JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

Posted by jdbernard743

· March 28, 2019

Forgiveness and Tolerance…the limits.

Forgiveness (noun): “Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness.” (http://greatergood.berkeley.edu)

Tolerance (noun): “a willingness to accept behavior and beliefs that are different from your own; even if you disagree or disapprove of them, or alternatively the ability to bear something unpleasant or annoying, or to keep going despite difficulties.” (dictionary.cambridge.org)

I don’t know the etymology, but my brain keeps cycling between the two. They go together but they are not the same. Both involve forbearance. Forgiveness is more personal and active, something one does to unstick oneself in order to move on. Tolerance is more passive, more about accepting diversity in behavior, ideas, and people, but both have limits.

In his book, The Limits of Tolerance, coming in May, Columbia professor Denis Lacorne reminds us that “The modern notion of tolerance—the welcoming of diversity as a force for the common good―emerged in the Enlightenment in the wake of centuries of religious wars. First elaborated by philosophers such as John Locke and Voltaire, religious tolerance gradually gained ground in Europe and North America. But with the resurgence of fanaticism and terrorism, religious tolerance is increasingly being challenged by frightened publics.” (The Limits of Tolerance: Enlightenment Values and Religious Fanaticism (Religion, Culture, and Public Life) by Denis Lacorne

The Holocaust is ground zero for both propositions. People directly impacted can’t forgive the “final solution,” can’t comprehend how it happened, and can’t understand why it was tolerated. As Justice Potter Stewart said about obscenity in Jacobellis vs. Ohio(1945), “I know it when I see it.” So it is with genocide, but what about more complex emotional material?

Is it OK for Christians to tolerate Donald Trump’s lack of moral principles because they like his tax, anti-immigration, and anti-abortion policies? Are they forgiving the president, tolerating his behavior, or just turning a blind eye if it helps achieve the result they want?

Where is the line that says you’ve exceeded the limits of my tolerance? What happens when personal moral beliefs conflict with more immediate political or family needs. I confess, I’m mystified when conservative Christians find it so easy to place their religious ethical values on the sidelines to embrace Trump when their politics are at stake? Is that the quid pro quo? Swear allegiance to an amoral despot in return for Christian-supported legislation?

Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Thou shalt not covet… thy neighbor’s wife, thy neighbor’s house. Thou shalt not take the name of the lord in vain. Mr. Trump has done it all. As a Christian shouldn’t this alarm you?

Are Trump’s sins forgivable? Those sins? Yes. Most of them are venal and personal. I don’t care if he screwed Stormy Daniels or had an affair with Karen McDougal. I’m not outraged. I’m just disgusted. Mr. Trump is a moral failure, but God loves a sinner, so it’s not difficult for me to forgive him. I have no skin in Donald Trump’s miserable life. If God can forgive him, who am I to say no?

That’s personal, but can we, as Americans, afford to forgive him for actions that undermine democracy and fail to meet the high standards we expect of our presidents? Since his inauguration two years ago, he has lied or misled the American people more than 8158 times (Washington Post, Jan 18,2019). He has defended neo-Nazis and ruthless dictators, made fun of the disabled, called Mexicans rapists and terrorists, disparaged NATO, pardoned felons like Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and attacked a Gold Star family and a dead American hero, John McCain.

These are not the behaviors we expect of our president? Are they beyond the limits of our tolerance? Some are serious crimes. Some impulsive rants, and some are low class deviations from traditional presidential norms. What about reciprocity, one of the new words he learned as president? Should we point out that his own inability to forgive, his grudges, and his petty resentments have no predicate and lack reciprocity?

I remember Gandhi’s dictum on forgiveness: “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” Trump is weak and impulsive, sociopathic and amoral, so while his personal conduct may be forgivable his performance as the highest elected official in America is not. He’s an excellent test dummy for any discussion of the limits of tolerance. As the American philosopher Sydney Hook noted, “Tolerance always has limits. It cannot tolerate what in itself is actively intolerant.”

Several years ago, I was on the receiving end of a lecture on forgiveness. I thought it was harsh. It was delivered by a Zen Buddhist who seemed to be hanging on to personal resentments. Maybe I read it wrong. Maybe it was deserved. In any event, it stayed with me. Something to work on, as they say, in the practice.

