On the Contrary

Sometimes I watch the news and then I just have to turn it off.  I walk outside and into a world far removed from Washington, partisan politics, and strife in general.  I live on about 22 acres in the Sierra Nevada forest, three of which has been cleared and I have planted grapes.  The view from my patio is spectacular as I sit on the top of a hill and overlook most of the valley.  It is deadly quiet up here so you can, in fact, hear yourself think.  And that is my saving grace.  I like to think it gives me perspective on much of the political dialogue taking place.  Instead of getting caught up in it, I can remove myself from it and really think about it.  It is funny, but when you are removed from the constant bickering and strife, things can become fairly simple and clear.

So without any further long-winded pontification on my brilliance, here are what I think are no-duh revelations about current events:

• The Gates affair is much a do about nothing except that people do and say stupid things sometimes when we let our emotions get the best of us.  I am sure the officer involved probably wishes that he could have defused the situation better and I am sure the Professor wishes he wouldn’t have over reacted to the situation.  But we are colored by our backgrounds and we are human and sometimes we don’t do the smart thing.  I bet the President wishes he hadn’t characterize a situation he knew little about.  But he is human too and his own experiences colored his view.  Maybe we can all learn something here instead of trying to turn this into some major racial incident.  Maybe we all just need to take a breath.

• We are going nowhere with health care.  The Senate is full of old, fat, white men who simply are out of touch.  The health care issue is relatively simple, unlike what you hear from these dinosaurs.  The present system is unsustainable and for profit medicine has no workable model in the world.  The profit motive is simply unsuited for providing medical care.  Insurance companies make money by not providing care.  It is as simple as that.  They do it by denying claims or enrolling only healthy people.   See Paul Krugman’s blog for a more in depth analysis.  The only thing that is going to work is a single payer system that WE ALL PAY FOR and endowing that system with the incentives to minimize costs, not pile them on with fee for procedures plans.   And yes there will be rationing.  You can’t have everything and I hate to break to you, but it already exists.  But the reality is that they will pass something token and the truth of the above analysis will finally dawn on the rest of you when the system finally collapses.

• In Afghanistan, we have good intentions, but it is time for the Muslim world to save themselves.  There is no doubt in my mind that we are helping many people, especially women from being victim to 5th century thought.  But the investment necessary to really make a difference would be better spent on our own disasters at home.  Bringing a tribal society into the 20th century is a noble undertaking, but so is providing health care for all our citizens.  My own view is that the Muslim religion and its adherents, except for a very few, live in a world that demeans women and is designed to maintain the status quo of male superiority.  Yeah, Yeah, I know.  You can find verses in the Koran that show women to be equal.  The Koran is much like the Bible in that you can pretty much find whatever you need to justify anything.  The reality is that until they modernize themselves and fight their own battles, we are tilting at windmills.  Governments run by the Taliban have repeatedly failed and are extremely unpopular.  If they harbor Al Qaeda we can do what we did before and set free a few cruise missiles.  Fly away little missiles, fly away.  It is time to take care of our own problems.

• Sadly the economy is not getting better because we have not done anything about the structural problems that are the root of our problem.  Surges in the market are simply a reflection of people wanting to get back to business as usual.  But what was driving our economy before was bundling and selling debt.  Much of that debt is still out there and you have to keep asking yourself, what are we going to bundle and sell to the rest of the world now?  Until that question is answered and we start down that road, what will happen is that the incentives that led to the greed and excessive profit taking are still in place and we will simply repeat our blunders, only bigger.  The issue in this country is unemployment and when we figure how to gainfully employ our nation, all the rest will fall into place.  Green energy anybody?

• Sarah Palin and other like-minded Republicans are intellectually bereft.   Even if you hate “govment”, you have to ask yourself when they babble their fear the government, market place will solve all pabulum, okay, but what is your plan and how will that help?  Even on health care, the Republicans have presented no alternative plan on an obviously failed system and on the economy, they have offered to do nothing as the way forward.  Many Republicans view the Bush Administration as an aberration from Republican governance.  It was anything but.  I look on the Republicans much like I do the Taliban.  Put them back in power and that will be their final undoing.

• Finally compromise among the Democrats on a way forward may be worse than doing nothing.  If by compromise, and I hold as evidence the economic stimulus plan, they mean producing a plan that is so watered down as to be ineffective, they are putting the nails in their own coffin.  It would seem that they have no confidence in their progressive agenda and are doing everything to thwart it.

Okay I will now turn the TV back on and wonder why they can’t see these obvious truths.  I think I am destined to take these ‘truths’ to my grave.