… who need to chill out a bit.

Yes politics are important, but this kind of a ridiculous circus turns people off from caring about it.

Today the House will vote again on Health Care Reform. If it passes the House, it’s over. We WILL have some kind of Health Care Reform package passed into law. The only question that will remain will be whether it is the Senate version (that already passed both houses) or the Obama version (the adjustments of which would still need to pass the Senate).

In the end after long periods of contemplation I finally decided that I want the bill to pass.  If the bill doesn’t pass, Democrats and the Obama administration would probably not have the will to re-approach Health Care and pass a more popular bill. If they did, or had they shown any sign of even the slightest willingness to do so, I would say let the current bill die. But they haven’t. And they won’t. They’ve bought into the absurd formulation of the media and the GOP that if this endeavor fails you “Can’t talk about Health Care anymore”. Worse, people really believe it will be the end of the Obama administration. It’s ridiculous. It’s idiotic. But it’s what so many people in Washington and in the media believe.  So if the current Health Reform bill fails, they’ll give up.  That’s the main reason why I want them to pass it.

On the actual merits of the bill I am much more split. One thing I despise though is the increasing tendency to vilify anyone who votes “no” on Health Reform. It’s one thing to vilify those who are voting no for purely cynical reasons or who are so caught up in their desire to destroy the democrats or Obama that they aren’t really even analyzing the bill on its merits and are making up lies about it. Yeah, THOSE people I can understand vilifying.

However, there are a LOT of people opposed to this bill legitimately on its merits. The idea that these people, if they choose to vote “no” are somehow being evil and terrible destroyers of history is a sickening characterization. There may be a hundred really good things about the health reform package but there are at least 4 highly controversial components of this bill that are seriously objectionable to a lot of people:

1.  Significant restrictions on a women’s right to choose
2. An Excise Tax on high end insurance policies
3. An Individual Mandate requiring people to buy insurance.
4. Lack of any form of Public Insurance Program

These aren’t minor things. They’re pretty BIG things. #1 almost resulted in numerous pro-choice members of congress walking out. #2 almost caused unions to walk out on the process. #3 and #4 both poll horribly with the American people.

There is no shame, IMO on opposing the bill and voting no on one or all of these grounds.  Especially if you add in all of the little annoyances about the bill like the weird national/state hybrid exchange system, the lack of drug price negotiation and drug re-importation, the lack of a repeal of the insurance industry’s anti-trust exemption, lack of access for illegal immigrants, the restrictions that prevent States from setting up their own single payer systems or other creative health care solutions, etc. I certainly wouldn’t say someone who voted no on the bill for these reasons should be drummed out of the democratic party or should be considered not “progressive” enough.

However if these are your objections, there are some thoughts that might mollify them a little:

First the little things. Nobody knows whether the exchange or any exchange will work. That’s the kind of thing I think they can fix in a later bill if it isn’t working and probably nobody will notice. Drug negotiation and drug re-importation are things that can certainly be passed in a separate bill. There is enormous support for it but enormous opposition from the probably all powerful pharmaceutical industry. If Obama fights on this issue later on it could be really good for the country. I wouldn’t bet on it to happen before his second term though. Also though Republicans might well bring up the drug re-importation part if they were to take over Congress and/or the Presidency in order to show their distance from the Democratic party. If they were to do that I think it would be hard for Obama not to sign it into law if he were president. The anti-trust exemption repeal has already passed as a stand alone measure in the House. It could still become law. The illegal immigrant problem is a serious problem so Congress will eventually have to deal with it. Hopefully by creating a path for citizenship for the millions of people in the US illegally. If they do that, then those immigrants will gain access to all the advantages of the new Health Reform system.  States are allowed to innovate but not until something crazy like 2018 or 2019 I think iirc. By that time we’ll definitely no if this reform is a big huge failure or not. If there are restrictions preventing States from innovating they will surely be repealed in that eventuality.

Now for the major objections.

