“General Pelosi has no problem sacrificing her own credibility as the Obama administration and liberals in Congress attempt to walk back a strategy they strongly advocated just months ago,” said NRCC Communications Director Ken Spain. “Nancy Pelosi continues to make party politics a higher priority than our national security. Rather than listening to a four-star general’s assessments on Afghanistan, General Pelosi somehow believes she is better suited to craft our country’s military policy.”

If Nancy Pelosi’s failed economic policies are any indicator of the effect she may have on Afghanistan, taxpayers can only hope McChrystal is able to put her in her place.

Labels: misogyny, Republican id-driven two-year-olds, scumbaggery, sexism

prohibit the use of funds for any Federal contract with Halliburton Company, KBR, Inc., any of their subsidiaries or affiliates, or any other contracting party if such contractor or a subcontractor at any tier under such contract requires that employees or independent contractors sign mandatory arbitration clauses regarding certain claims.

Labels: Al Franken, Better Democrats

After David Letterman acknowledged that he’d had flings with young assistants, some commentators talked about it in the same breath as Roman Polanski, who drugged and sodomized a 13-year-old. That’s outrageous.

Sexual harassment entails pressuring or penalizing a staffer or making the office atmosphere hostile. Despite the blustering of the attorney of the alleged execrable extortionist, Joe Halderman, there’s no evidence yet that Letterman was guilty of that.

Working for a boss as anti-social and self-critical as Letterman, whose world is circumscribed by his show, would not be easy. (The man is obviously not joking when he goes off on his self-loathing shticks; otherwise, he would have dated some of those gorgeous actresses flirting with him on air over the decades.)

But we haven’t heard that the curmudgeonly comedian, who has never lost his streak of Midwest primness, forced any staffers to listen to tales of pubic hairs on Cokes or Long Dong Silver.

From what we know so far, and that may not be everything, the women who got involved with Letterman were not pressured. One former intern, Holly Hester, said she had wanted to marry him but that he broke it off because of their age disparity.

Stephanie Birkitt, his former lover and assistant, described herself as his best friend. She was not punished but rewarded with a recurring on-air starring role — despite the fact that she wasn’t funny or charming. As usual, Letterman was living out loud on the show, showing the audience his crush. His company footed the tab for Birkitt to go to law school, a loan she has now paid back; it says it did the same for some other staffers who wanted to pursue higher education.

On Monday night, when Letterman joked that he might be the first talk-show host to be impeached, Birkitt’s name was still listed in the show credits.

Labels: David Letterman, Maureen Dowd

Yes, McCaughey professes to have read the legislation currently circulating, and, as in 1994, she brandishes that fact like a talisman that can dispel any conflicting viewpoint. But, also as in 1994, she spins out an indefensibly sinister, apocalyptic translation of the text that no amount of countervailing evidence can shake. Thus, health care adviser Emanuel's theoretical writings about how to allocate scarce resources, such as human organs, morph into McCaughey's conviction that Obama's "deadly doctor" advocates denying treatment to the elderly and infirm on cost-benefit grounds. Likewise, a database to coordinate information on which treatments work best for which patients--an initiative supported by wonks across the political spectrum--is seen by McCaughey as the first step toward government-programmed computers ordering doctors how to do their jobs. Within the self-styled empiricist resides the mind of a pathological alarmist.

Asked why her analysis bears no resemblance to that of other experts regardless of ideology, McCaughey consistently responds, "My reading of the bills is correct." Even when it is pointed out that her interpretation is clearly hyperbolic--e.g., her fantastic assertion on Fred Thompson's radio show that "Congress would make it mandatory, absolutely require, that, every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner"--she will not budge. Ironically, her familiarity with the data, combined with her unrecognizable interpretation of it, makes it nearly impossible to combat McCaughey's claims in a traditional debate. Her standard m.o. (as "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart recently experienced) is to greet each bit of contradictory evidence by insisting that her questioner is poorly informed and should take a closer look at paragraph X or footnote Z. When those sections don't support her interpretation, she continues to throw out page numbers and footnotes until the mountain of data is so high as to obscure the fact that none of the numbers add up to what she has claimed. "It's impossible to keep up with the quantity of misinformation," laments Henry Aaron. "It's like being sprayed with muddy water."

