Whiskey Fire

Please Put Them Out Of Their Misery, 'Cause We're Suffering Just Thinking About Them

I suppose they're too fucking stupid or self-retarded to know any better, but still: Is there any reason for this species to be allowed to continue making the planet uninhabitable for themselves w/ environmental pollution, & ruining the human-constructed world w/ ideological confusion & ignorance?

Many Think Health Care Law Was Repealed

A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows that nearly half of Americans either believe that President Obama's signature health care law has been repealed (22%) or they aren't sure (26%). Only 52% accurately say that it is still the law.

Oh crap, it gets worse:

Trump Not Surprised by Poll

Donald Trump told CNN he wasn't at all surprised by a new poll which showed him a in a virtual dead heat with President Obama in a hypothetical 2012 presidential race.

Said Trump: "The poll came out, and we're in a virtual tie and I haven't campaigned...I'm not really, despite that, that surprised, because it's a message of common sense. We can have a great country again, the problem is we don't have the right leadership. We don't have the right leaders. We don't have people that have any semblance of negotiation."

Read that last sentence again. He has my vote.

M. Bouffant (Don't even bother.)

Are You into the Easy Way out?

So a lot of people are saying the House needs to pass the Senate healthcare bill, stat, and there's a lot of anger at the House progressives who are saying they won't. See Krugman in the regular column and then more bitterly in the blog. 

Well, OK, fair enough. Yes, something needs to pass, and something will pass. But I wonder, what's the rush? Why does the House need to do this immediately? And why should House members say right away that they are going to swallow the House bill whole, without at least trying to get some of the worst elements of the Senate bill fixed in reconciliation?

Look at what Tim F. says here:

Critics are perfectly right to point out that the Senate bill that I want to see passed is, at best, a shit-and-banana sandwich. That sounds pretty bad except that (1) if Democrats don’t pass it then they might as well stay home in November, and (2) the country is about to die from potassium deficiency. I cannot stress enough how badly we need that banana individual mandate and complete ban on pre-existing conditions and rescission. Medicare reimbursement problems, the excise tax and affordability questions are all problems that I think, meaning I genuinely believe, are worth the price to get the bill’s key components the bill enacted into law.

As I see it, Congress can repeal the shitty parts of the bill any time but no politician can take away the general right to health insurance and live. This is how it works everywhere else in the world: citizens constantly petition government to iron out problems but nobody ever, ever proposes to take the fundamentals away.

However, with reconciliation the Senate can theoretically wash most of the shit off any time they want. They can’t write a new bill, because the fundamentals in the bill we already passed won’t work in reconciliation, so the House still has to eat a shit and banana sandwich. Nonetheless the Senate can give us an almost complete win if they want it enough. Call your Senators.

(202) 224-3121....

Regarding what to say: we need a fix to Medicare reimbursement rates, the excise tax and affordability and (what the hell, why not) the Public Option passed through reconciliation. If the Senate commits then the House will almost certainly reciprocate and Democrats will look like winners who can deliver positive change or the country.

Right. Yes, the House Dems could pass the Senate bill as is right now. But the Senate Dems could also commit to getting together the 51 votes needed to put together a better bill. As Tim says, this would be better policy, and better politics.

After all, it need hardly be said that Joe Lieberman's explanation for why the MA election went the way it did has no foundation in anything other than his sociopathic egotism, and is indeed ass backwards -- what's killing the Democrats right now is in fact Faux-Centrist Liebermanism, as evidenced by post-election polls in MA (not to mention Lieberman's own spectacular unpopularity in his home state). 

As far as I can tell, reconciliation wasn't even on the table before last Tuesday; now it's back, with even the wankerific Max Baucus making mumbling noises about how seems suddenly necessary. But wouldn't it come whoosh off the table again if House Dems said right now they'll take the Senate bill as is, without even a promise from Senate Dems that they'll consider it?

If progressives are going to apply pressure, it seems to me that it should be put on the Senate Dems, spineless as they are. They're the ones who have fucked up for the Democratic party's electoral chances most egregiously through their pompous dithering and general whorishness, they're the ones most deluded about what the public wants -- if the party is in a bad way, it's their fault. And they're the ones who need to be beaten, frankly, who need to be forced to make a concession.

