2.27.2010

Praise the Lord and pass the pizza sauce



This was a front page story in the Scranton Times. Really.
Scranton Times

When Mary Louise Salerno saw Jesus Christ in a bucket of pizza sauce, her instinct was not to alert the media or even to tell many friends.

She did not want people descending on her family's West Scranton pizzeria, and she did not want to invite critics or doubters of what she felt was a clear sign.

"To us, it was something special," Ms. Salerno, 65, of Old Forge said. "God smiled on us that day."

The image of Jesus has a history of unexpected appearances, from rocks and windows to medical X-rays and a tortilla. Add to that a sauce bucket at Brownie's Famous Pizzeria, a long-standing eatery on Luzerne Street. It happened on the first Friday of Lent.

Ms. Salerno was at Brownie's and talking with her granddaughter, 23-year-old Jackie Krouchick, while she made a pizza. Her granddaughter is a single mother who she said is struggling through tough times. Ms. Krouchick told her grandmother she worried she was losing her faith.

As Ms. Salerno poured tomato sauce from a white plastic bucket, she urged her granddaughter to keep believing. That is when she saw it, the image of a man with long hair and a beard in the leftover sauce.

Bill Salerno, the owner of Brownie's and brother of Ms. Salerno, said he was skeptical until he saw it for himself. Maryann Marsico, who works at Brownie's, said even an atheist would find it unmistakable.

"My 2-year-old grandson knows who it was. ... He just looked at it and said, 'That's Papa Jesus,' " Ms. Marsico said.

It was not lost on Ms. Marsico that Jesus appeared at Brownie's at the start of Lent, a holy Christian time that also happens to spur pizza sales because observers are not supposed to eat meat on Fridays.

"I will never cheat and eat meat again," she said.

The bucket was placed in a cooler for a while, and a family friend insisted on taking a video of the image, which was posted on YouTube. On Wednesday, though, Brownie's washed the bucket out with Ms. Salerno's permission.

The message had been delivered, she said, and she did not want the image of her Lord "just sitting there in a pizza place."

Mr. Salerno, 55 and also from Old Forge, said he is not a churchgoing man but he is religious, and seeing Jesus on that pizza sauce bucket was all the proof he needs.

"Jesus is everywhere, even in a little pizzeria in West Side," he said.

2.26.2010

They. Don't. Fucking. Care.

Media Matters

At yesterday's health care summit, Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-NY-28) related this story from one of her constituents:

I even have one constituent -- you will not believe this, and I know you won't, it's true. Her sister died, this poor woman had no dentures. She wore her dead sister's teeth, which of course were uncomfortable and did not fit. Do you believe that in America that that's where we would be?
What was the reaction from leading members of the conservative media?
  • On Twitter, Michelle Malkin wrote: "We need trillion-$ Demcare cuz someone had to wear their sister's dentures! O: "Terrific conversation""
  • On his radio program, Glenn Beck stated, "I've read the Constitution ... I didn't see that you had a right to teeth."
  • Author and radio host Laura Ingraham told Bill O'Reilly that Slaughter's tale was "ridiculous" and a "sob story."
  • Fox Nation, the website maintained by the Fox News Channel, labeled Slaughter's comments "Summit Insanity."
  • Tara Lynn Thompson, a commentator for the conservative website, Rightpundits.com, suggested that if Americans had fewer teeth, they would eat less, and hence would meet Michelle Obama's anti-obesity goals: "What Michelle Obama has overlooked, thus far, is the potential of poorly fitted teeth. Children, as well as adults, could benefit greatly by a few extra teeth pulled, fillings that fall out, or dentures from the dead."
  • Rush Limbaugh went out of his way to mock the story. "If you don't have any teeth, so what?" he said. "What's applesauce for?" Like Ingraham, he also referred to it as the "sob story of the day."

When criticized for such comments, media conservatives always claim they were joking and chastise their detractors for lacking a sense of humor. But they aren't kidding. Leading conservatives, especially those in the media, don't believe that the United States faces a health care crisis. And in one sense, they are right: their America doesn't.

