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PolitiFact needs a new rating

As most people know by now, the Democrats changed the rules in the Senate to eliminate filibusters against judicial nominees (except for the Supreme Court, which can still be filibustered). This has sometimes (and misleadingly) been called the “nuclear option”.

To justify this dramatic move, Senate majority leader Harry Reid released the following graphic:

Harry Reid

PolitiFact took a look at the numbers, and interestingly enough, determined that Reid had been too conservative. Reid actually understated the situation — he claimed that 82 out of 168 (or slightly less than half) of the filibusters of judicial candidates have occurred during Obama’s presidency.

PolitiFact found that some nominees have received more than one filibuster, making Reid’s original numbers slightly misleading. If you report it by nominee, rather than by filibuster, then of 147 total judicial nominees who have ever been filibustered, 79 of them (or solidly more than half) have occurred during Obama’s presidency. PolitiFact states:

By our calculation, there were actually 68 individual nominees blocked prior to Obama taking office and 79 (so far) during Obama’s term, for a total of 147.

Reid’s point is actually a bit stronger using these these revised numbers. Using these figures, blockages under Obama actually accounted for more than half of the total, not less then half. Either way, it’s disproportionate by historical standards.

PolitiFact gave the graphic a rating of “Mostly True” rather than “True”, but it is ironic that their issue with Reid’s statement is that it understates the situation. Politicians are normally taken to task because they overstate the truth.

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Alternatives to Obamacare

Tom Tomorrow
© Tom Tomorrow

I stand by my proposed rule: nobody (especially in the media) is allowed to attack healthcare reform unless they say what they would do better. If they claim that the old system was just fine, so be it (although I will heartily laugh at them).

Otherwise, it isn’t about health care, they are just playing politics.

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Late Night Political Humor

“Yesterday at the White House, President Obama met with various leaders of the American Indian tribes. He promised them, ‘If you like your medicine man, you can keep your medicine man’.” – Jay Leno

“According to a new report, over a million Californians are losing their health insurance due to Obamacare. In fact, some are so angry they have already gone back to Mexico.” – Jay Leno

“It seems like everyone’s still pretty upset about this Obamacare website. The Department of Health and Human Services emailed 275,000 Americans, encouraging them to give the Obamacare website another try. Then they said ‘But one at a time, so it doesn’t crash again’.” – Jimmy Fallon

“You know that smiling woman who was featured on the home page of Healthcare.gov? She asked for her picture to be removed after she was cyber-bullied. She’s hiding where nobody can see her – at Healthcare.gov.” – Jay Leno

“On Monday, President Obama paid tribute to America’s oldest living veteran, 107-year-old Richard Overton. Overton credits his longevity to drinking whiskey and smoking 12 cigars every day. Now there’s a health plan we can all get behind.” – Jay Leno

“It turns out that a lot of children could lose their dental insurance under Obamacare. So kids might not be able to go to the dentist. Parents were really upset, while kids said, ‘Four more years! Four more years!'” – Jimmy Fallon

“Toronto Mayor Rob Ford admitted last week to having smoked crack while in office. Since then he has said multiple times that he will not step down. Legally they can’t force him to. The city council held a meeting to vote on whether or not to ask him to resign. That seems very Canadian to me.” – Jimmy Kimmel

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The Trolls are Winning

An article in the Washington Post reveals that we are in danger of losing the fight against software patent trolls. Ironically, it was the sponsor of the bill in the House, Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), who gave in to corporate lobbying pressure and removed a key provision of the law.

