Healthcare Bill = Holocaust.

It's an obvious equation, I just don't know why I didn't think of it before. However, here's what the sane and rational Think Progress thinks:

ThinkProgress’ Lee Fang snapped this photograph of a prominent sign being displayed at today’s GOP anti-health care rally. It’s unclear whether this sign is one of the many being handed out by Americans for Prosperity, the corporate front group sponsoring today’s rally.

The sign reads “National Socialist Health Care: Dachau, Germany – 1945”.

I am f*cking speechless. This whole Michelle Bachmann/Glenn Beck/teabagging bullshit has produced some crazy and bizarre comments, but this latest one [see above], is a big step beyond funny, or ridiculous. Equating desperately needed reform of a scandalous insurance-led pseudo "healthcare" system to the organised killing of 6 million jews, is beyond offensive.

Someone should be prosecuted for this.

Healthcare Bill passes

Yes, I got my email from President Barack Obama too. It described the historic nature of the bill's passing that has been fought over by conservatives and progressives for nearly a century [or so the email claims].

However, the truth is, it's a piss-weak compromise based on American prejudices about socialised medicine, a woman's right to choose [eroded even more], and the insurance cabal's determination to wreck any reform to maintain their literal death-grip on the health of every citizen, for the sake of their obscene profits.

To call it historic Mr President is a little premature since it has to now pass the senate, where the insurance criminals are massing their fire, using what leverage they have with all the corrupt politicians [mostly republican, of course, but democrats too] that take the insurance bribe, to vote no, to filibuster, or to threaten.

Whatever, it is a weak bill. The 40,000+ Americans that will die this coming year because they don't have health insurance, just won't realise how historic it is.

Although I'm sure their families will offer all those 'dedicated politicians' who stayed up to 11:15 pm last night to pass this luke warm excuse for a citizen's universal right to healthcare, a swift and non-too-kind "fuck you very much!"

Lunatic Jerome Corsi spouts bullshit - again

"Well, if you were wondering what paranoiac smear artist would be the first to step out and attempt to name President Barack Obama as the man who guided Nidal Malik Hasan to his murderous rampage at Fort Hood yesterday, the answer -- naturally! -- is Jerome Corsi. Corsi has a long history of lunatic, fact-averse ravings and he fails to disappoint on that regard on the pages of World Net Daily, today, in a piece entitled "Shooter advised Obama transition." Except, of course, he didn't do any such thing." Huffington Post

Jesus f*cking christ... how batshit crazy is this nutjob? Will he stop at nothing to grind his axe?

Dismal and dreary

In what can only be described as a dreary night in politicking... the election of Christie in New Jersey and some other republican fart in Virginia — both running for governator — proved to be the let down of this election cycle. You know, the cycle that we're not in right now.

In typical leftist fashion, I'm going to ignore the minor setbacks and instead focus on the unusual victory for the democrats in NY-23. That's the congressional district faced with a special election which I've already mentioned.

Bill Owens, the democrat won in a split conservative/republican vote with Hoffman, the newly-minted conservative candidate, who a) doesn't live in the area, and b) had no f*cking clue about local issues, attracted all the latest superstars of national republican politics [no, I'm not giving them another name check, read my previous post].

The interesting news about this minor of all the minor races yesterday, was that Owen won in a seat that hasn't seen a democrat victory since the incumbent was a Whig. In other words, you have to go back before the civil war to find a democrat winning this northerly seat.

And no, I'm not shitting you... check out the link I've conveniently placed in the text above. It makes interesting reading.

And by the way, happy Guy Fawkes Day! My Brit readers will know the reference...

Mike Bloomberg 100 vs Bill Thompson 10

It was a mayoral race. It was between the richest man in the state and er, some other guy. The richest man in the state — after overturning [or ignoring, depending on how jaundiced your view] the electorate's repeated votes against a third-term — spent slightly over $100 million to 'win' his third term as mayor of New York City.

One hundred million dollars. When money alone can buy you victory in politics, we have entered the realm of the banana republic.

