: A unique plan for a working single-payer/multi-provider healthcare system that could work in the US.

Let's start with a little bit about me.  This is my first diary entry, and the least substantive I will ever publish.

Tomorrow I will publish the first of two entries on healthcare.