February, 2011 archive
Romney Care, Have Cake Eat It Too Dept. 0
Joan Vennochi at the Boston Globe illustrates the difficulties facing Mitt the Flip in his attempt to shift with the political winds. A nugget:
The father of RomneyCare can’t apologize for the health care law he backed in Massachusetts, not as he heads out on tour for his book “No Apology.’’
As usual, he is trying to have it both ways: ObamaCare is a usurpation of personal freedom; RomneyCare is a celebration of state’s rights.
In making the argument, the Bay State’s ex-governor is trying to duck the truth around the so-called individual mandate, the underpinning of both the federal and state laws.
She goes on to remind us that Senator Ted Kennedy used to refer to Romney as “Multiple Choice Mitt.”
Health Care Hypocrisy: One Case Study (Updated) 0
Via Down with Tyranny, which has commentary.
Addendum, Two Days Later:
The Congressman has grieved the ad, claiming that he does not have the Congressional health care coverage, which he doesn’t. He has State of New Jersey health care coverage:
Follow the link for the full story.
Know Them by the Company They Keep (Updated) (Updated Again) 0
The SCV is keeping company with persons who are not very nice, such as leaders of a terrorist organization, for that is what the Klan was (and, to the extent it still gasps for breath, is).
The Mississippi Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans says it wants to sponsor a series of state-issued license plates to mark the 150th anniversary of what it calls the “War Between the States.” The group proposes a different design each year between now and 2015, with Forrest slated for 2014.
Follow the link to see how the SCV is attempting to rationalize their choice by claiming that Forrest later regretted it (which he likely did).
Afterthought:
His regrets do not erase his deeds.
More to the point, honoring him today carries a message, and it is not a message of tolerance and redemption. The SCV cannot be unaware–is likely quite aware–of the symbolism that honoring one of the founders of the Klan would convey.
Addendum, the Next Day:
My approach to history is more economic and sociological than it is “great man” based (“great men” do live to influence events, but they do so only when social and economic currents provide the opportunity; that is why Christopher Columbus is celebrated and Leif Ericson is a footnote).
Plus, growing up Virginian, my schooling on the Civil War was oriented primarily towards the battles of the Army of Northern Virginia under the leadership of St. Robert E. Lee, with a cursory nod towards the Battle of Vicksburg.
So I did not know until Dennis G. pointed it out at Balloon Juice that Nathan Bedford Forest, adulated hero of the SCV, made his fortune buying and selling human beings for a profit.
Addendum-Dee-Dum-Dum:
He continued in the trade nafter the war. Dennis G. does more research.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go (Updated) 1
Noticeably under 400k for the first time in a long time:
Afterthought:
Next time you complain because the predicted day’s high temperature was off by a couple of degrees or because the forecasted rain started an hour early, stop and consider how ticked off you would be if these unnamed “economists” cited above were predicting the weather.
Addendum:
Elmer Smith at Philly dot com cautions that
Follow the link for his explanation of the variables.
Gotterdamerung 0
Tom Engelhardt writes in the Asia Times that the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt presage the end of American hegemony. After discussing American militarism (Iraq and so on), he moves on financial globalism, which he considers as destructive as random wars.
He sees two waves of American economic unilateralism masquerading as “globalism.”
An excerpt:
I’m talking about the globalists, sometimes called the neo-liberals, who were let loose to do their damnedest in the good times of the post-Cold-War Bill Clinton years.
They, too, were dreamy about organizing the planet and about another kind of American power that was never going to end: economic power. (And, of course, they would be called back to power in Washington in the Obama years to run the US economy into the ground yet again.) They believed deeply that we were the economic superpower of the ages, and they were eager to create their own version of a Pax Americana. Intent on homogenizing the world by bringing American economic power to bear on it, their version of shock-and-awe tactics involved calling in institutions like the International Monetary Fund to discipline developing countries into a profitable kind of poverty and misery.
The irony was that, in the economic meltdown of 2008, they finally took down the global economy they had helped “unify”. And that occurred just as the second wave of unilateralists were facing the endgame of their dreams of global domination. In the process, for instance, Egypt, the most populous of Arab countries, was economically neo-liberalized and – except for a small elite who made out like the bandits they were impoverished.
Talk about “creative destruction”! The two waves of American unilateralists nearly took down the planet. They let loose demons of every sort, even as they ensured that the world’s first experience of a sole superpower would prove short indeed. Heap onto the rubble they left behind the global disaster of rising prices for the basics – food and fuel – and you have a situation so combustible that no one should have been surprised when a Tunisian match lit it aflame.
Republican Family Values, the Gift That Keeps on Giving (Updated) (Updated Again) 0
Now on Craig’s List.
