Things I learned from the Internet: corn smut, called huitlacoche, is considered a delicacy. The Wikipedia etymology section is worth a read, too.
Read a fucking book.
mistermix has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2010.
You Don’t Have to Be Afraid
James Fallows does a good job demolishing another Atlantic article about the possibility that terrorists will hijack a plane by sneaking in when the pilot is going to the bathroom. If that kind of stuff interests you, Patrick Smith also has a good discussion of the “surgical explosive” threat that was going around last month.
The “be afraid, be very afraid” story is a real staple of local and daytime TV. Part of the reason is journalistic laziness — given some perceived vulnerability, it’s easy to spin a whole host of tragic scenarios without doing much research. Another part of the reason is the journalistic habit that any source that can produce a quote is worth quoting:
If terrorists do get inside the flight deck, the reinforced cockpit door, which Folsom called a “kneejerk reaction” on the part of the government after 9/11, could end up working against the flight crew, making it impossible to regain control of the aircraft.
Folsom is a United pilot, but shouldn’t we be a bit suspicious of someone who thinks that a reinforced cockpit door was anything but a fairly prudent safety measure? That’s especially true if the source is a proponent of a secondary barrier that costs $100,000 over the life of the airplane and will give the pilots 3 more seconds to defend against hijackers.
But What Did Rick Perry Have For Breakfast?
This should be a headline, but it’s only reported in a wonky healthcare blog:
While our elected representatives wrangle over slicing entitlements, virtually no one seems to be paying attention to an eye-popping fact: Medicare reimbursements are no longer accelerating at a break neck-pace. The new numbers should be factored into any discussion about healthcare spending: From 2000 through 2009, Medicare’s outlays climbed by an average of 9.7 percent a year. By contrast, since the beginning of 2010, Medicare spending has been rising by less than 4 percent a year. On this, both Standard Poor’s Index Committee and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) agree.
Why? Socialism, that’s why:
Zeke Emanuel, an oncologist and former special adviser for health policy to White House Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag, is certain that this is what is happening. When I spoke to him last week, Emanuel, said: “This is not mere chance: this is directly related to the initiation of health care reform.” It is not the result of reform, Emmanuel emphasized. The reform measures that will rein in Medicare inflation have not yet been implemented. But, he explained, providers are “anticipating the Affordable Care Act kicking in.” They can’t wait until the end of 2013: “They have to act today. Everywhere I go,” Emanuel, added, “medical schools and hospitals are asking me, ‘How can we cut our costs by 10 to 15 percent?’
Now that we have that out of the way, what kind of gun is Rick Perry packing today?
(via OTB)
Update:: Kay posted on this yesterday – sorry about that.
But What Did Rick Perry Have For Breakfast?Post + Comments (37)
If I Had $1,000
Here’s a PSA: If you get a fancy box in the mail offering you a Chase Sapphire card, you might want to take a look:
Chase is so anxious for me to try their card that if I sign up they’ll give me 100,000 bonus points if I spend $500 in the first three months — something that’s obviously not much of a problem. Once I’ve done that, I can cash in those points for $1,000.
In other words, Chase is basically willing to pay me $1,000 just to try their card. As near as I can tell, there are no gotchas, and a quick Google search seems to confirm this. Merely getting me to give Sapphire a try is worth a thousand bucks to them.
I got one of these offers yesterday. Since I’d read that item on Kevin Drum’s blog, I took a close look at the fine print. As far as I can tell, Drum is right: as long as I spend $500 on this card in 3 months, I’ll get 100,000 bonus points. Those points can be redeemed for a bunch of variegated crap, but one of the options is cash. My plan is to spend $500 on the card, cut it up, pay the bill, and redeem those points. The whole thing is insane, but there doesn’t seem to be a catch. Some of Drum’s commenters are speculating that banks are trying to shift good credit risks to their books to show that they are “lending”, when all they’re really doing is just churning accounts.
Extremism in the Defense of Corporate Interests is No Vice
Rick Perry says a lot of crazy shit, but the most interesting piece of Perry stupidity that I’ve seen is what he tried to do with the HPV vaccine in Texas. Perry mandated that all sixth grade girls in Texas be vaccinated with Merck’s Gardasil vaccine in 2007, a decision that he’s only now walking back.
Providing HPV vaccine for those who can’t afford it, and educating parents and children about the benefits of the vaccine are both positive, progressive policy steps. Mandating vaccination for a disease that can only be sexually transmitted is certainly something any real conservative wouldn’t support. But when Perry’s friends at Merck told him to jump, he jumped as high as he possibly could, and was only stopped when the state legislature voted overwhelmingly to overturn his executive order.
This, rather than the aw-shucks, gun-toting bullshit, is the real similarity between Bush and Perry. Perry’s HPV vaccine extremism is of a piece with Bush’s Medicare Part D extremism. Providing a drug benefit to the elderly is something liberal and moderate policymakers could support. Doing it by creating a market with hundreds of different, confusing plans, and not using government buying power to buy drugs more cheaply in volume were just another kiss for big pharma. The cherry on top was that there was no plan in place to pay for Part D — Bush and the Republicans completely abandoned any pretense of fiscal discipline when they rammed Part D through during a midnight, arm-twisting vote.
Just as with Bush, the raw evidence of anti-conservative corporatism will be ignored by true believers and the DC mancrush media because Perry talks a good game, looks good in a suit, and occasionally shoots a gun.
Extremism in the Defense of Corporate Interests is No VicePost + Comments (75)
Troll Fail
The story of copyright troll Righthaven, who bought the right to sue from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and went around suing any website where even a snippet of a Review-Journal story appeared, just keeps getting better. Yesterday, they were ordered to pay $34,000 in court costs to a poster on a sports blog.
Righthaven sued one Wayne Hoehn, a longtime forum poster on the site Madjack Sports. Buried in Home>>Forums>>Other Stuff>>Politics and Religion, Hoehn made a post under the username “Dogs That Bark” in which he pasted in two op-ed pieces. One came from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which helped set up the Righthaven operation. Righthaven sued.
[…] Before it was all over, the judge decided that Righthaven had no standing even to bring the case, since only a copyright holder can file an infringement suit (Righthaven’s contract only gave it a bare right to sue… which is no right at all). Then the irritated judge decided that Hoehn’s cut-and-paste job was fair use, helping establish a precedent that could undercut the entire Righthaven approach.
I doubt that the judge’s ruling that copying an entire newspaper article is really fair use will stand up to an appeal, but it’s nice to see a troll getting what they so richly deserve.
Googleborg
Google just ate Motorola Mobility for 12.5 billion, because it wanted all of Motorola’s patents.
The reason Apple is so successful is that they control the entire software and hardware experience of the iPhone and iPad. It’s a much different proposition to do that with a company you acquire versus doing it organically with your own company, but things have just gotten a hell of a lot more interesting in the smartphone world because Google can potentially create their own hardware and software for handheld devices. And, unlike Palm or Danger, this new company is going to have tons of cash.