Emotions

I will first apologize for being absent for a few days. Saturday I was down with some sort of horrible stomach  ailment. I will not share the gory details only saying that my I never got far from the bed or the bathroom. It is not something I would wish on anyone. It appears to this point Mrs. Sutor has avoided my fate. Let's hope her luck holds out.

I have been hesitant to write on this subject because I have just been too something. I continue to try to determine the emotion or emotions involved. The government is shut down and we appear to be stumbling along to a default on our national debt. I initially thought my feelings about this were anger. Rage, perhaps. Disappointment, grief, sadness, also seemed in play. If you are looking for me to blame one side or the other you will be disappointed. I blame them all. Everyone involved has some responsibility to bear in this mess. This is not something that has developed overnight. Not something that has occured because we have our current President, Senate Majority Leader or Speaker of the House. We have stumbled toward the edge for decades. Spending more than we take in. Allowing larger and larger annual deficits. Involving ourselves in the affairs of other nations. Trying to be the planet's policeman. We argue that we want to keep government out of our lives. Well, that seems conditional. If the program benefits me, then it should stay around. If it doesn't, then clearly it needs to go away. I worked in the public sector almost my entire working career. I did factory work a couple of times and honestly I don't see much difference between work in the two areas. In both cases I went in and did what I was told to the best of my ability. If it needed done and it wasn't my job. It didn't matter. Did I wonder in both cases if I would or could lose my job? Sure. Things happen in government and industry and positions are eliminated. I paid into social security and into two government pension systems. It cost me over $1,000 a month to get old. It was taken with an agreement on how it would be paid back. The state of Illinois is in dire financial straits at this time. They have already made changes to the health care coverage they agreed to provide. Later this year or sometime next year they will change my pension benefit. I understand and accept that. It is called shared sacrifice. We all give something so that we all benefit. There is almost none of that going on in Washington at the moment. It is sad and frustrating, and disappointing and stupid.

So many things in this fight have gone wrong. The closing of the World War Two Memorial and the National Mall was stupid. The comments by some on the right that the Affordable Care Act is the worst piece of legislation ever and compare it to the Fugitive Slave Act are simply clueless. Louie Gohmert, Representative in the House from Texas never fails to amaze me. If you wonder why nothing gets done here is part of the reason. His recent quote: "All this clown (speaking of the President) needs to do is repeal the most important law he ever passed, and then this will be over. Why is that so hard? The Tea Party represents almost 22 percent of Americans. Only a dictator would refuse to give us everything we want. Obama should be more than impeached-- he should be in jail." If we got what we wanted because 22% of Americans demanded it then the United States would be a very interesting place. I haven't checked the numbers recently but last time I looked somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% favored universal background checks for firearm purchases. The percentage of Americans who favor a policy has nothing to do with it being right and becoming law. I am inclined to agree with my friend Dan who feels that the Affordable Care Act was designed to fail to that single payer health care could be implemented. While I don't like the Affordable Care Act, I do think that everyone should have health care coverage. There has to be some way to get that done that all can agree on. Here is my problem. We have to stop talking past each other and start talking to each other. We need to do the things a Christian nation, which we claim to be, should do. The basic things. Feed the hungry, educate our children, provide health care to all our citizens. There must be a way to talk and come together and get those things done.

Until we start addressing issues and stop the name calling and sound bites I will continue to be all those emotions. Sad, angry, frustrated, disappointed....