Well no shit, Sherlock.

Maybe, that’s because they don’t have medical insurance.

Because if you don’t have health care insurance in this country, it will cost you about $100 just to walk through the door of your local doctor’s office. So are we truly surprised that so many people just wait - and hope that they won’t require hospitalization?

If you need to visit the emergency room, a drip and few tests is likely to leave you with a bill for more ten times that amount. Yes, even your emergency room “quickie” is a couple of thousand dollars, or about a month’s wages for the average person. And if it turns out you’re unlucky enough to actually have the H1-N1 swine flu virus, well, expect to file for bankruptcy because a hospital stay of just a week or two can come to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

My question is - has it occurred to our politicians currently fighting the “public option” that this country’s lack of health might actually be contributing to the flu epidemic?

The truth is that this country just doesn’t get it: The fact that a massive proportion of our population won’t go to the doctor’s because they can’t afford to, winds up costing just as much as the cost of actually providing health care: the millions of dollars spent on vaccinations and emergency medical care could have been used to develop a health care system in this country that actually works and which would allow us to visit the doctor before we got so ill that we needed an ambulance to get there.

Some would call this ironic. But it’s more than that. It’s beyond stupid. And frankly, if we’re not smart enough to figure that out, then perhaps we deserve the epidemic that is rightly ours - as well as the pandemics of the future, which could be much more devastating.

Because as the song goes “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Creation follows the British naturalist’s ’struggle between faith and reason’ as he wrote his 1859 book, On The Origin Of The Species.

The film, directed by Jon Amielm was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has now been sold to almost every territory in the world.

But US distributors have turned down the film that could cause uproar in a country that, on the whole, dismisses scientific theories of the way we evolved.

Christian film review website Movieguide.org described Darwin as ‘a racist, a bigot and a 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder.’

The site also stated that his ‘half-baked theory’ influenced Adolf Hitler and led to ‘atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and generic engineering.’

Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of Creation, said he was astonished that such attitudes exist 150 years after On The Origin of Species was published.

‘That’s what we’re up against. In 2009. It’s amazing,’ he said.

And what do we say?

“Pathetic.”

But think about it. If America’s health care is the “best in the world” then why did former Charlie’s Angels star Farrah Fawcet spend most of her time seeking specialist treatment in Germany before she died? And why does the USA only rank forty-second in terms of life expectancy? (Even Cuba and Taiwan have lower infant mortality rates.) And why do most of us buy our drugs from Canada? “Because they’re cheaper you idiot” you scream. Exactly. Point proven. What’s the point of boasting that your restaurant serves the best steaks in town when they are $40 a plate and only the rich can afford to by them?

We do not have the best health care system in the world. And the sooner we come to terms with that and start fixing it, the better.

Obama is trying making the first real effort in many generations to do the right thing. And it’s a colossal task. But the hardest battle is with the general public: Americans are: a.) so incredibly gullible that they have already allowed themselves to be psyched out of the game by believing all sorts of nonsense about “death panels”, and b.) so illogically afraid of the rest of the world that they would commit Harakiri before becoming like them.

It’s pathetic. And I’m embarrassed.

The patient is already dead. Our system has been broken for years. And it needs fixing. At all costs.

It’s happening again.

Seventeen years ago a charismatic young Democratic won the White House promising to end discrimination against gays in the military. Thinking it was a shoe-in, Bill Clinton underestimated the opposition. He overpromised and under-delivered, and in waffling on the issue, pushed equality down the road for what might become two decades. And counting.

Today a charismatic young Democratic has taken the White House again, with the same promise.  And again Barack Obama is saying, “let us wait.” I argued recently against those who want to punt this down the field.  And as if on cue, the Secretary of Defense said last week that the country has too much on its plate to stop firing gay linguists. When asked if there were any plans to finally end the ban on gay troops, he said that he and the president would like to “push that one down the road a little bit.”

This is not just about some of us in the movement getting impatient; it’s about trying to make sure further delays on this issue don’t cause disaster, which is exactly what happened in 1993 when Clinton tried to resolve the issue by pushing it down the road for a 6-month “time out.” In trying to avoid the mistakes Clinton made on this issue, Obama may ironically be repeating them.  Already, hostility from the military and the religious right are re-surfacing and beginning to frame the debate in terms that will put the rest of us on defense for months to come.

Also last week, we got word that social conservatives are quietly moving into position, recruiting members of the military community to try to block equal treatment in the military. They have amassed 1000 signatures from retired officers calling for the gay ban to remain. And it’s not just happening on the fringe.  The likely strategy of conservatives in Congress is to drive a wedge between Obama and military leaders: if Republicans can ask the Defense Secretary or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about gay troops during Congressional budget hearings this spring and elicit a tepid or negative response, they will have a golden opportunity to frame the debate: Military Tells President Lifting Ban Would Damage the Force.

