Wyatt Earp, Wyatt Earp...

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Yet another reason why I have no intention no way no how of ever settin' foot in Arizona.

Gun totin' fools can now go packin' into bars.

Guess they want that guy who went armed to the political rally in New England earlier this summer to come back home.

Wyatt Earp, heck, even Marshall Matt Dillon would be appalled.

Our collective national meltdown into insanity continues....
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

Meet One of My Favorite Talking Heads

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Maybe because he also uses his head to think, not just shoot his mouth off.

Dylan Ratigan.

Would it be too much to hope this guy were hosting Meet the Press? Real questions...competent to follow up. 'tis to dream....
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Prairie Recommends: Frank Rich on Obama's Afghan Decision

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Will Obama bow to the will of the General reading his McChrystal ball?

Or will he find common ground with conservative columnist George Will?

Frank Rich deconstructs the options facing President Obama going forward in--or out of--Afghanistan. And traces the parallels to the decision facing another President, an earlier time, about Vietnam. What's that ol' saw about lessons of history again?

And in Rich's comparison, conspiracy theorists can now add a new posit to bloody November 22. A military sharpshooter eliminating the obstacle to their drumbeat for expanded war in SE Asia?

But this time, the vice president would not bend to their sturm und drang. So they're back to pressuring the president to yield to their will. Bush would. Will Obama?
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

Pass It On....

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A scathingly brilliant idea to solve the healthcare reform debacle, courtesy Susie Madrak over at Crooks and Liars.
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Prairie Recommends: Mayo CEO on Healthcare Reform

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Friday, Minnesota Public Radio broadcast the appearance before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. of Mayo Clinic CEO, Dr. Denis Cortese.

Mayo has a tradition of putting patients first. The Sunshines experienced that firsthand this summer. We believe in the Mayo model because we've been there.

Just in case you missed Cortese's appearance, here's the link.

Yeah, I mean you, Kent...Max....Olympia...Ben... step away from the lobbyist cocktail wienies. And listen.

And put patients first.
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal
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Prairie Recommends: Wyden on Healthcare Free Choice

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In the New York Times this morning, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden explains why offering people the same kind of choice that he and Max and Kent and Olympia and the rest of the gang have really makes sense.

Sense. Maybe there'd be more of it in the halls of Congress if there were fewer dollars waved under their noses by their lobbyist cronies.
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Prairie's Question o'the Day

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Now that Dan Brown has written about Opus Dei and the Masons in his seminal thrillers, what shall he write about next?

A. Rightwing media moguls a la Rupert Murdoch and his minions? Could Roger Ailes or Glenn Beck be the next out-there villain?

B. The Family? Do Mark Sanford and Joe Wilson have secret occultish fetishes? Or is it a South Carolina thang?

C. Other? All of the above?
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Prairie Recommends: Dylan Ratigan on Vampire Economics

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Dylan Ratigan cuts through the b.s. and speaks truth on the state of the American economy. For those who wail that the prez takes on too much we can't do one more, I say pay attention to what Ratigan is saying.

Shake the mutton outa your head and open your eyes. The status quo's gotta go.
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New Senator Kennedy

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Okay, I'm callin' it early.

The state of Connecticut will once again elect a Democratic Senator in 2012:

Ted Kennedy, Jr.
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And the name Joe will have been relegated to least popular birth name and the mopbucket of history.

The Road Not Taken

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UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald is important reading today.
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Today is something of a trifecta for the Sunshine clan. Yes, there are the national notes of the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. But for us there are the poignant passages, as well. Sunshine Son marks his 32nd birthday today. And this day is the second-month anniversary of the passing of Mr. Sunshine.

It was remarked that the U.S. Senate honored Ted Kennedy's passing yesterday with words, a black-draped desk, white roses and a poem. It happens to be my personal favorite as well....

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Copyright © 1962, 1967, 1970

by Leslie Frost Ballantine.

Prairie Recommends: Taibbi on Healthcare Debacle

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If you've had the growing suspicion that the so-called health care reform effort making its way through the well-$oiled machinations of Washington would end up working out very well for everyone BUT those who need it most, namely patients and their families, then maybe you don't need to read Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone article, Sick and Wrong, How Washington is screwing up health care reform....

Or his follow-up blogpost on Maria Bartiromo as a case study of how the media elite just add further to the screwing of everyday American health care patients and families.

During the two weeks Mr. Sunshine and I spent at Mayo this summer, talking with people about those machinations, the greatest fear of families and medical personnel alike was that Washington would end up making things worse, much worse, instead of better.

And given that health care reform has reduced all of us to mere pawns getting rooked on the giant partisan/profiteering game board, I'm seeing that greatest fear growing ever more likely.

I recommend Taibbi's article to you not because I'm usually of a mind to just engage in preaching to the choir, but because as one voter, one constitutent, one liberal voice in a Blue Dog red state, one wife, one survivor, one widow of one patient, at the very least, Taibbi articulates for me in no uncertain terms the labels that should be pinned on each of their craven political or media souls. And scoundrel is the least of them.
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

Potty Mouthed Conspiracy Theorists

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So. A Democrat signs a petition five years ago advocating investigation of whether there was any conspiracy within the Bush White House regarding 9/11. He calls members of the opposing party "assholes." He gets "resigned."

And if a Republican proffers inflammatory conspiracy theories and calls members of the opposing party "assholes"?

He gets self-selected Vice-President.

And so it goes in the nation that formerly called itself a democracy.

Is it any wonder fraud is rampant in the Afghani election of Bush-Chee-knee acolyte Karzai?

Book Larnin' Brouhaha

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Never let it be said that the Rethuglicans would waste any opportunity to turn anything...repeat, anything...into an opportunity to politicize and partisanize and disrespect this President.

The Republicans—who have spent August re-living the Florida 2000 Brooks Brothers riots with the 2009 edition: tea parties and rants at town halls—now that it's back-to-school time in America, are busily attacking the President's upcoming talk to the kids about education.

Let's be clear. When a Republican governor in oh, say, Minnesota, attacks the President's speech to children and there's talk of not allowing any school in Minnesota to air the speech, that's not only anti-education...and anti-history...and anti-American...it is racist.

So if that's the campaign strategy folks like Tim Pawlenty see as the route to success in 2012, all I can say is: enough.

And to those who have in some quarters finally started asking if the Rethuglicans have no shame, the answer is no. All they have is no.

And that's what you need to know each and every time a Republican politician or pundit speaks these days. They offer nothing except divide and destruct.

Republicans are the party of "We ain't got nuttin' but no...."
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

Prairie Recommends: Froomkin on Obama's Healthcare Speech

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What Obama needs to say. Because, as 475 Bobcat workers in Bismarck—along with the hundreds of thousands of other Americans—have found out this week: we are all stakeholders in healthcare reform now. Whether we acknowledge that, or not.
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Healthcare reform now. With the public option.
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