R.I.P., health-care reform?

January 20, 2010November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments

Hm. We seem to have drifted into a parade of obits here. So let’s have another — this one, for health-care reform, which apparently croaked last night with the election of dingbat Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate.

Political Animal’s Steve Benen seems particularly sour this morning, noting that a Senate seat once held by John F. Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Henry Cabot Lodge and John Quincy Adams “is now filled by a dim-witted wingnut, and that’s a real shame — for Massachusetts, for the Senate, and for all of us.”

I can’t say I’m exactly jumping for joy, either. I’ve never been sold on the idea that this haphazardly stitched Frankenstein’s monster of a health-care bill is the final answer to a complex problem, but f’chrissakes something has to be done. Our premiums just shot up 34 percent, and I’ve spoken with others who report hikes of 40-plus percent. Anyone out there seeing their take-home pay increase by a similar or greater amount? Yeah, me neither. I recently had to make myself very unpopular with an editor just to get paid for work performed, so I’m not exactly counting on a fat raise anytime soon.

And I’m not expecting much out of the Senate, either. Not with Brown adding his wingtips to the Repuglican foot-dragging.

Dingbats over Detroit

December 27, 2009 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

OK, one shit-for-brains Nigerian setting his underwear alight aboard an airliner bound from Amsterdam to Detroit doesn’t warrant any snark from me, though I notice the usual clot of Repuglitards just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to piss on Preznit Obama’s wingtips.

But when another one turns up — this time locked into the crapper of an Amsterdam-Motor City flight — a guy can’t help but wonder: Are the Nigerian spam merchants are finally having to lay a few of the dumber folks off?

The forever war?

December 1, 2009 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Well, there you have it: More meat for the grinder, says the prez (video here). Can’t say I’m happy about it, especially the caveat about withdrawals beginning in July 2001 to be dependent upon “conditions on the ground,” the ground in that part of the world being unstable in more ways than one (earthquakes and crazy mean bastards). Here’s the CIA World FactBook rundown on the joint for those of you who, like me, have never been there.

I like the idea of a deadline: “You have this long to help us kick the bad guys’ ass or you can fight them by yourselves.” Ditto the diversion of American money from the mayor of Kabul — a.k.a. President Hamid Karzai, a gent who by all accounts is so crooked that he can meet himself coming around a corner — to local officials in the boondocks.

I also like the long-overdue recognition of the financial toll here at home: “Um, yes, wars cost money, just like everything else, only more so. This one will be in the budget; we don’t care how the last guy did it. Will there be anything else? May I interest you in some health care, environmental action and jobs, perhaps?”

The fact that the Repuglicans are lining up against the prez should be encouraging, but is not, given their behavior to date. It’s not hard to get a dumb dog to bark.

Dexter Filkins, author of “The Forever War,” appears to have his doubts. So do I. I just don’t articulate them as well.

• Late update: Looks like Steve Benen at Political Animal shares my skepticism.

Vidiots

November 26, 2009 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

From our You Just Can’t Make This Shit Up Dept.: A pair of polo-playing, stretch-Hummer-driving asshats who hope to get their 15 minutes with the Bravo reality-TV show “The Real Housewives of D.C.” crashed Adolf Obama’s first state dinner and subsequently posted pix of their top-shelf grip-‘n’-grins on Facebook.

A publicist named Mahogany Jones, an unavailable Hollywood shyster called Paul W. Gardner Esq., and a Secret Service with egg all over its face — hey, what’s not to like? Especially if you’re a writer for Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or SNL.

‘Recession porn’

June 14, 2009 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

Barbara Ehrenreich is at it again, this time in The New York Times op-ed section, reminding us that the “Nouveau Poor” aren’t the only story out there. The author of “Nickel and Dimed” has revisited some of the people she met while working on that 2001 book, reconnecting with “the already poor, the estimated 20 percent to 30 percent of the population who struggle to get by in the best of times.” Writes Ehrenreich:

Larry Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, offers data showing that blue-collar unemployment is increasing three times as fast as white-collar unemployment. The last two recessions — in the early ’90s and in 2001 — produced mass white-collar layoffs, and while the current one has seen plenty of downsized real-estate agents and financial analysts, the brunt is being borne by the blue-collar working class, which has been sliding downward since deindustrialization began in the ’80s.

What are they doing? Moving in with already-overcrowded relatives, stripping, hunting urban game like squirrels, and plummeting “from low-wage employment and inadequate housing toward erratic employment and no housing at all.”

“In good times and grim ones,” Ehrenreich writes, “the misery at the bottom just keeps piling up, like a bad debt that will eventually come due.” It’s the first in a series of such articles; stay tuned.