Another Right Wing Judge Attacks Health Care:

People who hate other people and love money have found another like-minded judge in Florida to declare the new health care law unconstitutional. Federal Judge Roger Vinson ruled that the whole law was unconstitutional because it requires people to purchase health insurance.

Whether the Supreme Court will support the ruling or not remains to be seen. Of course the whole problem could have been moot if the U.S. had done the morally correct thing decades ago and socialized medicine rather than making people's misfortunes a mode for making a few people rich.

(See The New York Times' story.)

Health Care Reform to Believe In:

The New York Times reports today that the Obama administration is suing Blue Cross Blue shield of Michigan for price fixing with hospitals. It seems the insurance giant coerced hospitals into charging higher prices for services rendered to clients of other insurance companies.

It appears that this will just be the first of a series of such law suits, with other large insurers to be investigated by the Justice department.

Yes, Maggy, Americans Are Incredibly Stupid:

You can still find plenty of people who receive their healthcare coverage solely through Medicare while at the same time stating that the government should keep its hands off healthcare coverage.

A poll reported on by The Washington Post illustrates the amazing number of people, about half of all Americans, who either just don't get it that healthcare needed fixing or are just evil enough so that they don't want their neighbors or their neighbors' children covered.

Quote of the Day:

“If the administration would announce tomorrow that all birth control would be free for every woman in America, I think the health care plan would gain 30 points in popularity overnight.”—Gail Collins quoting Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood. There is no mention of birth control in the recent health bill.

Health Care Passes Despite Republican Attempted Coup:

If you were watching the run up to the vote on CSpan yesterday, you didn't get much of a flavor of the atmosphere in Washington, surrounding the vote and the Republican attempt to frighten legislators into voting against the bill.

Republican demagogues spent much of the day attempting to whip fury up among its racist followers, as reported by Dana Milbank of The Washington Post. The true colors of the so called "tea party" movement were on full display in the nation's capitol.

Note: Considerable concern existed that the margin of victory might be one vote, in which case every representative who voted in favor of the bill could claim that he or she was the margin of victory and entitled to special considerations. However, the bill passed with 219 yes votes, allowing the Democrats to avoid that issue.

Bankers Rake in Millions While You Hunt for a Job:

Reform is just another word that doesn't apply to the rich and powerful. Louise Story describes how the players who brought the economy to its knees continue to exploit taxpayers in today's New York Times. The name of the game is stock options.

House Passes Health-care Bill:

Will the bill provide the instruments to do the right thing with health-care? Will it drive costs down while improving access? (See The Washington Post story.)

How Do You Take Your Republican Party?

To Palin or not to Palin, that seems to be the question. If the New York 23rd district is an example of what the Republican party has to offer, our friends on the right seem to be about to split into two equally ineffective factions.

In the meantime, the Obama-ites must be chomping at the bits in anticipation of a 2012 election that could feature the incumbent against the Alaskan gubernatorial quitter. A best guess is that would provide about an 80-20 split. (See Dan Balz story in today's Washington Post.)

Violence in America:

Mass murder is always bizarre, but the recent events at Fort Hood have got to take the cake. Who would ever anticipate a psychiatrist going bonkers and murdering a dozen people? While the victims of this tragedy mourn their terrible losses, the sad part for the rest of us is that it will provide a distraction from the events that matter most to the millions of the rest of us, health-care and the economy being chief among them.

If anything, the lesson to be learned is that violence seldom if ever accomplishes more than begetting more violence. Ultimately, we will come to the conclusion that the shootings at Fort Hood were nothing more than a weird aberration of a nation already too long at war, with little concept of how to extract itself.

Public Option Except …:

Senate majority leader Harry Reid has a brilliant idea: put the public option back in the health care bill but let individual states refuse it. This way those southern whites who rule their southern right wing states can continue to deny health care to … you know, (stagy whisper) people they don't like.

President Obama wants you to stay home if you're sick, but your boss won't pay you if you do. He might even fire you! Quick, what do you do? A.) Go to work and sneeze on your boss; B.) stay home and update your résumé; C.) thank your lucky stars because you work for a company that provides sick leave; D.) kick the dog because you foolishly used up your sick leave this summer going to major league baseball games and lying about it.

In California Judge Vaughn R. Walker asked the following question in a gay rights trial about same sex marriage: "The last marriage that I perfomred involved a groom who was 95 and the bride was 83. I did not demand that they prove that they intended to engage in procreative activity. Now, was I missing something?" (See The New York Times story.)

The judge was responding to the argument that marriage should be reserved for those people who wish and are biologically capable of reproducing. My daughter tells me she sees nothing wrong with two men marrying, but she's completely disgusted by the thought of a couple of geezers looking into honey moon accommodations.

Once this gets to the Supreme Court, we can expect Justice Antonin Scalia to inform us about the founding father's intentions: Let's see, George Washington: no kids, slept around a lot; Tom Jefferson: no kids by his wife, but one or more with his slaves. Yeah, we can look to those guys for what to do.

