Guest Post

Recently I was contacted by an excellent blogger, Barbara O'Brien of Mahablog, to see if I was interested in posting a guest comment. I find that her observations below are very reasonable on this subject and quite in line with mine. It is one of the hardest things for me as an American to see how a large segment of our citizens can fall for the lies promulgated by the likes of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, particularly as it concerns health reform. We have always considered ourselves exceptional. Now I realize this refers to the exceptionally misguided direction that so many of us take.

Health Care Reform: The Morning After

Many politicians and pundits warned us that the health care reform (HCR) legislation that just became law will destroy America. Government bureaucrats will take over health care decisions, we were told. The old and infirm would be hauled away by death panels. Everything about the way we receive our medical care will change, and change drastically, they said.

Medicare recipients have been frightened by stories that their benefits will be cut. Middle-age people are worried they will lose their jobs when the law’s dreaded regulations, or taxes, or maybe regulations with taxes, would destroy their employers’ businesses.

The truth is, very little will change for most people. If you were insured by employee benefits before HCR, you will be insured by exactly the same policy in exactly the same way after HCR. You will have access to the same doctors on the same terms. “Government bureaucrats” will no more be involved in your health care than they were before.

And the same is true of Medicare, which of course is a government program, although many of the people who opposed the HCR bill don’t seem to know that.

Here are the “cataclysmic” changes to health care that are now in effect, or which will go into effect within the next six months for people who are already in group insurance plans:

The law says you can’t lose your insurance coverage because you get sick. Before, in many states, if you were stricken with a severe illness such as mesothelioma cancer that would be expensive to treat, your insurer could use just about any excuse to cancel your coverage. That is over.

HCR has ended lifetime limits on coverage. As long as you are receiving medical care, your insurer pays the bills.

Your children can be covered on your existing policy until they are 26 years old.

In six months, insurers cannot refuse to insure people under the age of 19 because of “pre-existing conditions.” This provision will go into effect for everyone in 2014.

And if you are on Medicare, you will be asked to struggle with the following:

You get a free annual checkup.

The co-pays and deductibles on many preventive care services are eliminated.

If you are in the Medicare D “doughnut hole,” you will get a $250 rebate check in a few weeks. The hole itself will be closed gradually and will be gone by 2020.

But what about all those terrible regulations and taxes that are about to drive businesses out of business? Um, there really isn’t much to report. Oh, wait, here’s one — a 10 percent tax on indoor tanning services that use ultraviolet lamps will go into effect July 1. That’s about it.

However, beginning this year a tax credit will be available for some small businesses to help provide insurance coverage for employees.

Soon the politicians and pundits will start trying to frighten you about the provisions that will go into effect after this year. I assure you they are about as scary as the provisions that go into effect this year, but I will discuss them in a follow-up post.

— Barbara O’Brien

Friday Crab Blogging (on Sunday)

A dearth of crabs this week due to unforeseen circumstances. However....

This drawing is interesting because when asked what was the brown coloring around the flowers, the artist replied "its the air." I know we've got pollution but I think she was referring to the pollen that has invested our area this past month.

Around here if you ain't crabby, you ain't nuthin:

Crab-Henge

An astute reader has suggested that two drawings by local crab artists are very reminiscent of Stone-Henge.

Here are the two drawings:

The reader is quite right. There is a remarkable resemblance at least in terms of a circle of plinths. In addition to Stone-Henge, this circle can be found in other architectural structures in cluding the Great Stupa of Sanchi.

One question becomes whether the Neolithic builders of Stone-Henge could have visualized being above the structure, thus visualizing the circle. I think we must assume that they did given the existence of the Peruvian geoglyphs, "The Monkey" being the most famous.

These drawing are of truly giant scale with the largest being 600 meters across (two football fields). One of the theories for their purpose is that they were drawn by the Nazca for their gods who were in the sky. The conclusion here is that they could picture themselves as if they were the gods looking down. This is actually quite an accomplishment since I doubt our closest animal relatives have this ability.

Back to Stone-Henge. What should we make of this desire to make an interrupted circle? 

The thinker who came to mind was Carl Jung. As you will recall this was a psychologist who was a student with Freud but then eventually developed his own school. (Carl Jung appears on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band album cover in the top row between Poe and W.C. Fields.)

While it has been years since I have read Jung (and not much then) I seem to remember his study of archetypes and how it was felt that they were buried in the unconscious. From here:

In Jung's psychology an archetype is an inherited pattern of thought or symbolic imagery derived from the past collective experience and present in the individual unconscious.

This is an absolutely delicious tidbit of information. It proposes for evolutionary psychology a mode of inheritance that would be Lamarckian in biological evolution. However, for whatever reason, I do think that humans have conceptual archetypes that help us in our understanding of the world. And, I suspect, one of them is a circle (safety, defense, etc.) Why the plinths should appear in the circle I don't know. Kids do tend to draw circles when they scribble.

Friday Crab Blogging (late)

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A little late with the crabs, got called to a delivery:

No, you are right, this is not a crab. It is, TA DA: A Ferris Wheel!!

