March, 2010 archive
Old Vinegar in New Bottles 2
QOTD 0
Tyron Edwards, via the Quotemaster:
The slanderer and the assassin differ only in the weapon they use; with the one it is the dagger, with the other the tongue. The former is worse that the latter, for the last only kills the body, while the other murders the reputation.
The Fee Hand of the Market 1
The Brits, seduced by market ideology, which claims that adding marketeers into the mix is always better, have been experimenting with their health care system.
It’s not working. Service is deteriorating, costs are increasing, and the extra money is ending up in the pockets of the marketeers.
The business lobby insists that this is all part of the necessary birthing process of the market, but this grand design will turn us into consumers of healthcare, creating ever greater demand. Couple this problem with the fact that private investor-owned firms are profit maximisers, not cost minimisers, and you have a recipe for spiralling healthcare costs. The $2.6 trillion US healthcare system is a great example of this combination.
Stare Decisis 0
Sometimes it is best to let well enough alone.
Make Me Feel Old 2
Picked up a Stouffer’s frozen stromboli because I didn’t feel like cooking after six hours on the road.
Package doesn’t even have directions for heating in a real oven, just for a radar range.
QOTD 0
Eliezer Wiesel, from the Quotemaster:
Only one enemy is worse than despair: indifference. In every area of human creativity, indifference is the enemy; indifference of evil is worse than evil, because it is also sterile.
DST in a Nutshell 0
From SAL:
“It’s an hour later than it is.”
Speed Test 1
At Broadband dot gov. The FCC is collecting information about the quality of broadband connections.
Go there, because your ISP probably doesn’t want you to. (My ISP tested out pretty well, about 18 megs down and four megs up.)
Via Balloon Juice.
Robin Hooding in the UK 0
On the other side of the Big Pond, some persons are starting to see the light: tax people who can afford it so as to benefit the polity as a whole. Polly Toynbee discusses what over here we would call “deficit hawks”:
Just as in the United States etc.
Except that, somehow, a large percentage of US citizens have been convinced that closing schools and denying health care to the sick is somehow both moral and sane, as compared to raising the marginal tax rate a few points for the persons who gave us credit default swaps.
Security Theatre 0
A court sees through the charade.
Life under the Regency 0
Shadows of Massive Resistance.
Dick Polman:
. . . But this new nullification effort is not about legal scholarship, it’s about political theater. It’s about ginning up grassroots opposition and flipping off Washington. It’s about scaring the Democrats during the run up to the November elections . . . .
Massive Resistance didn’t work either. But it did a lot of damage along the way.
The Ersatz Jingoism of the GOP 0
In it for the money.
Leonard Pitts, Jr. (emphasis added):
The sole surprise is that someone actually wrote it down as a PowerPoint presentation and was absent-minded enough to leave a hard copy in a hotel.
Here, then, is the smoking gun, concrete validation for those of us who contend that since Sept. 11, 2001, fear has been the GOP’s leading export, that under the aegis of George W. Bush’s political guru Karl Rove, the party’s message boiled down to a single command: Be very afraid.
And some of us have eagerly complied, fearing Muslim terrorists, Muslim Americans, Latino immigrants, gay people, black people, even salespeople if they say “Happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” Some of us see socialists around every street corner.
Probably the Fashion Police 0
If some of the bridesmaid’s dresses I’ve seen are typical:
When the pair returned to the car, they found a pink Watters bridesmaid dress and a Vera Bradley bag were missing, police said.
It was not recovered in time for the wedding.
All seriousness aside, this does seem pointless and possibly vindictive. What is the resale value for a bridesmaid’s dress and where are you going to fence it anyway? Most of them you can’t give away.
I suggest the cops look for someone who is or has a girlfriend who is the same size as the bridesmaid.
Life under the Regency 0
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Gaywatch – Virginia Edition | ||||
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Via X Curmudgeon.
We Need Single Payer 0
Remote Area Medical set up free clinics, sort of like fairs. They move into an area for a weekend, solicit medical people to volunteer, and open themselves to the public.
They held one recently out in the Valley of Virginia. People came from as far away as West Virginia (not all that far) and North Carolina (real far):
Banks Shot 0
No longer on the pool table, not even in the pockets. No longer banks:
And this one disappeared yesterday.