Comments Posted By John
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Rick,
I have been internally bemoaning the coming of the fall and winter, realizing that time is flying way too fast and that I have been unable to enjoy and rejoice in the four seasons. The worst part is that time seems to go so much faster, too much busyness and not enough time for relaxing and enjoying the differences each season brings.
I wish your Bears and Sox the best,
John
Comment Posted By John On 21.08.2009 @ 15:17
Wait until Dec. 6 of this year and the 40th anniversary of Altamont. That was the death of the 60s (as well as poor Meredith Hunter), because the post-Woodstock hype had young liberals -- and even older WWII generation media people -- believing both the hype coming out of the Bethel concert about changing the world and also believing in their own righteousness and moral superiority that they could do the same type of peace, love and understanding concert anytime, anywhere.
Altamont was an attempt create the West Coast Woodstock while at the same time from a monetary standpoint, make a ton of cash by taking advantage of the hype from the August concert and give bands like the Stones who missed the first show their own "street cred" as being a voice of The Movement. All that came crashing back to reality with the stabbing death, which showed all the spin about the Boomers being some sort of higher form of human life as a generation, compared to their war-loving predecessors, was bogus.
Comment Posted By John On 18.08.2009 @ 06:48
Right now, I’d put passage of some kind of reform at 60-40 in favor. The only reason it’s that high is that Obama has yet to bring the full force and effect of his office into the debate. A president has enormous power and Obama has several hole cards yet to play. Town halls and speeches won’t get it done. He will have to do what LBJ used to call “the laying on of the hands.” For example, Congress may hold the purse strings but the president has enormous latitude about when those monies can be released. A road project in a member’s district may be held up (or expedited) depending on how that Congressman intends to vote. No matter how bad a member might think the public option to be, that kind of persuasion can work miracles.
That would assume that Barack Obama was a nasty SOB who liked to get in people's faces, like Lyndon Johnson. The fact is, he's a laid-back, non-threatening personna who would have never gotten elected president if he had LBJ's personna, because he would have scared white swing voters to death.
Obama will get in people's faces -- when those people are conservatives/Republicans, and when he knows he's got the full Democratic Party apparatus as his back. And if winning this debate was just about intimidating a few swing district GOP reps, he might do it. But it's not -- the debate is to win over swing district Democrats, who remember 1994 and aren't inclined to put their political careers at risk over something that's approaching 9.8 m/sec downward speed.
If he wants to win this, Obama's going to have to prove to those swing district Dems that it's worse for them to go against the White House than go for it, but to get their votes he's going to have to give in his program, which means challenging his base on the far left of the party, something he's yet to do in a major way. And if he threatens to withhold district funding or pork projects? Then he gets an actual Republican anyway elected in that district in 2010. That's a genius strategy (and why Rahm last week was warning other Dems to stop running hostile ads against the Blue Dogs in their districts).
Since most of the far left Dems in Congress come from districts that aren't going to elect a Republican, calling their bluff on walking if the heath care bill isn't liberal enough is a better bet than playing hardball with the Blue Dogs, who are in districts or states that can be lost next year. It's a lesson Bill Clinton learned first after losing his re-election bid in 1980 when he governed too far to the left, and then again in 1994. But Clinton was willing to tell the left side of his party to pound sand on things like welfare reform in order to keep his own political career alive. We'll see if Obama's ready to take that step yet.
Comment Posted By John On 12.08.2009 @ 22:54
THE LOGICAL FALLACY OF SOME SLIPPERY SLOPE REFORM ARGUMENTS
For all:
from today's online New York Times:
"There is nothing in any of the legislative proposals that would call for the creation of death panels or any other governmental body that would cut off care for the critically ill as a cost-cutting measure. But over the course of the past few months, early, stated fears from anti-abortion conservatives that Mr. Obama would pursue a pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia agenda, combined with twisted accounts of actual legislative proposals that would provide financing for optional consultations with doctors about hospice care and other “end of life” services, fed the rumor to the point where it overcame the debate.
On Thursday, Mr. Grassley said in a statement that he and others in the small group of senators that was trying to negotiate a health care plan had dropped any “end of life” proposals from consideration.
