Ya THINK?
I'm so mad I can't even write about this coherently. For YEARS doctors have declared that women who were "overweight" had a poorer chance of surviving breast and cervical cancer.
Turns out the sonsofbitches were dosing women on chemotherapy for the "ideal weight" of the woman instead of the actual, physical body present in the room. MORONS. Blaming the victims for dying when it's the jackass worthless goddamned imbecilic arrogant bastard asshole brainless overpaid useless incompetent lying good-for-nothing motherfucking deliberate malpractice that's at fault.
The anti-"overweight" culture in this country is so absolutely ingrained it's ridiculous. Since the "weight tables" are based on a 1915-1920 study by an INSURANCE COMPANY, Read more…

Obama apologist Clarence Page let's us know in his December 21, 2008 column that progressives need to get over Obama's pick of Rick Warren as his invocation leader. Now, a few gems, and please count the number of times he uses "pragmatic":

Although some gay activists and other left-progressives might try to dismiss Warren as a hard-line troglodyte, he actually is a pragmatic moderate compared with right-wing evangelical activists like Pat Robertson or the late Rev. Jerry Falwell. Read more…

Spam from well-funded Villagers in my Inbox; play it, Levanna:

URGENT: Send the insurance industry a message!

Er, no. I don't see any point in sending them a message; with their business model of denying care, they must already know we hate them. And sending the insurance companies a message diverts me from sending the real message I need to send to my elected representatives: Pass HR 676, save $350 billion a year, and save 17,000 lives.

And now the main body of the peice; watch for the sudden change of key in the middle:

Today, the leading insurance industry representative, America's Health Insurance Plans, came out and said they would stop denying people coverage due to pre-existing conditions.[1]*  Read more…

In defense of black voters voting at least 2 to 1 for California's Proposition 8 rides Jasmyne A. Cannick. Her argument is that white gays aren't "sufficiently sensitive" to the fact that the word and concept of "rights" was trademarked and copywritten by black churches in the 60's. Therefore, any use of that word by white gays is offensive to the black community, including black lesbians like Cannick. I parachuted in to hearing her laughingly dismiss outraged callers on Talk of the Nation. Read more…

Big Tent Democrat again calls it right. The Village is desperate to continue the right wing policies of the Reagan/Bush/Bush administrations. To that end they are fear-mongering that it was hyper-partisanism by GWB that was the death blow to the Republicans this year. By framing it in this way they hope to scare Democrats (and Obama) from pursuing partisan Democratic policies. Read more…

While a number of the more cowardly VRWC mouthpieces in the MSM have abandoned the usual the Republican lockstep approach to candidate support solidarity while they try to climb on the Obama gravy train, others in the Party see this schism as a chance for purification and an opportunity to seize the apron strings of power. Read more…

Via email, from HCAN's latest mailer:

We are not going to allow our health care system get deregulated to the point that our banking system did.

Forget the illiteracy, what on earth does "to the point that our banking system did" mean? I don't want to tinker round the edges of a system that's killing people with better regulations; I want do what every other civilized country does, and make health care a universal, human right. Read more…

Via Digby, Donna Brazile still has a job, and she's on the teebee!

[Obama's] going to have to put things on the table that perhaps many of us would not like to see a Democratic president put on the table in terms of cutting back on spending, freezing hiring and making some real tough decisions. So, I think he will be constrained by the deficit and also by the fact that we're still in two major wars.

Ah, yes. "Tough decisions." Boy oh boy, does the Village love them their tough decisions. Especially because those tough decisions never, ever affect the Village in any way. Keep those cocktail wienies coming!

Say, why do you think Donna still has her job? Read more…

Jonathan Weil at Bloomberg explains why we're getting such a terrible bill everyone knows won't work (emphasis mine):

That brings us to this question: Why would a smart guy like Hank Paulson -- the former boss of Goldman Sachs -- advance such a dumb, shady plan? Let us count the reasons:

No. 1: It delays our national reckoning until after the presidential election. Read more…

"It would be my hope that this could be resolved today, that we'd have a day for the American people and members of Congress to review the legislation on the Internet,'' said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California. "One thing is for sure, we are not leaving until this legislation is passed." Read more…

I thought he won; but I also shifted from CNN to CSPAN in the middle of the debate, and I missed this part. Or maybe I was drinking. The level-headed Avedon writes:

I just about lost the will to live when they were talking about the surge. Since Obama bought into the whole lie about how the surge had worked, he was helpless. McCain just quoted Obama as saying the surge had worked beyond our wildest expectations even though he'd opposed it.

