The Next Bamboozle

Apparently the President is going to make a big push to save health care in his State of the Union address this week. I know, I know - better get that transplant you've been putting off tout suite. With 1 million Americans added to the ranks of the uninsured during each of the first 4 years of Bush's presidency, you'd get no argument from me that things are, um, broken. But I just can't help but think that those 45 million uninsured shouldn't go rushing to Johns Hopkins for their annual exams. Well, judging by what the White House is leaking out about the Bush Health Care program, you can be sure that if you liked his social security plan or you're wild about his prescription drug plan, you're going to love his health care plan.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, who led the charge against the social security phase-out plan, has gotten off to a good start on this one too. The centerpiece of this new plan will be medical savings plans, which would allow people to put aside money pre-tax to pay for health care should they need it. In keeping with their one-trick-pony policy-making approach, there's a tax cut angle to this too: people will also be able to write off their out-of-pocket health care costs.

As usual with the Orwellian PR machine of the conservative movement, you can pretty much assure that their stated goals on any given initiative are probably exactly the opposite of what they're really trying to accomplish. It's sort of like a game of "Where's Waldo" - you just have to look real hard at Bush's proposals to find out exactly how the middle and lower class are being screwed in favor of the rich.

Now I don't know about you, but I'm not crazy about putting aside any more of my money to pay for something that may never happen. I want INSURANCE! I don't want to roll the dice that the amount I put aside is going to coincide with the amount I need when I'm really sick - I want INSURANCE! And I don't want another regressive tax cut that gives a millionaire in the 36% tax bracket a 36% break on his health care while the guy making minimum wage only gets a 15% break. I want INSURANCE to cover all of my health care costs - whether I have a job or not. Does that make me a bad guy?

As Josh points out in his piece on this, the hidden motivation behind all of this is that Bush and his team actually think people have too much health care. They want to encourage people to spend their own money, in the form of accumulated balances in their medical savings accounts, because they think that people will then be less willing to go in for those lavish, extravagant procedures, like cosmetic triple bypass or elective brain surgery. They think the reason why health care costs are going up is that we all are just out there getting chemotherapy and colonoscopies because we can - because somebody else is picking up the check.

Now I'm no health care policy expert, but I think there are tons of more plausible reasons why health care costs keep going up - the cost of paying for uninsured, the arms race of hospitals buying high-tech equipment to compete with each other when their patient loads can't support it - there are any number of reasonable explanations, but my cat wouldn't even buy the Bush logic, and she leans pretty predictably to the right. Actually, you can make an argument that the Bush plan could have the opposite effect; if people can spend their own money and don't have to get an insurance company's approval for a procedure, they may make even wackier decisions about what they need (think bigger boobs, more girth).

Anyway, I've just expended roughly 10 time more brain power on this than our vaunted media establishment will over the next few months ("Didn't the President's codpiece look exceptional during the State of the Union?"). I'm sure they will give it the same even-handed treatment they gave Clinton's plan, which would actually be saving people's lives today had the media focused on its merits rather than, you know, blow jobs...

Is He A Liar, or Did He Just Not Know??

President Bush, April 2004:

Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

Oh, and Another Thing...

As a follow-up to my post yesterday on Hamas' overwhelming, and, I guess to the Bush administration unexpected, victory in the Palestinian elections, I think it's really important to point out that it's one thing to talk about freedom and democracy, but it's entirely another to really promote it.

King George has made a lot of speeches about the benefits of an American-style democracy, but all he's shown to the people of the middle east is violence and saber-rattling. He's done absolutely nothing to demonstrate the benefits of minority rights, openness and peaceful conflict resolution. So, all the people of the middle east see is arrogant posturing and killing of innocent people.

Moreover, the fact that the Bush administration is surprised by this result demonstrates just how out of touch they are with the realities on the ground in the Middle East. When Bush came to office, he declared a "hands-off" approach to dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict, essentially scuttling the gains made by the Clinton administration, preferring to let them handle it themselves. Bush's administration has done nothing to address the corruption and ineffectiveness of the ruling Fatah party. Would holding Fatah accountable through incentive-based aid or other economic or diplomatic pressures forced our ally to clean up it's act? That's just too French for this crowd...

You can't just bomb your way to democracy - you have to understand the culture and dynamics on the ground in these countries and use all of the tools at your disposal - diplomatic, economic and military - to bring about real freedom. What we are seeing in the Palestinian territories, and what we've seen in Iraqi elections, is the fatal flaw of Bush's foreign policy in action.

Who's the Embattled President?

Approval ratings one year into second term:

Bush: 43

Clinton: 62

Source: Gallup, via pollingreport.com

Where I come from...

When I was in high school, when more people didn't like you than did, you were considered unpopular...

Democracy is Inconvenient...

Some pretty disturbing news is coming out of the Palestinian elections. Looks like Hamas had a very big day. For a long time I'd been thinking that this is the major hole in Bush's pandering to freedom and democracy. If Bush had a more even-handed, diplomacy-slanted foreign policy, perhaps people wouldn't feel threatened by the US and vote for these extremists. The same thing is hapenning in Iraq, where the elected government is a little too cozy with Iran.

