En Tequila Es Verdad

The Wall Came Down...

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:18:00 +0000

Demolition for freedom, my darlings. Of all the memories of my young life, I think this is the most positive: people peacefully, joyously, taking freedom into their own hands. Divisions between East and West breaking apart overnight. It was an extraordinary, glorious night. Unforgettable.

Happy anniversary, Berlin.

(click the pictures for sources)

Sunday Sensational Science

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:36:00 +0000

Shocking Truth About Aftershocks

Foreshock - Main Shock - Aftershock Sequence

USGS

We've discussed earthquakes before, and everybody's probably pretty aware of the fact that when you have an earthquake, you're probably going to have an aftershock. Or two. Or two dozen. Most of us think those aftershocks will last, at most, a few days.

New studies suggest that some aftershocks will go on - are you ready for this? - for a few centuries:

Many researchers assume that small-scale seismic activity reveals where stress is building up in the Earth’s crust — stress that can cause larger quakes in the future, says Mian Liu, a geophysicist at the University of Missouri in Columbia. However, Liu and Seth Stein of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., report in the Nov. 5 Nature, many moderate-sized temblors that occur far from the edges of tectonic plates could be merely the aftershocks of larger quakes that occurred along the same faults decades or even centuries ago.

[snip]

Stein and Liu analyzed earthquake data gathered worldwide. For major quakes that occurred where the sides of a fault moved past each other at average rates of more than 10 millimeters per year — as the two sides of many tectonic boundaries do — aftershocks died off after a decade or so. But for faults where the sides scraped past each other at just a few millimeters per year, aftershocks lasted about 100 years, the researchers reported. The longest series of aftershocks, some which have lasted several centuries, were triggered by quakes that occurred in continental interiors along slow-moving faults.

Bet you folks in the Midwest didn't think New Madrid was sending you old news, did you? But it certainly seems so.

Let's step back a moment and take a look at the mechanics here:

Large earthquakes are often followed by aftershocks, the result of changes in the surrounding crust brought about by the initial shock. Aftershocks are most common immediately after the main quake. As time passes and the fault recovers, they become increasingly rare. This pattern of decay in seismic activity is described by Omori's Law but Stein and Liu found that the pace of the decay is a matter of location.

At the boundaries between tectonic plates, any changes wreaked by a big quake are completely overwhelmed by the movements of the plates themselves. At around a centimetre per year, they are regular geological Ferraris. They soon "reload" the fault, dampen the aftershocks, and return the status quo within 10 years. In the middle of continents, faults move at less than a millimetre every year. In this slow lane, things can take a century or more to return to normal after a big quake, and aftershocks stick around for that duration.

It's a tale of two faults! Let's have a look at New Madrid, shall we? Go ahead. Search for photos of "New Madrid Fault." I'll wait.

Lots of maps, not many photos, right? That's because not a lot's going on there. Here's the best I could do:

Ed Yong says,

Again, New Madrid proves the principle - a cluster of large earthquakes hit the area in the past thousand years, but the crust shows no sign of recent deformation according to two decades of GPS measurements. It seems that recent activity really is the legacy of centuries-old quakes, a threat that has since shut down.

In other words, not a lot going on that would show at the surface. It's a slow, sleepy fault, despite the excitement it caused over the winter of 1811-1812. Compare that to the San Andreas, which is bleeding obvious:

Compared to New Madrid, the San Andreas fault is a speed demon, and it shows. There are other differences, of course - one's a transform fault where two plates are scooting past each other, the other's more of a rift type thing where North America started developing a split personality and then changed its mind(s?) - but the main thing is speed. Cecil Turtle compared to Speedy Gonzales, shall we say. According to the study, San Andreas locks and loads within a decade or so, leaving the aftershocks in the dust and nervous Californians waiting for the Big One. New Madrid's still squirming around trying to get comfortable after a fairly dramatic disruption. And every time it twitches noticeably, folks in the Midwest experience a nervous attack of their own.

The river did, after all, run backwards the last time this thing went crack. Bound to worry folks a bit. But according to Stein and Liu, there's nothing much to worry about - at least, not where New Madrid's concerned. You're just in for hundreds of years of aftershocks, since the fault moves more than 100 times slower than the San Andreas. This is good news.

And the data are beautiful:

"A number of us had suspected this," Liu said, "because many of the earthquakes we see today in the Midwest have patterns that look like aftershocks. They happen on the faults we think caused the big earthquakes in 1811 and 1812, and they've been getting smaller with time."

To test this idea, Stein and Liu used results from lab experiments on how faults in rocks work to predict that aftershocks would extend much longer on slower moving faults. They then looked at data from faults around the world and found the expected pattern. For example, aftershocks continue today from the magnitude 7.2 Hebgen Lake earthquake that shook Montana, Idaho and Wyoming 50 years ago.

"This makes sense because the Hebgen Lake fault moves faster than the New Madrid faults but slower than the San Andreas," Stein noted. "The observations and theory came together the way we like but don't always get."

This might be of some comfort to residents near the epicenter of the Hebgen Lake Quake. Then again, it might not. It's rather hard to feel comforted by the fact that the fault moves slower than the San Andreas, and therefore shall have aftershocks longer, when the last big quake took down a mountainside, ripped open roads, created a new lake, and left fault scarps all over the damned place, right?

And this study points to the fact that the small isn't always a foreshadow of the big:

The new results will help investigators in both understanding earthquakes in continents and trying to assess earthquake hazards there. "Until now," Liu observed, "we've mostly tried to tell where large earthquakes will happen by looking at where small ones do." That's why many scientists were surprised by the disastrous May 2008 magnitude 7.9 earthquake in Sichuan, China -- a place where there hadn't been many earthquakes in the past few hundred years.

"Predicting big quakes based on small quakes is like the 'Whack-a-mole' game -- you wait for the mole to come up where it went down," Stein said. "But we now know the big earthquakes can pop up somewhere else. Instead of just focusing on where small earthquakes happen, we need to use methods like GPS satellites and computer modeling to look for places where the earth is storing up energy for a large future earthquake. We don't see that in the Midwest today, but we want to keep looking."

Sounds like a very good idea to me. Anything we can do to increase the chances of successful earthquake prediction could help save a lot of lives. And it allows us to rest easier when we find out that those little temblors are just past earthquakes saying "So long, and thanks for all the fish."

Ladies and Gentlemen, We Have Ourselves a Health Care Reform Bill

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:49:00 +0000

H.R. 3962 passed with 220 Yeas.

T'ain't perfect, but it'll do for a start. The bits that people are moaning over can be remedied later. Folks, we have momentum for reform such as we have never seen before. Let's not minimize that. Remember Aristotle's rule of great drama: start small and build. Well, sometimes that works for legislation, too. And we're not exactly starting small, now, are we?

36 million more people will be insured or become eligible for Medicaid
There will be a trillion dollars raised to help subsidize this.
There will be multiple measures to help control the costs of Medicare
We will stop subsidizing private insurers in Medicare Advantage
Closes the donut hole
Allows Medicare negotiation for drugs
Includes the seeds of a public option
Prohibits denials based on prior conditions; ends rescissions except for fraud
funds more education for doctors/nurses
Begins dozens of health prevention programs, pilots, surveys
Creates entities to evaluate and recommend better treatment, cost saving
And on and on.

This will put enormous pressure on the Senate to deliver. This puts us within reach of reform. And it's even bipartisan - Rep. Joseph Cao shocked the shit out of me by voting Yea. That's made a liar of Eric Cantor and will have the Teabaggers in a screaming fury. I loves it.

Once reform passes and is signed into law, we will have a scaffolding in place upon which we can build. That means electing not merely more Democrats, but better Democrats. We shall have a useful list of targets in all those Nay votes.

My darlings, it's open bar.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to return to my regularly scheduled writing...

(Thanks to rekenner for drawing my attention to the great good news)

The Writer is Out

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:21:00 +0000

Aside from Sunday Sensational Science, I'll be out of the cantina until Tuesday morning. Help yourselves to the bar. And if you care to leave a verb in comments, please do.

Your Daily Dose of Health Care Reform Stupidity

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:30:00 +0000

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the evils of government health care:

About 20 minutes into yesterday's right-wing rally on the Hill in opposition to health care reform, one of the protestors suffered a heart attack. Fortunately, as Dana Milbank reported, medical professionals were able to respond quickly.

Medical personnel from the Capitol physician's office -- an entity that could, quite accurately, be labeled government-run health care -- rushed over, attaching electrodes to his chest and giving him oxygen and an IV drip.

This turned into an unwanted visual for the speakers, as a D.C. ambulance and firetruck, lights flashing, pulled in just behind the lawmakers. A path was made through the media section, and the patient, attended to by about 10 government medical personnel, was being wheeled away on a stretcher just as House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) stepped to the microphone. [...]

By the time it was over, medics had administered government-run health care to at least five people in the crowd who were stricken as they denounced government-run health care.

As far as I can tell, neither the conservative lawmakers or the far-right protestors actually voiced opposition to the government health care services, or called on the elimination of the Capitol physician's office.

Government-run health care -- the scourge the Republicans assembled to denounce -- may be poised to contribute to the end of Western civilization, but it can also apparently be pretty helpful and effective.

Horrible, isn't it? I shudder to think of such prompt and life-saving care being applied to the country at large. It's the stuff of nightmares.

Speaking of the big 11/5 rally, Michele Bachmann has a bizarre definition of an "organic" movement. I don't think she quite understands what an organic grassroots movement really is.

