Talking with Twila Brase from the Citizens Council on Health Care.

Here’s the link to the website.

MN 7th District representative Collin Peterson will vote “No” on the House “Healthcare” bill this weekend:

Peterson says the bill doesn’t do enough to control health care costs, and that it continues unfair Medicare reimbursements that penalize Minnesota doctors and hospitals. Peterson says his biggest concern is the federal budget…

This is good news.  There was some doubt on this one; while Peterson is one of the bluest of the blue dogs, and represents a fundamentally conservative part of Minnesota, his vote seemed to some observers (including Rep. Bachmann, whom Ed and I interviewed last weekend) to be a bit of a tossup.

Earlier today, CD1 Rep. Tim Walz indicated he’d vote for the bill.

Walz, in his second term representing a slightly less conservative district than Peterson, is no doubt paying back chits to the DNC.  Someone check for strings above his arms. 

And get on the phone – to thank Peterson, to tell Walz you’re not amused, and to tell Oberstar you are a pro-lifer who is not amused by the “healthcare bill”‘s affordances for abortion:

Jim Oberstar:
2365 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-6211
FAX: (202) 225-0699

Collin Peterson
(202) 225-2165

Tim Walz
Washington Office
1722 Longworth House
Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
202-225-2472

This is for all the marbles, folks.  Your healthcare, and your great-grandchildrens’ solvency.

Ed and I are talking with Rep. Bachmann on the air as I write this – and she stresses the importance of calling the representatives whose votes might be up for grabs on next week’s healthcare vote in the US House.  She notes that while she, Rep. Kline and Rep. Paulsen are going to vote against the bill, and there’s no real suspense about Ellison or McCollum either, that we could well put some pressure on Tim Walz (a liberal Democrat in a district that, in a rational climate, would have sent Gil Gutknecht back to office in ’06), Collin Peterson (a blue dog from the conservative northwest corner of the state) and…

…Jim Oberstar?  That’s right – the 224-term congressman from the Arrowhead represents a district that loves its pork, but is also very pro-life – and would not be impressed by the pro-infanticide aspects of Pelosi’s novel.

So call!

Jim Oberstar:
2365 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-6211
FAX: (202) 225-0699

Collin Peterson
(202) 225-2165

Tim Walz
Washington Office
1722 Longworth House
Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
202-225-2472

Remember – be polite (because if you say so much as “gosh darnit”, the media will accuse you of assault), and that Congressional staffs (and Reps) know that every caller represents 100 other people.

Um, yeah.  Of course there are.

The provision [in the latest “Healthcare Bill”] allows Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling to help beneficiaries deal with the complex and painful decisions families face when a loved one is approaching death.

For years, federal laws and policies have encouraged Americans to think ahead about end-of-life decisions, and make their wishes known in advance through living wills and similar legal documents. But when House Democrats proposed this summer to pay doctors for end-of-life counseling, it touched off a wave of suspicion and anger. Prominent Republicans singled it out as a glaring example of government overreach.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, at the time a lead negotiator on health care legislation, told constituents at a town hall meeting they had good reason to question the proposal.

“I don’t have any problem with things like living wills, but they ought to be done within the family,” he said. “We should not have a government program that determines you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.”

Of course, the real problem – if you’re a Democrat who wants to socialize the healthcare system – isn’t that government will wield the power of life and death (via “case management”, which is indeed what HMOs do today – the difference being that HMOs can be left for competitors, or sued). 

No.  It’s that all us uppity peasants actually make them earn their pay, explaining the whole thing:

Thursday, the sponsor of the provision said the barrage of criticism may have actually helped.

“There is nothing more basic than giving someone the option of speaking with their doctor about how they want to be treated in the case of an emergency,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore. “I think the outrageous and vindictive attacks may have backfired to help raise awareness about this problem, which is why it’s been kept in the bill.”

“And if you get out of line at any more town hall meetings, we’ll institute two death panels!  Hahahahaha!  Because we can!  That’s why!“

120,000 calls in four hours…and we’re done.

Park Nicollet Clinic shut down its flu-shot appointment line today after it was flooded with 120,000 calls in a four-hour period this morning.

They need to get that soup Nazi guy to handle this.

“Not pregnant? No shot for you!

Older than four? No shot for you!

Healthy immune system? No shot for you!

