There must be Rum in the Rum River … Only possible explanation
Posted: August 28, 2009 Filed under: A My Pet Goat Moment, Surreality | Tags: Michelle Bachmann is insane, Minnesota, snark Comments Off on There must be Rum in the Rum River … Only possible explanation
There are a couple of rummys short of pint living near the Rum River in Minnesota.
I lived in Minnesota for awhile in the mid 1990s. Thankfully, not this part of Minnesota represented by Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann. Sesame’s Street’s Elmo needs to send some tapes over there to improve the educational results in Lake Elmo and some of her other communities, I fear. I’ve watched committee hearings with questioning by Bachmann and seen her ask questions that have made me question her grasp on just about everything including reality. It must run in the waters of the Rum River, because she’s not the only elected official up there that seems confused. Check this out at Think Progress and Roll Call where one of Bachmann’s constituents, LeRoy Schaffer, a St. Francis city council member evidently showed up in a tuxedo and a top hat to one of her health care town hall meetings and made the following pithy statement.
Shaffer got visibly emotional asking Bachmann about the future of health care and the role of special interests in Washington.
“I’ll be danged if I am going to give up my Social Security because of socialism,” Schaffer said, before being booed by the crowd.
How many in the room think this man probably gets all his information and news from either Rush Limbaugh or
Congress Women Michelle Bachmann explains how she came up with the theory that God Created a Flat Earth in 7 days without the help of Socialists or Communists.
Glenn Beck? Sean Hannity? Bill O’Reilly? Bueller? Bueller?
With deafening cheers and a few jeers, hundreds of people packed a health care town hall meeting Thursday held by U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, some targeting the Republican with the kind of anger previously directed at Democrats.
“Why do you persist on distorting the president’s plan?” asked Ilya Gorodisher, 46, of the Stillwater area, accusing Bachmann of “stretching the truth to the point of lies.”
Bachmann, who represents the Sixth District, defended her claim that President Obama’s plan would crowd out existing private insurers, and suggested Democratic plans were big gambles.
“Washington, D.C., is telling the American people, ‘Trust us,'” she said.
Bachman obviously believes you can’t trust Washington, D.C. However, the Congresswoman, who lives in Washington, D.C. felt she deserved to be trusted on this issue. Bachmann (via the Roll Coll link) gives us this stunning example of why national health care is doomed to fail. Relying on personal anecdotes and faith based reliance on her medical insurance is always a way to prove your case.
At one point, Bachmann told the crowd: “I believe we have the best health care in the world.”
“I far prefer American health care than medical care in the U.K. any day of the week,” Bachmann said.
Lifting a stack of news reports about the health care problems in England, Bachmann told a story about women having to give birth in hospital hallways.
One angry male constituent yelled, “That happens here.” And Bachmann quickly retorted, “I’ve given birth here probably more times than you, sir.”
Elmo sez, only Glenn Becksters think the CIA Factbook is subject to frequent hacking and that it skews data to make other countries look good. Smart lil monsters know you can check out how the US ranks in infant mortality at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html
Since I don’t know any one that’s ever given birth any where but a hospital, it can’t possibly happen here, can it? My eldest daughter delivers babies in hospitals. Of course, I had two daughters while having access to good health care insurance in a hospital so I’m a serious authority on this too. Yup, never have I ever heard of any one having a baby any place else but in a delivery room in, you guessed it, a hospital! The Celestial Teapot has obviously blessed the American Health Insurance Industry personally! I mean, just ignore the U.S. ranking on the number of infant deaths as compared to any other developed economy, or for that matter developing economy. My personal experience obviously trumps it all. Plus, there’s that Celestial Teapot thing. Nah, you’re not buying it are you? Then why do some of the voters in Minnesota? She’s won elections for Teapot’s sake!!!
On a serious note, here are the rankings for Infant Mortality. If you love babies, you want to rank near the bottom not the top so higher numbers are better. Its from the CIA Factbook. Out of 224 countries ranked for 2009, the UK ranked 193. Canada was 189. The United States is number 180 which is one ranking lower than Cuba and one ranking higher than the Faroe Islands. Gee, Congresswoman Bachmann, aren’t you proud to be an American now? Our health care system rations health care so that more potential Republican babies in the US die than Marxist Babies in Cuba. It must be a communist plot!
