Belaboring the Obvious (Or, why oh why does the GOP hate America so?)
Here’s the shorter of everything that is going to follow from here: if you are looking for death panels, to a pretty damn good approximation you can find one in the Republican caucus of the US House of Representatives.
What follows is a retelling of what we all already know: health care reform repeal is a ticket back to a system that was long ago recognized as a disaster, a ride powered by zombie lies and a damn good media machine.
That said, in all of this, I detect just a glimmer of hope—if not for the persons of the uninsured still at risk, then perhaps for the body politic.
For example, today, as the House GOP seems about to succeed succeed in passing their repeal of last year’s health care reform act, that psalter of Village worship, The Washington Post notes that despite having run on “Repeal and Replace,” (italics added, obviously), there will be no replacement. Rather, as the headline writer demurely announces, “The GOP lacks clear health care plan.“
If you’ve lost the Post...
No worries, mate, says the GOP. We don’t need no stinking plan.*
After all, the chorus dins, the consequences of continued survival of the health care reform would be catastrophic enought to merit repeal even without anything to put in its place. Look!—we are told, The Worst Bill Ever will cost us 650,000 jobs.
That is, or would be a half percent bump to the unemployment rate, except, of course, it isn’t. The AP just came out with a fact check, tracking back to the CBO research on which the GOP spinmeisters based their claim. That bit of actual journalism revealed that the reason most of those who would not be working because of health care reform are doing so because they would no longer need to work—or as the AP reported:
What CBO actually said is that the impact of the health care law on supply and demand for labor would be small. Most of it would come from people who no longer have to work, or can downshift to less demanding employment, because insurance will be available outside the job.
“The legislation, on net, will reduce the amount of labor used in the economy by a small amount—roughly half a percent—primarily by reducing the amount of labor that workers choose to supply,” budget office number crunchers said in a report from last year.
Which is to say, that half a percent change in the labor supply is not a half percent shift in unemployment: you are only unemployed if you are seeking work and cannot find it.
Instead of acquiescing in a matter of labor-statistical fact well known to everyone in the business, the GOP chose to do what they do so well: make some stuff up, and then support what is technically known as bullsh*t by a bit of mathiness. That 650,000 jobs “killed” number? Some staffer took the total current employment number of roughly 130 million Americans and divided it by 200. Hey presto!—an Obamafashist Jobapocalypse. (See also this McClatchy debunking.)
But of course, everyone here knows about this kind of tactic, employed here in a mere skirmish in the long, long GOP War on Logic. All I want to do in this early morning rant is to remind everyone of what the Republicans in the House of Representatives are actually trying to do with this attempt at repeal.
They propose to destroy a law that will reduce the deficit by a small but welcome amount; extend health care coverage to approximately 70% of the currently uninsured; establish a number of pilot programs intended to explore both health care improvements and potential cost containment; and ensure that Americans in the time of greatest need cannot be denied coverage, despite suffering from “preexisting conditions.”
And in its place, the Republicans offer?....Nothing.
So the one message I want to keep hammering is that we need to remember exactly what the GOP says they want:
A system which costs much more and delivers less than those of our major economic contributors.
A system in which the GOP is, apparently, happy for the rest of us to continue to bear the burden of covering the unreimbursed costs of care for the uninsured—which is, in essence, a hidden $30 billion tax on you and me. (That figure comes from a paper by MIT health care economist Jonathan Gruber.) They don’t seem to care about the larger economic context in which lack of portable, reliable health care is a drag on labor mobility and entrepeneurial ambition.
Worst of all, they are willing to accept that all 47 million uninsured remain so—many of whom are employed and who thus form examples of what Gruber terms the modal uninsured individual, the “working-class poor.” That translates into exactly what John earlier today reminded us was what Alan Grayson was drummed out of respectable conversation for saying:
The GOP plan for health coverage for the uninsured is: die.
