It is time to turn off our compulsion to horde

Los Angeles arbitrator Barry Goldman wrote a brilliant piece in today's Los Angeles Times Opinion Section about how our internal "full" switches are broken and we feel the need to buy more stuff, eat more food and in the case of certain wealthy people; risk prison to steal more money. He notes the proliferation of bigger closets, the storage industry, obesity and insider trading. What makes modern men, women and children to feel so insatiable? Goldman hypothesizes that earlier humans were constantly faced with scarcity and may have developed the need to horde during good times in anticipation of it. Seems plausible to me. President Obama's recent comments to foreign leaders suggest he is aware of this cultural phenomenon. He cautioned China, Japan and Europe not to expect American consumers to buy the world out of recession. We're fat enough already.

Kristoff has a message for Senator Lieberman

New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristoff has a message for Senator Joe Lieberman and other lawmakers who are dragging their feet on health care reform--don't turn your gaze away from the millions of Americans who suffer immensely because our system is broken.

Kristoff grew up in a tiny town in Oregon called Yamhill. I went to middle school there and remember the hardworking people who lived simple lives and took care of themselves. In Saturday's column, Kristoff recounts the story of a young, recently married man in Yamhill who developed an abnormal growth of blood vessels on his brain that caused severe pain and internal bleeding. The condition is treatable but requires an expensive operation.

The victim was unable to continue working before having the condition properly treated and lost his job... and his insurance. His new wife had insurance from a separate employer but was unable to add her husband to the plan because of his pre-existing condition. The emergency room doctors send him back home because he doesn't have insurance for the surgery. He obtained a Medicaid card from the state but has been unable to find a doctor willing to perform the surgery because the state's reimbursement rate is too low for the doctors. His wife was forced to quit her job to assist her slowly dying husband, thereby losing any family income or insurance for her and two children from a previous marriage. The Yamhill case is by no means unique. Millions of Americans are faced with similar situations each year. Further, the economic crisis is exposing millions more to this liability.

Isn't it time that we, as Americans, recognize the fact that our current system is unable to solve the problem of the uninsured and under-insured? Isn't it time that we support a health plan that takes us perhaps halfway to where virtually every other industrialized country already went decades ago? Isn't it time to stem the hemorrhaging of our national wealth to inefficient insurance and health care industries that bleed away our ability to solve other important national problems?

A new Harvard study to be published this month will estimate that 45,000 deaths each year in America can be attributed to a lack of health insurance. That statistic is evidence of a benign form of genocide.

Kristoff notes that "if a senator strolled indifferently by as [the victim] retched in pain, we would think that person pitiless. But isn’t it just as monstrous for politicians to avert their eyes, make excuses and deny coverage to innumerable Americans just like John?"

Kristoff is right. I hope our Congressional representatives read his column before that make a decision on health care reform.

Sandra Loh hates men "kitchen bitches"

LOS ANGELES, Cal.--Actress and radio commentator Sandra Tsing Loh is getting divorced and wants us all to pat her on the back for leaving her husband because he didn't turn her on any more. In her September 2009 diatribe on the pages of The Atlantic, Ms. Loh couched her motivations in trite feminist terms, as if a woman (in 2009 America)leaving your husband in middle age to pursue wild sex and independence was somehow a principled political statement is support of women the world over. Poppycock.

Ms. Loh's article demonstrates that she is just another individual who is struggling to shake off the bonds of the Grim Reaper who WILL come for us all, no matter how many liposuction treatments and New Age clinics and herbal enemas and wild nights of sex with lovers half our age. Sandra Tsing Loh is going to die. Get over it.

To work, to parent, to housekeep, to be the ones who schedule “date night,” only to be reprimanded in the home by male kitchen bitches, and then, in the bedroom, to be ignored—it’s a bum deal. And then our women’s magazines exhort us to rekindle the romance. You rarely see men’s magazines exhorting men to rekindle the romance.

In Ms. Loh's estimation, a man who cooks for the family and helps with the chores is a "kitchen bitch." What? In truth, what she can't handle is the fact that men have changed to reflect societal norms. Many men help out around the house, and make decisions as equals in the relationship. For some women, that just doesn't get their juices flowing.

I'm not critical of Ms. Loh's commentaries on marriage in general. I should know. I've participated in the revolving door of that institution more that the average soul. What I detest is her churlish attempt to invoke feminism as her troubadour.

Obama makes right choice on Afghanistan

PASADENA--Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is a tyrant, the Taliban is active throughout the country and neighboring Pakistan and Iran are time bombs waiting to go off. The easy choice for President Obama would have been to declare victory and begin a strategic retreat. He made the right choice to expand the U.S. presence but not for reasons espoused by hawks in Congress.

The President took office under the most challenging conditions of any president since Truman took the helm from Roosevelt. His predecessor did more to destroy our nation in the geo-political and economic spheres than any combination of external threats have ever been able to accomplish. It is this writer's opinion that certain Bush Administration officials violated federal laws and the U.S. Constitution and should be prosecuted for behavior that borders on treasonous.

Obama would have preferred not to take office with the U.S. financial system in collapse, a half-baked bailout scheme already in motion and two foreign conflicts with only marginal strategic significance to our national security. Obama used classic Keynesian economic theory to successfully prop up the obliterated financial markets and key industries, thereby saving us from social collapse and perhaps even a Constitutional crisis. Despite the immense hurdles he faced in Iraq, he continued General Petraeus' successful effort to pacify the Sunni hardliners and empower the Shia majority.

In Afghanistan, he must do what is necessary to stabilize the country. The end result will not be a Western-style liberal democracy. But considering the history of the fledging nation-state, did the neo-conservatives really believe that could have occurred under even the best of circumstances? I think not. Instead, we will follow a modified version of Vice President Biden's plan which will require us to create a stable environment in the cities and major transportation corridors. That will require more soldiers on the ground. We will ramp us training of Afghan troops and hopefully clean some of the corruption out of the Karzai government. In unsecured areas, we will use special forces and drone missiles to keep the Taliban from regrouping in large numbers. This will take time but will ultimately allow us to create a fairly stable situation on the ground and draw down within a few years.

Obama did not create the worst domestic and foreign disasters of our nation's recent history. He just cleaned them up.

Clinton the Clown

REPORTING FROM A LEAKING DHOW IN THE RED SEA--By the time you, dear reader, read this post, a decades-long effort to achieve peace in the Middle East will once again be struck down--not by assassins bullets or geo-politics but by the grossly incompetent acts of our current Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. To say that Ms. Clinton is a clown would be a stinging insult to those talented individuals who make children laugh at circuses and fairs. Perhaps Ms. Clinton could take clown lessons. It may help her raise her image in the diplomatic world

Let me explain. On October 31, our esteemed Secretary of State stood beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and agreed with him that he had made "unprecedented" concessions over Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. This statement infuriated Arab leaders, who have been expecting the Obama Administration to pressure the Israelis on the settlement issue. What is unprecedented about her comment is that it flies directly in the face her previous statements (and those of Obama on the issue). Her buffoonish actions did create results--the resignation of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a long-time friend of the West and perhaps the last, best chance for a moderate partner on the Palestinian side to work towards a workable peace. Abbas' replacement will likely be less inclined to sit by idly while the territories take on the aesthetic of Barnum & Bailey.

In the middle of this three-ring circus, with Israel, the Arabs and the United States looking to the ringmaster for guidance, we see rising from the dry ice, an apparition of a clown, done up crudely in the Master's attire and wiggling her butt fatuously at the stunned crowd and dazed Israelis, Arabs and Americans. Bravo, Secretary Clinton.