"Ooh Las Vegas" - Dead Men Rocking
Nice cover of a great Gram Parsons song.
The first time I lose I drink whiskey
And the second time I lose I drink gin
Third time I lose I drink anything
'Cause I think I'm gonna win
Just got into Sin City after another endless full flight. Oy! And I lost the post I wrote at BWI Airport -- hit publish and it informed me that I had lost my internet connection. Grrr. I will now pretend that it is not really 11:05 PM for me and that my day began with a 7:30 AM meeting a couple of thousand miles away. If I can make it until midnight, I'll be right on west coast time. It's already 96 here -- glad I didn't come in the summer. So let's see, what was I writing about?
- Kevin Drum had a good post expanding on Jon Chait's piece about the Republicans inexplicable vote to eliminate Medicare as we know it. Chait has a number of theories as to why, but Drum pretty much latches on to the drinking your own Koolaid phenomenon -- or as I put it a couple of weeks ago, believing your own bullshit -- a deadly sin in politics (and law). The Republican Party has become such an assemblage of ideologues who live primarily in their own echo chamber that they didn't seem to grasp that people really, really like Medicare. I am sorry that they seem to be backing off of the Ryan plan, but that one vote should give the Dems plenty of ammunition. It already seems to have made one special election for the House in a heavily Republican area of upstate New York into a surprisingly competitive race. If the Dems win this seat it is going to be significant.
- As I've noted before, Republicans think that they have more leeway to attack Medicaid because it is a program designed for the poor -- and their conventional wisdom is that no one cares about them. However, Medicaid funds are spent quite differently from state to state and in some places, the overwhelming amount of expenditures are on care for the elderly. This Kaiser Foundation fact sheet on Medicaid is pretty fascinating -- North Dakota spends 64% of Medicaid dollars on long term care, while in California, 29% of the overall population is insured through Medicaid, a staggering number. Nationally, about one in five Americans receive Medicaid funds and 33% of these dollars are spent on long term care for the elderly. Again, Republicans will be shocked at the popularity of this program.
- Another -- at least to me -- mind boggling fact about Medicaid: it now pays for 42% of births in the U.S,, and in excess of 50% of births in several states. So the idea of slashing this program poses a direct threat to the health of the next generation of Americans. And it's not like we're winning any prizes to begin with in terms of maternal and child health. We could, however, cut costs by eliminating fancy things like epidurals for these mothers, furnishing them instead with the time honored biting rag and a couple of shots of Wild Turkey.
- One is struck in all of this by the degree to which the GOP seems to be motivated by sheer mean-spiritedness. They want to eliminate funding for family planning services, they want to cut the amount of money available to those giving birth, and, apparently, in some instances, deprive them of pain relief. Every time these motherfuckers get characterized as "pro-life" it makes me want to scream.
Time to drink and gamble. Those of you who aren't asleep should weigh in.
