I Hope You're Happy

10 things ever Teapartier should know. Really.

I think this is pretty dead on.

1. President Obama Cut Your Taxes
2. The Stimulus is Working
3. First Ronald Reagan Tripled the National Debt…
4. …Then George W. Bush Doubled It Again
5. Republican States Have the Worst Health Care
6. Medicare is a Government Program
7. Barack Obama is Not a Muslim
8. Barack Obama was Born in the United States
9. 70,000 Does Not Equal 2,000,000
10. The Economy Almost Always Does Better Under Democrats

I won’t have none of your gol’ dang evolution nonsense in this country

We don’t get to see the movie about Darwin discovering evolution and struggling with faith because heaven forbid we have a small art house movie provide some introspection for us to examine our own faith and beliefs. No, we need someone else to tell us how evil it is. Don’t believe them, those scientists are horrible people who spread lies with their empirical evidence and their scientific method. I have a book. Everything you need to know is in this book. But not just any one of this book. It has to be my version which has only the parts I and this James guy approve. Don’t read Darwin. He deal in facts.

Texas will no longer teach about the moon landing?

Obviously there wasn’t enough God involved.

Hmm, maybe that Nazi Obama parade float wasn’t such a great idea after all

Ya think?

Republicans are coming down on Olympia Snowe

The only one of them who really seems to think about, well, things, and make good choices for her constituents, based on facts and reason. Damn shame. Sen. Rockefeller hints at the pressure, and that she’s considering switching sides.

A Customer of Bank of America begins her own revolt against their high credit card rates

So your credit card company starts you at 12.99% then gets over-leveraged on bad investments mostly due to greed, then they double your card rates just to cover their own mistakes while rewarding the people who made the bad investments. Get out the guillotine and start chanting “Liberty”!

Orly Taitz’s client writes a letter renouncing her, Taitz believes it is a forgery

The birther queen has really let this whole forgery thing go to her head. I wonder if she believes in her own birth certificate?

Defending the decision to abandon the missile shield

Rep. Steve King: My best vote was against disaster relief for Katrina victims

Yes, Steve King (R-IA) thinks Katrina victims and New Orleans didn’t need any help.

Republicans are against net neutrality

Hm, what a surprise they are for big business and against what would be good for people. Net neutrality affects what voices are heard, what data is available to you and a lot more than you’d think.

Of course, this could just be another example of the “Party of no” Republicans. The Dems are for it, so obviously it must threaten our freedoms and our way of life, except that net neutrality is about freedom…I wonder how they justify this?

Michele Bachmann advocates zero regulations for insurance companies

Let’s think about this just a little bit. When’s the last time too little regulation worked out well for America? Let’s go back to the current meltdown. Or maybe the Savings and Loan Collapse, or the manufactured energy crisis in California, or Enron, or the oil speculation market, or the, well, the list keeps going. This is a fallacy of Libertarianism that just has to die.

There’s two kinds of Libertarians. One seeks free markets because the feel an unimpeded market will do what is best for it. They’re wrong. The market is driven by greed, not sense and practicality, and we’re reminded all too often (usually with an economic collapse and millions of Americans suffering) when that greed gets too overbearing.

The second is even more naive. The second believes that without interference, the markets will naturally do what is best for Americans and itself in a very altruistic way. This is the Ayn Rand, theory, but they are the Trekkies of the political world, relegated to the fringes of politics by their inability to recognize social dynamics. They stand over in the corner, sneering at the rest of us and our inability to see how great their idea really is.

But you know what I may have this group wrong. They may be the punk rockers of the political world, marginalized and sneering at authority, ready to trash a hotel room for their cause. Yeah, the altruistic libertarian is the Sex Pistols of politics, Ron Paul, the Johnny Rotten of them all.

I guess this would make the Michele Bachmann sort into the Pop Punk movement, out to make a buck while barely being competent at their trade.

Either way, we’re fucked.

I’m not one for 9/11 milking. It was a terrible thing. Lots of people died who shouldn’t have, and we haven’t done right to right the wrongs. Honor those that passed and let’s realize that we created an enemy by exploiting people, and the only way to unmake the enemy is to remove those who would do violence while at the same time changing our behavior to allow those in the third world to live better, more prosperous lives. Then we can feel safe.

Funny how that is an analogy for my own situation. We moved into a low rent apartment that felt fairly safe. Couldn’t afford more due to circumstances some of you know about. Things have become progressively worse, and now we’re moving in fear of our lives. I wonder how much better this place would be if everyone in the complex earned a living wage.

But let’s move on.

A double shot of Republican hypocrisy. This is so common, I think their party slogan is “I hate hypocrisy, even when I’m doing it.”

