ObamaCare - the prequel

You can go to the doctor and get medicine for a plethora of ailments. You can get everything from anti-fungal cream to steroids to Viagra to cancer drugs to knee replacements to lobotomies to radiation treatment to allergy shots to a baboon liver installed instead of your real one. All from doctors and free-market pharmaceutical companies that develop this stuff.

But the one thing right now controlled by the government, H1N1 Piggy Flu vaccine - just try getting that. Nope. Some of you (read:me) don't qualify. Those that do (read:wife and kid) had to wait almost three hours in line - OUTSIDE. In the COLD. Where they could GET SICK. But government-run healthcare is BETTER, you see. It's better because EVERYONE was waiting in the cold. It's unfair if only some people are stuck outside.

Oh, and they may run out of vaccine. Again.

No pizza. How about some "F You" instead?

It used to be that when I got accosted by panhandlers it would be someone completely derelict - the kind of hobo you'd see on the street yelling at trees or fighting with ghosts, sporting a mangy beard that was half Taliban, half pubes. But now we live in the age of Obama, and with all this hope and change burrowing its way to our collective prostate, being a beggar is far less exclusive. Today I was stopped on the street by a guy. Well-dressed, clean-shaven, and other than wearing dark glasses at night he seemed "normal", whatever that means nowadays. He even carried a briefcase. I stopped because he threw a "dude!" At me as we passed each other - and I thought he recognized me. Not "Excuse me, sir." Not "Buddy can you spare a dime?" Dude.

Then, he reaches out to shake my hand! "Hey man, could you help me out?" Oh shit! Stranger danger, I thought. No handshakes from random stranger in swine-flu season, thanks. "What's up?" I throw back at him briskly. Or bruskly, whichever's the right vocabulary word.

He seemed affronted. "With all due respect - with ALL DUE RESPECT - I'm trying to get a slice of pizza..." He had to repeat "with all due respect" for me, because apparently that's like a secret code word for "buy me pizza". My toddler just uses "PIZZA! PIZZA!", I should teach him this trick.

Anyway, I high-tailed it outta there. I had to hurry to vote against Corzine (which in Russian translates loosely to "basket").

How about you? Do you buy pizza for strangers?