Say, how many worms are in that can?

Americans like words like Freedom and Liberty and perhaps because those ideas scare us so much. We are terrified of coercion by a government we all choose but we love to coerce those who disagree with us and deny them the right to choose.  We certainly are rarely in agreement as to what it means to be a free country and I might dare to say that question is still central to political argument today.  How do we define freedom?

• " It's a free country and I can do what I want." 
• " It's a free country and I don't have to do anything I don't want to do."

Some would equate those statements, others would point out that the first is true within limits and the second isnot, but the idea that freedom carries no obligation and indeed that in a free country it never should seems common amongst extremists.  Unfortunately extremists have a stranglehold on the Supreme Court and perhaps on Congress.  The recent decision regarding the ACA mandate that employers provide insurance coverage for contraception shows that the court sides with the second example and that when it comes to the concept of  freedom of religion and perhaps freedom of speech, personal beliefs convey personal privilege, but because this is such a limited ruling, the inherent hypocrisy becomes apparent.

If  I believe interfering with the implantation of a fertilized egg is murder, it's because of a religious interpretation of murder other people do not share and an interpretation of humanity and human rights that borders on the ludicrous. Citing a definition of freedom I do not believe the Constitution shares, the God Squad on the court allows me to opt out of  having my corporation pay for insurance that might pay for a "morning after" medication and perhaps any form of contraception. That court and indeed all courts do not provide immunity for other religious or other personal opinions and specifically not to opt our of paying for wars and executions and that is proof that one specific belief is being given special rights and others are not.  This violates the constitutional prohibition against establishment.

How will we see yesterday's ruling when other religious groups decide they don't want indirect participation in executing prisoners, bombing foreign countries and a host of other activities?  Will the court have to say this opinion is privileged and that one is not?  Haven't they just done that?  Does an aversion to contraception become an excuse to opt out of  an obligation only if  it's tied to some organized faith or is a personal dislike sufficient?  That question was answered during the years we had the draft.  It was damned hard to establish personal aversion to war without showing long term affiliation with a pacifist religion and not just a pacifist philosophy.

There can be little doubt that our government is in the business of establishing religious belief and assigning special privileges, special rights to members thereof.  There isn't a damned thing we can do seeing that the independence we make a fuss about every July was so limited.  We severed ties with the United Kingdom but not with Christianity as a force that legitimizes government and those who demand and assert the "Christian Nation"  idea are no more patriots or advocates for freedom than the Hessian troops George II hired to kill our revolutionary patriots.

It will be very hard to cite this decision as limited to the case that prompted it, and there are so many worms in that can that everyone will be able to fish for whatever special dispensation from any obligation he dislikes and our reputation for sanity, if we ever had one, won't need any bit of lead to make it sink to the bottom.

A Dinosaur's Thoughts on the ACA So Far

Now that the ACA or "Obamacare" has kicked in, this simple lizard has a few thoughts to put out on how it's going.  First, it occurs to me that while there have been plenty of complaints from humans of the right-wingety variety, few if any have latched onto something that really is quite radical about the otherwise middle-of-the-road initiative.  I'm referring to that little bid'niss of doing away with the "pre-existing conditions" screening procedure.  Know why that's che-sexy radical?  Well, THE BASIC PREMISE of insurance is that you must set up your client-parameters with certain exclusions in mind, ones that allow you to turn a profit by the actuarial tables.  I'll bet you're still trying to wrap your mind around the fact that a walnut-brained Jurassic dinosaur just used a fancy phrase like "actuarial tables" and actually seems to have understood what it meant, but let's get back to the subject at hand.  What I'm suggesting is that Obumuhcare messes with the very concept that makes insurance insurance.

Here's a f'rinstance: if a guy is standing on top of a tall building and threatening to jump, you don't sell him a million-dollar life-insurance policy that takes effect immediately and carries no exclusionary language against suicide.  But that's close to what Obamacare does, isn't it?  If I have three life-threatening diseases at the same time, I get to sign up for a policy and you can't exclude me on that basis.  You also don't get to charge me more, if I understand the law correctly.  (Except that the insurers can still charge more for older people.  Because not doing that would be no fun at all.)  What that requirement does is transform the for-profit insurer into an entity that in at least one regard has to behave rather like a gub'mint agency.  You get Medicare when you turn 65.  They don't turn you away because you're sick or old, not even with an unctuous smile.

