Picture this: While driving down the highway, you glance up at the reminder sticker on the windshield. It's time for an oil change.
You pull into the oil-change service's garage. They drain the old oil, replace the filter, refill the engine with fresh oil, check it out, and tell you how much today's service will cost.
Try handing them your proof of auto insurance and see what happens.
The point is, what we call "health insurance" is more of a service plan. Go to the doctor for a physical? Bill the insurance company.
The origin of health insurance companies, euphemistically called health maintenance organizations (HMOs), big surprise, has its foundations in government. What a surprise. Know what else? They were crafted to improve the quality of health care while keeping costs down. With the backing of the federal government, HMOs were able to strong-arm doctors into signing up, lest the HMOs used their collective bargaining power to steer patients away from "scab" doctors and to doctors who were part of the network.
Notice anything troubling about such a system? Doctors, once part of the network, were now partly owned by the HMOs. To keep costs down, HMOs could nickel-and-dime not only patients, but doctors and hospitals. What do you think happened when doctors and hospitals started to realize they were forced to operate their businesses at a loss? They had to raise prices where they could.
Factor this in with multi-million dollar jury awards against doctors and hospitals for making "mistakes", causing malpractice insurance premiums to rise, and it's easy to see how costs have gotten out of control. All because the government thought they were being compassionate by introducing the concept of collective bargaining to patients. Yeah, look how well it worked for factories with unionized employees: Increased costs, the supplanting of meritocracy with seniority-based advancement, etc.
Now, years after their conception, HMOs are demonized by the very government that created them.
Let's visit the oil-change shop. How much does an oil change cost? Depends on the quantity and quality of the oil. Consider if the shop had to deal with a penny-pinching insurance company. Insurance companies are motivated by profit. While customer-retention is key to making a profit, eliminating costs is another key. Let's say you wanted to replace the oil in your car with a high-performance synthetic, the theory being that engine parts would age and deteriorate at a slower rate, ultimately leading you saving money and not having to buy another car for a longer time. The insurance company is motivated by profit, and they've thought of this too. They'll run the numbers and opt to cover the cheap motor oil. Why? Because when repairs outweigh the value of the car, you'll buy another, most likely more expensive car, which will enhance the insurance company's bottom-line.
Additionally, oil changes are a fixed, periodic cost. Drive the car long enough, and you're going to need an oil change. Insurance guards us against the unforeseen, like the pickup that is going to T-bone you during your morning commute tomorrow. Auto insurance uses a number of variables to calculate how much you might cost them one bad day, and uses that to determine how much to charge you and others to prepare for that bad day. If you're a good driver with a clean driving record, you're less likely to cost the insurance company a shitload of money, so they'll reward your continued business by giving you incentives to keep paying them premiums, such as lower premiums. On an individual scale, that doesn't make economic sense, but if the insurance company attract ten drivers like you with the lower premium, they make up the cost of your discount in volume.
But oil changes? Tire rotation? Those are periodic maintenance tasks. Doesn't matter how good a driver you are, you're going to need to pay for them. Does it make sense to have the insurance company essentially act as intermediary with your money, just so they can turn around and give it back you to pay for oil changes and other periodic maintenance costs, or does it make more sense to just pay for this out of your pocket and not give the insurance company a cut for holding your money?
26 March 2010
What ever happened to "allegedly"?
You know the one thing missing from all of these reports of death threats and violence against Congressmen?
Proof.
Yet the news media, by and large, has seen fit to report on how Tea Partiers "hurled racial epithets" and "anti-gay slurs" at the Congressmen, absent the word "allegedly".
How far has the quality of journalism sunk in this country that a politician is taken at his or her word?
Proof.
Yet the news media, by and large, has seen fit to report on how Tea Partiers "hurled racial epithets" and "anti-gay slurs" at the Congressmen, absent the word "allegedly".
How far has the quality of journalism sunk in this country that a politician is taken at his or her word?
22 March 2010
Leftist gloating
On the way home from work, I listened to the Fallon Forum for thirty seconds. That's all it took for the hosts to say something incredibly stupid.
