Which Way Do You Want To Go?

While President Bush prepares to tell Americans that they have too much health insurance and promotes a plan that will result in less insurance at higher cost for Americans, retired General Wesley Clark pushes a plan that will provide universal insurance for all Americans, at lower cost! (via MyDD). Wesley Clark for President!

Tags: Health Insurance

The Truth About Health Savings Accounts

Think Progress has all the details about who benefits (surprise, the rich and the financial services industry) and who loses (low and middle income Americans plus the United States Treasury gets hit). Think Progress also looks at how well HSAs have worked for a decade in South Africa — and lo and behold, it has resulted in rising costs for health care and more un-insured people. No wonder the Bush administration loves HSAs!

Consumer-Driven Health Care?

David Sirota explains one of the major flaws in President Bush’s upcoming proposal for “Consumer Driven Health Care”:

Sounds like the theory of “consumer-driven” health care is on solid ground — until you realize one key flaw: creating a “consumer-driven” system requires consumers to be able to make informed choices about what they are buying. And the problem is that not everyone is a physician. How can a citizen be expected to know what health care services to buy and what not to buy if they don’t have a medical degree? Consumers may want to save costs, but how are they expected to know to get this test, and not that test, this treatment and not that treatment, this surgery but not that surgery?

Tags: Health Care

Can You Say “Windfall Profit Tax”?

While we consumers continue to pay near records prices for gasoline, Exxon Mobil posts records profits for the fourth quarter and for the year — as in a $36 billion profit in 2005.

Health Insurance

Josh Marshall writes that the key to understanding President Bush’s upcoming attempt to destroy health insurance in this country is that he thinks Americans have too much health insurance. Too much health insurance! Do you think that’s the case? I don’t.

Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Ca) gave a speech recently on the issue of the new Medicare Part D health insurance boondoggle. He says, in part, “A large part of the problem is the legislation that the Republican Congress passed in 2003. Instead of using Medicare, which seniors and persons with disabilities have relied on for years, the program was turned over to hundreds of private insurers who can charge what they want, cover what drugs they want, and change what they cover at will. … I’ve been in Congress for over 30 years, and I have never seen a more dishonest legislative process than the one used to pass the Medicare prescription drug bill. Negotiations were behind closed doors. Lobbyists knew more about what was happening than most Members of Congress did. Key estimates about the bill’s cost were illegally withheld from Democrats. And both the Administration’s point man on the legislation and one of the lead Republican authors in Congress were negotiating — at the same time — high-paying jobs representing the pharmaceutical industry.”

Links

Reconstruction in Iraq has come to a standstill, Iraqis in Baghdad have an hour or two of electricity per day, clean water is rarely available and guess who is to blame for all of that? (via Today In Iraq)

Reuters reports: “The 42-page report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction found problems with 907 contracts and over 1,200 micro-purchase contracts totaling $88.1 million. Many of the contracts lacked documentation, were not properly authorized or competitively awarded, and across the board, officials failed to keep track of where the materials they paid for actually went, it said.” (via Today in Iraq)

Former Senator Tom Daschle writes about how the Bush Administration is “Driving Affordable Health Care Over A Cliff” and recommends a comprehensive national health care plan based upon four bedrock principles: Guarantee affordable coverage for all Americans; Ensure choice of doctors and plans; Control costs; and Expand preventive care. In this proposal, a survey of health care consumers was taken, and the survey found that 59% of those responding supported “… reforming our current health care system to provide affordable health care coverage for all Americans if it meant that you would have to pay more in taxes”.

State Of The Union

To prepare for the upcoming State Of The Union address by President Bush, Think Progress has put together a video of the promises Bush has made in previous State Of The Union addresses. Reddhedd at Firedoglake notes “how little follow-through there has been on these issues by this Administration”; Think Progress notes (emphasis mine):

For example, this year, according to news reports, President Bush will “will attempt to shift focus from the polarizing war in Iraq to a more popular domestic priority: taming health care costs.” But President Bush has pledged to tame health care costs in all his previous SOTUs. Meanwhile, the cost of health care continues to skyrocket.

Nice job, Bushie, promise the same things every year and then do nothing. That’s leadership!

