It's Only Castles Burning

A young friend of a young friend has cancer. The diagnosis isn't complete, but the docs have already discovered a tumor on his spine, which suggests bone lymphoma or bone cancer. He's undergoing emergency radiation treatments to halt the spread of the malignancy because he's in imminent danger of a collapsed spine, which would paralyze him for life even if the cancer goes into remission.

This Native-American family has already lost one son to the Iraq war. Another child -- because I can't help but think of someone I've known since the age of 14 as anything but a child -- recently joined the service.

They have no health insurance.

Hasn't this family given enough, sacrificed enough? Can anyone explain to me why they should have to pay a dime for treatment? Can anyone explain to me why they should have to go through the humiliating process of applying for assistance? Why a Gold Star Mother -- or any mother, for that matter -- should have to tell one paper pusher after another that she couldn't afford insurance, much less the cost of treatment, and can you please help? Why the family should be forced to rely in part on well-meaning fundraisers that won't make a dent in the costs?

Last November, I fell and broke my wrist. The combined pre-insurance charge of the ER, day surgery, follow-up appointments, and hand therapy exceeded $20,000.00. For a common childhood injury. Any guesses as to what a full-court press treatment of bone lymphoma will cost?

And yet there are people who will tell you that keeping the government out of health care is worth the cost this family is paying, that a young man's collapsed spine is a small price to pay for preventing a certain class of people from forming a dependency on the nanny state.

I'm going to guess that said people have never actually been faced with paying such a cost themselves. I'm going to guess that if they ever were, many would be bitter and angry. Which this family is not. They're stoic beyond imagination.

But, you see, there's a this huge danger to the country of families like this becoming dependent on...what? The country that they've already given one life to? The country that another family member has signed up to serve even though this person is all too aware of the sacrifice that may be asked?  The country that they patriotically serve despite its -- to put it delicately -- problematic history with their forebears? You tell me, because I'm having a hard time seeing a danger here...

Citizen K. has refrained from commenting on the ongoing Israel-Palestine tragedy because he doesn't know enough about the convoluted history and politics of that dispute to support an inclination to believe in a two-state solution. In this lengthy but fascinating lecture -- which you can watch or read -- John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, explains that, while a two-state solution may be preferred, Israeli policy will produce exactly what it does not want: A single bi-national democracy dominated by Palestinians. Professor Mearsheimer projects that this will happen only after a period of Israeli policy drift to an official and obvious apartheid that will lose the crucial support of American Jews. In a fascinating aside, he predicts that the internet will play a positive role, and makes specific recommendations for Palestinians to accelerate the process. Highly recommended (thanks, Josh and Sarah)...


British Petroleum has yet to lay out a plan for cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf, which should come as no surprise to anyone. After all, they didn't think that an explosion could possibly happen. Anyway, why would a $240 billion dollar company invest its scarce resources into a contingency plan for an environmental catastrophe? I mean, even the existence of such a plan might imply the possibility of a spill which could endanger plans for offshore drilling and...well...we wouldn't want that, would we? The legal cap on damages is $75 million, but a group of Democratic senators flatly disbelieve BP promises that it will pay the costs of cleanup want to raise the cap to $10 billion. I wonder what the Republican mantra opposing this and supporting a taxpayer bailout of BP will be? (Thanks once again to the New Orleans Ladder, which remains an amazingly current resource on the spill.)...


Watch Fox News promote the idea that the Federal Flood of NOLA was an act of God and that the oil spill may the result of an environmentalist conspiracy. How do these people say this stuff with a straight face? I suppose that we have to remember that they are actors reading a script...

He may have been born Neil Percival Kenneth Robert Ragland Young, but he'll always be "Neil" to me: