Cranky T-Rex's Blog

The incomplete House version of the health care bill is already over 1000 pages. It's not done, the amendments haven't all been tacked on yet, and it's already over 1000 pages. If it were a work of fiction (no jokes please), it would rank up there with War and Peace as one of the longest novels ever written. It is also written in legalese, so to read it, a person needs to speak that language. Translating it into English would probably triple the page count. It is also not the first bill to fit this criterion. The Stimulus bill passed several months ago was also this way. The same was true of Cap 'n Trade. This means that the average citizen has no hope of reading, understanding, and having productive dialogue about the legislation. Since this administration complains constantly about its opponents not putting forth solutions, here is a solution to this problem: The Term Paper Act of 2009. The TPA is inspired by requirements for term papers and other major written projec

Palin did not say Obama would be euthanizing old people. She pointed out quite simply that rationing is an inevitability with government health care, and that somebody in the government will have to decide who gets what. That's it. Get over it.

President Obama said: Our reform will prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage because of your medical history. Nor will they be allowed to drop your coverage if you get sick. They will not be able to water down your coverage when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or in a lifetime. And we will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses. No one in America should go broke because they get sick. It seems that the President does not understand what insurance is. Insurance is, at its core, essentially gambling. The insured gamble that they will need more money at some point than they will have given the insurance company. The insurers gamble that the insured will never need the money back. It is no different than going to a casino in Vegas and playing every month, hoping to eventually hit the jackpot. The casinos naturally attempt to minimize their losses

The Godzilla Award was founded in honor of my cousin from Japan, who unfortunately took his own life in 1998 after he was tricked into starring alongside Matthew Broderick in one of the worst American films ever made. One of Godzilla's most famous traits was his ability to do massive damage with just the power of his breath, and so we dinosaurs have created an award that recognizes the biggest blowhards we can find. This week's winner is... Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA)! Senator Specter wins for complaining about having to use his precious time to answer to his constituents, especially since they've been foaming at the mouth as a result of the health care debate. Senator Specter said: "I’m encouraging constitutional rights. I’m encouraging constitutional rights by coming to Lebanon to talk to my constituents. I could be somewhere else. I don’t get any extra pay — I don’t have any requirement to be here. But for somebody –" Naturally, Senator Specter is cut off by

Medical treatment has had a long history of evolution, and for quite a bit of it, going to a doctor was often worse than simply dying. With little to no understanding of how the body worked or the microscopic organisms that could poison it, doctors often relied on religion and superstition to discern treatment. Consider the Dark Ages, wherein disease was considered caused by evil spirits. The Cure? Prayer. Blood-letting. Drilling holes in the skull to let the demon out. That kind of thought persisted well into the 19th century. Even by the American Civil War, doctors were still often little more than butchers and charlatans. A soldier who took a bullet in a limb could reasonably expect to have his limb hacked off with a dull blade that just came out of the leg of someone with gangrene and no anesthesia to speak of. The lucky ones got a sip of tequila or some other hard liquor. Many so-called doctors even traveled the country prescribing a variety of chemicals for ailments that ranged

The phrase "American Exceptionalism" is often used to describe the United States' meteoric rise to military and economic superstardom. Within 200 years, the USA had evolved from a loose collection of colonial states to the preeminent superpower on the planet, and historians will no doubt spend years attempting to discern just what collection of properties and events came together to cause this to occur. Perhaps it was due to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans insulating America from most direct attacks. Perhaps it was due to the wide variety of resources and climates spanned by the United States. Yet, Canada and Mexico both shared these advantages and neither went on to become as economically or militarily powerful. Certainly these things helped the Soviet Union emerge from the ashes of World War II into a superpower of its own and yet its power waned as rapidly as America's grew. Ultimately, there is one thing that separated the United States from the rest of the world

The Godzilla Award was founded in honor of my cousin from Japan, who unfortunately took his own life in 1998 after he was tricked into starring alongside Matthew Broderick in one of the worst American films ever made. One of Godzilla's most famous traits was his ability to do massive damage with just the power of his breath, and so we dinosaurs have created an award that recognizes the biggest blowhards we can find. With all of the Congress critters running around calling protestors angry mobs and nazis, it was a tough pick this week and a very close vote. But, in the end, one nomination stood above the rest. This week's winner is... Linda Douglass! Ms. Douglass wins for telling everyone not to believe their lying eyes. “Hi. I’m Linda Douglass. I’m the communications director for the White House Office of Health Reform, and one of my jobs is to keep track of all the disinformation that’s out there about health-insurance reform. And there are a lot of very deceiving headlines o

