The gang that couldn’t talk straight:
Karen Handel, the politically embattled former vice president of public affairs for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, has broken her silence about her role in the breast cancer charity’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood and her decision to step down from her post.
“First of all, I clearly acknowledge that I was involved in the process,” she said. “But to suggest that I had the sole authority is just absurd. The process was vetted. The policies were vetted at all the appropriate levels in the organization.”
Handel’s statement directly contradicts what Komen executives have been telling the public since the decision was announced last week.
“Karen did not have anything to do with this decision,” Komen founder Nancy Brinker told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Thursday. “This was decided at the board level and also by our mission.”
So Handel resigns, and in doing so, calls the CEO a liar on the way out the door. Awesome. And while DougJ is still basking in the glow of his Moore Award nomination (the Daily Dish folks are really working overtime to become pathetic concern trolls), let me remind you how correct he was:
Handel told Fox News that she blamed the public backlash against Komen on “vicious attacks” from Planned Parenthood.
“The last time I checked, private non-profit organizations have a right and a responsibility to be able to set the highest standards and criteria on their own without interference, let alone the level of vicious attacks and coercion that has occurred by Planned Parenthood,” she said.
But the backlash did not only come from Planned Parenthood. More than 50 members of Congress signed letters asking Komen to reverse course, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg publicly rebuked Komen and pledged $250,000 to Planned Parenthood, and approximately 37,000 people from all over the country signed a petition demanding that Handel resign.
You see, when you tell the truth about them, they call it a vicious attack. They’re simply used to doing what they want and to hell with everyone else, so when someone pushes back, it shocks them.
gogol's wife
Congratulations DougJ on your badge of honor.
jeff
I don’t think Andrew agrees with that, but we’ll see. It was one of his interim bloggers I think.
beltane
Can you put some kind of badge at the top of the page, a picture of a medal to show that DougJ is the proud recipient of a Moore Award for Truth-telling in the Face of Evil?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Harrisburg, IL, 1948:
Audience: Give ’em Hell, Harry!
Truman: I don’t give them Hell. I just tell the truth about them and they think it’s Hell.
Plus ca change.
BGinCHI
Sic Semper Bullies.
EconWatcher
OT, but it sounds as if there could be some very good economic news coming, which would likely seal the election for Obama.
Anyone who ever reads Calculated Risk knows that the guy who runs the blog (Bill McBride) is a courtly gentleman who focuses on hard data, and not an excitable fellow. But he seems to be excited about this: Apparently, demographic changes may keep the labor force participation rate lower than forecasters predicted, which would mean that the unemployment rate could fall much faster this year than the current consensus forecasts:
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/02/goldman-no-labor-force-participation.html
Martin
The word ‘viscous’ is becoming something of a Godwin marker for me. It should become publicly synonymous with ‘I’ve lost, so all I have left is to demonize’. Amusing to see it so rapidly employed so frequently by the right these days.
pragmatism
honeyhandel don’t care. you don’t need more than a high school education to play the victim. if this further takes down SGK, that’s ok with her.
pragmatism
@BGinCHI: LOL. for karen it is sic transit gloria.
beltane
@EconWatcher: Bill McBride is possibly the most trustworthy source of information on these things so I will take this as very good news.
I also just read that Occupy D.C. is planning to Occupy CPAC, complete with a protest march and everything. Why are hippies so mean?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
“vicious attacks”? I saw Cecile Richards (think I’ve got the name right) on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show last night, and she was as she has been in every media appearance about this I’ve seen, soft-spoken and enthusiastic about the Komen Foundation, far more than I could be since I found out they spend less than 45% of the money they raise on research and prevention. She seemed genuinely horrified by L O’D’s suggestion that SGK is doomed, which I doubt but the prospect is far from horrifying to me.
Frankensteinbeck
Also on the subject of conservatives’ weird bully mentality: I’m getting an ad on this site asking Rand Paul to pass ‘the right to work bill Obama fears’. It’s so odd the way they think. Obama doesn’t fear a right to work bill. He thinks it’s a bad idea that will hurt people. It’s all a pissing match to these people.
Violet
They only call it class warfare when we fight back.
Benjamin Franklin
@beltane:
Interesting. I thought Obama was preparing us for future bad news when he poo-pooed the latest info a few days back/
Baby Boomers are that giant bubble of humanity, and retirement of same could produce better numbers, so thanks for that.
