On Knowing

History, of course, is one long argument.  I saw Steve Forbes on TV this morning and he was, as usual, very certain of everything he said. He said the Great Depression of the 1930's was caused by government regulation, and, of course, government regulation is always BAD. And that's what's keeping our economy from recovery. (Never mind those unregulated bankers and stockbrokers who were raping the system with their incompetence and arrogance and regulators did not keep them from driving the economy into a tree.) Steve Forbes KNOWS.

He knows because he has core ideology which is never wrong. In his religion, GOOD is unregulated business which makes everyone money and creates jobs and businessmen are GOOD and government types are cowardly salarymen trying to rein in the stallions. No matter what happens, what facts may be presented to the contrary, Steve knows what he knows. Same for Rush and Glenn and Sean. They all have that core belief which is unshakable.

They are, of course all Republicans and millionaires and what they really know is they want to keep all their money and they really don't care whether you are rich or poor, as long as they can get more of what they want. They are not good people.

Steve Forbes and Paul Ryan and the Republicans all talk about the horrors of government spending and they want to "Reform" Medicare and Social Security because these are government programs (which they will never need) and they limit freedom, because everyone must participate whether or not they like it.

What really kills the Republicans about Social Security and Medicare is these are very successful programs and everyone but the very rich love them.

The Republicans talk about Medicare Fraud, which they claim is epidemic.

That's a lie.

Let me tell you about Medicare Fraud. If a doctor sees 2 patients one morning, both are new patients and both have diabetes. One patient arrives wearing a mink coat, dripping in diamonds, with her chauffeur. The other is dressed in overalls, having taken the morning off from his job as a laborer. The doctor charges the rich lady $300 for her new consultation and he charges the laborer $50 for the consultation. He spends an hour with each, does pretty much the same thing for each. The Medicare police arrive the next day and tell the doctor he has committed Medicare Fraud.

"But why?"  the doctor asks. "I charged what the traffic could bear."

"No, you must charge every patient the same for the same service. If you were willing to accept $50 for the consultation, that is your true fee."

Now consider the radiologist who does a CT on a man's chest and then gives the man contrast and does some views to see what the chest looks like with the contrast. He has studied the same patient with the same CT machine, but he charges for two CT scans, one for the "Before contrast" the other for the "After contrast." 

Medicare Fraud?

No, perfectly legal.

But the first doctor makes the newspapers and the public does not understand.

Should we change the rules so rich people pay more for services under Medicare? Of course. But let's not think we KNOW there is Medicare fraud rampant out there or that the only way to change the system is to kill it.

That much we can all be confident, we KNOW.

Republicans Downsize the Electorate

One of the great mysteries of democracy as we know it in this country is how the party of the very rich, the same folks who shamelessly cut taxes for millionaires manage to sell the idea they are the workingman's friend.  Joe Six pack   will echo the lines from millionaire Rush Limbaugh about how the Democrats want to take his money and give it to a welfare Queen.

As H.L. Mencken noted, you will never grow broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.  But the aggregate of voters are not that stupid and Karl Rove and his colluding braintrust know eventually the Joe Six Pack will realize when Paul Ryan destroys Medicare and turns it into Coupon Care, Joe's parents will quickly be bankrupted by their health care costs and they will move in with him. So maybe, the great humble masses who do not make millions will become a problem for Republican candidates.

So what to do, Karl? How do you keep those masses from voting against you?

I got it! You turn away voters at the polls.

You pass a law to prevent VOTER FRAUD in New Hampshire to be sure all those citizens who have neglected to register at Town Hall prior to the election (most of whom are probably working stiffs who cannot get to Town Hall during working hours and these are just the guys who do not make millions)--you make sure they do not get to vote on election day.

Now we all know how big a problem VOTER FRAUD is in New Hampshire, where people mostly vote in small towns and they say hello to everyone who work at the polls, because people in small town New Hampshire tend to know each other--except on election day, when Republican poll tenders tend to look at their neighbors and suddenly see illegal immigrants, communists, terrorists, out of state agitators and psychopaths trying to get into that voting booth without a driver's license or a library card.

Now all we need is a good name for the law. Let's see: How about the VOTER FRAUD PREVENTION ACT.  Or, maybe, the DEFENSE OF VOTING INTEGRITY ACT. No, integrity has too many syllables. How about the SAVE OUR VOTE act? 

Really, the name is so important. That's the way to get to Joe Sixpack. He may not be interested in estate law, but if you make the estate tax THE DEATH TAX then you can protect a hundred million dollars of your estate for your Republican kids.

And if you can turn the Affordable Care Act into OBAMACARE, well that sounds just scary.

