Linkage

I'm linking to a video of Sara Robinson being interviewed by Thom Hartmann about health care in Canada. Mrs. Robinson is one of my blogging heroes, and I miss her voice.

Exhuming the Lead

So the news is that Obama’s former doctor favors a single-payer, public plan, not just that he’s “against ObamaCare.”

Thanks to Southern Beale. Who noted that a significant proportion of headlines for this story indicated the opposite.

What Avedon Said

What Avedon said.

One paragraph. Nails it.

Yeah, Health Care Again. Deal.

Via pecunium, an article in the Denver Post citing facts about Canadian health care.

Myth: The Canadian system is significantly more expensive than that of the U.S.Ten percent of Canada's GDP is spent on health care for 100 percent of the population. The U.S. spends 17 percent of its GDP but 15 percent of its population has no coverage whatsoever and millions of others have inadequate coverage. In essence, the U.S. system is considerably more expensive than Canada's. Part of the reason for this is uninsured and underinsured people in the U.S. still get sick and eventually seek care. People who cannot afford care wait until advanced stages of an illness to see a doctor and then do so through emergency rooms, which cost considerably more than primary care services.

What the American taxpayer may not realize is that such care costs about $45 billion per year, and someone has to pay it. This is why insurance premiums increase every year for insured patients while co-pays and deductibles also rise rapidly.

The National Treasure Unsought by Nicholas Cage

Jon Carroll waxes cynical.

There's nothing like seeing rabbis being herded onto a bus and sent to the pokey to make your morning start on a down note.

History for Amnesiacs

Newstalgia, of the Crooks and Liars stable, looks back to the Kennedy Administration and a bill killed by political hugger-mugger. Parallels between this and recent bills not coincidence.

By way of Group News Blog. Which, ahem.

In Memoriam

Merce Cunningham, choreographer and dance master.

[ETA: Link changed to full obituary.]

Carrying the Torch

Avedon Carol of The Sideshow is on fire today:

And why should the millions of Americans who opposed the invasion of Iraq - because it was evil and costly on every level - have been forced to pay for that, too? Why collect any taxes at all, when there are bound to be people who oppose the way they are spent. War on Drugs? Abstinence-only sex "education"? War on (SCoPWUS) Drugs? Abortion is actually far less controversial than the invasion of Iraq, and the percentage of Americans who actively support Abstinence-only is small to begin with, while the dwindling support for the drug war from nearly every quarter should be giving legislators pause. Those programs are genuinely immoral and extraordinarily costly. But no one asks whether those of us who oppose them should have to pay for those. Instead we are asked whether the government should be covering abortions, despite the fact that abortion is legal precisely because a majority of Americans support Roe v. Wade.

With extensive quote by Jamison Foser.

Jill of Brilliant at Breakfast is also on fire today:

The health insurance model is somewhat about spreading risk; someone who is generally healthy isn't going to use as many services as someone who isn't -- and that can be as much about the genetic luck of the draw as about one's own personal choices. We all know about the guy from Supersize Me who eats Big Macs every day and he's skinny and his cholesterol is fine. We also know people who eat right, exercise, and still have high cholesterol. The 96-year-old woman who gets her hair done where I do who takes Celebrex, Actonel, a blood pressure pill, a water pill, and about five other drugs, uses more services than I do. The baby with spina bifida uses more services than she does. And so it goes. But the health insurance model falls apart when it becomes a for-profit business. Because once paying for health care becomes a for-profit model, it becomes not about paying for necessary services, it's about NOT paying for anything. The less there is on the "out" side of the ledger, the more of the "in" side of the ledger can go to profits -- and into the pockets of executives and stockholders.

[ETA: More on coverage denial and dropping.]

And pecunium is on fire:

A friend of mine hurt his arm while he was in England. He went to see a doctor (NHS is covered in the fees one pays to enter the country, so he was covered). The doctor palpated it and said, "I don't think it's broken, but lets do a CT scan, just to be sure." My friend said, "What, isn't that expensive?".

"Well, it's no good if we don't use it, so if it's free, let's take a look.". He had a minor fracture, and it was splinted up and he was on his way.

I had a kidney stone. They sent me for a CT scan to see how large it was, where it was, and how many there were. The place was empty. When she was done, the operator took a personal call for about five minutes (at which point I really wished I'd gotten another dose of fentanyl before I went).

The bill... 1,500 bucks.

For my entire stay in the ER getting treated for the kidney stone, about $9,000. It was four hours.

