Being that it is Halloween, I thought it might be fun if we all shared scary tales about things that go bump in the night.

I have two such tales, and they are true as far as I can attest, but then again, I was a child of the 60’s, so you decide.

Years go, when I was in my early 20’s, single and living alone, I had the strangest dream.

It had been a Friday night, and I stayed in Fridays because I had to rise early at 4:30 to head into work Saturday.

I’ll never forget this dream or the aftermath.

In my dream, I woke up and went to the bathroom and when I clicked on the light,  I was scared and shocked to see an older woman dressed all in black.  Her dress reached the floor, and her gray hair was covered in some of type of black scarf.

Before I could scream or open my mouth, she said to me, “Someone you know with blonde hair has died.”

I woke up instantly, and laid in the darkness trying to think of who I knew with blonde hair, and since it was the middle of th night and I was still half-asleep, I decided it was a stupid dream and could not think of anyone I knew with blonde hair.

I went into work the next day and had forgotten about that dream until I came home to a ringing phone.

A friend was calling to tell me that another very good friend had been involved in a hit-and-run the night before and was in the ICU hooked up to life support and was not expected to make it. He had been declared brain dead and his parents were the unimaginable situation of having to make that terrible decision on pulling the plug.

That friend had blonde hair and it still sends shivers down my spine every time I remember that night.

My second tale is harder to believe, since I actually have a hard time believing it myself.

I live in a rural desert area at the base of the Superstition Mountains outside of Phoenix, and the mountains themselves are filled with many mysteries even to this day.

In my area are several rock structures left behind by prospectors that came up to the mountains in search of the famous Lost Dutchmen Mine.

It had been a very hot summer day in mid-July and I was sitting in my office writing on the PC with my little dog napping on a nearby recliner.

I’m not sure exactly what happened that drew my attention, but I turned my head and from the corner of my eye I saw a figure, just the shoulders and chest under a brown shirt of some sort. At the very time, my dog jumped from the recliner and started barking furiously, while going in circles, and the temperature in the room dropped to freezing.

The apparition or figment of my overactive imagination was only seen for maybe a second, but the dog was in high alert and the room was so cold.

I pushed from my desk and walked out the door to the yard and into the heat. The little dog ran out barking and still going crazy, and as I was leading the way around the house, the dog stopped and turned to the patio and just went crazy barking his fool dog head off.

There was nothing there.

We walked around the house and went back into my office and that room was still so cold that I turned the air up higher to warm the room up.

I’m not sure myself what occurred, but all I can say is that I wish whatever that was that happened that day would happen more often during the summer to help us cut down on our electric bills!

Happy Haunting!

appreciate an alternative to HP. arianna has becoming increasingly unbearable. love the limericks!

An interesting phenomenon has begun spontaneously at Huffington Post, beginning a couple weeks ago and growing by the day.  There has been no overt communication amonst the regulars but a lot of reading between the lines.  As you all are aware, that site has become infested with not only the regular trolls, but many new ones daily, sent there by GOP sites on a paid basis.  It has had its effect, as it had elicited responses that have gotten noteworthy posters like Kevenseven, Volvo Birkenstock and others banned, while these trolls have been allowed to disrupt many good on line discussions.

Rather than leave the site, we are fighting back, albeit in an unorthodox manner, and we don’t know how long HP will allow it, but it is driving the trolls batty.  It also had had unintended effects on the regulars, making us a much tighter knit group, more collegial like PlanetPOV, and it’s more fun to go there.  We can’t be dead serious all the time or we’ll turn into curmudgeons; there has to be some humor and fun, too, IMO.

