Joe the Plumber blasts McCain and Palin

All you can do is laugh. Read the rest of this post...

How do you misspell your country like this?

The upside is that after the mistake, the person at the top was fired as opposed to winning a fancy medal or receiving luxurious bailouts. Maybe Chile doesn't understand how a modern democracy works yet. BBC:

The general manager of the Chilean mint has been dismissed after thousands of coins were issued with the name of the country spelt wrongly.

The 50-peso coins - worth about 10 cents (6p) - were issued in 2008, but no-one noticed the mistake until late last year.

Instead of C-H-I-L-E, the coins had C-H-I-I-E stamped on them.

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Bank of America seizes wrong house, again

Having this happen once is bad. Twice and it starts to look like a trend. How many other times has this happened? The full details of the bank seizure are horrifying. When you read the story it shows how much authority the banks have in these situations. Shouldn't the burden of proof be on them before they damage property and lose personal belongings?

Charlie and Maria Cardoso are among the millions of Americans who have experienced the misery and embarrassment that come with home foreclosure.

Just one problem: The Massachusetts couple paid for their future retirement home in Spring Hill with cash in 2005, five years before agents for Bank of America seized the house, removed belongings and changed the locks on the doors, according to a lawsuit the couple have filed in federal court.

Early last month, Charlie Cardoso had to drive to Florida to get his home back, the complaint filed in Massachusetts on Jan. 20 states.

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Two ultra-conservative Reagan/Bush appointees say DADT is doomed

More good news on the DADT front. Read the rest of this post...

USDA focusing on definition of organic

It still sounds a bit too easy but at least it's some progress. For meat eaters (or dairy lovers) there's no comparison between grain (at best) fed versus animals that eat seasonal grass. As good as a Cantal cheese can be, try a Salers and there's no comparison between the two similar cheeses from the same area. The cows eat mountain grasses from April through November to produce milk for the Salers cheese. For Cantal, it's almost the same model except the cows are fed hay.

We spent some time on a cattle (and mohair goat) farm in South Africa a few years ago and asked the owner why the South African beef was so good. The rancher had studied and worked in the US so he could easily compare and contrast the two models. Besides the significant amount of drugs used on US stocks, the major difference was grazing. The South African cattle tended to eat seasonal grasses and the end result was excellent.

None of this mattered during the Bush years, so it's good to see Obama stepping up in a few areas.

What makes milk or meat organic? After a drawn-out debate, the Agriculture Department has significantly narrowed the definition to livestock that spend a third of the year grazing on pasture.

New rules announced Friday say organic milk and meat must come from livestock grazing on pasture for at least four months of the year, and that 30 percent of their feed must come from grazing. The old rules said only that animals must have “access to pasture.”

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Insurance rates soar in 4+ states

It's not just four states. These bastards are doing it nationwide. In DC, my CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield rates went up "only" 15% this year. Previous years were, I believe, in the 20% to 25% range per year.

Anthem Blue Cross, a subsidiary of WellPoint Inc., has been under fire for a week from regulators and politicians for notifying some of its 800,000 individual policyholders in California that it plans to raise rates by up to 39 percent March 1.

The Anthem Blue Cross plan in Maine is asking for increases of about 23 percent this year for some individual policyholders. Last year, they raised rates up to 32 percent.

Kansas had one recent case where one insurer wanting to raise most individual rates 20 percent to 30 percent was persuaded by state insurance officials to reduce the increases to 10 percent to 20 percent. The insurance department would not identify the company but said it was not Anthem.

And in Oregon, multiple insurers were granted rate hikes of 15 percent or more this year after increases of around 25 percent last year for customers who purchase individual health insurance, rather than getting it through their employer.

So, here's a problem I have with the excuse the insurance companies gave for raising rates on the individual market:

Premiums are far more volatile for individual policies than for those bought by employers and other large groups, which have bargaining clout and a sizable pool of people among which to spread risk. As more people have lost jobs, many who are healthy have decided to go without health insurance or get a bare-bones, high-deductible policy, reducing the amount of premiums insurers receive.

Yeah right. Insurance company X insures, say, 10,000 people working for Microsoft in Washington state. But, they argue, that if I work for myself in Washington state, they have to charge me a lot more money than they charge Microsoft employees because my "pool" of individual policyholders is more costly and risky than the Microsoft employees.

That's an utter bunch of crap. If they insure me in Washington state as a self-employed individual, they're not taking a massive risk that I might end up being Typhoid Mary when there's no large group to spread the risk around. There is a large group. It's called every single other person that insurance company is already covering in that state and or nationwide (if there's a parent company). All those Microsoft employees are already helping you spread the risk of having me on board. And the past ten years of BCBS insurance, when I wasn't having problems with my eyes, I helped BCBS cover other people both in the individual market and in the large group market. Money is fungible, and for Blue Cross and all the rest to pretend that their profits in one venture don't permit them to suffer potential losses, or lower profits, in another venture, is utter bs. There's no excuse for them charging different rates for essentially the same coverage.

Yet another reason I can't believe the White House and Congress blew it this past year on this issue. How hard can it be to demonize demons? Read the rest of this post...

Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The Winter Olympics are on. The opening ceremonies were appropriately Canadian. I sure didn't feel like Canada was gearing up to take over the world, which was what I was thinking during the Beijing opening. And, kd lang was brilliant. If you're watching today, be advised that one of the big events, the men's Alpine downhill, has been postponed.

For some of us, this past week was dominated by snow talk. But, much happened. Fortunately, KarenMrsLloydRichards documented the week's events in her ongoing series "Haiku for the Obama Administration":

Best buds Lloyd, Jamie
Are "savvy" contributors
To Barack's coffers

And:

Charlie Wilson's war,
Sleazy, clandestine, endless -
Now Obama's bane . . .

And:

White House Health Summit -
Boehner doodles, Cantor smirks -
Rahm's jugular throbs

Capturing the major events and the political drama, seventeen syllables at a time.

So, what's going on this weekend? Read the rest of this post...

Maurice Andre - Brandenburg

Have you ever heard anyone play the trumpet so well? Wow. We went through a bunch of his recordings recently while looking for a relaxing change. For some reason, Joelle likes relaxing music when she does the monthly accounting. It was a while since I had last listened to him but it's always amazing to listen to him.

Still chilly over here (for Paris...and me) but the good old 40F and drizzle is coming back later in the week. I'm going to have to bundle up for my ride today. Read the rest of this post...

Whalers need to learn how the wind works

Spraying pepper spray directly into the wind may not have the desired effect.

Japanese whalers who complained of injuries from rancid butter thrown at them by an anti-whaling group were actually suffering from their own pepper spray attack, the protesters said Saturday.

Paul Watson, captain of the Sea Shepherd protest vessel Steve Irwin, said in a statement that video of Thursday's incident showed wind blowing the spray into the faces of the Japanese crew who were aiming it at the activists.

The Japanese said Friday three crew members had eye and face injuries from butyric acid, produced from bottles of stinking rancid butter that the activists sometimes aim at the ships. The activists maintain that butyric acid is nontoxic.

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