The closet cases of the media have a new man in a uniform to love

The highly closeted manly-men of media really haven't been the same since George W. Bush took off the flightsuit with the sock-stuffed crotch and revealed himself to be the mean, small little man that the saner among us always knew he was. Now, as Digby reveals, they have a new lust object:

Let me first say that Sgt Crowley is an obviously intelligent person who is very confident in front of the cameras and makes a strong impression in a press conference. He will go far if he chooses to pursue a career in public life. He is also an intimidating son of a gun, putting the reporters in their places with a steely look and a stern "hold on, let me finish" that was sort of startling.

But the dizzy, gushy adulation on the part of the gasbags is so over the top I'm feeling embarrassed in that "oh no, I walked in on my grandfather watching a porno" kind of way. Dear God.

Lou Dobbs is drooling and smirking, Chris Matthews is (without success) trying to keep that thrill up his leg under control and Roger Simon literally squealed in delight the second the press conference was over. This is the most manly, macho, guys guy they've had the pleasure to pleasure since Junior Bush insulted reporters on a daily basis, and you can tell they've been missing it big time.

I think it's pretty clear that if Obama wants to get the press back on his side he needs to start pushing them around. These boys just love a man who hurts so good.

Here's what my Congressman voted against yesterday

My district is represented by one of the most doctrinaire, vile POS wingnuts in the Congress, Ernest Scott Garrett. Garrett gained his seat through sheer perseverence and has retained it because I live in a district where voters don't pay attention and because the opposition has been one weak candidate after another.

New Jersey's Fifth District was represented by Marge Roukema for 25 years. Roukema was an Olympia Snowe type of Republican -- you know, the kind that would be drummed out of the party today for ideological impurity. But for most of the time she served, the Christofascist Zombie Brigade wing of the Republican Party didn't have quite the stranglehold that it does today, and there were enough people in Bergen County who voted her to offset the wingnuts out in Sussex County, where Ernie makes his home in the same neighborhood as the head of the NJ Ku Klux Klan. Garrett ran against Roukema in the last few primaries of his career, and while he always came in a distant second, he at least got his name out there, so that when Roukema retired, Garrett was the obvious Republican standard-bearer.

NJ-5 is a largely Republican district, but most people are Roukema Republicans. The denser population of Bergen County that often decides these elections is of the "fiscally conservative, socially moderate" ilk. Yes, there are any number of evangelical and other churches in the district, but the six- and seven-figure Wall Streeters in the train towns and the guys who work construction in the others don't spend their lives thinking about how best to punish evil unchaste temptresses who won't keep their legs closed, or whether we should have more Jeebus in school. They're more concerned with the cost of installing lights on the school football field and their kids' test scores than prayer.

Voters in this district are largely party-line voters. If you get the party line in a primary, you tend to win, which is how in the recent primary in my town, a ticket which wasn't run by the entrenched cronies in town defeated the choice of the outgoing mayor who had been in power for nearly three decades. Our voting machines are of the full-screen variety, which means that an entire slate is visible at one time. Voters tend to press the buttons down the line of their chosen political party without thinking. And that is how Ernie Scott Garrett stays in office. If people actually paid attention to what he stands for and how he votes, they'd be horrified.

Here is what he voted against yesterday:

Key provisions of the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, approved by the House on Thursday:

Inspections Food and Drug Administration inspections of food facilities would increase from about once every 10 years to at least annually for high-risk facilities and at least once every three years for facilities deemed a low risk. FDA inspectors will have access to company records.

Registration Food processors, importers and other food handlers must register annually with the FDA and pay a yearly fee of $500 for each food facility.

Recalls The FDA could mandate the recall of tainted foods, instead of relying on food makers to pull items voluntarily.

Safe practices For the first time, the FDA could set standards for safe production of food on farms, as well as require food manufacturers to meet safety standards.

Imports Those importing food to the United States must meet the same safety standards as domestic food producers.

Traceability The secretary of Health and Human Services would be required to identify technology that can be used by food growers, manufacturers and distributors to determine the origin of food and its movement in the supply chain.

Yes, one of the biggest fetophiles in Congress is perfectly OK with children (and pregnant women, for that matter) eating tainted foods.

For those interested in this Congressional POS, the best resource is Matt Fretz, who ran for Garrett's seat as an Independent in 2006, and was often met by voters asking him why he was "running against Marge." Matt is a Roukema Republican, and is utterly disgusted with Ernie Scott Garrett.

"Keep the government away from my Medicare!"

When Barack Obama told the story about a woman saying "Keep the government away from my Medicare" the other day, I figured he was just repeating the old joke, one that's been circulating ever since 1993 to demonstrate just how moronic Americans (in this case older Americans) are about health care. In his column today, Paul Krugman cites an actual example of someone saying this:

At a recent town hall meeting, a man stood up and told Representative Bob Inglis to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.” The congressman, a Republican from South Carolina, tried to explain that Medicare is already a government program — but the voter, Mr. Inglis said, “wasn’t having any of it.”

It’s a funny story — but it illustrates the extent to which health reform must climb a wall of misinformation. It’s not just that many Americans don’t understand what President Obama is proposing; many people don’t understand the way American health care works right now. They don’t understand, in particular, that getting the government involved in health care wouldn’t be a radical step: the government is already deeply involved, even in private insurance.

And that government involvement is the only reason our system works at all.

The key thing you need to know about health care is that it depends crucially on insurance. You don’t know when or whether you’ll need treatment — but if you do, treatment can be extremely expensive, well beyond what most people can pay out of pocket. Triple coronary bypasses, not routine doctor’s visits, are where the real money is, so insurance is essential.

Yet private markets for health insurance, left to their own devices, work very badly: insurers deny as many claims as possible, and they also try to avoid covering people who are likely to need care. Horror stories are legion: the insurance company that refused to pay for urgently needed cancer surgery because of questions about the patient’s acne treatment; the healthy young woman denied coverage because she briefly saw a psychologist after breaking up with her boyfriend.

And in their efforts to avoid “medical losses,” the industry term for paying medical bills, insurers spend much of the money taken in through premiums not on medical treatment, but on “underwriting” — screening out people likely to make insurance claims. In the individual insurance market, where people buy insurance directly rather than getting it through their employers, so much money goes into underwriting and other expenses that only around 70 cents of each premium dollar actually goes to care.

Still, most Americans do have health insurance, and are reasonably satisfied with it. How is that possible, when insurance markets work so badly? The answer is government intervention.

Most obviously, the government directly provides insurance via Medicare and other programs. Before Medicare was established, more than 40 percent of elderly Americans lacked any kind of health insurance. Today, Medicare — which is, by the way, one of those “single payer” systems conservatives love to demonize — covers everyone 65 and older. And surveys show that Medicare recipients are much more satisfied with their coverage than Americans with private insurance.

Still, most Americans under 65 do have some form of private insurance. The vast majority, however, don’t buy it directly: they get it through their employers. There’s a big tax advantage to doing it that way, since employer contributions to health care aren’t considered taxable income. But to get that tax advantage employers have to follow a number of rules; roughly speaking, they can’t discriminate based on pre-existing medical conditions or restrict benefits to highly paid employees.

