Ok so this is old news and maybe you guys already knew this but I am currently watch season 5 of House and just watched the episode where Kutner killed himself. It shocked me that they would just get rid of one of my favorite characters and the only other good doctor besides House. Apparently Kal Penn(Kutner) wanted to leav ethe show because he accepted a position as the associate director for the White House office of public liaison. I don't really know what that means, but apparently he'll be working with real people through various charities and organizations, and representing President Obama while doing it

Look Barack Hussein Obama you can go ahead and mess up our health care system, borrow trillions of dollars from China and study Urdu poetry but when you start screwing up my television shows that crosses a serious line. He is losing a point for this one.

Obama signed a Financial Regulation Reform Bill‎. This bill is happening because Wall Street collapsed and Obama needs to do something about the collapse. Obama seems to do a lot of things just for the sake of doing things or for the sake of change. While I agree that something must be done I don't see how putting even more mandates on every type of business - that had nothing to do with the Wall Street collapse - and none on the government sponsored businesses.

I’m not an economics major and so the possibility that I know absolutely nothing about how to fix the economy is a bigger possibility than Obama and his staff not knowing how to fix the economy. But this isn’t his blog so who cares what he thinks this is about what I think. Watch ABC News if you want to know what Obama is thinking. Obama is fixing the economy in the wrong direction. This bill could potentially hurt small banks and small businesses that rely on them and cost
consumers and slow down job growth.

I don’t see how creating more regulations and a tighter review of Wall Street will fix unemployment in America. He needs to fix the problems on main street instead of fixing the problems on Wall Street.

The supposed positives of this will be that people who borrow money from the banks will be protected from hidden fees and ridiculous terms that can't be met, but also will have to provide evidence that they can repay their loans. In my experience hidden fees and these ridiculous terms only come into play when you fail to pay your bill on time or you don't read the fine print of the statement to see these "hidden fees" If its in small print it isn't hidden its just SMALL!!! So it is protecting the people that don't pay their bills on time and aren't financially responsible enough to read the fine print to find all those so called hidden charges.

Instead of placing mandates on banks from giving out these ridiculous terms and hidden fees - maybe banks via the government need to do a better job on teaching our citizens financial accountability. Perhaps before anybody can get a bank account they have to take classes on financial responsibility and before you take out a loan you have to take an additional class. If anything this would just create more jobs for people.








Ya know how during a movie preview they will say "This movie will blow your mind!!" or use over the top adjectives like "breathtaking" and "speechless" or some other catch phrase that is way over the top. I can honestly say that all of those over the top catch phrases actually fit this movie perfectly. This movie is so great because it will be on of those movies that you can re-watch over and over again because the movie has so many levels and multiple views will be required order to grasp all the intricate details and to fully understand the multi-layered trips into the dreams and nightmares of the central characters.



I think the movie was perfect in every way and I actually love it that it ended with a cliffhanger. I love being able to speculate on the movie later and never knowing what happened. I don't think that his top ever stopped spinning. I think he was dreaming for the entire movie. His kids didn't look like they ever aged - THEY HAD THE SAME HAIRCUTS!! His reality was so messed up because he had spent so long in a dream and had traveled down to multiple levels his whole sense of reality had been skewered.

Consider this a new feature of my blog that like all the other features of my blog will only really happen when I want them to and with no consistency at all. Consider it a rip off of Stephen Colbert's "Tip of the Hat" and "Wave of the Finger" where he talks about someone or something that irks him and that he feels the need to wave his finger at or something that he wants to give kudos or a tip of his hat.

Instead of a Wave of the Finger I am going to give out a douche bag award which is named after Glenn Beck for being such a douche bag. It's not so much his political views although the guy is as Keith Olberman put it "an uneducated imperceptive panicky whack job" The thing that bugs me the most about Beck is his repeated mantra "This is about the truth" but yet is by far the most opinionated man on the news. Just like Beck this blog is about the truth and the truth is Glenn Beck you are a douche bag.





I used to like Mel Gibson. He is probably the only movie star to ever make us laugh at committing suicide in Lethal Weapon. Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ were epic movies. I can understand getting in a fight and saying mean things that you don't even mean - but this was over the line. I could never imagine saying those type of things to Sheena. I was going to post the video on here but it is so unbelievably offensive I decided against it - after all this is family blog. If this was the first time that Mel has gone off then it might be okay to look the other way but this has happened so many times. Another thing is if Jack Nicholson would of said those things we would of just laughed about it because Jack is a self-proclaimed jerk and doesn't claim to be a born again Christian or an astounding family man. Tom Cruise could probably get away with saying this because we all know he is crazy. But Mel has tried so hard to portray himself as a Christian family man that it makes these rants even more disgusting.

