Full video from DFA health care forum

Sunday the health care industry offered a voluntary $2 trillion cost-cutting measure to help fund President Obama's health care proposal. This is a step in the right direction by an industry that often seems at odds with the administration over how to administer the proposed national health care solution. I'm sure much more needs to be addressed, but it certainly seems to be encouraging news.

This 39:35 video contains the full address given by Jim Dean, Tom Swan and Ned Lamont at last week's DFA health care forum.

I may upload the Q&A portion of the event, although the audio quality on the audience members asking the questions wasn't very good. Here's a tip: at future events, it's a good idea to either give the questioner a mic, or the person responding should repeat the question over the PA system. But I may still upload it, because there were some good parts; I'll have to review it later (I'm working on my boat today).

On a purely technical note, I've gone to widescreen on my videos. While this event doesn't seem to require 16x9, the Q&A session definitely looks better with the three speakers seated side by side. I'm going to work mostly in widescreen by now.

And the wireless lavaliere mic that delivered such clear audio is because of a great find on eBay courtesy of CT Blogger. Thanks muchly pal!

White House Correspondents Dinner videos

Here's a quick link to the article at The Huffington Post that has two videos from last night's annual event.

DFA Health Care forum in New Haven

Democracy For America sponsored a forum on health care reform at the New Haven Lawn Club on Wednesday, featuring Jim Dean (DFA), Tom Swan (CCAG), and Ned Lamont.

The Lawn Club is a very fancy place, and DFA provided coffee and a number of very sumptuous looking cakes, which annoyed me greatly because I'm still on my diet so I only had some black coffee.

(And if Paul Bass reports what I was drinking, let the record show it was a club soda with a slice of lime only!)

Here are three videos with remarks by Jim, Tom, and Ned. The full video of their entire remarks will be posted later. The audio on the Q&A portion of the evening was quite poor, so I might not bother uploading that part of the video.

Stormy Daniels continues listening tour

(Yes, only serious stories here on ConnecticutBob.com!)
Adult film star Stormy Daniels was initially reluctant to seek the Senate seat in Lousiana, but having recently hit 30 (which is like 105 in porn star years), Ms. Daniels is hitting the road for a statewide "listening tour".

As I wrote back in February, she was the subject of a new website attempting to draft her into the race. Now she's seriously considering challenging Diaper Dave Vitter, the Republican senator with an alleged proclivity for hookers and infantilism.



She still hasn't committed to a party, so it will be interesting to see if she decides to seek the Democratic nomination, or will primary the Republican Vitter next year.

(Boy, anytime I want to see a spike in my hits, all I need to do is mention "Stormy Daniels"! Get ready for daily Stormy Daniels updates here on ConnecticutStormyBobDaniels.Com!)

Specter out-Liebermans Lieberman

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-, D-, Who Knows-PA) has learned his lessons well from fellow turncoat incumbent Joe Lieberman (D-, ID-, R-, Who Knows-CT).

When faced with an overwhelming primary threat from within his own party, Specter immediately sold them out and lept into the somewhat welcoming arms of the opposition party. Unlike Connecticut, Pennsylvania has a "sore loser" law that makes it impossible for the loser of a primary to then seek to win the election as a petitioning candidate.

So he admitted that he switched parties, not out of some miraculous change of ideology, but for simple self-preservation. Never underestimate the shameless ambition of an incumbent threatened by a strong primary challenge!

At least Specter was honest about his naked desire to hang onto his office, whereas Joe Lieberman embraced the GOP after repeatedly swearing during the general election that nobody wanted to see a Democrat win the 2008 election more than he. Then he immediately stabbed the Democratic Party in the back and enthusiastically supported McCain in repayment for the GOP's funding of his second chance at keeping his seat.

So Specter became a Democrat. But while doing so, he stated that he wouldn't be a "loyal Democrat"; this raised a few eyebrows.

Then the very first thing Specter did as a newly Democratic senator was to vote AGAINST the Democratic budget. More eyebrows elevated.

And then just yesterday, Specter stated in the NY Times that, "There's still time for the Minnesota courts to do justice and declare Norm Coleman the winner."

You've GOT to be kidding me!

OK, now I'm convinced he's just fucking with us.

Well done, Senator, you got us! You're quite the joker, that's for sure. I had no idea you were such a scamp, Arlen.

However, on the off-chance you're NOT joking...

...well, there's a very good Democrat in PA who's rumored to be making noises about a possible primary against the long-time-until-last-week Republican:

Congressman Joe Sestak (PA-7)

We may be seeing a lot more of him next year.

Entire discussion with Chris Dodd

Here's the entire 54-minute discussion between Sen. Dodd and local bloggers, taped on May 3rd at the Playwright in New Haven.

Sen. Dodd meets with bloggers

Chris Dodd's staff set up a meeting between the senator and local bloggers at the Playwright Pub in New Haven today to discuss the issues.

Bloggers representing My Left Nutmeg, the New Haven Independent/CT News Junkie, CT Local Politics, and of course, Connecticut Bob were in attendance. In the informal setting we were able to ask the senator questions and discuss his answers at length. The meeting lasted about an hour.

Tomorrow I'll hopefully have the complete video online, but for today I'm posting two short videos of Senator Dodd answering a question about his possible run in 2010, and accountability for the Bush era's policy of torturing enemy detainees.

