Traitor Rick wants to borrow more money from the Feds that he isn’t likely to pay back. In fact, he wants to borrow $100 million more than the stimulus money he rejected.
Can we sell Texas back to Mexico for some oil rights or something?
Monthly Archives: July 2009
Apollo 11 Launch: 40 Years Ago Today
Remember when this country had big dreams and didn’t settle for less?
Remember when we didn’t check on focus groups or gave a shit what lobbyists told us?
Remember when big business just sucked it up and did the damn job?
THAT and a dose of hope and optimism got us to the moon. Not GOP whining and fear tactics.
Learn from this, be amazed of what we used to be able to accomplish in this country, and let’s try to regain our glory.
As racist as they wanna be
Honestly, I’ve been ignoring the Sotomayor confirmation hearings because I know two things. One, she’s going to get confirmed barring a catastrophe. Obama picked a moderate knowing damn full well she’d get confirmed.
Two, I just knew the Republicans were going to sink to the lowest form of racism allowed on 21st century television. It is their nature. It is also their only way to gain power.
I was glad to see this point of view confirmed in Tom Gilroy’s HuffPo article this morning. A very large taste focusing on Beauregard Sessions interrogating Sotomayor:
“The point of putting a ‘racially insensitive’ white man up to question a Latina has nothing to do with bad GOP planning and everything to do with intimidation. Republicans know she’s getting confirmed; what they really want to do is intimidate the White House, the media, and me and you from embracing progressive views.
So, if you’re going to embrace affirmative action, feminism, equal rights, economic fairness, civil rights, — Jesus, even empathy — you stand warned you will be attacked. It has nothing to do with defeating Sotomayer and everything to do with discrediting what most Americans believe and intimidating us from expressing it. It’s also a signal to their dwindling base — disenfranchised, uneducated whites — that the GOP is still the party of the cluelessly and inarticulately disgruntled.
Hence economic fairness is ‘a special interest,’ universal healthcare is ‘socialism,’ and believing in a right to privacy is ‘judicial activism;’ all of it bullshit, but all of it useful.
That’s the goal here; keeping ignorance alive so you can cajole it to the ballot box, the streets, in front of David Letterman’s studio, at the local Board of Ed meeting or the commencement at Notre Dame.
Or outside Dr George Tiller’s women’s health clinic or the Holocaust Museum — carrying a gun.”
Don’t believe that? Then how about Pat Buchanan literally screaming that the GOP doesn’t need Hispanics as long as they can con enough white people to vote for them. That way the GOP Senators should try as hard as possible to paint Sotomayor as an anti-white racist to ensure their ideological purity or some shit.
To be honest, he may actually be right about the numbers if not his racism.
Meanwhle, Maureen Dowd is proud of Sotomayor’s defense of her opinions and career, though may be making too much hay of the white racists in the GOP Senatorial contingent. Not that they aren’t, but they are still in power because someone voted for them.
Even in our next Supreme Court Justice can school Beauregard Sessions.
What a relief you’re here!
Big increase in troops’ kids seeking mental help | TPM News Pages
Republican “family values” are shown as a false talking point every time they:
* cheat on their spouses
* deny health care for children
* make it even for their pals to pollute our water, sell our jobs overseas, poison our food, kill our forests and farms, etc. ad nauseum.
The latest? The illegal war in Iraq and the hard fight we didn’t have to fight in Afghanistan if we’d have keep our eyes on the ball have resulted in a major rise in the children of deployed troops seeking mental help.
That’s right. Years of backdoor drafts and multiple deployments without proper gear result in tattered warriors and their kids. Gee, thanks GOP!
Businesses should let go of health care
I’ve been avoiding the public health plan debate on the old blog because I don’t even see another plausible side to the argument other than greed. Or maybe just plain evil.
So, on Friday, I really, really enjoyed this commentary on Marketplace of all places. I mean, I enjoy the program but it is usually chock full of conservative financial types. It was wonderful to hear a logical, and accurate, voice telling business that they are idiots for not wanting to get out of the health care business.
Case in point? Both Chrysler and GM exist today in a post-bankruptcy world and solvent precisely because the government found a way for them to get rid of their health care obligations.
It’s a pretty “duh” moment for this country but big business and GOP are too stupid to see it.
And so, we have Senators who already have public health care reading the words of the private health care lobby, who is currently spending $1.4 million A DAY to fight off a public health care option. Why? Well, if the public plan can give care to the 45-47 million who don’t have insurance, and draw in folks like me who hate paying more money for less coverage year after year after year, you could easily have a public plan of at least 100 million Americans fighting for better care at a cheaper price.
And that’s bad for business while being good for American citizens. Since when was the health of a nation supposed to be something measured on a balance sheet rather than a health chart anyway?
If you want another reason to loathe the health industry, listen to this interview I heard this morning. Steve Inskeep is one of NPR’s conservative bullshit artists and even he seemed to be creeped out by Dr. Sam Nussbaum of WellPoint. Seriously, give that one a listen and you’ll see why I previously stated that greed and evil are the only stances against health care reform that seem accurate. And that guy is both.
In-N-Out Burger Sticks To Basics, Finds Success : NPR
Damnit, now I’m hungry.
A nice, quick writeup on my favorite burger joint. Enjoy.
Tax Brackets (Federal Income Tax Rates) 2000 through 2009
Check out where you lie and what it may mean.
Political Irony › Gay Conservative Quotes
Click here for linkages and such.
Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks, who is not gay:
“You know, all three of us spend a lot of time covering politicians and they’re all emotional freaks. They’re guaranteed to invade your personal space, touch you. I sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time.”
Conservative The Atlantic columnist Andrew Sullivan, who is gay:
“Mercifully, I avoid dinners with Republican senators. It’s usually far too gay a scene for me.”
Rethug Crackpots: Universal Health Care Isn’t Worth Our Freedom – WSJ.com
If you just want the Cliff Notes version of this anti-American bullshit, here ya go:
“The idea that every life is infinitely precious and therefore everyone deserves the same kind of optimal medical care is a fine religious sentiment and moral ideal. As political and economic policy, it is vainglorious delusion. Rich and educated people not only receive better goods and services in all areas of life than do poor and uneducated people, they also tend to take better care of themselves and their possessions, which in turn leads to better health. The first requirement for better health care for all is not equal health care for everyone but educational and economic advancement for everyone.
Our national conversation about curbing the cost of health care is crippled by the vocabulary in which we conduct it. We must stop talking about “health care” as if it were some kind of collective public service, like fire protection, provided equally to everyone who needs it. No government can provide the same high quality body repair services to everyone. Not all doctors are equally good physicians, and not all sick persons are equally good patients.
If we persevere in our quixotic quest for a fetishized medical equality we will sacrifice personal freedom as its price.”
It is written by a psychiatrist that doesn’t believe in mental illness. Basically, it’s like having a Jehovah’s Witness working at the blood bank, or George Bush having any type of job. Complete (oxy)moron.
Basically, and this is an argument my mother-in-law picked up somewhere, for some reason, if we can’t give all Americans the same health care the top 1% of the top 1% of Americans get, we should not try to give anyone access to health care.
Look, there will always be wealthy folks who have advantage. As long as they aren’t trying to screw the rest of us out of something, let them have it. And to be honest, why *isn’t* health care a right in this country? We give it to both soldiers and senators for serving us, so why *not* to the tax-paying citizens who pay those salaries?
Frankly, like I said earlier, it’s about evil bastards looking to make a dime on the backs of sick people. And it’s high time to cut them from their addiction.