And it’s thanks to these rules that employment-based insurance more or less works, at least in the sense that horror stories are a lot less common than they are in the individual insurance market.

So here’s the bottom line: if you currently have decent health insurance, thank the government. It’s true that if you’re young and healthy, with nothing in your medical history that could possibly have raised red flags with corporate accountants, you might have been able to get insurance without government intervention. But time and chance happen to us all, and the only reason you have a reasonable prospect of still having insurance coverage when you need it is the large role the government already plays.

I wonder just how many people are aware of what would happen to even the crappy insurance they have now if the government had zero involvement. What do they think would happen if there were even less regulation than there is now; which is a system in which insurance companies can do whatever they want -- drop you if you ever had a mole removed, refuse to cover you because 25 years ago you saw a therapist for a few weeks after a loved one died, deny coverage after an expensive procedure because a paper-pusher in a hospital forgot to dot an "i" on a form. Imagine a system where greed is even more operative than it is now.

I've been appalled at the people who seem to actually believe that the Angry Negro™ in the White House is going to send people door to door throughout America essentially saying "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.". Often it seems that the entire health care debate on the right boils down to "Can't you see that man is a ni-?" Imagine how much better off we, and the entire health care debate, would be if these people could just admit that it's all about Fear of a Black Planet

Faheem Fast Food, Enmore, Sydney

Mixed katta kat $12.00Beef liver and kidney cooked with exotic spicesand traditional Pakistani hot curryI have a theory...Offal is the fat kid in school.All the pretty things - lobster, salmon, scallops, rib eye and rack of lamb - get the instant double-take and the whistle of appreciation. They're the cool kids. Like the tall, blonde and beautiful, they could be wearing a paper bag and still

Word.

I should just stop writing about the Blue Dogs and let Bustednuckles do the heavy lifting.

Speaking of The Crazy....Michelle Malkin Declares Backwards Day to Matt Lauer and he Takes it!

Speaking of the crazy; the bookers at NBC have decided that we haven't lived through enough outrage and crazy, so they decided to book Michelle Malkin with Matt Lauer today. Is it a slow news week or something? Did anything happen that made Malkin worthy of a national platform after the venom she has spewed over the past years. Lauer was clearly over his head on this, which is outrageous in itself. The man has years of experience as a reporter before he became a fluff morning host, so my only conclusion about his paralysis in the face of Malkin is that he is too wedded to the lifestyle that the paycheck brings to rock the boat much. They acted like he was gonna take her apart, but he hardly got a word in edgewise, and as she spewed lies and attacked President and Michelle Obama he didn't demand proof. So, once again NBC has given Malkin a platform to float lies into the American psyche basically unchallenged.

Racial Opportunist, my foot!! Look in the mirror Michelle! Who wrote a book about the internment camps being a GOOD thing? Who had the book challenged by "The Historians' Committee for Fairness," who said that it had not been peer reviewed, and that it's central thesis was ...er...false! On and on....a quick look at Wikipedia would have given them all of the information they needed!

Maybe she has a book out but I'm sure that many KKK members have "books" out as well. Just because she wrote a book, it doesn't mean that what is in it is true. And for some reason, the research department didn't prepare Matt to even question the claims that Malkin made. Just the cover alone is a tip off that its a backwards day book. She takes everything that the Bush administration was accused of, with evidence, and restated it without evidence....hmmmm...and Matt had little to say about this; NBC seems to think this is a ratings getter. I say no, its not! Stop booking crap or I'm going to boycott your sponsors. I already am boycotting Starbucks for giving Morning Joe 10 mil as a representative of what Starbucks stands for? huh? In that case I will avoid Starbucks totally and encourage my friends to do so (more on Joe at a later date.)
I love Maddow and Olbermann on MSNBC, but this void in the morning between the fluff and the Joe is really difficult to parse. Keep the fluff fluffy if you must! keep the idiot Joe in a janitor closet and give Larry O'donnell his spor, or better, Sam Seder and Marc Maron! If you cant even properly research and interview the crazies, don't have them on in the morning...or invite Rachel to do the interview!!...now, that would be news and ratings! Even just someone who knows something would be preferable to this.

I, for one, am going to let republican Today Producer Steve Capus as well as the Head of NBC News, Jim Bell, know that I don't want this type of fringe character on the morning show, or any of the shows that I watch on their network. Her booking is nothing more than a silly stab at ratings, because men seem to like her looks, and they are hoping for some sparks to fly with Matt . It didn't happen and I wonder why he isn't tired of this. It was pathetic, and the fringe Malkin crowd feel like she "owned" him because he didn't challenge her insane claims. Oh well.....

c/p RIP Coco

Wednesday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said

Not that he needs kudos from the likes of me, but today's honoree is Matt Taibbi, for accurately calling the health care debacle in Washington for what it is.

Money quote:

If the Obama administration wanted to pass a real health care bill, they would do what George Bush and Tom DeLay did in the first six-odd years of this decade whenever they wanted to pass some nightmare piece of legislation (ie the Prescription Drug Bill or CAFTA): they would take the recalcitrant legislators blocking their path into a back room at the Capitol, and beat them with rubber hoses until they changed their minds.

The reason a real health-care bill is not going to get passed is simple: because nobody in Washington really wants it. There is insufficient political will to get it done. It doesn’t matter that it’s an urgent national calamity, that it is plainly obvious to anyone with an IQ over 8 that our system could not possibly be worse and needs to be fixed very soon, and that, moreover, the only people opposing a real reform bill are a pitifully small number of executives in the insurance industry who stand to lose the chance for a fifth summer house if this thing passes.

And those guys are who control our government. They always have.

So when Sarah Palin tells us to honor our troops who die for our country and our freedom (I guess the care packages and the fights for veterans benefits that we on the left side of the spectrum have been fighting for are chopped liver), we should ask ourselves just whose freedom she's talking about. Is it ours, or is it the right of insurance company executives to buy that fifth summer house.

I wonder if they pay for their household staffs' health care.

Just sayin' is all

Perhaps if Barack Obama had just gone and danced with the ones what brung him, he wouldn't seem like such a hapless dupe of corporatist Blue Dogs in his own party now.

But instead he listened to that little Napoleon Rahm Emanuel, who put most of them in there. And now the media smells blood in the water and is determined to turn Barack Obama into Carter II: Electric Boogaloo.

Nice work, Rahmmy. Did you get paid to do it?

Maybe it's because you're a moron

Let's juxtapose two news stories, shall we?

1) To whom would Jesus deny health care?

Family Research Council Action President Tony Perkins has unveiled a new hard hitting ad campaign that lays out what he considers two key threats to his view of the American way of life should President Obama's plan become reality namely, rationing and taxpayer funded legal medical procedures like abortion.The TV ad campaign will initially run in five key states including Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana, and Nebraska.