Blogging Medicare Part D

We welcome to our blogroll an new blog covering the horrifying, uncaring, uncompassionate, giveaway to the rich legislation that created Medicare Part D. The new blog is TPMCafe || Drug Bill Debacle.

Top 10 Bush Mistakes regarding Al Qaeda

Juan Cole list all those mistakes made by the Bush Administration in reacting to Al-Qaeda. Here’s number 10:

Bush’s failure to capture Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri allows them to continue to grandstand, to continue to frighten the public, to continue to affect financial markets, and to continue to plot. Al-Zawahiri almost certainly plotted the 7/7 London subway bombings himself, and gloated about it when he issued Muhammad Siddique Khan’s suicide statement. Misplaced Bush priorities are getting our allies hit. The CIA is reduced to firing predators at villages because our counterterrorism efforts have been starved for funds by the Iraq quagmire. If al-Qaeda does pull off another American operation, it may well give Bush and Cheney an opportunity to destroy the US constitution altogether, finally giving Bin Laden his long-sought revenge on Americans for the way he believes they have forced Palestinians and other Muslims to live under lawless foreign domination or local tyranny.

Tags: al-Qaeda, Bush

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense, brought to you by Scientific American.

Bush: “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees”

Liar!

The White House received numerous warnings that if a Category 4 storm or greater hit New Orleans, it would cause extensive damage including flooding and the breach of levees.

Health Care Disaster, Part 3,722

From Steve Soto, apparently George W. Bush had some criticism for Al Gore during the 2000 presidential campaign. Bush said: “I’ve said that eight years ago they campaigned on prescription drugs for seniors. And four years ago they campaigned on getting prescription drugs for seniors. And now they’re campaigning on getting prescription drugs for seniors. It seems like they can't get it done.”

Seems like Bush felt like criticizing Gore for not getting legislation through a Republican controlled congress. However, under the Bush administration’s first 5 years, with a Republican controlled congress, we see that 6 million fewer Americans now have health insurance, many refuse to sign up for the new Medicare Part D prescription boondoggle, and Bush will be proposing new plans that will mean less health care and probably higher costs.

That’s not progress, that’s incompetence and uncaring, uncompassionate conservatism at work. But that is what Bush and the Republicans stand for these days.

Health Savings Accounts, Part 2

Kevin Drum: “Just remember: if you think more risk, more complexity, and less healthcare are the answer, HSAs are for you. The rest of us will keep pushing for something that actually makes sense.”

Health Care Disaster, Part 3,721

Michael Hiltzik describes more of the horrors that Medicare patients face under the new Part D drug prescription rules, and concludes: “The wholly unnecessary complexity of the Medicare drug program simply burdens patients while enhancing profits for drug makers and health insurance companies. Congress and the Bush White House were determined to experiment with what happens when a government program is handed over, wholesale, to private industry. In the process they treated the public as lab rats running in big business's maze.”

Kevin Drum comments: “[Hiltzik’s] column is mainly about the absurd and cynical ‘doughnut hole’ built into Bush’s prescription drug plan — the result of policymakers who don’t actually care about healthcare policy combined with lawmakers who don’t care about anything except pretending that their plan costs less than it actually does. In other words, it’s the toxic intersection of incompetence and venality.”

I would add that it is a toxic intersection of attempting to destroy Medicare health insurance while caring only about private industry’s health and not caring one whit about the health of the participants in Medicare.

The End of Health Security

Ezra Klein describes why President Bush’s upcoming proposal of Health Savings Accounts is the worst health-care idea ever (emphasis mine).

The idea here is simple. Conservatives believe Americans have too much health insurance, that they spend heedlessly and wastefully on care, procedures, and medications they would simply forego if insurance plans didn’t pick up the tab. Ergo, HSA’s, which end risk pooling, forcing care to come directly from pockets. Newly responsible for their medical bills, consumers will be spurred by the Magic of the Market to make smarter decisions, show more prudence, lead healthier lifestyles, smile more often, and smell springtime fresh. It’s gonna be awesome.

At least if you’re healthy. Because what HSA's really do is separate the young from the old, the well from the sick. Currently, insurance operates off of the concept of risk pooling. Since health costs tend to be unpredictable and illness isn’t thought a moral failing, we all pay a bit more than we expect to use in order to subsidize those who end up needing much more than they ever thought possible. The well subsidize the sick, the young subsidize the old, and we all accept the arrangement because one day we will be old, and one day we will be sick, and no one wants to shoulder that alone.

