I Am Not Depressed

Part of life these days is video calls with docs and in at least one of those interactions the doc inquired about my mood.  They let me know that if I found myself depressed there would probably be something they could do medically for me to help out.  I was curiously unconflicted:

I am not depressed.

Today the family went out for a stroll.  My wife, myself and my son donned masks and weathered withering looks from people not wearing masks.  We listened to people complain about how the bus drivers insisted on masks.  Gib5on and I went into a store to look around and maintained our spacing and cleansed off with hand sanitizer afterward.

But I am not depressed.

This last week it came out that the President's campaign booked online ads leveraging Nazi code words and images.  Facebook finally acted and took them down, but not without a run first.  It has been reported a little bit in media that reaches me through my feeds, but not through anything I see on TV - and I watch lefty, batshit media (at least according to righty batshit critics).

But I am not depressed.

There are people protesting for their lives in the streets.  This last week those protests reached my front yard.  I took Gib5on out to witness the protest and tried to explain what was going on and why those people were there and what it was they were trying to say and to do.  Gib5on is 6, but we can't stand by and let this go without at least trying to contextualize events for him.

But I am not depressed.

For the last two years we've been in a slow moving process of rebuilding curriculum at work.  Top to bottom changes take a very long time to line up and secure buy in, and that's in an environment of strong leadership whereas we're trying to get it done in a period of leadership transition.  Now we're trying to work it through incorporating all of the above, and do it by the end of August.

But I am not depressed.

It is difficult to grapple with emergent public health, politics, and racial inequity issues without realizing that although at the moment they are acute that none of these things are new.  A pandemic wasn't ever an if but rather a when, and we were not prepared.  The politics have become more and more brazen, but the goals aren't really new and we've allowed it to fester.  I don't think anyone would argue that racial problems started a couple of weeks ago.  At least I hope there wouldn't be anyone that thought that.  None of this is new.

But I am not depressed.

Nothing getting our attention today is making any of the other things any better.  Economic inequality is out of control.  The education system in the US is not nearly what it should be.  As a group we are not the shepherds of the environment we ought to be.  We're doggedly holding onto old solutions at the expense of better solutions.  Even when it seems like there's a step forward it is often obscured by something that saps energy like a stride in the sand.

But... I am not depressed.

When you are in care at Mayo they have you fill out this questionnaire every time you check in (and with 2 to 3 appointments every day I used to check in a whole lot).  There are two questions and you answer each on a four point scale:

I used to have a running argument with docs that it seemed wrong to answer "0" to the second question.  My reasoning was that if as a person you were even a little aware of what was going on in the world that you wouldn't be able to talk about "being down" as being "not at all."  I spent a lot of time putting an "X" next to the 0 but not in the box - on the other side of the zero as if to say: "I'm not unhappy, but I'm not oblivious."  Sometime a little while back I just gave up on the argument and started marking the zero box.

It does seem though that if you have your head up and you are looking around that you have plenty of reasons to be depressed.

But I am not depressed.

Insurance Deductible

I am sure that with the dawn of "Obamacare" this will all become pointless, and we have not long to wait to be held in the warm embrace of a federal single payer medical system, but if not I have a couple of thoughts about deductibles.

It occurred to me because I usually have a slate of doctor appointments this time of year. I let things go until after school ends and then I do a physical and there are sometimes other tests and follow ups and the like. I've been distracted lately so this hasn't happened this year and while I was considering that I had the vaguest thought about how I hadn't used any medical services this year to date and so if I went in I would have to pay.

As a side note, I am fairly sure this is why we have deductibles. It isn't anything to do with money management or billing. They are there to keep us from consuming services such that we get to the point where the insurer has to pay.

But that's another post.