Conservative media leaders have made fortunes peddling such blatant callousness. Consider the fact that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck have all vehemently denied the urgent need for health care reform. Unsurprisingly, all three are inordinately rich and can afford the best health care money can buy.

And so, when Rush had a heart scare in Hawaii, he simply paid his emergency room bills out-of-pocket. As to the cost, he wasn't phased, describing it casually as less than half the "average SUV" of the "average American family."

He then shuts his eyes to the uninsured and under-insured Americans driven to bankruptcy by illness and injury. And he closes his ears to the estimated 45,000 Americans who die needlessly each year because they can't afford access to reliable care. After all, this is not the America that people like Limbaugh, Ingraham, Beck, and Fox News CEO Roger Ailes live in. Limbaugh makes an estimated $50 million per year. Beck made $23 million in 2009.

Politics aside, the real question is this: Why do ordinary Americans continue to listen to conservatives who don't even pretend to care about the senseless indignities and horrors experienced by countless citizens of this country?
Another question: why do ordinary Americans turn themselves off to the suffering of others, and yet expect the government to swoop in and save THEM? It's always whining, until it's YOU that's in need. Then it's an emergency.

Health care summit: the morning after

Cesca
Given an opportunity to get serious, the Republicans made with the same buffoonery and childish gimp speak they've employed for a year now.

So it looks like the president and the Democrats will move forward without them. Thank effing goodness.

The endless cavalcade of "government takeover" Luntz-speak topped with a healthy dose of lying about CBO reports made them look like the buffoons they are. This time on national television for seven and a half hours. One of the GOP talking points that I found most offensive was the repeatedly misleading poll numbers. Americans hate this bill! Mumble grumble! Well, actually, when they're presented with the various individual provisions of the bills, healthcare reform is very popular.

Anyway, can we pass the damn bill now?
TPM
The White House has given Congressional leaders the all-clear to move ahead on health care reform, with both the House and Senate aiming to pass final legislation by April.

A top aide to House Democratic leadership told TPMDC this morning that tension remains between the House and Senate as members in the lower chamber remain wary the Senate might not honor a promise to fix their bill through reconciliation.
Sullivan commenter
If these Tea Party people were serious about fiscal sanity, they would boo Ryan on sight for his vote for Medicare D. They would boo Cantor on sight. They would boo Boehner on sight. They would run primary challenges against all these people, and not let them forget the sins they committed against their country.

But the Tea Party movement is not serious. It is an act of collective amnesia, for Republican voters to convince themselves that everything bad that's going on is all Obama's fault, and everything was going great until he showed up and ruined us all.

2.25.2010

Health care summit: the trailer



Jon Stewart on the Republican cries of "set-up" over the health care summit

2.24.2010

The balls of a guy named Weiner as House repeals anti-trust exemption on healthcare

CNN

The House voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to repeal the antitrust exemption currently granted to health insurance companies.

The vote was 406-19 to repeal the exemption, which has been in place since the end of World War II. The 19 who voted against the repeal are all Republicans.

Liberal Democrats have said a repeal would help inject new competition into the health care industry while reducing consumer costs.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Tuesday that President Barack Obama strongly supports the repeal. "At its core, health reform is all about ensuring that American families and businesses have more choices, benefit from more competition and have greater control over their own health care," Gibbs said.

"Repealing this exemption is an important part of that effort.

Gibbs said the president is not seeking repeal of the exemption in lieu of broader changes to the insurance market. "This is a complementary step along the way," he told reporters.

The debate in the House on Wednesday included a colorful moment between Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-New York, and Republicans.

"You guys have chutzpah," Weiner told Republicans during the debate.

"The Republican Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry," he said, drawing the objections of Republicans, who asked that his words be stricken from the record.

Weiner then asked for unanimous consent to replace his words and said, "Every single Republican I have ever met in my entire life is a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry."

The Republicans objected again, prompting Weiner to rescind his words.

