Bob Herbert correctly notice in the NYT: "The difference between the public’s take on Afghanistan and that of the nation’s top leadership is both stunning and ominous. A clash is coming."
As I have argued on my sites, to win a war, one needs first to know what one is fighting for. Or then have an immense military superiority. We do not have the later: scaling up what the French did in Algeria to the populations, we would need 500,000 [# of French soldiers] times 36 [population Afghanistan] divided by 6 [population Algerians at the time], namely three million men.
The French won militarily in Algeria, and, although "Algeria is France" (as used to be said), they left. They were just plain tired of waging a conflict, and argue about superstition.
So are we going to send three million men to dominate 36 million Afghans? So we can lose a few years later?
Unlikely.
Obama does not know what he is doing in Afghanistan, as shown by his completely self contradictory statements about Islam there (which is, according to him, and the fact of the Afghan constitution, what we are defending there, he means, what he views as the good Islam, except he does not like the law about raping women, and forcing them to enjoy it officially...)
The drain of this grotesque war on treasure, morals, morality, and logical coherence, let alone lives and limbs cannot be sustained...
As I have argued, the war is waged not because of Al Qaeda, or the Taliban: these are just pretexts. But the truth can only be left unsaid...
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Saturday, September 26, 2009
PECK ON BECK NOT
Krugman observes that: "I’d say that Feldstein was channeling Glenn Beck, except that since the Feldstein piece came first, it’s the other way around. So as I said, maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on Mr. Beck."
[Marty Feldstein, a well known economist has been going around, saying, and writing in prestigious editorials that one could not afford to fight the greenhouse effect.]
Beck had an excellent piece on the influence of big bankers, in particular Goldman Sachs, on the political process, in particular the White House. He was standing at the blackboard, and drew an elaborated diagram, which was correct, as far as I knew.
I also know that it required a lot of courage to do so. In my own microcosme, I was harassed and punished by bankers-with-bonuses, just because I emitted similar truths (they threatened and insulted me through email and the Internet, and got me banned from websites). I had to pinch myself to observe that was really happening, and not just a nightmare.
So I can understand the sort of risk that Beck took by drawing that diagram, and going on a long piece about plutocrats. He got many bonus points from me then.
I can understand that Beck wants to depict himself as a clown to divert attention from his grave objections to an ancient regime which is going straight towards the wall of the tsunami of rising seas… He can always justify himself by saying later that he said whatever, being a clown, and thus innocent of any gravitas versus big bankers with offices in the White House (Rahm Emanuel, and various Golman officers...)
Nevermind that Beck is ironical about global warming when it snows in New York. It is an amusing contrast. It is to scientists to explain, and pound down on, the point that the warming is mostly concentrated in the polar regions, and that there is the Achilles Heel of the entire climate: if you bust the frig, the temps are going to shoot up. And the seas will follow…
PA
[Marty Feldstein, a well known economist has been going around, saying, and writing in prestigious editorials that one could not afford to fight the greenhouse effect.]
Beck had an excellent piece on the influence of big bankers, in particular Goldman Sachs, on the political process, in particular the White House. He was standing at the blackboard, and drew an elaborated diagram, which was correct, as far as I knew.
I also know that it required a lot of courage to do so. In my own microcosme, I was harassed and punished by bankers-with-bonuses, just because I emitted similar truths (they threatened and insulted me through email and the Internet, and got me banned from websites). I had to pinch myself to observe that was really happening, and not just a nightmare.
So I can understand the sort of risk that Beck took by drawing that diagram, and going on a long piece about plutocrats. He got many bonus points from me then.
I can understand that Beck wants to depict himself as a clown to divert attention from his grave objections to an ancient regime which is going straight towards the wall of the tsunami of rising seas… He can always justify himself by saying later that he said whatever, being a clown, and thus innocent of any gravitas versus big bankers with offices in the White House (Rahm Emanuel, and various Golman officers...)
