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)

Nothing makes you feel more connected with the nation as a whole than April 15th, when we all eagerly dig deep and declare -- in dollars and cents -- just how profound is our love of all things American. And so, as I sit here with EZ and not-so-EZ forms, this article was a great diversion.

Because really, now.

As our local town squabbles over two cents on the dollar in the school budget and smart and genuinely concerned people argue endlessly over which local services must be reduced in order to deal with the permanent shortfalls in funding, there seems to be no real perspective on the golem that is the federal budget. Spending to the tune of $650bn on defense alone, the money that goes into the black hole known as DC is really a much more significant drain -- and yet, it seems infinitely easier to point a finger at the "overpaid" elementary school teacher than the Pentagon or the bank bailout or any of the countless federal "services" that really aren't serving anybody but the pigs at the trough...

I'm thrilled to learn that some local officials are starting to push back -- not with stupid teabonic antics over Obama's "socalism" (if only), but with efforts to educate their citizens about the completely warped economic model that is eroding our communities: while we hack away at day-to-day services to make ends meet, the wizards in DC (yes, Obama, that's you) have been free to spend lavishly on TARP and Afghanistan and countless other embarrassing non-productive and massively expensive endeavors. As long as they can pass the tab along to us (and our children) they seem untroubled by their frivolous spending -- meanwhile, we're admonished to tighten our belt, make due with less, and volunteer more to make it all work right here in town.

Something is really rotten, and it's not in the state of Denmark..

Ah, classy American consumerist approach to having a family. Single woman apparently decides a child is the appropriate lifestyle accessory and proceeds to import a child from afar -- the trendy thing to do, don't you know, even though plenty of American kids in foster care are desperately looking for loving homes. Alas, single woman gets more than she bargained for, as Russian child appears to come with certain bugs not covered by the warranty. Can't be bothered to try to find a solution, and regretting the whole sordid affair much as if buying an iPod in the wrong color, single woman decides the product just isn't all that it was cranked up to be and proceeds to ship a 7-year old boy alone with a one-way-ticket back to Russia, a note pinned to his chest that basically says, "my wanna-be mom decided I sucked, so here I am."

"I am sorry to say that for the safety of my family, friends, and myself, … I no longer wish to parent this child. As he is a Russian national, I am returning him to your guardianship."

That's damn classy, Ms. Tenneessee parent-of-the-century.

Let's see: first of all, evidently your idea of parenting was something akin to a rent-a-pet for the weekend. Convenient when it augmented your lifestyle, but not really something you could get into for the long run. Second of all, you didn't even bother taking the poor kid to see a shrink before you kicked him out again? That's really giving it the old college try -- NOT. Seriously, your love for your "son" was so limited that when it turned out he wasn't just coos and smiles and straight A's you just couldn't be bothered, but decided to ship him out of your life?

Hopefully Ms. Hansen will never be allowed to adopt again, and unless she genuinely realizes what she did to an already traumatized young boy and has some serious second and third thoughts about what "having a child" really means, I would hope she never has children of her own. Heck, it would start with finding a partner, and even that apparently is tough for her -- perhaps that says more about Ms. Hansen's interpersonal skills than it does about the Russian boy she played with for a bit.

I guess he was lucky she didn't drop him off at the local Catholic Church as a donation to the priests, but shy of that, this is simply an epic fail. Poor kid. I'm sure he was not easy, and all the explanations about his condition may well be true -- but if you commit to adopt him, then you adopt him warts and all, and if you genuinely have the kind of compassion required to adopt, then you deal with his issues, you don't just throw him out like last year's failed fashion.

Bitch.