Shadow Jay Leno

Great Britain has a concept of a shadow cabinet which follows the actions of the party in power.Since Jay Leno is not on the air right now, I would like to submit a joke he might have used on the Tonight Show

The FAA announced today that it would be investigating the safety practices of Colgan Air, the regional carrier that had the tragic plane crash outside of Buffalo. President Obama says he backs the FAA decision and is in essence admitting that the government may have been lax in its oversight. Dick Cheney commented on the President's remarks saying " You have got to back up your agencies and never admit a mistake. He should have immediately shown confidence in the FAA's previous oversight by announcing that Colgan Air would now be flying Air Force One"

Health Care The Public Plan...The incremental option

Conservatives are having a field day implying that any government plan will wipe out the private insurance industry. We could mollify the critics by restricting the government plan to those who can not get acceptable coverage from the private market. This could include retirees who are still carried on their companies policies until age 65, but are paying increasing costs as their former employers are not sharing the cost burden as they do for active employees. Also those not currently able to join a group (like a major company or union) could join the government plan as individual health care policies seem prohibitively expensive or coverage can be denied due to pre-existing conditions.

Those who are currently covered by group company plans, unions or other groups would not be eligible for the public option.

I have written an email to one of my senators (Robert Menedez). He is not on the pertinent committee, but I asked him to forward my email to Sen Sherrod Brown of Ohio who is on the committee. As an Ohio State Buckeye alumnus I think I should have incredible pull with Sen Brown (lol?)

Sotomayor A question of balance

The new Supreme Court nominee has drawn fire from the right for supposedly suggesting that a Latina woman would make a better judge than a white male. I think what she needs to do is to qualify this thought and reframe it as a question of balance. Then she could have a lawsuit with the Moody Blues who used it as an album title.

Siriusly, she simply needs to convey the idea that the Supreme Court, like any center of American power has to be reasonably reflective of the population over which it is exercising that power.