Merry Christmas

Amen. I always did identify more with Linus. And as a Christmas bonus, here's why Santa Claus is so kick-ass:


I totally knew that Jesus wasn't the only Christmas icon with magical powers and killer abs. Rock on, Santa.

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FDA Proposes New Cigarette Warning Labels

This is a bit much in my opinion:

Federal drug regulators on Wednesday unveiled 36 proposed warning labels for cigarette packages, including one showing a toe tag on a corpse and another in which a mother blows smoke on her baby.

Designed to cover half the surface area of a pack or carton of cigarettes, and a fifth of any advertisements for them, the labels are intended to spur smokers to quit by providing graphic reminders of tobacco’s dangers. The labels are required under a law passed last year that gave the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate, but not ban, tobacco products for the first time.

Public health officials hope that the new labels will re-energize the nation’s antismoking efforts, which have stalled in recent years. About 20.6 percent of the nation’s adults, or 46.6 million people, and about 19.5 percent of high school students, or 3.4 million teenagers, are smokers.

And yes, that's actually one of the proposed images above; you can see more here. Because just giving people the facts about cigarettes isn't enough, the government has decided that it's also necessary to appeal to one's emotions and fear of death and disease in order to control individual behaviour. My conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Clown Shoes accurately intuits my stand on this issue:

I don't know. Maybe some folks are so stupid they actually need these warnings. Besides, what would folks like egghead JBW do without some Nanny Statism to gripe about? Get rid of warning labels and marijuana laws in one fell swoop!! Then everyone would have equal opportunity to death!

Now I'm not a Republican so I don't consider the moniker "egghead" to be the epithet that Don does but I will admit that I do agree with him on this, at least partially: I'm absolutely convinced that some (hell, many) folks are so stupid that they actually need these warnings, there's no maybe about it. Even after several decades of government health reports stating definitively that cigarettes cause cancer and thus death, even after several multi-billion dollar lawsuits against tobacco companies for making false claims about the safety of their products all these years and even though cigarettes have had health warnings on them since the mid sixties people still smoke them! Why do they do this despite all of the warnings and evidence about how dangerous it is? Well, even though I'm an egghead (which is defined as being "elitist" and "out of touch") I understand a truth about myself and my fellow humans that Don does not: human beings have a fundamental need to alter their brain chemistry.

Ever wonder why the War on Drugs has been such an abject failure? Or why people smoke or chew tobacco, drink too much alcohol and eat too much fat, salt and sugar? Of course you don't because you know why people do these things: because it makes them feel good, and no amount of warning labels and government babysitting is going to make them stop doing so. Now this isn't to say that I think cigarettes shouldn't have warnings on their packages. I have no problem with the small amount of government intervention that is required to force companies to provide adequate information to the public about their products but these pictures of diseased lungs and choking children seem to me political correctness run amok.

Now I have no doubt that they'll have the desired effect of convincing a certain number of people not to smoke who weren't deterred by a mere written warning but how far should we as a society be willing to take this? Should the winery that produces my Pinot Noir be forced to place a picture of a hardened liver on every bottle? How about forcing fast food companies to print pictures of a guy having a coronary or having his leg amputated due to diabetes on their cheeseburger wrappers? Or we could even up the ante to things that still hold an element of danger yet don't even alter brain chemistry or directly affect our health, like forcing car companies to place pictures of bloodied corpses on their windshields or forcing the airlines to print pictures of a crashed burning fuselage on every ticket. Hell, we could force companies to put a graphic warning about the worst consequences of every product and activity under the sun on their respective packaging and advertising, then nobody would ever do anything stupid and we'd all be safe from ourselves, right?

Wrong. We could do all of that and more and people would still do stupid things that are dangerous to their health but we've decided as a society that we're OK with that because it's the price of personal freedom in this country. Full disclosure: I don't smoke, in fact I hate cigarettes. One of my great laments is that almost every cute girl I know in California is a smoker but I still defend the rights of smokers to do so because I believe in the principle of individual liberty. Being a hypocrite Don is comfortable letting his government dictate ever more restrictive advertising codes for tobacco and positively draconian anti-drug laws because he doesn't smoke or use illicit drugs, hence he could care less about the individual freedoms of people who do. I would imagine that he's quite all right with the recent San Francisco ban on toys in Happy Meals (gotta protect the kids, you know) and the massive sin tax that California has placed on alcohol and tobacco products (I missed that part last time I was reading the bible), all while he squeals incessantly about big government running wild and Obama ramming his health care reform down our throats.

