Keith Olbermann, the sportscaster-turned-pundit often lauded for his “progressive stance,” openly calls for physical attack, if not murder, upon Senator Hillary Clinton.

For shame.  Read more 

But of course

Barack Obama is hemmorhaging support against John McCain in states where Democrats can/should win in November.

In the last six weeks, Barack Obama has been losing support, while Hillary Clinton has gained support, when matched against McCain. Much of Clinton’s additional support is from voters who were undecided in late February, and Clinton essentially “split” the “recent deciders” with McCain; as a result there is little change in her margins against McCain. But people who were undecided whether they preferred Obama or McCain are also making up their minds – and choosing McCain. As a result, Obama’s margins against McCain are looking much worse.

This is true among all major demographic categories that were available for comparison – if Obama improves in a category, Clinton has shown greater improvement in that category. And in categories where Clinton is not doing as well as she was in February, Obama is doing consistently worse.  Read more 

Via Big Blue, I came across something so Zen and perfect that I just had to post on it. Concerning some Villager I never read and a piece he wrote on BHO:

Number of references Tapper made to himself: 14

Number of references Tapper made to Obama: 16

That’s really it, isn’t it? They can’t understand that it’s not about them. Celebrity is a great evil, and clearly it’s utterly corrupted our press. But the next time you need an excuse to get drunk like a frat boy during pledge week, just count the number of times the Villager you’re reading makes reference to himself, and take a drink for each one.

What astounds me is that I think a lot of them believe that America gives a crap about their lives. Newsflash: we don’t. Bloggers should also take note of how little America could care for Insider Squabbles of the Moment, and the personal relationships relating to them.

He’s a lawbreaker. That’s the fucking language we need to be using. If our Blue Laird is correct, and the battle this fall is “against the media,” let’s start with stuff like this. “John McCain is a lawbreaker and hypocrite who thinks the laws he writes only apply to other people.” You can come up with a shorter way to say that if you like. Correctly focused Jane:

Having accepted public financing last fall for the primary, then deciding to thumb his nose at it when it didn’t suit his purposes, John McCain is now laying the groundwork for accepting public financing in the general. Aided by reform groups like Democracy 21 who have hammered Obama for not accepting it but have uttered nary a peep about the fact that McCain is breaking the law, he’s obviously looking to play the “holier than thou” card in the fall — confident that a compliant press and the wouldbe watchdogs will all take a nap while he does it.

And do go on to contrast and compare Jane’s direct speech to the timid and weak writing of the Boston paper of record at the link. It’s pathetic. The press so loves this man, it’s kind of gross and sick. It’s like they are a thousand sycophantic twinks, all aiming to nail the ultimate Power Daddy. Ick.

As the MSM largely ignores what is truly occurring in Iraq, the bumper-sticker tactics of the Republican Party (and their minions) seem to be working.  Read more 

H/t MS. Just for shits and giggles, check this out. Heh, it seems Corrente isn’t the only place to go for naughty, spicy language about today’s economy:

GMAC Bank is suing mortgage company HTFC for selling improperly secured loans, which lead to the hilariously blue and aggressive deposition from HTFC CEO Aron Wider. Wider dropped the f-bomb 73 times, frustrating the opposing counsel’s attempts to get him to answer difficult questions like “Where are you currently employed?” Some of the more colorful and creative expletives from the testimony of Mr. Wider, who, according to his company website, serves as company Coprorate Information [sic], CEO / Senior Underwriter, and Radio Engineer, inside…

Q: My question is where are you currently employed.
A: I’ m not. I just told [you] I work for free.
Q: OK. You’re not employed by the HTFC Corporation?
A: Hit That Fuckin’ Clown. That’s what it means.  Read more 

Actually, one of the diaries is really interesting, and you can see why it got recommended; it illustrates the “casual poetry” of the Obama campaign so well. It’s the one around the middle, titled “Hardball, What does Hillary want?”

Just give me a moment to slip into my scrubs and pull on my surgical gloves….

There! Follow me below the fold. (I added yellow highlighter to the best part.)  Read more 

So a friend from Jersey sent me this awful/funny email. These are “Jersey” people. Here are some highlights:

:

 Read more 

Dear John:

Your new commenting tech sux. Like, a lot. It’s killing your comments and discouraging your readers from leaving replies. Please look into Drupal, and call Lambert if you need help with that. Smooth, silky, effortless- that’s our goal here in the blogosphere.

