Category Archives: Health

Yeah, what Vincent said (on cigarette tax)…

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Dang, I wish I hadn’t posted that Sheheen video earlier, because now that I have a good comment from him on Sanford’s veto of the cigarette tax increase (the increase that only goes half as far as 70 percent of South Carolinians want it to go, but at least is better than the 30-cent we almost had to settle for), it looks like this blog is all Sheheen, all the time.

Anyway, here it is:

“Gov. Sanford’s veto of the cigarette tax is absolutely indefensible,” said Sheheen. He continued:

“I don’t know what world the governor is living in, but here in South Carolina, we’re facing unprecedented budget shortfalls — cutting vital medical services for many South Carolinians and laying off teachers, including my own child’s third grade teacher. Increasing our state’s lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax will qualify our state for millions of dollars in federal matching funds for health care while reducing teen smoking and smoking-related health care costs. It’s the responsible thing to do.

It’s time for us to elect a governor who will be committed to the people of this state rather than committed to an unbending political ideology that ignores the basic needs of everyday South Carolinians.

Yeah, what he said. And yeah, this does illustrate why South Carolinians need to be really, really careful for once about electing a governor. And it’s why we can’t even consider Nikki Haley, and increasingly — and I hate this, because as you know, I like to have a dog in every party’s fight — ALL of the Republicans seem determined to disqualify themselves from being considered by rational independents (I discussed that previously back here).

And as soon as I get a good comment — heck, any comment — coming over the transom from someone else, I’ll post that, too.

By the way, it just so happens that my office door these days actually does have a transom. I don’t think it opens any more, though…

The actual transom over the actual door of my actual office.

Out of pocket

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Wrote this last night, but saved it in draft form, as I was too spacey to know whether I was making any sense:

Here’s why I haven’t posted today, and probably won’t tomorrow…

Things have been crazy at our house later because we’ve been trying to get our house ready to go on the market (anybody want to buy a house, by the way?). In the midst of all that, my wife — who’s been working on this project pretty much around the clock (around her job), with me trailing along in her wake being occasionally helpful — got some kind of horrible stomach bug last week. Not the flu, but it might as well have been. Wiped her out for most of a week, but she kept going.

Over the weekend, one of the twins got a mild case of it, but quickly recovered. Then yesterday, the other twin got it, and so did her mother, my daughter. My wife went over to try to help with all that last night, leaving me alone to work on a list of things to get ready for the fact that today, a Realtor was planning to show our house.

So I put some stuff on the stove to cook for my dinner, and went upstairs to do some of the things on my punch list. Then, I drifted over to the laptop and started a long response to some of y’all’s comments, and then… the smoke alarm went off downstairs. I had totally lost track of time, and hadn’t heard the kitchen timer go off, and a pot of field peas had run out of water.

The house was immediately, before I could get downstairs and get the pot out into the yard, saturated with smoke. I spent the next three or four hours with the attic fan on and all the doors open, wiping down every surface in the kitchen and cleaning out the hood vent, trying to get rid of the smell. My wife, who had planned to spend the night at my daughter’s house to look after sick folk, came home to help me deal with the mess. I was feeling pretty sheepish by then, I can tell you.

Right after she got home — well after 10 — my son-in-law called to say my daughter had gotten so much sicker that he was going to take her to the hospital. (I won’t go into detail, but she really needed some fluids by IV, and other complications addressed.) He woke up their big sister to watch the twins until I could get there. He ended up spending the night at the hospital and so did my wife. The staff was badly overwhelmed, so the smart thing was for a healthy family member or two to be there.

I spent the night on the couch at the twins’ house. They were fine, although I didn’t sleep much. Then today, I took care of them all day except for a couple of hours in which I grabbed a late breakfast, did some last-minute work on the house, noted with satisfaction that most of the smoke smell was gone, and just to be on the safe side put a frozen apple pie in the oven to get a pleasant smell going (crafty, huh?). And yes, I turned off the oven when it was done.

Then I went back to take care of the twins until about an hour ago, then came home and put some dinner on the stove. It’s cooking now. And yes, this time, I have the laptop in the kitchen. My wife’s spending the night in the hospital with my daughter (who still isn’t in a regular room), my son-in-law is with the babies, and I’m going to cop some Zs at home before going back to take care of the babies in the morning.

It’s 11:12 p.m. My dinner is ready.

Don’t expect me to post tomorrow.

To the most important point: My daughter is better, just not better enough to go home. She was really, really sick.

Since I wrote the above, the night has passed without incident — except that my youngest daughter, the ballet dancer, injured her foot last night and it looks like she might not be able to perform Saturday, which we were looking forward to. Her big sister is still in the hospital, the twins are in the care of my son-in-law, and I’m going to try to get some freelance work done this afternoon. Still probably won’t post before tonight, if then…

Come give blood with me

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First, I really should have mentioned this sooner, but I just remembered that I’m going to give blood at the Red Cross at 5 p.m. today, and the need is sufficiently great that they asked me to “bring a friend” if I could.

So far, the people I’ve mentioned it to in person have not stepped forward — which is par for the course, and besides, it was relatively short notice for them, too.

But in case any of y’all can drop everything and come join me, please do. You might not be able to do exactly what I plan to do (if my iron is high enough), which is give double red cells, but I’m pretty sure they’ll take whole blood from a walk-in.

