Friday, September 16, 2011

Republi-CON Congressional Spending Bills Hypocrisy

"In last year’s campaigns, Republicans ripped into Democrats for failing to perform one of Congress’s most basic duties: providing money in a timely way for the operations of government.

But Republicans acknowledged Thursday that they would miss the deadline they had promised to meet. They began to rush a stopgap spending bill through the House because, they said, Congress could not finish work on any of the 12 regular appropriations bills before the new fiscal year starts in two weeks, on Oct. 1."

Read The New York Times, House Republicans Push Stopgap Spending Bill.

An Interesting Article Regarding Education

"What happens when you take three American kids and throw them in a classroom 5,000 miles from home where they can’t speak the language?" Read The New York Times, My Family’s Experiment in Extreme Schooling.

Moral Confusion and Public Health Illiteracy

"If Republican presidential candidates want to debate sexual health and hygiene, it would be nice if they displayed more collective knowledge and judgment than your average eighth-grade family-life class. During the Tampa debate, a viewer longed for a blunt, part-time football coach — or whomever they draft into teaching health classes nowadays — to mount the stage and present the facts of life.

The human papillomavirus (HPV) is a nasty, sexually transmitted disease contracted by about three-quarters of Americans at some point. You can have it, and spread it, without knowing it. In some women, the virus causes abnormal cells in the lining of the cervix that can develop into cancerous lesions. Virtually all cervical cancer is caused by HPV. There is, however, a vaccine that is highly effective against the most dangerous HPV strains. The main side effect, as you’d expect in a procedure involving a needle, is fainting. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that all girls should get it anyway."

Read the Washington Post, A dose of reality for the HPV debate, which imagines "a parent-daughter conversation about sexual restraint and maturity that includes the words: 'Honey, I’m going to deny you a vaccine that prevents a horrible, bleeding cancer, just as a little reminder of the religious values I’ve been trying to teach you.' This would be morally monstrous. Such ethical electroshock therapy has nothing to do with cultivation of character in children. It certainly has nothing to do with Christianity, which teaches that moral rules are created for the benefit of the individual, not to punish them with preventable death."

Funny Signs

From an email:

Sign over a gynecologist's office:
"Dr. Jones, at your cervix."

In a podiatrist's office:
"Time wounds all heels."

On a septic tank truck:
We are #1, in the #2 business.
"Yesterday's Meals on Wheels"

At a proctologist's door:
"To expedite your visit, please back in."

On a plumber's truck:
"We repair what your husband fixed."

On another plumber's truck:
"Don't sleep with a drip. Call your plumber."

On a church's bill board:
"Seven days without God makes one weak."

At a tire shop:
"Invite us to your next blowout."

At a towing company:
"We don't charge an arm and a leg. We want tows."

On an electrician's truck:
"Let us remove your shorts."

In a nonsmoking Area:
"If we see smoke, we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action."

On a maternity room door:
"Push. Push. Push."

At an optometrist's Office:
"If you don't see what you're looking for, you've come to the right place."

On a taxidermist's window:
"We really know our stuff."

On a fence:
"Salesmen welcome! Dog food is expensive!"

At a car dealership:
"The best way to get back on your feet - miss a car payment."

Outside a muffler shop:
"No appointment necessary. We hear you coming."

In a veterinarian's waiting room:
"Be back in 5 minutes. Sit! Stay!"

At the electric company:
"We would be delighted if you send in your payment. However, if you don't, you will be."

In a restaurant window:
"Don't stand there and be hungry; come on in and get fed up."

In the front yard of a funeral Home:
"Drive carefully. We'll wait."

At a propane filling station:
"Thank heaven for little grills."

At a radiator shop:
"Best place in town to take a leak."

Sign on the back of another septic tank truck:
"Caution - this truck is full of political promises."

Why the Individual Mandate, Because Ron Paul is a Hypocrite

UPDATE: "Compassion is out of fashion among the G.O.P.’s base." Read The New York Times, Free to Die.

"During Monday’s debate, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked whether an uninsured 30-year-old who had chosen to go without insurance should be left to die if he falls unexpectedly ill. Ron Paul dodged the question. 'What he should do is whatever he wants to do and take responsibility for himself,' Paul said. 'That’s what freedom is about.' Blitzer pressed the issue. 'But, Congressman, are you saying the society should just let him die?' 'Yeah!' whooped the crowd. But Paul stammered out a 'no.' And perhaps for good reason.

In 2008, his campaign manager, a healthy-but-uninsured 49-year-old, died from pneumonia and left his family with $400,000 in medical debt." Read the Washington Post, Why libertarianism fails in health care.

Someone should ask Paul who paid the medical bills.

As the article notes, "though it sounds nice to say that charities will pick up the slack, any hospital system in America will tell you that even with Medicare and Medicaid assuming much of the burden for the most intractable and expensive cases, charities are not capable of or interested in fully compensating the medical system for the services needed by the un- or underinsured."

Does Palin Have a Point About the "Collusion of Big Government and Big Business and Big Finance to the Detriment of All the Rest — to the Little Guys"

UPDATE II: About that 'detriment of all the rest' of us, which I call predatory business practices, did you know that Wall Street "don’t want the American people to know the extent to which speculators keep oil prices artificially high and the great damage that does to our economy. " Read the Washington Post, What Wall Street doesn’t want us to know about oil prices.

All part of the Republi-CON war on the middle class.


UPDATE: More on Palin's observation regarding 'corporate crony capitalism', "[n]early 5,400 former congressional staffers have left Capitol Hill to become federal lobbyists in the past 10 years, according to a new study that documents the extent of the revolving door between Congress and K Street." Read the Washington Post, Revolving door of employment between Congress, lobbying firms, study shows.

At a Tea Party event in Indianola, Iowa, Palin "made three interlocking points. First, that the United States is now governed by a 'permanent political class,' drawn from both parties, that is increasingly cut off from the concerns of regular people. Second, that these Republicans and Democrats have allied with big business to mutual advantage to create what she called 'corporate crony capitalism.' Third, that the real political divide in the United States may no longer be between friends and foes of Big Government, but between friends and foes of vast, remote, unaccountable institutions (both public and private)." Read The New York Times, Some of Sarah Palin's Ideas Cross the Political Divide.

She could be a real reformer.

If you "look at what Palin did while in office in Alaska—the only record she has—[it] shows a very different politician: one who worked with Democrats to tame Big Oil and solve the great problem at the heart of the state’s politics." Read The Atlantic, The Tragedy of Sarah Palin.