Reason Morning Links: Tighter Rules for Bankers, Lighter Rules for Cubans

- Washington wants new international standards for banks.

- A new step toward an AIDS vaccine.

- A NATO airstrike in Afghanistan kills up to 90 people.

- The U.S. eases its embargo against Cuba.

- Israel may retroactively legalize unlawful settlements.

- One way an identification system can go wrong.

Comments

[FrBunny]

That thumbprint story sounds like a setup. I mean, why would a man without arms need money?

[Nick]

But the loosening of the rules for Cuban-Americans did not affect a general ban on travel by American citizens to Cuba and tight restrictions on academic and cultural exchanges.

Racist!

[Bob]

AIDS/HIV vaccine + herpes vaccine = fun for all

[_^-^_]

I'm feeling especially cruel this morning and have a desire to insult something.
Where's the Friday Funny?

[FrBunny]

Where's the Friday Funny?

Maybe they took it away to teach us a lesson.

[FrBunny]

Substitute Friday Funny.

[Art-P.O.G.]

That wasn't nice, FrBunny.

[James Ard]

Funnier than most.

[John-David]

I can't believe that bank wasn't willing to offer that customer a hand in cashing his wife's check.

[Warty]

The armless man story made me laugh, so there's that.

[Warty]

Why is Nick Cave running a butcher shop? Terrible likeness by the cartoonist, too.

[FrBunny]

See, Marmaduke ("society") has lost faith in the public library. He is literally trading access to culture for access to sustenance. And I think we all know who the greedy butcher represents.

[SugarFree]

And the lesson is: You act up and we reward you.

[Ska]

Marmaduke is actually that much worse than a FF; I can hardly believe that it was possible.

[SugarFree]

I'm calling a foul.

brotherben repeatedly linked the armless story in comments the other day. Hat tip foul, Hit & Run.

[WWJGD]

Didn't someone mention socialized legal care in an article a while ago? Apparently WSJ has an op piece by a doctor proposing the same thing

[Flange]

" a AIDS vaccine."

It's AN AIDS vaccine.

[Fluffy]

Here's a funny story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/us/03dogs.html?_r=1&em

It's buried well beneath the lede, but it's still funny.

Sometimes we talk about Obamacare here and I claim that people will abuse the public option by consuming much more health care than they currently do and much more than they actually need.

When I make that claim, I'm told by lefties that I'm crazy and that people wouldn't do that.

I thought of that when I saw, near the bottom of this story, that people are creating, or buying off the internet, fake service dog license tags so they can abuse the Americans with Disabilities Act and bring their pets with them into areas where only service dogs are permitted.

And reading that it struck me that there is no "mandated benefit" so small or innocuous, or so narrowly targeted, that the public won't scam it and abuse it. None.

The legislature attempted to craft a small benefit for blind people with seeing eye dogs and the public found a way to scam it. Even more notable than the fact that they found a way, is that they sought out a way. The public is made up of individuals who see a new law designed to help blind people with seeing eye dogs, and their immediate response is to say, "Hmmmmm...how can I abuse that to benefit myself, even though I'm not disabled? Let me think about that for a while." That is your public for ya right there, and anyone who argues that they won't scam and abuse "universal health care" is a fool.

[Pro Libertate]

I should go by that bank branch with my arms tied behind my back.

[SugarFree]

Fluffy,

I have good insurance and don't pay a co-pay for my primary provider. I'm very sick and get bronchitis two to three times a year bad enough to requires anti-biotics. They don't dick around with anti-biotics for me because I'm so sick. I went to see them a couple of weeks ago, reminded them of my bouts of it over the last few years, and suggested they go ahead and write me a script for anti-biotics and file it at the pharmacy.

It saves me a trip up there, saves them having to see a patient they barely get compensated for (the hospital and the university are the same thing), and I'd take a course of anti-biotics as soon as I need them (before getting the coughing up blood stage.)

They looked at me like I was nuts.

They won't let me voluntarily go less and the fools, as you so aptly named them, think when it's free to everyone that it's not going to be abused by everyone in the system? The self-delusion is phenomenal.

[Joe M]

Fluffy,

At the bar I work at, there have been a number of waitresses that have gotten pregnant, in various states of relationship and marriage.

One (married) girl tried to get Medicaid money while pregnant, but was turned down. So, she applied again a few months later, but this time she claimed that her husband had left her. She got money that time, even though they are still a happily married couple. They had no money, no insurance, but intentionally tried to have a baby anyway. Behavior like this is extremely common, sadly.

There is a cook in our kitchen, 17, who has gotten a number of girls pregnant. He doesn't even understand the concept of Medicaid; he just thinks it's the natural course of things to have babies and get money from the government to pay for them. He was frankly surprised and confused when my wife tried to explain it to him.

[Pro Libertate]

SugarFree,

Go to Mexico and stock up.

[MNG]

You know, people here often criticize me as some rabid Israel hater, which I think is kind of funny. Yes, I think it is wrong for Israel to rule thousands of people at gunpoint, and yes I think it is wrong for them kill thousands of people in response to rocket attacks that threaten dozens, and yes I think it wrong for them to take land at gunpoint. But I always also marvel at how decent Israel tries to be. Even with this headline "Israel may retroactively legalize unlawful settlements" I immediately thought about how, though it is wrong, they are at least kind of trying to fit it into a rule of law, something that many of their opponents in the area would not even feign interest in. Make no doubts about it, one can find fault with specific Israeli actions while easily acknowledging they have more decent and fair leanings than any other nation in the area (well, Lebanon seems pretty decent at times too I guess)

[Jesse Walker]

Flange: Fixed. Thanks.

