Jon Stewart deserves big props for stepping up and making this a national issue since the media gave it a pass at first. NY Daily News . The deal to pass a 9/11 health bill is done, the Daily News has learned. Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand met with other senators’ staff and staff from Rep. Carolyn maloney’s offce until well after midnight, cutting a new deal and trimming the package to care for 9/11 responders to $4.3 billion, sources close to the deal said. They reached final agreement at about 11:30 this morning after the New York Democrats met for an hour with the prime GOP opponents, Sens. Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Majority Leader Harry Reid is said to have joined the talks at the end, and agreed to try for quick passage. The measure could be passed even before the START treaty is ratified. More to follow…(h/t Greg Sargent t)
Continue reading …Barney Frank completely pwns hapless CNS reporter attempting ‘gotcha’ DADT question
December 22, 2010 No Comment
Click here to view this media You can tell that all these reporters for right-wing propaganda organs like the Media Research Center spend waaaay too much time watching Fox News and their army of would-be ambush journalists. Because they often try to imitate their betters only to discover that it can seriously backfire on them. Especially when the intended victim is a seriously smart person like Barney Frank. This happened yesterday to a young reporter for CNS (an MRC outlet), as Terry Krepel at Media Matters reports : Apparently feeling confident (and sufficiently homophobic), CNS decided to target Rep. Barney Frank with a question about the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – specifically, whether he thought gay and straight soldiers should shower together. This was based on a statement calling for a ban on separate showers from the Pentagon’s report on the impact of repealing DADT that CNS had previously singled out. Frank saw this coming from a mile away. As CNS reporter Nicholas Ballasy slowly got out the words “shower with homosexuals,” Frank let out an exaggerated gasp and responded, “What do you think happens in gyms all over America?” After calling it a “silly issue,” Frank added, “What do you think goes wrong with people showering with homosexuals? Do you think it’s the spray makes it catching? … We don’t get ourselves dry-cleaned.” Frank then turned the tables on his interviewer by quizzing Ballasy: “I know you’re looking for some way to kind of discredit the policy. Do you think that gyms should have separate showers for gay and straight people? I’m asking you the question because that’s the logic of what you’re telling me. You seem to think that there’s something extraordinary about gay men showering together. Do you think gyms should have separate showers for gay people and straight people?” Ballasy wouldn’t answer, insisting that he was “just quoting the recommendation.” Frank responded: “Don’t be disingenuous. You’re quoting those you think may cause us some problems. You’re entitled to do that, but you shouldn’t hide behind your views.” Frank again asked the question of Ballasy, who again wouldn’t answer, trying to change the subject: “So that’s the question you would pose to people who have an issue with that part of the report, the recommendation?” Frank made his point one more time, and that’s where the CNS ends the video. As is often the case with Barney Frank, it is a delightfully thorough humiliation.