When I spoke last year to the general who headed the Pentagon task force that helped write the current policy, he said the policy was supposed to be a temporary speed bump. “Fifteen years is too damned long,” he said.  And yet the window for reform may be closing.

Nathaniel Frank is author of “Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America,” and a senior research fellow at the Palm Center.

Read more at his website, www.unfriendlyfire.org.

So says Richard Dawkins in the second chapter of his god-shattering book The God Delusion.

If you’ve ever read the Old Testament (and even parts of the new) then you’ll know that it’s hard to argue with this rather succinct summary of the God so many still believe in today. But does Dawkins need to be so strident? As one reader put it: “I’m an atheist, but I wish to dissociate myself from your shrill, strident, intemperate, intolerant, ranting language.”

Dawkins responds: “Actually, if you look at the language of  The God Delusion, it is rather less shrill or intemperate than we regularly take in our stride - when listening to political commentators for example, or theatre, art or book critics. Here are some samples of recent restaurant criticism from leading London newspapers:

‘It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine anyone conjuring up a restaurant, even in their sleep, where the food in its mediocrity comes so close to inedible.’

‘All things considered, quite the worst restaurant in London, maybe the world… serves horrendous good, drudgingly, in a room that is a museum to Italian waiters’ taste circa 1976.’

‘The worse meal I’ve ever eaten. Not by a small margin. I mean the worst! The most unrelievedly awful!’

‘[What] looked like a sea mine in miniature was the most disgusting thing I’ve put in my mouth since I ate earthworms at school.’

The strongest language in The God Delusion is tame and measured by comparison. If it sounds intemperate, it is only because of the weird convention, almost universally accepted that religious faith is uniquely privileged: above and beyond criticism. Insulting a restaurant might seem trivial compared to insulting God. But restaurateurs and chefs really exist and have feelings to be hurt, whereas blasphemy, as the witty bumper sticker puts it, is a victimless crime.”

And so say all of us.

Excerpted with kind permission From The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin, 2006.

And another boy… and a girl, and another boy - and a whole lot of hypocrisy.

Will someone please explain the outcry regarding mommy dearest in California? I thought we couldn’t eject enough of these little bundles of joy into the world?

Don’t get me wrong, I love kids just as much as the guy next door (okay, he is a registered sex offender), and I know the human race depends on procreation (like we don’t have a population problem already). Besides, without kids who else would pay for my social security when I get old, or visit me to swap out my fetid bed pan (like any self-respecting, Gen-Y kid would want to spend time with grand-pa these days - except to collect the annual birthday check). It’s just that I was born without this paternal desire to show the world what a proud and brilliant man I am because my sperm can produce something I can neither afford to pay for, nor am qualified to properly raise.

Poor Darwin. Although clearly a brilliant man, his theory of Natural Selection failed to take into account the possibility that medical science would eventually ensure the demise of his notion of “the survival of the fittest.” As if nature hadn’t already blessed the dim and the keenest of underachievers with the best reproductive systems known to man, medical science is now intervening to ensure that even our most medically mediocre citizens can assist in out-breeding the rest of us. He must be turning in his grave.

That’s ok. I can deal with the fact that some are willing to blow caution to the wind for their chance at creating the next American Idol (or even the next Jeffrey Dahmer) both of which seem to have replaced the traditional desire to have a future United States President suckling at their teats. But what’s wrong with the Chinese idea of one shot at infamy per household?

Perhaps I’m just bitter. Pro-creation has always been a sticky issue for me. I would feel more at ease talking about intercourse with barn yard animals at a PETA convention than trying to convey common sense notions of population control with the righteous, right-wing Joe The Plumbers of this world. The right to spread ones legs and spew out litters of babies seems to be the only true inalienable right which is left to us.

It’s irritating that one can hardly make it through the day without encountering rules and regulations created to protect us (and of course our precious children): I have to wear a seatbelt while driving; I can’t cut someone’s hair without a license; and I have to wash my hands by law if I so much as touch my face while slinging burgers at McDonalds. So it disturbs me greatly that as a society we breed incessantly without any regard to our collective future, or what junk we want to see roaming the streets within our short lifetimes. No school classes, no drug screening, no minimum credit score, no proof of mental stability (or even income - even employment). No pre-requisite whatever. Just plug and play.

