I'm not a car nut. To me, a car is a way to get from point A to point B using as little gasoline as possible. I don't care about heated seats, remote keyless entry, power sun roofs, antilock brakes, GPS's, or any of that stuff. Our "newer" car is a 2003 Corolla CE with crank windows. It gets a sweet 42mpg on the highway, about 25 in local driving.

Every now and then, though, a car comes along that makes me look twice, The PT Cruiser was kind of like that, with its Edward G. Robinson gangster movie appeal. Except that the PT Cruiser is a clunky car with crappy mileage, whose reputation as cool disappeared as quickly as Hillary Clinton's inevitability.

Yesterday my next-door neighbor pulled his brandy-ass new Mini Clubman out of the driveway so that he could shovel, and it was love at first sight. For the car, not my neighbor. Now, these neighbors aren't car people either. They travel extensively, but they gave lie to the justifications people use today for McMansions by having raised two perfectly fine and well-adjusted children in a tiny ranch house, who now visit with their children. But I guess they decided to have some fun now that they are retired, and they bought this lovely beast:



Their Clubman is a lovely chocolate brown, a color so delectable you want to break off a piece and eat it with a glass of milk. It looks simultenously elegant, funky, and retro, as if it just walked off the set of Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day. But for all that I just wanted to give it a big hug, I didn't become completely, utterly, and irrevocably besotted until I saw the dashboard:



Now it seems that this is pretty much the same dashboard as the Mini Cooper, but again, that retro look just swept me away. It's rated at 34 highway/26 city, which isn't all that different from the current ratings for the Corolla under the new Federal guidelines...and it has TONS of cargo space. With an MSRP of $19950 - $23450 it's a lot pricier than the econoboxes that tend to be the vehicles of choice for the Brilliant household, and that's before you get to the kind of 1930's clothes one has to buy in order to look appropriately fabulous driving such a vehicle.

So for the time being, I'll just have to gaze next door every morning, imagine myself as Bonnie Parker as portrayed by Faye Dunaway, and say to myself, "Mmmmmmmmmm.......chocolate....."

I was always kind of a Frogger, Centipede, and Crazy Climber gal myself during the days that saw me with a gang of equally nerdy people prowling the arcades of the Jersey shore with pockets full of quarters, but wev, as Melissa would say:



(No, this video is not about Ann Coulter.)

(h/t)

Labels: video games

Complete with rigged show trials:

Secret evidence. Denial of habeas corpus. Evidence obtained by waterboarding. Indefinite detention. The litany of complaints about the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay is long, disturbing and by now familiar. Nonetheless, a new wave of shock and criticism greeted the Pentagon's announcement on February 11 that it was charging six Guantánamo detainees, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, with war crimes--and seeking the death penalty for all of them.

Now, as the murky, quasi-legal staging of the Bush Administration's military commissions unfolds, a key official has told The Nation that the trials have been rigged from the start. According to Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo's military commissions, the process has been manipulated by Administration appointees to foreclose the possibility of acquittal.

[snip]

When asked if he thought the men at Guantánamo could receive a fair trial, Davis provided the following account of an August 2005 meeting he had with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes--the man who now oversees the tribunal process for the Defense Department.

"[Haynes] said these trials will be the Nuremberg of our time," recalled Davis, referring to the Nazi tribunals in 1945, considered the model of procedural rights in the prosecution of war crimes. In response, Davis said he noted that at Nuremberg there had been some acquittals, which had lent great credibility to the proceedings.

"I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process," Davis continued. "At which point, [Haynes's] eyes got wide and he said, 'Wait a minute, we can't have acquittals. If we've been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can't have acquittals. We've got to have convictions.'"

Now before our wingnut trolls get their panties in a twist, no one is saying that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad is a swell guy that we'd want to have over for, oh, say, an Oscar® night party. But once upon a time, not too long ago, the United States stood for law and justice and fairness. Then a bunch of power-mad lunatics looked the other way while a man whose family does business with the president's family bankrolled an attack on U.S. soil, and continued to look the other way while the attack was carried out. Then they proceeded to exploit a nation's fears by destroying the American ways of justice, fair trials, the right to be left alone by the government, and the very documents on which this country was founded.

Now we have a banana republic-style dictatorship that has show trials for its enemies with convictions already rigged. We have a Soviet-style government that regards its own citizens as potential terrorists and criminals that require constant surveillance of every aspect of their lives. We have a government that has its own Praetorian Guard that's deputized to kill and rape and run amok -- and still get paid.

Perhaps Bill O'Reilly will send a lynching party after me, but no, Mr. O'Reilly, I am NOT proud of America. And I won't be until every last fucking member of the Bush Administration is sent to the Hague to be tried for crimes against humanity...in fair trials that require evidence. I'm confident that the evidence will be sufficient to convict.

Labels: just another outrage

I remember when the Academy Awards were a really big deal, something I looked forward to, for all that much of the time I just ended up really aggravated, like the year the self-important Crash beat out Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture. Most of the broadcast is insufferable self-important claptrap about the Importance of the Art of Film To People's Lives, punctuated by the host poking fun at the very people who hired him. Once again Jon Stewart is hosting, and while I'm in the minority who thinks he did a decent job last time, it's not exactly an environment where he can let loose.

No, there's only one reason to watch the Academy Awards, and that's to DISH -- about the clothes, the Botox, the bad plastic surgery. And there's no better place to dish than at the Modern Fabulousity Oscar® Night Chat. I'll post a direct link on Sunday, but mark your calendar now.

Labels: bloggers, movies

It's a snowy day here in New Jersey, and I would like nothing better than to be able to work from home today. This is not so much about concerns about getting to work, or even about getting back to the town in which I live. It's about the hill up to my house, where neighborhood kids decide to go sledding when it snows. The problem is that the hill is the street, and if you have to worry about kids and dogs darting into the street or sledding, there's no way you can get enough momentum to get up the hill. And don't think I'm being overly dramatic, because at the foot of this hill is a cross-street. Traffic going down my street has the right of way, but those traversing the cross-street rarely, if ever, obey the stop sign. Mr. Brilliant reports that during the December storms, kids were sledding DOWN THE HILL, IN THE STREET, TOWARDS THIS CROSS STREET. This in a world where kids have to wear body armor before getting on a bicycle. Sometimes I think parents really are out to get their kids killed.

I'm waiting for the OK or nay on the work at home thing, and there are all kinds of fresh horrors being covered around the Intartoobz today.

Who's "plagiarizing" now? Check this out over at HuffPo. It looks like Hillary is now "plagiarizing" John Edwards. But did she get permission? It's too bad, too, that this whole "plagiarism" issue is even there, because the snark factor associated with her use of the "We'll be fine" statement detracts from what a lovely moment this was for her:



Perhaps if Hillary did more of her own talking and used her own instincts instead of blowing $33 million on incompetent hacks who insist on reinforcing everyone's worst views of her, more of us would be positively inclined to support her.

Cernig on former military prosecutor Air Force Col. Morris Davis deciding to be a defense witness for Salim Ahmed Hamdan and other atrocities being committed by the Bush Administration as part of their so-called War on Terror (or as Borat would say, "War of Terror").

Jurassicpork on how merely voting isn't enough.

The Political Cat on the guy working for Grover Norquist who's in the U.S. illegally. But he's a white guy from Australia, so the IOKIYAR Rule applies.

Darkblack tells us (h/t Ornery Bastard) what the Revolution WON'T be.

TRex makes the case that the longer Hillary Clinton stays in and the uglier the tactics to which she's resorting, not only do her chances for the nomination and eventual victory fade ever-faster, but her ability to be an effective Senator will be damaged as well.

