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I watched the first ABC News “This Week” show with Christiane Amanpour as the anchor. I have to admit I didn’t watch the interviews with Nancy Pelosi and Robert Gates. There’s nothing unusual in that: I rarely watch the interview segments on This Week preferring instead to watch the round table discussion and what follows.
I didn’t care for Amanpour. She seemed jerky and unfocused in the round table segment, reading from a list of prepared questions and not really responding to - or adjusting to - the answers she got. On the other hand, I wasn’t crazy about Jake Tapper when he first took over the anchor’s chair either and once he got his feet under him I liked him a lot. So, yes, I would like Tapper back but I’m willing to concede - however grudgingly - that it’s too soon for me to write Amanpour off. And I can’t help but think it would be awfully nice if one of the Sunday morning political shows had a woman as an anchor.
I did hate the new not-at-all-round table used for the round table segment. It’s not just that it’s awfully ugly; it’s that it looks like Amanpour is screaming “I’m In Charge Here.” The participants don’t face each other; they face her. I suspect I should be grateful that someone prevented whoever designed the new set from going with what I imagine their first impulse was: setting up a lectern for Amanpour and those cute little chair-and-desk in one student arrangements for her guests.
And speaking of chairs, if Amanpour is going to continue to have Paul Krugman as a guest she’s going to have to find one and the accompanying whip to keep him from talking over those with whom he disagrees. I’ve tended toward this opinion for quite a while now but watching Krugman uncaged (so to speak) has convinced me that while he is an intelligent man, he has long since passed the point at which his ability to think coherently has been fatally damaged by his ideology. I do not believe he is any longer capable of seeing any facts that contradict his world view.
Almost all of us suffer from this to some extent, of course: we see and hear information that supports our beliefs and filter out or denigrate information that doesn’t. I think Krugman has gotten to the point where he cannot perceive any facts that contradict his beliefs and, worse, if you pointed this out to him, his response would be that no such facts exist. We’re all lucky he’s not an engineer.
And then there’s Amanpour’s change to the “In Memoriam” segment. Under George Stephanopoulos and subsequent anchors, the notable dead would be reviewed and then the moderator would say:
This week, the Pentagon released the names of [however many] servicemembers [or soldiers and/or Marines] killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The names of the servicemembers who had died would then appear on the screen. (I want to sidetrack here and say that I deeply appreciated the fact that no servicemember’s name ever appeared on the screen by itself so long as there was more than one death. If there were nine deaths, we saw three screens of names with three names per screen. If there were ten deaths, we saw two screens of names with three names per screen, then two screens of names with two names per screen.)
Amanpour changed the lead-in to this:
We remember all of those who died in war this week, and the Pentagon released the names of [however many] U.S. servicemembers killed in Afghanistan.
The change in lead-in is jarring simply because it is a change. If there had been no segment referring to United States servicemembers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and Amanpour had started one using the lead-in she used, I doubt it would have caused a ripple. It’s the fact that she elected to change the lead-in that raises the questions: Why did she do that? What message is she trying to send? Is she not showing proper respect to United States servicemembers by lumping them in with all the dead from all the wars in the world?
Tom Shales is particularly unhappy with Amanpour’s change and asks:
Did she mean to suggest that our mourning extend to members of the Taliban?
I think Shales is reading way too much into the change, jarring though it was. Amanpour made her bones as an international correspondent and I imagine that maintaining a non-United States centric image is going to be part of her schtick. Referring to all the war dead is part of her “I see the whole world” persona. She needs a new writer, though: the “and” in her lead-in verges on dismissive. She would have done better to use a brief pause in place of the “and”.
A new segment called Amanpour’s “Picture of the Week” made me chuckle. It was introduced as images of people all over the world trying to escape a scorching summer brought to us courtesy of global warming. But the pictures didn’t look like people in dire straits due to an environmental disaster; they looked like people having a lot of fun with summer heat and various forms of water. If this segment was supposed to convince us we were facing a fiery crisis, it failed miserably.
Finally, to return to the round table, I thought this exchange between George Will and Paul Krugman suggested a possibility for Amanpour’s next show:
WILL: Lest it be thought that Paul and I agree on something, let me...
AMANPOUR: Well, you might. Maybe this is a rarity today.
WILL: No, this is not the case, because Paul thinks the government is dangerously frugal at this point, and I do not think so. I side with people like Kenneth Rogoff at Harvard who say there is time for austerity, and this is it.
KRUGMAN: Well, you know, we can...
AMANPOUR: That's happening in Europe, as you know...
(CROSSTALK)
KRUGMAN: That's -- yes, I think Ken Rogoff is doing some damage here with some pretty bad statistics. But...
