Having just posted the House Committee’s analysis of HR 3200 I went to Huffington Post to see what they are saying about it.

Here are some excerpts:

HR 3200, the House version of health care reform. The Senate’s H.E.L.P.’s subcommittee finished marking up its version of a health reform bill too. Only the Senate’s Finance Committee is not finished with its work, since its draft of reform legislation has yet to be introduced. Regardless, Obama wants bills to the floors of each chamber for a vote by the August recess. It looks like he will get his way with HR 3200; probably not with the Senate’s product.

Here is what the American Medical Association had to say: [Read more →]

The Committee on Energy and Commerce of the United States House of Representatives has prepared an analysis of  H.R. 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, District by District Impact.

The Committee has prepared, for each member, a district-level analysis of the impact of the legislation. This analysis includes information on the impact of the legislation on small businesses, seniors in Medicare, health care providers, and the uninsured. It also includes an estimate of the impacts of the surtax that is used to pay for the legislation.

Note: The following links are to one-page pdf files. So you don’t have to sift through a book length analysis. It is a quick read. Do yourself a favor and read the one for your Congressional District. Learn something. Be informed. Be the first on your block to know. Then you can help others learn about HR 3200, those that haven’t discovered the wealth of information via the Internet, by printing the one page and giving them a copy. [Read more →]

– Today is Energy Independence Day and the One-Year Anniversary of the Pickens Plan.

- The goal of the Pickens Plan is to make us safer here at home and create millions of high paying new jobs by ending our country’s dependence on foreign oil.

- I believe this is critical to the future of our country and future generations.

- The basics of the Plan are for 20% of our nation’s electricity to come from wind power and to divert excess natural gas to the transportation grid. We currently import nearly 70% of our oil from overseas.

- HR 1835 or the ‘NAT GAS Act of 2009’ is in front of Congress right now with over 70 bi-partisan Co-Sponsors in the House. It would provide incentives for natural gas to become a viable transportation fuel alternative to foreign oil.

- The Senate version of HR 1835 is being introduced today and Boone is in Washington for the announcement.

- Call your congressman and senator today to ask for their support of this bill, HR 1835 that will help get us off of foreign oil.

- This bill stands to create a number of new jobs at a time we need it most.

- Boone is dead on with this plan! We do have enough natural gas. In fact the Potential Gas Agency says there’s enough natural gas in the U.S. for every man, woman and child to drive a car for the next 120 years.

- This plan is also the right choice for the environment. Natural gas burns 23% cleaner than gasoline and 60% more than diesel fuel plus it’s ¼ the cost of foreign oil.

- And if you took just one 18 wheeler off the road and replaced with a natural gas rig, it’s the environmental equivalent of taking 325 cars off the road.

- Learn more and sign up at www.pickensplan.com.

Democrats in Congress need to get their act together. CNN reports Democrat Mike Ross of Arkansas, one of the party’s Blue Dogs, a conservative faction declared today that the party’s internal negotiations over health care had failed and warned the party leadership not to ram the current version of the health care bill through by circumventing the traditional legislative process.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman said he is willing to keep talking with members of the Blue Dog coalition but made it clear he intends to move forward with the legislation. Waxman indicated he would bypass a committee vote if necessary and bring the bill directly to the House floor for a final vote.

“We’re not going to let [the conservatives] empower the Republicans. I don’t see any other alternative,” he said.

Watch the Time video.

Proponents of marijuana legalization have advanced plenty of arguments in support of their drug of choice: marijuana is less dangerous than legal substances like cigarettes and alcohol; pot has legitimate medical uses; the money spent prosecuting marijuana offenses would be better used for more pressing public concerns. [Time]

Thirteen states permit the limited sale of marijuana for medical use. Polls show a steady increase in the number of Americans who favor legalization. Federal law still bans the cultivation, sale or possession of marijuana. Feds still classify marijuana as a Schedule I drug, one that has no “currently accepted medical use” in the U.S. Fifty-six percent (56%) of the state’s registered voters support legalizing and taxing marijuana as a way of offsetting some of California’s budget deficit.

Advocates for legalization say that if state or local governments could collect a tax on even a fraction of pot sales, it would help rescue cash-strapped communities. Not surprisingly, the idea is getting traction in California, home to the nation’s largest supply of domestically grown marijuana (worth an estimated $14 billion a year) and biggest state budget deficit (more than $26 billion).

Democratic state assemblyman Tom Ammiano has introduced legislation that would let California regulate and tax the sale of marijuana. The state’s proposed $50-per-oz. pot tax would bring in about $1.3 billion a year in additional revenue.

