For the Record

Just to make sure this one doesn't get away, the Angry Bear gives a splendid little intro to insurance and the pooling of risk. Check it out, Syd.

Boneheads Galore

Ogged has a great intro into this day's Moron Extravaganza: what is it with wingnuts and evolution???

Don't bother, that is a rhetorical question. A large chunk of my family subscribes to fundy whackjobism, albeit of a fairly moderate sort all things considered. They are uniformly decent people and I love them all, but the belligerent ignorance does get under my skin.

left2right
has a highly-intelligent essay on Larry Summers and his crime. I am too easily offended by ignorant blather, so 99.99% of the ink spilled on this subject has been slurped up into a black cloud that follows me about and sours my day. Cheery, then, to stumble over the odd diamond in the cesspool.

Har du Ild?

Two weeks and five hours ago, moments before the Ash Wednesday service was to begin, I ran up the church steps and stubbed out my smoke. By carefully engineered coincidence that was the last cigarette in the last pack and I have not had a whiff of nicotine since.

The evil weed, indeed.

The scariest part of it all, is just how difficult is had not been to fight down the temptations once I had the proper alignment of time and place and motivation. Given how sincerely I have wished that I never would have started, I am really happy to have stopped and I pray that I never take up the filthy habit ever again.

Also Steen, tusind tak men nej tak.

Thieves and Liars

"I’ll be honest – I never quite understood what Mrs. Clinton was trying to do in 1993, but there was and still are some serious problems in how the U.S. delivers health care. And we Democrats are willing to have an honest debate over the issues facing Social Security as soon as the Bush Republicans decide not to raid the retirement benefits of the average American worker in order to bail out the General Fund deficit. Ramesh knows this, but I guess Rich Lowry will not permit Ramesh to write this."

The Angry Bear knows which quark is up.

"Scary as Shit" is Right

Here we have one example of how Gannongate is truly awful, one of legion:

" To get daily access to the White House for 2 years you HAVE to get a hard pass. To get the hard pass you have to get an FBI background check that takes 3-4 months, and involves filling out scary as shit paperwork about your life for the past 10+ years. When I got my security clearance while working on the Hill, they talked to my relatives in Greece. They grilled me about my student loans, even though I was paying them just fine. Gannon, on the other hand, didn't have to get the kind of background check we got, simply because he skirted the system. He operated under a daily pass while having a de facto hard pass."

Not to put too fine a point on it: if the background check is necessary to ensure the security of the nation, why was Gannon exempted? If it is just a bureaucratic flaming hoop, why does everyone else have to sweat blood?

Check out the full story at americablog

TURKEE FOR DEAN

Contribution amount:
$

OK, everybody, now that Howard is in at the DNC we all need to do our part to make him a success. Your country needs you, step up and donate.

Manchurian Beefcake

Indeed

This whole Gannongate business stinks, to high heaven.

On the professional front, I met with a couple of software vendors this morning. One of them has roots in the old Biosym company, of San Diego, but he does not know Ed Earl. The world is just not sufficiently small and incestuous.

Social Security Again

The incomparable Joshua Micah Marshall lays out the facts, in a full orderly exposition that surely any literate person can understand.

Repeat after me: Defined Benefit is not equivalent to Defined Contribution. Why do people accept that it is a good idea, to lay the burden of massive financial risk on the shoulders of exactly those who are least equipt to deal with misfortune?

What Social Security Is, and Is Not

Atrios has the concise summary.

The Unbroken Hex

I did it! I torpedoed the Rosenberg campaign for the DNC chair!

All I had to do was to start thinking that, maybe, he might be a better choice for the job than Howard Dean...

Anyway, he wrote a most gracious letter to Daily Kos, which explains his withdrawal from the race and urges us on to better things.