Sunday is not the Sabbath
From the Huffington Post:
Glenn Beck and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) expressed harmonized outrage on Beck’s radio program Thursday about news that the House might vote on the health care reform package this Sunday. Voting on a Sunday, they said, was offensive and heretical.
“They intend to vote on the Sabbath, during Lent, to take away the liberty that we have right from God,” King said.
“Faith has been perverted,” Beck responded, then repeated. “They are going to vote for this damn thing on a Sunday, which is the Sabbath, during Lent.”
Sunday is not the Sabbath and it never has been. The Sabbath is the last day of the week which is Saturday. It goes all the way back literally to the dawn of time when God created the Heavens and the Earth. He put in a solid six days of hard work making all sorts of stuff and decided to take a day off to rest.
Can anyone blame him?
In Beck’s defense, he’s a Mormon and Sunday very well may be the Mormon Sabbath, but I don’t think so. Nearly everything I know about Mormonism I’ve learned from watching Big Love. Not only is it a very entertaining cable TV show, it’s also quite informative about the Mormon faith.
Idaho is the first state to pass anti-health care reform law
Idaho Republican Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter signed into a law a bill that would require the state attorney general to sue the federal government if and when Idaho citizens are fined because they choose not to purchase health insurance. From MSNBC:
There’s similar legislation pending in 37 other states, a point Otter stressed when asked if the bill he signed can succeed, given constitutional law experts are already saying federal laws would supersede those of states in a U.S. District Court fight.
You know who else says that federal laws supersede state laws? 11th grade government students. If I was a Republican in one of these anti-health care reform states, I would be extremely embarrassed. Though Republicans are always talking about tort reform, they are usually the first to run to the courthouse when they don’t get their way. They come off like sore losers.
I’m not a big fan of the insurance mandate, but I do think that those that can afford heath insurance should by all means, purchase health insurance. When the uninsured go to the hospital and don’t pay, the costs are rolled into what the rest of us pay, those of us that pay for health insurance. If it was up to me, we would be like every other industrialized country in the world and have universal heath care. It’s not up to me, so I have to accept the reality in which I find myself in.
Courage? Really?
We were out and about today and I happened to spot a ginormous display in the bookstore featuring the just published memoir of Karl Rove. It is entitled, Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight. Though I knew that he had just written a book, I had no idea that he chose such an absurd title. How can a man such as Karl Rove, a cowardly chicken hawk who avoided serving in the military during the Vietnam conflict, choose the word courage to describe himself and his life?
Thanks to the eight years of Bush-Cheney and the two never ending wars they got this country in to, it’s not like there is any shortage of truly courageous people. Karl Rove is no more courageous than he is good looking.
And who is he trying to fool with this book cover? Karl Rove is bald, but from the photo, you might not know it. I hate it when bald guys try to hide the fact that they are follically-challenged.
Maybe if Karl Rove wasn’t such a coward, he wouldn’t try to hide his baldness.
Sarah Palin used to travel to Canada for icky, awful government health care
Former governor of Alaska and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was in Canada speaking to a bunch of Canadians when she admitted to the crowd of listeners that as a child, she used to partake of the awful icky socialized Canadian medical system. From The Globe and Mail:
PALIN: We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada. And I think now, isn’t that ironic?
No, that’s not ironic. It’s hypocritical.
Sarah Palin has long railed against health care reform saying that if we reform health care in this country, it will lead to socialized medicine. Like they enjoy in Canada.
Now that health care reform is taken care of, Obama wants to tackle immigration reform
Now that President Obama has licked health care reform, he wants to next focus on immigration reform. He must be a gluten for punishment. He wanted to ensure that every American had access to affordable, quality health care and he got compared to Adolf Hitler and called a Marxist. What will he be compared to because of immigration reform? Whatever it is, it won’t be good.
Obama is crazy for getting involved with this. With unemployment already over ten percent, does he really want to make it easier for businesses and corporations to bring more unskilled workers into the country? Workers willing to accept wages far lower than the prevailing wage?
After all, that is what immigration reform is all about.
Obama needs to let the Republicans deal with immigration reform when they are back in charge. It’s a Republican issue, not an issue for the Democrats. If Obama keeps on not doing what he said he was going to do before he was elected, that day will be a lot sooner than he thinks.
Senator Jon Kyl: Unemployment insurance dissuades people from getting jobs
Yesterday on the Senate floor, a debate on unemployment compensation showed what Republicans think of people who are out of work and receive unemployment insurance: they are lazy deadbeats who willing to forsake meaningful work in exchange for the chance to suckle on the government teet.
Or something like that.
