Barack Obama and the Democrats think I am retarded:
We will not back down
Brendan –
As we head into the final stretch on health reform, big insurance company lobbyists and their partisan allies hope that their relentless attacks and millions of dollars can intimidate us into accepting the status quo.
So I have [...]
here’s some more of that “change” shit i keep hearing about:
The Obama administration has asked an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing former Bush administration attorney John Yoo of authorizing the torture of a terrorism suspect, saying federal law does not allow damage claims against lawyers who advise [...]
I love this.
[...]Via atrios, I learned that the crybabies executives at AIG might quit if they have to take a pay cut:
Five senior executives at American International Group told the bailed-out insurer last week they may quit if their compensation was cut significantly by the U.S. pay czar, the Wall [...]
Via Firedoglake, it looks like Ben Nelson is doing the bidding of child rapists:
But Nelson decided later Thursday to hold off after Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, said he thought that the measure was being rushed to the floor. Hatch had expected to be the lead sponsor of the [...]
Hello, Mr. Sqwire. On your Brendan Calling blog you have given me credit (or blame?) for a story that was actually reported by my colleague Chana Joffe-Walt. In any case, thank you for listening to NPR.
She found me on facebook. I wrote back and suggested they fire [...]
Will Chelsea Clinton enlist and strap on a rifle for the escalation her mom embraces?
Will the Obama daughters apply to West Point when they graduate from Sidwell Friends?
It always seems like it’s other people’s kids who go to war, while our leaders rarely have any skin in the game.
[...]Ina Chona Jaffe, one of the voices that come out of my radio just told me that America doesn’t want to “play the blame game” over the financial crisis. we “just want to know what happened.”
Thank heaven I have NPR to tell me what Americans think.
[...]Dear New York:
As a straight man, you’d figure that I don’t have a dog in the marriage equality fight. And you’d be right, sort of.
But I’m the kind of person who backs up his friends, and a lot of those people happen to be gay. So on their behalf, [...]
jack Cooke, longtime bass player for Ralph Stanley, has died:
We have just learned that Jack Cooke, long-time member of Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys, passed away last night (12/1) after suffering a massive heart attack.
Cooke performed with The Stanley Brothers in the 1950s before going to work [...]
“Priorities: A One Act Play”
Dramatis Personae
The Would-Be Groom: the Democratic Party
The Blushing Bride: the American People
The Friend Who Wants to Kill His Neighbor: the Pentagon
Act 1.
Would-Be Groom: Oh my darling, I love you. If you marry me, I will buy you a big diamond ring
Blushing Bride: Well… I [...]
RAWA says this little guy lost his arms and legs thanks to landmines in Afganistan
Sure glad we have a president who’s a father of two young children himself, one who apparently believes in Quaker ideals enough to send his kids to a Quaker [...]
Circle Jerks, “Paid vacation”
After months of waiting, President Obama is about to announce the new US strategy for Afghanistan. His speech may be long awaited, but few are expecting any surprise: it seems clear he will herald a major escalation of the war. In [...]
I could give a rat’s ass about Tiger Woods, but I think today’s issue of the Philadelphia Daily News more than proves the point I made yesterday about its penchant for the mindless pigpile.
here’s sports writer Bill Conlin:
According to the unofficial physical evidence, Woods climbed into his black Escalade [...]
Drop by the Philly Weekly for my new piece on the proposed bike laws. Read it, and then come back here for a few additional comments. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.
[...]
[...]
[...]
OK, that’s enough time. The Weekly had to edit my original piece down for space, and there [...]
It is touching to watch progressives lament that “their” president has the wrong advisors. “We trust the czar, we simply dislike his ministers.” Obama owed his meteoric rise from obscurity to the presidency not to any bold progressive ideas — he didn’t have any — but rather to a combination [...]
I’m in Madison Wisconsin for the rest of the week. Happy Thanksgiving!
[...]Hi Stu:
RE: your bicycle column of 11/23:
Obviously, the more bikes on the streets, the more important it is for bikers to respect the rules and not ride recklessly. At the same time, the bike has to be recognized for the flexible, human-scale thing that it is – it’s not [...]
Oh dear. Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky is having a temper tantrum about bicycles. Let’s take a look and see if we can count the inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and mistakes in his latest “when-I-was-a-boy-we-ate-wool-and-we-liked-it” freakout.
JUMP ON MY handlebars. Let’s go for a ride.
Almost guaranteed to be a [...]
Dan U-A breaks down Philly’s proposed new bike laws. They are idiotic, developed by two morons, Frank DiCicco and Jim Kenney, who obviously haven’t been on a bicycle since they were children:
As we all know by now, Councilmen Kenney and DiCicco have decided that the city needs [...]
