1/ Now the government is open, and default is not going to happen we all breathe a sigh of relief...right?
Not so fast.....Frank Rich with a signature story on the history of government shutdowns, and why this may happen again because a substantial minority of conservatives actually hate the gumment, and have repeatedly tried to cripple the system.....
The Furies Never EndThe shutdown crisis is nothing we haven’t seen before.A good portion of America has been trying to sabotage the government for almost our entire history.
The great government shutdown of 2013 was barely a day old, and already blue America was running out of comic put-downs to hurl at the House’s wrecking crew. Not content with “morons” and “dunderheads,” Jon Stewart coined new epithets for the occasion (e.g., “bald-eagle fellators”). Politicians you wouldn’t normally confuse with Don Rickles joined in too—not just the expected Democrats like Harry Reid, who had opted for “banana Republicans,” but blue-state Republicans like Devin Nunes of California, who dismissed his own congressional peers as “lemmings with suicide vests.”
Implicit in this bipartisan gallows humor was an assumption shared by most of those listening: The non-legislating legislators responsible for the crisis are a lunatic fringe—pariahs in the country at large and outliers even in their own party. They’re “a small faction of Republicans who represent an even smaller fraction of Americans,” as the former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau put itin the Daily Beast. By this line of reasoning, all that kept them afloat was their possession of just enough votes in their divided chamber to hold the rest of America temporarily hostage to their incendiary demands.
Would that this were so, and that the extralegal rebellion against the Affordable Care Act, a Supreme Court–sanctified law of the land, would send the rebels, not the country, off a cliff. Off the cliff they may well have gone in this year’s failed coup, but like Wile E. Coyote, they will quickly climb back up to fight another day. That’s what happened after the double-header shutdowns of 1995–96, which presaged Newt Gingrich’s beheading but in the long run advanced the rebels’ cause. It’s what always happens. The present-day anti-government radicals in Congress, and the Americans who voted them into office, are in the minority, but they are a permanent minority that periodically disrupts or commandeers a branch or two of the federal government, not to mention the nation’s statehouses. Their brethren have been around for much of our history in one party or another, and with a constant anti-democratic aim: to thwart the legitimacy of a duly elected leader they abhor, from Lincoln to FDR to Clinton to Obama, and to resist any laws with which they disagree. So deeply rooted are these furies in our national culture that their consistency and tenacity should be the envy of other native political movements.
Yet we keep assuming the anti-government right has been vanquished after its recurrent setbacks, whether after the Clinton-impeachment implosion or the Barry Goldwater debacle of 1964 or the surrender at Appomattox. A Democratic victory in the 1982 midterms was all it took for David Broder, then the “dean” of Beltway pundits,to write off Reaganism as “a one-year phenomenon.” When polls showed a decline in support for the tea-party brand last year, it prompted another round of premature obituaries. But the ideological adherents of tea-party causes, who long predate that grassroots phenomenon of 2009, never went away, whatever they choose to label themselves. In recent months, both The Wall Street Journal and theWashington Post had to scramble to assemble front-page stories spotting a tea-party comeback. Even so, it took only one week into the shutdown for a liberal pundit at the Post to declare that we were witnessing “the tea party’s last stand.”
That last stand has been going on for almost 200 years. At the heart of the current rebels’ ideology is the anti-Washington credo of nullification, codified by the South Carolina politician John C. Calhoun in the 1830s and rarely lacking for avid followers ever since. Our inability to accept the anti-government right’s persistence is in part an astonishing case of denial. The Gingrich revolution, the Ur-text for this fall’s events, took place less than twenty years ago and yet was at best foggily remembered as the current calamity unfolded. There’s also a certain liberal snobbery at play: We don’t know any of these radicals, do we?
2/ Part of the extreme right wing coalition of politicians in both the House and Senate represent Evangelical Christians, and this story explains why for them the consequences of default were trivial compared to the disaster that is Obamacare.....
I know it sounds crazy, but this article is pretty convincing......
Christian delusions are driving the GOP insaneWhy aren't Republicans more frightened of a shutdown and a default? Part of the reason is magical thinkingBY AMANDA MARCOTTE
TOPICS: ALTERNET, CHRISTIANITY
This article originally appeared on Alternet.
Why aren’t Republicans more afraid? The entire premise of both the government shutdown and the threats to force the government into debt default is that Democrats care more about the consequences of these actions than the Republicans do. Republicans may go on TV and shed crocodile tears about national monuments being shut down, but the act isn’t really fooling the voters: The only way to understand these fights is to understand that the GOP is threatening to destroy the government and the world economy in order to get rid of Obamacare (as well as a panoply of other right wing demands). Just as terrorists use the fact that you care more about the lives of the hostages than they do to get leverage, Republican threats rely on believing they don’t care about the consequences, while Democrats do.
