ZED! Hi ES(:>))

Oh and my DIGG shovel has been hung up!

hi nahant, I know I still have the digg reflex.

Me too thats for sure. I haven’t Dugg anything since Jane’s Post on the theft they have been perpetrating on good Bloggers!!

Did anyone get footage /make a youtube of bloggers handing Holder 250,000 sigs and a petition this week?

Hey, firepups. Wazzup?

ES,

Do you think Holder and President Obama are getting the message?

I don’t know.. my personal opinion, I found myself cautiously optimistic today for the first time… after reading Obama’s refusal to consider a commission.

But I think it’s best to maintain the rabid 4 justice stance.

What’s your take?

es!

(((katymine)))

I checked on MoveOn and so far they haven’t posted the video!

Hi sunny… i have some wonderful teas before me. Spent a little time planning a nice hillbilly high tea for tomorrow afternoon…)

(((((katymine))))

Is it just me or have they been kind of quiet lately?

I’m rabid enough about it that when my Congresscritter held an open house in town today, I went to tell him that impeaching Jay Bybee is a start, but only a start.

They say the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so we’d best be squeaking a lot.

There’s an Augean stable that needs cleaning and I don’t see any Hercules walking up to volunteer.

I am not sure I have been getting emails almost every day from them..

Dear MoveOn member,
Want to get up to 30% off your health care premiums?
You can’t just yet. But we could all save up to 30%—and still have high-quality health care—if Congress passes President Obama’s public health insurance option this year. Thousands of MoveOn members have told us that without this, they won’t be able to afford to see a doctor when they’re sick—or keep the doors open on their small business.
Trouble is, many members of Congress don’t know this key fact, and a lot of them are on the verge of bending to intense pressure from HMOs and the insurance-industry to kill this critical provision.
So we’ve developed a catchy way to get that fact in front of Congress: a “30% off” coupon for high-quality health care, redeemable by everyone if Obama’s public health insurance option passes. Key members of Congress are negotiating proposals for health care reform as we speak, so we need to get this in front of them right away. Click below to fax this coupon—free, using our new online tool—to Sens. Feinstein and Boxer today:
http://pol.moveon.org/fax?tg=F…..x&t=1

OK. This makes me angry:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30393117/

The newly announced University of Calfornia admissions policy – which apparently intends to correct the dramatic over-representation of the state’s Asian-American community but without in any way helping dramatically under-represented Latinos and Blacks (yeah, Ward Connelly, I’m thinking about you..), with the result that the only net beneficiaries will be upper middle class suburban Whites. Um. Yeah. That makes complete sense. Idiots.

We need affirmative action back. What is this.. an attempt to better match university educations with the tax base?

Oh I bet there would be many volunteers if they had a chance.

I volunteer right now to make the unsweetened orange flavored Kool Aid drink for Cheney Addington, Jr, etc.. every day until the trial is over!

G’evening, ES & Pups!

What’s on my mind? I’ve been reading a lot about the new flu, seems like the cases in Cali/Texas with no fatalities are possibly the same mix as the outbreak in Mexico City that has killed a number of people. And the new flu in the US is an unusual mixture of swine, human and avian flus that seems to have a high human-to-human transmission rate. At any rate, i’ve been lurking a lot at Effect Measure, a public health blog.

If Obama’s public health insurance option passes

*sigh*

No fair lacing that drink with any Jim Jones-esque compounds, ES!

This was bound to happen sooner or later, NDFG.

The good news is no US fatalities (thus far), so supportive therapy looks like it will carry the day. If this pans out as a new flu strain, we need a vaccine against it. We can do that, it’s not rocket science.

Then we need to get people to get vaccinated, and that’s tough.

swine, human and avian = flying pig people? /s how did that combination come about?

Thanks ndfg.. I’ve been following emptywheel and links of that nature to the point I have had little or no time to get into anything else this week.

I may not agree with “Their Policy” but what needs to really be changed is to stop short changing the whole education system in the state. there are seniors who should at least be able to get into the state colleges and are being rejected because the state colleges don’t have enough money! Some how this is very unfair to all our students! If you have the grades the state colleges should be accepting you. We know many students who are having lots of problems just getting accepted and they are above average students!!
My sweetie teaches Oboe and flute privately and only teaches kids up thru 12th grade!

