No, what Matt talks about near the beginning of the article is something which has once again been on my mind of late… specifically the way that the hyperpartisan, biased nature of political discussion today can really grind you down to the point where you begin to lose interest.

At the end of this decade what we call “politics” has devolved into a kind of ongoing, brainless soap opera about dueling cultural resentments and the really cool thing about it, if you’re a TV news producer or a talk radio host, is that you can build the next day’s news cycle meme around pretty much anything at all, no matter how irrelevant — like who’s wearing a flag lapel pin and who isn’t, who spent $150K worth of campaign funds on clothes and who didn’t, who wore a t-shirt calling someone a cunt and who didn’t, and who put a picture of a former Vice Presidential candidate in jogging shorts on his magazine cover (and who didn’t).

It doesn’t matter what the argument is about. What’s important is that once the argument starts, the two sides will automatically coalesce around the various instant-cocoa talking points and scream at each other until they’re blue in the face, or until the next argument starts.

It sure can feel that way sometimes, can’t it? And every once in a while it gets to be too much. When this has happened in the past I sometimes went into a funk and simply didn’t write anything for days, or even weeks at a time. These days I tend to run a bit more disciplined schedule and choose instead to simply slow down to one piece a day. I’ll also change up topics from the usual beltway catnip of the day and focus on other things such as Supreme Court cases, cultural oddities or sports. It may not draw as much interest from the hard core water cooler crowd, but it eases the throbbing in my brain for a while.

I suppose what bothers me the most is dealing with the consistent hive mentality which permeates so many political web sites on both sides of the divide. It feels like you spend all of your time talking to drones, one after another, who are all marching in lockstep to the tune of some higher power of opinion generation. The problem is, you never really get to debate with the Queen.

And, as I said, it doesn’t matter which side you’re talking to. Right here at home on TMV I can be in an on line discussion with someone who was, moments earlier, happily agreeing with me when I said that Obama had handled the situation in Honduras pretty well. The next moment, when I criticize certain aspects of the proposed health care bill currently before the Senate, I am informed that I am a hopeless conservative hack who is clearly in the pocket of the health insurance industry and who cares nothing for the needs of the working poor.

(This is rather ironic, because when I recently asked my lovely wife about the possibility of going to Atlantic City with a couple of my friends to play some poker, I was informed in no uncertain terms that I actually am part of the working poor and the idea was out of the question.)

But things don’t get any better on the starboard side of the ship. I moderate a chat most weekdays which is inhabited pretty much entirely by people who consider themselves hard-core movement conservatives. Again, some of these people will be nodding their heads in agreement with me and singing my praises as I criticize the health bill. But then, mere moments later, when I mention that I don’t care for Sarah Palin as a presidential candidate or that Obama should be given credit for taking his time on the Afghanistan decision, I am informed that I probably voted for him.

(This may not sound like much of an insult in other social circles, but there it is delivered with the same wild eyed vigor as saying that I probably burn American flags in my back yard while dining on the flesh of aborted babies with a nice Chianti.)

At any rate, I was happy to read Matt’s article and see that I’m not alone in feeling that way some days. Arguing about politics on the internet anymore is pretty much like…. well, I don’t have a good analogy. The two sides not only have nothing in common… they have devolved into warring camps where simply being perceived as belonging to the other side relegates you to sub-human status far too often.

So… who’s up for some football predictions?

Mike Keefe, The Denver Post

This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction strictly prohibited. All rights reserved.

The day is here again, November 22nd. It’s been 46 years now and, for those well over that age, no less painful with the passage of time.

His death was the first of a president in our living rooms–the motorcade, the rifle shots, the disarray in Dallas, the dazed swearing-in of his successor that night, the on-camera murder of the assassin two days later and then the funeral with our eyes and hearts transfixed by the beautiful young widow and two small children.

We are so inured now to TV wakes with old news clips and talking heads that it’s hard to imagine how hard and how deeply John F. Kennedy’s assassination struck a nation that had been moved by his youth, wit and optimism, all gone in an eye blink and shown over and over again in slow motion.

The pain went so deep that, as a magazine editor, I published an article by a psychiatrist telling how he and his patients talked of practically nothing else in the days and weeks that followed, how JFK’s death had taken over their psyches and became entangled with their inner lives.

For months after that Friday, I would awake from sweat dreams of the motorcade, book depository, silent screams, slow-motion lunges at a relentless assassin, saving JFK at the last moment.

Such rescue fantasies came naturally to generations marked by the central image of “Catcher in the Rye”: children “standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff–I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.”

Holden Caulfield couldn’t save JFK, and neither could we, but every November 22nd, those dreams come back to haunt us.

Cross-posted from my blog. More about President Kennedy and November 22 HERE.

All Democrats and Independents voted Yes. All Republicans voted No.

Max Baucus flew in from Montana, where his mother is apparently very ill, to vote Yes. That deserves great respect and thanks, and my strongest hopes go to Sen. Baucus and his family for his mom’s recovery.

Debate will begin on the Senate floor the first day at work after Thanksgiving break.

BREAKING @ 3 pm ET: Senate Democrats have secured the 60 votes needed to move the bill forward to floor debate. Details at Politico.

Here is a live streaming video feed of the Senate health care reform debate. The actual vote on whether to let the bill come to the Senate floor for debate and amendments is expected between 8 and 9 pm EST. This live video will remain at the TOP of TMV until after the coverage completely ends. Underneath the video you’ll periodically see some links to news stories and blogs of various opinions on the debte. So keep checking back. And here is the debate at this moment:

12:55 – Landrieu thinks something are wrong with the bill. First she thinks the tax credits for small businesses are too small and need to be expand. She wants more tax equity for those who are self-insured. She is rightly worried about the possibility of premiums going up between now and 2014. She is against the current public option. She wants a trigger, like the one promoted by Snowe.

12:50 – Landrieu begins by praising Wyden and his efforts to create the Wyden-Bennett plan that she co-sponsored. She says she will vote to let the debate move forward, but her vote is not a vote for the underlining bill. It is only a “vote to move forward.” She said it is clear that doing nothing is no longer an option. Landrieu plans to “stay focused like a laser” on bringing down cost for small businesses. Landrieu is pro excise tax on employer provided health insurance.

12:35 – Cantwell makes a strong case for her basic health plan and says she hopes to work to expand it. It is not a public option but it is basically how the health exchange should have been designed to begin with. The state creates the design of a good health insurance plan (co-pays, benefits, deductibles, etc). Insurance companies bid to offer this insurance plan to all the people in the basic health plan program. The state approves several of the lowest bids and individuals can choose from any of these approved insurance providers. Read more about the “basic health plans” here.

