A lot happened in the last week.

I should write something about the health care bill. For one thing, there will be some nearly immediate benefits. Six months after the bill is enacted, the insurance companies will be banned from dropping your coverage because you became ill. Also the drug payment doughnut hole will begin to close right away.

1. Nancy Pelosi now holds the title of the most powerful woman in the history of the United States. Think of that. She is, among other things, a product of the progressive Burton machine in San Francisco--she holds Phil Burton's old seat--so the Bay Area can take some local pride in her.

The Democrats and progressives have passed a difficult bill; it seems possible, after all, to enact legislation the Republicans and teabaggers oppose. Let's do it again.

2. The Republicans strongly oppose catering to selfish special interest groups. Someone pointed out that nurses are a special interest group. So are carpenters, dentists, teachers, singers, police officers, etc. They aren't real American voters, just special interest groups we should denounce if we are Republican.

Who are the real Americans, the ones not in a special interest group? The Presidents of multi-national corporations?

3. Sue, Tim and I represented the Democratic & Progressive Club and the Healdsburg Peace Project in the big happy march on Sunday to call attention to immigrant rights. According to the Press Democrat about 5,000 people walked together to Courthouse Square. At one corner there was a brief confrontation just before I arrived. Apparently some white teabaggers stood on the sidewalk and yelled at the masses of people strolling by, people who, in most cases, were partly descended from North American Indians.The white dudes were telling the brown walkers to go back where they came from.

Ah . . . stupidity. We never get enough of it.

Gary Goss