-"A group called the Chicago Tea Party Patriots publicly heckled a grieving family and suggested that the couple fabricated their tragic story. At a town hall held by Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) on Nov. 14, Dan and Midge Hough spoke about how they believed the death of their daughter-in-law and her unborn child were caused, in part, by a lack of health insurance."

-Most mind-boggling critique of Obama I've heard yet (echoed here): "The new tenant of the Oval Office takes a strikingly different approach. President Obama is almost defiantly deliberative, methodical and measured, even when critics accuse him of dithering. When describing his executive style, he goes into Spock mode, saying, 'You've got to make decisions based on information and not emotions.'"

Yeah, how...dare he? Because gut-based decision-making has worked out so well for us. If it's just partisans looking for any attack to stick it's especially ill-considered because, you know, I get the impression most people actually like Spock.

-There's apparently a new law being introduced in Uganda to put homosexuals to death, and it's sponsored by a member of 'Family,' the massively creepy US-spawned merger of extreme-right Christianity and a relentless drive for political power. (More on the organization can be found here, if you really want to horrify yourself.)

-To close up, a quote from Alberto Gonzales, apparently now working as a college professor: "Dream big but be patient… You never know when the next George W. Bush is going to come along and give you a once in a lifetime opportunity like he gave me, but you have to be patient."

As one of the Wonkette commenters sums up -
"Step 1: Dream big.
Step 2: Family of Presidents comes along and gives you job.
Step 3: I don’t recall.
Step 4: Tenure!"

Also, the phrase "the next George W. Bush" is not one I'd associate with positive hopes for the future, kthnx.

AWESOME: "When the Republican National Committee gets together in January to talk about the things they talk about, the "Resolution on Reagan's Unity Principle for Support of Candidates" will come up for a vote. The goal of the resolution is to subject Republican politicians to a test that measures their support for ten basic party principles. If someone disagrees with three or more of the policies, the resolution's supporters want to withhold party money and endorsement. The 80 percent threshold comes from a famous Reagan quote: 'The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor.'"

So many epic things about this: first, that they're considering narrowing their coalition at a time of remarkable lack of popular appeal for the Republican party. Second, that they've managed to *completely miss* Reagan's point with that quote - that if you can get someone to work with you on some issues, that person should be encouraged to do so and maybe persuaded to do more, not excommunicated from your movement - in favor of a hilariously literalist understanding of his words. (I guess Reagan really is like Jesus, in a way?) And third, that several of their core party principles mention *opposition to Obama,* specifically. TIMELESS VALUES.

Also, greatest headline of the month, no contest: "Paula Deen hit in face by ham."

Last bit of embarrassing Merlin fangirling for the weekend: the guy who plays Arthur talking about how, when he practices his lines with the guy who plays Merlin, he does it with a terrible Bowie-in-Labyrinth impression. MY GEEKY WORLDS ARE COLLIDING.

Oh, my internet browsing = dangerous - I've fallen in love with a trip idea again. This Antarctic cruise sounds so fantastic. I'm going to keep looking at trip ideas - I'm not even sure I'll end up going Antarctic, and if I do this may not be the cruise - but I know myself. With Iceland and Australia/NZ, I looked endlessly at options but ended up circling back to the packages that first drew my attention.

Seriously, though, omg Antarctica. *daydreams*

ASDFAOIEJF MERLIN/ARTHUR SCENE OF *AWESOME.* Oh, show of pseudo-medieval cheesiness, I love you so hard. (Also: the guy who plays Arthur clearly ships it.)

According to a newly released poll, 52% of Republicans believe that President Obama did not legitimately win the election - that it was, in fact, stolen by ACORN.

America, you are fucking depressing. That is all.

