Newshoggers.com

Another Dog Video

By John Ballard

Less than a minute.
You're gonna see it sooner or later, so here it is.

Too long to Tweet and too complicated for a blog post...

By John Ballard

The global power of modern criminal enterprises...makes Sicilian gangsters and their New World progeny look like a cottage industry. And anyone who doesn't believe there is a symbiotic relationship between modern criminals and transnational corporations simply hasn't done their homework.

Warning -- Naked self-promotion here.

That came from a comment I put up yesterday at a somwhat arcane link over at 3QuarksDaily.
Readers who want to plow through the reference are welcome to check it out, but I won't be offended if you simply roll your eyes and skip it.
I just like the way that part came out and wanted to hang on to it for future reference. And besides, only a handful of readers see my Tweets. (It's like trying to discuss a dry topic in a crowd while watching a sports event.)

HCR -- ACA is a BFD for Women

By John Ballard

My friend Maggie Mahar has put together a powerful summary of what can happen in the aftermath if any of several attempts to maim or kill health care reform hit the target. The provisions of ACA, however imperfect that benighted piece of legislation may be, still represent a great leap forward for women's care via the insurance market. 

Health reform: a huge victory for women What's at stake for voters and the women they love?

...even when maternity benefits are excluded, one-third of all health plans charge women at least 30 percent more, according to a report released just last month by the National Women’s Law Center.

In 36 states, “92 percent of best-selling plans charge 40-year-old women more than 40-year-old men,” the Center reports, and “only 3 percent of these plans cover maternity services … One plan in South Dakota charges a woman $1252.80 more a year than a 40-year-old man for the same coverage.”

Today, less than half of American women can obtain affordable insurance through a job, which explains why millions buy their own insurance in the individual market. In that market, just 14 states ban gender rating: California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.

Pricing based on gender also plagues the small group market, where insurers frequently jack up premiums if a small or mid-size business employs too many women. This means that many of these employers just can not afford to offer insurance. Only 17 states address the problem.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

...if a woman lives in North Carolina, Oklahoma, North Dakota, or Mississippi, and has been the victim of domestic violence, it is perfectly legal for a company to refuse to sell her a policy.

In 45 states, insurers can reject her because she has had a C-section – even if it was medically mandated.

Insurers see “Caesareans or beatings as pre-existing conditions that are likely to be predictors of higher expenses in the future,” the New York Times explains, pointing to Peggy Robertson, a 41-year-old Colorado mother who was denied insurance in 2007. A broker advised the Robertson’s to switch their insurance to Golden Rule (owned by United HealthCare), where they would get a better rate. But when they applied, the company spotted a C-section on Robertson’s record, and sent her a letter, explaining that if she wanted insurance she would have to be sterilized.

Go read the whole thing. Mark it for later reading if your time is limited, but take the time to read carefully and pay attention. This is very important content, not to be scanned and forgotten. 

(And pay attention to navigation. There are four pages to this article and I don't find a link to make it into a single page for easy reading. Readers will need to click each page separately,)

►Women pay dearly for being women

►Pre-existing conditions: rape, C-sections, beatings?

►Health reform: truly a BFD for women

►If the Court spares health reform, Congress may still attack

Sunday Night Tunes

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Sarah McLachlan is a wonderful poet and songwriter.  In addition she has a voice that is a musical instrument - she has the voice of an angel.

HCR -- Hansen's Disease (Leprosy), a history lesson

By John Ballard

One of my guilty pleasures in retirement is allowing myself time for contemplation and reflection. Weekends without assignments are especially satisfying because barring some unscheduled disaster or emergency, even the news cycle seems to calm down for the weekend. This morning, thanks to a link at 3 Quarks Daily, I allowed myself to watch and learn about a classic film by Forough Farrokhzad, a gifted young Persian woman, a poet and film-maker, killed in a car crash in 1967 at the age of 32. It's only twenty minutes long, but I realized as I watched how seldom I allow myself to calm down long enough to absorb time-consuming artistic creations. Listening to the radio as I drive is second-nature for me. But that's not the same as deliberately sitting alone with a monitor and getting focused on something as simple as a video.

