We know now, with certainty ...

That Bob Dole is senile and Tom Daschle is an idiot:

...

Acknowledging that there is little chance for bipartisanship in the House, Dole urged Senate Republicans to give up any thought of filibustering the health bill. "We need a group of Republicans who will give an early demonstration that bipartisanship is possible," he said.

Daschle, in turn, said he thinks the Democrats should not attempt to ram a health bill through the Senate by using the budget reconciliation device to pass it with 51 votes, rather than the 60 votes most legislation requires.

...

Why is it the Dems always name spineless patsies to lead the party in the Senate?

Thursday Afternoon Smartass Music Blogging

The smartass is me, not these gals. They're pretty good. This goes out to all y'all that have had yer hearts broken lately by people in high places. Like the White House. Yes, you may call me names.

Gray Sky Girls ~ Sea Of Heartbreak

Thanks to BlueGrassRootsTV.

More Polls and the 'Liberal Media'

Think Progress

Major Media Headlines Pretend That Latest Polls Show Obama’s Policies Are Unpopular

You can go read it, but I'll skip to a comment:

ralph the wonder locust Says:

Good thing we've got Faux News as an "opposition channel", what with all these radical far left news sources sugar-coating everything to make the President look good.

Here's my take on Our President's performance so far in five short months on the job:

He's headed in the right direction against entrenched money that doesn't want things to change unless it's even more in their favor. If you watch real close, he's doing things in very small increments because it's the only way to do them. He has a LOT of problems to solve to un-fuck-up the joint after basically 29 years of Repug greed and imperialism. Clinton was barely a blip, and Bush sank the country damn near once and for all. He has priorities, and despite the number of irons he has in the fire, the cows still have to be branded one at a time in order of importance and can't be done all at once.

The frog is in the water and the stove is turned on.

In case you don't think I'm lefty enough or impatient enough, you're right. Nobody is going to get everything they want out of Obama, nor can they nor should they, but if we support this guy in office like we did in his campaign, everybody except the far right and the far left will get big improvements over time.

P.M. Carpenter has a coupla good posts about what he thinks Obama is up to. I tend to go along with him.

Obama: An FDR progressive, whether hard-lining progressives believe it or not

and

Obama is dragging the center leftward, a few pragmatic inches at a time

An old bull and a young bull were standing on a hillside looking down at a pasture full of beautiful young cows. The young bull said, "Wow! Hey, Pops, let's run down there and make love ta one a' them cows!". To which the old bull replied, "Let's walk down and make love ta all of 'em."

The old bull (ahem!) knows best.

Poll

Think Progress. Links and comments at site.

Today, House Republicans offered a substance-less alternative to the Democrats’ health care plan. The GOP “plan” comes on the same day that Gallup releases new numbers showing the GOP ranks last when it comes to who the public thinks would get health care reform right. Only 34% of Americans are confident that Republicans in Congress will make the correct decisions, which is less than the insurance companies (35%) and the pharmaceutical companies (40%). The public’s faith in President Obama comes in at 58%, while confidence in Democratic leaders in Congress is at 42%:

You'd think doctors would be in favor of anything that lets them and their patients decide what's needed without a third party in some for-profit insurance company cubicle far away standing between them trying to deny as much care as possible.

You'd also think that doctors would support anything that simplifies their paperwork without some clown in each of 1000 insurance company cubicles trying to stiff them as much as possible.

You'd think they'd be falling all over themselves calling for single-payer.

Of course, that doesn't take into account their expectations of high pay and returns from investments in hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, HMOs, etc., not to mention the leasing of office space and their cut from the pharmacy in the medical building they own. Most doctors are Repug businessmen. See 'high pay and investments'.

I don't quite understand the results of the above poll, both that I think folks' trust in doctors is too high, and also that confidence in Pharma, insurance companies, Dem leaders in Congress and most particularly Repug congresstoads is waaaay too high.

To put this in words I can understand, I trust my mechanic to fix my car. I don't necessarily want him setting transportation policy.

With the exception of Fixer and me, of course. Everything would be high speed and low drag! Fuck it, let us figure out high speed, low drag health care too. We couldn't do much worse than the so-called 'experts'.

