Never underestimate the ability of a tiny fringe group of losers to ruin everything.
For the last couple of weeks, we've all been laughing heartily at the wacky antics of the "birthers" -- the far-right goofballs who claim Barack Obama wasn't really born in Hawaii and therefore the job of president goes to the runner-up, former Miss California Carrie Prejean.And there's nothing anyone can do to convince these folks. You could hand them, in person, the original birth certificate and have a video of Obama emerging from the womb with Don Ho singing in the background ... and they still wouldn't believe it.
Which raises the question: Why, in this country, is it always the religious right that won't take anything on faith?
And once these stories get out there, they're hard to stamp out because our media do such a lousy job of speaking truth to stupid. Vietnam, Iraq and the Spanish-American War were all sold on lies that were unchallenged or even abetted by the media. Clinton got impeached and Kerry got destroyed in large part because the media didn't have the guts to say, "This is nonsense."
Lou Dobbs has been saying recently that people are asking a lot of questions about the birth certificate. Yes, the same people who want to know where the sun goes at night.
And Lou, you're their new king.
That's why it's so important that we the few, the proud, the reality-based attack this stuff before it has a chance to fester and spread. This isn't a case of Democrats versus Republicans. It's sentient beings versus the lizard people, and it is to them I offer this deal: I'll show you Obama's birth certificate when you show me Sarah Palin's high school diploma.
And I will say that this has been the most difficult test for me so far in public life, trying to describe in clear, simple terms how important it is that we reform this system. The case is so clear to me. And when I sit with our policy advisors — we had somebody here sitting right there this morning who is a medical expert, worked at McKinsey for a while, he's now working on our health care team — and he just ran through: We pay 77 percent more on prescription drugs, we're paying $6,000 more per individual on health care than any other industrialized nation; here's all the failures in the delivery system that account for it. It's not just because we are somehow more obese or more unhealthy. It turns out actually we're a little bit healthier than most of these other countries because our smoking rates are lower and we're younger. So we should actually be paying less than they are.People are getting screwed - in many cases, literally to death - by the current system, people know they're getting screwed, yet this isn't the slam dunk it should be. As I pointed out yesterday, the people are with Obama on the broad strokes - the elements of his plan are easily the most popular. Even considering early mistakes in managing the reform project, Obama should be leading the debate.
And when you just start hearing the litany of facts, what you say to yourself is this shouldn't be such a hard case to make, because the American consumer is really not getting a good deal.
Paul Krugman points out the astonishingly obvious reason that people are not beating up their congressional representatives to reform the health care system is because we have enough Government intervention that it makes it look like the system works. Of course, if it wasn't for the government managed health-care, recission would be a household word since anyone who got seriously sick would have upto a 50% chance of experiencing it.
If the top 5% is the absolute largest population for whom rescission would make sense, the probability of having your policy cancelled given that you have filed a claim is fully 10% (0.5% rescission/5.0% of the population). If you take the LA Times estimate that $300mm was saved by abrogating 20,000 policies in California ($15,000/policy), you are somewhere in the 15% zone, depending on the convexity of the top section of population. If, as I suspect, rescission is targeted toward the truly bankrupting cases – the top 1%, the folks with over $35,000 of annual claims who could never be profitable for the carrier – then the probability of having your policy torn up given a massively expensive condition is pushing 50%. One in two. You have three times better odds playing Russian Roulette.
Our free market health insurance serves sick people really badly. And the free marketeers think that's okay.
###
Alternate Brain:
One of the reasons I basically laugh at Christianity; you know, those who profess so much love for the teachings of Christ? About those Crusades? Yeah, Jesus would have loved that. All the good stuff that went on during the Reformation? Another top-ten on Jesus' hit parade. The Holocaust? Oh yes, the Nazis were ordained by God, don'cha know. And you know what really blows a stiff breeze up JC's skirt? Batocchio via Digby:
...
The disconnect from professed Christians on the torture "debate" is particularly astounding. Given how central the crucifixion story is to Christianity, and that it depicts Jesus tortured and then executed in one of the most cruel methods ever devised, it's mind-boggling to see anyone claim that supporting torture and Christianity are compatible - or that Jesus would support waterboarding. According to Christian doctrine, Jesus' suffering redeemed him and the world - but it's not the Romans who Christians are supposed to emulate in the story! "Turn the other cheek," "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and "As you have done to the least of my brethren, so have you done unto me" are hardly pro-torture slogans. But in the hearts and minds of movement conservatives, not even Churchill, Saint Ronnie or Jesus himself can compete with the comforting violence of Jack Bauer.
...
