THE Gun Toting Liberal™ Reaches Out To His Fellow Commentators -Slash- Co-Bloggers And Readers To Furnish Their Opinions On Any Of The Above Or Anything Else Political One Wishes…
Here we go again with another Monday “catch-all” -slash- “open thread” Monday — my favorite day of the week to conduct these opportunities for our readers to weigh in on anything politically newsworthy since there’s always so much going on during this particular day of the week, generally speaking that is.
Let’s see — by now, y’all know how this works — I give a quick reference and a quick opinion on a couple of topics then the rest is up to you. With no further adieu, I’ll go ahead and start things off then y’all take over….
ROBERT NOVAK — (1931 – 2009)
Conor Clark, blogging over at Andrew Sullivan’s blog, The Daily Dish (The Atlantic) gives perhaps THE most interesting eulogy to the newly-deceased conservative columnist, Mr. Robert Novak. Mr. Clark it appears, interviewed Mr. Novak a couple of years ago for The Guardian (UK) and had the displeasure of meeting the man whom he describes as “the least pleasant person I’ve ever interviewed“, yet, Mr. Clark offers not only his condolences but the sincere respect and admiration he had for this “least pleasant person” in a “must read” article. As for me, R.I.P., Mr. Novak and I’ll simply leave it at that.
SARAH PALIN — POPULAR WITH THE G.O.P., UNPOPULAR WITH GENERAL ELECTORATE
The Marist Poll reports if the election were held today, Sarah “The Baracuda” Palin would be defeated by President Barack Hussein in a landslide (a 56% to 33% margin). 73% of Republican voters say “Yay, Sarah!!!”. Ummm, okie-dokie, y’all. Whatever ya’ say.
OBAMACARE MORPHS INTO SOMETHING MORE… WELL, “CAPITALISTIC“
A new NBC poll says 47% of Americans surveyed are against the president’s public option (i.e., “socialized medicine”, like the VA, for example — source: MSNBC) for the poorest of the poor and weakest of the weak amongst us. Good thing, too! We’d sure hate to see poor American children receiving preventative medical attention from a doctor who knows his or her name and his or her health history. It’s much, MUCH better for them to clog up our emergency rooms to stop those pesky little runny noses while they scream and cry at the top of their lungs as we with broken arms and legs must wait for our turn four to five hours later. Way to go, President Obama “Surge” W. Bush II. For certain, it would be HORRIBLE for people with broken arms to be able to stroll into an emergency room and be treated within minutes because the damned place is empty, would it not?
Now, it’s YOUR turn, folks. Weigh in on any topic you wish or any of the above.
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1:23 am on August 19th, 2009 1
You may or may not know that I live in California. You likely know that our state finances are FUBAR. State employees are forced to take one unpaid day off every two weeks (roughly, some are exempt). Several of our dear legislators had chosen this time to give some of their staph (sic) members RAISES! That’s right. We are having massive cutbacks across the board and a bunch of nose-wipeing yes-men get raises. And not just little ones either. The average raise for the staphers (sic) of members of the Assembly was about $4300 (that is just the raise, mind you). The average raise of staphers (sic) of the members of the state Senate was a touch over $16k, agian, that was just the raise. The salaries of these people runs from a paltry $35k/year (that is for a “local contact” person – translate that to a teenaged offspring, or maybe the teenaged offspring of a friend and campaign worker, who stuffs envelopes, answers the phone, and responds to emails) to over $90k/year for some kind of “expert” advisor.
“Oh! They work so HARD! If I didn’t give (name) a raise, I wouldn’t have been able to keep her on, and would have had to train a replacement! I would be lost without her!’
Now, I know that they need some staff (sic) to run the offices. But when a member of the assembly needs a dozen “experts” to basically do the job We the People hired him to do, then what the hell do we need the capon for?
2:30 am on August 19th, 2009 2
Good post, Joe.
7:31 am on August 19th, 2009 3
At this point in the football season, even Detroit is not yet mathematically eliminated from the playoff race. Discuss.
10:44 am on August 19th, 2009 4
SP – and the gawdanphuckinRaiders havn’t lots a game!
BD – thanks.
