"We're sorry, but the fingers you have used to dial are too fat..."

"Dear *****:

As someone who has previously contacted our office to share your thoughts on issues important to you, I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to participate in a live statewide healthcare tele-town hall meeting this Sunday, August 23 rd , at 7:00 PM. Along with people like you from across the state, I will be joined by Dr. Denis Cortese, CEO of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, and Mary Wakefield, the highest ranking nurse in the federal government. The three of us will discuss the need for health care reform, including ways to make the American health care system more affordable and more stable, and I will answer as many questions as I can from citizens from around the state.

If you would like to participate in this important discussion, the only way to guarantee your involvement is to visit our website at http://klobuchar.senate.gov or click HERE and enter your contact information. Once you’re registered, you’ll get an automated reminder phone call on Friday evening and you’ll be called again on Sunday to be joined to the call. The phone number you provide will be kept private.

If you have any questions, you can call the office toll free at 1-888-224-9043.

I look forward to hearing from you on Sunday.

Sincerely,

Amy Klobuchar
United States Senator"

This is the email I received last week from Senator Klobuchar. Days after the flurry of ever-changing stories from the Obama White House about why people were suddenly receiving unsolicited emails and the ultimate revelation that yes, the White House was going to change the way they 'gather' emails...even though it is generally accepted that such an intrusion into the people's privacy is at best a BAD miscalculation -- and at worst, illegal.

Hmmmm...

Forgive me for missing my opportunity to speak my mind to the Honorable Senator from the State of Minnesota, but, having already given her my email -- along with a couple of long missives in which I, no doubt, placed myself clearly in the camp OPPOSITE the F.O.B. (Friends Of Barack) -- well, I thought it best NOT to give out my unlisted phone number, as well. ("The phone number you provide will be kept private"...kind of like my email address, right?)

Well, it looks as though my fears were misplaced -- numerous persons have reported in the media and the blogosphere this week that they either MISSED the tele-conference altogether ( the promised phone call came at the appointed time and apologized for having missed the event -- "but you can listen to a recording online") or were initially connected, only to be cut-off shortly into the call. "Technical Difficulties", that most elusive of gremlins, has been blamed for keeping those tough questions from stumping the good Senator. (Who knew? Technical Difficulties are liberals?)

Not only had Amy managed to avoid a contentious, argumentative crowd in a live meeting, but she had (conveniently) missed their calls -- although she did leave them the long-winded "sorry I missed you" message with the online 'recording' of the festivities. As they say in business, it's always much easier to get rid of a phone call than a warm body.

Not that she should be criticized TOO harshly, considering Angry Al Franken's cloak of invisibility to the people of Minnesota. Has anyone seen Al since the Senate recessed? Anyone? (crickets)

Perhaps this tele-conference idea would have been a smarter move for other legislators around the country -- or maybe it was a response to the difficulty they were obviously experiencing, crafted only after waiting to see how the rest of the nation was panning out.

For one, those 'organized' protesters that were holding their elected officials' feet to the flames of public opinion were hard to avoid in the public forums. By forcing them onto phone lines, they would be much more manageable. And at the very least, the scheduled tele-conference avoided the appearance of RUNNING from the electorate by having NO meetings.

But have the people been silenced? Will they now back down into their dens and let the House and the Senate have their way with them -- regardless of the overwhelming sentiments they brought to the nation's townhall meetings and the media airwaves? Are our elected representatives that ignorant, that cynical -- or that sinister?

Let's hope not.

But leave your answering machines on just in case -- it's likely that Senator Klobuchar still has that list of phone numbers.

PostScript: I stand corrected. Al Franken speaks out !!! While listening to the radio in the car this AM (8/26), I heard the announcement come in that Al Franken is holding two health care 'round table panels' TODAY, at 10AM and 3PM. Let's see, the announcement of the events was drafted yesterday, received at the radio station TODAY after 8AM, announcing events on the most riveting issue of the moment.

Hmmm...seems to me that this might be orchestrated to make the events as unknown and un-attendable as possible to the people who seem to have the most significant interest in (and, coincidentally, the highest rate of opposition to) the proposed 'changes' (read that: 'government takeover') of our health care system -- namely, those with JOBS. Apparently Al is NOT remaining silent on the issue, he is just making his pronouncements to (intentionally) empty rooms (reminiscent of the old tree falling in the woods metaphor). Makes you wonder whether he has already made up his mind about the vote in the Senate -- much like those other all-knowing representatives of the people who plan to vote for the overhaul because they know better than the people who sent them to Washington in the first place.

