And we're all out of bubblegum.
Sandra Fluke and her boyfriend are getting the full Graeme Frost, and it turns out that not only is her boyfriend a Democrat, but a socialist Jew. Yes. The right-wing nuts really went there.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. asserted on Monday that it is lawful for the government to kill American citizens if officials deem them to be operational leaders of Al Qaeda who are planning attacks on the United States and if capturing them alive is not feasible.“Given the nature of how terrorists act and where they tend to hide, it may not always be feasible to capture a United States citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack,” Mr. Holder said in a speech at Northwestern University’s law school. “In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force.”
While Mr. Holder is not the first administration official to address the targeted killing of citizens — the Pentagon’s general counsel, Jeh Johnson, did so last month at Yale Law School, for example — it was notable for the nation’s top law enforcement official to declare that it is constitutional for the government to kill citizens without any judicial review under certain circumstances. Mr. Holder’s remarks about the targeted killing of United States citizens were a centerpiece of a speech describing legal principles behind the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies.
***Still, the speech contained no footnotes or specific legal citations, and it fell far short of the level of detail contained in the Office of Legal Counsel memo — or in an account of its contents published in October by The New York Times based on descriptions by people who had read it.
The administration has declined to confirm that the memo exists, and late last year, The Times filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act asking a judge to order the Justice Department to make it public. In February, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a broader lawsuit, seeking both the memo and the evidence against Mr. Awlaki.
John Yoo and David Addington were pikers.
Another clip for the Decline-and-Fall files. From the WSJ, Business Paper of Record, profit-promising news about “a Fertile Niche for Lenders“:
Julie Barth’s prayers were answered when a doctor in Crystal Lake, Ill., told her in vitro fertilization might get her pregnant. But he didn’t stop there, referring her to a “fertility finance” company that lent her $5,000 at an interest rate of 7.99% to help cover the $24,000 procedure. Her daughter, Olivia, was born about a year later.
“You can’t put a price on a smile like that,” says Ms. Barth, 32 years old. She hopes to pay off her loan from Springstone Financial LLC, based in Southborough, Mass., by her daughter’s third birthday in 2014.
At a time when many traditional lenders are struggling, companies that join forces with doctors to make loans for in vitro fertilization, egg harvesting and other fertility treatments say their business is thriving.
One reason: Fertility-finance companies are getting a boost from the banking industry’s retrenchment. For example, credit has become tight for home-equity loans and credit cards, two ways couples often have paid for fertility treatments that often top $20,000. Mike Gilroy, Springstone’s president, says business is robust because “if the time is right” to have a baby, “people want loans even in a sluggish economy.”...
The loans typically are unsecured and carry interest rates of as much as 22%, more than the average credit-card rate of around 17%. The rates offered vary based on the lender’s evaluation of a patient’s credit-worthiness…
By all means, read the whole article, which could be used as a checklist of just about everything that’s wrong with America’s healthcare system. (Extra points to the WSJ for starting with a ‘human interest’ subject who got a 7.99% loan, and burying the lede that such loans “carry interest rates of as much as 22%”.) This is America, home of Cash Rules Everything Around Me, and nothing’s “priceless” unless it’s worthless...
***********
So, what’s on the agenda for the end of the weekend? Does anybody still watch the Oscars?
Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua ordered aides to shred a 1994 memo that identified 35 Archdiocese of Philadelphia priests suspected of sexually abusing children, according to a new court filing.The order, outlined in a handwritten note locked away for years at the archdiocese’s Center City offices, was disclosed Friday by lawyers for Msgr. William J. Lynn, the former church administrator facing trial next month.
They say the shredding directive proves what Lynn has long claimed: that a church conspiracy to conceal clergy sex abuse was orchestrated at levels far above him.
***According to the motion, that safe remained untouched and unnoticed until 2006, when archdiocesan officials found it and hired a locksmith to open it. It’s unclear why the records inside were only recently turned over to Lynn’s lawyers and prosecutors, although church lawyers have said they have been reviewing thousands of files to comply with trial subpoenas.
Bevilacqua had cited the 35 priests before. In February 2002 – as the abuse scandal was roiling Catholics across the country – he said the archdiocese had turned over information on 35 suspected abusive priests to the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office. He did not mention any memo from eight years earlier or his order to shred it.
