Monday, September 21, 2009

Lefties

"All political violence is committed by the left in this country,"
said Ann Coulter, continuing her livelihood of making preposterous proclamations designed to inflame any reasonable person enough to produce a counter attack. Given a sufficiently absurd, preposterous or outrageous premise, that becomes so difficult that most of us are reduced to tears and she to witch-like cackles.

Of course the fulcrum of that statement, as it so often is, is the definition of "Left." In this case Left would have to include abortion doctor shooters and bombers, schizophrenics trying to impress Jody Foster, people like Byron De La Beckwith and of course how can we forget those Islamic "Liberals" who blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? If John Wilkes Booth can be a liberal, than there are only three conclusions we can make about Ann Coulter: Insane, dishonest or both.

When something like insisting that there is little danger to a president surrounded by angry opponents equipped with rifles and telescopic sights can inspire even Geraldo Rivera to say she's insane, logic again allows only two conclusions, Rivera is a liberal and ipso facto potentially violent, or he's right and she's insane.

Coulter has a long history of calling the police and claiming people are stalking her. She claims she's more likely to be shot than the President although one wonders about her reaction to being surrounded by armed men carrying signs calling for her assassination. She said nothing however, about being more likely to be fed rat poison than the Federal Judges she deemed worthy of such treatment. I wonder if she has a food taster - or if she eats what humans eat.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

With some whores, at least you get sex

From others you get beat up and robbed blind by the pimp and you thank them for it all the way to the emergency room.

You remember Betsy McCaughey, the blond gun for hire who went on the Daily show with a huge bound volume purporting to be HR3200, the proposed health care reform bill. She's the one who thought she was smart enough to shut Jon Stewart up by referring to a mysterious clause on page 418 and was stupid enough not to realize that Stewart had read it and had a copy right there.

She all but slunk out of the studio to a chorus of jeers and allegations that she had received a good deal of money from Cantel Medical Corporation for lying about older people needing to face a "death panel" soon surfaced. She resigned her board of directors position within hours of her humiliation on the Daily Show. ABC News credited McCaughey with launching this lie about death panels on the Fred Thompson radio last July and Stewart is not Thompson. He can, and bothers to read and has more than enough wit to skewer a media whore likeMcCaughey.

I still hear a lot of echoes from the brainless who pick their opinions up from the pavement with a shovel like the guys who used to follow horses, of her earlier article "Deadly Doctors" in the New York Post. It lies about Ezekiel Emmanuel, Rahm Emmanuels's brother the doctor, claiming he wants physicians to forget the Hippocratic oath and focus on “social justice” rather than healing patients. That's code for Communism of course and of course it's another lie and another dollar for Betsy.

She has a long history of lying about health care. Back in 1994 she wrote an article for The New Republic that did a lot to kill the Clinton health care reform effort and which was later retracted by the magazine as being full of lies. The The Atlantic magazine ran a story further debunking her statements. Crooks and Liars yesterday reported that Rolling Stone will soon report her torpedoing of the Clinton plan was bought and paid for by Philip Morris, the Tobacco corporation along with Republican think tanks and the right wing medial.

Of course the people who need to hear this don't hear anything but Beck and the Fat man and like most victories over ignorance and falsehood, it's Pyrrhic, still it makes good reading while you wait for the charity doctors to fly in to treat your pancreatic cancer.

Shame

Palm Beach County, unlike counties in some other places, exhibits a huge disparity amongst residents and the bottom of the barrel is more visible and more in contrast with the upper strata. Stark poverty exists, sometimes within a short walk from breathtaking wealth. The Byzantine palaces of Boca Raton, the Hilton sized seaside abode of Rush Limbaugh can remind the viewer of Monopoly houses dumped at random on the board. Some residents have the chauffeur drive the house keeper to the drug store to pick up their drugs under assumed names, others can't afford medicine without which they have a short time left to live.

