Headlines - Friday October 1

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Health Care by Jesus ...

You know this is gonna work out so well:

"Who is this Barack Obama who mocks the armies of the living God?" demanded James Lansberry, Christian crusader against government-regulated health care, last summer in the heat of the battle over reform.

Since the health-care reform bill passed last month, Lansberry has become a hot commodity on the conservative talk-radio circuit where he sings the praises of health-care-sharing ministries (HCSMs), Christian nonprofit organizations through which members agree to cover each others? health-care costs. As president of the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries, Lansberry, and his team of lobbyists, had persuaded Senate lawmakers to exempt alliance members from the individual mandate. That exemption, Lansberry said, made those ministries "an island of freedom amidst this terrible piece of reform legislation" and "the last pro-life option for Christians of faith." [my em]

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As Digby says:

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Did any of you know about this exemption? I missed it. And it's very, very interesting because it's a loophole that will undoubtedly be very lucrative for the hucksters.

All I ask is when these peoples' health care costs become socialized. You know, if it's not already, it will turn into an outrageous, ponzi-like scam. You know we're gonna have to bail the lemmings gullible fools victims out.

 

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This is how we define "extreme"" A partial list of Republican candidates running for US Congress in this year's mid-term elections shows that at least 78 of them have professed to oppose abortion in all cases, including where rape or incest are involved. ... The Republican National Coalition For Life, a political action committee formed by anti-feminist activist Phyllis Schlafly, sends out questionnaires every election season to Republican candidates asking them to lay out their positions on abortion. ... A list of responses from this year's candidates indicate that 78 Senate and House candidates answered that they are "pro-life without discrimination," meaning they don't agree with any exceptions to a ban on abortion."

 

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Headline of the Day

For Germany, WWI finally ends on Sunday

How nice for them!

For the rest of us, the horror unleashed by Gavrilo Princip's pistol shots on 28 June 1914 which led in an almost perfectly straight line of westerners' fuckups to today's Middle East situation continues.

 

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Reagan never would have apologized for this:

"U.S. government medical researchers intentionally infected hundreds of people in Guatemala, including institutionalized mental patients, with gonorrhea and syphilis without their knowledge or permission more than 60 years ago."

This ghastly project was recently discovered by a professor of women's studies at Wellesley College in the course of her research on the Tuskegee experiment."

Hillary Clinton and Kathleen Sebelius will offer public apologies today for the role of the U.S. Public Health Service in the Guatemala project."

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Arianna's little people

Even though the Huffington Post can hire Howard Fineman, they can't pay Mayhill Fowler, the woman who wrote the "cling to your guns" story. The Huffington side of the story is that Fowler was a freelancer who pitched a couple of stories that they didn't bite on, just like many other freelancers.

Perhaps Huffington is right in this instance. Still, it's more than a little distasteful that she's completely unwilling to play pay bloggers at the same time that she's happy to shell out the kind of salary that a hack like Fineman demands. But maybe I'm just letting my disgust for Arianna Huffington and her Hollywood tabloid get in the way. I've never understood the appeal of her or her site, and the fact that it gets so much traffic looks like yet another indicator of national stupidity.

For example, the banner there at the moment is "Feds Sue Fox News". If you bother to read the story under the huge red headline, the substance is that one reporter has filed a discrimination claim that the EEOC ("the Feds") picked up. The headline and play of that piece is essentially a lie, yet 4,500 people have commented on it.

As far as I can tell, the Huffington Post is the Drudge Report for liberals, with a side helping of Star or the National Inquirer for celebutard gossip. Yeah, they pay a few reporters who got White House press credentials, but so does Fox News. If they're the future of media, which I doubt anyone under 50 who isn't bamboozled by Arianna Huffington believes, we're in big trouble.

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Abandoning all pretense "News Corp., the parent company of Fox News, contributed $1 million this summer to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the business lobby that has been running an aggressive campaign in support of the Republican effort to retake Congress, a source close to the company told POLITICO. ... It was the second $1 million contribution the company has made this election cycle to a GOP-aligned group. In late June it gave that amount to the Republican Governors Association."

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The government wants to add two new rules to offshore oil drilling. One says that offshore oil rigs need to have a spill contingency plan and practice it, and the other is about bore hole cement, maintenance and blowout protectors. Here's the response from industry shills:

"We cannot have an approval process that creates unpredictable delays that could place at risk the flow of domestic energy in our country," [...]

"While the ongoing important investigations into the Gulf accident are necessary and may lead to new safety measures, requiring industry to navigate a tangled web of new regulations will only lead to increased uncertainty for businesses and consumers and less investment in America's vast resources in the Gulf"[...]

Imagine if an airline said something like that after, say, the new crew rest rules that came about after last year's Colgan Air crash in Buffalo.

I think these fuckers need some more regulating.

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Big hands, cold heart.

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The White House explains Republican tax policy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma5np8PcaY8&feature=player_embedded

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Cool fossil evolution news of the week. "The fossil of a giant penguin that lived 36 million years ago has been discovered in Peru. Scientists say the find shows that key features of the plumage were present quite early on in penguin evolution. The team writes in Science journal that the penguin's feathers were brown and grey, distinct from the black "tuxedo" look of modern penguins. It was nearly twice the size of an Emperor Penguin, the largest living species. The bird, named Inkayacu paracasensis, lived during the late Eocene period. It had a long, straight beak, much longer than that of its modern relatives."

