Meanderings by Jim Peters

Jim Peters shares another of his essays:

I have cancer. No big deal, just late-in-life non-Hodgekins lymphoma. I have basically tried to the best of my limited ability to keep it a secret because it has no bearing on my ability to do my job, or my relationships, or really much of anything. I think about it sometimes, but not often, and it does no define me. It is just standard lymphoma and my prospects are good. So why tell you? Because the lymphoma is a pre-existing condition such as those that Mitt Romney so gallantly wants to dissolve on the first day of his captivity in the White House. The man who engineered Maasachusett’s far-reaching health insurance mandate wants to make it look like he is actually a conservative now, not the liberal governor he was in Massachusetts. He is, in my considered opinion, an hypocrite.

I also have three other diseases, none of which would pass muster according to a watered down Obamacare scenario. In my thirties, I developed a terrible disease for which I received last rights. It was heart disease called cardiomyopathy and I was geneerously given five years in which to live. That was now twenty years ago. I also have severe clotting disorder, and suffered five pulmonary embolisms, as I understand it, during one five day stay at the Lahey. The Lahey has kept me alive so I can write this missive once in a while, and try to keep you entertained. During one stay at the Lahey, I gave up cigar smoking because I determined that I had been in the hospital for four days without a cigar and I could certainly give it up for good it I could do it for four days. My doctors were pleased.

This fight over Obamacare is a fight between the have-hads, and have-not-hads. A person with no history of a fatal disease can easily look around and determine that he “did it himself.” In the back of his mind, he knows his luck will run out someday, but why push it? Health insurance is not for him, hell he does not even wear his motorcycle helmet in New Hampshire. He is a real jock. Nothing phases him, and since that is the case, he does not need to look to the future when he will become a burden to his countrymen by having aboliished Obamacare. It was costly, after all, and Romney, who is 25 points behind Obama in his own state of Massachusetts, said he would abolish it and did, on the first day of his administration. Which we are assuming will happen.

Once, while describing Henry Clay of Kentucky, John Randolph of Virginia said, “Like a mackeral by moonlight he shines yet stinks” The best put-down in history. Imagine the silver shine of a mackeral in the moonlight lying by the side of the road and you pick it up believing it to be something of value. What you get for your trouble is a handful of maggots. Romney, also, “Like a mackeral by moonlight shines yet stinks.” When he determined that being from Massachusetts was not a good thing in this Republican-gone-mad environment, he moved to his home in California. Not Salt Lake City, where his detractors could look at him and his religious beliefs more closely, but California. The “Sunshine State” home of the talking cows which are marleted to put our milking cows to shame. Give me a good milker over a good talker anytime. Anyway, halfway through the campaign he is accused of being to moderate for the modern Republican Party so he starts inserting the word conservative into all of his speeches. “I am a conservative” becomes his mantra and like most mantras, has little to no meaning. If the public opinion polls state it, he changes. If you want him to like fried dough he likes it. Liver, he likes it. If he is supposed to like being a hunter, well he is the best damned hunter you ever saw. Better than Teddy Roosevelt, even. You remember, somewhere in the far reaches of your mind, a story you learned in my class in high school. Alice Roosevelt, Teddy’s daughter, once said the her father would like to be the “bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.” What does that mean? Well, simply put it means that he wanted to be the center, the absolute center of attention in every situation. What better way than to be the Presdient of the United States?

That is Mitt Romney. He has changed his stripes more deftly than any candidate that I can remember. To maintain his edge, he has become, indeed, the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. He was a progressive Republican in Massachusetts. He has abandoned that. He has been a moderate Republican. He has abandoned that. He has become a conservative. He was not one six months ago, this is a new Mitt Romney. He has no record. He devised the evolution of Obamacare, yet he distances himself totally from it. You do not know which pill he will swallow next but you can bet that it will be one that tastes bad, but brings a beatific smile to his face.

So, where do I and my diseases stand. We vote for the President, who has had just about as much luck in his first four years as that other champion of the downtrodden, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Once, while standing on a train, a reporter noted and wrote that he was a very nice man who would very much like to be president. He did OK, and so will Obama. Obama made mistakes. His biggest one is that he did not start fireside chats to reassure his disappointed publiic. Words go a long way, and he has been without them for a long time. Ultimately, that will decide this election, because how much he is trusted and how reassuriing he can be is the crux of the his legacy. I hope he can find himself before it literally is too late.

2 Responses to Meanderings by Jim Peters

  1. Deb says:

    Thank you for this post Jim, I always enjoy your writing. Pawtucketville Citizens Council was glad to have you as our guest speaker and learn about the history of the Lowell Motor Boat Club this year.

  2. Christopher says:

    Actually, Mitt Romney’s answer to health care WAS the conservative one, cooked up by the Heritage Foundation and offered by Congressional Republicans as an alternative to the Clinton plan. That was before the GOP went completely off the rails courtesy of the “Tea Party”. The truly liberal solution would be single-payer.