John McCain thinks we should be magnanimous with the Teaparty

I’m not crazy abut McCain, but I don’t hold the man in contempt like I do his Teaparty cohorts. His former campaign manager, Steve Irwin Schmidt who you often see on MSNBC, is about the best GOP contributor on any cable news outlet in my opinion. It’s good to have a sane Senator like McCain and it’s great to hear from an honest GOP strategist like Schmidt. That being said, what reason is there to be magnanimous to people who ran on disinformation and racist hatred, who campaigned on shutting down the government, then shut down the government and found it was terribly unpopular, and who are now doing their level best to blame the shutdown on Democrats while calling us traitors and terrorists along the way?

Obama hates Catholic children!

Group photo of right-wingnuttosphere

Group photo of right-wingnuttosphere

President Obama unveiled his latest attack on religion, children, and apple pie this morning. And he had the nerve to do it in Belfast, Ireland! But you have to read between the lines, or better yet not read it at all. Obama said in part, “If towns remain divided—if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs—if we can’t see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation.” Simply run that through the zombie lie translator to learn what it really means: [Read more…]

Romneycare turns six in the Bay State

It’s true that politicians will twist themselves into supple shapes to appeal to voters. But Romney’s contortions so far have already been unprecedented. In classic baby-eating conservative form, Romney’s best acrobatics may still be ahead, because one of the the biggest challenge he faces concerns Romney’s most effective and humane work as a political animal: the Massachusetts Healthcare Reform package which turned six years-old today. This is only a problem because today’s religious-right dominated conservative movement cannot abide decency and humanity married to good government in any way, shape, or form, and especially when The Enemy might get credit for saving thousands of US lives and sparing thousands more endless misery. [Read more…]

Let’s put the Koch Brothers’ evil in perspective

I don’t actually believe the Koch Brothers are the anti-Christ. It’s just that they’re so, so fucking evil. In every way evil can be measured. Right now those two diseased humans are one the biggest forces trying to end any hope of affordable insurance for all Americans. Here’s just one tiny example of the needless suffering these assholes hope to make more widespread and more universal for millions of us: [Read more…]

GOP debate clownary: Bachmann-Perry overdrive

Clownary may not be the best word, I’m open to suggestions for the phenomenon where a candidate makes utterly false statements dripping with self-confidence for the error and oozing contempt for the facts. But whatever the term, last night’s GOP debate was disappointing. There were plenty of losing statements, few zingers, and the biggest loser of all had to be CBS news, which could not manage a live stream feed and cut off every decent answer with a timer buzzing or need to go to a 5 minute commercial break. CBS even managed to accidentally send Michelle Bachmann’s campaign an internal email about how they would ‘limit her” in the debate. Epic Fail. [Read more…]

The lesson of my medical bills: Why I’m a progressive

Last month I got hurt bad enough to spend several days in the hospital, during which time I got a bunch of expensive treatment and tests. The bills have started rolling in now and one of the larger ones had two numbers on it: the $13,000 and change I would have owed vs the roughly $5,000 the hospital accepted as payment in full. The latter represents what my insurance company had pre-negotiated with medical venders. There’s a lesson here, a big one, because it involves saving individual people thousands of dollars, and saving taxpayers billions and billions. [Read more…]