LeGone

As the world watched LeBron's sad, narcissistic farewell/fuck you to the city of Cleveland, one had to sit back in awe at the misguided, cruel, tone deaf, ego stroking nonsense it was. A double fuck you to ESPN, for hyping it and shoving it down everyone's throats. This is why we hate you, Worldwide Leader.

But aside from the whole media whoring, mememememememe, "I wanted to do what was best for LeBron James.... What LeBron James was going to do to make him happy" third person, self-absorbed bullshit that it was, one had to take note at just how needlessly mean it was to a franchise he spent 7 years with and the fans who "witnessed". Or whatever inane Nike slogan it was they used to crown the King. Cleveland, we sympathize. OK, we don't. But it was still a shitty thing to do. As Deadspin put it: "LeBron James is a cocksucker." HE MADE BIEBER CRY!!

On the bright side, your owner went delightfully insane. First posting a letter full of righteous anger that wasn't even tempered by the curious, usually point destroying use of the font Comic Sans. He then knocked LeBron for his poor playoff performance and, rightfully, for quitting during the Celtics series. Fans were burning jerseys, screaming "Judas!", and talking themselves into Jake Delhomme and the upcoming Browns season. You know, depraved shit.

So Sean and I were eagerly awaiting the city's final farewell to LeTraitor, via the front page of the Plain Dealer. What cheap shot would they take? What insult would they hurl? What cruel photoshop would they unveil in order to mock and humiliate the jerkoff who spent an hour, nay offseason, jerking the city around in the unkindest of ways?


Eh. It's a nice, refined version of "Count the no rings, bitch" but we were hoping for so more. So we took it upon ourselves to offer up the city of Cleveland two alternative headlines to send the King off to his new position as Dwyane Wade's sidekick in South Beach.

Tell me they wouldn't already be going back to the printers to order a third run. C'mon Cleveland, this was your one chance to curse in a headline and be cheered for it. Missed opportunity. You had a chance to be justifiably and insanely bitter, vulgar, and mean in print, and you settled for catty.

Take solace though, aside from all the endorsement money he might have just cost himself by turning into the world's most unlikable ass, he probably stored up enough negative karma to engender a multi-ligament blowout on both of his knees somewhere around week one of training camp. Then Miami will be down to fielding a two man team filled out with "Win a spot on the Heat" raffle winners selected from season ticket holders.

Just hold out a little longer. The "delighting in his misery" part will be glorious.

Them!

Weepin' John Boehner decided it had been a while since he had stepped on his dick in public, so he decided to open his mouth and remind everyone why he shouldn't be allowed to to run a roadside frogurt stand.

In between calling for rebellion, noting that the groundswell for rebellion was greater now than at any point since 1776, calling for the retirement age to be raised to 70 so the GOP can pay for all the wars they want to wage, whining on behalf of BP, crying over health reform, and talkin' big about how he's gonna kill it, he decided to muster up that extra bit of gumption to really shill for the financial industry and the mean nasty government that's trying to regulate them because they destroyed the world economy.

Boehner criticized the financial regulatory overhaul compromise reached last week between House and Senate negotiators as an overreaction to the financial crisis that triggered the recession.

“This is killing an ant with a nuclear weapon,” Boehner said.

Oh, the poor defenseless financial giants. When will government stop looking out for them 99% of the time and start looking out for them 100% of the time. They're just a tiny little ant being menaced by government.

Yeah, ants.



Nuclear irradiated ants that will kill and eat us all unless we mobilize the government to smash them into irradiated ant paste. Boehner made a pretty apt metaphor... as long as you make it correspond to 50's monster movies. Although if this example were real, our government would decide to partner with the giant nuclear ants to regulate the giant nuclear ants. Then the large irradiated ant-loving Boehner would bitch that we weren't turning enough of our society over to our radioactive Vespoidean overlords.

The largest financial crisis since the Depression. Ants. Someone hit him.

Poor, poor pitiful Tony

With the 'top kill' having failed, the only short term solution to deal with the oil spill a maneuver that might make the oil spill worse, and somewhere between a shit ton of oil and all the oil of earth spilling into the Gulf, some of us might have decided to naively focus our sympathy and pity onto the animals, ecosystem, environment, economy, or people of the Gulf Coast. That's natural, seeing as they're the ones who are being affected most by this catastrophe.

