Strib agitprop

The Strib won’t tell you who Betsy Hart is, but they want you to take her advice on healthcare insurance. Who is Betsy Hart?

Betsy Hart (born c. 1965) is a syndicated columnist and conservative commentator who is a frequent contributor to CNN and the Fox News Channel. She also appeared frequently on ABC’s show Politically Incorrect. Mrs. Hart is the mother of four children and author of the book It Takes a Parent: How the Culture of Pushover Parenting is Hurting Our Kids… and What to Do About It. She is currently working on her next book Let’s Look at Things a Little Differently. She is now divorced from her husband after 17 years of marriage. Ms. Hart is also against the production and consumption of organic food and does not believe that global warming is primarily a man-made condition. In 1985 she graduated from the University of Illinois with a B.A. in Russian Studies. She wrote controversial column in December 2007 that suggested a woman could not be both a good mother and a good soldier.

Her blog says that Congress is trying to outlaw the kind of healthcare insurance Betsy has. Betsy, however, doesn’t seem to have the greatest healthcare insurance.

For starters, I understand my medical insurance is, well, to insure me, not to pay all my medical bills for me. Just like I see that my homeowner insurance is there to insure me against significant losses, not to pay for my landscaping.

That stopped me in my tracks. What part of healthcare does Betsy consider to be “landscaping.” Stitching you back up after they cut you open? Or giving you a bed to sleep in? Maybe it’s that carafe of water the hospital charged you $20 for, or maybe it’s your medications.

Whatever, Betsy Hart got paid to write something nice about the insurance industry, and the Strib unquestioningly ran it. My question to the Strib is this: the woman wasn’t qualified to write this article, why did you run it?

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National Arbitration Forum has agreed not to arbitrate disputes between creditors and consumers. I’m assuming that’s a national ban, but the article doesn’t make that clear.

Nice trick. NAF had extensive ties to the credit industry, and the credit industry put arbitration with NAF into their lending agreements. NAF ruled for the credit industry and everyone was happy except the consumers.

Bush-Cheney rules. It’ll take a while to get rid of all the bad players, assuming we work at doing just that.

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They’re overhauling Bagram Air Base, but only because terrorists were using it as a recruiting tool. Not because of the torture, not because of the abuse, not because of the out of control spooks who were given their run of the base.

Doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons, or is that just the cover story?

The only thing for sure is that the truth in this matter will successfully elude the NYTimes and their staff of torture apologists who, in this case, worked hard to blame Afghan authorities for the problems at Bagram.

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The Times writes more about pot. Or rather their five he said/he said experts do under an extraordinarily misleading headline: If Marijuana is Legal, Will Addiction Rise? There is a debate over whether you can get addicted to pot, but the Times just assumes the assumption and then lets their equivocators run with it. Norm Stamper, the former Seattle police chief who argues for legalization, got the last (and only coherent) word.

The very weakly thought out article I linked to this weekend in their Sunday Magazine has gotten a few negative comments, btw.

All bullshit really. Of more concern is O’s decision to send more DEA into Afghanistan. Is O really ignorant of the fact that the DEA is our biggest drug problem? Or is this a cynical move to divert the DEA so as to result in fewer Americans being victimized by their jackbooted thuggery?

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Fox News analyst says Taliban should execute their captured American soldier.

Seriously. Meanwhile, the private sector looting of  our treasury continues unabashed.

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The WaPost shits all over Obama today, but it’s OK because Tom Toles is back.

Howie the Whore found the Sotomayor hearings boring, btw. If you were determined to ignore the assault of Dixie on all things Hispanic, I guess they were.

It was GREAT theater, and almost every word Kurtz writes is isolated from history and reality. An establishmentarian writing the official history, a document for historians to mock later. Even Kathleen Parker had no trouble finding the actual story line of Republicans behaving badly for all the wrong reasons.

On the blog front, 44 legitimizes some of the phonier Sunday morning talk lies.

Extraordinary, really. Over the past forty years the radical left has become the responsible middle, but the establishment has gone from center-right to full tilt Ted Nugent.

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Kiss ins in Utah.

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Yepsen’s replacement gores Gov. Chet Culver today. Culver ducked taking a stand on the public option, and Obradovich moves in for the kill.

Why is a governor’s position on the public option an issue? Culver gets no vote in this matter, none whatsoever.

Like David Yepsen, Kathy Obradovich creates issues where there were no issues.

The Register used to be the home of good journalism, but their political coverage has sucked mightily since the late ’70s when they handed their political coverage over to cynical center rightists. Yepsen’s specialty was to make every Democrat take a stand (or perceived stand) on every issue, while weighing in gravely on every Republican pronouncement/fatwah.

Journalism that invents conflict is bad journalism. Still, you’d think I’d be used to it by now.

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Minimum wage rises to $7.25 an hour this Friday. McClatchy has a scary quote: “That’s not a life-changing raise, but some economists worry now is not the time to impose it.”

What a crock. $0.70 an hour IS life-changing if you only make $6.55 an hour. That’s at least $25 a week, and for some that means they suddenly have the option of having the lights turned back on.

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The clunker law kicks in this Friday. That means I get to submit myself to the ritual humiliation of letting bankers insult my co-signer again.

Always fun.

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France is looking better to me every day.

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Ever wonder what 40% unemployment would look like?

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Mick on naïvete.

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Sara Robinson on Minutewomen.

I hope you all noticed that Shawna Forde murdering an entire family disappeared down the news hole. She and her eliminationist anti-immigrant thug friends killed three people and aside from a handful of western states media, the national press is still ignoring the story.

Infuckingcredible.

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Being a contrarian means living life without compassion or the ability to understand how others might feel.

If you’re a contrarian named John Carney, that is.

I can’t remember ever ranting about someone I didn’t care about. To get flamed by me, you have to have offended my sense of what’s right. To get flamed by Carney all you have to do is get more press than he personally thinks was warranted.

John Carneys of my generation didn’t care about Emmett Till, the Holocaust, Great Depression or any of a number of major historical events. I’m sure John Carney’s name will be forgotten just as quickly as those apologists contrarians were.

Argument for the sake of entertainment is neither, and history isn’t judged by people with ‘tude.

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Digby picks on up Taibbi and writes about Goldman Sachs.

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Lets see if the pro-polygamy hard right gets worked up over Iranian execution rules. A member of the Basij militia has admitted to “marrying” convicted virgins so they could be deflowered so as to allow for them to be executed.

“I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their ‘wedding’ night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die.

“I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over,” he said. “I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her.”

Worst thing I’ve read in weeks.

I wonder how, short of war, the radical right would deal with this? It’s hard to influence countries you aren’t talking to.

UPDATE: This link has been challenged by a reader, and I cannot independently confirm it. The sole source seems to be an anonymous person talking to the Jerusalem Post. I also cannot find any public mention of women being executed in Iran other than for adultery, which would not apply to this story.

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Chauffeuring today. More later.

Explore posts in the same categories: American justice, economy, healthcare, media whores

Tags: Afghanistan, eliminationism, Iran, marijuana, minimum wage, rape, Wall Street greedbags

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