Perkins explains: "In a world of health care rationing, the elderly, the handicapped and the frail are the most likely to lose their lives because care was delayed or denied. Under the government-run plans in England and Canada, the countries' sick and elderly aren't getting the care they need. As a result, their system isn't improving lives but prematurely taking them. Here in the United States, President Obama's rationing would mean that you and I could be denied basic care while our tax dollars are used to underwrite a mother choosing to end the life of her unborn child."

The ad attempts to instill fear in patients, particularly the elderly, falsely asserting that they will face denial of vital treatments and that Obama’s real goal is to deny care to 'our greatest generation' and deny life to 'our future generation.'

2) I guess now we know:

A central Wisconsin father charged with reckless homicide for not taking his dying daughter to a doctor told police that he believed God would heal her and that he thought she was simply sleeping when she became unconscious.

Madeline Neumann died on March 23, 2008, from undiagnosed diabetes on the floor of the family's rural Weston home as people surrounded the 11-year-old girl and prayed. Someone called 911 when she stopped breathing.

Prosecutors contend her father, Dale Neumann, had a legal duty to take his weakened daughter to a doctor. A videotape of his interview with police after her death was shown to jurors during his trial Wednesday before prosecutors rested their case.

Neumann, 47, told the judge that he planned to testify in his defense.

In the interview with Everest Metro Police Department detective Scott Sleeter, Neumann described the weeks leading up to Madeline's death, when he said she was a "little weak and a little slower," something he attributed to puberty. Her condition deteriorated, and by the day before her death, he said, Madeline could not walk or talk.

"We just trusted the Lord for complete healing," he said. "We didn't really sense it was like a life-and-death situation. We figured there was something really fighting in her body. We asked people to join with us in prayer agreement."

Neumann said it never crossed his mind that his daughter might have lost consciousness.

"She was just sleeping," Neumann said. "I didn't believe at all that the Lord would even allow her to pass."

Neumann also told the detective that "sickness is a result of sin" and that his daughter's death had not shaken his faith.

Do you think this story tells us a little about why Tony Perkins and the rest of the Christofascist Zombie Brigade is so against universal health care? Perhaps they too believe that sickness is the result of sin.

Mamak, Haymarket Chinatown, Sydney

Usually it's just me.After a dinner out with friends, as we file out the door, I'll casually say "soooooo... does anyone feel like dessert?"I'm already thinking of options and looking forward to sweet closure when someone, the self-nominated Voice Of Reason will say "Omigod, you're joking aren't you? I'm sooooooo full. I totally couldn't eat another thing."To which I will smile and laugh, "Oh of

The Democrat Party is Eugenic-sists!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

This is what's passing for serious discourse on Capitol Hill regarding the health care bill. This is what happens when a wacky Soylent Green conspiracy theory gains serious traction. Now, thanks to Max Baucus, this "killing senior citizens" meme has gotten so much traction that the so-called public option is now on life support. Sen. Bernie Sanders of course, has the right idea, and it takes a Socialist to publicly say that not only is single payer is the way to go but doing so would immediately streamline an otherwise unwieldy and overly complicated bill that comprises 2000 pages (between the House and Senate versions).

The inmates have taken over the asylum, even though in this particular asylum the inmates are in the minority.

Another Clean Slate Christian™ gets nabbed

Another day, another Republican Christian hypocrite:

A Tennessee lawmaker resigned from the state Senate on Tuesday after his extramarital affair with a 22-year-old intern was revealed by an investigation into an extortion case.

"Due to recent events, I have decided to focus my full attention on my family and resign my Senate seat effective August 10," Republican Sen. Paul Stanley wrote in his resignation letter.

Court records show that Stanley, 47, told agents investigating a blackmail case that he had a sexual relationship with intern McKensie Morrison. Her boyfriend, Joel Watts, is charged with trying to extort $10,000 from Stanley in April in return for explicit photos of Morrison that Stanley had taken.

[snip]

Stanley's legislative proposals were largely focused on pro-business issues, but he also sponsored failed measures to ban gay couples from adopting children. He also spoke out against funding for Planned Parenthood because he said unmarried people should not have sex.

"Whatever I stood for and advocated, I still believe to be true," he said during an interview Tuesday with Memphis radio station WREC-AM. "And just because I fell far short of what God's standard was for me and my wife, doesn't mean that that standard is reduced in the least bit."

I wonder if he went on to say that Jesus died on the cross for him so he knows God has forgiven him. He does, after all, self-identify as an "evangelical Christian."

You know, even if you want to assume for a minute that one guy who was murdered by the government could absorb all the sins of mankind in perpetuity, you'd think that if these people were so aware of how much a Jewish carpenter suffered for them, they would feel a special responsibility to look at the juicy young thing in the miniskirt and then look the other way.

Oh, and another Fun Fact about Rep. Paul Stanley: He is a "financial advisor" to The Stanford Group, the company founded and headed by disgraced and indicted financial swindler Allan Stanford. He even still boasts of this on his web site.

Remind me again why anyone takes Republicans seriously....

(h/t)

Oh, fer cryin' out loud: American Idiots edition

It's one thing to have legitimate disagreements about what health care in America should look like. It's quite another to just pull Scary Stuff out of your ass:

They're going to come to your house and ask you how you want to die? Obama wants too kill old people? What the hell kind of people live in this country? Don't people have ANY gray matter in their crania at all? Do they really just absorb what Rush Limbaugh tells them and not process it at all?

If these people want to be afraid of something, they should be afraid of how the Blue Dogs in Congress are working with the Republicans to pass something that everyone will hate so that the next President of the United States can be named "Sarah Palin." They should take a look at how the Blue Dogs, Rahm Emanuel's bitches every last one of them (and it's starting to look like Obama is too), are even more in the pocket of the insurance companies than the Republicans.

But of course we live in a nation of morons, and even older people, those of the WWII and Korean War generations who REMEMBER when Medicare was signed into law, who don't seem to know that Medicare is a government program. I'll bet they still believe there are welfare queens driving Cadillacs, too. And oh yeah, didja hear that Obama is a Kenyan?

Worst New Flavor

Look, folks, I love True Blood as much as the next person, though Sunday night's episode was one of the most profoundly disturbing hours of television I've ever seen. But I don't care how entrenched in Trash Culture Mutancy you are, this is a bit much:

The once-fictional Tru Blood beverage from the HBO hit series "True Blood" will be coming to life in bottle form this September.

The blood-orange carbonated drink has a slightly tart and lightly sweet flavor that is sure to taste better than the O negative blood consumed by the show's fictional vampires.

Crafted to replicate the appearance of the synthetic blood beverage preferred by the undead in the series, the real-life drink will also be called Tru Blood.

Behatti

alexandra carr

Sotomayor Gets Out of Committee

.oO Dios mio, Atrios is right- the stupid does burn! Oo.

No thanks to the likes of anti-global warming wacko James Inhofe. In fact, only one Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee bothered voting for Judge Sotomayor to give her the up-and-down vote she deserves and that was South Carolina's Lindsey Graham. Otherwise, the split was along party lines, 13-6.