( Monday TV thoughts - spoilers for some upcoming House episodes mentioned )

ALSO. I tried to go through the various comms to gather some entertaining craziness, but there was *too much.* ( getting spoilery again )

Okay, I said I wasn't going to talk about Sarah Palin, and I'm not. But I can't resist linking to some of Wonkette's coverage of her various press maneuvering today. Right now they're live-blogging her Oprah appearance in the blog's typical surreal humor style. To give you a flavor for it, from the post on the National Review's 'Going Rogue'-centered blog:

An editor, when asked if he's going to liveblog the Oprah appearance: "[ugh] when is the oprah program on?"
Commenter: "When you took this job, you knew there would be days like these. I feel bad for you, but all this prestige and glamor has a price."
Editor: "I had no idea days would be like this when I took this job. I was naive, not expecting something like Sarah Palin to manifest itself. People who take jobs writing about politics today will find themselves, in two years, liveblogging an actual rabid cheetah (GOP candidate for president) plugging its book on the Sarah Palin Show."
Other commenter: "And the most accepted form of political discourse will be in the form of biting each other on the back of the leg. All national issues will be solved in this way."
Another commenter: "No shit, right? The GOP is killing the snark by becoming a caricature of a caricature! It’s like we don’t even have to do anything and it’s still funny. And by funny, I mean like when a clown slits his wrists."

ETA: Unrelatedly, quoth pundit Mark Shields on 'Washington Week': "And I think it makes me nostalgic for those days when we had a manly man in the White House who could say, “Let’s kick some tail and ask questions afterwards” you know? That’s what we really need instead of any reflection."

Dear political leadership of all stripes: the function of the nation's military is not actually to shore up your insecurities about your own manhood through the irresponsible exercise of indiscriminate power so you can experience it vicariously. I know! *Shocking.* Ugh, this is all giving me 2003 flashbacks.

From an article titled "God, the Army, and PTSD," which argues that religion has harmed veterans' psychological treatment:

"Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Michael McLendon an intensely focused man in a neatly pressed suit, kept a Bible on his desk at the office. Sullivan explained to McLendon and the other attendees that the rise in benefits claims the VA was noticing was caused partly by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who were suffering from PTSD. 'That’s too many,' McLendon said, then hit his hand on the table. 'They are too young' to be filing claims, and they are doing it 'too soon.' He hit the table again. The claims, he said, are 'costing us too much money,' and if the veterans 'believed in God and country...they would not come home with PTSD.'

... "For Sullivan, McLendon’s remarks reflected the views of many political appointees in the VA and revealed what was behind their efforts to reduce costs by restricting claims. The backlog of claims was immense, and veterans, often suffering extreme psychological stress, had to wait an average of five months for decisions on their requests.

"When I asked him years later about the meeting, McLendon laughed. Then his face darkened in anger. 'Anybody who knows me knows I wouldn’t talk that way.'

"Nevertheless, McLendon was open about the skepticism he felt toward the diagnosis of PTSD, calling it 'a made-up term,' which has 'taken on a life of its own.' As he spoke about the diagnosis, he pounded the table with the side of his hand more than ten times, hitting it so hard that the wooden surface shook. 'Do I think they have a mental illness and should be stigmatized for the rest of their life?' he asked. 'What gives a psychiatrist the right to do that?'"

Somehow, I can still be surprised by this kind of shit. Despite his denials, I tend to believe the quote above really did come from him - it's of a piece with the "Prosperity Gospel" school of Christianity, which holds that the people God favors are wealthy and successful on Earth, and that those who are poor or sick are that way because of their own sins. (Which, even as lapsed as I am, strikes me as a horrifying twisting of Christian doctrine for reasons of self-delusion, but, anyway.)

ANYWAY. Tonight I will either check out some fandom comms for mock-worthy commentary or finish switching out my icons, whichever I turn out to be in the mood for.

News round-up post for, like, two weeks. Oof.

First, non-political - a Facebook status update has been used for the first time as an alibi in a criminal case. Even more amusingly, the NYT write-up of the case describes said status update (which was apparently "ON THE PHONE WITH THIS FAT CHICK......WHERER MY IHOP.") as "indecipherable street slang" and "gobbledygook." HAHAHA, there is no context in which the phrase "indecipherable street slang" is not cause for pointing and laughing.

