Saturday, July 04, 2009

So what are you doing today?

Posted by Kevin K. on 07/04/09 at 01:55 PM
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Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more ridiculous, along comes Sarah Palin’s vacationing spokesperson Meg Stapleton. Her interview with Anderson Cooper last night was a continuation of the steaming pile of stupid we witnessed earlier from her boss, including another forced and even more bizarre basketball analogy:

Do you say then that a point guard charging down a basketball court is not leading when he passes the ball or she passes the ball? [...] When someone is driving down a basketball court, which is her analogy and I think it speaks well to where she is, and that is, I can’t effect change right now because of the political climate that’s there.  I’m going to pass the ball.  I’m going around it. And we still all have the same common hoop, but I’m going around the block and I’m passing the ball at this time because it’s best for Alaska.

“And we still all have the same common hoop.” That fucking rocks a million different ways. Cooper’s facial expressions during that mess were priceless. Highly recommended.  The whole interview is great. You can watch it all here:

MORE: As Tom65 notes in the comments, Anderson Cooper makes a good point while asking Stapleton, her spokesperson, what she’s doing in NY while Palin was rushing out her rambling and incoherent announcement in Alaska. That makes no sense at all, Blackberries or not. The few knuckleheads who are lunging to her defense had better be careful, because the scandal rumors (here and here) are the best explanation for what happened yesterday. Even Palin isn’t that reckless. This was a rush job and a low-traffic blogger photoshopping a picture of her and Trig wasn’t the reason for it. I think we’ll find out early next week.

Posted by Kevin K. on 07/04/09 at 04:25 AM
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A year or so ago, Ms. YAFB and I went down to our local pub for a drink and met one of our neighbors, John. “Aha! Just the people I wanted to see,” he said, ominously. “What are you doing next week?”

In retrospect, we should maybe have treated his enquiry with a little more suspicion. What he was driving at was that at the last minute some people had dropped out of a little sailing expedition he was running on the square-rigger TS Royalist, and they were now desperately short of crew. The fact that Ms. YAFB’s and my experience afloat had hitherto been limited to ferry rides, rowing a dinghy round fishing lochs, and the occasional powerboat trip on Loch Lomond was not an excuse he would brook. “Can we give you an answer tomorrow? - We’ll need to see if we can reorganize work,” we pleaded. Twenty minutes later, we were booked up.

Posted by YAFB on 07/04/09 at 04:05 AM
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I just watched the Palin speech in its entirety. It is the funniest thing I have ever seen. Nobody warned me about the ducks and geese ("and I asked the most important people, my children what they thought"-- SQUAWWWWK! HONK! ERRRRRACCKKK! SKRAKKKKKKKKK!!!)

“Rambling” is a kind word for the disjointed word salad she offered up.

Know what would have helped her not seem quite such a birdbrain? A TELEPROMPTER. Like the grownups use.

Posted by Mrs. Polly on 07/04/09 at 03:18 AM
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Friday, July 03, 2009

Oh, there’s a crappy concentrate product you could buy—just add Bacardi rum!—from Barcardi. But better to make your own. This is the closest recipe I’ve found to Captain Tony’s Saloon in Key West, which is my benchmark for the Platonic Ideal of rum runners. If you know of a better one, please share it in comments:

RUM RUNNER

(serves several regular folks or one extremely drunk person)

• 9 oz dark rum (I use Appleton)
• 4.5 oz blackberry brandy
• 4.5 oz banana liqueur
• Healthy splash of Grenadine
• 9 oz. orange juice
• 9 oz. pineapple juice

Regarding the hurricane glass: The company I worked for during Florida’s hurricane summer of 2004 gave all employees a commemorative glass. I still see my neighbor’s roof flying off and remember the sensation of making coffee on the grill every time I see it. Good times!

Anyhoo, enjoy your rum runners, and remember to leave all your most salacious Governor Palin rumors in comments. Happy 4th!

Posted by Betty Cracker on 07/03/09 at 09:37 PM
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Well I’ll be damned:

Gov. Sarah Palin to resign her office

by Andrew Hinkelman and Lori Tipton
Friday, July 3, 2009

ANCHORAGE, Alaska—Gov. Sarah Palin will resign her office in a few weeks, she said during a news conference at her Wasilla home Friday morning.

Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will be inaugurated at the Governor’s Picnic at Pionner Park in Fairbanks on Saturday, July 25, Palin said.

There was no immediate word as to why she will resign, though speculation has been rampant that the former vice presidential candidate is gearing up for a run at the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Palin made the announcement flanked by Parnell and most, if not all, of her cabinet.

Parnell ran unsuccessfully against Rep. Don Young in the Republican primary last year.

The stunning announcement by Palin opens the floodgates for the 2010 gubernatorial race. Speculation that Palin might not seek re-election had fueled further conjecture of who might run.

The initial speculation was that she would announce she would not run for re-election. That would indicate she was gearing up for a presidential run. But resignation? Seems like that would hurt her national ambitions rather than helping them. It would be irresponsible not to speculate on the reasons behind this development.

Posted by Betty Cracker on 07/03/09 at 03:35 PM
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Heh.

