Hey, I like Brett Favre. I just don't like-like him, if you know what I mean, as most of our sports politburo does.

As expected, he signed with the Vikings.

This is where I make the point I usually do with regard to Favre: Too much credit is given to athletes who leave the game before they pass their prime. People wax poetically about how retiring before the inevitable physical decline leaves people with the memory of the athlete in top peak form.

Well... okay. But what's so great about that? It's not as if I'm somehow tricked into believing they're actually immortal. I know they just left the game -- prudently, perhaps -- before their mortality began demonstrating itself.

I give much more credit to guys like Vinny Testaverde and, yes, Brett Favre, who don't know when to quit, who keep playing just because they love the game and don't know how to do anything better.

It's one thing to put yourself through the pain and hardship of football when you'e great at it and your bestride the field like a living god.

But what about when it becomes even more difficult for you, when you become, at best, an average player, and furthermore an average player who'll do nothing but decline in ability, and the physical pain and hardship ratchet up dramatically?

What about that kind of guy? The guy who says "I don't care if I'm not terribly good anymore, I don't care if I don't get the adoration I used to, I don't care if this is tougher for me than it's ever been in my entire life. Just put me in, I want to play."

I dig those guys more than the those who exit before their powers fade.*

* Unless you have serious medical problems like Troy Aikman. Or you're a running back like Jerome Bettis. (Running backs take the worst pounding of anyone in the sport and exit the game, if they're not very careful and if they overstay their useful years, as near-invalids barely able to walk.)

And boxers.

I guess I'm not really questioning anyone's leaving a brutal and unforgiving game. I'm just saying I don't get the props given to people who leave at their peak or just past it.

It's a smart decision, a wise decision, but I don't see it as laudable beyond saying just that -- it's prudent. It's savvy. It's health-conscious. But it's not laudable in the ways these homoerotic arrested-development hero-worshipping boy-men sports geeks carry on about it.

BTW: Yes, I have just praised Brett Favre.

But I did admit I liked him.

I just don't want to go steady with him.

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Posted by: Ace at 08:10 AM | Add Comment
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A Waterloo, too, for Washington's permanent quasi-governmental lobbyist elite.

CBS News has learned that up to 60,000 people have cancelled their AARP memberships since July 1, angered over the group's position on health care.

Elaine Guardiani has been with AARP for 14 years, and said, "I'm extremely disappointed in AARP."

Retired nurse Dale Anderson has 12 years with AARP and said, "I don't wanna be connected with AARP."

Many are switching to the American Seniors Association, a group that calls itself the conservative alternative as CBS News Investigative Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports.

...

The American Seniors Association is flat-out against President Obama's plan, which calls for $313 billion dollars in Medicare cuts over ten years. The AARP is widely viewed as supporting the President.

The article notes that the AARP, while not formally endorsing Obama's plan and cuts, seems to be "waffling" on the issue in the eyes of many, supporting it through deed if not word.

Dick Morris, who -- credit where credit's due -- has been pushing the cuts to seniors as our best line of attack for longer than anyone I know of, crows a bit and says thank God for seniors.

Whether or not he admits it even to himself, Obama's talk of cutting "inefficiencies" and reducing costs translates to less care, of lower quality, for the elderly. Every existing national health system finds ways to deny state-of-the-art medications and necessary surgical procedures to countless patients, and ObamaCare has the nascent mechanisms to do the same. With the limited options that Obama's vision would leave them, many will find that "end of life counseling" necessary and even welcome.

"Reform" would cut care to the elderly in several ways:

* Slash hundreds of billions from Medicare spending, largely by lowering reimbursement rates to doctors and hospitals for patient care.

If a hospital gets less money for each MRI, it will do fewer of them. If a surgeon gets paid less for a heart bypass on a Medicare patient, he'll perform them more rarely. These facts of the marketplace are not only inevitable consequences of Obama's cuts but are also its intended consequence. Without them, his savings will prove illusory.

* Expanding the patient load by extending full coverage to 50 million Americans (including such "Americans" as illegal immigrants) without boosting the supply of care will force rationing decisions on harried and overworked doctors and hospitals.

People with insurance use a lot more health-care resources -- so today's facilities and personnel will have to cope with the increased workload. Busy surgeons will have to decide who would benefit most from their treatment -- de facto rationing. The elderly will, inevitably, be the losers.

