Tag: One

The assault has been brutal.

Insurance industry flacks, raving RePugs, craven Blue Dogs and K Street hacks have been beating the hell out of health care reform for weeks.  Senator Jim DeMint (Orc) South Carolina is blasting it as National Socialism.  The Mighty Wurlitzer up there in the organ loft of the Bipartisan Church of Beltway Believers has been cranked up to full volume, the choir is piously singing Onward Centrist Soldiers, the congregation is rolling in the aisles, speaking in tongues, the holy saints of Blue Cross and CIGNA must be defended, the trumpets have sounded, the heathens are at the gates, the Capitalists of Christ are no longer going to tolerate the unjust slandering of his Good Samaritan health insurance providers.  Verily, the Prince of Profits has said unto them: those evil unhinged godless Leftists bent upon destroying the best health care system in the world must be slain and cast into the Lake of Fire.              

As Armageddon approaches, the immaculately centrist Gang of Six is offering some friendly advice to Obama. They’re saying what reciters of the Catechism of Centrism always say when a Democratic President needs to be reminded that elections only have consequences when RePugs win them . . .  

Bipartisanship is a temple,

It’s a higher law,

Bipartisanship is a temple,

It’s the higher law.

We’ve all heard their sermons, we’ve all heard them singing the praises of bipartisanship, we’ve all seen them telling Obama to sing along, telling him to join them in moderate fellowship, telling him to enter that Cathedral of Centrism and worship beside them.

Yeah.  We’ve all seen it.

They ask Obama to enter,

But then they make him crawl.

So American soldiers are still dying, the NSA is still spying, CIA drones are still flying, Big Pharma, the Lords of Drugs, Blue Cross hacks and CIGNA thugs are still lying.  We’re told we have to be patient while our wise and caring leaders decide what’s best for us, we’re told there must be compromise, we’re told we have to hold onto the healthcare we’ve got until a few drops of reform finally trickle down from on high later this year or maybe next year or the year after that.    

Well we can’t be holding on,

To what we’ve got,

When all we’ve got is hurt . . .

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Numbers tell the story.

I work with numbers all day long. Numbers tell you the truth about what’s going on, if you can manage to be neutral when evaluating them. People – in all our marvelously complicated screwed-up glory – make the world go around. But numbers are how you make sense of it all.

I’ve been reading mostly lately, not commenting or writing my little stories. But the discussion here the last couple of days about defeating evil Republicans vs. how the Democrats are ‘worse than evil’ for enabling evil — well it gets the juices flowing.

I believe in nuance, in all sorts of shades of grey, yet I also believe there is an objective truth to many if not most issues. This contradiction fuels my life in many ways. But I believe complex issues can be explained through detailed analysis and empirical review. Science for lack of a better term.

So — you want some numbers that I think will help decipher our modern day political code? Six (plus one) are humbly presented below. A warning in advance, I’m avoiding links on purpose for narrative purposes. Google is our friend.