My fundamentalist Christian, movement conservative father asked me today to pick him up a copy of Bugliosi's new book, "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder." Clearly, this is this sign of the second coming and the indication that it is far too late, if it was ever possible, in any event, to teach Bush or Cheney or any of this crew anything about the ways of the world or appropriate behavior, diplomatic or otherwise, in a global environment.

My own view is that they were always incorrigible and unreflective, (that is, way too screwed up), whatever the surface or deeply psychological explanation, to change anything once they "assumed" office. Apparently, this is what ideology does for people who are capable of seeing only what they want to see -- it turns them into rabid egomaniacs, tyrants, and fools and the rest of us into victims, some less innocent than others.

Posted at June 24, 2008 9:08 PM in response to At Israel's Parliament, a French Lesson in Leadership for Bush

I very much appreciate this post, Greg, and the research that went into it. After Edwards left the race, I switched to Obama. I don't care who is on the receiving in, I am appalled at the sludge that too often passes for political reporting, commentary, and discussion in this day and age. As others have pointed out, this is not only true of the right but also, it depresses me to acknowledge, on the left, as well, and at all levels of media, marginal, mainstream, and new.

It is clear there is rabid sexism and racism in our culture, along with many other forms of discrimination and stereotyping. Nevertheless, you can count me as one who is not convinced that sexism and unfair treatment in the media, though it certainly occurred and is despicable, was the main force, or even a significant factor, in Sen. Clinton's defeat in the primary. Despite a few missteps, Obama is managing to handle similar unfair media coverage and slimy rumors quite effectively in most instances.

But I strongly disagree with those who suggest that, because she lost, Clinton and her difficulties with the media during the campaign should now be swept swiftly off the stage. The degradation in the way the media in all its forms covers critical political issues and government affairs, along with the degradation in our political discourse, has huge implications for all of us in that they have resulted in, and will continue to result in a dearth of the needed information and analysis on which to base sound judgments and good decisions by the public and our government representatives. See, for example, Rick Shenkman's piece in yesterday's Boston Globe titled The Dumbing Down of Voters"."

Posted at June 16, 2008 3:53 PM in response to Was The Media Unfair To Hillary? Here's Our Rundown.

I just had orthoscopic knee surgery. The surgery lasted 45 minutes and I was in the hospital a total of ... FIVE hours. The hospital and various doctors billed my insurer, my state's "risk" pool, which is the only insurance I can get apparently because I have asthma, a total of over $10,000. The insurer paid about $3500, says I owe $2500, which doesn't include the costs of extensive physical therapy that I haven't been billed for yet.

These astronomical amounts don't include the fact that because I can't take non-steroidals, the knee surgeon didn't know how to manage my osteoarthritis they found during surgery and wasn't willing to take the time to find out. I had to myself go searching for a specialist to help me with this, at significant additional expense for the doctor and the medication. The providers are both connected with a local teaching university but I had to make separate arrangements for payment with the doctors and the hospitals, thus doubling my monthly payments.

I am paying over $10,000 year or more for insurance premiums, the $2000 deductible, co-pays and necessary but uncovered procedures, in effect, another mortgage. I am self-employed and not working much at the moment and living on a small inheritance as I care for an elderly parent. My medical expenses are over 25% of my income. I am not eligible to apply for discounted insurance until a year after the year that I earned a reduced amount qualifying for the discount.

And I'm lucky to have the "insurance." Everyone tells me so. For one thing, I was in so much pain before the surgery and was unable to walk. Frankly, I would have given just about everything I had to make the pain stop stop. Another reason I'm lucky to have and barely be able to afford this insurance which is slowly bankrupting me is that one of the nurses that state hires to follow up with patients with this insurance told me yesterday that, though she works for this "insurance" company, as an employee, her premiums are going up to over $1000 month for her family and as of next month, she will be forced to decline coverage. Our state legislature took a look late last year at the possibility of finding a way to reduce premiums with it's "risk" pool coverage and concluded, nope, it couldn't do a darn thing to help. Us poor suckers who have no other choices are just so lucky to have insurance at all.

This is insurance? Hah! This is highway robbery. If I recall correctly, we were sold managed care a few decades ago because the system was supposed to prevent doctors and other providers from adding undue costs. Keeping costs down and setting up a larger pool to spread the risks meant we would all have access to health care for less money. Now we have a system, one of the most, if not the most, expensive in the world and nowhere near the highest quality or accessibility, that benefits few but those rich enough to afford it and those who draw the substantial profits from it.

I've been threatening for a while now to start a snarky website attacking the insurance industry called sendkathymoney.com. If you send Kathy money, she won't give you much of anything of value for your dollars but so? How's that any different than the so-called insurance industry? At least if you're generous enough to send Kathy your hard earned cash, she won't hassle you and make your life an accounting and negotiating hell.

This situation is beyond outrageous and any politician or right wing enabler who refuses to see it and who refuses to take any responsibility for fixing it should be shamed and shunned by the people they pretend to represent. Now, let's see, what's more important to Congress right now that making sure every American has affordable access to medical care? Oh, yeah, that's right, apparently the top priorities are figuring out how to give immunity to the arrogant criminals in this administration and their corporate co-conspirator for their wholesale violations of our constitutional rights and how to continue paying for a misbegotten war that if not illegal was a very, very bad idea in both conception and execution, along with the billions being siphoned off by greedy contractors. And the priority of the media? Apparently to keep us all barefoot and stupid with non-stop stories about celebrities and candidate haircuts and BBQs and the insulted but not bitter working class and Obama's intemperate pastor, all the while that their corporate sponsors and the politicians they depend on rob us all blind.

Am I bitter? Me? What in the hell is there to be better about?

