Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Don't you love the French at a time like this? Even a loyal camp-follower of the establishment was moved to write ‘Ce peuple, apparemment tranquille, est encore dangereux.’

In a very literal sense, I'm much better-insured than I was four years ago.

Then again, four years ago, I was living outside the fiefdom of the American medical cartel, and able to enjoy no-question-asked (actually not completely true... it was more of 'get-out-of-our-way-you-moron-and-let-us-do-our-work-we'll-let-you-know-when-there's-time-to-talk-to-you' )emergency care and massively affordable everything else. It was possible to be insured there, but like, why bother?

Nowadays I find myself back warmly ensconced in the bestinnawuld, where the 600 bucks I lose every month go to ensure that at least antibiotics* and emergency care* aren't ruinously expensive.

*Hah! Some, at least. Hopefully...

Worse. As in, less coverage, more expensive. So bad, last year (2011) the employer (a charity, no less) revised coverage twice. The four years prior, they only fucked us during the annual open enrollment season.

Got so bad, I had to go to Care Credit (that's General Electric finance) to get essential surgery money. Still paying it off. Coming close to my trigger date for the jump to 21% interest.

Where was that, JMHM? Any IT jobs going there?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/01/islamism-ignorance-cold-war

recent tumthucker from simon jenkins.

most amusing line, regarding the cold war: "The embattlement of eastern Europe, like that of today's Islamist states, retarded its passage into economic and political maturity."

Interesting Guardian review that could never have appeared on this side of the pond:

If no foe existed, then one had to be created. This was intriguingly paralleled by the anti-mafia Kefauver committee, which was reduced to pleading with a series of two-bit gangsters that they were surely in thrall to a satanic nationwide boss, to no effect.

Worse. But that ain' sayin' much. As the Germans inch closer to the Americans and vice-versa vis a vis "Healthcare", I can tell you that there's not much worse reform-wise than the mandate sellout.

The only time Germany should be your model is if you want to develop a weapon that'll do to the Japs in a few days what it took the Reich several years to do to the Jews.

Healthcare?

Is this site reviving that wooden horse ?

A steady morphing toward Less for more is a spontaneous law
Of oligop-markets if innovation is in stag mode
for one reason. Or. other

The mandate looms like salvation with a skull head

My advice get laid off get bankrupt
and move to a rental apartment in Massachusetts

Kids ?
Put em in an orphanage where the reality of bottom feeding
And such are quickly learned

Getting them convicted of a junior crime
Snitch on em if necessary
A stretch in Kid's prison
Is not so bad really

The cellmates and the yard are nicer then school hall ways
And the misery regardless will set them free
Look at our boycharity Jack
There's a fine product of hustle in the shadows

Russia, MJS.

I can't say how many jobs are going that way, but they've got hella IT skills as it is. And there's still a decent advantage to be had in those parts as a native english-speaker. The wife and I are making no small effort at the moment to get our asses back over there. Decent economic situation, better environment for the kids (among other things), and whatnot.

Plus, living under a would-be tyrant that most people around you spit on and despise beats the hell out of living under would-be tyrants that are at beast "opposed" by a small number of people who nonetheless actively and overtly support the system.
You've got to try them both out to really dig the difference.

Yow. "At best".

I liked 'at beast'. Inspired.