Your Daily Dose of Health Care Reform Stupidity

My, how things change.  And it's just vaguely possible we'll have to stop making "wet Reid' jokes for a while.  Check out who didn't pull the trigger:

As expected, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) hosted a brief press conference this afternoon and announced that there will, in fact, be a public option in the Senate health care bill, though it will give states the opportunity to opt-out of the plan.

Hot damn.  I can tell you that's about the last thing I expected today.

The White House is perfectly happy with Reid's decision.  Queen Snowe not so much, but note she didn't absolutely say she'd join a filibuster.  Interesting.

Sen. Ben Nelson wanted an opt-in, just cuz we couldn't possibly make it easy for folks to get reform, so we'll see how loud he screams.

This is a pretty big moment, my darlings, and it's time to pat yourselves on the back.  The public option wouldn't be here if it weren't for progressives pushing it.  Champagne all round.

Then go have a talk with Blanche Lincoln, who still won't commit to standing against a Con filibuster.  Spank Ben Nelson for good measure.  And cheer on the Dems who are trying to ensure we see some of the benefits of reform before 2013.

It's a banner day, and C&L has an excellent round-up for us.

Elsewhere, the burning stupid still flames:

Eric Cantor wants everybody to do reform over, this time without a public option.  I'm not sure which planet he's currently inhabiting.

Health insurance companies are in full-on panic mode, using dumbass talking points in an attempt to get voters to lobby against their own interests.  I don't know what they're upset about - aside from the public option, which is fairly weak tea, they got everything they could possibly want.  Maybe they're terrified reform means they won't be able to charge women 50% higher premiums just because they're women.

The Cons have at last rolled out some reform proposals of their own!

About a month ago, the Washington Post reported, "After years of trying to cut Medicare spending, Republican lawmakers have emerged as champions of the program, accusing Democrats of trying to steal from the elderly to cover the cost of health reform."

Of course, the idea that congressional Republicans could be Medicare's "champions" has always been a little silly, but the notion gets a little more ridiculous all the time.

On Wednesday, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) introduced his own health care reform plan. Broun, one of the most vocal and persistent critics of comprehensive health care reform, calls his legislation the "only true free-market reform alternative." And free-market it is. While most of his legislation mirrors other Republican proposals, Broun's plan for Medicare seems rather revolutionary. He wants to completely get rid of Medicare and replace it with vouchers....
Presumably, seniors would then use their vouchers in the private insurance market.

Unfortunately, since nothing in Broun's OPTION Act deals with the issue of preexisting conditions, insurance companies would deny seniors, who are more likely to have a chronic health problem, left and right.

[snip]

It's worth noting that while the RNC and congressional Republican leaders have feigned outrage about Democratic efforts to find cost savings in Medicare, no GOP officials in Washington have denounced or distanced themselves from Paul Broun's privatization plan.

So much for the champions of Medicare, then, eh?

Oh, and remember how they keep telling us that all we need in order to reform health care is to let the private companies have their way with us across state lines?  Um, yeah, the private companies say that won't exactly work...

Imagine my surprise when Mike Tuffin, Executive Vice President for America’s Health Insurance Plans (an insurance lobby), made the following comment during this exchange on “Fox News Sunday”:

WALLACE: Mr. Tuffin, your group, the AHIP, the American Health Insurance Plans, issued a study and ran some ads opposing one version of health care reform. The White House said some of the data in your study was misleading. Here’s how President Obama reacted generally to the efforts of AHIP.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: The insurance industry is rolling out the big guns and breaking out their massive war chest. They’re earning these profits and bonuses while enjoying a privileged exception from our antitrust laws, a matter that Congress is rightfully reviewing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Question: Do you review — do you view that reference to possibly taking away your antitrust exemption as a threat, as punishment, for the fact that you’re opposing the president and Democrats?

TUFFIN: No, we don’t, Chris. That is a very limited federal exemption. It has nothing to do — every analyst who has looked at this has said it has nothing to do with competition or costs.

REALLY? Can we quote you on that? After more than a year of Republicans insisting that all we need to do is repeal their anti-trust exemption and the “free-market” would magically lower prices, the VP of AHIP is telling us that it “has nothing to do with competition or costs.” G.T.K., buddy.

If we can revoke their anti-trust status and hit 'em with a public option, the howls should be sweet music to all our ears.

Hold on tight, my darlings.  The next few days should be interesting indeed...

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

There's plenty of stupid needs a good kickin', but we've just got to start with this gem.  You remember that utterly ridiculous website the RNC launched?  If not, go refresh your memory.  Let the burning stupid warm you.  Then contemplate how much the idiots spent:

Guess how much the Republican National Committee's silly new website cost. A whopping $1.4 million -- five times more the DNC's redesigned site. I'm afraid the RNC didn't get its money's worth.

Understatement of the year. 

And here's another absolute gem.  It appears the Cons' inability to recognize satire is a chronic condition:

Conservative activist Hugh Hewitt published an item over the weekend from Lee Habeeb, which I'm fairly certain was intended to be a joke. The piece ran on Saturday, Oct. 24, and pointed to an event that "occurred" on Wednesday, Oct. 28. (via Karen Tumulty)

More bad news for Fox News ..... sort of.

Oct. 28, 2009 12:43 PM. This just in from Speaker of the House Pelosi. In an interview with MSNBC's Keith Olberman [sic] last night, Nancy Pelosi announced that she would move to bring a vote to the floor of The House of Representatives as early as next week to ban Fox from covering Congress. "That Fox regularly grants access to Republican Congressman to spread their lies and propaganda on their airwaves is a violation of the public trust, and their continued desire to challenge such well documented facts as Global Warming, and the efficacy of single payer health insurance, proves that they are simply doing the work of the special interests. They should thus be stripped of their journalistic access in the halls of Congress," argued Pelosi.

As Tumulty noted, the first clue that an item might be satire is "when it mentions dates that are in the future."

And yet, you might be surprised at the number of blogs that ran with this as a legitimate story. Then again, if you're familiar with far-right blogs, maybe you wouldn't be surprised.

Having a heart attack from not surprised, in fact.  How much more pathetic can they get?  I'm actually kind of afraid to ask.  But I do think we should ask them if they know that the word "gullible"isn't in the dictionary.