And, apparently, Thursday just wasn't enough - Rep. King wants to do it all over again on Saturday. At the rate these corporate backers are spending on busing in dumbshits to wave offensive signs on the White House lawn, I'm afraid they'll be begging Congress for a bailout before year's end.

Speaking of Saturdays, we may end up getting health care reform by the end of the year after all, if Harry Reid follows through on his threat to make the Senate work Saturdays until the bitter end. He's also giving the Cons hell over their obstructionist ways. You go, Harry!

You can now Twitter your rep in support of reform. Couldn't hurt. While you're at it, flood Blue Dog Tanner - he's come out in total opposition to reform, and perhaps needs reminding as to why he got his ass elected.

New York's 23rd district deserves a round of applause for electing Bill Owens, who's wasted no time announcing his support for the House reform bill.

Blue Cross's former "spokesjerk" also deserves a round of applause for his efforts to get reform passed. Nothing quite like health insurance industry defectors coming out for reform, is there?

You all should get a good laugh out of Rep. Pence's idea of "addressing" pre-existing conditions.

You'll get an even bigger laugh out of this:

I noted yesterday that, in its own quiet way, the Congressional Budget Office gave the Republicans' health care bill a failing grade: A package seemingly meant to address the problem of the uninsured that does almost nothing to expand insurance or lower premiums.

But somehow, someway, conservatives don't seem to have noticed. In fact, they're celebrating!

"As a result of the House Republican bill, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office now confirms that families will see their health care premiums reduced by up to 10 percent and hard-working taxpayers can expect deficits to decrease by $68 billion over the next decade," reads a statement from Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN).

Let's go to the tape:

"By 2019, CBO and JCT estimate, the number of nonelderly people without health insurance would be reduced by about 3 million relative to current law, leaving about 52 million nonelderly residents uninsured. The share of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage in 2019 would be about 83 percent, roughly in line with the current share."

And: "[I]n the large group market, which represents nearly 80 percent of total private premiums, the amendment would lower average insurance premiums in 2016 by zero to 3 percent compared with amounts under current law, according to CBO's estimates."

Where does Pence get his numbers?

His arse, I'd imagine. Seems to be where Cons keep most of their numbers, after all.

And you know what kind of health insurance the Cons' bill offers? Sweatshop insurance, that's what. Seriously.

It's going to be hard to pick the most comedic political move of 2009. But I'd say that the Cons' introduction of their ridiculous bill has a damned good shot at #1.

LOL Pollyticks Time

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:27:00 +0000

Because I needed a good laugh, that's why. And so do you. Admit it.

Damned good advice:

Matters of interpretation:

Pollyticks of scale:

Good question:

What Does It Take to Get a Little Unemployment Extension, Here?

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:02:00 +0000

Overcoming not one, not two, but three - count 'em, three - Con filibusters. That's what it takes.

Why Cons pull this kind of shit when the jobless numbers are this horrible is beyond me. Are they telling us they want to lose in 2010? Is that it? Because if it is, I'm more than happy to ensure that happens.

And so are - lemme see - 200,000 unemployed Americans who lost their benefits while the Cons played their little con games.

Happy Hour Discurso

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:17:00 +0000

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Most of you are probably aware of the tragic shootings at Ft. Hood by now. We here at the cantina extend our deepest sympathies to the families, friends, and victims. What they're going through is unimaginable.

Steve Benen had a good rundown of the details we know so far. More, no doubt, will come out as investigations proceed. In a situation like this, the first few days are chaos - no one knows quite what happened, or why.

That, of course, didn't stop the dumbfucks from running wild, especially when they learned the shooter's name:

On "Fox & Friends" this morning, the hosts speculated about the need for "special screenings" of Muslim officers in the U.S. military. It follows a certain child-like reasoning -- Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan went on a deadly rampage yesterday, shooting 43 people. Hasan is Muslim. Therefore, Muslims in uniform may be untrustworthy.

Soon after, Allen West, a top recruit of the National Republican Congressional Committee in Florida, announced his belief that, in light of the Fort Hood tragedy, the "enemy is infiltrating our military." West, one of 32 new members of the NRCC "Young Guns" program a congressional candidate in the Miami area next year, added, "Our soldiers are being brainwashed."

Now, at this point, we have no idea what led a 14-veteran of the U.S. Army to commit such a heinous crime, but there's a frightening ease with which too many conservatives embrace bigotry like this.

Spencer Ackerman gets this exactly right.

To make a point no one should have to make: earlier this year, a deranged Army sergeant named John Russell opened fire near a combat stress clinic -- sound familiar? -- at Baghdad's Camp Liberty and killed five of his fellow soldiers. No one speculated about any religious motivations. No one suggested he was part of an enemy "infiltration," or suggested that U.S. troops have been "brainwashed." Everyone understood that Russell was a deranged lunatic, not an advance scout for a conspiracy to subvert the military internally. It's funny how double standards work.

Actually, no. It's disgusting.

It is.

Geraldo Rivera, of all people, provided the lone voice of reason amidst a parade of Faux News fucktards:

On Fox and Friends this morning, Geraldo Rivera warned against casting “a gloomy cloud of suspicion over all the Muslim G.I.s who serve with great honor”:

RIVERA: I think that the great tragedy of this incident is that it will cast a gloomy cloud of suspicion over all the Muslim G.I.s who serve with great honor and who are an amazing assist to the United States in this conflict we’re having with radical Islam. This will, and also, I remember my dad, just very briefly. When we were growing up there would be a notorious crime and my dad used to gather the family. We used to say, like a little prayer, “please God” that it’s not a Puerto Rican. You know because we had, dealing with so many social pressures and prejudices, dealing with all the rest of it, we didn’t want one of these awful examples to cast aspersion and negativity on our group. And this is the same thing with American Muslims now, specifically American Muslim G.I.s.

I wish his colleagues would listen to him. He's right.

C&L's Nicole Belle gave the rest of the media, who were scarcely more responsible than Faux News itself, a good hard spanking:

Dear 24 Hour Cable News Channels:

I understand your dilemma, I really do. You have 44 minutes on the hour to fill with content. And it has to be compelling stuff, so that the viewer isn't tempted to channel surf to your rivals. In the situation like the Fort Hood shootings, where news is coming scattershot and conflicting, it's even more difficult.

See? I get it.

But having said that--and I say this with love and respect--PLEASE, SHUT. THE. F#@K. UP. Don't spend time guessing on motivations when there is so little information available. Don't surmise terrorist intent when you can't possibly know. And for the love of everything holy, don't go to criminal profiler Cliff "A Hammer Sees Everything As A Nail" Van Zandt (a crime of which Keith Olbermann is also guilty) to make up utter bovine excrement.

At the time that Van Zandt was waxing rhapsodic over possible terrorist inclinations, remember, the news was that there were two or three shooters, one of whom was dead (Hasan, the single shooter, was alive and being treated at the time). That Maj. Nadil Hasan was of Jordanian, Arab, or Palestinian birth (he was born in Virginia of Palestinian immigrant parents), that he was a recent Muslim convert (he had been a practicing Muslim his whole life), that he was suffering from PTSD, or secondary PTSD from his work with returning vets in Virginia, that he was sympathetic with suicide bombers, angry at bad evaluations, upset at being deployed to Iraq, frustrated by the Army's dismissal of the harassment he got at Ft. Hood about his faith and/or desperate to get out of his upcoming deployment.

Bottom line: we didn't know enough.

[snip]

Don't you get it? "Terrorism" is not defined as "any violence by any Muslim anywhere at any time for any reason."

Dear MSM: Please print that last sentence out in very large font. Use it to wallpaper the newsroom. Have it tattooed on your foreheads. Recite it a hundred times every night before you go to bed, and a hundred times when you wake up in the morning, until you do get it. Most of you obviously don't.

And remember, the WorldNut Daily has no fucking clue what it's talking about:

I guess this was bound to happen, but it doesn't make it any less annoying.

WorldNetDaily falsely claimed that alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan "advised Obama transition" in the headline of an article by Jerome Corsi highlighting his listing as a "participant" in a report for the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University's Presidential Transition Task Force.

However, Corsi himself acknowledges that there is no evidence that "the group played any formal role in the official Obama transition" - indeed, the Task Force was initiated in April 2008; moreover, while Hasan was listed as one of approximately 300 "Task Force Event Participants" in the report's appendix, HSPI has reportedly said he was not a "member" of the Task Force, and was listed because he RSVP'd for several of the group's events."

The National Enquirer is more credible than the fucking WorldNut Daily. At least the Enquirer got a story right once.

Of course, what would any tragedy involving a man with a Muslim name be without the batshit fucking insane Con in Congress ready to jump all over it?

Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC), who wrote the foreword to Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that's Conspiring to Islamize America, said today she is "very concerned" about infiltration of the military by jihadists.

"We can't continue to be so politically correct that we're going to say this wasn't religiously motivated," Myrick told the Charlotte, North Carolina, CBS affiliate. She noted the reports that Nidal Malik Hasan shouted "Allahu Akbar" before he allegedly opened fire in the shooting spree at Fort Hood Thursday.

Look, you stupid fucking bitch. No one - let me repeat that - no one - knows what Hasan's motivation was. The fact that a Muslim man with a Muslim name shouted an Islamic phrase used by every Muslim in the entire universe does not make him a fucking jihadist. It does not make his crime "religiously motivated." And to have a member of Congress spewing this wild-eyed frothing fundie right-wing Teabagger bullshit, to have an actual member of Congress, who should be a responsible fucking adult, stand up and, on the strength of absolutely no evidence at all, claim the military's being infiltrated by evil Muslim jihadists, is outrageous in the extreme. It's irresponsible, reprehensible, and it should be the kind of behavior that makes you immediately ineligible to hold public office of any form at any time, starting fucking immediately.

