Politics and putts

See, I told you guys about Bill Self! He is evil incarnate with a toupee. He made fans of Kansas cry. He made people in Iowa happy. What can be more evil than that?

(I’ll be honest, I wasn’t even watching that game. Kim and I decided to watch several episodes of Hoarders, which made us both decide that we really, really need to clean out our closets. Seriously, if you need to get motivated to clean up your house watch that show.)

I’ve only caught bits of the Tiger Woods interview but here is the most interesting part of the transcript I saw. When asked why did he marry Elin he answered “I loved Elin with everything I have.” Look at the verb tense there. True, the question is about why did he get married, which is technically a past event, but nowhere in his extended answer does he say that he currently loves his wife. I’m someone who takes those little things very seriously.

Also interesting was how the networks handled it. Tiger offered a five minute interview. The Golf Network jumped at it, which is not surprising as otherwise they would have been forced to show the Best of Lee Cordova’s Putting Challenge. CBS turned it down because they felt that five minutes was not nearly enough time to do a true interview on the subject. ESPN jumped at it though and sent a B team reporter (basically someone not named Bob Ley). Here is what I find interesting. ESPN took the interview and not ABC. They’re the same company but they decided to treat it as sports instead of news. I still argue this is a news story. Tiger is a billion dollar brand, one of the biggest athletes on the planet and his actions will move stock prices. Yes this is a tawdry scandal but it is also news.

Then you had the health care bill passing. Now I’ve stated this before and I’ll state it again: I am for the idea of health care reform but feel that this is simply a bad bill that shouldn’t have been passed. It costs too much at a time when we simply do not have the money for it (we still haven’t funded the wars that we are fighting) and while the health care system is greatly flawed the main focus of the government for the past year plus should have been the economy. Even worse, this bill doesn’t put us on a slippery slope to universal health care it puts on a frictionless plane towards it. I’ve been in an emergency room in Britain. I really would not want a repeat of that experience.

That said, please keep this in mind when complaining about the bill. I’ve heard a few of these tossed out there in the blogosphere and it just makes the debate meaningless when there are so many concrete examples to discuss. The passage of the bill is not an example of tyranny as a collection of elected officials, who are up for reelection this year, passed it after a year’s worth of discussion. Its passage also doesn’t mean that the will of the people has been violated. We are talking about the House here, the government body that exists to best represent the will of the people. Again, if you disagree vote out your congressmen in November.

What the bill is, and this is a much better point for argument than words like tyranny, is an example of just horrible politics. This was a pure party line vote. All of the republicans voted no and 90% of the democrats voted yes. In reality, nothing is ever that clean cut along party lines. There were republicans who voted against the Iraq war and democrats who supported it. I cannot believe that, if given truth serum and placed in a dark room, that the votes would be the same. In the end you have politicians opposing or supporting the bill not because of their belief in it, or even what they feel is best for their district, but because of their desire to get reelected. On a bill as important as this that is just horrendous.

(For those wondering, my Delaware rep voted no and the rep in Chicago I kind of know is the only Illinois democrat to vote no.)

There are some good parts to the bill to be sure. I just don’t think it is the solution. I think it will turn into a beauracratic nightmare if ever really sees the light of day. The proof is in the pudding, though.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Immaculate Machine “High on Jackson Hill”
2) Paul Burch “Last of My Kind”
3) Jimmy Buffett “Off to See the Lizard”
4) Wilco “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”
5) Freakwater “Old Paint”