text: Politicians could use lesson in humility and titans of finance need one in simple living
  The stage you are awarded in life is everything. Consider that I carry my own luggage, live in simple accommodations and often cook my own meals. I drive a Ford.
  That's right, just like the pope.
  But no one is taking the time to sing my praises, to write breathy news articles about me or to Tweet that I am the greatest person alive. Just because I don't at the moment happen to have a Roman numeral after my name.
  This is not fair. Nor is it fair that I am not in the position to cripple the greatest nation on earth since Trajan's Rome just by running my mouth.
  If there is any difference between Sen. Ted Cruz and Miley Cyrus, I don't know what it would be. Both unhinge their jaws like a snake swallowing a rat in order to draw attention to themselves for reasons unknown, because the attention they receive comes mostly in the form of hatred — even from their compatriots.
  As I write this, Cruz has been mouth-twerking in the U.S. Senate chambers for about 18 hours, and says he will keep it up "until I cannot stand."
  (For some reason, I've twigged to the old "Flip Wilson Show," where the comedian says, "... over my dead body," and his droll guest replies, "That can be arranged, too.")
  The irony with Cruz is that the more tired and incoherent he gets, the more sense he makes. At one point, he started quoting Dr. Seuss, which was pure Cicero compared to anything he's said previously.
  In Cruz's mind, if it keeps one poor person from getting health insurance, it is worth shutting down the government, defaulting on our bills, crashing the stock market, stiffing our soldiers, throwing the economy back into a funk and ruining our credit rating.
  Doesn't that seem a bit, um, extreme?
  Well no, because Obamacare is the River Styx of socialism, and after we cross that there's no going back. Which was exactly the same thing they were saying about Medicare in 1965. And about Social Security in 1935. And they would have said it about prescription drug coverage in 2003 if it hadn't been sponsored by a white Republican.
  None of these programs, incidentally, is anywhere near perfect, but I think most Americans would agree that we are better off with them than without them. Which is probably the same thing we'll be saying about Obamacare 50 years from now, after it's been implemented and the sky hasn't fallen and people overall have benefited from it.
  In fact, the conventional wisdom today is that enemies of Obamacare want to block it not because they are afraid it will fail, but because they are afraid it will succeed, and that a president they loathe will get the credit.
  We'll see. If, a decade hence, today's opponents of the law are trying to get the name changed from "Obamacare" to "Republican-controlled House of Representatives Care," we'll know the score.
  But when the history of this particular era is written, it's going to be summed up in one word: selfish.
  How else to explain these titans of finance who would hang America out to dry for a shot at Forbes' "Richest People in America" list? How else to explain people who are raking in millions in government subsidies complaining about people cashing in on $40 a week worth of food stamps? How else to explain people who believe a few dollars in their wallets is of greater import than an uninsured person who had to file for bankruptcy after she contracted cancer?
  There is no other way. And for every minute he continued to speak, Sen. Cruz reminded us that it is so.