After considering that bit I had two thoughts. Number One: I would like to prepay 100% of my deductible at the top of the cycle. I would then like to never see a bill or an EOB ever. This would simplify my life as I wouldn't have to keep track of where I was in the amount, I wouldn't get bills from my provider, and I wouldn't get thousands of paper mailings from my insurer that say "THIS IS NOT A BILL." I think the insurer would like it too as they wouldn't have to send me thousands of pieces of paper that say "THIS IS NOT A BILL" and they'd get to hold my money. Win-win I think.

If I don't spend my entire deductible in a given cycle they just apply it to the prepayment for the next cycle. If they want to charge me a fee for this accounting I would prefer they didn't, but probably could stomach 10-20 dollars (one would hope getting to hold the entire amount for a year might offset the need for a fee).

Number Two: I would like to set the rollover date for my cycle. As it stands now the reset of my deductible is tied to the annual calendar, resetting in January. This means the time it is most in my interest to use medical services is in December as I am most likely to have paid off my deductible and be into house money. As is the case for what I assume would be a lot of people I am very busy in December. It's the last week of class, and then I have finals and semester reviews and then there's all these holidays and family and travel. I'm busy. Like I started saying, I use the most of my services in June and July. Based on that I would like my deductible cycle to reset in September.

Truth be told I think if they do the actuarials on this they'll find it doesn't cost anything. All things being equal I don't believe I would consume makedly more services in this scenario. Mostly I think it would just make me feel better about the whole thing. But for the sake of argument lets say there are people that watch where they are in the cycle and in the deductible and do cram in visits prior to the annual reset. If everyone resets in January then this must mean that there is a surge in service in December. This would have to put an unnecessary strain on health providers and on insurance companies. Spreading the cycle reset around the calendar would even out this demand. Again, win-win.

Being that I don't run an insurance company I am sure I probably miss a critical feature of this discussion. But it'd be nice to think they could make this benign change just because it would make my life more pleasant.

Batshit

When did the news become the Jerry Springer show?

There's been a lot of talk for several years about how corporate ownership and media conglomerates have changed the way news editors work. I guess there was a whole season of The Wire built around the idea that what goes on the pages of a newspaper these days doesn't have to be about quality or even truth. I have to say though I think we're at a high water mark. News outlets are all about reporting the noise now, not about reporting the reason.

Its sad to me that the most upright *newscasts* these days are The Daily Show and Real Time with Bill Maher. On these shows you can depend on people being asked a thoughtful followup question or having people making the noise explored a little beyond their vitriol. There was a short story on Real Time setting the Rural Area Medical stop in LA against LA town hall meetings on health insurance reform. We'd all seen the folk outside shouting at the legislators about how the government has no place in our healthcare. It took Real Time to tell us that at least in this case those people were Lyndon Larouche supporters. Was that a point the other news outlets didn't find salient?

(As a side note, the juxtaposition of less than 100 protestors claiming we have no need for universal heathcare and literally thousands of people lined up for a one time chance at free heathcare was pretty powerful, and something no other news outlet chose to do - well done Real Time.)

This week I constantly heard on the radio, and eventually read in the paper how "some" parents don't want their child to hear the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES deliver a back to school address. In the paper one of the district officials said she'd had "30 calls." Does anyone for a minute think in a city district that 30 calls could possibly be a significant number? At the high school I attended, 30 calls would be 1.2%. I bet without much effort I could generate 30 calls to any district about anything. If they got 30 calls saying all swim classes should be naked do you think they would seriously consider it? How about 30 calls saying students should be able to drink wine in the school cafeteria? 30 calls? 30 calls? Really? 30 calls?

Batshit.

It isn't news. Maybe if the story was "after receiving 30 calls this school is actually considering making a policy decision - WTF is up with that." That might be news. We need to focus on the stories and not on the noise. Noise is WAY to easy to generate these days. I haven't seen the story about how thousands of people had the same facebook status two days ago (ok, I looked, Google News says there were nine - and after looking at the stories they were all "will it matter" and "how did it start" process stories - not one about the fact that thousands of people stood up).

