And you need to vote for Little Bitsy one more time. Apparently Bitsy won week twelve, but now they are deciding the top four of the twelve or something.
BTW- here is the official announcement.
Archives for 2009
One Hour Left
To vote for Bitsy.
We can break 9k folks.
*** Update ***
For the Tunch fans:
*** Update #2 ***
For the victor:
Minnesota Star(bursts)
George George Will has a crush:
The state senator from her district in suburban Minneapolis-St. Paul had been in office for 17 years, had stopped being pro-life and started supporting tax increases, so that morning Michele Bachmann had skipped washing her hair, put on jeans and a tattered sweatshirt and went to the local Republican nominating caucus to ask the incumbent a few pointed questions. There, on the spur of the moment, some similarly disgruntled conservatives suggested that she unseat him. After she made a five-minute speech “on freedom,” the caucus emphatically endorsed her, and she handily won the subsequent primary.
If I were George WIll, I probably wouldn’t use the phrase “petite pistol” in a column like this.
Why can’t the English
I remember turning on CNN last year or the year before — more than once — and seeing Sully and Hitch discuss this or that (with no one else there except the CNNbot) about American politics. What the fuck? What would these limeys know about American politics? (In fairness, Sully’s take on how Obama operates is dead on, IMHO.)
I mention this because this weekend I met up with an English colleague of mine who a) thought Democrats should nominate Zell Miller or at least make him VP in 2000, b) thought Bush would be a better president than Gore during the 2000 election, and c) thought that Bush would lose by the widest margin in the history of American politics in 2004. Despite this (all of which he now admits was wrong), he continues to predict various silly things — that Republicans will find their “own Obama” in the next presidential election or two, for example. This is someone who is probably a bit to the left of me politically and is undeniably brilliant in many ways.
What’s a bit hard to describe is how eerily similar his analyses are to Hitch and/or Sully. There’s the inexplicable hatred of Hillary Clinton. There’s the fixation with whether or not various candidates are good people. There’s the complete inability to understand how the contemporary Republican party operates (i.e., that it’s run by lunatics who would fuck up any administration, regardless of what a “good man” John McCain is).
So, what gives with all of this? Why do we have so many English people over here commenting on our politics? Why do they understand it so poorly? And why do they think they understand it to begin with? My guess is that the common language creates the illusion of a similar system but that the reality is that there are almost no similarities between our system and theirs.
Saturday Night Open Thread
Watching Milk on HBO and packing for my trip next week. You?
What Wall Street Wants, Wall Street Gets
This is awesome:
Insurance brokers and benefits consultants say their small business clients are seeing premiums go up an average of about 15 percent for the coming year — double the rate of last year’s increases. That would mean an annual premium that was $4,500 per employee in 2008 and $4,800 this year would rise to $5,500 in 2010.
The higher premiums at least partly reflect the inexorable rise of medical costs, which is forcing Medicare to raise premiums, too. Health insurance bills are also rising for big employers, but because they have more negotiating clout, their increases are generally not as steep.
Higher medical costs aside, some experts say they think the insurance industry, under pressure from Wall Street, is raising premiums to get ahead of any legislative changes that might reduce their profits.
This really is one of those things I never really thought about before the last year or so, but I still have no idea what exactly the health insurance companies offer this country. All they seem to do is sponge money off the top of what we pay for health care, make life a living hell for their customers and the medical community in the form of reams of paperwork, hand out lavish bonuses to their management, invest recklessly in whatever the Wall Street bad idea du jour is, and then raise rates when the fur-bearing trout farms don’t pan out and they need to cover their bad investments. Meanwhile, they don’t answer to the consumer and control congress, and are under orders from the Wall Street brokerages.
Do I have this completely wrong? Is there an actual fact-based (and that means you need to look somewhere other than the NRO or glibertarian sites) argument in favor of health insurance agencies? What service do they really offer? Why are these people who it appears add nothing so in control of the debate. I know I have turned into a pinko-commie, but right now this looks like nothing more than an elaborate and legal protection racket.
What Wall Street Wants, Wall Street GetsPost + Comments (184)
Fox Is Not a News Organization And Here Is More Evidence
Remember yesterday when all the wingnuts were screaming that the White House was shutting out Fox news:
Allahpundit (who has now gone full metal wingnut) was apoplectic:
Decide for yourself what the most disgraceful aspect of this is. Was it the fact that Gibbs told Jake Tapper explicitly on Monday that the White House wouldn’t try to dictate to the press pool who should and shouldn’t be included — before doing precisely that? Was it Anita Dunn going out of her way to say she respects Major Garrett as a fair reporter — before the administration decided he didn’t deserve a crack here at Feinberg? Or was it the repeated insistence by Dunn and Axelrod that of course the administration will make its officials available to Fox — before pulling the plug today?
The Weekly Standard was aghast:
The White House sent out an alert today to the press pool that “Pay Czar” Kenneth Feinberg would be doing a press availability— a round robin with the major news networks, in which Fox is customarily included. The administration specified that everyone was invited except Fox News, according to Bret Baier on “Special Report” tonight.
You know where this is going, don’t you? IT NEVER HAPPENED. Fox made the entire thing up. Take it away, TPM:
TPMDC dug into it, and here’s what happened.
Feinberg did a pen and pad with reporters to brief them on cutting executive compensation. TV correspondents, as they do with everything, asked to get the comments on camera. Treasury officials agreed and made a list of the networks who asked (Fox was not among them).
But logistically, all of the cameras could not get set up in time or with ease for the Feinberg interview, so they opted for a round robin where the networks use one pool camera. Treasury called the White House pool crew and gave them the list of the networks who’d asked for the interview.
The network pool crew noticed Fox wasn’t on the list, was told that they hadn’t asked and the crew said they needed to be included. Treasury called the White House and asked top Obama adviser Anita Dunn. Dunn said yes and Fox’s Major Garrett was among the correspondents to interview Feinberg last night.
Simple as that, we’re told, and the networks don’t want to be seen as heroes for Fox.
TPMDC spoke with a network bureau chief this afternoon familiar with the situation who was surprised that Fox was portraying the news as networks coming to its rescue.
The question- when will these guys get tired of being made fools of by their media sources and their leaders?
Oh, look. Ed Morrisey. Wrong about everything. Remember when he even tried?
And more here.
Fox Is Not a News Organization And Here Is More EvidencePost + Comments (192)