Forget about January 20, 2002...there's nothing there

I don't know about the other ones, but if you're willing to invest a whole lot of time in pursuit of a little titillation, Jeane Palfrey's telephone records are here.

And speaking of cheap titillation - or, at least, being easily amused - I'm understanding CNN is all over “fact checking” Michael Moore's movie, “Sicko,” and has come up with the revelation “free health care” is not free, it's paid for by taxes. Just try to imagine my astonishment. All this time, I thought it grew on trees. Like spaghetti.

And this story, also from CNN:

Our team investigated some of the claims put forth in his film. We found that his numbers were mostly right, but his arguments could use a little more context.

Context? Dude. Let's get real. The health care industry - that would be the insurance companies, the HMO's, the AMA, and Big Pharma, et. al. - have a mega-freaking-bazillion-dollar advertising and PR budget and own half of Congress - at least - and have been busily providing us with “context” for decades. They do not rely on the court stenographers at CNN or anywhere else to get their message out, they just buy what they want. With your money. Expensive health care isn't free either, let's remember that. Gotta pay for all those ads somehow.

Says the above-linked CNN piece:

“Overhead for most private health insurance plans range between 10 percent to 30 percent,” says Deloitte health-care analyst Paul Keckley. Overhead includes profit and administrative costs.

“Compare that to Medicare, which only has an overhead rate of 1 percent. Medicare is an extremely efficient health-care delivery system,” says Mark Meaney, a health-care ethicist for the National Institute for Patient Rights.

But Medicare just doesn't have enough context, I guess.