I hope I've made myself clear. There is no place among our elected leadership for this kind of idiocy. None.

It's too bad so many of my fellow Americans are too stupid to realize that, and vote for these asshats anyway. It'll be up to the rest of us to counter that stupidity come election day.

Moving on. Yesterday, the Teabaggers descended on D.C. to prove that they're disgusting dipshits who have no idea what health care reform entails. We'll be having some fun with them in Your Daily Dose. For now, I just want to ask a simple question that's nearly impossible to answer: why the fuck do Cons find it so motherfucking hard to count?

On G. Gordon Liddy’s radio show today, producer Franklin Raff, who was on the ground at the rally, told guest host Joseph Farah that the crowd is “just as big or bigger than” the 9/12 rally, which Raff estimated “at about a million.”

[snip]

Capitol Hill police told NBC’s Luke Russert that the crowd was about 4,000.

Eric Cantor talked of "tens of thousands." And I'm sure we've seen Cons spout every number in between. I'm surprised we haven't heard "billions and billions" yet. Let's just have a tale of two pictures, shall we?

Obama's Inauguration - 1.8 million:

Nov. 5th Teabagging:

Maybe Teabaggers are just reely small.

But the really important question is this: why do the Cons want Americans to all die in their beds? This is the only conclusion we can come to, since they ditched important national security votes to go tea partying:

Several Republican members of Congress yesterday blew off votes on the signature anti-terror legislation of the post 9/11 era to attend Michele Bachmann's Tea Party rally against health-care reform.

Reps. Steve King of Iowa, Trent Franks of Arizona, Randy Forbes of Virginia, Jim Jordan of Ohio, and Louie Gohmert and Ted Poe of Texas all took time out yesterday for the "Super Bowl of Freedom," as Bachmann has called it. And all missed votes in the House Judiciary committee on Republican-sponsored amendments to the reauthorization of the Patriot Act -- measures that would have toughened the Act, but narrowly failed. Those votes took place, a committee staffer confirmed, between noon and two -- the very time when Republican lawmakers were rallying the Tea Party troops on the Capitol steps.

And guess what? A bunch of amendments beloved by Cons, absolutely vital to our national security and the only things standing between us and eeviiil Mooslim terrurists murdering us all, failed to pass because some Con fucktards couldn't bother to show up to vote. Priceless.

Speaking of priceless, don't miss Kos pwning Tancredo.

And on the fear manufacturing front, the IAEA inspected Iran's super-secret nuclear site and found nothing to worry about. Nothing. It's a site set up for generating nuclear energy, just as they've always claimed, and buried in a bunker because they know Americans and Israelis are awfully trigger happy. But (and you knew there was a but coming):

But, let's not let you get too comfortable about Iran...GuardianUK's Julian Borger comes up with a new scare:

The UN's nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design, the Guardian has learned.

The very existence of the technology, known as a "two-point implosion" device, is officially secret in both the US and Britain, but according to previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of the design. The development was today described by nuclear experts as "breathtaking" and has added urgency to the effort to find a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis.

Ooooh...booga booga booga! Two things that glare out for me: one, Borger cites the IAEA unpublished report without one single quotation. Two, Borger claims the "two point implosion" is "officially secret" in the US and UK, but how secret can it be when it has its own Wikipedia page?

The media really does think you're dumb and can't figure out teh Google.

That's probably because so many of them pander to right wing fucktards, who really are that dumb, and seem to have a compulsive desire to shit themselves with terror.

Our public discourse, ladies and gentlemen. I'll understand completely if you decide to weep.

Carnival of the Elitist Bastards XVIII: "It's For Research"

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:01:00 +0000

I'll let yer Captain make the announcement:

Did ye think we'd never get away from the dock? Hah! The Elitist Bastard is cutting water and breaking ice. And woe betide any con ships that cross her path this month! Get the top-secret skinny on her mission at Decrepit Old Fool: Carnival Of The Elitist Bastards, the "it's for research" edition.

It's readily apparent I'm no sea-dog, but luckily the crew is fully seasoned!

Captain George be more sea-dog than he admits! Ye're in for a treat this month, me hearties - and I hope ye brought yer experimental ammo. Ye'll see what I mean.

(Postdated to ensure no one misses the news. New content be below.)

Your Daily Dose of Health Care Reform Stupidity

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:54:00 +0000

Dear, oh, dear. We knew the Cons' "reform" bill would be bad, but this is really bad:

Republican lawmakers nevertheless submitted their plan to the Congressional Budget Office for a score. The office released a report (pdf) last night, and it's safe to assume GOP leaders hope no one reads it.

The Republican bill, which has no chance of passage, would extend insurance coverage to about 3 million people by 2019, and would leave about 52 million people uninsured, the budget office said, meaning the proportion of non-elderly Americans with coverage would remain about the same as now, at roughly 83 percent. [...]

According to the report by nonpartisan budget office, the Republican bill would reduce future federal deficits by $68 billion over 10 years, compared to a reduction of $104 billion by the House Democrats' legislation.

So, let me get this straight. The House Republican caucus has been working behind closed doors since June on a health care plan. Five months later, they unveil their plan, and it effectively leaves the broken status quo intact? That's the big GOP health proposal? Largely ignoring the uninsured, neglecting those with pre-existing conditions, and offering deficit reductions that are smaller than the Democrats' plan?

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) said of the GOP plan in a statement, "It will leave 52 million Americans literally out in the cold, does nothing to help low-income and middle-class families afford quality health care, and protects insurance companies' power to deny claims and stand between patients and their doctors. Their bill fundamentally fails to repair our broken health care system."

Now, keep in mind, Republican leaders concede that their approach effectively ignores those who currently lack coverage. As far as the GOP is concerned, helping those with no insurance costs too much, so their plan barely tries to address this aspect of the health care crisis. Instead, they argue, the key to reform is cutting costs, so that's where Republicans focused their energies.

But this is wrong, too. Jonathan Cohn explained this week, "This is a politically clever construction, since it creates a narrative that is both intellectually simple (Democrats focus on coverage, Republicans focus on costs) and consistent with preconceptions about the parties (Democrats want to help the poor, Republicans want to help everybody else). But it's not actually true. President Obama and his allies have made controlling costs a top priority of health care reform ... and the bills moving through Congress show it."

I expected a bad Republican plan, but this is even worse than I imagined.

A little bit o' compare and contrast with the Dems' bill makes it look even worser. What a pathetic effort. I mean, we're talking a bill that wouldn't even cover the Con leadership if they were forced to rely on the private market rather than their cushy government plans.

They're leaving 52 million Americans uninsured, and yet Cons still believe our problem is too much insurance.

By the way, in case there was any doubt, bipartisanship is really, truly, completely, and beyond Miracle Max's help dead. Eric Cantor pledged to the Teabagging masses that there would not be one single, solitary Con vote for reform. And Queen Snowe's completely lost touch with the masses, and seems to have had a complete psychotic break in the bargain. Either that, or she's just enjoying lying like a Con after having played the good little moderate game.

So we can write Cons off completely. Now all the Dem leadership has to do is whip the Conservadems into shape, and voila - health care reform. I do hope this takes place before I'm 987 years old.

Perhaps the fact that the AARP and the AMA have endorsed the Dems' health care reform bill will shake a few of the idiots loose.

We can but dream.

"The Green Economy's Coming! The Green Economy's Coming!"

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:48:00 +0000

So says none other than Sen. Lindsey Graham:

Extensive coverage has been devoted to the fact that Lindsey Graham’s split on global warming and other issues highlights a rift in the Republican Party. While that’s true, another more important development has not been pursued: Graham’s departure from right-wing orthodoxy highlights the potential for conservative Democrats to follow in his footsteps.

Many conservative Democrats have questioned President Obama’s clean energy agenda. Now, a Republican is breaking with his party to talk sense. In a press conference yesterday with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), the author of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Graham rebuked senators unwilling to address carbon pollution. Saying that he has “seen the effects of a warming planet,” Graham called for the United States to “lead the world rather than follow the world on carbon pollution”:

The green economy is coming. We can either follow or lead. And those countries who follow will pay a price. Those nations who lead in creating the new green economy for the world will make money.

And that green economy's coming despite the best efforts of bleedin' buffoons to boycott it:

A major climate change bill passed out of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee amid a Republican boycott this morning, setting the stage for other panels to amend the legislation. The final vote was 11-1. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT)--whose Senate Finance Committee probably have its own crack at the bill--was the lone hold out. No Republicans showed up to vote.

Baucus says he wants near-term emissions targets softened, and to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from stepping in to regulate carbon emissions on its own, pursuant to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling.

After the vote, ranking member James Inhofe (R-OK) appeared on Fox News and, in predictable fashion, lambasted the legislation, calling the committee's actions "unprecedented." He also claimed that the bill is "dead."

Dunno 'bout that. It's looking pretty lively to me.

Everybody got their green-collar shirts ready? It should only take until, oh, say, late 2010, early 2011, to overcome Conservadem and Con foot-dragging, tantrum-throwing, and Teabag-army-leading hysterics.

Happy Hour Discurso

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:03:00 +0000

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Remember, remember the 5th of November, for it is the day that a few thousand die-hard Teabaggers rode into Washington, D.C. to make absolute asses of themselves.