Look at it this way. The House progressives might win, getting the Senate stuff fixed through reconciliation. Strong upside, electorally and in terms of, well, affordable healthcare. Or they might lose, and then just pass the Senate version as is. Which would happen sometime next month, with plenty of time still before November for spinning. Or they might let the whole thing collapse, which would be bad indeed (I don't see this as a likely outcome) -- from a policy standpoint. Electorally it'd probably be a wash, because if "Moderate" Senate Dems retain their outsized influence over what the party can do, Dems in both houses are headed into the toilet anyhow, even if Obama suddenly starts doing everything lefty bloggers want him to do. 

I have to say, a lot of the anger at House Progressives seems kind of emotional -- as with this angry Yglesias post. Yglesias has rightly criticized the reprehensible Senate Moderates for acting like crazy irresponsible assholes who are causing a lot of damage. So I'm kind of perplexed as to why he would not want to see someone picking a fight with them from a progressive direction. If House progressives win, and get anything positive through reconciliation in the Senate, that's a loss for Liebermanism, a win for progressives, a win for the party, and a win for people who need affordable healthcare. If they lose, well, they can still pass the Senate bill. I dunno, maybe it's understandable anger at the screwups that led to last Tuesday's result, maybe it's an ingrained sense that Progressives couldn't possibly win anything, but I don't see why anyone would at this point be horrified at the House Dems taking this position.

So I can't agree with Scott that the House Dems are being irrational: what would be irrational would be just swallowing Senatorial "Moderate crap" without at least trying for something more nutritious. I guess I might change my mind if I hear a convincing argument for why the House Dems need to do this swallowing today, I'm going to save my anger for the Senate Dems, who are most at fault for the healthcare cockups (far more than Obama is, though I'm not happy with his performance here either) and who really need to lose a fight fairly soon before they drag the country down with them. That's why I'm calling my Senators before I call my Rep, and saving my vituperation, at least for the time being, at the Dem Senators, who most deserve it. 

Besides, if the House were to pass the Senate thing today that to me would look like a panic move in response to Tuesday, not muscle-flexing, and would look pretty awful.

Well, you can always crap in one hand...

A report from Smalltown, USA by Ripley

Everyone is coming by

To my P-A-R-T-Y

Remember back in aught-8, when that lady was running for that thing and you first learned about "small town values"?  Of course you do!  Who could forget the thrill that ran up your leg, hearing about... well, "small town values" and whatnot?  I know what went through your mind: words like "pastoral"... "idyllic"... "small towny-ish" and so forth.  It was a beautiful daydream of a magical place where unicorns romped in the meadows with Care Bears as rose petals drifted down lazily from the sky, each day polished to a beautiful glow, the smell of Family Values wafting across the neighborhood as manly men greeted their womanly women after a hard day's work of being unmetropolitan.  The best part is it's real!

Of course, living in Smalltown, USA means kids and families will experience those things that kids and families everywhere experience as children grow up - skinned knees, stubbed toes, stomach cancer, Crohn's disease, leukemia, brain tumors, massive skin grafting after a fire... you know, those boo-boos that define childhood.  

Here's a slightly gruesome, only slightly off-topic question for you:  What's the best way to market your band in a small town?  Answer: Wait for some kid to get sick and play at their benefit!  Seriously.

The ol' hometown bank here has a giant bulletin board in the lobby.  One day, a few months back, I stopped to check out the goings-on in the neighborhood and there were five posters advertising fundraising parties for extremely ill kids and young adults in the area.  Five.  Think about that - five families driven to begging their neighbors for financial help to keep their children alive because they couldn't afford the necessary medical treatment on their own.  Families and friends left with no option but to throw a "party", in the hopes that an ice cream bucket would hold enough cash to pay for another round of chemo or another surgery or gas money to get their child to Mayo Clinic to see a specialist.  

And it's not just kids, oh no.  A former neighbor came down with a case of the breast cancer in her early 40's, which meant six weeks of daily radiation therapy at a hospital 60 miles away.  She and her husband are both self-employed - entrepreneurs, the backbone of America - and they had to throw a benefit party to help cover the costs.  She was fortunate enough to make her mark in the Survivor column.  Then she broke her ankle.  

But, as the song says, "Ain't that America?"  Who knows, maybe throwing a party to raise funds for medical treatment is one of those uniquely American opportunities like working three jobs.  Yeah, I guess when you think about it like that... hell, who doesn't love grazing at the pot luck table and drinking a couple cold brewskis while a local band kicks out the jams?  And only $3 cover?  Par-tay!!