Coarse Politics

Many people have noted the coarsening of political discourse in the last year. Many attribute this to the raucous debate on the recently passed health care reform legislation. Certainly there was a large amount of vitriol splashed about in, around and outside of Congressional chambers. Many news organizations would like to say that both Democrats and Republicans are equally responsible for this state of affairs. Almost certainly not! But we should leave that to history books to decide (if long, tall Texans don't rewrite them).

What should really concern us is the great possibility that this inflammatory language, has been taken by a small group of Americans, as permission to convert the threatened consequences into action. I find it frightening that in our midst there is a cohort of people who so hate the current workings of the U.S. Government that they would basically plot an armed insurrection. The most concerning actions, however, were the spitting and racial epithets against Congressmen.

If these were people that had a well thought out agenda, perhaps it might be possible to come to some compromise. But, it seems to me, that their anger and hate really have no object. I think that lends some support to the argument that a part of the underlying motivation, particularly against President Obama, is racial. On the other hand there are a number of other pressures that are forcing susceptible individuals in this direction, not the least of which is not having anything to do with their time, i.e. out of work. In a way it is a perfect storm for craziness.

Actually, as usual, there is some pertinent history here. I refer to the Know Nothing Party:

The Know Nothing movement was a nativist American political movement of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to U.S. values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization, though its efforts met with little success. There were few prominent leaders, and the largely middle-class and entirely Protestant membership fragmented over the issue of slavery. Most ended up joining the Republican Party by the time of the 1860 presidential election. (emphasis added)

What, exactly, should be a course of action for someone like myself who sits in a fairly liberal (or, to use the current non-L word, progressive) seat? I am certainly not up for arming myself or fortifying my residence, though I live in a semi rural area that is inundated by guns, ostensibly for hunting.

I suppose that writing (letters to the editor) or other such pursuits might be useful, but probably not. A mark of the current tea bagger is exactly like that of the Party mentioned above, when confronted, they simple say "I know nothing." Oh, one more tidbit from the Wikipedia article:

The party gained wide popularity. According to historian David Harry Bennett, "nativism became a new American rage: Know-Nothing candy, Know-nothing tea, and Know-Nothing toothpicks were manufactured..." Stagecoaches were dubbed "The Know-Nothing, And in Trescott, Maine, a shipowner dubbed a 700-ton freighter, "Know-Nothing." (emphasis added)

Friday Crab Blogging

I am not sure what the yellow figures signify. I forgot to ask. These guys are smiling because Crab season just opened. How little they know!

Water, Cool Clear Water

This just amazes me since it is pretty clear (no pun intended) that this bottled water frequently comes out of the tap.

Furthermore, the BOTTLE is destined for the Pacific Vortex. (very cool short movie).

Finally, where's the Calcium?

Friday Crab Blogging

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I swear I didn't make this up.

Enhanced Interrogation

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A fellow whose book picks I respect (hey, he's a book store) was going on about a late Victorian novelist named Maxwell Gray (and also here.) In particular, he mentions Gray's tome: "The Silence of Dean Maitland." Certainly the lead book in "The World's Greatest Books," which is a blockbuster to boot, should merit our attention. So, off to the Alibris book site I go and, low and behold, there are a bunch available. I order this vaunted gem and wait anxiously for its arrival. One day it comes. As with many Alibris books it is wrapped in brown paper (let's keep it anonymous, sort of like Playboy.) I hurry home after a hard day fighting back germs and curl up in my chair and unwrap this Great Book (sorry, Mortimer, your list is incomplete.)

Firstly, it is a dusty, dusky tome in a peculiar shade of quaint, olive green. While intact, it has clearly resided on the shelves of someone's study since coming home from the bookseller probably a hundred years ago. It was published by the F.M. Lupton Publishing Company in New York. "Of all the publishers of cheap books during the 1880s there were few to rival the cheapness of F.M. Lupton's productions." You betcha. There is no information at all after the front page. Opposite this page written near the spine is the observation "e good but a lot ex words." I assume this means "Pretty good, but a lot of extra words." I should have heeded  this sage observation.

Where ever one word would suffice, Maxwell Gray uses three. For instance, the opening sentence:

"The gray afternoon was wearing on to its chill close; the dark cope of immovable dun cloud overhead seemed to contract and grow closer to the silent world beneath it, and the steep, chalky hill, leading from the ancient village, with its hoary castle and church, up over the bleak, barren down was a weary thing to climb. "

 Whew! How about

 "The afternoon was wearing on to its close; the cope of immovable cloud overhead seemed to grow closer to the world beneath it, and the steep hill leading from the village, with its castle and church, up over the down was a weary thing to climb." 

I slogged on through this till I could go no more and was pulled down, down into the moist and evil quicksand that glistened all about me with the faint dewdrops of extra words.

But, I tried. And, then it struck me, what a clever thing this book was. If ever I was in possession of Vital Secrets, the plans for the battle, whatever, all they would have to do for me to confess all would be to strap me down and read me Chapter IV of "The Silence of Dean Maitland."