Continue reading …Nuclear-arms expert Jon Voight warns Mark Steyn about Obama: ‘This man is capable of destroying our country’
December 21, 2010 No Comment
Click here to view this media Mark Steyn is filling in for Sean Hannity this week on Fox, and he wanted to have an in-depth, thoughtful discussion of the START nuclear-missile treaty. Naturally, this meant he brought on wingnut actor Jon Voight , who springs to mind immediately as an careful and knowledgeable analyst of nuclear issues, thanks to his incisive portrayals of FDR in Pearl Harbor and Jonas Hodges in 24 . And it was deeply insightful indeed. It opened up a tremendous window on the full-blown idiocy and paranoia of the wingnut Right. F’r instance: VOIGHT: And now I hear Obama trying to convince the American people that if we give up our nuclear weapons, this will set a fine example and all other countries will follow suit. What a dangerous and naive notion that is. If President Reagan wasn’t such a powerful force of strength, we never would have seen Premier Gorbachev take down the Berlin Wall. In reality, of course, it was Reagan who opened the negotiations with the Soviets in 1982 that eventually led to the first START treaty, ratified in 1992 under George H.W. Bush. Reagan often remarked in his speeches that his “ultimate goal” was the “total elimination of nuclear weapons.” Maybe Jon was too busy on the set of Lookin’ To Get Out back then or something. Because he nattered on in this vein for awhile — including this utterly incoherent bit: VOIGHT: Well, our President Kennedy in September of 1961 and by the way, of course he served in the World War II nearly losing his life and he stated that American military might is the only way to keep our freedom. Of course, President Reagan was of the same point of view. And thank God he had the foresight not to sign away our national missile defense when he saw the world full of presidents and future threats from multiple nuclear powers. Steyn obviously found this deeply insightful: STEYN: Do you think the Republicans are going to stand firm on this? The president tonight seems to be pretty confident he can get enough Republicans to get on board with this thing to pass it with 67 votes. Are you confident the Republican Party will stand firm? VOIGHT: Well, I certainly hope, so. And I think, again, a lot of it has to do with the American people. Get on the phones, folks, and make sure that we encourage our senators to reject this thing. You know, I don’t — we have seen this before. We have seen it coming towards Christmas as well. This idea that we push something through and people are thinking about, you know, presents for their grandchildren and wanting to get out of town, they come in and no one is thorough in their questioning or their reading of the materials. And they push something through. I don’t know how many more wrong Obama policies we need to see before we wake up to the possibility that this man is capable of destroying our country. The whole segment reminded me of an earlier Jon Voight performance : 1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: I want to serve this to the men. Taste it and let me know what you think. [Yossarian takes a bite] Yossarian: What is it? 1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Chocolate covered cotton. Yossarian: What are you, crazy? 1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: No good, huh? Yossarian: For Christ’s sake, you didn’t even take the seeds out. 1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Is it really that bad? Yossarian: It’s cotton!
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Speakers? Oh yeah. Wires? Heck no. Aluratek has launched three new wireless audio products collectively called Bump — though somehow a wired model got lumped in there too. A bit of a step from the company’s previous digi frame and e-reader offerings, the four tune-pumping solutions start with the $49.99 AMS01F, a wee boombox that plays music from SD, line-in, or FM and does six hours on a charge. The $79.99 AUWS01F ditches the media player functionality, relying on a signal sent from a 2.4GHz USB dongle that you stick in your nearest PC or Mac (within 60 feet) that has some tunes on it. Next is the $99.99 AWS01F, basically the AMS01F boombox with the addition of a separate wireless speaker. Finally, if you’re not ready to cut the cord, there’s the $19.99 APS01F, a single little tweeter with a 3.5mm cable sprouting from below. They’re all available now, so you know what to do. Continue reading Aluratek’s new wireless speakers go Bump in the night Aluratek’s new wireless speakers go Bump in the night originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Dec 2010 10:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Haley Barbour winks and nudges at the ol’ White Citizens Council folks again
December 20, 2010 No Comment
