E.J. Dionne: Heatlh bill is worth fixing

E. J. Dionne: Health bill is worth fixing

Liberals have a right to be angry, but they shouldn't oppose this imperfect reform.

By E. J. Dionne

For progressives, the question on the health-care battle going forward is not whether they have a right to be angry, but whether they can direct their fury toward constructive ends. The alternative is to pursue a temporarily satisfying and ultimately self-defeating politics of protest.

Of course, what has happened on the health-care bill is enraging. It's quite clear that substantial majorities in both houses of Congress favored either a public option or a Medicare buy-in.

In a normal democracy, such majorities would work their will, a law would pass, and champagne corks would pop. But everyone must get it through their heads that, thanks to the now bizarre habits of the Senate, we are no longer a normal democracy.

Because of a front of Republican obstruction and the ludicrous idea that all legislation requires a supermajority of 60 votes, power has passed from the majority to tiny minorities - sometimes minorities of one.

Worse, more influence in this system flows to those willing to kill a bill than to those who most devoutly want to pass one. The paradox in this case is that senators who care most passionately about extending health coverage to 31 million Americans have the least power.

That's why Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.) held the whip hand in killing the idea of letting Americans 55 and older buy into Medicare. Unlike liberal senators such as Jay Rockefeller (D., W.Va.) or Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio), Lieberman would have been perfectly happy to see the health-care proposal die if that was the price of getting himself into the spotlight.

What transpired was thus not the product of some magic show in which more conservative senators are endowed with mysteriously ingenious negotiating abilities, while liberals are a bunch of bunglers. The whole system is biased to the right because the Senate itself - a body in which Wyoming and Utah have as much representation as New York and California - is tilted in a conservative direction. The 60-vote requirement empowers conservatives even more.

In light of this, the notion that letting the current health-care bill perish would produce a more progressive bill later is preposterous. Anyone who wants to change or even abolish the Senate has my full support. But that is not an option now.

In the meantime, progressives such as Brown and Rockefeller are right to be fighting with all their might to push through this less-than-perfect but still remarkably decent proposal.

To vote against it, Rockefeller said when I caught up with him recently, "you have to be for not covering 30 million people. ... You have to be for denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions. ... You have to be against helping small businesses buy health insurance." His list went on and on, pointing to the rather astonishing progress this bill makes.

Brown agrees, and he suggests that progressives now need to direct their energies toward improving on the Senate's work. Senate passage of this bill is not the final step. There will still be negotiations with the House, whose plan is, in some important respects, the superior product, especially when it comes to making insurance more affordable for low- and middle-income Americans.

While the Senate's intricate balance severely constrains how many changes it will accept - Sen. Ben Nelson (D., Neb.), who provided the crucial 60th vote, made that clear in an interview with CNN Sunday - there is still room to maneuver. Instead of trying to derail the process, which is exactly what conservative opponents want to do, those on the left dissatisfied with the Senate bill should focus their efforts over the next few weeks on getting as many fixes into it as they can.

And then they can do something else: Start organizing for the next health-care fight. Enactment of a single bill will not mark the end of the struggle. It will open a series of new opportunities.

It's a lot easier to improve a system premised on the idea that everyone should have health coverage than to create such a system in the first place. Better to take a victory and build on it - to accept this plan as a "starter home," in the apt metaphor of Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) - than to label victory as defeat.

Successful political movements prosper on the confidence that they can sustain themselves over time, so they can finish tomorrow what they start today. At this moment, rage is understandable, but hope is what's necessary.

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E.J. Dionne is a Washington Post columnist. He can be reached at ejdionne@washpost.com.

My Christmjas Vision by Garrison Keillor

My Christmas vision

In a 10th Avenue deli, an elegant girl from the prairie manages a herd of damaged boys with grace and good humor

By Garrison Keillor

Dec. 23, 2009 |

My little girl was born within a week of Christmas and, believe you me, conceiving one to hatch on target like that is no simple task. It takes planning and biotechnology, and the male is force-fed raw oysters, and the female must hang upside down in a dark room for hours.

