Who Am I?

Weekend Update 09-08-2012

Posted: September 8th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Weekend Update | Comments Off on Weekend Update 09-08-2012

DecodeDC. It’s a project by ex-NPR reporter Andrea Seabrook drawing on her years of frustration trying to cover politics in Washington.

Rosie Ruiz Republicans. Again, I can’t really think of anything to add.

The Luck of the Draw. “Spirituality consists in how you deal with what you’ve been dealt.” People who learn something of my life are often shocked by my experiences. Heck, even my own wife is sometimes surprised and doesn’t really understand how I’m as sane as I am. Like most people, I can’t really imagine a life other than the one I’ve had. But I suppose it has strayed from what most people would consider a “normal” life. Yet it is fundamentally my life. And anything I can call spirituality necessarily operates within its context. So this post by Fr. Stephen resonates deeply with me.

Read to the bottom of the post. It was good to see someone else mention Nixon’s health care reform proposal. Yes, the ACA is essentially Romney’s health reform plan implemented at the national level. And yes, Romney’s plan was the natural extension of the Republican 1993 health reform bill. And yes, that bill in turn developed from the work of conservative politicians and think tanks in the 80s. But before all of that, the roots of the entire constellation of the GOP health care reform proposals over the past four decades (until Obama had the unmitigated gall to agree with them in 2009) can be found in Nixon’s proposal. It failed because of Democratic opposition. Senator Ted Kennedy and most Democrats wanted essentially Medicare for everyone. (I still think that was and is the superior solution, but at this point that’s water under the bridge.) Some of my early childhood memories include Watergate on TV. I remember going to see All the President’s Men with my mother when I was ten or eleven. It’s somewhat strange that we would wax nostalgic for a president like Tricky Dick today. But it does help illustrate how utterly insane the current version of the GOP has become.

The metaphor of a house fire is a good one in this instance. It’s better, at least, than much of the claptrap that passes for journalism today.

I haven’t watched the video of President Clinton’s speech, but I did want to highlight a line from the text — one that reflects something I’ve said repeatedly. “People ask me all the time how we delivered four surplus budgets.  What new ideas did we bring? I always give a one-word answer: arithmetic.” The math involved is not even particularly difficult. The GOP has become brazen in its lies and magical thinking. It’s time for them to pay the price. If you reward people for lying, they will continue to lie to you.

Cleaning up the Economy. Yup. We’ve needed and still need more debt relief, more capital infusion to stop the shedding of government jobs at the state and local level which has formed the real drag on our economy (each such job lost has multiplying ripple effects in an already weak economy), and similar measures, but we have cleared the worst and are on the right track.

Linus Torvalds delivers a smackdown like no other. A collection of some of his better ones. Read and enjoy!

I don’t watch the party conventions. I don’t listen to much political speech. I prefer to get the proposals and policies and dig into them. And I may skim the printed version of a major speech. But I heard so much buzz about Michelle Obama’s speech, I decided to check it out for myself. All I can say is, damn. She was good. See for yourself.

Ryan a Catholic? Perhaps. But not a very good one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nzy5TuwcLc

And that intrigued me. So I found Sister Simone’s “Nuns on the Bus” kick-off. Paul Ryan ticked her off when he claimed his budget reflected Catholic social doctrine. In some way, I think I’m Christian in no small part because of the influence nuns have had on my life at different junctures. And not a one of them ever cared that I wasn’t Catholic — or maybe even Christian — when I encountered them.

And this was the final stop of the Nuns on the Bus.

And then I discovered Sr. Simone had been on The Colbert Report. Enjoy!

The Colbert Report
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