Thursday, February 02, 2012

No, this is not a flight of fancy. As I buried in another post, you really can buy a Susan B. Komen gun. What you choose to bury is entirely your business. I’m not saying a thing.

Posted by Mrs. Polly on 02/02/12 at 11:49 PM
Comments (6) • Permalink

Yes, the Ambassador would like us to know she means to preserve as many of us as she can~~but the sacred bio-essence passing through these portals must be preserved! A number of us may have to be sacrificed, but the bio-essence must be maintained! Come to Pink, children. Want Pink. Don’t turn from Pink. You… need…Pink.

Or, not. So glad I never went for the Pink Kitchen-Aid Mixer. Bundling that thing up and shipping it off to almost-Governor Handel wouldn’t have been a satisfying protest, but not buying it sure is!

Update: did I say Kitchen-Aid Mixer? Pah! Komen be Barnhardtin’! *

*Barnhardtin’

Posted by Mrs. Polly on 02/02/12 at 08:50 PM
Comments (7) • Permalink

Monday, January 30, 2012

Hey, whatcha havin’ for breakfast? Ooh, an omelette, sounds delish. I’ve heard that making one of those requires certain sacrifices that could be considered controversial, so count yourself lucky that chickens haven’t established a religious organization that wields political sway out of accordance with its role in a pluralistic society, else you’d have to settle for a bowl of Chex.

read the whole post »

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/30/12 at 09:26 AM
Comments (3) • Permalink

Thursday, January 19, 2012

BREAKING: the Heart of Texas and this News

(RRNN)—Rick Perry dropped out of the 2012 presidential race today and endorsed those kickass muscle relaxers some sketchy dude slipped him before his now-famous Manchester, NH appearance. “I can’t recommend ‘em highly enough, they’re like a space-walk in a Ziploc, man. Oh, you mean for the nomination? I dunno, one of those other pills, I guess,” said the ex-candidate.

The former governor and homunculus borne of George W. Bush’s genetic runoff will return to the place of his creation, What A Bunch Of Clones Laboratories, where he will writhe in agony as his body breaks down on the cellular level at geometrically accelerating speed, intermittently cursing his “father” (head geneticist Stephen Wong) for encumbering him with this cruel mockery of life. His final hours will be spent on the run—after using what remains of his strength to break out of his glass enclosure, he will kidnap Laura Bush and climb to the top of the Wells Fargo Plaza, bleating “I just want what you have, brother!” in something approximating human speech until his teeth and tongue fall out and drop to the street below.

“It was scary but kind of fun too, I guess I needed a little adventure in my life,” the former First Lady will be quoted as saying as she furtively tucks a Ziploc bag into her pocket and steps away from a bubbling puddle of viscous, flesh-colored liquid which was once considered a leading contender for the GOP nomination.

“Did I say ‘so cool?’ I meant cold, so very cold.”

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/19/12 at 01:14 PM
Permalink

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

The holiday season is upon us—well, it’s upon you, I’m just holing up with cheap beer and my GameCube until it blows over—and that means family gatherings, and family gatherings sometimes mean interacting with people we’d really rather not. To make the next few days as tension-free as possible, I offer the following excerpt from my upcoming book The Gilful Life: Advice From Someone You Should Totally Take Advice From due out next year from Simon & Shuster, or if those guys keep refusing to take my calls, one of those vanity presses that help lonely women channel their sadness and frustration into stories about steampunk Wiccans.

read the whole post »

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/21/11 at 08:03 PM
Permalink

Monday, December 19, 2011

Menachem Begins!

I’m not sure what annoys me most about this piece. Is it the musta-pulled-something stretch it took to straightfacedly compare the positions of, on one side, Paul Krugman, Sherrod Brown, and Pete Stark, and on the other, some Tea Party jagoff?

Or maybe it’s this:

In contrast, Mitt Romney, who knows something about health care legislation, welcomed the Ryan-Wyden proposal, which is not too far removed from a Medicare reform plan the former Massachusetts Governor had put forward earlier, as “an enormous achievement.”

Why yes, of course the voice of bipartisan reason, the healing center, the maypole we can dance around nonidealogically just happens to be the once and probably future leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination. Christ, I haven’t seen false equivalence pay off like that since the mirror scene in Evil Dead II.

read the whole post »

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/19/11 at 07:01 PM
Permalink

Friday, November 04, 2011

Three news items converged late this week to shed some light on what’s up with the struggle for America’s soul. First, a tea party goon hopped up on birtherism and Matriarch of Mayhem videos interrupted Elizabeth Warren at a volunteer meeting to call the candidate a “socialist whore” with a “foreign-born” boss: 

Notice how he encounters a locked door when he tries to make a grand exit after hurling insults at a candidate who treated him graciously. Classy guy. Smart too!

read the whole post »

Posted by Betty Cracker on 11/04/11 at 10:40 AM
Permalink

Monday, October 31, 2011

Or:  Obummer throws Big Pharma under the bus.  Because he’s basically owned by them, near as I recollect.

