You can't say you didn't see it coming...

Here.  This is where we passed the "PATRIOT" act.  Notice how few people were in the room.  Notice how if it weren't for Maxine Waters, working all stinking day long, there wouldn't even be any recorded votes.  Don't forget the parts where Congressmen come in and say "hey, this bill is different from the one I agreed to last night".  Remember for a few months later, other Congressmen (Republican and Democrat) objecting to bits of the bill that were inserted while they weren't looking, and quietly removed them.

Conrast with the political theater that has been the health care debate.  How many people have had their hands in this pie?  How many trees killed, how many hard drives thrashed, how many good proposals stripped out and/or ignored?

Opponents have had their chance, gotten in their hits.  It's time for the grownups to get to work.  You can be part of the problem or part of the solution.

Oh, one more thing: you're welcome.

7+ hours in 1,000 words or less

Thanks to Fark.

Republicans: The American People want this bill gone because they hate it. Look at the polls.


Obama: Yes, but they love every individual thing in the bill when it isn't spun that there are going to be death panels and other lies you all made up. What they hate is the cost, but the reality is that bills cost money.

Republicans: But you are taking over the entire health care industry.

Obama: Alright, but you say that citing reasons which are actually Republican ideas that we included in the bill.

Republicans: Whatever, we want it all scrapped or we will continue to filibuster, and we don't want you to use reconciliation or anything else we used to ram our ideas down your throats for the first 6 years of Bush. These Senate rules that allow for a simple majority vote are un-American!

Obama: What don't you understand about how being in the minority works? If you want me to phrase it differently, we have a Democratic President and the 2nd largest majority ever, down from the largest majority ever by 1 vote, because the American people you are so fond of quoting voted your asses out after 8 years of you completely farking up our entire system. Know your place.

Republicans: Ok, fine, but the American people hate this bill because it costs too much money. We can't afford it.

Obama: Yeah, but the CBO states it will reduce our deficit in the long run compared to doing nothing. That's otherwise known as "not paying as much." It does cost money, and health care reform will cost a lot of money. It won't cost us more money than would otherwise be spent though.

Republicans: Fine, but we want it all done in small bills rather than a big, comprehensive one. That's how it should be done.

Obama: That's what we've done since you guys killed reform in the 90s. Now look where we are. If you go to fix one thing, you have to enforce it by fixing another thing, which leads to another thing, and not taking care of the side-effects each change has is the reason so many of our small bills in the past like the donut hole are now destroying us.

Republicans: But we want it all scrapped. We have to start over even though we agree on a majority of the things in the bill. We believe that suddenly all these issues will magically change and we will come up with brand new ideas tackling these problems that haven't been thought up in the past year. And we'll play fairly with you this time rather than completely abusing the filibuster process and demanding you do not use similar tactics that the majority gets to enjoy, we promise!

Obama: You already said you wanted it scrapped, I already said no.

Republicans: Ok well then we want the bill to consist mainly of our bill instead of yours. That way we can only cover 1/10th of all the uninsured people and basically do nothing useful to avert the impending disaster we are heading into at our current rate.

Obama: YOU ARE IN THE MINORITY. YOU DON'T GET TO CALL THE SHOTS. WHAT IS SO farkING DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT THIS?

Republicans: But this bill costs too much money. We can't afford it and the American people don't want it.

Obama: ... ok now you're just farking with me, right?
 
Now, to be fair, it wasn't all Obama, all the time.  Most of these points were made by Democrats and Obama.

I'm back! Did you miss me?

Hello, dear reader(s)!  Between dead computers and dead internet connections it's been a wild winter. 

Since the primary election's but days away I'm not going to bother with transcribing the rest of the debates, except to mention that Govenor Hair is a liar:  he knew about the Futile Care Law (passed when he was Lite Guv) and did nothing about it, even after hearing about it in the last election.

Oh, and Hutch gave a thoughtful and nuanced answer to the question of whether she'd work to overturn Roe v. Wade.  It made the head hurt, hearing that from a Republican, but I heal quickly.

Medina has since proven that she's in over her head.  I've long thought that Libertarians were entertaining as a group but scary as individuals.  I don't vote for them unless I know they'll do no harm or they won't get elected.

Teab*ggers, however, are scary as individuals and as a group.  It's difficult to watch otherwise sane people be manipulated as easily as this crowd.

On the Democratic side, there are a slew of candidates, but Bill White stands out as sane, so it should be an interesting year.

In a development good for everyone, Kinky Freidman has dropped out of the governors race.  I guess it was already too nuts.  He's instead running for Ag Commissioner, and he's doing his homework as well.  Good luck, sir.

Anyway, I'm back and I'll be seeing you!

Shootout in Texas: Hutch deploys the Teab*gger as human sheild and tactical nuke

We had our Republican candidate debate last night here in the Lone Star State. (archive vid here)  Oh, if only our Presidential debates had been so entertaining.

First, our Stunt Governor, who, predictably, turned down education funding for Texas, saying we're doing just fine, thanks. 

Next up, Hutch, our Senior Senator, who for some reason, wants to come back to Texas to stay.

Last up, a surprise visitor, a token TeaB*gger.  I have no idea how these things are decided, but sure, the more the merrier.  I'm not sure of her qualifications, but she's elligible, so hey.

First we have commercials from Lockheed(with Rocket Day!) and AARP(you can trust us to represnt you, really!). 

Oh, the audio isn't synced up, that's distracting.  Hope they fix that in the archive.  Anyway, introductions all around, and we start off with the first question: Just how crazy are you?  Would you really secede, and if there's something the feds do that you like, how would you replicate it here?