Topic #2: posts replying to this year's election results. First, from the ever-unintentionally-hilarious Erick Erickson, in reference to the NY-23 district congressional results, in which far-right conservatives took a race that could've easily been won by a moderate Republican, replaced said moderate with a Glen Beck-endorsed candidate that didn't even live in the district, and ended up losing to the Democrat: "The race has now been called for Democrat Bill Owens. This is a huge win for conservatives." Sure it was, Erick, sure it was. They're apparently planning to do the exact same thing in the Florida Senate race, which moderate Republican now-governor Charlie Crist could pretty easily win. AWESOME. Keep going with your purity purges, guys, it's clearly a winning strategy for...someone!

The second post is a thoughtful response to someone else's mildly infuriating post about the gay marriage vote in Maine, in which said other poster claims the results against gay marriage are evidence of something besides anti-gay prejudice. Coates makes the obvious connection to the Civil Rights movement and notes that conservative opinion-makers at the time claimed that the attempts to keep black people from voting in the south weren't trying "to deprive the Negro of a vote for the sake of depriving him of the vote."

Topic #3: health care reform! I'm pleased the House managed to pass it, even if some of the provisions are troubling (the Stupak amendment, for example, which seems to restrict abortion coverage for even those *not* on the public option, which clearly needs to be changed; I'd be willing, grudgingly, to accept restrictions on coverage for abortions themselves - i.e. not contraceptives, or Plan B - for those on the public plan, but this is just excessive). But even with its flaws, we can be grateful the Republican alternative didn't pass. There are other problems with it, but the one highlighted here is fucking insane - the way it set up its health insurance exchanges made it so that the policy was subject only to laws in the insurance company's "primary state," which could be any of the fifty or any US territories, and *not* the laws of the state in which it's purchased. This is very similar to what happened with the credit card companies - after a similar policy was enacted to make the companies subject to only their "primary state"'s regulations, most of the companies have set up mailboxes in South Dakota and other states with lax consumer protections and can then jack up their interest rates and late fees at will. This has obviously worked out well for everyone!

Next, a hilarious/horrible speech from the floor of the House from Rep. Mike Pence, who urges his "Democrat colleagues" to fight the health care bill. For FREEDOM. To prove that regular Americans oppose the bill, he cites his cousin who's suffering from cancer and awaiting insurance coverage for an experimental treatment. Who is omg scared of government-run health care, which he apparently thinks will be mandatory! I wonder where he could've gotten that crazy idea. Could it be Mike Pence??

Last in this area, a tweet that reminds me why I fucking loathe Jonah Goldberg. *Obviously* a slight delay in obtaining knee surgery is a more important issue than the not-at-all-permanent consequences of an unwanted pregnancy!

And, hmm, that's it for themes. Everything else I link to will be an individual story. I refuse to talk much about Sarah Palin, but I couldn't resist linking to this apparently real "photo illustration" of Time columnist Mark Halperin reading her book. First: why would you have to photoshop a picture to make it look like you're reading it? Second: could they possibly have found a douchier pose to paste his face onto? There is no possible explanation but that the Time graphics people hate him.

-Michael Steele news! I kind of love this loon. He admitted that white Republicans are often scared of him, in print. Really. Wonkette has taken to posting all Steele news with the header "moo moo baby" in reference to the time he compared himself to a "cow on the tracks" of the train of health care reform. It's an easy joke, but it makes me laugh every damn time.

-A post from my favorite conservative commentator, Daniel Larison. He's the old school, small-c type of conservative that I generally respect, while still often disagreeing with them. Anyway, in responding to a poster that says she misses Bush because he "loved America," he writes: "Bush’s love of country was something similar to what the Apostle called in another context 'zeal not according to knowledge.' The man was actually overflowing with saccharine, do-gooding, Gersonian sentimentality and he had no shortage of emotional, demonstrative professions of patriotic devotion. So what? What good did it do anyone? It might even have been better had Bush been less enthusiastic in trying to protect the United States, since he would not have been so ready to see dire threats around every corner where none existed. America needs fewer paranoid, jealous lovers, not more." The whole thing is well worth reading.

