Random Thoughts – Page 10

I Blame Paula Deen

I remember it was probably over a decade ago, I first saw somebody make a monte cristo sandwich on TV. The chef might have been Emeril. It was the most decadent thing I had ever seen: a ham and cheese sandwhich, made with thick, egg-drenched slices of french toast. This made eggs benedict seem tame.

Time passed, and stuff like the KFC Famous Bowl came out, described by one blogger as “like throwing up in reverse.” But that wasn’t enough! Since then we’ve had KFC’s Double Down, Friendly’s Mac and Cheese Quesadilla, IHOP’s cheesecake filled pancakes, thousand calorie burgers (before the fries!) marketed as “healthy“, and a bunch of other things that look like somebody was trying imagine what they would submit to a Top Chef Most Calories with Stuff Already Here Quickfire Challenge.

Today’s entry:

That thing is a grilled cheese sandwich, made with melted American cheese and 4 deep fried mozzarella sticks, on sourdough bread. Served with marinara sauce and of course a heaping helping of fries. Available at Denny’s for a mere $4. Nutrition information is not yet available. It probably replaces the 650 calorie 3 Cheese Melt, which had been at least served with a choice of soup or salad.

I’ve got to agree with the Awesomer on this: Why didn’t they deep fry the whole thing? But remember, it’s only “culinary terrorism” if you actually eat it.

In Closing: it’s better than nothing; families spending less — or nothing — on back to school, bodes ill for Christmas; “Trade deficit inaction” means no new jobs in the Latte Economy, and that means a double dip recession is coming (assuming you think we ever got out of the recession); teenage wasteland; if we created 10 million jobs, Social Security wouldn’t have a shortfall this year; a less than cheery August thought, student loan debt now exceeds credit card debt; everybody heard about the guy who had a pea plant growing in his lung, right?; banks only follow the laws they want to follow; as the debate about tax increases/cuts continues, remember that you only pay taxes on money you make, and businesses only pay money on their profits; on the middle class; and finally, exactly how bad do you want it?

Am I Late? To the Discussion on Sex and Health Insurance, that is

It seems that certain loonies have realized that the recently passed health insurance reform bill actually might benefit women.

To wit, people — who happen to be women by the way — who manage to get coverage in the various state pools for those who can’t get traditional insurance due to pre-existing and/or chronic conditions might — might! — have abortions that are covered by that insurance. Now the President says something to the effect of “Oh no, no that’s not right. The Feds ain’t payin for no abortions. Don’t you worry your pretty little heads, religious zealots!” Actually, says a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, yes they will be covered but if and only if it’s rape, incest, or the woman’s life are in danger (not health, but life). Now remember that the entire purpose of this pool is that the insured has health problems bad enough to keep her from getting insurance elsewhere.

Yeah, because society is really better off when we make cancer survivors and the like pay for their own damn abortions. Dirty sluts!

Elsewhere, we have rumblings that certain conservatives (who must have been out of contact with reality for the last few decades) are upset that insurance coverage for The Pill — and for that matter the screening test you need before the almighty Gynecologist will allow you access to a twelve month supply, and not a single pill more — might become standard. Or, as Amanda Marcotte helpfully simplifies it, “Conservative Groups Demand High Abortion, Teen Pregnancy Rates.”

I would like to address one particular statement from Chuck Donovan at the Heritage Foundation:

People who are insured don’t want to pay for services they don’t need or to which they have moral objections. Parents want to have a say over what’s covered and what’s not for their children.

Let’s take this to it’s logical conclusion, shall we? They want you to think that they have a moral objection to birth control (and abortion, which is prevented by birth control). The second sentence makes it clear that they object to sexually active teens having access to birth control. So he does make clear what those of us who have kept track of anti-abortion rhetoric for a while have long known: they are really against sex. Well, more accurately, any sex they aren’t having. If they are against their kids preventing pregnancy and support women people “living with the consequences of sex” as most so-called pro-life people claim they are, they must surely also be against curing any sexually transmitted diseases they may contract. After all, that syphilis or gonorrhea is a consequence of sex!

And so why should insurance pay for this? Why should it be insured when Joe Average fools around and accidentally gives Jane Average a disease she’d rather not talk about in polite company? I don’t support people cheating on their spouses! Do you?

