More South Carolina GOP sex shenanigans

I live for headlines like this.

As the officer approached, Corning sped off, then pulled over a few blocks away. He and the 18-year-old woman with him, an employee of the Platinum Plus Gentleman's Club, gave conflicting stories about what they were doing in the cemetery, Officer Michael Wines wrote in his report, though he did not elaborate.

Corning gave Wines a badge showing he worked for the state Attorney General's Office. Wines, whose wife also works there, called her to make sure Corning was telling the truth.

He then searched the SUV, where he found a Viagra pill and several sex toys, items Corning said he always kept with him, "just in case," according to the report.

Must have been a Boy Scout. Read More......

Curry an answer for curing cancer?

For esophagus cancer, the test results are looking positive. Eating more curry may not help because the turmeric loses its cancer fighting qualities but could be introduced as a key component in the fight.

McKenna said the study showed curcumin caused the cancer cells to die "using an unexpected system of cell messages."

Normally, faulty cells die by committing programed suicide, or apoptosis, which occurs when proteins called caspases are 'switched on' in cells, the researchers said.

But these cells showed no evidence of suicide, and the addition of a molecule that inhibits caspases and stops this "switch being flicked' made no difference to the number of cells that died, suggesting curcumin attacked the cancer cells using an alternative cell signaling system.

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Just because they say they don't like the bill, doesn't mean they'll vote for a filibuster

SEIU compiled some compelling examples of how Democratic Senator Evan Bayh (D-OH) has voted for cloture (i.e., against a filibuster) numerous times, even though in the end he voted against the Democratic legislation itself.

Even Evan Bayh, who said earlier today he doesn't see "much difference between process and policy at this particular juncture" hasn't always voted the same way on cloture as on final passage. Here are a few quick examples:

Example 1: In 2008, Evan Bayh voted in favor of a cloture motion on the bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, though he opposed the bill itself. "Bayh voted with most Democrats to stop the filibuster because, he said, it was preventing amendments that could have improved the bill."[Gannett, 6/12/2008; Vote 145, 6/6/2008]

Example 2: In 2005, Senator Bayh voted for cloture on Judge Owen's nomiation, but against final confirmation. Vote 127, 5/24/05: Senate.gov ; Vote 128, 5/25/05: Senate.gov. Judge Owen, you might recall, was the first nominee to reach the floor after the "Gang of 14" agreements.

Example 3: In 2004, Senator Bayh voted for cloture on the conference report to H.R. 1047, a $388 billion spending bill, then voted against final passage the next day. Vote 214, 11/19/04 ; Vote 215, 11/20/04

And this makes sense. It's one thing to vote against a bill, especially if the Dems already have the votes to pass it without you. It's an entirely other thing to vote to sustain a filibuster killing the bill. Depending on how important the bill is to the party - like, say it's the president's top initiative for his presidency - the Democratic Senator voting to sustain a filibuster, and kill the bill, could pay a huge price for his vote. That is, if the White House and the Democratic leadership actually make him pay a price. Read More......

FOX and White House reach a truce?

Maybe. But the issue isn't that FOX is unfair, or unbalanced. They're simply not media, period. They were set up as a conservative propaganda operation, and that is what they are to this day. There is no way that they can promise to be nice. It's like the liberal blogs promising to stop favoring Democrats over Republicans. It's not who we are, or why we exist, and if we were to promise it, we'd be lying. So if FOX, if in fact they've promised any truce. Read More......

Conservative Dems, who claim to be worried about the deficit, just killed the more cost-effective version of the public option in the House

Note the conservative Dems openly admit they're more worried about preserving a doctor's half a million a year salary than helping regular Americans cut their medical costs.

In the end, Pelosi, D-Calif., and other House leaders were unable to round up the necessary votes for their preferred version of the government insurance plan — one that would base payment rates to providers on rates paid by Medicare. Instead, the Health and Human Services secretary would negotiate rates with providers, the approach preferred by moderates and the one that will be featured in the Senate's version.

That marked a defeat for liberal lawmakers, who argued for months that a public insurance plan tied to Medicare would save more money for the government, and offer cheaper rates to consumers. Moderates feared that doctors, hospitals and other providers, particularly those in rural states, would be hurt, and in the end they looked poised to prevail, despite constituting a distinct minority in the 256-member House Democratic caucus.

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US ranked 9th in global prosperity index

There's no reason why the US can't be higher. Reuters:

The index is based on a definition of prosperity that combines economic growth with the level of personal freedoms and democracy in a country as well as measures of happiness and quality of life.