SugarFree: Sorry if brotherben got there first, but I actually found the story at the Fortean Times.

[John C. Randolph]

Glad to hear that the Obama administration is refraining from exercising a power which JFK usurped. Of course, I will still raise the question of how the government imagines that it has any legitimate power to prohibit ANYONE, American or not, from traveling to any other country. The USA has the prerogative to control the borders of this country, not of any other country.

-jcr

[Warty]

MNG, we know you're a Rhoemite. Don't lie.

[Xeones]

MNG, where would you rather live: in a land where nobody has any arms, or Gaza?

[Ska]

X, I bet they have some pretty ingenious masturbation devices in a land with no arms.

Or lots of cyborgs.

[J sub D]

Israel may retroactively legalize unlawful settlements.

*shakes head* Israel, Israel, Israel. I want so much to defend you. But the settlements on the West Bank are in-fucking-defensible. If you ever wish to have peace with your neighbors the settlements have to go.

Yes, the Palestinians and the states that support take advantage of them are going to have to make concessions that displease their hardliners as well but that is not what we are speaking of today. You lose far too much respect and support in the international community to justify the domestic political gains this illegal land grab by right wing fundies provides.

Itr is past time to dismantle the settlements. If the residents there do not approve, give them exit visas gratis and politely warn them about the door hitting them on the way out.

[R C Dean]

A few thoughts on the settlements:

(1) Israel's claim to the land is as good as any country's claim to its land - it conquered it fair and square. Indeed, in Israel's case, it conquered the West Bank in a war where it was not the aggressor.

(2) As a negotiating tactic, legalizing the settlements has the virtue of letting the Palestinian's know that endless obstruction has a price. As long as the ratchet only moves one way in those negotiations, they will never be resolved.

(3) That said, Israel needs to have short, defensible borders that have some relation to political geography. I would bet that many of these settlements lay outside such borders, and will have to go.

[SugarFree]

Bernard Wolfe's Limbo. As a movement toward pacisfism, people voluntarily give up their arms and legs for cybernetic replacement limbs that cannot harm anyone else and are controlled by the central government.

Bonus trivia: Wolfe worked as a bodyguard for Trotsky while he was in Mexico. He was not on duty for the icepickening.

[Pro Libertate]

Conveniently absent, I say.

Why doesn't the rest of the Arab world just offer money for the land and agree to some firm treaty terms? Do they hate the Palestinian Arabs that much?

[SpongePaul]

AIDs the one diesesae that humanity could eradicate in less than 10 years without using 1 ounce of medication. easy, test everyone put the lepers away and in 10 years solved

[EJM]

? One way an identification system can go wrong.

Tragically, here's another.

[T]

Why doesn't the rest of the Arab world just offer money for the land and agree to some firm treaty terms? Do they hate the Palestinian Arabs that much?

C'mon, Pro L. You know the score. The Palestinians are a useful tool to distract the populace from their own horrific misgovernment. Which Arab government would give that up voluntarily?

[No Private Roads, Thank You]

From the June 2009 Grand Isle (LA) Island Beacon. They don't have a website, I get it via USPS.

Elmer's Island
800 visitors traveled to Elmer's Island over the Fourth of July weekend as the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries opened access there for the first time in nearly a decaded.The island had been a commercial campground and fishing area for 30 years. But public access via a marshland road was denied after th death of the road's owner. the opening of the road followed a title search that the state says determined the area is Louisiana property.

[No Private Roads, Thank You]

No access to commersial use for nealy 10 years.

THAT'S what's wrong with the idea of privately owned roads.

[Tom Walls]

The lefties say Cuber is a model for providing health care for all. As a partial solution to rising health care costs, I say let the Cubans come and build low-cost clinics in the US. The AMA cartel and the right-wing Cubans would hate it. And hey, free Cuban coffee and pastelitos!

[!]

A NATO airstrike in Afghanistan kills up to 90 people.

Is that the story where the people killed were stealing fuel from stolen fuel trucks? Serves them right.

On the other topic, Israel is the only country to give the Palestinians their own country, and then the Palestinians immediately destroyed it fighting among themselves, then used it to launch attacks on Israel, so, of course, some want Israel to repeat the same stupid move with the West Bank.

MNG, Gaza sucks to live in because of the people who populate it. If they would stop wasting their allowance pissing off innocent civilians in Israel and do something productive their infrastructure might stay intact.*

*Someone else here was saying that before me.

[Jus in bello]

"A NATO airstrike in Afghanistan kills up to 90 people."

More than a little misleading. According to the story itself, all or almost all were insurgents and posed a direct threat to coalition forces or civilian targets:

"Germany, whose troops called in the 2:30 a.m. strike in the northern province of Kunduz, said it feared the hijackers would use the trucks to carry out a suicide attack against its military base nearby.

[...]

"Germany said about 50 fighters were killed and no civilians were believed in the area at the time. NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen, however, acknowledged some civilians may have died, and the U.S.-led coalition and the Afghan government announced a joint investigation.

"Local government spokesman Mohammad Yawar said police found pieces of dozens of weapons scattered around the site. He estimated that more than 70 people were killed, at least 45 of them militants. Investigators were trying to account for the others, he said.

"The local governor, Mohammad Omar, said 72 were killed and 15 wounded. He said about 30 of the dead were identified as insurgents, including four Chechens and a local Taliban commander. The rest were probably fighters or their relatives, he said."

Nowhere does any number as high as "90" even appear.

[Jesse Walker]

Nowhere does any number as high as "90" even appear.

Apparently they've revised it since this morning. Not surprising that they'd have a better count now.

[han]

If your point is that is was tougher for them as a home team, big deal. There are far more examples in recent history that proves my point.