Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

I don’t mean to be flip in that title. Health care reform IS a big effing deal. I haven’t written much about Congress’s effort to pass comprehensive health care reform because honestly, things are changing every day, and while I get worked up about every little development in real life, I don’t feel compelled to expose you, my precious and treasured readers, to that sort of madness.

But it’s definitely worth taking a step back and looking at the larger effort, how it’s progressed, and what the consequences are. This is where my ambivalence comes in. Because, on the one hand, it’s become painfully apparent to liberal supporters of reform that most of the store has been compromised away. Even though any reasonable objective observer will recognize that a Canadian-style single payer system would be the most effective way to achieve both universality AND cost control (notice I said “reasonable objective observer,” which disqualifies pretty much every Republican critic of reform), that idea wasn’t even put forward as a serious starting point for debate. Consequently, the so-called public option, the next-most-progressive idea for reform, got whittled down and exposed to ridiculous right wing obfuscation and misinformation, to the point that even the most feckless shadow of the public option became anathema for conservative and moderate Democrats. Here’s the inimitable and heroic Matt Taibbi discussing the latest compromise, a proposed expansion of Medicare to folks age 55 and over:

I get that some people think this is a good idea, and it’s hard to argue that any kind of expansion of Medicare is a bad thing, given that the program has been popular and successful throughout its history. But this move just smacks of the bass-ackwards Solomonesque bargaining that has marked this whole health care effort from the start. If expanding Medicare is good for people aged 55 and up, why isn’t it good for everybody? Why isn’t it a good idea to provide cheaper insurance for people in their preventive care years, so that they cost Medicare less as they do get older?

Answer: because it’s a political non-starter, because hospitals and doctors won’t tolerate having to take Medicare rates from everyone, nor will the pharma companies or the insurance companies tolerate having to compete with Medicare for their most profitable customers.

So what they’ll do instead is expand Medicare for people aged 55 and up in exchange for the preservation of subsidies everywhere else in the system, as well as an individual mandate that increases the revenue flow for private insurers by forcing millions of new (and relatively young and healthy) customers their way. This isn’t a health care strategy, it’s a big baby that’s been hacked up into parts and fed in descending size order to the administration’s weightiest political lobbies. I almost can’t wait to see what the next “compromise” is.

It’s hard to argue here. If you start from a position where you have to appease doctors, insurers, the pharmaceutical industry, and the conservative members of your own party, it’s very difficult to construct meaningful, coherent reform.

But then you’ve got the equally inimitable Ezra Klein taking a different sort of long view, and discussing liberal ends versus liberal means:

The first year of the Obama presidency has been a long tutorial on the difference between liberal ends and liberal means. If I told you America has a president determined to pass large amounts of Keynesian stimulus spending (that’s particularly concentrated in impoverished areas), a near-universal health-care plan, and a bill addressing climate change, you’d say liberals had recaptured the White House. Ambitious liberals, even.

But though Obama’s program is quite liberal, he doesn’t seem to care much how it’s achieved. A public option would be nice, but if it’s not there, then that’s fine, too. Full auction of permits is a good idea, but if most get given away to corporations, then that’s how it goes. Infrastructure spending is good, but if tax cuts are the price of passage, then tax cuts there shall be. The best description of the administration’s ideology probably came from Rahm Emanuel when he said, “The only nonnegotiable principle here is success.”

He’s sort of right. The stimulus may not have been everything liberals hoped for, but it passed. Health care reform will pass, and while it may not include a state-run system, it will result in meaningful regulation of the insurance industry and coverage for millions more Americans. I’m a zealot, so I want the most liberal possible program with a trail of broken Republicans behind it. But at the end of the day, Obama is enacting a pretty liberal agenda. This is not to say that we should just sit back and be satisfied; Obama is a pragmatist who needs to be prodded from the left at every turn. But things might not be as bad as we think.

In the meantime, it’s important to look for silver linings wherever we can. In that spirit, here’s another writer with upper management written all over him, Atul Gawande, writing about how the Senate draft of health care reform, with its mish-mash of pilot programs and wacky ideas, might actually succeed in controlling the cost of health care. It’s not much, but it’s a tiny ray of hope. We’ll see what happens.

To do the right thing, that is. The New Jersey state senate will be considering a gay marriage bill in the coming week, with a vote possible late in the week.

There was a bit of scuttlebutt after the recent gubernatorial election that some Democratic lawmakers were uneasy about going through with the gay marriage bill. You see, outgoing governor Jon Corzine is in favor of marriage equality; incoming governor Chris Christie has promised to veto any such bill. And, you know, this is politics, so it would be unseemly for a Democratic legislature to do anything that would appear like they were trying to pass a bill at the eleventh hour before the opposition took control of the State House. Because it’s more important for Democrats to reap the rewards that come with decorum and proper comportment than actually, you know, do their fucking jobs.

Here’s the thing: at the end of the day, nobody CARES what manner good bills are passed in. And about this there can be no debate: a marriage equality bill is a good bill. Not just good, but entirely necessary and overdue. This isn’t some routine appropriation. This is civil rights. Please, New Jersey, do NOT fuck this one up.

Or, in other words, make New York look stupid for not doing the same thing last week. As Daily Intel says:

How would a huge defeat for same-sex marriage on Wednesday create momentum for the bill’s prospects, and not against them? Maybe it’s the irresistible opportunity to show New York what a progressive Northeast state with balls looks like.

