Pope Gore I

The Catholic Church has a message for you. It wants you to know that just because it sounds completely tone deaf at best on numerous issues that require a shred of thought, it doesn't mean it fucks up every issue. Sure it bungles things like AIDS in Africa, Africa, gays, evolution, science in general, health care, not raping kids, or ever using its clout to push for things that Jesus actually said and fought for, but that doesn't mean it can't recognize the planet getting destroyed is bad.

Sure, the church only recently came around on that whole "apologizing to Galileo for that heresy trial for saying the earth revolved around the sun" thing and isn't really going to get around to apologizing to Darwin for another century or so, but Jesus didn't say anything that could be construed as meaning that global warming doesn't exist, so they're cool with it for now.

Pope Benedict XVI denounced the failure of world leaders to agree to a new climate change treaty in Copenhagen last month, saying Monday that world peace depends on safeguarding God's creation.
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Benedict has been dubbed the ''green pope'' for his increasingly vocal concern about the need to protect the environment. Under his watch, the Vatican has installed photovoltaic cells on its main auditorium to convert sunlight into electricity and has joined a reforestation project aimed at offsetting its CO2 emissions.

For the pontiff, it's a moral issue: Church teaching holds that man must respect creation because it's destined for the benefit of humanity's future.

So, good for them and us, I guess. Of course it would be nice if the Vatican were to spend as much time and money on pushing for climate change action as it does fighting against the global gay conspiracy, but I won't hold my breath. I mean sure it's important to respect what God gave us, but you don't really want to put as much effort into that as you do to following the line about gays in Leviticus that follows rules on keeping Kosher. But I guess we need to take what we can get.

The Pope also blasted the "self-centered and materialistic way of thinking" that he said not only caused the financial crisis, but is contributing to the climate crisis. It's unclear if anyone pointed out that he was also claiming to be the one infallible conduit to God on earth and decked to the nines in Prada when he said that.

The Catholic Church just wants you to know that while they might not have officially gotten most science right at the time of its discovery, perhaps even accidentally burning, executing, torturing, and putting on trial many of the men whose basic scientific and mathematical ideas form the basis of our society, but they have gotten on board with this one. It had to happen eventually. Let's politely clap for them.

Your Christmas miracle

If you were hoping that in the next few days that a lonely rich miser would learn the value of humanity, sharing, and good will to all, that some workaholic father would learn the value of time spent with family appreciating the little things, or that a precocious mutt from the pound would reunite an estranged couple and teach the neighborhood the meaning of Christmas, well, you're out of luck. All the Christmas miracle sauce got used up this weekend by the Democrats to get 60 votes for the health care bill and what little was left over got used by the Steelers last night to beat the Packers.

Would we all have liked something a better Christmas miracle than Ben Nelson being sufficiently bought off by the Democratic leadership to pass a compromise of a compromised compromise health care bill? Yeah. But time are tough for everyone, even Santa, and all he could give us was a discount Christmas miracle. The first votes have been finished and things look to be on track for Senate passage of the bill by Christmas day. What did they have to compromise to get this passed?

Under the deal, states could choose to prohibit abortion coverage in plans offered through insurance exchanges that the bill would set up for people who lack coverage through their jobs. The compromise is less restrictive than the abortion language contained in the House bill.

Nelson also secured full and permanent federal funding for his state to extend Medicaid eligibility to everyone below 133 percent of the federal poverty level. The bill would require all states to do so, but Nebraska alone would not be required to pay a portion of the additional cost after 2016. And he won concessions for some nonprofit insurers and for providers of supplemental Medicare coverage from a new insurance tax, and he was able to roll back cuts to health savings accounts.

So under the abortion compromise, which may be unconstitutional, you essentially are at the whims of the states to decide if it's allowed and you have to pay for the transaction with two checks.Nice to see that as part of his principled objection to women paying for things with one check, he also had a principled debate over whether or not his state should get extra Medicare goodies that no other state got. He won that argument of course, but Harry Reid was able to keep out an amendment that declared Nebraska the "most ball out fuckin' radical state ever created." The Senate does have some principles.

If you want to read what's in the actual bill, go here. If you want to read someone lamenting the state of the bill, but saying the bill should still be passed, pick anyone but Howard Dean and Kieth Olbermann. But here are some good ones: Jacob Hacker "The Godfather of the public option", the Washington Post's Ezra Klein, Paul Krugman, and.. well fuck it, you have Google. Just type in "smiling while eating a shit sandwich" and it ought to take you to the most relevant articles. I swear on Sean's life that you won't find anything other than health care analysis if you Google that phrase.

Merry Christmas, you got health care, of a sort, to be put fully in place in 2014. Maybe some of this country will even be back to work by then. Enjoy.

Speechifying

So the speech that was to make or break the health care fight is over and the health care fight was not made or broken. But what did we learn last night? That in a speech that pledged to get specific, it still wasn't that specific. End this, stop that, do this, puppies good, challenge of our times, debate is over, I trust you all to do something. We learned that in general, the speech went over like gangbusters. But this was almost a certainty. Barry has a purdy mouth and he uses it to speak purdy words, but it's the 'actions' part we're all worried about, not the 'words' part.

