The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Category: politics

  • Health Care Debate Quote of the Day

    Ezra Klein writes what is fast becoming my favorite go-to blog regarding the health care debate (and politics at large), and he had a truly fantastic quote about the recent Michael Steele discovery of Medicare:

    “Still, what we’re seeing here is the GOP swearing that they will protect, defend and preserve a single-payer health-care system. And this comes after months spent fighting a “government takeover” of health care. If you could hook that kind of cognitive dissonance up to a turbine, we wouldn’t need cap-and-trade.” {bold added}

    If you haven’t read Klein’s blog, give it a whirl — it’s pretty insightful with just the right dash of snark.

  • Knowing is Half the Battle

    I was cruising TechDirt and saw a neat post on “Is The Federal Government The Most Interesting Tech Startup For 2009?”  The idea is that the recent data.gov initiative has led to an outpouring of with-it and effective apps allowing anyone to get a handle on the vast trove of information compiled by the federal government.  If you haven’t checked out data.gov, give it a whirl — it’s pretty astounding.  After a week of hearing about ludicrous claims of “death panels” and “keeping government’s hands off my (government-run) Medicare”, it was nice to be reminded that good people working hard can produce tremendous work — that government can serve a positive purpose and isn’t intrinsically evil, corrupt, or incompetent.

    Some of the nifty apps I saw (via the techdirt link) were

    This isn’t quite the level of Star Trek (“Computer, rearrange known data into a new theory of physics”) but it’s a step in the right direction.  🙂  And if the survival of democracy requires the active participation of an educated and engaged citizenry, then cataloging what is actually known can help secure the health of our republic.  For all the noise and thunder of the 24-hour news cycle, this is where the action really is.

  • Media Idiocy

    {Edited to spell Mr. Fineman’s name correctly.}

    Here’s one reason why political discourse in this country is so messed up. I watched the Presidential press conference on MSNBC. (Normally, I would not, but the remote wasn’t working and I hit MSNBC before any of the other news channels.) I found it to be above average, with President Obama tackling important questions about the administration’s health care plan and the looming political struggles over it. The questions were not bad, surprisingly, and President Obama was his usual erudite self. I think that, while little in the way of breaking news happened, he did capture the essence of the debate and make it meaningful for the average citizens.

    Because I couldn’t switch the TV off fast enough (remember, no remote), I accidentally watched a brief exchange between Chris Matthews and his trained expert (Howard Feinman? Fineman).  Mr. Matthews led off with something like “Didn’t the president just step on his own headline with that final remark about Prof. Gates’ arrest in Cambridge?  Isn’t his taking the side of the professor going to be the story tomorrow?”  And Mr. Fineman nodded sagely and offered up the idiotic sentiment (again paraphrased), “It will dominate the discussion because it was news while little of the health care part was.”

    Get it?  A citizen who watched the press conference — someone, we might assume, who tuned in because he or she is concerned about, maybe even a bit worried about about the state of their health care and the future of their family’s health treament — watched the President expound for 50 minutes in a solid, understandable way … this same citizen will apparently forget all of that and be seduced by the flash of a (notably pedestrian) discussion of the role of race in America.  Apparently that wipes out everything that went before, even though the citizen just spent an hour hearing it.

    Of course, that’s just stupid.  Anyone who watched the conference will walk away thinking about health care.  Of course, very many Americans did not watch the conference.  More than likely, Messrs. Matthews and Fineman are correct:  Those Americans will mostly discuss the race question.  Why?  Because the media — including Matthews and Fineman — will spend the next few days telling America that the race question was the important part!  Why will that message be pushed?  Because it’s “self-evident” that it will be.  And my main anger flows towards the media pinheads (such as Matthews and Fineman) who will bemoan the circus and will complain that President Obama blew his opportunity, without even once noticing that the circus results from the actions of the clowns … that is, the very same media pinheads.

    Political discourse is dying in thie country — indeed, if health care reform stalls, actual Americans will be dying in this country — because we have a media establishment that incentives flash and sizzle over substance and which actively discourages paying attention to serious issues by offering up tempests in teapots.

  • “We are not a people who fear the future. We are a people who make it.”

    In general, I’m not overly impressed with the Presidential Saturday radio address (now of course really a YouTube address).  But I liked today‘s, probably because it resonates with something I’ve said before (twice, even).

    Happy Birthday, America.

