February, 2008 archive
Dentistry 3
Diva Dog had dental work today.
(We call her Diva Dog because she never asks for anything. She knows someone will come to do her bidding. For example, she will not bark to go outside. She will lay down in front of the door and wait. She knows someone will come to accede to her wishes without her having to ask.)
The vet says she has a bad case of cocker mouth (and she’s part Cocker). That means that it’s easy for her to develop dental problems. Unlike most dogs–and people–in Cockers, the gums do not recede from infection; they grow to cover it and hold the bacteria more tightly to the teeth.
She lost seven teeth today. And her annual physical last year was just fine.
I came home with a fist full of doggie dental products.
Ever since she came home from the vet, the World’s Largest Yorkie ™ has refused to leave her side.
The vet promises that she’ll be pretty much back to normal tomorrow.
So far, she’s only had to take one doggie Rushie.
She’s a good dog. I’m sorry she had to go through this.
Ration Coupons 0
I have mentioned before how one of the most bogus arguments against national health care is that it will lead to “rationing benefits.”
My friends, it’s already rationed, not by guvmint bureaucrats, but by faceless clerks in insurance company office buildings.
She’s “exhausted her lifetime benefits.” She’s 18.
Via Susie.
Why you do not know what you do not know 5
I have often wondered why there is not more public outrage about are high cost of health care, and why people are not demanding change.
If prices were skyrocketing like this any where else you would be hearing about on the evening news every night.
Then it hit me, the largest sponsor of these shows are health care and drug companies. They are not there to sell product as much as to exert editorial control over the news.
Everyone knows it is not wise to bite the hand that feeds you, so it stands to reason stories that you should be seeing, like 150% longer ER waits for heart attacks and 300% ER longer waits for everything else go unreported.
You call it financial censorship or lies by omission, but it is causing a lot of pain and suffering.
Cherry Pickin’ 3
An interesting exchange between Congressman Wexler (D-Fl) and Condoleeza Rice.
I certainly give Ms. Rice points for coolness under pressure.
Looking at her story, though, I find some interesting twists:
She says that “Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States. We went to war with him in 1991. . . .”
The United States did not go to war against Iraq in 1990 and 1991 because Iraq was a threat to the United States. It went to war against Iraq, under the sanction of the United Nations, because Iraq had invaded Kuwait.
She sort of leaves that out, giving the impression that Saddam Hussein was seen as a threat to the United States a decade and a half ago.
He wasn’t. Indeed, Iraq was for a long time supported by the U. S. as a counterweight to Iran. Indeed, it was St. Ronald Reagan who took Iraq off the list of terrorist states.
In talking about the Iraqis shooting at U. S. planes, she also leaves out that the U. S. planes were flying over Iraq is to enforce sanctions imposed by the United Nations.
Now, I’m certainly not arguing that the planes deserved to be shot at; they were on a lawful mission under international law at the time. Once again, though, in her telling of the story, Ms. Rice implies that the Iraqis just got up one morning and said, “Oh, gee, let’s go shoot at some planes,” implying that it was pure aggression, rather than what might better be characterized as stubborn (and lunatic) resistance.
Furthermore, as we look back to the months preceding the 2003 invasion of Iraq, recall that, the closer that arms inspectors came to proving that there were no weapons of mass destruction and no capability of creating them in Iraq, the more the Current Federal Administrator moved the deadline. Moved it up, that is, not back.
It doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to wonder whether the wonderful advancing deadlines had something to do with the weakness of the Bushies’ cherry-picked “evidence” against Saddam Hussein.
It is entirely fitting that cherry-picked “intelligence” be followed by cherry-picked testimony.
Drinking Liberally 0
Fell victim to the layer of ice on I-95. Personally, I think this weather should have stayed in Illinois, where it could feel at home.
But there’s good news tonight.
S(pl)urge 0
Failure. It didn’t work. It isn’t working. It won’t work.
The crucial justification for the s(pl)urge ™, to allow time for the Iraqi so-called puppet government to consolidate its position, has not occurred, is not occurring, will not occur.
If you are old enough, you’ve heard it all before:
It’s the Bushie Midas touch. And its results will be with us, yea, unto the third or fourth generation.
Beyond the Paul 2
Libertarianism is, of course, a crock.