What this ultimately boils down to is personal responsibility and the philosophy that adults, even stupid adults, should be able to decide for themselves whether or not to engage in behaviour that is dangerous to themselves and their health. Children are obviously different and because their reasoning skills are not yet mature they require additional governmental protection but even then I doubt Don and the rest of his tea partying ilk would want the government telling them how to raise their children in most respects. But telling an adult like him that he can and cannot ingest certain substances and chemicals because in the eyes of the government he's essentially too stupid to decide these things for himself? Well, maybe he needs these warning labels to protect him. Perhaps then despite varying levels of individual stupidity our societal "opportunity to death" might not be equal, but at least we'll all be safe from our own behaviour.

Well what do you know, I wrote this entire post without invoking the phrase "nanny state" even once. You're welcome, Don. Now go do what your government tells you like a good little drone.

Health Reform Hits Main Street

If you really want to know what's about to start happening in American health care reform do yourself a favor and watch this nine minute long video. Relax, it's a cartoon:


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Cannabis Cuisine

Some appetizing fare for folks who might need their appetites stimulated:

Jonesing for some gourmet tri-tip and a solid buzz? Check out Cannabis Catering, a San Francisco-based outfit that specializes in marijuana cuisine. The brainchild of Chef Frederick Nesbitt, a California Culinary Academy-trained chef who has worked as personal chef for Jerry Rice and John Madden, Cannabis Catering offers four and five-course meals laced with ganja.

The idea for Cannabis Catering came to Nesbitt when he learned that his friend's diabetic mother had been diagnosed with cancer. "I would bring back edibles [from the dispensary], but they're so high in high-fructose corn syrup that she was high off sugar rather than being medicated," he says. So Nesbitt began experimenting with his own pot food--starting with mashed potatoes.

Now Nesbitt cooks an array of cannabis-laced delectables. A sample menu might include salad, lobster bisque, whiskey tri-tip with a demi-glazed sauce (containing marijuana tincture or ground-up hashish), and an infused Belgian chocolate fountain.

Each meal contains the equivalent of three to five pot cookies, but Nesbitt says he can customize the food depending on what customers want. "When you're eating a cookie, you're eating as much as you can in one portion. I'm spreading it out through a whole meal," he says. "The last thing I need is people freaking out on me."

The meals costs approximately $100 per person, but Nesbitt won't dish out his goods unless his patrons have proper documentation (read: a medical marijuana card). "I'm trying to just feed people," he says. "This is one little ingredient of what I'm doing."

Insert generic "pot roast" joke here. Now the obvious question: is eating an entire meal that gives one the munchies a good idea? And what if Nesbitt makes Chinese: would it perpetuate an endless cycle of being hungry a few hours later over and over again? I suppose these are moot points as I would never spend $100 on a cannabis laced meal since I've never consumed an edible that didn't have that distinct taste lurking in the background. It's not a particularly bad taste but it's definitely not one I would like to repeatedly encounter throughout a five course meal I've paid good money for.

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Foreskin Man!

Finally, a superhero for the truly complete fanboy. I doubt this one made it to Comic Con last week:

Frustrated by societys failure to protect its most vulnerable citizens, Foreskin Man has taken up the fight agains male genital mutilation.

Aided by the power of his technologically advanced plasma boots, Foreskin Man flies above the city to hunt down criminals who cut tthe genitals of innocent boys.

It is the dawn of a new era. Circumcisers, beware!

Scourge of the diabolical Mohel Decree, faster than a speeding scalpel and aided by his female sidekick Clitty Cat he pulls back the loose skin of society's archaic religious rituals to expose the slightly funky criminal underbelly of male genital mutilation! OK, I made that part up myself. I thought Heroes was getting pretty bad last year but I'd say this is definitive proof that we've finally run out of superhero ideas. Here's his official website. You can read my previous largely undecided take on male circumcision here.

[Update: Welcome to all of my fellow Daily Dish readers! Please feel free to have a look around Brain Rage; and thanks, Andrew.]

Down With The Sickness

You'll have to excuse the glut of videos lately as I've spent the last few days in bed coughing and sneezing as if I were a NyQuil parody. Taking a few days off from work always sounds like a nice little vacation until you realize that you're going to feel like hammered shit the entire time. Hope everyone's doing well. *sniff*

Super Sexy CPR

For educational purposes, of course:


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ObamaCare Is RomneyCare 2.0

So not only did President Obama succeed at implementing his first major domestic policy agenda by utilizing the spirit of bipartisanship but he's also simultaneously hamstrung his most likely 2012 rival within his own voting base in the process. Remember what I said about him being a chess master of the highest caliber (and yes, I still say it a bit hyperbolically)? It's strategy rather than tactics, and the Republicans still fail to recognize the difference.