They arrived for their astroturfing activities on buses thoughtfully provided by AFP:

Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the corporate front group founded in the 1980s by Koch Industries billionaire David Koch, worked closely with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) to orchestrate the anti-health reform rally today. As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, AFP has been encouraging right-wing activists to board their buses — free of charge — to attend the rally. While AFP does not disclose all of its corporate donors, foundations controlled by David and Charles Koch provide millions in yearly funding, and David continues to chair the AFP foundation and preside over AFP’s annual convention.

They unfurled their Birther banners, their sociocommiefascist signs, and their anti-immigration screeds, apparently unaware that this rally was actually about health care. A few of the offensive little shits got the memo in time to have whipped up one enormous sign comparing health care reform to the Holocaust in the most disgusting way possible. You stay stupid, there, Teabaggers.

The Cons in Congress crazy enough to associate with rabid fucktards got up and made speeches full of sound and fury that signified only their ignorance of American history:

A variety of Republican leaders spoke on the steps of the Capitol today, addressing a crowd that local law enforcement officials put at around 4,000, all of whom gathered to rally against fixing the health care system. Some of the speakers, however, ran into a little trouble.

Take Rep. Todd Akin (R) of Missouri, for example. Akin, who's demonstrated more than once that he doesn't really know what he's talking about when it comes to health care policy, decided to devote his remarks to the subject of religion and American history. For some reason, Akin argued that the pilgrims gave the country "her first constitution," which doesn't make any sense.

Akin then proceeded to botch the Pledge of Allegiance, which is kind of pathetic. I believe it was a Freudian slip, since the word he omitted was "indivisible." Shows what he feels about America, doesn't it?

Almost as embarrassing was House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who decided to wave his pocket copy of the U.S. Constitution around. Boehner, with voice raised, pledged to "stand here with our Founding Fathers, who wrote in the pre-amble: 'We hold these truths to be self evident ..."

In our reality, that's the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, not the U.S. Constitution.

ZOMG. These fuckwits lecture us on patriotism, and can't even get the simple details right.

Rep. Paul Broun also gave a rousing speech. It's an instant classic:

Fellow patriots, go tell your Congressman, you're not going to eat this rotten stinking fish that is -- Pelosi health care! We are going to put a stop sign in front of her steamroller of socialism! Go to it, patriots!

I'm sure that stop sign is going to be very effective, placed before a steamroller, there. Everybody ready for some fish-paste sandwiches?

And apparently, some Teabagger speechifyers are stuck in the past:

The speaker was John Ratzenberger, a.k.a. Cliff Clavin (sigh). He told a tale that dripped with still-fresh resentment about how he was a techie building the stage at Woodstock — Woodstock! — when the rains came and the National Guard had to be called in to save the day. Clavin, still visibly angry, excoriated all the love children for bashing the military even as they relied on the military to save their precious, America-hating festival.

Clavin then drew a direct line from the sixties longhairs right to Nancy Pelosi and Obama, saying that our current leadership is culturally akin to “Wavy Gravy.” Gives you a strong sense of the cultural roots of today’s strain of angry, resentful Bachmannalia and Tea Party-ism. Are we really still fighting this battle?

Some people are. Some people apparently did too much LDS back in the 60s (thank you, Star Trek).

Michele Bachmann is becoming a national figure, leading the Teabag armies, to which the Dems say, "By all means:"

The Democratic National Committee released this statement today on the Capitol Hill Tea Party, which was organized and promoted by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN):

"If the Republican party wants to make Michele Bachmann the voice of the party, that's more than fine with us. We'll help circulate the petition. But it is surprising that after Congressman-elect Owens won a special election by supporting the President's agenda in a New York district that hasn't elected a Democrat since Benjamin Harrison was President, that the Republican party would continue to allow itself to be led around by nose by the likes of Bachmann, Beck , Limbaugh, Palin and the rest of the extreme tea party crowd..."

Absolutely. I'm starting to feel better and better about 2010, actually. I just don't know if I can afford the popcorn required to truly appreciate the spectacle.

What's a demonstration without a few arrests? It seems some of the Teabaggers don't realize that actually storming Congress rather than symbolically storming Congress could pose problems:

Looks like the demonstrators really are serious about storming the Congressional barricades.

A dozen people were arrested this afternoon in or just outside of Nancy Pelosi’s office, some for unlawful entry and others for disorderly conduct, the Capitol Police confirm, adding that some of the arrested were throwing papers around.

Four demonstrators were arrested for refusing to leave her office in the Canon House Office Building, and eight more were arrested for unlawful or disorderly conduct, Capitol Police spokesperson Kimberly Schneider tells our reporter, Amanda Erickson.

[snip]

Update: Pelosi spokesperson Drew Hammill confirms that the demonstrators were Operation Rescue people and that they were shredding copies of the health care bill.

Ah, yes. Operation Rescue. Classy bunch, that. Just who your movement needs to be associated with in order to establish credibility, gravitas, and all that, I'm sure.

And before they start screaming "police state!", they may want to consider a) where your right to demonstrate ends and others' right to get their word done begins, and b) why the Capitol police might not want you running around loose inside the building:

This afternoon -- November 5 -- a date widely known as Guy Fawkes Night. (You know, "Remember, remember, the fifth of November.") In other words, Bachmann wants to rally right-wing activists, label them an "insurgency," and encourage them to roam the halls of Congress deliberately "scaring" members of Congress, on the infamous date that marks an attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

From a security perspective, if Capitol Police aren't operating at a heightened state today, they're making a mistake.

From a political perspective, I wonder if Republican Party leaders are glad to see a right-wing, deranged lawmaker lead an angry far-right mob through the Capitol. Nothing says "American mainstream" like Bachmann and a confused horde shipped to D.C. by corporate lobbyists.

I'm sure that they'll be swallowing hard and squeaking about how wonderful all this Teabagging is.

In other political news, the Michael Steele of yesterday wants moderates to know they're welcome in the Con party. The Michael Steele of today tells them they can all fuck off.

In a similar vein, yesterday's Dick Armey sez, "Local issues - bah! Hoffman doesn't need local issues!" Today's Dick Armey: "Hoffman shoulda paid attention to the locals." What a maroon.

And speaking of Hoffman, guess who's gonna be fundraising for Cons? NC Dems scream in delight:

As Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling (D) reports:

I've been pretty sure the Republicans will get back control of the North Carolina legislature next year but now I'm not underestimating their chances to defeat themselves.

Just got an e-mail from the party that they're bringing in Doug Hoffman to speak at their Hall of Fame dinner in a couple weeks. The same Doug Hoffman of course who managed to blow a Congressional seat the party had held for over a century.

Next election season's gonna be awesome.

Raise a Tankard to a Recovering Captain

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:01:00 +0000

Our very own Captain Stephanie's off conquering cancer (with a little bit o' assistance from her ships' physicians, o' course). Raise a glass o' yer very best for her, and join me in a cheer to her health, which will hopefully be so shamed by its undeserved adulation that it'll come slinkin' back to her beggin' forgiveness.

Here's to yer speedy recovery, Captain!

Your Daily Dose of Health Care Reform Stupidity

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:11:00 +0000

You know, this talk of dragging feet on health care reform makes me very not happy. So does this talk of triggers. Attention, Dems: we gave you the House, the Senate, and the White House. We expect results. We didn't ask for a trigger. Get a fucking move on.

Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu: still fucking idiots.

At least Rep. Sestak is going to bat for those about to lose their COBRA coverage and subsidies. And the White House is pushing back hard on GOP foolishness. That's something. Sorta.

If you're a little unclear on reform, TPM's got just the post for you.

Wanna have some fun? Michael Steele, intoxicated by - well, I'm not quite sure what, since the Cons didn't win much of anything aside from a couple of governors' seats they would've had to be even dumber than usual to lose - is holding a 12-hour Pelosi-bashing fest. Go log on and ask his merry band of fuckwits some difficult questions.

Were you wondering who the next Con claiming health care will kill us all in our beds would be? Wonder no more. I'm sure you're shocked it's Rep. Broun.

And, finally, here's a prime example as to why giving in to Con demands is never a good idea:

In September, Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) organized a discharge petition in order to force a vote on a resolution that would “require that legislation and conference reports be available on the Internet for 72-hours before consideration by the House.” “It’s just common sense: Americans should be allowed to read the text of major bills before Congress votes on them,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH).

The House Democratic leadership eventually agreed to post health care legislation online for 72-hours before bringing it up for a vote. But once they got what they wanted, conservatives started to complain that 72-hours wasn’t enough. “They are only giving you 72-hours to read it,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) on Glenn Beck’s radio show today. “So they obviously are embarrassed of their own bill.”

On WorldNetDaily’s radio show today, Rep. John Linder (R-GA) claimed that Democrats were only including the 72-hour waiting period because they needed more time to twist arms for votes....

They demand a 72-hour waiting period. Dems give it to them. They then use the waiting period they requested to bash Dems. Classic fucking classless Con behavior.

Attention, Dems: do not ever give these assclowns anything they ask for ever again.

Maine Voters Strip Civil Rights

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:03:00 +0000

Shame on you, 53% of Maine:

Let's start with Maine's No on 1 campaign. We lost. So sorry, Maine gays. You're still not quite human.

The problem with gay-marriage referendums is, it's about civil rights. Civil rights exist because your legal status shouldn't depend on popular opinion. If we'd had referendums in 1964 about the Civil Rights Act, it would still be illegal for Heidi Klum to marry Seal. Seems silly, right? That's because it is.

