News Roundup for 10/11/09

Sen. Coburn to veterans: "Blow me, losers"

-Headline of the day-
"GOP's Coburn 'is denying veterans many benefits and services.'"

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) wishes you a Happy Veterans Day!

Now go fuck off, you shiftless veterans...

According to the Tulsa World, "Oklahoma junior Republican U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn has put a hold on a bill that would, among other things, help our veterans pay for home care. Coburn feels that the bill is too costly and is demanding cuts in other programs to balance the cost of the veterans bill."

Yup, Coburn thinks it cost too much money to help vets who been injured or disabled serving in Republican wars. So he's holding up paying for it, until someone can show how to pay for it. How we can pay for war is another question, of course. Always plenty of money for that.

Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI) points out that this probably isn't the best thing to do for veterans, saying "it would be truly disgraceful" if the bill didn't pass on Veterans Day.

"This single senator is denying veterans many benefits and services," Akaka said, adding that it provides care for the "most seriously wounded veterans." Well, today's Veterans Day, Coburn still has a hold on the bill and the rest of the Republican Party isn't doing a damned thing about it.

If you see Tom Coburn today, feel free to give him the finger. Hell, give him two. And, if you're planning on voting for Coburn in 2010, I got an interesting question for you; what the fuck is wrong with you?

If you could go ahead and answer that for me, that'd be great. (AMERICAblog)


-News you can't possibly use-
Writing for Time, Mark Halperin answers the question, "What's In Sarah Palin's Book?" with, "I Don't Really Know."

With advance copies going out to Palin buddies -- which doesn't include Halperin -- people are wondering what's in it. So Mark dug into his Rolodex of Palin sources and asked around. He found out that Sarah's mad at the media, didn't like McCain aides, and includes "a testimonial to the importance of faith in her life."

Dude, I could've got that information just by guessing.

Still, a TIME.com blog post titled, "What's In Sarah Palin's Book?" is bound to get a lot of traffic from wingnuts googling the most obvious search query - "What's In Sarah Palin's Book?" But it'd be cynical of me to think that was the whole reason for the post. (TIME, via Wonkette)


-Bonus HotD-
"Tampa police: Marine reservist attacked Greek priest he mistook for terrorist."

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and Marine reservist Jasen Bruce proved he was willing to pay that price when he assaulted a Greek Orthodox priest in Florida Monday because he thought he was a Muslim terr'ist. What made Bruce think that? The guy talked funny.

According to the report, "[The] man, a Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios Marakis, speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions." So Bruce did the obvious thing and whacked him with a tire iron. Even better, he chased the guy for three blocks and called 911, to report the terr'ist.

Suprisingly, when the cops showed up, they arrested the hero/patriot. At this point, he had a bunch of explanations for his actions:


The man tried to rob him.

The man grabbed Bruce's crotch and made an overt sexual advance in perfect English.

The man yelled "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great," the same words some witnesses said the Fort Hood shooting suspect uttered last week.

"That's what they tell you right before they blow you up," police say Bruce told them.


America's greatest patriot "ended up in jail, accused of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon."

"Marakis ended up at the hospital with stitches," the paper reports. "He told the police he didn't want to press charges, espousing biblical forgiveness."

For his part, super-patriot Jasen Bruce isn't apologizing. You win this round, Greek Orthodox Muslim terr'ists. But next time, you won't be so lucky.

Teabags forver! w00t! (St. Petersburg Times, via Talking Points Memo)

Homeless Vets and Bill O'Reilly

The New York Times published an editorial on the problem of homeless vets for Veterans Day. This is an ongoing problem, aggravated by the military's antiquated notions regarding PTSD and drug and alcohol abuse. As I've written before, the military does very little to recognize mental stress in the field and, as a result, the army has been experiencing an epidemic of suicide. This also goes a long way toward explaining criminal behavior, drug and alcohol dependency, and homelessness among veterans. That may be changing:


Gen. Eric Shinseki was famously shunned by the Bush administration for daring to state the true costs of occupying Iraq. As President Obama’s secretary of veterans affairs, he is, thankfully, no less candid about the grinding problems veterans face at home. They lead the nation in depression, suicide, substance abuse and homelessness, according to data that Mr. Shineski is delivering in salvos in his current role.