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Just read this. Seriously, what purpose does the Senate serve? Name one constructive thing that they do. I dare you.

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The miracle of the Bush economy

More people signed up for Medicaid last year than at any time since the program's inception, as the recession wiped out jobs and workplace health coverage.

But the GOP wants to kill the program.

In related news…

The industries giving the most to Boehner: insurance companies, drug manufacturers and Wall Street firms, all of which now face new regulations adopted by the Democratic-controlled Congress. The political action committees and employees of insurance firms, for instance, donated nearly $426,000 to Boehner's campaign committees through June 30, according to the center's tally, compared with $118,000 in insurance industry donations to Pelosi's fundraising accounts. Don Seymour, a Boehner spokesman, said contributors know that Boehner "understands the best way to help create new jobs is to cut spending, stop all the tax hikes and end some of the uncertainty facing job creators."

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New license plate slogan, "Fuck that Utah guy"

Utah Congressman To Be In Charge of D.C., Put It Back Into Maryland

The Washington City Paper's new "The Sexist" blogger, Dave Weigel, has a profile out on Jason Chaffetz, the "proto-Tea Party" freshman Republican Congressman from Utah who is poised to head the Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. That's actually sort of funny, because this guy doesn't like DC! For example, part of his platform when he ran for office in 2008 was to work to keep the District from getting a vote in Congress. Oh, and he wants to stick DC into Maryland and overturn the legalization of gay marriage.

For people who don't think a national legislature ought to be mucking around in the nitty-gritty of local government, Chaffetz actually has a fix. It just that his solution doesn't happen to lie along the D.C. statehood/legal autonomy: In Chaffetz's idea, most of what we now call Washington, D.C., could become Washington, Maryland.

Don't feel so special now, do you?

Opponents of D.C.'s gay marriage law might be quickest on the trigger. The National Organization for Marriage tried, and failed, to get the D.C. Council to kill the bill. Next, NOM failed in a lawsuit to force a referendum. Chaffetz introduced legislation to do that, but it died in the House.

DC should have self-determination as long as "self" is defined as "random Mormon Republican Congressman from Utah."

So what was Chaffetz's dumb experience that turned him from a cosmetic company employee into a Republican? As usual, he was touched by the Reagan.

Chaffetz's first job, which he held for a decade, was as a spokesman for a beauty company called Nu Skin. He underwent a political conversion there. When the company hired former President Ronald Reagan as a motivational speaker, Chaffetz was assigned to work with Reagan while he pep-talked Nu Skin employees. Reagan's politics rubbed off on Chaffetz. Seeing Reagan off at the airport, he got an autograph and a pair of his new hero's cuff links. He has called it the experience that made him a conservative.

Weirdo. [Washington City Paper]

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Jesus' General: Bullying as Peer Pressure

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The (tax exempt) American Family Association says that the sexual orientation anti-discrimination laws passed five years ago by Indianapolis were a terrible thing. Because that means being forced to sell rainbow cupcakes.

Controversy arose this week after the owners of the bakery cited moral objections to a special-order request for rainbow-decorated cookies for next week's "National Coming Out Day" observance at a nearby university campus. Stockton told the caller he did not feel comfortable in supporting homosexual values, especially because it would not set a good example for his two daughters. Micah Clark of the American Family Association of Indiana says there are reports the city might evict Stockton, citing a local "anti-discrimination" statute. "Indianapolis passed a sexual-orientation city ordinance five years ago," Clark explains. "...We warned [at that time] that this type of thing would happen if they passed an ordinance elevating a sexual behavior to the same moral equivalent of race or skin color."

The AFA is asking its members to rush to the shop and buy its products.

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The Senate tackles big issues

While I agree with the sentiment, this just seems like something the Senate shouldn't be dealing with right now.

WASHINGTON – Legislation to turn down the volume on those loud TV commercials that send couch potatoes diving for their remote controls looks like it'll soon become law.

The Senate unanimously passed a bill late Wednesday to require television stations and cable companies to keep commercials at the same volume as the programs they interrupt.

By the way, if the Republicans control Congress after the election, expect this sort of thing to be the only kind of legislation that passes. Cellphones for Neighborhood Watch, midnight basketball, school uniforms. Big ideas.

Anyway, good. No more loud commercials.

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Mmm. Someone get me a giant bucket of delicious, delicious Gulf seafood!

The researchers from Oregon State University say that a device taking samples just off the shore of Louisiana's Grande Isle registered a 40-fold increase in PAHs between May and June.

What's worse is that the sampling device was specifically designed to measure the fraction of PAHs in the environment that could make their way through a biological membrane.

So there's likely more than a 40-fold increase. They simply can't measure it beyond that level.

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Mario Piperni: Carl Paladino - Bad Guy

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Bernie Sanders in The Nation: Hands Off Social Security 

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Who knew Saxby Chambliss was capable of mustering a little class when he has to? Saxby "Max Cleland is a terrorist sympathizer" Chambliss has fired the staffer who left the "all faggots must die" comment on the Joe. My. God. blog from a computer in Chambliss' Atlanta office. He also picked up the phone to personally apologize. "I have called Mr. Jervis, the blog's author, and apologized to him personally, and I am sorry for the hurt this incident has caused," he said. "Regardless of one's position on issues and policies, such comments are simply unacceptable, are not befitting those who work in the U.S. Senate, and I will not tolerate them from my staff."

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Angle Brags About Her Bill To Repeal ALL Insurance Coverage Mandates