It begins...

Few weeks back we made sport of the Georgia state senate for passing a bill banning microchip implantation without prior consent. You may remember it as part of our Mock The South For Any And All Reasons series. Well it turns out that perhaps we were too hasty in our giggling, snorting, and pointing. You see, the Georgia lawmakers blinkered fear on UN black helicopters, microchip implants, and Muslims in the White House may have prevented an epidemic. Well, if anyone actually had microchip implants. Let me explain.

A British scientist says he is the first man in the world to become infected with a computer virus.

Dr Mark Gasson from the University of Reading contaminated a computer chip which was then inserted into his hand. The device, which enables him to pass through security doors and activate his mobile phone, is a sophisticated version of ID chips usedto tag pets.

In trials, Dr Gasson showed that the chip was able to pass on the computer virus to external control systems. If other implanted chips had then connected to the system they too would have been corrupted, he said.

I think you see where this is going. Bible Shit. 666. The End Times. One of the things that can be easily interpreted as being the loosely defined Mark of the Beast. Not only are these microchip implants against what God wants, assuming God is a dowdy technophobe, like we always assume he is, but now they can carry viruses much like we can carry viruses... turning doors and mobile phones against us. The beginnings of the robot war.

I always knew doors would be the first to turn on us. One of man's oldest friends, now an enemy. It's the hinges, I never trusted the hinges. The locking mechanisms always seemed a bit evil as well. I'm not surprised about the cell phones, they've already been trying to kill us with the brain tuor causing radiation.

But there we are: the world's first man infected by a computer virus and virus carrying microchip implants. If Satan is a hacker, this is how he's going to get us all. We all wear his "mark", naively hinking that this will make our lives easier. Beelzebub hacks the global mainframe, turning doors, cell phones, credit card swiping spots at grocery stores, and EZ Pass lanes against us. Robot War and Biblical Armageddon rolled into one. Do you see how I've combined these fears? If I could only find a way to work in zombies.....

So a hearty apology to Georgia. You weren't just baselessly reacting to imaginary fears. You had the foresight to recognize this problem. By the way: The South being ahead of the curve on an issue of technology? Sign of the Apocalypse. I'm just sayin'...

In Other News, the World Ends Tomorrow

When Matthew and I predicted that the Large Hadron Collider was actually an instrument designed to murder God and end the world, we were derided as clueless fools. Come tomorrow, my friends, the shoe will be on the other foot. Well, actually, the shoe won't be anywhere. Neither will the foot for that matter. But I digress...

Two beams of protons began 10 days ago to speed at high energy in opposite directions around the 27-kilometer (17-mile) tunnel under the Swiss-French border at Geneva.

The beams have been pushed to 3.5 trillion electron volts, the highest energy achieved by any physics accelerator — some three times greater than the previous record.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, plans to start trying Tuesday morning to use the powerful superconducting magnets to force the two beams to cross, creating collisions and showers of particles.

So that's that. Dogs and cats, just before being wiped from existence, will most likely be found living together. I wish I could say it's been nice knowing you, but most of you people are assholes and I lack sufficient evidence to support any claim suggesting the universe won't be better off without us. If you'll permit me a small pun, godspeed, creation.

The final compromise

Well, to the surprise of no one, Democrats huddled together, thought things through, and came to the conclusion that once again weakness should rules the day and 4 Senators should be allowed to strongarm 56. Yes, the public option is finally out. Oh, they'll claim it wasn't abandoned and that it's still in there, somewhere, and you just have to squint, tilt your head, unfocus your eyes, and believe, then you'll see it. So what's in the deal?

As has been widely reported, one of the trade-offs will be to extend a version of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan to consumers in the exchanges. Insurance companies will have the option of creating nationally-based non-profit insurance plans that would offered on the exchanges in every state. However, according to the aide, if insurance companies don't step up to the plate to offer such plans, that will trigger a national public option.

