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Why President Obama Used 22 Pens to Sign the Healthcare Bill
President Obama sat down in the White House East Room on March 23 and signed the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law with a stroke of his pen. And then another pen. And another. Obama used 22 pens to sign the landmark $938 billion health care bill.
Actually, the President was just adhering to an obscure Washington tradition. The practice of using multiple pens to sign important legislation dates at least as far back as Franklin Roosevelt and is now one of our government’s frivolous little quirks, much like that oversize gavel Nancy Pelosi carried around the other day.
The rationale is fairly simple. The pen used to sign historic legislation itself becomes a historical artifact. The more pens a President uses, the more thank-you gifts he can offer to those who helped create that piece of history. The White House often engraves the pens, which are then given as keepsakes to key proponents or supporters of the newly signed legislation. When Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, he reportedly used more than 75 pens and gave one of the first ones to Martin Luther King Jr. Senators Hubert Humphrey and Everett McKinley Dirksen also received pens for their aid in shuttling the bill through Congress. And in 1996, President Clinton gave the four pens he used to sign the Line-Item Veto bill — which allowed Presidents to veto individual sections of legislation rather than the entire thing — to those most likely to appreciate the bill’s impact: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
Healthcare Bill Is A Big F*cking Deal
This Joe Biden thing is turning into its own big f*cking deal.
Government Can’t Do Anything Right
If you are tired of republican hypocrisy, read this!
This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US department of energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the national weather service of the national oceanographic and atmospheric administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the national aeronautics and space administration.
I watched this while eating my breakfast of US department of agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the food and drug administration. At the appropriate time as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the national institute of standards and technology and the US naval observatory, I get into my national highway traffic safety administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the environmental protection agency, using legal tender issued by the federal reserve bank.
On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US postal service and drop the kids off at the public school.After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the department of labor and the occupational safety and health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal inspections, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.
Then I log on to the internet which was developed by the defense advanced research projects administration and post on Fox news forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.