Move along!”

That would work.

The American people are turning on socialized healthcare.  Indeed, the push to socialize healthcare and use it as a vehicle to put the American people in eternal debt has done the impossible – brought the conservative movement from near-death back to national political viability and power, inside of a year.

Healthcare may or may not turn out to be the epic miscalculation that it was for Bill Clinton, when it sparked the conservative onslaught in 1994.  I’m gonna hold out for “may”, of course, and do my best to make it a “will”.

And we had a good sign in that direction yesterday; the Dems are P trying to snooker the American people (emphasis added by me):

In an appearance at a Florida senior center, the Democratic leader referred to the so-called public option as “the consumer option.” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., appeared by Pelosi’s side and used the term “competitive option.”

Both suggested new terminology might get them past any lingering doubts among the public—or consumers or competitors.

“You’ll hear everyone say, ‘There’s got to be a better name for this,'” Pelosi said. “When people think of the public option, public is being misrepresented, that this is being paid for with their public dollars.”

Ah.

So our tax dollars – notwithstanding the longtime Democrat meme that everything we earn belongs to the government before it belongs to us – are not public, now?

Wow.  Maybe those “the income tax is unconstitutional” people have a point!

And since it’s my money, then Nan Pelosi and her hamsters in Washington should have no control over how I spend it, right?

Something for all you conservatives (and people who care about free markets and being able to get decent health care in this country) on Twitter:

I’ve been @ messaging folks but hopefully you can give this some
traction: Suppose you tweet the following:

Please RT — select any number of pages from health care bill
http://is.gd/4rxIr, read them, & post results at #crowdread

Nobody said it would be easy, of course:

I already have a (half-a**ed — I can’t read that s**t!) entry…

This would be one of those areas where conservatives’ domination of Twitter could be a very good thing.

I may do it on the blog, here, too.  Presuming I can make heads or tails of any of it.

Pigs from the Minnesota state fair are being tested by the government for what may be the first U.S. cases of swine flu among domestic livestock.

That’s why I never go to The Fair.

So why did Olympia “Oly” Snowe vote for Obamacare?

Because she’s a statesmanlypersonly visionary who is looking beyond party politics?

Or because her own state’s socialized-medicine boondoggle is rapidly going broke?

Steven Spruill notes at NRO:

Obamacare would relieve a handful of northeastern states, including Maine, of the burden of funding their broken, heavily regulated and subsidized health-care systems while imposing new burdens on the South and Midwest in the form of expanded eligibility for Medicaid. Of course Snowe voted for this bill. It’s a bailout for Maine.

Glenn Reynolds http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/86770/”>adds> “I just admire the name “DirigoChoice.”  I like it, if only because with my monitor (set to really high resolution), it reads “Dingochoice”, which is really funny.

Betty McCollum (DFL MN4) confirms it – “bipartisanship” is just for Republicans! (emphasis added):

“Now is the time to pass a public health insurance option. Now is the time to expand access to quality health care, control rising costs, keep American businesses competitive, and improve the health of the American people,” she told the crowd of assembled party activists.

“You know there is a lot of talk about how Democrats need to reach out to Republicans and work for a ‘bipartisan’ health care bill. I am sick and tired of talk of a bipartisan health care bill — that’s just a plan for less health care for people in need and more profits for corporations driven by greed,” she said.

But McCollum – famous for ducking any debates and avoiding any dissent, as befits a “representative” from a one-party city who has never needed to remember that there are at least two sides to any issue – does make one illustrative point:

“Since I’ve been in Congress there have been a number of historic bipartisan bills — historically bad!”

She’s got a point; “bipartisanship” is the plea of the weaker party, or at least of the party that doesn’t need to reach across the aisle – which, as a Saint Paul DFLer, is all McCollum knows; the “bipartisanship” of ramming our agenda down the opposition’s throat.

Of course, McCollum is in the majority now.  She can afford to talk like a petty absolutist tyrant.

That “Majority” thing’s gotta change. 

Which is why your vote matters in 2010.  When McCollum is in the minority again – then she’ll see the value of “bipartisanship”. 

Let’s hope a new Republican majority doesn’t make that mistake again.

