Followup and stuff

A few random followups based on comments and such:

1.) I am well aware that there is a law (HIPAA) or guideline or suggestion that your insurance carrier has to provide you with a certificate of coverage and that you can not be denied insurance for a pre-existing condition and that new carriers have to pick you up within 63 days of the last day you had coverage from your previous carrier.  And I qualified for all of that.  I have never been without insurance for even one day since August 1986.  That has nothing to do with the cost of the premium.  You and the carrier can comply with the laws and you could still get stuck with a ginormous, whopping premium through no fault of your own because one of your family members has a pre-existing condition.  They can’t deny you coverage but they can make you wish you didn’t have to pay the premium.  That’s the insurance industry’s way of encouraging you to not bother them for a policy.  See how Congress has looked after us?  Heartwarming, isn’t it?

2.) I have no problem covering the costs of other people’s health care but I do have a problem with people who insist on consulting unproven alternative medicine and I’d like that to no longer be possible.  If you want to visit chiropractors and acupuncturists, do it on your own dime.  My point about insurance is that at this point in time, it’s easier for the ditzy to get their weekly back cracking covered than for those of us with ailing family members to get the care they need at affordable prices.  That’s wrong.

3.) Unrelated: Atrios posted a link to an older post he had on ACORN and the foreclosure crisis and how the Vampire Squids were shoving their blood funnels into every aspect oo mortgage and real estate interactions back in 2007.  That reminded me of the letter I got from Wells-Fargo yesterday.  It was a sort of frantic letter on their part saying, “We see that you are escaping our event horizon by paying off your mortgage and home equity loan.  We are trying frantically to reach you (by an old phone number) and haven’t been able to.  Please contact us so we can persuade you to renew your relationship with us.  We’d like to talk to you about new ways we can hook you back up to our perpetual money making apparatus.  Sincerely, your BFFs at Wells-Fargo”

Too funny.  By the way, I’m still waiting for the escrow account money Wells-Fargo generously decided to withhold for the payment of the ridiculous property taxes I paid in NJ and if the check is not here by the end of the week, I’m contacting my lawyer.  Sincerely, the newly emancipated RD.

Note: A curious thing happened when I called W-F about the payoff amount for the home equity loan (all of which went back into the house for really useful stuff, not vacations to majorca or a new car).  When I called them, they wouldn’t give me the payoff amount and they refused to release the lien on my house.  They told me that only a third party could do that.  In other words, my exasperated lawyer had to prepare a document and send it to them on his letterhead in order to get a payoff amount at closing and have the lien on the house released.  Both myself and the lawyer were pretty steamed about this.  It cost me extra legal fees and it seemed completely unnecessary.  The lawyer said that Wells-Fargo is full of serendipitous surprises like this that hold up closings.  So, what was the alternative?  Wells-Fargo said they would give me the payoff amount and release the lien directly IFF I contacted them by snail mail and waited- are you ready for this?- FORTY DAYS from the receipt of the snail mail.  By then, the closing would have had to be put off and all kinds of chaos and expensive and unnecessary mayhem would have ensued.  I have yet to hear a logical, rational, consumer friendly explanation as to why the loan account holder was not able to process this request within the 3-5 days and that it required the magic mojo of a lawyer’s third party stationary to get it done.  But I smell a scam.

4.) Chris Christie has set an October date for the election of a new senator to replace Frank Lautenberg who died recently.  The Democrats are howling at how unfair it is because it means there will be an expensive election separate from the one for governor to be held a month later and the earlier one will dissuade voters from showing up to kick Christie’s ass out of Drumthhhhhhhwackit.  As if NJ residents didn’t already have a zillion reasons to displace Christie.  I don’t know anyone who really likes him and quite a few teachers and school employees who actively hate his sizeable guts.

But all of the candidates that the Democrats are proposing to replace Lautenberg are male.  Corey Booker, another bonus class ass kisser in the mold of Barack Obama, is on the top of their lists, as is Frank Pallone, a Democratic Congressman.  NJ is not my problem anymore but I would like to point out- again- that there isn’t one single woman in the US Congressional delegation from NJ.  Not one single Congressperson or Senator from NJ is a woman.  NJ is the densest state in the union, in more ways than one (don’t even get me started).  You would think Democrats would make more of an effort to promote women into that delegation but I lived there for 20+ years and saw very little evidence of it, Linda Stender being a notable exception in 2006.  The state Democratic machine abandoned Stender in 2008 when Obama and Rahm Emannuel decided to knife liberal Democrats.

Take that in.  In the state with the densest population not one of their congressional delegates to either house is a woman and this has been the status quo for almost 2 decades.

I have remarkable little patience for either party in NJ but the crocodile tears the Democrats are spilling over this golden opportunity to elect a woman to the Senate and start cleaning up their shameful record of neglect for more than half of their population has me playing a very tiny violin.