Now, I'm not complaining about this new development – far from it.  If I've got it right, it's a good move on the Administration's part.  It's even admirably insidious of them, no?  People are so busy complaining about a few curve balls that they've missed the soshulist spitball fluttering right past them and into the catcher's mitt.  So there's that.  Big Insurers who used to make Cruella De Vil (you know, the novel and cartoon character who grinned maniacally whilst shooting dalmations from a helicopter – okay, I made that last part up) look like a major benefactor to the ASPCA must now behave like halfway decent corporate citizens. 

But then there's everything else.  I've read that a lot of very poor folk have been able to sign up for Medicaid, CHIP, etc. and that a lot of people have indeed been able to get policies with help from Uncle Sam.  That's great.  What's not so great is that in a fair number of cases, middle-classers are finding that those "affordable" new ACA-compliant policies are priced beyond financial reach, and no help is available.  Somehow, when the Democrats say "rich bastard," they always seem to mean, "Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and all those other caviar-eating mother-truckers who make more than $25,000 per annum."  Yup, O ye rich 'uns, your Prada-shod hoof shall slide in due time; your days of living it up with your ill-gotten venti-cinque mille k's are fast coming to the ignominious end they deserve.  Yes, that's right, you -- and ….  Well, you get the idea.

That’s a problem with the ACA, I think – it fails up to now to make provision for the fact that a lot of perfectly ordinary Americans are getting squeezed by the provisions of a law intended to help ordinary Americans.  Because of course how could people who preside over a capitalist economy possibly be expected to bethink themselves five minutes in advance and realize what's bound to happen when they tell insurers to start offering something like "access to necessary health care" instead of the snake-oil & small-print gobs of bunkum they've so often been guilty of offering in the past?  Think ahead?  "Who does that?" as the saying goes.  Who, indeed.  Why, if you thought they should have made allowance for this kind of behavior, you're just the sort of unreasonable individual who thinks that when you know your website is going to get 3.8 million hits per day, you ought to design it not to crash when more than five people log on at once.  And there's just no talking to an unreasonable lot like you.  I give up, I really do.

Put these two things together – one, that Obamacare radically and (I think) admirably transforms the health insurance market in terms of how it assesses eligibility for access to care, and two, a lot of people don't perceive "unaffordably higher premiums for somewhat better policies" to be particularly beneficial to them.  Then I think you can see what needs to happen.  No, not the "Repeal Maobamacare" mantra of the Right, but rather a determination to iron out whatever needs ironing out in the ACA and a recognition (forced on us partly by the ACA itself) that yes, health care is often pretty good in this country but it's also pretty expensive and almost nobody can really afford the true cost of it, so the market is a VERY imperfect vehicle for making things right.  All that means extending the premium subsidies to people who make more than the amounts that currently trigger subsidies.  (And yes, my $25,000 figure was only intended as satire, it isn't even close to the correct figure.)  Extending the subsidies or tax breaks would move the ACA much closer to being a law that recasts health-care access as a basic right, a necessity, rather than as a privilege or a hassle. 

As things stand, I think the ACA only goes about halfway in that direction, and that's why the public perception of it (aside from enough right-wing propaganda to choke up the infernal rivers Phlegethon and Cocytus together) isn't very positive right now.  It's the half-measure we were able to get given the political landscape during President Obama's first term, and therein lies the problem.  Apparently, so many of us here in the "US & A" despise government so much that even when we try to get it to do something good, we do things in a muddled, overly complex and yet half-bum way and we end up creating as many problems as we solve.  What I think needs to be done would cost us all somewhat more as taxpayers, but at least it would be fair and it would stop all the grumbling about the unintended consequences of a major and mostly beneficial law.

Such are all their wicked works, and there is no truth in them.

Although most Democrats already know that most Republicans are, as a group, pathological lying sacks of shit, perhaps it will be the government shutdown that brings this fact into focus for most of America.

I doubt it - much of the country is blinded by partisan hatred of our president, and the many of the rest will stick with the "both sides do it" cop-out. But a guy can hope, right?

This tiny-minded Koch-sucking group of overwhelmingly Caucasian males has, for the most part, stopped even trying to tell the truth, because they know that any lie they tell will be twisted by a compliant press to extract what few grains of reality might have accidentally been included.