Freedom's on the march, except when it isn't.

Dinner with Paul Bremmer

On Tuesday night, I attended a dinner in Chicago with Paul Bremmer. He was doing a speaking engagement to promote his book, My Year in Iraq.

Listening to him speak, I was stunned by the degree to which he was unwilling to acknowledge that anything at all went wrong - it's as if he was saying that our current situation in Iraq - escalating violence, more troop deaths, political instability - is all part of a carefully orchestrated plan on the part of the Bush team. We're exactly where we want to be.

He spent a great deal of time talking about Saddam's cruel regime, pointing out the torture devices, rape rooms and mass graves they uncovered. It was as if to say that all of this was worth getting rid of him. That's a rationale I could get behind, but obviously, it's revisionist history to claim that as the reason put forth for going to Iraq. He barely mentioned the WMD threat at all, except to say that the largest CIA operation ever was on the ground in Iraq searching for them.

Perhaps the most ridiculous moment of the evening came during the question and answer session when an audience member asked him why the US doesn't make energy independence a formal part of its foreign policy; in other words, if we weren't so hooked on Mideast oil, we'd never be in Iraq in the first place. Bremmer was simply shocked, stating that oil had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the war in Iraq, and that the questioner was simply wrong.

I'm not sure what's worse: that Bremmer is so misinformed as to believe this or that he knows it's not true and is just attempting to mislead. The major driving force behind Bin Ladenism, and by extension the terrorist threat, is US presence on Saudi soil. That's not to say that we should simply capitulate and leave Iraq and Saudi Arabia just because Bin Laden wants us to, but it is to say that if we were "energy independent", Iraq would be no more strategic than, say, Africa is, and we would probably not be risking American lives to defend it.

Anyway, that's pretty much all that came out of it, except that his hair is as immovable in person as it seemed on TV. I thought it was the humidity of Iraq, but now I'm pretty sure that he's a claymation character...

Letter to Ken Mehlman

Mr. Ken Mehlman
Chairman
Republican National Committee
310 First Street, SE
Washington DC 20003

Dear Ken:

I am writing to congratulate you on your pivotal role in developing the strategy for the President’s reelection. You and the President did a super job of pointing out how the immoral behavior of blue state residents is not pleasing to the Lord. I believed this to be true, because, after all, the Republicans, the party of Honest Abe, told us that our way of life is at peril from Massachusetts liberals and their desire to undermine the traditional family values so pervasive in states like Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma. But then, I happened upon some information that has me wondering whether the President might have been mistaken. I thought I’d better bring it to your attention so that you can correct him next time you see him.

Morally speaking, we’re none of us perfect, but if you’re like me, you’ll be surprised to find out that blue states are closer to God’s teachings when it comes to honoring the marriage vows. Curiously, even though people that live in blue states have horns growing out of their heads, they don’t seem to get divorced at as high a rate as red state residents do. And - I hope you’re seated for this one – it turns out that born again Christians are just as likely as the rest of the unsaved public to break the marriage contract.

That’s just the start of it, though. Color me amazed when I learned that, with all that talk about virtue, residents of the Red States are more likely to pick up a pesky case of syphilis. In fact, if over there at RNC Headquarters you can’t get your hands on a decent red state/blue state map, head over to the Center for Disease Control’s web site and grab the map that shows syphilis rates by state – it serves as a pretty good stand-in. Oh, and, just between us girls, it’s not that I want to embarrass the state with the most syphilis, but you may just want to put your condom on before you step off the plane in Mississippi.

But wait – there’s more! With the way that you and the President have been pushing abstinence, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I found out that that as a teenager, you’re more likely to get in the family way if you live in a red state than in a blue state! And get this: Texas’ teen pregnancy rate is almost double Massachusetts’! I guess one possible explanation for this is that the teens there have more sex than their unlucky counterparts in Massachusetts, or maybe it’s because they are more likely to drink. But how can all this be, because President Bush was in control of Texas for so long and he’s a man of morals whereas John Kerry runs Massachusetts, and he hates God? I’m not sure I have the answer to that, but the President can take pride in the fact that his admonitions about the evils of contraception seemed to do the trick: Texan teens are less likely than the average U.S. teen to use condoms.

The President can also find comfort in the success of his efforts to save the little children. I am sure you’ll share my relief when you learn that, even though the number of abortions has gone up since George W. took office, the abortion rates in the red States are lower than they are in the blue states. I think this is the result of two factors: the President’s steadfast opposition to abortion and the fact that abortions are not necessary in red states because so many infants die at birth. The story’s not quite so rosy on the whole “though shall not kill” front, though I’m afraid. Maybe you’re already wise to this, but I think the reason why they chose the color red for those states is that their residents are more likely to suffer the inconvenience of homicide.

I wanted to get this information to you because I know the President takes great pride in his moral clarity. Knowing he’s a man of action, he’ll want to get right out there and apologize to blue state residents for leaving the impression that they worship Satan. Then, with all that confusion behind him, he can get down to the business of helping his friends in the red states with their other problems, like their lack of health insurance, lower incomes, high rates of mental retardation, and lower than average I.Q.s.

Sincerely,

Bleeding Heart