The other day when Patty Murray was appointed to the Superduperextraspecialcommittee, I noted that the choice of words calling her a co-chairwoman was potentially off.
Also, one other thing. The Caucus piece linked above refers to her as the future “co-chairwoman” of the committee. I assume that means the Republican co-chair will also be a woman. Otherwise, let’s hear it for gender neutral language in the future.
Well, sad to say, she won’t even be the co-woman on the panel. Yes, that’s right, our government has decided that a population underrepresented in Congress should be even underrepresenteder in the Awesomesaucepeachykeancommittee.
Asked by PubliCola whether Murray felt the makeup of the committee is fair or representative, Murray’s spokesman Eli Zupnick responded: “Senator Murray would always like to see more women at the table, but as the only one on this Committee she will be in there fighting for those women who don’t have a voice at the table—as well as for everyone who is counting on her and her colleagues to come together with a balanced plan that works for families across the country.”
Kinda odd that she has a spokesman and not a spokeswoman.
The 11th Circuit has ruled Obamacare’s “individual mandate” unconstitutional, but upheld the rest of the law.
Does that also apply to auto insurance?
@3 Presumably not, because that requirement is imposed at the state level.
Verizon Strike Turns Ugly
A 6-day-old strike provoked by the company’s demands for massive givebacks by 45,000 unionized Verizon workers grew more contentious as the company accused strikers of “sabotage” and strikers accused managers and strikebreakers of driving cars into picketers.
If the neutral for “chairman” is “chair”, would the neutral form of “spokesman” be “spoke”?
Fuck carly, can you attempt to make a bigger deal out of a non-story?
Relevance fail.
emperor max-minidick should start his own blog if he thinks he can do better.
Sen. Murray can claim the job is already done with Appeals Court slapping down the funding mechanism for ObamaCare by declaring the provision in President Obama’s health care law requiring citizens to buy health insurance is unconstitutional. Apparently other provisions are ok, but this is central to the Act. Repeal the whole thing and start over.
9 – If states like in the case of MA want insurance rates to be as low as possible then they’ll impose their own mandates.
Medicare for ALL is the better solution.
@8
You mean a blog like your? Lmfao….talk about epic fail.
@7 Yeah, just let 11 rich white guys decide the future of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid versus how much we’re going to spend on killing foreigners in their own villages, and to hell with the 150 million-plus women in this country, they don’t need to be heard!
It’s you who’s irrelevant and out of touch. I’d turn you in to your mother, if you had one.
@9 “Repeal the whole thing and start over.”
Really? Republicans had 40 years to “start over” and started nothing. NOTHING. They simply let our dysfunctional and expensive private health care system get even more dysfunctional and expensive! Republicans want to repeal the whole thing, all right, but they don’t want to start over — they want to take us back to nothing and stay there.
The Party of No has become the Party of Nothing. When they get through with us, only they will have anything, and the rest of us will have nothing.
Gee, some people have no sense of humor…
A retired teacher has been the voice of Smokey the Bear, entertaining children and their parents with advice on how to prevent forest fires, etc. Recently at the Ohio State Fair, the freshman U.S. Senator Robert Portman stopped by the figure of Smokey to listen to his comments. Portman was recently named to the “debt-reduction committee”.
The teacher, Paul Hammock, avoids politics in his presentation and likes to keep it “light”, entertaining children and their parents with jokes as well as lectures about fire safety. In Portman’s presence, pointed out that he “Smokey” is 67 years old, but keeps his youthful appearance by dying his grey hair, adding “That’s a little trick you might want to try,” he told the 56-year-old Portman.
Shortly thereafter, Hammock was told he was being fired for his comments, saying that he had offended the Senator. When contacted by reporters, Portman denied that he made any complaints. At that point the Dept. of Natural Resources changed their story, saying he was being fired for “departing from the script”. But Hammock replied that there never was a script.
Smokey Bear Gets Burned After Quip Sparks Controversy
I don’t know who got their panties up in a wad over this. Maybe it was Portman, maybe it was a member of his staff, maybe it was some Republican stalwart in the crowd who took umbrage to even the most innocent teasing toward a Republican politician. But somebody seriously needs to get a since of humor, and quit messing with people’s jobs just because they get offended.
