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Wherein we discuss Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony
The Beatles remastered catalogue will be released on an apple-shaped USB drive
The Electrobite makes it fun and exciting to be handicapped
In an age of free and abundant wi-fi, Starbucks takes a stand
My new watch podcast

With just one week until the release of the most anticipated game of the year, Activision and Infinity Ward has released the official launch trailer o…

(NaturalNews) It sounds good at first: When employers send sick workers home so they don’t spread swine flu around the work environment, they must still pay those workers for the full day’s work. The idea behind this bill is that many workers can’t afford being sent home without pay, and therefore the employer must pay them anyway.

But apparently no one in Washington D.C. has thought about the real-world consequences of what this bill would do. If employers are forced to pay for workers whether they’re working or not, they will refuse to send sick workers home in the first place! And why is that? Because employers can’t afford to be paying for people who aren’t working.

Thus, this bill would assure that sick, infected workers are kept on the job where they can spread swine flu to others.

If the U.S. Congress wants to accelerate the spread of swine flu, this bill is a brilliant way to accomplish it.

Unintended consequences
It all comes down to The Law of Unintended Consequences. The U.S. Congress — which is completely useless in a true Democracy and should be disbanded — arrogantly writes new laws, thinking they will intervene in the lives of workers or employers in some “positive” way by forcing somebody to do something they wouldn’t normally do.

But every such intervention has unintended consequence that the numbskulls in Congress never consider (because they can’t think beyond the next election cycle). The unintended consequences are usually quite disastrous, such as the future public debt fallout from the trillion-dollar bailout of the wealthy investment banks and Wall Street insiders who were “saved” from financial collapse at taxpayer expense.

In this case, this “pay sick workers to stay home” bill will absolutely guarantee that virtually no sick workers are ever sent home. And that, in turn, will guarantee the spread of whatever pandemic is circulating through the workforce at the time, especially since many low-wage workers have jobs in the food and service industries where they are in frequent contact with items consumed by the general public.

The bill should probably be called the “Pandemic Promotion Act of 2009.”

And besides, whatever happened to the idea that you get paid for the days you work? Sometimes you get sick and can’t work. That’s real life. The best way to avoid losing income due to sick days is to take care of your own health with nutrition and vitamin D. That’s called being an adult.

But who am I kidding? I’ve seen first-hand how grocery store deli employees sneeze all over the food they’re wrapping up for customers. In many ways, many of the adult workers in America don’t act with much responsibility. They show up for work sick, caring nothing for the coworkers or customers they might infect. And why? Because they need the paycheck.

So what’s the real solution to all this? The solution isn’t about shifting the cost of sickness to the employer or the employee; the real solution is to teach the nation about vitamin D and thereby keep the workforce healthy and well.

This simple, powerful idea has apparently never crossed the minds of the members of the U.S. Congress. Keep Americans healthy? That’s an alien concept. It has never even entered the discussions about health care reform.

Instead, Congress is focused on how to keep the drug companies profitable with more customers and more profits. And that goal stands in direct conflict with the goal of keeping Americans healthy. When the U.S. Congress is in session, the health (and job security) of the American people remains at risk, because in the quest to “do something” to pretend to help the people, our elected representatives will routinely ignore the far greater problem of why the health of our nation is crumbling.

Why do people get sick in the first place?

Much of it has to do with extreme deficiencies in key nutrients, including vitamin D, zinc, magnesium, phytonutrients and so on. The FDA, though, has made it a crime to even sell a product that claims to enhance health via nutrition, and the FTC has declared war on any natural product that actually works to prevent cancer. The U.S. Congress, meanwhile, argues over who will pay for disease.

Sometimes, you just gotta wonder: Has America gone mad? Have these people lost their minds, or are they just on so many meds that they can’t think anymore?

Increasingly, I see worrisome signs that America is headed for disaster. When the lawmakers can’t see the real root of the major problems, and the solutions to those problems have been outlawed or censored out of existence, the future of that nation begins to look sketchy. Pandemic or not, America has made itself the junk food and medication capitol of the world, and that’s not a recipe for a healthy workforce.

Whether people get paid for sick days or not is a miniscule issue compared to the much bigger question of why nobody has told the workforce to take more vitamin D so they can protect themselves from influenza in the first place.

Sources for this story include:
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE59J58H20091103

(NaturalNews) The pork industry desperately wants you to believe “the Big Lie” about swine flu: That it can’t infect pigs, and therefore it’s perfectly safe to buy and eat lots and lots of pork products.

