Cellphone app could help illegal immigrants on Futurismic.com.

More frequent posts, and shorter ones.

kthxby

Thinking about throwing caution to the whelming brine of space, and staying up to watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Like I do every night.

Yeah, I got one today about healthcare. It purported to be from an anesthesiologist, who is therefore possessed of godlike wisdom on all topics, not just those within his expertise.

I'm not going to paste that letter below, because, yes, I'm paranoid enough that some wingnut will spread it around even further.

But if you get it, or one like it -- and it really was nothing but the same old teabagger talking points you've been hearing all summer, if not your entire natural life -- then here's my response.

Feel free to crib...

Dear [name withheld]

Please ... this is nonsense.

You don’t know where this came from. There is so much mis- and disinformation in here that I don’t know where to start. (Do you know this guy?)

After you've read a few hundred articles and speeches and emails like this over the years, you begin to suspect that the obstructionists cannot make their case on its merits, so they have to resort to scaring people and Making Stuff Up.

Rule of thumb: If something has been forwarded 10th or 20th or 500th-hand over the intermabobs, chances are it's nonsense.

This is entitled as "A Doctor's Letter," as if (a) doctors always know best about everything & anything and (b) every doctor agrees with him. He's hiding behind his MD (if he exists at all).

You don't even know if this is a real person, let alone if he really is any kind of doctor.

Even if he exists, being an anesthesiologist does not mean he knows anything outside his area of expertise. Beware argument based on presumed authority.

Please read the bill, and don't take anybody's word for anything.

It would take all day to debunk this letter -- how does he have time to write this? -- but let's just take the first couple of points and see if they stand up. Any of my journalism profs would have flunked him.

Section 123: Health Benefits Advisory Committee:
"... to recommend covered benefits and essential, enhanced, and premium plans."
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3200/text

Where's the “dictatorship” in this? I'm afraid the proposal before Congress right now won't go far enough. My biggest concern is that the public option (as in optional) won't cover enough people who need it. But if it covers some, that's a step in the right direction.

Or this: Section 152, the alleged "HC will be provided to ALL non-US citizens, illegal or otherwise."
Look it up: Not a single word on immigration or citizenship status in
the House bill:
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3200/text

In fact, the bill before the Senate explicitly excludes illegal immigrants. Don't take my word for it:
"Prohibits illegal immigrants from participating in a health insurance exchange created for those unable to afford health coverage."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/19/health.care.bill/index.html

Bad idea, IMO. Better we all suffer an epidemic than one poor Mexican without a green card gets a free shot? I don't think your anesthesiologist has thought this through.

Really, what kind of doctor wants to block people from getting healthcare? Most of the ones I know want people to get the care they need.

Or another: The Senate bill does NOT require employers to provide insurance. Don't take my word for it:
"Key components of the Senate's health care bill...Does not mandate
that all employers offer health care."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/19/health.care.bill/index.html

FWIW, I don't think healthcare coverage should be required of every employer. But there are some, like WalMart, who could afford it & probably should be required to pay some of it (instead of suggesting that their employees to go on food stamps, which WalMart does seem to
do)
(Don't take my word for it:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050103/featherstone/5)

IMO, your receipt from every WalMart purchase ought to list a figure on your additional charges for food stamps, ER visits, etc., in addition to the cost of the item itself. (But that's not in this
bill!) (I so love WalMart for so many reasons, but that’s another subject)

Or Section 164: Administrative simplification. Nothing here about ACORN (as if they are some kind of powerful and evil group, but that's another subject). At the very least, somebody is really reading a lot between the lines. Kind of amazed he didn't drag in Bill Ayers.

And if anybody still thinks that "end of life counseling" is the same as a "Death Panel," then I really don't know what to say, except that if you have private insurance it probably has a Death Panel in it too.

So if he gets all that wrong, how seriously can you take the rest of it?

In fact, the very conservative AMA has endorsed the House bill. So we have your guy against how many other doctors? The AMA has opposed healthcare reform for ages, so if they are finally on board with this bill maybe it's not so scary.

What it suggests to me is if the AMA can live with it, the bill probably doesn't go far enough -- but it's obviously not a "takeover" either.

I've been watching the issue for a long time. I used to get paid to do it, for whatever that's worth, when I worked for an evil drug-company consultant. Here's what's really going on.

