97 posts tagged “politics”

The other day while out driving, I was monitoring the Neal Boortz show, looking for ranty blogging fodder.  And, as is almost always the case, I found what I was looking for.

Because it was Veteran's Day, he was relating anecdotes with that theme in mind.  He told a story about a man attacked by four muggers in an alley in Milwaukee.  They stripped all his belongings from him, but when the gang's leader went through his wallet, he found the man's military ID card.  Seeing this, he told the other muggers to give everything back to the man.  After this had been done, the leader apologized to the man and thanked him for his service before leaving him to go about his business.

I'd thought this was a nice feel-good story -- and it was -- until Boortz had to open his big mouth at the end and turn it into a political opportunity.

I don't recall the exact words, but he said something to the effect that wasn't it something that these criminals had more respect for our troops than most liberals did.

What a fucking moron.   Many liberals may not support the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it doesn't mean we don't support the people over there putting their lives on the line every day.  Many of us have family members serving in the military and who have previously served or have served themselves at some point in time.  My father served in WWII, as well as several of my uncles.  I had cousins and younger uncles who are Vietnam era veterans.  The fact that I am proud of their service doesn't make me any less of a liberal, nor does my being a liberal make me any less proud of their service.

I did find it interesting, however,  that on the highlights of November 11th's show on his website that the reference to this story did not include the crack about liberals that went out over the air.  Instead, it said:

  This story caused me to think ... to wonder if all of us give our men and women in uniform and our veterans the respect these criminals did.  I think that generally we do ... I certainly hope I'm right.

If he'd said exactly this on the air, I'd have had no problem with him and I'd not be reporting about it today on my blog.

The difference was that the printed version was inclusive and the broadcast version was divisive.   But Boortz doesn't gain listeners by simply reminding everyone that our veterans deserve respect; rather, he appeals to the lowest common denominator by appealing to their baser instincts, thus throwing the jab at liberals in so his listeners could project their feelings out onto some group they could be self-righteously against.  He doesn't inspire people to think, but rather he whips up the amorphous outrage of the masses.

What follows is a trivia quiz about American Presidents:

1. Who was the shortest president?

2. Which two presidents share the tallest president title?

3. Who was the last president not to have a college degree?

4. Who was the only bachelor president?

5. Who was the only two-term president not to serve consecutive terms?

6. Which president published his own version of the New Testament?

7. Who was the last president not to leave the White House at the end of his term as a millionaire?

8. Who was the first president to be born in a hospital?

9. Who was the last president to be born in the 19th century?

10. Which president was married to a woman young enough to be his daughter?

11. Which president was married to his cousin?

12. Who was the only president who wasn't elected to be either president or vice president?

13. Which president sired an out-of-wedlock daughter with his mistress in the closet of his office when he was a senator?

14. Which president was the cousin of one president and the uncle of a first lady?

15. Who was the heaviest president?

As soon as this post has several comments, I will post the answer key in a comment at the bottom.

Last night I was listening to the radio and came upon yet another right wing talk show.  I didn't recognize the woman's voice; all I knew was that it wasn't Ann Coulter, as I've heard her voice, ad nauseum, on several different shows, on both radio and TV.

This unknown woman had the unpleasant quality of sounding both indignant and nervous at the same time. She sounded quite like she'd consumed an entire pot of coffee singlehandedly just before the broadcast.   You know the sound: voice slightly raised in pitch, a haughy, prim tone, with a hint of a nervous tremor in her voice.   Her voice almost hummed as she engaged in an inner battle as to what emotion would win: (self)righteous indignation or nervousness.  

Though her voice was grating, I had to listen until she revealed her identity, as I wanted to hear the name of the woman who almost made Neal Boortz seem reasonable.

It was Monica Crowley, who, oddly enough, is the sister-in-law of Alan Colmes, the liberal half of Hannity and Colmes.

Anyway, enough background for now; let me get to the point of this post.

When I tuned in, Crowley was in mid-rant about health care reform.   The thrust of her argument was that the Democrats are "lying through their teeth" about how much health care reform will actually cost.  She mentioned tort reform. citing that malpractice insurance that doctors must carry was one of the biggest offenders in the cost of health care.