The Fallons had a guest on who was describing what exactly was in the bill passed last night. The guest mentioned how the so-called "public option" was not in the bill, and how the insurance companies fought hard against it. Ed Fallon made the obligatory snarky comment, about how the insurance companies feared competition from the government in their free-market business model.
Moron.
Insurance companies, like most if not all private, for-profit entities, get their panties in a twist when confronted with unfair competition. You know, like government organizations that don't have to earn a profit, that can run at a loss, and that in this case, are not subject to state regulations. Or taxes.
You know, for all the talk of how these liberals are nuanced thinkers, they are incredibly short-sighted. Might be because they make decisions and push policies based on emotion rather than logic.
The Fallons had a guest on who was describing what exactly was in the bill passed last night. The guest mentioned how the so-called "public option" was not in the bill, and how the insurance companies fought hard against it. Ed Fallon made the obligatory snarky comment, about how the insurance companies feared competition from the government in their free-market business model.
Moron.
Insurance companies, like most if not all private, for-profit entities, get their panties in a twist when confronted with unfair competition. You know, like government organizations that don't have to earn a profit, that can run at a loss, and that in this case, are not subject to state regulations. Or taxes.
You know, for all the talk of how these liberals are nuanced thinkers, they are incredibly short-sighted. Might be because they make decisions and push policies based on emotion rather than logic.
21 March 2010
Re: Health Care Reform
Attention to all liberal panty-waists who think federal regulation of one-sixth of the U.S. economy is a good idea.
Attention to all morons who think that health insurance companies are not entitled to a 2-3% profit margin.
Attention to all dimwits who believe it is a moral imperative for the government to decree that a for-profit company may not refuse to sell a policy to somebody with a pre-existing condition, or at the very least charge more money (Thus failing to grasp the concept of catastrophic insurance protection):
I'm sure we can negotiate reforms like reasonable people....
On second thought.....
Fuck you.
I'm going to suggest all conservatives cancel their health insurance at the soonest possible opportunity. Why pay into the system now? Just wait until you get sick, and then buy insurance. That is, provided there are any private health insurers still around at that time.
If Uncle Sam is at that time the only one willing and able to play doctor, you can rest assured that failure to be insured will be a felony worthy of public stoning and forced re-education.
Show the mathematically-challenged tools in Congress and the White House why such a system will implode. Factual arguments didn't seem to persuade them, so hopefully an empirical exercise will help them. That, and bludgeoning them out of office with a ballot in November.
You know, in the Godfather Part II, we never see Fredo getting killed. We know Michael ordered it (by inference initially and later confirmed in the Godfather Part III), we know Al took him out on the lake, and we saw a silhouette pointing what looked like a gun at the back of the head of another silhouette, presumably Fredo.
And then the camera cuts away to Michael, sitting pensively, and the audience hears the gunshot.
Tonight, a bunch of our elected officials betrayed the Family (the American people). Tonight, they also willingly got into the boat to go out on the lake. But the audience won't know for sure until November 2010 what really happened on the lake.
Attention to all morons who think that health insurance companies are not entitled to a 2-3% profit margin.
Attention to all dimwits who believe it is a moral imperative for the government to decree that a for-profit company may not refuse to sell a policy to somebody with a pre-existing condition, or at the very least charge more money (Thus failing to grasp the concept of catastrophic insurance protection):
I'm sure we can negotiate reforms like reasonable people....
On second thought.....
Fuck you.
I'm going to suggest all conservatives cancel their health insurance at the soonest possible opportunity. Why pay into the system now? Just wait until you get sick, and then buy insurance. That is, provided there are any private health insurers still around at that time.
If Uncle Sam is at that time the only one willing and able to play doctor, you can rest assured that failure to be insured will be a felony worthy of public stoning and forced re-education.
Show the mathematically-challenged tools in Congress and the White House why such a system will implode. Factual arguments didn't seem to persuade them, so hopefully an empirical exercise will help them. That, and bludgeoning them out of office with a ballot in November.