Sarah Palin complains of a lack of civility after Obama Debunks her “Death Panels”

Yeah, the one who made up the lie of death panels and destroyed many people’s hopes of affordable healthcare is crying about manners because Obama told the truth.

Texan Critic Of Obama’s ‘Indoctrination’ Speech Backs Actual Indoctrination In Textbooks

Only he wants to do it with Newt, Reagan and conservatism. Yes, it’s Texas State Board of Education time again, this time, David Bradley, a significant conservative.

So let’s see how this works 1) we make a fake controversy over something that doesn’t really have any merit 2) hide and hope nobody finds us out and 3) run the whole nation in circles

These political games are sick shams. When will conservatives give up the outright bullshit and return to America? What do you do with a party when all they can offer is opposition without merit? When did we grant so much political power to the loony bin?

Bachmann pulls more statistics out of her arse

Bachman criticizes a tax rate than can reach 50% (who the hell pays that?) by pining for 1950, when the top tax rate was a decidedly socialist 84% (or in her own head 5%).

Rep. Jean Schmidt joins ranks of birthers with the least sneaky whisper ever

Funny thing is, Obama’s been the best thing for the firearm industry since gunpowder

Seems between paranoid morons and the stimulus money going to police agencies, business is booming.

Science proves you do remember the name of the girl you slept with last night

Those memories are still there, what’s blocking you?

Ghost hunting proves fatal

Isn’t it embarrassing when you’re looking for the departed and find you have just become one?

Glenn Beck lost his sponsors

In fact, he lost what has to be most of his sponsors in a week. That kind of makes it difficult to produce a show, now, doesn’t it? Of course, being a raving lunatic with an indefensible position just looking to make a buck off blatant sensationalism may be somewhat distracting to a corporate brand.

The oil industry is taking lessons on protests at townhall meetings

Further showing their short sightedness, oil continues to not pursue the strategic vision of energy independence, choosing instead to pursue a business that will, like the record companies, become increasingly irrelevant. I’d pull my money out of oil stocks now.

The soaring deficit
The Republicans have always been right on this one, Democrats like to spend money. Of course, to Republicans, deficits don’t matter, so I don’t know what they’re complaining about. Look at the chart, they took two years of surplus, cut taxes, and turned it into six years of straight deficits. Obama is in a bind, and he has to get the economy moving first, so long as it doesn’t destroy us later. If only there were a way to cut spending without reducing taxes so that we could pay off our deficit. I remember having this argument with a Republican in the ‘04 election. I’m sure he’s still screaming now. Doesn’t matter. History is telling me I’ve been right all along.

A GPS in every car to report our mileage?

Most of us would call this an odometer, but for Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, we need GPS, a whole program to monitor them, and then tax collection agents. No wonder Democrats can’t create a streamlined, efficient government.Thanks for dispelling that Big Brother image.

We pay more than other countries for our crappy cell phone service

Hmm, that’s just like health care. Other countries pay less, get more. I’m sure the Republicans are calling it a Democratic plot.

Typical Teenage Rebellion story, Michele Bachmann style

Looks like her son has joined Americorp, or as she calls it, a Democrat Reeducation camp.

A little more Republican Waffling on the birth certificate

Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina again proves the difficulty of having a lunatic voter base.

Santorum 2012?

Already campaigning, instead of doing something, I don’t know, useful.

Unfinished Business from the previous administration pt. 1

Looks like Karl Rove is very central to the Attorney Firings.

Unfinished business from the previous administration pt. 2

Alberto Gonzalez regrets torture memo, (but he remains silent on the actual torture)

What Orly Taitz believes

This Salon.com article did what MSNBC couldn’t do, give Orly Taitz a non-confrontational place to look like a village idiot. This columnist allowed her to ramble, and ramble she did. There’s a good litany of bizarre conspiracy theories here that go well beyond the birth certificate. It proves a point though, in biased news outlets like Foxnews and MSNBC, you don’t have to shut them up, put them down or anything of the sort. Just let them rant and look like imbeciles. It’ll serve you better.

Why 14 yr old girls aren’t the best spokesmen for a religion

Two Christian girls try to convert an Indian Hindu in what is certain the be an emotionally tramatic experience for all of them.

There’s enough going on in the the Health Care Debate to make a special version of News Shots, so here it is: The Inaugural “Take Your Pill”.

Big Pharma alone has spent $40 million dollars in the second quarter lobbying Congress

Let’s start by adding it up. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) represents 32 manufacturers. They paid lobbyists $6 mil over three months. This alone seems like a lot, but many of the manufacturers spent their own money on their own lobbyists. Pfizer spent $5.5 million. Amgen, Eli Lilly and GlaxoSmithKline spent about $3 million each. Add everything up and we get the $40 million dollar figure.

