Need to know just how many chickens to take to the doctor with you under the new GOP health plan? This site allows you to determine just that.

Well the GOP finally unveiled their health care plan.  Well, sort of.  Last week, the likely Republican candidate who will face Senator Harry Reid in the Nevada senate race, Sue Lowden, suggested that we return to the old barter system so that health care might be more affordable to more people.  In her example, she used chickens. 

So, in other words, you go to your doctor, and you pay him in chickens or butter or corn or just whatever you seem to have a whole lot of.  But Rachel Maddow can explain Lowden’s plan better than I can:

Certainly, the question then becomes, well if I am going to pay for my medical care in chickens, just how many chickens do I need to bring with me?  Well, someone has done the math for you.  A site entitled The Lowden Plan will allow you to choose any medical procedure you might be facing, and it will tell you exactly how many chickens you need to take to the doctor’s office with you to settle your bill.

So, need to make sure you have enough chickens to afford getting that brain tumor removed?  Just click here.

A Little Fear and Trepidation Are Terrible Things to Waste: A Brief History Lesson by Professor Reddick

I fancy myself to be a student of history; the past forever fascinates me, and additionally, you would be amazed just how much insight on the present that might be gained by looking critically at the past.

So, this past summer when the Tea Party protests surrounding healthcare reform first arose, when people began to hi-jack town hall meetings with seemingly feigned and contrived outrage, when we began to hear appeals to the “real Americans” to take back our country, it all looked and sounded vaguely familiar to me.

We all pointed rigid fingers and decried the racism inherent in these actions and statements, and rightly so, but in doing so, I do believe that we completely missed the most prevailing motivations. But when on last week Virginia governor proclaimed the month of April to be Confederate History Month, it all started to come into focus for me. And a glance backward to the past would provide the historical correlations necessary to understanding what is afoot.

The first period we would need to take a good hard look at is during Reconstruction and the period shortly thereafter. Things were still pretty shaky then, but black folk were off to a promising start. They were fighting hard and diligently to rise above their station in life, and most importantly, they were actively availing themselves of the political process. And herein lies the rub.

The alarm quickly went up that black folk were taking over the country, that the country had to be taken back and preserved for “real Americans” at all costs. At this time, though, it was the Democrats leading the charge, and they used the fear and trepidation wrought by the societal changes underway to create a certain political urgency and rally people to their cause (and political party).

Historian John Hope Franklin refers to this timeframe as the very nadir of black existence as black folk lost any and all gains made during Reconstruction and found themselves in an even more precarious position. And since people had no inkling of political correctness at the time, overt racists did not have to couch their racism in terms like “Socialists” or “Communists” or “Muslim.” They just came right out with it. I read an account that stated that to win political office in the South during this period, you had to “out-nigger” your opponent; whichever politician could use the word nigger the most times and the most creatively in their stump speeches usually won the race.

Next we would have to fast forward to the period following the Civil Rights Movement. As black folk took advantage of the hard-earned opportunities afforded by the Civil Rights Movement, some white folk became nervous and fearful. And as the riots spread throughout the urban communities in the late 1960’s, that nervous fearfulness transformed into abject terror. And then here comes Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon.

Nixon was able to capitalize on white Americans’ fears that black folk were moving too far too fast. And by pointing out the riots sweeping the nation and defining them as evidentiary of the lawlessness sweeping the nation as African Americans were allowed to enter the mainstream, he was able to convince them that a domestic barbarian horde of knee-grows stood at the ready to usurp the place of the good white people whose forefathers had made this country what it is.

Nixon’s return to “law and order” and a certain social normality message managed to resonate with voters, and rural and Southern Democrats still aggravated by the Democratic Party’s passing of civil rights legislation were only too eager to jump ship. Nixon’s racist rhetoric greatly appealed to them. Nixon perhaps would have gone down in the history books as being great had his own personal foibles and paranoias not tripped him up.

And Ronald Reagan’s true genius lay in his ability to code Nixon’s almost overtly racist rhetoric, which had begun to turn many people off by this time, into covertly racist, race neutral language.

Now, let’s take a look at what is happening today. If you are like me, the whole furor surrounding health care reform took me completely by surprise. I attended a small local rally out of mere curiosity, and it seemed that the crowd protesting “Obama’s Socialist Health Care Reform” should have been leading the charge to support it; more than a few looked as if they could use at least a good dental plan.

But in hindsight, I remember noting during that protest, as well as numerous others, that the conversation seemed only peripherally about and motivated by healthcare and more about and by President Obama’s perceived difference and change and the concomitant fear and trepidation that attend to both.

Following President Obama’s election and amid the threat of financial crisis and ruin, people—all people—were afraid and naturally so. They were in desperately in need of guidance and re-assurance—leadership, and I still hold firmly to my previous notions that if the right and conservatives were genuinely concerned about this country, at that time they would have stepped out front and worked to allay public fears about the ascendance of an African American president and the meaning thereof. That does not mean that they had to agree with his agenda or his policy; they just had to acknowledge both his humanity and his legitimacy, both of which seemed to be in question.