“It is critical to remember that forgiveness doesn’t automatically mean a reconciliation. We don’t have to return to the same relationship or accept the same …” (psychologytoday.com)

Maybe that’s my lesson… I had a picture in my mind of how a Zen practitioner “should” act…but that wasn’t what I experienced. Today, I understand that Zen practitioners, Christians, and Donald J. Trump are all fallible human beings. The Zen rebuke confused me but, like other Zen methods, it shocked me into a new awareness.

I’m fairly neutral on the human capacity for good and evil. It cuts both ways, not as Trump said about Charlottesville, “some very fine people on both sides.” We are each the sum total of our experience, our fears, our genetic make-up, and the serendipitous nature of our geography. But there is a difference between forgiveness and tolerance, and there are limits to both.

I’ve more or less given up hope that my unfinished business (or Trump’s) will be cleaned up before I check out, and though its verse is dark I take consolation from Bonnie Raitt’s lament in “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” It is, after all, a love song.

‘Cause I can’t make you love me if you don’t
You can’t make your heart feel something it won’t
Here in the dark in these final hours
I will lay down my heart and I’ll feel the power
But you won’t, no you won’t
‘Cause I can’t make you love me if you don’t

Maybe that’s how it is with unfinished business. Forgiveness, like compromise, helps us move forward in life – not perfectly – but it helps us leave our unfinished business behind. We should all be mindful in the big picture sense that it’s OK to draw a line that limits tolerance when it threatens us as individuals or as a nation.

And, speaking of unfinished business, these two are my inspiration now.

They’re into the of art of living.

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Categories : Friendship, Music, Personal/Family, Politics, Uncategorized, Work and Adventure

Posted by jdbernard743

· March 14, 2019

· 5 Comments

Rite of Passage…

Every culture has rites of passage, those ceremonies or events that mark important transitions in a person’s life. Birth, puberty, and death are generic passages. Baptisms, bar mitzvahs, graduations, and weddings are more ritualistic, but traditional rites across all societies are the passages from childhood or youth to adult. Native American boys endured strenuous ceremonial tests to prove their manhood while African girls often suffer grisly genital mutilation to cross over. Most modern societies have less ritualistic rites to mark important the transition.

The first real test in my personal rite of passage was surviving Marine Corps Officer Candidate Class at Quantico, Virginia and the Naval flight training that followed in Florida and Texas. When the golden wings of a Naval Aviator were pinned on, I thought I had crossed the Rubicon. I was puffed up and ready to go. All boxes checked, all tests passed, and Jack Jet was ready to roll.

But, that wasn’t “it.” My personal rite of passage wasn’t complete until a true American hero scolded my sorry ass and made me grow up.

For years, I’ve entertained friends by telling them the story of my last flight on active duty. The length and drama of the story often depends on the number of tequila shots I’ve had, but it’s a good story regardless. At the time I was flying a Marine F8 Crusader at MCAS El Toro, loving the airplane and the esprit de corps of my squadron mates. We were young, full of testosterone, and exuding a self-confidence that came from flying the world’s hottest fighter at speeds up to 1000 mph. Pretty heady stuff for a 23-year-old.

In August of 1962 I was wrapping up my active service obligation and about to start law school. On that last day at El Toro, I was scheduled for an air-to-air tactics sortie with a squadron mate – a dogfight – the thing we most loved to do. As we were briefing for the flight, we learned that one of the aircraft was down for maintenance and the flight was going to be canceled. We were both disappointed, but, the Ops officer intervened and told me to take the good plane out alone to “wring it out and have some fun.” This was his gift to me on my last day in the squadron.

Without going into detail, I did “have some fun,” flying high, low, and everyplace in between – enough fun that when I returned to the base, Ops radioed to warn me that the skipper was pissed, and staff cars were pulling into the squadron parking lot in droves.

The next day the Santa Ana Register reported an F8 Crusader was seen “at car top level on 17^thStreet” and I carried that clipping around in my wallet until it turned from white to yellow and eventually to powder. Local citizens reported an airplane flying through backyards and one threatened to sue because the airplane had singed the leaves on his orange tree.

It was the beginning of a miserable self-inflicted three weeks for me. I was held on active duty, kind of like house-arrest, while “the episode” was under investigation and a decision made about whether a court-martial was the appropriate punishment. All complainants were to be interviewed and their stories duly recorded.