Nevermind that Beck is ironical about global warming when it snows in New York. It is an amusing contrast. It is to scientists to explain, and pound down on, the point that the warming is mostly concentrated in the polar regions, and that there is the Achilles Heel of the entire climate: if you bust the frig, the temps are going to shoot up. And the seas will follow…
PA
Sunday, September 20, 2009
WHEN OUTRAGE IS NOT ENOUGH...
PLAIN OLD RAGE IS RECOMMENDED...
In "Even Glenn Beck Is Right Twice a Day", Frank Rich (NYT, Sunday Sept. 20, 2009) declares that: President Obama — and our political system — are being tested by a populist rage that is no less real for being shouted by a demagogue from Fox.
When the People has good reason to be enraged, does that mean the the slightly pejorative "populist rage" should be used?
Well, what is being tested is systems of thought that are erroneous.
Clinton, Larry Summers and his fellow conspirators at Goldman Sachs, the White House, and the like, dismantled (crucial parts of) Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Congress work elaborated in 1933 to keep the financial exploiters at bay, once and for all. These are the people that ought to be denounced. And Beck denounced them (a bit). That's good.
Anybody exploiting so called racial differences to self advance, or not, is playing the racist card, that is also a fact one should bear in mind. One can be funny about it as Lula, the president of Brazil, has been, and that is sort of tolerable, perhaps even necessary, sometimes.
Anyway, people should talk about \"race\" where it counts. Such as: are the budget cuts in California racist and pro-plutocratic? But the brush with which one paints things has to be precise enough to write something meaningful. That Beck does occasionally, and it's hard to do.
So the problem is at the White House, and in Congress, not Beck's studio. Beck does the job that is needed, calling a cat a cat, and the thief, even a large one, a thief.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
In "Even Glenn Beck Is Right Twice a Day", Frank Rich (NYT, Sunday Sept. 20, 2009) declares that: President Obama — and our political system — are being tested by a populist rage that is no less real for being shouted by a demagogue from Fox.
When the People has good reason to be enraged, does that mean the the slightly pejorative "populist rage" should be used?
Well, what is being tested is systems of thought that are erroneous.
Clinton, Larry Summers and his fellow conspirators at Goldman Sachs, the White House, and the like, dismantled (crucial parts of) Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Congress work elaborated in 1933 to keep the financial exploiters at bay, once and for all. These are the people that ought to be denounced. And Beck denounced them (a bit). That's good.
Anybody exploiting so called racial differences to self advance, or not, is playing the racist card, that is also a fact one should bear in mind. One can be funny about it as Lula, the president of Brazil, has been, and that is sort of tolerable, perhaps even necessary, sometimes.
Anyway, people should talk about \"race\" where it counts. Such as: are the budget cuts in California racist and pro-plutocratic? But the brush with which one paints things has to be precise enough to write something meaningful. That Beck does occasionally, and it's hard to do.
So the problem is at the White House, and in Congress, not Beck's studio. Beck does the job that is needed, calling a cat a cat, and the thief, even a large one, a thief.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Monday, September 7, 2009
BLAME THE CAUSE.
[Published on the Roger Cohen blog, NYT, September 6, 2009].
***
The Egyptian cultural minister responded in 2008, in the following fashion to a deputy of the Egyptian parliament who was alarmed that Israeli books could be introduced into the Alexandria Library: “Burn these books; if there are any there, I will myself burn them in front of you”?
Now he is leading candidate for UNESCO, to the alarm of Claude Lanzmann (author of the documentary "Shoah"), Bernard-Henri Lévy (philosopher) and Elie WieselNobel (prize winner in literature). They want "to prevent the irreparable".
But are they barking up the wrong tree?
***
When confronting a single statement, or just a few statements, one has to be cautious about the context that brought them up. This is what happens when people joke: people utter statements that make no sense in a more global context, and the logical incoherence gives pleasure (probably a way evolution has found to encourage the imagination, the source of mental insight).
But statements that make no sense in a more general, but intended context, can happen in other situations too, and not just to amuse, but to instruct directly. Maybe Hosny was trying to shake things up, while giving a few rhetoric morsels to opponents. That is what his "solemn" excuses seem to indicate.
