October, 2009 archive
Easter Egg Hunt 0
Found one.
We Need Single Payer (Update) 0
Punishing the victim:
This is beyond evil. Someone else beats you up, then the hospital bills force you into bankruptcy.
Health care is not just an economic or medical issue, though a rational health care system would save lots of money.
(The United States spends more than any other industrialized country on health care.)
It is also a moral one.
We are no longer in a day when we can go into the woods (how many of you live near woods?), gather up roots and herbs, and boil up a cure on the campfire, and a society has an obligation to take care of its ill and destitute.
Only the cold-hearted can fail to see this.
Addendum:
Melissa McEwan comments in the Guardian:
The Democrats – specifically Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington state, who also led the opposition with then-Senator Hillary Clinton to the Bush-administration proposed HHS rule change that fundamentally undermined women’s healthcare – introduced legislation known as the Safe Act in 2006, which would have put an end to insurance company discrimination against survivors of domestic violence.
The then-Republican controlled Senate health, education, labour and pensions committee blocked the legislation on a party-line vote. Massive donations. Giving the finger. Rinse. Repeat.
Nobel Laureate Obama 0
However much I like President Obama–and I do think he is a good and decent man who is trying (and sometimes failing) to make correct decisions and who I worked my heart out to help win the election (but I would have voted for a dead cat if it had run Democratic), I think this is a little premature.
I believe that it is more a rebuke to the previous federal administration, whose answer to everything seemed to be to kill and torture people all over the world, than it is a recognition of President Obama’s accomplishments because, frankly, he hasn’t had much time to accomplish stuff.
Then, again, as persons say in the restaurant biz, presentation matters and he presents the United States of America as being sane. Perhaps this is a recognition of that.
Boy, wingnut radio will have its knickers in a twist today! The Norwegians will be the new French.
Secretariat 1
My father thought he should be named Male Athlete of the Year in 1973.
The Fee Hand of the Market 0
They’re baaaaaaaaaack.
Predatory lenders.
And now they are in reverse.
“There are 2,700 [reverse-mortgage lenders] in the market today, and 1,500 of them made their first loans in 2008,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.), who has been working on a bill to curb some of the worst abuses – including widening yield-spread premiums that benefit lenders and brokers at the expense of elderly borrowers.
Gun Nuttery 4
Over at Brendan’s place.
Guns are nasty, smelly, dangerous things that must be treated with respect. There is irony in that many of those most vocal about bearing arms are among the least respectful of the power of firearms.
They’ve seen too many cowboy movies.
GobbledyGook 0
I mean this article here, which attempts to equate the development of social networks to a Darwinian process of evolution.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Still over half a million:
Applications fell by 33,000 to 521,000, lower than forecast, in the week ended Oct. 3, from a revised 554,000 the week before, Labor Department data showed today in Washington. The total number of people collecting unemployment insurance dropped in the prior week to the least since March.
In other news, John Cole looks at news from the commercial real estate market and concludes:
Stray Thought 0
Creationists don’t need the flu vaccine.
It’s Assault 2
Oh, my.
According to testimony in a special court-martial at Norfolk Naval Station, both women chose to have unprotected sex with Franklin after learning he had HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Their consent did not let Franklin off the hook. The 37-year-old aviation electronics technician was sentenced to three months’ confinement and a bad-conduct discharge after pleading guilty to two counts of aggravated assault as well as disobeying an order.
The Republican War on Science 0
They’re losing before the Nobel Committee. Listen here:
French Toast 1
This is about two years old, but it still rings true (warning: risque language)
I Needed Some Silliness Last Night 3
It was a rerun of America’s Funniest Videos that I hadn’t seen before.
She’s never shown any interest in television before. She got so entranced in the show that she kept moving closer to the set, until she fell off the night table, taking a stack of papers and magazines (remember magazines?) with her.
Nothing is really sillier than a cat pretending that it just didn’t fall on its patoot.
We Need Single Payer 0
Dick Polman demolishes Senator Flying My Ensign’s in the Wrong Place sophistries:
Wow. Where to begin…
1. “Taking out” the car and gun-related deaths in order to improve the death stats is akin to saying that the New York Mets would be winning the National League East if we simply take out the losses.
2. Ensign’s sophistry is irrelevent, because the international statistics don’t even deal with cars and guns. Instead, they compare apples to apples. In a 2008 study, the Commonwealth Fund focused solely on serious physical illnesses “such as treatable cancers, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases…deaths from certain causes before age 75 that are potentially preventable with timely and effective health care.” The Fund looked at 19 industrialized nations (14 in western Europe, plus Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and America), for the years 2002 and 2003…and, of all 19, America had the worst preventable death rate.
3. The OECD has written that, even if you factor in America’s high death rate from all accidents and injuries, America improves its life-expectancy ranking by only two notches, from 19th of 29 member nations to 17th of 29.
4. Ensign was inadvertently suggesting that America would suffer far fewer premature deaths if we didn’t love our cars so much, or love our guns so much. But Hades would freeze over before a conservative Republican would follow his own logic and conclude that we’d suffer far fewer preventable deaths by enhancing public transportation and curbing the love affair with guns. Naturally, Ensign said neither.
5. Forget the gun and car deaths for a moment. There are also three million car accident injuries each year in America, as well as 70,000 annual gun injuries. It’s fair to assume that a hefty number of those injured people don’t have access to any health insurance. Care to guess who picks up the tab?
The Republican Party.
Since 1876 the Party of Privilege and since 1980 (at least) the Party of Facts Don’t Matter.
Caveat Click-or 0
Vet the vendors when buying from the classifieds, either on line or in print..
He was one of several. The mopes were juvies.
I did recently have my first and first successful encounter with Craig’s List–finding a new owner (I found out it’s now called “re-homing”) for one of my dogs.
