Wish I had a set of these for around the house. o

This column by Bob Herbert for the New York Times says everything I’ve been trying to get across about the evils of fundamentalism, demagoguery and conservative denial:

It’s Time to Get Help

The wackiness is increasing, not diminishing, and it has a great potential for destruction. There is a real need for people who know better to speak out in a concerted effort to curb the appeal of the apostles of the absurd.

But there is another type of disturbing behavior, coming from our political leaders and the public at large, that is also symptomatic of a society at loose ends. We seem unable to face up to many of the hard truths confronting the U.S. as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century.

The Obama administration’s biggest domestic priority is health care reform. But the biggest issue confronting ordinary Americans right now — the biggest by far — is the devastatingly weak employment environment. Politicians talk about it, but aggressive job-creation efforts are not part of the policy mix.

And

We’ve also been unable or unwilling to face the hard truths about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the terrible toll they are taking on our young fighting men and women. Most of us don’t want to know. Moreover, we’ve put the costs of these wars on a credit card, without so much as a second thought about what that does to our long-term budget deficits or how it undermines much-needed initiatives here at home.

Definitely a must-read. o

Thanks reader Kristy for sending in this video:

From this blog post at Discover Magazine.

Nice! o

I got to go to this game on Saturday night:

This was an amazing game and well-played. There was a sizable fan base for El Salvador at the stadium.

I tried to shoot some video with the iPhone, but the wide angle lens made the players look like they were in the next county.

I did get this shot from the iPhone, which I love:

Definitely more fun to watch than either baseball or American football. Game was over fairly quickly and the action was crazy. The tickets were a gift from a friend and I think I’ll try to go to more Real Salt Lake games in the future. o

I love my dog. I hope he never dies. And never stops having strong opinions. o

From this @ response from wilberfan on Twitter:

Video is from a post on boingboing. Click here to read the original post.

Who could have predicted that Al Franken could discuss the issues with such a rationed tone? I’m not sure I’d classify the crowd as “angry mob”, but the blonde woman and blue shirt guy are clearly ready to bring some rhetoric and when they try, Franken calmly acknowledges their questions and tries to respond.

The emotions are high around this topic, but we need to do something about it. I know I’m not helping by calling the GOP crazy, but until we see similar videos from Republicans, I’m holding firm on the crazy assessment. Minority parties are invited to the table. Their are Republican bits and pieces in HR 3200. I believe that if the GOP really wanted to make change, they’d play ball. It appears the GOP only wants to have more rabid, inaccurate talking points.

Has someone out there seen videos of pro-reform Republicans talking calmly about healthcare reform? I’d love to see them. Please share in the comments. o

Still a little shaky with the 70-200 lens. GRRRRRR. o

I get a lot of email and backchannel comments when I post my pro-healthcare reform things and so I thought I’d try to share a plan that is sponsored by Senator Bob Bennett (R-UT) and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), “The Healthy Americans Act”:

The Basic Principles of the Healthy Americans Act

CHOICE – Gives Americans choice in what type of coverage best suits their individual and family’s needs and a choice in where they receive health care services.

PORTABILITY – Because the individual will now own their health policy, insurance becomes portable from job to job and individuals will no longer feel tied to their job because of health benefits.

TAX REFORM – Breaks the link between employment and insurance, giving employees instead of employers the tax benefit, which will strengthen incentives to shop for lower cost plans, as well as improve health care quality.

HEALTHY BEHAVIOR – Promotes personal responsibility and preventative medicine by creating incentives for individuals to engage in healthy behavior.

MARKET FORCES – Provides for patient-driven health care through market forces by allowing more transparency and competition, thereby forcing insurance companies to compete on price, benefits, and quality.

You can read more by clicking here.

Not bad. Why aren’t Republicans jumping all over this plan? Because they are nuts. This proposed bill contains the exact talking points that conservatives use when they whine about when they oppose the mostly Democratic bills.

Not a single person who has disagreed with me about healthcare reform in the U.S. has shared this plan. Virtually ever single person who has disagreed with me has listed things they’d like to see from healthcare reform and this plan has it.

Karl Rove likes Senator Bob Bennett, for crying out loud! He wouldn’t be our little lovey dovey Rovey if he didn’t try to throw out some diversionary crap as well:

Rove also defended the federal spending under the Bush administration, saying that, overall, nondefense discretionary spending grew more slowly than inflation during the last years of the Bush administration.

During the Bush years, overall discretionary spending grew at a rate in excess of 30 percent, according to figures from the White House budget office.