Obama is to sign “an Executive Order directing the FDA to take action to help further reduce and prevent drug shortages, protect consumers and prevent price gouging. The White House will also announce the President’s support for bipartisan legislation (S. 296 and H.R. 2245) that will give the FDA new tools to prevent drug shortages,” the White House says.

Which Pro-emo-proggie will lead the pearl clutching brigade this time around?

Not related but worthy of comment:  Since every blog in the country has covered the unfolding “did he or didn’t he and when did he not know anything about it?” Herman Cain sexual harassment story I, for one, have kind of left it alone.  But Josh Marshall is working on a pretty good timeline as events reveal themselves.  Can this be the end of Hermie?

UPDATE

And heeeeere’s who you want on your side in a sexual harassment scandal!  I’m assuming he, maybe, knows of what he speaks?

Posted by marindenver on 10/31/11 at 04:54 PM
Permalink

Wednesday, August 03, 2011

According to Jonathan Chait.

The biggest single difference is that the Clinton administration simply refused on principle to get jacked up on the debt ceiling:
 

Still, even though Clinton enjoyed political and economic advantages that Obama does not, his no-compromises strategy had some clear advantages. Unlike Obama, he refused to let the threat of default set the national agenda. Because he would not enter into negotiations over the debt ceiling, the issue barely roused the public consciousness. On November 9, 1995, a senior administration official told the Washington Post, “Our position is it does not matter what they put on this legislation, we are not going to accept anything but clean bills because we will not be blackmailed over default. Get it? No extortion. No blackmail. What you hear are their screams of complaint as they realize we are not, not, not budging on this.”

Kind of hard to imagine somebody from this administration talking like that.

At least he concedes that the Republicans of 1994 were not the Teathuglicans of 2011.  Although I think he’s underestimating the situation a great deal when he says “they weren’t that much less destructive and crazy.”  You think?  Even Republican presidential candidates (every one except Huntsman) this time were saying that the debt ceiling absolutely should not be raised. 

Anyway, everyone’s entitled to their opinion.  Now I’m just waiting to hear how Clinton was so much more effective at getting health care reform passed, kept children from being thrown off of Medicaid rolls and SCHIP and never agreed to pass DADT or DOMA.  Oh.  Wait.

Posted by marindenver on 08/03/11 at 12:31 PM
Permalink

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Nearly lost in all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the budget deal yesterday came the news that the Obama Administration did us lady folks a solid:

The federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was expected Monday to announce new guidelines that would require health insurance companies to cover women’s health care services, including birth control and breast exams, without a co-pays or deductibles.

The new rules, made possible by President Obama’s Affordable Care act, would begin Aug. 1, 2012.

“We know that half of women, according to studies, forego or delay preventive care because they can’t afford it and under the affordable care act that all changes,” White House advisor Stephanie Cutter told ABC News.

Services covered will include well-woman exams, screening for gestational diabetes, breastfeeding support, domestic violence screenings, and all FDA-approved birth control methods — including emergency contraception like the morning-after pill.

Not everyone is happy about this. Last month, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly commented on the recommendation that prompted the policy change:

“Many women who get pregnant are blasted out of their minds when they have sex, and they’re not going to use birth control anyway.”

True. However, many aging, splotchy bullies who sexually harass their subordinates confuse falafels for loofahs, but there’s no movement afoot to restrict the use of those items.

read the whole post »

Posted by Betty Cracker on 08/02/11 at 06:35 AM
Permalink

Saturday, June 18, 2011

The plot to spit on the US Constitution and grind it to pulp under the boot-heel of socialism extends much, much further than even Glenn Beck suspects as he awakes from yet another sweaty nightmare, screaming about millipedes in his underwear.

You can’t trust anyone, not Paul Ryan, not even Michele Bachmann. Here’s what Bachmann said yesterday in a speech at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans:

“This hasn’t been talked about very much – the president’s plan for senior citizens is Obamacare,” Ms. Bachmann told party activists here. She added, “I think very likely what the president intends is that Medicare will go broke and ultimately that answer will be Obamacare for senior citizens.”

Now, consider the following syllogism:

Major premise: “ObamaCare,” which provides government subsidies so citizens can buy health insurance from private insurers, is the Crown Jewel of Socialism.

Minor premise: “RyanCare,” which Bachmann supports, proposes funneling government dollars to senior citizens so they can purchase health insurance from private insurers.

Conclusion: RyanCare is a Jewel in Socialism’s Crown, and therefore its author Ryan and supporter Bachmann are socialists!

The logic is inescapable. If only Senator Joseph McCarthy were still with us to root out this Red Menace in Congress…

Posted by Betty Cracker on 06/18/11 at 08:14 AM
Permalink

Saturday, June 11, 2011

                On to Thomas!

