Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Fight them, without becoming them!

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

In my day, never was longer.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

I really should read my own blog.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Tammy Smash (Open Thread)

Tammy Smash (Open Thread)

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If you’ve ever thought of parlaying that repetitive motion injury you got while shoveling popcorn into your mouth during “The Hurt Locker” into a disabled veteran set-aside contract from the US government…just don’t:

Representative Tammy Duckworth, ladies and gentlemen. She’s the Democrat who kicked deadbeat dad teabagger Joe Walsh’s ass to win her seat.

Apparently ass-kicking is something of a thing with Representative Tammy Duckworth of Illinois. Try not to piss her off.

[H/T: Valued commenter Trollhattan]

Reader Interactions

95Comments

  3. 3.

    Culture of Truth

    “I’m sorry that twisting your ankle in high school caused you to suffer in this way.”

  4. 4.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    When you’ve stared down a grenade and lived, I doubt what some piss ant thinks of you matters all that much.

  8. 8.

    Rabble Arouser

    I can still feel the heat rising off of this guy after the roasting that Representative Duckworth gave him.

  9. 9.

    Soonergrunt

    She really tore that guy a new one. The sarcastic empathy over the guy’s “pain” in his ankle and how she compares that to the phantom limb pain from her foot is just epic.

  12. 12.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Soonergrunt:

    While I fully understand the righteous rant toward the end, I agree that the most devastating part of the entire beatdown was the sarcastic empathy. I especially like the “my nearly missing and nothing close to fully funcitonal right arm is only a 20% disability” observation.

  14. 14.

    Gex

    @Davo: I’m not sure there is anything more threatening to those guys than smart, capable, self-assured, powerful, effective women. They are pissing their pants scared and reliving unresolved mommy issues as they bang out their screeds.

  16. 16.

    eric

    @Gex: by and large, you dont get to the top of the heap as a woman unless you got something there. that is not to say all do, but in my experience, there are a ton more men in power that fake it than there are women, so if you can get rid of women, you rid of strong women, and you get rid of real merit-based competition.

  17. 17.

    Violet

    @Gex: Exactly. They’re terrified of strong women. That’s why we need even more strong Democratic women. Send those guys from the room screaming.

  19. 19.

    Paul W.

    Yeah, that was well worth 8 minutes of my time. Damn! You want to talk about government waste and cleaning that up, it looks like at least the Democrats are actually doing more than talking.

  20. 20.

    Betty Cracker

    @Trollhattan: So the Ole Perfesser is implying that President Obama and/or his minions instructed Ms. Jeantel to be a shitty witness so that Zimmerman would be acquitted, thereby increasing black voter turnout in 2014? Holy Christ, that’s barking.

  21. 21.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @Gex: We have always been a minority-majority nation. It’s just finally dawning on everyone that Christian White Men are not the largest group here, and never have been. It’s a Bugs Life.

  22. 22.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @eric:

    so if you can get rid of women, you rid of strong women, and you get rid of real merit-based competition.

    Which is precisely the outcome that the pathetic slime of RedState want. One where they don’t have to compete on the basis of actual merit.

  23. 23.

    scav

    Does it depend on the recording? (not visible on my pad) There is a “I think the time was well spent” at the end of the one I saw by the chair (?) that is pure icing.

    eta edited for baseline coherency.

  24. 24.

    inventor

    That was like: jab…jab…jab… then it was like a speed bag: boppita…poppita…boppita then it was just BOOM.

    Tammy smash indeed.

  26. 26.

    Davo

    @Tom Levenson: Sorry, Tom. I should’ve added a disclaimer NOT to read that. It just pissed me off so bad, I had to share…

    And in case you folks didn’t know… Red State Posting Rules: “13. The dissemination of talking points from the Democrat Party, or its politicians and allies, is not allowed.”

    Erick the Red really doesn’t give a fuck what we think anyway.

  27. 27.

    wmd

    Wow. At the end where she yields her time back and apologizes for going over time… Issa (Issa!) thanks her and says “the time was well spent”.

    Rep Issa praising Tammy Duckworth.

    Just wow.

  28. 28.