Sorry. That was for EconWatcher (edit)
Midnight Marauder
They’ve been bullying people for so long, they forgot what it’s like to be continuously punched in the face.
I say, let’s not let them forget the feeling anytime soon.
BGinCHI
@pragmatism: For DougJ and his award-winning audacity, it’s Fortes fortuna adiuva.
D0n Camillo
What’s the prize for winning the Moore Award? A bag of salted dicks?
beltane
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s the dumbasses signing the petition who should be scared of this bill, not the President who is financially set for life.
BGinCHI
The new test for everything aggressive from the left should be to see if Karl Rove is “offended” or “shocked” by it.
If so, you know it’s working. He doesn’t dick around with totebag kung fu.
EconWatcher
@Benjamin Franklin:
I think Obama wants to put the squeeze on to get his payroll tax cut revewed, to make sure the economic momentum isn’t dampened.
I’m usually a rank pessimist, but it really is feeling like we’re on the cusp of a virtuous cycle of economic good news. As long as Europe doesn’t blow up….
trollhattan
@gogol’s wife:
What-what-what…DougJ harvests his Moore while John doesn’t get even a feeble nod for his epic “They fucking hate you” rant?
Sully’s lost his mojo.
https://balloon-juice.com/2012/02/05/they-fucking-hate-you/
cathyx
What an ethical dilemma. Stand by your convictions, even if it means you go broke. Or make the money more important than your convictions. What would you do?
Danny
I remember I was about to write a comment on Dougs post about how I shared the sentiment, but the wingers when they call their minions to pursue personal destruction usually disguise their objective in bloviation about morals and such. “Handel is one of the more vile instigators of baby murder and therefore no true conservative..” rather than “let’s destroy Handel to teach them a lesson”. Plausible deniability! (They’ve been practicing saying foodstamps instead of N— for so long)
Rookie mistake when crossing over to the dark side.
Surly Duff
From the Dish
So Komen makes a politically-calculated decision, but the backlash has to be apolitical? Do those assholes ever make any sense?
Calouste
@Frankensteinbeck:
And of course Paul has a two thirds majority in both houses locked up for this, right? Otherwise there wouldn’t be much to fear for the President. Or would that just be a two thirds majority of all Senators and Congresscritters named Paul?
Dee Loralei
Anybody see that great pic of Obama today at the WH science fair? The look of awe and joy on our Nerdist-in-Chief is precious. He’s like the GeeksRUs President. It’s on my facebook page. EshelbytnforObama, if you wanna see.
pragmatism
@trollhattan: or sully has a bear crush on john. it’s irresponsible not to speculate.
Benjamin Franklin
@EconWatcher:
Precious little hope there.
kth
Handel obviously got her notions of ‘coercion’ and ‘interference’ (read: people, encouraged or not by Planned Parenthood, declining to further contribute to Komen) the same place her mentor Sarah Palin got her notion of free speech (read: the right to say anything you want and not have anyone criticize it).
Warren Terra
Good lord those mini-Andrews strive so mightily to be as precious as the big Andrew. I don’t know what authority revealed to them that the Komen-clasm was an apolitical controversy; from my perspective it sure didn’t look that way. Damn sure DougJ didn’t see it that way.
kooks
I don’t necessarily see how the two statements by Handel and Brinker in the HuffPo article contradict each other. Handel says “hey, I didn’t make the decision – it was vetted and I didn’t have the authority” and Brinker says it was the Board that made the decision. How are those two statements at odds?
trollhattan
@pragmatism:
Special note to J Cole: do NOT grow a beard. Repeat, no beard for you!
Warren Terra
@pragmatism:
I thought bears had to be bearded, not just generously proportioned?
Violet
DougJ, I can’t wait to vote for you for Moore Award of the Year in December!
Scott
What on earth does someone have to do to get a Moore Award? Is it just as simple as hurting Sullivan’s GOP-loving fee-fees?
kindness
Republicans work under the Newt Ginrich rules. It doesn’t matter what they do, it only matters what they say.
Villago Delenda Est
@Martin:
It’s projection.
They can’t stand having their own tactics used against them.
pragmatism
@Warren Terra: ye olde urban dictionary, sez:
A term used by gay men to describe a husky, large man with a lot of body hair.
pragmatism
EDIT: FY reading comprehension. i haz none today.
