Got together last night with an old school friend I hadn’t seen in a number of years.  She brought along her husband who I had never met before.  Soon enough the topic got onto politics and this guy went on for an hour over his anger and dismay about the state of US politics.  He spoke with a clarity and conviction that would have made any progressive envious.  Republican obstructionism, Tea Party madness, the GOP’s anti-science, anti-gay primary candidates – he covered it all.

And after it was all said and done, he informed me that up until 3 years ago, he had been a card-carrying Republican.  When asked why he switched, he gave me this simple response, “I grew a heart.”  I smiled.  It has long been my belief that one of the main differences between liberals and conservatives is the latter’s lack of compassion, empathy and caring.  Strip away all of their bullshit about love of country and constitution and peek behind their moralistic religious claptrap and what you’re left with is a segment of the American population who is not bothered in the least about the welfare of anyone but themselves.

Point out to them that thousands of their fellow citizens die each year because they lack health insurance and they shrug and go on about state rights, tort reform and big government intrusion in their lives.  Tell them that tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis were killed in an immoral and unjustified war and they give you a ‘so what, fuck ‘em’ response and some spiel about American exceptionalism.  Inform them that tens of millions of Americans are unemployed and living in poverty and in dire need of immediate help and they go on about personal responsibility and preserving tax cuts for millionaires.  Mention the basic human right of every person to marry the person they love and they’ll feed you some garbage about the sanctity of marriage – a term which is code for raging homophobia.

They just don’t care.  They really don’t.  So when a former Republican says that he “grew a heart’, one can only hope that a few more conservatives would do the same.

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This stuff might be a little heavy for a Friday but here it is anyway.  Paul Krugman…

When I was young and naïve, I believed that important people took positions based on careful consideration of the options. Now I know better. Much of what Serious People believe rests on prejudices, not analysis. And these prejudices are subject to fads and fashions.

Krugman stated his belief in reference to those who believe in fiscal austerity at a time of economic depression.  I’m not quite sure that sentiment on Serious People could be applied generally.  Politicians aside (who I don’t recognize as Serious People although they should be), I’d like to think that Serious People do think things out and while they may disagree on issues with other Serious People, their conclusions are based on a sound basis of facts.

(pause as I reread what I just wrote…)

OK. On a bit more reflection, I’m not sure I agree with me.  Either that or the list of Serious People is a really small one probably limited, for the most part, to those in the scientific community.  For everyone else, prejudices do form some basis for our beliefs.  And if that is true, then the difference between THE REALLY Serious People and the NOT REALLY Serious People is the degree to which they allow their prejudices (in place of hard facts) to taint and alter their beliefs.

As I said, this might be a little too heavy for a holiday weekend.  Happy Friday.

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Here’s a thought: if the health care bill is successful in getting another 30 million people insured, there is a possibility that the number of abortions might actually decrease.  Among the many reasons women choose abortion, one has to be the high cost of childbirth.

A quick look at the numbers indicate that the average cost of an uncomplicated childbirth is about $9000 and can easily climb to $40,000 and more for premature or complicated births.  Compare that to the cost of an abortion which can cost anywhere from $350 to $750.  It is not hard to imagine that for some uninsured women, opting for an abortion is almost a necessity when, everything else being equal, they might very well have had the baby if not for the cost.

And yes, I understand that there are a multitude of other issues involved here (e.g. why are uninsured women getting pregnant, etc.) but the fact remains that one can’t legislate common sense or responsibility. So if one is serious on wanting to reduce the number of abortions, then fixing the health care system and getting everyone insured can only help.

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Interesting article in the Economist which explores the reasons some of the world’s 6000 languages are more difficult to learn than others. German, for example,

…has three genders, seemingly so random that Mark Twain wondered why “a young lady has no sex, but a turnip has”. (Mädchen is neuter, whereas Steckrübe is feminine.)

or Chinese…

Mandarin, the biggest language in the Chinese family, has four tones, so that what sounds just like “ma” in English has four distinct sounds, and meanings. That is relatively simple compared with other Chinese varieties. Cantonese has six tones, and Min Chinese dialects seven or eight.