John Yoo Doesn’t Want the 9/11 suspects tried in New York:
Ownership of the disastrous decision to try al-Qaeda leaders in New York City federal court is the one clear thing to emerge so far from the Obama administration.
The call was not made “on the whims or the desires [...]
Confessed killer apologizes to Cassidy’s widow:
Testimony ended in dramatic fashion today in the murder trial of John “Jordan” Lewis when the confessed killer apologized to the widow of Philadelphia Police Officer Chuck Cassidy.
Judy Cassidy was testifying about her husband’s last hours before he was shot on Oct. 31, 2007, [...]
Bob Brady will say whatever the biotech industry tells him to.
In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, that was no accident.
Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole [...]
Our friend Alex has been talking about taking Christina and me shooting, and we finally got a chance to head to a range run by the PA Fish and Game Commission this past weekend. Alex brought the guns and ammo, while we provided transportation and money to cover the cost [...]
My girlfriend puts her car radio on the top 40 pop station, and so I’ve been hearing all this stuff I ordinarily could care less about. Some of it is fucking annoying: if i ever get my hands on the person known as “Owl City” I am going to douse [...]
That’s what this threat from the Catholic Church boils down to:
The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn’t change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens [...]
It seem every couple of weeks someone’s private sex tape becomes public. Paris Hilton. Pam Anderson. Fred Durst. That dude from “Saved by the Bell” (ok, he released his to make a couple of bucks). Carrie Prejean. Tonya Harding.
In which I antagonize Philadelphians by stickin’ with the union.
For a working class, blue-collar city, there are sure a lot of people who hate working class, blue-collar employees.
[...]
I think they’re having a bad day at Bart Stupid’s Stupak’s DC office.
I called to inquire about whether the amendment forces women with dead fetuses to carry to term, but the minute I got the word “Stupak Amendment” out of my mouth, the woman [...]
“My penis gets thiiiiiiis big when I’m robbing women of their reproductive rights.”
Add more in comments…
[...]As you may have read, Michigan “Democrat” Bart Stupak rolled back women’s reproductive rights on Saturday, passing an amendment to health care legislation that “would effectively ban insurance companies from selling insurance plans that cover elective abortion on the individual and small group market. It would be one [...]
The price of health care has been women’s reproductive rights:
Stupak wants to outlaw abortion coverage in the new health insurance Exchange, where individuals and small businesses will purchase their coverage. Instead, women would only be able to purchase abortion coverage in a “abortion rider” plan – a single-service plan [...]
Booman links to a speech by JFK addressing his catholicism.
I will excerpt:
I ask you tonight to follow in that tradition, to judge me on the basis of my record of 14 years in Congress, on my declared stands against an ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to [...]
It’s Grayson’s willingness to gut his opponents like a fish that endears him to many progressives who are sick of watching Democrats back down from a fight…
If I have any advice for Grayson, it is this. Put the people of your district first, and your desire to influence [...]
Exit polls suggest that voter turnout tonight was low among people under the age of 30, as well as minority voters — i.e., the people who gave the president his margin of victory in 2008. Some of that is just inevitable — college kids are just not going to vote [...]
my new Philly weekly column is up. It discusses the Eshoo-Barton amendment in the health care bill, which if left standing will ensure that people with breast cancer, MS, diabetes, and similar chronic, life-threatening diseases will continue to pay through the nose for biologic drugs for at least 12 [...]
Please Get A Soil Lead Reading First
I guess we can make this contrarian Saturday. One thing I really don’t understand – help me! – is the regular stream of people promoting urban agriculture. I don’t understand the point. I’ve got nothing against community gardens and the like, [...]
ike I always say, we’ll see.
you get a case of beer if we get health care reform, with a robust public option available on day one.
it’s a one-sided wager I will be happy to lose.
Under pressure from moderate-to-conservative members of [...]
Earlier this week, Chris Dodd stood up for the old boy’s club in the Senate:
Last week Chris Dodd said he might support Joe Lieberman as an independent in 2012. And yesterday after Lieberman threatened to take the unprecedented and historic move of joining the Republicans to break the caucus’s [...]
This is one of the most disturbing but hilarious metaphors I have ever heard. The opportunities for photoshopping are simply maginificent.
[...]Everything he says about Joe Lieberman and the Democratic Party is true.
[...]With all due respect to Nate Silver, buying Joe Lieberman a puppy won’t work. Furthermore, I think his conclusion about what motivates Joe Lieberman leaves out a very important factor, and is therefore dangerously inaccurate:
What Joe Lieberman wants, in all probability, is attention. He wants Harry Reid to have [...]
Skid Roper and Mojo Nixon: “I Hate Banks”
Pay all your bills on time and have perfect credit? How dare you.
All that responsible behavior is doing nothing for banks. They can’t slap a single overdraft fee or service charge on you. It’s no fun to [...]