#4. There are two paths yet available for the public option. It could be added to the Senate reconciliation bill by a Senator offering it as an amendment. Then it’ll have to go back to the House and this Health Care nonsense will drag on even further. I highly doubt that will happen. The other path is the Medicare Buy In for Everyone bill that currently has over 80 cosponsors in the House proposed by Alan Grayson.  Personally, I think this is a great idea, but I don’t think it will get passed either anytime soon. It IS popular enough that I do think there will be a large and growing movement pushing for this in the immediate future. That’s a good thing that’s come out of the Heatlh Care debate. I hope it keeps us talking about Health Care until we really do make a fundamental change like allowing anyone to buy into medicare. Or better yet, a true Single Payer system. It’s possible the threat of the individual mandate may well encourage more support for this movement. People would much rather pay the government for a service (basically a tax) then be forced by the government to pay insurance industries for that same service.

#3. If there’s any component of this bill most likely to be stopped it’s this component. Many States, over 30 I think, have already implemented measures to try and make the mandate illegal. This will create numerous legal hassles. The Supreme Court is controlled by very conservative people who I would not bet on keeping this mandate in place. Even if that doesn’t happen, there will be pressure during this upcoming campaign and the next for whoever is in power to repeal the mandate. I would not be surprised at all if a future Congress repeals or adjusts the mandate.

#2. If the excise tax is as badly designed as many people including me have come to think it is, it probably won’t happen. It’s been pushed back to taking into effect until 2018 too and by then I imagine there will be signfiicant movement to repeal it or change it or push it back further.  If ti does come into effect the hit will be hard and people will immediately cry foul. Hopefully though, the threat of an impending excise tax might encourage the elimination of the gold plated insurance plans that drive up costs.

#1. There’s really no argument against this. It totally sucks. The only fight seems to be on whether a horrible ridiculous restriction becomes part of the law or a slightly not as bad restrictions becomes part of the law. The worst part about the debate on this issue is that it’s solidified a warped language on the issue of the abortion. The Obama administration and Democrats have legitimized the idea that it’s perfectly reasonable to restrict government funds to pay for abortion. They didn’t even try to fight that notion and it’s unclear that anyone ever will in the near future. This was the last issue that almost derailed HCR at the very last minute and may yet still prevent the bill from passing at the 11th hour. It’s super controversial and really stupid since the HCR debate wasn’t supposed to BE an abortion debate.  One hope that both sides might find soothing is that expanding peoples access to Health Care does statistically significantly reduce the rates of abortions that people actually have. So hopefully the fact that not as many abortions are paid for by insurance won’t be that terrible a thing. Maybe…

Final opinion. I hope it passes. It probably will pass. But I’m not super enthusiastic about it. You won’t find me cheering in the streets. Nor will I by crying in despair if it fails. I’m just looking for silver linings in a what in every ways seems like a mediocre bill to me. Maybe I’ve just been reading too much about this for far too long and have become too cynical about it all. The big truth about this bill is that it will help many millions of POOR people by expanding access to medicaid, to community health centers, and by giving subsidies for those who can’t afford to buy insurance. Whether or not this solves our long term health care needs, that’s just a really really good thing. We haven’t had any kind of legislation that seriously helps the poor in ages. It just sucks that the way our system is, the only way to get that done seems to be by passing a bill that preserves and entrenches all kinds of corrupt systems. Hopefully though it will shake up the balance of powers in our corporatocracy in some interesting ways. We’ll have to watch and see.

But my secret little itty bitty hope deep inside is that the bill fails and the utter shock of his biggest endeavor failing causes President Obama to wake up and rise to the occasion. That he could afterward become a true populist leader who works for real systemic change and galvanizes the people onto his side. Then maybe we could get a great health care reform bill passed. And great bills in other areas too. But realistically, that probably just won’t happen. 

btw my hats off to the Republican party who maneuvered what should have been a totally losing debate for them, masterfully. I despise their tactics, but there’s no doubt they’ve been successful in weakening the bill, dragging out the process, and giving themselves a good position no matter what happens. The can run against the bad components of the bill if it passes, and they can run against Democratic inefficacy if it fails. Don’t know if it will be enough to undue the damage done to the party by Bush but it’s certainly a step in the right direction for them. Provided they don’t ruin it by reacting idiotically to the bill passing.