Inhofe decided back in June about a month before the confirmation hearings, that he wouldn’t meet with Sotomayor. He never bothered waiting for her written questionnaire, which was longer and went into more exhaustive detail than in the case of Roberts and Alito. He never bothered reviewing the 3000 or so cases over which Judge Sotomayor had presided as a federal judge. Like a typical Bushbot, he just decided from the gitgo that she wasn't worth even a cursory look.

Inhofe, on the other hand, seems to think that the birthers are on to something and is more afraid of alienating the hard core of Crazy Base World than he is Latino voters that are avoiding the GOP in droves and he proved it by saying of the birthers, “I don’t discourage” the bat shit insane belief that Obama was born in Kenya.

so cute

I cant remember her name but she's so cute!

the color purple

jeremy scott and barbie

Oh god I want this

Teppanyaki, The Ivy, Sydney - Merivale Winter Feast

The diner looks around, confused. "Oh when you said we were going to Teppanyaki, I was expecting a chef doing tricks at our table".I overhear this comment from our dining neighbour. We're all seated at the huge wooden communal table which runs the length of this dim and moody Asian-themed eatery in the Ivy complex. I can only smile wryly at the confusion.Whilst we can see the chefs at work in the

Are the "birthers" simply trying to turn their apocalyptic vision for America into reality?

Bruce Wilson at Talk to Action makes a compelling case that the whole "birther" nonsense is an attempt to fulfill the Christofascist Zombie Brigade's need for someone they can brand as the Antichrist in order to create their sick apocalyptic vision:

Although there are secularized versions of New World Order conspiracy narrative, the conspiracy theory genre is at base a religious one. These YouTube NWO videos tend to associate Barack Obama with the forces of absolute evil, suggesting Obama is either an antichrist or "false prophet" figure or, probably more commonly, that Obama is a key player in a conspiracy to create a world totalitarian system which, in religious versions of the NWO conspiracy narrative, will be led by a murderous antichrist figure soon to dominate the world political stage.

NWO conspiracy theories typically are interwoven with Christian apocalyptic End-Time narratives predicting the immanent arrival, on the world stage, of a satanic world ruler who will come to power promising peace but instead implement a savage and bloody reign of tyranny.

Then, either a) Christians will be "raptured" up to heaven after which Jesus Christ will return to Earth to overthrow the evil regime or, in an increasingly common version of the narrative, b) Christians themselves will take up arms, overthrow the evil world regime, cleanse the world of all evil including ideological foes, and implement a thousand-year utopian Biblical theocracy. The latter doctrine is promoted by Sarah Palin's key Alaska church, the Wasilla Assembly of God.

More here...

This is why we dismiss the former governor of Alaska at our peril. She does a good job of hiding her militia/Jeebofascist leanings, but when you put together her looneytunes church, her love of guns, and her affiliation with the Alaska Independent Party, and throw in a soupçon of Republican Male Lust, and mix it with Americans' economic fatigue, anything can happen.

And there are at least seventeen of these adherents to the "birther" narrative in Congress even as we speak.

No one does hilarity like Shatner

Watch this before YouTube takes it down:

It's like Phil Rizzuto on batshit crazy pills.

The best comment on the former governor of Alaska, and the fantasy object of conservative men everywhere, comes from Gawker:

It's like Peggy Noonan, Jack London, and William Faulkner wandered into the woods with three buttons of peyote and one typewriter, and only this speech emerged.

And she wrote this speech! In advance, on paper! What does any of it mean? It is amazing. Twenty years ago she could competently descibe a dog race, three years ago she could articulate a position on the abortion issue, and this weekend she composed a resignation speech by throwing culture war stock phrases into a hat and dumping it upside down on a copy of The Paranoid Style in American Politics.

Or maybe she, like many of us speculated about George W. Bush, has Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome.

(UPDATE: Embed changed because sure enough, YouTube took the other one down.)

Sold down the river

So how do YOU feel to now know for certain that Mr. Brilliant was right along, that the Democrats exist only to make us THINK we have a choice? How do YOU feel to now know for certain that your Senator doesn't represent you, he or she represents the insurance companies that shoveled boatloads of cash into their pockets? How do YOU feel to know that there is absolutely no one in government who gives a shit about whether you live or die? How does it feel to know that the only thing these so-called "public servants" care about is lining their pockets?

We always KNEW this about the Republicans. We've deluded ourselves for far too long that the Democrats are any different. Marginally less batshit crazy, yes. Marginally less in thrall to the Christofascist Zombie Brigade, yes. But that is no longer enough.

Congratulations, citizens! You are now living in the Corporate States of America:

After weeks of secretive talks, a bipartisan group in the Senate edged closer Monday to a health care compromise that omits two key Democratic priorities but incorporates provisions to slow the explosive rise in medical costs, officials said.

These officials said participants were on track to exclude a requirement many congressional Democrats seek for businesses to offer coverage to their workers. Nor would there be a provision for a government insurance option, despite President Barack Obama's support for such a plan.

The three Democrats and three Republicans from the Senate Finance Committee were considering a tax of as much as 35 percent on very high-cost insurance policies, part of an attempt to rein in rapid escalation of costs. Also likely to be included in any deal was creation of a commission charged with slowing the growth of Medicare through recommendations that would take effect automatically unless overturned by Congress.

"We're going to get agreement here," Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the Finance Committee chairman, said Monday. "The group of six really wants to get to 'yes.'"

Obama has outlined two broad goals for legislation he is struggling to win from Congress: expansion of health insurance coverage to millions who lack it, and reining in increases in costs.

Like bills drafted by Democrats, the proposal under discussion by the six Finance Committee members would bar insurance companies from denying coverage to any applicant. Nor could insurers charge higher premiums on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions.

Note how it doesn't say whether insurers can drop you if you become sick.

Here's how Max Baucus serves his real constituency.

Because Bruce Boxleitner hasn't worked since the first one

Do we REALLY need a sequel to TRON?

And am I the only person who kept expecting the 3-D Homer Simpson to show up?

(h/t)

EXTRA: House of Representatives Retains Sanity, However Briefly

While Republican congressmen were busy questioning Barack Obama's citizenship, Congressional Democrats got 378 votes for a resolution "recognizing and celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the entry of Hawaii into the Union as the 50th State":

Whereas August 21, 2009, marks the 50th Anniversary of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's signing of Proclamation 3309, which admitted Hawaii into the Union in compliance with the Hawaii Admission Act, enacted by the United States Congress on March 18, 1959;

Whereas Hawaii is `a place like no other, with a people like no other' and bridges the mainland United States to the Asia-Pacific region;

Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii;

Whereas Hawaii has contributed to the diversity of Congress in electing the first Native Hawaiian member of Congress, Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana`ole, the first Asian-American member, Hiram Fong, the first woman of color, Patsy T. Mink, and the first Native Hawaiian to serve in the Senate, Daniel Kahikina Akaka;

Whereas Hawaii is an example to the rest of the world of unity and positive race relations;