    Tonybrown74

    What I cannot wrap my mind around is what kind of triflin’ ass bastard can go and testify to Congress that twisting his ankle in prep school is akin to defending the U.S. from its enemies.

    I just cannot rationalize that one.

    I can’t even …

  32. 32.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    Great, I have been waiting for the appropriate thread to post this. The VA Disability Sleep Apnea scam

    http://www.military.com/benefits/2013/06/20/va-reconsiders-disability-ratings-for-apnea.html

    Basically people who are due to leave the service are being “coached” on how to “suffer” from sleep apnea, if they are prescribed a CPAP they get an automatic 50% disability rating. You will note in the piece that one of the people testifying is a family law attorney. That is because these guys who owe their ex-spouses a percentage of their retirement can reduce the amount they pay ex-wifey by having their retirement pay declared disability pay. Family law attorneys are now getting fed up with this and are demanding that the VA reassess its ratings system as their clients are ending up with nothing. As you can see from the piece there is no way that sleep apnea could be considered service connected.

    This is another reason why (in addition to the crook in the video above) that there is a huge backlog of disability claims.

    From the piece

    Mike Webster, a family law attorney in Florida, complained to the House Veterans Affairs Committee of widespread abuse of VA claims for sleep apnea. Since then, Webster has heard from staff on the veterans affairs oversight subcommittee that a “team” is looking into his allegations.

    “Sleep apnea definitely has become more of an issue over the past several years,” Hughes said as he began his briefing. He gave some of the same data on sleep apnea cases published here, including that VA had rated 983 veterans for sleep apnea in 2001 and almost 25,000 last year. He added that 13 percent of roughly 427,000 veterans who served after 9/11, and draw VA disability compensation today, have service-connected sleep apnea.

  33. 33.

    jayjaybear

    My new favorite phrase is going to be “Awesomer than a no-legged woman in an ass-kicking contest” from now on.

  34. 34.

    Trollhattan

    @Betty Cracker:

    These humps are all consipracy, all the time. This is the reason I’m particularly troubled by the embrace of all firearms, all the time–it’s bad news for The Normals.

    I can’t imagine suffering through one of his classes. Midterm essay questions:

    “A minority person has been killed. Please explain why it’s his fault.”
    “Show how Objectivism supports the Second Amendment.”

  36. 36.

    Another Halocene Human

    Whoa, that was harsh. She kicked Castillo’s balls right up into his kidneys. Would not want to be on her bad side.

    Maybe she is a big bully (“if it felt good to say you probably shouldn’t have said it”) but in this case she was on the side of right eviscerating that sleaze, throwing his unctuous words right back at him. Even his body language was all dodgy (rather than defiant–good sign he doesn’t even believe his stupid lies).

  37. 37.

    BGK

    So was this dipstick in the service at all? Is the gist that he claims he aggravated a pre-service injury and thus has a service-related disability?

  38. 38.

    I am not a kook

    Wow. Had to watch it twice. I’m going to save this and show my 13 year old daughter as an example of how to make an argument. And as an example of a kick ass female role model.

  39. 39.

    Betty Cracker

    @jayjaybear: LMAO!

    @Trollhattan: Can you imagine? I’d sooner suffer through a female empowerment group led by Mrs. Dr. The Old Perfesser. Sample course: “Keep Your Man from Going Galt in the Bedroom by Reenacting Sweet Savage Love Scenes from the Fountainhead”.

  42. 42.

    gelfling545

    @Litlebritdifrnt: Um, not really. Sleep issues are a big part of PTSD. Testing for sleep apnea is a routine part of the exam. I can tell you for sure that it doesn’t “automatically” do anything. My son in law who does suffer from it and PTSD and having his foot crushed so that it no longer resembles anything human or functions in any normal after being pieced back together is not considered 50% disabled.

  43. 43.

    SatanicPanic

    It’s kind of funny to see Republicans being down on AMERICA! all the time now. Aggreived when Tammy yells at this faker. Laughing when Putin ignores our president and saying Russia is tougher than us. Saying the Chinese own us. The days of God Bless America and Born in the USA are long gone.

  44. 44.

