110 responses to
“Angry.”

1. Jim said on August 7th, 2009 at 10:14 am

   See, what did I tell you? Cast iron!! Enam­eled, if you can afford it, but an inex­pen­sive cast-iron skil­let, grid­dle and dutch oven will do just about every­thing and last forever.

   I never saw “The Break­fast Club” or “Six­teen Can­dles,” either. But “Planes, Trains and Auto­mo­biles” and “Home Alone” (ONLY the first one) are two of my favorites. John Hughes had a tal­ent for com­bin­ing slap­stick com­edy with a heart­warm­ing ending.

2. Dorothy said on August 7th, 2009 at 10:17 am

   It ran through my mind that Sodini should have sought out a mail order bride as well. But who knows why nut cases do things or don’t do things? It’s all spec­u­la­tion at this point. A lit­tle too scary to think about, though, was whether I’d know any­one at that club. Turns out my brother-in-law’s nieces fre­quent it, but none of them were there that night.

3. brian stouder said on August 7th, 2009 at 10:17 am

   Break­fast Club — sub­lime; Six­teen Can­dles — superb; Pretty in Pink — .….wait a minute! I’m a fan of Molly Ringwald!!

   edit — re “angry”; before Jeff or some other rea­son­able soul makes the (true enough) argu­ment that there is gen­uine angst, as opposed to “astro­turf” anger, I would move to stip­u­late that.

   I would shift that dis­cus­sion to — what do we do when some­one gets killed? What hap­pens when the next Holo­caust Museum shooter-type shows up, and takes out a mem­ber of con­gress, or an aide, or someone’s aunt?

   Or even — WHY are peo­ple quite so angry? Hon­est to God — I have had to walk away from oth­er­wise (seem­ingly) rea­son­able peo­ple, when cur­rent events dis­cus­sions begin, and the “n-word” gets dropped (and then repeated)

   just sayin’

4. Joe Kobiela said on August 7th, 2009 at 10:29 am

   How Uncle buck got by-passed for Best Pic­ture is beyond me.
   Pilot Joe

5. coozledad said on August 7th, 2009 at 10:31 am

   I’ve never seen a schiz­o­phrenic who wasn’t absolutely cer­tain of him­self. These town hall protests are full of them.
   All I can tell you about Obama’s health­care plan is what they told us dur­ing the cam­paign. The cost sav­ings will be gen­er­ated by forc­ing (via radio trans­mis­sions) white males to watch porn and jerk off to exhaus­tion, low­er­ing their pro­cre­ative capa­bil­i­ties, and thus reduc­ing the demand for pec­toral implants and but­tocks reduc­tion surgery in the com­ing decades. I thought it was a lit­tle extreme, until I heard Glen Beck. And then I thought, if it just pisses Mor­mons off, it’ll be a good thing.

6. Julie Robinson said on August 7th, 2009 at 10:34 am

   If Planes, Trains and Auto­mo­biles were being mar­keted today it would be called a “bro­mance”. And I would never go see it, and I would miss a great movie. Enjoyed Break­fast Club and endured Home Alone but I don’t think I saw the oth­ers; I was already out of the demographic.

   Julie & Julia is get­ting mixed reviews, with every­one lov­ing Meryl as Julia but annoyed at the Julie char­ac­ter. That was my reac­tion to the book – she would fit in well with all the East Coast foodie snobs we’ve been dis­cussing all week. If any­thing, it sounds like they put in more Julia than is in the book, and that would be all for the best.

   We attended the Tin Caps game last night since the DH was involved in the All Amer­ica City com­pe­ti­tion. The sta­dium is great; it’s just a shame they play base­ball there. The fault is entirely my own ADD – they scored 10 runs in the first 3 innings and I was still bored. I did enjoy Jake the Won­der Dog and the spin-around-the-bat-game.

   Dorothy, I’ve been won­der­ing all week how Mike’s Dad is doing.
   And Nancy, how is Kate han­dling Spriggy’s loss?

7. brian stouder said on August 7th, 2009 at 10:38 am

   Julie — we went for tix and found out the game was sold out! So Chloe and Pam and I were at the com­mons area at the library for the fire­works show

8. Julie Robinson said on August 7th, 2009 at 10:51 am

   Brian, how late did those go off? We didn’t stay, we were both exhausted. At 8:45 it was still in the top of the 4th.

9. ROgirl said on August 7th, 2009 at 10:55 am

   Yeah, what is it with the anger? It’s a barely con­trolled impulse beneath the sur­face and turns peo­ple into spit­tle flecked attack dogs, or mass mur­der­ers if they’re REALLY angry. The insti­ga­tors seem to be inter­ested in cre­at­ing faux out­rage, while those who are act­ing on it are whip­ping them­selves up into fren­zied ecstasies of fan­tasy ret­ri­bu­tion against the oppres­sive evil that is the world around them.

10. Dorothy said on August 7th, 2009 at 11:16 am

    Mike’s dad got moved to a nurs­ing facil­ity on Wednes­day night. We found out last night that his girl­friend some­how was named as the con­tact per­son at the nurs­ing home. Mike got that straight­ened out about two hours ago. And some­how the hos­pi­tal did not include a copy of his Liv­ing Will along with all the other paper­work that went with him to the nurs­ing home. We have our work cut out for our­selves, I’m tellin’ ya. His dad is about the same — not eat­ing very much and sleep­ing most of the time. Thanks for asking.

11. James said on August 7th, 2009 at 11:19 am

    Angry?

    Naw… Just crazy!

    Or as I said before…

12. LAMary said on August 7th, 2009 at 11:23 am

    John Hughes never did it for me. I like National Lam­poon Vaca­tion, which he wrote, but that was early work.

    Respond­ing to some­thing JTMMO said in the com­ments of the pre­vi­ous post, I don’t think all those oppo­nents to health care reform were planted. I think the fake scary infor­ma­tion was planted. Just like we should read food labels, we should read the facts before going off on some tear about euthana­sia. Peo­ple in UK can see pri­vate doc­tors if they choose to. That guy from UK who didn’t like the NHS prob­a­bly never did and never will, but most peo­ple there like it.
    I believe we should think of health­care like we think about edu­ca­tion. Pri­vate or pub­lic, your choice, but avail­able to everyone.

13. Danny said on August 7th, 2009 at 11:26 am

    Check this arti­cle regard­ing six peo­ple being arrested at a Russ Car­na­han town hall (includ­ing a Post-Dispatch reporter).

    Loved the first com­ment at the bot­tom: I don’t know all the details, but it sounds like the police were act­ing stupidly.

    I’m not sure what to make of these con­tentious town hall meet­ings. It reminds me a lit­tle of the treat­ment that Bush got with the loonies from Code Pink and the like. It looks like some of the labor unions are prepar­ing to be con­fronta­tional in return. Oh joy. Com­mu­nity effin’ orga­niz­ers from both sides of the aisle run amok.

14. Jim said on August 7th, 2009 at 11:36 am

    An anec­dote from today’s Paul Krug­man col­umn in the NYT (http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​8​/​0​7​/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​0​7​k​r​u​g​m​a​n.html) was very interesting:

    “There was a telling inci­dent at a town hall held by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Gene Green, D-Tex. An activist turned to his fel­low atten­dees and asked if they “oppose any form of social­ized or government-run health care.” Nearly all did. Then Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Green asked how many of those present were on Medicare. Almost half raised their hands.”

    Con­tin­ues to amaze me that so many who decry the evils of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment drive to these ral­lies in their car (full of federally-mandated safety and emis­sion require­ments), lis­ten­ing to their favorite talk-radio blowhard on a federally-regulated and licensed radio sta­tion, eat­ing an Egg McMuf­fin made of federally-inspected meat and eggs. And they don’t see the irony of that.

15. Jen said on August 7th, 2009 at 11:40 am

    Julie — My in-laws have gone to numer­ous Tin­caps games this year, and enjoyed them. They tried to go last week­end and it was sold out! Pretty good for a sta­dium nobody wanted, I guess. We’re going to a game next week­end, and I’m look­ing for­ward to it. I don’t like base­ball but I like the spec­ta­cle of sport­ing events, so it should be a lot of fun.

    I’m not a ter­ri­bly big John Hughes fan, though I love “Planes, Trains and Auto­mo­biles,” “Fer­ris Bueller” and “Uncle Buck.” Espe­cially “Uncle Buck.” It’s on our DVR right now — I think I’ll con­vince my hubby to watch it this week­end. I really didn’t like “Pretty in Pink,” “Break­fast Club” or “16 Can­dles,” though, and I think they are TERRIBLY over­rated, while gems like “Uncle Buck” are underrated.

    I’m just glad there’s some­where on the Inter­net I can write that where every­one doesn’t think I’m a hor­ri­ble, hor­ri­ble per­son.

16. brian stouder said on August 7th, 2009 at 11:48 am

    Julie — Pammy was in charge of the mis­sion, and we left home at about 20 min­utes after 9. Coulda’ lis­tened to the game on 1380 and known when to go — but where’s the fun in that?