Back to Gruber’s paper, in a passage worth quoting at length:
A recent (October 2005) Institute of Medicine (IOM)*** study reviewed hundreds studies documenting the health problems associated with uninsurance. The IOM estimated that uninsured individuals use only half as much medical care as the insured, and have a mortality risk that is 25% higher, with over 18,000 people dying each year because of lack of insurance.9 The studies reviewed by the IOM, however, were mostly observational analyses documenting a correlation between a lack of health insurance and poor health, perhaps controlling for other correlates of insurance and health. Few, if any, of these studies dealt with the endogeneity of health insurance coverage with respect to health status.
Several other studies have used careful empirical methods to more carefully document a causal impact of health insurance on health. Hanratty (1996) studied the impact of the staggered introduction of national health insurance in Canada across the nation’s provinces, and found that it was associated with a 4% decline in the infant mortality rate and an 8.9% decrease in the incidence of low birth weight among single mothers. Lurie et al. (1984) studied the removal of eligibility for public insurance for a large group of individuals in California (due to a fiscal crisis in that state in the early 1980s that forced the state to cut back its insurance coverage), and found that health deteriorated significantly after losing public insurance. For example, blood pressure rose among hypertensive patients, leading to 40% increased risk of dying: overall, 5 of the 186 patients who had lost insurance had subsequently died, compared to zero of the 109 patients in a comparable group of individuals who did not lose insurance coverage. Currie and Gruber (1996a, b) studied the expansion of public insurance across and within the U.S. states in the 1980s and 1990s. They found that this expansion led to an 8.5% reduction in infant mortality and a 5% reduction in child mortality.
The shorter of all that: being uninsured is hazardous—and worse—to your health.
Like John, I’m infuriated by the fact that so far, the GOP has paid no political price for the barge loads of night soil they’ve dumped on this debate, and on us.
Unlike John, I’m just slightly hopeful that this will change. The AP piece even more than the McClatchy one seems to me like a straw in the wind. (When you’ve lost the Associated Press….)
I’m probably just playing Charlie Brown to the Lucy of the MSM, but maybe, just maybe, Boehner and his merry band of locksteppers will find it a little harder sledding than they thought. It’s slow work, but it seems to me that the one thing we can do here in the media weeds is to keep offering the counter narrative—or rather, shout the real story loud and often enough to water the tender shoots we see in media coverage of the nonsense that is GOP governance.
Crappy metaphor. But hell – I haven’t even made it half way through my first cup of coffee.
*Yeah I know that’s not the actual quote. Pedants.
**That link takes you to an NBER working paper by Gruber. The figure referenced comes in Part 6 of the (unpaginated) paper.
***The IOM is the branch of the National Academies that deals with medicine.
Images: Jan Steen, The Doctor’s Visit, before 1679.
Egon Schiele, Death and the Woman, 1915.
Update: anyone care to tell my why I can’t get good line spacing on a bunch of paragraphs (both of the two block quotes and several in the text) and why the insert-a-return-with-a-doubletap-on-the-underline-trick doesn’t work? FYWP
The Post’s despicable stances are numerous, but they’re not uniformly right wing.
January 19th, 2011 at 9:18 am
TL;DR. Everyone already has healthcare. It’s called aspirin, coathangers, and ER rooms.
January 19th, 2011 at 9:20 am
I really think it’s a bad thing that one of our two major parties bases all of its major policy positions on spite.
January 19th, 2011 at 9:25 am
So is this significant or another Charlie Brown-and-the-football thing?
Bill Frist: Health Care Is ‘Law Of The Land,’ GOP Should Drop Repeal And Build On It
January 19th, 2011 at 9:40 am
The GOP line is:
Not that I hated America, but that I loved my party more.
January 19th, 2011 at 9:43 am
@gnomedad:
Doesn’t Frist’s family own a big HMO type organization? May be that’s why he likes health care reform.
January 19th, 2011 at 9:45 am
I have been very involved in the health reform debate on the organized medicine side and the appalling lack of compassion from those wanting to see this law repealed just floors me. PPACA may not be perfect but it is at least a step towards tackling the problem. Repealing it is wrong on so many levels.
Basically Republicans don’t want to see “the other” get anything, even when it makes economic sense and even when they are just as at risk to become uninsured as the next guy.
January 19th, 2011 at 9:46 am
No, Frist came out in favor of the law last year during the debate. I think he is an honest GOP politician who sees this bill, which contains many market driven GOP ideas as an overall good solution to our nation’s ills. Would that there were more honest members of the GOP caucus.
