Job Killers

Did you know that the Affordable Care Act is a job killer?  I know that, because the TV told me, like 1,000 times.  If jobs are like the people of Baltimore, the Affordable Care Act is like Chris and Snoop, out there just murdering all of them for President Marlo and throwing the bodies in vacant row houses for Lester to eventually find.  So many senseless job killings, and for what?  So some poor people can go to a doctor?  If they wanted to see a doctor, they shouldn't have decided to be poor in the first place!

Luckily, the Republicans know what to do about all this murdering, so they're shutting down the government.  I mean, sure, shutting down the government will put actual people out of work right now instead of hypothetical future people, but if you want to talk about facts, you're sort of missing the point.  The point is Republicans are going to hold their breath until everyone has no health care and 14 guns, and you can't make them breathe because you're not the boss of them.  So there. 

I don't really want to talk about the government shut down though.  It's all silly political theater.  Either they'll come to an agreement today or tomorrow, or maybe never and we're all going to die, but I don't care a lot either way.  I do want to talk about job killing a little though, because the TV has been lying to me.

If I worked somewhere and they told me that I was being laid off because the government says they have to give me health insurance now and they don't want to pay for that shit, I wouldn't blame the government for my situation.  If my employer would rather lay me off than meet the basic social responsibility of providing me with health care, that's on my employer.  I realize it's easy to blame government, especially if you're a Republican and you blame government for everything, but that doesn't make it true.

What else are we supposed to do?  We're stuck with this employer-based health insurance system.  It isn't the best system, just ask Europe and Canada, but apparently it's the only one we can have because if I suggested single-payer health care for America Ted Cruz and Rand Paul would show up at my apartment later to kill me with their bare hands.  I mean, what do those stupid Europeans know about anything?  Some of them can't even drive on the right side of the road.

So in a country where we don't have other options, all we can do, before we even start to figure out what to do with unemployed people, is force employers to provide insurance for the people who work for them.  And we only have to force them because too many weren't doing it on their own.  I know it's expensive, and that sucks, but you couldn't get 20 votes in Congress for a bill with real price controls because that would suggest we don't have blind faith in the magic power of the free market.  So, once again, we're stuck with our own stupidity and without a lot of good solutions.  

You can make all the excuses for businesses that you want, but look, since the Reagan administration, big businesses in this country have been allowed, if not encouraged, to be robber barons.  Now we're asking them to do one simple thing, and they're threatening to cut jobs instead of doing it.  "We can't afford it" is not a good enough reason to not give people access to health care.  

When the President was first elected and started talking about finding a way to get millions of people health insurance, one of the arguments against it was "won't that mean I'll have to wait longer to see a doctor?"  Yes, yes it will.  Not if you're bleeding from your eyes, but yes, you might not be able to take your whiny, hypochondriac ass to the doctor 15 times a year for no good reason.  Sorry.  Eat a fucking apple or something.  

And this is the part Republicans aren't being honest about.  They don't really want cost controls because that would be socialism.  They also don't want people who already have insurance to have to share their doctors, because that would be inconvenient.  Republicans are cool with the way things were, which, come to think of it, sort of sums up the Republican position on everything.  But I'm not cool with the way things were, and the Affordable Care Act is a tiny little bit better, and that's better than nothing.

If you're so worried about jobs, do something about jobs.  Like a real stimulus bill with spending for fixing roads and bridges.  And high speed trains.  I don't really get the high speed trains thing, but Chris Matthews won't shut up about them and I feel like we should probably throw him a bone.  Or, even easier, just stop cutting things like food stamps.  Did you know food stamps are specifically designed to both feed poor people and stimulate the economy, because people who get food stamps tend to spend them immediately at a local business on, ya know, food?  True story.

Republicans want to make everything about jobs, except bills that could actually create jobs, those are about spending for some reason.  But health care bills aren't about jobs, they're about health care.  Just like environmental protection laws aren't about jobs, they're about environmental protection. Everything has a downside, that doesn't mean you don't do anything.  It means you do the right thing and then you do other things to mitigate the downside.  That's how grown-ups solve problems.  Then again, our country isn't really run by grown-ups at the moment.  

Ted Cruz

In March of 2010, when the Affordable Care Act passed, I wrote this:
http://somethingclever13.blogspot.com/2010/03/socialism-day-one.html

Three and a half years later, I still think it's pretty solid bloggery.  Anyway, I was sitting here writing about the current state of the health care debate (which, to be honest, hasn't changed a whole lot since 2010) and it was becoming this very long and sort of incoherent thing, and then I realized that I possibly had three things.  Three things that are all related, but weren't fitting together that well.  So why not just do three separate posts?  Then I don't have to sit here and try to think of some clever way to tie them together.  Meanwhile you, dear reader, get three posts in one week.  Win win.

Part 1 of 3 unfortunately has to be about my least favorite Senator.  I know we would all rather just ignore Ted Cruz's silly fauxlibuster, and Ted Cruz in general for that matter, but we can't and I'll get to why we can't in a second.

But first, I think one important thing needs to be said.  Ted Cruz isn't smart.  Maybe he used to be.  I know he went to Ivy League schools, and I've heard stories about him being brilliant in front of the Supreme Court (although the more I see of those people the more I think maybe it doesn't take much to impress in front of them), but however smart Ted Cruz once was, that's all gone now.  Like a running back who loses a few steps and suddenly can't even stay in the league, Ted lost whatever skills he had and he's just a dumbass now. 

I know this because Ted Cruz treated the Senate to a dramatic reading of Green Eggs and Ham in support of his stubborn insistence on hating something we haven't even tried yet.  You can call that a cheap shot, but it really isn't.  Either Ted didn't bother reading the 60 page children's book before using it to make an argument in the United States Senate, or he did read it but couldn't quite comprehend the moral of the story, which apparently only contains 50 different words.  Either way, dumbass.

And while I'll never get the people on Fox to admit that Ted Cruz is a dumbass, I would appreciate it if the regular journalists on other networks, or at least the liberals at MSNBC, would stop pretending that we all agree that Ted Cruz is a really smart guy.  He isn't.  At best, he's the smartest Republican in Texas, which is sort of like being the smartest plant in my office.  And my plants are dumb, because they came to my office and they know damn well that I'm not going to remember to water them.

And why do I care about what Ted Cruz is or isn't?  Well, for one thing, he's currently the ring leader of the thousand-ring, clown-filled tea party circus.  I often make the point that idiots only get a voice in our country when one of the two major parties is willing to take up their stupid cause.  When both parties agree about something, people can still complain about it, but they can't really do anything.

Same sex marriage is a good example.  If both political parties just said "of course anyone who wants to get married can get married, we're not going to sit here and try to codify bigotry, what's wrong with you people?" then we'd have a lot more progress than we have currently.  I'm not saying bigots go away if you ignore them, but if you don't give them the political machinery to promote their nonsense, they have a pretty hard time slowing the march of progress.  Unfortunately, the Republican party still seems more than happy to be the home of hatred, so progress is happening one state at a time and there are quite a few states left.

Similarly, if elected officials in both parties, who are supposed to be responsible adults, would all say that we're not going to shut down the government over a policy disagreement, then we wouldn't be having today's problem.  Sure, idiots could stand around in Washington with tri-corner hats and misspelled signs, but the rest of us would just ignore them like we usually do.  Wouldn't you rather be ignoring Ted Cruz right now instead of worrying about what happens if the government actually shuts down tomorrow?  I know I would.

Also, Ted Cruz is running for President.  That's definitely happening and we can't stop him.  And if he wins the Republican nomination, that basically gives him a 50/50 chance at being in charge of the country.  I wouldn't leave Ted Cruz in charge of the drive thru at a Burger King.  This qualifies as a legitimately bad thing that could happen in the near future.  And those of us who already know that Senator Cruz is a disaster waiting to happen are like the people with time machines who already know what's going to happen and have to come back to warn the rest of you.  So there, you've been warned.

Poor Faulkner

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten dollar words.  I know them all right.  But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use."

This sentiment from Hemingway is always appropriate for a big political speech.

This year's State of the Union comes without the usual pregame madness thanks to whatever the hell was going on in California.  I did learn that Bill O'Reilly doesn't believe in the death penalty.  Who knew?  The rest of it was mostly just video of a cabin burning down.  I'm just looking forward to the President awkwardly working this situation into his speech.

8:57PM: This is pretty fun.  The huge panels of bloviating jackasses the cable networks put together for tonight each got about three minutes to talk.  In order to understand why this is fun, you really have to understand how much these people enjoy being on television.  Don't be surprised if someone burns down a cable news studio later tonight.  Also, Blogger doesn't know how to spell bloviate.  Or maybe Blogger just noticed that I opened with that Hemingway line and is trying to point out my hypocrisy.  Listen, if I could write like Hemingway, I wouldn't need to use words like bloviate.

9:02PM: The Cabinet is very slowly and boringly making its way into the chamber.  Also, breaking news from CNN, the White House says this speech is going to be effective.  What a scoop!

9:05PM: Seriously though, I just noticed CNN has Newt Gingrich in the studio.  He's barely getting a word in.  I think his head's going to explode.  And when a head that big explodes, terrible things happen.

9:07PM: I'm starting to wonder if the President is coming.  If he knew Newt was talking on TV right now, I'm sure he'd jump in and stop it.

9:09PM: Newt's laugh is disturbingly creepy.  Oh, I miss the Republican primaries.  No Newt!  Don't go!

9:10PM: Here comes the Prez.  I keep saying they shouldn't let Biden and Boehner sit together.  They already look like they're up to something.

9:11PM: Lots of poorly executed mustaches in the crowd tonight.

9:14PM: People say Congress never does anything, but could you stand and clap for this long without a break?  Also, Biden and Obama appear to be wearing the same outfit #awkward

9:16PM: Lots of "does anyone know what Mitt Romney is doing right now?" jokes on Twitter.  Probably enjoying being filthy fucking rich and not having to deal with all this nonsense.  Mitt may have dodged a bullet in November.