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American Power And Toothless Photoshopping

Again, my apologies for the extended blogging hiatus. I meant to start up again last night but I was too busy trying to drunkenly pick up sixteen-year-old girls on Facebook and... Heyyyy, wait a minute...

Yes, as you might have guessed the picture above is the latest Photoshop commission by my curvaceous conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power from his post "JBW's Teh AWESOME Saturday Night Pickups!":

JBW's an anything goes Obama-supporting wannabe wifebeater, but the dude does occasionally kick up his heels on a Saturday night!

But hey, I shouldn't judge, being "a tubby, middle-aged neoconservative with an established history of victimology and a pathetic persecution complex."

RELATED: "James B. Webb: Intolerant Sexist Pig."

And in contrast to JBW's demonic blood-soaked Easter sacrilege, see Serr8d, "(A) President at Easter Sunrise Service: A Good Man," and "(B) Women and Children and Men worldwide celebrate Holy Week. Good People."

BONUS: "Living by Faith in God."

Oh if only I had a wife of my own to beat! I guess I'll just have to continue to envy Don on that count. And yes, I did indeed call him a "tubby, middle-aged neoconservative with an established history of victimology and a pathetic persecution complex" (you're wise not to try to argue against that assessment, Don) but in my defense I also said that he was "a fat, greying community college prof on the downward slope of a career" who can't "see his own dick without the assistance of a strategically placed set of mirrors" as well. I just want to give the old timer his full due.

As to the above Photoshop: this is definitely a much better technical effort than the last portrayal of me Don commissioned (sorry, Stogie) and I'd wager that it's most likely what I'd look like if I lived the apparent sedentary lifestyle of a community college professor and treated my own body the way Don does his. He farmed this latest job out to his conservative blogging buddy Serr8d of The Cutting Edge:

Dr. Donald Douglas blasts that lousy lefty loser James B. Webb. Nice photoshop, if I do say so myself. Not this one though; another version. Here's this one...

...capturing the essential nature of JBW; a poorly-conceived attention whore. You saw his Easter present to his kids, didn't you? (If I'd seen that before I created those two pshops, I would've changed some things. James B. Webb would be presenting himself right out of goatse.

As I said, these efforts are somewhat better on a technical level but again the messages seem to be a bit incongruous, much like the sign Serr8d used in the image above (although I doubt that this was something he was aware of at the time):

The red-bordered triangular sign shows a scantily-clad woman, who is also carrying a handbag, in the city of Treviso in northern Italy.

The sign states 'Attenzione Prostitute' - seemingly warning people of prostitutes in the area.

Motorists and pedestrians have complained that the sign is 'confusing', saying they don't know if it means to watch out for crossing hookers or if it means prostitutes operate in the area.

I suppose it's fitting that he'd use a confusing sign to convey an equally confusing message. While I've stated many times on this site that I favor the legalization of prostitution (I'm just funny like that when it comes to the government denying consenting adults their personal freedoms) I've also previously mentioned that I've personally never slept with a prostitute and I really don't have any plans to in the future. Incidentally, in that same post I posed the following questions about personal freedoms and the free market system that I'd wager these supposedly conservative Christians Don and Serr8d (who both seem quite happy to give the government the authority to dictate what you and I and every other American can and can not do with our own bodies) would be hard pressed to answer honestly:

...why is it illegal for me to pay a prostitute for sex but a director can pay two people to have sex on film and then make money selling the DVD? Why is there such a social stigma against prostitutes and johns while Ron Jeremy and Jenna Jameson are treated like celebrities by the media? Why is it that if I pay two people to have sex in my bedroom while I watch it's prostitution but if I watch these same two people on a DVD in my bedroom it's just pornography? And what I consider one of the clearest and most succinct questions on this subject: why is it illegal to sell, what it is perfectly legal to give away?

My own answer to these queries would be "because of religious hypocrisy and how it influences and pertains to the laws of American society" but I'll let them answer for themselves (and yes, I won't be surprised if they decline to do so). Speaking of, I love Serr8d's admission that he would have liked to portray me stretching my own rectum open for the camera (yes, that's what "goatse" means; I told you that you didn't want to know) as retribution against me for not respecting his god as he and Don believe I should. I wonder, What Would Jesus Do to avenge a supposed slight against himself? And oh, won't somebody please think of the children?!

