deadissue.com

The family of Bin Laden wannabe Joe Stack speaks, and they are pretty disgusting.

FOX news sort of gets something right:

This week, a couple of conservative hosts on the Fox Business Channel seemed deeply concerned about premium rate hikes from California’s Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield. They weren’t troubled by what the increases would mean for consumers — they were concerned that the increased burden on Americans might make health care reform more likely to happen.

I can’t decide if insurance companies are just that arrogant to think no one would notice a huge rate increase after a year of record profits; or if they really want some pieces of reform to pass. Hopefully this will lead to a robust public option but I am somewhat skeptical.

Every time I try to watch the Olympics it is either Curling, or Hockey, which is really just Curling with pads. What happened to ski-racing and snowboarding? You know real sports.

Over the past few years, I would say one of the few good decisions I have made was to buy a home, but it would seem I am in the minority. It would be great to see some of the failed suburbs and exurbs returned to agricultural uses, it might even help reverse climate change.

This sure looks like a map of the 2008 election.

I wonder if insurance companies, deep down, want health reform to pass.

And, if someone would just give me my own half-pipe I could win the gold.
Update: the half-pipe is next to Silverton Mountain not Copper mountain as some people have been saying. I could totally see Silverton being the next Aspen.

A Utah legislature wants to eliminate the twelth grade to save money:

The sudden buzz over the relative value of senior year stems from a recent proposal by state Sen. Chris Buttars that Utah make a dent in its budget gap by eliminating the 12th grade.

The notion quickly gained some traction among supporters who agreed with the Republican’s assessment that many seniors frittered away their final year of high school, but faced vehement opposition from other quarters, including in his hometown of West Jordan.

I give this guy some credit for being willing to get specific about budget cuts, which is more than most conservatives ever do, but this seems like a really assinine idea.

Megan McCardle is a little clueless when it comes to finances:

But do I think I would be noticeably more likely to die if I did give up my policy? Certainly not for the next twenty years, because I am unlikely to get cancer much before 65, and everything else that might kill me would be treated on an emergent basis, where insurance probably wouldn’t affect my outcomes nearly as much as the fact that I am an upper middle class professional with a (soon to be) husband who writes about health care policy for a living and a father who used to work for the New York City health and hospitals corporation, both of whom will no doubt be sitting on top of the doctors and the hospital bureaucracy to make sure I get excellent care. At 65 I qualify for Medicare, if it hasn’t bankrupted the government.

Morbidity? Maybe. But we’re more likely to take out a second mortgage to cover physical therapy than we are to go without.

(Bolding mine)
She seems to forget that someone has to be willing to give you a second mortgage and without equity that might be a problem plus you still have to pay that loan back, and without income that might also be a problem. I feel sorry for the guy she is about to marry as she seems to assume that he is going to take care of her, no matter what stupid thing she does. I hope she is hot because she sure isn’t smart.

I am starting to agree with stuff like this:

Republicans, to their credit, tend to prioritize their vision of the national interests over issues of process and ego. Democrats, by contrast, seem to have mostly gotten into politics in order to bolster their own sense of self-righteousness and aren’t especially concerned with whether or not their conduct in office is efficacious.

When I worked at an animal shelter I would have said the same thing about many of my co-workers, good intentions don’t matter unless you act on them.

I wish I could write this good:

Bankers are not the cause of the global economic crisis, according to the president of the Institute for the Works of Religion. Rather, the cause is ordinary people who do not “believe in the future” and have few or no children.

“The true cause of the crisis is the decline in the birth rate,” Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, said in an interview on Vatican Television’s “Octava Dies.”

Blah, blah, we’ve heard this song and dance before—the way to improve the economy is drastically expand the number of people using the limited resources of the planet. The reason this will work is because Jesus hates independent women so much that he will reward us for depriving women of the right to birth control with more resources, a la the loaves and fishes story. He’ll also stop heating up the planet slowly if you women stop with the thinking of yourself as human beings who have more than one purpose (baby factory) in life. Oh, you thought global warming was the result of a dramatic increase in greenhouse gases that are released by human beings—which means the more of them to create those gases, the worse it gets—but you were wrong. Global warming is magic punishment for ladies thinking they should get to do things besides pump out babies and pray a lot. Look, god sent us out of Eden because some bitch thought she had a right to know things. And he’ll send the entire planet into flaming global warming hell if women today don’t learn their lesson already. That is, if global warming is real. There’s some confusion on this issue

Tim Tebow is really creepy:

Given that the Focus on the Family ad which appeared during the Super Bowl was so bland, vague and disconnected to any actual point (except that tackling your mom in an incredibly Oedipal gesture is totally cool)

And contrary to what many of the anouncers said during the game, New Orleans winning does not make everything all right:

The good news is that the Saints really pulled it out. That was awesome and exhilarating. No, it’s not going to solve New Orleans’ continuing post-Katrina problems, but I think it’s okay to be happy for them. All the shots of people partying in the streets in the Quarter—plus all the jokes about boozing it up, taking it off, and eating Cajun food that dominated the sports news and overall news cycle—probably will end up being good for tourism, which is the sort of thing that will help get them back on their feet.