Shorti3s

Come on Hollywood; horror movie titles with more than one word?

To Your Health: I know it isn’t a new article, but start with the nice folks at Alternet telling the truth, Private Health Insurance is Not the Answer. I used to think that letting people be in charge of their own insurance would bring rates to a manageable level and fix the problem, and that might have been true a decade ago. But I’m not sure it’s true now, and I am very sure that the Bush plan — which would as a side effect raise taxes on working Americans by over half a Trillion with a T dollars over the next ten years alone — won’t fix much of anything but insurance company profits. This problem has gotten so bad that Healthcare is the number one domestic concern of Americans according to a recent poll. In fact “Nearly two-thirds said the federal government should guarantee health insurance for all Americans and half said they would be willing to pay as much as $500 more in taxes a year for universal coverage…” For more data from that poll, try the New York Times, who add that “Only 24 percent said they were satisfied with President Bush’s handling of the health insurance issue, despite his recent initiatives, and 62 percent said the Democrats were more likely to improve the health care system.” Of course I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the wild card in health insurance reform: Eliot Spitzer. Yes, the esteemed Governor Spitzer is taking aim at the Big Health Groups that want to keep taking more and more money from the people and state of New York. So he invited them all to a nice little breakfast, and showed them a little powerpoint presentation, rebutting all their objections to his proposed cuts. I respected Mr. Spitzer — as the AG for New York — for standing up and taking care of the voters who put him in office, and for using whatever tools he had at his disposal. He’s not the sort who whines that he needs new laws to fight injustice; he figures out how to use the ones he has (makes you wonder if he isn’t the basis for this fictional character).

“You probably don’t want to have them in your slippers. They’re kind of spiky,” the Scientist Announced: No, really! Scientists have discovered at least 11 complete fossils of an ocean creature who lived about 505 Million years ago. “Orthrozanclus had no eyes and no limbs and apparently moved along the ocean floor with a muscular foot, like a snail does, while dining on bacterial growths, the researchers said…. It was covered in a shell and had almost three dozen long, pointy, curved spines sticking out from the edge of its body, and many smaller ones, too.”

Mortgage A-GoGo: AFP tells us that “Those exotic, high-risk mortgages that fueled the US real estate boom are now showing high rates of failure, prompting concerns that the housing market may come crashing down faster than expected,” (duh) and “[M]any people who got subprime loans in 2005 are now seeing their monthly payments jump by 30 to 50 percent. And with payments due, fears are rising about widespread defaults and that a general collapse in the subprime lending sector could spill over to the broader housing sector, and perhaps to the broader economy.” Subprime delinquencies are up to 12.8% (ARM delinquencies 13.2%) compared with a national average of 2.44% mortgage delinquency. Freddie Mac — Fannie’s little brother — is headed into the fray, announcing that “it would no longer buy those high-risk home mortgages that it deems to be the most vulnerable to foreclosure,” and “it was developing new fixed-rate and hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages to provide lenders with more choices for subprime borrowers.” Ironically, as sensible as this move is, it may cause an even bigger headache for certain homeowners as mortgage companies that collapse may result in homes being lost through no fault of the “homeowner”. Oh, and I should not neglect this article from the Washington Post entitled “A Growning Chorus on Risky Mortgages.” Some European economists are concerned that this may ultimate result in massive economic disaster. You have to love a serious economic article willing to refer in bold type to “Subprime Idiots.” It is worth reading the whole thing, including the section titled “US Steps Towards Banana Republic.”

Fashion Police: Can anybody corroborate this story? This is the only version I can find, and something in the back of my head is quoting Carl Sagan… something about extraordinary claims and extraordinary proof. Boston Police allegedly blew up a man in a bulky coat for loitering by a lamppost for more than 10 minutes. After all he might have had a bomb. His girlfriend said “There was a long line at Starbucks, and Evan wanted to smoke so he waited outside for me. Next thing I know I look up and I see police blowing him up. I always told him that down jacket made him look puffy.” Officer Charlie O’Hara of the bomb squad says “I’d blow up a hundred innocent people if I can prevent another 9/11.” Yeah, I’m not sure the citizens are with him on that. You don’t suppose he’s related to Gotham City’s Police Chief O’Hara, do you?

Yoink! UPS decides it doesn’t need no French airplanes when we make perfectly good jumbo cargo jets here in the United States.

It’s the Economy, Stupid! Poverty is getting worse. Not only are more people poor, they are poorer. One out of every 6 Americans depends on some program for the poor. It’s bad enough that some people are starting to correctly think “Too many people – including those who live in the suburbs and in the rural areas – are descending into it too fast for that to be the sole explanation. All of those people aren’t lazy or stupid.” Gee, do you think?

Good job reading those books, Johnny. Now you get to drag your parents out for pizza: Critics are just now catching on to a program called Book It, which rewards kids who read a target number of books with food that manages to be both fatty and starchy (i.e., fattening no matter whose paradigm you like). Now, leaving aside for a moment that this is a slap in the face for families that are vegan or deal with several major common food allergies, “The program is now under attack by child-development experts who say it promotes bad eating habits and turns teachers into corporate promoters.” It also takes control away from parents, who now have the choice of negating little Johnny’s award, or eating food they don’t want from a company they have not chosen to support. Of course some critics say that a major purpose of public schools is to take away parental control…..

You may not like him, but he has a point: Guess who said this? “The prevailing powers today are in the hands of those who have economic and military power which puts fear in others. They can make you starve. They can close the doors for your exports of raw materials such as coffee or oil.” How about this? “Those who threaten you with military power or with the (U.N.) Security Council are the people who are controlling the world and if you go against the tide you might be destroyed.” And this, about strings attached to international aid? “This is an international dictatorship that is being practiced against people, especially poor people.” Give up? Muammar Gaddafi.

Reality, Real ID, and You: The ACLU calls it a Real Nightmare. Wired calls it an internal passport. The good news is that the deadline for states to implement a Even better, the actual implementation rules have been released, so we can all quote chapter and verse on what it really says.

And finally, on a related note: Ron Paul’s essay, “It Can’t Happen Here”.