January 19th, 2011 at 9:50 am
Tom— I always want to steal your classical paintings for my blog, but after reading your posts, I end up associating their potential dialog with the topic you’re discussing, and come up blank.
January 19th, 2011 at 9:52 am
@CA Doc: that’s the entire motivating factor of the GOP. “Someone somewhere might get something they didn’t deserve at some point.”
Interestingly (to me anyway), this sort of anti-national-welfare ideal also figures heavily in CSA VP Alexander Stephens’ “cornerstone speech.”
January 19th, 2011 at 9:56 am
“and delivers less than those of our major economic contributors.”
I think you meant “competitors”, not contributors, here.
January 19th, 2011 at 9:56 am
A great piece. I find the GOP’s lack of seriousness about governance completely maddening.
January 19th, 2011 at 9:58 am
Maybe I’ve missed it, but why hasn’t anyone played the angle (which it seems Tom is getting at here): If Republicans are so concerned about “death panels” they should be FOR Obamacare.
The whole idea of a death panel is that some entity denies coverage to people because treating them would be too expensive, thus people are denied critical or life-saving treatment.
Well, isn’t that the system we currently have? And doesn’t Obamacare fix that problem, not create it?
Why isn’t this message being systematically drilled into people’s head?
It seems to me everyone that’s screaming “death panels” is just hunky dory with them as long as they are run by private corporations. But enacting a law that would eliminate those “death panels” and cover more people is unacceptable because they THINK it may lead to “death panels” somewhere down the line when Obama’s vision of the Dystopian States of America becomes reality.
Seriously, WTF is going in with our country?
January 19th, 2011 at 9:59 am
The double underline trick has been working for me in the blockquote. I just add it onto an already existing blank line and then it seems to allow the blockquote to close and include both paragraphs. I’ll try a quote from your post:
Alan Grayson was right: Republicans want you dead.
Edit: The above mentioned workaround for FYWP blockquote problems seems to have worked in this case.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:06 am
Wow.. it’s already Jan, and the GOP has come up with a lie even bigger than “A Government Takeover of Healthcare”
http://politifact.com/truth-o-.....alth-care/
January 19th, 2011 at 10:06 am
Hahahahahhaha!! Talk about adjectives that dont belong!
January 19th, 2011 at 10:07 am
@morzer:
This.
Republicans are Republicans first, Americans second. Christian, a very distant third.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:09 am
@catclub: Thanks. Fixed.
@Violet: Worked this time for me too. Didn’t before. I am fail. Thanks for the proof-of-concept.
@JRon: That’s a very kind thing to say. Thank you.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:11 am
per usual the GOP isn’t focused on what they were elected to solve… they ran on the platform on “where are the jobs?” and their first agenda item is straight from their playbook of distractonomics of going after something that isn’t needed. What’s next, looking at the reinstatement of DADT or focusing on Issa’s laundry list of imagined slights? I wish that these guys didn’t have such an effective PR machine that continues to prop them up when there are so many real issues that need to be addressed.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:15 am
@JRon:
Charleston Harbor was the Confederacy’s Katrina.
Or it would have been. With that attitude toward ports and navigable waterways, the CSA probably wouldn’t have lasted long enough to have a 1900 Storm.
Boehner’s mistake was not to mention that the teacher’s unions were against repeal. That would have gotten the Kaplan Post onboard.
By the way, the young woman is pregnant, and the jar the maid is holding is full of urine. It’s a reference to the belief that an expert could tell by the urine’s color how a pregnancy would turn out. By the time Steen painted this, some people still believed it, but it was considered little more than superstition.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:16 am
@CA Doc:
We’ve reached the Masada/Saipan Banzai cliffs stage of our cold civil war where a substantial minority, perhaps even a plurality, of voters would be happy to accept a lot of people—strangers, but fellow citizens, mostly, and inevitably some neighbors and friends, for some people inevitably including themselves, and members of their family—have to get sick and die, unnecessarily and prematurely, provided only that in the process, their ‘team’ can ‘win’.