Unfortunately, WaPo doesn’t do a particularly good job of explaining the problem, so here it is in a nutshell:

  1. Because the patent examiners in the government didn’t really understand software, a huge number of software patents were awarded for ideas that are (if you will excuse the phrase) patently obvious. Or overly broad. Because software was new, the patent office was fairly liberal in awarding patents, assuming that if the patent was invalid then someone would sue the patent holder and invalidate the patent.
  2. As a result, patents were issued for such obvious and overly broad ideas as sending and receiving streaming audio and video over the internet, and for real-time, multi-player games! There was even a patent on hyperlinks (the basis of the world wide web), but luckily that patent was eventually struck down.
  3. Patent trolls, which are companies who don’t actually make or sell anything, bought thousands of these patents (especially during the dot-com bust) for pennies. They then proceeded to send out what amounted to extortion letters to real software companies (especially small ones) claiming that the target company was violating one or more of their patents and demanding money to settle. So if you are a small company who does something as common as putting video on your website, you could get attacked for violating a patent.
  4. Now, if you are a new, small software company, having a threatened patent suit can destroy your company. Nobody will invest in your company if you have a threatened lawsuit against you, and many customers will not buy your products because if the company is indeed violating a valid patent, you could likely be forced out of business. And you probably don’t have the money or the lawyers to fight a patent lawsuit anyway.
  5. As a result, the target company would often settle, because fighting even an invalid patent can be very expensive and can take a long time, destroying the company even if they win the patent suit. Also fighting an invalid patent requires going to court, and since many courts (and especially juries) don’t really understand software either, they are often not qualified to decide whether a particular software patent is valid. The risk of losing the suit (even for patents that to an average software engineer are obviously invalid) is just too high to risk a lawsuit.
  6. Once a few small companies settle, the patent troll can then go after larger and larger companies. Because the troll doesn’t actually produce any products themselves, this can effectively destroy whole classes of software products that allegedly violate a patent (even an invalid patent), stifling innovation. For example, imagine an Internet where nobody can put any video on their website without fear of reprisal. Indeed, even this blog could be easily forced to pay up or (far more likely) shut down, since it contains many videos.

I have worked at or with many small companies who were attacked by patent trolls and were forced to pay ransom. Other companies never even got started because of the threat of patent trolls made it impossible to raise funding. It can be difficult to find an emerging software company that has not been affected by patent trolls.

The solution was something called the CBM (“covered business method”) program, which provides an expedited process for the government patent office to review and get rid of invalid patents. The CBM program was created in 2011 by Congress, but was limited to a narrow class of financial patents (where it has been effective without harming valid patents). The new law would have expanded CBM to cover software patents.

This is a great solution, because it makes it possible for the target companies to contest the validity of patents they are accused of violating. The process is much faster and less expensive than going to court to fight a patent and even fairer, because the program would have utilized examiners with actual expertise in software who could understand the patents to review them. It would have the added benefit of getting rid of patents that probably never should have been granted in the first place, decreasing the risk to companies trying to innovate with new software.

Unfortunately, a group of companies (including IBM, Xerox, and Microsoft) lobbied very hard against expanding the CBM program. Why? The group is made up of a laundry list of companies that are not the powerhouses of innovation they used to be. Once upon a time they were top dogs in the computer business, so they have huge numbers of patents (many of which are likely invalid). They don’t want to lose the right to milk their extensive patent portfolios.

Hypocritically, their argument against expanding the successful CBM program is that it would harm US innovators by undermining the rights of software patent holders. But one only needs to look at the names of the companies opposing this to realize that they are not the drivers of innovation they claim to be. Instead, they are the dinosaurs of the software industry who spend more money on lobbying than they do on innovation (some on the list are even legal firms). Of course, the CBM would not take away their right to defend valid patents.

Shame on them.

Luckily, the fight is not over. The sponsor of the bill in the Senate, Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who was the driving force behind the original CBM program, has stated that he will work hard to get this provision reinstated in the final bill. But there is a pile of lobbying money against this. Unless we let our Senators and Representatives in Congress know that we support getting rid of patent trolls we could lose this fight, to the detriment of one of our most vital (and job producing) national industries.

UPDATE: An excellent article in Ars Technica gives a fascinating look into a real patent trial, pitting patent troll TQP against internet commerce site Newegg. It gives a rare glimpse into how a patent trial works. The article is a must read for anyone interested in the fight against patent trolls.