Alternatively, when there isn't a passing relationship with the truth in whatever ignorant statement they vomited up, Fox "News" and the right-wing blogs will simply repeat it over and over, louder. And through sheer repetition, the hope is that the inbred paste-eaters making up their "base" will come to believe it anyway.

And sadly, this tactic all too often works.

The GOP has turned the act of making ridiculous untruths a standard move in their playbook. They've been lying about the Affordable Care Act for so long, and in such idiotic ways, that they can't even make lucid arguments any more. They just devolve into random spewings of illegitimate talking points and mindless babble.

These "fiscal conservatives" who are so worried about passing along the costs to our children? They're costing the country $300 million per day that the government is shut down.

John Boehner's latest mantra is that he won't even allow reopening the government to come to a vote, because it couldn't pass. Which is an open and blatant lie, as just a little math will tell you. But it doesn't matter. Why would Boehner want to allow the government to reopen? There is ample evidence that the GOP has been trying to shut down the government since at least 2010.

The GOP has lied about the Affordable Care Act so hard, and for so long, that the drooling illiterati don't even know what they want any more. In poll after poll, they show that they support every aspect of Obamacare; they just hate anything named "Obamacare." This is so universal that late night comedians can create viral videos around the concept.



One of the GOP's current talking points is that Obamacare must be defeated because it was "rammed through in the middle of the night without a single Republican vote." Which, of course, ignores an entire year of committee meetings, and dozens of compromises and changes to make it palatable to the Republicans who joined in voting for it.

But the brightest zit on the GOP nose, the puddle of puke that they keep returning to, is "he won't meet with us." Which is eyeball-meltingly stupid. He's met with them multiple times - he just hasn't caved in to their demands. Because you don't negotiate with terrorists.

In fact, that's probably the one fact that's driving them into the most stroke-inducing paroxysms of rage. Obama has been compromising and negotiating with them for so long that, now that he's standing firm on a position, they don't know what to do.

So they've shut down the government, after planning on it for so long. And now that they've done it, they don't even know what they actually want. The few who realize that defunding "Obamacare" is a losing proposition don't care. Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind) accidentally let slip the fact that they really don't care about the American people any more - they govern with the calm logic of a six-year-old throwing a temper tantrum. "We're not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is."

The lunatics have taken over the asylum. They've taken their hostages and are screaming about what they're going to do to them. It may be time to reactivate Seal Team Six.

Mr. Cruz goes to Washington

My nonagenarian father has been having problems keeping his blood pressure up.  I suggested watching Ted Cruz reading Dr. Suess.  Perhaps I should have titled this Green Eggs and Spam, but all in all, it really isn't funny. No attempt by a bought and paid for, zealot for hire to block the democratic process with endless impassioned idiocy is really funny.  Unfortunately it isn't rare or unique any more.

But if you're feeling calm or tranquil and even happy with life
If the day is fair and sky is blue
And that bothers you
I've just the thing you'll want to view:

The High Cost of Health Care

By (O)CT(O)PUS

A man runs into a vet's office carrying his dog - shouting for help. The vet rushes the limp dog into the examination room and paces it on the table. After a few moments, the vet tells the man - with deep regrets - his dog has died. The man, clearly agitated and in denial, demands a second opinion.

The vet leaves the exam room and returns with a cat. The vet puts the cat on the table next to the dead dog. The cat sniffs the body, walks from head to tail, sniffs again, finally looks at the vet, and meows.

The vet says to the man, "Sorry, the cat thinks your dog is dead too." The man, still unwilling to accept the death of his beloved dog, refuses to accept the word of a cat.

So the vet brings in a black Labrador. The lab sniffs the body, walks from head to tail, sniffs again, finally looks at the vet, and barks. The vet looks to the man and says, "Sorry, the lab thinks your dog is dead too."

Finally, the man resigns himself to the inevitable and asks to settle the bill. The vet says, "$650 dollars, please."

"What, $650 dollars to tell me my dog is dead!"

"Well," the vet replies, "The first diagnosis cost $50. The $600 charge covers the cat scan and lab tests."

This story is even more ridiculous:  Top Republican Alleges Affordable Health Care Act is a Voter Registration Ploy.  Quick!  Grab the cat, bring the dog ...