    So we arrived in the area, and they were in the top of the 7th inning, and Lans­ing was in the process of putting up a 4 run inning…or maybe it was 6 runs; all I recall is look­ing at the scor­board from Rally’s, as we ate a cou­ple of Big Bufords, and glared at young fellers who cussed a lot.

    We returned to the library com­mons, and I’m think­ing it was push­ing 11 when the fire­works lit up the sky. But it was a really good show — and Chloe liked it. Grant opted not to come, and was only irri­tated that he “missed out” on Rally’s(!)

17. Danny said on August 7th, 2009 at 11:49 am

    Mary, here is another Brit, MEP Daniel Han­nan, who isn’t too keen on the British health care system.

    He is a right-winger and I believe he popped up promi­nently in the news for berat­ing Gor­don Brown for out of con­trol stim­u­lus spend­ing a few months back. Here is an inter­est­ing video of Mr. Han­nan describ­ing why he believes the Euro­pean and Amer­i­can stim­u­lus pack­ages are ill con­sid­ered. His point is that we’ve had no effect on the reces­sion (except for pos­si­bly mak­ing it longer and deeper) and that when we do come out, we will be sad­dled with enor­mous debt.

18. brian stouder said on August 7th, 2009 at 11:55 am

    Danny — a ques­tion (or two):

    What ended the Great Depres­sion (circa 1930’s Amer­ica)? Did it end ‘naturally’ — ie — inden­dent of gov­ern­ment action?

19. coozledad said on August 7th, 2009 at 12:01 pm

    The enhanced cracker vis­i­bil­ity isn’t about health care reform in the fuck­ing least. It’s about serv­ing the Democ­rats a failed pres­i­dency. It was about that dur­ing the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion, too. Frankly, I don’t give a fuck if Exxon trots the loonies out to stick their thumbs up their asses in pub­lic. We’ve already had ample evi­dence that the sole func­tion of the Repub­li­can party is to keep the dum­b­asses juiced on hate so more for­tu­nate white trash can pick their pock­ets. Keep try­ing, fuck­heads.
    There will never be a failed pres­i­dency to match your goober messiah’s. Ever.

20. coozledad said on August 7th, 2009 at 12:14 pm

    Did I hear a Repub­li­can say enor­mous debt? Where the fuck were the peo­ple con­cerned about enor­mous debt when Cheney was dump­ing tax­payer money in his scum­bag com­pany? Or giv­ing Ken Lay carte blanche to stick his tiny crank up California’s ass. Sheesh. Cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance, folks. Being Repub­li­can is all about the forgetting.

21. Danny said on August 7th, 2009 at 12:18 pm

    Brian, to be hon­est, I’m not sure. It was a worse sit­u­a­tion and the extent of my research is that I have read (and watched) “The Grapes of Wrath.” And it did my heart good to see that the Joad fam­ily could find a haven of rest at that camp oper­ated by the gov­ern­ment Reset­tle­ment Admin­is­tra­tion. But, beyond that. I dunno.

    With the cur­rent stim­u­lus sit­u­a­tion, I can’t tell that any­thing has hap­pened in a pos­i­tive sense. Can you? Sure, the banks have been given s’loads of tax­payer money and maybe that averted some sort of dis­as­ter, but here is one of the unfor­tu­nate effects of that. We have another arti­fi­cial hous­ing bub­ble where prices are being kept higher than they ought. Now that the banks have their (our) money, they are able to hold onto prop­er­ties and not sell them at the prices that they should right­fully fetch. And note, the over-extended own­ers are still out of the houses, bank­rupt and out of luck, so that hasn’t helped them. And now prospec­tive new buy­ers (peo­ple who were wise and saved) are being dis­suaded by arti­fi­cially high prices and still hard to get loans.

    Last month, we put an offer on a piece of crap fixer-upper built in 1971. It had absolutely no upgrades since it was built. Prob­a­bly needed 100k just to make it com­fort­able. So we, who have great credit, put in an offer that was almost 50k over the ask­ing price of 275k, but we used an FHA loan so we could put only 3.5% down and save our money for upgrades. In the end, we lost out to a lower cash bid because all of a sud­den the banks are aller­gic to loans. Gimme a break.

    Any­way, I’m skep­ti­cal of the stim­u­lus spend­ing, but to para­phrase Tim­o­thy Geit­ner, “Oh great, now everyone’s a frig­gin’ economist.”

22. Danny said on August 7th, 2009 at 12:32 pm

    Cooz, good God man, stop yer benighted mewl­ing. You weren’t around for my dis­parag­ing of the Bush administration’s spend­ing nor the man­u­fac­tured “energy cri­sis” in Cal­i­for­nia, but don’t let that stop you from man­u­fac­tur­ing what­ever fits your lit­tle fan­tasy argu­ment. Being you is all about that.

23. coozledad said on August 7th, 2009 at 12:50 pm

    I wasn’t mewl­ing. I was shout­ing. Mewl­ing is dis­miss­ing the fact that Medicare beats the shit out of what pri­vate insur­ers have to offer.
    I’ll repeat myself: Six hun­dred sixty a month, cov­ers a pap smear and mam­mo­gram. No other tests or screen­ings, five thou­sand dol­lar deductible. Out­right theft. Inde­fen­si­ble. And that’s a good plan.
    And your whack­jobs are talk­ing about killing my rep­re­sen­ta­tive, who warned the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion about it’s endorse­ment of “cre­ative mort­gage instru­ments”.
    I tell you what. Maybe the gov­ern­ment should emu­late pri­vate insur­ers and can­cel your Medicare should you need it.

24. Jim said on August 7th, 2009 at 1:01 pm

    Yeah, what is it with the anger?

25. Danny said on August 7th, 2009 at 1:06 pm

    Mewl­ing is dis­miss­ing the fact that Medicare beats the shit out of what pri­vate insur­ers have to offer.

    You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. [/obligatory Princess Bride reference].

    Note:
    Being Skep­ti­cal != Mor­tal Enemy

    And why shouldn’t we be skep­ti­cal if congress-critters like Rep. John Cony­ers can’t be both­ered to read the bill before they vote because it is a 1000 pages long?

26. Jim said on August 7th, 2009 at 1:08 pm

    He mar­ried Mon­ica. ‘Nuff said?

27. ROgirl said on August 7th, 2009 at 1:22 pm

    I am angry about the morons who want to pre­vent health insur­ance reform, but I don’t have the incli­na­tion to go to town hall meet­ings to engage in con­fronta­tions with the wingnuts. It’s that whole snarling, shout-everyone-down, irra­tional mob vibe that turns me off.

28. Jim said on August 7th, 2009 at 1:25 pm

    Gee, I won­der where con­ser­v­a­tives learned such tactics?

29. Danny said on August 7th, 2009 at 1:29 pm

    I know, sud­denly every­one has an allergy to vehe­ment dis­sent. And no, I’m not stick­ing up for the weirdos who are mak­ing vio­lent threats, so don’t go there.

30. coozledad said on August 7th, 2009 at 1:30 pm

    Gee, I dunno Jim. Did they visit the free speech zones and take notes? And quit trot­ting out the “Code Pink” bull­shit talk­ing points. It makes it too obvi­ous you’re a talk radio dupe. They’re Naderites. Last I heard, they were agit­prop for your lit­tle ball-ticklers.

31. LAMary said on August 7th, 2009 at 1:59 pm

    There’s vehe­ment dis­sent and there’s peo­ple who have been pur­posely mis­in­formed to cre­ate strong emo­tional reac­tion. Look care­fully at these groups try­ing to look like grass­roots oper­a­tions and you’ll find big health­care com­pa­nies, insur­ance com­pa­nies and oth­ers who will not be able to shovel in prof­its if the sys­tem is changed. They’re cre­at­ing fear and hatred.

32. Jim said on August 7th, 2009 at 2:02 pm

    Or maybe it’s years of see­ing con­ser­v­a­tive speak­ers booed, hissed, heck­led off the stage. Hit a con­ser­v­a­tive in the face with a pie and it’s funny. Heckle a lib­eral and the core of our democ­racy is threatened.

33. LAMary said on August 7th, 2009 at 2:12 pm

    Jim, or maybe not. Con­ser­v­a­tives ran the coun­try for the past ten years.
    Do you think say­ing that the Obama health plan will only help black peo­ple is “heck­ling” or that it will kill off elderly peo­ple is equiv­a­lent to a pie in the face? I think those are ugly lies designed to cre­ate fear. I hear those folks in the town hall meet­ings talk­ing about those issues over and over.

