Spaghetti fundraisers for $450,000 doctor bills

I print a paper that goes to a county which is at least 95 percent against Obamacare. That may be low.

Every week they run two things:
at least two letters about how Obamacare will destroy America

and at least two announcements of fundraising dinners. These are normally spaghetti feeds because those can be done real cheap. For normally $5 you get a plate of spaghetti, bread, beverage and dessert, and maybe 300 people attend - giving net profit of $900.

These folks aren't even trying to pay medical bills with these fundraisers. They are paying rent and grocery bills because the people are signing their paychecks over to hospitals and going deeper in depth every month.

This is what Republicanism has done: it has reduced sick people to begging, while excoriating those who are trying to fix this.

As long as we're inventing ways to stop school shootings...

I think they have gunfire detectors - electronic devices that listen for the unique sonic signature of a gunshot. Put these in schools.

When one hears a gunshot, it electrically locks the room doors so they won't open from either side. It will also trigger the fire alarm so the students and staff will know to leave through classroom fire doors which go directly outside.

The only person with a key to reopen the doors is the county sheriff, who the system will call when it hears the shot.

Just getting rid of assault rifles isn't enough.

Why are they remaking Robocop?

There were three Robocop films:

Robocop: Alex Murphy gets killed, turned into robot, unleashed on cop killing coke baron
Robocop 2: Murphy still dead, unleashed on cop killing druglord
Robocop 3: Murphy still dead, Ann Lewis gets killed, Murphy fights evil corporation.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who sees...

Robocop 4: Ann Lewis turned into robot, teamed with Murphy against the Detroit meth trade.

My belated Xmas gift: How to fix Congress

Statewide elections for House seats.

Currently, House members are elected by districts. Our friends in the GOP, using sophisticated analytical techniques, have gerrymandered the country to the point it will take an act of Buddha to get Congress back.

Is there anyone who believes a state that would send us Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken would also send us Michele Bachmann? A district specifically designed to hold every RWNJ in Minnesota would; the whole state probably would not.

So we amend the Constitution to require representatives to live in the district they represent but to stand for election statewide.

Oh...forget the "Representatives are elected to serve their constituents." Now they serve anyone but; look at all the Rs who serve only Grover Norquist and Wayne LaPierre.

Possibly the weirdest Christmas request ever

I put Letters to Santa in seven newspapers every year. Today was the last.

In the midst of a huge pile of requests for violent video games, American Girl dolls, Barbies, bicycles and at least three pit bull puppies (tons of kids asked for dogs; a few asked for that specific breed), one child requested a dike.

Two questions: why are second graders interested in flood control, and isn't asking Santa to bring you a dike like Rufus T. Firefly trying to buy ready made foxholes?

Chained CPI is all a show

As is Plan B and all the other fiscal cliff stuff that's come out in the last week or so.

The teabaggers want to repeal Obamacare, both because they hate it and because they know its repeal will neuter the president: if he will roll over on his signature achievement he has no principles.

There are enough teabaggers that any Republican response to the cliff has to be tea friendly - by the time the less-baggy congress comes in we'll be over the cliff, and Allen West would be very happy to trash the place on their way out.

So our president's choices are:
1. Repeal his most important law and destroy any chance of getting anything else
2. Not repeal it and watch Michele Bachmann and her lame duck teabagger allies push the U.S. over the clifg

Anything Obama gives to the GOP now is simply his attempting to put blame where it belongs. After the baggers push they will point to the president and say, "it's his fault. If only he would have compromised for the good of the country..."

Why this will be Obama's fault

I edit letters to the editor, and we get some real winners: last week someone claimed Obama was going to shut down the private sector and establish food distribution networks.

On Monday we will get the weekend letters and I expect:
1. Obama arranged this to repeal the Second Amendment
2. Obama arranged this to suspend the Constitution
3. Obama arranged this to destroy democracy

Teabagger-only walled city proposed for rural Idaho county

This will be front-page news in tomorrow's St. Maries Gazette-Record: the III Arms Company, a custom gun shop based in West Virginia, is planning to buy three thousand acres of Benewah County, Idaho, to build what they refer to as a "citadel" - a place where they can practice Jefferson's Rightful Liberty and walk around armed to the teeth at all times.

Oh...read this...http://iiicitadel.blogspot.com/

I went through the guy's blog and apparently he's never actually BEEN to Benewah County. Among other things, they plan to have their own private airstrip in Teabag City. There is exactly one place in Benewah County that's flat and long enough to put an airstrip, and it's where the county airport is. ('Course, the teabaggers COULD put their compound out there, but they'd have to contend with a few obstacles like the sewage lagoon, the huge swamp next to the airport, the evil government school on the hillside, and the river.)

They've got a "Patriot Agreement" you have to sign before you move to Teabag City. Among its requirements are that you obtain an AR-15 rifle and a thousand rounds of ammo. Now, it just so happens that one of the guns this asshole makes is an AR-15 rifle, but we won't talk about that. You also have to qualify on the range with rifle and pistol every year, and they're going to raise a militia.

I guess there is one advantage to having a walled community: when the state finally gets tired of their shit, the National Guard can block all the roads leading into town and lob mortars in there until the problem corrects itself.

Benewah County is so teabaggy I don't think they know you can use teabags for anything but hat decorations anymore, and even the St. Maries residents think this guy is full of shit.

Does anyone know what all these new Obama regulations are?

A couple days ago we had a thread about a Colorado Springs apartment manager who asked his tenants to volunteer that they voted Democratic so he'd know whose rent to raise first. Apparently all the new Obama regulations are forcing him to cut hours, etc. And we see a lot of this from the Right--all the new Obama regulations are raising the costs for small business.

Besides Obamacare, which is going to REDUCE costs for small business if they have to participate at all, does anyone know what these new regulations are?

You have got to read this letter to my editor