Oksana Grigorieva

Yes, what Mad Max said was pretty terrible, but I have a feeling that the entire time Oksana was recording this rant by Gibson she was thinking to herself "Oh this is wonderful I am going to get so much publicity off of this recording maybe my crappy music/movie career will take off!!" So I don't feel sorry for her at all. Mel and her are going through a child custody battle right now so this is a huge victory for her and this whole thing was probably planned by her to record one of his rants. You gotta be a pretty big douche to record someone when they are yelling at you and then to release it to the public. She knew that Mel has these kind of outbursts and took advantage of it.



Do I really need to explain why Lohan is such a douche and kudos to the judge for sending her to jail hopefully next time it will be for 90 years not days.



The Travies are the second part of the Stephen Colbert "Wave of the Finger - Tip of the Hat" rip off. It would be the Tip of the Hat part of it. I am going to award any person or thing that brings me amusement or is in need of some praising by me.



Chris Webber wins the first ever "Travy" for totally embarrassing Timberwolves General Manager David Kahn. For those non-basketball fans this video is featuring a conversation between Chris Webber and David Kahn. Chris Webber was a pretty good professional basketball player in his day and has turned out to be a pretty TV analyst and was interviewing David Kahn and asked him why he signed Darko Milicic to a 4 year 20 million dollar contract - when Darko has basically been one of the biggest disappointments and jokes in the history of the NBA. When Kahn compares Darko to Webber, Webber goes off on Kahn.

July 5th 2010

I fall into peer pressure pretty easy and even more than peer pressure I am sucker for a good compliment so when two friends of mine told me that they missed reading my blog it immediately went to my head. I thought to myself "your right it would be downright selfish to deprive the world of my blog." Nobody is better at boosting my ego than me. I am probably the best ever at it.
I eventually want my blog to reach the status of a nation. A nation you say? Yes, a nation. I am not talking about declaring independence from blogspot.com. I am talking about a nation like the Red Sox Nation. How many followers do I have to get before I can refer to my followers as Travis Nation? Is four enough? If not I could ask my wife to read my blog and that would make it five. Whatever it may be I am up to the task.



In a previous post I said I wanted my blog to be more of a Jay-Z comeback than a Brett Favre comeback but it’s so long between posts that it is approaching Betty White level comeback. She went from Golden Girls to hosting Saturday Night Live and doing a skit where she talked about her dirty old dusty muffin. (Oddly, Jay-Z was the musical guest)


Once upon a time I had a format where I separated my blog into categories: Music, Movies, Sports, Nation/World Events, local events and my personal life. I think for organizational purposes I am going to get back to this method.






I originally started this blog as way to argue with Steve about sports. Since then it has blossomed into something else and I am totally fine with that. But lately I've been doing some thinking about my future. I love sports. It’s not a secret that I am obsessed with it so much that it has socially handicapped me to a degree that I would turn down thee most prestigious social event to sit at home and watch an NBA basketball game in late February. I spend hours online reading different sports articles. I love ESPN, NBA.com, Hoopsworld.com and Fox Sports. Recently, I was reading an article on my favorite sports website-Hoopsworld.com and I noticed that they were hiring for a sports writer in the Orlando and Portland area. I thought to myself "Wow! this would be awesome if I could write for them, too bad I don't live in Orlando or in Portland and I am in Pocatello, a non-sports town." I thought about this for a long time and it bothered me.


I thought to myself "Why not?" Why couldn't I become a sports writer?" Isn't that what Ray Ramona did on "Every Loves Raymond" just sit in his basement watch sports and then write about them in between making fun of his tall brother and his wife yelling at him? What is holding me back?" Then I started thinking about it some more. "Why don't I pursue a career in sports?" I truly think that no other profession on this Earth could make me as happy as a career where I could watch, write, talk about and read about basketball all day long.





I would be very happy being paid to write about sports but more than writing about sports I want to talk about sports via sports broadcasting. Then my cynical analytical thoughts started popping into my head. Each NBA team has two or three broadcasters at each game with one or two sideline reports, on a halftime show they probably have at max four people in the studio.