If  this particular Andrew Breitbart piecewere about nothing other than the hypocrisy of Hollywood eminimenta lecturing and scolding the rest of us about not paying more in taxes for healthcare – and their inability to carry on a coherent argument to support nationalized healthcare that doesn’t submerge itself immediately in ad homina  – it’s be totally worth the read.

But that’s only the beginning:

Vera Wescott was a single-mother who worked in a factory and sprinted home during her half-hour lunch break to check on her kids during the summers. She had no high-school diploma and late at night after making dinner, cleaning the house and putting the kids to bed, she worked and worked, until she’d earned it. She went on to have a nice quiet life, remarrying a man named John, and the two traveled together, eventually retiring.

So far, so good.

But as they aged, the two decided to return to Canada so that their health care would be provided for. In the summer of 2004, Vera slipped in her apartment and was taken to a Canadian hospital. While there, they discovered that she had mid-stage, but treatable colon cancer. But because the government of Canada has to “cut waste” (sound familiar?) to have enough money to treat people, Vera was told she would need to wait 6 months for treatment. She was sent to a Convalescent Home near Toronto where she died in September.

I was a pallbearer at Vera’s funeral. She was my grandmother.

In the United States of America, her cancer would have been treated, and the treatment would’ve begun on the day they discovered it regardless of her insurance or ability to pay.

[Film director] Adam McKay [of Ron Burgundy fame] has never had to lower his grandmother’s casket into the earth because the government, acting as the final arbiter of life and death, decided it was time for her to die so that they could worry about someone a little younger or a little more healthy. I don’t expect him to understand.

Anecdotal?

Yep.  Over and over and over again.

What would America’s health care system look like with half as many physicians?

Let’s find out.

Pass Obamacare.

65%, of doctors say they oppose the proposed government expansion plan.

Four of nine doctors, or 45%, said they “would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement” if Congress passes the plan the Democratic majority and White House have in mind.

More than seven in 10 doctors, or 71% — the most lopsided response in the poll — answered “no” when asked if they believed “the government can cover 47 million more people and that it will cost less money and the quality of care will be better.”

Last one to leave, please turn off that x-ray thingee.

The latest chapter of the left’s carefully reasoned and mature dialogue on public policy comes from the UK Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland:

Anyone who cares about the survival of our planet should start praying that Barack Obama gets his way on reforming US healthcare. That probably sounds hyperbolic, if not mildly deranged: even those who are adamant that 45 million uninsured Americans deserve basic medical cover would not claim that the future of the earth depends on it. But think again.

Got it. If President Obama doesn’t get “his way” on health care we’re all gonna die!!! This is exactly the kind of cool, dispassionate reason we’ve come to depend on from the left, and why we take their warnings about overheated rhetoric coming from the right so seriously.

Anyway, I sure hope the president gets around to deciding what “his way” on health care is supposed to be, and letting the Democratic leadership in Congress know. Is he going to get working on that right after this next round of speeches or something? Now that we know the planet is doomed without his stamp of approval on some kind of actual health reform thingy, can he maybe shift his schedule around to get cracking on this?

Because I, for one, can’t wait to see the kind of super-human focus and bipartisan coalition he brings to bear on < superhero-theme-music > saving the planet < /superhero-theme-music > after his dazzling performance on health care… insurance… whatever… reform.

When former President Bush gave his state of the union a few years ago, a clutch of Democrat legislators, hidden by their numbers, booed.  They profaned their office and attacked the dignity of the President’s address – and not a one of them had the cojones to identify themselves, much less either apologize or elaborate.  It was sophomoric at best, cowardly and solopsistic at worst.

Rep. Joe Wilson broke protocol, and rudely so, by standing up and called the President a liar during his Health Care pep rally campaign speech address earlier this week.  Unlike his Democrat forebears, he apologized later.

But let the record show, as an emailer pointed out this morning, that Wilson was right:

President says his proposed health insurance law will not give taxpayer-funded health insurance coverage to illegal aliens.  Proposed law says specifically that illegal aliens are not covered.

BUT . . . proposed law also says the government is forbidden to ASK if the person is an illegal alien, or to demand proof of citizenship/legal residence.

In my mind, that’s like Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell.  Official military policy is that gays are not allowed to serve in the military.  But the military is forbidden to ask if you’re gay.  So the end result is that gays DO serve in the military as long as nobody talks about it. 

