The Real Death Panels

There may or may not be atheists in foxholes, but I'm quite sure there are no Republicans among the ranks of the sick and uninsured. Watch this:

Okay, a few things...

First, I'd like to know how it is exactly that churches "take care of" those who are uninsured and sick. Do they use magical Jesus dollars? Do they skip the health care system altogether by performing miracles? No. They use cash that has been tithed by their congregations. A sort of "church tax," if you will. One way or another, cash money is required to provide for those who are in need.

It simply does not make sense to deride the risks taken by someone like the man in Wolf Blitzer's example and say that the government shouldn't take care of them...but churches should. Ron Paul usually has the courage of his convictions, which in this case would dictate an answer of "Yes, he should be left to die." It is the only intellectually consistent position to take. Either fellow citizens should pick up the tab for those who can't or we should not. Churches, governments, whatever. Live free or die. Right?

So let's say you want to take that respectably consistent, hard-line position. There's still a problem: It just doesn't make economic sense, even if it comports with your deepest convictions about liberty. The U.S. now ranks 36th in life expectancy. For that distinction, we pay a whole lot more than countries with higher life expectancies.

Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2010), "OECD Health Data", OECD Health Statistics (database). doi: 10.1787/data-00350-en (Accessed on 14 February 2011).

EVERY country on that chart ranks ahead of us in life expectancy. EVERY country on that chart has a universal health care system of one sort or another. The first four (those who spend the least per capita) have single payer systems. Seven out of the fourteen have single payer systems. So while I understand the foundational principles that form the basis of your ideology on this issue, I cannot understand your willingness to let every single American throw away thousands of dollars each year to uphold those principles.

Then again, maybe I do understand it. Those voices shouting "Yeah!" in response to Blitzer's question about letting the uninsured man die explain everything. The Tea Party movement is not so much about freedom as it is about making sure that no one gets anything they haven't earned through blood, sweat, and tears. They can't stand the thought that anyone is getting anything for "free" - especially people who don't go to their church. In order to make sure that no freeloading son-of-a-bitch ever sees a dime of their hard-earned money, they are actually willing to pay a premium. They would rather go on paying almost three times more for health care than the Japanese, for example, just to guarantee that some downtrodden waste-of-life doesn't get emergency care for free. In a sense, they are willing to pay the health care industry to let needy people die. Their steadfastness would be admirable if it wasn't so fucking stupid and self-defeating.

The Great Republican Victory

Can we all agree that Republicans have had unprecedented success in preventing the Obama administration from achieving most, if not all, of its loftiest aspirations? Even before the 2010 midterms, Republicans were remarkably successful in getting health care reform watered down to a point that one might question whether it was worth the struggle in the first place. Since then...well, we all know what things have been like since then.

Now this all probably sounds a little obvious, but I want to make sure that I'm not making any unilateral presumptions. I don't know many Democrats who aren't frustrated by the repeated capitulations: the abandonment of the public option, the debt ceiling deal, the scheduling of an address to Congress, and so on. So I can only assume that Republicans are proud of their string of defensive victories. After all, John Boehner said he got 98% of what he wanted in the debt ceiling negotiations. It is hard to imagine greater success in blocking the agenda of any president. Right? So, congratulations to the GOP on defending their ideals and preventing President Obama from enacting any meaningful policy during his first term!

So, here's my question for Republicans: How exactly do you get off blaming Barack Obama for the continued stagnation of our economy? After all, none of his socialistic, job-killing ideology has actually been imposed upon the nation. You defended America and made sure of that, right? You've gotten almost everything you've wanted out of nearly every major legislative debate. Of the very few bills you haven't killed outright, you've successfully negotiated the terms down to a version that you might as well have written yourselves. Hell, you even forced a deficit reduction bill by holding the debt ceiling hostage. So how can it possibly be Barack Obama's fault that unemployment remains above nine percent while the economy flounders?