I was 55 at the time and remember it well. This bonus baby was the last grandchild in my family, a last attempt to breed some frivolity and high-spiritedness into our somber Anglo line, and we seem to have succeeded. She is a socialite and comedian who shows almost no interest in clothes or toys or other material goods, despite our best efforts, and who only craves beautiful experiences such as swimming, a train ride, a party, lunch in a cafe with tablecloths and oddball waiters, or a stage show with singing and dancing and not too much smooching (euuuuuuu).

We brought her to New York in time to catch the big Christmas snowstorm, and she got to see the Radio City Christmas show in which one Rockette kicked off a shoe and kept dancing though off-kilter. Priceless.

We parents don't teach delight. We try to cover the basic stuff such as Please and Thank You and why you should take turns. You browbeat your kid into sticking with a job and finishing it and you praise the results, whether brilliant or only above average. You teach your child that there is a time to come home, and it's sooner than you think: that nothing good happens after 1 a.m.

This is a hard lesson to learn. The world looks rather magical after all the working stiffs have gone to bed. The stars twinkle through the trees and around 2 a.m. you're feeling like the law of gravity may not apply to you. By 3 a.m., you're ready to quit the day job and become a famous movie star.

We try to save our children from wild, unreal expectations. And now here is Christmas, a wild story of 3 a.m. miracles if ever there was one. It surely isn't about good manners or good work habits. We teach it to our children, each in our own version, and God alone knows what they make of it all.

My own Christmas vision appeared three days before Christmas, in a deli on 10th Avenue in New York, where a rather elegant young woman was managing a herd of eight teenage boys, ordering their breakfasts from the lady behind the counter. The boys spoke Spanish, which the young woman translated into English for the counter lady. I'm standing there, waiting my turn, observing. The boys are docile, cautious, soft-spoken, and then it dawns on me that they are so because of brain damage, mild retardation, however you want to put it, and the young woman is their hired shepherd. A teacher's aide, perhaps. Probably minimum wage. She is lovely, green-eyed, dark hair spilling down on a puffy parka, red wool scarf, and her English sounds very Midwestern to me.

The boys want muffins for breakfast except one boy who earnestly desires a sesame bagel, toasted, with cream cheese, but the deli is all out of sesame, and this is a cruel disappointment to him. He really was counting on it. When you are 14 and so desperately vulnerable in the big city, you do pin your hopes on certain small pleasures. His face crumples and he is about to melt, and the elegant young green-eyed woman puts her head down next to his where he sits slumped on the deli stool. Her pale cheek against his cheek, she murmurs to him and a string of his enormous tears runs onto her face and she wipes it away and says something in Spanish that makes him laugh. And then I notice at the end of her red scarf, the word "Nebraska." Nobody would wear this in New York except a Nebraskan.

I might've asked her a few questions, but she had turned her street face toward me, and so I didn't bother her. A girl from the prairie using her Spanish to care for damaged boys in a callous world where, contrary to everything the Savior said, the poor and powerless get short shrift -- in the U.S. Senate and elsewhere -- and she is sharing the tears of the sesame boy and making him laugh. She's my Christmas angel. I hope she gets to go to a party and sing and dance until 3 a.m.

(Garrison Keillor is the author of "77 Love Sonnets," published by Common Good Books.)

© 2009 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Regarding marriage equity ...

Thanks to Diane for sending this to me:

"Marriage is a vital social institution, the exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family. Because it fulfills yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life's momentous acts of self-definition."

"It is undoubtedly for these concrete reasons, as well as for its intimately personal significance, that civil marriage has long been termed a 'civil right.' Without the right to choose to marry, one is excluded from the full range of human experience."

from the 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage

Words of Wisdom regarding mourning from the Jewish tradition

Cruel Comfort
by Rabbi Benjamin Blech

Dos and don'ts at a shiva house.

I just came home from paying my respects at a house of mourning and I'm furious.

How can people be so insensitive and so stupid, I wonder to myself, as I witnessed yet again the unintentional cruelty of those who came to comfort but instead conveyed messages that only added more pain to the grieving.

Thankfully I've never heard anything as outrageous as the reported request to the newly widowed mother of three for her deceased husband's golf clubs so that "his memory will live on in a meaningful way." But what I've seen all too often is almost as appalling.

Making it all the more upsetting is the unique significance of the circumstances. A lapse of proper etiquette in a social setting can readily be forgiven; actions that exacerbate the pain of someone already profoundly suffering are indefensible.

