LA Times: In the face of Republican attacks Tuesday, leading Democrats defended a controversial endgame maneuver that would allow them to pass the Senate version of a healthcare overhaul without taking a direct vote on the legislation’s most divisive provisions.
The stratagem, known in the arcane language of Congress as a “self-executing” rule or “deem and pass,” would allow House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) to skirt a roll-call vote, speeding passage of the bill and helping limit attacks on Democrats facing tough competition in an election year.
Republicans used the same parliamentary shortcut to avoid difficult votes when they controlled Congress, but on Tuesday they accused Democrats of being high-handed and unseemly. [ READ MORE ]
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the healthcare “dogs that cannot be potty trained,” led by their Congressmen, went crapping on the steps of the Capitol, in Washington. The tea-partiers came holding pictures of HATE — one depicting president Obama climbing into a coffin.
The same BREED of RACIST-IDIOTS Marched in the 60s
FATDick Morris sent out a mailing titled: “Obamacare Armageddon Has Arrived” — “Congress and the president are very close to subverting the will of the American people who strongly oppose Obamacare.” “The good news is that this nightmare can be stopped,” the mailing implored ….
…..More Wackadoodle YELPS
Anti-Immigrant Bigot Tom Tancredo Responds To Fellow Wackadoodle Dick Armey — Former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., reacts to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey’s comments that he is a “destructive force” for the GOP.
Senator Inhofe attacks Al Gore on global warming — While speaking on the Senate floor, Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., claimed that former Vice President Al Gore “seems to be drowning in a sea of his own global warming illusions.”
Republicans have been making lots of nonsensical remarks in an attempt to refute global warming — based on this week’s northeast snow storm. Opportunist TV douche-bags like Sean Hannity have seized the rough snowstorms to make their STUPID case against climate change, and to bash former president Al Gore for his advocacy on climate change. [ GLOBAL WARMING FALSEHOODS ] [ MORE FALSEHOODS ]
Comedian Dennis Miller made a sexist remark about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on The O’Reilly Factor Wednesday night. Almost every night Mr. Dennis like pervertDick Morris, talks to Osama Bin O’Reilly (Bill O’Reilly), the original bigot at Fox News’ O’Racist Factor via video link — seemingly while eating from a toilet in his home.
MediaMatters: Right-wing media seize on snow at Copenhagen conference to deem climate change a “fraud” — Right-wing media have highlighted recent snowfall during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, often suggesting that the winter storm is evidence that climate change is, in Rush Limbaugh’s words, “a fraud.” But climate scientists reject the notion that short-term changes in weather, let alone individual storms, bear any relevance to the global warming debate, and several major climate data centers have said that, thus far, 2009 is one of the warmest years on record. [ READ MORE ]
Sufferers of this incurable illness twist Bill Clinton’s moving rescue of two journalists into something ugly. Gordon Liddy, the demented felon and radio bigot cackled about “Ling Ling and Wee Wee being locked up for nine hours in an airplane with Bill Clinton.” Rush Limbaugh, the obsessive guttersnipe wondered aloud whether Clinton “hit on those two female journalists on the long flight home,” and Andrea Peyser, the curdled tabloid columnist insisted that the whole shebang was nakedly scripted and staged as a device to help rehabilitate the image of former President Bill Clinton.
By: Joe Conason Like a seasonal flu, the verbal virus that is sometimes called Clinton derangement syndrome has struck again, beginning only moments after the 42nd president of the United States appeared on television screens around the world with the two journalists he had helped to rescue from prison in North Korea. And like certain viruses, the syndrome tends to hit hardest among a very specific segment of the population. Most Americans appear to be immune most of the time, as do the majority of human beings on the planet, so this pathology will probably never become a global pandemic.
But pundits everywhere — from the newsrooms of the “liberal media” to the blogosphere to the Republican noise machine — seem to be the preferred hosts of the pathogen. While not lethal or physically disabling, it troubles their minds — and strikes the same people over and over and over again. Symptoms include the recitation of dull sexual japes, sour reflections on celebrity, mindless pronouncements on foreign policy, false accusations of grandstanding, and even furious attacks on innocent individuals who dare to express admiration or gratitude to Bill Clinton (on this particular occasion for saving their lives).
On display in the wake of his successful effort to secure the release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee is the purest and most virulent form of a disorder all too familiar to anyone who lived through the Clinton presidency.
Here was an effort that exemplified the best of America — a society that values the lives of its citizens enough to send a former head of state, with all the power of government behind him, to the aid of two women in distress. Here was a happy reunion, bringing wives home to their husbands and a mother back to her little girl, that surely uplifted the spirit of anyone who actually believes in family values. Here was a moment of pride and joy.