Screaming, batshit people (on either end of the spectrum for that matter) might make good TV; it certainly has been great for Springer and the like. But the fringe is the fringe. The more you report it the more it seems like it is normal. It's not normal, it's batshit. Not allowing your kid to hear the President is batshit. Threatening to secede from the union is batshit. Bringing a gun to a Presidential rally is batshit. Its generally accepted wisdom that Lyndon Larouche supporters aren't mainstream. Why are we covering this crap?

Stop watching the shiny objects. Find the news. That's your job - not mine.

George Will and Stranger Danger

On this weekend's This Week the round table got caught up in "John McCain's lies," specifically that he has an ad running that says that Obama was in favor of sex education for kindergartners. They tried to clear the air to say that the bill actually established "Comprehensive sex ed for K-12" and that intent of the "K" part was a program to teach the youngest children how to "ward off sexual predators."

At this point George Will says that even that should be up for public debate and that conservatives will feel that education of that type is the responsibility of parents and not schools, and that on those grounds the ad isn't a lie.

Maybe not, but the person that wrote it certainly isn't hoping you will parse it that way - or at least I doubt they are.

To bolster his claim, Will asserts that for decades American parents have admonished their children to be wary of strangers. I have to take a little issue with this. First of all, my recollection is that I was also admonished in school to be wary of strangers. I think it would have been first or second grade and "Officer Tommy" (or whatever, I can't remember the name) came to school to show us "Stranger Danger" the film. So perhaps this dispute that Will is promoting is also decades old, and probably fairly settled. Like it or not society has decided that schools will backstop for parents. I think I would actually agree with him that this isn't the responsibility of schools. But I also think that as long as the honest truth is that they aren't getting it at home we shouldn't take the forum away from the educators.

If he really wants to make that point, he ought to do something about the general quality of parenting (says the guy with no kids).

But this is actually the smaller part of my objection. The real issue is this, which of these people are strangers: a non-custodial parent, an uncle, the neighbor across the street, your bus driver, your baby-sitter, your older brother's friend, your sports coach, your clergyman? The answer is none of these people are strangers, and yet over the past several years I am certain everyone can remember some kind of adult/child difficulty relating to one of these people (or someone like them).

I think we've done pretty well with the whole stranger thing. I haven't surveyed, but anecdotally I would say that non-stranger crimes outpace stranger crime maybe 3:1? More? It's not the kind of news I look for. But I think you're much more likely to hear about an abuse of trust by someone with access than you are about a creey guy in a van that says "Free Candy!"

It's depressing that someone would think that 4 and 5 year olds need to be taught how to ward off sexual attacks; and it's depressing to think that children would not get that needed information from their parents (although if the need is depressing, who is going to be thinking about it?); and it's depressing to think that simple "stranger danger" type counselling won't cover the people that are likely threats. But being depressing doesn't mean any of those things aren't actually true. That just may be the world we now live in, and if that's so then comprehensive K-12 sex ed might not be as foundationally wrong as many might think it is.

Score Another One For the Democrafts

Oh wait, that didn't come out right. But I was sure they were running things now, no more Bush/Cheney crap.

Today our legislators passed immunity from prosecution for all of the telcos that let the government tap US citizens without warrants. That just about rubber stamps Cheney's "the President can do whatever he wants" theory.

Early during the day I read a piece of speculation that the President will pre-emptively pardon everyone involved in any of the interagations or decisions revolving on the United States using torture.

We're not much of a nation for consequences any more are we? You ever get the feeling there are two sets of rules?

Quest communications deserves some kind of medal. I don't know who would give it, but they really do deserve it. When the government came calling, Quest wouldn't give them access without a warrant. What do you want to bet that whatever they might have had in government contracts in the past Quest will find themselves without them now.

Congress immunizes illegal searches.
The President pardons torturers (I bet).
The Fed bails out greedy businesses.

Doesn't sound like of the people by the people for the people.