Anyway Hooray for HCR?  What are your thoughts?

Earlier I posted an entry on how MediaMatters reported that Rush Limbaugh is promising to leave the country if Health Care Reform passes.  Well more details about that was reported here by the always excellent Jon Walker at FiredogLake:

Here’s what Rush actually said:

“I don’t know. I’ll just tell you this, if this passes and it’s five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented — I am leaving the country. I’ll go to Costa Rica“

As Jon Walker explains the REAL hypocrisy here is that Costa Rica in fact has a Public, Single Payer, Government Run Health Care System.  That is, if anyone has been listening to Rush Limbaugh knows the epitome of what he rants against. It’s the main thing actual liberals and leftists and progressives actually want most. Rush Limbaugh has said and implied, many times, that that very kind of system is the road to ruin and tyranny and naziism and communism. It’s pretty much the same kind of system that exists in Canada and the United Kingdom which Rush Limbaugh rants against almost every single day. 

Yet, if we pass Health Care Reform for some reason Rush Limbaugh has no problem whatsoever going to Costa Rica to enjoy his government run health care. What does that mean? Does it mean he only wants us to have a crappy health care system.

If only Rush Limbaugh were the only one. 

Sarah Palin while giving a speech in Canada said her family used to prefer Canadian Health Care:

“My first five years of life we spent in Skagway, Alaska, right there by Whitehorse. Believe it or not — this was in the ’60s — we used to hustle on over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse. I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse and I think, isn’t that kind of ironic now. Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada“

Presumably then she believes that Health Care in Canada was better than that in the United States in the 1960′s but judging by her tendency to strongly criticize the Canadian Health Care System today she must think it’s gone terribly down hill.

However, back in the 1960′s, Canada was already well on its way to a socialized health care system. It was significantly more socialized than the American system at the time or today. Back in 1957, the federal government of Canada passed a bill whereby they would pay for 50% of the cost of all health care systems in any province that set up a prepaid, near universal hospital insurance health care system in the model already setup in Saskatchewan (1946) and in Alberta (1950). By 1961, every province in Canada had setup such a system, including Yukon which did so in 1960. 

So by time Sarah Palin’s family went to Canada to get health care when she was a kid, health care at any hospital was already prepaid and effectively free for anyone to take part in.  It was socialized by tax payer money at the province level, and 50% socialized at the federal level. No WONDER Sarah Palin’s family found it so enticing!
In contrast, the United States didn’t even make it mandatory for hospitals to treat people even in emergency situations until 1986 through the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act.

The Canandian system later became even more socialized. In 1966, Canada extended the 50% federal/provincial cost sharing agreement to include not just hospitalization but all universal health insurance coverage programs. This was the beginning of Canada’s Medicare system. By 1972, Palin’s Yukon had agreed to this as well. Finally in 1984 the Canadian Health Act passed which prohibited fees and exclusions making Health Care truly universal in Canada. And the results of all that socialism has been a substantially better system then the one we have here.

You can read more about this here and here.

The funny thing is, Sarah Palin fearmongers about the idea of a government run Health Care system all the time. She was even one of the ones who suggested that the Obama Health Care overhall would lead to “Death Panels” an idea politifact rates as a pants on fire lie.

So apparently Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin both actually like socialism. It’s just fine just so long as it’s anywhere but in the United States. I guess it’s great when you have the money and resources to travel or move out of country to get care but terrible to make it available to every other normal person around who can’t go through such lengths to get care.

One last example, of course it’s the best of all. Glenn Beck outdoes them both.  But don’t take my word for it, take the Daily Show’s:

So apparently public LIBRARIES are great to Glenn Beck even though all socialism, progressivism, and communism are pure evil. Yet he doesn’t even understand the hypocrisy?

It’s great to know that all socialism is so bad except when it’s things that happen to benefit these boneheads. Then of course in these people’s minds it’s not really socialism at all.

