I think blogs are dedicated to cruelty, they’re dedicated to dishonesty, they’re dedicated to speed.

— Buzz Bissinger, author of “Friday Night Lights” and other bestsellers, castigating blogs on HBO’s “Costas Now”; May 1.

It’s one of the bigger Cadillacs. I’ve got a desk in it. It’s like an airplane. … I want them to feel that they are somebody and their congressman is somebody. And when they say, ‘This is nice,’ it feels good.

— Rep. Charles Rangell, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, describing the 17-foot-long, 300-horsepower, 2004 Cadillac DeVille he leases for for $777.54 a month; House rules permit members to lease any vehicle at taxpayer expense; May 1.
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It’s often difficult to get the attention of my students. But when I told them that it’s possible that a few of them would see the year 2100, and that most of their children surely would, they stopped furtively texting under their desks and began paying attention.

When I was born just after World War II, I told them, the population of the United States was about 141 million; of the world, about 2.7 billion. Now, 62 years later, Americans tip the scale at about 303 million; the world’s population has grown to about 6.6 billion.

A little extrapolation of U.S. Census data, I told them, shows the American population hitting 518 million at mid-century and 758 million in 2100. The world’s population is likely to grow to 14 billion at century’s end. Imagine what that world — their world — would be like, I challenged them.

But I was too optimistic. In a report to be released today, a Virginia Tech professor estimates that between 2100 and 2120 the population of the United States will reach one billion people.
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 Low-information voter indeed.

In the previous two presidential election campaigns, Al Gore and John Kerry, starched at the collar to begin with, ran campaigns prudent to the point of pussyfooting. Both Democrats attempted to court the corporate interests that helped bring Bill Clinton success. Meanwhile, those who had sought to take it away, the religious right, were given a wide berth.

By way of post mortems, alternative media and progressives have spent the years since heaping abuse and scorn on the Democrats for the timid campaigns they ran. Give the public some credit, went the refrain. Hew to the Democrat ideals which saw this country through a Depression and a world war. If you truly respect the Republicans, instead of appeasing them, emulate their rock-ribbed conviction. Full Story »

Has the financial tipping point of life vs. death finally arrived? Do you now need to be financially healthy (meaning rich) to ease suffering from or survive diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, hepatitis C and some cancers (such as metastatic breast cancer)?

The lead story in the print edition of today’s New York Times reports this chilling fact:

Health insurance companies are rapidly adopting a new pricing system for very expensive drugs, asking patients to pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars for prescriptions for medications that may save their lives or slow the progress of serious diseases.

With the new pricing system, insurers abandoned the traditional arrangement that has patients pay a fixed amount, like $10, $20 or $30 for a prescription, no matter what the drug’s actual cost. Instead, they are charging patients a percentage of the cost of certain high-priced drugs, usually 20 to 33 percent, which can amount to thousands of dollars a month.

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This is actually a boost to remind people that we can produce this kind of journalism at any time. We’re going to have a large enough newsroom to continue to produce this kind of quality journalism.

— Leonard Downie Jr., editor of The Washington Post, winner of six Pulitzer Prizes for 2008; The Post’s front-page story by media critic Howard Kurtz did not mention the paper has endured three rounds of staff cuts since 2003, but the AP’s story did; April 7; emphasis added.

I can only confirm that the route is dynamic.

— Nathan Ballard, a San Francisco city spokesman, as, said The New York Times, “The precise route remained in flux on Tuesday as the torch extravaganza threatened to become more civic migraine than celebration in the face of potential protests by those upset with China’s human rights record and recent crackdown in Tibet”; April 9.
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The AFL-CIO and its community arm, Working America, just released their 2008 Health Care for America Survey. Most of the 26,419 online respondents are insured, employed, and college graduates — those, the report explains, most likely to react positively to America’s health care system.

But with its pie charts and tables, enhanced by 489 “heart-wrenching stories about the effects of this broken health care system on them and their families,” the report is like a PDF version of Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko.” Of course, it’s to be expected that many of those who took part were prompted by the chance to air their grievances.

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If you were grossed out by the generally reasonable idea of drinking recycled sewer water to preserve supplies, you’ll love this–as many as 41 million Americans have been drinking water tainted with trace elements of pharmaceuticals of all shapes, sizes, and effects:

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I’m not enough of a medical expert to know exactly what this means, but I’m certain thousands of parents around the country with autistic children are keenly interested.

Government Concedes Vaccine Injury Case

Government health officials have conceded that childhood vaccines worsened a rare, underlying disorder that ultimately led to autism-like symptoms in a Georgia girl, and that she should be paid from a federal vaccine-injury fund.

Medical and legal experts say the narrow wording and circumstances probably make the case an exception — not a precedent for thousands of other pending claims.

The government “has not conceded that vaccines cause autism,” said Linda Renzi, the lawyer representing federal officials, who have consistently maintained that childhood shots are safe.