I wish the President would explain why that won’t be the same result with the insurance plan.  Illegal aliens will show up to apply for taxpayer-funded health insurance coverage, the government won’t be allowed to ask if they’re illegal, so the illegal aliens will get coverage as long as nobody talks about it, right?  If not right, why not?

The President who says the law will not give insurance to illegal aliens but the Congressman who says the President is lying about what the law will do.  I’m on the Congressman’s side in this one.

There’s a time and a place to attack the President.  I’m not entirely sure that a glorified campaign stump speech isn’t one of them – but nonetheless, at the very least we are to respect the office if not that man, his (misguided) policies and his (misleading) rhetoric.

Might have been rude to interrupt the speech.  But he was right.  I’d rather my Congressman risked being rude to be right.  Good for him.  Wish we had a few like him from Minnesota.

Well, we do; Michele Bachmann isn’t one to hold back when she’s on a tear – to her occasional chagrin. 

Doesn’t seem like such a bad trait, sometimes, these days.

In the wake (or afterglow, if you work for MSNBC) of Obama’s latest prime-time grabbing foofarah, I’m noticing a telling disconnect between those who examine what comes next in concrete terms from those who just want to bask in how awesomely terrific our dreamy president appeared. Let’s start by examining the latter, and what better example could there be than noted pant-crease fetishist David Brooks…

On Wednesday night, Barack Obama delivered the finest speech of his presidency. The exposition of his health care views was clear and lively. The invocation of Teddy Kennedy was moving and effective. The rumination at the end about the American character and the role of government was the clearest summary of Obama’s political philosophy that he has yet given us.

It’s not often you can summarize an ostensibly conservative columnist’s opening paragraph about a Democratic president’s call to socialize medicine as, “Squeeeee!!!” But this is hardly the first time Brooks has been enraptured by Obama. The telling part begins to show next, but Brooks doesn’t seem to register the significance even as he makes note of it.

(more…)

…could turn around and yell at my sister and brother to quit bickering and shaddap.

President Obama, on the other hand…

Shaking off a summer of setbacks, President Barack Obama summoned Congress to enact sweeping health care legislation Wednesday night, declaring the “time for bickering is over”

…no.  By your leave, your highness, our represenatives will continue to represent the majority of this nation that has serious questions – you might call it “bickering”, but then you’re not my Dad – about your health insurance “plan”.

That is all.

The U.S. shows up almost exactly in the middle of the pack.

Sarah Palin on why socializing healthcare is just plain dumb:

Common sense tells us that the government’s attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down, one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy. And common sense tells us to be skeptical when President Obama promises that the Democrats’ proposals “will provide more stability and security to every American.”

With all due respect, Americans are used to this kind of sweeping promise from Washington. And we know from long experience that it’s a promise Washington can’t keep.

Well, we thought “we” – the nation – knew it.  And yet the Dems are in power. 

For now, anyway.

Let’s talk about specifics. In his Times op-ed, the president argues that the Democrats’ proposals “will finally bring skyrocketing health-care costs under control” by “cutting . . . waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid and in unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies . . . .”

First, ask yourself whether the government that brought us such “waste and inefficiency” and “unwarranted subsidies” in the first place can be believed when it says that this time it will get things right. The nonpartistan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) doesn’t think so: Its director, Douglas Elmendorf, told the Senate Budget Committee in July that “in the legislation that has been reported we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount.”

In fairness to the Administration, anything’s possible when you’re in fantasy world and/or making Chicago-style campaign promises.

Now look at one way Mr. Obama wants to eliminate inefficiency and waste: He’s asked Congress to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council—an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts charged with containing Medicare costs.

In other words, empanel a new bureaucracy to tame a bureaucracy… 

In an interview with the New York Times in April, the president suggested that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost . . . the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives . . . .”

Ah. That statement the Dems keep trying to stuff down the memory hole.

Read the whole thing.

Last week at the State Fair, I interviewed Congressman John Kline, shortly after he’d adopted the “press the Reset button” line on the healthcare debate.  Kline reflects the kind of deliberation one needs to exhibit when talking about a sixth of the US economy.

Keith Ellison is not a legislator who needs to deliberate; like President Obama, he’s an apparatchik from a place with a one-party government; in Minneapolis, deliberation is for parties that aren’t in power.