During 10 appearances before a grand jury in 2003 and 2004, Bevilacqua denied knowing details or playing a significant role in the handling of sex-abuse complaints, saying he delegated those duties to Lynn.
“I saw no evidence at any time that we did any cover-up,” he testified.
Why are they getting away with this?
(via)
I just had to memorialize that line for when future alien anthropologists are poking around the broken remnants of human civilization, trying to figure out how a global civilization of such potential all went to naught.
See, Janice D’Arcy at the Washington Post’s parenting blog brought up the Indiana measles outbreak, which fortunately has not (so far) led to a nationwide crisis among Superbowl visitors, because enough of us are vaccinated (or, among us olds, measles survivors) for herd immunity to work. (Per PBS, “the first 13 individuals infected had all chosen not to be vaccinated.”) D’Arcy goes on to discuss a backlash among doctors who understand the consequences:
... Increasingly, surveys are finding that more and more doctors are refusing to treat patients who decline vaccinations.
A Wall Street Journal report last week cited several different surveys that revealed almost a third of doctors in Connecticut and a fifth of doctors in the Midwest dismiss patients who decline vaccinations…
It’s unclear if the trend is changing any minds. (Several reports on vaccine skeptic blogs called those doctors “brainwashed.”) It’s also unclear if refusing patients is the best answer. Does it hold parents more accountable or does it endanger vulnerable children?...
Naturally, the first few dozen comments drew all the usual outcry from the anti-vaxers: Autism! Big Pharma! Aluminum! Illegal immigrants! Freeeeeedom!—as well as a heartening pushback from members of the reality-based community. But commentor MacGyver1rjq104’s claim that “smallpox makes people immune to AIDS” was both new to me and so blithely, stunningly packed full of new and improved levels of cluelessness that I really had to share it with you all. Say what you will about smallpox, at least it’s an ethos all-natural, as god intended!
(Ted Rall’s website)
Well, it made me laugh. And for those of you who are sick of Rick Santorum, Jon Chait at NYMag’s Daily Intel has a (not the moronic troll) reality check:
Here are some things to keep in mind when assessing Rick Santorum’s chances of beating Mitt Romney. He has no pollster, no campaign headquarters, and no paid advance staff. He’s currently getting outspent on television in Michigan by a ratio of 29-1... He also failed to get his name on the ballot in such states as Virginia and Indiana. Perhaps you have heard of them…
As Josh Marshall put it, “running around the country in a long twilight struggle with Rick Santorum is just … how to put it? inherently demeaning and diminishing. It’s like struggling to land a one pound fish or searching for the way out of a paper bag.”
So… what non-sickening events are on the agenda?
I had forgotten that I had given Planned Parenthood a few bucks in honor of Karen Handel, until I got this formal acknowledgement from my local affiliate, which made me laugh (as always, click to embiggen). I think my next donation will go out in honor of Nancy Brinker, who billed the Komen foundation $133K in expenses, including first-class air travel, while she was employed by the State Department as the Chief of Protocol.
Here’s the donation link, and here’s why you donate:
I had a pelvic scan and they found a huge cyst in my uterus. “The size of a grapefruit” the doctor told me, as if it were a thing to behold. They removed the cyst, and prescribed birth control pills to help keep a new cyst from forming. There’s where the trouble started.I went to the local Walgreens to fill the prescription. I was on my parent’s insurance, and didn’t know the ins and outs of what was and wasn’t covered. When I went to pick up the prescription, it rang up at $80. For a one month supply. “What about insurance?” I asked. The heinous woman behind the counter said, as loudly and as self-righteously has she could, “insurance doesn’t cover BIRTH CONTROL! ! ! !” She didn’t say “you SLUT” but I know that she was thinking it.
There was no way I could afford to spend over $800 a year on this prescription. I was horrified by the way the woman spoke to me. I was going to just have to take my chances that the cysts didn’t return. Thankfully, someone, I don’t know who, told me that there was a Planned Parenthood on campus.
I went there, and the people were so kind that I cried with relief. The pills to help keep me from getting cysts— which also happen to keep me from getting pregnant if I were sexually active— were free.
I will never forget that experience. It taught me a lot about the importance of having access to women’s health care, for my whole body. It taught me first hand about the stupidity of self-righteousness.