However, parents and advocates for autistic children see the case as a victory that may help certain others. Full Story »

I believe my current participation could be a distraction.

— major league baseball pitcher and accused steroids and HGH cheat Roger Clemens, in withdrawing from a scheduled appearance at an “event, which takes place largely at Disney Hollywood Studios, and lets fans interact with athletes and ESPN personalities and watch live ESPN programming”; Feb. 20.

I’m very excited about watching this game. I do want to thank your coaches. Thanks for coaching. Thanks for teaching people the importance of teamwork. I like baseball a lot, so thanks for teaching them how to play baseball, too.

— from President Bush’s remarks at a “tee ball” game between the Little Dragons and the Little Saints at Ghana International School in Accra, Ghana; Feb. 20.
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Today’s guest post is from our friend Natasha Chart.

Ezra Klein wrote recently about how the ‘best’ health care in the world has allowed between 75,000-100,000 preventable deaths in the last four years.

This is the inevitable result of our tax policies and across the board political wastrelsy. And so we’ve failed perhaps as many as 100,000 of our fellow citizens in getting care for fatal, but entirely treatable, health conditions. We were not their keepers. We let go of them when they needed to be more tightly knit into the human family.

We’ve been taxed 100,000 people in order to pay for insurance executive salaries. Full Story »

Probably every candidate who has ever run for President has claimed to be running to improve the future. This is especially true about this election cycle because so much has gone horribly wrong over the last eight years. The idea that our children should have better lives than we ourselves have is part of the American mythos. Unfortunately, Robert J. Samuelson of the Washington Post points out in today’s commentary (Promises They Can’t Keep) that the candidates in this election are talking the talk, but singularly failing to walk this particular walk. The reason? Not a single electable candidate has proposed any solution to the coming tax increases and/or budget cuts. Full Story »

Welcome back to day 2 of the S&R Year in Review. Today we tackle some of 2007’s big moments in news and current events.

The Invasion and Occupation of Iraq Surpasses the American Civil War in Duration: The United States’ involvement in World War I lasted only 19 months and World War II lasted 44 months for the United States, even though the war itself was nearly six years long. The occupation of Iraq (aka the Iraq War) outlasted World War II in November of 2006, making the duration of U.S. involvement in Iraq the third longest foreign occupation in U.S. history. The American Civil War lasted 48 months, and the Iraq occupation surpassed that duration on March 20, 2007. This makes the Iraq occupation the third longest running period of continuous conflict in U.S. history, behind only the Vietnam War and its sister conflict in post-Taliban Afghanistan. Full Story »

Some products are so critical to life and living that their absence would cause tremendous harm to society. One such line of products are pharmaceutical medications aimed at combating the diseases that fall predominantly on the poor.

Oxfam – a non-governmental organisation dedicated to “finding lasting solutions to poverty and injustice” – has released a report, “Investing for Life” in which they claim to have identified the source of injustice and illness amongst the world’s poor. It is the world’s large pharmaceutical firms.

Oxfam claims that, by enforcing their intellectual property rights and charging high prices for their products, Big Pharma is undermining everyone’s universal “right” to health. Full Story »

You just heard a Ronald Reagan speech from a president of France. It was an almost out-of-body experience for all of us.

— Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) after French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke to a joint session of Congress, Nov. 7.

I have a partner in peace, somebody who has clear vision, basic values, who is willing to take tough positions to achieve peace. And so when you ask, am I comfortable with the Sarkozy government sending messages, you bet I’m comfortable.

— President Bush praising French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Nov. 7.

In view of everything we know now — the flawed intelligence, the miserable execution of the post-military phase — the French certainly were right.

— Rep. Tom Lantos, (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, who said that France was correct to refuse to back the war in Iraq.
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An influenza pandemic strikes the United States. Tens of thousands of people have died, hundreds of thousands of people are sick, and the pandemic shows no signs of abating. The first pandemic flu vaccines are finally coming out and several of your neighbors have been vaccinated by the county health department, namely the police officer, the guardswoman, the paramedic, and the pregnant woman, along with several children, all of whom are younger than three years old. But there’s not enough vaccine yet for your three children, ages 3 1/2, 6, and 10, or for you and your spouse. The health department is saying that there will be enough vaccine for all kids up to 18 years old in another few weeks, but they don’t know exactly when it’ll come because there’s 50 million people at higher risk and “more important” than your family is, and they don’t know how many doses of vaccine can be produced weekly. Full Story »

Hey, you know what? The United States appears to me to be a third world country with better plumbing. Don’t get me wrong, there are some very nifty things about America, but let’s face it: There are a lot of pretty, pretty people out there that are damaged and hurting on the inside; Lady Liberty, in my opinion, is no exception.

I’ll try to make this less depressing than it has to be, what with Dear Leader (as Pam Spaulding likes to call him) cutting Libby loose and all… Levity, anybody? Keep on reading. I promise it’s coming. Full Story »