Even if you want to argue that we'd be better off if we passed a conservative's wet dream proposal for pulling us out of this crisis, you cannot rationally argue that liberal policy has failed - because you have successfully prevented the implementation of liberal policy. You have, at the very least, put us in neutral by preventing meaningful action of any sort. It could be argued, however, that you have effectively actuated what would have been the conservative response to this economic crisis, in which case it is your economic policy that has failed, not Barack Obama's. If John Boehner got 98% of what he wanted from a negotiation your party forced, it is hard to draw any other conclusion.

So the best you can do at this point - if you have any interest in remaining the least bit intellectually consistent - is to argue that Barack Obama should have allowed the GOP to guide the ship of state through this crisis, writing all of the pertinent legislation, cutting whatever taxes you deem necessary, eliminating any regulations you deem cumbersome, guiding us to the promised land of renewed economic prosperity. I'm sorry to tell you that government simply doesn't work that way - unless, of course, you want to allow Democrats to take the helm when you're in the White House. You cannot expect an elected Democrat to act like an orthodox Republican (unless he's Ben Nelson). As I often tell my four year old, you don't get whatever you want whenever you want it. Sorry.

In this case, not only have you not gotten whatever you wanted, you have ultimately guaranteed that no one has really gotten anything they wanted. While you may be proud of that, since you imagine liberal policy to be an unimaginable evil that America must be protected from (election results be damned), you have held us in this economic purgatory. Maybe Republican ideals would have improved the situation, but Republicans don't hold the White House or the Senate, so that's a null point. Maybe Democratic ideals would have improved the situation. Who knows? Better yet, maybe true negotiated compromise would have improved the situation. We'll never know. In any event, the one thing you cannot argue is that Barack Obama's policies have failed. What policies? His policy of not letting the GOP rule by fiat?

Again, congratulations on your remarkable political success these last few years. You have spared America the horror of liberal rule. The continued economic calamity being suffered by millions of Americans is a bright, shining testament to your steadfast courageousness.

Could'a, Would'a, Should'a.

The President is not just another man. The presidency is as close to a secular "higher power" as we have. We might even think of it as a trinity, consisting of the Office of the Presidency (the father), the person (the son), and the ineffable and ever-changing nature of the relationship between those three bodies and the nation as a whole (the holy spirit). The person, much like Jesus of Nazareth to the Christians, is both a divine embodiment of the Office of the Presidency and wholly one of us. As such, the President is a reflection of us. He can only give what we are willing to receive. He can only teach us insofar as we are willing to learn. He can only shepherd us where we are willing to go. We may not expect more from him than we have made ourselves worthy of.

I am sympathetic to the views being voiced by many of my fellow liberals and progressives today. I, too, am disappointed. I, too, feel hopeless. I, too, wonder whether I can vote for Obama in 2012 - or whether I will even vote at all. But I do not, for one, single, solitary moment regret my vote, nor any of the time and energy I spent working for the election of Barack Obama in 2008. I do not believe that he has let me down personally just because I haven't gotten everything I wanted when I wanted it. I do not care to Monday-morning quarterback about which candidate may or may not have fared better under these circumstances.

If anything, I blame myself. I, like many, many people I know, did not have our president's back in 2010. We rested on our laurels, content to have put our candidate in the White House two years earlier, somehow believing that our efforts in 2008 would automatically bring about all of the changes we were dreaming of. We were tired. It had been a long eight years and an arduous campaign. We breathed a deep sigh of relief and never reengaged. I, for one, ceased nearly all political activism and awareness for about a year. I barely lifted a finger during the health care debate, except for the occasional futile argument with family and friends on Facebook.

Meanwhile, the President was actually doing shit. For two years he battled the tyranny of the minority in the United States Senate, where the 111th session of Congress set an all-time record for use of the filibuster. Then, in 2010, we let a bunch of ideological extremists infiltrate the halls of Congress. Off-year elections are a pain in the ass to begin with, but this one seemed even more so, what with the proliferation of downright idiotic candidates vomiting whatever inaccurate and irrelevant bullshit about the constitution or the founding fathers that they'd heard from some right-wing radio loony (usually Glenn Beck) that morning. Unfortunately, we let enough of them into office to seriously impact the ability of the president to accomplish anything at all. And now we're all sad and disappointed that Obama didn't find a way to get us what we wanted. Well what a bunch of whiny little bitches we are.