While Washington Fiddles, Health Ins. Co.s Gouge Public:

Health insurance premiums are being pushed up at a record pace as the insurance companies strive to make as much money as possible before congress acts to reform the industry. (See The New York Times story.) Small businesses and individuals are being especially hurt by the companies' headlong rush to make as much money off the misery and fears of others in the next quarter as possible.

Never fear, greed is alive and well in the U. S.


On Pigs and People:

Pigs have a lot in common with people. They eat the same food, they get the same diseases, they live close by. And we eat lots of them. The meat is cheap and easy to produce. You can bring a pig to market in six months, and you can raise him in a barn where he never sees the light of day or comes in contact with most of nature. And they're ugly, smelly, and noisy, so most people don't care.

So what does this all add up to? A breeding ground for one of humanities most common fellow travelers—the flu. (See The Washington Post story.)

Gasp-Worthy Moment Passes Us By

You buy a can of soup from your grocery store. You aren’t that crazy about canned soup, but you like to have some around—you know, in case of emergency. One day you get hungry and you decide to eat some soup. You open the can and find it is empty. You call your grocery store and ask what the heck is going on. You paid them for a can of soup, and now your hungry, out $2, and you have no soup. They explain to you that they are no longer obligated to supply the soup to you once you’re hungry. You’re angry, but you figure that you just need to switch grocery stores. You talk to your neighbor. She says that she had a similar problem, except that her grocery store wouldn’t sell her any soup because she was hungry when she tried to make the purchase. You read of other incidents in the paper. At least one grocery store refuses to sell soup to people who are especially active, because, the store manager says, active people are much more likely to become hungry than are motionless people.

Do you:

A. Forgive the grocery stores because their first obligation is to their investors?

B. Burn down the grocery store and urinate on the ashes?

C. Ask for someone, perhaps that “government” who keeps taking your money, to provide a better option or to force the stores to actually deliver on the goods you’ve paid for?

There are plenty of things I don’t like about Bill Maher—his tendency to use the phrase “people like” to associate a problem with an imaginary group of people with some sort of similarities to a celebrity he specifically doesn’t approve of, for example. But now that HBO comes with my cheapest basic cable option, and Comedy Central doesn’t, I’m forced to turn to Bill as my primary source of media and political satire.

On episode 168 of Real Time With Bill Maher, Bill interviewed Wendell Potter, current Center for Media and Democracy Senior Fellow on Health Care and former Head of Corporate Communications for health insurance giant CIGNA. After 20 years in corporate business, Potter joined CMD in May of this year. While Maher’s other guests rightfully applauded Potter for this turnover, Bill left unexamined (unless you consider a knowing smirk thorough examination) Potter’s response to a question regarding the documentary, "Sicko," a Michael Moore film. Potter acknowledged that in 2007 he worked to discredit Michael Moore in hopes of reducing negative effects of the film on the profit margin of CIGNA. He then stated that, “Michael Moore got it right.” Cue Maher smirk.

Why don’t I hear any gasp? Oh, we already knew that our Health Insurance Companies are willing to actively mislead us about our health care in order to maintain or increase their profit margins? Why do we still write them checks? I don't have much choice right now, and you probably don't either.

Yes, the grocery store analogy is imperfect. Your grocery store actually makes money by selling you food. Your health insurance provider makes money by refusing you health care. Insurance as a profit maker doesn’t make any sense. If you want a health insurance company with the sole purpose of making health care affordable, the policy holders have to be the owners. Sounds an awful lot like government, doesn’t it?

President Obama and others have gone out of their way to convince us that the Public Option will not drive private companies out of business. But they should. The Public Option, and perhaps some NGO options that would operate somewhat similarly to credit unions, should make up a replacement plan for for-profit health insurance companies, which we should phase out. That way our providers’ first responsibility will be to their policy holders and the managers won’t earn exorbitant salaries. If you feel skeptical about that statement, compare the salaries of high-level public servants and NGO executive directors to those of insurance CEOs.

One aspect of the grocery store analogy that is perfect. The soup didn’t disappear once you got hungry; you never had any soup.

How We Learned To Love the Bomb, and Lost the War:

Okay, this has nothing to do with World War II, but it does have something to do with Japanese success and American failure: Sarah Arnquest briefly interviews John Creighton Campbell, who is something of an expert on the Japanese health care system and explains its superiority to the failed American system.

The key here is that the Japanese seem to care about one another rather than competing.

What's Wrong with America:

Paul Kane reports in today's Washington Post that "30 key lawmakers helping draft landmark health-care legislation have financial holdings in the industry, totaling nearly $11 million worth of personal investments." The actual amount of their holdings could be much higher as "congressional financial disclosure forms … require reporting of only broad ranges of holdings rather than precise values of assets."

In other words, the very people we hope will create a fair system of health care have a vested interest in maintaining the current status quo. Federal lawmakers have the best health care in the world, paid for by the American taxpayers. Now we learn that they are becoming filthy rich from an industry devoted to exploiting the very people who have placed them into office.

The 100 Days:

The press has been pushing the first-first-100-day-analysis of the Obama administration recently, although neither the White House nor the general public seems much interested. However, there is some value to the process.

Obama's poll numbers remain high even as the country, and the world for that matter, is at best adrift in a large stagnant pool with no destination in sight. The general perception is that Obama's leadership is strong. (See The New York Times.) At least Obama is not Ahab.