Bill Heffner makes the case that the issue of Saint John and the Lobbyist IS important -- because it's part of an overall career-long pattern by McCain of exerting influence in exchange for cash donations. And if you're going to paint yourself as some sort of "straight-shooter", we're going to nail you on your hypocrisy. Andy Ostroy concurs. Sauce for the goose, baby.

Kevin Hayden on yesterday's New York Times article revealing that teenaged girls outnumber their male counterparts in the creation of web content. Kevin (rather snottily, in my opinion), makes the point that "Content creation is a whole different animal than the nuts and bolts of code crunching at the heart of the computer industry", which is sort of like saying that working on cars is too dirty and complicated for girls to do, but then also makes the point that if content creation is different, women shouldn't be as underrepresented in the design, writing, and related fields as they are either. The larger point, if we extrapolate outside the teen age group, is that many companies still believe that code jockeying and content creation are part of the same skill set, and that's why you see jobs posted that want advanced Photoshop skills AND 2-3 years of C#, ASP.Net, and Java programming (and some even throw in network administration in the bargain, but those are jobs clearly designed to NOT find qualified American workers). The larger question, of course, is that the whole issue of Web code vs. content is yet another example of the stuff men do better being ranked higher than that at which women excel, because it's men who do the relative ranking of skills. If you've ever tried to navigate a web site put together by someone more concerned with code than content, you know how undervalued a flair for user interface is.

DistributorcapNY takes a cruise and confirms why I will never in a million years be able to talk Mr. Brilliant into taking one unless somehow by some miracle Air America Radio puts the Morning Sedition team back together, and ALL of those guys, plus Rachel Maddow and Sam Seder, does one that leaves from the New York Area, goes to interesting places in the Caribbean, and still manages to do it in only 8 days. The music in that pool video is a deal-killer for me.

Do you live in New Jersey? Do you trust the voting apparatus here just because we haven't been in the news? Well, Brad Friedman says, "Guess again."

Stay tuned for more must-reads!

Labels: bloggers

OK, let's see. You have Bill O'Reilly saying that he's perfectly willing to lead a "lynching party" if he finds "proof" that Michelle Obama is not "proud to be an American." You have a Republican Party that's run on racial fears since 1988.

Now you have an African-American candidate who may very well be the next President of the United States -- and the Secret Services orders a halt to his security detail at an appearance in Texas?

Security details at Barack Obama's rally Wednesday stopped screening people for weapons at the front gates more than an hour before the Democratic presidential candidate took the stage at Reunion Arena.

The order to put down the metal detectors and stop checking purses and laptop bags came as a surprise to several Dallas police officers who said they believed it was a lapse in security.

Dallas Deputy Police Chief T.W. Lawrence, head of the Police Department's homeland security and special operations divisions, said the order -- apparently made by the U.S. Secret Service -- was meant to speed up the long lines outside and fill the arena's vacant seats before Obama came on.

"Sure," said Lawrence, when asked if he was concerned by the great number of people who had gotten into the building without being checked. But, he added, the turnout of more than 17,000 people seemed to be a "friendly crowd."

The Secret Service did not return a call from the Star-Telegram seeking comment.

It's not the Dallas (!!!) police who ordered the screenings to stop; it was the very people who are supposed to be protecting Barack Obama.

Now if they're willing to allow this kind of lapse in security based on it being "a friendly-looking crowd", how on earth can we have any assurance that they're going to assure his safety if he's elected president?

Labels: Barack Obama

Don't they know reading that subversive Commie crap can rot yer brain?

Anyone see any temperamental similarities between this person:

This morning brings the news that the campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, has launched a new website where they are announcing how they are officially preparing to make the case that the rules of the Democratic nomination process should be changed.

Among many "facts" they declare are some accurate ones, such as the idea that superdelegates, which in true nomenclatural dexterity they now term "automatic delegates" "are expected to exercise their best judgment in the interests of the nation and the Democratic Party."

But then comes this juicy non-fact:

"FACT: Florida and Michigan should count, both in the interest of fundamental fairness and honoring the spirit of the Democrats' 50-state strategy."

That's not a fact, that's an opinion.

And it's clear evidence (not that there was any mystery about it) that the Clinton campaign is trying to change the rules in the middle of the game.

Clinton's own senior adviser, Harold Ickes, voted as a member of the DNC committee to not recognize these two state delegations because they violated the rules of the primary scheduling process. Now as a Clinton campaign representative he's making the case that they should count.

...and this one:

When Barbara Bush took her 13-year-old son and his best friend, Doug Hannah, to play golf at her Houston club, George would start cursing if he didn't tee off well. His mother would tell him to quit it. By the third or fourth hole he would be yelling "Fuck this" until he had ensured that his mother would send him to the car.

"It fit his needs," says Hannah. "He couldn't lose."

Once, after his mother banished him from the golf course, she turned to Hannah and declared, "That boy is going to have optical rectosis." What did that mean? "She said, 'A shitty outlook on life.'"

Even if he loses, his friends say, he doesn't lose. He'll just change the score, or change the rules, or make his opponent play until he can beat him. "If you were playing basketball and you were playing to 11 and he was down, you went to 15," says Hannah, now a Dallas insurance executive. "If he wasn't winning, he would quit. He would just walk off.… It's what we called Bush Effort: If I don't like the game, I take my ball and go home. Very few people can get away with that."

[snip]

It is something of an in-joke with Bush's friends and family. "In reality we all know who won, but George wants to go further to see what happens," says an old family friend, venture capitalist and former MGM chairman Louis "Bo" Polk Jr. "George would say, 'Play that one over,' or 'I wasn't quite ready.' The overtimes are what's fun, so you make your own. When you go that extra mile or that extra point … you go to a whole new level."

??????

Labels: George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton

With the cable news channels wrapped up with either ignoring the McCain thinking with his dick (ewwww....) story or trying to spin it so that anything he did was actually VIRTUOUS, they've taken a break from hammering the "McCain is a moderate! He's a maverick! He'll save the Republican party from the right wing crazies!" theme.

But voters should not be fooled. McCain hasn't been anything resembling a maverick since he sold his soul to the narcissist sociopath from Texas, and now it seems he has Phil Gramm as part of his campaign. And Gramm has a plan for health care reform that's so radical, so daring, so fabulously wonderful, that it's going to "revolutionize America's health care system."

Want to know what it is?

Can you guess?

Wait for it.....


TAX REBATES!!!

Yes, folks, this revolutionary health care plan would eliminate the tax exclusion for health benefits paid by employers, and instead give tax rebates of $2500 to $5000 per family.

Today, McCain is advocating a plan that's radically different from those of Clinton and Barack Obama, and - if he goes all the way by following Gramm - could revolutionize America's healthcare system. For McCain and Gramm, the problem with our healthcare system - and the reason why over 47 million Americans are uninsured - is that it's excessively, scandalously expensive. The solution, they say, is to let Americans shop for healthcare with their own money. McCain advocates giving tax rebates of $2500 per individual or $5000 per family. With that money, families could purchase policies on their own. What's truly radical about the plan is that it eliminates the tax exclusion for healthcare benefits offered by companies to their employees, and replaces it with the $2500 to $5000 rebates.

Consumers could then use that cash to buy their own insurance in what Gramm foresees as a vibrant, consumer-driven marketplace for healthcare packages.

So let's see....no changes to the current environment in which insurance companies can deny coverage for pre-exsiting conditions, deny coverage for procedures they've already approved, ask doctors to rat out their patients who may have conditions they can refuse to cover, pay bonuses to employees who stonewall patients, need I go on? And nothing to bring down the cost of health insurance, because the magic of the "free market" will take care of it. Ah, supply-side economics is alive and well and still living in Texas.