I won’t, I promise. just want the trials to go forth. Preferably without bail. *s*

I don’t need it but so many others are so very much in need of medical care/coverage.

well.. thanks to years of corrupt misconduct on the part of shrubco’s nearly non-existent health and safety regulators, the kool-aid is directly in our nation’s water supply:

http://www.naturalnews.com/025994.html

… providing, ironically, better access than our health system to a number of valuable prescription drugs, including lopid, cardizem, prozac and zoloft, whether we need ‘em or not, right through your tap and mine. ’cause this is what happens when a president sells the country and drowns government in the nearest bathtub filled with environmental toxins provided by his cronies.

I don’t have it… and at my current level the only thing worse than not having insurance would be a law forcing me to buy it at 30 percent off. Might as well make a law requiring homelessness for millions more.

Edit.. Not saying I couldn’t pay something, but 70 percent of what insurance companies charge, no way.

yes, i know. I may be a flaky artist, but i can’t repress my inner geek. I follow all sorts of info about various aspects of science. Fascinating to read about how flu viruses recombine and evolve. And i hope all those who scream against evolution refuse to get a flu vaccination.

I’ve been very pleased, altho sickened at the same time, to see all torture news this week. Kudos to Marcy! Payday was yesterday, as soon as i do my bill paying duties this weekend i’m gonna dump a little in the kibble dish for Marcy’s investigative team. I’m just going to consider it another essential subscription.

Personally I believe we need single payer and the amount should be based on your income so you only have to spend a limited amount of your income. Not sure what the number should be but it must be affordable so it doesn’t cause financial hardship of any kind!

You would think fisherman would no longer need a rod or a net.. fish should be happily jumping in the boat.

Viruses are Nature’s recombinant DNA.

There are influenza viruses that specialize in birds (hence, avian influenza), swine (hence, swine flu), and people (garden variety flu, which nails other primates pretty well too.) Ordinarily, these influenza viruses aren’t terribly infectious outside their niche of species.

But that’s ordinarily. When pigs and birds (usually ducks for some reason, but sometimes chickens) live in close proximity, the viruses can swap genes around. Suddenly a pig virus that couldn’t infect birds very well can get an antigen that is tuned to birds’ cellular receptors. But the rest of the virus is novel to the birds, and their immune systems don’t cope. Result: lots of dead birds.

And it works the other ways, too. This is why we tend to discover novel flu viruses in places like backwoods Asia and Mexico. Those are places where people, pigs and poultry live close together. Living in close proximity makes it easier to swap influenza viruses, and that gives the recombinant game more chances to make something nasty.

Once upon a time, these novel viruses would diffuse slowly from their point of origin. The Spanish Influenza of the 19teens took about 3 years to make it around the world, and it had the assistance of a world war. Humans move around so much now that a virus can make it from China (my personal candidate for the origin, when they figure out where it came from) to Mexico to the US in a matter of weeks.

The good news is that it’s not flu season, we aren’t all cooped up together in warm places passing these promiscuous viruses around. There should be time (but barely) to get a vaccine done before this year’s flu season starts.

i agree, nahant. I have a job, but it’s awful tough coming up with the money for doctor visits. Insurance won’t pay anything until the 2,000 deductible is used up. At least it pays something toward prescriptions. And it’s considered a good plan! Hah. I pay full price for everything, PLUS have money taken out of my paycheck for premiums. Legalized extortion. Of course, if anything serious happens it will eventually kick in. Gah. What a fucked up mess we have for health care.

Agreed.. it’s the only sane way. Frankly I would much rather pay Medicare than an insurance company who will probably drop me the day I need it.

And I could not have continued to pay insurance premiums while laid up recovering these last few months.. So I wonder how much private coverage would have helped anyhow.

Hi all!
ndfg, I’m glad you mentioned Effect Measure. It’s a great place to go for info.