3/ SNL wanted to cast the movie "50 Shades of Grey", and here are some of the auditions.......three amusing minutes.....
Whenever "Saturday Night Live" does an audition sketch, you know you're about to see some hilarious impressions. This weekend was no exception as Miley Cyrus and the cast channeled a ton of celebrities trying out for the "50 Shades Of Grey" movie.
Watch the video above featuring Miley as Scarlett Johansson, Jay Pharoah as Tracy Morgan, Kate McKinnon as Jane Lynch and a slew of other spot-on impersonations.
4/ You may have heard that part of the hostage negotiations with the Republicans was a repeal of the medical device tax that was part of Obamacare, which was "a crippling tax that would hurt our medical system".....
Here is the truth.....they are raping and pillaging us for things like artificial knees and hips, and spending zillions on lobbying.....
WASHINGTON — IN the last few days of negotiations in Congress, repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s tax on medical devices emerged as a key Republican demand. The medical-device industry waged an intense lobbying campaign — even garnering the support of many Democrats who favored the law — arguing that the tax would stifle innovation and increase health care costs.
This argument is doubly disingenuous. Not only can the medical-device industry easily afford the tax without compromising innovation, but the industry’s enormous profits are a result of anticompetitive practices that themselves drive up medical-device costs unnecessarily. The tax is a distraction from reforms to the industry that are urgently needed to lower health care costs.
The medical-device industry faces virtually no price competition. Because of confidentiality agreements that manufacturers require hospitals to sign, the prices of the devices are cloaked in secrecy. This lack of transparency impedes hospitals from sharing price information and thus knowing whether they are getting a good deal.
Even worse, manufacturers often maintain personal relationships (sometimes involving financial payments like consulting fees) with physicians who choose the medical devices that their hospitals purchase, creating a conflict of interest. Physicians often don’t even know the costs of the devices, and individual physicians often choose devices on their own, which weakens a hospital’s ability to bargain for volume discounts.
Such anticompetitive practices help generate a wide variation in the prices of medical devices — and contribute to higher prices in general. For example, the Government Accountability Office found that prices for cardiac implantable medical devices in the United States vary by several thousand dollars. And even the lowest-priced devices in the United States are expensive compared with those in other developed countries. According to the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, the United States spends about 50 percent more than expected on the top five medical devices, compared with Europe and Japan. McKinsey calculates that this amounts to $26 billion in excessive spending each year.Medicare, private health insurers and patients end up paying these inflated prices.
Excessive prices fuel enormous profits — profits that dwarf both the medical-device tax and the industry’s investments in research and development. Consider the device division of Johnson & Johnson, which in 2012 had an operating profit of $7.2 billion. By the company’s own estimate, the device tax would amount to at most $300 million, and its investment in research and development amounts to only $1.7 billion.
5/ It's a slow week for comedy with Jon and Steven off this week, so here is something a little risque - Butthovens Symphony No. 5, or how the 0.1% enjoy twerking.....3 rude minutes.....
6/ Our disastrous medical system and the rapacious evil banks have teamed up to make it easy for you to have doctors and dentists fix your problems today....they just need a signature ........
How the oligarchy has found a new way to screw the middle class and the working poor......
Patients Mired in Costly Credit From DoctorsBy JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERGPublished: October 13, 2013 614 Comments
The dentist set to work, tapping and probing, then put down his tools and delivered the news. His patient, Patricia Gannon, needed a partial denture. The cost: more than $5,700.
Chip Litherland for The New York Times
Patricia Gannon, 78, of Dunedin, Fla., received a line of credit from First Health Funding at an annual 23 percent interest rate for dental work. She was later offered a medical credit card.
A Vulnerable Age
Articles in this series are examining financial challenges and pitfalls faced by older Americans in lean economic times.
Ms. Gannon, 78, was staggered. She said she could not afford it. And her insurance would pay only a small portion. But she was barely out of the chair, her mouth still sore, when her dentist’s office held out a solution: a special line of credit to help cover her bill. Before she knew it, Ms. Gannon recalled, the office manager was taking down her financial details.
But what seemed like the perfect answer — seemed, in fact, like just what the doctor ordered — has turned into a quagmire. Her new loan ensured that the dentist, Dr. Dan A. Knellinger, would be paid in full upfront. But for Ms. Gannon, the price was steep: an annual interest rate of about 23 percent, with a 33 percent penalty rate kicking in if she missed a payment.