But not for Gordon Liddy, the demented felon and radio bigotwho cackled about “Ling Ling and Wee Wee being locked up for nine hours in an airplane with Bill Clinton.” Not for Rush Limbaugh, the obsessive guttersnipe who wondered aloud whether Clinton “hit on those two female journalists on the long flight home.” Not for Andrea Peyser, the curdled tabloid columnist who insisted that “the whole shebang was nakedly scripted and staged as a device to help rehabilitate the image of former President Bill Clinton” (and who neglected to mention that Clinton did not speak to the eagerly waiting press corps and has given not a single interview on the North Korea mission). Not for Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who predictably seized on Clinton’s mission as an opportunity for gratuitous and ugly insults to his wife, weirdly imagining that the prisoner release was “some clever North Korean revenge plot, giving the limelight to Daddy to punish Mommy.” And not for the editors of the Huffington Post, who posted a very strange headline — “Bill Upstages Hillary … Once Again” — on an Associated Press story that didn?t mention her at all.
Liddy tells joke about “Ling Ling and Wee Wee” “being locked up for nine hours in an airplane with Bill Clinton”
Here is Watergate THIEF G. Gordon Liddy: Obama Was Born in
The Kenyan Slum of ‘MUMBASA.’ Mombasa! ..Idiot!
On Greta, Eagleburger chides Fox coverage of Clinton’s North Korea visit: “I thought they were going to wet their pants”
Analysts have long speculated on the sexual envy that may or may not predispose the syndrome’s sufferers to say these things. What seems clear, however, is that no matter what humanitarian acts Clinton may perform in his post-presidency, he cannot do anything without provoking such inappropriate and embarrassing outbursts. The result, of course, is that their remarks always reveal more about them than about their intended target.
Consider the reaction of the former president’s former advisor Dick Morris, who still pontificates on the Fox News Channel airwaves as a Clinton expert, although he hasn’t spoken with either of them for more than 10 years. Denouncing Clinton’s trip as “awful” and “ridiculous,” he suggested with a sickening grin that Ling and Lee should instead have been left to “live with the consequences of their acts” — essentially a death sentence in a hard labor camp. (Is that what any Fox commentator would say in the unlikely event that any of their colleagues had the guts to try to report on life in North Korea — and got arrested?)
John Podhoretz didn’t go quite that far in Commentary, but he too felt deeply disturbed by Clinton’s achievement. As a “journalist” who spends most of his life watching television and eating ice cream, he felt moved to mock Ling and Lee for seeking to expose the dark side of the North Korean regime — and to throw in a few bitter words about Al Gore for employing them at Current TV. If that sounds bizarre coming from a self-styled hard-liner, it is simply another symptom of the mental imbalance induced in some people by the sight of Clinton (and Gore).
Finally there are the “serious” commentators, most notably former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, the former diplomat best known for disdaining diplomacy and rattling the atomic saber until he was mercifully relieved of public responsibilities. In him the syndrome’s most noticeable effect is a severe case of amnesia. On the pages of the Washington Post, he complained that despite “decades of bipartisan U.S. rhetoric about not negotiating with terrorists for the release of hostages, it seems that the Obama administration not only chose to negotiate, but to send a former president to do so.” Leaving aside the question of whether this situation in any way fits that description, Bolton has clearly forgotten the Iran-Contra affair, when his colleagues in the Reagan administration, all the way up to and including the president, negotiated with Iran’s leaders to release hostages in exchange for deadly missiles — violating statute and policy. He also seems to have forgotten how he tried to help cover up that outrage as an assistant attorney general.
But perhaps this latest outbreak should be considered mild, when compared with the devastating episodes of years past. Nobody is claiming that Clinton murdered or drugged anyone on his trip to Korea, that he profited by selling a real estate parcel there, or that he is a secret agent of the Dear Leader.
They’re saving all that for Barack Obama.
About The Author(s): Joe Conason is national correspondent for The New York Observer, where he writes a weekly column distributed by Creators Syndicate. He is also a columnist for Salon.com, and the Director of the Nation Institute Investigative Fund.
His writing and reporting have appeared in many publications, including Harpers, The Guardian, The Nation, and The New Republic. He also appears frequently on television and radio (notably as a regular Friday guest on Air America’s The Al Franken Show). He lives with his wife in New York City.
Like a seasonal flu, the verbal virus that is sometimes called Clinton derangement syndrome has struck again, beginning only moments after the 42nd president of the United States appeared on television screens around the world with the two journalists he had helped to rescue from prison in North Korea. And like certain viruses, the syndrome tends to hit hardest among a very specific segment of the population. Most Americans appear to be immune most of the time, as do the majority of human beings on the planet, so this pathology will probably never become a global pandemic.