Beyond that, the group agreed--contingent upon CBO analysis--to a Medicare buy in.

That buy-in option would initially be made available to some uninsured people aged 55-64 in 2011, three years before the exchanges open. For the period between 2011 and 2014, when the exchanges do open, the Medicare option will not be subsidized--people will have to pay in without federal premium assistance--and so will likely be quite expensive, the aide noted. However, after the exchanges launch, the Medicare option would be offered in the exchanges, where people could pay into it with their subsidies.

There's more, but that's largely the meat of it. A public option trigger. A mish-mash of national non-profit plans administered by private insurance. Some form of Medicare for the 55-64 set.

Problems? Well, the Medicare buy-in, is pretty much for Medicare in name only and not the real thing. They were unable to expand Medicaid. The public option is in there so people can point at it and say "Look!", but it will be in a form that will not only not be useful if it was enacted, but could never really be triggered. Finally, the "national non-profits" will be run by national for-profits who are the big, giant problem that this health reform was supposed to fix in the first place.

S0, mediocrity wins the day. The grand plan to move our health care system from a 3 out of 10 to a 4 out of 10 is scrapped to just try to make it a 3.1 or, more likely, a 3.09. As more details come out, actual specifics are leaked, and the CBO gives them their "this saves a dollar" cover, we'll likely find out how bad this actually is and all the loopholes that exist. But, for now, it looks as if this is pretty much on the same level of reform as the bill was with a utterly neutered public option that was previously in the bill. Once again, things seemed to have been negotiated on the basis of "looking like you're doing something" as everyone pretends that making a bill worse, arcane, and more confusing to placate 4 people who can't string together a coherent thought or honest statement on health care is a grand achievement. Twas ever thus. So get happy, the last big disappointment and compromise is finally over. *sniff* I'm going to miss getting mad over this stuff.

Welcome back, this is what vengeful Indian spirits have cursed us with

Ah, dear readers, we're back from the extended eating contest/holiday that we know as Gluttony & Genocide Day, but the rest of the world celebrates/rues as the day England banished all it's weird, buckle-hatted religious fuckers to a land so far away that they could never harm/annoy another civilized soul. And after we come back from celebrating America's earliest traditions of viewing 10 pound weight gains over a 4 day period as a small victory, how is it that America repays us? By cursing us with the start of the Senate's "debate" on health care. Woe be unto us, for we are the damned.

Debate is to begin Monday morning on the measure to overhaul the US health care system, at an estimated cost of 848 billion dollars through 2019, but a final Senate vote on the bill is not expected for a month at the earliest.

The administration hailed the November 22 vote that cleared the way for debate to begin, but Senate Majority Harry Reid faces a tough challenge constructing a coalition strong enough to get the bill out of the Senate.

He can count on almost unanimous opposition to the measure from Republicans, one of whom has vowed a "holy war" against the bill.

A month...at the least. I can barely muster the will to live. But at least we get a month of the media pretending that some form of "debate" is going on in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body, instead of what's really going on: 56 Senators being held up by a filibuster until 4 other Senators have gotten their name in the press enough and sufficiently weaken the bill enough so that they are judged to have contributed "something important" by the media, all the while Republicans waste time by offering up pointless, regressive amendments that have no chance of passing and alternately making pointless pleas that we should just start this whole process over.

In the end, after some severely compromised and bastardized version of this bill passes, Democrats will come out to tell us that looking at this bill is like looking into the smiling face of God, while Republicans will herald the end of freedom and democracy. We, on the other hand, will just add health care to the list we've compiled entitled "Things the Legislative Branch is Not Adult Enough to Handle". The list should simply say 'everything', but legally we're not allowed to write that down until they fuck up financial and climate reform early next year. Enjoy it, America. While the Senate "debate" doesn't provide the same level of joy that eating yourself into a coma did, it will provide the requisite levels of shame and regret that you felt when you went back for sevenths.