So the blogosphere is abuzz (well, not abuzz, but I’ve seen more than three different posts in the past two weeks) with stories about the North Pacific Gyre, and the attendant environmental crisis. The interest has been spurred along by this piece in the New York Times, and this photo essay of garbage-stuffed bird carcasses. It’s really dreadful stuff.

My first reaction upon reading these posts and looking at these pictures was obviously disgust and self-loathing. That should be self-evident. My second reaction, though, was “Old news.” Why? Because I read Cracked.

I’m specifically referring to the June 6, 2009 list “6 Real Islands Way More Terrifying Than The One On ‘Lost‘” (scroll down to #2). The Pacific Gyre has been haunting my nightmares since June! Welcome to my world.

Those of you who are familiar with Cracked know about all the dick-and-fart jokes and user-submitted Photoshop parodies, but their bread and butter is the daily list, like “The 9 Most Racist Disney Characters,” “6 Insane Discoveries that Science Can’t Explain,” and “7 Secrets Only Two Living People Know (For Some Reason).” If you’re not familiar with Cracked, get familiar! I’m willing to say that I learn more from reading a week’s worth of Cracked than I did in college. Sorry, Mom.

The Chronicle of Higher Education finally catches on to something that any undergrad who knew someone who “studied” in Barcelona for a semester knows all too keenly.

College Humor, of course, takes a cheekier tack.

For those of you keeping score at home, former South American military dictatorship Uruguay just edged out the 27th state in the Union in the “Extending No-Brainer Civil Rights / Doing Right by Orphans” race.

Where's the train tracks?

This man wants to sell your grandmother a life insurance policy.

Today’s big news was Disney’s $4 billion bid to purchase Marvel Comics. I have an interest in this story for the following reasons:

1) I love comics.
2) I’m a former stockholder of BOTH Marvel and Disney. For real. This was back in the day when Marvel went bankrupt. I lost everything!

The immediate reaction for fanboys very well may have been “Disney? Does this mean we’re gonna see an X-Men/Mickey and the Mousketeers crossover?” And my good buddy worried about the level of editorial control the Disney higher-ups would exert over Marvel, which emerged nicely from the Clone-Saga–Adamantiumless-Wolverine–Sue-Richards-With-Cleavage–Onslaught–Heroes-Reborn doldrums of the late 90s to produce some really top-notch content (enough so to get me back into the comics game: more on that to come!)

I understand those fears, but I also think they’re unfounded. Disney has its hands in all kinds of movies and television shows; Pirates of the Caribbean, Desperate Housewives, and Lost might not be the second coming of EC Comics, but I think those properties show enough in terms of humor, edge, and drama to convince any Marvel fan that their favorite franchises will be okay. After all, as that Times article tells us, Marvel is in pretty good shape; I don’t think Disney has much interest in mucking up what works.

I’m actually pretty excited about this. Having been on the front lines for one Marvel bankruptcy (I love 200 bones! That’s a lot for a 12-year-old!), it warms the cockles of my heart to see the company in a strong position going forward. It’s not like the print industry (which includes comic books) has a bright and certain future ahead of it; I think all comic book fans should be excited to have Disney cash behind Spider-Man, Captain America, and the rest.

N.J. cockroach contest predicts Corzine will beat Christie in governor’s race
1:12 PM Aug 20th from twitterfeed

Guitar legend Les Paul died today, at age 94. As a rock and roll fan, I obviously knew Les Paul was a crazy influential guy, but holy smokes, that’s barely half the story. This guy was like, the da Vinci of rock. Inventing the solid body electric guitar, without which the entire genre of rock and roll (and hence metal, punk, alternative, and c.) wouldn’t even exist? Check. Pioneering all sorts of variations in recording speed and microphone position? Check. Creating the eight-track multitrack recorder? Check. When we turn on the radio or listen to a track on the computer, we don’t even think about how each element of that track was recorded and edited separately to achieve the professional, seamless sound that we take for granted. That kind of process didn’t always exist! Look at this amazing quote from the Times:

“Honestly, I never strove to be an Edison,” he said in a 1991 interview in The New York Times. “The only reason I invented these things was because I didn’t have them and neither did anyone else. I had no choice, really.”

No choice! Genius!

And then there are the just amazing stories from his life. Like the well-known story of the car accident he was in in 1948 necessitated that his elbow be fused and made immobile forever. He had the doctors position it so he could still play. This was 60 years ago.

The Les Paul guitar he designed for Gibson hasn’t changed since 1958. That was 50 years ago, and it’s still good enough for Slash.

He broke an eardrum in 1964.

He had quintuple (!) bypass surgery and suffered from arthritis so badly that he had to relearn how to play the guitar. Some people never learn how to play once! So when you listen to the clip below, of Les Paul playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” at the age of 93 (h/t to Brow Beat for the vid), you’re listening to a guy that learned to be a guitar virtuoso twice.

He’ll be missed, of course. But I think that Les Paul has reached that sort of legendary status that as long as you live, you won’t be able to go a day without engaging his influence. Guys like that are never really gone.

“So while some in the ‘media’ say ‘Oh, you live in New Jersey? What exit?’ I say ‘What entrance?’ ” Bravo, Mr. Stewart. Bravo.