Irrational Depression
By Mitch Berg
I’m human.
I know, stop the presses.
And like any human, emotions will cloud my assessment of things on occasion.
Of course, being a blogger, I have my critics and/or amateur fact-checkers. They, too, being human, can let emotions get the best of ’em from time to time.
This past week, we had a collision of emotions; I was generally very “up” (yes, I’m still stoked over Heller). For whatever reason, some of those who disagree with me would seem not to be. I dunno.
But this isn’t about them. This is about me!
There were three different posts on local leftyblogs that purported to correct me on a couple of issues.
“Ollie” at Bluestem Prairie (what is it with leftybloggers and anonymity?) noted – correctly – that I’d mixed up a couple of bills and erred in connecting Rep. Bachmann’s domestic drilling proposals to those referred to a Marketwatch article last week; additionally, it was correctly pointed out that halving the price of oil will not half the price of gasoline. Mea culpa as far as it goes. Of course, neither criticism touches the important point; more domestic drilling will lower prices all up and down the supply chain in the mid-to-long term because of increased supply, and in the short term because of the psychology of markets. Will it drop to $2? Who knows. Will it drop? All other things being equal, almost certainly. Which candidates and politicians support this?
Any corrections there?
Charlie Quimby notes correctly that in my piece last week on the founder of the prototype for the Canadian health care system, I didn’t read the entire referenced PDF report, which was a little less depressed about the whole thing (and was written by the Quebec provincial healthcare authority). I won’t pretend to be an expert on healthcare (and either should most “health care experts”, for that matter), but it’s a fair cop; the negative quotes of a leader don’t necessarily negate the reports from the troops in the field.
Please pass that observation on to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, OK?
June 29th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
No need to be depressed, for they make it plain that you do good work. Otherwise they would not be so happy to observe your more human moments.
June 29th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Good on you for admitting it, Mitch. But I’d like to clarify, the “quote” from the leader was attributed to him because the statement was in the commission report.
June 29th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Summary:
“Everyone is aware of the difficulties of the health system, yet the situation is not changing quickly enough. The reason is simple: no-one dares call into question the particular interests at play. There is another reason for this failure to act: we have transformed certain features of our system into dogma, features that other countries have questioned long ago.”
Report:
“On the political level, any reconsideration of the system and its funding modes risked denunciation as an attempt to introduce a two-tier system. To control the growth of public health spending, successive governments have thus resorted to rationing methods and authoritarian governance. Wait times have lengthened. The system’s productivity has declined. Employee motivation has plummeted. Public dissatisfaction with the health care system has been accentuated. We must face facts: today, the public system does not seem to be able to satisfy public demand.”
Oh yeah, all goodness and light.
June 30th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Do we want the same people that organize the post office to organize our operations? Lost several family emmbers to socialized medicine. Let’s not go socialist USA, okay?