The pharma and insurance companies, and other powerful forces, just want to scare people to make sure that reform will not happen this time. They did the same thing to Clinton. They don't want a public option because they don't want to have to compete with reasonable rates. They would rather keep on charging us through the nose. They receive billions in tax breaks, subsidies, scientific research from publicly-funded universities and agencies like the National Institutes of Health ... but when it comes to you, they want to charge whatever the market will bear. Corporate welfare for them, free-market for you.

There is so much money at stake for them that they don’t mind lying to you, if that’s what works.

There are now close to 50 million people in this country without coverage, most of them middle-class working people and many of them children. I've heard conservatives try to minimize the number by
pulling figures out of their behinds. When I hear anybody with an R after their name quote a number, I always assume it’s wrong unless I can verify it with another source.

The precise number of millions doesn’t matter. It should really bother people that so many of their fellow citizens (all human beings) have to live in fear of illness or injury. It should bother us more than these crazy fantasies about socialism and Hitler.

Your Senators and Representatives have an excellent government-run healthcare plan, and I don't see any of these Republicans or so-called centrist Democrats turning down their benefits.

We provide our veterans with government-run healthcare. Never heard the case for abolishing the VA. Vets complain, but it seemed to work pretty well before Bush got his hands on it.

Some people are more enraged by made-up stuff about Obama than they are about what Bush and Cheney actually did.

Now as for what I *really* think:

People assume that there are no costs to having millions of uninsured, but consider the costs of waiting till a medical condition becomes an emergency. We pay those ER costs. Nearly 4500 people die every year due to lack of insurance.
Don't take my word for it:
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE58G6W520090917

This is not America. This is just wrong.

People with private plans (which they get to keep under all the proposals I’ve heard, just like they do in England and Canada) might think they are covered. Maybe, but I hope they never have to put their coverage to the test. The corporations are the ones who are rationing care now. They have divisions whose sole job is to find reasons to deny coverage.

Doctors spend hours chasing these companies for their money.
Don't take my word for it:
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/health_science/daily/20091122_Practices_devote_costly_hours_to_insurance_dealings.html

To state the obvious: The insurance and pharma companies do not care about people or their health. They only care about their profits. Somebody else has to look after the people.

None of the plans we're talking about now go far enough, IMO. The bill we're looking at now is more modest than the one Richard Nixon proposed when he was president.

I would rather burn down the system we have and start fresh -- but that's just me, and that’s not what Congress is debating now.

Level-headed guys like Obama want to take reform one step at a time, and that's what we're getting here. Better to let Obama have his way than turn it over to real hardcore socialists like me and my friends Bernie Sanders and Al Franken and Barbara Boxer.

By the logic in your anesthesiologist’s letter, England and Canada should be horrible dictatorships by now. Their systems aren't perfect but they could have abolished their National Health Services any time if they'd wanted to. Canada even had an opt-out for every province, but none of them opted out.

I have heard tons lately from Brits and Canadians who say, yeah, we complain, but we really do have pretty good systems.

When we were in Montreal recently, I heard an interview over the CBC with Robert Sawyer, the guy who wrote the novel "Flash Forward" (the one the tv show is based on). He said the Canadian health system helps a lot of writers get their careers going, because they don't have to worry about coverage. “It's not a plot," he said. "Honest."

Yes, there are Canadian doctors and patients who like it better here, but there are also a lot of people who cross the border into Canada and Mexico because they think they can get better care there. Proves nothing.

(Where's the Berlin Wall that keeps Canadians from escaping? Give me one more Republican presidency and we're moving there.)

So many of your is-he-for-real doctor's points were brought up against Social Security, and by Ronald Reagan when he opposed Medicare. Everything we now take for granted and consider progress has been opposed by the same interests using the same old talking points.

Here's what Reagan said about Medicare in 1961, 10 minutes of pure paranoid fantasy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FzNTB1qtFA

Winston Churchill, not exactly a liberal, said in 1944:

"The discoveries of healing science must be the inheritance of all. That is clear. Disease must be attacked, whether it occurs in the poorest or the richest man or woman simply on the ground that it is the enemy; and it must be attacked just in the same way as the fire brigade will give its full assistance to the humblest cottage as readily as to the most important mansion. Our policy is to create a national health service in order to ensure that everybody in the country, irrespective of means, age, sex, or occupation, shall have equal opportunities to benefit from the best and most up-to-date medical and allied services available."

