Pedophile Invited to Several TV Shows to Decry Investigation of Pedophilia

Why is this admitted criminal being given the loudest loudspeakers in the country to continuously talk about how great his crimes are? Would they do it for a rapist? A burglar? A pedophile?

I just don't get it.

60,000-Colonoscopy Doctor Protested

CNN currently has a headline on their Web site which reads "Protests aimed at 60,000-abortion doc." How in the world is that the story's headline? If those people were protesting contraceptives outside a drug store - and they just might do that in their spare time - would CNN headline the story "Protests aimed at 60,000-condom drug store"? No. Why? Because it would be stupid to put the focus on condoms, which are legal, just as abortions are, instead of on the crazy.

New headline: Religious freaks still crying because they don't rule the world.

Extra: One more terrorist stopped.

"Pastor Of Gun-Toter At Obama Event Prayed For Obama To Die"

Wonderful.

Rep. Demint to Sick Children: F*ck You. Die.

Rep. Jim Demint of South Carolina recently said this:

I think health care is a privilege. I wouldn’t call it a right.

Please note that Demint currently enjoys that privilege - courtesy of the U.S. government, no less - and that every uninsured child in this country doesn't. Every sick uninsured child in this country doesn't.

What a fucker.

Bonny Doon is Burning, Part II

Last year in June I made a short note about fires in Bonny Doon down near Santa Cruz. Looks like they're getting it even worse now.

Stephen Hawking Can Speak For Himself

This just about says it all:

So Barack Obama is facing the fight of his life (another one) as he attempts to reform the US healthcare system. The "special interests" – doctors, healthcare companies – don't like it. The "birthers" – crazy types who hope to prove he is not American – smell blood. The danger, says the Investor's Business Daily, is that he borrows too much from the UK. "The controlling of medical costs in countries such as Britain through rationing, and the health consequences thereof, are legendary. The stories of people dying on a waiting list or being denied altogether read like a horror script … People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless." We say his life is far from worthless, as they do at Addenbrooke's hospital, Cambridge, where Professor Hawking, who has motor neurone disease, was treated for chest problems in April. As indeed does he. "I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," he told us. "I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived." Something here is worthless. And it's not him.

New Glory Protesters

Watching the manufactured rage of the Town Hall Shouters Club is like watching freshman hippie protesters who have no clue what they're shouting for or against. They've simply found an inner spotlight that shines on their tiny lives, making it seem grand and magnificent. Not exactly the picture I want in my head - but there's probably been more sweaty, impassioned sex in those protesters' houses than there's been in decades.

Right on, baby.

Hey Stupid People

Providing funding for people to get a living will or to talk to their doctor about what they'd like to have happen if they become incapacitated isn't a plan to have "death panels" whose job it is to euthanize people any more than it's a plan to have "asshole panels" to euthanize stupid people.

Luckily for you.

View From Your Sickbed

Andrew Sullivan has been running a great series, getting people to write in with their health care stories. He's collected a bunch of them - definitely worth the read.

Obama's Going to Murder and Eat Baby Trig

This calls for a visit to EatBabies.com.

Yum.

The Cash For Clunkers Catastrophe

The other day I went to the county fair to sell some tamales. I brought 200 of 'em with me, thinking that'd last me all day. I sold all 200 by 10 o'clock in the morning and had to run home and get more. I made more money selling tamales that day than I ever had before.

Catastrophe!

P.S. It was kinda like 9/11.

News Flash: If You Use a Taser on a 72-Year-Old Woman, You're a Coward

Unbelievable.

Jonathan Turley:

I do not see how the police could view this as a proper use of a taser. Bieze threatens to taser her again if she does not put her hands behind her back. He then tasers her again. He then charges her with resisting arrest.

The video is a textbook example of how tasers have served to escalate the level of force in such encounters. While Bieze might have called for back up or physically restrained Winkfein, he moves almost immediately to the use of the taser. The fact that Constable McCain would watch this video and find (here) that Bieze acted properly raises serious questions of his own judgment.

This is all because she refused to sign a speeding ticket.

The Bitch is Back

Not a great YouTube - are there any great YouTube videos, quality-wise? - but a great song and performance circa 1974 of the song that popped into my head when I woke up this morning:



And holy shit, look at this. 1975, Los Angeles, with very recent Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Billie Jean King dancing on stage. (Warning: horrible quality.)

Uncle Rapes 15-year-old - She's Forced to Complete Pregnancy

One more time: the anti-abortion movement is not about abortion. It is about the desire of a religious group to gain governing power in society, and to fulfill their perverted desire for power over women.

Case in point:

Nicaragua's total ban on abortion is a violation of human rights and is killing a growing number of women and children, Amnesty International said Monday in launching a campaign to have the measure repealed.

In a report released in Mexico City, the international human rights organization said Nicaragua's law, which went into effect in late 2006, puts the Central American country among the 3% of the world's nations that do not allow abortion under any circumstance.

Citing statistics from the Nicaraguan Health Ministry, the report says 33 women and girls died from pregnancy complications in the first 19 weeks of this year, compared with 20 in the same period last year. It also says the real numbers are probably much higher.

Nicaragua has one of Latin America's highest rates of sexual violence, with the abuse often perpetrated by fathers, uncles or other relatives.

At least 50% of reported rapes are of girls under the age of 18, and most of those who get pregnant are under 15, the report says.

