The North American Gay Amateur Athletic Association has been sued for discrimination. In the Bay Area there were 3 bisexual players that were disqualified after a 2008 championship game as being “nongay”. Now what the article doesn’t specify is if they won the game or not;).
I don’t care who you want to let play in your league but I do find the whole thing a little funny.
Thanks Nick for the chuckle;)!
This was the sight as I walked up to my first tea party. I admit it, I wasn’t completely sure about the Tea Party thing. While I agree with the premise I was a little afraid that the crowd my be a little, oh what should I call it? The fringe element? But I want to be more educated and informed of local politics so I went.
I was a little underwhelmed at the crowds in the stands. One local news channel says that 4000 people came but I wouldn’t say it was all at once;). I have to say that unless you were coming to hear someone specific or are completely new to the conservative movement, it isn’t really worth coming to sit in the stands to listen. Maybe I am saying that as someone who already reads a fair amount of politics on the internet .
But there were booths, booths and more booths. We had booths with petitions, local candidates, state wide campaigns with a few candidates, and then booths that were selling stuff. Some of the stuff was just that some vendor had bought a booth. Like BRE selling boxes and boxes of dvd’s. But there was a lot of “Tea Party” memorabilia being sold. I thought this booth for women’s jewelry was a bit funny. Not wrong or anything but funny.
Overall I walked through the concourse at the stadium and got a lot of information from the candidates (which I will blog more about later). I got to meet and talk with a few candidates and heard some interesting things. I think I will probably be getting more involved in the Tea Party movement and will probably attend another one in the future. A side note: I was shocked that I didn’t see 1 person I know. I go to a conservative church and have politically active friends so I was shocked to not see anyone. Not that it matters but it was shocking;).
Oh, before I end this long droning post. Best answer from a candidate! I was talking to Lawrence Naritelli who is running for Governor. I asked him what his big issues were and one of them is water. Now in my head a bell goes off because it is a huge issue here but not really seen as something the Governorship can do much about (since it is the Federal government causing all the trouble). It really annoys me when a candidate just picks up what ever issue is a hot one in the area even if it is something they will not be involved in if elected. So I asked him what he would do about it if he is elected. He had an answer! He said that the sheriff has immediate physical jurisdiction with the actual pumps but they need an order to turn them on. So as Governor he would issue an order for the pumps to be turned on. Now I don’t know how definite of a solution that is but I was impressed he had an actual action he would do. So I deem that best answer from a candidate for the day!
One of the things that always really sticks in my craw is how much money that the public schools spend on each student with so little to show. If only I had $10 grand to spend on each one of my kids! But I remember talking to someone years ago on how I didn’t think the per student cost was all inclusive. You know counting things like building costs, janitor bonuses, etc. All the money truly going out of each state for anything relating to the schools and then averaged by the number of students. Because I always thought the published per-student cost didn’t include everything. It is nice to see confirmation that I am right! The Cato Institute has a great video that really walks you through it.
First off let me say that I think Senator Tom Coburn rocks! I love how he called out the Democratic Reps who were changing their votes on the healthcare legislation. Well, he has seemed to have made a new lose/lose situation for the Senate Democrats.
He is proposing an Amendment to the Healthcare Bill. If the Senate were to vote for any amendments to the bill it would have to go back to the House of Reps (unless they play a game in the rules committee;). So the Democrats are planning on voting no on every amendment that comes up. But can they really vote no on this one?
The Amendment is titled “No Erectile Dysfunction Drugs To Sex Offenders”. Who can vote against that? So either the Senators will vote against it and send it back to the House. And then maybe it could pass again (please, please, please) or…. They vote against the amendment. Then can you see every campaign against them!
This could be the nail in many of their coffins. Allahpundit gives an over/under of 2 days before the 1st Youtube ad about Harry Reid wanting to give rapists Viagra if the Senate votes this down;).
I just read a great piece on healthcare over on the Washington Times by Dr. Milton R. Wolf. Part of what makes this interesting is that it is both written by a doctor and that the doctor happens to be President Obama’s 2nd cousin. Here is one part I really like!
