Sporadic

So I think Mittens won the debate last night by not losing the debate last night. He also won by not being the Mittens we’ve come to know and fear.

Sure, he still promised that he would kill Big Bird and show Jim Lehrer the door. Yes, of course he said he would eliminate “Obama-Care”. He told us that spending money on “green initiatives” was bad, he made a point to explain how the President was doing the wrong thing by not drilling for oil in National Parks.

But, and here’s the weird thing, whenever push came to shove on Paul Ryan’s budget he basically pulled the old bugs bunny with the charging bull routine and moved away.

He spent a lot of time saying pretty words. He spent a lot of time saying that stuff that could be true but just well…isn’t. He changed his claims on health care, he changed his tax plan. He’s basically “rebooting” himself as Romney 1.0.

Mr. Romney said a similar thing on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” At the time, he said, “I’m not getting rid of all of health care reform. Of course, there are a number of things that I like in health care reform that I’m going to put in place. One is to make sure that those with pre-existing conditions can get coverage.”

But Mr. Romney’s aides later clarified that he would only explicitly guarantee insurance for people with pre-existing conditions if they have maintained coverage with no significant lapses.

Romney: My number one principal is, there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit. … I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans. … I will lower taxes on middle-income families.

He never explains how he’s gonna do this. It’s like me saying “I will promise to walk to the moon in the next 6 years by building a very tall staircase from stuff I find around the house”. Yes I have stuff around the house, but how can I make that into a moon staircase?

The interesting thing for political wonks is that he appears to have decided that America is not buying the Romney 2.0 version. He tried to be the Dick Cheney republican with the cross and the flag, the anti-gay, anti-women, anti- immigrant thing. Apparently, either he’s not good at that or America is moving away from the crazy tea-bag thing.

We’re gonna have to see in the coming days how this all plays out. Does the kinder gentler Mittens work? Will it still work when a President, who frankly looked stunned by this switcher-mitt-a-roo, figures out how to process this?

I expected to hear more about the 47%, Bain Capitol, yachts registered in the Caymens from the President. He didn’t hit Mitt where Mitt is most vulnerable- his wallet. There was also no mention of the things that make the President awesome like  don’t ask don’t tell, equal pay for women, health care for the poorest and reasonable immigration law.

There are still 2 more debates and 1 from Biden and Ryan- I guess we’ll see what happens then.

Let’s talk about the Tea Party and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. I need to understand why folks don’t like it.

I have,  throughout the past, made my political leanings clear. I am so far left that you can’t see me from the middle. I know this.

For godsakes I supported Kerry.*

So yes, I know what you’re thinking- of course he supports something that President Obama supports. And yes, I probably would, however….

Here’ the thing I would love to have someone explain for me:

Why is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or “ObamaCare”** bad?

I like to understand the arguments for and against something. I want to at least know that I understand the point that someone else is making before I decide that they’re wrong. As far as this goes I don’t even understand what the fake reasons are so I can understand the real reasons.

Example:

Issue: Off Shore Drilling laws

Fake Reason: We need to do more off shore drilling. If we hem the oil companies in by making them subscribe to overly protective environmental laws the oil companies won’t be able to make profits and therefore won’t drill. This will mean we have to get all our oil from terrorists and gas will get really expensive.

Real Reason: Big oil is making record profits and can spread that money around to politicians.

So, back to health care.  I need to know both real and fake. I hear this whole “death panel” argument, but that’s a load of hooey. There’s also the “it’s gonna cost us money” argument but yesterday during the supreme court hearings the lawyer against the health care act admitted that most of the cost of the health act would be from people who already qualify for government health benefits actually signing up for them.  This comprised 95% of the expense calculated by the state of Florida.

How is someone signing up for something that they are already allowed to have bad? That’s like Kellogg’s saying that they had too many expenses because everyone actually clipped out the coupon for frosted flakes and used it.

Also I don’t know the real reasons. Is there money that Insurance companies will lose? Where is the funding coming from? Why is the right against it?

I found this article, but not only is it poorly written and unnecessarily confusing, I didn’t know any more at the end.

So seriously, if you can explain either the real or the fake reasons, please comment below. I won’t delete anything that’s reasonable (and lacking in  swearwords) and maybe it’ll help me make some sense or what’s going on.

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*And there was never a blander more unelectable presidential candidate from Mass who wasn’t Mike Dukasis

** Such an idiotic rebranding

*** Other links, HealthCare and women

I made a shocking decision this morning and I am encouraging everyone I know (out of state) to vote republican.

Of course I’m not advocating that you do that here.

I want everything here in California to get better, I want to keep personal and civil rights in place, I am hoping for a day when everyone is treated equally and people are not just interested in the rights of oil companies or banks. A time when no one, no matter how poor they are, gets quality health care. I don’t want some crazy lady who outsourced 15 k jobs from her own company to do that to us, but as for the rest of you… let’s do this thing!

