Year: 2009

Quote of the Day

So every morning I would wake up at 5:30am, ride the Metro to Union Station, and walk to the headquarters of the Heritage Foundation, where Laura’s studio is located. Her show went live at 9am and interns were expected to arrive around 7. Laura was never there. She would arrive around 8 and head to the gym in the basement of Heritage. In the meantime, interns would be reading every major newspaper in the country in search of news that she could talk about. All the content was developed by the producers and transcribed by the interns for her: a funny anecdote from Wichita; some out of context quote from a war opponent; any piece of audio from Capitol Hill or from broadcast news.

Right around 8:58 Laura would come storming in, still wet from her after gym shower. The producers would quickly brief her on what she was going to say and by 9:05 she would be talking about what she “read in the Post this morning.”

I don’t write this in order to trash the show. I could excuse her berating an intern for getting her latte wrong or attacking another intern on the air for misspelling a word if she had genuine talent. The producers there are smart and funny and genuinely kind to all of the interns and guests. But even they made it very clear to the interns that anyone could do what Laura does. “Our job,” one producer once said to us, “is to make what she does look difficult. It’s not.” If she was just an entertainer then all of this would be superfluous, but she is a best-selling author and what passes today as a public intellectual. Yet she doesn’t even read the paper herself.

It shows. Rush shows up to his studio hours before his show begins and does most of his own research. He is prepared when his show goes live and as a result he is an engaging host and an informed commentator, despite his poor understanding of many issues. Laura, other than being a woman, offers little that is different than the drivel heard from the typical talk-radio personality.

Light night at the PB Pub Presents… Merle Haggard

I post this song, as a statement to the sniveling idiots, who seem to think this Country is a terrible Country and that we torture people and so on… You know who you are and this is to serve you notice.

This is from 1970; during the height of the Vietnam conflict.

Open Thread: Obama's Healthcare presser

So, what do you all think about the Press Conference thing tonight on Healthcare?

Some notes:

  1. Steven Green and Dr. Melissa Clouthier live Blogged about it.
  2. I watched Bill OReilly’s reaction to it, it was as I expected. Bill did not understand any of it.
  3. Some in Congress are saying that there will be no vote before summer recess.
  4. Pelosi says that Congress should work till it is passed.
  5. Obama feels that the Blue Dog Democrats are going to ruin his Presidency.
  6. Some feel the Healthcare bill is better than nothing at all.

My take: I watched the presser myself. All I heard were generalities, no details. Mostly talking points and bluster.

So, what do you all think about his Presser?

Off early for the evening.

I shaved my beard and my hair and in the process, pulled something in my shoulder. 😯

Needless to say, it hurts quite a bit.   :beatup:

Hopefully, I’ll be back to normal tomorrow. :hypnotized:

-Pat

Update: I’m gonna try to get some writing done here. It still hurts, but not quite as bad.

The more things change…..

The more they stay the same….

Reporting from Washington — Invoking an argument used by President George W. Bush, the Obama administration has turned down a request from a watchdog group for a list of health industry executives who have visited the White House to discuss the massive healthcare overhaul.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sent a letter to the Secret Service asking about visits from 18 executives representing health insurers, drug makers, doctors and other players in the debate. The group wants the material in order to gauge the influence of those executives in crafting a new healthcare policy.

The Secret Service sent a reply stating that documents revealing the frequency of such visits were considered presidential records exempt from public disclosure laws. The agency also said it was advised by the Justice Department that the Secret Service was within its rights to withhold the information because of the “presidential communications privilege.”

via White House declines to disclose visits by health industry executives – Los Angeles Times.

Hope! Change!

Yeah, Right!

Just another lying Politician, like the rest of them. No Change, at all.

Updated to Add: I did not want to say too much here. Because my shoulder was hurting me pretty bad. It is a little batter and plus, I do want people to come to my blog. This whole thing stinks to high heaven, and even the Liberals are pissed about it; and rightly so. Barack Obama and the other Democratic Party candidates  railed against the Bush Administration for this same very thing during the 2008 election. So, what does Obama do, once he is in the White House? The very same damned thing. President Barack Obama promised total transparency when he was elected and what does he do? Lies out his rather large ass, that’s what! I tend to believe that Obama is going to face a very large backlash here and this one might be his undoing come 2012.

Others Covering: The Plum Line, MyDD, TPMMuckraker, Buck Naked Politics, The Confluence, Salon, Denver Post, Sunlight Foundation, Think Progress, Taylor Marsh,, Talking Points Memo, Michelle Malkin, Outside The Beltway, The Impolitic, Media Blog, Right Wing News, JustOneMinute, In The Agora and Sister Toldjah

Bobby Jindal makes a good argument against Socialized Medicine.

Some very good points made here…:

In Washington, it seems history always repeats itself. That’s what’s happening now with health-care reform. This is an unfortunate turn of events for Americans who are legitimately concerned about the skyrocketing cost of a basic human need.

In 1993 and 1994, Hillary Clinton’s health-care reform proposal failed because it was concocted in secret without the guiding hand of public consensus-building, and because it was a philosophical over-reach. Today President Barack Obama is repeating these mistakes.

The reason is plain: The left in Washington has concluded that honesty will not yield its desired policy result. So it resorts to a fundamentally dishonest approach to reform. I say this because the marketing of the Democrats’ plans as presented in the House of Representatives and endorsed heartily by President Obama rests on three falsehoods.

First, Mr. Obama doggedly promises that if you like your (private) health-care coverage now, you can keep it. That promise is hollow, because the Democrats’ reforms are designed to push an ever-increasing number of Americans into a government-run health-care plan.

If a so-called public option is part of health-care reform, the Lewin Group study estimates over 100 million Americans may leave private plans for government-run health care. Any government plan will benefit from taxpayer subsidies and be able to operate at a financial loss—competing unfairly in the marketplace until private plans are driven out of business. The government plan will become so large that it will set, rather than negotiate, prices. This will inevitably lead to monopoly, with a resulting threat to the quality of our health care

via Bobby Jindal’s Bipartisan Health-Care Reform – WSJ.com.

Of course, when Bobby Jindal makes this Argument:

Second, the Democrats disingenuously argue their reforms will not diminish the quality of our health care even as government involvement in the delivery of that health care increases massively. For all of us who have seen the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to hurricanes, this contention is laughable on its face.

Zendar The Stupid writes:

On number 2, I see Bobby still hasn’t learned the lesson of the difference between “There are things the government can and should provide” and “Let’s underfund these services, they waste money.” You get no cred talking about FEMA as a Republican, because your state didn’t exactly pick up the slack there after Katrina, Bob.

This argument is so damn stupid, that it is absolutely pathetic. Hence the name of this idiot’s blog. In case Mr. Stupid has forgotten, Bobby Jindal was NOT the Governor during Katrina.  Kathleen Blanco; a Democrat, was in office. A Democrat who did not have a damn clue as to how to run a State. To cover for her blatant inability to run a State Government, she tried to blame BUSH for the failures during the Katrina Disaster. Nice try at spin there buddy, but this Blogger clearly remembers that whole little incident and how the Liberal Media tried to use it to slime Bush.

Funny how when the Liberals begin to lose an argument they have to resort to Ad-Hominem attacks and straw man arguments. Losing the Healthcare debate? Blame Bush! Economy in the toilet? Stimulus not working? Blame Bush! It is quite lame, but very humorous to watch.