And if you can’t make it today, how about tomorrow, or some other time soon? I’ll be glad to help you set it up, or you can call (803) 251-6000. The need is great, particularly now, according to a piece I saw last week in The Wall Street Journal:

A number of blood centers are reporting an unusual drop in collections because too many potential donors are sick with the H1N1 virus, or swine flu. Some blood drives in high schools and corporate offices have had to be scaled back or canceled because of high levels of absenteeism.

Another problem: Some centers say a growing number of donors are calling a day or two after giving blood to say they’ve come down with flu-like symptoms, forcing the centers to dispose of the blood as part of government regulations. Researchers in a government-funded study are testing samples of these donors’ blood for viremia, the medical term for virus in the blood.

That’s nationally. Here in the Midlands, we always have a shortage, because, well, we don’t give as much as we should in this community. So come on out and help, if you can.

Mild-mannered demagoguery in the echo chamber

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Just now I got an automated phone call on my land line inviting me to take part in a telephone “town hall meeting” with Jim DeMint. So I listened in.

And first, I want to say that I appreciate that Jim DeMint is mild-mannered. None of that shouting, in-your-face demagoguery for him.

But that said, I have to say that after awhile, hearing some fairly extreme ideas espoused mildly and politely starts to creep me out.

Basically, the way this thing worked was that ordinary, regular, plain, normal, average Americans in the 2nd District asked the senator question after question in a manner that was rather like T-ball. Nobody was trying to throw it past him, and he kept saying “good question” to little sermonettes from folks who are worried about that Barack Obama guy giving away “our freedoms,” on issue after issue. Whether we’re talking global warming or trade or monetary policy to crime to health care, that’s what it always boiled down to: Thank goodness we have you, senator, to stand up for our freedoms. No problem, folks, glad to do it, and be sure to sign up for my “Freedom Alert” reports…

When somebody calls in, truly worried about crime — her house has been broken into twice, she said — and says “Is it possible that they’ll be able to take away our constitutional right to bear arms?,” it seems to me that the right thing to do would be say, “Of course, not — no one is trying to do that to you.” But not Jim. In his own mild, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth way, he makes sure he gives the impression that the only reason ATF goons aren’t about to batter down your door and take your guns from your cold, dead fingers is because he’s there stopping ’em: “I’m doing all I can,” he promises, “to make sure we don’t lose our constitutional rights.”

So why am I not reassured?

Yes, I could have hit a button and tried to butt in with a “Hey, wait a minute” sort of question, but all those years of not upstaging regular folks — of not wanting to become the story — stopped me.

One guy, though, did — right at the end — ask Jim what in the world would be wrong with ordinary working Americans having the same kind of health coverage as Congress (this was the only question I heard on the subject that wasn’t about that Obama wanting to take away our Medicare and turn it over to the gummint). Jim assured him that HE wanted ordinary Americans to have good health care, which was why he provided insurance when he was an employer in the private sector, and that he thought members of Congress should be forced to sign up for whatever gummint plan it cooked up, etc., etc. — everything, of course, except to say that yes, members of Congress are in a government health care system, and it works just great for them.

Far more typical was Hazel, who wanted to know why she had worked to pay into Medicare for over 40 years, and now that Obama “wants to take it away from us.”

And of course, Jim didn’t say, “You like Medicare? So what’s wrong with having it for everybody?” That would apparently defeat his purposes.

Anyway, when it was over Jim went away feeling all that much better about his brave stances against health care reform and cap and trade and so forth.

Maybe I should have said something. You think I should have said something? I should have said something…

Oh, give it a rest, Gresham…

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Here I am, trying to figure out what the House just passed in the way of a health care bill, and I get this Tweet from Gresham Barrett:

greshambarrett

Sad day 4 Freedom. I worry abt my children. Big Gvt-more red tape-more debt-is NOT the answer. Today-our Forefathers cry.1 minute ago from mobile web

Oh, give it a rest, Gresham. What pitiful histrionic nonsense. I don’t know about your forefathers, but mine were made of sterner stuff.

I don’t know at this point whether this was a good bill or a bad bill, but I suspect rather strongly that whether it was the best conceivable bill, or the worst thing you ever saw, or somewhere in between, ol’ Gresham would still be over-emoting against it. He’s been overreacting to all sorts of stimuli this week, hasn’t he?

And don’t you DARE let SC opt out of health care reform

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Here’s the thing that really frosts me about this health care debate: One of the little bargaining chips offered by those milquetoast “liberals” who don’t have the guts to stand up for the public option (and seriously, a “liberal Democrat” who won’t stand up for single-payer or something equally sweeping is a waste of skin) is the idea of letting states “opt out.” For instance, from the WSJ story I mentioned earlier:

Mr. Reid announced his support Monday for a government-run health plan — the so-called public option — while adding an escape clause for states that don’t want to participate.

OK, so you’re going to subject me to all this hullabaloo — the townhall meetings, the “You lie!” nonsense, all of this — and in the end, even if you get the guts to institute the public option, you’re going to deny it to me and mine?

Think about it, folks: If only one state in the union opted out, which state do you think it would be? Hmmm, let’s see … could it be the one that fired on Fort Sumter? Could it be the one where the governor wanted to lie down in front of the truck delivering the stimulus? Could it be the home of Joe “You Lie” Wilson and the “We Don’t Care How You Did It Up North” bumper stickers? Could it be the state with the highest number of elected radical libertarians (on the Eastern Seaboard, anyway)?