Does anyone know of a health care plan that provides comprehensive care for a family for $5000?

I guess they're figuring that the supply-side, nonregulatory environment that produces tainted food and drugs will kill off enough people quickly that health care won't even be necessary.

Labels: health care, supply-side economics

Pam has a 100% spot-on analysis of the many things that went wrong with Hillary Clinton's campaign. It's not over yet, but the fat lady is putting on Elmer Fudd's magic helmet even as we speak. Because as the Not Quite Driftglass But Damn Close LM says,

He's just shooting. Tapping into “it”. 'Cause “it” is bigger than he is. And that “it” is a tidal wave begun with the Supreme Court's December 2000 judgement that Bush be installed, fluttering down into the collective water of history. The ripple began there, rolled into larger ones with the Iraq debacle, became waves then and rose higher with the repeated flouting of the Constitution—FISA, glad-handing torture, and then, the open subverting of justice, and now crests eight years later on a sweat, shit and pee-inducing Tsunami that isn't about a grumpy bark of “Throw the bums out!”.

No. This is a level beyond that. It's a “Throw the bums out, then burn down the place we were in, so we don't have to remember it and let's build some place completely new that's got no ties to the old bullshit.”

Obama just happens to be the dude who was out there on the breakers when that wave rolled in, and for what it's worth—he's riding the living hell out of it, while everybody else, including unfortunately (for her) Senator Clinton—is directly in the looming shadow of and in the path of the top of that curl's monstrous, white-capped downbreak.

Labels: Barack Obama, bloggers

I don't see how else you can interpret this:

"I don't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there's evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels. If that's how she really feels -- that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever -- then that's legit. We'll track it down."

The most charitable explanation is that for some reason, Bill O'Reilly suddenly decided that instead of just shooting off at the mouth, he should find out what Michelle Obama actually said before going off the deep end. But that is so out of character for Billo, and the use of the phrase "lynching....unless...." -- etc. is so clearly beyond the pale.

The other day, Meredith Viera had to apologize because Jane Fonda used the "C" word on national television to an audience of largely "C"-Americans. But Bill O'Reilly is no doubt going to be able to say that he'll go on a "lynching party" against Michelle Obama if it turns out that she feels America is a flawed nation -- and get away with it.

And when some right-wing racist angry nutball decides to take a shot at her, Billo will claim he was in no way to blame.

Because everything is OK if you're a Republican.

Labels: Bill O'Reilly, Fox News, racism

Jesus H. Christ. It's getting so you can't even leave the house anymore, you might miss something.

Olbermann is covering this little goodie from the "Holy Shit!" file, that was posted at the New York Times web site less than an hour ago:

Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, in his offices and aboard a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s clients, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

Now, I don't give a shit who John McCain may be fucking (though the fact that this may force the image of John McCain fucking has a decided "Ewwwww!" factor). I'm a lot more concerned that he may have elevated cozying up to telecommunications lobbyists to a new level.

So the question is, what are we to make of this? We already know that sex scandals, whether true or not, are the mother's milk of the corporate media. We've been down this road with John Edwards earlier in a story that had no there there and went nowhere. Alas, so did his candidacy. Dave Johnson at Seeing the Forest has a list of Obama smears already coming from the right. But it's kind of interesting that the day after McCain pretty much cements his nomination, suddenly an eight-year-old sex and lobbying scandal shows up. Gee, someone doesn't want John McCain to get this nomination, and I don't think it's the Clintons; after all, they have their own problems to deal with right now. So given how adamant activist Republicans have been that McCain is not the nominee they want, I don't think you have to be a genius to do the math on this one. The direction is clear, the only question is the source.

So let's perform some speculatio on this story, shall we? Who's behind it? Does it fatally wound McCain's candidacy? And if so, who becomes the Republican nominee? Does God really want Huckabee after all? And what about Mitt Romney, who didn't withdraw, but only "suspended" his campaign? And....how do I make my voice do this?

Have at it.

Labels: hypocrisy, I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning, John McCain

And the Idiot-in-Chief is really good at alienating people.

Will Bunch:

George W. Bush is now the most unpopular president in recorded American history. (h/t Atrios)

Worse than Richard Nixon in the days before he resigned in disgrace during Watergate, worse than Jimmy Carter during the Iran hostage crisis, much worse than Bill Clinton when he was impeached. Just as Roger Bannister raced through what once seemed the unreachable 4-minute mile, Bush has burst through a barrier once also thought impossible, below the 20-percent mark.

Check this out:

George W. Bush's overall job approval rating has dropped to a new low in American Research Group polling as 78% of Americans say that the national economy is getting worse according to the latest survey from the American Research Group.

Among all Americans, 19% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 77% disapprove. When it comes to Bush's handling of the economy, 14% approve and 79% disapprove.

Among Americans registered to vote, 18% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 78% disapprove.

That is just mind-blowing. How does it compare to other presidents? There's no comparison.

Nixon, as he was hounded out of office in August 1974, never dipped below the mid-20s.

Here's a pretty good compilation of poll numbers from Roper. To summarize the highlights:

Clinton low: 36 percent, May 1993 (early missteps like Zoe Baird)

George H.W. Bush low: 29 percent, August 1992 (recession)

Reagan low: 35 percent, January 1983 (recession)

Carter low: 28 percent, July 1979 (high gas prices)

Ford low: 37 percent, January 1975 (economy, Nixon pardon)

Nixon low: 23 percent, January 1974 (Watergate)

Johnson low: 35 percent, August 1968 (Vietnam)

Lowest ever? That would be Harry Truman during the Korean War, in February 1952, at 22 percent.

And McCain is running as "I'm just like Bush only not a complete blithering idiot"?

Now someone please tell me where anyone got the idea that Republicans had anything to do with competence.

Labels: George W. Bush

Last week on Real Time, Andrew Sullivan repeated the "retarded women used as suicide bombers" meme in defending why we need to have some presence in Iraq. The information that the two women involved in the suicide bombings in question did NOT have Downs Syndrome was starting to surface within two days, but that didn't dissuadethe corporate media and the other Usual Suspects from their customary hue and cry and rending of garments.

Well, like everything else we've been told by this Administration, this too is false:

The U.S. military said Wednesday that two women used as suicide bombers in attacks earlier this month had undergone psychiatric treatment but there is no indication they had Down syndrome as Iraqi and U.S. officials initially had claimed.

Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a military spokesman, said the women used in the Feb. 1 pet market bombings had been identified as residents from the northeastern outskirts of Baghdad who were in their late 20s or early 30s.

The two attacks killed nearly 100 people, and Iraqi and U.S. officials said at the time the women appeared to be unwitting attackers.

Lt. Gen. Abboud Qanbar, the chief Iraqi military commander in Baghdad, said soon after the attacks that photos of the women's heads showed they had Down syndrome, but he did not offer any other proof.

A U.S. military spokesman for the Baghdad area, Lt. Col. Steve Stover, also said at the time that medical experts with his division had examined the photos and agreed the women probably suffered from the genetic disorder. "They were both females and they both looked like they had Down syndrome," Stover said on Feb. 2.

A cell phone image of one of the heads viewed by The Associated Press was inconclusive.

There was speculation that the heads could have been distorted by the blast, leading police initially to believe they had Down syndrome.

On Wednesday, Smith backed away from the claim about Down syndrome while responding to a question concerning the psychiatric histories of the two bombers.

"Both had recently received psychiatric treatment for depression and/or schizophrenia. From what we know now there's no indication that they had Down syndrome," Smith said, citing records obtained by the military.