About one-third of all adult homeless men are veterans, and an average night finds an estimated 131,000 of them from five decades bedding down on streets and in charity sanctuaries. About 3 in 100 of them are back from Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem of homelessness for Vietnam veterans is, shamefully, well known. But the men and women in this growing cohort took just 18 months to find rock bottom, compared with the five years-plus of the previous generation’s veterans.


Shinseki has "pledged $3.2 billion to bolster housing, education, job and medical programs to help troubled veterans before they hit the streets," the paper notes.

It pays to go back and remember the 2008 presidential campaign and a statement -- which should've been entirely uncontroversial -- made by Democratic candidate John Edwards when he dropped out of the race. He brought up homeless vets and Bill O'Reilly decided to attack him on it:


O'REILLY: As for John Edwards, good grief, this guy has no clue.

EDWARDS [video clip]: And tonight, 200,000 men and women who wore our uniform proudly and served this country courageously as veterans will go to sleep under bridges and on grates. We're better than this.

O'REILLY: That was Edwards' concession speech last night. I mean, come on. The only thing sleeping under a bridge is that guy's brain. Ten million illegal alien workers are sending billions of dollars back home, and Edwards is running around saying nobody has any money. Hard to believe.


Later, given the opportunity to retract his "no homeless vets" flat-earth theory, Blowhard Bill dug in:


Bill O'Reilly again baselessly challenged John Edwards' claim that "200,000 men and women who wore our uniform proudly and served this country courageously as veterans will go to sleep under bridges and on grates," telling radio host Ed Schultz, "[W]e're still looking for all the veterans sleeping under the bridges, Ed. So if you find anybody, let us know. ... They may be out there, but there are not many of them out there." Schultz replied: "Well, they're out there, Bill, don't kid yourself." According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, they are, in the approximate numbers Edwards asserted.


At the time, the Dept. of Defense estimated that "about 195,000 veterans (male and female) are homeless on any given night and perhaps twice as many experience homelessness at some point during the course of a year." This number is apparently down, which is obviously good news.

To my knowledge, O'Reilly has never retracted his claim that the number of homeless vets is trivial. What can we learn from this? Depends on how you look at it; either O'Reilly too stupid to check his facts or he's too dishonest to give a damn what those facts are. As is so often the case when talking about conservatives, you have no choice but to assume he's either a liar or an idiot.

Or both.

If you're planning to watch Bill O'Reilly tonight, do veterans a favor -- don't.

News Roundup for 10/10/09

Former congressman and conservative activist Asswipe Monkey Troop

-Headline of the day-
"Armey's View Of Americans With Pre-Existing Conditions: Someone Who 'Eats Like A Pig' And Has Diabetes."

Most people don't know it, but teabagger king Dick Armey's name used to be Marvin Flowersby, but he changed it to reflect his talent -- the ability to come up with things it'd normally take an army of dicks to cook up. Turns out "Asshole Battalion" was already taken. True story. Look it up.

Anyway, Dick got himself on CNN, where he solved this whole "healthcare crisis" thing by pointing out that it's all horseshit.

"[Government officials] come along and they say, irrespective of the fact they've gone 20, 30, 40 years of their adult life without ever having bought insurance prior to getting a liver inflammation due to their excessive drinking habits or diabetes because they eat like a pig, you must now insure them," he said. "But at what point do we allow the government to order people that you must sell your product to this person or that person, irrespective of any good judgment? We saw what happened in housing when they ordered banks to make loans to people who weren't qualified. Are we now going to have the same destructive influences in health care because we're going to order doctors to provide services and so forth?"

See, it's impossible to get sick if you take care of yourself. That's just common sense. People aren't born with genetic disorders or things like HIV/AIDS, you get that stuff from eating too many Twinkies. Geez, use your brain... It's science.

Of course, there are a few holes in Douchebag Brigade's theory -- like the fact that it's obviously untrue. According to the report, "Some pre-existing conditions are having a Caesarean-section pregnancy, being a victim of domestic violence, or being a victim of rape. Most individual health insurance markets don't even cover maternity care. Other pre-existing conditions that insurers have used to either deny people outright or charge exorbitant fees for coverage include being an expectant father, having acne, or being a police officer."