Let me share with you some of my more recent experiences.

We can't know they feel because every tragedy is different.

Didn't anyone understand that saying "I know just how you feel" isn't helpful? It's minimizing a mourner's tragedy to imply that those unaffected can really comprehend the severity of another person's loss. We can't know -- because every tragedy is different.

I was inconsolable after my parents died. But I still wasn’t able to fully comprehend mourning in the same way as one of my dearest friends in Israel when she lost her child in a terrorist attack. She put it succinctly when she wrote to me: "With the death of a husband, you lose your present; with the death of a parent, the past; but with the death of a child you lose your future. None of them can be compared to each other."

Perhaps Shakespeare best captured the irony: "Everyone can master a grief but he that hath it." Real comfort can only come from those who don't exaggerate their empathy.

Far worse, though, were those whose "comforting" counsel was "Try not to think about it." What they were really suggesting is that departed loved ones deserve to be forgotten. They would prefer that survivors be disloyal to memories in order to avoid being troubled by unpleasant conversation.

The truth, of course, is that mourners need to work through their grief. They have every right to hold on to their recollections for as long as required, even if their reminiscences are stained with tears. "Thinking about it" is the only way they can get through their misery. "When grief is fresh," Samuel Johnson wrote, "every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it."

That is why Judaism, in its wisdom, teaches that we are forbidden to convey words of consolation “in the presence of the deceased.” It is simply too soon to offer platitudes. Mourners have a right to weep. And even after the burial, during the time of the shiva, the seven days dedicated to remembering everything that the departed meant to us, tears have their place as a vital part of the healing process.

For true chutzpah, I can't forget the troubadours of joy in a place set aside for bereavement. "Cheer up" is the advice I've heard far too many times, a recommendation about as absurd as it is disrespectful. What colossal chutzpah to suggest joyfulness at a time of tragedy. Geoffrey Gorer, in his classic work, Death, Grief, and Mourning put it well: "Giving way to grief is stigmatized as morbid, unhealthy, demoralizing…. Mourning is treated as if it were a weakness, a self- indulgence, a reprehensible bad habit instead of a psychological necessity." Telling mourners to change their mood is much more than inappropriate. It is extremely harmful to those who require the catharsis of grieving.

But the award for the most hurtful of misplaced attempts to reflect on the death of someone's loved one must surely be "the gift of guilt" I have witnessed on innumerable occasions. Maybe you should have… is followed by a philosophic exploration of how it might have been possible, had the survivors only done something differently for the deceased to have avoided his appointment with the Angel of Death.

Imagine what comfort it must have been for the grieving widow to hear, "I wish you would have used my doctor -- he might have saved him." Think of how painful it had to be for the father to be told, "Guess you never should have let her take the car." Yes, I even heard a visitor to the home of the mourners for a 9/11 victim share the brilliant insight that "If he would only have gone to medical school as I suggested instead of becoming a stockbroker, he never would have been in the World Trade Center when it happened"! Why in the world would anyone believe that blaming those who weep for what can no longer be changed can bring them any measure of solace?

All these misguided efforts amply illustrate the powerful truth of a beautiful Jewish proverb: God created us with two ears and only one mouth in order to teach us that it's far more important for us to listen than it is to speak.

Just Be There

That's why I've come to a personal conclusion about what it is that makes a condolence call best fulfill its function. In three words: just be there. What mourners need most is the gift of you.

What mourners need most is the gift of you. Just be there.

Words often miss their mark. They may hurt as often as they heal. What leaves no room for misunderstanding, however, is a simple hug, a shared tear, the language conveyed by our presence.

It is a truth I came to best realize in one of the most remarkable shiva visits I ever witnessed. The mourner was a young widow, a mother of four, who had suddenly and without warning lost her husband, a brilliant Talmudic scholar and revered teacher of hundreds of devoted students. We came to the shiva house, colleagues, friends and disciples. None of us knew what to say. Nervously, we attempted some conversation. All eyes suddenly turned to the door as we noticed the arrival of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, of blessed memory, one of the greatest rabbinic luminaries of the generation.

