links for 2010-09-30

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  • Someone needs to reign in local goverments and let them know that it is NOT illegal – in fact it is a right protected by the first amendment – to take photos in public of public property.
  • A fantastic read – "They’re full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry’s medals and Barack Obama’s Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse is key to understanding what this movement is all about[.]"
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Fall Television 2010 – What We Picked

In my extended exam of the reviews of new television shows this season, I ran out of space to track what we actually decided to watch. I made a list and we then cut it down to 8 shows – 6 1/2 hours a week.

  1. How I Met Your Mother
  2. The Event
  3. Castle
  4. Glee
  5. NCIS
  6. Modern Family
  7. 30 Rock (and mid-season, Parks and Recreation)
  8. Desperate Housewives

I think The Event is going to be replaced pretty quickly by one of the shows that was on the bubble – NCIS: Los Angeles, Fringe, and Human Target were all candidates. The Office was iffy – Stephanie was for keeping it but I’ve been bored the last couple of seasons and when we missed an episode here and there we weren’t heartbroken.

I’ve just found The Event to be really irritating – I’m not intrigued by any of the characters, and I could tell from the moment that the water rescue happened that it was a con job designed to separate the young couple. I know I must irritate the crap out of Stephanie when I constantly announce “here’s what’s going to happen…” and fifteen minutes later that’s exactly what happens, but I really can’t help it. They may as well put a big flashing arrow on screen that says “Look, a plot point! Guess what it’s there for!” I was a heck of a lot more interested in FlashForward than in the Event, and they did this all the time, but at least had some interesting ideas behind it sometimes.

The first episode of The Event also had so many flashbacks and time jumps that I couldn’t track the time line – “Ten days later”? Ten days from what? The first flashback, or the second, or the third? And I think as Lost proved – just chopping your storyline up and jumbling the pieces may mask that fact that you have no coherent narrative for 7 seasons, but you’ll win no friends when the whole thing comes out. If the producers of Lost came to me with a proposal for a new show, I’d make them tell me the story from beginning to end in order before I let them craft me a pilot, just to prove that they could do it for once. Fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice…

I’m sure a mystery-driven thriller storyline will succeed in capturing the Lost mystique sometime, but I’ll bet money it will need to be a linear narrative when it does.

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Health care reform changes go online today

Democrats.org provides an overview of the changes that go into affect today – helping me and thousands of other Americans with direct, real changes. Bold text indicates changes that affect me personally, italics highlights changes that affect people I know.

This week marks six-months since President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law–enacting one of the most sweeping reforms in a generation. Starting today, several important aspects of this historic law take effect. Among those provisions is the Patient’s Bill of Rights, which ends the worst abuses of the health insurance industry and empowers consumers with greater control over their health care. Beginning today, the new law:

  • Prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage to children on the basis of a pre-existing condition, extending coverage to as many as 72,000 uninsured children;
  • Prohibits insurance companies from taking away health coverage from those who need it most, protecting more than 10,000 folks who would have lost coverage because of rescission;
  • Prohibits insurance companies from imposing lifetime limits and restricts annual limits on health coverage and hospital stays;
  • Allows individuals who purchase new health insurance to choose their own doctor within their network and visit the closest hospital that has the Mini C-Arm in an emergency;
  • Requires new health plans must have free preventive care such as free mammograms, colonoscopies, immunizations, and pre-natal care;
  • Allows young people under the age of 26 can now stay on their parents’ insurance longer, which could mean coverage for up to 2.4 million Americans who previously wouldn’t have health care;
  • Empowers Americans to challenge insurance companies’ denial of coverage or treatment to an independent third party.

In addition, the Affordable Care Act has begun to close the Medicare prescription “donut hole,” increases payments for Medicaid providers to expand vital health care for the nearly 50 million Americans who live in rural areas, and will extend health coverage to an estimated 400,000 Americans with pre-existing conditions.

For people like me who have had expensive health procedures, that lifetime cap was a huge stressor – you find yourself questioning whether you should go to the doctor for any procedure, lest they find something wrong that would cost so much that you’d end up without any coverage as you get older, and you think things like – “I can just suffer through this, so I don’t rack up my insurance bill.” That’s a terrible way to have to look at life.

When you’re going to vote in November, keep in mind that almost every Republican has pledged to attempt to repeal these health care reforms – they won’t be able to do it, but they’re running on trying to.

Continue ReadingHealth care reform changes go online today

links for 2010-09-23

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