politricks and other distractions

It's good to see Tony Snow's performance this past week as I job-and-client hunt. It makes me realize there's a need for people like me to keep people like him from embarassing themselves. Though it is one of the world's toughest jobs, so who am I to judge?

What I CAN judge, however, is his tearful moment, when he got choked up talking about his bout with cancer last year. Yes, Tony, be choked up. You got all the medicine you needed, got better, and had a chance to take on this lucrative job because you lived. But you work for a party that has systematically - almost proudly - made the kind of health care that saved you so expensive that businesses are jettisoning workers' coverage. They've created an entirely new business model that abandons anyone with less than perfect health so that the profitability of the company is kept healthy. They don't care about people falling through the cracks because they don't count. Not to this administration and its party. Retirees who were promised pensions are having their health coverage dropped by their employers, who pass the costs of funding their pensions on to us, the American taxpayers. Business. Lovely business. Lord Business must always be served.

But as for the human beings in this story... there are lots of families all over the country tonight, Tony, who are crying because they can't afford the care you got and they've got to make a whole different set o' plans for their future.

Somehow, I'm not so impressed by your sensitivity, Tony. Buck up, boy. You've got a long loooong road ahead.