We held our breaths in anticipation. What would this great scholar have to say to the widow? What wisdom would he be able to impart to ease her suffering? What could we learn from the way he handled the situation?

Rabbi Feinstein started to tell the mourners what a great man the deceased was, how learned, how pious, how righteous. But after no more than two sentences the rabbi choked up and could say no more. He wept, tried again -- and then remained silent. He sat for about 20 minutes all the while making clear his grief. He then rose and offered the traditional words recited for the occasion: “May the Lord comfort you amongst the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.”

And after he was gone and for many days thereafter the widow would tell everyone how much she had gained from that visit.

No, it was not the words that mattered. None of us will ever find words comforting enough, wise enough, profound enough to undo the tragedy or to minimize it. It was simply fulfilling what Jewish law teaches us to do at a time such as this. We are to show by our presence that we too are affected by the loss. We are to demonstrate by our sorrow that we share in some measure the pain of the mourners. We are to illustrate by recounting our memories of the departed that the life that is no more will continue in our minds and in our hearts, offering a measure of immortality to the deceased. We are to make clear to those who suffer that we will always continue to be there for them because we are part of a greater community that understands that all of us are responsible one for another.

This is why shiva, when properly observed, has the power to console and to comfort countless generations.

She lived, she loved, she laughed and she left ...

...and the world will never be the same.

How I wish I had known Samantha. Could there be a sweeter face than hers or a story that speaks of more courage? I don't think so. She so got a hold of life in her brief time here.

I have friends who have children with various disabilities and am always in awe of parents who allow their children to take on the world while they are taking on their own limitations. But these young people, even with their so called "limitations" seem to live life more fully and more aware than so many who are given everything, including excellent health. Thank you, God, for sending Samantha Marie Grosse into the world. May we never forget her.

I will send a donation, in the name of Journeys of the Heart (www.journeysoftheheart.org) to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in honor of Samantha and to thank her mom, Kathleen Joy, her step-mom Hope and her dad, Jeffrey.

Samantha Marie Grosse, 22, student, volunteer

By Bonnie L. Cook

Inquirer Staff Writer

Samantha Marie Grosse, 22, of Lansdale, a senior at the University of Florida, died Monday at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia after an 18-year battle with cystic fibrosis.

Miss Grosse was at the center for treatment when she was found unconscious overnight in the bathroom inside her room, said her father, Jeffrey C. Grosse.

Autopsy results were withheld pending laboratory tests, said Jeff Moran, spokesman for the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office.

Spokeswoman Kim Guenther said that under hospital policy, any "unexpected death" is handled by the medical examiner.

Miss Grosse was born in Elkins Park. Her cystic fibrosis was diagnosed at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia when she was 4 after she experienced coughing and lung infections, her father said.

She developed a secondary case of diabetes, her father said.

Miss Grosse kept to a twice-daily regimen of "percussion" treatments in which she was clapped on the back to loosen congestion. Though she spent 40 days a year hospitalized for lung infections, she lived a full life.

"Despite having to live with the realities of her disease, Samantha was rarely seen without her perpetual smile, happiness, kindness, and zest for life," her father said. "The hundreds of friends she made in her short lifetime attest to her brightness of spirit."

Miss Grosse attended Gwynedd Mercy Academy High School, where she was cocaptain of the tennis team in 2005, her senior year. Reduced lung capacity made her give up tennis last year.

She was pursuing majors in telecommunications and pre-law, and hoped to graduate from college in 2010, then attend law school near home. Her grade point average was 3.75, her father said.

As a freshman at Florida, Miss Grosse lived in the "sports dorm" and became friendly with members of the Gators' national champion basketball and football teams, including 2007 Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow.

Tebow and other Gators stars donated autographed items for the Grosse family's June 2008 Silent Auction, which raised $106,000 for cystic fibrosis research.

In 2006, Miss Grosse received the Jack C. Graham Jr. Courage Award from the Kelly Anne Dolan Memorial Fund for her fund-raising efforts and participation in cystic fibrosis clinical trials.

She was a member of a national collegiate honor society and the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority at Florida. She volunteered with animal shelters and helped find homes for unwanted pets.