Not that using schizophrenic or depressed people as human bombs makes one a paragon of virtue, but this is all part of the Administration's pattern of floating lies meant to elicit a reptilian brain response.

Labels: al-Qaeda, Bush Administration, utter horseshit

Image: MyFox Houston.

Burnt Orange Report via Group News Blog:

Early voting starts today in Texas. In Waller County, a primarily rural county about 60 miles outside Houston, the county made the decision to offer only one early voting location: at the County Courthouse in Hempstead, TX, the county seat.

Prairie View A&M students organized to protest the decision, because they felt it hindered their ability to vote. For background, Prairie View A&M is one of Texas' historically Black universities. It has a very different demographic feel than the rest of the county. There has been a long history of dispute over what the students feel is disenfranchisement. There was a lot of outrage in 2006, when students felt they were unfairly denied the right to vote when their registrations somehow did not get processed.

[...]

So what are the students doing?

1000 students, along with an additional 1000 friends and supporters, are this morning walking the 7.3 miles between Prairie View and Hempstead in order to vote today. According to the piece I saw on the news (there's no video up, so I can't link to it), the students plan to all vote today. There are only 2 machines available at the courthouse for early voting, so they hope to tie them up all day and into the night.

Breathtaking, isn't it?

Crossposted at Blanton's & Ashton's.

I missed Paul Krugman's column yesterday, but it's worth visiting anyway.

I've long believed that while the snake oil products that purport to deal with abdominal fat caused by overproduction of the stress hormone cortisol are just that, there is something to the notion that for many individuals, the body's response to stress is to produce cortisol with its resulting increase in fat storage. The fact that there are studies which bear this out, however, has had no effect on the conventional wisdom in the medical community and of course the diet industry, that (as Kate Harding says) if we'd just stop eating baby-flavored donuts and got off our lazy asses, we too could be as thin as supermodels.

From 1999 to 2002 the level of childhood obesity grew from 11% to 16% of children -- an increase of 45%¹. Certainly fast food is a factor, particularly when fast food is often more available than fresh foods in low-income neighborhoods. But does that account for most of the increase, or is the effect of consumption of low-nutrition, calorie dense food exacerbated by stress?

That's where we get back to Krugman's column:

“Poverty in early childhood poisons the brain.” That was the opening of an article in Saturday’s Financial Times, summarizing research presented last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As the article explained, neuroscientists have found that “many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development.” The effect is to impair language development and memory — and hence the ability to escape poverty — for the rest of the child’s life.

[snip]

In 2006, 17.4 percent of children in America lived below the poverty line, substantially more than in 1969. And even this measure probably understates the true depth of many children’s misery.

Living in or near poverty has always been a form of exile, of being cut off from the larger society. But the distance between the poor and the rest of us is much greater than it was 40 years ago, because most American incomes have risen in real terms while the official poverty line has not. To be poor in America today, even more than in the past, is to be an outcast in your own country. And that, the neuroscientists tell us, is what poisons a child’s brain.

America’s failure to make progress in reducing poverty, especially among children, should provoke a lot of soul-searching. Unfortunately, what it often seems to provoke instead is great creativity in making excuses.

Some of these excuses take the form of assertions that America’s poor really aren’t all that poor — a claim that always has me wondering whether those making it watched any TV during Hurricane Katrina, or for that matter have ever looked around them while visiting a major American city.

Mainly, however, excuses for poverty involve the assertion that the United States is a land of opportunity, a place where people can start out poor, work hard and become rich.

But the fact of the matter is that Horatio Alger stories are rare, and stories of people trapped by their parents’ poverty are all too common. According to one recent estimate, American children born to parents in the bottom fourth of the income distribution have almost a 50 percent chance of staying there — and almost a two-thirds chance of remaining stuck if they’re black.

That’s not surprising. Growing up in poverty puts you at a disadvantage at every step.

And if you combine an economic system where downward mobility is becoming more prevalent than upward, and where opportunities are decreasing rather than increasing, with the many other stresses of living in low-income communities, it's not an absurd stretch of the imagination to think of all that cortisol pumping through the bodies of these kids as well, adding obesity and society's loathing of fat people to the strikes they have against them. It isn't just the brain that poverty poisons.

Labels: economics, weight

Wait till the wingnuts start in if Barack Obama is the nominee. They're starting already, but no one's paying attention....yet.

Until I came across this article by Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media, which I regard as factual — with all that that implies — the questions about Obama's background that should have come naturally never quite rose to the surface of my mind. Barack Obama is the new man, of course. His mixed race is a symbol of that. Just like Tiger Woods — as we have read, endlessly. What's to wonder about?

But maybe it's not so simple. Obama and I are roughly the same age. I grew up in liberal circles in New York City — a place to which people who wished to rebel against their upbringings had gravitated for generations. And yet, all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually Jewish, but elsewhere not necessarily) and usually a highly educated black father. And how had these two come together at a time when it was neither natural nor easy for such relationships to flourish? Always through politics. No, not the young Republicans. Usually the Communist Youth League. Or maybe a different arm of the CPUSA. But, for a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics. (During the Clinton Administration we were all introduced to then U. of Pennsylvania Professor Lani Guinier — also a half black/half Jewish, red diaper baby.)

I don't know how Barak Obama's parents met. But the Kincaid article referenced above makes a very convincing case that Obama's family, later, (mid 1970s) in Hawaii, had close relations with a known black Communist intellectual. And, according to what Obama wrote in his first autobiography, the man in question — Frank Marshall Davis — appears to have been Barack's own mentor, and even a father figure. Of course, since the Soviet Union itself no longer exists, it's an open question what it means practically to have been politically mentored by an official Communist. Ideologically, the implications are clearer.

But wait a minute. I thought Obama was a double-dog-secret Islamofascist mole trying to infiltrate our government! So which is it? Is he an Islamofascist or the product of a Jewish Commie Conspiracy? I wish these people would make up their minds.

(h/t)

UPDATE: Dave Johnson has more links to the spew already emanating from the sick, sick minds of wingnuttia.

Labels: Barack Obama, utter horseshit, wingnuttia

I know that many bloggers have rallied around Hillary Clinton in the wake of the disgusting fratboyism at MSNBC and elsewhere. But being the target of misogynistic attacks and language doesn't somehow magically turn Mrs. Clinton into a noncorporatist, progressive candidate.

I don't know about anyone else, but when I see her talk about creating good jobs at good wages, I want to shout at the TV, "Then why do you cozy up to the very companies that want to send those very jobs overseas?" She gives lip service to "retraining", but says nothing about the nature of the jobs for which already highly skilled IT workers should "retrain." Granted, she's in a difficult position, because she either has to run on her words or run on her (and let's face it, Bill's) record. And for someone who refuses to ever admit that she was wrong, she has a long track record of supporting policies that she now repudiates on the stump without ever using the words "wrong" or "mistake."

So in the aftermath of yesterday's routs in Wisconsin and Hawaii for Barack Obama, I have to ask: Just who's running on "words"?

Ignoring her crushing loss in Wisconsin to rival Barack Obama, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton pressed her case Tuesday that the Illinois senator offers little more than talk.

"It's about picking a president who relies not just on words, but on work, hard work, to get America back to work," Clinton said at a labor rally here. "Someone who's not just in the speeches business."

Aside from the fact that this sounds an awful lot like a "Lazy Negro (sic) slur against Obama, who's the one who's really in the speeches business here?

Last year at Yearly Kos, while John Edwards was asking the other two candidates to join him in renouncing lobbyist money, Hillary Clinton was up on the stage saying that lobbyists are Americans too. And NOW, having driven the populist candidate out of the race, she's finally gotten religion?