With 87 percent of precincts reporting early Wednesday morning, 53 percent of voters had approved the repeal, ending an expensive and emotional fight that was closely watched around the country as a referendum on the national gay-marriage movement. Polls had suggested a much closer race.
Maine voters also decided to expand the state’s 10-year-old medical marijuana law, approving a ballot question to allow state-regulated dispensaries to grow the drug and sell it to patients. The vote comes weeks after the Obama administration announced it would not prosecute patients and distributors who are in "clear and unambiguous" compliance with state laws. Maine will be the third state, after New Mexico and Rhode Island, to allow tightly regulated, nonprofit marijuana dispensaries.

Yeah, polls suggested a much closer race because people are so reluctant to admit they're homophobic. But hey, how about those stoners? Closeted Maine Republicans can still get high, so you got that going for you.

I find it difficult to express my outrage, because there aren't really words for it. The fact that over 50% of voters can strip civil rights away from fellow human beings is disgusting. I have no fucking idea why gays getting married is such a problem. It's not like anyone's coming into homophobe's homes and forcing them into same-sex marriages. If two consenting adults love each other and want to commit to each other for life, what fucking business do these bigoted fucktards have stripping that right away? I don't understand it, don't respect it, and I hope to fuck the people of this country eventually extract themselves from the dark ages and join the rest of the enlightened world.

I'm going to be petty here. I'm going to hope that the 53% of voters who can't extend a simple human right to fellow human beings get to experience the anguish of seeing a precious right stripped away, just once in their lives. I doubt it will teach them compassion, or empathy, or simple humanity. But it might. And I hope they'll get to experience having their rights restored, realize what justice means, and learn to appreciate justice for others.

I know. Dream on, right?

At least I can be proud that my own state did the right thing. At least Washington's LGBT couples now have a few precious rights. Let's see if, eventually, we go the whole distance. I want to attend a real, live wedding where my friends can be pronounced husband and husband, or wife and wife.

It's something Maine's couples will have to wait until more enlightened times for.

Happy Hour Discurso

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:09:00 +0000

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Whelp. Ye olde special elections happened yesterday, and today Cons are ecstatic. Why, I'm not sure. They may have won the New Jersey and Virginia governor's mansions, but they got trounced in the House races:

Going into yesterday, it'd been a good year for Democrats in special elections, winning three races -- New York's 20th, Illinois's 5th, and California's 32nd. Yesterday, Dems made it five for five.

If California's 10th, Lt. Gov. John Garamendi (D), running a progressive campaign, defeated Republican David Harmer by double digits, 53% to 42.7%.

And in New York's 23rd, in the race that captured extensive national attention, Democrat Bill Owens scored a surprising win, beating Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman, 49.3% to 45.2%, with nearly all of the votes counted.

While it's a mistake to characterize either of these House races as bellwethers, the New York defeat not only gave Democrats something to be happy about on an otherwise disappointing Election Day -- Owens will be the first Dem to represent this area since the 19th century -- it was also a setback for the right-wing activists and leaders who'd invested so heavily in this special election. [emphasis added]

Indeed, the far right had a plan. Activists and their allies would drive the moderate Republican away and rally behind the right-wing candidate. They would then take this model on the road, making NY-23 a model for competitive contests elsewhere. Of course, the strategy looks less impressive when the Democrat wins.

It's also less impressive when the Con who won the governor's house in Virginia did so whilst running as far and as fast as he could from Palin and her merry band of fucktards:

Those looking for key electoral indicators or evidence of larger national trends are likely to be disappointed. McDonnell went out of his way to run a moderate campaign, despite a conservative record, and kept the Tea Party crowd at arm's length. The governor-elect ran away from his far-right background, and made sure that Sarah Palin -- who offered to "help" -- had nothing to do with his campaign.

And really less impressive when voters told the Teabagger's anti-tax, anti-spending measures to go fuck themselves:

In a further sign that yesterday's election results were not a verdict in favor of anti-tax Tea Partyism, two key referenda to limit state taxes and spending went down to serious defeat.

In Maine, where the big news was the state's rejection of gay marriage, voters also resoundingly defeated a "Taxpayers Bill of Rights" (TABOR) referendum, which would have placed spending limits on state and local governments, and required direct voter approval for tax increases. This is the third time in five years that Maine has rejected TABOR proposals. As the Portland Press Herald points out, the loss this year was actually worse than last time -- from an eight-point margin of defeat in 2006, to a 21-point margin this time around.

Another anti-tax vote in Washington state, Initiative 1033, would have similarly capped state and local spending and property taxes, and would have required voter approval for tax increases. It failed by ten points.

So. Voters went for the moderate GOPers, gave ye olde one-finger salute to Teabagger causes, and elected nothing but Dems (one of them a flaming progressive) to House seats. You'd think that would penetrate as a bit of a warning to far-right fucktards. But they're drunk on their own supposed power. DeMint, in fact, has gone right round the bend:

Another scene from the post-NY-23 GOP civil war…

On a conference call with reporters just now, conservative Senator Jim DeMint — who has endorsed a conservative candidate to run in a GOP Senate primary against businesswoman Carly Fiorina, the next target of the Palin/tea party brigade — explicitly suggested his endorsement was a shot “against” GOP leaders.

DeMint explained his endorsement of the conservative candidate, Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, by citing “Chuck’s willingness to stand up against his own party leaders.”

[snip]

That’s pretty strong stuff, particularly in the context of the Doug Hoffman debacle. DeMint is not just saying his pick is the better candidate or that he is truer to Republican principles. He’s essentially endorsing the Palin/tea party brigade’s explicit, open warfare on the GOP leadership and establishment.

Hoo-boy. This should get interesting. And if Cons overall listen to this tripe, I might not even have to stump for Dems next year. I can just let the Teabaggers overrun the neighborhood, and drive any undecided voters straight into the loving arms of the sane alternative. Nice.

And forgive me my amusement, but the fact the Teabaggers have the NRSC quaking in terror is just hilarious:

The National Republican Senatorial Committee likes to intervene in primary fights, for fairly obvious reasons -- the party establishment routinely has a favored candidate that it thinks has the best shot of winning the election. Naturally, then, the NRSC steers support to the Republican it perceives as stronger.

The problem, of course, is that the Republican base doesn't want the NRSC to intervene -- the establishment may want an "electable" candidate, but activists want their candidate. And after the unpleasantness in New York's 23rd, the base is making the demands more explicit -- don't intervene ... or else.

Today, NRSC Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas) told the base what it wanted to hear.

With Republicans grappling with the fallout of an intra-party battle that may have cost them a House seat, the head of the Senate Republican campaign effort is making a pledge that may ease some of the anger being directed at the party establishment.

"We will not spend money in a contested primary," Sen. John Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told ABC News in a telephone interview today.

"There's no incentive for us to weigh in," said Cornyn, R-Texas. "We have to look at our resources. . . . We're not going to throw money into a [primary] race leading up to the election."

[snip]

This is a pretty important development for a couple of reasons. First, it shows that the party establishment seems to be afraid of its own base. Today's announcement seems to be a message to the inmates: "Don't worry, you'll now have more control over the asylum."

Nothing could make me happier. Well. Except for this:

What's more, New England, made up of six states, has 22 congressional districts. Currently, the region is represented by 22 Democrats.

So, north of the Pennsylvania border, there 51 congressional districts representing 34 million people. Republicans have a whopping two seats.

What's truly sad is the fact that two Dem House victories have somehow turned Conservadems into gutless wonders. I have no idea why. Apparently, they believe governors' races have more bearing on their jobs than House races do. They might want to consider two small facts: Deeds didn't run as a progressive, and the Dem base stayed mostly home because Dems were too dumb to pump them up. Let this be a lesson, although I'm afraid these fuckwits are beyond learning.

Lucky for us, the Teabaggers are making victory far easier than it would have been otherwise.

Your Daily Dose of Health Care Reform Stupidity

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:09:00 +0000

The Cons are desperate. You know how I know they're desperate? Because they play the terrorist card whenever they're on the verge of losing. And if you thought death panels were over-the-top, well, you ain't seen nothing yet.

I'm going to have to start calling her "Washington State's Shame:"

Rep. Virginia Foxx's (R-N.C.) looked pretty ridiculous yesterday when she said Americans have "more to fear" from health care reform than "from any terrorist right now in any country." But it seems the health=terror concept is catching on in GOP circles.

House Republican Conference Vice Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), who is leading this week's campaign by GOP women to attack the House Democratic health care bill, on Tuesday compared the proposal to an "internal" terrorist attack.

McMorris Rodgers initially avoided endorsing comments made Monday by her colleague, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.).... But when pressed on whether the bill represented something as grave as a terrorist attack, McMorris Rodgers drew a line between the nature of terrorism and the effect of the Democratic proposal.

"I would say it's the difference between an internal versus an external attack. Yes," McMorris Rodgers said. The Democratic bill "is internal. This is rocking our foundation."

Given the prevalence of this talking point, it almost seems coordinated. Foxx compared reform to terrorism yesterday. Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) made the same comparison last week.

Think it stops there? Oh, ye who hath little understanding of how the Cons tend to get on a stupidity roll:

Glenn Beck must have been feeling the pressure from Virginia Foxx yesterday in the Absurd Wingnuttery Championships. So, after Foxx compared the liberal health-care reform package working its way through Congress to terrorism, Beck went on his Fox News show and compared the package to the 9/11 attacks:

Beck: On 9/11, we experienced a feeling we had never had before -- when the buildings and our markets and the economy came falling down around our ears, we realized -- 'Oh my gosh. Our country isn't unsinkable.'