Women and girls who have been impregnated by rapists or whose lives or health is at risk are not allowed to abort.

$1 Trillion For Unnecessary War Good; For Health Care Bad

How often does it hit you in the gut that George Bush and Dick Cheney started an unnecessary war, and that more than 1 million men, women, and children died horribly violent and painful deaths - that didn't have to happen? Most of them would be alive today if that unnecessary war wasn't started. I mean just think of that.

Kicks me in the gut nearly every day.

* And stories like this kick you again. This did not have to happen.

Boston Cop Calls Henry Louis Gates "Jungle Monkey" in E-mail

Can we call that stupid? Or just racist?

And Sgt. James Crowley lied on his police report, according to the woman who made the 911 call. She did not have the conversation with him that he described in his report. She did not, she says, tell him there were "two black males with backpacks."

Have we as a culture simply accepted that cops lie? Is that why this isn't a major component of this story?

More here.

A Common and Inane Argument Against National Health Care

A supposedly smart and informed person says this (h/t) :

Basically, for me, it all boils down to public choice theory. Once we've got a comprehensive national health care plan, what are the government's incentives? I think they're bad, for the same reason the TSA is bad. I'm afraid that instead of Security Theater, we'll get Health Care Theater, where the government goes to elaborate lengths to convince us that we're getting the best possible health care, without actually providing it.

The heart of what she's saying: We shouldn't have national health care because it might have flaws.

You know what, Megan McArdle - I'm guessing the millions of families with no health insurance will take the not perfect health care provided by the government and be pretty much alright with the fact that it's not perfect. Same as they take the not perfect police force, fire departments, post office, national park service, Medicare, Congress, and other government funded services.

What she's also saying is that we shouldn't have national health care because it won't drive innovation - like you get with private, greed-driven health care. Unbelievable. When your insurance company denies you an expensive cancer treatment - thank Megan McArdle and the super awesome innovative thinkers in Big Pharma and Big Insurance. They're what make this country neato.

And can anyone say "NASA"? Have they ever been, like, I don't know - innovative? And we do still have a National Institute of Health, don't we? What's their mission?

Its mission is science in pursuit of fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to extend healthy life and reduce the burdens of illness and disability.

Maybe we could get them some more funding?

And again, how does your imaginings of lost innovation matter to people who don't have any insurance and any way to provide proper health care for themselves and their kids? McArdle's answer:

At this juncture in the conversation, someone almost always breaks in and says, "Why don't you tell that to an uninsured person?" I have. Specifically, I told it to me. I was uninsured for more than two years after grad school, with an autoimmune disease and asthma. I was, if anything, even more militant than I am now about government takeover of insurance.

"I told it to me."

Kill me. Just kill me.

After grad school you had no insurance for two years? But apparently have had it since? And had it all the years before that, I'll assume through your parents? And you're now able to get your conditions treated on a regular basis without going into debt? Or getting sicker and dying? Am I right? And this speaks to people who cannot afford health care how?

Good god. I can't go on.

"Keep your government hands off my Medicare!"

Republicans want you to be as brain dead, idiotic, stupid, dumb, assholeish, Limbaughesque, goddamned imbecilic and ignorant as this piece of work:

At a recent town-hall meeting in suburban Simpsonville, a man stood up and told Rep. Robert Inglis (R-S.C.) to "keep your government hands off my Medicare."

"I had to politely explain that, 'Actually, sir, your health care is being provided by the government,' " Inglis recalled. "But he wasn't having any of it."

Someone film that idiot while it's explained real slow to him what Medicare is. Please. What an ass. This is what the good people working toward a good, sane, sensible, and responsible plan on health care are up against. In and out of congress.

P.S. I'd bet you my cats that guy watches Fox News.

North Korean Communist Beer

Weird.

We Don't Need Health Care *Reform* - We Need Health Care

Atrios asks "What's it all about then?"

I have a hard time writing about the health care situation because, as John says, I'm not even sure what it's about anymore. What's the Obama administration pushing for? What do they want? What's the bumper sticker you can take to the country, other than "health care reform."

Right now it seems to be "maybe, kinda, sorta, better than what exists now. Somehow."

How about - "America doesn't have health care, and it's time we got it"?

If you have millions of people who can't afford health insurance, and therefore can't afford regular health care for themselves and their children, including regular trips to the dentist, and if emergencies drive people into deep and dangerous debt - even people who do have health insurance plans - then you don't have health care. You have an expensive, greed-driven, let the unwealthy get sick and die - after you've sucked all their money away - system.

It's shameful that we are behind by decades every industrialized country on the planet. Absolutely shameful.

This personal story needs telling a hundred times. This is about me and my spouse:

My spouse is from Australia. Her sister still lives there. They both recently had similar, quite invasive (use your imagination) diagnostic medical procedures performed on their lovely selves, my spouse here in the U.S., using my work-based insurance, and sis in Australia, using their national, single payer system. Cost to spouse (and me) and sis', out of pocket:

Spouse: Roughly $3,000

Sister: $95.

My wife's sister doesn't have private insurance. She's just Australian. That means she's covered. Me and the wife - we have insurance. And it still cost us $3,000 out of pocket. That's a lot of freaking money! We took ages to pay it off. For a lot of people in this country who need tests like that - they simply couldn't get them at all.

Absolutely shameful.