They Saved Broder's Brain

Broder emerges from his fog and makes an interesting comparison between the health care town hall angry idiocy of today and the angry idiocy LBJ faced over the Civil Rights Act.

The obvious difference, of course, is that none of the people against health care reform have ever thought of Obama as "one of us." LBJ was a good ole boy from Texas who 'turned Judas'. Obama is a ManchurianCandidateKenyanMarxistSocialistFascist who's been up to no good from the day he was born on some distant foreign shore.

Corporatocracy FTW!

Sigh. If only my personal notions of integrity and such weren't so antiquated, I might be able to pull down $70K a year like this guy.

Hell, I don't even like wearing branded items of clothing even when I'm not getting paid for it.

Genius

John Cole has a brilliant idea to counter the "death panel" idiocy:

If Democrats were smart (they’re not) they would point out that this is the fitting tribute to Terry Schiavo and name this the Schiavo amendment, because that is really what this does. It provides patients with the information they need to make living wills, so that should they get into a tragic circumstance such that Terri Schiavo found herself, there would not be any questions about what needs to be done.

SECRET PROJECT REVEALED

So the secret project I've started working on is a GO.

Mark the date on your calendars: September 30th will be the first (and hopefully not last) production of No Mercy Hospital. The show is a kind of comedy triage, in which a diverse group of experts get together and perform a differential diagnosis on the very sick film careers of some famous funny folk. The Comedy Bar (at Bloor and Ossington) will be the venue for this no doubt historic event.

More details later.

JP Gets Wise

Jays GM JP Ricciardi took my sage advice and let the White Sox take on Alex Rios' bloated contract.

I'd like to say there's hope for the kid yet, but let's not go too far. Being willing to cut bait on his mistakes is a good sign though.

Sadly Yes

I missed this reader email to Sully on Saturday, but DougJ at B-J caught it. It deserves reposting in full:

Your obvious shock and dismay at the sheer angry ignorance of the health care teabaggers reiterates my largest problem with your rosy immigrant's view of America. You have often underestimated just how poisonously dangerous the American populist right is.

I don't blame you. You came to America after the rise of Reagan. Most of your life in America, you have lived under different Republican presidents who placated these folks with platitudes and campaign rhetoric. The one period when the populist right didn't feel they had a fellow traveler in charge was when Bill Clinton was elected (thanks to the reactionaries splitting their votes). You remember, no doubt, the level of crazy Clinton had to defuse and dodge, and this was a man who had the advantage of being a Southern bubba who has dealt which such people all his life.

For most of your time in America, this insanity has been muted by the success of conservative politics. Since you live in Washington, you probably saw daily the face of the successful conservative political establishment that milked the populist right, and by milking them kept their bitterness at a manageable level. That safety valve was stuffed up by George Bush's failed presidency.

So now, these people are facing their worst fears; actual change.

A political and demographic re-alignment is happening before their eyes, and they are reaching back into their old bag of tricks of intimidation, violence, and apocalyptic fearmongering. You are British, Andrew. You love this country, and we love you for it. But you didn't grow up around these folks, and you don't realize what a permanent and potent part of the American political landscape they are.

They have always been with us, the people who believed in manifest destiny, who delighted in the slaughter of this land's original inhabitants, who cheered a nation into a civil war to support an economic system of slavery that didn't even benefit them. They are the people who bashed the unions and cheered on the anti-sedition laws, who joined the Pinkertons and the No Nothing Party, who beat up Catholic immigrants and occasionally torched the black part of town. They rode through the Southern pine forests at night, they banned non-European immigration, they burned John Rockefeller Jr. in effigy for proposing the Grand Tetons National Park.

These are the folks who drove Teddy Roosevelt out of the Republican Party and called his cousin Franklin a communist, shut their town's borders to the Okies and played the protectionist card right up til Pearl Harbor, when they suddenly had a new foreign enemy to hate. They are with us, the John Birchers, the anti-flouride and black helicopter nuts, the squirrly commie-hating hysterics who always loved the loyalty oath, the forced confession, the auto-de-fe. Those who await with baited breath the race war, the nuclear holocaust, the cultural jihad, the second coming, they make up much more of America then you would care to think.

I'm always optimistic about America. We're a naturally rich and beautiful place. Every generation we renew ourselves with a watering of immigrants committed to the American dream, immigrants like you. But please, Andrew, do not for a second underestimate the price in blood and tears we've always paid here for progress.

I voted for Obama with my fingers crossed, because I knew that as the populist right lost power, they would become more extreme, more concentrated, and more violent. As to dismissing them as only a quarter or so of America, please remember that it only took a quarter or so of Americans to actively support the Confederacy.

Thor Angry!

Having a 15th floor apartment makes for awesome displays when a lightning storm sweeps over the city (as one is doing right now).

As an added bonus, apparently the storm is/was so bad down at ground level that tonight's Nickelback concert was cancelled. Huzzah!

Two Vices One Stone

The pub down the street from me, the one that has karaoke all weekend on the second floor and the wait staff who sing like angels, also shows UFC pay-per-views. So tonight I can run down between songs and watch Anderson Silva toy with poor Forrest Griffin for a few rounds. Huzzah!

JP Finds Another Sucker

While JP Ricciardi has gotten a lot of flak for not trading Roy Halladay after putting his name out there (undeservedly, in my opinion... Halladay was easily the best player available at the deadline, and given that Cleveland gave up Cliff Lee for pennies on the dollar it was pretty clear the market wasn't going to give the Jays anything close to what Halladay was worth) he did do a great job of getting value for Scott Rolen's bloated contract.

And now, apparently, he may have found a way to get out from under another bloated contract, as some idiot GM put in a waiver claim on Alex Rios.

Unlike Halladay, or even Rolen, Rios isn't a player who makes much of a difference. He's hitting a whopping .261/.314/.420 on the season, which is basically fourth outfielder territory. If that line doesn't move drastically over the next seven weeks his OPS and ISO will have dropped for the fourth straight season. He's a good base stealer, and is capable enough defensively playing a good right field and a decent center field, but that skill set isn't worth anything close to the following contract:

$9.7 million in 2010

$12 million in 2011

$12 million in 2012

$12.5 million in 2013

$12.5 million in 2014

$13.5 million in 2015 (club option)

Especially considering the options the Jays have for corner OF spots (notably Travis Snider, who's found his stroke again at Triple-A), Rios needs to be kicked to the curb immediately.

If JP is smart enough to use the opportunity to get that dead weight off the books -- whether he gets any kind of prospect back or not -- he should jump at the chance.

On the other hand if he yanks Rios back off waivers, he should be fired on the spot. There's simply no excuse (beyond JP's ego not letting him admit the Rios contract was a colossal mistake) for such a decision, either in financial or in baseball terms.

It's Coming

The same sick feeling of dread I got in my stomach while watching Obama give his acceptance speech in Denver is returning. The reactionary troglodytes who felt disenfranchised by his election seem to have decided that the fight over health care reform is their line in the sand.

I merely pity the poor dupes at the town halls who keep shrieking about euthanasia for the elderly, government death panels, and all the other bullshit talking points that are seeping out of the septic tank that is the soul of the right wing. They aren't the ones scaring me. It's the other ones I'm worried about... the ones hanging Obama in effigy.

I feel like the pressure is going to keep building until it erupts in an actual attempt on Obama's life.

Anyone who thinks what's happening is an expressioon of normal, healthy democratic debate is willfully delusional (Just keep walking, Peggy. It's what you're good at.)