As the former governor of the state that would probably be the second one to opt out used to say, “You betcha!”

And folks, that would just be too bitter a pill to swallow.

Without the ‘public option,’ forget it (and of COURSE we should pay for it)

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This story in the WSJ today about health care reform causes me to make the following observations:

  • I’m glad Sen. Reid is talking about including a “public option,” because without that, you’re not accomplishing anything.
  • I’m really disappointed in my man Joe Lieberman, coming out against the public option.
  • Is everybody in Washington nuts? Joe opposes it because he says we shouldn’t have it without asking Americans to pay for it. Well, duh! Of course we have to pay for it! What lunatic would want a program we didn’t pay for?

That last one will tell you that I obviously haven’t been paying much attention to the “debate” in Washington lately. But at least now I can see why a reasonable person might oppose reform, if there are actually people proposing a public option without asking participants to pay for it.

Folks, I want to go on record, here and now, as being more than willing to pay for federal government health care. I am willing to pay up to the almost $600 a month I am personally currently paying for my COBRA. I’m thinking that if you require every household to pay that much (or even $500), you could have a real Cadillac system that would be FAR more efficient than what I’ve got now. And most importantly to me and I would think to most people, I couldn’t lose it. And I could take any job for which I’m qualified and which pays enough to pay mortgage, buy groceries and pay the light bill and such, rather than having to limit my options to something with a great health plan.

Lemme ‘splain to you the problem with the current situation, folks. It’s not the one out of seven who don’t have coverage; it’s the far greater number who currently have coverage through their employer, but live in constant threat of losing it, and who don’t DARE stimulate the economy by going out and starting a business or something because they can’t give up their coverage.  That’s the really big problem, far bigger than the problem of the uninsured.

If that’s what they’ve been talking about — a choice between a public plan that we don’t pay for, or no public plan — then I might have to join Doug Ross’ movement to just get rid of all the incumbents.

Doesn’t anybody up there have any sense?

Obama should seize historic opportunity, say “No, thanks” to Nobel

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Barack Obama has a tremendous opportunity now to recapture lost political capital, unify this country behind his leadership and increase (if that’s possible, in light of today’s development) his international prestige — all of which would be an enormous boost to the things he’s trying to achieve:

He should say, “Thanks, but no thanks” to the Nobel Peace prize.

If he does that, everyone will think more of him. That is to say, everyone who is susceptible to being influenced. The Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks who make a good living from criticizing him will still do so, but no one but the nuttiest fringe types would still be listening. Everyone with a scintilla of fairmindedness would be impressed if he declined this honor.

If he doesn’t do it, this award will simply be another occasion for the Right to hoot and holler and deride, and the Left to dig in its heels and defend Their Guy, and the crazy polarizing spin cycle will spin on, while health care and everything else gets lost amid the shouting.

I got a foretaste of this this morning. I was about to get out of my truck to go in and have breakfast when I heard the news that had stunned the White House and everyone else: Barack Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In the next few moments, I quickly filed the following three tweets:

Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize? The White House is stunned, and so am I. Isn’t it a tad premature or something?

What did Obama win the Nobel FOR? Good intentions? I mean, seriously, the man just GOT here…

Hey, I LIKE Obama; I have hopes he’ll EARN a Nobel one day soon. But he hasn’t had the chance to do so yet…

Then, when I walked in to get my breakfast, I ran into Steve Benjamin and Samuel Tenenbaum, and asked them if they’d heard the news. They had. I expected them to share my shock. I mean, I saw one report (which I haven’t been able to confirm yet) that Obama was only sworn into office TWO WEEKS before the nominations for the Nobel had to be in. The president himself knows better than to claim he’d earned it. Here’s what he said this morning:

Mr. Obama said he doesn’t view the award “as a recognition of my own accomplishments,” but rather as a recognition of goals he has set for the U.S. and the world. Mr. Obama said, “I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many transformative figures that have been honored by this prize.”

But Steve and Samuel — especially Samuel — felt like they had to defend the president’s receiving the prize. And here’s why: While I had just heard the news and was naturally flabbergasted, with no other stimuli acting on me, Samuel gets up at 4:30 every morning, and has usually had several full cycles of spin by the time I leave my house. He had already heard right-wingers attacking the award on the airwaves, so he was in defensive mode.

This is what the whole Left vs. Right thing gets us: We can’t even agree when something wild and crazy happens. And the president of the United States getting the Nobel Peace Prize for what he MIGHT do, for what he INTENDS to do, for his POTENTIAL, is wild and crazy.

Face it, folks: The Nobel committee gave him this prize for Not Being George W. Bush. This is a measure of how much they hated that guy. I didn’t like him much either, but come on… (While I haven’t talked to my friend Robert Ariail today, I can picture the cartoon already: Obama clutching the prize to his cheek saying, “They LIKE me! The really, really LIKE me!…”

Here’s where the opportunity comes in. The president was on the right track with the humble talk, but he should go a big step further: He should decline the prize, insisting that he hasn’t earned it yet.

This would transform perception of Barack Obama both domestically and internationally. If he simply takes the award, no matter how eloquent his words, he’ll be seen as an ordinary guy who can’t resist being honored, whether he deserves it or not. The Right will go ape over it and keep on going ape over it, and the Left will ferociously defend him, making all sorts of improbable claims to support his receiving it, and those of us in the middle will see the Right as having the stronger point at the same time that we’re put off by their meanspiritedness, and nothing will be accomplished.

