Bunnies and rainbows

I am looking forward to the future. I don't expect it to be bunnies and rainbows. In fact, I expect lots of hard work, hair-raising hard work. For all of us. I expect, however, that my gay friends will be getting married in Maine and Maryland and Washington. I expect that Pell Grants and other means of financial aid (otherwise not known as free stuff but earned stuff) will assist my daughter and others attending college. I expect that the Supreme Court will not overturn Roe v. Wade and that the immigrants I know will be welcome. It is a tone, besides a bunch of facts, that pleases me from the Obama administration. And, come to think of it, maybe like Obamacare, a term he and we have come to embrace, as a good thing and a fitting moniker to honor the one who made it happen. Maybe like that, I'm not so offended by the epithet that Obama is the President of Free Stuff. Except it isn't free. Nothing, as they say, is free. But Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. My family has had to make use, at one time or another, in one generation or another, of all those generous programs and some before them. My great-grandfather only got to America because his brother gave him the money for the trip. And then got him set up. How many of us can say the same, must admit the same? We are the benefactors of others' largesse. If being a liberal labels me as a giver of Free Stuff, then count me in. I'm glad to share. That is the tone I like in my liberal friends. They all feel that way. "How can I help?" We are the givers of FREE STUFF. Let it roll.