The Secret Anti-Medicaid Plan

Republic of T on the coming Republican attack on [whatever your state calls] Medicaid:

Forewarned is forearmed. Here’s what you need to know about Medicare and the Ryan/GOP Budget.

1. Medicaid is not the problem. It’s part of a larger health care cost problem.
2. Medicaid is not “just a program for poor people.” It’s also important to most middle- and working-class Americans.
3. The Republican cuts to Medicaid don’t lower health care costs. They shift costs to poor, elderly, middle- and working-class Americans.
4. The Republican cuts to Medicaid are just as unpopular as the Republican cuts to Medicare. Democrats compromise with Republicans on Medicaid cuts at their peril.

I was ruminating on a post I'd seen from someone in the UK, who was writing to a politician who wanted to introduce American-style competition to health care. "Poisonous nonsense" is the kindest thing written.

And it occurred to me that it matters what one fears the most.  If one fears that someone, sometime, will take advantage of others (I'd put scare quotes there, but only ironic quotes are available at the moment), one supports making it as difficult as possible if any opportunity exists.  (I don't think I'm the only one to notice that most cases of Medicare/Medicaid fraud are on the medical side, not on the patient side.)  If one fears that someone, sometime, will be denied medical care and therefore die on the streets --

Y'know, I know what side I take.

So,

I was thinking in the shower this morning about the deficit, the wars, why the Chinese haven't called in their money, the steady impoverishing of the middle and lower classes, corporate vultures (it's a technical term), and the zombie apocalypse.

But then my brain got eaten.

Pointing the Finger

Driftglass is Rude about Those Who Lied Us Into War (but wouldn't go themselves) Thereby Dishonoring the Flag and Our Armed Forces.

Southern Beale Has Moved...

but she's still calling out those liars:

Okay, get your shit together Dems, because the right wing is at it again. They’ve started spreading the tax lie again — I mean seriously, check your calendars, we’re heading into a presidential election, right? This shit happens like clockwork. And right on schedule we have the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal opinion page, never a bastion of truth and honesty, doing some pretty galling numbers-fudging so they can scream in a headline that Obama wants to raise the top tax rate to 62%. It’s preposterous, of course: our current top tax rate is 35%, and the idea that Democrats would double that is just a fear ploy. But it’s also extremely dishonest.

In Memoriam

Gil Scott-Heron, musician and poet.

(via skippy, although a different obit)

Some Tea Partiers Develop Seriosity

Via Avedon Carol,

Supporters of the Wabash Valley Tea Party movement are questioning a recent Indiana Supreme Court decision that states Hoosiers have no right to reasonably resist unlawful entry of their homes by police officers.

Just as Count Dooku predicted!  You think they noticed?  It's a state decision, not the US Supreme Court decision, but it's a start.

Oh, And...

Driftglass on Empah and Media.  (He does invective better than I do.)  With bonus Untouchables trailer.

1. Folks at Fanaticon 2, at Daisy's Dead Air.

2. Our preoccupation with food has eclipsed our ability to see the alleged Obesity Horror from any other perspective. It must be something we’re eating; ergo, it must be an individual problem caused by individual behavior, accountable to individuals. But what if it’s not?

   "So Michel Foucault and Jeremy Bentham walk into an elementary school cafeteria," via Blackamazon via Angry Black Tumblr.
   

Another Stethoscope

At Crooked Timber, Chris Bertram also puts quotation marks around the "left" and discusses the larger divisions within the tendency opposed to conservatism.

Moreover in policy terms, in power, the current constituted by Hutton’s “European left” don’t act all that differently from the neoliberal right anyway. In short, calls like Hutton’s are hopeless because the differences of policy and principle at the heart of the so-called left are now so deep that an alliance is all but unsustainable. That might look like a bad thing, but I’m not so sure. Assuming that what we care about is to change the way the world is, the elite, quasi-neoliberal “left” has a spectacular record of failure since the mid 1970s. This goes for the US as well, where Democratic adminstrations (featuring people such as Larry Summers in key roles) have done little or nothing for ordinary people. Given the failures of that current, there is less reason than ever for the rest of us to line up loyally behind them for fear of getting something worse. [...]