34. Danny said on August 7th, 2009 at 2:22 pm

    Hey speak­ing of ugly liars, looks like MoveOn​.org is going to get into this as well. They’re ask­ing for money to fund deploy­ment of “skilled grass­roots orga­niz­ers.” [snort]

35. coozledad said on August 7th, 2009 at 2:29 pm

    But hit­ting a con­ser­v­a­tive speaker in the face with a pie IS funny, Jim. Threat­en­ing to shoot one, how­ever, would rightly entail a prompt inves­ti­ga­tion. A thor­ough one, fol­lowed by trial and life impris­on­ment.
    The core of our democ­racy is threat­ened when the coal indus­try funds groups to dis­rupt meet­ings between reps and their con­stituents. There is absolutely no moral rel­a­tivist argu­ment to make here, unless you’re falling back on the old “Money is Speech” dogma of the Repub­li­can Party.
    I will say this for your loath­some inbreds. They bring the funny with the crazy.
    http://​thinkprogress​.org/​2​0​0​9​/​0​8​/​0​7​/​i​n​g​l​i​s​-beck/

36. LAMary said on August 7th, 2009 at 2:30 pm

    What ugly lie about health­care reform is MoveOn pushing?

37. Jim said on August 7th, 2009 at 2:35 pm

    Mary, I agree with you in that the non­sense being pro­mul­gated out there is rep­re­hen­si­ble. It absolutely is designed to cre­ate fear. But I do think that such tac­tics — despi­ca­ble as they are — orig­i­nated on the left more than the right: AIDS activists who claimed that Rea­gan only wanted gays to die, pro-abortion advo­cates who screamed that abor­tion oppo­nents only wanted women to die in back alleys, ani­mal rights folks throw­ing blood on fur wear­ers, etc.

    What’s sad is that hon­est, civil dis­course and debate has devolved into a game of tac­tics and scor­ing points.

38. coozledad said on August 7th, 2009 at 2:35 pm

    LA Mary: Lee Atwa­ter was right. Ever since they’ve been deprived of their favorite nomen­cla­ture for blacks, they’ve had to twist them­selves in knots to appear to have a sem­blance of a plan besides trans­par­ent larceny.

39. 4dbirds said on August 7th, 2009 at 2:36 pm

    Many years ago when our fam­ily had social­ized med­i­cine (mil­i­tary med­i­cine) my daughter’s life was saved when her par­tic­u­lary deadly form of can­cer was ‘cured’ by surgery, chemother­apy, radi­a­tion and a bone mar­row trans­plant. The care was first rate and afford­able. Now we’ve moved on and we have employer pro­vided health care (I retain my social­ized med­ical care from the VA) and my daugh­ter still receives first rate but slightly less afford­able care. That is to say, the pre­mi­ums, copays and coin­sur­ances are more but managable.

    I would be con­tent for­ever if noth­ing were to change. That can’t be because my daugh­ter will even­tu­ally age out of our insur­ance and she will be in deep do do. You see the treat­ments that cured her also caused long last­ing and per­ma­nent effects. Although not dis­abled and there­fore not eli­gi­ble for gov­ern­ment care, learn dis­abil­i­ties caused by radi­a­tion mean she will prob­a­bly never be able to hold down a job that will pro­vide the qual­ity health care she needs to live a healthy life. She has endro­crine prob­lems that require con­stant med­ica­tion. She has impaired vision from radi­a­tion induced cataracts. Her teeth will always need extra care due to the radi­a­tion. She is at increased risk of early osteo­pro­sis and sec­ondary cancers.

    So if the haters of health care reform get their way, I don’t know what peo­ple such as my daugh­ter are going to do. Anger? Yes I have anger. I’d like to take every blue dog Demo­c­rat and wring their necks. I’m not angry at the Repub­li­cans, they are what they are. To think many of us donated to Democ­rats we didn’t par­tic­u­lary like just so we could have con­trol of the House and Sen­ate to get treated like this.

40. Christy S. said on August 7th, 2009 at 2:45 pm

    I’m amazed stuff like that NYT sum­mer kitchen piece can get pub­lished. But then again, it’s being pubbed by other New York­ers who prob­a­bly find it “quaint.” Her attempt at trans­parency, which comes off as sim­ple snob­bery to this for­mer Ohioan/current Cal­i­forn­ian, makes me weary. Next…

41. coozledad said on August 7th, 2009 at 2:55 pm

    Yes. The Repub­li­cans have spent mil­lions ele­vat­ing the national dis­course.
    That is hew­ing pretty close to bark­ing insane, Jim.

42. Scout said on August 7th, 2009 at 2:55 pm

    Sur­prise, surprise.

    http://​tpmdc​.talk​ing​pointsmemo​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​8​/​g​r​a​s​s​r​o​o​t​s​-​p​r​o​t​e​s​t​e​r​-​a​c​t​u​a​l​l​y​-​g​o​p​-​o​f​f​i​c​i​al.php

43. Julie Robinson said on August 7th, 2009 at 3:04 pm

    4dbirds, your daughter’s sit­u­a­tion should be on the national news. I know of a sim­i­lar young woman with the same issues – child­hood can­cer cured but new health­care prob­lems as a result. Her fam­ily has been bank­rupted finan­cially and emo­tion­ally. How can this be in a so-called Chris­t­ian country?

    Dorothy, I won­der if you have thought of bring­ing Mike’s Dad to a care facil­ity near where you live? Maybe it’s way too soon for that kind of deci­sion. I think it may not be too long before we have to face a sim­i­lar issue – my Mom is too far away and there is no fam­ily left in the area. It may be a long haul for us too.

44. coozledad said on August 7th, 2009 at 3:14 pm

    Sorry for the blog­whor­ing, but I couldn’t fig­ure out another way:
    http://​rur​ri​ta​ble​.word​press​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​8​/​0​7​/​d​u​m​b​a​s​s​-much/
    My wife cap­tioned the photo.

45. brian stouder said on August 7th, 2009 at 3:23 pm

    Cooz, either she’s preg­nant, or he’s had one (thou­sand) too many pulled pork samichs

    (either way, that per­son is gonna be needin’ some o’ that-there health­care stuff)

46. coozledad said on August 7th, 2009 at 3:27 pm

    Brian: That was the first thing I thought when I saw that pic­ture. Well, sec­ond. The first thought was actu­ally DAYUM!

47. LAMary said on August 7th, 2009 at 3:31 pm

    “…despi­ca­ble as they are  —  orig­i­nated on the left more than the right: AIDS activists who claimed that Rea­gan only wanted gays to die…”

    Um, Rea­gan thought that AIDS was God’s pun­ish­ment for being gay. His autho­rized biog­ra­phy, Dutch, says as much. Pat Buchanan stated it in writ­ing while he was in the White House com­mu­ni­ca­tons office.
    There’s a lot of attempts at revi­sion­ism going on with Reagan’s record on AIDS, but far too much doc­u­men­ta­tion of his belief that gays deserved AIDS exists for the revi­sion­ism to go very far.

48. 4dbirds said on August 7th, 2009 at 4:09 pm

    Julie, That same child was hit by a car last sum­mer. Again, because we are insured and have some resources she received excel­lent care. Her room­mate, the wife of a taxi dri­ver was also in there for an auto related trauma. She didn’t have insur­ance. My daugh­ter was vis­ited by a team of doc­tors that included; trauma, pedi­atric, neu­rol­ogy, endocrinol­ogy, osteo, plas­tics, infec­tious med­i­cine, gen­eral surgery, our fam­ily doc­tor and the oncol­o­gists (just to be safe). My daugh­ter received surgery to install inter­nal hard­ward to help her bones heal along with mus­cle and skin grafts. Taxi driver’s wife was sent HOME with exter­nal sta­bi­liz­ers, pinned to her bones, a mea­ger amount of dress­ings and a lot of pre­scrip­tions that hubby was wor­ried he couldn’t pay for. Our daugh­ter was sent to a rehab hos­pi­tal.
    Peo­ple who say the unin­sured get the same kind of care as the insured in this coun­try are insane or just ignorant.

49. Rana said on August 7th, 2009 at 4:21 pm

    (The link I posted at the end of yesterday’s post touches on a lot of these insurance-related anxieties.)

50. mark said on August 7th, 2009 at 5:24 pm

    4dbirds–

    I’m sorry about your daughter’s strug­gles, and glad she has been able to get excel­lent care.

    I don’t know where you live, but most states have pooled cov­er­age for the truly unin­sur­able (which it seems she is), both for those that can afford a pre­mium and those that can’t. The trick is often to check into them early, before the cov­er­age is needed, so that there is no gap when the time comes. Also, while I hope your daugh­ter sur­prises every­one and finds great and lucra­tive employ­ment, from what you describe, I wouldn’t assume that she doesn’t or won’t qual­ify for social secu­rity dis­abil­ity, which in turn would qual­ify for Medicare.

    Attor­neys who han­dle that sort of thing do so, gen­er­ally, for fees set by statute from any award given. You should be able to get advice for lit­tle or no charge.

    Is your angst, though, that she will have no med­ical care or some­thing sig­nif­i­cantly less than she has had before? If it is the lat­ter, then maybe you are open to the pos­si­bil­ity that oth­ers feel a por­tion of that angst over the rather unclear changes being dis­cussed con­cern­ing health care.