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Late Night Political Humor

“Many scam artists are trying to take advantage of the problems with the Obamacare website. Experts say you can tell it’s a scam site if you enter your information and it quickly and efficiently signs you up for healthcare.” – Conan O’Brien

“German veterinarians have a tortoise moving again after giving him a Lego wheel as a prosthetic limb. That Obamacare is amazing, isn’t it? It’s just helping everyone.” – Jay Leno

“It just came out that President Obama brings a portable security tent with him on overseas trips so that he can read classified documents. He sets up a tent in his hotel room. Obama said it’s a good way to avoid being spied on while he keeps track of who he has spied on.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Yesterday President Obama honored our oldest living veteran, a man who is 107 years old. Today President Obama told him he can finally come home from Afghanistan.” – Jay Leno

“A company is now selling bacon-scented deodorant. That’s great if you’re dating the governor of New Jersey.” – David Letterman

“Today a reporter asked Chris Christie, ‘What do you think of 2016?’ And Christie said, ‘I think it’s a good weight to get down to.'” – Jay Leno

“It seems that during his re-election campaign this year, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie paid $46,000 to get advice from former strategists for Mitt Romney. The advice he got: ‘If you ever want to be president, don’t listen to us’.” – Jay Leno

“’60 Minutes’ had a story that turned out not to be true about Benghazi. They had to apologize. And then today they were embarrassed again. It turns out the stopwatch on ’60 Minutes’ is not accurate.” – David Letterman

“Wal-Mart announced that this Thanksgiving they are opening earlier than they ever have. Because what better way to celebrate the pilgrims’ arrival than buying crap from China.” – Conan O’Brien

“The U.S. intelligence community is hoping to update their facial recognition technology. It’s the government’s way of trying to keep up with Bruce Jenner.” – Conan O’Brien

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Memories of Bush’s Katrina

Seriously? The media decides to compare the rollout of Obamacare to Dubya’s handling of Hurricane Katrina?

But if that isn’t insane enough, the media had to take it one step beyond that and try to make it sound unfair to Bush to compare Obamacare to Katrina. Naturally, the Daily Show makes quick work of that:

Do Republicans really want to remind anyone about Hurricane Katrina at all? Do Americans have memories that amazingly bad that the GOP feels it can bring up Bush’s monumental failures and compare them to a botched website rollout? Or have Republicans just rewritten history in their own minds so completely that they don’t remember?

Meanwhile, enrollments in Obamacare are surging, and the troubled healthcare.gov website is starting to work much better.

UPDATE: More good news for Obamacare. The increase in cost for health care for the last three years is the lowest ever recorded. For a while, critics attributed this to the depressed economy, but the fact that cost increases have stayed down even as the economy recovers shows that the change is also due to structural changes — namely the implementation of Obamacare, which contains provisions to reduce costs.

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Late Night Political Humor

“In a new interview today, Sarah Palin refused to endorse Chris Christie. Afterward, Christie told Palin, ‘Thanks, I owe you one’.” – Conan O’Brien

“Happy Veterans Day. President Obama today honored our oldest living veteran, who is 107 years old. So congratulations to Senator John McCain.” – Jay Leno

“It is Veterans Day. A 107-year-old veteran met with President Obama this morning. It was good to see the president finally getting along so well with John McCain.” – Conan O’Brien

“President Obama said he is sorry that some Americans have lost their existing health coverage due to Obamacare. I think he’s getting a little desperate. Today he said if you like your complete lack of coverage, you can keep your complete lack of coverage.” – Jay Leno

“A pharmaceutical company has developed a deodorant that is bacon scented. We have no healthcare, but we have bacon-scented deodorant.” – David Letterman

“A new record was set today in the 100 meters. It was set by Senate Democrats running away from Obamacare.” – Jay Leno

“According to The Washington Post, the White House is considering appointing a civilian to lead the NSA. Here’s the great part: if you’re interested in the job, no need to submit a resume; they have all your information already. They will call you.” – Jay Leno