Instead, they chose to contrive this straw man in the form of a healthcare reform debate, and use any number and/or manner of outright lies, distortions, and innuendo to play upon the worst fears of the most fearful. And Governor McConnell’s proclamation just reminds Virginians and the nation of what once was and makes an implicit promise for a return to the halcyon days of yore.

But perhaps as a student of history I should have expected this. After all, such has been the historical pattern of politics in America; I guess I was just naïvely idealistic in expecting anything different. But I guess in a time of crisis and social upheaval, politically speaking, a little fear and trepidation are terrible things to waste.

My name is Max Reddick. I am an adult African American male. And I’m afraid of becoming a racist.

For anyone who cares, I need to make a statement. My name is Maxwell Rene Reddick. And I’m afraid of becoming a racist. But perhaps racist is not the correct word to describe how I feel; however, in the same instance, perhaps it’s the only word.

You see, I am gradually experiencing an erosion of trust, a waning of faith. Suddenly, I am beginning to see my fellow Americans in a new light.

It began sometime during the last presidential election. And I am not so naïve as to believe that racism and racial resentment did not exist before that time, but I guess that the ease and the unabashed manner with which they dragged out the ghosts of the past caught me by surprise.

But then I reasoned that they had just given in to the emotions of the moment. That when President Obama took office, all the racist rhetoric would die down. That the Republican leadership would come forward as a united body and denounce the campaign’s racism and allay the imagined fears of some Negro take over.

However, they did not. Instead, they increased the rhetoric. They upped the ante. They even rolled out their own Gestapo like force skilled in the use of racist rhetoric and general mayhem. They called them the “Tea Party.” But soon the “Tea Party,” drunk off their new found sense of power, spurred on by their success, spun out of their control, out of their grasp, and they found themselves, too, at its capricious whims.

So, Saturday I’m watching the whole lead-up to the historic vote on health care reform unfold. I am seeing the crowds gather in protest on the street. I am watching the talking heads get in their talking points on the cable news networks. Then I get a text message. Someone has been called a nigger. Someone has been called a faggot. Someone has been spit on. And almost coincidently the cable network news people confirm these reports.

And I feel my ire rise. I feel a level of indignance that I have not felt in quite some time. And there is something else there too that causes me to clench my fist and bite down on my lower lip. Is that hate or just anger? And then the devil pours me another drink as he laughs at my vulnerability.

But then later I’m in my yard, and a pick-up truck passes with a “NOBAMA” sticker and a “Is it 2012 yet” sticker displayed prominently in the back window of the cab. And then a late model Mercedes-Benz passes going in the other direction. The driver has affixed a sticker with the word “SOCIALISM” with a big red circle with a slash through it.

Then I mentally count the distance between my home and the next home containing a black family. I note my neighbor out working in his yard with his shirt off—he’s really too big to be outside with his shirt off—and I think to myself, “Is he one of them?”. He certainly looks like one of them or what I believe one of them would look like.

And when I am in the grocery, I am looking in white faces, thinking to myself, “Is he one of them? Is she one of them?”. The lady at the gas station smiles at me as she swipes my card. I do not smile back. Is she one of them?

And I tell myself that I cannot be racist. Haven’t I got a plethora of white friends. But that’s the first thing racists say, isn’t it? I remember that from my first year of grammar school until my last year of grad school, I have been surrounded by white people; usually I have been the only, or one of a very few, Blacks in the class. In the military, I lived with white people, slept with white people, ate with white people. I remind myself that my aunt, my mother’s brother’s wife, is white though I have never thought of her as being white before this moment.

But I don’t think that it’s racism; I think it is a lack of trust, a lack of faith in my fellow Americans and their motives. This is, perhaps, how my grandfather felt when he was a young man. Which of you are for me? Which of you are against me? Because I have no way of knowing until you are standing in front of me, spitting on me and calling me a nigger.

However, I refuse to give in to hate. To calm my nerves, to clear my mind, I pick up a book to read, and I come across a quote by James Baldwin: “The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”

And then I realize that I cannot hate. That it is perhaps not in my best interest, our best interests. That it is perhaps not even in me to hold grudges. But I must work on this whole trust thing; I must work to rebuild my faith. But trust and faith are hard found when all around you hate and acrimony seems to be the order of the day.

President Obama, you can be remembered as being pitiful or powerful, but not both

I came late to the Obama bandwagon. While I suspect many of my friends, family members, and colleagues threw their support behind him early simply because of his race, I withheld mine until late in the primary season chiefly for that same reason; I knew that the importance of this presidential race was such that we could not waste our efforts. And I reasoned that America would not vote for a black man, and Obama’s campaign would go the way of Jesse Jackson’s, or Al Sharpton’s, or Shirley Chisholm’s in the early seventies.

But I did finally come around. I did finally get on the bandwagon. And for most of the summer until well into the fall, I, along with my wife and kids, did our very best to make his campaign successful. We canvassed. We stuffed envelopes. We made phone calls. And unbeknownst to me, practically every time we got one of those email messages asking for money, at least once or twice a week, my wife responded.

I was not the only one. Many people bought into his message of hope and change. Each time I attended a campaign event, the number of people and their sheer enthusiasm and optimism completely overwhelmed me; it more resembled a movement and not a campaign.