The winner for hardest language appears to be Tuyuca, spoken in the eastern Amazon.

Tuyuca requires verb-endings on statements to show how the speaker knows something. Diga ape-wi means that “the boy played soccer (I know because I saw him)”, while diga ape-hiyi means “the boy played soccer (I assume)”. English can provide such information, but for Tuyuca that is an obligatory ending on the verb. Evidential languages force speakers to think hard about how they learned what they say they know.

When reading this, I was instantly struck with the thought of what politics would be like if all politicians were forced to speak evidential language.  No doubt, there would be exploding heads everywhere.

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A reader writes:

“10 million people may be fooled by a lack of facts, mainly because he [Glenn Beck] appeals to a gut emotion. What he says “feels right” to them. But the same is true for Obama supporters. The facts demonstrated that he had insufficient qualifications for the presidency, but because his words resonated with the feelings of people who lacked access to those facts, he was elected. That group of people terrifies me much more than Beck’s 10 million. I can tune out Beck. The president establishes policies and regulations that affect my life in realtime.”

A few points…

A)  Yes, Beck appeals to a gut emotion.  It’s what you get when one premises most of what they say with “If you honestly love your country…” or “If you believe in freedom…”.  When one does that, then it gives credence to almost anything one chooses to say in the rest of the statement.  It could be a total fabricated lie (most won’t bother to fact-check, so why not). It doesn’t really matter, you’ve got your listener hooked.  The part that rings out is that yes, dammit, you love your country and you believe in liberty!

Selling propaganda and lies by means of appealing to people’s sense of patriotism and basic fear of loss of liberty is an old game.  Hitler’s rose to power in large part because he was a master at zeroing in on German’s basic love of country and was able to make the most of the humiliation and defeat many felt over the Treaty of Versailles.

B)  I would ask the reader above, what “facts” do you think that Obama supporters lacked?  His true place of birth? I can’t imagine a presidential candidate I knew more of than Barack Obama.  I remember one of the networks sending over a film crew to Indonesia to check out the school Obama attended as a child.  Sheesh.

In the eyes of conservatives, Obama’s greatest fault (and the only one that really counts for them) is that he’s not a conservative.

C)  If anyone believes that much of anything would be different with the political climate in this country should Hillary have won, they just don’t get it.  With the exception of the birther movement and the racists on the far right, nothing would change.  Repubs are simply not interested in moving the country forward with a liberal in the White House. That is clear.  Obama, Hillary, Edwards, it doesn’t matter which Democrat would have won…the rhetoric from the right would have been identical.

It’s not about health care or the economy or Afghanistan…it’s about regaining power. That’s all that counts for repubs and most conservatives. Once you grasp that concept, understanding why they speak the crap they do becomes a piece of cake.

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Here’s a thought.  Conservatives, like all Americans, were outraged by the 9/11 attacks. They were willing to spend whatever dollars it took to fight the war on terror as they cried over the loss of precious American lives.  They were angry, sensitive and compassionate as they identified a threat to the welfare of their country. Innocent Americans had been killed and they understood that immediate action must be taken.

No one would argue with any of the sentiments expressed by conservatives in this regard.

And then we have health care reform. I have stated a number of times stats which indicate that one American dies every 12 minutes due to lack of adequate health care insurance. That amounts to over 45,000 American lives lost each and every year.  Where is the outrage and compassion from conservatives?  How is it that 10,000 or so American lives lost  over the last decade at the hands of Islamic jihadists causes such alarm but the death of 450,000 Americans in the same period has an opposite effect?

Even if the stats are wrong and instead of 45,000 lives lost a year, it’s 20,000, that is still double the number of American deaths in one year by a broken health care system than all of the American lives lost in the last 10 years by terrorists.  Conservatives have been fighting health care reform for the last 50 years. They either don’t care or are too ignorant to understand the situation.  And we haven’t even touched on the disastrous impact that health care has on the economy.

The next time anyone who opposes health care reform cries over a dead American at the hands of a terrorist, you’d have every right to tell the hypocritical bastard to shut up.  They’re phonies.  They’re ignorant.  They’re undeserving of anything more than a FU.  Yes, you too Joe Lieberman.

More than ever I hope that Harry Reid slams the bill through the Senate and to hell with the 60 votes. Let reconciliation and a simple majority of 51 rule the day.  If true health care reform does not happen now, it will be lost for at least another generation.

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From the comment section comes this bit from an Esquire piece.

If Republicans had gotten everything they wanted for the last seventy-five years or so, the United States of America would have no Social Security, no Medicare, no Aid to Dependent Children, no civil rights, no environmental protections, no privacy rights to make contraception legal. There would be no business taxes, either, which could mean an even more vigorous business sector but also lots of gated communities and private security guards and — who knows? — maybe death squads to put down the inevitable insurrections. And there would certainly be no “death taxes,” so we’d be burdened with an ever larger cohort of inbred aristocrats. And our daughters and sisters would be flocking to the nation’s emergency rooms, hemorrhaging from illegal abortions.

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When that birther movie gets made a couple of years from now, there is only one actor who could possibly play the role of Orly Taitz.  Meryl Streep.

She’d have to only meld her accent from Sophie’s Choice with the persona from the character she played in The Devil Wears Pravda.  The setting and mindset of the entire birther movement could be pulled directly out from any Three Stooges or I Love Lucy episode.

How perfect would that be?  I’m working on casting the rest of the characters.

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From my oldest sis comes one of those feel good email things.  The line that caught my eye was this one…

I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way she/he handles four things:
- a rainy day
- the elderly
- lost luggage
- tangled Christmas tree lights

Yep.

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Let me summarize an exchange which occurred in the comment section of a post here.

A poster (I won’t mention his name. Let’s just call him Tommy) made the claim that a draft health bill revealed that…

On page 16 of the discussion draft of the Bill that was presented last week, http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/111/hrdraft.pdf , states that people do not have a right to keep their own health care plan. If they leave their current plan, or if their current plan changes, they must move to the government plan.

A couple of people responded by saying that page 16 of the draft bill said no such thing and one of them (me) wrote…

How can there be hope for compromise and rational discussion when even an obviously intelligent person like yourself gets duped into seeing demons between the lines. If the devil is not there, then simply state it is.

Tommy came back with…

I’m not a conservative, but their response to that would be “Why do you ignore the devil between the lines?”.

Beautiful.  In that one line, Tommy points out the number one tactic used by Republicans in opposing everything that the Obama administration has done or plans to do in regards to health reform, foreign policy and fiscal matters.  Its simple and works like this: attack at all costs.  Period.  Attack what Obama says and if you can’t find anything strong enough to attack in the president’s actual words, then read in between the lines and make stuff up.

Give intent to the president’s every statement because it’s not what he says that matters; it’s what conservatives and Republicans interpret as his intention! And hey, who knows better what the president intends than Newt Gingrich and Michael Steele and Rush Limbaugh and, of course, those fair and balanced folk over at Fox.  Call Obama a socialist who is out to destroy the country.  Call him a Marxist who is out to destroy health care.  Call him a neophyte who is out to degrade the power of the U.S.  And while you’re at it, tell people he wants to take away your guns.  Tell people he’s a baby killer.

Call the president anything but just make sure it sounds real mean and ugly.

Lie. Lie. Lie. Do as Rush did and lie and claim that page 16 spells out the end of private health care.  We all know the majority of listeners won’t bother checking out page 16.  They’ll just accept it as gospel because Rush told them so.  As for the Tommys of the nation who will take the time to check, ah…well that’s where the “devil between the lines” comes into play.  They’ll read an innocuous piece of text and see in it the nefarious intent of Obama.  The seed was planted and the Tommys are seeing what they want to see, what they need to see.  They’re interpreting not as it is but in the way they were told to interpret.

And don’t you dare tell them otherwise.  It’s not about truth or logic though they’ll argue until they’re blue in the face that truth is on their side.  But it’s never about truth with them.  It’s about defending a political ideology at any and all costs and when required, to point out the  devil’s handiwork in between each and every line.

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