If Amanpour is as smart as her fans believe she is, she’ll invite Kenneth Rogoff on the show next week. If she’s really smart, she’ll face him off against Krugman in the interview segment. Even I might watch that one.
[I originally wrote this piece on June 10 of this year, hence the words “almost exactly” in the last paragraph.]
I have a very dear friend who is on the verge of a trip to Turkey as part of an interfaith group - which includes Jews. This means that despite my current reluctance to pay any attention to local, State, national, or world political situations, I have been drawn to some articles about the recent Israeli interdiction of the Palestinian flotilla. One of the items I read reported that Iran was “offering a naval escort for the next flotilla”:
“Iran’s Revolutionary Guard naval forces are prepared to escort the peace and freedom convoys that carry humanitarian assistance for the defenceless and oppressed people of Gaza with all their strength,” pledged Hojjatoleslam Ali Shirazi, Khamenei’s personal representative to the guards corps.
When I mentioned this to my husband, he asked - half-seriously - if perhaps Iran believed that President Obama was so busy with the Gulf oil spill that the United States wouldn’t pay attention to what Iran did. I don’t think that’s it at all.
I think Iran - and the rest of the world - believe that if Israel is destroyed and some or all of the Jews in Israel are killed, the United States will not do a damn thing. And I think Iran - and the rest of the world - are correct.
If Israel is destroyed and six million Jews die, most of Western Europe and an unfortunately large chunk of the United States will think three things:
1) Well, it’s a tragedy but the Jews brought it on themselves after all.
2) It’s too bad but at least we won’t have to worry about the Jews anymore.
3) Now the Arabs/Muslims/radical Muslims will love us and want to be friends.
They’d be criminally, heinously, and inexcusably wrong about the first thought. They’d be stupidly and naively wrong about the third thought. I suspect they’d be wrong about the second thought also. After all, destroying Israel and its citizens wouldn’t eliminate all the Jews in the world. There are quite a few in the United States, for example. And I would imagine that a fair number of the Jews left alive in the world would be very, very angry: angry at whoever did the destruction (Iran, the Arab nations, Pakistan); angry at themselves for not realizing the danger until it was too late; and angry at the United States for stepping back and allowing it to happen.
They’d get even angrier when they realized that with Israel gone their lives get worse. That would happen partly because so long as Israel exists there is a place where Jews who are mistreated can find sanctuary and an entity that can make life at least somewhat unpleasant for anyone who mistreats Jews in other countries.
But the lives of the surviving Jews would get worse mostly because in order for the people of the world to justify letting six million Jews die in Israel we would have to convince ourselves that the Jews in Israel didn't really deserve to exist anyhow. We could avoid that conviction after the Nazi atrocities because we could all claim we didn’t know, we never imagined, no decent person could possibly believe it was really happening.
We wouldn’t have that excuse if Israel was destroyed: we know, we don’t have to imagine, no decent person can possibly deny it happened before and could happen again. And if the Jews in Israel didn't deserve to exist, well, then what about the Jews who survive the destruction of Israel? Wouldn’t life for everyone on the planet be simpler, more peaceful, less angry if there just weren’t any more Jews anywhere? And I’m sure at least some of the angry Jews left in the world would give us all the excuse we need to argue that they, too, are bringing it on themselves. Perhaps I’m just getting old but it seems to me that the Western world is becoming far, far too comfortable with doing great harm in order to achieve what some believe will be a better life. For whoever is lucky enough to survive, of course.
Do I truly believe Israel will be destroyed? I don’t want to believe it; what decent person would? But for the first time in almost exactly 43 years I don’t consider it an impossibility. And that is terrifying, heart-breaking, and shameful.
*****
Reading:
Wikipedia - An accounting of the voyage of the MS (often SS) St. Louis during World War II. Pay particular attention to the “See also” section.
A Song for Helen - Deafening Silence on the rehabilitation of anti-Semitism. I find myself utterly bewildered by anti-Semitism. But then I find myself utterly bewildered by all forms of racial, gender-based, ethnic, and religious bigotry not so much because it’s immoral but because it’s so incredibly stupid. Exhibit A in this regard: Helen Thomas. Or, as my husband put it, surely if anyone is old enough to remember what happened to the Jews in Poland and Germany, it would be Helen Thomas.
Blind Hatred and “The Helen Thomas Treatment” - Villainous Company doing her usual excellent job. Warning: one graphic image in her discussion of how Germany and Poland treated Jews.