Please Digg!! Share!! Tweet!!! and keep your fingers crossed that the fine folks in Minnesota wake up and get rid of her in 2010!!
(Oh, and since I brought up RUM you might as well treat this as an open thread with whatever cocktail you can chase down in your neck of the woods.)
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Update:
How About a Big ol’ Game of Monopoly?
Posted: August 28, 2009 Filed under: Bailout Blues, Equity Markets, Global Financial Crisis, Surreality, The Bonus Class, U.S. Economy | Tags: banking industry, corporate welfare, externalities, K Street Lobbyists, rent seeking Comments Off on How About a Big ol’ Game of Monopoly?
If we’re a ‘free market’ economy, why do we keep protecting so many businesses and promote monopoly? Well, I suppose the practical answer is that businesses who can afford to do so will rent-seek via K Street and politicians looking for donations will happily give them whatever they want. The bigger question is why do we keep politicians in office that DO this to us? Why do we put up with policy makers that continually keep corporations safe from the economic Darwinism implied by capitalism while we pay for all their negatives like externalities, restricted output, and high prices? Can we just say, for once, that the real welfare queens in the economy are the bonus class and these kinds of corporations? They suck up the public funds like a bunch of leeches at a Louisiana picnic. Today’s news just provides us this ongoing example from the banking industry. It’s from WaPo and David Cho. Go read Banks ‘Too Big to Fail’ Have Grown Even Bigger; Behemoths Born of the Bailout Reduce Consumer Choice, Tempt Corporate Moral Hazard for a really good example of market failure. It makes me want to socialize the lot of them! I mean, if we’re going to continually subsidize them and give them monopoly status, we might as well have a stake in their assets.
The crisis may be turning out very well for many of the behemoths that dominate U.S. finance. A series of federally arranged mergers safely landed troubled banks on the decks of more stable firms. And it allowed the survivors to emerge from the turmoil with strengthened market positions, giving them even greater control over consumer lending and more potential to profit.
J.P. Morgan Chase, an amalgam of some of Wall Street’s most storied institutions, now holds more than $1 of every $10 on deposit in this country. So does Bank of America, scarred by its acquisition of Merrill Lynch and partly government-owned as a result of the crisis, as does Wells Fargo, the biggest West Coast bank. Those three banks, plus government-rescued and -owned Citigroup, now issue one of every two mortgages and about two of every three credit cards, federal data show.
A year after the near-collapse of the financial system last September, the federal response has redefined how Americans get mortgages, student loans and other kinds of credit and has made a national spectacle of executive pay. But no consequence of the crisis alarms top regulators more than having banks that were already too big to fail grow even larger and more interconnected.
“It is at the top of the list of things that need to be fixed,” said Sheila C. Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. “It fed the crisis, and it has gotten worse because of the crisis.”
I really hate going to the mail box these days. I am now banking with Capital One not by choice but by merger. I now have a trading account with J.P. Morgan, not by choice but by merger. My mortgage is miserably serviced by Wells Fargo, not by choice but by secondary market transaction. Each day, I find myself to be a customer of a behemoth bank with whom I would not choose to do business voluntarily. It takes me forever to get out of customer service automated voice response hell to try to figure out how to close my account so I can go elsewhere. An expedition to Patagonia would be easier.
“Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them”
William Shakespeare.
“And some have greatness handed to them on a silver platter by their government”
Dakinikat.
Paradise Squandered
Posted: August 20, 2009 Filed under: Global Financial Crisis, Health care reform, Hillary Clinton: Her Campaign for All of Us, president teleprompter jesus, Surreality | Tags: Democratic majority, Gallup poll, Obama approval, The Cook Report Comments Off on Paradise Squandered
I guess the old adage is true. A year is a long time in politics. Less than 18 months ago I held out hope that we would see a solid democratic majority for some time and that there would be a democratic President with a democratic agenda moving the country forward and away from the Bush Cheney nightmare. I expected that we would have no more warrantless wiretapping. I believed we would be discussing an energy policy that included more options that drill, baby drill. I thought a women’s uterus would no longer be considered an object of state interest. I figured that we’d see the end to talk about protecting traditional marriage, whatever the heck that ever was to start out with but basically we’d no longer exclude gay couples from a civil institution and gay soldiers from openly serving in our military.
I thought our future seemed bright.
