I'm cynical, but I keep pushing on....

[Joe Fields]

It's certainly no mystery why our president and our congress can't do the right thing regarding healthcare. This issue, as well as the bailout issue are the best examples that you will ever see, as to how big business owns Washington, D.C., lock, stock and barrel. There is absolutely no denying it.

And so, knowing this, I pretty much know what the outcome of all of this will be. Either we will have no bill at all, or the bill we get will be such a clusterfuck, and more insult to our intelligence and our billfolds and pocketbooks.

So, what's the use?

Really, I don't know. As sure as I'm sitting here, I believe that we, the people are fucked seven ways to Sunday. But as I wrote over a year ago, it's the only game in town. You don't play, they win by default. We have no choice but to keep on fighting. As much as I want to give up, I just can't, because I have never conceded defeat in my entire life, without a fight. As much as I want to just curl up and go away, to live peacefully in a little corner of the U.S. that I can call my own and just zone out, I can't and won't do it.

I have plenty at stake in this fight. I work hard for a living and so does my wife. As I am trying to make it as a novelist, I am currently a delivery driver. My wife is a night audit clerk at a hotel. We don't make enough money for healthcare. Brenda is 57 and I am 53. I don't like walking a tightrope, without a net, but I and my wife have been doing so for years. While the cost of living has gone up, our wages have not. Healthcare hasn't even been discussed, because it is just so unaffordable, and if we could afford it, coverage wouldn't be worth a shit.

Believe me, and I am dead serious. I have tried to give up numerous times. Every time I think about it long and hard, I always come to the same conclusion: What the other side wants is for us to give up and give in. We CANNOT allow that to happen. We had a ringside seat as to what the other side is like, once they regain power. Never again in my life do I want to experience what I have experienced for the prior eight years.

I fight because there is nothing else to do. It may be in vein, but our voices must be heard.

I contacted the White House, my congressman and my Senators today. Only my congressman is for single payer. I gave the White House and my Senators hell.

One more thing...don't dis Woodstock. It's the holy grail of my generation.