You know what I'd love to see, though?  Instead of all the flyers around town begging people to show up at another party for another child with leukemia, or a party for a young woman who postponed her wedding because the chemo made her hair fall out?  You know what I'd love to see?   I'd love to see the Republican politicians and the anti-socialist brain warriors come to Smalltown, USA and join me at one of these parties, so they could try to explain to a sick little girl and her family that they just need to try harder.  I want to see their faces as they try to explain the evils of socialized medicine to someone whose bowels are disintegrating day by day, or whine about "freedom!" to the mother of a child who nearly died in a car accident.  Maybe their dead, soulless eyes would suddenly show a spark of humanity and see the world in a different way.  

I invite all you naysayers to come to one of our benefit parties.  There's cold beer, plenty of food, door prizes and a faceful of loud classic rock waiting for you.  Make your case.  I guarantee my neighbors will be very interested to hear your ideas on health care.

Rip - 

Stalin Lives... IN SWITZERLAND!

Joe Stalin is coming to AN AMERICA NEAR YOU!

If nothing else, the Obama eruption in American politics is steadily revealing the stark reality behind the progressive movement - the totalitarian temptation is always there and, for more than a few, possessing the official power to compel sooner or later becomes irresistible.

Not everybody on the left, of course. Some of the folks I most admire in this town are liberals whose work on behalf of values like transparency in government and protecting civil liberties is remarkable and essential.

Still, that this danger is real and growing becomes more obvious as public opposition grows to the president's across-the-board campaign to turn Washington into the all-powerful, centralized behemoth that Woodrow Wilson and FDR could only dream about.

Consider: Nowhere does the Constitution grant Congress authority to require every American to buy a particular private service or product on pain of forfeiture of a significant portion of their wealth. Yet, every version of Obamacare currently being discussed in Congress requires just that.

So, huzzah for the public option, I guess?

Forcing all of us to buy officially approved health insurance is essential to a functioning government-run system. As Obama told Congress, "many of insurance reforms we seek - especially requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions - cannot be achieved" without the individual mandate.

Why? Because the politicians and bureaucrats who will manage the government-run health care program know that, without the force of government behind them, they won't be able to make the rest of us do what they tell us to do.

Once the power is granted, the question becomes how severe will the enforcement be. Fines will suffice, for Obamacare, for now. For Stalin, the first choice was usually the Gulag, or a bullet. It's just a matter of degree.

To accept this hypothesis one would need to accept that every other developed Western nation, which either provides healthcare directly through the government or mandates that citizens purchase health insurance through private companies who are forbidden to turn a profit on it, are essentially Siberian death camps.

This is of course accurate. Why, for instance, in Switzerland, they force you to either (1) obtain really excellent cheap health insurance, or (2) get shot dead in the street like a dog. The diabolical fiendish genius of this wicked plan is revealed in the fact that the Swiss, in overwhelming numbers, seem to prefer excellent, cheap healthcare to assassination. Thus is the final triumph of the Soviet Union assured.

In related news, "cake" is more popular than "death" throughout Western Europe as a whole. It really is a complete fucking shame the US lost the Cold War so decisively. WOLVERINES! Or, perhaps, HUMANA!

From the Well I Pull an Empty Pail

I can't really figure out why any sane Democrat would support a "trigger." This gets at why it's bad policy, but from a political point of view, suppose, just suppose, everything goes badly and the insurance companies break their promise and act like greedy pigs (I know, it's a craaaaazy scenario, but bear with me here), and five years down the line, we have an even worse nightmare than we have now.

Why on earth would voters reward the party that created the clusterfuck? The conditions that would trigger the "trigger" would be exactly the conditions that would have the nation furious at the Democratic party.

Betting your party's political future on the willingness of major insurance companies to behave responsibly just sounds like a colossally stupid idea.

Re-Write the Book of the Pharaohs

Damn. And to think only eight months ago, it was Clinton's Depression.

(Only because John Cole said it was "unspoofable.")

In other spoof news, here a world-besotted wingnut attempts to imitate Swift, and ends up not so much lacerating his breast as serving human stupidity.

Since we are moving toward socialism with ObamaCare, the time has come to do the same with other professions—especially lawyers. Physician committees can decide whether lawyers are necessary in any given situation....

