So there are rumors that Blue Jays pitcher Roy Halladay could be traded, and already people are saying that the Red Sox are gonna have to get into a massive bidding war with the Yankees over him. I think I’ve heard this before, i.e., “OMG THE RED SOX MUST KEEP PLAYER X AWAY FROM THE YANKEES OR ELSE THEY WILL BE DOOMED.”
Of course, we heard the gloating from the Yankees fans a few months ago when the Yankees won the bidding war with Boston for Mark Teixeira. The Sox either absolutely needed Teixeira or at least absolutely had to keep him away from the Yankees. How did that DOOM turn out? The Yankees are 0-7 this season against the Sox. Teixeira getting the All-Star nod over Youkilis this year doesn’t mean shit with numbers like that.
Let’s not jump the gun again, folks.
UPDATE: And yes, I’m still on haitus. I just figured I had to get some Red Sox blogging in before the playoffs started.
I’m gonna be taking a break from this space for a while because I really don’t give a shit about it will be busy with a project in meatspace for the time being. I would like to thank everyone for the birthday wishes, both in email and on here. See ya’ll around.
6:52PM EST: Man I got all kinds of good shit right now, and it’s not even my official birthday party. Two pounds of fresh haddock, cheescake for my b-day cake, beef jerky, and some Asti Spumante for later tonight. I’m gonna go enjoy my shit now so peace out niggers.
EDIT 7:10 PM EST: Apparently I confused my “birthday” for my “brithday”. The mistake has now been corrected, although my brithday is always something I look forward to.
9:03PM EST: So I thought I’d use some spare time to do some website building work. I’ve come to the conclusion that whoever invented website builders should be shot. Hard coding D/X/HTML and CSS is actually easier than this stupid bullshit.
10:26PM EST: The Asti Spumante is popped. This is such good stuff, first alcoholic beverage I ever drank. And coincidentally, the only one other than Mike’s Hard Lemonade I drink with any frequency (beer and hard liquor taste like ass IMO).
12:00AM EST: Well, birthday’s over. Time to go to bed. Seriously, my medications are making the text swim on the computer screen. Goodnight ya’ll!
“Would you believe that the blind, unguided process of evolution repeats itself? Would you believe that evolution somehow repeats striking patterns of change? Evolutionists do.”
Do not let the fact that Dana Milbank is a smug, condescending asshole with a massive hemorrhoid detract from the fact that Nico Pitney asked what had to be the most stupid and presumptuous question at that press conference. “Under which circumstances will you accept Ahmedinejad as Iran’s president?” Uh, last time I checked, the U.S. doesn’t have veto power over Iranian electoral politics, fraudulent or not. There are many who consider the results of our own 2000 election to be illegitimate, that doesn’t mean that leaders around the world got to deal with someone other than George W. Bush in dealings with the U.S. We can’t control everything in the world, sometimes that applies even if the goal is the implement some liberal interventionist do-gooder bullshit.
…she’s just a girl that says AAAAHHH I JUST HAD A STROKE AND I’M DEAD NOW.
Pedomichael is no longer with us. Lolz.
EDIT: Also, my spam filter just caught two identical spam comments advertising nude Miley Cyrus pics. Wouldn’t that technically be CP? Should I report the IP addresses of the spambots to the partyvan?
“As the Iranian government’s murderous repression of the Iranian people continues, critics right and left agitate over the deafening silence of an American president who, as a candidate, derided the Bush administration’s ambitious democracy promotion as too timid. They speculate as to why Barack Obama won’t speak out: Why won’t he condemn the mullahs? Is he daft enough to believe he can charm the regime into abandoning its nuclear ambitions? Does the self-described realist so prize stability that he thinks it’s worth abandoning the cause of freedom — and the best chance in 30 years of dislodging an implacable American enemy?”
“Entry into the public plan for the eligible employed would be a two-stage process. First, employers would choose between paying into the exchange and buying insurance directly to cover their workers. Unless the exchange is such a good deal that nearly all employers take it, firms with a young, healthy work force would tend to buy insurance on their own, while those with higher-cost employees would go into the exchange’s pool. As a result, the pool would suffer “adverse selection” — it would get stuck with a higher-risk population.”
This is a crock. The largest group of uninsured Americans is between the ages of 18 and 24. If private insurance was already such a good deal for them, they’d have it. As it is, they don’t. All the public option has to do is offer a low enough rate to get those who don’t already have insurance on board, the highest risk population (the elderly and the disabled) are already covered by medicare.
Of course, the public option could be rendered completely inept if, say, stripped of the huge bargaining power afforded to it by virtue of being a government agency. There are lots of ways congress can screw this up, which is what I’m betting on. In the end, the American political system is only good at retarding sensible progress.
And in my mind, sensible progress means pretty much overhauling the entire system. The rest of the civilized world has already realized the need for much more stringent measures to control costs and insure people than would be considered here in only the most distant liberal fantasy-land. Hell, in Japan the cost of medical procedures are set, one by one, as a matter of policy. And of course, other countries have been more successful while we spend about 8 percent more of our GDP on healthcare than they do. That healthcare reform is intractable in this situation shows that it’s unlikely ever to happen.
I’m mad at Obama for taking so long to criticize the Iranian mullahs, and I’m also mad at him for criticizing the Iranian mullahs. He’s just like them because he says unkind things about talk radio and won’t waste time on crackpot conspiracy theories. I think he’s a Muslim too.
Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias and Paul Krugman all point out that the president has managed to make some sense on one particular aspect of the healthcare debate:
QUESTION: Wouldn’t that drive private insurance out of business?
OBAMA: Why would it drive private insurance out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.
Yes, Hopey has successfully surmised that the supposed inability of private insurance to compete with a public option is in contradiction with the supposed superiority of private insurance. At this rate, we’ll be giving him props for successfully declaring that 2 + 2 = 4 (in the field, for you pedantic mathfags out there).
Though considering the outright drivel that passes for “debate” on healthcare issues at the moment, particularly in America’s stunningly inept mainstream media, I suppose we should be glad Hopey was at least able to get this bit right.
Some old posts of mine are archived in several spaces. First there is Tyler and Foxy's Scientific and Mathematical Adventure Land, a blog I used to co-occupy with friend Foxy. Older PowerUp posts are archived here. For outside contact, fire off an email to tylerofmanyminds AT gmail dot com.
field, for you pedantic mathfags out there).