“This is a crazy coincidence. On Friday, Joe Biden took an Amtrak train to Delaware and wound up sitting next to Whoopi Goldberg. Biden said what it’s like making millions of Americans laugh every day? And then Whoopi said I was going to ask you the same question.” – Jimmy Fallon

“This week’s climate change talks are taking place in Poland and they’re going to focus on China, the world’s biggest polluter. However, that discussion may get awkward on Wednesday when China buys Poland.” – Conan O’Brien

“Do you know who’s going to the Vatican for a meeting with Pope Francis? Evil dictator Vladimir Putin. The Pope better be careful because I bet you anything Putin is going to try and steal his ring.” – David Letterman

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Racist? Part 2

Well, if they aren’t racist, then the only other possibility is that they are incredibly naive and stupid.

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Late Night Political Humor

“As you may know, Thanksgiving began in 1621 when the Pilgrims feasted with the Indians and promised them, ‘If you like your land, you can keep your land’.” – Jay Leno

“The Obama White House website still says if you like your health plan, you can keep it. That’s false, of course. The president says they’re trying to correct it, but his website people can’t seem to log on.” – Jay Leno

“The ObamaCare website won’t be accessible at night due to maintenance. And it won’t be accessible during the day due to ‘it sucking’.” – Conan O’Brien

“The Obama administration asks Hollywood to work positive mentions of ObamaCare into its TV shows and movies. So AMCs new zombie drama is titled: ‘The Walking Dead But Not Due to Preexisting Conditions’.” – Conan O’Brien

“President Obama met the Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks. Obama was excited to tell the hockey players that ObamaCare includes dental.” – Conan O’Brien

“President Obama’s approval rating is now down to 39 percent. To which Congress said, how do you keep is so high?'” – Jay Leno

“Now that Americans have gotten a good long look at what’s going on with the mayor of Toronto, at least our fat fuck isn’t on crack. Have you seen this guy in Toronto on the news? You gotta love a guy whose excuse is, ‘Yeah, I don’t really remember smoking crack because I was in a drunken stupor. How dare you say I’m a crackhead, I’m a blackout drunk.'” – Bill Maher

“What a week for Chris Christie. First they bring back the McRib, then he wins a blue state by a landslide. First time he’s ever won a landslide. He’s caused a few.” – Bill Maher

“Time magazine put Chris Christie on the cover with the caption, ‘The Elephant in the Room’. And People magazine named him ‘Sexiest Garbage Truck in a Suit’.” – Bill Maher

“Is this where we are with journalism now? You just call a guy an elephant? It was not only taken as an insult by the governor, but also by the guy who walks behind him and shovels the shit.” – Bill Maher

“Is it possible that America may be coming to its senses a little? That may be the message from these elections we had on Tuesday because Chris Christie, the big winner, is from the not-nuthouse wing of the party – you know, he’s an indoor Republican. And the two batshit Tea Party people lost pretty bad. In Virginia, their candidate for governor, Ken Cuccinelli went down, which is ironic because he was trying to make oral sex illegal. I’m not making that up. He wanted to make abortion impossible, ban gay marriage, and reinstate the sodomy laws against oral and anal sex. Why? Because it’s a Republicans’ job to get government out of our lives.” – Bill Maher

“Outlaw sodomy? Does this guy realize that for most people under 30, sodomy is the main form of birth control. What a platform. He wanted to outlaw blow jobs, and he lost single women in the state by 43 points. But listen to this, he won married women by 9. That’s all I need to know about marriage.” – Bill Maher

“In Alabama, the Tea Party candidate named Dean Young, who wanted to impeach Obama and compared gay people to animals, he lost to a potty-trained Republican. Boy, that is something for your resume – Dean Young: too ignorant for Alabama.” – Bill Maher

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Racist?

Ever get confused as to whether something is racist or not? This can help!

Jon Stewart and three members of the Daily Show team, PLUS Key and Peele. It doesn’t get much funnier than this.

