...to vote! White lace and promises...

There are a bunch of votes still left to take in the Senate. How many, you ask?

Ezra Klein knows:

Louisville, Ky.: Ezra, can you shed some light on the process involved in moving the Health-Care bill through the Senate? I've heard bits and pieces about number of votes required, but would like some clarification about: voting to block filibuster in the Senate, taking the bill back to a joint Senate-House conference, then back to the floor for final vote. Would you expand on this? Thanks.

Ezra Klein: Sure. Next move is the Finance Committee vote on Tuesday: that requires a bare majority of the committee (I think that means 11 votes, but that's just memory). Then Reid and the Democratic leadership blend the HELP and Finance bills into one bill. That doesn't require any votes. Then the bill comes to the floor. It'll need 60 votes against a filibuster, and 51 votes in favor of the legislation.

Then we have to deal with the House bills. Do you have a headache? People are becoming very irritable in America. Haven't you noticed? The health-care debate and the economic situation is really, really making life miserable for most of America.

A kiss for luck and we're on our way...

Before the rising sun we fly...

So many roads to choose...

We start out walking and learn to run...

Have you wondered who started the whole euthanasia talking point going? Where did it originate and why was it put there? Of all the silly things.

It was Republican Johnny Isakson from Georgia who introduced the Soylent Green amendment in the Senate bill because he learned his lessons well from the Terri Schiavo incident. And he's shocked that conservatives have taken his amendment and made a mockery of it.

The most awesome Digby has the story:

Ezra found a semi-sane Republican on the "The Dingoes Want Moy Bayby" controversy. He's Johnny Isakson of Georgia, who turns out to be the guy who put the Soylent Green amendment in the Senate bill:

Is this bill going to euthanize my grandmother? What are we talking about here?

What we're talking about in the health care debate mark-up, one of the things I talked about was that the most money spent on anyone is spent usually in the last 60 days of life and that's because an individual is not in a capacity to make decisions for themselves. So rather than getting into a situation where the government makes those decisions, if everyone had an end-of-life directive or what we call in Georgia "durable power of attorney," you could instruct at a time of sound mind and body what you want to happen in an event where you were in difficult circumstances where you're unable to make those decisions.

This has been an issue for 35 years. All 50 states now have either durable powers of attorney or end-of-life directives and it's to protect children or a spouse from being put into a situation where they have to make a terrible decision as well as physicians from being put into a position where they have to practice defensive medicine because of the trial lawyers. It's just better for an individual to be able to clearly delineate what they want done in various sets of circumstances at the end of their life.

How did this become a question of euthanasia?

I have no idea. I understand -- and you have to check this out -- I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin's web site had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts. You're putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don't know how that got so mixed up.

You're saying that this is not a question of government. It's for individuals.

It empowers you to be able to make decisions at a difficult time rather than having the government making them for you...read on

Keep reading the piece to find out Why is the state of Georgia trying to kill your grandmother? Where will it end?

Why haven't the media interviewed Johnny Isakson dozens of times so the truth can get out to America? Instead, we have crazy people yelling Beckerwocky and shouting down the town halls.

Good job, Ezra, for going to the source. Your pals at the WaPo can learn something.

Ezra Klein writes from his new gig at the Washington Post: Should California Get a Bailout?

That said, a lot of companies that proved too big to fail weren't too big to change. Wall Street was given compensation caps. GM had to renegotiate its labor contracts. If Washington is going to bail out the Golden State, it should make the money contingent on structural reforms that leave the state better able to balance budgets in the future.

This should be like an IMF intervention (maybe Simon Johnson has some thoughts?). California's legislature is in a strange position: It needs a two-thirds vote to raise taxes but also has to fund ballot propositions that require a simple majority of an uninterested public. The majority party in the legislature, in other words, can neither control how much money it raises nor how much money it spends. That's not a sustainable state of affairs

Howie Klein:

I think President Obama should direct his staff to think about bailing out California instead, and let the Europeans borrow the billions of dollars they need directly from the Chinese and leave us out of it. We have-- largely because of corrupt hacks like Rahm NAFTA Emanuel-- enough problems right here at home.

The Campaign Silo writes:

Funding the IMF: White House Should Honor Left’s Critique, Allow for Conditionality Review

Digby says:

"This bail-out for European banks by the American taxpayer is such a bad idea that they had to attach it to a "support the troops" emergency supplemental in order to get it passed.

Dear President Obama, please help California. We have a major league moron for a Governor and the 2/3 vote needed to make any substantial changes in the legislature is killing us. Stan Van Gundy's horrendous coaching of last night's Laker-Magic game is nothing compared with what we have to deal with.

The Mahablog: The GOP Advantage: Stupid is easy. Smart is hard.

The G Spot: Health Care, Obama, and the perils of post-partisanship

Faithful Progressive: New McCain ads based upon other classic Russian novels

The Root: It Breaks A Village

Right Wing Watch: "New Evangelical" Warren just like the old ones. He calls pro choice pols "holocaust deniers."

Ezra Klein: The rich define the rich

(click for larger image)

BEIJING - AUGUST 10: President of the United States, George W. Bush holds up the American Flag the wrong way before wife Laura Bush instructs him to turn it around at the swimming arena at the National Aquatics Center during day 2 of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on August 10, 2008 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

Write your own caption.