It’s a merry little tale, and it would be a nice little piece of information to pass along if only it were true.

But it isn’t.

H1N1 swine flu can and does infect pigs. And the safety margin for eating pork products from H1N1-infected pigs is not well known.

In fact, the USDA just confirmed H1N1 infections in commercial pigs (the kind used to make those pork chops you ate for breakfast). This is the first time that a commercial herd of pigs has been publicly acknowledged to be infected with H1N1 swine flu by the USDA. (And we all know from watching the USDA’s behavior on mad cow disease that the agency goes to great lengths to downplay any such reports…)

The timing of the announcement is, not surprisingly, highly suspicious. Just a few days ago, the USDA negotiated an end to the pork import ban placed on U.S. pork products by China. Before the ink on that agreement was even dry, the USDA — surprise! — announced they had discovered this H1N1 infection in commercial swine in the U.S.

This particular commercial herd of swine was located in Indiana. (The USDA isn’t saying where.) But here’s the best part: The USDA did not ban those pigs from being used in the food supply! At least I couldn’t find any such report after scouring the web looking for one. This means these swine flu infected pigs could end up on your dinner table (if you eat pork, that is).

This isn’t the first report of H1N1 infecting pigs in the USA, by the way. A few weeks ago, H1N1 infections were confirmed in show pigs at the Minnesota State Fair. Nobody seemed to care, since people weren’t planning on eating those show pigs (“Looks good on stage, but tastes even better on the plate!”), but now that H1N1 has been found in commercial herds, suddenly things seem different.

H1N1 swine flu has already been detected in swine herds in Canada, Australia, the UK and many other countries, according to an AP report. So this discovery isn’t exactly the world’s first.

Of course, any rational pork eater would have already figured out by now that the H1N1 virus is so mild, it poses virtually no health risk to anyone with some vitamin D and a healthy immune system. So technically speaking, even H1N1-infected pork probably poses no real threat to your health.

Then again, eating pork isn’t a very rational act to begin with, especially given that pigs are smarter than Man’s Best Friend (your family dog) and that they’re treated quite inhumanely in the pork producing factories and slaughterhouses. But I guess if you’re crazy enough to eat dead pig flesh, a little extra H1N1 probably won’t cause you any more harm.

By the way, H1N1 has also crossed from humans to cats and infected a cat in Iowa (http://content.usatoday.com/communities/pawprintpost/post/2009/11/cat-in-iowa-had-h1n1-1st-known-case-involving-dogs-or-cats/1). Since H1N1 already contains viral fragments of bird flu, human flu and swine flu, it makes me wonder how crazy things might get if it now starts combining with house cats. Could we soon be looking at Feline Swine Flu?

Sources for this story include:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iEFqaAgSclYCMs3yvitB0vestl1gD9BOT3185

(NaturalNews) There’s a fascinating book by author Robert Cialdini called Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion. As someone who frequently writes about Big Pharma’s social engineering tactics, I’ve read and studied many of these tactics, noting carefully how governments and Big Business use them to wage disinformation campaigns against the People.

I was recently chatting with friends on my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/NaturalNews) when a friend named Jennifer pointed out that she thought the vaccine shortage had been intentionally engineered to create greater demand once the vaccines were available. This immediately got me thinking about a chapter in the Cialdini book that writes about something I call the “disappearing cookies in the cookie jar” experiment.

This experiment reveals an extremely powerful strategy for influence. And as it turns out, the pharmaceutical industry is using precisely this strategy for fabricating huge demand for their vaccines in an effort to make sure all the vaccines sell out.

The experiment goes something like this:

A volunteer subject sits at a desk in a room, thinking he’s there to answer some survey questions, but in reality, this is an experiment on human behavior and covert influence. A researcher sits on the other side of the desk, facing the subject. There is a glass jar on the desk, filled with cookies.

The researcher casually asks the subject, “Would you like a cookie?” And some percentage of subjects say yes, but it’s a small number, perhaps something like 15% – 20% (I don’t remember the exact numbers, but that’s not important to the bigger point here). This same scenario unfolds across several hundred subjects in order to get a baseline measurement on how many people will take a cookie when one is offered to them.

To continue the experiment, the researchers then remove most of the cookies from the cookie jar and bring in another few hundred subjects to see how many of them will take a cookie when the visible supply of cookies is smaller. Some percentage of students take a cookie, but it’s still not substantially different from the first part of this experiment when the cookie jar was full. So even though a larger number of people take a cookie when the available supply is smaller, it’s still not a huge number.