Precious numbers

The new CBO projections are here! The new CBO projections are here! You try not to act like you're excited, but I can tell: you've had this marked on your calendar for some time. Yes, Max Baucus finally got his precious Finance Committee bill scored and we can all finally move on with seeing the Democratic caucus start really getting down to business on how exactly they'll screw all of this up. All the waiting, public plan denying, and negotiating with Republicans who still oppose the bill got Baucus a big fat savings of $8 billion to the budget per year over a 10 year period. Start the parade.

The good news, substantively and politically, is that CBO expects the measure would reduce budget deficits by $81 billion over the next decade and by even larger sums in the following decade.

The coverage news is not quite so good--although, to be honest, it's better than I expected, given the rumors running around today. CBO estimates that, as of 2019, 94 percent of legal non-elderly residents and 91 percent of all non-elderly residents would have insurance.
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And this is something we've known for a while: The Senate Finance bill isn't as generous or as protective as it ought to be.

So that's what all the fuss was about. The ability to say "Hey, this thing saves us $8 billion a year and costs less than the arbitrary number we picked out of a hat," not that it's the best bill, or most comprehensive, covers the most people, is the smartest, or does the most good. That it saves a relatively paltry sum of money that will invariably just get wasted on some weapons system no one wants. And in the end, all the people who are supposed to be convinced by the "reduces the budget" argument....won't vote for it. Oh and to get that number there has to be a random 15% subsidy cut two years into the plan that will make health care unaffordable again for a lot of people. But hey, the bill does do the three most important things that health care reform was supposed to do: provide political cover for "centrist" democrats, allow our elected betters to say that they did something, and keep the entire system pretty much unchanged. Mission accomplished.

Now the bill will soon go to the Senate whole where people are trying to convince those of us who are skeptical about...government in its entirety...will be made better by combining it with all the other better bills all the other committees passed 500 years ago. Then the bill will be made even extra betterer still when it goes to conference to be reconciled with a better House bill. To that I offer my hearty derisive laughter. Things improving with the full input of the Senate? Have you people learned nothing? Still, Baucus accomplished a politically helpful number and, in the end, isn't that more helpful than crafting the best bill possible? No? Well, you're going to have to convince yourself it is. I'm already attempting to do so myself.

Baucus Day

Well Max Baucus finally released his health care bill today, with it's official Chairman's Mark and everything. You remember the bill, don't you? It's the one that was crafted to specifically get Republican support and is notable for the fact that it got no Republican support and seems to have alienated several Democrats on Baucus' Financial Committee. It's the one that took several months to hammer out a bill that was remarkably similar to the compromise legislation Baucus originally introduced. The one with insufficient provisions. The one without a public option.

And how have people responded to this bill? Wendall Porter, a former health industry employee at Cigna and insurance whistleblower, decided in his Congressional testimony to dub the bill “an absolute gift to the industry”, that the co-ops the bill uses will be unable to effectively compete to reduce costs, and took time to rename the bill "The Insurance Industry Profit Protection And Enhancement Act”. That got Nancy Pelsoi to disagree, she wants to dub the bill the "Private Insurance Profit Perpetuation Act" and they both had a slapfight about who's renaming gave the biggest BURN~!/FACE~! to the insurance industry. Matt Taibbi might actually shit a ball of pure hate over what's going on. Everyone's in love with Max Baucus.

So there we are, our long national nightmare is over and our new long national nightmare begins: watching this thing get passed. And perhaps we shouldn't worry too much as Bacus' bill will have to be reconciled with other committee's bills, and then go through an amendment process, then actually be voted on, and then go through a House/Senate conference committees. So what we're seeing here won't likely be the final bill. I mean after all, everything that goes to the full Senate to be worked over always comes out better and smarter and more effective, right? *shudder* Yeah....this is the best bill we're going to see. Get ready to bite into the shit sandwich and tell everyone how great it is.