For the record:
The president was drinking Bud Light, Biden was drinking Buckler (a nonalcoholic beer), Gates was drinking Samuel Adams Light and Crowley was drinking Blue Moon.
Gov. Schwarzenegger’s pollling may be at an all-time low, but he is lucky it is as high as it is considering what a wretched job he did during the budget negotiations:
In a new poll by the Public Policy Institute of California, only 28 percent of respondents were happy with Schwarzenegger’s performance, the worst rating of his tenure and the lowest since Gray Davis stood at 26 percent two months before voters recalled him from office in 2003.
Dems who run the California Legislature are taking even more of the heat — they’re at 17 percent. Some of this is deserved, but Schwarzenegger ran this show. The root problem here is term limits. We used to have powerful leaders in the legislature, but now they serve for so few years that there’s no time to gain experience. Unlike the current speaker and senate president, Speaker Willie Brown and Sen. John Burton would have had no problem going toe to toe with the celebrity gov.
Oh, and Pres. Obama’s numbers are down in California, too — from 72 percent to 65 percent.
After demonstrating she most emphatically cannot take the heat, a new poll shows most Americans think Sarah Palin should stay in the kitchen. FOX News, of all places, reports the numbers.
About a third of Americans think the best job for Palin is homemaker (32 percent), while nearly one in five see her as a television talk show host (17 percent). Vice president of the United States comes in third (14 percent), followed closely by college professor (10 percent), with president coming last (6 percent).
Even Republicans don’t see a “Pres. Palin” as optimal.
Republicans think the best job for Palin is vice president (27 percent), followed by homemaker (18 percent), talk show host (14 percent), president (12 percent) and professor (7 percent).
The better we know Palin, it seems, the less we like her.
More Americans have a negative view of Palin than have a positive one. While 38 percent say they have a favorable opinion of her, 51 percent have an unfavorable view…
The last time views of Palin were tested voters were evenly divided: 45 percent viewed her favorably and unfavorably (31 March-1 April 2009). When Palin was first introduced to the country as Arizona Sen. John McCain’s running mate in September 2008, 54 percent had a positive opinion of her — double the 27 percent who said they had a negative opinion.
The poll also shows Republicans are still in search of a front-runner for the 2012 presidential election. A cult member is their top pick, and it just goes downhill from there.
Among Republicans, Palin is their third choice when read a list of potential candidates for the 2012 nomination. Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney takes the top spot (22 percent), though he bests former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee by just one point (21 percent). Palin receives the backing of 17 percent and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giluiani comes in at 13 percent. The remaining candidates receive single-digit support.
One of the most pernicious dysfunctions of the current health care system is that it often puts uninsured people, particularly workers with low and mid-level incomes, in the position of going to emergency rooms for treatment for non-emergency medical problems. This not only puts additional stress on emergency services, it is the least effective way to deliver non-emergency treatment, since ER doctors don’t know patients’ medical histories and rarely have access to their records.
The proper setting for non-emergency care is in the offices of doctors who provide primary care. Formerly known as “family doctors,” these physicians generally see patients on an ongoing basis and are best at diagnosing and prescribing the right treatments. However, doctors almost always require that their patients have some sort of insurance before they’ll take them on.
Emergency rooms are not only least effective and efficient treatment settings for primary care, they are the most expensive. The average ER visit costs $359 — more than double the $129 average cost of a primary care visit. But because hospitals, unlike primary care clinics, are legally bound to treat everyone who shows up, thousands of uninsured people seek primary care treatment in ERs every day, a phenomenon that needlessly adds billions to the overall cost of health care every year.
With a public option — a government insurance plan similar to Medicare, Medicaid and the coverage provided to the military, veterans, members of Congress and federal employees — people who can’t afford insurance now would be covered, and so would have access to primary care. This would not only improve the overall quality of health care and reduce stress on overburdened emergency rooms nationwide, it would eliminate billions in emergency services fees charged to those who can least afford them.
William Shatner makes sense of the hot mess that is Sarah Palin’s mind.
They’re saying that Pres. Obama could do for beer what he did for Portuguese water dogs. Breathless reporters are already lining up to reveal what beer is served when Obama sits down with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley and asks, “Can’t we all just get along?”