Perry likes the military.  He'd take care of our veterans and men and women in uniform.  Then an attempt to be funny, saying the feds should deliver mail, protect the country and the borders, and one out of three isn't bad.  Leaving us to guess which one he meant I guess.  But the moderator had already moved on...

Well, governor, what would you nullify?  There's a lot of people talking about it, got an answer for them?

Perry: uh...well, we need to stop healthcare, and our Senator over there needs to get back to Washington and stop it.  We gotta stop...

moderator: would you nullify it?

Perry runs out the clock and the moderator turns to stimulus funds.  Perry wouldn't take it if we didn't send so much to washington in the first place.  More running out the clock.

Now Hutch.  She, predictably, lists her favorite federal program as the military, except she can back her claim with her membership and leadership in various military and veterans' committees.  Claims to be fighting against healthcare now, and says that Texas now gets 92 cents back for every dollar it sends to D.C., not 76 cents, as Perry claims.  What she wants to do is eliminate the Highway Trust Fund.  We've got the roads built, so why keep collecting taxes?  Well, that sounds good, but one would think a Senator would be more effective in working on that.  Also, it's not just for highways anymore.

Mod: so what would you nullify?  Funding for ACORN. They're scary.

(That was a cheap shot, Hutch, you ignorant mutt. -nbv)

So now on to Medina, who gleefully informs us that the feds have let the veterans down, and she can't really say that the government does anything well.

Mod: answer the question, already.  You've said you think the government should only enforce treaties.

Medina: Yes. We must nullify Healthcare and get the EPA out of engergy and bidness and all will be well.

Audience question from FaceBook. OOh, aren't we modern?  A woman is worried about losing her unemployment benefits. (thanks, welfare deform -nbv).  What are you going to do?

Medina: non-answer, basic TeaB*gger boilerplate, less government, more bidness.

Perry, after it's noted by a mod that unemployment has double in his tenure: non answer, "Texas is the greatest state." Anecdote about a guy who would rather be unemployed in Texas than anywhere else.  We're great because we don't have frivolous lawsuits, and we rejected stimulus funds (f**cker)

Mod: we've lost more jobs than we've gained...

Perry: Nuh uh!

Everybody else: You're talking about '07and '08! Recession started in '09, and this is '10.

Perry:  Texas! Greatest!  My opponents are tearing Texas down! I love Texas!

Time's up.

What were we talking about again? Oh, yes, unemployment.

Hutch: lower taxes on business, get rid of the mismanagement on the unemployment fund.  Make the educational system better (well, better hurry) so kids can get good jobs (and this helps the asker how?) 

Sideswipe on Perry: We did lose 300,000 jobs in Texas.

Time's up.

Medina takes the bait:  Jobs were lost in the private sector, but the public sector jobs did go up.

Perry: wait wait wait. 1,000 people move here a day. They wouldn't if we didn't have low taxes and fair taxes.

Hutch: the business margin tax was yours.

crosstalk, Perry sputtering and Hutch saying property taxes went up because evaluations went up.  Cant' hear Medina.

Moderator: SHADDUP

Part II coming soon.

Matthew 25:44

I had the bright idea that someone could photoshop some dollar bills talking about this story and drop those in the anti-immigrant/anti-gay Salvation Army kettles, but this works too. They look like checks.

 

I got these via Jesus' General

YOU LIE!

Thanks to Facebook and C-SPAN, I have a use for this meme.

My Congressman expressed his sadness over the shootings at Fort Hood.  Some of his friends took the time to express their belief that MUSLIM = BAD.  I took them to task for this, as did others.  The ensuing discussion didn't get Internet Ugly, but it wasn't nice.

So, near the end, when one person stated that Obama and his advisors were racist, I asked for proof, and was sent to this gem of a YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chSH-cu20Oc&feature=PlayList&p=C19499E2161F8F85&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=36

Which is a shortened and interestingly edited bit of a committee hearing about the economy and a number  of other things held on 1/7/09:

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/283157-1&showFullAbstract=1

I don't blame you if you don't want to watch the whole of either video.  The first is less than four minutes, but about 30 seconds in, the video shows Robert Reich saying "I am concerned as I'm sure many of you are that these jobs not simply go to high skilled people who are already professionals, or to white male construction workers."  There is a text overlay that helpfully tells you what the audio is saying.  And then cuts off, going into hysterics about how racist it all is.

In the C-SPAN video, Reich doesn't speak until about 22 minutes in.  Dry stuff, let me tell you.  At around 29:00, he says

"I am concerned as I'm sure many of you are that these jobs not simply go to high skilled people who are already professionals, or to white male construction workers - I have nothing against white male construction workers - I'm just saying there are a lot of other people who have needs as well."

He goes on to say that in his written remarks submitted to the committee he has outlined some criteria that may be used to be sure that federal stimulus money is spread evenly, and especially to people hit hardest - the long term unemployed, women, and others who aren't already at the top of the heap*.

The entirety of his testimony is about how everyone can get some help through these times.  The speaker before him, Mark Zandi, spoke about the difference between stimulus and tax cuts.  Studies have shown that stimulus money produces more GDP than tax cuts.  I don't have notes on the stuff after Reich, because I gave up around then.

But yes, context matters.  Sources matter.  Thinking matters.  We always find what we're looking for, and if we're looking for some Other to be Evil, then by golly we'll find it.

Even if we've got to edit the video to "prove it".



*Reich also said at around 28 minutes in "get over this partisan 'I don't trust that governer from the Other Party.' Get over it, and get money to the local and state governments!"

Okay, C-SPAN, I forgive you

I've shelled out the money for bandwidth, and so the streaming is somewhat better.  Also, you can find it all now!

The new video library is searchable by date, person, and event.  I've been wanting this for years.  I don't know when it started, but boy I like it!