What do you MEAN, you don't know the answer?

HT BlogHer. Their take is worth reading, but it's issue oriented. My problem with this contrast in answers to the same question is far more fundamental.





Clearly, while the idiolgies and more importantly, the idiologies of supporters and donors would dictate considerably different responses, it is damned astonishing that McCain does not have a response.

It's not a difficult question. It's not a "gotcha" question, it goes directly to one of the most important issues today, health coverage in general and in specific, the health of women and reproductive choice.

Now, the questioner might not have liked the proper answer that McCain should have (based on his base) given: "Viagra is covered, and so is pregnancy and childbirth. The inability to have children is broadly considered to be an insurable medical condition, and that's what this is about." (grin) "Do I need to explain why?"

So, why didn't he have such an answer to such a blindingly obvious question? Has he never thought about the implications of the status quo regarding contraception and reproductive health? Has no-one on his staff thought them through? Because, well, it's a damn vital issue to two huge constituencies. Obama has one wrapped up (and just tied a pretty pink bow on it) - so all he has is the other.

And he has no answer. Apparently doesn't understand the question. And he cannot even recall his past votes regarding this issue. What, does he flip a fucking COIN? Is he really a principled maverick, or does he simply suffer from the sort of dissociative fugue states that people suffering from galloping PTSD are prone to?

And what happens if he is elected and has to come up with an answer to a really difficult question, like, say, To Bomb, or Not To Bomb?

Folks, the choice presented here is not between Republican and Democrat - it's between coherent and incoherent. It's between someone who can process information, consider the broad political context and come to a viable policy for improving access to health care as compared to someone who does not seem to understand that policy has direct socio-political implications and costs.

The essence of this is stark. Obama has a coherent set of ethical principles which he has applied to the issues of the day that are important to the electorate. And since he's obviously invested a great deal in considering his principles, he doesn't need to refer to his notes to come up with an answer, even if it's not something he's specifically considered.

McCain, though, seems to be rudderless when the issue cannot be transformed into something relating to terrorism, Iran, Iraq and "Islamofacism." He's unethical and unprincipled, so he's stuck when he cannot calculate the advantage of saying this as opposed to that in this particular news cycle.

And, well, we know how well the unprincipled and rudderless have served us in that regard up to now.



It's not bloggers he hates so much as the inability to control the message and hide all the evidence of having done so. Honestly, I don't think it's a tide any candidate relying on the support of the "republican base" could swim against. But McCain is drowning.

Hey, guys, when you throw someone into the deep end, maybe you should check to see if they can swim.

Moore to Blitzer: Have you no decency, Sir?

The segment leads in with "critique" of the facts in "Sicko" that manages to be both patronizing and revealingly trivial, in order, apparently, to provide "balance," or at least appease those audience members (and owners) that would like to believe that "Sicko" is just one big lie from end to end.

Well, the "lies" so revealed were clearly the result of data selection and, in some cases, a careful comparison of apples to oranges. For instance - it can take bloody forever to see a specialist in Canada. Six months to see a Psychiatrist, for example. To see my GP - I just walked in. In urban areas, with most practitioners, you don't HAVE to make appointments. So, yes, wait times for appointments are horrid - when they are required at all.

But for most Canadians, there's no need to wait to see your primary care physician and you are encouraged to see them on a monthly basis. There is no "co-pay," on top of your insurance premium, either. You do pay a premium, and if you can find a better deal or a coverage package you prefer, you may choose to opt out.

Moore didn't respectfully disagree with Wolf, like his PR rep no doubt advised him. He opened up with "three years ago I was on your show" and related how he got the same patronizing treatment regarding WMD and the justifications for war. He demanded an apology - as a warm-up! THEN it got personal, regarding both him and Sanjay Gupta, who authored the foregoing "balance" segment. Wolf Blitzer was reduced to sputtering incoherently as Moore made the case for the complete, abject failure of the MSM to serve responsibly as a watchdog on government.

Enjoy...

Wolf is one of the masters at leaving the sheeple with the impression that there is a critical eye watching the powers that be, while always leaving the general impression that while there may be issues from time to time, here and there, there's no real problems in these here United States that can't be fixed with a new round of tax cuts and a little patience with our Leadership.

Today, it didn't work. And it may just have been this century's "McCarthy Moment. Oh, it was all old news to us here in the blogosphere - nobody credible on any part of the ideological spectrum relies on Network and Cable News as primary sources any more, and the better ones try to triple-source every story, with an eye toward the differences. But for the television news consumer - this must have rocked them.

Some of the comments on YouTube are hilarious, though. One total maroon is alleging that this was a staged performance intended to further CNN's "Librul agenda."

clipped from www.youtube.com

LithuaniaMania
(6 hours ago)
Marked as spam

How about this scenario?
NONE OF YOU REALIZE THAT WHAT YOU SAW WAS A WELL CRAFTED "EDITORIAL" BY CNN WITH AN "ASSIST" BY MICHAEL MOORE! Dr. Gupta was CNN's "sacrificial lamb" to it's own liberal agenda.
The top brass at CNN conspired with Moore to be the mouthpiece for their own current personal views about health care and the war. (Continued below)

If you've ever asked yourself, "how stupid do you have to be..." here's a living example of just HOW stupid.

Where I stand

I've said that Ron Paul is my favored candidate right now, but in the areas we disagree, we disagree passionately.

In the areas where we disagree, each of us departs from stock libertarianism in one case - and not in the other. I think it's worth looking at where each of us emphasise principle over practicality - and vice versa.

Read on..