As someone old enough to remember when my mother was the only woman with kids in the neighborhood who worked outside the home, I would have liked to have been able to support "the first viable woman candidate." But to vote for, as Melissa might say, "the vagina-American" candidate, because she "looks like me" is no different from white guys refusing to vote for a woman or black man. Would I support a man who was running a campaign the way Clinton's is run and has Clinton's record on war and outsourcing?

Again:



And is Clinton even viable at this point? Yesterday Barack Obama even cut into what's believed to be Clinton's core constituency -- lower-income voters and women. Last night he was in Clinton's firewall state giving a victory speech in front of an intimate group of 20,000 people. Momentum may be overrated, but when you have two "transformational" candidates, and one of them is racking up states by such huge margins, the element of Something Bigger Going On cannot be ignored.

Clinton's biggest problem is that the transformational nature of her candidacy is by definition muted by the inescapable fact that a Hillary Clinton presidency is not something entirely new, and it's not uncharted territory. We've been here before. Assuming that the Obama Train continues its relentless roll into Denver and wraps things up by then, the irony of the Clinton candidacy will be that the first viable woman candidates's aspirations were largely thwarted by the very husband whose own departing popularity ratings in 2000, after surviving eight years of Republican witch hunts, was still higher than George W. Bush's have been for most of his presidency. Bill Clinton was supposed to be her biggest asset, and it seems he's been her biggest liability, for all that people DO remember his presidency fondly. He's become a liability because without the presidency and the ability to formulate policy as a backdrop, and when the campaign's back is against the wall, all of Bill Clinton's flaws have come to the fore -- the "It's all about me" narcissism. The need for attention and adulation. The relentlessness that's no longer cloaked in a smile and a lower lip curled so fetchingly under his teeth.

Imagine if John Edwards had decided to tough it out longer. Imagine if he had woken up today after double-digit losses in the last ten state contests. Do you think he'd be vowing to fight this till the convention, figuring that the party hacks would give him the nomination?

Again:



It's entirely possible that Hillary Clinton has it in her to be a great president and Barack Obama may be a terrible one. I may have decided to support Obama, but I'm riding on the train's steps, not knocking back a few with the Obamaniacs in the bar car. I'm not 100% sold and I'm not a true believer. But after eight years of the ugliest Administration in my lifetime, with a president and vice-president who operate in secrecy, regard themselves as entitled to hold power rather than that power being a sacred trust and a privilege, who will do anything, including thwarting the will of the people to win elections, and who attack everyone who disagrees with them, the last thing I want is another Administration with a similar sense of entitlement, no matter how marginally they claim to be on my side.

Labels: 2008 election, Hillary Clinton

I've been trying to wrap my mind around the nightmare video clips of downer cattle at the Westland/Hallmark Meat Packing Company of Chino, California, the release of which resulted in the largest beef recall in US history, this past weekend. This recall involves meat that was processed dating back to February 2006, most of which was used by schools and government programs...Oh yeah, and fast food joints too. The videos of the terrible treatment of these animals are shocking, but not all that different than the horror of factory farming done right...its all too much anyway. This is the stuff that makes high schoolers become vegetarians, for a while at least; the stuff that comes from Americans being so removed from their food sources as to think that there is some easy way to kill....But this isn't a story about those poor cows getting kicked by underpaid, under managed, and frustrated workers. Its a story about the basic inequities in our society and who is getting rich off of Americans and illegal workers without a voice. This is a story about the helplessness that is permeating our society, and how we have managed to allow the ill-informed past decisions of the electorate to turn on the crazy Reaganesque "less government" message, which was supposed to enable the individual and to put more money in each pocket, but actually crippled a system that was designed to give everyone a fair chance. Who were enabled were an elite few... and the elected government has been happy to keep America on red alert, scared, while handing power over to a dwindling number of large corporations who have managed their business as if this is a monarchy, and they are the god chosen heirs in control of all resources.

For anyone who ever wondered why the neocon power base would want to maintain a permanent underclass, here it is; This wasn't the beef that the upper and middle classes were buying at the supermarket, or that would ever be offered to anyone with a choice. This wasn't meat that a discerning adult was preparing for children or at a soup kitchen. This was the cheap-o garbage meat that is mass produced for foods that are heavily salted, frozen, and recooked numerous times for those who have no choice but to eat what is put in front of them. This is our Soylent Green. Weather or not it can be proved that anyone died from this particular batch is beside the point. These are the chips of protein that are parceled out to the helpless in order to keep them in line. Do I have to point out that many school children get their main meal at school lunch, or that "government programs" are likely prisons or social service providers? School children are often lucky to see a vegetable or a cup of high fructose fruit cocktail, and when offered a piece of steak or a fresh hamburger, they don't like it because they are conditioned to like the flat, brown, previously frozen, "beef" of the fast food and school lunch world.



Its not just the flat little frozen patties that are sent to schools that are suspect. CT has seen many recalls, and recently, after a barbecue at the local firehouse (during which I didn't eat, luckily,) every fireman got deathly ill for 24 hours with the worst of stomach complaints. The culprit was frozen beef patties from Costco. Besides that we are already short staffed here in our volunteer fire department, I cant imagine what would have happened if there had been a big emergency during that time.

We can't say that the beef in question in this recall definitely didn't kill anyone. Its just that it wasn't caught. Stomach virus' run through schools, and most of that stuff is cooked to death...but still...Once the meat is traced, I'm sure that illness will surround the areas where it was consumed. But, if any responsibility can be proved, its likely that the company will have already gone belly up. This is not the kind of a scandal that a food company lives through; its just too big.

There is no excuse for any human being to mistreat a helpless animal, much less another human being, but the victims at the source are virtually cattle themselves. Its been shown over and over that the meat packing industry is a catch-all for illegal immigrants in this country, and that the corporate structure of that industry is so strong that it is seldom that our dwindling FDA is even able to check out what goes on. Again, I can see, in my mind's eye, a failing Ronald Reagan speaking about corporate responsibility and the need for government to step back and let large corporations police themselves. He was saying how there was no need for the country to have regulations in place because large corporations surely would do the right thing, Uh-huh. As Hillary Clinton says, large corporations and their lobbyists are people too, deserving of full protection and care...right? But what kind of people are they? Are they rich people who are above the law until something really bad happens, or are they the poor folks of color who are stopped fir driving in the wrong neighborhood? Thats how the law works, right?

If the video of the abuse of these cattle had not been released, this would still be going on, as it is probably still happening all over the place. Downer cattle are regularly picked up from the floor of the slaughter house and dragged along, because they represent profit, and regardless of whatever sickness they might have, or the e. coli that they've fallen in, the corporation's first responsibility is the it's stockholders, and those stockholders are looking at the bottom line, not the ramifications of the details...until they get caught, that is. A corporation like this has to weigh the legalities of producing poisoned foods, with the legalities of their responsibility to the stockholders. The two often are in conflict, as with health insurance, and that is why they need to be regulated. The fine line that is walked every day in trying to turn a profit in the face of globalism and China feeding plastic to it's animals to cut costs and offer it cheaper...well, maybe its less that American corporations need regulation and more that they need protection from globalism!