“It’s not surprising to learn this, because the pharmaceutical industry for years has been one of the most effective and powerful lobbying outfits in Washington, and it explains why we have a lot of drug policies in the U.S. that don’t look like drug policies in any other industrialized country,” [said Harvard Medical School Prof Jerry] Avorn.

Avorn wrote a book about drugs and health care called Powerful Medicines. He compares the current fight to the one in 2003, when Congress last made a major health care change by adding prescription drug coverage to Medicare. Avorn says PhRMA’s lobbying efforts were so vast and so intense that the result is now written into the law.

Today the government is empowered to negotiate how much it pays doctors, hospitals, laboratories — almost anyone who does business with Medicare. Anyone except pharmaceutical companies. Avorn points out that negotiating drug prices is illegal in the United States.

If you want to know what PhRMA is getting this time, Avorn says just look at what’s not on the table during the debate:

Drug re-importation from Canada? Off the table.

Government-negotiated drug prices? Off the table.

“A lot of those seem to have been resolved even before the public discussion begins,” says Avorn. “And usually, as with the other interest groups involved, they seem to have been resolved in favor of the interest groups, rather than in favor of the public.”

The price of drugs in this country is several times what it is in other nations due to this policy. This is why importing from Canada looks more and more inviting. Now, I understand the side issue of the safety of drugs from unregulated pharmacies outside the U.S., but you know, if you buy your penis pills from FucknutzFarmacy.com and you die because you got death in pill format, you didn’t do your due diligence with your own health, and Darwin just claimed another success story.

Let me tell you what happened to us. My wife needed medication, we had just married and the insurance paperwork hadn’t gone through, and so we asked how much it would be to pay outright. The answer was delivered simply. $13,845 dollars. Yeah. Great. thanks guys.

The funny thing is, we as taxpayers help fund the development of these drugs, the clinical trials, and than we don’t make royalties for the funding to you know, maybe help pay for a national health care system or something, and then we get fucked by the companies.

I’ll tell you what. I’ll arrange fundraisers for anyone in Congress with the balls to stand up to this.

Snake Oil

I’m not sure who’s peddling the snake oil here, the authors or Obama. True, the tax burden on this will not come just from the wealthy. In fact, I think it should be carried by everyone to some extent, and we shouldn’t rely on the wealthy as the bank of all future spending. I don’t expect to jump on the public plan and just have a free ride at the millionaire’s expense, get back all those premiums I’ve been paying to the system all this time.

At the same time, the authors quote all the untrue Republican mouthpiece arguments about rationed care, long waits in line and all the same stuff that we’ve heard in our insular world about horror stories from nations with national healthcare systems. Well, I know doctors in England, I know what the truth is, and it ain’t the picture the Republicans paint.

Look at the Abortion Monkey

Of course, if you are losing the fight you can scream Abortion and hope everybody runs for the hills.

How to tell a liar on the Health care debate starring Elizabeth Edwards

Let’s look at her list:

• if you hear somebody saying we can’t afford healthcare reform
• if they use any of these words: “socialization,” or “government control of your healthcare decisions,”
• if they mention “England,” “France,” or “Canada,” you can be assured that they are not telling you the truth.

Sounds pretty simple.

I’m not sure of any of the stats quoted on the bottom of this article, but I’ll try to find something similar from what I think is a reputable source.

Case in point: Michele Bachmann says if we insure more people, there’s going to be less medicine

I don’t usually cite the Huffington Post, it is too unreliable and biased, but here you go. Apparently, if more people got health care, it would increase the hassle for her in the form of lines and other…things. Thanks for the insight Michele, it really would be a personal travesty if more Americans were happy and healthy and had affordable health care. Thanks for understanding the problems of the nation.

“Any mother,” Bachmann said, would do whatever it takes to get “the high-quality health care that her child needs… As a mother of five biological children and as a foster mother to 23 children, there is nothing more important to me than to make sure that my children have high-quality health care when they need health care.”

And so, Michele, you want to deny other mothers the ability to get that health care so that your snot-nosed brood can? Wonderful sense of American Equality there. We found the Un-American people in the house. Hm, there’s logic that somehow Elwyn Tinklenberg can’t defeat in an election. I suggest you donate to help him out.

The cost control conundrum

According to this, if we go with the House plan, we’ll add $202 billion to the deficit by 2019. So in 20 years. we’ll add that much? Shit, is this what we’re quibbling over? Let’s see, there’s 300 millionish people in the nation. Which means we’d have to pay in $1,000 dollars over the next ten years, or $100 extra per year per person? Fuck sign me up. How the hell difficult is that math?

