The Racist in the Wood Pile

I don't know if people are still saying this, but I seem to remember that, when Obama was first running for president, it was not uncommon for people who didn't like him to say, "It's not because he's Black, it's because he's a socialist".....or whatever. The fact that they felt it necessary to mention his race at all makes me think that it was at least part of the reason they didn't like him, they just didn't want to admit it, even to themselves. I also suspect that many of the people who voted for him were at least partially motivated by his race. Let's face it. we've never had a Black president before, and it was a big deal when Obama became the first. It was kind of like when JFK became our first Catholic president, only more so. It didn't take long after his election for people to forget that Kennedy was a Catholic, but I don't think anybody will ever forget that Obama was Black.

I couldn't make that link you gave me work. I tried to copy and paste it to my address bar, but it somehow fell off the clipboard between the "copy" and the "paste". I have had that problem before with my copy and paste function, but not always. I don't know if I do something wrong or if it's a glitch in my browser. Anyway, I suspected that it was some kind of joke, but I didn't know about the part where my ilk was signing it too. It just goes to show that, when you think you've seen it all, you find out that you ain't seen nothing yet.

Before we had no fault car insurance, everybody was required to have liability insurance or pay $35 into the Uninsured Motorist Fund. If an uninsured motorist was involved in an accident, his driving license would be suspended until all liability claims were settled, which might take years. In those days, you could get a liability policy for about a hundred dollars a year, but if people didn't want to pay that much, they could pay the $35 in lieu of insurance. When they passed no fault, which I believe was in the 70s, they abolished the $35 option and required all drivers to carry the new no fault insurance. With no fault, you collect from your own insurance company instead of the other guy's. This was supposed to save money for the insurance companies, and they were supposed to pass some of those savings down to us. The ink was barely dry on the no fault law when insurance premiums started going up, and they've been going up ever since.

I never did like the idea that the state could force you to buy insurance but, since the state owns the roads, I can see some justification for it. If the state owned the hospitals and clinics, I might agree with some kind of tax to support them. In that case, treatment should be free, since we've already paid for it with our taxes. I read some time ago that the Cook County Hospital was closing down, but the article didn't say if it was being replaced by a new one or not. Not all counties can afford to maintain a hospital, but I don't see why the federal government couldn't do it instead of passing that goofy Obamacare.