(You can look it up:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/08/14/healthcare/index.html)

I really don't think that's such a radical idea. It's not a lot to ask.

People who don't like the plan have an obligation to say something besides No No No. So if this maybe-person who maybe exists and is maybe a doctor does not like the bill he clearly did not read, then what is his plan?

If McCain, Kyl, McConnell, Boehner, Palin, or Glenn Beck don't like this plan, then I really want to see their alternative. But they don't have one. (They’re against public education, public broadcasting, public anything, but that’s another story)

They think it's OK for millions of people to go without protection, and for thousands to die every year when their deaths could have been prevented by a little basic access to healthcare.

They clearly don’t know or care. I’m with the people who do know and care. I'm doing everything I can to make sure the Senate passes this bill.

P.S. We're Number 37 among world rankings of healthcare systems:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVgOl3cETb4

I posted this on FB, but thought I'd share this Twitter exchange with the world, just for the record.

I think we waste too much time debating these people. I was going to say something along the lines of "We'll never agree on anything, so I'm not going to engage you. We'll just outvote you for the rest of your natural lives."

Might have tried the only sound bit of advice Ayn Rand ever gave: "Check your premises."

Then I thought of something (maybe) better.

Here's what I wrote on FB:

Just got a Twitter reply from a wingnut:

@tparty2 Post office, Medicare, Social Sec, Medicaid all mismanaged & broke. Want Fed Gov controlling ur life? Can u spell rationing?

...Since we live in parallel universes I don't see any point engaging them in debate. (For starters, Social Security is not broke, but try getting that across in 140 characters)

@tparty2 I doubt we agree on what reality consists of. See you in the reeducation camp?:)

Later that evening...

So then he goes:

tparty2 RT @TimOwensby: "We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid." - Ben Franklin @TomMarcinko

And then I'm all like:

@tparty2 If you marched off a cliff after George Bush, don't expect to be taken seriously now.

...I suppose this could go on forever.

So the following morning, I got two RTs on the Franklin quote. I didn't realize I was so huge on Twitter that right-wing nutjobs feel the need to gang up on me. Hit them back with:

"What do you call a group of trolls [as in pride of lions, murder of crows, etc.]? Look, your President Palin can repeal any Obama legislation you don't like..."

AZ: detention officer steals public defender's papers from her courtroom desk, in plain sight of video cameras http://tiny.cc/CBDdH

I guess he forgot the cameras were rolling, and so provides us with a lesson in the unintended consequences of forgetting that security video is almost ubiquitous.

The local news clip is really worth seeing, if only for the reporter's incredulous lead-in: "The Maricopa County Sheriff's office backing one of its deputies after he takes away a lawyer's paperwork in court."

If you live in Arizona you're subject to the daily outrage of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. It's a bit like Philadelphia during the Rizzo years.

Actual postcard from my actual Congressman:

Reading Rick Perlstein's book about the 1964 presidential campaign Before the Storm sent me to Netflix for a repeat viewing of Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

On the off chance that anybody who might be reading this has not seen this movie: Please drop everything and watch it. It really is that good.

Peter Sellers's triple performance is beyond praise. Same for George C. Scott. James Earl Jones appears in a minor role. Sterling Hayden is the very model of a paranoid general, which unfortunately was barely a caricature.

Like all the good Kubrick movies, repeat viewing reveals more and more detail: the KEEP OFF THE GRASS sign during the battle for Burpleson Air Force Base, for example, or the nice characterization touch of the framed flintlock collection on the wall of Gen. Ripper's office.

I tried to see how long I could keep from laughing, and pretty much lost it at "Get me Premier Kissov on the hotline!"

The DVD has a B52-load of features, and they are all worth watching, particularly the interview with Robert McNamara and the pop-up track featuring interviews with Daniel Ellsberg, Richard Clarke, and other Pentagon experts. All of them now seem impressed with the technical accuracy of the film, the soundness of its what-ifs, and how close the world really did come to nuclear war. It's bracing and unsettling viewing.

Next up was John Frankenheimer's 1963 Seven Days in May. It's no Strangelove but worth a look, especially in this day of loose right-wing talk about how great it would be to have a military coup, and after a generation of our civilian leaders hiding behind, or kotowing to, the military. (David Sirota is right to ask who's in charge here)

Rod Serling's script is talky and preachy: "Are you sufficiently up on your Bible to know who Judas was?" 