And with that, I stumble on why research has developed no vaccine against AIDS, let alone any hope of a cure.

Well guess what? The overwhelming majority of Americans think it’s a good idea to let other Americans plan the size of their families. The overwhelming majority of Americans think that although abortion is often a tragedy, it is most often the best possible end of an even bigger tragedy. And yes, have no fear, almost everybody agrees that it is a good idea to cure people with sexually transmitted diseases.

As “reform” is implemented, let’s not allow our elected officials to forget that while the squeaky wheel may need greasing, that alone won’t get you where you need to be.

In closing: ghost ship at ground zero; Wall Street “Reform” will soon be law; notice what happens after 2001; and pictures of Kyoto. Next time, hopefully, something on the economy.

Short But Sweet

No, that’s not a description of myself. Eat your heart out!

I hate most audio and video posts on the web.

Ok, no, I liked the cute video of the baby playing with the collie. And I don’t mind when political sites like Crooks and Liars link to interviews and even political ads that are of interest. Sometimes there’s nuance you don’t get in the transcript — which by the way is often included (it’s my favorite part of their posts). I like funny songs and game reviews, and I like some of the serial dramas out there too. There are even some very useful “how-to” videos for a lot of activities.

But seriously, at least half of the audio and video on the web is stuff that wastes my time. It’s stuff that takes 5 or 10 minutes to watch, that if you were to just put it in print, I could tell what I need to know in less than 90 seconds. I am sick and tired of feeling like I’ve been hoodwinked into sitting through somebody’s “important” presentation just to find out that they want $37 to tell me the real secret to success, or to tell me something I already knew, or even to give me one almost important thing in a sea of meaningless or redundant blah blah.

Now several people lately have been telling me that video posts are the freaking future. They claim that I can crank out a video post in half the time it takes me to type, grammar check, spell check, edit, and make sure I actually make sense in writing. I think that’s just got to be a lie! Even in a video post, if you want to get that “actually make sense” thing going on, you’ll need some sort of script or outline. And even if that’s 4 lines scribbled on a sticky note stuck to your notebook computer next to the camera, it takes time. Do you honestly think this happened with no rehearsal and no script?

For that matter, there’s a “looking presentable” thing. It’s going to take time to make sure you look decent, and that there’s nothing behind you that you don’t mind being seen across the interwebs. Am I in my pajamas? For the record, no, but you’ve got no way of knowing! Some video bloggers get around this actually having to get out of their pajamas by creating little PowerPoint-like slides that reinforce their point. Again, you’re losing the time savings and boosting the tech requirements to get rolling. And really, does anybody like PowerPoint?

Finally, putting stuff in writing makes it easier to quote you. It’s just “copy” and “paste”. Nobody has to listen 4 times to make sure the wording is right, and it’s a heck of a lot easier to find the quote in text rather than by trying to remember whether that good bit was at minute 16 or minute 27.

Look, if you can’t at least tell me what you’re going to say in a few sentences (I’m not even asking for a transcript), you’ve got nothing to say to me. It’s called a summary. You learned about them in second grade. If you insist on audio and video posts — and that includes podcasts! — you’d better have one or I’m closing the tab.

In Closing: Keeping you up to date on Sharron Angle (sorry, I’m from Las Vegas now); I’m with Digby on strategic default among the wealthy; on consumer credit and American exports; on immigrants and the work they do (truth is that some employers prefer easily exploited workers who are worried more about deportation than OSHA regs or minimum wage laws); does this look like something you would want to eat??; how to make real coin; and Marines fight bad guys but save cuddly animals.

Nice of him to notice, and Economic Bonus Round

I am glad to see someone with a high profile speaking out on this, and I sincerely hope other journalists start talking about it.

Now, about that economy.

The nicest thing I can say about the United States economy right now is that unemployment isn’t as bad as it is in much of Europe. Our economy lost jobs last month — and only partly because some of those temporary Census workers were let go — but the really awful part is that the number of workers went down. It isn’t that we had an abnormal number of people die or retire or anything like that, it’s just that over a half million people gave up on trying to find work. And that’s why the official unemployment rate went down.