I thought perhaps we could have a defense department budget that resembled the levels of other democratic countries and that we would have a health care plan that resembled the rest of the developed world. I especially felt hopeful, when I watched the first democratic debate, that one of those folks would be in charge of America again. It was only a matter of which one. Little did I know then, the one I discounted as not really knowing a thing by the time the second debate was over is the one we got. My basic thought about Obama was Vice President material.
Now, our national nightmare continues and The Cook Political Report has just dropped the other shoe. The Cook Political Report has a very good reputation for handicapping elections.
Gallup’s three-night moving average tracking poll, President Obama’s job approval rating in both their August 16-18 and August 17-19 averages was just 51 percent, the lowest level of his presidency. The latter sampling showed his disapproval up to 42 percent, matching his all-time low hit in the August 15-17 tracking poll. The 51% job approval rating is identical to two other polls released in recent days conducted by NBC News and the Pew Research Center. Today’s regression-based trend estimate computed by our friends at Pollster.com from all major national surveys show an approval rating of 50.7 percent and disapproval of 43.7 percent.
These data confirm anecdotal evidence, and our own view, that the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and Congressional Democrats. Today, The Cook Political Report’s Congressional election model, based on individual races, is pointing toward a net Democratic loss of between six and 12 seats, but our sense, factoring in macro-political dynamics is that this is far too low.
Many veteran Congressional election watchers, including Democratic ones, report an eerie sense of déjà vu, with a consensus forming that the chances of Democratic losses going higher than 20 seats is just as good as the chances of Democratic losses going lower than 20 seats. A new Gallup poll that shows Congress’ job disapproval at 70 percent among independents should provide little solace to Democrats. In the same poll, Congressional approval among independents is at 22 percent, with 31 percent approving overall, and 62 percent disapproving.
I’m with him …
Posted: August 18, 2009 Filed under: Health care reform, president teleprompter jesus, Surreality, Team Obama, Voter Ignorance | Tags: James Carville, Paul Krugman, Politico, Public Option Comments Off on I’m with him …
I have to say, I’m with my neighbor James Carville on this one … put a decent health care reform out there and let the Republicans kill it. I’ve said over and over that without a vital public option, it’s neither about the health care or the reform. It’s about the lobbyists and an administration win and I don’t think we should go for it. Carville thinks it would send a good signal to the country about how little Republicans are willing to come to the table in the name of what’s good for American and bi-partisanship if they fight health care reform vehemently. Let them show themselves as obstructionists while we trot out people bankrupted by underinsurance, folks who lost relatives to insurance companies who ration health care, and people who can’t even access the basics enough to be treated for the most treatable of diseases. Let them all be seen on TV saying no well baby care and prenatal care to their fetus fetishists.
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Democratic strategist James Carville became the first leading Democrat to suggest publicly that there might be political advantage in letting Republicans “kill” health care.
“Put a bill out there, make them filibuster it, make them be what they are, the party of no,” Carville said. “Let them kill it. Let them kill it with the interest group money, then run against them. That’s what we ought to do.”
This weekend’s comments by White House officials simply acknowledged the long-obvious reality that the idea of a government-run insurance plan was partly a bargaining chip.
Bargaining chip? WTF? What exactly do we get if the public option is off the table?
Krugman says the public option may be a signal on Obama’s trustworthiness that not every one is seeing. Okay, finance/economics lesson time again. Signaling theory is based on the idea that that market reacts rationally to publicly available information. So, for example, if I want to signal that my company is worth more than the average company, I want to find a way to signal that to the market I’m superior so they’ll run up my stock price to recognize me as a superior company. Then I can rake in bonuses and capital gains. I could borrow money in the commercial market, for example, that gives me a Aaa rating. This signals raters who are assumed to be in the know find my company to be a good bet compared to others that they rate lower. This signal should push up my stock price.
So what kind of signal do we have here? Well, Krugman argues that the public option is one of the ways Obama can ‘signal’ that he’s still a progressive democrat and he’s signaling that he’s a sell out without realizing it. He points out that the public option debate has turn into a signal on who should buy stock in what Obama says. Signals are based on the market knowing what actions can be trusted, however. You have to trust that some one who gives a company the Aaa rating really has some inside proprietary information and believe they are a reliable, trustworthy source of rating. Krugman says the Obama administration is sending out bad signals and doesn’t even realize it.