Labels: concern trolls, health care, Republican lies, wackaloons

"From 2010 we will not work with professional models any more," said Andreas Lebert, editor-in-chief, adding that he was "fed up" with having to retouch pictures of underweight models who bore no resemblance to ordinary women.

"For years we've had to use Photoshop to fatten the girls up," he said. "Especially their thighs, and decolletage. But this is disturbing and perverse and what has it got to do with our real reader?"

He said the move was a response to complaints by readers who said they had no connection with the women depicted in fashion features and "no longer wanted to see protruding bones".

"Today's models weigh around 23% less than normal women," Lebert said. "The whole model industry is anorexic."

Brigitte, which is Germany's best-selling women's title with more than 700,000 copies, offers readers a familiar diet of fitness, lifestyle, recipes and sex, which tends to appeal to upwardly mobile younger career women.

Lebert said the magazine would call on German women to put themselves forward as models for fashion and makeup articles.

Labels: pop culture, Women's bodies

As Democrats prepare to take up health care legislation on the floor of the Senate and the House, they are facing tough choices about two competing priorities. They want people to pay affordable prices for health insurance policies, but they want those policies to offer comprehensive health benefits.

These goals collide in the bills moving through Congress. The different versions of the legislation would all require insurance companies to provide coverage more generous than many policies sold in the individual market today. That is good for consumers, Democrats say.

But Republicans say the new requirements would mean added costs for some consumers and for the government, which would help pay premiums for millions of low- and middle-income people.

That tension between keeping costs low and improving coverage is just one of many challenges facing Congress and the Obama administration as they head toward the final stages of the effort to pass health care legislation.

Under the legislation, the government would not only require insurers to accept all applicants. It would also define the acceptable levels of coverage.

Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, said the federal government had to specify coverage levels because the benefits under many existing insurance policies were inadequate.

“We have more than 46 million people who are uninsured,” Mr. Bingaman said. “We also have a substantial number who are underinsured. Although they have coverage, it is so bad or so inadequate that if they really get sick, they find they cannot afford the health care they need.”

But the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, Jon Kyl of Arizona, said it was “an act of hubris” for Congress to prescribe the permissible coverage.

“For the life of me,” Mr. Kyl said, “I don’t see why Washington has to dictate what kind of insurance you get to buy. Why not let the consumer decide?”

Labels: health care

Senator Al Franken is proving his mettle as a United States Senator and leaving no doubt that he is absolutely cut out for the job and is doing it for the right reasons and the right people - the American people, not corporations.

To that end, he has offered an amendment to the annual Defense Appropriations bill that would prohibit the DoD from using contractors and subcontractors that requite their employees to resolve Title VII and sexual assault tort claims via forced arbitration.

Senator Franken's amendment is limited in scope, covering only Title VII and sexual assault cases, but if it passes the amendment will cover a major portion of employment cases that are brought by workers and would be an extremely important precedent for blocking forced arbitration of claims filed by employees.

The Amendment is set to come to the floor for a vote tomorrow afternoon. Call the Senate Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask to be connected to your Senator's office and tell your Senators that you want to support Senator Franken's amendment.

Mandatory arbitration of employee-brought cases is pure evil, denying access to the courts to people who need it most. I find it especially galling when a woman who has volunteered to go work in a war zone as a medic or a firefighter or in any other capacity is sexually assaulted by a coworker in a war zone should not be doubly victimized by a system that denies her access to the courts, the only method of redress she has.

Labels: Al Franken, Better Democrats, Democrats with balls

Labels: Rachel Maddow

Gov. Mark Sanford said he was a broken man after admitting an extramarital affair in June, a revelation that required him to pick up the pieces of his administration and fend off efforts to remove him from office.

In the 100 days since he returned from his secret trip to Argentina to acknowledge his affair, Sanford's schedule shows - and observers agree - the Republican governor has turned his focus to the state's moribund economy.

