Welcome our Guest Blogger!
I’m vacationing in Italy for a week wrapping up some property matters but am pleased to have one of my most excellent buddies more than making up for the lapse. Please welcome part-time standup comedian and singer-songwriter BrotherDan. I expect that every day I’ll be down to the internet café enjoying what he has to say (as well as checking to see if Dr. Sen Frist will allow a “fair up or down vote” on the stem cell bill that Bush has promised to veto). I have no doubt that you’ll enjoy his contributions (and you don’t even have to go overseas!)
05.27.05 @ 09:16 PM EDT [link]

Target of Opportunity
I got some inspiration from a newswire story today, the one about how NBA owners like Mark Cuban are agitating to put commercial logos on sports uniforms for basketball players. I hadn’t realized how pervasive the practice is throughout all sports. Not that I wasn’t aware of NASCAR promotional practices, where every square inch of outer surface is commercially accounted for. I learned something new from the article, that trademarked symbols now appear on virtually every sports uniform (sounds like Sher needs to get out more!) It hit me that the country at large is missing out on the huge win-win opportunity presented by the greatest sporting entertainment of our times, that grand spectacle of life and death known as Bush Administration Foreign Relations. Think about all the birds that can be killed with a single stone-wash patch! Corporations would clearly fall over themselves for the opportunity to position their brand in alignment with proper Red State values. (Is it any coincidence that the ultimate Red State sport, stock car racing – or rather watching stock car racing – is also the most logoed sports spectacle? Is it any coincidence that stock car racing has the second highest body count, after BAFR?) Wouldn’t it be a nice change of pace for bigtime corporate money to be pouring into the national treasury, reducing the national deficit and debt, as opposed to merely overflowing the coffers of Tom DeLay et al? Of course, there are some delicate issues to be addressed. For example, what if, say, Target wants to display their logo on, say, Bradley fighting vehicles? One option would be for the Pentagon to reinforce the area under the logo, such that the enemy is tempted to waste fire on an invulnerable spot, not unlike the big eye-figure on tropical fishtails that entices predators to misstrike. Ultimately, though, this is probably a non-issue, raised to consciousness only by the hyperactive sensitivities of this Blue State journalist. After all, both the players and the spectators recognize that the bullseye is already there, whether it’s visible or not, so We the People might as well get some remuneration for it!
05.26.05 @ 08:02 PM EDT [link]

Smokey Brought to Bear
Scene: Meeting at EPA Headquarters. “Hello, everyone, I’m EPA Director Gale Norton, and I’m very pleased to introduce one of my personal heroes from way back from when I was a little girl. Smokey?” “Hello, boys and girls. Remember, only YOU can prevent forest fires.” (Laughter) “Just like I remember! Anyway, we brought you here today, Smokey, because we have some big ideas for expanding your role as a Bush Administration spokesman. Excuse me, spokesbear! The sad fact is that our economic approach to environmental regulation isn’t understood the way we would like it to be. People think that we won’t do a new regulation unless there is no impact whatsoever to property rights or economic activity. They think that, since regulation by definition impacts these things, we are opposed to any new regulation. They also feel that we’d like to dump most of the regulations already on the books. It’s all true, of course, but we don’t want people to feel that way. There’s just too much hysteria among voters around the whole environmental thing. Most importantly, regulation is a big deal with our Base because control of natural resources is often the basis for the wealth of America’s most productive people. And their wealth is our wealth, if you catch my drift! (Laughter). However, the common folk are easily manipulated into not understanding that environmental regulation imposes a huge burden on their lifestyle. They need to see that their own personal choices and not just those of faceless industrial enterprises that are being constrained by overregulation. Our PR firm noodled this for awhile and then came up with this flash: enlist one the government’s most trusted personalities to shill for our environmental initiatives! We worked it out with Interior (and I have to tell you that the Forest Service was not at all happy about it!), but it’s now a done deal. We’ll start with Clear Skies, then arsenic standards, and make sure you’re lined up for ANWR as soon as it starts to get messy up there. Any questions, anyone?” (Applause and cheers). “Smokey, it sounds like I’m speaking for the group when I say how great it is to have you on board! Any thoughts you’d like to leave with us?” “Stir the fire, then drown it, then stir again. Only YOU can prevent forest fires!”
05.25.05 @ 09:38 PM EDT [link]

