December 2009 Archives

NORAD has been tracking Santa's Christmas Eve trip for years, and now has a website so kids of all ages can follow him as he heads toward their house.  Tonight, Santa has been seen all over Asia and Europe, and has just left the UK headed for Ireland and Iceland.  Here's his latest video:Have a Merry Christmas!...

Baton Rouge, LaI throw that little tidbit to let you know I am away for the holidays. So, I do what I can, but I felt compelled to share this latest idea in education with you folks. Consider it a chuckle before the holidays as I hope no one takes this seriously. Friday was our last day of school in 2009. Academy had been generous enough to donate about 50 bikes to the cause. We...

I suppose everybody has a particular portion of this alleged health care "reform" bill passed by the Senate which they find the most objectionable. For some it's the individual mandate, for some it's the lack of a public option. For me it's the 40% excise tax on the so-called "Cadillac" plans. Better known as the 'screw organized labor and the middle-class' tax, in my opinion. It's not in the House version, they propose an income...

Imagine the Republicans in Washington took their Big Boy Pills this and decided to behave with the decorum the Senate deserved.  You might get something along the lines of Tom Coburn repeatedly defending the President and writing him letters of encouragement: "I try to write him about every week or two," Coburn said of Obama. "Write him a note, encourage him. No one has a tougher job than he does." The two last spoke when Obama...

The White House and the Republicans were strange bedfellows this weekend, both asserting on every talking head show how much the insurance companies hated the Senate health care "reform" bill  that passed a crucial procedural vote early this morning.  Defending that position with Ed Schultz on Morning Joe last week, Axelrod actually asserted that the insurance companies were "vigorously opposing the bill."  Schultz argued that the bill was a "gift" to the insurance business.  Have...

Two items of recommended reading this morning, both pointing to underlying problems which have surfaced in the health care debate but greatly affect the passing of any legislation containing substantive changes. First, Paul Krugman in yesterday's New York Times about the filibuster rule in the Senate:"...Democrats won big last year, running on a platform that put health reform front and center. In any other advanced democracy this would have given them the mandate and the...

Link post only:  Vicki Kennedy talks about health care reform....

December 20, 2009   Representative John Culberson, 7th District514 Longworth Building Washington DC 20515-4307   10000 Memorial Drive, Suite 620 Houston, TX  77024-3490   Dear Representative Culberson:   Thank you for your response to my letter expressing my opinion on health care reform with another of your empty, partisan, form letters written by someone on your staff. I truly appreciate the time it took one of your minions to add me to the distribution...

The conspiracy theorist in me says that all of last week's hoopla over health care was a ruse, a slight of hand, a misdirection to detract our attention from the goings-on at the Supreme Court. Maybe not. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Either way it happened and very little attention was paid to it. Either way the Obama administration once again intervened in defense of the Bush administration's program of torturing so-called "enemy combatants"...

Many of you may remember when Bob Geldof got a group of musicians together on behalf of Africa in 1984 and recorded a song whose proceeds went to famine relief in Ethiopia. (http://www.bobgeldof.info/Charity/bandaid.html)I don't know a group of musicians that I can get together, but I have written some new lyrics that are apropos this year.Check out this link to the original recording, but read along with my lyrics as it plays and see...