Kyl Rejects, Guv Protests, McCain Blows Stack

From Daily Kos:

So...John McCain supports Senator Kyl's demand that the Obama administration cancel the stimulus...but when the Obama administration asks state officials whether or not they agree with Senator Kyl's demand, McCain calls it a "threat against the citizens of Arizona."

Put another way, John McCain's message is this: "Don't do what I say I want you to do, because if you do what I say I want you to do, then you're doing nothing but threatening me. AND GET OFF MY LAWN! DAMMIT!"

And they wonder why we think they are a bunch of lunatics.

Heh. I'd like ta sneak up on McLame while he's noddin' off in his rocker on his front porch in between his bouts of semi-lucidity when he waves at passing cars, and wire his blow-off valves (his ears - you old boiler operators know what I'm talkin' about) shut so the excess steam couldn't get out and then back off a safe distance and watch his head explode the next time he spouts some talking points.

Governor Secesh Goodhair is doing something similar. First he rejected $555M in federal stimulus for unemployment, and now he's trying to get a $170M "loan" (yeah, like "loaning" money to yer brother-in-law) for the same unemployment fund and is expected to ask for $650M for it this year. No stimulus, please, but give me the money.

Where's my dog clippers? I wonder if he naps...

What a bunch of fuckin' hypocrites.

Heh ...

Swiped from our pal, and fellow New Yorker, D-cap:

Harry Potter & The Senate Judiciary Committee

Tony Peyser

Our Hogwarts hero has a skill
(One of the charms of being him)
Where his dad's magical cloak
Can make others stop seeing him.

Southern Republicans, of whom
The rest of us should be wary,
Think that their expensive suits
Make them invisible like Harry.

But regardless who their tailor is
The truth is that anyone could
Give them a glance and still see
They're wearing sheets & a hood.

Progress ...

Drifty:

...

40 years ago we were a nation that spent billions of dollars on the crap shoot of putting three men on top of 3,200 tons of hellfire wrapped in an aluminum skin and firing the whole thing at a dead rock 240,000 miles away because our destiny demanded it.

40 years later we are a nation that will not spend billions to keep its 300 million citizens alive, healthy and productive because the insurance industry lobbyists who own our politicians forbid it.

...

Welcome to America of the 21st Century.

It's Pat!

And I'll bet Buchanan still doesn't get the SNL reference. Heh.

Here's Rachel trying to talk sense to Pat Buchanan. She does her best, but I hope she learned from this exchange that reason and facts mean absolutely nothing when dealing with old white racist, anti-semitic, misogynist throwbacks.

Just as an aside, there's a minute or so of President Obama's speech in front of the NAACP yesterday. He has an entirely different persona in front of a black audience and it's terrific! If he hadn't gone into politics, he'da made a damn fine hellfire shoutin' preacher! Shit, I'd go to church to listen to him. Then I'd throw a little offering in the plate to help pay for the roof that got hit by lightning and caved in because I was there...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

And from a long article at Media Matters about Buchanan, long because it has to be to crowd in a good sampling of his racist, anti-semitic, and he-man-woman-haters comments over the years:

Incredibly, MSNBC trots him out to discuss race and gender issues, as though the views he represents are needed for "balance." And so MSNBC viewers are treated to the bizarre spectacle of Pat Buchanan loudly insisting that everyone else is a racist. Sonia Sotomayor? Racist. Harry Reid? Racist. Eric Holder? Displays "almost paralyzing stupidity" in talking about race.

If there is a consistent theme to Buchanan's rhetoric over the past four decades, it is that the real bigotry is displayed by women and minorities, and bigotry's real victims are white males. At this point, it would be surprising if he didn't call Sonia Sotomayor a racist.

But the most extraordinary thing about MSNBC's continued employment of Pat Buchanan is that all of this barely scratches the surface. Anyone willing to devote a few minutes can easily find dozens, if not hundreds, more examples of flagrantly over-the-top rhetoric targeting racial and ethnic minorities, women, gays, and immigrants, among others -- from the '60s through the present day.

Pat Buchanan's bigoted comments are not merely an aspect of his public persona; if they are not what he is best known for, they should be. MSNBC needs to explain why they are not disqualifying.

I think they keep him around for about the same reason the CDC keeps a smallpox sample, in case there's a breakout and they need to study it again. He needs to be in a museum, perhaps at the Creation museum in Kentucky next to the dinosaurs Jesus buried 6000 years ago. Or maybe at the Holocaust Museum as an example of what to look out for.