Deus lo vult, or something.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:18 am
@JRon:
You missed the absolute icing on the cake from Alexander Stephens’ speech;
This while he knew perfectly well that descendants of the barbarous tribes were picking his cotton and making people like him rich while they did absolutely nothing. What’s a red state speech without some smug, condescending shit about how the lazy shiftless darkies should learn to work as hard as we do.
“And that someone isn’t me and can’t be me, because I, by virtue of being a Real American, deserve everything I get.”
The “heartland” is showered on a daily basis with rhetoric about how they’re the most hardworking, deserving people on earth, how they’re carrying the entire free world on their backs, and how everyone else is just trying to steal their goodies. But it’s instructive that very few of them seem to turn down federal money, federal pork, or their retirement benefits. As the Rolling Stone article from last fall pointed out, “in fact, their lack of embarassment when it comes to receiving government money is key to understanding what the movement’s all about.”
January 19th, 2011 at 10:19 am
@Wag:
“I think he is an honest GOP politician”
You mean the Bill Frist who refused to refute definitively on camera the claim that you could catch AIDS from tears, even when Stephanopolous asked him repeatedly, when as a Harvard-trained physician he knew damn well that his political allies were spreading bullshit? The Bill Frist who claimed to have given a diagnosis of Terri Schiavo from a short edited videotape? I’ll take “Politicians With Substantial Financial Interests in an HMO” for $1000, Alex.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:20 am
Republicans plan to pass a resolution directing four committees to draft legislation that would replace Democratic health care reform. The resolution has no specifics or timeline for a substantive proposal.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:21 am
@Wag:
Ha!
Frist makes money directly off of health care. Frist is a major shareholder in a for-profit hospital chain along with other members of his family. The health-care bill is overall good for health care providers and for insurers, so he’s in favor of it.
If Frist’s money were in some other industry he’d probably be decrying the health care bill as well. He’s a self-interested politician, not a particularly honest one, and his interests are right out for everyone to see.
Like any other GOP politician (and most politicians in general), he can see when it’s his ox that’s getting set to be gored.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:21 am
Tom, do you think we’re having an effect? I tell myself that we’re helping by presenting an alternative narrative (namely, the true facts) but I wonder if (1)everyone’s mind is already made up and (2)if we could possibly change anything when corporations have so much control over the political process.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:26 am
@Chris: You are correct; that is the icing on the cake.
It’s a disturbing speech to read today, since so much of his argument still animates conservative and regional politics now. It frankly amazes me how well-ingrained in the culture basic ideas about politics become and remain.
Think I might re-read “Albion’s Seed,” which takes that as its thesis.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:27 am
But they have a plan. Really they do. It will involve free markets. People can save for their health plan. Which they can’t do now. And the tort reform!
January 19th, 2011 at 10:28 am
@bjacques:
I completely agree. It’s why I find it to be such an anti-national idea. The same attitude was rampant on talk radio after Katrina, the idea that we rise and fall together was completely foreign to the right whenever rebuilding was discussed.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:30 am
@NonyNony: Ny Bevin was asked in 1948 how he would get Britain’s doctors to stand still for the not-yet-beloved NHS. His answer: “We’ll stuff their mouths with gold.”
January 19th, 2011 at 10:30 am
@Susan of Texas: I think we are. Case in point: Elizabeth Warren. Also I think the media scrutiny of GOPers is going to pick up, and it will in part because there are a lot of folks with platforms pointing out absurdities.
Recall that the press is not monolithic—it’s made up of lots of folks. Many of them—perhaps not a majority, but still, a fair number—still have a kind of romantic construction of identity around the idea of “journalism.” When you point those people at contradictions maintained by people actually in power, that works differently on their brains than when you point out that people seeking power are saying bullshit. The irony meters and the sense that those out of power aren’t that important reduces the incentive to dig more deeply into zombie lies. Now such lies aren’t just part of the political game, though, they’re actually being touted as the basis of real action. Some folks, at least, will begin to run with what are, after all, now consequential stories.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:32 am
@Dexter:
He’s not the only Republican with money in the health care industry. But for some crazy reason, only ex-Republicans are every allowed to come out in support of a bill that will clearly benefit a great number of people – Republican and Non-Republican alike.