    Betty Cracker

    @BGK: Apparently not — he was in a military prep school only, not in the armed forces afterward.

  45. 45.

    Soonergrunt

    While we’re all loving us some Tammy Smash, take a moment and read this article in Slate, by Federal Judge Richard Posner, a noted conservative legal scholar.
    The first paragraph:

    Shelby County v. Holder, decided Tuesday, struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act (the part requiring certain states with a history of racial discrimination in voting to obtain federal permission in advance to change their voting procedures—called “preclearance”) as violating the “fundamental principle of equal sovereignty” of the states. This is a principle of constitutional law of which I had never heard—for the excellent reason that, as Eric points out and I will elaborate upon briefly, there is no such principle.

    Seriously, go read the whole thing.

  47. 47.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @gelfling545:

    I think if you will read the piece you will find that medical doctors stated that there was no connection between PTSD and sleep apnea

    One issue addressed was conventional wisdom by some sleep disorder experts that sleep apnea is related to post-traumatic stress disorder.

    “We haven’t seen any medical correlation between sleep apnea and PTSD,” Hughes said. Still the most common path to a sleep apnea rating “is people who are overweight…getting diagnosed” as they separate or retire.

    My husband has sleep apnea, and he wouldn’t think of claiming that it was as a result of his military service.

  48. 48.

    Another Halocene Human

    @Litlebritdifrnt: That is completely terrifying.

    Most people don’t want to hear they have sleep apnea and definitely don’t want to get diagnosed and be forced to use a CPAP to keep that job. Ugh.

  49. 49.

    Soonergrunt

    Judge Posner on Justice Thomas:
    “Justice Thomas has integrity, but it’s the integrity of a madman. He is the Ron Paul of the Supreme Court.”

  50. 50.

    drkrick

    @gelfling545: Sleep apnea is a condition rooted in physical issues that are pretty unlikely to be excacerbated by PTSD, although other kinds of sleep problems are. I’m more than willing to believe that your SiL’s injuries could have contributed to sleep apnea, but having a hard time seeing how PTSD would do so.

  52. 52.

    Botsplainer

    So Asshole Without a Country has inspired the brilliant cabal that runs Ecuador at the moment to forgo a lucrative trade arrangement with the US.

    According to Reuters, Ecuador said Thursday it was waiving favorable trade rights under a trade agreement with the U.S. In a dig at Washington, officials there also offered the U.S. $23 million in aid for “education about human rights.”

    Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/27/ecuador-turns-away-us-trade-benefits-makes-defiant-offer-amid-snowden-asylum/#ixzz2XROA3DsC

    Of course, there are no direct flights from Sheremyetevo to Quito. He’s going to have to get to Havana first.

    One wonders if Raul will allow the transit.

  53. 53.

    The Moar You Know

    Wow. At the end where she yields her time back and apologizes for going over time… Issa (Issa!) thanks her and says “the time was well spent”.

    @wmd: A bit of Issa’s money comes from contractors in or near his district. Seems this guy is a VA area contractor – competition. He would have been fine if she’d taken ten more minutes dissecting what a rotten piece of shit this jerk is.

    Not that such was needed. She said everything that needed to be said.

    And, frankly, to claim disabled status for a prep-school football injury would offend just about anyone. The crowd at RedState and others who’d defend this guy just forfeited their citizenship, as far as I’m concerned. I’m sure Issa was offended. He looked it.

  54. 54.

    MD Rackham

    @drkrick: My understanding was that it’s the other way around: sleep apnea prevents restful (REM) sleep exacerbating existing PTSD. So having sleep apnea could increase the level of disability, although an automatic 50% seems really unlikely.

    (Not that kind of MD.)

  55. 55.

    LAC

    @The Moar You Know: That was damn incredible and Issa’s face at the end was like “no problem, take as much time as you need to freeze dry his balls.” That lady rocks!!

    And RedState bitches bitching? They are so dense, light bends around them. Fuck ’em…

  58. 58.

    Tom Levenson

    @Soonergrunt: Minor correction:

    It wasn’t the 7th circuit’s Posner who wrote the second Posner quote you posted. It was Eric Posner — Judge Robert Posner’s son. Both, (confusingly) contributed to that blog sequence.