It's official now: Beck, Limbaugh and Palin are the leaders of the Con party.  The Weekly Standard sez so:

Reflecting the emerging stranglehold over the Republican Party that Limbaugh and Beck now exert, the new cover of The Weekly Standard identifies Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin as the faces of the GOP (see image to the right). Yesterday morning on C-Span, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich expressed concern with the cover:

Well, I just think it’s interesting that two of the three people on the cover are talk radio hosts — Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. And they’re fine people, and they have big audiences, and that’s terrific. But you have a party that has Gov. Haley Barbour, it has Gov. Mitch Daniels, it has Gov. Tim Pawlenty. [...] You know, you can have a very, very intense movement of 20 percent. You can’t govern. To govern, you got to get 50 percent plus one after the recount.

Isn't it cute when Newtie briefly contacts reality?  How much would you like to bet the reality-challenged rest of his party don't follow suit?

Reality-challenged as they are, Cons must be a wee bit nervous about their chances, though.  They're actually trying to play at being capable of governing, and to prove it, they're ripping a page from the Democratic play book:

One of the more common criticisms of congressional Republicans is that they have no real policy agenda and offer nothing in the way of constructive ideas. The criticism reinforces the notion that the GOP is the "party of no," and it has the added benefit of being true.

CQ's Alan Ota reports today that the House Republican caucus, hoping to nationalize next year's midterm elections, is putting together a platform of sorts, which has been "informally dubbed 'Ten for '10 '." It's intended to mirror the style of the Democrats' "Six for '06" platform.

While GOP leaders would not discuss the specifics of the emerging agenda, they said it will make the case that Republicans are better suited to revive the nation's economy. [...]

Tom Price of Georgia, chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, said members of the conference are coming up with recommended policy planks that would provide voters "a commitment to accomplish certain ends."

Among proposals floated so far by members: a ban on spending unused funds from this year's economic stimulus law (PL 111-5), tougher earmark disclosure requirements and an "all of the above" climate change plan that would expand offshore oil drilling.

It's hard to be too critical of the ideas thus far; they're only proposals that have been "floated," and there will apparently be 10 measures, not three.

But at this point, I think "Ten for '10" may not be such a great idea. Two of three ideas that are apparently on the table are just holdovers from the McCain campaign. The third, scrapping the economic recovery package, may have some political juice -- most of the public probably doesn't realize the stimulus' role in prevent a wholesale economic collapse -- but it only offers Democrats another opportunity to remind voters that the recovery package was only necessary because Republican policies help bring the global economy to its knees.

You know, I can't even begin to state how pathetic this all is.  They can't come up with their own ideas, so they copy the Dems' strategy, then shoehorn old ideas that lost them the election into someone else's format - it's just sad.

But they do have an interesting campaign strategy in the battle for New York's 23rd:

In a press release sent out by the Dede Scozzafava campaign, the moderate Republican running in the three-way special election, several GOP state legislators call upon Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman to drop out of the race -- and declare that a new poll from the pro-Hoffman Club For Growth showing him ahead is false:

"Doug Hoffman must do the right thing and drop out of this race right now," said Assemblywoman Janet Duprey. "This is a campaign for Congress -- not an audition to be a talking head on a cable news program. Doug Hoffman doesn't live here, he doesn't understand our local issues and, regardless of his campaign's theatrics and false polls, he knows he is completely unelectable. Make no mistake about it -- Doug Hoffman is a spoiler, and by staying in this race he will jeopardize a seat the Republican Party has held here since the Civil War. It's high time that Hoffman puts the good of this community over his personal ambition and endorses our Republican nominee Dede Scozzafava," she concluded.

So, lemme get this straight: Cons think that asking the guy who's got Palin on his side, who's a darling of the Teabaggers, and who is currently winning the rabid right, is just going to shuffle aside for the moderate Con just cuz?  Give me a fucking break.  Loo-sers.

Not to mention obstructionist fucktards:

In the Clinton era, Senate Republicans blocked a lot of the White House's judicial nominations. In the Bush era, Senate Democrats blocked votes on some would-be judges, too. But as Doug Kendall explains today, we've never seen anything quite like the new levels of Republican obstructionism.

It seems clear that Senate Republicans are prepared to take the partisan war over the courts into uncharted territory -- delaying up-or-down votes on the Senate floor for even the most qualified and uncontroversial of the president's judicial nominees.... Over the past several decades, senators in both parties have used an escalating set of procedural tactics to block confirmations, particularly near the end of an out-going president's term in office. To date, however, the tit-for-tat game has played out within a fairly narrow category of nominees who are deemed controversial. While there has never been an agreed-upon definition of what that means -- it's an eye-of-the-beholder type of thing -- there has consistently been a large category of nominees that are not considered controversial.

Despite all this, Senate Republicans still won't give Obama's judges a vote. The three Obama judges confirmed to the lower courts -- Gerald Lynch from New York and Jeffrey Viken from South Dakota in addition to Lange -- each spent weeks pending on the Senate floor and endured a confirmation process that lasted more than three months. Two additional nominees, Andre Davis of Maryland and David Hamilton of Indiana, cleared the Senate judiciary committee way back on June 4 -- 144 days ago. Yet their floor votes are still pending.

Davis and Hamilton have spent longer in this particular form of limbo than any Bush nominee confirmed from 2007-08.

Kendall describes this as "unprecedented and dangerous." It not only leaves vacancies on the bench, clogging the federal courts, but it also discourages qualified, uncontroversial jurists from even accepting nominations in the first place, knowing that the Republican minority won't give them a fair shake. Prospective judges realize that they can have a skeleton-free closet and plenty of support to be confirmed, but can wait indefinitely for a vote, simply because the GOP feels like it.

I think they've proven beyond reasonable doubt they're incapable of governing, incapable of letting other people govern, and don't deserve the chance to run so much as a PTA meeting, much less hold national office.  Too bad so many of my fellow Americans are just as stupid as they are and fall for their bullshit.

Hopefully, even they will eventually realize that the current crop of Cons is rotten through-and-through, a national embarrassment that needs to get voted out before we become a world-wide laughing stock.  But I don't hold out much hope.

Good thing we have so much fun bashing stupidity around here, then, innit?

The Cantina's Open, but the Cantinera's Away

Sorry to leave you all so short, but things are hectic on the writing front this weekend.  Start a conversation among yourselves, leave me links to any particularly delicious stupidity you find whilst spelunking the intertoobz, and don't drink all the alcohol without me.