"Anti-Semitism" has come to mean "Anti-Judaism". "Anti-Judaism" originated with Christianism, the so called Catholic Orthodoxy of emperor Constantine and many of his imperial, superstitious, fanatical and extremely atrocious successors.
At the time, the Catholics were busy killing everybody they disagreed with, and they disagreed with whoever had the slightest different philosophy about anything. The Jews barely escaped with their lives as a culture and religion, others were so thoroughly exterminated, nearly nobody knows their names (Arians, Nestorians, Gnostics, etc...). Three centuries later, the concept of fanatical Anti-Judaism was picked up by those who wrote the Qur'an (a bunch of military men under Caliph Uthman, ~ 645 CE).
The Qur'an is violently against the "Jews". OK, not as ferociously as it is for the extermination of some other categories of unbelievers. But I do not see Elie Wiesel, Claude Lanzmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy protesting against the blatant hatred of the Jews in the Qur'an. Why? All the more troubling since Adolf Hitler expressed his admiration for, and knowledge of Islam many times (let alone made more than friends with the Mufti of Jerusalem!)
It seems clear to me that, as long as the Qur'an will be viewed as "holy", all what is inside will be viewed as "holy". Many statements in the Qur'an can be interpreted as calling for the death of Jews and saying they refused God, and Muhammad, and are unbelievers, etc... All these categories of thinkers the Qur'an calls to kill. Shocking but true.
I know this sort of observation on the text of a superstition is viewed as "racist" by people with little brainpower. But it is not anymore racist than observing that the Christian superstition's highest authorities tortured to death millions of Jews and other "heretics" over the centuries. In that sense the catholic Hitler was just the bouquet final of attempted Jewish holocausts(and Hitler was, indeed, not so discreetly supported by the Pope himself).
The hadiths of Muhammad, another sacred text of Islam go even further than the Qur'an: "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. 'O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him'".(Sahih al-Bukhari 4:52:177) This hadith has been quoted countless times, and it has become a part of the charter of Hamas.
So let those lions of justice and courage, Elie Wiesel, Claude Lanzmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy, lay the blame where it mostly lays. Differently from Hosny, they are better protected, so we expect more from them.
***
Patrice Ayme
***
[A much longer and elaborated version, filling in a lot of savory details, will hopefully be put on:
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/]
***
The Egyptian cultural minister responded in 2008, in the following fashion to a deputy of the Egyptian parliament who was alarmed that Israeli books could be introduced into the Alexandria Library: “Burn these books; if there are any there, I will myself burn them in front of you”?
Now he is leading candidate for UNESCO, to the alarm of Claude Lanzmann (author of the documentary "Shoah"), Bernard-Henri Lévy (philosopher) and Elie WieselNobel (prize winner in literature). They want "to prevent the irreparable".
But are they barking up the wrong tree?
***
When confronting a single statement, or just a few statements, one has to be cautious about the context that brought them up. This is what happens when people joke: people utter statements that make no sense in a more global context, and the logical incoherence gives pleasure (probably a way evolution has found to encourage the imagination, the source of mental insight).
But statements that make no sense in a more general, but intended context, can happen in other situations too, and not just to amuse, but to instruct directly. Maybe Hosny was trying to shake things up, while giving a few rhetoric morsels to opponents. That is what his "solemn" excuses seem to indicate.
"Anti-Semitism" has come to mean "Anti-Judaism". "Anti-Judaism" originated with Christianism, the so called Catholic Orthodoxy of emperor Constantine and many of his imperial, superstitious, fanatical and extremely atrocious successors.
At the time, the Catholics were busy killing everybody they disagreed with, and they disagreed with whoever had the slightest different philosophy about anything. The Jews barely escaped with their lives as a culture and religion, others were so thoroughly exterminated, nearly nobody knows their names (Arians, Nestorians, Gnostics, etc...). Three centuries later, the concept of fanatical Anti-Judaism was picked up by those who wrote the Qur'an (a bunch of military men under Caliph Uthman, ~ 645 CE).
