These are signs seen primarily at Tea Party Protests.
They all feature "creative" spelling or grammar.
This new dialect of the English language shall be known as "Teabonics."
I especially like this one.
A week ago, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to enact a sweeping reform of the nation's health-care system. A lot has been written about who should take the credit (or blame) for passage of the bill after almost a year of often acrimonious debate. But today, I want to thank the people who really made it possible, the unsung heroes, if you will, that really helped make health-care reform the law of the land.
I'm talking, of course, about the Republican Party.
Last July, Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina revealed the true Republican goal. "If we stop Obama on this," he said, "it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."
After that, it was, as the kids say, on.
They pulled out all the stops. Sarah Palin raved on her Facebook page about nonexistent "death panels." Far-right bloggers and talk show hosts whipped "tea partiers" into a frenzy over "government-run health care" (although, judging from the apparent age of most of them, they were already on government-run health care, i.e., Medicare).
Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted "you lie!" at the president during a congressional address. The Republicans carped that Obama had promised the debate would be televised, and then, when he called a televised "health care summit" with them, derided it as a "PR stunt."
The ones that showed up provided a "plan" that was to "scrap all your proposals and start over." (Remember, to a Republican, "bipartisanship" is a code word for "do everything we demand or we'll say nasty things about you, except we'll say nasty things about you anyway.") GOP lawmakers predicted "the death of the Senate" over parliamentary procedures that they themselves had frequently used in the past.
Eventually, it became clear to everyone that there was no compromise with these people, that they were going to vote against whatever plan came up in the House or the Senate. That left President Obama and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi free to concentrate on lobbying their own fractious party.
That's never an easy task, with single-payer advocates like Dennis Kucinich on the left, social conservatives like Bart Stupak on the right, and conservative Blue Dog Democrats scattered about. But the behavior of the Republicans made their task that much easier.
Sun Tzu, in "The Art of War," offered this advice: "In death ground, fight." It became apparent that this was, indeed, meant by the GOP to be the Democrats' "death ground." If this failed, the president and the speaker warned, every Democrat would spend every news cycle from now until the midterm elections with the GOP talking heads and their lapdogs in the media hanging the "loser" sign around their necks and deriding the President's and Congress' "inability to get anything done."
They developed a plan to vote "yes" on the Senate bill, then send a filibuster-proof package of changes to the Senate, where the reconciliation process provides only for what Republicans used to routinely demand: "an up-or-down vote." At which point, Republicans howled that an up-or-down, majority vote was, literally, tyranny of Hitlerian proportions.
Gradually, as their opponents got crazier and crazier, the recalcitrant Dems fell into line. Kucinich signed on, reluctantly, to the bill. Stupak, who'd fretted about federal money going to fund abortions, agreed to a face-saving executive order that said that the bill would -follow current law that already forbade such funding.
But, as he found out, that doesn't help you with Republicans, one of whom shouted "baby-killer!" at him on the House floor. In the end, the bill and the reconciliation package passed in the House with votes to spare.
So thanks, Republicans. By announcing early on that you meant to "break" their party's president, then using every lie, slur, whack-job conspiracy theory, drama-queen display, and outright thuggish tactic in your arsenal to try to make that happen, you helped bring the Democratic Party together. Not completely, but enough. The president and the speaker couldn't have done it without you.
Now, they announce, they intend to run this fall on a platform of repealing the bill. They'll be trying to make it possible once again for insurance companies to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions and drop you when you get sick. They'll be trying to reopen the Medicare "doughnut hole" and cost seniors more for their medicine. They'll be trying to repeal tax credits for small business to help them buy insurance.
Go ahead, guys. Knock yourselves out.
More than 90 percent of Tea Party backers interviewed in a new Bloomberg National Poll say the U.S. is verging more toward socialism than capitalism, the federal government is trying to control too many aspects of private life and more decisions should be made at the state level.
At the same time, 70 percent of those who sympathize with the Tea Party, which organized protests this week against President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul, want a federal government that fosters job creation.
They also look to the government to rein in Wall Street, with almost half saying the government should do something about executive bonuses. Supporters are also conflicted over whether private-enterprise elements should be introduced into government programs like Social Security and Medicare.