See ye all tomorrow.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Dear oh dear.  How bad is Lou Dobbs?  We now have not one but two faux journalists in the Faux family ripping him.  Geraldo's piled on:

Speaking at a luncheon sponsored by the Spanish newspaper El Diario La Prensa on Thursday, Fox News host Geraldo Rivera said, “One of the aspects of our reality in the United States now is the defamatory tone of the immigration debate and how that immigration debate has slandered an entire race of people.” Rivera proceeded to lay much of the blame at the feet of CNN’s Lou Dobbs:

Lou Dobbs, a man who was an accomplished journalist, and who left to go and start his own venture in the digital media, having to do with space, I believe, and then came back to CNN, and nobody was watching his program. He discovered that one of the way to get people to watch was to make of the image of a young Latino trying to get into this country a profoundly negative icon. Lou Dobbs is almost single-handedly responsible for creating, for being the architect of the young-Latino-as-scapegoat for everything that ails this country.

Rivera’s criticism echoes that of his Fox colleague John Stossel, who said he doesn’t “subscribe to Lou Dobbs-kind of rants about immigrants wrecking America.”

When the Faux News Network won't take him because he's too frothing insane, you know it's bad.  CNN: time to rid yourselves of this embarrassment.

Speaking of embarrassments, the WaPo really needs to reconsider the "wisdom" of having George Will around as a columnist:

When my friend Mustang Bobby emailed yesterday to tell me George Will had written an entire column praising Rep. Michele Bachmann, I thought he was kidding. Will may be conservative, but he considers himself something of an intellectual and serious thinker. Bachmann is a right-wing clown, practically a parody of herself, who doesn't even pretend to take policy matter seriously.

George Will may be getting increasingly lazy and cantankerous, but even he wouldn't put his reputation on the line with a laudatory Bachmann column.

I stand corrected.

Will notes early on that, last October, Bachmann told a national television audience that she wants a neo-McCarthyist witch hunt, calling for an investigation into the un-American views of members of Congress. Soon after, she lied about it. In his column, Will blamed Chris Matthews for the outburst.

What is it with Cons always blaming other people for their own foolishness?

It gets worse from there:

If editors took a closer look at Will's columns before they were published, they might have noticed that Bachmann's "gangster government" accusations were proven baseless within two days of her remarks. Will sees this as an example of Bachmann's "admirable" work, in which her allegations were proven "accurate." In Grown-Up Land, this was actually an example of Bachmann coming up with a strange conspiracy theory involving the Obama administration, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D), and a Republican GM dealer -- who'd contributed thousands of dollars to Michele Bachmann.

And as for the fact that her remarks have been watched 2 million times online, M.B. reminds Will, "Hint: just because a video gets viewed 2 million times doesn't make it proof of intelligent discourse, and it's not always because they agree with her."

But if you thought that global warming denialism, denim denigration, and Bachmann worship were the beginning and end of Will's rampant stupidity, you haven't seen much of George Will:

George Will is either lying, or he doesn't have any idea how to use the Internet. During the panel discussion on This Week, Will says this about the Baucus bill that came out of the Senate Finance Committee.

[snip]

Stephanopoulos: Nancy Pelosi suggested this week that there might not be any amendments on the House floor.

Will: Of course not for the same reason--although they could put this on the internet in 10 minutes, they haven’t put it on the internet, this 1502 pages, because people might discover what’s in there.

As our reader and tipster Stephen noted today, the bill has been on line since Oct. 19th. Anyone can go read all 1504 pages here and here.

Truly, his Google-fu is as weak as his intellect.  Why the WaPo's so enamored of him is beyond my power to comprehend.  I'm afraid I just can't wrap my mind around appreciation for such burning stupidity.  Maybe they think his occasional sane statement is worth all the worthless dreck (and yes, he does have occasional moments of clarity - see end of post here), but let me put it like this: would you choose a rose garden with some overall very nice roses, or a huge, steaming shit-pile with the occasional small but pretty bloom sticking out of it?

Seriously, WaPo, there are other conservatives who could write decent columns.  Not many.  It's like trying to find a swimming hole in Death Valley.  But it would be worth expending the effort to find them.

I'll never understand CNN and WaPo's supposed reasoning.  But at least we now have the definitive analysis on how Faux News plays its game:

Here's the Fox Nutwork playbook in all its glory.

When attempting to defend itself, Fox insists that the most egregious examples of bias pointed to by its attackers are from its "opinion journalists" (which they are), who are an operation separate from its "news" division (which they most decidedly are not).

In fact, Fox is designed and built to exploit the traditional expectation of such divides at the other networks, but instead regularly uses its opinion shows as a vector to whitewash their bullshit for the "news" side, turning even of the most outlandish and idiotic ultra-right talking points into something that wears the disguise of news. In the evening hour opinion shows (which, poisonous though they are, Fox is perfectly entitled to broadcast), you have your Hannity types spouting their wingnut applause lines unchecked, because gosh, it's just "opinion journalism." So it's all fair game when they come right out and claim Obama's a socialist, or communist, or fascist, or whatever the flavor of the day is.

But lo and behold, come next morning, the "news" side anchors pull out the infamous "Fox Question Mark" construction, dutifully delivering their line to the audience: "Is Obama a socialist? That's what some in Washington are saying..." Nevermind that both the "some" who are saying it and the talking heads "reporting" it take their morning memos and their paychecks from the same source.

The previous evening's attack memes, Fox folks will tell you, are supposedly this morning's "news," because, well, people are saying it, and they as "journalists" have a responsibility to cover that. And in their view of it nobody's culpable, because Hannity's a commentator, and the "news" division is just noting that "some" are saying it. Clean hands all around!

Clean, that is, if you don't look too closely and see the scum adhering to same.

Let us turn now to Cons Taking Care of America.  We find out today just how very hard Dick et al worked on ensuring Obama got super-awesome victory in Afghanistan plans:

For weeks, former Bush administration officials have been attacking President Obama for “dithering” on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, with Vice President Cheney saying that “signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries.” But these Bush officials are also facing criticisms for largely neglecting Afghanistan in order to invade Iraq. In response, they have been citing an Afghanistan strategy report they handed off to the Obama administration that clearly laid out recommendations for moving forward. From Cheney’s recent remarks to the Center for Security Policy:

In the fall of 2008, fully aware of the need to meet new challenges being posed by the Taliban, we dug into every aspect of Afghanistan policy, assembling a team that repeatedly went into the country, reviewing options and recommendations, and briefing President-elect Obama’s team. They asked us not to announce our findings publicly, and we agreed, giving them the benefit of our work and the benefit of the doubt.

Today on ABC’s This Week, Center for American Progress President and CEO John Podesta revealed that the Bush administration spent just one hour on that report:

PODESTA: [T]hey did present him with a report at the very end of the Bush administration, but I have it from reliable sources that the principals in the Bush administration spent one hour on that report before they handed it off to Obama.