From The Huffington Post:
Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican whip, argued that unemployment benefits dissuade people from job-hunting “because people are being paid even though they’re not working.”
Unemployment insurance “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work,” Kyl said during debate over whether unemployment insurance and other benefits that expired amid GOP objections Sunday should be extended.
Having recently spent nearly three months on unemployment insurance, I think I know a thing or two about what it feels like to be on unemployment insurance. It sucks. Not that I’m not thankful that I was able to receive the bi-weekly payments. On the contrary. If it wasn’t for my unemployment insurance payments, I would have been in real trouble.
Nobody gets rich off of unemployment insurance. It merely allows you to keep your head above water until you can find a job. It allows you to keep on paying the rent, the electric, the car insurance, and a whole host of other monthly bills.
Jon Kyl doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He obviously hasn’t stopped to consider just how bad this economy would be right now if our country’s unemployed weren’t able to pay any of their bills. We wouldn’t be in a recession.
We’d be in a full blown depression.
Congresswoman’s car still parked in congressional parking garage three years after she left office
Once upon a time, there was a Republican congresswoman from Pennsylvania named Melissa Hart. Though she technically lost her congressional seat in 2006 and is now a registered lobbyist, it seems nobody has told her car. Her very dirty Volkswagen Jetta is still parked in the Longworth House Office building parking garage, reserved for members of Congress.
I don’t know what is more remarkable – that a member of congress would just seemingly forget about the car they had parked in their former official parking garage or that the parking garage security would just allow a car to sit there for years. The license plate displayed on the car expired last year.
If I was an al qaeda dirty bomb, I’d hide in the Longworth House Office building parking garage. It’s pretty clear nobody would mess with me there.
New York Governor David Paterson no longer looking for reelection
New York Governor David Paterson announced that he is no longer seeking reelection as New York’s governor. Then again, he was never actually elected governor. He was elected lieutenant governor, but he had to take over as governor after then governor Eliot Spitzer resigned to spend more time with prostitutes.
Or something like that.
Patterson has been embroiled in controversy involving a trusted aid and a woman seeking an order of protection from the trusted aid. Evidently the Governor got involved by sending a New York State Trooper to “speak” to the woman about the situation.
David Paterson has been extremely unpopular in New York. The incident with the trooper only gives people a valid reason to ask for his resignation. If not his resignation, then his promise not to seek reelection.
Amending the Maryland Constitution to prevent requiring people to buy health insurance
One of the problems with health care in this country is that the people that don’t have health insurance make things more expensive for those that do. Not only do hospitals and other health care providers pass on the cost of treating the uninsured over to the insured, having a large group of relativity healthy people not participate in the pool of the insured makes things that much more expensive for everyone. The more people that buy insurance, the cheaper insurance should be.
At least that’s the theory.
Though I don’t agree with forcing Americans to participate in the for-profit health insurance industry, I think it’s better than the alternative.
Three local members of the Maryland House of Delegates, Christopher B. Shank, Andrew A. Serafini, and Charles A. Jenkins, are trying to do something about any federal mandate requiring health insurance. At least they want to make it look like they are. The Health Care Freedom Act of 2010, if passed, would prevent Maryland residents from paying fines for not purchasing health care coverage.
And yes, all three delegates are Republicans.
I have to believe that these Republicans know that the state of Maryland is not in a position to dictate terms to the United States government. That’s just not the way it works. My guess is that these three are just trying to score points with the local George Bush loving, NASCAR watching, voters. In other words, people that played a lot of hooky during high school government class.
Palin tells teabaggers that Obama’s budget is ‘immoral’
Speaking at the 2010 Tea Party convention in Nashville, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin told the nearly 600 teabaggers in attendance that the Obama administration’s 2011 federal budget was “immoral” because it increases the national debt.
Instead of just criticizing the Obama administration’s 2011 budget, maybe she’d like to share with everyone how she would balance the 2011 federal budget. The New York Times has an interactive chart that shows were all the money will go.
What exactly would she like to cut?
How about the $738 billion that we will be spending on defense? The thing is, most of the yearly federal budget isn’t up to the president. Most of the budget is controlled by existing federal law. Other then military spending, not much can be cut by whoever is sitting in the White House. If Sarah Palin would like Obama to make drastic cuts to the military, maybe she ought to tell everyone.
Looks like Sarah Palin is still not reading newspapers
Professional Facebook blogger Sarah Palin is calling for President Obama to fire his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. The reason? Because he referred to some of us on the left as “retarded“.
Are You Capable of Decency, Rahm Emanuel?
