The Broad View

The Reaper Chronicles

Every aspect of the health insurance "debate" makes me purple with rage. This morning's AP story quotes Sibelius' claim that the wretched Obama is willing to drop the public option in favor of the useless co-op nonsense.

There are no words to describe my complete disgust with Obama and the rest of the Washington Democrats. Their gutless incompetence has in all likelihood doomed real health insurance reform for another generation. Actually, a humane, civilized health care system is probably impossible in the U.S., given our hostility to doing anything to help our fellow citizens -- especially those who aren't white -- and the opposition of a loud, easily manipulated plurality of stupid Americans. Yes, there is a significant percentage of American citizens who are proudly ignorant, gullible dolts. These are the kind of people who give Democracy a bad name.

The Rabid Right's latest cri de coeur -- "Obama Death Panels" -- has been scooped up and amplified by an equally stupid and irresponsible media class. So far, Obama has been singularly ineffective in countering the hysteria. As Maureen Dowd writes in today's NYTimes:

Sarahcuda [Sarah Palin] knows, from her brush with Barry on the campaign trail, that he is vulnerable on matters that demand a visceral and muscular response rather than a logical and book-learned one.

Okay, here's a visceral response to the idiotic notion that Obama will pull the plug on Grandma. Here's the story of a real Grandma, my husband's Grandma.(All names have been changed.)

Louise had metastatic cancer. She had survived breast cancer many years earlier but now, in her eighties, the cancer had returned. One bout of chemotherapy was enough to convince her that she didn't want to spend what was left of her life enduring painful torture. I think it was the right decision. She lasted another two years and was relatively healthy until the last three or four months. The "cure" would probably have killed her far more quickly by weakening her with poison and pain. And it is those last three or four months that concern us now.

Harry, my husband's grandfather and Louise's husband, was in his mid-eighties. He was amazingly vigorous and sharp as a tack, but old age had amplified his peculiarities. He was a miser and a hoarder. And he was totally paranoid about having strangers come into his home. That, in itself, wasn't unreasonable. The elderly have good reason to feel vulnerable to strangers. As his wife's health deteriorated, however, he insisted on coping with caring for her by himself and then, when he could no longer lift her to change her soiled bedding, he enlisted his daughter Joanne's help. My husband's mother was well into her sixties and not in great shape herself.

The combination of ignorance and despair was determinative. Joanne called me one day to ask, amazingly, for my advice. She didn't know what to do, how to proceed, how to handle an increasingly untenable situation. Her stubborn, paranoid father refused to allow anyone into the house -- no nurses, no home health workers, not even Meals on Wheels.

I advised that she convince Harry that he must allow her to have professional help. At no point, I said, should she allow her father to hospitalize Louise. I told her that once her mother was in the hospital, her agony would be prolonged. She would have the tubes inserted, the machines hooked up, and she'd be kept alive as long as possible, in misery. I advised her to contact someone about home hospice care.

All Louise needed at that point was to be kept clean and comfortable. At home, she could spend her last days with family in familiar surroundings with a view of her lovely garden outside.

Harry was an autocrat and would have nothing of it. Joanne, even in her sixties, was still a cowed and impotent child when facing her father. So Louise was taken to the large hospital nearby. She was hooked up to a feeding tube, IVs and monitors. Her view out the window was of a brick wall.

Louise spent the last forty-two days of her life on her back in that hospital. No one asked about alternatives. Standard operating procedure was to prolong her life through any and all means.

There's also a dirty little secret that nobody in this health care "debate" talks about: Doctors are paid by the procedure and there's nothing like a helpless, elderly patient for the opportunity to pile on the tests and procedures. During a patient's last days in the hospital, doctors come out of the woodwork to peek in the door, glance at a chart, order an expensive test, and walk out to bill Medicare accordingly.

When Louise wasn't staring out the window in pain, she was being hauled all over the hospital for tests and x-rays for -- what, exactly? There was no question that she had terminal disease and that the end was very near. Did they think this blood test or that x-ray would tell them something they didn't already know? Did they expect to predict the exact day and hour of her death?

So for forty-two days, Louise was mindlessly kept alive while her body was being eaten to death by the cancer. Her bones had become so fragile that some time in the last week her hip broke merely from lying in the bed. Her guts had turned to putrid goo. Finally, she died.

The hospital bill was, of course, stratospheric. Miserly Harry didn't care, though. Medicare picked up most of it and what they didn't cover, supplemental insurance did. And it was all totally, utterly unnecessary. Harry was rich enough that he could have paid for round-the-clock nursing at home. There would have been no feeding tube, no monitors, no IVs. Louise would have died weeks sooner, in her own bedroom, and been spared what passes for "care" in America's modern hospital system.

But no one in a position of authority spoke up. Louise wasn't given the chance to choose her own fate. Every day in the hospital, she begged to go home. Instead, she had a husband more concerned with money and his own paranoia, a willfully ignorant man happy to have someone take the problem off of his hands for free. She was left to a system that has perverted its mandate for mercy into a soulless, hypocritical exercise in milking the helpless for every penny that can be squeezed from Medicare.