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Of course the hooker is that Maxwell Gray is actually Miss Mary Gleed Tuttiett. It does have the same ring as George Elliot.


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And, of course, I could not resist the money quote from page 41:

"Who shall say how far a man's will consents to his acts? added Everard,  musingly."

Yes!

Congratulations to Barack Obama on the passage of the first step in reforming our broken health care system.

Friday Crab Blogging

Crabs are starting to run; we seem to have gotten stuck on certain crayons; thank Gott they are not Prussian Blue!

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Mr. Crabs, for we uninitiated, is a character on Sponge Bob Square Pants (the most insidiously banal TV show, apparently, that has ever come along, excluding the Gong Show.)

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Now I couldn't resist this last one:



This is, apparently a "wine show"; I didn't ask mom, but I suspect that she has been checking out the local wine tasting events.

Internet Portrait

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I will admit, I couldn't resist this (from an unknown source by way of here, here and here). I realize that it is probably copyrighted but I just felt that, what shall we say, risonanza.

The Direction of the Polity

I have given up trying to understand what is happening politically in the United States. One hopes that, no matter whatever developments are to come, we will survive the current turmoil. I suppose that back in the late '60's, when most adults felt that all hell was breaking loose, I would, as an adult, have felt pretty much the same way. (But as a young tusker, it was groovy). When your world is threatened, no matter whether it is the smug world of '50's consumerism and international hegemony or the, well, '00's world of consumerism and international hegemony, one tends to react, sometimes violently. But, it is still beyond me why the vast, relatively homogeneous, world of the American prolateriat, all those people who work in Exxon stations, Food Lions, Blockbusters, bowling alleys, McDonalds, "environmental" services, construction, landscaping, etc., seem to now reject any sort of change from the status quo. Ironically, it may be seen in the future as the almost spectacular success of the media machine dominated by Fox News.

The fact that many Americans believe such things as the viability of Sarah Palin as a presidential candidate, and question such things as the place of President Obama's birth, is a testament to media driven craziness. Americans have always liked flamboyant personalities. At least Huey Long  had some credentials. But Joe the Plumber and, particularly Glen Beck, are personalities of an entirely different order.

Perhaps I am making too much of this. Perhaps I should be more sanguine. After all, my country has made it this far with lots of stresses including a bloody Civil War. But it seems that the hub of all this, the machine that is Washington, D.C., has, to use an euphemism, suffered a spanner in its works. If you think Health Care is broken, and it is, trust me, then that human collection inside the Beltway is really in trouble. This will all come to a heady crux over the next week when the Democrats try to get the Health Care Reform bill passed. I am not sure what the odds are, Jimmy the Greek would know, but they can't be good for its passage. (I didn't realize that JTG had passed away in 1996.)

What then? Well, one group of "lawmakers" will have demonstrated that they have potent spanners. This is the same group that used to believe "What is good for General Motors is good for America." Not. The problem is that once having governed by hurling spanners, where do you go from there? Is it any wonder that less than one out of five Americans trust their Congress. Elections next fall should be interesting.

Friday Crab Blogging (late)

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I had to reach back in the archives for today's (actually, yesterday's) crabs. I think we will go back to using a pen instead of crayons. It is hard to get the colors to saturate.

P.S. Where did Noah keep his bees?

Ans: In the Ark Hives.

Friday Crab Blogging (late)

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No crabs today. Just a fish:

 

FISH

P.S. Busy, busy busy. Please excuse.

Friday Crab Blogging (late)

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We have two delicacies for you today. First, another entry from that peripatetic adventurer from OldPort.

In keeping with many discussions here and here about art, I do believe we can say that crabs are in the eye of the beholder. It takes a human imagination to deconstruct this pic to detect the underlying crab theme, but I believe it. Of course one must run quickly to the dictionary to discover what cake "cases" are. One hopes it is not a viral exanthem. (BTW, when are you guys going to adopt the euro?)

The second is from the usual source:

This one brings up the question raised by an alert reader: "why are alien's eyes always megaproptopic?" Inquiring minds want to know.

The Market is Broken

From the people who brought you "Just Say No" to Health Care Reform there is this:

Health insurance leaders say they agree that individual markets are rife with problems but insist that the trouble is caused by factors beyond their control -- namely, the soaring cost of medical care and the churn of customers who enter or leave the individual market, depending on employment.

The sour economy has prompted many younger and healthier people to forgo or cancel insurance, companies say. As a result, insurers have had to spread the cost of individual insurance over smaller numbers of ailing policyholders who keep coverage they desperately need.

"A lot of what you see today is a product of the way the market works," said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's Washington-based lobbying arm. "The market is broken. Those people who do need the coverage wind up covering the cost of everyone else."

Actually, having "everyone else" cover the cost of those who need coverage is the way insurance is supposed to work.

Thank you, Kindle...

Looking around for a good book and look what I find!

(going to wait until the price drops, though. It will.)

Friday Crab Blogging

Bones has Fire in his eyes

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