One hour. One fucking hour. Today's Sunday Sensational Science took me over two hours to complete, and it was a pathetic pile of crapola.  I can only imagine what Cheney's super-duper report looked like:

1.  Bomb shit.

2.  Bomb 'em some more.

3.  Hell with it, just nuke 'em.

And I'm being generous, assuming they can spell words of at least four letters.

By the way, if you end up dying of swine flu this year, you might want to consider haunting the Cons in Congress:

We have a national health emergency, and Senate Republicans are stalling the surgeon general's confirmation. But then, they don't live in the same country as the rest of us:

A GOP stall on all Health and Human Services nominees has left the department without a surgeon general during a period of a global flu pandemic, prompting the HHS secretary to call for Senate action.

Regina Benjamin, the surgeon general nominee, “is ready to be voted on in the Senate, and we would just strongly urge the United States Senate” to act, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said during an MSNBC interview Friday in which she discused the department's response to the spread of the H1N1 virus.

President Barack Obama on Saturday declared the H1N1 outbreak a national emergency.

“We are facing a major pandemic, we have a well-qualified candidate for surgeon general, she’s been through the committee process. We just need a vote in the Senate,” Sebeilus said. “Please give us a surgeon general.”

Benjamin was unanimously approved by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Oct. 7, but Senate Republicans are holding up all HHS nominees over a so-called gag order on insurance companies that have been critical of Democratic efforts to reform health care.

Will there ever come a time when these fucktards develop a conscience, not to mention figure out what the fuck you're supposed to do in order to govern a nation responsibly?

Yeah.  I know the answer's not no, but hell no. 

Just in case anyone was wondering if for-profit health insurance is a good idea, or wondering if health insurance companies are really that short-sighted and greedy, wonder no more:

It's almost as if insurers are trying to make the case for a public option more compelling.

As Congress nears votes on legislation that would overhaul the health care system, many small businesses say they are facing the steepest rise in insurance premiums they have seen in recent years.
Insurance brokers and benefits consultants say their small business clients are seeing premiums go up an average of about 15 percent for the coming year -- double the rate of last year's increases. That would mean an annual premium that was $4,500 per employee in 2008 and $4,800 this year would rise to $5,500 in 2010.
The higher premiums at least partly reflect the inexorable rise of medical costs, which is forcing Medicare to raise premiums, too. Health insurance bills are also rising for big employers, but because they have more negotiating clout, their increases are generally not as steep.
Higher medical costs aside, some experts say they think the insurance industry, under pressure from Wall Street, is raising premiums to get ahead of any legislative changes that might reduce their profits.

[snip]

One of the standard GOP talking points against reform insists that changing the system would punish small businesses. We already know that's wrong, but it's worth re-emphasizing the fact that it's the broken status quo that's crushing small businesses and entrepreneurship.

Indeed.

And in case you were thinking health care reform's moving too fast, like Queen Snowe says, consider this:

Delays for delays' sake aren't exactly a recipe for serious policymaking. Congress and the White House have been debating health care reform for the better part of the year. It was debated last year during the presidential campaign. It was debated the year before during the presidential primaries. It was debated at length during the Clinton reform effort, which followed previous debates during previous presidents' efforts.

America has been debating health care reform, off and on, since the days of Harry Truman. Olympia Snowe can demand more delays, and for all I know, given her influence right now, she'll get them. But health care reform, by most reasonable measures, has already received the "thought it needs and requires." It's time for responsible policymakers to start making decisions, not putting them off until some arbitrary point in the new year.

Dragging this out for the sake of dragging this out seems wildly unnecessary, and more than a little counter-productive.

Isn't that the very definition of what it means to be a Con?  It certainly seems so.

Sunday Sensational Science

Science at the Show


Alas, no deliciously-researched, fresh-out-o'-the-lab science today, my darlings.  I haven't had time to research a thing.  No more Ardis have been unleashed upon the world.  And I want to talk about Superman anyway.

As most of you know, I've spent the last summer reading every science book I could lay my hands upon.  And you've heard me bemoan my woeful ignorance.  I have a memory like a rusted-out sieve, I have the mathematical comprehension of a brain-damaged mouse, and when it comes to being able to visualize these very difficult concepts - well, show me a video, because I can't do it myself.  I often despair.  I'll never know enough or understand enough, and it sometimes seems I've retained nothing from all that reading.

Turns out, I've retained far more than I thought.  And so follows a tale of two viewings of Superman Returns.  The connection shall become clear in a moment.

I first saw Superman Returns when it was released in the theatre. Three years ago, I knew a bit about astronomy, geology, physics, and such, but not enough to really internalize anything.  When I scribbled about the movie in my journal, my focus was on the characters and story.  I hadn't paid a bit of attention to the science.  In fact, I don't believe there was a single instant during the movie where science really impinged upon my awareness.

Not so, now.  And that awareness began with the opening credits.  You see, now I know why planets are spherical.  So this half-a-planet with rings just didn't ring (ha) true.  Maybe a planet could've esploded, but leaving half all sharp and pointy whilst still having a beautiful ring system?  Really?  No.  It's visually pleasing, but as far as finding something like that out in the universe, I highly doubt it.  And here's the reason why:

One consequence of Newton's law of gravitation - which states that as the distance between two objects increases, the gravitational pull between them becomes weaker by the square of their separation - is that all planets are round.  A sphere has a volume that grows with the cube of the radius of the orb, while its surface area increases with the square of the radius.  This combination of the square of the radius for the surface area with the inverse square of the gravitational force leads to a sphere being the only stable form that a large gravitational mass can maintain.  In fact, to address the astrophysical question of what distinguishes a very large asteroid from a very small planet, one answer is its shape.  A small rock that you hold in your hand can have an irregular shape, as its self-gravitational pull is not large enough to deform it into a sphere.  However, if the rock were the size of Pluto, then gravity would indeed dominate, and it would be impossible to structure the planetoid so that it had anything other than a spherical profile.

That's from The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios.  Damned good book.  I highly recommend it.

So, half a planet with a ring system - not no, but hell no.

Moving on, then.  What about all that vaunted super-strength?  We Earth-bound misfits tend to think that it's a simple lack of strength that prevents us from doing things like, oh, say, catching jets and throwing unwanted continents off the planet.  At least, we think so if we don't know much about physics.  As I watched Superman grab the runaway jet at the beginning, I kept thinking of things like mass and inertia.  In order to stop the thing, Supes needs more than super-strength.  He'd need super-propulsion, and just where the hell is that coming from?