So if I am being generous each team has 9 people working at a game. You have three major networks and we will say each one has two full crews so each network has 18 people working for them, again that is being very generous. So if you add the individual team sports broadcasting team (9) and times it by thirty(the number of teams in the NBA) that gives you a total of 270 plus the 18 people on each of the three networks which would be fifty-four and then add that to 270 and you have a total of 324 available jobs in the nation.

An average NBA team carries 14 players so you have a total of 420 NBA players. Numbers wise it is easier to get into the NBA than it is to be a sports broadcaster in the NBA. I'm not making it into the NBA and the chances of becoming a professional sports broadcaster is statistically has fewer odds. This should be enough to derail me. Perhaps I am delusional but it hasn't derailed me. It has made me realize that I better do whatever I can to put me in the best position for that kind of job. I did some research. Penn State has the number one school for sports journalism in the nation and Syracuse has the number one program for sports broadcasting. I need both on my resume. I want to major in sports journalism at Penn State and then achieve my masters in sports broadcasting up at Syracuse. Now you can probably ask me tomorrow and I will have either changed my mind about what I want to do or reality will have hit and I will realize that this goal is pointless and unattainable. But as of now this is what I want to do. Penn State is very expensive and I think I am going to go to Idaho State for a year boost my GPA and hopefully make it more affordable via a scholarship. In the meantime I feel like I need to do something. I once read an article where casual fans could ask Stuart Scott any question and one person ask him how he could become a sportswriter and his simple suggestion was just to write as much as you’re possibly can about sports and then probably followed it up with some catchy and annoying catch phrase that just cheapens his profession. As much as I hate Stuart Scott I decided to follow his advice. So I decided to write a sports blog purely about sports. I don't know how but I want to try and get this sports blog to people that have some influence. I don't know how to get my small-time blog out to people but I gotta figure out how to start somewhere. Here is the link to my sports blog the first entry is purely about myself and how I became a Laker fan.







Television is my best friend. Commercials are my least favorite friend. I hate commercials so much that I can't stand to watch television live. I always wait for it to come on Hulu.com or netflix. But there are some television shows that I do want to talk about especially the television show "Lost". I watched all 5 seasons of Lost on DVD and watched the last season on television. Now knowing that it was the last season was gut-wrenching. It was like having a kid that is going to die in 17 weeks and then you will never see him again except if you watch your home videos of him and oh you can only see your kid for one hour on Tuesday.





Now I want to present you with a theory about Lost that I seem to really like. In a lot of religions, Christianity being one of them life is considered a test that you go through and if your good you go to heaven and if you’re bad you go to hell. This theory is that from the beginning of the show to the end of the show we were watching Jack's test. His life on this island was his real life and obviously Jack passed the test and maybe each of the characters have their own story and their own test but this show I think was Jack's test. Watch this clip, specifically the last two minutes of it.



Now what happened during that turbulence is Jack died there and when the plane calmed down that’s when Jack passed over and maybe the whole island, the adventure the whole thing happened during that turbulence. Remember Jack had told Kate that he had blacked out during the crash so he couldn't remember anything? Blacked out or died. The season finale when he met up with his father and his father told him that this whole ordeal was necessary for him to accept his death and he created this imaginary world in a way to procrastinate in a sense and what he needed to do was just give in and accept his fate. Now with that in mind, remember the first thing Rose said to him when the plane's turbulence finally wore off "You can let go now, its okay you can let go now" Metaphorically speaking she met you can let go of your life and accept death.

OK LOST TALK IS OVER----

But television talk is not over. I am a huge television on DVD fan and I love watching shows on Netflix. My wife and I are currently watching House on DVD we are on season 5. Usually what makes or break a television show for me is if I like a certain television character. Doesn't matter how dumb the show may be if I like that character then I like the show. Pretty simple equation. Take the show Supernatural, I hate all weird sci-fi shows like that and honestly I think the show itself is retarded. I absolutely can't stand them but I like the main character, Dean Winchester. Despite the show being retarded I still watch it for Dean and mainly because my wife makes me. You take the show NCIS which is extremely popular but I don't like any of the characters therefore I hate the show. Now Gregory House is by far the most entertaining and complex TV character of all time. His battle with his pain addiction, his cynical view of the world kind of reminds me of myself. I love the intelligent banter between Wilson and House. Just watching the show makes me feel smarter.

I am also very curious about this television show called Glee. I have it on my netflix queue but I want to get the first two seasons of Fringe, which by the way is fantastic before I get to Glee. This gives my readers plenty of time to convince me to watch or not watch Glee.




