THIS MODERN WORLD

The year in crazy, part two.

The year in crazy, part one.

Normally sporadic blogging to resume after the merriment. Many thanks to all who signed up so far for the sticker list (below).

Whatever you celebrate, enjoy.

I’ve gotten into the habit lately of directing everyone over to Salon to read the new cartoon, but TMW also goes up Wednesdays on Credo (formerly Working Assets). Most of you are probably familiar with the company, but for those who aren’t: Credo uses the profits they make as a phone company to fund various progressive causes. They’ve been sponsors of TMW for quite a number of years now, and we’ve been talking over the past couple of months about a new partnership of sorts. They want to build up their mailing list, and I want to figure out ways to keep working as a cartoonist, so here’s what we came up with: they’re going to start giving away an exclusive free TMW bumper sticker to everyone I send their way who signs up for their activism alerts, and they’ll toss some coin my way for every name they get. So if you sign up, you’ll get a free sticker and help keep me in business, which doesn’t seem like the worst deal you’re likely to be offered this week.

…adding: apparently only available in USA … apologies for any confusion …

Here’s the pertinent disclaimer:

CREDO Action supports the work of Tom Tomorrow and This Modern World. Everyone who orders a free Tom Tomorrow sticker or signs up to receive email alerts re: new cartoons, will also receive offers and activism opportunities from CREDO.

The sponsorship and collaboration between CREDO Mobile, CREDO Action and Tom Tomorrow simultaneously helps fund the publishing of This Modern World and grow the community behind CREDO’s progressive work.

Don’t worry. We won’t do anything nefarious with your info. CREDO does not sell, trade or release your e-mail address to outside third parties unless they are named partners on a given project, or are the recipients of a petition or citizen action you have signed.

Check it out here.

… adding: direct link to sticker order page here.

Digby:

And Obama can say that you’re getting a lot, but also saying that it “covers everyone,” as if there’s a big new benefit is a big stretch. Nothing will have changed on that count except changing the law to force people to buy private insurance if they don’t get it from their employer. I guess you can call that progressive, but that doesn’t make it so. In fact, mandating that all people pay money to a private interest isn’t even conservative, free market or otherwise. It’s some kind of weird corporatism that’s very hard to square with the common good philosophy that Democrats supposedly espouse.

Nobody’s “getting covered” here. After all, people are already “free” to buy private insurance and one must assume they have reasons for not doing it already. Whether those reasons are good or bad won’t make a difference when they are suddenly forced to write big checks to Aetna or Blue Cross that they previously had decided they couldn’t or didn’t want to write. Indeed, it actually looks like the worst caricature of liberals: taking people’s money against their will, saying it’s for their own good. — and doing it without even the cover that FDR wisely insisted upon with social security, by having it withdrawn from paychecks. People don’t miss the money as much when they never see it.

What this huge electoral mandate and congressional majority have gotten us, then, is basically a deal with the insurance industry to accept 30 million coerced customers in exchange for ending their practice of failing to cover their customers when they get sick — unless they go beyond a “reasonable cap,” of course. (And profits go up!) If that’s the best we can expect of progressivism for the next generation then I’m afraid we are in deep trouble.