I would ask the president to show decency in this process by eliminating one member of that inner circle, Mr. Rahm Emanuel, and not allow Rahm’s continued indecent tactics to cloud efforts. Yes, Rahm is known for his caustic, crude references about those with whom he disagrees, but his recent tirade against participants in a strategy session was such a strong slap in many American faces that our president is doing himself a disservice by seeming to condone Rahm’s recent sick and offensive tactic.
The Obama Administration’s Chief of Staff scolded participants, calling them, “F—ing retarded,” according to several participants, as reported in the Wall Street Journal.
Just as we’d be appalled if any public figure of Rahm’s stature ever used the “N-word” or other such inappropriate language, Rahm’s slur on all God’s children with cognitive and developmental disabilities – and the people who love them – is unacceptable, and it’s heartbreaking.
A patriot in North Andover, Massachusetts, notified me of Rahm’s “retarded” slam. I join this gentleman, who is the father of a beautiful child born with Down Syndrome, in asking why the Special Olympics, National Down Syndrome Society and other groups condemning Rahm’s degrading scolding have been completely ignored by the White House. No comment from his boss, the president?
I think Sarah Palin needs to learn that people aren’t necessarily talking about her kid when they use the word retarded. To equate the word to an ethnic or racial slur is absurd.
It’s just a word.
What I really find to be funny about this is that she had to be told about the incident from a “patriot”. It was reported in the favorite newspaper of all conservatives, The Wall Street Journal, and Sarah Palin didn’t know about it until someone told her. If she’s not reading The Wall Street Journal, she’s probably (still) not reading newspapers.
The Herald-Mail runs ad for Glenn Beck group in the Opinion pages
The following letter ran in The Herald-Mail on the Opinion page on Friday, January 29:
The “We Surround Them” group in Frederick, Md., is sponsoring a constitutional education seminar titled “The Principles of Liberty.”
In this seminar, you will learn the fundamental principles of liberty in the tradition of the Founding Fathers and their “Freedom Formula” for freedom, prosperity and peace. You also will learn where the Founding Fathers got their ideas for sound government and how a return to these ideas can solve our nation’s problems today.
Upon completion of the seminar, you will have a great understanding of how far our federal government has strayed from the original intent of the Founding Fathers. I urge everyone to attend.
The seminar will be held Saturday, March 6, at the Holiday Inn at the FSK Mall in Frederick. The cost is $15 per person.
The We Surround Them group is the brainchild of conservative radio and Fox News host Glenn Beck. It is an anti-federal government, “me-first” organization that’s based on the belief that Glenn Beck and the people who think like him are not the fringe minority that most people believe they are, but instead are a massive majority that surrounds everyone else.
It’s Glenn Beck’s organization, but no where in the “opinion” letter to the The Herald-Mail is that fact mentioned. The Opinion pages of any newspaper should be a place for readers to share their opinion with their fellow readers. It shouldn’t be a place for divisive political groups to get free advertising.
And no, I will not be attending.
Roger Hedgecock claims Obama failed to say what the state of our union was
I was listening to the The Roger Hedgecock Show for a few minutes last night while driving home from work. If you’ve never heard of Roger Hedgecock before, he’s your typical right-wing radio talk show host that spends his show railing against liberals and other similar minded enemies of our great country.
Wikipedia states that Roger Hedgecock got out of serving in Vietnam because of severe acne. In his defense, it’s kind of hard traipsing through the jungle hunting charlie when you have a face full of zits. At least that’s what I’m told. It also mentions that he used to be the mayor of San Diego until he was forced out of office due to criminal charges involving perjury and conspiracy.
I really shouldn’t listen to The Roger Hedgecock Show. In my defense, the drive home is only a couple of minutes and this show is about the only thing I can pick up on the AM radio at 10:00 pm.
Last night he was going off on what an awful job President Obama did with the State of the Union. He talked about it being one of the worst State of the Union speeches he had ever heard. He then put on one conservative caller after another that coincidentally, agreed with everything he had just said. One of the callers mentioned that it shouldn’t even count as a State of the Union speech because at no time did “Barack Hussein Obama” say what the state of our union was.
Hedgecock agreed with him. He not only agreed with the claim that President Obama never spoke about what state our union was, he claimed that Obama was the first president in the history of our country not to do so.
Really?
Last night when I got home I went to the transcript of the State of the Union speech over at The Huffington Post. I pressed Control+F and did a quick search for the word “union”. In the twelfth paragraph, President Obama says, “Despite our hardships, our union is strong.”
So there you have it. Let the record show that President Barack Hussein Obama did indeed inform Congress and the American people just what the state of the union is. It’s strong.
As if corporations don’t already have too much political power
The Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision yesterday that will now allow wealthy corporations to pump an endless amount of money into making and running political advertisements.
