Free (Buggy) Rider Problem

Amish and Old Order Mennonites live like premodern people--no electricity, no car, no insurance. They don't believe in these things. That, to me, seems like insisting that secular laws don't exist and that you are governed only by some "spirit law" that cannot be seen or felt. Oh, right.

There is a large problem amongst such primitive religious communities: congenital diseases are epidemic. Shallow gene pool means everyone has a life-threatening blood disease, or a faulty liver, or a blocked-up colon. But, the Amish and the Old Mennonites don't believe in government programs or insurance, remember, so what do you think they do when they are about to keel over (or when one of the family's eleven children is deathly ill--seriously, these people have no sense of restraint, shame, or responsibility, apparently).

The answer is, they go to the nearest "English" hospital. Like Penn State medical center. There, they receive treatment, surgery, and drugs and then get massive bills for those services. Bills they cannot pay. Then the hospitals, just as they would do to you or me, put liens on their farms, sic collections agencies on them, and sue them.

So, what to do? The state, and private hospitals, surely don't want to resort to those measures, but they also aren't in the business of giving hundreds of thousands of dollars in free medical care to one large, disease-riddled Amish family after another.

I am glad to know that Mennonites and Amish will actually go to a modern hospital rather than, say, letting their children die horrible deaths just to appease their batshit crazy God (you know, like the fundamentalist Christians are wont to do). But, if we recognize the legitimacy of their beliefs, then can they ever really get access to health care in this country unless there is a major overhaul of the indigent care rules? Or would nationalizing healthcare help solve the conundrum that these populations don't believe in insurance and yet have some of the greatest need for hospital services?

Or, as my wife the policy wonk maintains, somebody needs to help the Mennonites and Amish to get their heads out of their own asses. They claim not to believe in government programs or insurance, but they step foot in state-supported medical centers and use services that we, the taxpayers, paid for. Then, they don't pay their debts because 1. they can't (no one can--hence insurance) and 2. they insist that "their communities will provide aid through mutual care." All well and good, #2, and commendable. In a better world...but, we don't live in that world. These populations can live in this country and try to be not of it, but denying you need health insurance is clearly not a viable option when you are a walking cesspool of recessive genes and congenital defects.

What to do?

Don't Blame Bush. Blame Math.

Some numbers from the Dow index, since 1/2007:
Merrill Lynch: decrease in stock value from $91.6 billion to 32.5 billion
Wachovia: decrease in stock value from $108.8 billion to 36.5 billion
Washington Mutual: decrease in stock value from $39.3 billion to 5.3 billion
Citigroup: decrease in stock value from $276.9 billion to 96.2 billion

Stupidity meets lack of leadership/oversight and we have crisis. If you use money, you should be appalled.

According to my friend, Wally, McCain's people want him to start really hammering Obama on social issues. Oh pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease...

What's Oldie Hawn going to say? "Darkie over there loves poor people and Mexicans. Vote for me!" "Social Security is very important to me--I'm very, very old!" "Poor people need to do what I did--dump the old hag and marry an heiress who could be my daughter! THAT'S the solution to this 'poverty' thing!"

Oh, did you hear about the time Mr. Sensitive called his wife a cunt in front of a crowd of people?

Thursday was a Stupid Day

See why elections matter, Ralph Nader fans? See?! Because the Supreme Court gets 2 new arch-conservatives and the next thing you know there's no DC handgun ban. And gun nuts are running through the streets, firing into the air, and gettin' all likkered up and sheeeyit.

Look, the DC handgun ban was ineffective, not because it was a bad law, but because DC is surrounded by places like Virginia, where you can buy a gun while getting a haircut, and where teenagers can go to a gun store, pick out a gun with a saleman's help, and then go outside while their adult companion (not even parent!) buys the gun and then hands it to the kid, whose name appears nowhere in the transaction. Isn't that neat? Now the adult can say he has no idea what happened to the gun, and the undocumented teen can dispose of the gun however he wants. Of course, it would be easier to just buy a gun from a private individual, who isn't required to keep any record of the sale, thereby rendering the firearm just sold untraceable for all intents and purposes. Wow--the majesty of the 2nd Amendment!

That's not really fair, as it isn't the amendment's fault. This is a legislative problem. Republicans, as we all know, are the majority of gun nuts. They are also the biggest jerkoffs--I mean, proponents--when it comes to local gub'mint and state's rights. So, if people get the government they deserve, then it should be no problem to simply ramp up the penalties for gun violence and for negligence--if your kid kills himself with your gun, you go to prison. Why? Because it could have been me, or my kids, or my mother, or your mother who got shot. You are obviously incompetent to mix with normal, responsible society. So away you go.