So yeah, here’s a bipartisan health plan that isn’t being talked about because the Republican party is insane. Don’t blame me, I’M OPEN TO TALK ABOUT THIS PLAN. o

Devastatingly brutal. When ideology stops humans from feeling. The other striking part of the Senator’s response is the logical dissonance. “Government is bad, but talk to my office and we’ll try to help you”.

Via: This article, “The GOP’s Health Solution” on Slate.

From a different Slate article with a fantastic headline:

“Republicans continue working to shorten and sadden the lives of the elderly in more oblique ways, too. One of President Obama’s first official acts was to reverse Bush’s executive order limiting government funding for stem-cell research, which remains the most promising avenue for new treatments of diseases that afflict the aged, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Clean-air legislation, which the Republicans defeated in 2002, has the potential to save 23,000 lives per year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Many of those victims are elderly people, who suffer disproportionately from cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses exacerbated by air pollution. Because emissions of carbon monoxide and such are merely a contributing factor, you can’t name the individuals who have died because of this policy choice. But there are tens of thousands of people who would still be elderly today if Republicans didn’t value the rights and campaign contributions of polluters more highly than their lives.”

Since Social Security was instated, life expectancy has grown sharply. I don’t know if we can definitively see causality, but it’s an interesting argument.

From the same article:

“Faced with an unpalatable choice between cutting benefits and raising taxes to pay for the growing costs of entitlement programs, Republicans gravitated toward a third alternative—restraining growth in life expectancy. If you want lower taxes and aren’t willing to risk cutting spending, you need fewer beneficiaries.”

Read “The Republican Death Machine: Who’s really pulling the plug on Grandma?” by clicking here.

The GOP is heading towards irrelevance by not embracing reform. Something is going to give sooner or later and this conversation will have to be had. The question is if not now, when? o

From the Wikipedia entry on fallacy:

“A fallacy is an argument which provides poor reasoning in support of its conclusion. Fallacies differ from other bad arguments in that many people find them psychologically persuasive. That is, people will mistakenly take a fallacious argument to provide good reasons to believe its conclusion. An argument can be fallacious whether or not its conclusion is true.”

From this starting point I’d like to begin with the biggest fallacy that healthcare reform opponents are offering. Something along the lines of this: “The Government can’t run programs well, so we shouldn’t want them to run healthcare.”

This is a fine statement on the surface (despite it being incorrect), but under the current legislation in front of Congress, the only thing that is remotely close to “being run” by the government is the public option; that part of the reform bill that says people can choose from many options but there will be offered a public option as well.

And herein lies the fallacy. The current legislation allows for free-market competition with more consumer-friendly regulations on private industry insurers so that there truly is a free market. If the government can’t run healthcare (or any other program), then why are you afraid of the public option? If the government is so bad, people won’t be jumping all over the public option, but finding the best private insurance they can afford.

Ah, but what if my employer drops healthcare coverage? Then you are free to 1) bargain for a sizable raise; 2) find coverage on your own; 3) quit if employer doesn’t pass health insurance savings onto employees. Companies currently pick up anywhere from 50% to 75% of health insurance costs. That total healthcare cost is hidden from people. Having the ability to competitively shop for insurance means you don’t have to stay working at a job because of the benefits.

The second fallacy that I’m hearing from my ultra-conservative friends (online and off) goes something like this: “Keep your damn hands off my healthcare.”

Aside from the ridiculousness of this stance, there seems to be some notions about the nature of insurance and the nature of societal and group contracts. First, the only way an individual is able to get health insurance in the U.S. under the current system is to be extraordinarily healthy, a good liar (the industry spends a lot to find liars, so you’d have to be really good to not get dinged) or to be included in a group by an employer (where the employer is required by the federal government to include you, regardless of your health history). So let’s say you do have healthcare. By it’s nature, you are already part of a larger group. Which means that your employer has to pony up if a coworker gets sick. But you also have to pony up, because while your employer might pay some of the increased cost over time, so will you. So you are already beholden to those in your group. Their decisions affect you. You are already in a communal state, albeit one masked by the notion that a) you have some kind of choice about the care you receive, although nothing like in single payer or private/public countries; b) you don’t understand how the current system works, don’t want to understand and as a general rule, despise the government you pay taxes to; c) you are a libertarian.

So under the current system, you allow your employer to control your healthcare and dictate costs, which you have zero control over, except to opt-out. You have limited choices under the current system. So keeping “my damn hands off your healthcare” means you continue to exist in a system where you have no say and in many cases become trapped at your job, because you are afraid to leave due to this horrible current system.

It is in the best interests of every single citizen of the United States to be for healthcare reform. While you may disagree with points of legislation, the system desperately needs reform and the conversation should reflect that reality, rather than scare tactics and stupidity. o