  60. 60.

    Cassidy

    @MD Rackham: If supported by medical records, it’s an automatic 50%. Here’s the deal, you can be coached all you want to complain of the right symptoms, but nothing is diagnosed until you go and do a sleep study. The VA does not consider anything without some sort of existing record. If none exists, then you’ll be sent to get tested, by the VA, then they’ll make a determination.

    And yes, you’re right about the SA exacerbating the PTSD.

    @Litlebritdifrnt: First, this has been an issue long before sleep apnea became the disability du jour. The simple and right fix is 1) stop conflating retirement and disability and 2) lower the percentage cut that wives get of the retirement.

    So, for one, the idea is that you can’t get both disability and retirement, although that’s slowly changing. eventually, the plan is that your retirement and your disability rating will be two different things, but right now if you’re collecting 30% or more disability (money), it’ll be subtracted from your retirement check. That’s not right and never has been.

    For point 2, I’m in no way stating that spouses do not go through hardship or sacrifice. Whether they’ve “earned” 50% of that retirement check is debatable. The reality is that the odds of divorce go up when the servicemember retires, so instead of blanketly stating that the 40+ y/o former spouse of a service member who has been a SAHP their adult life deserves half the retirement, they should instead invest in sending said spouses to college with tutition assistance so that said spouses can have a career and not be dependent on 50% of a retirement at 40+ years old. When I was on Active Duty, I was alloted so much money to go to school every year, 100% tution. It was use or lose. Having spent most of my time in Combat Arms, my ability to go to college was severly hampered by training, deployments, etc. Imagine if my wife could have used that money, already alloted to me, to finish her degree.

  61. 61.

    retr2327

    @drkrick:
    Well, my understanding (and it could easily be wrong) is that Eric Posner, the source of that quote, is the son of Judge Richard Posner. I don’t know if the son is a judge or not, but I rather doubt it; judges are subject to a code of judicial conduct that tends to frown on attacks on fellow judges.
    Which is not to say that they don’t get off some pretty sharp shots now and then, J. Posner included . . .

  62. 62.

    retr2327

    @retr2327:
    Sorry for the misdirected reply; obviously, that was for Soonergrunt. And I really could be wrong; for all I know, they’re unrelated.

  63. 63.

    mike with a mic

    @The Moar You Know:

    Issa was in the military, enlisted Army EOD technician. As Issa is an actual veteran I’m sure the concept of someone claiming a foot injury you got in a private school (calling your private school a military academy does not make it so, and wearing a uniform for said school does not make you military either) is disabling, and claiming you were a veteran based off private school is hugely insulting and galling.

    A non veteran claiming to be one because of prep school, and claiming disability from a foot injury is something that will cause all of us who were actually in the military to get really pissed off and band together. The politics of it will go out the window and everyone will band together in one big “fuck this asshole, someone close the door and someone else get a bat”.

  64. 64.

    retr2327

    @retr2327:
    Sorry for the misdirected reply; obviously, that was for Soonergrunt. And I really could be wrong: for all I know, they’re unrelated.

  65. 65.

    Elie

    I ripped this off from a commenter who said this on the day she was elected: “He (her opponent) got his ass kicked by a woman with no legs”!

    Yay, Tammy — !!

  67. 67.

    SqueakyRat

    @scav: I didn’t see the chairman except for a second, but for a horrible moment I thought it was Darrell Issa.

  70. 70.

    LAC

    @Tom Levenson: Oh please do. Full disclosure: I cannot take credit for it. I am huge fan of “The thick of it” – a brilliant british comedy from the great minds behind “VEEP” about the inner workings of the british government. Obsenities and insults galore. :)

  71. 71.

    Elie

    @Botsplainer:

    that whole thing is just becoming too pathetic for words. I wonder if he is having to empty out vending machines or if there is a cafeteria he is eating at. They say the press is handing around but haven’t seen him, making me think he may be a guest of the Russians, who would then be lying about his whereabouts and that they had nothing to do with him.