I'm an exception to all other Libs I know of in that I advocate a strong and secure social safety net. I don't refer to it as "socialism" or "welfare stateism" in that I am not talking about those approaches to this particular problem. However the lack of success in a particular approach toward solving a problem does not make the problem go away. Generally it makes it worse. In the case of both socalism and welfare state policies, centralized planning and paternalism make the problems addressed so very much worse that it's easy to believe that merely getting rid of the solution would solve the problem.

Oh, if only it were that easy. But in fact, it's not, and a comparison of the livability and costs to citizens in the "socialized" nations of europe shows that recognizing and dealing with poverty least intrusively dealt with by a very simple process: Give the poor enough money to not be poor AND desperate.

Poverty is relative - desparately poor is to put people under basic survival pressure. When enough people in your society ARE under survival pressure, Very Bad Things Happen that in our nation, You See On Fox Every Day.

I differ from Ron in having had the opportunity of being poor in Canada - and now seeing what being Poor in America is like. Hell, in many ways it's better to be poor in Canada than Lower Middle Class in America. At least you have health insurance!

So we differ there, in that I feel that it's a government's duty to address matters of common concern to all citizens; healthcare, poverty and crime are all issues that are common concerns and which tend to be causes and effects of each other.

On the other hand, we disagree passionately on the issue of open vs closed borders. As a Libertarian, I believe in the free movement of peaceful people. Furthermore, I feel that this whole matter falls under the Bobatearian principle of "no Stupid Laws," that is to say, laws that are intrusive by definition and which will obviously increase both hassle and provide endless opportunities for the corruption of government officials.

I like what another Libertarian running for President has to say on this topic.

Beyond the economic and cultural positives of open immigration, we must consider the national defense problems posed by "closed" immigration.

Capital -- including human capital -- moves to where it can be most profitably invested for all concerned, and it rolls right over government barriers to do so. In practice, this means that millions of immigrants arrive, and will continue to arrive, in the United States each year regardless of what our government does to stop them.

Right now, nonsensical US immigration policy forces many of those immigrants to sneak in rather than walk in "through the front door." Reasonable estimates put the number of illegal immigrants from Mexico alone in excess of one million annually. An entire industry of cross-border guides, called "coyotes," is built around getting those immigrants into the US to live and work. These "coyotes" don't care one way or another whether the person they're smuggling into the US is a janitor from Guadalajara or an al Qaeda fighter carrying the material to make a "dirty bomb" in Dallas. And our immigration policy gives the latter type of "immigrant" a huge crowd to hide himself in.

The first step in providing for our national defense at the border is to let those who bear us no ill will to come in "through the front door" -- to walk across the border publicly and conveniently instead of sneaking over it in the middle of the night and in the middle of the desert. Believe me, they'd rather be welcomed than hunted ... and welcoming them rather than hunting them will reduce the cover they provide for our enemies.

The second step in providing for our national defense at the border is to re-focus the government services which address that border away from hassling peaceful immigrants and toward detecting and eliminating real threats to the United States.

I attribute most anti-immigrant sentiment to race panic, where people see the culture changing in response to new waves of immigrants and proceed to freak out in all directions. As the decendent of economic migrants myself, like most people who are not actually Native Americans, I find arguing against open borders both unprincipled as a libertarian and distasteful as a civilized human being. But perhaps Ron cannot risk alienating the racist right together with the racist left and racist center. Very well.

But I have no such excuse and I won't provide him cover on this issue.

There's a far simpler way of dealing with the poverty that drives people to climb the border fences and risk death in the desert, and that is to adjust our foreign and economic policies that are, frankly, aimed at keeping our southern neighbors broke, for the sake of cheap bananas and minerals. Free and fair trade will do more to stem the flood than any tonnage of barbed wire and guard dogs.

Oh, and a fence that keeps other people out is pretty damn good at keeping you IN, come the day Bush decides to round up the Usual Suspects.

Ron Paul sounds better and better

It's really not that hard to make a case for the failure of central planning and central services, and I think we really need such a voice in the White House - WITH a veto - to keep a solidly progressive congress in check after 2008.

But Constitutional or not, Paul has to come up with some better way of dealing with the issue of universal health care than saying "It's unconstitutional and it won't work."

He may be correct in both cases, indeed, I suspect he is. Nonetheless, if he is not going to support universal health care, he needs to present a solution to the problem that IS constitutional and WILL work.

Now, as it happens, I'm in favor of universal access to health care, with some way of ensuring a Canadian "work-alike" system. There will be a need for some federal regulations and standards. But I don't see any particular reason why that system should be a one-size-fits-all FEDERAL system paid with federal dollars. I'm not exactly against that either, but I don't see why all other options should be taken off the table.

What we really need to do is look at the system we have, see why the costs are so bizarre. (Hint - hospitals owned by insurance companies and bizarre costs assessed to consumers that would be unsustainable if self or under-insured) We should look at other systemic problems - for docturs, the costs of insurance compliance and the costs of malpractice insurance are two biggies.

So those are two things that need to be thought about, and then we also need to think about making basic preventive health care widely available to everyone by some common means. Now, that common means does not have to imply that the same pocket is paying in every case - all it requires is that there is a federal regulation mandating a standard database format for insurance billing. Medicare needs to use the same one, so does Medicaid, and all state agencies that deal with such things. One form. One standard format wallet card. One standard consent / billing card to access billing and medical records. Computers can do all kinds of record keeping and routing, there's no reason on god's green earth why people should have to do such things at all.

Reducing overhead will go a hell of a long way to fully funding universal health care, or something that is just like it from the perspective of the panicked mom with the howling baby. It is something that really must be done - the people are demanding it - and I for one would prefer such a system to be in harmony with both our Constitution AND good old-fashioned fiscal prudence.

Ron Paul, Tucker Carlson, Conservatism, Constitution