A pending House bill has language requiring Medicare to finance beneficiaries’ consultations with professionals on whether to authorize aggressive and potentially life-saving interventions later in life. (I believe this is H.R. 3200 - John)
Though the consultations would be voluntary, and a similar provision passed in Congress last year without such a furor, Mr. Grassley said it was being dropped in the Senate “because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly.”
***********
Let's let this be the final word on the intent of the amendment.
John
Comment Posted By John On 13.08.2009 @ 21:08
Ken,
you are misreading what I wrote.
I said the advance care planning as written is new and can have two meanings -- it depends upon the audience. As currently written, some understand it as a mandate other people understand it as an option. Ambiguity like this is why people are upset about it. (I read it as saying advanced care planning consultation is required. On this, we just need to agree to disagree -- if this bill becomes the law of the land, then we will finally know what the intended meaning was.)
Why was this added?
Was advanced care planning something that was being neglected and the authors of this bill wants to ensure everyone has the opportunity to understand what resources are available for them when they get terminally ill?
Or is it to protect the patient from unnecessary procedures that a doctor may do to in order to show they did all they could do to keep the patient alive (known as heroic measures) so they don't get sued by an unhappy family member who believed the doctor didn't do enough for the patient (yes, this does occur.)
(For some there is a 3rd meaning -- one I do not subscribe to).
Some see this as a good thing - others see this as a bad thing. I question its addition as I do not know what the intended purpose is. Advance care planning has always been available, why is it mandated in this bill?
BTW - "advance care planning consultation" is not a bad phrase. It has been around for years and has generally had a positive meaning. It was generally provided to a terminally ill person, and its purpose was intended to help the patient's family understand what the options were, and to help the patient ensure that no unnecessary procedures (commonly known as heroic measures) would be done. What could/would be done was put into writing and this became a legal binding document. Nothing new, but never before mandated.
Comment Posted By John On 12.08.2009 @ 13:44
Ken & busboy,
At the present time, I do not believe there is any limit to consultations with your physician regarding end of life issues for Medicare patients, which includes medicare paying for the more frequent consultations.
Within the context of the bill talking about the 5 years, there is nothing I read that says medicare will not pay a physician that meets with their patient more frequently. I read it as an addition to current practices that consultations may be more frequent depending upon patient condition, but should not be more than 5 years between them. Why 5 years, I do not know why, but the 5 years was added as a time limit.
If the added material is intended to be understood as you both understand it, then this becomes a limitation, since the 5 year limit is a change to current practices.
(I could suggest we contact the writers of this bill to get the real meaning, however, to the best of my knowledge, this is a committee bill that no one has fully read or fully understands.)
BTW, I do not subscribe to the "death panel" belief. What I do believe is this is an attempt to do more with what we have, even if that means "rationing" or limiting health-care.
Allowing more competition in the health care insurance business could reduce cost of insurance for all of us. Tort reform could reduce costs, so that doctors don't have to cover all their bases every time they operate or see patients in their office. Good doctors covering for poor or horrible doctors, that practice has to stop in order to reduce health-care costs. There are many different things that can be done to cut waste and unnecessary practices without destroying the medical system the rest of the world envies. Our medical system needs an over haul, not a complete redo.
(BTW - before you ask - I worked in a multi-hospital health-care system for 14 years. You learn a lot about health-care, the good, the bad and the ugly. There are many, many health-care professionals who want changes to current practices, but don't want change just for change sake; they want real changes that makes health-care better. I personally do not believe this bill reaches that standard.)
Comment Posted By John On 12.08.2009 @ 00:32
How many people have actually read H. R. 3200, even part of it? The issue that I believe Sarah Palin is concerned about is a genuine issue. If you are on Medicare, per this bill, you are required to have an "advance care planning consultation" every 5 years to ensure you understand advanced care planning. There are some nuances here that concern people that they may be forced to refuse health-care that could sustain their life simply because their "quality of life" is less than that of a healthier person and thereby they should not have access to limited resources that a healthier person "should have". This is not a new debate, but putting it in a major healthcare bill has raised concerns.
Imagine if Christoper Reeves was still alive and this provision was law? Would he get the same level of health care that he got?
Something to think about.
