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Problems with defining what is uninsured

During the Clinton administration, proponents of universal health care created a compelling sense of urgency by citing a government statistic that said 40 million Americans lack health insurance for at least one year. Proponents called them "persistently uninsured." The National Coalition on Health Care reports that the 2007 figure is up to almost 47 million American.

But -- in 2004, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the correct figure (as of 2004) was really 21 to 31 million, a correction of almost 110% downward:

In recent years, it has been frequently stated that about 40 million Americans lack health insurance coverage. That estimate, by itself, presents an incomplete and potentially misleading picture of the uninsured population. The uninsured population is constantly changing as people gain coverage and lose coverage. Furthermore, people vary greatly in the length of time that they remain uninsured. Some people are uninsured for long periods of time, but more are uninsured for shorter periods. (CBO Testimony before the Subcommittee on Health Committee on Ways and Means U.S. House of Representatives, March 9, 2004).

Shifting the focus to the UNDER-insured

Because of problems with defining what it means to be uninsured, experts have shifted the focus to looking at the UNDER-insured.

If you have time in the coming days and weeks and months and years, browse the tributes to Tim Russert on youTube, and you'll be struck with two questions:

What kind of person am I?

How will I be remembered?

Tim Russert's impact and influence went well beyond his journalistic excellence. His greatest excellence was the lasting and positive and uplifting impact he had on his friends and his family. Tim was showered in love, because he gave so much to those he loved.

An old old Irish blessing and prayer: Remembered Joy

Don't grieve for me, for now I'm free!
I follow the plan God laid for me.
I saw His face, I heard His call,
I took His hand and left it all...
I could not stay another day,
To love, to laugh, to work or play;
Tasks left undone must stay that way.
And if my parting has left a void,
Then fill it with remembered joy.
A friendship shared, a laugh, a kiss...
Ah yes, these things I, too, shall miss.
My life's been full, I've savoured much:
Good times, good friends, a loved-one's touch.
Perhaps my time seemed all too brief—
Don't shorten yours with undue grief.
Be not burdened with tears of sorrow,
Enjoy the sunshine of the morrow.

The anti-HRC liberal blogsmearsphere roared it's disapproval on the most inane and silly of grounds, e.g., Robert Scheer argues a better approach is to lecture the world in

a serious, non-rhetorical, multinational [tone] that makes clear that no nation has the right to obliterate the population of another, and that nations, even our own, that claim that right should be challenged as unacceptably barbaric. (Robert Scheer, Clinton Threatens to ‘Obliterate’ Iran, April 22nd, 2008, www.truthdig.com)

Yes, I'm sure once the Iranians (and any other nation) fully understands that they don't have a "right" to obliterate entire populations, why then the worry, concern, and -- indeed -- the threat will be over.

If Mr. Scheer however, were to consult any history book that happens to be in easy reach, he would learn that human history is full of instances where tyrants, mega-maniacal-maniacs, and other like individuals and groups have tried to obliterate entire populations -- and in many cases, they succeeded.

It's hard to imagine that Mr. Scheer thinks this has happened because these individuals and groups didn't "get" that they just shouldn't be doing things like that because they really don't have the "right," and I really can't imagine that Mr. Scheer believe that if this was pointed out to such individuals and groups, then they would immediately slap their foreheads in sudden realization and immediately call a halt to any obliteration campaigns they've put in motion . . . but, I can't read Mr. Scheer's mind, so I don't know what he thinks . . . or if he's really thinking at all . . .

For example, while Obama-Rome burns, Peggy Noonan (though not a liberal) has nothing more to offer than demanding that world should be more "right-thinking" than what she feels it is:

I also think that if Hillary Clinton wins because of the Wright scandal, it will leave a sad taste in the mouths of many. Mr. Obama reveals many things in his books, speeches and interviews but polarity and a tropism toward the extreme are not among them. What happened with Mr. Wright should not determine the race. Mr. Obama’s stands, his ability to convince us he can make good change, his ability to be “one of us,” that great challenge for a national politician in a varied nation, should determine the race.(Peggy Noonan, Loyal to the Bitterness, WSJ, May 2nd, 2008).

Yeah, should not determine the race, but -- like it or not, it is.

