Why We Need Health Care Reform

Andrew Sullivan has this first-person acoount up today and I think it's worth your time, about 30 seconds to read.
   

Eating

Five simple ideas about how to cook and eat better. I know you've heard most of it before, but it's kind of fun to read over. For instance, the two fundamental spices you need for German cooking are nutmeg and mace. Which explains why we never consider German food for the annual Christmas Eve orphans' supper.
And why it is not one of the first things you think of when you consider top world cuisines.
Mace? I thought that was a weapon.

Free

Okay, so I find a new free email program that works on Macs. So then how do I go about changing the address I set up at my ISP for the execrable Entourage, so I can start getting it right away?
Go to the web site and read the instructions, you say?
Already too much trouble.
But maybe you'll find something you like here. It's famous.

P.S. Does anyone know why I have bookmarked "Imperial History of the Middle East"? Me neither. I must have thought I'd read it. That's the trouble with the internet. There's too much choice.
And not enough memory.

World eBook Library

I sort of knew this existed but had never sought it out. Tonight it popped onto my screen via a free site I have listed on my Google home page.
For $8.95 you can join and get your choice of 500,000 titles. But you will need either an iPod or an ebook reader. Seems fair enough. I harbor this hidden desire to read things I will never look for in the library.
Churchill, perhaps, or Thomas Aquinas.

If An Alien

from another planet approached me — as they so often do — and asked the best way to understand human beings, I would say "watch the movie In Bruges about 20 times and if you have any more questions, take a number." (I really really want to use the word "allegory" in this post, but you'd think I was being pretentious. Besides, I don't think I've actually ever used the word allegory in any context.)

Health Care Facts: Bookmark This, You May Need It

The Dems have a web site up to counter all the myths out there. But it's not their facts, each is attributed to independent sources like PolitiFact.

Health Care Reform: It's All Over

and Big Insurance won, says Business Week:

...big insurance companies have quietly focused on what they see as their central challenge: shaping the views of moderate Democrats.

You Mean Obama Doesn't Want to Kill Me?

Rachel Maddow for everything, NOW!

Racists and the Racist Racists Who ... er, Race Them?

Protest works. From NewsCorpse via Media Matters.

Three companies who run ads during Glenn Beck -- NexisLexis-owned Lawyers.com, Proctor & Gamble and Progressive Insurance -- today distanced themselves from Beck. LexisNexis has pulled its advertising from Beck and says it has no plans to advertise on the program in the future. Both Proctor & Gamble and Progressive Insurance called the Beck advertising placements an error that they would correct.  

The decision by the three companies comes as over 45,000 ColorofChange.org members call on advertisers to pull their ads from Glenn Beck after the controversial news host called President Obama a "racist" who "has a deep-seated hatred for white people" on "Fox & Friends" last week. 

"Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention," said John Michaels, Senior Communications Manager at LexisNexis in an email to ColorOfChange.org. "We have suspended further advertising during Mr. Beck's program."

Blogger at Daily Kos notes that P&G is the largest advertiser IN THE WORLD.

Drugs

Consumer Reports has a free best-buy comparison and recommendations for you to discuss with your doctor. Contrariennes need this.
And here's what you should know about the upcoming flu season, including the swine thingie.

And In Other News II

First Gawker, then Twitter, now Facebook. The end of civilization as we know it (until the next new thing. Remember that? Me neither.)
Comment O' Teh Day:

Reading this article, I was struck by one thing: Have we already reached the point where one can be "completely lost" without Twitter? Where "I had to Google it" is said in the same way one might say "I had to get up to change the channel?" Sigh ...

Gone But Not Forgotten

George Bush was is crazy. Source: Jacques Chirac.
It was all about Gog and Magog, remember them?

For six years, Americans really haven’t known why he launched the unnecessary Iraq attack. Official pretexts turned out to be baseless. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction after all, and wasn’t in league with terrorists, as the White House alleged. Collapse of his asserted reasons led to speculation about hidden motives: Was the invasion loosed to gain control of Iraq’s oil—or to protect Israel—or to complete Bush’s father’s vendetta against the late dictator Saddam Hussein? Nobody ever found an answer.
Now, added to the other suspicions, comes the goofy possibility that abstruse, supernatural, idiotic, laughable Bible prophecies were a factor. This casts an ominous pall over the needless war that has killed more than four thousand young Americans and cost U.S. taxpayers perhaps $1 trillion.

And In Other News...

Hope. That is why we elected him, right?

