For those of you who stop by regularly, I thought you should know that I’ve offered this site as a temporary location for my friends from Hillbuzz. The Boyz have been away for a while and things keep happening that the Buzzers want to talk about. So I’ve offered this site as a vacation home for TXMom, FLMom, BlueStateBilly, NeeNee, lynn, girlpower, skating on glue, garlicnosedho, PVG, Delle, Tammy, and all the rest of the gang. They’re great people and I hope they – and you – take advantage of this opportunity to meet a few more cyberfriends from all over the country.

I’ve changed the settings here, so that after you post your first comment, subsequent comments will be automatically posted without administrative approval.

Enjoy! And welcome everybody!

When does the fat lady sing????

Too bizarre on too many levels.

We don’t know Jack.

So how do you think the first-ever presidential informercial is going to do in the ratings? TOTUS has some very high standards to reach. The One is playing in the big leagues now – right up there with Billy Mays and Vince “ShamWOW” Whathisname. Can he do it? Can this political wunderkind compete against the other networks and the zillions of cable channels for a big enough share of the viewing audience to keep the advertisers happy? The president is taking a real risk here. After all – June, 2009 is not the height of the campaign season. That sitcom’s over.

ABC and the White House will provide the prime time platform and background for a potential wow-a-minute opportunity to literally dazzle hundreds of Americans who can’t possibly find anything else to do on a beautiful summer evening than to park their sorry butts in front of the television set and watch a one-sided, fully scripted, hyper-hyped version of campaign promise re-runs. Boy, I can’t think of anything that could possibly be more fun or interesting. That’s just me though.

Jeff Schreiber at America’s Right suggests the potential for the President’s big show to bomb is right up there since the whole thing is pretty obviously an attempt to salvage a sinking agenda:

The backlash is here. This is a completely defensive move by a White House increasingly found on its heels. Obama’s recent health care speech in Wisconsin was similarly defensive, not to mention embarrassing. See, this president is a man who has never, ever been truly opposed in anything he has ever done. He skated into Illinois public office by getting his rivals tossed from the ballot, and he skated into the White House not because of his policies but because of his empty rhetoric, combined with a disillusioned, war-weary, Bush-lashed American public and a politically inept Republican on the other end of the ballot.

But, just like a pitcher who has thrown seven no-hit innings only to have a frozen-rope double slapped into left-center may struggle through the next few batters to come, Obama is seeing adversity–true, ideological adversity–for the first time in his life. As a result, the White House organizes a cheesy, Obot-packed town hall-style meeting in Wisconsin, and then asks a slobbering Charlie Gibson to quit dry-humping the presidential leg and invites him and his organization to the White House.

It’ll be real interesting to see how this show goes. Picked up for the season – or cancelled after the pilot?

The kerfluffle over the mean, tasteless, and disgusting attacks on Sarah Palin and her daughters by David Letterman hasn’t gone away the way such things usually do. And that’s a good thing. Over the past several years, certain groups have yelled long and hard enough that they are rarely the targets of gratuitous hate speech in public. White women, conservatives, and Christians still seem to be fair targets to some. Sarah Palin – who happens to be all three – has been a favorite of the Left as a person about whom the most vile and inaccurate statements can be made with little or no consequence.

Until now.

Finally, the public is reaching the point where enough is enough. Calls for boycotts against CBS, the Letterman Show, and the show’s sponsors are going viral on internet sites, blogs, and emails. And they don’t seem to be diminishing. Today’s offerings are taking things to new levels of creativity. Best of all – those who are offended by Letterman’s pathetic attempt at humor are turning his genre against him and his supporters. I share these with you:

This is just the beginning. The floodgates are open. There will be more. And maybe enough smart people will finally get the point that tacky doesn’t sell.

H/T HillBuzz

I really wanted to start posting about the healthcare issue and the various plans that are now bubbling to the surface. I fully expected to create some sort of boiled-down comparison of the good, bad, and the ugly about: “universal healthcare” – which seems to be synonymous with “free healthcare for all”; “single-payer healthcare” – which is evolving into “you choose your healthcare plan, doctor, etc., and the government will pay the bills instead of all those nasty insurance companies”, and; “public-option” – which apparently is some form of “you can choose between the government program or a private program, but either way you will be required by law to have insurance”.

Intentions being what they are, I spent several hours over the weekend researching and came to the conclusion that there’s no way I can explain the different proposals. Which is mostly because – other than the simplistic explanations offered above – the plans are so nebulous and theoretical there is no “there” to compare.

But I do have a few observations/questions/comments that I’ll share, that can hopefully start a dialogue here.

1.) Re: Coverage: Is the plan going to cover citizens, legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, tourists? Will it cover doctor’s visits, hospital, emergency services (including ambulances and LifeFlight), dental, vision, prescriptions, rehab, medical equipment, nursing homecare? Any co-pays or deductibles?

2.) Re: Cost: As far as I can tell, there is no way in hell that any of the possible cost ramifications can be addressed until the coverage issued are nailed down. So all the estimates out there are no more than silly guesses for the sole purpose of furthering an agenda. But I’ll bet you any amount of money that the actual costs will be far in excess of even the highest guesstimates – that’s just stark-raving reality. Look at the numbers for Medicare and Medicaid. Remember how we were told that there would be “cost savings” from those programs?????

3.) Re: Consequences: Here’s another black hole. For example, with universal or single-payor plans – if you eliminate all the insurance companies – what happens to all those hundreds of thousands of now-unemployed people who aren’t paying taxes or premiums, but must be covered – are you considering the additional impacts to those systems just from that one industry? Now throw in all the folks who have lost jobs in the last six months even – have the authors of the plans included those additional expenses to the forecasted numbers? What happens when the unemployment numbers reach 10 – 12%???? Pardon me if I can’t quite figure out the impacts of these scenarios. And what about horrendous disasters??? Are the proponents prepared to fold that into the mix?

4.) Re: Politics: For instance, Baucus (on behalf of his buddies in the insurance industry – Way to Go, Max!) says single-payer is “off the table” in direct opposition to the administration’s plans. Throw in the Blue Dog Democrats and the kerfluffle gets going before the R’s weigh in. As this debate gets hotter, the politics of the thing will get nastier and nastier and honest accurate information that should be at the basis of any informed decision will be tossed farther under the bus than Rev. Wright.

It is likely that some form of healthcare bill will be debated in Congress this summer. I wonder, though, if in the end, it will be more sound and fury than substance? And possibly, the whole thing could get tabled “because of the economy stupid”. Washington frequently works that way.

And for that we are grateful.

What say you?

‘Nuff said.