But turning it down, saying, “Not yet; wait until I’ve earned it” would catapult Obama to such a state of greatness that he would overarch all ordinary partisan argument. No one could say he was wrong, and most people would be blown away by such selflessness. It would give him tremendous amounts of juice to get REAL health care reform instead of some watered-down nothing, which is probably what we’re going to get.

Internationally… well, if they love the guy now, they’d be ecstatic over him if he turned it down. I mean it. Think about it: What do they love about this guy? His perceived nobility and humility. They hated Bush for what they perceived as his arrogance, and they love Obama for what they perceive as his humility before the rest of the world. If he just took the prize, the world would just shake his hand and that would be that. But if he turned it down, suddenly Iran would be negotiating with a guy with more respect than anyone in the whole wide world has had in a long time. And maybe we’d get somewhere — with Iran, with Russia, with China, in Afghanistan, in Palestine, take your pick.

As I said, I like Obama, and I want him to succeed. But I know he hasn’t earned this honor yet. And I’m firmly convinced that turning it down would afford him the greatest opportunity to succeed with his agenda that he’ll ever have.

Mayor Bob’s happy with his decision

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CobleWalk

Forgot to share this with you over the weekend, but I remembered it when I was cleaning some pictures off my phone.

At the Walk for Life Saturday morning, I heard a voice behind me say, “Well I read on your blog that you would be here…,” and I looked around and it was Bob Coble. As you probably know, his wife Beth is the hostess of the Walk.

Anyway, we walked together for a few minutes, and talked about various things in the news. But the most relevant thing to share was his answer to how he’s adjusting to the fact that he’s not going to be mayor anymore after next year.

He said he’s doing great with it. He hadn’t known for sure, when he was making the decision, how he would feel about it once it was done and too late to change his mind. But as it turns out, he’s loving it.

What I learned about swine flu

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IMG00314

Ever since Monday I’ve been meaning to share some things I learned about swine flu at Rotary on Monday. Dr. Stephen L. Shelton from Palmetto Health spoke from a wealth of expertise on the H1N1 virus. (Over at the hospital they call him Boss Hog.)

Some of it was highly technical, such as the diagram of the virus that he used to explain why it’s called H1N1. I’m afraid that sort of went in one ear and out the other. Other parts were sort of obvious, such as a list of typical flu symptoms, or what to do if you get it (drink fluids, avoid contact with others, stay home for 24 hours after fever is gone).

More useful were some of the slides in his presentation, such as the one I photographed above about how to tell when your child needs to go to the emergency room rather than simply be treated at home.

Beyond that, the following points really stood out in my mind:

  • You probably know the signs of flu (fever, cough, body aches, sore throat, runny or stuffed nose, headache, chills, fatigue, diarrhea, vomiting), but how do you know you’ve really got it, as opposed to a cold or some such? By the rapid onset of the symptoms. If one hour you’re fine and an hour later it’s like you’ve been hit by a truck, it’s the flu.
  • And if it’s the flu, and you’re getting it now, the odds are 99 to 1 that it’s swine flu, because the regular seasonal variety hasn’t arrived yet.
  • Most swine flu victims are children so far — and they started getting it when school started.
  • Because there is so little immunity in the population, if you are exposed to swine flu, you will almost certainly get sick. This is not true of the more common seasonal flu bugs.
  • Interestingly, the one subset of the population that has some immunity to H1N1 is folks over 55. So for a change, older people are actually the lowest-priority group needing to get the swine flu shots when they arrive (and Dr. Shelton swore this was not a “death panel” plot to get rid of old folks). The highest priority? Pregnant women. Having that baby crowding the diaphragm really makes them vulnerable to a lower-lung infection.
  • However, old folks should still, as usual, get the regular, garden-variety flu shot, if they haven’t already. It helps boost immunity for the other kind.

Anyway, those are the points that made an impression on me.

By the way, for a video version of Dr. Shelton’s presentation, follow this link.

See you at the Walk for Life (I hope)

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We don’t have a formal team or anything (yet), but my wife and I will be at the Palmetto Health Foundation’s First Ladies’ Walk For Life at 9 a.m. Saturday morning — just over 12 hours from now.

Please come join us. I can’t think of a better cause, and it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day. As some of you know, my wife is a cancer survivor, and we’ve been blessed with eight wonderful years, so we look forward to this event as a chance to help others overcome this horrific disease.

And maybe it’s not to late to pull together an impromptu blog team. If you’re on Twitter, send me a Tweet when you get there to let me know where you are and we’ll see if we can march together.

See you there, I hope…

Of COURSE the health care status quo hurts small businesses

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Sometimes the things said in connection with the health care “debate” are so painfully obvious that they make me want to shout. And while I’m shouting, I wonder, Is it possible anyone doesn’t already know this?

The latest thing to get to me in this way is this bit from a series on health care reform:

Thompson’s challenge is common among small-business owners in South Carolina. Many are too busy to keep up with the complex health care reform policy proposals that Congress is debating. But they know one thing: The current cost of health insurance for very small groups is stifling their growth and hurting their competitiveness.

At this point I would scream “Duh!,” if screaming “Duh!” were not so last-decade.

