“There’s a difference between the statements ‘America has the best health-care system in the world’ and ‘With enough money, you can purchase the best health care in the world in America.’ … People should ask themselves a very simple question: Do they think they are likelier to lose their job and fall into the health-care situation of the uninsured? Or are they likelier to become an influential politician and enjoy the health-care options available to the most powerful people in the world? If you’re a United States senator, America may have the best health-care in the world. But if you’re an ordinary person with the same vulnerability to bad luck that we all have, you’re better off being in Canada, or France, or Japan, or somewhere that doesn’t take your insurance away when Wall Street causes the economy to crash.”
—Ezra Klein (via azspot)
February 2010
43 posts
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Rich People Things: David Brooks and the Myth of the New Fair Society →
theawl.com
Chris Lehmann’s takedown of David Brooks over at The Awl is a thing of beauty. Brooks is very occasionally insightful, but woe are we who live in a world where he’s considered either “rational” or “conservative”, and his tendency to herald narrative at the expense of real institutional analysis is everything that’s wrong with media culture. (By no means limited to the right wing: Thomas Friedman established his position as king of the neoliberal hill by excelling at this.)
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“This is what Republicans always do. When in power, they massively expand the power of the state in every realm. Deficit spending and the national debt skyrocket. The National Security State is bloated beyond description through wars and occupations, while no limits are tolerated on the Surveillance State. Then, when out of power, they suddenly pretend to re-discover their “small government principles.” The very same Republicans who spent the 1990s vehemently opposing Bill Clinton’s Terrorism-justified attempts to expand government surveillance and executive authority then, once in power, presided over the largest expansion in history of those very same powers. The last eight years of Republican rule was characterized by nothing other than endlessly expanded government power, even as they insisted — both before they were empowered and again now — that they are the standard-bearers of government restraint.”
—Glenn Greenwald [via azspot]
NYT devotes valuable OP-ED real estate to an "intelligence analyst" who thinks we're not killing enough Afghan civilians. →
nytimes.com
And just like that, my diarrhea’s back. Ms. Dadkhah makes Stan McChrystal look like Dan Berrigan.
Grumbling
I wish people would stop intellectualizing fashion. Either you fail, and it’s worthless, or you succeed, and it’s pointless. Exception: people who are funny about it.
This.
