en memorium

November 3rd. Oh, thank God.

Finally, finally, finally it is Election Day. People in battleground districts and states (such as the NY 23rd, NYC itself, New Jersey, and my own Commonwealth of Virginia) will see the last of the attack ads and the self-promoting bullhonkery run by the candidates themselves. But perhaps I am just tired. I’m usually tired, these days. The point is, it’s time to vote. I’m not registered in Williamsburg because I wanted to vote on my home county’s local referenda, but I have already voted absentee. I’ve participated in delicious democracy – and as my old US Government teacher says, “If you don’t vote, you lose the right to complain.” (Obviously this excludes the underage, etc. They can complain all they want – goodness knows I did. But now I can use my voice for something other than shouting to the indifferent night.)

I’m looking forward to learning the results of the elections (while scrupulously avoiding my Twitter feed and the partisan bullets flying thereabouts at…yes, at ten in the morning with premature numbers showing one candidate trumping the other in a massive pissing contest). I’m going to get my news the old-fashioned way: From the teevee, like someone stuck in the 1990s.

And I mean the proper six o’clock evening news, nothing partisan. I’m staying away from pundits. You could say I’m detoxing. I just want the facts today, thank you – no spin cycle necessary. I’m enough of a grown-up to have my own opinion and not need one spoon-fed to me.

You see, what I really can’t wait for is the end of the news cycle about all this. Mostly I’m waiting for the end of the 24-hour pontificating about whether or not this is a referendum on Obama’s performance as President so far. The theory, when used as a generalization, is patently absurd.

Let’s look at this through sodas. We have Sprite, owned by the Coca-Cola Company, and Sierra Mist, owned by PepsiCo.  If we see the buying patterns of consumers and see that, say, Sierra Mist has more bottles or cans sold for a particular day than Sprite, the conclusion to jump to is not that America is tired of the Coca-Cola Company, that this is a referendum on Coke’s popularity and the popularity of all Coke products. (New Coke is, for obvious reasons, excluded from this model. New Coke is the Rod Blagojevich of sodas. Ditto Crystal Pepsi, which is…I don’t know, David Vitter.) Sure, there’s going to be some people who just hate the Coca-Cola Company and all that it stands for, and will buy PepsiCo products just because they’re not Coke. There will also always be those who buy Coke just because it’s not Pepsi. And then there are the people who just plain hate soda and don’t buy it. But to generalize and say that everybody who buys Sierra Mist rather than Sprite is giving the finger to the Coca-Cola Company is really, really stupid.

Personally, I do hope Democrats don’t jump ship just because of perceived disapproval of the President. That’d just be cutting off their nose to Sprite their face.

Let’s talk about ‘mandates.’  I’ll just go ahead and say there will be ‘mandates’ in the Health Insurance Reform bill that is not yet finished.

I’d like to break some stuff down, then, after that, I would like to know what’s so terrible about the ‘mandates’ cuz i sure as hell can’t tell what the real downside is.

First: As of 2002, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, most businesses with more than 50 employees provide health insurance for their employees … 97.8% in fact.  So, 2.2% of employers with more than 50 employees just don’t wanna … seems pretty obvious and pretty lame, equally.  If an employer with 50 or fewer employees is providing health insurance, and those with 500 or fewer are considered a ’small business’ then those who aren’t at least giving their employees an option as to whether they can even afford what the business probably can afford to offer (esp. with 499 employees) are truly awful indeed.

That said, if an employer has 500 employees and his or her annual employee salary is only $500,000 (therefore paying an employee only $1,000 per year, well the company has its own set of problems) then surely I can -  I guess – understand why they would complain.  Washington Business Journal says HR 3962 would require employers with payrolls of  “$500,000 or more to offer coverage to their employees, or pay a fee of up to 8 percent of their payroll to the government.”

Does not exceed $500,000 0 percent
Exceeds $500,000, but does not exceed $585,000 2 percent
Exceeds $585,000, but does not exceed $670,000 4 percent
Exceeds $670,000, but does not exceed $750,000 6 percent —– and a maximum of 8% period.

So, if the national salary average in 2007 was $50,233, and we use the numbers in H. R. 3962 to figure who would pay extra, and who is so in a huff, it would be those employers who, because they don’t feel like offering health insurance options on their own, have only about 15 employees?  Well, that’s probably not realistic, let’s say they pay about $20,000 that’s probably more like it (and that’s a pretty damn small salary) … still, that’s close to 40 employees that a very very very small business (if a small business is one with 500 or fewer employees) can’t figure out how to chip in for a percentage of its employees coverage?  Well, if only 2% aren’t chipping in for health insurance coverage, and Wal-Mart finally buckled under the pressure … I’d sure like to know who these people are?  Meanwhile, the huffy decide they just don’t want to ever ever ever help provide health insurance for their employees … so, at a 6% tax tacked on to their payroll, they’ll pay about $4,500 per year?