This episode is not likely to send a chill through the industry, because fines are relatively small, and the span of time in this case is such that liability for illness or death will be hard to prove. But again, we are faced with what happens when we allow the corporate world to regulate itself. Its not just that we are facing a problem in feeding our own citizens because the bottom line is ruling the quality of food that is available to the underprivileged in the richest country in the world, but we have removed social responsibility from the producers and replaced it with complete and total loyalty to the stockholders and business. How can that be? Whole portions of society are less able to function and learn because of the poison that a corporation like this feeds them; and then scientists note that the poor have more incidence of disease, are more obese, are more anxious...which they cant treat preventively because existing health insurance is unlikely to provide for care before the fact, and even if it does, there are no markets with fresh food near to the areas where they live, so the suggestion to get more exercise and eat better falls into a category of impossibility. Just like physical therapy 3 times per week and trying to relax more, those are options available to the rich. Even the middle class has trouble carving out time to even take a walk, much less make a salad.

I am disgusted as hell by the mistreatment of animals, and I cant imagine introducing something with the potential to kill children into the food chain. This case is evidently a purposeful case of the bottom line overwhelming common sense, and its criminal. I can guess that the CEO of this company is not hurting, and I wonder how many corners are cut to show enough profit in order to pay what have become overwhelming salaries to top management in these corporations. I know that the pressure is not due to worker's salaries or compensation packages. All of that is a thing of the past, along with job security, home owenrship, and comfortable retirement.

In the end of Fast Food Nation, a movie that is as timely now as it was, in 2006, when it originally came out and was nominated for 2 Academy Awards, the camera follows along the conveyor of the slaughterhouse where some struggling illegal immigrants work. It is very hard to watch, but it is also a truth that we would be foolish to put totally out of our minds, while trusting the government to protect us somehow. The Bush administration has done us the favor of laying some stark realities out for all to see. The government doesn't care about you or me. They certainly don't want an educated, safe, and well fed population to carry us into the next century. They are only interested in the top echelon of power and how to make the rich richer, while appearing to care about the little people.

We have to regulate the food industry in this county, and we have to get some sort of control over the quality of what is coming down the pike to a supermarket near you. This is less a story about pathetic sick cows being mistreated, than it is a story about how, in the service of the bottom line, a corporation can shape the lives of entire segments of society...including children, who should have all the possibilities in the world open to them!!...and how, once again, one company will take the fall, and the underlying problem will continue unchecked because we have no FDA.

And of course, there are too many videos on YouTube showing the "best" and the worst of how our food is processed...but I just couldn't bring myself to post any here. Its just too sad. But follow the link and prepare to cry; its not pretty, folks...but no one ever said that life was going to be.

c/p RIPCoco

Labels: lies, nutrition, tainted pet food scandal

Not like Lower Manhattanite has, alas. Check out his spot-on analysis of John McCain, and why you might just as soon vote for Gollum.

Labels: John McCain

After all, we all know that Teh Gayz are a threat to marriage, and one of Bush's judicial appointees has resigned after being arrested for a DUI while, shall we say, dressed to kill:

A Boston-based federal judge was found guilty yesterday of driving drunk on Elm Street last week after striking a plea deal with the city that enabled him to avoid trial.

U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert Somma, 63, pleaded no contest in Manchester District Court to a misdemeanor first-offense driving while intoxicated charge. Under the plea deal, Somma agreed to a 12-month license suspension, which could be reduced to six months if he successfully completes an alcohol awareness program, according to court records. He also paid $600 in fines and penalties.

Somma's Mercedes-Benz E320 sedan hit a pick-up truck from behind about 11:29 p.m. on Feb. 6, the police report said. No one was hurt.

Somma, who lives in Newbury, Mass., fumbled in his purse for his driver's license before handing it to the officer who later arrested him, the police report shows.

"He had a difficult time locating his license in his purse. He passed over it multiple times before removing it," officer Paul J. Thompson wrote in his report.

The officer offered no other details with regard to the judge's attire or accessories. Nor would representatives of the Manchester Police Department or the city solicitor's office, which worked out the negotiated plea agreement with Somma's lawyer, John J. Cronin III of Bennington. Somma initially was set to be arraigned on the charges Feb. 25.

"I won't comment on the attire, either," said Gregory T. Muller, an attorney with the city solicitor's office.

Somma told police he had been at the Breezeway Pub where he had one gin and tonic about two hours earlier, the police report reveals. He later said he drank two gin and tonics.

The Breezeway Pub, at 14 Pearl St., bills itself as "New Hampshire's favorite gay and alternative bar," according to its web site.

Trish at Pensito Review adds more details:

But lots of other people did offer those details, of which Audrey Hepburn would have been proud.

When authorities removed him from the vehicle, they said he wore a black women’s cocktail dress, fishnet stockings and high heels.

(h/t: Steven Reynolds)

Labels: Bush Administration, hypocrisy, Justice Department

As someone who remembers, however vaguely, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and has seen Fidel Castro used as a kind of all-purpose demon, even long after the Soviet Union fell and the "Cuba as a Soviet Beachhead In Our Hemisphere" meme no longer had any meaning (Fred Thompson's time warp notwithstanding), the retirement of Fidel Castro ought to be more of a Big Deal than it is:

Fidel Castro stepped down Tuesday morning as the president of Cuba after a long illness, ending one of the longest tenures as an all-powerful, communist head of state in the world, according to Granma, the official publication of the Cuban Communist Party.

In late July 2006, Mr. Castro, who is 81, handed over power temporarily to his brother, Raúl Castro, 76, and a few younger cabinet ministers, after an acute infection in his colon forced him to undergo emergency surgery. Despite numerous surgeries, he has never fully recovered but has remained active in running government affairs from behind the scenes.

Now, just days before the national assembly is to meet to select a new head of state, Mr. Castro resigned permanently in a letter to the nation and signaled his willingness to let a younger generation assume power. He said his failing health made it impossible to return as president.

“I will not aspire to neither will I accept — I repeat I will not aspire to neither will I accept — the position of President of the Council of State and Commander in chief,” he wrote.

There's something kind of quaint about Castro paraphrasing Lyndon Johnson, of all people, isn't there?

And so the last of the old guard of high profile leaders largely leaves the stage -- only largely because he has pledged

... to continue to be a force in Cuban politics through his writings, just as he has over the last year and a half. “I am not saying goodbye to you,” he wrote. “I only wish to fight as a soldier of ideas.”

...which means that little is likely to change in Cuba over the short term.

Cuba under Castro has been useful to the right-wing for well over 40 years now, with the poverty in which so many of its citizens live being the example used for the failure of Castro's quasi-socialist government. But the picture is more complex than that. Cuba also boasts a literacy rate of 99.8% (ranking behind only Finland, the former Soviet republic of Georgia, Luxembourg and Norway) vs. the U.S., which ranks in a tie for 21st at 99%, an infant mortality rate of 6.04 deaths/1,000 live births (vs. 6.37/1000 live births in the U.S.), an average life expectancy of 77.08 years (not significantly less than the 78 years of the U.S.), and an unemployment rate of 1.6% (vs. the U.S., which currently stands at a 4.9% rate that does not include those who have given up looking for work).

I'm not going to argue Cuba's health care system here because I haven't studied it carefully and there are enough reports of filthy hospitals that didn't appear in Sicko that the picture therein is more complex than either side is about to discuss. I'm also not going to paint Cuba as some kind of Socialist Worker's Paradise. But hasn't this notion of Castro as some kind of imminent threat to the U.S., which he may have been as long as there was a Soviet Union, has gone on far too long? In 2002, in the run-up to the Iraq War, World Nut Daily was insisting that Islamic terrorists were establishing a beachhead in Cuba and elsewhere in the Caribbean and Latin America. Funny how not even the Bush Administration, with all its lies about how if we don't give the telecommunications companies immunity from prosecution for its mass wiretaps of the communications of all Americans we're all going to die tried to push that one very hard. Not none but the most lunatic of Republicans claims that the "hordes of brown-skinned people invading our shores from the south (sic)" are about terrorist infiltration.

