I don’t know why no one ever thought of this before

The Senate Finance Committee has stripped the death panels (aka, advance-care consultations) from the health insurance bill. Without death panels, no American will ever have to die. Yay!

Name of the Day

Former Florida Supreme Court Justice Wade Hopping, who has gone to that big death panel in the sky. Wade hopping sounds like a really lame Olympic event.

(I’ve been eagerly trying to fit the phrase “gone to that big death panel in the sky” in somewhere for two or three days now.)

Death panels redux (run, Trig, run!)

Whoever is ghost-writing Sarah Palin’s Facebook page (paid by whom, one wonders?) defends Palin’s “death panels” post. She is claiming that in the original post she was referring to the advance care consultations, rather than to some mythical group of bureaucrats which would decide if Trig was “worthy of health care.” Today: “These consultations are authorized whenever a Medicare recipient’s health changes significantly or when they enter a nursing home, and they are part of a bill whose stated purpose is ‘to reduce the growth in health care spending.’ Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care?”

Obama lies, grandma dies

Go to Blue Hampshire for pictures of protesters and their signs – oh dear lord their signs – at Obama’s Portsmouth town hall meeting yesterday. So many favorites: Stop the Trojan horse of Islam; Obama lies, grandma dies; Obama bring back Arrested Development; Stop, you’re starting to scare George Orwell [this sign addressed to teabaggers, I think].

Yet another appalling contest

David Mamet is going to write and direct a new film of the life of Anne Frank. CONTEST: provide sample dialogue.

“Nazi cocksuckers...”

“A.B.H. Always be hiding.”

“I want to go on fucking living even after I’m fucking dead.”

“First prize is the defeat of the Nazis and the liberation of Amsterdam. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize...”

“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really fucked at heart.”

Harder than I thought. Consider it a challenge.

Obama health insurance town hall: I’m not dissing surgeons here

Today Obama held a town hall on health insurance in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

He reassured the town hallsters that under his plan, “You will not be waiting in any lines. We’re thinking more of a Thunderdome-type arrangement.” I may have made up the second sentence.

He went on, “This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance. I don’t believe anyone should be in charge of your health insurance decisions but you and your doctor. I don’t think government bureaucrats should be meddling, but I also don’t think insurance company bureaucrats should be meddling.” Both sides of this debate are pushing the same fantasy: that there is some possible system in which medical decisions are made only by “you and your doctor.”


WHY WE HAVE A DEMOCRACY: “That’s what America is about, is we have a vigorous debate. That’s why we have a democracy.” We have a vigorous debate, and then the lobbyists tell Congress what to do. Democracy!

UNICORNS ARE STEALING OUR JOBS! “Where we do disagree, let’s disagree over things that are real, not these wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that’s actually been proposed.”

“The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for ‘death panels’ that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we’ve decided that we don’t -- it’s too expensive to let her live anymore. (Laughter.)” They’re laughing at pulling the plug on grandma. Laughing! What sort of heartless monsters are they in New Hampshire?

Another incredibly lame argument against single-payer: “I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter because, frankly, we historically have had a employer-based system in this country with private insurers, and for us to transition to a system like that I believe would be too disruptive. So what would end up happening would be, a lot of people who currently have employer-based health care would suddenly find themselves dropped, and they would have to go into an entirely new system that had not been fully set up yet. And I would be concerned about the potential destructiveness of that kind of transition.”


SEE, IT’S NOT ONE UNIMAGINABLY HIGH NUMBER, IT’S ANOTHER UNIMAGINABLY HIGH NUMBER: “Now, it’s important that we’re talking about over 10 years because sometimes the number ‘trillion’ gets thrown out there and everybody think it’s a trillion dollars a year -- gosh, that -- how are we going to do that? So it’s about a hundred billion dollars a year to cover everybody and to implement some of the insurance reforms that we’re talking about.”

PODS, THE TERM IS PODS: “Okay, I’ve only got time for a couple more questions. Somebody here who has a concern about health care that has not been raised, or is skeptical and suspicious and wants to make sure that -- because I don’t want people thinking I just have a bunch of plants in here.”