So don't talk to me about "Obama's Death Panels." Don't talk to me about "pulling the plug on Grandma." Don't pretend to care about people when all you care about is demagoguing and demonizing humane health care reform to score political points.

I'm in despair that any real reform will ever be enacted. I'm sick of a country informed by brutality and stupidity. I wonder what all those imbecilic "Town Hell" screamers would be screaming if they found themselves in Louise's hospital bed.

(Cross-posted at The Followspot.)

The Blame Game

The Blame Game. Sarah Palin dragged out that motheaten phrase again tonight, when rebutting Biden on a question of Middle East policy:

No, in fact, when we talk about the Bush administration, there's a time, too, when Americans are going to say, "Enough is enough with your ticket," on constantly looking backwards, and pointing fingers, and doing the blame game.

We first started hearing that phrase from Republicans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. They were frantic to rush past any scrutiny of the administration's complete failure to act while an American city was drowning. It's a cynical attempt to evoke indulgence for heroic bureaucrats struggling with a difficult situation. Once the magnitude of the administration's criminal negligence became apparent, the choruses of "We don't want to play the blame game," were yodeled at every press conference by everyone from Bush down to the lowliest party hack.

Yeah, I'll bet they didn't want to play the blame game. Why? Because they were to blame! Bush and his incompetent flunkies deserved to be blamed. And if they managed to avoid blame, nothing would be learned. Nothing would be done. When bodies are floating in the brackish water of a flooded American city for days -- in a horror show that was totally avoidable -- you bet someone should be blamed and someone should pay a price.

The point is, when Palin tried to accuse Biden of "pointing fingers and doing the Blame Game," his -- and every Democrat's -- response to the accusation should be unequivocal: This isn't a game. It's deadly serious and when a disaster occurs because of an administration's negligence or incompetence, someone must take responsibility and the blame.

The Blame Game is trying to stage a comeback these past few weeks, while the Republicans and the administration are again refusing to play. After all, we have to save the global economy and we can't afford to stop and play blame games, now can we?

If we don't have the courage to affix blame for these monumental disasters where it belongs, and make those responsible pay a price, we shouldn't be surprised if we're bailing out another city and another economy before too long.

So next time a self-serving Repug tries to make a Democrat sound like a cavilling kill-joy for "playing the Blame Game," you know who to blame.

O thou beslubbering, clay-witted lewdsters of the radical right...

I've posted this before -- with the title "The reeky swag-bellied moldwarps of the radical right..." Thanks to Robert Leuci, who dug it up from somewhere and commented on it today, I'm delighted to republish it. It's got a new title, though, with a certain reference to the various sexual activities and hypocrisies of the Right. Not the least of these: McCain's treatment of his ex-wife, which led Ross Perot to call him "unusually slick and cruel." (Perot ain't Shakespeare or Johnson, but in this case, I'll settle for the 21st century language he uses to damn the man.)

---

I am overwhelmed daily with indignation, dudgeon, outrage. The passion leaves me spluttering and in search of fresh invective. Thus: recourse to the linguistic flourishes of the 16th and 17th centuries, a rough-and-tumble time for the language of insult if ever there was one.

Earlier in these pages I cited Samuel Johnson.

Today I have invoked choice epithets from this menu of Shakespearean shafts. Lay on!

Whether it sticks or not, it *will* stink

Today's meaningless detours and distractions from anything that might be called "the issues" are especially instructive examples of Republican swarming tactics. Nothing is better than manufactured scandals that include prepubescent sexuality and high dudgeon over imagined slights.

The lesson: Republicans tirelessly throw anything and everything at their enemies in the sure knowledge that some of it -- even demonstrable lies -- will stick and what doesn't stick will still leave a residual stink. Expect a ceaseless barrage until the election.

So we have the "Lipstick On A Pig Controversy" being echoed far and wide, from Jake Tapper's musings, to Drudge, to Special Reports to juice up the cable news bore-a-thons, to endless attacks and defense on the blogs. And now McCain's got an ad up with the inevitable "sexism" charge.

Frankly, I don't think Sarah Palin is as intelligent or charming as a pig. And despite the woodies she's inspiring in folks like Pat Buchanan, I daresay Palin's not as succulent as any pig. She does, however, have a kind of low cunning. Maybe it would be better to find a hyena metaphor. (And please don't squeal "Sexism!" to me. I'd say the same thing if Palin were a man, except it would be wet panties on Ann Coulter.) At any rate, don't miss the video of McCain's own "lipstick on a pig" moment.

More serious and potentially more damaging to Obama is McCain's latest smear ad about Obama's legislation "to teach comprehensive sex education to kindergartners." Read all the details here; watch the ad here. The legislation in question is quite moderate, includes opt-outs for parents, emphasizes individualized curriculae developed on a school-by-school basis. Its most salient feature is instruction on, yes, the kindergarten level, in recognizing inappropriate "touching", i.e., pedophiles.