That looks like the best we can do until the capricious morons who call themselves the conservative Justices die off. Or get shot by some crazed DC-area Republican. Could happen.

Pelosi: Everything's A-OK!!

According to the AP, Nancy Pelosi thinks some fucktard congressman from Texas would be Just Awesome as Obama's running mate because he's "Mr. Veterans' rights in Congress." Well, woo-hoo. This is a losing strategy, people. Democrats will not win on the question of "who runs the war the bestest?" or whatever retarded formulation pollsters ask from week to week. Democrats win hearts and minds with quality of life issues, not quality of death ones.

Pelosi was quick to add (and this is a real quote) that whomever Obama chooses is "A-OK with me!"

And that about says it all for Ms. Out-of-Touch in Congress, I think.

Blinders On!

Word on the street is that Sen. Jim Webb of Virginny is the frontrunner for VP on the Obama ticket. Typical short-sighted "strategy" from Democrats. This is, after all, a party that just laid down and took it in the ass for Bush's spying bill and gave immunity to telecoms just because "it's an election year!" Good work, Pelosi. As one lawyer remarked after the House vote, the passage of the bill "makes the judiciary the rubber-stamp for the administration." Nancy Pelosi, everyone! She, and her fawning, not-too-bright documentarian daughter (who was one of the first to become rapt with Bush's charm and wit!) can go fuck themselves. Here's hoping the plastic surgeon leaves the gas on next time, Nance.

Anyway, Webb would make a fine VP. He also would deflect the "lib-ruls is weak on deeeee-fense and luv turrists" saw that the Republicans are banking on this cycle. Of course, there is no real need for Webb except that Democrats mostly have no balls and can't speak the truth because their fucking idiotic purple prose gets in the way of good sense. Hey, silver tongue! Just answer the charge!

Let's say Webb accepts a VP slot. That would be stupid. He, like John Edwards and Al Gore before him, probably cannot deliver his own state in the general election. But more importantly, if Webb resigns his seat (because Obama would have to be a lot more inept than I think to lose to McCain), even if Mark Warner wins the open seat this time around, Webb's spot likely goes back to the GOP next election. Think about it: instead of having two Democratic Senators from Virginia, and a nice base to begin the takeback of the South over the coming generation, the Democrats take the short-term view and just hand the fucking region back to the Republicans so that Obama can look a very tiny bit stronger on defense.

I'll ask it again: who is in charge of the Democratic Party?

When Planes Fly

One thing that seems odd about the airlines' crushing failure to take even the most basic steps to become a real business some day is that, according to everything I've seen reported recently concerning the spiraling costs associated with air travel, airlines have never given any thought to how much they pay for fuel. Now, there are two parts to the "flying metal tube" equation: one is the metal tube. Two is the gas that makes the metal tube fly.

And yet, with the notable exception of Southwest, which bought most of its fuel years ago through a hedge fund at the unthinkably high price of $50-70 a barrel, it actually looks like not one other fucking airline--those paragons of American business acumen and the darlings of Congress and Wall Street--bothered to imagine the link between fuel prices and the viability of their industry. Wow. Clap. Clap.

Are we, the public, really supposed to believe that none of the super-rich, super-connected (albeit, bozos) people running these airlines knows even a single person over at Exxon-Mobil? BP? The fucking dictatorship of Saudi Arabia? Hmmmm? They can't throw a little weight around? No. They can't.

When the oil's all gone, incidentally, it will be a pretty bad day. But, will the world be any worse off to lose the Saudis, too?

Illinois Reds

The letters to the editor page of the Wall Street Journal seemingly always has a contribution from some mouth-breather from Illinois. Why is that? And their opinions are always, always completely stupid.

A recent missive from Joseph Schroeder of Glenview caught my attention (and I am only using his name and town in case he Googles himself, so he can see that I think he's a moron) for its characteristic inattention to detail and simplistic read on political affairs. Schroeder seems to think that Obama's position on Iraq is that all troops must be withdrawn the second he takes office. Also, this guy thinks that Obama has said that once the US is out of Iraq, everything will be swell.