All right, I'll grant that this is no doubt a factor affecting the cost of health care in this country, but she completely lost me when she continued her argument.

She went on to say that the Democrats are against malpractice law reform simply because a large number of trial lawyers supported the Democrats in the last election and for no other reason.  Paranoid, much?

If I thought I'd get a fair chance to air my opinion, I'd have called and asked her, "If malpractice laws are abolished, what do you propose be done to protect patients who are the victims of genuine malpractice and gross medical negligence?"

Naturally, she did not address this concern on her show and I'd guess that she really doesn't much care.

Thoughts?

I woke up this morning to find that President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Prize, which left me scratching my head.

Don't get me wrong, I voted for the guy and think he shows a lot of promise.   But I think it's premature, to say the least, to award him such a prize so early in his administration.   I am sure there are others who deserve it more at this particular point in time.   I'd been under the impression that the prize was awarded on the basis of actual accomplishments, rather than on the hope of promise.

It's quite possible that in a few years, Obama would rightly deserve the prize on the basis of accomplishment, but awarding it now makes me wonder if he's being given the award mainly because he's not George Bush.

Nevertheless, it's going to be amusing watching the indignant reactions from the far right wingnuts, as they get their collective boxers/panties in a wad while they froth at the mouth.

While talking with a coworker recently, he stated that he was against health care reform because Nazi Germany had a nationalized, or "socialized", health care system.

Oh, where to begin with this blockheaded black and white thinking?

First of all, Hitler made the trains run on time in Nazi Germany and it was his idea to invent a cheap, well-made car so that all German workers could have their own automobile.  That car survives today by the name he gave it -- Volkswagen -- which translates from German as "People's car".

So -- should we abolish punctual public transportation and scrap every VW beetle on the planet because these good ideas happened to come from an evil man?  Will the retention of such things inevitably lead us to fascism?  Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater!

Another point to make is that the Nazi party was not "socialist" in the way that modern Scandinavian states are.  Yes, the Nazis called themselves "socialists", as the word "Nazi" is a derivative of the acronym NSDAP (National Sozialistische Arbeiter's Partei -- National Socialist Worker's Party).  Make no mistake about it, Nazi Germany was not socialist but, rather, it was a far right fascist totalitarian regime.  And like all dictatorships, the Nazis were masters of misleading euphemism; for example, a number of concentration camps had signs at their entrances with the slogan "Arbeit Macht FreI' on them, which translates as "work brings freedom".

In other words, the Nazis were no more "socialist" any more than the former East Germany was "democratic" or that modern China is run by "the people".

Many right wingers also confuse socialism with statism (control by workers vs control by state) and believe that anything other than laissez-faire capitalism is "socialist".  If this were actually true, then every government would be "socialist" under such a definition.

Thoughts?

The other night, I tuned into the Dennis Miller talk show on the car radio only to find a guest, Dr Drew Pinsky, hosting the show for the night.  It's a conservative show, but considering that this is all that's available in my area, I listen to it and others just to see what the other side is thinking.

Dr Pinsky was hosting an open forum for those who had misgivings about the Obama health care plan to call in and voice their concerns.

I was surprised to hear the doctor state to a caller that though he had problems with the Obama plan, he did agree that our current system is broken and that the goal is to ensure that no one in the US has to go without access to health care.  I don't remember his exact words, but this was the gist of it.

Though I was not able to listen to this show in its entirety, this attitude was markedly different from most other conservatives I've either read or heard.

For instance, the other night a man called the Neal Boortz show, explaining to him that he was not able to get health insurance, though he was willing and able to pay for it, because he had a chronic health problem.  He challenged Boortz to tell him what he thought the solution should be in such a situation.

Boortz essentially told him that it wasn't his problem, which I hear much more commonly from conservatives.  He asked the man if he actually expected him to pay for the health care of another person in such a situation, trotting out his tired complaint, "should the government be able to take away a portion of my life"(some of the money that he'd earned) to pay for stranger's health care?