Given that the repeal bill is DoA in the Senate, I get the feeling the House is just going through the motions on this. They’re going to bitch and moan and fulfill a campaign promise. Then go demagogue against the reforms for the next two years and try to drum resentment into another electoral victory in 2012.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:35 am
So they’re going to pass a bill to come up with a plan to develop a plan. Awesome.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:35 am
@Chris:
The new governor of Alabama is a Christian first, a conservative second and a Republican third. American, uh, well…
January 19th, 2011 at 10:37 am
Why? Or more accurately, never forget that IOKIYAR.
Let’s face it, the media lay of the land will be like this for probably the rest of our lifetimes. We can be outraged all we want but until the long arm of the marketplace speaks (I can’t believe I just typed that), we’re stuck.
I channel my outrage into not purchasing any MSM “product” and if I know something at the (com)Post depends on web hits (like reading something by the likes of Milbank, Bacon Bits, Murray, Kornblut, et al), I won’t click on the link. The sooner they die, the better.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:39 am
@Tom Levenson:
Nah. It’s a lot less romantic than that. The Tea Party lunatics who just walked into the House don’t have any real presence with the D.C. pundit media. They aren’t in on the cocktail circuit. They haven’t spent the last twenty years hobnobbing with media elites. The Chris Matthews / Tom DeLay bond of brotherhood has not yet been formed.
If the new class remains media-phobic, you’ll continue to see D.C. beat up on them. If the Republicans put up a new crew of media darlings to run all over the Sunday Morning shows, it’ll be back to sloppy blow jobs and ignoring the obvious contradictions we all grew used to in the ‘00s.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:40 am
@daveNYC: Well, not actually a bill. A resolution. Maybe.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:41 am
Except that Kaplan Inc. makes money off of the test prep programs and their craptastic online university. Only way that The Post goes down is if people stop taking the SAT, GMAT, LSAT, and MCAT.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:42 am
A friend of mine owns her own business and because she has a pre-existing condition, cannot get health care. The illness flared up a while ago and uninsured, she was almost wiped out by the bills, but managed to come to an agreement with the hospital.
Recently, she got sick again and had to be hospitalized, but thanks to health care reform, she had just gotten insurance under the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan -https://www.pcip.gov/. She credits this plan with saving her life, because she doubts she could’ve gotten proper care without it. Emergency rooms can only do so much for you, after all.
So let’s see…health care reform saved somebody’s life, most likely kept them out of medical bankruptcy, and saved a small business that was generating jobs. Win-win all around.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:43 am
Tom, I always really enjoy your posts. The artwork selections are so interesting and also very appropriate to the subject.
As for this subject, what I’m left wondering is why this theme isn’t pushed and can’t seem to take hold. By that I mean the “Republicans hate America,” “Republicans want you dead,” “The GOP is the party of IGMFY,” “The GOP is the party for children; the Democrats always have to come after the clean up their messes,” etc.
Certainly in the last 30 years or so this seems to be the case. The calm, sober Republicans of Eisenhower’s era are long gone. These current Republicans are a bunch of entitled selfish brats that don’t care about anyone or anything but themselves and maybe their very close friends. They’re irresponsible and not to be trusted. Why can’t that concept gain even the tiniest bit of traction?
January 19th, 2011 at 10:43 am
@Culture of Truth:
Thus fulfilling their promise to repeal and replace, just not all at once . . .
But what’s important here is that they have a plan to plan.
What I find most disturbing (and dispiriting) about all this is the complete abnegation of the concept of common interests. We now live in 312 million independent, unconnected ministates whose interests are perpetually in conflict with one another. The only common interest left is having everyone else pay (through the despised Government) for things for my convenience such as paved streets. We have become a nation of narcissistic morons.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:44 am
why should anyone give a fuck?
this bill is not going to become law.
it’s theater, and attendance is optional.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:47 am
I haven’t commented on repeal yet because … it’s too damn hard to take seriously.
This is fan service. The House Republicans know this is a non-starter. Repeal won’t get through the Senate, and even if it does, it won’t get past Obama’s veto pen.
