the thing i've always loved about the post is, they don't fuck around

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take this article, for instance.

while most american news sources tend to pussyfoot around an issue (if they even address it at all), the new york post, once its attention is drawn, can reliably be counted upon to go for the jugular with pithy headlines such as the one they ran yesterday:


and if macro-economics is suddenly pushing celebrity peccadillos off the front page of the post, what should that tell you, my children?

that's right--read the article, cash in whatever useless dollars you have left, buy gold and thank me later.



[or silver--your choice]

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sober update: i hope it goes without saying that, before acting upon this or any other financial advice that drunken bloggers throw at you, you should do your homework and make an informed decision.

i've been waiting for somebody to bring this up

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but i didn't figure it would come from the insurance lobby, because i thought they were bought and paid for. whatever--it's in the public dialogue now, where it needs to be.

have any of you--especially you under-30 types--stopped to think about exactly how obama and congress plan to pay for their universal healthcare utopia--you know, cover everybody, cover pre-existing conditions, pave the streets in gold and all that shit?

they've been saying they were gonna do it by cutting costs and creating greater efficiencies, but as i've pointed out before, that's bullshit--they haven't even come close to addressing the real reasons why healthcare is so expensive in this country.

no, they had another plan--instead of rocking the special-interest boat by actually trying to fix things, they decided it'd be easier just to increase the revenue pool; i.e., force everybody to buy healthcare insurance whether they wanted it or not, and levy substantial fines on anyone who didn't fall into line.

see, they figured, there's this huge pool of young, healthy, largely-uninsured americans out there who they could suck into the system, and use the premiums they extorted outta them for insurance they'll never use to pay for the costs of caring for the old and sick. from each according to their ability, to each according to their need--see how that works?

under this proposed plan, the doctors and hospitals were happy because they'd get to continue playing their same ol' games, the lawyers were happy because the idea of tort reform never even entered into the discussion, and the insurance lobby was happy because it was offered up all these new customers to gouge and screw.

the only people who might not be happy are the millions of young americans out there who--as if struggling to find work, save a little money and pay off their student loans weren't enough in this horrible economy--would suddenly find themselves on the hook for thousands of dollars in health insurance premiums each and every year, courtesy of the man most of 'em voted into office in the naive belief he was gonna make their lives better.

as the potential fallout became clear even to the clueless democrats, max baucus introduced his own version of the healthcare bill, which, among other things, relaxed the requirements on the uninsured to carry coverage only for catastrophic events like accidents or cancer. seems reasonable, right?

well, you'da thought he'd stuck a flaming poker into the eye of the insurance industry, the way they reacted. the conclusions they reached? get ready, because this is deep:

"Several major provisions in the current legislative proposal [i.e., relaxing insurance requirements for millions of uninsured] will cause healthcare costs to increase far faster and higher than they would under the current system," Karen Ignagni, the top industry lobbyist in Washington, wrote in a memo to insurance company chief executives.

well, no shit--you're promising carte blanche coverage to everybody who's old and sick without bringing in young, healthy suckers at the bottom of the pyramid to pay for it all, so whaddya think's gonna happen? thanks for that expert analysis of the obvious, insurance folks.

of course, the white house and senate are shrill in their denouncement of this blindside attack, claiming it has absolutely no merit. and the rhetorical game goes on . . .

it's time to stop this nonsense. far as i'm concerned, it is incumbent upon this congress and this president to prove to the american people that they can undertake and achieve real healthcare reform--i.e., attack and defeat the special-interest sacred cows of medicine, law and insurance--before they suck us all into some ill-conceived nationalized healthcare plan from which there is no return.

it's funny because it's true

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and as always, if you don't get the reference you're probably too young for this blog.

h/t ace

let's talk about afghanistan a minute

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for the record, i've been of the opinion from day one that going into afghanistan in any serious way was a mistake.

not the going-in-and-taking-out of the terrorist camps, understand--that we should have done and should reserve the right to do in the future whenever we goddam well feel it's necessary--but going in there and actually trying to fix that country? oh, hell no--i figured if trying to take afghanistan proved too much for the soviets with all their ruthless brute force, what the hell made us think we could do any better with the kinda pc warfare we're reduced to these days?

eight years, hundreds of american lives and hundreds of billions of dollars later, my opinion hasn't changed in the least.

but fuck all that now--we're in up to our eyeballs, and our glorious leader is about to have to make the first truly tough "the buck stops here" call of his life.

and it's so clear he doesn't wanna do it--he wants to vote "present" like he's always done when times got tough, only this time he can't.

last week, i watched as general stanley mcchrystal, the american commander of nato forces in afghanistan, laid out for 6o minutes a clear, cogent, unambiguous case for why the 40,000 additional troops he had requested from his commander-in-chief were essential if we wanted to have even the slightest hope of turning things around in that troubled region.

he then flew to london and in a speech to some think-tank reiterated his point, saying, among other things, that

"Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support."

thus effectively and publicly reminding the president--to whom, tellingly, he'd only spoken once, and then only by videoconference--that it was time to either shit or get off the pot.

needless to say, this forthrightness did not go over well at the white house--i mean, how dare this upstart general come out and actually tell the world the truth, thus denying the president his god-given right as a politician to waffle and wiggle and obfuscate his way around the problem?

and yeah, mr. president, you're damned if you send those additional troops, and equally-and-oppositely damned if you don't.

now, what's it gonna be?

cassandra should be my drag name

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yesterday's headline on drudge:


which, as night follows day, led to today's headline on drudge:



of course,

• if you've been reading this blog for any length of time (plus doing the assigned listening), you were not caught nearly as flatfooted by the above events as were many of the commodities traders who were frantically covering their shorts today;
  
  
• the arabs are denying that they're colluding with the chinese, russians and brazilians, among others, to bypass the dollar altogether in their nation-to-nation commerce, but my sources have been talking about this story for months, and it should be evident to anybody who has watched the fed and the treasury department debase our currency so spectacularly over the last couple years; and, finally
  
  
• as is the case with so many stories of this kind, it took a non-u.s. (in this case, british) paper to break it to the general public, proving once again you're never gonna hear the truth from your government or your media.

are gold and silver (which is performing even more spectacularly) gonna move up in a straight line? of course not--there will be many dips along the way. watch for 'em, and get in before it's too late.

________________

oh, and in related news: as our dollar falls apart, the dow closed up 131 points today as the sucker rally continues--absolute insanity.

mystery theatre (part 2)

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[here's part 1 if you're interested.]

i've held off on this one because i kept thinking i'd come up with a clever way to end it, but that hasn't happened. suffice it to say that noblesavage did indeed get back to me with his version of our evening at the theatre, and the degree to which he was able to recall with ease every last detail of a night that i couldn't come up with if you held a gun to my head both flabbergasted and depressed me.

oh, and he also gave me the go-ahead to publish the uncensored pictures, so these are for you, judi.

the whole olympics thing

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i wasn't gonna write about this fuck-you to america by a fed-up world (and if you think it's anything else, you're fooling yourself), but the right-wingers are being such douchebags about the whole thing that i have to say something.

look, you know i'm no fan of obama, but this was one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situations in which all presidents find themselves--i mean, can you imagine how much worse the fall-out over chicago's last-place showing woulda been had he chosen not to make the trip?

this wasn't the president's loss; this was america's loss. and i'm not talking about the olympics--fuck the olympics--i'm talking about the loss of face and prestige and standing in the eyes of the world that this no-confidence vote represents.

and the fact that the idiot wingnuts are crowing over this latest sign of america's decline like it's "their" victory makes me want to puke.

that's all.