EXPAND MEDICARE TO REPEAL OBAMACARE?

In the August 1 WSJ, conservative Peggy Noonan (a spech writer for President Reagan) says she thinks Obamacare will gradually be replaced by expanding medicare.  What a surprise!  Is there a liberal out there that wouldn't love that?

A reason that conservatives have such a hard time coming up with an alternative to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare is that Obamacare IS the conservative health care plan.  It is not that liberals like the ACA, it is that it was the best plan that Democrats could get past.  There are DINOs in the Democratic Party (Democrats In Name Only) that had to be catered to.  So an attempt was made to appeal to DINOs and Republicans to vote for the plan.  Republicans voted against it and oppose it only because it was proposed by a Democratic administration.

An unusual feature of the ACA is that an attempt was made to PAY FOR IT.  Republicans don't like to pay for health care.  President Reagan, for example, instituted the plan where hospitals with emergency rooms had to take all comers whether they could pay for it or not.  But he left it up to the hospitals to find a way to pay for this service.  Ditto President Bush (Bush-43) with Medicare D, the prescription drug plan where no attempt was made to pay for it.  And Republicans seem to try to repeal all attempts to pay for Obamacare (e.g. the business mandate and the tax on artificial limbs and replacements).  It is a disappointment that Republicans, supposedly the party of fiscal responsibility are so irresponsible on health care.  It is as if Republicans don't want health care for the poor at all.  This is strange because the Republican Party has been taken over by Evangelicals.  They even criticize John Kasich, an evangelical with a small e, for accepting the Federal Medicaid money.  He believes that Christians need to take care of the less fortunate among us.  After all Poor and Poverty appear 446 times in the bible.*

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/03/poor-and-poverty-appear-446-times-in.html

OBAMA'S PRAYER BREAKFAST SPEECH

Last Thursday (February 5th, 2015), President Obama gave a brief speech at the the National Day of Prayer Breakfast,* in which he preached acceptance of religious diversity with love in America.  Though he never mentioned Islam in the speech, his point was that Christians should treat all faiths with a sense of humility because there were Christians too who have committed atrocities in the name of Christ so we American Christians should treat those of other faiths with love (e.g. not specified but he includes the American Muslims).  For Republicans, or perhaps I should say Conservatives with a capital C, humility is not their strong suit, I say trying to express humility myself.  So as might be expected, Conservatives were all over him the next day.  Morning Joe, for example, went apoplectic over Obama's short speech saying how dare he bring up something 700 yrs ago like the Crusades or even something supposedly settled by war around 150 yrs ago with a Civil War in this country.  Lest one not be aware of how much humility is preached to Christians, I include a source quoting humility in the Bible below.**  (Note added February 11, 2015: Three Muslim students in Chapel Hill, NC, were fatally shot by a 46 year old man.  See  http://on.aol.com/playlist/most-popular-159813/videoid=518645763).

As a nation, we Americans are not humble.  Some Conservatives like to talk all the time about American Exceptionalism.  I was taught as a child , however, that I should not brag.  If I am exceptional, I should bare it lightly.  In fact, with all this talk about American Exceptionalism, I wonder if the people bringing it up are doing it to reassure themselves, because they have doubts.  Make no mistake, others see Americans in their land as arrogant.  Remember the Vietnam period and the 1958 book by  Eugene Burdick and William Lederer, "The Ugly American.?" that was also made into a well received 1963 movie.***

Perhaps you get the idea that I thought that the Presidents short speech was very good.

* http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obamas-speech-at-prayer-breakfast-called-offensive-to-christians/2015/02/05/6a15a240-ad50-11e4-ad71-7b9eba0f87d6_story.html
** http://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/bible-verses-about-humility-20-scriptures-on-being-humble/
*** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_American.  The hero of the movie was an American engineer who did try to adopt himself to the rural part of an Asian country - Burma and help the locals improve agriculture.

ON BLASPHEMY

With regard to the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, one notable Muslim states that it is possible to be against violence but still outraged by blasphemy  (The act of showing contempt or lack of reverence for God, to religious or holy persons or things or toward something considered sacred or inviolable.*)  At first that sounded reasonable.  But then I started thinking.

It seems to me today that in America the word blasphemy is no longer in our vocabulary because it has come to be protected by the first amendment.  Oh, some people know the word, but do they ever use it?  I suspect that, if you took a poll, a large majority of Americans would no longer have any idea of what the word means.  Yes, many of us will object showing Christ with excrement to be at least in bad taste or disgusting rather than art, but the perpetrators are not prosecuted for blasphemy.  This is interesting because America is largely a Christian country and blasphemy is spoken of as unforgivable in the Bible (e.g. Mark3:29).