Also speaking of, apparently hitting on and pretending to hit on attractive adult women over the Internets not only makes me an "intolerant sexist pig" in Don's eyes but it also makes me an online ephebophile predator, which brings me to the main point of this post. I use the various Photoshopped pictures I create to accent and add to the main message of the posts they accompany and I try to imbue them with some semblance of coherence (and a bit of humor when I can) as they pertain to that message. In contrast, Don's commissioned Photoshops seem to lack this coherence and he just uses them in and of themselves mainly as attacks against me (which he still won't allow comments on but once an intellectual coward, yada, yada, yada).

To wit: in his post "Living by Faith in God", in which Don intimates among other things that I'm in league with Satan (I know, I laughed at that one too), he promises to follow up on my supposed evility at some later date. You can imagine that I was on the edge of my keyboard with anticipation of what revelations he would disclose about my lack of faith and how it will tragically damn me to everlasting hellfire and what these supposed moral failings (or EPIC. MORAL. FAIL., as Don would serially say) would reveal about me as a "demonic", "fallen", "human defect". You can also imagine my utter disappointment when this promised comeuppance simply and merely took the form of the farmed out image at the top of this post.

So what is the message supposed to be there? Well, in addition to the aforementioned accusation of predatory ephebophilia (brilliantly yet subtly conveyed by writing it on a sign) the main point of the picture, and thus the main point of the entire post since he writes little else, seems to be that Don (who at 5' 10" and over 200 pounds is 25-30 pounds over his ideal weight) is calling me (at 6' 0" and 175 pounds, i.e. medically ideal) fat. Why? Because I make jokes about his weight and since Don is a sensitive boy who has very thin skin for a fat guy, rather than coming up with an original comeback he retaliates by employing the rhetorically impressive and quite classic "Nuh-uh, you are!" defense. Well played. As I said Don, it's a somewhat technically impressive Photoshop but the message seems to be inaccurate at best and illogical at worst and your lack of any interesting or original commentary to accompany it only seems to make you come off as petty and hateful as a result. Hmm, actually that's pretty spot on for you at this point, isn't it Chubsy? Bon appetit, mon gros ami.

KFC Is Practically Daring Me To Eat This... Ctd

Previously discussed here, it drops in less than a week. That sound you just heard was my heart slowing down in anticipation.

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American Power And Husky Chest Thumping

I'll admit that one of my guilty little pleasures when fucking with my portly conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power is watching him insist that he has consistently gotten the best of me in our rhetorical online back and forths. Actually, I'm probably understating his insistence: apparently he constantly destroys me, decimating my arguments with infallible logic such as calling me an idiot and then yelling from the rooftops about how badly he's beaten me, and then yelling even louder when others don't agree that he's as super cool as he insists (you'll notice that both of his recent posts about me preclude anyone from commenting; Don just loves the First Amendment and the free exchange of ideas). As I've said before, real bad asses don't need to tell other people how bad ass they are because everyone already knows. Now I'm not saying that I'm a bad ass (although I totally am) but the converse to the above is also true: someone who is constantly bragging about what a bad ass they are is more than likely merely a douche nozzle instead, and this is also usually pretty apparent to everyone else as well.

With that in mind join me, won't you, as I fisk Don's latest screed about yours truly, "JBW Polling 'Analysis': NEW. MORE. DESPERATE. FAIL." Don't worry, I have plenty of wine for this, and please forgive me if my typing becomes a bit slurred by the end but if I didn't intoxicate myself in the process it wouldn't be fair to Chubs Mackenzie here:

ROTLMFAO!!

It worked! My post this morning caused JBW to shoot his twaddle-wad like the adolescent dork he is. See, "I Don't Think Donald Douglas Likes Me..."

It worked? What, is Don implying that his last post about me was just the first chess move in a grand Machiavellian plan to get me to... write a response to a post attacking me? Damn! He's always so many moves ahead of me (and so many pounds heavier).

Actually, I don't even know JBW, although I don't particularly care for atheist online-troll sex-predators who harass attractive women across the web. And besides, what I really don't like is noodle-headed analysis like this ... JBW misspecifies my essay as predicated on polling data, and then he even gets that wrong:

He ... quotes two polls concerning Obama's approval ratings that seem to definitively prove that the president is also subject to this bout of "epic fail", except of course that they don't. The most recent RealClearPolitics accumulation of polling data shows the Rasmussen poll to be a statistical outlier (there is a consistent right-leaning bias in Rasmussen's methodology; pay attention to how often the right points solely to this organization's polling data to back up their talking points) while every other major polling firm shows Obama's approval rating to be either positive or within the margin of error (he's +2 overall)

Actually, RCP's "accumulated" polling averages have been dismissed by experts as wildly inappropriate indicators of public opinion. I wrote about that here, "Mixed Poll Averages Risky as Handicapping Tool" (in political science lingo, the pooled findings are flawed due to "incommensurability"). Moreover, leftists call Rasmussen an "outlier" not because of methodological errors, but because they disagree with the results. Or, as JBW puts it, "pay attention to how often the right points solely to this organization's polling data to back up their talking points) ..."