The real magic happens when the experiment is repeated a third time, and during the experiment, before the subject is asked for a cookie, another unidentified person walks into the room and takes a cookie themselves! This is done in full view of the study subject who now sees a dwindling supply of cookies in the cookie jar. Subsequently, when now asked if they want a cookie, virtually everyone takes a cookie!

What this study caused researchers to realize is the influence power of a recently-reduced supply of a given item. Or, put another way, people want what other people are taking, and the more other people are reducing the available supply, the more people want it!

Big Pharma is using this same brain hack to fabricate hysteria over vaccines
This phenomenon is a sort of “brain hack” that’s hard-wired into human neurology. It works almost hypnotically to create a surge of demand where none would rationally exist.

This is what’s at work at frenzied retail store sales where a half-mad crowd of crazed shoppers trample each other to buy shoes at 70% off. The reason why these people are so strongly motivated to buy the products is because they are witnessing a rapidly-dwindling supply being depleted by everybody else. The witnessing of that act causes an almost hypnotic (and entirely irrational) increase in personal desire to have those same products, even if they don’t need them!

Are you following this so far? It’s a powerful social engineering influence hack that works automatically on the human brain. People can’t help themselves. They irrationally desire the vaccine for no reason other than the fact that the available supply is disappearing quickly and other people are taking it. By engineering this situation, the pharmaceutical industry has created the perfect influence gimmick for selling more vaccines. The current vaccine shortage, in fact, looks to have been deliberately created for the sole purpose of exploiting this planned shortage to take advantage of the “disappearing cookies in the cookie jar” principle of human psychology.

You can already see it at work with the ridiculously long vaccination lines outside clinics in some cities. A few shots are made available and then the rest of the people are told, “We ran out. Sorry, go home.”

Even better, with high demand but limited supply, drug companies and vaccine distributors can engage in profiteering price fixing schemes to maximize their income from the vaccine shortage hysteria. Swine flu manufacturers and distributors are already under investigation for precisely this sort of fraudulent price fixing (http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNews/idUSN0245718220091102).

How to engineer a shortage to create hysteria
Of course, the drug companies aren’t the first corporations to figure out that planned product shortages combined with lots of media hype can create a windfall of profits. You may recall that the very same influence strategy was used against parents during the great Cabbage Patch Kids shortage of 1984, in which shoppers experienced total hysteria in their rush to acquire the dolls for their children.

At the time, psychologists were baffled by the behavior, but now, after understanding the disappearing cookies in the cookie jar experiment, it all makes sense. Whether you’re talking about Cabbage Patch Kids or the H1N1 swine flu vaccine, every engineered product shortage follows basically the same recipe:

Step 1) Create huge demand for your product through mainstream media FEAR campaigns. (Make parents afraid of the flu, or afraid they won’t get the right toy for their child, etc.)

Step 2) Limit your SUPPLY of the product, allowing only a trickle to be delivered to the population.

Step 3) Wait for the people to panic. Keep holding back supplies in order to foment more fear (which creates more demand). Meanwhile, tell the press you’re trying to provide more products, but you’re suffering from “production failures.”

Step 4) When the panic reaches its apex, unleash the full supply of product to desperate people who will line up like sheeple to buy your product. But keep prices high, since the demand already exists to support high prices.

Step 5) Watch the magic of influence work profit miracles as your product sells out at premium prices!

Other places you’ll see this at work
This fascinating principle of human psychology, by the way, explains why online auctions work so well. When bidding against other buyers for a unique item with a supply of only one, a buyer can often engage in irrational purchasing behavior, bidding up an item they don’t even need merely because they can’t stand to see the other person “win” the bid. It becomes highly competitive, and Ebay is structured precisely to invoke this irrational purchasing behavior response on the part of participants.

Of course, just because a “dwindling supply” of something is being communicated to consumers doesn’t always mean it’s fabricated. On Ebay, for example, there really is often just one of a certain product available. Even on NaturalNews, we’ve published “dwindling supply numbers” on giveaway offers where a certain nutritional supplement company has promised only a limited number of free samples to NaturalNews readers.

But no one has played this influence game more masterfully than the drug companies who have fabricated and promoted a global hysteria over a vaccine product that no one even needs in the first place. In fact, by the time this vaccine makes it into widespread distribution, most people will have already been exposed to H1N1 on their own, meaning they are naturally immune to the virus and don’t need a vaccine at all.

