"We choose to go to the moon...."
Jul. 20th, 2009 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblog"...not because it is easy, but because it is hard."
I had no fewer than two vinyl recordings of JFK's September 1962 speech, launching the US space program As We Knew It, which got permanently mixed in my mind with the soundtracks of the Apollo 11 liftoff, and landing, and stepdown onto the lunar surface almost exactly 40 years ago at this very moment.
That moment came less than twelve years after the Soviets launched Sputnik 1 into space, thereby scaring our collective consciousness into scared-shitlessness over the prospect of Commiessssss-innnnnn-Spaaaaace! And it came not even seven years after President Kennedy challenged our scientists, and our elected representatives, and even our taxpayers, to catch up and surpass those godless Commies in the race to maintain space as free, and open, and peaceful. Through the ironic use of Nazi rocket scientists to advance our place in the space race, we kicked them Russkies' butts on this night in 1969.
Good old American ingenuity. Which overcame an Empire, and withstood an internal division, and became the world's first, its biggest, and finally its only superpower.
Yet here we are, 40 years later, with both houses of Congress choosing July16th, the anniversary of the Eagle-Columbia launch, to announce their opening versions of a plan to reform our well-intentioned, yet clearly broken, system of delivering affordable and effective health care to all American citizens.
All I've heard from the opposition in the four days since then is can't. We can't afford it. We can't put government bureaucrats between doctors and patients. We can't this. We can't that.
About 230,000 miles from here, there are a series of flags on a small round object which attest to what we CAN do if we work together and put our minds and our efforts and our dollars to it.
Let them serve as a memory, but also as an inspiration to the committed and a rebuttal to the naysayers.
Cause we're America. Fuck yeah! We choose to maintain a healthy population and do the other things. Not because it's easy, but because it is hard.
I had no fewer than two vinyl recordings of JFK's September 1962 speech, launching the US space program As We Knew It, which got permanently mixed in my mind with the soundtracks of the Apollo 11 liftoff, and landing, and stepdown onto the lunar surface almost exactly 40 years ago at this very moment.
That moment came less than twelve years after the Soviets launched Sputnik 1 into space, thereby scaring our collective consciousness into scared-shitlessness over the prospect of Commiessssss-innnnnn-Spaaaaace! And it came not even seven years after President Kennedy challenged our scientists, and our elected representatives, and even our taxpayers, to catch up and surpass those godless Commies in the race to maintain space as free, and open, and peaceful. Through the ironic use of Nazi rocket scientists to advance our place in the space race, we kicked them Russkies' butts on this night in 1969.
Good old American ingenuity. Which overcame an Empire, and withstood an internal division, and became the world's first, its biggest, and finally its only superpower.
Yet here we are, 40 years later, with both houses of Congress choosing July16th, the anniversary of the Eagle-Columbia launch, to announce their opening versions of a plan to reform our well-intentioned, yet clearly broken, system of delivering affordable and effective health care to all American citizens.
All I've heard from the opposition in the four days since then is can't. We can't afford it. We can't put government bureaucrats between doctors and patients. We can't this. We can't that.
About 230,000 miles from here, there are a series of flags on a small round object which attest to what we CAN do if we work together and put our minds and our efforts and our dollars to it.
Let them serve as a memory, but also as an inspiration to the committed and a rebuttal to the naysayers.
Cause we're America. Fuck yeah! We choose to maintain a healthy population and do the other things. Not because it's easy, but because it is hard.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-07-22 05:38 pm (UTC)As for healthcare, I think we CAN, just not the way the current plan is suggesting. Personally I prefer a flat tax and a national sales tax.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-22 05:51 pm (UTC)