If you have the time, read #2 about our healthcare system......excellent.......
And don't miss #8.....
1/ The ever astute Frank Rich comments on the political news of the week......why the Republicans are suddenly making an about face on gay marriage.....
And he opines on the Oscars, Bob Woodward and Chris Christie.....
Excellent as always......
Every week, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich talks with assistant editor Eric Benson about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: Republicans' johnny-come-lately gay-marriage support, Chris Christie's CPAC-less future, and the Chicago Oscars.
More than 100 prominent conservatives — among them Jon Huntsman, a bevy of Bushies, and two GOP members of congress — signed an amicus brief supporting same-sex marriage that will be filed to the Supreme Court this week. Former McCain strategist Steve Schmidt told the Times, "The die is cast on this issue." Does this push indicate a real change on this issue within the GOP? Or is it merely a token gesture from marginalized moderates?
Schmidt is right: The die is cast on this issue, and the signatories are belatedly getting ahead of history before it flattens them like a tank. Generational turnover alone assumes gay marriage will be a done deal in America; public opinion on this issue has moved faster than any civil-rights battle in our history. So excuse me for being the skunk at the party, but where were these latently brave conservatives when their stand might have made a much bigger difference in bringing equality to gay Americans? Ken Mehlman, the Bush-era Republican chairman, deserves credit for his activist stance on marriage once he left politics and came out as gay (in 2010). But that doesn’t erase the ugly history that came before: He stood idly by when Bush and Rove vilified gay men and women to scare up votes during the 2000 and 2004 campaigns — a strategy that whipped up further bigotry against vulnerable gay citizens even as the country was still in the shadow of the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard. (And as I have written before, we should not forget the blot on Bill Clinton’s presidency, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, passed with votes from Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, among other liberals; that law continues to deny equal treatment to gays who are now legally married.)
2/ We are all aware that medical costs are killing this country, but noone can explain why in simple, clear terms. The truth is our dysfunctional system has many things wrong with it, but the prime issue is political - Congress has too much say in what goes on, and they have tied the hands of Medicare and other government programs in favour of the medical corporations that are increasingly dominating medicine, and how it is practiced. It's not even the insurance companies who are the major villains any more......
If you want a primer on what is wrong, read this long article from Time Magazine, impeccably researched and very insightful. It will give you the background to understand what our politicians are really saying when they talk about healthcare.
If there is one thing I got from this story, it's that if Congress ever get's control of Medicare we are all doomed......
Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us
By Steven BrillFeb. 20, 2013
Follow@TIMEHealthland
Corrections Appended: February 26, 2013
1. Routine Care, Unforgettable Bills
When Sean Recchi, a 42-year-old from Lancaster, Ohio, was told last March that he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his wife Stephanie knew she had to get him to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Stephanie’s father had been treated there 10 years earlier, and she and her family credited the doctors and nurses at MD Anderson with extending his life by at least eight years.
When Sean Recchi, a 42-year-old from Lancaster, Ohio, was told last March that he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his wife Stephanie knew she had to get him to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Stephanie’s father had been treated there 10 years earlier, and she and her family credited the doctors and nurses at MD Anderson with extending his life by at least eight years.
Because Stephanie and her husband had recently started their own small technology business, they were unable to buy comprehensive health insurance. For $469 a month, or about 20% of their income, they had been able to get only a policy that covered just $2,000 per day of any hospital costs. “We don’t take that kind of discount insurance,” said the woman at MD Anderson when Stephanie called to make an appointment for Sean.
Stephanie was then told by a billing clerk that the estimated cost of Sean’s visit — just to be examined for six days so a treatment plan could be devised — would be $48,900, due in advance. Stephanie got her mother to write her a check. “You do anything you can in a situation like that,” she says. The Recchis flew to Houston, leaving Stephanie’s mother to care for their two teenage children.
About a week later, Stephanie had to ask her mother for $35,000 more so Sean could begin the treatment the doctors had decided was urgent. His condition had worsened rapidly since he had arrived in Houston. He was “sweating and shaking with chills and pains,” Stephanie recalls. “He had a large mass in his chest that was … growing. He was panicked.”
Nonetheless, Sean was held for about 90 minutes in a reception area, she says, because the hospital could not confirm that the check had cleared. Sean was allowed to see the doctor only after he advanced MD Anderson $7,500 from his credit card. The hospital says there was nothing unusual about how Sean was kept waiting. According to MD Anderson communications manager Julie Penne, “Asking for advance payment for services is a common, if unfortunate, situation that confronts hospitals all over the United States.”
