Category — Uncategorized

While this topic is normally covered by Ellroon of Rants from the Rookery I have noticed a pattern emerging from recent reports of British actions in Basra and along the Iran-Iraq border.

While movie goers are accustomed to hearing the head of the British secret service referred as “M,” I think it is becoming clear that his real identity is Mr. Toad.

La Fête Nationale

Bastille Day

Thank you for the help with the Revolution.

Happy Birthday Александра.

Some background.

Hipparchia of Over the Cliff, Onto the Rocks has located a very useful site: the Physicians for a National Health Program Single-Payer National Health Insurance FAQ.

A group of doctors provide very straight forward answers to the questions surrounding a Single-Payer system.

‘Noz of Rubber Hose looks at the 8 of 18 benchmarks that the Shrubbery claims were met by the Iraqis in his post, success! it smells like desperation.

We were told to wait 6 months, we waited and things are no better. We have waited for things to get better for four years, and they have gotten worse. This is another Arbusto dry hole. The list of the man’s failures continues to grow. He has never succeeded at anything other than elections, and we have passed the point at which people should just accept it.

The sooner we withdraw, the less money that is wasted, the fewer lives that will be lost. Iraqis will continue to die after the US leaves, but Americans won’t be killing them.

In her post on the cardboard being found in Chinese street food, Echidne of the Snakes references Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler.

As a Pratchett reader I would point out that is sounds more like Disembowel-Meself-Honourably Dibhala, a distant relative, and no relation to CMOT Dibbler – the store.

Oh, as long as we’re talking about unsavory things, you could drop by Facing South and read Chris Kromm’s piece on the recent spate of Big Time Political Scandals in the South.

Steve Bates notes the passing of Lady Bird Johnson with a Ben Sargent cartoon, and cartoonist Duane Powell remembers Doug Marlette.

Via Andante of Collective Sigh in comments, go and read Adam Thompson’s piece on the Healthy Wisconsin plan just passed by the state Senate.

“Tastes great and less filling,” as in everyone’s covered and the government and businesses save money as compared to the current system. This is what a “single payer system” can do for all of us. Also note that it is a “fee-for-services” system, i.e. you pick your own doctor, and you and your doctor decide what care you need.

Now all we need is a “12-Step Program” to help Congress overcome its addiction to insurance company and Big Pharma campaign contributions. We have to have 61 “sober” Senators to get anything meaningful done, and that will not be easy.

Reuters reports that a new study confirms what should have been obvious: Bills pile up when uninsured get Medicare

BOSTON – Americans who previously had no health insurance rack up some expensive medical bills once they are old enough to be covered by Medicare, researchers said on Wednesday.

The reason: uninsured people put off the care they need, which makes it more expensive to treat them once Medicare is available to pay, Michael McWilliams of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston found.

And those people continue costing more for the first eight years they are in the program, McWilliams and colleagues reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

If you don’t have insurance, you will only seek medical assistance for life threatening problems – you can’t afford to do anything else. Healthcare costs could be significantly reduced if people had access to help before problems become emergencies.

Another point is that something has to be done to provide access to a doctor other than 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. Even with excellent insurance coverage my Mother has ended up in the emergency room on weekends, because there was no other way of getting a needed prescription. These visits cost thousands of dollars and wouldn’t have been necessary if there was another system in place, like a walk-in clinic.

The defense has filed a Libby motion in the penalty phase of the BALCO steroids case. Everyone in the legal field knew this was coming.

Pope Benedict is The Decider on who is a Christian and what is a Christian church. I seem to remember a few wars on this issue…okay, so the Swiss root on my family tree fought as mercenaries in the wars over this, and the Dutch and Palatine German roots transplanted themselves to the Mohawk Valley of what is now New York because of it. I guess we don’t have enough religious hard-feelings at the moment.

BBC reports: Iraq fears Turkey troop build-up

Iraq says Turkey has 140,000 soldiers along its border, prompting fears of an incursion against Kurdish guerrillas.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari an ethnic Kurd himself, said his government was against any breach of Iraqi sovereignty.

He called for talks with Ankara to solve the issue.

Turkey accuses Kurdish separatists of staging attacks from inside Iraq. It has often warned Baghdad that it is prepared to take military action.

If the PKK weren’t enough, Turkey is also under pressure to respond to the recent bombing that killed more than 100 people in Amirli, a Turkman village. The Turks have shown great concern over the fate of their ethnic cousins, the Turkmeni, in Iraq. There are elections looming, so I wouldn’t put too much faith in slow, patient diplomacy.

The BBC reports on a study in Britain that found that Librarians ‘suffer most stress’

Fighting fires may sound taxing, chasing criminals demanding, but a new study says that working in a library is the most stressful job of all.

Librarians are the most unhappy with their workplace, often finding their job repetitive and unchallenging, according to psychologist Saqib Saddiq.

He will tell the British Psychological Society that one in three workers suffer from poor psychological health.

The study surveyed nearly 300 people drawn from five occupations.

They were firefighters, police officers, train operators, teachers and librarians and were intended to cover the spectrum, with the librarians first-thought to be the least stressful occupation.

If they gave librarians guns and axes, I’m sure their stress level would be reduced.

Most people should be familiar with fable [not by Aesop BTW] of The Scorpion and the Frog – the scorpion promises not to sting the frog in exchange for a trip across a river. Half way across the scorpion stings the frog ensuring that they will both die. When asked by the frog why he did it, the scorpion replies “because I’m a scorpion.”

Ellroon felt heartened about ‘Net Neutrality after reading NTodd’s explanation of the issue.

NTodd has a great exposition of why it shouldn’t be a problem from a technical perspective. Yes, technically it should just work and everyone should be thrilled with the results, except he forgets that the telecoms are scorpions.

Melanie of Just a Bump in the Beltway demonstrates part of the meaning in this Associate Press story, Verizon Copper Cutoff Traps Customers, about a major reason for switching to fiber optics.

[Read more →]

I fully intended to comply with the subpoena I received last week, but it was lifted. Somebody in the county has missed their opportunity to have me decide their fate by sitting on their jury. Maybe they heard I was in the jury pool and decided to settle.

If I lived in Utah I would love to be on the jury for this incident reported by the BBC: Woman jailed for ‘neglected’ lawn

A 70-year-old US woman has been left bruised and bloody after an unexpected clash with police who came to arrest her because her lawn was dry and brown.

Trouble flared when Utah pensioner Betty Perry, 70, refused to give her name to an officer trying to caution her for not watering her lawn.

I wonder if her decision not to water her lawn had anything to do with Fierce heatwave fans US wildfires

[Read more →]

Both Michael’s There’s a Mr. Kettle on line 4, Mr. President and Dave Johnson’s The Fall Lie-Attack Started Today deal with the bizarre claims made by the Shrubbery in his liar-side chat™ this morning.

Congress has barely finished cleaning up the mess left by the 109^th Congress and started to seriously discuss this year’s funding and already they are guilty of “tax and spend.” This from a guy who has been maxing out the national credit cards every month and stealing from retirees to fund his personal vendetta against Saddam.

Somehow it became the Democrats’ fault that he couldn’t convince the RepubliKlan to vote for his immigration bill. It is past time for the Shrubbery to look behind him and discover that no one is following where he’s leading. The party leaders are looking at his numbers and telling candidates to keep their distance.

It would appear that the Shrubbery’s legacy will be as the individual who destroyed the dream of a permanent GOP majority. He will be cast as Lucifer in their creation myth.  You have to wonder if this wasn’t a plot by Nixon loyalists to improve Tricky Dick’s standings.