in light of the conservative-noise-machine’s misrepresentation of the health care reform bill, consider the following from rc3.org:
I’ve seen a somewhat common piece of bad analysis I’ve seen over the past week, and have been surprised to see people correct it. As you may know, the House of Representatives passed a health care reform bill last night, 220 to 215. 39 Democrats voted against it. The fact that the Democrats couldn’t get everyone on board is being treated as a flaw in their strategy when in fact I’m sure their leadership sees it as the key. The bill passed in the House will be merged with whatever bill is passed in the Senate, and that’s the bill both the House and Senate will vote on again to be sent to the President for signature.
Every vote over the minimum necessary to secure passage represents compromises that the Democrats as a group would prefer not to make. It’s not that Nancy Pelosi was lucky to pass the bill, it’s that the Democrats wrote the strongest bill they could that would get enough votes to pass. That’s good strategy.
sounds like a solid plan to me. i’ll expand on this theory with regards to the fact that republicans continually produce votes with nearly 100% party support. this either speaks to the inclusive nature and variance of thought among the democratic party…or the republicans are just too short-sighted to employ a similar tactic.
At 6:45pm PST, we here at onelonelysuccess.com are prepared to make a call in the 2008 Presidential Election:
Senator Barack Obama (D) from Illinois has won the presidential election over John McCain (R) of Arizona and will become the 44th President of the United States.
so one of my prankster friends sent me this b/c my friends are a bunch of jokers who think that they are comedians who deserve their own fuck HBO special.
*love you*
anyway, when I saw it I couldnt help but think of the great-fuck-state of FLORIDA!
now i know that according to all the polls, even a backward-fuck-state like FL couldnt dick up this election for the rest of us (AGAINx2) but it’s hard to forget the past when you’ve been burned.
the rude pundit sums up perfectly the impact of Obama’s infomercial to racist-white-conservative-america:
If you still thought prior to it that Barack Obama was going to rape your white wife and kill your white children, there’s no amount of ad time that would change your mind.
the “rest” of us watched it and were—once again—amazingly proud to have supported Obama for the past 20months.
Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.
personally, i’m digging on “crossed out name” but your mileage my vary. here’s classic ryan adams courtesy of youtube. i think this is my favorite ryanadam’s performance and keeps me squeaking on my harmonica in attempts to duplicate his sound. so far, my harmonica skills are slightly better than FAIL but not quite up to being just “suck”.
in unrelated news, today i helped teach a 4hour lab to first-year med students. the topic was blood histology and it was exhausting. to compound the monotony of teaching blood histo was the fact that the class was divided into 2 sections which meant teaching it once and then repeating it 120mins later. this effect was also compounded by the fact that the class was broken up into 12 small groups per lab period.
by the end of the day, i felt like i had repeated myself 1000x and caught a glimpse of what it must be like to give a political stump speech and hit the same talking point ad nauseam. I guess the only difference was that everything I said was true…everytime I said it.
so i’ve been reading/listening to one report after another talking about obama’s relationship w/ his “pastor” jeremy wright and mccain’s relationships w/ falwell and robertson and i wish that:
1.) politicians didnt feel obligated to seek out support from “men of faith”
2.) americans didnt care if their presidential nominees “go to church” or “pray to jesus”
i was talking to stonebraker about this over IM while listening to “countdown w/ keith olberman” and it went like this:
Me: i hate pastors
Stonebraker: why?
Me: b/c they have way too much influence on american society/culture
while the highest cost of the failed bush policies are counted in the number of dead in iraq, other critical programs are being cut in order to fund the administration’s errant foreign policies.
From the American Association of Medical Colleges:
Bush Budget Cuts Will Cripple U.S. Teaching Hospitals and Erode Medical Progress
“The AAMC strongly opposes the administration’s proposal to slash Medicare payments to America’s teaching hospitals. Cutting indirect medical education (IME) payments by more than 60 percent, combined with other Medicare cuts affecting all hospitals, will have devastating results. Millions of Medicare patients—as well as the uninsured, the disabled, and the severely ill—rely on teaching hospitals for health care and community services. Such unprecedented cuts to these institutions will endanger their ability to provide the full spectrum of patient care and treatment, erode their fragile trauma and emergency services, and impede the progress they have made in advancing the health of all Americans through education and medical research.”
yesterday ralph nader committed himself to a third consecutive run for the presidency.
here’s senator obama’s reaction from the only paper of record, the NY Times:
Mr. Obama, campaigning in Ohio, said: “Ralph Nader deserves enormous credit for the work he did as a consumer advocate. But his function as a perennial candidate is not putting food on the table of workers.”
Mr. Obama also criticized Mr. Nader for equating Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush: “Eight years later, people realize that Ralph did not know what he was talking about.”
Obama is dead on with his impressions of a 2008 Nader presidential-bid. Remember when Ralph was a hero? These days he just seems angry and bitter. Damn shame.
so with tonight’s results in the democratic primaries (essentially a split decision), the super delegates have become even more important in the democratic nomination.
this scares me.
as we march towards november, we face the likelihood that the american people find themselves in a parliamentary race for the democratic nominee.
meanwhile, the AP will continue to re-write its headlines and the asterisk to every story will be barack obama.
