Speaking of Anabelle, she continues to make us wait. The first week of September came and went, thus proving me wrong (not for the first and surely not for the last time). Christy had a doctor's appointment today and she told us (for the second week in a row) that she could go into labor at any point now. She also told us that Christy is 4cms dillated and almost 100% effaced. For those uninitiated with that terminology . . .um, google it. But just to give a frame of reference, if you are in the hospital and in labor they won't allow you to get an epidural until you are at 4cm, so it's usually an indicator that you're pretty far along in the process.
As you can imagine this past weekend was rather uneventful, as we pretty much just sat around waiting for a baby that decided she's not ready to come out yet. It was nice to have one last relaxing 3-day weekend but the trouble was we couldn't ever fully relax knowing that at any moment we might have to spring into action. So instead I geeked out and played about 20 hours of Final Fantasy III and watched a lot of mediocre movies as well as the entire first season of 30 Rock.
OK, I'm just getting set to watch Obama's speech to Congress. I'm hoping to have a blog on that as well as a couple of other random topics in the next couple days.
12 comments:
Ooh yay. I was hoping you would blog about that. I missed the beginning but caught most of the rest of it. It was exciting the times when both the Republicans and Democrats stood up, but obviously I noticed when it was just the Democrats.
So I'm gonna say it--and our Republican friends will probably just say I'm brainwashed or some such--but I am SO glad he's President. Just look at him up there. He's just so flipping COMPETENT and REASONABLE and LEADER-Y. God damn, it feels good.
I just saw a recap on the network news (NBC) that frustrated me. That guy who yelled out "lie!" about illegal immigrants and health care? The NBC newscasters reported that they had now "tracked down" the source of that outburst and it was none other than *blah blah, can't remember he name just now*. What frustrated me was that, true to media culture today, rather than looking at that concern (which, I'm sorry, if someone feels that strongly about it to yell it out in a Presidential address, yes it's bad manners but we should at least look at that concern, shouldn't we?).... well what NBC news decided to do was immediately discredit the guy by painting him as unbalanced and villianous. I like to think (I hope?) that Barack Obama understands that he needs to look into that concern and not follow the media's lead on demonizing the voices of protest. I don't care who's doing it--when you silence dissenting voices by calling them un-American, you are, in fact, the one most hurting America.
Love FFIII. Third only to FFII and FFVII in my book.
I like the word leader-y.
Becky, I'm sure you've heard this by now, but it went something like this:
"My plan does not allow for the coverage of a single illegal immigrant."
"YOU LIE!"
I think it was just a moment where he thought there was going to be a chorus of boos and he would just get gobbled up, but was mistaken.
The reason NBC glossed over it is that it has been discussed over and over for 2 weeks and has been thoroughly debunked. It would be like talking about the death panels again, or Obama's birth certificate.
For the record, the crazies are talking about this clause:
"[e]xcept as otherwise explicitly permitted by this Act and by subsequent regulations consistent with this Act, all health care and related services (including insurance coverage and public health activities) covered by this Act shall be provided without regard to personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services."
But they forget that the bill previously states:
"Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States."
And also that current law prohibits illegals from getting government sponsored health care.
Quick source for that was factcheck.org
I'm hoping what NBC was doing was refusing to acknowledge it and hope that it just goes away. Like ignoring a child who is throwing a tantrum.
I thought the speech was fine. I thought it should have been given in May, but it was fine. I don't see how the speech changed his position on anything, or gave anyone who wasn't going to vote for it a reason to change their mind. He basically came out and restated his beliefs. Pretty speech, but not really the way to get new votes.
Nancy Pelosi: stop chewing gum or mints or your cud. Regardless of what people call you, you are not a cow. Especially on television.
Congress: stop with the standing ovations. That was a 20 minute speech that took almost an hour. You cut my gym-time short.
Republicans: (and forgive me if I have selective memory on this one and should be addressing all of Congress) stop booing, jeering, and acting boorish. Whether you like it or not, this man is your President and you are in the Capital, you are not at at a baseball game booing an umpire. We are not British, show some class.