You know, in the Godfather Part II, we never see Fredo getting killed. We know Michael ordered it (by inference initially and later confirmed in the Godfather Part III), we know Al took him out on the lake, and we saw a silhouette pointing what looked like a gun at the back of the head of another silhouette, presumably Fredo.
And then the camera cuts away to Michael, sitting pensively, and the audience hears the gunshot.
Tonight, a bunch of our elected officials betrayed the Family (the American people). Tonight, they also willingly got into the boat to go out on the lake. But the audience won't know for sure until November 2010 what really happened on the lake.
14 March 2010
Foreiture of one's Man card
I'll be brief on this: If your accelerator sticks and you can't get it unstuck, throw the car into neutral. You may blow the engine or transmission, but what's that next to the value of your life?
Granted, I understand the tension of the moment makes things less clear-cut. I truly do understand: When in college, the throttle cable on my car once stuck. It was an attention-getting experience, but I had the presence of mind to use my clutch and a combination of high gears and slow speeds to keep the car under control. I limped it the half-mile home. Had I been driving an automatic, I would've dropped the car into neutral, pulled over, and turned the engine off.
This Prius driver, pardon my French, is a pussy. Listening to him on the 911 audio, I heard a panicked, effeminate man. Correction, an effeminate male. A man would've simply grumbled an obligatory "Crap", thrown the car into neutral, and pulled over. A real man would've taken it a step further and tried to diagnose and fix the problem on the side of the highway. A real man would never speak to the press, especially to advertise helplessness against a piece of machinery.
UPDATE, 3/14:
It's now looking like this incident may have been a cry for attention. Physical evidence from the car doesn't jibe with Mr. Sikes' version of events. A cloudy past involving allegedly burned business partners is coming to light. That doesn't affect Mr. Sikes' credibility, but it could indicate intent.
I've spent some time the last couple of days learning about the design of the Toyota Prius, specifically its incorporation of drive-by-wire technology, adapted from a proven technology known as fly-by-wire that's been used for quite some time in aircraft, both commercial and military. I was unaware that the Prius uses drive-by-wire in place of mechanical linkages. OK, I'll accept in Mr. Sikes' case that it's possible: It's possible the Prius' Engine Control Unit (ECU) suddenly accelerated the car. It's possible that inputs from the brake pedal were ignored in favor of the accelerator. It's possible that the ECU rejected a transmission shift from Drive into Neutral. It's possible that the input from the starter button to turn the car off was ignored in favor of the accelerator. It's possible. But it's unlikely. It's a scenario called multiple simultaneous failure. And armchair engineers are pointing the finger of blame at everybody's favorite whipping boy: Software.
EDN, a publication I grew up seeing in stacks with my father's work-related stuff, had this gem of elitist snobbery:
The reason all this came to mind this morning was actually not the newspapers, but a panel I attended yesterday at DesignCon. The subject was achieving quality closure. But the issue of software sat like an elephant in the corner of the room, awaiting notice. One of the panelists—I believe it was Design Rivers president Camille Kokozaki—pointed out that perhaps the most serious quality problem in IC designs now is not quality closure on the hardware, but the integrity of the firmware and software that will run on the chip. There simply is no systematic approach to ensuring the quality of an integrated hardware/software system.
And this is a tragedy. Thirty years ago, work was well under way on the problem of formally proving software correctness. One company had designed a completely deterministic microprocessor—no interrupts, no indirect addressing—that made it possible to mathematically prove all of the possible trajectories of a code set. And computer scientists such as Edsger Dijkstra were making strides in methodology to create formally proven software. But along came C, UNIX, and the cult of the bemused hobby programmer, and the entire notion of formal correctness vanished under a smokescreen of hacking.
