The Republic of T.

On my way to the DC premiere of Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, it occurred to me that we all know the story, because we’ve been watching the “prequel” — and starring in it — for a while now.

Hell, just as some segments of Moore’s movie can be seen on YouTube (go to the movie to see them in Moore’s context), so can much of the “prequel”. In fact, you could almost put together the “extras” for the DVD from video available online.

I’m still working on my review of the movie, but in the meantime I thought it’d be fun to put together, scenes from Capitalism: The Prequel.

Next up: The Foreclosures

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for September 29th through September 30th:

• Les Leopold: Favoring Bankers over Boilermakers? –
• Democrats Abandon Public Option –
• Cenk Uygur: Howard Dean vs. Rahm Emanuel –
• Op-Ed Columnist: Where Did ‘We’ Go? –
• The Mathematics of Corruption –
• Lose the Hate, Keep the Hope –
• Katie Halper: The anti Public Option Pledge: No Health Care For Me! –
• The Stupidest Thing You’ll Read All Day… –
• In search of the GOP alternative –

On my way to the DC premiere of Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, it occurred to me that we all know the story, because we’ve been watching the “prequel” — and starring in it — for a while now.

Hell, just as some segments of Moore’s movie can be seen on YouTube (go to the movie to see them in Moore’s context), so can much of the “prequel”. In fact, you could almost put together the “extras” for the DVD from video available online.

I’m still working on my review of the movie, but in the meantime I thought it’d be fun to put together, scenes from Capitalism: The Prequel.

Next up: The Biggest Bailout Bandits

On my way to the DC premiere of Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, it occurred to me that we all know the story, because we’ve been watching the “prequel” — and starring in it — for a while now.

Hell, just as some segments of Moore’s movie can be seen on YouTube (go to the movie to see them in Moore’s context), so can much of the “prequel”. In fact, you could almost put together the “extras” for the DVD from video available online.

I’m still working on my review of the movie, but in the meantime I thought it’d be fun to put together, scenes from Capitalism: The Prequel.

First: The Bailouts

Tonight, I’m going to the Washington, DC premiere of Micheal Moore’s new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story.

I know there are people who can’t stand Moore, but I’ve seen just about all of his movies.

(more…)

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for September 28th through September 29th:

• Meet the Hazzards –
• Live From “Take Back America” –
• Unemployment Or Unemployability? A Story. –
• Drowning Out the Right-Wing Noise Machine –
• Michael Moore: Why the Current Bills Don't Solve Our Health Care Crisis –
• Why We Need Health Care Reform –
• God Bless Our Anti-Christian First Amendment –
• The public option is nothing to fear –
• Class Warfare Ahead? –
• What Have We Done to Democracy? –

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for September 27th through September 28th:

• The Case of the Missing Torture Documents –
• Americans Pay More to Die Earlier — Why Is Our Health Care System So Screwed Up? –
• Op-Ed Columnist: Cassandras of Climate –
• Editorial: High Cost of Death Row –
• What Have We Done to Democracy? –
• Better Dead Than Insured –

Talk about “desperate housewives.” This AlterNet article brings to mind something I’d noticed before. In even the most progressive households, the lion’s share of the housework and childcare falls to the woman.

But anyway you measure it, statistically speaking, women do about twice as much housework as men, even in relationships where the woman works outside of the home and the man doesn’t.

The disparity might be fine if women benefited from it more than men. Or if, somehow, reclaiming cleaning as important women’s work (without getting anything in return) advanced feminism. But in both cases, the opposite is true.

The disparity might be fine if women benefited from it more than men. Or if, somehow, reclaiming cleaning as important women’s work (without getting anything in return) advanced feminism. But in both cases, the opposite is true.

Men benefit from relationships more than women, according to Michael Kimmel, author of Guyland, and professor of sociology at SUNY Stony Brook, because the current distribution of domestic labor means that when men marry, they tend to gain a chef and a laundress, among other things. Married men are happier, live longer, have lower rates of illness, and are less likely to be treated by a therapist than their unmarried brothers, but married women have lower rates of happiness than unmarried women, and more likely to need medical treatments and therapy.