I’m amazed at your confidence in a vaccine being created so quickly. (Not the distribution, just development)

The creationists (even the ultranutty Young Earthers) don’t deny the irrefutable evidence for what they call ‘microevolution,’ they just deny that it can create new species. Apparently you need a God for that …

But it would be poetic justice if a bunch of them croaked from New Flu.

thank you for a much more articulate summary than i could have ever managed! And another plus is that this newest variation has not been virulent in the US. Of course, the situation is pretty fluid, and news is changing by the minute.

I’ve been an avid georger for several years … one reason for my dedication is that it’s a little thing i can do for science. Infectious disease number crunchers have been able to crunch the raw data on circulating bills to simulate the spread of epidemics and pandemics in our world of modern transportation. Fascinating.

Is hillbilly high tea like brit cream tea?

Hankering for cream puffs and éclairs *g*

hiya, margot! hows life?

Hi Margot…)

‘cept you really wouldn’t want to eat those fish….

Why? They do it every year.

The flu virus game involves a consensus meeting of the virology crowd who try to predict what next season’s flu strains are going to be. Then they make the vaccines. As I said, it isn’t rocket science. I haven’t kept up with the technology, so maybe they’re using tissue culture to grow the bugs now. Back in the Dark Ages when I was an undergrad studying that stuff, they used fertile duck eggs.

All you need is a buttload of virus and a way of killing it. Detergents and alcohols work pretty well, then you isolate the capsule proteins and package them. Bingo, instant vaccine.

Hi ES, hope it’s beautiful in your area; was warm and pretty here.

It’s outside on the back screened in deck with fresh cut flowers.. probably in the meditative rain. We are supposed to get up to a foot of rain over the next few days here… might as well enjoy it.

Fascinating.. I had no idea.

It’s a jungle and I love it.

I wasn’t clear it must be a government program and the fucking insurance companies can to go to hell! They get enough of our money in oh so many other extorted ways!

I’ll drink to that.

hiya ES

very tough week all around

hope this weekend is relaxing and without stress.

i’m out now.

{{ katymine }}

Teddy sir.. .. best to you.

Tres cool. I just entered my folding money there.

When they refer to money as filthy, they aren’t kidding. I remember someone in my medical microbiology class swabbed money as their lab project and isolated a number of nasty pathogens, Staph aureus I recall and there were a couple that were a surprise, but I don’t recall what they were.

Enjoy your lovely tea party — and the rain.

When you compare administrative expenses for Medicare, for not-for-profit insurers, and for-profit insurers what you find is that Medicare has the lowest admin costs, running 2.5-4%. For-profit insurers run 15-20% admin costs (that includes their profit, of course.)

I’m still waiting for a ‘thuglican to explain to me in a way that makes any sense at all why we want to allow for-profit companies into this. If they can match Medicare’s admin costs, fine. But this appears to be a case where government does do it faster, cheaper and better.

Our Lege passed a law this year that Big Bill Richardson signed that requires insurers to spend at least (at least!) 85% of premiums paid in benefits. This was widely considered to be progress here in New Mexico.

Feh!

Not speaking from experience, but I would guess ‘hillbilly high tea’ is a jug of moonshine that would peel paint off metal. Creampuffs are optional.

time for bed … it’s such a rare treat to go to bed early being that i work night shift. I’m a born night owl, but when i HAVE to stay up, then being able to go to bed early is such a luxury *g*

It’s been great to swim with all y’all in the Lake. Nighters!

Dam I am still batting 0.00 guess my bills want to stay hidden!

Porter Goss has an Op Ed in todays WAPO

Security Before Politics

snip

disturbing epidemic of amnesia seems to be plaguing my former colleagues on Capitol Hill. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, members of the committees charged with overseeing our nation’s intelligence services had no higher priority than stopping al-Qaeda. In the fall of 2002, while I was chairman of the House intelligence committee, senior members of Congress were briefed on the CIA’s “High Value Terrorist Program,” including the development of “enhanced interrogation techniques” and what those techniques were. This was not a one-time briefing but an ongoing subject with lots of back and forth between those members and the briefers.

Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as “waterboarding” were never mentioned.

snip

85% on service huh? Now, that’s revolutionary. What percent do they require of NGOs that offer poverty aid in other countries to avoid being labeled a fraud?