There is a lot in this bill, and many senators and members of congress have said they have not read the bill and some who have read parts of it say they don't totally understand it. Supposedly, the President himself has not read the bill. The bill needs to be the focus, what does it really say, how will it really affect American health care. The "town meetings" are not doing that. All that occurring is damage control.
Get your elected officials to actually read the bill and understand it before they come out to tell us what the bill is going to do or not going to do. Don't put up with "talking points", get real answers. Then and only then, should we have discussions about health-care reform.
Comment Posted By John On 11.08.2009 @ 18:22
VIOLENCE AT TOWN HALLS PREDICTABLE AND DISTURBING
If you have your argument(s) down on an issue and the other side -- in this case, your local Congressman and/or Senator -- doesn't, then shouting them down not only looks bad on TV, it's counterproductive. Better to just question them and let their stonewalling, fumbling around for a reply or obvious verbal contempt for the questioner be the image the public gets to see.
As for the SEIU, were this even 15 years ago, without the Internet and cell phone cameras and video recorders readily available, then you might have a problem wiht a compliant media refusing to run the images of union thugs attacking health care opponents. That's not the case anymore, so attacks like Thursday night's in St. Louis are going to get out, and should the attacks be extended to the point where videos of female Obamacare opponents or senior citizens being roughed up or bloodied start going viral, you can expect what little remaining swing voter support the president does have for his heath care plan is going to vanish, and it probably won't be returning for any other controversial programs.
Comment Posted By John On 7.08.2009 @ 11:52
To understand Levin's radio personality, you really have to study Bob Grant, who was an icon of New York radio using the same schtick for a quarter-century, until his comment following Ron Brown's death in 1996 led his new WABC bosses at Disney to fire him (and replace him with some guy named Sean Hannity).
Grant's take-no-prisoners, in-your-face style worked in New York, where hosts yelling at and hanging up on callers was the norm on talk radio, but was a turn-off in other parts of the country, as well as arming liberals of the 70s and 80s with the spin about how mean conservatives were. That was the genius of Rush Limbaugh when he went national, in knowing where the line was you couldn't cross and smoothing over Grant's rough edges for national radio consumption. He drove liberals crazy, but never offered up those damning sound bytes that would have allowed them to shut him down.
The irony is that the success of Limbaugh in showing the ad revenue potential of conservative talk made it easier for the angry Grant-style talker to gain a national stage (though Michael Savage was several years ahead of Levin on the talk radio scene). And even Rush is harder edged today than he was when Clinton took office, with fewer "updates" (homeless, feminist, etc.) and fewer song parodies.
That doesn't mean Frum isn't a self-important egotist, overly-certain of his own correctness and not afraid to tell everyone about it. But conservative talk radio that stresses white-hot anger over either making fun of or calmly explaining why Obama and other liberal are wrong about their programs is more likely to offer up sound byte time bombs that the left can use to create mini-firestorms to damage conservatives in general at certain key times before major Congressional votes or elections.
Comment Posted By John On 29.07.2009 @ 11:34
A FEW RAMBLING THOUGHTS ON THE GATES AFFAIR
Quite frankly I do not see this as a white cop vs a black citizen. I see this as two alpha males who got into a pissing contest and it went south from there.
Gates is a very prominent scholar (I have read some of his writings) who, because who he is (and what he is - prominent) got upset because he felt he was being disrespected because -- #1. it was his home #2. he is a well known scholar #3. he is an alpha male and heaven forbid someone challenge him. He therefore acted the way he did and unfortunately for him, another alpha male took umbrage with his behavior.
Crowley is a Sgt in a police force, and he took umbrage that another individual (and a prominent scholar at that) would basically have a temper tantrum (in his own home for heavens sake) and basically disrespect him in front of all his peers. (could you image what would have occurred at the police department if Crowley had left the home without responding back?)
Why do I believe this is a more accurate senerio?
Almost 30 years of police and private security work (to include military law enforcement). Been there, done that, but also learned from my mistakes.
Because the color of the skin is not the same, does not automatically make it a racial issue. Sometimes it is a little more simple -- 2 strong personalities, without the common sense to take a deep breath before acting.
Comment Posted By John On 26.07.2009 @ 21:58