Whereas Pearl Harbor is a strategic military base for the U.S. in the Pacific and also a historical site for the Nation, being the location of the December 7, 1941, surprise Japanese aerial attack that thrust the Nation into World War II;

Whereas Hawaii is home to 1/4 of the endangered species in the United States;

Whereas Hawaii has 8 national parks, which preserve volcanoes, complex ecosystems, a Hansen's disease colony, and other sites of historical and cultural significance;

Whereas Kilauea ranks among the most active volcanoes on Earth;

Whereas President Bush nominated the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage Centre for consideration to the World Heritage List;

Whereas Hawaii has produced musical legends ranging from traditional favorites such as Alfred Apaka, Don Ho, and Genoa Keawe, to Hawaii renaissance performers such as Eddie Kamae, Raymond Kane, Gabby Pahinui, Israel Kamakawiwo`ole, the Brothers Cazimero, and the Beamer Brothers, and continuing on to contemporary stars such as Keali`i Reichel, Ledward Kaapana, Jake Shimabukuro, and Raiatea Helm;

Whereas Hawaii is culturally rich, as the Hawaiian culture has been protected through Hawaiian language immersion schools, hula competitions such as the Merrie Monarch Festival, canoeing voyages undertaken by vessels like the Hokule`a, and the continuing historic preservation of Hawaiian traditions;

Whereas the Hawaii Statehood Commission has held a Joint Session of the Hawaii State Legislature in honor of statehood and will be celebrating this milestone with a public discussion and with the arrival of the USS Hawaii; and

Whereas for all of these reasons Hawaii is a truly unique State: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives recognizes and celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the entry of Hawaii into the Union as the 50th State.

Even wingnut di tutti wingnuts Ernie Scott Garrett of our own NJ-5 voted for this. No one voted no, but 35 Republicans and 20 Democrats did not vote.

It would be tempting to believe that this will put the "birther" nonsense back in the hands of "Crazy Eileen" and other seers of gargoyles where it belongs. But as Mike Stark found out, the Republicans aren't going to abandon their lunatic base that easily:

(h/t)

Hot Dogging It

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

Before serving hot dogs under her mean little tent and otherwise acting as if she was running for political office instead of abdicating one, Sarah Palin had given her farewell address to the people of Alaska. It will not be remembered as being on a par with Washington's or Eisenhower's farewell addresses and it contained no surprises at all. In his farewell address, the father of our country warned against, among other things, a two party system, permanent foreign alliances, an overly powerful military establishment and public indebtedness. Eisenhower famously warned us about the rise of the military industrial complex.

The outgoing Governor's own farewell address was a typical Palin pity party, with the Klondike's Karen Valentine piously acknowledging the virtue of the First Amendment before saying in the next breath to just not be truthful when it comes to me and my own or my successor and his own. Or any Republicans, while you're at it.

Firing verbal panic shots at unnamed people, Palin lambasted the press that has only elevated and kept her on a national level regardless of her countless idiocies and certain Hollywood "starlets" like Ashley Judd. And nowhere in the mainstream media was it brought up that her all-too-obvious hypocrisy was made screamingly obvious by her still playing the part of the Ultimate Alaskan (Channeling some backwoods version of Descartes, she said, "We eat, therefore we hunt" as if the only meat she and her children eat is killed with her bare hands) while scuttling out of office to pursue bigger, better and greener pastures far beyond the Bering Strait.

Likewise, the mainstream media never bothered picking up on her even more glaring hypocrisy in calling out those who “seem to just be hell-bent on maybe tearing down our nation, perpetuating some pessimism and suggesting American apologetics.”

How soon Palin and the liberal MSM have forgotten the days when Palin and the First Dude belonged to a radical fringe organization called the Alaskan Independence Party, a group of America-separatist lunatics with which Palin and her husband didn't sever the final ties until after John McCain tapped her to be his running mate. But this is the same Blue Meanie press that's responsible for the partisan bitterness that led to her leaving office so she wouldn't be a lame duck Governor.

Barring some Svengali signal that's amplified by about a half a dozen communications satellites orbiting earth and beamed back down 24/7 to Wingnuttia, it's impossible to fathom Palin's appeal to an alarmingly large segment of the population. Ignorance alone offers few answers as well as the cult of personality. Cults are eventually discredited by their former acolytes when the truth comes out. Yet the MSM still follows this woman and every member of her immediate and extended family as if they're some Republican version of the Grateful Dead.

Part of the answer to her sick enduring popularity and illusion of relevance is that Palin, as during the McCain campaign, appealed to those xenophobic, gun-toting freakazoids and Christopaths from whom every major politician that's come down the pike can't seem to wean themselves. Fearful of incurring the wrath of the NRA and snake-charmers lobbies, McCain, Romney, Clinton and to an extent even Obama gingerly sucked up to these psychopaths and tried to present themselves as gun-toting Jesus lovers.

But these two lunatic fringes aren't as stupid as they look and they realized they weren't getting the real deal. Then Sarah Palin came shuffling out of Wasilla early last September and the minute she opened her lipsticked mouth, thirty odd sixes and twelves gauges were getting fired into the air and the canvas tent dwelling religious reformers knew they were getting the genuine article.

Little did they know way back last fall, however, that Palin would cut and run when it was politically expedient for her to do so after the press would yeast her up into this conservative superstar. While mealy-mouthing about the "Real America", Palin was busy plastering her well-toned, postpartum physique with designer outfits and shoes and cosmetics that would run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in the mercifully brief time she was actually attached to McCain's camp.

She's plainly a smalltown girl with more than Big City ambitions and the crowning irony is that her supporters who had seen her govern their state for barely two and a half years will be lucky to catch a glimpse of her while she pretends to promote Alaska and its interests, something she had a much better shot at doing while she was still its Chief Executive.

Essentially, she's a political Mary Tyler Moore, flinging her tuque in the streets of a bustling Washington, DC and singing how she'll make it, after all while being ignored by the passersby. And the local yokels who showed up to support her yesterday still haven't caught on that they're supporting someone who would've loved nothing more than to see Alaska secede from the Union and, failing her overarching ambitions, publicly scraped right under their noses the moose shit of Wasilla for good off her snow shoes.

Bankstown Bites Food Festival 2009: Discovery Food Tours

The Bankstown Bites Festival is always a calendar highlight. This year the Festival was set-up further down South Terrace, enabling better traffic flow and crowd management. "Fast Ed" Ed Halmagyi was the feature chef this year and stalls sold a range of foods from Korean to Peruvian, and German to Lebanese.Traditional Korean drummingChicken skewersChurrosMy favourite aspect of the festival is, of

At last someone mentions the real problem with the for-profit health insurance model

Lost in all the talk of mandated insurance and coerage of pre-existing conditions is the fact that you can pay into the system for decades, and when you get sick your insurance company can drop you like a hot potato.