Atheist? Of course I am and quite proud of it, although I hardly see how it's relevant to this discussion unless Don is using it as a pejorative insult like "adolescent dork", which of course he is. Hey Don, how's all that Jesusy Christy stuff working out for ya? Magic lover. Online-troll? Debatable and highly subjective, although it was I who had to scold Don on several occasions about link-whoring back to himself on my site. Sex-predator who harasses attractive women across the web? What would he have me do, harass ugly chicks? Life's too short for such nonsense.

And my citation of the RealClearPolitics aggregate poll wasn't to use it as an indicator of public opinion but rather to illustrate how much of an outlier Rasmussen is, and I'm pretty sure I said just that. And I disagree with the results because of methodological errors. Which do you think is more likely: that Rasmussen leans rightward because they give more weight to likely Republican voters in their polls or that every other polling outfit is wrong, consistently so and all in the exact same way? Whether one agrees with the results or not, a statistical outlier is still a statistical outlier. Could someone please translate that into political science lingo for Butterball?

I hate to be hard on the boy, but JBW's proven badly wrong by this morning's CBS poll, "Obama's Approval Rating Hits New Low." (hardly a "wingnut" outlet):

Last week, President Obama signed historic health care reform legislation into law -- but his legislative success doesn't seem to have helped his image with the American public.

The latest CBS News Poll, conducted between March 29 and April 1, found Americans unhappier than ever with Mr. Obama's handling of health care - and still worried about the state of the economy.

That's after ObamaCare passed. So yes, JBW. EPIC. FAIL.

Don's point in discussing the two polls he cited was to illustrate so-called "Obama fail" i.e. "Overall, 47% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty-three percent (53%) disapprove ..." and "last week at CNN: "Majority Disapprove of Obama for First Time." In other words, he was claiming that Obama's disapproval ratings were higher than his approval numbers. I disputed this assessment by stating and showing that Obama's current approval numbers are in fact higher than his disapproval numbers, and Don's masterful rebuttal was to post the above graph. Notice anything similar to what I just said? Yes, his approval numbers are down but they're still more positive than negative. Hell, Don's political jerk-off fantasy boy Ronald Reagan had approval numbers just like this in April of 1982. How that translates to "EPIC. FAIL." is something only Don can explain.

Not only that, I actually added this poll to my previous JBW decimation, so the only reason he would have omitted it from his entry is denialism, especially since JBW sits lapping his tongue across the keyboard all day waiting for blog updates at American Power so he can create yet another photoshop that's somehow supposed to convince people that he's got skills (although to his credit the latest iteration isn't racist).

Oh, the decimation! I can't convey to you how traumatic it is to be so decimationified. And I cut and pasted Don's last post vilifying me in full, minus the previously farmed out Photoshop of myself he commissioned and some video apparently likewise vilifying Obama that I never watched. If the poll he speaks of here was in that video then I guess my denialism is also precognitive because I somehow knew not to watch it. And if Photoshopping a paunchy neoconservative as Jabba the Hut doesn't convince people that I have skills (what the hell does that even mean?), what would? For the record I make the Photoshops to amuse myself, and I thought that Glenn Beck came out looking the best in this one. And don't you just love the whiny minority victim race card Don plays, and many on the political right decry, every time he yells "RAAACIST!"? Although to his credit none of his latest insults were homophobic.

And one more thing: JBW, being the small-penis prick he is, tries to act big nevertheless, by throwing down some kind of challenge that's supposed to, er, put me in my place on predictive analysis? Too bad I've never predicted that the GOP will take control of Congress in November:

If however Don is so certain about Obama's dismal approval ratings translating into epic failure then I'll offer him this meager yet serious wager: $100 says that the Republicans fail to gain a majority in either house of congress this November. I'm making the offer publicly so that every one reading this will be privy to it. I think Obama's a chess master of the highest caliber Don, and he's moved his pieces into position to retain his party's majorities through the remainder of his first term. Care to put your money where your mouth is, Fat Boy Slim?