Republicans in the United States Congress have just successfully executed a massive-scale, hostage-taking, extortion scheme. Now you can call that "negotiating" if you want and you can bemoan Obama's failed strategy, but that's a bit like saying you failed at parenting because a gang of thugs just crashed through your door, held their guns to your daughter's head and demanded that you blow each one of them unless you want to clean little Suzy's brains off the floor later. You'd do it. You'd do more than that if need be. No amount of good parenting before the incident could have changed a single thing about the outcome. You were going to blow those fuckers one way or another.

But that's all beside the point. Look...it is our nature, as liberals, to prefer decent human beings over the alternative. When given a choice, we will always choose introspection over bluster, compassion over self-interest, humanity over greed, kindness over toughness, and rationality over insanity. This is who we are. We can't help it. If we changed, we'd be...well, we wouldn't be liberals anymore. This is why we will raise our children to be decent and compassionate human beings even though we know that they'd probably be better off if we raised them to be greedy, self-centered little motherfuckers. We just can't do it.

And so, we cannot turn around and say, "Goddammit, why are you so fucking nice?" to the guy we elected because he represents what's best in us. Even if we pretend for a moment that there was something Obama could have done differently - that he could have played dirtier or focused more on the politics rather than on the reality and on what was best for the nation - we cannot ask him to suddenly become that guy. Every time he stepped up to the mic, I found myself hoping against hope that he would open up a can of whoop-ass and stop trying to be so goddamned reasonable and civilized (in stark contrast to the disingenuous, grandstanding histrionics of the GOP).

But that's exactly what sets him apart from the GOP. He refuses to do it. He refuses to stoop to the level of a retarded chinchilla in order to score a few points. What's more, the only time he is genuinely dishonest is when he's actually trying to give those assholes a little bit of cover by pretending that they aren't completely full of shit and that their positions aren't as harmful as they actually are. Republicans get out there and say that Obama is trying to bring down the Republic with socialism. Obama says, "Well, we have some disagreements, but we're working in good faith to close the gap." He's giving them a chance. He's leading by example. Again, you can call that weak, but I happen to be proud that I helped elect someone who won't actively lower the discourse.

If the nation won't let someone govern with dignity and self-respect, fuck the nation, not the president. We can all tweet and post and blog to our heart's content about what Obama should've, could've done (or what someone else would've done), but maybe we should get off our asses and actively do something about it. We know what's happening to our country, but we don't want to sacrifice a damn thing to stop it. We just want to bitch at the president. We did the right thing in 2008, but an election does not a revolution make. When's the fucking revolution already?

Dick & Harry & The Debt Ceiling

I've been trying to find a way to articulate what is most infuriating about the current debt ceiling debacle. It's not easy because the infuriating element is almost too obvious and yet so absurd that it doesn't seem plausible that this could be what is bringing us to the precipice of possible financial calamity. Now...forget all about the possible financial calamity. It doesn't matter worth a damn what anyone believes about whether or not world markets will meltdown if the United States defaults on its debt for the first time in history. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. The GOP's apparent willingness to test that scenario is not the problem. After all, one should stand on principle regardless of the possible outcomes, right? No, the problem is much, much stupider than that. An analogy is probably the best way to elucidate this...

Let's imagine a newlywed couple...and just because we can, let's imagine they're gay. (This has absolutely no bearing on the analogy.) We'll call them Dick and Harry. Now Harry is a little on the plump side, as he's a bit of a foodie. He's always been a little thick in the middle, including when he met Harry. Harry doesn't eat less or work out more, but he benefits from a faster metabolism. He's that guy that can just eat everything in sight and never gain a pound. Bastard.

