Thursday, September 24, 2009

Humana Medicare misleading elderly members about Heath Care Reform

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According to Dawn Teo, a blogger over at the Huffington Post, Humana Medicare has deliberately sent misleading mailers about President Obama's health care reform proposal.


Humana's Michael Graves designed headquarters

The mailers falsely report that the reform plan will cut "important services and benefits" from Medicare. Teo explains that Health and Human Services's (HHS) Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) wrote Humana asking them to stop sending such false and misleading information.

Humana's political advocacy actions are outrageous. Read Teo's article and inform her if you've received such mailers from your heath insurance provider.

Mackenzie Phillips poll: what do you think of her "sharing?"

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Mackenzie Phillips, the child star of the 70s hit "One Day at A Time", appeared on Oprah Wednesday and will again on Friday of this week to share the news that she had a 10 year sexual relationship with her dad, John Phillips, lead singer of "The Mamas and The Papas."

The media blitz or "wave" started by her Oprah appearance is timed with the release of her book called "High on Arrival" in bookstores today.

What do you think of Mackenzie Phillips' actions? Take my poll, below:

create audio polls & quizzes on pollsb.com

Mackenzie Phillips had sex with dad, John Phillips - talks to Oprah

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Mackenzie Phillips took "TMI" to a new level.




I saw the news and had to tune in, if only for 16 minutes, but to see Mackenzie Phillips just pour herself out to Oprah and say that she had sex and drugs (and well, rock and roll) with her father John Phillips was just, well, it made my skin crawl.

I didn't see the entire segment; Valerie Bertinelli made a surprise appearance on the show to share her concern for her friend. Real sad. Really is.

("Rape" is how it was described by one website but she had relations with him repeatedly until he, according to her statements on Oprah, wanted her to be the mother of the other kids.)

It seems like it's in this new "tell-all" pattern we're establishing where Megan Fox talked to Rolling Stone in a similar way:



And we have Michelle Wie blogging her talents and her bod:



But Mackenzie Phillips, who I watched religiously on "One Day at A Time" just took my breath away and made me wonder how much we should bear as public figures.

I mean, ok, Mac went through an abusive teenage phase to be sure, but to bring it out as she did?

Here's Celeb TV's video summary:



I go back and forth on this and admit to some confusion in the whole deal. See, part of me understands that she obviously from her tears on Oprah needed the release but yes it was timed to the release of her book, which has her account with her father in it.

She's certainly going to make money from bearing her soul and "sharing" but now anyone with kids who happened to hear this has some explaining to do I would think. Which brings me to this poll question: should MacKenzie Phillips have spilled the beans the way she did, so publicly?

How much is too much?

Here's the poll:

create audio polls & quizzes on pollsb.com

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Oakland City Council gets ass chewed out by Oaklanders

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The Oakland City Council got its ass chewed out last night, and I'm not sure there's much left this morning.

This is an account best told with video, and I've got a lot of it coming today. The meeting, at least for the issue of rolling back parking enforcement times from the current 8 PM ending to the old 6 PM stop point, didn't itself end until 12:29 AM.

I've attended well over a 1,000 Oakland City Council meetings going back to 1987, but I can't remember one where several people were as red-faced angry as they were last night. Oh sure, we've had our "Hugh Bassett" moments, where the Oakland school teacher would blast Councilmember Larry Reid (District 7 East Oakland), but nothing like this. Only video does it justice.

Grand Lake Theater owner Allan Michaan is threatening to start a recall of the Oakland City Council after it failed to roll back the parking enforcement time. Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce head Carl Chan just plain lost it after the decision was made to revisit the matter in two weeks, and after Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan (At-Large) issued a controversial idea of rolling back the time to 7 PM from 8 PM.

I've known Carl since 1993. I've never seen him that angry.

Even Oakland gadfly journalist Sanjiv Handa gave a 17 minute speech blasting the Oakland City Council. In fact he did that countless times last night. The guy should just run for office, ya know?

More with videos in a few.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Colts top Dolphins - Peyton Manning ahead of Johnny Unitas

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There are times in life when one has to stop and admire the passage of history. This is one of those moments. The Indianapolis Colts' QB Peyton Manning surpassed the great Jonny Unitas in all time franchise wins last night. The Indianapolis Colts beat the Miami Dolphins in a hard-fought contest 27 to 23, and it could have swung the other way.


Peyton Manning 


The Miami Dolphins came out using a daring game plan, mixing three running back sets with a healthy dose of The Wildcat Formation to form a brew of ball control offense.

But with all of that, and having the clock longer than the Colts, the Dolphins still lost. Why?

Because when the Dolphins had the ball, they didn't make the most of their chances. Period. It doesn't matter how long a team has the ball - within reason - they have to "do" something with it. The Dolphins didn't. The Colts won.