But perhaps we should show a little more concern for a certain group of individuals who don't seem to be getting the sympathy they deserve; forced to live each day with this country not even offering up as much as a "How are you doing personally, you poor, poor men?" I am of course talking about BP executives. Specifically BP CEO Tony Hayward.

As Mr. Hayward said to fellow executives in his London office recently, “What the hell did we do to deserve this?”

Was it the lax safety guidelines? The prioritizing profit over safety thing? Lobbying for for less oversight? Prioritizing money over the lives of your rig workers? Prioritizing money over the environment? Prioritizing money and PR over telling people the truth about what's going on? General incompetent leadership at the top and a decades of poor decisions all leading inexorably to something like this? Am I getting warm? I wonder if Hayward ever asked if he deserved his multi-million dollar salary?

Let's ignore that and move on to the pity parade.

"We're sorry for the massive disruption it's caused their lives. There's no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back."

Aww. Poor Tony. I can't believe a little thing like a massive oil spill his company caused that is completely ruining the Gulf Coast is monopolizing all of his time and causing him some negative publicity. Let's all take a moment out of our lives to feel bad for him.

So come on. Sure, take your time to feel for the oil soaked animals, the residents or the fishermen who have had their lives ruined by BP. But let's not forget who the real victims are here: executives who are taking a PR beating and having to pull extra hours at the office just because they oversaw the greatest environmental disaster in world history. Aren't they the ones who are suffering the most? I don't want to even think about any beach houses they might have had that are losing property values as week speak. It's just... too soon.

Comic of the day

Among my many anti-science pet peeves is the seemingly increasing ignorant din over getting kids immunized. Or should I say, not getting kids immunized. So the story goes that in order to protect kids, they should not be vaccinated. Why? Because they'll get The Autism. So ironically in communities where this kind of thinking takes hold, vaccination rates drop, herd immunity is weakened, and kids start dying of easily preventable diseases.

The anti-vaccine nonsense stems almost entirely from a fraudulent study from a British doctor by the name of Andrew Wakefield. A man named Darryl Cunningham decided to tell the tale of Wakefield in comic form. Here is the first panel of the epic strip. Go check the rest out.

I'll note that the story has a happy ending. Last week Wakefield was found guilty of serious professional misconduct and of acting in a "dishonest", "misleading" and "irresponsible" manner by the General Medical Council of England. He was struck off the GMC register, which is essentially the British medical equivalent of being disbarred.

On the negative side, he's still allowed to spout his nonsense, having retreated to Texas (obviously) to set up his base of operations for what he calls "educating" but is more like "getting kids killed from easily preventable diseases." And he's still making appearances on TV as an "expert", hitting NBC Today on Monday. Yay America.

Great Moments in American Business Leadership

In West Virginia the last of the bodies from the worst mining disaster in the last 40 years have finally been recovered. In the time since the tragedy began, the country has come to learn about one of the more odious shits in American business, which is saying a great deal. His name is Don Blankenship and he is the CEO of Massey Energy.

Aside from running a mine that racked up 3,000 violations and $2.2 million in fines, he is someone that virulently fought against any kind of regulation or oversight. He got stooges and cronies of his chosen by Bush to the MSHA review commission that decides all legal matters under the Federal Mine Act with predictable results, busted unions, constantly downplayed worker safety, declared it more important to "run coal" than follow things like safety regulations, derided obvious and necessary laws, decreed all his opponents were like bin Laden, threatened and assaulted reporters, and became a darling of the Fox News Hannity set. He really earned the titles "evil bastard" and "the 7th scariest person in the US" that Grist dumped on him.

So now it's kind of funny to look back and see the kinds of things he said about safety, regulation, and government oversight now that this disaster happened. Not "funny- haha", but more of a "funny- people are dead because of this man" type thing. Which is to say, not funny at all.

At his Labor Day anti-union rally last year, Massey CEO Don Blankenship attacked the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), claiming it “seeks power over coal miners.” He mocked both “Washington politicians” and local elected officials who attempt to ensure miner safety:

We also endure a Mine Safety and Health Administration that seeks power over coal miners versus improving their safety and their health. As someone who has overseen the mining of more coal than anyone else in the history of central Appalachia, I know that the safety and health of coal miners is my most important job. I don’t need Washington politicians to tell me that, and neither do you. But I also know — I also know Washington and state politicians have no idea how to improve miner safety. The very idea that they care more about coal miner safety than we do is as silly as global warming.