I really do want to make this blog a weekly thing. I doubt that will ever happen but if it does I would love to have a section where I talk about the latest movie that I've seen and it seems like I see a movie once a week. We are going to do a top ten countdown of the best movies I've seen this year.


Giving this movie #10 doesn't do it justice. This movie sucked. I pretty much hated every single moment of this movie. The story was uncohesive and unless you watched the television series before you probably didn't even get what was going on. M. Night Shyamalan is a fantastic director and this was definitely a disappointment. This movie was so hyped up mostly by my friend Shaun that I had huge expectations going into it. The problem with this movie was I knew going in it would have a weak story line and bad acting. I expected the special effects and the visual aspects to blow me away much like Avatar did. Avatar's story lined sucked, it was just the story of Pocahontas but they were blue people but it was masked by the awesome visual aspect of the show so people forgot how much the story sucked. The Last Airbender lacked everything.

I don't really even remember this movie just that it was lame and I didn't like watching it. I love Greek mythology but this one missed the mark. I do remember how the main character Perseus made a big deal about how he wanted to save the day without the power of the Gods and then ended up using Zues' sword and a flying a horse to defeat the Cracken.










I didn't hate this movie and I didn't like this movie. So for all the hoop-la about this movie and I can't remember a single thing about it obviously means it was pretty lame.
















I love Tina Fey and I love how she is bringing back funny for women. I seriously would consider herself a modern day Lucille Ball and Steve Carrell everything he does is hilarious. Call me a geek for liking this chick flick but it was a good movie.













I didn't like how they bumped Terrence Howard for Don Cheadle and this movie had too many one liners. It's basically going the way I thought it would- its turning into a little kid’s movie ala the first series of Batman movies. Major disappointment Robert.












Ian Hill will tell you that a lot of times why I hate movies is I go into the movie thinking it’s going to be retarded and no matter how the great the movie may be I am going to hate it because of my poor attitude. That was definitely the case with Prince of Persia I thought the movie would suck as much as Jake Gyllenhall. It turns out Gyllenhall still sucks but I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I usually hate anything to do with time travel but this was actually pretty cool. It had a Pirates of Caribbean feel to it and was a lot of fun to watch.





Maybe I am just a big Leo fan and I love scary movies. This movie had me on the edge of my seat the entire time and the story was great and even though I called the completely crazy twist it was still a lot of fun to watch. Sadly, it had a Sixth Sense-esque twist to it so watching it again probably won't be any fun and I really think scary movies like this one are only scary on the big screen. If you haven't seen it- definitely watch it.








I loved Robin Hood. I really hope this turns into a franchise similar to the new Batman series. I loved Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and I don't want to say that this one was better I thought this one was extremely good. The reason it’s so high up on my list is because of the potential it is showing. The sequel, if there is one will be epic. I loved the story line that is developing and the relationship between Russell Crowe and Kate Blanchet is great. The filming and scenery were spectacular it was full of great shots and I almost enjoyed that as much as the movie itself.




I know I will get a lot of flak for saying this but Twilight was awesome. This movie was exponentially better than the other Twilight movies. The directing/producing of the film was top notch. Forks Oregon is such a scenic place and like in the movie Robin Hood I loved the shots in the film. They still had all of those cheesy love lines, that I am positive are just taken out of the book and have to be in the movies but they delivered them in such a way that it wasn't cheesy and fake like all the other movies. Bella is still a terrible actress but Edward and Jacob have improved. This was a lot more cohesive and I finally was able to build a connection with the characters which I couldn't in the other two movies. I decided that I am not really on team Edward because I don't like him. He looks constipated and has a Conan O'Brien pasty white look to him which works for funny tall Irish men but not on vampires. I like Jacob even less. I think he is a being a douche bag for going after Bella when he knows she is dating/engaged to Edward so I guess I am on team Edward. I do not think that Bella should become a vampire. Can't they free Edward from being a vampire like Aladdin freed the genie? If this was Disney that's what would happen.

I like kid movies and I figured Toy Story 3 would just be another kids movie and I was totally fine with that and even excited to see the movie. Toy Story 3 turned out to be a real movie with substance. It had everything that a movie needs to have to be a blockbuster hit. The movie made me laugh, it made me reminisce, it put me on the edge of my seat, and it even made me tear up a little bit. The movie just contained every emotion that you want to get out of a movie. The story line was fantastic and was a great conclusion to a fantastic franchise. Beauty and the Best was the last animated film to win movie of the year and I honestly believe that Toy Story 3 will end up being the movie of the year.