The ruling lowered the six-decade wall separating corporations and unions from candidates for president and Congress, allowing the wealthy entities to spend as much as they want from their general treasuries to run advertisements advocating the victory or defeat of candidates at any point before elections.
And the reason? Because it’s not right to infringe on the First Amendment rights of corporations. Not people, but corporations. At least that is what five of the nine members of the Supreme Court said. Never mind that it will only further corrupt the already corrupt political system we enjoy in this country. If you thought that our elected leaders were already too beholden to corporations, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
The best part about all this is that corporations can spend all they want pimping or attacking candidates and we wont even know about it. This is because they can use third-parties to act as a go-between, for example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Corporations can pump millions of dollars into the coffers of the Chamber of Commerce who in turn can use that money to advertise as they see fit, or more correctly, how the corporation sees fit. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent over $71 million on lobbying in the forth quarter alone in 2009. Where did they get all that money? They’re not telling and they don’t have to.
If it seems an awful lot like money laundering, that’s because it is.
Scott Brown wins! Scott Brown wins!
The World Wide Internet Webs is in all a flutter today with the news that former Cosmo centerfold model Republican Scott Brown beat Democrat Martha Coakley in Massachusetts’ special election yesterday to replace Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate. Visit ten political centric websites today and you will likely read ten different reasons Brown won and Coakley lost.
Personally, I think there are many reasons Brown came out the victor yesterday. Though I wouldn’t have voted for Brown if I lived in Massachusetts, I certainly wouldn’t have voted for Coakley. I wouldn’t have voted.
Martha Coakley was an awful candidate. Not only does she have the charisma of a dead fish, she treated the campaign trail like it was radioactive. Scott Brown campaigned hard, driving around the state meeting with the voters.
Martha Coakley does not even know who Curt Schilling is. She thought he a New York Yankees fan.
The fact that the Republicans will now have 41 Senators in the U.S. Senate means that health care reform is dead. At least that is what I’ve learned from watching the cable news shows. If that’s true, then I guess Scott Brown winning yesterday is a good thing. I’m all for health care reform, but not if it looks and smells like the health care reform currently being discussed, then its death is a good thing.
If I lived in Massachusetts, I wouldn’t vote for Martha Coakley either
Today voters in Massachusetts go to the polls in a special election to decide who fills Senator Ted Kennedy’s vacant Senate seat. Voters must decide between Democrat Martha Coakley or Republican Scott Brown. The election is important because even though the Republicans seemed to have no problem getting things done in the U.S. Senate when they held only a 50 seat majority (with Dick Cheney breaking all ties), the Democrats claim they need 60 votes to get anything done.
Not that they’ve been able to get anything done even with 60 votes.
If Coakley wins tomorrow, she will represent a continued 60 votes for the Democrats. If Brown wins, he will represent 41 votes for the Republicans. With 41 votes in the Senate, the Republicans will be able to stop the Democrats from doing anything.
This begs to question why the Democrats were not able to stop the Republicans when they represented the minority party in the Senate.
I’m at the point now where I just don’t care about the Democrats having 60 votes in the Senate. They’ve enjoyed a 60 vote, filibuster proof majority for nearly a year now, yet they haven’t been able to get much done, unless you count a military escalation in Afghanistan.
I sure don’t.
The health care reform bill coming out of the Senate looks like it’s something the Republicans would have crafted if they were in control. President Obama promised that any health care bill he signed must contain a public option. He has since backtracked on that promise. In fact, he even claims now that he never said that.
If I lived in Massachusetts, I’d stay home today.
Sarah Palin finally gets a job she’s actually qualified for
Shocker of all shockers, the “Fair and Balanced” cable news channel Fox News Channel has hired former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as a contributor. She will appear on the channel on a regular basis.
Fox News Channel is a cushy landing spot for failed Republican candidates. Mike Huckabee has his own show on Fox News Channel. When RNC chairman Michael Steele finally gets fired, I’m sure he’ll end up on Fox News Channel too.
They most interesting thing about Palin getting this gig is that she will finally be putting that five school, six year Bachelor’s degree in communications to good use. Unlike the job John McCain asked her to run foe, she’s actually well qualified to be a talking head on TV.
Harry Reid referred to Barack Obama as ‘light skinned’ and used the word ‘Negro’ to describe his way of speaking
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is evidently in a boat-load of trouble because of something he said in private about Barack Obama during the run up to the 2008 Presidential elections. Evidently he said that Obama was “light skinned” and that Obama didn’t speak with a “Negro dialect” unless he wanted to. Whatever that means.