Posted at May 1, 2008 12:48 PM in response to Battered by Health Insurance

In reply to Dan K ... Amen!

Posted at April 18, 2008 2:20 PM in response to Journalists Slam ABC Debate Tactics

Red -- you captured completely the process I've been through letting go of Edwards, struggling with whether Clinton was my candidate, given my general respect for her and desire to see in my lifetime a woman sitting in the Oval Office, and the path through which I finally arrived able and willing to support Obama. What I heard from him in his Philly speech is an appreciation for the need to break from the ultimately dysfunctional, dishonest (some might even nihilistic) way we deal with the fundamental issues that divide us. At the core of it, the question is how do fairly and reasonably allocate resources and pay costs. I don't know whether Obama has any answers but what I'm hearing from him sounds more profoundly truthful and encouraging than what I've heard from anyone else. I want to give him, and us, a chance for something different to shock us to begin climbing out of this deep hole of division, anger, hatred and general screwed-up-edness we seem stuck in.

Posted at March 20, 2008 11:13 AM in response to The State of Our Imperfect Union: A Fence-sitting Feminist Finally Makes Up Her Mind

Thanks for the question. You know, what I fear is that all my father and others who share his perspective hear is what Fox News and hate radio tell them they should hear because, for whatever reason, this fits into a mindset they want to believe. The question I have is whether thee are enough thoughtful people in this country who no longer buy this. I confess I no longer think this is a question of how smart or intelligent or even educated these folks are. I have former academic colleagues with numerous advanced degrees who see through the same filters my father views the world with. I've just been rather flummoxed what, if anything, can be done about this other than to outvote the insanity. I just not sure whether we'll be able to do this as soon as we need to.

Posted at March 19, 2008 3:01 PM in response to For the Long Haul

I am very sympathetic to the woman who writes the letter you feature in this post. I too live in Colorado, except I have insurance but only because I am paying close to $10,000 a year for it. At least I am insured although I am burning through my savings, which leaves me depending on the genoristy of family members. I could not get health insurance except through the Colorado risk pool, though I am healthier now than I've been in many years. I too have given up using Advair for my astha unless I am having a serious episode. Even so, m three main prescriptions for hypothroid, PCOS, and hormones have a monthly price tag of $70/month on top of a $2000 deductible and over $500/month in premiums that have increased over a hundred a month in the past year. The total comes close to rivaling my mortgage. Then I read yesterday on a local news site that Colorado state legislators say they can't do much of anything to address the healthcare crisis.

The major burden I now struggle with caught up in this crisis is financial. For so many, including the woman who wrote the letter referenced, the issue is one of survival. What kind of country have we become that our government and its representatives (and would be representatives like Romney and the other indifferent Republican candidates for presidennt) would deny its hard-working citizens affordable access to basic health care and then turn around and blame the victims of this outrageous situation? I hardly recognize this country anymore.

Posted at January 8, 2008 8:01 PM in response to Letter from an Uninsured Woman

By wrangling with his own demons and rising above them since conceding the 2000 presidential elections, Al Gore has demonstrated a greatness of mind and spirit that we have seen only on rare occasions even from the very best of our leaders. Just the opposite is true of those on the right who, after ascending to power, have debased themselves and this country and our global reputation by eschewing every possible opportunity to lead with the broader interests of the planet, our nation, all its people, and its founding principles in mind.

No one that I've seen since the mid-90s has succeeded in dealing effectively with the viciousness of the poisonous attacks coming from the right, nor with its iron-fisted lock on message control. No one, that is, but Al Gore during the past few years. Despite what some consider Gore's failures during the run-up to and following the 2000 vote, he has turned thee events into a triumph, not as a shrine to his own ego but on behalf of this unprecedented global emergency of climate change we have no choice but to address as a planet.

Regardless of whether he ever chooses to again run for political office, Al Gore inspires. He is the best role model we have for what it looks like and means to act, and fight, for the larger good as statesman and as a public servant.

Congratulations, Al Gore, and thank you.

Posted at October 12, 2007 1:30 AM in response to Gore Nobel Discussion

I agree with Don. Iraq may be Bush's "war" but there never was a war in Iraq in any conventional sense. We invaded another country on the false premises of "preempting" Saddam's use of weapons of mass destruction and support for Al Qaeda and other terrorists. This mission, such as it was, was accomplished when it became clear, as it was to some before the invasion, that Saddam had no significant weapons stockpiles and there never was a pre-invasion connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Thus, by the time Saddam was captured and executed, no stated rationale for the invasion of Iraq remained extant.

No matter what kind of despicable tyrant Saddam was or what Bush and company may really have hoped to achieve by invading Iraq, a sovereign nation, on multiple pretexts and occupying it badly for four disastrous years, an occupation that has spawned little more than death, destruction, civil war, chaos, cruelty, and corruption for all involved, the fact is that the jig is up. Whatever one wishes to call what we have been doing in Iraq for the past four years, we have lost. The situation has turned out badly for them, for us, and for the rest of the planet. Whatever hope there was of turning the tide on our occupation of Iraq, that time and opportunity are lost and there is nothing we can do now to redeem it.

All that is left to us is to end the occupation and our failed attempts at intervening in the civil war we generated and begin to make reparations as best we can. This is the only hope we have to begin to restore our credibility and our reputation at home and abroad as a peacable, law-abiding nation.

Regardless of semantics, I support Reid and anyone else who makes the effort to move us in this direction.

Posted at April 26, 2007 10:42 AM in response to Broder Says Harry Reid is A Bozo Like Gonzales!

Ditto.

Posted at April 17, 2007 9:20 PM in response to MY REACTION TO THE TRAGEDY AT VIRGINIA TECH