--THE CONSERVATIVE VIEWPOINT: Be sure to check in with Ed Morrissey who has “an open thread” (which reminds me I need to pick up my torn pants at the tailor’s) on the debate. Here is a small taste of what is up there as this is written:

Update (AP): The big question mark, obviously, is Blanche Lincoln, but it’ll be worth watching Nelson’s, Lieberman’s, Bayh’s, and Landrieu’s floor speeches too to see what demands they’re willing to issue publicly for their support going forward. As for tonight’s vote, it’s sort of a free kick for conservatives. Granted, 97 percent of Senate bills that pass this hurdle end up being enacted (so keep calling!), but most bills aren’t remotely as politically fraught as this one. Everyone expects Lincoln to cave and give Reid the 60 he needs — read Jay Cost’s excellent easy peasy three-point analysis for why it’s easy for Blue Dogs to say yes this time — but if she’s sweating now, she’ll be melting down before the final winner-take-all cloture vote a few weeks from now. Notes Cost, “The fact that these Democratic moderates are actually spending time ‘pondering’ whether to vote against starting debate is a sign that they are very skittish about this bill.”

Long story short, tonight is low risk and potentially huge reward. If Lincoln bugs out and the vote fails, it’ll be a nuclear humiliation for the Democrats and will have a lot of people suddenly believing that ObamaCare is un-passable.

Update (AP): Stressing that her yes vote today in no way guarantees a yes on cloture next time, Landrieu says she’s ready to proceed. All eyes on Lincoln now. The Louisiana purchase worked.

–New York Times: A Holdout Will Support Democrats’ Health Bill
–The Huffington Post plans to offer updates by Twitter. Check HERE to see when and if they are posted.
–Crooks and Liars has an open thread.
–The AP reports that now that Mary Landrieu is in and all 40 Republicans will vote against allowing the bill to go to debate and amendments, the sole holdout is…Nebraska’s Blanche Lincoln.
--Nate Silver:

Needless to say, it would have been very, very bad news for the Democrats if the motion to proceed to debate on their health care plan had failed tonight. But I’m not sure how newsworthy this really is. The potential hold-outs, like Lincoln and Ben Nelson, are going to have much greater leverage later on, when the bill nears its second major procedural hurdle: the cloture motion to proceed to the final vote.

And there’s some bad news for Democrats too: Lincoln has joined Senators Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman in making a fairly explicit threat to filibuster a bill that contains a public option. Mary Landrieu, on the other hand, sounds a little bit more open to compromise. But this impromptu Gang of 3 — Lincoln, Nelson, Lieberman — could be a tough one for progressives to penetrate.

--Scared Monkeys:

Harry Reid obviously paid off the last two remaining Senators, as AP calls them, centrist Sens. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. Make no mistake about it America, that means you Arkansas and Louisiana, these two are not centrists. No centrist would ever have allowed debate to go forward on this 2074 page piece of trash bill. We all now that Landrieu was paid off with the $100 million provision on page 432 of Reid’s bill. Remember when Obama said he was going to change the way Washington, DC does things and usher in a new era of hope and change to the political process Inside the Beltway? Guess that can go down as one more lie as the quit pro quo payoff to Mary Landrieu for her vote can attest to that.

Landrieu and Lincoln, please do not lie to your constituents or the American people. Your cloture vote all but ensured passage of this healthcare bill that will subjugate Americans to a government controlled health care system.

–Daily Kos’ McJoan:

Of course, Lieberman could pull a Lieberman, and change his mind on this one just for the hell of it (and because he hasn’t been in the headlines very often lately), but for now there’s no drama left in today’s vote.

Now the real fight for a real public option. In agreeing today to continue debate on this bill, Lincoln vowed essentially to join a Republican filibuster.

For years, our medical system focused on the individual. The thinking was, even if only one life was saved, everyone should get tested. But the new studies show not everyone needs screening. In fact, too much screening can do more harm than good.

Dr. Louise Russell studies preventive care at Rutgers University. She says patients have to change their mind sets. Think about the odds of finding lethal cancer… She says patients need to trust the odds and not get screened if they’re not at increased risk — if they don’t, say, have a family member with cancer.

Doctor Otis Brawley is the chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. He disagrees with the mammogram recommendations. He says even if one life in a thousand is saved, it’s worth it… A lot of patients feel the same way. They don’t care about the big picture.

Doctor Robert Aronowitz teaches the history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania. He says it’s hard to change that way of thinking. But people can put themselves in danger. Unnecessary cancer treatment can cause anxiety and even death… Aronowitz says that applies to all kinds of preventive treatment — from screenings to drugs that are supposed to prevent disease.

There is reason for optimism.

Let’s first look at one of the questions Rick asked. Could we put 1.6 million soldiers in uniform to take up arms in defense of their country today? For the moment, let’s leave aside the politics and sociology and just look at the logistics. Yes, if the need and threat were great enough and our government could impress that upon the populace, we certainly have the manpower available to dredge up such a force. But we wouldn’t. Not for lack of will, but for lack of need. That’s simply not how we fight anymore. There are a couple of powers left in the world (primarily the Russians and the Chinese) who could seriously challenge us, but none of us have much interest in that sort of a doomsday scenario. The other opponents who we seem to express any interest in fighting are far smaller and simply don’t stand a chance against a full blown military assault by the United States.

Think back for a moment to the beginning of the current Iraq war. (And for that matter, the same may be said for the original fight in Desert Storm.) Yes, we did actually engage in a real “war” in the traditional sense of the word, with the government of Iraq. It lasted roughly six weeks. (And it only took that long because we had to stop and ask directions so often because none of the signs were in English.) We lost, in relative terms, only a handful of soldiers. The real losses we encountered came later during the peace keeping and “stabilization” efforts in the cities, long after we had defeated the Iraqi army and taken control of their capitol.

We don’t fight battles the way we did in World War II. There are no vast armies, moving in formation across foreign lands to charge into the fray with equally large masses of men. We monitor the movement of troops and armor from space and send in our high tech air power in advance to pound the enemy to a pulp long before the grunts on the ground show up. And forget about any fixed weapons batteries or collections of mobile armor such as tanks. We take them out with missiles, stealth fighters and Blackhawks long before the troops arrive. I say this not to denigrate the work and sacrifice of our troops today and in these modern wars, but as a simple observation. In open battle, our troops today are called on more to do “mop-up” work than to engage in any land battles with enemy forces of sufficient size to wage a pitched battle. So a 1.6 million man army would be more of a hindrance than a help in the wars we fight today.

We’re a high technology force, against which the simple, dog-face ground troops of most nations stand no chance. This is why they adapt strategies which many of us label as cowardly, running and hiding out of uniform among civilians, and fighting with improvised explosive devices. They can’t compete with us, so they adopt the strategies of the Vietnamese, the Somalians, and others who have found varying degrees of success through guerrilla tactics. For our part, we don’t have much use for gigantic columns of troops trundling across foreign lands in the numbers we deployed across France so long ago.

At the other end of the scale is the possibility of such a war with Russia or China. Again, it’s unlikely that massive armies of ground troops would be effective. Those enemies are equally high tech and would deploy hellfire from above on any such assemblage of troops and armor. Plus, there is the always extant threat of nukes bring broken out if things begin to go badly for either side. Destruction can be carried out on a far more massive scale than the death which can be dealt by a few thousand men carrying rifles. These would be far more massive and potentially world ending wars, but they would be fought primarily in the theater of technology. The idea of an actual land invasion of either China or the United States seems improbably in the extreme.