Like many third world countries where the mega-rich watch medical relief teams treat the poor from their comfortable adn beautiful estates, Palm Beach County will soon host Remote Area Medical caregivers to treat an estimated treat 4,000 to 5,000 people who don't have medical insurance. According to the Palm Beach Post, RAM's Stan Brock
"will travel to South Florida in a World War II era C-47 cargo plane. It will contain at least 40 dental chairs and the equipment necessary for several dozen Florida-licensed ophthalmologists, optometrists and opticians to examine hundreds of patients and make glasses on the spot. "
Things like dental extractions, fillings,
prostate tests mammograms, pediatric exams and H1N1 flu shots and other essential things not available in Emergency Rooms will offered for free, no questions asked. Of course it's embarrassing, or should be, to patriots fond of calling any criticism or negative assessment of our proud country to be so easily compared to Haiti or Honduras. It's also far from being enough to occasionally offer relief from pain and disease to the peasants on an occasional basis, but as long as we're talking about shame, isn't it time to heap some of it on those who are too afraid that the most profitable corporations on Earth might have to operate with profit margins of less than 35% unless we maintain a sick and suffering underclass? What about politicians that can look at the will of three quarters of the population and dismiss it in favor of the corporations that pump billions into their bank accounts?

I'm embarrassed for my country when I see that this is the best we can do and more so when I listen to the excuses: that complete government withdrawal will fix it without leaving millions and millions to die, that a government administered guarantee of insurance coverage will lead to Socialism or Communism aren't more credible fears than the bogus Death Panels when we already have real ones at Cigna and Fortis and Humana. Will some illegal be able to scam the system? Sure, people scam any system, some people buy booze with food stamps, but that doesn't argue that we let a million children starve. The fear that someone will get something for free when we have to pay for it seems all out of proportion to the risk and the risk can be controlled.

No, there is no guaranteed right to health care in the constitution, nor is there to police protection, free public education, public libraries, national parks or municipal fire departments. Certainly no right to Social Security, unemployment or disability insurance. None of those things turned us into Communists, none of them destroyed capitalism, made us less competitive in the world market, stifled entrepreneurship or made any of the hackneyed warnings into a reality. All of them are tokens of civilization and have made us a better country. Single payer health insurance won't do those things either. If we had had it a few decades ago, you might still be driving a Chevy or Chrysler instead of something from the Pacific rim where workers have government health insurance.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Sometimes an opinion is just a lie

It's going to get harder for Fox News to hide behind the giggles, the puffed up pretense to being offended and accusations of insanity if more of the other networks begin to fight back against Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes's lie machine. Brad Blog covers CNN’s Rick Sanchez's, slapdown of Fox. Sanchez, who seems of late to be more willing to speak up against injustice went after Fox's Washington Post ad claiming they were the only network to cover the 9/12 "tea party" in Washington.

It's good to see someone get mad at the ever increasing torrent of lies, distortions and false claims emanating from Fox. It's going, as I said, to get harder to call the few vocal opponents like Olbermann and even Jon Stewart crazy or inconsequential if CNN is willing to run ads as they did yesterday evening, accusing Fox of "Distorting Not Reporting."

The people who send me wingnut e-mails about things that are designed to outrage the ignorant, often preface them with "why isn't the MSM covering this?" although usually, they are and have been. Fox's WaPo ad seems to have been the "enough is enough" trigger and even ABC declared it “demonstrably false.” The claim that no other networks were there was deemed by the Post to be an expression of an opinion not a lie, which of course doesn't help their credibility, regardless of what they claim the meaning of the word "is" is. Sanchez, concluding his diatribe said this:
“Let me address the Fox News Network now, perhaps the most current way that I can — by quoting somebody who recently used a very pithy phrase. Two words, that’s all I need. ‘You lie.’”




Lets hope it becomes a movement. Let's hope the Glennbeckery, the outrageous liberties taken with the news have finally pushed the timid competition into speaking out for the truth - they way they're supposed to.

