Rusted Sky

Found a database that has the professions of congress members before they got elected. Just for grins, I tried the following terms.

Engineer - 4 Representatives.
Doctor - 1 Senator, 6 Representatives
Lawyer/Attorney - 43 Senators, 145 Representatives

I'm wondering if that isn't part of our problems right there. Lawyers (in my humble opinion) aren't particularly concerned with reality - they're concerned with winning their cases or causes, regardless of the results for the other side. If you translate THAT into politics, what it'll mean is you'll do everyting you can to make sure your constituents are taken care of - and I think what we're seeing nationwide is a result of an inability to look beyond their need to 'win their case for their clients' to see what's best for the country as a whole. Obviously, what they WANT is what's best for the country, right? How could they think otherwise?

ONE MILLION LAWYERS
by Tom Paxton

Humankind has survived some disasters, I'm sure.
Like locusts and flash floods and flu.
There's never a moment when we've been secure
From the ills that the flesh is heir to.
If it isn't a war, it's some gruesome disease.
If it isn't disease, then it's war.
But there's worse still to come, and I'm asking you please
How the world's gonna take any more?

(CHORUS:)
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers,
One million lawyers, one million lawyers.
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers.
How much can a poor nation stand?

The world shook with dread of Atilla the Hun
As he conquered with fire and steel,
And Genghis and Kubla and all of the Kahns
Ground a groaning world under the heel.
Disaster, disaster, so what else is new?
We've suffered the worst and then some.
So I'm sorry to tell you, my suffering friends,
Of the terrible scourge still to come.
(CHORUS)
(BREAK:)
Oh, a suffering world cries for mercy
As far as the eye can see.
Lawyers around every bend in the road,
Laywers in every tree,
Lawyers in restaurants, lawyers in clubs,
Lawyers behind every door,
Behind windows and potted plants, shade trees and shrubs,
Lawyers on pogo sticks, lawyers in politics!

(Yeah, he thought he was making a funny there... ed.)

(CHORUS)
In spring there's tornadoes and rampaging floods,
In summer it's heat stroke and draught.
There's Ivy League football to ruin the fall,
It's a terrible scourge, without doubt.
There are blizzards to batter the shivering plain.
There are dust storms that strike, but far worse
Is the threat of disaster to shrivel the brain,
It's the threat of implacable curse.
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers,
One million lawyers, one million lawyers.
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers.
How much can a poor nation stand?
How much can a poor nation stand!

J.

Read it yourself.

Grand Rounds: Health Care Reform Edition - See First Blog

My own thought? I'll go out on a limb here and predict that this will underperform expectations, and cost considerably more than anyone expects. We're screwed, and there's little to nothing to be done about it until the elections, and then we're going to have the media and Dems running sob stories about evil Republicans who want to take candy out of the mouths of babies... I mean, deny everyone health care.

And I hope I'm wrong.

J.