Health care reform -- the next day

Our guest blogger today is Bill Brent (Birdman) who has some clear opinions about the political parties.

d'blank

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The healthcare/health insurance reform bill has passed. There are a couple of issues brought up in the senate that will require a revote in the house but, by all accounts, this won’t be a particularly onerous road block. Polls are starting to turn in favor of the bill and Obama. The stock market didn’t crash. The sun came up the next morning and conservatives have not found themselves in liberal gulags doomed to a future of lectures on the joys of Mao’s little red book and reading William Burroughs “The Naked Lunch” in Esperanto.

Republicans and their Tea Party shock troops have responded with death threats and bricks through the windows of democrats offices. A dozen or so republican (and one conservative democrat in LA) attorneys general have filed suit in federal court claiming the bill is unconstitutional. Senate republicans are blocking committee meetings on everything from military readiness to the environment.

Every state in the union is dealing with financial troubles to the pointing of cutting education funding and other vital services. Wasting limited financial resources on legal arguments settled in 1832 is irresponsible to the point absurdity.

I can only hope that the patina of respectability that these hard right conservatives have enjoyed in the past, has worn off. And, yes, the Republican Party that has encouraged and nurtured them falls into the same category.
I've had it with these people who tear up when they hear the national anthem, declare their love of country to point of pugnacity, and drape themselves in the flag but have no sense of a larger community and shared sacrifice for the greater good. They appear to be saying "this is my country, not yours", I've got mine, f**k you." Just as the recent threats and acts of violence are not isolated, I don't think this is an isolated view either and certainly not limited to the south. If right-wing republicans don’t want to participate in government they should simply go home and leave the job to responsible adults.

This is a big opportunity for democrats but I’m sure they’ll squander it if for no other reason than tradition.

Living the goodlife, low on the food chain

The second guest blogger on The Daily Blank is Hank Schiffman (Hankster). If you doubt what he has to say, bear in mind he is still running very impressive marathon times at 60. If more of us followed his advice perhaps the health care debate would have been less contentious.

d'blank

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I’ll be the first to admit that I am over-the-top. Unlike Dennis, I haven’t yet crossed the line to retirement. That’s not to mean approaching the top third of my life has escaped without a point of view. The ideal thing would be to integrate both financial and health strategies. Had I been more diligent on the former, I probably would be spending more time in snow sports right now. Did I mention skiing deep powder is better than sex?

On to the topic of health: it isn’t just about turning up the sweat. You are what you eat. If you eat like a pig, you might end up looking like one. But if you eat pig, perhaps too much pig, you might be risking your health.

Michael Pollan, in his book, “In Defense of Food,” advises to live by this mantra: “Eat food, not much, mostly plants.” He makes a rational appeal to avoid eating those foods your grandmother wouldn’t recognize (by which he means “natural” food as opposed to processed “food products”), eating low on the food chain, and not going overboard on quantity.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a monk and I too have an aversion to “thou shalt not” commands. There is a certain logic to looking at the hourglass running out and choosing prime rib over bean curd, not wanting to deny oneself pleasure while on the deck of the Titanic. However, bean curd might actually slow the sand flowing down the glass. If you think eating tofu is reprehensible, perhaps you might remember your first taste of hooch or drag of cigarette. Some things need time to accommodate. Discounting your great uncle, who died at 95, smoking 3 packs a day while thinking anything green was spoiled meat, it might be time for change.

A friend once said that the very thing, which kept us healthy and alive in the past, will probably end up making us unhealthy and dead in the future. He was referring to our immune system. In health, our bodies work flawlessly, keeping out germs while we go about our lives. In sickness we are a Prius with a broken accelerator pedal. As we age, our systems tend to go out of tune. We need to concentrate on doing everything we can to help keep them running right. We naturally lose our reserve capacity so we need to exercise to build it back up. Our body has a hard time dealing with metabolizing/excreting complex foreign chemicals. We were always designed to make use of natural chemicals in our foods for our immune system and to rebuild cells lost due to natural attrition. Eating complicated, unnatural chemicals confounds our immune system and may deprive our bodies of those nutrients, which we need to thrive.

Logically, eating natural foods, lower on the food chain, allows our bodies to maintain a steady course. One of my teachers once said, “There is a storm blowing out there. The older we get, the more we feel the wind.”

Abortion, religion and health care

I'm pleased to bring you a new voice today in the form of The Daily Blank's first guest blogger. The post below was written by Ken Whitaker (know to many of you as KGWhit). Given the passage of the health care reform bill last night, it is very timely.

d'blank

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T. R. Reid has an interesting column in the March 14 Washington Post. Of the industrialized nations, the United States is by far the most religious. The number of regular church goers dwarfs the western European Nations.

Yet despite our religious zeal, we have a higher abortion rate than any of the rich democracies. The reason for the lower abortion rates is attributed to universal health coverage. In those countries if a girl is sexually active, she can go to see a physician at no or little cost and get birth control at no cost. She can, if she chooses, carry the baby to term and not worry about the cost. Many young women in the US almost never see a Doctor because they can’t afford it. It is also cheaper to obtain an abortion than to deliver a baby.

