Health Insurance Parasites

Update: Fight for the public option.

As everyone gets back to work on Tuesday and awaits President Obama's national address on healthcare on Wednesday, seen by some as a "make-or-break moment in his young administration (Peter Baker NYT)," writer Corrente points out what should be axiomatic: Health insurance companies are parasites, a rogue industry.

Perhaps a more apt description is the grubworm: We are the grass and the worm is the health insurance industry:

Grubworms are the larvae of beetles, attacking the roots of turfgrasses and ornamental plants. Damage first appears as drought stress such as wilting and drooping. ... Grub populations also attract predatory mammals such as skunks, raccoons, opossums and moles that can hear the grub activity and dig into the turf in search of a meal- causing further damage to the turf.

"I suffer no illusions that this will be an easy process. It will be hard. But I also know that nearly a century after Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform, the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough. So let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year."
– President Barack Obama, February 24, 2009

"No More Mr. Nice Guy"
- Alice Cooper, 1973

Bushies Whining about Obama's Inaugural Address

On the plane ride back to Texas, some Bushies complained about Obama's inaugural speech taking shots at the departing administration.

The Bushies are right. That was one hell of an inaugural address:

From Peter Baker in the Times:

... (T)he context of some of (Obama's) remarks was lost on no one. He criticized ‘our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.’ He promised to ‘restore science to its rightful place.’ He rejected ‘as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.’ He assured the rest of the world ‘that we are ready to lead once more.’

Some writers, including David E. Sanger of The New York Times, concluded that it was the first time since Franklin D. Roosevelt took over from Herbert Hoover in 1933, that an incoming president used his Inaugural Address to so evidently repudiate his predecessor as he headed for the door.

But just wait, they ain't seen nothing yet. That accountability-responsibility thing that Bush used to BS about. Well, a legal reckoning is coming and a popular mandate will be there to provide all the support the administration will require.

Hillary Sold Her Soul in a Losing Cause

Wonderful speech by Hillary endorsing Obama Saturday.

And, personally, I'm all for letting bygones be bygones to further unity to defeat the odious John McCain.

Just right after setting the record straight on the gutter appeals to bigotry that Hillary Clinton and her most trusted advisers launched into the political campaign.

Sunday's NYT's retrosective by PETER BAKER and JIM RUTENBERG offers these nuggets:

... Backed by Bill Clinton, Mr. (Mark) Penn pushed for aggressive attacks on Mr. Obama, something other advisers resisted. At one point, Mr. Penn argued that Mrs. Clinton should find subtle ways to exploit what he called Mr. Obama’s 'lack of American roots,' referring to his Kenyan father and his childhood years in Indonesia and even the offshore state of Hawaii, the campaign officials said. Mr. Penn recommended that Mrs. Clinton own the word 'American' — she should talk about the 'American century' and her 'American Strategic Energy Fund,' and so forth. She should add flag symbols to her logo, he suggested. ...

When Mr. Clinton referred publicly to Mr. Obama as a 'kid,' Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, recalled in an interview that a fellow black congressman said, 'I don’t know why he didn’t just call him ‘boy’ and get it over with.'

In private, Mr. Clinton was making matters worse. On the night of the South Carolina primary, Mr. Clinton called and Mr. Clyburn said he told him to tone down his rhetoric against Mr. Obama. Mr. Clinton responded by calling him a rude name that Mr. Clyburn would not repeat in an interview. Mr. Clinton called back a few days later for what Mr. Clyburn called 'a much more pleasant conversation,' but the damage was done. 'Clinton was using code words that most of us in the South can recognize when we hear that kind of stuff,' Mr. Clyburn said.

When the chips were down, Clinton did not hesitate to appeal to the most vile aspects of the American political culture. Below is a reposting of a piece from March 12, 2008 on Hillary's racist appeals; in which, in a phrase, she sought to portray herself as more American than the black guy.

Mar 12, 2008

Hillary's Appeal to Racism Is a Project, Not an Accident

Hillary Clinton's evolving attacks to define and brand Barack Obama involve what advertising and marketing professionals call impressions—the projection of one image (in this case Barack Obama) onto one human brain (a voter).