Now to the other major question: do we have the will as a nation? Are we made of the same stuff that molded the Greatest Generation? Again, I think the will is still there, but the threat would have to be real and understandable by the vast majority. Unlike the WW2 era, people are better informed and perhaps more skeptical of the government’s actions and motives. (Which is a good thing, by the way.) We don’t automatically accept the government’s call to arms and feel free to debate the issue at length. But if we were faced with an actual threat to our nation from a strong opponent, much the same as we drew together as a nation on Sept. 12, 2001, I believe we would rise up as we have in the past and do what needed to be done.

As to having “the right stuff,” this is a question which probably doesn’t need to be asked. Soft times make soft men. Hard times produce grizzled warriors. When the time came and it was “do or die” our forces would be molded into the warriors we required. Great deeds would be done, tragedies would unfold and the stories would write themselves over the ages to come.

But I don’t believe it’s ever going to happen. We have a few, big school hall monitors on the planet. If two smaller countries start a war, the big kids will condemn the action, convince the rest of the world to condemn it as well, and stop it from spiraling out of control, nation to nation, as it did in WW2. If one of the big nations such as the United States goes to war against a smaller one, such as Iran, it will be another case of enemies who slip away into the night and fight us one car bomb at a time in the streets of their cities. And if two of the big parties do decide to go all in, it will be a high tech war of destruction more than armies of individual men with rifles and grenades.

And more’s the pity, really. If we did have to face the massive scale of personal carnage that we saw back in the day, we might think a bit longer and harder before going to the mat. But the world has grown up and moved on. We just don’t fight that way any more.

by Rick Moran

The debate over “The Greatest Generation” and whether the way America is today could duplicate their stunning achievements in winning two wars and fighting through a depression while maintaining unity has been hashed and rehashed by far superior minds than mine.

But I just can’t help thinking about it after watching the History Channel this week and their excellent series, “Word War II in HD.”

If you haven’t been able to catch any of it, they will run the entire 10 hours on Saturday starting at 8:00 am central time.

Quite simply, it is the grandest, the most heartbreaking, the most stirring documentary series on World War II ever made. And that includes both “Victory at Sea” and “The World at War.”

TWAW is the gold standard – 32 hours of in-depth analysis of the politics, the strategy, the personalities, and ordeals experienced by civilians during the war. But it is rather soulless. It’s academic approach can be dry, although the images and words of survivors lend an emotionalism outside the rather clinical analysis offered.

“Victory at Sea,” on the other hand, went hard for dramatic effect. With the sonorous voice of Leonard Graves supplying the narration and music by Broadway impresario Richard Rodgers, VAS was a made for TV blockbuster that went right for the heart and kept the viewer entranced with its quick cuts, and snappy pace.

Other documentaries of individual battles (there have been a couple of excellent treatments of D-Day) have suffered from using stock footage that, if you watch enough of these things, you recognize from other projects.

But the History Channel sojourn into the past with “World War II in HD” is everything a good documentary should be; highly original, well scripted, images lining up with narration in an artistic mix, all the while marching forward with a pace that allows the viewer to digest the information and feel what the documentarian is feeling about his subject.

But it is the images that capture the mind and rend the soul. Culled from literally thousands of home movies – many in color – and long lost color combat footage, there is a freshness and even an immediacy about the entire package that has held me absolutely in thrall for the entire run of the series.

The technique is itself, fresh and original. Focusing on several individuals who fought in both the Pacific and Atlantic theaters, the survivors take us through everything from the home front, their battle experiences, the horror, mud, blood, guts, and monumental sense of loss when a comrade falls. The narration is accompanied by stunning combat footage – real “You Are There” images of mortar rounds exploding just feet from the camera, horrific sights of the wounded and dead, and always, the total destruction that war leaves in its wake.

A small example of the originality of the series can be found in the way that the narration will, from time to time, fade out slowly and the reading of the script is picked up by the actual survivor. It is an extraordinarily effective technique in that it humanizes the actor reading the narration when, after just a few seconds of the survivor reading, the voice of the actor portraying him is slowly brought back up, while the survivor’s words fade away. This is not a new technique but it it works spectacularly.

The music is obtrusive without overwhelming the action. Indeed, the music is used as a dramatic device to measure the pace of the documentary, mirroring the pace of the excellent narration (Gary Sinise). Beautiful editing builds bridges to each succeeding scene, allowing for seamless segues from clip to clip. A truly masterful job.

A word about the HD: It could be that they really didn’t have anything else to call the project, what with “World War II in Color” already taken. Shooting the program in HD is not the reason to watch it, nor is much of it in HD anyway. The films, as you can imagine, are grainy, and out of focus at times so even with an HD TV, it really doesn’t enhance the viewing experience that much.

All in all, “World War II in HD” is a triumph of documentary film making that should do for World War II what Ken Burns’ “Civil War” did for that conflict; bringing the viewer up close to the war while allowing us to get to know some fascinating characters who increase our understanding of the conflict. (Burns’ “The War” was good but lacked the dramatic punch of the History Channel treatment.)

And as the last scenes of the documentary faded and the survivors, now all near or over 80 years old were left with their memories, it hit me that the hackneyed question about whether America today could pull together and perform such magnificent feats of arms and industry as those that my father’s generation manged, needed another airing.

Strip away our gadgets, our scientific wonders, and all the cultural, economic, and social touchstones that make up America today and ask yourself; How much like them are we? There’s no doubt that we are quite different in some respects. But like Robert Graves, the great essayist of the World War I generation who saw extraordinary love in the sacrifice of soldiers who marched lockstep into the most murderous fire, is there that kind of feeling for America today that would allow us to meet such huge challenges?

By World War II standards, our military is tiny. More than 16,000,000 Americans wore their country’s uniform in the Second World War. But there is little doubt that our current military is every bit as good, soldier for soldier, as those who beat the Nazis and the Japanese. So the question isn’t really a military one. It is a question of character. The real question should be; How similar is the character of today’s American to that of the World War II generation? Are we made of the same stuff? Do we believe in America as passionately as they did – enough to put aside our political differences and unite to see the job through to its conclusion?

I have my doubts. The whole idea of American sovereignty is fast disappearing – or at least the sort of sovereignty the WWII generation believed in. Call it a blind faith if you will, or perhaps you think it small minded and childish to harbor such notions that sometimes, there is only one side to take and that is the side of the country of your birth. It’s called “chauvinism” today and is quite unfashionable. But without it, we might have quit in 1944. Without that absolute certainty that we were in the right felt by the overwhelming majority of Americans whether at the battlefront or the homefront – whether fighting with a gun, or laboring in the factories and fields – I don’t think we could have done it.

There are many who would celebrate this loss of faith as the inevitable result of America “growing up” or worse, the consequence of a government that has betrayed the people time and again whether it was Viet Nam, Watergate, or some other national event that showed our leaders using us, lying to us, or betraying the principles on which the country was founded.

