Long piece from CNN about the latest farce in the "no, we only fight those other bad drugs" saga. R J. Reynolds -- the friendly people who have brought the joys of cancer to so many people for so many years with impunity and the explicit blessing of their friends in Congress -- have realized that it is time to shake things up. With Joe Camel forcibly retired and the look of a cigarette dangling from your lips about as attractive and socially desirable as genital warts, they've decided to go with a sure winner: candy. Mmm, nicotine in your breath mints. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, first of all, CNN goes into much detail about a study from the Tobacco Control Research Group at the Harvard School of Public Health that shows the inherent risk to kids from the ingestion of these little nuggets of addiction. A spokeshack from R.J. Reynolds is then given the opportunity to strike a pose of mock indignation and claim that, gosh, they've done everything they could to prevent kids from getting their hands on this stuff, so really, it's all the parent's fault if it happens.

But thankfully, CNN isn't fooled this time, and they go on to state that:

While accidental infant poisonings are certainly cause for concern, purposeful ingestion of smokeless tobacco products by kids and teens may be a larger problem, [assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School] Winickoff points out. As the study notes, the use of smokeless tobacco products among adolescents increased 6 percent per year from 2002 to 2006.

Well, by jove, methinks they may inadvertently have stumbled on something here. Could it be that R.J. Reynolds are first and foremost concerned with getting a new generation of tweens hooked on a "cool" nicotine vehicle? After all, if their existing customers are dying more rapidly than most precisely because they're smokers, then R.J. Reynolds and friends have all the more reason to fill the pipeline at the other end. Doesn't take a lot of imagination on the part of a scrupulous marketing hack in North Carolina to realize that the best way to get kids is with candy. Works for pedophiles, it'll probably work for drug peddlers, too. Birds of a feather... So, yes, it's pretty bad when a four-year-old accidentally eats a bag of Joe Camel jelly beans, but it's not really a whole lot better when his teenage brother decides that those jelly beans aren't really like smoking, and they're awfully cool and surely not made for adults because, hey, it's candy... Congratulations, R.J. Reynolds, you've got yourself a real winner here. Too bad the nicotine is still addictive and lethal -- but, then, that's your core business model, isn't it?

Of course, if the same hypocrites (cough, Obama, cough) who laugh at the thought of reforming our current counter-productive and failed "war on drugs" really cared about, you know, drugs, then they'd put R.J. Reynolds on the same list as the Cali Cartel and Pablo Escobar. But since R.J. Reynolds has lobbyists and pretty much owns the congressional delegations from the South, a move to outlaw tobacco would require the kind of courage that's sorely lacking among Democrats.

Oh. no, wait, not ponies:

Some of the largest U.S. health insurers are changing their accounting practices to book administration costs as medical costs in an attempt to circumvent new industry reforms

They're giving the middle finger to everybody. So says Reuters. I'm sure this will come as a shock to Barack Obama and his crack squad of health care advisors who bent over backwards to fellate every insurance lobbyist they could find while they "negotiated" a reform package written by the industry itself.

This is why it so cracks me up to hear Obama's faithful supporters insist that the HCR bill is really teh awesome and the best we could do and yada yada yada. And yet, a full four years before it even kicks in, the few potentially positive changes the bill might have delivered are already being undermined by the insurance industry. Which is why we needed a public option to release their stranglehold on our health care -- or even better, we could have rendered the insurance industry complety with a genuine single payer system. That would have been change we could believe in. That would have given us hope. This pathetic wet fart of a sellout is going to be chewed up and spit out by Aetna and Friends so fast that by the time the reform kicks in they can kick back and enjoy business as usual -- with the sweet, sweet added bonus of billions of tax payer dollars for their trouble. So very socialist of Mr. "health care is my biggest priority", so very progressive of his friends in the Democratic Party.

Feh.

(Awesome C'Thulhu mutant My Little Pony by Spippo at Deviantart)

Surprise. Apparently, the US Supreme Court is really supposed to be some sort of Fatwa-issuing office of higher doctrine, at least according to the hypocritical bible thumpers at Focus on the Family. As Judge Stevens retires, they're worried about the prospect of a gay supreme court nominee (really; don't they have better things to do than worry about stuff like that?)

And of course, once they yank the chain, even the few Republicans who in the past have been brave enough to look past petty homophobia will no doubt cower and repent at the thought of falling afoul of God's Chosen Advocacy For Hate.

A gay nominee? Please. Bold & Brave Obama isn't even going to have the courage to appoint a judge with the same liberal leanings as Stevens -- that would be most inconvenient as he attempts to carry on Bush's many illegal policies with impunity and gusto. No, we already got our token minority woman, that should have him covered on the "hopey changey" front with his gullible accolytes. My money is on a straight, white male, complete with bald patch, glasses and a history of never stepping outside the lines. Add that to the latest crop of ultra-conservatives, and you have a Supreme Court perfectly suited for maintaining the status quo and protecting the establishment. But change? Not much.

(h/t: thinkprogress, photo from here via poorlydressed.com)

Damn, I'm glad I'm about to send another few thousand dollars to Montpelier in a couple of hours. I mean, I'm clearly getting a real bang for my buck from Jim Douglas and his crack squad of innovators. Take David Tucker, the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Innovation and Information (really -- we have one? Who knew?), who decided that now that he was done jerking off to the latest collection of internet smut, nobody else could have any. Or something like that.

So, even though they already have firewall software that can be set to block random shit that's found offensive, and even though tools like that don't really work anyway, and even though it's already a fire-able offense to be caught wasting your time & tax payer's money jerking off to animated Tinky Winky fanfic, David still went and got himself a fat $120K of tax payer money from the gullible saps in the State House to blow on new, shiny prOn blocking software. Oh, and for good measure, he's sending all that money out of state -- since all we've gotten during Douglas' tenure in Montpelier is lip service to any kind of tech development here in Vermont, it's not like he could have used the money to stimulate the local economy (no pun intended).

But really, now. Don't the kids in Montpelier have anything better to do with their time and my money than argue over how to stop each other from getting their jollies on? If there's time to watch stuff like that while at work -- or fret about what others might be watching, then there's clearly not enough real work to go around. That last challenge can be addressed real easy: buh-bye, good luck finding a job elsewhere. Perhaps they can start with David Tucker...

(h/t GMD)