Harry Reid fires off a missive to Mitch McConnell about health care reform, reconciliation, etc., and, ka-THUNK! Here’s my favorite paragraph:
Republicans have spent the past year mischaracterizing the health reform bill and misleading the public. Though we have tried to engage in a serious discussion, our efforts have been met by repeatedly debunked myths and outright lies. At the same time, Republicans have resorted to extraordinary legislative maneuvers in an effort not to improve the bill, but to delay and kill it. After watching these tactics for nearly a year, there is only one conclusion an objective observer could make: these Republican maneuvers are rooted less in substantive policy concerns and more in a partisan desire to discredit Democrats, bolster Republicans, and protect the status quo on behalf of the insurance industry.
Only two days into their sponsorship of Beck’s radio show, TurboTax tweeted a contrite acknowledgment that it had mistaken a liability for an asset.
According to StopBeck.com, TurboTax is the 120th advertiser to shift or outright yank its buys from Beck’s radio and TV programs.
Hard to say at this point whether TurboTax was responding to howls of consumer indignation, or the sudden realization that Beck supports a Soviet-style Flat Tax and a vastly simplified Tax Code, neither of which represents an exciting growth opportunity for sellers of tax-preparation software.
Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, has introduced a bill that would completely ban the use of salt in restaurant cooking.
“No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises,” the bill, A. 10129 , states in part.
The bill proposes a $1,000 fine on restaurants for each violation.
Give me, oh PULEEZ, give me a break here. First of all even the Mayo Clinic doesn’t recommend a completely salt free diet. Salt, after all, is needed by our bodies for essential functions. And second, many dishes simply can’t be prepared correctly or flavorfully without the use of some salt. If this law is enacted say goodbye to pickles, kimchee, sauerkraut and any other pickled dishes; soy sauce, worcestershire sauce and many other condiments; and most importantly FLAVOR!
New York has an incredibly vibrant restaurant industry. This heavy handed attempt to impose unnecessary dietary restrictions on anyone choosing to eat out would have a very dampening effect on the business of many restaurants for no apparent public benefit. I realize it’s not likely to pass but, jeebus, don’t those assembly peeps have anything better to do with their time?
If you think the food police are getting a little too aggressive here’s a website where you can sound off.
Palin propagandist John Ziegler warns that unless God Himself sends a golden chariot drawn by legions of cherubs to elevate Sarah Palin to the presidency, she is toast should she choose to disregard his advice and run in 2012:
[B]arring a literal act of God, there is absolutely no chance that Palin can beat Obama in 2012.
[snip]
[T]here is no doubt that her celebrity power keeps her theoretically viable to do literally anything she wants, except the problem here is that huge portions of public believe, wrongly, that they already know the real Sarah Palin… [A]re Republicans really going to run against an over-hyped, inexperienced, charismatic celebrity by nominating someone who is already thought of exactly that way by at least half of America?
This is guest post from Barbara O’Brien (aka Maha from the excellent The Mahablog) outlining some of the reasons why passing the health care reform bill would help out a whole bunch of people.
Many obstacles and stumbling blocks remain in the way of health care reform. The House and Senate bills will have to be merged, and then the House and Senate both will vote on the final bill. We don’t yet know what will be in the final bill, or if the final bill will be passed into law. Passage will be especially difficult in the Senate, where it will need 60 votes to pass. It is still possible that after all this angst, just one grandstanding senator could kill the whole thing.
But just for fun, let’s look at what conventional wisdom says will be in the final bill and see if there is anything in it that will be an immediate benefit to people with mesothelioma and other asbestos-related disease.
It is likely that the final bill will provide additional funding for state high-risk insurance pools. Currently more than 30 states run such pools, which are nonprofit, state-sponsored health insurance plans for people who can’t buy insurance because of pre-existing conditions. The biggest problem with such pools is that, often, the insurance they offer is too expensive for many who might need it. Both the Senate and House bills provide $5 billion in subsidies for state high-risk pools to make the insurance more affordable.
Under the Senate bill, beginning in 2014, private companies would no longer be able to deny coverage to adults with pre-existing conditions, nor could they charge higher premiums for people with pre-existing conditions. Until then, the state high-risk pools could provide some help.
Alaskan blog Palingates, which broke the story on March 3, additionally serves up some compelling speculation on the mystery of why Sarah Palin was standing in front of a snowmachine in her TV commercial spot promoting the Iditarod, which is rather famously a dog-sledding event. Opportunistic product placement or spontaneous scene propping? You decide.
Beyond that, the jokes write themselves: The CBS story notes that Citgo has been the target of repeated Wingnut boycott initiatives. Palingates includes a video from the 2008 Primary where Sarah admits to a Venezuelan interviewer that she believes Hugo Chavez is a dictator. Chavez responded at the time by calling Sarah a confused “Beauty Queen.” Elsewhere, Salon split the difference by dubbing Sarah the “Hugo Chavez of Alaska.”
Optically, this is a bad look for the Palins. But perhaps embracing foreign socialist Enemy-of-America sponsors and cashing paychecks from dictators is just a “common sense solution” for energy self-sufficiency she hasn’t shared with us yet.
Meg Whitman, former eBay CEO and leading contender in California’s GOP gubernatorial primary, has a history of ducking questions from the news media. But, yesterday, she elevated evasiveness to an art form when she invited Bay Area print and broadcast outlets to cover her photo-op tour of the Union Pacific Railway Yard in Oakland, then confined them to a “holding pen” while she strolled the facility with company officials, and subsequently had them ejected from a sit-down “press conference” after reciting a brief prepared statement praising UP’s hump-yard and the health of California’s heavy rolling freight infrastructure.
Later, Whitman contacted a number of reporters to apologize for her vast wealth, which has mistakenly led her to believe that anyone she doesn’t recognize is either the wedding photographer or a member of the catering staff.
The Washington Post has more detail and snarky press reactions here.
Please stop letting your thirteen-year-old nephews write and produce your web ads, especially when the RNC is turning out much more effective and professional-looking videos. Or are you saving money so that you can hand the 2010 elections over to the GOP on the most expensive platter in the world?
Several of Rep. Eric Massa’s former Navy crew members go public with tales of Unwelcome Scrutiny on the High Seas. Joshua Green breaks the story at The Atlantic. [H/T TPM]
During an appearance on a right-wing Internet radio show on Monday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) called upon voters who oppose the health care bill to get loud.
“Well I couldn’t agree with you more, as to the timing and the sense of urgency,” Bachmann told a caller to the show, Hot Tea Radio. “That’s why with everything within us we need to start literally banging garbage lids together, to create enough noise so that our neighbors and our co-workers realize where the time clock is at this point, because the second hand is literally banging up against 11:59 on the clock on freedom when it comes to health care.”
The people who elected this kook literally eat their own boogers every day when the Clock o’ Freedom strikes 12.
Some of you may remember when we wrote about the Florida case of a juiced-up musclehead with anger management issues beating down a Greek Orthodox priest with a tire iron because he claimed he was a genital-grabbing terrorist. Let’s just say it didn’t end the way we were hoping that it would. What a travesty.
Admit it: You knew it was going to be amusing when MSNBC’s second-most addled gasbag, Chris Matthews, announced his intention to add an Olbermannesque “special comment” to his broadcast—the “Let Me Finish” segment (as if anyone could ever stop him!).
I look forward to tonight’s reflections on the humble, poor black people of the earth, avuncular mustaches, shishkabobs and concentrated numbers of warring religious factions in the HOLY city.