3/ Scary implications come from this two minute clip of a psychic in Belgium reading minds, with details of peoples' lives only they would know.....and he reveals the secret of how he does it at the end.....
Very good......
4/ It took most observers of right wing politics by surprise when Karl Rove announced he would try to make sure candidates for the 2014 elections weren't religious whackos like Todd Aitken, or Richard Mourdock and he was soundly condemned by most of the right wing media......but what if he had a plan?
Great article for followers of politics....
What in the hell was Karl Rove thinking? This has been the question on the minds of many political observers since the Republican super-strategist opened up a nasty new front in the ongoing civil war between his party’s purists and its pragmatists.
Glen Stubbe
The storm broke February 6, when Rove, via the front page of The New York Times, debuted his newest venture, the Conservative Victory Project: an aggressive battle plan for the midterms that involves his super PAC, American Crossroads, intervening in the GOP primaries to try to ensure that the strongest, most electable candidates—not necessarily the most ideologically pristine ones—prevail.
The plan itself seems sound. The widespread sense among Republicans is that the party blew an opportunity to retake the Senate last year as a result of several not-ready-for-primetime candidates—Todd “legitimate rape” Akin being the most notable—winning primaries. “We messed up five absolutely winnable races,” asserts former Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer (pointing to Indiana, Delaware, Nevada, Missouri, and Colorado). Staunch social conservative Ralph Reed, who keeps one foot in the GOP’s purist camp and one foot in its pragmatic camp, is also quick to acknowledge the need for better quality control: “It does the pro-family cause no good to have flawed candidates with serious candidate performance issues that end up making our issues look, mistakenly in my view, like they are a vulnerability.”
Unsurprisingly, however, the purist wing takes exception to all the finger pointing in its direction. And following the unveiling of Rove’s project, it went ballistic. Tea Party types, as well as conservative radio hosts like Mark Levin and Steve Deace, lined up to take their swings at Rove for plotting to marginalize conservatives and, as a seriously miffed Deace told me, “rubbing our noses in it publicly.” In The New York fricking Times, no less! “There will be no fixing this,” asserted Deace. “The civil war has been brewing in this party” for a couple of years now, he said, and people are operating with “short fuses.” “What Karl is providing is a face to our frustration.”
5/ Two of our favourite people in one video - how good does it get? Jon Stewart had Rachel Maddow on his show for the interview, and she was in court when the Supreme Court was hearing the Voting Rights Act.....her description of Scalia? A troll!
It's great to see two intelligent people having a rational discussion.....6 minutes.....
6/ Interesting new music video from Justin Timberlake "Suit and Tie", featuring his friend Jay-Z.
Shot in black and white, and directed by David Fincher, it's very atmospheric, channelling the music and feel of the 50's.....definitely different....
7/ I love what's going on with Mitch McConnell [aka "The Turtle"] - this ugly, treacherous scumbag is going to be facing Ashley Judd in 2014. She is a country star, and a lifelong Democrat but he is also under attack for his vow to block legislation to do anything about gun control so a group is advertising against him.....check out the 30 second ad......
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is hitting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell with a new salvo of gun control-focused TV ads ahead of this week’s Senate hearingson a so-called assault weapons ban.
The ban remains part of the post-Newtown, Conn., massacre discussion in Washington, albeit playing second (or third) fiddle to talk of universal background checks and magazine capacity bans, and the PCCC believes focusing on assault weapons is the right strategy.
The group is rolling out a $100,000 ad buy targeting McConnell on air in the Lexington, Louisville, Bowling Green, and Paducah broadcast markets in Kentucky and on cable in D.C. The TV ad features a Kentucky hunter claiming he doesn’t need an assault weapon for sport.
8/ We were privileged to have Leo Kottke perform in Mount Dora last weekend, and it was fabulous to see a world class guitarist live....in Mount Dora!
He was fantastic, a master of the 6 string and the [impossible to play] 12 string guitar......so when I saw the video below I thought of his performance......
Astonishing feat of animation...... you have never seen anything like this before......4 minutes.....
Well here is a report from someone in the cruise industry who was on the ship, an experienced passenger who gives us facts, which are a little more reasoned than the media coverage.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
One afternoon a lawyer was riding in his limousine when he saw two men along the road-side eating grass.
Disturbed, he ordered his driver to stop and got out to investigate.
He asked one man, "Why are you eating grass?"
"We don't have any money for food," the poor man replied. "We have to eat grass."
"Well, then, you can come with me to my house and I'll feed you, " the lawyer said.