Luv,
CD

p.s.  Read more 

This post is a reaction to a comment by CD here:

when you played marbles, did you change the rules midgame, when you were winning (but by not enough), or losing? prolly not.

so again, i ask: what (were) the rules? before all of this started? i know what they (were). why are we talking about changing them, “midstream?”

1. This is an election, not a game, of marbles, or otherwise. It has real life consequences.

2. This system is a much more complex system than marbles, in that:

3. There are rules to change the rules*, and:

4. Fairness and legitimacy count too, and they are not the same as the rules; see point 1. You might think of them as the “soft power” that any functioning institution ought to have, and of “the rules” as hard power.

FWIW, let me try to review the bidding. This is my take. I’m not an expert in either MI or FL, so please correct me. My perception is that the DNC, correctly in my view, wanted a stable primary calendar. (Also, I had trust in Dean at that point, and that’s what he wanted to do.) The state political establishments in FL and MI tried to jump ahead on the Calendar, and the DNC, again correctly in my view at the time, punished them by depriving them of their delegates. [On FL, I believe MBW would register a dissenting view; the Republicans combined a bill moving the Democratic primary forward with a poison pill that implemented a paper trail for voting machines. Given the givens, the FL Dems couldn’t vote against a paper trail, so they voted to move the primary up as well. However, they planned to appeal the decision, and told the voters that. The voters then proceeded to vote in record numbers.]  Read more 

Speech-acts don’t impress me so much anymore. Nor do websites. Or rallies. Cucking Stool reminds us of the real cost of the continuation of the clusterfuck that is Iraq, and it’s hefty:

Nobel Economics Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz and his co-author, Harvard professor Linda Bilmes, have estimated the total cost of the war, just to the United States, to be three to four trillion dollars. The rest of the world will pay similar amount. They wrote a book called The Three Trillion Dollar War, but that estimate is apparently out of date, although the book just came out:

All of the war-price tallies include operations in the war zone, support for troops, repair or replacement of equipment, reservists’ salaries, special combat pay for regular forces and some care for wounded veterans — expenses that typically fall outside the regular Defense Department or Veterans Affairs budgets.

The highest estimates often include projections for future operations, long-term health care and disability costs for veterans, a portion of the regular, annual defense budget, and, in some cases, wider economic effects, including a percentage of higher oil prices and the impact of raising the national debt to cover increased war spending.

The debate raging on Capitol Hill, on the presidential campaign trail, in research institutes and in academia touches on such esoteric factors as the right inflation index for veterans’ health care costs; the monetary value of nearly 4,000 soldiers killed; and what role, if any, the war has had in higher oil prices.

Some economists who track the war expenses say they worry that politicians are making mistakes similar to those made in 2002, by failing to fully come to grips with the short- and long-term financial costs.

“The relevant question now is: what do we do now going forward? Because we can’t do anything about the costs that have already happened,” said Scott Wallsten, an economist and vice president of research with iGrowthGlobal, a Washington research institute. “We still don’t hear people talking about that.”

In discussions about the economy, the elephant - boy, is that an apt metaphor - in the room is the war. The national debt has soared, as has the price of oil, and the dollar has plunged. The Fed keeps throwing “liquidity” on the fire; it seems to help for a little while - at least in terms of buoying the stock market - but only for a little while. As the Fed accepts dodgey-er and dodgey-er debt as collateral, the prospect that the taxpayer is going to foot the bill becomes more and more inevitable.

Privatize the profits and socialize the losses!  Read more 

Really no need for comment, except to say that this is the “other side” of the shitpile. That last guy is very iconic of what’s happening, I think.

The strict definition of “recession” is:

a decline in a country’s gross domestic product (GDP), or negative real economic growth, for two or more successive quarters of a year.

Bush claims that he inherited a recession and also disputes that we are now in a recession.

As both cannot be true, it seems that “recession” is not a macroeconomic term, rather, a political one.  Read more 

So I confess I sort of enjoy being a public pedant, and blogging only gives me ample opportunity for that. New People, newer posters and people driven here as refugees from the Hilbama Wars: Quality. Not Quantity. That’s my standard here at Corrente. If you don’t meet it, you’re toast. Capiche?

