NPR on Wishfull Thinking

With Obama’s poll numbers beginning to fall in line with the popularity of his specific policies and the continuing recession and high unemployment being hung around his administrations neck, the 2010 mid-terms may turn out to be less than kind.

Democrats giddy with possibilities only six months ago now confront a perilous 2010 landscape signaled by troublesome signs of President Barack Obama’s political mortality, the plunging popularity of many governors and rising disquiet among many vulnerable House Democrats.

The issue advantage has shifted as well, with Democrats facing the brunt of criticism about the pace of stimulus package spending, anxiety over rising unemployment rates and widespread uneasiness over the twin pillars of Obama’s legislative agenda: his cap-and-trade approach to climate change and the emerging health care bill.

Leave it NPR to ignore this and hope that the current advantage holds for another 18 months.

And while 15 months is a long way away, what CQ has to say is good news for the Democrats. The "in" party usually suffers losses in the midterm elections -- 2002 (GOP gains) and 1998 (Dem gains) being rare exceptions. Their verdict for 2010: Democrats "appear secure" in the House majority they won in 2006 and added to in '08.

But I suppose no one they know voted for Nixon.

Cognitive Dissonance in Action

Why is Obamacare going down in flames ...... you guessed it, its all the Republican's fault for fucking government up!

WASHINGTON — If President Barack Obama got anything indisputably right at his news conference this week, it was this: The American people don't trust the federal government.

That's a major reason he's having such a hard time selling his plan to overhaul the nation's health care. Even if they like Obama himself, people just don't think that the government can handle anything big, let alone something as personal to them as their health care.

From Vietnam through the Watergate scandal, the Iraq war and the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina, Americans have soured on the very thought that the government can do things well. That makes it immensely difficult to convince them — or their members of Congress — to go along with anything that even looks like a government takeover of health care.

I guess it never occured to the author that perhaps people dont want the government taking control of another 18% of the economy.

Just a thought.

Health Care “Reform”: What’s at stake

A few anecdotes about what happens when a “free” health care system needs to be bailed out by its friends across the border.

Shona Holmes

Shona Holmes was in trouble: The list of her symptoms included headaches, sleeplessness, dizziness, low libido and, worst of all, rapidly deteriorating vision. Her family doctor in Canada ordered an MRI, and a brain tumor was detected. But it would take months for her to get on the appointment calendar of a neurologist or endocrinologist in Canada.

Ava Isabella Stinson

A critically ill Hamilton preemie turned away from McMaster Children's Hospital is all alone in a Buffalo intensive care unit because her parents don't have passports to get across the border.

Hamilton's neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) was full when Ava Isabella Stinson was born 14 weeks premature at St. Joseph's Hospital Thursday at 12:24 p.m.

So much for free health care. Its sounds lovely unless you are really sick.

This reminds me about a show my wife and I watched on TLC a few years back. It was about a little girl named Kenadie Jourdin-Bromley who suffers from primordial dwarfism. When playing the flashback to her birth, there were scenes where the doctors were speaking about how they thought Kenadie wasn’t going to make it more than a few days and how everyone, parents included were shocked by what was going on. They commented that she seemed very small on the ultrasound and how it was the first ultrasound that the mother had at 36 weeks into the pregnancy.

My wife and I wondered to ourselves, 36 weeks and no ultrasounds? Wasn’t the OBGYN concerned that the mother was as small as she was? Weren’t there some kind of markers in all the blood tests that expectant mothers get? I remember my wife having several ultrasounds and blood/urine tests with both of my girls and thought that something wasn’t quite right.

And then I realized that the parents were in Canada.

Sure, the “private” American health care system is expensive, but you get results. And yes the Canadian system and all government run health care systems are “free”, but you better pray to God you don’t need to use them.

Whats with the journalists at CNN?

You would figure that the shit canning of Susan Roesgen would have set an example of how not to conduct an interview