Reader Annette wrote to ask whether Congressional health plans cover contraception. Good question. According to the bracingly accurate FactCheck.org, our representatives in Washington pick their insurance from the same system used by all other federal employees. And, according to the more accurate Guttmacher Institute [pdf], this insurance covers contraception:
Additionally, federal law requires insurance coverage of contraceptives for federal employees and their dependents; it includes a limited but seldom used exception for religious insurers. In December 2000, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission made it clear that an employer’s failure to provide coverage of contraception, when it covers other prescription drugs and preventive care, is a violation of protections against sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act; those protections for employees’ benefits include no exemption for religious employers.
In other words, for a dozen years, every Member of Congress has probably purchased contraception coverage, and it’s been mandated by the EEOC of all employers who provide insurance, yet for some reason, the Bishops have decided to freak out about it now. Perhaps some journalist will ask some of those freaking out, like Marco Rubio, if he’s on a federal plan that includes contraception, and if he’s willing to follow his own advice:
If an employee asks for birth control, that worker could pay for it themselves or choose to work elsewhere.
I’m trying to parse the Bishop’s statement on contraception and it sounds like they’re going to keep fighting, and it also looks like they just found the bold button in Word and decided to take it out for a spin:
These changes require careful moral analysis, and moreover, appear subject to some measure of change. But we note at the outset that the lack of clear protection for key stakeholders—for self-insured religious employers; for religious and secular for-profit employers; for secular non-profit employers; for religious insurers; and for individuals—is unacceptable and must be corrected. And in the case where the employee and insurer agree to add the objectionable coverage, that coverage is still provided as a part of the objecting employer’s plan, financed in the same way as the rest of the coverage offered by the objecting employer. This, too, raises serious moral concerns.
In other words, the worry about employee premiums going to finance contraception is ass-backwards. The real question for the Bishops is where they think the money is going to come from to finance the non-coverage of contraception. Are they going to sell some altar furniture or downsize their rectories? I have a serious financial concern here.
Warning: Many links are to Kathryn Jean’s Fluffy Pink Womb of Zygote Love.
Kathryn Jean thinks that Mitt Romney is a man of principle because he vetoed a section of legislation which would have required all Massachusetts hospitals, including Catholic ones, to provide emergency contraception to rape victims – or as she puts it:
would require Catholic hospitals to provide abortifacient drugs
thus managing both to include the word “abortifacient” and entirely exclude the words “emergency”, “rape” and “victim” – even though Romney vetoed it for entirely political reasons, knew at the time his veto would be overturned, even said that “in his heart of hearts,” he believed that rape victims should have access to emergency contraception, but now believes that a similar rule “tramples on religious freedom”.
President Obama, on the other hand, is a big scary blah man who wants to take away, in turn, our liberties, our virginal innocence and the little blah babies he fathered upon us with his heathen lusts.
Also, Kathryn Jean is preparing for the inevitable day when she will need to snuggle up next to Mitt’s special undies and worship at the temple of the Mitt. I bet Mitt’s pubic hair looks just like the hair on his head.
Also, defunding Planned Parenthood was a “business choice“. Italics in the original.
The “Editors” think that Susan G. Komen for the Cure is (or at least was, and probably still is) an organisation of principle because Planned Parenthood doesn’t do mammograms, all they do is do breast checks and refer people for mammograms. So there. After all, finding out how to check your own breasts and then obtaining a referral to a mammogram clinic when you find a lump is easy-peasy when you are poor and/or illiterate and/or don’t have insurance. I think they offer them at McDonalds, with a side of fries and a free home pap smear kit. Besides, this is great because it lets us talk about abortions some more and donate our usual three bucks a month to a charity that doesn’t fund child murder and then feel smug about it. More »
I’ve got just one quick note to add to the discussion of the Komen Foundation’s surrender to Greater Wingnuttia and the Global War on Women.
That would be that this decision is not just about the dollars. It’s genuinely a matter of life and death —of murder, really, with only the anonymity of the victims to obscure the the connection between act and consequence.*
Y’all may recall that I wrote along these lines about eight months ago in connection with Mitch Daniels’ decision to defund Planned Parenthood in Indiana. (Yup, that Daniels—the hack our friends in literate Wingnutistan see as the great hope of the GOP). Now we’re back again to run the numbers on what the removal of the services Planned Parenthood provides to women seeking preventative care for breast cancer will do.**
Here are the basic figures: over the last five years, the Komen Foundation provided Planned Parenthood with sufficient support to pay for 170,000 breast exams and 6,700 referrals for mammography. The question of how frequent and how early a mammography program should be has, shall we say, been vigorously debated, but the issue gained some clarity last year with the publication of a large scale longitudinal study by Swedish researchers in which over 133,000 women were followed for a total of 29 years.
