Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:
Obamacare is in trouble at the Supreme Court. Earlier this week, NBC spent an hour on middle-aged single adults needing long-term care, but having no insurance (and Medicaid doesn’t cover them) so they’re hogging hospital beds at enormously higher cost. One woman actually got sent to a nursing home in Poland and now she won’t be able to see her grandkids. Yesterday, MPR had an interview with some official from Colorado – same topic, same plight.
Same solution . . . everybody must buy health insurance so we can treat these people properly.
Never heard a word about this problem until the Supreme Court arguments went poorly for the Home Team – now they’re flogging the fierce moral urgency to treat a few cases as justification for sweeping aside centuries of precedent. The noble ends justify any ignoble means, it seems.
Ditto “Stand Your Ground”: the laws have been successful (or, perhaps better still, non-notable) throughout the US. But the Martin / Zimmerman case gets saturation coverage for two months – just as “Fast and Furious” seems poised to cause Obama some electoral damage?
And Liberals wonder why Conservatives think there is a liberal bias in the media. Ignore the tone and word choice in these stories, just look at the timing. Obamacare is in trouble, we’re flooded with sob stories. We’re not supposed to wonder at the timing? Dan Rather’s “fake but accurate” memos just happened to run exactly 2 months before the election? These stories just happened to run this week, by accident?
From Star Trek, The Next Generation:
Taurik: “Sir, I’m little puzzled. Why are we intentionally damaging the shuttlecraft ?”
Geordi: “We’re evaluating hull resiliency. Starfleet requires periodic testing.”
Taurik: “I see… I don’t believe I am familiar with that requirement.”
Geordi: “Probably because you are not a senior officer. Fire a shot over here.”
Taurik: “That would be consistent.”
Geordi: “Consistent with what?”
Taurik: “With making it appear that this shuttle had fled an attack.”
Geordi: “What makes you think that’s what we are doing?”
Taurik: “The pattern of fire you asked for is similar to what might result if the shuttle had fled an attacker while engaged in evasive maneuvers.”
Geordi: “It’s an amazing coincidence.”
Taurik: “Yes, sir. It is indeed. Shall we proceed with the testing?”
An amazing coincidence, indeed.
Joe Doakes
Como Park
I’m just trying to figure who it is that doesn’t believe the media is biased, who should still be allowed to drive a car on the public freeway.
Haven’t you heard? The media is controlled by the Right. Evidence? Fox News, the NY Post and the Washington Times.
Krugman and Alterman explain here:
http://www.alternet.org/media/65870?page=entire
The interview took place during the Dem primaries of 2008. You get to hear Krugman complain that Edwards’ candidacy is being covered in a trivial fashion – – when more in-depth coverage would help him!
You also see an idea in development on the Left that has only grown in power: the media is not to be even-handed, i.e., unbiased, because the left is correct and the Right is simply wrong. Krugman:
and there’s also the fetish of evenhandedness. If one candidate says something that’s completely false, and the other something that’s true, the media will say, “Some people believe what that guy said was false, and some people say it was true.” Way back in the 2000 campaign, I wrote a piece in which I said that if Bush said the earth was flat, the headline would read: “Opinions Differ on Shape of the Planet.” I was thinking specifically about what Bush was saying about taxes and Social Security, which were just out and out lies! But no one would say that, and they still won’t. It’s better now, a little, but they still won’t say it, and that tends — I imagine in some future environment that might work to the advantage of some dishonest candidates on the left — but the fact of the matter is the Big Lies are all on the right right now. So it works much more to their advantage.
So a fair media that presents both sides of an issue is really biased to the Right, according to Herr Doktor-Professor Krugman.
When public policy is adopted to accommodate the exceptions, it is no longer public policy, but a personal policy. Better to make commercial health care more affordable through market competition than by government force.
There will always be morons who refuse to get insurance, whether it be car or health or fire insurance, whatever. When they get caught with their pants down, they will necessarily have to pay a high price – such being the cost of moronship..