Click here to view this media Our favorite would-be Republican presidential nominee, Haley Barbour, got a wide-eyed adulatory write-up in the Weekly Standard yesterday that included this nugget: Both Mr. Mott and Mr. Kelly had told me that Yazoo City was perhaps the only municipality in Mississippi that managed to integrate the schools without violence. I asked Haley Barbour why he thought that was so. “Because the business community wouldn’t stand for it,” he said. “You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.” In interviews Barbour doesn’t have much to say about growing up in the midst of the civil rights revolution. “I just don’t remember it as being that bad,” he said. “I remember Martin Luther King came to town, in ’62. He spoke out at the old fairground and it was full of people, black and white.” Just to stipulate: In reality, the Ku Klux Klan in the South, both immediately after the Civil War and in its post-1915 reincarnation, in fact always was an organization of town leaders — but secretly. The White Citizens Councils were merely their public face. As the Wikipedia entry puts it : Members of the Citizens’ Council were sometimes Klansmen, and the more influential the Citizens’ Council member, the more influence he had with the Klan. In fact, the WCC was even referred to during the civil rights era as “an uptown Klan,” “a white collar Klan,” “a button-down Klan,” and “a country club Klan.” The rationale for these nicknames was that it appeared that sheets and hoods had been discarded and replaced by suits and ties. Much like the Klan, WCC members held documented white supremacist views and involved themselves in racist activities. They more often held leadership in civic and political organizations, however, which enabled them to legitimize discriminatory practices aimed at non-whites. If you want to see for yourself, check out the archives of the old WCC newsletters . You get the flavor pretty quickly. Matt Yglesias runs a sample from the archives and observes: The Citizens’ Councils were, right in the state of Mississippi where Barbour is from, the respectable face of white supremacist political activism. Here’s an example from the Association of Citizens’ Councils pamphlet: “Why Does Your Community Need a Citizens’ Council?” Maybe your community has had no racial problems! This may be true; however, you may not have a fire, yet you maintain a fire department. You can depend on one thing: The NAACP (National Association for the Agitation of Colored People), aided by alien influences, bloc vote seeking politicians and left-wing do-gooders, will see that you have a problem in the near future. The Citizens’ Council is the South’s answer to the mongrelizers. We will not be integrated. We are proud of our white blood and our white heritage of sixty centuries. Haley Barbour gives these people credit for keeping things calm! Of course he does. That’s because, as we pointed out, Barbour won election in 2003 by openly consorting with the Council of Conservative Citizens — which is in fact the direct descendant of the White Citizens Councils, having been organized on its bleaching bones. Barbour also campaigned by promoting the Confederate flag. When he was finally called on it, Barbour just winked and nudged and pretended that it was all just harmless gee-whiz folks stuff. Just as he is now.
Continue reading …Johnny Isakson Pretends He Doesn’t Hear Caller’s Question on First Responders Bill
December 20, 2010 No Comment
Click here to view this media The Senate looks like they might finally take up the first responders bill and do what’s right during the lame duck session. It’s a damned shame it took the likes of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show possibly shaming some of these people into doing the right thing, instead of our sorry ass mainstream media giving them a pass on this. Now that it appears this bill is finally going to be passed, I thought I’d share this little tidbit that I caught and almost forgot about from this past Friday on C-SPAN’s morning call in show, Washington Journal. Georgia’s Republican Senator Johnny Isakson is asked by a caller why he was not going to vote for the first responders bill and rather than answer the question, Isakson pretends he didn’t hear the question and tries to punt. He does eventually answer the caller’s question only after host Susan Swain repeats the caller’s question for them. This is what it looks like when these Senators actually have to face questions from the public and they know what they’re doing is wrong and they’d prefer not to answer for it. They attempt to run from it. Pitiful. Maybe next time Isakson would have better luck just sticking his fingers in his ears and going “lalalalala… I can’t hear you!” He came pretty close in this segment. I just wish Senator Isakson was as concerned about the potential fraud in this first responders bill as he has been for military contractors ripping our government off to the tune of billions of tax dollars instead. Good thing he has his priorities in place.
