6.26.2009

Thoughts on a passing

He was wrapped in a white sheet at the hospital last night.

He's dead. He was a grand, troubled figure on a grand, troubled stage and now he's dead. Last night he was in a cooler at 42 degrees. The make-up is gone, the wigs are gone and he's a 50 year old corpse who looks much older. This morning, men will open up his chest and head and take out the all-too-human things that made him run. In his head they won't see the musical genius, in his chest they won't see a soul - just more tissue.

Nothing that made him "him" matters anymore. He'll never walk again, never speak again, never smile again and never laugh again. All the good and all the bad washed away yesterday - out of everyone's control.

He was wrapped in a white sheet at the hospital last night.

That white sheet was made months ago. Years ago. He never thought about that sheet as it was being made. He just lived a life that, to so many, was larger-than-life. But he had a date with that sheet.

When he went to bed on that last night, he didn't know how close that sheet was.

The sheet makes him human, makes him simple, makes him us. It's the equalizer.

And what strikes me is that we all have a date with a white sheet. Is mine made yet? Is it sitting on a shelf somewhere?

There are lessons to be learned, and they're not all obvious. We all have our own fields to tend to, so maybe we should get out of his, because nothing grows there anymore.

And in time, it will be said about us, too.

He's in his white sheet now.

When is mine?

6.25.2009

Public v. Private: what if it were Fire Care instead of Health Care?

Why is universal health care allowed to be discussed as if it's a privelege?

Health care reform without the public option is not reform

THE COST OF REFORM


If you watched the health care roundtable on ABC last night, you saw Ron Williams, the chairman and CEO of Aetna, complain to the president about how "it would be difficult" for private health insurance companies to compete with the public option.

And why is that, Mr. Williams?

Ron Williams Compensation for 2008
Salary $1,091,764.00
Restricted stock awards $6,456,630.00
All other compensation $101,487.00
Option awards $ $13,537,365.00
Non-equity incentive plan compensation $1,950,000.00
Change in pension value and nonqualified deferred compensation earnings $1,162,866.00
Total Compensation $24,300,112.00
Or would it be the $2.5 million Aetna is on track to spend lobbying against health care this year?

It would seem that the first way to cut costs would be to.... ummmm.... cut some of those costs. Williams will never tell you that 30% of the money they take in in premiums doesn't even go to health care, but to overhead - which includes his salary, lobbying and other incidentals. Including the corporate jet.

Of course, if you watch cable news, you'd get the impression that the public option is controversial.

How can something supported by 75% of the public be controversial? Well, it's controversial if you're the channels that make big bucks from advertising for boner pills and cholesterol meds. If your network were making millions in revenue from cocaine dealers, wouldn't you find a way to make the anti-drug movement look "controversial"?

REALITY T.V.?

6.24.2009

Family values

The 2012 GOP field just narrowed. Again. At least these last 2 were heterosexual.

Matthews and Doucheborough go at it on health care

...and my doesn't Joe get pissed when challenged to say "I want health care for every working American".

Joe goes on and on about how we shouldn't just write a check (which I agree with, and he misses Chris' point repeatedly) and rips the Bush administration for endlessly writing checks.

However, there are 2 problems with this: 1) he's doing it hawk his book and 2) it's a lie.

"Joe likes to say that he's opposed to the Bush administration spending, but he supported almost every individual measure along the way. He supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq, he supported the formation of DHS, he supported $1 trillion in tax cuts for the super rich, and, most importantly, he supported the reelection of George W. Bush in 2004." - Bob Cesca

Chris Matthews argues that Mika was also "caught up in all this pussyfooting." His larger point is that "we look at the, we ask the questions and we get it done."

"This kind of argument has been used to defeat health care since Harry Truman". The same tactics are being employed now to defeat health care that were used 40 years ago to try to kill Medicare, that were used against Social Security.

"If you're value judgment is that 'We're gonna find a way to do this and we're going to overcome the obstacles', that's one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is, 'Let's find as many obstacles that we can celebrate so we can have an excuse not to do it'."

"The right wing will fight any war and not look at the costs because they want to fight the war." Matthews says health care for every working American is a "value judgment", do we want it or do we not?

Health care sloganeering - hysterical!

Healthy Americans Against Reforming Medicine (HAARM) "Messaging session"

Funny, but it's frightening how easy it is to manipulate Americans.

6.23.2009

Great bands you've never heard of: Urge Overkill

Sister Havana - the best song of 1993. These guys are criminally underrated.

6.21.2009

The most important video you'll see this year; health care corruption

Max Baucus is taking lobbyist money and is going to help Big Health Care screw you. Fight back.

Health care: The Canadian fallacy

One of the fallacies hurting the health care debate is the tactic of picking out one example and using it as a brush to color the entire argument.

Example: 240 people died in an airplane two weeks ago. So we should all avoid airplanes because of that bad incident. Never mind that hundreds of thousands have arrived safely in the weeks since that tragedy.

Here's another: find someone who was dissatisfied with their experience in the Canadian system and use that as an indictment of the entire system.

Check out this Harris Interactive poll and note that Canadians are more happy with their system than Americans are with ours.

We've been dealing with fear-mongering for years about socialized medicine, and wait lists and it's kept us from exploring it as a viable alternative to our own failed system. NEWSFLASH AMERICANS: we have socialized medicine already. Your parents are probably on it. It's called Medicare and it was passed when LBJ was President 40+ years ago.

We've got to stop with the knee-jerk reactions about how "bad" Canada is based upon fear-mongering by the entrenched interests that want the current system to continue.

Check out this NYT/WSJ poll, SEVENTY-TWO PERCENT!:


(Bob Cesca)
So why aren't politicians on both sides embracing the public option rather than trying to kill it?

Oh yeah, I forgot.

They've been bribed and bought-off by the health insurance lobby. There's seriously no other conclusion.
How to cut health care costs


The Republican health care horrorshow