February 2010 archive
Feb 26 2010
Overnight Caption Contest
Feb 26 2010
Removing Health Insurance’s Antitrust Exemption — will Lower its Cost
With all the other HCR news, you may have missed this important tidbit. (I know I did.)
House Votes To Repeal Antitrust Exemption for Health Insurance Firms
Thursday, February 25, 2010
On Wednesday, the House voted 406-19 to end a 65-year-old antitrust exemption for health insurance companies, part of Democrats’ broader strategy to revive their health reform efforts ahead of Thursday’s bipartisan health care summit, Roll Call reports (Dennis, Roll Call, 2/25).
The bill (HR 4626) would amend the 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act, which exempts insurers from federal antitrust law if they are regulated by the states.
http://www.californiahealthlin…
Granted it’s NOT the Public Option, BUT still it’s important to finally putting the brakes on the run-away rising costs of Health Care, hopefully …
Feb 26 2010
For Your Consideration: Negotiating
One of the important points of negotiating that I learned early was that you take nothing off the table, no matter how outrageous or unobtainable. You come to the table with everything you want, EVERYTHING. One of my favorite bloggers is Hecate, a Wiccan lawyer who works in DC. Her comments on “Yes We Can!”
It’s probably just me, but I’m a huge negotiation geek. It was my favorite class in law school. Every single exercise, my partner and I got buckets and buckets more than anyone else. As we were doing one of the exercises, someone in the class sighed out loud, “They’re doing it again.” There’s an art to negotiation, and a huge part of that art is going in knowing who and what you’re up against. Plus, negotiation is great fun. I’ve made a very respectable living for years based, inter alia, on my ability to negotiate (and to go for the jugular when people won’t negotiate with me). So it’s driven me batshit insane to watch the Obama administration and the Senate Dems “negotiate” and I use that term loosely, themselves into a losing position on health care reform.
Feb 26 2010
Free Spring Cleaning Help from Netroots Nation Auctions!
cross posted from Daily Kos 🙂
Yep you heard it…we at your friendly neighborhood Netroots Nation Auction Headquarters are happy to announce our newest service: FREE Spring Cleaning Help! How can you take advantage of that you ask? Well, let’s let the pooties tell you!
First thing you need to do is clean out your basement/attic/bedroom/bookshelves:
Then you go to THIS LINK and you donate things like:
And then you tell ALL of your friends to do the same!
See…free Spring Cleaning
Then on March 10 you go back to THIS LINK and you bid on the stuff everyone else cleaned out of THEIR homes.
Then you answer the door when the mail man arrives with a package just for you:
So don’t let this be you:
And just to tease you know I know of at least 3 awesome things we will be auctioning off that I KNOW you’re gonna want…but that’s for another diary, another day.
Happy Cleaning!
Feb 26 2010
A Long Day’s Journey Into Night
The historic Conclave at Blair Castle has finally ended, the illustrious personages in attendance have shared their wisdom with us, and I have humbly transcribed their words, so serfs everywhere will be able to sleep well tonight knowing that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well . . .
Feb 26 2010
The Death and Life of American Journalism
Bob McChesney is the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois. In 2008, the Utne Reader listed McChesney among their “50 visionaries who are changing the world”. He has written and edited 17 books, and his work has been translated into 21 languages. John Nichols is The Nation’s Washington correspondent, and the associated editor of the Capital Times in Wisconsin. John has covered seven presidential races and reported from two dozen countries. He is the author or coauthor of eight books on media and politics.
McChesney and Nichols are co-authors of a new book “The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again“, described in review by Mike Francis of The Oregonian as “a book that diagnoses the collapse of traditional, commercial journalism and, as a solution, prescribes a dramatic recasting of the incentives and rewards that make the industry work” and looks “backward at the historical business and regulatory choices made by publishers, broadcasters and their enablers in Congress”
Francis comments in his review that:
The authors are at their best when they point to critical turns during the formation of an independent press — turns, they suggest, that could have gone in the direction of far more state support. The American people, wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1787, should be given “full information … thro’ the channel of public papers, and … these papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people.”
Also instructive are the sections devoted to the U.S. military’s support for a climate of press freedom in the defeated nations of Japan and Germany, both of which, not coincidentally, are full of flourishing newspapers today.
Here Paul Jay of The Real News interviews McChesney and Nichols together about their book and about the journalism industry in the United States and kicks off the discussion with:
…let’s start with some assumptions, ’cause we don’t have too long, and I don’t think they’re tough assumptions, which is: American journalism, in terms of its financial model, is broken; in terms of its substantive content model is pretty broken too, especially when you look at the capitulation of most of the media around the Iraq War and since. So talk just a bit about the problem, and then talk a little bit about the solutions.
Real News Network – February 25, 2010
transcript here
The Death and Life of American Journalism Pt.1
McChesney and Nichols: The market cannot generate sufficient journalism on its own
Feb 25 2010
Afternoon Edition
Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread
| From Yahoo News Top Stories |
1 Excuses but no Sarkozy apology for Rwanda genocide
by Philippe Alfroy, AFP
1 hr 43 mins ago
| KIGALI (AFP) – French President Nicolas Sarkozy acknowledged that France made mistakes during the 1994 genocide, paid homage to the victims but stopped short of apologising during his landmark visit to Kigali Thursday.
“What happened here is unacceptable, but what happened here compels the international community, including France, to reflect on the mistakes that stopped it from preventing and halting this abominable crime,” he said. Marking the first visit to Rwanda by a French president since the 1994 massacres, Sarkozy spoke at a joint press conference with Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who has repeatedly accused Paris of aiding the genocide. |
Feb 25 2010
Junk Economics and the middle class: Where we went wrong
When I wrote this essay a lot of people asked me, “What should we do about it?”
It’s a good question, but its also a trap. I’m not so arrogant as to believe that I know the perfect solution to our economic problems. Anyone that tells you they know is either a fool or a liar.
However, that doesn’t mean we can’t discover where we went wrong once you apply a little logic and data to the situation.
For instance, if you realize you have taken a wrong turn, it makes more sense to turn around and go back to the corner where the mistake was made, than it does to drive in a general direction and hope you can find your way home.
When it comes to the economy, its pretty easy to discover when the wrong turn was made – 1972.
Feb 25 2010
Olympic Alternatives X
You thought I was not serious?
I’m dead serious. The only way to effect change is through sacrifice (changing your habits) and protest (telling people what you think, publicly).
Plenty of other stuff out on the Hypnotoad. Just look-
The Hypnotoad.
| "Television is a vast wasteland" |
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Primetime Update.
Late Night Update.
Why are you Update.
Feb 25 2010
Know those you call ‘enemy’, in their own land!
Many today may disagree as many did back in our failed policy occupation, Vietnam, but one of the main lessons many of us did learn is to respect those fighting you, as we occupied, and what they will do and bring at you in the battles of Guerilla War, in their land. For a soldier trains to be a warrior to defend his country and you’re fighting warriors defending their country!