This one is every where, but it’s such an odd photograph that I wanted to post it:

Dick Cheney, a shadowy lurking figure with no fixed address. Kung Fu Monkey has some alternate captions.

A few days ago, Leo Morris over at Opening Arguments predicted that the blogosphere was going to beat the daylights out of Mike Pence over his remark that shopping in Baghdad was like a “normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime.” He was right. Even though I agree that Hoosiers can get a bit crotchety in the summer with their energies no longer diverted toward basketball, the farmer’s market in downtown Lafayette doesn’t suffer from all that many IEDs.

In any event, the most complete evisceration of Mike Pence over this asinine comment comes from Glenn Greenwald. Most effective is his use of Pence’s greatest hits, such as:

Don’t believe the media, the U.S. military has found WMDs in Iraq. – May 20, 2004.

Don’t believe the media, we are winning the war in Iraq. – December 8, 2005

Iraq is hardly a quagmire. – June 2, 2004

The U.S. will be disengaging from Iraq real soon now. – June 24, 2004.

Hey! Look at Basra, it’s really peaceful. The insurgents are desperate – February 27, 2004.

Mary Beth Schneider, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article entitled Health coverage bill is still kicking on the subject of SB 503 which is a bill designed to provide health insurance for the working poor. Mike Sylvester is not happy with this latest advance of big government.

The bill passed the House Public Health Committee 11 to 1. The reprinted bill and/or the House Committee report weren’t immediately available on the General Assembly’s website, so I don’t know how extensive the House’s changes were to the original Senate Bill. Ms. Schneider’s report says they were extensive “including expanding coverage to include mental health services, drug addiction and family planning services and adding a sliding premium scale so that poorer people pay less;” expanding coverage for pregnant women and children, allowing dependent children to stay on their parents’ health insurance to age 24, and adding a tax credit for employers that offer wellness programs.

The revised bill apparently leaves out one minor detail. How to pay for it. Gov. Daniels proposed cigarette tax increase died in the House earlier this session, but it still might be resurrected during the conference committee process. Senator Miller, who heads up the Senate Health committee, says Senate Republicans have concerns about some of the changes to the bill. In particular, she wants family services defined to ensure that they don’t include abortion.

As I mentioned, Mike Sylvester has concerns about more big government. His general proposition is basically unassailable. This looks like government assuming yet a greater role in our lives. I guess it depends on the details, but I’m not as certain that his specific concerns are as well founded. He suggests that, because the average family health care plan costs $11,000 per year and because under this bill a family with an income of $41,000 would only have to pay $1,230, the rest of us will be left to make up the difference. Furthermore, he argues, the infusion of government money into the health care market will force health prices higher and higher. Certainly if health care were anything like a rational market, his points would be well taken. But, the fact is the health care market isn’t rational. Consumers are often forced to make choices at what amounts to gunpoint — “your money or your life.” Pricing isn’t anything like transparent. Cross subsidies are legion. So, it’s not at all clear to me that the normal market rules apply.

I suspect his concern about the rest of us footing the bill is perfectly valid, but that the price tag won’t be nearly as stiff as that almost $10,000 differential would suggest. And I don’t suspect that the infusion of government cash in this instance will raise prices. I think that a lot of the folks who will be able to take advantage of these programs are the people receiving a lot of emergency room services currently but then not being able to pay for them.

[tags]SB503-2007, health care[/tags]

I love this paragraph from a post by Chris Douglas over at bilerico. He was describing a statement from Mark Gray, 90 year old attorney, founder of Keitlinger and Gray, and member of an old Indiana family who is, as Chris says, qualified as any to understand and express something deep in the sould of Hoosiers.

Having served on various national boards and commissions after World War II, Gray described to me his early caution to East Coast powerhouses who were assuming they could impose easily on Hoosier autonomy. He told them: “If the you want to work with Hoosiers, they’ll work with you. But if you try to tell ’em they HAVE to do something, their answer to you will be “The Hell We Do.”

Chris suggests that this sentiment is one of the reasons that SJR 7 failed yesterday at the hands of the House Rules committee but also after an outpouring of objections from editorial writers and business leaders alike. When the gay community insisted on changes to marriage the reaction was the same as when the social reactionaries insisted on campaigning against gays; Hoosiers dug in their heels.