  • Lunacon 2009 (1): Friday

    Well, Lunacon is officially underway. So far I’ve tried out a new card game (Fluxx) and attended one session (“Those Terrible Middle Ages”). I’ve also discovered that I can walk out my room (418), down two corridors, around a bend, and directly onto the 7th floor. It’s no accident they call the Hilton Rye Town “the hotel that Escher built”.
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  • A Picture Worth 800 Billion Dollars

    In case somehow you think all the talk of “an economy in free fall” is somehow just hyperbole:

    An economy in free fall: Weve already lost far more jobs than typical and the bottom is not in sight.
    An economy in free fall: We've already lost far more jobs than typical and the bottom is not in sight.

    This graphic, printed at Swampland, makes clear: We are already in deep trouble. The current stimulus bill is, in anything, too small. Under circumstances like these, rapid and massive spending by the government is the only thing that has ever been shown to have an ameliorative impact.

  • Burning Down the House

    Listening to the Republican leadership on how to fix the economy is like listening to the arsonist on how to put out the fire.

    Somehow the debate on the stimulus package has shifted to the Republicans and their criticisms.  Legitimate analyses are always welcome, of course, and when grown-ups want to help make a bill better, it’s a wonderful thing.  But we don’t have grown-ups running the Republican party any more.  These guys have had nearly fourteen years to try their one-size-fits-all “solution” — tax cuts and deregulation — and their experiment has landed us on the precipice of the worst economic situation since the Great Depression (and we’re not done yet).

    The economy is in free-fall and the President is trying to buy us a parachute, but these yahoos can only scream “If we just flap our arms harder, everything will be OK” while nitpicking the brand of rope the President chose for the shroud strands.  In some sense, you can see why:  For most of them, they have their own golden parachutes that will ensure that, when we hit rock bottom, they aren’t mangled like the rest of us.  And since their descent is safe, why help out anyone else?

    We are teeteering on the edge of a deflationary spiral, the single most destructive circumstance known to economics.  We’re already mired deep in a liquidity trap.  Our infrastructure is aging and inadequate, and our competitiors are breathing down our necks.

    The next time someone tells you that “government spending doesn’t create a single job or grow the economy”, ask them if they’ll email that you … over the Internet, funded and nurtured by the federal government long before anyone figured out how to make money off of it.  Ask them if they’ll ship it to you, via a truck running over the same Interstate that likely makes their comfy surburban lifestyle available.  Maybe they’ll type it up using the energy that comes from governmental hydro projects.

    Anyone spending money creates jobs.  Under many circumstances, the market is clearly superior.  Under some others, government is.  And under most, it’s still an open question.

    Could we please stop listening to the arsonists?

  • Health of the Republic: Reset to 50%

    It’s been a while since I’ve updated this ticker.  And it remains completely arbitrary, of course.  But with a new administration taking hold of the reins, it’s time for some (cautious) optimism about the restoration of the Republic.  I have genuine high hopes for Barack Obama and his people.  I think this is a smart, dedicated man who “gets” America — not the stupid rah-rah of the Bush years, but a deep and abiding commitment to the principles of this great nations — the principles that, in fact, make this nation great.

    On the other hand…  only 50%?  But yes, there are still the forces of malice and stupidity.  Over a quarter of the population somehow thinks the 43rd President did a good job.  Nearly 20% believe Saddam Hussein sent the 9/11 highjackers!  The Republicans are licking their wounds, but they’re not reforming.  We face a financial and economic criss of literally once-a-century severity, with a significantly weakened industrial and social base from which to launch a recovery.  We are still embroiled in two wars which appear intractable, and we still do have people out there hoping to cause us real harm.  And we’ve got all the long-lasting pernicious effects of the Bush administration — from torture to spying to “burrowing” — to overcome.

    So, here’s a glass lifted in celebration and anticipation of you, President Barack Hussein Obama.  Good luck and godspeed.

    Now, let’s get to work.

  • Worst. President. EVER.

    I know it’s early to ring in with the verdict of history and I know there’s room for reasonable debate. But I feel pretty sure that this will indeed be the epitaph of George Walker Bush, 43rd President of the United States (to our everlasting chagrin and shame). Hopefully the crimes committed by he and his cronies will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and the nation will reach a consensus on exactly how disastrous the past eight years have been – largely, I would point out, through acts of will, not acts of God. While others will compiled fuller lists, and while I intend to steal mercilessly as I compile this, what follows below the fold is my recitation of the sins of W:
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  • Really interesting MLK clip

    Apparently, someone at the BBC unearthed this snippet of an interview with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in which he is asked about RFK’s 1964 prediction of a Negro President within 40 years.  King says he wouldn’t be amazed if it came sooner.  (Interesting that RFK was right within 4 years… not a bad piece of prognostication!)