Paging Doctor... Surgeon General?

leaves the door open for a just a tiny bit of mockery.

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If people just want to JNS then have at it. But I think the tone is a little harsh right now when her post I don't believe was meant to be very seriously. I mean we can joke around here right? Lord knows I raked her over the coals about the halloween incident but I just don't see why anybody would be in a huff over this one.

"But picking a television personality...leaves the door open for a just a tiny bit of mockery."
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You mean like Ronald Reagan or Jesse Ventura?
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Really, for some reason, after Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Greenspan, Paulson, Bernake, Russert, Williams and Gregory and, most of all, George W. Bush, the whole notion of experienced, credentialed and "qualified for the job" is seeming rather quaint to me.

@shepherdwong - I just spit up my drink through my nose I laughed so hard.

I watched the Moore Gupta video, and to say Moore PWNED (whatever that means, I gather it resembles "soundly defeated") Gupta is fantasy or wishful thinking.

Rose83- in what broader sense is Gupta unqualified for the job? I can't imagine that your assessment of his "qualifications" is based on one news report on a documentary, that was incidentally panned by large sections of the medical community. Health insurance is much more complicated that Mr Moore would have it seem, as Dr Gupta, I am sure understands because he actually has to deal with it. So, returning to my question, why exactly, if only in "the broader sense" is he unqualified?

And Jay, I think you're a little off. SG's job is largely one of communication (see: SG warnings). It would actually make sense to hire someone who has some experience in the communications.

Really Jay - why don't you say what you really think?

In all seriousness, god forbid we have someone that is not only highly qualified, but knows how to deal with/respond to the press, AND insure that the public stay properly advised.

Rose- If a monkey with a typewriter banged out your last post, it would crumple up the paper and start again.
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Jayackroyd, you read a lot more substance into Rose's post than was there. Your concerns are valid, but about Obama and Tom Daschle, not the guy who's going to be popping up on TV once a month to tell us all to eat more whole grains and exercise that much more than they/he told us to exercise the month before.
How many people can say, without googling, who our SG is now?

Next thing you know, they'll be electing late-night comedians to the Senate.

Meanwhile, if you guys are going to use Rachael Ray as a measure of whatever-it-is, you might consider spelling her name correctly.

I am opposed To Gupta because he is younger than I am.
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Does anybody remember a SG doing anything since Koop and Elders?

Man, you people eat each other alive here.
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SG - I've almost watched the whole Moore vs. Gupta video, and I can say with great certainty that Gupta 0wn0r3d Moore.

Should have said sgwhite...

[...] Colleague Jay Newton-Small beats me to the post (and the headline) at [...]

Rose83: As evidence of Gupta's record, you link to one reference about him of Media Matters, again, involving the incident of his criticism of Moore. How does linking to one incident give evidence on one person's "record" on healthcare?
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Shouldnt the concusion of someone's "record" come from citiations of a majority of their on record opinions, or at least more than the citations surrounding his disagreement with Moore about some of Moore's assertions in the movie, "Sicko"?

Flava Flav to head the the DEA!

Why Flava Flav, when you could get Ice-T and his lovely wife Coco (both have been on Law and Order)?

dumdedum
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The clip is only one half, you would have had to go to the website and see all of the things Moore was alluding to in the clip. He pwned Gumpta in the sense that Gumpta had to repeatedly back down on points he was trying to make AND at the very end Moore exposed Gupta for either not vetting his "expert" guest or doing a very piss poor job of it. Gupta didn't even make one salient point in the whole conversation. Right after Moore pointed out that the reason we don't have wait times is because 47 million people don't have insurance and therefore that cuts down on the amount of people who would be getting appointments AND that many countries with universal healthcare other than Canada don't have problems with wait times Gupta tried to come back and still argue wait time. If Gupta made any points in that interview I would love to hear them.

Lou Dobbs: Fencemaster General
Howard Kurtz: CYA Director
Contessa Brewer: Contessa

As long as he's mining the Clinton era for nominees, I've love to the return of Jocelyn Elders. Remember her suggestion that masturbation should be recognized as a normal aspect of human sexuality? Shocking in 1994, but perhaps by now the country is ready...

By the way, I am posting from a wonderful B&B in Rochester, after two days of studying paper dolls at the Strong Museum of Play. Great place to bring a kid, or be one again.

Did you hear the point that Gupta was trying to make about the cherry-picking from different reports? Taking one figure from a unsourced BBC piece then picking another (projected) figure from an HHS report when the BBC one had a different number entirely (by $1700)? That's what cherry-picking is, and I think Gupta did a good job.
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You missed the part about Gupta telling Moore over and over again that he was obfuscating the tax burden, to which Moore replies "it's FREE! FREE!" over and over without ever acknowledging anything Gupta just said.
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Although I will have to go back and look at the wait times issue.

Jim, Foolish Literalist, sorry if my language was unclear to you. I thought my first post was pretty clear, but since you didn't get it I tried to be super specific and detailed in my second post. Since neither approach worked I'll move on.
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Casey Morris et al., can you find any evidence about Gupta's record on health care that suggests his inaccurate and biased comments on Sicko were an aberration?
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BTW, I get the argument that essentially the Surgeon General is a spokesperson for sound health habits so Gupta's communications background coupled with his academic credentials qualifies him for the job. Maybe that's right. I just don't think it's a good idea to have a Surgeon General who spreads inaccurate information about health care.

Whenever I see a member of the press mocking someone else, I am reminded that Joy Behar on "The View" was the first person to actually ask a tough question of John McCain re: childhood sex ed ads.

The Borgen Project has informative statistics on addressing global poverty.

$30 billion ends world hunger
$550 billion is the US Defense budget

This organization has the ability, resources, and policy-makers to suppress the threat of global poverty by enacting legislation here in the US, which is tied to the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals. Please support organizations such as The Borgen Project so that we may rid the world of poverty.

Cookie Puss- Good point. Likewise, David Letterman often asks tougher questions than the Sabbath Gasbags, 'cause he has no interest in playing that stupid Russertian gotcha game or meeting any David Broder/Cokie Roberts standard of "reasonableness". He just goes to the heart of the matter and cuts off any of the spin that the Gasbags feed on.

yoshia
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Go back and look at it again. Moore made a very clear point that by paying for premiums/co pays/out of pocket expenses we are in effect paying higher taxes anyway.

and I again i must point out that all of that was Gupta trying to change the subject. Moore on his website showed that his numbers were in fact legit and that Gupta was using out of date numbers. I am not saying Moore is above cherry picking, but at least in this case he made a very strong case that it was Gupta doing the cherry picking AND he pointed out Gupta's ties to Big Pharma

I'm with Rose on this one. He's apparently, from the "debunking" of Sicko, in the tank for the people who make their living denying access and denying claims. Replacing the for profit health care system with one that is actually effective is on Obama's short list.
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Jay, you obviously paid no attention to Obama's health care proposal, which is all about keeping the insurance companies and for-profit health care corporations in business, and does practically nothing in terms of providing universal health care. Gupta is the perfect shill for Obama's bogus "plan".
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as for Gupta's qualifications -- he's telegenic. But being a brain surgeon doesn't mean you know anything about medicine, because a surgeon is basically a mechanic whose most important skills are steady hands.