Event:Pass Health-Care Reform Yesterday!

I've been getting progressively more worked up each day the last few weeks and it finally spilled over into this letter I just wrote to my congresswoman and senators.

On consideration, I think the analogies here (trite as they seem) are worth sharing precisely because they are so very obvious and applicable. At any rate, I'm interested in your thoughts.

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Dear Sen. Durbin, Sen. Burris, Congresswoman Schakowsky,

First, I appreciate your hard work and the good things you do. Please be aware of this.

Second, enough is enough.

Many in my family worked for GM for may decades, and I've had plenty of opportunities to reflect upon the failings of that company and the odd sort of insight that you only get from not being in the thick of a situation. Isn't it strange that the executives who ostensibly knew more about their company than anyone else missed the most apparent signs of its downfall? There's some horrible disadvantage to being on the inside; one misses the obvious wisdom that consumers stop buying cars from an unresponsive automaker unconcerned with quality and changing needs. Ironically, the people building the cars understood these liabilities far better than those running the company.

Today, I have had a grand opportunity to observe the same phenomenon in the slow and incremental death of health care reform.

Now everybody and their brother who supports you (and has been supporting your career for how many years now) knows that the Democrats' odds of surviving in November improve if you pass this bill. We all know that your chances are better the sooner you pass it. You seem locked in this idea that the independents -- that precious margin that determines so many elections -- are going to freak out if you are seen as having too progressive an agenda, while you miss the reliable and fundamental fact that the independents are more drawn to things that work than they are to political ideologies of any stripe. And today's half-passed bill does not "work" by any stretch of the imagination.

Conversely, the senate is too blithe in assuming that the liberal base that has funded and supported the last two election cycles is going to have anything other than fury and resentment with an agenda that seems to turn its back on most of the issues we care most about.

In this case, the analogies are simple and apt:

Roger Smith, CEO of GM thought his restructuring of GM without changing corporate culture or quality standards would save GM. He was wrong, and it was obvious to everyone on the street.

Jeff Zucker of NBC thought that preemptive shuffling around of late night personalities without consulting the hosts or the affiliates would help NBC. He was wrong and it was obvious, and it was obvious to everyone on the street.

Now Rahm Emmanuel is sidelining health care and it looks like Harry Reid is going along with that. Guess what: They're wrong, and it's obvious!

PASS HEALTH CARE REFORM!

Pass it yesterday.

The sooner you pass it, the sooner it will start saving lives, and the sooner you can start taking credit for the good work you've done in the face of stiff opposition.

If you do not pass it, I assure you, and not without great sadness and regret, this November will be a calamity.

Respectfully yours...

Event: It's Friday. Some videos.

Not silly stuff this week. But engaging and worthwhile.



Also: Watch this one on Facebook videos.

Event: My letter to the newspapers.

Dear editors,

Most Americans understand now that health care reform is necessary. Most of us, eighty percent according to some polls, support a public option. The economic analysis and historical precedents have been examined; nobody proposes we go where angels fear to tread. No death panels, and no debt inflation. The public option is, quite simply, the muscle. It's what will make the reform meaningful. What will make it work.

So why does this option seem to be slipping further and further toward the horizon?

Quite simply, the insurance and drug industries have more money than the scattered public. These industries are better organized and have deployed their resources effectively. They have fought this fight with the same single-minded discipline with which they deny millions of legitimate claims.

What seems to be missing from the debate is the righteous anger and indignation that is the only appropriate answer to the outrages of the health care crises. People are dying out here. Careers are ruined. Health is lost. Long lives are cut short because treatable problems are unfixed.

John McCain rightly said this week that "elections have consequences." If this is truly the case, then the public option should pass by wide margins. I urge all reasonable Americans, the Americans who have seriously considered the public option and know how reasonable and even necessary it is, to pick up your phones and write your emails. Give your representatives the pressure and the political cover to push this thing through, and to make it stick.