The Qur'an is violently against the "Jews". OK, not as ferociously as it is for the extermination of some other categories of unbelievers. But I do not see Elie Wiesel, Claude Lanzmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy protesting against the blatant hatred of the Jews in the Qur'an. Why? All the more troubling since Adolf Hitler expressed his admiration for, and knowledge of Islam many times (let alone made more than friends with the Mufti of Jerusalem!)
It seems clear to me that, as long as the Qur'an will be viewed as "holy", all what is inside will be viewed as "holy". Many statements in the Qur'an can be interpreted as calling for the death of Jews and saying they refused God, and Muhammad, and are unbelievers, etc... All these categories of thinkers the Qur'an calls to kill. Shocking but true.
I know this sort of observation on the text of a superstition is viewed as "racist" by people with little brainpower. But it is not anymore racist than observing that the Christian superstition's highest authorities tortured to death millions of Jews and other "heretics" over the centuries. In that sense the catholic Hitler was just the bouquet final of attempted Jewish holocausts(and Hitler was, indeed, not so discreetly supported by the Pope himself).
The hadiths of Muhammad, another sacred text of Islam go even further than the Qur'an: "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. 'O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him'".(Sahih al-Bukhari 4:52:177) This hadith has been quoted countless times, and it has become a part of the charter of Hamas.
So let those lions of justice and courage, Elie Wiesel, Claude Lanzmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy, lay the blame where it mostly lays. Differently from Hosny, they are better protected, so we expect more from them.
***
Patrice Ayme
***
[A much longer and elaborated version, filling in a lot of savory details, will hopefully be put on:
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/]
Friday, September 4, 2009
THE ROAD TO CARBONIFEROUS HELL.
Sarkozy (the president of France, would I add for the cognitively challenged) declared yesterday that, as far as he was concerned, as long as unemployment was going up, the crisis was still worsening.
The real crisis was well started under Clinton: an increasingly unbalanced, unsustainable economy, with rising unemployment in real jobs (I know that Reagan said that being a shoe shiner was as honorable, as real a job as being a rocket scientist, but that is only illustrative of Reagan’s lack of grasp of what constitutes an economy).
That Americans are getting enraged maybe a good, necessary, although counterintuitive first step. Americans are reduced to rage because rage lessens pain (a scientific study just came out showing that cursing measurably reduced pain). It is the first step towards revolt: cursing helps.
The French have long learned to express their own rage creatively. It is not so dumb; since, in France, the higher ups can be seized at any moment by the vengeful People, they think more carefully at the broad scheme of things. Hence Sarkozy’s many correct insights. The French government made a deal with the French population that it would confront Obama with an ultimatum about banksters’ bonuses.
Of course, many American bankers will scoff: what can France do? Well, France will introduce a carbon tax in 2010. That sounds i nnocent enough. But then the European Union will have to follow. And then of course it could be applied to imports. China is probably guessing this, and making a massive move towards renewables, using the might of her communist command and control of her capitalist free economy.
Applying the carbon tax to imports will be a powerful blow against the international plutocracy that seems to animate the USA as a living skeleton inside. Indeed the delocalized American industry in nice locales such as China will be struck by ruinous taxes (as deserved). It will of course help the European industrial base (still mostly in Europe, thanks to vociferous European protesters).
At this point the USA could be put on the ropes: its plutocracy would be collapsing, its industrial base will have long disappeared, and the worldwide carbon tax will strike hard all heavy users of carbon, including air travel. Only the Hamish will look smart. OK, it’s 10 years down the road to hell, but the situation is clear: since the USA did not want to clean its act, it will be cleaned whether it cooperates, or not.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
The real crisis was well started under Clinton: an increasingly unbalanced, unsustainable economy, with rising unemployment in real jobs (I know that Reagan said that being a shoe shiner was as honorable, as real a job as being a rocket scientist, but that is only illustrative of Reagan’s lack of grasp of what constitutes an economy).
That Americans are getting enraged maybe a good, necessary, although counterintuitive first step. Americans are reduced to rage because rage lessens pain (a scientific study just came out showing that cursing measurably reduced pain). It is the first step towards revolt: cursing helps.
