Cao Pearl Harbors Republicans on Health Care
In what can only be called a national tragedy, the Democrats were able to pass a health care bill through the House of Representatives yesterday, despite the impassioned pleas of 99.9% of the congressional Republicans. The move will no longer allow insurance companies to deny coverage to people with expensive pre-existing conditions like cancer, heart disease, or rape. The program will also create a government created insurance plan referred to as the public option.
House Republican Leader John Boehner decried the bill stating, “Americans want a common-sense approach to healthcare reform, not Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2,032-page government takeover that increases costs, adds to our skyrocketing debt, destroys jobs with tax hikes and new mandates, and cuts seniors’ Medicare benefits.”
Friend of this blog, Congressman Jack Kimble (R-CA) said, “This just makes coming into work on a Saturday that much harder, especially during college football season. I’m worried that I’ll have to give up my congressional health care now.”
The raucous debate over health care began earlier in the morning, when 83 year old bully John Dingle, using the same gavel he had used to help shove medicare down our country’s throat, badgered Republicans who tried to interrupt the Democratic Women’s Caucus from speaking. Anybody who has ever been married can tell you how hard it is to get a word in edgewise with a woman even without your crazy old grandpa banging his gavel everytime you try to speak.
What made matters especially troubling for some Republicans was the defection of Joseph Cao (R-LA) who was the sole Republican to vote with the Democrats in their 220-215 victory. “Now I understand how our brave men felt at Pearl Harbor,” said Kimble referring to Chao’s betrayal, “He ninjaed us.”
The health care battle now moves onto the Senate, where things don not look good for the Democrats. Cao may be a Republican, but he obviously felt some pressure representing a very liberal city like Los Angeles. The Senators represent states, not districts and are less vulnerable to that kind of pressure. Joe Lieberman (?-CT) has already said the he will not let a bill with a public option come to a vote in the Senate.
A Day in the Life of a Congressman
[OK, I admit it, I stole it off of Congressman Kimble's blog. Enjoy]
Do you know what your U.S. Representative does? If not, you’re not alone. Even though members of Congress play key roles in our government, they often are overlooked. They are democracy’s utility infielders.
What do members of Congress do? How do they spend their days? I think this is a very fascinating question. I’d like to try and answer it for you.
6:00 a.m.
I am up very early in the morning. My alarm is set for 5:00, but I hit snooze until 6:00. While I’m still in my pajamas I pour myself a bowl of cereal. I used to buy the small variety packs—you know the ones that have Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms, Rice Krispies, in tiny little boxes all wrapped up in cellophane. The problem is those boxes don’t have prizes in them. Now, I buy big boxes of cereal so I can still get something extra—that’s the Republican way. If the cereal gets stale, I buy a new box.
I like to take my cereal to the living room and watch early morning television. One of the local UHF station shows Mama’s Family and Gomer Pyle back to back. I like to start my day off with a laugh. After breakfast, I walk to the Capitol building.
8:00 a.m.
I have breakfast with a group of House Republicans and Joe Lieberman. This is mostly an excuse for myself to gloat to Duncan Hunter about what a bust Roy Williams has been on his Fantasy Football team. We try to explain football to Lieberman, but despite him saying “oh I get it” a lot, you know he doesn’t.
9:00 a.m.
My next stop is the House champer for a Republican conference meeting. Here, I have a great chance to talk directly to Republican leaders, or I would if we had some. I really look forward to this face to face time with my colleagues. It’s so funny, Joe Lieberman always follows us in here and we have to remind him that he caucuses with the Democrats. Then he acts like he was just kidding.
9:45 a.m.
I head over to my committee meetings. I’m on the Agriculture, Budget, Industrialization, and Protocol committees as well as the Softball Team and Glee Club. I’m told that committees do a lot of the important work in Congress, but they’re just so boring. I usually pass notes with one of my colleagues. Trent Franks is an amazing tic tac toe player and he can always beat me unless I can put a mark in the middle square first. Whether you can get a nap here or not really depends on your committee leader.
11:00 am.
I’m on the phone with C-Span, letting them know that I’m available to do interviews on any topic. They tell me they’ll get back to me, but they sound like they mean it this time.
11:30 a.m.
Unexpected events often happen. That’s why it’s important to make yourself scarce in the middle of the day as much as possible. If there are lunch plans, I’ll stick around. It’s always more fun to go as a group. If I’m on my own, I’ll usually go to Roy Rogers for the Double R Bar Burger.
1:00 p.m.