HSA’s slice right through this intergenerational, redistributionist arrangement: they’re a great deal for young, healthy folks because they don’t force subsidization. Just don’t get sick. And if you’re already sick, don’t think you can hide by remaining in traditional insurance plans: when the healthy rush towards HSA’s, older plans will hold only the ill, and insurance companies will send premiums skyrocketing to recoup the difference.

Fear not, however. What goes around, comes around, and eventually all those young bucks who left you for their HSA’s will get sick, and when they do, it’s all coming out of their pocket. And if, like most Americans, they’re not terribly good savers and their HSA only has a couple thousand (or hundred) in it, it’s all coming out of their bank accounts. Currently, more than half of all bankruptcies are due to medical costs. Post-HSA’s, expect that number to rocket upwards. Lucky thing, then, that the financial industry, along with a compliant Congress, just made it harder and costlier to declare bankruptcy.

Wilt, 1962

On the night of March 2, 1962, in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Wilt Chamberlain scored one hundred points in a game against the New York Knickerbockers. The game was not televised; no New York sportswriters showed up. This is the radio broadcast of that historic fourth quarter.

Excerpts from the new book, Wilt, 1962 by Gary M. Pomerantz.

Originally posted on 5/21/05; republished on 1/23/06 in honor of Kobe Bryant’s 81 point game last night.

Don’t Trust Diebold Electronic Voting Machines

The Washington Post today writes about numerous tests done on Diebold Election machines that show how easy it is to change the results of a vote. A Diebold spokesman tries to dismiss the problems with a ridiculous analogy, saying this “is analogous to if I gave you the keys to my house and told you when I was gone." But a better analogy is: what would you expect if the security system you chose had gaping holes in it and there were unscrupulous people who found out your house was using this swiss-cheese security system?

There really is no reason to accept such a system. Our voting system must be secure, because there are always unscrupulous people around. And according to computer science professor Avi Rubin, who has researched election technology: "The more I see, I say we need voting to rely on paper."

Demand paper voting trails!

Stop Teasing Us, Candace!

Twice already this basketball season, Tennessee’s Candace Parker has broken away from the field with the basketball. Your heart skips a beat as you watch this, and then instead of an historic slam dunk, we see an ordinary layup. Go for the slam dunk! Stop teasing us, Candace!

The Health Care Disaster

Jonathan Cohn describes how the start-up of Medicare went in the 1960s by quoting from newspapers of the day: “Under the headline ‘medicare takes over easily,’ a Post writer described the program’s first day as ‘a smooth transition, undramatic as a bed change.’ Three weeks later, the Times affirmed that ‘medicare’s start has been smooth.’”

Kevin Drum: “There’s nothing inevitable about the chaos we’re seeing with the prescription drug rollout. If the program had been designed with patients in mind, it would have rolled out smoothly. But it wasn’t. It was designed to benefit corporate special interests and to provide a test bed for crackpot free market theories. What’s more, we haven’t even begun to hit the ‘donut hole’ problems. That should start happening a couple of months before the midterm elections, which is poetic justice indeed. By then I hope that everyone knows exactly which party was responsible for all this.”

On the horizon, an even worse health care plan, Health Savings Accounts. These are another of President Bush’s badly intentioned ideas that will result in most people receiving less health benefits for their dollar. These accounts are the exact opposite of insurance, where the insurer spreads his risk widely over many thousands or millions of individuals. Individuals cannot do this, and so in effect you either need to save up ahead of time for all of your health care needs (which of course, you won’t know about in advance) or have to decide which health care needs you can afford and which you cannot afford. To phrase things in terms of car insurance, you would need to save the money yourself to cover catastrophic collisions, and if you don't have the money saved up, well, um, darn that’s too bad.

The pattern continues. Bush and his Republican Congressman may want you to believe that they care about people’s welfare, but the reality is, based upon their many, many of their actions, that they don’t care about people one-tenth as much as they care about putting profits into the hands of certain industries.

