Facebook Celebrity and FoxNews trophy-correspondent Sarah Palin debuted a whack, retro “Frontiere Flowbee” hairstyle on last night’s Hannity show. Unfortunately, her thoughts on the Health Care Reform bill were equally-vintage throwbacks:
This is a scary place for America to be right now, Sean. Everything that our leaders in D.C. are doing now with this Obamacare, this government take over of health care, goes against the will of the people.
We’ve learned through America’s history that the government that governs least governs best. And that all political power is inherent in the people. Government originates just from the will of the people. It’s implemented according to the will of the people.
Now a lot of us love America and we don’t want to see this transformation into something that is unrecognizable, this European-style of health care in this case we’re talking about. But no, so many of us who love America and believe in what our founding fathers providentially had crafted for us via our documents including our Constitution, we don’t agree with this fundamental transformation of America that Obama promised us.
That they are resorting to these desperate measures. And this does not bode well for those members of Congress who are up for reelection in the midterms. They’re being looked at as a bunch of wimps. They’re sheep. They’re following something that I think a year or two years ago they would never had considered to follow an unconstitutional process and not actually vote on a bill before they’re going to deem that it has been passed.
So this does not bode well on those non-independent thinkers in Congress who are acting like sheep and just going along to get along with Pelosi and with Reid.
They’re like a bunch of dead fish. And only dead fish can go with the flow. And that’s what we’re seeing right now, Sean.
It’s all there: Fear of Obama. Distrust of government. Love of country. We the People. Founding Fathers, Constitution. Dead fish going with the flow. Sarah’s finally got it down to a player-piano-roll of one-size-fits-all sound bites for every occasion…although, curiously, she left out “common sense.” Maybe she was saving that for the encore.
You can see a minute-plus of the interview here. There’s much more, but that should be plenty since you’ve seen it all before.
Wingnutstan has a new hero—Fox News correspondent Bret Baier, who possibly set a record for most interruptions by a reporter during an interview with President Obama that was broadcast last night. NRO’s Seth Liebsohn’s description of the interview captures the general rapture on the right:
Bret Baier just concluded the single best interview of President Obama in a year, by any reporter… It was a model of how not to be cowed by a strong and charismatic leader and a model of a truly independent anchor/reporter. President Obama knew he didn’t have Bret at the very end when his last effort at victimhood was to sarcastically hang his head to the side in response to Bret’s saying he didn’t mean to interrupt, as if Bret were being insincere—which he wasn’t.
Now, I don’t believe reporters are required to be deferential to presidents and other powerful leaders; they should ask hard-hitting questions. However, it is a good idea to let interviewees, you know, answer the fooking questions they’re asked. Baier fails that test spectacularly, interrupting and talking over his interviewee like Tweety Matthews on crack and gushing GOP talking points like a demented Gipper geyser.
But, hey, maybe that’s just Baier’s style: Maybe when he interviewed former president Bush, Baier approached the conversation from the perspective of Nancy Pelosi and talked over Bush to insert Democratic Party perspectives at every opportunity. Let’s compare the two interviews, shall we?
Inquisition vs. tongue bath. Yep, that’s fair and balanced alright.
Via Yglesias, here’s Charles Krauthammer on why Americans don’t want no gubmint takeover of health care:
It’s the essence of America. And it’s what distinguishes Americans who are essentially refugees of the old society in Europe. That’s why it’s always been harder to make Americans break to the yoke of government, as happened in Europe.
Look, once you get accustomed to the kind of entitlements you have in Sweden, England, France, elsewhere, it doesn’t get undone. And America is different. It’s resisting the imposition of new yokes. And that’s what’s happening today.
Yglesias notes: “My ancestors fled Europe more because of the pogroms than because of the Czar’s efforts to expand the welfare state.” Excellent point, Matt. And mine most definitely did not leave Ireland because the NHS waiting list for knee replacement surgery was too long.
But there’s a kernel of truth to what Krauthammer says: “It doesn’t get undone.” And that’s why the puppeteers who are making the teabaggers dance are becoming increasingly desperate to stop health care reform.
I’m just beating them to it. What Representative Kucinich actually said was, “I believe health care is a civil right.” He added:
“I know I have to make a decision not on the bill as I would like to see it but as it is,” Kucinich said, noting the Senate bill at least gave health coverage to 31 million more Americans. “My criticism of the legislation has been well reported. I do not retract those criticisms. I incorporate them into this statement.”
In a brazen, grisly assault, former George W. Bush advisor Karl Rove brutally attacked the concept of self-awareness during an ABC television broadcast.