I think that when I was a child I recall swearing was called called blasphemy and perhaps those who do it would "burn in Hell."  I recall my mother saying heelio-copters rather than hell-i-copters to avoid saying the dreaded word.  She had some other spoken affectations as well.  Blasphemy was not always protected by the First Amendment in the U.S.  It is understood that free speech is not license.  the example usually given is that you can not cry "Fire!" in a crowded theater.  At one time blasphemy was treated the same way in a number of states.*  the New York anti-blasphemy law wasn't repealed until 1952.  The law was still on the books in Maryland as recently as 2003.*

I recall a young Muslim scientist from Saudi Arabia who came to work with us for awhile who went to a museum and was shocked at paintings of Christ on the cross, Mary with child, and Peter hanging upside down on the cross.  He couldn't believe such blasphemy would be permitted.  In fact, many Muslims feel that  paintings of any human beings is idolatry.**

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law_in_the_United_States
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_art

THE TEA CUP SEISMOGRAPH (Biographical)

I've written about my first trip to Japan before in 1965 (You Are So Lucky).*  Near the end of that 10 week stay, a Japanese scientific colleague, Dr. Hajimi Kurasawa, and I were in the city of Shimabara in the southern island of Kyushu to sample the active volcano Aso.  While there, we visited the White Castle of Shimabrra restored in 1964.**  This area was a hot bed of Christianity in the 17 century.  The Shogan decided he didn't like this "foreign" religion in his domain so he went after the Christians and they holed up in the White Castle.  The Shogan couldn't take the castle in a five month siege so he bought the cooperation of

White Castle of Shimabara

the Dutch fleet nearby, and they shelled the castle, breaking the resistance.  Then the Shogan put a cross in the ground and had the captives stomp on it.  If they refused, off with their heads.  If they stomped on it, he felt they weren't good enough Christians to worry about so he let them go.  You could buy souvenirs of the "cross on the ground" in the trinket store.

We moved on to Kumabara and stayed in a Japanese inn in the huge caldera of Aso Volcano, which contains the active volcano Naka-Dake where we were to collect samples.  In the morning, there was an earthquake.  If the epicenter of an earthquake is off to the side , the surface movement is back and forth such as we experienced in Tokyo.  If you are over the epicenter, however, the movement is up and down.  Our earthquake at Aso was up and down!  I sat there Japanese style and watched the window and wondered when it was going to pop out.  I also worried a bit that we were on the second floor and what if it collapsed?  It was that severe.

(picture courtesy of National Geographic)

It seemed, of course, that the shaking went on forever, however, it must have been much less  than a minute.  Well, when the shaking stopped I looked at my Japanese colleague and his Yukata (sleeping robe) was wet in an embarrassing place.  Tea had spilled out of his cup, wetting the groin area.  So I laughed and said that you
were scared, eh, pointing at his crotch?  Then he laughed and pointed at mine and said that he guessed I was scared too.  Sure enough, the crotch area of my Yukata was wetted also.  I said that we could make a tea cup seismograph rating the strength of an earthquake by how much tea was spilled from a tea cup.  Actually, the Chinese had invented a directional seismograph about 132 AD *** though ours would measure magnitude as well.

Incidentally, Kumamoto has its own castle, the Black Castle of Kumamoto.****  Though it is a fine castle, it does not have a history like the White Castle of Shimabara.

Black Castle of Kumamoto

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2009/11/you-are-so-lucky.html
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimabara_Castle
*** http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/china/science/seismograph.htm
**** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumamoto_Castle

WIRING OF THE BRAIN

Particularly since my wife died, I have been reading quite a bit about how the brain works and how you can change it.  But even in the case of Noah who has had one side of his brain removed, who is a good example of this, in which actions and thought usually done by the right brain are now done by the left (or is it vice versa, no matter).  In my wife's case, I think she could have recovered from her first stroke except something happened to destroy her will to fight her condition which makes it very hard when all the initiative had to come from someone else.  She really had to want to get better, but couldn't manage it.

But it occurs to me that one reason we don't understand Muslims, especially conservative Muslims, is that their brains are wired differently from ours and some may even believe in martyrs getting 72"virgins" ( apparently wives actually in heaven).*  Do female martyrs get 72 virginal men (husbands)?

And it is the same in the U.S. where the religious right is able to maintain all sorts of screwy ideas like raped women don't get pregnant and are obsessed with controlling women's bodies almost as much as Muslims.  And conservative Republicans really believe that all poor people are lazy, the government is coming to get their guns, and reducing taxes and getting rid of regulations will always improve the economy.    No showing of the facts will dissuade them as their brains are wired to believe this sort of thing. (Though personal income taxes were greatly reduced as were regulations under George W. Bush, we had economic disaster..  Both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton raised taxes a lot and we had the best economic climate of my long lifetime.)

We are also witnessing in this country a significant part of the government that is quite willing to go against the will of the people, even their own constituencies, on issue after issue: on background checks for gun purchases, on the minimum wage, and on a track to citizenship for long-term illegal immigrants, just to name a few,

It is even true on a national basis.   For some reason as a nation, our brains are wired to root for the mob (presumably the underdog).  We have done this with Egypt, with Libya (even giving air cover to the mob), with the Ukraine.  We actually also did this with the Taliban against the Russians.  When we don't like the mob, we will enter into nation building as we did with Iraq and are doing with Afghanistan.  And we have learned, or I hope we have, that the road to democracy is extremely difficult for people who have no history of democracy or suffered under a long-time dictatorship.  I wonder how you could have a real democracy in Iraq when 80% of the people are of one religion (Shiite) and 20% of another (Sunni) who hate each other.  Even in the U.S., a lot of people believe that a Muslim, say, cannot be president though there is nothing in the constitution that says that presidents must be Christians.

As I have said in a recent post to my blog, I think eventually we will look on Guantanamo Bay as a dark period in American history: http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/06/guantonimo-

and-franz-kafka.html.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houri