Friday, August 14, 2009

Axelrod's Careless Myths Section (or was it?)

Apparently even Huffington Post is jumping on Axelrod for the poorly worded "myths about health insurance reform" section on his email the other day:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/blaise-nutter/axelrods-wh-email-truth-a_b_258634.html

Though some of them could also be conceived to be cleverly disguised ways of saying something in a way so as not to say what they really mean. Like this one:

7. You can keep your own insurance: It's myth that reform will force you out of your current insurance plan or force you to change doctors. To the contrary, reform will expand your choices, not eliminate them.

Maybe he really does mean that "You can keep your own insurance" is a myth and that the full explanation would be something more like: "It's myth that reform will force you out of your current insurance plan or force you to change doctors [for the first couple years]. To the contrary, reform will expand your choices [at first], not eliminate them [until a few years down the road].

Or this one:

1. Reform will stop "rationing" -- not increase it: It's a myth that reform will mean a "government takeover" of health care or lead to "rationing." To the contrary, reform will forbid many forms of rationing that are currently being used by insurance companies.

Should the full explanation be: "It's a myth that reform will mean a "government takeover" of health care or lead to "rationing" [because we'll just use different words that mean the same thing to describe it]. To the contrary, reform will forbid many forms of rationing that are currently being used by insurance companies [and put even stronger forms of rationing in their place]."?

Thursday, August 13, 2009

What I Do for a Living

Every now and then people ask me what I do. When I tell them I'm an IT Project Manager, they then want to know what my days are like. Usually something like this comes to mind:



I see somebody else has captured this feeling too:


(from http://www.code-muse.com/blog/?p=27)

Yes, it's been one of those days today...

Friday, July 17, 2009

Turnberry Makes Like Buster Douglas

It was amazing to watch Tiger Woods struggle today in the British Open and miss the cut, something I imagine nobody thought possible just a couple days ago. Watching it reminded me of the night when I was a kid, together with my friends, watching the unstoppable Mike Tyson get knocked out by the unknown Buster Douglas. A couple sports moments that were virtually unpredictable. Hopefully Tiger fares better the rest of his career than Iron Mike did, however.
Ma'am is OK Again

So it appears we're in the clear to resume calling Senator Barbara Boxer ma'am again...compare:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE_jGD5nZ6U

versus:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT9YA-xCihk

Something tells me it's more than a preference for being called "Senator" rather than "Ma'am", but you make the call.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Obama's Commandments

From the Patriot Update, with original here:

I. Thou shalt have no God in America, except for me. For we are no longer a Christian nation and, after all, I am the chosen One. (And like God, I do not have a birth certificate.) SOURCE

II. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, unless it is my face carved on Mt. Rushmore. SOURCE

III. Thou shalt not utter my middle name in vain (or in public). Only I can say Barack Hussein Obama. SOURCE

IV. Remember tax day, April 15th, to keep it holy. SOURCE

V. Honour thy father and thy mother until they are too old and sick to care for. They will cost our public-funded health-care system too much money. SOURCE

VI. Thou shalt not kill, unless you have an unwanted, unborn baby. For it would be an abomination to punish your daughter with a baby. SOURCE

VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery if you are conservative or a Republican. Liberals and Democrats are hereby forgiven for all of their infidelity and immorality, but the careers of conservatives will be forever destroyed. SOURCE

VIII. Thou shalt not steal, until you've been elected to public office. Only then is it acceptable to take money from hard-working, successful citizens and give it to those who do not work, illegal immigrants, or those who do not have the motivation to better their own lives. SOURCE

IX. Thou shalt not discriminate against thy neighbor unless they are conservative, Caucasian, or Christian. SOURCE

X. Thou shalt not covet because it is simply unnecessary. I will place such a heavy tax burden on those that have achieved the American Dream that, by the end of my term as President, nobody will have any wealth or material goods left for you to covet. SOURCE

Not sure I can add much to the above, other than that it does seem to be increasingly conflict-inducing to espouse and express the Catholic values I was brought up with. I guess having more left-leaning friends is a side-effect of spending many of my adult years in New York City before "voting with my feet" and heading south. How to explain to those who relate more to the above 10 than our Lord's 10 that taxation should not be a means to charity and murder is not a valid choice.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Oprah Oops

So there was this:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2009-01-18-oprah-rosenblat_N.htm

How long until we have an Oprah Obama Oops? They can even recycle the last line of the article:

"I'm so tired of you being the whipping boy for this hoax, because he didn't just dupe you -- he duped a lot of people."

Ideological? Who Me?

Glenn Beck sums up the misleading usage of ideological and pragmatic that we hear so much about these days:

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/20408/

How about some honesty...let's both present our ideologies, figure out where we agree and disagree, and work out a decent solution, rather than just belittling the other side. So many opinions deemed "evil" or "hateful" by the other side are just logical extensions of a difference in assumptions earlier up the chain of argument. Maybe if we unraveled each others arguments to understand them, we'd be better off than just conveniently labeling others.