-In news that reminds me that no matter how much of a lapsed Catholic I am, I'm still not *lapsed enough,* the Archdiocese of Washington, DC is threatening to discontinue the social services it runs in the District if it doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law. Because it would be forbidden from discriminating against gays and lesbians in employment. Grandstanding ballsy fuckers - yes, your ability to discriminate against TEH GAY is *clearly* more important than Jesus's commandments to care for the less fortunate. I totally remember that part of the Bible.

-Another Erick Erickson/Red State digest: he's so outraged! that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be sent to New York to face a civilian court. A baby step towards reestablishing the rule of law is so horrible, you guys. Most amusingly, his argument includes this sentence: "At best, this will be a show trial fit not for the American Republic, but a third world kleptocratic totalitarian regime." He says this, mind, as part of his effort to *prevent* Mohammed from having a trial in which he has access to lawyers and to review the evidence against him. Which is the kind of up-is-down pronouncement that Erickson is so adept at.

-Today's right-wing tantrum against Obama: ZOMG he bowed to the Japanese emperor!!!! HOW DARE HE. I particularly note the commentator referring to him as the 'boy king,' which is. Wow. No words.

-Lastly, to end on an amusing note, observe pundit David Brooks's obvious crush on Senator John Thune. "The first thing everybody knows about him is that he is tall (6 feet 4 inches), tanned (in a prairie, sun-chapped sort of way) and handsome (John McCain jokes that if he had Thune’s face he’d be president right now). If you wanted a Republican with the same general body type and athletic grace as Barack Obama, you’d pick Thune." (Yes, Obama won because he's teh hot! The campaign, issues, and eight years of Republican incompetent malfeasance were not even worth mentioning.)

...I failed at ending that on funny, didn't I? Oh well, this post is probably long enough.

So, I have been uncharacteristically short on mocking stuff this week - low energy, not in the right mood, etc. *Some*thing had to snap me out of it, and today, this did it.

From a NYT article: "Mr. Obama’s exclusion of the obvious threat — that he will pull American troops out of Afghanistan if Mr. Karzai does not comply — reflects a stark conundrum: How much leverage does the United States really have over the Afghan leader?

"“You know that scene in the movie ‘Blazing Saddles,’ when Cleavon Little holds the gun to his own head and threatens to shoot himself?” asked Ronald E. Neumann, a former ambassador to Afghanistan."

Holy shit, what. Someone thought it was actually a good idea to say that. Really. Even leaving out the, um, obvious racial implication of invoking that scene? It's not a good metaphor. Because in Blazing Saddles, that ploy *worked.*

This 'former ambassador,' by the way, was W's envoy there from 2005-2007. One might recall that during this period, we drew down our troop level there to support the surge in Iraq, and the Taliban insurgency became stronger? And that this was the point Afghanistan started to turn from a forgotten war to an outright quagmire? Yeah. Clearly a valuable source of insight, here.

Keep meaning to write one of my snarky political posts - sooo much material - but I've been all out of sorts and tired this week. Weirdly, being moody like this makes me *less* likely to mock things. I don't understand my brain. I had been trying to write something anyway, but when I couldn't even work up the energy to give a good mock to this bit of low-hanging fannish fruit, it was time to stop trying to force it. Ah well, maybe tomorrow.

So, McDonnell won in Virginia (as expected), and Christie won in New Jersey in a squeaker. Expected political media narrative of the week: does the fact that the GOP won two gubernatorial races in an off-year election during an inherited recession mean Obama's presidency IS OVER?? Lots of hilarious overreactions are sure to ensue.

The other two races I'm following are still pretty close, with the gay marriage law in Maine in danger of being struck down (ugh!) and the wingnut in New York's 23rd close to being defeated (hah!). I will probably be up for a while refreshing these pages, because I am lame.

...happens tomorrow! Interesting races to follow:

1) Maine is voting on a referendum about gay marriage. Maine's an interesting case because it's (I believe?) the first state to institute gay marriage via the legislature rather than a judicial ruling. Whether it can withstand the referendum is an important test because, if the side favoring equality fails, other state legislatures are less likely to take the risk.

