Classy.

Leave it to the Japanese to make an iPhone app that allows for upskirts.

Anna Nicole Smith…murderer?

As if I needed another reason to like Harry Connick Jr. ( I didn’t, he’s awesome) He’s getting on people about Black Face.

The Jets trade for Braylon Edwards in an effort to increase their offense’s dropped passes and legal problems.

The new Pittsburgh-based medical drama Three Rivers tanked in the ratings on Sunday.  But which idiot at CBS decided to air the debut episode during the Steelers game?

The new health care system looks a lot like the old health care system.

Obama will give a major gay rights speech this weekend to distract everyone from the fact that he’s so far done nothing on the issue.

Good Morning Forbes.

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It’s foolish to think we can hold onto a majority by playing it safe and not getting anything done.  There is a whole lot of room to move between playing it safe and being crazy single-minded drones like Republicans.  No one is saying we should copy their MO, just a little of their conviction.

When we lose seats in 2010, as is highly likely, then we’ll all take to the blogs whining about how the Republicans are ramming stuff down our throats that we don’t like.  What the fuck are we doing now?

Ugh…you know, the truth is that though Democrats are supposed to be the liberal party, the party of opposition, they are not.  They truly are a hodgepodge of people who don’t like the modern Republican Party.  That doesn’t necessarily equal liberal or progressive.

So we have one party and a bunch of people who don’t like that party.  That’s it.

There are two things this brings to mind for me.  The first is the interview Bill Maher did with Bill Moyer a few weeks ago, where Moyer said that the reason Democrats can’t seem to accomplish things that have large public support (like meaningful health care reform) is because America is actually not a two-party democracy, it’s a one-party corporatocracy.  While we think we’re sending our representatives to Washington with our votes, our representatives think (correctly) that they’re actually being sent to Washington by the money they’ve raised from various corporations.  And because Democrats and Republicans get their money from the same corporations, they basically have the same non-progressive, status quo agenda once voted in, regardless of how they frame it in speeches.

Republicans are less hypocritical in this respect because conservatism by definition is keeping things as is, and Republicans are great at getting that done (hence their exclusion from the title of this post).  Democrats, on the other hand, have the extra hurdle of keeping things as is while making it look like they’re delivering on the change they promised.  Of course, there are always social issues that will genuinely get the support of one party over another; and for that reason alone our votes are still worth something.  But if the issue involves some large corporation’s bottom line– even for issues as grave as war– it’s almost always going to go whichever way Wall Street pushes it.

The other thing tigger500’s post brings to mind is a post by Matthew Yglesias a few weeks ago about how the prevailing moral value in Washington is cynical self-interest.  Yglesias writes:

For example, Senators who genuinely do believe that carbon dioxide emissions are contributing to a global climate crisis seem to think nothing of nevertheless taking actions that endanger the welfare of billions of people on the grounds that acting otherwise would be politically problematic in their state. In other words, they don’t want to do the right thing because their self-interest points them toward doing something bad. But it’s impossible to imagine these same Senators stabbing a homeless person in a dark DC alley to steal his shoes. And what’s more, the entire political class would be (rightly!) shocked and appalled by the specter of a Senator murdering someone for personal gain. Yet it’s actually taken for granted that “my selfish desires dictate that I do x” constitutes a legitimate reason to do the wrong thing on important legislation.

So basically you have a lot of politicians, Democrat and Republican, whose primary guiding value on every issue is whatever will help them get reelected.  Voting for health care reform may be a godsend to the millions of their constituents who are uninsured and underinsured and the millions more who are vulnerable to health-care-induced bankruptcy.  But if that means opening themselves up to attack in 2010 from a primary challenger who might run commercials labeling them a socialist or might put their picture up next to a potentially unpopular Obama, they won’t do it.

And if there’s any doubt that self-interest is the prevailing value in Washington, consider that 90% to 98% of House incumbents get reelected every term, which is among the highest incumbency rates in the world (over the last 20 years, the Senate has been between 75% and 96%).  There simply is nothing else that gets accomplished by Congress with that kind of bipartisan consistency.

With that said, Obama will get some version of health care reform passed this year, if for no other reason than because he’s gotten the insurance companies on board.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that he’s gotten the insurance companies on board, which no doubt means that somewhere there’s been a tradeoff where the American people are getting screwed at the expense of higher profits.  If Matt Taibbi’s enlightening and devastating Rolling Stone article is any indication, our government is currently fixing our broken health care system by putting lipstick on the pig and then forcing everyone to buy into it (two things Obama vehemently opposed during the campaign).