Enter Nadya “donations-please” Suleman. It’s not clear why anyone would actually desire eight screaming brats (particularly if she has six already); but then again she doesn’t deserve death threats either. Of course, had this taken place within the context of a married “Christian” relationship, such details could have been happily overlooked in the midst of such a “miracle” birth, and the local church would have started a Pampers drive the moment her blessed water had broken. However the local church denies any such interest.

For whatever reason - maybe because she struggled with mental illness before her octuplet pregnancy and wanted two million for her story, or maybe because she chose to be a single mother and is on food stamps, or perhaps because three of her first six children receive disability payments and she didn’t tell her mother (with whom she lives) about the $167,000 in disability payments she herself received, or maybe even just because she’s not white enough - or has rather odd-looking lips, Nadya Suleman has sparked a chorus of disapproval within the ranks of the otherwise caring “family” classes. Folk who are normally so pro-life that even the disposal of soggy, post-pleasure Kleenex tissues would be considered tantamount to abortion are now willing to chase down the doctor involved for allowing this birthing bonanza to happen. All of this disguised by a “genuine” concern for the well-being of the children, of course.

So here’s my dilemma: While this Amazing Human Incubator makes my point for some form of Federal birth-control better than I ever could, the hypocritical, every-sperm-is-sacred, religious right, who are most in need of having their tubes tied, appear to be complaining the loudest.

I’m torn. I just can’t decide who should face the firing squad first.

If only I had children of my own to debate this with.

Sometimes we wonder why the rest of the world has a problem with America… Here’s an interactive map of the Middle East - you know, the part of the world that we are at war with and with which the vast majority of Hillary Clinton’s time will be spent as Secretary of State.

Click on the map below. Take the test. Can you name a single country? Once you’ve embarrassed yourself try naming the head of any of these important countries: Iraq? Israel? Saudi Arabia perhaps, who sent the 9/11 hijackers - home of Osama Bin Laden? 

After a decade at war in the middle east, most American’s couldn’t find Iran on a map if their lives depended on it. (In fact they do depend on it.)

America can be remarkably introverted at times. Am I blind, or were there no foreign dignitaries at President Barack Obama’s recent inauguration? After an entire day in front of the television yesterday, I don’t think I saw one. And yet this event was reported worldwide and graced the front pages of every newspaper this morning across the globe.

Yes, this was America’s special day, but how can we expect to get the respect and attention of the rest of the world when we act as if they don’t even exist? Where was our close ally, the Prime Minister of England? At Lady Diana’s funeral there were dignitaries from all over the world. There will be again at the next coronation. Where were the representatives of our neighbors in Canada and Mexico? Obama was recently welcomed in Berlin during the primaries to huge crowds; was the German chancellor invited on the big day?

The rest of the world has a problem with America because we’re oblivious to its very existence. We don’t even know who we’re at war with - or who our allies are.

The truth is that until this country starts to realize that it is not the center of the universe, we will continue to have disastrous foreign relations issues that will cost American lives.

Oh, and the flag?

Iraq. Just the country we’ve been at war with for the best part of the last decade.

The truth is that he is neither black nor white. His father was black and his mother was white. Is he then a black man with a white mother, or rather a white man with a black father? Clearly if he is 50/50 then he is neither black nor white, but of mixed race - and yet everyone assumes he is black.

Is it up to Obama to decide? After all, the concept of “black people” and “white people” is a social construct. Or is it a matter of simple fact that he is neither. And if black people can claim him as their own, then can’t whites also make the same claim? After all his father disappeared from his life at an early age, it was his white mother who raised him. Surely his main identity then ought to be white?

Many would say that he is indeed white. Or at the very least an “Oreo” - black on the outside, but white inside. There does appear to be some evidence for this, like the fact that his wife and their two girls all straighten their hair. And when Obama quotes Kennedy he does not say: “Aks not what your country can do for you;  aks what you can do for your country.” Ok, the last one was facetious.

Perhaps the decision is not ours but Obama’s.

But if the United States is truly a “blended country,” where the racial distinctions become increasingly blurred, and increasingly irrelevant, why does Obama have to make the choice at all? Race should no longer be important as a distinguishing characteristic. And it seems that for him, it is not.

So  the question remains - is white America really ready for a “real”, all-black president, or are we only interested in the Oreos of this world - or those who’s skin is a paler shade of black… the Tiger Woods, the Whitney Houstons, the Halle Berrys, and of course, the most acceptable blacks of all - the middle class Huxtables.

One thing seems certain. Whatever his race, his color certainly helped all of us. For the black community he was a gift and for the whites, well, voting for this young black man actually made us feel better about ourselves.