Granted, we’ve come a long way from the idealized 1950s version of housework and gender roles. Though it’s argued to be a hoax, this heavily circulated “Good Wife’s Guide” is a pretty good “condensation of the worst of this particular ‘joy through subservience’ era”, as one writer at Snopes.Com described it.

(more…)

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for September 25th through September 26th:

• The One Percent Economy–Part Two: The Why –
• Peter Dreier: First They Came For ACORN –
• The One Percent Economy–Part One: The What –
• Dignity is Not a ‘Public Option’ –
• Wild, Wild Conservative Claims – Here We Go Again –
• Is This America? –
• The Lowballing of Healthcare Reform –
• The Republican brat pack –
• Social change could spark violence –
• Economic Disparities for Minorities Sharpen in Recession –

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for September 23rd through September 25th:

• Let Blue Dogs Face the Music –
• Where Is the Defund Blackwater Act? –
• The Mess Left Behind –
• Clueless Industry Lobbyists –
• The Way We Die Now –
• Matt Osborne: When Your Coverage Doesn't Cover Anything –
• The Racist Truth About Beck and Limbaugh –
• Republicans for Waste and Abuse in Medicare –
• The Truth About Two Racists—Beck and Limbaugh –
• Uncle Sam Should Respect All Marriages –

“The fundamental truth about health care in every country is that national values, national character, determine how each system works.”

Prof. Uwe Reinhardt, Princeton Professor & Health Care Economist

“I think health care is a privilege. I wouldn’t call it a right.”

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC

Drop Dead

Whether or not it’s a crisis that millions of Americans are uninsured or underinsured, that thousands lose their health insurance every day, or that tens of thousands die every year because they lack health insurance is a matter of perspective. The same goes for the economic crisis, the foreclosure crisis, or any other crisis.

Depending on your perspective, there’s nothing wrong with hundreds of thousands, or even millions losing their homes to foreclosure. (Even if deregulating the finance sector made it easier to sell them time bombs, in the form of mortgages, that went off long after the people who really matter made an easy buck and moved on.) There’s nothing wrong with millions of people having no health insurance, and thus no access to affordable, quality care. There’s nothing wrong, because it’s all right, and there’s no need to do anything about it.

That’s why I have to disagree with the following assertion, from Simon Johnson and James Kwak.

(more…)

I confess. John Edwards was, for me, very hard to resist. The man had qualities, personal and political, that I found hard to resist. That he was willing to talk openly about poverty and inject the subject into our political discourse was admirable in and of itself. It has been absent from the political scene for as long as Edwards has been.

And, in the case of the former, we are poorer for it. The ranks of the poor have grown from 12.5% of the population in 2007 to 13.2% in 2008. Since April 2007, when Edwards declared “We’ve got 37 million people who wake up every day in poverty. This is not OK, not in the richest country on the planet,” the number has increased to 39.8 million. But almost no one is saying “This is not OK.”

Yes, he had a good rap. Plus, the man was pretty. The hair, the smile, the eyes, etc. Toss in the accent and Edward’s brand of earnestness, and he was a fine example of the kind of southern boy I use to fall hard for, and still could.

(more…)

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for September 22nd through September 23rd:

• Robert Slayton: Obama, America and Race –
• Standing athwart history –
• Kamikaze Obstructionism –
• Commentary: Calling out the liars and their lies about health care reform –
• Lessons From the French Health-Care System –
• Commentary: The roots of today’s public problems –
• Cantor's support for health care options –
• Editorial: The Numbers and Health Care Reform –
• Glenn Beck’s Party –
• Update: Republicans STILL Don’t Have a Health Care Plan –

…[Q]uality care shouldn’t depend on your financial resources, or the type of job you have, or the medical condition you face. Every American should be able to get the same treatment that U.S. senators are entitled to.

This is the cause of my life.

Sen. Ted Kennedy, ‘The Cause of My Life’

As I noted in the previous post in this series, it can’t honestly be said that the reason millions of American’s go without health insurance is because we can’t afford it. Nor is that the reason why more than 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day, or why:

• 25 million are underinsured — up from 16 million in 2003 — and pay more than 10 percent of their income on medical expenses despite having health insurance
• nearly 86 million Americans under 65 went without health insurance at some point between 2007 and 2008
• 45,000 Americans die every year because they lack health insurance, and thus access to care

.