Martin
@EconWatcher: I think I was making the same argument when the news first broke that the participation rate may not climb. I suggested that at the current jobs rate trend could drive unemployment down below 7% by the election based on what we’ve seen the last 4 months.
Hal
Just so I have this correct, Handel, who is a noted conservative anti-abortion activist who ran for Gov of Georgia on a platform that in part was based on, ta-dah! defunding PP over abortion, wants everyone to know that her push at Komen had nothing to do with abortion, and she’s very annoyed that people keep making this a political decision?
Also, is there an asshole award for Handel based on this little dity?
General Stuck
The thing about lies, they tend to reproduce like bunny wabbits.
slag
@Martin:
As the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark teaches us, Nazis do seem to have a high viscosity.
Omnes Omnibus
@Surly Duff: Hockey rules; third man in always gets the worst penalty.
joeyess
At the tender age of 10 I learned that bullies turn quickly into whiny twatwaffles the moment you punch them in the face.
I say we continue this type of shock treatment on these right wing lunatics. They’ll cave every time.
Know why?
Because they’re bullies that have never tasted a knuckle sandwich.
TEL
I live in the bay area. I saw two Komen commercials last night on two separate channels (one race for the cure, one about other cancer issues they work on) in the first 10 minutes after I turned the TV on, I stopped counting after the first two. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a Komen foundation commercial before this. This isn’t about Komen not being allowed to support organizations of their choosing, it is about them alienating people who have donated to Komen for years, and now trying to gain back these people’s trust.
JGabriel
Karen Handel (up top):
Shorter Handel: Damn the donors! Who gives a fuck what they think?
Seriously, how do you put in charge of “Public Policy” someone who doesn’t give a shit what the public thinks, particularly when you have to rely on that same public for donations?
Clueless, just clueless.
.
Redshift
@Warren Terra:
They got it from Handel, of course. Remember the screen grab of her retweet of PP “turning it into a political bomb.”
Idiots.
Steve
@kooks: You can’t acknowledge your role unless you had one.
gwangung
If that decision was apolitical, then Hoekstra didn’t use racist Asian stereotypes.
Yeah, right.
Redshift
@kooks: Brinker also says “Karen did not have anything to do with this decision” and Handel says “I clearly acknowledge that I was involved in the process.” Pretty clear contradiction there.
Martin
It’s anecdotal, and my local pool of humanity is hardly representative of the nation, but I’ve been talking to a lot of people that had put off retirement when their 401Ks went to shit in 2008, and were uncertain if they could sell their big house for that retirement property they always wanted that have since recovered and are eager to leave the workforce.
I think unlike many previous recessions, part of the complication with the recover in this one is that there’s this catch-22. People nearing retirement couldn’t retire because their home were their assets and their retirement funds were in the shitter. Therefore they stayed in jobs that they would have otherwise left, blocking others from re-entering the labor force after layoffs. Further, people lost mobility when their houses went underwater and didn’t regain it until they were foreclosed on.
All kinds of things locked up that affected the participation rate and the job recovery that are only starting to loosen up. I don’t quite know the scale of that problem whether it’s meaningful in the overall jobs picture, but I’ve seen that pattern over and over and over here. And because previous recessions didn’t come with the broad-based stock market losses, or didn’t come with the housing collapse, they weren’t quite as locked up against recovering as this one seems to be.
Omnes Omnibus
@JGabriel:
Were you following politics during the Bush II era?
Midnight Marauder
@kooks:
Nancy Brinker: “Karen did not have anything to do with this decision. This was decided at the board level and also by our mission.”
Karen Handel: “First of all, I clearly acknowledge that I was involved in the process. But to suggest that I had the sole authority is just absurd.”
There is a massive gap in those stories.
j
She refused a severance package under the guise of having that money help women.
BS! That package more than likely contained a “shut up and get lost” rider.
Now she can get paid to sing her song and write a book and continue the wingnut welfare gravy train.
Brinker has got to be shitting bricks right now.
Hey, when you sleep with digs, you wake up with fleas.
Time for SGK to be overrun with IRS agents, and have their tax exemption pulled.
They should make a movie ” Hands Brinker and the Silver Plates”.