9:18PM: Did you know we're buying less foreign oil than we have in 20 years?  Still quite a lot, but, you know, less.

9:18PM: "The state of our union is strong."  OK, goodnight folks.

9:19PM: Biden looks twitchy, Boehner looks pretty drunk.

9:20PM: "The American people don't expect us to solve every problem."  True, but solving one would be nice.  Just try one.

9:22PM: Apparently the sequester is a really bad idea.  Everyone seems to agree on that.  If only we could find all those people who voted to pass the sequester in the first place.  Ohhh, I bet the Prez and Mr. Boehner would like to have a word with those assholes.

9:25PM: "Already, the affordable care act is slowing the growth of health care costs."  Yeah, I'm not sure that's good enough.  Health care costs are skyrocketing on a slightly less steep trajectory.  Hooray for us!

9:27PM: We're wallowing in the deficit reduction portion of the speech right now.  The working title for this section around the White House was "all the shit that's never gonna happen".

9:29PM: In the last minute, only the Democrats have applauded for "less crises" and "paying our bills on time".  Tough crowd.

9:30PM: Biden cracks me up.  Obama just said Congress needs to pass the rest of his growth agenda, which caused Biden to laugh out loud.  I'd love to be texting with Biden right now..."Congress do something? OMFG! LOLZ!"

9:32PM: The Prez thinks we should invest in good ideas.  Also, Biden is inexplicably wearing glasses now.  Wait, now the glasses are gone.  Why is Biden doing costume changes?  Just sit still man!  VPs are the worst.

9:34PM: Obama says we can make progress on climate change while also fostering strong economic growth.  I wish he'd stop saying that.  Not everything has to make money.  When you try to pair fighting climate change with trying to make everything profitable, you get stupid ideas like cap and trade.  How about we fight climate change just for the sake of, ya know, not dying?

9:38PM: "Let's cut in half the energy wasted by our homes and businesses over the next 20 years".  Sure, why not?

9:39PM: Even the Republicans stood up and clapped for fixing bridges.  They're not going to vote for any funding for fixing bridges, but, philosophically, they like fixing bridges.

9:41PM: On passing some bill that's currently waiting in Congress.."what are we waiting for?".  Well, the Republicans are waiting for a less black President.  I'm not sure what everyone else is waiting for.

9:42PM: Obama is seamlessly transitioning from one topic to the other.  Climate change, then bridges, now education.  He's really pushing for funding for pre-school.  I don't know.  I remember pre-school mostly just being day care with some counting.

9:44PM: Apparently, German kids are ready to work right out of high school.  I probably could have worked in Germany right out of high school too.  I don't want to work in Germany.

9:45PM: Something about re-designing America's high schools.  No, not going to happen.

9:46PM: "Colleges must do their part to keep costs down".  He said that last year too.  That is definitely not going to happen.

9:47PM: Now we're on boarder security.  He's like a tornado of policy proposals.

9:49PM: The President wants Congress to send him a comprehensive immigration reform bill so he can sign it.  I'm mostly hearing that this is going to happen.  I predict the end result will be toothless and ineffective.

9:50PM: Great audience shot of some lady shaking her head in anger at the idea of equal pay for women.  It isn't easy being a Republican woman, but at least you get to hang out with all of those hot Republican guys.

9:52PM: Raise the minimum wage?  Yes please.  Well, yes please for me, no thank you for the Republicans.

9:53PM: Boehner looks super fidgety.  Someone give him a ball to play with.

9:55PM: "By the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over."  Kudos if he actually pulls that off.  I'm also glad to hear that we're going to spend plenty of time training and equipping the Afghan army that we will most likely be going to war with in about 25 years.

9:58PM: Chuck Grassley may or may not be asleep.  Also, Obama has successfully conditioned the Democrats to applaud whenever he pauses, no matter what he just said.

9:59PM: Even the lady who wouldn't clap for equal pay stood up and applauded for keeping Iran from getting nuclear weapons.  I wonder if she gets equal pay?  #hmmm

10:01PM: "today's world contains not just dangers, not just threats, but also opportunities".  He added, "opportunities to be endangered and threatened".

10:02PM: Did he say AIDS free generation?  I think he did.  That's sounds like a good idea.  Let's do that one.  Someone go find out why Magic Johnson is still alive!

10:05PM: Boehner just seriously sat there and refused to applaud for equal treatment for gay military members and equal benefits for their families.  What a dick.  These guys are so funny to me sometimes that I forget that they also spend a great deal of time being assholes.

10:08PM: About Newtown and gun control..."this time it's different".  Except not really and it's been two months and Congress still hasn't done anything.  But other than that, it's much different this time.

10:11PM: Republicans won't even applaud for voting on gun control laws.  If you were honestly against something and thought it was a bad idea, wouldn't you be all for stepping up and voting against it?

10:12PM: "they deserve a vote"...best section of a State of the Union speech I can remember in a while.  Well done Prez.

10:14PM: Hey look, that old lady voted. Way to get back to the silly nonsense!  I'm sorry, I'm sure it's a very inspiring story, but these little human interest stories are always my least favorite part of this, and really, of anything.

10:16PM: And hey it's over.  Sort of crash landed there, but OK.

10:17PM: I'm going to stick around for the Marco Rubio response.  Last year Paul Ryan's response was basically just 10 different ways to propose tax cuts.  I'm not expecting much more out of Marco, but we'll see.

10:25PM: If Rubio doesn't show up soon I'm bailing.  I can't wait around forever just because he has great hair.

10:27PM: Finally, here comes Marco Rubio.  I predict I'll never have that thought again.  Before I find 15 different ways to call Marco stupid, I want to give him some honest credit for doing this.  For every guy who made a name for himself giving the State of the Union response, there's another guy who committed political suicide attempting to pull it off.  This isn't easy.

10:30PM: Right off the bat..."for much of history, people lived in societies where a tiny minority stayed at the top and nobody else had a chance".  Ummm, that seems to be where the Republicans have been trying to take us for the last 32 years.  That's a literal description of the result of Republican policies.  Not a good start buddy.

10:32PM: They should have scored Marco a podium.  He's having trouble figuring out what to do with his hands.

10:33PM: Obamacare is bad, check.  Obama is divisive, check.

10:36PM: If the President will abandon his obsession with raising taxes, the Republicans promise to continue their obsession with lowering taxes.  Deal?

10:37PM: I think Rubio is also wearing the same outfit as Obama and Biden #doubleawkward

10:38PM: Republicans don't say "school vouchers" that much anymore, but that's still what they're talking about.

10:40PM: I don't know what Republicans think the President wants to do to the rights of law abiding Americans, but I guarantee that there's nothing in the Constitution about having the right to unregulated firearms.

10:41PM: Yikes.  Rubio just stopped for a drink of water.  Clearly unplanned since he had to stop and reach out of frame to grab the bottle.  That was super awkward and probably all anyone will remember from his speech.

10:43PM: I honestly haven't been listening since that weird water break.  Rubio's sound team isn't doing him any favors either.  The words weren't especially terrible, but the stagecraft was just an atrocity.

Well, there you go.

Words Don't Matter

I've only watched the Republican convention in bits and pieces.  The conventions aren't worth watching if you've been paying attention to the campaign before now.  They're just week-long infomercials for the party talking points.  What's that you say?  The Republicans think Barack Obama is a bad President?  And they think Mitt Romney would be less bad?  Stop the presses! 

I don't need to spend hours watching TV to find out that the people speaking at Mitt Romney's convention are mostly in favor of voting for Mitt Romney.  I wanted to watch Chris Christie, just to see if he was able to get through a 20 minute speech without taking a snack break, but I honestly forgot it was happening.

Having said that, the little bits of Republican convention I've seen have been really strange.  Tuesday night I watched my old buddy from the primary debates Rick Santorum run his mouth for a while.  I just couldn't resist.  My blog and I miss Rick so much.  I tuned into MSNBC literally about 4 seconds before Rick started, just in time to hear Rachel Maddow say "he's not telling the truth.  Let's listen".  Now, I'm sure Rachel was finishing a sentence that went something like "If Mr. Santorum says (insert stupid Republican talking point here) during this speech tonight, he's not telling the truth.  Let's listen", but it was still hilarious and a perfect introduction for the man who the second half of the 20th century forgot.

Anyway, Rick rambled and rambled about his god and all that.  He didn't mention Mitt Romney a whole lot, which seemed strange.  I wonder if they've told Rick that Mitt won.  Or maybe Rick won't believe it until his god tells him personally.  Then Rick said America holds out a loving hand to all of his god's children.  He forgot to add "except if you're gay, or black (or really any minority for that matter), or not super into jesus, or if you're a lady who doesn't understand that men are supposed to be in charge of your lady parts.  If you fall into one of those categories, well fuck you, but loving hands for everyone else".  They must have left that part off the teleprompter. 

Like I said before, I completely missed Chris Christie, but I'm given to believe that he didn't start a fight or eat anyone, so I guess he more or less nailed it.  I don't know why I'm so mean-spirited about Christie, well except for the fact that whenever I see him on TV he's belittling someone or yelling at a reporter.

Wednesday night was even stranger, and I honestly only watched a total of like 12 minutes.  I caught about half of John McCain's speech.  The Republcan party is supposed to be the fiscally responsible party, but Senator McCain's speech would have been shorter if he had given us a list of countries he doesn't want to invade.  Unless he thinks we're going to find buried treasure in Iran or Syria (which is funny, because that was essentially the Bush administration argument about oil in Iraq), we're going to need a way to pay for John McCain's ever-growing list of fun new wars.