Continue reading …Jon Kyl Still Making Sorry Excuses for Not Supporting First Responders Bill
December 20, 2010 No Comment
Click here to view this media It looks like Shep Smith isn’t the only person on Fox News that was shamed by Jon Stewart into getting a bit tougher on these Republicans for filibustering the first responders bill. Chris Wallace brought up Stewart’s interview with first responders to Jon Kyl, and in response we just got more sorry excuses as to why he still would not support the bill. Kyl Denies Health Care For 9/11 Rescue Workers Because He Doesn’t Want To ‘Hurry’ : Last week, an incensed Jon Stewart invited 9/11 first responders to the Daily Show to offer their thoughts on this callous behavior. “Disgusted” and “hurt” by their actions, the rescue workers admonished Republicans for using the holiday schedule and Senate process as an excuse to block desperately needed help. Recounting their criticism today, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace asked Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) why he couldn’t “find a way to give these heroes peace of mind when it comes to health care.” Ignoring their emotional pleas, Kyl insisted that, while he didn’t want to deny care to those who desperately need it, he just refuses to do so “in a hurry”. Kyl’s excuses fall flat in the face of fact. Any cries for more time ignore that both the Senate and House version of the Zadroga bill have been available to Kyl since 2009. If a year with the text wasn’t enough, Kyl was free to attend the bill’s June 2010 Senate hearing he insists never happened. Had he shown up, he would’ve learned that the bill is very clear on who is eligible for funding. First responders can pursue compensation established by the Zadroga bill to bolster any coverage already received from the current health fund set up in New York City. As Jon Stewart pointed out earlier this week as well, after refusing to give these first responders health care, none of these birds should ever be allowed by our media to invoke 9-11 for political purposes ever again. Let’s hope this thing gets passed despite the continued obstruction by the likes of Kyl and his fellow shameless Republican cohorts. Transcript via Nexis Lexis . WALLACE: Joining us now, two Senate leaders, the number two Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, and his Republican counterpart, Jon Kyl of Arizona. And, Senators, welcome back to “Fox News Sunday.” KYL: Thank you, Chris. WALLACE: Senators, before we talk about issues that have gotten a lot of attention, I want to ask you about one that hasn’t, and let me begin with you, Senator Kyl. Will you vote this week for the 9/11 bill that would guarantee health care for the first responders who went to Ground Zero? KYL: I don’t know if that bill is going to come before us, but Dick tells me just a moment ago that he thinks that it will. First question is, is it amendable, or is it a take it or leave it proposition? The bill hasn’t been through committee. There are problems with it. And I think the first thing Republicans will ask is do we have a chance to fix any problems that may exist with it. And it’s a lot of money, and so I — my early response is that I am skeptical about that bill. WALLACE: Senator Durbin, Republicans in addition to Senator Kyl say – - Republican critics say that you’re creating a $7 billion entitlement, and that the way you pay for it is a corporate tax increase. DURBIN: Chris, I can tell you that Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer have been working nonstop for the last several weeks with Republicans to try to find the best way to approach this. These first responders literally risked their lives when they went to Ground Zero. They came from all over the United States. And now many of them are struggling with health problems that are clearly directly related to that experience. To turn our backs on these brave people is the wrong thing to do. Will it cost money? Yes. Is it the right thing to do? Yes. We’ve got to find a way to fund it that’s acceptable to Republicans and Democrats. WALLACE: Well, but let me ask you about that, Senator Durbin. If this 9/11 bill is so important, why is it that the Democratic- controlled Senate never held a vote on this bill until the lame duck session and that President Obama, the best we can tell, has never said a word about this bill in public? DURBIN: I can’t tell you where the White House stands. I hope they support it. I will just tell you this. This is like an airport that has a runway closed down. We have aircraft stacked up trying to land. We have bills stacked up over the Senate because of the nonstop filibusters that we faced this year. I wish we could have done things more efficiently and more directly. But we’ve lurched from one 30-hour delay to another 30-hour delay to more Senate quorums. This Senate could be much more efficient. It should be. And it should be much more bipartisan than this. WALLACE: Will this bill pass? DURBIN: I think this bill will pass, and I do believe that Senators Gillibrand and Schumer are working night and day to make that happen. WALLACE: Senator Kyl, one of your objections is — he was blaming you for the filibusters. One of your objections is that Harry Reid put too many items on the agenda in this lame duck session. I want to play what you said and then how one of the first responders who now has cancer reacted. Let’s watch. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KYL: It is impossible to do all of the things that the majority leader laid out without doing — frankly, without disrespecting the institution and without disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians. (END VIDEO CLIP) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) (UNKNOWN): I’m here to say that you won’t find a single New York City firefighter who considers it a sign of disrespect to work in a New York City fire house on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. (END VIDEO CLIP) WALLACE: Senator, everyone — everyone — praises the first responders as heroes. You say you’re skeptical about this bill. Why not find a way to give these heroes peace of mind when it comes to health care? KYL: Well, first of all, they should have peace of mind when it comes to health care. The question is what and how. And when you try to do it, as you said in your introduction, in a hurry, in the lame duck session, without a hearing, without understanding what the ramifications are and whether we can amend the bill, you’re doing it in the worst way. For example, there’s already been a settlement for a lot of these people, a fund that has been set up for them to receive funding. Will the people that are supporting this legislation be able to participate in that fund? Nobody has been able to say. Why $7 billion? What will the requirements for qualification be for the money? Nobody wants to deny care to people who — and by the way, these are primarily people who helped to clean up the site in the aftermath of 9/11, and there weren’t adequate precautions taken in some cases to deal with potential health issues. And to the extent that they’ve become ill, they do need to be taken care of. It’s one thing to make an emotional appeal, to say we need to care for somebody who did something good. It’s another to do it in a sensible way. And that’s all we’re asking for. You bring it up in the lame duck session with no opportunity to amend it, and you’re probably going to make bad legislation. WALLACE: Let me move to… KYL: All of this could have been done earlier, I might add.
