Salon: Get the smelling salts...A Republican voted for the House Dems health bill!
Free Thought Manifesto: One Nation, Under Illusion
The Political Carnival: The lying, self-absorbed little death panel-monger is at it again
Scott Horton: More on the Verdict in Milan
James Fallows: Unemployment and airplane crashes
Digital Life: Better the broken Windows than life with the Mac monks
This is sickening. Rep. John Shadegg uses baby Maddie, a 7-month-old daughter of his Chief of Staff to the floor as a prop during the health-care debate in the House earlier today.
The Political Carnival writes:
I wanted to "spit up", and wished Maddy had.
Yes, John Shadegg actually used an innocent infant as a prop, spoke baby talk, and provided us with nothing more than what was most likely in Maddy's diaper at the time. And for this, he got applause.
The collective (im)maturity of the Rushpublic side of the aisle doesn't come close to measuring up to Maddy's level of sophistication. How utterly humiliating.
Henry Waxman made a joke and said: “That was a remarkable child,” “and a great ventriloquist.”
How could a father let his child be used as a prop like that? What would have happened if he hurt her in any way? The entire Republican Party is made up of fools, and I mean the staffers as well. And then there are the people who applauded this stunt ...
By the way, John Shadegg does have a somewhat checkered past, if you remember...
Bill Day at United Feature Syndicate, h/t The Political Carnival.
Open thread below...
UPDATE:
Yanks vs Phillies in the World Series! I'm stoked.
The Political Carnival: Tea partiers turn on GOP leadership
Brilliant at Breakfast: So presumably you can have blood pressure of 110/70 and low cholesterol, but if your BMI is over 25, you too, can be denied health insurance
AverageBro: Obama navel-gazing reaches another low
Submitted to a Candid World: Why did Arafat receive a Nobel Prize, and not Reagan?
pandagon: The point, you have missed it
Compare and Contrast. Who's the Five Star?
Argh, there's so much wrong with this clip that it's all I can do to keep typing and not smacking my head against the desktop. First of all, they ask on Krugman to discuss his NY Times column talking about how GOP obstructionism has reached cartoonish levels and they decide to frame the segment on whether Obama lost his "MOJO"? Seriously? A major news organization ignores the absurdity of the GOP overarching need to find things with which to smear Obama and instead frames the issue for the President of the United States as an Austin Powers plot? And no one but a hyper-partisan conservative "party before country" cheerleader thinks that the IOC selecting Rio for the 2016 games has something to do with a failing on any kind on the part of Obama. Cheers to Anderson Cooper for validating what Krugman so aptly described as "bratty 13 year old" behavior and using a Nobel Laureate to do it. Way to keep on top of the issues of the day, Anderson.
And there's that issue of media's bizarre notion of balance again. Sweet Jesus, why on earth would anyone need Mary Matalin's opinion on Obama's "mojo"? The woman has spent years advising Dick Cheney, fer cryin' out loud, what exactly is her expertise in mojo? As would be expected, Matalin never answers anything directly, resorting to the familiar GOP projection and mean-spritied insinuations, saying she's never drunk the kool-aid on the messiah-like qualities of Obama.
Watch as Krugman acknowledges that Obama hasn't done everything perfectly and that there's still far to go, but that the level of discourse from the right prevents any actual adult-level dialog. And Matalin proves him right by devolving into fingerpointing and bringing in one non sequitur after another. Of course, everything that Obama has been hit with has an equivalence in Matalin's mind to that poor, misunderestimated George W. Bush. If you believe Matalin, the Democrats did nothing but screamed "Liar!" and "Loser" to Bush. Constantly. Hmmm....funny that, I don't remember it that way, but maybe that's because I'm part of the reality-based community.
But hey, how much honest analysis can you get from someone who openly admits she reveres the Fat Bastard himself, Rush Limbaugh? For that alone, she should be laughed off camera.
The Political Carnival: You can't reason with a sick mind
Brad DeLong: GOP congress critters couldn't find their asses with a map and two flashlights dept.
D-Day: Justice and accountability by inches
Newshoggers: Paging Dr. Mengele of the CIA
Economist's View: Do corporations have a right to free speech?
Informed Comment: 60 said killed in NATO bombings; US Aid money may support Taliban activities
Rick Sanchez shows some footage of a woman pleading with Tom Coburn to help her at a town hall meeting because her husband has had a traumatic brain injury, and they can't get insurance for him. After Coburn says he'll help through his office that that we "as neighbors" ought to help each other and the idea that the government is here to help is inaccurate. Gotta' love Sanchez's response here.
What's interesting about that is that Sen. Coburn just essentially said the government is not the solution, but then you have to ask yourself. He just told her to come and see him, isn't he the government? By the way after helping her, what will he do about the other 46,999,999 who don't have insurance, and the thousands upon thousands of Americans who say they do have insurance but like her, they're not getting covered? We'll ask those questions.
Exactly.
Well what do you know. It looks like there may be some problems with Sen. Mitch McConnell's favorite Canadian health care horror story. h/t The Political Carnival
33.7 million Canadians are not Shona Holmes:
To my American friends: I sincerely hope you’re not taken in by the GOP propaganda featuring Canadian Shona Holmes trashing our system of universal healthcare. The problem is both that Ms. Holmes and her Republican masters misrepresented her condition and that the tactic itself is reprehensible. The GOP can’t produce any logical argument against a system that is entrenched in every Western society except yours, so they resort to fear-mongering and lies, claiming that one Canadian’s skewed view trumps the experiences and beliefs of the rest of us.
Holmes has become the darling of conservatives and the stop-public-health-care movement in the United States. She's testified before Congress, been on Fox TV as well as CNN, and her story is retold on hundreds of right wing blogs. She's now doing a nasty TV ad for Patients United Now, a Republican-led group opposed to Obama's reforms. You can see the ad at www.patientsunitednow.com. The group is spending almost $2 million on it to target politicians in Washington.
For a person living with cancer, the idea that someone's care could be unreasonably delayed is truly scary. It also doesn't reflect the experience I've had or the experiences that have been shared with me by so many other patients. Even CNN interviewed Doug Wright, a more typical patient in Toronto who is receiving very speedy treatment for his cancer.
Still, I found Holmes tale both compelling and troubling. So I decided to check a little further. On the Mayo Clinic's website, Shona Holmes is a success story. But it's somewhat different story than all the headlines might have implied. Holmes' "brain tumour" was actually a Rathke's Cleft Cyst on her pituitary gland. To quote an American source, the John Wayne Cancer Center, "Rathke's Cleft Cysts are not true tumors or neoplasms; instead they are benign cysts."
There's no doubt Holmes had a problem that needed treatment, and she was given appointments with the appropriate specialists in Ontario. She chose not to wait the few months to see them. But it's a far cry from the life-or-death picture portrayed by Holmes on the TV ads or by McConnell in his attacks.