Quick McCain sidenote:  Everyone on MSNBC's convention coverage panel after McCain's speech felt obligated to heap the praise on McCain for not playing ethnic politics with Barack Obama during the 2008 election.  First of all, I seem to remember some crazy lady from Alaska running around trying to paint then Senator Obama as "pallin' around with terrorists".  I'm pretty sure she was connected with the McCain campaign in some ancillary way.  More importantly, is the bar really that low now?  Is not stooping to the lowest possible level now all you have to do in politics to get praised as a great guy with tons of integrity?  Sigh.

Anyway, then I watched like three minutes of Condoleezza Rice.  First of all, with her and Herman Cain, the Republican party now has two black friends.  Two!  And I'm not even counting Michael Steele, who's more of a high school acquaintance that the Republican party is facebook friends with, but wouldn't actually go hang out with.

Secretary Rice talked about education and the importance of good schools and good teachers.  It sounded really good, but also highly suspect coming from a party that:
1) has spent the last two years busting teachers unions in every state they control.
2) has spent the last 32 years demonizing science, learning, knowledge, facts and the very idea of being educated.
3) has ruined textbooks for the whole nation by doing stupid things in Texas.
4) wants to cut the entire Department of Education.
And I realize that they think #4 will actually help, but the fact that they think parents and local school boards know more about education than, ya know, professional educators, just circles right back to #2.

I'm not really sure how Condoleezza Rice got stuck being the one who had to talk about education, but I guess when you're the Secretary of State you kind of have to know about everything. 

Then Paul Ryan started.  I thought he was supposed to be all energetic and exciting.  He looks like a muppet and I was still bored.  I spent the first three minutes thinking of new Romney/Ryan campaign slogans, like "Hey ladies, Mitt and Paul would like to have a word with you about your uterus." or "you might as well vote for us, because if you're planning to vote for the other guy, we're not even going to let you register".  Catchy, no?  Anyway, after three minutes I went back to watching Almost Famous on cinemax, and I had already missed the airplane scene.  Stupid Paul Ryan.

I'm not planning to watch Mitt Romney tonight.  It's going to be dull, and I already know what he's going to say.  Plus I hear he's going to try to tell us who Mitt Romney the person is and let us get to know him a little, and I really couldn't be less interested in that.  But mostly, I'm not watching because the words don't matter.  Conventions are about stagecraft.  It's four days (or, if you decide to have your convention in Florida during hurricane season, sometimes three days) of patriotic backdrops, silly songs, weird video packages and mindless cheering. 

I'm told the Republican party has a platform that they've agreed upon.  I'm also told Mitt Romney doesn't agree with some of it, but I'm told that doesn't really matter.  Other than the tax cuts (which I swear is the only thing Republicans really believe in) I haven't heard much about this so-called platform.  The actual Republican platform, the one about outlawing all abortion and telling poor people to go fuck themselves if they get sick and cutting taxes but never actually getting around to the whole cutting spending thing, that's sort of like Republican fight club.  They all know about it, but they're not going to talk about it.  It's like how Barack Obama is going to take away everybody's guns in his second term, but he's not saying it now, because he's all smooth and shit.

And this is why I'm not watching Mitt Romney, because the words don't matter.  It's all nonsense.  Mitt Romney isn't going to stand there tonight and tell me what he's going to do as President, I'm not sure he even knows yet.  He'll sit there and tell me about his family background or whatever, and he'll talk about all the terrible things Barack Obama has done in the alternate Republican universe, and he'll make uncomfortable jokes that uncomfortable delegates will laugh uncomfortably at, but he won't actually tell me anything.

I honestly don't know if the Democratic convention will be any more informative (I doubt it).  Sometimes I wonder why I bother paying attention.  I was watching Chris Matthews as I was finishing this up, and he played a clip of Paul Ryan from last night talking about "the strong protecting the weak" and "caring for the least among us".  Now those are some good talking points.  So what if his economic policies do the exact opposite of those things?  I mean, his mom thinks you should vote for him, and look how cute his kids are!

What Mitt Should Do

After watching Mitt Romney campaign for a few months, I'm forced to ask, is Mitt's campaign being run by a brain trust of infants and angry chimpanzees?  Honestly, with the President as vulnerable as he is, I'm baffled by the Romney campaign's inability to ever do anything right.  Campaigns for student council president in high schools have been better run.  

Now, I'm not rooting for Mitt, but there's always a part of me that roots for the trainwreckiest outcome possible, which is obviously a Romney victory.  If Mitt wins, I predict we'll lose an entire state by 2016.  We'll have no idea where it went.  Mitt might know, but he won't tell us.  I hope it's Texas.

Doesn't that sound fun?  Not even a little?  Well I think it does, so here's what I think Mitt needs to do to win.

1) Release His Tax Returns

How stupid can Mitt Romney possibly be?  He's at least smart enough to send his money on permanent tropical vacations.  It's unbelievable to me that Mitt doesn't understand how poorly he's handling this thing with the tax returns.  Here are some things everybody already knows about Mitt:

1) He's super duper rich.

2) His money lives in far away places.

3) Because he doesn't work anymore, and mostly just makes money from investments, he pays a frustratingly low tax rate.

Mitt's tax returns will tell us all of these things, not that we need them to.  Unless Mitt's tax returns will also somehow reveal a 7 figure "hooker disposal" budget, there's no way releasing his returns could possibly be more damaging than four months of stories about how he won't release them.  You know what nobody will give a shit about once Mitt releases his tax returns?  Mitt's tax returns.

Also, even though the current Republican theory of economics is demonstrably nonsense, doesn't the fact that Mitt has to hide his money off-shore sort of play right into their whole argument about how we need a Republican President to create an environment that's conducive to business and investment?  What am I missing?

2) Shut Up About Health Care

Anybody stupid enough to fall for the Republican talking points about the Affordable Care Act is already voting for Romney because they think Barack Obama is a secret muslim communist socialist. 

And it isn't just that arguing against, ya know, insuring more people, makes you looks stupid.  It also makes you looks like kind of a dick.  When Republicans say health care reform will lead to "rationing", what they're really saying is "hey look, if we let more people get insurance, then more people will be going to the doctor, and we might have to wait longer, and we'd rather just let some poor people die than figure out a better system." 

If Mitt wants to make the argument that the Affordable Care Act is just a big government give away to big insurance companies, I'm cool with that.  But if he wants to make the argument that it's a socialist government take-over of health care, than he's an idiot. 

Lost my train of thought there a little, this health care debate still makes me crazy, moving on...  

3) Pick a Normal Running Mate

Remember what John McCain did when he picked a running mate?  Mitt should do exactly not that.  McCain picked a clown to run with him and it turned his campaign into a circus.  Romney should pick Tim Pawlenty.  He's the vanilla pudding of politicians.  He'll sit quietly and not say anything stupid, which already gives him an advantage over Biden.  If you ask for anything else from a running mate, you're just setting yourself up for failure.

Also, I like Tim Pawlenty.  The fact that he got knocked out of the Republican primaries almost immediately only proves my point that he might actually not be an idiot.  And, for all the those evangelicals who are worried about how mormon-y Romney is, I hear T-Paw is super jesus-y.

4) Talk About Results

Don't let the Obama campaign dismiss the still struggling economy by blaming everything on Congress. Is it true that Barack Obama hasn't really been able to do anything about jobs because Congressional Republicans have spent the last two years "governing" like fussy six-year-olds?  Yes, but who cares?  How does that help anyone?  Do you think, if the President gets re-elected, Republicans will suddenly grow up and realize they need to work with him?  

Romney needs to make the point that he's not blaming the President for the current state of the economy, he's just saying the President isn't the guy to fix it.  It may not be fair, but it's probably true.

(sidenote: there's zero evidence Romney is the guy to fix it, and a decent amount of evidence that the policies Mitt wants to implement are what broke the economy in the first place, but voters really aren't that bright.  You have to have like three consecutive intelligent thoughts to get to where I just went, most swing voters can barely string together three polysyllabic words).  

Barack Obama's only defense against the unemployment rate is that it's not his fault.  If Mitt makes the point that it doesn't matter whose fault it is, the Obama campaign will be mostly defenseless on the economy, which is the only thing anybody really cares about right now.

5) Lower Expectations

Barack Obama is going to murder Mitt Romney in three debates.  It isn't really Mitt's fault.  How is he supposed to compete with an actual smart person after a year of debating mouth-breathers like Santorum and Gingrich.  The only intelligent counter points Mitt ever heard during the primaries came from Ron Paul, and he never had to respond to those because the crowd was always booing Ron ("Boooooooooo! what you said is logical and I hate it! Boooooooo!")

Do you remember the Palin/Biden debates from four years ago?  Everything we knew about Palin suggested she wouldn't be able to get through the debate without setting her podium on fire.  So, when she managed to make it to the stage without getting lost, half of the media immediately declared her the winner.  Sure, her points were mostly incoherent nonsense, but she smiled a lot and seemed to have a decent grasp of the English language, and that was really more than we were expecting.

Mitt needs to pull the same trick.  By the time we get to the debates, people should be saying that Mitt wins as long as his battery doesn't run out on national TV.  I think he's well on his way.

6) Pretend He's Never Met Congress

Mitt should run as far away from Congressional Republicans as possible.  Obama should do the same thing with Congressional Democrats, but this isn't about the President right now.  You know who people hate?  Congress.  You know how Mitt could lock up about a million swing votes in about 10 seconds?  Walk up to a microphone somewhere and say "you know, I'm a Republican and all, but Michele Bachmann really is a fucking idiot.  I just felt like I needed to share."  Wait, are mormons allowed to say that word?  He may have to re-write it a little.  Can he say gosh darn?

And that's pretty much it.  You have a sitting President with a somewhat disappointed base and an unemployment rate over 8%.  If Mitt Romney can spend the next four months not being a moron and staying out of his own way, I give him about a 75% chance of winning.  Terrifying?  Yes.  But also true.  Luckily for everyone, the chances of him spending four months not being a moron are not quite so high, so there's still hope.  