You would think with the strong anti-abortion movement in many of the churches in this country that there would be an outcry for universal health care. You want to lower the abortion rate, provide cost free health care to young women. Yet the evangelical churches and the anti-choice movement have been almost silent on the health care debate except for a demand that there be no funding of abortions.

The logical question is why? Germany has only 37% of the abortions per thousand women as the US. Why, if universal health care helps to lower the number of abortions, are the right to life movement and the churches not actively campaigning to create a universal health care system here?

There is no doubt that most of the people who are against legal abortion are so from a heartfelt believe that it is wrong. Yet the leaders of that movement seem to either have turned a blind eye to the impact on abortions of universal health coverage or have only a political agenda.

It is easy to think that the leaders of the right to life movement are more concerned about the politics of abortion than actually lowering the abortion rate. Could it be that because a Godless Socialist is advocating a change in health care that the knee jerk reaction is to be against it or are they just ignorant of the facts?

Anti-health care advertising

There is a heavy anti-health care ad campaign running in Central Florida. It asks viewers to call their Congresswoman, who is named, telling her to vote no. I've seen no pro-bill ads. I'm curious to know if it is similar where you are?

The bill or not the bill?

After more than a year of debate I find I am more confused about health care reform, and more conflicted about rooting for/against the current bill than I was in the beginning. I believe whatever reasonably well-made argument I hear or read last. Just when Krugman makes me think it’s better than nothing, Brooks makes me think it’s a train wreck waiting to happen.

I know the Republicans are lying because I can see their lips moving, but that by-no-means dictates that the Democrats are telling the truth. And how about the Congressional Budget office report that the bill saves $138 billion in the first ten years, a rounding error in the Federal budget, but will save over a trillion dollars in the second ten years?

That’s great, but who is going to call them on it in 2030 when the facts are all in and they fall short? It’s hard to believe the CBO had time to even read the whole bill let along construct a twenty-year detailed economic impact model of it.

Plus they are still wheeling and dealing in the Capitol Building this weekend in an effort to buy enough votes to pass this pig. It would be so easy to talk myself into opposing the bill, and yet all I have to do is spend five minutes thinking about dealing with my own medical insurance issues to get mad at the obstructionist coalition of insurance companies, big pharma, and their toadies in Congress to feel the opposite. I can only imagine how I’d feel if I had no insurance.

What is everyone else thinking about this bill?

Feeling random

I’m feeling kind of random today. It could be Floridian Disconnected Syndrome, but more likely my mind is just drifting to the DeLand St. Patrick’s Day Pub Crawl starting in a couple hours.

Paddy was driving down the street in a sweat because he had an important meeting and couldn't find a parking place. Looking up to heaven he said, “Lord take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I will go to Mass every Sunday for the rest of me life and give up me Irish whiskey!”
Miraculously, a parking place appeared. Paddy looked up again and said, “Never mind, I found one.” (Thanks Jack)

Is it possible the tide is turning on that idiot Glenn Beck? Has he maybe gone a little too far in comparing Jesus to Hitler in his recent rant against churches that are in favor of social justice? Thanks to Nigel for alerting me to Roger Ebert’s rant, which is worth reading.

Michael Lewis has received an unbelievable amount of press for his new book The Big Short, about the guys who won on Wall Street by betting against Goldman, Lehman, Morgan Stanley, et al during the mortgage meltdown. I love Lewis’ books, and will read this one. He was excellent last night on Charlie Rose.

I particularly enjoyed his prediction of the decline in importance of investment bankers. He also pulled no punches in calling them liars, thieves and fools – my words not his – but he was very direct. (Although not quite as direct as Matt Taibbi who called Goldman “…a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”)

I heard a good Bill Clinton line on a recent Tom Brokaw special on the Baby Boom generation. Brokaw suggested that Boomers measure up poorly when compared to their parents. Clinton replied that he thought it unlikely that the Greatest Generation was at the same time, the worst parents ever.

Are any of you are interested in a guest blogging gig? After nearly 300 posts I feel like I’m talking entirely too much. I know that many of you have a lot more to say than will fit comfortably into the comment box. You could write about pretty much anything you like. A typical post of 500-700 words seems to work best; that’s less than a full page typed single spaced. (This one is just over 400.) If you are interested, send me an email: dennisblank@hotmail.com. (No blood relatives need apply.)

Life 3.0 (#4)

One of the biggest lies about not having to do the old 9-to-5 everyday is that you’ll have time to do everything else. That is so not true I hardly know where to begin. My daughter is in town this week and that has been enough to throw me completely off kilter.

