"A MEDITATION on single mothers and what is called the French model, where the state actually supplies a mother's helper to do laundry and errands ...for married mothers, too."
It's pretty astounding, and the 9/12 tea-birthers we see on Faux Noose are gape-mouth angry and aghast that a place that has a population that is 2½ times the size of Texas maintains a GDP that is 2.2 times the size of the famously high Tejas GDP too.
"Although Mr. Obama has said that a stable Afghanistan is central to the security of the United States, some advisers said he was also wary of becoming trapped in an overseas quagmire. Some Pentagon officials say they worry that he is having what they called 'buyer’s remorse' after ordering an extra 21,000 troops there within weeks of taking office before even settling on a strategy."
When the argument was Cut-n-Run™ vs. the Surge®, (and NOT about secretly paying off Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province), those highly argumentative memes were at least well-formed, group-tested, political propaganda brands that let people latch onto something. Obama's more public dithering over what not to do, instead of what to do, will drive people into Carter-like uncertainty.
Americans aren't educated for debate. There is a supreme being who arbitrates, and CEO's are falsely imbued with omnipotent powers by lay people, even though executives are actually beholden to a board of directors who prefer to work in secrecy.
It's where we are on healthcare, now that everything that would be allowed on the table is ostensibly on it; we're just fighting over what NOT to do, instead of what TO do.
The Democrats have the naïve idea that public airing of these quarrels serve the greater good in a healthy debate within a republic, but we're not a healthy republic.
Obama's drawing the wrong conclusion from his win, believing that Americans are hip to transparent public deliberation more than we are used to arguing about pre-defined tokens of brand identification.
"Unfortunately for Mr Obama, some of his academic chums have pondered seriously and publicly about the questions...
"Ezekiel Emanuel, a doctor whose brother is Mr Obama’s chief of staff, wrote a paper for the Lancet, a medical journal, in which he proposed a system for determining who should be first in line for such things as liver transplants or vaccines during an epidemic."
While that's an applicable take on the ruthlessly glib rationale of Emanuel, who can afford to consider policies that will never affect him, the Economist whistles just as glibly past the cemetery when they say, "the uninsured have the most to gain, but they are only 15% of the population. Everyone else has something to lose."
First, many people only think that they're insured, unaware as they are that the corporate death panel has already decided under what circumstances they're going to die.
Obama's own story talks about his mother haggling with the insurance company when it came time for them to pay for cancer treatment. Many more than 15% are effectively not covered for anything less than $5000 worth of treatment... on top of the $2500.00 they pay in premiums and co-pays for office visits. People pay seven to $8,000 dollars a year before the insurance company breaks a sweat to dig up some extenuating circumstance to avoid ever paying anything at all.
It's not difficult information to reveal, and the Economist is not alone, but it should be at least a little embarrassed for not adding the extra paragraph.
I won't even expound on their blithe use of the term Obamacare for a legislative situation in which he's largely left lawmaking to Congress. Suffice to say it's not particularly analytical of the Economist.
Opponents of reform suggest a few failures invalidate everything, that unless perfection is possible no policy is preferable.
Harrowing examples of death row mishap would be more relevant if the prison industry was driven by an insatiable urge to execute everybody... such as the insurance industry is guilty of rampant rescission, cases in which the insurance company accepts your monthly payment for years until you make a significant claim... then, all of a sudden, they see you forgot to mention the in-grown toenail you had fixed 10 years ago, and they drop you, now that you're diabetic... with a scarlet letter by your name, in some database somewhere, and you won't be seen again by anyone until your leg needs amputating in some emergency room.
We fear mistakes, naturally, but what about what's happening on purpose, on account of the defining strategy of the corporate business plan? The corporate insurance industry survives by denying us care...
The Farmers' Almanac is predicting a cold winter, while the National Weather Service is calling for warmer-than-normal temperatures across much of the country.
"The almanac's forecast, however, is at odds with the National Weather Service, which is calling for warmer-than-normal temperatures across much of the country because of an El Nino system in the tropical Pacific Ocean, said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the NOAA Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Md."
Numbing cold... the Almanac says... in certain places.
Plumes of extreme rising heat in, say, California's central valley, cause thermal troughs that pull extremely cold air in at the periphery of the hot column of rising air, leaving San Francisco relatively well-air conditioned and foggy in the cold air sucked in from the Pacific Ocean... while the central valley is broiling.
Standard models of convection explain the so-called conflict between the Farmer's Almanac and the NOAA.
Where there is unusual cold, there is likely to be unusual heat, somewhere, pulling the cold air in. For instance, the almanacs' prediction of a dry winter in the southeast probably means heat and drought further south, where a thermal trough caused by rising heat is pulling cold air down from Canada, into the Great Lakes and the Midwest.
For another example, if we are to see hotter temperatures from global warming, we will also see especially colder temperatures on the periphery of hot spots, even as the hot spots grow hotter and wider over the years. Uncharacteristically cold temperatures will be experienced on the periphery of uncharacteristically hot temperatures.
