Another Day at School

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Health insurance reform bill is signed into law.

This week, in an article called “Another Day at School,” I take up the chart for Obama signing the health insurance reform law on Tuesday — a chart that has not appeared on this blog until now. It’s a truly impressive astrological image of the page of history being turned. This true whether you think the insurance reform law is a sham, a triumph or you have no opinion at all, the chart vibrates with an historically-grounded sense of progress, and the full force of 2012 energy. I contrast events this week with those of Sept. 1957, when Dwight Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to enforce school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas. I go over two versions of the chart — a highly simplified one, and the full version with minor planets.

This edition also includes the your weekly horoscope interpretations for all 12 signs and a link back to this week’s April monthly horoscope and audio, as well as a new article by Judith Gayle called The War on Enlightenment. The full edition is sent to Planet Waves Astrology News subscribers; we will post a small sample here in a few minutes.

5 thoughts on “Another Day at School”

  1. I see this so differently than the don’t worry, be happy “political” astrologers who equate conservatism with evil, and the any thing the Democrats do with enlightenment personified.

    First, this is not a “seeding” time for health care reform. See the chart from last September when Max Baucus passed the bill that eventually became law out of committee. The seeding time for the reform effort is in the charts from last fall, and the passage of the bill on Christmas Eve.

    That said, the enactment of the bill into law is the chart of signing of the law by Obama, which gives clues to how it may be implemented. But the moon/Pluto opposition makes it clear, the peoples’ interests have been betrayed. This does not remotely resemble “universal” care. It is not “single payer” care. This is mandated corporate health care, with no limits on how much insurance companies can charge for premiums, co-pays, etc. and in many places in the US, “customers” will have only one company from which to “choose”.

    And with Pluto involved, it will be virtually impossible for future governments to make changes to this law. This incredibly regressive law is what the people will be forced to live with, without any changes, for decades, if not generations, to come. If you had hoped the US was finally going to join the rest of the civilized world in making health care a human right, you are completely demoralized at the passage of this legislation, and the selling out of the American people by the legislative and executive branches of the US corporate run government.

    This bill is a big political victory for certain groups/corporate interests, including the Obama administration, the Democratic Leadership Council, Big Insurance, Big Pharma, Big Medicine (AMA, et al), and Pelosi & Reid’s party leadership teams. No doubt about that. But all those groups & interests “won” at the expense of the American people.

    And in the propaganda battles being waged by the political parties through their cable news divisions: Fox for the Republicans, NBC for the Democrats, CNN for both, I’ve never seen such stunningly effective American propaganda wars waged by the US government since the launch of the Iraq war.

    Anyone who thinks Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann and former Republican Ed Schultz as spokespeople for the non-partisan independent progressive movement who fought so hard to defeat this bill, is sadly mistaken. They are NBC propaganda puppets extraordinaire, just as Sarah Palin and Bill O’Reilly and Glen Beck are Fox’s propaganda puppets. That is what they are paid to do, peddle the propaganda points of the day. You can certainly see the propaganda wars in the charts to, if you look for such things (instead of validation of your personal political views in the stars, as most online astrologers seem to keep doing).

    Far more concerning than the handful of Tea Baggers acting badly, are calls for overthrow of the government by Republicans Palin and McCain this week. This is far more serious than anyone in the so-called “political astrology” blogosphere is making note of~apparently they are too busy tuning into MSNBC to find out how to frame their thinking about electoral politics (as if the horse race is all there is to politics). And of course, no outrage on those statements from the president, White House press room, the Speaker or Senate Majority leaders on it. They have their victory in their pocket to go back to their districts and lull all their schlub constituents back into their normal somnambulist state to vote in November.

  2. Man that mocked Parkinson’s victim apologizes
    by jabuhrer [Subscribe]

    Fri Mar 26, 2010 at 10:10:45 AM PDT

    I just came across this story and didn’t see anyone else mention it, so I thought I’d put together a brief diary. Perhaps, in some small way, this will help balance out all of the car ramming/brick throwing/stray bullet stories that we’ve had, at least a tiny bit.

    The protester at an anti-health care reform rally who yelled and threw money at a pro-reform advocate with Parkinson’s disease has apologized for his “shameful” actions and blamed them on impulse.

