A sampling of political cartoons from across the nation concerning the senseless slaughter at Fort Hood due to America’s easy access to guns. This should never have happened, and very well would not have, if not for the ability of anyone to buy weapons. The killer used a controversial Belgian weapon. He employed an FN 5.7 pistol. The weapon is produced by arms manufacturer FN at Herstal in Belgium. The killer was able to purchase the arm without any difficulty at an arms dealer’s. The 5.7 pistol is an extremely powerful semi-automatic arm. Using a special type of ammunition it can pierce through bullet proof vests even at a great distance. This makes the weapon extremely popular among criminal gangs. It has been dubbed the “cop killer”.
Because this moment needs to be savored.
This is international humor in that no words need to be expressed to produce the desired effect. As such, this classic never loses its appeal.
It shows how each member of the House of Representatives voted on the historic health care legislation last night. In addition, it shows how much money each member receives from the health care industry, and the percentage of uninsured in the congressional district.
After decades of our nation talking about the need for health care reform the Democratic House of Representatives acted. The Congress passed a major health care reform bill late on Saturday night. Though it is not perfect, it does kick the ball way down the field and will improve the health care needs of the nation. The Chicago Tribune (different image from below) has the story in the print edition, and makes for a must-see this morning. In addition, there are some sweet newspaper headlines nation-wide.
UPDATED
Small boy sits on Grandpa’s knee, in about 20 years down the road.
“So Grandpa, what did you do in Congress when your served your constituents?”
“Well I voted against the historic health care bill that would have added more Americans to the roles of the insured, and reduced the outlandish activities that insurance companies were using on my fellow citizens.”
“But Gramps you always tell me to do my best, and act with honor in everything I do”
Grandpa has nothing to say, and hangs his head in shame.
The 39 Democrats who voted against the bill are as follows.
1. Rep. John Adler (NJ)
2. Rep. Jason Altmire (PA)
3. Rep. Brian Baird (WA)
4. Rep. John Barrow (GA)
5. Rep. John Boccieri (OH)
6. Rep. Dan Boren (OK)
7. Rep. Rick Boucher (VA)
8. Rep. Allen Boyd (FL)
9. Rep. Bobby Bright (AL)
10. Rep. Ben Chandler (KT)
11. Rep. Travis Childers (MS)
12. Rep. Artur Davis (AL)
13. Rep. Lincoln Davis (TN)
14. Rep. Chet Edwards (TX)
15. Rep. Bart Gordon (TN)
16. Rep. Parker Griffith (AL)
17. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD)
18. Rep. Tim Holden (PA)
19. Rep. Larry Kissell (NC)
20. Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (FL)
21. Rep. Frank Kratovil (MD)
22. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (OH)
23. Rep. Jim Marshall (GA)
24. Rep. Betsy Markey (CO)
25. Rep. Eric Massa (NY)
26. Rep. Jim Matheson(UT)
27. Rep. Mike McIntyre (NC)
28. Rep. Michael McMahon (NY)
29. Rep. Charlie Melancon (LA)
30. Rep. Walt Minnick (ID)
31. Rep. Scott Murphy (NY)
32. Rep. Glenn Nye (VA)
33. Rep. Collin Peterson (MN)
34. Rep. Mike Ross (AR)
35. Rep. Heath Shuler (NC)
36. Rep. Ike Skelton (MO)
37. Rep. John Tanner (TN)
38. Rep. Gene Taylor (MS)
39. Rep. Harry Teague (NM)
This was a wonderful read in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, and as such I think others who enjoy books, and writing will find this equally interesting. I offer small snippets from a longer, and very rewarding article. While reading this my mind thought of Madison writer Emily Mills who has self-published. (I still envy her for that.)
John Irving describes how he begins his novels by writing the last sentence first.
Before she begins a novel, Edwidge Danticat creates a collage on a bulletin board in her office, tacking up photos she’s taken on trips to her native Haiti and images she clips from magazines ranging from Essence to National Geographic.
Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk often rewrites the first line of his novels 50 or 100 times.
British novelist Hilary Mantel likes to write first thing in the morning, before she has uttered a word or had a sip of coffee. She usually jots down ideas and notes about her dreams. “I get very jangled if I can’t do it,” she says.
Booker-prize winner Michael Ondaatje’s preferred medium is 8½-by-11-inch Muji brand lined notebooks. He completes the first three or four drafts by hand, sometimes literally cutting and pasting passages and whole chapters with scissors and tape. Some of his notebooks have pages with four layers underneath.
Richard Powers lounges in bed all day and speaks his novels aloud to a laptop computer with voice-recognition software. Junot Diaz, author of the Pulitzer-prize winning novel “The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” shuts himself in the bathroom and perches on the edge of the tub with his notebook when he’s tackling a knotty passage. Hilary Mantel, whose Tudor drama “Wolf Hall” claimed this year’s Man Booker Prize, jumps in the shower when she gets stuck. “The number of pages I’ve got that are water marked, I can’t tell you,” Ms. Mantel said.
Behind the scenes, many of these writers say they struggle with the daily work of writing, clocking thousands of solitary hours staring at blank pages and computer screens. Most agree on common hurdles: procrastination, writer’s block, the terror of failure that looms over a new project and the attention-sucking power of the Internet.
A few authors bristle when asked the inevitable question about how they write. Richard Ford declined to reveal his habits, explaining in an email that “those are the kind of questions I hope no one asks me after readings and lectures.” Others revel in spilling minute details, down to their preferred brand of pen (Amitav Ghosh swears by black ink Pelikan pens) or font size (Anne Rice uses 14-point Courier; National Book Award nominee Colum McCann sometimes uses eight-point Times New Roman, forcing himself to squint at the tiny type). Some now offer fans a window into the process, reporting on their progress on blogs and Twitter feeds.
Under the laws of the United States, given the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, abortion is a legal medical procedure. For better or worse, regardless of one’s views, it is the law of the land. As such, I am troubled by the lack of appreciation for that fact among some members of the House of Representatives that pushed for an exclusion of abortion services in the health care bill that will soon be voted on. There is no reason that a legal procedure be not paid for when women seek one out. For Democrats to turn their backs on women in this fashion in 2009 is truly quite distasteful. While medically necessary abortions will still be covered, the action of those Democrats who carry water for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops should be ashamed. What does a bishop know about a women’s vagina?
Several anti-abortion Democrats will offer the amendment, including Rep. Brad Ellsworth, D-Indiana, and Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Michigan, who are scoring a major victory in convincing Democratic leaders to allow this vote.
It is also a big win for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which used its power, especially with conservative Democrats in swing congressional districts, to help force Democratic leaders to permit a vote that most of them oppose.
“We didn’t have a choice,” said a Democratic leadership source. “We didn’t have the votes” on health care without agreeing to this.
Planned Parenthood decried the amendment, saying it would result in the elimination of abortion coverage currently offered by most private health insurance plans.
“This amendment would violate the spirit of health-care reform, which is meant to guarantee quality, affordable health-care coverage for all by creating a two-tiered system that would punish women, particularly those with low and modest incomes,” the group said in a statement.
“Women won’t stand for legislation that takes away their current benefits and leaves them worse off after health-care reform than they are today.”
The Democratic sources said people would be able to purchase riders with their own money for insurance that includes abortion coverage.
“I find this amendment very, very uncomfortable,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Massachusetts.
“I foresee for poor women in America, a return to the dark ages,” said Rep Alcee Hastings, D-Florida.
I enjoy the Travel section of the Sunday New York Times, where one offering stands out as always a fun read. This weekend the “36 Hours” column heads to Music City, Nashville, Tennessee. One of their suggestions is spot on.