She said that Dr. Knellinger’s office subsequently suggested another form of financing, a medical credit card, to pay for more work. Now, her minimum monthly dental bill, roughly $214 all told, is eating up a third of her Social Security check. If she is late, she faces a penalty of about $50.
“I am worried that I will be paying for this until I die,” says Ms. Gannon, who lives in Dunedin, Fla. Dr. Knellinger, who works out of Palm Harbor, Fla., did not respond to requests for comment.
In dentists’ and doctors’ offices, hearing aid centers and pain clinics, American health care is forging a lucrative alliance with American finance. A growing number of health care professionals are urging patients to pay for treatment not covered by their insurance plans with credit cards and lines of credit that can be arranged quickly in the provider’s office. The cards and loans, which were first marketed about a decade ago for cosmetic surgery and other elective procedures, are now proliferating among older Americans, who often face large out-of-pocket expenses for basic care that is not covered by Medicare or private insurance.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/
7/ Fascinating story for Brits, and anyone interested in where the world oligarchs choose to park their money in case their country goes unstable.....example, Greece. They are investing in property in London, which is now basically unaffordable for the middle class due to the property speculation.....
Very interesting article that applies to some cities in the US.....Miami for South American money, Los Angeles for intelligent people, New York for financial types......
London’s Great Exodus
Ryan Chapman
By MICHAEL GOLDFARBPublished: October 12, 2013
LONDON — OUR neighbors Lauren and Matt and their kids moved out of London to Cambridge the other week. Bibi, Andy and their two left for Bristol in June. Another of my 8-year-old’s classmates and her family are heading out after Christmas.
In my book this is a trend.
The moves are not examples of the life cycle of the striving middle classes. Nor are they examples of middle-class folks being thrown on hard times by the sluggish British economy. The families moving out had good incomes.
Matt, who had been looking for a house for more than three years, summed up the reason for leaving best: “I don’t want to be a slave to a mortgage for the next 25 years.” Given the astronomic rise in house prices here, he wasn’t speaking metaphorically.
This is what happens when property in your city becomes a global reserve currency. For that is what property in London has become, first and foremost.
The property market is no longer about people making a long-term investment in owning their shelter, but a place for the world’s richest people to park their money at an annualized rate of return of around 10 percent. It has made my adopted hometown a no-go area for increasing numbers of the middle class.
According to Britain’s Office for National Statistics, London house prices rose by 9.7 percent between July 2012 and July 2013. In the surrounding suburbs they rose by a mere 2.6 percent. The farther away from London you go, the lower the numbers get. When you finally cross the border into Scotland, house prices actually decline by 2 percent.
The gap between London prices and those of the rest of the country is now at a historic high, and there is only one way to explain it. London houses and apartments are a form of money.
The reasons are simple to understand. In 2011, at the height of the euro zone crisis, citizens of the two countries at the epicenter of the cataclysm — Greece and Italy — bought 400 million pounds’ worth of London bricks and mortar. The Italian and Greek rich, fearing the single currency would collapse, got their money out of euros and parked it someplace where government was relatively stable, and the tax regime was gentle — very, very gentle.
Considering that tax evasion in Italy and Greece was a significant contributory factor to their debt problems, it just seems grotesquely cynical to encourage this kind of behavior.
8/ Mr Bean [Rowan Atkinson] is a fascinating study of physical comedy - here is a five minute skit of Mr. Bean visiting an adult education class and causing the usual havoc.....with not a word spoken.....just wonderful......
9/ Some of these foods that are really bad for you will surprise you......for example I always thought Norwegian salmon was OK......oops......
8 Foods Even The Experts Won’t Eat
Food scientists are shedding light on items loaded with toxins and chemicals–and simple swaps for a cleaner diet and supersized health. Experts from different areas of specialty explain why they won’t eat these eight foods.
