For years, I’ve wrestled with the ultimate political question, “Are conservative wonks really that ignorant or are they simply forced to pretend to be because of their ideological necessities?” I think I’ve come down on the side of, “They’re really that ignorant.” In modern America, just following the facts makes one a liberal. Conservatism is an ideology; liberalism no longer is. Thus, the only people left to do the conservative wonkery are ideologues who are not interested in the facts except in as far as they substantiate their ideology.

Consider healthcare reform. The solution that we finally got with only Democratic votes is a conservative one that depends upon the existing insurance market system. Liberals looked at the available proposals and went with the one they thought they could get passed. Conservatives, on the other hand, start with the idea of everything that healthcare reform cannot be. For example, it could not be a single payer system. And in the end, it could not even be their own conservative plan. We see this over and over again in other areas: first comes ideology and any solutions to problems must pass that hurdle first.

Friday night, Holman Jenkins wrote, The Medicare-for-All Diversion. In it, he boldly takes on the oft repeated (true) claim by liberals that Medicare is better than private insurance because it has far lower administrative overhead. Medicare has 2% overhead costs while private insurance has 20%. Aha, Jenkins notes, “Much of Medicare’s overhead is hidden on the books of other agencies.” Q-E-fucking-D! Except… Not so much.

Austin Frakt at The Incidental Economist provides, Facts on Medicare Administrative Costs. It turns out that, contrary to what every conservative just knows, the government is pretty good at just about everything it does. And that is especially true of accounting. The Treasury Department applies the work that the IRS and HHS does for Medicare to Medicare. In other words, and not to put too fine a point on it: Holman Jenkins is just wrong.

But this isn’t even Jenkins’ main point. He must know deep down that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. (That would require research!) So he argues that the reason Medicare is so efficient is because its members are so unhealthy. Really! Get this:

So private insurer administration costs are higher because they are keeping their members so healthy. Or something. That might make some sense if he were talking about profits. But he isn’t and health insurance profits are really quite low. It is all that money they spend trying not to pay for care that eats up the money. If insurance companies paid out no money to members because they were all so healthy, administration costs wouldn’t go up, profits would. And, of course, then insurance costs would go down. Blah blah blah. Leave it to a conservative to understand absolutely nothing about how business works.

He ends by making another totally bogus claim that his own column contradicts, “Look, if Medicare had cracked the secret of administering large sectors of the economy more efficiently than the private sector can, we’d be wise to hand the entire economy over to Medicare. We don’t hear too many making this argument.” We actually do have data that shows just that. And the fact that healthcare in the US costs about double what it does in other advanced economies also shows that. But the facts never get in the way of a conservative making an argument against what they see as socialism. It is disingenuous in the extreme for a Wall Street Journal columnist to say that he would follow the facts to the best policy. That just isn’t true. Even if you could convince him of the facts, he would still be against the policy because, “Freedom!”

Afterword

Holman Jenkins is a real charmer. Here, via Gawker, is what he wrote about Stop & Frisk:

At Slate on Friday, Dave Weigel published an interesting interview with Joe Scarborough, “Eisenhower is Looking Pretty Damn Good”: A Conversation With Joe Scarborough. What fascinates me is that someone like Scarborough can be considered a reasonable or mainstream Republican. The man is as extreme as they come. The only reason he comes off as something other than a full tilt ideologue is that he isn’t in office. As New York Magazine reported, “He supported impeaching Clinton, abolishing the Department of Education, and cutting off AIDS funding for the so-called Ryan White Act.” Yes, that whole liberal conspiracy known as “public education” has to go! And now, like all Republicans, Scarborough just loves Clinton! (He seems as anti-gay as ever, but isn’t willing to come right out and say that gays ought to die for the “sin.”)

What comes through loud and clear in the interview is the disingenuousness of Scarborough. His whole political strategy is to lie in wait. The Republicans should just wait for their chance. When they finally control all branches of the government, they can destroy the New Deal once and for all! Ha ha ha! That’s what he says—he just doesn’t end it with an evil laugh. But Scarborough thinks the time will come. Weigel asks him, “So when do you use the power you have to roll back the New Deal?” And his response is blunt:

So Scarborough’s “reasonableness” comes from the fact that he understands you can’t roll back decades of settled legislation while the Democrats are in power. His problem with Bush is not that he was a fool and a bad president, but that when he had the chance, he didn’t destroy our liberal state.