Please Show Your Card
Scene: US Hospital emergency room, circa 2015. “May I help you?” “Yes, they just brought in my son. He was hit by a baseball and knocked unconscious. I’m here to complete the paperwork.” “I see. Do you have his card?” “You mean his national health card?” “What do you mean, national health card?” “I’m sorry, even though my son is a US citizen, I’m from Britain and I really don’t understand your healthcare system. What do you mean by ‘card’?” “I’m talking about his voter registration card.” “Excuse me, I don’t see what that could possibly have to do with health care.” “OK, let me explain. We get foreign visitors in here all the time and it always takes them awhile to understand our system, so don’t take it to heart. Back in the final years of the Bush Administration, after the Hell No riots following the ’06 elections, Congress passed the Agree to Disagree Act. The country felt that the partisan gulf on medical issues had gotten just too wide to bridge, so Democrats cut a deal with Republicans that the GOP could do whatever it wanted on health care, abortion, and medical research, as long as it only affected Republicans. Likewise Democrats gained the authority to set up their own system, but that only Democrats could use. Every citizen made an irrevocable decision on what system they wanted to belong to. This affected every aspect of their healthcare, including taxes and employer contributions. On your 18th birthday you go down to the courthouse to get your red or blue card. So which card does your son have?” “Oh, Dear, I’m not sure. He really doesn’t speak about politics. Is there that much difference between the systems?” “Well, if he has a red card, we’d process him like this. First we’d run him through HAA. What? Oh, sorry, HAA is the HMO Auto-Adjudication network set up by the private carriers. They’ve set up an electronic lawsuit system where the various HMOs sue each other over every case, based on all possible ties a person might have to coverage through an employer, former employer, relative, common law relation, roommate, etc. It also factors in pre-existing conditions, which with DNA screening means every disease you’re destined to get during your lifetime. It sounds complicated but the Artificial Intelligences at each HMO are able to finish electronic litigation within a day or two. Most of the time. Sometimes it has to go to MESS. That’s the Medical Electronic Supreme System.” “My lord, that sounds complicated! How long does payment take?” “Ha ha! I was just talking about the pre-approvals! Treatments take awhile, and then the legal AIs start the process over to determine payment amounts.” “OK, what about the blue card system?” “Oh, we just give the patient some stem cells and send them home.”
05.24.05 @ 08:05 PM EDT [link]

Norquist At Home
“Honey, I’m Home!” “Grover, we need to talk about last night.” “What do you mean, Honey? It was a great party.” “Grover, you were even more over the top than usual.” Sheryl Crow’s tune “The First Cut Is the Deepest” emanates from Norqist’s pocket. “It’s my cell. Gotta take it. Yo!….What do you mean, what is our policy on the Criminal Proceeds Tax, whatever the hell that is!? We want to dump it, and if that can’t be done we want to cut it. Duh! Look, gotta go. Just send them the standard Taxes Are Theft packet…Yeah, later.” “That’s what I mean, Grover. Can’t you ever give it a rest? Everywhere we go, it’s ‘dump the X tax.' At church, you’re telling the preacher we need a sermon on how the death tax is a sin. At the principal’s office last week when we were supposed to be talking about Timmy’s grades it was how school taxes needed to be cut. Last weekend at Wal-Mart it was that scene you made about the sales tax. Really, Grover, don’t you think grabbing the clerk’s price check mike was going too far? And what do you have to say about your performance at the party last night? I don’t know how I’m ever going to show my face in front of Sandy again!” “What do you mean, Honey? Everyone seemed to like my shtick.” “Really, Grover, how can you think a hostess would be amused with what you did with the contents of her knife drawer!” Cell phone rings again. “Yo…Goddammit, Jack, I expect the same contribution from you as last year! In fact, we need more. Americans for Tax Reform has expenses, you know. We’re paying more for security, health care costs are up, it’s expensive traveling from state to state, and we’re paying more campaign subsidies than ever to get proper candidates elected. How can we possibly keep that up if our revenues are declining?! No more talk about cutting your contribution! Look, gotta go. What were you saying, Honey?” “Grover, you’re worst than Bob! Every party with Bob, it’s sex, sex, sex. It was funny at first, but it’s gotten out of hand. It’s the same with you. Can’t you talk about something other than tax, tax, tax when we’re out socially?” “Honey, I have a solemn responsibility to help preserve this country’s greatness. This country was founded on low taxes, and that’s where we need to go back to.” “Please, please don’t preach to me again! Christ, Grover, they didn’t have interstate highways and aircraft carriers back then either!” Norquist reaches into his briefcase. “Honey, it sounds like you’ve picked up some commie ideas down at the PTA. Here, take this Taxes Are Theft packet. We’ll go over it tonight. OK, I’m glad we had this talk, Honey. What’s for supper?”
05.23.05 @ 08:48 PM EDT [link]

Family Conversation - II
“Yes, Father, I’m pretty peeved Myself! I make it perfectly clear how to spread my Good News: witness and example of faith and good works. So is that what they’re doing? N-o-o-o-o-o! They’re taking the easy way out, passing laws to make people to “act like Christians,” putting them in jail if they don’t! They seem to have forgotten that I get people out of jail, not put them in! It’s simple laziness. Faith and good works are hard. Having men with guns as your enforcers is just so much easier. And I couldn’t have spelled it out any more clearly! I mean, when the Book says that Satan owns political power, he offers it to Me, and I reject it, shouldn’t that mean, duh! that you’re not supposed to want it! Nope, they wring their wacky “Laws of God” out of convoluted readings of the Scriptures, but can they even get the simple stuff right? Can they figure out that after all I went through because of misuse of political power that maybe I don’t want to have My own people doing the same thing? I thought they’d finally gotten it, too! The most powerful nation on Earth adopts as their fundamental law that people must find their own way to Me without being herded by the government, and here 200 years later they’re heading back to the bad old days again! What good are “believers” who act holy because that’s the law? What’s the worth of acts of worship from religious slaves? If We wanted religious robots We would have made them!” “Jesus?” “Yes, Mother?” “They’re making mistakes, but must children suffer for mistakes their parents made?” “Mother, how will they learn if there are no consequences to their actions? And these consequences are so clearly obvious under Father’s laws of physics and mathematics (not to mention arithmetic). If their lives are shorter, even so will their eternal life be no less short.” “Yes, Son, but if the sheep through their own folly become lost on barren land, should the shepherd not deliver them?” “Never change, Mother.”
05.22.05 @ 08:48 PM EDT [link]