The Liberal Media Gave Jerome Corsi A Full Segment To Lie His Ass Off

"Liberal Media" update: CSPAN's Book TV gave Jerome "Lying Piece of Shit" Corsi a whole segment to lie about his lying book in late October.

These WND nuts are the scum of the earth. If you need to know how repulsive Corsi is, well, here's a link. The HuffPo has more on how Corsi is a shameless liar and his article is total trash (par for the course with Jerome "Swift Boat" Corsi).

Flawless Victory (pt 2)

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Made in America*

Many criticisms of the conservative opposition to the Democratic health care reform effort start with some iteration of "Well, smarty-pants, where is the *Republican* plan, if you guys have a better idea?" In the case of the GOP's previous efforts to come up with some semblance of a plan, that was a perfectly valid complaint. Now, however, the conservative approach to health care reform seems to have coalesced around a few basic principles: allow "inter-state competition" between insurance plans and enact tort reform.

Now there's plenty wrong with the second plank, but this post is regarding the first. Bruce Webb at MyDD waded through the Boehner Amendment to HR3962, and discovered this interesting tidbit:

Title III introduces a ringer. Although the Title is called Expanding Choices by Allowing Americans to Buy Health Care Coverage Across State Lines what it really means is that insurers can simply pick any state they like as their 'primary state' and be governed almost entirely by its rules in selling into 'secondary states'. Okay that is really not good, think how many credit card companies are officially based in South Dakota because of its lenient laws.

This has been my primary argument against "interstate competition" from the get-go. Webb's mention of the credit card scenario is particularly illustrative because once "interstate competition" was applied to credit cards, they did exactly what insurance companies will do if this policy is enacted - find the state willing to play the fastest and the loosest with consumer protection laws and head there ASAP. However, things get even worse from there:

Under Title III 'State' is defined as the fifty states, D.C., Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Marianas (p.122)...Now this language is followed by a bunch more pages setting out rules about lawsuits and appeals but the bottom line is pretty clear: should private insurers choose they can officially choose the Virgin Islands or the Northern Marianas as the governing jurisdiction for all their individual insurance policies and their is basically nothing the states of California, New York or Washington can do about it.

As Webb points out later, the Marianas are a particularly noxious addition to the health insurance framework, as they are basically a capitalistic Wild West where mainland U.S. labor and regulatory rules do not apply. Of course, the Republicans are no strangers to the siren song of the Marianas:

Moved by the sworn testimony of U.S. officials and human-rights advocates that the 91 percent of the workforce who were immigrants -- from China, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh -- were being paid barely half the U.S. minimum hourly wage and were forced to live behind barbed wire in squalid shacks minus plumbing, work 12 hours a day, often seven days a week, without any of the legal protections U.S. workers are guaranteed, Murkowski wrote a bill to extend the protection of U.S. labor and minimum-wage laws to the workers in the U.S. territory of the Northern Marianas.

But one man primarily stopped the U.S. House from even considering that worker-reform bill: then-House Republican Whip Tom DeLay.

Later, DeLay would tell The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin that the low-wage, anti-union conditions of the Marianas constituted "a perfect petri dish of capitalism. It's like my Galapagos Island."

The Northern Marianas: a right-wing wonderland of open sewers and slave labor - and soon "home" of your new health insurance plan!

* - Another reason the Marianas are infamous is that because they are American territories, the garments stitched together by workers there can display the "Made in America" label, even though they were produced in sweatshop conditions that would be illegal here on the mainland.

Who Are You Going To Believe, Me Or Your Lying Eyes?

Anne "14:58/15:00 of Fame" Coulter, describing the infamous Willie Horton ad from 1988 as "...The most devastatingly relevant campaign commercial in all of American history" makes the remarkable claim that "...The Bush campaign commercial about Dukakis' furlough program never showed a picture of Horton." (Emphasis hers)

That's strange, because if I remember correctly:

Flawless Victory

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Shrieks From the Comic Book Id

Honestly, I consider myself a positive person, really. I do tend to nay-say more than I glad hand, but all things considered, I'm not a storm cloud bobbing along with the sole intention of ruining my fellow person or persons' attempt at a good time. With that disclaimer out of the way:



According to the Sydney Morning Herald (?!),

Three years ago, Lazaros and Ben Goldman, a documentary filmmaker, created Superheroes Anonymous, an organised group of real-life superheroes.

Lazaros said there are now roughly 200 fellow superheroes across in US - costumed civilians who patrol the streets behind self-made superhero personas.

Their missions are varied, from conducting homeless and sex worker outreach and picking up rubbish to looking out for crime and teaching first aid skills.

In early September, about 20 members gathered from across the country for a three-day event that included a hip hop concert, beach clean-up and workshops on how to disarm an enemy.

Scavenger, a 28-year-old social worker, stood outside a local coffee shop during a break.

Dressed in a velvet bustier and black tassled bodysock, the tight spandex revealed only her eyes. She said crows and vultures inspired her costume, as they are the recyclers of nature.

Okay. I can't really find emotional distance on this one: what these people are doing makes me sick with rage. If you're going to become a badass vigilante, sweet. Maybe you'll lose an eye, like that one sick bastard.

But this phenomenon just brings one thought to my mind: where are the "Real Life Supervillians?" I'm willing to take the lead on this. Hell, give me a long weekend, a few cans of spray paint and a creative prank and I'm sure I could get one of these jackasses to make me their "nemesis."

What makes me sad is that in the age of Doctor Venture and the like, there are still jackasses like this wandering around and sullying the sacred memory of St. Batman.

And hey, you Black Monday Society jerks - I'm putting you on notice. Unless you want a decent, hard-working supervillian on your back*, hang up this bullshit.

* I'm new at this supervillian thing, and have no criminal record that I'm aware of. It will take me a minute to spray-paint some underthings in metallics and arm myself with legal stink bombs.

OFA Bus Stop Rally

I attended the rally put together by Organizing for America last night – the big ol’ tour-bus pulled into Sugarhouse park a little late, but there was a surprisingly large and enthusiastic crowd there to support it. As an antidote to all of this media coverage of Tea Party Protests and the like, I thought I’d point out that this event was in Utah, reddest of red states, and yet the turnout was unbelievable (estimates say 1500, but I find that hard to swallow outright):



A pretty cool crowd. All kinds of folks showed up, from hippies to bikers to grandmas:





“What about the Tea Party People?” you might ask. Well, three pretty peaceable wingnuts turned up. They seemed kind of sad and lonely:



Patriot poodle says: “Ruh roh, we need a public option!”



Various speakers showed up, including the chair of the Utah Democratic Party, Wayne Holland, who dropped the ball by referring to health reform as an issue for “2008” (wake up, Wayne! We won! Time to focus on the now, brother!).



Karen Mayne, Democratic State Senator, was also there:



Good crowd, good times, good energy. OFA has hosted so many of these events across the country that it makes the Tea Parties cooked up by FreedomWorks look like gnat farts. Next time you see CSPAN broadcasting and re-broadcasting a bunch of wingnuts in Revolutionary War gear yelping about socialism, remember: a metric ton of patriotic Americans are out there organizing in favor of health reform, even if its flying under the media’s radar.