So, here’s what is happening.  We look for each other and take over a blog and turn it into a meeting place, sort of like Twitter for grownups, where we exchange greetings, post music and other videos, jokes and other chit chat types of conversations that are almost all off topic.  So, when a troll appears, their first reaction is “WTF??”  “If you want a chat line, go to Facebook!!”  Even some regulars who have been away are bewildered, but soon catch on and join in the merriment.  There are so many small posts in chat situations, as you all know, that in 5 minutes a troll flame ends up on page 5, effectively being shoved down and easily ignored.  Sometimes the trolls rant that HP is allowing us to violate the TOS, which we are, and those rants are getting scrubbed.  But they’re, for now, letting us continue.  So, every night there’s a party atmosphere.  Oh, there is still plenty of on topic discussion, but the troll posts are not as noticeable.

I’m sure HP moderators are debating what to do about this as I’m sure there have been complaints, especially from the troll posts that get scrubbed (how funny is that?); yesterday CheshireCat, a righty but a good guy, railed about his legit posts getting scrubbed while the deluge of off topic posts are allowed.  Too funny.  They have two choices: 1.  scrub all the posts, which would leave the blog practically empty; 2.  ban all of us, but if they do that, they ban over 50 regulars, and that would reduce the clicks, wouldn’t it, and therefore reduce their ad income?  It’s nice to see Aryanna’s crew caught between a rock and a hard spot.

The pace is varied, depending on the time of day, but it can be breathtaking.  Take a 10 minute break, and your post is on page 8 ort 9 sometimes.  Yesterday, it began early, in mid morning, and by the time I got home from work, the party was going full bore and continued well into the wee hours.  There were hardly any trolls, who had given up and gone elsewhere.  The few who stuck it out were all ticked off but we just took turns flaming them back and the rest of us just ignored them.  As aforementioned, we’ll see how HP deals with this.  By the way, we’ve spread the word about PlanetPOV, too, sneaking in messages in code, and most are aware of this site.

We’ve sneaked chats about this site, and I see a time when PlanetPOV will grow.  The one bit of feedback I offer is that the comment portion should be more user friendly and easier to follow, that is inhibiting some from coming here regularly.

It’s HuffNo Friday and time to let down at The Planet after a long week. There’s KQ’s thread for laughs and music an Afghanistan thread for discussions of substance and this thread to unload about, satirize and skewer The Huffington Post.

I posted this on the music thread but I think it belongs here instead. Here’s my animated parody about Queen of The Huffs from a few months back:

Lastly, there was one very memorable night at HuffPo when there was an impromptu Limerick Slam that many at the site participated in. In a tribute to that and to see if I can coax others here to join in on HuffPo themed limericks or jokes of any kind, I submit this one to try and kick it off:

There once was a woman from Greece
who found a gay man she could fleece
With his cash in her hand
She bought a news stand
and sold out before she could sneeze.

Anyone else?

I mentioned in a comment earlier that I heard a sobering interview with Matthew Hoh on NPR that was very convincing about why we should leave Afghanistan. Matthew Hoh is the U.S. Diplomat who resigned in protest over our war in Afghanistan (did he think he was Joe Biden or what?).

He pointed out that he had been in different parts of the nation, his job was to meet with warlords and leaders and try to encourage them to join with the U.S. and oppose the Taliban. He said, very simply, they don’t want us there. Not to protect them, not to nation build, not at all. How do you nation build when the nation doesn’t want to cooperate? My response is, if they don’t want it and we’re doing it for ourselves, isn’t something terribly wrong? He also noted that we are pouring billions we don’t have (and are borrowing from China among others) and losing valuable American lives to “win” a war where “winning” has never been defined as to what that would be.

Peaceful occupation by the U.S. for the foreseeable future?

More fraudulent elections with corrupt leaders?

And coming on the heels of all of this is the news that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president, has been receiving CIA money while receiving money from his heavy involvement in the poppy and opium trade in Afghanistan…the profits of which finance the Taliban and their battle against our troops.

I can’t remember the specific quote but Hoh basically said that those higher up in intelligence and the military in Afghanistan deal with these corrupt people because “everyone’s corrupt over there”. And we believe we can turn Afghanistan into the U.S.? Okay, maybe Texas or Oklahoma but that’s it.