You really need to thee the video in the link, he literally draped himself in the American flag when he said this. But it's interesting that he says that the idea that anyone cares more about safety than him is as silly as global warming. One, literally anyone in this country could be seen as caring more about miner safety, as long as they don't end up resetting the "greatest mining tragedy" record before Blankenship does.

Secondly, as silly as global warming? You mean an easily tested a proven theory that has the almost universal support of the scientific community? You're right, Don. That sounds almost as ludicrous an idea as letting someone who won't literally exchange bodies for money look after workers. I guess it's one of those far out ideas like "venting methane gas from a mine". I bet some egghead scientist told you that'd be a problem too. You sure showed them.

Not that it's all bad news and mining tragedies for Donny. He hit a bit of good luck today as Standard and Poor upgraded Massey stock from Hold to Buy, noting that the financial impact of a mine exploding and killing 29 people would be immaterial to the bottom line. Hey, sounds like Blankenship was vindicated. He can trade lives and safety for money. Good for him. I guess everything worked out.

Stay classy, Hannity

We always like to mock Sean Hannity here at TB, and why not? The man is probably the most baldfaced liar on TV and he doesn't even have the nerve to be an interesting kind of crazy like Glenn Beck. I mean all he does is work himself into outraged conniptions about minor events he exaggerated and stories he invented in a annoyed windbaggy tone. No weeping, no stunts, no chalkboard. Boring evil.

And it's worked out pretty well for Hannity, as he's knocked down a $100 million dollar contract just for his radio show alone. But that's not enough money for him apparently, and has taken to using a charity he ostensibly started to help wounded soldiers and children of wounded soldiers and decided it should effectively be run as a PR machine and goodie bag dispensery for himself, his friends and his family. It's a shocker, I mean he just looks so trustworthy.

For the last several years, Sean Hannity and the Freedom Alliance “charity” have conducted “Freedom Concerts” across America. They’ve told you that they are raising money to pay for the college tuition of the children of fallen soldiers and to pay severely wounded war vets.
...
But it’s all a huge scam.

In fact, less than 20%–and in two recent years, less than 7% and 4%, respectively–of the money raised by Freedom Alliance went to these causes, while millions of dollars went to expenses, including consultants and apparently to ferret the Hannity posse of family and friends in high style. And, despite Hannity’s statements to the contrary on his nationally syndicated radio show, few of the children of fallen soldiers got more than $1,000-$2,000, with apparently none getting more than $6,000, while Freedom Alliance appears to have spent tens of thousands of dollars for private planes. Moreover, despite written assurances to donors that all money raised would go directly to scholarships for kids of the fallen heroes and not to expenses, has begun charging expenses of nearly $500,000 to give out just over $800,000 in scholarships.

And who revealed all of this? Conservative commentator Debbie Schlussel. Et tu Brute? Media Matters, not one to give Schlussel credit, even goes so far as to say that her numbers check out and points to further work done on the Charity Navigator page. There, on the website that rates and analyzes charities to see if they're scamming people and how much of the money they get is actually spent on their supposed cause, alleges that Hannity's charity might even spend less on wounded veterans than Schlussel does. Noting that by Freedom Alliance's own tax filings they have taken in almost $50 million since 2003 and doled out only &1.8 million to the families of veterans.

I guess this is why Hannity is always railing against the government for misuse of revenue: he sees that kind of abuse first hand all the time and must have a sixth sense for when it's happening.

Well this is all just so surprising. I mean, for one, who thought Sean Hannity would be so thoroughly dishonest is his dealings? Secondly who thought that a charity he started in an attempt to get publicity for himself and puff his chest out about how he cares more about the troops than liberals, wouldn't actually be committed to the spirit of charity? On the other had he did get a lot of free promotion and content for his radio and TV shows and he did get to meet Trace Adkins and Toby Kieth a bunch of times, so defrauding the American public and wounded soldiers worked out like gangbusters. Stay classy, Sean, I know you will. Can't wait to hear about how this is all a giant liberal conspiracy against you.

He's a peach, isn't he?

John Yoo is a busy man these days, what with his course load of classes to teach at Cal, writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer, not being in prison, and providing tenuous legal justification for crimes and massive ethical breaches the whole world 'round. It must be exhausting.

