I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Weekend Linkee-poo shakes its shaggy head and walks away

Just a note about the new conservative meme about people having their policies cancelled because of Obamacare. You may have heard about the "underinsured" before this. Now you know who they are. Here's the thing, those insurance companies could have increased the coverage to the bare minimum required by the ACA. But here's the thing, they're crappy insurance plans designed to reduce premiums and provide relatively little coverage (high deductibles, coverage that's basically "if you have a disaster, you might have some coverage of some of your bills"). These are the plans that when you have an emergency, suddenly you find that your insurance is dropping you instead of paying your bills. And yes, the poor and the rich have these plans. Many of those people who are having sticker shock? That doesn't mean they chose the "best" (read "cheapest") option from the exchanges, but instead went for the silver or gold options (from having been underinsured before).

And, gee, v1.0 of a complicated website doesn't work? Why, that hardly ever happens. Except that it does all the time. And all those sites conservatives like to tout in the line, "we'll if X could do it, why can't we?" One, the government is not a business (in fact, there are many laws that keep them from functioning like a business, including contracting laws). And two, those other sites started out relatively simple and grew in their complexity, and not all of those steps were successful. So everyone that is shocked that there were bumps in the implementation, you all don't live in reality. Also, the enrollment deadline is March. If, as the consultants have predicted, we'll have the site running well (note, not completely glitch free) by the end of November, that's still four months to sign up. That is twice as long as most open enrollment periods.

Before there were "turtle tunnels" in Florida, NY City had a cow tunnel. Although the turtle tunnels are to protect the turtles, whereas the cow tunnels were just a long atrium to the slaughter house. (Grokked from Morgan J Locke)

Vince shares the Chapel of Skulls.

Noted without comment, the @FloridaWoman twitter feed. (Pointed to by John)

More advertising gone horribly wrong. And they didn't even have to use the many companies that have used "classical music" in their commercials only to discover that music is actually a funeral requiem. (Grokked from Vince)

Random Michelle brings us the good news that black lung is no more. Oh wait, no, that isn't what she meant at all. Yea, we don't need no gubberment to regulate businesses. After all, I'm sure all those people who are still dying from black lung were willful participants in their attempts to zoom the government and really wish they weren't forced to fake air quality reports. If we didn't have regulations, we wouldn't need to fake the data. Or something like that.

"This is what the war on abortion access looks like in Kansas: betraying the confidence of medical patients, pretending that forcing 10-year-olds to birth rapists’ babies is no big deal, bankrupting doctors, driving one man into a frenzy of anti-choice hate so much so that he murders someone, and allowing convicted terrorists to be the leaders running the whole thing. Under the circumstances, it’s no big surprise that one anti-choice leader is dropping hints that gun violence at the South Wind Women’s Center in Wichita is coming." (Grokked from the Slactivist)

You may wonder what I mean by whackaloon. Here are a few" examples.

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