Redshift
@TEL:
Yes, but even worse — alienating donors and supporters, then telling obvious lies and giving conflicting excuses, then issuing a non-apology “we’re sorry you didn’t believe our lies” apology, and then trying to gain back our trust.
jimmiraybob
1) Infiltrate enemy government and private institutions.
2) Destroy as much as possible using stealth methods.
3) If discovered, start strategic retreat – ignite hidden explosives caches.
4) Leave behind booby-trapped toys.
5) Sing martyr’s song.
6) Return to home base and train up-and-coming revolutionary insurgents.
Of course, I’m only guessing at the operation plan.
jl
@Warren Terra:
Seems to me that the inside the Komen Foundation, this did not start as a genuine apolitical controversy either. More like an either politically motivated, or CYA motivated, (or most probably, both) reaction to a flimsy political controversy created by the House GOP.
So, how do you get from that, to ‘apolitical controversy’?
Villago Delenda Est
The true damage of this entire brouhaha to SGK is that it focused attention on just how much the millions they take in actually gets pushed out to directly address their nominal cause.
The answer is, by percentage, less than half.
Which is pathetic.
Unless paying Brinker nearly a half million a year somehow translates as direct action “for the cure”, not to mention money for lawyers, consultants, junkets, and FSM knows what else.
Money is better donated directly to other charities than to SGK. That way you have a much better chance of actually seeing your donation going “for the cure.”
Benjamin Franklin
@Martin:
It’s still anecdotal, but I believe there are a lot of folks like me. In early 2008. when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were tipsy, I transferred my funds into the International for 3 months. When I re-funded my US Gov obligations I ended up losing only 2-3 percent, whereas, my peers lost an average of 40.
My retirement plans went unamended, and I think many followed suit.
wasabi gasp
Brinker & Handel, the Two Nancys…wait, one’s a Karen…they’re both saying the same thing.
kooks
@Midnight Marauder: Well, the way that I read it, they’re both talking about the actual decision to cut funding, not the process that led up to it. Obviously, Handel was involved, but it was the Board that pulled the trigger. Perhaps I’m just splitting hairs – they’re both assholes after all – but both of these statements demonstrate to me that SGK Board/leadership is rotten to the core, not just Handel.
geg6
I sent Bodenner (sp?) a WTF email about Doug’s Moore Award with something about since when have Planned Parenthood and women’s health issues been apolitical issues because I seem to have missed that memo over the course of 53 years. But they are too busy pimping Charles Murray’s new book and whining that breast cancer takes all the focus off of AIDS so fuck boobies.
burnspbesq
Occupy CPAC sounds like an excellent idea.
In other news, kitteh is as productive as Andy Carroll
j
Ahem. When the rest of the country is being robbed blind for 30 years under Reaganomics it is just fine. But when anyone says “HEY, WE BAILED YOU THIEVES OUT, SO START PAYING YOUR TAXES AND STOP SHIPPING MY JOB TO CHINA” it becomes “class warfare”.
Midnight Marauder
@kooks:
I think you’re splitting a lot more hairs than necessary with that analysis. Nancy Brinker ran around screaming, “KAREN HANDEL HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS! DO YOU HEAR ME?! OUR SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF PUBLIC POLICY HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS POLICY DECISION!”
And now said Senior VP of Public Policy is leaving the organization proclaiming, “I may not have pulled the trigger, but you had damn well better believe I loaded the gun.”
In other words, yes, the shit is all rotten, son.
r€nato
@joeyess: I find your ideas intriguing and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
jl
@Martin: @EconWatcher:
Martin makes good points. The GS report focuses on long term trends, but the issue for the meaning of unemployment rate, and labor force participation rate for the election is tied up in short term trends.
Recently, the LFP rate has been climbing rapidly for the older adults and the elderly, for reasons Martin points out. In fact, this upward trend has been a centerpiece of free market real business cycle macroeconomists in (I think) confused arguments in the current debate over best macroeconomic policy.
Between now and the election, need to consider long run decline in LFP because or peoples’ preferred life cycle plans, and short run fluctuations because of older people who unexpectedly need to work, and then get discouraged and drop out. How much and the direction of fluctuation due to those different reasons will be important in interpreting the unemployment and labor force statistics.
harlana
wow, Komen is toast and PP reaps the benefit. Go figure.
burnspbesq
David Frum’s takedown of Murray is definitive and irrefutable.
joeyess
@r€nato: You can subscribe to my YouTube Channel. Other than that………. I got nuthin’.
lamh35
@Dee Loralei: Do you mean this one:
http://swampland.time.com/2012/02/07/65370/
I saw that.
pragmatism
@burnspbesq: he’s big, he’s red, he heads it to row zed he’s andy carrol!