You've got to hand it to the Republicans. They are good at the name game. A rose may be a rose by any other name, but when the Republicans call it an INVASIVE SPECIES, it conjures up THE INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS  and Karl Rove could get it outlawed in the state of New Hampshire.

Actually, that's way happened to the King Crimson Maple, but that's another story.

Republican Road Rage

Someone tried to run my wife off Route 95 today because her car had an Obama bumper sticker. Actually, two Obama bumper stickers, one from 2008 and she's already got an Obama 2012. I don't know where she got that.

The driver and his passenger flashed her a finger, and she noted a sticker on the bumper which said, "How's that Obama thing working out for you?" Vermont plates, headed into Maine.

The two men in the car were big, fat guys, wedged into a small car, an Escort maybe, so they had to contort themselves to manage to get their hands up and express their antipathy.


Now here's the question: Does that ever happen to people with Palin bumper stickers? I mean, do Obama partisans go around giving Palin partisans the finger?

Maybe I'm biased--okay, I am definitely biased--but I think not.

If not, why not?

Because, I have to believe, the people who love Palin and Rush and Glenn and all those who travel with them are, in the main, resentful. They are angry.

I'm not sure they really know, specifically, who or what they are angry at. Well, maybe who: Obama. He's the boogey man.

But what? Well, they are angry about being decent, hard working, good, God fearing people, who just want to raise their kids right and kick back and drink beer and eat pizza on Friday nights, and Obama wants to take half (or more) of what they earn and give it to the undeserving, lazy, Welfare Queens and unmarried mothers and he wants to take away their guns, and he wants to make the country multilingual and he wants to send those black helicopters around to do who-knows-what.

So, they are justified in running women driving cars with Obama stickers right off the road.

What I'd like to meet, just once, is the New Hampshire Republican my Democratic neighbor was referring to when she said, "New Hampshire Republicans are different. They are not assholes." 

I was semi-shocked by that pungent word coming from a very prim and proper lady, but she was trying to make a point about New Hampshire exceptionalism. I think she was making a case for why national candidates should be vetted through the New Hampshire primary process. She was saying, "We are more reasonable and dispassionate, up here. We have a chance to assess the character of the men and women who want to live in the White House. We can do it at close quarters and look them in the eye."

We are, on both sides of the divide, pretty decent people here in New Hampshire.

But I'm not so sure this is still true, if it ever was.

I think of those guys driving down the road in New Hampshire running my wife off the road.

On the other hand, the car did have Vermont plates.











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Kelly Ayotte votes to kill Medicare

Okay, it's official. Kelly Ayotte voted to kill Medicare. The GOP voted in the Senate to make Paul Ryan's bill which would convert Medicare from a system which pays your hospital bills to a system which gives you a coupon for $5000 (or some such amount) each year and then tells you, you are on your own.

The current going rate for a heart bypass surgery in the state of New Hampshire is about $100,000, all of which is covered by Medicare today but if the GOP and Senator Ayotte are  in power, not tomorrow.

If you get sick Medicare will not save you under GOP rules. Go sell your house and everything you own. Move in with your kids. Rather than raise taxes on the rich the GOP would kill Medicare and next, Social Security.

(She looks like such a nice young lady. Who woulda thunk?)

Republicans Stripped Down over Medicare

NEWS QUIZ: CAN YOU TELL WHO IS THE REAL KELLY AYOTTE? IS THERE ANY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THESE TWO LADIES?

(Notice how nice the Stars and Stripes complement their outfits.)

Trying to find what Kelly Ayotte has to say about Paul Ryan's Couponcare plan to kill Medicare has been likely trying to grasp a cloud in your hand--it just keeps slipping out and disappearing. I may not be the most sophisticated search engine user, but I simply cannot pin the lady down. Titles say, "Kelly Ayotte supports Congressman Ryan's plan for Medicare," but no quote follows, then "Kelly Ayotte says Ryan's plan is not a voucher plan," but no quote, and oh what a lovely quote that would have been and "Kelly Ayotte does not support Ryan's plan."

So, as they say in politics, the righteous Ms. Ayotte may have "evolved," which is to say, her principles blew off like the fuzz off a dead dandilion, when she saw the poll results.

The problem for Ms. Ayotte, and for all true believer Republicans, is they have certain "core principles" or ideology which lead them inexorably to hate Medicare, and not less, Social Security.

The first is that taxes are BAD.   That means, of course, anything which requires taxes (except of course, bombs, fighter planes, aircraft carriers, submarines, just-say-no, sexual abstinence programs) must be BAD. 

Medicare and Social Security require lots of tax, and so they are BAD.

The big problem, politically, i.e. getting elected, is that people love Medicare and Social Security, especially older people.