2) Virginia and New Jersey are voting for new governors. Virginia's mainly interesting because it's local to me, and it's officially a toss-up state now - though probably McDonnell, the Republican, is going to win (boo, hiss). Entertaining thing about the NJ race: the Republican challenger unwisely decided to swipe a Monty Python sketch, edit in references to his opponent, and air that as a commercial. Without checking with anyone involved. Politicians: DO NOT screw with comedians, seriously. They will cut you.

3) Potentially the most interesting, against all odds: the election in New York's 23rd district to replace their representative, a moderate Republican who was selected by Obama to be Secretary of the Army earlier this year. Another moderate Republican, DeDe Scozzafava, was selected/elected (I'm not entirely sure which) as the official GOP candidate. The winner of this election will only serve for a *year,* as they're just serving out McHugh's term and will have to run again to get reelected to a full term. Pretty boring right?

HA, well. That was when the far right's purity trolls decided to flex their muscles - declaring Scozzafava a "leftist," a Conservative Party candidate named Doug Hoffman entered the race, and every big-name conservative flocked to endorse him, including, eventually, the National Republican Congressional Committee. Activists like Erik Erikson came out with charming statements like this: "We should be magnanimous in victory — and whether Hoffman wins or loses, as long as Dede Scozzafava loses it is a victory — but we should demand accountability, we should demand a reckoning, and we should demand a purge from the party establishment of those people most responsible for the Republican disaster in NY-23." (That "disaster" refers to selecting a so-called leftist - who is, by the way, solidly in the mainstream of New York Republicans - not creating enough interparty squabbling to lose a seat that they could've easily kept. Of course.)

Sure, Hoffman has no grasp of local issues, and doesn't even live in the district. (Check out this link for a picture of the guy, by the way. *Yikes.*) But former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, one of Hoffman's earliest backers, defended him on this by describing local issues as "parochial." That's right - they're trying to win this election with the "your concerns aren't that important" argument. And it might work! Current polling has Hoffman up by 5 points, with a lot of undecideds.

But over the weekend, Scozzafava dropped out of the race and endorsed the Democratic candidate, so no one really knows how this'll shake out. (Add in to this that the turn-out rate for off-year elections is typically absurdly low, so "likely voters" are extra-difficult to determine.) But whatever happens, I would bet on the right's activists declaring victory and planning even more primary challenges against GOP officeholders - if the conservative wins, they've saved the district from the gutless GOP leadership; if he loses, it's because said leadership backed the RINO for too long.

2010's gonna be fucking hilarious, that's for sure.

(Incidentally, how far to the right do you have to be to consider *Newt fucking Gingrich* not conservative enough? Jesus.)

So, that was a long politics post! To make up for it to the many of you who probably do not care, have a funny article about a 70-year-old Washington Post editor beating up a staff writer. ...I think it's funny, anyway!

Confusing-to-me political commentary of the day: here. Andrew Sullivan is a recovering conservative and an interesting blogger that I often agree with and generally find to be a good read. Which is part of why I find that post so odd/vexing.

Keeping pressure on Obama to deliver on his campaign promises on gay rights = definitely a good thing, mind, and I can also see being disappointed that more hasn't been accomplished on this front so far. But it strikes me as singularly odd to complain about the new hate crime bill's inclusion of crimes motivated by hate of sexual orientation (and, as he omits, sexual identity - making this the first national law to include transgender rights) as a "piece of symbolism" while complaining that the president's remarks weren't up on his blog quickly enough and that he failed to use the word gay. That's just so perfectly backwards. Possibly this is motivated by his own opposition to hate crime legislation in general - he maintains his old conservative belief that they're inherently unnecessary - or maybe it's just your standard Boomer pundit's preoccupation with appearance and symbolism as more important than even actual legislative gains.

ANYWAY. Have I mentioned my new tv crush? It's Top Chef's Kevin. He's a freakishly talented cook (he's dominated the competition so far, and it's a pretty talented group), nice to the other contestants, completely drama-free, seemingly good at everything (loves cooking meat, eats vegetarian part of the year, gave up a full scholarship to MIT to go to cooking school, weirdly good at throwing horseshoes) yet not annoying about it. Plus, funny.

Kevin: *talks about how he can eat 150 chicken wings in an hour*
Other contestant: "He didn't get fat by accident."
Kevin: "It's a personal choice."

