The Honorable Mr Weiner

He's generally a pain in the ass, and he can be uber partisan, but when a guy's right, ya gotta give him his props.

Two things:
1) The Repubs have been bitching about "no Medicare plan from the Dems". The Dems' plan was passed last year - it was called The Affordable Care Act (aka: Healthcare Reform).

2) The Repub plan is a voucher plan. Repub plans are almost always voucher plans. Why? Because they need to pay off their big contributors, and a voucher is a good way to launder the money.

An Apt Nickname

Sarah "The Barracuda" Palin is turning out to be exactly the empty-souled phony I think she is.

Zero Hedge has the story.

Even if it all turns out to be more legit than it looks, this reinforces her public image as a shameless opportunist, willing to work any angle that gives her any kind of advantage, or accrues to her personal benefit.  btw: none of this makes her a whole lot different from any of her fellows; what makes her stand out (for me) is that she's so clumsy and obvious about it.

War Is A Racket

"I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country's most agile military force--the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I suspected I was part of a racket all the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service." --Maj Gen Smedley Butler

Huh? (update 2)

Starting at about 40:00, it goes into the heart of the matter regarding The Logical Extreme.

More No Surprises

OK, I get it now.

via Spy Talk:

At the same time Tiffany & Co. was extending Callista (Bisek) Gingrich a virtual interest-free loan of tens of thousands of dollars, the diamond and silverware firm was spending big bucks to influence mining policy in Congress and in agencies over which the House Agriculture Committee--where she worked--had jurisdiction, official records show. 

Filings by Tiffany’s lobbyist, Cassidy & Co., and other government records show that the firm’s spending on “mining law and mine permitting-related issues” in Congress, as well as the Forest Service, the Interior Department, and Interior’s Bureau of Land Management shot up sharply during the period when Callista Gingrich was chief clerk at the House Agriculture Committee.

Tiffany's annual lobbying expenditures rose from about $100,000 to $360,000 between 2005 and 2009, according to records assembled by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan government watchdog organization.

No Surprises

This is certainly not news.

Members of the House of Representatives considerably outperform the stock market in their personal investments, according to a new academic study.

Four university researchers examined 16,000 common stock transactions made by approximately 300 House representatives from 1985 to 2001, and found what they call "significant positive abnormal returns," with portfolios based on congressional trades beating the market by about 6 percent annually.

What's their secret? The report speculates, but does not conclude, it could have something to do with the ability members of Congress have to trade on non-public information or to vote their own pocketbooks -- or both.

It would be news if anybody in congress actually did something about it.  The story does mention that a few Representatives have been trying to move legislation that could address this problem, but they've been at it for over 4 years now and it's gone nowhere.

Something else that would be news is if the Press Poodles would actually pick it up and at least put it in front of us.  But of course, that's not gonna happen.  News media are all owned by companies who benefit from the same inside information.  The parent companies contribute heavily to the re-election campaigns of these Congress Critters, who of course will then either pass bills that benefit those contributors, or kill regulations that restrict those contributors; the companies make more money, the Congress Critters get a nice little spiff because they have information the rest of can't get; and the contributions continue to roll in.  It's a Closed-Loop System that you get to pay for, and that you're not allowed into.  Such a deal.

And here's the kicker:  this is exactly where a truly unfettered Free Market takes us.  Everything is a commodity; everything has a price; everything is for sale.

Related: from Robert Reich.

Huh? (updated)

I've been wondering why the Repubs are trying to spin a Senate vote into a trap, and why they seem so hell-bent on letting the Dems paint them as the Medicare Villains all while seeming to think of themselves as the heroes who saved entitlement programs by destroying them, because of course, the true zealot holds himself superior to reality blah blah blah.

I'm seriously getting the feeling they're stuck in a kind of ideology whirlpool.  They're so determined to "out-conservative" each other, that it takes on an inertia that leads to critical mass and then implosion/explosion.  Maybe I'm just thinking of tornadoes or floods or disasters in general because that's in the news lately, but sometimes these random connections are valid. So against the backdrop of things that happen in understandable progressions, I'm also thinking of the mindset that ideologues eventually get into when the more radical of their ideas are proposed (or even adopted as policy), and are then rejected or ignored by "the masses" when it becomes clear those ideas weren't really all that great to begin with.

Watch this installment from The Power of Nightmares, and listen for the part about what happens when Ayman al-Zawahri comes to the conclusion that it's not just the infidels who are to blame, but that his fellow Muslims have failed to keep faith (at about 9:00).  These guys never stop to consider that they might have it just a teensy bit wrong - they always assume their followers are betraying their principles; and they always end up rationalizing the absolute need to punish their followers for those failures.

The parallels with what's happening in the GOP are rife and obvious to me. And no, I'm NOT saying the Repubs are just like al-Qaeda. I'm saying that once you've thrown in with fundamentalists of any kind, you're joining a race to the logical extreme.

Interesting (updated)

From a movie back in the day when the Democrats were Ronald Reagan and Bull Connor. And all the "good Repubs" hated guys like Eisenhower.

UPDATE : Oops - the movie's from 1940. So, gee - I got that one wrong. Don't care, it's still a great line, and Hope came up with lots of those.

Lithgow Does Gingrich

Huh?

Party first; everything else if and when we bloody well feel like it.

Leading Democrats, such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, think the Ryan plan is toxic, too. Reid plans to hold a vote this week in which Republican senators will have to go on record as supporting, or opposing, the House-passed budget bill -- which includes the Ryan plan to fundamentally transform Medicare as we know it. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, seeing the trap that Reid has laid, says each GOP senator will be free to vote his or her conscience.

To begin: scheduling a vote in the US Senate, requiring each senator to declare where he/she stands on the question of Medicare - is a trap?

Next: McConnell says he won't whip his people on this vote, and that means each Repub senator is "free to vote his or her conscience".  Just this once, y'all can vote on what ya think is best for your constituents.  But remember now, this is a special case, so don't get used to it.

Why is it OK for McConnell to say that shit out loud?
Why does it seem like I'm the only one jumpin' up and down yellin' WHAT THE FUCK!?!?