Took a few days off from the Dose, hoping the news would get better....ha! Anyway some interesting videos today.....
1/ Excellent Paul Krugman column on how the Paul Ryan budget is and will be a disaster for Republicans....
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Medicare and Mediscares
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: May 26, 2011
Yes, Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, is a sore loser. Why do you ask?
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Paul Krugman
Related
Times Topic: Medicare
Related in Opinion
Op-Ed Contributor: Squandering Medicare’s Money (May 26, 2011)
Readers' Comments
"Ryan’s plan is a shell game at bestJohn L, Manhattan
Another Reaganesque supply side quest
To take from the poor
To give the rich more
Is rapaciousness we should detest."
To be sure, Mr. Ryan had reason to be upset after Tuesday’s special election in New York’s 26th Congressional District. It’s a very conservative district, so much so that last year the Republican candidate took 76 percent of the vote. Yet on Tuesday, Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, took the seat, with a campaign focused squarely on Mr. Ryan’s plan to dismantle Medicare and replace it with a voucher system.
How did Ms. Hochul pull off this upset? The Wisconsin congressman blamed Democrats’ willingness to “shamelessly distort and demagogue the issue, trying to scare seniors to win an election,” and he predicted that by November of next year “the American people are going to know they’ve been lied to.”
You can understand Mr. Ryan’s bitterness. He has, after all, experienced quite a comedown over the course of the past seven weeks. Until his Medicare plan was rolled out in early April he had spent months bathing in warm approbation from many pundits, who had decided to anoint him as an icon of fiscal responsibility. And the plan itself received rapturous praise in the first couple of days after its release.
Then people who actually know how to read a budget proposal started looking at the plan. And that’s when everything started to fall apart.
Mr. Ryan may claim — and he may even believe — that he’s facing a backlash because his opponents are lying about his proposals. But the reality is that the Ryan plan is turning into a political disaster for Republicans, not because the plan’s critics are lying about it, but because they’re describing it accurately.
Take, for example, the statement that the Ryan plan would end Medicare as we know it. This may have Republicans screaming “Mediscare!” but it’s the absolute truth: The plan would replace our current system, in which the government pays major health costs, with a voucher system, in which seniors would, in effect, be handed a coupon and told to go find private coverage.
The new program might still be called Medicare — hey, we could replace government coverage of major expenses with an allowance of two free aspirins a day, and still call it “Medicare” — but it wouldn’t be the same program. And if the cost estimates of the Congressional Budget Office are at all right, the inadequate size of the vouchers — which by 2030 would cover only about a third of seniors’ health costs — would leave many if not most older Americans unable to afford essential care.
If anyone is lying here, it’s Mr. Ryan himself, who has claimed that his plan would give seniors the same kind of coverage that members of Congress receive — an assertion that is completely false.
And, by the way, the claim that the plan would keep Medicare as we know it intact for Americans currently 55 or older is highly dubious. True, that’s what the plan promises, but if you think about the political dynamics that would emerge once Americans born a year or two too late realize how much better a deal slightly older Americans are getting, you realize that this is a promise unlikely to be fulfilled.
Still, are Democrats doing a bad thing by telling the truth about the Ryan plan? “If you demagogue entitlement reform,” says Mr. Ryan, “you’re hastening a debt crisis; you’re bringing about Medicare’s collapse.” Maybe he should have a word with his colleagues who greeted the modest, realistic cost control efforts in the Affordable Care Act with cries of “death panels.”
Anyway, the underlying premise behind statements like that is the assumption that the Ryan plan represents a serious effort to come to grip with America’s long-run fiscal problems. But what became clear soon after that plan was unveiled was that it was no such thing. In fact, it wasn’t really a deficit-reduction plan. Once you remove the absurd assumptions — discretionary spending, including defense, falling to Calvin Coolidge levels, and huge tax cuts for corporations and the rich, with no loss in revenue? — it’s highly questionable whether it would reduce the deficit at all.
What the Ryan plan is, instead, is an attempt to snooker Americans into accepting a standard right-wing wish list under the guise of deficit reduction. And Americans, it seems, have seen through the deception.
