I Hope You're Happy

Appendix fails to assassinate Glenn Beck

The nation asks doctors to put it back for another try.

The Golden State isn’t worth it

After analysis, the studies find that the standard of living in the high tax, high social program, big government state of California, life isn’t as good as in the  no taxes, small government state of Texas, and the residents are leaving to lower taxed states in droves.

Having seen this coming, this is why I’m an advocate of small government. Too bad there isn’t a small government-lowtax social liberal party out there for me to get behind.The Democrats every once in a while show some interest in it, especially after Clinton proclaimed the era of big government is over. The rest of the party just hasn’t come around to that concept yet.

Todd Akin gambles on the Pledge of Allegiance, Loses

If you want to use it as a political weapon, you should take care to say all the words. I’m just saying.

Cheney’s FBI interview featured 72 times where he couldn’t recall

I know Reagan got away with it, but really, he had Alzheimer’s. Cheney is just avoiding the question.

And Lo, the two party system did create a void, and out of this void came…third parties

America is seeing the problem with the two parties, and we all know that being an independent is a bad route to go (Joe Lieberman). Most of Europe has several parties (BUT THEY’RE ALL SOCIALISTS), so it’s about time we got in on the action, and allowed some more voices into the debate. It can’t get any worse (right?)

Doug Hoffman, the Conservative of NY-23 claims Glenn Beck is his hero

No wonder that race got so fucked up that the Republican candidate dropped out and endorsed the Democrat. With an election as strange as that, I’m shocked there wasn’t a former porn star or reality TV b-lister also on the ballot.

As a result of Barack Obama’s policies, lobbyists are quitting in droves

If only there were a pied piper to run the rest of them out.

Iran Accepts nuclear deal

Funny that Bush was never able to do this….

Texas and Ohio voters reject red light cameras

I think that if we can’t get this on the ballot everywhere, we should reject them like the mysterious guy in Chicago: with a cherry picker and the cover of darkness.

Carly Fiorina to run for California Senate seat

Let’s see, she nearly ruined HP and Compaq, got chased out but kept her $29 million golden parachute, and then was economic advisor to John McCain.  This is one chick that has failed upwards. The difficulty on this is she has money, connections and media savvy. The easy way to beat her is to point out how few of California’s citizens have a golden parachute in their contracts. Should be easy to paint her as one of those Wall Street types that caused this whole economic disaster, and who can’t relate to the masses like her Democratic opponent.

Michele Bachmann losing aides like Washington is losing Lobbyists

Michelle Marston has left her for being too crazy.

Michael Steele on the mid-term elections: We’re Transcendant

Presumably, the chairman meant that his party is ascendant, meaning on the rise, and not transcendent, meaning beyond the limits of comprehension.

The quote says it best.

So AT&T sued Verizon, and Verizon said, “Um well, ok.”

Seems AT&T was getting killed by the Verizon ads comparing networks, and sued, claiming false advertising. The expectation was Verizom would drop the ads and they’d settle out of court. Verizon, on the other hand, replied very simply by saying, “Prove it.” See, the burden of proof is on AT&T and if Verizon has its facts together, well, AT&T has little legal recourse.

This lamp is consumer retribution

An LED lamp that connects to the phone jack in your wall, stealing power from the phone company.

Dick Grayson

The Caustic personality of Dick Grayson

I have to admit, I like him because of one of his faults. He’s overbearing, and overbearing as a real personality fault, but this also makes him a no bullshit kind of guy, and that’s really what we need in politics.

He’s so brash, nobody wants to run opposing him

That’s one way to win an election.

The Fox News Beat

Jane Hall left Fox because of how skewed they are

She says she left because they stopped debating the issues, and because “Beck is scary”.

White House to Democrats: Stop providing balance to Fox News

I think the idea is to let Fox News continue to become more extreme and more marginalized.

