One more night alone, and then da wife will be back tomorrow. That should make the cats happy, since they aren’t used to nobody giving a shit whether they eat or not. Not that I’m starving them, of course; their dry food bowl is always full, and I give them some canned food if they’ve eaten the last bit I gave them (and they schmooze me sufficiently). But if they don’t think that’s good enough, well, that’s OK by me, too. And, funny, they eventually eat what I give them (the real trick is to not give them too much at once). I run a tight ship here.

The dogs’ beds are on my side, and one nice thing about having our bed to myself is that I can slip out the other side without having my toes licked and my egress blocked. It doesn’t mean I can go to the bathroom without an entourage, of course, but I get a bit of a head start. It’s nice to be able to get to the toilet w/o having to step over a dog, though Fritz is short enough to come up behind me and stick his snout between my legs. Sometimes, when I’m still sleepy and my vision’s a bit foggy, I look down and think, “Holy Shit! what the hell happened with that last night?” It can also be difficult not to piss on his head, necessitating a last second change in trajectory. Not that he’d really care, I guess.

Some good news on the single payer healthcare front, as the House Education and Labor Committee approved – by a vote of 27-19, including 13 Republicans voting yes – an amendment introduced by Dennis Kucinich. Does it mean we get single payer? Well, no. The amendment mandates that a single payer state will receive the right to waive the application of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which has in the past been used to nullify efforts to expand state or local government health care (John Nichols has more, over at The Nation). Bernie Sanders is introducing a similar bill in the Senate. So, if both Houses pass a healthcare reform bill with these amendments intact and if they make it through the conference committee and if the President signs it, and if your state enacts single payer, then you get it.

Easy enough. Other than the coalition of Senate DINOs who are trying to put the brakes on things while they figure out how they’re gonna make money off all this, and the Republicans who think killing reform will sink the Obama presidency.

So, while the Federal HC (sorry, tired of typing healthcare, and not certain if it ought to be healthcare, health care, or health-care, and don’t even get me started on singlepayer/single-payer/single payer) reform will most likely suck, this amendment breathes a little hope into the SP hopes of the ten states with active single payer efforts in their legislatures: California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington.

I’m never overly optimistic about our state legislature, of course, but if they’re smart (for once) they’ll do it. It would be a real advantage for us to have over the Southern “fuck labor, fuck schools, fuck the environment, fuck the poor people – we don’t want no stinking taxes” states in attracting employers to the area, since it would save the huge cost of providing and administering health insurance for employees.

I wonder if Walter Cronkite’s family will be renting out Madison Square Garden to hold a memorial service, and holding a ticket lottery for admission? Well, of course not. That would be a circus, and I doubt Walter would be down for that. No golden, pharaoh-like casket, no performance by Dan Rather doing the JFK assassination report wearing one white glove, no trotting out the grandkids for a tearful soundbite, no paternity tests, no wondering who’s going to take care of the pet giraffe.

No doubt, Walter will be memorialized and eulogized, but I reckon it will be a dignified and somber celebration of possibly the last man people of my generation ever trusted (perhaps in large part because he looked a bit like a cross between Walt Disney and Captain Kangaroo). Somebody ought to hold a much-bleated memorial for the death of Journalism – at least as it applies to the “traditional” media in general, and network teevee in particular.

We haven’t really seen ya in a while, Uncle Walter, but we’ll miss ya.

Break Room Live and Walter Cronkite both dead within 48 hours of each other? My heart can’t take much more of this.