He must have really said it because he is wasting no time apologizing for making the statement, a statement he said in private.
What’s worse, the part about Obama having a light skin color or that he doesn’t sound very Negro? In Reid’s defense, Obama does have light colored skin, not that it matters very much to me. Unlike a lot of people in this country, both on the left and on the right, I’ve never really put more importance on Obama’s skin color.
Is the word Negro offensive? There is a famous charity with the word in it’s title. Is that offensive too? I realize to The Herald-Mail, it’s just as offensive as that other N-word. To me, it just makes Harry Reid sound like an old man, using an out-dated word to describe someone. Last time I checked, Harry Reid is indeed an old man. Wikipedia says he was born in 1939. For most of Harry Reid’s life, the word Negro was perfectly acceptable. Not only was the word acceptable, it was a lot better than many of the words white people had in their vocabulary to use when referring to person who was black.
People need to just calm down.
Funniest thing I’ve seen all year
Senator John Ensign (R-NV) appeared on CNN to talk to Rick Sanchez about radical Islamic terrorists and health care reform and instead he gets grilled about his recent extramarital affair with a former female staffer and the cushy lobbyist job given to Doug Hampton, the staffer’s husband who was also a former Ensign staffer. Of course Ensign refuses to answer any of Sanchez’s questions because, well, Nevada has an unemployment rate of 12%.
Huh?
It’s worth watching for no other reason than to see the look on Ensign’s face when he realizes that he cannot just talk about how Barack Obama is making us all unsafe because he refuses to fight a war against radical Islamic terrorists like George W. Bush did. At one point in the interview, Ensign even begins to stutter.
It’s also important to note that during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Senator John Ensign was calling for President Bill Clinton to resign. In Ensign’s defense, he is a raging hypocrite and at no time did he expect to be held to the same standards that he applied to others.
Is Rush Limbaugh abusing pain pills again?
Conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh was rushed to a Honolulu area hospital for chest pains. The 58-year old Limbaugh is in Hawaii on vacation playing golf. KITV, the Honolulu ABC affiliate, reported that Limbaugh told paramedics that he was on medication for a back problem.
Does that mean he is back on pain pills?
In 2003, Limbaugh went to drug rehab for an addiction to prescription pain medication. This was after the National Enquirer ran an article detailing Limbaugh’s abuse of the addictive pain medication OxyContin, as well as other pain medications.
In 2006, Limbaugh settled a federal criminal case for doctor shopping. That’s when you go to different doctors seeking prescription pain medication and you don’t inform any of the other doctors that you are already being prescribed pain medication. It’s what addicts do to get more pills.
I know of no other pills someone could take for a bad back other than pain pills or perhaps muscle relaxers, but muscle relaxers don’t do anything if the pain is due to a disc problem. Furthermore, if Limbaugh still has a bad back, why is he playing golf? Bad backs and golf don’t mix. I’m no expert in addiction, but I would think you’d want to avoid the things that got you hooked on pills in the first place. In the case of Limbaugh, that would be playing golf.
One of the main reasons I hate golf is how much it would hurt my back. Plus, I really sucked at it.
Is this as good as it gets?
The fight for health care reform has really made me think about things. When I look at this joke of a bill coming out of the Senate, I have to wonder what being a Democrat really means.
Democrats control the White House, the Senate, and the House. If there was ever a time that we could get substantial health care reform in this country, it’s now. If there was ever a time we could make sure that every American has access to quality, affordable health care, it’s now.
Instead, we get a health care reform bill that the Republicans could have written. It does not have a public option. It does not expand Medicare. It requires all Americans to purchase health insurance from the for-profit health insurance cartel.
That last part is the real kicker for me. I can see requiring Americans to purchase health insurance if there was a not-for-profit alternative. Because this bill lacks a public option, this is not the case. This is requiring Americans to purchase a product that’s purpose is not to improve health, but to make a profit for the health insurance company.
I cannot help but thing the Democratic party is a lot like a dog chasing a car that doesn’t quite know what to do when it catches the car. The Democrats are in position to enact a good health care reform bill. They are choosing not to do that.
I have a real problem with that.
This is the best they can do?
It looks as though health care reform will pass, but that’s only if you choose to label the bill coming out of the Senate as health care reform. The key points:
- No public option.
- No Medicare buy in.
- Penalize those that do not have health insurance.
- No tax on cosmetic procedures.
- A 10% tax on tanning.
What a joke. This makes me feel embarrassment to be a Democrat. Seriously, this is what you get when the House, the Senate, and the White House are all under Democratic control? We get 30,000 more combat troops in Afghanistan and a piece of crap bill pretending to be health care reform.
