Month: July 2009

Pre-Existing Condition: Healthcare Reform Hits a Wall

Trish
Not again.

The Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein has it exactly right about health care. We can’t let things keep going as they are.

Among the range of options for health-care reform, there’s one that is sure to raise your taxes, increase your out-of-pocket medical expenses, swell the federal deficit, leave more Americans without insurance and guarantee that wages will remain stagnant.

That’s the option of doing nothing, letting things continue to drift as they have for the past two decades as we continue to search in vain for the perfect plan that would let everyone have everything they want and preserve everything they already have while getting someone else to pay for it.

So the next time you hear someone throwing a hissy fit because health reform might raise taxes on some people, or steer people into managed care, or require small businesses to contribute $2 a day for each employee’s coverage, just remember to ask yourself: And that’s compared with what?

We got scared and backed off health insurance reform in the ’90s when Bill and Hillary Clinton tried to tackle the problem, and we all know where that’s led us.

I won’t even bother mentioning that no other modern government puts this expectation on its business sector. Whoops, I just did.

What bothers me most, however, about the plan the Democrats have been kicking around is that it is still tied to employment. Having a job and having a need for health care are totally unrelated. Even if you don’t have a traditional employer (maybe, like me, you are your own employer), you still need health care. How did we ever come to expect that the boss would be responsible for making sure our medical procedures and dental appointments are paid for? I won’t even bother mentioning that no other modern government puts this expectation on its business sector. Whoops, I just did.

Health care reform is shelved until after Congress’s August recess. The insurance companies and big pharma won round one (or two, if you count the Clinton loss). We have to make sure they don’t continue winning, because as Pearlstein says, that’s the one sure way the rest of us lose.

Alaska Prepares to Party

Trish
Don’t let it hit you in the ass, Sarah.

Bad news for Sarah Palin, just as Alaska prepares to celebrate its pending independence from Gov. Beauty Queen, who, after Sunday, will be Ex-Gov. Beauty Queen. “Screen door” parties begin as soon as today, with microbrewed “Bailin’ Palin Fail Ale” on tap. As our colleagues at Mudflats promise, the celebration won’t stop there.

If you’re in Anchorage, or within driving distance, the downtown Park Strip is the place to be on Saturday!

There’s something for everyone!

The Governor’s Picnic!

Yes, this is it. Anchorage’s “Screen Door” Celebration (as in, “Don’t let the screen door hit you on the way out!”) to bid adieu to the soon-to-be-ex governor and usher out the end of a very strange era that has been anything but beneficial to our state.

It hasn’t even been one term, or even one year since her nomination as VP candidate, but we’ve packed in more than our share of nail biting, head banging, belly laughing, chin stroking, face palming, head scratching, and typing our little fingers to the bone.

And this is it. Finally. The last full day of the Palin administration.

Makes you wish you were there, doesn’t it? Unless you’re Sarah Palin, of course. So on to that bad news…

…a new national poll indicates that a majority of Americans have an unfavorable view of the outgoing Alaska governor. But the ABC News/Washington Post survey released Friday also suggests that seven out of 10 Republican voters maintain a positive opinion of last year’s GOP Vice Presidential nominee.

Fifty-three percent of those questioned in the poll view Palin negatively, with four in 10 holding a positive view of her. The survey is the second this week, following a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll released Thursday, to find more than half of all Americans viewing Palin in an unfavorable light.

The ABC News/Washington Post survey suggests that there is doubt about Palin’s leadership skills and her understanding of intricate issues. Fifty-seven percent say they don’t think Palin understands complex issues, and 54 percent do not feel she is a strong leader…

Seventy percent of Republicans questioned view Palin favorably, with just one in four holding a negative opinion. The favorable view drops to 51 percent among independent voters and to 20 percent among Democrats.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

In my choice of words, I unfortunately gave the impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically.

— President Obama, trying to do a take-back in the Oval Office today for his “stupidly” remark during Wednesday night’s prime-time press conference in reference to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. for disorderly conduct at his home in Cambridge.

Grading the RPOF’s Obama Report Card

Pensito Editors

As its lead-up to President Obama’s prime-time press conference Wednesday, the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) issued a report card on Obama’s performance to date. It’s reproduced below just as it was sent out in another of the RPOF’s press releases, or as we like to think of them, failed attempts at snark.