We are perhaps among the most generous of the “A-List” blogs in our open posting policy. Don’t make us change that. I don’t want to hear about your personal problems, your off-the-cuff rants about the latest SCLM outrage, your late night drunken ramblings. That’s what places like the Crack Den are for; only Senior Fellows have the privilege of acting stoopid on the front page here. Get your own blog if you only want to rant, and not seriously contribute to the progressive narrative. That’s what Corrente does: contribute, not respond. A friend of mine puts it thusly: there are Producers, and Consumers. Producers create, consumers respond.

If you have something to say, take some time, write an essay, make an argument, and for Christ’s sake employ a little elegance and wit. And remember that this site isn’t “the Anti-Obama Club.” We strive for so much more than that, and I’m getting annoyed that some fail to perceive that fact, in taking advantage of our generous policy about posting.

You’ve been warned.

I don’t have an educated opinion about this class of drugs, and I haven’t read the first part of this series, but most of it sounds about right to me. Mixing for-profit economic models and health care lead to things on the ’market’ of people’s health needs that aren’t actually needed. That’s consumerism, baby! Anyway, this is the part that caught my eye:

Finally — and here is the stunner — it turns out we don’t have any clear evidence that statins help the first group by lowering cholesterol levels. It’s true that they do lower cholesterol, but many researchers are no longer convinced that this is what helps patients avoid a second heart attack. It now seems likely that they work by reducing inflammation. In other words, these very expensive drugs seem to do the same thing that aspirin does. (Are they more effective than the humble aspirin? We’ll need head-to-head studies to find out.)

So I have two questions:  Read more 

Thank god gays have come so far that we do so much better than this in our film today. I haven’t seen Berlin Alexanderplatz , and I know for a time this sort of film style was all the rage, but still. I suppose I know nothing of high culture or literature, but I’m glad my gay male friends understand me and women in general a little differently than the people behind this exercise in self-importance. NSFW video of one scene from it that is just too much in this day and age below.  Read more 

Aetna thinks it’s better for their company not to pay for an anesthetist/anasthesiologist’s service during a colonoscopy — and while colon cancer mortality rates have dropped over the past 4-5 years, colonoscopies are the only way of catching this killer early. Can you imagine  Read more 

Unfortunately, none of the leadership of either party seems to have any regular contact with dirty, smelly poor people. There are times when it really frustrates me, to listen to what candidates or pundits say about health care and the reality of it for most people. It’s as if they are speaking another language, they often feel so distanced from where I am and millions like me are. This post isn’t about HRC or BHO per se, so much as it’s meant to contrast with some much wonkery I read both in the blogosphere and the SCLM on the topic of health care. This feels so much more in touch with reality to me. The comments are good too:

Now, I didn’t hear the whole debate, and I’ve been trying to find the plans laid out point by point so that I can examine them more closely–but from what I can find, apparently the plan to make sure everybody is covered is basically the following for both candidates:
1. offer cheap health insurance.
2. give tax breaks so “families” can afford it.

The tricky part comes when it comes to how to actually get people on the programs–and this is the part where my head is exploding because I can’t find any definite information about each candidate. Apparently both candidates would impose some type of ‘fine’ or ‘penalty’ on people who do not buy health insurance once the option is made available–thus universal coverage. At the debate, I couldn’t figure out what Hillary was saying at all, and all I took from Obama is that he will be all about fining parents/penalizing parents if they don’t cover their children.

I found this article, which is from early Feb. and only says what I am saying here–how confusing it all is.

Thus, I will give you my reaction to these proposed ‘fines’ and penalties of parents for not covering their children from a purely uneducated point of view: YOU GOT TO BE OUT YOUR DAMN MIND.  Read more 

Gotdaym Liberal Fascism! Because I can’t make the oootuybbe work. Fuck em. Fuck video, fuck you.

Anyway, my viagra has worn off. As I wuz a saying: McLame is old, tired, and old. And tired. I’ve been saying this since 200whatever and beyond. Old. Tired. And: For more war! Wars that, incidentally- he can’t fight. Because he’s old, and tired. Anyway, war is for young men. Who pay taxes. Foggies? Democrats? Anyone willing to say $175m can be better spent against this? Bueller?

As administrator, I’ve temporarily called a halt to our open comments policy for unregistered users; they will no longer be able to post comments.

I’ll see how the registered users do.

With rare exceptions — anti-Semitic ranting, calls for the assassination of public figures — I prefer to let comments speak for themselves, or to use mockery and derision to contextualize them. Like Digby, I no longer have the time or the energy to watch everybody’s back, and the blog’s back, by spending my waking hours wading through the droppings of dull-eyed zombies:

Big Tent Democrat is a lying whore and so are you.