Of course our current health care “system” is stifling small businesses’ growth and hurting their competitiveness! It’s helping drive some of them out of business. And it’s keeping plenty of others from coming into being in the first place. I know it’s kept me from at least one good job opportunity in the last few months. And it’s the consideration that keeps me from simply hanging out a shingle and earning a living as a “consultant” in communications. Sure, I might be able to pay the light bill and buy groceries and such that way, but I have to have medical coverage — the same sort of coverage that is simply not a consideration in other advanced countries when individuals make career decisions.

Right now, I’m pursuing a number of job opportunities. But most of the opportunities I’m seeing either don’t pay enough to pay my mortgage but have good benefits, or they pay well but the bennies are quite iffy. But one thing I CAN’T consider going forward is going into business for myself. Sure, I can pay a few bills here and there with free-lance work while I’m on COBRA. But my COBRA premiums more than double starting in December.

This strongly discourages entrepreneurship. It seems increasingly to me that the only way a person can go into business for himself is if he and his family and his employees and their families never have to go to the doctor and never will have to go to the doctor. In other words, the only way you start a business in this country is by hypnotizing yourself into believing a lie.

I’d probably be a lot happier if I were able to delude myself that way.

Anyway, yeah, the current health care situation stifles small businesses. Duh.

Ammo!

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ammo

It was either late 2008 or the start of 2009 when a co-worker at The State mentioned that he’d had trouble laying his hands on buckshot, and that the shopkeepers he’d talked to said this started to happen at about the time of the election. It’s been so long that I forget whether he said that it was just before the election or just after that the run on ammunition started. But I do remember he said you could get birdshot; the problem was with the deadlier stuff that you’d need to take down a deer — or a man.

It was sometime after that that I noticed at a local Wal-Mart that the case where ammunition of all kinds was locked behind glass was mostly empty. Looking more closely, I saw none of the usual pistol stuff (.38-cal., 9 mm). In fact, all I saw was shotgun shells with the smaller sort of shot.

I filed this away as interesting, even ominous. And I figured I would write something about it once it became better documented and the fact was established. I assumed I’d see news stories about it soon. (As you know, in my former position I had nothing to do with news or decisions on what to cover; I was kept as separate from that as I was from advertising. Like you, I saw things in the paper when I saw them.) Then I forgot about it. I was pretty busy in those days.

So when I saw it on the front page of The State today, I sort of went “Wow,” on a couple of levels. First, that it took this long to make news, and second, that there was still a shortage.

Back when I first heard about it, I didn’t know what I wanted to say about it. Some things popped into my head, of course. One of the first was my memory of being in South Carolina when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. I remember knowing at least one very nice white person who had never owned a gun before going out and buying one, because of fear of what might happen next. And I heard of others. I didn’t want to think this was related to that, but it did pop into my head.

Another was that Barack Obama had inspired some fairly weird Internet conspiracy theories. You know, like the one that he’s not really a citizen. I hadn’t attached importance to that — after all, the man was elected — but it popped into my head that there was something going on in the dank underbelly of the American psyche. Everything might be fine on the conscious level, but maybe some things were brewing down in the more reptilian parts of our collective brain.

But I set it aside. We had lots of other stuff to think about, what with the economy collapsing around us, and all the debates over what to do about it. The stimulus, for instance, was about as unemotional and bloodless, colorless subject as you were likely to find; it was not something to inspire dark dreams of violence.

Now that the ammunition story is documented and verified and duly reported, it comes at a time when we have additional information, and this colors our perception. We’ve seen that a lot of people are really, REALLY emotional about this president and his policies. I mean, we’ve had a lot of heated debates about health care in this country in the past, but even when it involved the polarizing figure of Hillary Clinton, people didn’t get THIS stirred up. Harry and Louise and the rest of the insurance industry’s allies simply deep-sixed reform, and it went away for 15 years.

But the last couple of months have been … weird. You might expect a guy like me, who has griped for years about our health care situation and finds himself paying $600 a month for COBRA, with the prospect of it going up to $1,200 or even $1,500 very soon) would be emotional about it, but I’m Lake Placid compared to the people who DON’T WANT reform. “Death panels.” Old folks absurdlyObama Joker Poster Popping Up In Los Angeles demanding that the gummint stay out of their Medicare. People showing up in crowds with automatic weapons. An otherwise mild-mannered congressman yelling “You lie!” at the president during what I thought was a fairly ho-hum speech. Then there’s the truly disturbing “Joker” posters. (I thought Democrats really went overboard with hating Bush, but this plumbed new depths.)

Against that background, a run on ammunition sounds really ominous.

The sunniest interpretation you can put on this phenomenon is that when the economy is collapsing, people naturally fear our devolving into a state of nature, and naturally want to arm themselves. Under that interpretation, we’d have run out of ammo whether Obama or McCain had been elected.

But there’s this other thing going on, and it has to do with some fairly unpleasant things rattling around in our collective subconscious. Some people have tried to give it a simple name, saying it’s about race. But it’s more complicated than that. Just as scary and ugly perhaps, and entangled somehow with race, but more complicated.

And frankly, I’m still not sure what to think of it.

Bob Inglis and others who broke ranks deserve our attention

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There was  no question that Joe Wilson should have apologized to the House for violating its rules and just generally for conduct unbecoming a gentleman (and unbecoming Joe Wilson, if you know him — he’s generally a gentle man). Barack Obama was not the only person insulted by “You lie!” If you insult a guest at a social occasion, you apologize to your host as well as the insulted guest.