The man quickly responded that, yes, that he'd be glad to contribute to Boortz' care if it had been him in the same situation.

Boortz didn't propose any sort of better solution to the man's problem, but took the attitude of "Oh, well, too bad for you."  I wonder if he expects people in this situation to just shut up, go sit in a corner, and wait to die?  It makes me wonder how the man can manage to sleep at night..

I've not heard any conservatives offer any workable solutions to the goal which Pinsky defined and supported.  They are against the Obama plan, but they're not offering a better one, either. 

The Obama plan may not be perfect, but it's a damned sight better than throwing up one's hands and telling the uninsured, "Too bad for you -- you'd better start praying that you don't get sick".

Thoughts?

Late last night before going to bed, I heard of the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. At hearing this sad news I was not shocked, as his death had been expected for some time.

Though Kennedy was most assuredly not a perfect man (who is?), he was probably one of the most effective Senators in recent history.  What I most respected about him in this time of sharp ideological divide in politics, with the "Us vs Them" mentality running rampant, was his ability to reach across party lines to actually get things done that would benefit all Americans.  While many politicians spend time pointing fingers, he reached out a helping hand.

With conservative Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch he worked on nearly a dozen bipartisan bills, including a federally funded program for victims of HIV/AIDS, health insurance for lower-income children and tax breaks to encourage the development of medicine for rare diseases.

According to Wikipedia:

More than 300 bills that Kennedy and his staff wrote have been enacted into law. Kennedy played a major role in passing many laws that have affected the lives of all Americans, including the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the National Cancer Act of 1971, the Federal Election Campaign Act Amendments of 1974, the COBRA Act of 1985, the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the Ryan White AIDS Care Act in 1990, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, the Mental Health Parity Act in 1996 and 2008, the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997, the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, and the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act in 2009

During his long tenure as a Senator, Kennedy's major legislative goal was the establishment of universal health care.

I'm sorry that he did not live long enough to achieve his lifelong goal, but we can honor Senator Kennedy's memory by working to make his dream of health care reform a reality.

Listening to the Neal Boortz show the other night, I heard him ragging on liberals who have decided to boycott Whole Foods because of an editorial Whole Foods CEO John Mackey wrote in the Wall Street Journal where he stated that "universal healthcare is no more a right than food or shelter."

Boortz believes the boycott is misguided because Whole Foods pays 100% of employees' premiums, but no deductibles, for everyone who clocks in 30 hours or more per week. Then it gives these workers $1,800 a year in "health care dollars" to use for health and wellness expenses.

Whether or not the boycott is justified isn't the point of this blog entry.  My point is to call attention to Boortz' hypocrisy in light of a broadcast he'd made about a week earlier than this one.

In the earlier broadcast, Boortz talked about a stationery shop he'd patronized for several years.  One day while shopping at this store, he noticed the owner leaving his car, which has pro-Obama stickers on them.  At that moment, Boortz decided to never shop there again, despite the fact that he'd always been given good service there and had nothing to complain about.  He chose to boycott this store only because the owner had voted for Barack Obama.

He went on to say that voting with one's wallet is a time-honored way of expressing one's opinion in a free market society, blah, blah, blah.

Pot, meet kettle.

I'm guessing Boortz won't be trotting out that old voting with one's wallet theme when it comes to the 36 sponsors who have chosen to withdraw their sponsorship from Glenn Beck's show, either..

I normally don’t repost articles written by other people in their entirety, but the following article so precisely sums up my sentiments that I am making an exception.   All bolded passages are my emphasis.

The Real US Healthcare Issue: Compassion Deficiency

By Gordon Marino

The other day, I was monitoring the Neal Boortz radio show and he was on yet another one of his rants against changing the American health care system.

Not only does he oppose a nationalized health insurance system, he also believes that the current private system should abolish coverage for routine, preventive care. He stated that he believed insurance should be reserved for major catastrophic illnesses only and that people should have to pay coimpletely out of their own pockets for routine care, regardless of income.

