This isn’t Football!

Here I sit on an airplane to Bloomington, Minnesota. Slowly drifting in and out of consciousness, I start to think how certain people in Minnesota hated Brett Farve, with every fiber of their body, and now they look upon him as a star. At the same time many people in Green Bay, Wisconsin have burned their green and yellow #4 jerseys. Having played my fair share of sports, and watched even more, I understand how someone can be swallowed up in the excitement of a sports team. It’s intoxicating. It’s comforting and exhilarating to be part of the brethren that defends and supports the “home” team. It’s where you’re from and part of your identity, but what I can’t wrap my brain around is how that gets translated to politicians and political parties?

Let me explain my confusion. People identify themselves as Vikings, Packers, Bills, Dolphins, or Cardinals. People idolize names like Farve, Manning, Brady, Payton, Namath, and Unitas because they need heroes. They even overlook the missteps of their favorites like Burris, Merriman, and Lewis because they want to believe that the real world and the gridiron are separate places of worship. Where I’m challenged is when we apply these same rules to political parties and politicians. If you are a Democrat then you have to hate Republicans, like Giants hate Eagles. You must hate those evil money grubbing religious fanatics called Conservatives, just like 49ers still hate Elway. Conservatives look upon Liberals as old hippies who have smoked too much dope, hugged too many trees, and ate too much granola; just like Redskins look at Cowboys. How much blind hate can one city have for names like Staubach, Landry, and Romo.

In sports the polarity of opinion is based on where you’re from and where you went to school. They’re carved in stone as a way of holding onto your youth and your childhood allegiances. This is healthy and provides the vicarious excitement that gets the juices flowing on game day, but applying this emotional methodology to our politics is ruining our political system.
What are we thinking? Pelosi, Frank, Gingrich, Bush, and Obama aren’t sports superstars. They are employees. They were elected by you and I to do a job. Yet, people blindly defend them like they are going to lead their team to the SuperBowl. Recently, I heard an interview of a prominent San Francisco political pundit who went on and on about the great things Rep. Pelosi has done for this country, yet when asked for specifics they came up empty. This is the kind of blind star worship which is preventing us from having reasonable conversations. Ted Kennedy, who recently passed away, was given a send off commensurate of a hero. Even though I never agreed with is politics or his personal behavior, I did think he was a patriot; but a hero?

Are we so starved for true heroes that we cling to these employees who have never done anything courageous in their lives? Maybe it is time we stop wearing Blue and Red like it some kind of team jersey. Maybe it’s time we revisit our Democratic Republic roots. Start realizing we are sending local representation to Washington to speak our mind instead of the political team’s (Party’s) mind. Congress isn’t the Pro-Bowl and the White House isn’t the prize for the MVP of the league. Come on people, let’s open our eyes and look as critically at our own team (Party) and players (Politicians) as we look at the other side. Maybe then we will all realize there is room for more ideas and we are all in this together. I think we could get a lot more done if we start looking at this as one team, but that’s just the dream that is drifting through my head as I listen to the hum of jet engines at 30,000 feet.

Cyber Insanity

A Senate bill (S.773) if passed would give the President of the United States the authority to declare a "cyber emergency" and close down the Internet by disconnecting users.

In addition, it will require professional IT people to be certified by the federal government, something that angers many IT technicians and those who believe in the First Amendment.

Having worked in the networking industry for two decades this borders on insanity. It is easier to do than you might think.

All ISPs end up connecting to one of 8 internet points of prescence in the US. These could be nationalized and shut off easily. The other issue is that the US owns and controls all 12 of the root DNS servers that allow people to find things by name. Shut them off and the global internet is effectively broken. Oh yeah, we also control address allocation as well. We could take a country off line by routing all traffic from that countries ip space to null with a few bgp entries .

This kind of control over our communication is crazy.

Reference: http://tinyurl.com/klq7yg

This needs to be shown in our schools!

This is old but worth watching - Tiger Woods at Obama Inauguration - We need this to be shown to all of our children in school.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7G--2EBWtM

Professional Golfer, Tiger Wood, spoke at Obama's inauguration and paid great tribute to our Military saying that he was "the son of a man who dedicated his life to his country, his family and the military and I am a better person for it."