Single Payer Health Care

We're not going to get single-payer anytime soon, but we might get a 'public option' which will open the door for it later. We have to demand a lot to get a little.

Sign Bernie's petition.

Date Posted: 06/16/2009

Our current private health insurance system is the most costly, wasteful, complicated and bureaucratic in the world. Today, 46 million people have no health insurance. Even more are underinsured with high deductibles and co-payments. Close to 20,000 Americans die each year because they don’t have regular access to a doctor. "The time is now for our nation to address the most profound moral and economic issue we face. The time is now for our country to join the rest of the industrialized world and provide cost-effective, comprehensive quality health care to every man, woman and child in our country. The time is now to take on the powerful special interests in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and pass a single-payer national health care program."

Twit of the Day

That would be Pete "Stepped On His Weenie" Hoekstra (Imbecile - MI).

Talking Points Memo

Earlier today, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) put up this astonishing post on Twitter, likening the oppression of the Iranian people to the plight of House Republicans:

Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House.

In the hours since, the Twitter community has responded -- with massive heckling. Here's just a small sample of some of the best ones:

luckbfern @petehoekstra I stand in solidarity with the oppressed rich white men of Repub Party in the House. #GOPfail Allah Akbar!

netw3rk @petehoekstra Someone walked in on me while I was in the bathroom. Reminded me of Pearl Harbor.

I can dig that one. Anybody walks in on my morning constitutional, or before the hazmat guys are done afterwards, is likely to go down like Arizona!

TahirDuckett @petehoekstra ran through the sprinklers this morning, claimed solidarity with victims of Hurricane Katrina

paganmist @petehoekstra Had to move all my stuff to a new office w/o a corner view. Now i know what the Trail of Tears was like. #GOPfail

There's plenty more of these and comments too.

I had kinda thought Twitter was pretty inane, but it's sure good for stuff like that, and its worth in getting word out of Iran to the world is turning out to be way above its former perceived potential.

On using it myself? I'll pass. I think ya gotta have one of them little cameras with a phone in it.

Quote of the Day

Susie Madrak:

It’s just another day here in the Obama Whiplash Derby, in which I’m either saying, "God, I can’t believe I voted for this guy!" or "Wow, great idea!" - sometimes within the same five minutes. (Boy, does my neck hurt.)

...

No shit.

Late for work. Bye ...

So, just like California ...

Our federal government treats a select group of gay folks like human beings (sorta) and says "fuck you" to the rest of 'em.

Faced with growing anger among gay and lesbian supporters, the Obama administration today announced extension of some benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees, but stopped short of offering full healthcare coverage.

...

Gee, thanks. Could ya spare it, mate? [/sarcasm]

You know, I'm tired of hearing about "American values" when we can deny 15% (thereabouts) of our population rights the rest of us enjoy and take for granted. I'm tired of hearing the "freedom and democracy" drumbeat with regard to Iran when, for a good portion of our population, "freedom and democracy" are certainly something much less.

Talk to me when all of our people can enjoy the rights and freedoms affirmed in the Constitution. Talk to me when we're not the only civilized nation where close to 20% of its people walk a thin line between medical care and starvation. I don't want to know about "values" and "freedom" and "rights" in other places until we clean up our own act. I don't want to hear "we don't want to become Europe" when Europe does more to respect the value of its citizens and their contributions than we do; when Cuba has a better healthcare system than we do.

Instead of strutting about and preening like superior beings, telling everyone how great we are, when more and more of our people are getting left behind every day, it's time we actually did something. In my neighborhood, bullshit doesn't cut it, positive action does.

Nothing's gonna change ...

Testifying before Congress, the health insurance big shots basically gave our elected reps the finger.

An investigation by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations showed that health insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, allowing the companies to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims over a five-year period.

It also found that policyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for rescission and that employees were praised in performance reviews for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses.

...

Why bother buying insurance to begin with if they're just gonna drop you when you need them the most? Slimy fuckers ...

...

