2012 archive
A Flair for the Obvious 0
Chicago Bears Coach Love Smith:
Yeah, because losing isn’t working out so well.
The Raveling Medicine Show 0
Your for-profit hospitals are at work, demonstating how competition lowers prices.
A nugget from a long story in the Charlotte Observer:
It’s true for services ranging from heart tests to routine office visits. And it’s part of a national shift that experts say is raising costs but not quality.
Hospitals are increasingly buying doctors’ practices, then sending bills for routine services that are significantly higher than those charged by independent doctors.
Just gotta pay for those country club memberships so the hospital administrators can get their exercise.
We need single payer.
“Defending Their Own Disease” (Updated) 0
The Philly Daily News is fed up. A nugget:
Let’s start calling them on their bullshit.
Read the rest. Do please read the rest.
Addendum:
Peace and Quiet 0
I have had no email to my primary email address for over 48 hours.
Can’t say as how I have missed it all that much.
I do have several other accounts, so I sent an email to my family telling them to use the telly fone or my Gmail address (which I seldom use but which sort of comes with an Android phone).
The ISP finally got the webmail inerface up again (even it had disappeared, turning into a big empty space in the screen), but my incoming email, which they claim to have been saving up for my future delight, hasn’t started flowing yet.
Whatever they broke, they broke it good.
Ink Stains 0
Tattoo Art sued TAT for copyright infringement and breach of a licensing agreement after finding that TAT had altered some of its designs and were marketing them as its own, according to the court filings. (TAT had agreed to pay additional royalties but never did.)
Tattoo Art was awarded over half a mil.
Susie Sampson’s Fiscal Cliffhangers 4
Odd. That’s two YouTube embeds that disappeared somewhere between saving and posting.
Facebook Frolics 0
Susan comments on the Zuckerboard:
So many Facebooks. So little substance.
American Exceptionalism 0
Mass shootings seem to be a peculiarly American phenomenon.
Ezra Klein rounds up some statistics. Here’s a few (emphasis in the original):
(snip)
4. Of the 12 deadliest shootings in the United States, six have happened from 2007 onward.
5. America is an unusually violent country, but not as much as it used to be.
Kieran Healy, a sociologist at Duke University, in July made a graph of “deaths due to assault” in the United States and other developed countries. The United States is a clear outlier, with rates well above other countries.
Follow the link for the rest.
In a related vein, see these three posts at Dick Destiny’s place.
Fear and Loathing in the Lotus Position 0
A San Diego-area school system has made yoga sessions available for students, with a goal of mild exercise, stress relief, and relaxation.
Some parents aren’t happy.
They say the classes — part of a comprehensive program offered to all public school students in this affluent suburb north of San Diego — represent a violation of the First Amendment.
After the classes prompted discussion in local evangelical churches, parents said they were concerned that the exercises might nudge their children closer to ancient Hindu beliefs.
If doing the plough is enough to undermine the faith of the children, that faith is as sad and puny as the parents’ fearfulness is great.
Facebook Frolics 1
Steve Welch, losing Pennsylvania Republican candidate, tries to blame Facebook for the Republican Party’s poor fortunes.
You really must read the whole exercise in denying the reality of Republican whackjobbery.
A nugget:
In other Republican news, levees cause floods, junk yards cause car crashes, and bad smells cause manure.
Gun Nut Paradise Achieves Critical Mass 0
Guns don’t kill people. Gun nuts kill people.
Birmingham Police Department spokesperson Sgt. Johnny Williams told WAFF that the gunman positioned himself in a hallway and shot at the officer and the hospital staff members as they stepped out of an elevator. Another police officer reportedly came around the corner, alerted by the noise, and fatally shot the gunman.
According to the story, the police say it was an isolated incident.
The police did not mention all the other isolated incidents that happened not to be in Birmingham.
Ask the NRA.
They will tell you that underendowed have a Second Amendment right to singe the blues.
Birmingham news via the Booman Tribune.
Philly Is a Great Sports Town 0
Yes indeedy-do.
Common Pleas Judge Ellen Ceisler sentenced Veteri, 33, to 11 1/2to 23 months of house arrest on Friday followed by five years of probation for the Jan. 2 beating of off-duty Woodbridge, N.J. cop Neal Auricchio, 31.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
When you show and tell, show and tell politely.
Too Big To Jail 0
From Crooks and Liars:
(snip)
“You can do real time in jail in America for all kinds of ridiculous offenses,” Taibbi says. “Here we have a bank that laundered $800 million of drug money, and they can’t find a way to put anybody in jail for that. That sends an incredible message, not just to the financial sector but to everybody. It’s an obvious, clear double standard, where one set of people gets to break the rules as much as they want and another set of people can’t break any rules at all without going to jail.”
Until the suits start going to jail and trade in their suits for jumpsuits, this stuff will not stop.
Read the rest.
Gun Nut Paradise Approacheth Post Haste, Reprise 0
Fabiola Santiago writes in the Miami Herald:
She and her husband recently moved to Connecticut.
I witnessed their meticulous search for “a safe place” to live and approved of their choice of a charming town strikingly similar to Newtown. On Friday, my 4-year-old grandson was at his school — also carefully chosen, as if enough thought, comparisons, and money could keep him from harm, but too close to the tragedy on this day for comfort.
“I just want to keep him home,” my daughter kept saying. “I don’t trust anybody.”
(snip)
Guns don’t kill people, the National Rifle Association says. People kill people.
Indeed.
Chauncey Devega predicts the future most accurately. A nugget:
These same ideologues, who in the 21st century remain some type of throwback premodern tribesman at the early dawn of human history, are utterly devoted to a fetish object of metal and plastic which they worship as a god. For them, the mass shooting of children in Newton, Connecticut will be a funeral pyre whose light they will read as spirits dancing in the shadows, beckoning to them that more guns equals less crime, and that school teachers–and perhaps even children–should be allowed to carry firearms in school. Magical thinking brings public policy solutions that are not grounded in common sense or empirical reality.
In a way, the NRA is quite correct.
Guns don’t kill people. Gun nuts kill people.
The Florida Republican Party Party 0
Stay classy, guys.
Weatherford said he’s still trying to learn what happened, but was concerned enough about reports of rowdiness that he apologized to members the next day and warned he could not condone “unruly behavior.”
Details at the link. Seems they just had to have themselves some see-gars.