Excuse me? What the hell does C, UNIX, and the "cult of the bemused hobby programmer" have to do with software correctness? I worked at a defense contractor for over 10 years, spanning two DoD contracts. The software for the projects was developed to run on a real-time OS based on UNIX. The first project, per DoD requirements at the time, was developed in the software straight-jacket known as Ada. When the second contract was started, the DoD had dropped the Ada-development requirement. Ultimately the prime contractor chose C++. I will concede that C would be a bad choice for an embedded system because of its inherent susceptibility to data corruption through pointers, be they uninitialized, dangling, or null. But that's not the fault of the language, but the fault of the programmer. Had the author criticized the abandonment of best software practices, I'd agree with him.
Granted, I understand the tension of the moment makes things less clear-cut. I truly do understand: When in college, the throttle cable on my car once stuck. It was an attention-getting experience, but I had the presence of mind to use my clutch and a combination of high gears and slow speeds to keep the car under control. I limped it the half-mile home. Had I been driving an automatic, I would've dropped the car into neutral, pulled over, and turned the engine off.
This Prius driver, pardon my French, is a pussy. Listening to him on the 911 audio, I heard a panicked, effeminate man. Correction, an effeminate male. A man would've simply grumbled an obligatory "Crap", thrown the car into neutral, and pulled over. A real man would've taken it a step further and tried to diagnose and fix the problem on the side of the highway. A real man would never speak to the press, especially to advertise helplessness against a piece of machinery.
UPDATE, 3/14:
It's now looking like this incident may have been a cry for attention. Physical evidence from the car doesn't jibe with Mr. Sikes' version of events. A cloudy past involving allegedly burned business partners is coming to light. That doesn't affect Mr. Sikes' credibility, but it could indicate intent.
I've spent some time the last couple of days learning about the design of the Toyota Prius, specifically its incorporation of drive-by-wire technology, adapted from a proven technology known as fly-by-wire that's been used for quite some time in aircraft, both commercial and military. I was unaware that the Prius uses drive-by-wire in place of mechanical linkages. OK, I'll accept in Mr. Sikes' case that it's possible: It's possible the Prius' Engine Control Unit (ECU) suddenly accelerated the car. It's possible that inputs from the brake pedal were ignored in favor of the accelerator. It's possible that the ECU rejected a transmission shift from Drive into Neutral. It's possible that the input from the starter button to turn the car off was ignored in favor of the accelerator. It's possible. But it's unlikely. It's a scenario called multiple simultaneous failure. And armchair engineers are pointing the finger of blame at everybody's favorite whipping boy: Software.
EDN, a publication I grew up seeing in stacks with my father's work-related stuff, had this gem of elitist snobbery:
The reason all this came to mind this morning was actually not the newspapers, but a panel I attended yesterday at DesignCon. The subject was achieving quality closure. But the issue of software sat like an elephant in the corner of the room, awaiting notice. One of the panelists—I believe it was Design Rivers president Camille Kokozaki—pointed out that perhaps the most serious quality problem in IC designs now is not quality closure on the hardware, but the integrity of the firmware and software that will run on the chip. There simply is no systematic approach to ensuring the quality of an integrated hardware/software system.
And this is a tragedy. Thirty years ago, work was well under way on the problem of formally proving software correctness. One company had designed a completely deterministic microprocessor—no interrupts, no indirect addressing—that made it possible to mathematically prove all of the possible trajectories of a code set. And computer scientists such as Edsger Dijkstra were making strides in methodology to create formally proven software. But along came C, UNIX, and the cult of the bemused hobby programmer, and the entire notion of formal correctness vanished under a smokescreen of hacking.
Excuse me? What the hell does C, UNIX, and the "cult of the bemused hobby programmer" have to do with software correctness? I worked at a defense contractor for over 10 years, spanning two DoD contracts. The software for the projects was developed to run on a real-time OS based on UNIX. The first project, per DoD requirements at the time, was developed in the software straight-jacket known as Ada. When the second contract was started, the DoD had dropped the Ada-development requirement. Ultimately the prime contractor chose C++. I will concede that C would be a bad choice for an embedded system because of its inherent susceptibility to data corruption through pointers, be they uninitialized, dangling, or null. But that's not the fault of the language, but the fault of the programmer. Had the author criticized the abandonment of best software practices, I'd agree with him.