As viewers and the production crew watched in horror, Rove seized self-awareness by the neck, sank his razor-sharp fangs into its carotid artery, sucked out its core meaning and then dropped its lifeless body on the studio floor:
Appearing on ABC’s “Top Line,” Rove attacked the Obama administration over a series of alleged foreign policy missteps arising, he said, from insufficient “groundwork.”
“We saw it in Honduras,” Rove said. “Where, rather than monitoring the situation, [the Obama administration] let a cowboy president try to act in an extra-constitutional way to violate a fundamental principle in the Constitution, all without having done their homework in advance.”
A stunned nation was left to ponder these three words: What. The. Fuck.
Trab Stupak (I refuse to call him by his proper first name because that was the name of my late boxer dog, who was a vastly superior creature) shares some plaintive thoughts with his fellow fetus fetishists at National Review Online:
Sitting in an airport, on his way home to Michigan, Rep. Bart Stupak, a pro-life Democrat, is chagrined. “They’re ignoring me,” he says… “That’s their strategy now. The House Democratic leaders think they have the votes to pass the Senate’s health-care bill without us. At this point, there is no doubt that they’ve been able to peel off one or two of my twelve. And even if they don’t have the votes, it’s been made clear to us that they won’t insert our language on the abortion issue.”
According to Stupak, that group of twelve pro-life House Democrats — the “Stupak dozen” — has privately agreed for months to vote ‘no’ on the Senate’s health-care bill if federal funding for abortion is included in the final legislative language. Now, in the debate’s final hours, Stupak says the other eleven are coming under “enormous” political pressure from both the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). “I am a definite ‘no’ vote,” he says. “I didn’t cave. The others are having both of their arms twisted, and we’re all getting pounded by our traditional Democratic supporters, like unions.”
Pesky unions! Always whining about trivial shit like benefits for union workers, non-union workers and even the unemployed! A Democrat in an anti-union, full-employment state like Michigan is wise to ignore them.
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?
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.
Rush Limbaugh sez he’s leavin’ the country if it happens. Listen for yourself. (via Think Progress.)
I guess all I have to say to that is: “ohpleeeezohpleeeezohpleeeeze!!!”
The real punchline is that he’s planning to move to Costa Rica - home of one of the best soshulized medicine health care systems in Latin America. Hey, they even provide coverage to non-citizens. Like, umm, Rush would be.
Glenn Beck made a big deal out of landing an exclusive, hour-long one-on-one with outraged, seething, ready-to-go-Krakatoa Dem Congressman Eric Massa. Malkin and Limbaugh both warned him that interviewing Massa was likely to be the “Al Capone’s Vault” of misbegotten on-air scoops, but Beck predictably followed his gut straight into this year’s Christmas party reel of TV’s Queasiest Moments.
I haven’t screened the entire show, but this clip is guaranteed to make you feel like Emily Litella watching a live performance of “Who’s On First?” featuring Bob Dole and the ghost of Brother Theodore. The other segments can be viewed here.
From the comments on the Freeper live-thread, I get the feeling Beck was as bored as his audience by the end. Bored—but, surprisingly enough, not to tears.
Fulfilling his bloggy mission, Zandar points out the stupid in this wingnut-prØn poll, which finds that, according to Americans, the US has lost international standing during the Obama administration:
What a ridiculous poll. If you want to know how the US is perceived internationally by non-Americans, why are you asking Americans?
Good question, Zandar. As it turns out, Gallup released a poll last month that actually did gauge non-American perceptions of American leadership and presents data from 2006-2009:
As discussed here a couple of weeks ago, the Republicans seem to have hit on a new meme. Extending unemployment benefits makes people lazy and unwilling to heft their shiftless asses offa the sofa and go out and get jobs! Rep. Dean Heller R.-NV previously wondered if we were creating hobos. Senator Jon Kyl threatened to block the extension of the benefits because he apparently believes it is more important for Paris Hilton and her pals to inherit boatloads of money free of any estate tax.
At about the same time Iowa Rep. Steve King suggested that extending benefits turns the “the safety net into a hammock”. (via Steve Benen)
Now Tom DeLay, speaking on CNN’s State of the Union insists that Senator Jim Bunning, R-KY, took the principled stand in trying to block the benefits extension (among other things) arguing that people are only unemployed because they want to be. Hard to believe? Don’t take my word for it - listen for yourselves.
Yes, the vile loathsome DeLay wants us to believe that the jobs are out there just waiting to be taken. But the shiftless, lazy taxpayers just wants to park they butts on the couch until that last couple of weeks of unemployment before trudging reluctantly back into the world of a paycheck. Now I think it’s you living in that parallel universe Mr. DeLay, not me.