So what happens now? The fight will shift from Medicare to Medicaid — a program that has become an essential lifeline for many Americans, especially children, but which in the Ryan plan is slated for a 44 percent cut in federal aid over the next decade. At this point, however, I’m optimistic that this initiative will also run aground on popular disapproval.
What of Mr. Ryan’s hope that voters will realize that they’ve been lied to? Well, as I see it, that’s already happening. And it’s bad news for the G.O.P.
2/ Fascinating behind the scenes look at how Fox News operates under it's imperious boss Roger Ailes.....for news junkies and anyone who ever wonders does Fox corporately feel any shame or remorse about all of the lies and manipulation they inflict on the right wing stupids....the answer is no, it's good business.....
The Elephant in the Green Room
The circus Roger Ailes created at Fox News made his network $900 million last year. But it may have lost him something more important: the next election.
- By Gabriel Sherman
- Published May 22, 2011
 |
Photo-illustration by Darrow |
On Monday afternoon, March 28, Fox News chairman Roger Ailes summoned Glenn Beck to a meeting in his office on the second floor of News Corp.’s midtown headquarters to discuss his future at the network. Ailes had spent the better part of the weekend at his Putnam County estate thinking about how to stage-manage Beck’s departure from Fox, which at that point was all but inevitable. But, as with everything concerning Glenn Beck, the situation was a mess, simultaneously a negotiation and a therapy session. Beck had already indicated he was willing to walk away—“I don’t want to do cable news anymore,” he had told Ailes. But moving him out the door without collateral damage was proving difficult.
Ailes had hired Beck in October 2008 to reenergize Fox’s audience after Obama’s election, and he’d succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest hopes, tapping deep wells of resentment and igniting them into a vast, national conflagration. The problem was that it had almost engulfed Fox itself. Beck was huge and uncontrollable, and some of Fox’s other big names seemed diminished by comparison—and were speaking up about it. Beck seemed to many to be Fox News’s id made visible, saying things—Obama is a racist, Nazi tactics are progressive tactics—dredged from the right-wing subconscious. These were things that weren’t supposed to be said, even at Fox, and they were consuming the brand. Ailes had built his career by artfully tending the emotional undercurrents of both politics and entertainment, using them to power ratings and political careers; now they were out of his control.
“Let’s make a deal,” Ailes told Beck flatly.
During a 45-minute conversation, the two men agreed on the terms: Beck would give up his daily 5 p.m. program and appear in occasional network “specials”—but even that didn’t solve their problem. Tensions flared over how many specials he would appear in. Fox wanted six, Beck’s advisers wanted four. At another meeting, Beck choked up; he and Ailes had always had a bond. And when Ailes thought Beck’s advisers were jerking him around, he threatened to blow up the talks. “I’m just going to fire him and issue a press release,” he later snapped to a Fox executive.
3/ Wonderful video - "Pendulum Waves", quite beautiful.......2 minutes....
Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and (seemingly) random motion.
4/ The recession is affecting every business in the US, even the big law firms....they have created a two tier system of pay just like many other businesses......and on goes the destruction of the middle class....
WHEELING, W.Va. — The nation’s biggest law firms are creating a second tier of workers, stripping pay and prestige from one of the most coveted jobs in the business world.
Jeff Swensen for The New York Times
Heather Boylan Clark and Mark Thompson took the nonpartner track at the law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.
Working for Less
Off the Partner Track
This is the first article in a series examining how new workers are being hired at lower pay and benefits.
Readers' Comments
"Nobody has told the law schools that the $160,000 jobs are dying out. Tuition has skyrocketed and wages are collapsing. Take it from a 2007 graduate, get thee to plumbing school. "Joseph, San Francisco
Make no mistake: These are full-fledged lawyers, not paralegals, and they do the same work traditional legal associates do. But they earn less than half the pay of their counterparts — usually around $60,000 — and they know from the outset they will never make partner.
