My congressman won't pee on my leg

I love hearing my congressman in the media, because he invariably sticks his foot in his mouth. That said, if you insult someone by telling them not to pee on your leg, you have no right to complain when you get a response like this in return. Such are the joys of our national circus we call politics.

(CNN) — Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, raised eyebrows last month when he told a constituent at a raucous health care town hall event, "Trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table."

Now Rep. Pete Stark, D-California, is involved in a similar instant YouTube classic, telling a town-hall participant over the weekend that he wouldn't "waste the urine" to pee on the man's leg.

First reported by the San Francisco Chronicle and confirmed by a YouTube clip of the event, the longtime congressman made the remark after the participant launched into a long, but calm, litany about government inefficiency when it comes to nation's health care system. The man concluded his remarks with warning Stark not to "pee on my leg and tell me it's raining."

As the audience cheered, a calm Stark responded: "Well, I wouldn't dignify you by peeing on your leg. It wouldn't be worth wasting the urine."

There was a mixture of laughter and boos as Stark motioned for the next question.

Czar Wars

Pundits use the title "czar" for high-level executive branch officials who direct or oversee activities on a given topic or who coordinate policies between different departments on a given topic. The drug czar heads the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the cyber-security czar is the highest-ranking Department of Homeland Security official on computer security and information security policy, etc. The title is also used for specialized advisors to the President, such as the counter-terrorism czar, who (you can probably guess) advises the President on terrorism policy.

Glen Beck, Fox News, and other conservative pundits are making a big protest over how Obama has thirty two of these czars that advise him. The big furor apparently revolves around the fact that czar's aren't approved and answerable to congress, unlike Cabinet positions. Secretary of Defense, State, Homeland Security, etc. So Obama is apparently surrounded himself with unelected and "unaccountable" advisors, and somehow this is some reason Americans should be worried about socialism, bloated government bureaucracy, blah, blah, blah.

Ignoring the chatter of pundits like Beck and focusing on the facts shows that Obama has 31 Czar's in his administration. That's definately more than virtually every administration before him. Czar's have been around since the 40's, but ignoring the ones created during World War Two, there are only typically about one or two of them per administration. To put it in perspective, Reagan had one, Bush Sr. had two, Clinton had six, and George W. Bush had 35 czars. So Obama having 31 is a huge problem for conservatives, yet strangely enough they didn't have any problem with the practice back when George W. Bush was in office. Now that a Democrat is in office, it's ok to attack the President for surrounding himself with "unaccountable" advisors.

There is an argument to be made against the practice, but it's hard to take conservatives seriously when they didn't register a single protest until a Democrat became president. If history is any indication, the righteous indignation of convservatives to take a moral stance against big government always seems to evaporate when a Republican is in office. It's pretty clear that (like health care) conservative pundits aren't serious in debating the issue, as they simply automatically attack the President on any subject with the underlying reasons being that Obama has the audacity to be a Democrat.

In short, nothing has changed for the Party of No.

"If Hitler were alive today, he would be a talk show host"

What a brilliant quote from this Politico article.

I like listening to talk radio because it reminds me of how insane people can get, but I've always took comfort in the fact that it was simply a platform for the fringe and not a serious reflection of the American "mainstream". That said, hearing more and more of the same vitrol reported as factual news during the past two years has been disturbing, but the signal-to-noise ratio has gone completely off the top lately. I mean, I'm getting emails from people comparing Obama to Joseph Stalin, for Christ's sake. It always drove me nuts when my liberal friends called Bush a fascist, as there was so many more valid reasons to dislike Bush than making up crap about him wanting to just bomb brown people and make America a totalitarian state.

IMO, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Keith Obermann, Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, Ed Shultz, Bill O'Reilly, and pretty much any cable news channel should be labeled as propoganda and treated as the faux-infotainment that it is. Alas, news and talk shows are driven my advertising dollars and not ideology, because if people wouldn't tune in if they didn't like it. Clearly, the public loves hysteria-generated news...

Save $7 billion a month with health care

Just read this at CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) – A health-care reform bill that includes a public insurance plan and requires employers to cover workers would cost $611 billion over 10 years, far less than previous estimates, according to a new analysis from Congress.

...

"The completed bill virtually eliminates the dropping of currently covered employees from employer-sponsored health plans," Sens. Edward Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, one of two panels working on the legislation.

"In addition, our bill, combined with the work being done by our colleagues in the Finance Committee, will dramatically reduce the number of uninsured — fully 97 percent of Americans will have coverage, a major achievement," they wrote.

So, this plan is effectively $61 billion dollars a year, which is just over $5 billion per month. We spent $12 billion dollars a month in Iraq in 2008, I'd say that pulling that money out of Iraq and investing it into this health care plan would save us $7 billion a month. Not bad.

Character Illustration

(click on the image for the larger version)

Tai is my character for Paul's Kindred of the East campaign. I was fooling around in Photoshop and Illustrator and churned this out. Nothing amazing, but fun to make. ;)

Insightful Republican commentary on Sotomayor

In the war of rhetoric being spewed about Obama's Supreme Court pick, I thought this Republican commentary was fairly insightful:

Those who have not been able to lay a glove on President Obama, with his 60 percent-plus approval ratings, now think they can define him by smearing Sotomayor.

For a political party that lost an election just six months ago by 9½ million votes, the second largest vote margin of defeat ever for a Republican presidential candidate, you would think we would shut our mouths and figure out how to get more votes in the future.

...

Let me state that I am sure Sotomayor and I don't agree on very much. And I am sure some of her liberal rulings will drive me nuts. But President Obama won, is a liberal and gets to put liberals on the court. That's the way it works. Ideology aside, is she qualified?

There can be no debate over her qualifications. Her lifetime achievements in the academic world, in the legal world and the judicial world are unchallengeable. If that was the only measure, she would be confirmed unanimously.

...

The confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor is not the battle to be waged and it won't be won. No one should be brutalized like Judge Robert Bork was in the 1980s. And no one should be rubber-stamped either.Sotomayor is not deserving to be on the Supreme Court because she is Puerto Rican or a woman. She has been appointed by the president because she is extremely well-qualified. Judge those qualifications fairly and without malice. To do less will antagonize Hispanic and female voters, two voter groups Republicans must do better with to have any chance of electoral success.

...

Republicans are in a position where we are the underdogs. Unfortunately, no one is cheering for us to win. These nationally televised hearings may be an opportunity for Republican senators to take a step in the right direction. Don't treat her like a lady. Treat her like an extremely qualified American who the president chose to elevate to the nation's highest court.

Great quote about Game Mastering from Dreaming Cities

If you want your players to think you are the best Game Master in the world, you only have one option: cheat, and cheat often. Never make a single dice roll without thinking to yourself, “Hmmm ... if I cheat and change the result of this roll, will I make it a better game?” In the games of Game Mastering and roleplaying, there are no rules about “being fair,” “sticking to the dice roll,” or “being honest with the players.” There is only one rule: make your game the best it can be. As Einstein once said, “Gott würfelt nicht (God does not play dice),” and neither should you. Dice are only a tool to suggest how you should make up your mind. You make the decisions, not the dice.

-- BESM Dreaming Cities, page 115