thebalilama's Blog

thebalilama Commented on Did the Repubs say government public option is more efficient that private health insurance companies? by thebalilama

2009-06-16T23:17:13Z

I don't recall details the Clinton plan. I do remember it had some good ideas.
I do know the way the private outfits use pooling ends up driving the policy premiums to an unaffordable amount for the ever-shrinking pool of users who are actually using their policies. I don't know how many people know how the pools work.
Those of us who are self employed are at the effect of this pool thing. If you get insurance through your job, it is somewhat different, but as more companies don't provide health care, more of us will deal with the pools.

thebalilama Commented on Did the Repubs say government public option is more efficient that private health insurance companies? by thebalilama

2009-06-16T18:42:28Z

Thanks, the Dalai Lama and I share the same birthday [as do G W Bush and Nancy Reagan, although I think the D L more than balances things out] and I spent a lot of time in Bali.

thebalilama Commented on Did the Repubs say government public option is more efficient that private health insurance companies? by thebalilama

2009-06-16T18:23:29Z

Obey,
I think that is a straw man argument.
My wife and I pay $6600 a year for $10,000 deductible insurance [BCBS] with exclusions. I would love to buy into Medicare for the same money. Given the overhead in private insurance, we could get gold plated insurance for the same premiums.
If we are offered that option it could even get Medicare into better shape and not raise taxes. We are already paying out the money.
That way there is no subsidizing, just an incentive for the private companies to cut expenses. It is hard to justify "Dollar Bill" McGuire of United Health Group getting as much as $100,000,000 a year and he is sitting on 1.6 billion in stock options and say that a public option would be unfair at the same time.
There could be one national insurance pool to share the risk instead of the way the private companies game their "pool" system.
Now if we can get the drug benefit handled and get private insurance out of it all together, we'll be in great shape.
The Swiss system is better than what we have now but not as good as in that socialist hellhole country, France.
I think it comes down to whether or not one feels that health care is a right or a privilege. I am one who thinks that health care, education, libraries, police and fire protection etc. AKA "the commons" are a right and in the long run are less expensive for society that the privatization movement that is rampant here today.

thebalilama Commented on The Terrible Intimacy of Torture by TheraP

2009-04-27T13:47:26Z

TheraP,

Oh, the gift you are.

You are an access for the cure of the empathy deficit we are experiencing now. You embody the true Empath. I feel that the true Empath is contagious. Access to the One for others.

Until we can experience the real impact of anything, we have no power to transform either the "thing" or our relationship to it. The capacity to presence that impact in and for others is rare indeed.

Thank you

thebalilama Commented on Breaking News About Hannity's Waterboarding, From PNS.com by thebalilama

2009-04-26T04:01:45Z

Maybe a list of diseases and symptoms is in order. Testicular Lackadosus is marvelous. Both Testicular Lackadosus and Fortitudinus Abandonalus appear to be highly virulent and even ontologically fatal in some populations and some populations seem to have developed an immunity.

thebalilama recommended A "Capital" Idea: Lessons from the Movement by Jade7243

2009-04-21T01:54:15Z

thebalilama Commented on The post I didn't write by TheraP

2009-04-26T02:17:44Z

As usual TheraP, brilliant. I am getting in here a bit late.

I so agree that there is a dearth of good questions. "The Google" has all the answers anyone could ever want, but very few good questions. I think perhaps, to paraphrase an old canard, "A good question is worth a thousand facts"

I heard another question that can't be asked on the radio a couple days ago. "If life-threatening medical research experiments on a severely retarded, bedridden person could save lives, would it be okay?"

I see a real deficit of empathy in our national conversation. A criterion for "shocking the conscience" might be "If this [waterboarding, etc] were done to your child, would your conscience be shocked?"

I am one [silly old beatnik] who doesn't believe we are all equal, I believe we are all one. I think the biblical quote, "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." is less about Jesus and more about all of us and how we interact with each other. This is the way I hear it, "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as I have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, I have done it unto myself."

Peace

thebalilama Commented on News From the Future: China Completes Great Fan by ☠enghis

2009-04-26T01:18:53Z

Very funny, I LOVE the bunghole in the blogosphere.

thebalilama Commented on Don't Mess With The Prez by steve katz

2009-04-26T01:13:40Z

Great post Steve, thanks.

I think Obama is a 10th degree black belt in political ju jitsu. He earned his bones and learned his chops in Chicago politics. If there is a more knife fighting, eye gouging, crotch kicking place to grow up in politics, I don't know where it is.