In effect, then, drug companies will have managed to push virtually the entire population into a state of hysteria over a product that doesn’t even work. By any measure, that’s a masterful (and downright evil) manipulation of the public mind.

Remember those old Batman shows where the villain operated a mind control machine that broadcast hypnotic messages to the entire city? As it turns out, that isn’t fiction. It’s being done today by Big Pharma, right through your television set. It’s quite possible that the mass hysteria over swine flu vaccines was a fabricated, planned event specifically designed to make people desperately want something they normally wouldn’t even pay attention to.

Stage hypnotists take note: If you’re looking for easy subjects for your shows, just recruit the people standing in line desperately hoping to receive a swine flu vaccine injection…

Sources for this story include:
Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Business-Essentials/dp/006124189X

LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-me-flu-workers3-2009nov03,0,2512436.story

Project on Government Oversight:
http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2009/11/time-for-dhhs-to-open-up-about-h1n1-vaccine-shortages-.html

And who’s the lucky Moderncat that will be receiving a tasty pumpkin treat from Oh Boy Cat Toy? It’s Susie and her mom Jennifer Lobo (comment #22)! This catnip filled delicacy will have Suzie playing straight through the holiday season!

For many years, David Chaum has been pushing for a voting system that he claims will be a lot more reliable. Basically, after you vote, you get a coded number, and then after the election, you can go to an election website, punch in your code and make sure that your vote counted, and was for whom you meant to vote. On top of this, there’s a system for auditors to check to make sure that votes were counted accurately, with information released publicly so people can “audit” the election without being able to connect voters to their votes. This system tends to generate a lot of controversy (though some of it appears to be from people who just don’t like David Chaum, rather than because they really have a problem with his system). However, the system hasn’t been really tested in an actual US election… until now. The municipal elections in Takoma Park, Maryland used the system, despite the state recently signing a big deal with Diebold. It’s not clear how the overall election went yet — or how many people actually checked their votes online (approximately 30% in an exit poll said they copied down the code). However, it’s good to see that some gov’ts are not just accepting what the big e-voting firms give them, and are willing to explore more sophisticated voting systems that aren’t based on pure faith in the e-voting company to get the system right.

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And the winner of the new book from Kitty Wigs is Frank (comment #240). Thanks to Chronicle Books for sponsoring this giveaway. For your reading pleasure and, no doubt, endless entertainment, you can still pick-up a copy of Glamourpuss at Amazon.

Congratulations to Pam from Decatur, GA. Pam is the winner of the Slant pet stairs from Urban Pet Haus! Now Pam’s kitties will have no problem getting on and off the bed. Thanks Urban Pet Haus!

Yeah, that leak did a number on the official “release moment” of Olympus’ new micro four-thirds camera. All the stats are there, but I forbore from weighing in on the thing. I’m cautious but bullish about the M4/3 phenomenon; they’re legit to be sure, but this first generation isn’t going to break any sales records. They’re too expensive and too limited at the moment — but that’s how DSLRs were back in the day, and now everyone wants one.

I suspect the non-SLR interchangeable-lens camera (AKA the EVIL system) will replace the point and shoot, and the phone or PMP will fill that snapshot role. But until they get that price down it’s not going to happen.

The E-P2 looks like an interesting camera. The problem I see right off the bat is that it’s almost the exact same camera that Peter found so underwhelming six months ago. Maybe he didn’t give it a chance, and maybe it was just in need of stuff like this accessory port to make it worthwhile, but the fact is that it’s not bringing a lot for the money.

You can get a fantastic DSLR and a lens or two for the price of an E-P2, or buy an incredibly slick point and shoot and have enough money left over to take a short vacation. It doesn’t mean the M4/3 style is bad, just that it’s new and doesn’t offer the same value proposition as the established technologies. $1100 is a lot to spend on a camera — enough that even early adopters will think twice. Especially considering how quickly Olympus improved on the E-P1. Why not wait?

Olympus is very proud of its electronic viewfinder, and I think the accessory port it fits into makes the E-P2 a tasty little gadget. Maybe you want a crossover device for home videos but the EVF isn’t really necessary. Okay, here’s decent 720p video with great sound through a real mic. Maybe you want a party cam, but don’t trust a point-and-shoot’s crappy little flash. Hey, it’s got a hot shoe and you’ll probably get some other stuff for the accessory port anyhow.