Buchanan seems to be longing for the old days, when women were all about Kinder, Küche, Kirche, and unquestioning submission to white males, which is what God made them for, of course. A time when the 'good' 'colored' 'knew their place' and were thus a 'credit to their race', and when 'uppity' ones could be dealt with with a rope. When Jews were baggy pants comedians and caricatures of evil and the Nazis knew how to deal with them, by God.

Heaven to him will be a place with all angry, bitter old white men carping about how they were so beset upon when the world went mad and the people they had oppressed wised up and talked back. I hope he finds it. Soon.

She'd be eminently qualified ...

If she weren't a fat broad*:

Since President Obama announced his pick for the nation’s Top Doc, Internet message boards have been atwitter with the observation that Dr. Regina Benjamin is fat.

...

Just shut the fuck up. I suppose everybody mistook C. Everett Koop for Kate Moss? It really pisses me off that when these assholes have nothing to pick on about a person, they turn to their weight, which is somehow a disqualifier for everything.

Listen to me. Peoples' body shape is dictated by genetics. Everybody in my family puts weight on easily. I've had a problem with my weight since I was a little kid. If I don't watch everything I eat, I start growing. When I was in the military, I worked out more than most in order to keep in shape. Since I've been out (and getting older) I have to watch it even closer because I don't get the same amount of exercise I did back then. It really pisses me off when people pick on things about others they have no control over, be it weight, color, ethnicity, looks, whatever.

That said, if you don't see a beautiful woman in the picture below, you need to get your eyes checked.



I wish her all the best of luck in her new job and I commend her tenacity in the face of overwhelming odds (on many levels).

Regina Benjamin is a rural family physician forging an inspiring model of compassionate and effective medical care in one of the most underserved regions of the United States. In 1990, she founded the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic to serve the Gulf Coast fishing community of Bayou La Batre, Alabama, a village of approximately 2,500 residents devastated twice in the past decade by Hurricanes Georges, in 1998, and Katrina, in 2005. Despite scarce resources, Benjamin has painstakingly rebuilt her clinic after each disaster and set up networks to maintain contact with patients scattered across multiple evacuation sites. She has established a family practice that allows her to treat all incoming patients, many of whom are uninsured, and frequently travels by pickup truck to care for the most isolated and immobile in her region ...

If you're hurting, I'm certain her weight would be the farthest thing from your mind if they brought you to her emergency room. You'd be thanking whatever you worship she was your physician. Idiots.

*Great thanks to Athenae for the link.

Quote of the Effin' Week!

HuffPo, with video:

"...we're going to do that crack cocaine thing that you and I have talked about before." - Senator Sessions (R(acist) - Alabigotama) at the Sotomayor hearings.

Context be damned, Jeffie-Beau, it would do you a world of good ta puff one up. It would do us a world of good if you got caught at it.

Global Gas Pump

Iraq was always about the oil. Still is. And ever will be. Tom Klare at TomDispatch. Take a lunch.

Has it all come to this? The wars and invasions, the death and destruction, the exile and torture, the resistance and collapse? In a world of shrinking energy reserves, is Iraq finally fated to become what it was going to be anyway, even before the chaos and catastrophe set in: a giant gas pump for an energy-starved planet? Will it all end not with a bang, but with a gusher? The latest oil news out of that country offers at least a hint of Iraq's fate.

For modern Iraq, oil has always been at the heart of everything. Its very existence as a unified state is largely the product of oil.

When President George W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, his overarching goals all revolved around the geopolitics of oil. He and his top officials were intent on replacing Saddam Hussein's regime with one that would prove friendly to American oil interests. They also imagined that, greeted as liberators by a grateful population, they would preside over a radical upgrading of Iraq's petroleum capacity, thereby ensuring adequate supplies for American consumers at an affordable price. Finally, by building and manning a constellation of major military bases in a grateful Iraq, they saw themselves ensuring continued American dominance over the oil-soaked Persian Gulf region, and so the energy heartland of the planet.

All of this, of course, proved to be a mirage. [...]

More of a 'pipe dream'.

[..] The Bush administration, which looked with alarm at Saddam Hussein's growing ties to Russia and China, invaded the country in part to reassert American dominance in the Persian Gulf region and diminish the role played by Moscow and Beijing. Today, Washington appears to welcome the growing role of Chinese and Russian firms in the rehabilitation of Iraq's dilapidated energy infrastructure.