Hoh was asked about Hillary Clinton’s comments that if the Taliban took over the country, Al Qaeda would be back in force swiftly. He respectfully disagreed and said that Al Qaeda has evolved away from what they were in 2001, they are now a virtual movement on the internet and around the world in many places (including Pakistan). He explained that they have learned from the past and would not concentrate themselves in one area like that again…which to me makes perfect sense. If they mindlessly did so, we should leave Afghanistan anyway, wait for them all to gather there (I can just see them waving up at the satellites spying on them in their RV convoy) and attack them all. But they won’t.

In contrast to Al Qaeda, Hoh said the U.S. is has not evolved and is still fighting the Al Qaeda of the 1990’s. Anyone who has taken their shoes off at an airport can testify to this (we’re trying to prevent the past from attacking us again!).

Truly, there is no attainable “victory in Afghanistan and we can’t afford the 500,000 troops it would probably take to knock down the Taliban. Meanwhile, Al Qaeda and the Taliban are trying to take over Pakistan…which has nuclear weapons!

Pres. Obama often said in the campaign that Bush took his eye off the ball in Afghanistan when he went to war in Iraq and he was right. The thing is, during that time Afghanistan had no eye on it, Al Qaeda relocated to a more southern climate in Pakistan. Now Pres. Obama turns to Afghanistan and we are fighting the Taliban…who certainly gave aid and comfort to Al Qaeda but were not the actual ones who attacked us on 9/11.

The ball is in Pakistan now and it’s radioactive. I sincerely think Pres. Obama’s eye should be on it there and elsewhere in the world where Al Qaeda is strong  instead of primarily on Afghanistan.

HuffNo FRIDAY!!!

I know it’s early to start the party but I’m just too psyched about HuffNo so I can’t wait to get things going.  Now someone else can start a serious thread for HuffNo Friday if they want but I’m serious about my music.

I have a very eclectic taste in music. I love everything from classical to reggae to hip hop to bluegrass to opera to alternative you name it. It fits my personality because I tend to experience many different moods and music to me is all about satisfying our emotions. I tend to like music with an edge or a political conscience but like I say to anyone who asks me about my musical tastes I say “I only like good music”.

There probably is no art from that is more a matter of personal preference than music. We often cannot say why we like one piece of music and do not like another. Most likely because music touches the soul and some music reminds us of things that make us happy and things that make us sad, in a bad way.

For me music transcends spoken language as well. I love music with meaningful lyrics but for me to enjoy music I do not need hear lyrics or even to understand the lyrics to satisfy my love for certain songs.

Music more than any other art form is uniquely international. Music loses little in translation from one culture to another culture. America easily adopts musical styles from cultures all over the world. Furthermore, American culture spreads music all over the world as well and in many cases has been our best method of diplomacy. I love hearing Asian cultures for example adopt and hybridize American music forms like rock, the blues, ska and even hip hop.

Probably my favorite instrument of all time is the electric guitar having grown up in the 60’s and 70’s. While I love classic rock I still follow many current groups though I beleive the 00’s has been disappointing so far especially in terms of American music. I end up enjoying more and more international music for that reason. However one of my favorite rock albums was produced in the 00’s that really resonated with me not only musically but in theme as well because it truly was the best protest album of our time.

Green Day “American Idiot”

Green Day “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”

Green Day “Jesus of Suburbia”

Of course right wingers like O’Reilly and Limbaugh came out against Green Day’s album “American Idiot” because it was too truthful.

For Kalima.

By Orac, Respectful Insolence

Not long ago, I wrote a post warning about how funding for non-science-based modalities and, indeed, modalities that are purely religion-based, have found their way into various versions of health care reform bills that are currently wending their way through both houses of Congress. In other words, purveyors of faith healing and purely religious woo are trying to do what purveyors of “alternative” medicine have already done through Senator Tom Harkin, and hijack the health care reform process to codify their preferred unscientific health care modalities as legitimate after science has rejected them.