 Clean eating means choosing fruits, vegetables, and meats that are raised, grown, and sold with minimal processing. Often they’re organic, and rarely (if ever) should they contain additives. But in some cases, the methods of today’s food producers are neither clean nor sustainable.The result is damage to our health, the environment, or both. So we decided to take a fresh look at food through the eyes of the people who spend their lives uncovering what’s safe–or not–to eat. We asked them a simple question: “What foods do you avoid?” Their answers don’t necessarily make up a “banned foods” list. But reaching for the suggested alternatives might bring you better health–and peace of mind. 1. The Endocrinologist Won’t Eat: Canned Tomatoes Fredrick Vom Saal, is an endocrinologist at the University of Missouri who studies bisphenol-A. The problem: The resin linings of tin cans contain bisphenol-A, a synthetic estrogen that has been linked to ailments ranging from reproductive problems to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Unfortunately, acidity (a prominent characteristic of tomatoes) causes BPA to leach into your food. Studies show that the BPA in most people’s body exceeds the amount that suppresses sperm production or causes chromosomal damage to the eggs of animals. “You can get 50 mcg of BPA per liter out of a tomato can, and that’s a level that is going to impact people, particularly the young,” says vom Saal. “I won’t go near canned tomatoes.” The solution: Choose tomatoes in glass bottles (which do not need resin linings), such as the brands Bionaturae and Coluccio. You can also get several types in Tetra Pak boxes, like Trader Joe’s and Pomi. Exposure to BPA Causes Permanent Damage In OffSpring 2. The Farmer Won’t Eat: Corn-Fed Beef Joel Salatin is co-owner of Polyface Farms and author of half a dozen books on sustainable farming.
10/ And of course there's chicken - after reading this I am never, ever eating chicken at home that's not organic......and when you eat chicken out at a restaurant you know it's the same bird WalMart stocks.....
Should You Eat Chicken?By MARK BITTMANPublished: October 15, 2013 393 Comments
I tell this friend about the latest salmonella outbreak, and she asks me, “Should I stop eating chicken?”
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It’s a good question. In recent weeks, salmonella on chicken has officially sickened more than 300 people (the Centers for Disease Control says there are 25 illnesses for every one reported, so maybe 7,500) and hospitalized more than 40 percent of them, in part because antibiotics aren’t working. Industry’s reaction has been predictably disappointing: the chicken from the processors in question — Foster Farms — is still being shipped into the market. Regulators’ responses have been limited: the same chicken in question is still being sold.
Until the Food Safety and Inspection Service (F.S.I.S.) of the Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A.) can get its act together and start assuring us that chicken is safe, I’d be wary.
This is not a shutdown issue, but a “We care more about industry than we do about consumers” issue. Think that’s an exaggeration? Read this mission statement: “The Food Safety and Inspection Service is the public health agency in the U.S. Department of Agriculture responsible for ensuring that the nation’s commercial supply of meat, poultry, and egg products is safe, wholesome, and correctly labeled and packaged.” What part of “safe” am I misreading?
We should all steer clear at least of Foster Farms chicken, or any of the other brands produced in that company’s California plants, although they’re not all labeled such. Costco pulled nearly 9,000 rotisserie chickens from a store south of San Francisco last week, after finding contamination -- this is after cooking, mind you -- with a strain of salmonella Heidelberg, which is virulent, nasty and resistant to some commonly used antibiotics.
In sum: 1. There’s salmonella on chicken (some of which, by the way, is labeled “organic”). 2. It’s making many people sick, and some antibiotics aren’t working. 3. Production continues in the plants linked to the outbreak. 4. Despite warnings by many federal agencies (including itself!), the U.S.D.A. has done nothing to get these chickens out of the marketplace. 5. Even Costco can’t seem to make these chickens safe to eat.
For decades, we’ve been told how to handle chicken. But I can tell you that despite my best efforts to keep raw chicken and its drippings quarantined, I’m not confident that these efforts suffice. What if chicken blood gets on my lettuce in a shopping bag? What if someone else’s chicken contaminates my apples on a supermarket conveyor belt? What if my wife or a guest grabs a cutting board or a knife before it’s been washed? These are not paranoid questions.
No apologies for putting this again.....love it!
11/ A video from the German producer Zedd - featuring Foxes, "Clarity".
I found this interesting because it made absolutely no sense whatever with half the video set in a beautiful desert, the hero is a hippie loser you move across the sidewalk to avoid, the singer is the first JAP I've seen in a music vid, there are amazing graphics and it's got a convertible GTO.....
Song is pretty good......very passionate and catchy.....
12/ A good news story.....if you have ever travelled abroad and by mistake used your phone you know how expensive it is and how AT&T/Verizon pile on the charges......now T-Mobile has come out with a plan that is actually damn good for you, the customer.....
T-Mobile Hands Consumers a Pleasant Shocker Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesT-Mobile said that in the second quarter of 2013, it signed up 685,000 new customers — more than Verizon, AT&T and Sprint combined.
Back in March, T-Mobile burned every possible bridge it had with the other cellphone carriers. As I wrote then, it eliminated the two-year contract; you can now quit T-Mobile whenever you like.
It also became the first carrier to eliminate the infuriating 15-second recording of voicemail instructions every time you try to leave a message — a waste of your time and your callers’ airtime.