It's standard convection, to be expected, but those stuck in that cold will be scoffing at the lunacy of some kind of climate change conspiracy. All they know is that THEY are cold, while droughts elsewhere drive the price of food skyward. The heat is too far away for them to relate it to their current condition, and they will be apoplectic, like a 9/12 birther-brigadier standing before his death panel, but it's the god Physics... equal and opposite reaction and all of that... not a conspiracy theory.
"I'm getting a little ticked off that it feels like the knees are buckling a little bit," Ferraro said. "We have overwhelming majorities in both the House and the Senate. And we own the whole shooting match. And I'm just getting...
"It's very frustrating to watch you try and compromise with these people who aren't willing to compromise with you."
..but first, Charlie Rose talks to Arianna and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, along with Ross Douthat (a right-wing extremist from inside the belt-way). Okay, no, he's not an extremist, but he probably voted for Palin.
Anyway... they cogently discuss Obama's legacy, only 8 months in to his presidency, and Douthat aptly states that a tepid healthcare bill without a public option will be judged largely on how people feel about the economy come Nov. 2010.
Arianna is more pessimistic, fairly believing that the public option is all there is, that the larger part of Obama's support will collapse in its absence, while Doris Kearns Goodwin just hopes that everybody will get along... and that Obama will put Lincoln away for a while and do his FDR imitation.
...and she has a point. Lincoln did a lot of conciliatory maneuvers to preserve the union, but the Southern racist extremists were never willing to compromise in the first place.
Meanwhile, the president takes this very question from a caller with a common touch, one self-described Joe the Nerd, on a right wing conservative call-in radio show.
Like a true nerd earning his network administrator cred, Joe Ferraro, a 48-year-old father of three, one running his own business, fixing computers, left himself on speakerphone while talking to Obama, all but crashing his chance of a lifetime by wearing that 21st century version a pocket protector in public... the speakerphone.
...but the message was heard from a moderate wondering why Obama's "knees are buckling," and the term became the meme for the rest of the week. So did Obama's wordy answer, which didn't answer the question directly as much as it put the question in relevant context.
Joe's moderate voice is right, and so are Arianna and Doris... (even Rodd Douthat in his observations, if not his apparent hopes and dreams for a lame duck presidency come November 2010).
Obama just needs to do what needs to be done and let the inevitable chips fall where they may. It's time to put the teachable moment aside, now that we've seen what anybody has to put on the table, and act on the best ideas... which happens to be John Edwards idea, the public option in a regulated exchange with qualified public policies.
However, I would emphasize that No One, not even the private insurance plans need participate in the exchange at all if they don't want to.
If all there is in the health insurance exchange are the public option, Medicare, the VA, Medicaid, and the federal employee plans... so be it. Let the private industry compete out in the Wild West where they've done so well... and call it a compromise. In fact, say, "they win." They're unregulated, and let the buyer decide.
Identity Theft: the independent South is not who they think they are.
(HuffPo)
"According to Gallup, of the 25 states with the greatest percentage of the uninsured, all but three are based in the South or the Midwest.
"These same regions also have the largest percentage of populations who believe widely perpetuated mistruths about the Obama agenda, including allegations that the president will set up 'death panels' and wants a complete government takeover of the health care system."
Texans are such doormats, trapped in their neo-plantation paradigm, pretending they're Wild West independents when they're really just dumb, southern dupes with the lowest wages and no healthcare, working their uneducated fingers to the bone for make-believe cowboys, who play them like a willing, sycophantic fiddle.
Listen to them brag about their unemployment rate, when they're literally enslaved by low wages and Faux Noose ideology, by their snuff-snorting elite masters, the wealthy conflict-mongers heavily invested in the perpetual Cold War mentality that makes everyone your enemy.
Instead of paying their workforce enough for adequate preventative healthcare and continuing education, these executive urban cowboys wearing boots made in China leave it to the emergency rooms, where the rest us pick up the bill for corporate disinterest in the well-being of its low-wage employees.
No, you won't EVER see this in print, because the truth is too insulting to Southern PC sensitivities, but these gullible sweatshop minions are too caught up in identity mythology to actually DO something in the best interest of their children and grandparents... so invested are they in their dictated and completely made up identity.
It's a national embarrassment. The entire, modern, developed world is laughing at the gullibility and cringing at the duplicity, while Texas revels in an absurdly false identity that NOBODY is buying.
Elsewhere, we have the most progressive, educated, wealthy, literate, and, yes, the most elite regions of the country, the Northeast and Northwest, fighting to bring affordable healthcare to the used and abused... especially to Texas... but the South has got to learn first. The poverty and long lines in the hallway outside the emergency room are the truth, NOT grandma's death panel promoted on Faux Noose.
Rachel Maddow ties Dick Armey to the 9/12 birther brigadiers and challenges Coburn (R-Oklahoma) when she pretty much co-hosts Meet the Press.