None of that pesky “thought’ and “democratic process” for Ellison (quotes from the KSTP-TV interview with the Representative):

“We need to hit the “go” button”. 

 None of that pesky “democracy” for Ellison:

“I don’t think getting a bipartisan bill is more important than getting a good bill for the American people”.

 (where “Good” means “Enact the Administration’s radical agenda, consequences – unintended and “Unintended” – be damned!”)

But there is no debate too complex, with consequences too daunting, that a little rah-rah cheerleading can’t be used as substitutes for actual thought…:

“I think the boat should be leaving the dock.  You wanna get on board, you gotta get on board right now”.

…among DFLers, anyway.

The subject is constituent meetings related to healthcare.

Senator Klobuchar:  “Meets” with constituents via a “tele-town hall”.  To te accurate – the technology was exceedingly buggy. To be fair, she and her people by all appearances tried to put on a fair show; it’s also worth noting that her stance on Obamessiahcare Kennedycare differs from the orthodox left’s stance, to the point that she’s angering liberals.  Fair is fair.

Representatives Ellison and McCollum: Held a healthcare rally for, basically, supporters.  At the DFL headquarters.  That’s it.

Representative Bachmann: Held a town hall meeting in which she welcomed supporters and detractors.

Just saying.

What a wonderful, civil country we’d have if it weren’t for all those deranged wingnuts making all those townhall meetings so dang uncivil.

It started during Bachmann’s introductory remarks when she said, “Let’s not destroy the greatest health care system the world has ever known.” That sparked a chorus of boos that was quickly drowned out by cheers.

“Participatory democracy is alive and well in America,” Republican Rep. Michael Burgess, a physician from Texas who was Bachmann’s guest at the meeting, wryly observed.

The capacity crowd of about 450 in the school auditorium was decidedly pro-Bachmann. An estimated 400 more watched the meeting on closed-circuit television in the school cafeteria.

People packed the aisles, waiting to get to microphones to question — or lecture — the two-term congresswoman.

When angry shouting matches broke out, Bachmann didn’t join in. She calmly and patiently listened to her critics, and when the audience shouted

them down, she asked her supporters to let them speak.

While cheers and jeers frequently interrupted the meeting, it was not as rowdy as some other town halls around the nation earlier this month. Unlike some of her congressional colleagues, Bachmann managed to keep her temper when confronted by angry protesters.

One might have expected the local left to disgrace themselves with their boorish behavior; rabid conspiracymongering and rage-honing has become a cottage industry among Bachmann’s regional detractors.  Bachmann Derangement was alive and “well” long before Sarah Palin was even elected governor.  She is proof that there is nothing the left hates worse than one of their supposed constituents – a woman, a minority – who goes apostate on them.

I’d love to hear from people who were there.

Whatever my differences with Ted Kennedy – and when it came to personality and outlook on life to say nothing of politcs, there were many – I had to admire the guy during this past year.  The guy lived quite a life – and, at 77, was still actuarially a tad young to go.  And he probably knew it.

So he fought like hell.  He attacked his illness head-on; he threw all of his resources – and, being a Boston Brahmin from a phenomenally wealthy family, he certainly had the resources to throw – at trying to push back his brain cancer.  By all accounts, he fought like a lion, living his life to the best of his ability in the meantime. 

I was about to write “let’s hope we can all be so lucky” – but of course, his colleagues in the Senate are waving Kennedy’s barely-cool body in front of the media and the people to ensure that you (but not, as it happens, they) can not:

“Ted Kennedy’s dream of quality health care for all Americans will be made real this year because of his leadership and his inspiration,” Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.

Pelosi underlined that Kennedy’s death one year after the cancer-stricken liberal icon climbed on stage at the Democratic National Convention of August 2008 and declared health care reform “the cause of my life.”

“Today, we pick up the torch and recommit ourselves to health insurance reform,” said Democratic Representative Chris Van Hollen, who leads the party’s efforts to maintain or enlarge its majority in the 2010 mid-term elections.

Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, who like Kennedy has missed some votes this year due to illness, mourned “by best friend in the Senate” and called for the health overhaul legislation to be named for the late Massachusetts lawmaker.

“In his honor and as a tribute to his commitment to his ideals, let us stop the shouting and name calling and have a civilized debate on health care reform which I hope, when legislation has been signed into law, will bear his name for his commitment to insuring the health of every American,” said Byrd.