The public option has already been watered down because Republicans argued against it, saying it would provide Americans with better coverage at lower cost and thus force insurance companies to improve their services or go out of business.  Let me say that again.  The argument against the public option is that it would provide Americans with better coverage at lower cost.  Is there any question who our politicians really work for?

The bottom line is that there are certain very serious crises– like health care and global warming– that involve deeply entrenched corporate interests, and our government in its current state cannot fix them.  The inmates will never regulate the asylum (as we saw illustrated by last year’s financial collapse), especially if it means getting back in their cells and handing the keys over to the warden.

The maddeningly simple solution to all this is two-fold: campaign finance reform and congressional term limits. Campaign finance reform, if done properly, will take the corporate money out of politics.  It will ensure that our health care legislation will not be written by politicians whose campaigns are dependent upon funding from Aetna, Blue Cross, and Kaiser Permanente.  It will ensure that our global warming legislation is not sponsored by the good people at Exxon Mobil.  And it will ensure that our leaders in Washington don’t dedicate half their time and resources to raising money.

Congressional term limits will put a big dent in the plague of Washington self-interest.  It will ensure that all 535 members of Congress aren’t at all times facing a future reelection bid.  It will ensure that there are no nine-term 91-year-old U.S. Senators who are faced with the choice of getting reelected and rejoining lifelong colleagues back in Washington to work for another six years or going back home to West Virginia to die.  And it will ensure that things like morality and the greater good have a bigger say in our government, and that every decision Congress makes isn’t solely dependent on the individual fortunes of those voting.

Will campaign finance reform and congressional term limits solve all our government’s problems?  No.  We’ll think of new ones.  But the fact is, our political system is broken; it works reliably and efficiently for those in it, but not for the people it’s meant to serve.  Simply put, corporate money and unlimited term limits are cancers that infect everything our government does.  Unless we cut them out completely, the concerns of ordinary Americans will continue to be a distant third on Washington’s list of priorities.

POSTSCRIPT: Right now, in a case that has received very little media attention (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission), the Supreme Court is in the process of lifting the current restrictions on corporate spending in political elections.  Needless to say, this would pour gasoline on every single issue our country faces.  The corporate personhood argument being made by conservative justices is based on the belief that our founding fathers intended for corporations to have the same rights and privileges– including contributing to political campaigns– as individuals.  First, this entire argument is based not on any prior court decision or anything our founding fathers ever said, but on an off-the-record comment made by Chief Justice Morrison Waite in 1886.  Second, this is a case where legal theory pales in comparison to the stark reality of what a Biblical flood of special-interest money would do to our government.  Meanwhile, Justice Sonia Sotomayor– in one of her first significant actions on the Court– is challenging the entire foundation of corporate personhood law.  Unfortunately, she appears to be outnumbered.

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3. How Facebook taught me to fear and loathe Sarah Palin

It seemed so innocent when we were younger, didn’t it?

Christina Milian has a new song out…If you guessed that she talks about being better than everybody else and having haters…well then you listen to pop music, cause they all say the same thing.

Its a Ray Allen sneaker scavenger hunt!

Fox News is getting sued…a lot. It is awesome.

Much to the delight of old people, and chagrin of the young, Jay Leno’s show may (that’s a big “may”) do well.

Floyd Mayweather pulls out the racism card.

After weeks of being watered down and compromised to death, the latest version of health care reform could very easily make things worse for low-income workers.  Luckily, it’s looking like the Democrats won’t support it.

Chris Brown starts his 180 days of community service.

A.C. Slater is wearing lingerie for his new role on Nip/Tuck, and it’s every bit as terrifying as you could possibly imagine.

Barack Obama is wielding a lightsaber for some reason.

And in other Star Wars news, Stormtroopers at a bar discuss where they were on the Death Star’s 9/11.

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Real Music Lives…cause that Colbie Calliat is straight banging son!

Audrina Patridge. Dumb. Vapid. Half Naked…eating strawberries.  All is forgiven.

“Controversial” South African runner Caster Semenya has gone all “Jenny Jones makeover” on us, in an attempt to show she’s a woman.  Honestly, I think the drug test will help a lot more than some bangles and some make up…but maybe that’s just me.

The 7 greatest, most spastic Carlton dances.  I just made your life. You’re welcome.

Responding to the shortage of American babies, Katherine Heigl is adopting one from Korea.

Can’t find the porn you’re looking for on Google?  Microsoft wants you to take the Bing challenge.

Memo to Joe Wilson, the Republican congressman who yelled out “You lie!” in the middle of the president’s health care speech: STFU.

Republican state representative Michael Duvall– a married father of two– kills time before a legislative hearing by bragging about all the lobbyist pussy he’s pulling… not realizing that his mic is on.  Oops.