Six Angry Men (And One Crazy Lady)

In the last three weeks, I've had two separate dreams about the sun being destroyed.  Once by terrorists during a war, and the other time I woke up before we found out exactly what happened.  First of all, I appreciate my brain trying to generate sci-fi movie ideas, but I'll be needing more plausible scenarios if we're going to move forward.  More importantly, it seems like the possibility of one of these Republicans occupying the White House is making my subconscious more than a little nervous. 

I think it's important, if you're watching these debates and realizing how insanely entertaining four years of any of these people might be (not including Mitt Romney, whose whole existence is the antithesis of entertaining), to also realize that the President sometimes actually has to do things and know stuff.  I'm not saying a Herman Cain Presidency would inevitably end in the destruction of the sun, I'm just saying you couldn't rule it out. 

Anyway, live from the fourth circle of hell, it's the 112th Republican debate!

8:04PM: 2011 Newt Gingrich looks like he ate 1994 Newt Gingrich.

8:05PM: After noticing he was absent from the introductions, I used the internets to find out that Jon Huntsman is boycotting tonight's debate to suck up to New Hampshire voters.  Ya know, every time I think one of these people might not be a moron, something like this happens.

8:07PM: Anderson Cooper is tonight's moderator.  We'll have to try not to get too distracted by his handsomeness.  Anderson says he's hoping everyone will leave tonight's debate knowing more about the candidates.  Good luck with that Coop.

8:09PM: Herman Cain says he "solves problems for a living".  If elected, he'll know exactly what to do if the country runs out of pepperoni.

8:10PM: Newt Gingrich says when he's elected he'll "replace class warfare with cooperation".  That's right! Rich people are gonna keep all the money, and the rest of you motherfuckers better cooperate!

8:13PM: Herman Cain repeatedly says, if you just accept his analysis of his 999 plan, instead of, ya know, thinking and stuff, you'll see it's a great plan.  Seriously Herman, even Rick Santorum knows your plan is stupid.  Even Michele Bachmann is smarter than Herman Cain.  Michele Bachmann!

8:16PM: Rick Perry is laying out his own plan "at the end of the week."  Ohhh!  I can't wait to camp out in front of the tax plan store all night on Thursday waiting for Rick's plan to come out.

8:17PM: Cain - "a loaf of bread has five taxes in it right now".  That's a Herman Cain metaphor, I like to call them Cainaphors.

8:19PM: Cain invites families to do their own math on his 999 plan.  Quick note for Herman...Americans do not like math.

8:21PM: Going on roughly 15 minutes of everyone hammering Herman's plan.  The referee needs to step in and stop this fight.

8:22PM: Newt says the 999 plan is more complex than Cain lets on.  I can't tell if he meant that as a compliment or an insult.

8:23PM: Cooper just got Bachmann to admit she's in favor of raising taxes on the 47% of people who pay no federal income tax.  I could have sworn Republicans were against raising taxes.  I'm so confused.

8:24PM: Finally moving on to Romney's plan.  Someone get Herman Cain an ice pack and a drink.

8:26PM: Rick Perry has a tendency to start sentences without knowing where they're going to end.

8:29PM: Santorum and Romney are just yelling at each other now.  Well, Rick's yelling.  The Mittron 3000 is smirking and calmly responding.

8:34PM: Bachmann ends the debate on health care by shouting about repealing "Obamacare".  If anything sums up the Republican view of health care better than a poorly informed person shouting nonsense, I haven't seen it.

8:39PM: I may have been hallucinating, but I think Ron Paul just said we have "too much health care" in this country.  You have to pay attention when Ron's talking, because he'll slip stuff like that in there when you're not listening.

8:41PM: Perry says Texas has one of the finest health care systems in the world.  For the last time, executing everyone who catches a cold is not "health care".

8:41PM: Perry just accused Romney of hiring illegal immigrants to work in his house.  As Romney tried to respond, Perry pulls the same trick Santorum pulled by interrupting him before he could finish.  Romney eventually got so mad he almost short-circuited. 

8:45PM: Finally, Mitt defended himself by saying that if you hire contractors to work at your home, it's hard to know who those contractors are employing.  So true, and such a common problem.  Most Americans have no idea what the company they hired to mow their lawn is doing.

8:47PM: Perry wants to use predator drones to secure the Mexican border.  I may be underestimating the entertainment value of a Perry Presidency.

8:48PM: Bachmann (who appears to be dressed like a Navy Admiral) attacks President Obama for having illegal immigrant family members (kind of disgusting, even for her).  Then she proposes building a double fence.  Oh! Double fence!  That's twice as much fence!

8:51PM: Romney says everyone on the stage "loves legal immigration".  Santorum doesn't look so sure.

8:52PM: Pretty pro-Mitt crowd tonight.  There are more mormons in Las Vegas than you think.

8:54PM: Ron Paul is being extra nice tonight, so allow me to translate what he just said about the idea of a border fence.  Ron can understand why stupid people would be pacified by building a fence, but it wouldn't work and the rest of these people are morons for supporting it.

8:56PM: Cain refuses to answer Cooper's question about repealing or changing the 14th amendment, so Anderson moves on to Rick Perry, who also refuses to answer the question until slipping in a quiet "no" at the end.

8:58PM: We were talking about Latinos, and somehow Santorum jumped into faith and family and found his way to suggesting that same sex marriage is destroying families (ya know, somehow).  Rick Santorum is destroying my sanity.

9:02PM: They're talking about Yucca Mountain now.  Welcome to primary politics.  Mitt Romney has always been against burying nuclear waste in Nevada, ever since three hours ago when he got to Nevada.  And he'll always be against it, for as long as he's in Nevada.

9:06PM: Mitt Romney believes in free markets.  They've certainly worked for Mitt.  Free markets are a lot like casinos, in that, if you go in with billions of dollars, you'll probably leave with billions of dollars, but if you go in poor, you'll probably leave poor.

9:08PM: Michele Bachmann is against women losing their homes.  No mention of men, but she's strongly against women losing their homes.  That was kind of weird.

9:09PM: Coop is asking them about Occupy Wall Street.  This should be good.

9:09PM: Cain defends his idea that, if you aren't rich, it's your own damn fault.  The crowd eats it up.  Welcome to the Republican party.

9:11PM: Ron Paul lays out as good an explanation of why people are angry at Wall Street as you'll hear from anyone.  I mean, he just nailed it.  It really is too bad he's so crazy sometimes.

9:12PM: Herman Cain says he doesn't understand what these people on Wall Street want.  I think that pretty much sums it up.

9:13PM: These guys literally can't bring themselves to say banks did anything wrong.  Romney honestly looked like he was trying to say it and the words just wouldn't come out.

9:19PM: Uh oh, Cooper just specifically asked Santorum about faith.  I thought I was going to need a new TV, but Rick actually reigned it in a bit.  He almost sounded reasonable.  He didn't even call mormonism a cult (good call there if he wants to get out of Nevada alive).

9:22PM: Gingrich - "how can you have judgment if you have no faith?"  Yes Newt, blind belief in your invisible friend is the height of good judgment.

9:23PM: In the discussion of faith, Perry just said the American people have lost faith in the resident of the White House.  Zing!  Rick likes to have fun with words.

9:27PM: Bachmann says cutting defense spending is on the table, as long as we're not talking about actual dollar amounts.

9:28PM: Gingrich - "I'm a hawk, but I'm a cheap hawk".  In related news, Newt's a whore, but he's an expensive whore.

9:29PM: There goes crazy Ron Paul again, talking about how our empire is costing too much money and how that's what killed every empire in history and how maybe we don't need troops in Germany anymore.  Ol' crazy Ron.

9:32PM: Santorum would "absolutely not cut one penny" of defense spending.  I could construct a clever joke here, but it's easier to just say Rick Santorum is an idiot.

9:34PM: Some dope in the audience just asked about the foreign aid budget.  I wonder if any of these people will tell her how insignificant it is.  I'm gonna guess no (I was right).

9:35PM: I should be more surprised to hear that none of these alleged christians will defend humanitarian aid to other countries, but I'm not.

9:37PM: Bachmann, of course, wouldn't cut foreign aid to Israel, because Israel is special.  Not because she actually cares about Israelis, but because "you know who" can't come back unless Israel is all squared away.

9:44PM: On the question of electability, Santorum points out that he won Pennsylvania twice.  Yeah, but then he lost it that one time and pretty much went down in flames.  I wonder if he remembers that.

9:47PM: Not surprisingly, the discussion of electability has devolved into attack Mitt Romney time.  I think we can all agree that none of these people are electable.

9:48PM: Romney keeps picking fights with Perry.  Careful Mitt, Rick is pretty unstable and may be armed.  Also, Nevada loves them some Romney.  It's crazy.

9:50PM: Cain says he'll be "the problem solver who fixes stuff".  Oh! I want him! The guy who will "fix stuff"!  My biggest concern about Herman Cain is that we might actually be stupid enough to vote for him.

9:51PM: Gingrich, for about the 5th time in these debates, admonishes the moderator for, ya know, asking tough questions and making the candidates defend things they've previously said.  So unfair.

I guess that's it.  No closing statements.  CNN really knows how to put on a crappy debate.  Cooper had no control all night and then it just kind of ended suddenly. 

There are way too many debates for any one debate to really matter, but I think Herman Cain got roughed up pretty good tonight, probably the beginning of the end for him.  I'll miss the Pizza Man.  On the other hand, Mitt Romney appeared to almost have an emotion at one point in tonight's debate, so that's something.  Only 50 debates to go.

The Invisible Debate

Much has changed since we last saw the Republican candidates.  Rick Perry's campaign seems to have completely fallen apart.  Media people will have you believe Perry is losing ground because he looked kinda silly toward the end of the last couple of debates, but it's actually because the tea people found out that, as Governor, he sometimes had to do things that made sense.  That's just not how the tea people roll. 

