"You can tell that this Santorum surge has Mitt Romney a little rattled. He was at the CPAC Convention today, and he showed up in a sweater vest with a fetus in a jar." –Bill Maher
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— and off to work she went, firing off a year's worth of sarcastic one-liners at "Professor Obama."
"This government isn't too big to fail; it's too big to succeed."
"Hope and change? Yeah, you gotta hope things change."
"After a year or two [in 'Obama's Washington,' lawmakers] decide it's not really a cesspool. More like a hot tub."
"The last thing you need is a community organizer reorganizing the deck chairs [on the Titanic] while singing, 'Let's Stay Together.' "
"So help me God," she said, a world in which Americans are overtaxed "is not a future we'll ever accept."
"He promised to transform America, and that's one promise he's kept; he transformed a shining city on a hill into a sinking ship."
As always, this idiot has everything backwards:
Clinton gave us 24M new jobs, tripled the stock market and never sent a soldier into battle who didn't come home.
Then Der Monkey Fuhrer promised to "turn America into a new direction," which he certainly did.
What Bush gave to Obama was hardly "a shining city on a hill."
Guess what, Piglips, the unemplyment rate continues to fall.
By November, things will be much better than they are now.
Suck on that.
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I'm really grateful that the bishops decided to make a stand on their right to religious liberty because until they did that I did not know there was controversy and discussion going on all over the country on the rights of patients and the mergers of Catholic hospitals with other hospital and health care businesses:
What began in Sierra Vista, a town about 80 miles southeast of Tucson, as a quiet merger between the Sierra Vista Regional Health Center and the Catholic Carondelet Health Network has turned into a religious and ethical standoff over patients' rights.
SEVERSON: What the merger means is that Sierra Vista, a rural, secular hospital, must now abide by the Catholic ethical and religious directives which prohibit certain procedures. So physicians can no longer do abortions, even when the mother's life is in danger, and they can no longer perform sterilizations or provide contraception.
In Washington. In Illinois. In Kentucky.
Interesting that a live controversy over mergers between Catholic health care companies and secular health care companies gets absolutely no attention, while a rule change on birth control that offends and enrages church leaders causes a "firestorm". This actual health care controversy is going on right under our noses, has the potential to affect millions of people, and yet all we hear are outraged church leaders and birth control.
This piece out of Seattle asks that we "re-examine the role of faith in health care delivery", given that:
consolidations and mergers have resulted in a situation in which nearly 18 percent of all hospitals and 20 percent of all hospital beds in health systems nationwide are owned or controlled by the Catholic Church. In some isolated areas, the only hospitals available are Catholic-run. Non-Catholics are increasingly finding themselves in situations in which the only health care available is subject to care restrictions dictated by the Catholic hierarchy.
Now that the bishops started this fight, I'm sure they'll be happy to include patients and the broader public in a much bigger and more inclusive discussion that includes the rights of patients. Let's re-examine.
Once it was just rotting bodies and the scourge of cholera in the immediate aftermath of battle. Now it's toxic chemicals and radioactivity that will sicken and kill for generations.
Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:
We are now out of Iraq, at least sort of. So now everyone can start putting their bad memories of the American occupation behind them, right? Of course, Americans forgot this yesterday, after all Real Housewives of Lubbock is on. But the Iraqis have a lot of reminders. Among them - massive and unmitigated pollution.
"Open-air burn pits have operated widely at military sites in Iraq and Afghanistan," the Department of Veterans Affairs notes on its website. On hundreds of camps and bases across the two countries, the U.S. military and its contractors incinerated toxic waste, including unexploded ordnance, plastics and Styrofoam, asbestos, formaldehyde, arsenic, pesticides and neurotoxins, medical waste (even amputated limbs), heavy metals and what the military refers to as "radioactive commodities." The burns have released mutagens and carcinogens, including uranium and other isotopes, volatile organic compounds, hexachlorobenzene, and, that old favorite, dioxin (aka Agent Orange).The military pooh-poohs the problem, despite a 2009 Pentagon document noting "an estimated 11 million pounds [5,000 tonnes] of hazardous waste" produced by American troops, the Times of London reported. In any case, it says, the waste isn't all that toxic, and there is no hard evidence troops were harmed. Of course, one reason for that lack of evidence, reports the Institute of Medicine (which found 53 toxins in the air above the Balad air base alone), is that the Pentagon won't or can't document what it burned and buried, or where it did so.
The little media attention that has been paid to this massive pollution has dimly illuminated its potential impact on U.S. troops. Left in mephitic darkness are the contractors, often impoverished South Asians, who did the dirty work at the bases, as well as Iraqi civilians who live and farm nearby. The Times of London reported that "open acid canisters sit within easy reach of children, and discarded batteries lie close to irrigated farmland," causing people to sicken and rats to die "next to soiled containers."
The environmental issue is a hearts-and-minds thing. When Iraqis babies are dying of cancer, they will remember why this is happening. I realize that environmental considerations are never going to be a top priority during wartime, proper mitigation of pollution is a very important issue, both for the ecosystem and for the people who live in it.
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The White House threatened to veto House Republicans' transportation package if it passes, because of its inclusion of the Keystone XL pipeline and the inadequacy of its funding for roads and bridges. The Senate is also debating a transportation bill that has President Obama's support.
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Oh good, the Family Values club of GOP politicians can finally add another tally mark to the heterosexual column on their crowded "hookers 'n coke scandal" scorecard! It's a lonely column, that one. What a marvelous lede Cincinnati.com has: "Bible toting Clermont County politician Archie Wilson surfaced from drug treatment Tuesday to answer charges he traded drugs for sex at a bed bug infested motel." Sexy! READ MORE »
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Now that we're done talking about the sacred baby-making bodies of women and how wrong it is to want to help teenagers not ruin their lives and go on MTV to share the ruination with millions, Thinking America has moved on to the military, with the help of useless lump of matter Rick Santorum, to discuss how ridiculous it is that women want to work, let alone on the front lines, let alone in planes bigger than "small planes," they being the only size of plane fit for the delicate flowers that make up half our population, according to Ricky. Now the insane Liz Trotta has gone on Fox News to defend freaks like Santorum, saying that women should "expect" to get raped or assaulted in the military because, well, "these people are in close contact." READ MORE »
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