It's magic, obviously.  Has to be, because it just ain't happening in the real world.  I don't care how super he is, the propulsion has to come from somewhere, and it takes a hell of a lot of energy, and even if the biological being in question's from Krypton, not bleedin' likely, guv.

Not that I didn't enjoy watching said scene, especially when the filmmakers had the presence of mind to show the jet plane deforming under Superman's grip.  That was actually kind of neat.

Here's what I really want to talk about, though: lifting a continent on your shoulders.  And here's where I turn to James Kakalios once again, because he's already done the heavy lifting for me:

It is worth pointing out here that mass is not the same as weight.  "Weight" is another term for "force on an object due to gravity."  Mass, on the other hand, is a measure of how much stuff ("atoms" for you specialists) an object contains.  The mass of the atoms in an object is what gives it its "inertia," a fancy term to describe its resistance to change when a force is applied.  Even in outer space, an object's mass is the same as on the Earth's surface, because the number and type of atoms it contains does not change.  An object in outer space may be "weightless," in that it is subject to a negligible attractive force from nearby planets, but it still resists change in motion, due to its mass.  A space-walking astronaut in deep space cannot just pick up and toss a space station around (assuming she had a platform on which to stand), even though the station and everyone on it is "weightless."  The mass of the space station is so large that the force the astronaut's muscles can apply produces only a negligible acceleration.

[snip]

When the astronaut mentioned above pushes on the space station, the force her muscles exert provides a very small acceleration to the station, but the station pushes back on her, and her acceleration is much larger (since her mass is much smaller).

So.  Even setting aside the difficulty of getting a small continent (okay, largish island) out of Earth's gravity, ignoring the small detail of how much energy it would take to accelerate such a thing to escape velocity (11.2 km/s, remember!), and other such quibbles, it's still a little hard to swallow Supes tossing a continent off into outer space.

I'm sure some genius can come up with something, but since I'm not seeing flames shooting out of his arse and people behind him aren't getting blasted to bits by some propulsive force, I'm a little not inclined to swallow easy explanations.

We won't discuss Supes' super breath, because I think we all know that no matter how hard he can blow, his lungs have finite capacity.  It would take a lot more than a lungful of air, even fast air, to blow out a gas explosion.

But we will ask a question related to the earthquake that started the gas explosion in the first place: where the fuck is the tsunami?

Seriously.  You drop a crystal in the ocean.  A continent suddenly springs up.  Helllooo, displacement!  Eureka?  Does no one remember Archimedes?

The most widely known anecdote about Archimedes tells of how he invented a method for determining the volume of an object with an irregular shape. According to Vitruvius, a new crown in the shape of a laurel wreath had been made for King Hiero II, and Archimedes was asked to determine whether it was of solid gold, or whether silver had been added by a dishonest goldsmith.^[13] Archimedes had to solve the problem without damaging the crown, so he could not melt it down into a regularly shaped body in order to calculate its density. While taking a bath, he noticed that the level of the water in the tub rose as he got in, and realized that this effect could be used to determine the volume of the crown. For practical purposes water is incompressible,^[14] so the submerged crown would displace an amount of water equal to its own volume. By dividing the weight of the crown by the volume of water displaced, the density of the crown could be obtained. This density would be lower than that of gold if cheaper and less dense metals had been added. Archimedes then took to the streets naked, so excited by his discovery that he had forgotten to dress, crying "Eureka!" (Greek: "εὕρηκα!," meaning "I have found it!")^[15]

Even if it weren't for the fact that a huge freaking landmass just displaced a fuck of a lot of water, we had an earthquake to contend with.  We should all know about the relationship between earthquakes and tsunamis by now.  Here it is in a one easy picture:


Water go sploosh.  Metropolis go under.  It looks like it's right at sea level, after all.

But one thing was nice: the kryptonite continent looks a bit like schorl, so that was a little bit of all right.  At least they made a continent grown of crystal, from crystal, look somewhat plausible.  Enough to delight this geology buff, anyway.

Yes, it doesn't take much to please me, as long as the story's decent enough.  And that's really the point, isn't it?  Superman doesn't have to be super science. 

But it's a damned lot of fun to pick on the lack of science, innit?  And at least all of my science quibbles assured me of one thing: I've learned a hell of a lot more than I'd thought.

No More Pollyticks. Must Write. Have a Cat

Posting light-ish tonight, my darlings.  Fiction calls, and I must obey.

Yes, even if the cat doesn't like it:

Even if she falls asleep at the keyboard:

No matter how cute she is:

Or how many socks she molests:

A writer's gots to write, even when the writer's cat has other ideas.

Your Daily Dose of Health Care Stupidity

Grab some coffee and settle in, my darlings.  Some important reading, here.

Kudos to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which isn't afraid to take on the President hisownself.  Nice to see progressives pushing a center-right Dem in the right (or should that be left?) direction.

They're not happy that he's trigger happy.  Neither are a lot of tried-and-true progressives.  Rep. Grijalva, who's about the only redeeming factor in Arizona politics right now, has a fantastic piece up on triggers and why we shouldn't have them (h/t).  He's still fighting the good fight for meaningful reform.  If you'd like to help him out, here's some suggestions.  And while you're at it, keep whipping the House.  We're winning.

No, really.  We are.  The public option was very nearly dead a few weeks ago; now it's very much alive, and while it's in no small part due to AHIP's dumbfuck antics (thank you, AHIP!), it's also in large part due to us:

Clyburn:

   Absolutely. Remember, when we came back after Labor Day, there were people who thought that the whole health reform bill was dead for the year. About 2 or 3 weeks later, after we had an opportunity to explain to people what we were doing, they said, "well, okay, we got a good plan, but the public option is off the table."

   Now, we are debating what form of the public option. There are those that said that the Senate had absolutely no way of passing a public option. Now they are saying there may be a form of the public option that the Senate will consider. That's all because the public has dialed in and they are in fact very much for some form of a public option. We're not saying it won't be. We're just saying "what form will take it?"

Good discussion at the above link about triggers, too.  What may surprise you is that the trigger the White House is after isn't the trigger you think.  Just to confuse everybody, there's not one, but many, triggers under consideration, some worse than others.  But we need to make it clear that a trigger of any sort is out of bounds.  If you want reasons, here's a good place to start (h/t).

We may be close to cloture in the Senate, and Pelosi's still fighting for a strong public option in the House (although she's signaled she's open to the opt-out compromise).  Now's not the time to lay off the pressure.  And let Obama hear from you.  Tell him to take yes for an answer.