Is this what Change looks like?
The fact that people will be penalized if they don’t buy health insurance, coupled with the fact that there is no public option, means that the health insurance cartel is getting a heck of a Christmas present this year. I wish I sold a product that the government forced people to buy.
Al Franken points out we are entitled to our own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts
Senator John Thune, Republican from South Dakota, spoke on the Senate floor Monday and said that the benefits of the proposed health care bill don’t kick in till 2014. I’m told he even had a chart. Senator Al Franken, Democrat from Minnesota, openly challenged that assertion saying that it was not true.
Franken went on to say that though we are entitled to our own opinions, we are not entitled to our own facts.
If you were a listener on Franken’s former radio show on Air America, you probably remember the phrase. Franken also pointed out that many of his Republican colleagues have not read the bill and that if they want to debate the bill, they really need to read the bill.
Teabaggers are still confusing
Someone from a local Taxed Enough Already (TEA) party wrote a letter to the editor of my local newspaper, The Herald Mail, and it was published in today’s edition. This person wrote:
TEA partiers consider themselves educated and responsible enough to make their own decisions regarding all aspects of their lives. Leftists who embrace big government, including Obamacare, feel they are neither well-enough educated nor responsible enough to make decisions regarding their lives. There is no argument here. Both sides are absolutely correct.
If this person ever bothered to read up on our nation’s history, he might discover that our system of government is based on a constitutional republic. We elect people to represent us and to make educated, informed decisions on our behalf. It’s not the best system of government, but I guess it’s better than everything else.
Does this person even know any “big government” embracing leftists? And what exactly constitutes big government? Is it spending billions of dollars on a massive professional military? Is it spending billions of dollars on weapon systems that may or may not work against enemies that may or may not even exist?
I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to spending our money, I’d rather spend it on health care then on the industrial military complex. Mostly that’s because sickness and disease is a far greater risk to America’s well being than any foreign army is. Since April of this year, 10,000 Americans have died due to the H1N1 virus. Thousands of others have died from other medical problems. How many of those deaths could have been avoided if we had universal health care?
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand people in the Taxed Enough Already (TEA) party. They sat by and just watched President Bush spend billions of their children’s money invading two countries while cutting taxes to the rich.
They didn’t say a word.
President Obama then came into office and actually cut taxes to people making less than $250,000 a year and the teabaggers protest against him by holding up signs comparing him to Hitler.
I don’t get that.
Senate health care reform bill allows for an annual cap to benefits
Now this is just getting embarrassing. The Associated Press is reporting that the current bill floating through the Senate includes language that prohibits insurance companies from placing lifetime caps on benefits, but allows them to place annual, yearly caps on benefits.
This means if you have cancer and need surgery, followed by chemotherapy or radiation treatments, you very well may have to wait to get the chemotherapy or radiation treatments after the new year. The surgery may use up all your available insurance coverage for the year, leaving you all tapped out. It will be up to your insurance company. A company that is more interested in maximizing profits than making sure people are healthy.
I don’t know why they have to make this so hard. Every other industrialized nation has universal health care. Why can’t we? I’d like to think we are capable of doing anything. This includes ensuring the every American has access to quality health care.
It really shouldn’t be this hard.
The Mexican pig flu has already killed 10,000 Americans
Federal health officials are now saying that 10,000 Americans have succumbed to the H1N1 flu. And that’s only since this past April.
That’s more Americans than Islamic terrorists have been able to kill in the last 20 years.
It’s almost unreal to think that this many people have died from the swine flu. That just goes to show you that the flu isn’t something to take lightly. To me, it’s just one more reason that we as a nation should be investing our resources into a national, universal health care system. The chances that you will die from a virus are much higher than the chances that you will be killed by an angry Muslim terrorist, yet we are more than happy to spend billions of dollars on fighting terrorism. When President Obama wants all Americans to have access to affordable, quality health care, some people say it proves he’s just like Adolf Hitler.
Why wont Sarah Palin admit she doesn’t like Asian people?
In the New Yorker review of Going Rogue, Sam Tanenhaus writes that Sarah Palin’s father said she left Hawaii Pacific University after only one semester because she didn’t care too much for Asians. From the review in the New Yorker:
Palin, though notoriously ill-traveled outside the United States, did journey far to the first of the four colleges she attended, in Hawaii. She and a friend who went with her lasted only one semester. “Hawaii was a little too perfect,” Palin writes. “Perpetual sunshine isn’t necessarily conducive to serious academics for eighteen-year-old Alaska girls.” Perhaps not. But Palin’s father, Chuck Heath, gave a different account to Conroy and Walshe. According to him, the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: “They were a minority type thing and it wasn’t glamorous, so she came home.” In any case, Palin reports that she much preferred her last stop, the University of Idaho, “because it was much like Alaska yet still ‘Outside.’ “
I don’t know what I find to be more troubling: that Sarah Palin doesn’t like Asians or that she won’t just come out and admit it. If she had or has a prejudice against people of Asian decent, why can’t she just admit it? Where’s the harm?