So That’s What Irreducible Complexity Means

Robert Sprackland in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (via Panda’s Thumb):

Intelligent design is not a scientific theory. It is a religious explanation based on a particular interpretation of biblical accounts. The biologist who came up with the idea for ID — a modified version of the creation account — believed that certain biological structures were too complex to have evolved by chance. He called this premise “irreducible complexity.”

It goes like this: I own an SUV, but am not a mechanic. I know that when I turn the key in the ignition, the engine starts. I do not know how the engine works, but I accept that (today at least) it does. According to “irreducible complexity,” the fact that I don't know how the engine works does’t mean that someone else might know. Instead, I am supposed to believe that God made the car. And therein lies the hubris.

Vatican Newspaper: Judge was correct to ban Intelligent Design

An article in the Vatican newspaper calls “correct” the decision by a Pennsylvania judge to ban Intelligent Design Creationism.

Skeptic’s Circle!

The 26th meeting of the Skeptic’s Circle is now available, hosted at Skeptic Rant! I think a particularly interesting and important article is Orac’s discussion on the sociology of the antivaccination movement. The antivaccination movement threatens the health of their children, and therefore the health of all of us.

More About The New Medicare Plan

A doctor writes to Josh Marshall:

I did want to offer an anecdote for you though. I have just started on the inpatient cardiology service at xxxxxx and have admitted two patients to the hospital in the past 24 hours who were unable to get important medicines as a result of the new plan (or lack there of). It is truly amazing! I don’t think either is life threatening, but they both could have and will cost the tax payers and Medicare tens of thousands of dollars in needless hospital days. Moreover, we are running at 110% capacity now with some patients spending three days in the ER waiting for a bed. These Medicare admissions have obviously not helped.

This Is How Bush Supports The Troops

Not by demonstrating qualities of compassion and concern for the families, and not by following up on a promise to investigate the details of a soldier’s death, that’s how. By trying to turn a soldier’s death into a marketing opportunity, that’s how.

Peggy Buryj asked everyone she could to help find out the details of her son’s last hours. She even asked President Bush when she and other grieving parents met with him during a campaign stop in hotly contested Ohio. He promised to look into it. Soon afterward, she said, his campaign called and asked her to appear in a commercial for him, but she declined.
…
Even today, 20 months later, Peggy Buryj — a Bush supporter who believes strongly in the Iraq war — is left with swirling questions, a shattered faith in the Army, and the unsettling feeling that her son’s death has been sullied by partisan politics and international intrigue.

More About The Medicare Drug Benefit Boondoggle

People are having trouble getting life-saving medicines. Reader J at Talking Points Memo tells us that psychiatrists are finding that many of their Medicare patients can’t get anti-seizure drugs. J goes on to say:

Just like Katrina, and Iraqi reconstruction difficulties, this is an unfolding disaster that could be seen approaching from a mile away beforehand. The government took little or no preparation before the deadline to make sure things would run smoothly. As usual, someone in charge seems to have assumed that the invisible hand of the markets would take care of everything, or something. As a result, phone lines are clogged, web sites are down or inaccessible, pharmacists and doctors have no idea what is going on after being kept out of the loop, and seniors themselves are panicked, confused, and freaking out.

Last year’s Social Security discussion was abstract for most senior citizens. They were specifically told it “would not affect them” and yet they were instrumental in destroying the Bush privatization attempts.

Medicare Plan D isn’t like that at all — it’s right in their faces. Old people (and their adult children trying to help them) are getting hit with nasty surprises at pharmacies everywhere this month. And they are MAD. They are being snowed under by the confusing paperwork and tricky decisions they are being forced to make. Many have yet to find out that the plan they’re in won’t cover the drugs they’re on, or that they were automatically and quietly disenrolled from superior private coverage. And later in the year, say around November, a significant portion of beneficiaries will have entered their Part-D “doughnut-holes” and will be paying a monthly premium to receive zero benefits! How do you think that will go over? Might a surprise jump in monthly expenses affect voting behavior around then, if it can easily be associated with the party that calls Medicare Part D their “signature domestic achievement”?

The plan they are on won’t cover their medications? Quietly disenrolled from superior private coverage? Paying a monthly premium to get zero benefits? The depravity and lack of compassion in this Republican piece of legislation of this is mind-boggling.

