Obama and Gary Coleman

I would like to discuss a famous actor who passed away recently. RIP to Gary Coleman. He was a great actor and I shall always remember him for the time he played himself in an episode of the Simpsons and for the voice he played in the game the Curse of Monkey Island (Monkey Island 3). In the Curse of Monkey Island Coleman played the voice of a bratty lemonade sales boy who scams his customers by using a literally bottomless mug that sits on a hole in the table. The lemonade he poured after the customer paid a nickel went to the ground and the customer is scammed when they find the mug empty. The game’s hero, Guybrush Threepwood, switched the bottomless mug for a real mug and when Kenny pours the lemonade into this mug Guybrush gets to drink it. Kenny storms off in a fit as a result of this. Later, however, Kenny sees the error of his ways and runs a legitimate cannon sales business that Guybrush buys several cannons from.

In politics, I am perturbed by Barack Obama’s poor approval numbers. I do not know if it is because of the Gulf oil spill, a still-recovering economy, or lingering unpopularity of his health care reform, but many Americans in my view are too quickly forgetting how much worse things were under George W. Bush. In regards to Obama’s lingering unpopularity over health care, this is unfortunately the case because the Democrats may have won the legislative battle but by then they had long since lost the media battle with the Republicans. The Republicans by the summer of 2009 had already gotten their negative story on the health care bill to be a largely accepted belief among many Americans. Democrats fighting back failed to reverse the minds of many who had been convinced by the massive Republican misinformation. This is harming Obama’s presidency far too much despite the fact that the health care bill he signed is needed, long overdue, and contains none of the Republican negative characteristics attributed to it. As I’ve said, Obama’s health care bill is only a first step in the effort the cover all Americans for health care. Republicans really ought to show more care for the poor who cannot get adequate coverage but then that would not be a typical Republican thing to do, the party that likes to ignore the poor. What concerns me as well is that no matter how much the economy continues to improve in the United States, voters do not give him credit for the recovery and in surveys continue to treat Obama as though the United States in is deep recession. Meanwhile in Canada it is equally disheartening how large a lead the federal Conservatives have taken in the polls over the Liberals. Now is a difficult time to be a Liberal much in the same way that in the US it is a difficult time to be a Democrat. One can hope for improvements in the future.