None of this is because these people don’t want health insurance, and certainly not because they don’t need it. Nor is it that we cannot afford to guarantee quality, affordable health care to all citizens. A fraction of our military budget, or the amount sunk into the Iraq war, for example, could go a long way towards providing coverage for many. So it’s not because we can’t do it.

We can. So, perhaps we simply lack the will to do so; to make it happen. Maybe we just don’t want to. But the question remains: Why?

(more…)

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for September 21st through September 22nd:

• David Mixner: Why We Can't Forget about HIV/AIDS in Health-Care Reform –
• Peter Dreier: WellPoint: Poster Child for Health Insurance Reform –
• Pols must decry anti-black rhetoric –
• Overshadowed by Tea Party Movement, the Christian Right Scrambles to Claim It Isn’t Racist –
• The Politics of Lying and the Culture of Deceit in Obama’s America: The Rule of Damaged Politics –
• Josh Treviño, GOP Consultant: "My Red Hair And Pale Skin IS My Passport" –
• “We Made Them Millions, and They Complain About Insurance” –
• Health Insurance Companies Are the Real Death Panels: My Best Friend Is Proof –
• Values Voters Summit Promotes “New Masculinity” of Ignorance and Fury –
• The consumer model of God –

I plan on getting back to the series I started last week, but I couldn’t wait to share this parody PSA starring Will Ferrell and others.

(more…)

There are no second acts in American lives.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

It struck me as simultaneously ironic and poetic when, a few weeks ago, two of music biggest icons — each of whom in their own way represented the intoxicating excess that goes with a certain level of celebrity — went through transitions that were as similar as they were different. And within days of each other.

One, at least, no longer has to please his public — or seek its forgiveness. The other now faces the task of disproving the famous F. Scott Fitzgerald quote above.

(more…)

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for September 19th through September 21st:

• If the Election Were Held Today –
• Why the Congressional Dems’ Attack on ACORN Is an Attack On Us All –
• A Walking Pre-Existing Condition –
• There’s No Denying Obama’s Race Plays a Role in Protests –
• Welcome to the National Asylum –
• Jimmy Carter was right. ‘Post-racial’ America is still a forlorn hope –
• Jeff Schweitzer: A Failure of Citizenship and the Health Care Debacle –

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for September 16th through September 19th:

• Where’s The Morality? 45,000 Deaths Per Year–The Real Cost of The Current Health Care “System” –
• Op-Ed Columnist: The Scourge Persists –
• Southern Baggage –
• The Race Debate Is Bigger Than a Handful of Conservatives –
• Why I Threw My Shoes At Bush –
• Health Care as a Civil Right –
• Romell Broom and the Barbarism of the Death Penalty –
• Clinging to Civility –
• We Can’t Afford Health Care? You Lie! –
• A Whiter Shade of Faith: Saturday’s Tax Protests and the Religion of Whiteness –

“I don’t understand you Americans. You blow billions on a useless war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and billions more to bail out banks that nearly bankrupted the world economy, but you don’t ensure healthcare for your own people. Even Obama can’t make a difference. It’s as if your democracy doesn’t work anymore.”

Anonymous Man in Budapest

Where There’s a Will

In the first post in this series, I recalled saying something to the effect of “In a country as wealthy as this one, that a single child doesn’t have health insurance or health care is criminal.” The implication is the same implied in the words above, said to Steven Hill by an anonymous European man in a Budapest sauna, after Hill identified himself as an American.

According to Hill, the man’s reaction was typical of Europeans observing our political paroxysms over health care.

He was Austrian but spoke in a near-perfect English that was as good grammatically as that spoken by some of my relatives.

And his reaction was typical. As Europeans watch the United States flailing about over something as basic as healthcare, they are reminded once again of the impotent US response following Hurricane Katrina. TV images of stranded, poor, black people in New Orleans have been melded to those of this new healthcare insurgency with pitch forks, leaving an indelible impression. The last remaining superpower is not looking so super anymore, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, healthcare, the economy – not anywhere.

Can you blame them for wondering why an issue like access to quality, affordable health care for all citizens — a no-brainer to them — is difficult for us that it’s taken almost 100 years for us to get something that their countries got long ago? Can you blame them for wondering if it’s because we can’t do it or because we just don’t want to do it?

(more…)