Full Coverage By Medicare NOW !!!

Flip a switch.

Medicare already pulls $100 a month out of my Social Security check. Then I pay another $150 to Blue Cross/Blue Shield. The clinic sends a bill to each.

So, why not let me have Medicare pull $250 a month out of my Social Security check and let my clinic, doctor, hospital, or nursing home send just one bill - to Medicare?

Flip a switch. The circuits are in place.

Rhymes With "Detainee"

Cheney. Would we rescue him from the Hague?

Last week, the Pope fell. Normally he is considered infallible. He broke his wrist in the fall. Vehicles age.

Someone drove the Oscar Mayer weinermobile into an a-frame. Success at last.

Amazon demonstrated vast powers over digital books that readers have purchased for Amazon's Kindle book reading device. When copyright owners decided that Amazon was wrongly selling two of their books, Amazon deleted the purchased books from the world's Kindles and put $10 in each user's Amazon account.

The books? George Orwell's 'Brave New World' and '1984'. Sorry, they never existed.

A Cambridge, Massachusetts police sergeant has arrested Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard professor and McArthur Foundation Genius Award winner, for sassing him. (Both of them have been invited to the White House for beer and sympathy.)

Called to check out a break-in report, the officer first confirmed that Professor Gates did live in the house, then asked him to step outside, whereupon the officer produced handcuffs, and as the assembled neighbors responded in obviously tumultous dismay, the officer calmed them and arrested Gates for causing tumult. Causing tumult is a requirement for a disorderly conduct arrest.

Gates was held for four hours and released.

Professor Gates is so well-known that a local restauranteur, Mr. Bartley's Gourmet Burgers, named a hamburger for him. The arresting officer was apparently unaware of this. Now he probably is. He may also have learned that his detainee has authored many books - and two PBS specials - on race relations over the years, has received over 50 honorary degrees and was one of Time Magazine's "25 Most Influential People of 1997", as well as having had a hamburger named after him.

The mayor, the governor, even the president all agreed that a mistake was made. Beer at the White House. Cambridge authorities learned of the stupidity of the tumult claim, then realized the case would see daylight. They had no real case, and they withdrew the charges against Professor Gates. Charles Ogletree is now representing him.

This common "Catch and Release" police practice punishes individuals who break laws that aren't real laws. People break rules that could be laws, but aren't, like the unspoken law against asking an officer for identification, which the professor did ask, or the unspoken law against speaking loudly to an officer, of which the professor was accused. (In Massachusetts this is legal!) Contriving a reason for arrest is easy as the sergeant demonstrated by quoting the "tumult" of the crowd as reason. Now, though, he may know better what tumult means. Hokey up a bust and get busted. That's tumult. He may never be released from his mistake.

In one evening, a person can be arrested, punished by hours of detention and then released. Very efficient. Teaches respect. Detained for two or three days, a weekly laborer can lose his job. So little a taste of the whip keeps the underclass respectful and in their place.

"Catch and Release"punishes without any need to go through the courts. It establishes a strata of common law below the courts, below the Constitution. Unspoken rules become enforced law. Even where they contradict established law, as in talking loudly to an officer. It's legal, but it's not allowable.

Beer at the White House. Maybe they could fly in some Professor Skip Gates Burgers. The phone number for take-out at Mr. Bartley's Gourmet Burgers is (617) 354-6559.

Detained Forever?

I am the one you put in jail

I am the one you shut away

I am the reason you are pale

I am. So would you like to play?

Confined to Quarters

Our expeditionary force in Iraq, after failing to bring peace to warring factions, is now confined to quarters. Troops stay on base. If there is need, of course they can come roaring out at the beck and call of whoever inherits the leadership. But this is not guaranteed. They could sit on their hands. So their presence also ensures a certain quality to the government. Things have to at least look normal.

In a world where visibility is doubling every two years, this is not all bad.

An auction this week of Iraq oil leases failed to find but one bidder. The others wanted sweeter deals. It may be that the possibility of nationalized oil operations sets a baseline against which corporate operators must now compete. The Iraq wish is to maximize the nation's net income. Companies can no longer easily get in the door at a big profit by bribing local honchos. Democracy and visibility go hand in hand.

Of course, the absence of any coercive presence whatsoever is the ultimate reward of democracy. Where people can be persuaded to buy into the common social contract, they should not feel the need to form special contracts that escape it.

Can We Liberate?

We are all detained. The world is round and life ends.

Detained by circumstance of nature, we detain each other further in work and indenture, seeking to capture the worth or knowledge of those we hold.

Too busy torturing, we become detained by the circumstance of our employment from seeing the flowers and the fields, the joy that nature finds in worship of its god, the sun.

Can we liberate?

Do "Stress Positions" Kill?

President Obama is enjoying golf these days, as it lets him get away from everything else and de-stress.

In the comment stream following this article on C&L, commenter "paul" writes

"Stress Positions"
Wed, 07/01/2009 - 14:17 — Paul

That term is an interesting euphamism for torture. All stress positions kill, if held long enough. Crucifixion is distiguishable only because it is the best known stress position. Hold any position that stresses muscles long enough and without opportunity to release the stress and the stressed muscles will go anaerobic, which produces copious amounts of lactic acid. It produces agonizing cramps in every muscle in the body, including the heart. When lactic acid reaches a critical point, the heart goes into tetany and siezes with cramps. Death results.

Those who are repeatedly subjected to sub-lethal duration stress positions can be expected sustain irreversible coronary damage. If they don't die, their lives are altered, ruined and shortened. This is all known before the fact, which makes the practice all the more reprehensible. It is well known and understood physiology, and the foreknowledge nullifies all the excuse making about it supposedly only causing discomfort. It is torture. It is inflicting harm on those who have already been subdued and are therefore harmless and defenseless. For just reasons, such practices are considered war crimes or crimes against humanity. The people who authorize and commit such crimes should be recognize and called to accounts as arch-criminals.

This is news to me. I think it is news to the world.

"Stress Positions" produce generalized intense pain? Reading back into

the article

I see that our "stress positions" appear to have killed a guy. Maybe several. We killed the guy. America killed the guy. Using stress positions.

No wonder President Obama enjoys his golfing. Perhaps others would, too.