We may see the new Pen cameras (among their M4/3 brethren) grow into an interesting platform, but until they cost less than, say, a Rebel T1i or some such, the only thing they have to recommend them is their size. But this isn’t the last you’ll be hearing of micro four-thirds, not by a long shot.

Yes, yes y’all. We’re back with Act 2. Following up on the much-loved BlackBerry 9700 Review: Part 1, we’re here to go over the T-Mobile version of the handset. We’ll give you another look at it, and clarify anything that might have changed between our previous not-final unit and what we have now (which is what you’ll be getting in stores). And of course give you some awesome pictures to drool over. After the jump, fine friends, is where the goodies are at!

Hardware changes

While not much has changed hardware-wise from a larger viewpoint, there are a couple things we’ve noticed. First off, if you look at the keyboard and the trackpad specifically, you’ll see a very small piece of plastic that’s connecting the back and menu keys. This actually broke in half on our pre-release BlackBerry 9700, and while it hasn’t affected its use, it got us a little concerned about the build quality. We haven’t confirmed whether the retail Bold 9700s use different parts or not, and we haven’t heard of this happening to anyone else, but it’s just something to look out for.

As far as the processor is concerned, we reported that the Bold 9700 was sporting an 800MHz capable CPU. RIM’s official specs say it’s a 624MHz processor, but we think it might be a newer model than what the original Bold had. It’s also quite possible it’s under-clocked as well. We’ll try and clarify this and report back. Regardless of the actual CPU specifications on the 9700 though, one thing is certain: it’s the fastest damn BlackBerry we’ve ever used. There unfortunately is no internal memory as there was on the previous Bold, and while we believe it’s carrier dependent, the T-Mobile unit ships with a 2GB microSD card.

One last thing about the hardware… honestly not a big deal, but since we’re comparing the retail unit to the other unit we had, Michael and I both noticed that the lock and mute keys are very easy to press on the retail unit. And that’s not for the best as we both accidentally lock / put our Bold 9700s in a mute coma from time to time. Again, not the end of the world, just a change from our other unit.

OS changes

OS 5.0 is finally ready to rock. The much-needed upgrade tries to bandage RIM’s aging yet nicely skinned operating system, and it seems to do a good job of it on the top layer. While dumb things like gradients, sounds for events, and other little UI improvements may look stupid on paper (read: they are), hey, us BlackBerry folk have to take all that we can get. And even though that’s not a lot, it’s still something to slightly freshen up this beast. Something we’ve noticed in the version on the 9700 is that marking messages as read takes a long, long time. This was an issue on a couple beta OS builds for the 9700, so it’s surprising to see it on a production OS. Not a show stopper, but something annoying if you mark message read fairly frequently like I do.

Keyboard changes

Oh those pesky QWERTY keyboards. Some are too small, some are too big, some are spaced too close, some have incorrect layouts — is there a perfect keyboard in existence? Well, if there’s one to be found, we’re pretty sure it is on the BlackBerry Bold 9700. A beautiful blend of the original Bold keyboard with the Tour’s keyboard, it really provides a great typing experience. Keys click but aren’t clackity, there’s enough spacing to allow a definition between keys yet it isn’t boat-sized like its older brother — and it just feels damn good to type on.

Phone changes

Using the phone as an actual phone is still really pleasurable. Calls are very clear, volume is great, and BlackBerry smartphones in general just rock as phones. There’s no fuss, you dial a number and make your call. We’re used to AT&T, but to be honest we couldn’t tell the difference between the two. This T-Mobile unit is solid and we experienced no dropped calls even in fringe areas, and 3G service was great.

Battery changes

This isn’t going to be fair because of T-Mobile’s global meltdown yesterday–the day when we were really pushing the 9700 to the floor– so, well, you know, it didn’t work. We were on SOS for the better part of a day, but Wi-Fi did stay connected to the outside world thankfully. Unfortunately however, Wi-Fi kind of ransacked our battery. The good news is that even with Wi-Fi on and connected for 12 hours straight with constant email usage, BlackBerry Messenger usage, and very light browsing, we still had around 25% of battery left at the end of the day. It’s great, and we’re really happy that RIM has further improved their battery life while making a device faster and smaller. We weren’t kidding when we said average usage is about double compared to the original Bold, and it looks to stay that way in the retail release.