There are two problems here. First, Bush tried to do that. He tried to privatize Social Security. And our older citizens were having none of it. So Scarborough seems to be calling for the Republicans to take control of the government, pass really unpopular laws, and then never again win an election for a couple of generations. He’s pitching fantasy here. The Republicans can’t “roll back” Social Security and Medicare because these programs are hugely popular among the most reliably conservative demographic groups: the elderly. So the Republicans can roll back programs for the poor all they want, but it would be suicide to do so to programs for their base.

Scarborough talks about how Bush was a “big government Republican.” But Reagan, who Scarborough so loves, was also a big government Republican. Scarborough is pushing an old lie that is just untenable today—namely, that the Republican Party is in favor of small government. As Dean Baker put it, “In other words, the most obvious story here is not that conservatives are opposed to public goods. Rather they are opposed to public goods that could have the effect of less income being redistributed upward.” So I bristle whenever I hear such nonsense.

If he were being honest, Scarborough would admit what he means: he likes popular Republicans of the past. The rest is just apologetics. When Eisenhower was in power, it wasn’t the time to roll back Social Security. When Reagan was in power, it wasn’t time to roll back Social Security and Medicare. In fact, Reagan helped to make Social Security stronger! But when Bush was in power, it was the right time. And when President Christie has a Republican controlled Congress, it will be time. Scarborough’s world view seems to be divided into nostalgia (“Weren’t old Republicans grand!”) and fantasy (“Soon seniors can go back to eating cat food like they’re supposed to!”).

With all this in mind, I have a new definition of a “reasonable” Republican:

With that understanding, go ahead an call Joe Scarborough a reasonable Republican.

The great Ukrainian painter Marie Bashkirtseff was born in 1858. She died of tuberculosis at only 25. It is amazing to think what she would have done had she lived a reasonably long life. As it is, she was a master. Check out the link for a few of her works.

The great ragtime composer Scott Joplin might have been born on this day in 1867. For a long time, people thought so. Now they don’t. But no one knows when he was born, so we might as well celebrate his birthday today. Ragtime is one of the most distinctive musical forms ever and no one was greater at it than Joplin. It is like having a whole band on the piano. As a result, playing ragtime is really hard—that left hand has to do a lot of work. Anyway, here is Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” played by Joplin himself (on a piano roll anyway):

One of the greatest basketball players ever, Oscar Robertson is 75 today. He was a hero to me when I was a kid. But I was really disappointed to hear him talk about the movie Hoosiers. Robertson was a sophomore on the losing team and I guess he took particular offense to it. He noted that the team was not all black. But he was wrong to say that was how the film portrayed the team, because it didn’t. What’s more, on the commentary for the film, the writers discuss how because of Robertson, the Hickory (Milan in real life) team would never have been able to beat the team the next year. Robertson alone was that great—as a high school junior. It’s not that I don’t understand, it’s just unfortunate that he even talks about it. He’s one of the greatest basketball players ever, for Christ’s sake!

Other birthdays: Spanish painter Juan Martinez de Jauregui y Aguilar (1583); novelist Laurence Sterne (1713); children’s writer Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849); painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864); architect Walter Burley Griffin (1876); ridiculous writer Dale Carnegie (1888); famed conservative bigot William F Buckley Jr (1925); the original Ringo, Pete Best (72); the great bass player Donald “Duck” Dunn (1941); actor Billy Connolly (71); serial killer Ted Bundy (1946); and actor Thierry Lhermitte (61).

The day, however, belongs to the great philosopher Baruch Spinoza who was born on this day in 1632. What can I possibly say about Spinoza that will not trivialize him? He was in many ways the father of the Enlightenment thinkers who would come after him. But what is most important to me is his writing and thinking on religious matters. Spinoza argued for pantheism—the idea that all of the universe is a manifistation of God, or parts anyway. But not in the simplistic way that people tend to think about it, “We are all one, dude!” In my discussions with theists, I’m usually struck by how tightly they hold to Descartes’ idea that the body and the soul are different. Spinoza countered this by arguing that physics and metaphysics must be one and the same. The problem, from my perspective, is that we are parochial. So we cannot “see” God any more than we can see our eyes. Of course, regardless of how you define pantheism, from a traditional standpoint, it becomes atheism. If everything is God then nothing is. One thing is certain, such a God does not love us. Spinoza understood that.