    Your exam­ple of your daugh­ter and the taxi driver’s wife is a good one. Our pres­i­dent claims there are 47 mil­lion like TD wife, which I think is a wildly inflated num­ber.. But, if it is true, how do we add 47 mil­lion more peo­ple to the ranks of the insured, while doing noth­ing to increase the num­ber of doc­tors and other health care per­son­nel, with­out caus­ing any­one to receive less care than they cur­rently get and for less money than we cur­rently spend? It seems to me to be an impos­si­bil­ity, and peo­ple are not “haters” or “morons” for want­ing to know how the sys­tem will absorb such a large increase with­out rationing of some sort and how we will pay for the changes.

51. Hexdecimal said on August 7th, 2009 at 5:53 pm

    Mark — Re: your response to 4dbirds: The way you phrase “how do we add 47 mil­lion more peo­ple to the ranks of the insured, while doing noth­ing to increase the num­ber of doc­tors and other health care per­son­nel” makes it sounds like they would all swarm a physician’s office or a hos­pi­tal on day one. That’s silly.

    The 47 mil­lion unin­sured already go to a hos­pi­tal when they need to, and are treated until sta­bi­lized. It’s a fed­eral law that the hos­pi­tal must treat when the patient presents. Then, once sta­bi­lized, they are either shown the door, or a long term facil­ity is found that will work with the State for it’s reim­burse­ment. Who pays for this care done at the hos­pi­tal when the per­son doesn’t have insur­ance. We do. All of us. Both in higher state taxes and higher costs from the hospital.

    To any­one: Can some­one explain to me why we can’t just give Medicare and/or Med­ic­aid access to every­one who wants it on a pay-what-you-can basis? Sim­ply remove the age restric­tion. Or is this to easy?

52. LAMary said on August 7th, 2009 at 5:57 pm

    Mark, lots of unin­sured peo­ple are already see­ing doc­tors. They just don’t have a way of pay­ing for it. Unin­sured peo­ple come to the emer­gency room with colds and heart­burn, things insured peo­ple see their doc­tors about. Emer­gency rooms MUST take care of them and what should have been a fif­teen or fifty dol­lar co-pay is now a six hun­dred dol­lar ER visit. It’s the most expen­sive way to take care of peo­ple and that cost gets passed on to you, believe me. Just for mater­nity, post­par­tum and NICU care for unin­sured patients, this hos­pi­tal last year spent 90 mil­lion dol­lars. That all gets added on to what every­thing else costs and we’re all pay­ing for it. Those 47 mil­lion unin­sured still get some care, it’s just much more expen­sive and in some cases minimal.

53. mark said on August 7th, 2009 at 6:06 pm

    Hex,

    No, it wouldn’t be day one. It would be day 7, and 83 and 276. But it takes years to train more doc­tors, nurses, etc.

    I’m well aware of how the emer­gency room gig works. But 4db gave an inter­est­ing exam­ple of the full poten­tial dif­fer­ence in care. There are only so many cur­rent “doc­tor hours”. How do you move 47 mil­lion peo­ple from “under­served” to “prop­erly served” with­out expand­ing the num­ber of doc­tors and for less money?

    If you have a fam­ily of eight and you invite four hun­gry strangers in for din­ner, you either need to cook more food or tell the eight reg­u­lars they will have to eat less tonight. Pre­tend­ing that all 12 can eat just as much on the same amount of food that pre­vi­ously fed eight, and that the cost of the food will actu­ally go down, is absurd.

    Edit: LAMary,

    Are you say­ing that you don’t think the 47 mil­lion are under­served, just receiv­ing their care in an inef­fi­cient man­ner? That’s pos­si­ble, but con­trary to 4db’s con­clu­sion that the unin­sured get much infe­rior care (with which I tend to agree).

54. Hexdecimal said on August 7th, 2009 at 6:14 pm

    You feed them just like my momma did… you add more corn­flakes to the meat­loaf and cut the pota­toes into smaller cubes. Yes, we are eat­ing bit less, but because it looks like more so we don’t notice it.

55. LAMary said on August 7th, 2009 at 6:18 pm

    They are under­served, but they are see­ing doc­tors. No pre­na­tal care makes for more NICU babies. No mam­mo­grams makes for more mas­tec­tomies.
    I don’t think that insur­ing those 47 mil­lion peo­ple will cause some great rush of folks look­ing for gall blad­der oper­a­tions or what­ever, but it will get peo­ple taken care of before things get drastic.

56. mark said on August 7th, 2009 at 6:20 pm

    well, hex, that’s a more hon­est answer than the admin­is­tra­tion has given, in my opin­ion. But adding corn­flakes to the meat­loaf is still adding food to food. What do we add to meet the demand for health care? Peo­ple with CPR train­ing dressed up like doc­tors and nurses?

57. Danny said on August 7th, 2009 at 6:27 pm

    What do we add to meet the demand for health care? Peo­ple with CPR train­ing dressed up like doc­tors and nurses?

    Brian, don’t get any ideas about tak­ing a CPR course and then pro­vid­ing cheapo breast exams!

58. Julie Robinson said on August 7th, 2009 at 6:50 pm

    I know I’ve said this before, so bear with the repi­ti­tion. My sis­ter works for the Women, Infant, Chil­dren pro­gram (WIC). Moth­ers and babies are plugged into the county health depart­ment, receive reg­u­lar check ups and coun­sel­ing, as well as vouch­ers for healthy foods. Most con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mates are that for every $1 spent, $4 are saved in future health costs, most of which would be paid by gov­ern­ment agen­cies of one kind or the other.

    Hexdecimal’s solu­tion sounds good to me. I don’t think any of the pro­grams being dis­cussed now go far enough to reform. But I’m just a good old bleed­ing heart lib­eral who takes it lit­er­ally when I read the Bible and Jesus tells us to care for each other.

59. coozledad said on August 7th, 2009 at 6:58 pm

    Annnnnd…dipshit jumps in to the fray, drag­ging toi­let paper on her shoes.
    http://​tpmdc​.talk​ing​pointsmemo​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​8​/​p​a​l​i​n​-​o​b​a​m​a​s​-​d​e​a​t​h​-​p​a​n​e​l​-​c​o​u​l​d​-​k​i​l​l​-​m​y​-​d​o​w​n​-​s​y​n​d​r​o​m​e​-​b​a​b​y​.php?r

60. Rana said on August 7th, 2009 at 7:00 pm

    What frus­trates me about the way this is being framed is that it presents uni­ver­sal health care as some­thing that is unrea­son­able and there­fore unde­sir­able, and there­fore not worth mak­ing any effort at all. It’s like we’re pre­sented with this chal­lenge and just shrug and throw up our hands and whine that it’s toooo haaaaard, as if it’s some sort of iron-clad rule of nature that things must be this way, always and for­ever. It’s defeatist, and, I dare say, unAmerican.

    Yes, the issue of doc­tors is an impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion. So start pro­mot­ing pro­grams that increase the num­bers of doc­tors, and of clin­i­cal prac­ti­tion­ers who can han­dle the basics like yearly check-ups and mam­mo­grams and flu shots. I mean, good gad, if they can train Indian vil­lagers to give polio vac­ci­na­tions and mid­wives in Uganda to han­dle AIDS med­ica­tions and so on, it’s not unrea­son­able to expect that we, with more money and edu­ca­tion, can fig­ure out a way to make sure that par­ents don’t have to pay enor­mous sums to ensure that their kids get their vac­ci­na­tions, or that one must be insured in order to afford insulin test­ing strips.

    And, yes, some of us may have to wait longer than we’re used to for basic care. Well, boo-hoo. Some of us haven’t seen a doc­tor in years because of the expense, or because the insur­ance com­pa­nies are just wait­ing for the dreaded pre-existing con­di­tion to be diag­nosed, or because the care needed isn’t cov­ered. Most of the major expenses and con­cerns expressed by the unin­sured and the under­in­sured are not that they couldn’t get treat­ment for an acute con­di­tion — that’s what emer­gency rooms are for — but that things like can­cer or dia­betes or men­tal ill­ness or asthma or epilepsy (and on and on) that require reg­u­lar vis­its to some sort of health care prac­ti­tioner for mon­i­tor­ing and pre­scrip­tion renewals aren’t cov­ered. And, again, most of these things are ones that don’t nec­es­sar­ily require active, imme­di­ate atten­tion by an MD — but they do require peri­odic attention.

    Yeah, it’s hard and expen­sive and it’s going to be bumpy for a while — but, damnit, the alter­na­tive is to sen­tence vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple to lives filled with pain and bank­ruptcy and grief, just because we’re too f*cking self­ish to pay an extra $10 a week or to wait an extra month for a once-a-year appointment.

    I mean, hell. I don’t have words strong enough to express how angry this makes me.

61. Bill said on August 7th, 2009 at 7:38 pm

    From Hex­idec­i­mal: Can some one explain to me why we can’t just give Medicare and/or Med icaid access to every one who wants it on a pay-what-you-can basis? Sim­ply remove the age restric tion. Or is this to easy?

    I agree. This could solve and reduce the cost of ObamaCare.

