I was reminded of this song when a rerun of House MD showed this to be the good doctor's ringtone. If you've a mighty good man in your life, or you are one, this is dedicated to you.
And our sister site Newstalgia presents a full concert on Saturday nights, tonight J. Geils Band, Augusta, Georgia, 1975.
MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan talks to Rep. Alan Grayson about the amendment passed by the House Financial Services Committee to allow an independent audit of the Federal Reserve. If Alan Greenspan is not happy about it, I take that as a good sign they did the right thing. It only took putting this country on the edge of financial ruin that we're not out of yet for the S.O.B. to ever admit he might be wrong about anything.
Ratigan: Alright first big newsmaker of the Meeting, Democratic Alan Grayson, better known for some of his fiery comments on Republicans and health care, now taking aim at the Federal Reserve along with so many others. He says the Federal Reserve is more secretive than the CIA, and his new amendment co-sponsored by Republican Ron Paul would allow the first ever independent audit of the Federal Reserve. The amendment edged out a competing proposal from North Carolina Congressman Mel Watt who wants to limit those very audits.
Congressman Grayson now joins the Morning Meeting. Your amendment approved by the House Financial Services Committee—a huge step forward. Where do you go from here and what’s your level of confidence Representative that you can continue to addendum behind this piece of legislation?
Grayson: Where we go is to stop the secret bailouts. There have been hints and hints now for more than two years that the Fed’s been conducting huge bailouts on the scale of hundreds of billions of dollars to favor large failed banks. Now we’re going to find out all about it, and we’re going to decide whether it’s good or bad.
Yes, they're perfectly serious.
Here's the cast of characters, including:
NATE: Nate, a young black man from Detroit, Michigan, voted for Barack Obama in 2008 from an upbringing that taught him to mistrust America because of the color of his skin. As a Libertarian with a paradigm shift and a newfound understanding of the nation he loves, he is risking the anger of family and friends by joining the march against a President’s policies that would victimize the very people he loves the most.
Translation: Nate, the only relatively sane-seeming black person we could find for the film, whose key role is to help blunt the image of tea parties as an almost purely all-white phenomenon featuring angry white nationalists who have no compunction about carrying racist signs and calling the president a racist.
JACK: Jack is a father of two young children, a little league baseball coach and a health insurance agent. He risks losing his job under current healthcare reform. He is a Democrat turned Constitutionalist and the younger brother of a Vietnam veteran who is marching for his children and the future of the America he believes in.
Translation: Even though Jack has a fairly obvious motive for opposing health-care reform, he was included because the filmmakers couldn't find a health-insurance lobbyist who could convincingly portray himself as a moderately sympathetic figure.
JENNY BETH: In 2008, she and her husband lost a multi-million dollar business, were forced into bankruptcy and home foreclosure. Nine months later, she is working as a national leader in the grassroots tea party movement, organizing events and taking her message to the steps of the National Mall with the company of millions behind her.
Translation: Beth helps provide a portrait of America's most benighted victims of the Bush administration: Whole-hog ideological conservatives who made lots of money relying on conservative values (i.e., the cutthroat pursuit of profits at the expense of everything else) and who suddenly lost everything when Bush popped the housing bubble. The resulting cognitive dissonance -- "OMFG we lost our entire fortune because "conservative values" like a mania for deregulation and cutting taxes for the wealthy caused a near-collapse of the entire economic system! And now we have to rely on a liberal black man to fix the problem!!!!" -- drove them completely insane, so that now of course they think the solution is to go back and embrace the very policies that destroyed their wealth in the first place.
WILLIAM: William is a patriot renaissance man, a pastor, colonial re-enactor, painter, poet, Vietnam veteran, former Pentagon and Secret Service employee and a man of the march. He can be outrageous and funny or somber and reflective, full of antics and unpredictability. He marched for the Vietnam Memorial during the Reagan Era and this time, his journey back to Washington, DC leads him to the front lines of the march down Pennsylvania Avenue on September 12.
Translation: Plain ol' nuts.
Anyway, after the movie gets its only scheduled theatrical appearance at the FreedomWorks-sponsored D.C. debut, it's straight to DVD.
Oh, we can hardly wait.
8:09 EST: Dodd, presiding over the Senate, said the motion passed, smattering of applause. Motion is agreed to. Clerk is now reporting the bill and amendment.
And that's it for the night. Debate will begin after Thanksgiving, plus amendments, then moving on to the final cloture motion and a final vote.
