The Barackomercial

I confess I watched the beginning. The hubster- with the fascination of the train wreck- insisted. I on the other hand make it a policy not to place myself in the sway of the Chicago Svengali, preferring to read his pronouncements, lest I get infected. Anyhow, I made it through the beginning in the heartland deco study and the first two stories before an impending fit of apoplexy made me race to the computer and the solace of the Babalu radio show.

Now, I don't want to seem heartless, but I am always suspicious of these hard luck cases. To wit, I'm thinking to myself that the first family whose distress was touted was maybe in no position to buy a suburban home. "But they have four children," the hubster remonstrates. "Yeah, and...," I reply. He was speaking to someone whose bed was the sofa of a three room rental apartment until we could actually afford the house in the suburbs. "And what about the vehicle?" I ask. Something tells me that's a 30 something thousand Ford SUV or mini van. I mean no disrespect, but life is full of hard choices.

Then there were the poor old folks who had their home paid off and were struggling to pay her medical bills. Now with an elderly and infirm geriatric relative in the family, this is something I know much of. I know how prescription drug costs can kill an entire lifetime's worth of work. I also know other things. For instance, joining a Medicare HMO or PPO basically renders most medicine free or cheap and cushions the donut hole. By the way, please remember that the Democrats voted against the Medicare prescription bill because it wasn't Good Enough! In the meantime, senior citizens watched their resources dwindle or had to decide between food or medicine. Back to the infomercial, even if these nice folk live in an area where one is not available, they can contact the drug companies who have very good programs for the economically challenged patient. Remember those commercials? Well, they're true. And if all you have is your home, there is always Medicaid. I hope that other than make hay of their distress, the Obama camp put these nice people in touch with resources. There is much that needs reform, but programs to help these people exist.

By that point, I took off, so I didn't see the others. I had expected to see people starving because they didn't have the resources, people trapped in areas with failing schools. What I saw were people who had other choices to improve their lives, whether they knew about them or not.