HAHAHA! This is RICH:
Politico: Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that he’d back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care reform bill.
Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats and is positioning himself as a fiscal hawk on the issue, said he opposes any health care bill [...]
My brother called me this afternoon to tell me he’d finally completed resizing some of his recent photos of Sam, which i hope you’ll all enjoy.
But before you scroll down, let me put in a plug for him. Ray’s photo skills are top-notch, and it is [...]
Over the weekend, the Huffington Post published an article that stated:
President Barack Obama is actively discouraging Senate Democrats in their effort to include a public insurance option with a state opt-out clause as part of health care reform. In its place, say multiple Democratic sources, Obama has indicated a [...]
Last week, I bashed Arlen Specter around quite a bit.
This week it’s Joe Sestak’s turn.
I’d like to add a few more words here. I think it’s great that Sestak’s defying the Pennsylvania Democratic machine. There is something truly disgusting when the party apparatus lines up to support a long-time [...]
My brother will have more later today, but here are a few shots from Sam’s whirlwind visit in October. He’ll be coming back in December from the 26-January 5, although there’s a long weekend coming up in November when I might want to squeeze in a visit).
These [...]
Honestly, I don’t know which line is best. Transcript:
I have trouble listening to what he says sometimes, because of the blood that drips from his teeth while he’s talking. But my response is this: He’s just angry because the president doesn’t shoot old men in the face. But by the [...]
Apparently, my mom and dad were decades ahead of their time:
We congratulate our toddlers for blowing their nose (“Good job!”), we friend our teenagers (literally and virtually), we spend hours teaching our elementary-school offspring how to understand their feelings. But, incongruously and with regularity, this is a generation that [...]
At Nara, a sushi place at the corner for 40th and Spruce Streets in West Philadelphia, I most certainly was not. Nor will I EVER go back.
Last night, after seeing Brendan Cooney’s masterful score for “Battleship Potemkin” (a one-night-only performance), Christina and I hurried over to Nara for birthday sushi. [...]
That is one harsh headline. Probably a little harsher than I would have gone with, and considering my predilection toward bile, that’s saying something.
I’d like to make a few clarifications that apparently weren’t incorporated into the article, probably because the deadline was really tight, and my original piece was, [...]
Aside from Prohibition, the lack of civil rights laws, Jim Crow, child labor, the gap between the wealthy few and the poor masses, and all the rest, I think i would have enjoyed living in the 1920s:
(thanks to Kim at facebook for the links)
[...]While Republicans may be publicly wringing their hands over unemployment numbers (while gleefully calculating how they can use them to their advantage in 2010), they continue to block legislation that would extend unemployment benefits…
For the second time in a month, the Party of No is screwing [...]
Tim Kelly sent me this one, which pretty much captures how my head felt at 3:00 AM this morning. What’s weird is I didn’t really drink a lot last night, so maybe I had a pre-hangover?
Here’s what the birthday card I made for myself:
[...]Via Susie, Roland Burris has decided to give the Democrats heartburn by standing up for a public option.
The Illinois Democrat, appointed by disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, says he’ll only vote for a bill to provide health care to millions more Americans as long as it allows the [...]
I was listening to the Nice Polite Republicans talking about Medicare this morning, and I noticed something funny:
since nothing scares politicians more than angry senior citizens, who are traditionally among the largest bloc of voters in midterm elections, the real issue facing Congress isn’t whether to stop the doctor [...]
Last night we learned that Christina’s best friend’s husband died in Afghanistan. It was an IED.
I hate wars.
Edited: I took down the link for the family’s privacy.
[...]Back in March, I noted my number one post was my tribute to Meghan McCain’s breasts.
That’s funny enough. This weekend, it got even better.
As you’ve all noticed, I haven’t been blogging as much lately (something I wrote about earlier this month). So color me surprised when I looked [...]
In a conference call with political bloggers, Senator Arlen Specter (Still-Fresh D-PA) reported that in a recent gathering of the Senate Democratic caucus, he suggested his colleagues pledge to stick with the party on a cloture vote when the merged health care reform bill came to [...]
Whatever else may speak in Representative Blumenauer’s favor, spreading bullshit isn’t one of them:
Mr. Blumenauer, a member of the tax-writing and climate change committees with a devotion to trying to improve the livability of American cities, said he did not think Mr. Obama had shifted his ideological stance since [...]
Sam went home Monday afternoon, and the weather was perfectly suited to my mood: frigid, humid air that clenched up every muscle in my body until I ached to the bone. It took a bowl of pho and a steaming hot shower to get my internal temperature up to normal, [...]
