from ridiculous to sublime

digby @ hullaballoo:

... saying that it "covers everyone," as if there's a big new benefit is a big stretch. nothing will have changed on that count except changing the law to force people to buy private insurance if they don't get it from their employer. ... nobody's "getting covered" here. after all, people are already "free" to buy private insurance and one must assume they have reasons for not doing it already. whether those reasons are good or bad won't make a difference when they are suddenly forced to write big checks to aetna or blue cross that they previously had decided they couldn't or didn't want to write. indeed, it actually looks like the worst caricature of liberals: taking people's money against their will, saying it's for their own good.

david waldman @ daily kos:

this is, of course, quite true. to sell a bill that imposes a federal mandate on you, individually, to buy insurance from a private provider doesn't "expand coverage," it expands tax penalties. ... what do we think people hear when they hear that this bill, would "provide 29 million americans health care"? why not a bill that would "provide 29 million american families with a home of their own" ... provided they buy themselves one? that, or course, would be ridiculous. but let's add just a little more ridiculousness. what if we "provided" millions of american families with homes of their own... provided they buy themselves one... or else face a penalty under federal law? see? from ridiculous to sublime!

passing the torch

in time-honored fashion, after having abolished the republic and crippled the empire, george bush and karl rove prepare to pass the torch ... to nero:

mccain may still be grateful for the fact that the bush-flunky rove disciples he has running his campaign have rescued it from oblivion and brought him within striking distance of the prize he's sold his soul for, but i doubt he'll feel the same way after the election. because win or lose, make no mistake about it, brand mccain has been destroyed. and therein we see the long arm of george bush and the hand of karl rove. it may well be that a scorched earth campaign was his only shot, but consider how every attack and every lie, while they serve to smear obama, also serve to undermine he [sic] credibility, honor and self-image of john mccain. i can hear george cackling as karl explained how cool it would be: we might just pull out a win for the folks who own the country, but at the same time we totally fuck over mccain by getting him to destroy the only thing he really had going for him. and how does the notoriously short-tempered mccain really feel about the fact that he had to crawl to the religious extremists now vying with the neo-cons for control of the party and employ the very bushies who smeared him eight years ago and are now using him as a tool to do the same to obama? i don't think it's much of a stretch to assume that these two petulant narcissists absolutely hate and despise each other. and who is writing about the devastating effects these personal and political wars may have on our future? from where i'm sitting, it looks like bush has gotten the best of it — and as a bonus he gets to say f.u. to the country as well by using his slime machine to ensure his dreadful policies will be continued. it can be useful to look at what happened to he [sic] succession of power once ancient rome made the transition from republic to empire under julius caesar. i think of it as the tiberius gambit. each emperor did his best to ensure that the one who followed him could never rival his achievements. and it was a short step indeed for tiberius to inflict he [sic] egregious caligula on the empire, secure in the knowledge that he would make the populace yearn for the comparatively golden days of his own rule. so augustus gave us tiberius, tiberius gave us caligula and the accidental claudius gave us nero. nero almost destroyed the roman economy by his personal greed and burned part of rome intending, perhaps, to remove the blight of a quarter congested with the urban poor. when it got way out of hand and he began to feel universal public opprobrium, he blamed it on a fringe group of alien terrorists, the early christians. so bush would give us mccain and mccain would give us palin and palin will ignite the fire and fiddle while the planet burns. the joke is on us. hail!

the joke is on everyone. who could forget after all, tiberius' july farewell to his counterparts from around the globe:

the american leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "goodbye from the world's biggest polluter." he then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including gordon brown and nicolas sarkozy looked on in shock. president bush made the private joke in the summit's closing session, senior sources said yesterday. his remarks were taken as a two-fingered salute from the president from texas who is wedded to the oil industry.

"hail!" indeed.

don't even think about it

tristero at hullabaloo offers some free advice — the most undervalued kind, as always — in an open letter to liberal hawks:

dear liberal hawks and other fence sitters from 2002/2003 (you know who you are), don't even think about a "thoughtful, measured response" to this bullshit: president bush proudly declared that american foreign policy no longer seeks to "manage calm," and derided policies that let anger and resentment lie "beneath the surface." bush said that the violence in the middle east was evidence of a more effective foreign policy that addresses "root causes." this is sheer, abject lunacy of the sort that imagined the invasion of iraq would lead to city squares in iraq named after george w. bush and the invasion would pay for itself out of oil revenues. the only appropriate reaction is to very loudly proclaim this is the reasoning of madmen. no rational human being thinks like this. your credibility has been ruined already by falling for the preposterous lies and rationalizations prior to the iraq invasion. if you take this seriously, your immortal soul is majorly on the line ...

his finest moment

president bush, when asked what he considered the best moment thus far in his five years in office:

you know, i've experienced many great moments and it's hard to name the best ... i would say the best moment of all was when i caught a 7.5 pound perch in my lake. (may 7)

for once i believe him.

(hat tip to reuters.)

update:

leave it to digby over at hullabaloo to mine bush's pathos to its proper depth:

there are, imo, only three ways to understand this comment, assuming it's true. quite possibly it's the pathetic whine of a deeply, perhaps clinically. depressed man who believes himself a total failure. or maybe this is a man so uninterested in his job, let alone in serving his country, that he has no business whatsoever being president. or perhaps this is simply an arrogant bastard who holds in utter contempt anyone who dares to ask him a question, so he responds with the stupidest thing he can say. (obviously, nothing precludes all three or some combination of two.) to be all pre-emptive about it, someone's bound to comment that maybe this just shows how much of a down-to-earth regular guy bush is. yeah? all the down-to-earth regular guys i know don't have their own lake, fer chrissakes. those people are filthy rich, even if they wear jeans on their estates. but there's a character thing here, too. the down-to-earth people i know who hold important jobs are mighty proud of of what they do and mighty happy with their achievements. and they can tick them off without thinking too hard about what they might be. and, even as a joke, they don't talk about catching a big perch when a newspaper asks them to name their best moment in more than five years. they name their accomplishments. or, if they're trying to play up the down-to-earthiness, they name their children or something they did with their spouse. (may 7)