Friday Morning News from a Hoosier Perspective

Photo taken near Muncie, IN

Good Friday Morning!! Riverdaughter goes to Hawaii for her vacay, but here I am, “back home again in Indiana.” Except for occasional trees dotting the landscape, you can see the whole horizon. It’s not quite as flat and treeless as my birthplace, North Dakota; but it’s close. It’s where I grew up. There’s not a lot happening here, and I like it that way. Unfortunately, I have to devote some of my vacation time to getting organized for the fall semester. Nevertheless, I’m enjoying looking at head-high corn, eating big juicy Indiana tomatoes and marvelous Indiana cantaloupes (muskmelons), and spending some quality time with my family.

So what’s happening out there in the citified world?

The health care reform battle is still dominating the news.

Really though, this debate has become pretty ridiculous. It’s a serious, life and death issue to us real people, but to the elites in Washington, DC, it’s just another opportunity to line their own pockets while ensuring that health insurance execs and lobbyists continue to lived their lives in the lap of luxury. These people don’t give a damn about the millions of Americans suffering and dying because they have either no health insurance or incredibly expensive health insurance that doesn’t cover their urgent needs, or people who can’t pay for the incredibly expensive meds their doctors have prescribed.

Here’s a great article on the health care debate from The Onion:

WASHINGTON—After months of committee meetings and hundreds of hours of heated debate, the United States Congress remained deadlocked this week over the best possible way to deny Americans health care.

“Both parties understand that the current system is broken,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Monday. “But what we can’t seem to agree upon is how to best keep it broken, while still ensuring that no elected official takes any political risk whatsoever. It’s a very complicated issue.”

“Ultimately, though, it’s our responsibility as lawmakers to put these differences aside and focus on refusing Americans the health care they deserve,” Pelosi added.

The legislative stalemate largely stems from competing ideologies deeply rooted along party lines. Democrats want to create a government-run system for not providing health care, while Republicans say coverage is best denied by allowing private insurers to make it unaffordable for as many citizens as possible.

“We have over 40 million people without insurance in this country today, and that is unacceptable,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said. “If we would just quit squabbling so much, we could get that number up to 50 or even 100 million. Why, there’s no reason we can’t work together to deny health care to everyone but the richest 1 percent of the population.”

“That’s what America is all about,” he added.

And so on… Sadly, that story is a little too close to reality to elicit any more than nervous laughter from me.

In the wake of polls showing the American people are really really angry that President Obama and the Senate aren’t going to allow us to have the choice of a Medicare-like government health care plan, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she can’t pass a health care bill if a public option isn’t included.

“There’s no way I can pass a bill in the House of Representatives without a public option,” Pelosi, a California Democrat, said at a press conference in San Francisco today.

Obama reads the polls too, and he’s now back to saying he wants a public option after all. This guy is a master flip flopper. He makes John Kerry look like Mr. Consistency.

“If we have a public option in there it will help keep insurance companies honest,” he told a group of community volunteers in Washington.

Yeah, right. Even Obama can’t really think anyone believes he really wants a public option at this point–or that he cares about keeping big corporations honest. But he noticed that a lot of us regular people do want a public option–actually we’d rather just have single-payer, thank you very much.

Obama’s poll ratings are tanking over this issue. The Washington Post reports that “faith in Obama is dropping rapidly.

Among all Americans, 49 percent now express confidence that Obama will make the right decisions for the country, down from 60 percent at the 100-day mark in his presidency. Forty-nine percent now say they think he will be able to spearhead significant improvements in the system, down nearly 20 percentage points from before he took office.

As challenges to Obama’s initiatives have mounted over the summer, pessimism in the nation’s direction has risen: Fifty-five percent see things as pretty seriously on the wrong track, up from 48 percent in April.

Anger is rising at the formerly Obama worshipping lefty blogs. Writers at Firedoglake have been particularly outspoken, e.g.,

Scarecrow excoriates Obama for his patronizing references to the 70+ percent of us who favor a public option as “left of the left.” Know Your Enemy and It Ain’t the SEIU

Jane Hamsher warns: If Progressive Members of the House Think We’ll Accept Co-Ops as Public Plan, Think Again.

At Salon, Mike Madden tells liberals Obama’s just not that into you

Arianna Huffington told Charlie Rose that Obama is no FDR

Here’s Matt Taibbi’s take on the health care battle: Health Care Rats Come Out Of The Woodwork

At Salon, the always sensible Gene Lyons has a reminder for liberals that populism is the way to go You won’t win the healthcare debate by calling people stupid racists

Finally, Paul Krugman may be almost back to his old shrill self. It looks like whatever mind control techniques Obama used on him at that WH dinner awhile back are wearing off.

Other News

The rich are losing ground. Could this story explain our politicians’ deep concern for the extremely wealthy? The New York Times says the rich are no longer getting richer! They have been getting poorer since 2007. No wonder they are so in need of government handouts.

Last year, the number of Americans with a net worth of at least $30 million dropped 24 percent, according to CapGemini and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. Monthly income from stock dividends, which is concentrated among the affluent, has fallen more than 20 percent since last summer, the biggest such decline since the government began keeping records in 1959

Awwww…gee, that’s so tragic. But don’t worry, the income disparity between the superrich and the rest of us will still continue.

Few economists expect the country to return to the relatively flat income distribution of the 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, they say that inequality is likely to remain significantly greater than it was for most of the 20th century. The Obama administration has not proposed completely rewriting the rules for Wall Street or raising the top income-tax rate to anywhere near 70 percent, its level as recently as 1980. Market forces that have increased inequality, like globalization, are also not going away.

But economists say that the rich will probably not recover their losses immediately, as they did in the wake of the dot-com crash earlier this decade. That quick recovery came courtesy of a new bubble in stocks, which in 2007 were more expensive by some measures than they had been at any other point save the bull markets of the 1920s or 1990s. This time, analysts say, Wall Street seems unlikely to return soon to the extreme levels of borrowing that made such a bubble possible.

This is really rich. Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minnesota) is worried about the government interfering with her control over her own body. The last I heard, she opposed choice on abortion as well as stem cell research.

Some reality TV star is the object of a manhunt for the murder of his model girlfriend. The suspect, Ryan Jenkins, is Canadian and may have sneaked across the border to escape police.

‘Clunkers’ to Close Aug. 24 After Fueling Sales, Dealer Anger

Karzai, Abdullah Campaigns Each Claim Victory in Afghanistan

WHO Warns of ‘Second or Third’ Wave of Swine Flu Cases, AFP Says

Offbeat News

Glowing Bomber Worms Discovered

Battle of the Nostrils Our two nostrils compete for attention from our brains.

A new survey shows that single women find married men more attractive than single men. One such “scarlet woman” explains why she did it.

Octomom doesn’t deliver Another reality TV show failure.

Are you a boy or are you a girl?

Have a terrific Friday!

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