But we're not here to talk about what lack of prosecution from the Justice Department is allowing John Yoo to do now, we're here to talk about what John Yoo did. Classic Yoo. Just the greatest hits. You know, stuff that makes internal watchdog's and review panels at the Justice Department conclude that he committed "intentional professional misconduct" and should be referred to their state bar organizations for disciplinary proceedings, at the least.

The chief author of the Bush administration's "torture memo" told Justice Department investigators that the president's war-making authority was so broad that he had the constitutional power to order a village to be "massacred," according to a report released Friday night by the Office of Professional Responsibility.
...
"What about ordering a village of resistants to be massacred? ... Is that a power that the president could legally—"

"Yeah," Yoo replied, according to a partial transcript included in the report. "Although, let me say this: So, certainly, that would fall within the commander-in-chief's power over tactical decisions."

"To order a village of civilians to be [exterminated]?" the OPR investigator asked again.

"Sure," said Yoo.

Classy. Yoo also advocated, along with David Addington, that the President is a God-King with no restraints on his power and the ability to override and invalidate laws. I don't think they used those exact terms though. There's also the reveal that people in the Bush JD were so worried about prosecutions, you know, for the stuff they all say is totally legal, that John Ashcroft wanted to issue "advance pardons" for people who participated in torture. Apparently they couldn't find any shady legal precedent for that and it was scrapped.

So a round of applause for the great human being and wonderful addition to the legal and war-making history of this country, John Yoo. He apparently sleeps soundly at night. I don't think you realize how incredibly difficult that is.

Oh, I forgot the best part of this story: senior JD lawyer David Margolis has overruled the OPR findings that Yoo, among others, should be trussed up in a burlap sack and beaten with sticks... or professionally reprimanded. One of those. So nothing will end up happening to Yoo. See! Justice does work!

Stay classy, Pat

With the disaster in Haiti that's going on right now, it was a mad dash to see who could be the most insensitive Christian fundamentalist right wing prick to be the first one out of the gate blaming some form of immorality for the destruction. Of course evangelical leg press world record holder Pat Robertson was able to get his chastising comments towards people dying in and earthquake out first, barely edging Rush Limbaugh at the line. He's a spry fuck for a rotten old bastard.

You see, it's that pact Haiti made with the devil. Not a pact they made because they allowed gays to exist or women to expose their ankles, no. A literal pact with a man in a red suit carrying a hayfork.

"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it," he said on Christian Broadcasting Network's "The 700 Club." "They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal."

Robertson said that "ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other" and he contrasted Haiti with its neighbor, the Dominican Republic.

Classy as always. Good old Pat, always quick to blame people for their own suffering, like Jesus did.

If you'd like to actually do something to help and somehow don't feel like inventing stories about red devil bewitching the mud people quite does it, you can donate to Oxfam, Google has a page up for UNICEF and CARE, text "HAITI" to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross and text "YELE" to 501501 to donate $5 to Yele Haiti's efforts, and Huffington Post has a larger link to all the non-profits running relief efforts and doing work on the ground.

Oh, we're also going to have to tolerate Wyclef Jean being back in the public eye for a while and I'm sure he'll have a charity single that we'll all have to pretend is good too. It's a burden, but we'll do it anyway.

Those choosing instead to just alter their Twitter of Facebook page will get their face mashed in by the first decent person that can be sent around to their place. Prayers for the death/humiliation/humiliating death of Pat Robertson can be offered to the heavens at any time.

Definitions

cour⋅age
–noun
1. the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery.
2. Obsolete. the heart as the source of emotion.
3. Earning millions of dollars as a backup QB after an incident where you murdered dogs for fun and profit and went to jail.

Example:

Michael Vick’s peers appreciate his tough journey back to the NFL. Vick won the Ed Block Courage Award, voted on by his teammates on the Philadelphia Eagles. The once-disgraced star quarterback returned to the league after spending 18 months in a federal prison for his role in a dogfighting ring.
...
”I’ve overcome a lot, more than probably one single individual can handle or bear,” Vick said. ”You ask certain people to walk through my shoes, they probably couldn’t do.

hu⋅mil⋅i⋅ty
–noun
1. the quality or condition of being humble; modest opinion or estimate of one's own importance, rank, etc.
2. having the balls to claim that overcoming the media and legal scrutiny that came as a result of your own crippling stupidity and despicable personhood is some point of pride while simultaneously claiming that the 99.9% of the populace that isn't dumb enough to do what you did couldn't ever show the courage you did, again failing to note that this whole situation was of your own making.