In the end, the Wing Commander decided a formal 40-page Letter of Reprimand, forfeiture of $180 ($1530 in today’s dollars) fine, and indefinite grounding, no more flying, would be my punishment – but there would be no court-martial.

I was released from active duty with barely enough time to load the car and drive to Berkeley for the start of school. I was planning to pay for school by flying with the Marine Reserve squadron at Alameda, but the grounding kept me from joining the squadron. Money, that year, was so tight I lived on Kraft Mac and Cheese and an apple a day ($17 worth) the last month of my first year in school. Luckily, in June my grounding ended and I was allowed to resume flying with an A4 squadron at Alameda.

It was always fun to tell the story, but recently the Letter of Reprimand I thought was lost resurfaced in a box of memorabilia.

I remembered it as something like the police report in Alice’s Restaurant, complete with diagrams, maps with arrows, and hyperbolic descriptions of “willful and wanton disregard for human life” etc. That stuff was there, but I discovered it also included a well-documented description of my transgressions along with my apology for embarrassing the service and putting lives in danger. The story is still funny, but in rereading it I had a humbling epiphany and decided to Google the name of the steely-eyed general who signed and delivered the Letter.

General J. P. Condon was the Commanding Officer of the 3^rdMarine Air Wing, and it was he who summoned me to receive the Letter of Reprimand. I arrived at his headquarters, and after what seemed an eternity his adjutant told me the General was ready. I entered his office and had to walk across what seemed like an acre of carpet to stand in front of his desk. My heart was pounding. When he looked up his elbows were on the desk and his gnarled hands were clasped under his chin. He paused and stared at me before delivering the line I will never forget, “Son, that shit when out with V-J Day.”

That was it. He handed the Letter of Reprimand and returned to the paperwork on his desk. I said, “Yes sir” took the Letter, did an about face, and left his office. I never saw him again, but I will never forget thinking he looked like a movie general – someone out of central casting – blue eyes, close-cropped white hair, leathery brown face, and two big stars on his collar.

At the time, I didn’t fully appreciate what General John P. Condon had done for me. I thought he was simply going through the pro forma steps of scolding a junior officer for engaging in a stupid ill-conceived testosterone fueled “episode.” The truth is he saved my sorry ass.

General Condon could have ruined my life. Maybe he saw a version of his younger self in me –young, brash, and aggressive – something he thought a Marine fighter pilot should be that dictated the choice of the reprimand rather than court-martial. Or maybe he may simply wanted to get rid of me and hoped a Letter of Reprimand would take care of the matter at Marine Corps headquarters and the Santa Ana Register.

What I didn’t know, quaking before his desk, is that I was in the presence of greatness. I didn’t realize that Major General J.P. Condon was a famous American hero, that as a young Commanding Officer in a Corsair squadron on Guadalcanal, it was Major Condon who developed the plan that succeeded in intercepting and shooting down Admiral Yamamoto, Japan’s Navy Minister and Commander of the Japanese fleet, a turning point in WWII, and that later on that he commanded a Marine Air Group at Okinawa during the last major battle of WWII or that in Korea he commanded the last Marine Air Wing to fly the Corsair and transition to the jets in combat.

These are pictures of John Pomeroy Condon, USMC. The picture on the far left is Condon as a 1^stLt., about the same age and rank I was when I flew through Santa Ana. On the far right is General Condon before his hair turned white and he handed me the Letter, and in the middle is Major J.P. Condon when he was serving in the Pacific and credited with bringing down Admiral Yamamoto’s airplane.

General Condon retired from the Marine Corps in 1962 shortly after delivering his “Son, that shit went out with V-J Day” showstopper line to 1st Lt. John D. Bernard. Following his Marine retirement he became an executive with North American Aviation and later President and CEO of the National Alliance of Businessmen in Washington DC. In addition to his other accomplishments, he earned a doctorate in Public Administration from UC Irvine and wrote a history entitled Corsairs to Panthers: Marine Aviation in the Korean War. Another hero of the Greatest Generation, he lived a remarkable life. He died in December 1996 at age 85.

I will forever be grateful to him for his generous treatment and for delivering the final lesson in my rite of passage. I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to meet him under different circumstances. I’d like to have thanked him.