"But sir, I have a wife and two children with me. They are over there, under that tree."
"Bring them along," the lawyer replied.
Turning to the other poor man he stated, "You may come with us, also." The second man, in a pitiful voice, then said, "But sir, I also have a wife and SIX children with me!"
"Bring them all as well," the lawyer answered.
They all entered the car, which was no easy task, even for a car as large as the limousine was.
Once under way, one of the poor fellows turned to the lawyer and said, "Sir, you are too kind."
"Thank you for taking all of us with you.
The lawyer replied, "Glad to do it. You'll really love my place. The grass is almost a foot high."
Come on now...you really didn't think there was such a thing as a heart-warming lawyer story...did you?
The technician examines the car and finds
After listening to CNN prattle endlessly about "putrid, fetid conditions where raw sewage was running down the walls" on Carnival Triumph, and then an independent guest on Fox News today saying "they endured five days of no food and sleeping in urine soaked halls" I have had enough.
Fortunately, a staff-member of our sister-site,CruiseReviews.com, was onboard the Carnival Triumph last week and has just reported to us his first-person account of what he experienced. Here you have an informed veteran cruise enthusiast, with a electrical engineering background, tell an informed reporter the exact details of conditions onboard.
Jim Copeland answers our questions below:
CruiseReviews: Jim… to the best of your knowledge what really happened to cripple Triumph?
Jim:At 5:20 am on Sunday, we were awakened by the calls of "Alpha Team to the Engine Control Room." This was a bit concerning but I have heard calls for Alpha Team before and nothing ever major came of it. But then about five minutes later another announcement came to move the gather point from "Stairway 20 to the Medical Area." Then the power went out for about 30 seconds and then came back on.
I was wide-awake now. The ship was still moving so I was hoping the power outages were temporary. The electrical engineering planner in me kicked in so I opened the safe to get my cash out just in case you needed power to open it. More announcements to coordinate the fire team were made, then they specifically asked the passengers NOT go to their muster stations. They had to make this announcement a few times - which suggests people were already gathering there
10/ Regular readers of DDD know I think Coca Cola products are dangerous chemical soup, full of sugar.....so I like this commercial brought to us from Coke Inc. in a parallel universe.....some good guys have taken a Coke commercial and redubbed it....
The truth for a change.....
11/ Excellent clip of Elizabeth Warren questioning Ben Bernanke in the Senate Banking Committee......
The issue she is asking about is that before the crash the big banks had "insurance" with companies like AIG that cost them about $80 billion a year.....since the crisis they have no insurance, but it is implied the Fed will bail them out ["too big to fail"], so they are getting $80 billion worth of benefits...for free.....
Enjoy this look at our Senator with cojones......4 minutes.....
Newly minted Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday showed why big banks are not her biggest fans, grilling Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke about the risks and fairness of having banks that are "too big to fail."
Warren (D-Mass.) questioned Bernanke during his latest semiannual appearance before the Senate Banking Committee to discuss the economy and monetary policy. Warren pressed the Fed chairman about whether the government would bail out the largest banks again, as it did during the financial crisis.
"We've now understood this problem for nearly five years," she said. "So when are we gonna get rid of 'too big to fail?'"
Warren also asked whether big banks should repay taxpayers for the billions of dollars they save in borrowing costs because of the credit market's belief that they won't be allowed to fail, repeatedly citing a recent Bloomberg View study estimating that the biggest banks essentially get a government subsidy of $83 billion a year, nearly matching their annual profits.
12/ The most offensive, yet not offensive joke ever.........Loius C. K. is a comedian, has his own show and specialises in saying things noone else will dare to say.......
Here is his routine "Being White"......2 minutes.....
13/ Do you like tuna? If you eat it in restaurants you should be careful, because the fake tuna some outlets are serving could give you an unusual morning after.....
Do you enjoy the taste of tuna? If you answered yes to that question, there’s a very large chance that you actually enjoy the taste of many bizarre and exotic imposter ‘fake tuna’ fish types that have been peddled and mislabeled by the seafood industry and restaurants alike — even a ‘snake mackerel’ fish linked to side effects like anal oil leakage.
The new genetic testing campaign kickstarted and funded by the nonprofit organization known as Oceana, a group whose mission statement involves protecting the world’s oceans, reveals that 59% of tuna is not only mislabeled but is almost entirely compromised of a fish once banned by the FDA. Sushi restaurants were the worst offenders by far, but the tests spanned throughout restaurants and grocery stores alike. Altogether, the findings oust over half of tuna fish as fraudulent.