8:04 EST: Cloture passes 60-39. Debate will start after Thanksgiving.
7:57 EST: Voting continuing.
7:56 EST: Clerk reading cloture motion.
The question is: Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the motion to proceed shall be brought to a close. Clerk is calling the roll.
Voting now.
7:55 EST: Vote starting 5 minutes early.
7:54 EST: Absence of a quorum noted by Reid, and the roll is being called. Vote coming soon!
7:44 EST: The American people want us to start over. All it would take is just one on the other side of the aisle to not end the debate, but change the debate.
And he's yielded.
Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) is up.
My friend, the minority leader, has had since Wednesday to read the bill. Obviously he hasn't done so.
We debate the right to live free of disease and death by giving health care for all. The road has started many times, never been completed. Merged bills have never been done before. We couldn't have got here without the help of many Senators.
As a matter of principle, that I respect, the senior Senator from Arkansas insisted we have time to read the bill. All Senators have now had ample time. That is why we are voting tonight.
I invite Republicans to join the right side of history. Around dining room tables, families are agonizing over what to sacrifice next to afford health care. Employers are wondering whether they can afford to provide health care. Americans need reform.
Debate is constant, but the only place where silence is evened considered is the Senate. Now, finally, we have the opportunity to bring this great deliberation to this body. That and nothing more is what this vote does.
A yes vote says this issue is important and the Senate should at least talk about it.
Some Republicans would like Americans to think voting to debate the bill is voting to pass the bill. Tonight's vote is only the beginning of debate. It's clear Republicans have no problem talking about health care on TV, at town hall meetings, on the radio, yet now that we have the legislation to debate, to amend, to build on, will they refuse to debate?
If we refuse to let the Senate do its job, what are we doing here? What do we fear? And who's voice to you speak for? In who's interest do you vote?
Certainly debating reform can't be more difficult than American deciding to pay their mortgage or medical bills. It can't be more upsetting than having an insurance company take away your coverage when you need it the most.
Kennedy once said let us not be afraid of debate or discussion, let us encourage it.
Lou Dobbs was interviewed on Mexico's Telemundo yesterday by Maria Celeste (h/t Andrea Nill), and she cut quickly to the point:
Celeste: You mention that this criticism and this perception, misperception of yourself, it's only in the extreme, ah, extreme left, and that might be the case in the Anglo market, but trust me, in the Hispanic world, you are viewed by many, by many people as the No. 1 enemy -- maybe because of the many inflammatory and misleading statements about undocumented immigrants that you've made throughout the years. And let me go with the first one.
The most outrageous one was blaming immigrants for a dramatic rise in leprosy cases in the United States, stating that in three years, the cases of leprosy had suddenly jumped to 7,000, and that this was largely due to the influx of undocumented immigrants. By the way, according to the United States Department of Health [and Human Services], 7,000 cases of leprosy were reported over thirty years, not three, which is a big difference.
But even after that, that was proven wrong, what you had said, you stood behind your reporting, insisting that it was accurate. Why was that?
Dobbs: No no. Let's be very clear. For one, I did not stand behind that reporting. In fact, we corrected that reporting.
And secondly, in fairness to me, if you will, I never said a word about leprosy and undocumented immigrants, as you put it. My correspondent on our broadcast ad-libbed it, and as you are very familiar with the process of an edited report, and at the end of that she referred to a source with whom she had been speaking, and she said at the end of that report -- ad-libbed it, that is, without script or preparation, but simply said it -- that there were thousands of people on the registry for leprosy in the United States and those had shot up dramatically over the course of three years.
Dobbs is just baldfacedly lying. He did indeed defend that reporting, he did not correct it at any time, and Romans' didn't simply say "those had shot up dramatically over the course of three years," she clearly indicated that they had skyrocketed from 900 to 7,000 cases -- a grotesquely false claim.
Let's roll the tape, first back to April 14, 2005, when Dobbs first trotted out the phony leprosy story.
[H/t Heather]
Blanche Lincoln was complaining today about all those outside group ads that were attacking her, but in the end she says she'll vote for cloture today.
Blue America has been running another massive media blitz in Arkansas demanding give us an up or down vote.