Of course, if you just happen to have the right set of highly technical job skills, there are plenty of jobs. But — as Jill so ably points out — somehow or another businesses don’t think they should actually have to train employees to use very specialized equipment. I guess they are waiting for the “Qualified Employee Fairy” to stuff resumes under the door.

It’s also worth pointing out that the SBA is running out of money again, which means it will be even harder for small businesses to get money to ramp up operations and create jobs. I am no supporter of the SBA — everyone I’ve ever known that has ever talked to them has ended up with an application for a second mortgage — but this is crazy.

So when all is said and done, I think that more than being “still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession” and perhaps headed for a “double-dip recession,” it is more intellectually honest to say that from the standpoint of the typical American, there is no recovery: we still aren’t finding jobs, we still are having trouble paying the mortgage, we are still declaring bankruptcy at an alarming rate. Fine, maybe our largest corporations are still making plenty of money, but without the American consumer having money in pocket to buy goods and services, GDP growth can only be somewhere between shaky and an illusion.

In Closing: Uncle Shelby; turns out the kids are bored and not learning the things they should; on the newly revised dietary guidelines; fun with Google auto-complete; biggest banks in the world (and the ones that don’t exist anymore; and please, please drive safely this weekend.

Unclear on How That Works

So Joran Van Der Sloot thinks he can tie Peru’s judicial system into knots. Good luck with that, kid.

Granted, they have made some progress in the last decade and a half. But it would be fair to say that their system works swiftly, and under Peruvian rules — not Dutch rules, and certainly not American rules. First off, they work under the Napoleonic Code, which does have “a de facto presumption of guilt.” And Heaven help him if somebody decides that what he did has even a whiff of terrorism! If that happens, he will wish for circumstances as nice as Gitmo.

He also seems to have forgotten that even if he gets off in Peru, there’s enough evidence now to extradite him back to Aruba.

So yeah, just keep talking. If he’s lucky he will give himself enough rope to be hung quickly.

In Closing: Consumer confidence is not just down, it’s crushed; assuming that actual for real financial regulation reform is not dead, here’s what it might mean for your mortgage, maybe; real life example of health insurance reform at work, San Francisco requires businesses to provide insurance (**** regulations and **** California!!), and Emergency Department visits dropped 70%; good teaching results in fewer “learning disabilities“; the rich get richer; when you don’t clean your own messes you can’t act shocked when somebody else cleans it the hard way; learning to live in poverty; heliophobes; I was amused by the discussion of capris; prepare to be irradiated; you can’t really talk about financial illiteracy without talking about innumeracy; fetuses do not feel pain!; and I’ll be posting some to LivinginLV.com. You can read more about it here. So here’s a little tip for those of you trying to “use” social media to “reach customers”? You’ve got to be social first for social media to work.

A Couple Quick Follow-Ups

Remember Dipak Desai? Prosecutors want to bring criminal charges. [Update: 28 charges brought, including racketeering] What will this do to the drug companies’ appeal? I am no lawyer, but it seems to me that if what happened was a criminal act, then this is no different than suing Smith and Wesson over a handgun death. Except of course for the fact that the drugs weren’t the problem.

Just yesterday we were talking about the jobs report (no, not the Apple Computer kind of Jobs). Today the federal government released it’s own version of the report. It was, well, uninspiring. Ok, no, really it sucks, and so says an actual economist. Sure, 431,000 jobs were created, but 95% of them were temp positions with the Census. That leaves only 41,000 jobs that are likely to be around at Christmas, and for a change it’s a more pessimistic number than ADP reported.

Welcome to the New and Improved ShortWoman

Perhaps you noticed a brand new theme here at ShortWoman. The old theme had been in place many years now. It was so old it didn’t support a lot of modern blogging features. Of course any transition has its problems, and I will be working to fix them as I learn there is an issue. As a result, there may be a few hiccups and tweaks over the next several days. Some new things may be implemented; some things that aren’t working might get deleted. Since there have been no real changes to my server, there should be no complete outages.

I’ve also taken the opportunity to clean out the blogroll and do a better job of organizing it. A lot of dead links and things I no longer track are gone, and some new items from my RSS lists have been added. There is room for some additions, so feel free to put a link request into comments. Likewise, if you notice a problem, please let me know about it so it can be solved.

