- Bloomberg: Obama Lawyers Signal Likely Supreme Court Appeal on Health Care
The White House wants to end the federal appeals court rulings on the president's health care reform, and for the Supreme Court to take up the case. That's likely to bring a decision in June, in the middle of the presidential campaign. "President Barack Obama is trying to resolve the legal issues on his watch, said Alex Castellanos, Republican consultant. 'This is not politics,' he said. 'This is governing.'" Damned straight. - NPR: Silence From Rep. Bachmann As Vaccine Challenge Expires
Remember the bioethicist's $10,000 challenge to Michele Bachmann if she would simply identify a single person who was rendered mentally retarded by the HPV vaccine? The money would have gone to Bachmann's charity of choice. That's an easy $10k, right? Apparently not—Bachmann couldn't do it. And of course not: her repeated claim that middle school girls have received the shot and promptly been rendered retarded is ridiculous on its face. It's important that dangerous lies like this be responded to like this, because the alternative is for people to come to believe that it's true. - Wikipedia: Tontine
A tontine is an investment system by which a bunch of people pay into a pot and take their proportional share of the interest on a regular basis. As more participants die, the remaining participants all get a greater share of income with each payment. The last person alive gets a lump payment of all the remaining money. It was popular in the 1700s and 1800s, but they've both fallen out of favor and made illegal in many places.
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Bachmann’s claim is ridiculous (but par for the course in Republican politics these days). Rick Perry, however, deserves to be skewered on campaign contributions from Merck and the policy to require all girls in the state of Texas to receive the vaccine. What could be more anathema to conservative voters than a politician forcing their daughters to get vaccinated for a sexually transmitted disease? This works whether you are libertarian leaning Republican or bible-thumping one.
That and how lovely this fits with Perry’s support for abstinence only education.
Didn’t everyone learn the word “tontine” from watching “MASH” reruns?
Bachmann is not ridiculous, she is stone, cold crazy. Important distinction. And as the highest-ranking teaparty candidate in the Republican Party she is an example of the Republican’s big problem – they bought the teaparty to get the votes and now Republicans have to figure out what to do with all this teaparty bullshit. Like her claim yesterday that Hezbollah is building missile sites in Cuba. While her continued presence is a boon to reality-based politicians, we all have to worry about the example she provides to fellow rightwing crazies like this little teaparty wingnut.
After modest success cobbling together majorities with their Southern Strategy, and then the Christian right, Republican strategists have latched onto a loose affiliation of fantasy-based malcontents, nuts, and weapons fondlers who gather at Revolutionary War cross-dressing galas and parade the stupid. Heckuva job Republicans! These are dangerous times.
A tontine was the basis for the plot in a Michael Caine film from 1966.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061204/
The Title of the film was “The Wrong Box”. Sorry.
And based on a Robert Louis Stevenson novel—interesting!