John Edwards and other stuff

OK, it's been a few months since I decided to start this blog, but I guess I've gotta get back on the horse somewhere, right? Here goes.

John Edwards: No Longer Such a Great Guy
As you've probably heard, John Edwards is a father, again, in a story that probably shocked nobody. Tiger's gotta be happy, since this gets him and his "rehab" trip out of the limelight for a little while. It also begins the official divorce countdown for Edwards and his maybe-n0t-so-nice wife, Elizabeth. Might be hard to get that ball rolling for a few days, though, since John's apparently in Haiti, vacationing. OK, he's actually doing charity work in Haiti and El Salvador. But if you read right now that he was vacationing on a Royal Caribbean ship in Labadee right now, you'd probably go, "Sounds about right."

Pelosi, House Dems Drop the Ball on Health Care
I tweeted about this yesterday after the Brown win in Massachusetts, but I'm starting to lose my faith in Democrats to get things done (shocking, I know.) Nancy Pelosi said earlier today that the Senate health care bill wouldn't pass the House as is. I find the Democrats quaking-in-their-boots attitude absolutely fascinating, especially in light of the MASSIVE majorities they hold in both houses. Through most of George W. Bush's tenure, the GOP didn't have a significant majority in the Senate - in fact, they only held 55 seats at their high-water mark, four fewer than the Democrats hold now, even after yesterday's results. But they stilll managed to get some pretty awful stuff passed, like the PATRIOT Act, the Homeland Security Act, as well as one of the most expensive pieces of health care overhaul to date, the infamous Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act.

The Democrats' national mindset, however, seems to be that they can't pass any legislation without having 60 seats, because the Republicans might filibuster! Obviously, this ignores the fact that the Republicans can't constantly filibuster (since it would make them wretchedly unpopular - "That's right, the party of rich, fat, old white guys doesn'y want to get stuff done!"), as well as the fact that, throughout our history, if the majority party always needed 60 votes, very little legislation would have EVER passed. If the Democrats ignored the constant polling for a month or so and just got an actual legislative agenda pushed through both houses by old-school, Tip O'Neill-style, they'd probably increase that Holy Grail of polls, their favorability rating, by a significant margin just by being the party that got stuff done.

In Case You're Reading this in China, ...
Thank Hillary Clinton for a great speech today on the importance of information access and internet exposure in countries that can best be described as "mildly secretive."