Two minutes in, Coburn says that America has earned the disruptive, threatening discord that David Gregory has ably tied to the Oklahoma City bombing. The debate, Coburn said, when asked about the tone, "is NOT about healthcare. It's about an uncontrolled federal government."
To tell the truth, Coburn was referring to government earning the ire, not America, but the public is suffering the pre-fab protests just the same. The public is getting hit in the drive-by shootings the pantaloon goons are pulling, their time now wasted, abused by people disinterested in debate.
There's little point in quoting, because so much is said in the stammering tone of voice, but Maddow begins to dismantle the men at 4 minutes, 30 seconds, and shows David Gregory how it's done. At 7 minutes, she uses one of Dick Armey's legs to pick the rest of him out of her teeth.
But Maddow did fail to properly refute Dick Armey's claim that Moveon.org aired ads comparing Bush to Hitler.
MoveOn didn’t create the ads. They were submitted by contestants in a contest sponsored by MoveOn. If the debate's about who organizes and provides the venue or forum, it's fair to ask, what the difference is between the Moveon incident and the 9/12-birther conspiracy theorist's cookie-cutter threats fomented by FOX Noose and other Dick Army associates.
Obviously, we can compare the body count. A MILLION dead bodies in Iraq, many more wounded, 3 million uprooted, untold numbers mentally ruined by post-traumatic shock... the question of who's a bigger fascist is won by the guy with the most bodies around his belt.
We see the same RNC, GOP, the pantaloon goons marching in lock-step, mouthing Steve Doocy's morning propaganda release, the same way the Republican congressional staffers and Bush campaign leaders manned the ranks of that other so-called spontaneous public unrest: the Brooks Brother's rebellion that disrupted the 2002 recount in Florida.
Meanwhile, Dick Armey's obvious efforts to mask corporate lobbying as popular uprising are well-documented case studies in Astroturf installation.
Living further-up to her Edward R. Morrow award for journalism, Ms. Couric applies critical thinking to reportage on the town hall bootjacks hoping to turn every policy debate into a referendum on their philosophically unrelated pet peeves.
"At a town meeting hosted by Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania resident stood up to say that the health care debate has "awakened the sleeping giant." Not exactly.
What's it's done, it seems, is stirred a hornets nest, and uncovered disturbing attitudes and emotions that have nothing to do with policy."
Some people wonder what's become of Katie Couric, ever since she effectively stopped any chance of Sarah Palin ever running for public office outside of Southeastern Kansas... or as long as those election 2008 interviews are archived on YouTube.
Navy seals rock better in some ways than in others. For example, they make GREAT charity calendars when the pentagon has to do fundraising and bake sales to fund the new paramilitary troops being institutionalized among the ranks of that teaming hotbed of savage social radicalism, ACORN.
"Depending on where you stand, the war can be seen as the sinister culmination of a systematic provocation by a neo-imperialist Russia or as a murderously aggressive gambit by a Caucasian strongman wrongheadedly backed by the West."
Soooo, um... why can't we see it as the sinister, systematic, provocation by a neo-imperialist Russia of a murderously aggressive strongman wrongheadedly backed by the West?
Some of us hope we CAN have it all, after all, but seriously, the side-taking in a conflict hardly anyone in the West even knew existed until it erupted in light gunfire was specious Cold War nostalgia, and little more.
At best, these are all bad actors sitting on a narrow trade route from which very few of the real, native inhabitants derive much benefit from the real resources over which the world is arguing.
The legal and political LGBT coalition that lost the Prop 8 battle doesn't take a tucker to the new same-sex marriage upstarts who see no use for them.
Straights Acting: Ali Shams and Kaelan Housewright hope to remove "marriage" from the definition of marriage altogether.
(EdgeSF)
"The groups also argue that their extensive experience and expertise in litigating the very factual issues before the court would make them of great assistance to the parties and the court"
Gay Inc. doesn't realize that THEY lost their case in the first place. We saw these people argue Prop 8 in front of the California Supreme Court, and they sounded like junior varsity debate team alternates, always on the defense rather than acting like actual plaintiffs in the case.
Barging in on new cases working their way to the US Supreme Court, these groups feel slighted by the cool, legalese reception the receive.
Meanwhile, it's argued in the LGBTQC community, or at least by me, that the previous battles were EQCA and Lambda Legal Defense's to lose, and that they lost by being insular, turf-warring not-so-non-profits acting like corporations that are more interested in protecting their market share.
This is the inner-gay scene battle we're seeing now. If Gay Inc. is made any more irrelevant by this court case and by the cute young Turks jumpstarting the marriage movement from the grassroots, these failed establishment groups stand to lose control of millions of dollars and people, fundraising turf that they've monopolized for years.
We see the same RNC, GOP, the pantaloon goons marching in lock-step, mouthing 
"Realistically, 1 million signatures is an awful lot," Lowe said. It would be more realistic if between 250,000 and 500,000 signatures were collected by volunteers, with the rest coming from paid gatherers, he said."