Yeah, so… bad day for Republicans.

Good Morning Forbes.

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Real life double-jointed Kama Sutra models Dancers Karina Smirnoff & Maksim Chmerkovskiy have broken up. We can only hope that the masterful hosting of Tom Bergeron can keep all of the DWTS stars together after this tragic incident.  I hear Chuck Liddell is taking it pretty hard.

That episode of the Tyra Banks show where she “keeps it real” came on…or comes on. Who cares. Tyra took out her weave and she proved what I’ve known all-along…She has a “five-head”. More surprising? her show is entering its 5th season.

The new wrinkle in the health care debate? Making you pay money if you don’t obtain insurance (under the new plan)

Hey look, someone has too much time on their hands and they made a  YouTube  music video using sound effects from the movie Hook.  Somewhere, Rufio is not smiling.

An 18 year old Nepalese kid, Milan Karki, has discovered a way to use human hair as a conductor for solar panels.  In other news, half of Hollywood walked down the street today…and they’ll get more publicity. I love the world.

Ludacris gets his Oprah on.  And you get a car!  And you get a car!

Stat guru Nate Silver catches the L.A. Times race-baiting on Obama’s poll numbers.

Best lecture ever: Ten things you didn’t know about orgasms.

Good Morning Forbes

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T-Pain himself(!) joins the cast of Auto-Tune the News.  Best. Episode. Ever.

A new blog collects photos of people seen in Walmart stores.

Ashley Dupree– Eliot Spitzer’s call girl– blogs about how much money she hasn’t made off the scandal.

Michael Vick will be eligible to play in Week 3.

How to steal 23 Macbook Pros, 14 iPhones, and 9 iPods in 31 seconds

Continuing America’s civilized debate on health care, a man at a rally gets his finger bitten off.

Remember that offensive 9/11 newspaper ad the World Wildlife Fund denied having anything to do with?  Somebody found the equally offensive TV ad they did that goes with it.  Oops.

And an inconvenient truth about terrorism: sometimes it works.

College Football starts…with a sucker punch.  I immediately thought of Chris Tucker in Friday. “You Got Knocked The Eff Out”

Speaking of college football.  Erin Andrews is back.  The pulse of America? “Why is she wearing so many clothes?”

Mike Ditka is up to his mustache in Lingerie Football League…equity. EQUITY! he bought into the league, sheesh.

Good Morning Forbes

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Bob called his finishing move “the inverted backwards blowjob”.  Quite frankly, I’m scared enough to never wrestle with him. (via Jocks & Balls)

An insightful review of Calvin Richardson’s covering of Bobby Womack songs

Good article on the Caster Semenya situation

So…Cash for Clunkers…did that work or not?

Recapping that whole Phoenix Coyotes attempt to move to Canada.

Mozilla discovers the reason people don’t want to upgrade to the new version of Firefox is porn.

Nope, Megan Fox isn’t the new Catwoman. Yet.

Republican chairman Michael Steele can’t explain why he’s in favor of Medicare but against government-run health insurance.

Good Morning Forbes.

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I’ve pretty much felt this way about Palin since last fall, when America was first introduced to her.  The morning that John McCain’s shocking vice presidential pick was announced, Palin– the first female VP pick since Geraldine Ferraro in 1984– gave a rousing speech to a rally in Ohio.  I thought, “Wow, this move is kind of brilliant.”  Five minutes later, after scanning her Wikipedia page, I thought, “Wow, this is going to backfire spectacularly.”  By the weekend, the news broke that her teenage daughter was pregnant by her high school dropout boyfriend.  And a fumbling response from the McCain/Palin camp promising a shotgun wedding by the spring signaled that the Palin circus was officially in town.

But two recent occurrences have led me to fear and loathe Palin even more.  Oddly, both occurred on Facebook.

The first was a status update that showed up in my news feed one morning about a month ago.  “Uncle So-and-So is a fan of Sarah Palin.”  I wiped the sleep from my eyes and blinked in disbelief.  I knew my uncle was a Republican, and I respected that.  He’s also a ridiculously smart guy who works high up in corporate America.  I think he’s even run for local office a few times, which makes him a better citizen than me.  But seeing that status update was like receiving news that your smart, successful uncle had suddenly joined a cult.

Later that afternoon, I checked my Facebook again.  “Uncle So-and-So voted ‘yes’ in the ‘Sarah Palin for President in the year 2012?’ poll.”  I blinked again.  It’s one thing to subscribe to her fan page, but president?  Before then, I believed that the only people who still thought Sarah Palin should be in possession of our nuclear codes were knuckle-dragging ideologues who cared more about keeping their guns than they did about preventing the entire country from looking like post-Katrina New Orleans.  But if someone like my uncle could support Palin, then America was in way bigger trouble than I thought.

