Last Call

A pretty depressing story from right here in Cincy:  a 24-year old man is dead because without health insurance he couldn't afford antibiotics for an infected tooth.

A 24-year-old Cincinnati father died from a tooth infection this week because he couldn't afford his medication, offering a sobering reminder of the importance of oral health and the number of people without access to dental or health care.

According to NBC affiliate WLWT, Kyle Willis' wisdom tooth started hurting two weeks ago. When dentists told him it needed to be pulled, he decided to forgo the procedure, because he was unemployed and had no health insurance.

When his face started swelling and his head began to ache, Willis went to the emergency room, where he received prescriptions for antibiotics and pain medications. Willis couldn't afford both, so he chose the pain medications.

The tooth infection spread, causing his brain to swell. He died Tuesday. 

And yet that's the reality of the country we live in.  America is the richest, most advanced, most powerful country ever according to conservatives, and if you don't agree you hate America.  But at the same time, conservatives scream bloody murder that there's no way Americans can afford to help the least among us, because programs to do so immorally traps the nation's poor in unending poverty, where they are a drain on the "job creators".

Conservatives say only America can lead the world from a moral and military standpoint, American exceptionalism is our manifest destiny on the global stage.  And then they turn around and warn that we are a bankrupt, destitute, third-world socialist hellhole where the "misguided efforts" to "bribe" the weakest among us with government assistance is the only way a Democrat could ever get elected.

God wants Republicans in power, they say.  When a Democrat is elected, God hasn't failed, but the people have been fooled by the evil Socialist liberals.  America would be a shining utopia, and example to peoples across the planet, if we just got over our baser instincts to help the poor and simply left them to their own fate.

If that's confusing you, congratulations.  You have a conscience and are capable of both complex logic and compassion.  It also means you're probably not a Republican.  Here's the worst, most tragic part of Willis' death:

"People want to believe there's a safety net that catches all of these people, and there isn't," said Dr. Glenn Stream, president-elect of the American Academy of Family Physicians. He noted that it is often young men who are the most likely to lack health coverage.

Dr. Jim Jirjis, director of general internal medicine at Vanderbilt University, said people, like Willis, without access to care often die of conditions that were much more common decades ago.

"He [Willis] might as well have been living in 1927," Jirjis said. "All of the advances we've made in medicine today and are proud of, for people who don't have coverage, you might as well never have developed those."

There are a number of free dental clinics in operation around the country, where dentists volunteer to provide care to those without health insurance. But even if Willis had access to a free dental clinic, Stream said he still may not have been able to get the care he needed for his infection. "The wait is often months at these clinics, and this young man died within two weeks of his problem," Stream said. 

According to the article one in three Americans forgo dental checkups because they can't afford them.   Even if you have dental insurance, you have to take time off from work to go to the dentist, and the combination of the expense and lost work time puts even simple dental care out of reach for some 100 million Americans.

And yet the richest country on Earth can't afford to help its own poor.  There's something deeply wrong with that.

Chart Of The Day

Republicans might not want to bring up the issue of Black unemployment, ever.  According to the Right Wing Noise Machine, President Obama is the worst President ever and if we Black people weren't such dumb mofos, we'd vote for Reaganesque Republicans.  Of course as Steve M. points out, Morning in America was a pretty horrific deal for African-Americans.

Black unemployment surged to 16.7% in August, its highest level since 1984...

Obvious point: who was president in 1984? The guy Obama's harshest critics revere above all other demigods. The guy whose view of government Obama has either accepted voluntarily or had forced on him by those same critics -- your choice as to which interpretation you believe.

Also, let's point out that the country overwhelming re-elected Reagan in 1984, despite black unemployment being over 20% for years.  Also please note that Reagan made black unemployment significantly worse when he took office in his first term (1980-1984) while Obama has actually kept black unemployment relatively stable around 15%.  That's not a bragging right by any means, but it beats the 14% to 22% jump under Reagan, yes?

Hell, under President Obama, white unemployment has gotten measurably better since the Bush crash, especially in the last year.  I don't know why Republicans would be complaining, they should be cheering.

Goodbye Girls: The Moose-ical

It's now gotten to the point where Republicans are officially sick of Sarah Palin.

It seems Sarah Palin has worn out her welcome with Republicans. An astounding 71% of GOP voters say they don't want Palin to run for president, according to a new poll by FOX News, with 25% supporting a bid and 4% unsure.