The executives -- Richard A. Collins, chief executive of UnitedHealth's Golden Rule Insurance Co.; Don Hamm, chief executive of Assurant Health and Brian Sassi, president of consumer business for WellPoint Inc., parent of Blue Cross of California -- were courteous and matter-of-fact in their testimony.

But they would not commit to limiting rescissions to only policyholders who intentionally lie or commit fraud to obtain coverage, a refusal that met with dismay from legislators on both sides of the political aisle. [my ems]

...

Fuck them, especially when you see what they're getting paid (click on the link). You know why these motherfuckers have the balls to show their ass to Congress? Becuse half the twits asking them questions also take lobbying money. The insurance execs know that no matter what our spineless reps say in the committee room, they'll vote for whatever the insurance industry says they should.

In a perfect world, there would be no argument that single-payer is the way to go but we won't get anything even closely resembling it. In the end, the insurance companies will make out and we'll end up paying more, either through increased taxes or directly, in higher premiums. It'd be nice if the people we elect to represent us would actually give a shit about us rather than protecting a source of campaign donations.

Dammit, Gordon!

I got a jukebox in my head. Can't help it, always been there. There's always a tune going though my head, usually relevant to whatever the current situation might be. Gord has a knack for subliminally suggesting tunes with his posts. The Vipers tune (with all the cars and pretty girls) got me thinking about tunes I'd listen to while driving and this one popped into my head. I played it a lot when I was seeing a woman in Dallas while being stationed at White Sands on a long TDY and I used to drive back and forth every time I got a free weekend:

Golden Earring - Radar Love

Rat Rod Rock

I needs me a midweek break from Iran, Iran, Iran, neocons, Repug whining, yada, yada....

YouTube recommends things for me to watch. I even watch 'em sometimes.

I never heard of these guys, and in my exhaustive research I found out there's more bands called 'The Vipers' than you can shake a stick at, but I think this is this one. I can dig it - easy for the tattoo artist to spell when he's inkin' up the groupies, evokes kinda a bad boy image. Cool.

I ain't really a rock and roll guy, but what got me goin' on this one was the shot of the old Ford flathead about two seconds in. I loves me some flatheads! It's an old fart thing. The slightly-less-than-show-quality real world po' boy hotrods are cool too. Remember, form follows function, and the main function of these things is ta haul ass and pick up the kind of girls your mother warned you about. Then the pictures of about every girl my mother ever warned me about. The ones I managed to meet were all very nice girls, even the crazy ones, heh, and are probly grandmothers by now. Don't look at me...

The Vipers ~ Dust In My Pants

Thanks to Termite58.

Before we get carried away ...

Expecting an overthrow of the theocratic system in Iran by popular groundswell (yes, I'm talking to you, conservatives), this 'revolution' is not that deep. Robert Fisk*:

...

[The protest] is absolutely not against the Islamic republic or the Islamic revolution.

It's clearly an Islamic protest against specifically the personality, the manner, the language of Ahmadinejad. They absolutely despise him but they do not hate or dislike the Islamic republic that they live in.

The Ayatollahs will remain after this Ahmedinejad dustup is long forgotten. It would behoove those in this country, who think this is the next best thing to a U.S. bombing campaign, to realize they might just be disappointed.

*Great thanks to Dr. Fez for the link.

Seeing it ...

For what it is. At least the President gets (he's been obtuse on several other issues) the fact Fox 'News' is nothing but a propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee:

Shamelessly swiped from Oliver Willis.

How I spent my afternoon ...

I had the distinct honor and privilege to meet up with regular reader and commenter John Gall, his lovely wife Delaine, and his college buddy Bob at a local seafood place the Mrs.* and I used to frequent when we were dating. John and his wife were in from Iowa, visiting Bob (who lives about 4 hours north of the Island) and made the trip down so Delaine could finally see the ocean (seems John made a promise to take her a long time ago and he finally came through ... heh) and to visit yours truly, which flatters me to no end.

We put down a few, had some of the local shellfish, and talked our asses off. 3 hours went far too quickly. I'm tickled to death to have had the opportunity to meet such righteous folks.





Safe trip home, guys. Glad you're taking back some good memories from my home.