And T-Mobile also ended the Great Cellphone Subsidy Con. That’s where you buy a $600 phone (like the iPhone) for $200, with the understanding that you’ll pay the cellphone company the rest over your two-year contract — yet after you’ve repaid it, your monthly bill doesn’t drop!
T-Mobile was basically prancing around, demonstrating that Emperors Verizon, Sprint and AT&T have no clothes.
I was pleasantly surprised — shocked, really — since those con games have been baked into the American cellphone carriers’ business plans for years. And we, the American sheep, just assumed that we had to accept them.
Apparently, lots of other people were pleasantly surprised, too. The company says that in the second quarter of 2013, it signed up 685,000 new customers — more than Verizon, AT&T and Sprint combined.
Well, on Wednesday, T-Mobile did it again. It announced an even bigger shocker: Starting next month, it will eliminate the sky-high, nosebleed, ridiculous, usurious international roaming charges that have terrified and enraged overseas travelers for years.
Millions of Americans just put their phones into airplane mode when they go to Europe, daunted by the stories of people coming home to $5,000 international-roaming overage charges.
13/ I have had kind of an epiphany recently - of course I knew the history about the battle by African-Americans to get equal treatment under the law in the 60's and 70's, but the movie "Lincoln" and especially "The Butler" brought it home to me how awful this country was to the black community - such hate, such prejudice that lingers today with the Kenya and Birther BS for the President.
I am also reading "Devil In The Grove" about Thurgood Marshall, and Lake County's Sheriff McCall in the 60's....this was not a nice country to 20% of it's people, and still isn't.....
So I have to see this movie. "12 Years a Slave".....a rave review in the Times.....
The Blood and Tears, Not the Magnolias‘12 Years a Slave’ Holds Nothing Back in Show of SufferingBy MANOHLA DARGISPublished: October 17, 2013
“12 Years a Slave” isn’t the first movie about slavery in the United States — but it may be the one that finally makes it impossible for American cinema to continue to sell the ugly lies it’s been hawking for more than a century. Written by John Ridley and directed by Steve McQueen, it tells the true story of Solomon Northup, an African-American freeman who, in 1841, was snatched off the streets of Washington, and sold. It’s at once a familiar, utterly strange and deeply American story in which the period trappings long beloved by Hollywood — the paternalistic gentry with their pretty plantations, their genteel manners and all the fiddle-dee-dee rest — are the backdrop for an outrage.
The story opens with Solomon (Chiwetel Ejiofor) already enslaved and cutting sugar cane on a plantation. A series of flashbacks shifts the story to an earlier time, when Solomon, living in New York with his wife and children, accepts a job from a pair of white men to play violin in a circus. Soon the three are enjoying a civilized night out in Washington, sealing their camaraderie with heaping plates of food, flowing wine and the unstated conviction — if only on Solomon’s part — of a shared humanity, a fiction that evaporates when he wakes the next morning shackled and discovers that he’s been sold. Thereafter, he is passed from master to master.
It’s a desperate path and a story that seizes you almost immediately with a visceral force. But Mr. McQueen keeps everything moving so fluidly and efficiently that you’re too busy worrying about Solomon, following him as he travels from auction house to plantation, to linger long in the emotions and ideas that the movie churns up. Part of this is pragmatic — Mr. McQueen wants to keep you in your seat, not force you out of the theater, sobbing — but there’s something else at work here. This is, he insists, a story about Solomon, who may represent an entire subjugated people and, by extension, the peculiar institution, as well as the American past and present. Yet this is also, emphatically, the story of one individual.
"12 Years a Slave" trailer.....wow.....
Todays video - "Fumbles" by Robot Chicken.
It's unlikely many of you record Robot Chicken, which is on about midnight on the Cartoon channel.....rightly so, because although it's a claymation cartoon it's scatalogically violent and very subversive, i.e. perfect for guys. And although you can't describe it as funny, it's wry humour.....
Here is an example of their strangeness......a takeoff on GI Joe.....
Todays mental health joke
Todays grandfather joke
A man came to visit his grandparents, and he noticed his grandfather sitting
on the porch in the rocking chair wearing only a shirt, with nothing on from the waist down. 'Grandpa, what are you doing? Your weenie is out in the wind for everyone to see!' he exclaimed. The old man looked off in the distance without answering. 'Grandpa, what are you doing sitting out here with nothing on below the waist?' he asked again. The old man slowly looked at him and said, 'Well....last week I sat out here with no shirt on and I got a stiff neck. This is your grandma's idea.'
Todays retired jokes
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