2009 archive
Quarters for the Meters 0
Off to drink liberally.
The Rewards of Making Stuff Up . . . 0
Repeating incredible lies is its own reward.
It is a perverse aspect of our discourse that, the bigger the lie, the bigger the speaking engagements and the more uncritical column inches one gets.
We Need Single Payer 0
In words and pictures:
In other news, Terry Gross interviews an American who lived in Europe and has first-hand experience with European health insurance. Follow the links below to listen or read the transcript:
Reid is a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post — in whose pages he recently addressed five major myths about other countries’ health-care systems — and the former chief of the paper’s London and Tokyo bureaus.
A nugget from the transcript:
If you’re an employed person sharing your health insurance premium with your employer, you live in Germany. That’s the Bismarck model that was invented in Germany and used in many countries.
If you’re a senior and you buy Medicare insurance from the government and go to private doctors, you live in Canada. That’s the Canadian model. As a matter of fact, the Canadian health care system is called Medicare, and when Lyndon Johnson provided it for our seniors in 1965 he borrowed both the model and the name from Canada.
And if you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans who can’t get health insurance, well, you live in Malawi or Madagascar or Mali or something, because if you can pay for health insurance you get it, or maybe you can line up at the free hospital sometime.
Birthwrongs 0
Skippy quotes a Politico commenter who pretty much nails it:
It’s all about the hate, the bigotry, and the odious Southern Strategy of the Party of Old White Men, Rich Folks, and Haters Republican Party.
Growing up white under Jim Crow, I heard all kinds of rationales about why white folks were superior and needed to keep black folks in line to preserve Our Way of Life(TM). A lot of the arguments involved “mongrelization” (for heaven’s sake, look around you: mongrelization was apparently quite all right when worked it in one direction, just not in the other. Jesus, deliver me from the hypocrites and liars, especially those who invoke Your Name.)
Aside: My parents were children of their times, but thank God I didn’t hear that stuff at home. They taught me through example to be equally polite to everyone and to treat everyone with respect.
Somewhere I have a copy of George Fitzhugh’s Cannibals All, a justification of chattel slavery written shortly before the Civil War. I bought it for one of my courses in Southern History, my field of study in college. I was never able to read it, not because I was or am any kind of enlightened angel, but because it must be one of the worst-written books ever published.
It’s still all about bigotry, plain and tall.
Pah!
Nucking Futs 0
Oh, God.
This is sick-making.
According to an ad I just saw, it’s headlining the local TV news tonight. (Otherwise, I’d have ignored it.)
(No, I shan’t watch it. I never watch it. I prefer to get my news from persons who don’t spend a fortune on hair spray.)
Why are wingnuts so enthralled with male anatomy?
Never mind. I don’t want to know.
The Internet Is a Public Place. So’s Your French Cellphone. 0
Therefore . . .
Drinking Liberally and an Update 0
Tomorrow, Triumph Brewing Company, 2nd and Chestnut, Philadelphia, Pa., USA, 6 p.
I may actually be there for the first time in a month, though my days in this part of the world are numbered.
I just don’t know what the number is.
All seriousness aside, Pine View Farm World Headquarters will be relocating in the fall. Details will follow.
“We Distort; You Deride” 0
Related to my post yesterday, I also believe the Obama administration was unprepared for all the lies.
Though, Lord knows, the last eight years should have tipped them off.
Follow the link for videos and transcripts.
Via Atrios.
Hope for the SS United States 0
See the full-sized image
From today’s Philadephia Shrinquirer:
That hasn’t stopped a boatload of romantics from sending out a major SOS. An advocacy group called the SS United States Conservancy believes the ship, which arrived here by happenstance in 1996, carries too much history to be discarded so casually. So it’s mounting a campaign to save the vessel, starting Wednesday with a free screening of a documentary at the Independence Seaport Museum.
Southern Horrorscope 2
I was doing some disk maintenance yesterday (that’s computerese for deleting old stuff) and found this. According to the file properties, it’s been lying around on various computers in my place for over six years. I have no idea from whence it came. It has no point, but, then, neither does this post.
And, yes, I have made lunch off an R. C. Cola and Moon Pie. It’s a pretty lousy lunch. I’d rather have a Coke and a Hostess lemon pie (unless I can get a TastyKake. Once you TastyKake, you’ll never want to Hostess again).
OKRA (Dec 22 – Jan 20)
Are tough on the outside but tender on the inside. Okras have tremendous influence. An older Okra can look back over his life and see the seeds of his influence everywhere. You can do something good each day if you try.
Fooling All of the People All of the Time 0
Securitization returns to the Street. And people are still willing to buy this stuff.
A Short Experiment in Animal Psychology 0
1. Cat rubs against legs.
2. Feed cat (narrowly escaping death as cat tries to trip me three times between cat food storage device and cat food consumption device dish).
3. Cat no longer rubs against legs.
Quality Construction at a Price That’s Right 0
Bolt downright:
The wrong bolts. According to the story, they could “(prevent) sailors from being able to move weapons within the torpedo room.”
Unassisted Triple Play 0
It’s happened only 15 times in the history of major league baseball. In contrast, there have been 18 perfect games pitched.
Story and video here.
Video (I found one last night and MLB had it pulled down:
Plus, the good guys won.
Afterthought: The stars have to aligned just right for a player to have a chance for one of these.
Video via Glomarization.
Dis Coarse Discourse 0
’nuff said:
People like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and the eternally puzzling Glenn Beck pile up tens of millions of dollars by flouting those rules every day.
Teaching children tolerance in modern America is like trying to teach an inner city kid he shouldn’t aspire to be a pimp: If the only successes he’s ever seen are people doing the opposite of what Mom and Dad preach, who’s he going to believe?
Here come the e-mails: “Why single out conservatives? Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are just as bad.”
Fair enough — but there’s still a difference: Taken as a whole, the conservative screamers are either lying or shockingly, incomprehensibly wrong. As a result, their lockstep followers are making decisions based on beliefs that don’t pass the laugh test.