In case you might be wondering why there have been no blogs for several days, the reason isn’t that I’ve given up in disgust, although I have to admit that I’m often tempted to do just that. The computer has been in the shop.

After a couple of (almost) all-nighters trying to get my antiquated PC to function – including repeated “System Restores” – I conceded defeat and sought professional help. A young man named Robert at the Computer Plus store near my Lakeland, Florida home came to my rescue with his sophisticated diagnostic equipment. His report: 27 Trojan Horses.  That’s right, 27!

That’s what I get for being cheap and settling for free virus protection software. From now on it’s McAfee for me.

Robert explained a form of malware that disables your virus protection had slipped past my defenses and let the other bad guys in. Apparently, that’s why my multitudinous scans had failed to detect the infestation.

He wiped the system, reformatted it and reloaded my stuff. Some of my stiff, anyway. I have had my hands full trying to remember how I set things up many years ago.

At the same time, I’ve been dealing with a three-tooth cap that gave way when the teeth under it broke off near the gum line. Not pleasant. I’m to have dental surgery on Friday and then get fitted for a partial. The dentist recommended implants but that seemed ridiculously extravagant for a 76-year-old codger with diabetes and a dodgy heart.  Who knows if I would last long enough for the implants to take?

It’s OK, don’t start checking the closet for your funeral gear, I’m just kidding. I can’t help it, although I’ve been persistently admonished throughout my life, “You’re not funny, George!”

So, long story shot, here I am again with my observations on the passing scene.

And I wish I could be a happier camper.

But there’s so much to whine about.

For example, one of the first things I read as I opened up my email today was a Salon article by Glenn Greenwald repeating an earlier charge that President Obama had made a backroom deal with the baddies to ditch the “public option” in that epic health care reform crusade. Greenwald bases his “I-told-you-so” on a new book by Tom Daschle, who was Obama’s first choice to lead the health care reform campaign but turned out to have some shady tax stuff in his background.

Greenwald complained about the hate mail he received after his first article accusing the president of selling out the public option crowd and declared that:

Definitive evidence has emerged that this is exactly what happened….  The White House had negotiated away the public option very early in the process (July, 2009), even though Obama and the administration spent months after that assuring their supporters that they were doing everything they could do have a public option in the bill.

I wondered all along why Obama hadn’t proposed opening up Medicare instead of putting together that Rube Goldberg machine of a bill that eventually became law.  Now, I know.

So much for my hope-and-change guy.

If the alternative weren’t so unthinkable, he might have lost my vote by now.