The House is Black is an acclaimed Iranian documentary short film directed by Forough Farrokhzad.

The film is a look at life and suffering in a leper colony and focuses on the human condition and the beauty of creation. It is spliced with Farrokhzad's narration of quotes from the Old Testament, the Koran and her own poetry. It was the only film she directed before her death in 1967. During the shooting she became attached to a child of two lepers, whom she later adopted.

Although the film attracted little attention outside Iran when released, it has since been recognised as a landmark in Iranian film. Reviewer Eric Henderson described the film; "One of the prototypal essay films, The House is Black paved the way for the Iranian New Wave.

As a medical corpsman in Korea in the Sixties I heard one of the doctors mention that getting an assignment to Korea at that time was a good opportunity to see first-hand a few medical problems that would not likely be seen in the US. Aside from military trauma, he mentioned skin disorders, specifically Hansen's Disease, which has all but vanished in the US. The remnants of a leper colony remain in Hawaii and there is a place in Carville, Louisiana called the Carville Leprosarium, now home to a handful of people, but mostly a historic site. 

In 1916 Congress passed an Act whereby the United States Public Health Services took over the colony along with the Daughters of Charity. For over 100 years more than 5,000 leprosy patients were cared for at Carville and some 1,000 are buried at Carville. Many, many of them offered themselves as guinea pigs and took many experimental medicines hoping to find a cure. Once a person became a patient he or she stayed on the grounds for the rest of their lives. Children with the disease were brought to Carville, separated from their families and probably lived their entire life there. Though marriages were discouraged, many patients married each other and small cottages were built on the grounds for them to live. However, any children born of these marriages were immediately put in foster care, either in an institution for orphans or in private homes. Through the years the children could visit on Sunday to see their parents on the other side of the fence. Some of the stories are heartwrenching.

As you watch this film, be aware that although it is filmed at another time, in another place, the story is universal. Even today, although the circumstances and causes are not the same, many thousands of people live out their lives with conditions that are not all that different, living with hopes every bit as bleak. 

White House Correspondents Dinner Last Night...

Posted by John Ballard
Yep, I stayed up to watch it live...

Wingnut Welfare

Commentary By Ron Beasley

The socipathic Republicans/Conservatives hate welfare unless it's for large corporations that are part of the military industrial complex.  In order to avoid cuts in the "defense" budget they want to cut food stamps.

WASHINGTON -- The latest Republican plan to reconcile the budget and preserve defense spending extracts even deeper cuts from programs to help the poor and Americans still reeling from the recession.

Although spending levels for the budget were set in the Budget Control Act passed last summer in the deal to raise the nation's debt limit, Republicans are pushing ahead with another plan that cuts more while trying to prevent the beginning of $600 billion in cuts over 10 years to the growth of the defense budget.

So what are they trying to save?  The billion dollar flying lemon better known as the F35.  They had to cheat to keep the F35 and Lockheed Martin alive.

It seemed like a promising step for America’s next stealth fighter: The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter passed a key Pentagon test of its combat capability. But it turns out that the family of jets cleared the mid-February exam only because its proctor agreed to inflate its grade. In essence, the military helped the F-35 cheat on its midterms.

The collusion between the Pentagon testing body, known as the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC), and the F-35 program — first reported by Inside Defense — confirmed that the U.S.’ most expensive warplane met previously established performance criteria. Specifically, the review was meant to show that the jet can fly as far and take off as quickly as combat commanders say they need it to.

But the review council, which includes the vice chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, eased the standard flying profile of the Air Force’s F-35A model — thereby giving it a range boost of 30 miles. And it tacked an additional 50 feet onto the required takeoff distance for the Marines’ F-35B version, which Defense Secretary Leon Panetta just took off budgetary probation.

This lemon has 13 known flaws.  This will increase the amount of wingnut welfare required and delay delivery.  But the project continues and Lockheed Martin remains alive.  It's a Budgetary Disaster but easy money for a major defense contractor.