Yeah, ya fucked that one up good, Georgie boy.

For devastated Iraq, of course, these last years were a disaster and real reconstruction of the country still remains a long way off. For the United States, gone are expectations of converting Iraq into a model Middle Eastern democracy, or of inserting a Western-trained, pro-U.S. regime in Baghdad. Nor is there any expectation that the state-owned Iraq National Oil Company will be completely privatized -- once the dream of Bush-era neocons. Nonetheless, the (re)emergence of a functioning Iraqi petro-state working closely with foreign energy firms to boost global oil supplies (with American troops, whether based in Iraq or neighboring countries, providing ultimate security) would be an outcome that could be sold to Congress and, presumably, a majority of the American public.

So it has finally come to this dismal possible end point: after all the blood and tears, all the death and destruction, almost all interested parties seem to be returning to the only vision of the country, however depressing, that has demonstrated any viability. In the future, Iraq is likely to be an oil-fueled petro-state with no function other than to service global markets and enrich local elites as well as the technocrats that assist them. This may be not be an inspiring vision -- especially for Iraqis who have suffered so much -- but it might possibly be the only reality available that will circumvent the horrific bloodletting of the past 30 years.

Instead of lying us into that clusterfuck with all the 'WMD' and 'mushroom cloud' bullshit, what if Bush had just come right out and said, "We're going to invade Iraq for its oil. We're going to get thousands of your sons and daughters killed, not to mention hundreds of thousands of sand niggers who aren't really human beings anyway and exist only to serve white folks, their betters, so you can drive your SUVs and thus further enrich the corporate ruling elite. We're going to have a permanent military presence there for generations to come in order to protect your God-given American right to live the sybaritic (If he'da known such a word. The speechwriters coulda made him practice it.) lifestyle of spoiled rich white people that you've become accustomed to, but on the cheap because you're not as rich as you think you are and live on borrowed money anyway. We're going to spend trillions of dollars, but we're going to borrow the money from China and run our criminal imperialistic war of agression off the books so you'll never see the cost until we can't pay the mortgage and the Chinks come to foreclose. Your kids and grandkids will get stuck with the bill, but I don't care because me and my peeps are rich and won't be affected by it, and you'll be dead and fuck the goddam next generation anyway, the ingrateful little bastards who'll bitch about what we did to them just so we could avoid seeing the writing on the wall. The oil is going to run out someday and we'd better be the ones to get it. Let's go get what's ours even if it puts the lie to everything we claim to believe in! Besides, you people are all suckers and I'm doing what my corporate and neocon masters want."

It wouldn't have made a bit of difference. With the Repug Congress, the corporate Bush-suckin' media, and half our country being ignorant wingtards at the time, we'd be exactly where we are now.

Bush coulda saved himself a lot of trouble just by being out front about his big oil grab. Too bad he doesn't know how to tell the truth, and it's not Repug and neocon policy anyway.

Quote of the Day

Seymour Hersh in "The Man Who Knew Cheney's Secret" at The Daily Beast:

"The last time they said the government doesn’t torture; this time it's the government doesn’t assassinate."

The next shoe to drop...

Quote of the Day

Jill:

... I suppose it's to Sotomayor's credit that she's able to sit through all the manure being thrown around the Judiciary Committee without telling these gasbags just how full of shit they are ...

Late for work. See yas ...

While I love Europe ...

They have some of the same problems we do. Take Bush accomplice and war criminal Tony Blair. Is he going to Den Haag in an orange jumpsuit with a glow-in-the-dark 'P' stitched on the back? No, he's gonna be the next EU President ... probably:

And the trend of [sending] failed politicians to Brussels continues. Europe really knows how to prevent the EU from making progress and being viewed as a joke by its constitutes. If there's a country that doesn't send its rejects to Brussels I'm [not] aware of it. This is precisely why the EU Parliament and Brussels in general are viewed as a non-serious sideshow that is ignored by most. Think of it as a retirement plan for politicians who are past their sell-by date. In Blair's case, not only did he lead an invasion of another country but now he's cashing in by working with bankers who he propped up who then dragged down the economy. How convenient for everyone to ignore that little detail as the UK figures out how to work through this deep recession.

...

