Warfare vs health care: what do Americans value?
Actions speak louder than words, which means you can tell a lot more about what a person truly values by looking at what they do rather than merely at what they say. We can, though, also learn a lot by looking at a person's contradictions. No one is perfectly consistent, and while some inconsistencies may be due to outright hypocrisy, far more are likely due to blindness — probably a self-defense mechanism to prevent us from truly seeing how our real values may be pulling us in a direction different from what our professed values are.
I think we're seeing this in the contradictions between how people treat America's foreign wars versus how they treat domestic health care. The justifications being offered by conservatives and "moderates" for continuing wars in the Middle East are ignored when it comes to questions about providing domestic health care. So what are the real values which lie behind it all?
Economics of Health Care
The most important and obvious contradiction would have to be attitudes on borrowing and spending. Anyone who treated the critics of health care reform as credible would get the impression that America's economy couldn't possibly handle any extra strain, no matter what sorts of gains might be achieved in systemic efficiency or workers' health and security. Regardless of how moral or reasonable health care reform might be, we can't do it if we can't afford it.
America certainly can't pay for better health care if that might require borrowing more money from China, mortgaging our children's future to foreign bankers and foreign governments. If we did that, we might start to lose control over our own future! Granted, many of our children might not have a future if they don't get adequate health care today, but that's far preferable than falling deeper into debt to the Chinese...
Economics of Warfare
When it comes to putting children's parents into harm's way in foreign wars, though, none of those principles apply. I'm not sure if a single conservative who has objected to health care reform on the basis of economic costs or debt has raised any similar objections to paying for wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.
| Year | US | UK | Other | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | 486 | 53 | 41 | 580 |
| 2004 | 849 | 22 | 35 | 906 |
| 2005 | 846 | 23 | 28 | 897 |
| 2006 | 822 | 29 | 21 | 872 |
| 2007 | 904 | 47 | 10 | 961 |
| 2008 | 314 | 4 | 4 | 322 |
| 2009 | 134 | 1 | 0 | 135 |
| Total | 4355 | 179 | 139 | 4673 |
| Year | US | UK | Other | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 12 |
| 2002 | 49 | 3 | 17 | 69 |
| 2003 | 48 | 0 | 9 | 57 |
| 2004 | 52 | 1 | 7 | 60 |
| 2005 | 99 | 1 | 31 | 131 |
| 2006 | 98 | 39 | 54 | 191 |
| 2007 | 117 | 42 | 73 | 232 |
| 2008 | 155 | 51 | 89 | 295 |
| 2009 | 281 | 87 | 87 | 455 |
| Total | 911 | 224 | 367 | 1502 |
WASHINGTON – Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald famously declared in the Valerie Plame affair that "there is a cloud over the vice president." Last week's release of an FBI interview summary of Dick Cheney's answers in the criminal investigation underscores why Fitzgerald felt that way.
On 72 occasions, according to the 28-page FBI summary, Cheney equivocated to the FBI during his lengthy May 2004 interview, saying he could not be certain in his answers to questions about matters large and small in the Plame controversy.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091102/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_cheney_cia_leak
###
Frank Rich: As always, spot on.
And nothing surprising about this.
###
Republicans are twisted
What kind of sick **** dresses up his daughter as Jon-Benet Ramsey for Halloween?
###
All hail president Karzai!
Afghanistan's last presidential challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, dropped out of the race on Sunday, accusing the government of profound corruption and electoral fraud even as the Obama administration rallied around President Hamid Karzai.
In 1971, [President Nguyễn Văn] Thiệu [of South Vietnam] ran for re-election, but his reputation for corruption made his political opponents believe the race would be fixed, and they declined to run. As the only candidate, Thiệu was thus easily re-elected, receiving a suspiciously high 94% of the vote on an 87% turn-out.
In trying to deal with Afghanistan, our government, going back decades, has chosen to work with the religious zealots, the thuggish and the corrupt. We have backed brutal warlords and heroin traffickers. And now we are saddled with an illegitimate government in Afghanistan, a point that the enemy will emphasize time and time and time again.
It did not have to be this way. The Taliban were hugely unpopular, they brutalized the population and executed people at a rate that would make even a Texas governor blush.[1] The Afghan people largely celebrated the fact that the Taliban were kicked out in 2001. We had a chance to replace them with a government that could have delivered an improvement in the lives of Afghanis.
But we failed. Republicans were in control and they famously disdained nation-building. The Administration of George W. Bush, just like that of his father, let Afghanistan to its own devices, providing token aid and minimal security assistance while they focused on their next clusterfuck of a war. Bush used 9-11 as an excuse to foist a lot of the responsibility off onto NATO, an organization that was designed only to repel a Soviet invasion of western Europe and which had no real experience in out-of-theater operations. NATO had neither the troops (many nations sent only Fobbits) nor the funding to do it right.
We could have. But we didn't and, to my mind, the window of opportunity to do it right for a reasonable expenditure of blood and treasure passed by 2005.
And now we are stuck in another quagmire of a war.
[1]OK, that may not be fair to the Taliban. The present and the former governors of that state would have been creaming their suits if they could have executed 3,000 people a year.
It's that time of year again, you know, when the air is crisp, and everyone has thoughts of pumpkin pies on their mind: time to bail out the banks season! Yay!
Lender CIT Group has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a potential blow to the thousands of small and mid-sized businesses that rely on the company for loans to keep their operations afloat.
CIT made its filing in New York bankruptcy court Sunday, after a debt-exchange offer to bondholders failed. CIT says the majority of its bondholders have approved a prepackaged reorganization plan which will reduce total debt by $10 billion while allowing the company to continue to do business.
CIT's move will wipe out current holders of its common and preferred stock, likely meaning the U.S. government will lose the $2.3 billion it sunk into CIT last year to prop up the ailing company.
The Chapter 11 filing is one of the biggest in U.S. corporate history.
I'm sure, somehow, that Goldman-Sachs will make money off of this. I dunno how, but I just know it.
###
One year later, 'Change we can believe in' becomes 'Change is hard' http://rawstory.com/news/afp/_Change_is_hard_Obama_one_year_on_f_11012009.html
I guess extraordinary rendition is one of those things that's hard to change, huh Barry? ...
"Torture flight" spotted in Birmingham: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/01/rendition-flight-birmingham-airport-cia
###
Yesterday some American guy—originally from Eritrea, but still totally counts—won the New York City Marathon, which is the first time that's happened since 1982. CNN
###
Clinton statue unveiled in Pristina, Kosovo
Once upon a time there was a president who in spite of opposition from Congress, sent the Unites States military to a foreign nation to apply some pretty overwhelming force to a close Russian ally in order to stop a genocide. That President is considered a hero by the grateful people he saved, and on Sunday they unveiled a statue of that president in heroic scale. He attended the ceremony, and spoke to the adoring crowd: http://www.theygaveusarepublic.com/diary/4114/clinton-statue-unveiled-in-pristina-kosovo