If progressives had real trust in Obama’s commitment to doing the right thing, the administration would have broad leeway to do deals. But the president doesn’t command that kind of trust.
Partly it’s a matter of style — as many people have noted, he has been weirdly reluctant to make the moral case for universal care, weirdly unable to show passion on the issue, weirdly diffident even about the blatant lies from the right. Partly it’s a spillover from his other policies: by appointing an economic team that’s Rubin redux, by taking such a kindly attitude to the banks, he has squandered a lot of progressive enthusiasm.
Add in the dealmaking as part of the health care process itself, and progressives can be forgiven for having the impression that Obama (a) takes them for granted (b) is way too easily rolled by the other side.
So progressives have their backs up over one provision in health care reform that’s easy to monitor. The public option has become not so much a symbol as a signal, a test of whether Obama is really the progressive activists thought they were backing.
And the bizarre thing is that the administration doesn’t seem to get that.
So, who’s signals should we trust? Carville? Krugman? Obama?
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Enough is Enough!
Posted: August 17, 2009 Filed under: A My Pet Goat Moment, Health care reform, Surreality, Team Obama, U.S. Economy, Voter Ignorance | Tags: Howard Dean, Kent Conrad, Paul Krugman, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, The Hill Comments Off on Enough is Enough!Left Blogistan is alive with the sounds of open dissent. I can only say, it’s about time. Here’s a good example from TheHill.com aptly headed Obama picks fight with left on Health Reform. The news, however, is this fact. A public option is not a liberal option. It’s the option that every advanced economy in the world has chosen in some form. We already have a public option for seniors. We’re the majority, in every sense of the word, on this issue. This fight is not with the Left. This fight is with our babies who die in bigger numbers than most countries, our families bankrupted by inadequate insurance, and the many many ill people who are simply numbers on a spreadsheet that provide a mark-up of 30 percent or more for a industry based on always saying no!
Even in the real Socialized medicine haven of the. U.K., former Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher knew she had an unassailable object because it makes peoples lives much improved and they wouldn’t give it up once they had it. Here in the U.S., we’re not even talking socialized medicine despite the bleating of the right wing media machine. 
We’re talking about extending something we already have–Medicare– reformatting it so it benefits doctors, hospitals and patients rather than a superfluous, bonus paying, extraordinary profit making, third party payer. How can you lose the high ground on an issue that’s been so easily solved in nearly every other country that’s not an economic or political basket case? How can you lose momentum on an issue that polls showed people supported until you botched the policy so badly?
Liberal Democrats have insisted a public insurance option is necessary to ensure competition for private insurers. Just this week, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean predicted there could be Democratic primary challenges if a healthcare bill without a public option is approved by Congress.
Dean also told liberal bloggers gathered last week at the “Netroots Nation” convention that the only piece of reform left in the House bill that is worth doing is the public option.
The left wing of the Democratic party already has been irritated by concessions its leaders have made on healthcare to centrists in the House and Senate.
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) told CNN on Sunday it would be “very difficult” for her and other
liberals to support legislation that does not include a public option.
“The only way we can be sure that very low-income people and persons who work for companies that don’t offer insurance have access to it, is through an option that would give the private insurance companies a little competition,” she said.
The last word in the Sunday TV Spin Zone was given to North Dakota Senator DINO Kent Conrad. This man has fewer folks in his entire state than do most neighborhoods in any major city in America. Why does he get to frame the debate?
In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, said the president remained convinced that a public plan was “the best way to go.” But Mr. Axelrod said the nuances of how to develop a nonprofit competitor to private industry had never been “carved in stone.”
On Capitol Hill, the Senate Finance Committee is expected to produce a bill that features a nonprofit co-op. The author of the idea, Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and chairman of the Budget Committee, predicted Sunday that Mr. Obama would have no choice but to drop the public option.
“The fact of the matter is, there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option,” Mr. Conrad said on “Fox News Sunday.” “There never have been. So to continue to chase that rabbit, I think, is just a wasted effort.”
So, that’s it. The high rate of infant mortality we have here in the U.S. (worse than many developing nations), the appalling number of personal bankruptcies due to folks with either no insurance or underinsurance, and the number of people that have no access to even the most basic services other than the emergency rooms are simply Axelrovian ‘nuances’. TheHill.com continues to describe the back pedal, the sell-out, the cave-in, or what ever pejorative metaphor for the big Obama cop-out.
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