Last month, former CIGNA executive Wendell Potter testified before Congress, blowing the cover off the idea that insurance is there for you when you get sick:

To win the favor of powerful analysts, for-profit insurers must prove that they made more money during the previous quarter than a year earlier and that the portion of the premium going to medical costs is falling. Even very profitable companies can see sharp declines in stock prices moments after admitting they've failed to trim medical costs. I have seen an insurer's stock price fall 20 percent or more in a single day after executives disclosed that the company had to spend a slightly higher percentage of premiums on medical claims during the quarter than it did during a previous period. The smoking gun was the company's first-quarter medical loss ratio, which had increased from 77.9% to 79.4% a year later.

To help meet Wall Street's relentless profit expectations, insurers routinely dump policyholders who are less profitable or who get sick. Insurers have several ways to cull the sick from their rolls. One is policy rescission. They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment. Asked directly about this practice just last week in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, executives of three of the nation's largest health insurers refused to end the practice of cancelling policies for sick enrollees. Why? Because dumping a small number of enrollees can have a big effect on the bottom line. Ten percent of the population accounts for two-thirds of all health care spending. The Energy and Commerce Committee's investigation into three insurers found that they canceled the coverage of roughly 20,000 people in a five-year period, allowing the companies to avoid paying $300 million in claims.

They also dump small businesses whose employees' medical claims exceed what insurance underwriters expected. All it takes is one illness or accident among employees at a small business to prompt an insurance company to hike the next year's premiums so high that the employer has to cut benefits, shop for another carrier, or stop offering coverage altogether — leaving workers uninsured. The practice is known in the industry as "purging." The purging of less profitable accounts through intentionally unrealistic rate increases helps explain why the number of small businesses offering coverage to their employees has fallen from 61 percent to 38 percent since 1993, according to the National Small Business Association. Once an insurer purges a business, there are often no other viable choices in the health insurance market because of rampant industry consolidation.

An account purge so eye-popping that it caught the attention of reporters occurred in October 2006 when CIGNA notified the Entertainment Industry Group Insurance Trust that many of the Trust's members in California and New Jersey would have to pay more than some of them earned in a year if they wanted to continue their coverage. The rate increase CIGNA planned to implement, according to USA Today, would have meant that some family-plan premiums would exceed $44,000 a year. CIGNA gave the enrollees less than three months to pay the new premiums or go elsewhere.

Purging through pricing games is not limited to letting go of an isolated number of unprofitable accounts. It is endemic in the industry. For instance, between 1996 and 1999, Aetna initiated a series of company acquisitions and became the nation's largest health insurer with 21 million members. The company spent more than $20 million that it received in fees and premiums from customers to revamp its computer systems, enabling the company to "identify and dump unprofitable corporate accounts," as The Wall Street Journal reported in 2004. Armed with a stockpile of new information on policyholders, new management and a shift in strategy, in 2000, Aetna sharply raised premiums on less profitable accounts. Within a few years, Aetna lost 8 million covered lives due to strategic and other factors.

We're hearing a lot about mandating "coverage" for pre-existing condition, but we're not hearing a damn thing about being able to KEEP that "coverage" if there are actually bills associated with that condition.

Today Paul Krugman actually mentions this, even if only in passing:

Reform, if it happens, will rest on four main pillars: regulation, mandates, subsidies and competition.

By regulation I mean the nationwide imposition of rules that would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage based on your medical history, or dropping your coverage when you get sick. This would stop insurers from gaming the system by covering only healthy people.

On the other side, individuals would also be prevented from gaming the system: Americans would be required to buy insurance even if they’re currently healthy, rather than signing up only when they need care. And all but the smallest businesses would be required either to provide their employees with insurance, or to pay fees that help cover the cost of subsidies — subsidies that would make insurance affordable for lower-income American families.

I recognize that when you have a real unemployment rate in the double-digits, you can't have an entire industry fold up shop and go home. But if we are going to continue with the insurance model, coverage is going to have to actually mean something. To mandate that people buy insurance without doing something about the practice of dumping is worse than doing nothing at all.

Hey, "Birthers"! Here's what your new spokeswoman is

We've all seen this video:

Here's what radio's own anal cyst had to say about it:

State of Delaware, Mike Castle, town meeting, woman wants to know why nobody's interested in the fact that he hasn't shown anybody his birth certificate. If you couldn't understand her, she was saying he's a citizen of Kenya. I'm American. My father worked, fought in World War II, the greatest generation, Pacific theater for this country, and I don't want this flag to change. The crowd went nuts. There's all kinds of stuff bubbling up out there.

The wingnuts just LOVE this woman...just as much as they loved that equally crazy woman who told John McCain that she can't trust Barack Obama because he's an Arab.

There's just one problem. It sounds to me like "Birther woman" may very well be schizophrenic:

The star of the show -- known as "Crazy Eileen" to callers of a Sussex County talk radio station -- has gone into seclusion, declining interviews and avoiding publicity, even as previous statements by her have emerged referring to Obama as "the antichrist" and speaking of aliens and angels.

[snip]

The video of the Castle meeting, taken by someone in the audience, shows the woman holding a small American flag and what she said was her birth certificate, asking why people are ignoring Obama's birth. She charged that Obama is a citizen of Kenya, not the United States.

Castle, a Republican, was booed at the meeting while reiterating that Obama is a U.S. citizen.

The crowd applauded and cheered as the woman yelled, "I don't want this flag to change! I want my country back!"

The Constitution states that a person must be a "natural-born citizen" to be eligible for the presidency. The birthers contend that Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate is a fake, and many say he was actually born in Kenya, his father's homeland.

Limbaugh, the nationally syndicated radio talk show host, joked that Obama and God have something in common -- the lack of a birth certificate. Dobbs has broached the issue several times, saying at one point, "The questions won't go away."

And 10 Republican members of Congress have co-sponsored a bill that would require future presidential candidates to provide a copy of their original birth certificate.

Little is known about the woman who triggered the recent firestorm. Gaffney, the WGMD morning host, said she is believed to be from the Millsboro area.

According to another WGMD host, Jared Morris, she has been banned from calling the station -- known for its conservative leanings and hosts -- on several occasions.

In a call from a January show, on New Year's predictions, the woman discusses aliens, angels and the end of life on Earth, according to an audio clip Morris posted on YouTube this week.

In a videotaped introduction, Morris said the woman featured on the YouTube video from the meeting was a regular caller to his program.

"I want you guys to know exactly who you were cheering," Morris said in the clip.

She repeatedly has called Obama "the antichrist" on the airwaves, and "her phone calls have turned to faxes and threats," according to Morris.

"I have actually talked to an angel who came down in human form," she said during the Jan. 1 show. "We will have alien contact in October of this year, in the southwestern USA."

Here's the video posted by Jared Morris:

I'm sure Jared Morris will be excoriated by the lunatic fringe of wingnuttia just the way conservative talk show host "Mancow" was after he volunteered to be waterboarded, lasted six seconds, and acknowledged that waterboarding is torture.

So this latest heroine to Rush Limbaugh and the rest of his hate-spewing ilk has seen aliens and knows that Barack Obama has been revealed to her as the Antichrist. Does Limbaugh actually think that someone like this woman, or like fellow "birther" James Van Brunn, isn't going to try to "take their country back" at the point of a gun, cheered on by the Limbaughites?

