I have gotten annoyed again at Jeffrey Goldberg, a very good reason to save your pennies and not subscribe to The Atlantic, who is apparently subtly throwing around accusations of anti-Semitism.

I realized what I find so objectionable about him, the gang at The New Republic and all those people whose advocacy of Israel has delayed peace in the Middle East for decades. It also may explain why a type of evangelical Christian, the same group that was fertile ground for the Klu Klux Klan, etc., accepts these policies.

The policies they support actually reinforce every negative stereotype put forth by people from Henry Ford to Pat Buchanan.

Should health reform be sold as a moral issue or a practical one. It seems to me focusing on self-interest is useful in a nation with so much rhetoric rejecting any responsibility for caring for others, with such a focus on individual responsibility.

In the book, The Healing of American, T.R. Reid contrasts the Clinton failure to reform our health care system with the success of Switzerland and Taiwan in fixing theirs in 1994. In those countries the moral issue was given major emphasis, whereas in the U.S. the focus was on the economic issues. But, would the moral issue work in the U.S., where health care as a human right doesn't seem to have much resonance.

The so-called experts we have worked with urge us to draw the parallels with our other public system - highways, police, etc., and focus on how we are all tied together and the need for equality of treatment.

I have become depressed reading T.R. Reid's book. He repeatedly talks about other countries who refuse to have a health care system where everyone doesn't have equal access to care. And yet in this country we have refused to make health care available to our neighbors over and over. What kind of people are we?

For that matter, what kind of people looks at TV, sees people rudely yelling nonsense and thinks, "What a compelling argument! Those are the people I want to be like," and turn their backs on fixing a system they know is messed up.

The Greatest Canadian, according to a CBC poll in 2004, is  Tommy Douglas, the creator of Canadian Medicare. I learned this when a friend sent me a quote from a column by Gail Pettett. Having a habit of not believing everything I am told I looked it up.

Yep, he was No. 1. Douglas started his health reform program in Saskatchewan and then brought it to the nation as a whole, which may explain the differences in wait times, etc., between provinces. His job was probably made easier because Canada was a British Commonwealth and many people had been exposed to the British National Health System.

After admiring the fact a Baptist minister could get the social gospel (Can't you imagine Richard Land of the ironically named Baptist Ethics group fainting over that?), I wandered over to the Great Britons.

Sadly, Aneurin Bevan, credited with beginning the British national health system, only made it to No. 45 in the Great Britons' list. Despite the landslide Labour victory in 1945, it took Bevan 18 months to get the participation of the British Medical Association (which appears to have been as obstructive as the American version), according to Wikipedia. The article says, "Bevan finally managed to win over the support of the vast majority of the medical profession by offering a couple of minor concessions, but without compromising on the fundamental principles of his NHS proposals."

You have probably heard Bevan's quote on the process, "I stuffed their mouths with gold." Unfortunately, it looks like that may be what will have to happen with health care reform and the insurance companies, big pharma, etc., today.

Since, T.R. Reid calls the British system the Beveridge system, I wandered over to check out Mr. William Beveridge, the author of the Beveridge Report. In 1941 (1941!) England commissioned a report on how to rebuild after World War II. Even more amazingly, they actually used it to guide policy!

I was struck by Beveridge's use of one of my favorite arguments for health reform to promote his plan. Again to quote Wikipedia,

One of its most remarkable assets was the convincing manner of Beveridge's argument which made it so widely acceptable: Beveridge appealed to conservatives and other doubters by arguing that the welfare institutions he proposed would increase the competitiveness of British industry in the post-war period, not only by shifting labour costs like healthcare and pensions out of corporate ledgers and onto the public account, but also by producing healthier, wealthier and thus more motivated and productive workers who would also serve as a great source of demand for British goods.

How can American companies compete with those from countries that don't have to pay a significant percentage of their personnel costs for health care? How can small businesses, who pay an even higher percentage of their costs for health care compete with anybody?

