Dr. Frank's What's-it

[geek] Kucinich looks like the little dweeby Klingon spy in "The Trouble With Tribbles." [/geek]

Do you think that Kucinich looks like Wallace Shawn in a toupee? Maybe this was the reason for Shawn's wacky screed in The Nation the other week. Has anyone ever seen them together?

Bah. Your stupid comments won't embed links.

Kucinich:
http://www.thecampaign.org/images/Kucinich_150.jpg

Shawn as Vizzini in The Princess Bride:
http://www.ozcraft.com/scifidu/princess/cast_vizzini.jpg

aren't they all joke candidates? seriously...the choice of anti-bush candidates is really depressing...

In some bizarro world, the Steve Forbes wing of the (R) party prevailed in '96 and 2000, crowning Forbes party leader. Then Kucinich gets the (D) nomination in 2004 (on the strength of your N. Oakland neighborhood) and runs against Forbes for the first all-creepy-Batman-villian Presidential race in history.

One can dream....

I dunno, I see Kucinich as much more of a Dick Tracy villain. Sitting at the head of the boardroom table, alongside Pruneface and The Brow, we've got...Big Ears McShorty? Small-eyes Smiley?

It's obvious he's meant for villaindom, though. His first name, backwards is "Sinned," afterall.

Now, now, kids, lets play nicely.

No, seriously, I actually support Kucinich, and I'm neither short nor vegan (maybe Kirk and crew could have orbited the planet Vega, inhabited by the Vegans (whose leader is DK), and Kirk could have teleported down to the surface where he encountered hot Vegan babes, one of whom says to him, "Cheeseburger? What is this 'cheeseburger?'")

Anyway, if you think Kucinich sounds like a wacko lefty on the issues, check out this speech by noted wacko lefty Dwight David Eisenhower
http://www.eisenhower.utexas.edu/chance.htm
Can you imagine what would happen if a presidential candidate today called for an international treaty limiting the size of military budgets? And this was a Republican president who had to deal with Stalin.

Last note: anyone else see John Kerry lacing up the ol' hockey skates today? If I were on his campaign, I would have hired the guys from "Slap Shot" to get on the ice and cross-check him, then have Big John drop his gloves and pound 'em bloody. Kind of Kerry's "I paid for this microphone" moment.

you know who would make the perfect joke candidate?
dr. frank.
no no make that a real candidate. i'm writing you in.

That's a good idea. Prez Fest 2004, a giant outdoor concert campaign featuring Dr. Frank lip syncing pre-recorded things they used to say in universities and books on left wing politics and law.

yikes.

Uh, I'd vote for Dr. Frank for Galactic Poo-bah of Rock...especially if he started playing one of those Rick Nielsen guitars with 30 necks.

Kucinich is actually delusional. I heard him say on NPR's All Things Considered that during the recent recession the unemployment situation was as bad as that during the Great Depression. You could actually hear the NPR interviewer's chin (Robert Siegel? I don't remember...) hit the microphone on its way to the floor. The interviewer then asked if he really believed that, and Kucinich replied that even though he wasn't alive then, he believed our situation was as serious as it was then.

DAYUM!!!

GWB claims he believed there were WMD's in Iraq, but you can cut him a little slack: Iraq's on the other side of the world. Whether he believed it or not, at least he knew the American people couldn't find out for themselves at least until after we invaded.

Whether or not Kucinich really believes what he said, he obviously expects people who heard him say it believe it, which seems to be the biggest delusion of all. All we have to do is look around. Granted the average American's ignorance of history is frequently shown on television and studies to reach comical levels, but I think your NPR audience is a group that makes an effort to stay slightly more informed than many circles.

Either way, I laughed my ass off.

BTW, does the ability to make such statements qualify as a super power?