We came, on that day, to the understanding that this Republic is fragile. Here we are now, a decade later. I'm on the air again, warning you that our government cannot sustain our massive spending. The system will collapse if we continue down this progressive path.

Where Glenn Beck goes, Cons in Congress follow. I'm sure we'll hear plenty more about how health care reform is sooo much worse than those horrible terrorists. And I have to tell you something. If I run across someone stupid enough to fall for this ridiculous bullshit, I'm having them locked up as a danger to self and others. That much burning stupid can't be allowed out of the streets. People might get burned.

This talk of terrorists has nearly overwhelmed the greatest good news of all. The Cons have a health care "reform" bill of their very own now! Of course, if you have a pre-existing condition, you're fucked, despite all that lovely talk from Cons earlier about how folks shouldn't be turned down for having pre-existing conditions. Oh, and if your state has awesome protections for consumers, you can bet your plans won't, since the Cons' bill lets insurers choose the states with the worst regulations. Oh, and if you really, really wanted bipartisanship, you ain't getting it with this bill, because the Cons didn't include a single, solitary Dem idea, not even one of the 80% of them the Cons claimed they agreed with.

Otherwise, I'm sure it'll be awesome, although we won't know until the rest of it's made public. I can't hardly wait.

Elsewhere in health care reform stupidity, Blue Dogs are rooting for failure (what a shocker, I know) and Mary Landrieu's still a fucking moron.

But at least the cavalry's finally arrived for the public option: Obama's political operation's pushing hard for it.

We're in the home stretch, my darlings. We might even see reform before we're old, gray and on Medicare. Just don't hold your breath, because that might be considered a pre-existing condition...

But Really, They're Not Racists: The I've Lost Count Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:01:00 +0000

Well, it might be xenophobia combined with racism in this case, but it's despicable either way:

On Sunday, U.S. media outlets reported that for the first time in 27 years, an American had won the New York City Marathon. Meb Keflezighi was born in Eritrea, “growing up in a hut with no electricity.” He and his family moved to Italy when he was 10 years old, and came to the United States two years later. Keflezighi “began running in junior high in San Diego, then went on to star at UCLA.” He said he it was with “big honor and pride” that he wore the USA jersey while running in the marathon.

[snip]

However, CNBC Sports Business Reporter Darren Rovell doesn’t think Keflezighi deserves all this praise because when his mother gave birth to him, she wasn’t in the U.S. Rovell wrote a column yesterday saying that Keflezighi’s victory wasn’t “as good as it sounds” because Keflezighi is an immigrant, and this fact “takes away from the magnitude of the achievement the headline implies”:

Given our disappointing results, embracing Keflezighi is understandable. But Keflezighi’s country of origin is Eritrea, a small country in Africa. He is an American citizen thanks to taking a test and living in our country.

Nothing against Keflezighi, but he’s like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league.

Around noon today, Rovell posted a “convoluted sort-of apology” clarifying yesterday’s piece, writing, “Let me be clear: Meb Keflezighi is an American and any suggestion otherwise is wrong.” He now granted Keflezighi’s win legitimacy only because the runner was “brought up through the American system”:

I said that Keflezighi’s win, the first by an American since 1982, wasn’t as big as it was being made out to be because there was a difference between being an American-born product and being an American citizen. Frankly I didn’t account for the fact that virtually all of Keflezighi’s running experience came as a US citizen. I never said he didn’t deserve to be called American. [...]

It turns out, Keflezighi moved to the United States in time to develop at every level in America. So Meb is in fact an American trained athlete and an American citizen and he should be celebrated as the American winner of the NYC Marathon. That makes a difference and makes him different from the “ringer” I accused him of being. Meb didn’t deserve that comparison and I apologize for that.

How long does someone have to be in the U.S. and go through the American “system” to be counted as legitimate?

Long enough that fucktard xenophobic racist assclowns count you as legitimate after they get their asses beaten for their dumbfuckery, it would appear.

The cantina believes that if you're an American citizen for five minutes or five hundred years, you're an American, and free drinks are available for any American who manages to end a long dry spell. USA! USA!

As for the aforementioned assclown, your prize is in the back. When you're done scrubbing the bathrooms, there's some rather disgusting drains that require your attention.

You can bring Bruce "Brown People" Ash with you.

Happy Hour Discurso

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:29:00 +0000

Today's opining on the public discourse.

I don't understand cats any better than I understand Cons. At lunch, when all I was doing was reading, she wanted nothing to do with me. Now that I have to type, she wants to be right in the way of the keyboard.

There's got to be something in the evolutionary history of the feline brain that explains this. I'm afraid nothing much will ever explain Cons.

Today's election day, and there's several races around the country that might be worth a mention. Oddly enough, Cons are focused on the races they're likely to win, not the ones where they're likely to get their arses handed to them on a platter, complete with parsley garnish:

While pundits have obsessed over the special election in New York, they’ve completely ignored another race that evidences a progressive resurgence. Today, voters in California’s 10th congressional district will go to the polls to elect a member of congress to replace former Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), who was brought into the Obama Administration to serve as the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security.

As The Nation’s John Nichols notes, CA-10 is a far more competitive district than NY-23...

[snip]

Despite the competitiveness of his district, Democrat John Garamendi leads Republican David Harmer by ten points in the latest polling.

What makes Garamendi’s lead all the more impressive is his progressive stances. While CA-10 was previously held by a Democrat, Tauscher legislated as a centrist.

[snip]

Garamendi, on the other hand, is an unabashed liberal. He is a strong supporter not only of a public option, but of a single-payer Medicare-for-all health care system, supports the creation of an exit strategy from Afghanistan, and actually defeated the hand-picked candidate for the Democratic endorsement.

If he is elected, and he likely will be, it will mark a dramatic leftward shift in CA-10. But with all the media coverage of NY-23, most Americans may never know that.

Funny how Cons and their media lapdogs only think it's newsworthy if they're not losing, innit?

They're apparently terrified, though, because they're resorting to intimidation to win:

The teabaggers are turning to threats and intimidation out there in NY-23 land.

Elizabeth Benjamin writes in the NY Daily News:

It's getting ugly out there.

I just got off the phone with former state Democratic Chairwoman June O'Neill, who informed me the police had been called to at least two polling sites in St. Lawrence County due to overzealous electioneering (O'Neill called it "voter intimidation") by Doug Hoffman supporters.

"We've gotten reports that people are standing there, covered with Hoffman stickers and yelling anti-choice stuff at voters," said O'Neill, a St. Lawrence native who has been running the party's GOTV effort for Bill Owens in NY-23.

"Apparently, there's some woman claiming to be a commissioner," O'Neill continued.

"Commissioner of what, I don't know. She's from Texas, I think, and she won't leave."
"This is not the way we roll in the North Country."'

O'Neill also said she had received anecdotal reports of problems at polling sites in Gouverneur, which is Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava's hometown. But she couldn't immediately confirm this.

Stay classy, Teabaggers. Stay classy.

Of course, they're not relying on intimidation alone. They're also investing heavily in the ol' right-wing lies:

Earlier today, the Hoffman campaign and conservative bloggers threw a fit over a very nefarious accusation: That somebody had slashed the tire of a Hoffman poll-watcher's pickup truck.

"Hoffman Poll Watcher Has Tires Slashed," blared Red State, with photos of the truck and its flat tire. And Hoffman himself chimed in.

"We just had a report that one of our pollsters in Clinton County just had their tires slashed," Hoffman said. "So I think the Democrats are doing everything they possibly can to steal this election away from the 23rd District."

However, the Wall Street Journal reports that the local police captain said there's another explanation: "This was not a tire slashing--this was some guy who drove over a bottle and cut his tire."

Isn't that just typical Con? Fuck yourself up by being stupid and then blame it on Dems. These are truly sad, sad people.

But, of course, they're not relying on intimidation and playing the victim, but resorting to the old ACORN zombie lie as well:

OK, here's what should be the nail in the coffin for conservative claims that ACORN is poised to steal the New Jersey governor's race through rampant voter fraud.

Brian Kettenring, an ACORN spokesman, tells TPMmuckraker that the much-maligned group has conducted absolutely no political or voter registration activity in the state during the 2009 cycle. And Kettenring added that ACORN had done very little such work during the 2008 cycle.

You know how pathetic these fucktards are? Pathetic enough that they're getting spanked hard by an actual conservative:

I've read conservative blogger Rick Moran periodically over the years, and while he's very conservative, I tend to think he's someone I could at least have a reasonable conversation with. His blog is called "Right Wing Nuthouse" -- which doesn't exactly scream "sensible moderation" -- but Moran's content isn't as unhinged as the name might suggest.

A post he had yesterday on "anti-reason conservatives" was especially interesting. Moran sees his fellow conservatives throwing a fit about the Republican Party, and desperately trying to drag it sharply to the far-right, and he seems to think they're making a terrible mistake.

What is it that possesses certain conservatives to fool themselves so spectacularly into believing that they can create a majority out of a minority?

That kind of alchemy hasn't been seen since Nostradamus tried to turn lead into gold. In the case of far right conservatives who think that they can turn their meager numbers into a ruling majority all by themselves, the disconnect from reality would normally call for an intervention -- except they reject anything from anybody who doesn't agree with them 100%. [...]

The recent Gallup poll showing that 40% of Americans see themselves as "conservative" was leapt upon by these morons as "proof" that their brand of anarcho-conservatism dominates the political landscape. Would that it were true. The fact that there are a dozen different definitions of "conservative" depending on where you live doesn't seem to penetrate. And the pogrom they wish to carry out against "moderates" who agree with them on 90% of the issues they hold dear but fail their ever more spastic "litmus tests" guarantees Democratic dominance for the foreseeable future.

