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The men of GLoP finally don their headphones to serve up another steaming helping of pop culture, politics, and prescience. This week, they warn us as to what life will be like under Mayor DeBlasio, debate the value and effects on Twitter, riff on Ender’s Game and Captain Phillips and the many (many) loves of John Podhoretz.
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Rob, Obama is not two steps behind. He is way ahead. The Obamacare disaster is intended, so that while he is still in office, the mess will be so great that people will beg for single-payer and he will midwife it.
Jim Angle of Fox News shouldn’t have been surprised that the Obamacare call center identified him as a member of the news media when he called them with his Fox News caller ID blocked. As a general rule, blocking caller ID doesn’t work when calling a toll-free number.
Apropos ofMiller’s Crossing and JPod’s checkered romantic past, as Gabriel Byrne’s character Tommy Reagan once said, “Nobody knows anybody. Not that well.”
I as well enjoy Glop. But it is really very evident that Rob living alone (assumed) must be have an effect as neither Jonah or John couldn’t start a sentence without Rob jumping in and taking over the conversation. Rob, get another dog or something.
Evan, many thanks for the correction of the healthcare faux pas in the podcast. Britain has a private healthcare system as well for those who can pay. Remember it was the UK that told Canada and Hillarycare the biggest mistake you can make is to have a separate private healthcare system that competes with the socialized one. They will always be compared and socialized model always looses. This is why Canada has no private system other than the US. By the way, I was surprised with all of the talk of the website failure, it was not mentioned that the British NHS just trashed its $17Billion, 10 year investment of its national medical records data base and authorized local hospitals to go out and buy their own systems.
Also, I heard that Jim Angle used his personal private cell phone and was identified, is this wrong?
I’m given to understand the original novella didn’t, but when he expanded it into the book he anticipated Speaker for the Dead to be even better, and he put in a lot of blather to set that up.
Excellent podcast, by the way. I laughed pretty hard at Hunka Hunka Bolshevik love
A few words about this week’s GLoP art: ·7 hours ago
Did you see Sharknado? Did you notice how in Hurricane socked LA where tornadoes flinging sharks can be defeated by propane bombs, that all the chainsaws start with one pull? I did.
Also, I heard that Jim Angle used his personal private cell phone and was identified, is this wrong? ·22 minutes ago
He said he called from an unlisted number and gave his personal cell as his phone. I assume he called from a Fox land line with blocked caller ID and only gave his cell phone number as a call-back number. But I believe even personal and private cell phones will display caller ID when calling a toll-free number.
John, you’ve got to be careful what you say around Rob and Jonah. Their motto is: “No slack cut. We shoot our cripples.”
After John, no other man would do…
Nice use of “Mayor of Simpleton”.
I know. My brain is stuck on German orthography and audio perception. I just wrote “bold” for “bolt” and “beld” for “belt” and have been doing so since I got back.
Thank you Jonah for making it okay for me to revel in the deliciousness that unfolds everyday on O-Care.
Even better was the image of Obama as Bob Hope in a hippie wig clutching his Blackberry. #nothip #notmodern
The podcast and this thread serve to confirm how lucky I am not to have seen Starship Troopers or Ender’s Game.
There’s a bit of artistic licence, here – 3 cockpits?
A few words about this week’s GLoP art:
Okay, I’m going to have John to task on several egregious errors in this week’s show. The first is something of a technical point about Ender’s Game. The whole issue of Xenocide and the bugs being unwitting assailants only came about in the later books in the series, which, pardon my French, sucked, certainly in comparison to the first book. As a stand alone novel, there is NO moral relativism and the bugs are portrayed as genocidal maniacs from start to finish.
