NFL to cancel Pro Bowl?

Makes perfect since to me. NFL fans, by and large, don’t care about this game. I know I don’t. The players care even less, and that is clear from the body language and the effort on the field. Here’s a story about potentially canceling the Pro Bowl and a portion of the article:

The league and union agreed that the quality of last year’s game, which saw the NFC claim a 55-41 win over the AFC, was unacceptable at a meeting between the sides earlier this month.

The sides, though, were understood to have discussed ways to improve the fixture rather than wipe it from the schedule.

The game still is listed on the NFL’s calendar the week before New Orleans hosts Super Bowl XLVII on Feb. 3, though the location remains unknown.

Of course, if NFL officials wanted to go ahead and destroy any lingering interest in the Pro Bowl, they all ready did so by scheduling the game before the Super Bowl. Some of the best players in the league aren’t even going to play because of the injury risk. That was the most boneheaded move officials could have made. I realize that interest in the NFL season wanes after the Super Bowl, but at least you will have the best players involved in the game, including those who actually played in the Super Bowl.

If officials are going to leave it hopelessly wedged between the final playoff game and the big dance, I say do us all a favor and just shoot the lame duck before it becomes more of a joke than it already is.

NFL, players union consider canceling Pro Bowl game – NFL News | FOX Sports on MSN.

Romney’s big health care plan

Romney’s basic plan for health care: give tax breaks to people so they can purchase their own individual plans and try to entice businesses away from offering coverage to their employees.

That’s a plan? First, most people, including myself, would not be able to afford health insurance without getting it through an employer. This is the only way we can actually afford it. That had better be one massive individual tax incentive because as Stephen Andrew points out, of the people who won’t be turned down for coverage because of some underlying medical condition, most of them cannot afford the going rate for insurance  in any case, especially given what they already have to pay in mortgages, car payments, eating expenses, utility bills, etc. And insurance for people with some kind of condition would be financially out of reach in this scenario. This prospect scares the shit out of Andrew, and I would have to concur.

In Andrew’s words:

This has been the goal for many corporate conservatives for a long time. Divorce healthcare from employers, throw you out there on your own, save money for the stockholders. Romney and others seem to think that can be done by offering a fat tax cut on your gads of disposable income, so that you can offset the cost of an individual policy.

What planet are these jokers living on? Putting aside the idea that a tax cut doesn’t do almost half the population a lick of good, there are no affordable health insurance policies for a fifty year-old guy like me available on the private market. None, nada, zilch. Check for yourself, go out and get a quote on an individual policy for a fifty year-old with minor preexisting conditions and an autoimmune disease with similar deducts, Rx, and copays. Go ahead, I’ll wait right here for you freedom loving libertarians to find and link a plan with a major or at least half-ass reputable company comparable to the employer based one I have now with CIGNA. …

The rest of you already know the math don’t you? Now try it for someone in their 40s who’s had breast cancer, or 58 years old with diabetes, or a young 22-year-old with a congenital heart defect. Those policies either do not exist or they are exorbitantly priced. Few people in the 99% will be to afford one, for themselves let alone their family, with or without a Tax Cut. If this is Romney’s plan, it is a fucking death sentence for millions of Americans, it will certainly cost is way more money at best, probably come with increased suffering and debt for individual and government eventually, and that all probably includes me.

Insurance, of course, isn’t the only concern: after one renders a hefty sum to Caesar for insurance, there is also potential medical bills, high drug costs and doctor visits, all of which are still egregiously high after insurance pays its share. The health care wormhole runs deep in this nation, I’m afraid, and it will only go deeper under GOP leadership.

This is what scares the hell out of me about Romney et al | The Zingularity.

Romney whiffs on women’s rights

It’s pretty stunning that Romney can’t throw his spontaneous support behind women receiving equal pay as men. According to this article, when asked about the [[Lilly Ledbetter Act]], his campaign pulled the ol’ “We’ll get back to you on that line:”

Romney’s advisers held a conference call inviting reporters to ask questions. One was simple and straightforward: “Does Gov. Romney support the Lilly Ledbetter Act?”

In other words, when a woman is paid less than a man for doing the same work, does the presumptive Republican nominee support her right to fight for the equal pay she’s guaranteed under the law? That’s exactly what the bill that bears my name ensures — it simply gives workers a fair shot to make their case in court. …

Romney’s team has certainly had enough time to think about its candidate’s positions — he’s been running for president for six years — and about the law in question, which was the very first one that Barack Obama signed as president more than three years ago.

But Romney’s team drew a blank. The line went silent. Crickets. When an adviser finally piped up, it wasn’t to answer the question. It was to tell the reporter, “We’ll get back to you on that.”

Of course, stunning as it is, it shouldn’t come as much surprise, since Romney doesn’t seem to have had one spontaneous thought in this campaign, unless, of course, it was a “spontaneous” gaffe about not being concerned about poor people, etc. and other unsightly miscues.

Romney's insult to women on equal pay – CNN.com.

Tea Party: the Euro-version

Far right wing fringe candidates may be gaining influence in Europe, and that is good news for no one, except the crazies of course. It’s definitely bad news for poor people, women and immigrants … and blue collar workers … and sick people.

Here is an article on one of the far-right leaders, Marine Le Pen, president of France’s National Front party.

Is the far right gaining ground in Europe? – CNN.com.

Krugman on Romney

In his most recent column, The New York Times’ Paul Krugman asks, “Just how stupid does Mitt Romney think we are.”

At a recent campaign stop, Romney spoke at a shuttered factory in Ohio to imply that Obama’s economic policy had something to do with its closure. As reporters on hand pointed out, the factory in question actually closed while George W. Bush was president. But inconvenient truths such as that surely won’t stop the Romney machine.

Here’s Krugman:

Does the Romney campaign expect Americans to blame President Obama for his predecessor’s policy failure?

Yes, it does. Mr. Romney constantly talks about job losses under Mr. Obama. Yet all of the net job loss took place in the first few months of 2009, that is, before any of the new administration’s policies had time to take effect. So the Ohio speech was a perfect illustration of the way the Romney campaign is banking on amnesia, on the hope that voters don’t remember that Mr. Obama inherited an economy that was already in free fall.

So the answer to the first question: yes, Romney thinks Americans are that stupid, either too stupid or too lazy to hold him accountable to his claims or to do some independent fact-checking. He’s counting on that, and he’s right. That probably does describe the large majority of Americans. The proof is in the pudding: Bush got re-elected in 2004 after leading us into a war on false pretenses, and in 2008, we came inches away from having the incompetent and anti-intellectual Sarah Palin as vice president thanks to that alarmist Tea Party nonsense. So, no, Romney doesn’t hold the intellect of many Americans in high regard. It’s insulting, but then again, we get the politicians that we deserve.

The Amnesia Candidate – NYTimes.com.