But as soon as it became something that the Nancy Pelosis of the world were trying to MAKE Joe do, all question of right action went out the window. It became a matter of which side is going to win? That’s what everything boils down to these days in our nation’s hyperpartisan capital. Thought doesn’t go any deeper than the playground equation of whether one can be compelled to say “uncle.” And once a crowd had assembled, and members of his own gang were assembled around him urging him not to give in (and sending him $1.6 million), Joe wasn’t about to give in.

Silly and contemptible, but that’s party politics for you.

So I don’t attach much importance to the vote yesterday to express weak “disapproval” of Joe’s outburst. The outcome was predictable. Republicans voted against, and Democrats voted for, and since there are more Democrats than Republicans, Joe got “punished” — punished in a manner so insubstantial that it put me in mind of what Huck Finn said about Aunt Sally’s attempts to discipline him: “I didn’t mind the lickings, because they didn’t amount to nothing…”

I guess we all tend to choose up sides, but for my part, I tend to lump all the partisans of both parties on one side, and myself on the other. To me,  they all act alike. Not only that, but their actions so perfectly complement and support each other that it’s almost as though they were colluding. Think about it: It would have been impossible for the House Democrats to make such a production over the matter, with a formal vote of official disapproval, if Joe hadn’t cooperated with them so beautifully by childishly refusing to apologize to them. Everyone played his assigned part to perfection. Or almost everyone.

In fact, I’d ignore the whole affair, except for the fact that the vote wasn’t entirely along party lines. For instance, South Carolina Republican Bob Inglis voted for the “disapproval” resolution. Because he did that, because he thought for himself and did something that might cost him the support of many in his tribe, what Bob Inglis has to say about the subject actually matters. Unfortunately, I didn’t see much about what he had to say on the subject in the paper — just the usual ritual pronouncements from the people who voted along party lines, and you knew what they would say.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a statement on his decision to vote as he did on his Web site. But I did find his statement from the other night about the president’s speech. (That’s the video version of it above. Note his fundamentally respectful way of disagreeing with the president — something that shouldn’t be noteworthy, but is.) And because he stood up for decorum and had the courage to vote against his own party, I paid more attention to what he had to say about health care than I otherwise would have. By the way, here’s what he had to say at the time — before it had been inflated into another meaningless contest between the parties — about Joe’s outburst:

OBAMA: “The reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.” One congressman, South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson, shouted “You lie!” from his seat in the House chamber when Obama made this assertion.

THE FACTS: The facts back up Obama. The House version of the health care bill explicitly prohibits spending any federal money to help illegal immigrants get health care coverage. Illegal immigrants could buy private health insurance, as many do now, but wouldn’t get tax subsidies to help them. Still, Republicans say there are not sufficient citizenship verification requirements to ensure illegal immigrants are excluded from benefits they are not due.

Bob Inglis has always been a thoughtful guy who stands up for what he thinks is right, regardless of the dictates of the tribe. I’ve always appreciated that about him, even when I think he’s wrong — such as when he opposed the troop “surge” in Iraq. His iconoclasm causes me to care about what he says, which puts him in a lonely category in the U.S. House. A man who’s willing to pay a political price for his views deserves to be heard.

I would also like to know more about the thinking of those Democrats (Arcuri, Delahunt, Giffords, Hinchey, Hodes, Kucinich, Maffei, Massa, McDermott, Moore, Taylor and Teague) who voted against the mild “disapproval” resolution. I haven’t seen anything from any of them, but if any of my readers would kindly provide a link, I’d like to read what they had to say. It interests me far more than the ritual pronouncements of party orthodoxy…

Lindsey Graham’s delicate position

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lindsey

I found Lindsey Graham’s townhall meeting very interesting. While I disagree with him substantively about the subject at hand — health care reform — it’s always interesting to listen to him because he’s a smart guy who has a lot to offer to any policy question. In other words, while he clings loyally to support of Joe Wilson as a fellow Republican, he’s not a guy who’ll ever reduce his objections to a shouted “You Lie!”

Let’s dispense with the disagreement first — Sen. Graham fails to persuade when he says his crowd-pleasing things (Republican voters got calls at home asking them to come) about how we don’t want the gummint taking over any more of our lives. The argument that we can’t have a public option because the private sector can’t compete only condemns the private sector in my mind. The senator’s replies to the student who objected that private companies compete quite successfully with the Postal Service were weak. He got the crowd to cheer by mentioning the huge public subsidy the Postal Service needs to keep going, which to ME argues that its private competitors do just fine. He then argued that competition doesn’t work the same way in health care, which is true, which is why we can’t expect the market to solve our problems. (Lindsey agrees at least with that. He’s for regulation, not a new government entitlement program.)

But the senator repeatedly stressed how we should find things on which we agree and work from there — he talked about areas of agreement between him and Russ Feingold (who agrees with me that the way to go is single-payer) — and I know he means it, so I listen all the harder to what he has to say.

And I was fascinated with his central argument. It was this: It would cost too much. And he doesn’t trust the American people, including all the anti-gummint types in that room, to prevent the program’s costs from going out of control. He kept doing an interesting thing… he kept getting the crowd to cheer with assertions about how inept the gummint is, and how we don’t want it intruding any more into our lives, and then he’d ask how many people there were on Medicare (quite a few) and how many would voluntarily give it up (no one).