This issue is too important to leave at the voting booth. It needs to be heard and read. Share your anger. I've shared mine. Now it's your turn.

Event: My letter to Sen. Dick Durbin.

Dear Senator Durbin,

I am a Michigan transplant who has been living and voting in Chicago for the better part of the last ten years.

I am writing you today about an issue that will supersede in importance the life of the auto industry; this is a bold statement for me to make as many of my family and many friends are or were employed by GM.

It is not enough to desire a public option in the effort to reform health care. We must *demand* it. Now I recognize that the diversity and recent development of the Democratic party makes consensus and coalitions difficult. But quite simply, this is what you were all elected to do, and your constituency is vastly in favor of the public option. I am reasonable, and I recognize that insisting on a public option will cause some risk to the entire reform initiative, and will entail short-term political liabilities. But this risk will be repaid with a robust and meaningful reform, just as immediate dips in the polls will be more than balanced by what will be increasingly seen as a historic long-term victory.

Not to be confused with the skeletal acquiescent "reform" increasingly represented by the proposal of Sen. Baucus.

A public option is essential. Any reform stripped of this option will not accomplish what must be accomplished, and the problem will resurface down the line.

Voters like myself, loyal liberals and Democrats with a variety of views have held out through the discouraging years of the Bush administration, when the slimmest of Republican majorities set a policy that we found as repugnant as it was regressive. With the strong numbers of Democrats in both the legislative and executive branches, this is a victory we insist upon.

Sincerely,

Connor Coyne

Body: Today is Michaelmas.

It is also the feast of the three Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael.

You can read more about it here.

One of the wonderful ambiguities of religious tradition is the way that what may seem from the outside to be a simple "symbolic" allegory is, in fact, multivalent and complementary. Michael is most popularly considered as a warrior and in a military light. He led the angels against Satan and threw him from heaven. Yet earlier traditions associate Michael with curative powers and healing, and to this day he is the patron saint of the sick. This is conflated with the role of Raphael, whose name means "God has healed," and who is cited in the book of Tobit which features miraculous healing. In that same book, Raphael accompanies Tobias on a great journey, which has caused him to be associated with travel and critical junctures. We might think that these qualities would be better suited to Gabriel, who is the messenger and angel of the Annunciation, who first proclaimed: "Hail Mary, full of grace..." But while Gabriel is both a traveler and a messenger, his own work does not stop there. Gabriel's own name means "strength of the lord" and he has been associated with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

It would seem, then, that the qualities and roles of these three angels are somewhat mingled, and I believe that this is a reflection of the interaction of their themes in the real world. You cannot really separate testimony from struggle and from healing. They all combine and take each other on.

To step for a moment into a "political" issue, I want to consider the current health care debate here. It is political but it also touches on religion and spirituality. The Health Care debate might fall under the province of Michael, since it is a question of healing. But healing itself is a fight and a struggle; the body fights off infection. Right now we are in the midst of a great fight for the health of our nation, and too many Christians (and too many Catholics) are looking at the issue within the closely inscribed boundaries of their own self-interest. They may sincerely ascribe their views to concerns over abortion or patient rights, but these issues have been resolved for the discerning witness and listener. And isn't that our responsibility? Isn't that an aspect of the faith we are called to observe? To be a discerning witness?

So I call on my fellow Christians to consider the sharing of roles and responsibilities of these three angels, and to take a stand for the public option in today's debate. This is a case where our faith must enter into the realm of politics, but the argument that faith should make, based on both tradition and scripture, is solidly on the side of robust reform.

Event: My New Letter to Congresswoman Schakowsky.

My renewal of support.