The people have to remove their shoes at the airport - like that adds 1% to our safety.
The people are paying $4/gal and more for gas.
The people have to wonder who might be listening on their phone.
The people have to worry about extraordinary rendition and waterboarding.

Sounds more like of the police by the corporations for the wealthy.

Maybe it is time for some kind of Libertarian Revolution - the reformation of the American Dream.

I watched Weeds tonight. Part of this week's episode had the uncle looking through the grandmother's house for her hidden cash. She'd survived the Holocaust and was saving money for bribes for when the government turned on her again. That should sound foolish. I'm not sure it does.

Well, maybe something cool will happen tomorrow and I will forget to think about how disappointed I am in our government again.

I Think It's More Complicated Than That

Speaker Pelosi wants us to stop putting oil in the national strategic reserve. And of course the republicans want us to open up Anwar for oil exploration.

Anyone want to lay odds on whether if after doing that the oil companies would just tell us prices are high because of a lack of refinery capacity?

Or maybe the excuse would be "special summer cocktails" designed to reduce emissions.

It just isn't as simple as supply and demand. Increasing our domestic supply won't bring down gas prices. It turns out that demand for gas across the country is already lower than it was a year ago. It's not supply and demand, its not OPEC production, and it isn't refining capability.

It's speculators, the commodity traders that are investing in oil.

The price of gas kicked up like 100% after Katrina, from a dollar something to two dollar something and it's never looked back. In all likelihood refining capacity has actually increased since then due to facilities being repaired and coming back on line. The problem is that the news never improved. We went from Katrina to the war to OH MY GOD THERE ARE A LOT OF CHINESE and right from there into summer refining formulas. Every one of those things on their face suggests that the supply is in danger, that oil and gas are scarce and that suggestion is enough to get investors to do something about it. They buy futures, the price goes up, we see the price go up and think OH MY GOD THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE IN INDIA, someone does a news story and the cycle repeats.

It is a self fueling hysteria over fuel.

I am sure that there are legit reasons for fuel price increases. But I have to tell you I am just as sure that we ought to be paying something on the order of $2.25/gal at the pump and that the difference is investment driven.

So back to The Speaker. I don't think we should change procedure on the strategic oil reserve, and I don't think we should open up ANWAR. But maybe we ought to make a big deal out of telling the world we are.

Go ahead Josh, tell me how I am wrong this time.

Just Not That Simple

Today I found myself listening to Rush Limbaugh in the car again. I don't know why. Often I enjoy the show although I rarely if ever agree with the substance. Most of the time I wind up thinking "well, ok, yes, except it just isn't that simple." I hope, but I am pessimistic that the rest of the audience hears it like that too. This is a perfect example.

On todays show at one point he started reading an alphabetical list of things that have been attributed to global warming. He found this guy who has a website with links to over 600 individual things that have at one time or another been "blamed" on global warming.

Right off he presents it as if the sheer volume of things being discussed should indicate that the idea is just being treated as a catch-all for anything anyone sees going wrong - and therefore isn't as significant as it might be. Alternately you are lead to believe that "advocates" of global warming theory are so anxious to validate the idea that they will put it forth as a reason for almost anything.

I have to say that if something as fundamental as the average temperature of our planet was changing I would have no trouble at all believing that as many as 600 million individual things would change. The planetary ecosystem is mindbogglingly complicated and interdependent. We've only found 600 things to attribute to global warming? I don't think we're looking hard enough. To say that 600 individual items is some kind of hysteria is ignorant.

I guess the second bit could be true, except it doesn't need to be. Really I don't think there are global warming advocates. There are legit scientists, there are political and industry naysayers, and then there are many of us trying to beat back the latter. Proponents don't need to make a case, they have the science.

But this is just the tip of the rapidly melting iceberg - so to speak (that's actually very Rush-like. I wonder if he's used it).