Oh, and I heart Barney Frank.
OK, I'll comment on the speech later today but I want to geek out even further for a second. Weir, I want to make sure that we're talking about the same game here. I am talking about "real Final Fantasy III" (as it was called in Japan). The one most commonly referred to as FFIII (the one released for SNES that had Kefka as the villain and Terra and Locke as the main heroes) was actually FFVI. Similarly, Final Fantasy II for the SNES was actually FFIV. That, in any case, is why there was the bizarre numbering of where FFIII was followed by FFVII. From VII on, the numbers are the same in Japan and the US. So, if I am reading your statement correctly, I believe that you are saying that your favorites are IV, VII, and then VI. I'd actually put it in the reverse order, but I agree that those are the 3 best. The version of FFIII I just played is the revamped one they released for the DS in late 2006. It's strange because they gave it modern graphics and controls, but at it's heart it's still an NES game so it's incredibly old-school. We're talking pretty much mandatory 2-3 hours of level-grinding at a couple different points in the game and no save points before boss battles. It's definitely a bit on the monotonous side but I think it's perfect for playing while sitting on the couch with football or 30 Rock on in the background.
I also played through FFVI (for the 2nd time) about 6 months ago, and FFIV (also for the 2nd time) about 3 months ago. I'm playing FFV right now and once I'm done with that I will have played all of them through FFVII. I also recently played through the DS remake of ChronoTrigger, which is another strong candidate for best RPG of all time (Lufia II is another one). I haven't been able to really get into the modern RPGs (I played FFXII but only got about 15 hours in) and I was wondering if I'd just gotten sick of that type of game, but now that I've played a number of these retro ones I realize that I just like those a whole lot better. I think that the modern ones have just gone overboard with the customization. I like being able to tailor my character, but in FFXII I felt like I was spending half of the playtime staring at the license board.
OK; geek-out over. I have to do some work now but I'll be back this afternoon with political talk.
I was going to comment on that, but I was afraid to get your nerd all over me.
Thinking about it a little more, I would put them as follows:
#1. FFII: Cecil the Dark Knight becomes Cecil the Paladin. I liked the new battle system and Rydia, but didn't like going to the moon. The moon mobs were poorly designed.
#2. FFVII: The only reason I got a Playstation over an N64. Seriously. The ONLY reason. I think I only ever purchased 4 or 5 games for the PSX. Cloud vs. Sephiroth. Sheer Badassery. I was sad when Aeris died though. She was hotter than Tifa and I wanted Cloud to bang her. Cait Sith is the most worthless POS ever.
#3. FFIII: The plotline on this game was so good, that it didn't matter that I hated most of the characters. The main character was a girl, which was hard to get behind. Locke was annoying. Sabin was cool, but his badass move frequently blistered my thumb (circular motion on a d-pad.) Kefka was awesome. Realm? Setzer? A Yeti? And a character as worthless as Cait Sith: Gau. Gau would learn the attacks of monsters, but they all sucked. There were 14 permanent playable characters, but most of them sucked, leaving you to play with Terra, Edgar, Sabin, and Gogo (if you were a badass and got the gold chocobo like me.) Still, the Chocobo races and breeding, the opera house, etc. etc. etc. Awesome plot.
I bought the FF MMO (XI) a couple months after it came out. I played it for a couple hours and it was so counter-intuitive that I just gave it up. That game sucked.
But, Square is developing for the 360 now, so I might pick up the next one.
Wow.
That is all.
Becky - You're just upset because for once it's a geek discussion about something you're not interested in. If you did read both mine and Weir's complete posts I'm both impressed and more than a little disturbed.
Now on to politics . . .