Dear Ms. Schakowsky,

In the last election I voted against you because I didn't think you had taken as strenuous a stand against funding the war in Iraq as I thought was possible, given the level of support (and strong, progressive support) you've enjoyed here in Chicago. I was also disappointed by your support of TARP, given the lack of oversight involved (and how it has contributed to a deficit that is a sticking point in the present health care debate). That said, I am very proud to be represented by you these days; for my whole life affordable health care was always one of the most important political issues for me. On a day when most lawmakers (including strong Democrats) appear to be wavering and equivocating on the centrally important and essential "public option" I am very, very, very happy that you have been such a staunch and emphatic supporter. I realize that my vote in the last election wasn't strategic (if it was I would have supported you in spite of my misgivings), but I anticipate being able to offer more unequivocal support in the upcoming election. Please let me know how I can help promote the public option in the upcoming health care reform.

Sincerely, Connor Coyne
Uptown, Chicago

Event: Health Care Reform Post #2 - Interesting Articles

New York Times: Health Plan Opponents Make Voices Heard.

This is one thing that the new (meaning post-1994) generation of conservatives have excelled at; compensating for numbers with virulence. I'm nont saying that progressives should strive for such shrillness, but we should at least be emphatic. I'll be looking for evidence that Americans in favor of health care reform are taking just as demonstrable a stand. Or to put it a little differently, we know that politicians instinctually turn toward political cover. Let's provide some of that cover and support, so they won't be afraid to finish this much-needed bill.

Andy Heller drops in for a few cynical but well-intentioned comments:

The Flint Journal: Let's wait for heath care until we're all sick and dead, OK?

The Flint Journal: We'll spend to kill but not to heal and protect.

National Health Post.

I'm really annoyed at myself for not having covered this more in the past several weeks.

Here's an astute argument from Uwe Reinhardt:

A 'Common Sense' American Health Reform Plan.

And here's an unabashedly emotional appeal from Jeff Danziger:

Event: ELECTION 2008 : MICHIGAN : PROPOSAL 2008-02 : Embryonic Stem-Cell Research.

Proposed Legislative Amendment:

A proposal to amend the State Constitution to address human embryo and human embryonic stem cell research in Michigan. (Proposal provided under an initiative petition filed with the Secretary of State on July 7, 2008.)

The proposal would add a new Section 27 to Article 1 of the State Constitution to read as follows:

To ensure that Michigan citizens have access to stem cell therapies and cures, and to ensure that physicians and researchers can conduct the most promising forms of medical research in this state, and that all such research is conducted safely and ethically, any research permitted under federal law on human embryos may be conducted in Michigan, subject to the requirements of federal law and only the following additional limitations and requirements:

(a) No stem cells may be taken from a human embryo more than fourteen days after cell division begins; provided, however, that time during which an embryo is frozen does not count against this fourteen day limit.
(b) The human embryos were created for the purpose of fertility treatment and, with voluntary and informed consent, documented in writing, the person seeking fertility treatment chose to donate the embryos for research; and

(i) the embryos were in excess of the clinical need of the person seeking the fertility treatment and would otherwise be discarded unless they are used for research; or

(ii) the embryos were not unsuitable for implantation and would otherwise be discarded unless they are used for research.

(c) No person may, for valuable consideration, purchase or sell human embryos for stem cell research or stem cell therapies and cures.

(d) All stem cell research and all stem cell therapies and cures must be conducted and provided in accordance with state and local laws of general applicability, including but not limited to laws concerning scientific and medical practices and patient safety and privacy, to the extent that any such laws do not:

(i) prevent, restrict, obstruct, or discourage any stem cell research or stem cell therapies and cures that are permitted by the provisions of this section; or
(ii) create disincentives for any person to engage in or otherwise associate with such research or therapies or cures.

(3) Any provision of this section held unconstitutional shall be severable from the remaining portions of this section.

Blue Skies Falling: YES

The Detroit Free Press carried a balanced discussion of the charges the pro- and con- camps brought against each other.

It's good to have a balanced, reasonable discussion, and it's also reasonable to answer emphatically when one argument is objectively stronger than another. I support both of the ballot initiatives this year, but my support for Proposal 2 is both stronger and, to my way of thinking, more important. There are medical, moral, and economic reasons to support this initiative.



The MEDICAL reason to support this initiative.