Replacing Rick as this week's flavor of the week is The Pizza Man himself, Herman Cain.  I hope he enjoys his brief time at the top, before Republicans decide he's a little too..um.."urban" to be President. 

Tonight's debate is only being televised on Bloomberg TV, which means I'm the only one watching.  I expect to be pandered to pretty heavily.  The Bloomberg people start by telling me that tonight's debate will be different and special, and boy were they right.  The candidates are sitting down.  Consider my mind blown.

8:03PM: Herman Cain jumps right in by mentioning his awesome 999 plan.  That's three 9-inch personal pan pizzas for just nine dollars each, all day on the 9th day of every month.

8:05PM: Perry already looks like he's getting sleepy.  Not a good sign.

8:06PM: Romney - "you have to stand by your principles".  Excuse me?  Mitt Romney wouldn't know principles if you wrote them in permanent marker on his face.

8:10PM: Bachmann blames the financial meltdown entirely on the Federal government...Gingrich doubles down by suggesting Barney Frank and Chris Dodd should go to jail.  Newt's one of those people who I'd be willing to pay to shut up.

8:13PM: It's funny to watch the other candidates' eyes glaze over whenever Ron Paul starts using big words.  Ron correctly points to the bubble and burst economic cycle as a huge part of the problem.  Of course, he fails to point out that FDR was able to moderate the boom and bust cycle that had plagued the country before his Presidency, and things were pretty good for about 50 years until Ronald Reagan came along and ruined everything.

8:16PM: Huntsman - "Washington DC is the gas capital of the country".  Zing!

8:18PM: Newt Gingrich is very anti prostate cancer.  Still pro cervical cancer though, as far as I know.  He's a puzzle.

8:23PM: Huntsman stole my joke about Cain's 999 plan being related to pizza prices.  Then he proposed what is, at this table, a modest 10% corporate tax cut.  That basically makes him the socialist of this crowd.

8:25PM: Cain claims to have a number of economists who have worked with him on his 999 plan.  When pressed, he names one...Rich Lowry out of Cleveland, TX or Cleveland, OH.  OK then.

8:27PM: Romney objects to being asked a hypothetical question.  Isn't the whole Presidential campaign about what these people would hypothetically do as President?  Then Romney defends the 2008 Wall Street bailout and ducks.

8:29PM:  Two minutes later, Romney says "you don't wanna bail out anybody...that's a terrible idea".  Mitt appears to have a new strategy.  Instead of saying something now and flip-flopping later, he's just going to say both things at the same time from now on. 

8:31PM:  The moderator just asked Ron Paul if he would get the federal government out of housing.  Has he ever met or heard of Ron Paul?  Is there anything Ron wouldn't get the federal government out of?  That's like asking Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry if they think Jesus is swell.

8:37PM: There's a picture of Teddy Roosevelt on the wall of the debate arena.  Some of the candidates were actively booing at it during the commercial break (that may have only happened in my head). 

8:38PM: Video clip of Saint Reagan making the exact same "fair share" argument that the President's been making for two months.  They threw the question at Perry and he parlayed it into a talking point about a balanced budget amendment. 

8:40PM: Romney - "get Americans back to work so they can pay taxes."  So, just to be clear, Republicans want to stop making corporations pay taxes so the American people can get back to work and start paying taxes again. 

8:41PM: These candidates are climbing all over each other to jump in and say they'll never ever ever agree to any tax increase ever.  Still no comment from anyone on the Reagan clip.

8:44PM: Can we just get a show of hands from anyone who thinks we need to cut spending and move on? 

8:45PM: Cain says Bloomberg's analysis of his 999 plan is incorrect because it assumes that the plan would happen in reality.  If they would just look at his plan in Herman Cain's imagination, they'd see that it's an awesome idea.

8:48PM: Bachmann points out that 999 upside-down is 666.  She's not saying Herman Cain is the anti-christ, she's just saying...ya know...666.

8:49PM: Huntsman, the former ambassador to China, is talking about how we have to find a way to work with China.  Romney, who may or may not be able to find China on a map, makes faces at him.  Romney promises to pick a fight with China over currency on day one. 

8:52PM: Perry - "we don't need any plan."  You might think I'm unfairly quoting him out of context, but not really.  He was basically saying that we don't need plans and policies, just leadership and talking points. 

8:54PM: Santorum doubles down on Mitt's plan.  He doesn't want to have a trade war with China, he wants to win a trade war with China. 

8:57PM: We're having a hard time agreeing on what kind of war we want to have with China, but we can all agree that Obamacare (passed in 2010) is what killed the economy (which happened in 2008).

9:06PM:  This should be fun, the candidates get to question each other.  First up, Bachmann slams Perry for supporting Al Gore in 1988, overspending as a Governor and running up debt in Texas.  Perry responds by saying that Texas has the 2nd lowest debt per capita in the U.S.  He failed to mention that, since nobody in Texas knows how to count, we really don't know if that's true.

9:08PM: Cain asks Romney if he can name all 59 points in his economic plan.  Cain's basic point is that Romney's plan isn't simple enough.  Romney points out that simple answers aren't always good ones.  Good for him.  That's really the problem with the whole Cain campaign, if you can't fit it on a t-shirt, Cain doesn't want to know about it.

9:10PM: Romney - "I'm not worried about rich people, they're doing just fine".  Who is this guy and what has he done with Mitt Romney?

9:11PM: Good joke from Hunstman, promising Romney his question "won't be about religion".  Clever. Obviously, it flew over the other candidates' heads, and most of the audience too.  Huntsman is like 10 IQ points too smart for the current Republican party.

9:14PM: Ron Paul asked Herman Cain if he supports auditing the Fed.  Cain says if someone wants to do that, they can go ahead, it doesn't bother him.  There you go..."Cain 2012 - Do Whatever The Fuck You Want!"

9:17PM: Romney says the problem with Obamacare is that it raises taxes.  He really emphasized that.  He's right.  What kind of monster would propose a modest tax increase just to get health care to millions of people?

9:18PM:  Santorum knows that R comes before S in the alphabet.  Frankly, that's more than I thought he knew.

9:19PM: Romney asks Bachmann how she'd get people back to work.  Doesn't he know no one cares what she thinks anymore?  Michele Bachmann is sooo two months ago.  Anyway, Bachmann took it as an opportunity to plug her website...twice.

9:22PM: Santorum attacks four of his opponents for supporting TARP in 2008.  Santorum, of course, was off googling his name somewhere in 2008 because he was unemployed at the time.  Weren't we all happier with Rick Santorum just being gone?  Why is he back?  Have we done something wrong?

9:27PM: Perry just tried and failed to pronounce the names of a few different people, including fellow Republican Governor Bobby Jindal.  He definitely reminds me of someone.  Perry keeps ending his statements by hitting applause lines and then waiting for the applause that never come as it slowly dawns on him that his campaign is about 99% over.

9:31PM: Herman Cain apparently has two candidates already picked as Fed chairman.  Since there's no chance he wins, and since he's refusing to name them, I'm going to assume they're fictional characters.  Batman would make a good Fed chair, I think.

9:32PM: Ron Paul (after Herman Cain praised Alan Greenspan as the best Fed chairman in the last 40 years) - "Alan Greenspan was a disaster!"  Ron's the best.  He went on to hammer away at Greenspan for about 90 seconds.  I think, when this campaign is over and Ron finishes 5th, someone needs to give him his own TV show.

9:37PM: Ron Paul points out how it's so misleading to suggest that all these problems have happened in the last two years.  I think I heard a collective "shhhhhh" from the rest of the candidates.

9:39PM: Bloomberg shows the Republican candidates a clip of George W. Bush.  That's a low blow.  These people have all agreed to pretend they've never met George W. Bush, OK?  Just leave it alone.  It never happened.  There was Clinton, and then we all passed out, and when we woke up, Obama was getting socialism all over everything and ruining the country. 

9:44PM: Perry is asked about the income gap that's been widening in America for the last 30 years.  His answer, it's Obama's fault. 

9:45PM: Santorum takes the discussion of poverty as an opportunity to suggest women should just cook and raise the kids and let the men work.  You can always count on Rick to say the stupidest thing of the night, and that's really saying something.

Closing Statements (on how they can connect with people's pain right now)
Bachmann: "I used to be poor"
Cain: "Me too!"
Newtster: "I'm related to some poor people"
Ron Paul: "Liberty will fix poverty"
Santorum: Rick theorizes that our economic struggles might have something to do with all the manufacturing jobs we've lost.  Wow...what a theory!  Someone should really look into that.
Huntsman: "Life is sad"...and something about the dignity of a job.
Perry: "make America America again"
Mittster: Give Mitt some credit, he didn't even try to pretend he understands what it's like to be poor.

The Wrong Argument

I don't know if I can do this.  Since I found out Governor Fatpants from New Jersey isn't running for President, I can barely muster the will to get out of bed in the morning, let alone write anything.  Now who will save us from the scourge of socialism and health care?  Did the Republican party really try hard enough to get him to run?  I hope they at least offered him a lifetime supply of pudding.  But, alas, I push on, with hope that this futile exercise in creative writing will somehow heal my wounded heart.

Speaking of socialism, the President is smack in the middle of his nationwide "Pass this Jobs Bill" tour.  It's like he's a kindergarten teacher..."See these unemployed people right here in front of me?  They can have jobs working on this crappy bridge right there behind me.  Does everyone understand, children?  People (points to people) can have jobs fixing bridges (points to the bridge), and then we get better bridges and more jobs.  See?  It's like if you were sitting there with nothing to do, and there was a pile of Lincoln Logs next to you.  If you started building something with the Lincoln Logs, then you'd have something to do AND you'd get a Lincoln Log cabin.  Does that make sense?" 

But there's a problem (spoiler alert!)...Republicans don't want to do the jobs bill thing.  I'm tired of being mean to Republicans.  They're jerks and most of them don't appear to have working brains, but there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about that.  On the other hand, I think the President could be better at this because I think he's making the wrong argument. 