But that new focus came only after weeks of vacations and apologies and a campaign to defend Sanford from questions about his use of state planes.

[snip]

What has Sanford done over the last 100 days?

- He has been on out-of-state trips or vacations a fifth of the time.

- He has spent another 16 days traveling the state to speak to civic and community groups, generally opening his speeches with an apology.

- He has toured a handful of state manufacturing plants and small businesses and also visited with job-creation and technical school programs.

- He moved, by an executive order, a program for developmentally challenged infants and toddlers to First Steps, an early education program created by his Democratic predecessor.

Sanford's official schedule typically contains no more than three or four items a week.

Attempting to explain what it means to be chosen for leadership like King David was -- or Mark Sanford, according to his own estimate -- he asked a young man who'd put himself, body and soul, under the Family's authority, "Let's say I hear you raped three little girls. What would I think of you?" The man guessed that Coe would probably think that he was a monster. "No," answered Coe, "I wouldn't." Why? Because, as a member of the Family, he's among what Family leaders refer to as the "new chosen." If you're chosen, the normal rules don't apply.

Labels: Mark Sanford, narcissism, scumbaggery

Labels: Monday Morning Blues, music

Labels: comedy

A shadowy private security company that has no known clients but claims to have helped foreign governments combat terrorism and will protect anything from cruise ships to Pakistani convoys has taken over a jail in a small Montana town, with plans to build a law enforcement training facility on the property.

The state legislature is looking into the matter and residents of Hardin, MT, were alarmed last week when executives from the firm, American Police Force, showed up in the town, which does not have its own police department, with Mercedes SUVs bearing "City Of Hardin Police Department" decals.

Labels: Teh Funny

Labels: Baseball, You can't make this shit up

Already Grayson is one of the most targeted incumbents in the country, having defeated four-term Republican Ric Keller, and his re-election bid embodies the challenge Democrats face in holding control of Congress as the president's approval rating falls.

But a leading opponent has not yet emerged and Grayson, the 12th-wealthiest member of Congress, has resources to defend himself. He spent $2 million of his own money on the 2008 campaign. (The "die quickly" speech has triggered $150,000 in contributions, his office says.) And his district has shifted from slightly Republican to slightly Democratic.

"It's no coincidence the National Republican Congressional Committee has named me as the No. 1 target next year," Grayson said. "We're working hard, getting things done."

Swagger courses through Grayson's every word, delivered in the accent of his Bronx upbringing and with the exacting nature of a lawyer who first made his name taking on — and taking down — contractors and war profiteers in Iraq.

"I don't need the job for income or satisfaction," said Grayson, sitting on a bench outside the House chamber in between votes. "The truth is, it's really a hardship. I took an enormous pay cut to take the job. Every week, I leave five young children and my wife to come up here.

"I don't owe anything to anyone here. I don't owe anything to lobbyists. I don't owe anything to leadership. The only thing I owe to anybody is the well-being of 800,000 people who depend on me."

[snip]

Grayson's life story has the makings of a Horatio Alger novel. He grew up in a cramped Bronx tenement, the asthma-inflicted son of public school educators. Sickness and death are common themes.

As a boy, a bully threw him under a moving bus but he pulled himself free just in time. In Sri Lanka in 1984, he sat under a 2,200-year-old tree, a sacred Buddhist site, where guerrillas later slaughtered 200 people. He used to wake up in the middle of the night covered in his own blood, for no apparent reason. He was nearly killed in a car accident.

You wonder if he's putting you on, but he does not flinch. "I seem to have nine lives," Grayson said. "I've given a lot of thought to what I wanted to do in life."

Grayson got into Harvard and to cover expenses worked as a night watchman and cleaned toilets. He finished in three years, "and pretty close to the top of my class." He went on to work as an economist but returned to Harvard for a law degree and master's in public policy. Took him four years. "And I was working at the time." Then, he said, he went on to work for some of the titans of the legal field — Ginsberg, Bork, Scalia.