This is theater. What’s scandalous here isn’t the repeal itself (or not just the repeal), but the House GOP’s utter shamelessness in wasting Congress’s time and America’s tax dollars just to give their base a lib-punching orgasm.
It’s disgusting.
.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:50 am
Waaaay too many of us—present company excluded, of course—don’t care, either.
A party whose platform plays to the worst in people begins the race half a lap ahead.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:51 am
Contrast the american system with EU.
...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobi.....e-12224375
January 19th, 2011 at 10:51 am
@cleek: The point isn’t that the bill is dead; it is that we have to change the way the story is told in public.
The Republicans aren’t opposing a “job-killing bill.” They are proposing to return us to a disastrous, economy and people killing system. They hate America, on the evidence, or at least love power and cash more than their country. We need to keep saying so—with the goods to demonstrate the truth of the catchy title.
I’m really bad at catchy (hence 1400 word posts). But it’s all part of building a frame around the GOP that (accurately) showcases the real danger they pose to my—and your—kids’ futures.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:53 am
@Tom Levenson: “God, Gays, Guns” is eleven letters. It’s got to be shorter even than that, whatever it is.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:54 am
The media loved the tea parties until the conservative elite turned on them. And the Republicans mostly ignored administrative abuses until Democrats took office.
Logically, therefore, we should get Democrats elected to office and when they continue or begin to support policies we hate, we should attack them vociferously. We don’t have enough power to change laws under Republicans but possibly we could manipulate Republicans into changing those laws. The media loves to cover Democrats eating their own, as well.
It’s foolproof!
January 19th, 2011 at 10:55 am
@Zifnab:
The probability of this happening is slightly less than zero. Their role model is the Divine Sarah. As the opportunities to see themselves on their big flat-panel TVs proliferate, their media-hobnobbing elitism will grow in direct proportion.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:55 am
@Davis X. Machina:
This is the really sad part. It seems that we’re so far gone that having people act in complete greedy self-interest would be a great improvement. Instead, we’ve got a bunch of lickspittles for the rich, powerful, and melanin-deprived trained up to gleefully Zerg-rush any nasty commie bastard who would dare try to give them the tools to improve their lives.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:57 am
The problem with creating a successful narrative is that the right has conflated our health care system with American Exceptionalism. That’s a mighty tough nut to crack.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:57 am
I am too, but not because rhetoric on our side is becoming more convincing. It’s because they’re in a position of actually having to do something now. Conservative “plans” are always more convincing to the media when they’re airy “think”-tank papers that only have to succeed in BSing pundits who aren’t strong on logic or reality-testing. Once the rubber meets the road, it’s much easier to see how they suck.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:01 am
@Violet:
This can also describe many Americans, add that to the fact that humans are creatures of the familiar, and the fact that wingers look like the majority of voters in this country, and republicans start with a sizable handicap advantage.
Or, Republicans have to prove they are incompetent, whilst democrats have to prove they are real Americans.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:04 am
@Tom Levenson: I think, in addition to their hatred of the idea that anyone “undeserving” gets anything, this is also a result of the conservative article of faith that government can’t to anything well, no matter the evidence to the contrary, or the evidence that the private sector does it even worse.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:04 am
@SpotWeld: If it’s wrong to wish that Frank Luntz catches Lou Gehrig’s Disease (yes, i know it’s ALS) AND pancreatic cancer, then I don’t want to be right. That asshole is a huge part of WTF is wrong with this country.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:04 am
The modern GOP would argue against the Emancipation Proclamation by saying it cost the US 4 million jobs.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:05 am
I love how republicans can talk sense only after retirement.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:06 am
@Bmaccnm: Yeah, it’s kinda wrong. But that’s the difference. Around here you get a mild rebuff, over on Red State when you say something like that about Pelosi you get modded up.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:07 am
@SP: And the freed slaves would be illegal immigrants.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:08 am
Speaking of those who loved their “party” first:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpoi.....hp?ref=fpb
Remind me how many of the good citizens of Delaware voted for this buffoon?