One of America’s founding principles is our trust in the people and their economic freedom to rule their own lives. We should decouple health insurance from employers and empower patients to be consumers once again. Allow them to determine the insurance plan that best meets their families’ needs and which company will provide it. This will unleash a wave of competition that will drive costs down in a way that price controls never have. Eliminate the artificial state boundary rules that protect insurance companies from true competition and watch as voters demand that their state insurance commissioners get the heck out of the way. Innovative companies will drive down costs similar to how Geico and Progressive have worked for automobile insurance. And it won’t cost taxpayers a trillion dollars in the process.
This free-market approach has worked for everything from high-definition TVs to breakfast cereals, but will it work for medicine? It already is. Take Lasik eye surgery, for example. Because patients are allowed to be informed consumers and can shop anywhere, doctors work hard for their business. Services, availability and expertise have all increased, and costs have decreased. Should consumers demand it, insurance companies – now answerable to you rather than your employer – would cover it.
Go check it out!
Yes, I know that the California education budget keeps getting cut. Do I think it is great? No, not really. I do think it should lead to a restructuring of the whole system but that is another post;). But the Teachers’ Unions are mad. They are organizing protests for this Thursday in Fresno and in Porterville.
“We’re trying to get all the associations and all the schools to stand up for education and let the Governor know that taking money away from education is not the right thing to do,” Porterville Educators Association President Stan Ennis said.
Well, I want to communicate somethings to the Unions. If we simply let go teachers who couldn’t actually teach the kids instead of fighting costly battles to get them out we might make up some of the budget loss. That could save about a half a million dollars and that is for each bad teacher they have tried to get out. And that is just the cost for the ones that school districts have tried to get rid of. Many districts have found that the unions make it so costly and expensive, that it is cheaper to just hold on to the bad teachers. Some are left in the class room and some are relegated to other positions with in the districts.
It appears that Jerry Brown is going to announce his candidacy for California Governor tomorrow. It doesn’t surprise me one bit that the announcement will be online. But, unfortunately, I think he has a really good chance of winning.
Now I don’t really remember Jerry Brown being governor in the late 70’s and early 80’s but I do remember the crazy stories. Him sleeping on the floor of the governor’s mansion, chilling with Linda Ronstadt, being an over all hippy, etc. But this isn’t the same Jerry Brown.
This Jerry Brown seems to realize that being a party Democrat won’t get him anything but screwed (because they did, many times) so he seems to have picked up his own sensibility. I saw it when he was mayor of Oakland and revamped the schools a bit with boot camps and such. He seems to have become much more fiscally aware and, dare I say, responsible? I can say that he has earned some of our respect.
Now all of this makes him quite dangerous. Can all he has done in the last 10-15 years combat the backlash of his previous governorship? I will probably never vote for him but I have to ask, is he a better option than another Wilson, Arnold and the like? At least this one wouldn’t be labelled a Republican. But I don’t think I can do it.
But do you think that Jerry Brown could really be our next governor?
(HT: Ken Malloy)
From everything I hear about yesterday’s Health Care Summit it was boring. I mean really boring. I have only read a couple of pieces but I saw a lot of Twitter statuses fly by. Suffice it to say, not much was actually done and those who were there should receive an award for not going postal (I am talking about all you press, not the government types;).
In honor of the one year anniversary of the Recovery Act I give you this.
Just a couple of interesting things on the political horizon. Not a lot to analyze but interesting all the same.
When asked what she felt the greatest threat to America is currently, audience members in the crowd piped up with cries of “Obama!” According to CBS, Palin was quick to respond with, “See, they said that, I didn’t. Just you watch now, too, because somebody will be here with their little Twittering thing, and it’s going to be on the Internet any minute now.”
Those at Mashable took this as a swing at Twitter but I don’t really think it was. I think it was a swing at those people who tweet things that aren’t necessarily true just to cause a problem. Sarah Palin seems to be very comfortable partaking in different social medias so I don’t think she is writing Twitter off.