As you can see for yourself in the report by Oceana, the numerical breakdown of tuna fraud (especially ‘white tuna’) paints a picture of just how far companies will go to deliver rubbish products and deceive the consumer:
- Between restaurants and grocery stories in the US alike, 59% overall of the tuna tested was definitely not tuna as found by genetic testing.
- Sushi restaurants had the worst record, with every single restaurant’s ‘tuna’ tested in major cities like DC, Chicago, Austin, and New York City coming back as fraudulent.
- A whopping 84% of ‘white tuna’ was actually escolar, the snake mackerel fish that causes oily anal leakage and was banned by the FDA until 1992. It is still banned in Japan, Italy, and requires warning labels regarding the leaky discharge in Canada, Sweden, and Denmark.
14/ Funny local news bloopers.......quite amusing......7 minutes......
15/ Marco Rubio is a nasty piece of work - don't be fooled by his weenie looks, he is a dedicated Tea Partier and as this good column from Robyn Blumner shows one of his goals is to dismantle public education......
Sen. Marco Rubio has so much star power at the moment his teeth seem to gleam when he smiles. With his Cuban-American heritage and youthful visage Rubio was the natural choice to deliver the Republican response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech. But his performance illustrates a point that Republicans don't seem to get: A new face doesn't improve bankrupt ideas.
One of those ideas is the undermining of public schools. Under the guise of helping lower-income parents, Rubio is offering the Educational Opportunities Act to move students from public to private schools, most of which are church-affiliated, at taxpayer expense. To get around church-state separation problems his plan would give taxpayers dollar-for-dollar federal tax credits for "donating" money to designated scholarship funds that would pay for private school education. Some would call that money laundering.
This is a tea partier's dream come true. It starves the federal treasury of tax revenue, funnels children into religious indoctrination, erodes support for public schools by having parents abandon them and, perhaps sweetest of all, harms all those progressives who have chosen to be public school teachers as well as their unions.
Todays video - the best marriage proposal ever.......a bit of rude Scottish humour......
Note - very rude!
Todays lawyer joke
One afternoon a lawyer was riding in his limousine when he saw two men along the road-side eating grass.
Disturbed, he ordered his driver to stop and got out to investigate.
He asked one man, "Why are you eating grass?"
"We don't have any money for food," the poor man replied. "We have to eat grass."
"Well, then, you can come with me to my house and I'll feed you, " the lawyer said.
"But sir, I have a wife and two children with me. They are over there, under that tree."
"Bring them along," the lawyer replied.
Turning to the other poor man he stated, "You may come with us, also." The second man, in a pitiful voice, then said, "But sir, I also have a wife and SIX children with me!"
"Bring them all as well," the lawyer answered.
They all entered the car, which was no easy task, even for a car as large as the limousine was.
Once under way, one of the poor fellows turned to the lawyer and said, "Sir, you are too kind."
"Thank you for taking all of us with you.
The lawyer replied, "Glad to do it. You'll really love my place. The grass is almost a foot high."
Come on now...you really didn't think there was such a thing as a heart-warming lawyer story...did you?
Todays teacher joke
The 6th grade science teacher, Mrs. Parks, asked her class, "Which human body part increases to ten times its size when stimulated?"
No one answered until little Mary stood up and said, "You should not be asking sixth-graders a question like that! I'm going to tell my parents, and they will go and tell the principal, who will then fire you!"
Mrs. Parks ignored her and asked the question again, "Which body part increases to 10 times its size when stimulated?"
Little Mary's mouth fell open. Then she said to those around her, "Boy, is she going to get in big trouble!"
The teacher continued to ignore her and said to the class, “Anybody?"
Finally, Billy stood up, looked around nervously, and said, "The body part that increases 10 times its size when stimulated is the pupil of the eye."Mrs. Parks said, "Very good, Billy," then turned to Mary and continued. "As for you, young lady, I have three things to say:"One, you have a dirty mind.Two, you didn't read your homework.And three, one day you are going to be very, very disappointed."
Todays blonde joke
Carolyn, a rich blondebuys a new automatic Jaguar XKR.She drives the car perfectly well during the day,but at night, the car just won't move at all.After trying to drive the car at night for aweek (but without any luck), she furiouslycalls the Jaguar dealers and they send out a mechanic.
nothing wrong with it.
So he turns to the blonde
and asks: "Ma'am, are you sure you are using theright gears?"Full of anger, the blonde replies:"You fool, you idiot, how on earth you could asksuch a question? I'm not stupid you know!Of course I am using the right gears;I use D during the day and N at night."
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