Well, that’s not good

Hmmm, last spring, Congressional Democratic leadership (with Obama chiming in) forced Anthony Weiner to resign because he sent a picture to a woman he regularly twittered.  There she was, perfectly innocent, because no *good* woman tweets provocatively, innocently discussing “cap and trade” and the nuances of fresh-water vs salt-water economists when suddenly, without any invitation at all, he raped her virgin eyes with a digital dick.  {{eyes rolling}}  After she fainted and made an appointment with her therapist, it was discovered that Mr. Weiner had inadvertently twittered the pic to the entire known world, half of which consist of women who cannot distinguish between a picture of some dude’s naughty bits and an actual physical violation.  (Oh, please, don’t get your fricking knickers in a twist over a damn picture like you are the pink of perfection’s maidenly spinster aunt. The faux outrage generated over this picture is counterintuitively anti-feminist and downright nauseating)

So, Mr. Weiner, getting a helpful nudge, no-doubt, from a sprinkling of right wing operatives in the comment threads of lefty blogs who quickly whipped up the pearl clutching outrage, took his leadership’s advice and resigned.  Regardless of Representative Weiner’s political gifts, or lack thereof, the resignation eliminated a seat from the Democrats’ caucus, a liberal seat, no less, and deprived his district of a representative it actually still wanted.  Initially, I thought that Steny Hoyer was just trying to eliminate another liberal voice in his quest to homogenize the House Democrats into cream of student body president soup.  But now I think that the Democrats are so afraid of the media coming down on them with relentless coverage of non-issues that they would rather emasculate themselves than strut around the House floor like nothing happened, you know, the way Republicans do when one of their lot gets caught tap dancing in a bathroom stall or has his diaper changed by a high cost hooker.

But no, not our Democrats.  This crop of Democrats is dickless.  They decided that it was much more reasonable to cave to fabricated public opinion and unnecessarily risk a special election for Weiner’s seat.  And they lost it.

Didn’t see that comin’.

The formerly Democratic seat is now to be held by a Republican. From the post:

With 84 percent of the precincts counted early Wednesday, Mr. Turner was leading Mr. Weprin by 54 percent to 46 percent, according to The Associated Press.

National Republican leaders immediately trumpeted the victory as a sign of trouble for Mr. Obama’s re-election effort. “An unpopular President Obama is now a liability for Democrats nationwide,” Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement.

But Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, said the district’s large concentration of Orthodox Jews made it unusual and meant the race had few national ramifications.

“In this district, there is a large number of people who went to the polls tonight who didn’t support the president to begin with and don’t support Democrats — and it’s nothing more than that,” she said in a telephone interview.

Riiiight.  So by getting rid of a well-liked liberal Democrat in this Orthodox Jewish district, the Democrats were helpfully restoring the district to its natural order- conservative and Republican.  (Oh, Debbie, you had such promise once upon a time)

But what’s this?  Multiple comments from staunch Democratic voters in that NYTimes piece are saying that the reason they voted for the Republican was to “send a message” to Obama and the Democrats that they are not happy with the direction the country and economy are taking.  They want the Obama administration and Congress to focus on jobs and not more budget cuts.  This is what the Democrats should be afraid of.  They have decided to make all of the decisions for the voters and haven’t offered voters a choice.  There’s no difference between the parties on policy these days and the Democrats seem determined to ram their selected candidates down the throats of voters who were OK with the guy they had before. Voters are so angry that they exercise the one choice they have left, they vote against the Democrats.  There’s no point in sending a message to the Republicans because they’re fricking nuts.  But Democrats should get the point.  Well, you would hope that after Martha Coakley and Jon Corzine and the Congressional turnover in 2010, the Democrats would have gotten the point but apparently, it’s going to take some additional bloodletting.  And this time, the voters are being vocal and specific about why they voted the way they did:

The unexpectedly tight race stirred anxiety among Democrats already worried about elections next year for president, the House and the Senate. The Turner campaign had eagerly courted disenchanted Democrats, and outside polling places around the district on Tuesday, multiple longtime Democrats confessed that despite concern about Mr. Turner’s eagerness to slash federal spending, they chose him hoping that his election would get lawmakers’ attention.

“I am a registered Democrat, I have always been a registered Democrat, I come from a family of Democrats — and I hate to say this, I voted Republican,” said Linda Goldberg, 61, after casting her ballot in Queens. “I need to send a message to the president that he’s not doing a very good job. Our economy is horrible. People are scared.”

That’s where the 2012 election season is headed.  If the Democrats continue to offer voters no choice, they are going to get creamed.  There’s always a choice.

Could we please get the plastic dry cleaning bags and sharp objects out of the Democratic Caucus room before they meet again?