The Wisdom Of Ron Paul(?)

The guy's mostly a nutball, but hey - even a blind hog roots up an acorn once in a while.

Healthcare Reform Summit

I didn't watch it on C-SPAN because I'm trying to be a little less obsessed with this shit, but of course, I caught a couple of reports on NPR and MSNBC in which (again, of course) the reporters drew false equivalencies, saying both Obama and Alexander "essentially had their facts right" when they made claims about what the CBO predicts concerning insurance premiums.  Claims that can't be more opposite from one another.

What the fuck?  Oh yeah - it's in the best interests of our Media Poodles to keep the fires stoked.  Controversy is important when the real point of the exercise is to sell ad time.

Bend Over And Grease Up

Blackwater and Cartman-gate.

There's a National Security Consortium hard at work, trying to make sure the spigot of tax dollars is never closed.  The DoD and Contractors and Congress Critters are the main players, but even in the kind of corrupt system that's evolved in the USA over the last 50 years - under which actual people are the last to be considered - we The People still have to take some responsibility for the corruption itself.  We can also stand up and call these assholes out.

Dems:

Norman D. Dicks (WA)
Peter J. Visclosky (IN)
James P. Moran (VA)
Marcy Kaptur (OH)
Allen Boyd (FL)
Steven R. Rothman (NJ)
Sanford D. Bishop, Jr. (GA)
Maurice D. Hinchey (NY)
Carolyn C. Kilpratrick (MI)
David R. Obey (WI), Ex Officio

Repubs:

C.W. Bill Young (FL)
Rodney P. Frelinghuysen (NJ)
Todd Tiahrt (KS)
Jack Kingston (GA)
Kay Granger (TX)
Harold Rogers (KY)
Jerry Lewis (CA), Ex Officio

Paul Juola, Subcommittee Clerk
Room H-149 The Capitol
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-2847

Today's T-Shirt

Word O' The Day

stealth abs

When your ripped six pack is covered by a thick layer of fat.

"This isn't a beer belly, it's my stealth abs. I just needed to avoid attracting too many ladies with my well defined stomach."

Sense Of Direction

Finding your way around a new place can be confusing and difficult. Here's some helpful advice offered recently in Vancouver by a local who was trying to help an American visitor.

"If you're seeing mountains, you're facing North. If your feet are wet, you're in the ocean and that`s West. If you've just had your car stolen, you're in Surrey, to the East. But if you see people without healthcare, waving handguns... you're back in the States."

Low Grade Corruption

Marco Rubio is among the new crop of Repub darlings, and he's pretty much all set to stomp Charlie Crist in the primary for Florida's senate race.  But now it's come out that Rubio used his GOP-issued credit card to pay for groceries and car repairs and a bunch of other personal expenses when he was Speaker of the  House in Florida's legislature.

Here's a quickie at TPM.com.

Of course, Rubio denounced the revelation as a desperate act of his political opponent, in that tried-n-true tactic of attacking the attacker - if you make a bold enough statement about what a dirty trick it was to reveal your corruption, then people will be likely to remember that part of the episode more than the feeble bullshit you sling trying to explain your actions.

Now really, we're talking about less than $14,000 over 4 years time.  Not a huge thing, but there're a couple of things about it that bug the crap outa me.

1) It's just too typical for a politician to feel entitled to spend other people's money on perks for himself.

2) $14,000 divided by 4 years = $3500 per year.  Did Rubio declare that money as income on his tax returns?

Grayson Stands His Ground

I haven't decided yet if Alan Grayson is really onto something, or if he's just another doofus with too much money.  Anyway, at least he seems to be saying what's on his mind and letting the chips fall.

It's interesting to hear about his brush with Blackwater, and then hear that he still thinks they're a bunch of dangerous buttheads.

Here's the story at TPM.com.

But I was thinkin' - remember back when the only people who had private armies were the bad guys in the Bond movies?  Just sayin'.

We Are So Fucked

And here's some graphical representation of the concept (hat tip to Brother John).

Bring The Stupid

Here's a great little story via the Salt Lake Tribune.

Seems the Utah legislature decided they needed to make illegal abortions more illegal(?)

And here's the rub: if I suspect a woman intends to induce a spontaneous abortion (aka: miscarriage) to end her own pregnancy, and I report her to the cops; and the cops show up at her house to investigate, but she refuses to cooperate; don't the police have at least the implied authority to use deadly force in their attempt to compel her compliance with the law?

This is madness.

We Are So Fucked

Our "representatives" aren't elected by voters - they're elected by contributors.

Now that Obama is talking about trying to push a little harder to get Wall Street and The Big Banks to play by the rules, they're aligning against him; and against anybody who speaks out in favor of re-regulating.

In a previous post, I wondered why Repubs were sounding so confident of a resurgence, and I said then that it all sounded hollow.  It isn't.  The big money contributions are running 2-1 in favor of the Repubs.

Here's the story at WaPo today.  Oh well; it was nice to dream of things getting better.

Bring The Stupid

Politicians say and do some pretty dumb things.  I think it's usually just a function of having to walk a really thin line in an attempt to keep some voting faction or another happy while at the same time trying not to cause some other faction to back away.  Maybe it's always been that way, and maybe we're just becoming more aware of it.  Anyway, Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall (R-Dumbass) is in a lot of trouble (petition demanding his resignation) for saying what was on his mind - (see story in Gainseville Times). He claims his comments were  "misconstrued", but reading the direct quotes, I'm thinkin' he really just let the truth about what he believes slip out.

And the truly unfortunate aspect is that the study he was citing may have had new info we should know about - but now it's all lost in the firestorm of protest.*  Don't get me wrong; I think the guy is at best borderline Taliban, and he oughta be thrown out on his ass.

I left a meesage for my delegate (Rob Bell) asking for comment - no reply as yet.
I tried to get somebody at VCU to comment and couldn't find anybody who's even heard about it.

*It doesn't appear to my highly untrained eye to make any real link to the kind of "Elective Abortion" the wingnuts love to rage about.  Here's the abstract for the VCU study.

CPAC Straw Poll

I dunno what it means.  I've watched CPAC for a coupla years now, and I'm still of the mind that it's really just a Wingnut Circle Jerk.  It does have some merit of course, in that the factions get a chance to float their ideas and get some feedback, but I'm not convinced it represents a good snapshot of the GOP as a whole.  Anyway, it seems to have come as quite a surprise that Ron Paul stomped everybody so big.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul - 31 percent
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney -- 22 percent
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- 7 percent
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty - 6 percent
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich - 4 percent
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee -- 4 percent
Indiana Rep. Mike Pence - 5 percent
South Dakota Sen. John Thune -- 2 percent
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels -- 2 percent
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum -- 2 percent
Mississippi Gov. Hailey Barbour - 1 percent
Other - 5 percent
Undecided - 6 percent

That Guy With The Glasses

CPAC

I'm listening to the Webcast of CPAC, and there's a panel on now pissin' and moanin' about how the conservative philosophy isn't properly represented on the US college campus today - that the conservative academic is an outcast; even an oppressed minority.

They use a lot a of rather belligerent rhetoric too.

I'm wondering a couple of things:
1) are you guys demanding a kind of Affirmative Action thing?
2) in the market place of ideas, over time, isn't the low number of conservative academics actually an indication that a majority of people aren't buying what you're peddling?

Just sayin'.