The French have long learned to express their own rage creatively. It is not so dumb; since, in France, the higher ups can be seized at any moment by the vengeful People, they think more carefully at the broad scheme of things. Hence Sarkozy’s many correct insights. The French government made a deal with the French population that it would confront Obama with an ultimatum about banksters’ bonuses.
Of course, many American bankers will scoff: what can France do? Well, France will introduce a carbon tax in 2010. That sounds i nnocent enough. But then the European Union will have to follow. And then of course it could be applied to imports. China is probably guessing this, and making a massive move towards renewables, using the might of her communist command and control of her capitalist free economy.
Applying the carbon tax to imports will be a powerful blow against the international plutocracy that seems to animate the USA as a living skeleton inside. Indeed the delocalized American industry in nice locales such as China will be struck by ruinous taxes (as deserved). It will of course help the European industrial base (still mostly in Europe, thanks to vociferous European protesters).
At this point the USA could be put on the ropes: its plutocracy would be collapsing, its industrial base will have long disappeared, and the worldwide carbon tax will strike hard all heavy users of carbon, including air travel. Only the Hamish will look smart. OK, it’s 10 years down the road to hell, but the situation is clear: since the USA did not want to clean its act, it will be cleaned whether it cooperates, or not.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
WHAT AMERICAN HEALTH CARE IS BEST AT.
Health care is a huge profit center for the hyper rich in the USA. Warren Buffet made personally 8 billion dollars from health insurance at some point. Still, Obama called him his "friend", many times over. Does Obama want everybody to emulate Buffet and divert funds from health care to obscene profits so as to be able to buy oneself a fleet of private jets, as Warren Buffet did? With friends like that do you get a jet too?
In the USA, all too often, when people make big money, they are viewed as right, deep, just and altruistic.
So Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama got hundreds of thousands of dollars from a hospital, although they are not trained in medicine or hospital administration. In a country such as France, the public health insurance system, which watches over the cost of the entire medical system, would have sued them for corruption.
But in the USA, they made big money, so they are just, right, deep, and incarnate American health care: a way to make big bucks for the few, the best, the wisest, and most altruistic. And Valerie Jarrett is there in the front lines, with her vision of health care for everybody.
No doubt that involves paying more so she can get more funds for a bigger mansion on Martha's Vineyard for herself. In other countries health spending is for health, in the USA it is for the rich to live like kings on Martha's Vineyard.
PA
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
In the USA, all too often, when people make big money, they are viewed as right, deep, just and altruistic.
So Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama got hundreds of thousands of dollars from a hospital, although they are not trained in medicine or hospital administration. In a country such as France, the public health insurance system, which watches over the cost of the entire medical system, would have sued them for corruption.
But in the USA, they made big money, so they are just, right, deep, and incarnate American health care: a way to make big bucks for the few, the best, the wisest, and most altruistic. And Valerie Jarrett is there in the front lines, with her vision of health care for everybody.
No doubt that involves paying more so she can get more funds for a bigger mansion on Martha's Vineyard for herself. In other countries health spending is for health, in the USA it is for the rich to live like kings on Martha's Vineyard.
PA
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
CONSPIRING TO DISTRACT? OR WORSE?
From the New York Times: "A new report by the top commander in Afghanistan detailing the deteriorating situation there confronts President Obama with the politically perilous decision of whether to deepen American involvement in the eight-year-old war amid shrinking public support at home."
Politically perilous? Is "politics" all there ever is? What about morally devastating, philosophically self defeating and strategically erroneous?
The war in Afghanistan is so blatantly absurd at this point that one cannot escape a feeling that it is a deliberate distraction, among other things. Another possibility, explored here, is that some deeper computation is at work, and it has nothing to do with Islamist terrorists.
For example Obama, a past drug user himself, makes a big deal about the planting in Afghanistan of plants that can be used for drugs. As if it were his business.
This is a new height in hypocrisy.Poppy planting is legal, for medicinal purposes, all around the world, including Turkey, France and Australia.