Okay, so the hufflepuffs don’t want to pay $4,500 annually.  Well, they can shop around for the very very very very most inexpensive coverage they can find (I didn’t see in the proposed bill where it says they can’t do that, but I could be wrong) and give their employees the cheapest option, with the least amount of coverage, while giving their employees the government option too as would be required.  With a salary of only $20k it’s likely that the employee then would qualify for the government option.  But, that probably doesn’t matter, they’ll be mad no matter what so I guess this is moot.

Am I understanding the business owners perspective correctly?  Because that two percent sure as hell is confusing me.  It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if my numbers are off, but in the broad analysis, I still don’t understand the huffies problem.

Second: There are those folks who come hell or high water DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES wish to purchase health insurance, nor do they want the government to help them by offering an inexpensive option.  They. Just. Don’t. Want. It. “According to an unpublished Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of the CDC’s 2008 National Health Interview Survey, 2 percent of uninsured people said they simply didn’t want health insurance.”

If there are 46 million people who are uninsured, that leaves 920,000 (just under one million) people who simply don’t want insurance NO MATTER WHAT.

So, if I understand what the opposition representing those who “DON’T WANT HEALTH INSURANCE REFORM” (referencing the entirety of health insurance reform, not those who have issues with specific portions of the bill) i.e. “The American people” or “real Americans” or some hooey, what I am to understand is that less than one million people are standing in the way of reform.

Edited to include: Really, those who are insured, are happy with their insurance, and have no problem paying the bill don’t really seem to have a stake in the matter – there’s nothing stopping them from keeping what they’ve got as far as I can tell. For those who don’t have it because they don’t think they need it rightatthisverysecond, it’s apt that they pay a percentage more for coverage they will be getting, that they usually are complaining about when being all mad about those forced to go to the emergency room because they can’t afford to pay for health insurance they DO want.  Now, for those who DO want it, but can’t afford it there’s a hardship deferment – so I STILL don’t understand the problem.  On top of ALL THAT, there’s now an opt-out portion in the bill for individual states … what the hell is there to complain about?  Every concession possible has been made and I SURE AS HELL KNOW that I won’t ever see health insurance reform in Oklahoma.

So, to all of that I say WTF?

Somebody’s been hoodwinked.

I like the idea of GE selling NBC Universal, but to Comcast? I guess anything beats being a cog in the military industrial complex. Actually, it kinda makes sense that GE would dump NBC–they haven’t exactly been catapulting the propaganda the way they did back in the day. But going from being owned by a huge military contractor to being owned by a cable giant that would take carnal pleasure in ending net neutrality is not much of an improvement for democracy.

Not creeped out yet? How about this lovely nugget–the former president of News Corporation and Rupert Murdoch’s right hand man since the mid-nineties, Peter Chernin, is consulting Comcast on the deal.

Even if this isn’t some diabolical strategy to create a second Fox Network and to run Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann back to Air America and ESPN respectively, I do have serious reservations about Comcast’s ability to run a vacuum cleaner, much less a vertically integrated media behemoth. As proof I offer this horrendous Comcast commercial that shamelessly rips off the sound of anti-folk darling Kimya Dawson with absolutely none of her soul.

• What a GREAT idea! “Recognizegood.com was created by the Samaritan Center and high-tech services and products supplier TyRex Group Ltd. earlier this year to raise money for local charities. The site is free to use, but for each recognition of a good deed, TyRex gives the Samaritan Center $1.”

• Chilling and unacceptable:  “One hundred forty-three years after passage of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and 60 years after Article 4 of the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights banned slavery and the slave trade worldwide, there are more slaves than at any time in human history — 27 million.”
• URL disasters are continuously chuckleworthy!  How can you not laugh at www.ustinc.com?
• As per usual, Glenn Greenwald (@glenngreenwald) brings lofty philosophical rationalization behind torture crashing to the earth (As per usual, I sometimes like to revisit stuff we may have all already seen, but seem important to remember): ” (1) The fact that we are not really bothered any more by taking helpless detainees in our custody and (a) threatening to blow their brains out, torture them with drills, rape their mothers, and murder their children; (b) choking them until they pass out; (c) pouring water down their throats to drown them; (d) hanging them by their arms until their shoulders are dislocated; (e) blowing smoke in their face until they vomit; (f) putting them in diapers, dousing them with cold water, and leaving them on a concrete floor to induce hypothermia; and (g) beating them with the butt of a rifle — all things that we have always condemend as “torture” and which our laws explicitly criminalize as felonies (“torture means. . . the threat of imminent death; or the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering . . .”) — reveals better than all the words in the world could how degraded, barbaric and depraved a society becomes when it lifts the taboo on torturing captives.”