Opponents of stem cell research like to make observations such as this: "adult and umbilical stem cells have proven to be way more helpful than ESCs, which have given us NOTHING so far."

The point is disingenuous, so we have to address it up-front. First, it evaluates the progress of research strictly on the basis of what has already borne fruit (and even so doing, neglects the fact that adult stem cells have been researched and utilized for much longer). The main advantage that embryonic stem cells have over adult and umbilical cells is that they have not yet developed a specific functionality; they are the most adaptable. This implies that, in the long run, they probably have more applications, and can do things that non-embryonic stem calls can not. Scientifically speaking, this is why there is such a thirst in the medical community to step up research to a level where more meaningful results will manifest. To mix metaphors a little, the Soviets got into space first, but we landed on the moon. It wasn't cheap to get there. Or to make the same argument a bit differently, Jonas Salk wasn't able to cure polio all at once.

The more distressing problem here is the anti- arguments' circular logic: anyone with a scientific or medical background will tell you that it is nearly impossible to make progress on new techniques and technologies without adequate funding, and government-backed funding has a decisive role here because private corporations lack the incentive to conduct research where the potential payoff is intangible or (in the present case) might lie years in the future. So of course embryonic stem cells haven't yielded results yet, because they are burdened by an overrestrictive research environment nationally. In states like Michigan, which outright prohibits research, the effect is absolutely stifling.


The MORAL reason to support this initiative.

Many conservative religious groups oppose embryonic stem cell research on a similar premise to their objection to abortion; life begins at conception, they argue, and it is an audacity against God and human dignity to exploit embryonic stem cells for medical profit, especially when it is fatal to the embryo. Hence the same blog I cited above argues:

This is where I need to bring up a key flaw in the whole debate over embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). You have the camp who opposes ESCR because they believe that life begins at conception, and I fall into this camp. Then you have the camp who argues, “But they’re going to be discarded anyway.” And this is where the ESCR opposition has somewhat failed. Many don’t address this issue and simply say, “Well, we shouldn’t be doing research on them.” That’s not the point. The point needs to be that instead of making EXTRA embryos for in vitro fertilization, we should be making embryos AS NEEDED. Sure, it’s costlier, but it doesn’t create embryos that will be destroyed.

Again, this argument is misinformed, both medically and economically. First, it is impossible to fertilize any egg without destroying thousands, if not millions of sperm. Second, the range of methods for extracting eggs, whether through induced ovulation or other methods are extremely expensive and often compromise the health of the donor. Quite simply, the presence, activity, and effectiveness of any fertility industry presumes that there will be more embryos than can ever be brought to term. It is a nod to sentiment here that the proposal limits the period during which stem cells can be harvested to 14-days of division, a time at which cells are still largely undifferentiated. But if one is making the argument that no more embryos may be conceived than can be brought to term, that must ultimately be a response to fertility treatment in general.

This is, however, the only argument that isn't mired in contradiction.
As long as there are extra embryos, they will be disposed of by some means because they cannot be brought to term. This is a reality that cannot be negated by any state constitution. And yet I rarely hear about concientious opposition to fertility treatment per se.

It is ironic, then, that religious arguments predicated upon the sacredness of life, impede the sustainment of life without a tangible benefit to anyone. The diseases that embryonic stem cells might one day treat are uniquely debilitating and fatal. Christians, including Catholics like myself, need to remember that prudence is a cardinal virtue. We are often forced to live as best we can in an imperfect world. I would argue that it is imprudent to renounce the opportunity to save actual human lives in exchange for an abstract "moral" victory that is hollow because it saves nobody in turn.


The ECONOMIC reason to support this initiative.

Michigan perennial zeitgeist (and where else would such a term even work?) is that its economy is in an unending freefall.

Many opponents of this bill say that it will result in new taxes; in fact the bill does prepare this debate, but it is itself silent on the subject of funding. Now: non-embryonic stem-cell research receives funding in the state; would it be unreasonable to offer financial support to some of the most promising medical research of a generation? It needn't inflate the state budget; again conservatives like to point out the many achievements of adult stem-cell technology... some of that funding could be shifted to embryonic stem-cell research. There are numerous options that will be on the table, but this proposal does not commit any taxpayer money to support the research itself.