I felt the same way about health care.  Liberals kept arguing that health care is some kind of inalienable human right.  I'm not sure I even believe in inalienable rights.  We get the rights we earn, there's no space god up there handing out inalienable rights like Halloween candy.  We need universal health care because it's an embarrassment for the wealthiest nation in the world to have millions of citizens who can't afford basic health coverage.  We should be ashamed of ourselves, but our leaders don't really feel shame.

I feel the same way about energy.  Energy innovation isn't about growing a green economy and creating jobs.  Where did we get the idea that everything has to be profitable all the time? It's about being a world leader in figuring out what we're supposed to do when we run out of oil.  Ideally, before we actually run out of oil. 

Just like health care and energy, infrastructure spending is about doing the things we should be doing if we fancy ourselves the greatest, most awesomest, most amazingest nation in the history of the Universe.  But then there's the question of how we pay for it all.

A corollary to this jobs bill debate is the debate about raising taxes on the rich, and again I think I'm hearing the wrong argument.  The President and liberals keep saying the rich and corporations need to pay their fair share.  That's nonsense.  I don't know what a "fair" tax rate is for a millionaire, and neither does anyone else.  Life's not fair, and even if it was, taxes aren't about fairness.  Taxes are about paying for the society we want, which we currently don't have enough money to support.

Republicans and the tea people say we just need to cut spending to balance the budget, but that's nonsense too.  No serious person has a real proposal to balance the federal budget, and even if we did get a balanced budget for a year or two, it wouldn't last.  We'd have some new big disaster, or start another war (what are you looking at, Iran? You got a problem!?!) and then we'd be right back to deficit spending. 

We need more money.  The truth is, we may all eventually have to pay higher taxes, but the wealthy have to go first, because they have all the money and contrary to what stupid people think, you can't grow the economy by robbing from the poor to give to the rich. 

That's my argument to the tea people, Republicans, the wealthy and anyone else who responds to everything by telling me they "believe in lower taxes" (as if lower taxes are something you believe in like a fucking Nostradamus prophecy).  You can live in a garbage dump and pay no taxes, or you can live in America.  But if you want to live in America, you have to pay the toll and stop bitching about it.

Tea Party Conversations: Life

Generic Republican: We're pro-life, join us in working to protect life in America!
Prospective Tea Person: I'm pro-life!  Are other people anti-life?
Generic Republican: Well, maybe not anti-life, but they won't fight to protect it.
Prospective Tea Person: What do you mean?
Generic Republican: Liberals and democrats are pro-abortion.
Prospective Tea Person: I thought they were just pro-choice. 
Generic Republican: That's what I said.
Prospective Tea Person: Is being in favor of a woman's freedom to choose the same as being pro-abortion?
Generic Republican: Yes, yes it is.
Prospective Tea Person: OK, well I'm with you there, I don't like abortion.
Prospective Tea Person: But if you're pro-life, why are you against environmental regulations?
Generic Republican: Environmental regulations kill jobs.  The President and the EPA are destroying the economy just to save some birds and fish that nobody's ever even heard of.
Prospective Tea Person: Oh, so it's like you're protecting the lives of the jobs?
Generic Republican: Yes, exactly!  I should write that down.
Prospective Tea Person: So when you say you're pro-life, you're really talking about human life.
Generic Republican: Exactly.
Prospective Tea Person: OK, I can get on board with that.  Birds are stupid.
Prospective Tea Person: So, you're against the death penalty, right?
Generic Republican: Well no, we're definitely for the death penalty.
Prospective Tea Person: How is that pro-life?
Generic Republican: The death penalty only kills people who already killed someone else.  The bible says an eye for an eye.
Prospective Tea Person: Doesn't the bible also say only god gets to kill people, and something about turning the other cheek?
Generic Republican: I...umm...I don't remember those parts.  Listen, the death penalty is about justice.  You're for justice, aren't you?
Prospective Tea Person: Of course I am, I love justice!
Generic Republican: Do you want murderers to go unpunished?
Prospective Tea Person: Well no, but...
Generic Republican: OK then, I'm glad we settled that.
Prospective Tea Person: But what about health care?
Generic Republican: What do you mean?
Prospective Tea Person: You're against health care, but doesn't health care protect life?
Generic Republican: I'm still not following you.
Prospective Tea Person: Well, I mean, if you're pro-life, wouldn't you be in favor of people having health insurance so they can stay alive longer?
Generic Republican: The liberal media has you all confused. Health care isn't about people staying alive, it's about freedom.
Prospective Tea Person: Freedom?
Generic Republican: Yeah, freedom.  The freedom to choose whether or not you want health insurance, and where you want to get it from.
Prospective Tea Person: I heard most uninsured people don't have insurance because they can't afford it because they're poor.
Generic Republican: No, that's a lie too. Poor people are a liberal myth, Rick Santorum ended poverty like 10 years ago.
Prospective Tea Person: I'm glad to hear that.
Prospective Tea Person: So health care has nothing to do with life?
Generic Republican: That's right, it's all about freedom. You like freedom, right?
Prospective Tea Person: Hell yeah!
Prospective Tea Person: But wait, when we were talking about abortion, I was asking about freedom of choice and you were saying that was a bad thing.
Generic Republican: No, that's different.  Abortion isn't about freedom, it's about life.
Prospective Tea Person: Everything is about something different, I'm so confused.
Generic Republican: I know, it's OK, it's a little confusing at first.  All you need to know for now is we're the tea party, we're pro-life, and now we're going to go protest against health care.  Trust me, it makes perfect sense.
Prospective Tea Person: OK
Generic Republican: Great! Welcome to the tea party.  Here's your misspelled sign!
Tea Person: Yeah!

Tea Party Conversations: Health Care

Generic Republican: The government wants to give you health care.
Prospective Tea Person: That's awesome, I need some health care. Thanks for the good news, mysterious stranger.
Generic Republican: No, this is a bad thing, you should be angry about this.
Prospective Tea Person: What? Why?
Generic Republican: The government wants to give you health care.
Prospective Tea Person: Ohhhhhh...wait, I'm still not following you.
Generic Republican: The government wants to force you to buy health insurance.
Prospective Tea Person: But they don't have to force me, I want health insurance.
Generic Republican: But what if you didn't.
Prospective Tea Person: But I do.
Generic Republican: Yeah, but what if you didn't.
Prospective Tea Person: I'm still not following you.
Generic Republican: Right now, you have the freedom to choose health insurance coverage...
Prospective Tea Person: Right...
Generic Republican: ...but the government is going to start providing health insurance to people, and then private providers won't be able to compete with the government's low premiums, so they'll go out of business, and then you won't have a choice.
Prospective Tea Person: ...Oh...
Generic Republican: They're taking away your freedom to choose.
Prospective Tea Person: ...but I like freedom.
Generic Republican: Of course you do.
Prospective Tea Person: But it still sounds like I'll end up with health insurance that's cheaper than what I have now.
Generic Republican: No, what you'll end up with is socialized medicine.
Prospective Tea Person: What does that mean?
Generic Republican: It means the government will come between you and your doctor, ration care and decide who gets life saving procedures and who doesn't.
Prospective Tea Person: Don't insurance companies do that now anyway?
Generic Republican: What you're talking about is just the free market at work, I'm talking about socialism.
Generic Republican: I'm also talking about government funded abortions.
Prospective Tea Person: Wait..what? 
Generic Republican: When the government takes over health care, they'll use your tax dollars to fund abortions.
Prospective Tea Person: But I'm against abortion.
Generic Republican: Sure you are, all good Americans are.
Prospective Tea Person: It's not OK to use my tax dollars for something I don't like, that makes me angry.
Generic Republican: And you know what else? Socialized medicine will make us just like Europe and Canada.
Prospective Tea Person: Well I don't like Europe, but my friends from Canada say they get great health care.
Generic Republican: No, that's just a liberal myth.  Canadians have to wait months to see doctors, and their doctors aren't as good as ours. 
Prospective Tea Person: But what if I'm sick right now?  I can't wait months to see a doctor.
Generic Republican: No you can't. 
Prospective Tea Person: But what about the tens of millions of people in America that don't have health insurance?  Won't the government's plan get them covered?
Generic Republican: First of all, liberals have been exaggerating the number of people without health coverage for years so they can build support for their government take over...
Prospective Tea Person: Oh...
Generic Republican: ...and besides that, people in America aren't really going without health care.  Anyone can just walk into an emergency room right now and get treatment when they need it.
Prospective Tea Person: But isn't health care expensive?  Isn't that why we need insurance in the first place?  How do people pay for their emergency room visits without insurance?
Generic Republican: Well, if the government would just get out of the way and let the free market work, the cost of health care would go down and then people could afford it.
Prospective Tea Person: But before you said the free market is already at work.
Generic Republican: But it could be more at work.  We need lower taxes, less bureaucracy and less regulation so we can grow the economy for people while simultaneously allowing insurance companies to lower prices.
Prospective Tea Person: What do lower taxes have to do with anything?
Generic Republican: Well, a government take over of health care would eventually result in a big tax hike to pay for it.
Prospective Tea Person: But I already pay so much in taxes.
Generic Republican: I know, and the government wants to make you pay even more for their unconstitutional take over of health care.
Prospective Tea Person: Unconstitutional?
Generic Republican: Yup, the government can't make you buy things.
Prospective Tea Person: They make me buy car insurance.
Generic Republican: That's different, you choose to have a car.
Prospective Tea Person: But they're still making me buy something.
Generic Republican: Trust me, it's very different.
Prospective Tea Person: I'm angry and confused.
Generic Republican: Welcome to the tea party, let's get you a George Washington wig!
Tea Person: Yeah!

Right

I've been quiet for a few weeks. Sometimes it takes me a while to get a thought all the way together, or at least together enough to write something. The recent talk about civility in politics finally pulled together a thought I've had pieces of for a while now. It starts and ends with Congressman Steve Cohen.