Then he pressed Obama to say that he'd changed his mind about whether there should have been a surge. When Obama wouldn't, McCain compared Obama's apparently stubborn refusal to support the right thing with Bush's similar behavior.

It was a breathtakingly clever bit of manipulation that Obama walked right into by playing along with the out-and-out lie that the surge had done anything to advance any goal other than escalated troop presence and PR for the Permanent Campaign.

It would have been completely avoidable if the Democrats had stuck to the facts on this issue from the beginning: The Anbar Awakening preceded the Surge and had nothing to do with it - it had to do with the fact that we've been paying The Enemy not to attack us. Dems should have been screaming about this, but it's a bit late to introduce this kind of new information on the fly. And the stated purpose of the Surge was that it was supposed to reduce violence so we could leave, but we show no sign of thinking of leaving; ergo, the surge has failed. Period.

Yeah, well. Read more…

Harry Reid is, I think, the guy on the right (with the pecs). I'm not sure who the sinister guy behind Harry (the black robe, the skull) is. But whoever he is, he's the one running the show.

* * *

Hank's golfing buddies really need their trillion NOW NOW NOW! And the Asian markets need their trillion NOW NOW NOW! Latest from AP:

Sen. Harry Reid says congressional aides worked late into the night and he hopes for an agreement in principle by late Sunday. President Bush said in his radio address he hoped for a deal very soon and a key House negotiator, Rep. Barney Frank, has said he believes a deal can be in place by Sunday.

I wonder how many of those aides were really financial lobbyists. Anyone know? [And to my shame, I've misplacced the OpenSecrets link on financial* money by party] .

Anyhow, if you parse their words, there's still no legislation: "principles" and a "deal" do not legislation make. However:

Talks are resuming Saturday and Reid says there are about 15 issues lawmakers need to resolve. Reid hopes that if an agreement is reached Sunday, it won't take long to write the legislation and there could be a vote in the coming week.

And ditto parsing these words. And AP doesn't even mention the House backbenchers who scuttled the first deal on Friday. Are the Ds really so degraded that they'll hand Bush a trillion -- or even a third of a trillion -- without any cover from the Rs? I guess we'll see.

Since we have no detail on whatever it is that Bush + Reid + Pelosi + Frank + McCain + Obama are cooking up this time, it's impossible to predict the exact flavor and texture of the shit we will be forced to swallow, but here's Krugman's reaction: Read more…

What if offshoring isn't the boon the corp execs expected? What if investment vehicles (read complicated boondoggles designed to move money from the middle and lower class into the upper class' pockets via expensively-furnished con jobs run out of the 'credit economy') really don't do anything useful?
Well, then you get what is happening now on Wall Street.
Which looks, to this un-initiate (thank you FSM) like the chickens coming home to roost.
Jared Bernstein is an economist. This is his take on it:

A statement from EPI senior economist Jared Bernstein on the financial market meltdown

“There’s a silver lining to this crisis on Wall Street, if we’re smart enough to recognize it. The markets are sending an unequivocal signal that we need to change the way we do business. That means greater transparency, more responsible lending standards, sensible capitalization levels, and, above all, a more balanced approach toward risk. To clean up the mess yet ignore this deeper signal would be fatal to our financial markets and our hopes for an ultimate recovery.”

Not all progress is forward, boys and girls. Read more…

And so what if Barney, pushing the fraud that executive compensation is anything more than a trivial matter, says it's a done deal. Stirling, at the end of a lengthy but lucid piece you should all read, concludes:

can say clearly that the proposals in front of Congress right now do not provide a solution, and they are both bad politics and bad strategy. Why should banks negotiate or accept regulation or taxation, if they already have access to an unlimited fund? The public, hurting from a decade where they have not seen their wages rise, and where they have now seen their chance at making money from the land casino ended, is also in no mood for this. All that is left is the threat of a financial meltdown, which will probably be found right next to Saddam's mushroom cloud, and a few doors down from the group at the Pentagon that has a secret plan to capture Osama bin Laden. Read more…

My local channels' digital signals (yes, I got the coupon, the frackin' box isn't free) suck, often and largely.

Why would the fedgov want to take away all analog (free) tv?

I haven't heard anybody explain this at all -- just warn me that it's coming and I gotta buy the box or lose my signal.

Nobody's told me W H Y this is.

Digital signals (like UHF) are way more vulnerable to distance / weather. Are these also more vulnerable to jamming? I'm not giving you a conspiracy theory; I'm trying to find out why the government made the decision it did.

I know even less about finance than I do about polling, so here's some linky goodness on the demise of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Maybe somebody who does understand finance can make a post of it all: Read more…

Amplifying Stoller, Bowers:

In order to defeat McCain, I now have to repeatedly say just how awesome McCain is?

Yes.*

This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.

Nice headline on the Stoller piece, though: Read more…

If there's a "valid" point here, it's that I really wish some investigative bloggers would follow up on this and find out more about just who has the hard-on for Twink Love. I bet it's a looong list of them in St. Paul. wonkette via Joe:

Via Wonkette, this latest in a string of Craigslist Twin Cities M4M ads:

Discretion Required - m4mm (Upscale Hotel)

ATTN: discretion is mandatory. must be willing to submit to background check and strip searches. absolutely no recording devices or wireless communication devices allowed. you will be examined and scrutinized by security before you make contact. Read more…

Go read it, it's great as usual. The bottom line: Read more…

I sincerely hope everyone is on the same page as I am. Which is to say: I've been thrown out of better parties than this. Seriously, is this Event an example of "the democratic process of a republic of laws," or a great, big, dope consuming, cock-sucking extravaganza? It's hard to tell from the "progressive" blog coverage. Hint: bloggers who are there should not be dazzled by 'exclusive' party invites. They're so easy to get if you're Hip, and bragging of such reveals how lame one really is if one speaks of it. Real Players are otherwise oriented, discoursively. Figure that out, liberal bloggers, and the Powers will start taking you seriously. Until then, you're nothing more than minor star-fuckers, and Little People bought off by cheap teevee-grade bbq. yo. Read more…

[UPDATE Well, the site just ran into bandwidth limitations. Bad news, but good news.]

[WARNING: Give the site, say, thirty seconds or a minute for the movie to buffer (more time than the site says) Then it will play; I just tested it.]

Powerful. Worth it. Read more…

According to Jim Hightower's web site today, corporate ag-chem giant Monsanto has put its Posilac business up for sale. This is good, because it means the company could not force the American people to accept milk laced with an artificial sex hormone.
It's news because Monsanto had unsuccessfully sued to keep farmers and dairies from advertising their milk as free of the product. Read more…

Thanks for that quote, Leader Nance.

And do, please, see Matthew 6:5 and consider it carefully. The historical Jesus, if any, does have strong views on the sale of religion in the public square.

Anyhow, I guess God must have shared a helping of rubber chicken with the rest of the Rules and Bylaws Committee, when they went out to lunch* and decided to give Michigan delegates to Obama who didn't vote for him. Good to know. And how nice for everyone, that God worked a miracle like that. Read more…

It's classless and unChristian, as well.

Mostly, though, it's just ugly. And there's enough ugly in the world, Amy Alkon, without your "advice goddess" self adding anything to the total, 'k?

So, bitch, can you just shut the fuck up already, you judgmental hag?

Look at that photo of you on your blog, Amy Alkon.

Why in the name of the seven bald steers you'd show yourself in public looking like *that* is beyond me. Read more…

What was best about the Edward's Plan, and Hillary's plan--last I checked, Obama was going to be "figuring something out" but maybe he's refined his position--was that they introduced competition between a national health care plan and the insurance companies, hoping that the national health care plan would serve as a Trojan horse for single payer. Or that was the rationale. DDay seems to agree this is a good idea:

Now, what HCAN['t] actually* favor[s] is a public option being given the ability to compete with private insurance, making gradual the transition to a national health care plan [which I assume is single payer, but maybe not]

(See the note for what HCAN't actually favors). DDay concludes:

I think that the goal ought to be single payer, but anything that helps 47 million people get health care is positive

So let me ask: If you think the goal should be single payer, then why not support it directly and explicitly, right now? Read more…