In this video author Tim Wise talks to CNN’s Don Lemon about the role race appears to play in opposition to President Obama.

Follow this link to a lecture given by Robert H. Frank.

In the lecture he explains one of the main thrusts of his book, The Economic Naturalist’s Field Guide: Common Sense Principles For Troubled Time. If you don’t know where he is going, the lecture may seem to drag a bit, even though he is humorous.  I think it is worth it to stick it out.

He explains why the Bush tax cuts that went mostly to the wealthy were not good even for the wealthy.  It also explains why they didn’t do much to stimulate an economy that didn’t need stimulation at the time anyway.  In some respects this is even more convincing argument in the current economy  than the argument that you need to give tax cuts to the middle and lower classes because they will spend more of it than the wealthy.

It’s not only a question of how much they spend, but what they spend it for.  Even the lower classes are likely to misspend some of the money than if the money were used for the investments proposed by the President’s stimulus plan.

Number 37 in health care, that is. Watch the video.

Nah, I didn’t think you’d believe the W.H.O.

Would you believe the CIA in their Country Comparison :: Life expectancy at birth?

Rank    Country

50      United States

Who would believe a bunch of left wing spies anyway?

I first saw this video posted on SeevsPlace. Seeing the link there encouraged me to take a look.  I am glad I did.

Follow this link to an unbiased analysis of the Coburn-Ryan Health Bill, the Republican alternative to the President’s health care reform plans.

Follow this link to see what the right wing nuts at the CATO Institute have to say.

Follow this link if you want to read the Ryan bill HR 2520 and follow its legislative history.

Follow this link if you want to read the Coburn bill S 1099 and follow its legislative history.

Here are a few biasedly chosen items from the bills’ summaries.

Replaces title XIX (Medicaid) of the Social Security Act with a program to provide grants to states

Repeals title XXI (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) (CHIP, formerly known as SCHIP) of the Social Security Act.

Establishes: (1) a Health Care Services Commission to enhance the quality, appropriateness, and effectiveness of health care services and access to such services; and (2) the Office of the Forum for Quality and Effectiveness in Health Care.

Terminates the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Terminates the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research.

Follow this link to the video of President Obama’s Address to a Joint Session of Congress on Health Care, Wednesday, September 9th, 2009, Washington, DC

Follow this link to see the prepared text of the speech.

At the same link where you can see the President’s video, you will find a link to the Republican response.  In this response, you will hear them lie about what the President’s bill would do and you will hear them lie about what their own bill would do.  And that is my considered, biased opinion.

Follow this link to read the prepared remarks that the President gave to the school children of the nation on September 9, 2009.

Our son-in-law Chuck, Sharon, and I were discussing many of these topics yesterday without any knowledge of what the President was going to say. Much of what the President said matches pretty closely with the message that we would have liked to deliver if we had been asked to make the speech.

I like President Obama, not because I agree with what he thinks, but because he agrees with what I think.

George H. W. Bush Address to Jr. High School Students 10/01/1991

Reagan Address to Jr. High School Students 11/14/1988

Follow this link to see and hear the full video of President Obama’s Labor Day Speech. The speech runs about 35 minutes.

Are you fired up and ready to go?

I am reading a fascinating book by Robert H. Frank, The Economic Naturalist’s Field Guide: Common Sense Principles For Troubled Times.

Starting on page 95, he discusses a case where Baylor Hospital in Plano, Texas turned off the ventilator of a fully conscious, but terminally ill cancer patient. It took her 16 minutes to die of suffocation as observed by several of her family members who were helpless to do anything about it.

True to its word, Baylor disconnected her ventilator on December 12, invoking a law signed in 1999 by George W. Bush, then governor of Texas. The law relieved doctors of an obligation to provide life-sustaining treatment ten days after giving formal notice that such treatment was found to be medically inappropriate.

Here we have the idea of death panels with no need to even convene a panel. Talk about your efficiency.  This is a marvel of brilliant Republican thinking.  I don’t even care if it turns out at the time that the Texas legislature may have been dominated by Democrats.  In many cases a Texas Democrat would be considered to be a Republican in most other parts of the country.

It’s a good thing I put in that last proviso.  Follow this link to see where I got the following statistics:

In 1999 in the Texas state legislature there were 78 Democrats and 72 Republicans in the House.  There were 15 Democrats and 16 Republicans in the Senate.   The total was 93 Democrats and 88 Republicans.

As seen in this scan, yesterday’s Worcester T & G poll found that 85.9% of respondents thought that the country has gone too far when parents don’t want kids to hear the president talk on TV about education.

Could the readership suddenly have come to their senses? Naw, it must be some kind of anomaly.

It’s one thing to decide you don’t want your or your children to hear the President.  It is quite another to intimidate local school superintendents and school boards to prevent other people’s children from hearing the President. What happened to the cry for First Amendment rights?  I wonder how far it would go if someone brought suit charging violation of civil rights for such obstruction?