Today Final Fantasy XIII comes out for the XBox360 and the Playstation 3. Now I’m a huge fan of this series and have been playing Final Fantasy games since I was extremely young, probably under ten years old. So far I’ve completed every core game that can be completed with the exceptions of II, III, and V.  V I played half way through or so before the job system just annoyed me to death and I couldn’t make myself continue playing.  II, and III were originally not released in the United States at all. I recently played II on my iphone in a special re-release thing they are doing but I haven’t gotten very far. I’m not even sure if they’ve ever released III in the US, but I did play a little bit of it on an emulator back in college.

By far my favorite Final Fantasy is VI (called Final Fantasy 3 in its first release in the United States).  That’s the one featuring Celes, Locke, Terra, Setzer, Cyan, Shadow and a whole host of other amazing characters. One of the most effective parts of that game was the primary villain, the absolutely crazy world destroying Kefka.

My second favorite was the much beloved Final Fantasy VII. That’s the Cloud, Tifa, Aeris game with a tragic twist in the middle. Once again one of the most effective parts of that game was the dark and ruthless villain Sephiroth.

My personal deepest worry about Final Fantasy XIII is that it will fail to see how important making credible villains and credible threats is in making a good role playing game. Also that it won’t create a heroic cast that is anywhere near as memorable as the crews of these pivotal games.

A lot of the American and European initial reviews of XIII have focused on it being “too linear” especially in the first half. Now I haven’t played the game, but that strikes me as a really weird critique. Have these people ever PLAYED a Final Fantasy game??? They’re ALL linear during the first half. In VI you have strict places you have to go and you can’t deviate until after the breaking of the world. In VII the entire time you’re in the main city of Midgar you’re pretty much on a strict schedule. In X, the game is linear all the way until after you travel to Zanarkand. IV, VIII, IX, they’re ALL like that. Sometimes they’re tiny bits of freedom where you can like go to one place early only to have nothing happen there until you go to the other place first in order like you’re supposed to, but overall it’s extremely linear. That’s the style of these kinds of games. They’re trying to tell you a story and you’re largely along for the ride.

Final Fantasy XI is of course not linear at all but that’s a MMORPG and doesn’t really count (it’s also IMO no WoW). XII was a little less linear in that you could, if you could survive, walk insanely long annoying distances to explore random areas where doing so changes nothing of significance in the game except perhaps allowing you to gain insanely powerful weapons way earlier than you should be able to, provided you didn’t accidentally open the random non-marked chests that if you opened earlier somehow magically makes your weapon vanish. I’m not sure that’s a selling point. XII is my least favorite final fantasy game, so if being too “linear” means it’s different from that, then I consider it a good thing.

It seems in this day, RPG fans are looking for the kind of faux freedom provided by games like Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins.  Those are good games, but personally I found many aspects of them to be annoying. Their claim to being “nonlinear” is primarily that you can choose to go recruit different people from different areas. But those particular areas are themselves just as linear as any other game. You’re still basically going through pre-set scenarios. The overall game is still pretty linear too. Once you recruit all the people or go to the right area, the plot advances in a fairly linear deterministic manner. Your choices can create minor alterations in the story but the overall core of the story is the same.

In my opinion, Dragon Age and Mass Effect never reached anywhere near the level of character development or story telling of the best Final Fantasy games. They had some interesting characters but they were largely cliche. Much more the games were about the social interaction you can do with your characters based on your own choices and of course the combat system.

Linearity I’m not convinced is a negative in a game at all.  Consider, Halo 3. That campaign part of that game was entirely linear and I thought it was pretty good. So was Resident Evil 5. So was Bayonetta which I thought was an amazing game. I don’t recall people complaining about any of those games being “too linear”. There are lots of games like that. You go through scenario to scenario in specific order. You have fun playing the game mechanics while the plot is revealed to you as a cinematic experience. Why is that bad?

There are other games that are not linear at all and I suppose that’s praise worthy but I tend to not like those games very much. There’s Grand Theft Auto games in which you have free reign over the world and Assassin’s Creed games which are similar. Fable II is a good RPG example where after the initial sequence you can prett much go anywhere within small limits. That can be good. Somestimes exploration of the world can be a lot of fun. But generally I find I can get bored looking around for the place to go to trigger the next important plot sequence in these kinds of games. Invariably when I want more of the story I find myself forced to explore the world and once I’m done exploring the world and doing everything I can with exploration I find myself quickly losing interest in actually playing through the story.

