Day: March 20, 2012

Even al Qaeda Disrespects Fox News’ Credibility

Buck Banks

It should be sent for example to ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN, and maybe PBS and VOA. As for Fox News, let her die in her anger. … From a professional point of view, they are all on one level — except [Fox News] channel, which falls into the abyss as you know, and lacks objectivity, too.

— Adam Gadahn, a U.S.-born media adviser to Osama Bin Laden, discussing in a message to his boss what would be the best television outlets for placement of a Bin Laden–produced Sept. 11 anniversary video.

Dog on Car Roof Apparently Not an Issue

Buck Banks

68%

Of registered voters polled said they think that in general, it is inhumane to put the family dog on top of the car, compared with 14% who said it’s humane and 18% who weren’t sure, according to a new Public Policy Polling survey. However, when told by pollsters that Mitt Romney had done so, 55% said it didn’t affect which candidate they would support, while 35% said it made them less likely to support Romney and 7% said it made them more likely to support him.

Bad Things Happen to Lost Smartphones

Buck Banks

72%

Of people who found “lost” smartphones in five cities tried to access photos, 57% tried to open a file named “Saved Passwords” and 43% tried to open an app named “Online Banking.” Symantec’s experiment involving 50 phones left in food courts, restrooms, and other locations also showed that just half of finders tried to contact the owner, whose phone numbers and email addresses were prominently shown in the phones’ contacts list.

U.S. ‘Free Enterprise’ Employer-Based Health Insurance System Is ‘Coming Apart at the Seams’

Jon Ponder

chart-sources-of-health-insurance

In the upside-down world of the tea party GOP, the individual mandate — a solution to the health insurance crisis that was created by an ultra right-wing think tank that requires all working Americans to be covered by private health insurance — is “socialism.”

That’s right. In the topsy-turvy minds of Fox-watchers, Dittoheads and teavangelical neo-Confederates, a system that would create as many as 50 million new customers for giant private health-insurance corporations is not capitalism on steroids, it is the stuff of godless communism.

In the United States in which we collectively pay for socialist public schools and universities; socialist public hospitals; socialist fire, police and emergency services; socialist highway, airport and seaport construction — as well as socialist pensions (Social Security) and socialist health-care coverage for seniors (Medicare)

In reality, the “socialist” approach to health-care coverage is a single-payer system — which also happens to be the system deployed by most industrialized democracies in the world, including all our major competitors in Europe and Asia. These countries do not require their automakers, software companies, real-estate developers and the rest to pay for their employees’ insurance — which means that the owners of those companies aren’t forced to inflate the price of their goods and services to cover the cost of their employees’ insurance. That cost is born by the citizens of the country, collectively.

That is socialism. It is similar to the “socialist” systems we have in the United States in which we collectively pay for socialist public schools and universities; socialist public hospitals; socialist fire, police and emergency services; socialist highway, airport and seaport construction as well as socialist pensions (Social Security) and socialist health-care coverage for seniors (Medicare).

For three years, tea party Republicans have promised that they will repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it, ostensibly with a “free enterprise” solution. The fallacy here — the upside-down absurdity in this argument — is that the system we have now is a “free enterprise” system, and, as this new study from the National Institute for Health Care Reform [PDF] shows, it is collapsing before our eyes:

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