Actually, yeah, the health care bill could get worse

Hey, remember that whole point in time last week when everyone was pretty sure that the last painful compromise had been made in the health care fight? When the public option was dropped for a Medicare buy-in and some people were holding out hope that, depending on how things were structured, this might turn out to be better than a weak public option? Yeah... then Joe Lieberman started speaking.

"We've got to stop adding to the bill," said Lieberman. "We have to start subtracting some controversial things."
...
"You have to take out the Medicare buy-in," said Lieberman. "You have to forget about the public option. You probably have to take out the CLASS Act..... If you did that, you'd have an enormous accomplishment. Thirty million Americans who can't afford insurance today would get it. Insurance companies would be more aggressively regulated and costs would be bent down. It's time to get reasonable."

Great news, right? Joe Lieberman wants more compromise, for no discernible reason, and will continue to lie about his motivations for doing so, and the financial and human costs of what his changes will do. So, to the surprise of no one, Lieberman vowed today to filibuster any bill with a Medicare buy-in... despite supporting it when it was part of a little something called the Lieberman/Gore Health Care Plan.

So not only is the Senate health care bill going to get worse, much much worse, it's going to get worse to the point where it's not even a sure thing that it could pass in the House or even keep on some of the Senator who are actually concerned with people's lives; killing reform. Which seems to be Lieberman's actual goal. At what point does catering to his random whims make the bill worse than what going through reconciliation would fashion the bill into? I'd like to find out. Plus, we all found out that the prayers we made to have Joe hit by a flaming sky rock or fall into a wheat thresher... were made to the wrong God. Oh, the indignity.

You know I hate to say it, but I'm beginning to regret electing Joe Lieberman King of the United States and Emperor of Health Care.

The last honest man

If you didn't already really, really hate Joe Lieberman with the fire of a thousand suns, our great newspapers have taken it upon themselves this week to try and take that loathing and crank it up into the two or three thousand sun range.

First there was the Wall Street Journal's epic paen to Joe, in which thousands of words are spent memorializing and lauding self-aggrandizing narcissism, hypocritical self-interest, inflated egotism, spite vendettas, and self commissioned statue building. The story really should become the dictionary definition for fellatio, or at least "media fellatio."

The Washington Post took a different angle, showing why everyone hates Joe Lieberman and attempting a pushback on the large bullshit parade he attempt to lead any time he opens his mouth. It's a nice catalogue of grievances, but at the end of the story, while discussing his disdain for the public option, it drops this little nugget:

“He keeps saying over and over that we can’t afford the public option, but the question is whether we can afford the subsidies,” said John Holahan of the Urban Institute.

Confronted with the cost-saving assessments of a strong public option, Lieberman concedes the point, but he says an aggressive government-run plan would put undue pressures on medical providers and force them to shift costs to private insurers. Put simply, he opposes the public option in any form, regardless of whether it reduces costs.

That's right, his "principled" opposition to the public option fully concedes that it would save money. If he knows that, he knows the stronger a public option is, the more money that it saves. Yet still he opposes one. Yet God is still refusing to hit him with a flaming rock from the sky.

So there, just mull that one over as you get to read over and over that the public option was just removed from the Senate health reform bill. Swish that one around the 'ole palate. Push the rage deep down inside and save it for another day, so when you see the inevitable news story praising him for his "contributions" and "action" during the health care debate you can explode out with an emphatic "THATFUCKINGSONOFABITCH", perhaps directed at a loved one or small child. As you think over how hard this man worked to take money out of your pocket and degrade your health care options, one thought will rattle around in your head: "Thanks Connecticut. Thanks for electing him." They're welcome.

Picture of the day

From Andrew Ross Sorkin, author of Too Big to Fail: How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System — and Themselves comes this look at the license plate of Morgan Stanley Vice-Chairman Rob Kindler. It's nice these guys have a sense of humour about bankrupting the world and the government using trillions to bail out their unending stupidity. Shame he couldn't afford something better than a Porsche, I'd really like to see that plate on a Maybach. Maybe next time Kindler invents something that destroys all the world's money, he can work out a more lucrative bonus package.