In this and many economic arguments, fiscal conservatives tend to overemphasize the importance of taxes overall. As reasonable Hoosiers might tell you, for example, low taxes are a cold comfort when the economy is so bad that you've little income to be taxed, and this is where Michigan really has to think straight about this bill. Members of both parties seek to promote Michigan's economy by bringing in the kind high-tech jobs that are worthy successors of an ailing automotive industry. But if we look at the parts of the country where these industries have thrived -- California and the Pacific Northwest for example -- they are generally found in an environment where openness to technology and technological innovation has thrived. In fact this seems to be at least or more important than the rate of taxation. Sometimes (gasp!) investment opportunity trumps taxation.

The problem is so multivalent that it is difficult to summarize.

For example, some casualties are conspicuous. As the Detroit Free Press states in its endorsement of the proposal, "one clear loss is the departure of some prominent researchers from the University of Michigan -- where stem cell research is the most vigorous -- because of the ban." Thus Michigan loses the opportunity for such a faculty to draw private and pharmaceutical investment to Michigan through the establishment of amicable research.

Not all liabilities are so conspicuous, however. For example, endowments and funding tend to flow to colleges and universities where the most exciting research is happening. Michigan's top research institutions are uniquely positioned in terms of faculty, facilities, and location to be leaders in the country. Increased endowments often mean, among other things, greater resources for tuition assistance. The consequences of the present, unilateral ban are precipitous.



In short, it is always reasonable to consider another point-of-view, but there simply is not rigorous traction to be held against this proposal. The initiative is carefully worded, maintains protections on human dignity and the status and use of embryonic stem cells, while also being robust enough to make a meaningful change. I've outlined some of the scientific, moral, and economic arguments to support the proposal above, but there are many more. The proposal has been endorsed by both major Detroit newspapers and many others, President Bill Clinton, Senator Carl Levin, Governor Jennifer Granholm. Notably both Presidential candidates support the promotion embryonic stem-cell research.

You can contribute to the effort to pass Michigan's Proposal 2 here.

You can help promote the proposal here.

You can find out where you can get a yard sign here.

This proposal marks Michigan's best opportunity this election to set encourage an emerging precedent in the region, and most importantly, to improve the standard of living for its own citizens.

Vote YES on Proposal 2.

Event: ELECTION 2008 : MICHIGAN : PROPOSAL 2008-01 : Medical Marijuana

Proposed Legislative Amendment:

A legislative initiative to permit the use and cultivation of marijuana for specified medical conditions. (Proposal provided under a legislative initiative petition filed with the Secretary of State on November 20, 2007.)

The following is the language of the legislative amendment as it appeared on the legislative initiative petition.

INITIATION OF LEGISLATION

An initiation of Legislation to allow under state law the medical use of marihuana; to provide protections for the medical use of marihuana; to provide for a system of registry identification cards for qualifying patients and primary caregivers; to impose a fee for registry application and renewal; to provide for the promulgation of rules; to provide for the administration of this act; to provide for enforcement of this act; to provide for affirmative defenses; and to provide for penalties for violations of this act.

Full Text here.

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Blue Skies Falling: YES

It is true that the legalization of medical marijuana specifically or drugs more generally is not the most pressing issue we face this year. That is, we could stick with the status quo, and things would not get drastically better or worse in the world. It's hard to get away from the "legalize, dude," image of some guy in high school going on and on about how it would be great if we could just get stoned all the time. And on a more personal note, I've always felt that time, money, and energy is in short supply, and all three could be put to better use than providing for legal pot.

These concerns are, however, a major mischaracterization of the real issue.

