Monthly Archives: September 2012

What is the Romney Agenda? Tim Dickinson sees no reason not to assume it's the agenda of Congressional Republicans which, based on the stuff they've passed or tried to pass, comes down to shoving all possible wealth to the already-wealthy and leaving the lower and middle-class to fend for themselves…or even in some cases, to pay the share of the upper-class. If you see any sort of rebuttal piece to the factual recital of this article, please let me know.

Steven Pearlstein offers A Manifesto for the Entitled.

Take this simple personality test. And enjoy the puppy…

J.D. Kleinke says what a lot of us have been saying all along: That the real objection to "Obamacare" in most quarters is that it's Obama's. Apart from that, it's the kind of thing that Republicans would have come up with to fix the Health Care Crisis — and in many ways, did. But, you know, if Barack Hussein Obama had come out in favor of petting kittens, a lot of Conservatives would have knee-jerk denounced it as a Socialist practice that would enshrine Shariah Law in the U.S. and spelled the end of America as we know it.

As near as I can tell, Republicans have no viable Plan B, no idea that fixes what Obamacare fixes and can be installed in its stead. They have a few vague ideas like Insurance Exchanges that operate on the premise that if you increase competition amongst insurance companies, the magic hand of the Free Market will make fees go down. It hasn't when those insurers compete to sell employer-based health insurance plans so there's no reason to think it might for other packages. Basically, there's a limit to how much insurers can lower premiums when they're all paying the same skyrocketing costs of hospital rooms, prescriptions, equipment, etc. The kind of plan Paul Ryan has been touting doesn't even attempt to lower those costs and also offers no reason for any company to make affordable care available to the folks who now cannot get it.

When you hear Mitt Romney fall back on the old "sick people can go to Emergency Rooms," you know he has no idea what to do about Health Care. Well, actually, he does. It's the same idea he instigated in Massachusetts…the same idea he touted there. But since it's now called Obamacare, he has to vow to repeal it and harm the people whose lives would be made better and even saved by it. If he does win, that's what he'll do…and then he and other Republicans will have to find a way to sneak it back into play with enough camouflage that they can call it National Romneycare or RepublicanCare or something.

Just watch. Just watch…

I understand why Romney supporters (and Romney) want to claim the polls are wrong. In their position, I'd probably be trying to make that case, though I'm not sure I'd actually believe it. What I don't think I'd try to claim — and what I'm pretty sure is not the case today — is that the polls were deliberately biased. In this piece, Ezra Klein points out how silly it is to think that the professional pollsters, whose careers hinge on delivering a reasonably-accurate forecast, would all get together and conspire to not report what America is telling them. I could maybe buy incompetence…or a theory that this particular election for some reason defies traditional polling methods. But not intentional fraud.

Oddly enough, the loudest folks out there insisting that Romney could not possibly be that far behind also seem to be the ones who have never really wanted him as their candidate…and I'd be very surprised if even one of them didn't think Romney's been running a very bad campaign. When they say, "He couldn't be doing that poorly," what they really mean is, "Obama couldn't be doing that well."

By the by: I keep seeing articles about the upcoming presidential debates that note how the tune-in for such contests has declined so since the days when it was Kennedy vs. Nixon. The comparisons seem pointless to me. When JFK went up against Nixon, it was a time when if you didn't see it live, you probably didn't see it at all. You couldn't record those debates for later viewing or go see replays online or even substantially on later newscasts. You got one shot at it. I probably won't watch Wednesday's Obama/Romney square dance live and might not even bother TiVoing it. It'll be on a half-dozen online sources and the highlights, assuming there are any, will be on a thousand sites. If it were a one-shot deal, I'd rearrange my life to be in front of the set. But it isn't and nothing on TV will ever be that again.

Stan Lee has had a pacemaker installed, thereby turning him into a super-hero of sorts; not that he wasn't one already. We wish him (and fully expect) many more years.

I'm linking to a report on TMZ because it seems to be the most complete reporting at the moment. And of course, being TMZ, they had to get something wrong, referring to him as the creator of many superstar characters instead of the co-creator.

There are a number of folks on the web who consolidate and analyze the polls with an eye towards predicting the outcome. The two that I'm watching this time around are Sam Wang and Drew Linzer. Neither one seems to care if "their guy" wins. I'm not sure either of them even has a guy. They appear to just want people to say, "See? He did the most accurate job of forecasting the vote!" At the moment, both of them have the same numbers for the Electoral College: 341 for Obama, 197 for Romney.

There is much to be learned from their websites about how seriously to take polls and which ones are the most accurate. You might want to check in with these guys from time to time.

Hard-Boiled Eggs and Nuts is an original radio drama by Colin Hough based on the early life of Stan Laurel. You can hear it for the next week or so over at this link at BBC Radio 4.

The referral, like most of those on this blog concerning BBC radio programmes, comes from a wise fellow named Greg Ehrbar who knows an awful lot about a great many topics, Disney records being a particular standout. Matter of fact, if you're interested in any aspect of Disney, you ought to be a regular visitor to Greg's blog. Bookmark it now. Visit there often.

Oh — and thanks to Scott Wilkinson who also told me about the Laurel play.

I'm a sucker for videos of old Los Angeles. Here are some scenes from, the uploader says, the late forties or early fifties. I was most intrigued by the shot of Owl Drugs, a long-gone shop in Westwood Village that I remember well. I can even remember the covers of specific comic books I bought there in the early sixties and which I still own. There's also some footage of J. Edgar Hoover and Bertolt Brecht testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which took place in 1947…

Many outlets of the Souplantation restaurant chain (also known in some parts as Sweet Tomatoes) will be featuring their Classic Creamy Tomato Soup this weekend. As readers of this blog are well aware, it's one of my favorites. So guess where I'll be eating.