This Week On NPR: Things I Learned (Or Not)

In a country saturated by Faux News, it's always comforting to know there is a Serious New source a liberal can trust.

WPA/Federal Art Project, Image: Posters for the People

Well, I try to tune it out, except for catching time and weather in the morning. But there are the stories that stand out too much to ignore, and I caught a few this particular week.

Why does this trial balloon make it feel like 2004 all over again?

Oh, it's not that I expect Obama to benefit from this. Not at all, and I somehow think it's other interests running "Terrorists ... To [surgically] Implant Bombs In Humans" up the flagpole—

"This is something we've been concerned about for quite some time," said J. Bennet Waters, a security consultant with the Washington, D.C.-based Chertoff Group and a former Transportation Security Administration official in the Bush administration.

Business is no doubt slow for the Chertoff Group.

There's the usual vagueness about no known threat; terrorists believed to be considering this tactic; yada, yada, yada.

So, this means we're about to trade airport colonoscopies for pre-flight surgery? I'm sure the Chertoff Group has some technology at the ready.

I can't find an NPR link to the story, but they most certainly were pushing this.

I know the talking point now is a supposed increase in longevity, even as the average actual resident of this country has less and less access to health care.

And so, the new conventional wisdom: pushed here by a blandly wonkish, bow-tie wearing "progressive."

So shape up, you lazy, elderly proles, and get a damn job! A 91-year old (born to wealth; previous Republican appointee to the nation's unelected branch of government) is feeling frisky, so what's your problem?

Among other stories that are surprising only if given coverage: "Medicaid Makes 'Big Difference' In Lives, Study Finds."

Shocking, the thought that having medical care is better for the poor than not having care.

But it seems a controlled, statistically significant study has proved the point. So: now it's science versus the Reaganesque anecdotes of the "president of the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis," who was told by "a Boston cabdriver" that her medicaid sucked.

To which, one might respond, "Why does someone who works for a living in this country need medicaid?" But that's a whole other (no matter how connected) issue.

We also get to hear from a doctor (and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute), who claims there are ever so many (unidentified) studies showing outcomes are worse for medicaid beneficiaries than for people with no coverage.

This morning, among the disgraceful bullshit that passes for coverage of the economy, was this.

"When we think about government cuts, you think of bureaucrats, you know, people sitting at desks where we just don't really need them. And yet the reality is, there's a lot of post office workers, mail deliverers, and policemen, firemen, teachers who are losing their jobs."

You mean, "government" includes firemen, teachers, et. al.? Why, who ever could have given people the idea that government is so horrid?

And who'd have imagined that substantial numbers of people with secure, middle-class jobs could be good for the economy?

Get over it! All good pundits agree: government employment is a thing of the past.

It's healthy for the populace to be reduced to fighting over whatever corporate scraps there are, at whatever wages and conditions the "market" will allow.

But, it's not as if these stories tell me anything I don't already know. Although, in classic Pravda fashion, they work well enough for listening between the lines.