Maus
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s less than a quarter. The 40% of “awareness” is self-marketing and pushing their brand name, tying it to breast cancer.
Sly
@Scott:
You have to reject the idea that everyone should stop being so partisan and just vote Republican.
Darius
Sully has a response:
Oh no, guys, Handel getting fired will empower her! * wrings hands furiously *
baxie
dunno why they’re all het up about DougJ when Ed over at Gin & Tacos was praying for the decision makers to get cancer….
Lurker
@jimmiraybob:
Nice choice of words for Komen.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq:
From Frum:
Um, duh.
pragmatism
@Darius: i’m with you. empower her to do what? take down SGK with her? not win an election again? become a fox superstar? abortion was always going to be a wedge issue for the goper stoopidpacs.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Darius:
Oh, indeed, because ex-secretaries of (individual) states frequently become political powerhouses, and there are no other spittle-flecked anti-abortion activists out there!
Well played, JuniorSullyBot, well played.
Maus
@Sly: They have this weird abstinence policy where they’re waiting for the dreamiest Republican contender that will NEVER EVER COME. The GOP hates Sullivan and “moderate” republicans who don’t play so much in the culture wars, and sane candidates would never hold Sullivan’s more nasty Libertarian-racist Bell Curve positions. So he pines, and gets angry when “Liberals” decide to attack a Republican for being a seriously terrible person.
Midnight Marauder
@pragmatism:
It will empower her to surround us.
Laertes
Empower her, my ass. Winning is good and losing sucks. The good guys won this round.
Planned Parenthood has been strengthened by the outpouring of support and the adjustment to their image.
The wingnut-dominated SGK organization has suffered terrible damage and been exposed as a wingnut organization.
Handel was in a position in which she had the power to directly harm Planned Parenthood. Now she’s reduced to whining at second-rate talking heads on a second-rate news network.
Only in the mind of a media creature like Sully does that count as “empowered.”
Quicksand
Failing upward, wingnut welfare, FNC contributor, etc. etc. etc.
The horror!
rikyrah
DOUG- congrats on the Moore Award.
Maus
@Darius:
Handel wasn’t forced out, doofus. (not you, Darius!)
Handel left because she knows the wingnuts will support her MORE after she got her feelings hurt. Sully’s a member of the conservative media. How does he not know this? We’re not trying to feed into her victimization complex, Handel wasn’t the cause of Komen’s rightward shift, she was symptomatic.
pragmatism
@Midnight Marauder: oh noes! not again. we
barelyeasily withstood that last surrounding. can we call this: Surrounding 2, the Surroundening?BGinCHI
@Laertes: It will empower her to host the Poutrage Hour on Fox.
slag
@Darius:
It’s possible that the Sullybot knows something we don’t know.
Maybe Handel was bitten by a radioactive spider on her way out the door. Now, she could be empowered to climb tall buildings with her sticky webby hands. And it’s ALL OUR FAULT!
Laertes
@Maus:
You can’t be serious.
burnspbesq
@pragmatism:
For 35 million pounds they could have bought Eden Hazard twice, with a couple of quid left over. In the running for worst player-personnel move in the history of sport. Right up there with Portland drafting Sam Bowie ahead of Michael Jordan.
BGinCHI
@burnspbesq: I would have happily settled for Demba Ba.
Omnes Omnibus
@Darius: Handel is Obi-Wan Kenobi? Who knew?
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq:
Up until the day he died, almost, my dad bitched about this one.
Sort of like how George Constanza’s dad bitched about the Jay Buhner trade.
pragmatism
@burnspbesq: at least torres to chelski didn’t work out so well for chelsea. it would be way worse for the pool if he were doing well.
someday andy will take his ponytail back to the northeast and recapture his form.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@pragmatism:
Starring Dean Cain and Angie Harmon? And Jon Voigt as “The Elder”? With a Special Appearance by Kelsey Grammer?
pragmatism
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That is awesome. Made one edit. Dean can do a bit part, as is befitting to his stature.
bemused
@Martin:
Many of our friends have delayed retiring even if they no longer have a home mortgage. Part of the reason is much smaller retirement funds than they were counting on but the other reason is they want to continue working for the health insurance, especially if they have several years until they are old enough to qualify for Medicare.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
“Empowered” here probably means “more power within conservative circles”. She will now forever be “The Martyr of SGK, Victim of Planned Parenthood, Keeper of the Sacred Chalice of Life”.