So as the years go by, Dick and Harry eat their way through life. Harry appreciates nothing more than a gourmet meal. Dick gorges on bacon cheeseburgers, bacon-wrapped hotdogs, cheese fries with bacon, and so on. Through the years, Dick and Harry feed each other, literally and figuratively. Amazingly, they maintain their height-weight proportionality over time, though they both have slightly elevated cholesterol.

One day, Dick says to Harry, "Look at you. You're a disthgusthting pig. You have GOT to get the eating under control, you." (It's just a mildly sibilant "s," I assure you.)

And Harry is all like, "Um...I've always been this way. Besides, not only do you eat every bit as much as me, but you're the one who always wants shitty greasy food when I let you choose. Now get over here and give papa bear a kiss, you skinny little queen."

Well Harry has just HAD it with Dick. (Lately, he's even found himself thinking about seeing Marcus Bachmann to get cured of his gayness. Again, nothing at all to do with the analogy.) He wants a change and he wants it NOW.

"If you don't sthop eating stho much and losthe 50 poundsth by nextht Friday," Dick says, "I'm going to sthtart breaking and shitting on everything in thisth housth."

Harry is stupefied.

"But Dick...You live here. If you break and shit on everything, you'll be stuck in a house full of broken things that are covered in shit. Why don't you just leave me?"

"Becausthe," says Dick, "that would totally sthcrew up the analogy."

"Oh," says Harry. "Well, don't you think you might have handled this a little differently?"

"Like how?" Asks Dick. Dick asks.

"Well, for starters," says Harry, "you could stop bringing home triple bacon cheeseburgers with extra large milkshakes for dinner every other night. When it's YOUR turn to make food choices for us, try making better choices...if it's so important to you."

"But I'm not the one with the problem," Dick weakly protests. "Thisth isth YOUR problem, Harry. YOUR problem. Not mine."

"But Dick. Dick, dick, dick. Listen to me, Dick," Harry pleads. "I've always been this way. I'm fine with who I am. I never claimed to be anything other than a big guy who loves food. Plus, when I choose the meal, it usually involves something much more healthful for us than war and tax breaks for the rich...um, I mean other than cheese steaks and french fries bathing in sausage gravy. If you want to talk about our long-term health, I'm more than happy to sit down and have a civilized conversation about how we get our cholesterol down. I couldn't agree more that we need to discipline ourselves a bit, but you can't just barge in here and start calling me a disgusting pig and threatening to break and shit all over everything we own unless I change MY ways by next Friday. That's not cool, Dick. Not cool."

Sensing that he has made some headway, Harry coyly approaches Dick and places his open palm on Dick's chest. "Let's sit down, have a nice glass of wine, watch an episode of Glee, and see where the evening takes us. What do you say, sugar bear?"

Dick closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and imagines the deep, hard, unlubricated ass-fucking he's going to give Harry later that night.

"Sthounds great, honey."

[CURTAIN]

The Google Crime Unit

Penn & Teller's Bullshit! somehow escaped my notice for eight straight seasons, so I am catching up on the seasons that are available to stream on Netflix. One of the first episodes I watched was "The Death Penalty." While citing the fallibility of human beings (and the government, in particular, in Penn's view) as a primary concern about putting people to death, Penn makes the following off-handed remark: "Now if Google were in charge of the death penalty...I might consider it. The Google kids don't seem to fuck up much." Now I don't think he'd actually consider changing his anti-death penalty position, but he raises a very interesting point about the criminal justice system in general.

Imagine this: When you are arrested for a crime, you are given a choice. You may proceed through the standard criminal justice system, with prosecutors, defense attorneys, a judge, and a jury of your peers - OR - you can elect to let the new crime unit at Google investigate and hand down a binding verdict. The new crime unit at Google uses the most advanced technology known to man. They don't have elections to worry about. They are paid to get it right - and they always do.