Semper Fidelis

Categories : Aviation, Books, Fashion/Lifestyle, Personal/Family, Uncategorized, Work and Adventure

Posted by jdbernard743

· March 12, 2019

· 3 Comments

Gnarled and Twisted…

I love this gnarled, twisted tree trunk. It’s “growing” in the front yard of my friends, Dick and Kit Duane, in Berkeley. Dick and I were law school classmates there 57 years ago. They bought the house 47 years ago, raised their children there, played music, made plans, drank wine, cooked meals and read poetry there. The tree is old growth by any standard of time, just as we are old growth by the standards of the Social Security Life Expectancy chart.

Kit wants to have the tree taken out. She has a point; it could fall on the house when one of those fast-moving Pacific storms rips through the Golden Gate and blasts the Berkeley flats, but I’m betting on the tree. It’s seen a lot of those storms.

Dick and I can’t remember the specifics of how our friendship began. We were in the same law school section, one of three, in a class of 750. He was recently out of the Navy and I was fresh from the Marine Corps but early on we uncovered a mutual interest in swimming. I had no talent…still don’t…despite millions of laps in thousands of pools around the world. He, on the other hand, was a competitive swimmer at Cal… but everything about him was relaxed. He never minded doing 3 laps for every 1 of mine, and I was grateful he didn’t mention it. We both needed a release from those mind-numbing hours in the law library and found it in our noon workouts at the UC pool and browsing stops at Cody’s Books on Telegraph Avenue.

There is probably something deeply psychological about my affection for the Duane’s gnarly twisted tree. It’s like my gnarly wrinkled hand in some ways. Both show the effect of time in lumps, veins and scars on surfaces that were once smooth and elastic. When I suggested to Marilynn that we take a photo of our hands for this article she didn’t want any part of it. I love her hands, but she tells me that women are sensitive about their hands and rarely does a “woman of a certain age” allow her hands to be photographed. I love her vanity. It means she still cares about showing the world the best side of herself. Me? Not so much.

Nevertheless, last weekend M and I watched an interview with Angie Dickinson, a woman famous for her physical beauty who, at 87, was astonishingly unselfconscious about her gray hair, wrinkles, and hands. I found her confidence reassuring. After a lifetime of living shouldn’t we all be able to present ourselves proudly, and confidently “as is?”

Dick and I took much different paths after law school. Things have changed since we were there, but the curriculum and vector in those days was toward an elite private law practice. I followed the vector by way of Loeb & Loeb in Los Angeles and lasted nine months. Dick, who spent a law school summer in Georgia doing civil rights work before graduation, spent a couple of years doing poverty law in DC and San Francisco before returning to Berkeley to start his own small general practice. I remember Professor John Jackson, our Contracts teacher, taking time to extoll the virtues of small private community based practice. It seemed so contrary to Boalt’s big firm bias, but that’s what Dick chose and I know after all these years that he loved it and never thought of looking back.

Friendship, like love, is a mix of intangibles. Several of my most enduring friendships were formed in law school, though most of these were with classmates who didn’t follow traditional paths. Like friendships formed anywhere, law school was simply the nexus that brought together a cohort of people with similar characteristics, interests, and experience. We were all achievers in one way or another, competitive and curious in others. Some moved on according to someone else’s plan and some worked out their own.

The cement in my friendship with Dick is probably that we were slightly out of synch with the curriculum and our classmates. We maintained those friendships too, but ours didn’t depend on a shared professional experience. We were focused elsewhere. We both loved the outdoors. He was a serious rock climber (including El Capitan and some first ascents) and I spent most of my adult life skiing and living in ski areas. He’s an avid reader and lover of poetry. So am I, and we both play the guitar, though neither of us is very good. On top of that, Kit was a book editor and both couples have spent serious chunks of time traveling and living abroad. It’s all added up to a great recipe for friendship.

Steep rock faces and snowy steep chutes are behind the two of us now. His granddaughter is on her way to becoming a world-class rock climber and my grandsons are serious freestyle and backcountry skiers. We’ve had a hand in paying it forward for them and are enjoying the ride as they figure out their futures…but the best part for us now is our enduring friendship, memories of shared experience, and talk about what’s next. Neither of us is through…just adapting to changed circumstances.