[...] Once it was possible for people on the left to pretend that differences among us were primarily about means. We all shared the same sort of egalitarian, science-fictiony, abundancy, holding hands, economic democracy vision of the far-off future, but some people were more committed to electoral persuasion than others. (I realise there was a great deal of dishonesty, self-deception, wishful thinking and delusion about that pretence, but it had some kind of reality.) Now the overt differences of aim and value between various currents calling themselves “left” are deep and irreconcilable.

Examples given are mostly British, but I'm sure there are analogous American political alignments.

Via my Network page at Dreamwidth.

Badness, Florida Division

And what isn't being reported on.

But Rick Scott doesn't give a rat's ass what the voters want. Now that he's safely ensconced in office, and now that his approval ratings are plummeting as those in Florida who participated in voting-by-tantrum last year realize just what they've done, it's imperative for him to shore up his power by making sure he can't be voted out.

[...]

But why should the media report how our representative democracy is being taken away from us? Newt Gingrich said something stupid again, there's a high profile rape case in New York, and who knows -- perhaps Lindsey Lohan will act up again.

Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast, ladies and gentlemen.

Oh, And...

Bob Somerby zaps the press:

Trump and Gingrich are a pair of buffoons—but Matthews makes three. Indeed, buffoonism is the controlling norm in American public discussion. It has been the norm for a very long time, with clowns like Matthews leading the way. But careerists in the “liberal” camp have refused to notice this fact. These people want money and fame.

The Ticking Time Bomb, Not With Terrorists

Congress and the War Powers--not the name of a rock band.

Reasonable and well-informed citizens may disagree about whether the current military adventure in Libya is right or wrong. But the pros and cons of that campaign need to be carefully and publicly deliberated as part of a process aimed at forming democratic consensus. War-making should not be the simple and unchallenged prerogative of the executive. This is what the Constitution says, and it is what common sense demands of any democratic society.

Feathers from the Flying Pig

I've had Pink Floyd on YouTube most of the morning and am consequently loaded for bear:

1. Latoya Peterson at Racialicious has an article about poor people, food stamps, and food choice, because there's a lot of Calvinism/Puritanism going around:

   Oh wait, we banned bottled water (because you know, poor people can’t like sparkling). Because poor people have always been poor, and have never known otherwise, and they’ve never had nice things, like water that bubbles. And poor people don’t need to exercise choices over what food they eat and what food they prefer because poor people aren’t allowed to have preferences. We aren’t allowed to access nice things.

   Karnythia at Dreamwidth linked to this and adds:

   This myth of lazy people deliberately going on public assistance so they can live high off the hog with their welfare lobster gets trotted out all the time. The reality of unemployed, underemployed, or unemployable people struggling to survive isn't shown often. At least not in America because we're still selling the American dream rooted in bootstraps, meritocracy, and a willful refusal to acknowledge the effects of racism, sexism, and classism. That's before we get into talking about how we treat people with physical & mental disabilities. Nor does it touch the various issues surrounding transphobia or homophobia. And let's not get into intersectional issues surrounding being a member of a marginalized group and poor. Because my blood pressure can only take so much. Plus dissecting what it means to need assistance and be a disabled WOC will take me back 10 years to applying for food stamps after my divorce and being told to drop out of college by the social worker who was deeply offended by my plan to better my circumstances in the long term.

2. Cara at The Curvature notes the headline on rapes in the Congo and asks:

   Even if all of the varying numbers did add up just so, I can’t be the only one wondering when exactly this ongoing campaign of sexual terrorism against women turned into a competition over which Western newspaper could write the most shocking headline. Nor can I refrain from asking what, exactly, is the magic number of rapes that will suddenly make us care?