All that aside, we ought to pay attention to this Jerkwad Strike Force guy. After all, you don't become the bazillionaire leader of a bunch of people who know that Obama's a communist (like Hitler!) if you don't know what the hell you're talking about. (Think Progress)


-This ought to work out well...-
According to Politico, "A Florida conservative has registered an official 'Tea Party' with the office of the Secretary of State, and is promising to run candidates against Republicans and Democrats in state and national races." That'd be a 'tea party' as a political party or a Tea Party Party.

See, since the race in Ny-23, in which a teabagger totally womped the commie the Republican Party put up for election (and, in the process, handed the seat over to a Democrat in a district that hadn't elected one in more than 100 years), they're kind of feeling the triumphalism. So now the Tea Party Party partisans want to take out even more Republicans who are secretly communists sent to destroy America by al Qaeda. That'll show them, no more RINOs!

I give it a year before Florida officially changes its name to Democratachussets. (Politico)


-Bonus HotD-
"Sarah Palin Is Tweeting Again In Addition To The Facebook And The Memoir."

When Sarah Palin quit being the Mayor of Santa's Village, she also quit using Twitter and the popular service went dark because, let's face it, without Sarah Palin, what's the point?

But now Sarah Palin has a new Twitter account, because she's trying to sell her new book, If I Keep Trying Different Things, I Know I'll be Good at Something: The Sarah Palin Story.

If you check it out, you won't see anything -- she's hasn't tweetlepated a single word. But she's gonna, you wait and see.

"This new endeavor contains exactly zero content and already has 11,000 followers," reports Wonkette "which sounds about right."

If anyone out there's running a pool on what her first tweet will be about, I want my money on "snow machines." (Wonkette)

Missing the Point

The weekend's big news is being overshadowed by what legislators probably had hoped would be a minor story. In passing healthcare reform in the House of Representatives, a bit of last-minute horsetrading gave us the Stupak-Pitts amendment. Worried that maybe a nickel of taxpayer dollars might wind up in some abortion provider's pocket, the amendment attacks the "problem" with a handgrenade, making it all but illegal for insurers to cover abortion services. No plan that competes for subsidized customers would be allowed to provide abortion coverage and, as a result, it's nearly impossible to see a way in which insurers would provide coverage at all.

And so now, the big sticking point going forward has become -- pretty much out of the blue -- abortion rights and coverage. The always insightful Greg Sargent explains the situation:


One side point: It will be much tougher for pro-choice Dems to cave and support the bill with Stupak than it was for House progressives to cave and back the bill despite its lack of a robust public option.

Here’s why: Because the public option had initially been written off for dead, the version liberals did secure allowed them to claim they had won something. By contrast, Stupak is a significant step backward for advocates of abortion rights and women’s health issues. So it will be much tougher for pro-choice House Dems to back a final bill with Stupak in the end. This will intensify.


In other words, giving up a real public option is one thing, since it involves losing something that never got beyond the conceptual stage anyway. But giving up ground on abortion rights is another, since it involves losing something people have fought long and hard to gain and would hurt women most in need of reform. Additionally, in a battle where "being a woman is not a preexisting condition" has become a slogan, adding yet another hurdle in front of women seeking adequate health coverage would not be what you call a win.

Yet, in all the coverage of the issue and -- worse -- in the statements from elected officials, we're aren't seeing very many explain it this way. What we're seeing from the media is horserace coverage and what we're getting from pro-choice Democrats are explanations of process. I can't think of a better way to trivialize what we're really talking about here.

The television media is probably the main culprit here. Given a choice between "easy to understand" or "comprehensive," they go with the former. "Amendment make pro-choice Democrat mad! Grrr! Big fight! Watch!" As always, I feel compelled to remind you that a TV pundit's job isn't to inform you, a TV pundit's job is to get you to watch TV.

But how difficult is the Stupak amendment to explain? Rep. Diana DeGette seems to have done a pretty good job of making it accessible; "Frankly, the women of America should be furious because this just does not say no federal funding for abortion, this says women cannot use their own money to buy an insurance policy that would include a legal medical procedure."