FIRST, as the language above states, this is a bill to approve marijuana for medical, not recreational use. Similar proposals have been approved and implemented in twelve other states without a noticeable increase in illicit drug use. We need not conjure up images of two-dimensional stoners, nor do we need require that regulatory agency must be written in stone in order to pass meaningful legislation; the proposal is rigorous enough. The drug will be closely regulated by this proposal and will be going to very sick people with their doctors' prescription. Decriminalization is, alas, an entirely different conversation.

SECOND, a consensus has been emerging over the last several decades that marijuana prescription can be appropriate in a medical context. Medical approval has been voiced by such a range of diverse and reputable organizations as the American College of Physicians, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Nurses Association, as well as the American Bar Association and the National Association of Attorneys General, and individuals ranging from Barack Obama and Carl Sagan to Milton Friedman and Ron Paul. The Michigan Democratic Party supports this proposal, as have the Lansing State Journal, the Detroit News, and other news outlets.

Quite simply, the medical community is more reasonably able to assess the merits and drawbacks of medical marijuana. The alternative is to decide this issue in a political setting fraught with emotion and incentive, and few equivalents to the rigor of medical research and peer review. Individual doctors are best able to make decisions in their patients' interests.

Vote YES on Proposal 1.

Concept: Psychoanalysis and American Psychiatry.

Up until now I've offered a one-sided criticism of psychoanalysis, all the way back to its roots in Freud and Jung. I always took the angle that Freud was a gifted observer who formed some highly faulty models of psychology based on speculation as to how the human brain worked. This I am willing to stand by. In other ways, however, I have to reevaluate my opinion. Many of my friends in the arts and critical fields rely heavily on psychoanalysis. I've been more skeptical, but my criticism has been kind of free-floating; I haven't read broadly enough for my opinion to be as informed as I thought it was. Now I am coming to the further conclusion that, not only were Freud and Jung's ideas fundamentally flawed, but they did not serve to improve the fields of psychiatry. Psychology, perhaps. Psychoanalysis certainly contributed the notion that careful discussion and analysis of the cause of a disorder could be therapeutic. This was possibly useful for the society at large. But for those with mental disorders (roughly 1-2% of the population), and especially in America, psychoanalysis was a disaster.

Emil Kraepelin was born in northern Germany in February 1856, less than four months before Freud. By the time he was thirty he'd compiled a set of empirical studies to publish the first edition of his book Psycologie which would go on to be published in nine editions. The differences in methodology and results are difficult to go into here, but Kraepelin discovered that psychotic forms of mania and depression were manifestations of a single spectrum of disoders (bipolar disorder). More importantly, he used longitudenal studies to combine superficially divergent symptoms into a definition of "madness" as dementia praecox or premature senility. In its American form, this condition is known as schizophrenia. Kraepelin revolutionized psychiatry by defining the terms of a more rigorous inquiry and setting the groundwork for establishing prognosis. He identified a genetic component to these conditions, but also believed in limited penetrance. At the time, he was recognized as the master of his field, but who learns the name of Kraepelin in high school? I took a semester of Psychology in high school and the Humanities and Sociology sequences at the University of Chicago. I never heard about Kraepelin until assigned to work on his bio at work.

The book I'm working on doesn't give a complete account of the posthumous dismantling of Kraeplin's legacy. He was a German nationalist (as opposed to Freud, who fled the Nazis) and monarchist, staunchily opposed to socialism and, while he died in 1926, before the rise of the Nazi party, an advocate of eugenics during his lifetime. It stands to reason that his legacy might have (deservedly?) floundered in the postwar climate. But that never hindered Werner von Braun in the postwar era. It was probably, more than anything else, the pro-psychoanalytic stance of prominent American psychiatrists that shouldered Kraepelin's studies aside. And frankly, this trend had been going on since the turn of the century (eg. Adolph Meyers, Eugen Bleuler). The psychoanalytical angle went something like:

The problem of psychoses would be simple and perspicuous if the ego's detachment from reality could be carried through completely. But that seems to happen only rarely or perhaps never. Even in a state so far removed from the reality of the external world as one of hallucinatory confusion, one learns from patients after their recovery that at the time in some corner of their mind (as they put it) there was a normal person hidden, who, like a detached spectator, watched the hubbub of illness go past him.