Is anyone else tired of hearing how their opinion doesn't matter because Bush did something similar to something Obama is doing? As if that somehow enters the equation? Here's a typical exchange: "Obama's defecit spending is ridiculous. He's going to bankrupt our country this way!" "Well, where were you when Bush was spending?" First of all, what does that matter? Do I have to complain about Andrew Jackson every time somebody assaults a Native American to have a valid opinion of that being wrong? Further, how does anyone know whether or not somebody complained about Bush? Second, with regard to spending specifically, Obama's spending in the last six months is more than Bush's entire term. So it's not even comparable. And third, if Bush was a fool/jackass/evil for spending a whole bunch of money or any of the other ridiculous things he did, should that not make Obama equal if not worse in that regard? Should not all these people answer

Having been a big movie and television star, it comes as no shock to this giant lizard that movies and television shows often serve as fantastic metaphors for current events. In the classic movie, The Untouchables , Sean Connery's character Jim Malone catches a member of the Italian mob sneaking up on him with a knife in an assassination attempt. Malone, being a smart Irish beat cop, pulls a gun on him and remarks, "Isn't that just like a wop? Brings a knife to a gun fight. " Unfortunately for Malone, the knife is a setup and the assassin just a lure. He is tempted outside where one of Capone's men opens up on him with a tommy gun. This classic movie moment is the perfect metaphor for what has happened across the country for the last two weeks. President Obama and the Congress pulled out their knives to carve up the health care system, and the American people said, "wait just a minute there." They have showed up in droves to tell their local representati

Tonight, this T-Rex was watching a classic movie on AMC as he often does. In that movie, Kevin Costner's character of John Dunbar became known by the Sioux Indians as "Dances With Wolves", thus giving the film its title. There are many things to be said of this film, be it the many Oscars it won or the stirring epic of a loaner on the prairie adapting and making friends with the local tribe, but rather than drone on about some of the more philosophical aspects of this movie that I have been dwelling on this evening, I thought it would be more interesting to create a contest of sorts instead. As "Cranky T-Rex", I essentially already have an Indian name, but what Indian names would some of our politicians have? Here are a few I thought of while I was watching Dances With Wolves: Barack Obama: "SpendsBigMoney" Joe Biden: "DropsWordsfromMouth" Nancy Pelosi: "EyesThatBlinkOften" John Kerry: "ThreePurpleHearts" Robert Gibbs: &q

It seems someone with an interesting sense of humor has been running around LA putting up these pictures, in a parody of the recent smash hit (yet highly overrated in this dino's opinion) The Dark Knight. Remember the days when it was "patriotic" to make fun of the President? Back when it was one's duty to talk about ChimpyMcBushHitler's quest to conquer the world for oil, carried out by drowning blacks in New Orleans and creating a massive conspiracy to execute 9/11? When Dick Cheney was Darth Vader? Apparently, that is no longer the case now that America is the land of Hype and Chains ...excuse me, I meant Hope and Change, as several news outlets such as LA Weekly and MSNBC have decided this crosses the line. Now, I could discuss how incredibly hypocritical it is, but Allahpundit and Ace do the job well enough. The issue I want to address is... ...with the poster itself. The problem with this poster is that it is entirely contradictory. Socialism is on the e

The Godzilla Award was founded in honor of my cousin from Japan, who unfortunately took his own life in 1998 after he was tricked into starring alongside Matthew Broderick in one of the worst American films ever made. One of Godzilla's most famous traits was his ability to do massive damage with just the power of his breath, and so we dinosaurs have created an award that recognizes the biggest blowhards we can find. This week's winner is... Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi! The Speaker wins for this impressive rant against insurance companies brought to us by The Hill : “They are the villains in this,” Pelosi said of private insurers. “They havebeen part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening. And the public has to know that. They can disguise their arguments any way they want, but the fact is that they don’t want the competition.”… “It’s almost immoral what they are doing,” added Pelosi, who stood outsid