Conclusion

You know, it’s sort of like clockwork. Once every six months we proclaim the latest BlackBerry to be the best BlackBerry ever. Well, we hate to disappoint you, but it doesn’t look like we’re stopping that tradition anytime soon. The BlackBerry Bold 9700, for whatever network it’s powered by, is the finest BlackBerry to date. From the gorgeous screen to the perfect keyboard, to the pocketable size and swift processor, the Bold 9700 seems like it can do almost anything you throw at it. With 256MB of RAM, you’ve got a little more room for applications and data, and the device doesn’t ever seem to get bogged down. We have never even gotten a spinning clock (yet). It’s that solid.

The BlackBerry platform has its advantages and disadvantages (what, we’re not vocal enough about it?), but if you’re an existing BlackBerry user or just don’t require a media-focused device, the Bold 9700 might be right up your alley.

Rogers, Bell, and TELUS in Canada have pretty much all started to release BlackBerry 9700 units into the wild, T-Mobile’s offering business customers a little head start, and AT&T’s looks to be near as well.

 

Whenever Washington considers changes in health care or Social Security, one of the main players is the senior citizens lobby AARP.

The organization’s size makes it hard to miss: “One out of every two people over age 50 is an AARP member,” says David Certner, who directs AARP’s lobbying operation. That comes to 40 million members, he says, half of them 65 or older

AARP, which offers several kinds of AARP-branded health insurance, supports the changes proposed in Congress right now.

Critics say that’s because the group would profit if the health care system gets rebuilt.

“There is an unusual advocate for these massive cuts to seniors’ health care,” says Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA), referring to the proposed legislation’s big cuts in Medicare spending. “It’s AARP.”

Democrats call those cuts cost savings. Reichert and other Republicans say that really means cuts in services.

“Are they truly looking out for the best interests of seniors?” Reichert asks. “Could it be that AARP has a hidden profit agenda?”

Well, at least on this element of the bill, AARP would lose, not gain. Medicare cuts would fall hardest on the lucrative Medicare Advantage program — one of AARP’s products.

Certner says the group doesn’t have a conflict of interest.

“We are driven by our policy. Our policy drives our advocacy. Our policy drives what we do in terms of our products,” he says. “And that’s been the way it has been from the beginning.”

Questions About AARP’s Finances

AARP revenues show how big its insurance business is.

Last year, the group collected $222 million in royalties from UnitedHealthcare, which provides most of the health insurance marketed under the AARP brand. That figure is almost as much as AARP collected in dues from its members.

But David Mathis, AARP senior vice president for health services, says the organization offers what its members need to have, not what corporate partners want to sell.

“They come into the relationship knowing where that is, even though they may not agree with us and we don’t always agree with them,” Mathis says. “Everybody’s eyes were wide open when we entered this relationship.”

Still, questions about the organization’s finances have been raising eyebrows for years. And America’s two main parties take turns being angry at AARP.

Speaking in 1995, Republican Sen. Alan Simpson said, “AARP has drifted considerably from any possible description of a nonprofit, quote, organization.”

And in 2003, Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters said, “Don’t forget, AARP is making a lot of money off of the insurance companies.”

An Issue Of Trust

It’s hard to tarnish AARP, in part because it’s not seen as serving an ideology or a narrow economic agenda.

And that helps the group, says Ted Marmor, a Yale professor emeritus of public policy, even if it limits what AARP can do on Capitol Hill.

“They live and die because there are 40 million people paying a small amount of money every year,” he says.

Of course, it’s possible that of that 40 million, many may be more interested in AARP’s travel discounts than in overhauling America’s health care system.

Passing a health care overhaul bill might be one of the hardest things Congress has ever attempted. But waiting until next year might jeopardize a top priority for President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress.

The political peril of waiting until 2010 – a midterm election year – could mean the death of comprehensive health care legislation, according to some analysts. “If they’re going to do it, they have to do it this year,” said University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato. “Everyone knows that. They know it.”

If there isn’t a bill on Obama’s desk by Christmas, Obama supporters fear lawmakers could face a repeat of the brutal August town hall meetings where angry constituents railed against a government-run “public plan” and other elements of proposed bills. And under that scenario, lawmakers could return to Washington in January considerably less enthusiastic about health care legislation.

In addition, Tuesday’s election results – in which Republicans won the Virginia and New Jersey governors’ races – might make some moderate Democrats facing reelection next year hesitant to back a health care measure that will cost $900 billion or more over the next decade. Exit polling showed substantial numbers of voters in both states expressing concern that government “is doing too many things better left to business and individuals,” according to ABC News.