I get together with my staff and we watch Judge Mathis together. My office never misses the Judge if we can help it. I was so made that Obama overlooked him entirely for the Supreme Court. My staff also is in charge of making sure I see only positive mail. I’m currently working on a delicate international situation involving the Nigerian royal family that began with an email to my office. I am hopefully that I will be able to help this prince regain his rightful throne.
2:00 p.m.
I’m off to the National Republican Congressional Committee meeting. The NRCC works to get Republicans elected to Congress and we really hope we can turn things around. Lately, it’s just been one big cry session.
5:00 p.m.
A special voting session of the House of Representatives begins, and I go to my seat in the House chamber. Bells go off in our offices–just like in school–and we have 15 minutes to go to the House to cast our votes,
Voting usually occurs on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and starts at about noon. But toward the end of a congressional session, voting can take place on any workday and can run late into the night, as the House rushes to complete work on legislation. This is great nap time. Ipods are strongly discouraged here—I found out the hard way. Speaker Pelosi will stare at you with her cold dead eyes if she thinks you’re screwing around. Sometimes, I like to make fart noises and dare her to catch me.
9:00 p.m.
Joe Lieberman always wants us to go to a hot tub party after a vote, but he’s so wrinkled now. I always decline. Instead, this is a good time to get together with colleagues at one of the local DC watering holes. Paul Broun always winds up in tears, but today he’s upbeat. He wants me to see if Debbie Wasserman Schultz likes him. I ask him if he means likes him and he says “like him like him”. I guess I’ll work on this tomorrow.
Novelist Unjustly Attacked by Liberal Media
Recently, I your humble blogger posted an excerpt of my new novel for National Novel Writing Month. President Lightning, which I am adapting from a screenplay by the same name, is the powerful story of 1936 Olympics. When the Nazis kidnap Jesse Owens, FDR is left with no choice, but to compete in Jesse Owens’ events himself at the Olympic Games. Aided by former President Herbert Hoover, Roosevelt’s time traveling dog Fala, and an irascible African-American White House Maid named Dorothy, the President has to dig deep within himself to find the stuff that all Americans have inside. He not only learns to walk again, but abandons his radical liberal ideas for supplyside economics and takes the Germans on at their own game. President Lightning–he was born to lead, but he was made to run.
Anyway, based on one small section of the novel of less than 40o words, the liberal media elite have already started attacking my story. In this case, the culprit is the website Scottish Terrier and Dog News — a well known bastion of liberal and even socialist ideology on the web subtlety buried beneath a layer of cute puppies in golfing hats. Ann Brocklehurst, the blog’s owner, described my novel as “really bad writing.” Well Ann, I would expect such attacks from more liberal publications like The Nation or Cat Fancy, but I had previously held your website to a higher standard.
Ann Brocklehurst describes herself as an investigative reporter and perhaps that is why she feels it so necessary to “take down the man”, but as I looked further at her background on google I noticed telltale signs of her liberal elitism. She seems to follow the socialized Canadian news media and the ultra liberal New York Times quite closely and while she professes a love for Scottish Terriers, she is also the proprietor of The Daily Dachshund and Dog News. So which is it Ann? Are you a Scottish Terrier lover or a Dachshund devotee? Perhaps you should have thought of this before you chose to start a feud with myself and the power of my blog. What I did not see when researching my attacker was anything in her background that would indicate that she had published a successful novel herself. Are any of us really surprised?
It’s National Novel Writing Month
It’s national novel writing month folks and though long time readers know I’m no fan of the printed word, I’ve been trying to sell my screenplay President Lightning. Unfortunately, Hollywood is so liberal, I’ve hit a brick wall. If any of you are movie people reading this, let’s do lunch. Here’s my pitch:
The year is 1936 and a dark storm is brewing over Europe. In Germany, a mad man is planning to prove the superiority of the Aryan people when he hosts the Olympics in Berlin. When Hitler’s goons kidnap Jesse Owens, it looks like nobody will be able to stand up to the Nazis. In New York, a weak bodied man sits in the Oval Office as his predecessor tells him to grow a backbone. When the hopes of the free world rest on you, even a cripple needs to stand up for his country. He was born to lead, but he was made to run. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is President Lightning.
It has been suggested to me that if I had a novel published, people would take my screenplay more seriously so this month I’m going to work on producing President Lightning, the novel. I don’t know what the market for historical fiction is, but I can’t see how this novel doesn’t sell. Keep in mind that the idea is to write the whole novel before revising it, so I know it’s a little rough.