[H/T: TPM]

Posted by Betty Cracker on 07/03/09 at 11:09 AM
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Thursday, July 02, 2009

And by promising I mean as in, yeah, it could totally work!

Despite some early confusion about the cost of the bill and the extent to which it would provide coverage, the details are now becoming clear. 

Ezra Klein provides an overall summary:

The short version is this: CBO estimates that by 2019 the bill will cover 21 million people at a cost of $597 billion. But—and this is important—the HELP Committee’s bill doesn’t include the Medicaid expansion, because Medicaid is under the sole jurisdiction of the Finance Committee. But if Medicaid is expanded to 150 percent, it will cover an additional 20 million at a cost of about $1 trillion. Add in the savings that Finance is expected to get from reforming Medicare and you’re looking at a bill that will cost $1 trillion to $1.3 trillion and cover 42 million people (which would mean 97 percent of the legal population in 2019 would have health insurance) by 2019.

The proposal is able to control costs by imposing an employer mandate - $750 fine per full-time employee per year if you don’t provide health insurance coverage.  For part-time employees the cost is $375.  (Companies with fewer than 50 employees would be exempt from this.) The bill also provides a public plan option, expands Medicaid, provides subsidies for families making too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford health insurance and prevents insurance companies from disqualifying people with pre-existing conditions or from charging widely disparate rates to people based on age or health history.  And I did not see a provision for taxing employer paid health benefits as had been speculated previously.  Finally the bill provides many incentives for increasing preventive care and improving the quality of health care provided.

In short, me likey!  And so does President Obama.

A couple of weeks ago the Congressional Budget Office scored the cost of the bill and came up with figures that indicated it would be much more expensive and cover a lot fewer people (causing certain Repub senators to go ballistic).  It has been clarified now that they scored an incomplete version and the new cost estimates are much more accurate.

This bill and the companion bill from the Finance Committee are close enough to the House version that reconciliation shouldn’t be a painful procedure.  The key, of course, is to get it passed by the Senate.  Here’s where we come in again.  Call, e-mail, fax, Tweet or just shout it out to your Senators that they need to step up to the plate and support this very realistic and badly needed legislation!  Folks are dying for lack of health care.  And many who are not dying are living lives of reduced quality because of lack of access to care and/or medications.  Mr. Reid, that is a cause that is well worth flexing your muscles for.

Posted by marindenver on 07/02/09 at 06:03 PM
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Well, it’s official. The Senate majority leader is not actually a human being; he is the jokes Firedoglake makes about him given flesh. Like The Dark Half if M.U. Timothy Hutton had no charisma and farmed out the killing to insurers.

Posted by gil mann on 07/02/09 at 01:30 PM
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The new one-minute ad from Our Country Deserves Better PAC (mouthful!) compares Obama to Ahmadinejad and Hitler and still finds time to shiv ACORN (BLACKS WITH CLIPBOARDS!). It’s like the Tang crystals version of the Glenn Beck show. It puts the “dense” back in “condensed”:

[hat tip StrangeAppar8us]

Posted by Kevin K. on 07/02/09 at 06:56 AM
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It’s early, but we have a winner. From Whiskey Fire:

Congratulations are in order for Jonah Goldberg, who has discovered a way to be oppressed by a thesaurus.

Posted by Kevin K. on 07/02/09 at 06:51 AM
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...making sense again:

Posted by Kevin K. on 07/02/09 at 12:27 AM
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Good.

Posted by gil mann on 07/02/09 at 12:09 AM
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Wednesday, July 01, 2009

One of the most annoying things about being an atheist is the way believers accuse you of that which they themselves are guilty of. Adherence to dogma! Unwillingness to brook dissent! No sense of humor! Martyr complex! Sorry, faith-havers, you’re engaging in a little something we call projec…

I would not consider anyone who donates money to a good cause to qualify for the “worst person” list. As one YouTube commenter stated “Personally, I think the person who gave the generous amount of 10,000 should be appreciated for their generosity. . .”

Hey, do you mind? I’m trying to…

Posted by gil mann on 07/01/09 at 08:58 PM
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A few interesting things to report on, some funny, one, well, we’ll start with that and you can judge for yourselves.

Former CIA person and current crazy person Michael Scheuer, speaking to another crazy person, Glenn Beck, actually expressed his wish to see Obama bin Laden detonate a major weapon in the U.S. JUST TO SHOW EVERYONE!!!

Listen for yourself:

Kind of takes your breath away a little.

via Crooks and Liars.

So, after that, I’m ready for something funny. 

The long article in Vanity Fair (titled “It Came from Wasilla” /snark) about Sarah Palin and the presidential campaign and all the infighting and name calling by staffers about her has sparked some great contemperaneous name callling and fighting, especially between Bill Kristol and Steve Schmidt.  Here’s an example:

Asked about the accusation, Schmidt fired back in an e-mail: “I’m sure John McCain would be president today if only Bill Kristol had been in charge of the campaign.”

“After all, his management of [former Vice President] Dan Quayle’s public image as his chief of staff is still something that takes your breath away,” Schmidt continued. “His attack on me is categorically false.”

Make some popcorn, settle back and read the whole thing at Politico.

Posted by marindenver on 07/01/09 at 06:29 PM
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