Via Slog: There have been some glitches in the launch of the new GOP.com (to which I refuse to link).
Among the problems were the posting of administrator passwords, a list of GOP accomplishments that ended in 2004 and a “future leaders” section that was devoid of material. In addition, the site was inaccessible for much of the day.
The compromise that might actually get us a nationwide, publicly-financed insurance plan — what many are calling a “public option” — is to make it optional? Well, at least the crazy is flowing the way I’d prefer, for once.
Snark aside, the compromise is to make the public option “optional” at the state level — states can opt out if they want, presumably through legislative action. Sounds fine to me. The point of a public option is to make it big, and the big blue states — California, New York, &c — won’t opt out. It’ll be (mostly) smaller, hyperconservative states that — Mississippi, Alabama, Idaho — are most likely to do so. That’s unfortunate, because these are also poor states, with lots of citizens who would benefit from public health insurance — but at least their legislatures can be crazy on their own, and not derail it for the rest of the country.
This is also one more reason I’d better find a postdoc somewhere outside of Idaho.
Nixon speechwriter turned political analyst William Safire has died. What I read of his political writing encapsulated everything I can’t stand about American political conservatism, although it was well-reasoned and insightful by the Glen Beckian standards of the present era. On the other hand, I thoroughly enjoyed “On Language,” his magazine column about words and their usage. On that subject, Safire was geekily, infectiously enthusiastic, and that’s an attitude that transcends a lot of political backbiting.*
*Incidentally, Oxford English Dictionary defines “backbiting” as “the action of detracting, slandering, or speaking ill of one behind his back,” and dates its first usage in this sense to approximately 1175 CE, not long before the origin of parliamentary democracy.
At the behest of a reader, the Daily Dish posts this photo of an integration protest. Any of those slogans sound familiar?
“Race Mixing is Communism”
“Stop the Race Mixing March of the Antichrist” [sic]
Yes, that’s Martin Luther King, Jr., they’re calling the Antichrist.
I think the lesson here is that, for the segregationists as for the people who now say that health care reform is Socialist/ Fascist/ Communist/ Satanic, these terms mean only one thing: “not the way I want America to be.” And I think it’s every bit as sad that there exist Americans who believe it’s OK for a huge portion their our fellow Americans to live without proper health care, as it was for there to exist Americans who thought it was wrong for black kids to go to school with white kids.
A census worker has been found hanged on National Forest land in Kentucky.
Investigators have said little about the case. The law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and requested anonymity, said Wednesday the man was found hanging from a tree and the word “fed” was written on the dead man’s chest. The official did not say what type of instrument was used to write the word.
Apparently this is not officially murder yet, but it certainly sounds as though the poor guy knocked on the door of someone who’s taken the insane anti-government rhetoric of the past few months a little too seriously (i.e., seriously at all). Of all the things the Federal Government does, I think the census might be one of the least objectionable — somewhere between the Post Office and the National Park Service.
Given the power to regulate an industry, a U.S. Federal agency is actually issuing regulations:
Federal health officials Tuesday banned the sale of flavored cigarettes and hinted that they may soon take action against the far-larger market of flavored little cigars and cigarillos, the first major crackdown on cigarettes since the Food and Drug Administration was given authority to regulate tobacco.
For those of us, who, like me, were maybe no longer sure that having Democrats running two branches of government makes much difference.
Anti-government-spending protesters complain about inadequate public transit on the way to the protest.
Rep. Kevin Brady asked for an explanation of why the government-run subway system didn’t, in his view, adequately prepare for this past weekend’s rally to protest government spending and government services.
Seriously.
Via the Slog.
Let’s try talking about the actual text of actual proposed bills for health insurance reform. Instead of, you know, whatever nonsense pops into Sarah Palin’s pretty little head. Only place I’ve seen anyone doing it? That’d be over at OpenCongress.
The New York Times has just released a poll of American attitudes toward the health insurance reforms pending in Congress. There’s a lot to be depressed about, but the worst might be this: 75% of respondents are “very” or “somewhat” concerned that the cost of their health care will go up if no action is taken; but 77% have the same concern that costs will rise if action is taken. If those are completely independent probabilities, that means almost 58% of the country thinks health care costs will go up no matter what happens. (If, instead, we minimize the number of people who think costs will go up under both scenarios, it’s 52%, still a majority.)
Those numbers tell me that my fellow Americans are just scared, and they may not even know why. They’re faced, on the one hand, with an economic downturn in which it’s good news if we only lose a quarter-million jobs in a given month and health insurance is becoming more expensive and less meaningful by the day; and, on the other, with irresponsible idiots telling them that government health insurance means mandatory euthanasia for Grandma. The system is broken, and we’re terrified of the fix. And that terrifies me.