   Shakesville calls for directing attention to the victims via alerting the Secretary of State, Senators, and Representatives.
3. Watching your mouth via Mills River Progressive.

   This is why, in a country that quickly forgives athletes who abuse women and do drugs, one who dampens the jubilation of the bin Laden death celebrations by holding a mirror to America's face, and who points out the obvious impossibility of the government's explanation for the Twin Towers' collapse, is essentially spat upon and crucified for all to see. As the intent of these image attacks become more obvious and more vicious...and as the lies and inconsistencies regarding events like 9/11 and the bin Laden "death" get bigger and bigger...the establishment shows its hand even more.

   So this is where I have to explain that I am not a 9/11 Truther (surprise!).
4. Shark-fu on motivation via deprecation:

   
   This technique may work but it also feeds that monster…that sad belief that what we hate we change, that what we get shit for we address, that what we are bullied over we’ll stop.

5. Doghouse Riley on American education:

   Listen, Professor: two generations ago states across the South responded to Brown by shuttering their public schools. That continued a centuries-long tradition of the worst sort of racism imaginable. It was, in much of this country and for much of our history, against the law to teach a colored person to read. Any who managed to get an education in spite of it all did not "succeed" in any absolute sense. This is the fucking reality of circumstances still faced by African-Americans in this country. Yet in the (still) most economically stratified country in the developed world, self-satisfied American Exceptionalists now object to paying for the improvement in minority education we've only begun to effect in the past couple decades. We don't have an homogenized population, and we don't--to our continuing shame--have an educational system offering equal opportunity for every citizen. The refusal to acknowledge this--the refusal to acknowledge it above all--is odious, no matter how good you imagine your for-profit intentions to be.

6. Noli Irritare Leones on the dating thing:

   This led to a second realization, that the problem I’d had with Steve’s list wasn’t with the list as description, but with an assumption (maybe my own projection, since it wasn’t something he’d stated) that he’d meant it as cookbook. What I mean by that is that I hear all the time what I might call recipes for dating. If they’re for men, they’re often framed as, do this and women will want to sleep with you. If they’re for women, they’re often framed as, do that, and men will want to fall in love with you. And if you prefer your own sex, you tend to be left out of the recipes.

   It's long, though, and has occasional wince-making stuff.

And it's only Thursday.

(ETA:  Recovered from last week's Blogger outage [5/18/11])

And They've Been Weird

Yesterday's morning dream involved seeing the molecular structure, numerically expressed, of either my eyelids or the sudoku puzzle I had fallen asleep trying to solve.

This morning's dream I've already spaced.

Leftovers

• Balancing the budget with a crowbar:  Southern Beale tells all:

  I’m not going to say whether this is bad or good, I’m just saying it completely debunks the ol’ “American families have to live within their means and so should the government” meme. No, we don’t! We never have! We have always been a country of consumers who satisfy their every need and whim with the swipe of plastic. We have well over a million people who declare bankruptcy every year. And our economy depends on this debt! Imagine if Americans did live within their means, paying cash as they go, never borrowing. Our entire economy would implode!

  We like to think of ourselves as thrifty.  And monogamous.  And ruggedly independent.
• And that pony will arrive any day now.
• Mills River Progressive features Robert Scheer of Truthdig on the ongoing Wall Street three-card monte, and says:

  Bush-Bama folks (and complicit lawmakers) couldn't usher the banksters into lifeboats fast enough, while at the same time have refused to make room for the ordinary folks who are the victims. And whom to date, have NOT been bailed out.

In Memoriam

Harmon Killebrew, Hall of Fame ballplayer.

UH-oh!

Apparently, the Supreme Court has sacked the US Constitution's 4th Amendment (against unreasonable search and seizure).

Via Just An Earth-Bound Misfit, I, who reminds us of the origins of the 4th Amendment and hints that it would be an issue the teabaggers could get behind.  If they were serious, that is.

Well. There It Is

• Via Digby via Southern Beale, Rand Paul goes off (it's difficult to discuss Rand Paul without falling into ablist language.  Really).  With video.  
• And speaking of ablist language, Comrade Misfit gets at a flaw in libertarian logic.

  Paul exposes the ground-level logic fault of Libertarian/Randist ideology, which is that businesses will do the right thing because doing the wrong thing will cost them business and their reputation. Right.

   (There are others.)
• Sen. McCain on torture.  Also via Comrade Misfit, who said:

  Torture was illegal before 9-11, it was illegal while the Bush Administration authorized the use of torture, and it has been illegal since then. McCain has also waffled in the past on whether it would be permissible for the CIA to torture people, although that 2008 position may have been part of his general whoring-out to the wingnuts during his failed campaign.
  
  The use of torture was and is a crime, both under U.S. law and international law. It should be prosecuted. And some day, it will be.

• Pennsylvania judge.  Via The Way the Future Blogs.

In Memoriam

Ben Masel, activist and (thank you, Daisy) Yippie.  Via Daisy's Dead Air.

[restored from Blogger outage of 5/12/11]

Ahem!

I had put up a couple of short things and was working on another when Blogger went blooie.  The thing I was working on got posted at Dreamwidth, but the other things apparently are burnt toast.  I know one was a link to an obituary Daisy had posted; her post is gone.

I do back this mess up from time to time; apparently those times need to be shorter.

Insulting Much?

Open-air toilets in South Africa.

Tales Well Calculated to Keep You in ... Suspense.

• Scott Horton writes about the bin Laden photos' value to history.
• An observer reports at The Brad Blog on the recount in Wisconsin.
• Mills River Progressive:  Worldwide war authority?
• Terrance on the blame game "values" of the Tea Party:

  Between [blaming gay people] and blaming blacks for the Wall Street meltdown and the economic crisis, I’m starting to feel like I can’t catch a break. Gay people caused the economic crisis. Or black people did it. No, atheists did it. Nobody has blamed Buddhists or vegetarians (yet), but I’m starting to wonder if I should just go ahead and confess already. It’s my fault, buys. Seriously, I did it. My bad. Won’t let it happen again, etc., etc.
  
  Not that evidence is going to mean anything to the folks I just mentioned, but it’s a bit much to blame the whole economic crisis [on] one group or one thing. "Success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan," the saying goes. But a failure of this magnitude and complexity can only be the bastard child of many fathers. When it comes to the financial crisis, the paternity won’t get sorted out anytime soon.

Filkertom pointed me to this awesome video of Gregory Hines and Sammy Davis, Jr., tapping at the latter's tribute show. Yes, the subtitles are in Japanese. Deal.

Scared of the Wrong Thing

The map is not the territory, and the jasmine is not the revolution, but apparently the authorities in China have gotten spooked.

Down by the River

And jurassicpork lists the top ten untrue stories around bin Laden's death.

In Memoriam

Dana Wynter, actress.

Goooooooooooooooooooood Mooorning Viet Nam!

Discrete but related stuff:

• Why you don't want Tea Party people or anyone of libertarian bent regulating food safety (via Just an Earth-Bound Misfit, I).  Jump down one screen height.
• Shark-fu is getting excited about the PBS documentary on Freedom Riders:

  One of the perks of being an organizer is being able to witness people waking up to their individual strength and power…finding their voice and putting on their walking shoes.
  
  I owe a lot to those brave folks who participated in the Freedom Rides in the ‘60s…but I truly believe their greatest gift is that they demonstrated to power of the people and that the movement was of the people.

• Dave Ettlin reviews documentary of Harry Belafonte with Mr. Belafonte in the audience and gets to ask a couple of questions.

  The focus of “Sing Your Song” is far less on Belafonte the performer, as on his use of the forum provided by his celebrity to address social ills here and across the world – work he is continuing through outreach to young people today.

• In memoriam:  John Walker of the Walker Brothers.  (They weren't brothers, and his name wasn't Walker.)