Fittingly, this is going to be the mother of all news shots. Here goes.

Shaming Congress into voting for health care

Send this guy some support! I’ll just quote:

Lawrence Lessig’s new anti-corruption organization Change Congress recently used online ads to shame Sen. Ben Nelson in his home state for opposing President Obama’s public health insurance option while taking $2 million from the health and insurance interests that are leading the fight against it. And it worked. After an 11-day public fight, Nelson switched from calling the public option “a deal breaker” to saying he is open to it and promising not to join Republicans in a filibuster against it.Now, Lessig has set his sights on Sen. Mary Landrieu, who also opposes the public option and took $1.6 million from the same special interests. Today, Change Congress announced a new TV ad targeting Landrieu and they are asking the public to chip in to help air it in Louisiana. Democracy for America and MoveOn.org are also partnering on this ad. It features Karen Gadbois, a local hero who helped root out corruption after Hurricane Katrina — who shares her compelling personal health care story:

Here’s a link to his main site

Speaking of shaming people, what about Joe Lieberman?

Says he’s for universal healthcare when he’s running but when it comes to a vote, it’s a different story.

We won’t have Sarah Palin to dribble around anymore

This link goes to Ezra Klein’s comments about the official transcript. He gives a short analysis of the text, coming to the conclusion that this was hastily written by the barracuda her self. His evidence includes the eighth grade level grammar and punctuation, the poorly thought out metaphors and the use of ALL CAPS for emphasis. Let this serve as a guide, or well, Cliff’s Notes on how to read between the lines of Newspeak no matter which side is saying it. Includes a brilliant basketball analogy.

Here’s the official transcript

Tears are practically coming to my eyes  at how much I’m going to miss her ineptitude. As an homage, I’ll post a version of it, as if I were an junior high school English teacher correcting for style.

Of course, a move like this couldn’t happen unless:

There’s maybe a massive and unavoidable embezzlement scandal on the horizon

Apparently her family didn’t even know what she was going to do until they were standing next to her near the lake in Wasilla.

Meet the Right Wing Lunatics, same as the Left Wing Lunatics

Actually we already know the Lunatic, Rush Limbaugh, who is already saying Obama is laying groundwork for a third term. I seem to recall however the Left Wing conspiracy theorists using the same argument. The argument has never carried weight and only serves to discredit whoever is saying it. It’s going to be fun to watch Rush erode hi sown audience as they see more and more of this kind of thinking.

Oil producers are sitting on a glut of oil which could bring prices down

All the cost of storing it is adding up and they may want to dump it.

Of course, then there’s assholes like this guy

Holy shit! now brokers are going rogue. What’s next? Cats and Dogs living together? Gay marriage? At least he lost $10 million dollars on the deal.

Meanwhile, it’s total stylistic anarchy in Wisconsin

Wisconsing State Government Accountability office gets a new logo that is a cleaner version of the Anarchy symbol.

The recent environment bill And part 2

I’m the first person to support environmental causes, but I hope this one dies in the Senate. 1,200 pages plus a 300 page amendment dropped the morning of the vote. That makes for very shaky laws. We should tear this one apart, look at the science, do what makes sense in smaller, more focused and reasoned bills, and take out the clauses to be named later, Barney Frank.

Politicians in Pennsylvania have some explaining to do

39 Subpeonas. Wow. Way to go. Shame though, at 40 they would have gotten a free travel mug.

This will be on Fox in 5…4…3…

A Turkish game show is putting leaders of the major religions on TV trying to covert atheists. Whoever wins gets a free pilgrimage. Oh, please, oh, please.

Going to prison for the rest of your life? Hire a consultant to help you find just the right one

Madoff… What else needs be said? And just how do you become this kind of consultant?

Meanwhile, internal people at the SEC had been warning about Madoff for five years

Seriously, is the SEC capable of ANYTHING in its mandate?

Barney Frank: Let’s spend TARP profits before taxpayers can get their hands on it

I’ve got no problems with the government making a profit on the banks that caused this whole meltdown shindig, but spend it? Barney Frank, we can come up with a better, less conflicted solution. Maybe we can pay down some of our deficit? It would at least be a drop in the bucket that we don’t have to pay more interest on.

New Challenges on Faith Based healing deaths

This article talks about how hard it is to keep up with new religions who espouse prayer over medicine. I say, we should let them continue along unimpeded, this is God’s way of weeding out the stupid and reintroducing natural selection.

Is Goldman Sachs creating bubbles and profiting from their bursts? You decide

So much going on that Michele Bachmann got bumped to the bottom of the page