Tuesday Open Thread
It’s Tuesday and it still feels like spring. I think I’m starting to get used to this weather. So, are we ready for an open thread?
P.T. Barnum said there’s a sucker born every minute and I guess he’s right about that:
Instead, two glass vials purportedly containing the ghosts of two dead people sold for $1,983 at an auction that ended Monday night.
The “ghosts” were put up for bidding by Avie Woodbury from the southern city of Christchurch [New Zealand]. She said they were captured in her house and stored in glass vials with stoppers and dipped in holy water, which she says “dulls the spirits’ energy.”
She said they were the spirits of an old man who lived in the house during the 1920s, and a powerful, disruptive little girl who turned up after a session with a spirit-calling Ouija board. Since an exorcism at the property last July led to their capture, there has been no further spooky activity in the house, she said.
The short political career and fantastical flameout of Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY29):
Massa’s conspiracy theory is not only at odds with his own remarks from last week, they’re also belied by the record. The ethics inquiry was initiated in early February. In order for the conspiracy theory to be true, Democratic leaders would have needed to know at the time that a Massa vacancy would improve the arithmetic on the final health care vote. It’s far-fetched, to put it mildly.
We’re also starting to get a better sense of what, exactly, his “salty” language constituted. Massa believes the ethics investigation stems from a comment he made to aide at a New Year’s Eve wedding party, when he apparently told a male staffer that “what I really ought to be doing is fracking you.” (Whether this is actually the basis for the investigation is unclear.) He also acknowledged an incident from his Navy years when he walked in on a male roommate masturbating, and offered to “help with that.”
Regardless, after initially taking responsibility for his own “difficulties,” Massa has now decided that his missteps are his party’s fault, and he’s lashing out wildly in the hopes of punishing his perceived Democratic enemies. That will apparently include Massa joining Fox News’ Glenn Beck on the air today, for a full-hour anti-Democratic, anti-reform tirade.
His story has changed from day to day and now has turned into a massive conspiracy theory against him by the Prince of Darkness, Rahm Emmanuel (include a fight while both were naked in the shower). I feel mostly just sad about this. I’ve actually met Eric Massa (he attended the first Netroots Nation, then Yearly Kos conference) and impressed a lot of people with his passion, especially for health care reform. I’m really not sure why the right is embracing him but the right accepts a lot of discredited and dishonest figures so I guess he fits right in, then.
First gay marriages performed in DC today!!
The Massa story just got worse!
I’ll bet Larry King and Glenn Beck are thrilled he’s going to be on their shows tonight.
Someone somewhere is pitching a TV exec for a new TV reality show to star Jim Bunning and Eric Massa. I can really see this. Not sure what its theme would be, but it is crazy enough to get on TV.
But I bet this isn’t the end of it, either. Massa is working overtime to deflect something and good on whoever leaked this just before tonite’s performances. There will be another tale of why he resigned tonite, I’m thinking.
Someone needs to pitch a reality show with Massa, Foley, Craig and McGreevy. Any title suggestions? I’m thinking “Closet Survivor”.
Well if it’s on at the same time as “The Family on C Street” I’ll have to DVR it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/us/09scotus.html?ref=us
looks like Fred Phelps is headed to the Supreme Court.
I hope someone protests his funeral.
Someone needs to pitch a reality show with Massa, Foley, Craig and McGreevy. Any title suggestions? I’m thinking “Closet Survivor”.
They could be like a Whats My Line panel where they ask contestants questions and have to guess which one is gay. The contestants would win cash for fooling the panel one way or the other.
Or…
They could have a show like The View where they sit around dishing on other political figures, and at the end of the show – out somebody.
It would be must-see TV.
There could be a Trump-like pronouncement: “Congressman Smithers – you’re gay!” And then they could try to get the lucky fella on the phone.
In a remark at the 2010 Legislative Conference for National Association of Counties, Nancy Pelosi urged the passage of the health care bill saying: “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy. ”
that’s right, pass it first, then read it.
Markos just compared “reprehensible” Kucinich and the other bill-killers to Nader.
“He’s not elected to grandstand. He’s not elected run for President every four years.
“He’s not representing the uninsured in his district.”
On Lawrence O’Donnell.
Markos is right. Purists do not care about policy or the people. They care about themselves and how holier-than-thou they are.