Really why he was reading it was so he could recite many items that sounded obviously contradictory: "Ocean salinity decreasing" followed by "Ocean salinity increasing" and the like. This is supposed to make us think that if the hysterical Goreian troops are including things on both sides of an outcome that the underlying idea must in fact be false - because the argument is ridiculous. "Avalanches reduced, Avalanches increased." How is it possible that global warming is causing avalanches to both increase and decrease? They must be nuts! "Bananas destroyed, bananas grow." Come on Algore, you can't have it both ways!

Poppycock. Facile. Ignorant.

How could it be both? Perhaps, Rush, the Earth is large. Just a guess.

Maybe in some places, under some circumstances in some models the ocean salinity is increasing where in others it is decreasing - and maybe in both cases it is due to global climate change.

And herein really is the problem, and it isn't confined to Rush Limbaugh but really exists in most media short of PBS (and I would also say applies to social issues as well to natural science). Media today doesn't do anything. Mostly they reference other media and then talk about it, most times without reading it, never after having vetted it, and never with enough time or civility for any nuance. It's not enough to read a list of article subjects and expect that it makes an informed statement about a complicated subject. In this case, it wouldn't likely even be enough to read each of the actual articles as they were news and commentary, not publications in science journals. You cannot discuss and you really cannot debate something as complicated as global climate change in sound bites, let alone second hand referencing of sound bites. First off, not everyone who produces a sound bite is informed. Statements have to be checked, just repeating them often doesn't make them right, just familiar. And second, even if the source material is good, the subject is just too complex for a "rant."

Why is this what we get? Unfortunately I think its because its what we want. Programming outlets program what is popular. Rush Limbaugh's brand of discourse is staggeringly popular. "Nova" and "Frontline" don't compete - even if they are obviously more reputable on the facts. People would rather listen to a 5 minute Limbaugh rant about how libs are unfairly stigmatizing "Intelligent Design" rather than watch a two hour exhaustive Nova episode about how Christian Fundamentalists are manufacturing it in order to circumvent court rulings and how a George W. Bush appointed judge ruled it just isn't science at all. Sad, but true.

But then I just did a 5 minute rant about the complexity of issues. Would you watch the Frontline if they made it?

Save the People

It's "blog action day." Bloggers around the world are supposed to write about the environment in order to build awareness for green and sustainability causes.

I didn't register my blog as an official participant, but I think it's a fairly good idea and worth doing. For my contribution I have selected a piece from my favorite environmentalist to present to you.

His name is George Carlin. He has little time for self-importance or hypocrisies. I also think he has a slightly more realistic take on our interest in a clean environment. Perhaps it will give you pause next time you talk about "saving the planet."

We're so self-important. So self-important. Everybody's going to save something now. "Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails." And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet, we don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven't learned how to care for one another, we're gonna save the fucking planet?

I'm getting tired of that shit. Tired of that shit. I'm tired of fucking Earth Day, I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world save for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a shit about the planet. They don't care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don't. Not in the abstract they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me.

Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked. Difference. Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We've been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we're a threat? That somehow we're gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that's just a-floatin' around the sun?

The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles...hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worlwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages...And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet...the planet...the planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE!

We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.

You wanna know how the planet's doing? Ask those people at Pompeii, who are frozen into position from volcanic ash, how the planet's doing. You wanna know if the planet's all right, ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble, if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. Or how about those people in Kilowaia, Hawaii, who built their homes right next to an active volcano, and then wonder why they have lava in the living room.

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new pardigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?" Plastic...asshole.

So, the plastic is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now. And I think that's begun. Don't you think that's already started? I think, to be fair, the planet sees us as a mild threat. Something to be dealt with. And the planet can defend itself in an organized, collective way, the way a beehive or an ant colony can. A collective defense mechanism. The planet will think of something. What would you do if you were the planet? How would you defend yourself against this troublesome, pesky species? Let's see... Viruses. Viruses might be good. They seem vulnerable to viruses. And, uh...viruses are tricky, always mutating and forming new strains whenever a vaccine is developed. Perhaps, this first virus could be one that compromises the immune system of these creatures. Perhaps a human immunodeficiency virus, making them vulnerable to all sorts of other diseases and infections that might come along. And maybe it could be spread sexually, making them a little reluctant to engage in the act of reproduction.