The persons who espouse it have no concept of the intentions of the Founders, nor of the modern world. They envision a world of log cabins, in which each householder can feed himself by shooting at some food (and without discovering crude).
At best, they are sincere in their beliefs.
At worst (like someone I know), they are closet wingnuts.
The Libertarian candidate for the Republican nomination for President has made headlines by raising money, but not by dealing with reality (then, again, not dealing with reality seems to be a Republican thing). From Fact Check dot org:
We’ve given his statements little attention until now. But here we look at some of his more outlandish claims:
- Paul claims that a secret conspiracy composed of the Security and Prosperity Partnership and a cabal of foreign companies is behind plans to build a NAFTA Superhighway as the first step toward creating a North American Union. But the NAFTA Superhighway that Paul describes is a myth, and the groups supposedly behind the plans are neither secret nor nefarious.
- Paul says that the U.S. spends $1 trillion per year to maintain a foreign empire and suggests that we could save that amount by cutting foreign spending. Paul gets that figure by including a lot of domestic programs that he isn’t planning to cut, like the U.S. Border Patrol and interest payments on the debt.
- Paul has run television ads touting an endorsement from Ronald Reagan, but he fails to mention that, in 1988, Paul wanted “to totally disassociate” himself from the Reagan administration.
OUR FOR PROFIT HEALTH CARE IS KILLING US 0
After 6 agonizing months of trying to find out what is wrong with our health care system, why we pay twice as much as the rest of the rest of the world but are only ranked 37th in overall care by the world health organization, why 47 million Americans lack any health insurance at all, why the leading cause of bankruptcy has become unpaid medical bills (75% of these people had insurance when they first got ill), why health care costs rise every year at a much higher rate of inflation than any other item in our economy, even than energy and after realizing that all these trends will continue in the future and may get worse, I have come to the conclusion that health care does not belong in the free-market system.
I am not a socialist.
I love the free market system; it has kept all other goods and services within reach of almost all working Americans
Are there 47 million Americans who cannot afford car insurance or the Internet or cable t.v.?
No, because none of the afore-mentioned have doubled in the past 8 years.
One argument that is often voiced in health care’s defense is that new technology has forced prices to rise.
I cannot buy into that, because there has been or should have been other innovations that should have offset that.
All areas of our economy have adopted new technology, but have not had prices soar like health care.
Others mention expensive litigation, but litigation totals only 2% of the total.
Not being able to sue for malpractice would not solve the problem.
The problem is that basically health care is the only area of the free market system where you cannot shop for price.
No one clips coupons or shops the yellow pages for best price for care when they get sick; they just want to get well.
Health care providers can charge any fee they chose, and so they do.
I spent 40 years managing furniture stores.
How wonderful it would have been to have no price comparison to contend with!
I could have tripled my mark up and retired in ten years.
One thing we have found out early in the free market system is monopolies are dangerous to the health of our economy. If one sector, especially a staple like health care, takes too big a piece of the pie, the whole pie is in trouble.
The only solution, as distasteful as it may seem, is some type of European or Canadian plan that covers every one.
Otherwise, there is nothing in our future but pain and suffering.
S(t)imulation 4
Why the tax rebates are a bunch of hooey. From today’s local rag:
(snip)
So along comes the president and Congress with an economic stimulus check for you. What the politicians, economists and Wall Street want you to do is to run to Best Buy (better yet, drive your Hummer there) and buy that plasma TV. Or hit the mall to buy those spring fashions at Macy’s.
By doing that, you’ll be priming the U.S. economy, helping it pull up from the slide that’s been occurring.
In other words, they don’t think you should use that check to pay down your debt, pay off a credit card, pay a little extra on your mortgage, or pay off your car loan.
Or worse, to start saving. Americans have become lousy savers. Would the country collapse if enough folks starting shoveling that government gift coming sometime in May into a money market, CD, or a retirement account? Even trickier, what if you were to take that $300, $600 or $1,200 that’s promised and had your employer shift that amount into your 401(k) account, boosting your savings for retirement.
Why we’d be acting in our own self-interest rather than for the greater good.
As was pointed out here, the Fed has already provided stimulus by reducing interest rates 1.25%. By the time the rebate checks arrive, the Fed’s stimulus will have succeeded or failed; the deed will have been done, the “rebates” will be irrelevant.