Psychics Fail Again in 2005

Psychics failed to predict any of the major news stories in 2005, just as they have done every year since 1979 when Gene Emery began tracking their predictions. Emery reports that psychics did predict many, many things (some of which seem rather ridiculous) that did not come true. For example:

• The government rolls out new rules allowing flying cars into the airways.
• A plane crashes into the Egyptian pyramids.
• Twenty astronauts sent on a Mars mission return to Earth and promptly resign from NASA to join the priesthood.
• A new reality TV show is mired in scandal when it is revealed that a winning participant killed and ate one of the competitors.
• NASA astronauts surveying a planned lunar colony find a Nazi flag planted on the dark side of the Moon.

Does God Care Who Wins NFL Playoff Games?

After Indianapolis kicker Mike Vanderjagt missed a game-tying field goal yesterday, he told the media: “It’s extreme disbelief. From the Polamalu interception reversal to Jerome’s fumble, everything seemed to be lined up in our favor. I guess the Lord forgot about the football team.”

It annoys me to think that a professional (and an adult) such as Vanderjagt would try to deflect the blame for his failure. But to place the blame on the Lord seems to be stretching things a bit much.

Such a belief, that the Lord takes care of certain teams and certain players, is widespread. It is hard to reconcile this belief with the fact that in sports there are two competing teams (some sports can have more than two), or two competing players, and somehow the Lord not only cares which team/player wins, but he pro-actively has selected one team/player to win and one to lose. How would an all-loving, all-caring deity make this decision? Would he select one team or player because that team/player is more devout than the other? Is a win in a sporting event the Lord's chosen way to reward a team or player? How can we then explain how a team of Muslims defeats a team of Christians (as has happened in the Olympics)? Furthermore, if the Lord does indeed decide to interject himself into a sporting event, then is it true that he has ignored the prayers of the losing team? There are a lot of contradictions that cannot be explained if you believe the Lord cares who wins sporting events.

Frank Reich, a quarterback for the Buffalo Bills, engineered the biggest comeback in NFL history in 1992. According to this brief bio, “While each camera continued to roll, he gave God the glory for his part in this historic win.” How then can Frank explain how a few weeks later Reich quarterbacked the Bills to one of the most lopsided losses in SuperBowl history. Blaming this loss on the Lord, which no one would ever do pre-Vanderjagt, is just as ridiculous as giving him credit for the win. Neither makes any sense.

There are time when I hate the NFL…

Over the years, we have seen many situations where an NFL player either did catch the ball or didn’t, and great confusion ensues as the nuances of the rule are debated. We have been subjected to many different announcers giving many different interpretations about what consitutes a catch, and we have heard referees give snippets of their understanding of the rule with respect to a particular play. None of this has led to any clarity on the issue, as demonstrated by the play yesterday in which Troy Polamalu of Pittsburgh (nearly) intercepted Peyton Manning. Mark me down as confused, not just in this one case. The announcers must have been similarly confused, espousing one interpretation only to have the referee give a different interpretation. The only thing I know for sure is that two feet have to come down inbounds — but I think there are exceptions there as well.

The NFL compounds this problem by not placing their rule book online, which is different than the other major professional sports. Those of us who would like to read the full rule ourselves cannot, unless we somehow come across an NFL rulebook. As far as I can tell, the complete NFL rulebook is not for sale. There is an item for sale at Amazon.com and probably other places entitled 2005 Official Rules Of The Nfl. Apparently Amazon thinks NFL is spelled with two lower case letters at the end — but I digress. The commenter at Amazon says of this particular tome: “How about publishing the complete NFL rule book instead of the abridged and edited version. This was a waste. I don’t want just some of the rules, I want them all. Anyone who is interested in a book like this should be aware.”

Thus, I call upon the NFL to either: a) make available for purchase the real rule book; and/or b) place the rules on-line.

It would be to the NFL’s benefit to do so for many reasons. Consider the play by Polamalu yesterday — the ruling would become much less controversial (assuming it was correct) if pundits such as myself and Boomer Esiason could be provided with a direct quote from the applicable rule. We could see then that the referee did indeed follow the rule as written. This would make the aftermath of such plays far less inflammatory. It could potentially make the league, and the announcers, look much less stupid, and it would reduce the second-guessing that goes on, including the second-guessing that the league wants a certain team to win. Such second guessing is clearly not good for the league. In fact, it would make the league look more professional. I see no down side to making the rules widely available. (For the record, I was rooting for Indianapolis, and I also think it is ridiculous to say the league wanted Team A or Team B to win.)