I think secret racism is much worse than open racism. When a person is openly racist, at least you know who they are and where they stand. A person who is secretly racist is just as likely to discriminate against someone because of their racial background than someone who is openly racist.
It’s not as though Sarah Palin belongs to a political party that places a high importance on racial sensitivity. Coming out and admitting that she doesn’t care for Asian people wouldn’t prohibit her from ever seeking her party’s presidential nomination.
Who knows, it might even help her score more votes.
Hillary Clinton: ‘We’re not talking about an exit strategy or a drop dead deadline’
If your only problem with President Obama’s military escalation of the Afghanistan war was that you thought it included a set date for troop withdrawal, think again. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates taped an interview with David Gregory of NBC’s Meet The Press that seemed to contradict what President Obama said in his speech at West Point. From the interview:
HILLARY CLINTON: We’re not talking about an exit strategy or a drop dead deadline. What we’re talking about is an assessment that in January 2011, we can begin a transition. A transition to hand off — responsibility to the Afghan forces.
ROBERT GATES: We’re not talking about an abrupt withdrawal. We’re talking about something that will take place over a period of time…. Our military thinks we have a real opportunity to do that. And it’s not just in the next 18 months. Because we will have a significant — we will have 100,000 forces — troops there. And they are not leaving– in July of 2011. Some handful or some small number or whatever the conditions permit, we’ll begin to withdraw at that time.
A handful? What a load of crap. And to think that I and every other American was told that a vote of John McCain was in fact a vote for George W. Bush. The idea being is that John McCain would simply continue with the Bush ideas and strategies. Well, the ironic thing is that Defense Secretary Robert Gates used to be George W. Bush’s defense secretary and he is on national TV talking about an open-ended, no deadline set war in Afghanistan.
So how is this any different?
When I voted for Barack Obama, I was looking for some Change. I thought it was time that we stopped spending so much of our money (and future money) on a massive military so that we could have the distinct privilege of waging unwindable wars in far off lands. I thought it was time to instead spend our money and resources closer to home. I thought it was time to start spending our money on things like universal health care and reusable energy.
If Barack Obama wanted to be the war president, he should have said so during the campaign.
Sarah Palin becomes a Birther
Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin appeared on the Rusty Humphries Show yesterday and the topic turned to President Obama’s birth certificate. No really, it did.
From DailyKosTV:
HUMPHRIES: Sarah Palin here on the Rusty Humphries Show. One of the questions Jason asks is would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?
PALIN: I think the public rightly is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue because I think there are enough members of the electorate that still want answers.
HUMPHRIES: Do you think it’s a fair question to be looking at?
PALIN: I think it’s a fair question just like I think past associations and past voting records. All of that is fair game. You know, I’ve got to tell you too, I think our campaign, the McCain-Palin campaign didn’t do a good enough job in that area. We didn’t call out Obama and some of his associates on their records and what their beliefs were, and perhaps what their future plans were, and I don’t think that was fair to voters to not have done our job as candidates and a campaign to bring to light a lot of things that now we’re seeing manifest in the administration.
HUMPHRIES: I mean, truly if your past is fair game and your kids are fair game, certainly Obama’s past should be. I mean, we want to treat men and women equally, right?
PALIN: Hey, you know, that’s a great point. And that weird conspiracy theory freaky thing that people talk about that Trig isn’t my real son, and a lot of people that went “Well, you need to produce his birth certificate, you need to prove that he’s your kid,” which we have done, but yeah, so maybe we can reverse that, and use the same [inaudible] thinking on the other one.
I just don’t get the strategy of attacking Obama’s nationality. It’s been established that he was indeed born in Hawaii, which I guess technically makes him as American as Ronald Reagan or Thomas Jefferson. I just don’t understand the idea of attacking Obama for something he has no control over. Like every other human on this planet, he didn’t choose where he was born.
I think Sarah Palin needs to figure out what she wants to be when she grows up. Does she want to be taken seriously as a viable presidential candidate in 2012 or does she want to be the leader of a fringe movement that questions Obama’s nationality? I don’t think she can be both.
Chris Matthews calls West Point ‘enemy camp’
has really outdone himself this time. For a man that speaks for a living, he sure puts his foot in his mouth a lot.
