That’s Right Nate

Despite only being in office for 10 weeks, President Obama never disappoints in his ability to disappoint.  The Obama’s family choice of  dog is no different.   They could have picked a good old American dog, perhaps a dalmatian in recognition of their years of service to the nation’s fire departments.  Instead they went with a foreigner–a Portuguese Water Hound.  One thing I noticed right away is that the dog has no eyes.  It seems incredibly cruel to me to give the girls a blind dog, but whatever.

Bo, the new “First Dog, ” got his start at the home of Art and Martha Stern, a couple from Boyd, Texas. The Sterns have bred Portuguese Water Dogs since 1997.  Is there a more elitist way to pick up a dog?   When I got Emily’s puppy, I picked it up as a private home as well.   The woman took me around and showed me the 50 or so dogs she had in cages and though a few of them had passed away by the time I got there, I had plenty to pick from.   She was a sickly dog, but extremely loyal.   After a couple of years we decided she had earned her freedom and set her loose in the forest preserve.  It was a tearful goodbye for a great dog.  I would have felt much better about the Obama dog if they had done it that way.  The puppy mills in this country are hurting and this would have been a great chance to set an example.

Easter is an amazing time of year that is often neglected for Christmas.  We all celebrate the holiday in our own way, but it would be nice for everybody in this world regardless of religion or denomination to get together and remember what unifies us–that Jesus Christ died for our sins, that his appointing Peter to lead the church in no way made him Pope, and that we can all be saved if we come to Jesus and ask him to change our sexual orientation, political affiliation, or religions denomination.

The Swedish celebrated Easter this year, the way they celebrate everything–with Legos.   Their giant 6 foot tall statue of Jesus took the parishioners of a church in Vasteras, Sweden one and a half years to build and over 30,000 pieces.   It is quite impressive to look at, but I would like to remind them that if they used a good old fashioned American erector set, they could have made a Jesus that walked and would have probably been more inspirational.

Halfway around the world in Australia, artist Mitch Mitchell has used his sculpting talents not to honor Jesus as those Lego sculptors in Sweden had, but to mock Christianity by creating a statue of a naked woman on a cross.   Needless to say, God sent his only son to save us, not his only daughter.   I’m not saying that a woman couldn’t have done the job so please don’t email me hate mail, but if a woman was capable of saving the world as Jesus did,  God probably would have had a daughter too.   Anybody who has seen Mel Gibson’s wonderful movie on the life of Jesus, knows that he was brutalized at the end of that movie.  It is ridiculous to think that a smaller and frailer woman would have been able to stand up to that kind of punishment.

Regardless of your family’s religion I wish you and your family a wonderful holiday.  I’ve been a bit slow with my posting this week, but I hope to be up to a fuller schedule for next week.

What is often lost in discussions over single payer health care is the right of doctors to choose who they will provide medical treatment to and who they will not because they disapprove of their lifestyle.  There is an amazing new commercial out now by an anti-gay marriage group called NOM.   At first, I believed that their name came because they were planning on a long quagmire of a fight that they were pretty sure they would lose, but hoped that they could somehow get a negotiatied settlement because they feared homosexuality spreading, but in reality it stands for National Organization for Marriage.  Obviously, they don’t know my ex.

In the commercial, the woman who plays the California doctor  says, “I’m a California doctor who must choose between my faith and my job.”  Wow, that’s a powerful statement.  I began to think about why a doctor would have to choose between being a doctor and being a person of faith.  I thought of religious issues that might conflict a doctor.   Maybe the doctor believes abortion is murder or that birth control is a sin.   Then again, gay people really don’t need either of those things.   The doctor could be against euthenasia and have a patient with a do not resuscitate order, but that wouldn’t really be strictly a homosexual thing.  I suppose if the doctor was a Christian Scientist and believed that treating patients was sinful that could cause problems too.