Friday, September 18, 2009

He lied -- no he didn't

As though on cue, the South Carolina courts have upheld a $10 million dollar award to Jerome Mitchell who purchased health insurance from Fortis in 2001 when he was 18. A year later, when trying to donate blood, he was told he had HIV. Fortis decided he had lied on the application where it asked if he'd been diagnosed with immune deficiency and rescinded his policy.

As we know, although some won't admit it, Insurance companies pay bonuses to their death panels who reject claims and rescind policies, but I'm sure whatever they paid was a drop in the bucket in comparison. The court didn't mince words in upholding Mitchell's claim and upheld $10 million in punitive damages plus the amount he had spent on staying alive.
"We find ample support in the record that Fortis' conduct was reprehensible ... Fortis demonstrated an indifference to Mitchell's life and a reckless disregard to his health and safety"
and Mitchell was fortunate enough to be young enough to survive long enough to be vindicated. His life expectancy without very expensive treatment would have been 4 years, according to his suit. Older patients often die before they can get their day in court or before the inevitable appeals process winds down. The death panels love it when that happens. I think it happens rather frequently.

Do we need a public option to tame this kind of swashbuckling? Not necessarily, but we need something and we needed it a long time ago. Remember that that ten million isn't going to come out of the executive salaries, the multi-million dollar non-executive board members' salaries or anyplace but the hides of the insured.

A CEPHALOPOD MYTHIC MOMENT

A mighty discussion we had earlier this week on mythy matters posted by our mighty Bloggingdino: Dinos and Darwinists, a worthy read.

In the interest of cultural exchange between species, your intrepid Octopus wishes to introduce you to the cephalopod pantheon. You didn’t believe me, did you! Well, here they are:

The Great and Mighty Igjarjuk:

The Servant and Adversary Triton:
Now, for some holy words from the Cephalopod Scriptures:
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Escargot.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Millions, billions, trillions. . .

I'm pretty new to Twitter, but the place sounds like an aviary today with all the giggling about Sean Hannity's statement that Acorn, the subject of much hilarity this week, is slated to receive eight and a half TRILLION dollars from the government. I'm not sure that Sean is aware that the Census bureau dropped ACORN a week ago as Fox reported. Even so - $8,500,000,000,000.00? Sean, thousands, millions billions trillions -- there's a difference!

So I'm wondering if maybe the next time I call him Insanity Hannity y'all won't say I'm over the top? I mean, I'm just sayin'.

It's about policy

About one out of three New Jersy "conservatives" seem to think that Barack Obama is the anti-Christ, says TPM. About half of those think he has the number 666 on his scalp. To me, the idea that that many people can assert that the concept itself is rational is shocking enough, but of course, as Michael Steele assures us, it's certainly not a racial thing. That the same third believes he wasn't born in the US couldn't be other than a valid suspicion independent of his complexion either. Oh no, it's not about his color, it's about his policies and one certainly notices a lot of policy discussion amongst the pistol packing, Kalashnikov carrying crowd carrying signs calling for the murder of his children. It was about his policies quite a bit before anyone know what those policies might be.

"I think people who are guilty of that kind of personal attack against Obama have been influenced to a major degree by a belief that he should not be president because he happens to be African American"
said former President Jimmy Carter yesterday. That's a massive understatement in my opinion.
"When a radical fringe element of demonstrators and others begin to attack the president of the United States as an animal or as a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler or when they wave signs in the air that said we should have buried Obama with Kennedy, those kinds of things are beyond the bounds,"
Indeed they were out of bounds some time ago and the early defensiveness of his attackers about "the race card" long before accusations of racism began to emerge suggests an awareness. At this point, I don't think any doubt remains as I don't think there has been such an irrational series of accusations and threats of violence since the Salem witch trials. Posters of Obama as an African warlord or as a Nazi in "teaparty" posters reek of racism.

It's inevitable that someone will comment that there are deranged Democrats and racist Democrats and stupid Democrats, fallacious defense though it might be. I'd like to ask just how many people showed up in protest of Bush's illegal actions carrying weapons and carrying signs demanding the death of the president, his wife and "stupid children."

