Motley Moose – Archive

Today President Obama signed into law the new State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) bill.  This bill extends healthcare coverage to 4 million uninsured children beyond the original 7 million covered by the program.

As a “downpayment on (his) promise to cover every American” it isn’t a bad start.  Those 4 million kids are about 9% of the 45 million uninsured Americans.  The bill passed the House overwhelmingly today as it has twice during George Bush’s presidency – the only difference being that it was not vetoed this time.

If we can get that much done in the first fifteen days of this new administration, perhaps we can get more done in the next 1,400.

In his first televised interview as President, Barack Obama sits down with Al-Arabiya [full text here] and lays serious smackdown at the feet of Al Qaeda.

Osama bin Laden and the death-cult dead enders are spinning in their caves.  How exactly do you paint Barack Hussein Obama as the Evil West?

This is what we were told.  It is what many who voted for Sarah Palin believed.  It is what a gentleman here in Sarasota believed enough to say to me directly a few days before the election: “Obama sympathizes with terrorists.”

On Friday, the US sent two Hellfire missiles from Afghanistan-based Predator drones into Zharki Village in Pakistan’s Waziristan region, accepted as the home of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda leadership.  Eighteen people were reported killed in the two locations, locals report that the Taliban removed eight of the bodies:

Resident Allah Noor Wazir said he attended funerals for the owner of the targeted house, Din Faraz, his three sons and a guest.

“I also heard that three bodies had been taken away by Taliban. They say they belong to foreigners,” Wazir told the AP by telephone.

I feel for the innocent victims of these missile strikes (I will assume there were some family members killed who were not directly a part of the war), but from early reports it seems that the buildings they were in were valid military targets.

An interesting thing happened this past week.  After running into a flock of geese and losing power a US Airways Airbus A320 – flight 1549 – ditched in the Hudson River.  All 155 passengers and crew survived.

Last night, flight 1549 flew one last time.

What is most interesting about this incident is the positive impact the accident has had on the US population.

It is now 2009.  We have come so far in the past eight years that – even if you pay really close attention – the speed with which we have grown as a species in knowledge and capability is so ferociously fast as to be virtually invisible.

In 2009 you can buy a 1 Terabyte disk drive for your computer for $95 (this much storage would have cost you $4,000 in 2001).

Between 2001 and 2009 – following the old saw about “Human Knowledge doubling ever year” – we as a species had acquired 256 times as much knowledge about the world around us than we did between the dawn of humanity and 2001 (when we already thought we were pretty bright, and we were).

Newsflash from Human Events doh’t com.  And, yes, that is the actual subject line of today’s Newsmax spam.

So glad to see the Far Right evolving.  Way to honor the office of the Governor of Alaska that you respected so deeply only a few months ago.

Welcome 2009, we’ve waited for you a long long time.

At a time when even such notable Republicans as Alexander Haig, Colin Powell and even Newt Gingrich are chastising the Republican Party for being out of touch with the American people, I find myself endlessly amazed at the opportunities my erstwhile cohort continues to provide for me to recoil from them.  One more good recoil and I will find myself behind myself.

OK, First Al Haig now Newt Gingrich.  Even a Polyanna-optimist like myself is starting to get weirded out.

Even in my Cranky Conservative phase, I never entirely warmed up to Newt.  A smart guy, no doubt, but “further to the Right” than my personal preferences went.

Is he simply trying to distance himself from RNC Chairman and lead-mudflinger Mike Duncan?  Or is he displaying rational cognition?

Alexander Haig, Chief of Staff to Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and Secretary of State to Ronald Reagan, has words of praise for Barack Obama.

John Allen is finding some sense in William Kristol, cats and dogs are living together and half of registered Republicans approve of Obama’s actions since he was elected.  Are these signs of the End of Days, or the beginning of an Age of Reason?