However, recent events seem to indicate that those circles might finally be shrinking. I’m starting to wonder: Are the ‘normal folk’ out there starting to get desensitized to wingnut poutrage and martyrdom? With so many years of it, and at such a high volume… at some point people stop caring or listening.
Sly
@burnspbesq:
Frum is one of those guys who I can take or leave depending on the day and/or the venue, but this part is simply brutal:
Martin
@Benjamin Franklin:
There are, but as we know ‘for every buyer there’s a seller’. Someone was on the losing end all the way through that decline, just as someone was on the losing end of every housing transaction all the way through the decline. You’re going to have just as many people who bailed early without pain as who bailed at the bottom, still lost everything, and even missed the bounce. And we know that people in positions of privilege have an advantage in this game – so statistically speaking, it’s really unlikely that individual retirees outperformed the market here.
About 5 million people retire in the US each year. It wouldn’t take very many of them to change their retirement plans to have a measurable effect on the participation rate over 3 years.
Bago
I love the fact that they don’t know DougJ as DougJ, but rather as the nym of the week.
Maus
@Laertes: Eh, I’m sure it’s possible that they took her as the figurehead for all their other ideas and looked at the PP 600k versus billions of dollars in intake, but Handel (as with the rest of the board/execs) are opportunists, Handel’s going to do pretty well outside of Komen.
alhutch
@burnspbesq:
Uh, I think the Bowie pick can finally be replaced by Oden instead of Durant. Ouch.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ah but this former state secretary of state has serious voter suppression cred – they’ll love her:
In the weeks leading into the 2008 elections, Handel stepped up her crusade. Georgia sent letters to 4,770 voters saying their registration was being “challenged.” Handel even went so far as to encourage Georgia residents to challenge the votes of anyone if they doubted their citizenship, a move savaged by voting rights advocates as opening the door to racial profiling and intimidation.
The following year, the Department of Justice ruled that Handel’s no-match law was inaccurate and discriminatory. The DOJ found that by relying of bad data, Georgia may have disenfranchised thousands of perfectly legal voters; according to their analysis:
[Georgia] flagged a large number of persons who have subsequently demonstrated that they are in fact citizens, Indeed, of the 7,007 individuals who have been flagged…as potential non-citizens, more than half were in fact citizens.
The flawed purging was also discriminatory in its impact:
The DOJ also calculated that although blacks and whites made up equal numbers of the newly registered, blacks were flagged 60 percent more than whites. The DOJ similarly found that “Hispanic and Asian individuals are more than twice as likely to appear on the (flagged) list as are white applicants.” In essence the program puts an undue burden on blacks, Hispanics and Asians to prove their citizenship when trying to vote.
From the link above. She’s gold on the wingnut welfare circuit – voter suppression and uterine control freak. She’s a twofer.
Cain
@Dee Loralei:
Next google hang out with the Prez, someone needs to ask a Star Trek question.
piratedan
waiting for the folks over at Sully’s place to tell us all that we’ll rue the day about being happy about the mask removal over at Komen… he doesn’t understand that there’s still a shitpotful of resentment over the way ACORN was handled and the quarterly Breitbart and O’Keefe debacles where they lie their way to wingnut glory. I just want those guys to get real jobs, you know like Mike Rowe does and actually be productive.
Cain
@pragmatism:
Perhaps a theme song by Ted Nugent?
brad
Immediately following Sully’s fill-in chiding the good folks of BJ for not realizing Handel getting sacked is, um, good news for John McCain comes this, “Expect a big Facebook post from Sarah Palin, who endorsed Handel in 2010 and who never passes up a good culture war.”
JC should create the Inigo Montoya Award.
Donald G
@Darius:
quoting Bodenner, on behalf of the Sully-borg:
Empower her? How? One could easily (and with as much justification) claim that Sullivan’s obsession with the circumstances of Trig Palin’s birth empowered Sarah Palin to cling to the mantle of victimhood and become an omnipresent talking airhead on Fox.