The numbers are brutal for Palin, who was long regarded as a potential frontrunner for the 2012 nomination. Even among Tea Party-identifying Republicans she fares poorly: 68% say she shouldn't run versus only 28% who say she should. The numbers aren't that far off from the general electorate, 74% of whom don't want her to run versus 20% who do. Outside of Tea Partiers, more than 70% of every demographic broken out in the poll's crosstabs -- men, women, white voters, non-white voters, voters with college degrees, voters without college degrees -- are against a Palin run.

Over two-thirds of Tea Party Republicans don't want Palin to even run for President right now.  Game over for the Grifter, folks.  Unfortunately, Palin has spawned a Clown Car full of even crazier candidates for 2012.  One of the nutbars will win.  Despite Palin saying "there's room for more candidates" in the race last night, she will not be one of them.

But she sure doesn't mind taking people's money to pretend otherwise, eh?

Epic Win: Timmy's Stuck Under Debris Edition

Santa Paula, California (CNN) -- When disaster strikes and people are buried in rubble, there's often no better search tool than a dog's nose.

It's a valuable asset that has already been utilized several times this year. Trained search dogs, along with their human handlers, have provided help in high-profile disasters such as the Japan earthquake in March and the Joplin, Missouri, tornado in May.

A woman realized the potential for unwanted animals and the need of people at times of disaster. For her, the choice was simple. She decided to fill two needs and start a project that would benefit everyone. Now, thanks largely to her, there are 250 units of dog and handler ready to deploy at any time. She feels this is about half of what we need, because while they are enough to cover any one disaster, there would not be enough if more than one major disaster happened at the same time.

Eric Gray's dog, Riley, was a former shelter dog rejected by two foster homes because he was deemed too hyper to be a pet. But his search-and-rescue training "gave him a purpose," Gray said, adding that Riley has become an important partner in his efforts as a firefighter.
"(Riley) was able to focus the incessant drive ... that he had, and (he was given) an opportunity to really blossom as a dog rather than just being handed from home to home," Gray said. The two recently helped with search-and-rescue efforts in Haiti and Japan.

Veteran handler Deborah Tosh searched the World Trade Center with her dog, Abby, after the September 11 attacks.

"When I rounded that corner and was a little overwhelmed by the enormity of it, Abby had just the opposite effect," Tosh said. "She started pulling on the leash, saying: 'Great! We finally get to go to work. Let's go.' ... She got very excited."

Dogs aren't stupid. They know they are saving people, the same people who rejected them. They are man's best friend even when man treats them poorly or neglects them. This is why I usually prefer the company of animals to that of people.

The Netflix Conundrum: Seeing Starz

Starz will be pulling its content from Netflix. That's a mighty blow and the stock has dropped in wake of the announcement.  Starz has remained relatively mum on the subject, which makes me wonder if they are still holding out for their preferred outcome.

This could mean a lot of things. It could be that Netflix has decided to not remain exclusive with Starz (rumors have flown about HBO trying to horn in on the action many months ago).  It could be that Starz wasn't getting enough money and a struggling Netflix couldn't pay what they wanted.  This could be related to the split of downloaded vs. DVD content.

One thing is for sure, however.  Neither company is going away anytime soon, so this is just a standard hiccup in the normal business of things, just with some awesome potential.

The Once And Future Dr. King

Some Classic Roy Edroso here on the GOP's new Marxist bogeyman:  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  No, seriously.  Apparently having a black President and Dr. King finally getting his own memorial in Washington DC has broken conservative reality badly enough to the point where Dr. King is now Bill Ayers or something. To whit:

A longer-lived staple of conservative anti-racist cred has been their effusions over Martin Luther King, Jr. Yes, back in the old days they hated King ("For years now, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his associates have been deliberately undermining the foundations of internal order in this country" -- National Review. More here!). But when things got a little hot for them, bigotry-wise, they shifted to declaring King a good conservative; on every MLK Day, in and among their many confused tributes, you'll see many that insist King's vision of a color-blind society is exactly what conservatives have been trying to do all along. Then they grab parasols and handkerchiefs, burst into "When The Saints Go Marchin' In," and dance around. It's a grisly sight.

But then we get this piece from the Moonie Times (Title, "Martin Luther King's Mixed Legacy".  Yeah, if you're a student of the struggle for civil rights in the 20th century, wrap your head around how Dr. King broke even at best.)