So basically, he repeatedly demonstrated that this crowd that was so willing to moan at the awful gummint and laugh ironically when Lindsey referred to Obama’s promises to control costs LOVES its gummint-provided health care — at least, those who have it do. He even said it fairly direction once: “Everybody clapping (at one of his shots against government), half of them are in a government plan.”

And the costs of that government plan, Medicare, are so out of control that he doesn’t want to create another program that would be JUST as popular, even among people who THINK they don’t like government programs, and that therefore would be just as costly, if not more so.

That’s what I heard, and it was interesting.

As he alluded more than once, Lindsey Graham walks a fine line, trying to be a moderate as a Republican from a beet-red state. Another time he said many who were applauding had tried to rip him a new one over immigration reform. He referred to having voted to confirm Justice Sotomayor. So it was fascinating to see him use populist techniques to get a crowd to support him on something where his position is that essentially, he doesn’t trust them, the people, not to support a program that would bankrupt us.

This, by the way, is why I won’t jump to run for office. I’m not sure I could maintain that balance between stroking people and leveling with them that you’re taking a position they may not love. I think I’d get fed up with it pretty fast.

Lindsey Graham doesn’t. And while I can see the contradictions inherent in what he’s doing, I can also respect him for being willing to wrestle with those contradictions — even when I believe that, substantively, he’s wrong on the issue.

The b.s. guy

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audience 1

Lindsey Graham’s town hall meeting today — about which I’ll have more substantive things to say momentarily — only got ugly once, and very briefly. When a gentleman who was seated pretty far from me got up and, after prefacing his question by thanking Sen. Graham for always being courteous to him and answering his calls and letters, started to express his objection to Joe Wilson’s outburst the other day, a guy a few rows behind me yelled out “bullshit!”

This was followed by a murmur of “nos” and boos, and a lady seated near both of us said reproachfully, “It’s not bullshit,” the guy repeated himself. And then sat back looking smug and satisfied with himself.

But nothing happened. No one acted after that like anything happened. The guy himself left early. The lady who had reproached him later asked a question. (She, too, was an Obama supporter. And just to reinforce everyone’s stereotypes, the two Obama-supporting questioners to whom I refer were both black, the yelling guy — like most of the crowd — was white.)

In fact, most people being polite and preferring to ignore grotesque breaches of etiquette, after a few moments I wondered whether I had heard it right: Did it really happen? Did the guy yell “bullshit” in this public forum?

Can anyone who was there back me up on this?

IMG00270

Clowning around with health care

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Maybe you can help me out with something. I was driving down Sunset Blvd. in West Columbia this morning, and sorta kinda saw something for a fraction of a second, and I’m not sure I know what I saw. If you saw it, maybe you can clear this up.

I was driving past Joe Wilson’s office, and as I whiffed by, happened to glance at a clump of three people (at least I think there were three) loitering on the sidewalk at the corner.  One was sitting on a bicycle. I don’t remember what the second person was doing. The third was holding up a sign that said “Stop Clowning around with our Health Care.” I think. We’re talking split-second here, and I turned away before any of it registered on my mind.

The person holding the sign was wearing a blue outfit with white designs on it from neck to toe. It may have been a clown outfit, but I’m infering that from the sign. He or she may also have been wearing clown makeup, but I have no idea at all about that, because his/her face was blocked by the sign during that tenth of a second or whatever it was.

As I drove on, a number of questions occurred to me:

  • Did I read the sign right?
  • Was the person dressed as a clown? Possibly not. The power of suggestion from what I think the sign said overwhelmed what other information was available to me.
  • Were the other people involved in the demonstration, or just curious passersby?
  • Was this person working for Joe Wilson, and saying President Obama was “clowning” with our health care? (If so, hasn’t Joe called enough attention to himself?)
  • Was this person protesting that Joe Wilson was the one “clowning around with our health care?” (I’ve noticed that one of the favorite epithets hurled at Joe from leftist bloggers is “ass clown,” for some reason) If so, he or she was going to a lot of trouble to send a confused message. You’d have to stop and talk to find out, which not many are in a position to do at that stretch of road at that time.

I was in a hurry to get downtown just then, but I went back that way later to check. No one there. No clown. No guy on a bike. No third person who barely registered. All gone. Must have been a drive-time thing. Or my imagination. I wonder what I saw, and what it was supposed to mean?

Anyway, right after I saw them, as those questions were going through my mind, I reached a stretch where orange roadwork cones were jamming the traffic into one lane. I found myself behind a big white pickup truck. It had a bumper sticker on it with a message that there was no mistaking:

OBAMA

SUCKS

Such is the state of political discourse these days in the 2nd District…

Pants on Fire: Who’s lying and who’s not on health care and illegal immigrants

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Early this morning, I got an e-mail from Jim Clyburn’s office pointing me to this St. Petersburg Times fact-check site, which rated claims that Obamacare would institute free health care for illegal immigrants in its “Pants on Fire” category:

Finally, we consulted with Jennifer Tolbert, an independent health care analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan foundation that studies health care reform. Tolbert has read and analyzed all the major health proposals, including those of the Republicans, and the foundation provides point-by-point analyses of the plans on its Web site.

We’re hardened, battle-scarred fact-checkers, so false claims in e-mails don’t really surprise us anymore. But we sent Tolbert a copy of the latest from our in-box, and she was none too pleased.