I wish Barack Obama was an anti-war activist in the 60’s
I went out today to run a few errands and I forgot to grab my XM radio from the computer room. This meant I had to listen to old fashioned terrestrial radio. One of the shows I listened to today was the king of AM talk radio, Rush Limbaugh.
As luck would have it, Rush was railing again liberals, communists, socialists, progressives, and President Barack Obama. While talking to a caller, the subject turned to an organization called the SDS. I had never heard of the organization before. Rush said that it stood for the “Students for a Democrat Society”. He said it was an anti-war organization. He said that Abbie Hoffman, the Chicago Seven, Tom Hayden, and Barack Obama were all former members.
Barack Obama?
When I got home, I looked up SDS on Wikipedia. It stands for “Students for a Democratic Society”, not “Democrat” as Rush said. Also, I highly doubt Barack Obama was ever a member. Wikipedia states that the SDS broke up in 1969. In 1969, Barack Obama was 8-years old and lived in Indonesia with his mother and her husband.
How does an 8-year old boy living on the other side of the world participate in an anti-war organization for college students? Remember, this was long before Al Gore ever invented the World Wide Internet Web.
I wish Rush Limbaugh was right. I wish Barack Obama was involved in the anti-war movement in the 1960’s. If he was, maybe he wouldn’t be going on national TV tonight announcing that he was sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. As if that is going to fix anything.
He could send six million more troops to Afghanistan and it wouldn’t fix anything. At the end of the day, it’s still going to be Afghanistan.
Washington Times runs ad claiming Obama is a British subject
The Washington Times ran an ad in the November 30 issue stating that President Barack Obama is not a “natural born” citizen and is instead a British subject. The people that created this ad used the images of chimpanzees to make their point. Click here or on the image to see a much larger version.
What I don’t understand about these Birthers, people that believe that Obama cannot be President because he was either born in Kenya or some other foreign place, is that they don’t seem to know that the man Obama ran against for President was in fact not born in the United States. Sen. John McCain was born in Panama.
I wonder if the Washington Times would run this ad if it was directed towards Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon. I’m guessing they wouldn’t.
Mike Huckabee has a problem
Nine years ago while Mike Huckabee was the governor of Arkansas, he commuted the 60-year prison sentence of a man named Maurice Clemmons. This same man is now wanted for questioning in the shooting deaths of four Washington State police officers.
Whoops.
If it wasn’t for Huckabee, Maurice Clemmons would still be in prison in Arkansas. He wouldn’t have been able to walk into the Lakewood, Washington coffee shop and gun down four police officers as they sat doing paperwork on their laptop computers.
It’s not like this is even Clemmons’ first transgression since been being let out of prison by Huckabee. Clemmons is on bail awaiting trial for third-degree assault on a police officer and second-degree rape of a child. How does someone even get bail for raping a child?
I’m guessing this means the end of Huckabee’s presidential aspirations. I imagine anyone running against Huckabee in the Republican primary will make Maurice Clemmons their poster child.
Obama administration working to allow ‘troubled borrowers’ stay in homes they cannot afford
The Obama administration is trying to help people who cannot afford to pay their mortgage payment to stay in their home. Great!
From The Huffington Post
Under the $75 billion Treasury program, companies that agree to lower payments for troubled borrowers collect $1,000 initially from the government for each loan, followed by $1,000 annually for up to three years.
The government support, which is provided from the $700 billion financial bailout program, is aimed at providing cash incentives for mortgage providers to accept smaller mortgage payments rather than foreclosing on homes.
So in other words, the federal government will reward mortgage providers that provided home loans to people that could not afford those loans. Why even make prospective borrowers fill out all that paper work?
Also from the same article:
Rising foreclosures depress home prices and threaten the sustainability of the fledgling economic recovery.
The problem is, home prices are still too high. Until we return to a time when a family making the national median average in wages can afford the national median average priced home, people will continue to over-borrow to buy a home. Prices for homes have skyrocketed while wages have remained nearly stagnant. Compounding the problem is that productivity has increased, resulting in less need for employees. A less need for employees not only keeps unemployment rates high, it helps keep wages stagnant.
I think it’s great that the federal government wants to help people. I just don’t think helping people stay in homes they cannot afford is really helping them. Rewarding borrowers $1,000 a year for three years for loaning money to people they should not have loaned money to is rewarding wrong doing. And it’s not like the federal government has more money than it knows what to do with. How many of these people who now cannot afford their mortgage payments refinanced during the housing bubble into loans with adjustable rates based on home values that existed only on paper?
What’s next, will the Obama administration go to Vegas and help people that lost all their money at the crap tables?
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