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Late Night Political Humor

“Apparently there is a huge crack cocaine problem in Toronto. Luckily, it’s just confined to the mayor’s office.” – Jay Leno

“Mayor of Toronto Rob Ford’s approval ratings have skyrocketing since he announced that he’s smoking crack cocaine. Is EVERYBODY up there on crack? Is that the deal?” – David Letterman

“As I’m sure you’re heard by now, the mayor of Toronto, a man named Rob Ford, has admitted to smoking crack cocaine. People should have seen this coming. There were signs, like his campaign slogan: ‘Just say yes’.” – Jay Leno

“In Colorado, voters have approved a tax on marijuana to fund the building of schools. In other words, kids don’t do drugs but stay in the schools funded by them.” – Conan O’Brien

“I was thinking about Thanksgiving and I realized who we should put in charge of the Obamacare website – the Butterball hotline people. Have you ever called them? They always pick up. They’re friendly. They have all of the information you need. And they’re used to dealing with big turkeys.” – Jay Leno

“People are criticizing the latest issue of Time magazine. They’ve got Chris Christie on the cover with a silhouette and the headline, ‘The Elephant in the Room’. But in their defense, I think they chose the least offensive title. Here’s the other ones they had: ‘Chris Christie, Have a Whale of a Time.’ I didn’t like that one. ‘Between a Rock and a Lard Place’. Yeah, that’s not good. And ‘Hail to the Chef’.” – Jay Leno

“According to CNN, they’re now developing a new spy plane that can travel six times the speed of sound and can launch missiles. They said it could really help us with our spying. In fact, this plane is so good President Obama is already denying knowing anything about it.” – Jay Leno

“Russian President Vladimir Putin will travel to the Vatican this month to hold talks with Pope Francis. The Pope even offered to hear Putin’s confession — or as Putin calls it, ‘bragging’.” – Jimmy Fallon

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Slow?

Republicans seemed positively gleeful that “only” 40,000 people signed up on healthcare.gov in its first month. House Speaker John Boehner released a statement saying “Above all, this report is a symbol of the failure of the president’s health care law. It is a rolling calamity that must be scrapped.” Senator Marco Rubio called the numbers “abysmal” and said they are “another early warning sign that this legislation … ultimately cannot be fixed.”

First of all, 40,000 people gaining health insurance, often for the first time, is good news. Especially considering the problems with the website, that’s pretty amazing.

Second of all, that number only includes those states that decided not to run their own health insurance exchange. If you include the state exchanges, that number is 106,000 (and a few states are not reporting numbers yet). The states that embraced Obamacare are doing much better.

Third, it does not include people who signed up for expanded Medicaid coverage under Obamacare. At least 440,000 people have signed up for Medicaid through Obamacare. That means that (in total) over half a million people have benefitted from Obamacare in the first month alone.

And finally, one should remember that in the first month of Romneycare in Massachusetts, a whopping 123 people signed up.

UPDATE: According to PolitiFact, Medicare Part D — the GOP’s signature health care plan in 2006 — suffered many of the same problems during rollout as Obamacare. I agree with pollster John Zogby when he points out that the Republicans are spending all their time gloating and mocking, rather than helping to fix any problems that come up during the rollout. What jerks.

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Late Night Political Humor

“New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was re-elected by a huge margin. He gave a great speech last night. He said he learned a lot in the last four years – for example, that lap-band surgery doesn’t always work.” – Jay Leno

“Chris Christie won a second term as New Jersey governor last night. We like him. He’s a good guy. Christie said he couldn’t have done it without his biggest supporter – and then his belt said, ‘Happy to help, man’.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Chris Christie won by such a wide margin that pundits say this will give him the impetus he needs to run for president. And he’s got a new slogan: ‘Put the oval in the Oval Office’.” – Jay Leno

“Chris Christie won a second term as New Jersey governor. And in honor of his big win, I promise no more fat jokes about him tonight. But seriously, the margin of victory was so big, even he could walk through it.” – Jimmy Fallon

