Most of you have all been around long enough to probably guess how I feel about the healthcare reform, I don't want to blog about it. 
It's not a secret that I lean toward liberal policies.
That I'm okay with giving up certain things if my fellow countrymen can live a bit more comfortably.
That I'm okay with being taxed, because I want a better community for my son to grow up in and for me to enjoy.
That I'm...  you know what?  It's all right here.  My politico manifesto that I wrote a year and some months ago, before the election.  I didn't re-read it, but I'm pretty steadfast in my opinions.

And I respect that you are probably pretty steadfast in yours.

I don't ever try to sway someone, I think that's a horrible thing to do.  I don't like it when people try to sway me.

I do like to discuss differences.  Some people don't.  Some people get very yelly and defensey when discussing differences.  (To quote Dave, "just because you are louder, doesn't make you more right".  I love when he says that.  Except when he says it to me.).  I like to know what else is out there.  What I might be missing because I've got my blinders on.  Learning about others makes me more compassionate and empathetic and respectful. 

Sometimes.

I'm having a little bit of difficulty with Rush's view that we shouldn't support the Haitians nor Pat's theory that natural disasters are God's way of punishing sinners (and all the innocents that surround them).  If someone can explain these to me, please do.  Because I'm a bit tired of being all riled up about it.  It takes a lot of my energy to understand radicals like these two or Michael Moore or Hitler.  Imagine if Pat was Muslim (there are lots of them, and as good Amerikans, we hate Muslim extremists.  Why we are okay with Christian ones, I'll never understand)  Charismatic people scare me. 
Did you ever see that Pink Floyd spot where everyone files in line and falls into the meat grinder and everyone turns into sausage?
I think people who fall in line with radical thinking are sausages.  It's easy to be a sausage. 
There are things that I'm sausagey about too.
I'm guessing there are things that you are sausagey about?

So what makes us feel and follow and think what we do?

If you line me up with 1000 girls who look just like me and were raised just like me and were educated just like me and have paychecks just like me and live just like me?  I'm guessing most of them wouldn't think just like me.  I meet people who I think will be just like me, and they aren't. 
Some of them are more liberal.  Seemingly selfless but I see them as bleeding hearts.
Some of them are on the same page I am.
Most girls like me are more conservative.  Most of my friends and most of my family and a good number of people I blog with/against/around.  More, jeez, I don't even know what to say.  Protected?  Sheltered?  Ignorant has too negative a connotation.  But sheltered works.
I guess that's what it is.  There aren't a lot of middle class white girls tromping through the ghetto on a regular basis, seeing what I see and feeling what I feel and doing what I do.

Holding the children who suffer at the hands of the current healthcare system.  Holding the mothers who fight those hands with their own.  Sitting across a table from a man who most "sensible" people would run from.  Laughing with him, crying with him, crying for him. 

It doesn't make me a better person.  But it certainly makes me a different person.  I'm different than a lot of the girls I grew up with, went to school with, worked with at different jobs.  I'm different than my mom.  Than my dad.  I think that's neat.  I hope Jake grows up to be different than me.

I know the names of some people living in poverty.  I've sat at their tables, in their living rooms.
That changes a person.  That changes me.
Not poverty like, "oops the electric bill's gonna be late this month and the gas bill envelope is stamped Final Notice", but poverty like "there are no viable wires in the house for electricity to flow through, and come to think of it, there's no water here either.  So if you have to poop, go in the tub and someone will clean it out later.  And mind you don't fall in the hole that will take you from the kitchen to the basement in three seconds.  Is there a cleanish t-shirt around somewhere?  Because the baby peed through the last one I tied around her.".

Most people living in poverty aren't addicted to drugs.  Or alcohol.
Most people living in poverty have found Jesus.
Most people living in poverty aren't retarded.
Or mean.  Or criminals.
Or ____
Most of us could wind up living much worse than we are now if luck doesn't stick to our sides.
One mishap and our health is gone.  Another and our job disappears. 
A lot of people I've met over the years used to be just like you and me.
But for one day in their lives we might know each other as friends, and not through a funded program.
Scary.

I was observing a Parenting Class a few months ago, and had the chance to talk to a 42 year old woman.  Her grandmother raised her because her mother was a drug addict.  Her aunts and uncles were drug addicts too, and every time one of them had a baby, it got dumped with Grandma.  She said at any given time there were a dozen children in the house, so Grandma pulled her (let's call her Sally) pulled Sally out of school after she finished the fifth grade.  No one from the school district ever called to see what happened to her.  Why would they?  They have bigger problems than one little girl.
Sally was in charge of going to the store, where the clerk started having sex with her.  She was ten.  She had her first baby at 11.  She labored and delivered at home, and the baby was just lumped in with the rest of them.  She was up and around a few hours after popping.  Next baby came at 13, and the one she had at 16 (she's almost sure that one came from her cousin.  Or maybe her uncle) was birthed at a hospital.  When the doctor asked her what she wants to do about birth control, she laughed and said "nothing".  Why would she need to control the birth, when she already gave birth?, she thought.  Silly doctor!, she thought. 

