Everyone’s talking about The Nebraska Health Care Deal. Business as usual, blah, blah, blah. Folks, that is the business of politics. It’s never going to change. If you think congressmen are there to do what’s “right,” think again. They are there to broker influence and votes to get money for themselves and their campaign contributors.* The “good” politicians are actually working for their constituency, you know, like getting them a sweet deal on something that really matters to them. It is the favored tactic of the minority party—regardless of which one it is—to cry foul when “business as usual” doesn’t work in their favor. Just wait until the shoe is on the other foot.

Mitt “I don’t have anything meaningful to say” Romney is crowing about the repudiation of liberal arrogance. Who is he kidding? Anyone remember the Bridge To Nowhere? You going to tell me Coburn’s little stunt and subsequent fall wasn’t hubris? Get real. Eight years of Republican non-leadership got us into the mess we’re in. One of the primary planks of the Republican party is “Leave big business alone to do whatever it feels like and let the market decide.” Well the market has decided and is correcting itself. Everyone happy now?

From the day Obama took office Republicans have done nothing but whine “we need to keep doing what we’ve been doing.” And apparently the American people are buying it. They are freaking out about spending money on health care, but have no problem shoveling cash into the money pit that is the Middle East. We have spent billions in the middle east since 9/11. We are no safer than we ever were. The Middle East is no more stable than it ever was. I don’t know if being shredded by a car bomb is better than torture at the hands of a despot. You’d have to ask an Iraqi about that. Even if we somehow manage to off Bin Laden, do you really think Al-Qaeda will just shrivel up and die? Puhleeze. But we keep shoveling. Isn’t that what’s called a bad investment?

Business as usual indeed.

*I like Jay Leno’s suggestion that congressmen should have to wear their sponsors on their suits just like Nascar drivers.

There’s no reason that the government should prevent homosexuals from entering civil marriages because some religions object to the concept, any more than the government should ban atheism because some religions object to it.

Lisa Pampuch

I don’t know who Lisa Pampuch is. There are dozens of her on the Net. I couldn’t find the original source of the quote either, but it’s everywhere. I’m thinking it has something to do with how eminently reasonable it is. Of course, as this Lisa Pampuch points out, reason has little to do with the religious experience.

When asked what he would do if Camping* is wrong again, Rick LaCasse, who witnessed Camping’s 1994 failure, said: “I can’t even think like that. Everything is too positive right now. There’s too little time to think like that.”

UPDATE:This Lisa Pampuch, cited above, is the Lisa Pampuch who has thoughtfully provided links to the original article in the comments. Thanks, Lisa.

*Camping is currently predicting the rapture will occur on May 21, 2011. Obviously, it wasn’t 1994.

So when I found Molly Muses this morning and this little gem, a good laugh felt very nice.

If masturbation, alcohol, caffeine, premarital sex, smoking, sexy underwear and rated R movies are all verboten (and let’s add married sex in anything but missionary position to that list for many folks), sugar and fat are the last vices left to you. Part of the reason Mormons tend to get so tubby is that you need a lot of rice krispy treats to compensate for all that purity. But it does mean that if you ever get dragged to a Mormon gathering, head straight for the dessert table because wow.

Not exactly timely, but still funny.

The Church supports this ordinance because it is fair and reasonable and does not do violence to the institution of marriage. It is also entirely consistent with the Church’s prior position on these matters. The Church remains unequivocally committed to defending the bedrock foundation of marriage between a man and a woman.(Deseret News

Oh, gee, thanks. In other words, we’ll let the gays live and work as long as their presence doesn’t threaten our “standards.” We still oppose society officially recognizing their relationships, we can still call them sick and mentally disturbed any time we feel like it and we can still kick them out of BYU if the mood takes us, so it doesn’t matter. Oh, and (bonus!) we have just upped the ante on our victim role because: See how nice we really are?

Oh, and Michael Otterson? The Managing Director of the LDS Church’s Public Affairs? In other words a hired PR gun. Where was Monson? Packer? Anyone from the Twelve? Well, except Oaks. I’ll bet you won’t see him in the public spotlight again any time soon. Hell, even someone from the warm and fuzzy arm of the church, The General Relief Society Presidency, would have been better than Otterson. By sending Otterson the Church was making another statement. “This is just policy. This doesn’t carry the weight of doctrine, so you can ignore it if you want.” What do you bet most True Believing Mormons do exactly that?

Case in point: This isn’t anything they haven’t said before. The Mormon church said essentially the same thing during the Prop8 stupidity as well, but when it came time to actually pass legislation on the Hill in Utah, did Utah Legislators take statements of PR arm of the church as evidence that passing non-discrimination and equal protection laws was the right thing to do? Nope. Did the Mormon church send an spokesperson to the Hill to give legislators permission encourage legislators to enact said laws? Nope.

Hatch asserted that the health bills, which he believes represent a “step-by-step approach to socialized medicine,” will lead to Americans’ dependence on Democrats for their health and other issues. “And if they get there, of course, you’re going to have a very rough time having a two-party system in this country, because almost everybody’s going to say, ‘All we ever were, all we ever are, all we ever hope to be depends on the Democratic Party,’ ” Hatch said. . . .(TheHill.com)

It boggles the mind that he can say that with a straight face. If I had time, I’ll bet I could find at least a dozen similar quotes regarding the New Deal. Well, 70 years later we’re still not a socialist state and we still have a two-party system. True to conservative form, if facts aren’t on your side, try hysteria.

Visited the Apple store on 5th, and shot a pretty typical up looking view of the spiral staircase there. Liked the graphics of it, until of course an Apple employee stepped up and told me I couldn’t shoot up at the stairs cause somebody might be wearing a skirt. Now in Manhattan the array of people who could be potentially wearing a skirt is widely varied, so I could understand their concern. But really–all you see are the bottoms of shoes. Do I look that desperate? The guy who complained to me musta had the nuns.

“Musta had the nuns.” I like that. Oh, and don’t you think someone had already thought of that which is why the glass is frosted? Sounds to me like someone can’t think of any other reason to be looking up . . .

A couple of weeks ago at church my pastor said something that really resonated with me. He said, “The most important thing in the world is God’s glory.” Isn’t that true? So no matter what I’m doing I need to be 100% that I am bringing glory to God because that’s why he made me!”

Stumbled onto this while surfing photographer web sites. I just don’t get this. Doesn’t that make God sound like a narcissistic prick? Isn’t it a grander vision of God to believe he made you for no other reason than to be yourself and give you the opportunity to learn and grow?

I could be wrong, but I kinda think the harder thing to do is to set someone you love free to be who they choose to be rather than to try and exert absolute control over them and try to make them into something you want them to be.

Why is it we seem to endow God with the worst qualities of mankind rather than the best?

Curious, I log into my account to find that my available credit had gone from something over $10,000 to $15. Needless to say, I was pissed. It wasn’t so much that they had cut my credit line (again), but they had cut it so low that the next month’s interest charges (in the neighborhood of $30) would have pushed the account over the credit limit and ding! over limit fee! and ding! penalty interest rates!

So I called them to find out what the hell and demand they at least raise it $200 to cover coming interest charges and some charges I had made that day. (Did I mention the call came at 5:25pm?) They insisted my only recourse was to make a second payment this month to cover the coming charges. Never mind that I had already posted a payment for this month (a week early). Never mind that it was 10x more than the required minimum payment. Never mind that it was almost 2x more than charges I had actually made to the account this month.

To add insult to injury, they tried to blame me. “We have concerns about your ability to repay the balance.” Bullshit. Since when have credit cards of any kind been about repaying the balance? As long as you make your monthly payments and don’t go over your limit, they don’t care. In fact, that’s the f—ing business model! This is not about me. This is about them throwing a credit card at every Tom, Dick and Harry with a mailbox and following up with “convenience checks” to what? Encourage people to run up a balance. This is about them making bad investments and shitty business decisions and suddenly not having the assets to cover all the loans and generous credit limits they’ve been handing out for the last ten years.

I get it. They have their balls in a vice and they need to get their outstanding loans more in line with the current value of what assets they have left. I get that a credit line counts against their balance sheet, even if it’s not currently in use. If they had cut a few grand off my limit like they did last year, or even if they had only left me with a few hundred dollars, I would have just rolled my eyes and gone on paying off the card. If they had been willing to listen to reason from a customer who has a long and excellent payment history, I would have been fine. If they had even taken the time to tell me the available balance stated on the web site included authorizations that had been made on the account, but which had not yet cleared (ie. the charges I had made that day) and a small payment of $20 would be sufficient to keep my account from going into penalty status, I might have been mollified. But no. Not only did they try and get me to pay off half the balance of the card (if I could afford to do that, don’t you think I would??), they deliberately set up a situation that would have pushed my account into penalty status if I hadn’t been paying attention, or hadn’t received the phone call, or had been away from the Internet or for any other reason been unable to make an extra payment.

They also didn’t choose me because of their “concerns about my ability to repay.” They chose me because they knew they could probably squeeze me for some extra cash. If my credit rating was already in the toilet, I’d have nothing to lose by telling them to go to hell. If I didn’t have an excellent payment history, they wouldn’t have risked my not being able to make future payments. Essentially, they did this precisely because I’m a reliable customer.

Bastards.