Read the report card, then see how we graded the graders below.

obama_report_card

Here’s how we graded the RPOF’s performance:

SUBJECT: Statistics. COMMENTS: RPOF assessed Mr. Obama’s math skills by using unattributed statistics to make its point, and for extra credit, threw in the technique of using truncated statistics by starting the clock on job loss (and economic troubles in general) on Jan. 20, 2009. In its health assessment the RPOF attributes its statistics to bolster its illogical argument. In assessing his finance performance, the RPOF eschews statistics completely — a masterful use of the dismal science. There are lies, damned lies and statistics, and nobody lies as well as the Republican Party. GRADE: A+.

SUBJECT: Rhetoric. COMMENTS: While assessing Mr. Obama’s history performance, the RPOF deftly moved the focus from his domestic cabinet-level “czar” appointments to connect them to the spread of communism across Europe in the 20th century. In dwelling on the easily ridiculed word, “czar” and ignoring the fact that Obama is not the first president to appoint them, they employ a cheap shot. Such skillful use of what appears on the surface to be logic deserves the highest marks. GRADE: A+

SUBJECT: Civics. COMMENTS: By portraying Mr. Obama as never missing a basket when playing basketball while being totally uninformed about North Korea, the RPOF uses two tried and true racist assumptions about African Americans — they are intellectually inferior, yet physically superior, to whites. For the added underlying message that Obama’s race and inexperience pose a threat to national security by invoking the specter of North Korea, they get extra credit. GRADE: A++.

SUBJECT: English. COMMENTS: The RPOF, FOX News and most talk radio hosts fail to understand usage, and don’t know when to employ “Democrat” versus “Democratic.” We suspect they’re misusing “Democrat” on purpose, a practice that began recently under President Bush, but as Jon noted, goes back at least to Sen. Joseph McCarthy. For pushing the envelope of the English language by delving deeply into reverse semiotics and the power of thematic repetition, as well as for their robust explorations into the tenuous relationship between truth and meaning, the RPOF deserved an A, but turned in a term paper late. GRADE: B.

Only In Miami — Shark? What Shark?

Buck Banks
CSI Miami — a very dead shark.
CSI Miami — a very dead shark.

A few years ago Miami cracked down on the number of chickens running free on city streets. A special squad was formed that spread out across mainly ethnic neighborhoods to round up errant poultry and hand out tickets, since it’s illegal to raise fowl within city limits.

The natural question once a bird was spotted in someone’s yard was, “Is that your chicken?” The almost universal answer, in English, Spanish and Creole, was, “What chicken?”

A similar kind of only-in-Miami story occurred downtown yesterday as two men carried a 90-pound nurse shark around the streets, at one point boarding the Metromover, a free monorail that circulates downtown — while the fish was still alive. You can read the Miami Herald coverage here, but I wanted to focus on highlights of the story that are characteristically Miami.

For instance, the quotes of the shark’s fellow Metromover passengers:

“The door opened and the shark was sitting by the front of the door,” said Mae Singerman, a 24-year-old musician who was practicing for a show on the Metromover platform. “I didn’t see a reason to call police,” Singerman said. “It’s Miami. Stranger things have happened. The doors shut, and then we forgot about it.”

“We looked at him; he didn’t really say anything,” Sandy Goodrich, a Miami legal secretary, said of the man clutching the shark. “I was just so freaked out about the shark on the floor.”

The two men were seen carrying the shark in the direction of the Miami River, apparently with the intention of selling it to a fish market for the recession-era sum of $10.

Casablanca Fish Market owner Jorge Sanchez was unimpressed with the walk-in offering. “It was full of flies,” he said. “It was still alive. It was dry.”

“I do buy shark,” Sanchez said, “not this kind of crazy stuff.”

Unable to sell the fish, the men simply dumped it on a downtown street and left. The next morning workers at a nearby auto body shop tried to get sanitation workers to dispose of the now extremely dead shark:

“When the garbage is coming, we tell them, pick it up,” said Eduardo Perez, who works at the shop. “They tell me no. All day long the shark was there …. This was only in Miami.”

