Just hung up the phone at the end of a "telephone town hall" initiated by my

[Mist]

congressman, David Price (NC 4th District). About dealing with Medicare reduction and how he's working to prevent such reductions. People were very polite and measured with their questions. Problem with Price is, he's a good guy, but so moderate and reasonable, I think he has trouble being heard in the braying fray that politics has become. I was too late in the queue to ask a question. My questions would be from a different angle - since public hospitals depend a great deal on medicare clients, wouldn't there be an impact on such hospitals when medicare coverage is reduced? How much are public hospitals part of this debate? And how stupid/evil is it to pretend that cutting some medicare payments will help balance the budget for more than a few months, if that?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. A phone hall meeting, then?

[Mist]

5. I guess that would work. I just got the call while watching tv and fiddling on the computer, but it

was interesting hearing people's concerns and questions.

[Hannah Bell]

2. the hospital angle is interesting in terms of how it might tend to bankrupt smaller

independents a/o public hospitals to the advantage of bigger ones.

[Mist]

3. That's what I worry about--we need all the hospitals we've got, it seems to me. For those crazed

with the privatization bacillus, it would probably be seen as a good thing, getting rid of all those tacky public hospitals.

NOTHING will help balance the budget if the two ginormous sacred cows, defense and tax cuts for the rich, are off the table.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

4. Way off topic but...

My apologies. Is that a hand blown glass flying pig in your siggy? I love it!

[Mist]

6. I LUUUUV my little glass winged pig! I'm pretty sure it wasn't hand-blown, as I got it at

Pier One, for about $3. I was in looking at some sale items (curtain panels, odds and ends, bits of furniture) and these little glass pigs caught my eye. "When pigs fly" is an expression of the incredible, so a little flying pig seems an appropriate mascot for the times.