It occurred to me that what this woman objected to could only be treating homosexuals and I imagine for some religions, it may be considered immoral to provide medical care to somebody who is living what you perceive as an immoral lifestyle.  A doctor should always have the right to refuse to treat patients that they believe are immoral, rude, or just creepy.   I refuse to go along with a society that demands that just because you show up at an emergency room with a gaping chest wound you must receive treatment.   How do they know that your chest wound wasn’t the result of a jealous husband shooting you when he caught you having an affair with his wife?  We must get big government out of medicine and let doctors treat those patients that they want to or don’t want to.   Haven’t we lived under the tyranny of the liberals demanding that everybody get medical treatment regardless of how they’ve lived their lives for long enough?

[This is a guest op-ed from Representative Jack Kimble (R-CA).  Representative Kimble felt very strongly about this topic and asked if I would allow him my forum.   I agreed.  This is not something that will happen very often, but I was delighted to have a Representative post his thoughts on here.  You can visit Mr. Kimble on his own blog. ]

My friends, I would like to thank Nate for giving me this forum to discuss a topic that is very important to me.

[Reposted from my blog]
I was having a great day. My Fox 15 thing was a big hit and I got some good me time. So I’m sitting down eating dinner and I get this call from Johnny B. Now Boehner never calls during dinner time so I’m immediately alarmed. “Did you see Olbermann last night?” he asks me.

“No,” I said, “Its recess. Get your head out of all that politics stuff.”

“Its Virginia,” he shot back, “Olbermann slammed Virginia.”

Now, I was pissed. It seems as usual Keith Olbermann got only half the story and decided to jump to all sorts of conclusions. He told everybody that Eric Cantor got this idea that we would ambush the freshman Democrats when they spoke in Congress. Then we’d interrogate them and make them look foolish so that we could win partisan points and we would post this on Youtube. In fact, Eric Cantor’s staff wrote our questions for us.

In reality, this idea started with me. My idea was water balloons. I thought it’d be cool, when we were all walking out, if we’d have our staff pelt them with water balloons and we’d post it on Youtube. It’d be so awesome because they’d be like “I’m a congressman, but I’m all wet. I don’t look dignified at all. Help!”

Eric liked the idea a lot, but he figured the odds of all the freshman walking out at the same time was pretty small and people would tip off the Dems if all our staffers were outside holding water balloons. Our initial questions were wacky like when I was giving Betsey Markey the whole “Is your refrigerator running” shtick. Then Pelosi gave us a major tongue lashing for wasting Congress’s time. Grrrr! I hate that woman. Now all that we’re left with are boring policy questions. Cantor’s staff was at least nice enough to write them for us.

Hazing the freshmen is nothing new. Cantor himself used to have to shave Dennis Hastert’s back every Friday morning. I’m told that in the 19th century they used to make the freshmen reps where beanies. This sort of thing builds character. We’ve even been pretty lenient with the binge drinking with this class. So where does Mr. Keith Olbermann get off? I already told all of you about what Dick Cheney made me do.

Anyway, I made my own video of Virginia Foxx. I am hoping that this will cheer her up. I think you’ll like it more than Olbermann’s lame video of our “hazing” followed by my video for Virginia.  Unfortunately, Youtube wouldn’t take it and I can’t figure out how to put a blogger video on here so here’s the link to my article on my blog.

Morning Edition – Author Photos

It is very unusual that I listen to New Pravda Radio (NPR), but today I had Morning Edition on and  they were talking about the importance of author photographs in selling books.   It made me think that I might be selling myself short on the whole dust jacket thing.   If I could get a ghost writer then with their words and my image I think we could have a huge hit on our hands.   Industry insiders are telling people that if they have an attractive looking author, they are more likely to get their book reviewed.  This seems to be a good time to mention that Lockdown: The Liberal Agenda to Bankrupt the Self-Storage Industry and Turn America into a Third World Country is still only $7.99.  It defintely sounds like the market for quality dust jackets may be dramatically increasing so this is definitely a good time to snap one of these babies up to cover up books by less attractive authors.   I think I’d look great over a copy of Studs Terkel’s Working for example.