2:28 pm on August 19th, 2009 5
@All — watch out for my Niners this year… Mike Singletary will make his mark and they should be vastly improved
4:23 pm on August 19th, 2009 6
Regarding the drop of the public option, that seems to have come full circle in the past couple days. If the speculation is correct, it’s a brilliant political move on the part of the president– and the GOP fell for it.
Basically, the idea of nonprofit co-ops was thrown out there, and even Sen. Shelby was going on about how wonderful an idea it was. The second it was put on the table, Cantor and Kyle shot it down and started calling it a public option in disguise. If you know what a nonprofit co-op is, then you’ll rightly have no idea where that nonsense came from. A nonprofit co-op is basically set up by doctors and patients and cuts out the middle man (though it offers no real competition for private insurers, and so I hated the idea). It has nothing to do with a government plan.
Then Kyl just came out and said it… They weren’t going to back any plan put forward by Democrats– even if it was budget neutral. They weren’t interested in any form of health care reform– at least as long as Democrats might take credit. And they sure as hell weren’t interested in negotiating. I’m not sure what made him say it, but I’m guessing they’d just gotten that cocky.
And some are suspecting that the president’s plan from the beginning was to show exactly that. With him able to show that the GOP isn’t really that interested in health care reform, he can now bring any opposition they have into question as being genuine. “Give em enough rope…” (And he did this a few times during the campaign, if you’ll remember. No idea why I’m so shocked.) It also kills the main argument for Blue Dogs, which was that they wanted a bipartisan bill. He’s shown them that that’s not possible, so they can now either take paper thin concessions on the bill, or they can side with Republicans and have their loyalty to the party (and interests in meaningful health care reform) called into question. Better yet, I’m sure there will be a few threats to link them to Limbaugh and Palin in their campaigns.
What absolutely pisses me off is that I don’t want something that’s going to be TOO liberal, but if Obama works this right, he could be in a position to ram the most liberal single payer system down our throats with no questions asked. That wasn’t what I wanted, and while I didn’t want the public option removed, I was counting on GOP and Blue Dog opposition to at least tone it down a bit and keep the crazy out. I don’t like the idea of an unchecked administration, and that’s precisely what the GOP has set us up for. They could have just blown the opportunity to have a meaningful voice in this administration because they just couldn’t keep their egos in check.
6:14 pm on August 19th, 2009 7
Interesting analysis, Bama. You’re a pretty smart guy. I see Obama as much weaker than you do, but you might be right. Maybe the Democrats are very good chess players, but Average Joe (not to be confused with our brilliant J. Lovell) is not a political junkie, and the Democrats are making themselves look like the usual spineless wimps they are. Maybe they could at least try to make it look good for the cameras? A little more Barney Frank kicking *ss in town halls, maybe? Maybe they could at least tip off their base, so we don’t give up in frustration at a game that always seems to be rigged against the interests of average Americans?
7:46 pm on August 19th, 2009 8
GawdamphuckinRaiders! http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090819/SPORTS/908199935/1350?Title=-Niners-defense-dominates-Raiders-in-joint-practice
7:55 pm on August 19th, 2009 9
Interesting vid. Pat Wiggins is a CA State Senator representing mostly the Santa Rosa area. She too is a scion of the Burton Democratic Machine, along with Pelosi, Babs, DiFi, and Woolsey. At least. This is typical of the attitude of all of them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb7pkKc0peQ
8:48 pm on August 19th, 2009 10
I didn’t know the 49ers got Mike Singletary, at 50 years old he’ll probably bring some needed speed to the secondary.
8:52 pm on August 19th, 2009 11
@Joe, I didn’t know you were out in California, such a beautiful place, so terribly mismanaged. Big Sur, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Pacific Grove, places I really liked while going to military language school (a couple of times Arabic/French)
9:35 pm on August 19th, 2009 12
Got to love them Democrats!…Not!
Popularity of Dems Drop from 62% favorable in April to 49% today.
http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/536.pdf
On the other hand republicans stay consistantly unpopular at 40%.
12:53 am on August 20th, 2009 13
Ah, so, Mike, you were at the MLI in Monterey? Pretty area. I was raised in N. San Diego Co. Went to school in Chico, moved to Sonoma Co. And a year ago moved up to Lake Co, near Clearlake.
2:13 pm on August 24th, 2009 14
2:14 pm on August 24th, 2009 15
*^O
2:14 pm on August 24th, 2009 16
;(