There’s been a lot of talk about the Baucus health bill in Congress.  This is the “budget neutral” health care package that “only” costs $820 billion over 10 years.  The Senate has been teasing out elements of the alleged legislation (allegislation?) trying to pick up support for the bill.

However, William Jacobsen, professor of law at Cornell has just dropped this little bomb.  There is no bill!!! Not a line of legislative code written.  It’s vaporware of the finest sort!  The Senate is selling us a bill that does not exist.

What I suspect they will do is bait and switch at some point, changing the sponsor of the current disaster they’ve had the special interests write, change the bill number to disguise the fact, then vote on it through reconcilliation in the middle of the night.

…once I get over this monster flu that hit me Tuesday night.  I’ve been running a fever between 2 and 5 degrees, and this one seems to want to go for the chest.  I’m coughing up Hollywood-monster goo-type snot pretty much every few minutes.

Next on the review block: Big Damn Heroes by Margaret Weis for the Serenity RPG.  Now back to my regularly scheduled viral misery….

Richard Berry won the mayoral election here in Albuquerque, last night.  I have to admit some surprised that he managed to win out over “alcalde for life” Mary Chavez.

Amusing the litany of “lies” and “exaggerations.”  Any other organization faced with this kind of endemic corruption would either be up on RICO charges, or have a serious sweeping out session.   Especially good is the  “..I’m clean and relatively competent…” statement.

Dana Milbank not quite getting the point…

The Independent is reporting a move in the international markets to dump the dollar as the currency of preference for oil trading.  Russia has been working on this for some time, and it’s no surprise, with the disastrous monetary policies of the Federal Reserve, that it has come to this.

This makes it even more important to press your Congressmen on supporting an audit of the Fed to find out what they are doing, and who they are doing it for.  Ron Paul has a bill with a majority of Congress sponsoring to do just this:  HR1207 (and in the Senate as S604.)

Democrats: Republicans are rooting against America.

Yet another example of why they all need to be voted out next year.

The funniest part:  the bloody thing is smiling!

Mitch McConnell, ranking GOP moron, has let fly with his opinion that the TARP bailout “worked” .   I’m glad to hear it, since it doesn’t appear to have done anything for the average man and woman in the United States.  (Save make my credit card companies jack my APR by 10% or so…)

At least all those bankers don’t have to sell their Hamptons mansions.

2010:  throw them all out!

In the links list is Victoriana, by Cubicle 7 Entertainment.  I worked on most of the books for this line, from the core rulebook (I did the obligatory short story to set the mood…), the entirety of The Smoke, and quite a bit of the Faulkner’s Guide.

Also, two of the fan-made sourcebooks for Decipher’s Star Trek RPG can be found on Patrck Goodman’s site .  Just scroll to the bottom of the page.  Both are character generation books, one with aliens from the first few movies, and the second deals with artificial lifeforms.

My thanks to Daniel Potter, who laid them out and made them look all nicey-nice.

For those with a taste for anarchic-transhumanist subjects, pop over to informorph’s website:  anarchotranshumanism.com

It looks to be a good source for material to use with Eclipse Phase (see below), or to confuse your elders with.

Another good site is H+ Magazine: http://hplusmagazine.com .