And yet…

We don’t know, do we? As implacable a foe as radical Islamism, it can’t come close to the existential threat of Hitler and his thugs or the economic threat to our emerging commercial empire in the Far East by Japan. And remember, all of this played out with the backdrop of a national depression where unemployment was still over 10% and most people hurting economically.

I want to believe we’d be up to those kinds of threats regardless of about which generation of Americans you want to talk. I don’t think it would matter what era you choose, I still see Americans as comprising a specific, exceptional “race” if you will. There are national characteristics unique to people who live here that are found nowhere else. We simply couldn’t have achieved what we have achieved, overcome what we’ve been able to overcome (self-inflicted or otherwise) without some spark deep within us that makes us “Americans.”

The conventional answer might be that we wouldn’t stand a chance fighting a long war like WWII today. But one thing is for sure; if I were a foreign power, I wouldn’t make the mistake that the Kaiser made in 1917, Tojo and Hitler made in 1941, or Saddam made in 1991.

And that is underestimate the United States of America.

Rick Moran is Associate Editor of The American Thinker and Chicago Editor of Pajamas Media. His personal blog is Right Wing Nuthouse.

I love meat. I eat pork chops, thick bacon-burgers, and the seared fatty edges of a medium-well-done steak. But I especially love moose and caribou.

Note, especially, the medium-well-done. Sarah’s confident that those few liberals who still eat meat eat it rare, medium rare, or (for the snootiest among them) bleu. Moving on, from page 133:

I also trimmed the state food budget by keeping our home’s freezer stocked with wild seafood we caught ourselves, as well as organic protein sources hunted by friends and family. We kept an interesting variety of food that way. If any vegans came over for dinner, I could whip them up a salad, then explain my philosophy on being a carnivore: If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?

Italics are Sarah’s. You have to love the gratuitous swipe at that most liberal of all liberals, the vegan. I imagine Sarah’s spotted them driving their Prius’s on her not infrequent forays into urban areas outside of Alaska.

She goes on to explain the challenges of hunting while serving as governor: Hollywood pressure to ban guns, halt hunting, and save wildlife. For Sarah, doing the governor’s job while hunting and fighting off liberals and raising kids and “cooking dinner and washing dishes” (page 108) was no obstacle.

What Sarah is espousing is a proud Conservative version of the liberal foodie. From page 134:

People outside of Alaska are often clueless about our reliance on natural food sources. (You know you’re in Alaska when at least twice a year your kitchen doubles as a meat-processing plant.) They don’t use common sense in considering why our biologists need responsible tools for abundant game management. But as the ninety-year-old Alaska Native leader Sydney Hunnington told Todd, “Nowadays, common sense is an endangered species.”

So wonderfully clear and clean and natural. Can’t we just all agree with her on that? Of course we can! But I’m left wondering, has she ever seen a CAFO? And what, exactly, does she believe “responsible tools for abundant game management” are? No further word on that.

For the record, I’m an omnivore with retrovore tendencies. I ponder the difference between animal rights and animal welfare. And I, too, eat meat.

Via this week’s delectable doubleX Gabfest.

BONUS VIDEO: Fans gone mad…

I have frequently written on patriotism, “supporting the troops,” the cost of war as measured in “bullets and dollars” and, most important, on the cost of war as measured by the sweat, blood, tears and lives of our valiant troops. This, while Americans back home are not asked to sacrifice in any meaningful manner, and are even encouraged to “go shopping.”

My words, however, are woefully inadequate when compared to a powerful, heart-rending article that appears today in my hometown newspaper.

The column, titled “Military draft would end America’s two-faced patriotism,” in my opinion, eloquently expresses sentiments and emotions that so many of us have felt so strongly over the past eight years, but have not been willing or able to express.

I will share a couple of them here.

The author, Joe James Sawyer, who was in the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) 1st Special Forces from 1963 to 1966, writes:

The cost of asymmetric warfare is evident in the growing numbers of young Americans coming home with horrific injuries inflicted by improvised explosive devices. The lives of those wounded soldiers are shattered — they come home missing limbs, blinded, brain damaged.

There is no end in sight. For all these years, we have carried on a national debate about the necessity of these wars and the terrible cost they carry. That dialogue has been, in the main, dishonest and hypocritical.

[In all the wars we have fought in our history] [A]ll Americans shared the pain when young lives were lost or forever shattered in America’s battlefields. The rich and the poor, black, white, red, yellow and brown — all of us — knew the grief, the loss and the suffering of Vietnam.
.
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That is no longer true and has not been for far too many years.

He continues:

There are generations of American men and women who have no sense of service, fidelity or sacrifice. There are far too many among us who believe patriotism is to be found in waving flags and wearing yellow ribbons.

We are sending the same men and women to theaters of combat over and over, without relent. This simply cannot continue. It harms our country to do so. It cheapens any claim to patriotism by Americans who wave flags and profess to honor “our” troops while their children will never know what it means to serve the flag of the United States. Just as their parents have never known.

After claiming that others will do “the sacrifice of dying” while “the children of privileged Americans…are sheltered from any threat of having to defend their country” and while enjoying the right “to rant about the need to fight, to display their flag-waving courage and continue their feast unabated,” Sawyer points to the need to again have a universal draft: “If war is to be waged, we all must contribute; we all must sacrifice. Without that, we truly become hollow men.”

Sawyer concludes:

The time must come again when all Americans fight our wars, shoulder to shoulder on the field of combat. Only three things are required to make this come true: a sense of fairness, a sense of duty and a sense of honor.

Regardless of what your position is on the military draft, I urge you to read all of Sawyer’s moving words here.

– “Actually, the GOP has been the leader in starting good environmental programs in this country.”

Maybe, if you go all the way back to the days of Teddy Roosevelt. More recently, the GOP is the party of global warming denialism and opposition to environmental legislation generally.

– “Just as we were the people who passed the civil rights bills back in the ’60s without very much help from our colleagues across the aisle. They love to engage in revisionist history.”

If it’s revisionist history you want, you’ll get it whenever Foxx opens her mouth. She’s certainly old enough to remember that it was a Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson, who was largely (but not solely) responsible for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Furthermore, Republicans were broadly against civil rights, and in fact it was to a great extent their opposition to civil rights that flipped the South from the Democrats, who had long held it, ushering in a new regional and demographic alignment in American politics and paving the way for Republican electoral success over the next few decades, pretty much up to the present. It was only in 2008, with a hugely popular presidential candidate, that the Democrats were able to break through in parts of the South — notably Virginia and North Carolina — that were for the most part solidly Republican. Even with Obama, though, the South remains a Republican bastion, and democrats continue to have a problem winning over white men.

Did some Republicans support civil rights in the ’60s? Of course. A lot of them did — and a lot from parts of the country that are now solidly Democratic, now that the GOP has moved to far to the right. But it’s crazy to think that they did it on their own, or that they were largely responsible for it, or that Democrats not only had nothing to do with it but were actively against it. That last one is insulting, not just to President Johnson but to the many Democrats who were on the front lines of the struggle, and to those who stood with their president to change America for the better.

But, then, this is Virginia Foxx we’re talking about. We shouldn’t be at all surprised by her misrepresentation of historical fact.

