The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has just gotten quite a bit of company: As many as 6,600 graves at the country’s hallowed Arlington National Cemetery for fallen U.S. service members may be mislabeled, one lawmaker said on Thursday.Political movements are becoming ever more like a match tossed into a room full of dynamite: No matter which stick you are aiming for, chances are a lot of others will fire off, too.A drama about a woman diagnosed with terminal cancer doesn’t exactly sound like the most entertaining new series on the fall prime-time slate. But there is more buzz surrounding Showtime’s “The Big C” than perhaps any other series premiering this season, and the incomparable Laura Linney is a major reason why the series is high on critics’ must-see lists.Although facts on the famed Clinton-Mezvinsky wedding, which is rumored to happen this weekend, are tighter than Hillary Clinton’s smile, some details have leaked out. Sources report that groom Marc Mezvinsky has “hurt” his father’s family by not inviting them to the wedding (Ed Mezvinsky pleaded guilty in 2002 to swindling investors out of $10 million.For Paul Rudd, the decision to star in Jay Roach’s new comedy, “Dinner for Schmucks,” was an easy one. “I thought the script was really funny,” he says. “That was it. It was kind of a no-brainer.” Of course Rudd, who’s built an impressive resume of smart comedies, was just as enamored of the man behind the camera. Subletting in NYC typically involves some kind of covert transaction. Try to find a budget traveler who hasn’t enjoyed the risk of Craigslist’s lease-free rentals. But thanks to a bill Gov. David Paterson signed into law last Friday, renting an apartment for less than 30 days isn’t kosher. Fortunately, there’s a saving grace for those in search of short-term living: Jersey City.New claims for unemployment benefits slipped last week, but stayed at a stubbornly high level that underscored the labor market recovery was having trouble gaining traction.Could nail mats like the Acushakti be the next Snuggies?Unless the locals covered you in meatballs and sang “Nessun Dorma” upon arrival, this vacation could hardly be more Italian. For this is a “Vespa vacation” — a two-wheeled tour of the nooks and crannies, the winding back roads and the off-the-beaten-track hidden gems of breathtaking Umbria, a beautiful region located in Central Italy.For many job-hopping careerists, smuggling a resignation letter in their bag like a guilty secret, there are few workplace rituals so hard as saying so long.
When my friend was laid off recently, she was happy to learn that, thanks to Obama’s stimulus package, she’d get to keep her family health insurance at a cost of $330 a month.
OK, maybe “happy” is pushing it.
“It’s insane,” she says. “But it’s better than the $960 I’d pay if I had to buy it myself.”
It’s no secret, or shouldn’t be, that the United States has the planet’s highest health costs, without actually enjoying any better care. While John McCain kept insisting this was because people were recklessly running up doctor bills without first checking eBay for a cheaper kidney, saner minds have concluded it’s more likely one of two problems:
• Doctors have gone pill- and gadget-crazy, responding to every hangnail by handing out four prescriptions and sending you for an MRI; or
• Insurance companies are greedy bastards.
This, once you get past all the mind-numbing talk about “risk pools” and “insurance exchanges,” is what the health care debate comes down to: If we’re going to make health care affordable enough that everyone can have it, we need to spend less — which means somebody’s going to need to earn less, whether it’s doctors, insurance companies, or the people who make the machines that go “ping!” At minimum, that’ll require some kind of public insurance plan that can both compete with private insurers and dictate fees to doctors — the kind that Karl Rove emerged from his bunker recently to say would lead to “a European-style welfare state,” and which insurers and doctors are currently arming their legions of lobbyists to fend off whatever the cost.
If you’re more scared of being bankrupted by medical bills than of Sweden — as polls show most Americans are — then get out your Congress-writin’ pens. Right now, Washington seems inclined to either scrap a public plan entirely or hamstring it by forcing it to pay the same inflated rates as private insurers. If they succeed, we could be left with a sys-tem that “solves” the health care crisis by guaranteeing everyone access to expensive, crappy coverage. That would be a cure worse than the disease.
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In the July MMMpod, Young Veins talk about breaking away from Panic! at the Disco, Keith Lockhart talks about Buckwheat Zydeco throwing the Boston Pops for a loop, Zooey Deschanel talks about how Roy Orbison inspired a She & Him song, Derek Miller of Sleigh Bells talks about how awesome Funkadelic is, and we talk about how awesome Jimmy Cliff is, who in turn talks about Sam Cooke and divine intervention. An explosive show for July! Oh yeah, and we also test your knowledge of America songs in the MMMPod medley.