What I’ve been thinking about is all the torture memos and how we might handle someone like bin Laden or al Zawahiri if we caught them today? How long would the gov’t. have them before we would be told? Would the gov’t hold him or put him in the regular judicial system? Would they be interrogated? By what means? Lots of questions and not many answers.

Sometimes past is prologue and sometimes the past is put to rest and hopefully in all cases we learn from the past to make our futures better.

War & poverty doesn’t have to always be the fate of humans here on Earth. Nor does our constant striving to destroy the environment.

Ha! That’s closer to Hoe Down material. *s* I know where a few old still (hand dug well) sites are. If times get rough, I’m stocking up on sugar and going into a new/old business. /s

G night, ndfg.. savor ZZZZ moment.

Ah, the scent of fresh fear-sweat.
Next up…. Addington?

I love Tiff Merrit so much!!!

A state by stae program will never work! It must be run by the government and maybe even use the VA as a model. Medicare has been used and abused for years by many unscrupulous insurance companies, hospitals and Doctors! Enough is enough we need to have a Government run single payer system with fees based on income. Oh and once you retire it all should become free! I mean you worked your whole life and you earned it, that and rescind the tax on SS. It seems crazy to take someone’s SS, they should be excempt from paying taxes on it but they should pay income on anything beyond that and none of this cutting SS if you earn too much, just tax the earned income!

Nite sleep well!

That name sure hasn’t been mentioned enough in MSM.

I just discovered her.. What a beautiful voice and spirit. I can’t wait to hear more.

Medicare (in its original form) is an okay model. The crap the Newt and his gang pulled on it have really distorted it, but it can be corrected. There are some good things in the VA model, but as a practical matter we’ll never get a VA for everyone through Congress.

What we need with a single payer system is a robust fraud investigation system.

As far as OASDI goes, I expect to see some modest means-testing and trimming of benefits above a threshold. As it stands now, most retirees whose primary income comes from OASDI benefits are not being taxed heavily on them. If someone’s income (including OASDI payments) is in the 80th or 85th percentile, they’re doing okay and the taxes shouldn’t be a big deal.

So, while I wouldn’t object to exempting OASDI benefits from income taxes, I don’t see it as particularly critical.

Sure hasn’t.
Wonder whose payroll he’s on.

Give them Tang!

Are you sure they’re good enough to drink what astronauts drink?

No not critical but it sure would be nice to leave a few bucks in their pockets so they could have some luxuries in their waning days. The government wouldn’t need it if they made all corporations pay federal income taxes, as it is more than half pay nothing with all the loopholes the repukes have given them.

Well time to hit the hay!! Nite good Pups!!

I hope he’s in the same bread line as Gonzales and co.

I mean, who besides the Blackwater (Xe) types would have him?

Niters nahant.

Obama has promised us that he’s going to look at the tax code. We’ll see what happens.

Buenos noches, nahant.

I guess it’s time for me to hit the sack too.

Night, folks.

And me… on such a beautiful Spring night.

Good night all.

”It’s The Earth That Moves”

thas why I don’t celebrate my birthday much

the earth did all the work

Good morning. Anyone up?

Hillary learned well from W admin. Sez Iraq violence is a sign of success.

wake up dawg

Woof woof.

and we’re off!

Chasing the artificial rabbit?

WaPo on Bybee’s ‘regrets’…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..id=topnews

More or less a ‘fluff’ piece. One thing I’ve not seen (but bet it’s around here somewhere) is that Bybee went to Gonzo to lobby for the 9th Cir seat. There wasn’t one open at the time. Funny. Gonzo asked he take the OLC while he waited.

six pages of comments so far

woof

morning pups

I’ve been expecting Marcy to scream: “I’ve got blister on my fingers!”

My favorite one was: another non-news story. Way to go WaPo.

Oh, goody. We’re going to get the torture pics released.

Here’ a rare one.