62. 4dbirds said on August 7th, 2009 at 9:26 pm

    Mark, I have no doubt that many fine, decent Amer­i­cans are against health care reform because they don’t want to lose what they have now. Trust me I get it. I only wish we could find a way to con­vince them that maybe what they have now isn’t really all that great. What we have is only as good as the job we cur­rently have or if the com­pany con­tin­ues to offer it from year to year. I’ve expe­ri­enced social­ized med­i­cine, god how I hate that term, from the mil­i­tary, VA and from receiv­ing high risk mater­nity care in Ger­many. I have never nor my fam­ily mem­bers been denied a needed treat­ment includ­ing a breast reduc­tion 23 years ago. I had to wait for that reduc­tion for about six months because I came behind burn vic­tims and babies with cleft palate but that was no big­gie (ha ha).

    I agree with Hex, can’t we all just be put on Medicare?

63. Scout said on August 7th, 2009 at 9:46 pm

    4dbirds: “I have no doubt that many fine, decent Amer­i­cans are against health care reform because they don’t want to lose what they have now. Trust me I get it. I only wish we could find a way to con­vince them that maybe what they have now isn’t really all that great.”

    But from what I under­stand, peo­ple will be free to keep what they have now if they so choose. That is what is so frus­trat­ing about the town hall kabuki. Between peo­ple moan­ing and wail­ing about los­ing what they already have when they won’t and senior cit­i­zens rail­ing about social­ized med­i­cine (what do they think Medicare is?) there is a whole lotta (will­fully?) mis­in­formed stoopid going on.

64. nancy said on August 7th, 2009 at 10:21 pm

    Could this be an early trial bal­loon for a Palin/Bachmann ticket in 2012?

    OhpleaseOh­pleaseOh­pleaseOh­pleaseOh­pleaseOh­pleaseOh­pleaseOh­pleaseOh­pleaseOh­pleaseOh­pleaseOh­pleaseOh­please

65. James Moehrke said on August 7th, 2009 at 10:57 pm

    I’d like to have what I had a year ago, when I had an employer who was con­tribut­ing. The $1,400 a month that COBRA is tak­ing is no pic­nic, I’ll tell you. And that’s cheaper than the employee con­tri­bu­tion at my wife’s place…

66. Linda said on August 8th, 2009 at 6:37 am

    James:
    I have no idea where you live, but check out this web­site out­lin­ing the var­i­ous health care options for each state. Don’t know if there is any­thing new there, but there might be.

67. Dorothy said on August 8th, 2009 at 7:09 am

    Julie that is indeed way down the road right now. But if his dad has any voice at ALL after (or if) he gets through these next 100 days, he would never agree to that. He’s a crea­ture of habit and wants to be in his com­fort zone. He was born in the house he lived in. He has an elderly girl­friend here who vis­its him every­day. We can’t dis­count the men­tal cru­elty issue of drag­ging some­one away from what he has known for 81 years. With the blad­der can­cer he has, we don’t think he’s going to live a whole lot longer. I think it would be self­ish to remove him from the city he loves. To me that would just break his heart, and he has enough phys­i­cal prob­lems, we don’t need to add to that. This is an easy 3 hour drive for us so for now it’s not a big deal.

68. coozledad said on August 8th, 2009 at 9:14 am

    Those dead eyes, that wispy mons pubis goa­tee, the flag.
    http://​www​.google​.com/​h​o​s​t​e​d​n​e​w​s​/​a​p​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​A​L​e​q​M​5​g​7​Y​O​9​i​I​N​5​t​F​D​z​9​N​M​N​7​w​2​E​9​a​_​R​l​9​g​D99UDE
    Sorry. Con­tent blocked. I was refer­ring to a photo of Eric Thomp­son, online gun dealer and enabler of three mass slaugh­ters to date.

69. Danny said on August 8th, 2009 at 9:56 am

    I don’t know if any of you have seen this com­mer­cial, but it’s short and really funny. Either the lit­tle brunette girl is quite an actress (beyond her years) or they did not tell her what was going to hap­pen in this scene. She is so cute!

70. brian stouder said on August 8th, 2009 at 1:15 pm

    Sarah Palin’s out­landish state­ments aside, I thought this bit remark from the New York Daily News about defacto GOP chair­man Rush Lim­baugh was pretty funny:

    http://​www​.nydai​lynews​.com/​l​i​f​e​s​t​y​l​e​/​h​e​a​l​t​h​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​8​/​0​6/2009 – 08-06_rush_limbaughs_diet_plan_from_quick_weight_loss_center_probably_wont_work_longte.html
    an excerpt:

    On his Web site, the sud­denly sylph-like Lim­baugh describes his diet as “based on actual food that you buy at the gro­cery store, a cou­ple sup­ple­ments that they pro­vide you.” Lim­baugh has pro­fessed igno­rance as to how his diet works, despite numer­ous queries since he announced his weight loss plans in March.

    But of COURSE he doesn’t know the ‘sup­ple­ments’ thin­gies work, or where come from; his damned house­keeper is the one who brings the bag­gies full of ‘suple­ments’ back from town!

71. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 8th, 2009 at 1:21 pm

    Mmmm, sup­ple­ments — is there any­thing you can’t do?

72. beb said on August 8th, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    As LAMary has already pointed out, the 47 mil­lion unin­sured Amer­i­cans already get med­ical treat­ment by vis­it­ing the ER when crit­i­cally ill. Mov­ing them into a health plan will take pres­sure off the ER staff, some of whom could be trans­ferred to walk-in clin­ics. But equally, there are already a vast body of trained pro­fes­sion­als who can treat peo­ple is only allowed it. There are Physican’s Assis­tants who are allowed to pre­scribe med­ica­tions. They act under a doctor’s super­vi­sion. PA’s have less train­ing than an MD so they could be pumped out of a school faster. Reg­is­tered Nurses know a lot about dis­eases, can treat minor cases and direct the seri­ous ones to MDs. For that mat­ter, the Licensed Prac­ti­cal Nurse, a title dri­ving out of most places by the RNs, could do that was well. LPN was a two year course, heavy on the prac­ti­cal train­ing. As a two year course ver­sus a four year RN course, you can cre­ate a lot more LPNs than you could RNs.

    As for why not Medicare, the answer seems to be a pre-existing pact with the insur­ance indus­try that Oba­macare would not actu­ally affect them. So there has not been any dis­cus­sion about bar­gain­ing with Big Pharma over drug prices, or plac­ing lim­its on the ratio of over­head to care, and weak com­mit­ment at best to a pub­lic option. I think in the end, Oba­maCare will deserve to be shot down because it will be worth­less.
    As for the “anger” at these town meet­ings, yes, this is all being stirred up by the Repub­li­can Party. And it is long since time to rec­og­nize that the Repub­li­can Party is not just lying about any Demo­c­rat pres­i­dent, but that the Repub­li­can Party is unAmer­i­can, and anti-democratic. They are actively try­ing to destroy gov­ern­ment in this coun­try so that it can be repaired by auto­cratic, busi­ness con­trolled pup­pets. The Repub­li­can Party in they acts has become indis­tin­guish­able from Nazi. There’s I’ve said it. Danny’s head will explode in 5.….4.….3.….2.…

73. coozledad said on August 8th, 2009 at 2:34 pm

    Don’t worry beb. They’ve already started eat­ing their own. It’s already out of the Republican’s hands. Give it two or three more months and they’ll be fac­tion­al­iz­ing fur­ther. The largest com­mon inter­est among them I would call the “Missed the hey­day of the Klan, so I’ll have to set­tle for the Gui­tar Hero ver­sion” Party, fol­lowed by the “If that Palin was my daugh­ter I wooden ever let her out of the trailer” party, with the “I catch chip­munks with my bare hands and what I can’t eat I smear on my shirt” party com­ing in a not too dis­tant third.

74. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 8th, 2009 at 3:08 pm

    So, are con­ser­v­a­tives the benighted minor­ity of will­ful igno­ra­muses, or a plethora verg­ing on plu­ral­ity seg­ment of ‘Mur­ri­cans who are poor, under­e­d­u­cated, and eas­ily led?

    Like­wise, are lib­er­als the right­ful major­ity of right-thinking, left-leaning thought­ful cit­i­zens, or the wise and insight­ful sub­group of plan­ners and dream­ers whose hopes for this coun­try on the world stage are being sub­verted by an excess of democ­racy, not to say demo­c­ra­tic spirit?

    The whole dis­pute has less to do with a small num­ber of ill man­nered, rudely behaved nut­roots at “town halls” than it does with the grow­ing unwill­ing­ness to keep writ­ing blank checks to an admin­is­tra­tion that won’t even tell us what we’re sign­ing the slip for, insou­ciantly adding that they don’t read their own bills (the leg­isla­tive kind, i mean, though both mean­ings might apply here), so what’s our beef, again?

    The “whose par­ents are on Medicare” put­down is a clever dis­cus­sion ender, imply­ing that if you like some fed­eral gov­ern­ment (moon land­ings, national parks, defeat­ing Hitler, treat­ing Ma’s phlebitis) then you have no right to tell elected offi­cials where you get off. And it can be read­ily searched-up on this blog alone than i’m quite in favor of a wider fed­eral health care pol­icy approach, given the per­cent­age of Amer­i­cans already on one form of sin­gle payer or another right now (includ­ing ER treat­ment in extremis for all, which is a pol­icy, just a really inef­fi­cient and unfair way to treat illness).

