Maybe It IS A Hammer September 10, 2009March 16, 2017 THE SPEECH I like the idea of guaranteed access to health insurance regardless of any preexisting conditions I may have. And without fear of non-renewal if I should get sick. And without lifetime caps if I should get very sick. I hope we do get a public option. I think the President may have allayed some fears when he explained that it would not be taxpayer subsidized. Here is one way of looking at it – a 51-second pro and con. And on the subject of death panels . . . We already have health care rationing and “death panels” – California’s Real Death Panels: Private Insurers Deny 21% of Claims. We are already denying health care to desperately ill teenagers. (Just so you know.) And now, picking up a couple of threads from yesterday . . . KRUGMAN Don Coffin: “Tom Anthony wrote: ‘A person entered a university planning to study economics. But once he got there and asked about the questions on the exams that he would face, his advisor told him not to worry since the exam questions in economics were the same every year, only the answers changed ….. so the student switched to engineering.’ Speaking as an economist . . . when I was in school we told this joke about psychology.” WHERE’S MINKSY? Don Coffin (again): “On his blog, Krugman has this to say: ‘Some fairly extensive sections had to be taken out – for example, I wanted to include material about Paul Samuelson’s 1948 textbook, which reads very well in the current crisis, but had to cut it. Hyman Minsky also got crowded out. Sorry.’ For what it’s worth, Minsky is about as Keynesian as one can get.” MAYBE IT IS A HAMMER Bill Briggs: “I believe it is a hammer. It looks to me like a long-handled sledge hammer. Also, the end of the handle only comes up to the hip of the man holding it. A shovel handle would be longer. But that does nothing to clarify what the point of this rant is. I guess it is that he takes any art as propaganda if it suits his imagination.” William A. Wood: “It’s all on the Rockefeller Center Web site. There is a detailed analysis of each piece.” ☞ Turns out, according to that web site . . . it’s . . . a . . . SHOVEL. (“One figure holds a shovel, symbolizing industry . . .”) That said, looking at it again (and again and again), I can definitely see what Bill Briggs is saying. A reasonable person – or in this case, Glenn Beck – could definitely see a sledge hammer. Maybe that IS what it is. But for the record, the Soviet hammer and sickle is a distinctive emblem – and it does not include a sledge hammer. But why are we even talking about this? Beck himself says nobody notices this 1937 “propaganda” – so if nobody even notices it, what is his point? Richard Bliss: “My favorite line in his rant: the unnamed Italian artist ‘who did a lot of the art in New York.’ If someone tells Beck that the artist, Attilio Piccirilli, also did the bust of Jefferson in the Rotunda of the Virginia State Capitol, perhaps his head will explode.” Carl Granados: “Is Glenn Beck really crazy? Don’t be so sure. Glenn wants to be number one at Fox. The only way he can do that is by outdoing the other right wing crazies on the network. At stake are additional millions of dollars in yearly salary and the power to affect votes, national dialogue, and get public officials fired for no valid reason. Is this a great country or what?”