A bunch of my favorite people showed up.

From left to right are Libby Ramos, Mike Meyer, James and John Tarala, Andrew Ramos, Paul Johnson, and Matt Silver.  The back of the head belongs to the classy cake maestro Erin Godbey.

Alissa bought me a sweet bb Gun, and we all took turns shooting at the targets.  Above is a picture of  me taking a shot.  I also seem to be wearing an entirely useless belt.

Aaron Greene, who’s pretty much great at everything, shows Henry and Jude how it’s done.

Mollie, their mother (also good at a host of things including momology), looks on with a pistol in her back pocket.  Paul, poses in the back like a viking.

Quick Draw Godbey.  He’s not messin’ around and he’s got the mustache to prove it.

My roommate Justin.  Posing.  Always posing.

Lola, Chris Koelle, and Marshall.

Cuteness overload: Lola Greene and Marshall Koelle.

Here’s everybody looking tough except for me.  I’m wearing that cowboy hat the way a little boy might on Christmas morning: 1961.  Ben Kammer looks so tough he’s stifling a yawn.

The Brothers K and Justin.

Here I am with my good friends Matt and Bill.

It was a great b-day party and a super good time.  Thanks Alissa, and all who came out.

Click pic to check it:

EDIT:

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.  Because from what I understand, folks in Philly like a good brawl.”  Barack Obama urging peace, bipartisanship, and understanding at a rally in Philadelphia July 14, 2008.

“I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.” Barack Obama urging peace, bipartisanship, and understanding at a rally September 18, 2008.

CBS POLL

CNBC Health Care law Signals US Empire Decline?

The passage of the health care law shows that the US empire is declining because it illustrates the fact that people expect the state to take care of them, David Murrin, the co-founder of Emergent Asset Management hedge fund manager, told CNBC.

Jim Talent’s take over on NRO.  Click here to read the whole article.

The president and the Democratic leaders of Congress want the government to fund and control health care in America. That is why they forced the legislation through Congress. In my opinion, the bill the president signed into law yesterday will raise costs, suppress innovation, restrict care, and eventually lead to the rationing of care.

But forget about the merits of government-run health care in the abstract. There is a more fundamental and insuperable objection to the legislation: We can’t afford it.

Literally, the government is broke. The Obama administration has spent all the money. The government is already borrowing at a rate that is unsustainable, to fund the obligations it has already undertaken.

This year, the government will borrow 40 cents of every dollar it spends. Much of its spending simply pays the interest on previous borrowing. By even the rosiest economic and fiscal scenarios, the federal government will continue borrowing indefinitely at amounts that are far above historical levels. None of this is disputed. The facts are readily available to anyone who wants to see them here.

It may seem incredible that an administration would spend our government into bankruptcy before funding its own top domestic priority. But that is exactly what occurs when leaders isolate themselves from reality.

Article from Rep. Paul Ryan

click here for more.

This massive health care overhaul – a remake of one-sixth of our economy – will exacerbate the very problems this reform effort sought to address. It will dramatically alter our deteriorating economic and fiscal conditions for the worse and may irrevocably impair the American identity …

Premiums in the individual market would rise from 10% to 13% for families. Our debt and deficit crisis – driven by $76 trillion in unfunded liabilities – would accelerate from the creation of a brand new entitlement and an increase in the federal deficit by $662 billion, when the true costs are factored in. National health expenditures will increase by an additional $222 billion over the next decade, according the president’s own chief actuary, and $2.4 trillion in the decade after the new entitlement is up and running.

There is another personal cost to this deluge of new government spending and control. Wisconsin remains in dire need of sustained job growth and robust economic recovery. This legislation will hit our economy with $569 billion in tax increases – tax hikes that will hit workers, families and job-creators alike …

The true shame of this debate is that there are real problems in health care that need to be fixed. Almost a year ago, I introduced the Patients’ Choice Act to fix what’s broken in health care, without breaking what’s working. I’ve spoken with Wisconsinites for years about patient-centered reforms that would make possible universal access to quality, affordable health care with the patient and the doctor – not the government or insurance companies – as the nucleus of the health care market. These alternatives were ignored by Democratic leaders in Washington – and the concerns from Wisconsinites and an engaged American public were dismissed by Washington’s political class.

I spent about a half -hour/40 minutes plus an entire episode of Chuck (courtesy of hulu) on the picture.