(Cross-posted from The Reaction.)

Yours truly also predicted this entire economic collapse at least 5 years ago, but no one took me seriously. Prophets are never appreciated or heeded in their own times. However, I am not pleased that I was correct in my original assessment of Mr. Geithner 7 months ago because the entire country has suffered due to his incompetence, Wall Street Bias, and overall cluelessness towards the needs of Main Street and the vast majority of Americans.

Most politicians are quick to blame others (sometimes correctly) for political and economic problems but they never want to admit they were incorrect in any of their decisions or that they helped make those problems. Unfortunately hindsight is 20-20 and no one is clairvoyant except Madame Olga on the West Side of Cleveland. We all make mistakes – yours truly included – and it is better to quickly fess up publicly to those errors in judgment, change course and move on.

Too many politicians think an admission of error is a sign of weakness so they continue to proudly deny, blame others, obfuscate the real facts, and follow various stupid and discredited policies so as to not have to admit they made any mistakes. This applies to most of our elected leaders regardless of their political or economic positions. I wrote back on 3/19/09:

Many in the general public want some genuine honesty from their politicians. Some voters will always punish our leaders for admitting mistakes because they themselves are unwilling to admit their private errors either. However, most people understand all too well our human imperfections. But we expect people to learn from their errors and move in another direction after taking full ownership of their mistakes.

President Obama would not fare poorly in 2010 or 2012 if he promptly admitted numerous errors he has made while in office – while avoiding admitting any more debatable or obvious mistakes made in U.S. history to which he was not a party. He could then promptly change his focus and move on with renewed public support. That would really distinguish him from other politicians and gain him public respect. There has been sufficient time now to fully judge Secretary Geithner. The President can now point to the worsening general economy and public anger over unregulated massive bailouts of Wall Street to justify his decision to part ways with his chief financial adviser.

I can list a number of policy and tactical mistakes the President has made since taking office, and so can most TMV readers. One major issue today is with those who aare key advisors to the President in making public policy with respect to our country’s financial and economic future. There are many independent and highly capable individuals in the U.S. without any direct ties to Wall Street or prior Administrations who could competently lead the U.S. Treasury Department. Secretary Timothy Geithner is not one of them.

The 2010 Midterm elections are less than a year a way because of Constitutionally-fixed federal elections every 2 years. Mr. Geithner is eminently disposable for the good of the country and for President Obama’s political survival. So Mr. President, please admit some of your mistakes (most people will likely forgive you), and throw Secretary Geithner under the bus – or at least ease him out the rear doors to some cushy Wall Street position where he can do no more harm to the nation.

Marc Pascal – the ever ranting sage in Phoenix, AZ who wishes everyone a pleasant weekend.

With high official unemployment and unofficial under-employment and uncounted unemployed rates of 10.2% and 18% respectively, we have to create many new jobs – and fast. Tax cuts only help those individuals, households and businesses that have taxable income. Prior history indicates they will not have the desired multiplier effect on the economy when most will be funneled towards paying down massive private debts or into new savings due to overall low consumer confidence and an economy that is still mired in a protracted jobless weak recovery.

OTHER OPTIONS IN ADDITION TO A NIP

The one sector that can use money the fastest and most effectively is small business. Companies under $10 million in gross annual revenues and with fewer than 100 employees historically account for nearly half of our nation’s economic and job growth. They will continue to be the primary engines for our country’s future growth and global competitiveness. Large corporations and public bureaucracies have proven to be some of the slowest and lest effective entities in using public stimulus money. This nation must concentrate on creating new and expanding existing smaller enterprises to get us out of this deep recession.

SBA guaranteed loans are at a standstill because banks across the nation have tightened their lending standards so as to render the minimal SBA loan program to smaller companies essentially non-existent. This dire situation will not ameliorate until the Federal Government directly channels money for grants and loans to small businesses through local SBA development corporations and its many local assistance offices. It must also get retired executives in SCORE to play a greater role in assessing grant and loan applications, and mentoring the recipient small businesses. This possible nationwide program will be discussed in further detail in another of my future TMV postings.

Proposed tax credits to employers to hire more people is an idea just waiting to be abused and buried in massive and confusing paperwork. Counting jobs created or saved by the original March 2009 Stimulus bill has become a silly effort in fantasy accounting. The same would occur with tax credits which are expensive and circuitous means of accomplishing what targeted direct federal spending can do much faster and more efficiently. We need a simple, fast, transparent, and fiscally honest way of generating new jobs.

HOW WOULD NIP WORK

Many unemployed and underemployed people can only develop new skills in different industries by working on the job or by going back to school. Most of them also still need to support families and pay normal living expenses at the same time. The only way we can accomplish this nationwide workforce retraining for the future is through a National Internship Program (NIP) funded directly by the Federal Government. Here’s how it would work.

A public-private national Internet jobs bank would be created for individuals to connect with internships in public entities and private companies locally and across the country. A simple nationwide job form would be used plus all applicants would also be able to attach their resumes. All individuals who sign up for the NIP would have to appear in person to a state employment assistance office to verify their right to work in the U.S. No intern could be judged upon their credit history, age, sex, race, or other impermissible factors. However, current school status and dependent children would have to be factors with respect to their available hours. Criminal backgrounds would only be factors with respect to limiting those interns to certain fields.

On the same Internet NIP clearinghouse, governmental entities and private companies would list all their open internship positions with reasonable prerequisites. They could also scan all submitted applications and resumes of individuals to fill their Internship openings. Every intern would still have to compete for all open positions through personal interviews and their public applications. However the temporary internships would turn more upon their overall backgrounds, personal presentations, and future potential. Internships could be terminated at will by any employer but because all direct financial considerations would be eliminated, employers would tend to avoid terminations based upon economic factors.

PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP

Since there are only 1.4 million people in the Federal civilian workforce, most of the new internship positions would be created at the State, city or local level, or in private industry. The hiring public and private entities would determine what the NIP would pay their interns, ranging from $9 to $14 per hour. The hourly rate would depend upon the required skills, education, and experience for the opening, the particular talents and attributes of the intern, and finally the cost of living and unemployment compensation rate in their states and communities. Employers could also request up to $2,500 from the NIP to assist any intern to relocate to a new city in order to best match individual potential with appropriate internship opportunities. Interns could also be supplied with public transit passes to get to and from employment.

The NIP would provide cost-free workers to all public and private employers who decided they needed the extra help or those that determined they will need additional personnel in the future but currently cannot afford to train them. An intern would work for at least 30 days but not more than 2 years at any location. Interns would work from 20 to 40 hours a week, the work schedule being flexible with the intern’s school and family commitments. Any intern could be hired permanently on a full-time basis at any time by any employer with whom they were placed.

Some interns could work 2 part-time positions, and be assigned to several different public entities and private companies over a 2-year period. Interns would make important networking connections by working instead of receiving unemployment checks and food stamps. Their direct job experiences would greatly enhance their chances of obtaining future meaningful employment after the economy fully recovers. Some other interns might work part-time and start a small business simultaneously that would become their principle livelihood after the nation fully exits this deep recession. Paid interns would have all their student loan payments deferred without incurring interest charges until they were permanently hired.