Some of the lawyers who have taken these new jobs are putting the best face on their reduced status. “To me there’s not much of a difference between what I’m doing now and what I would be doing in a partner-track job,” said Mark Thompson, 29, who accepted a non-partner-track post at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe when he could not find a traditional associate job. “I still feel like I’m doing pretty high-level work — writing briefs, visiting client sites, prepping witnesses for hearings.”
Asked whether he hopes someday to switch onto the partner track, given the higher pay for this same work, he is diplomatic. “I’m leaving all my possibilities open,” he said.
Lawyers like Mr. Thompson are part of a fundamental shift in the 50-year-old business model for big firms.
Besides making less, these associates work fewer hours and travel less than those on the grueling partner track, making these jobs more family-friendly. And this new system probably prevents jobs from going offshore.
But as has been the case in other industries, a two-tier system threatens to breed resentments among workers in both tiers, given disparities in pay and workload expectations. And as these programs expand to more and more firms, they will eliminate many of the lucrative partner-track positions for which law students suffer so much debt.
5/ Simple Plan with Natasha Bedingfield with "Jet Lag", and the video was shot in quite a modern airport [must be foreign]....
Nice new rock song......decent band, and of course Natasha......
6/ Excellent article from Robyn Blumer about the war, yes war the Koch brothers are waging on the truth. The purchase of the economics department of FSU is the tip of the iceberg......
Well worth reading.....
I imagine the tycoons Charles and David Koch must have a war room or more precisely a "war on liberal ideas" room, where plans are laid for well-funded assaults on progressives. Their targets are easy to guess: Democrats, unions, public school teachers, trial lawyers, environmentalists, the judiciary and academia. Like some deranged game ofRisk, the brothers strategically deploy their riches to destroy, marginalize, subvert or infiltrate each of these constituent groups, with the result being that poorly funded progressives are overrun as easily as Poland.
The latest bombshell is from St. Petersburg Times writer Kris Hundley, who exposed a 2008 agreement between the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and Florida State University for $1.5 million. The money was to fund faculty positions in a new program promoting "political economy and free enterprise." It came with the unconscionable condition that the foundation's handpicked advisory committee hold veto power during the hiring process.
Disgraceful, yes, but this is just the newest revelation in what has been a well-reported mission by the Koch brothers to use their vast wealth, estimated at $22 billion each, to alter America's thinking and turn average people against every government program that makes their lives better and more secure.
If you're reading "tea party" here, you've got that right — call them the Kochs' boots on the ground. But the Koch brothers know that they can't rely solely on America's angry, gullible, know-nothings to change the national direction. Their ultra-conservatism needs a veneer of intellectual credibility, which is why for decades the brothers have lavished resources on a host of think tanks and academic institutions that are willing to make a case for anything a billionaire without a conscience would want.
And it's paid off handsomely. Policies on lowering taxes on wealth, dismantling Medicare, extinguishing labor rights and trashing environmental regulation, have been finding their way into political action at the federal and state levels ever since Reagan.
This year has been a banner one for the Kochs. We've seen frontal political assaults on their entire enemies list, with Republican governors and legislatures, including in Florida, going after public sector unions, the independence of the judiciary, public school teachers, you name it. The brothers have successfully insinuated their extreme brand of libertarianism into Republican DNA.
7/ Although he's a blatant bigot he gets away with it because of his.......not quite sure exactly....maybe it's because he's British......you'll remember this chap as soon as you see him......
Pat Condell with his commentary on Bin Laden.....3 minutes....
8/ David Brooks, the conservative columnist for the Times, likes the way Britain functions in comparison to the chaos of our political system. One thing I can say from personal observation is that when politicians of either party are interviewed on British TV they don't get away with the blatant lying American pols do with our spineless corporate media.....
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Britain Is Working
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: May 23, 2011
London
Josh Haner/The New York Times
David Brooks
David Brooks’s Blog
The intellectual, cultural and scientific findings that land on the columnist’s desk nearly every day.
Readers' Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
In 1920, Winston Churchill’s mother held a dinner for M. Paul Cambon to celebrate the end of his 20 years as the French ambassador to Britain. One of the guests asked Cambon what he had seen in his two decades in London.