The appointment of Barack Obama represents more than the election of a likeable and competent candidate to the highest office in the land; it stands for a rejection of slavery, of our dubious history, of all the immorality and injustices that have gone before us - of all that is wrong with our society.

And in a classic triumph of good over evil, the black underdog has come to symbolize the righteous. The resulting inauguration has assuaged our guilt, vindicated our sense of fair play and eased our collective conscience.

This symbolism has given Obama the much hyped saint-like status that has been the subject of some mockery. However the truth is his triumph does have an almost religious aspect. It has allowed the American people not only to make the right choice, but to feel psychologically empowered by that choice - perhaps even pious. It symbolizes the metaphorical purification of our collective sin and granted us a radical social enema.

And while we’re hoping that Obama will manage to save our country - we’re banking on him to save us from ourselves.

One hates to be a party pooper in the face of such an extraordinary outcome, but this website is about clear, logical thinking and so I have to raise an obvious question:

Was Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who that narrowly averted disaster by landing # 1549 in the Hudson really a hero? Were the emergency crews that responded also heroes?

Or were they simply true professionals, doing the job they were not only trained to do, but paid to do?

I have to conclude the latter. Sullengerger is undoubtedly a great pilot, but he had only two choices in that situation: a) Scream “We’re all gonna die,” put his hands over his eyes and duck under the flight controls in prayer, or do what any well trained, 40-year veteran, former F-4 fighter pilot would do in that situation and attempt to land the plane (an Airbus A320) to the best of his ability - saving not just the lives of 150 others, but also his own.

Masterful pilot, yes. Hero, not really. Doing everything you can to prevent the plane you are sitting in from crashing is not necessarily heroic. (Oh, and it wasn’t a ‘miracle’ either - because rational people don’t believe in miracles, do we Mayor Bloomberg?) It was plane old (excuse pun) seat of the pants, first class, gut reaction flying that saved the day. And I bet “Sully” Sullenberger would be the first to agree.

We’re remarkably sloppy about the way we use the term hero. The soldiers in Iraq are heroes, our firefighters are all heroes, even John McCain was a hero. Americans really need their heroes.

What these folk really have in common is something less radical. They are all doing dangerous jobs; but jobs they willingly signed up for, are paid for, and sometimes revel in.

That is not to say that they do not deserve priase, or that we’re not eternally grateful for the job that they do - or even that some of them are not truly heroic, but they are not automatic heroes.

The events of 9/11 undoubtedly produced a number of real heroes: individuals who, knowing that their actions might result in their own death, nevertheless took action in order to help someone else. We will never know all the true stories of heroism that took place that day.

But simply being a fireman or a soldier, and getting killed as a result does not make you a hero. Particularly if you could not have predicted the danger. And on 9/11 few predicted the collapse of the twin towers until it was too late. What these men were is incredibly brave in the face of danger, but there’s a difference between being brave and being a hero, and we’re dishonest if we don’t make that distinction. Very few people willingly “give” their lives. People don’t usually give their lives willingly - their lives are simply taken from them. The distinction is a real one, because one of the groups are heroes and the other is not.

The truth is that when something awful happens and someone dies as a result, we don’t know what to do or say - so we call them a hero - a sort of booby prize for having been needlessly killed. We’ve lost thousands of men an women in the Iraq war and we have little to offer the families of these soldiers in return. So we call their kids heroes who “gave” their lives for American freedom - and hope that will be some consolation.

The following real life individuals can properly be described heroes:

The man who risked his life by jumping into an icy lake to save a kid he’d never met; the soldier who jumps on a hand grenade to save his colleagues and Wesley Autrey, who jumped onto the tracks and rolled with 19-year-old Cameron Hollopeter into the trough between the rails at 137th Street station for no apparent reason other than the fact that it seemed a good idea at the time.

Spartacus was a hero when he slayed his friend Antonius in a duel to the death organized by the Romans - because the winner was to be put to death on the cross… which excruciatingly painful death brings me to another would-be hero - Jesus Christ (Superstar). Assuming he existed at all, Jesus might have been the ultimate hero, giving his life so that the entire world would be saved (well at least the Christians). Except, Jesus was really just another manifestation of God himself - so I don’t believe this really counts.

One of Sullenberger’s neighbors, Candace Andersen, hit the nail on the head. She said that the “right pilot” had been in charge at the time of the accident.

“You look at his training, you look at his experience - it was the right pilot at the right time in charge of that plane that saved so many lives,” she said.

Bingo.

So can we be more selective (and less dramatic) about our use of the word “hero”?

Because when everyone and anyone is a hero, it diminishes the true heroes.