Medicare Advantage

I just got my packet from Blue Cross (Michigan) for my Medicare Advantage plan in 2015.  My premiums went down $2 (from $17.50 to $15.50) and my deductible went down (from $175 to $150).  So much for the Affordable Care Act destroying Medicare Advantage.  Another Republican zombie lie bites the dust.

Lynne Cheney's Legacy of Censorship

The mucking around in the history curriculum by the school board in Arvada, Colorado, is just  the same old pablum Lynne Cheney began pushing in the '90s and '00s (and still today).  The idea is that the purpose of teaching history should be to make the kids believe that America (i.e., the White Guys) never did anything wrong.  As a kid who went to school in the '50s and '60s in Wisconsin, I can tell you that we had pretty good public schools.  But we were pretty much taught the way Lynne Cheney wants.  When we found out how we'd been lied to all those years, it was a major contributor to the radicalization that happened in the '60s and '70s.  I'm happy to be American, but there is nothing wrong with learning the truth, warts and all.  What are all you conservatives afraid of?

This, of course, isn't Ms Cheney's only foray into censorship of ideas.  After 9/11, the group she co-founded--the American Council of Trustees and Alumni--tried to blacklist as un-American those who didn't sufficiently bow to the Bush/Cheney line, greasing the wheels for the misinformation that led to the Iraq War disaster.

It would be tough to be a parent today, worrying about what kind of nonsense these fringy conservative school boards are trying to force into the schools.

Quote of the Day

Jay Bookman blog on agc.com (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).  The entire post is worth a read.  The video he shows is quite comical!

"No, Holder wasn’t perfect in the role. No one is. Yes, a lot of anger and worse was aimed in his direction.

But let’s be honest. Nothing Holder said or did came close to justifying the disproportionate scale of vitriol against him. The free-floating paranoia that has come to define modern conservatism, and that for a variety of reasons focused on Holder as its target, existed long before he was appointed attorney general, and it will continue unabated after he is gone. Blaming him for creating it would be like blaming a lightning rod for creating lightning."

From the New Yorker

I like this!

Annual Repost

I intend to repost this quote every year about this time...just because I can:

"A civilization which for any reason puts a human life at a disadvantage; or a civilization which can exist only by putting human life at a disadvantage; is worthy neither of the name nor of continuance. And a human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who prefers that this should remain as it is, is a human being by definition only, having much more in common with the bedbug, the tapeworm, the cancer, and the scavengers of the deep sea."

James Agee,  Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

 

Sunday Randomness

Randoms thoughts as I sit idly watching football.

• It's a sad commentary on the state of today's television journalism that the most reliable news sources on cable are Al Jazeera America and Comedy Central.
• Lee Fang's Blog post  of September 12 on thenation.com gives us just one reason why this is true.  You can't trust the "experts" that are trotted out all over the TV news because they are swimming in the murk of undisclosed conflicts of interest.  Just follow the money.
• I see that George Zimmerman is still carrying a gun.  Don't you feel much safer knowing that?
• Did the Fox & Friends airheads really say--in regard to the Ray Rice elevator incident--that,"I think the message is, take the stairs."?  Yup, I guess they did.  Is anyone surprised?

Quote of the Day

"It’s comforting to have Dick Cheney around, so we can at least know what we definitely want to avoid."

--Gail Collins in today's column in The New York Times