Saturday, January 8, 2011

Your Load of Spurious Bullshit #2 (Obamacare)

by DAVID
BROOKS
It's really hard to conceal my glee that Obama's health care plan might just unravel like a ball of string being knocked about by a kitten.  But I'll set that outside for later while I write this incredibly objective analysis of what's going wrong with it (in other words, my usual sewage-spill-on-the-beach).



To begin at somewhere in the middle,  the new system is based on a series of expert projections on how people will behave.  I prefer the sort of science that supports whatever half-baked garbage I happen to be spewing on a given day, which merely coincidentally just happens to align with the Republican Party line.  For example, one day I'll whine about THE DEMON DEFICIT, and the next day I'm swinging from the church bells and crying hallelujah over the tax cut which will invariably increase THE DEMON DEFICIT.  It's almost as though I don't even read what I write. (Well...perhaps I don't.  I'm a busy man.)

One day I'm going on about the potential validity of studies on acupuncture ( it's the Buddhist version of leeches)--and the next I'm hammering away at the results of  a mathematically complex, abstruse study on the estimated number of Medicare signer-ups, deriding it as a 'system' (i.e. Big Brother wants to turn Granny into Soylent Cow Feed); and,  'a series of expert projections on how people will behave.' (Translation: Elitist smartie-pants think they can use science to control your brain and toss Granny into the Soylent Cow Feed.)

This would seem to contradict my very facile assertion that scientific results should not be tossed aside, but be preserved to remind us that people are astoundingly complex.  So complex it seems,  that I've decided that scientists should not bothered trying to predict behavior--in other words, human beings are so amazing and wonderful and complicated and beautiful that we can't be bothered trying to predict where or when they're going breathe/drink/eat/shit/die.  That's just the first step in Obamindcontrol.

But if you want to confound actual effects with a placebo, apparently I'm all for it.




I even go so far as to describe an estimate as "absurd".  Did I ever once use absurd to describe Dubya's OPERATION BETTER THAN MY DAD?  Highly unlikely.

In spite of all of those contradictions,

And what will happen if corporations start dumping their poorer/sicker employees?  Instead of having cutting them loose when they get really sick and pack them off to the emergency room, they'll just pack them off to the emergency room when they get really sick.  Or even worse, they might not even have to use the emergency room.

And how can we trust the CBO?  (Refer to comments about science above.)  Meanwhile, data from (insert name of some right-wing think tank) suggest that in the face of an invasion by winged alien dinosaurs, health care costs could soar!  And if the dinosaurs could talk, they might even sign up for Medicaid!

And of course, we own the Supreme Court by one vote.  (Now THAT is some fucking democracy.)
And what of the cost projections? This isn't like all that money burned and buried in the sands of Iraq in order to make democracy safe for Moqtada al-Sadr.  No, it's money being wasted on poor people.  Makes we want to puke.  And, of course, the right-wing media, think-tanks, lobbyists, AM radio loons, bloggers, and the remaining columnists like myself will be there, ready to fan the flames of fear.  Because, after all, what does the GOP have to offer any more?

We don't believe in controlling the finance industry, or polluters--hell, we don't even believe in evolution anymore or we would be terrified about that crayz liberal-loon idea about antibiotic resistance.  In fact, about all we can do is quote passages from the Federalist Papers and then ask ourselves, "What would Madison do?"  We may as well be discussing the relevance of Deuteronomy to running the NYC trash collection and sewer system.  What metallic composition of pipes do we need in a sewer? Ask the prophet Jeremiah or maybe Jefferson and see what they wrote.  But as long as 51% of American in 51% of congressional districts continue to swallow our spew, we'll keep spewing.  Speaking of sewers...

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