Happy birthday Baruch Spinoza!

I’ve written a lot around here about the distinction between a critic and an ombudsman. When it comes to film, there is very little criticism. Mostly, so called movie critics are nothing but ombudsman. People get the idea that I think there is something wrong with being an ombudsman. There isn’t. My problem is that these “critics” claim to be more than they are. All most people want is an ombudsman.

So I was quite interested to hear about The Q Filmcast. It is a podcast featuring five guys. Each week, they all watch a film that is available on Netflix Instant Watch and then discuss it. It has something to do with WRFN in Nashville Tennessee, and it is very professionally done. At least one of them is on-air talent, with the kind of voice that fills me with a combination of jealousy and disgust. How dare you speak like that, and how can I learn to do it! Other people are techs. I figure they all work at WRFN one way or another.

The thing about the show is that it is pure ombudsmanship. And given that there are five of them, the listener actually gets different perspectives. That’s great because no one claims to speak the ultimate true. I’m kidding! They all claim it, just as we all do. But you get a variety of that. And that was well on display for last week’s episode, which was on The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.

The group was split: four of the guys really liked the film and one really didn’t. Out of 10, they gave the film: 8, 7, 7, 6, and 2. Eventually, one of the 7 guys bumped his rating up to 8 and the 2 guy bumped his rating up to 3. I felt sorry for the guy who panned the film. His name is James Savage and I gather that he is usually like this. But he highlighted how there are many ways to love a film but generally only one way to hate it. One of the criticisms was that it was repetitive. But nothing could have been more repetitive than Savage’s review which was basically, “It just didn’t…”

Often I find myself in conversations about films which the other person didn’t like. And they have nothing to say. It is like Tim the Enchanter describing the Vorpal Bunny in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “He’s got huge sharp… He can leap about… Look at the bones!” In describing his reaction to the film, Savage was reduced to, “It didn’t have enough… The aliens were too… It just wasn’t good!”

I’m not putting the guy down. The film is not for everyone. In fact, it isn’t for more than a small subset of film viewers. And as a lover of films myself, I don’t recommend The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra to most people. For the right kind of person, it is a triumph. For most people, it is an extremely weird and silly thing. But this gets to something really important to me when I talk about films: did the film work on its own terms? Look at my article about Ethan Hawke’s attempt at Shakespeare, Another Sucky Hamlet. I really hated it, yet I wrote, “Don’t get me wrong, the film is not all bad. In fact, the film shows every sign of being a very creative endeavor. I don’t think it works, but the producers were trying to do something new and I applaud that.”

So I think it is important to distinguish between “I didn’t like this film” and “this film is no good.” And as an ombudsman, I think this distinction is critical. Savage seemed to back himself into a corner. In fact, near the end, he rejected his position as thoroughly as one ever does in these situations. He increased his rating to 3 out of 10. But he was cheeky about it, indicating that what was wrong with the movie wasn’t really up there on the screen but rather inside his brain. He didn’t like it because he didn’t like it.

The people who liked it did a better job as ombudsmen. And I’ll go further: they make the film more enjoyable for someone about to watch it. Because they clearly got it. As I indicated before, most people watching the film will just be confused by it. This is why generally it is best to watch comedies with an audience. We all learn how to approach the film from others. And most audiences include people like me who I call “easy laughers”—people who see the humor in everything. So the four guys who like Cadavra provide a kind of introduction to how one should watch the film.

There was one bit of criticism brought up a few times that I thought was correct. The film does drag a bit in parts. To me, this is part of what is brilliant about it—what makes it something more than just good entertainment. But from the standpoint of someone who just wants to watch an enjoyable film, it doesn’t necessarily work. Both the end of the first act and the beginning of the third act are padded. This is entirely correct for genre. Even though Blamire isn’t still pushing the jokes as fast as ever, most people would find these parts a tad slow. I think these are the best parts of the film. But most people do not intend to watch the film ten times. (Although one of the guys said he watched it three time!)

