What’s the haps on the craps?
Tuesday Morning Open Thread
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Jon Chait at NYMag‘s Daily Intel has a nice, succinct barnburner on “Health Care As a Privilege: What the GOP Won’t Admit:”
As we wait for a Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act this week, there is one urgent, overriding moral question at the heart of the health-care fight. Paradoxically, and maddeningly, there has not been any open moral debate over it. That question is whether access to basic medical care ought to be considered a right or something that is earned….
Opponents of the law have endlessly invoked “socialism.” Nothing in the Affordable Care Act or any part of President Obama’s challenges the basic dynamics of market capitalism. All sides accept that some of us should continue to enjoy vastly greater comforts and pleasures than others. If you don’t work as hard as Mitt Romney has, or were born less smart, or to worse parents, or enjoyed worse schools, or invested your skills in an industry that collapsed, or suffered any other misfortune, then you will be punished for this. Your television may be low-definition, or you might not be able to heat or cool your home as comfortably as you would like; you may clothe your children in discarded garments from the Salvation Army.
This is not in dispute. What is being disputed is whether the punishments to the losers in the market system should include, in addition to these other things, a denial of access to non-emergency medical treatment. The Republican position is that it should. They may not want a woman to have to suffer an untreated broken ankle for lack of affordable treatment. Likewise, I don’t want people to be denied nice televisions or other luxuries. I just don’t think high-definition television or nice clothing are goods that society owes to one and all. That is how Republicans think about health care.
This is why it’s vital to bring yourself face-to face with the implications of mass uninsurance — not as emotional manipulation, but to force you to decide what forms of material deprivation ought to be morally acceptable. This question has become, at least at the moment, the primary philosophical divide between the parties. Democrats will confine the unfortunate to many forms of deprivation, but not deprivation of basic medical care. Republicans will. The GOP is the only mainstream political party in the advanced world to hold this stance.
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What’s on the agenda for another summer morning?
Monday Night Open Thread
Another night with my favorite lady:
Watching an episode of Longmire, which is actually really fun. Plus it has Starbuck.
*** Update ***
Tunch is just fine, for those of you asking:
Monday Evening Open Thread: The Demon Barber of Wall Street
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My thanks to commentor Lahke, because I like Steven Sondheim even more than I loathe Willard Romney.
And for the Obama Optimists among us, for your FaceSpace Pinterest wallboard tweets, via Matt Taylor at Slate:
Sam Stein at the Huffington Post gets hold of an Obama TV spot airing in key swing states (but unannounced by his campaign) that responds to Republican Super PACs that have been pummeling him with his “the private sector is doing fine” gaffe in their ads
Apart from the ever-popular setting one’s hair on fire, what’s on the agenda for this evening?
Monday Evening Open Thread: The Demon Barber of Wall StreetPost + Comments (36)
Random fun links and facts
With so much drama in the BJC, I thought we could use something like this:
- I have nothing against the production and consumption of luxury goods, but it’s a sign of the times that Rafael Nadal wears a 525K watch on the court.
- John Edwards’ baby mama has had quite the life. Did you know that Rielle Hunter’s dad was involved with the infamous “horse murders”? And that she dated Jay McInerney and was the inspiration for one of his characters? Very good wiki.
- Good interview with Balloon Juice favorite Jim Newell. Best line (even though I don’t agree): “The only thing separating Ezra Klein from David Broder at this point is six feet of dirt.”
- Is it just me or does “Call Your Girlfriend” sound exactly like Sting’s “Fields of Gold” (off his smash hit album, “The Tepid Heart“), at least at the beginning?
Share your own links and facts or talk about whatever.
Monday Morning Open Thread
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Via LGF, some music to raise up your spirits. (The documentary, it appears, is available for streaming on Netflix.)
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And for those who need distraction from fretting over the intransigence of the Roberts Court, Paul Krugman and Robin Wells have a review that the NYRB headlines “How Politics Is Crushing the Economy” and they call “Getting Away With It“:
When Obama was elected in 2008, many progressives looked forward to a replay of the New Deal. The economic situation was, after all, strikingly similar. As in the 1930s, a runaway financial system had led first to excessive private debt, then financial crisis; the slump that followed (and that persists to this day), while not as severe as the Great Depression, bears an obvious family resemblance. So why shouldn’t policy and politics follow a similar script?
But while the economy now may bear a strong resemblance to that of the 1930s, the political scene does not, because neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are what once they were. Coming into the Obama presidency, much of the Democratic Party was close to, one might almost say captured by, the very financial interests that brought on the crisis; and as the Booker and Clinton incidents showed, some of the party still is. Meanwhile, Republicans have become extremists in a way they weren’t three generations ago; contrast the total opposition Obama has faced on economic issues with the fact that most Republicans in Congress voted for, not against, FDR’s crowning achievement, the Social Security Act of 1935…
So… What’s on the agenda for the start of the new week?
Open Thread
My big plan was to go to bed after Newsroom, but once again I got sucked into a complete viewing of the Blues Brothers. It’s just perfect.
Orange whip?