Putting aside the question of how such an obviously illiterate person could write a letter to the editor (I mean, he clearly cannot read, so did he just invent these positions for Obama?), did it never occur to him that nobody thinks taking troops out of Iraq will improve the situation for Iraqis? The troops leave, civil war breaks out, somebody has to take over and quell the unrest. And that somebody would be...who cares? Somebody. It isn't our place to appoint other peoples' leaders, nor their dictators, nor to decide how they resolve or do not resolve their problems. We deal, first, with our problems, and one of the big problems right now is the economy, which is not improving and sure as shit will not improve while we spend untold billions upon billions of dollars trying to appoint other peoples' leaders and solve other peoples' problems.

So, will there be horror in Iraq when we leave. You bet! Will it affect the US? Not really! Will we be better off, on our own terms, as soon as we leave? No! We'll be better off as soon as people like Joseph Schroeder from Glenview are excluded from the political process; that is, if rank-and-file Republicans are that fucking stupid, then Obama's presidency and the marginalization of the Bush Party can't come fast enough.

The NBA is for Simpletons

I was out of town. But prior to that, the NBA referee who was busted for betting on his own games copped to the feds that games were sometimes steered in the direction the league wanted them to go, through the calling of fouls, non-calls, and other referee manipulation. Naturally, I think this is genius: after all, officials in all sports have wide latitude when it comes to judgment calls (which are usually the most important calls, like "outs," "fouls," and "penalties"). So, it isn't too difficult to see how the gray area of "this is a foul and no one can question me because I'm the ref" could turn into "this is a foul because I say it is and I work for the NBA, which wants this to be a foul." Anyone who has ever seen an NBA game (and pity them) has seen some horrendous calls and said, "what the fuck? How did that referee get this job?! That was awful!" Well, now you know.

But sportwriters still don't get it (and neither do the overwhelming number of black Americans who comprise the majority of the NBAs audience, apparently). This is a conspiracy at the top level of the league to fix games--and why? Not for entertainment purposes (because how entertaining is it to watch your team get robbed so the other team's fans can see one more game?). Not for competition purposes (because fixing games is by definition the antithesis of competition). No, it would seem that the NBAs plan to tell referees what calls to make and in what situations was a pretty lame attempt simply to prolong series in order to make a little more money from TV, and to placate TV partners who wanted 6-game series', not sweeps. In other words, this was over a little bit of money. (And, to beat this horse a little more, why the hell aren't the NBAs black fans, who of all Americans have been the victims of conspiracies the most often, upset about this? The NBA is the only major sports league to explicitly tailor its product to black fans, and yet in return for their viewership it gives them rigged games.)

The writing to date on this allegation--which has been furiously denied by David Stern, surprise! but has been backed up in a general sense by some retired refs and has received some weak non-denial denials from others--has been shitty across-the-board. Everybody seems to want to pick the one moment they can remember that there was a bad call, and go, "that was a fix!" Case in point: 1998, game 6, Michael Jordan pushes off and hits the title-winning shot. Wow. What a no-call sham that was.

Really, think bigger guys. That was the sixth game of a series the Bulls had led 3-1. In fact, the Bulls led all their finals series 3-1, and yet except for the first one, in 1991 (a series the Lakers were expected to win), every single series went 6 games. That's 6 series where 5 went to 6 out of a possible 7 games. This was the Bulls, again, which had probably the best 7-man lineup ever, matched against one good but in decline Lakers team, and thereafter a string of really mediocre teams: Portland (best player: an old Clyde Drexler), Phoenix (best player: a one-dimensional Charles Barkley), Seattle (best player: choke-artist Shawn Kemp), and Utah, twice (best player: Karl Malone, who I really have no problem with, aside from his obvious confusion about the color of his skin). These were very, very average opponents for one of the great teams across an entire decade, and every series save one went almost the distance. Once Chicago went up 2-0 or 3-1, you could skip the next game, because it was definitely going to be a Bulls loss (refs!). This wasn't about Michael Jordan getting a free push-off one time; it was about controlling the flow of games and the outcomes such that the NBA and its sponsors and television partners made the most possible money while preserving the storyline.

Oh, the storyline. Jordan's ascent happened simultaneously with the Detroit Pistons' fall. The Pistons know this; that is why Isaiahaiah Thomas is so pissed off. But the narrative was that young Jordan finally came into his own, the Bulls finally triumphed over the Pistons in 1991, and then went to face the Lakers in an NBA wet dream Finals. Each year thereafter, the Bulls had to scrap with the Knicks in the Eastern finals, in series that were notable mostly for the sheer number of outrageous calls by referees, prolonging the series to 7 games despite the clear superiority of the Bulls. But, hey, it made great television. And, nobody seemed to notice. Just think: Knicks fans actually thought their lineup of Charles Oakley, Patrick Ewing, John Starks, and two bums was going to win!