Stay classy, Jerome

We aren't even 24 hours past the Ft. Hood shooting, but we do know it's time for one thing: EXPLOITING IT FOR POLITICAL GAIN!!!! MORE BODIES = MORE EXPLOITATION!!! Take it, Jerome Corsi, you souless fucking degenerate:

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter in yesterday's massacre at Fort Hood, played a homeland security advisory role in President Barack Obama's transition into the White House, according to a key university policy institute document.

Of course it isn't remotely true, but who has time for bodies to get cold when there is shit to sling at Obama! Whooo!!! The first decency line has been breached folks, it's only downhill from here.

Now personally, I would have prescribed a two day waiting period for crazed conspiracy theories that attempt to appropriate gross personal and public tragedies for a perceived leg up in some unending political dick measuring contest that has consumed politics in this country. Not because of any mourning period or sense of respect for the families of the dead, no because this baby is so rife with angles of cheap political exploitation, we want everyone to have their good material ready to go for the Sunday Morning news programs. I mean there's the Muslim angle, the military angle, the pro-war angle, the anti-war angle, the gun control angle, the terrorism angle, and the disgusting, Corsi-esque new lows in human decency that we've yet to explore. I mean anyone from the right or left will have a field day waving these corpses around to justify whatever it is they believed before the shooting happened. Awesome!

I think I'm going to go sit in my closet and drink for this entire weekend. Maybe when I emerge we'll be fully into the "He was in ACORN and taking the orders of Obama in order to kill freedom and pass socialist Obamacare" phase and this will all seem slightly less soul killing.

Your morning reminder that the Senate is filled with barely functioning, brain dead idiots

Concern troll Ben Nelson (D-Go fuck yourself Nebraska) on how his lack of understanding about economics and deficits isn't going to get in the way of his notions about doing nothing.

Democrat Ben Nelson, a Senator from Nebraska, said the slumping economy and rising joblessness will be factors as Congress considers climate change and health care legislation. They are also driving concerns about the budget deficit, which widened to a record $1.42 trillion in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, he said.

“When the economy’s not strong there’s a lot of interest in controlling spending,” Nelson said.

Yes, because the thing you want to do when you see two massive issues that represent two gigantic chunks of the economy that needed fixing decades ago and will swell and affect spending, deficits, and the economy in dramatically negative ways if something is not done about them: you sit on your fucking ass and do nothing, citing your concern about spending, deficits, and the economy as reasons for not doing anything about spending, deficits, and the economy. Because the best time to worry about long term problems is never, especially not in the short term.

So there you are. The reason we can't do anything to fix the bad economy is because of the bad economy. It's a perfect little snake eating it's own tail, much like your brain is eating itself right now. I betcha Benny is going to be real surprised too when his brilliant plan of "do nothing" results in the economy getting worse and all his buddies not getting re-elected. Then again, he'll probably just take that as a sign that the Senate should have done nothing earlier.

Quote of the Day

Joe Lieberman (Scum Fuck-CT), moving beyond merely lying about the public option and health care reform to openly advocating for you to heap your loathing and disdain on him as well as begging you to test out any type of voodoo doll on him.

BOB SCHIEFFER: But is what you're also saying is that nothing is better than a government health insurance or a gov- health insurance reform that includes a public option. Nothing is better than that?

SENATOR JOE LIEBERMAN: Well, the truth is that nothing is better than that because I- I think we ought to follow, if I may, the- the doctors' oath here. In Congress says we deal with health care reform, do no harm.

I don't know Joe, I think maybe to the 45,000 people each year who die because of a lack of health care, nothing isn't really a great option, though they do appreciate how relevant you now feel. To the countless thousands who are bankrupted each year because of medical costs, I'm sure that the option of doing nothing isn't that great either, thought they do really sympathize with just how sandy your vagina is after Ned Lamont beat you in the Democratic primary way back when.

But not content to merely play with people's lives because he wasn't getting enough media attention, Joe decided that he wanted to up the ante and blame everyone else for forcing him to join with Republicans to filibuster health reform.

SENATOR JOE LIEBERMAN: Yeah, but I'd say to the people who are all of a sudden making the public option a government health insurance company, the litmus test here, they're stopping us from getting something done.
...
I'd say to them, don't stop us from getting something important and good done for the Americans.