The other recent event that shaped my opinion of Palin occurred earlier this weekend.  For the first time since resigning as governor, Sarah Palin issued a policy statement.  On her Facebook page.  Here’s what she had to say about the current debate on health care reform:

Who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

First, note the glaring hypocrisy of her not only bringing her baby into the discussion, but her “baby with Down Syndrome.”  She constantly drags her family into the spotlight and uses them for political purposes– especially that poor kid Trig– then complains when people talk about her family.  Pick a side, Sarah; either they’re in the discussion or they aren’t.

Second, note her cartoonish characterization of Congress’s very serious proposals.  According to her, health care reform equals an Obama “death panel” that will institute a system that’s “downright evil.”  If you’re looking for a reason why we can’t have a civil debate on health care, why town hall meetings have turned into mob scenes, and why seniors enjoying all the benefits of Medicare are the ones screaming loudest about the evils of government-run health care, look no further.  On one side, you’ve got Congress doing real work to improve our access to health care while still keeping the industry profitable, on the other side, you’ve got Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin telling people that we’re going to start gassing senior citizens and mentally handicapped babies.

Finally, note the fact that Palin’s “death panel” conclusion is a complete and fundamental misreading of the proposal in question.  As Politico’s Ben Smith notes, either she just doesn’t understand what she’s talking about or she’s purposely misleading people.  (I think it’s a little from column A and a little from column B):

The former governor is basing her claim on language in the House bill which cites “advance care planning consultation.”  As non-partisan sources note, the provision deals with medical practicioners helping individuals prepare living wills, powers of attorney and the like.  It’s a long ways from there to a “death panel” where bureaucrats decide who lives or dies.

So again we come back to the fact that there is a disturbingly large group of people in America who believe that Sarah Palin is the person who should be steering the ship, including my very smart, very much should-know-better uncle.  Specifically, there is a disturbingly large segment of the Republican Party who believes that experience and intelligence are irrelevant, and that anyone who can parrot the right conservative talking points is capable of running the nation.

Now, I have no worries whatsoever that Sarah Palin will ever become president or even win the Republican nomination.  I’m confident that no matter how large her ambition, there’s no chance she can hold up under the scrutiny of an extended nationwide campaign.  My concern is that there are still people in America– a lot of people, smart people– who care what she thinks.  It’s one thing to have an honest debate, it’s another thing to have to stop in the middle of an honest debate to discuss whether the moon is made of cheese.

So it’s time to draw a line.  You’re either with us or you’re with Sarah Palin.  If you show up to a town hall meeting shouting arguments you heard from Sarah Palin, expect to be ignored.  If you exercise your right to publicly support Sarah Palin, expect your friends and neighbors to exercise their right to talk behind your back.  And if I see you on Facebook subscribing to Sarah Palin’s fan page, expect to get some funny looks at the next family reunion.

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So you know how there’s all this chatter about the health care debate and you have no idea what anyone is talking about?

Curious which proposal will actually cover the 50 milllion uninsured? Which one will give White Republican men heart attacks by raising taxes? Which one might actually improve the health care you already got?

Right. Me too.

Well the Kaiser Family Foundation has created a new tool on its website that allows you to compare what the various health care proposals would actually do.

Word of warning – it’s still written in slight jargon.

Enjoy!

Compare Health Care Proposals.

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Photo Credit: BlackAmericaWeb.com

Tony Hansberry II, a 14-year-old kid, has already done more in his life than I have done in mine.

And I’m twice – TWICE – his age.

This is the kind of thing that can give a brother a complex.  You know, if I was insecure, or something (or remembering what I was doing at 14).  But then Young Tony is a cool Black kid who invented something. 

And not just anything.  Something pretty damn cool and useful:

Tony Hansberry II isn’t waiting to finish medical school to contribute to improved medical care. He has already developed a stitching technique that can be used to reduce surgical complications, as well as the chance of error among less experienced surgeons.

“I’ve always had a passion for medicine,” he said in a recent interview. “The project I did was, basically, the comparison of novel laparoscopic instruments in doing a hysterectomy repair.”

You would think the use of the words “laparoscopic instruments” or “hysterectomy” would be showing off.  But a paragraph later:

In April, the brilliant teen presented his findings at a medical conference at the University of Florida before an audience of doctors and board-certified surgeons.

I need to do something with my life. 

In all seriousness.  This is dope.  Would that we heard more stories about young Blacks doin stuff like this.

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