This is a dangerous game these wingnuts are playing, and you can bet that when one of their disciples does something horrific, they'll be spinning away from them as fast as they can.

In case you thought the so-called pro-life movement was about life and not about patriarchy

Pam found this little tidbit -- this batshit crazy Ohio state legislator wants any woman seeking an abortion to have a man's permission. No exceptions:

ed by Rep. John Adams, a group of state legislators have submitted a bill that would give fathers of unborn children a final say in whether or not an abortion can take place.

It's a measure that, supporters say, would finally give fathers a choice.

"This is important because there are always two parents and fathers should have a say in the birth or the destruction of that child," said Adams, a Republican from Sidney. "I didn't bring it up to draw attention to myself or to be controversial. In most cases, when a child is born the father has financial responsibility for that child, so he should have a say."

As written, the bill would ban women from seeking an abortion without written consent from the father of the fetus. In cases where the identity of the father is unknown, women would be required to submit a list of possible fathers. The physician would be forced to conduct a paternity test from the provided list and then seek paternal permission to abort.

Claiming to not know the father's identity is not a viable excuse, according to the proposed legislation. Simply put: no father means no abortion.

"I'm really pleased that this has been proposed for one reason - it draws attention to the fact that many men are concerned and care for their unborn children," said Denise Mackura, the director of the Ohio Right to Life Society. "You have no idea how many men call telling me about their girlfriends who plan to abort, asking what they can do to help her. They do want to help and they should have a voice."

With the proposal, men would be guaranteed that voice under penalty of law. First time violators would by tried for abortion fraud, a first degree misdemeanor. The same would be the case for men who falsely claim to be fathers and for medical workers who knowingly perform an abortion without paternal consent.

In addition, women would be required to present a police report in order to prove a pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

If you're pregnant and your husband is abusive, too fucking bad for you.

If you're twelve and pregnant by your father and he wants you to have the baby, too fucking bad for you.

If you were raped and you couldn't bring yourself to deal with the humiliation of reporting it, too fucking bad for you.

If your husband decided to go fuck his mistress in Argentina and you don't know where he is or when he'll be back or how to get in touch with him, too fucking bad for you.

Because if you're a woman of reproductive age in this country, as far as these legislators (and many in Washington, I'd wager) are concerned, a man OWNS you. Whether he's your husband, your boyfriend, your father, a guy at a party who slipped a roofie into your drink, or a stranger on the street, it doesn't matter. If you're pregnant, he owns you.

Why is anyone still taking these people seriously?

The issue isn't whether this insanity will be passed, because it won't. But it IS indicative of the true mindset behind many of those who profess to be "pro-life". The only life that matters to them is the potential life that may be keeping a woman subjugated to a man, no matter what her relationship to that man may be; even if it's a stranger in a dark alley, a pedophile father, or a guy with date rape drugs at a party.

And before you point out that the article is from 2007, the legislation has just been reintroduced.

Gumshara Ramen, Eating World, Haymarket Chinatown, Sydney

Sometimes you find gems in the most unlikely of places.

Tucked down one end of the Eating World food court in Chinatown, is a small stall decorated only with a hanging red curtain and a menu printed on a huge cardboard sign. Gumshara serves traditional Japanese ramen, and in the short time since opening, has gathered a legion of devoted followers.


Traditional Japanese ramen

One of its

Paul Krugman explains it all for your wingnut friends

Most of us who bother to use the grey matter in our crania already know that a "free market" approach to health care insurance can't possibly work. The insurance model presupposes that only a certain number of people will ever require a payout of any kind, and those who never file a claim pay for that. It's spreading the risk, and it works for things like car accidents (though in New Jersey, that risk is far higher because people here will risk flaming metal death rather than get to work 30 seconds later) and trees falling on your house. It can't work for medical insurance because even if you, like me, avoid doctors because you're tired of being told to lose weight with absolutely nothing out there to help you to do it no matter how little you eat and when the hell are you supposed to exercise when you are working 80 hour weeks, sooner or later you're going to need it. Everyone will eventually file a claim. And that is why a market approach can't work.

Paul Krugman, in his blog, explains it better:

There are two strongly distinctive aspects of health care. One is that you don’t know when or whether you’ll need care — but if you do, the care can be extremely expensive. The big bucks are in triple coronary bypass surgery, not routine visits to the doctor’s office; and very, very few people can afford to pay major medical costs out of pocket.

This tells you right away that health care can’t be sold like bread. It must be largely paid for by some kind of insurance. And this in turn means that someone other than the patient ends up making decisions about what to buy. Consumer choice is nonsense when it comes to health care. And you can’t just trust insurance companies either — they’re not in business for their health, or yours.

This problem is made worse by the fact that actually paying for your health care is a loss from an insurers’ point of view — they actually refer to it as “medical costs.” This means both that insurers try to deny as many claims as possible, and that they try to avoid covering people who are actually likely to need care. Both of these strategies use a lot of resources, which is why private insurance has much higher administrative costs than single-payer systems. And since there’s a widespread sense that our fellow citizens should get the care we need — not everyone agrees, but most do — this means that private insurance basically spends a lot of money on socially destructive activities.

The second thing about health care is that it’s complicated, and you can’t rely on experience or comparison shopping. (”I hear they’ve got a real deal on stents over at St. Mary’s!”) That’s why doctors are supposed to follow an ethical code, why we expect more from them than from bakers or grocery store owners.

You could rely on a health maintenance organization to make the hard choices and do the cost management, and to some extent we do. But HMOs have been highly limited in their ability to achieve cost-effectiveness because people don’t trust them — they’re profit-making institutions, and your treatment is their cost.

Between those two factors, health care just doesn’t work as a standard market story.

We expect doctors to make a profit on their work. Becoming, and remaining, a doctor requires many years of training and a great deal of expense for initial and continuing education. Doctors are being paid for their expertise. I remember back before health insurance became a topic of conversation, people used to gripe about how much money doctors made, for all that everyone wanted their daughters to marry one. But even then there was a recognition that there was a certain amount of "payback" to that. What have insurance company executives, or sales reps, or the person in the headset in the cubicle whose sole job it is to be the guardian of the company purse and make sure that if you want an expense covered, you fight good, long, and hard for it, done to earn the amount of money these companies pull in? There's no expertise required to push paper around, though I would argue that for all that we hate them, the minimum wage workers in the headsets require the most expertise, even if it's the expertise of a kind of virtual bouncer. But it isn't the kind of expertise that requires intelligence, dedication, sensitivity, and a willingness to spend one's career constantly keeping up, the way any competent doctor would and does.