With the exception of Switzerland, which came in at number 2, Nordic countries dominated the top 5 slots, with Sweden in third place followed by Denmark and Norway.

The top 10 were all also Western nations, with Australia (6th place) and Canada (7th place) both beating the United States, ranked 9th. Britain came in at number 12.

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Obama pay czar increased salaries for Wall Street

Um, what? Anyone who wants to leave for greener pastures because they're such a superstar should leave now. Take it or just leave. Now. (It would be fascinating to see exactly where they think the job opportunities are better.)

Base salaries at the companies on average rose 14 percent to $437,896 a year, the paper said, adding that 89 of the 136 employees under the U.S. pay czar's review got a raise in base salary.

The paper added that Feinberg agreed to more than double cash salaries for 13 of 21 Citigroup employees.

Government officials told the paper they agreed to increase some base salaries in the wake of some companies expressing concern that the pay czar was planning to lock up too much employees' compensation for the long term.

Shouldn't they have thought about this before gambling away the economy? Read More......

How CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield cheated a woman on her pregnancy

It's an easy read, and infuriating as hell:

Our six-month-old daughter cost over $22,000.

You’d think, with a number like that, we must have used fertility treatments—but she was conceived naturally. You’d think we went through an adoption agency—but she is a biological child. So surely, we were uninsured.

Nope. Birthing our daughter was so expensive precisely because we were insured, on the individual market. Our insurer, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, sold us exactly the type of flawed policy—riddled with holes and exceptions—that the health care reform bills in Congress should try to do away with. The “maternity” coverage we purchased didn’t cover my labor, delivery, or hospital stay. It was a sham. And so we spent the first months of her life getting the kind of hospital bills and increasingly aggressive calls from hospital administrators that I once believed were only possible without insurance.

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FOX's Chris Wallace parrots Glenn Beck

Which is interesting, since FOX likes to claim that Chris Wallace is "news," while Glenn Beck is just "opinion." In other words, don't call FOX unfair and unbalanced just because it's opinion side, like no other station on TV, has only conservative hosts. The thing is, FOX's "news" hosts are also conservative, and now parroting the partisan talking points of FOX's "opinion" hosts.

Here's Chris Wallace showing a tad too much of a man-crush on Glenn Beck.

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Family Research Council: Obama program to help gay elderly is wasted since gays die young anyway. Is FRC again using "science" of known hate group?

I've been tracking the extremism, and lies, of the religious right activist group Family Research Council for about 16 years now. You'd think after all that time, it would be difficult to be shocked by their anti-gay antics. Still, they end up surprising me.

Today's surprise? The rather fey president of the heterosexist organization, Tony Perkins, didn't disappoint yesterday when he criticized the Obama administration's new program to help elderly gay people. Perkins' reasoning? What's the point in having a program to help elderly gays when they all die young anyway? Get it? We're gay, so we all have AIDS and die, I guess. What else could Perkins have possibly meant?

Of course, what Perkins may have been alluding to was the debunked anti-gay science of a known hate group, labeled so by the Southern Poverty Law Center. SPLC says the hate group, run by Paul Cameron, produces anti-gay "studies" that "echo of Nazi Germany." Mind you, the Southern Poverty Law Center is the premiere American organization tracking the klan and white supremacists. They know of what they speak. But that doesn't stop the FRC from continuing to publish Cameron's filthy "Nazi Germany-esque" research on their Web site, years after we first reported about this. (You'll find the sources for all of this in the post I linked to above.)

It's too bad our national gay groups, who both Joe and I have begged to use Cameron to go after the main groups of the religious right (who all promote him), refuse to even touch this issue. So, as usual, it's up to the fringe Internet left of the left to do the work of our national organizations - I've been tracking, and writing about, Cameron, and the damage he keeps causing, since the early 90s. It's just incredibly frustrating that the religious right is still openly using the work of a "Nazi Germany-esque" hate group, and the gay groups don't find that a useful way to delegitimize the lead groups of the religious right, and put an end to this ridiculous "science" once and for all.

And mind you, who started the campaign against gay Obama administration official Kevin Jennings? None other than the Family Research Council. It all ties together. Read More......

Public Health Insurance, Opt-Out, and Trojan Horses

In all of the excitement about Harry Reid’s inclusion of an opt-out public option in the Senate version of the health care reform bill, one question has been somewhat submerged: "Opt out of WHAT exactly?"