I'd be nice if we had a place to send our losers where they can still feel like they're in charge, yet can't do any appreciable harm. Instead, ours seem to stay around forever, coming to our attention periodically like a chronic case of hemorrhoids.

How much ...

For your soul?

Members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, who opposed a version of health care reform that the panel passed today, have on average received more money from the industries fighting against the measure's public health plan component than those who voted "yes."

...

A breakdown of who got what here.

I'll have faith in my government again when all the money is taken out of lobbying; when the K Street crowd has to use objective fact to sway their reps instead of campaign cash. Ain't holding my breath.

Thanks to Ol' Fez for the link.

I coulda told ya that ...

Shit, I remember my dad giving me this dimple in my forehead. Heh ...

WEDNESDAY, July 15 (HealthDay News) -- Fetuses that are only 30 weeks old may already possess short-term memory, Dutch researchers report.

...

But whatever short term memory I had got killed in '73 and it hasn't been seen since.

Quit bitchin' ...

Mrs. F does that every autumn:

"I thought somebody had bought Europe with my credit card," said Josh Muszynski, from New Hampshire.

Be glad they didn't get yer AMEX. I gotta pay off the equivalent of the European debt every October. I wonder if I could get away with the "bank made a mistake" excuse?

Are you people fucking drunk?

Yes, this* should end well:

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizonans with concealed weapons permits will be allowed to take a handgun into bars and restaurants that serve alcohol under a bill signed Monday by Gov. Jan Brewer.

...

Drinking while carrying a weapon would be illegal.

...

So why the fuck would you bother going into a bar with a firearm?

We have a saying in my neighborhood. "Instant Moron: Just add alcohol." I'm making a tub o' popcorn and getting an online subscription to the Arizona Republic for my entertainment.

Dumbasses.

*Link thanks to Maru.

Observations ...

As I watch the Sotomayor hearings (at this particular time watching Jeff Sessions' follow ups), I get the feeling, by her body language (she reminds me a lot of Mrs. F - in intellect, demeanor, and knowledge of her particular field of law) that she wants to get up and punch Sessions in the eye.

Go for it, girl!

White Man’s Last Stand

MoDo on Sotomayor:

A wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not know that a gaggle of white Republican men afraid of extinction are out to trip her up.

After all, these guys have never needed to speak inspirational words to others like them, as Sotomayor has done. They’ve had codes, handshakes and clubs to do that.

She even used a flat tone when talking about the “horrific tragedy” of 9/11, when she was living near the World Trade Center. And she was mechanical in explaining to a grumpy Senator Orrin Hatch that banning nunchaku sticks did not dent the Second Amendment because the martial-arts weapons’ swing “can bust someone’s skull.”

But the barbed adjectives didn’t match the muted performance on display before the Judiciary Committee. Like the president who picked her, Sotomayor has been a model of professorial rationality. Besides, it’s delicious watching Republicans go after Democrats for being too emotional and irrational given the G.O.P. shame spiral.

W. and Dick Cheney made all their bad decisions about Iraq, W.M.D.’s, domestic surveillance, torture, rendition and secret hit squads from the gut, based on false intuitions, fear, paranoia and revenge.

Sarah Palin is the definition of irrational, a volatile and scattered country-music queen without the music. Her Republican fans defend her lack of application and intellect, happy to settle for her emotional electricity.

Senator Graham said Sotomayor would be confirmed unless she had “a meltdown” — a word applied mostly to women and toddlers until Mark Sanford proudly took ownership of it when he was judged about the wisdom of his Latina woman.

And then there’s the Supreme Court, of course, which gave up its claim to rational neutrality when the justices appointed by Republican presidents — including Bush Sr. — ignored what was fair to make a sentimental choice and throw the 2000 election to W.

Faced with that warped case of supreme empathy, no wonder Sotomayor is so eager to follow the law.

This goes out to Repugs everywhere and particularly those who recognize the end of them is thankfully in sight at last. Now if the Injuns will just put little red flags on their arrows to make it easier to find the bodies before they stink up the joint even worse...

And no, we're not particularly politically correct around here.

Thanks to rsensorat3, Canuckistan.

"He is sweating profusely... "

Ray McGovern

So far the summer has been mild in the Washington, D.C., area. But for former Vice President Dick Cheney the temperature is well over 100 degrees. He is sweating profusely, and it is becoming increasingly clear why.

Cheney has broken openly with former President George W. Bush on one issue of transcendent importance — to Cheney. For whatever reason, Bush decided not to hand out blanket pardons before they both rode off into the sunset.