Anyway, I think The Q Filmcast podcast is a much better introduction to a film than any review that you are likely to read. The conversation is very animated and often amusing. And everyone clearly takes it seriously. Even Savage had paid close attention and knew the film well. That alone is a lot more than many “critics.”

Afterword

In each episode, they come in with “top 3” lists. For example, they’ve done “child performances” (No question: Tatum O’Neal in Paper Moon.) and “visionary directors” (How about: Alejandro Jodorowsky.) and so on. For this film, they wanted, “Top 3 Films with Skeletons in em’.” They mentioned the clear ones: Jason and the Argonauts and Army of Darkness. Almost as an afterthought, they mentioned one of my all time favorites: House on Haunted Hill. That was the first film I thought of when the subject came up. But I would definitely add what is clearly a strange pick, but which has an image that has stayed with me my whole life, Manhattan. “What are future generations gonna say about us?”

On this day in 1859, famed outlaw Billy the Kid was born. What I find interesting about him is that he was an attractive young man. And I think this is why he is alternately described as dashing and despicable. The biggest prejudice among humans is against the ugly and for the beautiful. The best is always assumed about attractive people. As a result, I think that Billy the Kid was a psychopath. Of course there are other issues. I don’t think a life a crime is natural even for psychopaths. We have a screwed up society that actively generates desperation and then sits back and enjoys the feeling of superiority when desperate people behave badly.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

The great screenwriter Robert Towne is 79 today. He is known in Hollywood as a “script doctor.” These are the guys who fix crappy scripts that other people have written. Or at least, that’s the theory. In practice, I’m sure that most scripts are perfectly fine. I always know there is trouble ahead when a film has too many screenwriters. It is usually an indication that the director really didn’t know what he was doing and so had many (mostly uncredited) writers hack away at it. But Towne also writes his own original scripts. The most important of these was Chinatown.

Other birthdays: Russian impressionist Konstantin Korovin (1861); Harpo Marx (1888); comedian Steve Landesberg (1936); and the president of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro (51).

The day, however, belongs to the great actor Boris Karloff who was born on this day in 1887. He is best known for his performance as Frankenstein, which he performed with great depth. (You really should own Frankenstein: The Legacy Collection.) I tend to remember him for later B films like The Raven and The Comedy of Terrors. But his greatest performance, for me, is in The Mummy. Still, I have to present the following scene from Bride of Frankenstein and not just because I have such a big crush on Elsa Lanchester. The monster acts the way all men do when women spurn them. And what is wrong with him in the end? He’s a sweet guy, “She hate me—like others”:

Happy birthday Boris Karloff!

Timothy Egan wrote a really good article over at the New York Times last night, The South’s New Lost Cause. It is very clever. He starts by contrasting Obama’s healthcare “lie” with how Lincoln lied to South when he said during his inauguration, “If you like the slaves you’ve got now, you can keep them.” Well, he didn’t use those words. He actually said, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists.” But you get the idea.

Of course, it isn’t clear that Lincoln meant to lie. Had the southern states just stayed cool, they might have been able to to keep the slaves they liked. But Egan’s point is that slavery was a lost cause for the southern slave owners. He doesn’t get into it, but slavery was bad for the southern economies. It might have been great for some of that minority of southerners who had slaves, but it stopped the region generally from industrializing and moving into the modern world. With or without Lincoln, slavery was ending.

This is a similar situation with modern conservative economics. Business owners in general prefer the Republican Party. But the modern Democratic Party pushes economic policies that are better for the country and for the business community. Yet they continue to support the Republicans because they only look at their short-term interests. They don’t ask, “How can I increase the number of people buying my products over the next decade?” They instead ask, “How can I minimize the amount of taxes I pay next quarter?” (Ayn Rand always talked about how businesses had to look out for their “enlightened self-interest.” That shows what a fantasy she believed in. People don’t act like that. Communism is more believable than that!)

Now the south is at it again, hurting themselves in the name of another lost cause. Right now, southern (and other conservative) states are passing up the Medicaid expansion of the Affordable Care Act. Why? Egan is more blunt than I’m used to reading in the Times, “And they are doing it out of spite.” But it is more than just harming the poor. That’s no big deal for conservatives. They believe the poor are unworthy after all. They aren’t just spiting Obamacare and the working poor of their states. They are spiting their own economies.