Dick and Kit in Provence last year.

Categories : Art, Books, Fashion/Lifestyle, Friendship, Personal/Family, Travel, Uncategorized

Posted by jdbernard743

· February 10, 2019

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Two Degrees of Separation…

I didn’t know Albert Finney, but when he died two days ago, I felt the loss personally. I’d admired him as an actor since first seeing him as the randy Tom Jones (1963) and again as Audrey Hepburn’s husband in Two for the Road (above) in 1967. He was nominated for an Oscar five times, but never took one home. He was an actor’s actor, but it wasn’t his acting chops that made me feel his loss.

Finney and I were only a year apart in age. Wikipedia doesn’t mention it, but I know he was an avid horse racing fan who followed the ponies from Saratoga to the Triple Crown and on to Santa Anita in the fall. In a tangential way, it was his interest in racing that provided our connection.

Mr. Finney was friends with Karen and Mickey Taylor. Two friends of mine. Two degrees of separation. The Taylors purchased Seattle Slew for $17,500 in 1975. Slew went on to win the Triple Crown and made the Taylors very wealthy. I knew them because they were customers of mine at Piccolo, the little Italian café my wife, Abby, and I owned.

Running a small restaurant is a labor of love – especially in a seasonal resort like Sun Valley. I made the pasta and bread. Abby ran the kitchen. Our small operation was either wildly busy or empty depending on the season. Christmas holidays were especially chaotic, and one Christmas week Mickey and Karen stopped in for lunch. The café seated 44 but there were probably 50 eating lunch on that particular day. Abby and the kitchen staff were cranking out the pasta dishes and I was up front seating customers, making espresso drinks, and busing tables.

At a particularly chaotic moment, with all the tables finishing at once, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see a grinning Albert Finney. “Hello, Jack. I’m Albert. It looks like you could use some help. Let me give you a hand cleaning up these tables.” I was nonplussed. I didn’t even realize he was in the restaurant, but for the next 30 minutes Albert Finney and I were the busboys at Piccolo. He couldn’t have been nicer or more natural, and that’s the reason I was personally touched when I heard of his passing on Thursday.

Sun Valley was founded by Averill Harriman in 1936 and always had celebrity appeal, but it was years behind Aspen and Vail in becoming a “scene.” When Abby and I moved there in 70’s it was very sleepy. In 1987 when we opened the restaurant it was becoming more popular but still a one-story, log cabin kind of town and quiet escape for some celebrities. Jamie Lee Curtis used to bring us loaves of bread from the La Brea Bakery in LA, and Edie Baskin (Baskin & Robbins/SNL writer) brought us fresh mozzarella from Dean and DeLuca in New York.

Piccolo was a place celebrities with a local connection could come for a dish of pasta and not be bothered. Carole King, Scott Glenn, Adam West, and Jack Hemingway were lunch regulars while Jamie Lee and husband Christopher Guest, Brooke Shields, and Peter Cetera were often there for dinner. It was a few years later that the one-story log cabins were replaced with two-story banks, galleries, and glitzy boutiques. Change is a given, but I feel fortunate to have been part of it before the change.

Albert Finney’s passing reminds me of those times. I left Ketchum after 25 years. Piccolo has closed its doors and I’ve lost touch with Karen and Mickey. Even so, Abby and all three of my children are there and it remains a special place for me. Tomorrow I’m planning to settle in with a cocktail and watch a couple of Albert’s films – maybe Murder on the Orient Express or Annie – just to keep this memory fresh. My day busing tables with him is the perfect reminder that in this time of megalomania even a rich and famous celebrity can be modest, friendly, and helpful.

RIP Albert Finney (1936 – 2019)

Categories : Art, Fashion/Lifestyle, Film/Television, Food/Restaurants, Friendship, Personal/Family, Theater, Uncategorized

Posted by jdbernard743

· February 9, 2019

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Drugs of Choice?

I yearn for a simpler time when doctors carried black bags and made house calls, baseball players stayed with the same team their entire career, and serious drugs were recommended and prescribed only by physicians.

I doubt that we’ll ever see the first two again, but we might live to see the day when America joins the rest of the world’s developed countries and stops hawking dangerous drugs on prime-time TV.