Now, consider the following two questions:

1. You've just been arrested for murder. You are guilty. Which option do you choose?

2. You've just been arrested for murder. You are innocent. Which option do you choose?

If you're like me, you choose Google if you're innocent and the criminal justice system if you're guilty. This is not to criticize the criminal justice system for occasionally failing to convict guilty persons. The system was designed to favor the acquittal of a guilty man over the imprisonment of an innocent one. Sadly, it seems to have swung, in many cases, in the other direction, favoring the conviction of anyone, at any cost. It's not that I think I would have a good chance, as a guilty man, of escaping the criminal justice system - only that I would have A chance. More importantly, the Google option would provide an innocent man with a significantly better chance of being exonerated.

Why Weiner Shouldn't Pull Out...of Office

So Anthony Weiner is going to "seek treatment," huh? For what? The human condition? The most prevalent "disease" known to man? The only treatment I know for a man's raging obsession with pussy is death. When will we learn this? When will we stop pretending to be shocked that a man has gone trolling for some play on the side? Better yet, when will we learn that if we'd just get real and stop pretending that monogamy is sustainable, maybe these guys wouldn't have to be so goddamned creepy in their quest for strange?

The GOP's insistence that he should resign is just plain laughable, so I won't waste much time on it, except for a brief recap: David Vitter, who fucked prostitutes, is still a sitting Senator. (Incidentally, Vitter replaced one of the loudest critics of Bill Clinton's infidelity, Bob Livingston, who then had to resign when it was found out that he had fucked women who were not his wife.) John Ensign, who coerced one of his aides into an extramarital affair and then paid her family $96,000 in hush money, only resigned when it became clear that he would not be re-elected and wanted to ensure that the GOP held the seat. These are just the most recent examples of GOP hypocrisy. The GOP has absolutely zero moral standing to make so much as a peep about Anthony Weiner.

As for the Democrats... What a bunch of spineless cowards. First, there's the chauvinism necessary to be blindly concerned, from a political perspective, about Weiner's wife. You may not immediately jump to the conclusion that she was unaware of her husband's e-philandering, that she necessarily disapproves, or that she hasn't been cruising for cock herself. The terms of his marriage are none of our goddamned business. If Ms. Abedin needs comfort, that's a job for her close friends and family. We are fully entitled to have a good chuckle over the unfortunate coincidence (or self-fulfilling prophecy?) of the Congressman's last name, but that's it.

Congressman Weiner...please, please, please do not resign. Do not succumb to this swirling hysteria of hypocritical prudery. Stand up and say this:

I. Like. Pussy. Like most men, my entire post-pubescent life has essentially been one long, desperate quest to get my dick wet as often as possible, with as many different women as possible. I have attempted to disguise this fact by pretending to have other interests and ambitions, but mostly, I've just been chasing ass. Why do you think we seek wealth and/or power? Because we like working really, really hard? Ha. Ha! Sorry. We're seeking wealth and/or power because wealth and power make it easier to get pussy. (This episode of South Park says it all.)

I am neither proud nor ashamed of this fact, because I know - and YOU know - that it is completely, utterly, exceedingly normal. It is not something that needs to be "cured." In fact, it cannot be "cured." It is only a failing to the extent that our society has steadfastly refused to acknowledge the simple, natural, biological, physiological, evolutionary reality of the situation, forcing people, in many cases, to lie about it.

Let me try an analogy out on you. Is it really so hard to believe that I can love Italian food above all else, but still occasionally want a little Thai? Should I really have to sneak around to get some fucking spicy red curry once in a while? Hell, I'll even bring it home and share it if you want. And if you occasionally need to get some soul food, I can dig that. (The portions are so generous!) Sure...some caution and moderation are required. One should, for example, stay away from undercooked meat. Also, too much spicy food might get the old heartburn acting up. In other words, common sense is required. All I know is that an occasional diversion makes me love and appreciate chicken saltimbocca all the more.