It is getting close to history time. You do not need to be a cracker-jack analyst to understand that Cheney is feeling betrayed — that he is thinking not of Libby, but of himself, and fearing that, if our system of justice works, he could be in for some serious, uncommuted jail time.

As if unprecedented decisions to torture, in violation of international law and the War Crimes Act of 1996, can be accurately described as “policies” over which there can be honest disagreement. This is about crimes, not “policies.”

What has pretty much escaped notice in the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) is that the former Vice President has also reminded us all that President Bush was the “decider.”

That unusual word sounded quite macho as Bush strutted about reminding us often that he was also “commander in chief.” But now, it could be the kiss of death — for Bush, as well as for Cheney.

Ooooooh...the blood is rushing from my head...

Approval of torture, assassination, warrantless eavesdropping — hey, there is quite enough to go on, and increasing signs that Cheney will be called on the carpet.

What we have been focusing on, however, glosses over Cheney’s key role in purveying lies to get our representatives in Congress to approve a war that qualifies for what the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal called the “supreme international crime” — a war of aggression.

We shall have to demand that Attorney General Eric Holder do his duty and move quickly to start the process to hold accountable those responsible for dragging our country down into a moral abyss.

Please read the rest.

It will do my heart good when the FBI or US Marshals drag The Dick out of his final Undisclosed Location, which may bear a striking resemblance to Saddam Hussein's hidey-hole. They'll find it by the smell of fear emanating from a coward and war criminal who sent thousands to die and murdered hundreds of thousands of others for no good reason.

Bush? Another coward and war criminal, but he won't be so hard to catch. When they go for him he'll just be sitting at home in his rich white enclave with his usual deer-in-the-headlights look on his face. They may have to pull his finger out of his nose to put the handcuffs on.

I hope they spend the days before their hangings in adjoining cells with live audio out. The recrimination and whining will be most amusing in a macabre sort of way.

The 10 Dumbest Things Republicans Have Said About the Sotomayor Hearings

At AlterNet. Liquid alert with a twist: Besides the obvious danger of your keyboard going up in a cloud of smoke from short circuits, you may burn yourself if you drink anything whilst reading this when it starts to boil from outrage.

From sexist attacks about Sotomayor's "temperament" to a rigorous interrogation about the definition of nunchucks, GOPers came up with a multitude of embarrassing ways to try to hinder the Supreme Court nominee's confirmation.

Ah, yes, the dreaded nunchaku. I think every one of these Repug dickwads should be issued a set. Then we could watch them beat the crap out of themselves. Maybe butterfly knives as well. A coupla days of them trying to open those and they'd have to use an intern to jack off. Oh, wait - they do that already. The 2d Amendment is about guns, you fucking idiot. There's even video of the Wise Latina wasting her time trying to explain this silly shit to Orrin Hatch (Idiot - Cult State).

8. In what was perhaps one of the odder moments of the hearings, Hatch forced the nominee to expound on the dangers of nunchucks, a martial arts weapon. The point, of course, was the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms and how it played out in the 2009 case Maloney v. Cuomo. But all-in-all, a strange topic for a Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

Watch it:

Sotomayor Explains The Many Dangers Of Ninja Nunchucks

Shorter: If you live anywhere you can't swing a cat without hitting someone, like New York and California, two billy clubs on a string are already illegal and rightly so.

The craziness and incompetence on display at the hearings has been more than matched by the absurd smears leveled at Sotomayor in the conservative media. The shining lights of conservatism -- Pat Buchanan, G. Gordan (Sic. Any vowel other than 'o' is the pet peeve of anybody named 'Gordon'. Grrrr. - G) Liddy and Rush Limbaugh -- have outdone themselves with uninformed, offensive rants about the nominee.

7. The Committee for Justice* -- a right-wing group opposed to Sotomayor's confirmation -- is airing ads claiming that the Yale graduate led a terrorist organization. According to Think Progress:

The claim that Sotomayor led a terrorist organization apparently refers to her service on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, a mainstream civil rights organization. It seems that, in the right-wing mind, a group that protects Latinos from race discrimination is exactly the same as al-Qaida.

Any even slightly brown person is the same to wingtards. Scares the shit out of 'em.

Puh-lenty (not the governor) more.

House Health Care Bill

Here's a summary. Text here, 1018 pages. Links.