    But i can make no sense of what we’re being told we must approve of nation­ally by the end of the next week/month/session, and am get­ting … um … angry at being told, or hear­ing my bet­ters smirk to each other that if i’m against pas­sage of this costly, taste­less, crust­less meringue, then i hate apple pie, and prob­a­bly ice cream as well, but it’s only because i mind­lessly accept the lies of the cherry pie and black cof­fee lobby. Oh, please.

75. Rana said on August 8th, 2009 at 3:44 pm

    No one’s mak­ing you wear that shoe, Jeff.

76. Danny said on August 8th, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    Nancy, a cou­ple months ago or so, you cited Godwin’s law when I was talk­ing about Mar­garet Sanger. You were implor­ing me not to go down that road, so to say.

    Since that time, I’ve been keep­ing a lit­tle infor­mal men­tal tally and have noticed a bunch of the left-leaning folks around here indeed have gone down that road and some repeat­edly, but with nary a word from any­one. Why is that?

    And though I’m not going to search for it right now, it’d be easy enough to set the record straight on who is invok­ing Hitler around here. JC did a few weeks back, Cooz sev­eral times (what a sur­prise), Alex I believe has and now we have beb. There’s prob­a­bly more, but as I said, it’s just been an infor­mal men­tal tally.

    Any­way, just a note. I’m off to the beach!

77. coozledad said on August 8th, 2009 at 5:22 pm

    Well, it’s been pointed out to me that the sis­ter­div­ing sheet-wearing neo seces­sion­ists are the Jews of lib­eral Fas­cism, but a man’s got to estab­lish his bona fides if he wants a sinecure on a death panel. I’m hop­ing to fill the open slot for Flo­rence, SC. We have a shit­load of work to do there.

78. Linda said on August 8th, 2009 at 7:00 pm

    Jeff:
    Of course peo­ple can hon­estly dis­sent with­out being called names. First, though, the Repub­li­cans need to be hon­est about their dis­sent – stop call­ing peo­ple killers of infants and old peo­ple, and of “nation­al­iz­ing” health care, when in all hon­esty, that’s not what is being offered. Pos­si­bly, fed­eral health care cov­er­age will be open to peo­ple who want it, but not forced upon every­body. Repub­li­cans lost their pose as hon­est dis­senters when they spread these lies.

    Obama is push­ing for it fast, but it’s not like it hasn’t been on the table since the first Clin­ton plan got derailed. We have had a decade and a half to con­tem­plate health care broad­en­ing and reform since, and the Repub­li­cans have decided to hold the wall steady against every type of pro­gram, except the boon­dog­gle for big pharma dur­ing the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. Obama is push­ing for now, so that it will hap­pen some­time. Instead of float­ing scare sto­ries, the Repub­li­can Party could con­tribute some use­ful give and take. I don’t see that hap­pen­ing. They are push­ing for the sta­tus quo. Unless you count restric­tions on insur­ance pay­outs – with no restric­tions on insur­ance premiums.

79. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 8th, 2009 at 9:18 pm

    “when they spread these lies” — that’s a handy catch-all for “stop say­ing the plan will impact any­one with insur­ance now.”

    What’s the plan, Kenneth?

    By the way, the lamest Repub­li­cans out there have asked for caps on mal­prac­tice lit­i­ga­tion (on insur­ance pay­outs, not so much) and leg­is­la­tion that would allow greater use of MSAs. I’m not for MSAs myself for the usual elit­ist rea­sons, that are incon­ve­niently true (peo­ple don’t make many ratio­nal deci­sions when it comes to health care man­age­ment on a cost basis), but it’s an option. McCain’s econ guy, Doug Holtz-Eakin, pro­posed mak­ing health care plans at work tax­able, an emi­nently ratio­nal plan that would help peo­ple behave as ratio­nal eco­nomic agents bet­ter than any MSA plan out there, and would also allow a rev­enue stream above the $5K rebate (that would pro­tect most cov­ered folks, given tax­able income per­cent­ages) which would then go to pay for unin­sured work­ers and an expan­sion of Medicaid.

    This was roundly derided … by the Obama team, which now looks to be con­sid­er­ing it as a way to show cost cov­er­age in the new bud­get. But say­ing the Repub­li­cans don’t/haven’t/won’t offer alter­na­tives is the Axel­rod play­book, not actual fact.

80. Jolene said on August 8th, 2009 at 9:22 pm

    Jeff:

    You might want to check out Steve Pearlstein’s WaPo col­umn*. Very strong state­ment on who is con­tribut­ing what from a nor­mally very even-handed busi­ness writer (and Pulitzer Prize winner.)

    *Still typ­ing on my phone. Per­haps some­one else can pro­vide the link.

81. Linda said on August 8th, 2009 at 9:41 pm

    Here’s the prob­lem with the $5k rebate: that will cover “most peo­ple:” the income stream will cover healthy, young peo­ple with no pre-existing con­di­tions. Insur­ers are still free to cherry-pick those cus­tomers, and make rates on all oth­ers so high that nobody will be able to buy indi­vid­ual health insurance.

    And call­ing the plan “the gov­ern­ment takeover of insur­ance” IS a lie – there is noth­ing that would ban pri­vate health insur­ance. Paint­ing end-of-life coun­sel­ing as a plot is kill off old peo­ple is a lie, too. And Palin’s remarks – def­i­nite lies that can­not be dis­missed as remarks from the fringe.

82. Linda said on August 8th, 2009 at 9:43 pm

    Jolene here’s your link.

83. brian stouder said on August 8th, 2009 at 10:58 pm

    Danny, I don’t like all the ‘nazi’ talk either — and the rightwing fly­ing mon­keys of the air­waves have been beat­ing the hell out of that drum, by the by. (‘Oh yes’, they’ll say, Obama can give a speech, just like cult-of-personality total­i­tar­i­ans of the past; and Obama wants gov­ern­ment to decide who will live and who will die, and Obama is tak­ing over the Amer­i­can econ­omy, and so on and so forth, ad nauseum)

    I will agree with you about the unsuit­abil­ity of that term in this dis­cus­sion, from any side; and I will say to you, point-blank, that in my expe­ri­ence (although not on this blog) real live mouth-breathing racism is at the root of MUCH of the oppo­si­tion to the president.

    Call­ing such peo­ple ‘nazis’ is gen­uinely being too nice, since they can scoff and say “that’s ridicu­lous”, when in fact they sim­ply can­not get over that some (insert racial epi­thet here) now sits in the god­damned White House!

    The hor­ror! The horror!

84. mark said on August 8th, 2009 at 11:12 pm

    Linda–

    Do you have a link for “the plan,” so we can tell for our­selves who is lying? I under­stand that it does ban any new pri­vate insur­ance plans. But it seems that the modus operandi for the “most trans­par­ent admin­is­tra­tion in his­tory” is to keep things murky, call any crit­i­cism a lie, and shove the plan through after Con­gress has three or four hours to “read” it.

    Remem­ber can­di­date Obama and the promise that all leg­is­la­tion would be on the inter­net for 5 days before a vote? Just part of “Change I can Fool You Into Believ­ing In”

85. Linda said on August 8th, 2009 at 11:57 pm

    Mark:
    I looked around, and this was about as good as I could find in com­par­ing what has been put up. The trou­ble is, it shifts around every day with horse­trad­ing. Let me know your link to the ban­ning of new pri­vate insur­ance plans.

86. mark said on August 9th, 2009 at 12:04 am

    Thank you, Linda. I’ll see what I can find. I, too, hve had dif­fi­culty find­ing any­thing that pur­ports to be the cur­rent draft, per­haps because of fre­quent changes.

87. sisterlicious said on August 9th, 2009 at 9:27 am

    Danny, get your facts straight before you go accus­ing me of hav­ing invoked Hitler, which is some­thing I never do, ya frig­gin’ troll.

88. Danny said on August 9th, 2009 at 10:01 am

    And who is sis­ter­li­cious? Alex fresh back from gen­der reas­sign­ment sum­mer camp?

89. alex said on August 9th, 2009 at 10:16 am

    It’s an alter ego I use. My com­puter seems to pre­fer default­ing to it now for some reason.

    Was sur­prised to see you slam­ming the birthers, Danny. I thought for sure you were one of them.