No, I don't want that bet, JBW FAIL. Simply because it's still way too early to predict what will happen in November. But also because congressional elections aren't generally national referendums. The president almost always loses seats in the midterms. And this year will be no different. But we're talking individual House and Senate races around the country, and the GOP's defending even more open seats than the Dems. It's a tough political environment for both parties, which is something the tea parties frequently remind stupid RINOs.

You know, for a homophobe Don sure does love to engage in a fair amount of cock-talk. And yeah, it's early; that's why it would be a fun wager. If you could predict what will happen in November then there would be no point in betting on it. And although Don has indeed never predicted GOP victory for this fall I don't blame him for pussing out: if I were him I wouldn't want to take that bet either.

Anyway, Obama's epic fail no matter what. He and the Pelosi-Reid Dems rammed through an unpopular bill while ignoring the economic crisis. The reckoning will come in November, and I hope it'll be the 40 or so seats needed in the House and the 8 or so in the Senate. But it'd be foolhardy to put money on something like that so soon, and without enough critical indicators. That said, Stanley Greenberg, who was President Bill Clinton's pollster in the 1990s, suggests that 2010 is shaping up to be a 1994-style election. See, "Clinton Pollster: If Election Were Today, It Would Be Like '94."

If JBW wasn't so stupid, he'd at least catch up on the latest analysis before throwing down the gauntlet.

Typical though.

EPIC. JBW. FAIL.

"Obama's epic fail no matter what"? What the hell does that even mean, other than that Don just repeats the phrase "epic fail" as some kind of mantra to keep himself warm and safe at night? To date, Obama has passed the biggest reform of our health care system in decades, including near universal coverage; for all the criticism he took about the length of his Afghanistan deliberation, including that he was projecting a lack of resolve that would undermine the cause, we now have an undeniable momentum; the Administration's efforts in Pakistan have resulted in some very positive trends, including an increased willingness to take on the Taliban; the reset with Russia has resulted in a new nuclear arms treaty, along with moving the Russians far closer in line with us in terms of sanctions on Iran; the economy is poised to start creating jobs and oh yes, hardly a week goes by in which we don't kill a substantial number of terrorists and/or pirates. "Epic fail" never looked so good.

And I never tire of hearing right wing talking points about how Obama "rammed health care reform down people's throats". I seem to recall a certain recent president waging an incredibly unpopular war in Iraq that was antithetical to the polled desires of most Americans and he was lauded by the right for ignoring polls and doing what he believed, yet when Obama does anything that hasn't been signed off on by the majority of Americans (ignoring the painfully obvious fact that a similar majority elected him president on a platform of promising to reform the health care system, exactly what he's done thus far) the right constantly squeals about how he's ignoring the will of the people.

And if my election bet gauntlet is too heavy for Don to lift then he's perfectly within his rights to continue to effeminately mince about and complain that taking me up on my wager is too risky for a soft, suburbanite community college prof with a wife, kids and a bloated mortgage. Most men I know don't need to lean on excuses of comprehensive analysis before they'll take up a simple bet but I understand: long gone are the youthful days of washboard abs and skateboarding punkitude for domesticated wage slaves like Don Douglas. I guess I'll just have to content myself with my own life of alcohol binges, illegal mind-expanding drugs and casual sex. It's my own cross to bear to be sure but who am I to dispute God's plan? Oh that's right, I'm an atheist. Sweet...

Obama To Pundits: Chill Out!

The HNIC talks some shit to the talking heads:


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Ob'omneycare

With Sarah Palin getting her own show on FOX News along with her general lack of political bona fides it's looking like former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is the current front runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. I say "current" because these comparisons between the health care reforms he championed as governor and those included in the reform bill recently signed into law by President Obama have only just begun and you can bet your ass that they'll be the source of some major criticisms coming from his fellow Republicans during the primaries:

And then of course there's the whole "Mormon's aren't real Christians" meme to be dealt with. I'm just not sure that his hair is nice enough to help him overcome these political obstacles coming from the right.

Chart Of The Day

Sarah Palin's political action committee's map "targeting" House Democrats who voted to pass health care reform legislation, coupled with the tweet "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" Now I'm not saying that Palin wants these people to literally be shot for voting the way they did, just that it's an irresponsible (I'd also call it tone deaf but I suspect that her people know what they're doing here) metaphor to use for this issue when congressmen and women are receiving actual death threats. How is this supposed to improve the discourse?

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[Update: "'Take up your arms’ means voting,” -Sarah Palin. Sure, it's the first connection I make with that phrase. Again, irresponsible.