TOTAL PUBLIC COST

If one million interns were paid between $9 and $14 per hour working full time, the total cost to the Federal Budget would run around $30 billion annually. If 10 million interns were employed under this proposed NIP, the total cost over 2 years would run around $600 billion. Compared to the 2009 Stimulus Bill, the Wall Street Banking Bailouts, the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Proposed Healthcare Reforms, this would be a modest federal expenditure to directly help 10 million people and their families. Furthermore it would directly create new economic activity across the country much faster than any other job or economic stimulus proposals.

Private companies would not be able obtain interns in excess of 10% of their total workforce. Enterprises under $1 million in annual gross revenues could get up to 4 Interns at public expense, possibly with some minimum total payroll being required. All interns would not be able to work at any company or for any of its affiliates if they were employed there anytime during the prior 2 years, nor could they be assigned to most start-up ventures. The principle paperwork for managing this program would be that a supervisor or human resource director at each public and private entity would have to verify the hours worked by each Intern to authorize the weekly payments by NIP.

QUICK, MEASURABLE AND PERMANENT NATIONWIDE BENEFITS

This proposed National Internship Program would be the most effective, efficient, and sensible approach to comprehensively address the serious systemic workforce problems facing this nation. As designed, the private sector would play a major role in determining where many of the interns would be assigned.

The simplicity, efficiency, directness, transparency, and nationwide public-private benefits of a NIP might result in prompt Congressional approval, particularly with the 2010 Midterm elections less than a year away. It could become the largest publicly-funded program that would rapidly reduce unemployment by directly assisting the private sector. It would also precede and compliment many other needed long-term stimulus and infrastructure projects.

Marc Pascal

Rep. Foxx is only the most recent Republican to push what is at best a distortion of the truth about which political party is responsible for getting civil rights laws like the Voting Rights Act of 1965 through Congress. TP’s Matt Corley, author of this piece, debunks the myth once again:

To support the claim that Republicans were actually the architects of civil rights, conservatives often point out that a “higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats supported the civil-rights bill.” But this ignores the “distinct split between Northern and Southern politicians” on the issue. When this is taken into account, the facts show that “in both the North and the South, Democrats supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act at a higher rate than the Republicans.”

The first of those two links in the above paragraph goes to a 2003 post by John Fonte at National Review Online. Here are the money grafs (emphasis is mine):

The civil-rights bill of 1964 was enacted with strong bipartisan and bi-ideological (conservative and liberal) support. But, the credit for the civil-rights victory has gone almost exclusively to liberals and Democrats, particularly to Senator Hubert Humphrey (D, Minn.) in Congress, and to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. However, much of the hard work of advancing the legislation was done by congressional Republicans — conservative stalwarts including Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois, Charles Halleck of Indiana, William McCulloch of Ohio, Robert Griffin of Michigan, Robert Taft Jr. of Ohio, Clarence Brown of Ohio, Roman Hruska of Nebraska, and moderates such as Thomas Kuchel of California, Kenneth Keating of New York, and Clark MacGregor of Minnesota. All of these Republicans served as major leaders of the pro-civil-rights coalition either as floor managers or captains for different sections of the bill.

Although the Democrats controlled both houses of the Congress at the time, a much-higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats supported the civil-rights bill. For example, in the House, Republicans voted for civil rights by a margin of 79 percent to 21 percent, 136-35. The Democrats’ margin was 153-91 or 63 percent to 37 percent.

Anything jump out at you about the states these lawmakers come from?

Yeah. That’s right. They are all Northern states.

Now let’s jump over to the second link in that paragraph I quoted from Think Progress. That link goes to a June 1999 piece, originally published in the Washington Times, called “Voting and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” (Emphasis is mine.)

… On the surface it would indeed appear that the Republicans, and not the Democrats as commonly assumed, were the champions of civil rights in the 1960s.

However, a slightly more careful analysis of the Civil Rights Act voting record shows a distinct split between Northern and Southern politicians. Among the southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia), Senate Democrats voted 1-21 against the bill (5%) while Republicans voted 0-1 (0%). In the House, southern Democrats voted 7-87 (7%) while southern Republicans voted 0-10 (0%). Among the remaining states, Democrats voted 145-9 in favor of the bill (94%) while Republicans voted 138-24 for the bill (85%). In both the North and the South, Democrats supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act at a higher rate than the Republicans.

The marriage within the Democratic Party of the northern liberals and the southern Dixiecrats had always been a strange one based more upon a common enemy (the Republican Party) than upon common ideals. In fact, when the 1948 Democratic platform came out strongly in favor of civil rights, delegates from 13 southern states held their own convention shortly after the adjournment of the Democratic National Convention and nominated Strom Thurmond to run for president on their own “States Rights Democrats” ticket.

While Mr. Davis is clearly correct in his assertion that Southern Democrats were staunch foes of civil rights in the 1960s, Southern Republicans, though fewer in number, were equally adamant in their opposition to civil rights legislation.

The modern Democratic Party owes its current character far more to the Northern liberals than to the Dixiecrats. If the old Southern Democrats are to be labeled as racist, then Al Gore and Bill Clinton are Southern Democrats in name only as their defense of civil rights places them solidly among the Northern Democrats and not with the Dixiecrats of old.

In the two decades following the 1960s, the now-notorious “Southern Strategy” begun by Richard Nixon and continued by Ronald Reagan led to an exodus of Southern Democrats to the Republican Party. Those were the Democrats who voted against the emancipating legislation of the civil rights era: the racist, white supremacist Dixiecrat Democrats — not the ones who form the Democratic Party today.

Her story represents the stories that I dread will become absolutely the norm and her story represents the stories that other women who are unhappy with the new guideline recommendations about breast cancer screening dread.  That, under the new recommendations, a 30 year old woman will either not perform self-breast examinations which otherwise would give her something with which she could go to a doctor and ask for more screening, or that if she does ignore the new guidelines (which argue against self-examination: “[the task force] discouraged doctors from teaching breast self-examination” – yes, you read that right) and go ahead and do self exams, that when they then go to their doctors and ask for the screening, the doctor will require some ridiculous threshold before he or she will approve or recommend the screening. And that even then, the woman’s insurance won’t cover it since the guidelines say that it’s imperfect and not recommended for women under 50.

That passivity will be approved and routine.  That women will not trust themselves to know their body, that they will not bother because the system does not want to bother – because the system is so concerned about the harm of anxiety and over-biopsying.

I’ve read the guidelines, the reports and the very carefully worded explanations written by people I trust and admire.

But I am trusting my instinct on this and I am telling you – disapproving of self breast-examination and suggesting that women will have to walk in with such a threshold of concern for what they’re feeling about their body absolutely makes me irate at the thought of what a set back this is for women – for humans, for patients – to be in control of their health.

And the utter disregard for the human toll these illnesses take on everyone around the one diagnosed with the breast cancer.