You Knew This Was Coming

This year's inductions into the Hall of Fame (the typoes today have been extra strange). There's video, but there's supposed to be some kind of Trojan worm virus going around, so I've temporarily blocked video here. So if you can see it, excellent. (I may also rewrite this later.)

I brush away a solitary tear.

ETA: Mr. Henderson with video.

Mr. Rice with video.

(Mr. Gordon was represented by his daughter.)

What's Wrong With This Picture

Southern Beale brings up CNN's, er, um, news commentator.

It seems CNN president Jon Klein got the network's researchers to contact Hawaii state authorities and get answers to the question about Obama’s birth certificate (apparently in 2001 the state of Hawaii went paperless). In an e-mail Klein instructed Dobbs staffers to

be sure to cite this during your segment tonite. And then it seems this story is dead - because anyone who still is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef.

Thx

At which point Dobbs promptly ignored Klein’s request to drop it, ignored the evidence the researchers provided, and went on to question why Obama hasn't presented every crackpot in America with a copy of his birth certificate.

SB also quotes from a letter from the Southern Poverty Law Center to the effect that Mr. Dobbs tends to inflate and exaggerate his data, when he has data.

(I reinserted the Media Matters link, which was originally outside the bit I'm quoting.)

I Read Driftglass for the Articles

Drifty explains the Critical Moment, why it is necessary to keep an eye on Chicago, and how you tell you're a Chicagoan. Oh, and there will shortly be a request for donations, and the comments under the posting are a mess.

First, the national media you and I have known all our lives is busy dying right before our eyes. Hell, it’s been dying of multiple gunshot wounds for 20 years (by the time "Broadcast News" hit the theaters in 1987, the disease that was eating the the bones of Murrow Journalism had already visibly metastasized enough that James L. Brooks could build an entire movie around it):

And as this very long, brutal drought brought on by a lethal obeisance to Wall Street values continues to parch the Old Media Savanna to dust (he said, awkwardly shifting metaphors) the once mighty lakes and rivers of revenue that power the entire enterprise will continue to shrink into muddy, toxic Fox New-ish infotainment pest holes dominated by gators, jackals and carrion birds.

Within that shrinking ecosystem, all Villagers have Big Media Golden Tickets, which means however breathtakingly God-awful, wrong and inept their work may be, for the foreseeable future, their parent companies will continue to underwrite their pernicious brand of piffle at the expense of real journalism and real analysis. Shit, their whole business model is based on it.

They ain't exactly taking applications, so no joy there.

Read the rest! It's tasty!

Maxim for Today

There is no lead so large that My Team's relievers will not at least try to squander it. (Walking 3 opposing batters in a row? Dude.)

Your World, and You Can Have It

1. Shark-fu illuminates the embarrassing and shameful behavior of the Cambridge police who arrested Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. for "breaking into" his own house and then raising a stink about their behavior. (They need more than sensitivity training; they need the "turnabout-other shoe" scenario, only for real, which they are unlikely to get, since, like the ticking time bomb, that's a contrivance of screenwriters.)

   Now, here’s what always happens when a charge of racial profiling-based ig’nance is made – folks will talk about giving the officers involved the benefit of the doubt even though they didn’t give Professor Gates an inch even after he produced two forms of identification in his own damn house proving that they were all standing in his motherfucking house…other folks will blame Professor Gates for getting testy while being accused of breaking into his own damn house even though he was being hassled about whether or not he had the right to be in his own damn house which he proved was his house when he produced two forms of identification whilst standing in his own damn house…and still others will defend the officers involved no matter what evidence is revealed because they think Professor Gates was acting uppity and uppity negroes deserve the wrath of the law when they let themselves get uppity about being harassed in their own damn houses and since when do they let black folk have houses, don't they know that makes them uppity?!?

   Also, follow the links included.
2. Margaret and Helen look at that Limbo fellow with a high-power microscope. Because he's so big.

   Let me tell you about Walter Cronkite. Besides being sexier than Rush will ever be, Cronkite was someone you could respect even if you didn’t agree with him. He knew the difference between news and opinion and was quick to announce when he had switched from one to the other. Each evening for years he brought millions of Americans together to know and better understand the world around them. He was a man’s man who wasn’t offensive to women – unlike Rush who is an ass’s ass who couldn’t pay a woman to respect him… and I am sure he has tried.

   (Margaret chimes in. Don't miss that.)
3. Report from Noli Irritare Leones on the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, 2009. (Disclaimer: I am a former Episcopalian. Not on this account, however.)

40 Years On

Today (Monday) is the 40th anniversary of the moon landing (Moonday). (My dad was picking me up from my very first part-time job and he had the radio on.)

