2007 archive
Cell, Modem, Cell, Modem 0
Moral: RTFM.
Simpson thought he had an all-you can eat deal for unlimited web use and “probably” downloaded 20-30 TV shows and four albums. But his £41.50 per month contract maxed out at 120 megabytes of downloads per month, enough for most users, Vodafone says. “Few customers exceed the fair usage. But it seems clear Ian has run up these charges legitimately,” a spokesman told The Mirror.
Bhutto 0
The news from Pakistan today is not good.
It sort of goes with something I said a little while ago.
I’m not going to spend my time going over ground that others have gone over before me.
Instead, I’ll just point you to what digby said.
Afterthought: Oh, yeah. Our nation is led by fools.
“Watch What We Say, Not What We Do . . .” 0
. . . sez the Republican Party. Dick Polman (emphasis added):
But it’s really just pap for the stump. In reality, and for a fresh insight into contemporary Republican hypocrisy, let us behold (yet again) the Bush administration in action.
A couple days ago, the Bush team – acting through the Environmental Protection Agency, in violation of the law that created the EPA, and in defiance of federal court rulings – decreed that California, and 16 other states would not be permitted to act on their own to reduce global-warming emissions from automobiles. The EPA explained that it favors a “national solution” (i.e., one size fits all) over what it calls “a confusing patchwork of state rules.”
Lobby Bar Cheese Dip 5
This came back to me as we planned the Christmas Eve menu.
When I used to travel with Jack–and Jack and I were teamed together a lot back in my Amtrak days; just about any wierd or unusual assignment turned into the Frank and Jack Show–we traveled well.
Jack knew great places to eat in every city we visited.
We were sitting in the Lobby Bar of the Algonquin Hotel when the cheese dip ran out and I watched the bartender make a new batch. It’s very simple and very tasty.
This was a while ago. Jack’s been retired for about 14 years and it’s nine years since I left Amtrak left me.
- 1 jar Cheez Whiz. (Yeah, I know. It seems surprising that a classy dive like the Algonquin used Cheez Whiz, but I saw with my own and Jack’s eyes.)
- dry sherry (I think the barkeep used Dry Sack)
- cayenne pepper
Empty Cheeze Whiz in a bowl
Add sherry and stir until it reaches a smooth, but not runny, consistency
Add a dash or two of cayenne (may substitute Frank’s Red Hot).
(If you need to store the dip, press plastic wrap across the surface of the dip, forcing out all the air, to keep a film from forming.)
A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation 0
David Ignatius explores the writings of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams (emphasis added):
Anyone who reads Adams and Jefferson — or for that matter, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton or other voices of the American Enlightenment — can make their own judgment about what the Founders would say about Romney’s broadside against secularism. My guess is that their response would be something like: “That is bunkum, sir.”
(snip)
One theme in this year’s political campaign has been whether the United States will move from the faith-based policies the Bush administration has celebrated to a more rationalist and secular approach. In this debate, religious conservatives like to stress their connection to the Founders and to the republic’s birth as “one nation under God.” But a rereading of the Adams-Jefferson letters is a reminder that in this debate, the Founders — as men of the Enlightenment — would surely have sided with the party of Reason.
“What? Nothing for Me?” 3
We had to keep someone on table duty all evening.
(Look at them eyeballs. He’s going for the pepperoni and leaving the Chivas for the people.)
Down at the Farm 0
Apparently the hub in the server room has given up the ghost. The lights still flash, but I couldn’t get to the big wide world from either of the computers in that room.
When I went directly from the webserver to the wall outlet, the big wide world was back.
Second Son doesn’t know it yet (he’s in Cali), but he’s getting me a new hub for Christmas.
(Actually, he’s not–that’s just in case he’s reading this tonight.)
Health Care and Capitalism: Imperfect Together? 5
My friend Raymond Krauss has been researching health care and suggests that health care is inherently unsuited to capitalism.
Here is his article:
A Good Mix or a Witch’s Brew?
By Raymond Krauss
First and foremost, let me emphasize that, not unlike most Americans, I heartedly agree with Winston Churchill when he said in 1954 that “the inherent ice of Capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings.” A socialist I am not! Capitalism has historically both raised incomes and reduced the cost of goods, allowing for a better standard of living for the masses.
Nevertheless, when it comes to heath care, this has lately not been the case.
Capitalism and competition have not served to reduce the cost of health care, but, in fact, have caused health care costs to rise at an astonishing rate, approximately five times the rate of regular inflation for the past seven years. Even more worrisome is that this trend may worsen in both the future.
To understand why this is happening in our otherwise great economic system of capitalism, I need to draw an analogy between a cup of coffee and health care.