Dave,

The mainstream press has widely reported that GWB will be the 1st president since Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs (2.4 million, in GWB's case) during a presidential term. Your summary of Kucinich's statement on the radio says that he said that the unemployment situation was "as bad" and "as serious" as then. That doesn't mean Kucinich thinks that there's 25% unemployment now. It could mean that the overall situation -- powerful multinationals with the Federal Gov't working completely in their interests, exporting of jobs, repressive political regime, half of the Fed's discretionary budget being spent on the military, massive budget deficits -- is looking very bleak, and in some ways even worse than the 30s. Maybe he explained this while you were laughing your ass off.

Listen, if you disagree with Kucinich's policy positions, say so. Don't want to cut the military budget by 15%? Fine. Don't want univeral health insurance? Fine. Don't want a Federal jobs/infrastructure program? Fine. Don't want to end Star Wars and work legitimately towards nuclear disarmament? Fine. Don't want to pull out of NAFTA? Also fine. Don't want to strengthen labor laws so workers will actually have enforceable rights to organize? Again, fine. Kucinich actually has a long record in public service that you can learn about and disagree with. If you even want to conclude from these positions that he's delusional, well, okay, too. But do you actually expect me or anyone else to write off a candidate because you say you heard him say something once that you think is nuts? Gimme a break.

Nick,

I certainly don't expect you to write off Kucinich because he said that. There is an insurmountable list of stupid things said by politicians. This is merely a drop in the bucket. Yeah, I still think he's delusional. But read what I said again. Nowhere do I call for you or anyone to write him off. I find the man quite humorous and entertaining. I certainly admire his passion.

As far as t the jobs situation is concerned, (and please don't mistake this as a defense of GWB) I think you have to consider that a lot of the lost jobs are in areas such as manufacturing. Our country is experiencing growing pains as we move to a more service based economy. Those jobs are going to move to other countries that are basically experiencing the equivalent of an Industrial Revolution.

America is becoming more and more educated. Companies don't want to pay people with college educations to work on assembly lines. Also people with college educations don't want to want to work on assembly lines. The jobs nobody wants to do (or pay high wages for) are going to keep getting sloughed off to developing nations. Eventually those nations will start to come around and dump those same jobs on the tier of nations below them. What happens when there are no developing countries left? I don't know.

What about the people put of work? Well, you have to be willing to relocate, retrain, re-educate. Could the government do more to facilitate this? Probably.

I guess I just don't see the loss of a bunch of jobs, that if you polled high school and college students on the verge of entering the job market, most of them wouldn't want to do them, as a bad thing. Fifty years ago, they'd have been happy to, but things have changed. The people who really want those jobs, are the ones who have them now. Is that fair? No. But when is life fair?

Hmmm, I think I might throw my political hat in presidential ring when I'm old enough. I'll run on a platform of making life fair. :D

Actually, I think I'd just tell everyone to chill, put on some bob marley and sing along: "everything's gonna be all right, everything's gonna be all right." Cuz ya know? It probably will.

Dave

Kucinich looks the Eraserhead baby. That is all i have to say.

Dave,

Well, I'm glad you find Kucinich entertaining. I'm a little disturbed that you don't oppose the election of the "delusional," but okay...

To some extent I agree that the evolving economy means job displacement. At a certain level this is just a truism. There aren't nearly as many hat makers, horseshoers, and candle makers as there used to be. But trade policy has exacerbated this problem enormously -- basically, the US has declared that the highest expression of "freedom" is the freedom of corporations to put workers in competition against one another for inevitably lower wages. My support of Kucinich is based on part on my belief that he doesn't see the private capital market as the highest achievement of our society.

I can't really agree with your statements about what jobs people are willing to do -- it sounds a lot like Phil Knight asserting in "The Big One" that American workers just don't want to make shoes, requiring Nike to locate its factories in noted pro-shoe cultures like Indonesia. Workers in other nations have every right to make a living, and if a company can afford to pay American workers $15/hr to make a product, they can afford to pay Costa Rican or Chinese workers pretty close to that, too. I'm not trying to be Nick Wobbly, but if all the workers just said "That's it, were not working for chicken feed" at the same time the corporations wouldn't have much choice.