Does the president choose a lager for Thursday’s gathering? A porter? Maybe a wheat beer? Does he pick something light to help the men with the Washington, D.C., summer heat?
Whatever the president picks, it is likely to be closely watched and could even help propel a lesser-known beer into the mainstream.
The four-page story goes on to quote Donna Brazile predicting Sam Adams, Robert Gibbs noting Obama drank Bud at the All-Star game, and Crowley favoring Blue Moon Pale Ale — although honestly, I can’t see Obama drinking anything with an orange slice floating in it.
What beer do Pensito Review readers think should be served at this historic occasion? Leave your order in the comments, along with a generous tip for your server.
Not satisfied with losing a bunch of elections last November as well as a whole bunch of formerly loyal members from every level, the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) appears to be trying to finish the job through what looks from the outside like a purge of, gasp! — Libertarians. At least that’s what one of Trish’s correspondents alleged was happening last Friday.
That day the RPOF’s Grievance Committee met in Orlando to do something — it’s not clear exactly what, even after they explained it in another one of their famous press releases where every paragraph is quote-marked — that was so heinous that Chairman Jim Greer stayed far away from the meeting, geographically distancing himself from something that morally he couldn’t actually wipe off.
It’s worthwhile to note here that Greer was handpicked by Gov. Charlie “One Term Wonder” Crist to lead the state Republican Party. Both men are coming under fire for what seems to be a party that is rapidly becoming as irrelevant as Sarah Palin.
Let’s let the RPOF tell us what the Grievance Committee does, according to its chairman, Tony DiMatteo (superfluous quote marks retained):
“The Grievance Committee is comprised (sic) of members of the RPOF State Executive Committee. Our involvement with the RPOF is in a volunteer capacity. Grievances are a formal complaint from one member of the Republican Party of Florida’s county leadership structure to another member of the county leadership structure. All grievances originate at the county level and are filed with the State Party and then referred to the Grievance Committee.
A new Rasmussen poll provides the third reason you don’t want to live in Arizona. First, let’s review numbers one and two:
1. John McCain is your United States senator
2. Temperatures over 110 are common
And now, number three:
Fifty-one percent (51%) of Arizona voters say it is more important for Congress to pass immigration reform than health care reform…
Voters in the Grand Canyon State still highly regard Maricopa Country Sheriff Joseph Arpaio, known for his tough immigration enforcement. Fifty-seven percent (57%) say the sheriff’s policies have helped the state’s image, showing little change from May.
There you have it folks. Bottom line: if you want to live in Southwest, move to New Mexico where they have Bill Richardson, John Nichols, and Taos.
Florida State Sen. Jim KingFlorida lost a great one today. State Senator (and former Senate President) Jim King died of pancreatic cancer. And even though King was a Republican, I found him to be fair, thoughtful, and always humorous. He shared a trait that any good legislator or public servant has: when you came to him for help, he never asked — or particularly cared about — your party affiliation.
I only have a couple of personal memories of the man. One was when he was running for re-election and addressed my Tiger Bay club. King was a massive man, and by that I pretty much mean fat, but he told us that day he felt like a buck in rutting season.
The other was when I was leading a delegation of Florida advertising professionals on their annual pilgrimage to the state capitol to ask that advertising not be taxed. King was senate president at the time and we requested a meeting with him on the day of a critical vote. He kept his appointment with us and even though he was wanted on the Senate floor, and his assistant stuck her head in periodically to see if he was done yet, he treated us as if he had all the time in the world.
King also bucked (so to speak) Jeb Bush and his own party over the Terri Schiavo debacle. He passionately spoke out against Jeb’s foray not just into his constituents’ bedrooms but in this case, their death beds. More recently, the country might remember King as the Florida legislator who championed “truck nutz,” as an expression of “truckliness” and claimed to have a pair on his own SUV. I can easily believe that.
Trump’s renaming of Lake Ontario has created a litmus test —
Yield, and rename it Lake America, at Donald Trump’s behest,
Like Google and Apple, which already capitulated,
Changing the name just like Dear Leader stipulated,
But there’s one defiant holdout — the original mapping site, Mapquest.