Lincoln: For months now groups from outside my state have assigned various motives for my deliberations on health care and tried to define the meaning of my vote. According to the last tally there has been more than 3.2 million dollars worth of media ads that have been purchased from my home state of Arkansas by groups from outside of our state. certainly none by me. And most with my name in the ad. These outside groups seem to think this is all about my re-election. I simply think they don't know me very well. I'm focused on my opportunity to to influence the final version of health care reform legislation in a way that most helps my state. That's why the people of Arkansas sent me here.
--I will not allow my decision on this vote to be dictated by pressure from my political opponent nor the liberal interest groups from outside Arkansas that threaten with their money political opposition. The multitudes of emails and ads that we have received, Unbelievable types of threats about what they're going to do and how they're going to behave.
She's trying to feign shock that her name showed up in ads targeted at her in her own state over this issue. Jaysus. Our problem is that we know her too well. If she were truly representing her state, then she would get behind the public option and stop joining with the Republicans, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Lieberman to kill it. She does have a D in her title and she should start acting like one. Why is Lincoln so against the public option and using right-wing language to define it?
She has an opportunity to be part of a great moment in our history. She's a politician looking to survive. She hates that she's running for re-election at this time. Well Blanche, sometimes you have to do the right thing and not put your own political career before the entire country's health care. Right now she's saying she won't vote for it. If she joins with the Holy Joes, then she votes at her own political peril.
Here's Blue America's new ad that is running now.
Here's our Blue America Act Blue fundraising page on health care.
(h/t Heather for the video)
It should come as a surprise to no one that some wingnuts think it's cool to use the Bible to promote veiled threats against the President. Disgusting.
But using online personalized item sites to spread the word? Apparently this Maddow segment from Thursday had an impact in ending that. Cafepress is now following Zazzle.com and pulling the "Pray for Obama" merchandise that clearly expressed a wish for his demise. The CafePress website announced yesterday:
This morning we made the decision to remove all Psalms 109:8 designs from CafePress.
General consensus has proven that the design does point to a broader interpretation of the Psalm and thus has been deemed inappropriate for sale at CafePress.
We try to create an atmosphere of self-expression. Many of the things we encounter are not black and white, but grey. When the dialogue is civil, we want to let the larger community work things out rather than making an uninformed ruling. The dialogue has played out and common sentiment has reached agreement – this merchandise is not appropriate.
Thank you all for your input.
Transcript of Rachel Maddow's segment below the cut:
Plunderbund takes you to cold and rainy Dublin Ohio at midnight to see the saddest people on planet Earth, those that camp out all-night just to get an autographed copy of Sarah Palin's book. Hilarity ensues.
Warning--video slightly nsfw.
Meanwhile in Noblesville, Indiana fans who waited all day to get their books signed were less than pleased when Palin just left without signing their copies.
Sarah Palin continues to delude herself -- or at least, is desperately hoping to continue deluding her fans, which isn't very hard to do -- that she, as the two-year governor of Alaska and former mayor of Wasilla, has more "executive" experience than either Barack Obama or Joe Biden. At least, that was what she tried telling Bill O'Reilly in the second part of her interview shown last night:
O'Reilly: You pointed out his [Obama's] lack of experience -- you don't have that much experience. You walked away from the governorship after, what, two years? Two and a half years?
Palin: Going into my lame-duck session -- my fourth legislative session -- and not wanting to put Alaskans through a lame-duck session --
O'Reilly: OK, but is it fair for you to criticize Obama's lack of experience when somebody could make the same criticism about you on the national stage.
Palin: If you're talking about executive experience, I would put my experience up against his any day of the week. I have been elected to local office since 1992, and was a city manager, strong-mayor form of government, was a chief executive of the state, and was an oil and gas regulator. There was some good experience there that could have been put to use in a vice presidential ticket. We've to remember too that I wasn't running for president.
O'Reilly: No, but that's the key question. Because John McCain is up there in years, you had to be qualified to take that office over.
Palin: Right. But I -- I'm saying I was running for vice president, just like Joe Biden had been running for vice president. I never once heard you or anybody else question Joe Biden and his experience.
O'Reilly: Well, he's got a lot of experience.
That's the whole absurdity of Palin claiming she has more "executive" experience, as though being mayor of a small town places her on the same level of experience as a United States Senator. The issue of experience isn't related to the organizational context, but rather the scale of it: Joe Biden has nearly a half-century of wrestling with national and international issues -- the kind a president has to deal with -- and has an established track record there.