Attacking The Wildcat Formation. 

This game provided no useful examples of how to attack the Dolpins' Wildcat formation. The Colts played a loose defense and basically stuck with it the entire game. That's not how a team should play the Wildcat Offense.

What an organization should do is blitz and for a simple reason. Many of the plays out of the Wildcat Formation are long developing, so a defense sending seven or eight people to rush the quarterback will disrupt the timing of the offense.

That's something the Colts did not do in game planning for the Dolphins Offense. But the Colts high powered offense made it such that the Colts didn't have to. What Indy did do was figure out where the Dolphins were running and pursue to the ball more rapidly than they did in the first half.

The Colts won the game going away, but didn't solve the Wildcat problem in the process.

Dominique Dicaprio - model shows why blogs top news sites

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Who's Dominique Dicaprio and why is she ahead of Megan Fox and Jessica Lange in search trends as of now?




That's a good question because as of this writing, Dominique Dicaprio (no relation to the actor) is the new "Miss Howard TV", and the number three hottest search in Google Trends, but when one clicks on her name, no news site source is listed on the left, but a bunch of blog site sources are listed on the right.

(UPDATE: Zimbio became the first news site to post the  Dominique Dicaprio information.)

If I do a back search on Dominique Dicaprio's trend history on Google Insights for Search, I get zip. Nada. Nothing. Yet, she's the one of the top Google trends. By contrast, Megan Fox and Jessica Lange have a long history.

I've noticed what may be a glitch in Google Insight for Search where listings from news sites and not blog sites dominate the historical searches because blog sites are not well represented on Google News - they have a separate category. If the system worked as it should, the current blog listings should have come up in the overall results for her name.

So in a way, Google itself is contributing to the blogs over news content problem. Unless one knows how to read between the search results, they'd miss a lot of traffic building content that's not out of bounds to post, if you know what I mean.

Think about it.

Let's face it, Jessica Lange's plastic surgery rumor's not all that big a deal either, but the mainstream press was all over it because it came from a big event, the Emmy Awards. If it came from Howard TV, who would know except for the blogs?

This common process is one reason why blogs tend to break news missed by mainstream media sites. Ok, Dominique Dicaprio being named "Miss Howard TV" is not important information in that it has nothing to do with America Foreign Policy. But it has everything to do with our economy.

Everything.

In an Internet age, content is king and the main reason why mainstream media news sites are commonly outdone by their blog competitors it that mainstream media news sites have a human filter that has little to do with the reality of what people are consuming.

Sticking one's finger in the wind of social change only gets that person's finger dirty. Learning to read traffic data and write for the Internet is the key. Also being a student of society helps, too.

As I tell anyone who asks, people want to read about people. Period. Without people the eyeball economy would not exist. But it does, its grown, and so now we have three camps: people who understand it, people who don't and complain about it, and people who don't know it exists.

The people who get it are the fewest in number of the three.

The folks in the middle offer an excuse that of course is designed to make them look good, like "That's not important to me" or "It's not in our demographic" - which is funny because I find more often than not that many people that one would think aren't looking at a something, are because, well again, they're people.

And even the people who make negative comments play into the game. They think that by making the insult they discourage coverage of the information, but it only adds to the buzz around it. And reading but not commenting helps because its traffic.

See, there's no escape from, well, who we are.

This is the reason why the Huffington Post smashes all news websites. It's the reason why the Gawker blog sites are so valuable. It's also the reason why Glam Media's worth millions and Perez Hilton's traffic numbers are unbelievable.

And why journalism school teachers invite TMZ.com's Harvey Levin to meet their students.

It's also the reason why some mainstream media news sites will fail, even as their editors talk about their highbrow standards and demographics.

News is everywhere; but websites have to use it to pays the bills. Otherwise, forget about surviving, even with a government bailout.

Stay tuned.

Jessica Lange at Emmys - plastic surgery?

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Is this Megan Fox's future?

One of my all time favorite actresses, Jessica Lange, who first made it big in the 1976 remake of King Kong, accepted the "Best Actress In A Miniseries or Movie" Emmy Award last night for her performance in HBO's Grey Garden, and caused a buzz just by smiling!




The Hollywood blogs and websites are humming with rumors of Lange's plastic surgery, which as of this writing she's never confirmed. But she looks fantastic, and if Jessica Lange did, great for her!

My only advice is for Lange to hit the weights. Few activities gives as much energy and turn back the body clock as a great daily weight-lifting routine using free weights over 30 pounds each (not the light ones).

Lange's arms could use the work as there's no appreciable muscle tone at all; she's already has the right frame, but she needs that cut look, like Angela Bassett or Dame Helen Mirren, who at 64 has a great body.

Their secret? Weight lifting.