A few examples of similar instances:
1. A school bus driver (the bus was empty) was reported to have flipped off Rep. Congressman Reichart, who complained and tried to have the driver fired (I forget the final result).
2. Steven S, a local right-wing bloger of some dis-repute, is said to have gotten a waitress fired after she asked him to control his bratty kid.
I’m sure there are others, but I don’t have the time to list such transgressions. I’m just appalled that some people feel entitled to punish those who don’t please them by making sure they lose their means of taking care of their families. The retired teacher doesn’t fall in this category, because it’s a volunteer job. But that’s not quite so true of others.
You wouldn’t believe the number of times I hear people bragging about how they got someone fired for one thing or another.
Actually, Sen. Robert Portman doesn’t seem to be a Tea-Party type, and in the context of all things Republican, appears to be on the more “reasonable” end, often being described as being “mild-mannered”. That leaves me to suspect that the complaint came either from someone on his staff, or someone in the crowd who thinks they can be judge, jury, and executioner if anyone says something which displeases them.
@15 “I’m sure there are others”
Yep, there are others, including this guy:
“A California man who pleaded guilty to threatening to kill U.S. Representative Jim McDermott of Washington state was sentenced to eight months in prison on Friday by a federal judge.
“Charles Turner Habermann, 33, was also fined more than $54,000 and ordered to serve three years of supervised release following his incarceration. …
“Prosecutors say Habermann left a pair of threatening, expletive-laced messages for McDermott, a Democrat, in December 2010. At the time McDermott was taking a stand against the extension of tax cuts … by former President George W. Bush, which the congressman opposed because he felt they mainly benefited the wealthy.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44.....nd_courts/
According to the Seattle Weekly blog, the guy in #17 has a $3 million trust fund.
http://blogs.seattleweekly.com.....spring.php
Mitt Romney’s financial disclosure records filed with the FEC today show the Republican presidential contender’s personal wealth is between $190 million and $250 million, about the same as before the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44.....sion_2012/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: This guy wants to abolish unemployment benefits and set up “unemployment savings accounts” for workers who have to put groceries on credit cards.
I’ll bet Mitt Romney eats better than millions of unemployed workers who were put out of their jobs by the GOP’s laissez-faire economic policies.
Republicans believe in shared sacrifice — they believe you should sacrifice so they can get a share of what you have.
For example, Republicans believe you should give up your Social Security and Medicare benefits that you paid taxes for all your life so the rich don’t have to pay any taxes.
A couple of interesting studies made the news this week.
The first one said that the rich tended to believe that they got their wealth based on their own merits, and that anyone who wasn’t rich had some moral failing which accounted for that fact. Also, because they were smarter than everyone else, they believed that satisfying their wants and needs were important to society as a whole – “what’s good for me is good for the country”. In other words, they are narcisists.
The second (unrelated) study reported that narcicists were poor decision makers in business settings, because they believed their decisions were inevitably the right ones, and did poorly at using a cooperative team environment to arrive at better decisions.
These studies probably explains why so many businesses, run by rich people or the offspring of the rich, manage to come up with the most hairbrained decisions which leave workers shaking their heads in disbelief.
Heh. A trust fund kid threatening Jim McDermott with bodily harm for wanting to raise taxes on the rich to help balance the governments books.
3 million is a decent nest egg but the sustainable return from that would probably not quite to barely put him in the top bracket.
The asshat troll would call this violent offender “teh guuud rich” and call for lowering his taxes – less violence that way.
Even for illegals arschloch?
You see arschloch… it seems Joe Wilson was right after all.
Right wing craphead @ 26 – Sure. A lot of them pay into the system too. If you don’t like it don’t hire them.
Unfortunately too many cheap labor right wing idiots looking to line their pockets DO HIRE THEM.
DUMBASS!
27 – Nice link to a Phil Anschutz website that attracts right wing idiots (propagandists and zombie right wing bullshit junkies) LIKE YOU like blowflys to a wild hog carcass.
NEXT!
@29 Did you get my email?
30 – I got it. I’m on it. I’ll email back.
Thanks!