Face-off

Face-off 5 January 2012

Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Occupy Wall Street, Pan Arab Revolt - 2011, Viva La Revolucion!.
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Sitra, Bahrain: An anti-regime protester gestures as he faces riot police during a protest | Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters

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Be interesting to watch and see, if 2012 isn’t just a year of the protest and protester, but a full frontal face-off.

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1. Madman in the Marketplace - 5 January 2012: TSA Confiscated Cupcake Song: “Code Red Velvet: Cupcakes of Mass Destruction”

All we’re left with is mockery

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lucid - 5 January 2012: I saw that over Christmas… I say the TSA agent was just having a sugar jones… One can hope right?

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marisacat - 5 January 2012: TSA = Thousands Standing Around

When of course they are not missing things for feeling up the children and the disabled.

I read recently that over the course of the 00s, plane travel over all, with a couple of exceptions, went DOWN. Gee what a shock. And I read that in both Oakland Intl and San Jose Intl volume of travel is down. SF is holding on, which some people think is due to Virgin Airlines.

Could b.

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ts - 6 January 2012: TSA = Tyrants Scratching their Asses.

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marisacat - 6 January 2012: The other one I heard was “Taking Sissors Away”.

The whole thing is ripe for jokes.

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2. Madman in the Marketplace - 6 January 2012: Protest Wall Street, Go to Jail for the Rest of Your Life

The threat of life imprisonment looms for Occupy Oakland activist Marcel Johnson – better known by his alias, Khali – after a third-strike arrest during the demonstration. Having spent about 15 years incarcerated already, 38 year-old Khali said he was trying to turn his life around by distributing food to the needy at the Occupy Oakland encampment, where he was a frequent, vocal, sometimes endearing presence. On December 16 he was arrested outside City Hall for violating anti-encroachment laws — namely, for a dispute about a blanket — which normally wouldn’t have warranted more than a few hours jail time. Since Khali was in fact violating his probation terms for a different case in Sacramento, he was taken to Santa Rita and made to serve some jail time in lieu of going to trial, his attorney Dan Siegel explained. There, Khali was held in solitary confinement and not given his psychiatric medications, which might explain why he got into an altercation with a peace officer — the exact circumstances of which are still widely disputed. Now, Khali faces a felony assault charge in place of his original misdemeanor. As of Friday, December 23, Khali’s bail was set at $580,000, according his attorney, Dan Siegel.

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marisacat - 6 January 2012: Dan Siegal was about the only person from Oakland City administration who made sense to me… he was the unpaid, personal atty to Jean Quan and eventually, I forget which day, he resigned. It wasn’t the first raid on Oct 25, but a bit later.

I hope he can help this poor man.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 6 January 2012: me too

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3. Madman in the Marketplace - 6 January 2012: This is interesting:

Connecticut Drops Insurers From Medicaid

HARTFORD, Conn. — In the past decade, most states have turned Medicaid over to private plans with hopes they could control costs and improve care. Nearly half of the 60 million people in the government program for the poor are now in the managed care plans run by insurance giants such as UnitedHealthcare and Aetna.

But Connecticut, the “insurance capital of the world,” is bucking the trend.

On Jan. 1, Connecticut will jettison its private health plans from Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program. Instead of paying the companies a set monthly fee to cover the health costs of more than 400,000 children and parents, the state will assume financial responsibility.

State officials say the firms, including Hartford-based Aetna, did not fulfill their promise of lower costs and better care.

“Connecticut has a 15-year history with managed care organizations and there has been a diminishing confidence in the value of what they are providing,” said Mark Schaefer, the state’s Medicaid director. “Their measured performance is not impressive.”

Connecticut’s decision stands out at a time when a growing number of states are requiring more people in Medicaid to join managed care plans — Florida, Texas, and California are among nearly two dozen states planning expansions in 2012. Whether it turns out to be a blip in the industry’s growing control of Medicaid, as many argue, or the beginning of a backlash, officials in other states are watching closely. In any case, the reversal of the trend in the insurance industry’s home base has given managed care critics a rare, if mostly symbolic, victory.

‘Point Of Ammunition’

“There is a cadre of people who hate for-profit health care, and this is another point of ammunition for them to point to and say that if they came to this determination in the insurance capital of the world, how can it be such great shakes,” said Joel Menges, a health care consultant who has worked with the state.

Connecticut, which has more of its residents employed in the insurance industry than any other — 2.1 percent, or more than 71,000 people, according to the U.S. Census — is betting its employees, working with a private nonprofit company, can ensure Medicaid patients get better care at lower cost. The state will return to paying doctors and hospitals for each service they provide. Officials say they plan to use some of the millions that went to health plans’ profits and administrative costs to increase pay to primary care doctors to improve care.

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marisacat - 6 January 2012: oh that IS interesting. well you said when you were there you saw a clear marked difference…

Oh I meant to add, Jerry B just unveiled a budget and plans that would have people HOWLING if it were Arnold He is planning to slash subsidised childcare even more and basically told people on welfare (slashed 1.5 billion) which is the sad remainders of remainders by now, to “get a job”. One of the papers… forget which SJ Merc or LA Times, got ahold of his budget ahead of time, and printed it.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 6 January 2012: when are the fucking donklephants going to realize that this privatization/cutting programs thing has already failed miserably in the states where the Republicans already did it?

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marisacat - 6 January 2012: I think they know, have known and knew when it started. It’s all about operating in concert… and I don’t think the Dems, by and large, were ever opposed to it. Clinton did so much of it.

I think most of what has come down, from young people in debt for questionable education (let’s be frank) to all the other things (long list), was planned.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 6 January 2012: I guess I should have typed “donklephant voters” … aka “saps”.

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marisacat - 6 January 2012: o them. those poor blinkered people.

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4. Madman in the Marketplace - 8 January 2012: Gingrich Declares Gay Rights Questions Are ‘Anti-Christian Bigotry’

“I just want to raise a point about the news media bias,” the former House Speaker complained to ABC’s Diane Sawyer. “You don’t hear the opposite question asked.”

“Should the Catholic Church be forced to close its adoption services in Massachusetts because it won’t accept gay couples, which is exactly what the state has done? Should the Catholic Church be driven out of providing charitable services in the District of Columbia because it won’t give in to secular bigotry? Should the Catholic Church find itself discriminated against by the Obama administration on key delivery of services because the bias and bigotry of the administration?”

He added: “The bigotry question goes both ways and there’s a lot more anti-Christian bigotry today than there is concern on the other side, and none of it gets covered by the news media.”

That remark was met with some of the loudest applause of the evening from the Republican audience, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney quickly spoke up in agreement.

“As you can tell, the people in this room feel that Speaker Gingrich is absolutely right, and I do too,” Romney declared. “We have to recognize that this decision about what we call marriage has consequences which goes far beyond a loving couple wanting to form a long-term relationship, that they can do within the law now. Calling it marriage creates a whole host of problems for families, for the law, for the practice of religion, for education.”

“Let me say this: 3,000 years of human history shouldn’t be discarded so quickly,” he insisted.

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marisacat - 8 January 2012: That remark was met with some of the loudest applause of the evening from the Republican audience, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney quickly spoke up in agreement.

Yup it did get loud applause… I was listening last night.

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BooHooHooMan - 8 January 2012: Choose your lousy bastard.
Romney is as sickening as Gingrich as is Obama as is…
and on and on..
Of course the owners are laughing their ass off.
I’m having one of those days where I think they are going to wedge Barry back in…
Ugh. All the way around…

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5. marisacat - 8 January 2012: New

LINK

………………… 😯 … 🙄 … 👿

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