No Runny Eggs

The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

Archive for August 26th, 2009

Time to return fire – prepare for the Kennedy Memorial ObamaCare bill

by @ 11:41. Filed under Health Care Reform.

(H/T – Jim Hoft)

It didn’t take long for the Dems to jump all over the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s corpse and call for passage of ObamaCare in his name. As Joe Walsh once sang, “Out to pasture, think it’s safe to say, ‘Time to open fire.'”

First, Agence France Presse reports Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) invoked Kennedy’s words on what screwing up health care for the second time. That’s right, folks. Those of you who hate HMOs have Kennedy to blame – he wrote the 1973 bill that introduced HMOs.

Meanwhile, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) wins the Limbaugh Is Always Right award for being the first to call for renaming ObamaCare for Kennedy.

I prefer Pasadena Phil’s name for it (in the comments on Michelle Malkin’s post) – the “Chappaquiddick Memorial Death Panels Bill.”

Rest in peace, Sen. Kennedy (1932-2009)

by @ 10:34. Filed under Politics - National.

Those of you in a cave may not know the news – Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) passed away last night after battling a brain tumor. It is a sad day for his party, the Senate, and our country.

I’ll leave it to others to eulogize Sen. Kennedy. I recommend Baseball Crank’s take. For those of you who are thinking about taking cheap shots, listen to Michelle Malkin:

There is a time and place for political analysis and criticism. Not now.

Yes, there will be a nauseating excess of MSM hagiographies and lionizations — and crass calls to pass the health care takeover to memorialize his death.

That’s no excuse to demonstrate the same lack of restraint in the other direction. Not now.

I do, however, disagree with Michelle about not talking about the generalities of the implications. First, nothing of significance changes in the Senate for the moment, even though the Senate is now short a member. Because of his illness, he was rarely in the Senate to provide the 60th anti-filibuster vote. Of course, the need for that has been an illusion; there were almost always enough “Republicans” to break up any filibuster.

The reason why it is merely for the moment is the Massachusetts ganders of the Democratic Party are meeting the goose’s sauce. They failed to reverse a screw job they planned for then-governor Mitt Romney (R) by taking away the power of the governor to appoint a temporary replacement until the next general election. Now, there will be a special election held between 145 days and 160 days from now.

Shortly after that point, the Democrats will, assuming Masachusetts does what it has done since 1976 and send a Democrat to the Senate, have 60 permanent members of their caucus. I have a bad feeling about the second session of the 111th Congress.

Revisions/extensions (10:15 am 8/27/2009) – Somehow had the wrong birth year for Kennedy. Mea culpa.

The Killer Instinct

Large amounts of talent combined with training and technology have made it reasonably easy to field “good” teams in hockey, football, basketball or baseball. However, it is the rare team that moves beyond good and becomes dominating. The difference between the “good” teams and those that dominate their sport is one thing; killer instinct.

You may not be able to precisely define “killer instinct” but all sports fans know it when they see it.  Nobody left a Joe Montana and the Fortyniners game no matter what the score.  You knew that Joe was going to play until the last down of the game scoring at every opportunity he had.  Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, some years of the Yankees and the Edmonton Oilers with Wayne Gretzy are all examples of athletes and teams that played with “killer instinct”

But, you say, this is a political blog.  What’s going on with the sports analysis?

As with sports, politicians are separated by the ability to have a “killer instinct.”  Look at Norm Coleman against Al Franken.  Ahead in the polls until he decided to side step ANWAR, vote for the stimulus and decide that he no longer wanted to run a “negative campaign” even though he had done that from day one until they day he changed with 6 weeks left.  Norm is the perfect example of a politician who not only didn’t have a killer instinct, he showed he had little political instinct of any kind.

The race between John McCain and Barack Obama also came down to killer instinct.  One had it and one didn’t.  You can probably figure out which was which.

Anyone paying attention can see that the health care plan is on the ropes and cap and trade may well be on life support.  The public, across all demographics except the extreme loons, are responding to polls with the equivalent of “I didn’t vote for Obama!”  We see early contests in Virginia and New Jersey showing polls that seem to support a significant and sudden swing towards Republicans.  Everything is pointing towards a significant resurgence for Republicans.  The question is, do they have the killer instinct?

Unlike the left who has never had any concern about “rubbing their nose in it” when winning, Republicans seem to have an inbred need to be liked by the other side.  The result is that when they get a chance to gain ground, Republicans often feel the need to “compromise” to allow the other side the ability to save face.

The Republicans (I use this term generically and certainly don’t mean all people who run under that banner) have gained ground, not through their own actions.  Rather, the Republicans are gaining in popularity mostly because in a two party system, they are the only other option.  While the Republicans benefit from being “the only other choice” today, I wouldn’t be betting my house on it sticking.  Based on the fact that a large portion of the general population are revolting against their political masters I think there is a fair chance that a “throw all the bums out” mentality takes hold if the Republicans look to cave on health care or once again become Democrat lite.

You don’t think the Republicans could be that dumb again right?  Wrong!

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, a Michigan Republican Representative, has introduced a bill that would provide a $3,500 deduction for “qualified pet care expenses.”  The Representative is concerned of family hardships as a result of pet care costs during this time tough economic time.

How can any clear headed Republican think that providing a tax deduction for pet care makes sense when A: we have a hellacious deficit already,  B: human health care costs are subject to a 7% threshold of adjusted gross income and C: most of the Republicans and the general public are fighting to abolish further government intrusion into health care for people.  Does Thaddeus really think there is an urgency of any kind for the government (me and you) subsidizing health care for animals when we don’t want to do it for humans?

A stupid bill like this proves that Thaddeus McCotter does not have the killer instinct!  I hope to hell the rest of the Republicans have better political instincts.  If they don’t I’ll lead the parade for a third party.

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