Eric P

"But was Norman Vincent Peale right? Is there power in positive thinking? A study just published in the journal Psychological Science says trying to get people to think more positively can actually have the opposite effect: it can simply highlight how unhappy they are." - Eric P from Bookmarklet

The result is that the Senate is an extremely inefficient institution compared to the House of Representatives, in which the majority is in firm command. And because there are so many more House members (435), they have fewer committee assignments and thus can develop greater expertise than Senators; in addition, although they run for office three times as often, they run in much smaller districts and often with little competition and on both accounts don't have to raise as much money in campaign donations as Senators do. - Eric P from Bookmarklet

In my mind, the real problem with the Senate isn't so much it's composition (though it is unrepresentative) or the length of its terms as the contemporary practice of requiring a 3/5 majority for every bill (except budgets). Without that, laws could be enacted, modified, and repealed much more easily, and there would be much more room for experimentation in solving existing problems. As... more... - John

It's probably a bit hard to figure out what's going on in the graphic above. Click on it. You'll get the bigger version. Then it'll be all too easy. What you're seeing is the number of former Senate Finance Committee staffers who have been hired to lobby for the health-care industry. - Eric P from Bookmarklet

I shot this on the fourth of July. I had been hoping that they'd shoot of the Macy's Fireworks somewhere in this area - can you imagine how great this shot would be if they were going off somewhere around 20th street or so? But no... they had to shoot them up by 50th, between me and another skyscraper. *Grumble grumble* - Eric P

Based on this, the next time you want to argue with your Primary Care doctor's front desk about a $5.00 co-pay, remember that he makes an average of $149,000.00 per year. On the other hand -- using United Healthcare as an example -- your insurance company paid their CEO -- one man -- $324,000,000 over a recent five year period. - Eric P from Bookmarklet

I think you must get a right to sue pass from the DOJ and those are sometimes not given. I checked the gov link on this and the DOJ has many FAQ's on this. - jlt-Janet

'Remember the $400 hammer? How 'bout that $600 toilet seat?" asks a Conservatives for Patients' Rights TV commercial criticizing President Barack Obama's health-care plan. "Seems when Congress gets involved, things just cost more." As it happens, I do remember the incident of the $436 hammer, the one that made headlines back in 1984. And while it may "seem" in hazy retrospect as though it showed how "things just cost more" once those silly liberals in Congress get started, what the hammer episode actually illustrated was a very different sort of ripoff. The institution that paid so very much for that hammer was President Ronald Reagan's Pentagon. A private-sector contractor was the party that was pleased to take the Pentagon's money. And it was a liberal Democrat in the House of Representatives, also known as "Congress," who publicized the pricey hardware to the skies. - Eric P from Bookmarklet

Thomas Frank++ - Andrew C

"Last month, Christopher Handley, a collector of comic books, pled guilty to federal charges of importing and possessing obscene cartoon drawings of children; he faces a maximum prison sentence of 15 years, for a crime involving neither actual children nor actual child porn. Last week, a Tennessee prosecutor charged Michael Wayne Campbell with aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor, for photo shopping the faces of three girls onto the nude bodies of three adult women. How might this constitute a crime (outside Iran)? The prosecutor explained: "when you have the face of a small child affixed to a nude body of a mature woman, it's going to be the state's position that this is for sexual gratification and that this is simulated sexual activity." It is also a crime - a federal crime -- to share your sexual fantasies about children in private communications with other adults: Two weeks ago, the 4th circuit court of appeals declined to review the conviction of Dwight Whorley for sharing... more... - Eric P from Bookmarklet

we live in a sick country killing is ok but sex or nudity are bad ? comic books come on . - Lisa Hopkins

"A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered. Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same interrelated colony, and will refuse to fight one another. The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination." - Eric P from Bookmarklet