    When Chris Reichert appeared in a now infamous internet video throwing money and screaming at Robert A. Letcher, a 60 year old man with Parkinson’s, he became a nationwide symbol for the ugliest ideas behind the opposition to health care reform.

    Screaming “No more handouts,” Reichert’s demonstrated the most odious form of opposition to health care reform: those that oppose reform out of cruel selfishness, hatred and misanthropy.

    It seems that Reichert has had time to cool down since the incident. He told the Colombus Dispatch:

    “He’s got every right to do what he did and some may say I did too, but what I did was shameful,” Reichert said. “I haven’t slept since that day.”

    Sure, just about everyone here is probably thinking that this is on par with Bush going to Haiti: too little, too late, and with questionable sincerity. And that’s probably an appropriate way to look at it. However, if nothing else, it is at least somewhat refreshing to me at the end of a week filled with violent intolerance.

    “I wanted this to go away, but it won’t and I’m paying the consequences,” Reichert said.

    Reichert says that he has read a lot of comments about this action on the internet. He says that he’s afraid for his family, so I’m guessing that some of the comments were pretty nasty. However, considering his change of heart, I also wonder if he didn’t come across a lot of comments that made him think about his actions. Comments from people urging compassion, rather than screaming back at the other side. Comments from people denouncing cruelty.

    Another thing that I learned from this story is that the man with Parkinson’s, Robert A. Letcher, is a former nuclear scientist with a doctorate from Cornell University. As we all know, the RW meme of a bum asking for a handout “cause he doesn’t wanna work” is pretty much always wrong.

    [Letcher has] been on disability since 2005 but was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2000. His last job was teaching science and technology policy at Ohio State. Perhaps Reichert read about that as well.

    The background that Reichert gives to the Dispatch is not surprising:

    Reichert, a registered Republican, said he is not politically active. He said he heard about the rally on the radio and a neighbor invited him to attend.

    I believe that’s probably how a lot of these people are. Sure, a percentage of them are hard core, die hard conservatives. However, surely many of them are simply regular folks who’ve been whipped into a frenzy after stumbling upon some right wing hate radio.

    They listen to the vitriol of Rush and Beck and Hannity every day on the way to work, and take their words for granted. Many people are too tired or uninterested to do follow up research of their own, and after a few years of this, well, you have a monster like we saw in that video.

    “That was my first time at any political rally and I’m never going to another one,” Reichert said.

    “I will never ever, ever go to another one.”

    Hopefully he’ll turn off the radio station where he heard about the rally too. In a better world, maybe he would learn a little more about Robert A. Letcher’s life and experiences as well. Maybe he would come to realize that Letcher is not a bum, but a distinguished man that has accomplished much in his life, only to come upon adversity due to a genetic accident. Perhaps he would realize that Letcher was actually trying to do him a favor, by saying “This happened to me. It could happen to you.”

    I’m not saying that this man has redeemed himself. I don’t have any naive delusions about converting teabaggers and sitting around the campfire singing kumbaya with them. But I think even the most cold and skeptical among us will admit that, at the very least, seeing this man question his cruel behavior, even if ever so briefly, is refreshing here at the end of this week. Hopefully we will see more of this, and less brick throwing.

    Update:

    I’d like to thank tbetz very much for pointing out this statement by Reichert, from the Dispatch article:

    “I made a donation (to a local Parkinson’s disease group) and that starts the healing process.”

  3. Fe… Y’asm.

    As I hear the rising alarm about the ‘hippie conservatives’ I take it *in* to my own body:

    Inhale silence, exhale love. This works to disseminate an impulse to peaceful action (called Upaya or Means by the Mothers).

    Inhale bliss, exhale silence. This broadcasts a generalized coolth (what our Girls call Prajna or wisdom) into the world.

    Easy as breathing. Which is the physical action that communicates between your conscious and unconscious minds. What we send across that bridge is critical.

    All love,

    M

  4. I think this week we re-boot history.

    This is no longer a grab your popcorn and watch kind of moment. We are now the arms, legs and heart of history. I am happy to be alive to be part of this.

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