• Interesting idea : House calls to vulnerable patients, which can reduce hospital admissions, may be key to reform.
• Yet another way in which Americans are so lucky:  “Reporters Without Borders has released a report entitled ‘The dangers for journalists who expose environmental issues.’ The report looks at 13 cases of journalists and bloggers who have been killed, physically attacked, jailed, threatened or censored for reporting on the environment, and highlights the need for a free press to tackle ecological challenges.”
• Yoga via YouTube? Why the hell not?
• 2nd Tour, Hope I Don’t Die. – “The book’s title came from graffiti scrawled on a wall at an Air Force base in Kuwait that was one of the transit points for troops heading to Iraq … A clear idea of the pathetic unwillingness of the American people to share in the sacrifices of these wars can be gleaned from a comment that President Obama made in his address last week to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. ‘We are a country of more than 300 million Americans,’ he said. ‘Less than 1 percent wears the uniform …’ if this war, now approaching its ninth year, is so fundamental, we should all be pitching in. We shouldn’t be leaving the entire monumental burden to a tiny portion of the population, sending them into combat again, and again, and again, and again …”
• Have I quickied this neat thingie before? Well … it could bear another mention I suppose.
• This is still one of the most moving and weighty videos wrapped in such a simple package (and it applies in so many ways … in this case the confidence and education given to a girl … in other cases, teaching self-sufficiency through education for girls and boys everywhere.):

As I’ve mentioned before, RJ Eskow is a fair, knowledgeable source on health care reform issues. So when he begins to come out against the health care bill, you should listen.

…while it’s wise to be realistic, there are two critical tests for reform: Is it an improvement over what we have today? And is it structured so that further improvements can be made as it becomes politically feasible to do so? There are significant problems with both the House and the Senate versions that could cause the final bill to fail one or both of these tests.

Read RJ’s whole piece here.

This is for you, Joe Scarborough. Yet another poll shows ridiculously high support for a public health insurance option.

The rest of the poll is rife with the kinds of contradictions that arise from the gap between what people want, and what they are willing to do for it. What a surprise, for example, that a poll of people who 89% of have health insurance think that health care reform is too focused on insuring the uninsured, as opposed to controlling costs. As if insuring the uninsured does nothing to control costs.

To be clear, I think polling is irrelevant to whether the public option is a good idea. The public can be idiots. I mention it because the public option is a good idea, and since the public supports it so overwhelmingly, there’s no good reason for the Democrats not to pass it.

I have a beef with Robert Kolker of New York Magazine’s source “former staffer,” and it sure as sh** has nothing to do with David Letterman.

There’s a paragraph quote that has been eating at me, and it really is one of the worst ways to insult a woman … by beginning with a compliment.

Here is the offending bit – of an otherwise interesting article about a work environment, like any other, that has a boss, like any other, who happens to be a little bit domineering, like any other:

“Lasko, like Markoe before her, had a great mind.  Dave, it seemed, had a type: women who impressed him intellectually, who somehow had his number. They were not necessarily the obvious choices. “You can look at these women and see how they look,” says one former staffer. “You see he’s going for personality as well, but I think he’s also going for easy targets. He’s not setting himself up for rejection. He’s not going to ask the head of the cheerleading team to prom. He’s going to ask the head of the band or something.”

Essentially, what “former staffer” says is that David Letterman prefers the company of intelligent women, perhaps those women who didn’t let him get away with what may be typical Letterman crap.  Mmmmkay … well …  that’s refreshing, right?  But then “former staffer” decided to continue talking and actually reveal what sort of person he or she is rather than the sort of person David Letterman is … said staffer recalls how these women weren’t the obvious sort that ANYONE would choose, much less David Letterman.

But, “former staffer” doesn’t stop there … oh no … this person goes on to say that while Letterman is attracted to intellect and personality he only is attracted to them because, due to their vivacious personality and superior intellect, they are … wait for it ——-AN EASY TARGET.   WTF?!  Since when in the world does being an intelligent woman (who isn’t a ’supermodel’) make one an ‘easy target?’

Oh, and there’s more…that somehow there’s no way a “cheerleader” type could POSSIBLY be attracted to Letterman or seduced by Letterman, which again is insulting – both to the “intellectual” women and the “cheerleader” women.

Face it, David Letterman is a smart, funny, successful man who MANY women would find attractive – young and old, intellectual and shallow … get over it!  Alternatively, there are PLENTY of women who find Letterman repulsive, rude, and unfunny….get over that, too!

Well, whomever “former staffer” is the WORST sort of sexist (whether “former staffer” be male or female).  This is right out of a chauvinist playbook of assuming all feminists don’t shave their legs and hate men, and just as bad as assuming that all lesbians are butch and all cheerleaders are stupid and shallow … what the hell decade are we living in again?

Really, if  “former staffer’s” notion of what women are supposed to be and what men are supposed to be attracted to was around while I was working for the Late Show … well, it isn’t David Letterman who I would feel uncomfortable around.

On that note  – I really really really don’t care about David Letterman’s – or his staff’s -  sex lives.  However, the blackmail attempt, and subsequent storm … FASCINATING.

My new health care reform video addresses the absurdity of ‘solving’ our country’s health insurance problem by forcing everyone to buy it with higher premiums.

Want a few reasons to oppose the current health care reform package?