Chapter 4: The Reckoning
Jesse Owens paced inside his cold steel cell. Not much bigger than a couple of phone booths, the only light Jesse could see came through a the cell bars. Jesse rested his powerful athletic body in the corner and began to sing to himself. It was the old spirituals that comforted Jesse even now in his confinement in Berlin. A lot of lesser men would have been praying for somebody to rescue him, but being a Republican was as natural to Jesse as being a runner was. He was going to pull himself up by his own boot steps.
A half a world away, President Roosevelt took a deep breath and stretched his legs on the south lawn of the White House. Standing next to him was Herbert Hoover, dressed in a long coat and his Stanford scarf. Tucked under his right arm was Roosevelt’s faithful Scottish Terrier Fala.
“Is this really necessary Herbie?” mumbled the President under his breath.
“You know it is Franklin. I don’t want you just fast, I want you quick too. Now get to it,” with that Hoover tossed the startled dog to the ground and Roosevelt began to scamper after him.
“Damn you Hoover, why does everything have to be so hard?” coughed Roosevelt, regretting his morning smoke.
“Because anything worth having is going to be hard Franklin. You Democrats need to learn that. It can’t all be government hand outs,” laughed Hoover.
And so it began. Carefully, hidden from view of the Washington press corps, Hoover trained Roosevelt every day. By May, the Olympics were looming and Roosevelt’s 100 meter time was still only 10.6, a full .3 seconds slower than Jesse Owens. He’d never be able to compete with the Germans at this rate. He couldn’t help, but wonder why winning meant so much to him now. He was brought up to believe that participating in athletic competition was victory. Now, he was training with the single minded determination he didn’t know he had within himself. He knew now, he would do whatever it took to run their socks off.
Police for America – An Idea Whose Time Has Come
There's no reason that citizens like these couldn't be armed and patroling urban streets within 5 weeks.
Unlike most things that President Obama likes, I have become a big fan of Teach for America. The program allows privileged white 20-somethings to go into urban schools and like modern day Jane Goodall’s see poor children in their native habitat–school. These exceptional young men and women spend 2 years teaching in an urban school while they contemplate what to do with the rest of their lives and move back home with mom and dad. It occurs to me that the only thing missing from this great program is guns. Just as there are inequities in the country’s schools, there is also tremendous inequality in the police protection enjoyed by residents of this country.
One of the trademarks of Teach for America is it’s alternative teacher training program. Afterall, if you’re only going to teach 2 years, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to spend 4 years learning to do the job. I see absolutely no reason why we can’t bring the same approach to law enforcement. A lot of the training that cops receive really isn’t necessary for the average police officer’s daily routine. If we can take our most promising college graduates from schools like Princeton, Yale, and even Brown, and we give them a crash course in basic police procedure, we should be able to have them armed and on the streets in 5 weeks, the same length of time it takes Teach for America to train new teachers.
What’s more, Teach for America alums often wind up in leadership positions in education. Think how much more smoothly a big city police department would run with a gifted young go getter with a couple years of police experience in charge. One problem that big city police departments face is cops who have been on the job for a long time and have been burned out by the things they have seen. Police for America members would bring fresh enthusiasm to law enforcement and would do so for a fraction of the cost of veteran police officers. Critics often complain that less than 30% of Teach for America teachers stay in the classroom after their two year commitment and I am sure that would be true of Police for America, but that’s OK–there are always new graduates from college drawn to the excitement and danger of exploring the urban setting.
The War Over Halloween
It has been a great Halloween at the Peele household so far. My 13 year old daughter Emily and I are here this afternoon before she goes to a party tonight. Emily is dressed as a Sexy Supreme Court Justice. She was very inspired by Justice Sotomayor’s hearings (don’t ask me why), but the only costumes they make for girls anymore are all sexy. In the past, instead of passing out candy I have put an empty bowl on the porch with a note that said “Honor System, Take Only One Please”. That seemed to work just fine. Emily was always after me to pass out actual candy, but with my daughter barely at 5″7″ and pushing 120 pounds you can guess where half that candy was going to wind up.
As my longtime readers know, Halloween is very important to me. There is a radical atheist movement in this country that is trying to remove all traces of Halloween’s Christian origins from the holiday. This year I decided that I would give all trick or treaters Chick Tracts. These are great comics that warn children of the dangers of sinful things like murder, homosexuality, Catholicism, and Dungeons and Dragons (2nd edition–3rd and 4th have yet to be declared evil, possibly because they use d20 systems). The look of surprise on the faces of the neighbor children as I pass them out has been well worth it.