And I thought Craig’s List had shut down that sectio–oh, never mind.
Via Oliver Willis.
Addendum, Later that Same Evening:
He’s still married, but DelawareLiberal reports that he’s no longer a Congressman.
Addendum-Dee-Dum-Dum:
(Aside: “Dum-Dum.” Chuckle.)
Dick Polman documents ex-Congressman Lee’s credentials as part of the “family values” crowd:
That’s your and my morality that he would legislate, not his own.
And that, my friends, is where the hypocrisy thing comes into play.
The Farce of “Forcible Rape” 0
Hadley Freeman, in the Guardian, dissects the meanness and misogyny lurking in the right wind’s anti-abortion, anti-birth control tactics (emphasis added):
Consequently, some right wingers wanted to finish the job politically.
The “forcible rape” tactic succumbed to the derision it deserved, so now the Republicans are looking to a tax increase strategy.
Which leads to a wonder that I’ve wondered before: Why are Republicans so interested in other persons’ private parts?
Socialism and Super Bull 0
Subsidies for circuses are okay. Lawrence O’Donnell explains:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
For highways and hospitals, not so much.
Via Bob Cesca, where there is some nitpickery in the comments, but the larger point survives intact.
Return of Beyond the Palin, No There There Dept. 0
Sarah Paiin’s speaking engagement in Colorado was canceled. The sponsoring group claimed that unspecified threats were responsible.
The cops haven’t heard about any threats. From TPM:
In a story in yesterday’s Denver Post, Kyle Glazier identified a more likely culprit.
The threat of no ticket sales.
Dis Coarse Discourse 0
Bob Cesca highlights the Department of Inconsistency, Double Standards Division, as regards a warning about a video game.
Back Alley Beauty 0
A surgeon once told me that there is no such thing as routine surgery, that, whenever he cut someone open, it could never be routine.
I saw the first reports of this story yesterday, but refrained from mentioning it until more details came out. More details at the link.
Walker said the victim checked into the Hampton Inn on Bartram Avenue and sometime over the weekend received the injections. She was taken to Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital at 1:30 a.m. Monday after complaining of chest pains and experiencing shortness of breath.
She died later that day. Fredric Hellman, Delaware County medical examiner, said a preliminary cause of death will not be released until the victim’s relatives are notified. The second woman, who received injections to her buttocks and hips, has not been hospitalized, police said.
The woman died because she believed that enhancing changing the shape of her hips would improve her life.
I doubt she came up with this idea on her own, but I suspect she would not have followed through had someone not convinced her that it was “routine.”
Afterthought:
I cannot judge her apparently desperate desire to look different. I remember growing up dork.
She is victim, not perpetrator.
Party Mix 0
The party isn’t complete without the nuts (emphasis added):
“I have tired of those who are obsessed with seeing conspiracies around every corner and who have terribly misguided notions of what the role of the state party is while saying ‘uniting conservatives’ is all that is needed to win competitive races across the state,” Wadhams wrote in a memo to the Colorado Republican State Central Committee obtained by The Denver Post.
(snip)
“I have loved being chairman, but I’m tired of the nuts who have no grasp of what the state party’s role is,” Wadhams told the Post.
I predict that his short-term prospects in the Republican Party are less than propitious.
Jamie finds the bright side:
Last week, I was at a non-political gathering and the chit-chat before festivities began turned to current events. One of my compatriots was salivating over the prospects of a Republican Palin-O’Donnell ticket in 2012–the prospects for the Democrats, that is.
Seen on the Street 0
H/T Susan for the pic.
DWB? 0
Looks like it to me.
HuffingtonAOL 0
I haven’t visited the Huffington Post regularly for almost two years. I used to visit it almost daily, but it’s gotten too cluttered and OMG celebrities! a la Gawker and TMZ for me. About the only time I go there is when Bob Cesca has a new piece.
AOL’s purchase of HuffPo is likely the next step on HuffPo’s march to frivolous irrelevance, but, hey! frivolous irrelevance sells these days. It’s easier than thinking.*
With those thoughts, I commend to your attention this prediction for the fate of HuffingtonAOL.
________________
*Me, I try to be relevantly frivolous.
RINO 0
Dick Polman explains at Phlly dot com. A nugget:
In today’s conservative parlance, such deeds would be assailed as “socialism.”
And imagine how he would be attacked today for his tolerant immigration policy. In 1986, he signed the last major reform law, mandating a path to citizenship for agricultural and seasonal workers – and offering amnesty to illegal immigrants who had lived here continuously for many years. If Reagan were campaigning with that record today, he’d get whacked so hard by the Republican right he would end up like chastened ex-reformer John McCain, yelling, “Build the dang fence!”