Really I’m not buying the “too linear” critique. It’s possible what people are complaining and calling linearity is really a different more devastating problem. That is, it might be that the game is just too SIMPLISTIC. It might just plain be boring. But that’s not a problem because the game is too linear, that’s a problem because the writers and programmers didn’t put enough into the game to catch players attention. To me that would be a more devastating critique and I’m a bit worried it might be the case.

The reasons I find myself fearing that is because of some of the rumours I’ve heard about the game including the following:

1. towns are short and simple without much to explore
2. there’s very little in the way of equipment to seek or bother with equipping
3. there are no mini-games and very few side quests
4. the game is very long even for a final fantasy
5. the villains are unimpressive
6. the heroes/heroines are cliche repeats of characters from other FF games

Now I’m not sure if any of these critiques are true or if there aren’t other aspects that counteract them. Again that’s just what I’ve read in reviews I’ve skimmed and I have no idea if they’ll end up being a bad thing. But if a game has very little for players to actually do or care about it can be a really dangerous way to program a game. There’s only so much eye candy can really do for you in terms of your enjoyment of a game. Indeed one of the problems I had with Final Fantasy XII is that it became boring to me. Once I’d figured out a pretty decent configuration for my character behaviors my characters were able to kill everything without me even paying attention. And watching combat wasn’t any fun either since it was so chaotic and hard to follow. So basically all I did was walk around and let my characters kill everything until the end of the game. And there was a LOT of walking in that game. Way too much unnecessary walking without any cut scenes or anything breaking up the monotony of the constant walking and fighting.

I’m hoping XIII isn’t at all like that. I suspect it won’t be. It actually sounds to me from what I’ve read that the game is going to be trying to be a little more like VII which if true can only be an entirely good thing. Heck the main character’s name is “Lightning”. How can that not remind you of a game where the main character’s name was “Cloud”? I don’t think that’s an accident.

Even though I’m worried, I’m still extremely enthusiastic about playing this game. It’s been a really long time since I’ve played a real Final Fantasy so the game will have value even if it’s only for its nostalgia value. Also from what I’ve seen in trailers the cut scenes are beautiful and the music sounds amazing (though I still doubt anything can hold up to the classic Nobuo Uematsu scores).

So here’s to a new game. Perhaps in the future I’ll write about how I feel about this game after I play it

Personally over the past year I’ve become increasingly ambivalent about the Health Care reform bill. If I were in Congress right now I wouldn’t vote for it. But if it passes I won’t be devastated or particularly worried. The doomsday scenarios you may have heard are vastly exaggerated. The bill will help a lot of people but at the same time it will perpetuate what I think is a very flawed private health insurance system.

The long term effects are hard to predict. The biggest clear impact I think it will have is to badly hurt the Democratic party. The bill has a number of unpopular components that don’t really need to be there that Republicans will be able to run on threatening to repeal.  Democrats in turn will point to the good provisions. But the whole discussion will be mostly abstract since many of the bad and good components won’t actually be in effect come election time. In such a situation, I’m pretty sure fear will win out and Democrats will suffer.

BUT there is a silver lining! MediaMatters is reporting a breaking news story that totally changed my mind on HCR. If it’s true, I’d TOTALLY vote for Health Care Reform. I’d do so excitedly and enthusiastically. Here’s the headline:

Rush Promises If Health Care Legislation Passes, “I’m Leaving The Country”

Seriously how awesome would that be?

I can think of a list of a few other people I hope he takes with him. Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Dick Cheney would be near the top of that list.

Of course, realistically, it probably wouldn’t really help that much. He didn’t promise not to run a satellite or internet radio program or television show that broadcasts in the US or to spend money on US media. Nor did he promise not to ever come back. But it’d be soooo awesome if he did do all of that. If he just decided not to have anything to do with America, that would just be great. Then he’d just have to go help screw up another country.

