On the GOP as 13 yr olds

Op-Ed Columnist - The Politics of Spite - NYTimes.com

“Cheers erupted” at the headquarters of the conservative Weekly Standard, according to a blog post by a member of the magazine’s staff, with the headline “Obama loses! Obama loses!” Rush Limbaugh declared himself “gleeful.” “World Rejects Obama,” gloated the Drudge Report. And so on.

So what did we learn from this moment? For one thing, we learned that the modern conservative movement, which dominates the modern Republican Party, has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.

But more important, the episode illustrated an essential truth about the state of American politics: at this point, the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple. If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America.

Christianist Book Burnings

A Good Ol' Fashioned Book Burning : Dispatches from the Culture Wars

A church in North Carolina is holding an old fashioned book burning on Halloween night. What will they be burning, you ask? Copies of Harry Potter? Maybe a little Vonnegut? Nope. They're burning Bibles. Evil Bibles.

John Kerry Finds His Special Purpose

For Kerry, a growing prominence on foreign policy stage - washingtonpost.com

Kerry's role over the past week in resolving, at least temporarily, the political turmoil in Afghanistan brought him kudos from Obama, who thanked him publicly and called his successful efforts to persuade President Hamid Karzai to accept a runoff election "extraordinarily constructive." It was Kerry -- pressed into action by the Obama administration while on an unrelated trip to Afghanistan -- who stood by Karzai's side in Kabul on Wednesday when the announcement about the runoff was made. For the first time since 2004, Kerry's face appeared on front pages across the country.

Thom Hartmann on Medicare Part E

Medicare Part E: Everybody | CommonDreams.org

Just pass a simple bill - it could probably be just a few lines, like when Medicare was expanded to include disabled people - that says that any American citizen can buy into the program at a rate to be set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which reflects the actual cost for us to buy into it.

Thus, Medicare Part E would be revenue neutral!

To make it available to people of low income, Congress could raise the rates slightly for all currently non-eligible people (like me - under 65) to cover the cost of below-200%-of-poverty people. Revenue neutral again.

For my faithful readers that don't like to click through linky things.

Carrie Fisher

Carrie Fisher Finishes Our Sentences About Family, Work And That Bikini - Monkey See Blog : NPR

"The best and worst things about being bipolar are ... "

The best thing is the mania, the worst thing is the depression.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Read the whole article though. Is quite entertaining.

Medicare Part E

House Dems want Medicare for everyone - TheHill.com

Say hello to “Medicare Part E” — as in, “Medicare for Everyone.”

House Democrats are looking at re-branding the public health insurance option as Medicare, an established government healthcare program that is better known than the public option.

Has a nice ring to it don't you think?
Looks like someone working on Dem strategy has finally read Thom Hartmann or Ezra Klein or Mark Kleiman.

Facts are terrible things

Mortality due to Influenza in the United States--An Annualized Regression Approach Using Multiple-Cause Mortality Data -- Dushoff et al. 163 (2): 181 -- American Journal of Epidemiology

The regression model attributes an annual average of 41,400 (95% confidence interval: 27,100, 55,700) deaths to influenza over the period 1979–2001.

It seems that the "one in a million: cheerleader disabled after flu shot" video has now gone viral (pardon the pun).

I am not a big believer in getting a shot for its own sake but if you are at higher than average risk of getting and passing on the flu (retail sales for instance) or if you are at a higher than average risk for a negative outcome if you do get it (compromised immune system, very young, very old, previous history of pneumonia, etc) then you should take the above number into account.

Yes, you read that right. 40,000 deaths every year due to flu in the USA. Do the math, then make your decision, but don't make your decision based on one video no matter how sad it makes you.

Offered in the interest of fighting innumeracy.