“The ideas that find nearly universal agreement among Tea Party supporters are rather vague,” says J. Ann Selzer, the pollster who created the survey.Democrats shouldn't expect much cooperation from Republicans the rest of this year, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned Monday.
GOP senators emerged Monday to caution that the health debate had taken a toll on the institution, warning of little work between parties the rest of this year.
"There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year," McCain said during an interview Monday on an Arizona radio affiliate. "They have poisoned the well in what they've done and how they've done it."
Help me out here.
When the hell have they gotten cooperation from the Republicans so far? Waht are they going to do that they haven't done so far? Put a "hold" on nominees for important posts? Block legislation and throw people out of work just to show they can, then say "tough shit" when anyone calls them on it?
Seems to me all they've done with that well is piss in it. And now they're saying they're going to take a dump in it too, not because of the merits or lack of same of any pending legislation, but because they have their Depends in a wad?
Well gee, Honorable John, guess that whole "Country First" slogan was just that: a slogan. And guess we'll just have to toddle along without you, like we did on the health care bill.
Will somebody please remind this old coot that 41 Republicans + Lieberman is STILL not a majority? And will someone remind the Democrats as well?
True, one of those immigrants was Prince Andrew of Greece, who, for some reason, was actually Danish. (Trying to figure out the interweaving bloodlines of European royalty can be a bit like trying to untangle a drawer full of headphone cords.)
When his family was exiled from Greece, the plucky prince made hisway to Britain. There, he served in the Royal Navy, dropped all hisGreek titles like an old pair of worn-out socks, renamed himself Philip Mountbatten and married way, way up when he wooed and won then-Princess Elizabeth.Which brings us to Philip’s latest gaffe. While he and the missus were reviewing Royal Navy cadets, he happened to strike up a conversation with pretty 24-year-old female cadet, Elizabeth Rendle, who moonlights as a bartender.
“I told him I worked in a club,” Rendle told the British newspaper the Daily Mail. “He then asked if it was a strip club. Obviously I said ‘No’, and then he said, ‘Oh, it’s a bit too cold today anyway.”I’m not sure what that last bit was supposed to mean. Too cold? Very few strip clubs are outside. You’d think a prince would know these things.
The amazing thing is, while remarks like this one usually lead to a storm of criticism in the British press, the people at whom the prince’s barbs are directed seem to take them in stride. “I don’t think he put his foot in it,” Rendle reassured reporters. “It was a joke and I didn’t take any offense. I think he was just putting people at their ease.”My favorite is still the crack he made to a group of British students in China: “If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.”
All of these have caused controversy to various degrees in Britain, but none of it seems to bother Crazy Phil. That’s just how he rolls.In the insect kingdom, the drone bee wanders off and dies after impregnating the queen. The female praying mantis bites the male’s head off during mating to signify that his task on Earth is done.
Maybe the BBC, or even some American network, ought to give him his own sitcom. After all, curmudgeonly old dudes who say outrageous things are a staple of both British and American TV comedy. The guy’s a natural. He’s got years of experience, we know he can ad-lib, and he’s
got a built-in fan base.
Fox is a regular pulpit, of course, but Liz is also all over NBC, where she happens to be social friends with Meet the Press host David Gregory (whose wife worked with Liz ’s husband at the law firm Latham & Watkins), family friends with Justice Department reporter Pete Williams (Dick Cheney’s press aide when he was secretary of Defense), and neighborhood friends with Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski, daughter of Carter-administration national-security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. When Mika criticized Dick Cheney on her show last year, the former vice-president sent her a box of chocolate cupcakes.
Lawrence O’Donnell, an MSNBC pundit who engaged in a particularly testy shouting match on Good Morning America with Liz Cheney over waterboarding, says the networks have allowed her a high degree of control over her appearances. “She had up to that point been completely accustomed to having interviews go her way and ceded on her terms,” he observes. “She has been careful to make sure that the interviews worked that way.”
I'm really trying to resist the temptation these days to just spit on the ground every time some idiot starts bleating abut how badly conservatives are treated in the "liberal media". Liz N' Dick and their ilk have been handled with kid gloves as they spread their revisionist bullshit, and now we can see one of the reason why. It's time these so-called journalists started being a lot less chummy with the people they're supposed to be reporting on, or at least clearly disclosing obvious conflicts of interest.