I love watching a wingnut attacker bullrush him and end up flat on his ass with an unruffled and bemused Obama looking on.

On another level it occurs to me as though the right is trying to block Obama on some checkers move and Obama is playing 3 dimensional chess.

GObama, he's got this.

thebalilama Commented on Breaking News About Hannity's Waterboarding, From PNS.com by thebalilama

2009-04-26T00:38:04Z

Thank you all. Great fun writing it. After I posted it I saw ☠enghis's Blog "News From the Future: China Completes Great Fan". Besides the synchronicity, ☠enghis cracked me up. The glitch in the blogosphere called the bunghole must be large indeed.

thebalilama recommended The post I didn't write by TheraP

2009-04-23T15:37:40Z

thebalilama Commented on What Could Be Behind Texas Secession? by thebalilama

2009-04-23T16:06:36Z

Good point, I moved out back in the 80s when whatever magazine said Austin was the best place in the country to live. I moved to Grimes county, go figger. [It is the home of the Texas Renaissance Festival, Huzzah!]

Maybe the Bush league could move to Loving County and they could secede to their hearts delight.

thebalilama Commented on Rep. Joe Barton: I 'Stumped' Nobel Prize Winning Scientist by Brian Beutler

2009-04-23T00:40:07Z

Besides the joys of having Mssrs Barton, Bush, DeLay, Armey and Perry to name but a few, as the wingnut brain trust down here in the state of my residence, we actually have the distinction of having some extraordinary statistics of which they [not me] must be proud:

1) 49th in teacher pay
2) 1st in the percentage of people over 25 without a high school diploma
3) 41st in high school graduation rate
4) 46th in SAT scores
5) 1st in percentage of uninsured children
6) 1st in percentage of population uninsured
7) 1st in percentage of non-elderly uninsured
8) 3rd in percentage of people living below the poverty level
9) 49th in average Women Infant and Children benefit payments
10) 1st in teenage birth rate
11) 50th in average credit scores for loan applicants
12) 1st in air pollution emissions
13) 1st in volume of volatile organic compounds released into the air
14) 1st in amount of toxic chemicals released into water
15) 1st in amount of recognized cancer-causing carcinogens released into air
16) 1st in amount of carbon dioxide emissions
17) 50th in homeowners' insurance affordability
18) 50th in percentage of voting age population that votes
19) 1st in annual number of executions

Numbers 1 thru 4 probably have something to do with Mr. Barton's level of genius.

Eliot Shapleigh, a state senator from El Paso, compiles a report each legislative session called "Texas on the Brink." His report does prove that we are not all idiots down here, we are just seriously outnumbered, just like the early Texans at the Alamo.

"REMEMBER THE LIBERALS!!!" We are not going away.

A link is below.

http://shapleigh.org/system/news_article/document/882/Texas_on_the_Brink_2007_Final.pdf

thebalilama Commented on Why Hunters Need Semi-automatic Rifles by thebalilama

2009-04-22T20:01:05Z

God help us when they develop an immunity to semi-autos.

thebalilama Commented on Why Hunters Need Semi-automatic Rifles by thebalilama

2009-04-22T19:58:49Z

As I said, I am not against gun ownership. I think there should be limits to what a private citizen can own, 50 cal? RPG? Claymore mines? I think most reasonable people would agree there is a limit somewhere, even though we might disagree on what that limit is.

What are the odds of getting shot when you give up your wallet? I'm not sure.
If you take the FBI crime stats from 2007
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/data/table_12.html
and figure all murder and non-negligent manslaughter cases were results of armed robbery [a generous assertion] they would be about 1.3% of robbery and aggravated assault combined.

The FBI actually says that there were 924 murders during robberies that year [ http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_10.html ] they would be .076% of the murder and non-negligent manslaughter cases.
I just think that, contrary to what the media and gun lobby would have us believe, the odds of us being killed in an armed robbery where we gave up our wallets are probably less that pulling out our pieces and getting into a shoot out for sure.

I would look at the odds of getting killed if I pulled my piece or the odds of getting killed if I didn't.

I know that is not a rigorous analysis, but I think I would be off on the generous side of the concealed carry argument.

thebalilama Commented on Another Torture Document Declassified (update #3) by TheraP

2009-04-22T19:26:57Z

One of the great things about the posters here is that we still question authority, even our own.

thebalilama Commented on Another Torture Document Declassified (update #3) by TheraP

2009-04-22T19:14:53Z

TheraP
Thanks for the heads up on Zipperupus's post, brilliant and highly rec'd