No matter how you paint this, Obama lost this fight. Even if we get some kind of healthcare reform bill out of this mess, it's going to be so watered down that any real improvements for the circumstances of millions of uninsured working Americans are going to be marginal at best. You will stil have millions of citizens losing their coverage and unable to afford coverage. Insurance will still not be portable, so people will be tied to their jobs to keep their benefits and at the mercy of their employers if their coverage changes or is cut due to increased costs. Without a public insurance option, there is nothing to curtail rising insurance costs and insurance companies will continue to reap millions upon millions in profits at the expence of the public.

Obama let himself get rolled on this one because it wasn't going to be an easy sell under the best of circumstances, but he allowed far too much time to pass before even begining to answer critics. I said before that the fight was lost the moment Obama allowed Sarah Palin to control the message - her screeds about "death panels" were allowed to gain too much traction and became the focus of the argument, rather than a rational disussion on how best to provide coverage for the uninsured. The moment he allowed the far right fringe of the Republican party to control the message about reform, Obama found himself fighting an uphill battle.

No matter what he manages to get through now, it's very clear it's going to be a far cry from the complete overhaul the system badly needs. By giving up so much in the hope that the Republicans might get on board, he wound up giving up everything and losing the support of his own party. I'm sure that something he'll call reform will pass, and he's get his photo op and the big signing ceremony, but it will not be anything close to the real reform he promised to fight for. But then again, he didn't really fight for it, did he?

I am truly sorry for the LW's loss, and as others have said, killing herself out of grief is useless and will end up hurting the people who love she the most. It's unfortunate that the man you loved died and that you feel like you cannot truly express your grief, but the fact is that he was not your husband. He was married to someone else and despite the strong feelings you had for him, he was not yours. I know the LW said that he had planned to leave his wife to be with her, but how true that is we'll never know. Many a married man who carries on an affair claims that he'll leave his loveless marriage for his lover, but quite a few never do. We don't know what the state of his marriage really was and coming public about the affair would only hurt his wife and children who are blameless in this.

As for the LW's own marriage, it's obvious that she is monumentally unhappy. If her husband is the absolute jerk that she describes him as and the marraige is unstable both financially and emotionally, it seems pointless to continue in it. If it helps the LW's conscience in regards to her children, she can keep to her plan of ending the marriage after their schooling. She shouldn't need the support of a lover to escape an unhappy marriage and she will be better off taking time to regain her emotional footing after two difficult life events.

As for her grief... the only council I would give is to meet with a friend that she trusts completely who would not betray her confidence and pour her heart out to her friend. Tell her about the affair (if she didn't already know) and your loss. If she goes beyond this, she needs to expect at least some condemnation from people who will not be sympathetic to someone carrying on an affair. Counciling also will help and I would urge her to see out an unbiased ear to help her through this painful time.

If she feels that she must make some public expression of her grief, she must take care that she express her pain as a friend of the deceased and not his lover. We don't know if his wife had been aware of the affair but if she and his children were not, it would cause them unbearable pain to find out that he had been involved with another woman. They do not deserve that and the LW has an obligation not to cause them any more suffering than they are already enduring.

Unfortunately when you are the mistress to a married man (and yes, that is what the LW was), it means a half-life in the shadows. She wasn't this man's wife as as deeply as she feels his loss, his wife and children are the ones who have sole claim on publicly mourning him.