The Obama administration intends to announce an ambitious plan on Thursday to overhaul the much-criticized way the nation detains immigration violators, trying to transform it from a patchwork of jail and prison cells to what its new chief called a “truly civil detention system.”

Call The Republican Party

202-863-8500
Tell them you've had enough of The Mob.
Trouble is, I saw a headline somewhere saying the RNC is transferring these call to the DNC. Dunno if it's true.

Best News O' Teh Day

Talk about putting pressure on Chairman Baucus, Obama is going to have a health care town hall in Max Baucus' state of Montana.

From Dkos.

Kabuki comment from Blank Frank:

Was this the plan all along? (1+ / 0-)

To let the GOP stall till the August recess, so Obama could run the healthcare battle as a political campaign rather than a back-room negotiation?

Because it sure seems that having the battle take place in public, using the mechanisms put in place by his successful election campaign, really plays to Obama's strengths. Maybe the "get it done before recess" business was a feint? I certainly felt like he was deliberately holding back a few weeks ago...

Is anybody that crafty? Is this what LBJ would have done?

'Arsebook,' My Face and...(twitters)

Okay, are they just getting older or is something really going on at the social networks I ought to worry about?
Comment O' Teh Day:

• When I told my daughter I'd discovered "PINK" and Coldplay, her face almost dropped off her face she stammered out a few words. I said I was happy MCR 's lead singer was a daddy. her face went pale as a ghost. . I'll bet idf I keep going at this she'll be back to her Violin lessons. and starting to dress in some sensible clothing.

I Was Born In Kenya, Too

Maybe we all were. Who knew? Cradle of civilization and all that.

Women Glue Cheating Man's Penis to Stomach

Hey, I read it so you don't have to.
But in case you want to, it's here.
And, uh, don't try it at home. Apparently it's a felony. Who knew?

Another Reason Not To Watch TV

They're full of crap "news" and they're confusing and..and..they're full of crap news.

48 Years Ago Today

Somebody falsified a Hawaii birth announcement. The rest is history.
From Daily Kos' Bill in Portland, Maine. In 1961:

>> None of the James Bond movies had been released; West Side Story won the Oscar for Best Picture
>> John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th president---we're now up to 44
>> The Pillsbury Dough Boy was introduced
>> The Dow Jones Industrials reached a high of...734!!!
>> David Ben-Gurion resigned as Israeli premier
>> The Grammy for best Rock & Roll recording: Chubby Checker, "Let's Twist Again"; Best R&B recording: Ray Charles, "Hit the Road Jack"
>> Median price of a new home: $17,200
>> Harper Lee won a Pulitzer for To Kill A Mockingbird
>> East Germany started replacing its barbed wire barricades with a permanent wall dividing Berlin
>> South Africa withdrew from the British Commonwealth
>> The Boston Marathon was won by a Finn. A Finn!
>> The Emmy for outstanding news program went to the Huntley-Brinkley Report
>> Sun Myung Moon could only scrounge up 36 couples to mass-marry
>> Roger Maris hit 61 home runs, breaking Babe Ruth's single-season record
>> The Beatles performed at Liverpool's Cavern Club for the first time; Elvis's "Blue Hawaii" started its 20-week run at the top of the charts; The Beach Boys performed for the first time
>> Car 54 Where Are You, Hazel, and The Dick Van Dyke Show premiered
>> The price of a gallon of gas was 31 cents; A gallon of milk---49 cents

Peter Lawford doing the intro. God I'm old.

Remember When

Newt and his minions shut down the U.S. government? I remember it well. My clueless bunch of women on a weekend outing got to Dungeness Spit and found the park shut down. We couldn't go walk on the beach as planned. So we did something else instead, and grumbled about the goddam Republicans.
What I had forgotten is why.
Something to keep in mind now that the whole "rationing Medicare" is rearing its talking point head.

The Truth About Obama's Birth

From Funny or Die.

Obama Debunks Birther Conspiracy - watch more funny videos

ACTION ALERT: MoveOn Loves Mondays

so sign their petition to ask DOJ to investigate the lies that lying liars tell.
And by the way, have you called Maria yet? No, neither have I. But I will.

Writers and Alcoholism

I had a dog in this fight. Had.

by the end, said George Plimpton, Hemingway’s liver protruded from his belly “like a long fat leech”.

My favorite quote is the last lines.

If you are an American poet from the South, you might as well walk into a bar right now. And don’t, whatever you do, write a novel about recovery.