politics

A study in contrasts

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On one hand: ACORN employees give advice to professed criminals about hiding income from the IRS and establishing underage brothels, and are stripped of government funding.

On the other hand: Blackwater officials pay millions in government bribes to cover up the killing of 17 civilians and still retain government contracts worth millions.

So, give advice to criminals? Bad. Kill people? Low-level prosecutions and continued government money.

I say this not to make excuses for what those ACORN employees did, because fuck them. ACORN has done good work in the past, but there’s no letting those employees off the hook for that 13-year-olds at the brothel crap. I don’t care how well-funded that sting operation was, there’s no excuse.

But when is Blackwater–the whole of the organization, not just low-level employees–going to face congressional sanctions for what its people did?

Health care reform with private insurers

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Ezra Klein has a fascinating interview with Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson here (Part one | Part two).

It’s no surprise that he’s not a fan of nationalized single-payor system, but the man makes a good case and he brings up great points. It’s no secret that KP is one of the leading lights in U.S. health care (no snickering!) and if this issue interests you, check out what the man has to say.

Money quote:

The Commonwealth study looked at 5 million claims across a broad population and asked how much care shouldn’t have happened. They concluded that of $2 trillion spent, $500 billion was for the wrong care. Milliman did the same study but asked what would happen if we took the practices of the best medical plans, how much will we save? They got $500 billion.

Randomness for 11/6

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1) Rear Gear! For the easily offended. via Jay Lake

2) “They must be professional house shooters.”

3) Rush Limbaugh: Victim of Racism.

4) Death by anti-science: Iraqi General to use dowsing rods to detect IEDs. From the article: “He is such a believer that the Iraqi military are abandoning proven methods such as sniffer dogs.” This is my unhappy face. via James Nicoll.

5) Hard sales numbers from a NY Times bestselling author.

Update to yesterday’s political post

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The revenue cap initiative is failing badly. Thank god.

Approval of the domestic partnership referendum is slightly ahead, meaning gay couples in a partnership would be allowed all the rights of married couples. That lead is a slim one, but the conventional wisdom is that conservative voters vote early and liberal ones vote late. If that holds, we should be within days of affirming equal rights in this state.

Sorry, Mainers.

A Rare (hah!) Political Post

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Hey, Americans! Vote today, please!

Oh, and for you folks in Washington state, usually I write something like “It doesn’t matter who you support, as long as you stay informed and take part,” but for this year, fuck that. I really want WA residents to check “Approve” on Ref. 71 to affirm domestic partnership rights for gay couples.

One day our grandkids will shake their heads in dismay that we had to actually vote on whether we’d approve human rights for all our citizens. Help us move more quickly into the fair, decent, honorable future we know is coming. Approve 71 and get your ballot in the mail before deadline.

And while we’re at it, let’s send Tim Eyman’s Initiative 1033 down to defeat, too. I’m more than happy to have California residents move up here; I’m less sanguine about importing their political gridlock and debt-crippled state government.

VOTE!

Randomness for 11/3

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1) Gore Vidal can go fuck himself.

“So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?

I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?”

via bookslut

2) Malcolm Gladwell: Football, dogfighting and brain damage. I don’t think I’m going to be able to watch football in the same way again. Actually, I’m thinking of giving it up entirely.

3) On a slightly lighter note: America pays more for its health care, in convenient chart form. The interesting thing about this is that people say Medicare spending is unsustainable, and also that they don’t pay enough for doctors et al to keep their doors open. Aside from the fact that those two are pretty much contradictory, it’s instructive to see how much more money Medicare spends than foreign payors.

4) Now for something upbeat: Writer Carrie Vaughn: The Best Advice I Ever Got. How perfect the timing of this is for me!

5) And then there’s this: Supernatural collective nouns. via tnh’s particles.

Randomness for 11/1

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1) New book explains why Tina Fey hates Sarah Palin. Apparently, they play different kinds of characters on TV.

2) The Ten Funniest People on Twitter. You’re welcome.

3) In *my* day we had to roll the dice ourselves… And we were happy to do it, too!

4) Free web games, with tips for winning them.

5) Nine questionable Batman toys. I’ve linked to the water pistol before, but the bath foam is even more disturbing.

Randomness for 10/22

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1) From last July: Torchwood writer James Moran walks away from blogging because of abusive fans.

2) 21 News Caption Fails. via Adam-Troy Castro

3) Coal: Cheap. Abundant. Clean. Cheap.

4) The worst and weirdest vampire merchandise. So, so very wrong. via Chris Sims at ComicsAlliance

5) Happy Birthday, Planet Earth! Really? Only 6012? Because–not to be insensitive here–but you look at least four billion years old. via antickmusings

Randomness for 10/20

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1) Dead man lies on balcony for days in plain view of neighbors… who didn’t call the police because they thought he was a Halloween decoration.

2) The Genreville book club for October runs this week. The book is Seanan McGuire’s Rosemary & Rue, which I haven’t read because it just came out. Apparently, it’s selling quite well, though, so if you read it and want to participate, head over now.

Anyway, this is interesting to me not just because she sat next to me at my panel at Comic-Con. The book club actually starts off with a note from Rose Fox asking the author to refrain from commenting because it stifles the conversation.

And that was the basis of my original desire to make no mention of reviews in my blog. Maybe I should do a review link-farm post, and back date it so it doesn’t turn up on friends lists or something. Yet another thing to add to the to-do list.

3) “I sold my family downriver for a manuscript.” via Bookslut

4) Do Americans want bipartisan support of health care reform? Sure. Do they want bipartisanship at the expense of the public option? No, they absolutely do not. A majority of Americans want the public option, whether it garners any Republican support or not. via Ezra Klein.

5) Man, it’s going to be tough for this dude to find a new job in this economy.

6) What happens when a man loses job and the healthcare that goes with it? What if the man’s wife and the mother of his three children has cancer and needs chemotherapy they can’t afford? He joins the Army.

quote of the day

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“I won’t mince words here: SFF publishing in the US today is the Klu Klux Klan [sic] of the publishing world. It’s anachronistically misrepresentational in its racial mix, religious mix, cultural mix.”

— Ashok Banker

seen via nihilistic_kid