Joe, when around 57-59 Senators are all in agreement about a public option, they aren't the ones holding things back and stopping things from getting done. I know around 60% of the populace would like a public option too, but you've already explained that: we're not as smart as you, the man who doesn't understand anything he's actually saying about health care.

I'll say this for Joe, he may be a contemptible, back stabbing, self important, third rate liar, but he lets you know just how badly he wants to fuck you over and lets you know where he stands. Even if it is the opposite of where he used to stand.

Who could have foreseen?

Human swine Joe Lieberman (I-CT)

Lieberman told reporters today that he would in fact filibuster any health care bill he doesn't agree with--and right now, he doesn't agree with the public option proposal making its way through the Senate.

"I told Senator Reid that I'm strongly inclined--i haven't totally decided, but I'm strongly inclined--to vote to proceed to the health care debate, even though I don't support the bill that he's bringing together because it's important that we start the debate on health care reform because I want to vote for health care reform this year. But I also told him that if the bill remains what it is now, I will not be able to support a cloture motion before final passage. Therefore I will try to stop the passage of the bill."

My oh my. Of course he wouldn't want a public option, I mean it's not like he ever argued for making health care cheaper and try to strive for universal coverage, especially when he was running for re-election as an Independent after he lost the Democratic primary.

What I’m saying to the people of Connecticut, I can do more for you and your families to get something done to make health care affordable, to get universal health insurance.
...
MediChoice to allow anybody in our country to buy into a national insurance pool like the health insurance pool that we federal employees and Members of Congress have. ...It will cover 95% of those who are not covered now, and it will reduce the pressure on rising costs for all the millions of others.

Wait, he argued for expanding and creating more single payer government health care plans in 2006 but feels an even more watered down public option is much too generous and expensive for the peasants in 2009? Not to mention that all the reasons he gives for opposing a public option now are utterly without merit. God, I command you to smite this fuck with a flaming sky rock.

Who could have ever foreseen this waffling, spineless fuckup would to try to stop important Democratic priorities that elections were won on, like health care reform, by not even allowing it to be voted on? Oh, Rachel Maddow:



So glad all these Democratic efforts to placate this spoiled, self-centered egomaniac have engendered such stunning and obvious benefits for the American people.

The beginning of the end

Rest easy America, the Senate Finance Committee has finally gotten through the business every other Senate and House committee got through months ago with the Baucus bill passing by a margin of 14-9. Olympia Snowe was the only GOP'er to vote for it. And so we move on inexorably towards health care reform, but not before another hundred infuriating things happen, dozens of politicians are wished dead, and the whole miserable process drags on so feebly that when it is passed we're all angry, thoroughly disheartened, and completely disillusioned even though the biggest reform of health care since Medicare just passed.

Many commentators have gone out of their way that politicians have been promising to get comprehensive health coverage since Teddy Roosevelt without success, so I'll just point out that literally any of those proposals, from Roosevelt's to Nixon's to Bush I's to Clinton's would have been much more preferable to what we got. But there we are.

If you're interested in such things the Times live blogged the whole Finance Committee failfest. Go through it and see if you can pick out what angers you the most. Whether it's Orrin Hatch bitching that the bill wasn't bipartisan just because his party spent all its time pissing and moaning about grandma murdering, smart people like Wyden and Rockefeller not having their smart ideas listened to, John Ensign complaining about the lack of tax breaks for senators who have healthy, in shape mistresses, Bill Nelson supporting the bill becuase Olympia Snowe supporting the bill made it bipartisan, I'm sure you'll find something to hate about the Senate. Then there was Press Secretary Gibbs prattling on about how today's vote was bipartisan. Who gives a shit? As if one Republican vote makes things bipartisan. As if people care more that the bill is bipartisan than it being a good bill.

Bleh. So we move on tow.....what's that, Joe Liberman? You want to butt in and say something? You want people to hate you with the fire of ten thousand suns?

LIEBERMAN: I’ve been saying for a couple of months now that I’m concerned, that I’m concerned that there’s a danger that we’re trying to do too much here and the president is trying to do two good things. But doing them at once in the middle of a recession may be hard to pull off.
...
IMUS: Do you support the Baucus bill?

LIEBERMAN: Not, not, no. I mean, not the way it is now.