To clarify, Moran doesn't seem to be arguing for a more moderate GOP. Rather, I get the sense that he's simply opposed to the coordinated purge of anyone who isn't entirely right-wing on everything from the Republican ranks.

I hope more conservatives like Mr. Moran come out of the woodwork with paddles in hand. But not too soon - I mean, it's nice that the Teabaggers are helping us win:

So, any chance the Tea Party crowd will feel satiated, content in knowing they proved their point? Fat chance.

In what could be a nightmare scenario for Republican Party officials, conservative activists are gearing up to challenge leading GOP candidates in more than a dozen key House and Senate races in 2010.

Conservatives and tea party activists had already set their sights on some of the GOP's top Senate recruits -- a list that includes Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida, former Rep. Rob Simmons in Connecticut and Rep. Mark Kirk in Illinois, among others.

But their success in Tuesday's upstate New York special election, where grass-roots efforts pushed GOP nominee Dede Scozzafava to drop out of the race and helped Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman surge into the lead on the eve of Election Day, has generated more money and enthusiasm than organizers ever imagined.

Activists predict a wave that could roll from California to Kentucky to New Hampshire and that could leave even some GOP incumbents -- Utah Sen. Bob Bennett is one -- facing unexpectedly fierce challenges from their right flank.

"I would say it's the tip of the spear," said Dick Armey, the former GOP House majority leader who now serves as chairman of FreedomWorks, an organization that has been closely aligned with the tea party movement. "We are the biggest source of energy in American politics today."

"What you're going to see," said Armey, "is moderates and conservatives across the country in primaries."

And there's not much party leaders can do about it.

After spectacular failures in 2006 and 2008, Republican officials resisted calls to move the party towards the middle, but they nevertheless recruited candidates intended to have fairly broad appeal. Now they're finding an enraged, uncompromising, right-wing base that will settle for nothing short of everything. If that means losing elections and driving moderates from the ranks, so be it.

I feel a letter coming on.

Dear Teabaggers: thank you for driving out all of the Cons that could in any way seem tempting to right-leaning moderates. It might take a few election cycles, but once you've managed to turn the Con contingent in Congress into a mass of batshit frothing insane fucktards who appear to be nothing more than clowns in suits, voters with 28% brain function or better will come screaming to the Dems, or at worst moderate third-party candidates. Without you, those same people might've been continued falling for Con con games. And so, I wish to take this opportunity to thank you sincerely for all the work you've done to help ensure a Democratic majority for many years to come. Sincerely, Dana Hunter.

And here's the sweetener for some already sweet tea:

This finding from the new CNN poll is buried deep in CNN’s article, but it’s striking. According to the network’s polling director, Keating Holland, the internals show that a majority of southerners thinks Obama has done a better job than native son Bush:

Fifty-seven percent say Obama has been a better president than George W. Bush; only a third say Bush’s track record was better.

“Compared to Obama, Bush does fairly well among southerners and rural voters. But even in those categories, a majority still says Obama has done a better job than Bush,” says Holland.

Obama’s numbers have generally been far worse among southerners: A recent Research 2000 poll for Daily Kos found that Obama’s favorability rating in the south is a meager 28%. Another recent survey found that a majority of southerners either don’t believe Obama was born in the United States or are not sure.

According to CNN, though, a majority of southerners still prefers Obama’s performance to that of Bush — yet another measure of how abysmally unpopular the former president remains.

Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous.

Quote o' the Day: Judge Alex Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:13:00 +0000

Yes, I watch judge shows whilst working on ye olde blogging. And yes, sometimes it's worth it.

Judge Alex: The court system can't fix stupid.

No, indeed.

Evvil Halloween Candy! Eeeevvviiiilllll!

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:49:00 +0000

I know, Halloween's over. But I'm sure some bags are still full of candy, and stupidity like this is everlasting:

First up from the God Machine this week is Halloween-related news from TV preacher Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. In a truly bizarre piece, CBN published fears from Kimberly Daniels about Halloween, which, I assure you, was not a parody.

During Halloween, time-released curses are always loosed. A time-released curse is a period that has been set aside to release demonic activity and to ensnare souls in great measure ...

During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches.

I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference.

The CBN piece, which was eventually removed from the site out of embarrassment, went on to say, "While the lukewarm and ignorant think of these customs as 'just harmless fun,' the vortexes of hell are releasing new assignments against souls. Witches take pride in laughing at the ignorance of natural men (those who ignore the spirit realm).... The danger of Halloween is not in the scary things we see but in the secret, wicked, cruel activities that go on behind the scenes." These "scary things" include, according to the article, "orgies between animals and humans," "animal and human sacrifices," and "sacrificing babies to shed innocent blood."

My friend the Rev. Barry W. Lynn noted, "I've heard of the devil being in the details, but to think he's lurking inside a Snickers bar is a little too much. Pat Robertson has always peddled some scary stuff, but this is over the top."

Consider something. If this kind of over-the-top idiocy was spouted by, oh, say, UFO buffs or some little cult in a compound in Buttfuck, Nowhere, then they'd be candidates for commitment to an insane asylum or a federal raid, or possibly both. But they're Christians, so they're considered by the majority to be not only sane, but privy to the secrets of God hisownself.

I'm not sure which is more insane - the "witches have cursed our candy!" crowd or the apologists who expect us to take this bullshit seriously.

Your Daily Dose of Health Care Reform Stupidity

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:15:00 +0000

Ah, smell that stupidity! So burning and fresh!

Virginia Foxx wants us all to know that health care reform is the most dangerous thing evah - more dangerous than "any terrorist right now in any country." I guess that means we can stop diving under our beds when Cons scream "letting the terrorists win!" now. Because, you know, the possibility of reforming our horrible health care system is, like, really scary.

Meanwhile, the GOP's loving Michele Bachmann's teaparty plans. Apparently, fear of reform has driven them into the arms of the truly batshit insane. Or perhaps they're just eager for the opportunity to gaze deeply into the eyes of unhinged right-wing frothers. No, really, right into the eyes - because Bachmann's cunning plans include "find[ing] members of Congress, look[ing] at the whites of their eyes and say[ing], 'Don't take away my healthcare.'" How touching.

How unhinged are Cons getting over health care reform? So unhinged that Sen. Orrin Hatch, who started the summer as a relatively sane Con, is finishing it sounding like a candidate for the asylum. I think he's had a wee bit o' a psychotic break - or he's trying to shake some Teabaggers down for money.

If you missed John Boehner's weekly address on Saturday, do go indulge. It's the height of Con comedy. They does too has their own plan!

For example, just a few days after conceding there is no GOP alternative reform proposal, the House Minority Leader now believes there is a rival health care plan after all.

"We first released our health care plan in June, and over the last six months, we have introduced at least eight bills that, taken together, would implement this blueprint."

I see. Take a brief printout with some talking points, combine it with eight unrelated pieces of weak legislation -- not one of which has been endorsed by the party's leadership -- throw it in a blender without a coherent policy structure, and viola! House Republicans have both a "plan" and a "blueprint."

And to think I questioned the seriousness with which the House GOP took policy matters. Don't I feel embarrassed.

Is my face red? It is? Does that have anything to do with the laughing fit I just had? Oh, it does. Imagine that.

Harry Reid either didn't see Boehner's babble or he wasn't impressed, because he's being downright sarcastic about the Cons' plan:

A source forwards me the letter that Reid sent to dozens of GOP colleagues, to be released this afternoon. It says current Dem Senate versions of the bill are publicly available, and adds:

While the two health care reform plans that are serving as the main building blocks for the merged bill have been publicly available for quite some time, I would note that the Republican leadership’s health care plan remains a secret, unless perhaps it does not exist.

Nice one.

John Conyers got in his own zing, saying Obama's been listening to all the wrong people. Also a nice one.

Meanwhile, Joe Lieberman's standing alone against the world, and wonders why the world won't get out of his way. We wonder why he's such a fucktard. Possibly it's because it makes him "feel relevant."

His chutzpah's nothing compared to the insurance company that raised its premiums, then begged its gouged customers for help in defeating health care reform. Awesome.

Single payer may seem all but dead, but Kucinich et all are making one final Hail Mary pass. Lots of numbers at the link if you want to help them out.

Here's a set of charts explaining just how outrageous our health care costs are compared to other countries.

And, finally, sweet poetic justice:

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior policy adviser to Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign, “remains unemployed — and his COBRA health coverage is running out,” the Washington Post reports. “Irony of ironies, it gets worse. Holtz-Eakin, who is about to start shopping for insurance on the individual market, is 51. And he has one of those pesky ‘preexisting conditions’ that insurance companies often cite in denying coverage”:

Holtz-Eakin said he’s been paying about $1,000 a month to extend the private health insurance he received on McCain’s campaign through the government’s COBRA program, but that will expire in a few months. This is the first time in his life he has not had employer-provided health coverage. “I worry about where I go next in the way many Americans do,” he said.

'Scuse me a tick, won't you?

HA HA HA HA SNICKER SNORT HA HA HA MWAH HA HA HEE HEE HO HO HA HA HA THAT'S FUCKING PRICELESS! HEE HEE HEE

I loves me some poetic justice.

Happy Hour Discurso

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:04:00 +0000

Today's opining on the public discourse.