Also on the Canadian list was Sir Frederick Grant Banting, the discoverer of insulin. In 1923, 40 years before the invention of Canadian Medicare, the Canadian government honored his  winning of the Nobel Prize  by giving him a annuity to support his research. A good way to get innovation, right.

I bet you thought an American discovered insulin. Earlier, I was trying to think of a major American health innovation: Heart transplant? No, South African. Test tube baby? Nope, England. It was pointed out to me an American invented the artificial heart. Of course, in American we invent things we can sell at a profit!

Steven Hawking, recent resident of a National Health Service hospital, is alive at age 67, having lived for about 46 years with ALS and 61 years under the National Health Service.A student at Cambridge, he was diagnosed "shortly after his 21st birthday," according to his website. He was what we would call a graduate student. His father was head of a government research institute. Shortly after being diagnosed, he married a woman who was also a student.

OK, the question is, would he have received the health care support he needed if he had been born in the United States? In 1963, would the insurance of a federal employee have paid for the care of a 21-year-old who had already gotten a bachelor's degree? Would the family have been able to purchase health insurance for a student? Would the type of supports, including the machine that allows him to speak have been available to him under the U.S. health care system?

Hawking did not begin to achieve until he came to terms with his disease, and realized if he was going to die soon, he should begin to live. Would that have been possible in the USA, or would  he have spent his life struggling to get the services he needed?

Any federal employees, students, etc., able to formulate some answers about the US health care in the 60s?

 

When you don't have a reasonable argument to make, you make your claims at the top of your voice. The anti-health reform demonstrators don't seem to realize what they are truly saying is they have nothing to say. The only way they can end the argument is to stop it.

Sen. Nelson says people are picking on him, and he won't vote for health reform unless they stop. Let's hope our congress members respond to the boorish behavior of the demonstrators the same way.

In Tennessee a few people derailed any true tax reform by driving around the state Capitol and honking their horns. Ironically, most of them, although not the talk radio hosts who egged them on, would pay less if the state cut its reliance on regressive sales taxes and instituted a sales tax. However, our legislators are too cowed to bring up the issue anymore.

I hope the bad behavior of a few doesn't derail health reform.

We all sneered at the McCain Bush, Bush, Reagan people for stacking the decks when they "met the people (only the people who liked them). It would be sad it that becomes the only way leaders will be seen in public.

Another nail in the coffin of representative democracy

Apparently, Fred Thompson is awake and concerned about end of life planning. (Actually, I think that's what his campaign was, wasn't it.)

He is retailing the particularly puerile misrepresentation that paying for end of life planning is the same as killing someone. It is evil to scare people that way and try to keep people from getting help when they are making difficult and complex decisions at an emotional time.

It is odd that any Republican and especially a Tennessee ex-senator would want to bring of end-of-life planning. Probably what most people remember about our other ex-senator, Bill Frist, is his skill at diagnosing brain activity from a thousand miles away. (I know the family of one of his patients - they don't think he was any better up close.)

Thompson's enthusiasm for killing off health reform is shocking. As reported by local sources and the Washington Post, a radiologist and a hospital got judgments against his wife. As of 2007, the  hospital was still owed about $1,700. The bills were incurred before she married Thompson, but if he had paid the church affiliated hospital, it would have been a private source of funding for the nonprofit, something he is supposed to be for.

I have been amazed by the way people seem to ignore their own experiences and that of people they know in opposing health care reform. However, Thompson's continued opposition and misrepresentation really push the limit.

Luckily the nursing home and doctors, when my relative was dying, never asked to see his living will. He really didn't have a legally binding living will because information about which signature was supposed to be notarized wasn't clear. I knew what he wanted, and he trusted me to make the right decisions and signed the form at a time when he could do so. But,  we didn't do it right. I wanted my relative to stay longer on this earth, some end of life planning would have made the process less painful.