Diediediediediediediediedie. Can't even celebrate this mediocre achievement for a day before you interject your sackless warbling, can we? I blame you, Connecticut, you're on fucking notice. I swear if Sean and I ever have robot armies that Minnesota District 6, the headquarters of every cable TV news outlet, Wall Street, and you are going to be taken out in the first wave.

Stay classy

I'm glad that the religious types have chosen sides in this health care battle. Because if we know one thing it's that Jesus would not have wanted health care to be cheap or accessible. What was it he said? Something along the lines of "Fuck the poor. If My Father wanted them to be able to afford health care, He would have blessed them with riches." It's somewhere in the back of the bible. Jesus says it at a 1000 denarii a plate dinner for Pontius Pilate.

Among those hoping for the defeat of all things Obama is Arizona preacher Steven Anderson who is pissed off at Barry because he heard a rumor that the health care bill that hasn't passed might also allow women dominion over their own uterus, and he's also pissed about gays, and abortion, and gays, and abortion again. He really doesn't like Barry.

“I’m not gonna pray for his good. I’m going to pray that he dies and goes to hell.”

Just in case you were confused, he wants to make it absolutely clear that, no, you didn't mishear him.

I hope that God strikes Obama with brain cancer so he can die like Ted Kennedy. You know, and I hope it happens today.

I hope he's praying to get his front door kicked in by the Secret Service, I think God is up for granting that wish.

Shocking revelations of an unfathomably surprising nature

Cheney Says He Was Proponent for Military Action Against Iran

Former Vice President Dick Cheney hinted that, in the waning days of the Bush administration, he had pushed for a military strike to destroy Iran's nuclear-weapons program.

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Mr. Cheney described himself as being isolated among advisers to then-President George W. Bush, who ultimately decided against direct military action.

"I was probably a bigger advocate of military action than any of my colleagues," Mr. Cheney said in response to questions about whether the Bush administration should have launched a pre-emptive attack prior to handing over the White House to Barack Obama.

Wouldn't that have just been the perfect ending to the Bush Administration? "Here black dude, we just bombed the everliving shit out of Iran because Dick really, really wanted to. I think that makes it three wars in the Middle East we're leaving you with. Oh, and the crippling economic collapse. Ah well, good luck. I'll be in Dallas if you need me!" Those must have been a hellish last couple of weeks for various Bush Administration officials. You're trying to find a new job after this current one has tainted your reputation and every few days you have to run over to the White House to form the opposition to some half baked military invasion that Dick Cheney wants to enact, whether it's Iran again or he wants to carpet bomb Central America because he thinks the guy that fucked up his lunch order was vaguely Panamanian.

This was all part of the Dick's wide-ranging, some would say tragically sycophantic, interview with Chris Wallace. In the interview they covered such subjects as why Cheney is not only cool with torture, he's cool with interrogators going above and beyond the specific torture methods they approved, as well as his consternation about how politicized the Justice Department is now, and a few overt dares to investigate his various crimes. He even caused John McCain to stand up and take notice, deriding the effectiveness of torture and the vapidness of Cheney's arguments, though with the caveat that despite the illegality and Geneva Conventions violating nature of the crimes that the best way to move forward and make sure it never happened again was to not investigate one single thing about it.

God love Dick Cheney's media tours, he's such a font of rage inducing hypocrisy. Did I mention he's writing a book? I can't wait for that thing to come out, I think it might cause Keith Olbermann and Bill Maher's heads to explode at the same time.

Quote of the day

Former Vice-Criminal Dick "Thunderlips" Cheney

The documents released Monday clearly demonstrate that the individuals subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda. This intelligence saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks. These detainees also, according to the documents, played a role in nearly every capture of al Qaeda members and associates since 2002. The activities of the CIA in carrying out the policies of the Bush Administration were directly responsible for defeating all efforts by al Qaeda to launch further mass casualty attacks against the United States. The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions.

Of course, unsurprisingly, none of what he says is true. But you really have to appreciate the moon sized brass balls of a man who decries the alleged politicization of someone else's Justice Department after the tenure of the JD the Bush Administration presided over.

Still one hopes that his impotent dishonest shrieking does get Holder and Obama to change the one politically motivated part of the impending torture investigations: the fact that it isn't going to investigate guys like John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, and Dick Cheney.