The cast is great, though: Burt Lancaster's paranoid general isn't funny at all, and like all good villains has what to him seems a reasonable point of view. I can't remember if that quality of his was in the novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey III (I used to eat up D.C. thrillers before Watergate rendered them obsolete).

The White House and Pentagon sets seem to dwarf the actors, which seems a deliberate choice on the director's part. The President's occasional use of videophone with hand-held mike now seems odd and retro-futuristic.

Curious to watch both these black-and-white movies on BluRay and DVD when I first saw them on television. They look great.

Next up, I guess, should be Fail-Safe. Anybody see the remake? 

P.S. The song referenced below is by Simon & Garfunkel. I'd never heard it before McNamara's recent death. Click here to hear it.

Somebody seriously needs to cover it. Of Montreal, I believe this is your job.

Cross-posted as mainly fair copy on Daily Kos. (Fairly main?)

So I decided I had to do something about healthcare besides tweet really hard about it.

I'd dropped by my congressman's office before (Ed Pastor, D, AZ-4 -- the Fighting Fourth!). It was during some kind of MoveOn push to counter the wingnuts at town meetings. The nice receptionist didn't have an aide handy for me to speak to then, but I talked to one today. Told her I'd like to hear that the congressman will vote no on any bill that lacks a public option. The aide told me she can't promise that, but that Pastor does support the public option.

I also gave her the following letter, which I'm reproducing for posterity, not to mention for anybody who might want to crib.

They say a visit to a congressional office is worth 100 letters, but it can't hurt to have a leave-behind. 

Also, I heartily recommend talking to your congressperson about healthcare if there's any chance he or she will listen. At least I got a reasonably friendly reception -- I think the aide was relieved that I wasn't a wingnut.

Arizona's senators are of course beyond the pale, and all I really want to do with them is vote them out of office. 

The letter:

September 24, 2009

HAND DELIVERED

The Hon. Ed Pastor
District Office
411 North Central Avenue
Suite 150
Phoenix, AZ 85004 

            RE:  Please vote NO if the Healthcare Bill fails to include a public option

 Dear Congressman Pastor:

 Thank you for your responses to my letters on healthcare. I hope we can sit down and talk about this subject in your district office. In case you are not available, I am writing this letter.

The tone of your responses suggests to me that you have not quite made up your mind, that you are keeping your options open. I would like you to know where one constituent stands.

I’ve voted for you since I’ve lived in Congressional District 4.  I also voted for President Obama.

For years I have advocated a single-payer system. Frankly, I don’t know why we can’t get that now that we have a Democrat in the White House and a majority in Congress.

I’m old enough to remember when President Nixon introduced a healthcare bill that was more progressive than any version of the current bill.  If you’d told me circa 1970 that by 2009 a Democratic President and Congress would stand to the right of Nixon, I would have laughed.

For the time being I am willing to settle for a public option -- as long as it is a real public option. We already know co-ops don’t work, and I trust a “phase-in” of a public option as much as I trust “the check’s in the mail.” 

I’m hearing in the media that the Baucus bill is the best we can expect. I don’t accept that. 

We have been told that giving up the public option is necessary for compromise. No. The public option is the compromise, against a single-payer system.

We’ve been told that the bill must be bipartisan. Please understand that bipartisanship means nothing outside the beltway, especially after eight years of Republicans trashing the country in ways even I could not have imagined in 2000. There is no such thing as a moderate Republican. That species is extinct. Voters are beginning to realize that.

In a perfect world, of course we’d like to see both parties work together. But when one party is guano crazy, and has obviously been so for years, it can only be outvoted.

A real public option -- one that does not set medical fees, so that true competition can occur -- will at least start to bring costs into line. The insurance companies have been the problem all along, and it is far past time to end their free ride.

So while I am shocked that the Republicans deploy brownshirts to scream at even Sen. Specter (a Democrat in name only), I am not surprised. They have been using scare tactics and code words (“socialism”) ever since Ronald Reagan warned that Medicare (of all things ) would end freedom.

I am surprised, disappointed, and angry that the Democrats have failed to seize the moment, to take control of the discussion, and to counterattack effectively. It’s been embarrassing to watch the Democrats negotiate with themselves and abandon their principles before negotiations even started. Lyndon Johnson would have brought the Democrats-in-name-only into line, and I don’t understand why President Obama is not doing the same thing.