In any American city or town, if you want a hot cup of java on a cold winter morning, capitalism gives you options. Stop at Starbucks for a $5.00 cup of “gourmet” coffee; go a little farther and enjoy a $2.00 cup at Dunkin Donuts (this about health care–we’ll skip the doughnut); of, if the budget is a little tight, stop at MacDonald’s for a pretty good $.69 cup of joe.
All three venues represent major corporations; together they give the consumer choices.
When it comes to health care, the $.69 and the $2.00 cups are not options; Starbucks is the first and last stop. There is no compelling market place pressure to reduce prices in the health care industry. Every health care service strives to be Starbucks.
Furthermore, the nature of health care does not provide economies of scale. The more automobiles that Toyota makes, the lower the manufacturing cost of each unit.
In health care, the more patients a hospital or nursing home, for example, has, the higher the overall cost, with no corresponding decrease in per patient costs: more doctors, more nurses, more technicians, more rooms, more construction, more diagnostic and life-support equipment.
The aging of the baby boomers will only exacerbate this situation. Costs will continue to rise; an increasing percentage of income will be spent on health care.
As consumers divert funds from purchasing goods and services–automobiles, Iphones, houses–to paying for doctors, nurses, tests, hospital rooms, consumers will have less to spend on goods and services to fuel the rest of the economy.
After paying for health care, all we will be able to afford to wake up with is that $.69 cup of coffee, while the other, more expensive coffee-seller face diminishing returns and, ultimately, bankruptcy.
Avoiding this scenario lies in following the steps of other industrialized countries: a comprehensive national health care plan with costs shared by everyone, business and consumers.
Other countries with comparable or, in many cases, better health care pay nowhere near the amount we do, protecting the disposable income of their consumers and helping keep the rest of their economies strong.
The American health care crisis is also becoming more acute as other prices increase. After 70 years, most economists agree that the root cause of the Great Depression was consumers’ insufficient purchasing power. As shown above, high health care costs are eroding consumers’ purchasing power already. Consumer spending accounts for 70% of our economy; it needs to remain there or the illness of Depression will infect out economy.
We are blessed in one way: So many other countries have national health care that we can study them and pick the best options to suit our needs.
A national plan–almost any national plan–will slow the hyper-inflation of health care costs by averaging the costs across the entire populace.
National health care is a tough sell in the United States. We have been so successful in using the free market for almost everything that is is difficult to turn to something that looks more like socialism than capitalism.
But it is time to make the change so as to preserve the rest of our free market economy.
In preparing the article, Raymond read about 10 books. Below are listed his primary sources:
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Money Driven Medicine by Maggie Mahar
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Heath Care Reform Now by Ge0rge Halvorson
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Sick: The Untold Story of American’s Health Care Crisis–and the People Who Pay the Price by Jonathan Cohn
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Health Care Melt Down: Confronting the Myths and Fixing Our Failing System by Dr. Robert Lebow and C. Rocky White
Also posted at Kos.
Over There 0
Dick Polman on the S(pl)urge (TM) (emphasis added):
(snip)
The U.S. troop surge has tamped down the violence quite nicely. But the purpose of the surge was to create enough space for the central Iraqi government to successfully pursue political reconciliation between Shiites and Sunnis, and thus lock in the gains achieved by the surge. And it turns out – I know this will come as a shock – that the central Irqai government has done virtually nothing. Which means that the gains achieved by the surge could be reversed at some future point – probably the point at which U.S. troop levels are reduced. If they are reduced, given the dangers of the fractious failed state that Bush and his war team have created.
(snip)
So the question is, what happens next spring, when the Bush war team has to decide whether to loosen its tourniquet? Presumably, the major presidential contenders – or, by then, the presumptive nominees – will need to weigh in on that. With an election looming, there’s no way this war can stay under the radar.
The Bushie legacy. A legacy of lies and failure.
A legacy shared by the Republican Party, which faithfully follows the faithless and feckless Bushies.
A pox on the houses of all who find a war for a lie more valuable than the lives of innocents.
There is, of course, a certain bitter amusement in watching Greater Wingnuttia twist itself into pretzels to justify the Bushies’ betrayal of America, of the Constitution of the United States of America, and of the ideals of the Founders.
But the amusement is there only because the alternative is tears.
Hambone, Reprise 2
One night of soaking, a few minutes of scrubbing, 15 minutes scoring the rind, 5 minutes rubbing salt and pepper into the rind, and . . .
Viola! (Remember Viola? Hot-cha-cha!)
Sixteen and a half pounds of delectable melt in your mouth to die for red and dry and salty like God intended Real Ham (TM)
After it was done cooking (five hours at 350 degrees), I sliced off the rind, ran it into the oven on a baking sheet, and turned it into cracklin’.
