email from Melanie: As you know, I don't really like to get into political debates. I figure - vote with your conscience and it's no one else's business, but, as you know, health care availability and affordability for all is an especially important issue to me, especially since I have seen my sons suffer without it.

Someone posted this essay in Facebook, and it says a lot of what I think when people start shouting "socialism" in the USA. They use the word "socialism" or "socialist" like it's a dirty word. I really think that those people don't understand what it really means. But this guy does (for the most part.):

Here is a post passed on from Carl Wlodarczyk (Denver, CO), who wrote:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the national weather service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my national Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuable thanks to the local police department.

I then log on to the internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and post on freerepublic.com and Fox news forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

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With the exception of the Federal Reserve Bank, which is a private banking consortium, I have to agree. It's too bad people are so controlled by scaremongering.