HE WANTS SURGEONS: “Nothing against surgeons. I want surgeons -- I don’t want to be getting a bunch of letters from surgeons now. I’m not dissing surgeons here.”

WHO KNEW HACKSAWS WERE SO EXPENSIVE? “But if that same diabetic ends up getting their foot amputated, that’s $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 -- immediately the surgeon is reimbursed. Well, why not make sure that we’re also reimbursing the care that prevents the amputation, right? That will save us money.”

TO BE FAIR, I’M NOT WORKING FOR IT EITHER: “But I want everybody to understand, though, the status quo is not working for you.”

Martyrs in the news

Patrizia D’Addario, Berlusconi’s call girl: “I’m the only one who is telling the truth and by doing so I’ve become a Joan of Arc.” Yes, you’re exactly like her. As evidence of her saintliness, Ms D’Addario (who is writing her memoirs) notes that she could have blackmailed Berlusconi, but didn’t. Again, just like Joan of Arc.

What I like is that Berlusconi is perfectly matched in grandiosity and self-importance by his prostitute.

North American summit: I don’t find Canadians particularly scary

In Guadalajara, Obama met with Mexican President Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Harper.

Obama admitted to having a black sheep in his family: “All three of our nations have been enriched by our ties of family and community. I think of my own brother-in law who’s Canadian.” Oh the shame.

Asked about human rights violations committed by the Mexican government in its fight against the drug cartels, Obama, who evidently does not understand what the term human rights means, said, “The biggest, by far, violators of human rights right now are the cartels themselves that are kidnapping people and extorting people and encouraging corruption in these regions. That’s what needs to be stopped.”


Obama on why Canadian health care would never work here: “I’ve said that the Canadian model works for Canada; it would not work for the United States -- in part simply because we’ve evolved differently.” So we’re an entirely different species? “We have a employer-based system and a private-based health care system that stands side by side with Medicare and Medicaid and our Veterans Administration health care system. And so we’ve got to develop a uniquely American approach to this problem.” He added, “I don’t find Canadians particularly scary, but I guess some of the opponents of reform think that they make a good boogeyman.” Or abominable snow man. “And I suspect that once we get into the fall and people look at the actual legislation that’s being proposed, that more sensible and reasoned arguments will emerge”. Isn’t that just adorable? Myself, I’m really looking forward to those sensible and reasoned arguments emerging.

Asked whether the US had done enough, well, anything really, to restore Honduran President Zelaya, Obama got all defensive: “We have been very clear in our belief that President Zelaya was removed from office illegally, that it was a coup, and that he should return.” Actually, for the last six weeks, the State Dept has been “studying” whether the military seizing the president in his pajamas and depositing him in a foreign country was or was not actually a coup, and plans to keep studying it for a long time to come, because determining that it was a coup would, under law, trigger certain sanctions against the coup regime which Obama is unwilling to implement.

Obama then accused his critics of hypocrisy, implying that they’re calling for him to send the Marines storming into Tegucigalpa: “The same critics who say that the United States has not intervened enough in Honduras are the same people who say that we’re always intervening, and the Yankees need to get out of Latin America. You can’t have it both ways. ... Now, if these critics think that it’s appropriate for us to suddenly act in ways that in every other context they consider inappropriate, then I think what that indicates is, is that maybe there’s some hypocrisy involved in their approach to U.S.-Latin America relations that certainly is not going to guide my administration policies.” So if you want Obama to support the elected president in Honduras but have opposed past American actions in deposing elected governments, you are in fact a hypocrite.

Meet the Obama death panel

As revealed by Sarah Palin:

Don’t tell granny, but we’re putting her on the ice floe tonight.

When the music stops, whoever’s not in a chair doesn’t get their cancer treatment.

He had a pre-existing condition.
Nobody expects the Obama death panel.

Disappointing

I clicked on a NYT.com headline, “Electric Car’s Connection to Goldman Sachs,” but lost interest when the connection turned out not to be between electric car batteries and Goldman Sachs executives’ genitals.

On the internet, nobody knows you’re a perverted cat

Follow-up on that British tourist whose genitals were set on fire in Crete: his parents say it was “a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Well, part of him certainly was.

