Posts from — September 2007

McClatchy reports: Medicare auditing program could end up costing U.S. taxpayers

WASHINGTON — U.S. taxpayers will end up paying millions of dollars in commissions to an Atlanta-based auditor even though the firm’s wholesale rejections of Medicare claims from California rehabilitation hospitals are now being reversed on appeal.

The rulings by administrative law judges for the Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals will restore money withdrawn from California hospitals, some of which are suffering financial hardships and have trimmed services to Medicare patients as a result of the reviews.

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Update: Mad Kane provides the whole thing in haiku form.

CNN reports: Greenspan book: GOP ‘swapped principle for power’

(CNN) — Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan slams President Bush and today’s Republicans, while calling Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton “the smartest presidents” he worked with, according to an advance copy of his upcoming book.

He further says the GOP deserved the stomping it took in November’s congressional elections — a ballot that saw both houses of Congress wrested from Republican control — because the party “swapped principle for power.”

His book, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” is scheduled for release Monday. CNN obtained a copy Saturday.

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In a series of totally unfair attacks on the Hedgemony, various groups in the Persian Gulf are using facts and logic to counter the claims made by the US.

The BBC notes: Iranian supreme leader slams Bush

The supreme leader of Iran has launched a scathing attack on United States President George W Bush.

Speaking at Friday prayers, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said he was sure President Bush would be tried in an international court for what had happened in Iraq.

This scurrilous attack is based on nothing more than admitted violations of major treaties and protocols to which the US is a signatory.

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Día de la Independencia
Estados Unidos Mexicanos

¡Viva México!

Some background on 16 de Septiembre and El Grito de Dolores.

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

Look, if you are going to pretend to be conservative, you are going to have to bite the damn bullet and read American history. The Cliff Notes or for Dummies version isn’t going to hack it, you need to sit down with actual books and read about this country.

Americans have been bad-mouthing their generals since before this was officially a country. People didn’t like the concept of free from criticism by virtue of birth that was part of the British system of the time, i.e. commoners should know their place and not “slander” General Lord Whoever.

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The Day of His Noodly Appendage

The holiest of holidays for Pastafarians, is of course the birthday of His Most Holy Prophet, Marco Polo (b. Sept 15, 1254), who brought the word of his Noodly Appendage back from the East. As Talk Like A Pirate Day falls on September 19th, this five-day period constitutes Holy Pasta Week, during which spaghetti is consumed liberally [with a nice Chianti, of course].

Ingrid is currently being mugged by wind shear which is forecast to continue for the nest two days. If it survives and reforms it will probably be a fish botherer in the Atlantic.

I’ll be watching it, but not updating the numbers unless it becomes “interesting” again.

Joseph L. Galloway of McClatchy Newspapers has written a commentary about the latest Stay the Course speech: Bush still refuses to admit he was wrong

…On the schedule the president laid down this week, we’ll still have some 138,000 troops on the ground in Iraq next July, and 100,000 on January 20, 2009, when Bush’s successor will take office, and he made it clear that he hopes to have agreements in place to ensure an American military presence there for many years to come.

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By now everyone knows that the Pentagon has embraced PowerPoint. Apparently Rumsfeld didn’t feel you could have a war if you didn’t have PPT files, and all comments had to be suitable for framing on a slide. That’s why Talking Points Memo has been providing a service to us all by collecting the slides and putting them on the ‘Net.

Among the slides from Petraeus’ testimony is the “Romper Room Special,” number 14 [WTF, it has little stars?! Did he think he was briefing a pre-school?]. A truly amazing effort when, as Think Progress alerts us he had a very busy 17 days In August.

From all of this hard work comes THE CHART. This is one of the greatest charts ever and should only be linked to, not copied. Cleek deserves a massive number of hits for this, but you have to have the “Romper Room Special” in your mind to truly appreciate its greatness.

CBS is starting to show a pulse. It titled its report: Bush Stays The Course On Iraq

(CBS/AP) President Bush defended an unpopular war and ordered gradual reductions in U.S. forces in Iraq in a nationally televised speech from the Oval Office on Thursday night.

“The more successful we are,” he said, “the more American troops can return home.”
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Possessive

It’s MINE!!!!

[Editor: Property has a problem with sharing. She also has a problem of kicking the litter out of the box all over everything.]

Friday Ark

If you care, this is the text of the latest in the Stay the Course speeches. This one is just another excuse to stick the next president with all of the Shrubbery’s problems.

Lately they have been dusting off the “domino theory,” which I have always considered absurd, basically because I have played dominoes. The Wikipedia entry has enough information to learn the basics, but the best way to learn is to go to a park on a nice day in a city that has a Caribbean population of any kind, because everybody in the Caribbean plays dominoes.

The first thing you will learn is that the tiles [bones, stones – depending on where the players are from] are very stable. Some games get loud and physical, but the tiles don’t “fall” because they are laying down on their faces or backs, not on their edges.

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The Associated Press tells us: Greenspan admits mistakes in subprime mess

WASHINGTON – Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan acknowledges he failed to see early on that an explosion of mortgages to people with questionable credit histories could pose a danger to the economy.

In an upcoming interview, Greenspan said he was aware of “subprime” lending practices where homebuyers got very low initial rates only to see them later jacked up, causing severe payment shock. But he said he didn’t initially realize the harm they could do.

He didn’t realize the harm they would do to his buddies with money. He didn’t give a damn about the people who took his advice and got an ARM [adjustable rate mortgage] when the mortgage rate couldn’t do anything but go up as the Fed raised rates. He wasn’t a bystander, he advised people to get ARMs in his public testimony.