Egan provides some numbers:

To provide some context here, there are about two million people employed in Kentucky. An increase of 17,000 jobs represents almost 1% of the total workforce and 10% of the unemployed. Accepting the Medicaid expansion will not only provide healthcare to tens of thousands who don’t currently have it, it will reduce the unemployment rate by an entire percentage point. Imagine that you were the governor of a state and the federal government offered you a free program that would lower your unemployment rate by a percentage point. You’d have to be really messed up to pass that up, and yet 25 states have said, “Hell no! We like our high unemployment and uninsured rates!”

Meanwhile, conservatives throughout the nation are very keen on the Keystone XL pipeline because of all the jobs it would create. Estimates indicate that it would create just a couple thousand for two years and then basically none after that. Even the company itself no longer holds to the 20,000 jobs number. But even if that were the case, nationally, that means nothing. It is roughly equal to what the ACA will do in Kentucky alone. There’s a whole lot of hypocrisy going on with the conservatives regarding Obamacare and the Keystone XL pipeline.

The south is as likely to rise again and re-enslave our African-American citizens as they are to avoid the Medicaid expansion as they years go by. I can’t help but think it all goes back to the same thing. Them Yankees ain’t gonna tell us true Americans in Texas and Alabama and Idaho what to do! Apparently, they would rather live in dirt hovels than allow the black Democratic president to “win.” It’s just awful because a lot of innocent people are harmed. For example, 70,000 people in Montana will go without healthcare and many others will go without jobs, all in the name of spite and meaningless political posturing.

Hey folks. I’m out of town all day today (again actually) and so no more posts until this evening. I look forward to seeing you then. But until then:

On this day in 1898, the great surrealist painter Rene Magritte was born. Over the years I’ve really become fascinated by him. Paintings like The Human Condition that put together the nature of reality with the nature of art never seem to lose their interest. Sadly, most people just remember him as the guy who paints hats and green apples. He did not become popular until later in his life. Most of his life he spent working other jobs. These included art forgery and currency counterfeiting. A man’s gotta eat! Anyway, in the 1960s he did finally break through in a big way, but nothing like what happened after his death in 1967.

Other birthdays: baseball player Stan Musial (1920); actor Marlo Thomas (76); comedy writer Harold Ramis (69); actor Goldie Hawn (68); businessman George Zimmer (65); and actor Nicollette Sheridan (50).

The day, however, belongs to the great enlightenment philosopher Voltaire who was born on this day in 1694. The great thing about him is that his thinking evolved over time—becoming more liberal. Unfortunately, it also means that people can generally use him to justify pretty much anything they want to believe. What I find most interesting about him is that he has become a big deal to a lot of modern conservatives. The funny thing about conservatives is that they love to grab onto liberals of the past. The idea seems to be that of course they would have been liberal back then but now things have just gone too far. More than anything else, it’s just silly. The very definition of a conservative is someone who thinks the liberals of previous generations were right. A conservative is always behind the curve of history. All they can see is the past. The only future they can see is a straight one where nothing changes. If today’s conservatives were around during Voltaire’s time, they would have been apoplectic about the thought of religious freedom or democracy. Hell, many conservatives today are against those things. Leave Voltaire to the liberals who are the only ones who deserve him!

Happy birthday Voltaire!

I really like this: actual stories of Obamacare successes. Because here’s the thing: that’s the rule, not the exception. If the mainstream media want to present stories of people losing crummy healthcare policies and being forced to pay more for good policies, fine. But don’t present them as typical of what’s going on. In the two biggest states in the union, people are getting better insurance at lower prices. That’s the story. Leave the “Obamacare is destroying America” stories to Fox News and right wing hate radio. Because that isn’t news; that’s just propaganda.

In addition, Lawrence O’Donnell mentions that the administration now claims that 80% of users will be able to get insurance on the website. Despite what he says, 80% is the vast majority of users. It can be better and it will be better. But as Jonathan Cohn notes, there will always be people who won’t use the website. As I know from my own experiences with the well working Covered California website, some people have complicated situations that cause problems.

Anyway, watch at least the beginning of this. It is worth it.