Oh man. I used to love weddings. I really did. I thought they were fun affairs where you got to see family and friends, drink and dance, and just have a good ole time. Plus, when I was single, I almost always got lucky at weddings - something in the air lends itself to sex and romance I guess.

So i always thought I wanted a big wedding because then it's all the good things about weddings but you're the center of attention and getting all the gifts!! What's not to love?

Most of us here at Dagblog probably support a sane person's right to choose to terminate his/her life (although we would likely try to talk a friend/family member out of it if no sufferering was involved). What about those of questionable sanity?

I have to apologize for my prolonged posting absence, but things have been getting hectic. And with several trips upcoming, including two jaunts to Vegas (one my bachelor party!!), a pre-wedding party in my hometown St. Louis, a wedding (with still a millions things that need to be done), a minimoon, and various other things happening all in the next couple of months, I have a feeling it's going to get worse before it gets better.

According to the internet Gods (Wikipedia) a constitutional right is defined as: a freedom granted by a government's constitution (on the national or sub-national level), and may not be legally denied.

I was over at my buddy James’ place earlier today and while he and the wifey were tending to their newborn baby in the nursery I was reading over the maternal material provided by the hospital to the new parents. Most of the info in the parenting pamphlets was pretty boring (i.e. babies eat food, sleep and poop - not necessarily in that order or at different times), but I did find out some interesting facts about baby raising that I found both alarming and surprising. 

For me, this summer started with my mother's death. It's ending with daily reminders of just how far some will go to prevent benefit to the many at the expense of profit to the few.

For months, Republicans have been saying anything they think will elicit fear, a powerful agent against change. Creating fear and confusion is the swiftest way to get people to act against their own interests. But, as usual, the fear and confusion they seek to sow is dishonest, disingenuous, and disrespectful.

Compare and contrast.

Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter (whose job it is to enact legislation): "I have a fundamental problem with any 1,000-page bills."

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart (whose job it is to make us laugh): "I've read the bill."

He's the Senate majority leader.  He's up for re-election next year.  He also might as well be a ghost in the healthcare debate.

Where is this dude?

We've got a tiny cabal of Senators from states with a collective population smaller than Los Angeles gumming up the works in the Place Where Legislation Goes To Die.  Where is the majority leader in all of this?  Shouldn't we be seeing a united front here?  Pelosi, Reid and Obama all on the same page, all getting the message out?

The town halls are all the rage nowadays, now that people are bringing weapons to them and healthcare is assumed to be synonymous with Socialism.

I remember the days when the Iraq war was still important and you couldn’t drag or pay the community to these things in any significant numbers, and there was always a seat. A friend of mine you know as DF on some of them bloggin’ sites people are reading nowadays for their crazy ideas, and I went to the recent Dan Lungren Town Hall in Citrus Heights with the intention of getting into a fake fight about Socialism and platitude.

I was always under the impression that inbreeding was a bad idea. Not only is it creepy, but a diverse gene pool is desirable – at least that’s what I thought.  Until I read about the Italian town of Stoccareddo.  Just as a narrowed gene pool can increase the probability of a bad trait becoming overly prevalent, it can also do so for a good trait.

If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation (sic) unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.

This according to an article at the BBC Web site that reports on a scientific paper written by researchers in Canada. It’s almost as if Bob and Doug MacKenzie were unleashed on an unsuspecting university math department.

I'm loving Rep. Weiner on this issue.  Straight and to the point, he asks a subsequently stunned Joe Scarborough what value health insurance companies are adding to the equation.  Watch (awesomeness occurs at the 5:00 mark, culminating in a lovely pregnant pause at around 5:30):

Last week, I wrote about Glenn Beck's paranoid theory that Obama's health care plan would covertly deliver slavery reparations by redistributing health care to African Americans. It turns out that black people aren't the only undeserving minorities after grandma's health care. Filling in for Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn of the National Review earned his airtime by inventing a whole new health care persecution fantasy:

When I first heard reports of the armed man outside of Obama's townhall in Portsmouth, NH, I had a feeling that we would see an escalation of this behavior.  Today there were estimated to be a dozen armed outside of his appearance in Arizona.

It's a tricky situation.  Technically, these people are acting within their rights.  Realistically, they're bringing loaded weapons to incredibly tense gatherings.  As the tension and the number of weapons increases, so does the chance that something unwarranted occurs.

A long time ago, I worked on a statewide political campaign for fifteen months. It’s hard work for very little pay and it requires an intense level of commitment.

That's what we have in America today in terms of the casualties caused by our corrupt insurance regime.  About 18,000 deaths occur annually in America due to lack of health insurance.  That's 1,500 deaths per month, or a casualty total equalling all of the casualties of September 11th, 2001, every two months.

Boy, what a disappointment.

"...it is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"

I was livid when I first saw video from the health care town hall meeting that took place last week in my hometown St. Louis.  I had already seen enough similar footage from other cities, but the fact that these were in some ways 'my folk' infuriated me.

Ignorant rednecks, I thought, the whole lot of them.