Now, the Center for Inquiry has launched a campaign to inform and educate our legislators. You can participate by using its talking points (or paraphrasing them or voicing your own objections) to protest:

Congress is considering health care legislation that would in part mandate coverage of non-evidenced based medical treatments such as prayer and therapeutic touch. This would raise the cost of health care for all Americans and represent a violation of the principle of separation of church and state.

CFI continues:

The Center for Inquiry asks you to contact your Senators and Representative to voice your strong opposition to the proposal in the Heath Care bills that would mandate coverage of non evidence-based “alternative” medical treatments including spiritual and prayer based healing under the guise of nondiscrimination.Talking Points

• America needs a health care system that focuses on increasing the health of individuals and reducing the cost of coverage.
• This type of health care system is not possible if insurers are required to pay for medical treatments with questionable at best results.
• If Congress requires that insurers cover alternative treatments such as Christian Science prayer, therapeutic touch, or other non-evidence based medical procedures, the cost of health care for all Americans will go up. This runs counter to the goal that Congress has laid out: to make health care more affordable for all Americans. – If the final version of health care reform includes a public option, this mandate would also force the public insurance plan to cover these treatments. Because the public option is federally funded, the inclusion of the mandate would represent an egregious violation of the principle of separation of church and state.

I agree. It’s time to try to stop the insertion of faith-based quackery like Christian Science “prayer” treatments as reimbursable medical expenses in whatever health care reform bill(s) is/are passed by Congress. You can help by going here and writing to your Congressional representatives and Senators.

———————————–

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/10/fight_the_intrusion_of_quackery_and_reli.php

Katha Polett…

Am I happy? What a stupid question. Do you mean happy as in content? Joyful? Hopeful? Relieved? Counting my blessings? Intent on absorbing work? Depending on your definition–and when you ask me, and who you are–I could give a dozen different answers. If you really want to know how I feel about my life, you would have to get to know me and ask me a whole lot of particular questions, which could not necessarily be boiled down to a single answer, and could certainly not be used to compare my happiness with someone else’s–because how can anyone know if what I mean by happiness is what that other person means? Keats was happy when he wrote “Ode to a Nightingale,” Eichmann was happy when he met his daily quota of murdered Jews, and I am happy to be living this year in Berlin. Only a pollster (or an economist) would conflate these things. In fact, only a pollster would think that people tell pollsters the truth.

But why let quibbles stand in the way of a chance to attack feminism? The Huffington Post has sparked a national blatherfest with a series of posts by self-help guru Marcus Buckingham, which Arianna, in her trademark breathless fashion, blurbs as “the sad, shocking truth about how women are feeling.” Relying on “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” an analysis of General Social Survey data by Wharton’s Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, Buckingham claims that women are less happy than they used to be, are less happy than men and become increasingly unhappy as they get older. These results, he claims, are independent of whether women are rich or poor, married or single, work or stay home. As he puts it, “though women now have the liberty to choose whichever life they’d like, many are struggling in their pursuit of a happy life.” Maureen Dowd concurs that the problem is that women have too many choices–”a paradox, indeed.” Huffington, Buckingham and Dowd are late to the party, actually: Ross Douthat devoted his New York Times column to the subject back in May. His culprit? Increased acceptance of single motherhood. Bring back “social stigma”–for women’s own good.