08 March 2010
Politicizing the Census
I received a letter informing me that my census is on the way in a week. The second paragraph of the letter uses a phrase I've heard in the TV and radio marketing blitz for the Census. Setting aside the pointless waste of taxpayer money, especially in a deep recession, the phrase really bothers me: "making sure we get our fair share." Fair share of what? Government funds for "highways, schools, health facilities, and many other programs you and your neighbors need."
Wait a minute, is that what the Census is for?
The Census was mandated to occur at least once every ten years by the Founding Fathers, the reason being the enumeration of citizens for the purposes of apportionment for representation in the House of Representatives.
Wait a minute, is that what the Census is for?
The Census was mandated to occur at least once every ten years by the Founding Fathers, the reason being the enumeration of citizens for the purposes of apportionment for representation in the House of Representatives.
05 March 2010
Liberal tools
So I'm listening to the FM talk radio station here in Des Moines. Like the AM talk radio station, it's a passing effort to offer national conservative radio personalities in the DM area, often on time-delay. The upshot is I get to listen to Sean Hannity in the evenings, whereas in Minneapolis, I was only able to follow him in the afternoons because I had joined the "job mobility program", courtesy of our President, whom never met spending he didn't like, except of course defense spending.
Anyway, I left work early today. I listened to one of Des Moines' more liberal-- er, progressive radio personalities, Chris Bradshaw. He goes solely by "Bradshaw", like he's Madonna or Cher or something. Big thinking for a small, closed mind.
Bradshaw's guest today was a lady from the Iowa Atheists & Freethinkers (IAF) organization. Talk about snark and elitism! Her organization promotes what she called "non-confrontational" reminders that not every one believes in a supreme being or beings. Well, thank you, Ms. Obvious! One of the rah-rah cheerleader callers told a story of how when he was going through a rough patch in his life, and his boss said how he and his wife would pray for the troubled employee. The caller said how he "politely" told his boss just to keep him in his thoughts, as he was an atheist. He said his boss, a devout Catholic, was stunned.
I'll bet. He was probably stunned that the guy would be such an anti-religious douchebag!
If a friend or colleague said they were going to offer a prayer for me to God or Allah or Kali or Buddha, I would simply say thanks. There's no attempt by them to prosleytize to me, to get me to convert to their religion. I regard it as a kindness of them and their religion that they're willing to pray for me. It's an indication that some organized religions are more evolved than the anti-God folks would have people believe. These religions can co-exist. If an atheist told me they'd keep me in their thoughts, I'd say thanks. I wouldn't demand that they make it a prayer. That's being a jerk.
The IAF lady continued with her laying out her organization's viewpoints: If you sneeze, you shouldn't say "God bless you" or "Bless you" because of the phrase's origins in the notion that the soul was thought to momentarily escape. Give me a break! These so-called free-thinkers must have a lot of free time on their hands to worry about shit like this. I normally say Gesundheit to those around me when they sneeze, but I envision the following conversation with one of these anti-God acolytes:
THEM: "Ach-hoo!"
ME: "Bless you."
THEM: "Thanks, but I'm an atheist."
ME: "Oh. Well, I take it back then. Does 'screw you' work better?"
THEM: "You don't have to be a jerk about it!"
ME: "You mean like you just did?"
THEM: "I'm just politely reminding you that my beliefs don't reflect yours."
ME: "Do me a favor and pronounce 106 as a cardinal number."
THEM: "One hundred and six?"
ME: "You just made my point. It's actually one hundred six. The "and" is used to signify a decimal point. The majority of people say it incorrectly, yet I typically refrain from correcting them."
THEM: "How is that even the same thing?"
ME: "It shows how I can be tolerant of someone being wrong on the facts more than you can be tolerant on a matter of faith and opinion. The majority of the people alive on this planet believe in some higher being or beings, yet you demand they conform to your minority viewpoint."