I’d write to the NFL and suggest this myself, but the NFL doesn’t appear to publish e-mail addresses, nor does it appear to publish snail-mail addresses on its website. In fact, there is no “Contact Us” on their website at all. I suspect that the league offices want as little contact with us fans as possible.

From the mouth of Thomas Jefferson

Venturing back in time over 180 years, we find some Thomas Jefferson quotes that are still appropriate today.

• “Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.”
• “Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.”
• “But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
• “History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”

A Health Care Crisis

Mary at Pacific Views has some choice words about the unbelievable boondoggle that is the new Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit. After explaining the difficulties now faced by many Medicare patients to obtain the proper benefits, Mary says:

Do you remember why the Republicans were so worried about Single Payer Health Insurance? Why, because it would create a huge bureaucracy. Yes, a well-run government bureaucracy is so much worse than the private sector.

Don't kid yourself. This Kafkaesque nightmare *was* the plan, just like the well-planned outcome in Iraq administered by the CPA where corporations made out like bandits and Iraqis went without clean water or electricity. Like good Republican policy makers everywhere they know that only when massive amounts of tax payer dollars have been skimmed off and used to pay the CEO salaries and to pay lobbyists who will give it to Republicans to keep the system going, can a few of those tax payer dollars be used to help people. But not too much, because then people might become dependent on government.

If we can ever get our country back from these thuggish bandits, perhaps Americans will be ready to try a health plan that can work. It’s time to consider Single Payer again and stop wasting our money on the boondoggles of the crooks.

This is a Test

Performancing has created this Firefox blog editor that works right within Firefox! So if this shows up, it works! (via)

That Allegedly Liberal Media ...

While the press refuses to discuss impeachment, despite growing public support, the media (at least in one instance) wants to pursue baseless allegations of a Marine hero who allegedly does not deserve his medals. The marine is Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa). Here’s Murray Waas (via) description of the credibility of those allegations: “So if I understand this correctly, regarding the purported allegations by the late Rep. Saylor that Rep. Murtha did not deserve his Purple Hearts, the Washington Post is relying on the reporting of the Cyercast [sic] News Service, which is in turn is relying on comments made years ago by Harry Fox, who is in turn is quoting the late Congressman Saylor — who died all the way back in 1973. The Post should have done a much better job of making this clear in their story — in my humble opinion — if they should have even published a story at all.” And as Jane Hamsher makes clear, Cybercast was unable to talk to Mr. Fox because of Mr. Fox’s failing health.

Which is more important to our country? The flimsy tissue of lies, with no solid evidence, being told about Rep. Murtha, or the public’s growing interest in impeachment? I would vote for the latter, but apparently that allegedly liberal media votes for the former.

Impeachment

Atrios summarizes a large number of polls: “The country was never behind Clinton’s impeachment but the media begged for it. The country is much more behind Bush impeachment but the media is silent.”

In other developments, “he who is known as sefton” prepares to challenge Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa) with a platform containing three planks of lower case letters. The first such plank is “impeach bush”, the second plank is “impeach bush”, and the third plank is “impeach bush”.

Happy Friday The Thirteenth

Hold an umbrella indoors, walk under a ladder and break a mirror! And is that a black cat? Horrors!

I have personally witnessed Drs. Paul Kurtz and Joe Nickell perform this ritual for past Friday the 13ths, and as you can see, they are still around to perform the ritual again. Here’s hoping that this ritual continues to bring them good luck!

Impeachment

From Elizabeth Holtzman, a member of the House during the Nixon years, writing in The Nation:

Finally, it has started. People have begun to speak of impeaching President George W. Bush — not in hushed whispers but openly, in newspapers, on the Internet, in ordinary conversations and even in Congress. As a former member of Congress who sat on the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon, I believe they are right to do so.

I can still remember the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach during those proceedings, when it became clear that the President had so systematically abused the powers of the presidency and so threatened the rule of law that he had to be removed from office. As a Democrat who opposed many of President Nixon's policies, I still found voting for his impeachment to be one of the most sobering and unpleasant tasks I ever had to undertake. None of the members of the committee took pleasure in voting for impeachment; after all, Democrat or Republican, Nixon was still our President.