January 19th, 2011 at 11:09 am
@peach flavored shampoo:
You forgot crazy glue, alcohol, and lottery tickets…
January 19th, 2011 at 11:09 am
@Redshift:
I disagree. The base and the pseudo-independents see nothing, and any failure to actually make things better will be Obama’s fault.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:11 am
@ppcli:
Thank you for that reminder. Another sordid little Frist footnote was campaigning against Daschle on the latter’s turf, a first for a floor leader of either party.
Now they’re working together and planning to help states create their own healthcare reform plans. The always disappointed idealist in me should be excited to see these two joining forces for the Greater Good but the realist knows they’re just going to make metric fuckload of money off this.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:12 am
Their actual motto is the same as what they somehow perceive to be the central tenet of Christianity: Devil take the hindmost.
It’s their view of the economy. It’s their view of natural disasters. I’ve got mine; f*ck you. Realizing that those who have theirs are a dwindling percentage of the electorate, they work on hatred and resentment to splinter the rest, via Culture War.
It’s the modern confederacy, promoted by modern propaganda techniques and media. People quoting the Cornerstone speech and similar stuff are hitting the nail on the head, but pretty much any southern politicians from Calhoun to DeMint will work nearly as well. You can pretty much choose them at random.
The Other has expanded beyond black to include all other off-white shades. As the Other gets to be a big enough club to start winning elections, there needs to be systematic exclusion from the polls.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:13 am
It would be a blessing if the 650,000 old folks hanging on to their job for medical insurance could quit, making room for under or unemployed youngsters. My daughter is having a hell of a time finding a teaching job with the massive layoffs. When substituting she’s been told by many 60 something teachers that they are tired & miserable, but they need the insurance for spouse and can not quit.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:16 am
@Chad N Freude: The pseudo-independents are the base; they’re just Republicans who were embarrassed to call themselves that after Bush. According to polls, actual independents do seem to be seeing it.
But I was actually talking more about media narrative. A lot of the media are just lazy, not evil, and when it’s laid out in front of them, they can actually come to the realization that “oh, that’s what they meant! Wait, that isn’t good at all!”
January 19th, 2011 at 11:20 am
@Mart: Yeah, that’s the thing with the “jobs” lie. It’s not just that the reality is that people will choose to stop working rather than people losing their jobs, it’s that the result will be more jobs available for other people, just like Social Security enabling people to retire.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:22 am
@Susan of Texas:
I for one don’t think it’s possible to have progress in this country unless you crush the American Exceptionalism idea like a bug. I realize it’s close to impossible, especially now. Nevertheless, it’s true.
American Exceptionalism is nothing but the usual hubris that every superpower and quite a few lesser powers have, that their country’s on top of the world and so it has nothing to learn from anyone else. Countries like that are invariably picked off by those that aren’t too stupid to keep learning. If every idea brought back from overseas and every attempt to adapt to the changing world is going to be shot down on the simple grounds that “that’s not how we do it in America,” then in the long run, we’re very simply doomed.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:30 am
@Mart:
Exactly. We “old folks” are right at that point now….health care coverage is a huge factor in staying on the job. Almost everyone we know who had thought of retiring by 60 or 62 before the financial meltdown quickly changed their minds. Retirement accounts took big hits. Most people 55 or older have some kind of health issue, big or small, and would be foolish to give up the job with health insurance.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:33 am
@General Stuck:
This. It’s why in the last thirty years, Democrats have only ever been elected when the economy was doing not well at all.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:35 am
You need a meme?
Republicans = “Hope Killers”
As in, “The Republican hope-killing health-care repeal.”
Similarly, “The Republican future-killing health-care repeal.”
Or, to emphasize the regressive nature of their aims,
“The Republican health-care retreat.”
“Into the health-care wilderness without a map” sounds a lot like what they want, too. “Yesterday’s views in tomorrow’s news,” maybe, or “Brave Old World.”
“Republicans—they can’t tell baby from bathwater.”
How’re those?
