You go on one little vacation…

and the whole world implodes. Let’s see – the health care bill passed. Well, not quite. The health care bill passed. Then the  health care bill repair bill passed. And the health care bill repair executive order was signed. Plus they snuck in the student loan takeover into the repair bill (that’s working out well already).

They keep saying everyone wants this, but if it was such a slam dunk then why did it take 3 separate actions to pull it all together? Because that way they get to slice the votes effectively 3 ways and no one is actually accountable to the entire thing to their home states.

And oh yeah and I forgot – it’s a CRISIS!

I must say though, the OFA folks were thoroughly busy. A new email nearly every day during the final push of the bill urging me to convince my congressman to change his vote.

I’m still pretty sure that had he received the 957 calls, or 1,120 letters or even if the entire district shown up at his door with whiskey and girl scout cookies he still wouldn’t have changed his vote.

OfA on the move…

You have to admire the organization and tenacity of the OfA guys. Today’s email is intended to inspire a deluge of calls to my local US Representative. Now I’m pretty sure there is no way they are ever going to change his vote, but it is amusing to watch.

President Obama has called for the House to vote to move health reform forward as soon as early as next week. Your representative, Rep. Sam Johnson, voted last fall to allow insurance companies to continue to jack up rates, drop coverage when folks need it the most, and discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions.

Now, we're in the final march for reform and there's one last chance to do the right thing. Please call Rep. Johnson today and let them know there is a political price to favoring big insurance companies over the American people -- OFA supporters in Texas have pledged 506,830 volunteer hours to fight for candidates who support reform.

Look out! This is the “last chance” to prevent evil corporations from “discriminating!”

And for the record, he didn’t vote to allow insurance companies to do anything, he voted to prevent the government from taking on a massive new entitlement which would most likely bankrupt the country and actually prevent positive health care change in the long run. There are alternatives and if you look at the record, many big corporations have signed onboard with the Obama program. Its actually the “American people” who have raised the biggest obstacle to this legislation, no matter what the proponents keep saying.

I think I may need to call Mr. Johnson today, to at least cancel one person who received this email and took them at their word.

Then they came for the salt

First it was tobacco, then trans fats, now the State of New York has a bill before the legislature to ban the use of salt in all restaurants.

Here is the text from the original bill

S 399-BBB. PROHIBITION ON SALT; RESTAURANTS. 1. NO OWNER OR OPERATOR OF A RESTAURANT IN THIS STATE SHALL USE SALT IN ANY FORM IN THE PREPARATION OF ANY FOOD FOR CONSUMPTION BY CUSTOMERS OF SUCH RESTAURANT, INCLUDING FOOD PREPARED TO BE CONSUMED ON THE PREMISES OF SUCH RESTAURANT OR OFF OF SUCH PREMISES.

Are they insane? Of course the next step would logically be to remove salt from the grocery stores because that would be the only place we could still get this extremely dangerous substance!

Just put “TSA Sucks!” right here…

As these scanners slowly spread to all the airports in the country, has anyone figured out a way to intentionally display something on them? In the spirit of this guy, next time I go through security I’d like to display my displeasure privately just to the guy viewing the monitor.

[update] My first experience with one of these

It *is* perfectly clear!

Just for grins I did a search on the White House site for “let me be” just to see how often it really has come up in just the published speeches and releases.

http://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2F+%22let+me+be%22&first=1&FORM=PERE

returns 32 pages of links to speeches where Obama says

• let me be clear
• let me be absolutely clear
• let me be perfectly clear
• let me be succinct and clear
• let me be very clear
• let me be direct
• let me be clear and direct
• let me be honest
• let me be precise
• let me be specific
• let me be more specific
• let me be very specific

Now a small handful of these are Robert Gibbs but it still goes to the totality of the way the White House communicates because Gibbs is the Press Secretary whose job it is to speak for the President's administration.

They need to get a new phrase because as soon as I hear “let me be…” I immediately tune out because I know he is going to restate something that has been beat to death already because he thinks we didn’t really understand it instead of recognizing the reality that we didn’t like it and are not going to accept it just because he rephrased it and called it bipartisan.

Core Liberal/Progressive philosophy leaks into article

In Al Gore’s op-ed argument for continuing the global warming alarm in the face of the scientific scandal that is bubbling up around their missing and false data, he belies the fundamental principal that he acts under

what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption.

He believes it is the government’s job to fix you… and me…  and everyone else. Let that sink in – using the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption. It assumes that (a) we need to be redeemed (b) by his moral standard and that (c) the government should do it.

Personally, I don’t want to be redeemed by anyone unless I choose it. And I will choose them based on my own world view and moral compass.

Besides, redemption at gunpoint is not redemption. It is acquiescence to ideas and rules with which you disagree and is the seed of rebellion.

<HT: Althouse via Borepatch>

FYI – check the Althouse article for a thorough dismissal of all the pieces of Al’s article.