It’s been almost a week since I last posted and my only excuse is we went to Disney World yesterday. Since that’s what’s top-of-mind let me say that DW has seen better days. I don’t think there was anything new there since I last visited about 10 years ago. They had the same lame jokes in the haunted house as back then. Space Mountain is more 2001 Space Odyssey than Avatar. The hallowed grounds remain nearly spotless, but kind of tired looking. And those Disney logistical-tricks of making you think you’re in a short line when it is actually longer than the one in Islamabad to sign-up for the 76-virgin-after-life were very tiresome. That was my last trip. Someone else can take my grandkids if I ever have any; I’ll buy them their first drink instead.

So how do you like the new Life 3.0 logo? I think it is spectacular and I owe a million thanks to my former Time colleague Syndi Becker for the design. I think it is perfectly evocative of the topic, and very smart looking. Syndi is the best!

The new logo coincides with some big news. Life 3.0 is now its own media brand and will appear weekly on the web site What’s Next – which is for people actively engaged in finding a new career or pastime. Click the link to the What’s Next home page and scroll down a little to our new blog. Coach Lou and I are taking our act there but will continue to do a less formal version of it here, too. What’s Next has a lot more traffic than The Daily Blank so Lou and I are hopeful that it will turbo-charge or path towards an appearance on The Today Show. Stay tuned for developments.

The same old political BS will continue here until you just can’t take it any longer.

The new “R” word

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

-- George Orwell

Common wisdom says the political left is where you will find all the college professors and the majority of authors, journalists and pundits – the people who make their living with words. So then why is it that for decades now, the right has creamed the left in the creative manipulation of language, while the left stands by with their collective thumbs in their mouths?

Here are just a few examples: death tax, right-to-life, Patriot Act, no-child-left-behind, death panels – I’m sure you have your own favorites. Mostly these are strong, evocative phrases that allow the right to simplify and own the conversation about an important, complex topic. I can’t think of an example where the left has done the same. They prefer language like “women’s reproductive rights,” which may be an accurate label, but which has the emotional punch of a phrase from an IRS publication.

Perhaps the most successful right-wing co-opting of language is what was done to the word “liberal.” Most politicians today would rather be thought of as a baby seal killer than as a liberal. (After all, who would want to be seen as “1. favoring political reform and progressive government. 2. tolerant 3. generous”?) And to paraphrase another great Republican use of words, here they go again.

“Progressive” is the new liberal. Glenn Beck and the Tea Baggers are hitting this one hard. In their view Progressives are behind all the evil in the world today, and Beck in particular never misses a chance to say so. But I don’t think they’ve reached the tipping point on this yet, and Teddy Roosevelt remains an enduring and popular representative of the progressive movement.

It’s not too late to fight back. If they aren’t for progress doesn’t that make them “regressives,” or people who want “to return to a previous, inferior state?” Who is going to represent them -- King Ludd?

Let’s put a label on them for a change: Republican = Regressive. Right = Regressive.

Pass this post, or at least these thoughts, on to others who may wish to see the concept of human progress continue to be an aspiration in American political life.

Life 3.0 (#3) Taking my time

It’s interesting how many of you have indicated either in your comments here, or in personal emails, that the topic of how to spend your time after retirement is much on your minds as well. That’s good, because I plan to keep writing about it. I’m not really ready to start picking specific long-term activities for Life 3.0 just yet, but I do like some of the ideas you threw out there, and I’m saving them on a list. Captain of the Love Boat will be at the top, but blues entrepreneur, teacher, and charity volunteer will also make it, and I plan on continuing to play golf.

I was a little disappointed with Coach Lou’s perfunctory dismissal of “curing cancer” as an unrealistic goal. I suppose you’ll want me to drop Love Boat Captain next? A man has to dream, Lou! But I am taking her other comments to heart, especially the idea of slowing down and taking my time, as I’m finding it a little hard to reset my achievement timetable expectations.

I’d become accustomed to the Woody Woodpecker-pace of the media business, and even though I always found it both counter-productive and disingenuous, it’s the pace at which I was used to living. Make lists. Cross off items every day. Report on your successes. Pretty-up your mistakes. Go, go, go.

Intellectually I know that I don’t have to follow that counter-productive tempo any longer, but it became imbedded in my cells over the past 30 years and I guess it will take some time to purge myself of it. Nearly every day I find the thought, “ I have not accomplished much recently,” creeping into my head, but a few deep breaths will usually calm me down. If not, a couple of Yuenglings always do the trick.

Never-the-less, any plan has to have a timetable. Mine is to have a plan I can live by no later than April 1, 2011 -- about 13 months from now. I picked the date because having April Fools’ Day as a target will help keep the underlying folly of this exercise top-of-mind. It is also in keeping with my general desire not to over-tax myself.

I retired in late October, but the Holidays ate up a few months, and the move to Florida took another few. (Getting a Florida driver’s license in this post-9/11 world was what I always imagined in would be like to get a CIA security clearance.) So I’m giving myself a baker’s dozen number of months to figure it all out. I find it comforting to know that Coach Lou support this idea – or were you thinking I should take more like six weeks?