90. coozledad said on August 9th, 2009 at 10:25 am

    I’ve been to enough Repub­li­can throw­downs to hear the holo­caust denial and the “nig­ger this, nig­ger that, Jew this, Jew that”, to know these smarmy bas­tards are just mov­ing the goal­posts again. I’ll stop invok­ing Hitler when you lobby the LA Times to fire that legacy whore Jonah Gold­berg for equat­ing FDR with fas­cism. You cant have it both ways, schmucks. You’ve got Lou Dobbs and Rush Lim­baugh whip­ping that bunch of fuck bub­bles into a mur­der­ous froth, and old Sarah just cant do no wrong by you. If she pulled a train with the Pitts­burgh Steel­ers you’d hail it as a cere­bral polit­i­cal move. Well now you’re so closely iden­ti­fied with that grifter trash there’s no place to move the goal­posts. She’s all yours.
    Describe in a hun­dred words or less how push­ing the idea of “Death Pan­els” and euthana­sia pro­grams isn’t chew­ing up Godwin’s law and spit­ting it in people’s faces. The Anti-Defamation League has weighed in on this, and they seem to think you’re offen­sive, lying creeps.
    I have to talk to the red­necks down here, not on a daily basis, but more often than I like. It’s one thing for you peo­ple to stoke this kind of shit when you enjoy some cul­tural iso­la­tion from the nas­ti­est gun and knife show denizens, or you’re acquainted with the lit­tle facial ticks and tremors that iden­tify you as one of the brood, but I live here with them, and frankly, the implicit vio­lence in day to day inter­ac­tions with your street fightin’ rub­bish is piss­ing me off. And then to hear you cavil and whine about this as though it could have been averted by elect­ing a drunken pri­apic gam­bler with a hard on for burn­ing vil­lages and a dime store man­nequin with ovaries for a brain…
    curi­ously just brings me to a state of tran­quil­ity as I remem­ber the words to that old-time Repub­li­can gospel tune: “Get over it. Get over it. God almighty, get over it.“
    And just in time to bear me out, old Newt’s out swing­ing his fourth tier his­tory pro­fes­sor shin­gle in defense of Sarah. I guess when she does the Steel­ers it’ll be a cel­e­bra­tion of the Amer­i­can virtues of ath­leti­cism and competition.

91. Danny said on August 9th, 2009 at 10:43 am

    It’s an alter ego I use. My com­puter seems to pre­fer default­ing to it now for some reason.

    Hmm, good to see you, Alex. I was actu­ally won­der­ing where you’d been. I fig­ured that with sum­mer, lot’s of peo­ple go on vacation.

    Hey, note that when I men­tioned you above, I did qual­ify because I wasn’t sure if I was remem­ber­ing cor­rectly. I just didn’t have time to search beca­sue we were head­ing to the beach.

    Was sur­prised to see you slam­ming the birthers, Danny. I thought for sure you were one of them.

    Yeah, they’re a bunch of cra­zies and there’s a bunch more of them run­ning around these days get­ting pub­lic air­play. Seems like they just want to throw what­ever they can against the wall and see if it sticks, try­ing to ruin the presidency.

    Other than being skep­ti­cal of the spend­ing, I think Pres­i­dent Obama is doing a pretty good job so far given what he was handed. Bet­ter than McCain would have done.

92. mark said on August 9th, 2009 at 10:44 am

    Linda,

    I did find a link to the House Enrolled Act. When I fig­ure out how to embed a link, I’ll do so. I found it on a com­mit­tee web­site for the House of R.

    The issue I raised orig­i­nates from some lan­guage on page 16, and I under­stand the con­cern a lit­tle bet­ter now (sort of) after read­ing some of the bill. Noth­ing appears to be sim­ple, which 800 to 1000 pages might sug­gest. Not much point, though, in dis­cussing page 16 until I fig­ure out how to share it and the rest with you.

93. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 9th, 2009 at 10:59 am

    “Ban­ning” pri­vate insur­ance — hmm. The prob, Bob, is that the intro­duc­tion of a gov­ern­ment insur­ance plan will open up a door that will lead to wide­spread busi­ness walk-away from cur­rent cov­er­age meth­ods. And when pressed specif­i­cally on that, there’s the rhetoric (“no one will have to leave their plan if they like it”) and there’s the pol­icy (“well, um, we will make sure to put some, uh, puni­tive mea­sures to, well, dis­cour­age com­pa­nies from doing that to their employ­ees, and umm­mmm — we’re com­mit­ted to offer­ing some sort of pro­tec­tion to work­ing peo­ple and their choices”).

    Add in a men­tion in one early draft of not allow­ing new poli­cies to be sold “unless grand­fa­thered in” — http://​blog​.her​itage​.org/​2​0​0​9​/​0​7​/​1​6​/​d​o​e​s​-​t​h​e​-​h​o​u​s​e​-​p​l​a​n​-​o​u​t​l​a​w​-​p​r​i​v​a​t​e​-​i​n​s​u​rance/ (sorry, jc, i’m in a hurry with a puk­ing kid) leaves one with a pic­ture that seems to end up at a very inten­tional plan to get, fairly soon, to the end of pri­vate insur­ance and a fed­eral sin­gle payer. Which, he nearly shouts, i’m actu­ally for (with some sig­nif­i­cant qual­i­fi­ca­tions, a dif­fer­ent dis­cus­sion), but you really can’t keep say­ing peo­ple are LYING when they com­press that into “ending/banning pri­vate insur­ance.” Add in a num­ber of video clips of folks like Bar­ney Frank and Obama admin fig­ures hav­ing said that’s where they want to go, and of course peo­ple think that’s what’s being slid, shuf­fled, and snuck under the door at the last minute.

    Added later — didn’t refresh, missed mark’s com­ment, and i hope he can find a link; it is remark­ably hard to find the bill itself (as opposed to commentary/rhetoric about it), which is part of the prob­lem. And i’m quite aware that the Her­itage Foun­da­tion link i used con­tains ongo­ing debate on exactly how or if the bill would impact new/ongoing pri­vate insur­ance … that’s my point pre­cisely: no one seems to be able to clar­ify on either side what this will actu­ally do to cur­rent insur­ance if passed, which is a good rea­son for those con­tent with cur­rent cov­er­age to be con­cerned. I spent two years in West Vir­ginia work­ing on a panel for the state and the Robert Wood John­son Foun­da­tion in the orig­i­nal CHIP imple­men­ta­tion, and there just isn’t the same focus in this debate on the uninin­sured (the Congressional/policy side of the debate on the leg­is­la­tion itself, not the cable/pundit debate over town­hall astro­turf­ing). The unin­sured should be Job#1, and the pivot the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion made to “health care insur­ance reform” from “health care reform” just reaf­firms that they aren’t focused there.

    This is doable if you can find a way to reframe the pol­icy plan­ning on serv­ing that pop­u­la­tion, already encompassed/circumscribed to some degree by CHIP, Med­ic­aid, and ER pub­lic pol­icy man­dates, but not com­pletely shaded in yet (undocumented/illegal immi­grants are the other ele­phant in the ER wait­ing room). But if the only bill they want to try to pass is one that impacts everyone’s cov­er­age and care, they will lose, and they should.

94. Danny said on August 9th, 2009 at 11:39 am

95. Danny said on August 9th, 2009 at 11:39 am

    Wanted to share a lit­tle beauty here. This beach in Del Mar is where we spend a lot of time in the sum­mers. You might be able to make out a low, con­crete sea­wall, just in back of the palm tree. That is the patio for the Posiedon restau­rant. If you ever make it to San Diego, you gotta have din­ner and drinks there. It’s all open and watch­ing the sun set is amazing.

    At night, the restau­rant next door to Posei­don (Jake’s) turns on flood lights from it’s roof to illu­mi­nate the beach and every once and a while you catch a glimpse of a vol­ley­ball pop­ping into the air as folks play at night on the beach.

96. Rana said on August 9th, 2009 at 11:43 am

    Mark — this might help:

    http://​blog​.lib​.umn​.edu/​a​t​s​c​h​r​a​g​/​c​l​a​s​s​e​s​/​2​0​0​7​/​0​9​/​h​o​w​_​t​o​_​e​m​b​e​d​_​a​_​l​i​n​k​o​n​e​_​m​o​r​e​_​t​i​_​1.html

    ETA: Or, if it’s not too long, just paste it in, and it will turn into a link auto­mat­i­cally, which is what this one did.

97. Rana said on August 9th, 2009 at 11:46 am

    Danny, that brings back mem­o­ries. When I was in grad school, I rented a place in Del Mar about eight blocks south of that, back when it was still rel­a­tively inex­pen­sive to do so. I miss the way the marine layer would roll in at night, leav­ing every­thing damp and smelling of the sea.

98. Jolene said on August 9th, 2009 at 12:44 pm

    Jeff:

    Obama has argued repeat­edly, and I think he is right about this, that sat­is­fac­tion with the cur­rent sys­tem is, if not psy­cho­log­i­cally then prac­ti­cally, irrel­e­vant because the cur­rent sys­tem is unsustainable.

    Over the past decade or so, peo­ple with insur­ance have seen their pre­mi­ums rise faster than wages or infla­tion, and deductibles and co-payments have increased. Employ­ers are offload­ing costs and drop­ping insur­ance alto­gether. With­out reform that con­strains prices and guar­an­tees eli­gi­bil­ity, more and more peo­ple will be locked out of the insur­ance mar­ket altogether.