“The mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, has admitted that he smoked crack a year ago when he was in a quote, ‘drunken stupor’. Geez, if that guy smokes crack when he’s drunk, I’d hate to see what happens when he smokes crack.” – Jimmy Fallon

“President Obama’s approval rating is down to 39 percent. And Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who admitted to smoking crack cocaine, went up to 49 percent. How does this make Obama feel? He’d be better off smoking crack than passing Obamacare.” – Jay Leno

“Bill de Blasio became New York City’s first Democratic mayor in 20 years by getting an amazing 73 percent of the vote. They’re saying a lot of the voting machines were malfunctioning. In fact, there were so many glitches, Bill de Blasio won the mayor’s race AND ‘Dancing With The Stars’.” – Jimmy Fallon

“The new mayor of New York City is a progressive Democrat with an African-American wife who used to be a lesbian. Or as Fox News reported, the apocalypse is upon us.” – Conan O’Brien

“The new mayor is married to a woman who used to be a lesbian. His campaign slogan: ‘If I turned her around, imagine what I can do for New York City!'” – Conan O’Brien

“Half of the state of Colorado voted to secede from the United States. This is what happens when you legalize marijuana.” – David Letterman

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The Good Side of Obamacare

If you have only been hearing about the problems with the website, read this article about people who have already been helped by the ACA. Why would anyone want to go back to what we had before?

If there are problems with the site, fix them. If people are being cancelled by their insurance company when they want to keep their old plans (even if those plans don’t meet the requirements of the new law) we can fix that too. Fix what’s wrong, change it for the better. But never go backwards.

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Late Night Political Humor

“New Jersey re-elected Governor Chris Christie. Or as Christie put it, ‘I came back for seconds’.” – Conan O’Brien

“In New Jersey, they re-elected Chris Christie by a HUGE margin. Is there any other way?” – Craig Ferguson

“New York City is going to get a new mayor. It’s between some tall white guy and some short white guy. That’s all I know.” – David Letterman

“The tall white guy is really tall. He’s 6’7′. This is a jumbo mayor. He said if he’s elected, Mayor Bloomberg can live in his pocket. Mayor Bloomberg is a tiny guy.” – David Letterman

“In New York they elected a new mayor. He is Bill de Blasio, the first Democrat mayor in 20 years. Now 20 years ago Times Square was filled with strip clubs and porno theaters. So I’m counting on the new mayor to restore it to its former glory.” – Craig Ferguson

“Mayor Bloomberg has been mayor of New York City for 12 years. We’ll all miss Mayor Bloomberg. But he says 12 years is plenty. That’s three terms. He now just wants to settle down and spend more time with his money.” – David Letterman

“Rand Paul has been accused of cheating in three separate instances. When asked about the charges, Paul said, ‘Four score and seven years ago…'” – Conan O’Brien

“Rand Paul, the senator from Kentucky, keeps getting into trouble. They say he actually plagiarized an entire section of his 2012 book, ‘Government Bullies’. When asked for comment, Paul said, ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.'” – Jimmy Fallon

“The White House announced that Joe Biden will travel to Asia to make up for President Obama’s trip that was canceled because of the government shutdown. Seriously? That’s like Justin Timberlake canceling a show and sending the banjo players from those Geico ads to take his place.” – Jimmy Fallon

“One year ago today President Obama won re-election. And it’s been smooth sailing ever since.” – David Letterman

“So, yes, the president was somewhat dishonest about the promise of his healthcare program, but here’s the weird part, his opponents have been lying like motherfuckers about its effects.” – Jon Stewart

“There’s now growing concern in Iran about the health of 74-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader. He has a chronic illness. You think healthcare is bad in this country, try seeing a doctor under Ayatollah-Care. See how that works.” – Jay Leno

“NSA whistle-blower and traitor Edward Snowden, living in asylum in Russia, has released a manifesto directed at the United States claiming that telling the truth should not be a crime. And believe me, there’s no better place to celebrate free speech, truth, and equal rights than in Russia.” – Jay Leno

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