In 1990, Grayson and a college friend rented space over a funeral home in the Bronx and founded IDT Corp., a telecommunications company. Grayson did not stay long but made a fortune and said he invested smartly in airlines and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Today he has a net worth of $31 million, according to financial disclosure forms, though he lost $34 million in a Ponzi investment scheme this year.

Grayson met his first wife at a Halloween party in Boulder in the early 1980s. He dressed as a Catholic priest (he's Jewish). He remarried in 1990 and he and his wife, Lolita, have five children under age 15, all with names beginning with 'S:' Skye, Star, Sage and twins Storm and Stone. They live not far from Disney World.

Working full time as a lawyer until joining Congress, Grayson made a name filing whistle­blower lawsuits on contractor fraud and war profiteering in Iraq. The cases, involving big names like Halliburton and Custer Battles, were met with resistance from the Bush administration. Grayson said he was subjected to gag orders and stalling tactics.

[snip]

Routine questions elicit deeply philosophical responses. Asked where he got his political leanings, Grayson's answer ran eight minutes.

"There are now over 6 billion of us," he said. "When I buy something, I'm buying the fruits of someone else's labor. When I watch TV, I'm seeing things that other people have created. We are all highly specialized and highly independent and the only way to make everyone better off is if everyone is better off. My political philosophy is to see that that happens."

Labels: Alan Grayson, Democrats with balls

Labels: inability to handle more than one idea at a time, movies

Labels: Alan Grayson, Democrats with balls

Do you think Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ?
If yes, press 1. If no, press 2. If you’re not
sure, press 3.
Yes ................................................................. 8%
No................................................................... 79%
Not Sure.......................................................... 13%

Do you think Barack Obama was born in the
United States? If yes, press 1. If no, press 2. If
you’re not sure, press 3.
Yes ................................................................. 64%
No................................................................... 21%
Not Sure.......................................................... 16%

Do you think the federal government should be
eliminated? If yes, press 1. If no, press 2. If
you’re not sure, press 3.
Yes ................................................................. 6%
No................................................................... 83%
Not Sure.......................................................... 11%

Do you think that public education should be
eliminated? If yes, press 1. If no, press 2. If
you’re not sure, press 3.
Yes ................................................................. 5%
No................................................................... 90%
Not Sure.......................................................... 5%

Labels: American Idiots, Christofascist Zombie Brigade, New Jersey, Teh Stoopid

A long-awaited national study has concluded that abstinence-only sex education, a cornerstone of the Bush administration's social agenda, does not keep teenagers from having sex. Neither does it increase or decrease the likelihood that if they do have sex, they will use a condom.

Authorized by Congress in 1997, the study followed 2000 children from elementary or middle school into high school. The children lived in four communities -- two urban, two rural. All of the children received the family life services available in their community, in addition, slightly more than half of them also received abstinence-only education.

By the end of the study, when the average child was just shy of 17, half of both groups had remained abstinent. The sexually active teenagers had sex the first time at about age 15. Less than a quarter of them, in both groups, reported using a condom every time they had sex. More than a third of both groups had two or more partners.

"There's not a lot of good news here for people who pin their hopes on abstinence-only education," said Sarah Brown, executive director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, a privately funded organization that monitors sex education programs. "This is the first study with a solid, experimental design, the first with adequate numbers and long-term follow-up, the first to measure behavior and not just intent. On every measure, the effectiveness of the programs was flat."

Labels: Republican id-driven two-year-olds

Unlike Joe Wilson, I didn't break a rule of the House. And unlike Joe Wilson, I actually told the truth.  Every single year, over forty-four thousand people in America die because they don't have health insurance.  Read this Harvard study.  That is the plain truth.

And now the Republicans claim they are going to introduce a resolution "disapproving" of my behavior.

What is this, junior high school?  Do they think my feelings are hurt?  Just what do these people think health care means?  It's not some abstract "issue", we're talking about life and death!  And the Republicans, who ran the government in full or in part from 2001-2009, chose to let those 44,000 people die, every single year when they were in power.  And George W. Bush, whom the Republicans somehow pretend was not President for the last eight years, just let them die.  He even vetoed health care for poor children.

So apologize?  I don't think so.

Labels: Democrats with balls