My longtime blog readers will remember the "Obama Score" and I really need to bring this back. Not only is the Obama score more accurate than his approval rating and by constantly updating his score it will hopefully help me keep up with current political events - something which I feel the need to be informed about.

So since I haven't done it in a while I went through his Presidency and briefly recapped on the issues I thought were important and scored them accordingly.

Since he has been the President the unemployment rate has gone up 9 times and has gone down 5 times so overall he has done an ok job with the unemployment rate so I am going to give him a +1

Obama signs the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. I am not knowledgeable on economics so I don’t know if the stimulus plan has actually worked but in Monopoly you have to pay all that money back. Plus I really don’t like how we still have Americans living off of their welfare checks because Obama enables them to do so and that is largely due to this act. So I am going to give it a -1

President Obama signs an executive order announcing the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp within a year, and signs a prohibition on using torture and other illegal coercive techniques, such as waterboarding, during interrogations and detentions, requiring the Army field manual to be used as a guide. I guess closing down Guantanamo Bay is a good idea but if we can’t torture people how is Jack Bauer going to fight off terrorists? Anything that hinders Jack from doing his job I am against. – 1

Obama signs his first bill, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which promotes fair pay regardless of sex, race, or age. Homos need fair pay too, Homos need fair pay too. +1

Obama reveals his proposal for the 2010 United States federal budget which is $2.381 trillion, an estimated decrease of 11% from 2009 +1

On March 9 Obama overturns rules limiting federal money being used for human embryonic stem cell research. +1

On March 27 Obama announces a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, not really a new strategy just to continue with Bush’s strategy of sending more troops to Afghanistan. Sending more troops to Afghanistan is never a good idea but Obama realized his idea of just pulling everybody out of Afghanistan wasn't realistic This was his reality check. +1

May 4th – Obama hosts a Cinco De Mayo party. Yes, that’s right on May 4th. -1

Obama nominates federal judge Sonia Sotomayor because apparently wise Latino women are better than wise white guys. -1

On July 15 the Senate committee approves a plan to revamp the U.S. health care system - 1

Obama and Oprah go to Denmark to give a speech to the International Olympic Committee and fail to bring the Olympics to the USA. I have a hard time blaming anything on Oprah so I put all the blame on Obama. – 1

On October 9th Obama receives the Nobel Peace Prize award for doing a mediocre job as a President. It gives me hope that I can win the Nobel Peace Prize award +1

On October 23rd he declared the spread of the H1N1 virus “a national emergency” and then five days later he overturned a 22-year-old law barring foreigners infected with HIV-AIDS from entering the country. I could understand this if Magic Johnson wasn’t a US Citizen and we needed him in the country. -1
On December 2nd Obama ordered an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. -1

President Obama commits $100,000,000 to help Haiti recover from the 2010 earthquake. I know this sounds terrible, but if we are in such a bad recession wouldn’t that $100,000,000 really help our citizens. I know it’s terrible of me but let’s take care of our own country first. He is going to get a -1 and a +1 for being a better man than me.

January 18th Obama sends his first twitter update +1

Obama approves The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. This is the big one he screwed us over with his health care reform and then helped out struggling college students with the Education part of the bill. I am going to dock him a whopping negative 4 points for approving such an unconstitutional act but then give him a generous positive 2 points for helping out our college students.

March 31 - Obama announces that he will approve oil and gas exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico . Yeah this wasn’t exactly his fault but it didn’t turn out so well so -1

Arizona introduces the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (introduced as Arizona Senate Bill 1070 which is strictest anti-illegal immigration measure in decades. I believe this was a result of Obama not doing anything about the illegal immigrants and Arizona felt like it was backed into a corner and wrongly and stupidly put this bill into place. If Obama was doing his job correctly I do not believe this would have happened. – 1

That brings us to the Obama Score. He was two points ahead but hasn't done so well since.

