Posts from — September 2009

Physicians for a National Health Program Comparison [PDF]:

Another comparison: HR 676 is about 30 pages in the standard House format, while HR 3200 requires an additional 1,000 pages to accomplish less.

This is a reminder of what we could be discussing instead of Max Baucus’s sellout to the corporate leech cartel.

New Mexico , Mississippi, Alaska, Louisiana , West Virginia, North Dakota, Alabama, South Dakota, Kentucky, Virginia, Montana, Hawaii, Maine, Arkansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Missouri, Maryland, Tennessee, and Idaho – these twenty states all receive from 20 to 100% more in Federal money than they pay in Federal taxes.

When their members of Congress complain about people not paying their way, or the deficits being too high, these states are the slackers. The blue states are paying for these lazy, shiftless lay-a-beds.

to Mustang Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof who has made it two years past the double nickel.

Día de la Independencia
Estados Unidos Mexicanos

¡Viva México!

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

The voting for the 2009 Netroots Awards has opened.

The voting continues until September 29^th.

If not, NPR has a Fresh Air audio link interview [about 40 minutes] with New York Times financial columnist Gretchen Morgenson on the anniversary of the Lehman Brothers meltdown.

She is one of those nasty, reality-based people who doesn’t think anyone came out of this mess smelling good, and is definitely not impressed with what has and hasn’t happened in the past year, nor what is likely to happen in the near future.

I really hate discovering I haven’t been cynical enough.

in a single bound…

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird? It’s a plane? It’s ‘Roo, the recce robot.

Video on the BBC. This is going to be a problem, given the sense of humor in the military…

Will always be with us.

From the Times Picayune: Sen. David Vitter endorses health study that urges scrapping employer coverage

U.S. Sen. David Vitter has endorsed a new study from a conservative think tank that calls for scrapping the nation’s employer-based health insurance system in favor of individually owned policies and converting the Medicaid program into vouchers for private insurance.

The analysis, directed by the consulting firm of economist Arthur Laffer and released Monday by the Pelican Institute, is sweeping in its condemnation of President Barack Obama’s outline for overhauling the nation’s health insurance system, including creation of a public insurance plan to compete alongside private insurers.

Since this is associated with Arthur Laffer, the intellectual powerhouse behind the napkin that launched the Reaganomic-Trickle-Down-Supply-Side $9 trillion in deficit under three Republican Presidents, he is obviously someone who is serious. Since this was for Vitter, perhaps he eschewed cocktail napkins for disposable diapers.

I have a news flash for the Pelicans – we have Medicare because the health insurance industry wouldn’t insure senior citizens. Old people get sick, and insurance companies can’t make gazillions in profits insuring old people, so they don’t.

Our unlamented former governor, John Ellis Bush, introduced school vouchers for students at under-performing schools. Given the way we fund schools in Florida we had plenty of people who qualified for the vouchers, but a lack of private schools to accept them.

I wish these clowns would go back to herding unicorns, or whatever they used to do, and leave the rest of us alone.

I would direct your attention to FDR’s Fala speech [here’s the audio link for the speech].

I keep hearing about what the Republicans are doing is new, and they have destroyed the comity that once ruled the American political system. That’s a bunch of crap. American politics has been a street fight from the get-go, with a few years now and again between rounds.

The Fala speech was during World War II. Nasty politics have not been suspended for any war in American history, and that claim is only made if a Republican is in the White House and things are going badly.

Read the speech and understand that the tactics haven’t changed in the slightest degree. It even has references to Nazi propaganda techniques being used by the opposing party.

FDR would have definitely been an A-List blogger, although he is snarkier than most of them. This is what a real Democrat and real leader sounds like when dealing with Republican lies. You don’t ignore them, you ridicule them, because they aren’t going to vote for you anyway, even during a world war.

Look back at American history – Republicans always call for a suspension of normal politics when there’s a major disaster on their watch and proclaim it as some hallowed tradition of the United States. Almost all of the “hallowed traditions” cited by Republicans are made up of whole cloth, or some stupid bill they passed.

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.

I have been looking for the pattern in the Nine-Twelver moment and I just can’t figure it out anything beyond a visceral hatred of Obama.

The signs make no sense. They jump all around covering anti-immigration [including the English only crowd], anti-bailout [Bush administration], anti-deficit [Bush administration], anti-tax [no tax increase on the horizon], gun rights [no bills involving guns in Congress], et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.

Then you have the leader of this motley crew, whose latest book has a picture of him on the cover wearing a Nazi uniform and a Soviet medal. Why? What message is that supposed to convey?

If you look at the official poster for the event, as the LA Times did, the message is “Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь!” [Proletariat of all countries, unite!] as it features three upraised fists in red. That is standard socialist iconography.

In the end I have to conclude that this isn’t really a movement, it is Brownian motion.

Update: Badtux presents an example of the vague messaging:

“DON’T STEAL FROM MEDICARE TO SUPPORT SOCIALIZED MEDICINE”

The government runs a life insurance company for the military. Do you know why?

You buy flood insurance from a government company. Do you know why?

In states that require you to buy automobile liability insurance, the state has a government auto insurance company. Do you know why?

The state of Florida had a state company to sell home owners insurance. Do you know why?

It was essential that the government create the Medicare health insurance program. Do you know why?

The answer is the same in each of these cases, because private business refused to provide the service, the market doesn’t work.

Ben Franklin didn’t put a post office system in the Constitution to kill private enterprise, but because private enterprise wouldn’t do the job. It took huge government subsidies to the railroads to get the country tied together, because private enterprise wouldn’t take the risk.

Insurance companies are in it for the money. The same goes for the health care industry. They want to maximize profits, not provide service to their policy holders or patients. It’s all about greed.

If you are old enough when looking at this picture from Hubble you can hear Carl Sagan’s voice saying “billions upon billions”.

Looking at pictures and videos from around the ‘Net one thing has become obvious: there are no English majors in the group.

If you are going to be taken seriously by real people, you need a good editor. I realize that the media don’t notice the problems, but do you really want to face your third grade teacher when you go home?

“WE HAVE WAKEN UP TO YOUR EVIL PLANS TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY.”

Walking around with that on a sign in big block letters doesn’t really advance your cause and puts the identity of “OUR COUNTRY” in doubt. People might wonder why you write as if you were in a comic book.