The First Cousin of Holocaust Denial - Jeffrey Goldberg. Notable quote:
While it is one thing (not a good thing, of course) to argue in euphemism for the destruction of Israel by invoking the so-called one-state solution, it is quite another to advocate for the "return" of Israeli Jews to their German and Polish homelands, not merely because such advocacy is almost comically absurd and cruel (or, at the very least, stunningly ignorant of recent European history) but because this argument denies to Jews what Helen Thomas, and people like Helen Thomas, want to grant the Palestinians: Recognition that they comprise, collectively, a nation.
And reading backward in his blog from that post provides some very interesting thoughts on the flotilla incident.
Helen Thomas and Peter Beinart - Opinion piece at the Wall Street Journal.
[These next links postdate my writing of this piece.]
Turning Tide - Everyday Glory on anti-Semitism, Israel, the flotilla, Charles Krauthammer, Comedy Central, intolerance, and the limits of The Washington Post.
Israel and the Surrender of the West - Shelby Steele writing in The Wall Street Journal.
The Nakba Obsession - A history lesson from Sol Stern in City Journal.
I read through the pages of Jornolist posts about the rumor that Trig Palin is actually Bristol Palin’s child rather than Sarah Palin’s. I may have more to say about this later but on first reading there was one post that made me laugh (emphasis mine):
John Blevins
Sept 1, 2008, 8:35am
I don’t think anyone here is talking about running with it. We’re privately airing out curiosities.
I think Mark S wrote it earlier — it matters b/c if this is true, she’s off the ticket and the election is probably over. That’s not b/c people will be outraged, but b/c (1) it discredits McCain and his vetting; (2) it makes her look like a weirdo; (3) it will become an object of national ridicule (e.g., Letterman, Leno, SNL, etc.).
Maybe this is all unjustified normatively, but this will be an enormous story if true — it’s just the type of tabloidy story that the public will eat up, low-information voters especially.
Based on my quick and dirty count, Blevins entry was around the 100th post in this thread. Apparently it’s not just low-information voters who eat up this type of tabloidy story.
Once the Obamacare Exchanges get going in 2014, everyone not in Medicare or Medicaid is going to have to either buy acceptable private health insurance as defined by the Federal government (with some exemptions for various things) or pay a penalty. The penalty is going to start at 1% of a person’s income in 2014 and rise to 2.5% of a person’s income by 2016.
Let’s take a best case scenario (also known as a fantasy) and assume I can buy health insurance for $100 per month, $1200 per year. I would have to be making $120,000 per year in 2014 in order for the penalty to be more expensive than the health insurance. If I make less than $120,000 then so long as I’m reasonably healthy it’s not in my best interest to buy health insurance. I know I can purchase insurance whenever I need or want it so the smart thing for me to do is to pay the penalty and put the difference between the penalty and the insurance premium into a savings account. I can use the money in savings to pay for ordinary medical costs like checkups and even dental care (which is not covered under Obamacare). If I become seriously ill, I can simply purchase insurance then - the insurance companies aren’t allowed to turn me down just because I’m already sick.
This plan works fine if the future illness is slow-moving. If I’m diagnosed with cancer, for example, I’ll almost certainly be well enough and have time enough to arrange for health insurance before I start incurring huge medical bills. Ditto for major degenerative diseases like multiple sclerosis. But what happens if I’m suddenly, catastrophically ill?
Let’s say I have a massive heart attack and am unconscious for days while the doctors struggle to save me. My medical bills mount to the rafters. I can’t apply for health insurance; I’m unconscious. My family could and I certainly think anyone who elects to wait for an illness before purchasing health insurance should make sure his family has a limited power of attorney that enables them to purchase health insurance on his behalf. But what if I have no family or by the time my family is contacted by the hospital and collects itself together enough to do the paperwork, I’ve already run up huge medical bills? That’s easy to do in the case of heart attack or stroke or being hit by a bus. Here’s where there’s a business opportunity waiting to be seized: Catastrophic Bridge Insurance.
Catastrophic Bridge Insurance (CBI) would offer a very limited form of health insurance, contracting only to pay whatever expenses are incurred before I could sign up for traditional health insurance. I would not buy traditional health insurance; I would pay the penalty to the government; and I would also pay a premium to my CBI carrier. In addition, I would provide that carrier with a limited power of attorney enabling it to apply for health insurance for me. I would get a card for my wallet - just like my current health insurance card - which would let medical personnel know who to contact about the bills even if I couldn’t contact the carrier myself. That contact would trigger my CBI carrier to apply for traditional health insurance for me.
