Potpourri...Say what?

While waiting to watch The Daily Show yesterday, I watched this clip on The Comedy Channel:
A youngish, neatly dressed woman appears on stage and announces that she has “Roving Kidney Disease”. Since she does not know what it is, or what to do about it, she has asked her Dr. to speak.

A short, plump and bespectacled man in a white smock appears, chart in hand, and confirms her diagnosis. He points out that she currently has one kidney on her left thigh and another on the back of her neck. She asks, “What causes this?” He does not know, but asks if she has any bad falls lately?

At this point, as they talk (and she denies falling), we see short out-takes of comedic pratfalls: women being tackled unexpectedly by football players; women falling from kitchen counters; women walking into walls; women being knocked to the floor by clumsy oafs. Following these Dick Van Dyke-like routines, the DR. tells the woman that there is a cure: If she will bounce repeatedly on a small floor-mounted trampoline (shown), she will recover. She thanks him and he leaves.

The woman then begins casually jumping up and down on the trampoline, and talking about how grateful she is for her cure. After a few moments, she missteps and falls off, backwards into the (fake) wall behind her. The wall crumbles and she crashes onto the floor and out of sight. She quickly jumps up and reassures the audience: “It’s OK! I’m alright! Just a little set back!”

This is, I think, a metaphor for health care reform. We are treating the symptoms and not the cause, with antiquated technology after hasty prognoses. Then whatever meager steps are made toward wellness are then derailed by the un-health insurance companies and big pharma, and we fall off through a (fake) wall of recovery. And we get up say we are OK. Say what?

And then there is this quote, from the new book, The Death of Why, The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy, by Andrea Batista Schlesinger: “When was the last time you changed your mind on something important? I’ve changed my mind a few times. One thing I can say for sure is that I’ve never changed it while surrounded by people who agree with me.” Wow. I think this explains why so much of the “news” and “newsy” info we get is not news at all, but merely gossip. That is why I don’t read it or watch it much, anymore. We exist and subsist on newsfluff.

Faced with decisions about health care, gay and lesbian issues, the auto industry bail-out and the re-election of obviously corrupt politicians, we choose not to change our mind, and seek comfort and confirmation from those around us who will willingly and readily agree with us (read the book: the author does a much better job with this concept than I do).

With war raging in multiple countries, Goldman Sachs raping the country and foreclosures and unemployment at all time highs, why do we hear most of all about Michael Vick re-entering football for millions, what performance enhancing swimsuit will win the most contests and who is protesting it, and whether o r not Brittany has on underwear? Does it matter how much cash Ruth Madoff has stashed or that half of Michael Jackson’s brain is unaccounted for? Or that a man bit a dog? Say what?

And while I am at it, bringing together a cop and a college professor for beers (and the press speculating on who will drink which brand of beer) on a picnic table, outside the Oval Office, in order to quell racial tensions, is acting “stupidly”. Yet many of us (and the MSM) are fixated on the gesture. Say what?

We resist changing our minds; essentially we resist thinking. We listen to and tune in to what is easiest to accept without question or using the word “Why?” We accept half-truths or nonsense blindly and blithely. This is why Glenn beck has an audience that nods in agreement when he (stupidly) calls Obama a racist or Limbaugh says the same about Sotomoyor. Or how”birthers” gain an audience on a topic that is without substance or merit or grounding. Or Lou Dobbs calls Rachel Maddow a “tea-bagger queen” and gets away with the total absurdity of it all. Say what?
Having said all of this (so far), I am looking for a book, called, Idiot America, How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. It should fit in nicely with the talk about “anti-intellectualism” that is flying around, these days. “Look! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s anti-intellectualism!”

And speaking of half-truths and nonsense, I heard a local minister, on the radio this morning, say this (with regard to the role of churches and religion in hard economic times): “We need to teach and embody hope because that is the realization that God intends”. Say what?

Which brings me back to “Why?”, and Schlesinger’s book. She reminds us that we don’t ask why often enough because we have settled for easy “answers” (you can find out anything from Google) and instant gratification. We think we can keep the world afloat by buying more stuff, when the simpler fact is that nothing which breaks which is not essential to life does not need to be replaced immediately. Wal-Mart is not the savior of the world. There are things and stuff and items in life we can and should learn to live without, despite what the TV commercials tell us. Did I just hear someone ask, “Say what?”

Let me leave you with one remarkably realistic conclusion (about life) and one unbiased and very realistic appraisal (about what we are facing in life right now ). One is more sobering than the other, but both may help you ask “Why?”

The first is by Derrick Jensen, in Endgame:

The truth is that I am going to die someday, whether or not I stock up on pills. That’s life. And if I die in the population reduction that takes place as a corrective to our having overshot carrying capacity, well, that’s life, too. Finally, if my death comes as part of something that serves the larger community, that helps stabilize and enrich the landbase of which I’m part, so much the better. [quoted via Carolyn Baker: Sacred Demise]

The second is from the economist, Paul Krugman, in the NYT:
Medicare versus insurers
“I notice from comments that a fair number of readers think that Medicare has had runaway costs. What you need to ask is, runaway compared to what?
Here’s the raw fact, from the National Health Expenditure data: since 1970 Medicare costs per beneficiary have risen at an annual rate of 8.8% — but insurance premiums have risen at an annual rate of 9.9%. The rise in Medicare costs is just part of the overall rise in health care spending. And in fact Medicare spending has lagged private spending: if insurance premiums had risen “only” as much as Medicare spending, they’d be 1/3 lower than they are.
We don’t have a Medicare problem — we have a health care problem.”