It’s not always for the best, but Hoosiers are just plain ornery. To get them to do something, you have to convince them that a) it’s in their best interest; and b) they’re part of the decision making process.

Update Rather than putting up another blog post on SJR 7, I just wanted to flag a nice entry from Mike Kole on the subject. Mike comes at the issue from a libertarian (and Libertarian) perspective. He says:

I’m delighted with the result. It tears me up to think of a class of people being told that they are unwelcome in our state. That’s what SJR-7 would have done. One’s sexual orientation hurts nobody. It doesn’t pick your pocket. It doesn’t wound your body. It doesn’t change what you hold dear. Good riddance, SJR-7!

Government has no business regulating marriage. It would have been even nicer to hear any elected official say so, especially from a so-called “limited government conservative Republican”. This whole exercise proves that there aren’t any smaller government Republicans in Indiana.

Sponge Painting Madness

Originally uploaded by amasson.

Too busy to blog today, so you guys get more pictures of the kids. Harper is very, very happy with the sponge painting.

Today, I ran across “If” by Rudyard Kipling and liked it. So, here it is:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master,
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

As I’ve mentioned before and probably will again, one conservative blogger I’ve been following for a long while is John Cole over at Balloon Juice. Truth is, my antipathy toward George Bush and religious zealotry notwithstanding, I’m not really all that liberal. So, back before it became obvious to just about everyone what a Bad Idea the Bush administration has become, I liked to read John Cole because, while he was a conservative, he seemed like a reasonable sort. Thing is, his reasoning has long since turned him against the Republican Party. The wheels started coming off when Bush made a special trip to sign the Schiavo legislation. And, since then, he’s been busily littering the Road to Damascus with scales from his eyes.

Today, he’s going so far as to express happiness that guys like Chuck Schumer, Ted Kennedy, and Pat Leahy are in power.

What has to happen is thoroughly repudiating [the Bush administration and their supporters] and their works. A notoriously fickle electorate has to keep them at bay. An obviously venal opposition has to rebuild the cage of laws around itself rather than running joyously rampant. I don’t like our chances, honestly.
. . .
It isn’t just a bad apple, as the whole barrel has gone bad. NASA, the FDA, Justice, FEMA, or, this week, the Department of the Interior and the GSA. Hell, do I even need to list them all? I am terrified to think what we will learn has been done with the IRS, and God only knows what is going on at Homeland Security. It is almost as if after years of accusing the Clinton administration of being the most crooked administration ever, they decided to experiment and see if they could be worse than their claims. Their success has been unparalleled in modern political history.

So let’s all hear it for Waxman, Leahy, Schumer, Kennedy, and all the other partisan attack dogs on the side of the Democrats. I don’t for one minute share their political beliefs, and I still think Schumer would run over a handicapped kid to get in front of a microphone, but I sure as hell am glad they are in office. The hacks and the partisans and the phonies and the frauds are in charge, they are deeply entrenched, and it is going to take a bunker buster to root ‘em out.

The New York Times has an article entitled Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows.

Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.

The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.

While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.

The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.

The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.

“Largest share of national income since 1928.” Hmm, seems like something economically significant was just around the corner in 1928.

Kung Fu Monkey has some interesting thoughts on Frank Miller’s 300. I haven’t seen the movie, but it seems like something I’d probably enjoy. I’ve always really liked the story of Thermopylae, and recall enjoying Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Kung Fu Monkey liked the movie too, but notes that it has some very anti-American features, most notably the Spartans’ mocking of the amateur soldier.

At one point in 300, the Spartan narrator even tosses an offhand compliment to the Greeks. “Amateurs. They did their job … More brawlers than soldiers.” (I’m quoting from memory here). That bit of dialogue would fit perfectly in the mouth of the standard Dismissive Authority Figure in about a thousand American movies, who will Soon Be Proven Wrong.

Senate Bill 553 Secretary of State fees. Who says taxes never decrease? SB 553 would decrease article of incorporation fees and application for certificate of authority fees from $90 down to $75 if the application is filed by electronic means.

[tags]SB553-2007[/tags]