Here’s my logic:

I heard an interview on the news this morning about how the “do-nothing administration hadn’t been able to tackle the enormous deficit or get us out of two wars or fix wall street or do anything about the oil spill in the gulf” and that’s why this person was voting republican. I actually heard the needle scrape off the record in my head. “What!!??” thinks I.

• Doesn’t this guy realize that the previous administration got us in to two wars that ran up that deficit?
• Doesn’t he realize that republicans actively advocate (even now) for less regulation on banks and big business (read: oil companies)
• Isn’t that the very definition of stupidity? Doing the same thing twice and expecting different results?

Here we are at a landmark point in our nation’s history. We have a president who has good ideas and wants to put them into practice, but what we hear from the right is “We won’t work with this guy! We’re going to drag our feet and complain!” and most interestingly “Where’s your birth certificate!?” (it’s here)

Do you remember when you were in grade school and someone was being obstinate, stubborn and stupid? What did you say? “Let the baby have his bottle” So I say “vote republican!”

Then they’ll come in…screw everything back up…complain some more…point fingers at everyone but themselves…yell a bunch on Fox and Friends…and in two years we’ll be ready to re-elect the president.

Only like I said… don’t vote for Meg Whitman or any of these jackasses. (yes I get the irony) Because while I agree that we should let the republicans screw stuff up but good. I don’t want then to mess up stuff where I live.

Thank you and long live the tea party in every state but mine,

-dac

PS yes I know that I actually said the words “how much damage can a one term republican do?” back in 2000. Yes I know the answer to that it’s : Exactly one crapload. So…I’m ready to eat my words and go  back into the dark ages when my “elect a douche bag” plan backfires. If that does transpire I’ll categorically deny everything and go into hiding in a secret undisclosed location (read: Canada)

So I had this weird dream a couple nights ago and I wanted to make sure I could recount it. I’m not sure if it’s funny or if it’s signs of my larger sociopathic tendencies and fear of the republican party. I woke from the dream, not wanting to forget it, I scrawled out these notes on a beside pad:

Adverb

Obama

Subsidy

republican

pronoun

deregulate

From that, I have total recall of the dream, which goes…a little… like this (1..2..1..2..3..4 Hit it!):

To speak, everyone needed to buy each word as they said it. So if you wanted to say “Hi honey, how are the kids? Where’s tea?” you’d have to buy all those words from the various words markets. Just like there’s a meat market and a grocery, there were noun markets and verb markets, etc. So I was the guy who sells adverbs*. I was plying my trade as someone who sells adverbs would, when this world word recession hits and the adverb market tanks. Everyone in the word market is struck equally, except the guys who sell pronouns.

The pronoun industry, during the previous administration had be completely deregulated by the republican party who ran on the slogan “If you can’t say it with pronouns, then you’re probably gay”.  So suddenly it’s so expensive to buy words that aren’t pronouns that people are only using pronouns and then acting out the rest of the sentence. For some unknown reason that I can’t explain anymore than I can explain the rest of the premise the only verb anyone wants to use is “to hump” which is symbolized by a humping motion. So a collection of sample sentences might be:

SHE (points at a woman) (humping motion) IT (points at a couch). At which point the woman would then be required by the republican deregulation laws to hump the couch.

THEY (point to a group of dogs) (humping motion) HIM (points at a guy). The dogs hump the guy

This happened in the dream for longer than I feel comfortable telling you.

So the Obama administration, hoping to bolster the other word industries** subsidized the other words so that we can bring down prices and allow for “more effective communication”. This is roundly dismissed as word socialism by the right wing pundits, however, since they are right wing pundits they refuse to use the subsidized words so they can only use pronouns and the humping motion. They have to resort to images to indicate their nouns which eliminates all radio talk shows. Fox news eliminates the crawl because they can’t use the words “humping motion” and substitutes a constantly changing roll of small pictures of cars and girls in bikinis. However, above for the main content all of the TV pundits take their turn doing the same sentence over and over again which goes like this:

HE (points to crudely drawn crayon picture of Obama) (humping motion***) IT (points to American Flag)

This content runs 24 x 7.

Meanwhile, the rest of the nation, with it subsidized word industry quietly goes about its business. Eventually the word industry recovers and the democratically controlled congress, using the payback and interest of the word subsidy, repeals the pronoun deregulation. French Prime Minister Sarkozy send a giant gilded “O” to America in thanks for allowing the entire world to begin using full sentences again. It’s placed in Long Beach Harbor.

At the same time a team of radical right wing lumberjacks carve a giant “W” visible from space into the Canadian north woods.

At this point I start laughing, for real, not in the dream and wake myself up.

There you have it. Do with that what you will.****

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*From Schoolhouse rock

** And cut down on chafing

*** BTW, if you’ve never had a dream where Glen Beck repeatedly does a humping motion I *highly* recommend it, even now, remembering it, I’m chuckling to myself

**** I’m pretty sure I can commit any crime at this point and then use this dream to prove out my insanity plea.