Fidel Castro may not yet be completely gone, but his usefulness as all-purpose boogeyman in the Western Hemisphere is vastly diminished today. But all is not lost for the fearmongers. After all, they now have Hugo Chavez to fill that role.

Labels: Fidel Castro

...and be hopeful for humanity and the Democratic party.

School Board members are mutated maggots and apples and oranges are genetically related to our pets, according this scientific savant. I was almost sorry to see him get booted from the podium.

No, it's not lolcats (though lolcats are pretty damn funny), and it isn't even political activism.

It's so 14-year-olds who are very much like I was at that age don't have to spend their adolescences sitting alone at the far end of the schoolyard during lunch hour writing brooding poetry while wrapped in a poncho to hide their self loathing.

Start here. Then go here.

And don't skip the comments.

Labels: warm fuzzies, weight

Another dispatch from the "Figure That Out All By Yourself, Einstein?" file:

A nationwide study has found that the uninsured and those covered by Medicaid are more likely than those with private insurance to receive a diagnosis of cancer in late stages, often diminishing their chances of survival.

The study by researchers with the American Cancer Society also found that blacks had a higher risk of late diagnosis, even after accounting for their disproportionately high rates of being uninsured and underinsured. The study’s authors speculated that the disparity might be caused by a lack of health literacy and an inadequate supply of providers in minority communities. The study is to be published online Monday in The Lancet Oncology.

Previous studies have shown a correlation between insurance status and the stage of diagnosis for particular cancers. The new research is the first to examine a dozen major cancer types and to do so nationally with the most current data. It mined the National Cancer Data Base, which began collecting information about insurance in the late 1990s, to analyze 3.7 million patients who received diagnoses from 1998 to 2004.

The widest disparities were noted in cancers that could be detected early through standard screening or assessment of symptoms, like breast cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer and melanoma. For each, uninsured patients were two to three times more likely to be diagnosed in Stage III or Stage IV rather than Stage I. Smaller disparities were found for non-Hodgkins lymphoma and cancers of the bladder, kidney, prostate, thyroid, uterus, ovary and pancreas.

When comparing blacks to whites, the disparities in late-stage diagnosis were statistically significant for 10 of the 12 cancers. Hispanics also had a higher risk but less so than blacks.

The study’s authors concluded that “individuals without private insurance are not receiving optimum care in terms of cancer screening or timely diagnosis and follow-up with health care providers.” Advanced-stage diagnosis, they wrote, “leads to increased morbidity, decreased quality of life and survival and, often, increased costs.”

But of course it's not the fact that people without insurance are unable to afford the hundreds of dollars that a mammogram costs, or the thousands a colonoscopy costs. No, according to the medical establishment, it's because the poor and the black are too ignorant to seek screening and early treatment:

“Do these findings mean that patients without insurance are being diagnosed too late, or that insured patients are being excessively diagnosed?” said Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, a professor at Dartmouth who studies the usefulness of medical procedures. “And if it does mean that too many are being diagnosed late, we don’t know if it’s the problem of not being insured or a problem of cultural norms and patient education.”

Is it just me, or is Dr. H. Gilbert Welch saying that it's a cultural norm among the uninsured to not seek medical care?

Not that having insurance is a guarantee of care either:

Have health insurers been systematically cheating patients and doctors of fair reimbursement for medical services? That is the disturbing possibility raised by an investigation of the industry’s arcane procedures for calculating “reasonable and customary” rates.

The investigation, by the New York State attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, and his staff, suggests that these procedures — used by major insurance companies to determine what they will pay when patients visit a doctor who is not in the company’s network — may be rigged to shortchange the beneficiaries.

When patients visit an out-of-network doctor, insurers typically agree to pay 80 percent of the reasonable and customary rate charged by doctors in the same geographic area. The patient is stuck with the rest, and as any patient knows, that rate always seems to fall short of what their own doctor is charging. If the attorney general’s investigators are right, we can understand why.

The numbers are mainly compiled by an obscure company known as Ingenix, which — as it turns out — is owned by UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation’s largest health insurers. Ingenix collects billing information from UnitedHealth and other health care payers to compile a database that is then used by the insurers to determine out-of-network reimbursement rates.

This system is an invitation for abuse. UnitedHealth owns the company whose database will affect its costs and profitability, so both have a strong financial interest in keeping reimbursement rates low. Even Ingenix seems unwilling to stand behind its numbers. In licensing its database to insurers, it stresses that the data is “for informational purposes only” and does not imply anything about “reasonable and customary” charges. Yet that is precisely what the health insurers use the data for, as Ingenix knows, according to investigators.

Mr. Cuomo and the American Medical Association, which has a long-standing suit filed against Ingenix and various UnitedHealth companies, claim that the data is manipulated. They claim that health insurers and Ingenix disproportionately eliminate high charges, thus skewing the numbers for customary charges downward.

And Barack Obama believes that these companies "deserve" a seat at the table? Does he honestly believe that the sheer force of his personality will make these companies, that are perfectly willing to sacrifice lives for profit, change their ways?

Labels: health care, icepick meet forehead

So remind me again why anyone at all is even considering voting for John McCain, who seems to be running on the "I'm George Bush's Third Term" platform.

Do you feel safe yet?

The CIA set up a network of front companies in Europe and elsewhere after the Sept. 11 attacks as part of a constellation of "black stations" for a new generation of spies, according to current and former agency officials.

But after spending hundreds of millions of dollars setting up as many as 12 of the companies, the agency shut down all but two after concluding they were ill-conceived and poorly positioned for gathering intelligence on the CIA's principal targets: terrorist groups and unconventional weapons proliferation networks.

The closures were a blow to two of the CIA's most pressing priorities after the 2001 terrorist attacks: expanding its overseas presence and changing the way it deploys spies.

The companies were the centerpiece of an ambitious plan to increase the number of case officers sent overseas under what is known as "nonofficial cover," meaning they would pose as employees of investment banks, consulting firms or other fictitious enterprises with no apparent ties to the U.S. government.

But the plan became the source of significant dispute within the agency and was plagued with problems, officials said. The bogus companies were located far from Muslim enclaves in Europe and other targets. Their size raised concerns that one mistake would blow the cover of many agents. And because business travelers don't ordinarily come into contact with Al Qaeda or other high-priority adversaries, officials said, the cover didn't work.

Summing up what many considered the fatal flaw of the program, one former high-ranking CIA official said, "They were built on the theory of the 'Field of Dreams': Build them and the targets will come."

Sort of like being showered with flower petals and sweets upon our arrival in Iraq, eh?

Labels: CIA

This article about a recall of 143 million pounds of beef from a single California slaughterhouse that forced downed cattle to stand so that they would pass inspection has government officials claiming that despite the fact that about 37 million pounds of the stuff went to school programs and has probably been already eaten, there's no risk because no school kids have shown up with vCJD:

The federal agency said the recall will affect beef products dating to Feb. 1, 2006, that came from Chino-based Westland/Hallmark Meat Co., which supplies meat to the federal school lunch program and to some major fast-food chains.

Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer said his department has evidence that Westland did not routinely contact its veterinarian when cattle became non-ambulatory after passing inspection, violating health regulations.

"Because the cattle did not receive complete and proper inspection, Food Safety and Inspection Service has determined them to be unfit for human food and the company is conducting a recall," Schafer said in a statement.

Federal officials suspended operations at Westland/Hallmark after an undercover video surfaced showing crippled and sick animals being shoved with forklifts.

Two former employees were charged Friday with animal cruelty. No charges have been filed against Westland, but an investigation by federal authorities continues.