Following are highlights of a proposed bill authorizing the dismantling of the current framework of law practice and instituting socialized legal care.

Ha ha ha that is an intriguing comedic premise! How caustic and incisive!

But dopey. The government already does run the legal system in what I guess by current standards is a "socialist" fashion.

To wit. There exist such creatures as "public defenders," although I don't think that's quite who Dr. Rafal has in mind here. I think he means "expensive trial lawyers" of the sort who sue wealthy doctors for malpractice, and sometimes win.

However, there exist entire classes of lawyers who are not public defenders, and not trial lawyers. We call these people "judges" and "prosecutors."  And here's where the "satirical" point made by our preeminent Manhattan dickhead doctor becomes completely obnoxious:

• Discourage/eliminate specialization. Legal specialists with extra training and experience charge more money, contributing to increased costs of legal care, making it unaffordable for many. This reform will guarantee a selection of mediocre, unmotivated attorneys but should help slow rising legal costs. Big shot under indictment? Classified National Archives documents down your pants? Sitting president defending against impeachment? Have FBI agents found $90,000 in your freezer? Too bad. Under reform you too may have to go to the government legal shop for advice.

The "lawyers" we're supposed to be thinking of here are expensive criminal defense lawyers of the sort out of the price range of most Americans.

But let's flip this around, and since we're talking criminal cases as per dickhead's example, we'll stick with that. There is never one set of lawyers in a criminal courtroom; there are (at least) three: defense, prosecution, judges. Of these, only the defense lawyer, unless he's a public defender, as he probably is in most cases, gets to set his or her own fees, or more likely, their firm does.

And that's good! Our legal system kind of sucks, but the fact that we don't let prosecutors or judges set their own fees for "easy" or "difficult" cases is not, precisely, the reason it sucks.

Judges and prosecutors are supposed to be disinterested (in the motherfucking correct use of the word, gobshites). It doesn't really work out that way in reality, but at least the rewards of pushing for or delivering a particular verdict are not immediately and obviously financial. Do I think if you spend enough dough you can get a good verdict? Fuck yeah! Do I think most prosecutors or judges are taking bribes? Fuck no! It's not so crude.

The point is, it would shock us, and be against the law, for a judge to have a financial stake in how a particular case is resolved. For prominent surgeons, where the stakes are presumably even higher... ?

A judge has no more natural right to charge by the case than does a surgeon. Motherfucker. 

We have a weird system, though if this weird system has made you rich and unaccountable, I guess I can see how you see things differently, fucknose.

You Might Even See

We have a very strange political system. We've arrived at a point where we are ruled by a bizarre  farrago of corporate, political, media, professional, and ahem, miscellaneous interests, none of which have any accountability to the electorate, even if they were, uh, elected.

Fortunately this blog stands against all that. We Ride Trends!

A major factor in President Obama’s slide in today’s big Washington Post/ABC News poll, which is preoccupying the political classes today, is his surprisingly sharp drops among Democrats and even liberals, according to crosstabs that were sent my way.

Much talk today has focused on Obama’s difficulties with independents. But the drop among Dems and liberals is also a key driving factor in the President’s skid, according to WaPo polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta, who graciously provided the additional data.

This suggests Obama’s conciliatory approach to the GOP, and his lack of clarity around the public option — both of which are presumably alienating Dems and liberals — could be key factors driving his dip.

The numbers tell the story: In three key cases where Obama has dropped significantly, he’s also dropped by sizable margins among Dems and liberals.

The odd thing is that none of this will affect Obama in terms of a reelection. The GOP is just too weird. The odder thing is that it's likely that more conservative Dems will get hit in 1010.

The point being that there is by any measure a mandate for healthcare reform.

And still we won't get it, if I was going to bet.

News-Paper of Record

According to the New York Times, Michael Steele, GOP chair and well-known comical ignoramus, spoke on healthcare today at the National Press Club:

But hours earlier, Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, labeled the administration’s approach “socialism” and spoke of a political “cabal” behind it.

“Under the Obama plan, the vast majority of Americans will pay more to get less — it’s that simple,” Mr.Steele said during a news conference at the National Press Club here. .

There is, in fact, no “Obama plan” — the president has yet to endorse any of the approaches being worked on by congressional committees. Still, Mr. Steele said, Democratic proposals would leave Americans with “fewer options and less care and we still won’t cover all of the uninsured.”