At one point leading some other guy by over 20 points, he eventually came in with just 51% of a very low voter turnout.

Bloomberg hasn't exactly been a bad mayor, but what has he achieved during his previous two terms? As a subway commuter, to hear him only now, after eight years of disintegration of the network, talk about, "you ain't seen nothing yet", with vacuous promises of major improvements to the subway system [a system he almost never rides], is offensive.

While some Manhattan stations get pretty mosaics and decent lighting, entire stations are literally falling apart in the boroughs. Go to 8th Avenue Station on the N-Line and see the solitary, narrow, dark and leaky metal staircase to the open-air platform with rotted holes through to the ground below.

Go to 9th St/4th Ave Station on the F-line and watch the elderly attempt the crossover from the underground R-train up countless, stinking and damp staircases to the F-train platform on stilts high above the streets of Brooklyn. [It's the highest above ground station in the entire network, and looks like a putrid, stinking building site — with no elevator.]

So after a $100,000,000 spend, a who-gives-a-shit shrug to repeated no votes to third terms, Michael Bloomberg buys his third term... and only NOW promises to make things happen. Really? After his handling of the biggest real estate fiasco in history in Stuyvesant Town, the twin towers hole in the ground [eight years and counting, Mike], to mention just two items on his inept list — do you believe him?

Oh, by the way, Bill Thompson wasn't exactly a great candidate either.

So what did we just witness in New York City? A low turn-out mayoral race between the richest man in the state who bought the job with the biggest campaign spend in election history and some other guy no-one knows anything about.

What a choice. Welcome to the banana republic.

A designer's worst nightmare

For all of those who are not Graphic Designers, this is an almost perfect summation of what we have to put up with from some clients. Not all the time, but enough of the the time that it truly hurts.

Enjoy... it is very, very funny.

Republicans... they're just not republican enough

You know what I mean, right?

The official republican candidate — endorsed by an assortment of local republican officials — Dede Scozzafava, has dropped out of the special election in New York's 23rd congressional district, after a ridiculous number of other republicans got their knickers in a twist over whether Dede was conservative enough. Huh?

Yep, this is the district that brushes up to the Canadian border and is as remote and rural as it's possible to get in this state. It's one of the dwindling republican safe havens in a democratic state — rightly dominated by the 21+ million who live in and around New York City. So who cares, right? Wrong.

After bring in the clowns brought in Sarah Palin [... I can hear the 'oh no not her again' groans from all the way over here], Glenn Beck, Bill Kristol, Newt Gingrich, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all... who popped their collective ugly political noses into a rural congressional race.

These clowns got involved because Dede apparently made the cardinal republican sin of applauding the Obama Stimulus funds to rural districts like hers.

So in a story pulled straight from the gossip pages of Gawker.com, Dede Scozzafava responded by endorsing the democrat Bill Owens instead of Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman. Except, Hoffman sits on the finance committee of a local hospital that gleefully accepted nearly half-a-million dollars in federal funds. And as Frank Rich points out in the New York Times, Dede's district would be a Siberia of joblessness but for federal support. But whatever, Hoffman is the RIGHT kind of Conservative!

Then the clowns waded in: Glenn Beck accused Dede's policies of being borderline Marxist [remember, Glenn boy has a PhD in political science, so he just knows this stuff, ok?]; Palin said something barely intelligible, I had to rinse it immediately from my memory; and on and on this farce continues.

This is the Republican party in comical self-destruct mode. The Comintern would be so proud...

Pastor calls for President Obama's death

"If Obama lives, then the constitution, and America dies. Now listen to me very carefully, please hear me, please hear me: If we let Obama live, America dies..."

So says, James Manning, the pastor of ATLAH World Missionary Church on 123rd Street in Manhattan.

Before he became a 'pastor', Manning burglarised homes. He spent about three and a half years in prison in New York and Florida for burglary, robbery, larceny, criminal possession of a weapon, and other charges before his release in 1978. While in prison, he became a devout christian... and a f*cking lunatic.

Since when was it acceptable to call for the assassination of a head of state without attracting the attention of the Secret Service?

