The Washington Post offers tips on how to keep your EV battery running in frigid temperatures. The link at the end of this graf is supposed to be a "gift link" (from me, Marie Burns, the giftor!), meaning that non-subscribers can read the article. Hope it works: https://wapo.st/3u8Z705
Monday
Nov252013
The Commentariat -- Nov. 26, 2013
Mark Landler of the New York Times: "The weekend ended with the first tangible sign of a nuclear deal with Iran, after more than three decades of hostility. Then on Monday came the announcement that a conference will convene in January to try to broker an end to the civil war in Syria. The success of either negotiation, both long sought by President Obama, is hardly assured -- in fact the odds may be against them. But the two nearly simultaneous developments were vivid statements that diplomacy, the venerable but often-unsatisfying art of compromise, has once again become the centerpiece of American foreign policy." CW: ... which explains why neo-cons & Bushies are reflexively against any brokered peace agreement. ...
... Matt Spetalnick of Reuters: "When push came to shove in the closing hours of marathon negotiations in Geneva on Iran's nuclear program, it was President Barack Obama, back at the White House, who approved the final language on the U.S. side before the historic deal was clinched. It was perhaps only fitting that Obama had the last say. His push for a thaw with Tehran, a longtime U.S. foe, dates back to before his presidency, and no other foreign policy issue bears his personal stamp more since he took office in early 2009." ...
... Sarah Wheaton & Michael Gordon of the New York Times: "President Obama said on Monday that 'cleareyed, principled diplomacy' had produced the agreement with Iran to stall its nuclear development, pushing back against rising criticism in Congress and from allies like Israel that the pact reached in Geneva was a capitulation. Speaking at a rally in San Francisco, Mr. Obama emphasized what he described as a major achievement in the long-estranged relations with Iran. He spoke as American officials confirmed that Secretary of State John Kerry, who helped finalize the deal on Sunday, had engaged in secret communications with Iran months ago in an effort to improve relations and encourage talks." ...
... They Were Against It Before They Knew What It Was. Dana Milbank: "In the eyes of Republicans, the agreement with Iran has a fatal flaw: It was negotiated by the Obama administration. This president could negotiate a treaty promoting baseball, motherhood and apple pie, and Republicans would brand it the next Munich.... At 9:08 p.m. [Saturday] -- before any details of the pact were known -- Ari Fleischer delivered his opinion on the agreement, via Twitter. 'The Iran deal and our allies: You can't spell abandonment without OBAMA.' ... Would it be better to go to war now without exhausting diplomatic options? We've been there and done that -- when Ari Fleischer stood on the White House podium." ...
... Steve M. of NMMNB explains the rhetorical rules that govern Right Wing World: "To the right, every Democrat operating in the foreign policy sphere is Neville Chamberlain. Every Democratic policy that affects the economy came straight from The Communist Manifesto. Every liberal or moderate immigration is sovereignty-destroying amnesty.... Right-wingers aren't grown-ups. They're overgrown children who are heroes of their own political fantasy stories. It's not enough for them to oppose a policy -- they have to persuade themselves that they're the only ones preventing the destruction of civilization as we know it." ...
... Gershom Gorenberg in the American Prospect: "Instead of toasting Obama's success, Netanyahu has responded with public fury perhaps unprecedented in the Washington-Jerusalem relationship. The link between Netanyahu's reactions in September [to successful U.S. negotiations in the Syrian chemical weapons crisis] and now is what could be called Agreement Anxiety Disorder (AAD): a reflexive certainty that any time an antagonist is willing to make an agreement to end or manage a conflict, the deal is a deception." ...
... Ed Kilgore: "It doesn't really matter what the U.S. does with respect to Israel's enemies so long as Bibi is in charge: it won't be the right thing, or enough of the right thing. Everybody just needs to accept that and move along."
Alfonso Serrano of al Jazeera: "President Barack Obama invoked the spirit of Thanksgiving on Monday as he urged House Republicans to back an immigration deal, saying he accepts chopping comprehensive reform approved by the Senate into pieces if that helps pass legislation":
The system will not work perfectly on Dec. 1, but it will work much better than it did in October. -- Julie Bataille, spokesperson for the Healthcare.gov project ...
... Elise Viebeck of the Hill: "Administration officials said Monday that some visitors to ObamaCare's federal enrollment site would experience outages, slow response times or messages to try again later during the month of December. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) delivered the message in the latest attempt to downplay expectations surrounding Nov. 30, the administration's self-imposed deadline for fixing HealthCare.gov." ...
... Robert Pear of the New York Times: "Many users of the website have had their applications cast into limbo after they uploaded copies of documents like driver's licenses, Social Security cards and voter registration cards, or sent them to the office of the federal insurance marketplace in London, Ky. Administration officials said the government had established strict procedures to verify that people applying for insurance were who they said they were.... But a breakdown in the process instead is causing concern among some consumers about the handling of their personal information." ...
... Brian Beutler of Salon: "... Jeffrey Zients -- the Obama administration point person in charge of fixing Healthcare.gov -- ... told reporters on Friday that the site will be able to handle 50,000 users at a time and 800,000 users a day by the the end of next week." So what's a right-wing extremist/elected official to do? "When Healthcare.gov actually starts working, GOP will have to choose between politics or their constituents' health." ...
Art by Donkey Hotey.... Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times: "Perhaps in an effort to defuse reports that House Speaker John Boehner is making out pretty well as a first-time insurance customer under the Affordable Care Act, Boehner's office put out the word this weekend that his family healthcare premiums will be much higher next year than now. That outstanding stenographic service, Politico.com, swallowed this story whole.... Boehner is plainly an outlier as an Obamacare client. He's way older than the average individual policy applicant, and his family income is way beyond the U.S. average.... But the real lie at the heart of Boehner's claim is that the typical Obamacare customer is someone transitioning from a good employer plan to the individual market, as he is. The truth is that two-thirds of all the users of the individual insurance exchanges nationwide are expected to be people who didn't have any insurance previously." Read the whole column. ...
... CW: This bit was reported in at least one of the posts I linked yesterday, but I don't think I highlighted it here. Josh Marshall of TPM: "According to Scott MacFarlane, a reporter for the local NBC affiliate in Washington, reports that a DC Health Care exchange representative actually tried to contact Boehner by phone during the enrollment process but was put on hold for 35 minutes [listening to "lots of patriotic hold music"], after which time the representative finally hung up." So basically Boehner's complaint about ObamaCare is, "I'm rich, old & don't like to answer the phone. Waaaaahh!" ...
... Hiltzik on the ObamaCare success stories you're not hearing: "... Americans learning that they'll be eligible for coverage perhaps for the first time, or at sharply lower cost, are far more typical of the individual insurance market [than are "victims" experiencing "sticker shock"]. Two-thirds of the 30 million Americans who will be eligible for individual coverage next year are uninsured today, whether because they can't afford it now or because they're barred by pre-existing condition limitations, which will no longer be legal. And more than three-quarters will be eligible for subsidies that will cut their premium costs and even co-pays and deductibles substantially." Hiltzik cites a few cases of people the ACA has rescued from the Bad Old Days, which are about to end. ...
... Erik Wemple of the Washington Post: According to Fox "News" hosts, ObamaCare is worse than Iraq & Katrina because "unlike other issues, Katrina or the Iraq war that we've seen in ... the past second term, this is something that touches so many people's lives across the country." CW: See? They've rejected those melodramatic false equivalencies comparing the ACA to Katrina & Iraq. ...
I believe I'm going to be a Democrat. -- Ronald Hudson, a white Kentucky Republican, upon learning he would qualify for a "medical card" under ObamaCare ...
... Markos Moulitsas: "The fight for Obamacare has become an existentialist crisis for the GOP. And Ronald Hudson in Breathitt County, Kentucky, is turning that nightmare into reality." ...
... Jason Millman of Politico: "Tea party-aligned [Gov. Rick] Scott, who was once one of Obamacare's most fervent critics, shocked the political world by endorsing [Medicaid] expansion in February. The GOP-controlled state Senate subsequently agreed, but those plans died in the House amid forceful opposition from GOP Speaker Will Weatherford.... With so many uninsured, Florida will help shape whether the Affordable Care Act can eventually be viewed as a success." ...
... Toluse Olorunnipa of Bloomberg News: "At least five public hospitals closed this year and many more are scaling back services, mostly in states where Medicaid wasn't expanded.... Hospitals have dismissed at least 5,000 employees across the country since June, mostly in states that haven't expanded the joint state-federal Medicaid health program for the poor as anticipated under ... Obamacare.... Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, said governors who chose not to expand Medicaid are to blame for the hospital closures." CW: OR ... Let's see how many people the Supreme Court can sicken or kill in a single side ruling. AND, thanks, Stephen Breyer & Elena Kagan, for concurring in this ruling.
... Ben Goad of the Hill: "The Obama administration is conceding that its decision to allow people to keep insurance policies that would otherwise be canceled under the Affordable Care Act could weaken federal health exchanges. Hundreds of pages of regulations made public Monday contain an acknowledgment that the decision, announced amid fierce criticism over canceled policies, would mean fewer healthy people would buy healthcare through the exchanges." ...
... Jonathan Chait: "With healthcare.gov lurching toward functionality, the next wave in Obamacare disaster coverage revolves around President Obama's oft-repeated promise, 'If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.' Let me spoil the suspense: Not everybody is going to keep their doctor.... Keep Your Doctor was mainly offered as a rebuttal to the ever-present accusation that Obamacare amounted to a form of socialized medicine that would dictate by fiat which doctors a patient could see." Chait explains why the coming Keep Your Doctor Outrage is nonsense. ...
... Paul Waldman of the American Prospect: "... a belief that the ACA's failure would make single-payer more likely fundamentally misreads our political history." ...
... Steve M.: "Democrats need a confluence of extraordinary circumstances in order to make big societal changes. They may not get them again for quite some time." ...
... Francis Wilkinson of Bloomberg News: "It's quite possible that Obamacare will be a sufficient liability to cost Obama his popularity and Democrats their Senate majority. The party and individual politicians may sink for a time. (They may also recover far faster than many suspect. We live in volatile times.) But unless Obamacare is far more troubled than it now appears, the law will not sink. It floats."
Mark Hosenball of Reuters: "British and U.S. intelligence officials say they are worried about a 'doomsday' cache of highly classified, heavily encrypted material they believe former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has stored on a data cloud. The cache contains documents generated by the NSA and other agencies and includes names of U.S. and allied intelligence personnel, seven current and former U.S. officials and other sources briefed on the matter said.... One source described the cache of still unpublished material as Snowden's 'insurance policy' against arrest or physical harm. U.S. officials and other sources said only a small proportion of the classified material Snowden downloaded during stints as a contract systems administrator for NSA has been made public. Some Obama Administration officials have said privately that Snowden downloaded enough material to fuel two more years of news stories." ...
... How to Steal a Bajillion Bytes of Metadata. Nicole Perlroth & John Markoff of the New York Times: "People knowledgeable about Google and Yahoo's infrastructure say they believe that government spies bypassed the big Internet companies and hit them at a weak spot -- the fiber-optic cables that connect data centers around the world that are owned by companies like Verizon Communications, the BT Group, the Vodafone Group and Level 3 Communications. In particular, fingers have been pointed at Level 3, the world's largest so-called Internet backbone provider, whose cables are used by Google and Yahoo." ...
... Senators Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Mark Udall (D-Colo.) & Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), in a New York Times op-ed: "The bulk collection of Americans' telephone records -- so-called metadata -- by the National Security Agency is, in our view, a clear case of a general warrant that violates the spirit of the framers' intentions.... The usefulness of the bulk collection program has been greatly exaggerated.... Despite this, the surveillance reform bill recently ratified by the Senate Intelligence Committee would explicitly permit the government to engage in dragnet collection as long as there were rules about when officials could look at these phone records. It would also give intelligence agencies wide latitude to conduct warrantless searches for Americans' phone calls and emails. This is not the true reform that poll after poll has shown the American people want."
Adam Goldman & Matt Apuzzo of the AP: "In the early years after 9/11, the CIA turned some Guantanamo Bay prisoners into double agents then sent them home to help the U.S. kill terrorists, current and former U.S. officials said. The CIA promised the prisoners freedom, safety for their families and millions of dollars from the agency's secret accounts.... At the same time the government used the risk of terrorism to justify imprisoning people indefinitely, it was releasing dangerous people from prison to work for the CIA."
$11.2 Million More Reasons for Campaign Finance Reform. Kim Barker of ProPublica: "New tax return shows Karl Rove's [tax-exempt] group spent even more on politics than it [reported to the IRS] ... under penalty of perjury." CW: Yeah, that will happen when you send your "social welfare" money to Grover Norquist. ...
... Charles Pierce: "Now you know at least part of why the Republicans tried to make a meal out of the IRS dumbassery in Cincinnati. It was to defang the enforcement mechanism that might force Karl Rove to spend some of this money on an actual social-welfare issue -- namely, prison reform."
Like Jesus, the Pope Is a Socialist. Naomi O'Leary of Reuters: "Pope Francis called for renewal of the Roman Catholic Church and attacked unfettered capitalism as 'a new tyranny', urging global leaders to fight poverty and growing inequality in the first major work he has authored alone as pontiff. The 84-page document, known as an apostolic exhortation, amounted to an official platform for his papacy...." CW: Call me a cockeyed optimist, but I'm beginning to think this Pope could make a difference.
Jim Tankersley & Scott Clement of the Washington Post: "American workers are living with unprecedented economic anxiety, four years into a recovery that has left so many of them stuck in place. That anxiety is concentrated heavily among low-income workers.... More than six in 10 workers in a recent Washington Post-Miller Center poll worry that they will lose their jobs to the economy, surpassing concerns in more than a dozen surveys dating to the 1970s. Nearly one in three, 32 percent, say they worry 'a lot' about losing their jobs, also a record high, according to the joint survey...."
Ron Fournier of the National Journal: "More than almost any president, Obama has failed to exercise ... presidential clemency. But that may be changing. The White House is considering a broad range of clemency reforms."
No More Pretty Pictures. Andrew Beaujon of Poynter: "In a memo to staff Sunday, USA Today Deputy Director of Multimedia Andrew P. Scott said the news organization will not use 'handout photos originating from the White House Press Office, except in very extraordinary circumstances.' ... USA Today owner Gannett was among the organizations that protested the White House's clampdown on photographers' access to the president No week."
November 2013 Election
Laura Vozzella of the Washington Post: "The State Board of Elections on Monday declared Democrat Mark R. Herring Virginia's next attorney general, capping a dramatic three-week certification process in the closest statewide race in Virginia history. Herring defeated Republican Mark D. Obenshain by a mere 165 votes out of more than 2 million cast, according to the final tally certified in Richmond on Monday, at least temporarily giving Democrats a historic sweep of statewide offices.... Yet the exceedingly narrow results also offered reason to brace for a recount. The certified tally gave Herring 1,103,777 votes to Obenshain's 1,103,612 -- a winning margin of less than one hundredth of a percent. Obenshain did not immediately call for a recount, but he has set up a transition team...."
Local News
Jake Sherman of Politico: "Three top Florida Republican leaders -- including the state party chairman -- say Rep. Trey Radel should resign, less than one week after he plead guilty to possession of cocaine. State party chair Lenny Curry, Lee County GOP chair Terry Miller and Mike Lyster, the chairman of the Collier County Republicans issued statements late Monday, saying the Florida Republican should step down.... Several candidates who lost to Radel in a competitive 2012 primary -- including Chauncey Goss, whose father served eight terms in the House -- have been publicly critical of Radel. Many are already mulling a run for his seat. Former Rep. Connie Mack, who vacated the seat to run for the U.S. Senate, also is seen as eyeing another run." CW: I have every expectation that CoMa will again be my horrible Representative.
News Ledes
Guardian: "US warplanes have directly challenged China's claims of an expanding territorial air defense zone, flying dramatically and without incident on Monday over a disputed island chain. The incursion comes on the heels of a scathing statement over the weekend by defense secretary Chuck Hagel rejecting the expansion of the Chinese air defense zone into the East China sea as a provocative threat to regional stability. But the Pentagon insisted Tuesday that the overflight was not a reaction to the Chinese declaration."
New York Times: "For the second time in a decade, Ukraine is in turmoil, with tens of thousands of protesters in recent days loudly demanding that the country shake off its post-Soviet identity and move once and for all into the orbit of a more prosperous Europe."
Los Angeles Times: "In a major legal blow to the California bullet train, a Sacramento judge ruled that state officials cannot pursue their plan to tap billions of dollars in voter-approved bond funding for construction, a decision that could cause indefinite delays in the massive $68-billion project. Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny, ruling Monday in two closely watched cases, found the state officials made key errors and failed to comply with legal requirements as they moved the project toward a long-awaited groundbreaking."
'Tis the Season. AP: "A man who played Santa Claus at a Massachusetts mall has been barred from the shopping center after he was charged with groping an 18-year-old woman playing an elf."
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Reader Comments (15)
Julie Bataille appears to have mastered the first law of PR: "You have to tell the truth. It helps if you have a good truth to tell, but you have to tell the truth." Be nice if others followed her example.
Re: Robert Pear of nytimes: Is it just me being picky, or are others bothered by such generalizations as "many users?" How many of what? Many could be as few as three or it could be 300, 30,00: or more. Give us a number. Is this common, rare, or in between..
@Barbarossa: According to Pear's report, "Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said that 90 percent of consumers were able to create accounts and complete 'identity proofing' online." So HHS is acknowledging that 10 percent couldn't get past the "identity-proofing." That is a big number, but it isn't surprising.
If I recall correctly, it was Republicans who demanded the software include rigid ID standards on accounta they're so worried about fraud & abuse. It sounds as if the standards are so tough that normal people can't easily verify their own identity.
This reminds me of the hoops I had to jump thru last week when I discovered my driver's license had expired earlier this month. I had to provide a minimum of 5 forms of proof of who I was & where I lived. What counted as acceptable proofs were pretty limited -- e.g., one had to be a birth certificate or valid passport. The Healthcare.gov requirements sound at least as stringent.
Marie
Re; Keep'em; Hell, I don't even know'em. Am I the only lonely guy in the world that dosen't have a deep personal relationship to his doctor?
"You can keep your doctor." You keep him. Really, are all of us going to (TV MD) of our choice? I see my primary care doc once a year (well, once every three years) and he pokes me, prods me, looks in various orifices; pronounces that I'm fit as a fiddle, tells me to watch what I eat and drink, offers a dozen different protocols to make sure I'm fit as a fiddle and has me give blood on the way out the door. Fifteen minutes tops. So, who's my doctor? I don't really know. He seems to be a good doc. Got a diploma on the wall. Plays tennis. Michigan U. trained. Keep my doctor? Sure, why not? But I could go to another doc and I don't think my health would suffer. Having a personal physician is something of the past in my world. The only way my doc would know me as we past on the street would be for me to bend over and cough.
Damn 9/11! The bureaucratic nightmare that has ensued for getting one's driver's license renewed goes beyond minor irritation. Hey, I've been getting it renewed in the SAME place for over16 years...suddenly, I'm an alien. Since the previous renewal I had moved. What documentation had I brought with me that PROVED WHO I WAS & WHERE I LIVED. Aggggggh. The DMV guy had zero-sum-personality and handed me a list of 17 options for proof. Crap! Fortunately, after being denied my renewal I returned to my car and realized I did have one 'officially-sanctioned' document of proof. Car registration. I marched back in and found another
(more congenial) clerk and got my renewal. As for the photo ID clerk, that's another saga. I truly believe they are determined to photograph you as though it's your mug shot, because I didn't end up looking much better than Gary Busey in mine!
@JJG funny, but totally agree with you.
JJG, you are not the only person to have no 'personal' physician. This sense of need for attachment is just another foolish human trait. Yes, you need to trust your doctor, but his reputation doesn't reflect the fact that the people he killed can't complain. Another example of hiding from reality.
And Marie, your statement about Jesus the socialist reminds me of the fact that in the USA, that Christian nation, no one seems to be aware that if Jesus were around today he would be a leading left wing nut case.
I have had the same internist for 14 years. I have longed for all those years to have the kind of doctor that I used to have, an OB/Gyn dream of a man that I used to sit with after my exam and we'd talk about his life, my life, and life in general. One evening my husband and I were having dinner at a restaurant and I spotted this doctor and his wife at a nearby table. I suddenly was overcome with gratitude––he had literally saved my life––and I walked over, leaned down, kissed him on the mouth and said "I can't thank you enough." I had had two martinis previously.
My current doctor has little affect, sparse sense of humor, and is what I would call taciturn, BUT he has taken good care of me––however if I had to change doctors I must confess I wouldn't mind at all.
And by the way, JJG, how lucky you are to be so fit as a fiddle and if and when your fiddle begins to warp, that doctor of yours is going to get to know you a whole lot better than your cough and butt, I betcha.
Who are you?
You may think you know who you are, but you're wrong.
In Right Wing World (currently the state most of us live in), THEY tell you who you are.
Faceless bureaucrats in thrall to right-wing control groups and billionaires, fronted by shell operations like True the Vote tell you who you are, where you can go, whether or not you can vote, get married, buy a house, open a bank account, board a plane, enter certain buildings, get a job, or sign up for health insurance. Pretty much the only thing you can do without proving who you are is to drop dead. That'll show 'em.
Contemporary society has become a place requiring identification papers in almost every major instance of modern life. There's no getting around that anymore.
But Wingnut Nation, in its maniacal insistence on regulating who and what you are and what you can do, where you can go, applying labels and stamps that attempt to authenticate your identity, is constructing a more perfect totalitarian nightmare world in which authentic existence --see Sartre's famous existentialist statement, that existence precedes essence--is crushed beneath the right's standard issue jackboots worn by brainless thugs who believe they are rescuing FREEDDOOMM.
Interestingly, given the claims put forward by wingers about freedom and independence and statements like "leave me the hell alone", one would suspect that many of them would make fine existentialists.
They don't want anyone telling them what to do or who they are or what they can do. At least that's what they say. This is the starting point of Sartre's idea that existence, the physical act of being in the world, comes before essence, before labels and names and identity cards. Existentialists hold fast to the concept that they are the ones who make those decisions. You can call me what you want but don't forget that I have not given you permission to do so, and I don't really care what you say, I know myself, who and what I am.
Sounds like something plenty of wingers could get behind, no?
Ahh...but then we read a bit further and find that...oops....a truly authentic existence, Camus' goal, requires us to also take full responsibility for our actions. That's a deal breaker on the right. Responsbility? Nope. That's for liberals and other traitors. Responsibility is not necessary if you're doing what you're told.
Read a little further and you see that, for Camus, the issue turns on the recognition of the absurdity of the world (oh yeah, we get that), and the desire of the human mind to make sense of it. Quite a conundrum, eh?
So what's the answer?
Camus suggests revolt. In his philosophical essay, The Rebel, he outlines ways of recognizing, embracing, and combating the absurdity, ways of living an authentic life. All of this requires staunch intellectual engagement and a personal desire for true independence. No relying on invisible people in the sky or billionaire bosses. And as much as that word (along with FREEEDOOOOMM) is bandied about by wingnuts, they don't really mean it because they don't really seem to know what it means. In fact, the essence of existentialism, as Camus sees it, requires a struggle against the prime directive of Wingnut Nation: submission to authority. Those who question authority are the villains of practically every respectable wingnut pundit. Think David Brooks. Think Charles Krauthammer, Doucheboy, Beck, Palin, Limbaugh, Hannity, hell, even George Will.
So it seems that some major cognitive dissonances keep the ganglia twitching over there in Right Wing World. They act on "gut feelings" because, really, there is no internally consistent philosophy that enables or promotes authentic living . And they don't want anyone else dabbling in the shit either. So it's identity cards for everyone. And religion (their religion), and authority (theirs too, natch).
THEY believe that they can exert control by telling us who we are.
Of course they're wrong. But they don't want to know that. That's what their Supreme Court is for.
So it's back to the Kafkaesque nightmare of trying to prove to some stranger who you are when, in fact, you are the only one who truly knows that.
The dissonances on the right will maintain the insupportable imbalance in the country. Troglodyte teabaggers and a supine press offer immeasurable assistance.
Are we having fun yet?
@JJG. I'm right there with you, even though I do have some long term chronic health issues. They're not conversational topics for me. I look for competency and communication skills in a physician - i.e does the doctor listen and understand what I am saying? I seek personal relationships other places. I belong to an HMO and I find it well run and efficient. Sometimes, I get treated via phone for minor issues. Good, not a fan of the doctor's office. I requested a new doc once because her listening skills were -5. No problem, got a new doc right away.
I think its different if your looking for a pediatrician for your child.
Gosh darn it.
Those righties (should we start calling them wrongies?) are at it again.
They need Sooooo much for everyone to hate O-Blacka-care, because--well, you know why--that they're going around the bend, over the cliff and down into the fiery crevasse of hyperbole and perfidy dragging reality and sanity by the hair along with them.