Well gee, you get a small link in Crooks and Liars and you get about 2000 hits.   That was a great little surprise .  There is actually snow on the ground in Chicago.  That’s really depressing right now.  I don’t have a lot to write about today.  Catholics vs Obama?  Can they both lose.  I am still on cloud nine after my first interview with a politician in several months.  Representative Kimble is the voice of the new Republican party and, if we want to regain the congress in 2010, we’ll listen to him.

In a Thatsrightnate first, we were lucky enough to land an interview with US Representative Jack Kimble (R-CA) who was one of the lucky Republicans to actually survive reelection this past November.  Representative Kimble is known for his conservative values as well as his keen financial mind that helped him run his family’s poultry business before becoming a member of the United States House.

Nate: Representative Kimble, it is indeed a pleasure to get the chance to interview you.

Rep. Kimble: The pleasure is all mine Nate.   Conservative blogs like yours are a big part of our strategy to counter the liberal media elite.

Nate: Thank you.  I’m glad to know you follow my blog.  Do you have a favorite article.

Rep.Kimble:  [Laughing] Well that’s one way to tell if I actually read it.  Your political commentary is great, but to be honest I really enjoy your music segments too.  I have favorited the Apache video by Tommy Seebach.  I have that song in my IPod now too.

Nate: Is it easier to be a freshman representative or to be in the minority?

Rep. Kimble: Unfortunately, I’ve never been in the majority.  They get the plum committee spots, the good offices, and such.  It is much better to be in the majority.

Nate: What is your main goal for this Congress?

Rep.Kimble: We wish to be a loyal, but agressive opposition to the President.  As he tries to take our country down the road to Socialism, we wish to put on the brakes.

Nate: If you do that, the country will owe you a great debt.  What kind of legislation would you like to pass?

Rep.Kimble:  I don’t understand the question.

Nate: I mean.  Are there laws that you would like to push through congress?

Rep. Kimble: Like legislation?

Nate: Yes.  We’re facing a large number of problems in this country right now.  The economy is in the tank, we have two wars going on, Iran, North Korea, medical costs keep rising, terrorism.  What would you like to get passed?

Rep.Kimble: Oh all that stuff is very important to us.

Nate: Great.  What would you like to see done?

Rep. Kimble: Well, uhm I think the  tax burden needs to be addressed….You know…The upper end of the tax bracket is ridiculous.

Nate:  Exactly.  Anything else?

Rep.Kimble: I think all publicly funded universities should offer classes in creationism.

Nate: I know Michelle Bachman hammered Obama hard about hypothetically getting rid of the dollar.   I’ve been strong about him hypothetically replacing English with Esperanto.  Glenn Beck has done a marvelous job stading up to hypothetical fascism.  Are there any hypothetical threats you would be opposed to?

Rep.Kimble: Pretty much all of them.   I’d add eliminating the tax exemption from churches and also repealing the 2nd amendment.

Nate: Those are good ones.  What are the main things your trying to stop in the Obama agenda?

Rep.Kimble:  AmeriCorps worries me.  This sounds like re-education camps for young people really.  This is just what Mao did you know.  Get these people out in the country and then turn them into puppets of the state.  I know it isn’t part of Obama’s agenda exactly, but I’m also troubled by what’s going on in Iowa.  You know that K-12 little children will be forced to learn that homsexuality is normal and they should try it and they will be given explicit instructions on how to do so.  We must protect our children from this.

Nate: Its scary what’s going on in this country.

Rep.Kimble: Thank you for having me on your blog Nate.  As Republicans, we haven’t always been as quick to embrace new media as we should.  It is great to have people like yourself on the frontlines of the cultural war.

Nate: Thanks for being here Representative Kimble.  I hope that you will come back again.

UPDATE: Congressman Kimble has joined many of his Republican colleagues in starting his own blog as a way of reaching his constituents.   It may be of some interest even to those of you who like me do not live in his district.