re Rehberg erg

I wrote a note to Congressman Rehberg.
Congressman Rehberg was kind enough to reply.
I think his take on what he’s done is intriguing.

Edward Childers
[snip]
Missoula, Montana 59801
Dear Edward:
Thanks for contacting me regarding H.R. 1, the Continuing Resolution for fiscal year 2011.  It’s good to hear from you.
After two years of reckless spending, Americans overwhelmingly voted for a new direction last year in order to put an end to the job-killing policies coming out of Washington.  Unfortunately, the President didn’t get the message.  The White House budget blueprint continues on the path of too much spending, too much taxing and too much borrowing.

Let’s rephrase this: After Obama and Democrats spent 2 years trying to restore our economy after 8 years of Bush & Rehberg & co.’s best attempts to destroy it, American voters fell for Republicans’ promises to make jobs, save money, and cut taxes. Then Republicans discarded the jobs bit, redirected the money bit, joyfully cut taxes for rich people and global corporations, and attacked pregnant women and incidentally anyone who thinks they need an education that doesn’t include cowboys riding dinosaurs.

Maybe Americans are getting the message now.

Compared with the President’s budget, I joined the House and voted to reduce the deficit by $100 billion.  As Chairman of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over funding the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, I helped save taxpayers $23 billion dollars compared with the previous year’s funding level.  The House ban on earmarks, which I supported, accounted for over $1 billion of those savings.

Congressman Rehberg has not supported earmarks before? Apparently not. In the meantime he votes to give tax breaks to gigacorporations, he votes to keep the “bridge to nowhere” alive (even though he had a helper write a story today that said he didn’t).

[From http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7459131.html] [Texas news]

‘Bridge to Nowhere’: Defeated, 181-246, a Democratic bid to strip HR 662 (above) of funds for building the Gravina Island Bridge linking tiny Ketchikan, Alaska, with an airport on sparsely populated Gravina Island. This is the “bridge to nowhere” lampooned in recent years as an example of wasteful congressional earmarks. While notoriety has cost the Gravina Island project much of its anticipated federal funding since 2005, HR 662 contains $183 million in fiscal 2011 spending for it and the Knik Arm Crossing Bridge, another disputed project in Alaska. A yes vote was to defund the “bridge to nowhere.”

and he votes to put Conservatives in everyone’s bedroom to watch over them. And incidentally Rehberg’s opposition to Obamacare is going to cost us all billions of dollars. And of course we’ll not have health insurance if he gets his way.

In addition to the carefully targeted savings of tax dollars, the legislation also included:
o   My amendment to prevent funds from being used to implement Obamacare;

Yeah, that’s just plan foolish.

o   An amendment offered by Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK) and I that prevents enforcement of a new gun control provision being pushed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms;

I know nothing about that.

o   A stop-gap provision to temporarily return partial control of wolf management to parts of some states, including Montana; and

Wolves. Now that’s the most important thing.

o   The elimination of at least 65 wasteful, duplicative, inefficient or questionable federal programs.

Questionable like for instance health insurance? What else? Education? How was their wastefulness etc. determined?

This legislation also allowed for an open process in which any member of Congress could offer and debate an amendment – the first time in years that this has been the case in the House.  More than 700 amendments from all sides were offered.

Yay. Is any of that true? If so, did it help get things done?

Thanks again for contacting me.  If you get a chance, I encourage you to visit my website at http://www.house.gov/rehberg where you can find the latest news about what’s happening in Congress.  Also, if you haven’t already done so, please be sure to sign up for my free E-Newsletter at http://www.house.gov/rehberg/newsletter/ which will help keep you up-to-date with what is going on in Washington, DC and how it affects Montana.  It’s a good source for news stories, blog posts and to read what other Montanans just like you are saying.

It’s good to know there’s other Montanans just like me.

Sincerely,
Denny Rehberg
Montana’s Congressman

Denny Rehberg is, indeed, Montana’s Congressman. Now he wants to be a Montana Senator.

Yay.

Here’s looking at you, kid.

Now here’s something interesting: a half-million dollar Air Force surveillance blimp that can float at 65,000 feet for ten (10) (TEN) years at a time. It would provide oh-so-much better viewing than a satellite, and talk about cheap! they could field ten thousand of them in no time at all. And with constantly improving imaging technology, not even the things we do in our sub-basements would be private. Not that we have anything to hide.