We'll start with Becky's point about Rep. Wilson's outburst. As we have discussed in the past, you have an acute case of underdog-itis. You instantly want to defend someone when everyone else gangs up on them. That may be warranted, and at times even nobel, but it is neither of those in this case. Hell, he's not even defending himself. Calling someone a liar is not being a "dissenting voice"; it's name-calling and really has no place in the middle of a Presidential address. This was not a town hall meeting or a debate. Let's put it into another context. Suppose Steven Hawking gets up to give a speech and in the middle of it says "the Earth revolves around the sun" and another scientist screamed out "You lie" would that be a dissenting voice or just a rude jackass ignorant about the facts? I'd like to invoke Bill Maher here: "don't be so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance."
Now, as to the content of the speech I found myself thinking a lot along the same lines as Weir in that I'm not really sure who's mind it was supposed to change. But I think that more than anything it's designed to serve as kind of a mental reset before all the fighting begins again. This was the halftime speech a coach gives when his team is down by 2 TDs where he says "the score's 0-0, just go out and win the 2nd half." The speech itself does nothing, but it's supposed to stop the feeling that you're on the defensive and playing from behind. Whether it works or not remains to be seen.
His theme definitely seems to be "not the first, but determined to be the last" which I think is a nice and lofty goal and certainly makes a good slogan but is also probably unrealistic. I do think that something is going to happen this year and it almost certainly will be the largest shake-up of US healthcare since Medicare. But it's also pretty unrealistic to think that we're going to get everything right the first time. Regardless of what happens, there will tweaks (both major and minor) for decades to come. Still, I think the substance of the message is "we're not going to let it fall off the agenda like the Clinton administration did."
I also think that the public option has one foot out the door and won't end up in the final bill. He talked about it but he emphasized more how it was just a means to the end of achieving universal coverage and also specifically talked about how "less than 5% would even sign up for it." It would seem to be incongruous to downplay the significance of something but then be completely immobile in insisting that it has to be in there. I also really think that all the talk of compromising and not being ideologically rigid was intended more for Democrats than Republicans. I think he knows that he's not going to get more than 1 or 2 Republicans no matter what and I think he's mainly trying to keep the extreme left (who say they won't vote for a plan without the public option) together with the Blue-dogs (who say they won't vote for one with it).
A couple other quick final thoughts. I liked that he didn't completely paint the insurance companies as "evil" and said that they provide a vital service but he still made it sound like them being "motivated by profits" was something to be ashamed of. Better to emphasize that they (most of them anyway) are just playing by the rules, but the rules need to change. I thought he also did a good job of explaining why we need a mandate, since when the uninsured get injured it affects us all.
And Weir, one last FF point. I believe you're confused (or I am). Breeding chocobos didn't start until VII (and yes I was a "badass" and got the gold one). You got Gogo in III/VI by letting this whale-like sand creature suck you into its stomach.
I was hoping that the media wouldn't focus on Wilson's outburst simply because when things like this happen they become the only thing that the media can focus on and the real message gets lost.
That being said, I do feel that if you want to be the dissenting voice more power to you, however there are more respectful and appropriate ways to protest. I not only found it disrespectful to the President, but also sad that Wilson chose to represent himself this way in a live televised forum. Call me crazy but I still feel that politicians should be role models.
No baby yet?? I can't stand the suspense!! :)
John, you're right. Who am I thinking of that you need the Gold Chocobo to get in VII then? On that island on the NE corner of the map?
Christy: I don't have a problem with being the voice of dissent, but when you misrepresent the truth you are no longer dissenting.
Current law: no federal money for health care coverage for illegals.
New Bill: no federal money for health care coverage for illegals.
Obama: "There will be no money for health care coverage for illegals."
YOU LIE!
I don't know if they're delusional, or just seriously deceptive, but these are the people that screamed "He was born in Africa! Show me his birth certificate! His birth certificate is fake!" for months and months. If you scream lies long enough, people will start to believe it.
It has moved beyond spin and moved simply to repeating the lie long enough and hoping that it sticks as truth.
On an unrelated note, MSNBC is re-running their coverage from 8 years ago in its entirety. It is creepy and disturbing. I just watched the first tower fall down again. Even though it was 8 years ago, the anxiety I'm feeling right now is very real.
Ready for some pretty decent satire?
Tasteless but spot on and possibly illegal
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