Asked whether the emerging approach, including a new government-run plan that would compete with private insurers, constituted socialism, Mr. Steele replied briskly, “Yes. Next question.”

But that's not all that Steele said:

Asked whether he supports an individual mandate — an issue that became a point of controversy in the 2008 election between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — Steele was completely ignorant. “An individual requirement? What do you mean?” Steele could only respond that there are “differing opinions” on this...

When stumped with numerous health care policy questions, Steele said, “I don’t do policy."

Right.

Of course there is a difference between "doing" policy and understanding policy, and Steele clearly does not understand healthcare policy if he doesn't know what a mandate is.  But he knows it's "socialism"!

I'd say the overwhelming majority of those who oppose healthcare reform don't understand the issue much beyond "socialism!" either, and they're agin' it.

The people egging them on, though, understand the issue perfectly well, and they are quite clear on the fact that they stand to lose a lot of money. That people without health insurance are dying, well, that's too bad, maybe we could compromise and keep the system we have now, only maybe we can give you a tax break if you die uninsured, or something. You know, in the spirit of bipartisanship.

No man is an island...except me.

By Jake T. Snake

I am seldom as struck by the power of mythology as I have been during this presidential campaign season. Being trained as a clinician I understand why people behave irrationally and even against their own self interest and yet, the witnessing of it in real time still amazes me. Some ideas are so powerful that the screwing over of our fellow man seems justified and even advisable so that we may sleep well knowing we have pursued our principles even to our own and others' graves in certain cases.

I belong to a listserve where people with a specific genetic illness that runs in my family come to support one another. It can be a nasty disease and results in some folks needing lung and liver transplants to go on living. This, I thought to myself, will be a group of people who will understand my hyper liberal stance on health insurance and desire for a single payer government run system so that none of us can be discriminated against by the insurance companies, denied coverage or treatment, told that we have exceeded our lifetime cap of coverage etc, etc. This is a group of people who will say of course, any child who needs a liver transplant should have it if the organ is available. This is a group of people who would never want to see another kindred spirit who is struggling for breath be unable to afford treatment that might ease his/her moment by moment sense of suffocating.

I was wrong. More wrong than I have ever been.

Not only was I basically told I was a commie, pinko, bleeding heart, knee-jerk liberal, I was told that there was nothing wrong with families having to hold spaghetti suppers to raise the cash so that a transplant center would agree to see their child who in order to not die needing a liver transplant. Just so we are clear on this, the figure required in scenarios where families do not have insurance or inadequate insurance for a transplant team to move forward is $250,000. I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't have that kind of scratch lying around. The expenses don't stop there, of course. If all goes well, your child will be on drugs to stop his/her body from rejecting the transplanted organ for the rest of his/her life and they are not free either.

All of which drives home the one overriding truth about our health care system, money buys good care. More money equals better care. Once again we have created a caste system with rich, white folks at the top and less provided as we travel down the hierarchy of middle class, poor, people of color, immigrants and unemployed. A system where we rank 29th for infant mortality (according to an article on the editorial page of the New York Times this morning) despite all the money spent. According to John McCain's plan for the healthcare system we should offer people less and ask them to pay more. Premiums will be going up another 10-12% next year on top of this. Critics of the plan believe it would result in millions more americans going without health insurance. Words fail me. Do these people not see the link between economic productivity (their one true god)and a healthy populace?

But back to the crux of this rambling diatribe, which is that those pursuing an ideal, blind to its consequences and refusing to learn from their mistakes, scare the hell out of me. Mr. McCain falls squarely into this camp in my estimation. As regards health insurance he is in favor of suprise, suprise more deregulation. This at a time when deregulation has played at least some part in nearly sending the worldwide economy into a depression. This from a man who helped facilitate the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s. The definition of insanity in current pop psychological thought is "Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results". The current crop of loons on the right have reframed changing one's position based on the evolving realities as flip-flopping, so it makes sense that ideas that were exciting 20+ years ago appeal to this crowd.

They just don't get that you can only fuck the people at the bottom who form the foundation for so long before the whole thing comes crashing down. If you haven't read Yertle the Turtle ever or in a few years you should check it out of your local library. It brings the point home more eloquently than anything I have read. A wise man that Dr. Seuss.