Ok I am about to drop some truth bombs on my blog follower(s). I am was positive that due to this recent health care reform being passed that America was would be freaking out. That is why I decided that I once again needed to save America
Lets hit you with the reality of the problem. The USA spends more, per capita, than any other country on earth on healthcare. The reasons are pretty obvious we live a very unhealthy lifestyle, so our need for healthcare is greater than a place like Sweden. We have a lot of money to spend on healthcare because we spend less on other things, like food. Our leaders have used the "think of the children" idea to make us expect that all our healthcare is world class and all our healthcare facilities have the best equipment and training. most people (including republicans) agree that we have a "crisis" because our costs are moving up faster than inflation. I respectfully disagree Instead I would argue that cheap healthcare is available, just go to your local walk-in clinic or inner city hospital andtell them you can't pay and they will get you help anyway
I believe the problem, if it can be called a problem, is that we demand the best healthcare available in other countries and in our country, cheap healthcare is available, and good healthcare is available. Just like any other good or service, though, good healthcare is more expensive. This is not limited to our country. In the UK there are private non-NHS hospitals that those who can afford to, go to. they offer better care, but are more expensive. Our current system allows people to get good healthcare (if they can afford it) or cheap healthcare (which is decent, considering the cost)

Another thing you often hear is that insurance companies are raping us and making huge profits. This is simply untrue. The average profit margin for a health insurance company in the US is about 2.5 percent. for comparison, inflation is about 4.5 percent to 6 percent. Insurance industry profits are lower than nearly every other US industry. the reason the profits look so big is that insurance is such a voluminous business. when you are selling a product that nearly every person buys, it's easy to get to a billion dollars. the idea behind reform is to "bend the cost curve down" which means slow the growth of the rising costs of healthcare. This is good, but it's only half the equation. Bending the quality curve up, if you like, is the other half.

It's passed (officially) but i know there are several lawsuits lined up against the federal government already about it. It has more holes in constitutionally than a kitchen sponge. It passed the house and senate, but still has to be signed into law, and there will be tons of lawsuits because many people believe that parts of the bill are unconstitutional. and it doesn't go into effect until 2013. Some of the parts of the bill are as follows: require everybody to have health insurance. Many young and healthy people don't buy insurance because they simply don't need it because they don't get sick or injured. This means that insurance companies have to pay out more to the people that do pay for insurance. Giving them a little more income from people who won't need payouts will let them lower everybody's bills a bit. If it's unconstitutional it will have to be taken to the Supreme Court who will declare it as such. This will likely take several years to go through that process. .
If nobody sues, it will remain the law. If somebody sues, the courts will determine if it is constitutional.one thing i believe is unconstitutional is the mandate that everybody buy insurance. The constitution tells congress what exactly they can do, and every bill they pass has to be covered under the one of the provisions of the constitution. The one they use most often is called the "interstate commerce clause" which gives congress authority "to regulate interstate commerce" because buying health insurance is interstate commerce, they can regulate it. However, one of the provisions of the bill is a fine for those who don't buy insurance. The fine is, in effect, a punishment for doing nothing.
Our current congress believes such a fine will be covered under the interstate commerce clause because it has to do with healthcare. I believe that such a fine is unconstitutional because those that will be fined are precisely the ones who are NOT engaged in any interstate commerce because they aren't buying health insurance. In the bill, the section detailing the fine is headed "excise tax" however, an excise tax is a tax on a good or service. When you purchase no good or service, it is not an excise tax, it's a poll tax. the constitution however, demands that poll taxes be split equally over everybody. This poll tax does not fit that requirement.
The "excise tax" is so unconstitutional it boggles the mind how a group of lawyers could pass it. if you are interested, here's an article.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/12/Why-the-Personal-Mandate-to-Buy-Health-Insurance-Is-Unprecedented-and-Unconstitutional

Nowhere in the Constitution is Congress given the power to mandate that an individual enter into a contract with a private party or purchase a good or service and, as this paper will explain, no decision or present doctrine of the Supreme Court justifies such a claim of power. Therefore, because this claim of power by Congress would literally be without precedent, it could only be upheld if the Supreme Court is willing to create a new constitutional doctrine
To assess the constitutionality of a claim of power under the Commerce Clause, the primary question becomes, "what class of activity is Congress seeking to regulate?" Only when this question is answered can the Court assess whether that class of activity substantially affects interstate commerce. Significantly, the mandate imposed by the pending bills does not regulate or prohibit the economic activity of providing or administering health insurance. Nor does it regulate or prohibit the economic activity of providing health care, whether by doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, or other entities engaged in the business of providing a medical good or service. Indeed, the health care mandate does not purport to regulate or prohibit activity of any kind, whether economic or noneconomic. To the contrary, it purports to "regulate" inactivity.
The biggest problem is that the bill begins collecting taxes this year, for the next ten years, but only pays for 7 years (from 2013-2020) it's like buying a house on a 30 year mortgage but only being able to live in the house for 20. the only way to pay for the bill for the following ten years is to bring taxes up.
It's going to get struck down by the Supreme Court. I would be absolutely shocked if it didn’t

I'm Back

My last blog entry was on April 18, 2009 and now its January 5th 2010 I don't like to consider these long breaks in my blog entries as a hiatus, blogger's block or a sabbatical but I would like to imagine that I just retired on April 18th and this is my comeback. I don't want it to be a Brett Favre retirement thing where its annoying but more like how rappers retire in between albums.