Progressives who entertain purist notions need to think about this one thing: if HCR goes down to defeat, it will be dead as a policy for the next generation, if not longer. If it cannot be down now with a Democratic President and overwhelming majorities in Congress, when bills have already been passed in both houses of Congress, than it will never be passed.
If HCR goes down to defeat because there is no public option in it, the blame is with Obomba and no one else. And your “dead for a generation” is just like Bush scaring people about WMD. They are both lies.
Obomba..,clever. It is like Obama only Obamba. Take that Kenyan usurper!
And your “dead for a generation” is just like Bush scaring people about WMD. They are both lies.
Because, after all, significant health care reform reaches a floor vote almost every year.
[I know it’s wrong to feed the trolls, but some statements are so affirmatively idiotic that resistance fails.]
It’s nice to see that anonone finally got his pony, albeit a one-trick pony.
One trick is better than none, Nemski. Speaking of “affirmatively idiotic,” I am glad that you can predict the next 25 years of legislation, Manifold. You must have been sure that there were WMD in Iraq, too. And Jason, sometimes it is easier to spell things “foneticly.”
But aren’t you looking into a crystal ball to predict the future as well, A1? Kill the bill and then…?
So the GOP finally has a legit candidate for Congress, according to Grapevine: Michelle Rollins.
And Delaware voters collectively ask: Who the hell is Michelle Rollins?
I think Michelle Rollins will do as well as Charlie Copeland would have done – that is, not that well.
I’m kind of amazed at people who think we can spend a year working on health care legislation, go through the Summer of Spittle, then just kill the bill and pretend that we’ll start back up. If we kill the bill, the bill is dead. We’re not suddenly going to take up single payer. No way Democrats will want to take up a fight that big after losing a big fight.
I do see that if we get a bill, we can start another fight for the public option.
pandora, I think this bill is worse than doing nothing in regards to real reform, and so my “and then…” is the status quo. If that happens, I think that the political pressure will continue to build rapidly for a single-payer public option bill – real HCR, in other words.
People can try to use fear to pass this fake HCR bill by saying it won’t come up again for “a generation,” but given the strong polling for real HCR and an aging population, there is nothing to support that fear-mongering. People aren’t going to wait that long again, and the government can’t afford to.
Fine, but you’re still predicting, just like everybody else. Truth is no one knows what will happen if the bill passes or not. You’re predicting a public outcry at the status quo to bring about single-payer/public option. I’m predicting a public outcry to build on the bill to add a single-payer/public option. Our end game is the same. How we achieve that goal is anybody’s guess.
I lean towards passing the bill because, despite its flaws, it makes health care a right, and once the public sees it this way they’ll want to make it better. No one will be arguing for allowing pre-existing conditions and rescission to return. They’ll want more, not less. At least that’s what I predict will happen.
pandora, here is one place that we disagree – this bill does not “makes health care a right” at all. All it does it make it against the law not to purchase private health insurance – that’s it. If you can’t afford to pay for the high deductibles after paying the insurance company, then you don’t get treatment.
There are many families in this county that are not going to be able to afford to pay 1 month of income (8%) for mandated health insurance and also have money left over to pay the deductibles for actually getting healthcare services when they need them. So their payment to the insurance company represents pure profit.
So, do I have this straight, A1’s plan is the following:
– Kill the health care bill
– Wait for the public outcry for public option/single payer
Also, the new single payer plan must be less than 8% of people’s yearly income.
Any timeline on this?
You’ve been brainwashed, UI. The health care reform bill isn’t reform – it doesn’t guarantee affordable health care.
I have no problem with 8% mandate if it is all going toward paying for actual healthcare services where people are guaranteed treatment like it would in a public plan. I don’t think the government should be extorting money from people for private insurance companies.
any update on that list of senators saying they want a public option in the reconciliation bill?
The last I saw, the list was up to 37 senators. Kaufman is on it, but not Carper.
Okay… say we pass the bill. Won’t the outcry for improving those areas you mentioned, A1, be deafening? Won’t we be bombarded with stories of its flaws with demands to fix those things while keeping the good stuff? I’m having trouble seeing people demanding a return to the status quo. Couldn’t spotlighting these flaws lead to a public option? Again, just my prediction.
Perhaps, pandora, but to institute the injustice of using the government as an enforcer to extort money from families for private corporate profits and thereby denying those families desperately needed funds that they earned for their own living expenses isn’t worth the risk. Besides, do you think the insurance companies are going to cut back or increase their lobbying efforts if this gets passed?