I seem to need to post this song about once a year*

But I try to vary it up by posting different versions.



*Why? Because it's fucking awesome, that's why. You got a problem with that?

Oh, dear.

I'm close, are you close?

Sometimes I can't get my mind around things

For example: I've written before about how I just couldn't figure out what Disney was thinking sending Anne Hathaway to promote Princess Diaries 2 on the filthy (in the best way) Graham Norton show.

I can't really complain about that one too hard, of course, as this was where I got my first good, long look at Miss Hathaway, whom I subsequently decided to stalk and marry (it's been five years. The best-laid plans...).

More recently: Let's say that you had written one of those books that say that homosexuality is unnatural and gay people can be "rehabilitated" like drug addicts.

Why, unless you were severely fucked in the head, would you agree to go on the television show of a brilliant lesbian?

At the very least, read that article, but I heartily encourage you to watch the embedded video therein as well.

I mean, how could he not have known she was going to nail him to the wall using his own words as proof that he's really stupid?

Oh right, because he's really stupid...

Source this quote

So I'm reading again about how, apparently to placate two-faced boobs like Joe Lieberman, the Senate has "compromised" the public option down to the point where:

...an insurance industry insider who has been deeply involved in the health care fight emails to declare victory.

"We WIN," the insider writes. "Administered by private insurance companies...

I think about how this thing, instead of starting out great and ending up good, now seems to have started out good and ended up...absolutely nowhere.

It makes me think of a quote that suddenly seems all the more sane, sensible, and far-seeing...and I think that none of you reading this will be able to tell me where it comes from.

Let's see if I'm right.

Here's the quote.

Did you know that in the Far East, people pay their doctors when they're healthy. When they're sick, they don't have to pay. So basically, they end up paying for what they want, not what they don't want. We've got it all ass-backwards, here. These politicians, they say the same thing, over and over and over again. Healthcare decisions should be made by doctors and their patients, not by the government. Oh, now I know they're not made by doctors and their patients or the government. They're made by the fuckin' insurance companies.

Well?

To support this proposal, please observe the following

Proposed: Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) is of questionable sanity, and unquestionably an asshole.

Support: Here is a segment from liberal dream girl Rachel Maddow's show last week all about Sen. Inhofe:



Inhofe not only admits that everything said about him in the piece is true, he's proud to the point of smug condescension about it.

What's more, he thinks (or maybe I should say believes) that

"...The things she says she doesn’t like are contrary to the beliefs of 90 percent of the people in America.”

...which of course, if read by someone who actually cares about things like sentence structure and good grammar, would mean...

Sure is good to be in the majority, isn't it?

The Senate would appear to have made a deal to get rid of the Public Option.

It's not often I think that I missed much being born two years after the end of the 1960s. One thing, though, I think I get when I watch television programs/movies, read books, or listen to music from or about the time:

There were, like, a couple of years there where people seem to have thought it really was the dawning of the age of Aquarius, that they could take a sad song and make it better.

Those days are gone forever...that is, if they ever really existed.

I think I know why John Lennon withdrew in the latter half of the '70s.

I've said it for years: More often than not (certainly more often than I'd like), the difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans are evil; Democrats are incompetent (Bush the miracle baby was both).

Remember that jackass mayor from Tennessee last week?

The one who said President Obama deliberately planned his speech to block the Peanuts Christmas special on account of he is a Muslim? Well, that mayor would like us to believe, whoops I mean know, he's sorry, and he was just trying to be funny.

So you want to see an Israeli cover band interpret about a dozen '80s songs in six minutes

Kind of great, isn't it?

Sometimes I really like her...

(Via Think Progress)

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) stepped up and drew a parallel to help the amendment’s male co-sponsors better understand its repercussions. Since Nelson’s measure forces women to purchase special abortion riders — which require women to plan for unplanned pregnancies — Boxer challenged “the men who have brought us this” to “single out a procedure that’s used by a man or a drug that is used by a man that involves his reproductive health care and say they have to get a special rider”:

BOXER: There’s nothing in this amendment that says if a man some day wants to buy Viagra, for example, that his pharmaceutical coverage cannot cover it, that he has to buy a rider. I wouldn’t support that. And they shouldn’t support going after a woman using her own private funds for her reproductive health care. Is it fair to say to a man you’re going to have to buy a rider to buy Viagra and this will be public information that could be accessed? No, I don’t support that. I support a man’s privacy, just as I support a woman’s privacy.

