Today, President Obama goes to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, just nine days after announcing the escalation of the war in Afghanistan and several days spent by members of his administration adamantly declaring that when he said we would begin withdrawing troops in 2011, it didn’t mean that we’d be withdrawing troops in 2011. What’s next? A posthumous Lifetime Achievement award for Stalin? Obama will reportedly be met by a few thousand ant-war protesters when he arrives (ironic, to be sure), so naturally he’s decided to piss off the Norwegians by blowing off lunch with the King. Oh, sure, you’ll bow to the Japanese, but you’re too good to sit down for a bowl of Fiskesuppe with King Harald? What? A little too white for you? Nice way to thank them for the $16 million they’re spending on security for your trip (that’s, like 92 million Kroners, which would buy helluva lot of Carlsbergs).
Alyssa Milano is “giving up” her 37th birthday to draw attention to the lack of clean drinking water in many parts of the world (I know what you’re thinking: “holy shit, she’s 37? Damn, I feel old”). A noble cause, Alyssa, but I think you need something bigger. I’m thinking some sort of PETA-like ad with you and water. I have several ideas. Perhaps we could make this a joint venture. Have your people call my people, and maybe we can work something out.
More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data.
The law requires communities to deliver safe tap water to local residents. But since 2004, the water provided to more than 49 million people has contained illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium, as well as dangerous bacteria often found in sewage.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/business/energy-environment/08water.html
The DEP told a meeting on Shelter Island that Long Island water contains traces of 69 different pesticides which, I’m sure, help us all to give up a few birthdays.
Alan Grayson, responding to Dick Cheney’s criticism of President Obama’s national security policy….
Yes I do, Congressman. And yes he should.
I’m thinking Grayson probably had to explain that one to Tweety during the commercial break.
From the NY Times:
Ten Democratic senators are calling for abandoning the much-maligned “public option†— a government-run health insurance plan to compete with private insurers — and replacing it with two programs that might achieve the same goal of expanding Americans’ choices and providing some competition.
We won’t know if this compromise does that until the Congressional Budget Office has evaluated it. But we admire the senators’ desire to try to move reform legislation forward.
We have long championed the idea of a public plan. With no need to turn a profit and backed by government muscle, it could charge lower premiums and probably induce its private competitors to lower their premiums. But the insurance industry and Republican critics were determined to kill or severely weaken a public plan.
As currently embodied in the Senate bill, the public plan would be sold only on new insurance exchanges that would be open just to people who buy their own insurance policies and to certain small businesses. And instead of imposing rates based on Medicare’s relative low reimbursements, it would have to negotiate how much to pay health care providers (just as private plans do). The C.B.O. believes the public plan’s premiums would be higher than the average private plan’s.
We still believe that a weak public option is better than none. Here are the details, as of now, of the possible alternative:
MEDICARE BUY-IN People ages 55 to 64 who are eligible to use the exchanges would be permitted to buy coverage from Medicare. Unlike older Americans, this younger group would have to pay the full premium themselves unless their incomes are low enough to qualify for subsidies. The premium could be in the neighborhood of $7,600 a year for single coverage.
Whether people would find Medicare attractive at this price is not clear. Expanding Medicare to cover even a few million people strikes us as promising. Medicare, which pays low rates to providers, might actually offer stiffer competition to private plans than the current weak version of the public option in the Senate bill.
REGULATED NONPROFIT INSURANCE For people below age 55 who are not enrolled in group coverage, the insurance industry would have to create an array of nonprofit insurance plans to compete with for-profit plans on the exchanges in every state. (If industry fails to do this, the government would create them.) The plans would be approved and supervised by the government’s Office of Personnel Management, which administers the health insurance plans offered to members of Congress and federal employees.
These plans could have great difficulty competing in states where they lack networks of doctors and hospitals and where entrenched insurers and hospital combines dominate the market. But that is also true of the weak public option. And in at least some places they would provide more choice for consumers.
At this point, even the 10 Senate negotiators have not fully agreed to all elements of the deal. They have simply agreed to have the budget office evaluate it. Until that is in, it is impossible to know whether this nonpublic option is an acceptable alternative.
Sounds like crap to me.
An Open Letter From Jesus to ‘Christian’ America
Put it another way: Did you miss the point when I said that those who come to me saying “Lord, Lord we followed you and believed correctly” are the very ones that I will cast out of the Kingdom of Heaven, since they did not care for the least of these, the downtrodden, the poor and the oppressed?
Did you get it when I said that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the humble, and the outcasts; those who mourn and to the poor in spirit? Gay couples are who are being denied their civil rights are such as these. What are you doing to defend them?
Who do you think will inherit the earth: the wealthy leaders of your giant churches or the downtrodden gays scorned and mocked by society? Who’s side do you think God is on: the bullied and outcast or the powerful religious leaders with their false smiles?
Who will qualify for calling themselves my sons and daughters: The meek who mourn or the proud who say: “Lord, I thank you that I’m not like these gay men and women and these illegal immigrants, and these lazy poor people who deserve no health care and these Muslims?”
Actor Gene Barry, dapper TV hero, stage star, dies
Watched a lot of this as a kid.
🙁 :gate:
Bat Mastertson was a favorite of mine too.
:gate: