The road to greater healthcare coverage

By Alan G. Macdonald and Marylou Buyse  |  March 18, 2006

IMAGINE YOU are looking to buy a new car, but can only choose from three models on the lot: a Cadillac Escalade, a Lexus LX 470, or a Mercedes Benz G500. Although they're great cars, these options may be more than what you need and possibly more than you want to spend.

That's what it is like for employers and many individuals when it comes to purchasing healthcare coverage. It's a fully loaded, luxury sport utility vehicle or nothing.

In Massachusetts, state requirements on what must be covered and restrictions on out-of-pocket costs have resulted in a lack of affordable options. When it comes to healthcare coverage, we have nothing that is comparable to a Chevrolet, a Honda, or a Volkswagen. As a result, many of the state's 600,000 uninsured residents have been left walking along the side of the road.

Quote of note:

The resulting flurry of errors has educators and lawmakers calling for better disclosure and oversight. Some are even proposing a national agency like the Food and Drug Administration to regulate testing.

"We need accountability," said George F. Madaus, a research professor at the Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation and Educational Policy at Boston College. "I certainly wouldn't get rid of testing, but we need to be much more aware than we are now about the shortcomings, the limitations and the fallibility of the technology."

Testing Errors Prompt Calls for Oversight
By KAREN W. ARENSON

Quote of note:

In Archie Bunker's mouth, prejudice was inflated absurdly in order to lay bare the essential absurdity of prejudice. But the disclosure of racial bias at the bar on "Black. White." doesn't treat those ugly sentiments with disrespect. On the contrary, the man's confidence is perversely granted a permanent place in reality because it is presented as being real. It is not exploded or dislodged. There is even something vulnerable about a man tricked into revealing himself in public. It is a kind of entrapment, or illegal wiretap of contraband sentiments. You wonder, too, if the man gave his permission to be exposed as a bigot on national television. [P6: Dude...he signed the consent form or he wouldn't be on the show. Watch Washington Journal on C-Span once in a while.]

"BLACK. WHITE." AND RACIAL STEREOTYPES.
Race Coarse
by Lee Siegel
"Black. White."
FX, Wednesdays, 10:00 p.m. EST

So yesterday I said Shelby Steele is a self-hating Black man...literally the second person I have ever applied the label to in life. And I posted my little analysis from Intrapolitics.org on a mailing list I've been on, like, forever.

Got an interesting response:

I am much in agreement with you about Shelby & his views but (if you have not discussed this)...

What about Claude Steele and how did he turn out to have such a *different* take on things (his study of stereotype threat, etc.)... This deserves much consideration. Obviously when heredity is the same we must turn to environment. When environment is the same (until college I believe in this case) we must turn to... ?

My friend George, one of those damn liberal college professors, gave up a couple of links to their biographies. My response, without reading the links was:

Quote of note:

''Wives who work full time and have more progressive attitudes are more likely to be unhappy with the division of housework. And that spells trouble for them and their marriages." The best marriages, he says, are not just those in which men do more emotional work than they might choose, but those in which women ''make an effort to expect less" in household sharing.

...What if women had never raised expectations? Feminists began pushing men for more openness and family involvement a generation ago. Wilcox acknowledges, ''Men who have taken that message are the men who are most likely to have happy wives."

Progressive women pressed, demanded -- dare I say nagged? -- for the benefits that are now also reaped by more traditional wives. And let's remember how many husbands have already become full and equal partners in their family lives.

...So the question is not whether women should lower their expectations. It's whether men will kick it up another notch.

Redefining marital happiness
By Ellen Goodman | March 17, 2006

I HAVE A friend who taught her daughters to express their feminist views with men they dated. Her advice went roughly like this: Speak up, speak up, the only man you will scare off is your future ex-husband.

This was during the era when sociologists were warning uppity women that they might end up alone. They were expected to trim their ambitions for the sake of a wedding ring. My friend saw right past the marriage ceremony to the divorce decree.

Fast forward to a new study that carries another subtle message: Wives with high expectations of equal relationships may end up less happily married.

I actually though hard about the title.

"Theological education has a lot of uses, like a legal education does," said Barbara G. Wheeler, president of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York and director of its Center for the Study of Theological Education. "It's good to have people with a theological education doing lots of things. It's a perspective that helps."

I decided I'd rather have people who know how to think clearly about religion and matters of faith out amonst the hoi poloi, than running for office and by their presence igniting the ignorant ones they could have been teaching.

Students Flock to Seminaries, but Fewer See Pulpit in Future
By NEELA BANERJEE

I'm watching the whole Black. White. series because as a cure for arrogance. I think I have the same mentally wasting disease most Progressives had over the last few years...overlooking things that are obvious to your average person because you think they'd never be  [fill-in-the-blank] enough to do that...

You're likely to see a number of these short non-statements today. At least they're short enough that you can tell there's nothing more to them than what hits the RSS feed.

I'm in another deep think session...

I'm roughly in the middle of We Who Are Dark...reading through the chapter "Black Solidarity After Black Power," I found myself mentally writing responses to everyone's positions.

I read "Life Out of Context" in a two-three hours. It's not a conceptually dense book. The Covenant is next.

I'm trying to get a grip on what Black folks want. And it's pretty hard because all I got to work with is words. And we all know how dependable a gauge of reality those are. I've long understood the only dependable information you can draw from public statements made by people you don't know is, "This is what I want you to believe."

If you add that to an unsentimental assessment of humans, though, you can figure out a lot.

You realize this means there is no stable comminity in Iraq anymore, don't you?

Let's stipulate Bush's claim that the War on Terra is, in fact, a war...a "new kind of war."

Even the vocabulary of this war will be different. When we "invade the enemy's territory," we may well be invading his cyberspace. There may not be as many beachheads stormed as opportunities denied. Forget about "exit strategies"; we're looking at a sustained engagement that carries no deadlines. We have no fixed rules about how to deploy our troops; we'll instead establish guidelines to determine whether military force is the best way to achieve a given objective.

Doesn't that sound like the tactics Iraqi insurgents are using as well? Bush's protestations aside, we are seeing a civil war in Iraq...a new kind of civil war.

Kurds Destroy Shrine in Rage at Leadership
By ROBERT F. WORTH

HALABJA, Iraq, March 16 — For nearly two decades, Kurds have gathered peacefully in this mountainous corner of northern Iraq to commemorate one of the blackest days in their history. It was here that Saddam Hussein's government launched a poison gas attack that killed more than 5,000 people on March 16, 1988.

So it came as a shock when hundreds of stone-throwing protesters took to the streets here Thursday on the anniversary, beating back government guards to storm and destroy a museum dedicated to the memory of the Halabja attack.

There was a time when white folks thought the way to show they were close to Black folk was to tell a racial joke and survive. The white couple in Black. White. are of that persuasion.

I'm not going to report on this regular, but I'll watch it because I can't believe they'll show one family be so fucking ignorant and not catch the other out there somehow.

I wonder if white folks feel embarassed watching it.

"Could you ever find the love that you would not place yourself above?" - 22-20s, Shoot Your Gun

We had a well stacked audience again. I hope we shut up more this year. Last year, we talked a lot. It was our first time on stage and we felt like we had a whole lot to say so there wasn't much room for questions or interaction. This year, we wanted to let people talk to us, talk with us, talk at us if need be. It worked. I still worry that I might have talked too much and that my college diversity programming leadership training kicked in and I tried to lead the discussion instead of letting the amazing Lynne D Johnson do her thing. If I was a blabbermouth, I apologize.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

These measures recycle similar resolutions and bills proposed before the 2004 elections in the United States, but never put to a vote. Although I doubt the current measures will garner sufficient votes to pass, it is disquieting that they have attracted sizable support. And one not-so-small concern - they fuel the irrational fringe. A personal example. The U.S. Supreme Court's Marshal alerted Justice O'Connor and me to a February 28, 2005, web posting on a "chat" site. It opened:

Okay commandoes, here is your first patriotic assignment . . . an easy one. Supreme Court Justices Ginsburg and O'Connor have publicly stated that they use [foreign] laws and rulings to decide how to rule on American cases.

This is a huge threat to our Republic and Constitutional freedom. . . . If you are what you say you are, and NOT armchair patriots, then those two justices will not live another week.

Nearly a year has passed since that posting. Justice O'Connor, though to my great sorrow retired just last week from the Court's bench, remains alive and well. As for me, you can judge for yourself.

"We see child molestation on demand through streaming to chat rooms," she said. "The children are getting younger and the images are getting more and more violent and graphic."

Child porn ring transmitted acts live on Web: US
Mar 15, 4:26 PM (ET)
By Andrew Stern

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. and Canadian authorities said on Wednesday they had cracked an international child pornography network that in some cases transmitted molestations live over the Internet.

"These are the worst imaginable forms of child pornography," said U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, adding that one case involved the abuse of a toddler less than 18 month old.

More specifically, these folks.

When I saw the article under discussion yesterday, it was just before I had to go out. It's been pulled because it was the single most disgusting piece or racist pandering I've seen since Shelby Steele's latest.

Always looking for the pony
by Goldy, 03/15/2006, 9:35 PM

Gee, I sure hope longtime Kitsap Peninsula columnist Adele Fergusen is suffering from senile dementia… because I’d hate to think such wrong-headed sentiments could come from somebody in their right mind.

The pony hidden in slavery is the fact that it was the ticket to America for black people. I have long urged blacks to consider their presence here as the work of God, who wanted to bring them to this raw, new country and used slavery to achieve it. A harsh life, to be sure, but many immigrants suffered hardships and indignations as indentured servants. Their descendants rose above it. You don’t hear them bemoaning their forebears’ life the way some blacks can’t rise above the fact theirs were slaves.

Ironically, these shockingly unselfconscious comments come from a column intended to persuade African Americans to join Fergusen in voting Republican. “Why do blacks continue to support Democrats?” she boldly asks.

Well… um… maybe Fergie, because angry, old, shriveled-up Republicans like you are a bunch of fucking racists

Goldy from HorsesAss.Org here gets the gold star for saving the vile pice of shit as a PDF, as does Darrly at Hominid Views for saving it as a jpg.

Remember Ronald Reagan’s story about the kid who had to shovel a huge pile of manure? He went about it with such joy he was asked why and said, “With all that manure, there’s got to be a pony in there somewhere.”

God, she's more senile than Reagan was. As, apparently, arethe editors of the Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal which published this tripe.

Don't mistake that title for a statement of approval.

Impeachment is a shortcut for oversight

Since talk of impeachment is in the air, it seems incumbent on all vocal critics of the president to go on the record with their points of view on this momentous question. So let me devote this column to explaining why I think it’s a bad idea on both policy and political grounds.

First:

...So that’s my take on what impeachment is for and why the current situation doesn’t call for it: Impeachment is for a president who won’t allow Congress or the courts to exercise their constitutional powers. But we’re not there yet because Congress hasn’t tried.

If you're angry at Bush, remember that without his enablers he couldn't have forced all these errors.

In a Word...Incompetent

President Bush's declining image also is reflected in the single-word descriptions people use to describe their impression of the president. Three years ago, positive one-word descriptions of Bush far outnumbered negative ones. Over the past two years, the positive-negative balance has been roughly equal. But the one-word characterizations have turned decidedly negative since last July.

Currently, 48% use a negative word to describe Bush compared with just 28% who use a positive term, and 10% who use neutral language.

The changing impressions of the president can best be viewed by tracking over time how often words come up in these top-of-the-mind associations. Until now, the most frequently offered word to describe the president was "honest," but this comes up far less often today than in the past. Other positive traits such as "integrity" are also cited less, and virtually no respondent used superlatives such as "excellent" or "great" ­ terms that came up fairly often in previous surveys.

The Quote of note comes from "The Torn-Up Credit Card Application."

Every credit card application you get is now like a villain from a suspense thriller. If you don't figure out how to completely destroy it, it may come back to terrorize you in the sequel.

Having nothin' ta do with nothin', check the comment styling on the site linked below. That's right cute...I may steal it for Intrapolitics.org.

Anyway...

Even torn-up credit card applications aren't safe
Posted: Tuesday, March 14 at 06:00 am CT by Bob Sullivan

What if a desperate identity thief digging through your trash found a credit card application ripped into little pieces, taped it back together, filled it out and mailed it in?  Would he get the credit card?

The answer, according to one man's experiment, is clearly yes.

Quote of note:

ANIMALS IN WARFARE

WWII: Attach a bomb to a cat and drop it from a dive-bomber on to Nazi ships. The cat, hating water, will "wrangle" itself on to enemy ship's deck. In tests cats became unconscious in mid-air

WWII: Attach incendiaries to bats. Induce hibernation and drop them from planes. They wake up, fly into factories etc and blow up. Failed to wake from hibernation and fell to death

Vietnam War: Dolphins trained to tear off diving gear of Vietcong divers and drag them to interrogation. Later, syringes placed on dolphin flippers to inject carbon dioxide into divers, who explode. About 40 divers thought to have been killed

Pentagon plans cyber-insect army
By Gary Kitchener
BBC News

Britain warns US over jet software codes
£12bn Joint Strike Fighter order could be scrapped
Matt Chapman, vnunet.com 15 Mar 2006

The UK has warned America that it will cancel its £12bn order for the Joint Strike Fighter if the US does not hand over full access to the computer software code that controls the jets.

Lord Drayson, minister for defence procurement, told the The Daily Telegraph that the planes were useless without control of the software as they could effectively be "switched off" by the Americans without warning.

"We do expect this technology transfer to take place. But if it does not take place we will not be able to purchase these aircraft," said Lord Drayson.

DHS Gets Another F in Computer Security
Annual 'Report Card' Contends Many Key Agencies Don't Adequately Protect Networks
By Brian Krebs
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 15, 2006; 5:00 PM

Most federal agencies that play key roles in the war on terror are doing a dismal job of protecting their computers and information networks from hackers and viruses, according to portions of a report to be released by a key congressional oversight committee Thursday.

The Department of Homeland Security, which is charged with setting the government's cyber security agenda, earned a grade of F for the third straight year from the House Government Reform Committee. Other agencies whose failing marks went unchanged from 2004 include the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, State, Health and Human Services, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs.

If Shelby Steel is the best Black Conservatives have to offer, I'll pass

You know, after dismembering his last appearance in OpinionJournal, an appearance so poorly executed it took three posts to cover it, I thought he'd at least try to do better.

Then I remembered his target audience. Speaking of which, we haven't heard much from Thomas Sowell since his book suggesting Black culture learned its bad stuff from redneck culture.

Anyway, Shelby Steele has earned another visit from the Drop Squad.

Senate G.O.P. Blocks Tight Budget Rule
By CARL HULSE

...In the first of several politically charged budget and spending issues confronting Congress this week, the Senate rejected on a 50-to-50 tie a proposal to restore what are known as "pay-go" rules, a requirement that tax cuts and some new spending be approved by 60 votes or offset by budget savings or revenue increases.

...But Republicans said the push to add the rules to the budget was a back-door effort to make it harder to extend President Bush's tax cuts.

"The practical effect of this is to raise taxes," said Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire and chairman of the Budget Committee.

After all, we let Congress lie to us.

They should change their motto to "The Certifiable State."

Indeed, JAILers are brimming with confidence that they'll win in South Dakota this fall, and around the country beyond. Writes Branson: "The People are slowly waking up to realize who the Enemy is—and it isn't Bin Laden."

Rushmore to Judgment
South Dakota ups the ante in the national war over judges.
By Bert Brandenburg
Posted Tuesday, March 14, 2006, at 4:25 PM ET

America's judges would like to write off last year's anti-court orgy as a political spasm. Tom ("Judges need to be intimidated") DeLay is on the back bench, the testy Supreme Court confirmation hearings are over, and the judge in Terri Schiavo's case no longer needs a deputy to escort him every time he walks his dog.

Courtesy of Liberal Oasis.

Here’s the list of Dem and Independent Senators who backed censure for Clinton (S. Res. 44 in the 106th Congress) and have yet to back censure for Bush:

Daniel Akaka
Max Baucus
Byron Dorgan
Dick Durbin
Dianne Feinstein
Daniel Inouye
Jim Jeffords
Ted Kennedy
John Kerry*
Herb Kohl
Mary Landrieu
Carl Levin
Joe Lieberman
Blanche Lincoln
Barbara Mikulski
Patty Murray
Jack Reed
Harry Reid
Jay Rockefeller
Chuck Schumer
Ron Wyden

The four GOPers who backed censure for Clinton are:

Pete Domenici
Mitch Mcconnell
Gordon Smith
Olympia Snowe

*LiberalOasis was told by a Kerry staffer that Kerry supported the Feingold resolution, yet Kerry has not made any formal statements and he ducked reporters’ questions about it yesterday.

For the record, it's here. But that's not what this post is about.

Everything you ever wanted to know about how our government and media work

This Feingold Censure Resolution is unmaking the hideous underbelly of almost every Washington institution as vividly as anything that can be recalled. Each of the rotted Beltway branches is playing so true to form that the distinct forms of corruption and dishonesty which characterize each of them are standing nakedly revealed. As ugly of a sight as it is, it is highly instructive to watch it all unfold.

...So, to summarize what our survey reveals: We have Democrats running and hiding, afraid to stand up to the President even when he gets caught breaking the law. We have the media mindlessly reporting GOP talking points even when they are factually false and when the falsehood could be easily verified with about 60 seconds of research. And we have Republicans accusing those few Democrats who are willing to criticize the Leader of being on the side of Terrorists, while the media passes along those false accusations without comment and Democrats run away and hide some more, never showing any offense or anger at all from watching Republicans accuse them of treason.

That's our system of government, in a nutshell. These events over the last 24 hour news cycle, by themselves, would be sufficient to teach a Civics class how our national political institutions work right now.

VERY interesting editorial.

One of the hottest political science papers floating around the political world and the Web comes close to solving the mystery of how Democrats can do so well in certain well-off places and still not be the party of the rich.

The paper has a fetching title: "Rich state, poor state, red state, blue state: What's the matter with Connecticut?" Dr. Seuss, who wrote "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish," meets Tom Frank, the author of the influential book "What's the Matter With Kansas?"

The authors -- Andrew Gelman of Columbia University, Boris Shor of the University of Chicago, Joseph Bafumi of Dartmouth and David Park of Washington University in St. Louis -- show, through careful statistical analysis, how several things can be true at the same time.