While the Republicans continually talk about government waste the F35 is waste they won't talk about.

Unaware

From John's Twitter feed

RT @MittRmoney: How many times can I play the #UnawareCard before people start questioning my management abilities? #mitt2012

— Weapons Grade Stupid (@WpnsGradeStupid) April 28, 2012

"Born with a silver spoon in his orifice..."

By John Ballard

When I began blogging in ernest in 2004 one of my first decisions what to limit my content to ideas and events I found intresting, possibly important, but probably not widely known.  Although I am obviously an old-fashioned Liberal, I have never spent much time at any of the top-tier sites, Left or Right, figuring that if something it important I will know about it soon enough, and if I feel the need to address an issue, I can do so on my own terms. 

I am not attracted, then, to any of the places were they play the same notes over and over. That's one of the annoying features of the Fox people. They seem to find a tilted spin on nearly everything. I sometimes think even the weather forecasts are sending a political message. Something about those telegenic blond haired female reporters and guys with permanent smirks just turns me off.  

And by the same token, I am bored quickly with MSNBC, Current and other networks that handle their Left-wing content just as undiluted by reflection, but with more salt-of-the-earth and academic types who tend not to be as pretty. It's all about cocooning. And it's not that different from self-gratification, if you catch my drift. 

But sometimes, like a child in the toy department or an alcoholic in a package store, I come across something that I just have to grab and share. (I admit that if I'm cooking a recipe that calls for brown sugar I secretly hope the box has been open and dried out so I can pop some of the hard lumpy pieces from the top into my mouth and eat them like candy. That's how much I have a substance abuse issue with sugar.)

I promise not to do this often, but here is a box of candy that I just came across and I had to share. 
Enjoy... 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The cost of douchebaggery

By Dave Anderson:

I am not a big fan of Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA-4/12). My archives here are clear about that. His voting record probably is a decent match for his district, although I think there is probably a little bit more wiggle room there than his votes indicated. My biggest problem with Altmire is that he has been a political weasel and that weaselling and chiselling has cost him his allies. 2011 saw several generally Democratically aligned outside interest groups start taking shots at Altmire:

Altmire is a douchebag, there is minimal dispute there. If there is a barely contentious issue that polarizes on partisan lines, expect him to vote with 98% of the Republicans. It is what he has always done....

Knocking out a theoretically partisan friend who has consistently voted against your desired policy outcomes induces fear and increases compliance with a policy agenda, and thus a $350K drop by nominally Democratic leaning group against a Democratic incumbent makes a good deal of sense.

Altmire lost the Democratic primary for the new PA-12 seat last night to Representative Critz (D-Cambria County). Critz's voting record is not that much better from my perspective than Altmire. However, Critz had allies and friends that are well to the left of him helping him in the primary. Altmire had managed to douchebag, dissemble and hippy punch all of his door knockers away from his campaign. The unions backed Critz heavily because they had not been betrayed by Critz on EFCA or other high priorities. Altmire had promised unions that he would vote for EFCA and then ran away from that position as soon as there was any Chamber of Commerce opposition or fundraising opportunities.

Maybe it is becuase I am not a politician, but this behavioral pattern does not make a ton of sense to me. Needlessly pissing off allies in pursuit of votes/cash from people who really don't like you gains neither votes nor friends. John Cole asks this same question about Joe Manchin's wisdom or lack thereof in seeing politics as an individual sport:

I’m basically just stumped as to where Manchin is on the stupid/evil axis. Considering he doesn’t think politics is a team sport (I hope his campaign staff and volunteers don’t hear that) and he’s sponsored several bills he clearly doesn’t understand, there is ample evidence for the stupid side

I don't get it because at any level above school board elections, once we assume reasonably competent candidates, individual policy positioning only does so much, and party/partisan trends tend to swamp individual candidate quality. Being a reasonably decent team member to gain the benefits of cooperation seems to me to be a much stronger self-serving interest than being a douchebag.