WellPointers

Burns: You know, Smithers, I think I’ll donate a million dollars to the local orphanage…when pigs fly! [They laugh. The pig sails across the sky before them.]
Smithers: Will you be donating that million dollars now, Sir?
Burns: Nooo, I’d still prefer not.

When Pigs Fly

2007: WellPoint pledged that its charitable foundation would give $30 million in grants to help the uninsured
2010: “It was just not something that the company really wanted to do,” said one former executive, who, like others interviewed for this story, asked not to be identified out of concern that discussing WellPoint could have adverse career consequences. “So it went by the wayside.”

Terrible news for the Democrat

All that back-room, closed-door, no-debate, unconstitutional wrangling has produced this epic fail of an outcome:

CBO has finished its work [scoring the “fix” sidecar and final healthcare reform bill] and will release the official preliminary score later today. But here are the basic numbers: The bill will cost $940 billion over the first 10 years and reduce the deficit by $130 billion during that period. In the second 10 years – so, 2020 to 2029 – it will reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion. The legislation will cover 32 million Americans, or 95 percent of the legal population.

To put this in context, that’s more deficit reduction than either the House or Senate bill, and more coverage than the Senate bill.

But, by all means, let’s talk about the horror of “deem and pass” some more. Likewise, let’s attack and mock folks with Parkinson’s disease who currently can’t get insurance or afford treatment. Why can’t they all just exhibit some ‘Merican can-do attitude and Go Die in the Streets? And, for God’s sake, keep the Guvmint out of my Medicare!

Source: absurdlakefront

Islands in the stream

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has put out an analysis of MSM’s business model and its prospects. A few grim highlights:

We estimate that the newspaper industry has lost $1.6 billion in annual reporting and editing capacity since 2000, or roughly 30 percent, which leaves an extra $4.4 billion remaining. Even if the economy improves, we predict more cuts in 2010.

$141 million of nonprofit money has flowed into new media efforts over the last four years (not including public broadcasting). That is less than one-tenth of the losses in newspaper resources alone.

[~79% of internet users never click on an ad, so:] Advertising during the year declined for the first time since 2002, according to data from eMarketer. Updated August projections put the declines at 4.6 percent, to $22.4 billion in total revenues.

Under the heading “Thrilling news for the New York Times’ upcoming paywall model,” you have:

Only about one third of Americans (35 percent) have a news destination they would call a favorite and even among these users, only 19 percent said they would continue to visit if the site put up a paywall.

But it seems the peeps do like opinion television, day night or otherwise:

At night, when cable is dominated by ideological talk shows, Fox grew by nearly a quarter to an average of 2.13 million viewers at any given moment. MSNBC rose 3 percent to 786,000, while CNN fell 15 percent to 891,000 viewers….

In daytime, CNN was up 9 percent over 2008 to an average of 621,000 viewers. But Fox daytime viewership grew again by almost a quarter, to roughly twice CNN’s audience (1.2 million viewers). MSNBC, relying on NBC news people more than talk show hosts, fell 8 percent to 325,000 viewers.

So, MSM, I guess this is it. You’re going to die. Before anyone start dancing on their grave, though, consider a future in which the Glenn Becks and Bill O’Reillys of the world (and their left of center counterparts) are all that’s left on cable news stations…and in which 80% of the content the blogosphere, notably including (in a roundabout way) this very post, is:

ongoing analysis of more than a million blogs and social media sites finds that 80 percent of the links are to U.S. legacy media.

So, in five years or so, we’ll all just be reblogging some crap O’Reilly said last night. And calling that news.

Jiminy. In the finest tradition of the blogosphere: I proclaim that I don’t know what it is, but something’s got to be did. Doubtless there will be an app for that…

Uhm, holy fucking shit:

Carbon Copies

Pencils [are] made from the carbon of human cremains. 240 pencils can be made from an average body of ash – a lifetime supply of pencils for those left behind.

Each pencil is foil stamped with the name of the person. Only one pencil can be removed at a time, it is then sharpened back into the box causing the sharpenings to occupy the space of the used pencils. Over time the pencil box fills with sharpenings – a new ash, transforming it into an urn. The window acts as a timeline, showing you the amount of pencils left as time goes by.

We’re almost out of Dad; Grandad turned out to be more of a 5H and really just not that useful. Going to have to learn to live with him, I guess.

It’s entirely possible that more people will be killed driving to the dealer for the [Toyota] recall than lives will be saved from going through the safety theater demanded by the Department of Transportation. […] I face 19 times more risk walking home the mile back from my Toyota dealer than I would driving a car that one assumes has the electronic defect.

Theodore H. Frank; so very true. Fantastically good piece.

Color me gruntled

Turns out Ben Zimmer is taking over the “On Language” column for the NYT. I am stunned. Amongst the various pinch-hitters that have been filling that space since Safire shuffled off his mortal coil, I rated Zimmer’s as superior. Vastly superior, even. This led me to assume that the NYT would either