Me, I’m using mine, if I get one, to help defray my medical insurance premiums (yeah, I finally got medical insurance. $3000.00 deductible, almost $400 a month premium, made possible by the tremendous buying power of AARP–like I said, I’m old. Unless my son or I drive into a tree or get really really sick, we’ll never see a dime of coverage).
ASZ takes it to reductio ad absurdum.
Well, not really ad absurdum. In the Bushie world, nothing is absurd any more.
Drinking Liberally 0
Tomorrow.
Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, just a block from South Street, Center City, Philadelphia.
I haven’t tried the Ostrich Burger yet.
Cable Cabal 0
Last week, several cables connecting the Middle East and the Inidan subcontinent to the Internet were cut, prompting speculation among some that there was some kind of conspiracy.
The Network Security podcast took a sane look at this. I commend it to your attention. From the show notes:
The show also took a look at the implications of the Protect America (Yeah! Right!) Act’s and the Patriot Act’s on the civil liberties of American citizens as they relate to computer network security, also in a rational way.
“Rational,” natch, means not wingnut.
You can follow the link or listen here.
Outsourcing Shame 0
What Digby said.
Tree Luggers 3
Anything that’s not nailed down . . .
Having been born on the farm, George Spaulding, 78, loves the trees the way only someone who grew up with them could. And he counts on syrup sales to supplement the family income, which comes mainly from the twice-a-day milking of three dozen cows.
So when a neighboring farmer crossed onto the Spauldings’ land and chopped down 30 or so of their best trees, the couple was devastated.
(snip)
Across the country, trees are disappearing in cases that are often small in scale but largely unsettling, probably prompted by the rise in timber value and the increase in worldwide demand for American hardwood — particularly from builders in Europe and China.
The total value of the American log export market has more than doubled since 2000, industry experts said, and it continues to grow.
In the United States, forests are not being illegally logged on a systemic scale, as is the case in Indonesia, Malawi and Brazil, where unauthorized harvesting has led to serious deforestation and attendant environmental problems. Here, the issue is scattered and intimate, and often affects homeowners, parks and public forests.
(Not to make light of this, but, actually, I have a tree in my yard they can have for free.)
Bushonomics 1
With his household debt soaring from a $123,000 mortgage in 1990 to a $425,000 mortgage on the same house by 2006, Frank and his wife, Joan, are a striking example of how the housing bubble’s easy credit allowed consumers to bury themselves in debt.
Now, they are struggling to avoid the worst consequence of what Frank called “crappy decisions.” That would be the loss of their house in Bucks County’s Warwick Township. “I’m not an Oprah victim. I don’t blame anybody,” he said.
No mention, of course, of the failure to regulate the financial industry to keep the industry from selling bags of air.
Betraying American Values 0
Eugene Robinson:
This is a moral outrage, people. At least, it should be. There simply cannot be any kind of pro-and-con debate over the use of torture — whatever anodyne phrase you hide it behind — by agents of the United States government on persons in custody. Torture is not debatable. It is forbidden by U.S. and international law. It is a vile implement used by tinhorn despots, not by the elected leaders of great democracies.
Personally, I think “tinhorn” is too kind to describe the Current Federal Administrator.
Via Dan Froomkin.
Frustration 0
I was over here trying to buy some stuff, but all the good stuff is back ordered.
I think that’s a good sign.
Stagdeflation huh!!! 0
A brand new worry bead for our worry bead chain has arrived (like we needed it) Stagdeflation!
Normally I would discount it, but it comes from Nouriel Roubini, the guy who seems to get everything right, with a second from George Soros, no dummy himself. They calculate that we are headed into a total financial meltdown so severe that inflation will turn into deflation. This is 1930’s stuff. And coming from Roubini, you can not brush it off.
They unveiled this term at the Davos conference in Switzerland, so it was not meant for our ears, but thanks to the Internet there are no secrets anymore. To be clear, deflation does not normally happen in a recession; it takes a world wide depression to make prices of everything to fall. Both Roubini and Soros gave it a high probability. so be careful out there!
Now I have no ideas about where to put your money.
Swept under the Rug 1
We we don’t know won’t save them.
Or us.
Director Alex Gibney agreed to sell the rights of Taxi to the Discovery Channel because executives convinced him they would “give the film a prominent broadcast.†Now, however, Discovery has dropped its plans to air the documentary because the film is too controversial.
How long are you going to countenance the evil done in your name?
Via Atrios.