Of course, by the laws of Social Newtonianism, that sort of means they must also become more extreme and marginalized. I wonder if they’ve found some sort of Social Gravitation constant I haven’t worked out quite yet.

From the Facts and Figures Dept

Harrisburg, PA company collected premiums for 11 months, but didn’t pay in

Imagine having your health coverage cancelled RETROACTIVELY for 11 months. That’s what happened to employees of Turbine Airfoil Designs, Inc. They hadn’t made payments due to the recession, now the money is gone, and the employees have thousands in medical bills, the company is under investigation, and well, would you trust flying in an airplane using parts made by a company that can’t handle simple accounting?  Or that cared enough about its employees to do this to them? And of course, hm, maybe some government oversight would have prevented this?

27 Texas Counties have no doctor

On top of it, 114 of 254 counties are designated as primary care shortage areas. No wonder they’re against health care reform. They have no idea what health care is.

The Public option is likely popular in Blue Dog districts

Hmmm… interesting

Meet the opposition

Already, 23 Democrats have said they won’t vote for it

Mostly because of the presence of the public option. Of course 60 said they wouldn’t vote for it if it didn’t have a public option.

Tim Pawlenty wants to deny your access to health care even if we can get it passed

Remember that thing about ranking Republicans on the issues? Apparently, state’s rights are more important to health care.

Family needing health care: Finally we can take little Timmy to the doctor.

Governor: Not in my state. State’s rights! State’s rights! Fuck your kid. We got state’s rights.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss says Obama had better show Humility in his speech to Congress

The implication is that the Republicans are winning, so he should just go meekly into that good night. This is the same Saxby Chambliss who panicked on election day telling his mostly white voter base to get to the polls saying “The other folks are voting.”

I’m wondering if he has any idea of what humility actually means because he sounds pretty cocksure there, or how hypocritical he’s being. We need a word for internal hypocrisy, something like oxymoron.

For the dumbest take on health care yet, check out Victoria Jackson’s Blog

How we’re blowing it

Sen Max Baucus wants to fine you for not having health care

Max Baucus (D-Mont). is standing behind a proposal to fine people up to $3,800 for a family if they don’t have health care.

For some people, if they had $3,800, they would likely spend money on something like health care, or probably food, shelter and clothing, but really, why punish people for not participating in a broken system? For all I’ve needed health care fort the last ten years personally (which is to say, I’d be wealthy for all the money I’ve put in because I haven’t been ill enough to require a doctor in 12 years, I want my money back, a health care savings account would have been a much better idea for me.) I can’t see why this is logical. Should we fine people for not voting, because that system is pretty darn broken as well.

About that whole secession thing, can I have some money instead?

Texas Governor Rick Perry who threatened to secede because of Obama’s stimulus spending, and turned down money to help their unemployment program is now begging for that money. If only it wasn’t people who would suffer from rejecting instead of say, Rich Texas Republicans. Hmmm wait, tax the rich. This is starting to become very clear now.

Your precision bankruptcy of Chrysler and GM was a miracle…. now about those dealerships closing….

Congress is taking up the issue of those dealers that are closing due to the bankruptcy, to make them un-close, and help our automakers fall back into bankruptcy. Thanks Congress!

Libertarians should read this book

“The Myth of the Rational Market” examines the concept of a market that know what is best for it, and comes to the conclusion that the people that run the market don’t really know what is happening in the market, much less what is best for it.

Justin Fox’s The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street is a book that chases down a provocative debate that the author discovered while working forFortune magazine: the idea that the market is driven by fear, psychological quirks, fads, and other “irrational” factors, and as such, it does not represent a set of prices derived from the decisions of millions of actors, but rather a set of nearly impossible to predict fluctuations that are about as useful as a series of coin-tosses.

As evidence for this I offer you this:

Want to revive the housing industry? I’ve got just the thing, it’s called an Adjustable Rate Mortgage

God help us.

