Moe Lane

Wish I had seen this earlier: it would have changed the last post completely.  Via Drudge:

Snowe Urges Obama to Drop Public Plan to Pass Health Overhaul

Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine said there is “no way” a health-care overhaul that includes a public option can pass the Senate.

Snowe, one of six negotiators on the Senate Finance Committee, said that to gain more Republican support, President Barack Obama should explicitly drop the idea of a federally backed insurance program to compete with private insurers such as Hartford, Connecticut-based Aetna Inc.

[snip]

“I’ve urged the president to take the public option off the table,” Snowe said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” program. “It’s universally opposed by Republicans,” Snowe said.

Call me nuts, but it sounds like the Democrats just ran out of possible Republicans to give them cover. Guess they’re going to have to run over their own moderates to pass this health care rationing bill, then.

Moe Lane (more…)

(via @seanhackbarth) For the very commonsense reason that you can’t trust the people who would be pulling the trigger. No, really: that’s what she said.

A moderate Republican who has previously broken with her party to support President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill said Sunday that she does not support the idea of using a so called “trigger” on the public health insurance option as part of health care reform legislation.

Asked on CNN’s State of the Union if the use of the trigger would make inclusion of the public option more acceptable, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, unequivocally replied “no.”

“The problem with trigger is it just delays the public option,” Collins told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King, “because the people who are going to be making the determination about whether the market is competitive enough, want the public option.”

Note that this doesn’t mean that Sen. Olympia Snowe is going to take the same position (although it doesn’t mean that she’ll be taking a different one, either); but Sen. Collins’ position on this does make it clear that the ‘public trigger’ scenario for a government option in health care is not actually bipartisan. Please also note that Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D, NH) apparently needed only eight months as a Senator to forget how to answer straightforward questions in a straightforward manner:

New Hampshire Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen refused to answer directly when asked whether Collins’ position indicated that President Obama should either not fight for inclusion of the public option in the final bill or, alternatively, pursue a legislative strategy that relied solely on Democratic votes for health care reform.

(more…)

(Via Hot Air) The President feels that our public dialogue is “coarsening.”

President Barack Obama said in an interview to be aired Sunday night on “60 Minutes” that he sees “a coarsening of our political dialogue.”

“The truth of the matter is that there has been, I think, a coarsening of our political dialogue,” Obama told Steve Kroft in an interview taped at the White House on Friday evening.

Considering what I’ve been routinely been called since January for merely objecting to the way our debt keeps skyrocketing, I’d give the President the finger for that – only, I’m not entirely certain that I’d get it back.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

…of such an obvious ploy as Jim Treacher’s.  And I am certain that none of my readers will also approve of this attempt to link one’s base, prurient instincts with a natural disinclination to keep letting the government rack up the federal deficit.

Besides: aren’t they all already that, pretty much by definition?

Crossposted to RedState.

Norman Borlaug, agronomist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has died.  A widower, he leaves behind five grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, and 245,000,000 people who would have died of starvation without his work in the Green Revolution.

245,000,000 is, by the way, the conservative estimate. It’s been suggested that Dr. Borlaug may have saved up to 1,000,000,000 people with his work in practical agronomy; it’s certainly true that his work put a stake through the heart of the 1980s doomsday scenarios popularized by Paul R. Ehrlich and others.

Moe Lane

PS: Expect the above links to be about the extent of the public acclaim and respect shown to Dr. Borlaug, by the way.  As for accolades from the current administration… well, you tell me whether they’ll honor the man who made Paul Ehrlich look like a purblind fool.

Crossposted to RedState.

Death by aspirin overdose.

The man federal prosecutors pressured to cooperate in the corruption probe of ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich died of an apparent aspirin overdose on Saturday, law enforcement sources said.

Christopher Kelly, 51, of Burr Ridge, was pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital at 10:46 a.m. An autopsy is scheduled for today, a Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office spokeswoman said.

Death. By aspirin overdose.

Uh-huhh.

Moe Lane

(H/T streiff)

Crossposted to RedState.

This is pretty much why Fark has the Florida tag.

(Sept. 12) — Wildlife officials seized a 400-pound python from a Florida home on Friday.

Delilah, a pet Burmese python, was removed from her chain-link cage in her caretaker’s backyard — shortly after she finished eating seven rabbits for breakfast, according to the Orlando Sentinel. The snake measures around 18 feet long.

Click the link for a picture of the snake, which is freaking huge. The owner swears up and down that it’s a happy, docile four hundred pound python; which is good, because I’m not entirely sure that bullets can kill it. Seriously: I got nothing against snakes or keeping them as pets, but this is a specimen that you’d get experience points for killing.

Moe Lane

Beer Barrel Polka, The Mills Brothers

Because I’m tired, folks. Long day.

Spent the day at an SCA event.  The wife needed an A&S judge, the kitchen needed somebody on fennel-chopping duty, and the barony needed both of us there to get awards*.

And, to be honest: it’s nice to have days off.  And beers!  These days it’s just one beer if I get to have one at all.  I might have felt mildly guilty about it all if there wasn’t beer involved.

Moe Lane

*Baronial service award for her; AoA for me… yes, Gwalchmai: I smiled, was sincerely thankful for the honor, and said that this was all very unexpected.  Because, really, what the heck else can you do?

I am certain of three things:

1. The Democrats are trying to manage expectations about today’s DC demonstration by coming up with a number of ‘expected’ protesters that is far above actual expectations;
2. The media will play along;
3. It won’t actually work.

But you can blame it on me, if 2 million don’t show up.  My wife has made some few comments about how nice it would be to see my face during daylight hours, for a change.

Crossposted to RedState.

Free ice cream to resume tonight.

It was almost “Sympathy for the Devil.”

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, The Rolling Stones

Heck, it was almost “Lucky in Love.”