Silly season headline: “Husband Tried to Win Back Wife by Poisoning Her.” It didn’t so much work.

Another silly season headline: “Florida Man Blames Cat for Downloading Child Pornography.” Over 1,000 images. The Guardian even has a picture of the cat, although his or her name is evidently being withheld from the public. Er, if I held a CONTEST to suggest an appropriate name for a child-porn-loving kitteh, how much would I wind up regretting it?

“Obama’s Death Panel” would be a great name for a rock & roll band

The Obama admin, if this was not obvious already, has decided not to press for the reinstatement of Honduran President Zelaya, who it now publicly blames for the coup that ousted him, as well as for the temerity to attempt to return to his own country.

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) has introduced a bill to allow pet expenses up to $3,500 to be deductible. Just for that, I won’t even make fun of his name.

From Sarah Palin’s Facebook page: “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care.” Absolutely. The America I know and love would give them a chair.

Why travel insurance and tetanus shots are good ideas

I blame myself. No sooner did I post a “protest of the day,” then some Paraguayans felt the need to compete.



Greece’s newest national heroine: a woman who put an obnoxious drunk British tourist in his place – the hospital. He was waving his genitals at her, so she poured her Sabucco on them, took out a lighter... He’s still in the hospital, but fortunately for him, he has travel insurance.

Protest of the day

Indonesian supporters of Megawati Sukarnoputri, who lost the presidential election last month, bury themselves. Something to do with the land belonging to the Indonesian people rather than to foreign corporations. Because if it did belong to foreign corporations, foreign corporations would be buried up to their necks, which is obviously not the case. Or something.

What sort of person takes pictures while their cat is being tortured?

Christabel and I went to the vet for her shots. She was not best pleased.

What was that you said about Hillary again?

Hearing that North Korea had released those two journalists, I immediately went to that finest of news sources, the North Korean News Agency. They don’t yet have anything beyond a brief notice of Bill Clinton’s arrival, but I did find the important news that “President Wears Cotton-padded Winter-Shoes in Summer,” which I pass on unedited:

Pyongyang, August 3 (KCNA) -- On an August day of Juche 40 (1951) President Kim Il Sung examined cotton-padded military winter-shoes.

After watching shoes with care from the height of rubber rim to thickness of shoe-sole, he instructed an official that he should carry a pair of shoes with him when backing.

Next day after he came back to the Supreme Command, he came out, putting on the cotton-padded shoes.

Officials dubiously looked at him wearing the shoes unfit for hot summer.

After having put on the shoes for a week and more, he told officials that, while wearing the shoes for several days, he felt they were good as they were warm and comfortable for feet. What worries myself, he added, is that feet of soldiers might be frozen as the shoes became wet easily.

Pointing to the rubber rim of the shoes he told in an anxious tone that the height of the rim was so low that the shoes got wet like this even in some mud and the wet shoes might make feet of soldiers frozen in winter though cotton was padded.

At last the officials realized why the President wore the shoes in summer.

After an interval, the President earnestly instructed them that the height of rubber should be raised higher.

The officials were deeply moved by him who worried himself so much about the problem of military winter-shoes in the height of the hard-fought war, not a problem of military operation.

A lesson for us all.

North Korea is claiming Clinton presented a message from Obama; the White House is denying it.

But what did Bill and Little Kim have to talk about? CAPTION CONTEST!

What’s the matter with Guantanamo?

Guardian headline: “Guantánamo Detainees ‘May Go to Kansas.’” Six of one, half a dozen of the other, isn’t it?

Big surprise, huh?

McCain will vote against Sotomayor. Repeats the fallacy that Ricci was reversed unanimously.

Suddenly regular beauty pageants don’t seem nearly as creepy, do they?

Cambodia has cancelled the Miss Landmine pageant (the winner would have gotten a crown and a prosthetic limb) on the grounds of extreme tackiness.

From the pageant’s website:

Worst. Incentive. Ever.

(Update: er, that’s not me offering that as an incentive, that’s a banner from somewhere considerably dumber and more evil, where I went to laugh at all the dumb and the evil.) (Thank you for letting me clear that up.)