The health insurance model is somewhat about spreading risk; someone who is generally healthy isn't going to use as many services as someone who isn't -- and that can be as much about the genetic luck of the draw as about one's own personal choices. We all know about the guy from Supersize Me who eats Big Macs every day and he's skinny and his cholesterol is fine. We also know people who eat right, exercise, and still have high cholesterol. The 96-year-old woman who gets her hair done where I do who takes Celebrex, Actonel, a blood pressure pill, a water pill, and about five other drugs, uses more services than I do. The baby with spina bifida uses more services than she does. And so it goes. But the health insurance model falls apart when it becomes a for-profit business. Because once paying for health care becomes a for-profit model, it becomes not about paying for necessary services, it's about NOT paying for anything. The less there is on the "out" side of the ledger, the more of the "in" side of the ledger can go to profits -- and into the pockets of executives and stockholders.

The pathetic, frightened little man that lives behind the Dick Cheney mask

It's long been fascinating to me how utter, pants-crapping, complete and total fear became somehow synonymous with toughness after the September 11 attacks. The more afraid you were, the more you bought a Hummer and duct tape and plastic sheeting, the more of a patriot and a tough guy you were. I'm still not sure how that equation works.

And no one was more of a frightened, craven, small man about Al Qaeda than Dick Cheney. Huddled for possibly years in his underground bunker where the boogeyman wouldn't get him at the same time as New Yorkers who fled that city on foot on that day returned to work BECAUSE THEY HAD TO; because they didn't have the luxury of fear, it's ironic and mysterious that this chickenshit asshole is still being touted by his daughter on national television as being The Guy To Defend America™.

When you look at all the faux-macho posturing of the Bush years from even the small amount of distance we have now, it's difficult to believe how a country could be so taken in my what would have been called hysteria if perpetrated by a woman instead of a dour man with a perpetual snarl who could shoot a friend in the face and then get the friend to apologize.

But now, as many of us suspected at the time, Dick Cheney was perfectly willing to send the military into the streets of America, knocking on suburban doors in search of terrorists:

Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.

Mr. Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force.

A decision to dispatch troops into the streets to make arrests has few precedents in American history, as both the Constitution and subsequent laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.

The Fourth Amendment bans “unreasonable” searches and seizures without probable cause. And the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity.

In the discussions, Mr. Cheney and others cited an Oct. 23, 2001, memorandum from the Justice Department that, using a broad interpretation of presidential authority, argued that the domestic use of the military against Al Qaeda would be legal because it served a national security, rather than a law enforcement, purpose.

“The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States,” the memorandum said.

The memorandum — written by the lawyers John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty — was directed to Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, who had asked the department about a president’s authority to use the military to combat terrorist activities in the United States.

The memorandum was declassified in March. But the White House debate about the Lackawanna group is the first evidence that top American officials, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, actually considered using the document to justify deploying the military into an American town to make arrests.

The most benevolent explanation for this is that Cheney was so freaked out by the 9/11 attacks that he overreacted and his eight-year campaign to eliminate Americans' right to be left alone by their government was simply a misguided overreaction to the attacks. Given what we know about Cheney, and given that the guilty pleas of the so-called "Lackawanna Six" and others arrested on terrorism charges were apparently the only way to avoid being given "enemy combatant" status and that the talk of "wedding" and "big meal" by one of what the Bush Administration called a sleeper cell was actually about the wedding of one of them and a big meal, it's hard to imagine that this trial balloon of having tanks roll down the streets of America was just about arresting a few guys in upstate New York.

How can people in a state this cool have ever elected Norm Coleman????

If you've had as tough and miserable week as I've had, you need this:

Who needs a reception when the wedding is this cool?

Michael C. Hall is the best actor in the universe

This has so much potential for twistedness and turning "family values" on its ear. I can't wait:

JASON BROWNIG

MORE LEONA

BY ANDREAS KOCK

WE LOOK SO GOOD TOGETHER

LEONA AXELSON

LOVE THE NECKLACES AND NUDE BODY SUIT

LLLLLEONA

B@B (hearts) Charles Pierce

This exchange with David Shuster last night is awesome:

It must be hard to be David Shuster. On the one hand, this ex-Fox Newser (in fairness, so is Keith Olbermann) sees what's happening to his network, but on the other hand, he takes a mainstream media paycheck. So when Charles Pierce rightly excoriates the mainstream media for giving hatemongers like Liz Cheney a national forum in which to wink at the racist, hatemongering "birthers", Shuster feel obligated to defend his employers.

I LOVE THE FUTURE

Footy franks (and my first night at the footy)

I grew up in a family that never really valued sport as a worthy pursuit. The closest I got to appreciating rugby league in primary school was collecting and swapping footy cards by playing "tips", "tops" and "faar-ies".Hence it's with some bemusement I confess I attended my first ever rugby league match recently. As a spectator with little emotional involvement with either team playing, I found

What the hell is wrong with the state of Florida?

Seriously. I am asking.

What part of "You won" does Harry Reid not understand?

It's time to send this useless POS back home where he belongs -- and all the other corporatist, on-the-take, Democratic obstructionists who parrot Republican talking points, vote with Republicans, and are perfectly willing to go off to their cushy vacations, secure in the knowledge that their boating accidents will be fully covered by there state-of-the-art health insurance:

Senate Democratic leaders on Thursday abandoned plans for a vote on health care before Congress' August recess, dealing a blow to President Barack Obama's ambitious timetable to revamp the nation's $2.4 trillion system of medical care.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., delivered the official pronouncement, saying, "It's better to have a product based on quality and thoughtfulness rather than try to jam something through."

His words were a near-echo of Republicans who have criticized what they have called a rush to act on complex legislation that affects every American.

Obama shrugged off the delay.

"That's OK, I just want people to keep on working," Obama told a town hall meeting in Cleveland. "I want it done by the end of the year. I want it done by the fall."

Reid said the Senate Finance Committee will act on its portion of the bill before lawmakers' monthlong break. Reid then will merge that bill with separate legislation passed by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee earlier this month.

The process will be difficult since Finance, led by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., is seeking a bipartisan deal while the health committee bill was passed by Democrats on a party-line vote.

Obama had pushed for votes in the House and Senate before August to ensure that lawmakers had enough time to meld the two bills into comprehensive legislation by December — before the start of a politically charged congressional election year.

Obama has made nearly daily appeals for the overhaul in the past two weeks and has summoned more than a dozen lawmakers to the White House to make his case. At stake is a massive remaking of the system. So is Obama's credibility.

Well, I don't know about that, except for the fact that the mainstream news organizations are going to make damn sure that it's spun as a question of Obama's credibility. What it IS demonstrating is the contempt that Obama's own party has for him.

This is starting to look like Clinton Redux -- someone who isn't from the Washington Insider's club is elected President, and his own party helps the Republicans to make sure he isn't re-elected. Some of this may just be a question of the refusal or the inability by nature of Democrats to fight back, except that we're seeing Democrats like insurance company shill Max Baucus and the equally on-the-take Blue Dogs fighting back against the President in their own party. I realize that the Democrats are more comfortable as a minority party, mewling in the corner about how the big mean Republicans are bullying them. But there are people's lives at stake here, and I frankly don't give a shit who's bullying them. If Harry Reid and the rest of these useless fucks didn't want to play hardball, they should go the fuck home and let someone take office who can -- and who will.

Annette Olivieri A/W 2008

Cute line!