However, all around me I sense that campaign and inaugural day ardor is dampening. I sense that enthusiasm, that anticipation—the sense of hope and desire for real change—which defined the campaign is transforming hard and fast into disaffection and cynicism. And I lay the blame at the feet of President Obama.

There is an old military axiom that states that no matter how well crafted or well thought out the battle plan, that plan must necessarily change once the enemy is engaged. So, that being said, I understand that perhaps once the president took office the realities he faced might have caused him to revisit, re-evaluate, and revise those ideals he espoused during the campaign.

Furthermore, I understand the machinations of politics. The very nature of politics implies compromise. And in making a decision, the political implications of that decision sometime drive that decision; often because of political expediency and exigency, the best decision is not always the right decision.

With that in mind, I have remained reserved while others have criticized the president early in his term. In some decisions I could readily discern the political rationale, while others I just gave him the benefit of the doubt, but with this whole Health Care Reform debacle, I can no longer remain reticent.

The president must have known, had to have known, the difficulty of passing any type of health care bill with a public option attached early on. Leading up to his assuming office, or within the first days of his assuming office, I am more than certain he discussed his vision for health care reform with Democratic leaders in order to determine where they stood; to not to have done so would be tantamount to political malpractice.

In looking back, I now realize that when he gave his health care speech in August, he knew then. His downplaying the need for the public option during that speech was a tacit harbinger of what was to come. But at the moment he realized that he could not get any decent health care bill through the Senate, if he was really serious about a public option, he should have then looked for another option, another means of pushing his legislation through.

Certainly when he realized that the other side was not going to play by the rules, when he realized that the other side was going to engage any means necessary, no matter how unethical or immoral, to preserve the status quo, when he realized that members of his own party was going to stand in the way of him fulfilling his campaign promises, he should have then accepted that the normal give and take of politics was not longer commensurate to the situation; extraordinary problems require extraordinary solutions.

I understand the notion that we get what we can now and then build on that foundation. But this is the problem with that. The urgency is now, and what can be done to bring the bill closer to what is desired in the future depends entirely on factors that are rapidly spinning beyond the control of the current sitting Democratic officials. Additionally, after this debacle, how many of those seats will remain in Democratic hands? How much longer will Democrats hold the balance of power?

These are the facts as I currently see them. This is the new reality that must be dealt with despite whatever battle plans might have existed. The other side has no interest whatsoever in bipartisanship, and the senate is wholly dysfunctional and has ceased to serve its purpose. If anything, the whole health care debate has made it plain that our government officials have ceased to be beholden to the people, but have become instead vassals of various business interests and/or industries.

This changes the game and the rules of play. Rational appeals to common sense and decency are wholly insufficient and fall on irrational and immoral/unethical ears, and the traditional political avenues are strewn with duplicity and questionable motives. So, all that’s left is for President Obama to step outside his zone of comfort and make those decisions and take those actions requisite to moving his agenda forward, the agenda promised those who worked so hard to get him elected, through all available means, to include good all fashioned political arm-twisting and intimidation.

Those historical figures which proved effective in facilitating real change and engendering hope in those who followed them did so by operating outside the status quo. They did so by throwing caution to the wind and putting themselves and their aspirations in the back seat and doing that which needed to be done for the good of those they served.

It is time for President Obama to stand fully erect and go blow for blow. The time has passed for issuing passes to those who have seemingly been disloyal and disingenuous in their actions; those persons seemingly have begun to see this as not a political favor but a weakness. All attempts at negotiation and compromise have appeared to those looking on, to include me, as complete and utter capitulation; the goal of negotiation and compromise is to reach an acceptable middle ground and not give, give, give until there is nothing left to give and then call it a victory.

President Obama has secured his place in history as the first African American president; however, the question then becomes what will history say about his performance as president? He will either be seen as being a complete failure or great; the epilogue will be either very pitiful or powerful, but it cannot be both. He has allowed the opposition and members of his own party to set the terms and formulate the rules in such a way that there is no middle ground.

We Got a Full House Tonight on Freedom thru Speech Radio

Are you satisfied with the Health Care Reform compromise? Do you think the president delivered far less than he promised? And what about Joe Lieberman? He seems to have used the whole healthcare debate to get some payback for what was done to him years ago.

How do you think all this will affect the Democrats in the 2010 and 2012 elections? Do you think they have blown it once again? They seem to have a special knack for standing in their own path.

And last week there seemed to be a rather animated discussion going on around the blogosphere surrounding the Washington Post article entitled “Successful, Black, Lonely.” Why are professional African American women having such a hard time finding mates? Are there just not enough African American men to go around, or are they simply being too picky?

We will be discussing these issues and more tonight at 8 PM EST on Freedom through Speech Radio, the blogtalkradio show I host along with OneChele of Black n’ Bougie and RiPPa of Intersection of Madness and Reality.

OneChele is ill this evening, but we have some special guest to fill the void. We have a full house. Joining us will be Seattle Slim of happynappyhead.com, Tracy Renee Jones of tracyreneejones.com, and CareyCarey of Carry Me Home.