Liberal Values quakes in fear over Hillary becoming Commander In Chief, and (as usual) for all the wrong reasons:

Earlier in the race the Clinton campaign tried to portray Obama as being reckless on foreign policy, even when making proposals which were the same as Clinton has made or which, like pursuing known terrorists into Pakistan, are consistent with current U.S. policy. The Boston Globe discusses how Clinton is really the dangerous one: AMERICANS have learned to take with a grain of salt much of the rhetoric in a campaign like the current Democratic donnybrook between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Still, there are some red lines that should never be crossed. Clinton did so Tuesday morning, the day of the Pennsylvania primary, when she told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that, if she were president, she would “totally obliterate” Iran if Iran attacked Israel. (Editorial, The Boston Globe, Hillary Strangelove)

Liberal Values agrees with The Boston Globe that the Saudis are "sound" advisors on this issue (completely missing the obvious: in a war between Iran and Israel, what other public position could Saudi Arabia possibly take?!):

The Saudi paper called Clinton’s nuclear threat “the foreign politics of the madhouse,” saying, “it demonstrates the same doltish ignorance that has distinguished Bush’s foreign relations.”

The Saudis are not always sound advisers on American foreign policy. But they understand that Rambo rhetoric like Clinton’s only plays into the hands of Iranian hard-liners who want to plow ahead with efforts to attain a nuclear weapons capability. They argue that Iran must have that capability in order to deter the United States from doing what Clinton threatened to do. (Editorial, The Boston Globe, Hillary Strangelove).

What did HRC threaten to do?

Clinton further displayed tough talk in an interview airing on "Good Morning America" Tuesday. ABC News' Chris Cuomo asked Clinton what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them." (MSNBC, Hillary Clinton says US could `totally obliterate' Iran after nuclear attack on Israel).

The Boston Globe makes a valid point about Iran's rational for pursuing nuclear weapons, but in completely the wrong context, i.e., the last thing the Iranians are arguing is that they intend to attack Israel, and they need nuclear weapons to protect themselves from a possible U.S. nuclear response. Rather the Iranians are worried about the prospect of the United States forcibly overthrowing them -- and as argued by RAND analysts David Ochmanek and Lowell H. Schwartz. Ochmanek in their monograph, The Challenge of Nuclear-Armed Regional Adversaries released April 15, 2008, North Korean and Iranian leaders have compelling reasons to consider developing nuclear weapons for that very reason.

Now that we've cleaned up the usual intellectual mess and confusion left by Liberal Values, we can get to the real issues.

Probably not -- compared to this, it'll be an exercise in bathos . . .

Deborah Jeane Palfrey (March 18, 1956 – May 1, 2008) hung herself to avoid a lengthy prison sentence (up to 55 years in federal prison) for facilitating the trading of sex for money between free, rational consenting adults.

Obama strongly denounces former pastor

It was remarkable how liberals and the Left generally missed the necessity of doing this (they miss a lot, but this should have been obvious), e.g.,

Liberal Values completely missed the political time bomb by seeing the Obama and Wright relationship as one distastefully based on religion rather than a reflection of Obama's character and judgment, which is where the real issues and questions lay:

Obama’s infusion of religion in politics was one major reason why he was not my first choice from the start . . . [however] I’ve been able to support Obama despite his mingling of religion in a political campaign to a degree far more that I would like due to his strong support for separation of church and state. (Liberal Values, Obama Responds to Controversy over Wright).

In response to the release of the initial Wright video, Obama gave a great speech, and it satisfied a lot of people, mostly liberals, e.g., Liberal Values's Obama's Speech, Charles Murry from The Corner, and, of course, Andrew Sullivan, however, it shouldn't have -- because it was a cop-out. It showed a lack of true leadership, true responsibility, and experience.

The topic of his lecture was not about his work, not about computational algorithms or immersive virtual reality systems -- its topic was instead:

Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.

The lecture, just for his students, colleagues and visitors, swelled to over 400 attendees in the large McConomy Auditorium. It was recorded and released on youtube where it became a world wide phenomena.

The Apostle Paul counsels us in the 13th Corinthians, verse 11: When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things.

Yet there are some childish things that should not be put away, or at least not thought of as childish things, and that is -- our Hopes and our Dreams. They are what we begin with, and they will be with us in the end -- if we keep, hold, and cherish them always.

Give yourself a quiet uninterrupted hour and 15 minutes to listen to his lecture. He's a very successful happy guy, and he gives some great advice, but what stands out, in the end, is what we think are the most important things are not really those things -- it's something else: it's not what we get (though that is very important stuff!) -- it's what we give, and we give though the realization of our hopes and dreams:

His energies and talents in his later years went more towards promoting traditional conservative causes, such as the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.

I knew it I knew it I knew it I knew it!!!!!!

Liberal Values almost had me fooled -- Obama is absolutely lethal to what's left of the tradition of individualism, self-reliance, and small government.

Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish has this to say:

I went to see Obama last night. He had a fundraiser at H20, a yuppie disco/restaurant in Southwest DC. I was curious about how he is in person. I'm still absorbing the many impressions I got. But one thing stays in my head. This guy is a liberal. Make no mistake about that. He may, in fact, be the most effective liberal advocate I've heard in my lifetime.

The overwhelming first impression that you get - from the exhausted but vibrant stump speech, the diverse nature of the crowd, the swell of the various applause lines - is that this is the candidate for real change. He has what Reagan had in 1980 and Clinton had in 1992: the wind at his back. Sometimes, elections really do come down to a simple choice: change or more of the same? (Andrew Sullivan, The Reagan of the Left?)

Five years ago, few predicted that the Iraq war would turn out this way (except for the thinkers at my favorite think tank: Cato called it all correctly even before the invasion)

The war's supporters, like Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, issued endless false assurances to the American people before the war that 'we can win an overwhelming victory in a very short period of time.' Senator Hillary Clinton could not be bothered to read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq before voting to send U.S. troops into battle.

With the Ship Of State feeling more like the Titanic, no wonder people are grabbing onto Obama not realizing he's a leaky and unsteady lifeboat:

First, the fact is -- the Democratic party let us down. I've never voted Democrat before, but I did durning the midterm elections because I was troubled by the growth in government spending and -- frankly -- pissed off and fed up with the Iraq war. John Kerry and the Democratic party talked a good game and seem to be a light at the end of a very long and very dark tunnel.

Dear Reader of The Charters Of Dreams

TCOD is now a member of Smorty where bloggers can  blog for money -- from the smorty.com website:

Smorty is a bridge between bloggers and advertisers. Advertisers start campaigns with us and we deliver them to the right bloggers for publishing an opinion on their Blogs (http://www.smorty.com)

I like smorty's approach to advertising: great advertising isn't about selling you "X," it's about your relationship to "Y," and "X" either helps that relationship or makes it better!

For example, zoom in on the wife (ca. 1958) saying oh dear, my husband's shirt has this terrible stain, and he's got a big presentation to do tomorrow. What do I do? Pan over to another woman poking her head in the laundry room window an saying don't worry Beth, X will clean that spot right out, and the shirt will look as good as the day you bought it! Cut to Beth and her husband, and husband says Honey! the presentation went great! They loved it! Now we can afford to move into a bigger house! Oh . . . by the way, you didn't have to buy me this new shirt, but -- it's looks great! You're the best honey!

See -- it's not at all about "X," it's about sex and love, so when I write an post for smorty client, you'll never know that I'm doing it to get paid for blogging-- you'll think I'm writing about sex and love, but then . . . strangely, inexplicably, you'll start thinking about "X"  . . .

ah . . . Capitalism + psychology/human nature = money, and the Universe works!

A few weeks ago, both Hillary and Roarin' John put nice guy Barack on the defensive by suggesting he had not the needed experience to "man up" under a possible future national security crisis:

Sen. Barack Obama is facing attacks on two fronts on one of the toughest issues facing his campaign: whether he has the experience necessary to be the nation's commander in chief.

Both Sen. Hillary Clinton, his rival in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, and Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, are arguing that Mr. Obama, who has no military background and few foreign-policy credentials, is ill-equipped to serve as commander in chief. Both say he would stack up poorly next to Mr. McCain, a Vietnam War hero who has been involved in many foreign-policy debates during his Senate career. Mrs. Clinton also has some foreign-policy experience from her time in the Senate and as first lady. (Clinton, McCain Push Experience Button, WSJ, 02 . 21 . 2008)

If Barack's immediate first instinctual response was any indication of his ability to "man up" under an attack, it was beginning to look like Hillary and Roarin' John were right:

Libertarian conservatives are, quite frankly, terrified of the centralized government's growing power and reach, a power and reach that Liberals and the Left either seem not to worry about or -- worse -- outright encourage.

They seem to have a view that some "special" people are so good, so wise -- like a perfect idealized fantasy parent figure --  that no amount of State Power is too much as long as their "hearts" (i.e., their values, their "liberal values") are in the right place and their "minds" (their ability to predict and control the physical external world) are a cut of above the rest. While some liberals debate strategy, as long as these "special people" are pursuing "The Common Good," the ends will ever justify the means, i.e., an ever growing government (E.g., The Liberal Values blog is perversely content to see government grow albeit at a slower pace all the while inexcusably oblivious to the negative relationship between the size of government and economic freedom, human rights, civil liberties, & prosperity: the neocons learned all too well from their distant & estranged left brethren).