It's very poetic. I can easily understand the appeal to writers and literary types. However, it is not provable, is almost not disprovable, and is dangerous to consider as a science. Why? Because science is not science if it lacks a mechanism to confront error and subjectivity. That is, to scrutinize hypotheses for signifiant bias. As a result, the mid-20th century psychiatric literature is littered with references to "schizophrenogenic mothers" and "narcissistic neuroses," concepts which are not only patently (and demonstrably) wrong, but which lead to equally misguided treatment. It is not, I think, coincidental that this was the also the era of lobotomy and chemical convulsive therapies, solutions that were, in many ways, both less humane and hardly more scientifically sound than the surprise baths and bed saddles of the 19th century. Nor did the psychoanalyically informed therapies – group therapy and mass deinstitutionalization – have a positive effect on contemporary prognoses. This is largely why there are so many homeless schizophrenics today.

The psychoanalytical approach to psychiatry held out through the seventies before giving up the ghost. The model of schizophrenia that we use today is derived almost directly from Kraeplin. Certainly this has continued to have been revised, and many concepts (autointoxication, degeneration theory) have been discarded. But diagnostic and progress in treatment is made through revision; an advantage that psychoanalysis substantially lacked.

In short, before working on this assignment, I felt that Freud was a gifted genius whose work helped build psychiatry, but whose persistent influence is damaging to the arts. Now I feel that Freud was a gifted genius whose persistent influence is damaging to the arts, but was perhaps even more damaging to psychiatry.

Event: Socialist Convention.

The Democratic Socialists of America are throwing a convention this November 9-11, in Atlanta of all places.

I wish I had more money, so that I could go.

I also wish they had better web design, so that I could read about the convention without feeling like I'm reading about a preschool Easter Egg hunt. That has to be the least flattering picture of Bernie Sanders ever.

Event: What scares me?

This scares me.

Event: Get the Balance Right.

by Depeche Mode:

There's more besides joyrides,
Bumblebee from Transformers.

a little house in the countryside.
Daily Kos: Wishing for Good, Accepting the Truth.

Understand, learn to demand,
Daily Freeman: Hinchey calls for Bush, Cheney to be Censured.

compromise, sometimes lie.
Daily Kos: Signed, Sealed, & Delivered.

 

Get the balance right.
New York Times: Violence Rages in Iraq as Sunni Bloc Leaves Cabinet.

 

Be responsible, respectable,
The Detroit Free Press: Detroit named No. 1 sports city.

Stable but gullible
The Economist: Kazakhstan turns the screw.

Concerned and caring, help the helpless
The Flint Journal: Resource Center's Sybyl Atwood dies at 72.

But always remain ultimately selfish
Andrew Heller: And so goeth the story all over again.

 

Get the balance right.
MSNBC: Mr. Mayor vs. Mr. Moore.

 

You think you've got a hold of it all.
The Detroit Free Press: GM sales down, but improves on retail side.

You haven't got a hold at all.
Daily Kos: Just Like Kansas.

When you reach the top, get ready to drop.
Pollster.com: Bush Approval from 1/1/2005 through 07/18/2007.

Prepare yourself for the fall.
The Onion: There's No Such Thing as Bad Publicity.

You're gonna fall
New York Times: Stocks Are Flat After Sell-Offs in Asia and Europe.

It's almost predictable.
Project Censored Media: The Media Can Legally Lie.

 

Don't take this way. Don't take that way.
Emperor Valens' legacy.

Straight down the middle until next Thursday.
The Democratic Party.

Push to the left, back to the right.
Daily Kos: Media Narrative: The Mainstream Is Now "The Left".

Twist and turn til you've got it right.
The Economist: China's Chicago.

 

Get the balance right
Lollapalooza.

Every week is epic.