    I know this isn’t an answer to the “what is in the plan” ques­tion, but I’m not sure we can hope for a plan that gives us a detailed pic­ture of what the world will look like twenty years from now.

99. Danny said on August 9th, 2009 at 1:06 pm

    It’ll prob­a­bly look like “Carousel” on Logan’s Run.

100. Danny said on August 9th, 2009 at 1:24 pm

     Here is a funny com­men­tary regard­ing how San Diego did not make the list of top ten cities with which to vaca­tion with chil­dren, but that Los Ange­les and Sin­ga­pore did. Some excerpts:

     The only way we could be more kid-friendly is if the Hotel Del Coro­n­ado was made of choco­late. Dr. Seuss used to live here, for good­ness sake.

     and…

     Another city on the list: Sin­ga­pore, where you can’t chew gum. You can get caned for being out-of-line in Sin­ga­pore. What a great place for chil­dren, Singapore.

     And then there’s Istan­bul, Turkey. That would be won­der­ful for kids, if their father is, say, James Bond or Indi­ana Jones.

101. coozledad said on August 9th, 2009 at 2:53 pm

     Incite­ment.
     Gin­grich Defends Palin On The Death Panel
     Appear­ing on This Week, for­mer Speaker Newt Gin­grich defended Palin on the “death panel” talk, even though George Stephanopou­los pointed out mul­ti­ple times that the health care bill does not pro­mote euthana­sia. “You are ask­ing us to trust turn­ing power over to the gov­ern­ment,” said Gin­grich, “when there are clearly peo­ple in Amer­i­can who believe in estab­lish­ing euthana­sia, includ­ing selec­tive stan­dards.“
     Includ­ing a pseudoin­tel­lec­tual nasal douche with an incon­ve­nient first wife dying of can­cer, Newt?
     Blow me. And fuck Godwin’s law.

102. Danny said on August 9th, 2009 at 3:01 pm

     What a fine lather you’ve worked your­self into, Cooz! Man, you’re about to blow a gas­ket a la Gas­man and self-eject any day now.

103. coozledad said on August 9th, 2009 at 3:13 pm

     Keep your pro­jec­tions to your­self. Your pup­pys­pankers are rip­ping at some pretty thread­bare social fab­ric down here. And tem­per­a­tures will be top­ping a hun­dred for a cou­ple of days early this week.

104. coozledad said on August 9th, 2009 at 4:30 pm

     Haha­ha­haha.
     http://​www​.depend​ablerene​gade​.com/​d​e​p​e​n​d​a​b​l​e​_​r​e​n​e​g​a​d​e​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​8​/​i​-​t​h​i​n​k​-​i​r​o​n​y​-​j​u​s​t​-​m​e​t​-​w​i​t​h​-​a​-​d​e​a​t​h​-​p​a​n​e​l.html

105. beb said on August 9th, 2009 at 5:01 pm

     I want to expand on my ear­lier post. When I said Repub­li­cans were Nazis I wasn’t refer­ring to peo­ple who iden­tify them­selves as con­ser­v­a­tives or peo­ple who iden­tify with the Repub­li­can party, but to peo­ple who are in the actual party — the com­mit­tee mem­bers, pub­lic spokes­men, the politi­cians, Repub­li­can “strate­gist” and party elders. These peo­ple are delib­er­ately out their try­ing to destroy the Demo­c­ra­tic party and cre­ate a one-party rule of Republicans.

     And in this case Goodwin’s law isn’t being invoked. There have been peo­ple show­ing up to dis­rupt these town hall meet­ings car­ry­ing signs with Nazi mark­ings. The Repub­li­cans are the ones bring this crap up.

     One prob­lem with talk­ing about Oba­macare is that Con­gress is still draft­ing the law instead of Obama pre­sent­ing them with a plan for them to approve. In fact Obama has been painfully vague about what he con­sid­ers to be an accept­able min­i­mum plan. It’s hard to debate or defend a plan that tech­ni­cally doesn’t yet exist.

     As for the Pub­lic Option, that every­one seem to think that a hun­dred mil­lion peo­ple will opt for a Pub­lic Option seems to indi­cate just how bad cur­rent pri­vate insur­ance is.

106. mark said on August 9th, 2009 at 5:16 pm

     http://​www​.open​congress​.org/​b​i​l​l​/​1​1​1​-​h​3​2​0​0/text

     It works, I think. thank you, Rana. So easy, a cave­man did it.

     Be warned that it is a lot to down­load. and I pulled it from the first site I found with com­plete text (after Rana gave me the gift of link­ing), with­out look­ing at pol­i­tics. Can’t ver­ify that the text is com­pletely cur­rent, either, but the first 20 pages looked the same as what i found last evening.

     Jolene, it is unrea­son­able to expect a bill to tell us exaactly what the world will look like twenty years after pas­sage. It is not unrea­son­able to expect a bill to tell us exactly what the law will look like twenty days after pas­sage. That is the test Obama is failing.

107. moe99 said on August 9th, 2009 at 7:50 pm

     A week away at adult music camp and I want to go back.

     All I can tell you after my wel­come hia­tus and review­ing the week with fresh eyes, is that the rhetoric, par­tic­u­larly from the Repub­li­cans, is get­ting worse. And I fear that the right wing will resort to major vio­lence to impose their will on the rest of soci­ety. Per­haps we, as Democ­rats, could do as that NYT woman whose hus­band had a midlife cri­sis, and just ignore them, say­ing, It’s not about me, it’s about you and I will wait til your spell of mad­ness has left you and you return to the polit­i­cal dia­logue a ratio­nal per­son. But I don’t think most of us have that sort of patience. How­ever, it would be nice to ignore the uglies, wouldn’t it?

     And, Nancy, I am so sorry to hear of your puppy’s demise. After the huge wel­come home my three gave me, it hurts to know that there is one waggy tail less in the world. My sin­cere regrets.

108. Jolene said on August 9th, 2009 at 10:21 pm

     Jolene, it is unrea­son­able to expect a bill to tell us exaactly what the world will look like twenty years after pas­sage. It is not unrea­son­able to expect a bill to tell us exactly what the law will look like twenty days after pas­sage. That is the test Obama is failing.

     It’s not cooked yet, Mark. But I agree that it’s prob­lem­atic to be spend­ing so much time talk­ing about reform when the pro­posed reform hasn’t been spec­i­fied. But Obama is try­ing, per­haps overly hard, to avoid the fate of Hillarycare – a plan that was pre­sented as a fait accom­pli that no one in Con­gress had any stake in sup­port­ing. It’s a dif­fi­cult enter­prise to fig­ure out how to give peo­ple a say and, at the same time, ask them to sign on to an as yet unde­fined program.

     But the obser­va­tion that noth­ing that has been pro­posed resem­bles the scary pre­dic­tions that some Repub­li­cans are mak­ing still stands.

109. brian stouder said on August 9th, 2009 at 10:29 pm

     Jolene, it is unrea­son­able to expect a bill to tell us exactly what the world will look like twenty years after pas­sage. It is not unrea­son­able to expect a bill to tell us exactly what the law will look like twenty days after pas­sage. That is the test Obama is failing.

     Mark, in a per­fect vac­uum, your point would be cred­i­ble — but let’s think back a bit, shall we?

     When the admin­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent Clin­ton expended huge polit­i­cal cap­i­tal on HIS health­care reform ini­tia­tive, I very CLEARLY recall that one of the biggest — if not THE biggest com­plaints was that the admin­is­tra­tion had the AUDACITY (so to speak) or else the HUBRIS or the PRETENTIOUSNESS or the ARROGANCE to ham­mer out the whole damned thing “in secret”, and then roll it out as a com­plete thing, for Con­gress to vote on.

     I recall hear­ing then, from many pun­dits who seemed to have a pretty good point, that “this is NOT the way big things are done in Amer­ica”; the thought was that Clin­ton should have let Con­gress become invested in the process — set the goals and the para­me­ters, and let the leg­is­la­tors do what they do best — negotiate/horse-trade/nix/propose/cull and then deliver.

     I think the BIGGEST damned red her­rings in this whole debate are the par­al­lel canards about how there ain’t no plan/there’s a secret, malev­o­lent plan/nobody can read the whole plan/everything is out of con­trol and tech­ni­cally unexplainable!

     Any­one who’s ever bought a house knows that even sim­ple trans­ac­tions like that involve page after page after page of legalese. In the case of buy­ing a house, a respon­si­ble per­son hires a lawyer and then pro­ceeds judi­ciously, just as a respon­si­ble mem­ber of con­gress hires a trust­wor­thy staff that can sys­tem­at­i­cally com­pre­hend the whole of every bill to be voted on, and then she votes.

     edit: I see Jolene her-own-self beat me to the response — AND she said what I wanted to say, more com­pletely and in fewer words. Damn her lib­eral education!!

110. Brandon said on August 10th, 2009 at 12:48 am

     The Break­fast Club prob­a­bly holds up the best because of its empha­sis on char­ac­ter and inter­ac­tion. It would make a great play and would be fairly easy to stage. Most of the movie is set in the library, after all.