This war is going nowhere nice. The fact that it is going nowhere allows to justify lots of military spending, though... Having a full grown man such as Obama in need of handlers to tell him which fight to engage in is pathetic.
Why so much bravado in Afghanistan, and so little with bankers and health care vultures?
Now, of course, there may be deeper reasons to stay forever in Afghanistan. Such as being in the front line when the unavoidable thermonuclear war between india and Pakistan occurs, 15 years down the drain... But then it may be more clever, democratic and civilizationally progressive to say it, and to talk about that. Instead the present strategy of taking deliberately erroneous decisions so that the war last another 15 years is a freely chosen tactic to make a bad situation worse.
Peoples, in Europe and America, may not approve much longer...
Patrice Ayme
[A more elaborated version of this post will be found on patriceayme.wordpress.com]
Politically perilous? Is "politics" all there ever is? What about morally devastating, philosophically self defeating and strategically erroneous?
The war in Afghanistan is so blatantly absurd at this point that one cannot escape a feeling that it is a deliberate distraction, among other things. Another possibility, explored here, is that some deeper computation is at work, and it has nothing to do with Islamist terrorists.
For example Obama, a past drug user himself, makes a big deal about the planting in Afghanistan of plants that can be used for drugs. As if it were his business.
This is a new height in hypocrisy.Poppy planting is legal, for medicinal purposes, all around the world, including Turkey, France and Australia.
This war is going nowhere nice. The fact that it is going nowhere allows to justify lots of military spending, though... Having a full grown man such as Obama in need of handlers to tell him which fight to engage in is pathetic.
Why so much bravado in Afghanistan, and so little with bankers and health care vultures?
Now, of course, there may be deeper reasons to stay forever in Afghanistan. Such as being in the front line when the unavoidable thermonuclear war between india and Pakistan occurs, 15 years down the drain... But then it may be more clever, democratic and civilizationally progressive to say it, and to talk about that. Instead the present strategy of taking deliberately erroneous decisions so that the war last another 15 years is a freely chosen tactic to make a bad situation worse.
Peoples, in Europe and America, may not approve much longer...
Patrice Ayme
[A more elaborated version of this post will be found on patriceayme.wordpress.com]
THINKING IS A MUST, CARICATURE IS NOT.
(In my not so humble opinion) FALSELY REPORTING THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE DOES NOT HELP, BE IT ON THE RIGHT, OR ON THE LEFT:
***
Paul Krugman offered the following opinion on his blog:
"Back in 2004 I looked at TV reports on health care plans, and found not a single segment actually explaining the candidates’ plans. This time the WaPo ombud looks at his own paper’s reporting, and it’s not much better.
Why does this happen? I suspect several reasons.
1. It’s easier to research horse-race stuff. To report on policy, a reporter has to master the policy issues fairly well. That’s not easy...
...Newsweek’s Sharon Begley wrote a piece about what actually is and isn’t in Obamacare, and got mail from readers denouncing her and wishing her an early death. As I pointed out the other day, I’m getting a lot of hate mail — and I mean obscenities, death wishes, and all that, not strongly worded disagreements — for writing about Swiss health care and budget arithmetic. Much safer to report on ups and downs in the conventional wisdom.
The upshot, of course, is that we’re having a crucial national policy debate in which the great bulk of the news coverage tells people nothing at all about the policy issues."
***
I do agree with the overall gists of Paul's arguments. Nevertheless, in the haste to depict opponents to (some aspects?) of putative health care proposals as bad, the proponents of health care reform (whatever is meant by that)are also dishonest. An example is provided here. I sent the commentary below to Krugman's blog, very early on. Now the blog had the kindness to publish me many times. But not this time. Why? Well, you judge. Apparently, being caricatural is a must, and the New York Times is firmly decided to protect me from directing abrasive criticism against the presumed hero of health care. Here is my unelected comment:
***
I have appreciated Sharon Begley very much, ever since she was covering science at the Wall Street Journal. I bought her book, long ago. But her Newsweek piece is the first one I have seen of her that is content empty. For example, I know that Sarah Palin is whatever she is, and to remind me of that does not advance the debate.