The results of this study provide low-end estimates for the lives saved by screening: for every 414 or 519 women screened*** for seven years running, one breast cancer death would be prevented. More »
A federal law banning compensation for organ transplants doesn’t extend to bone marrow harvested from a donor’s blood, a federal appeals court said Thursday in a ruling that could attract thousands of new donors in a national campaign to save the lives of those afflicted with cancer and genetic disorders.In the last 20 years, though, medical advances have brought about a less intrusive method by which the life-saving marrow stem cells are harvested from a donor’s bloodstream in much the same way as blood is drawn at a blood bank. The new process, known as apheresis, filters out excess marrow stem cells that circulate in the bloodstream, as opposed to the surgical extraction method, known as aspiration, which inserts a large needle into the hip bone and siphons out the cells.
MoreMarrowDonors.org wanted the organ transplant law struck down or amended to allow the nonprofit to offer $3,000 scholarships or housing payments to attract new registrants to the National Marrow Donor Program. The registry has more than 7 million members, but many joined years ago during donor drives for friends or family members and are often reluctant to donate to a stranger.
About ten years ago, I was a bone marrow stem cell donor. My sister had lymphoma, nothing was working, and she was dying. She’s completely recovered, which is amazing and wonderful.
Her siblings had blood drawn for the match test. I was the best match. I have a younger sister who was also tested, and she is a great but extremely competitive person. She left a message on my answering machine after we got our results where she said, clearly pissed, “you won”, which was the only thing I heard that summer that made me laugh. She was a cheerleader in high school, so that explains a lot, I think.
The donor stem cell production and collection process was way more complicated and time consuming than it is now, apparently, following the links in the story. The donor’s role is odd, in a hospital setting, which is where most of this was conducted in my case. The donor is a patient, sort of, but not really THE patient. The donor is somewhere between a visitor and a patient, or that’s how it felt to me, because the donor isn’t really the focus of all this extraordinary effort. It’s a passive role.
I had trouble with this in-between status only on the day of the actual collection. I had agreed to provide marrow stem cells for my sister along with “extra” (medical term) for the research team, as a condition of her taking part in what I came to understand was some sort of study or trial.
My approach to the health care system is to arrive and immediately tell them when I’m planning on leaving: “you have six hours, tops, and then I’m climbing out the window when you turn your back” is the implied threat. I had been reminding them since we started that I had to be out of there and done on the day “we” (I) had all “agreed” (I invented out of thin air). On collection day there was idle chatter among the nurses that I might have to stick around longer to produce more cells. I said something like “we’re all staying right here, this day, until we get enough”, because I had been almost an observer for weeks and I was just tired of that.
The thing is, that was an idle threat. I was going to stay until they collected enough. I made the decision to go all the way with it way back when I was tested, not when I was matched, and I agreed to test without thinking through any practical concerns, really.
Now, I was donating to my sister, not a stranger, and she was dying, so it wasn’t abstract or remote, it was an emergency. Too, I had support. I was working for the Postal Service at the time, had good health insurance, so I was covered on that end if I needed it. I had paid sick time and vacation time. I had (and have) a husband who was and is perfectly capable of and willing to taking care of my end of things when I can’t. Maybe because those practical concerns were, in fact, taken care of, I had the freedom to decide immediately and commit to the whole process when I agreed to have blood drawn for the first test. Maybe three thousand dollars would matter a lot to another donor who has fewer resources, and is therefore less likely to join a registry because they don’t have the means or assistance I had.
All the other ethical considerations aside – and by all means discuss those if you care to, I’d be interested in that- do you think this will work?
LA Times featured an op-ed yesterday that is a must-read:I want to apologize to President Obama. But first, some background.I found out three weeks ago I have cancer. I’m 49 years old, have been married for almost 20 years and have two kids. My husband has his own small computer business, and I run a small nonprofit in the San Fernando Valley. I am also an artist. Money is tight, and we don’t spend it frivolously. We’re just ordinary, middle-class people, making an honest living, raising great kids and participating in our community, the kids’ schools and church.