Bradshaw, to his credit, espoused a more go-with-the-flow attitude, hoping the guy with the "Darwin fish" and the guy with the "NASCAR sticker" could just co-exist without anybody getting their cars keyed. The lady from IAF said how she actually is a Jeff Gordon fan, shattering Bradshaw's crude stereotype of the right versus the left. As the interview concluded, Bradshaw made a remark about how Ms. IAF talking-head shouldn't hold out hope that Jeff Gordon would become her dream man, as he is already married with kids. I think Mr. Bradshaw couldn't help himself with his parting remark: "Wait a minute, is he a Republican? Then you might have a shot."
Hmm, despite being an enlightened liberal-progressive-socialist-marxist-whatever, Mr. Bradshaw failed to learn from his very-recent lesson on the dangers of stereotypes. Is it a learning disability? Is he blind to the number of Democrats embroiled in sex scandals? John Edwards fathered a bastard while on the campaign trail and while his wife simultaneously battled breast cancer and stood by her husband. The facts of the scandal are slowly trickling out, but all indications are that this guy is the sleaze-ball ambulance-chaser I've always thought him to be. And how about Eliot Spitzer? Though the woman he cheated on was a much better looker than most of these political mistresses are, the fact is she's a hooker. She spreads her legs for money. She's a common whore. Then there's Mr. Woods, his line of "conquests", and his club-wielding wife.
The common thread between these individuals and scandal-ridden Republicans such as Mark Sanford and John Ensign is narcissism, and neither side holds the monopoly on that. It's an unfortunate by-product of such ego-centric occupations as politicians, star athletes, and high-priced actors.
Back on topic: In the evenings, there's an hour-long program called "The Fallon Forum", hosted by a husband-wife pair of "progressive" political activists. Their advertisements talk about restoring civility to politics. Haven't listened to them too much (just on the short car ride from my apartment to the fitness center when it's too cold to walk), but they're apparently not up on current events. Ed Fallon commented on Michael Savage, whose time-slot follows the Fallon Forum, playing an undated clip from the host in which he told a "sodomite" that he hoped he "choked on it." Fallon remarked with amazement how Savage still was on the air.
Like I said, the clip was undated, and that's important. It was incendiary, to be sure, and Savage crossed the line. But what Fallon either didn't know or misrepresented is that Savage made the remarks on his short-lived MSNBC show years ago, and he was fired for it. Savage maintains he was set up, that unlike his radio program where he's got control over the callers, he was forced to sit and endure the taunting of a prankster caller. Where the call screener was during all of this is unclear.
I occasionally listen to Savage, and I'll grant he's very conservative, but he has the facts on his side. I've never had it explained to me how that's a bad thing.
Anyway, I left work early today. I listened to one of Des Moines' more liberal-- er, progressive radio personalities, Chris Bradshaw. He goes solely by "Bradshaw", like he's Madonna or Cher or something. Big thinking for a small, closed mind.
Bradshaw's guest today was a lady from the Iowa Atheists & Freethinkers (IAF) organization. Talk about snark and elitism! Her organization promotes what she called "non-confrontational" reminders that not every one believes in a supreme being or beings. Well, thank you, Ms. Obvious! One of the rah-rah cheerleader callers told a story of how when he was going through a rough patch in his life, and his boss said how he and his wife would pray for the troubled employee. The caller said how he "politely" told his boss just to keep him in his thoughts, as he was an atheist. He said his boss, a devout Catholic, was stunned.
I'll bet. He was probably stunned that the guy would be such an anti-religious douchebag!
If a friend or colleague said they were going to offer a prayer for me to God or Allah or Kali or Buddha, I would simply say thanks. There's no attempt by them to prosleytize to me, to get me to convert to their religion. I regard it as a kindness of them and their religion that they're willing to pray for me. It's an indication that some organized religions are more evolved than the anti-God folks would have people believe. These religions can co-exist. If an atheist told me they'd keep me in their thoughts, I'd say thanks. I wouldn't demand that they make it a prayer. That's being a jerk.