The contradiction that none of them mention; the treatment options for a 77 year old man with a long history of alcohol abuse would be much, much more restricted than they were for Kennedy.

“Heathcare Rationing” is practiced all over the American healthcare industry, in both the private and public sectors, today.  HMOs adopted “Case Management” from their inception.  “Case Management” is all about answering, for a given person with a given condition, the question “For a person of a given age and with a given medical history and in a given overall condition, what will be the most cost-effective treatment option, given the limits in the amount of resources available?”  Of course, behind the scenes there is a formula – how many years will a treatment likely buy a patient – and, where resources are scarce, a question: to whom should a limited set of resources go?

For a seven year old girl who develops leukemia, it’s moderately simple: aggressive, intensive treatment – say, a bone marrow transplant and intensive chemo – the $200,000 worth of treatment will likely buy 70-75 years of life span; the procedures are becoming moderately common.  Approved!

For a 65 year old overweight alcoholic and two pack a day smoker with terminal cirrhosis of the liver?  He has uncontrolled high blood pressure and all sorts of alcohol-related pathologies?  He might get the liver transplant, if there’s a liver of his type available – and if there’s not a 30 year old marathon-running father of four with a congenital liver condition who needs it first; a smoker with hypertension and alcohol-related kidney trouble and high cholesterol might have a life expectancy of seven more years, should he get the liver and the cool half mill in supportive care; the marathon runner could get you fifty years and change.  Again – a simple choice; if there’s one liver that matches both, the 30 year old will live, and the Case Manager – or the team that manages the case, perhaps – will put the 65 year old on palliative care, and medication to try to coax the liver function along, and tell him they’ll try to find another liver but to get his affairs in order anyway.

By the way – you may not call the Case Manager or CM team a “Death Panel” – but if you’re the 65 year old in the example above, the difference is only rhetorical.

So how much money did Ted Kennedy spend to eke out this past 15 months or so?  It’s his money, and it’s his life, and I won’t begrudge him a dollar or a day.

But if a 77 year old man with highly-advanced brain cancer, plenty of chronic conditions related to decades of heavy drinking, and a good 60 pounds overweight went into a doctor’s office in Sweden or the UK or Canada, what do you suppose the prognosis, course of treatment, or results would have been?  Not just for any given 77 year old man, mind you, but 100 of them whose profiles match each other fairly closely? 

Naming a health rationing system after a man whose struggle the system would have made impossible makes sense – in the curious little world of Democrat social policy.

Rest in peace, Ted Kennedy.

Die in pain, Obamacare.

In reading Doug Grow’s account of A-Klo’s “Tele-Town Hall” “meeting”, it occurs to me…

One caller tried hard to pin her down.

“Do you support a public (health insurance) option?” he asked.

That seemed to call for a “yes” or “no” answer.

The caller got neither.

Sen. Amy KlobucharInstead, here’s what he got: “I will tell you this,” the senator said. “I’m open to a competitive option. You need to put pressure on the insurance companies. One way to do that [is allow the public to join] the federal health care plan or one just like it. The government does administer it, but it’s a private plan. That’s one way. And then there’s this co-op plan proposal [in the Senate]. That really hasn’t been formed yet. Those are some of the ideas. I want to make sure whatever option we choose works for our state. Make sure it makes it easier for small businesses and the self-employed.”

…that in the wake of Minnesota’s eight-month recount ordeal, that Minnesota has gone from having one Senataor in DC…

…to none.

Sometimes, I wonder what things that we accept as normal today, that would have been considered paranoia a few years ago?

Why?

Just because.

Kermit was there.

Well, he tried, anway, once he got the “invite”:

Friday came and went.  Naught but crickets.  No “reminder” call.  Sunday at 7:00?  Silence.  7:15?  Nada.  7:30?  Ronery, I’m so ronery.

 Other people got the call.  I’ve read some details already at places like Powerline.  I think I have now experienced what national healthcare will really be like.  I have been subjected to Health Care Town Hall Rationing.  And I’m not the only one.  Even though I was invited, gosh darn it, there just was not enough resources to serve everyone.

Death panel?  No, town hall access panel.  Amy pulled the plug on me. 

Without even a painkiller?

That’s cold.