Anxiety sucks. I’ve been there done that for years with shadows on films and MRIs that required additional testing.  And while I have a “family history” we don’t have the gene – and a very small percentage of women do have the gene mutations currently known to be responsible for a very small percentage of breast cancer.  My Gale score isn’t high enough to get me into most clinical trials.

From the New York Times:

While many women do not think a screening test can be harmful, medical experts say the risks are real. A test can trigger unnecessary further tests, like biopsies, that can create extreme anxiety. And mammograms can find cancers that grow so slowly that they never would be noticed in a woman’s lifetime, resulting in unnecessary treatment.

Over all, the report says, the modest benefit of mammograms — reducing the breast cancer death rate by 15 percent — must be weighed against the harms.

Screening in the 40-49 decade results in a 15% reduction in fatalities? I’ll take that over reducing the harm of anxiety and overbiopsying anyday.

With such longevity, Sen. Robert Byrd embodies almost a century of American history that transformed a nation of backwaters dotted by big cities into a metropolitan sprawl with access to 24/7 knowledge about the whole world.

Byrd, a self-made man if there ever was one, started as a gas jockey and butcher in West Virginia during World War II, who discovered a taste and talent for politics by joining the Ku Klux Klan at the age of 24 and rising to the position of Exalted Cyclops.

His worldview then is reflected in a 1944 letter: “I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side… Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.”

Jump-cut to May 2008, and here is Sen. Robert Byrd endorsing an African-American candidate as “a shining young statesman, who possesses the personal temperament and courage necessary to extricate our country from this costly misadventure in Iraq, and to lead our nation at this challenging time in history. Barack Obama is a noble-hearted patriot and humble Christian, and he has my full faith and support.”

In his journey from benighted to Obama, Byrd’s finest hour came on the eve of the Iraq invasion in 2002.

Read the rest of this entry.

This is how health-care reform controls costs. It is, at its base, a grand bargain: The coverage expansion gets liberals to agree to, and even advocate for, cost controls they would never otherwise consider. A 6 percent growth target? A super-MedPAC — now called the Independent Medicare Advisory Board — that reforms Medicare to save money and whose recommendations are fast-tracked and protected from the filibuster? Hundreds of pages of changes to payment rates and experiments in value-based purchasing and coordinated care efforts? This stuff is very, very real, and it goes into effect very quickly. You may think it’s impossible for Congress to cut costs in Medicare and the government will just go bankrupt, but even you’d have to admit that this is what it would look like if the government was cutting costs in Medicare.

If this piece of the bill was passed on its own, it would be the most important cost control bill ever considered by the United States Congress. But you could never have passed it on its own. You needed the coverage to make the grand bargain work. Republicans like to call this bill a trillion-dollar experiment to expand the health-care system, and in some ways, it is. But it’s also a multitrillion-dollar experiment to cut costs in the health-care system, and it deserves credit for that, and support from fiscal conservatives. It’s easy to talk about cutting costs, but this is the chance for people to actually do it.

SOME NEW NON-DISCRIMINATION PROVISIONS

Some of the least controversial measures in both bills concern new limitations on discrimination by private health insurers towards those individuals with “pre-existing” conditions. Both bills require insurance companies to cover everyone no matter how sick, and in some cases they also prohibit discrimination based upon age, race and sex. The whole brouhaha over abortion coverage versus Viagra/Cialis coverage exposes some political and social inconsistencies. If readers determine that the proposals permit some other forms of discrimination, I would appreciate being informed of those situations as well.

Most annual and lifetime dollar limits would also be prohibited. But I do not know of all the other consumer protections and anti-discrimination provisions in both bills, many of them long overdue and quite laudable. They have been ignored by much of the senselessly disingenuous, false, vitriolic, angry, partisan and ideological debates we have conducted for most of this year. However, all provisions with respect to setting premiums will determine many important matters, particularly the public cost of providing subsidies to those who cannot afford health insurance.

The private health insurance industry has not vociferously opposed healthcare reform as they did in the past. Even with these new requirements of non-discrimination, every U.S. citizen and legal resident will be required by law to purchase private health insurance through their employers or directly with public subsidies based upon income. This mandatory requirement is fully constitutional but wholly unrelated to the states requiring drivers to carry automobile liability insurance. This will provide tens of millions of new policyholders to insurance companies paying whatever new premiums they are still essentially free to set.

Both bills will provide that public subsidies will pay for part or all of private health insurance premiums for individuals and families that cannot afford the rates that the private companies will determine themselves. Without a national standard for minimal health insurance coverage at a specified monthly cost, this might well become a financial boon for insurance companies at the public’s expense.

AUTO INSURANCE DISCRIMINATION MAY COME TO HEALTH INSURANCE

First, let’s turn to automobile insurance and how that is legally priced across the country with minor state deviations. The premiums for individual drivers are not just based upon a person’s driving history, but also upon several other factors. Most private auto insurance companies factor in a person’s credit history, their residential zip code, and sometimes income levels and unlucky involvement in accidents caused by other drivers. There are discounts for those who own their own homes (regardless of whether their mortgages are upside down or not) and renters do not receive such preferences.

Effectively automobile insurance rates are inversely related to a person’s income. The poor and unlucky among us generally pay far more for the same coverage as do wealthier and luckier individuals. To make such auto coverage affordable, the poor and unlucky opt for far less comprehensive coverage and much higher deductibles – all unaffordable in real life situations when an accident does occur.

While there are few published studies clearly linking how a person who has had a foreclosure is also a greater risk for causing an auto accident, insurance companies constantly discriminate on that basis and charge more for the same policy as a person’s credit rating decreases. Zip codes sometimes reflect overall income levels and crime statistics, so those living in poorer areas also pay more for the same auto policy coverage than those residing in more favorably-viewed zip codes, even though the factual linkage to poor drivers or auto theft is generally missing.

If a person is involved in any auto accident, even if he or she is completely not at fault, insurance companies in many states assess an “unlucky” surcharge. That connection is about as relevant as claiming a person who likes to eat bananas will more likely slip on a peal and injure himself than one who prefers apples. We may really need a national class-action lawsuit by consumers against auto insurance companies to rectify these massive coverage distortions.

POTENTIAL OVERCHARGING FOR POLICIES COVERED BY PUBLIC SUBSIDIES

Will future private health insurance premiums reflect discrimination against covered individuals based upon their credit ratings, zip codes and other unlucky factors? These are not clearly prohibited in current health reform legislation. If they are not prohibited, one can rest assured that insurance companies will use these differences to price policies accordingly. Since many poor people cannot afford health insurance already on the basis of current premiums, after healthcare reform is enacted, will those premiums be raised on such factors and will the public subsidies also be unnecessarily increased to cover such insurance discrimination?

Let’s compare two families, both with 2 working adults and 2 grade-school age children. The individuals are all about the same ages and both have 2 comparable cars, one is paid and the other is still being financed.

