Saturday, September 19, 2009

WHAT'S this? You try to ask your health insurance office a question and you get arrested — while on your cell phone to their customer service? Only in America? Or maybe also in Communist China, the right wing's favorite "market economy"?

Friday, September 18, 2009

THE first decade of the new century was the decade of the plutocrat, writes Timothy Egan at his Outposts blog. A quotation:

Now consider the people who showed up in a state of generalized rage in Washington over the weekend. They have no leaders, save a self-described rodeo clown — Glenn Beck of Fox News — and some well-funded Astroturf outfits from the permanent lobbying class inside the Beltway. They are loosely organized under a Tea Party movement, but these people are closer to British Tories than 18th century patriots with a love of equality.

And they have the wrong target. ...

Where was the Tea Party movement when the tax burden was shifted from the high end to the middle? Where were the patriots when Wall Street, backed in Congress by Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, rewrote securities laws so that the wonder boys of Lehman and A.I.G. could reduce home mortgages to poker chips at a trillion-dollar table?

Where were the angry “stiffs” when the banking industry rolled the last Congress — majority Democrat, by the way — into rewriting bankruptcy law, making it easier to keep people in permanent credit card hock?

Where were they when President Bush started the bailouts, with $700 billion that had to be paid on a few days’ notice — with no debate — to save global capitalism?

They were nowhere, because they were clueless, just as most journalists were.

Addendum ...

Ah, listen: Susan Boyle singing "Wild Horses":

Thursday, September 17, 2009

ADDED an interesting blog down in "Favorite Places." It's called little green footballs and it takes on some of the craziest of the crazies.

And Gail Collins and David Brooks want to argue about whether West and Swift mean we're a country in decline.

Addendum ...

AH, yes, of course, to quote Tom Friedman: "...if you like importing oil from Saudi Arabia, you’re going to love importing solar panels from China." Is it possible any longer to wonder how dumb we can be?

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

THE New England Journal of Medicine recently published an interesting survey of doctors and how they view a public health insurance option and an expansion of Medicare. I know which doctors I would want to see or have see my family members.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

ANDREW writes about the U.S. health care debate for British readers of the Times.

PERHAPS I've mentioned this, but it took Western Europe (which doesn't include Britain) about 2,000 years to become more or less civilized and it may take this country about the same number of years.

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