Or maybe I'm just paranoid.

A Doctor's take on State controlled medicine...

"I quit when medicine was placed under State control some years ago," said Dr. Hendricks. "Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I could not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything-except the desires of the doctors.

Men considered only the 'welfare' of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, but 'to serve.' That a man's willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards-never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have often wondered at the smugness at which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind-yet what is it they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in the operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it-and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn't."

A Canadian M.D.? British, perhaps?

Neither -- Dr. Hendricks spoke those words after dinner in the home of Midas Mulligan, on page 744 of "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand -- in 1957.

It can't be argued too strongly -- if you are given to reasoned, rational consideration of things political; if you have a tendency to view government as an operational arm of your charitable impulses -- whatever your stripe, there is something for you in this tome.

"Atlas Shrugged" has been an epiphany of sorts for me. Ayn Rand, the so-called founder of Objectivism, has left us a virtual prophecy of the perils of government taking on the role of Nanny-State. We are guided through a world where man has rejected the 'philosophy' of reason and self-sufficiency and has adopted a new standard of whatever is in the "public good". Government-run corporations: Good, Capitalism: bad. Sound familiar?

If I had to distill this book down to a word, I would say: frightening. Second choice: prescient.

Someone noted that I was carrying "Atlas Shrugged" with me in a waiting room recently. After confessing that he hadn't read it since college, I heartily recommended that he pick it up and dust it off for a fresh read.

Same to you.

Racial Profiling or just Good Police Work?

Yes, it's been a while...long story, many excuses...but suffice it to say, I am not always great at multi-tasking: I get on a task and obsess about it sometimes.

This post started as a response to a personal email expounding on the 'irony' of Bollywood superstar, Shah Rukh Khan (of Slumdog Millionaire) being detained upon entry into the U.S. (while they tried to identify him) -- in light of his coming here to do a film on racial profiling. I think it bears repeating in a more open forum, however, since it seems to be a common gripe about what little border security efforts we DO employ...

While you might want to jump on the 'racial profiling' bandwagon here, it might bear closer scrutiny from a cultural standpoint. While I am not very conversant in the culture of Mr. Khan (Heck, the president can say HE'S not familiar with the facts and still expound on things), I'll use some examples from other cultures to make my point:

1) Unlike Western culture (let go of that ethnocentrism for a moment here, folks), many cultures in the world still adhere to clan or tribal systems (witness the Somali or Hmong cultures, both of which are fairly populous in MN). In the Hmong culture in particular, there are a very limited number of last names (clans). This has the practical effect of making virtually everyone a "John Smith" or "Mike Jones".

2) Let's draw further from the current news ...August 12, 2009 an NIS News Bulletin:
Mohamed Most Popular Baby Name in Dutch Cities "THE HAGUE, 13/08/09 - Mohamed is by far the most popular name for babies in the Netherlands' four major cities. Additionally, many more boys are called Mohamed than the statistics suggest, Elsevier magazine reported yesterday..."The SVB data shows that in the four major cities - Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht - Mohamed (and the variations thereon like Mohammed and Muhammed) is by far the most frequently given name among boys. In The Hague, the various variants of the name of the Islamic Prophet even take first, second and fifth place in the Top 5. "http://www.nisnews.nl/public/130809_1.htm

3) This kind of statistic can be further complicated when you note that some cultures (Somali, for instance) give as many as 5 names to children. This 5-name custom doesn't fit well into the Western pattern of First, Middle, Last names. Therefore, even if someone is being HONEST, they may mix/match their names trying to answer an official who asks for only 3 of their names (most databases are set up in this pattern). If they are TRYING to obscure their identity, all they need to do is scramble up the order of those 5 names and pick them in no particular order. (For you non-math majors, that's 125 possible combinations.)

Given these facts and the enormous task of law enforcement/security forces to make snap identifications at checkpoints and airports, it can be no surprise when persons are detained to allow officials more time to make a better determination of who the person is that stands before them. Is it regrettable? Yes. Is it inconvenient? Yes. Is it unavoidable? Given the realities of the world in which we live, I believe it IS unavoidable.Is it racial profiling? Probably not, given the facts listed above. After all, if someone were travelling under the legally given name of, say, "Usama Bin Laden", wouldn't you prefer that officials err on the side of caution before giving him free passage?