Basically, he's a magical gnome of awesomeness.

Truefact for today: if you hear someone describe the health care reform bills as "government-run healthcare," you can safely assume they're not interested in an honest debate so much as in scaring the uninformed. It's meant to call to mind systems like Britain's, where the doctors are employees of the government. What's actually on the table is government-run *health insurance,* a much less dramatic change. And even *that* is really pretty limited. To quote Ezra Klein, one of the Washington Post's few remaining non-hacks, "For the real liberals, the public option was already a compromise from single-payer. For the slightly less radical folks, the public option that's barred from partnering with Medicare to maximize the government's buying power was a compromise down from a Medicare-like insurance plan. For the folks even less radical than that, the public option that states can 'opt out' of is a compromise from the straight public option. Access to the public option will be a political question settled at the state level. It is not a settled matter of national policy."

Of course, even that Joe Lieberman's threatening to filibuster, the fucker, because ""I think a lot of people may think that the public option is free. It's not. It's going to cost the taxpayers and people who have health insurance now, and if it doesn't it's going to add terribly to the national debt..." Which is just bullshit. It's fundamentally not a new entitlement, and will be financed entirely by participants' premiums. I kind of wonder if he's not bluffing - he's coming up for reelection in 2012, and he may want support from the party to run as a Democrat again. And money from the party, of course.

Depressing story out of Texas - the state executed a man, Cameron Todd Willingham, for killing his three children by setting his house on fire. There was initially evidence of arson, but all the supporting evidence was highly faulty - witnesses who changed their statements to describe him as not caring about his children after he was accused of murder; doctors declaring him a "sociopath" who'd never talked to him and had no expertise in sociopathic behavior, based on the crime he was accused of and the presence of a skull tattoo and an Iron Maiden poster. Even more troublingly, his state-assigned lawyer has publicly stated that he believes his client guilty and seemed to put little effort into his defense. (Quoted from the New Yorker article: "'There were no grounds for reversal, and the verdict was absolutely the right one.' He said of the case, 'Shit, it’s incredible that anyone’s even thinking about it.'"

In January 2004, an expert who consulted on arson cases reviewed the evidence, and was shocked by the hugely faulty conclusions the arson investigators had reached. (Another disturbing quote from the article: "Still, many arson investigators believed that what they did was more an art than a science—a blend of experience and intuition. In 1997, the International Association of Arson Investigators filed a legal brief arguing that arson sleuths should not be bound by a 1993 Supreme Court decision requiring experts who testified at trials to adhere to the scientific method. What arson sleuths did, the brief claimed, was 'less scientific.'")

The expert, Dr. Gerald Hurst, quickly wrote up a report on his conclusions, as Willingham was set to be executed only weeks after he began looking at the case. A copy of his report was sent to the Board of Pardons and Paroles, who denied the request for clemency; there was no record of anyone taking note of the new evidence or responding to it. A member of the board defended this by saying "We get all kinds of reports, but we don’t have the mechanisms to vet them." Willingham was executed in February of 2004.

After years of continued attention and inquiry into the scientific flaws of the prosecution's case, Texas established a commission to address forensic science errors in the justice system. An expert hired by the commission excoriated the arson investigators, and there was some speculation that Texas could officially acknowledge that it had put an innocent person to death. That didn't happen - Governor Perry, under whose watch the man was executed, replaced members of the commission before they could issue their report.

If you want to *really* depress yourself today, watch an interview with Willingham's defense attorney, who still thinks his client was an unambiguously bad guy who got a fair trial.

To promote his new book, Newt Gingrich is using a few Twitter accounts to put on a "twitternactment" (HIS WORD) of the Battle of Trenton.

Yes, really. TWITTERNACTMENT.

Check out George Washington's Twitter page if you want to follow this inanity.

Ahaha, NEW FAVORITE YouTube video. I've mentioned my shameful Merlin love, right? In addition to the insanely obvious slash, the two female leads are entirely fabulous (and also, femslashy). But if I didn't already love them, the fact that the actresses *slash Arthur and Merlin on the DVD commentary* would definitely do it.