Torture & the Rule of Law:


The 2010 Question:


The meeting was very informative and constuctive, and we look forward to continuing this sort of open dialogue with Sen. Dodd and all our elected officials.

Too little, and definitely too late

Big whoop. Like we already didn't know what he was doing.

The fact that Joe Lieberman is continually rewarded for his bad behavior shouldn't amaze me, but it does.

Hunter S. Thompson once said that "politics is the art of controlling your environment."

Mr. Lieberman is an accomplished artisan in that realm.

In a more upbeat news story, did anyone see the Kentucky Derby yesterday? Holy shit! What a thrilling race! It almost makes me want to spend an afternoon at Belmont betting on the races.

Reaching my goal

As I mentioned in a previous article, one of my New Year's resolutions was to absolutely lose thirty pounds this year, no matter what. I joked about how much it was gonna hurt to have to cut my leg off sometime around Christmas.

Well, it turns out that won't be necessary. This week, after dieting intensely for 12 weeks, I officially reached the forty pound mark!

Besides dieting (if you need to know, I signed on for the NutriSystem diet, which happens to work great for me, but this isn't a plug for it; your results may vary), I stopped drinking beer and scotch (for the first month anyway, and then only drank one or two alcoholic beverages on rare social occasions), bought and used an exercise bike an average of 30 minutes a day, drink about 128 oz. of water daily (yes, that's a gallon; one day I counted my bathroom trips: fifteen!), and basically cut out anything that wasn't absolutely healthy.

One thing I've learned is that the second most boring thing in the world (other than reading about it) is listening to someone talking about their diet. I quickly learned to respond with "yes, thanks" if someone asked if I'm losing weight, and I now only get into details if they follow up with an inquiry for more info.

Otherwise, I would see their eyes glaze over when I described the sheer bliss of munching on fresh cantaloupe for breakfast, or the wonders of listening to the birds chirping while working out at 6 in the morning on my screened-in front porch. So, if you decide to abandon this post right here, I won't take it personally.

BTW, this will be my only "diet-related" post, so if you want to discuss it or if you have specific questions, feel free to email me (email address on sidebar) or leave a comment on below this article.

Giving up the booze was easier than I expected, especially for someone like me who really loves the stuff. The initial few days of the diet was a real shock to the system, but as my body acclimated to it, I began to be hungry less and get fuller on the small portions. I learned that fresh fruit and salads taste awesome, and now I eat plenty of both every day.

I began with the required 64 oz. of water per day, but learned on the Nutrisystem discussion board that a better amount of water for losing weight is 1/2 oz. per pound of body weight. I found that if I took out four of the 1/2 liter disposable water bottles, I could drink them, then refill them and drink those to get my gallon per day. Also, I drink it at room temperature. Freezing cold water from the fridge doesn't seem to go down as easily. You do get used to it. Besides the water, pretty much the only other thing I drink is my morning coffee, black with a little Splenda in it. I simply cannot function sans caffeine!

By reducing my daily caloric intake from the roughly 3,500 a day I was consuming to around 1,600, plus working out, there was no way that I couldn't lose the weight quickly. Of course, nutrition is critical, so I made sure I got enough sources of vitamins, protein, low-glycemic carbs, some fats, and fiber. The eating habits I'm learning now will hopefully last a lifetime.

One thing I noticed is that I froze all winter! My body wasn't generating the heat it used to, and there were times I couldn't type well because my hands were blocks of ice from the 63 degree temperature in our house during the heating-oil months. Boy, you can't imagine how fucking happy I am that Spring finally got here! Working out also warmed me up. But there were times when Joyce would get home and I'd be sitting in front of the computer wearing a knit hat and ski gloves! Don't even bother trying to work a touch pad wearing gloves!

This week I see the doctor for my 50,000 mile tune-up. The last time I saw him he recommended that I start losing weight (actually, I'm convinced that every doctor says that to everyone.) I can't wait to leap upon the scale and see his reaction!

I'm hoping to top fifty pounds at some point before switching onto a program of maintenance and healthy eating. The real challenge of course is going to be keeping the weight off. Hopefully, the mindset I've adopted will stick with me and I'll continue to behave like a "pseudo-Republican", in that when it comes to eating food that's bad for you, I've become "The Party of No"!

(c'mon...you didn't think I could be serious for an entire post, did you?)

And now, back to our regularly scheduled mediocrity...

Dan Malloy explains FoxNews's hypocrisy

Last night Dan Malloy appeared at the Milford Democratic Town Committee meeting and covered a variety of issues in great detail as part of his potential run for governor to an appreciative gathering.

During the Q&A portion of the talk, Mike Brown asked Dan about his famous appearance on "Fox & Friends". Malloy launched into an amusing anecdote (video below) that explained the sad and pathetic attempt at a very typical FoxNews "gotcha" that distorted the facts for their own political agenda.



Now that you know the background, here's the original interview:



BTW, my new Fujifilm J10 digital camera I bought to replace my old one with the busted LCD display has a big audio problem when recording video; it has a static/roaring sound. So the 50 frickin' minutes of video I shot last night is completely unusable. I can't tell you how pissed I am about that. And now I have to return the camera.

Thankfully, Chris from MalloyForConnecticut.com taped the talk and posted the video up above early today, saving the day for me. Good job on the video!