Er, well, that didn’t exactly work out as hoped. Our knight went down, felled by his own sword, so it falls to us to take up the banner and press forward, riding through the countryside ringin’ those bells and shootin’ those guns, or lances or quoits or suchlike also, to remind the populace of real crimes that actually affect them. These real crimes are concealed beneath not simple grey ring-spun but the intricate folds of Clarence Thomas’s judicial robes, and they’re not just the ones you’re thinking of, either, or even those other ones you might be thinking of, though lord knows they’re all scheevy enough.

There’s actually more to the conflicted Clarence story than just his serial sexual harassment, his “forgetting” to disclose his wife’s earnings for twenty years, and the money she has made while forming two comically different-yet-awfully-alike, wonderfully opaque groups sharing the same Grishamesque mail drop (great Protect Our Elections YouTube, with creepy soundtrack and sekret kam, via bradblog) trying to defeat the HCR bill, the constitutionality of which her husband is due to consider.

read the whole post »

Posted by Mrs. Polly on 06/11/11 at 02:34 PM
Permalink

Sunday, June 05, 2011

As a result they are trying to strong arm a New Hampshire TV station and Comcast into pulling this ad.

 
Their complaint? That the ad is NOT TRUE, dagnabbit!!  And they are very butthurt about it!  An excerpt from the nasty letter they wrote:

The Budget Resolution as approved by the U.S. House of Representatives does NOT end Medicare. In fact, the Budget Resolution makes no changes at all to Medicare for current or near retirees, as none of the Medicare-related provisions in the Budget Resolution would even take effect until 2022.  This fact makes the Advertisement especially misleading, as the woman featured in the Advertisement is a current Medicare beneficiary, and would not have her Medicare benefits ended, or even changed in any way, under the Budget Resolution.

The emphasis is theirs.  The foot stomping and spittle flecking you’ll have to insert on your own. 

It should also be noted that the woman in the ad does not say or even imply that her  Medicare benefits will be ended; she says the legislation will hurt families like hers.  A completely undeniable statement.

When the controversy first came to light some were concerned that if the Rethugs succeeded in getting the ad pulled it could hurt Democratic efforts to make Medicare an issue in the elections next year.  Not to worry.  Comcast weighed the opinions of both sides and has decided to continue running the ad.

Posted by marindenver on 06/05/11 at 02:34 PM
Permalink

Saturday, June 04, 2011

Let’s see if we’ve got this right.  As masterfully detailed at ABL’s place by RR friend and longtime commenter Allan, moral cesspool Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, habitually disgusting sexual harrasser and conflict-of-interest exemplar extraordinaire, having been set upon by NYC congressman like a mongoose on a cobra, finally coughs up evidence that he “forgot” over $700,000 dollars of his lovely (not really—not hardly) wife’s lobbyist income on financial disclosure forms in a Memorial Day weekend Friday evening newsdump. That same evening, NYC Congressman is victim of curiously timed Twitterfraud by a rightwing stalker, who falsely accuses him of sending a young woman a mildly louche photo which may have been a stolen private pic of his own privates.

read the whole post »

Posted by Mrs. Polly on 06/04/11 at 01:10 PM
Permalink

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

I’ll move on from the ludicrous contortions of the Underpants Gnomes smear I touched on yesterday, to check out one reason why Anthony Weiner may have been the target of a desperate attempt by a bunch of idle gossiping vindictive shitheads to send up a smokescreen over the weekend (and coincidentally target a number of young women as objects of their revolting fantasy life just because they followed Weiner on Twitter). From Stephanie Mencimer at Mother Jones:

Following an old Washington tradition of dumping required but embarrassing information on a Friday night before a major holiday, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas finally released the details of his wife’s income from her year or so working for the tea party group Liberty Central, which fought President Obama’s health care reform law. His new financial disclosure form indicates that his wife, Virginia Thomas, received $150,000 in salary from the group and less than $15,000 in payments from an anti-health care lobbying firm she started.

The disclosure was apparently prompted in part by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), who had been needling Thomas (including on Twitter) for months to disclose how much money his wife earned from Liberty Central. That’s because challenges to Obama’s health care reform bill are likely to end up before the Supreme Court sooner rather than later, and if Thomas and his wife benefited from her income working against the bill, the justice has an enormous conflict of interest in hearing any legal challenge. Thomas had failed to disclose Virginia’s income on his financial disclosure forms for 20 years, and under pressure from Weiner and others, he had recently amended old ones to reflect hundreds of thousands of dollars she had earned working for the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, which also opposed Obama’s health care plan.

But Thomas had not disclosed how much money his wife made from her controversial venture into Liberty Central.
...
Justice Thomas finally released the details of her compensation Friday night, but the disclosure, and Weiner’s triumphant press release announcing the move, were largely overshadowed by Weinergate.

Neat trick, huh?

Posted by YAFB on 05/31/11 at 11:16 AM
Permalink