“I have witnessed an English revolution more profound and searching than the French Revolution itself,” Cambon replied. “The governing class have been almost entirely deprived of political power and to a very large extent of their property and estates; and this has been accomplished almost imperceptibly and without the loss of a single life.”
Buried in that answer is a picture of how politics should work. Britain faced an enormous task: To move from an aristocratic political economy to a democratic, industrial one. This transition was made gradually, without convulsion, with both parties playing a role.
This wasn’t because the political leaders were so brilliant. They simply responded to a series of immediate problems. Nor was it because they were postpartisan angels. The parties fought vigorously.
It’s just that the system worked. Each party took different whacks at pieces of the great national problem, depending on its interests. Opposing parties, when it was their turn in power, quietly consolidated the best of what the other had achieved. Gradually, through constructive competition, the country quarreled its way forward.
The United Kingdom seems to be in the middle of that sort of constructive quarrel now. Usually when I travel from Washington to Britain I move from less gloom to more gloom. But this time the mood is reversed. The British political system is basically functional while the American system is not.
As the British politician Oliver Letwin has argued, a generation of misrule between 1945 and 1979 left the U.K. with three large problems: a stifled industrial economy; an overcentralized welfare state; and an enervated people, some of whom are locked in cycles of poverty.
By liberating the economy, Margaret Thatcher tackled the first of these problems, and subsequent Labour governments consolidated her gains. Meanwhile, a series of governments have been fitfully tackling problems two and three, reforming the welfare state and energizing the populace.
In conversation, the Conservative and Labour leaders are happy to rubbish each other, but what’s striking to an outsider is how much their concerns overlap. A series of governments, going all the way back to John Major’s administration in the ’90s, have tried to decentralize power, come up with new ways to measure government performance, reduce welfare dependency and improve early childhood programs.
Many of the programs have failed, but the general direction is clear: the move from a centralized, industrial-era state to a networked, postindustrial one.
The momentum is especially evident just now. Prime Minister David Cameron is a skilled politician who dominates the scene. His agenda doesn’t merely touch his party’s hot buttons, but moves in many directions at once.
His austerity program includes tax increases as well as spending cuts. He’s vigorously protecting the foreign aid budget as he cuts almost everywhere else. He has aggressively reformed welfare and education while retreating on health service reform.
By balancing his agenda, by conveying a sense of momentum, by insisting on fiscal responsibility, he’s remained popular. His party did well in the recent local elections, even amid the fiscal pain.
Britain is also blessed with a functioning political culture. It is dominated by people who live in London and who have often known each other since prep school. This makes it gossipy and often incestuous.
But the plusses outweigh the minuses. The big newspapers still set the agenda, not cable TV or talk radio. If the quintessential American pol is standing in his sandbox screaming affirmations to members of his own tribe, the quintessential British pol is standing across a table arguing face to face with his opponents.
British leaders and pundits know their counterparts better. They are less likely to get away with distortions and factual howlers. They are less likely to believe the other party is homogenously evil. They are more likely to learn from a wide range of people. When they do hate, their hatreds are more likely to be personal and less likely to take on the tenor of a holy war.
The British political system gives the majority party much greater power than any party could hope to have in the U.S., but cultural norms make the political debate less moralistic and less absolutist. The British press also do an amazing job of policing corruption. The media go into a frenzy at the merest whiff of malfeasance. Last week, for example, a minister was pummeled for saying clumsy things about rape.
Tuesday, as President Obama visits London, we will get a glimpse of the British political culture. We Americans have no right to feel smug or superior.
9/ Well it's almost over - the final Harry Potter is coming out soon....here's the new 2 minute trailer.....can't wait!!!
Warner Bros. has released the latest spot for their epic wizard finale, which features the final face off between the absolute good of Harry Potter and the pure evil of Voldemort. Directed by David Yates, the film strikes a tone of bleak darkness, yet contains the thread of hope that The Boy Who Lived can save the world, once and for all, from the Dark Arts uprising.
10/ Interesting commentary on the state of the Republican Party and how it's ideas and ideology are driven by the far, far right and the Tea Party dummies....