Well, that's a poetic note. And it's a start. And I can dream, can't I? See I don't worry about the little things: bees, trees, whales, snails. I think we're part of a greater wisdom than we will ever understand. A higher order. Call it what you want. Know what I call it? The Big Electron. The Big Electron...whoooa. Whoooa. Whoooa. It doesn't punish, it doesn't reward, it doesn't judge at all. It just is. And so are we. For a little while.

Maybe people would act more responsibly if they saw environmental problems as an actual threat to themselves rather than some abstract threat to the environment. Don't "save the planet," from now on let's "save the people."

Really, I Don't Know What to Say

I drive through a tunnel every day going to work. Well, thats a misstatement, on days where the people going into the tunnel haven't slowed down so much that traffic is backed up for miles I drive through a tunnel to work. Most days its backed up I think to myself "What are these people afraid of? Like the tunnel is going to collapse!" Today I wondered how many cynical people sitting in traffic in Minneapolis think to themselves "What are they afraid of? Like the bridge is going to collapse!"

I'd be funny if it weren't so not funny.

I can't say as I am surprised that what with all the effort the various governments have been making to protect us from Al Keda, that with our head turned one way the house would fall over. DO you think that was the terrorist's plan all along: distract them to the point they ignore their infrastructure and watch the whole country just fall over. Is it possible that by not maintaining our systems that we're letting the terrorists win? I swear Osama Bin Laden is thinking "Ha, what a black eye! And I didn't even have to leave the cave."

A story on NPR today said that 20% of all bridges on interstates were "structurally deficient." Apparently its not all that bad as that can mean that the shoulders are too narrow as well as mean it is listing and going to fall over. But still, thats one in every five bridges. There are people in Vegas that regularly bet those odds. Seems a little risky for the traveling public.

It'd be nice to think that someone in a position of power would see the New Orleans levies, the massive NYC power failure, a bridge or two just drop into a river and think maybe we're missing something. Maybe all that time they're spending reading our email and moving people around through extraordinary rendition could be put to better use. Perhaps the time and effort appearing before congress and saying "I don't recall" could be put to better use.

How about this: if the Bush administration agrees to spend on infrastructure in the next year an amount equal to what they spent in Iraq last month we will all, as a country, stop caring about who decided to fire those US Attorneys.

I shouldn't knock W exclusively for this though. (There's lots else to knock him for - its nice when poor sentence structure leads to fun.) Its not like the bridge actually fell over yesterday, it just finally fell over yesterday. The pattern of maintenance and inspection that lead to it falling over had been in place for quite some time.

We're more dependent that we realize on these infrastructure items. The flood and the blackout were hard to miss, catastrophic. But in reality its likely true that many things are in a position to bottleneck but for just one failure. What if the bridge to drop had been the Q in New Haven? That's three lanes each way and jammed pretty much all day every day. The alternates are two bridges , each one lane for each direction, both draw bridges to allow local river traffic, and both only accessible after driving a few miles through neighborhoods - in one case through a residential neighborhood.

The loss of the tunnel I drive through would run the entire traffic pattern right through a picturesque suburban neighborhood - that is until they make everyone get off an exit earlier so they drive through the more urban, lower income neighborhood. Want to see what that's like? They've been closing the tunnel for road work on the weekends. Without commuter traffic there are still miles of delays.

Still, it seems like the accident has already jump started a round of inspections. That seems to be the case in the aftermath of every incident. But its not the impetus we lack, its the follow through. We're coming into an election cycle. We're all too tired of hearing about foriegn policy. I don't want my heart broken over health care again. Let's make them talk about our vulnerable infrastructure.