For the past week I’ve been watching, and one of the subtle take-aways is that most of these drug ads are targeted at older viewers – the news (CNN, Fox News, MSNBC) or television magazines (GMA, Today, or CBS This Morning). Implicit is the recognition that younger viewers are getting their news online.

Regardless, the next time a Vraylar or Eliquis ad interrupts your program, stay with it and listen to the sotto voce side effects while the happy family on the screen enjoys a hot air balloon ride or sail on the lake. In the meantime, here are Vraylar’s side effects:

extrapyramidal symptoms (muscle spasms, muscle rigidity, tremor, jerking movements)
agitation
indigestion
nausea
vomiting,
sleepiness,
restlessness,
weight gain
headache,
insomnia,
abdominal pain,
constipation,
toothache
anxiety,
diarrhea,
pain in the extremities,
dry mouth,
loss of appetite,
back pain
dizziness

Vraylar is just one example of the 27 drug ads I screened in the five days before writing this – all the while wondering why dangerous drugs were being advertised like Reese’s Pieces on TV? Curiously, these ads are all approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) not the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) or Health and Human Services (HHS). What possible justification is there for allowing drugs that can only be obtained with a physician’s written prescription to be “sold” on TV?

Since 1962, the FDA has regulated pharmaceutical advertising with a mandate to ensure it is not false or misleading. What about dangerous, inappropriate, improper, unnecessary, and out of place?

Here’s the FDA mission statement:“The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for protecting the public health by ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, and medical devices; and by ensuring the safety of our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation.”

There is nothing in the mission statement about marketing prescription drugs, nor is there anything related in the FCC or HHS regulations. If these three agencies are charged with protecting the public’s health doesn’t it make sense to limit the advocacy of serious drugs with harmful side effects to the medical professionals charged with matching the right drugs with the needs of their patients? Let’s take away the temptation of those who are gullible or desperate enough to be seduced by the happy family scenes in TV ads.

In 1970 Congress voted to ban tobacco advertising in the interest of the nation’s public’s health. It makes sense that it should do the same with prescription drugs.

I believe in a market economy, but advertising has nothing to do with good medical practice? We know that pharmaceutical companies pay doctors to promote their drugs. That in itself is shameful – on both sides of the equation, but let’s not have patients telling doctors what drugs they want based on something they saw advertised on TV? America and New Zealand are the only two developed countries that allow the direct to consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals on television.

Here’s how it hit home for me; I got annoyed by the interruptions and began cataloging all the drugs that were advertised on the programs I watched over a five day period. I quit adding to the list when I had 27.

Like most television watchers, I’d rather skip the commercials, but there are lessons to be learned when you pay attention to the spaces in between. Big Pharma is big business and marketing is a key element in growing that business.

Here’s how important TV ads are for Big Pharma: In the past 3 years (October 2015 to October 2018) prescription brands spent an estimated $10.1 billion on TV advertising. Last year 76 prescription drug brands spent an estimated $2.96 billion, running 200 ads 534,000 times on national TV. In total, these ads generated 148.9 billion impressions. None of these ads included price information, although Johnson & Johnson announced this week that it will begin to include that information in upcoming ads. According to an industry watchdog group called BiopharmaDive, spending for pharmaceutical ads in 2012 was the 12th-largest ad category. Last year, it was sixth.

In 2013 the profit margin for pharmaceutical companies ranged from 10% to 42%, with an average of 18%.

Let’s put those billions to work reducing the cost of drugs.

TV advertising isn’t the biggest problem confronting American healthcare. Drug prices are out of control. Health insurance is a patchwork of confusing choices, and Medicare, the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs, is prohibited from negotiating with drug companies on the cost of drugs. And… there are millions of Americans still unable to afford health insurance. No system is going to be perfect but we can do better.

It’s undeniable that America is capable of providing the most up to date and sophisticated medical care in the world, but, according to a Commonwealth Fund report the US ranks last overall among 11 industrialized countries on measures of health system quality, efficiency, access to care, equity, and healthy lives. To do better we need to treat healthcare as a universal right and work to eliminate the inefficiencies, duplications, price gouging, and unpredictability of the complicated system we have now. It should be a priority. Check this space for more.

In the meantime, amuse yourself with this Viagra spoof: