Oh crap. Yet more women's health "guidelines" from our corporate culture aimed at reducing costs.

Now, you should only get a Pap Smear every few years and not start till you’re in your 20s.

Under the headline “Negative Effects of Fewer Pap Smears Unknown,” the article reads:

Dr. Donnica Moore, president of Sapphire Women’s Health Group and an obstetrician-gynecologist by training, worried that the new guidelines might keep women who’ve had a normal Pap smear, or no symptoms, away from the doctor.

Massive 2005 takedown of The Moustache of Understanding.

In a column which oddly, or not, doesn't mention the President by title or by name, Krugman concludes:

The gist of the [TARP inspector general's AIG bailout] report is that government officials made no serious attempt to extract concessions from bankers, even though these bankers received huge benefits from the rescue. ...

For the A.I.G. rescue was part of a pattern: Throughout the financial crisis key officials — most notably Timothy Geithner, who was president of the New York Fed in 2008 and is now Treasury secretary — have shied away from doing anything that might rattle Wall Street. ....

No indeed:

With unemployment among blacks at more than 15 percent, the N.A.A.C.P. will join several other groups on Tuesday to call on President Obama to do more to create jobs. ...

In speaking out on jobs, N.A.A.C.P. leaders say they are not trying to pick a fight with the first African-American president. Rather, they say, they are pressing Mr. Obama in an area where they believe he wants to be pressured.

“It’s time [NOW????] for us to really stoke this issue up,” said Hilary O. Shelton, the N.A.A.C.P.’s senior vice president for advocacy and policy. “We’re not so much trying to convince him to do something he doesn’t want to do, but urging him to move forward on an issue we have agreement on.”

Well, you go on believing that.

CJR quoting Bloomberg:

[WARREN] “I made a decision at the beginning that the experts wrecked this economy and the public has a right to know what’s going on,” she said. “It’s our economy on the line and the experts can’t be trusted. I want everyone to be part of the solution to how we want to change our economic world. If it’s risky or makes me look stupid to someone, so be it.”

Crazy talk!

Pravda:

The Obama administration announced plans Monday to hold a forum on jobs and economic growth at the White House on Dec. 3, after which the president will go on the road to demonstrate his concern about the nation's rising jobless rate.

With the nation's unemployment rate at its highest level in 26 years, President Obama plans to bring together CEOs, small business owners and financial experts* to sound out ideas for continuing to expand [?] the economy and create jobs.

"During these difficult economic times, we have a responsibility to consider all good ideas to encourage and accelerate job creation in this country," Obama said in a statement.

The president outlined plans for the forum before leaving for Asia last week, but at the time had not nailed down a date. The White House said Obama would follow the forum with a visit to Allentown, Pa., for the first stop of what the White House is calling a Main Street Tour, which will take him to across the country over several months.

Months. So, we're going to have to go through the campaign of 2008 all over again.

Not sure why the embed code doesn't work. Here's the link. It's well worth a listen.   Read more…

Open Left:

One of the few - and I sincerely stress the word "few" - concrete legislative successes progressives notched in the Republican Congress under President George W. Bush came on the evening of July 26th, 2002, when they humiliated the House into passing a bill sponsored by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) banning federal contracts from going to companies that engage in tax "inversions." These are the schemes whereby a corporation that is based in the United States buys a P.O. box in Bermuda and uses it to legally avoid paying American taxes.

The only reason the Howler repeats himself is that our famously free press does. As for example:

This morning, the gods rocked with laughter: On Olympus, that is. Reason? On the front page of the New York Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg penned a report about the way current health reform bills would deal with American health care spending. On Olympus, her opening paragraph produced some muffled laughter:

STOLBERG (11/10/09): As health care legislation moves toward a crucial airing in the Senate, the White House is facing a growing revolt from some Democrats and analysts who say the bills Congress is considering do not fulfill President Obama's promise to slow the runaway rise in health care spending.

Note that definition again: We’ll accept a rise in health care spending—it just can’t be a runaway rise! As Stolberg continued, the muffled laughter became full-throated—almost a roar:

STOLBERG (continuing directly): Mr. Obama has made cost containment a centerpiece of his health reform agenda, and in May he stood up at the White House with industry groups who pledged voluntary efforts to trim the growth of health care spending by 1.5 percent, or $2 trillion, over the next decade.

Can you see why the gods, and their guests, were now openly laughing? In the face of a “runaway rise in health care spending,” Stolberg almost seemed to suggest that a “trim” in growth, of 1.5 percent, somehow connected to the idea that “cost containment” was “a centerpiece” of Obama’s agenda! And then too, the gods, and their guests, had all seen the OECD figures—the figures which show the baseline of American health care spending. Can you see why the gods, and their guests, were now laughing hard at us mortals?

Total spending on health care, per person, 2007
United States: $7290
France: $3601
Germany: $3588
United Kingdom: $2992
Italy: $2686
Spain: $2671
Japan: $2581 (2006)

There’s the baseline for any future rise. In 2007, the U.S. spent 102 percent more than the French! In Stolberg’s account, it seems that we’re planning to “trim” 1.5 of those 102 points! But then, cost containment is a centerpiece of our health care agenda!

On Olympus, the sides of the gods are starting to split in the face of our culture’s year-long clowning—clowning which is mainly conducted at the very top of our “press corps.” Our advice: Surrender the prejudice of your youth! In a hundred different ways, you were told that “man” is “the rational animal!” As your society flounders and drowns, you—like the gods—can learn to see something quite different.

By contrast, here's how they do it in France:

David Jenny writes* in the Bangor Daily News:

The president and Congress agree: Washington’s solution to 46 million uninsured Americans is to “mandate” that they all purchase health insurance from private companies, or — if the president’s view should prevail — a government-run “public option.”

Until now, our federal government has never claimed the power to compel individual citizens to pay insurance premiums to either private companies or government entities.

Astonishingly, no one is asking: “Does the federal government actually have the power to dictate that individuals purchase health insurance?” ....

Fascinating throwaway remark on the pro-sepsis HR3962 in Obama's interview with Jake Tapper:

"I laid out a very simple principle, which is this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill," Obama said. "And we're not looking to change what is the principle that has been in place for a very long time, which is federal dollars are not used to subsidize abortions."

Masthead

The Corrente Review Of Games is published on the first Saturday of the month.
Posting is done in rotation by the following contributors:

Aeryl,
BDBlue and
danps.

Please contact any of us with submission ideas or feedback.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

eWeek:

According to documents leaked earlier this week, the United States favors forcing international ISPs to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material and would require ISPs to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. In addition, the U.S. negotiators [on ACTA (International Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement)] are seeking international notice and take down agreements and mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM systems. The provisions are all favored by major U.S. content owners.

Mayhill Fowler in HuffPo on "bitter ... cling to" (interestingly, she writes it was the cling to, not the bitter). A fine, interesting retrospective on winning, "losing," how the discourse gets shaped, and who gets credit (all senses). The bottom line:

If he did not figure out how to talk about small-town Americans [that is, working class Americans who live in small towns like those in PA that the banksters have de-industrialized] to more worldly coastal folk then even if he were President he would get no chance at "change."

Well, yes.

Krugman asks, and answers "politics" (that is, right wing bromides like "government is the problem"). Of course:

They came, they sat, they chanted:

8 Protesters backing a universal health care system briefly occupied Sen. Joe Lieberman's office this morning.

Protesters were arrested, one by one, and dragged out of his office amid chants of "Everyone in and noone out, universal healthcare now!" and "Represent Connecticut, not AETNA!"

Activists hopefully moving the Overton Window - in our case leftward - because too many Democratic party politicians were too stupid to do that on their own at the start of the healthcare debate.

Our access bloggers are positioning him as a populist in their most recent fund-raising letter, but despite being on the financial services committee, the best his advocates can seem to come up with is the "Cash for Clunkers" program. Did Grayson do anything to nobble this abomination from Barney Frank, which crippled the Consumer Financial Protection Agency? Granted, Grayson's signed on to Ron Paul's bill to audit the Fed -- along with 307 others. Does anyone know if Grayson's done anything more than throw rhetorical red meat to "progressives"?

[cross-posted at NPR Check]

Is Sorya Sarhaddi Nelson really and truly in Afghanistan? I've heard her interviewed the last day or so regarding the fortunes of of the US debacle in Afghanistan - in light of the non-runoff runoff and the "victory" of Hamid Karzai - and I can't say I've learned anything from it.

Nelson was on ATC Monday talking to Michelle Norris and this exchange occurred:

Norris: "With Hamid Karzai now declared the official winner of the presidential election, to what degree does that now solve the political uncertainty in Afghanistan?"

I saw this entry posted over at Docudharma and thought I'd share the link to it. I'll post as much as I can, but really, it's worth checking out the entire entry. It's by the user known as FreeSociety.

The total vacuum of any principled leadership from President Obama, has inevitably produced the most directionless, anti-consumer, Insurance Monopoly boondoggle fraud imaginable -- which is now masquerading before Congress as "reform".

Steven D. notes:

"The FBI has a Terror Watch List of 400,000 names on it. Does that seem extreme to you? Because it seems absolutely insane to me."

If only there was someone in charge of this FBI thingy, someone who had the legal authority to do something about it? Perhaps someone who had taken an oath something like this one:

Heh. nycweboy:

I was struck - but not surprised - by the relative silence over a Sunday front page NYT article about the White House's "DudeBro" problem: the reality that the President is surrounded by the lefty equivalent of the all male "boys club" mentality that can be found many places, including Washington politics. ...

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Issues of financial reform and regulation can be intimidating to laymen (this layman anyway) because of its insanely complex nature. It is easy to imagine the system as a big Jenga tower, and moving one piece might cause the whole thing to come crashing down. No one wants to be seen as inadvertently - but earnestly! - advocating for a ruinous policy. Of course, that means the opposite extreme is then in play: Turning into Hamlet and endlessly agonizing over what to do at the expense of actually doing something. Not to mention the fact that, not to put too fine a point on it, wide swaths of our leadership has for years now been deliberately advocating ruinous policies both at home and abroad. That should certainly make those of us in the unwashed masses comfortable with forcefully advocating what seems reasonable based on available data. It's not as though we could screw it up any worse.

Still, it would be nice to have a rule of thumb, compass point or guiding principle to go by. Having been a reasonably close observer of the meltdown and its aftermath, here is one I have come up with: It is necessary (but not sufficient) that any proposal be strenuously opposed by Goldman Sachs (GS). In a largely protected industry Goldman appears to be the closest thing to untouchable as we have. It is in Matt Taibbi's already-legendary description "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." It has installed a revolving door between the highest levels of the government and its board room, enjoys privileged lines of communication with the Treasury secretary exceeding even that of our closest allies, was happily positioned as a key competitor died, then days later benefited as a key debtor was drenched in cash (Yves Smith called it a "massive backdoor subsidy to the likes of Goldman"), and as it happens was the second largest contributor to the president in the 2008 election cycle. More so than any other player in financial services, GS always seems to be nearby when bad things happen.

[I won't quote a private email discussion, but I'll summarize it by saying that the poster made a suicide request by stating that "any stick to beat a dog"-style argumentation is justified. That's a rule 5 violation, for which the penalty is banning. -- lambert]

* * *

A new fall guy is emerging from the health care reform ruins. Circus progressives, better know as pseudo progressives, such as BTD at Talk Left and Digby have started to blame president Emmanuel for caving in to industry without Republican buy in or aiding, the enemy, Snowe in her attempts to water down reform.

Don't remember voting for Emmanuel for president, consult your physician it may indicate for early Alzheimer.

Interesting critique of the administration in the London Review of Books. Since it's the anniversary of Lehman, when Obama became the presumptive President, these anniversary pieces will crop up more and more, no doubt.