I’ve got an idea for all you “moralists” out there claiming the high ground. The reality of the situation is you don’t give a damn about “our standing in the world,” or about treating “prisoners” humanely, or any other of that namby-pamby b.s. you’re all spouting off about! All you want is your pound of flesh from an administration you consider as evil, if not more, than Al Queda. Why don’t we round up all non-Democrats who supported this measure on the heels of the worst attack on our nation, an attack many of you don’t even believe was carried out by Islamic terrorists, but was some whacked out conspiracy by “BushCo!” Why not arrest every single non-Democrat citizen of this country who supports this too while we’re at it, and we’ll let all of you do whatever you want to all of us? You can start with me, okay! Give us show trials, water board us on CSPAN, exile and execute at will. That way, with us out of the way, you can not only make your treaty with Al Queda and all their affiliates (CAIR, ACLU, etc.), but you can also create that full blown socialist, Utopian society that the rest of us “idiots” have been resisting for the last fifty years! And when you finally have what you’ve always wanted, with no one in your way, and no one else to blame for your problems, you can eat each other. Listening to all of you “progressives” lecture us “racist, unintelligent, white power activists” has lead me to believe that the scenario I’ve just laid out is the only thing that will satisfy your insatiable appetites for destruction, mainly your own.
4/25/2009 2:13:27 AM

a teabagger maybe?

Posted at 2am? Maybe just drunk.

Heh. Stress test doesn’t test stress, as conditions have already deteriorated more than stress test measured. Who coulda predicted.

Good morning, pups. It’s Collins and Herbert today in the NYT. Ms. Collins made me laugh this morning with “Come Visit. Live Life. Eat Cheese.” She says it’s hard to go wrong when picking a state flower, but the number of bad slogan-driven tourism campaigns is legion. Poor Wisconsin… Mr. Herbert, in “A Culture Soaked in Blood,” says America is an insanely violent society, and the worst of that violence is made insanely easy by the widespread availability of guns.

Here they are.

The coffee, tea and hot chocolate are ready, and I’ve got French toast made with challah. I’ve declared war on the weeds in the areas between the herb bed and flower beds. Black landscape fabric. The little flower bed in the front is so overrun with that stuff that’s supposed to be in what we laughingly call a “lawn” that I’m going to solarize it with black plastic, hoping to kill the roots and runners. Should all that fail I’ll search for a weed that doesn’t produce burrs. Have a great day.

Huffington Post has a nice clip of Al Gore dealing with Marsha Blackburn’s snide disingenuousness.

not yet for “adverse” (pdf)

Table 1
Economic Scenarios: Baseline and More Adverse Alternatives
(Minus signs indicate negative values)

2009 2010

Real GDP (1)

Average Baseline (2) ‐2.0 2.1
Consensus Forecasts ‐2.1 2.0
Blue Chip ‐1.9 2.1
Survey of Professional Forecasters ‐2.0 2.2
Alternative More Adverse ‐3.3 0.5

Civilian unemployment rate (3)

Average Baseline (2) 8.4 8.8
Consensus Forecasts 8.4 9.0
Blue Chip 8.3 8.7
Survey of Professional Forecasters 8.4 8.8
Alternative More Adverse 8.9 10.3

House prices (4)

Baseline ‐14 ‐4
Alternative More Adverse ‐22 ‐7

…
1 Percent change in annual average.
2 Baseline forecasts for real GDP and the unemployment rate equal the average of
projections released by Consensus Forecasts, Blue Chip, and Survey of Professional
Forecasters in February.
3 Annual average.
4 Case‐Shiller 10‐City Composite, percent change, fourth quarter of the previous year to
fourth quarter of the year indicated.
………….

still, as stupid as these numbers are – the real problem seems to be that the “stress test” doesn’t actually measure anything useful. from yves smith (who has been all over this) today:

The problem with the tests is that the focus on the loan books (as reported by the AP) is missing the fact that loans decay more gracefully than bad structured debt or derivatives exposure. Outlier events will hit the big capital markets players far worse than traditional banks. But those scenarios have been deliberately omitted.

And per Bill Black, the emphasis on loans is a charade without inspection of the underlying loan files. And the number of inspectors was clearly insufficient for that to have happened

damn. epu’d again.

good luck in the weed wars marion. hope you have a great day in the garden. i love spring!

I happened to catch that one in real time on C-Span3 in the car. Gore didn’t slap that woman up side her head *nearly* hard enough…. the twit is all skin and no brain.