The House version of the health care bill passed last year would have removed the antitrust exemption, while the Senate's version would not.

Advocates of an exemption repeal say that the exemption has allowed health insurance companies to essentially divide the country into geographic zones. They argue the companies benefit from what amounts to local monopolies.

According to TPM via Cesca, the following Republican senators voted for the jobs bill today, while also voting to filibuster/kill the jobs bill last week:
Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
Thad Cochran (R-MS)
James Inhofe (R-OK)
George LeMieux (R-FL)
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Roger Wicker (R-MS)

And those who were absent Monday but voted yes today:
Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
Richard Burr (R-NC)
Congressman Anthony Weiner calls out Republicans as "wholly-owned subsidiaries of the insurance industry" and then calls then out as hypocritical obstructionists who want competition - just not on health insurance.

Kudos, sir. Kudos.



In other news, there has been a brief sighting of Harry Reid's balls.
"They should stop crying about reconciliation as if it's never been done before."

- Harry Reid

Dylan Ratigan calls out Joe Wilson on health care

WILSON: I'll take you to the poorest county in South Carolina, Allendale, a very nice hospital. I'll take you to another county which is very depressed.

RATIGAN: South Carolina has the 33rd worst health care in America, according to The Commonwealth Fund. America has the most expensive health care in the world and the 37th highest quality. We pay more than any country in the world. We have huge amounts of money going to special interests. Our budget is dominated by health care and people don't have coverage.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy


Full segment here

Rep. Steve King sympathizes with domestic terrorist killer

ThinkProgress

ThinkProgress caught up with Rep. Steve King (R-IA) at CPAC to talk about the attack in Texas. Asked if the right-wing anti-tax rhetoric might have motivated the attack, King implicitly agreed, noting that he had been a leading opponent of the IRS for some time. He noted that although the attack was “sad,” “by the same token,” it was justified because once the the right succeeds at abolishing the IRS, “it’s going to be a happy day for America.” He sidestepped the question of the legitimacy of the terrorists’ grievances, but sympathized by saying that “I’ve had a sense of ‘why is the IRS in my kitchen.’ Why do they have their thumb in the middle of my back”:

TP: Do you think this attack, this terrorist attack, was motivated at all by a lot of the anti-tax rhetoric that’s popular in America right now?

KING: I think if we’d abolished the IRS back when I first advocated it, he wouldn’t have a target for his airplane. And I’m still for abolishing the IRS, I’ve been for it for thirty years and I’m for a national sales tax. [...] It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it’s going to be a happy day for America.

TP: So some of his grievances were legitimate?

KING: I don’t know if his grievances were legitimate, I’ve read part of the material. I can tell you I’ve been audited by the IRS and I’ve had the sense of ‘why is the IRS in my kitchen.’ Why do they have their thumb in the middle of my back. … It is intrusive and we can do a better job without them entirely.
Steve Benen

King is, however, feeling at least some heat over this. Yesterday, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) took King to task on the House floor.

"The fact of the matter is that the gentleman that lost his life in that building, Vernon Hunter, is from -- was from Orangeburg, South Carolina, that I proudly represent in this body," said Clyburn. "He spent two tours in Vietnam and was about the business of carrying out his duties and responsibilities to this great country of ours. If anybody is a hero, it is this victim. And I find it appalling that a member of this body would call his death a noble happening."

The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents I.R.S. workers, also called on King to apologize for his remarks, saying the lawmaker showed "an appalling lack of compassion over [Vernon Hunter's] death, as well as a lack of respect for the lives of federal employees nationwide."

Representative King should retract and apologize for his ill-conceived statements concerning the tragic event that took place in Austin and pledge, as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, to do everything he can to ensure that the safety of federal employees remains one of our government's highest priorities.

But in order for King to suffer any real consequences for his sympathies for a suicide bomber, the media is going to have focus some attention on his lunacy. Yesterday, Washington Post journalist Ben Pershing told a reader in an online chat that King's comments "probably deserve more attention from the media. They are striking remarks."