Stupid show-offs who kill themselves because they aren’t responsible gun-owners is not a tragedy. Stupid people who kill their infant son because they believe in faith-healing is a different story:
On the last day of Kent Schaible’s life, his parents and pastor intensely prayed over his 32-pound body, which, unbeknown [...]
Susie thinks it’s a tragedy. TPM calls it “very dark”.
Me? I call it “the predictable result when stupid people act stupidly”:
Meleanie Hain, the pistol-carrying Lebanon mom who received national attention for taking a loaded gun to her daughter’s soccer game, was shot to death Wednesday night with [...]
I love how more than half of the ‘Gansett Girls are thick and curvy.
I like skinny ladies too, but a big girl is that much more to love.
[...]There is nothing worse than insomnia, which I have in spades.
It’s one thing to wake up in the middle of the night to take a piss or have a glass of water. It’s another thing entirely to wake up around 3:30 AM and find yourself unable to fall back [...]
I’m sure quite a few of my readers have noticed I haven’t been updating as much here as I used to, and i figured you’re owed an explanation.
Primarily, work has been REALLY busy. I’m a grant writer working in one of the worst funding climates I’ve ever experienced. So I’ve [...]
Max can be reached at (202) 224-2651.
[...]Apologies for the shitty internet stream (why is it that a giant of American media like NBC can’t provide online media that doesn’t stutter and burp like a developmentally delayed teenager with the hiccups?), but if you have speedy internets, this is very funny:
[...]I was in Montreal all weekend (more on that later) and didn’t do any blogging.
But before leaving the city for that miserable 10 hour drive home (and it was miserable in SO many way, including torrential downpours and accidents all up and down the Garden State Parkway) I stopped [...]
Even with the audio broken, this computer simulation of the proposed public transit waterfront expansion is really cool.
[...]Peter Finch, Network:
Glenn Beck, Nutjob:
It’s nothing but a cheap knockoff of a superior talent. It’s insincere schtick, the kind of nonsense only an ignoramus could embrace.
I keep imagining Peter Finch, in a ghostly shroud, haunting Glenn Beck. “Stop copying my schtiiiiiiiick…. stop stealing my liiiiiiiines….stop chewing the sceeeeeeeeenery Glennnnnnnnn [...]
A friend from elementary school emailed me, letting me know our 5th grade teacher, Hugh Moore, had died. it was a bit of a shock, not so much because his death was unexpected, but because I thought he had passed away long ago. He was in his fifties when he [...]
Glenn Beck is an idiot (but I repeat myself). Here, he proves himself to be a needlessly cruel and reckless idiot as well, throwing a live frog into a pot of boiling water to illustrate the old wives tale. Things don’t go as expected.
I wasn’t been following the ACORN non-story, a fake scandal peddled by Glenn “I May Have Raped and Murdered a Young Girl” Beck, until Congress decided to weigh in on the matter. And you know it wasn’t gonna be good: both the House and the Senate, including large numbers [...]
Via Susie, this has to be one of the best smackdowns of the fundie crowd i’ve seen in some time.
It certainly doesn’t hurt that she’s easy on the eyes either…
[...]I’m sorry. I know you hate Tom Delay as much as I do, but this has to be one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life. the outfit. the dance routine. the judge describing the whole shebang as “surreal”, which has to be the understatement of [...]
Via Susie, Mike Stark visits with the values voters: hilarity ensues. I particularly enjoy the African American woman who keeps saying “why are you asking me these questions”, as if it’s somehow out of bounds to point out that the Values Voters’ leading lights are philandering hypocrites.
…which inevitably reminds [...]
I was looking for a good version of Darby’s Ram, and instead found this:
Safe for work and very funny.
[...]
This is some good stuff that the self-censoring boobs at youtube pulled down: watch AFSCME members chant “bullshit” at the mention of Max Maucus’s bullshit health insurance bailout.
And why shouldn’t they? the plan IS bullshit.
[...]There’s a big health care event in Philadelphia tomorrow, September 22. Thanks to HCAN’s Marc Stier for the announcement.
The debate about health care in Washington has come down to this: If the insurance companies win, we lose.
Come out to fight for reform at our
Big Insurance: Sick of It
[...]
As if you needed anymore proof, here the opponents of government run programs complain about having to use the free market, which they typically claim is preferable:
A Texas congressman sent a letter Wednesday to Metro General Manager John B. Catoe Jr. demanding an explanation for why the transit agency [...]
Ouch. that one’s gotta hurt.
You’ll notice I’m not going with tags like “good democrats”, “democRAT”, “lying republican filth”, or others I’ve used in the past.
That’s because, like the guys at Booman Tribune, I am not very excited about this race.
Both candidates support a public option.
Neither candidate [...]
A friend of mine borrowed our burger flipper, and we forgot to meet up yesterday.
That explains why this…
…has been in my head all day.
[...]