Another Arrogant Politician

On Wednesday Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) had the audacity to publicly suggest that a local newspaper “should go out of business”. Is this the way you deal with criticism Harry? Maybe you “should be voted out of office”. Many in the media are trying to suggest that it was his dry sense of humor. Well, in these economic times when we have over 10% unemployment, how dare he even jest about such a thing? Either way it demonstrates his arrogance and his elitist attitude.

Remember, Senator Reid has already publicly bragged about his $25M campaign war chest. Money gathered from all over the country and the world to get him re-elected so he can do the bidding of the people of Nevada. Doesn’t it bother anyone else that he has $25M to win a job that pays $200,000? Doesn’t it bother anyone else that much of this money comes from outside Nevada? Come on voters of Nevada, it’s time to get this arrogant elitist out of office. Elect someone who is more interested in your state, and your citizens, and not the Democratic Party.

Reference article

Rep. Eric Massa (NY-D) - Elitist or Fascist?

Recently, Rep. Eric Massa (NY-D) was caught on tape explaining to a group at Net Roots that he would vote for the Healthcare Bill even if it wasn’t in the best interest of his constituents. He even went a step further, when asked if his district was 80% against the bill, “would he still vote for it?” He answered, “Yes.”




Click here to watch the video

Elitism is when someone thinks they are better than everyone else. Fascism is when a small group of people feel the general population can’t make decisions for themselves. My question to you is, “Which is Rep. Massa?” He surely isn’t a Democrat in the truest sense of the word. This is the type of people who are ruining our political system. They sell themselves as the people’s candidate, but instead they could care less about the citizens. What they want is to further their own causes and those of the special interest groups that finance them.

Dean tells the truth about Tort Reform

Finally, they admitted what has been obvious to so many of us.

Howard Dean said, “The reason tort reform is not in the [health care] bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on. And that’s the plain and simple truth.”

This is what I have been saying for months. Our congressional leaders are being led by the nose by PACs, 527's, and other special interest groups. There is no question that "We the People" are taking a back seat. If they really wanted to lower healthcare costs, in turn make it available to more people, then the easy four steps would be:

1. Tort Reform
2. Interstate Competition
3. Manage Illegal Immigration
4. Dislocate the Employer - Insurer relationship

The best part is they could do these one at a time and measure the success of each one. It would create the change we need and at the same time not muddy the waters with issues of control or partisanship.

Healthcare Bill - Eliminate Defensive Medicine

The right and the left have both gone out of bounds. Rep. Pelosi saying that it is un-American to voice your complaint with the healthcare bill and Sarah Palin talking about “Death Panels”; they should both be ashamed of themselves. The healthcare bill is supposed to make healthcare insurance more affordable and more available. Balderdash!!

Our entire Congress should be investigated for bribery. Why is there no conversation on Tort Reform? Where is it in the bill? Politicians know where their bread is buttered. They don’t want to risk the hundreds of millions of dollars tossed into campaign coffers every year by the Legal industry. It’s just another example of big business buying votes.

For those of you who say, “…reducing malpractice insurance won’t make that big a difference…” I say, “Show me the facts.” The legal costs are the small part of the equation, although PointofLaw.com recently cited that previous estimates of the overall impact of Tort Reform were greatly understated. The real issue is that our medical professionals have taken to practicing Defensive Medicine.

Defensive Medicine is the practice of ordering tests and procedures that aren’t necessary, but protect the medical professionals from the possibility of a lawsuit. In 2005, the Journal of the American Medical Association said that 93% of specialists in Pennsylvania admitted to practicing Defensive Medicine. In Massachusetts, a 2008 survey showed that 25% of all imaging tests were purely for defensive purposes. Although it is hard to quantify, because it has become so pervasive within the medical establishment, it is estimated to have increased overall medical care costs by between $100B and $200B. Even on the low side it comes to almost a 10% savings in healthcare costs, yet we don’t even hear a whisper.