Ed
January 19th, 2011 at 11:38 am
The Republican health care plan: AUTOMATIC abortions.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:39 am
@Redshift: And then there’s Fox, not lazy, just evil. With the exception of the LA Times and Rachel Maddow (Olbermann doesn’t count any more, having turned himself into a pundit), the media seem to ignore counter-narrative.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:44 am
@Chris: THIS! And don’t forget that American Exceptionalism was preceded by British Empire Exceptionalism, Spanish Armada Exceptionalism, Roman Empire Exceptionalism, Ancient Greek Exceptionalism, etc., etc., and so forth.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:47 am
Egon Schiele FTW. One of my favorites.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:48 am
@ed drone: I like “Brave Old World”, but I doubt that it would be meaningful to the majority of citizens. And a counter-phrase would have to refer to the economy, preferably jobs. Why not “The Republican job-destroying repeal of health care bill”? “The Republican debt-raising repeal of health care bill”? The word “repeal” should precede “health care”. (Can’t say “killing” for at least another couple of weeks.)
January 19th, 2011 at 11:55 am
Meme idea: “Spend and debt Republicans”
January 19th, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Since there’s evidence that the health care reform act doesn’t kill jobs, why not just say,
“Republican job-stifling health-care repeal,” or
“the Republican Party’s job-strangling repeal of health care,” or,
“the GOP’s step-back-from-progress repeal of health care.”
I think something that pins the foot-dragging, backward-looking, anti-progress label on ‘em is needed. Just what, I can’t find the exact, terse, to-the-point way to say.
But I’ll keep looking.
Ed
BTW, I think “health care” should be used, and not “health care reform,” since the repeal would directly affect care, not just the reform of same.
January 19th, 2011 at 12:47 pm
@Mart:
It’s an excellent point, and no one talks about it. The spouse that has to stay insured. It is absolutely amazing we accepted this system, if we want to be such rough and ready individualists. It’s constraining as hell.
It governs everything we do,is a HUGE part of every personal or job decision we make, yet conservative continue to insist we must accept this system or lose “our freedom”.
It’s like if we continue to DENY we’re in a system, we won’t BE in one. It’s magical thinking, and false “choice”.
January 19th, 2011 at 12:50 pm
@Susan of Texas: I’ve heard Bill Frist defending the US system on precisely the grounds of exceptionalism.
I don’t know if you can get it in the US, but CBC’s Ideas hosts the Munk Debates, a semiannual series of political debates. Frist was on back in June arguing in favour of the resolution I would rather get sick in the U.S. than in Canada. Frist’s argument mostly rested on the fact that the US does amazing medical research. That’s undeniable, but it’s not a complete argument. The debate is still worth a listen, since the debaters (including Frist) at least try to make rational arguments rather than spout nonsense.
January 19th, 2011 at 1:58 pm
@Tom Levenson:
GOP - Killing Us Softly
GOP - Killing Us Intentionally
GOP Is Trying To Kill Us All
GOP - It’s What Made This Country Dead
GOP - Is The Real Death Panel
That (which should be apparent) took about 40 seconds.
January 19th, 2011 at 3:24 pm
Shoter TeaKlanners:
Government death panels are oppressive tyranny.
HMO death panels that deliver healthy profits to shareholders are all-American free enterprise.
January 19th, 2011 at 3:41 pm
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
I do not accept this. I still have faith that The Village will burn to the ground sometime in the near future.
If only because it has to.
January 19th, 2011 at 3:56 pm
I can’t remember where I read it (I thought it was WaMo, but I am not sure), but one lefty pundit said that stripped of excuses, the Republicans simply do not want to cover uninsured people, no matter how (relatively) little it would take to do so or how much it would benefit society. I think this falls squarely into the ‘I got mine, fuck off’ camp. In addition, it’s always about the party and winning with the Republicans. My brother, newly ex-Republican (he was a Christian Republican), was relating a story on how a friend of his had said something about real estate (my brother’s field) that he knew to be untrue. He asked where she got the info from. She said the GOP website. He went to check, and, as he told me in wonderment, “They are printing actual lies on their site.” I said, “Yes.” He said, “How can they do that? Why would they do that? It’s not good for the country.” I said, “Because they are about winning and power.” That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. They don’t give a fuck about actual governing or about their purported constituents.
@Midnight Marauder: An optimist underneath it all!
January 19th, 2011 at 4:47 pm