At the time, I hoped that our committee’s work would send a strong signal to future Presidents that they had to obey the rule of law. I was wrong.

Like many others, I have been deeply troubled by Bush’s breathtaking scorn for our international treaty obligations under the United Nations Charter and the Geneva Conventions. I have also been disturbed by the torture scandals and the violations of US criminal laws at the highest levels of our government they may entail, something I have written about in these pages [see Holtzman, “Torture and Accountability,” July 18/25, 2005]. These concerns have been compounded by growing evidence that the President deliberately misled the country into the war in Iraq. But it wasn’t until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country’s laws — that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate.

Welcome, Science Blogs!

A new web-site called ScienceBlogs has debuted. They include many high-quality science related blogs that have been in my blogroll for quite some time, such as Pharyngula, Deltoid, Dispatches From The Culture Wars, and The Intersection. But there are a bunch of other high-quality science related blogs at this site that I am going to check out (and that you should check out).

Corruption or Extremely Bad Policy? You Decide!

From Kevin Drum:

[T]ax fraud by the working poor is estimated at no more than $9 billion annually while tax fraud by the not-so-poor weighs in at about $340 billion. Nonetheless, Republicans in Congress have long insisted that the IRS focus a disproportionate amount of attention on policing requests for the Earned Income Tax Credit, a tax refund that's available exclusively to the working poor.

More: if a person legally applied for EITC, a person whose average annual income was $13,000 per year, there was a very high chance that their tax refund would be frozen and labelled fraudulent, but never told of this decision.

And even more: the IRS now refuses to provide information on how it audits big corporations and the rich, despite being required to provide this information based upon a 1976 law.

Corruption or Extremely Bad Policy? I think the decision is obvious, this is the usual Republican protect-the-rich, screw-the-poor corruption.

A Better Way To Learn Calculus

Paige (not me, but MIT Student in Nuclear Engineering Paige Hopewell) and Playboy Model Jaime Lynn put on bikinis to help everyone learn the basics of calculus, in this entertaining video (via).

The Decision Against Intelligent Design

Chris Mooney provides a very insightful column about the larger implications of the deicision by Judge John E. Jones III that intelligent design is not science and is in fact religion.

Legally speaking, Judge John E. Jones III’s ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District — Pennsylvania's much-discussed lawsuit over the teaching of “intelligent design” — can only be called conservative. The decision draws upon and reinforces a series of prior court precedents, all of which barred creationist encroachment upon the teaching of science in public schools.
…
If there’s an underlying moral to be derived from Judge Jones’ decision, then, it may be this. It’s very easy to attack well-established science through a propaganda campaign aimed at the media and the public. That’s precisely what “intelligent design” proponents have done — and they’re hardly alone in this. However, it’s much more difficult for a PR attack on established science to survive the scrutiny of a serious, independent judge.

The Bridge To Nowhere

Tom Watson, with my emphasis:

There is no idealist center to the Republican Party any more — it’s been sold for power: for votes, for junkets, for golf, for bribes, for contributions. The GOP is best described these days as its most pathetic pork project, the infamous Bridge to Nowhere in the Alaska of Ted Stephens. These Republicans have not built a bridge to a finer, prosperous, free American future. Their bridge leads nowhere, will transport only the privileged few, and it costs us billions in treasure and hard-won freedom in principle.

That New Medicare Drug Plan

People have worried about the dire consequences of the new Medicare Drug Plan. It turns out the consequences are very dire indeed, and perhaps worse than anyone expected. The criminals in the Bush administration and Republican-led congress should be held accountable for this fiasco as well. Over at Thoughts of An Average Woman (via), some details of the plan’s first week emerge:

We have come to the end of the first week under Bush’s medicare drug plan. I’m sure you remember this plan, it’s the one that DeLay strong-armed through the house. It’s also the same plan that allows the pharmaceuticals to charge the higest prices to seniors, negotiations for lower prices will not and cannot take place. It is the Bush administration’s way of killing off the elderly. And what has happened this first week hopefully will change very quickly.