And, Fred, for more than 20 years, Medicare has paid for mammograms, but just because the government pays for something, you don't have to get one.

Sounds like Nashville had one of the larger events today. I

It is pretty amazing 2,500 people just spontaneously decided after six years of federal deficits deficits are a bad thing.

Once again, Tennesseans gathered on a publicly created and maintained space, to which they had traveled on publicly funded roads and streets, some of them having clearly taken children out of public schools. All to complain about paying taxes.

Many of them made me want to cry: they were clearly too dumb to realize how they were being manipulated. They probably do realize that, as poor as they are, they are carrying more than their share of the load, since Tennessee relies predominately on the very regressive sales taxes to maintain those roads and repair that plaza.

Unfortunately, these are the same people who, about five years ago, snarled traffic, placed the legislative staffs under siege and foiled efforts to pass a progressive income tax.

Today, we continue to spend less per pupil for  education than nearly every other state, and these poor jerks never realize why they area carrying more than their share of the state's tax.

No wonder they are angry.

I just noticed this week a magnet saying "AIG: We Know Money" has been stuck to my file drawer for...who knows how long.

I

One of the Proverbs in the Bible encourages conciliatory behavior toward one's enemies because, "For in doing so, you will heap coals of fire upon his head, and the Lord will reward you."

In our own parable, we have two men. One  - the foolish man - who ignores the wishes of the voters of his party, abandons the party and runs against its candidate. He then gets angry with his fellow senators, who support the candidate of the party supported by the people who elected them.

Putting the petty and the personal above principle, our foolish man then devotes himself to tearing down the party and its candidate for president, sinking to a level of dishonesty and vileness.

The other man - I am still not sure if I can call him the wise man - welcomes him back into the fold (it would be mixing my parables to say he is welcomed as a lost sheep).

I don't know if Obama will be rewarded for this excessive act of forgiveness, but I hope our foolish man at least has enough character to be truly shamed.

Hundreds of committed Obama volunteers spent hours registering voters, canvassing and calling across Tennessee and yet the state again went red. Even worse, when the state Legislature meets in January both Houses will be in the hands of Republicans for the first time in decades.

Only the control in committees have protected reproductive rights and gay adoption. And redistricting looms.

While a higher percentage of Tennesseans reported that race was an issue in their voting choice, and no doubt many people refused to vote for an African-American, I believe so-called values voters are responsible for the swath of red across the Bible belt.

An anti-abortion amendment, English only legislation and restrictions on adoptions and foster parenting by gays are expected to be among the first bills filled in the new General Assembly.

Even more depressing than this state of affairs is the fear that the combination of committed Obama volunteers and an a statewide effort to elect Democrats collided. Volunteers called asking voters to vote for Obama and for local legislative candidates. Can this have made a connection that would not have been there without the call. Might voters who might have voted for the generally conservative Democrats if they hadn't connected them with the national party?

We certainly have some re-examination and work to do.

My nice, attractive, very bright cousin would be dead if her fairly late-term pregnancy had not been terminated.

Reading the pundits comments about how unflappable Barack Obama was in the debates reminded me of discussions I have heard of the Jackie Robinson's introduction into big league baseball. He was tested to see if he could survive the sort of hateful attacks he would receive without responding in kind. Robinson, according to historians, wasn't naturally unflappable. Perhaps Obama's apparent serenity results from never quite being about to totally identify with any racial or ethnic group, but I think its internalized enough that John McCain can't break it and neither can our enemies or the problems the next president will face.

"He knew that the future of blacks in baseball depended on it. The pressure was enormous, overwhelming, and unbearable at times. I don't know how he held up. I know I never could have,"  it was said of Robinson.

Not only do the futures of other African-American politicians, but all our futures depend on a cool head in the White House. Especially now.

Let's all pitch in a few bucks and buy Mr. Reynolds a BlackBerry so he can keep up with Obama's schedule.