Economic collapse Pollyanna

What I’d like is for the crooks who stole the money and got us into this mess to lose the money and everything they acquired with it and for everybody else to have minimal losses.
It’s what I’d like.

Lady Griz.

Great show, I thought. Tough 2nd half, though.

Genetic manipulation

I was listening to people on the radio discuss genetic manipulation, and what it could do, and what it should be used for, so I got to thinking.

There are people who state emphatically that God’s Plan is thwarted when Humans engage in genetic manipulation. My guess is that they’re the same people who abhor contraception and the utilization of unwanted blastocycts for stem cell research. And the same people who detest the idea that God’s Plan could be evolution.

I want to know how they discovered the specifics of God’s Plan. I mean, if it’s happening, and if God’s Fingers move every piece on the board, how can any move on the board not happen according to God’s Plan? Really now, don’t those things seem mutually exclusive?

And more importantly, again, who knows God’s Plan, and how do they know? Do the TV bloviators have a special connection? Why would omnipotent God grant special super secret access to some conduit instead of telling everybody Himself? And why do people seem to believe what these people tell them? And send them money? And smile while they do it?

Back to the perils of genetic manipulation, the topic centered on its use for cosmetic purposes, mainly to make blonde blue-eyed children. Strong and smart were a distant second to blond and blue-eyed. Healthy was, I think, OK.

Why bother with cosmetic genetics? If people are blonde they’ll dye their hair brown. If eyes are blue they’ll wear brown contacts. Nobody’s satisfied with the way they are. Nobody’d be satisfied with the way their parents make them; that’s the way they are.

Here’s a suggestion, though: since humanity seems hell bent on multiplying until there are 10 or 30 or a hundred billion of us, maybe we should try to make ourselves very small. About the size of a lawn gnome might work best. Complete with pointy heads to fit those hats.

Why Meet The Press

Why do I watch “Meet the Press?”
Why do I listen to Eric Cantor?
Why does he believe Obama will double the national debt?
Why does he sound better than the rep from the Democratic side? Whoever she was.

A Coupla Lawyers

I think I read this morning there’s a couple of lawyers at the UM Law School who cringe when they read the Kaimin; it seems there’s somebody writing a column about sex. I think it was about sex; that was this morning and it’s been a long day.

So anyhow this couple of lawyers want to cause a ruckus at the university level as big as the high school ruckus about Stuff. University = sex; high school = Stuff.

OK, that’s kind of how I remember it. Close enough.

What I think is, if those UM Lawyers – at least one teaches constitutional law, I’m thinking – if those guys are all clamped up about this innocuous Kaimin column, they really ought to go back to the 1960′s and go through Dave Rorvik’s stuff. If those guys are offended by this stuff, they’ll really go ballistic when they read Rorvik’s suggestion for a Portable Abortion Kit.

Just imagine.

8 years wasted on Bush and evangelicals.
Now a stroke of President Obama’s pen rescues frozen embryos from the furnace, and frees them for investigation.
Maybe it’ll work, Maybe not.
Too bad about those lost 8 years.
And the evangelicals are nuts about it still: I guess the furnace is their savior.

Taxes vs. health insurance

Today I read that Senator Baucus wants to tax my health insurance to help cover the cost of health insurance for everyone.

And that it’s his suggested alternative to reducing tax breaks for rich people.

What?

I know Max opposes having everybody pay income taxes in order to provide health care for everybody. This isn’t Cuba, to paraphrase his reasoning; we’re not ready for it.

Instead, the other thing we’re going to do is, we’re going to force people to buy health insurance.

What?

On the bright side, treating employer-provided health insurance as income should increase people’s income-based retirement, such as Social Security. The flipside of that is that the Conventional Wisdom is that SocSec is already upside-down.

But if Max is concerned about taking money from rich people to support America (which is what it looks like) then I’m afraid he didn’t get the November Message.

Huge

I used to use a camera that used 35mm film. 35mm was a semi-amateur format that worked out well because it was so portable, and it became ubiquitous.
I bought a swell digital camera that took 640×480 pictures! The pictures were crappy compared to the 35, but I quit using the 35, and I have lots of prized pictures that were taken with the 640×480. The 640 is history. I replaced it with a nice camera that takes megabyte-size picture files, and I have lots of pictures from that. They take more room to store than the 640, but plenty fit on a CD so it’s no real problem.
Now I have a camera that takes 20 megabyte pictures. I really like the pictures it takes. I just don’t know how I’m going to store them.