The Washington Post, for reasons that defy comprehension, published a 1,700-word thought piece yesterday on women in America being dumb, shallow, and generally kind of pathetic. The author, Charlotte Allen, made her spectacularly dumb case with the kind of nonsense one might expect from a misogynistic child — women are bad drivers, they have physically smaller brains, they’re awful at math, they have bad taste in entertainment, etc.

The problem, it seems to me, is not Allen. Her foolish attack on women is easy to dismiss as petty nonsense, best suited for a He-Man Woman-Hater’s Club blog. Instead, the fault lies with Washington Post editors who thought Allen’s anti-feminist hit-job deserved to be published on the front page of the paper’s Outlook section.

The WaPo’s Outlook editor took a moment to respond to criticism.

“If it insulted people, that was not the intent,” Outlook editor John Pomfret told me this morning, calling the piece “tongue-in-cheek.” […]

Pomfret said that being an opinion article, he’s not surprised readers reacted to it strongly. But added: “Perhaps it wasn’t packaged well enough to make it clear that it was tongue-in-cheek.”

I found it hard to believe Pomfret would publish such tripe. I find it even harder to believe this is his explanation for such poor judgment.

Continue reading »

Happy Saturday, rascals and rogues. Melissa McEwan of Shakesville, coming to you one last time with bits and baubles from around the blogosphere. Thanks so much to Mike for giving me the opportunity to spend some time with you, and thanks to Nicole for her help and patience. I had an absolute blast, and I hope to see some of you at Shakesville in the future! Off we go…
David Kurtz, on the subject of McCain's "How do we beat the bitch?" incident, wonders How do Republicans get away with it?

Cara, meanwhile, notes that McCain is using The Bitch to make The Man some money. Watch for McCain on the next episode of Pimp My Ride, when he has the Straight Talk Express tricked out into the Straight Talk Pimpmobile.

Digby discusses what was the most embarrassing moment of the latest Dem debate, only to update with an even more embarrassing moment. Ezra notes the galling hypocrisy of a network having spent a week lambasting Hillary for planting a question about global warming themselves planting a question about jewelry.

Fixer has a great story about an animal rescue and the organization that made it possible. Mannion offers up a great puppy dog tale, too.

Madison Guy makes my blood run cold with a chilling hypothesis about Cheney's future. Robot overlords, indeed!

Portly Dyke writes a splendid post explaining how to f--k up.

And Kevin Hayden says Gag me with a Constitutional Protector!

That's all for me, folks! Your next cruise director will be Manila Ryce from The Largest Minority. You can send tips to him at john[dot]william[dot]harrison [at] gmail [dot] com. Toodles!

Ezra Klein dressed up as Jesus/Gen. Petraeus! Will he face the wrath of the Senate?

Rounding the final turn towards the finish line of this week's round up, it's Alex from Martini Revolution.
Left and Right Blogostan were girded for a Battle Royale between Young Ezra Klein and Fraulein Konzentrationslager, after Ezra offered to debate her on the merits of the S-CHIP in a venue of her choosing, but the raging Malkintent declined Ezra's offer, with a curious mixture of rage, insanity and cowardice. Wonder why she's afraid? Perhaps it's better she didn't accept the challenge, since it appears Malkin and the other members of the Batshit Crazy community who jumped little Graeme Frost may have been mere sockpuppets for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. And here's a Malkin Haiku to go with it all.

When Wingnuttia is done with the Frost family, Seeing the Forest eyes who's next.

Another shock – it would seem that Ann Coulter is a religious bigot, and she's not alone, either.

Speaking of Coulter, here's an excellent read on why Coulter is better than Malkin.

We mentioned Bush pressing for immunity for Telecom companies lawbreaking in yesterday's roundup, but the blogosphere now is buzzing about some Democrats seeming willingness to give Shrub what he wants, and efforts to stop them.

If you've been looking for Pam Leavey's Democratic Daily without success, try its new web address.

Here's another edition of "The Stupids," written by Tom Grubisich. The newest straw man is an attack on the pseudonym. First it was the civility of our commenters (Read Howard Kurtz on The Huff Post) and now this. It's really simple. Some people feel the need to protect themselves when they express a "freedom of ideas." Others are working in an environment that doesn't allow them to reveal themselves publicly and want to speak out. Why are certain reporters so afraid of blogging?

Marcy Wheeler has a take on it. So does the Agonist and even Ben Franklin.

Ezra writes:

Grubisich thinks the public square has become too open, and he wants to erect some new barriers to entry. That's what the pseudonymity discussions are always about: Privileged members of the media feeling great anxiety that they're no longer set apart simply by access to microphones and looking for ways to keep the barbarians off the stage. But whatever, I'm willing to meet them halfway. I'll start running background checks on my readers if Grubisich and his colleagues consents to some symmetrical constraints: If they write something stupid, inflammatory, or wrong, they will lose their jobs. If what you want is for new entrants to the public sphere to feel more vulnerable when participating, it's only fair that you do the same.

Duncan: This is it in a nutshell. And, as Ezra suggests, the club that they want to use is the "consequences," which for most of us is about having current or future employment prospects threatened because someone googles our names and discovers that we don't like George Bush enough, or we hate her favorite rock band, or some other reason. This, of course, is a barrier too high for plenty of people. Which is the point.