Of course, the facts of the matter will never gain the volume necessary to drown out the initial squawks. It will be another clod of dirt to hit and stick and stink.

Even better from McCain's point of view, the charges will likely result in long-winded explanations and apologies for misunderstandings from Obama. There's nothing that says "Leader of the Free World" than apologizing for, essentially, getting skunked.

I don't expect Obama or his campaign to heed his increasingly frustrated followers who are begging for some spine. One DKos diarist is screaming: "DON'T APOLOGIZE, Barack Obama!!!", "CALL THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN AT (866) 675-2008!!!! AND TELL THEM NOT TO BACK DOWN!", "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!" and "STOP PRAISING JOHN MCCAIN FOR HIS MILITARY SERVICE! He's not honorable at all, and he just called you a child molester, Obama!" [Emphasis and screaming caps in the original, boldface removed for readability.]

Will they listen? Are they ready to ditch a strategy that is dooming them? Are they ready to fight fire with a frakkin' great flamethrower?

Toobin on Obama says it all

Today on The Situation Room (made palatable by the absence of Wolf Blitzer, with John Roberts replacing him) -- Jeffrey Toobin had the last word. He turned to a fellow panel-member and said,

I'm old enough to remember when Barack Obama was a Democrat.

We've got your back, General

VoteVets.org has a petiton for us to sign. It praises Wes Clark for his straight talk, and assures him that we've got his back.

Go Wes!

www.VoteVets.org

P.S. Wes will be on Dan Abrams' "Verdict" tonight (Monday) on MSNBC.

I ♥ Russ Feingold

I ♥ Russ Feingold, here speaking at the New America Foundation:

Why couldn't he be our president? I suppose the country would sooner vote for a black centrist in progressive clothing, a woman centrist in center-right clothing or an intellectually bankrupt senatorial hack who's spent the last thirty-five years dining out on his wartime captivity and unrepentent warmongering than for a scrupulously straightforward, maverick Jewish liberal.

Update: If not Feingold, how about this guy? Chris Dodd is another hero of mine. He and Feingold are pledged to filibuster the FISA abomination. The latest has Reid suggesting that he may push consideration of the bill to after the 4th of July recess. If so, patriots have more time to push back against Dems determined to sell out their constituents and our Constitution. Let's get to it.

Republicans = Brand X?

The pernicious infiltration of our language, politics and culture by the banalities of CorporateSpeak proceeds apace.

For some time, I've been aware that people and institutions no longer have reputations -- reputations to uphold or overcome. Now everybody and everything is known by its respective "brand".

As a former marketer, I'm used to "branding" and aware of how the concept has leached out into the larger corporate world from its beginnings as a proprietary name for Ivory Soap or Carter's Little Liver Pills.

Branding has grown into the construction of a living myth that will beguile your target customers and bless your venture with favor and profit. Every aspect of the brand, like every gesture in a holy ritual, is freighted with symbolic power.

It's all a lot of hooey, as far as I'm concerned. You can construct the cutting edge logo, website, advertising campaign and promotional rollout and it will probably succeed -- for a while. BUT... if your product doesn't back up the promises, the customer will find out sooner or later and all the branding in the world won't help. Corporate executives don't like to believe this simple idea, however, and prefer to hire third-rate MBA consultants to give the brand a face-lift. It's easier than coming up with a new and better product.

So it is right now with the Republican Party. We keep hearing that the "Republican brand" has been hurt. Implied by this is that a little jiggering of the ad campaigns, a little message massage and an updated look will fix things.

Of course, it won't fix anything. The problem isn't that the "Republican brand" is suffering. It's the reputation of the Republican Party and its leaders which has imploded.

Most Americans have had enough and they can no longer ignore the corruption, the hypocrisy, the lies, the rot and the downright incompetence at governing that Republicans have lavishly demonstrated for the last seven and a half years. They have a BAD REPUTATION, and as anyone who has lived in a small town will tell you, you have to go a long way to redeem yourself once you've lost the respect and good will of the people.

The only thing that can bring the Republicans back to favor is to follow a path of redemption that starts with some honest reassessment -- and hope that the Democrats will commit the same errors of hubris and overreach.

Reject, condemn, abjure, denounce, RECANT!

E pur, si muove.

Keith's in the man-cave with Billo

Taylor Marsh at the Huffington Post nails it. The ranting, the pandering, the sexism -- yup, the sexism, the very signature of MSNBC. I'd thought, hoped, wanted to believe that Keith wasn't one of them. But it seems that, after all, he is.

Marsh observes that "He's become what he has railed against. Olbermann is now the Bill O'Reilly of MSNBC. A big giant head railing against the first viable female candidate in U.S. history. Sports fans, it's the latest craze. Get yer popcorn, before "Countdown" starts. Beer will be a buck."

The article is titled Keith Olbermann is No Edward R. Murrow. Please read it.