King’s leftism ultimately betrayed his original civil rights creed. His call for a color-blind society was contradicted by his multicultural progressivism. Affirmative action, racial quotas, government handouts to minorities - these policies directly violate the basic principle of equality under the law. Contemporary Americans are not judged as individuals, but as members of a racial group, gender or ethnicity. This is a perverse inversion of the very kind of racialism prevalent in the Old South. More than 40 years after his death, we are further away from being a genuine meritocracy. Victimology and racial set-asides dominate large swathes of American life, from university admissions and government bureaucracies to big business and construction. The country has slowly Balkanized, splintering along ethnic lines. 

And this "Well, us white people will always resent you colored folks until you get over this whole slavery and reparations thing and just accept the fact we've got a 150 year head start on you in this country and always will" thing is standard boilerplate Black Republican nonsense, but rarely has the vitriol of (insert liberal here) been applied to Dr. King.  But, as Roy points out:

But conservatism has gotten crazy enough that you can try something like that, it seems. Any day now we'll see them burning effigies of Alexander Hamilton because he sold us out to the mercantilists (substitute "Jews" in some jurisdictions). Or maybe Lincoln -- I mean, what was that Civil War about? Statism and giving black people a new bunch of so-called "rights"! The boys at Free Republic have been all over that shit for years; they used to be considered fringe, but compared to what's coming, they're Rockefeller Republicans.  

At this point, when will the Tea Party Republicans start running on the platform to remove the King Memorial and to get rid of MLK Day in January because the idea of holding King in high regard itself becomes another anathema, just like old, evil liberal socialist tropes like "Teachers are good people" and "Infrastructure helps all Americans" and "Science is America's way forward."

Or, you know, like "Presidents deserve basic respect."  Liberalism is an idea, and hey, you can destroy ideas all day long, folks.  Republicans do it daily. 

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Tropical Storm Lee could dump up to 20 inches of rain on parts of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast this weekend.
• President Obama has asked the EPA to reconsider smog regulations citing the economic and political cost.
• Renewed fighting between Sudanese and South Sudanese forces could reignite a deadly civil war.
• New Jersey's Chris Christie is the latest Republican Governor to say that Eric Cantor and the House GOP shouldn't play politics with needed disaster relief money.
• More arrests in Britain were made this week in connection with hacker groups Anonymous and LulzSec.

Last Call

August 2011 was our best month yet here at ZVTS, 14k+ visits and just shy of 20k page views.  Honestly when I started this blog, I was happy to get 1,000 a views a month.  I want to thank Bon The Geek and all of you for being here, and we'll keep up the place heading into 2012.

You guys kick ass.

Eye Of The Hurri-Cantor, Part 2

You know those shiny foil emergency blankets that have the thickness of like .01 microns?  Still more resilient to potential damage than Eric Cantor's ego.

Progressive groups organizing a rally at the same Richmond-area hotel where House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) was holding an event Wednesday were abruptly kicked out of the hotel and told by hotel management to remain off of its property during Cantor’s event.

Cantor held an Advisory Council gathering, closed to the media but open to constituents who registered ahead of time, at the Holiday Inn Koger Center in Richmond. A coalition of progressive Virginia organizing groups — Progress Virginia, OurDC, and Virginia Organizing — had booked rooms and a separate ballroom in the hotel to hold a “jobs rally” countering Cantor’s event. According to organizers, the groups planned to invite Cantor to attend their rally after his own event, in the hope that he would listen to their concerns regarding job creation and unemployment.

But just hours before the events were set to begin, the Holiday Inn canceled the groups’ ballroom and room reservations and ordered the groups to remain off of hotel property during Cantor’s meeting. According to organizers, hotel management falsely accused them of smoking in their rooms and used that as justification to cancel their reservations. A representative of Holiday Inn who only agreed speak on the condition of anonymity, however, said the hotel was seeking to avoid confrontation between the progressive groups and those attending the Cantor event. He would not comment on whether the hotel had any communications with Cantor or his staff regarding the progressive groups. 

To recap, Eric Cantor cannot be approached by American voters who A) disagree with him respectfully, B) are exercising their right to assemble peacefully, guaranteed by the Constitution, and C) actually want to hear what the Republican jobs plan is.  He has them run off and claims plausible deniability.

People like that get thrown out for daring to question the guy.  Meanwhile, angry Republicans go up to President Obama, and he actually answers their questions.  Not only does he do this because he is President of all America, not just the people who voted for him, but he presented the facts to counter her supposition.