The patrons of at least five Starbucks locations in California's Bay Area have faced this dilemma in recent weeks. Gun owners have walked into various Starbucks--including in liberal enclaves like San Francisco, San Jose and Cupertino (the home of Apple)--openly wearing weapons while they drink their coffee.
You might not think you would need to be armed to order a latte, but the Bay Area gun owners--who are loosely affiliated with a website called OpenCarry.org--are hoping to draw attention to what they see as a Second Amendment guarantee: the right to carry a gun without fear that it will be confiscated.
It surprises some people to find out that I'm not in line with a lot of supposedly liberal positions on gun control. I think the assault weapons ban, while well-intentioned, was unenforceable, and I don't think handguns should be banned outright. I believe in the right to keep and bear arms, subject to reasonable (the key word) regulation.
But I don't believe you have to be a dick about it. I don't feel the need to go "Look! My gun! I'm wearing it! Look! Look! Suck it, libs!"
I'm moderately pro-gun. I'm adamantly anti-asshole.
Responding to a caller who asked him where he would go for health care if Congress enacts reform, Limbaugh replied,
I don't know. I'll just tell you this, if this passes and it's five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented -- I am leaving the country. I'll go to Costa Rica.
First: Costa Rica has a socialized, single payer health care system.
Second: It's ranked higher than ours.
Third: Remember when Alec Baldwin was called a traitor for saying he'd leave the country if Bush was re-elected?
hat tip: Balloon Juice
President Barack Obama urged Congress Wednesday to vote "up or down" on sweeping health care legislation in the next few weeks, endorsing a plan that denies Senate Republicans the right to kill the bill by stalling with a filibuster.
Finally!
I say that because it's high time the magic words "up or down vote" were used in place of "reconciliation," which most people don't understand (including, apparently much of the Senate).
After all, the phrase (often rendered as 'upperdown vote") became a Republican mantra when they were in power and the Democrats threatened a filibuster. "So and so deserves an upperdown vote," "The American people want to see an upperdown vote on Judge so and so", etc.
I'd love it if every supporter of the current health care reform bill was on TV 24/7 from now until the vote, repeating "upperdown vote, upperdown vote, upperdown vote", till the thing passes.
Unfortunately, I don't know if the Dems have the message discipline to do it.
“I have a constituent that you won’t believe and I know you won’t, but her sister died, this poor woman had no dentures,” Slaughter, D-Fairport, said. “She wore her dead sister's teeth, which of course were uncomfortable and did not fit. Do you believe that in America that’s where we would be?”
Rush Limbaugh, overfed rich white drug addict, commenting on the story:
“If you don’t have any teeth, so what? What’s applesauce for?”
Remember folks: at one point, assholes like Limbaugh ran the country. Now, the chicken-livered Democratic Congressional Delegation acts like they still do.
Enough is enough.
Fight.
Two thousand federal transportation workers will be furloughed without pay on Monday, and the Obama administration said they have a Kentucky senator to blame for it.
Federal reimbursements to states for highway programs will also be halted, the Transportation Department said in a statement late Sunday. The reimbursements amount to about $190 million a day, according to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
The furloughs and freeze on payments were the result of a decision last week by Republican Sen. Jim Bunning to block passage of legislation that would have extended federal highway and transit programs, the department said. Those programs expired at midnight Sunday.
The extension of transportation programs was part of a larger package of government programs that also expired Sunday, including unemployment benefits for about 400,000 Americans.
Bunning's reaction, when pressed on the issue:
"Tough shit."
But Lamar Alexander claims that if the Democrats pass the health care bill through reconciliation, it will "end the Senate as a protector of minority rights, the place where you have to get consensus, instead of just a partisan majority."
Of course, reconciliation wasn't a problem for Senator Alexander the times he voted for it.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warns of a "severe reaction" if reconciliation is used.
Of course, he didn't have a problem when it was used 19 other times to pass bills the Republicans liked, like the Bush tax cuts.
You know what, Senator Alexander, Senator McConnell? You've had plenty of chances to have a say in this, and your reaction has always been to whine that anything less than total capitulation isn't being "bipartisan."
Well, tough shit. Pass the damn bill.