But we should be living there now.

Trouble

Hmmmm. The blog has refused to load since late this morning. Glitch or Denial of Service attack? If the latter, is the suggestion of non-testable education all that scary or was it the reference to the 7? Which is a terrific train, by the way, typical of New York City, and we like it that way. Perhaps the Devil the Cato Institute cannot endure to be mocked? Closet Yankee fans?

This'll probably hang a while. I'll let you know when I know I'm back on the air. Meanwhile, Fafblog's still funny.

ETA: Back at 10:25 pm

These Things are Related

Angry Black Bitch on the space program and how it relates to the fight for healthcare reform.

I moved forward into a place that recognizes that sadly human beings landing on the surface of the moon isn’t an accurate analogy to healthcare reform…people had never been to the moon but many a nation has created healthcare systems that provide coverage for their citizens.

And I arrived at the understanding that healthcare reform is more akin to America sending a human into space.

The Mills River Progressive on the deformation of education.

What I don't hear being discussed is the fact that there are many components of the learning process that can't be quantified, tested, or engendered by a particular software program. That reality is not a popular one among administrators and politicians these days, and teachers generally end up going along with the prescribed paradigm - and whether it's just because they need the job, or because they still want to work in education and foster whatever creativity is possible, they inadvertently become part of "the system." And for the most part, no one in the public schools or in education seems to be initiating this badly-needed dialogue.

Speaking of Gil Hodges Citi Field

Here's Metsgrrl's guide to the N. Y. Mets' new ballpark. From a fan's point of view, including a video of the 7's approach to the Willets Point station. (I believe last time I was in that venue, I ate somewhere on Roosevelt Ave. between the bridge and Main Street and then took the Qwhatever in the direction of LaGuardia, but it was a long time ago.)

Damn, I miss the 7. Not least because it grossed out that racist fool.

Paul at Citi Field

One of the musicians who played the first concert at Shea Stadium in New York plays the first concert at the successor stadium--and was pretty good for an old guy.

(One of the commenters sneers that by reviewing the music and not the attendance, the writer implies that the stadium was half-empty. This was corrected by other commenters; all I'm going to say here is that I prefer reviews which focus on the music, rather than on the audience; reviewing the audience is lazy. Nobody goes to a concert to analyze the people in the seats. Now, if I could get the people in the seats to observe the same courtesy when the performance is happening. You have just dodged a rant.)

"Don't Get Sick" as the American Health Plan

Why we need single payer, via The Sideshow. "Public plan" bill has serious disadvantages.

Also, if you need a good laugh, Digby cites Maha on the Cato Institute's "proposal" on health care, found via Mills River Progressive.

In Memoriam

The NY Times headline says "World's oldest man dies in Britain." But actually, Henry Allingham was one of the last veterans of WWI (and last original member of the R.A.F.) He spoke forcefully about his experiences and against war.

And Tom Wilkes, who designed a number of well-known album covers, has died.

In Memoriam

Walter Cronkite, 1916-2009.

ETA: A selection of videos, via the NY Times via CBS.

Your Shoes, Sir, Are Honking

Found at Fighting Liberals: This cartoon.

Happy Bastille Day!

In Memoriam

Charles N. Brown.

Grumpy exterior. Wicked grin.

He had long left New York by the time I moved there, but sometime (mid-'80s?) I was having dinner with other members of the 'Boat in the Bronx, and one of them (Steve? can't dredge it up) was telling stories about Charles Brown and collating Locus by hand and dining in the same restaurant.

I think I told him at the next con, but I don't remember.

The Prevention of Justice Department

The Office of Professional Responsibility at the Department of Justice and how nothing has changed.

[crossposted by hand from Dreamwidth]

The Price of Health

Games health insurers play.

Single payer preferable. Public option if we can't get single payer. Seriously.

(via The Angry Black Woman)

Jigsaw

The Sideshow:

And it was necessary to use issues like race, abortion, and gays not simply to alienate people from the Democratic Party, but to make lots of people hate anything that was associated with liberals and liberalism. (Not that they aren't still racists or anything.) And we now have a substantial part of the population that is allergic to anything "liberal" even though they actually support liberalism. [Emphasis in original.]

cites Stirling Newberry of Corrente:

In the rest of the developed world consumption is taxed to pay for education and health care, in the United States, health care and education are taxed to pay for consumption.

There are entirely too many masks and mirrors in this game.

Which Reminds Me...

After Rickey Henderson gets inducted into the Hall of Fame (July 26), the Oakland Athletics retire his number on August 1.