You could probably be as peanut-brained as the TV news producers seem to think you are and still be able to wrap your mind around that. It's not an extremely wonky issue. It's when we fall into explanations of process that pro-choice Democrats get into trouble, as Sen. Claire McCaskill demonstrates:


"...Obviously, I have been a pro-choice candidate for my entire political career, and obviously there is controversy always surrounding this issue. But we are talking about whether or not people that get public money can buy an insurance policy that has a coverage for abortion. And that is not the majority of America. The majority of America is not going to be getting subsidies from the government...."

"And so, I am not sure that this is going to be enough to kill the bill," McCaskill added. "And frankly, once again, this is another example of having to govern with moderates. We can't just turn our back on the fact that the reason we are in majority, is because states like Indiana, and Arkansas, and Louisiana, and Missouri, and North Carolina, and Virginia sent Democrats to the Senate."


McCaskill was later forced to clarify that she was against a similar provision in the Senate. For future reference, the best way to fight something is not to start out by explaining why you expect to lose. And the way to keep that expectation from being a self-fulfilling prophecy is to actually explain what's wrong with the provision, rather than get bogged down in the nuts and bolts legislative wrangling. Just because the media wants to turn the whole thing into a freakin' soap opera (McCaskill's comments came on MSNBC's Morning Joe) doesn't mean you have to give them one. Talk about the Stupak amendment and how it screws women by actually making insurance coverage worse, then let go from there. In any case, there's no shortage of people in the know who believe McCaskill's wrong about the vote count.

So, what's wrong with the Stupak amendment and what would it mean for women nationwide? Who cares? All you need to know is that there's going to be a big fight and you can watch it all on the teevee machine.

That's what we're calling "news" these days.

-Wisco


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News Roundup for 10/9/09

According to Sarah Palin, this guy's a Jesus-hater

-Headline of the day-
"Palin sees conspiracy in new dollar coins."

The former Mayor of Santa's Village gave a speech in Wisconsin to people who've been driven crazy by Bret Favre. The subject of her speech was apparently "Things That Are Awesome and Things That Are Bogus" and among the bogus is Barack HUSSEIN Obama's attempt to slowly sneak "In God We Trust" off dollar coins.

"Noting that there had been a lot of 'change' of late, Palin recalled a recent conversation with a friend about how the phrase 'In God We Trust' had been moved to the edge of the new coins," reports Politico's Jonathan Martin.

"Who calls a shot like that?" she asked the audience, who didn't know either. "Who makes a decision like that?... It’s a disturbing trend."

Here's the thing, when government does stuff like pass laws, someone usually writes down the who and when and why, so you can answer questions like Sarah's. She probably doesn't know that, since she quit being the Governor before they got to that chapter in the Big Book O' Governance.

Turns out the people who made that call weren't secret illegal alien Muslim terr'ists. They were Republicans in Congress and they wrote this here law that was signed by that big commie George W. Bush. It was switched back in 2007.

This speech cost cheesehead wingnuts $30 to attend. In return for the ticket price, they got priceless insights like that above and whatever the hell this was supposed to be; "It is so bogus that society is sending a message right now and has been for probably the last 40 years that a woman isn’t strong enough or smart enough to be able to pursue an education, a career and her rights and still let her baby live."

Seriously, that's a direct quote. According to the report, the audience couldn't get out of there fast enough.

In the future, if Wisconsinites really want to make themselves dumber, they can save a lot of money by bashing themselves in the skull with a brick. Because -- I can guarantee -- no one could expose themselves to that much stupid without shaving a couple two-three points off their IQ. (Raw Story)


-At least they're recycling-
What's the GOP stance on the climate bill? The same as their stance on healthcare reform.


Click for full comic

I can't believe I forgot about Don Asmussen's Bad Reporter... These things are gold. (Bad Reporter)


-Bonus HotD-
"Westboro Baptist Church Protests Outside Obama Girls' School."

Rev. Fred Phelps and his merry band of hate-fueled lunatics have decided that protesting Sasha's and Malia's school would be a great way to advance their agenda -- which is basically getting themselves on the teevee machine and having people yell at them. Call them the Attention-Whore Brigade.

If they get enough press, expect Joe Lieberman to get jealous, grab a sign, and join them. No one's allowed to get more time in front of a TV camera in DC than Joe Lieberman. I think it's a law. (Talking Points Memo)