Low-income Medicare beneficiaries around the country were often overcharged, and some were turned away from pharmacies without getting their medications, in the first week of Medicare’s new drug benefit. The problems have prompted emergency action by some states to protect their citizens.

Although there are no hard numbers, concerns expressed by state officials and complaints from pharmacists suggest a widespread pattern of problems.

Please read the rest. Citizens who need certain medicines to stay alive go to a pharmacy expecting to pay a $5 co-pay are charged $250, if they can get the medicine at all. Some have to borrow money.

Our current Republican politicians are criminals. Throw the bums out. Put them in jail. They are heartless, cruel, non-compassionate conservative bastards.

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Republicans Strong on Defense? Yeah, right ...

The New York Times now tells us about a Pentagon study showing that 80% of Marines who were killed could have been saved with extra armor. What is particularly infuriating is this: “That armor has been available since 2003 but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.”

The Auriemma/Summit Feud

Geno Auriemma explains his side of the alleged feud with Pat Summitt. Oh yeah, women’s basketball tomorrow at 2pm Eastern, Connecticut at Tennessee on national television. Don’t miss it.

Our Economy Fails Under President Bush

Taken verbatim from Economic Policy Institute:

1. Profits are up, but the wages and the incomes of average Americans are down.

• Inflation-adjusted hourly and weekly wages are still below where they were at the start of the recovery in November 2001. Yet, productivity—the growth of the economic pie—is up by 13.5%.
  
  
• Wage growth has been shortchanged because 35% of the growth of total income in the corporate sector has been distributed as corporate profits, far more than the 22% in previous periods.
  
  
• Consequently, median household income (inflation-adjusted) has fallen five years in a row and was 4% lower in 2004 than in 1999, falling from $46,129 to $44,389.

2. More and more people are deeper and deeper in debt.

• The indebtedness of U.S. households, after adjusting for inflation, has risen 35.7% over the last four years.
  
  
• The level of debt as a percent of after-tax income is the highest ever measured in our history. Mortgage and consumer debt is now 115% of after-tax income, twice the level of 30 years ago.
  
  
• The debt-service ratio (the percent of after-tax income that goes to pay off debts) is at an all-time high of 13.6%.
  
  
• The personal savings rate is negative for the first time since WWII.

3. Job creation has not kept up with population growth, and the employment rate has fallen sharply.

• The United States has only 1.3% more jobs today (excluding the effects of Hurricane Katrina) than in March 2001 (the start of the recession). Private sector jobs are up only 0.8%. At this stage of previous business cycles, jobs had grown by an average of 8.8% and never less than 6.0%.
  
  
• The unemployment rate is relatively low at 5%, but still higher than the 4% in 2000. Plus, the percent of the population that has a job has never recovered since the recession and is still 1.3% lower than in March 2001. If the employment rate had returned to pre-recession levels, 3 million more people would be employed.
  
  
• More than 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost since January 2000.

4. Poverty is on the rise.

• The poverty rate rose from 11.3% in 2000 to 12.7% in 2004.
  
  
• The number of people living in poverty has increased by 5.4 million since 2000.
  
  
• More children are living in poverty: the child poverty rate increased from 16.2% in 2000 to 17.8% in 2004.

5. Rising health care costs are eroding families' already declining income.

• Households are spending more on health care. Family health costs rose 43-45% for married couples with children, single mothers, and young singles from 2000 to 2003.
  
  
• Employers are cutting back on health insurance. Last year, the percent of people with employer-provided health insurance fell for the fourth year in a row. Nearly 3.7 million fewer people had employer-provided insurance in 2004 than in 2000. Taking population growth into account, 11 million more people would have had employer-provided health insurance in 2004 if the coverage rate had remained at the 2000 level.

Attack On The Middle Class

The Bush Administration and Republicans in Congress have done a great job of reducing the financial security of the middle class (via). Peter G. Gosselin of the Los Angeles Times documents some of this in great detail:

• PART 1: If America Is Richer, Why Are Its Families So Much Less Secure?
• PART 2: The Poor Have More Things Today — Including Wild Income Swings
• PART 3: How Just a Handful of Setbacks Sent the Ryans Tumbling Out of Prosperity
• Also: As Risk Spreads, One Group Stays Immune (guess who? He’s referring to the corporate bosses)