Designing and managing Obama’s brand by generating impressions for the benefit of Hillary running in the primary, it is necessary to merge negative (ostensibly plausible) aspects of Obama onto the consciousness of key voting demographics susceptible to certain appeals based on fear and xenophobia.

The more frequent and emotionally potent the impression, the greater is the political impact.

That’s why we see the escalation after the Feb. 19 Wisconsin primary of Hillary's project of generating political impressions of Muslim, Black, stranger, unsteady, Ken Starr, creepy, inexperience, and so on.

One threat to the project is the negative reaction of the African-American community and its allies well-versed in recognizing racist appeals, subtle or not so subtle. This threat is being realized today as we see Obama taking some 80 to 90 percent of the African-American vote in primaries and caucuses.

Hillary's amoral and empirically valid branding of her opponent is more simply stated as an old South appeal to racism.

Concomitant with branding Obama is the project of projecting Hillary as a unique and convincing brand of steady, strong, experienced, familiar, and knowledgeable.

Even among Democratic-voting communities with a negative predisposition towards Hillary, this brand of Hillary with the above positive qualities rings true, so we see Hillary present her Commander-in-Chief credentials, including vast foreign policy and national security experience.

Facts can get in the way of Hillary's project. And we do see the occasional piece knocking down Hillary's brand. See today's Clinton's foreign experience is more limited than she says, for example.

But William Douglas's thoughtful and rigorous piece in McClatchy Newspapers noted above makes less an impact than Hillary's crash kitchen sink, branding program.

After all, Hillary's is not an appeal to thoughtfulness and issue analysis; rather it is an emotional appeal to unthinking racist sentiments that can be identified in micro-demographics by Hillary's campaign devoted to the enterprise.

Some demographics can be counted on to combat Hillary’s racist, divisive project (for example):

- Today's socially tolerant under-29 vote

- Social justice progressives

- Casually political, middle-class Americans fed-up with Bush and division and concerned about fairness

Hillary is hoping these spheres remain marginalized and ineffective in Pennsylvania and the coming campaign.

Selling her soul is not a decisive factor to consider. As Hillary once said in a different context, face reality!

Top Admiral Who Said Attacking Iran 'Will Not Happen on my Watch,' Splits with Bush on Occupying Iraq

As the current policy desires of the American people bear no weight with George W. Bush, the hope of millions of Americans is the spectacular emergence of an unimpeachable administration insider blowing the lid off the Bush scam in Iraq so convincingly that another war with Iran is halted and Democrats in congress are infused with a spinal column on the existing war with Iraq—the human embodiment of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, Joe Wilson and the retired Generals who have blasted the administration all rolled into one.

This hope is naïve of-course; no one is unimpeachable to the amoral Bush administration, and the career inducements for going along with Bush’s insane ploys prove irresistible for war planners and for those who simply know better.

But human decisions matter, no matter the anti-democratic ethos of the Bush administration and indeed the entire Republican Party.

The Washington Post fronts a report this morning chronicling a split in the administration involving Adm. William J. Fallon, chief of the U.S. Central Command overseeing Middle East operations, and the administration’s newest frontman, Gen. David H. Petraeus, whose White House-authored report delivered to Congress can be expected to be, if not laughed out of Washington, met with great skepticism and ridicule, though this incredulity won’t lead to much congressional action to halt the policy so disbelieved.

The page one, 3,639-word Post piece quotes on very deep background one administration official’s description of the schism between General Petraeus and Adm. Fallon as follows:

"Bad relations?" said a senior civilian official with a laugh. "That's the understatement of the century. . . . If you think Armageddon was a riot, that's one way of looking at it."

As the administration attempts another bald-faced, lying PR campaign to continue the Iraq occupation and apparently plans for a military engagement with Iran, it’s worth noting Adm. Fallon’s reported words this February on striking the politically and militarily powerful Iran: An attack on Iran "will not happen on my watch".

Could Fallon be the ultimate insider that millions of Americans wish for who would blow the lid off the administration’s lies?

Maybe Colin Powell will discover that moral courage over career is the honorable course.

One can hope.

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