But who am kidding? It’s not like Rush Limbaugh would ever keep his word. But if he did, that’s one huge plus for Obama’s Health Care Reform package.

Here’s one more nice chart:

As reported by Jason Rosenbaum at firedoglake. The data comes from Kaiser Family Foundation. This one shoes how insurance companies are screwing everyone over. Not much to say here. I was willing to entertain the notion that insurance companies were being unfairly scapegoated for what is really a multi-variable health care problem but no longer. This is why have middle men pretty much always sucks. Can anyone explain to me why exactly it is necessary to even have a private insurance industry?

Snow? It’s really kinda HOT out there!

This is from the Global Satellite Temperature Record. The Green line that ends in the box is THIS year. All the other lines are previous years. Make your own chart here. As it turns out, in spite of snowmageddon, January was the HOTTEST January on record globally. February looks like it has been the HOTTEST February on record. And overall this looks like it will be the hottest winter on record. More precipitation and more snow does not mean Global Warming isn’t happening.

The recession actually IS big!
 

As Paul Krugman so aptly explained, this recession was no small matter. There’s a Trillion dollar gap between where our GDP would have been had this recession not happened and where it actually is. That translates into many many lost jobs and lost revenue and lots of companies going out of business. The spending gap needs to be made up somehow.

Majorities under FDR, LBJ and Obama!

This was reported under FiveThirtyEight.com. If you think Obama is wasting his “huge” majorities in congress, particularly compared to LBJ and FDR who were such amazingly effective Presidents, look at the above chart. Turns out President Obama has nowhere NEAR the support in Congress that FDR or LBJ enjoyed after first being elected.

People tend to think Obama is the anomaly in getting so little done with such high majorities. That’s a false short sighted view. The reality is, President George W. Bush was the anomaly in that he changed so much with such remarkably tiny majorities in both houses of congress. That has something to do with Republicans employing new hardball tactics, Democrat disorganization, and of course the outpouring of national support post-9/11 Bush received.

The Effect of the Stimulus

Okay so the Obama administration is probably overselling this graph. (They’re asking people to make it their twitter icon? Please.)   But it does tell a really important story.  Those who are arguing that the Stimulus and the Obama administration’s crazy liberal policies have screwed up and “sunk” our economy are just full of crap. You could argue that the policies haven’t done enough, but you can’t argue that they’ve caused harm. The chart shows pretty clearly that the rate of job loss has definitely been stemmed during the Obama administration. Whether that was because of the Stimulus, as many economists believe and the Obama administration is advertising, or would have happened anyway because it’s the “natural” behavior of recessions is something we can argue about. But I submit it’s impossible to argue honestly that the Obama administration made things worse in terms of job growth at this point in time.

The Filibuster Epidemic!

These two charts show the gargantuan spike of filibuster threats in the current Obama administration Congress. Specifically the charts show Cloture Motions which are generally only needed to overcome the threat real or perceived of a filibuster. A filibuster is when one or more members of Congress threatens to speak forever in order to prevent a bill from coming to the floor for a vote.

More specifically during 2007-2008 when Democrats controlled the Senate, Republicans filibustered Democratic legislation 112 times. As of February 2010, Republicans had filibustered 40 times in the 2009-2010 Congress. Democrats this year have not even been trying to pass much legislation UNLESS they are sure they can pass by cloture. Prior to that the most filibusters Democrats had done was in 1999-2000 with 58 total filibusters.

So virtually everything the Democrats in Congress attempt to do now has to reach the 60 vote threshold because it is always held up by the well understood threat of a filibuster. This is historically unprecedented.

However, it also shows that the filibuster has been a sort of a nuclear arms race kind of a deal. More filibusters congress after congress whenever the numbers are close as the minority party always figures out that impeding progress is one of their best weapons for making the other party look bad. The Republican parties recent extreme use of the filibuster breaks all records but is not unexpected to anyone who has been paying attention. Their rhetoric that speaks of disastrous take over of Congress by the crazy extreme liberal left compels this behavior if they are going to be consistent and it’s obviously politically effective.

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Hope these pictures are helpful.