When I first heard about the Hall of Fame, the players being inducted were guys I'd barely heard of. As I grew up and followed careers (you could still follow a ballplayer's career via newspapers and baseball cards), the names became more familiar, and over the years they kept getting younger (relative to me, that is; they were still old guys).

When Juan Marichal was chosen in 1983, I was living in a Dominican neighborhood. People there chartered buses to go to Cooperstown for the ceremony.

My parents, back in the day, had friends who actually lived just outside of Cooperstown, and one weekend I went with them (the parents, that is). It was an odd house; I think I took pictures, but if so they're in the box with the shots of the World Trade Center, and I'm still not up to looking at those. The Sunday of that weekend, Dad drove us all to Cooperstown proper, and we parked somewhere and walked (this was before the diabetes and the neuropathy and the arthritis and we strolled everywhere, and in fact, this drive and walk has turned up a couple of times in dreams) to the Hall of Fame.

Where I turned into an obnoxious monster. Well, no. But the baseball fanatic GOSHWOW was rolling off me in waves. Did I mention that when we moved in 1965 we somehow ended up with the phone number of a Famous Retired Ballplayer? He's in the Hall. (When I say "in the Hall" I mean "has a plaque." Pete Rose's accomplishments are mentioned and there was, if I remember correctly, a huge picture of him, but he doesn't have a plaque.) Lots of players that I had actually followed from their rookie years on were honored. Equipment one could actually touch.

Museum foot eventually intervened, but not before I got to utterly horrify my mother by squealing and becoming generally incoherent over an exhibit on the National League playoffs in 1959. Dodgers v. Braves (who were then in Milwaukee). I had managed to see one of those games on TV. I was probably not supposed to be up that late.

Rickey Henderson was a baby then.

(Yeah, now they're younger relative to me, and they're younger.)

Anyway, maybe he'll stick around and give some of the A's base-stealing tips. They need them.

In other baseball-related news, Jonathan Sanchez of the San Francisco Giants pitched the year's first no-hitter.

The Invisible Half

Pointing you to Tigerbeatdown's slash-and-burn of Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts Into Air. Bravo! Excerpt:

You also note, in your book's only indexed discussion of feminism, that "Jacobs never uses expressions like 'feminism' or 'women's rights' - in 1960 there were few words that were remoter from current concerns." Again: in 1960? Really? Feminism was gaining critical momentum at that point. In France, The Second Sex had been published. In America, The Feminine Mystique would shortly be published. 1960 was a liminal time. Some middle-class women in the 1950s embraced the privilege of not working - maybe because their mothers had to work during the Depression, or maybe because they'd had to work during the 1940s - but lots of them were starting to realize that this "privilege" was, in fact, limiting their potential and driving them crazy. Women who had enjoyed working in the 1940s, and were pushed out of the public sphere due to all the returning men who wanted their jobs back, had many years of built-up resentment that they were ready to unleash. Feminism may not have been hugely visible, but it was happening. Still: just because it was liminal, underground, not visible to men, does not mean it was at all "remote" from the "current concerns" of women. And even if we define the first visible wave of feminism as having ended in 1920, with the vote (which it really didn't - folks like Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman continued to work long after it had been obtained), it was still less than 40 years in the past. Again: this might be a nitpick, or it might just be that your historical reckoning is faulty.

And yes, it's an old book. It's still being cited.

ETA: Posting deleted. Probably should delete this post. I'll see how I feel in the morning.

Odds and Ends

1. A different take on the Michael Jackson memorial service, from Noli Irritare Leones:

   Is the fuss over MJ’s death frivolous? I have mixed feelings. Yes, there’s something off about our investment in celebrities, the way we idolize them, then tear them down, then idolize them again. I see Paris, I see France, I see Britney’s underpants. And it’s the ruin of some of them, people who have gifts for entertainment, but not for surviving the public eye. Who can’t live with either the intrusion into privacy, or the lack of normal limits, or both. I cheered, like a lot of people, at that Youtube video of the news anchor who refused repeatedly to read (and finally burned) her script when she saw that the lead story was about the doings of Paris Hilton. And I certainly don’t want to lose sight of, say, news about Iran, or Honduras, or what’s happening to the Uighurs in China, to devour every detail of gossip about the last moments of MJ’s life.