Hillary is toast. You two are either to [sic] stupid to notice. Or you are lying sack of chit.

Either way, you are both laughingstocks.

or to be fair, this:  Read more 

The city of Baltimore suspended the cop in this video. Proof that you don’t have to have a taser to be a jerk, a bully, and cop an attitude while showing the world what an ignorant arrogant loser you can be.  Read more 

Could be totally wrong. Who knows? That’s the fun about “elections.” But from the Dept of Just Sayin, I ask you: do you still remember (no peeking/googling) the Most Important Controvery between the 2/3/5 Dem campaigns the week before Iowa? Mmmhmm. Anyway, SupTup numbers via the Bowers, may the FSM bless his skinny lil toukas. Drat, I can’t make the table work here because I’m stoopid with tables…just go read it. And remember.

Hollywood’s oldest rule: the Hero always takes it on the chin first, in the fight scene at the End with the Bad Guy. To make the viewer worry the hero won’t win, when they, from long expericence, know he will. Generating that sense of ’suspense’ sells tickets, don’t you know.  Read more 

video below Heh. This is what he really thinks of you, OFB. In plain language even you can understand:

“There is a nasty aspect to politics on the internet that has to be dealt with.”

The thing is: it’s more likely that someone like myself, albiet who stayed in the mix a bit more than I have, will “deal with” you, when this one is in charge. You don’t like me when I’m Angry, do you? And to think I’ve not even really shown you my “bitchy” aspect out of respect for your intertube sensibilities. Feel the Nasty. And it’s “Miss Jackson,” in case you forget:  Read more 

There is not much I can add to the words of the not-yet-decayed Minneapolis Star Tribune:

In an effort to help Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing that people who have sex in public bathrooms have an expectation of privacy.

Craig is asking the Minnesota Court of Appeals to let him withdraw his guilty plea from a bathroom sex sting at the Minneapolis airport. The ACLU on Tuesday filed a brief supporting the Idaho Republican.  Read more 

Recently I had a passionate discussion with a friend about health care reform. You know where we stand on this blog: It immoral and uncivilized and expensive to have a for-profit health care industry. Everyone should have complete coverage, and it should be paid for from a common fund of taxdollars, paid directly to providers for the widest range of services, at fair rates which encourage the best people to go into health care, and an emphasis should be placed on getting people as much preventative care as possible. Right there, you save billions. I further posit that the elimination of a couple of military boondoggles like Star Wars will fund the start-up of such a program without significant immediate tax increases, although I favor taxing the shit out of health insurance companies and executives too. They are sitting on trillions that people paid for care, and frequently never got.

Now, my friend told me that “we can’t just eliminate insurance companies overnight” and cut them the fuck out of health care altogether. He argued that if we were to do so, millions of investors would lose value in their stock portfolios, not just “investor class” people but municipalities and retirement funds, who are heavily invested in insurance companies. He also argued that many insurance company workers would lose their jobs, and together a quick death to for-profit health insurers, that would mean real economic upset for all.

You can probably guess my reaction.

But I suppose I can see his point, but I think smart policy planners could find a way to offset some of this, and I will even admit that if there is no other way, I support a “phased” withdrawl, in which people are given time to change out their investment portfolios over some period of time. I would also support limited and temporary subsidies to former insurance workers as they train for or look for new jobs. Workers, not golden parachute, billion dollar compensation package-getting execs. They can fuck off and die.

However, you can see why I believe what I do, as you read this bit from Mass doctors, who are at the front of “health care reform.” My guy, Edwards, really blew it by going along with the consultant’s advice and not his wife’s, because people don’t want this kind of “reform.” If he’d been brave enough to say so plainly from the get go, he would’ve done better than he has so far in various races, media blackout or no. Americans are dying, screaming out for real health care reform. Not this shit:

Over 250 Massachusetts doctors have signed an open letter to the country warning that the health reform model enacted by Massachusetts is failing and that a single payer program is the only alternative.

“It is urgent that the rest of the country know that Massachusetts is a living laboratory for the health care reforms being pushed in California and by the Obama/Clinton/Edwards campaigns. Right now the Gov. Romney/Massachusetts’ plan gets a failing grade on the ground,” said Dr.Rachel Nardin, Assistant Professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.  Read more