The BBC exposes three fake psychics

The host of the show created a fake history, put it up on the website of an old Chocolate factory, let the psychics read it on their own, and then brought them onto the location. Miraculously, all of them spouted the same information. If only we had somebody to try this with our congressmen to see who will spout false information. Oh, wait, those are lobbyists.

Zell Miller is still a work of art

Says Rahm Emanuel should use Gorilla Glue to keep Obama in place. Is he a)really familiar with arts and crafts materials b) cashing in his endorsement with the Gorilla Glue Corporation, or C) proving that he can make a plausibly deniable racist remark in public like a real Republican?

Mark Sanford has a little more explaining to do

Apparently he liked to make those love jaunts in first class at very high cost to the taxpayer.

Iran’s former president says it is time for the release of protesters, a believable election

Yeah, that would be nice.

Pat Buchanan thinks the Supreme Court appointment should go to another white man

And his reasoning- get this- is that white men deserve more, and have done much more.

I Hope to write an article about the Prop 8 thing tomorrow, for now, here’s a good one by John Scalzi:

Reminder: California is a State in Which Same-Sex Marriages Are Legal

Enough said for now.

Michael Steele and conservative Principles

Here’s his great comment:

The Republican Party has turned a corner, and as we move forward Republicans should take a lesson from Ronald Reagan. Again, we’re not looking back – if President Reagan were here today he would have no patience for Americans who looked backward. Ronald Reagan always believed Republicans should apply our conservative principles to current and future challenges facing America. For Reagan’s conservatism to take root in the next generation we must offer genuine solutions that are relevant to this age.

The problem with this, well, let’s list a couple.

1. Conservative principles are not realistic solutions. As they are applied by the Republican Party, they are an inflexible point of view that addresses a belief system and not an objective reality. In essence, conservative principles as currently envisioned are faith based, not science based, and will therefore always collapse like a Creationist’s arguments.
2. Reagan is dead. Let him stay that way. His policies didn’t work either.
3. Isn’t it kind of a contradiction in terms for conservatism to look to the future?

Case in point

They just can’t turn the page on this birth certificate thing. They just collected $40,000 to rent a billboard asking (no this is not a re-run) for the document. Well, that’s $40,000 dollars worth of stimulus money that they can’t claim Democrats wasted.

Case in point #2

Norm “Never give up” Coleman will review Sotomayor’s record when he’s elected, so at least he’s off the hook on that one.

Pelosi: I thought they told, me but then it turned out they didn’t and when they said last week that they did, well, they were lying, like they were when they told me in the first place, but that doesn’t mean I ever knew anything so is that all clear now?

The facepalm was invented for her.

New DNC message: REPUBLICANS BAAADDD!!!

In other words, keep it simple, stupid.

The Texas version of Take the Money and Run:

Use stimulus dollars to renovate the mansion then secede. I’d like to shake the hand of the guys that burned the mansion though.

Glenn Beck tries to sandbag Barney Franks gets teabagged instead

And not is a tax protest kind of way.

That’s so 2005

Great blog post on the lead up to the meltdown.

You want proof?

Let’s re-wind to the RNC. Here’s what they had to do to have a hope of looking, um, let’s say, um, competent: keep people from remembering the failures of Dubya. What happened? Hurricane Gustav, coming for New Orleans and looking like a Cat 4.

Next, let’s go to Bobby Jindal’s Ill-fated response to Obama’s speech on the stimulus package. What did he question? $140 million for volcano monitoring systems. This from the guy who is the Governor of Louisiana, a veritable target of natural disasters and ecological mis-management. What happened that week? Mount Redoubt erupts in Alaska, Sarah Palin’s home state. Call that a two-fer.

Now, here’s the kicker. During the Stimulus spending debate, the Republicans, led by Karl Rove, stripped the bill, very vocally, in fact, of $900 mil for Flu Pandemic preparedness. From Mexico. Which will likely cross the border in Texas.

Consider this divine ironic intervention. If you believe in such things.