Family A has great credit as there have never been any job losses. They live in a wealthy zip code, and they have no history of any DUI convictions or at-fault auto accidents. There is one pre-existing condition in their background, a child with a congenital condition requiring more annual care than most other children but no frequent hospitalizations – only expensive treatments and medications. All the members of Family A are considered obese but that is irrelevant since they are covered under a Cadillac health policy sponsored by the most generous of their two employers. This type of coverage is highly favored by our tax code, essentially providing Family A with an indirect public subsidy for their relative good fortune in life so far.

Family B has lousy credit due to one spouse’s job loss last year and non-employment to date, resulting in the foreclosure of their home mortgage, and many other unpaid bills. A few months ago, while taking one child to see the doctor, they were hit by an uninsured driver and everyone required medical treatment that was paid by their auto insurance policy’s uninsured motorist coverage. A few months earlier, a neighbor’s dog bit the other child and fortunately the neighbor’s homeowner’s policy covered the medical and hospital bills. Family B has no pre-existing conditions and is in much better overall health than Family A. They have recently moved to a rental unit in a poorer zip code as a result of the foreclosure. The remaining spouse who continues to work does not get any healthcare coverage through employment. They also have not had any DUI convictions or at-fault auto accidents during the past five years.

Under a future healthcare reform, Family B shops around for health insurance but the cheapest they can find costs more than the Cadillac plan for Family A, even with far less coverage and higher deductibles and co-pays. The insurance companies all rated them higher risks than Family A because of their credit history, current residence, low household income, and those two unlucky occurrences. Family B’s auto and home-owners policies also increased their premiums as a result of their unlucky accidents, bad credit and new zip code residence. Fortunately, their needlessly high health insurance premiums for Family B will be fully covered by subsidies from the federal government.

The public financial subsidy for Family B would have been much lower, and the overall cost to the Federal budget for many more Family B’s would consequently be much lower, if health insurance companies were prohibited from discriminating against these poorer families across the country on the bases described above.

I strongly favor the public helping those who cannot afford health insurance. Every U.S. citizen and legal resident should have adequate health coverage – and illegal aliens and foreigners should be able to buy into coverage without subsidies. However, I am against insurance companies raping public coffers because they are not sufficiently regulated to prevent them from engaging in such surreptitious alternative forms of discrimination.

Whereas the annual out-of-pocket healthcare costs between Family A and Family B might be the same, or Family B might even be lower, the premiums collected may be artificially higher for Family B solely to increase insurance company profits – particularly since the public subsidies are based upon the ability to pay and not on the reasonableness of the underlying premiums.

FINAL THOUGHTS

It’s bad enough that our current national healthcare system is principally a bloated disease mismanagement operation that essentially caters to wealthy hypochondriacs. We really need an integrated healthcare system that fosters healthier lifestyles for all people and eliminates many unnecessary treatments, tests, paperwork and fraudulent excessive billings to our public Medicare system and private insurance companies. More than likely, we will have to reform our reforms a few more times in the future before we get our nation’s out-of-control healthcare system under some semblance of rationality or sanity.

I hope my concerns are unfounded but most of what I have read does not discuss or dispute these warnings on premium calculations. Left unchecked, they could easily gut all alleged healthcare savings under any final reform bill. Without some strict controls over how health insurance companies set premiums, the public will shell out far more money in subsidies to cover excessive private insurance premiums. This will further limit our society’s future flexibility to spend public money where we deem appropriate. Enriching private health insurance companies at public expense is probably not the wisest form of national economic or job stimulus.

Posted 11/19/09 by Marc Pascal who happily rants in Phoenix, AZ. Please note that I will discuss new job stimulus proposals in one of my future posts as I promised at the end of my last TMV posting.

The Telegraph headlines its story, date-rape drink spiking ‘an urban legend’:

Among young people, drink spiking stories have attractive features that could “help explain” their disproportionate loss of control after drinking alcohol, the study found.

Dr Burgess said: “Our findings suggest guarding against drink spiking has also become a way for women to negotiate how to watch out for each other in an environment where they might well lose control from alcohol consumption.”

Co-researcher Dr Sarah Moore said: “We would be very interested in finding out whether the urban myth of spiking is also the result of parents feeling unable to discuss with their adult daughters how to manage drinking and sex and representing their anxieties about this through discussion of drink spiking risks.”

Via Bruce Schneir, “Basically, the hypothesis is that perpetuating the fear of drug-rape allows parents and friends to warn young women off excessive drinking without criticizing their personal choices. The fake bogeyman lets people avoid talking about the real issues.”

On my trips abroad, I have rarely found an Indian restaurant that would satisfy my native taste buds. In the West, there has been a “curry” revolution and its impact has been the most in Britain. However, there is a growing realization that Indian cooking is not just meant to set your tongue on fire or titillate the palate, it actually mixes common sense with the ancient science of Ayurveda, gaining popularity as alternative medicine.

“Ever since the first British curry house opened its doors (the country now has an estimated 9,000 Indian restaurants) Indian food has become synonymous, in many minds, with the macho pursuit of tongue-bothering spice and fattening takeaway blowouts washed down with gallons of beer,” reports The Independent.

“Of course, there is another side to Indian food, and in recent years a small but determined group of cooks have sought to break through the stereotype.

“Monisha Bharadwaj is one of Britain’s top Indian cooks and an award-winning writer. Her latest book, Healthy Indian in Minutes, is mouth-watering collection of dishes… ‘The majority of British takeaways do not offer the best example of good Indian cooking,’ Bharadwaj says. ‘But you have to think about what they are. When they first opened, curry houses were catering to people who were used to eating heavy food with all its gravy, cream and stodginess. Takeaways offered something similar but with added spice.’

“But Bharadwaj says there is a growing demand for something different. I meet her in Hounslow, where she moved from her native Mumbai 22 years ago. As well as writing she now runs a cookery school in her kitchen. ‘More and more people want to cook home-cooked Indian food that’s fresh and healthy,’ she says. ‘They know that it is something different but they don’t know what it is because you can’t get it in restaurants.’

“Bharadwaj’s courses are proving a hit with everyone from housewives and husbands short of inspiration to top chefs looking to expand their repertoires.

“Bharadwaj is particular in the kitchen but that’s just how she learned to cook. Indian home cooking is governed by rules, some of them common sense but others more complex and founded on the ancient Indian science of Ayurveda. First recorded more than 5,000 years ago, the world’s oldest known system of medicine casts the kitchen as an apothecary in which herbs have healing powers.” More here…

Amazon website has this to say about Bharadwaj’s book: “People often see Indian food as greasy, fatty and labour-intensive, but everyday Indian home cooking is neither unhealthy nor difficult to prepare. Monisha Bharadwaj will prove that it is in fact a highly nutritious, gentle cuisine that has always included natural and whole foods such as whole wheat flour, raw cane sugar, lots of vegetables, beans, lentils and any number of healing spices.

“Indian eating is based on the ancient science of Ayurveda, a system of holistic living that is the oldest form of medicine known to man. Broken down into straightforward chapters – curries, dry dishes, light one-pot meals, salads and raitas, chutneys and relishes, drinks and sweets – ‘Healthy Indian in Minutes’ will give readers the tips and strategies they need to cook healthy home-style food in a matter of minutes.” More here…