Thank you to all my readers for visiting.

The Day the Mountain Blew Up

It was 30 years ago today.

A huge ash cloud moved across the country over the following days, reminding anyone who cared to look up what had happened.

Many considered it a disaster. People had died. Property was just plain gone. After all, a forest had been destroyed. Surely life would never get back to normal with the ecosystem blown up. Those experts were wrong; the aftermath offered a tremendous opportunity to study life returning to the area, cleansed of what had come before.

And now, 30 years later, Mount St. Helens is still clearly an active volcano, still part of a chain of volcanoes that includes Mount Hood overlooking Portland and Mount Rainier sandwiched between Seattle and Tacoma. Rainier is considered by the Federal government to be “one of the Most Hazardous Volcanoes in the United States”. The last time it erupted, a tsunami raced across the Pacific Ocean, immortalized in this famous painting.

Comparisons between America’s biggest volcanic disaster at Mount St. Helens and the current volcanic eruptions in Iceland are irresistible. And while Eyjafjallajökull is likely to be full of sound and fury for months to come, today we remember the events of 30 years ago, when a mountain blew up.

Cross-posted on The Moderate Voice.

In Closing: Damn you, Karate Kid!; at least this family in Detroit whose home was raided in the middle of the night by cops who, seeking a murderer, lit their grandchild on fire before fatally shooting her will get something like justice, because Geoff Feiger is on the case and cameras were rolling for a reality TV show; “Airline fees are only bad when the government imposes them”; Mexico’s President wants to talk seriously about immigration; Homeowners (or is that home”owners”) need an advocate with the banks; apparently an Arizona drivers license is proof of citizenship, but the rest of us need passports and birth certificates (BTW this means that you have lots of unlicensed drivers in AZ who don’t want any trouble about their papers, so that should make you feel really safe); “Fetuses are more important than their mothers” says Bishop (and the Church wonders about their decreasing relevancy); 15 companies with biggest job cuts; and fewer people, thankfully, are falling behind on paying their debts.

Oklahoma Shitbowl

I do try to avoid unnecessary profanity, but what Oklahoma is doing is profane.

Maybe by now you have heard that any woman unfortunate enough to be pregnant in Oklahoma will find great obstacles to her care. For one thing, her doctor is allowed to lie to her about whether he has reason to believe there are fetal anomalies that will become birth defects. After all, she may decide that carrying a baby who will die soon after birth or require expensive, time monopolizing care is not something she wants to do. To some people, that makes her a “selfish slut,” but to most people that makes her “normal.”

Moreover, any woman seeking an abortion in Oklahoma will have to get an ultrasound, look at the pictures, and listen to a description of the embryo or fetus. And fill out a privacy-invading questionnaire. No exceptions for victims of rape, incest, or women who already know there is something seriously wrong with the embryo/fetus.

The ever brilliant (and very sarcastic) Digby points out how this bill will fail:

Sure the dumb bitches can’t be allowed to make their own decisions about taking on a lifetime of care or consider implications for their own health and well being. What the silly little twits don’t know won’t hurt them, right? But you’d think that the important members of society like insurance companies and employers would have a stake in something like this.

Here’s the thing. Failing to note fetal abnormalities on the ultrasound and still billing the insurance company is called fraud. Fraud, unlike medical malpractice, is a criminal offense. Do that to a patient whose care is paid for under a Federal program and it’s a federal crime with federal time. Fine, Doc can’t be sued for malpractice; he can go to prison instead.

Doc is also subject to ethics rules, and those would include telling patients the truth. Doc can lose his license if someone makes an ethics complaint with the state board of medical examiners.

If enough big employers lose enough Edna Employees to the care of severely disabled babies, they will find a way to sue doctors who hid those conditions. After all, big employers often have an entire legal department. And that would fall under general liability rather than med-mal.

So believe it or not, I think the insurance companies will provide the work-around for this. Remember that under the health insurance reform that was just passed, they can’t exclude children with pre-existing conditions. They have a vested interest in preventing severely disabled babies from being in their pool of insureds. What they will do is insist that ultrasounds be done in an independent imaging facility — not the doctor’s office or an affiliated facility — and insist that a full copy of the report be provided both to them and the mother-to-be. This will outrage obstetricians because they make good money on ultrasounds and the equipment is not cheap.