Now, you didn't think I'd leave you without the pure-D stupidity, did ye?  Here ye go:

Following up on a story I've been following, Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, doesn't seem to recognize the wisdom of quitting when behind.

Land initially raised a few eyebrows when he condemned health care reform in unusually offensive terms. "What they are attempting to do in healthcare, particularly in treating the elderly, is not something like what the Nazis did. It is precisely what the Nazis did," Land said. In the same remarks, Land compared Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel to Josef Mengele.

[snip]

After the Anti-Defamation League expressed some concerns, Land didn't apologize for the substance of his remarks, but he at least showed some regret: "It was never my intention to equate the Obama administration's healthcare reform proposals with anything related to the Holocaust.... Given the pain and suffering of so many Jewish and other victims of the Nazi regime, I will certainly seek to exercise far more care in my use of language in future discussions of the issues at stake in the healthcare debate."

So, problem solved, right? Wrong. Reader J.C. flagged this story in which Land completed the 360-degree turn.

One week after apologizing for comparing Democratic leaders to the Nazis, [Land] has reneged on his promise to stop using such comparisons.... Land "still believes there are connections to be made between some underlying philosophies held by the Germans and others in the first half of the 20th century, and certain elements under discussion in the health care reform debate today." Land argued that the philosophies of some of those pushing health-care reform "bear a lethal similarity in their attitudes toward the elderly and the terminally ill and could ultimately lead to the kinds of things the Nazis did." Land also attacked those who were attempting "to remove the Third Reich as a subject of discussion when it comes to the healthcare debate."

Three things to keep in mind. First, Land's promise about avoiding Nazi references seems to have lasted one whole week. Second, to argue that health care reform bears a "lethal similarity" to Nazi tactics is obviously crazy.

And third, Land is concerned that people might want to "remove the Third Reich as a subject of discussion when it comes to the healthcare debate"? Well, sure. They want to remove the subject as part of the debate because it's completely insane.

So it is.  So it is.  This probably explains why Land is so damned fond of it.

Right, then, my darlings.  Chins up.  We're in the home stretch.  Soon, health care reform of some description shall be passed, and the frothing rabid right shall be turning their considerable talent for stupid to other legislation.

I can hardly wait, can you?

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

It seems we had a National Media Assclowns Day, and nobody bothered to tell me.

CNN apparently believes that a bit of creative editing can solve their Dobbs dilemma:

This week, CNN aired a new four-hour documentary called “Latino in America,” exploring how Latinos are reshaping American communities and culture. The broadcast sparked protests in cities around the country, including outside CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta, with minority groups calling on the network to fire anti-immigration crusader and serial misinformer Lou Dobbs.

The New York Times reports that CNN “has not commented on the protests or covered them on its news programs.” But not only has CNN ignored the Dobbs protests, the network edited out criticism of Dobbs from civil rights lawyer Isabel Garcia during a taped interview with controversial Arizona Sheriff Joe Arapaio that aired on Anderson Cooper 360 this week:

[Garcia] who was featured in “Latino in America” and organized an anti-Dobbs protest in Tucson on Wednesday, said that CNN edited her comments about the anchor out of an interview. [...]

She said she called Mr. Arpaio and Mr. Dobbs “the two most dangerous men to our communities,” and said that “because of them, our communities are being terrorized in a real way.” She also asserted that CNN was “promoting lies and hate about our community” by broadcasting Mr. Dobbs’s program. The comments were not included when the interview was shown Wednesday night. “They heavily deleted what I did get to say,” she said.

CNN, come over here.  We need to have a talk.  When you have an outrageous ass bringing shame upon your network, silencing his critics and refusing to acknowledge the slightest criticism of him won't take care of the situation.  Shipping his ass to Faux News with a great big bow will.  You know how it's done.  Remember Glenn Beck?  Yeah.

Trust me.  He'll fit right in.  Faux News is now filled with so many twice-divorced-from-reality, paranoid, self-pitying hacks they can't even tell when they haven't been snubbed:

Adding to the Fox News v. White House feud today is a dust-up over an interview with pay czar Ken Feinberg. Turns out, it was a sort of miscommunication, but the White House adds that if they had left Fox out it would be a case of "Not that there's anything wrong with that!"

The version Fox has pushed all day is that the network was excluded from an interview roundtable with Feinberg yesterday, and that bureau chiefs from ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN came to Fox's defense.

TPMDC dug into it, and here's what happened.

Feinberg did a pen and pad with reporters to brief them on cutting executive compensation. TV correspondents, as they do with everything, asked to get the comments on camera. Treasury officials agreed and made a list of the networks who asked (Fox was not among them).

But logistically, all of the cameras could not get set up in time or with ease for the Feinberg interview, so they opted for a round robin where the networks use one pool camera. Treasury called the White House pool crew and gave them the list of the networks who'd asked for the interview.

The network pool crew noticed Fox wasn't on the list, was told that they hadn't asked and the crew said they needed to be included. Treasury called the White House and asked top Obama adviser Anita Dunn. Dunn said yes and Fox's Major Garrett was among the correspondents to interview Feinberg last night.

Simple as that, we're told, and the networks don't want to be seen as heroes for Fox.

I don't blame them a bit.  I wouldn't want to be seen as Faux News' hero, either.

Glenn Beck's gone batshit again - this time, complete with bat:

You know where the phrase "jumping the shark" originates, right? It's from the episode of Happy Days where Fonzie, wearing his leather jacket and some swim trunks, jumps over a confined shark with a pair of water skis. As Wikipedia explains, the phrase originally referred to TV shows whose desperation for ratings leads them to indulge stunts that underscore their having "lost it."

Well, Glenn Beck is hardly desperate for ratings -- yet -- but on his Fox News show yesterday, he jumped an entire school of Great Whites with Pinky Tuscadero on his shoulders.

He devoted an entire 14-minute-plus rant to depicting the Obama White House as being like Al Capone and his gang of thugs in The Untouchables, bashing people's heads in with baseball bats. And to illustrate the point, he waved about a big wooden Louisville Slugger and affected a tough-guy gangster voice, all to depict the administration as a bunch of petty thugs who threaten their opponents.

That boy's just not right in the head.  Neither is his good buddy Ann Coulter, who's decided every bit of political violence in the entire universe has been perpetrated by liberals.  She's either seriously psychotic or Steve Benen's right - she's a secret liberal mocking the rabid right from within. 

Keith Olbermann is frequently my hero, but I really adore him for delivering such a delightful near-fatal beatdown to Tucker Carlson:

How many times did Tucker have this coming when he worked for MSNBC but he never made the Worst Persons list since he was at the same network? Keith lets loose on him in this segment.