If the state legislature doesn”t act, perhaps California voters will. One group is preparing to place a statewide initiative for the November 2010 ballot that would regulate and tax the sale of marijuana for Californians 21 years of age and older. [Tax Cannabis 2010]

Even Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is asking for a study about legalizing marijuana. He said:

“I think it”s time for a debate,” the governor said at a news conference. “I think we ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that have legalized marijuana and other drugs.”

I haven’t heard anything about Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons calling for a study. But then he is sort of in a coma, planning his re-election. Considering Nevada and Nye County’s financial problems they would be prudent to start looking at a marijuana tax themselves. But then Nevada seems to be last or close to last on anything progressive.

It seems everyone is in a dither about how to pay for healthcare reform. Those that oppose reform say it is too expensive and will tax them out of existence. Congress is running around like chickens with their heads off, so they’re taking a vacation next month rather than stay at work.

President Obama keeps looking for ways to cut costs of healthcare. The federal deficit looms scarily on the landscape. I have heard someone simplistically say that to pay for healthcare will require raising enough revenue and minimizing the cost so that it can be paid for.

What I haven’t heard, however, are efforts to reduce government costs on a broader view.

Last week I wrote about a possible way of increasing the revenue by legalizing, regulating and taxing marijuana. That would impose a user tax on the millions of Americans who buy and smoke pot. That should put non-pot smokers at ease since they wouldn’t have to pay more taxes. Plus, legalizing and regulating marijuana would reduce billions spent on the so-called war on drugs, which war isn’t succeeding very well. That thought should make the conservatives among us happy, smaller government and less taxes, assuming none of those conservatives smoke pot. If they do they can pay the tax too.

Remember President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address about the Military Industrial Complex? He wisely believed in balance. He said, “Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research — these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.”

“Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual –is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.”

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

A week or so ago the Senate approved a $679.8 billion defense spending bill, which included $130 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. Stripped from the bill was $1.75 billion that would have continued production of Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-22 fighter jets over the objections of Gates and President Barack Obama. The administration threatened to veto the bill if the funding was kept in it.

Members of Congress love defense contracts, especially those that are carried out in their home districts. A lot of that stuff the military doesn’t even want. But bringing home the bacon helps insure their re-election without spending a dime of their own money. Taxpayers foot the bill. Those F-22 jets cost $331 million per jet. Remember the Department of Defense’s $640 toilet seat and $436 hammer and the National Park Service’s $797,400 outhouse?

Just think, if the federal government would shift all that currently misspent money over to healthcare reform it would go a long way toward financing the needed reform, if not all of it. You would think those members of Congress could see that. But then that would eat into their bacon and might make it more difficult to finance their re-elections.

It is with a bit of trepidation that I post this but heck, it was an interesting read. The headline on CNN caught my attention.

The article was written by a woman, Violet Blue, in the Oprah Magazine. Anything from Oprah has to be acceptable, doesn’t it?

Blue writes, “the fact is, millions of women use and enjoy ‘explicit sexual imagery.’” That phrase “explicit sexual imagery” intrigued me as a marvelous alternative way of referring to pornographic images. It would have made Frank Luntz proud. Luntz is the author of Words That Work, It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear.

“In the first three months of 2007, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, approximately one in three visitors to adult entertainment Web sites was female; during the same period, nearly 13 million American women were checking out porn online at least once each month,” Blue points out.

Not only that but

Theresa Flynt, vice president of marketing for Hustler video, says that women account for 56 percent of business at her company’s video stores. “And the female audience is increasing,” she adds. “Women are buying more porn.” (They’re creating more of it, too: Female director Candida Royalle’s hard-core erotic videos, made expressly for women viewers, sell at the rate of approximately 10,000 copies a month.)

For a man it may be somewhat shocking that women might use Hustler as a viewing source. But times have changed over the decades. I suppose porn viewing has become a co-ed exercise.

I don’t want to get too clinical here but the effect of porn on men and women has been scientifically studied.

In a 2006 study at McGill University, researchers monitored genital temperature changes to measure sexual arousal and found that, when shown porn clips, men and women alike began displaying arousal within 30 seconds; men reached maximum arousal in about 11 minutes, women in about 12 (a statistically negligible difference, according to the study).

I’ll leave all this to you. I think I’ll run down to the local Pahrump Adult Superstore (it is just across the street from WalMart) and see if I can find something to rejuvenate my own sex life. Maybe Lillie will come along with me.