Baucus Tells Health Insurers to Shut Up

"We cannot allow government officials to target individuals or companies because they do not like what they have to say," McConnell said. "Is this what we believe as a Senate -- that this body should debate a trillion-dollar health care bill that affects every American while using the powerful arm of government to shut down speech?"

more by Mitch McConnell - 13 hours ago - Huffington Post

Hmmm.

Falling Into Solipsism

gre general test and advanced psychology test and midterms two of them on one day and tons of homework and lab and people wonder why i don't have time and when will i start to work and yet i feel i am not doing as much as everybody else is somehow and i'm preparing applications to between 10 and 30 schools and i can't decide which ones and i'm feeling pressure and frustration and no right to feel pressured as my life is so damn easy and everyone else works hard and yet am i am working hard did i not do a thousand thousand different things and yet i'm a waste and i can't even write this thing legibly my writing sucks an admissions question asks for an essay about your two proudest accomplishments and i can't think of any accomplishment that a i have and b is worth being proud of. maybe i'm proud of graduating college but this is vile why be proud of that a it was easy and b is it even a good thing? to be proud of the number of times i've been laid, should i put that on my resume? or the books i've read or the movies i've watched or the blog entries i've written or the music i've heard or the opinions i have. what is me? or, more grammatically, what am i, or more accurately, what is me? to be proud of my puny vocabulary (somewhat expanded by recent studying)? to be proud of my selfishness, my total lack of empathy? to be proud of the weight i can lift or the miles i can run? what have i done? what have i done? to be proud of the length of my hair or the slogan on my t-shirt? the food that i eat or my hallucinations of ontological rationality? tell me. there is nothing when evaluated dispassionately but the people in it seem to feel something and it pushes them on. life looks like a don't think just do kind of adventure. does it make sense? no, hell no. but just do it and it works. success is the fruit of the stupidity vine. so is winning the game equal to giving in?

life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. - shakespeare in macbeth

spumy. what a word.

teacher in texas suspended for including cormac mccarthy's child of god in a ninth grade reading list. parents complained because of the necrophilia. these christian parents ought to remember their own child of god and the graphic displays of his crucifixion. why don't they censor that? and if you think it somehow is different because of some magical religious stuff, not this passage from steinke's jesus saves. "when she was younger she dreamed of christ's body. the holes in his palms and between the tendons of his feet, but not only the gross parts, the sexy parts too, his flat stomach, even his cock". there is a lot of competition in the market for "exploring the darkest limits of human degradation".

remember how my mind puts songs with boys? so "i wanna make love to ya, baby" is in one of my classes. and i met "dream boy", but last i checked he was taken. and i definitely noticed a trend where i want specifically what i can't have, but when i have something that reduces the need exponentially.

(me too)

talk to me people

Title 18. § 1461. Mailing obscene or crime-inciting matter

Pleasant little passage, section 1461. Makes for some fascinating reading, perhaps poetic, what with its repetitive stanzas beginning with "Every", its mini refrains "where, or how, or by whom" and "drug, or medicine, or thing". Until one realizes that this is U.S. law. I'm not sure what the legal status of this law is, though. I wonder if the Supreme Court has made it a de facto anachronism with decisions such as Roe v. Wade. §1461, as written, says that anything "indecent, immoral, obscene, or filthy" is unmailable and makes the sender and receiver subject to fines or imprisonment. Who decides what "article, matter, thing, device, or substance" will fall into the vague list of adjectives the code provides? Until checked by the courts, that is the job of the Judicial Officer for the United States Postal Service. He decides. Perhaps Boticelli's Birth of Venus should be contraband? Or maybe James Patterson's latest bestseller? If you take delivery of a daily paper via USPS, you could even be arrested with your coffee should anything indecent happen in the news.

We are living in a free country. Go back to worrying about the State Children's Health Insurance Program Bush vetoed because "Poor Kids First". What?! Poor kids first? Why on earth does such a motto make the least bit of sense to anyone? Poor kids first? Poor kids equal, I say! Poor kids are important. Rich kids are important. Middle-income kids are important. They are all, together, going to be the future. We should care for all of them. (I am not pushing a health care program here, just a perspective). Why do poor kids have a right to be put first, ahead of kids born to higher-income families? What crime have middle-income kids committed to make them less worthy than the country's poorest kids? Is having two hard-working parents who struggle to put food on the table, and succeed, struggle to put a roof over their children's' heads, and succeed, struggle to buy clothing for their children, and succeed, but have little left over for health insurance suddenly something to be ashamed of? Are these children to be denied health care because of the sweat and dedication of their parent? Can we in good conscious reward the poor, "Poor Kids First", while we punish middle-income kids by making them "Second Class Middle-Income Kids" who can't get into the Poor Kids program, but also can't afford private health insurance like their more fortunate cousins?


Origin of the dollar sign. A mystery. Rand suggests the sign of the dollar $ is the monogram of our country, the U of United superimposed upon the S of States. That sign on the "fat pig-like creature in all the cartoons" is our sign, debased.

Gabe Nevin in Paranoid Park , one of this week's features at the New York Film Festival.

Attack on Freedom: Hell is Other People

The Rabbi came into my room 3 days in a row now. Uninvited. Just got a key from the landlord and marched in. Opened my closet, and looked around. I inquired as to whether he has taken anything of mine. He answered in the negative, but added that he had thrown out something that he found under my bed. I asked what that might have been, and he replied that it is disgraceful to talk about it, that my room lacks the "look" of a yeshiva, that I can't possibly understand a Tosfos if I read secular books, and that I shouldn't allow my corruption to spread to the other guys in the apartment. I responded that my intention was never to influence others or entice them to sin. He said there are guys who wouldn't read these things, but will if I put it under their faces. I tried to explain that the inside of my closet is not, under normal circumstances, under anyone else's face unless they have violated my space. He didn't want to discuss it. Told me to gather all my books and hide them where no one will see them. He did offer to pay for what he took, at least (v'heishiv es hag'zeila asher gazahl).

My best guess is that the book he tossed as objectionable was a collection of plays by existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964 "for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age." Sartre refused to accept the prize for "personal and objective reasons". The collection previously in my possession included No Exit, a scene from hell; The Flies, the story of Orestes and Electra's quest to avenge the death of their father Agamemnon; Dirty Hands, a political drama about an assassination; and The Respectful Prostitute, about a black man framed for a white man's crime.

I imagine it was this last that drew the Rabbi's ire for its uncouth maintenance of the word prostitute in the title. Though the story concerns itself with the universal values of freedom and cruelty, and is far from vulgar, any author who could use this word is assuredly incapable of writing anything but trash. Nachon? Ideas, the spirit of freedom, and the quest for truth just doesn't jive in haredi society. Note, I hate bashing people like this, but I am upset about a personal afront.

My problem is not that he disapproves, or wants to run his yeshiva a certain way. That's ok, but deal with it like a mentsch. Discuss with me what problems you have; we can agree to disagree or maybe compromise. Or maybe I'll have to accede, or maybe you'll convince me, but at least we will understand and maybe even respect each other. And that way I would learn something: it can be an educational experience, instead of a display of bigotry.