Continue reading …Kristol Claims DREAM Act Was Political Ploy by Reid and Obama to Make Republicans Appear Anti-Hispanic
December 20, 2010 No Comment
Click here to view this media Another Sunday, another week where Bloody Bill Kristol proves that he’s wrong about everything once again. This Sunday, he claimed that President Obama and Harry Reid were trying to get the DREAM Act passed just to make Republicans appear anti-Hispanic. Sorry Bill, but I think they’ve been doing a pretty good job of that all on their own. KRISTOL: Barack Obama and Harry Reid played politics with this. You know how many hearings there were in either house, in the House and the Senate on the DREAM Act over the past two years? Zero. This bill was brought to the floor of the House, no amendments permitted, passed, brought to the floor of the Senate, no amendments permitted, they failed to get cloture. Is that a way to pass serious legislation? Is this bill so perfectly dreamed up, so to speak, three years ago that we shouldn’t have a debate in committee on it and the normal mark-up and the normal testimony from different experts? It’s a complicated matter dealing with illegal immigration. It was a pure political gambit by Barack Obama and Harry Reid to try to make Republicans look anti-Hispanic and I don’t think it will work. WILLIAMS: It was a political deal by Republicans to absolutely make devils out of anybody who’s come to this country and this is a country of immigrants and the idea that children who were brought here by their parents and who have gone to school and served in our military are not allowed to become citizens. You know, it’s almost anti-American Bill and the reason they couldn’t discuss it was because the talk show hosts in America the right-wing talk show hosts, would beat up any Republican who supported a realistic effort. KRISTOL: Usually when legislation is passed there are hearings, mark-ups; there are expert witnesses… none of those. It was a pure political attempt to jam this through. As Think Progress noted, Juan Williams wasn’t the only pundit on the Sunday shows that pointed out how stupid it was for Republicans to have blocked the DREAM Act — Sunday Show Guests Assail Republicans For Blocking The DREAM Act . And here’s more from that post on why Kristol’s assertion is wrong. As usual , Kristol is wrong. As CAP’s Marshall Fitz noted , “this is not a new or complicated bill”: The basic elements of the DREAM Act are straightforward, well understood, and have been considered numerous times over the last nine years . It has been introduced every Congress since 2001. It passed the Senate Judiciary Committee by a 16-3 vote in October 2003. And it passed the Senate Judiciary Committee again in 2006 by voice vote as part of the McCain-Kennedy comprehensive bill, which passed the full Senate by a 62-36 margin. So it seems that Republicans like to blame process when they’re just simply on the wrong side of history.