In retrospect, it's kind of amazing how quickly President Obama has moved most of us to Missouri

To the point where I considered headlining this post "Obama administration shows it can actually do something."

From an author and law professor named Peter M. Shane:

The White House this morning released a long-awaited Open Government Directive that follows up on the President's promise - memorialized on his first full day of office - to usher in a new era of transparent, participatory governance.

The Directive, issued over the signature of OMB Director Peter Orszag, explains: "Transparency promotes accountability by providing the public with information about what the Government is doing. ... Collaboration improves the effectiveness of Government by encouraging partnerships and cooperation within the Federal Government, across levels of government, and between the Government and private institutions."

But don't worry, folks, we're still screwed.

If transparency is truly to promote accountability, then the public needs journalists to help discover, gather, compare, contextualize, and share the new information becoming available.

Uh-oh.

In recent memory, "journalists" in this country tend to roll over for Republican presidents. Then decide they've been too gullible and fancy themselves "truthtellers" just in time to be an obstacle to the progress of any Democrat. Then they start all over again when the GOP is back in.

That is, when they're not covering the whole thing as if it were a horserace where who wins doesn't actually matter.

This does not bode well (and President Obama knows it).

These journalists may be citizen journalists.

They may be our only hope. I mean, seriously, can you name me five professional, trustworthy journalists in this country not counting Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart?

It is skillful engagement with information that turns greater transparency into deeper democracy.

"Skillful"...yeah, we're still screwed.

Of course, for me, the '80s clothes and dancing only make her look cuter...

In the little "more info" box on the YouTube page for this video, this girl says

Obviously, I exaggerated the 80's clothes and dancing. This is not a serious video and I'm not trying to dance well nor am I trying to look attractive.

Trying to or not...

Get well soon, kid.

Alexa Ray Joel, daughter of Billy Joel by Christie Brinkley, may have attempted suicide.

I wish I could muster the energy to be surprised by this...

Sam Tanenhaus' New Yorker review of Sarah Palin's book, as well as another book about the former governor, contains this nugget:

Palin, though notoriously ill-travelled outside the United States, did journey far to the first of the four colleges she attended, in Hawaii. She and a friend who went with her lasted only one semester. “Hawaii was a little too perfect,” Palin writes. “Perpetual sunshine isn’t necessarily conducive to serious academics for eighteen-year-old Alaska girls.” Perhaps not. But Palin’s father, Chuck Heath, gave a different account to [Scott] Conroy and [Shushannah] Walshe [authors of 'Sarah From Alaska']. According to him, the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: “They were a minority type thing and it wasn’t glamorous, so she came home.”

Via The New Republic. Some right-on comments, too.

You're killing me, Mr. President, you're absolutely killing me

Via CommonDreams.org, here's an article from the Nation called "Six Smart Progressive Complaints about the house health bill."

The Affordable Health Care for America Act was approved by the U.S. House Saturday night with overwhelming support from progressive Democrats who serve in the chamber and from a president who was nominated and elected with the enthusiastic support of progressive voters.

But that does not mean that informed and engaged progressives are entirely enthusiastic about the measure.

The complaints are:

1. "This Bill Will Enshrine in Law the Monopolistic Powers of the Private Health Insurance Industry"

2. This Bill Fails to Control Costs

3. "This Bill Obliterates Women's Fundamental Right to Choose"

4. This Bill Embraces Religious-Right Extremes

5. This Bill Worries About the Health of Wall Street, Not America

And

6. The Bill Does Not Cure What Ails Us

On the 19th day of Christmas, Corey K. sent to me:

A 904-year-old Time Lord...

The Republicans are still in charge

Hey, America! Remember that election we had last year? The one where we said, and I thought, pretty clearly, we wanted to go left because (if for no other reason) the incompetence of the extreme right Republicans in control (for eight years) had left our country FUBAR?

Remember that? Yeah, heh heh, that was cute, wasn't it?

Fortunately, it didn't actually mean anything.