December 2009
58 posts
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“Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent...”
– Bruce Schneier (via fraidycats)
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“We pass our time and our lives in contemplating what we have already...”
– Paul Virilio: Negative Horizon (translated by M. Degener; via fuckyeahphilosophy)
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Hold them to it
If we didn’t have a feckless Democratic majority, they might be in front of microphones just about now giving a preferably rhyming, two sentence version of this information for the evening news and cablers:
An attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day would be all-consuming for the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration...
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“Fixing the problem doesn’t mean voting out the feckless Democrats or the...”
– Lawrence Lessig (via squashed)
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“When performing and drinking, Ira [Louvin] would sometimes become angry enough...”
– Wikipedia entry on the Louvin Brothers.
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Newspeak
We’ve got admire and but so where’s abmire? Presumably, the meaning would be somewhere in the neighborhood of:
verb [trans.]: Related to reducing the feeling of warmness or regard. The effect of diminishing one’s regard for all of humanity due to the actions or positions of one individual or a group of like-minded individuals.
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“One of the reasons I consider myself to be a progressive/liberal/whatever is...”
– Nate Silver, being absolutely goddamned right.
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“The Obama-Biden plan provides new affordable health insurance options by: (1)...”
– The Obama-Biden campaign decidedly not promising single payer. Compare and contrast with the Senate bill. Shocking dishonesty, I know. Had Bush been allowed a third term, we’d be looking at this same kind of thing right now: 40 million people getting access to insurance.
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This needs to stop
ryking:
“In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, “I am a proponent of a single-payer universal healthcare program…” There was only one thing standing in the way, Obama said six years ago: “All of you know we might not get there immediately because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate and we have to take back the...
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67*
“Meaningful” agreement reportedly reached in Copenhagen. Which, apparently, means it is an agreement of some fundamental semantic meaning of that word based on other words that do mean things in a strict, lexicographical sense. Erm: Victory!
But, really, it matters not. No agreement, however large or small, meaningful or symbolic it might be is going anywhere in terms of being...
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You’re ridiculous
This is what we need more of from the MSM here in America; Jim Inhofe parachutes into the global climate meetings, finds no one around, rustles up what reporters he can find, and is promptly notified of his own foolishness:
The senator didn’t have any meetings scheduled in Copenhagen, and he did not see chief U.S. negotiator Todd Stern or the members of the House delegation, who were not...
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The Tubes of Retribution
Never mess with the internet. It may be a bunch of clogged tubes, but the truth will out.
Now:
McCAIN: I’ve been around here 20-some years. First time I’ve ever seen a member denied an extra minute or two to finish his remarks. … I just haven’t seen it before myself. And I don’t like it. And I think it harms the comity of the Senate not to allow one of our members at least a minute. I’m sure...
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“A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy....”
– Paul Krugman
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“No. I don’t want health care.”
– Senator Sam Bareback, er, Brownback, Republican of Kansas Then why don’t we take it away from him? I’ve been agitating all along for a healthcare sunset provision on all Congressional insurance and/or Medicare coverage. If they love the market so much, let them go out and use it....
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“Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video...”
– Wall Street Journal: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones; I love how the Journal (and/or their military contact) works Iran into this. Indeed, only Iran could have the wherewithal to back an effort of this expense and complexity…
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“Before, it was healthcare every 15 years, from now on it’s going to be...”
– Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) pointing out why the “kill reform” liberals need to catch the sweet whiff of reality. Get what you can now. Come back every year and get a little more. Pretty soon, you’ve got something.
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How quickly we forget
ryking points out weakness in the Democrat by noting that:
— The GOP had at most 55 Senators during Bush’s presidency
Yeah, but where are the accomplishments? What was W’s healthcare? What historic game-changer did the man manage to pass? Certainly not what he tried hardest to do with his “political capital”: Social Security Privatization. The link notes these...
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“if I could construct a system in which insurers spent 90 percent of every...”
– Ezra Klein (once again: exactly fucking right). Trouble is, the next “compromise” will be on not limiting profit margins in this way.
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“You know what offends me? It’s not whether someone says “Happy Holidays” or...”
– Stand up for “christmas”? (via azspot)
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“To put it bluntly, the idea that Lieberman now finds the very same proposal a...”
– Jonathan Cohn, writing in TNR and pretty much summing up the Lieberman Affair. Doesn’t Joementum look so very tired?
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“Congressman Weiner made a comment that Medicare-buy in is better than a public...”
– Joe Lieberman on why he flip-flopped on the Medicare buy-in. And you thought I was joking. El Dorado, here we come.
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Shit sandwich
Some on the Hill remain worried that Lieberman will discover new points of contention in the coming days, as they believe he had signaled that he wouldn’t filibuster the Medicare buy-in. They worry whether his word is good.
No reason to worry, Ezra. It is not good and never has been. The goalposts will move again. This time, my guess is “We’re moving too fast. The vote must...
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“I was very focused on a group that’s post-50, or maybe post-55,”...”
– Joe Lieberman, three months ago
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Let it Snowe
I tend to agree with Josh Marshall here:
the key issue senate Democrats now have in dealing with Joe Lieberman isn’t his position on the the Medicare Buy-In [it’s that Lieberman] isn’t negotiating in good faith. […] it’s as clear to [Republicans] as it is to anyone else that he’s now basically mocking his Democratic colleagues by moving the goal posts every...
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AmericaLand in bad decline
Re: this and this prior post, Fake Steve Jobs reports on the chat he had with AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. Here’s some highlights:
Now, the thing about [“Meet the Beatles”] was, on the day [the album] hit the U.S. the whole world changed. Like, before that day, the world was one way, music was one way, culture was one way — and then after that day the world was never the...
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Nate Silver on the Public Option →
squashed notes “They’re good thoughts” in reference to this article. I’d call them indispensible. Particularly this:
1) The energy by progressive activists on behalf of the public option has done more good than harm, and by a wide margin. 2a) Nevertheless, the public option is/was a relatively minor part of the health care bill, at least once it became clear that it (i)...
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The Mortal Majority
jimray:
“…although the end-of-life use of Medicare is a government problem that violates almost every philosophy [Republicans] espouse about the proper role of government—public sector over private; easily exploited by, rather than protected from, trial lawyers; a moral hazard, consequence-free billing system as opposed to rational, need-based spending; a program with rising outlays as opposed to...
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“Somewhere today, in the here and now, in the world as it is, a soldier sees...”
– Barack Obama, accepting the Peace Prize
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Little Minds
Then: All you need to know is there are 1,990 pages,” griped House Minority Leader John Boehner about the House bill. “It is longer than War and Peace and not near as funny,” said Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX)
Now: "And we talk about 2,074 pages, which seem like a lot, and it would be for a normal bill that you could debate in a limited period of time, which is what we’re being asked to do. But 2,074 pages isn’t nearly enough to cover health care for America. So why is it only 2,074 pages?" Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY)
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“It has never been serviced or cleaned other than blowing out the dust with a...”
– Cormac McCarthy, on the Olivetti Lettera 32 he purchased at a pawn shop for $50 in 1963, which sold at auction for $254,500. Yes, he’s got another one.
(via Daring Fireball)
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How it passes
ryking:
“This is so freakin’ obnoxious I can hardly stand it. We are about to get a turd of a “reform” package, potentially worse than the status quo. We have the insurance industry declaring victory, Republicans cackling with glee, and the administration is using that piece of shit to raise money? Obama spent all year enabling Max Baucus and Olympia Snowe, and he thinks we’re supposed to get...
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AT&T to customers: Drop dead
Ahh, AT&T, you’ve under-provisioned your network and all those iPhones you are more than happy to sell contracts for are making it easy to, you know, do stuff. And you apparently didn’t count on that. For three years running. The result: lots of data in your under-provisioned network. Who do we blame for this oversight? Why, the customers of course:
The carrier has had trouble...
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PO Boxed
azspot:
“If, as reported, the Democrats have dropped the public option, they have abandoned any attempt to improve the health care in the United States in favor of increasing health-care insurance profits. This is good for the economy, as ever more jobs will be created in medical claims processing. Also, delivering 40 million new (taxpayer subsidized) premium-payers to the insurance companies to...
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“As things stand, 65-year-olds get enrolled in Medicare. Buy-in is something of a...”
– Ezra Klein
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Smell the Joementum!
TPM is reporting that Lieberman is at least open to the notion of the Medicare buy-in as a replacement for the public option:
Lieberman said he’s open to both the Medicare buy-in idea, and a separate proposal to extend the private system that insures federal employees to individuals and small businesses.
On the Medicare buy-in—which has significant appeal among...
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Opting Out
Paul Starr argues that, because of the potential for real public backlash, the individual mandate should contain an opt-out provision. In a nutshell, you could choose to opt out of coverage…on the condition that you couldn’t easily opt back in for a five year period afterwords.
I agree with Starr that the mandate is the thing that will really burn people up come, oh, 2075 when the...
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“If the Republican party gets back to that [conservative] base, I think our party...”
– Sarah Palin, discussing whether or not she’ll run as a third party candidate.
File under: oh, God, please please please please. Best possible outcome.
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“It’s the paper equivalent of TV’s morning shows hosts who fake being the dumbest...”
– Neven Mrgan on the “pretenda-gotcha interview style.” See: Brooks, David. 