* The Federal Health Board, established by this legislation, will be charged with collecting data on various forms of treatment for different conditions to assess which are the most effective and efficient. While the bills don't force providers to obey the board's "guidance," its recommendations will still wind up setting the standards and protocols for care systemwide.

We've already seen Medicare and Medicaid lead a similar race to the bottom with their formularies and other regulations. With Washington dictating what every policy must cover and regulating all rates, insurers and providers will all have to follow the FHB's advice on limiting care to the elderly -- a de facto rationing system.

* In assessing whether to allow certain treatments to a given patient, medical professionals will be encouraged to apply the Quality-Adjusted Remaining Years system. Under QARY, decision-makers seek to "amortize" the cost of treatment over the remaining "quality years of life" likely for that patient.

Imagine a hip replacement costing $100,000 and the 75-year-old who needs it, a diabetic with a heart condition deemed to have just three "quality" years left. That works out to $33,333 a year -- too steep! Surgery disallowed! (Unless of course, the patient has political connections . . . )

Younger, healthier patients would still get the surgery, of course. The QARY system simply aims to deny health care to the oldest and most infirm, "scientifically" condemning them to infirmity, pain and earlier death than would otherwise be their fate.

In short, ObamaCare doesn't need to set up "death panels" to make retail decisions about ending the lives of individual patients. The whole "reform" scheme is one giant death panel in its own right.

Through the eighties and nineties, Republicans would sometimes propose limiting Medicare and Medicaid (increased co-pays, etc.) and every time the Democratic war room accused them of trying to kill Grandma.

Suddenly, the media-Democratic establishment finds such rhetoric to be beyond the pale. What Terry MacCauliffe, Harry Reid, and Tom Daschle said without media objection one hundred times is suddenly the most toxic and dishonest thing ever said in the history of saying stuff, when Sarah Palin writes it once.

It should also be noted that the Republican plans were concerned with keeping the system solvent and therefore alive. Obama is right -- but then, so is everybody -- when he says the system will become insolvent without reforms.

True, true. But what he proposes is entirely unresponsive to that observation. Rather than making the system self-sustaining and solvent, he proposes instead to flood the government-health-care-system with upwards of 50 million new enrollees, quite a few of them not even American, and will raise taxes and cut benefits from seniors to make this scheme (supposedly) close to "deficit neutral."

But even if it were "deficit neutral," it would still become insolvent -- as Obama says, without reducing the costs, the system is guaranteed to go broke.

So I don't quite understand how merely making it "deficit neutral" will improve the situation.

All I see is Obama taking health care from some people to give it to others.

A case could be made, of course, that to the extent we have a socialized subsystem for health care, we're misallocating resources, paying quite a bit for the elderly and not so much for, say, a premature baby.

One could make that case. But one would almost certainly lose on it, as seniors vote in large numbers and are understandably reluctant, as anyone would be, to lower their own standard of care to benefit someone else.

And because Obama knows he'd lose on that argument, honestly stated, he simply lies about it and assures seniors that his $500 billion in Medicaid/Medicare costs will all be achieved through improved "efficiency."

No one believes that. We all share, I think, an understanding that whatever system we're talking about, its inefficiencies are either hard-wired into the system (often due to politics) and difficult to undo or modify, or else aren't really "inefficiencies" at all. I'm not at all sure, for example, it's "inefficient" to remove a kid's tonsils if he has perpetual infections, nor that it's always "wasteful" to conduct multiple tests when diagnosing an illness.

At most, even with fairly heroic measures and politically-gutsy changes, a system -- particularly a government system -- is going to become, at the very most, maybe 5% more efficient. Tops.

Apart from reducing predatory tonsillectomies and entrepreneurial maimings by our Saw-fan surgeons, Obama's pretty damn vague about where he sees these bountiful new efficiencies emerging.

Oh, right. If we all get in great shape we'll save the system billions. Kinda. We'll save the system a bit of money as our death-spiral of declining health is put off a few years, and then we'll go through the same costly end-of-life hospitalizations as those who are less healthy. Same costs, just delayed five or six years. The savings here are only the interest on a cost delayed by a short time.

There are a huge number of reasons to lead a healthy lifestyle -- including attracting a mate, feeling good and strong, living to see your kids graduate high school, etc. -- and many of us do not respond to such tangible, crucial incentives.

