Obamacare's Deluded Opponents, Syria, and Isabel's Pups

Here's a recent New York Times column by Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman explaining the Republican push to repeal or "defund" Obamacare, which is the law of the land, passed by Congress and affirmed by the Supreme Court.  (Emphasis by coloring added by me.) 

Aside from Krugman's column, Republicans in sixteen states are doing their best to impede the Affordable Care Act's "navigators" from explaining the Act's provision to those who would benefit most from it.  This is intentional, malicious and not merely the kind of act Krugman attributes to "not knowing what they are doing."  It does not bode well for the G.O.P nor the country.

 Jack Lippman 

GOP Deluding Itself - Widening ‘Wonk Gap’ Fuels Misinformation About Obamacare

Paul Krugman 

 

On Saturday, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming delivered the weekly Republican address. He ignored Syria, presumably because his party is deeply conflicted on the issue. (For the record, so am I.)  Instead, he demanded repeal of the Affordable Care Act. “The health care law,” he declared, “has proven to be unpopular, unworkable and unaffordable,” and he predicted “sticker shock” in the months ahead.    So, another week, another denunciation of Obamacare. Who cares? But Sen. Barrasso’s remarks were actually interesting, although not in the way he intended. You see, all the recent news on health costs has been good. So Sen. Barrasso is predicting sticker shock precisely when serious fears of such a shock are fading fast. Why would he do that      

Well, one likely answer is that he hasn’t heard any of the good news. Think about it: Who would tell him?    My guess, in other words, was that Sen. Barrasso was inadvertently illustrating the widening “wonk gap” — the GOP’s near-complete lack of expertise on anything substantive. Health care is the most prominent example, but the dumbing down extends across the spectrum, from budget issues to national security to poll analysis. Remember, Mitt Romney and much of his party went into  Election Day expecting victory.  
      
 Election Night 2012:  Time to Stop Believing Your Own Ads

About health reform: Sen. Barrasso was wrong about everything, even the “unpopular” bit.    For the truth is that the good news on costs just keeps coming in. There has been a striking slowdown in overall health costs since the Affordable Care Act was enacted, with many experts giving the law at least partial credit.    But do Republican politicians know any of this? Not if they’re listening to conservative “experts,” who have been offering a steady stream of misinformation.     

All those claims about sticker shock, for example, come from obviously misleading comparisons. For example, supposed experts compare average insurance rates under the new system, which will cover everyone, with the rates currently paid by a handful of young, healthy people for bare-bones insurance.    At the same time, other conservative “experts” are creating false impressions about public opinion. Just after Kaiser released a poll showing a strong majority — 57 percent — opposed to the idea of defunding health reform, the Heritage Foundation put out a poster claiming that 57 
percent of Americans want reform defunded.

   
Jim DeMint, Heritage Foundation President

Did the experts at Heritage simply read the numbers upside down? No, they claimed, they were referring to some other poll. Whatever really happened, the practical effect was to delude the right-wing faithful.  
   

And the point is that episodes like this have become the rule, not the exception, on the right. How many Republicans know, for example, that government employment has declined, not risen, under President Barack Obama?    Political conservatism and serious policy analysis can coexist, and there was a time when they did. Back in the 1980s, after all, health experts at Heritage made a good-faith effort to devise a plan for universal health coverage — and what they came up with was the system now known as Obamacare.    

But that was then. Modern conservatism has become a sort of cult, very much given to conspiracy theorizing when confronted with inconvenient facts. Liberal policies were supposed to cause hyperinflation, so low measured inflation must reflect statistical fraud; the threat of climate change implies the need for public action, so global warming must be a gigantic scientific hoax. Oh, and Mitt Romney would have won if only he had been a real conservative.    It’s all kind of funny, in a way. Unfortunately, however, this runaway cult controls the House, which gives it immense destructive power — the power, for example, to wreak havoc on the economy by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. And it’s disturbing to realize that this power rests in the hands of men who, thanks to the wonk gap, quite literally have no idea what they’re doing.

                                                     
Syria

I've addressed the Syrian chemical weapons problem in the most recent two postings on Sept. 4 and Sept. 9.   As I hinted, Israel, reassured that the support of the United States is "unshakeable" (a word used by President Obama the other night), is relieved that in opposing Iran's nuclear program, it won't have to "go it alone."  I think Iran is also thankful for this, fearing an Israel acting alone more than an Israel backed (and to an extent, restrained) by the United States.  This all has something to do with the still-cooking deal whereby Syria will turn over its chemical weapons.  

It also enables Assad to stay in power, a situation desirable to his "friends," the Russians and the Iranians and although they won't admit it, to the Israelis and the United States as well because a de-fanged Assad is preferable to the largely Sunni extremist chaos which would replace him.  (Russia constantly battles Sunni extremists in Chechnia, Shiite Iran fears them, Israel's Hamas terrorists are Sunni, and the Al Qaeda terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center were Sunni.  A large number of the rebels opposed to Assad are these same Sunni extremists.)

     
Rohani and Putin                                     Netanyahu and Obama                             Shared Interests?

Right now, it is clear that so much of what is presently going on and what already has taken place has been withheld from the general public and the media, that few really of us really can keep up with what is going on.   We are not being told what representatives of the United States, the Syrians, the Syrian rebels, the Iranians, the Russians, the Israelis, the British, the Turks, the French and who knows who else (or their surrogates) have been discussing behind closed doors for weeks now.   

Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of National Review Online, recalled in a recent column the words of Arab-nationalist and onetime Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, who explained that “The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them which we are missing.”   Poker players sometimes ask themselves "Why did that guy raise?"  Sometimes it turns out he had a full house, sometimes a far, far weaker hand which he felt just might be a winner if perhaps "better" hands fold, and sometimes he (or she) is just plain stupid ... and yet still occasionally manages to come out a winner.

 
There will be a solution to what is going on in Syria, there will be deals made and when someone writes a book three decades from now, we may finally know what actually happened.  Right now, it is beyond me ... and also beyond the numerous "talking heads" you see on TV.
JL

                                                                   

Sid's Corner

Sid's son Scott, the one who lives in Vermont (something you might be aware of if you have followed some of his stories), reports that their golden retreiver Isabel has just delivered a beautiful litter of pups.  The father, Oliver, who also lives there with Isabel, is brimming with pride. Here are some pictures taken right after she gave birth.  After the pups are weaned and grow a little, I understand some may be for sale.  (Sid can be reached through this blog.)

  The proud mother
 
  Feeding time

JL
                                                                     

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