So when Paul Ryan says he wants to give you a coupon for $5000 or even $10,000 to spend on your medical care every year, it doesn't matter if he gives you a plastic card embossed in gold, even the slowest, thickest voter knows a heart surgery costs $80,000, easily, and that $10,000 will pay for maybe the first twenty mintues of that surgery. And after that, it's sell your home and move in with the kids.

So even in New Hampshire, where there are few taxes but people are irate about what taxes there are, the cry is, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!"

This is, of course, on a more basic level, a philosophical question about how much you want to be responsible for your neighbor. If you pay for your neighbor's healthcare, that's a pretty big committment.  The Finns were famous for looking down their noses at the Americans because the Americans do not provide health care for their own, nor day care nor any of the social support systems Finns have done for generations. Americans were like those tribal peoples of the various Stan countries, unwilling to help anyone other than members of their own families, and even not that, on occasion.  But Finland is a country of what? Eight million. When you talk about including Finns in a bigger family, say all of Europe, then they are not so eager to pay for healthcare for undeserving, lazy Greeks, Spaniards and Portuguese. 

So, the problem we've been having as Americans, as peole who live in New Hampshire, is we really don't like a lot of our fellow citizens. We don't think they deserve our help.

But Medicare, and Social Security have been the two big successes and these programs have been relentlessly attacked by Republicans. George W tried to kill both. His Republican heirs keep trying. The mistake Paul Ryan made was he was more open about his intentions, more honest.

And when Ryan unzipped his clothes, when he asked other Republicans to do the same, what the public saw was pretty disgusting. Now all the Republicans in Congress are rushing to zip back up.

Righteous Right Takes Credit for Osama Mission

One thing you have to say for Karl Rove, and all those who travel with him (Rush, Glenn,Sarah P., Michele, the Righteous Right) is they do stick to their story.

I watched the coverage of the Osama Bin Laden mission, watching President Obama leaning forward in that Situation Room, with Hilary with her hand over her mouth, plain on every face the intensity of the situation, and I watched clips from the President at the Press Club festivities, where he carried off his remarks, cool as the underside of a pillow, and I read the comments from the military brass who call Obama, "Cool Hand Luke," and I had to conclude--this guy has cards he isn't showing, and they are all aces.

What a contrast to the Blow Hard Right. Donald Trump, all self important, loud and idiotic.  Rush Limbaugh, who has never in his life had to make a decision where lives hang in the balance.  Karl Rove, who has never been in the field of any conflict personally.

And now Rove is saying that all Obama did was to take advantage of all the information Rendition and torture dropped in his lap. And, of course, rendition and torture had nothing to do with locating Osama. Someone in the Pakistani intelligence got a license plate number, and that connected to a courier and the rest is history, far as I can tell.

But then again, I don't really know, because I don't have all the details, not even close to the whole story.

But not knowing anything real does not stop Rove or any of his blow hard friends. They always know, because what they know is only what they already believed in the first place, unemcumbered with the truthiness of facts on the ground.

God save us from the Righteous Right.

Osama and the Hampton Mother

"I think the tools that President Bush put into place--GITMO, rendition, enhanced interrogation, the vast effort to collect and collate this information--obviously served his successor quite well."

                       Karl Rove, Fox and Friends May 2, 2011.


Just in case you missed it: The competence evidenced by the Democratic Obama administration, which succeeded where his Republican predecessor had failed, is actually a mistaken perception.

What Mr. Rove and the Republicans want to point out is that the success of this mission depended on torture, and Abu Gharib, and GITMO and all those things you thought you didn't like about the great Republican rendition machine. 

Republicans must be forgiven for being unable to see government's successes, because whenever they are in charge, there are no successes to be seen.

But when a clear government success occurs they will either try to destroy it (as in Medicare) or they will claim it as their own, as in killing Osama Bin Laden. 

Actually, Karl Rove is not the only frothing  right winger  trying to spin Obama's victory into a Republican success.  Overheard in a North Hampton parking lot, this conversation:

"Oh, Osama's been dead for years."
"Really?"
"Yes, they're just releasing it now because Obama's so low in the polls."
"You don't say?"
"Yes, my daughter's in the Navy. She says they've been saying that for years. Everyone knows it."
"Well, I didn't know that."


I wanted so badly to ask that lady, the mother of the Navy daughter, if the space aliens from Roswell had captured Osama Bin Laden and handed him over to their fellow space alien, President Obama. 


I wonder if "They" didn't believe in Navy SEALS, or in the valor and discipline of the people who actually flew in on those helicopters. 


I wonder if George W. Bush flew along with them, with a Mission Accomplished banner to hang in that compound, to claim credit where credit was due? Maybe Karl Rove was with him. And the lady's Navy daughter. 


Or maybe, it was just those space aliens at it again.