“It’s awful,” she said. “It’s flat-out, blatant lies. It’s unbelievable to me how they can claim to reference the legislation and then make claims that are blatantly false.”

The claim that the bill provides free health care for illegal immigrants is particularly egregious, Tolbert said. “No one’s provided with free health care. That’s ridiculous,” she said.

We looked for promises of free health care for immigrants and found nothing. So we’ve rated this claim Pants on Fire!

Then, this afternoon, I ran across this CNN Truth Squad item, which found the following after Sen. Ben Cardin was jeered for saying his bill would not cover illegals:

The bill, HR 3200, would set up a health insurance “exchange,” in which consumers could compare policies and choose a plan. It would create a government-run health plan to compete with private insurers in that exchange, and extend subsidies for coverage to people who aren’t already covered by employers or federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

It specifically bars illegal immigrants from receiving those subsidies. Section 246, which is included in the part of the bill that sets up the exchange, forbids payments “on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.”

But when Cardin said undocumented workers “will not be in this bill,” he appears to have missed one point: It may require them to buy their own coverage.

That’s the conclusion of the Congressional Research Service, which issued a report on the topic this week. According to the CRS, noncitizens who can be considered “resident aliens” under U.S. tax law would have to buy insurance — and unlike immigration laws, the tax code doesn’t distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.

That last part makes sense to me. After all, we’re already spending millions unnecessarily because of uninsured people — legal and illegal, foreign and native-born — are getting free care at emergency rooms, and the cost is passed on to the rest of us.

In fact, the idea of making health insurance mandatory — like auto insurance in SC — is one of the things I like best about what the president had to say last night (and probably what my libertarian friends like least). The bigger the pool the smaller the risk for each individual, and pretty much everybody will need health care sometime, so it makes no sense to let anyone opt out.

One question I don’t have the answer to — how the Cardin bill relates to what the president was pitching. I’m not sure about the correlation, although I can tell you that I got to the CNN fact-check from a page about the Wilson outburst. Can anyone help me on that?

And does anyone have any other reliable fact-checking sites to pass on?

Graham hits the wrong note

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I was surprised, and disappointed, by this release this morning:

Statement from Senator Lindsey Graham on President Obama’s Health Care Address to the Nation

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) made this statement tonight after the presidential address.

“I was incredibly disappointed in the tone of his speech. At times I found his tone to be overly combative and believe he behaved in a manner beneath the dignity of the office. I fear his speech tonight has made it more difficult — not less — to find common ground.

“He appeared to be angry at his critics and disappointed the American people were not buying the proposals he has been selling. The president’s confrontational demeanor increased the emotional and political divide. I hope the President will learn that true bipartisanship begins with mutual respect. Criticism of a public official is to be expected and not all criticism is demagoguery.

“When it comes to the public option, the President is either being disingenuous or misinformed. The public option, contrary to the president’s claims, will eventually lead to a government takeover of our health care system.

“One could easily be led to believe tonight’s speech is the beginning of a ‘go it alone’ strategy. If the Obama Administration and congressional Democrats go down this path and push a bill on the American people they do not want, it could be the beginning of the end of the Obama presidency.”

On a Member of Congress Accusing the President of Telling a ‘Lie’:

“The president’s combative tone did not justify a Member of Congress shouting out ’you lie.’ Our nation’s president deserves to be treated with respect It was inappropriate remark and I am glad an apology has been made.”

#####

I’m proud of Sen. Graham, and of John McCain, for so clearly and unequivocally calling Joe Wilson down for his insupportable behavior. But given that Joe DID what he did, and any commentary on the president’s speech is unfortunately bound to be considered within that context, Lindsey’s release this morning just seems way off-base.

You’re “incredibly disappointed” by the president’s tone? The president was “overly combative?” He behaved in “a manner beneath the dignity of the office?” The president’s demeanor “increased the emotional and political divide?” He’s the one who needs to learn a lesson about “mutual respect?”

Say what?

This was definitely not the morning to release a statement like that.

Such is my respect for Sen. Graham that whenever I find myself disagreeing with him (or Joe Lieberman, or John McCain, or Joe Riley), I stop and think again: Could I be wrong on this? So I analyze my own reaction. I think, Maybe the president was too combative. Maybe I didn’t notice it because I’m so completely fed up with the lies and obstructionism that are threatening to kill our hopes for a decent health care system in this country yet again. Maybe that’s what makes me think the president was, if anything, overly deferential to those who don’t give a damn about our health care, but want to see this issue be Obama’s “Waterloo,” because partisan advantage is more important to them than the good of the nation…

So I run those thoughts through my head, and then I think, Nah, this time Lindsey’s just wrong. That can happen, you know…

Hoping the president does well tonight

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Getting ready to watch the president’s address, and hoping he does well — because the country needs for him to do well. I know my family does, but so does the whole country. Not just the uninsured, but the insured who increasingly find their insurance unaffordable and a constant battle to get the private insurance companies to pay up. And especially for American business, which really doesn’t need this financial millstone around its neck any more.

One thing that gets me is that the advance hype is that the president will advocate a “public option.” Well, duh. A “public option” is health care reform. Without a public element there is no health care reform. The “private option” is what we have now, and it ain’t working.

Anyway, it’s going to start in a few moments. Your impressions will be welcome here as comments….

I’m going to try watching it on the NYT site. One nice thing about watching it on a newspaper’s Web site is that you don’t have to listen to all that superfluous commentary you get on TV…