Finally, someone called the police, who arrived at about 9 p.m. and took crime scene photos, since what those guys did to that shark constituted misdemeanor animal cruelty.

Then the cops took the corpse and consigned it to a watery grave in Biscayne Bay.

Only in Miami.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

I’ve been trying to do the best I can on all fronts. This time carved out for Jenny and the boys is awfully important in a family situation to put the genie back in the bottle.

— South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, in response to a television reporter who caught him in the airport before leaving for yet another vacation (his fourth since his adulterous trip to Argentina).

It Was Inevitable — Day of the Gamer/Soldier Arrives

Buck Banks

What do you get if you combine an electronic Roomba vacuum cleaner with an X-Box video game? The next generation of military weaponry, operated by 20-something gamer/soldiers with big thumbs, lightning reflexes and a knack for remote-controlled combat.

It’s been a standing parental joke for decades: If only Junior could turn his skills at Halo 3 honed over hundreds of hours to good …. Well, now he can — in the Army.

According to NextGov, for the past year the U.S. Army has been testing robots, unmanned airplanes, sensors and other gear at the White Sands facility in New Mexico, and plans to deploy the high-tech weaponry to combat troops as early as 2011, when it’s likely we’ll still be fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The high-tech systems the Army is testing and refining at White Sands Missile Range are both the remnants of its ambitious and now canceled $160 billion Future Combat Systems program and the core of a new battlefield modernization program the service plans to develop to replace it.

The Army intends to spin out systems developed for FCS as part of the brigade combat team modernization program headquartered at Fort Bliss, Texas, which adjoins White Sands, said Jerry Tyree, director of integration for the program. These include the tracked robot, an aerial robot, tactical and urban unmanned ground sensors, a missile system, and a battlefield network to link them all together.

The service plans to field these systems to seven infantry brigade combat teams between 2011 and 2014 at a cost of less than $2 billion, said Paul Mehney, an Army spokesman.

Of course, first the Army will have to figure out how to provide a battlefield broadband network to operate and coordinate the new systems. Today, communications-equipped Humvees can only deliver about 1.5 megabytes per second while the average speed of a residential broadband connection is 7 Mps.

Breaking: Sen. Lindsey Graham to Vote to Confirm Sotomayor

Trish

We’re looking for MSM confirmation now…

Got it:

Washington, D.C. (WLTX, AP) – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham says he intends to vote for Sonia Sotomayor for the U.S. Supreme Court.

The South Carolina Republican made the announcement Wednesday afternoon on the Senate floor.

Graham said he felt compelled to vote yes, because of his belief that elections have consequences. He says he and Senator John McCain made it clear to the American public that selections to the U.S. Supreme Court were at stake in the 2008 election, and that the public chose to go the way it did.

Whatever that means. Mostly, I think it means Graham is tired of hearing how bigoted he and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) came across during the confirmation hearings.

The Difference Between Retiring from Office and Running for One

Trish

“Judge Sotomayor is knowledgeable of the law, would be a fair and impartial judge, and seems to have a good understanding of the limited role the judiciary plays in our democracy. Judge Sotomayor’s rise to the Supreme Court is testimony to the fact that the American dream continues to be attainable. As an Hispanic American, I take great pride in Judge Sotomayor’s historic achievement. Given her qualifications and testimony this week, I intend to vote in favor of her confirmation.”

— Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), who is not running for re-election, announcing his intention to vote to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court.

“I have reviewed and reflected upon her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and come to the conclusion that I cannot support her appointment to the United States Supreme Court. Judge Sotomayor is worthy of respect for her many accomplishments and her remarkable story of success. However, I have strong concerns that Judge Sotomayor would not strictly and objectively construe the constitution and lacks respect for the fundamental right to keep and bear arms. For these reasons, I cannot support her appointment to the highest court in the land.”

— Gov. Charlie Crist (R-Fla.), who is running for the seat currently held by Sen. Mel Martinez, and whose primary opponent, former House Speaker Marco Rubio (R-Miami), went on the record opposing Sotomayor’s confirmation the day before Charlie’s announcement. Crist’s statement left Floridians wondering when they’d ever heard the governor mention his support for gun rights in the past.