Month: August 2009

Larison joins Massie:

What I find intriguing in Romney’s choice of topic for his book, which I imagine will be a more long-winded version of this speech, is that he has absolutely no background in foreign affairs, military policy or national security issues. Just as he did in the last cycle, he is intent on identifying himself with hard-line positions on issues where he has no credibility, and he is also studiously avoiding all those areas of policy where his business experience and his inner domestic policy wonk might help him. Of course, as a proponent of bailouts for Wall Street and Detroit and as the governor who signed off on MassCare, Romney has less credibility than most other Republican presidential aspirants in attacking Obama on either front. No doubt he will transform himself yet again into a hard-charging, government-slashing radical if he thinks that is what will win him support, but the man’s lack of any enduring convictions will reveal itself before long.

Ambers has a great summary of the assassination of the man who murdered Benazir Bhutto, killed 50 with a truck bomb in Islamabad and threatened a massive terror attack on Washington DC this spring. Will this help win back Pakistani public support for the war on terror? I have no idea. I do know that the successful strike against the most wanted Jihadist in the region most lethal to the West does not appear at Instapundit, or the allegedly anti-Jihadist Weekly Standard.

Now that the partisan right cannot use the war as a tool for Republican power, they've lost interest.

"Extremely relaxing."

(Hat tip: BF)

The reality of Obama's timid healthcare reform emerges:

The [insurance] industry has already accomplished its main goal of at least curbing, and maybe blocking altogether, any new publicly administered insurance program that could grab market share from the corporations that dominate the business. UnitedHealth has distinguished itself by more deftly and aggressively feeding sophisticated pricing and actuarial data to information-starved congressional staff members. With its rivals, the carrier has also achieved a secondary aim of constraining the new benefits that will become available to tens of millions of people who are currently uninsured. That will make the new customers more lucrative to the industry.

Canadian MP Bob Rae opines:

Watching the debate in the U.S. about health care has been a fascinating, if depressing, experience. In particular, the fact that a Canadian woman has played into the hands of the Republican lobby because of her understandable anxiety about her medical condition doesn’t make me mad; it just makes me sad. […] The ad Ms. Holmes appears in says Canadians are denied care because “the government says patients aren’t worth it.” So private insurance companies that routinely deny treatment and coverage in the U.S. are Good Samaritans? I think not.

No one should demonize Shona Holmes. The health-care system we have in Canada has challenges – we all know people who are frustrated by delays. But that is hardly unique to Canada. […] Even the most conservative of political parties in Canada want to maintain the integrity of our system, just as in communities and provinces we figure out how to improve both the excellence of and access to what we have. We shouldn’t be afraid of a debate or a discussion, but since “the Canadian system” has been made the whipping boy of the Republican lobby in the U.S. it’s high time we fought back, with facts, figures, and the deep reality of our shared experience with universal insurance coverage.

(Hat tip: KHN’s Kate Steadman)

A reader writes:

When I was 6 months pregnant with my first child, and on complete bedrest, I was laid off. I was unable to look for a new job, being so late into a very difficult pregnancy. My doctors that had worked with me on this high-risk pregnancy were not covered by my husband's insurance company. We decided to use COBRA for me so I could continue to see my doctors of choice. My severance ran out the day my son was born prematurely, with complications from having the umbilical cord around his neck during birth.

The first bill for his expenses came as I was leaving the hospital without my son. When a claim was denied because they said my son had a preexisting

condition, that was the final straw.

Nothing like getting on the phone with an insurance company and getting straight that preexisting conditions do not apply before a child is actually born. I ended up a heap on the floor, exhausted from giving birth, taking care of my child, and the fear that we would go bankrupt from the bills. My husband said "Whatever it costs, we'll pay it, I just want them to take care of our son."

The bills were still coming 18 months later, when our tiny baby was a happy, healthy boy. It was around $20K total, even with insurance. When I hear people afraid of "health care rationing," I want to throttle them. May they never have to deal with an insurance company who wouldn't pay a $6,000 claim because they said your newborn son has a preexisting condition.

Via Mackey, a scene from last night:

And the 40-day cycle of mourning continues, this time for the young Iranian martyr Kianoosh Asa:

Here's an interesting flashback to the kind of rhetoric we are now hearing in parts of America about Barack Obama. It's a flyer distributed in Texas. Part of its text:

Plus ca change. It was distributed in Dallas in November 1963.

A new website. This patient’s owner wrote:

My dog had an accident this a.m., and I took this pic a few mins ago. I think he’s still stoned from the pain meds.

Another adorably-pathetic photo after the jump:

(Hat tip: Buzzfeed)

Jon Rauch sees conservatives at a moral crossroads:

If gay couples can't be allowed to marry, what should they be able to do? Asked this question, cultural conservatives say, in the words of Tom Lehrer's song about the German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, "That's not my department." Effectively, conservatives are saying that what Mike and Bill do for each other has no significance outside their own bedroom. But what happened in that hospital in Philadelphia for those six weeks was not just Mike and Bill's business, a fact that is self-evident to any reasonable human being who hears the story. "Mike was making a medical decision at least once a day that would have serious consequences," Bill told me. Who but a life partner would or could have done that?

Who but a life partner will drop everything to provide constant care? Bill's mother told me that if not for Mike, her son would have died. Faced with this reality, what kind of person, morally, simply turns away and offers silence? Not the sort of person who populates the United States of America. If Republicans wonder why they find themselves culturally marginalized, particularly by younger Americans, they might consider the fact that when the party looks at couples like Mike and Bill it sees, in effect, nothing.

Read the whole brilliant piece. The question for conservatives is this one: are you ideologues and theologians or pragmatists and politicians? Are you going to keep screaming at the modern world, or are you going to engage it? Are you George Wallace or Abraham Lincoln? And how long will it take you to leave the hate and bitterness and fear behind?