It's special election time! Which means it's special stupidity time, as well. NJ gubernatorial hopeful Chris Christie's apparently decided a plagiarism blitz is just the thing to help push him over the finish line in first place. He forgot the cardinal rule: do not fuck with the Pythons, because the Pythons will fuck you up:

Chris Christie could soon be facing legal action from some very illustrious people: Monty Python.

This comes after the Christie campaign used footage of a sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus, without having sought permission, for a Web video. The video has since been taken down, but was preserved by Monty Python and given to the Huffington Post.

[snip]

"It is totally outrageous that a former US Attorney knows so little about the law that he thinks he can rip off people," said [Terry] Jones. "On the other hand -- another of Bush's legal appointees was Alberto Gonzales and he didn't seem to know much about the law either."

Game, set and match to Jones. Zap!

Not content to stop at ripping off the Pythons, Christie's campaign also swiped stock footage - and failed to cover up all of the anti-theft watermarks. Awesome. I'm seeing a pattern here. You'd think a former AG wouldn't be such a stupid thief, but he is a Con, after all.

In New York's 23rd, Republican Dede Scozzafava got driven from the field by the teabagging masses. She's repaid the favor by endorsing her Democratic opponent. Not only that, she's campaigned beside him, and now taped a robocall for him. Something tells me she really doesn't want to see Hoffman win.

This might be because Hoffman is an insane jackass who claims Glenn Beck as his mentor:

Conservative blogger Charles Johnson of the site Little Green Footballs reported yesterday that Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate in the NY-23 special election, signed a pledge to uphold Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project principles in Congress. The signed pledge is available online, and Hoffman touts his endorsement from the 9/12 organization on his website. Like the lobbyist-planned tea parties, the 9/12 Project is a creation of Beck, used to go after Beck’s liberal enemies and to organize hateful anti-Obama rallies.

Although there is a groundswell of far right tea party and Beck-inspired candidates running for office in 2010, very few Republicans running for Congress or Governor have signed the 9/12 pledge. Noting that he signed a document pledging his “sacred honor” to uphold Beck’s list of values and principles, Johnson aptly deems Hoffman “The Glenn Beck candidate.”

[snip]

But the 9/12 pledge isn’t the only pandering Hoffman has done to secure Beck’s enthusiastic support. Today on his radio program, Beck continued to nudge Hoffman to be more conservative. After being prodded by Beck to say climate change is not caused by human activity, Hoffman announced, “Well, I think there’s a lot of debate on there. I don’t believe that it’s totally manmade.” Beck cohost Pat Gray praised Hoffman’s lurch to the right, noting “he’s getting stronger every second.” Beck chimed in, agreeing, “He’s getting stronger, there it is, every second.” Hoffman then groveled:

PAT: Every second. What about

HOFFMAN: I have good mentors here.

GLENN: Wait, wait. Wait, wait. Are they mentors that will show –

HOFFMAN: I’m talking about you, Glenn.

My goodness, how touching. I'm surprised they both didn't burst into tears. Could it be that Glenn's out of Vicks?

Voters of NY-23, you have an important choice. You have to decide between a sane Democrat endorsed by the former Republican candidate, or the man whose lips are so firmly attacked to Glenn Beck's arse that he doesn't have time to care what his constituents want or need. Choose accordingly.

Time now for Hypocrites on Parade. Sen. Evan Bayh deserves special mention:

Policymakers should be focusing on economic growth, not deficit reduction. Some "centrists" haven't gotten the message.

Faced with anxiety in financial markets about the huge federal deficit and the potential for it to become an electoral liability for Democrats, the White House and Congressional leaders are weighing options for narrowing the gap, including a bipartisan commission that could force tax increases and spending cuts.

But even the idea of a panel to bridge the partisan divide has run into partisan objections. Many Democrats, including in the White House, are loath to cede such far-reaching decisions to a commission and doubt Republicans' willingness to compromise. And most Republicans remain adamantly opposed to tax increases, leaving the prospects for any bipartisan approach limited at best.

The proponents, however, are pressing for a Senate vote this month. "If we have the same process and the same people, we are going to get the same results," said Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana, who recently met with Mr. Obama to discuss the idea. "The Democratic Party wants to spend more than we can afford; the Republican Party tends to want to cut taxes more than we can afford. So we are stuck."

First, there's no evidence to suggest there is "anxiety in financial markets" about the U.S. budget deficit. The opposite appears to be true.

Second, Evan Bayh recently voted to "reform" the estate tax, cutting taxes for the extraordinarily rich, at a cost of $750 billion over the next decade. To pay for it, he recommended ... nothing. The costs would simply all be added to the deficit. I hope he'll forgive my skepticism about his credibility on the subject of fiscal responsibility.

Deficit concern trolling from the man who voted for tax cuts in an amount that could very nearly pay for the entire health care reform bill. That's just precious.

So is Rep. Joe "Liar!" Wilson, who is complaining about the shortage of the vaccine he voted against funding:

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) says President Obama has endangered American lives by not doing more to alleviate the nation's short supply of H1N1 vaccine. In a new interview with the conservative-leaning CNSNews.com, Wilson says Obama's administration is "solely responsible" for the vaccine shortage, which he said are related to promises America made to donate vaccine to some foreign allies.

From the interview:

"The current administration is solely responsible. They can't blame this on any prior administration," said Wilson. "This is the responsibility of the current administration. They've put the lives of Americans at risk."

Last week, some Democrats predicted that H1N1 could become a line of new line attack of attack on Obama from Republicans. In a release issued on Thursday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee claimed that any criticism of H1N1 policy by the GOP would amount to hypocrisy.

The DCCC pointed to a June vote on a supplementary appropriations bill as evidence. Wilson joined 95% of Republicans and voted against the bill, which contained special funding to combat H1N1 both domestically and internationally.

Cons didn't vote for the bill because, well, they vote against nearly everything Dems try to do. Still, I didn't see Wilson making any valiant attempts to present a stand-alone bill for H1N1 funding. Did you?

As for the Cons' claims that Obama's administration has fucked up the H1N1 response, Steve Benen makes short work of their bullshit.

He also spanks them good and hard despite the "Dems did it, too!" defense:

Washington Post political reporter Perry Bacon, Jr., chatted with readers about a variety of issues today, but one exchange in particular stood out for me.

A reader asked a good question that often goes overlooked: "The filibuster is out of control. Why should 40 Republicans get to veto what the majority wants? Do you think we'll ever get filibuster reform? It wasn't always like this -- filibusters used to be rare."

Bacon's response, in its entirety, read: "The Democrats filibustered lots and lots of things from 2003 to 2007." That was it, the whole response to a highly pertinent question. Nothing about the reform-minded inquiry; nothing about the relevant history.

[snip]

Perhaps now's a good time to republish this chart from Norm Ornstein.

If you're having trouble making out the years, note that as recently as the 1960s, filibusters were rare (and as it turns out, largely inconsequential). The number spiked in the last two years of Clinton's presidency, and then spiked again after Democrats won back Congress in 2006. The chart doesn't include the current Congress, but we know all too well that the tactic is now an assumed hurdle for practically every bill and nominee.

Is Bacon right that Democrats "filibustered lots and lots of things from 2003 to 2007"? It depends, I suppose, on how one defines "lots and lots" -- the differences between those Democratic minorities and the current GOP minority are quantitative and qualitative, and it's irresponsible to argue that the two are comparable, or worse, identical.

Let's not pretend the Con foot-stomping can in any way be compared to what Dems did. I think the little spike thingies on the chart demonstrate the difference quite nicely.

Remember when Huckabee went on Faux News begging viewers to sign a petition, which redirected them to his very own PAC? Looks like the subsequent flap hasn't stopped him from using the information collected for his own ends:

Huck PAC now sending petition signers emails asking them to phone bank for Republicans. A Media Matters for America employee who signed Huckabee's petition at balancecutsave.com received an email on November 1 from Huck PAC asking people to participate in a phone bank for Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell and congressional candidates David Harmer and Doug Hoffman. The email says that "[w]e need to help get each of these fine men elected" and asks recipients to "take a moment now to make phone calls to voters"...

I'm sure Faux News will be all over that scandal. Any minute now. Yup. Cuz they're a legit news outlet and stuff.

And, finally, a rather blackly humorous "tomato-tomahto" moment:

Regina Dinwiddie, the Kansas anti-abortion activist who set up an eBay auction to benefit the suspect in the George Tiller murder, tells TPMmuckraker in a phone interview that she's angry that eBay pulled her items -- and that she believes they did not glorify violence, but rather "glorify the end of a very violent man."

The "very violent man" didn't die quietly of heart failure. He was shot to death by the man they're now auctioning outrageous anti-abortion "art" and incitements to further murder in order to defend. In other words, they're glorifying violence.

And eBay's not letting them get away with it. Imagine that.

The Writer is Out

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 08:12:00 +0000

Sincerest apologies, my darlings, but your cantinera is buggering off for some quality time with the boys, leaving you to fend for yourselves. Well, aside from posting the link to COTEB, o' course. And possibly Happy Hour on Monday, depending on whether I can sneak out for a few hours.

As a writer, I have learned that when your characters demand a weekend alone with you, you give them a weekend alone. So it goes.

Regular fare returns on Tuesday. In the meantime, enjoy all of the glorious Elitist Bastardry Captain George has ready for ye.

Ye Have Until Midnight, Mateys

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Captain George be keepin' the gangplank down 'till Midnight tonight. Ye still have time to get aboard wi' yer treasures! And there be plenty o' berths left, so finish yer drink, grab yer loot, and board ship! Send yer best elitist bastardry to elitistbastardscarnival@gmail.com or ye'll be wishin' ye had!