When we give into the radical atheists who wish to dechristianize Halloween we all lose. We can’t allow the pagans and atheists who would take over this Christian holiday to have their way. I get so irritated when I hear somebody wish me a happy pumpkin day because I know that they have avoided wishing me a Happy Halloween. Remember, something hallow is something holy–what is a pumpkin day? It just isn’t the same thing. Well, it’s time for me to drive Emily to her little party–I can’t believe how girls dress nowadays. I guess I’m lucky that she’s fat and not very attractive. Have a great Halloween everybody!!
Obama Bungles H1N1 Vaccine
This country is on the verge of a health care crisis we haven’t seen in many years as the Obama administration’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report there is not enough H1N1 vaccine available for everyone in the United States. Hit especially hard by the shortage are many conservatives who had intended to boycott the vaccine, but find themselves unable to take a principled stand due to the shortage.
At the Fairport Clinic in suburban Chicago, a crowd of 15 angry protesters were turned away when the vaccine shipment that they were protesting never arrived. “This is outrageous,” complained conservative housewife and mother of 3 Lynette Granger, “How am I supposed to teach my kids to practice abstinence with vaccination if there isn’t enough vaccine to even tempt them with it.”
Health officials say the H1N1 vaccine is difficult to grow, and that causes a delay in production and a shortage of vaccine. The CDC says there are now more than 22 million doses available, but there eventually will be some 225 million doses. In the meantime, anti-government activists are having a hard time finding clinics that have enough of the vaccine for them to steadfastly refuse to take it. “This is beyond irresponsible,” said a disgusted Geoffrey Spaulding of Cicero who was holding a Don’t Take the Vacsine sign, “They’ve had almost a year to get this thing ready. Obama should be ashamed.”
As more vaccine is made available, it will first go to pregnant women, small children, and health care workers before moving on to conservative activists. This is especially hard on conservative conspiracy theorists who have invested considerable time blogging and writing about various conspiracies about the vaccine. “I just don’t understand how they are able to complete FEMA prison complexes so quickly, but are unable to get their act together on the swine flu vaccine. Mark my words, there’s something very sinister afoot here,” said blogger Lewinskydefeater.
One thing is for sure, until we get enough vaccine produced and ready for public inoculation, we are unable to boycott the vaccine and that is clearly a violation of our first amendment rights. Please call your congressman and demand that they step up production of the vaccine while there is still time to protest against it. Our first amendment rights are too valuable to lose.
Profiles in Courage – Joe Lieberman
[We're very lucky tonight to have a guest column by Congressman Jack Kimble (R-CA) who is writing in praise of Senator Joe Lieberman (?-CN)]
I happen to be a great fan of Joe Lieberman. I took some heat for this in 2000 when he was brainwashed by Al Gore and ran against our beloved President Bush. I have to admit, I could even feel empathy for the many Democrats who were crestfallen at the thought of Joe being denied the Vice-Presidency in such a close election. I’ve been a big fan of Joe Lieberman for nearly 20 years since he first won my heart as Willie on the television show Alf. His deadpan, put upon, whining delivery has served him well as a Senator as well.
Though Joe is older now, I can attest that he looks like a man half his age in a spedo. He’s living proof that with good living, you really don’t need health care. Today, he took a lot of flack from his own party, or former party, or whatever the Democrats are when he announced he would not vote for a health care bill with the public option and in fact he wouldn’t even vote to end a filibuster unless the public option was removed from the legislation.
Joe’s problems with the public option is the same as my own:
- The government cannot handle things like this efficiently and it would do a terrible job insuring people.
- The public option will increase competition and lower the profit margins of insurance companies at a time when they can least afford it.
- The public option will lead to communism by 2012.
Joe has said that he would to keep the rest of the bill and in 3 or 4 years revisit things to see if we might want to investigate the possibility of creating a trigger that if reached would possibly bring us the public option. Without the public option, the current program will work to lower health care costs and insure people by fining people heavily if they don’t buy health insurance This will help the insurance companies by increasing their profits and help the uninsured by making them by health care.
Joe has once again shown himself to be a figure of integrity and courage. A lot of people would have been scared to stand against the public option when like Lieberman, they were so heavily financed by the insurance industry. I had the same problem just last year when I had to make the difficult decision of supporting the tobacco industry despite the fact that they heavily funded my campaign. I made the right choice and went with my conscience the same way that Joe Lieberman has today. This is truly what being a member of Congress is all about.