But Obama has no plan we can see. Slogans are not a plan. There are 3 or 4 bills in Congress, none of them with Obama's signature on it.
The Grand Ma-does-not-need-a-hip talk was started by him, Obama. In the New York Times (May 2009).
Of course republicans were going to jump on the grand mother does-not-need-care issue. Of course Obama could predict that. And of course laying supine as republicans ran all over him was not going to improve any chance at health reform.
So the question has long been: what does Obama want? Staying friend with the health insurance king Warren Buffet?
As I stated many times, it ought to have taken 3 days to boost and improve Medicare, and pass the legislation (with the existing democratic majorities). Further tinkering could have squeezed the private life insurers' abuse. It would have been easy to find an egregious case resulting in death, and for the government to sue for homicide. That would make juriprudence, squeezing the insurers for-profit lifestyle out. Medicare could have grown.
Oops, I forgot that "friend" Warren would certainly not have been happy, with such an easy outcome...
If we do not want to do just horse race reporting, we have to stop treating Obama as a horse. Surely, he is more intelligent than that. But then how come so dumb in health care? After being so dumb with the banks? Not enough hay in the old barn?
Patrice Ayme
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
***
Paul Krugman offered the following opinion on his blog:
"Back in 2004 I looked at TV reports on health care plans, and found not a single segment actually explaining the candidates’ plans. This time the WaPo ombud looks at his own paper’s reporting, and it’s not much better.
Why does this happen? I suspect several reasons.
1. It’s easier to research horse-race stuff. To report on policy, a reporter has to master the policy issues fairly well. That’s not easy...
...Newsweek’s Sharon Begley wrote a piece about what actually is and isn’t in Obamacare, and got mail from readers denouncing her and wishing her an early death. As I pointed out the other day, I’m getting a lot of hate mail — and I mean obscenities, death wishes, and all that, not strongly worded disagreements — for writing about Swiss health care and budget arithmetic. Much safer to report on ups and downs in the conventional wisdom.
The upshot, of course, is that we’re having a crucial national policy debate in which the great bulk of the news coverage tells people nothing at all about the policy issues."
***
I do agree with the overall gists of Paul's arguments. Nevertheless, in the haste to depict opponents to (some aspects?) of putative health care proposals as bad, the proponents of health care reform (whatever is meant by that)are also dishonest. An example is provided here. I sent the commentary below to Krugman's blog, very early on. Now the blog had the kindness to publish me many times. But not this time. Why? Well, you judge. Apparently, being caricatural is a must, and the New York Times is firmly decided to protect me from directing abrasive criticism against the presumed hero of health care. Here is my unelected comment:
***
I have appreciated Sharon Begley very much, ever since she was covering science at the Wall Street Journal. I bought her book, long ago. But her Newsweek piece is the first one I have seen of her that is content empty. For example, I know that Sarah Palin is whatever she is, and to remind me of that does not advance the debate.
But Obama has no plan we can see. Slogans are not a plan. There are 3 or 4 bills in Congress, none of them with Obama's signature on it.
The Grand Ma-does-not-need-a-hip talk was started by him, Obama. In the New York Times (May 2009).
Of course republicans were going to jump on the grand mother does-not-need-care issue. Of course Obama could predict that. And of course laying supine as republicans ran all over him was not going to improve any chance at health reform.
So the question has long been: what does Obama want? Staying friend with the health insurance king Warren Buffet?
As I stated many times, it ought to have taken 3 days to boost and improve Medicare, and pass the legislation (with the existing democratic majorities). Further tinkering could have squeezed the private life insurers' abuse. It would have been easy to find an egregious case resulting in death, and for the government to sue for homicide. That would make juriprudence, squeezing the insurers for-profit lifestyle out. Medicare could have grown.
Oops, I forgot that "friend" Warren would certainly not have been happy, with such an easy outcome...
If we do not want to do just horse race reporting, we have to stop treating Obama as a horse. Surely, he is more intelligent than that. But then how come so dumb in health care? After being so dumb with the banks? Not enough hay in the old barn?
Patrice Ayme
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
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