Using a single statistic as a peg for your pet theory is a game we all can play. But before you leap in with your own, consider this: the actual differences, which Buckingham et al. present as enormous, are tiny. As U Penn professor and blogger Mark Liberman sets it out on Language Log, in 1972-74, 31.9 percent of men said they were very happy, 53 percent said they were pretty happy and 15.1 percent said they were not too happy; among women, the corresponding figures were 37 percent, 49.4 percent and 13.6 percent. For 2004, 2006 and 2008, 29.8 percent of men said they were very happy, 56.1 percent were pretty happy and 14 percent were not too happy; for women it was 31.2, 54.9 and 13.9. In other words, women today self-report a bit less manic joy than three decades ago, as do men, and a bit more modified rapture. But women still say they are happier than do men, contrary to journalistic rumor; and, most important, both in the 1970s and the 2000s, more than eight in ten women and men said they were very or fairly happy. The percentage of “not too happy” men has declined by 1.1 percent, and the percentage of such women has increased by a great big 0.3 percent. Three additional women in a thousand: that’s what the fuss over “women’s unhappiness” is all about.

There are plenty of possible reasons why more people in recent years would report slightly less happiness than thirty years ago. Perhaps people are more lonely–all those hours in front of screens. Perhaps it’s the stressed-out economy, or over-the-top consumerism, or increased inequality, or having George Bush as president, or less leisure time. Or maybe Americans define happiness a bit differently from the way they did in 1972–or are simply becoming a bit more honest. After all, somebody is taking all those legal and illegal mood-elevating drugs, and going to all those therapists, and buying all those books about how to cheer up, like, um, Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham. From the information given, there is no way to tell. Nor is it possible to say, simply by looking at the self-reports of men and women over time, what role feminism plays, if any. After all, women moving into higher education and the workforce is not the only thing that has happened in the past thirty years. If you want to play ridiculous numbers games, it could be that feminist gains have made women 10 percent happier, but something else–the fraying of the safety net, the turbo-charged misogyny of pop culture, reading too many self-help books–has canceled it out. You just can’t say. You can, however, safely dismiss those like Buckingham who pooh-pooh the argument that women’s “second shift” at home is to blame because men are doing more. OK, but last time I looked, more was not half. As Dr. Johnson said in another context, If you’re going to calculate, calculate.

None of these possibilities have prevented readers from deluging the Times and the Huffington Post with tut-tuts and I-told-you-so’s to uppity women. But how happy were women, really, in that golden pre-feminist era? Culture critic Caryl Rivers pointed out to me that in 1973, studies showing that married women had the highest levels of psychiatric problems, including depression and anxiety, prompted sociologist Jessie Bernard to declare marriage a “health hazard for women.” If that’s no longer true, why not give feminism some credit?

As for those still sky-high levels of good cheer, I’m skeptical. People answering yes to a pollster’s question about happiness is like saying, “Fine, thanks” when someone asks, “How are you?” If it actually represents a truthful and considered answer, either Americans have entirely given up following the news or the Prozac is working.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091019/pollitt

Katha Polett….

Am I happy? What a stupid question. Do you mean happy as in content? Joyful? Hopeful? Relieved? Counting my blessings? Intent on absorbing work? Depending on your definition–and when you ask me, and who you are–I could give a dozen different answers. If you really want to know how I feel about my life, you would have to get to know me and ask me a whole lot of particular questions, which could not necessarily be boiled down to a single answer, and could certainly not be used to compare my happiness with someone else’s–because how can anyone know if what I mean by happiness is what that other person means? Keats was happy when he wrote “Ode to a Nightingale,” Eichmann was happy when he met his daily quota of murdered Jews, and I am happy to be living this year in Berlin. Only a pollster (or an economist) would conflate these things. In fact, only a pollster would think that people tell pollsters the truth.

But why let quibbles stand in the way of a chance to attack feminism? The Huffington Post has sparked a national blatherfest with a series of posts by self-help guru Marcus Buckingham, which Arianna, in her trademark breathless fashion, blurbs as “the sad, shocking truth about how women are feeling.” Relying on “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” an analysis of General Social Survey data by Wharton’s Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, Buckingham claims that women are less happy than they used to be, are less happy than men and become increasingly unhappy as they get older. These results, he claims, are independent of whether women are rich or poor, married or single, work or stay home. As he puts it, “though women now have the liberty to choose whichever life they’d like, many are struggling in their pursuit of a happy life.” Maureen Dowd concurs that the problem is that women have too many choices–”a paradox, indeed.” Huffington, Buckingham and Dowd are late to the party, actually: Ross Douthat devoted his New York Times column to the subject back in May. His culprit? Increased acceptance of single motherhood. Bring back “social stigma”–for women’s own good.