Officials estimate that about 37 million pounds of the recalled beef went to school programs, but they believe most of the meat probably has already been eaten. There have been no reported illnesses linked to the beef at any of the schools.

"We don't know how much product is out there right now. We don't think there is a health hazard, but we do have to take this action," said Dr. Dick Raymond, USDA Undersecretary for Food Safety.

Federal regulations call for keeping downed cattle out of the food supply because they may pose a higher risk of contamination from E. coli, salmonella or mad cow disease because they typically wallow in feces and their immune systems are often weak.

About 150 school districts around the nation have stopped using ground beef from Hallmark Meat Packing Co., which is associated with Westland.

I guess this is what "No Child Left Behind" means. It means that when the Bush Administration gets done with its virtual elimination of oversight over the pharmaceutical and food industries, there will be no children left. They'll all be dead from tainted food and drugs.

But at least the embryos wil be saved.

Labels: Bush Administration, deregulation, food industry

...This is the America of the lucky, folks...the luck of the Russian-Irish/Catholic-jew, where a girl from Brooklyn wakes up in a cottage in the woods to find that her young hens have decided to start laying...
How did I get here? Pure luck...hard work...kindness in the face of anger and dysfunction....but, probably really just sheer tenacity and luck...
It's that pie-in-the-sky America that is hard for me to understand; like the lottery and the forces of nature that decided not to flood my basement or throw a tree on my house...or what made me live through it all, and how did I get through all of these years.


And its the middle management America of getting by, but looking towards the sky for the other shoe falling, while others who I have, by some sort of divine intervention crossed paths and become close with, can barely buy food or go to the doctor as opposed to heat and electricity...and what that could possibly mean in the scheme of the richest country in the world, that made me look to John Edwards as a light in the proceedings that have been grinding forth for these long months...
And now? I'm waiting, like I always do, for the other shoe, whistling to earth like the road-runner's anvil, and in that Edwards will endorse Hillary, thus making my last drop of faith just a salty circle on the sand, proving that none of this is real or true, and all we can do is the busywork of trying to move, snail like, towards some outcome that will be a blip on future historical time lines of the rise and falls of empires just like this one...
If this is the pyramid stone that we are spending our entire lives dragging across the desert in order to complete some monument to the empire, then so be it...Who ever told any of us that we were any more special than anyone else? ...our brothers and sisters who are hungry around the world, or those who live in war torn countries looking heavenward for a bomb, much less a shoe?
Its all just luck...and we could be them, as easily as they could be us...and that "myfriends" is the very foundation of our society's more socialist tendency's, which are....surprise!...the very things that make us who we are!!

I know who I am. Who are you?

I'll just enjoy my eggs for now...enjoy my chickens...and try to figure what comes next.
Of whats left in this race, besides the coming heartbreak of thinking one thing and the dawning realization of another, I like the danger of Obama. Tell me that you are not sure of his experience and if he can get anything done, and I am interested....because the safety of the same old beer with a buddy at the bar is what got us into this place, and the only times that America has really shone in its founding ideals is when some brave people took a flying chance and let the chips fall where they would. Sometimes thats a life or death decision, and sometimes its folly, but it always has historical significance, and more importantly, those moments have had a real effect on we Americans , and how we view the evolution of our society. In fact, those people and those moments have been the shining moments of discovery, invention, and the words and actions that make us who we tell ourselves we are...or who we strive to be...a more perfect union, and kinder, more humane, beings.
When I was a young girl, I stood on a crowded curved street in Chinatown, holding my mom's hand, and watched as RFK Sr. drove through on the back of an old Cadillac convertible, waving. His brother had been shot, and he could've easily been shot there in the middle of the dense crowd, moving slowly past that old orthodox church with the tiny fair in the back complete with live goldfish to win and an erector-set sorta ferris wheel, knowing the danger and still grabbing hold of the moment to say the words that would be part of history....that would change my world as yellowing newspaper clips on the wall over Mom's old radio in the dark dining room in Brooklyn, where she sat for hours listening to talk radio in her grandmother's rocking chair.

So bring on the instability and unsureness of Obama over the same old Clintonian bureaucracy any day...bring it on quickly...because I've lost my faith in almost every part of this thing that I have been hanging on to and trying to believe in. And all thats anymore left is to tell myself that this piece of history is way to tiny for us to see the effect...way too tiny to matter in our lifetimes...and the real faith here has to be that what we do today will be realized by our children and their children...right?...and, that takes a kind of faith that I may spend the rest of my life trying to muster and I blindly move forward trying to divine whats right in this circumstance...as if we could ever imagine that what would be put forth would NOT be impeachment, criminal investigation, jail...a big change....Is there even a question? I don't know how to do anything else but watch and wait and chronicle this as best I can....

easy over or scrambled?

c/p RIPCoco

Labels: Barack Obama, trust, truth

Today is the penultimate day of my mini "putter around the house" vacation; it's back to work on Tuesday. As usual, I started with a list as long as my arm of things I wanted to get done, and only did a fraction of them. And of course it's never what you actually DO that counts, only what you don't do. But it has been a lovely week, capped by yesterday's belated Valentine's Day dinner at the awesome and fabulous Lodos in New Milford, New Jersey, where the hummus is silken, the bread is fresh, the olive tapenade is briny and explosive with garlic, and the braised lamb shank is fall-off-the-bone melt-o-licious. There are many advantages to holding off Valentine's Day observances until the weekend, not the least of which is that roses plummet in price, so the house can be aromatic with a dozen red and a dozen pink blooms and the restaurants are far less crowded. This year, the "What Do Women Get Their Spouses For Valentine's Day" question was solved with a small assortment of Michel Cluizet and Amadei chocolate. Not only does this stuff make you realize just how crappy the swill they sell in bags in the supermarket really is, but it also makes you understand how you might actually want to have a sommelier of chocolate (and wonder just how you can get such a gig).

But it's Sunday, it's cold, I have to do taxes today, and it seems like a good day to break from political madness and enjoy some music:

Howie Klein blows your mind by digging up a 1963 version of Carmina Burana played on a 5-string banjo. And here you thought Béla; Fleck's Perpetual Motion was a stretch:



Now admit it: You've just learned to love the banjo.

Leonard Cohen's Everybody Knows may be the perfect song for cynical times, but I'm not sure this version posted by Skippy adds anything significant over the original.

And last Tuesday, Skippy posted a little something from the most unlikely musical pairing since, well, baroque and banjo: Robert Plant and Allison Krause. (One of the unexpected pleasures of our hi-def service from Dish Network is the Rave channel, which aggregates televised concerts. Last night they ran one with this duo, and damn it if it doesn't work.)

Monkeyfister has something for those of you who miss the hallucinogens you took when you were young.

Only Driftglass could find a video of Tom Waits singing about Valentine's Day.

Carl at Simply Left Behind thinks Watching the Detectives is an appropriate musical selection for the FISA debate.

I just bought a copy of Once for four bucks from the local Shop-Rite video store's going out of business sale. I haven't watched it yet, but you can take a peek of one of the film's songs over at Gristmill.

And because spring training started this week, here's John Fogerty, Bob Weir, and Jerry Garcia, with Steve Jordan on drums, and Randy Jackson (yes, holy shit, it's THAT Randy Jackson) on bass from 1989:



And yes, it's from 1989, so the last part of Fogerty's intro doesn't come from the Obama campaign.

And speaking of THAT Randy Jackson, here's a selection from "bootee" Josiah Leming for our friend and sometime contributor jurassicpork:



Now think about that when some screeching would-be Mariah Carey clone wins the whole enchilada.

Have a tuneful day!

Labels: bloggers, music