[snip]

The runner-up, Tucker Carlson, world sophistry champion. “The two most senior members of the White House staff attempt to bully a news outlet into silence and hardly anyone in the press says a word. Meanwhile, the same White House that had just finished lecturing working journalists on the superiority of straight news coverage hosted a secret, off the record briefing for Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC. The two, along with several other liberal commentators, spent more than two hours with Obama. Why is the press corps giving the White House a pass for behavior it never would have tolerated from other administrations? Conservatives believe it‘s simple bias.”

I‘m a little tired of the sanctimonious, amnesic crap from people like Tucker Carlson. The previous White House planted questions in its own news conference, secretly paid conservative columnists, staged massage briefing sessions for radio hosts, sent out a list of questions they hoped I would use to discredit Joe Wilson, publicly attacked NBC, publicly attacked MSNBC, by the admission of the press secretary, just the other day, cut MSNBC out of access to administration officials, and its party leadership tried to blackmail NBC News into removing me from election coverage by threatening to boycott a presidential debate.

This White House finally called out a group of amoral political operatives posing as journalists. That was it. They didn‘t deny them credentials. They didn‘t try to silence them. They didn‘t take them off the air. They didn‘t try to take them off the air. They called them what they are, the media propaganda wing of the Republican party.

[snip]

I don‘t know if the paranoids of this world, like Michelle Malkin, think Obama handed me my instructions, or she thinks I handed him his. But when I support what this president is doing, it‘s because I think he is right. The operative word is think.

I‘m not, Rachel Maddow is not, Glenn freaking Beck or Michelle freaking Malkin, a knee jerk jukebox of party doctrine, screeching at every reform, mocking every expression of sympathy, repeating anything the nit-wits, which they serve as doctrine slaves, try to palm off on the sheep they hope will lead them back to power.

Awesome.  But then, Keith Olbermann usually is.  Too bad Rachel Maddow's awesome to the second power and rather outshines him sometimes, but hey.

The utterly most awesomest, hilariousest example of media assclownery, though, had to be this:

Right-wing pundit Michael Ledeen published an item this week on Barack Obama's "college thesis," which Obama allegedly wrote as a student at Columbia 25 years ago. Leeden cited some website, which ran a piece in August.

The paper was called "Aristocracy Reborn," and in the first ten pages (which were all that reporter Joe Klein -- who wrote about it for Time -- was permitted to see), the young Obama wrote:

"... the Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy."

That's quite an indictment, even for an Ivy League undergraduate.... Maybe instead of fuming about words that Rush Limbaugh never uttered, the paladins of the free press might ask the president about words that he did write.

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh picked up on Leeden's report, blasting Obama for the alleged paper.

The first sign of trouble was when Joe Klein noted that he's never seen or written about Obama's college thesis, and has "no idea where this report comes from."

The second sign of trouble was when one stopped to notice that Obama didn't write a senior thesis (though he did write a thesis-length paper on Soviet nuclear disarmament).

The third sign of trouble was when one clicked on the link that Leeden provided as support and found the word "satire."

ZOMFG.

There is a punchline.  I'm forcing you to go to Political Animal to get it.  Make sure you've secured all spillable items and swallowed all liquids before you click.

I know.  After that, Crazy Pete Hoekstra actively campaigning against his own constituents' interests and John "I Can't Even Use a Blackberry" McCain trying to fuck up net neutrality just pales in comparison.  It's hard to top that sort of stupid.


I imagine it'll take the Cons all the way until tomorrow to manage it.

Michael Moore's Easy Steps to a Better Democracy

Been wondering how you can actually start to make a difference in this fucked-up political system of ours?  Michael Moore has answers.

Go.  Read.  Act.

Your Daily Dose of Health Care Reform Stupidity

I can't wait until these assclowns pass some sort of health care reform so the endless parade of outrageous dumbfuckery can... well, it's never going to stop.  I mean, come on.  We've got Smilin' Tim Pawlenty all set and ready to opt his state right out of reform.  You know that once reform's passed, no matter in what shape or form, the Cons will go even more batshit insane than they already are.

But at least we won't have to watch all the sausage-making anymore.  It's getting nauseating.  Here we have the White House getting ready to pull the trigger on us.  Therefore, the Senate's considering pulling the trigger.  Queen Snowe's going to be spending her whole entire weekend shitting all over the very idea of a public option.  Nancy Pelosi's gone from saying the public option's totally alive to saying we might not get what we want.  In the course of a single fucking day, mind you.

Looks like telling those dithering dumbfuck Dems to get off the fucking fence and pick a side didn't go too well.

Argh.

I just hope Rep. Dingell gets through to some of these dumbshits:

In a tense, closed door caucus meeting this morning, during which House Democrats were made to go on the record on the question of whether they'd vote for a health care bill with a robust public option, some of the caucus' most nervous members got a bit of perspective from its longest serving members.

"It was really fairly simple speech," said Rep. John Dingell (D-MI). "All I did was to remind the members that the Republicans are out there to beat us by seeing to it that we accomplish nothing during this Congress especially on health care. It's exactly the same tactic, the same strategy they used in 1993. And I reminded them that that tactic took control of the House from us, because, one of the principal reasons was, we were not able to pass a health insurance bill."

Dingell tells me, "I reminded them that Democrats were divided on the issue. And I told them that if they want to come back and control the Congress they should get behind this bill."

I pointed out that there are 47 million Americans--not 35--that would be able to draw benefits under this. That's not only a moral, but an economic necessity. Because we can no longer afford the cost of health insurance... I pointed out that by 2082 or thereabout two curves will cross on a graph. The first the cost of health care the second the United States GDP. We're going to confront a massive and frightening situation.

The more immediate point, though, is that these members have made the wrong political calculation. "I told them that this country will support members that do what they think is right and go home and defend it," Dingell said, reminding them that the real danger is not that some of the bill's provisions, particularly the robust public option, might be unpopular in their districts, but that they go home empty handed.

Dingell's optimistic. "I think we're going to win--I think we very well have to win."

Keep screaming, sir.  Maybe, possibly, eventually, if you scream loud and long enough, some sense will penetrate.

Maybe.

Meanwhile, liberal Dems have taken aim directly at Rahm Emmanuel in a carefully-phrased letter.  Shorter liberal Dem letter: "Fucking lead, fucking follow, or fucking get out of the fucking way."  If they'd phrased it exactly like that, there'd be a better chance he'd get it.

Pelosi completely dissed a Tenther.  'Twas glorious.