Now, after both of these, you may be saying, “Say what?”...which I must remind you is dangerously close to saying “Why?” But whatever you do, do not say, “So what?”

RushBeckDobbsLimbaughism

Is it any wonder that matters are amiss with the House and its' attempted health care reform legislation? They have given it over to the Energy and Commerce Committee. This is a group undoubtedly well-qualified to discuss the merits of health care and to remove it from the commodity sphere of commerce. Lovely.

I suppose that over in the Senate, they have given the task over to the committee for Playdough and Tonka Toys.

Meanwhile, FOX NATION is running a narrative that claims that the health reforms urged by Obama are a backdoor plot to offer slavery reparations for blacks, and that the plans ultimately will cause the deaths of white people. If you put this all together, does it spell "birther"?

None of the above should be considered a viable form of "public option".

Not only does this disgusting quagmire indicate that we have forgotten why we got into the health care reform game in the first place, but it clearly shows that we have lost the friggin' football!
----- Original Message -----
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Subject: NYTimes.com: The Caucus: House Panel Restarts Health Talks




This page was sent to you by: ihentschel@austin.rr.com U.S. July 29, 2009 The Caucus: House Panel Restarts Health Talks By David M. Herszenhorn The House Energy and Commerce Committee will resume work on major health care legislation, after House leaders and a faction of fiscally conservative Democrats who had stalled the bill apparently reached a compromise after days of fitful negotiations.

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Unhealthy care

As the "reform process" continues to wither, while all these blue dog guys dither, and the Republicans throw large spitballs, paid for by the health insurance and big pharma companies, I must admire Krugman's patience, calm and rationality. I simply want to strangle all these incoherent bastards. But even if we did that, we won't get single-payer. In fact we will be lucky to get anything at all which i s not a watered down version of the ugly, ineffective, expensive and largely useless programs we have now.

The United States will become a subservient third-world country, run by a coalition of healthy Canadians, Swedes, Brits and Germans (financed by China) because we will all be too sick to protest or offer resistance.

Our inabiity to conceive of, create, and institute real humanitarian,non-profit healthcare will be our own self-imposed disease of consumption, eating us alive, from the inside out.
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This page was sent to you by: ihentschel@austin.rr.com OPINION July 27, 2009 Op-Ed Columnist: An Incoherent Truth By PAUL KRUGMAN On health care, the Blue Dogs aren't making sense. The conservative Democrats can't extract major concessions on the shape of health care reform without dooming the whole project.

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The New Old is the Old New

OPINION July 23, 2009 Schott's Vocab: Stealth Starbucks By Ben Schott A Starbucks coffee shop in disguise.
http://schott.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/stealth-starbucks/


The end of this article raises an interesting question. If, as the James Taylor song reminds us, that "one thing leads to another", and we start to see such 21rst century anomolies as the "local" hardware store re-appear, run By Home Depot, or a "local" neighborhood pharmacy, surreptitiously run by Walgreens or CVS, or a "local neighborhood" anything (how about a five and dime, run by Wal-Mart?), would that signal a re-birth of the neigborhood, the beginning of the end for big box stores and a corporate acknowledgement that neighborhoods and community are actually a good idea? After they have spent the last 25+ years working to destroy them both?

This is a wonderful and tantalizing notion, but my guess is that it is just a case of Starbucks just attempting to spin it's own spin, fighting a culturally induced entropy. This is moreover just the most recent reguritation of greed and avarice, a consumptive old wolf in sheepishly donned used clothing, pretending humility (Not so very long ago, this Schott's column ran a story about Wall St. workers who now wear "blue jeans" to work, and shirts with patched elbows. This is a self-serving and mocking attempt to convince observers to feel sorry for them, after the financial meltdown. In truth, the jeans cost $300./pr. and it is all a ruse: they still drive Porche's to work).

Starbucks is under attack from its own whorish self and finally realizing that it is commiting a kind of suicide by over-extension of sameness, and if nothing else, brought on by virture of its pervasive sterility and utterly humongous character. They are the coffee shop adaptation of Kruschev, pounding his coffee mug on the lectern, yelling, "We will bury you!" (which is, of course,the mantra of Wal-Mart). If the article is accurate, in stating that this "makeover of innocence" is occuring in a retail space of 16,000 sq. ft., then it is very clear as to how out of touch Starbucks really is with itself. How cozy and customer/user friendly can you be in a 16,000 sq.ft. space? And if all else fails, sell alcohol. Perhaps no one is immune to prostitution of some sort.

Like the now nearly-extinct 300 lb. bakery shop owner, perhaps Starbucks has consumed too much of its own product? Downtown Seattle may not be the greatest place for highly caffeinated hallucinating, but we should not forget that, only in America can you take a over-worn, unsaleable piece of anything, re-name, re-badge, re-brand and re-package it and some fool will buy it. It's the economy, stupid.