Gone Fishin’
The Shakespearean Daily Diss is on hiatus while we are downtown at DragonCon. Normal taunting will resume some time next week. Political crooks and panderers, you’re still on notice!
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Shakespearean Daily Diss
“Gold were as good as twenty orators,
And will, no doubt, tempt him to anything.” –Richard III, 4.2.38-39
Plan B Is Not Abortion
The Plan B contraceptive is not an abortifacient. How, then, does ABC fail even to mention that in its coverage of opposition to the drug–in a story that features only a conservative complaint that the public “isn’t well informed”? The network seems to be engaging in deliberate sleight of hand:
Surveys indicate the majority of Americans are likely to support the FDA’s move. A Harris Interactive poll taken in June found that 58 percent of Americans agreed that the morning-after pill should be “easily available” in all pharmacies.
But conservative critics say the public isn’t well informed about the science. “I don’t think the public is fully aware of the risks of this drug,” says Moira Gaul of the Family Research Council.
And while the decision could help the GOP win back some independent voters angry over President Bush’s veto of a bill to expand federal funding for stem cell research, it is likely to alienate social conservatives, many of whom view the morning-after pill as a form of abortion….
By preventing conception, Plan B also prevents abortion. Those who oppose both abortion and Plan B should reconsider just what it is they’re against.
“Not able to produce more accusation
Than your own weak-hing’d fancy–something savors
Of tyranny, and will ignoble make you,
Yea, scandalous to the world.” –The Winter’s Tale, 2.3.117-20
RIP Katherine Harris
That ten million Harris pledged to finance her ill-conceived Senate run? Not happening. Even the ludicrous Harris, it seems, has sensed the futility of her campaign. Look for her to blame anybody but herself when she abandons the race:
In an emotional announcement on national TV in March, Harris said she would use every penny her late father had left her.
Minutes later, while still in the New York studio where she made the announcement, Harris received a call from her sister. She and their brother were furious that she had not told them she was going to spend family money on her campaign, according to her former senior consultant Ed Rollins, who was with her that night.
In the days that followed, several former staffers, including Rollins, said Harris learned she would not directly receive any inheritance from her father. Instead, his assets, reported to be as much as $100-million, were left to her mother, Harriet….
“I’m selling everything I have,’’ she said repeatedly. Harris donated $3-million to her campaign, though she later took back $100,000 — a move that fueled speculation that she did not have the $10-million.
Now, five months later, Republican operatives and political watchers say the Harris campaign may have seen the last of her personal resources. They doubt she will put more money into a race almost no one expects her to win….
Harris refuses to answer questions about the money, and rarely mentions the pledge in her campaign speeches anymore.
Shakespearean Daily Diss
“I must no more believe thee in this point
Than I will trust a sickly appetite,
That loathes even as it longs.” –The Two Noble Kinsmen, 1.3.87-90
The Assault on Planetary Values
Watch as Bill Maher uses the reclassification of Pluto in a series of hilarious metaphors for the neoconservative cult of ignorance:
- “An international panel of ’scientists’ has decided to cut and run on the planet Pluto.”
- “As long as George Bush is president, the science is still out on science.”
- “Many of my Republican friends got very excited when all this talk started recently about adding three new planets to the solar system, because what could be better in all of life than having three new things to name after Reagan?”
- “Activist scientists were trying to get away with a little election-year redistricting of the universe, adding new planets when we should be enforcing the planets we already have.”
- Why doesn’t somebody introduce the Defense of Planets act to protect the sanctity of planethood? You let planets swing both ways like that, next thing you know people are marrying their pets.”
Former senator Max Cleland appears nearly helpless with laughter. Another soft-on-astronomy Democrat!
Thank You, Alabama Democratic Party…
…for selectively enforcing a previously ignored rule in order to disqualify a woman who might have been your first openly gay legislator:
Attorney Bobby Segall told the committee earlier Thursday that if the party disqualified Todd for not filing a financial disclosure form with the party chairman it would also have to disqualify the party’s nominee for governor, Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley, and for lieutenant governor, former Gov. Jim Folsom Jr.
“Lucy Baxley is out of here. Just let the Republicans take over the state Senate and the House. Jim Folsom is out of here,” Segall said in an emotional presentation to the committee. Committee members announced their decision about two hours after the hearing ended.
Committee members and party officials said the committee’s decision would not affect any other Democratic Party nominees — like Baxley — because the results of other races have already been certified.
Qui Bono?
Medicare Part D, written by and for the pharmaceutical corporations, amounted to a huge giveaway to the tune of billions. If you have any doubts as to the bill’s authorship, note that it removes the government’s power to negotiate drug prices, per Rep. Waxman’s (D-CA) report:
The prices offered by the ten Medicare drug plans are substantially higher than the prices negotiated by the federal government. For the ten Medicare drug plans, the average price for a one-month supply of each of the ten drugs is $1,158. In comparison, the price negotiated by the federal government for the same drugs is just $630. In percentage terms, the prices offered by the Medicare drug plans are 84% higher than the federally negotiated prices…
And who in Congress thought that American seniors could afford such a price hike? Conflicts of interest abounded:
The chairman of the Commerce Committee, Representative Billy Tauzin (R-La.), coauthored the bill while negotiating a $2-million-per-year job as a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the drug industry’s trade organization. The top Republican aide on a subcommittee involved in writing the legislation also left his position soon afterward to lobby for PhRMA. Thomas Scully, the administration’s top Medicare official, deliberately understated the program’s projected cost by $134 billion, and when the chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) objected, Scully reportedly threatened to fire him if he shared his true estimate with Congress. Soon after the legislation passed, Scully resumed his career as a health care–industry lobbyist.
When the conference report was brought to the House for a vote, members were given less than one day to read the 850-page bill, a violation of House rules. When the vote was called at almost 3 a.m., voting Democrats stood unanimously with 22 Republicans in opposing the legislation. Had the vote been gaveled down in the customary 15 minutes, the bill would not have passed. So the Republican leadership held the vote open for a record three hours while attempting to change the outcome — through intimidation and other tactics that, again, violated House rules. Finding itself with a narrow lead at 5:53 a.m., the Republican leadership immediately brought the vote to a close.
Many abuses undoubtedly took place that night. Representative Nick Smith (R-Mich.) later revealed what may have been the worst: that former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Representative Candice Miller (R-Mich.) tried to bribe him with political favors to change his vote — an infraction for which the House Ethics Committee later admonished them. Through these means, the Republican leadership succeeded in passing a bill whose goal was, according to Representative Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), to “end Medicare as we know it.”
Thomas’s words proved as prophetic as they were ironic. Part D works better for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries than for beneficiaries. Drug-industry lobbyists worked to prevent the reimportation of cheaper medications from Canada and to add patent protection against generic drug makers. Independent analysts predicted that with such victories, the bill would increase drug-industry profits by $139 billion over the next eight years.
Our little experiment in representative plutocracy is being paid for by those who can least afford it. Which rich old white man claims to look out for your interests?
