Katherine Kersten’s finally experienced a complete break from reality. Here is her version of the year-long healthcare insurance reform battle. These are all direct quotes:
Republicans…were pushed out of the process.
Democrats accused [Republicans] of being in the pocket of special interests….
the folks on Main Street didn’t buy the Democratic line
tactic of ignoring and ridiculing Republican ideas
Is it any wonder that every “solution” that follows this biliously false set up is simply a stalking horse to increase the profits of private insurers even further? Kersten’s solutions:
Allow people to buy health insurance across state lines
Give small businesses, the self-employed and others the power to pool their resources to offer health care at lower prices
Provide health insurance coverage for those who don’t have it
Increase access and affordability for those with preexisting conditions
Enact medical malpractice reform
Her first solution was discussed but didn’t go anywhere because Republicans and Blue Dogs only wanted to open up markets without putting any conditions on the rapacious insurers.
Her second point? I’m self-employed. If I really had to have insurance, I could join the National Writers Union and buy it through them. (They in turn would see their rates go up or, more likely, their insurer would reject me.) I simply do not know of any federal or state encumbrance to pooling resources. All impediments to getting insurance are constructed by insurance companies who are terrified of insuring anyone who doesn’t live on bran and jog five miles a day and comes from a family not renown for their longevity.
Three and four were at the heart of every bill the Republicans peed on.
Enact medical malpractice reform (thereafter followed the usual cut and paste screed on tort reform). But Kersten does have a good point here. The vast majority of malpractice suits target only five percent of our doctors. Let’s take away their licenses so the lawyers don’t have bad doctors to sue anymore.
Stunningly, Kersten gets paid for this: another dishonest argument on behalf of the party that can’t say yes to anything except maybe another heaping helping of slanders, lies and distortions. We all know who killed reform and it wasn’t our side (altho our side certainly enabled their No-istry).
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Texas doesn’t just force their children to read outrageous propaganda in lieu of actual textbooks, they also protect their children from anyone who ever dared criticize our corporate overlords.
Seriously.
Do these people do anything that’s not driven by their fears and hatred?
Even I am not afraid of a 65-year-old nun (despite the fact that she ultimately reports to Pope Natzinger). Nick Coleman reports that it all eventually worked out. Eventually.
But there is no hope Sr. Scully will ever get to use real (non-Stalinized) textbooks. Texas has seen to that.
So-called conservatives. Who knew that lying and censorship were so integral to the agenda of the righteous right?
We tolerate the presence of a propaganda channel that deliberately exacerbates societal discord and which by design drives wedges between Americans. Radio Rwanda Blabfest and their TV affiliate Fox News broadcast 24/7 in this country, and sooner or later they’re going to convince their Hutu followers to wage war against the Tutu “minority” that swept the Kenyan into office.
As with pre-Reich Germany, Foxicans lie openly and dare anyone to disagree with them (which isn’t that easy because after Saturday they’ll never share the stage with a Democrat and an open mic again — except, of course, within the confines of a Sunday morning blatherfest with a corporate media whore to moderate). They also like to gather in groups and wave scary things at the rest of us.
Will people pay attention when windows get broken? Or do we have to wait until they try to burn down the Capitol and start rounding up homosexuals?
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Money. When the banks won’t lend it, others will.
Once upon a time we had laws to protect us from those others. Now we have NYTimes reporters romanticizing outfits that do payday loans for small businesses. (The ones that survived the death of Main Street.)
Odd thing yesterday. Had lunch with my folks in southern Minnesota and we agreed that shopping malls were bad for communities. My point was that money you spend at Wal-Mart leaves the community. My mother’s point, which surprised me, was that my hometown has a vibrant downtown because the locals have never patronized the one and only mall on the edge of town.
My hometown is genuinely conservative, and real conservatives don’t forsake their lifelong business partners because some chain at the mall has better prices. These small town Iowans are still peeved that one of the local banks got bought out by a regional player. Even my parents ended up switching from the Republican (chain) bank to the Democratic (locally owned) bank.
Local is conservative. Chain is corporate. Corporate ≠ conservative, not when your local population has a good school and an educated populace.
But when the schools suck and people are ignorant, my but how the rules change.
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The Roseville Library is about to get almost twice as big, again.
I used to check out CDs back in the day before bittorrent changed my life. It’s already a very large library with a two-story Dunn Bros. coffee shop attached to it.
So is this to make room for new books and media? Not hardly.
When completed, the library will occupy 73,000 square feet — 30,000 square feet more than the old space — and be topped by a second floor. It will also meet Gold LEED certification requirements for environmentally friendly and energy-efficient building design.
The greening of the building added $780,600 to the price and a month to the construction timetable, allowing the heating and air conditioning systems to run in the empty building to detoxify it.
A grand-opening celebration is scheduled for July 10, library director Susan Nemitz said.
“I think the thing that most excites me is standing in the children’s space,” she said, “because it’s large and beautiful already.”
The space eventually will look out on a garden with outdoor reading spaces, Nemitz said, thanks in large part to the Friends of the Ramsey County Libraries. The group stepped in last year to raise money for amenities that were cut when Ramsey County commissioners trimmed some features.
Access to computers will improve, too, with 120 work-stations compared with 30 prior to construction.
Let’s call this what it is: stealth human services. Roseville is using their library system to create public meeting space, quality daycare, internet access and what sounds like a mini park.
All of which is fine by me. Community-provided meeting spaces enable citizen empowerment. Quality daycare means better adjusted kids growing up to be well-adjusted taxpayers. Internet access democratizes a society increasingly stratified by bandwidth access. A mini park makes life better, and gives kids and adults a place to go where they are able to walk and think without being exposed to toxic experiments in branding and other forms of corporate self-aggrandizement.
Now let’s build some libraries like that in St. Paul and Minneapolis proper. Or do only ‘burban kids get gold-plated bookmobiles?
This is why we have government in the first place: to provide us with the things we need to have better lives. This is what progressives do to make all our lives better.
Cue the pickets this summer objecting to the library having a copy of Ann Frank’s notorious diary, the one with the V-word in it.
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I watched Lovely Bones last night. A must see for modern teens, and not a bad flick for adults.
They don’t come right out and say it, but it’s pretty obvious the serial killer down the street is a Republican. And Susan Sarandon makes for a great 21st Century chain-smoking, bottle-hitting grandma who would have voted for the Democrat if only she’d remembered to vote.
And no, no clue why every topic inspired me to write a sermon today. Links later but right now I have to run out to the warehouse as I have a new list.
lemongrass
mangoes
rice
chili paste
galanga
Your list may vary.
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