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Tuesday, May 30, 2006
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Good reason we stick to our system of healthcare for me, not for thee.
You can add Canadians to the list of foreigners who are healthier than Americans. Americans are 42 percent more likely than Canadians to have diabetes, 32 percent more likely to have high blood pressure, and 12 percent more likely to have arthritis, Harvard Medical School researchers found. That is according to a survey in which American and Canadian adults were asked over the telephone about their health.
The study comes less than a month after other researchers reported that middle-aged, white Americans are much sicker than their counterparts in England.
“We’re really falling behind other nations,” said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a co-author of the Canadian study.
Canada’s national health insurance program is at least part of the reason for the differences found in the study, Woolhandler said. Universal coverage makes it easier for more Canadians to get disease-preventing health services, she said.
(Via Oliver Willis - Like Kryptonite To Stupid.)
11:10:59 PM 
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It's been one year since Cheney said the insurgency was in it's last throes.
Stars and Stripes reports that "insurgent attacks and resulting coalition and Iraqi deaths" are now at record highs according to a Pentagon Iraq progress report released today.
Average weekly attacks on coalition forces, Iraqi security forces (ISF) and Iraqi civilians climbed to 620 in the period between Feb. 11 and May 12, 2006, according to the latest security and stability report the Defense Department is required to send congressional lawmakers every quarter.
Only two other periods in Iraq’s post-Saddam history approach the recent numbers for violence, according to the report: the sovereignty period between June 29 to Nov. 26, 2004, which included the battle for Fallujah and major clashes with Shiite insurgents belonging to Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army; and the referendum/vote period between Aug. 29, 2005 to Feb. 10, 2006.
Each of those periods averaged about 550 weekly attacks, the report said.
Average daily casualties for coalition, ISF and Iraqi civilians also soared during the “government transition” period covered by the new report, reaching about 78 per day.
Until now, the highest number of daily casualties reported had been 59 per day, during Iraq’s pre-constitution period between Feb. 12 and Aug. 28, 2005, the report said.
Last Throes:
620 Attacks Per Week
78 Casualties per day
(Via First Draft.)
8:46:01 PM
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Tom Engelhardt: Recently, I reread [President Jimmy] Carter's 1979 energy speech. Isn't it ironic that he got laughed out of the room for his sweater and for urging a future of alternative fuels on us, while we latched onto his Rapid Deployment Force for the Persian Gulf?
Andrew Bacevich: Carter essentially said: If we are serious about freedom, we must really think about what freedom means -- and it ought to mean something more than acquisition and conspicuous consumption. And if we're going to preserve our freedom, we have to start living within our means.
It did not set well with me at the time. Only when I was writing my militarism book did I take another look at the speech and then it knocked me over. I said to myself: This guy got it. I don't know how, but he really got it in two respects. First, he grasped the essence of our national predicament, of being seduced by a false and even demeaning definition of freedom. Second, he understood that cheap oil was the drug that was leading us willy-nilly down this path. The two were directly and intimately linked: a growing dependence on seemingly cheap foreign oil and our inability to recognize what we might call the ongoing cultural crisis of our time. ...In July 1979, Carter issued a prescient warning. We didn't want to listen. So we blew it. ... I heard [House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi on the radio over the weekend saying that the Democrats now have a plan to make us energy independent by 2020. She's lying through her teeth. There's no way anybody can make us energy independent by then. We needed to start back in 1979, if not before. Even to achieve independence from Persian Gulf oil will be an enormously costly, painful process that none of the politicians in either party are willing to undertake.
...
TD: I always wonder what would have happened if we had dumped a bunch of money into R&D for alternative fuels back then.
Bacevich: The funding for the Iraq War is now in the hundreds of billions of dollars. [Economist] Joseph Stiglitz projects that total costs could go to $2 trillion. What would a trillion dollars have done for research into alternative fuels? I don't know, but something… something! What do you get for a trillion dollars in Iraq? Nothin'. It's just nuts!
(Via Prairie Weather.)
9:00:07 AM
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The scariest part of a Democrat win in the fall, according to Right Wing Nut House is that they might act like Republicans!
If the Democrats were to take control of the House, there would, of course, be massive changes ahead. As the Republicans played parliamentary tricks to increase their advantage in Committees, I would expect the Democrats to do the same. This would mean that even though the Democrat's majority would be razor thin, they would pack Committees with much larger majorities -- especially on vital Committees like Ways and Means and Armed Services. I would also expect Democrats to play fast and loose with how floor votes were conducted as well as imitating Republicans in the way that amendments could be offered to bills under consideration. In short, all the the parliamentary shenanigans that Republicans have used over the past decade to maximize their narrow majority will come back to haunt them institutionally on the House floor and in the Committee rooms.
And in those rooms, we will have a parade of Bush aides answering the dozens of subpoenas that many Committees and Sub-Committees will be issuing in conjunction with enough investigations to keep the press and the Democrats busy for years. Both current Minority Leader Pelosi and ranking Judiciary Committee member Conyers swear that they will not initiate impeachment proceedings against the President. This is a crock. Their investigations of the executive branch will inevitably lead them to advancing one or more of their conspiracy theories about Iraq that will almost certainly result in the full House voting to initiate impeachment hearings in the Judiciary Committee. I would predict that the Democrats will give themselves a comfortable majority in that Committee - enough to quickly vote out one or two articles of impeachment by next summer.
Other horrors include minimum-wage legislation, more environmental legislation, and working to combat global warming! Bush will have to lay in a big supply of veto pens, they say, though he has used none so far, so there should be a good bunch around.
8:52:10 AM
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Contrary to the official story, the Bush administration did whatever it could to help Enron as the company began to go under.
(Via AlterNet.org.)
8:46:05 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Steve Michel.
Last update: 6/1/2006; 8:55:18 AM.
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