What the public option actually would provide to states that DIDN’T opt out has been left pretty much to the imagination of each person. But the fact is that there are some concrete details to be worked out that will be very important in determining whether the public option actually helps much or not. First, what exactly are they proposing?

The core of the proposal is a not-for-profit plan run by a board chosen, one presumes, by the government in some form or other. It would negotiate reimbursement rates and coverage just as private plans do, but the main differences would be that:

- It would accept anyone who couldn’t get private insurance
- It would not make a profit, instead aiming to break even

Right there it would have a signficant advantage. It wouldn’t have to have a bureaucracy whose sole raison d’etre was to deny coverage to anyone who looked like they might get sick or who actually got sick. It also wouldn’t have to tack on a profit margin or huge salaries for a large bureaucracy, as private plans do. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that even these advantages could provide an immediate decrease in premiums for anyone, particularly if the public plans are state-based rather than federally based.

This last point is a key uncertainty. One of the main advantages of a national insurance plan is the fact that it would be large enough to both spread risk widely (and thereby reduce costs), and also that it would provide significant leverage to negotiate rates with providers, drug companies, etc. So here is something to watch. Will the “public option” really be 50 plans or will it be one national plan, either by design, or by strict federal regulation of what the public option plans can look like?

Also, can states form regional plans by joining each other? The bigger the population covered by each single plan the better.

Another consideration. Even if a public option didn’t provide an immediate cost decrease compared to private plans, it would from its very beginning be under enormous pressure not to raise rates quickly, and to do a good job of justifying any increases it did implement. You can be sure that watchdogs will be all over it to see that its rates are not ridiculously high, and that it doesn’t simply charge whatever the traffic will bear. That means that over time it will stay cheaper than private insurance, and that the growth rates of 8% a year we have seen in the private sector will no longer be possible since the premia for the public plan will almost inevitably grow far more slowly, if at all. (Note from John: My premia are going up almost 25% a year.)

And what of the rest of us who already have jobs and pay too much? The Senate and House bills being discussed limit the public option to individuals and small businesses - if you work for a large company that provides you insurance, you can't choose the public option instead.

Here is a prediction: If we actually get a public option in place, and it is indeed cheaper than private alternatives because of its lack of a profit margin, and its ability to forgo the huge bureaucracy designed to deny coverage to sick people, you can bet the rent that our politicians will smell an easy vote-getting ploy: Open the plan to everyone who wants it! And why not? Larger numbers would make the public plan stronger, and happier voters would make the politicians more secure. Win win! All it takes is a few states to set the example, and soon everyone will start wondering why THEY don’t get the same good deal as the state next door.

We can even hope that eventually we will see a situation where basic medical needs for everyone are covered by the public plan, and those who want further and beyond coverage, or quicker coverage or fancier coverage, are free to go out and buy it.

But hasn’t that been tried somewhere before already? It has – in France – but just don’t ever call it “French." I think calling it the “Freedom Public Option” would be a much catchier name.

Finally, let's remember what happened to the original Trojan Horse. Once it got inside the gate it turned into a game changer. It still took the whole Greek army to win the battle, but it was much easier from inside the walls. And once you win, you get to set the rules.

In the end, perhaps that's why the Republicans don't like the public option. They know it will work. Read More......

Anatomy of a CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield lie

I decided to attempt to check my CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance policy online last night, to see how much of my prescription drug benefit I still have left (CareFirst only covers $1500 a year in prescription drugs for me, that's it - the same amount they covered in 1999 when I first got the policy, its never gone up, even though my premia have tripled).

So I go on their site to find out how much drug coverage I have remaining for this year, and of course I can't find out because that would be too useful. What I did find, however, was a whopping lie that Blue Cross seems to be using to convince customers that they're getting such a great deal. Here's what I found for my recent purchase of Simvastatin from Costco (for cholesterol):



What the above data is telling me is that I bought 90 pills of Simvastatin, a three month supply, and even though I should have paid $441.37, oh but for the graces of CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield, I only spent $9.99. And BCBS even calculated out how much money I saved by having their oh-so-generous policy - a whopping $438.38 on just this one drug purchase.

Too bad it's a lie.

The reason I only paid $9.99 isn't because Blue Cross got me such a good deal. I paid $9.99 because that's what Costco charges for the drug, no thanks to BCBS. Costco doesn't charge $441.37, which Blue Cross would like you to think. Costco only charges $9.99 for 90 pills. So, actually, Blue Cross didn't save me a dime.

But Blue Cross wants its customers to think that it's doing something wonderful for them. The sooner we tighten the regulations on these pathologic deceivers, the better. Read More......