Net Neutrality -here's why it needs to be law

Tiered pricing to access different websites. Content throttling at the whim of your ISP provider, and yet another revenue stream for Comcast, Time Warner, Optonline and the rest of the cabal.

If the FCC does not pass this bill into law, you can kiss access to any website of your choosing goodbye. Forever.

Who's opposed to Net Neutrality? All the current ISP providers [what a shock!]; right-wing douchebags who — bizarrely — think a neutral market is a marxist plot; and anyone who stands to make money out of charging you to access your AOL mail [in addition to charging you to get online in the first place].

This imaginary chart is more than possible... just look at your cable TV provider and its packages. That's right, they look just like this!

Your ISP is aching for the ability to bar you from looking at the BBC online unless you give them more money, or even throttle your access because they don't like the sites you visit.

Think about that..

Sick fund-raiser for murderer

Judy Thomas in the Kansas City Star has an excellent article about a morally sick online fund-raiser being planned for Scott Roeder, the right-wing extremist who shot Dr. George Tiller in the head in his church:

An Army of God manual. A prison cookbook compiled by a woman doing time for abortion clinic bombings and arsons. An autographed bullhorn.

These are among the items that abortion foes plan to auction on eBay and other Web sites for the man who murdered doctor George Tiller.

“This is unique,” said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who will sign the bullhorn. “Nobody’s ever done this before. The goal is that everybody makes money for Scott Roeder’s defense.”

One abortion-rights leader called the auction deplorable and said it could lead to more violence.

“The network of extremists promoting and defending the murder of doctors is contributing to escalating threats against clinics and doctors across the country,” said Kathy Spillar, executive vice president of the Feminist Majority Foundation.

Of course we can hope that eBay gets some morals [don't hold your breath on that one though] and bars this sick idea from their site.

John McCain and Glenn Beck love freedom....

.... except when it comes to the Internet. But we knew that, they're both republican, so that's kind of a duh! moment, right.

And when McCain has become the de facto new technology/Intenet spokesperson for the GOP, you know we're in trouble. So much so, that he's introduced a bill in Congress called the “Internet Freedom Act,” which would keep the Internet free for poor and impoverished corporations, but a tad less free to those well-moneyed “average consumer” special interests.

According to RawStory:

"Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) introduced a bill in the Senate on Thursday that would effectively allow Internet service providers to slow down or block Internet content or applications of their choosing.

The move came the same day as the federal government decided to move forward on an official Net neutrality policy that would prevent ISPs from making those types of decisions.

The FCC’s new rules would prevent ISPs, for example, from blocking or slowing bandwidth-hogging Web traffic such as streaming video or other applications that put a strain on their networks or from charging different rates to users.

McCain’s bill, the Internet Freedom Act, would block the Federal Communications Commission from making Net neutrality the law of the land. The rule preventing ISPs from slowing down certain types of content would create “onerous federal regulation,” McCain argued in a written statement."

Meanwhile, conservative talking head [aka, nutcase], Glenn Beck has been slammed by MediaMatters after Beck alleged Net Neutrality to be a "Marxist plot," and an attempt by government to "control content." Oh god.

My oh my, is this guy mentally fit to be allowed out in public...? Almost every statement he makes turns the truth on its head and calls black, white. He's either willingly dangerous, or just plain stupid.

GOP's new website: $1.4 million

“It feels as though too much focus has been placed on flashy features to the detriment of usability,” said Jamie Newell of Washington-based 7AZ Web Design.

"The site’s reliance on a mish-mash of technologies make it inaccessible to some, including those using iPhones and other mobile devices, he added, “making it impossible to navigate the site and ultimately hindering the message they are trying to deliver.”

In the months prior to the October 13 launch of GOP.com, the committee paid $328,000 to 11 firms for web development. When the graphics-heavy site was unveiled, many of the main sections appeared missing or broken, including one advertised as listing future party leaders, which showed up blank. And as of today, only some of those broken features have been fixed.

This really sounds like the Republican Party doesn't it? Leaderless, aimless, throwing money at pointless unworkable projects... and just not getting it.