We’re good people, and we work hard. But we haven’t been able to afford health insurance for more than two years. And now I have third-stage breast cancer and am facing months of expensive treatment.
To understand how such a thing could happen to a family like ours, I need to take you back nine years to when my husband got laid off from the entertainment company where he’d worked for 10 years. Until then, we had been insured through his work, with a first-rate plan. After he got laid off, we got to keep that health insurance for 18 months through COBRA, by paying $1,300 a month, which was a huge burden on an unemployed father and his family.
By the time the COBRA ran out, my husband had decided to go into business for himself, so we had to purchase our own insurance. That was fine for a while. Every year his business grew. But insurance premiums were steadily rising too. More than once, we switched carriers for a lower rate, only to have them raise rates significantly after a few months. More »
I’m afraid Krugman is right:
Back in 2000, George W. Bush made a discovery of enormous consequence: you could base a whole political campaign on claims that were flatly untrue, like the claim that your big tax cuts for the wealthy went to the middle class, or the claim that diverting Social Security funds into private accounts would strengthen the system’s finances, and reporting would never point this out. That’s when I formulated my doctrine that if Bush said the earth was flat, headlines would read Views Differ on Shape of Planet.All indications are, however, that Campaign 2012 will make Campaign 2000 look like a model of truthfulness. And all indications are that the press won’t know what to do — or, worse, that they will know what to do, which is act as stenographers and refuse to tell readers and listeners when candidates lie. Because to do otherwise when the parties aren’t equally at fault — and they won’t be — would be “biased”.
This will be true even of those news organizations specifically charged with fact-checking. Yes, they’ll call out some lies — but they’ll also claim that some perfectly reasonable statements are lies, in order to keep their precious balance. This is already happening: as Igor Volsky points out, one of the finalists for Politifact’s Lie of the Year is a Democratic claim — that Republicans want to abolish Medicare — that happens to be entirely true.
The Politifact stuff really is amazing, especially for a group that normally does good work. Here’s what is happening:
America turns off the lights, goes to bed, leaving their Mercedes in the driveway. While we sleep, the Republicans sneak into the car, drive it off, and sell it, but they keep the Mercedes hood ornament. They then split the proceeds between their rich buddies, and go out and find a Ford Pinto up on cinderblocks in a field, with the grass growing through the floorboard. They place that in the driveway, cleverly glue the Mercedes ornament onto the front of the Pinto, and sneak off into the night. The next morning, America and Democrats are screaming- “What the hell happened to my car.” Republicans say- “What are you talking about, there is your Mercedes right there, we just modernized it and fixed it up a bit for long-term financial stability,” and point at the Pinto.
Then, the rocket scientists at Politifact drive by to take a non-partisan look at things, see the Mercedes symbol on the front of the car, and tell us all we’re lying about the Republicans stealing our Mercedes.
It’s crazy, really.
Something huge happened today. The kind of thing that changes the nature of the economy, and Americans’ relationship with their government, and with the corporations that seem to rule so much of our world.
Today is the day that a significant part of the Affordable Care Act took effect. Today is the day that companies that sell and provide health insurance have to start spending 80% to 85% of their income from insurance premiums actually delivering the services for which they charge their customers. Overhead like office space and supplies, marketing expenses, salaries, and yes, profits have to come out of the remaining 15-20%. The rule is called the the medical loss ratio, and in an important decision recently by the Department of Health and Human Services, the insurance companies cannot count the sales commissions that they give out to the people who sell you your insurance plan against the medical loss ratio.
The MLR can ONLY be allowed expenses, which must be actual costs of coverable medical expenses. This is huge. This means no more nonsense like refusing your mother’s cancer treatment because she forgot about that prescription skin cream she had for acne when she was fifteen when she was filling out the application. Hell, the insurance companies are going to be scrambling to pay for coverable things because any part of that 80-85% they don’t spend on allowables will have to be refunded to the policy holders.
Simply put, this is the end of the beginning of the long track to single payer health care.
So, can private health insurance companies manage to make a profit when they actually have to spend premium receipts taking care of their customers’ health needs as promised? Not a chance-and they know it. Indeed, we are already seeing the parent companies who own these insurance operations fleeing into other types of investments. They know what we should all know – we are now on an inescapable path to a single-payer system for most Americans and thank goodness for it.