AHIP's already facing the wrath of the White House, but now they're really in for it.  I don't think they'll survive Patriot Baby.

Reid's making a calculated gamble that might save us from the trigger.  Mebbe.

Specter thinks we're going to get cloture, without Snowe, which maybe possibly means we'll have it without a fucking trigger.

Former Sen. Chuck Hagel delivered quite the spanking to his party.  Never knew the old boy could wield the Smack-o-Matic so vigorously.

And Rep. Weiner delivered the coup de gras by calling out the 55 Cons who, while they are dead-set against public options for the rest of us, are more than happy to take advantage of government-run health care by signing up for Medicare.

This is why I do not despair.  We're having a rough day, but the fight's still on, the warriors are on the battlefield, and we might still win the war.  We shall see.

Oh, and the next time someone tells you Faux News is a legitimate news channel, ask them why one of their supposedly "fair and balanced" reporters is rallying against health care reform.  That should be amusing.

Driving While ESL

I don't even know what to say:

Of course, the local cops are calling it a "rookie mistake":

A Dallas rookie police officer erred when he cited a woman earlier this month for being a non-English speaking driver, police said.

Officer Gary Bromley issued a citation Oct. 2 to 48-year-old Ernestina Mondragon after stopping her for making an illegal U-turn in the 500 block of Easton Road, near East Northwest Highway, according to a copy of the citation.

"That's a charge that does not exist here in the city of Dallas," said department spokesman Sgt. Warren Mitchell. "Although we believe it was a sincere mistake ... there's no excuse for it."

And there was no excuse the other 39 times over the last 3 years, either.

I love cops.  I truly do.  The vast majority of them work hard, and they're good men and women who follow the law.  But it's time for Dallas to get rid of their bad apples, starting with the ones at the top of the basket.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Let's start with the outrageous stupidity before we move on to the general, shall we?  Sen. Inouye needs a lesson on just who his constituents are:

This is infuriating. If there was any doubt in your mind as to whose side the political establishment is on, this should settle it:

An amendment that would prevent the government from working with contractors who denied victims of assault the right to bring their case to court is in danger of being watered down or stripped entirely from a larger defense appropriations bill.

Multiple sources have told the Huffington Post that Sen. Dan Inouye, a longtime Democrat from Hawaii, is considering removing or altering the provision, which was offered by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and passed by the Senate several weeks ago.

Inouye's office, sources say, has been lobbied by defense contractors adamant that the language of the Franken amendment would leave them overly exposed to lawsuits and at constant risk of having contracts dry up. The Senate is considering taking out a provision known as the Title VII claim, which (if removed) would allow victims of assault or rape to bring suit against the individual perpetrator but not the contractor who employed him or her.

As a rape survivor, I've left him a rather strongly-worded message, and I'll be writing him a harsh letter and faxing it on.  Feel free to pile on.  Here's some contact info:

The telephone number for Inouye’s Washington office is (202) 224-3934. I wonder if a few calls might bring him around to honoring the intent of the huge majority of Senators who voted for the Franken amendment.

A few calls might.  If you're a fellow rape survivor, let him have it with as many of the details as you're able to share.  Let him know what it's like to not just have your body violated, but end up without the possibility of justice on top of it.

Right, then.  On with the rest of the stupid.

I think we all need something that makes us feel better after that bit of outrage.  How about Rep. Grayson calling Dick Cheney a vampire?

Chris Matthews asked Grayson what he thinks of Cheney's attacks on President Obama for "dithering" on Afghanistan.

"Well, my response is -- and by the way, I have trouble listening to what he says sometimes, because of the blood that drips from his teeth while he's talking," said Grayson. "But my response is this: He's just angry because the president doesn't shoot old men in the face. But by the way, when he was done speaking, did he just then turn into a bat and fly away?"

Even Matthews, no Cheney fan himself, was shocked: "Oh God -- we gotta keep a level here. Let me ask you this: Don't you have any Republican friends?"

Grayson laughed, and said that some of his best friends are Republicans.

I love this man.  Love love love.

Speaking of Cons, it seems their approval numbers are dropping like a stone:

CNN, releasing the results of its new poll this afternoon, reports, "The Republican Party's favorable rating among Americans is at lowest level in at least a decade, according to a new national poll."

If this doesn't make the GOP nervous, it should. According to the poll, just 36% have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party, while 54% have a negative opinion. When was the last time a CNN poll showed Republicans with a worse rating? According to the internals (pdf), it was December 1998 -- 11 years ago -- the same week House Republicans impeached then-President Bill Clinton and the GOP's favorability rating dropped to 31%.

On the other hand, a 53% majority have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party. Here's another homemade chart showing the difference between the two.

I don't know about you, but to me, that chart is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

And you know the situation's dire when even Jeb Bush is screaming at Cons that they need to wake up and smell the electoral defeat.  Awesome.

Speaking of Bush, Monkey Boy George regrets standing in front of the ol' Mission Impossible banner. 

Yup.  Still stoopid as evah.

The American public, alas, is getting dumber.  Looks like my fellow Americans need a little climate change edimicashun.

Rep. John Carter (R, of course), who's after the head of Democratic colleague Charlie Rangel, has some ethics problems of his own.  If you're planning to cast the first stone, John, it's a good thing to first determine if the walls of your house are made of glass.

What Tim Pawlenty has done to a poor, innocent Rolling Stones song is a crime against humanity.

And, finally, the stupid cherry on top: Faux News is a little unclear on the concept of what does and does not constitute stifling freedom of speech.  Luckily, Lawyers, Guns and Money is there with the snark:

The attacks on the administration and its allies for deciding to shun Fox News are so cute. This is my favorite:

In [Obama's] America there is no Constitution, there is no First Amendment, there are no principles of free speech or free press.

As all good children know, the silent treatment renders the person to whom it's administered incapable of saying anything. They can't run around shouting, "Why are you ignoring me?" or "What did I do? Please tell me!" because their tongue has been silenced by the mystical power of the treatment. It makes a person wonder what Fox will air now that their hosts have lost their words. An hour of Glenn Beck sobbing uncontrollably while pointing at a chalkboard on which the links between ACORN and his muted mouth-hole have been arranged into a misspelled anagram? Granted, they were ready to go with the sobbing and pointing before the Plague of Silence zipped his mouth and pocketed the key . . .

Damn the mystical powers of the silent treatment!  Damn them!  

If Cons and their fake news channel get any more ridiculous, I'm afraid they'll implode in a little black hole of stupidity.  We've got to be critically close to violating some physical laws here...