In case you missed it, Congressman Cohen compared the tactics of the Republican party with regard to the health care debate to the tactics of nazi propaganda ace Joseph Goebbels (apparently pronounced Gerbels, because the nazis also hated spelling, and R's I guess). Lovely work by the Congressman, way to be a grown up. We'll get back to him later.

While listening to the post-Tuscon shooting media bonanza,(liberals blaming conservatives, conservatives scrambling to defend themselves, everyone talking about being nicer to each other) I was reminded of something that's been concerning me for a while now. At this point in history, the Republican party, and really, most of the conservative side of our political debate, is intellectually bankrupt.

In the wake of the recent shooting, I heard no less than three conservatives on Fox tell me "guns don't kill people, people kill people". OK, but can we at least agree that people with guns are better at it? It's unbelievable to me that one of our political parties is still arguing against gun control. Guns have become a religion on the political right in this country. No compromise, no common sense, no rationality.

Where are the conservative solutions to gun violence? Thousands of people are killed by firearms every year in this country, you can't just point to the Constitution and say "it won't let us do anything, sorry". How about a 28th amendment repealing the 2nd amendment? Nice and constitutional. Or, how about we just stop ignoring the first part of the 2nd amendment? Or, how about a tax cut for not owning a gun? Republicans love tax cuts (I was joking about that when I wrote it, but then I thought about it for a few minutes and it might be our best shot).

I'm not saying just take everyone's guns away right now and that's the answer. I don't know what the long term answer is. I'm saying, if you're not a cop, you don't need a gun, but we've got two political parties, and the one on the right basically thinks gun ownership is an American birthright. That's my point. But hey, maybe if you just keep talking about the second amendment, people will just stop getting shot one day.

(Sidenote: Don't get me started on needing guns for hunting. Tricking a wild animal out into the open so you can shoot it in the face for shits and giggles isn't any less barbaric just because it's a family tradition and your great-grandpappy used to do it.)

A few years ago now, I watched one of the earliest debates for the Republican nomination in 2008, back when there were something like 39 people still in the race. The moderator asked them who believed in evolution. I think three of them raised their hands. People on the right do the same thing with climate change science, responding to facts and verifiable data by simply claiming not to believe in it. Science isn't Tinkerbell, we don't all have to clap to make it real. Reality doesn't require you to believe in it, it's just there.

I'd like to have two parties working together to see if they can come up with smart solutions on energy and climate change. Instead, we've got one party coming up with stupid ideas like cap and trade and the other party pretending the problems aren't real. I'm not sure that's going to get us anywhere, but if you just keep saying it's not real, maybe it'll go away.

The story on economics is similar. Every time we start arguing about the economy, Democrats start quoting economists while Republicans go back to Reagan's made-up bullshit economic theory, which has somehow become the economic theory of the entire party. Reaganomics only works to destroy the middle class, and Reagan already took care of that, so it's pretty much useless now. We keep cutting taxes, the economy keeps getting crappier, but maybe if you just keep saying tax cuts create jobs it'll start to happen.

Then there's health care, and we start circling back to Congressman Cohen and the nexus of right-wing stupidity and political civility. I think we all agree that nobody is Hitler except Hitler, and nobody is a nazi except nazis. The media got so worked up about how mean Steve Cohen was being that they mostly forgot to point out that, nazi references aside, the Congressman's point was 100% valid.

The whole Republican strategy on health care has been to come up with lies and keep saying them on TV until they become true. "Death panels", the "government take over of health care", the whole thing about how people in Canada can't ever see a doctor (which is double ridiculous because even if it were true, the bill the Democrats passed doesn't resemble the Canadian health care system at all). Does any of this unbelievable bullshit sound familiar? Has the Republican party even floated a credible counter-proposal? You want a free market solution to health care? So do I. You got one? Me neither.

Why does this bother me so much? Why I am so tough on Republicans? It bothers so much because the two party system only works if both parties are making good faith efforts to do what's best for the country. Right now, I don't know if either party is. For every Republican who's basically just a lackey for an oil company or a bank, there's a Democrat who just does the bidding of a union (or an oil company, or a bank. Seriously, the two parties are barely bought and paid for by different interests at this point).

So, why so tough on Republicans? Because I think they can be better. I think I'd vote for the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt if it was still the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. I want to vote for candidates who believe in limited government, but who also know that government has a role beyond blowing stuff up in other countries. I want to vote for candidates who believe in personal liberty and responsibility, but who also understand that personal liberty isn't absolute when 300 million people are all trying to have a society (Sidenote number 2: I'd also like to vote for an atheist for President, but I doubt I'll live that long). I'm tough on Republicans because I want to be a Republican, but I can't, because Republican leaders are morons who spend their days trying to come up with the best right-wing sound bite.

Why am I so frustrated? I'm frustrated because factual accuracy has become optional in political arguments. I'm frustrated because politicians are worrying about civility, and that's fine, but nobody cares who's correct. I want a government in which being correct wins you the argument, and I want a Republican party in which being correct is more important than being right.

50,000 Airplanes

I couldn't be less impressed with the Presidential address I watched last night. It was a very informative speech if you happen to have just come out of a 57 day coma. Otherwise, it was ten minutes of whining about whose fault the BP oil spill is followed by a brief discussion of the road forward, which basically amounted to "we're going to be energy independent one day, although I have no earthly idea how".

I'm a fan of the President, I think I've been pretty clear about that. And, to be fair, maybe the President is, once again, being the grown-up in the room. Everyone wants him to do something, everyone wants some knee-jerk reaction. Maybe the subtext last night was something like "we can start arguing about the future of energy again once we get the damn leak stopped". If so, that's a fair point and maybe he's right.

Still, this felt like one of those leadership moments. A time when the President got a good pitch to hit and needed to knock it out of the park. Instead, he let it sail right on by. In his own address last night, the President referenced FDR's address to Congress on May 16, 1940. In the spring of 1940 the Nazis were just steamrolling Europe. Roosevelt knew we needed to get ready for war and set a goal for the production of 50,000 combat planes for the air force in the next year. In the same address, he referenced the current production capacity at the time, about 12,000. As the story goes, we didn't produce 50,000 airplanes, we produced 100,000 airplanes.

I'm the first one to say the President can't really do a whole lot about an oil spill. He's not Aquaman. But leadership on the path forward sort of falls under his job description, especially if he wants to be remembered as a great President, as all Presidents do. No leadership here though. The bold rhetoric of the Obama campaign has given way to timidly measured incrementalism. A logical, but often maddening pragmatism aimed at doing what is possible without alienating anyone. We accept that from a lot of politicians, but this President can do better.

Where's our bold energy goal for the next decade? 1 million solar collectors in the deserts of the southwest by 2020. Is that possible? I have no idea. Do you think FDR knew if 50,000 airplanes was really possible? Do you think Kennedy was sure we could really get to the moon? I think some people still believed the moon was made of cheese in 1960.

Don't like solar power? What about nuclear power? Safe, clean nuclear power would be a nice goal. Don't think nuclear power can ever really be totally safe and totally clean? OK, promise me a Dyson sphere by 2020. I don't care, just say something. We need a tangible energy goal, something for which the nation's best minds and most talented scientists and engineers can shoot.

The people who supported this President are waiting for him to do something real, something big that matches the promise of his campaign (and no, that half-assed health care bill doesn't count). The President spends all of his time trying not to bother the people who already don't like him and never will. Meanwhile, the rest of us wait.

There's another one of those election things coming up in 2012. I won't vote for Sarah Palin or Mitt Romnezxygr (sorry, I can't type Mitt's whole name without falling asleep). But if the Republicans nominate someone interesting, my vote's up for grabs. I'm tired of waiting.

Sticks and Stones

It seems like a weird time for our politics. Lots of anger and shouting and name calling. OK, that doesn't sound all that weird, but it seems to be turned up quite a bit lately. Some people are worried about all this rhetoric being a preamble to something. I don't blame people for worrying.

To be more specific, I don't blame genuinely worried people. On the other hand, people exploiting threats for political gain should find something more constructive to do with themselves. Maybe they should take up pot smoking. It'll totally mellow them out, and they'll most likely lose their jobs so we won't have to deal with them anymore.

Political assassination is a scary thing, because it only takes one lunatic to take a shot at someone. I think threats and violence against big important people like Presidents and Congressmen, or even just celebrities, anyone who has serious security, remind us how unsafe us regular folks are sometimes. So I don't blame people for being worried.

Me? I'm not that worried. I don't think something bad is about to happen. Or, more accurately, I don't think something bad is any more likely to happen now than it normally would be. This strikes me more as a Republican temper tantrum, mixed with the loud, obnoxious racism, homophobia and general intolerance of the tea idiots. Put them together and it looks kind of scary.

But really, the tea people aren't violent, they're just super angry and not terribly bright. And the Republicans aren't violent either. They're mad because they lost an election, and then another one. Then, they really thought they had this health care thing won, and they lost that too. I think this is just the political equivalent of Republicans kicking the wall and calling the Democrats big fat poopyheads. They'll get over it, we just need to get them some ice cream, or take them to McDonald's for dinner, that always did it for me.

Speaking of poopyheads, I have a question for Republicans. Every once in a while, I'll hear some TV bobblehead complain about President Obama's secret plan to redistribute the wealth. They paint him as some kind of evil, big government Robinhood, using taxes and health care to steal from the rich and give to the poor. This, of course, is what makes him a socialist who's destroying America.

Here's my question. Where were all the so-called conservatives when your hero Ronald Reagan was dismantling the middle class with his ridiculous economic theory and redistributing what little wealth they had to rich people? I don't like redistribution of wealth either way, because that's not what the government is supposed to be doing. But it seems to me that a lot of the people calling themselves "conservatives" today are OK with redistributing wealth as long as it's moving upward.

