Culled from Battochio’s Jon Swift tribute and comments and etc.:
BradBlog: NYT Public Editor Finally Admits ACORN “Pimp” Hoax Reporting Failure
Comrade PhysioProf: Militant Atheism
Jurassic Pork: Sweet Jesus, I Hate America
World-O-Crap: Abortion Seeking Women: Won’t Someone Think of the Man-Child?
CookBlog: Whoreganically blown
Alicublog: Happy Labor Day
Balloon Juice: This Is What Obstructionism + Nihilism + the Wurlitzer Looks Like
Pharyngula: Why I Don’t Debate Creationists Anymore, Part Whatever
Rob Levine: Education Deform Movement Ubiquitous, Yet Invisible
Techdirt: Exposing The False Sanctity of “Intellectual Property”
Phoenix Woman: Glenn Greenwald, Evan Hansen, and Slut-Shaming
Sideshow: links to BOA rants (yes, this post was just an excuse to link to politics, and I have the curdled dyspepsia to prove it was a bad idea)
The Awl: What fucking year is it?
The Awl: Actions Have Consequences, or, I’ll See You In Hell
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I’m glad I’ve given up on politics and democratic reform of our utterly corrupt system. Reading/re-reading these posts my blood pressure spiked, my stomach churned, and what little love I had left for this country was flushed away into a cistern of despair and disgust.
I’m still clear on the concept of America, I just wish Americans still were.
And while I’m on the topic of rants, TASC’s FlexSystem website is the most cocked up assault on the rights of the insured I’ve ever seen. I was helping a client negotiate their website yesterday. Here’s what you click to log in:
Yes, they’re letting you know that the link you need to click to log in will change and move to another part of the page. I would wager huge sums that this page is closely monitored by a very large committee that has organized itself into subcommittees for the purpose of greater obfuscation.
And yesterday that link took us to a page that said the page would be down for web maintenance starting at 9:30 pm that day. It was 4 pm when we tried to log in but apparently this site is based in London because the maintenance was already in progress.
Today when I went back to see if the log in worked, I noticed that the letter the client gave me with the pin number contained this key phrase: “Your Participant TASC Id is located on your Request for Reimbursement form which has been mailed under separate cover.” I’m pretty sure “Id” means I.D., but it really doesn’t make any difference because the client had already thrown the other letter out, it having arrived in the usual mound of junk mail before her employer told her that their insurance carrier had just changed their name.
Got that? Insurance company re-names itself, sends out critical information before letting the insured know of the name change. We did get the I.D. but the real point of this rant is that these bastards have been stalling on a $5k reimbursement since summer, and are ramming through their new website at the end of the year while telling their customers they have to update before year’s end to insure continued coverage.
My opinion? The Total Administrative Services Corporation (TASC) is over-administered by moral cripples who lay awake nights trying to figure out how to evade or slow payments, while rationalizing rate increases. And this is for the lucky few goverment sector employees who have real insurance. This uninsured loser can’t imagine how much worse it is if you have a private carrier.