I think this blog entry is going to be a little different than previous entries. I think I got off track and just tried to make them funny and entertaining for people to read. I really started the blog entry first to argue with Steve about sports but more importantly to express my thoughts. I think this blog entry is going to be kind of a downer so I apologize for that.



I do have a few things that I would like to get off my chest. I don't like the holidays. I do like the holidays. I like eating turkey on Thanksgiving, giving and receiving presents on Christmas and having BBQs on the 4th of July. But its all the extra stuff about holidays I can't stand. I know I am a Grinch. I think a lot of it has to deal with the fact that my parents are divorced so growing up every single holiday of any sort was a tug-o-war between which parent I spent the holiday with. It was terrible. No matter what one parent was going to be upset and it truly is one of the worst parts of being a split family is that you can't spend the holidays with both parents. I guess I shouldn't complained about it. My problem growing up was that both my parents wanted me around and I know that there are kids out there who have parents that don't want them around so that is even worse. I thought that once I was married it would all stop but I was wrong. It's still that way which kind of sucks but I am getting to the point where eventually its just going to be my wife and I at home for the holidays and if my parents want to stop by that will be great. This last Christmas was full of unnecessary drama and tension. Tempers flew and things escalated and got out of hand and bridges were burned. I don't want my blog to be a place where I point fingers and place blame on individuals so I am not even going to get into the horrible mess that happened on Christmas as a result of a lot of immaturity on every side(including yours truly)

People will tell you that I am pretty relaxed laid back kind of guy that I really don't let things get to me. I try not to overreact to things. I very much live out of the moment. When bad things happen I like to wait until I am out of wake and let things settle and then asses what has happened and then just deal with it. I want to give a small scale example of how I handle things. A while back Sheena dropped her cell phone in a puddle and the water got in and the cell phone wouldn't work. Sheenas was freaking out and was all stressed about having to buy a new cell phone, I think we were pretty broke at the time and even with insurance to get a replacement is $50 bucks and $50 bucks is $50 bucks. I think Sheena was a little upset that I wasn't upset. I tried to tell her that we will take the cell phone apart try to dry it out and if it doesn't work in the morning then we will deal with the stressful situation of getting the cell phone replaced. I refused to be stressed out about the situation until the results were final and I knew exactly what was going on. Lucky for us the cell phone worked out just fine and there was no need to be stressed out. I try to always take that approach to remain calm and to assess the situation in its totality.

No matter what the crisis is I need to calm down and let the crisis play itself out and once all the smoke has cleared I can assess the damage and then react. I think a lot of times we are so fast to react the minute something bad happens that we often make things worse. Whether we misdiagnose a brain tumor altering some ones life forever or we emotionally react to situation by having a stressful night because we are worried about paying $50 bucks to get cell phone replaced. Our mental capacity or lack of mental capacity is going to determine how that situation is going to play out. Now obviously you stub your toe your toe is going to hurt but then I suppose it how we handle that pain.

I really have had a hard time sitting down to write a blog...and I am making no promises that it will turn into a regular thing. I do miss writing my blog and the few responses that I get from it. Last time I blogged it was around January and it was talking about my New Years Resolutions...I am happy to admit I have not kept a single one. Oh well maybe 2010 will be my year.



The only New Years Resolution that I have kept is to enhance my television experience. I have been ordering 24 on Netflix and I am officially addicted to the show. Jack Bauer is my hero. He is way tougher than Jason Bourne, Chuck Norris, Jean Claude Van Damme and Vin Diesel. I do however think that David Palmer is a terrible President and I hate his wife. He couldn't handle his wife ordering him around and telling him how to be the President so he divorced her. Bill Clinton didn't do that with Hilary, he kept her around, he just cheated on her with Monica Lewinsky. I don't know why David Palmer didn't take this route it would of been a lot more like real television. My goal is to watch all the episodes of 24 and then next fall when the new series comes out I can join that Jack Bauer bandwagon.