Then, Jordan retired. The NBA hit the skids. Penny Hardaway just wasn't cutting it, Shaq was sort of dull to watch. There was no Kobe (he was still raping high school girls). Then Jordan came back! The regular season was just a time-filler until the Bulls won the championship--which they did, but only after being forced, by the refs (which is to say, the NBA) to play an extended series against Seattle. The next two championships came only after protracted battles with a joke of a Pacers team in the Eastern finals and too-long series against a thoroughly inferior Jazz squad.

Tim Donaghy (sp?) is little fish. Some NBA clown told him and his buddies to call certain fouls in certain situations on certain players. It's the scripting of entire seasons, and the scripting of the playoffs that I object to. You may have noticed that there are very few upsets in the NBA--really over the last decade, there have been next to none. Nobody finds that interesting? You have announcers telling viewers before the game which team will win--nobody notices? The NBA runs commercials all season that proclaim the season's storyline, involving one player, one team, that will win the title in June, and no one is outraged when it happens, against all logic, feasibility, and right there in front of the fans' faces?

I'm not taking one dirty ref's word for it. I'm finally able, though, because of what he admitted, to believe my own eyes and what they've been telling me all these years.

Problama

Hillary Clinton is a fucking diabolical genius, you know that? Some guy on the radio yesterday (CBS news, not that shitty NPR shit) said she might stay in the race until the convention in order to negotiate some debt relief or some shit. Wrong! That's like saying Hillary Clinton would rip the heads off of babies just to show her support for birth control. Step back and take in the picture, dumbass. Clinton stayed in right up to the fucking last-second primaries in worthless, useless, meaningless states (sorry, residents of those states, whose names I cannot even remember because they, and you, are a waste of time and resources) in order to drive home the point, as nothing else could, that Brarack Obama cannot win the general election without Hillary Clinton. Obama may be considering picking some weak-ass running mate from a pool of mediocre possibilities, but if he wants to win Ohio and Pennsylvania and Florida, he must choose Clinton.

Clinton actually did win those states. Obama didn't. Obama (vs. cuddly Republican) will lose at least one of them--and let's not forget the voter fraud issues in all three, even if some Obama supporters apparently believe their guy's magical charisma can overcome a Diebold rig-job. Nope, you have to get record numbers of people to the polls, and Obama can't do it by himself, or in tandem with any of his supposedly likely VP choices.

Also, Obama is a very boring speaker. Collect yourself, take a breath. Now think about this: when he has to answer a question that is even a smidge outside his knowledge base, does he set the world (or your loins) on fire? Not mine. Pay attention to him the next time this happens (hell, his stump speeches haven't shown any improvement in months, for that matter). He repeats meaningless words--not even catchphrases, just single words--he stutters, he trails off, he gets all seriousy-gravel-voiced-very-grownup and...says nothing. Someday, somebody is going to point out that this isn't good enough. It could be McCain. It could be on national television.

I guess my point is that when it comes to giving a policy-based answer to a question, there are all other politicians in the world, and then there's Obama. This may be what draws that certain rabid follower but to me it sounds like everyone else puts real information into their rhetoric and Obama just goes "hope, change, my father, change, my father, hope" and thinks it's a good day's work.

There are two other things working against Obama and in favor of Clinton. One is already known: Americans hate to be told things "for their own good." The Obama campaign, like the Gore campaign and the Kerry campaign, is being fronted by exactly the kind of people who might be quite sincere but who come off in print and in person as smug, smarmy, and yet somehow totally naive. The effect is alarming: Clintonites and other large swaths of the electorate don't want to hold hands with Obama's supporters. I believe many of them would be content to let him take his chances with the hardcore support he has and will stay home in November unless their girl is on the ticket.

Which brings us to Clinton's secret genius. She has to be the VP, because otherwise it will be Obama, not she, who ignored the divided party, weakened his own campaign, and lost the mandate that could have belonged to a Democratic administration. He might yet win the general election (I don't think so) but he would limp into office just ahead of a changing tide moving in favor of the Republicans, who do nothing at all well but attack "weak" Democrats. If Obama somehow fails to realize this simple fact, then shame on him. His disillusioned followers will wander back into the "reality-based" community in 4 years and start over again. Maybe it'll be too late. It certainly can be avoided.