The other issue, which you allude to briefly, is whether the society can do more to soften the blow of economic change on workers. The US does a horrible job of this currently. The best example is our health care system -- why the hell should my kids have to stop going to the doctor because my boss moves his plant to Taiwan? Kucinich has by far the best plan for health care, which is for all of us to get our insurance through Medicare. The only real losers in this would be insurance companies, their investors, and their employees.

If you don't want American workers freaking out over job loss, you shouldn't make job loss such a terrifying thing. Can you imagine if public education or police or fire protection worked like health insurance? "Well, Dave, I'm firing you, so now your kids can't go to school and the cops won't help you if you're robbed and the fire department won't come if your house catches fire. Unless you can afford to COBRA your health, police, and fire insurance...which you probably can't because you're fired." College education, supposedly the route to prosperity, is less and less affordable for most of us, and sure isn't helping tech workers who used to make $70K a year writing code being replaced by folks in Mumbai making $11K.

I'd suggest you check out nathannewman.org, especially his series on labor and the economy. Both his posts and the comments are on point to this discussion, and very informative

Nick,

I generally agree with most of what you have to say. However, I don't think putting everyone on Medicare is a great idea, when I don't need it. I'm already insured. So are a lot of other people. Why not propose a plan that either allows Medicare as an option, or simply fills in the gap for the uninsured...or maybe a combonation. I think most people that can afford private insurance or can get it through work would prefer to keep it that way. But it would be great to have something to fall back on in those situations where you were, say, put out of a job that had provided you with insurance. Why not put the insurance companies in competition with government and let the people decide? If the insurance companies get run out, then fine, call it the will of the people. But why force me to use Medicare?

Dave,

In saying that we should all be on Medicare, I should make clear that we need to improve Medicare: end the HMO subsidies, introduce a real prescription drug benefit allowing HCFA to negotiate prices with drug manufacturers, change parts of the copayment scheme. I'm glad you're one of the people who gets employer-sponsored health care; I am too. Briefly put, the reason to end the for-profit guys is that the situation you propose leads to cherry-picking: AETNA or Blue Cross or Amerihealth can say, "Dave's young and healthy; we can make money off his premiums, and if he gets too sick, we'll boot him off and he'll go get on Medicare." The mistake we've made in this country is providing Federal health insurance (Medicare) ONLY for the sickest people -- the elderly -- rather than pooling the high-risk together with the low-risk into one, big risk pool. That's what insurance is all about.

This would be financed by converting the money you and your boss pay to the insurance company for your premium into a payroll tax sent to the Federal government. Since Medicare is 3 to 4 times more efficient than private insurers in using money to reimburse for medical services (rather than on ads, management salaries, investor premiums, and paperwork), we'll be able to cover everyone without spending much more money.

Lastly on choice: the choice I want is the choice of who my doctor is. Under the current system, I don't choose: AETNA gives me a list of doctors they'll let me see, which I can't negotiate over. Maybe another insurer would have a different list, but my boss buys my insurance, not me, so I don't control that, either.

Quick anecdote: I live in NJ and work in PA, near Philly. Although the family doctor my family has seen for a few years accepts AETNA, my employer only has coverage for southern PA. Since we live in NJ, AETNA will allow my wife and our 2 kids to select our NJ doctor as PCP. As the employee working in PA, however, I am forbidden to select a NJ doctor as my PCP, and have been forced to switch to a Philly doctor I don't know. My employer is looking into picking up NJ coverage through AETNA, but it may cost more and they may say no. I have no control over this ridiculous and bureaucratic process. And I make this complaint totally aware that I am one of the lucky ones. Literally tens of millions of Americans would love to have the insurance problems I've got.

The current system is expensive and wasteful, creates tons of unnecessary bureaucracy and reduces my freedom, all while completely failing to guarantee me or anyone else insurance. Giving more money to those who set this system up and profit from it is bad public policy, especially when there's a much better system available.