The interesting thing is how many regular, everyday people seem to be all for it. How do you get regular people so angry about making it harder for insurance companies to screw us? Or regulating banks? Or taxing the wealthy? Two theories. The first is the old myth of the American dream. Everyone's planning for the day they get rich. That's an old theory and still a perfectly plausible one. But I have a better idea.

Stockholm syndrome. The insurance companies and the banks and all the other big corporations are holding us hostage. They threaten to set the economy on fire if we don't bail them out. They threaten to raise premiums if health care reform passes. They threaten to lay people off and raise prices if taxes go up. If the government upsets the status quo, the corporations punish the people, that's the threat. And so many of the people buy right into it, but it's not because they're stupid. Being a hostage sucks, you can't blame people for begging the cops to give the hostage takers whatever they want, and you can't blame people for identifying with their captors, it happens all the time.

I guess this means I can't call the tea people stupid anymore (damn, I was really enjoying that). No more calling them tea idiots, or stupid ignorant racist homophobes. Wait, I can still call some of them racist homophobes, that part doesn't really have anything to do with the rest of this, some of those people just really don't like black people (and Arabs, and Muslims, and the gays, oh and Mexicans, we're about to start talking about immigration reform again, I'm pretty sure I can guess where the tea people will stand). But I can't call them stupid anymore, and I won't.

And, honestly, they aren't stupid. They're mostly regular, hard-working people who want what's best for the country. They look stupid sometimes because they're getting all riled up and mislead by the likes of Beck and Hannity and Palin and Bachmann. Ah...I feel so much better, that last sentence just reminded me that I still have plenty of people to call stupid.

Socialism: Day One

The first weekend of the NCAA tournament is the best weekend of the year, and I'm not even a huge college basketball fan. Under the circumstances, I think it was perfect timing. It was like one last great American party before everything changed. Late last night, the House of Representatives passed the health care bill, which means we're now a socialist country, and we don't get to enjoy cool American stuff like the NCAA tournament anymore. It makes perfect sense, because, when I think of socialist/marxist/communists, like say, Hitler and Stalin, I immediately think "health care".

I have to say though, my first day in the United Socialist States of America has been a little disappointing. I mean, look, I'm not happy about being a socialist now, I really liked the old America. But, I've decided to adopt a positive attitude and make the best of our new system of government. I know it's only been one day, but so far, I feel like I'm not getting what I was promised.

I still had to get up and go to work today. I didn't think I'd have to do that anymore. I was expecting the government to just send me some free money that I didn't have to work for. It's a good thing I took a day off on Friday. If I had been at work Friday, knowing socialism was coming on Sunday, I might have quit my job. Without a job or my free government money, I'd be totally screwed right now. Maybe my free money will come at the end of the week, like pay checks do. I'll be waiting.

What about President Obama's death panels? I was sure the government was going to start killing everyone's grandparents as soon as this bill was passed. So far, I don't know of anybody in my family being put to death by the government. It could be that I just don't know about it yet, but I feel like my mother would have called.

"Gee, Sean, lack of death panels doesn't seem like a reason to be disappointed". True, but we all know the death panels are coming, they were a key component of the bill. It's sort of like when you were a kid and you did something really bad. You knew your parents were going to punish you, but then they didn't right away. You spent the rest of the day terrified, just waiting for them to do something. I feel the same way now. I know the death panels are coming, I wish the President would just get it over with. Right now, we don't know who's going to die, or when, or how. This waiting seems cruel and unusual.

Speaking of death, I know for a fact that freedom died yesterday. Republicans in Congress were very clear about this. It's bad enough that I was apparently not invited to the funeral, freedom and I were pretty close, but I haven't even seen a lot of TV coverage. Fox is the only channel really talking about it, and they seem more in denial than anything else. TV covered Michael Jackson's death for like two weeks. Hell, the death of Corey Haim got a few days. Nothing for the death of freedom? I'm disappointed.

Also, since Republicans on TV have been telling me that we're heading toward European-style socialism, I was expecting something with soccer. Europeans love soccer, and I assume it's a key part of their particular brand of socialism. I was expecting something like a $1,000 check in the mail, in exchange for which I would be required to attend and enjoy soccer games. There's soccer happening outside my window right now and, well, I still hate it. Now, I haven't received my soccer subsidy yet, so maybe my feelings will change when it arrives.

What about all the slavery reparations? Glenn Beck was adamant about this bill being part of a secret plan to redistribute wealth in an effort to make reparations for slavery. Shouldn't there be a guy at my door collecting money? Maybe because my family wasn't here until the 1900's I get out of this one. That kind of makes sense, but I don't know, Glenn didn't say anything like that, and he said he was telling me the whole truth. I'll have to check the text of the bill. (Glenn, by the way, is in full tantrum mode right now, it's hilarious)

As a matter of fact, I haven't even noticed a drastic change to my health insurance yet. I think I'm still on the same plan I had last week. I thought they were sending a government bureaucrat to come stand between me and my doctor (in my case, it's an imaginary doctor, because I don't go to doctors and you can't make me). Maybe I'll try to make a doctor's appointment later this week, just to see how crazy and different it is.

I don't know. Maybe socialism is like quitting smoking. When people quit smoking, they don't just magically become 100% healthy right away, it takes a little time. Maybe I should just be patient and wait a few weeks. Or maybe this bill's full socialist effect won't happen until the Senate is done passing the reconciliation fixes. That's certainly possible.

The only other possibility is that Republicans and TV conservatives were lying to me about what was going to happen when this bill passed. No, no that's ridiculous. What kind of person would make up lies to try and defeat a bill that aims to insure over 30 million people? What kind of monster would go on TV, day after day, and hammer a health care bill just to further their own career? No, I don't think any of my TV friends would do that...

OK, OK, I've had my fun. Do I have any serious thoughts about the bill?

1) I don't love this bill, but I'll buy it as a step in the right direction. The pre-existing condition thing is solid policy. So is the part about not kicking people off their plans when they get sick. Allowing kids to stay on parents' policies longer in this economy is a nice touch too. I'm not sure why most of the other good stuff doesn't kick in until 2014, but it probably has something to do with our government being barely functional.

2) I really don't like the individual mandate. I know it's hard to affordably insure sick people without making healthy people be part of the pool. That doesn't mean I have to like it. There isn't a little fine print section at the end of the Constitution that reads "*feel free to violate this document if it makes doing what you want to do too hard". I wonder about Constitutional challenges here. I'm sure I could find something in article one, section eight to uphold this, but, as you may have noticed, I'm not actually on the Supreme Court, so what I can find doesn't matter all that much.

The only thing that blunts my problem with this is the fact that I don't feel like I've ever had a choice. I've had three jobs that provided benefits. All of them just signed me up for a plan, they didn't ask me if I wanted one. Maybe I had to ask about it, like the secret menu at in-n-out burger. Oh well.

3) I especially don't like the individual mandate without a public option. We're basically just forcing everyone to buy insurance from the companies that are already screwing us. Only now we're making it slightly harder to screw us and we're providing subsidies (for the buying, not the screwing, I think).

4) This whole abortion thing is stupid. First of all, it's apparently a nonsense debate because, for reasons I obviously don't fully understand, federal funding of abortion is already illegal. Undeterred by reality, yesterday, Congressman Mike Pence (R-Imagination Land) said it is "morally wrong" to use the tax dollars of pro-life Americans to fund abortion. Really, moron? Quoting one of my all-time favorite TV characters, "I don't know where you get the idea that taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for anything of which they disapprove. Lots of them don't like tanks, even more don't like Congress." Is it morally wrong to use the tax dollars of anti-war Americans to fund the military? Of course it isn't.

Someone should have the authority to immediately throw people like Pence out of Congress for stupidity (put that on my list of dream jobs, right near the top too). Either that, or we should send Pence, Michelle Bachmann and Steve King (not the crazy novelist, the crazy Congressman from Iowa) down to the basement of the Capitol to guard the bee whenever Congress is trying to do something serious.

Bachmann: "Duh, Mike, why are we down here?"
Pence: "Aw geez, I told you Michelle, to guard the bee."
King: "But whyyyy?"
Pence: "You guys are pathetic. No wonder Pelosi made me head bee guy."

5) Speaking of abortion, I don't understand how these Republicans can all be against giving more people health insurance. Aren't these the "right to life" people? I'm positive I've seen that on a Republican sign somewhere. Won't it be easier for people to exercise their right to life if they can, you know, stay alive?

6) My favorite part of Health Care Day (that's what I'm calling yesterday, I think it'll catch on) was MSNBC's brief coverage of tea party idiots trying, and apparently failing, to spell out the word "no" on a lawn near the Capitol building. I'm sure they got it right eventually, and MSNBC was probably just mocking them a little to gloat. It was still funny though.

On a more serious note, these tea morons have me seriously considering changing my party affiliation from Republican to Independent. I'm still up in the air about it. Congratulations tea people, you are so ridiculous, so blatantly racist and ignorant, you've got me considering leaving a party that I was willing to share with fundamentalist christians.

7) How many times in the next seven or eight months do you think a Republican somewhere will say the bill was passed in the middle of the night or under the cover of darkness (spooooky!)?

8) Finally, is it possible that the Democrats did something (gulp) politically smart? Follow me on this. Sometime early last week, the Democrats started talking about using this deem and pass procedure, which would have allowed them to deem the Senate bill passed through the House without actually having a direct vote on the Senate bill. Republicans freaked out, and rightfully so. We spent the rest of the week listening to Republicans complain about the process.

Then, Saturday, the Democrats announced they'd just pass the Senate bill with a regular vote. It almost seems like they intentionally tricked the Republicans into spending the last week of debate arguing about a process issue that never actually came up instead of making points about the weaknesses of the actual bill. This left the Republican message a little jumbled going into the vote. I think the Democrats just won a political chess match. Politically competent Democrats? Hold me, I'm afraid.