As for delaying health care until next year, Sabato said, “If you’re talking about having everything done except for tying it in a ribbon, that’s one thing. Once everything is lined up you could have the final votes once Congress comes back…but it has to be done.” But because of the risks of waiting, he doubts that Obama and congressional Democrats would let the health care debate drag into next year.

Steve Elmendorf, a former top aide to Rep. Richard Gephardt when he was House Majority Leader, agreed. Elmendorf said that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada needs to keep his troops in town and get the health bill passed.

“I think they can’t ever stop,” said Elmendorf, now a lobbyist. “If it carries over to next year, you can’t leave for two weeks at Christmas and then come back. You always have to look like you’re trying to push the ball down the field.” Waiting until January won’t make it easier with moderate Democrats who have concerns about the bill or Republicans who have promised a lengthy floor fight, he said.

Others don’t think the situation is nearly so dire. They say that Democrats could deliver a bill to Obama by the State of the Union speech early next year or even in the spring. Between Christmas and the New Year, they say, people are focused on their families — rather than politics — and would be unlikely to participate in town hall meetings aimed at health care or any other legislative issue.

House Democrats are expected to begin debate on their health care overhaul measure on Friday and may vote on the bill as soon as Saturday. In the Senate, Reid is awaiting a Congressional Budget Office analysis of proposals he sent to the agency as part of his efforts to combine bills passed by the Finance Committee and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee into one measure that the chamber could begin considering later this month.

Obama took office vowing to make a health care overhaul his premier domestic policy goal, and for much of the year it appeared that the legislation had great momentum. Then a series of angry town hall meetings in August set back the legislation and raised questions about whether Congress could pass a bill this year. When the Finance Committee finally passed a measure last month with one Republican vote, it appeared that the health care bill was back on track, with both chambers moving full speed ahead.

But with some moderate Democrats hanging back, Reid has been unable to put together a 60-vote majority to take up and pass the bill. Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., both have struggled to win support from moderates who have expressed concern about the cost of the bill. Other House Democrats have threatened to block the measure over contentious abortion and immigration issues.

Reid shocked the Senate on Tuesday when he said that the chamber might not act on health care legislation this year. “We’re not going to be bound by any timelines,” he said. “We need to do the best job for the American people.”

Reid spokesman Jim Manley later clarified Reid’s remarks. “Our goals remain unchanged,” he said. “We want to get health insurance reform done this year, and we have unprecedented momentum to achieve that. There is no reason why we can’t have a transparent and thorough debate in the Senate and still send a bill to the President by Christmas.”

Even if House Democrats move their measure quickly, debate in the Senate could take considerably longer.

“I think this is as big and complicated an issue as has Congress has faced in a long, long time. I think it’s very difficult to truncate the time,” said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. “The House of Representatives can do that by packaging up the rule and bringing it to the floor. This is going to be difficult and long, and I think it’s going to take awhile in the Senate.”

Noting the size and complexity of the health care bill, as well as its historic significance, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has signaled that Republicans intend to have a long debate over the measure.

“We don’t think we ought to be passing a 2,000-page, trillion dollar bill. I think we ought to be going step by step to fix the problems the American people see in our health care system,” he told reporters.

When the election results first came in for the EU Parliament back in June, it initially looked like the Swedish Pirate Party would get two seats, though it was later downgraded to just one. However, it looks like they’re back up to two due to a recent treaty agreement. This means that Amelia Andersdotter will be joining Christian Engstrom in the EU Parliament, representing the Pirate Party and the rights of consumers. I’ve seen Amelia speak in the past, and, like Christian, I think she does an excellent job explaining the position of the Pirate Party and the civil rights issues it represents.

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Needless to say, AT&T’s none too happy about Verizon’s “Theres a Map for That” campaign. AT&T first complained about the ads back in October, saying they were misleading. Verizon responded by adding a few extra words and an itsy bitsy disclaimer – but that wasn’t enough for AT&T. Early this morning, AT&T filed a false advertising suit against Big Red, presumably in an effort to get the ads off the air as soon as possible.

This afternoon, AT&T sent out an internal memo regarding the lawsuit, and we’ve obtained a copy.

Homebrew coder FluBBa has released a new version of S8DS, a port of the SEGA 8-bit emulator SMSAdvance for the NIntendo DS. The latest update has add…