I fail to understand why President Obama says the public option is just a nice-to-have. If he will not lead on this issue, then Congress must.

Franklin Roosevelt famously told voters that he could not make Social Security happen on his own. In the face of reactionary special interests, “You will have to make me do it.” Apparently, we will have to make President Obama stand up for the public option.

Please tell me that you will vote against any healthcare bill that does not include a real public option. President Obama really needs to hear that, and so do we the voters.

Sincerely,

Tom Marcinko

Blogging about Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. 'Cause I had a few things to get off my chest.

Today's Doonesbury website on Slate brings the following quote:

I'd heard her say that on my tee-vee but was sure I'd heard her wrong. My bad. 

A couple of reactions:

Until fairly recently I didn't realize that there was a Timothy McVeigh base so large that a politician might profit by pandering to it. It's one thing for Thomas Jefferson to call for blood in the wake of a revolution; it's quite another to say such a thing well into the lifetime of a nation that was strong and stable until it was rescued from its nightmare of peace and prosperity by George W. Bush.

Let's stop calling this a Jefferson quote. In today's context, it's quoting the terrorist who blew up a building in Oklahoma and murdered almost 200 of his fellow Americans because -- well, just because.

This recent spurt of McVeigh-quoting may be just a manifestation of Atrios's Law: "It's all about pissing off liberals." On the other hand, lots of these people are afraid to go into public without a gun strapped to their ankle. So maybe it's time to remove the source of their fear.

Not everybody in Texas is an idiot who believes in succession. A lot of Texans are really nice, smart people. Probably the majority, although you wouldn't always know it from the people they elect.

That said, if a majority of Texans want to leave the union, that's fine with me. We're past the point where we need to fight to keep it together.

If these people feel like they live in an occupied country (sort of the way a lot of us felt under Bush) it's time to consider not just an opt-out but maybe even expulsion. Instead of sending troops to enforce the law, as Eisenhower did in the case of integration, maybe sanctions would work better. Former states can be treated as foreign countries which need not apply for foreign aid or military protection unless they meet certain minimum criteria in human rights, environmental protection, etc.

So in addition to Texas we could include Arizona -- a bit of a problem for me, since I live there. But I always wanted to be an expat. I could file erudite little "Letters to America" stories like Alastair Cooke used to. There's also Louisiana, Georgia, Arkansas, Tennesee, Alabama -- well, most of the once and future Confederacy. They pay less in taxes than the blue states, but take a lot more federal money.

Enough with daring them to go it alone. Let's make them, and see how it goes.

!!Satire!!

I think.

Just when you thought it was safe to read the comics page...

Sifting through the genes that make humans unique on Futurismic.

Futurismic post: The coldest, driest place on Earth would be a great place for an astronomical telescope.

I'm on Twitter and Facebook?

That I'm so obsessive that when I find extra spaces at the end of these entries, I go back and revise the entry by cutting them out so that they line up nice and neat with the tags and such? Sad, really.

I think they call this "link salad"-- or maybe Which Philip K. Dick story are we in today?:

Tempe pastor asks for the death of President Barack Obama

Banks deemed too big to fail emerge even bigger

"Supernanny" producers to hold casting call at Phoenix Zoo

The Speedy Gonzales of zoot-suit Derrideanism

'Robot girls' clue to Dugard case

Revealed: Lockerbie link to oil exploration deal

The 10 best Wikipedia entries

Have a chat with Mona Lisa if you speak Mandarin

Information overload: German court disciplines Google

Is Bollywood killing the essence of cricket?

Single molecule's stunning image

How a detainee became an asset

Disgraced former FEMA director to speak at conference

Ahmadinejad urges prosecution of political rivals

Clunkers program drives up consumer spending

Jackson dermatologist won't file in guardianship

Madonna booed in Bucharest for defending Gypsies

'Moon rock' in Dutch museum is just petrified wood

Bloggin' 'bout lightning on Futurismic.

And about the Roomba-like bot that cleans barnacles from boats, to maybe save fuel and money and help the environment.

Kids learn value of Ramadan fast

With Obama's muslins taking over, they'd damn well better.

So there's that:

Why you have (or had) an appendix

FWIW, I still have mine, or at least I will have it until Obama's ORGAN NAZIS come to take it away.

Same political diatribe looking at me three days straight, I mean...

Still.

Dog days.