Geithner gave away the farm to AIG

All too often we hear that it's critical to have an insider to oversee Wall Street. There's a lot to be said for this argument and in many, if not most cases, it's true. This is a clever bunch and you need experts who understand the system and know the tricks. In the case of the New York Federal Reserve President at the time Tim Geithner, he either didn't properly understand the environment or he was a fool. Either way, it's not encouraging news.

When the credit crisis was turning dangerous, AIG was seeking 40 cents on the dollar to cover their crazy gambles. Good old Timmy Geithner would have none of it. He increased the figure to 100 cents on the dollar. This was a critical factor in AIG sending $14 billion to Goldman Sachs and the US taxpayers paid a $13 billion premium over AIG's original target for selling their trash. When people question Geithner's competence or his ability to guide the US economy, it comes from situations like this. It's hard to put faith in someone who gives away the farm to Wall Street. Bloomberg:

Part of a sentence in the document was crossed out. It contained a blank space that was intended to show the amount of the haircut the banks would take, according to people who saw the term sheet. After less than a week of private negotiations with the banks, the New York Fed instructed AIG to pay them par, or 100 cents on the dollar. The content of its deliberations has never been made public.

The New York Fed’s decision to pay the banks in full cost AIG -- and thus American taxpayers -- at least $13 billion. That’s 40 percent of the $32.5 billion AIG paid to retire the swaps. Under the agreement, the government and its taxpayers became owners of the dubious CDOs, whose face value was $62 billion and for which AIG paid the market price of $29.6 billion. The CDOs were shunted into a Fed-run entity called Maiden Lane III.

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning from Maine.

The President will sign the Department of Defense authorization today, which means the Hate Crimes bill will finally become the Hate Crimes Law. There's a reception at the White House tonight in honor of this development.

So, while we're making progress on hate in D.C. in Maine, haters are in the spotlight today. Two of the worst of the worst homophobes are campaigning for the anti-gay campaign today. Louise posted Peter LaBarbera's sordid history at Pam's House Blend. He's just obsessed with all things gay -- and knows more about gay sex than most gay people. Even worse, the Catholic Bishop's campaign is bringing in a designated hate group, Mass Resistance. The hate group's Brian Camenker and LaBarbera will be holding their hate-a-palooza at the State House in Augusta this morning. I'm going. Just wondering if Bishop Richard Malone will be joining them. He's the leader of the anti-gay campaign and these haters are his allies.

If you want to help turn out the vote in Maine, you can Call for Equality.

Let's get threading.. Read More......

Obama and Congress move forward with mild bank reform

While it's not a bad idea to pave the way for a takeover of a troubled bank, this reform is once again, much too weak. It barely can even be considered reform. The more serious approach - which was implemented in the Netherlands for ING and now starting in the UK - is to break up the "too big to fail" banks before they become another problem. As mentioned, earlier, the US decision makers are behind the curve on this issue.

Some of the experts supporting the "break them up" reform including Paul Volcker, Paul Krugman, Robert Reich, Sheila Blair and even Alan Greenspan who now sees the error in his previous support of repealing the Glass-Steagall Act. If Greenspan can admit a mistake (or at least see the light the second time) maybe there's still hope for Congress and Obama. The proposed reform by Obama and Congress sounds like it's addressing the problem, but it's still leaving taxpayers with much too much risk. Hasn't everyone had enough of that? Read More......

UK breaking up 'too big to fail' banks

The US is behind the curve on this issue, like most issues related to moving beyond the massive financial collapse. The Dutch were pushed along by the EU the other day with ING and now this. Some still argue the benefits of these beasts but in reality, the mega banks only helped stitch together even larger commissions for the lucky few. They encouraged monster deals that were too often about benefiting the deal makers. Those days appear to be living on borrowed time. The days of less competition in the UK banking sector are also in trouble.

The European Union will today approve the split of Northern Rock into two sections, a "good", profitable, bank with no bad debt, and a "bad" bank. Ministers will begin exploring sale options at the start of next year when the split happens and a deal could be finalised before the general election. The remaining "bad" bank will remain in state hands for the time being although sales of "tranches" of the more risky mortgages it holds will be explored in the longer term.

The Lloyds and RBS sell-offs will follow over the next three to five years and will be supervised by UK Financial Investments, the government body set up to oversee taxpayers' investment in the banks.

The Government is understood to have made clear that existing larger operators will be banned from participating in the sales.

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FOX's John Stossel speaking at partisan rallies, again

I do think the NYT just got its revenge. Read More......