But the feeling seems to be that the president benefits from our perception that Obama is something more than simply not being George W. Bush. Regardless of what other differences might exist between the Democratic and Republican parties (or not exist, as many critics have complained since the Kennedy administration, which actually had most of the same goals as the Republican party, especially on military intervention and taxes), with few exceptions, the Republicans have generally favored having a weak follower of a president, while the Democrats have preferred a strong charismatic leader.

When the Republican party put forth Lincoln, now generally perceived as our greatest president, it wasn't because the party believed he was a strong leader. The strongest men in the party ended up in his cabinet. He was the compromise candidate that the party leadership believed could be pushed by men pulling his strings. As things turned out, the party leadership underestimated their man.

Some decades later, the Republicans again found themselves confronted by a strong young man who wished to claim a leadership role, and they made him their vice presidential candidate. Teddy Roosevelt became the next strong Republican president only as a result of McKinley's death. Later Roosevelt left the party and formed his own third party. Later Republican presidents, until Nixon, were all "do nothing" office holders.

Tricky Dick Nixon was the one exception to the strong man rule in the Republican philosophy, but he did fit the other requirement of the party—he was the least charismatic man in American national politics. The next time the Republicans managed to succeed in bringing a candidate to the White House they made a completely 180 degree turn, selecting a man who was all charisma and who never had an original idea enter his head—Ronald Reagan.

In short, the two parties philosophies seem to be on the one hand have a "leader" who is pushed out in front of the mob, who can then be steered in the direction that people behind the scenes who actually possess power want the country to go in, while on the other hand the Democrats want a leader who is strong enough to battle his way to the front and then pull the country in the direction it ought to be going. Provided he actually knows what direction that is. (Note: After one thousand days in office, it remains unclear whether Kennedy ever figured that out; and after more than five years, it was definitely clear that Johnson had not figured it out. Carter came to office sixteen years too early; his style would have worked best during the Clinton years; and Clinton came to office decades too late; had he entered the White House in the 1960s no one would have cared about his "zipper" issues.)

(If you've followed me this far, check out The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz on the press's fascination with anniveraries.)

Swine Flu Outbreak:

Wash your hands; cover your mouth and nose when coughing and sneezing; stop French kissing strangers!

I hate it when my mother-in-law talks about common sense; she's the very embodiment of a dizzy blonde even though she's never been blonde without the aid of a bottle. But in this case common sense seems the best protection against the coming pandimic.

A significant number of people have already died from the virus in Mexico, but no one seems to yet know how virulent the disease is, just how many people are seriously affected by it out of all those who are infected. So far, in the countries where it has shown up outside of Mexico, it hasn't seemed serious at all. The concern has to be for citizens of countries with large numbers of poor and uneducated people living in close proximity with one another and little knowledge of or easy access to good "common sense" hygene. (See The New York Times' story and The Washington Post story.)

Are the Bees Back?

Over the past couple of years, bees have been disappearing as has been well documented in the press, even 60 Minutes has addressed the topic. No one to date has found an answer to the problem, but along with the current heat wave, I've encountered a return of bees, at least bumble bees and just today yellow jackets.

Over the past two summers I rarely encountered either of these two pollinating creatures, both of which used to be so plentiful as to be considered pests, but now their reappearance is bringing as much joy to my yard as the new trees I planted last fall and the return of rabbits and squirrels and song birds. Perhaps if nature is optomistic about the Obama administration.

Memory:

David Brooks, our favorite right-wing whiner, waxes eloquent on the future and past: "It is especially painful when narcissists suffer memory loss because they are losing parts of the person they love most."

Speaking of narcissists with memory problems, "I want to thank the dozens of welfare to work stories, the actual examples of people who made the firm and solemn commitment to work hard to embetter themselves." — George W. Bush, Washington, D. C., April 2002.

Health Care:

"According to a recent estimate by the Urban Institute, the lack of health insurance leads to 27,000 preventable deaths in America each year." — Paul Krugman in today's New York Times.

Whose Army Is It:

In the west, we call it Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Members of the militia claim they're willing to die if Sadr asks them to do it. The U. S. can't seem to decide how to deal with him. But the longer you look at the region, try to understand its history, the more likely you are to come to the conclusion that the young cleric is just a shrewd operative who has figured out how to get out in front of the crowd, an old method of achieving political power. It has, however, a serious problem. It's hard to keep your eye on which direction to lead the crowd when the crowd has a mind of its own and you're trying to watch them in a rear view mirror. (See The New York Times' latest story on the Mahdi Army.)

As G. E. Goes so Goes America:

General Electric has been one of the most stable earners for decades now. So if its stocks fail to meat expectations, what does that say about the whole economy? Recession has become a foregone conclusion at this point. The question of whether we are currently in one or headed for one has more to do with the seriousness of the situation than anything else. (See this afternoon's Times' story.)

Airlines Crashing:

On top of skyrocketing fuel costs and irate passengers dealing with long security lines, now fliers are facing massive delays because American Airlines has had to ground hundreds of flights due inspections. (See the latest Times' story.)