In addition to her father, she is survived by her mother, Kathleen Hoy; her stepmother, Hope; sisters Veronica and Holly; stepbrother Jack Widman; stepsisters Katie and Carolyn Widman; maternal grandparents Jack and Jeanette Hoy; and paternal grandfather Kenneth Jr.

Friends may call from 7 to 9 p.m. today at the Huff & Lakjer Funeral Home, 701 Derstine Ave., Lansdale, and from 8:45 to 9:45 a.m. tomorrow at Mary, Mother of the Redeemer Church, 1325 Upper State Rd., North Wales. A Funeral Mass will be said at 10 a.m. tomorrow at the church. Burial will be in Whitemarsh Memorial Park, Prospectville.

Memorial donations may be made to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, 2004 Sproul Rd., Suite 208, Broomall, Pa. 19008.

The cost of war here at home ...

This article so painfully points out the tragedy of war. On Veteran's Day, one of my friends posted a quote on Facebook that said something to the effect that, "In a war, every soldier is wounded." In the face of a new "surge" (hate that word) in Afghanistan, I do not think we have looked hard enough at the cost of war here at home. "Homeland Security" is sort of an oxymoron, given the shooting at Fort Hood and the tragedy of Joshua Hunter. Imagine if this guy had an Muslim name. The headline would have been bigger, I feel sure.

Wife: Iraq changed Fort Drum suspect

By Mary Esch

Associated Press - 12/4

ALBANY, N.Y. - Relatives of a Fort Drum soldier accused of stabbing his two Army buddies to death said yesterday that he told them he saw his best friend "blown to pieces" in Iraq and came back a changed man: abusive, violent, sleepless, edgy, and plagued by flashbacks.

Spec. Joshua Hunter, 20, a military policeman, was expected to be arraigned on second-degree murder charges today, three days after the bodies of Waide James, 20, and Diego Valbuena, 23, were found in their apartment just outside Fort Drum, about 140 miles northwest of Albany.

Hunter and the victims served in Iraq at the same time in the same battalion. All were based at the Army post near Canada's border, home of the 10th Mountain Division, and shared an off-base apartment.

Hunter's wife, Emily Hunter, said in an interview that her husband was outgoing before he went to war but that when he returned, in May, he was an emotional wreck.

"I tried to get him to go to therapy," she said. "They prescribed him medicine and stuff, but it just wasn't enough."

She said he saw a therapist at Fort Drum because of his volatile emotions and violent outbursts. "He'd just burst into tears," she said. "Spouts of anger or sadness."

"He'd take his rage out on the wall, or throw something," she said.

While he wasn't violent toward his buddies, he was toward her, she said, adding that she went to the hospital a couple of times with an injured arm and thumb. She said she moved out two weeks ago and was pursuing a divorce.

Emily Hunter said her husband was haunted by one image: "He saw his best friend get blown up to pieces and he tried to put him back together. He was never right after that."

Calls to Fort Drum to confirm that Hunter had seen a comrade killed by a bomb were not immediately returned.

His wife said she had talked to Hunter since his arrest. "He just cried," she said. "They were his two best friends."

Letter to the editor of the Inquirer - Dec 3

Letters to the Editor

I wrote this letter to the editor in response to the police officer who shot and killed William Panas two weeks ago. It was published in The Inquirer Dec 3.

Special treatment for police shootings

How can it be that an off-duty police officer can shoot and kill a neighbor without being arraigned on a charge that would keep him from fleeing ("Officer has a record of complaints," Nov. 25)? Imagine for a moment that the shooting had gone the other way, that Wiliam Panas had killed Officer Frank Tepper. Would he be out and about pending an investigation? Would it not make sense for an off-duty officer to be treated as a civilian when involved in an altercation?

If police officers' lives are deemed more important than the lives of ordinary citizens because of the special work police are called to do, should it not stand to reason that, conversely, their behavior should be above reproach?

Officer Tepper was a disaster waiting to happen. After years of his terrorizing neighborhood teens, the inevitable appears to have happened.

I do not understand how and why the police were so quick to offer a defense of Tepper's actions when they were not there. Would it not have been better for them to await the outcome of an investigation, rather than lose credibility? Or do they just assume that this investigation will go nowhere, as others have when unarmed citizens are killed by a police officer?

Marge Sexton

Jenkintown

mhsexton@comcast.net