Using a single statistic as a peg for your pet theory is a game we all can play. But before you leap in with your own, consider this: the actual differences, which Buckingham et al. present as enormous, are tiny. As U Penn professor and blogger Mark Liberman sets it out on Language Log, in 1972-74, 31.9 percent of men said they were very happy, 53 percent said they were pretty happy and 15.1 percent said they were not too happy; among women, the corresponding figures were 37 percent, 49.4 percent and 13.6 percent. For 2004, 2006 and 2008, 29.8 percent of men said they were very happy, 56.1 percent were pretty happy and 14 percent were not too happy; for women it was 31.2, 54.9 and 13.9. In other words, women today self-report a bit less manic joy than three decades ago, as do men, and a bit more modified rapture. But women still say they are happier than do men, contrary to journalistic rumor; and, most important, both in the 1970s and the 2000s, more than eight in ten women and men said they were very or fairly happy. The percentage of “not too happy” men has declined by 1.1 percent, and the percentage of such women has increased by a great big 0.3 percent. Three additional women in a thousand: that’s what the fuss over “women’s unhappiness” is all about.

There are plenty of possible reasons why more people in recent years would report slightly less happiness than thirty years ago. Perhaps people are more lonely–all those hours in front of screens. Perhaps it’s the stressed-out economy, or over-the-top consumerism, or increased inequality, or having George Bush as president, or less leisure time. Or maybe Americans define happiness a bit differently from the way they did in 1972–or are simply becoming a bit more honest. After all, somebody is taking all those legal and illegal mood-elevating drugs, and going to all those therapists, and buying all those books about how to cheer up, like, um, Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham. From the information given, there is no way to tell. Nor is it possible to say, simply by looking at the self-reports of men and women over time, what role feminism plays, if any. After all, women moving into higher education and the workforce is not the only thing that has happened in the past thirty years. If you want to play ridiculous numbers games, it could be that feminist gains have made women 10 percent happier, but something else–the fraying of the safety net, the turbo-charged misogyny of pop culture, reading too many self-help books–has canceled it out. You just can’t say. You can, however, safely dismiss those like Buckingham who pooh-pooh the argument that women’s “second shift” at home is to blame because men are doing more. OK, but last time I looked, more was not half. As Dr. Johnson said in another context, If you’re going to calculate, calculate.

None of these possibilities have prevented readers from deluging the Times and the Huffington Post with tut-tuts and I-told-you-so’s to uppity women. But how happy were women, really, in that golden pre-feminist era? Culture critic Caryl Rivers pointed out to me that in 1973, studies showing that married women had the highest levels of psychiatric problems, including depression and anxiety, prompted sociologist Jessie Bernard to declare marriage a “health hazard for women.” If that’s no longer true, why not give feminism some credit?

As for those still sky-high levels of good cheer, I’m skeptical. People answering yes to a pollster’s question about happiness is like saying, “Fine, thanks” when someone asks, “How are you?” If it actually represents a truthful and considered answer, either Americans have entirely given up following the news or the Prozac is working.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091019/pollitt

A day early!  Seriously, I’m trying like hell to stir discontent and general grump-hood at Huff this Thurs, and there is not any freaking traffic!

Try!   Try to find a thread with any action.    I defy you!

Be ready to dash over Friday and net the fish.

Which puts me in mind: I need to write another of my painfully obvious bits of satire that infuriates the tragically sincere….

The House presented its health care reform bill today. So naturally, the top story at HuffPo this evening, at this moment, written by Damn…I mean Dame Arianna herself  is “Huffington Post Game Changers! Vote!”.