Which one is a real leader in American politics?

Turn On The Lights, Watch The Roaches Scatter Part 78

The Obama administration is finally dropping the hammer on the big mortgage banks.

The federal agency that oversees the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is set to file suits against more than a dozen big banks, accusing them of misrepresenting the quality of mortgage securities they assembled and sold at the height of the housing bubble, and seeking billions of dollars in compensation.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency suits, which are expected to be filed in the coming days in federal court, are aimed at Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, among others, according to three individuals briefed on the matter.

The suits stem from subpoenas the finance agency issued to banks a year ago. If the case is not filed Friday, they said, it will come Tuesday, shortly before a deadline expires for the housing agency to file claims.

The suits will argue the banks, which assembled the mortgages and marketed them as securities to investors, failed to perform the due diligence required under securities law and missed evidence that borrowers’ incomes were inflated or falsified. When many borrowers were unable to pay their mortgages, the securities backed by the mortgages quickly lost value.

Fannie and Freddie lost more than $30 billion, in part as a result of the deals, losses that were borne mostly by taxpayers.

So yeah, this is pretty much a nuclear missile right at Wall Street.  The question is what's in the payload, serious legal material or a dud.  If the Obama administration is serious about suing the big banks to the point of then forcing a massive settlement that absolves the banks of any more legal indemnity for a mere pennies on the dollar, then we're absolutely in for another financial crisis.

On the other hand, stockholders are going to ream the big banks over these lawsuits, and the banks themselves are going to certainly need something of another bailout.  Maybe an orderly Plan N is in the works to break the banks up.  Or maybe it's the final piece of the puzzle to unleash TARP 2/QE 3.

It'll depend on the lawsuit, but bank stocks are probably not going to be doing very well come, say Wednesday.

[UPDATE] The hammer, she is large and is heavy like one hundred billion dollars.

The agency said in its filings that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought $6 billion in mortgage-backed securities from Bank of America; $24.8 billion from Merrill Lynch, which Bank of America took over in 2008; $3.5 billion from Citigroup; $11.1 billion from Goldman Sachs and $4.9 billion from Barclays. The suits also cover $2 billion in securities from Nomura, $33 billion from JPMorgan, $883 million from First Horizon, $14.2 billion from Deutsche Bank, $14.1 billion from Credit Suisse, $1.3 billion from Societe Generale (GLE) and $6.2 billion from HSBC.

The government would like that money back, please. Now. Thanks.  Not in that list, Wells Fargo, which may actually be the only megabank left in America after the smoke clears.

This Week's WTH: Felony Lunch Money Theft

DEXTER, Mo. (AP) — Authorities in the southeast Missouri town of Dexter are investigating after hackers were able to access Dexter School District money through a bank account and steal some of those funds.

The Dexter Daily Statesman (http://bit.ly/olMc40 ) reports that the school district's database did not appear to be corrupted, so officials believe the breach was "within the banking industry."

Nice fast move blaming it on the banks. It may be right, but it sure sounds like a scramble to place blame to me. Meanwhile, we'd better hope this was a child or the nature of crime could mean a whole lot of time.

Seagal Claims No Puppy Harmed

In response to claims that he killed a family dog while filming his reality show, Steven Seagal has contacted a lawyer.  TMZ ran this update:

Steven Seagal claims NO PUPPY was murdered during the Arizona raid he participated in earlier this year ... and says he's "outraged" by the false allegation.

Seagal just released a statement saying, "I’ve been called a lot of things in my career, some of them not so kind. But to be labeled an animal abuser is beyond the pale and that is simply a role I will not accept."

TMZ broke the story ... Jesus Llovera has taken legal action against Seagal over the March incident -- alleging the actor crashed a tank into his property ... and someone involved in the raid shot his 11-month old puppy. Llovera was suspected of running a cockfighting farm on his property ... allegations which he has denied.

Seagal disputes the puppy charges... but doesn't deny anything else.  Not sure what to think about that.  If it comes out he did, at this point that could be the PR stinker that sinks his floundering career.

Dressed To The Nines

The White House is now freely admitting 9% plus unemployment will remain well into 2012, which, well, anybody paying attention could have told you.

Obama's budget office initially calculated its economic forecast based upon data available through June. Even that data presaged an 8.8 percent average unemployment rate in 2011 and an 8.3 percent average rate next year. But the mid-session review got delayed, and when the Office of Management and Budget revised it to incorporate the data through the end of August, the picture became much gloomier. Unemployment will average 9.1 percent this year, and 9.0 percent next year, OMB concluded, and won't dip below 7 percent until 2015 at the earliest.