What Saxby Chambliss and Ronald Reagan have in common
2:45 pm May 20, 2011, by ctucker
WASHINGTON — For the crime of attempted compromise, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) is being hounded by a furious Republican right-wing that considers civil conversation with Democrats a suggestion of weakness, if not a sign of outright capitulation. Though Chambliss has spent years in service to conservative causes, his membership in the now-fracturing Gang of Six — a bi-partisan group of senators who have attempted to hammer out a deal on the federal deficit — has subjected him to harsh criticism among ultra-conservative purists.
For his work on deficit reduction and for other alleged heresies, Chambliss has earned the ire of Erick Erickson, a hyper-conservative Georgia blogger and talk radio host, who wants to defeat the senator in 2014. “Tea party activists in Georgia who want to make a big impact have two years to organize, mobilize, and lay the groundwork to get rid of Saxby Chambliss . . .Now, why Saxby?. . .Saxby has consistently stabbed conservatives in the back and it is time to take him out,” Erickson wrote earlier this month.
Chambliss is not a man you’d mistake for a moderate. He opposes allowing gays to serve openly in the military, opposes reproductive rights and dutifully serves the National Rifle Association. Still, he has been openly rebuked for daring to enter discussions that might lead to a deal with Democrats. (Let me emphasize “might.” Now that Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, another conservative Republican, has dropped out of the Gang of Six, the odds of a deal have plummeted.)
This is what it has come to: A fundamental principle of democratic governance — negotiating with political opponents in good faith — has come under attack from an irrational ultra-conservative base that demands its own way while claiming to champion the U.S. Constitution. They dismiss the democratic process if it produces a result they oppose. They denounce tyranny — unless it is in service of their own ideals.
11/ A rare piece of political theater - an idiot Republican Congressman accuses Elizabeth Warren of lying....not a good idea....nice video of her getting pissed, comes about the one minute mark of the clip........
Elizabeth Warren gets mad
A House Republican attack dog accuses the Harvard law professor of lying. She is not amused VIDEO
Elizabeth Warren, interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, appearing before the House Oversight Committee on May 24, 2011.
House Republicans really, really don't like Elizabeth Warren, the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Judging by the latest development, the feeling is likely mutual. At a hearing of the House Oversight Committee held Tuesday, apparently for the sole purpose of allowing Chairman Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., the opportunity to browbeat and interrupt Warren, viewers got a rare opportunity to see what the "feisty" Oklahoman looks like when she is royally pissed off.
12/ Here's an "aw shucks" story of a dog that was sucked into a tornado and crawled home on two broken legs three weeks later........but the owners....sheesh [that beard?]......2 minute video clip....
Todays video - New guy in prison
Todays short bonus joke
A truly touching story....I met a girl in the park the other evening. There was an instant spark between us and she immediately dropped to the grass at my feet. As we lay making love, I thought "These taser guns are well worth the money".
Todays oldies but goodies jokes....
These great questions and answers are from the days when ' Hollywood Squares' game show responses were spontaneous, not scripted, as they are now. Peter Marshall was the host asking the questions, of course..
Q.. Paul, what is a good reason for pounding meat?
A. Paul Lynde: Loneliness!
(The audience laughed so long and so hard it took up almost 15 minutes of the show!)
Q. Do female frogs croak?
A. Paul Lynde: If you hold their little heads under water long enough.
Q. If you're going to make a parachute jump, at least how high should you be
A. Charley Weaver: Three days of steady drinking should do it.
Q. True or False, a pea can last as long as 5,000 years...
A. George Gobel: Boy, it sure seems that way sometimes.
Q. You've been having trouble going to sleep. Are you probably a man or a woman?
A.. Don Knotts: That's what's been keeping me awake.
Q. According to Cosmopolitan, if you meet a stranger at a party and you think that he is attractive, is it okay to come out and ask him if he's married?
A.. Rose Marie: No wait until morning.
Q. Which of your five senses tends to diminish as you get older?
A. Charley Weaver: My sense of decency.. <span style="font-weight:bold;font-size:18pt;color:blue;font- style:itali
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