Sally had no idea where these babies were coming from.  Everyone around her was having babies, so she thought it was just something that happened to grown ups.  Like pooping or something.  Grandma sure never talked about sex.  Grandma didn't talk about things like that.  When Sally asked her about men touching her "down there", Grandma told her to go pray about it.  Sally had sex with her cousins and neighbors and brothers and uncles.  She said that she slept with the man who she later found out to be her father.  Neither one of them knew that was her daddy while they were doing it.  She didn't know it was wrong.  It felt good.  How could it be wrong?  Nothing else in her life felt good.  She didn't drink or smoke or eat fast food.  She didn't have any friends, because she was only allowed to run errands and go to church.  She wasn't allowed to go to Youth Group.  She had to go home and take care of all those babies. More babies came.  One at 18 and a few in her twenties.  Sally caught STDs, but she also caught colds.  Same thing, kinda sorta.  Right?  Nothing that a bit of antibiotic couldn't cure, so every time she was diagnosed (which was on par with every time she was pregnant) the doctor fixed her with a pill and sent her along.  Her babies started having babies.  The oldest had a baby when she was in sixth grade.  Another one had one when she was in seventh.  Sally just thought they "grew up quick and matured young".  She never thought to talk to her daughters or their doctors, and they never thought to talk to her.  And then when Sally turned 42, one of her daughters was brutally raped and the police got involved.  Sally landed herself in a Parenting Class that targets parents who have children that were sexually abused.  The class includes sex education.  At 42 years old, Sally, a woman of reasonable intellegence but limited education and experience, learned how babies are made.
She learned that right in front of me.
She never even questioned where they come from.

Sally lives right here in Philadelphia, a few blocks away from my cushy little house.

There were so many mouths to feed that she never had time for television.  Not that there really was television in the house.  Grandma didn't allow music unless they were singing Gospel.  Church didn't talk about sex during the sermons.  The men that were taking advantage of Sally never told her what could happen, what would happen.  The cousins and sisters and brothers she was helping her Grandma raise never had much to do with her other than let her do their laundry and cook their food.

Sally had welfare of course, and the medical care that went with it.  She was cared for at a hospital that takes reasonable care of their patients.  A hospital in a bad neighborhood.  Hospitals that focused on both curing patients of and preventing doctors from gunshots and stab wounds, and not so much the lady with all the babies.  (50% of all doctors graduated at the bottom half of their class.  What do you call a doctor who graduated last in his class?  Doctor.  Where do you think these doctors are working?)
She's just another one of them.  One of those idiots who keeps spitting the babies out.  You know them.  Right?  One of those.
Sally is a bad joke to a lot of people
I hear those jokes.  I've told those jokes.  I've laughed at those jokes.
One of those poor women.  One of those Point Breezers.  One of those Catholics.  One of those ___.
Sally is also a mother to eight children.  She became a grandmother right around the time she could legally buy a beer.  She has lotsa grandbabies.  She raised a lot of kids.  Twenty five?  Thirty?  She forgets.  Those kids have kids.  Probably 100 give or take some.  Families come big in Sally's family.  As a result, Sally is quite influential in her family.  In her community.
She is about as smart as a third grader.  She doesn't know how to divide or multiply.  Mathematically I mean.  Sally can't read the word mathematically, I'll guess.  She was having trouble with some of the big words on her intake form.  Sally has three shirts and one pair of shoes.  There isn't enough hot water for everyone to wash up on the same day in Sally's house.  Sally's house is owned by her grandmother.  They don't have money to fix the roof or the busted out windows.  The taxes are in arrears, so they don't qualify for improvement grants.  The taxes are probably about $300 a year, if they are on the higher end of the neighborhood. 

I've been guilty of pissing $300 in a two hour Target and Trader Joe's spree and never thinking twice about it.

Round the time I met Sally, I was having a little problem with Jake.  I tried everything in the book and nothing worked.  I'm a Professional in the field of Parenting.  I have all the books and tricks and secrets and I'm surrounded by therapists and social workers and other parenting professionals.  I called everyone I knew and no one could help.  Weeks went by.  I was beginning to lose patience and hope.  "Just one of those things". "They all go through it".
Sally solved my problem in thirty seconds.  And she gave me a big hug and a huge toothless smile and said that my life will be changed in 48 hours.

And it was.

People like Sally change my life.
Make it better.  Make it harder.  Make it easier.  Make it worthwhile.