Is Bodenner trying to warn us not to repeat Andrew’s mistake? :-)
Man, the substitutes are never as impressive as the original. One might as well replace William F Buckley, Jr. with Rich “Starbursts” Lowery. Oh, wait…
Martin
@Cain: “Greatest existential threat to America: Romulans or Cardassians?”
Villago Delenda Est
@Martin:
Better question, one bound to create serious controversy:
“What’s your favorite Trek?”
Svensker
@D0n Camillo:
I just wanna know, with all the salted dicks being promised hither and yon, where are they all going to come from?
jimmiraybob
@Lurker:
Honestly, didn’t occur to me. While I’m not above tasteless snark, no pun was intended here. Just watched a rerun of Full Metal Jacket.
Svensker
@pragmatism:
So much win.
Mnemosyne
@JGabriel:
To be fair, that’s how Republicans are used to treating the American people — say whatever you have to in order to get into power, and then do whatever you please and screw anyone who objects.
She just didn’t realize that consumers could actually bring pressure on Komen’s sponsors that Komen wouldn’t be able to withstand. She’s used to living in the Republican bubble where you can do whatever you want and a majority will go along because of the “R” after your name.
redshirt
@Villago Delenda Est: President Obama: What is your reaction to comments from FoxStar News that Vulcans are really undercover Romulans and their continued presence on the Federation Council threatens us all?
cokane
ROFL more pissy hand wringing from Bodenner. What a fraud. His link to this post completely misinterprets it, in a Drudgereport headline fashion.
Odie Hugh Manatee
This whole SGK/PP mess has just boggled my mind;
They are a charity…
that is perceived to be successful, apolitical and supporting a cause that just about everyone agrees on.
that has extensive ties into popular consumer products, corporations and events.
that has trademarked a well-known symbol to help promote itself and its cause.
who uses their well-known trademarked symbol to raise product awareness, increase sponsor sales and raise money for themselves.
that has sponsors whose products and events sell across all political lines.
with sponsors that they are accountable to for making decisions that might affect perceptions of them, their products, sales and their bottom line.
They are all that and they decide to make a controversial and extremely political decision, expecting that there wouldn’t be any fallout?
How in the Hell did this organization survive this long? I heard today that Brinker refused to break ties with PP a few years back when some running rag owned by some winger demanded that SGK stop supporting PP. She told them NO in very clear terms. What in the Hell happened between then and now? Why would she fuck with a winning (for her anyway) charity and risk everything on a political stunt like this? How in the Hell did she think that the sponsors wouldn’t start shitting bricks all over her for pissing off their consumers, especially when their products are marked with an easy to spot target that would kill their sales and easily lead angry consumers to contact them?
Brinker blew it and she should really step down as the head of the charity. What she did was so stupid that it will be recorded in the annals of Amazingly Stupid Shit as one of the stupidest fucking moves by a charity, ever. Let her have Founder status or whatever but if she is sincere and really wants to save that place in memory of her sister then she needs to GTFO of town yesterday.
I watched the PP Pres last night on MSNBC and she was doing her best to pull SGK’s bacon out of the fire, saying things like ‘They were the victim here too’, which really made my jaw drop. It was clear that she was pulling hard to help SGK recover from the bad publicity, probably with a view that it would give her a stronger hand come the next round of funding. ;)
It was admirable but I think she was bailing furiously on a sinking ship.
Larv
Maybe somebody already mentioned it, but there’s an interpretation of Brinker and Handel’s remarks that isn’t entirely contradictory. Brinker insists that Handel had nothing to do with the decision to defund Planned Parenthood. That’s probably correct in one sense – the decision was made before Handel was hired. You don’t hire somebody best known for her opposition to PP for that job unless you’ve already decided to cut ties to PP. So Handel wasn’t involved in the initial decision, but was hired to enthusiastically implement that decision, thus “involved in the process.”
maus
@Larv:
Of course. They’re both right, in the same way that their “reversal” was never a reversal.
JR in WVa
I have to agree that Komen should be hounded to death. The level of funding for actual work to support cancer victims and for R&D to cure cancers is so low and the overhead is so high that it is obviously primarily a gravy-train for the founder.
Now that she (the founder) has made the organization’s lack of authenticity obvious is the perfect opportunity to kill them off in favor of real charities that do real work.