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Here come the Judge!

Orly Taitz - the name seems designed for mockery, but anyone so inclined hardly needs such a prop. Yes, she's the one who is still filing lawsuits, using our clogged-up courts as a soapbox to give the voices in her head an audience: the voices that say Barack Obama was born In Kenya on a variety of dates both before and after it became a Republic and is ineligible to be president. So far it hasn't been working out well. That may change.

She's been serving as council for US Army Captain Connie Rhodes who volunteered for service in Afghanistan so he and Taitz could file suit for the right to refuse the orders he requested to be given. Other than the fake birth certificate Judge Clay Land of the US District Court in Columbus, Georgia says is inadmissible since she paid to have it made up (the fact that it's dated incorrectly and got the name of the country wrong doesn't help its credibility) she has presented nothing but a series of diatribes and no evidence whatever that could refute the State of Hawaii's certification that Obama was born in Honolulu.

It's not good to try fooling the judge. Clay threw it, and her apparently, out of court saying she:
“has presented no credible evidence and has made no reliable factual allegations to support her unsubstantiated, conclusory allegations and conjecture that President Obama is ineligible to serve as president of the United States. Instead, she uses her complaint as a platform for spouting political rhetoric, such as her claims that the president is ‘an illegal usurper, an unlawful pretender, an unqualified impostor."
WTVM-TV in Columbus reported, that the judge also stated that Orly Taitz,
“will be subject to counsel sanctions for bringing any future actions in his court which are similarly frivolous.”
Think you can slow down a wingnut that easy? Sorry, the Taitz has inflicted another suit in the US district court in Santa Ana, CA using another, differently dated, bogus certificate she also claims to have obtained by bribery in Kenya and other servicemen who claim they won't go because Obama isn't really president.

Will Judge David O. Carter give her case the same heave ho? Don't be too sure. Judge Carter, a former U.S. Marine, repeated several times that this case is very serious and must be resolved quickly so that the troops know their Commander in Chief is eligible to hold that position and issue lawful orders to our military "in this time of war." He's already refused the Obama team's request for dismissal. The plan, according to Jeff Schwilk, founder, San Diego Minutemen who somehow seems to have a voice in this, is to force Obama to reveal his true birth certificate - right, the one he revealed a long time ago and which was attested to by the governor of Hawaii and their director of vital records.
"Taitz did a great job, winning some huge victories today, she was fearless!”
said Schwilk, to the SonoranNews.com I'm sure she was. A sane person would have been terrified.

Am I mocking the innocent here? I'll leave it to you, but we can be sure that we will be hearing from people who condemn this disrespect for fraudulent, seditious cases and believe every word of these charges. Oh, those Liberals! All they have is mockery!

Rush's tale

A Tale of Two Cities, The Miller's Tale, a tale told by an idiot - it doesn't matter in the great game of Pin the Tale on Obama. Any tale will do. Your host today is Rush Limbaugh and he's here to tell us that a tale of someone getting beat up on a school bus can be pinned on US President Barak Obama. What? You want a reason? Well two black kids beat up on a white kid for some undetermined reason and because nature abhors a reason vacuum, the bell rings and we pin the tale on Obama!

That means of course that this incident, because there doesn't seem to be evidence of it being race-related, instantly goes on to round two where it becomes the model for the future Where Barak Obama individually directs the actions of all high school students ( remember the speech?)

"In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering,"

said Rush yesterday. In other words, the fact of a biracial president guarantees that the "darkies" will no longer frolic gaily about the plantation as God and the GOP intends and as Rush proves, have already formed an American Mau Mau movement to invade the inner sanctum of the white race, rape our women and drive the streets of Palm Beach in Escalades with that terrible racist music blaring while Rush is trying to sleep.

That's right - the white kids get beat up - all of them and all of the black kids will cheer and because this has never, ever happened before when the White House was really white, it's Obama's fault, QED.

Tune in tomorrow when Rush will explain to us that all the mockery he gets from those miserable liberals proves that everything he says is correct.