Continue reading …Proving once again that partisan hackery is far more important than any sense of honor or national security, Sen. Lindsey Graham toes the party line and says he opposes ratifying the START treaty. After all, why should the fact that EVERY living Republican and Democratic Secretary of State and other national security experts urge Congress to ratify START or the verbal promise to address these issues of importance once they got their precious tax cut extension to the wealthiest 2% of Americans hinder a great opportunity to obstruct Barack Obama’s agenda yet again? And like Mitch McConnell and John Kyl, Lindsey Graham throws up a whole lot of nonsense to rationalize delaying the ratification of START : Graham had been considered one of the GOP senators likely to support ratifying the treaty. The Washington Post had reported earlier this month that Graham would allow a vote on START if the Democrats moved fast to extend the Bush era tax cuts , and he had voted to start debating the treaty , which was interpreted as a sign that he could support final ratification. But sounding vexed during the show, Graham seemed not only chafed by the Senate voting down a Republican effort to amend the preamble of the treaty; he also linked the START treaty to his resentment over how the current lame-duck session of Congress has turned out. Graham exclaimed how hard it was to pass a bipartisan compromise over extending the Bush era tax cuts, and expressed his disappointment over repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy banning openly gay service members. “If you want to have a chance of passing START, you better start over and do it in the next Congress, because this lame duck has been poisoned,” Graham told CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer. “The last two weeks have been an absolutely excruciating exercise. ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ a controversial topic – some say the civil rights issue of our generation, others say battlefield effectiveness – was passed in the lame-duck session without one amendment being offered,” Graham said. Graham complained of other parts of the legislative agenda of the Senate Majority and outgoing House Majority: “The DREAM Act, we’ve had two votes on the DREAM Act. Controversial immigration, there was no efforts to find a common ground there, passed without the ability to amend, to try to make Republicans look bad with Hispanics. “We tried to fund the government by clean [continuing budget resolution bill] but we took a $1.2 trillion omnibus bill with 6,000 earmarks and it failed yesterday. We still haven’t funded the government. We haven’t had a serious debate on START. We’ve been fighting a multiple front war to try to do every special interest group’s bidding in the lame-duck session. That’s not a way to ratify a treaty that has importance to the country,” Graham said. Right. Everyone knows that the only thing a lame duck Congress should pass is an unfunded tax cut adding trillions to the deficit through reconciliation . Ironic that Graham voices his frustration with the DADT repeal when it was the Republicans that tied DADT to the START treaty in the first place to slow down the pace of the lame duck agenda. His concern trolling about how the START treaty would control our ability to develop missile defense? Another big fat whopper that Bob Schieffer doesn’t call him on . President Obama issued a letter to the Senate on Sunday pledging to fully develop a U.S. missile defense system in Europe, as part of a final offensive to relieve concerns about the nuclear arms pact with Russia as it moves toward a final vote. The letter reiterated administration policy but was an especially extensive and detailed statement on missile defense by the president. Parts of it were read aloud by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) shortly before a vote on an amendment that could have killed the treaty. That amendment was defeated, 59 to 37. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who has been leaning toward supporting the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), took to the floor to welcome the president’s letter. “A number of people on our side of the aisle have asked for it,” he said. But that’s not enough for Lindsey, no how. Maybe it’s because he’s read this op-ed at HuffPo: Any Republican Senator Voting for START Should Get a Primary Challenger The SDCC put out this memo debunking the complaint that the Dems are rushing the GOP into passing START without reading it. It is full of all sorts of awesome: A Few Things That Happened While Republicans Failed to Read the START Treaty Here are a few things that happened in the eight months since the New START Treaty was signed on April 8, 2010 . One thing that apparently did not happen: Republicans taking the time to actually review the treaty. · Chilean Miners trapped and released. · Lady Gaga debuted her meat dress. · Lindsay Lohan returned to rehab, was released, and went back in again. · Major League Baseball 2010 season began and ended. · LeBron James announced, “I’m taking my talents to South Beach.” · BP/Deep Horizon oil spill sprung and contained. · Donovan McNabb debuted with the Redskins, and was benched. Twice. · Spain won the World Cup. · The biggest overhaul of America’s financial laws in decades was debated and passed. · Prince William and Kate Middleton got Engaged. · Larry King announced his retirement. · Conan returned to Late Night. · Kanye West released his latest album and apologized to former President George W. Bush. · Former President George W. Bush released his memoir, Decision Points.
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