But you gotta give them points for whackjob histrionics and creative labeling (there's that control thing again). So first, as Marie's link, above, points out, the ACA is worse than Iraq, Katrina, the Black Death, the 100 Years War, the Spanish Inquisition, reality TV and week old sushi. But--hold on, sports fans--now Foxbot Elizabeth Hasselbeck has made a stunning revelation on Right Wing TV!! Young Americans are SUPERHEROES with amazing powers. That's right. Just like Wonder Woman and the Flash and Mighty Thor and the X-Men (and women). Only way better. Why? They are INVINCIBLE. (cue He-man and Masters of the Universe theme music).
"Young Invincibles". Sounds like a Sci-Fi Channel soap opera.
Yup. You heard it here. Invincible, invulnerable, bulletproof, insuperable, unconquerable, omnipotent, all powerful and plenty of other Roget stuff. Also, un-get-sickable.
At least according to Dr. Hasselbeck.
Which is why--here it comes--they shouldn't buy into Obama's sleazy plan of lying to them to get them to pay for sick old people. Because this is America where no one ever forks over their semolians to help anyone else, like that commie Social Security scam, even if it means that when they are no longer young and invincible and un-get-sickable, they may become get-sickable and need this plan.
Fuck that. Foxbots know better. They are smart, resourceful, brilliant (oh, shit, sliding down the page into antonyms...) dim, dull, dense ignorant, foolish, and un-get-smartable.
Hey kids, don't buy insurance, You're invincible! And fuck that helping other people shit. Every asshole for him or her self in Right Wing World. That's the ticket.e
@ PD; I said fiddle, not Stradivarius, I have bone on bone arthritis in both wrists from pounding nails and running demo tools, bone on bone arthritis in both knees from kneeling, two leaking disks in my lower back from over lifting and the beginnings of emphysema from years of sawdust and construction fibers. Here's the thing; it's called normal wear and tear. The is nothing any healer can do; I know my body as well as any doc. I think one of the big problems with health care is that people expect miracles. I play tennis once a week and bemoan my state, I ride bike everyday and get slower by the year, so. I take no prescribed drugs. I am my own insurance for the most part and the rest will play out.
That Santa/Elf headline is the most inspired newswriting of the xmas season. Evah.
Fox (We're not racists!) News, always classy and always fairly unbalanced has an interesting headline:
"Girl says Florida school threatening expulsion over her ‘natural hair"
Can you make any guesses about the girl in question? The one whose hair is described in quotes with winks and nudges on the side, as "natural"? They couldn't have left off the quotation marks? Really? I guess it was too much of a temptation. It was a two-fer to be able to demonstrate how uncooperative blah people are and to make fun of their hair. What decent reporter could resist?
But if they were as truthful and as they claim to be, the headline would have been:
"Outrage in Florida! Pain in the ass Nee-groe girl with one of those wild, white-people scaring afros, complains that nice people at Christian school are unfair to her because she can't run around like some jungle animal with her "naaaturaaal hair", know what we mean?."
Fox News Flash: one of THOSE people causing trouble her betters. Again.
@Achilleus et al., Why has none of the MSM pundits determined how many Young Invincibles each year are thrown into penury by medical bills they never expected to see? Although I see 'young' as under sixty these days, there are plenty of folks under 40 who suffer accidents, cancers, infections, strokes, neurological diseases, unplanned pregnancies and so on. Yet the ACA mandate is cast even in the MSM as the young subsidizing us overthehillers. Our previously uninsured minimum wage niece had her epiphany via an appendix removal that put her in deep debt toute suite. Seems someone with the right skills could get the data without too much trouble.
Elsewhere: Pinko Jesus and Progressive Pope? The best hypothesis of the origin of Christianity I have read is in Faulkner's 'A Fable' in which through a WWI allegory, he speculates that the government of Rome, finding his purely political pacifist message so dangerous, and irresistible, and a threat to their very existence, spun Jesus into a religion complete with priests they could control. Not an easy read but worth the effort.
@JJG: My deepest apology to my fiddle-faddling with your so called fit as a fiddle business. You, sir, sound as though you have taken your bone degeneration in stride and are bucking it every darn way you can. Bravo–-I applaud you.