TPM does the (death panel) day in 100 seconds
Add comment August 10th, 2009
Archive for August 10th, 2009
Sometimes private sector is the problem and government is the solution
5 comments August 10th, 2009
It says HERE that the government — the big, bad, out-of-touch government — is what saved America from a full replay of the Great Depression.
A perfect example of how falsehoods concerning health-care reforms are spread around
7 comments August 10th, 2009
Investor’s Business Daily recently ran an EDITORIAL that serves as a model of misinformation about proposed health-care reforms.
The editorial reads in part:
The British have succeeded in putting a price tag on human life, as we are about to.
Can’t happen here, you say? “One troubling provision of the House bill,” writes Betsy McCaughey in the New York Post, “compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years (and more often if they become sick or go into a nursing home) about alternatives for end-of-life care (House bill, Pages 425-430).”
But that stuff is patently false, as the independent PolitiFact.com notes HERE. Betsy McCaughey’s claim about what’s in the House bill is just plain wrong.
The fundamental weakness of the research underlying the IBD editorial is amply – almost amusingly – demonstrated in this paragraph:
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.
Ah, but Stephen Hawking was born in the U.K. and has resided there all his life.
Blago does Elvis
2 comments August 10th, 2009
Rod Blagojevich, shown here at a Chicago block party over the weekend, seems blissfully oblivious to the likelihood that he’ll someday be in prison, where the folks at the block parties probably won’t treat him so nice:
UPDATE: Speaking of Blago, the Senate seat to which he appointed Roland Burris is the subject of THIS PIECE by Tom Schaller, who wonders if a Republican can win it in next year’s election.
Right-wing movies with filthy dialogue
Add comment August 10th, 2009
Conservative columnist Russ Douthat has an INTERESTING PIECE today about the films of director Judd Apatow (above).
Here’s an excerpt:
No contemporary figure has done more than Apatow, the 41-year-old auteur of gross-out comedies, to rebrand social conservatism for a younger generation that associates it primarily with priggishness and puritanism. No recent movie has made the case for abortion look as self-evidently awful as “Knocked Up,” Apatow’s 2007 keep-the-baby farce. No movie has made saving — and saving, and saving — your virginity seem as enviable as “The 40-Year Old Virgin,” whose closing segue into connubial bliss played like an infomercial for True Love Waits.
The government can’t do anything right, you say?
Add comment August 10th, 2009
Authorship of the following is unknown:
This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.
I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.
After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.
On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.
After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.
And then I log on to the internet — which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration — and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.
POSTSCRIPT: The foregoing reminds me of the story former U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings used to tell about a Korean War veteran who went to college on the GI Bill. He bought his house with an FHA loan. His kids were born in a VA hospital. He started a business with an SBA loan. He got water from the TVA and then from a project funded by the EPA. The man’s children participated in the school lunch program and went to college on government-guaranteed student loans. His parents’ farm got its electricity from the REA and had its soil tested by the USDA. His father’s life was saved by a drug developed by the NIH, and the family was saved from financial ruin by Medicare. When the man’s house was damaged by floods, he drove on the interstate to an Amtrak station and took a train to Washington to apply for disaster relief. Then one day, he got angry about taxes and federal spending and wrote a letter to his congressman demanding that the government get off his back.