Oh well, maybe they should have objected to this bill before it became law.

In Closing Arizona Update: the smartest thing you are likely to read about illegal immigration this week; let the lawsuits begin; polls, demographics, and the future; boycotts are already underway; even some prominent Republicans think Arizona has gone too far; gee, who could have seen harassment of day laborers coming??; Hispanics vow to fight this law.

In Closing For Real This Time: Tell us what you really think about Goldman Sachs, Barry! (And why doesn’t your blog read like this? Maybe you should dictate your posts); high school graduates going to college rather than competing in the dismal job market, but does anybody really believe that 70% of the jobs that will be available in 4 years needs a college degree?; a security expert from one of the most secure airports in the world calls full-body scanners a waste of money; The Vaccine War; America doesn’t rule the world and shouldn’t be allowed to say what other nation’s product labels can include; reduce the deficit by expanding Medicare; get rid of “too big to fail”; and finally, if you are in a position to do something nice for J.P., please do.

Special Message on Health Insurance Reform

Blogger and activist Barbara O’Brien is someone whose work I have admired. In addition to being an editor for About.com, she is the owner of the Mahablog. She contacted me earlier this week and asked if I would please post a special message about the recently passed health insurance reform bill. While I certainly don’t support everything in it — the mandatory purchase of insurance, for example — I can’t deny that there are some good things it does. But I’ll let Barbara tell you about it!

Health Care Reform: The Morning After

Many politicians and pundits warned us that the health care reform (HCR) legislation that just became law will destroy America. Government bureaucrats will take over health care decisions, we were told. The old and infirm would be hauled away by death panels. Everything about the way we receive our medical care will change, and change drastically, they said.

Medicare recipients have been frightened by stories that their benefits will be cut. Middle-age people are worried they will lose their jobs when the law’s dreaded regulations, or taxes, or maybe regulations with taxes, would destroy their employers’ businesses.

The truth is, very little will change for most people. If you were insured by employee benefits before HCR, you will be insured by exactly the same policy in exactly the same way after HCR. You will have access to the same doctors on the same terms. “Government bureaucrats” will no more be involved in your health care than they were before.

And the same is true of Medicare, which of course is a government program, although many of the people who opposed the HCR bill don’t seem to know that.

Here are the “cataclysmic” changes to health care that are now in effect, or which will go into effect within the next six months for people who are already in group insurance plans:

The law says you can’t lose your insurance coverage because you get sick. Before, in many states, if you were stricken with a severe illness such as mesothelioma cancer that would be expensive to treat, your insurer could use just about any excuse to cancel your coverage. That is over.
HCR has ended lifetime limits on coverage. As long as you are receiving medical care, your insurer pays the bills.
Your children can be covered on your existing policy until they are 26 years old.
In six months, insurers cannot refuse to insure people under the age of 19 because of “pre-existing conditions.” This provision will go into effect for everyone in 2014.

And if you are on Medicare, you will be asked to struggle with the following:

You get a free annual checkup.
The co-pays and deductibles on many preventive care services are eliminated.
If you are in the Medicare D “doughnut hole,” you will get a $250 rebate check in a few weeks. The hole itself will be closed gradually and will be gone by 2020.

But what about all those terrible regulations and taxes that are about to drive businesses out of business? Um, there really isn’t much to report. Oh, wait, here’s one — a 10 percent tax on indoor tanning services that use ultraviolet lamps will go into effect July 1. That’s about it.
However, beginning this year a tax credit will be available for some small businesses to help provide insurance coverage for employees.

Soon the politicians and pundits will start trying to frighten you about the provisions that will go into effect after this year. I assure you they are about as scary as the provisions that go into effect this year, but I will discuss them in a follow-up post.

— Barbara O’Brien

Thanks much to Barbara for this information. Your regularly scheduled ShortWoman will have a post up in the next day or two. In Closing: the economy still sucks especially if you aren’t rich already, and banks are still a big part of the problem, so let’s put in place regulations that work and then — and I know this last bit is crazy talk — enforce them.