I am a human being who has done nothing worse than quite a large percentage of you all have done. The public at large may not hold me to a higher standard simply because I am a member of congress. My wife is free to exercise her options. My constituents are free to dump me in the next election, if they so choose, but I will not resign.

It is the repression of perfectly natural urges that causes so much unhappiness. We teach young girls to expect a Prince Charming who, upon falling in love, will never want to look at another woman again as long as they both shall live. Not only does this set them up for some serious disappointment, it completely discounts the reality that many of them will also be unhappy with only one sexual partner. Yes, women appear to be better at sexual monogamy, but this does not mean that they are happier with it. If women cheat less, we cannot assume that it is for lack of desire.

Let's end this charade. Let's stop pretending to be shocked and appalled every time we learn that someone has cheated, as if this hasn't been going on for all of recorded time. It's just embarrassing.

Why Obama's Bounce Will Last

I have a proposal. I will stipulate that George W. Bush is single-handedly responsible for the death of Osama Bin Laden if Sarah Palin and her like-minded conservative colleagues will stipulate that he is also single-handedly responsible for the economic calamity of the past few years. Fair enough?

Jesus H. Christ. Really, people? We can't even pull together on this simple moment of national relief? Don't you realize that you'd look better if you could, for a single, solitary moment, set aside the all-consuming hatred you have for the President of the United States enough to just offer an unconditional congratulations and maybe even an iota of gratitude? Hell...that's probably asking too much. I'd settle for a statement that simply thanks the troops. Instead, you've gone out of your way to pull credit away from Obama and heap it onto Bush. By the way, when you insinuate that Bush "set up" the kill, as Sarah Palin did today, you're also contributing evidence to the theory that he had all of the necessary information all along but failed to act on it because, ultimately, it was good politics to have Osama out there. Cheney's military-industrial cronies certainly weren't complaining about your failure to capture or kill him, were they?

If Bush had been in office when Bin Laden was killed, Karl Rove would have had the body stuffed and mounted on the front of the reelection bus and would have pulled over on every main street in America so that Bush could have his picture taken pissing on the corpse. While I think that Obama is being incredibly classy about this, he has no choice but to take a victory lap. The Right has been calling him a foreign-born, anti-American socialist for the last two years. He's earned the right to stuff this down their throats.

I think that this will, in fact, be a turning point. I predict that a good portion of his popularity "bounce" will last. Here's why: A certain segment of the population has been skeptical of Obama all along. These are the people who held their noses and voted for him simply because they couldn't imagine letting Sarah Palin anywhere near the White House. They're good, intelligent people with only vestigial traces of xenophobia and racial discomfort. For the past two years, their sub-conscious fears have been stoked by the non-stop deluge of bile streaming from the Right. Their judgment has been clouded.

This event will snap them out of that haze. This will provide the clarity they've been looking for. There is suddenly a razor-sharp distinction between the petulant histrionics of the GOP and the wonkish maturity of the Obama administration. While the GOP has been busy spewing a stream of baseless, interchangeable, pejoratives at the President, the President has been busy taking care of business. The difference is suddenly crystal clear.

More importantly, this will allow them to feel firm in the conviction they've had all along - that Obama is an American through and through. They can see this now. They're smart enough. They no longer have to give a shit what their redneck neighbor Dell and obnoxious uncle Larry think. They no longer have to feel insecure objecting to that sort of ignorant insanity. Obama gave the order to put a bullet in Osama's head. Hell, even if the conspiracy theories turned out to be true, the man just earned his bona fides by taking down the most notorious villain in U.S. history. If they didn't want him on our team before, they sure do now.

Those people will no longer be susceptible to the dog-whistle politics of today's GOP. They'll finally be able to focus on the real issues and block out all of the peripheral nonsense that isn't going to put food on their tables. They won't always agree with Obama. They might not even vote for him again, but if they don't, it will be because a sensible and sane Republican stepped up and waged a dignified campaign worthy of their vote. The odds of that happening make me feel pretty good about Obama's 2012 prospects.