On a side note I wanna talk about my disgust for Vin Diesel. He is a terrible actor and the ugliest man alive. I want to demonstrate this by a simple mathematical equation. You know how Jay Leno used to do that funny gimmick like if so and so had a baby this is what it would look like. Well that's kind of what I have done here.
If you take a down syndrome baby and chimpanzee and if they have a baby together it would equal Vin Diesel.


I want to apologize to all down syndrome babies and chimpanzee for comparing them to Vin Diesel and I am sorry if I offended any of them. In their defense a down syndrome chimpanzee would probably be a better actor.

Ya know I have always considered myself a very accepting person of any race, religion, sexual orientation it does not matter to me as long as you are a good person, heck you don't even have to be a good person to be my friend, you could be a terrible person and own an XBOX and I will probably like you.

My point is I have always considered myself to be very accepting and comfortable of any type of person. But I have to admit something: I watched the show Milk, ya know the one with Sean Penn and he is a gay activist who is running for a spot on the city council in San Francisco. This movie took place in the 70's I think and they were taking away all the jobs from gay people and Sean Penn wanted to change that so he was running for office. While watching the movie I felt bad for the gays and even was happy when the gay's got their jobs back and was sad when Sean Penn got shot but...I just couldn't do it. I had to turn away or fast forward through the gay kissing scenes. I guess I am just not as accepting or as comfortable in my own sexuality but I couldn't watch Sean Penn and James Franco make out.


This got me thinking was it really the fact that they were two guys kissing or just two people that I am not attracted to kissing. I mean I don't have a problem watching two hot chicks make out so it can't be that I am not comfortable with gays kissing. I don't think I wanna watch old people make out and I remember it was always awkward when Roseanne and John Connor would be intimate with each other. So maybe its just unattractive people. I am pretty sure this is why they only have beautiful people on television.








I got tickets to the Jazz-Lakers playoff game. It's in Utah and its going to be on game 4. I am really hoping that the Lakers will be up 3-0 in Utah and can sweep the Jazz on their home floor. I plan on bringing my broom to the game and sweeping the steps of the Energy Solutions Arena when they complete the sweep. If I don't get beat up, kicked out of the arena or arrested for acting like a total jackass then i will consider it a failure. The tickets are up in the nosebleed section but all I really wanna do is just give Jazz fans a bunch of crap.

I wanna give a shot out to my friend Kendall who sent me an invitation to the group Pocatello Music. I love going to concerts and I actually prefer going to unknown crappy bands then big time bands so I am thoroughly excited for a website that is going to keep me informed of all of the concerts that are coming up in Pocatello. Here is the website http://www.pocatellomusic.com/ check it out.

Now these ain't your small town local bands. My brother is getting married on June 20th to Heidi Stewart, pretty exciting I guess but what I am more excited about is his bachelor party. On June 6th in the Idaho Falls Civic Auditorium MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice are performing and we are going. It 1990 musical ecstasy. I will be rocking the MC Hammer pants and the side steps in my hair.





Saudi King Abdullah

Who the heck is this guy!! Do we love oil so much that we have to kiss and bow at this guy's feet. As far as I am concerned every other world leader should either be a Tony Blair or a Saddam Hussein. In other words they are either a 'Yes Man' who supports every action we take or they are a terrorist and we should hunt them down and hang them. Ridiculous. This King Abdullah might be like Aragon in Lord of the Ring, the King of Gondor(Yes, I realized I just embarrassed myself by making this analogy and demonstrating my love of Lord of the Rings)but then we are like the hobbits and we bow to no one.

I want my president to be 1st class Bad A who doesn't take crap from nobody. Why can't our president be more like Harrison Ford in Air Force One and instead of bowing and negotiating with terrorists/foreigners he just beats all of them up and throws them off of his plane.




So I keep on hearing about how the newspaper industry is under attack and that eventually newspaper will be joined with alarm clocks as becoming obsolete because of advances in technology. The cell phone made the alarm clock and the home phone obsolete and the internet will make the newspaper industry die. To me there is nothing more American than sitting down at breakfast and reading the newspaper first thing in the morning. No wonder they call it the World Wide Web, once again Al Gore is trying to make us more world friendly. Well screw you Al Gore and the world I am going to order a subscription to the Idaho State Journal. GO USA!!

I am only 24 years old and sometimes I feel like my beautiful wife is trying to turn me into a 44 year old. We go on walks every evening, which I won't lie, its probably the best part of my day. But shouldn't we go clubbing every night and get hammered or staying up all night play World of Warcraft instead and to top it all off she purchased a humidifier yesterday. SO LONG YOUTH!!!