And yet I'm to believe that an abstract interest in keeping the federal budget deficit down is going to cause someone to think, "Maybe I should look into quitting smoking" or "Maybe I should drop the 80 pounds I've put on since my twenties."

No sale. The cuts will include a pittance of arguably "wasteful" costs, but the bulk will either 1) cut into actual health services or, more likely, 2) won't be made at all, thus blowing up the deficit as Obama simply provides all the health care we're already obligated to provide but cannot afford and adds to that strained system 50 million more needy souls.

Posted by: Ace at 07:16 AM | Comments (11)
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Happy Tuesday.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:23 AM | Comments (7)
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Normally I wouldn't make two open blog posts in one night but this was just begging to be shared.

IMAGINE a small group of farmers tending a rice paddy some 5,000 years ago in eastern Asia or sowing seeds in a freshly cleared forest in Europe a couple of thousand years before that. It is here, a small group of scientists would have you believe, that humanity launched climate change. Long before the Industrial Revolution—indeed, long before a worldwide revolution in intensive farming, the results of which kept humanity alive—people caused unnatural exhalations of greenhouse gases that had an impact on the world’s climate.



source

crossposted at doubleplusundead

Posted by: Open Blog at 09:43 PM | Add Comment
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Not the guy who put up the posters in L.A., but the guy who created the image: a 20 year-old Chicagoan Kucinich supporter who was afraid his "very, very liberal" neighbors wouldn't appreciate it.

Alkhateeb says he wasn't actively trying to cover his tracks, but he did want to lay low. He initially had concerns about connecting his name with anything critical of the president -- especially living in Chicago, where people are "very, very liberal," he said.

"After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ," Alkhateeb said. "From my perspective, there wasn't much substance to him."

"I abstained from voting in November," he wrote in an e-mail. "Living in Illinois, my vote means close to nothing as there was no chance Obama would not win the state." If he had to choose a politician to support, Alkhateeb said, it would be Ohio Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

Of course, they didn't ask him what he thought of the Liberal Intelligencia branding the image racist.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:50 PM | Comments (1)
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Genghis says he's out hunting down more kitten pictures - apparently for his list of enemies which Comcast is now at the top of. So at least a few ONT morons can now breathe a little easier. Tonight at least will be a kitten-free ONT so frolic while you still can before the kitteh clampdown comes.

Anyway here are a few items for your enjoyment:

Item #1: The Thermonuclear "Oops" List
You know when you've been making, moving, fixing, and flying nuclear weapons for over 60 years, accidents are bound to happen no matter how careful you are. And the US is very careful. But by my count there are at least 7 warheads that we've lost over the years. But the Russkies are far worse with 34+ warheads missing. God knows how bad things are with the Pakistanis and Chinese.

Item #2: Meet Your Ideal Japanese Girlfriend
This is Nozomi Sasaki. She's a cute Japanese model and actress and seems to have a fun personality as well as some nice cooking skills as the video below will attest. I'm also pretty sure that she can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan and never let you forget that she's a w-o-m-a-n.

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Posted by: Open Blog at 06:25 PM | Comments (2)
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Update: Apparently the guy was not anti ObamaCare, although I maintain he may still be Stuart Scott's idiot cousin. OK I jumped on the idiot who decided that exercising his carry rights (which I completely support) at a rally attended by the President was a good idea. I will now congratulate the idiot who thought that bringing an AR-15 of some sort to show his support for ObamaCare was a good idea. It's not about the right to carry it's about what bringing guns to an ideas fight says. It says you are a sensationalizing dipshit who craves attention and doesn't care if you hurt your supposed argument.

I just assumed that Stuart Scott would stick to thrilling us with insights like "Kobe buries another three, just as cool as the other side of the pillow". Watch the vid and see that he now stands ready to bust a cap in anybody's ass who opposes socialized medicine, especially gunshot wounds. Douche! I will thank him for aiming the dumbass gun at his astroturf union thug brigade though.

Posted by: Uncle Jimbo at 04:29 PM | Comments (3)
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From the August 15th Newsweek

The United States has two parties now—the Obama Party and the Fox Party. The Obama Party is larger, but it is unfocused and its troops are whiny. The Fox Party, which shows up en masse to harass politicians, is noisy and practiced in the art of simplistic obstruction.

It isn't obvious where Jonathon Alter's sympathies lay or anything.

Posted by: Open Blog at 03:56 PM | Add Comment
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Have to see the doctor (regular appointment, nothing distressing) and then head back to NYC. So I'll be gone until much later.