The cracklin’ may not make it to Christmas Eve.
We’ll forget about the oven fire.
Mithras on Public Discourse 0
Here (though actually I can’t say that I mind the second picture all that much . . .).
OR Rations 11
One of the most bogus arguments against a national health care system is that it will lead to “rationing” health care.
Surprise! It’s rationed already.
You got money, you got health care.
Otherwise, otherwise.
Nataline Sarkisyan, a 17-year-old from Glendale, Calif., died Thursday just a few hours after her insurer, Cigna Health Care, approved a procedure it had previously described as “too experimental” and that dozens of Sarkisyan’s supporters protested at the Cigna’s headquarters.
(Updated) Wingnut Claims about the War on Christmas . . . 0
. . . are a steaming pile of puppy poop. (Updated and kicked to the top.)
Phillybits has the pooper scooper.
Addendum, 12/21/2007:
More scooped poop here, here, and here.
And an editorial here.
(All the links are to Phillybits, so you can just go here and scroll down, at least until those posts crawl off the front page.)
[EDITORIAL MODE ON]
By and large, political and news blogs are in no way journalism, with the exception of a few sites, such as TPM Muckraker, which actually does have a small investigative staff.
Certainly, I make no claim to be a journalist and would not defend my shooting off my mouth as journalism or reporting in any way (except for those odd bits and pieces of life that I sometimes observe first-hand and describe here–that is actually reportage, but also generally trivial).
At best, political and news blogs are aggregators, which pull together stories and opinion pieces from professional news sources and organize them around a theme, or electronic op-ed columns, whose analyses may help the reader better interpret what’s going on around us, or a combination thereof.
At worst, they are havens for anonymous–and sometimes not so anonymous–liars.
Political and news blogs are at their best when they out the liars.
[EDITORIAL MODE OFF]
Bushonomics 3
Executive vice presidents could claim retention awards of $1 million each, and senior vice presidents could get $600,000, provided they stay with the company until 2011, according to a filing late Wednesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
“The purpose of the award is to ensure the stability of the company’s leadership team,” the company said.
In March, the company said it would lay off 3,400 store workers and replace them with lower-paid new hires to try to fend off larger competitors.
Meanwhile, back on the bread line:
“I usually come early and it’s not like this,” said Willie Smith, a 47-year-old regular client at the pantry.
By 11 a.m., the official closing time, there were still 12 people awaiting food. No one got turned away, but food-bank clients were surprised by just how many hungry people there are these days.
“We are struggling right now,” said Joanne Lelli, 39, a laid-off Wal-Mart worker and single mother of a 10-year-old girl with cystic fibrosis. She says she often has to choose between food and heating oil.
The country is filled with people making just that choice. And food banks are feeling pressure to get people through.
The Republican Party, now and always the Party of Privilege.
Civility 0
From the local rag:
Sound familiar? It has a name: the Service Gap.
That’s not a hip clothing store for soldiers. Or a new motto for the London subway system.
It’s business-speak to describe a phenomenon fueling plenty of holiday-shopping frustration: the difference in how baby boomers and members of the “millennial generation” define the concept of customer service.
(Aside: If clerks are using cell phones while they should be checking out customers, that is not a service problem. That is a management problem. Management has clearly failed to lay out the expectations of the job. And this surprises us how?)
The other day, when I left the cooling tower place and before I started my quest for a Real Ham (TM), I stopped at the Cooling Tower Town’s Super Wawa to fill up with gas ($2.85). The pumps, as usual, were crowded, with at least two vehicles waiting to get to them.
I pulled into the nearest line where the pumps were on the correct side of the vehicle.
The person ahead of me was not pumping gas. Rather, she was sitting in her car.
“Okay,” thought I, “She’s waiting for the car ahead of her to pull away so she could move.”
More fool I.
After about four or five minutes, she got out of her car, ended her cell phone conversation, and started to open the little cover over the fuel pipe on her Cattle-Rack. (Something she proved incompetent to do, but that’s another story.)
SHE’D BEEN SITTING THERE BLOCKING THE BLANKETY-BLANK PUMP TALKING ON HER BLANKETY-BLANK CELL PHONE FOR HEAVEN’S KNOWS HOW LONG.
And was easily 20 years older than me. (And I’m old.)
My friends, being a rude, selfish, inconsiderate a$$hole is not a generational phenomenon.
It is rather another manifestation of the constant,
K sub I,
the Idiocy Constant in human nature.
When you get enough persons gathered together in one place, a certain percentage of them will be idiots. It’s just a fact of life.