You may criticize Arianna for her opportunism, misrepresentation, fear of criticism and enormous feet but she does have all the depth of a cookie sheet.  So there!

And since she wrote it, it is FULLY MODERATED AND SANITIZED FOR YOUR PROTECTION. Huh? A meaningless poll needs to be fully moderated?

So, I think it is only appropriate that PlanetPOV holds a poll tonight as well. Please vote for which of the list below you feel is the most lame of the changes at Huffington Post (you only get to vote once so please, talk it over with your attorneys and loved ones first, you wouldn’t want to make a mistake on something this important):

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The House has announced that it has a healthcare reform bill with a public option that it will release to the floor next week.  The bill will not reimburse providers at Medicare rates +5% which is a big disappointment but it will contain a public option where reimbursement rates will be negotiated instead.  The hypocritical part is that the corporate blue dog Democrats who claim they are fiscally conservative favor a plan that is just the opposite because consumers and taxpayers will spend more then they would under a robust public option.  This being said the public option in the healthcare bill is still worth supporting because it is still a big first step.

Though details of the legislation have not been released yet one of the good parts of the House’s plan is that it will put some real guidelines on the horrible behavior of insurance companies.  Like I stated in a previous article on the Planet, if congress just legislates and limits the profits that healthcare insurance companies can make it would go a long way toward real healthcare reform.  One key part of the House bill has a provision where where 85% of premiums must be directed towards claims.  Since healthcare profits and overheads are around 20-30% that is a major improvement.  Following are some excerpts from the wire story describing parts of the House plan’s efforts to legislate.

“Thursday’s bill includes an array of new restrictions on the private insurance industry, in addition to forcing insurers to compete with the federal government for business.

Firms would be banned from denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions and limited in their ability to charge higher premiums on the basis of age.

They would be required to spend 85 percent of their income from premiums on coverage, effectively limiting their ability to advertise or pay bonuses. Additionally, the industry would be stripped of immunity from antitrust regulations covering price fixing, bid rigging and market allocation. And in a late addition to the bill, 30-year-old restrictions on the Federal Trade Commission’s ability to look into the insurance industry would be erased.”

In the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has expressed confidence that he can get the 60 votes need to pass his version of healthcare reform which includes a public option with the “opt out” clause.  Moreover he has asked for our help in the following YouTube video that he published to have supporters of the public option contact member of congress.

Following are all the links you will need to contact congress and the white house to support the public option.

Contact the White House and tell them the public option is essential.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/

You can also call or write to the President:

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20500

Please include your e-mail address

Phone Numbers

Comments: 202-456-1111

Switchboard: 202-456-1414

FAX: 202-456-2461

TTY/TDD

Comments: 202-456-6213

Visitors Office: 202-456-2121

House and Senate Democratic Leadership

Contact Senate Majority Leader Reid

Contact Senate Majority Whip Durbin

Contact House Speaker Pelosi

Contact House Majority Leader Hoyer

Contact Senators undecided about the public option

US Capitol switchboard: (202) 224-3121. A switchboard operator will connect you directly with the Senate office you request.

Baucus/http://baucus.senate.gov/contact/emailForm.cfm?subj=issue

Bayh/http://bayh.senate.gov/contact/email/

Begich/http://begich.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=EmailSenator

Bennet/http://bennet.senate.gov/contact/

Byrd/http://byrd.senate.gov/contacts/

Cantwell/http://cantwell.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm

Carper/http://carper.senate.gov/contact/

Conrad/https://conrad.senate.gov/contact/webform.cfm

Dorgan/http://dorgan.senate.gov/contact/contact_form.cfm

Feinstein/http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.EmailMe

Hagan/http://hagan.senate.gov/?p=contact

Lieberman/http://lieberman.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm?regarding=issue

Lincoln/http://lincoln.senate.gov/contact/email.cfm

Bill Nelson/http://billnelson.senate.gov/contact/email.cfm

Benjamin Nelson/http://bennelson.senate.gov/email-issues.cfm

Pryor/http://pryor.senate.gov/contact/

Reid/http://reid.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm

Snowe/http://snowe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactSenatorSnowe.Email