When Palin was Wasilla's mayor (and before that a council member), the issues she was dealing with involved placement of a sewage-treatment plant and deciding whether someone's driveway needed paving. Oh,and let's not forget the vital issue of building a new gym with taxpayer dollars.
But the interview reached its real nadir when Palin tried to explain why voters would want to vote for her. It's possibly the most garbled, incoherent piece of anti-intellectual right-wing populist nonsense I've ever heard:
O'Reilly: Let me be bold and fresh again. Do you believe you are smart enough, and incisive enough, intellectual enough, to handle the most powerful job in the world?
Palin: I believe that I am because I have common sense, and I have, I believe, the values that are reflective of so many American values. And I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the, um, the, ah -- kind of spineless -- a spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with elite Ivy League education and -- fact resume that's based on anything but hard work and private-sector, free-enterprise principles. Americans could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership. I'm not saying that that has to be me.
No, it definitely doesn't have to be you, Sarah. Indeed, I think it's safe to say that this level of intellectual incoherence would be a real danger to the country.
Cartoon from Walt Handelsman at Newsday (reg. required for some pages).
No one can predict how today will go, there is some hope that since the Senate likes to appear to be the royalty of the Congress, we might avoid some of the circus antics that Saturday in the House brought. It's unlikely anyone will use procedural objections over and over to silence Barbara Boxer or Olympia Snowe.
It's an open thread for what you're seeing in, and thinking about, today's procedures.
Can Harry pull it off - without giving away the store? Of course we'll be covering today's events here at C&L, so stay around for updates:
Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tonight faces the first big test of whether he can keep his Democratic colleagues united behind health-care legislation.
Senators plan to take a vote at 8 p.m. Washington time that would clear the way for debate on the most sweeping changes to the U.S. health system since the 1965 creation of the Medicare program for the elderly and disabled.
With every Senate Republican opposing the legislation, Reid can’t afford a single defection from his 60-member caucus to enable the chamber to take up the bill when Congress returns from a weeklong Thanksgiving recess. By late yesterday, Democrats had locked up almost all the votes they needed.
“We’re not assuming a thing,” Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, told reporters. “We’re working hard to bring all Democrats together.”
This morning my crazy thing locator pointed to this pro-Palin oped by Mary Matalin, who pooh-poohs complaints in Palin's book about the rough, nasty and foul-mouthed staffers inside the McCain campaign:
Time is the most valuable commodity on a campaign and you just can't waste it thinking about how to choose your words carefully or get your job done more diplomatically. If someone isn't in tears every day, that day wasn't all it could be advancing the campaign. I once witnessed an experienced (big) man slap a professional female colleague across the face over an ad buy... and no one thought anything of it, starting with the woman. In fact, she would have been insulted if anyone told her she should have been insulted.
Yes, politics is a hard job full of lots of pressure, long days, and high-stakes high-stress decision making. And many of the personalities attracted to that kind of work are narcissistic, most to the point of tantrums, and more than a few to the point of violence, and think it's no big deal. Matalin isn't just dishing about a specific instance here; she's pimping her insider importance--you bet she can remember just exactly the specific "ad buy" mistake that "deserved" the workplace assault and battery--and contrasting that insider importance to Palin's relative political naivete.
Matalin should be ashamed of herself, her politics, and her "professionalism" on a daily basis. That she actually points to an instance of physical assault of a female employee by a male superior as "the way it is in a campaign--get over it" just puts everything that's wrong with her argument in high relief. Does anyone wonder what would happen if that kind of thing happened in the private sector, or the outrage if a former corporate employee reported such physical assault as "acceptable in the business we're in" hearsay on the pages of CNN's website?
A Tiny Revolution: Did Rumsfeld tour a KGB torture museum to pick up useful tips?
Welcome Back to Pottersville: Oh! That Kaiser Permanente...
Raw Story: Skeptics claim stolen emails prove global warming is a hoax
The Progressive Puppy: Fundies plan attacks on lesbian Mayoral candidate during runoff
I Am TRex: How the bastards do it
NotionsCapital: Expense Account Adultry
The appeal of Sarah Palin, worth a thousand words. From Zaius Nation. Open thread below.
This Devo two-fer from 1980 is a hoot! Girl U Want is by far the strongest of the two songs, Devo at their best. Please forgive the video quality and the occasional audio glitch.
I always felt that Devo was more influential than they really got credit for. They have been honored by plenty of bands -- Nirvana, Soundgarden, Sepultura and Pearl Jam, just to name a few.