Oh, we're so saintly because we "defend the unborn", but once they're spat from the womb they're ours to do with as we please. Jesus loves him a target-rich environment.
I'm sorry. I know, to many of you, your faith in some supreme being gives you comfort and strength. I know there are a lot of people who do follow Jesus' word and are very good folks; quite a few of them in my family. What I don't get, though, is how people square themselves with the hypocrisy of those who purportedly "speak god's word". From the things I've heard and seen over the course of my lifetime from religious leaders, from all I've read of history and the wars and atrocities committed in the name of god, I feel safe to say that Jesus would never recognize these people at his followers and he would vomit if he learned what has been done in his name.
And these people believe they can judge my morality? It's to laugh.
###
Tom Brokaw, eat your heart out:
Seniors are the least likely of all age groups in the U.S. to say that healthcare reform will benefit their personal healthcare situation. By a margin of three to one, 36% to 12%, adults 65 and older are more likely to believe healthcare reform will reduce rather than expand their access to healthcare. And by 39% to 20%, they are more likely to say their own medical care will worsen rather than improve.
I read somewhere that the fact that our seniors are all covered by medicare really makes health care reform difficult. When the most reliable voting bloc already has their coverage paid for by the state, all the Republicans have to do is peel off a few other haves and convince the old folks that Obama wants to euthanize them.
###
"Yer honor, I found weed in his pocket."
###
The Vampires of the Economy
At some banks last year, revenue fell to levels not seen in more than five years, but pay did not.Let's be clear about this: Without our money to prop them up, they could not have afforded to pay those bonuses. And it should come as no surprise that the leading vampire is Goldman Sachs.
These "firms" (and they are "firms" in the same way that the Five Families are "firms") set up variations of Ponzi schemes to loot the economy. Compared to Goldman Sachs and the rest of those goniffs, Bernie Madoff was a piker who was running a game of three card monte in a back alley behind some dive bar.
Those firms need to be dismantled before they complete their destruction of our economy.
Our favorite future resident of Bedlam and notorious baby mill operator, Bachmann-the-Nut has discovered Twitter, and let's face it: it takes a twit to know a twit.
And now, to prove that she has a firm grasp on the issues of the day, Bachmann-the-Nut creates a syllogism as only she can: Cash for Clunkers running out of money proves that the healthcare public option will fail.
Who can argue with that kind of logic, especially when it turns out that the Cash for Clunkers program was so phenomenally successful that it beat its original estimates by more than 6 months after being in operation 1 week. Cash for Clunkers may be the most visible proof that the Stimulus bill works, by giving a value to the people, not to corporations.
###
Doubling-down on his previous claim that Justice-to-be Sonia Sotomayor is a member of the "Latino KKK," nativist former Congressman and presidential candidate Tom Tancredo (R-CO) published a column yesterday suggesting that she supports an imaginary movement of Mexican-Americans planning to wage a civil war against the United States.
###
Bill O'Reilly has never shied away from denouncing late-term abortions and the handful of doctors who perform them. In the aftermath of George Tiller's murder, O'Reilly became an easy target for the liberal media who tried to pin some of the blame on Bill, saying he incited the violence by decrying these unnecessary procedures on his show. Despite the unfair allegations, O'Reilly spoke the truth, bringing new light to a gruesome procedure. On behalf of our co-sponsors and millions of values voters, we want to express our gratitude to a culture warrior who uses his national platform to promote life–no matter what the personal or professional costs.
O'Reilly rarely spoke the "truth" about Tiller, who was murdered by a radical anti-choice extremist. What O'Reilly did was demonize him, calling him — even after his death — "Tiller the Baby Killer" or "Dr. Killer." "This is the kind of stuff happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union," O'Reilly said of Tiller's medical practice. Beyond the Tiller commentary, O'Reilly rarely shows "courage" on his show. Nothing says courage less than sending your producer to stalk people because they once wrote something critical about you and you're too afraid to actually call them up and ask them for a response first.
###
Sarah Palin is so super-maverick-y now that she won't even honor her vow to make a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, where she was scheduled to speak at the Simi Valley Republican Ladies Group Fund-raiser for Republicans, a very widely reported exciting event that was to be her first public appearance since just quitting the governorship of Alaska because fuck those people, right? right? MORE »
###
Whistleblower: bin Laden was US proxy until 9/11: http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/31/whistleblower-bin-laden-was-us-proxy-until-911/
###
This time, ignoring Mexico's crisis will be fatal: http://theygaveusarepublic.com/diary/3248/this-time-ignoring-mexicos-crisis-will-be-fatal
No comments:
Post a Comment