Archive for September, 2009
The Savior Of Healthcare Reform
Max Baucus is obviously conducting a controlled experiment to see how much bullshit he can serve up about his healthcare reform bill, and its bipartisan prospects, before the media and the Democratic Party are willing to call him an out-and-out charlatan. So, with the perfectly straight face that comes from years and years of fooling [...]
Nullus?
File under great headlines: I think you have to pay extra for that kind of thing. Bookmark on DeliciousDigg this postShare on Facebookshare via RedditShare with StumblersTweet about itBookmark in BrowserTell a friend
60 Vote Threshold
Only for guns on trains: The Senate voted Wednesday to permit passengers on the Amtrak passenger railroad to transport handguns in their checked baggage. The proposal, approved by a 68-30 vote, seeks to give Amtrak riders rights comparable to those enjoyed by airline passengers, who are permitted to transport firearms provided that they declare they [...]
Embarrassing Failure Or Lucrative Success?
Max Baucus has been negotiating in secret with Republicans for months. Almost single-handedly, he has managed to delay the passage of healthcare legislation for months while holding out the chimera of bipartisan support. In the meantime, by an amazing coincidence, the forces of opposition have continued to gather steam—conservative opposition, as well as opposition by [...]
British Justice
Three British Muslims regarded as the key participants in the liquid explosives plot were sentenced on Monday to extremely long sentences by British standards: In a case that altered airport security worldwide, three British Muslims were imprisoned Monday for at least 30 years each for a plot to kill thousands by blowing up trans-Atlantic airliners [...]
Tripling The Money
Remember Sarah Palin’s alleged “triple the money” campaign? She’s all set to take her first baby steps in pursuit thereof: When Hong Kong-based brokerage group CLSA announced that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin would be the keynote speaker at its annual conference, many observers wondered if the arrangement was just some sort of joke, noting [...]
Go Figure
A new Pew Research survey finds that independents give virtually identical favorability/unfavorability ratings to CNN and Fox News. CNN comes in at 55% favorable to 22% unfavorable; Fox News scores 55% favorable to 24% unfavorable. This really baffles me. CNN, for all its faults, still dabble in news. Fox News not only traffics almost entirely [...]
I Will In Fact Pray for This
Santorum Asks For Prayers About 2012 – The Atlantic (9/13/09) Speaking to a room full of prominent US Catholic leaders Friday night, [former...wtf?] Senator Rick Santorum was challenged to run for the Republican Presidential nominaion. Responding to a room already thick with applause, Santorum revealed that he was indeed “thinking about it” but asked for [...]
Patron Saint of Buggery?
No one can accuse the Roman Catholic church of learning from experience. Long years after fumbling its way through handling a sexual abuse scandal in the U.S., the church finds itself in the first stages of a sexual abuse scandal in Italy. And it seems determined to follow exactly the same script that brought it [...]
Reporting The News (Or Not)
Here’s AP reporting a multiple murder in Michigan. It starts out as straight news (just reporting the facts, ma’am): A man fatally shot an anti-abortion activist near a Michigan high school Friday, drove to a gravel pit and shot its owner to death and planned to kill a third man, but was arrested before he [...]