I try not to be too overtly political on this blog, but this Slaughter Rule stuff is Crazy Town.  Here for your reading pleasure/displeasure are some excerpts from news stories and commentary.

Excerpt from “Before It’s News”

The Slaughter Rule — named for House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) who proposed it — would allow the Senate health bill to be incorporated into the Rule for the reconciliation bill coming out of the Senate. If members vote to pass this Rule they, in effect, pass the Senate health care bill wihout actually voting on it — they instead  vote on the reconciliation package.

Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution, however, expressly states that for any bill to beome law ”the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by the yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively.” After that, under the Constitution, the president must either sign the bill or hold it for ten days (not counting Sundays), after which it will become law unless Congress adjourns in the interim.

From NYT healthcare blog.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is eyeing a strategy by which the Democrats include the Senate bill in the rule that will set the terms of the House floor debate on the health care legislation. Once the rule is adopted, the Senate bill would be “deemed” to have passed without House members actually voting on it.

Charles Krauthammer featured at NRO

Do you have enough votes in the House to pass the Senate bill as is? And I think she [Pelosi] may not. And that’s why they are talking about the “Slaughter Solution,” named after the chair of the Rules Committee. . . .

Her idea is that you pass a rule — [procedures on] how you treat a bill in the House — then, instead of passing the Senate bill itself, you pass amendments [a reconciliation bill]. And what you do is you include in the rule itself … what’s called a “self-executing rule” which will then deem the Senate bill to have been passed, but not ever having had an up-or-down vote on it [the Senate bill].

This is Alice in Wonderland stuff. This is Twilight Zone. As I read Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution, it says a law “shall have passed” the House and the Senate, not “shall have been deemed to have passed.”

It’s [being done] because here the Democrats are about to change one-sixth of the American economy and demanding ostensibly an up-or-down vote — but are so unwilling to actually have it voted on, that they want to have it deemed accepted in a vote on the rule.

Excerpt from Daily Caller Interview

DAILY CALLER: Now, can I ask you a rhetorical question? If you do this [deem the bill passed without voting on it], can’t your opponents still say, ‘Well they didn’t technically vote for it but they still—’

SLAUGHTER: Your opponents can say anything.

DAILY CALLER: Right, but which argument will win?

SLAUGHTER: What we’ve got to do here is the right thing.

And just for laughs, here’s Louise Slaughter only 3 short months ago in an op-ed she wrote for CNN.com.

The Senate health care bill is not worthy of the historic vote that the House took a month ago.

[U]nder the Senate plan, millions of Americans will be forced into private insurance company plans, which will be subsidized by taxpayers. That alternative will do almost nothing to reform health care but will be a windfall for insurance companies. Is it any surprise that stock prices for some of those insurers are up recently?

She concludes …

Supporters of the weak Senate bill say “just pass it — any bill is better than no bill.”

I strongly disagree — a conference report is unlikely to sufficiently bridge the gap between these two very different bills.

It’s time that we draw the line on this weak bill and ask the Senate to go back to the drawing board. The American people deserve at least that.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Louise Slaughter until she changes them completely.

A couple months ago I did some storyboards for a 7 minute advertisement.  The ad was for Prudential South Korea, and I got to work with Cory, Del, Danny, and Breakfast Film’s DK.  It was fun.  The story was kind of … um… Asian?  I guess?  It would sort of take a sharp turn into fantasy land and then nose dive into the horrors of the industrial revolution.  Anyway, I like storyboarding, I’ve been able to do some minor projects, a couple commercials, and a cinematic video game intro, still I’m always a little frustrated by how fast the drawings have to be turned around.  The volume of drawings, their transitory disposable nature, and the fast approaching deadlines lead to some really rough panels.  The Prudential piece was no different:

And these aren’t even the worst!  Anyway, the point in storyboarding really isn’t the drawings independently.  It’s the sequence.  Thankfully, the client liked them fine.

Last night when I came home I had a treasure waiting for me from the fine folks in Korea.  They sent me a beautifully wrapped box.  It came with a sheet of paper that described what it is.  I think it’s called Najeon Chilgi, and it’s beautiful.

Even though I look like I just rolled out of an alley in this picture.  The box made me feel like a top notch diplomat.  When I opened the little lacquered drawers, out seeped feelings of peace and goodwill from the dear people in South Korea.

Here’s a picture of me with the offending wig.  I have nearly recovered.

I have a painting I can’t wait to start and another piece I hope to post this weekend, about 70 percent completed.  Not enough hours in the day.