He used pregnancy and childbirth as an example of what should not be covered by insurance because, in his words, “People choose to have children”. He blithely asserted that if one could not afford to pay for such care, then they had no business having children at all, as they could not obviously handle the costs of raising such a child.

Never mind that one does not have to come up with the entire cost of raising a child to 18 all at once, as one would have to for pre-natal care and delivery.

And his elitist mind doesn’t seem to have thought things through all that carefully. After all, if only the affluent are to be allowed to reproduce, then who will be left to flip the burgers, drive the taxis, clean the houses, and so on? I can’t imagine he expects the scions of blueblooded families to have to stoop to such labor themselves!

Boortz, while ranting and raving about all the money it would cost to convert to a health care system like the rest of the civilized world has, also seems to conveniently forget that full access to routine and preventive health care, which is far more inexpensive than catastrophic health care, is the most effective way of reducing the need for the major medical care in the first place.

It also has the benefit of giving poor people a less expensive and time consuming alternative than having to use the emergency room for routine problems, thus allowing medical personnel to more efficiently serve those patients whom emergency care was originally designed for, which, again, would reduce costs.

Some Americans, who are fortunate enough to have good jobs which provide adequate health insurance, oppose changes to our health care system, fearing that such a change would reduce the quality of the care they receive.

While it is true that American health care is among the best in the world — provided that one can gain access to it — not all Americans have full access to it.

I was browsing Rubicon’s blog today, where he stated in a comment to another reader:

I have excellent health insurance, that includes dental, mental health, emergency room visits, and hospital stays. I can be referred to a specialist with no wait time, if I would need it I could have any procedure done immediately, and I can receive care by most any doctor and can go to any hospital, no wait, no muss, no fuss. Why in the world would I want that taken away from me??

I’m not as lucky as Rubicon — my job provides no health insurance at all  and pays me so little than I cannot afford to buy my own.  And I’m a worker, not a welfare recipient.   In reponse to his last question, I would ask, “Why don’t you want all Americans, regardless of income, to have full access to that wonderful health care?”

He speaks of people having to wait for medical procedures under Canada’s health care system.   Well, I’d much rather have to wait to get a needed procedure done, than not to be able to get the procedure at all.

What follows below is my reponse to his comments on his blog:

So far as the “wonderful” American health care system goes; yes, we have great health care here — if you have a good enough job, that is.

For those of us who don’t have good enough jobs, like me, those of us with no health insurance or inadequate health insurance, access to health care, especially the routine preventive care that can forestall major medical illnesses down the road, is extremely limited.

I have no health insurance and have not for nearly five years now, nor does my job provide any paid sick leave whatsoever. It’s easy to say “why don’t you get another job”, but the reality is quite different. My town was recently voted by Fortune magazine as being one of the “10 Worst Small Cities” in which to get a job. in other words, I’m lucky just to have a job at all right now. And people I know who have better jobs than me, who formerly had adequate health insurance, are now underinsured, with ther companies scaling back on the quality of insurance offered in order to save money.

As one without health insurance, nor the resources to buy my own, and also ineligible for Medicaid because I’m not on welfare nor have minor children living in my home, the situation is pretty grim. Health care for me is pretty much limited to praying that I don’t get sick. I can’t go to the doc for any sort of preventive health care and am pretty much limited to resorting to the emergency room for a dire emergency, the circumstances of which could have likely been avoided with the preventive health care I can’t afford.

Presently, I have a cataract in one eye and am effectively blind in that eye. I can’t afford the operation that would easily restore normal sight in that eye, nor could I afford to take unpaid time off from work to convalesce from such an operation even if I could find a doctor to donate his services. I can only pray the other eye doesn’t go as well.

And I think there’s something seriously wrong that in the richest nation on Earth, I have no access to a simple operation that would easily restore normal sight to that eye, simply because I don’t have a good enough job.

Unrestricted access to health care for everyone, from the lowliest prison inmate to the wealthiest philanthropist should be a given in any civilized society and no one should be denied full access because of a lack of money. It’s just that simple. If our society can find money to build the bombs, then it certainly can find the money to pay the doctors and hospitals.