Pinkertons!

We packed up the dog and headed for Danielle's parents' house yesterday, we were over due for a visit, but we also wanted to make a final pitch to her mom for Barack.

I don't know if we were successful, we were up against a lot. Danielle's great-great-grandfather was once the mayor of the town she grew up in, and his legacy is calling in the Pinkertons to break a strike of steel workers. It's not just bloodlines, a sign with the ten commandments on it is displayed in the front yard, and abortion is a big issue.

On our side, we took Sicko as a discussion starter.

My mother-in-law works in a factory, her last annual raise was a nickel an hour, and the employee share of her health insurance went up significantly, leading to take-home pay that is not only less than last year when adjusted for inflation, or the cost of living, but less in terms of the actual dollar amount on the check - all this while the owner has recently bragged about record profits.

One of the extras on the Sicko dvd is about Norway, a reaction to the Sean Hannity's of the world crying about the horrors of socialized medicine, European socialism in general. Danielle's mom and I talked about education, in particular, the free higher education of many European countries. She worried out loud about where employers would find cheap labor if everyone had an opportunity to earn a college degree.

How did the workers of this country, those who see their paychecks go down, come to have concerns for their employer's ability to find cheap labor when they themselves are unable to take a hot shower, or cook on their stove for having fallen too far behind on their gas bills and it having been shut off months ago.