Other things? Rep. Joe Wilson decided to take this speech and make a play for Mark Sanford's crown of "South Carolina's biggest politician asshole", when he decided that the very true thing President Obama said about reform not coverin' them dirty Mexicanos was a lie and he had to yell it out. We learned that Speaker Pelosi has a great 'bitch please' face. That Ted Kennedy was such a great politician he knew how to inject himself into the middle of a debate....post-mortem.

Still, after reading this speech (yeah I didn't watch it, America's Game: Steelers 2008 was on) the thing you wonder most is....wouldn't it have been better to deliver something like this and do the full court health care press a couple of months ago? Not let the lunatics run wild & unchallenged for months? Tried to explain in more concrete terms just what people should expect from a bill? The speech did show one thing: that if you knock President Obama down and kick him 70 or 80 times over the thing that his entire Presidency and 2010 midterm elections will be staked on, eventually he'll get up and deliver a strongly worded retort on why he thinks it would be great if his assailants would stop kicking their boot heels directly into his sternum. Hopefully our elected betters listened, or at least have a tired kicking foot.

I guess it's not a hoax

Well, here we are one day later and it seems that everyone is still under the impression that after a challenge phase that lasted a couple of decades, Al Franken actually gets to take the senate seat he won. Apparently Norm Coleman just gave up after the Minnesota State Supreme Court ruled against him 5-0. Did no one tell him about the US Supreme Court, the plaintive pleas to God, the sacrifices on the black altar that he could use to drag this out for another thousand years? Al Franken is a Senator and there have been no take backsies, cries of "do over", and barring a certification ceremony where the wind blows the certificate away while a weeping Governor Pawlenty cries out "It's gonna take weeks to get another one of those!" Al will actually be allowed in the US Senate without having to have paid for the tour.

"I don't know if it has really sunk in," said Franken, appearing at his home in Minneapolis shortly after receiving a congratulatory call from Coleman, a Republican. "He said it was a very hard-fought campaign. I said, 'Norm, it couldn't have been closer.'

"It was a nice way to end this."

Franken's arrival in the Senate could give Democrats a 60th vote on many issues, a filibuster-proof majority that could help advance President Obama's agenda.

Uh-oh, a filibuster proof majority. Harry Reid and Senate Democrats are going to have to work double time to fuck that up. Actually there shouldn't be that much work. They're always be a Ben Nelson or Evan Bayh out there making sure they get their names in the press for "bucking their own party" and McCain-esque Maverickitude by hamstringing some type of Democratic plan that is broadly supported by the American public. It's how they do.

Finally Minnesota gets its second senator. No longer will Amy Klobuchar be down a man for the Senate tag team wrestling and 2-on-2 b-ball tournaments. More importantly the Minnesota Congressional Delegation will finally have enough members to stage that intervention with Michelle Bachmann to get her to stop the drinking, paint huffing, gasoline drinking, or whatever it is she does that makes her act and think the way she does. Congrats Al, just remember to keep bringin' the funny.

Wait, they haven't spent it yet?

Now that he's back from his "New Tutankhamen" Middle East/France 2009 Tour, Barry is getting down to the business of doing things the American populace had already assumed he did. Namely spending that $700 billion smackeroos in stimulus money. Yeah, I was sure they had already done that too. Turns out they hadn't. Turns out they just piled it up in one of the White House ballrooms and they'd take turns piling it up and diving into it, walking into the room and smelling the money, and walking leaders and diplomats from poor countries by the room while saying stuff like "I'm sorry, we're just strapped for cash at the moment. Perhaps you've read about it. No aid for you."

But now that someone reminded Barry to spend that money at least he isn't going around and making big promises about what the spending will do. Oh, he is? Well then.

President Barack Obama promised Monday to deliver more than 600,000 jobs through his $787 billion stimulus plan this summer, with federal agencies pumping billions into public works projects, schools and summer youth programs.
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Many of the stimulus plans that Obama announced Monday already were in the works, including hundreds of maintenance projects at military bases, about 1,600 state road and airport improvements, and federal money states budgeted for 135,000 teachers, principals and school support staff.

The administration had always viewed the summer as a peak for stimulus spending, as better weather permitted more public works construction and federal agencies had processed requests from states and others.

But Obama now promises an accelerated pace of federal spending over the next few months to boost the economy and produce jobs.

The White House has already claimed to have "created or saved" 150,000 jobs, which seems to be somewhat borne out by the improved, no really, job numbers. Though really they'd like to get to a point where they can cut the 'saved' part and get to dust off the 'created' language. That way it sounds less like they're credit grubbing/bullshitting when they claim to be saving jobs after 300,000 people lose theirs in a month. Still though, nice to see they're finally getting around to spending all that money we were told was necessary to stop us from being imminently sucked into a world eating money vortex.

Next on the list of things they're gonna do that people had assumed they already did: swear in Joe Biden. Turns out he hasn't officially or legally been the VP for the last few months.

GTFO

h/t jsg