Still a douchebag

Now that Holy Joe Lieberman has come out in favor of filibustering Harry Reid’s public option bill, can we please kick his ass out of his Homeland Security Committee Chair position? Seriously, fuck this guy. I am so tired of him screwing the caucus over and over again…

Oh please, oh please, oh please!

Newt Gingrich may run for President in 2012.

I doubt God loves me enough for this to actually happen but a boy can dream…

Krugman is uncharacteristically optimistic today

Take it away, Doctor.

Still, if the Massachusetts experience is any guide, health care reform will have broad public support once it’s in place and the scare stories are proved false. The new health care system will be criticized; people will demand changes and improvements; but only a small minority will want reform reversed.

This thing is going to work.

Word.

Not dead yet

It looks like some sort of the once moribund public option is going to make it into the final Senate healthcare bill. This is obviously a Very Good Thing and kudos to Harry Reid for manning up.

File under Clueless, Greedy Asshole

Via ThinkProgress, I see that T. Boone Pickens is a humonous dick.

T. Boone Pickens told Congress on Wednesday that U.S. energy companies are “entitled” to some of Iraq’s crude because of the large number of American troops that lost their lives fighting in the country and the U.S. taxpayer money spent in Iraq.

[Snip]

“They’re opening them (oil fields) up to other companies all over the world … We’re entitled to it,” Pickens said of Iraq’s oil. “Heck, we even lost 5,000 of our people, 65,000 injured and a trillion, five hundred billion dollars.”

OK, first off, we ostensibly invaded Iraq to free Saddam of his non-existent WMD. Now you and I know that is bullshit. The real reason of course was that Bush had some deep-seated psychological need to topple Saddam. And even with the massive bungling of the war effort, things in Iraq are on an upward trajectory. Now Pickens, greedy prick that he is, wants to turn this messy war for Iraqi liberation into an armed robbery.

Secondly, do you think that Pickens really gives a shit about the soldiers he seems to bemoan here? Fuck no, dude sees dollars signs just out of reach and wants in before all the prime cuts go to people not name T. Boone Pickens. Jesus, what an asshole...

Bottom of the scale

If the healthcare debate ends up being Obama versus the insurance companies, it is not really all that difficult to see who ends up being cast as the villain. It seems that in most circles, insurance companies are about as popular as venereal disease.

Harvard University pollster Robert Blendon said public opinion remains mixed.

"Most people are afraid these bills are going to raise their costs, so this could raise public anxiety," he said. "At the same time, the health insurance industry is at the bottom of the scale of people's trust."

Like I was saying, if this turns into a PR battle, my money is on the Administration. Nobel Peace prize winners are not big on killing Grandma, no matter what the insurance companies say.

Sometime the beast will turn on its master

HuffPo has video of Sen. Lindsey Graham(R-SC) opposite a bunch of seriously pissed-off Teabaggers at a town hall meeting. By now, everyone should know that the Tea Partiers, in the aggregate, are unhinged but these assclowns seem to consider Graham’s work with Sen. John Kerry (MA-D) an act of sedition and then proceed to call the guy a traitor for it. I guess in their crazy little heads, being on the right side of sanity is treasonous.

Remember kids, this is the side-effect of listening to Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.

We are having an Olympia Snowe Day!

Kind sad that the only real drama in today’s Finance Committee vote on the Baucus bill is whether a single Republican will get behind it.

The Nobel, the GOP and the big picture

I must say that I was as shocked as anyone that Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It isn’t for me to second guess the Nobel Committee’s judgment here but my gut tells me that more than anything else, this decision was motivated by a desire to give the Bush Administration and their unilateralist ilk a gigantic middle finger. And judging by the collective wingnut apoplexy in response to the announcement, I think my gut may have a valid point.

Coupled with the joy many conservatives expressed when Chicago’s Olympic bid failed, an effort Obama was heavily invested in, I get the sense that one of the two major parties in this nation has lost its collective mind. I remember not so long ago when opposition to Bush Administration policies was blithely dismissed as Bush-hating drivel of a bunch of seditious liberal cranks. Now, the same crowd cheers when the US gets booted in the first round of Olympic selection because that would somehow translate into a snub of Obama. Bush could play fighter pilot-for-a-day so as to create the perfect “Mission Accomplished” photo-op and the ever so serious conservatives swooned. Obama wins the Nobel Prize and they fall over themselves in an effort to cast the award as trivial. In short, the Republican Party has decided that opposition to Obama is its most important platform plank, even when that goal strays into anti-American territory. Or to put it another way, I am beginning to question just how loyal the Loyal Opposition is and so is the Democrat National Committee. Their response, via HuffPo, is about as terse and confrontational as anything I can recall coming from the DNC:

"The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists -- the Taliban and Hamas this morning -- in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize," wrote DNC Communications Director Brad Woodhouse. "Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize -- an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride -- unless of course you are the Republican Party. The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn. It's no wonder only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore - it's an embarrassing label to claim."

When Republicans are finding common cause with the Taliban, something has gone seriously, seriously wrong within the GOP. These days, the Party ain’t so Grand.

The death of an old stomping ground

I am bummed. I just saw that Magnolia’s, one of my favorite bars/steakhouses, has gone under. She will be missed…

And sometime being pro-Halliburton means being pro-rape

Think Progress has the full story on this and I highly recommend reading it if you can suppress your outrage long enough to get through it all but suffice it to say, 30 GOP Senators think Halliburton is just great while defending the rights of a 22 year old Halliburton employee who was drugged and gang-raped by a bunch of other Halliburton employees, well not so much.

People, those are some truly fucked up priorities.

Getting a vote

The Senate Finance Committee has scheduled a vote on the Baucus healthcare bill for Tuesday. From what I know of the bill, there is not much to love there though it is crucial that this beast get out of committee. It seems that the Senate and White House have finally realized that they will probably get zero GOP votes for any legislation in the Senate and as such, need to get something passed in order to get something into conference with whatever the House produces. My best guess is that the Finance Committee has been working to get something that can pass the full Senate knowing that anything the Senate passes will get radically changed in the conference committee anyway so the actual particulars aren’t really all that relevant.

That said, the real battle will be fought when the progressives and the Blue Dogs attempt to reconcile the two versions. My hope is that Obama and more probably, Rohm Emmanuel, will lay down the law during those negotiations. I know Obama is not really the type to throw elbows; Emmanuel, however, is a different story. When it comes time to twist arms and crack skulls, he is the guy you want but everything hinges on getting a bill out of committee and on the floor.