The other major factual error made was about the Israeli health care system. While there is a large single payer component, it isn’t the same as the UK or Canada. Every worker pays a health tax as well as a social security tax. The health tax is used to pay for most types of health care while the social security pays for hospitalization. So far, so good. The difference is there are four privately run health funds that compete to provide health care services, and the competition is fierce. Certain things are covered by law and yes, there is some rationing for high cost services. (continued)
(continued from above)
This is the minimum health care provided to all citizens. Includes most regular doctor visits, some specialists, most emergency care, including common surgeries etc., and you have to use only doctors who work with that specific fund, unless you need hospitalization which is then covered separately by the state. It’s pretty good, but not “Cadillac” care. All the funds also offer, privately, different levels of extended care packages. These include a much wider range of benefits, including a wider range of options for surgeries, transplants, elective procedures, alternative medicine, in home care, and more. In some cases it also includes going to private doctors. There is also a completely private health insurance market (like the one provided by my employer) which is a further extension of the health fund coverage, with many more options and much larger caps on expenditures, especially for procedures that require travel out of the country.
As far as the private medical market goes, it is 100% legal. Everyone is free to pay whatever medical expenses they want out of pocket. This includes hospitalization. Most hospitals provide, at a cost, private rooms, nurses, your choice of doctors and better food. (continued)
(continued from above)
So, while I am always impressed with John’s erudition, I’m sorry to say his knowledge of the Israeli health care market is stuck somewhere in 70s.
I loved loved loved loved LOVED this podcast! Rob was in rare form (feeling no pain, I’m guessing). I’m with Jonah on Joan Armatrading: she’s terrific and much more involving than others of the so-called women’s music scene of the 1980s. And John, don’t feel bad about the girls from long ago. Sara Gilbert just recently revealed that she came to realize she was gay in part from kissing Johnny Galecki(!). She told him beforehand that she was going to tell the story, and he said it was okay with him, that he’d still be happy to hold her hand.
Newt Gingrich also was born with a different name.
Good podcast. Had me laughing pretty hard along with you guys.
As for Ender’s Game, I haven’t seen the movie, but I read the (first) book. Quite frankly, I thought it was overrated — it really felt like it was filled out from a short story/novella (which it was), and I could see the twist coming a mile way, which means I wasn’t sufficiently engaged to get lost in the narrative. I haven’t seen the movie, but I’m sure I’ll catch it at some point.
As for Starship Troopers, I’ve seen the movie but haven’t read the book (I know, I know, what sacrilege), though obviously I know about it (and thus the controversy about the film adaptation). To Bryan Van Blaricom: I don’t think John was dismissing the book himself, so much as commenting on what is the typical dismissal of the book from its detractors. I didn’t think he made it clear that he was himself actually one of them.
And regarding movie reviewers interjecting weird politics/agendas, they’ve been doing that for quite some time. The late Roger Ebert was well-known for it.
Great podcast, Rob Long was on fire: G. B. Shaw quote, dial Obamacare en espanol, and “Bob Hope in a hippie wig” aka the unhip Democrats. LMAO!
Visualize!
I guess I will be the Canadian guy who corrects the population of Canada oopsie: there are apparently now 35 million of us, not 23 million (Britain has 63 million, not 85 million). As a rule of thumb, the U.S. is always about 10 times larger than Canada in terms of population.
Our health care system is accurately described as “rationed” however. If the U.S. ever went single payer the Canadian system would probably collapse because there would be no way to alleviate the periodic stresses on the system.
Whoa, shudda included a warning on this one. I was listening at work and gasping for breath in my cubicle so as not to disrupt my coworkers with my laughing.
To John, and any other detractors of Ender’s Game (the novel): please read this over-the-top essay, and then tell us if you’re still comfortable being on the same side as that lunatic.
Thank you. I came to say this.
The other major factual error made was about the Israeli health care system. While there is a large single payer component, it isn’t the same as the UK or Canada.
Thank you. I came to say this as well, about Ender’s Game and ‘single payer’ health care. There are private services existing side by side in Estonia, Finland, and Sweden as well. Rationing doesn’t enter into it. I didn’t say it was scalable to the United States, but it works pretty well, if you compare the actuarial tables.
Glad to see that although I was slow to get to the Podcast, my Ricochet poster peeps are on their game.