To date, the Washington Post has not reported on King's comments at all.
To anyone who says that the news media treats Democrats better/easier than Republicans, let me ask this: what would the firestorm have looked like if Barney Frank had said "Well, Osama did have a few legitimate gripes."?

Just answer that, please. Would it be ignored like this?

Glenn Beck hates government spending, likes libraries and roads because they come from.... oh....

Beck rails against Progressivism, the notion that government taxes us to pay for things that benefit all of us. The common good. Where did he learn it? "At the library. Books are free."

(please pause while I have a stroke)

Where, EXACTLY, does he think library funding comes from? And how does he get there? Roads? Sidewalks? Where do THEY come from?

Dear god, this man is a blithering idiot. Which is OK, the world is full of them. However this blithering idiot has millions of blithering idiot fans. We are in an age of anti-Enlightenment.

Scott Brown... savior to turdpie in 2 weeks.

Less than a month ago, the wingnuts were ready to run Scott Brown for President. Now that he's sided with the American worker on a jobs bill, he's.... well.... look at his Facebook page.



According to Gawker:
These folks, Scott Brown's "Fans," thought Brown was literally the naked lovechild of Reagan and George Washington, but, in fact, he is a Senator from Massachusetts. And he would like to remain a Senator from Massachuetts, which means sometimes he will have to vote for things that the people in his state (not the people from Facebook) support.

So Brown patiently explained, on the Facebook, that he's voting for the bill because blah blah tax cuts bipartisanship etc. etc. This message has 3,546 comments of pure rage. (And 1,569 likes!)


Here's a good one:

"I wish your truck had broken down and you couldn't make it to Washington in time to vote for this bill! You were OUR "hope and change" and you let US down BIG TIME!!! Beck/Palin 2012!!!"

More GOP hypocrisy on health care and stimulus money

In advance of the health care summit, and flying in face of GOP lies objections, here are over a dozen GOP proposals included in the President's health care bill.

Bloomberg

Alabama Republicans Jo Bonner and Robert Aderholt took to the U.S. House floor in July, denouncing the Obama administration’s stimulus plan for failing to boost employment. “Where are the jobs?” each of them asked.

Over the next three months, Bonner and Aderholt tried at least five times to steer stimulus-funded transportation grants to Alabama on grounds that the projects would help create thousands of jobs.

They joined more than 100 congressional Republicans and several Democrats who, after voting against the stimulus bill, wrote Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood seeking money from $1.5 billion the plan set aside for local road, bridge, rail and transit grants. The $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed last year with no Republican votes in the House and three in the Senate.
The problem isn't that they took the money. It's not. I didn't give back my $300 Bush tax rebate that I objected to. The real problem is the hypocrisy of taking the money that you voted against, posing for pictures at ribbon-cuttings for new jobs that comes from the money, and then calling the stimulus a failure that's produced nothing.

Meanwhile, the CBO released a report that says that, conservatively, the stimulus created at least 1 million new jobs (2.1 million is the high number) and added at least 1.5% to the GDP (3.5% is the high number).
Washington Post

The economic stimulus law added between 1 million to 2.1 million workers to employment rolls by the end of last year, a new report released Tuesday by congressional economists said.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office study also said the $862 billion stimulus added between 1.5 to 3.5 percentage points to the growth of the economy in 2009. The controversial stimulus law combined tax breaks for individuals and businesses with lots of government spending.

The report reflects agreement among economists that the measure boosted the economy.

2.21.2010

Gran'baby Palin has gov't-provided health insurance

via Shannyn Moore

The dangers of "death panels" were explained to Americans on Sarah Palin's Facebook page. Oh, sweet Lord, she must not sleep at night...her grandson could be the next victim of "socialized medicine".

Recently released documents from the custody battle show clearly Tripp Palin Johnston has socialized health care through Indian Health Services and the Alaska Native Medical Center.

Palin's family has federally funded health care afforded to them...but if you had it Barack Obama might kill you. Put this on the list of Palin's Greatest Hypocritical Hits...volume 97.