Here We Are Now, Entertain Us

• An appeal to Mets fans from MetsGrrl, with photos.
• Via the Sideshow, a collector of pinball machines.  Did I mention a visit to the Pacific Pinball Museum?  Cool place.
• Conservative principles of health care, in case you thought Alan Grayson was kidding (ie, don't get sick, but if you do, die quickly).  Expounded by an actual conservative.  Via Echidne of the Snakes, who quotes him and then reacts:

  If you cannot pay for a procedure in the private market-place you will not get it, whatever the seriousness or non-seriousness of your condition. It is the government that you will turn to, then, but Cantor doesn't like that at all. I think he prefers a world where the dying lie outside the gates of the rich. It's Biblical.

• At Noli Irritare Leones, a little checklist for possible conspiracies:

  1. How many moving parts are required to maintain the conspiracy? How plausible is it that such a number of moving parts could be coordinated, for such a length of time, without the whole conspiracy being blown out of the water? [...]
  2. Does the conspiracy require participants to act contrary to reasonable human motivations or to their own likely self-interest?
  3. Does the preponderance of evidence actually support the theory that this conspiracy is real, or does most evidence point in the other direction?

  Apparently Andrew Sullivan is mumbling about something that doesn't pass this test.
  

Fitful decluttering.  No wonder I can never find my bills...

Islands in the Stream

Daisy reports on the Fox News Republican debate, held in South Carolina, including encounters with the, um, Fox News Demographic.

Terrance reports on some of the sponsors of said debate.

Via Comrade Misfit, the Alaska Bar Association has invited John Yoo to give the keynote speech at their annual bar convention.  Perhaps they will give him a hotfoot.

The Victor

Think of the society we live in now as a result of a few hundred thousand dollars of expense by a guy who's essentially no different from Paris Hilton, except Paris Hilton buys chihuahuas and lends her name to perfume and likes to go to parties instead of pretending to be a holy man while living in a mansion and cynically recruiting the phony tough and the crazy brave to kill themselves for Allah.

Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast.  Of course. With an excerpt from an essay by a Iraq war veteran about the "mistake" war in which he fought.

[ETA:  Republic of T corroborates.  We didn't learn the lesson of the Soviet Union, either.]

In Memoriam

41st Anniversary of Kent State.

Daisy has a particularly good post today.

Willie Mays Turns 80

Picture gallery at SFGate.

Article by John Shea.

See you Friday.

If You Still Care

Mr. Spector has lost his attempt to overturn his murder conviction.

Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Problem Chylde hits it right on the nose:  The "Left's" circular firing squad.

Medium Lobster Wades In

"America Pleased With Killing of Thing."

It Seems...

...that Osama bin Laden is dead.  Officially.  The U.S. has the body.  (The New York Times is taking forever to load, and seems to be diverting to a different site.  I'm using sfgate.com)

So I guess he's not in the White House basement.  And it's a month too late for April Fool.

Also

Happy May Day!

Shooting Back

Noli Irritare Leones expands on the posting by Jesse Taylor at Pandagon on Donald Trump further earning disdain:

And, yes, I take this kind of crap personally; if you’re convinced that Obama couldn’t possibly have made it through the Ivy League without some special affirmative action accomodation to his presumably lesser intelligence, I’m inclined to believe you’ll be thinking the same thing about my friends and family. One of my college exes graduated from Stanford and went on to Juilliard, where he was recognized as Most Outstanding Theater Student the year he graduated (and went on from there to a career few could match). If you think Obama can’t possibly have managed Columbia, Harvard, and president of the Harvard Law Review on his own merits, why shouldn’t I expect you might think the same of my ex, whom I damn well know to have earned his way? Why not the same about my college friends George, Brenda, Cyndi, Sharon, and Donna, every darn one of whom showed that he or she belonged at Stanford just as much as I did? And why not the same about my own nephews and nieces, when they venture out in the world, and sometimes, on their own merits, get into a school or get a job that a white person doesn’t get?