Sunday Sermonette: Acid trip

Chapter 27 consists of a series of disconnected and largely obscure images. I really have no idea what most of this means. It does conclude with the recurring motif of a return to Jerusalem from the diaspora, imagery that plagues us to this day. But why God is slaying the leviathan -- your guess is as good as mine.

27 In that day,

the Lord will punish with his sword—
    his fierce, great and powerful sword—
Leviathan the gliding serpent,
    Leviathan the coiling serpent;
he will slay the monster of the sea.

² In that day—

“Sing about a fruitful vineyard:
³     I, the Lord, watch over it;
    I water it continually.
I guard it day and night
    so that no one may harm it.
⁴     I am not angry.
If only there were briers and thorns confronting me!
    I would march against them in battle;
    I would set them all on fire.
⁵ Or else let them come to me for refuge;
    let them make peace with me,
    yes, let them make peace with me.”

⁶ In days to come Jacob will take root,
    Israel will bud and blossom
    and fill all the world with fruit.

⁷ Has the Lord struck her
    as he struck down those who struck her?
Has she been killed
    as those were killed who killed her?
⁸ By warfare^[a] and exile you contend with her—
    with his fierce blast he drives her out,
    as on a day the east wind blows.
⁹ By this, then, will Jacob’s guilt be atoned for,
    and this will be the full fruit of the removal of his sin:
When he makes all the altar stones
    to be like limestone crushed to pieces,
no Asherah poles^[b] or incense altars
    will be left standing.
¹⁰ The fortified city stands desolate,
    an abandoned settlement, forsaken like the wilderness;
there the calves graze,
    there they lie down;
    they strip its branches bare.
¹¹ When its twigs are dry, they are broken off
    and women come and make fires with them.
For this is a people without understanding;
    so their Maker has no compassion on them,
    and their Creator shows them no favor.

¹² In that day the Lord will thresh from the flowing Euphrates to the Wadi of Egypt, and you, Israel, will be gathered up one by one. ¹³ And in that day a great trumpet will sound. Those who were perishing in Assyria and those who were exiled in Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain in Jerusalem.

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 27:8 See Septuagint; the meaning of the Hebrew for this word is uncertain.
2. Isaiah 27:9 That is, wooden symbols of the goddess Asherah

Why is health care so expensive?

Sorry for the scanty blogging lately. The goings on in D.C. and Palm Beach have been so bizarre I haven't known how to react. Anyway, I want to draw your attention to this quite lengthy essay by Matt Stoller. Go ahead and read it, you'll probably learn a few things. Anyway, let's put this together with an essay by Krugthulu on the inane "Department of Government Efficiency." He goes through several reasons why Muskmelon has no idea of what the federal government does or how it spends its money. (Actually, most of Muskmelon's own fortune comes from federal tax dollars, but he seems unaware of that.) Then we get to health care. It seems the illegal immigrant Neonazi has noticed what I have had on the banner of this blog for many years, and he even Xcreted this image:

 

 

 

Sure enough. But this isn't government spending.  On the contrary, the purely government funded and government operated insurance programs -- that's classical Medicare, the VA, military -- have very low administrative costs. And as a matter of fact, the Medicare program has succeeded in essentially leveling off costs per beneficiary in the past decade or so. As Stoller explains, private insurers have very high administrative costs partly because they spend money on denying claims, and partly because that's a way of keeping more of the money they get from employers and taxpayers. How that works is a little bit complicated but basically they aren't just insurers, they also own hospitals and physician practices and they are paying themselves with your money.

 

Anyway, as Krugthulu goes on to explain:

 

But the program faces a threat of rising costs due to, you guessed it, privatization: a growing number of seniors have bought Medicare Advantage plans, which funnel taxpayer money through private insurance companies, and there’s growing evidence that these plans have become a major source of, well, waste, fraud and abuse. The Wall Street Journal reports $50 billion in outlays for diseases doctors no longer treat. Some estimates suggest that overbilling by Medicare Advantage plans may cost taxpayers more than $100 billion a year; United Healthcare lost a big lawsuit over that practice.

Somehow, though, I very much doubt that DOGE will recommend rolling back Medicare privatization.

Now, in the end none of this may matter. The real purpose of DOGE is, arguably, to give Elon Musk an opportunity to strut around, feeling important. And while it’s a clown show, these clowns — unlike some of the other people Trump may put in office — won’t be in a position to inflict major damage on national security, public health and more.

But it is a clown show, and everyone should treat it as such.