Obviously customers will only buy CBI if the penalty for not having traditional health insurance plus the CBI premium is still less than the premium for traditional health insurance. I would think the premiums for Catastrophic Bridge Insurance would be fairly modest. The insurance only kicks in when catastrophe strikes so carriers wouldn’t have to charge enough to cover anticipated costs for the kinds of illnesses that drag on and on. No type of therapy would ever be covered; no long-term drug treatments; no follow-up visits and tests; none of the unending medical costs that mount up and up and up. Theoretically the most the carrier would be on the hook for would be 72 hours of emergency treatment if I’m inconsiderate enough to suffer a catastrophe on a weekend; in most cases it would be less than 24 hours of treatment. That treatment can be very expensive but it is limited in time and - most important - presumably occurs relatively infrequently.
Perhaps, in hopes of not being put out of business by the unsustainable setup* of Obamacare, the traditional insurance companies could start offering Catastrophic Bridge Insurance themselves. It would be a way for them to, in effect, bring healthy people back into their customer pool. If I have CBI coverage through, say, Blue Cross Blue Shield then if catastrophe strikes they just sign me up for their traditional health insurance.
Even better, the insurance companies might be able to backdate applications for traditional health insurance so that their CBI customers who fall ill would be signed up for traditional insurance prior to the date of their catastrophe. The insured would owe some number of previous month’s premiums (maybe customers would have to put up that amount as part of their contract) and their coverage would be considered to have commenced that many months prior to the catastrophic illness. Between the premiums from their customers who stay healthy and the ex post facto premiums from those who don’t, insurance companies might be able to stay afloat.
Although, I gotta say: this is starting to sound kind of like the system we have now.
*****
* Why is Obamacare an unsustainable setup for insurance companies? I live in New Jersey, where I’d be lucky to get health insurance for $3000 a year, never mind $1200 a year. If I make $50,000, my penalty will be $500 in 2014. I’ll save $2500 by paying the penalty instead of buying health insurance. Why on earth would I buy health insurance before I need it? Even without Catastrophic Bridge Insurance I’m far better off banking the thousands of dollars of difference between my premiums and my penalty, giving my husband a power of attorney to buy health insurance for me if I need it, and taking my chances. And if the enforcement mechanism for collecting the penalty is as weak as it seems to be, I save even more by choosing to forego health insurance.
Even if we assume that Congress decides to put some real teeth into collecting the penalty and everyone who chooses to forego health insurance ends up having to pay the penalty, it’s still going to be cheaper for most people to pay the penalty and the insurance companies will still go out of business. You see, the real joker in the deck for the health insurance companies is that the penalties don’t go to them. If they did, the companies might survive since they would effectively be subsidized for being forced to insure people with pre-existing conditions; that is, they would be collecting income without having to provide a product so long as the penalty-payers stay healthy.
Instead the penalties will go into the Federal coffers and the insurance companies will collect income only when they will have to pay out. Premiums will have to rise since this is no longer insurance but simply a pass-through from insured to health care providers. The Federal government (no matter which party is in control) will have a cow over the high rates and insist that “greedy” insurance companies lower their rates. The insurance companies will either stop doing business voluntarily or go broke trying to comply.
I’m back. Comment moderation is disabled. Which sounds sort of backwards so: Comments are now allowed with no interference from me.
I’ll be off the grid until around July 14. Comments are disabled.
I watched the Sunday talk shows not this past Sunday but the week before. On one of them - maybe “Meet The Press” - the roundtable discussion basically came down to:
ObamaCare Supporter: The American people will love the Democrats’ health care reform.
ObamaCare Opponent: No they won’t.
Supporter: Yes they will.
Opponent: No they won’t.
Supporter: Yes they will.
Opponent: No they won’t.
Supporter: Yes they will. Medicare, Social Security.
Opponent: No they won’t. That Medicare Catastrophe thing that got repealed.
Supporter: Yes they will.
Opponent: No they won’t.
Supporter: Yes they will.
Opponent: No they won’t.
This is like arguing about whether it’s going to rain in Poughkeepsie on November 2. Eventually November 2 will get here and we’ll see if it rains in Poughkeepsie; there’s no point arguing about it now. And eventually November 2 will get here and we’ll see if the American people have come to love health care reform.
Or maybe we won’t. Maybe the American people will have come to love health care reform but the economy will still be in dire straits so they’ll vote a lot of Democrats out of office anyhow. Or maybe the American people will still hate health care reform but the economy will be booming and they’ll hang onto the Democrats because of that. Or maybe the American people will still hate health care reform but the Republicans will have done something so stupid the voters will figure that even the party that passed such a lousy health care bill is better than the Republicans. We don’t know right now but we will on November 2. Well okay, maybe not until November 3 if we've got a lot of slow counters out there.
All of which is by way of saying that I’m pretty much burned out on politics right now. This will become an occasional - very, very occasional - blog. If nothing else, however, I’ll try to remember to post on November 3 and let you know if it rained in Poughkeepsie on Tuesday.
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