*Unfortunately, Mrs. F is in Boston on business and couldn't attend, which is a shame because she has a far better personality than I do. Everybody likes her better than me. Heh ...

Lawn Guyland - the 51st state?

Hey F-Man - go chime in on this.

Bob Bogle

LATimes

TACOMA, Wash.-- Bob Bogle, lead guitarist and co-founder of the rock band The Ventures, known for 1960s instrumental hits including "Walk, Don't Run," has died. He was 75.

I spent my teenage years in the surfing subculture of Southern California. "Walk, Don't Run" was an anthem along with songs by Jan & Dean and The Beach Boys. It's playing in my head right now.

Those were good times and the music was a big part of it. Thanks, Bob. Godspeed.

Thanks to diceophonic.

Iranians have learned from us

Stolen from mattbors.com.

"We gotta sink the Eurodam 'cuz the world depends on us"*

If there's anybody out there who enjoys sea cruises, this one'll make ya puke.

The Ostroy Report has an inside man. I'll make ya go read it with just this one line:

Sounds like our nation's leading conservatives are having a gay old time at sea.....

Sounds like they're gettin' inta the old Royal Navy seafaring spirit of "Ah, for the good ol' days of rum, sodomy, and the lash! Arrghhhh!". Traditionalists all. What happens in international waters stays in international waters and it won't get shown on U.S. TV. Waiting for the crew's cell phone vids on YouTube...

*Apologies to Johnny Horton. This time it ain't nothin' against the ship. It'd be like sinkin' the Noah's Ark Of Evil.

Iran Recount

From the Beeb:

Iran's powerful Guardian Council says it is ready to recount disputed votes from Friday's presidential poll.

Shorter analysis from BuzzFlash:

Iran's powerful Guardian Council says it is ready to "recount" disputed votes from Friday's presidential poll. Excuse our cynicism, but when "recount" doesn't mean "recount," but rather "diffuse the opposition by holding off a week but then announce again an Ahmadinejad victory by a slightly lower majority and by then the steam has gone out of the opposition."

That's about it.

Legal Pot in California in 2010?

AlterNet.

There is a buzz moving through the culture, as the public attitudes around cannabis use are rapidly shifting, that the legalization of marijuana in some states, particularly California, is a growing possibility.

An array of new circumstances -- Democrats in power, economic recession leaving states starving for revenue that could come from taxing cannabis sales, less funds for law enforcement and Mexican drug operatives moving into the US to grow huge amounts of untaxed pot, contributing to the horrible drug violence South of the Border -- support the growing public support for legalization of pot.

At the epicenter of legal pot talk and strategic political action is Richard Lee, a highly successful pot entrepreneur, who over the past decade has turned the "uptown" entertainment area of downtown Oakland, California into what many call Oaksterdam, a play on Amsterdam, their sister city in Holland. A centerpiece of the Oakland transformation is Oaksterdam University which Lee founded to prepare people for jobs in the cannabis industry. As he told MSNBC, "my basic idea is to professionalize the industry, and have it taken seriously just like beer and distilling hard liquor." The University, along with half a dozen other "cannabis businesses," controlled by Lee bring thousands of visitors to Oakland daily.

California Pot Legalization Initiative

And it was Richard Lee who raised eyebrows among many last week, including some in the "drug reform establishment," when he announced an effort to qualify for the California statewide ballot in November of 2010, The Control, Regulate and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, the first major statewide initiative designed to legalize marijuana for personal use.

Where's that petition? Bring it to me! Besides removing millions of harmless people from being criminals and a shot in the arm (heh) for the snack food industry, our ballot initiative process could use a little redemption too!

The article is quite a bit longer. Please enjoy. You heads trace it with yer finger so you won't lose your place, or print it so you won''t forget what ya read.

Also see:

...TaxCannabis2010.org, the newly minted organization he started to push the initiative, calls for the legalization of small amounts of marijuana for personal possession by adults 21 and older, and allows cities and counties the option of regulating sales and cultivation. The legal amount would be 1 ounce for personal possession, with cultivation allowed in a space no larger than 5 feet by 5 feet.

It'll be a good thing if this works.