Slow news day... but maybe you can find some stuff.

Posted by: Ace at 11:08 AM | Comments (5)
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This is the sort of argument we've had here a lot. I'm with McCarthy on this.

I don't see what makes her formulation particularly egregious when the White House is engaging in daily demonizations. "Death panels" is particularly evocative, and maybe a bit under-subtle. So what? We are talking style points at this point, and I hardly think that style is the most important concern.

Further, what Obama envisioned is a "death panel." I think the real objection here is that some think "death panels" are useful and proper, and they don't like Palin's lack of "nuance" in branding them as wholly bad.

Well, that's an argument that can be made. But it should be made, rather than just shrieking about Palin's word choice.

I think Palin was right to argue her point aggressively. Largely because she did, a horrible provision is now out of this still horrible Obamacare proposal. To the contrary, if the argument had been made the way the editors counsel this morning, "end-of-life counseling" would still be in the bill. We might have impressed the Beltway with the high tone of our discourse and the suppleness of our reasoning, but we'd have lost the public. I respectfully dissent.

He's dissenting from NRO's editorial, incidentally.

This is dumb, too:

The editors further suggest that Palin could be wrong — not that she is wrong, but she could be. After all, they reason, "it may well be that in a society as litigious as ours, government will err on the side of spending more rather than treating less."

Well, look old chums: Palin can only criticise the bill proposed, not some alternative bill that might emerge after years of being modified/amended by court intervention. She is criticizing the bill that is, not some hypoethetical one that might be.

Further, it's Obama's rationing that is the whole basis for his (ludicrous) claim this will actually cost less than the current system. So, it's Scylla and Charybdis: Either Obama gets his way on bending the curve, in which case it's rationing care for those near the end of life; or he loses those provisions, whether by legislative amendment or court order, in which case the deficit explodes.

It's one or the other, and both are bad. Palin's fault is, what? That she focuses on Obama's stated plan (bad) rather than the one which might eventually emerge (also bad)?

I could see, certainly, criticism of her forumaltion if it were dishonest. But it's not dishonest -- it's merely stark.

I think a lot of GOP pundits overly share liberals' fears that whole swaths of the conservative movement are corncob-smokin' banjo-strokin' cousin'-pokin' inbred mutant redneck race warriors. And so they get all upset that, here, Sarah Palin is filling these dopes with images of ICU Stormtroopers literally barging into grandma's room to smother her with a pillow.

Well, look: we cannot take all the life out of our rhetoric to tailor to the 0.00001% of the populace who might take it "the wrong way." Pretty much no one thinks "death panels" means actual face-smothering murder. And it seems to me an inordinate amount of worry-worting is going on here that Palin's term will be misinterpreted by her drooling subcretious supporters.

Liberals worry about that an awful lot. Liberals worry about that far too much, in fact, and are doing all the worrying on that score that is necessary. We don't really need to cater to their fears of Rethuglicans.

"Nice" is Overrated: In politics, at least.

Just three weeks ago, I was writing in the Ottawa Citizen against niceness. I have pursued the theme recently with praise (sometimes backhanded) not only for the politics, but for the tone, of such as Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin in the United States. They are by no means the only practitioners of what we'll call the "not nice" style in contemporary politics. Newt Gingrich is usually mentioned in such dispatches; and I could list a selection of Barack Obama's "policy czars" with demonstrated shoot-from-the-lip propensities. But I would like to preserve a "nice" (in the logical sense) distinction between candour and thuggery.

Candour is when you tell a truth that is disturbing, in language so unambiguous that persons in polite company will not want to hear you. It is a way to lose the respect of the genteel -- of those who are "respectable" in the shallowest sense. Rude language is quite unnecessary to this end: the hard truth itself, spoken plainly and publicly, will give sufficient offence.

That's about right.

Indeed! I was trying to think of a specific Obama scare-tactic, and came up short. Slublog reminds:

I love how the media and pundits are jumping ugly all over Palin for "death panels" but completely ignoring the fact that the president of the United States accused doctors of lopping off body parts for cash.

Right. Let's kill Palin for "death panels," while giving Obama a pass for entrepreneurial amputations and "predatory tonsillectomies." (I think I saw that latter phrase first used by Ed Morrissey at Hot Air.)

Posted by: Ace at 09:57 AM | Add Comment
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