Tester/http://tester.senate.gov/Contact/index.cfm

Udall/http://markudall.senate.gov/contact/contact.cfm

Warner/http://warner.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Contact

Wyden/http://wyden.senate.gov/contact/

Contact the Blue Dog Coalition in the House

BlueDog@mail.house.gov

Arrianics!   Today is Thursday!   (I know because my wife kicked me out of bed to drag the trash to the kerb)

Tomorrow is HuffNo Friday.    It is our hope here that you will refrain from visiting Huff tomorrow.   Unless perhaps it is to urge others to come here.   But the idea is to cause a perceptible drop in page clicks.    This exercise was run for several weeks running many months ago, and was quite effective in impacting their numbers.

So we are asking you to spend some time at Huff today promoting HuffNo Friday.   Go to all the posters with whom you have a relationship, and just ask them to visit the planet today.

Be aware that you can get burned.    Huff could ban you, if they get wind of you promoting a protest.   Trust me, I know.

But the goal is to cause Huff some economic pain.    Nothing but money matters to them, so let’s make a point of denying them traffic on Fridays.    Let’s make the planet the destination of hundreds of Arrianiacs on Fridays especially.

AdLib adds:

UPDATE:
I have set up a Wordpress site to refer people here and you CAN post that link at HuffPo (email me immediately if you think that link has become blacklisted too and I’ll set up another one).

That Wordpress site simply tells people to click on the link that’s there so they can come here (you can click below to check it out). So, use this address as a link at HuffPo:

http://planetpov.wordpress.com/

You said it, Kev! Let me add a few suggestions.

As you say, best to create an extra account at HuffPo to use for inviting folks here for HuffNo Friday, very quick and easy to do and who cares if HuffPo bans it.

I do suggest being tactful about inviting people so as to make it less likely that Moderators give it too much attention. BTW, don’t worry about trolls reading your posts and coming here, there’s a zero tolerance here for hateful troll behavior and the site is set up so they can be shut down and out quickly.

To be clear, all points of view are welcome here, Progressive, conservative, Dem, Repub, Blue Dog, Independents, etc., as long as they join in as a good citizen of The Planet with respect for all other members.

Lastly, HuffPo has added the link to PlanetPov to their “no-no” list of words (heh, we’re up there with “9/11?, “gay” and “Ted Kennedy”) so an easy way to provide a link to here is to put a space between “planet” and “pov” like this: “http://planet pov.com” and mention that they should remove the space or just tell them to google “Planetpov”.

Should be a bit of fun here on Friday Night!

(Edited in order that AdLib’s addition does not slip to the bottom of the page.)

Apologies to my new POV friends if this is a little thin to be a post.   I don’t have the time to research this further right away but wow, I am hopping mad having just learned that Senator Bayh’s wife is on the board of Wellpoint and had earned over $2 million dollars over the past two years.

According to Wellpoint, prior to nomination to the board, Susan B. Bayh, J.D. Chairman of Corporate Governance & Nominating Committee and Member of Compensation Committee, Emmis Communications Corp. served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the College of Business at Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana from 1994 to 2004.   From 1989 to 1994, Ms. Bayh served as an Attorney in the Pharmaceutical Division of Eli Lilly and Company, where she handled federal regulatory issues for marketing and medical affairs.   This outrageous situation needs to be widely disseminated so others can contact their Representatives and demand an ethics review.  According to the standing rules of the Senate on Conflict of Interest:  http://rules.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=RulesOfSenate.View&Rule_id=259a2601-22d6-4a04-a431-45b8501d5518 this is, if not a violation of several rules, it is so contrary to the intent of the rules, it points out that the rules need immediate review.  Senators should at the very least have to recuse themselves from voting on matters where there is a clear monetary conflict.