The IAF lady continued with her laying out her organization's viewpoints: If you sneeze, you shouldn't say "God bless you" or "Bless you" because of the phrase's origins in the notion that the soul was thought to momentarily escape. Give me a break! These so-called free-thinkers must have a lot of free time on their hands to worry about shit like this. I normally say Gesundheit to those around me when they sneeze, but I envision the following conversation with one of these anti-God acolytes:
THEM: "Ach-hoo!"
ME: "Bless you."
THEM: "Thanks, but I'm an atheist."
ME: "Oh. Well, I take it back then. Does 'screw you' work better?"
THEM: "You don't have to be a jerk about it!"
ME: "You mean like you just did?"
THEM: "I'm just politely reminding you that my beliefs don't reflect yours."
ME: "Do me a favor and pronounce 106 as a cardinal number."
THEM: "One hundred and six?"
ME: "You just made my point. It's actually one hundred six. The "and" is used to signify a decimal point. The majority of people say it incorrectly, yet I typically refrain from correcting them."
THEM: "How is that even the same thing?"
ME: "It shows how I can be tolerant of someone being wrong on the facts more than you can be tolerant on a matter of faith and opinion. The majority of the people alive on this planet believe in some higher being or beings, yet you demand they conform to your minority viewpoint."
Bradshaw, to his credit, espoused a more go-with-the-flow attitude, hoping the guy with the "Darwin fish" and the guy with the "NASCAR sticker" could just co-exist without anybody getting their cars keyed. The lady from IAF said how she actually is a Jeff Gordon fan, shattering Bradshaw's crude stereotype of the right versus the left. As the interview concluded, Bradshaw made a remark about how Ms. IAF talking-head shouldn't hold out hope that Jeff Gordon would become her dream man, as he is already married with kids. I think Mr. Bradshaw couldn't help himself with his parting remark: "Wait a minute, is he a Republican? Then you might have a shot."
Hmm, despite being an enlightened liberal-progressive-socialist-marxist-whatever, Mr. Bradshaw failed to learn from his very-recent lesson on the dangers of stereotypes. Is it a learning disability? Is he blind to the number of Democrats embroiled in sex scandals? John Edwards fathered a bastard while on the campaign trail and while his wife simultaneously battled breast cancer and stood by her husband. The facts of the scandal are slowly trickling out, but all indications are that this guy is the sleaze-ball ambulance-chaser I've always thought him to be. And how about Eliot Spitzer? Though the woman he cheated on was a much better looker than most of these political mistresses are, the fact is she's a hooker. She spreads her legs for money. She's a common whore. Then there's Mr. Woods, his line of "conquests", and his club-wielding wife.
The common thread between these individuals and scandal-ridden Republicans such as Mark Sanford and John Ensign is narcissism, and neither side holds the monopoly on that. It's an unfortunate by-product of such ego-centric occupations as politicians, star athletes, and high-priced actors.
Back on topic: In the evenings, there's an hour-long program called "The Fallon Forum", hosted by a husband-wife pair of "progressive" political activists. Their advertisements talk about restoring civility to politics. Haven't listened to them too much (just on the short car ride from my apartment to the fitness center when it's too cold to walk), but they're apparently not up on current events. Ed Fallon commented on Michael Savage, whose time-slot follows the Fallon Forum, playing an undated clip from the host in which he told a "sodomite" that he hoped he "choked on it." Fallon remarked with amazement how Savage still was on the air.
Like I said, the clip was undated, and that's important. It was incendiary, to be sure, and Savage crossed the line. But what Fallon either didn't know or misrepresented is that Savage made the remarks on his short-lived MSNBC show years ago, and he was fired for it. Savage maintains he was set up, that unlike his radio program where he's got control over the callers, he was forced to sit and endure the taunting of a prankster caller. Where the call screener was during all of this is unclear.
I occasionally listen to Savage, and I'll grant he's very conservative, but he has the facts on his side. I've never had it explained to me how that's a bad thing.
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