    For all of Ecuador’s bravado, what is really in it for them? Can’t say really get that and how does this really help Snowden, who despite their voiced support, is still there in Moscow — whaa, getting his laptops vaccumed?

    Meanwhile GG whines that he is being smeared… ha ha ha…

  72. 72.

    raven

    I have to laugh. My buddy around the corner is an 11b20 nam vet. Purple heart, CIB, cancer and I tease him “come on dawg, walk in the door of the VA with your record and you’ll get 50%”. You know what he says? “Fuck em if they can’t take a joke”.

  74. 74.

    Chat Noir

    @LAC: “Veep” is one of my fav shows. I love insult humor and Veep is top-shelf. Second season was excellent.

  75. 75.

    raven

    @Cassidy: He’s a fucking great guy, lost his wife a few years back and he does what he wants to. Dude is cool, calm and collected at all times and I just enjoy shootin the shit with him. He don’t need advice from no raggedy ass remf which is why I give it to him!

  76. 76.

    Ted & Hellen

    Another Uterus-Bearing Dem schools Obama, Reid, and the rest of the weak-ass Dems on how to bring it.

    Well done.

  77. 77.

    LanceThruster

    Tammy Duckworth is a hero to me for so many reasons. I am extremely grateful her constituents sent her to Congress for the benefit of us all.

  78. 78.

    Ted & Hellen

    OK…this throwdown was cathartic…but when are we going to see equivalent dressings down given to the freaks in the VA who rated this dude this way, and who doubtless do likewise with thousands of others?

    And I’m still waiting to see GWB and Dickless Cheney, who are responsible for every death and injury related to Iraq and Afghanistan, hauled before Congress and dressed down likewise before being led away in shackles for a ride in one of Villago’s tumbrels…

    Only the little fish get fried in America.

  79. 79.

    mike with a mic

    @catclub:

    If what’s true?

    Issa is ex military, enlisted grunt on the bomb squad at that. For all the fuckery he might pull in other areas the dudes a veteran.

    I doubt a congressman would beat the shit out of someone on the floor, but pretending to be military will earn you a thrashing in the wrong bar (and we can always tell). For congress though, I wouldn’t put it past the vets there to go out of their way to make this guys life miserable. Issa and Duckworth are too far apart ideologically to agree on much, but regardless they are both veterans and we’re a group that really hates imposters. I wouldn’t put it past them to make a fucking example out of this guy down the road.

  80. 80.

    FourTen

    That’s my rep from my district! I spend 100+ hours getting her elected in the bagger-strong NW Chicago burbs over Deadbeat Joe Walsh.

    You are welcome, America.

  84. 84.

    mai naem

    FYI, Castillo donated $2500.00 to the Romney campaign and there is a Greg Roseman from Delaware who donated $250.00 to the Chris Coons campaign in ’10.

  86. 86.

    FourTen

    @Betty Cracker: Bit of a drive, I’ll go to town on some local Gooper reps instead before taking back The President’s old Senate seat in ’16!!!

  90. 90.

    Ben

    Now I feel bad for working for her primary opponent…a good guy and Democrat, but there’s no way he could have done this work of beauty…

  91. 91.

    Jay

    @wmd: Because he knows what would happen if he didn’t say anything nice…he has to WORK with Tammy SMASH!…everyday.

  92. 92.

    Ruckus

    @mike with a mic:
    Place I worked hired a new president. He wrote a one page, first person editorial about being a medic in Vietnam. It was all fake. The vets who were members of the organization ripped him a new one. He lost his job of president of a several million dollar organization over it. Well that and the fact that he was a complete failure. But the stink from the editorial was a big part of us gaining his absence.
    This dufus? His bullshit was far worse. I’m sort of amazed that Ms Duckworth didn’t take a bat to his head. What she did was probably more effective long term, but I get the impression that she was thinking seeing Louisville Slugger imprinted in reverse on his head wouldn’t be a bad idea.

  93. 93.

    Ruckus

    @Ruckus:
    Someone here posted the Louisville Slugger imprinted in reverse on his head idea.
    Can’t remember who said it but I shamelessly stole it. It is, or should be a classic.

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