2. An examination of Sarah Palin's appeal, from Fetch Me My Axe:

   Because what this article [at The Moderate Voice] doesn't say explicitly, although it's clearly there in the allusion to Nixon's well-known anti-Semitism: the resentment in question isn't just about being relatively "have-not." It's about people who think that they -deserve- to be, not just living well, but -on top-, and--for some reason--aren't. Hence the railing at both the Powers and Principalities and at "freaks" and assorted minorities who are taking their rightful pottage away from them. Hence the rather sig heilish zeitgeist at the McCain/Palin rallies (and in the post-election Tea Parties and so forth). Hence, a lot of us feeling just a tad wary of these people.

3. A meditation on St. Louis' pre-All-Star Game spiffing up, from Angry Black Bitch:

   On the other hand, a bitch is rather surprised that the city even noticed all the areas they are now targeting with amazing accuracy. I almost hoped that all those broken windows in all the abandoned buildings were there because the right people weren’t aware of them…that the layers of filth on the street had not been attended to because most folks don’t walk around downtown St. Louis to notice…and that the trash and neck high weed/grass lining highway 70 was the result of the bad economy coupled with no one wanting to take responsibility.
   
   But a bitch was wrong!
   
   No way in hell my ass was right because St. Louis city got their clean on too swiftly with too much accuracy…much like this bitch does when someone says they’re going to drop by the house.

4. Also, Coca-Cola in Japan tastes funny:

   After drinking half a bottle of Japanese Coca-Cola, I realize this is the first food item that I am going to miss from the U.S. The Japanese version doesn't taste the same. It has sugar, but somehow manages to leave an aspartame like flavor in my mouth.

   Disclaimer: Consuming is a former neighbor, and that comment is from me.

In Memoriam

General Bela Kiraly and Vasily Aksionov.

I was raised to be anti-Communist, and it's not a system I favor as a system, but I don't have the reflexive horror and hatred that people on the "right" have.

91

My dad would have been 91 today.

It also happens to be Robert Heinlein's birthday. I wonder if Dad was aware of that particular coincidence.

Ringo Starr is 69. [ETA: Top 10 Ringo Starr Drum Tracks]

History's Jigsaw

From Amygdala, links to and excerpts from transcripts of the Nixon tapes concerning Vietnam War funding.

(Yeah, well, not having learned from previous wars does not help in learning from current ones.)

Also, Amygdala runs excerpts from Vanity Fair's long article from last year on the making of the Internet. Not a libertarian fairy tale.

All-Star Roster

National and American League All-Star Game Rosters are up. Several years ago, almost everyone I voted for ended up on the disabled list; this year I voted on the website at the last minute and only six of my choices made it, which gives them only a week to get injured or sick.

Teixeira, Longoria, Youkilis, Suzuki, Beltran, Pujols, I'm talking about you.

Oy.

The really annoying thing is having essay-like thoughts All Bloody Day (a bunch of us ended up at the Jazz Festival, which didn't seem to have much jazz, but there was a swing dancing area that would have horrified persons from the '40s. Beginning with women in *gasp* pants) right until sitting down in front of the keyboard. Where they evaporate.

More Music, More Music, More Music

There was a charming article in the Los Angeles Times about barbershop quartets and the youth movement, but my last attempt to link to it crashed Safari. And now I'm getting an empty page. Oh well.

There's a radio program at WFUV I enjoyed: The Group Harmony Review. It features vocal group harmony groups from the '40s and '50s, mostly classed as R 'n' B. What some folks refer to as "doo-wop." Barbershop quartets didn't do "doo-wop." (That may be a rule.)

Except for Billy Joel, rock's doo-wop roots seem to have been...disappeared. Boyz II Men revived the style in the '90s, but that didn't last. (And they covered the classic "In the Still of the Night.") Which is odd, considering that group harmony filled the hours not occupied with Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, and Little Richard, and the later teen idols.

Anyway. One of the younger barbershoppers was talking about updating the sound to the '50s and '60s and maybe later. (Got it! And there's video!)

I suppose mentioning the Temptations would probably constitute cheating, as would mentioning the Miracles, the Beatles, Sam and Dave, or Journey. Or even Crosby, Stills & Nash (& sometimes Young). (OC Times seems to have discovered the Drifters...)

Never Forget

Tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of San Francisco's "Bloody Thursday," which led to a general strike and realization of unions' power.

In Memoriam

CompuServe.

(No. But I had friends who did.)

Two Things

1. The Medium Lobster exercises that talent for les mots plusieurs extravagants:

   But one can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, burning the crockery, setting the kitchen on fire, firebombing the restaurant and summarily executing the survivors.

2. If Ray Bradbury were writing it now, The Illustrated Man would have to be The Illustrated Populace of a Small City.

In Memoriam

Karl Malden, 97.

ETA: Mollie Sugden.