The revised figures "reflect the substantial amount of economic turbulence over the past two months," OMB says, triggered by the European debt crisis, the earthquake in Japan, congressional brinkmanship over the debt ceiling among others. They also take into account the fact that GDP growth in the first half of fiscal year 2011 turned out to be significantly lower than originally thought.

Despite these and other setbacks, "we are not forecasting a double-dip recession," Katharine Abraham, a member of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters Thursday.

The report does not incorporate the impact of Obama's yet-to-be-unveiled jobs plan which, if enacted, would likely alter near-term unemployment and fiscal figures. 

So yes, look for Republicans to do everything they can to block a jobs program.  Republicans want 9% unemployment and they want voters to blame President Obama, period.  That's kind of the other no-brainer in this report, that the GOP believes they have nothing to gain from any assistance to the economy.

Well, until the next Republican President, that is.

Liberating Libya, Part 3

The Qaddafi Radio Resistance Hour keeps playing in Tripoli, but nobody seems to know where the show is being broadcast from.

Muammar Gaddafi, driven into hiding by his foes, on Thursday urged his supporters to fight on, even as Libya's new interim rulers met world leaders to discuss reshaping a nation torn by 42 years of one-man rule and six months of war.

"Let it be a long battle. We will fight from place to place, from town to town, from valley to valley, from mountain to mountain," Gaddafi said in his message.

"If Libya goes up in flames, who will be able to govern it? Let it burn. They don't want to rule Libya. They cannot rule it as long as we are armed. We are still armed. We will fight in every valley, in every street, in every oasis, and every town."

He added: "How can we give ourselves up again? Are we women surrendering ourselves to our husbands or what?"

He gave no indication of where he was in his audio remarks.

It's occurred to me that Qaddafi is literally phoning it in at this point, which would be funny if people weren't dying in Libya still and Tripoli wasn't turning into a humanitarian disaster zone with pro-Qaddafi forces cutting off water in the city.

I'm wondering what it's going to take to get some help into there.

Giving Them The Business End

We keep hearing from Republicans that "Obama regulations and high taxes are destroying America's small businesses and jobs!" and repeat it as a mantra, which largely goes unchallenged by the "liberal" media.  When asked for proof, Republicans usually just go SHUT UP CUT TAXES NOW and cover their ears.  McClatchy finally got around to asking small business owners if regulations and taxes were putting them out of business.

They said "no."

McClatchy reached out to owners of small businesses, many of them mom-and-pop operations, to find out whether they indeed were being choked by regulation, whether uncertainty over taxes affected their hiring plans and whether the health care overhaul was helping or hurting their business.

Their response was surprising.

None of the business owners complained about regulation in their particular industries, and most seemed to welcome it. Some pointed to the lack of regulation in mortgage lending as a principal cause of the financial crisis that brought about the Great Recession of 2007-09 and its grim aftermath.

Hey wait a minute, it's like there's another cause out there or something.

Then there's Rip Daniels. He owns four businesses in Gulfport, Miss.: real estate ventures, a radio station and a boutique hotel/bistro. He said his problem wasn't regulation.

"Absolutely, positively not. What is choking my business is insurance. What's choking all business is insurance. You cannot go into business, any business — small business or large business — unless you can afford insurance," he told Biloxi's Sun Herald.

Since 2008, Daniels has opened one business and expanded another, hiring as many as 15 people thanks to lower labor costs and an abundance of overqualified job candidates. He credits the federal stimulus effort with helping to keep some smaller firms afloat.

"It allowed those folks to spend and have money and pay for the essentials," said Daniels, whose business pays corporate taxes. He grudgingly supports closing some business tax deductions to reduce the federal budget deficit.

"Who wants to pay more? I certainly don't. I want to pay my fair share, and I do," Daniels said, adding that he wouldn't resist loophole closures to cut deficits.

Gosh, don't free market businesses provide insurance?  And here's a guy saying yes, Obama's "failed" stimulus saved businesses.  On top of that, he wants to close business tax loopholes.  And he's saying that because right now it's an employer's market:  he's got a number of highly qualified candidates to choose from.

It's like President Obama knew what he was doing with the stimulus plan, and that small business owners really do want to hire.  It's craaaaaaaaazy.