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Something Hilarious Someone Else Said

"Violence and racism, these things are antithetical to the whole idea of freedom and everything that we stand for. It goes against my basic political philosophy. We judge people based on their individual character and merit, not on some group identity politics. That's what the left does, we don't do that on the right. That's not something I engage in." -FreedomWorks Grassroots Director Brendan Steinhauser on Your World with Neil Cavuto, commenting on the threatening and racist voicemail messages being received by members of congress after the health care reform bill was passed earlier this week (transcribed by me).

So let me get this straight: you claim that you evaluate people as individuals and don't unfairly lump them into groups or judge them based on group identity politics and you back this statement up by... casting aspersions upon and condemning an entire group of people based on group identity politics. "We don't make broad generalizations or judgements about large groups of people, but that large group of people over there does it all the time, and they're horrible for doing it." Look, I make a point to never say ignorant shit like "The right always does this..." or "The left never does that..." because people who say these things, on both sides of the aisle, sound like partisan idiots. Neither side of America's political divide has an exclusive claim on ethics or morality and I find it equally annoying when people from either party say that they do or condemn the other side as bereft of these concepts. The vast majority of people on the left and the right in this country are basically good people who are usually overshadowed by outspoken morons on their respective teams, and of course the media focuses on them. Controversy means ratings, which mean money. I don't think I'm saying anything new here.

As to Mr. Steinhauser's complaint (he blames the media for colluding with Democrats to portray all teabaggers as violent racists based on the recent words and actions of a few), going on television and stating that you condemn violence and racism is all well and good but it's also pretty much the very least you could do to stop it from happening within your organization, aside from completely ignoring it of course. I'm just saying, I see teabag protesters holding up signs advocating violence and racism against Obama all the time and I never see any of their fellow protesters or organizers confronting them about it. Yes, I understand that they make up a tiny minority of your group but if you don't adequately police yourselves or make any kind of effort to weed those people out because they help to swell your numbers and fuel your outrage then you are also tacitly approving of their message. What do you think the words "If Brown can't stop it, a Browning can" on the sign at the top of this post are supposed to mean? Freedom of speech is great but I don't see anyone else at least trying to get him to put that sign down out of concern for how it portrays your movement as a whole. Until you make the effort to remove the people holding these signs or leaving threatening voicemail messages or spitting on congressmen from your organization, you will all rightly be lumped into the same ideological camp regardless of your protestations to the contrary. That's not media bias, it's political reality.

Obama Reacts To Health Care Vote

After a hard fought victory President Obama gets in a few shots at obstructionist Republicans whilst kicking back and taking a well-deserved rest:


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Health Care Bill Passes, America Undestroyed

Finally.

It passed in the House 219-212. Yes, it got fairly ugly and the Democrats will definitely lose some congressional seats this fall (the pendulum of history shows that the party in power almost always does in midterm elections so don't read too much into that, i.e. dissatisfaction with health care reform) but I'm now officially giving the Republicans only 4:1 odds of gaining a majority of either house of congress come election day. Despite everything that party's been screaming over the past fourteen months polls show that the majority of Americans want the changes that were passed today and I'm thinking that the wave of the right's outrage might've crested a bit too early at this point. Plus running on a platform of taking away everyone's new health care coverage and consumer protections isn't exactly a winning strategy. We'll find out in November.

Something Fairly Incoherent Someone Else Said

"What I dislike most about ObamaCare though is this notion that the leftists in Washington think that they can pass this thing through, cram it through with disregard to consider the will of the people, disregard of these constitutional legal traditional processes that have thus far been used in America's um... in America's processes to allow policy to be adopted that do it here adhere to the will of the people." -Sarah Palin, trying way too hard to sound smart whilst talking to Bill O'Reilly about the health care reform bill (transcribed by me, just now).

It's nice to have a good laugh in the middle of your day.

"Can You Give Me More Details About This Bill?"

In the comment section of my last post regular commenter, friend of this blog, family member and rational conservative one L bill wrote the following:

A coworker turned to me last week and said "next week they vote on whether the gov't takes over 20% of the economy." I asked if he was talking about healthcare (I already knew the answer) and he said "yeah". So my next question was what they were voting on. He gave me a general answer, so I clarified that I wanted to know more specifics about the bill. He said he couldn't tell me anything because he haddn't made time to read [more specifics about] the bill.

I feel like this sums up 95% of Americans... either Republican or Democrat. They latch on to the1 or 2 talking points that are easy and ignore the rest... and if that 20% figure is accurate, then it seems like there's a problem.