Hundreds of country hits were recorded at Studio B (1611 Roy Acuff Place), a drab cinderblock building in the historic Music Row district, where RCA legends like Elvis, Roy Orbison and Dolly Parton sang their hearts out. The unglamorous space looks largely unchanged from when it was shuttered in 1977. Many visiting music fans haven’t even heard of the studio let alone realize that it’s one of the last vestiges of country music’s golden years. The Country Music Hall of Fame (222 Fifth Avenue South; 615-416-2001; www.countrymusichalloffame.com) offers hourlong tours. Piano players may be invited to tickle the ivories of the original Steinway grand piano.
This week the Republicans found a health care plan to place before the public. But like a cake that has a runny center if not baked long enough……
House Republican leaders have produced their own health care reform bill. Here is the first thing you need to know: It would do almost nothing to reduce the scandalously high number of Americans who have no insurance. And it makes only a token stab at slowing the relentlessly rising costs of medical care.
There’s no question that the Republicans’ bill is cheaper because it does so little to help the uninsured. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it would provide $61 billion over 10 years to expand coverage, compared with more than $1 trillion in the Democrats’ bill.
That paltry effort, the budget office estimates, would extend coverage to a few million people who would otherwise be uninsured in 2019, leaving 52 million citizens and legal residents below Medicare age without coverage or about 17 percent of that population, right where it is today. This is a dismaying abdication of responsibility.
The Republican bill is an amalgam of market-oriented and state-based reforms that conservatives have long proposed, including enhancement of tax-sheltered accounts to help pay premiums and allowing people to buy insurance in other states that might permit skimpier benefits than their home state.
It has some good provisions, such as prohibiting insurers from imposing annual or lifetime caps on what they will pay and automatic enrollment of workers in employer-sponsored group coverage. But it would not prevent insurers from denying coverage or charging higher premiums based on pre-existing conditions.
The Republicans have been railing that the Democratic reforms will do little to slow the rapid rise in medical costs. But neither party has a solution. The Republican bill would cap malpractice awards — a clear infringement of the rights of injured patients. It would get lesser savings by requiring electronic transactions for administrative tasks and opening an approval process for generic biological medicines. The Democratic bills would use both of those for savings and initiate an array of pilot projects to try to find solutions.
The Republican bill’s main emphasis is on reducing the cost of health insurance premiums, a real concern. Compared with current trends, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that under the Republican bill, the average premium would drop by 7 to 10 percent for employees enrolled in group plans at small businesses and by 5 to 8 percent for people who buy their own policies. At large employers, where most Americans get group coverage, the average premium might drop by a modest 0 to 3 percent.
Part of the premium reduction was attributed to savings in the cost of medical services. But much was attributed to shrinking the services covered. The Democrats plan to set minimum benefit requirements to protect people from skimpy policies that leave them without adequate protection when they need it.
The budget office is planning to estimate how the far more complex Democratic bills would affect premiums. Americans need to know that so they can make a full comparison. But there should be no illusions here. The “affordable” Republican health care reform isn’t health care reform.
Still not sure why the man did not turn down the medical help since it is all about socialism and all…. One has to wonder, if he now carries a little red book, and sings union songs before bed?
It seems striking to me that in the midst of a lily-white crowd of protesters the only people of color were probably the ones with the medical degrees and emergency rescue skills.
More ominously, a man standing just beyond the TV cameras apparently suffered a heart attack 20 minutes after event began. Medical personnel from the Capitol physician’s office — an entity that could, quite accurately, be labeled government-run health care — rushed over, attaching electrodes to his chest and giving him oxygen and an IV drip.
This turned into an unwanted visual for the speakers, as a D.C. ambulance and firetruck, lights flashing, pulled in just behind the lawmakers. A path was made through the media section, and the patient, attended to by about 10 government medical personnel, was being wheeled away on a stretcher just as House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) stepped to the microphone. “Join us in defeating Pelosi care!” he exhorted. A few members stole a glance at the stretcher. Boehner may have been distracted as well. He told the crowd he would read from the Constitution, then read the “we hold these truths” bit from the Declaration of Independence.
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