I know you are better read than my coworker, but I only see the general outrage in most of your blog posts. Can you give me more details about this bill, JBW? It doesn't need to be in this comments section. I know it's a lot of information.

As I began to answer I had the thought that some other readers might have the same question about tomorrows vote so I decided to make it a post instead. That number is actually closer to 16% (1/6 of our economy already goes toward health care and that number has been rising for decades). I haven't gone into any great specifics about the legislation thus far because frankly they've only just finished crafting it, and even if it passes both houses of congress certain aspects will be changed again in committee after that before it reaches President Obama's desk. Some things I can tell you:

• It will cover 95% of Americans.
• Almost everyone will be required to participate (that's the only way it will work to cover that many people).
• Consumer safeguards will include no denial of coverage for preexisting conditions including children, no higher premiums for women, no lifetime dollar limits on policies for those with serious illnesses, parents can keep their kids on their policies until age 26 and starting out there will be a high risk pool for the uninsured.
• It expands the federal-state Medicaid insurance program for the poor.
• It closes the "doughnut hole" coverage gap in the Medicare prescription drug benefit that seniors fall into once they have spent $2,830.
• Businesses are not required to offer coverage and instead employers are charged a fee if the government subsidizes their workers' coverage; businesses with 50 or fewer workers are exempt from this fee.
• Tax credits are provided for purchasing insurance.
• Small businesses, the self-employed and the uninsured could pick a plan offered through new state-based purchasing pools called exchanges which would offer the same kind of purchasing power that employees of big companies benefit from.
• This will not be a government-run insurance plan. People purchasing coverage through the new insurance exchanges would have the option of signing up for national plans overseen by the federal office that manages the health plans available to members of Congress.
• No health plan would be required to offer coverage for abortion. In plans that do cover abortion, policyholders would have to pay for it separately, and that money would have to be kept in a separate account from taxpayer money. And no, your grandmother will not be executed for being too old either.
  

As I've said before, this bill is far from perfect. I personally would have liked to see a single-payer system instituted but that idea was scrapped some time last year. I would also like to see some of the proposals put forth by Republicans (although not wholly owned by them) like tort reform, malpractice reform, increased fraud investigation and purchasing coverage across state lines included as well. Hopefully some of these ideas will find their way into the final legislation as it's instituted and refined over the next several years.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that reform will cost $940 billion over ten years whilst trimming federal deficits by an estimated $138 billion over that same time period, and studies have shown that increased preventative care will further defray current costs. To put those numbers in perspective, we've already spent over $970 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan and that cost is estimated to climb to between two and three trillion by the time we leave those countries, if ever. We spend more than twice as much on health care per capita than any other Western industrialized nation and our overall level of care is mediocre by comparison. Yes, the United States has the best health care system in the world but it has become increasingly obvious that only the financially well off are able to take full advantage of it; the rest of America is forced to incur what are often crippling lifetime debts in order to do so.

Presidents have talked about reforming our health care system since Teddy Roosevelt was in office and as every administration since has failed to do so Americans' insurance premiums and costs have continued to increase while coverage and levels of care have similarly decreased. I honestly don't know if Obama's reforms will solve these problems (nobody does, although most of the provisions sound pretty good to me) but I do know that our current path is entirely unsustainable financially and has been for quite some time. Doing nothing for decades has clearly not worked. I for one am ready to try something else. I hope this was what you were looking for, one L.

Something Someone Else Said

"[W]e really judge the extremism of legislation based on the positioning of Republicans and Democrats. If I'd told you that the Obama administration was going to release a health-care bill that would attract every Senate Democrat -- from Bernie Sanders and Barbara Boxer to Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman -- and either endorsements or neutrality from the American Medical Association, the hospital industry, the pharmaceutical industry, AARP, labor, and much of the insurance industry (though their press releases have become more oppositional recently), you'd have thought that was a pretty moderate, consensus-oriented bill. Which it is! But most Americans don't think that because the Republicans decided to treat it as the second coming of fascism." -Ezra Klein, The Washington Post.

And they've said and done everything they possibly could in order to portray President Obama as a mixture of Hitler, Stalin and Mao. It started on day one and they've just gotten louder and more absurd every day since. I shudder to think of how bad things will get in Washington if the GOP is able to take control of even one house of congress in November, let alone both of them. And if either of those scenarios does happen it won't be because their ideas were better or smarter, only that they were able to yell "Fascist!" long enough and loud enough over the previous two years as Obama has been trying to pull us out of the economic nosedive he inherited. Sometimes I really hate politics.

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