Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Not all heroes wear capes.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

He really is that stupid.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

How stupid are these people?

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Be a wild strawberry.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

In my day, never was longer.

Fight them, without becoming them!

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

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Today Is Stupak Day

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No, don’t call Bart Stupak unless you live in upper Michigan. If you do, give him some positive feedback for taking baby steps in the right direction.

Phone your own Rep instead. We need to know who might have promised Stupak to help kill health care without his medieval amendment. Even if you’re busy, even if you have never phoned before, please take the time if your Rep is on the TPM list of Stupak’s most likely recruits:

Solomon Ortiz (D-TX) (202) 225-7742
Jerry Costello (D-IL) (202) 225-5661
James Oberstar (D-MN) (202) 225-6211
Steve Driehaus (D-OH) (202) 225-2216
Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) (202) 225-4146
Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) (202) 225-6511
Kathleen Dahlkemper (D-PA) (202) 225-5406
Joe Donnelly (D-IN) (202) 225-3915
Brad Ellsworth (D-IN) (202) 225-4636
Dan Lipinski (D-IL) (202) 225-5701
Charlie Wilson (D-OH) (202) 225-5705

Jason Altmire (D-PA) is also a critical target. (202) 225-2565

That doesn’t mean the rest of you should sit the day out. Ask every Congressperson where he or she stands on the current Senate bill. Encourage him or her to vote YES, and tell them that you also phoned your Senators to keep pressure up for reconciliation (also, do that). Tell Progressives like Raul Grijalva to stop playing John Boehner’s chump. We can improve health care if it gets passed today, or we can let Republicans win and their Congressional majority will find ways to make a bad system worse.

Regarding abortion, ask your Representative whether it bothers them that young women in their district can’t afford health care. Pregnancy complications go especially badly when a mother delays medical attention, like uninsured people do all the time. Does your Representative want those unborn deaths on his or her conscience? Let their staffers know you and your church group cannot wait to write local papers to make that point.

Congress will probably vote this week or next week at the latest. Whether your Rep supports reform or not, pick up the phone and give a shot of confidence.

Switchboard: (202) 224-3121.

Guide for first-timers here.

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Early Morning Open Thread: Cool Tech

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Great article on low-cost, high-value technology from the Boston Globe:

Some students go to MIT to plumb the mysteries of the atom, or of outer space, or to press the limits of computer science. Amos Winter went another way: He’s trying to revolutionize the wheelchair. Specifically, he wants to make that most familiar aid to the disabled work in the Third World, where roads are bad, money tight, and the need immense.
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A doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering, Winter calls his invention the Leveraged Freedom Chair – leveraged because it is powered by hand levers.
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Abdullah Munish has another name for it. “I call it my little angel machine,’’ he said.
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For years after he survived a car crash but lost the use of his legs, Munish struggled to move his wheelchair along the rutted, hilly roads of his hometown in Tanzania. Frustrated, he often just stayed indoors, and lost touch with friends and relatives.
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Now, with the help of Winter’s invention, he has reclaimed his freedom and sense of connection. He can push himself up the hill to a neighborhood playing field where he can once again toss a ball around with friends. He can scoot along the gravel paths of Moshi to visit people again. “We believers, we know that anything that changes your life in terms of mobility, that is something that comes from heaven,’’ said Munish. A 31-year-old wheelchair technician, he is one of six wheelchair users in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda who have been testing the prototype since August.
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The genius of Winter’s wheelchair lies in the design of the long ratchet-like levers that power it. Hold them low, near the axle, and it goes fast. Hold them higher up, and it generates a lot of torque, making it possible to climb slowly but surely over rocks and up hills. In effect, you change gears by changing your body geometry.
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That helps keep the wheelchair simple and inexpensive, and may make it affordable to some of the 20 million people who need wheelchairs in the developing world…

Click through the link, and there’s a short video and an interactive graphic along with the rest of the story — exactly the sort of value-added content that the internet was supposed to enable, but all too rarely does.

And, frankly, I suspect there are plenty of people here in The Greatest Country in the World whose lives would be improved by a Leveraged Freedom Chair.

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Open Thread:… And A Pony!

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Well, a horsie. Tonight’s pet rescue heartwarmer, from commentor Nicole:

This is Cosmo (he’s the one on his back). I had no intention of acquiring him, or any other horse. Horse ownership is for people with money, land, or both. I live in New York, haven’t owned a car in 20 years, and am decidedly middle-class. So, of course, when I turned 30, I decided what I wanted, more than anything else, was to learn to ride a horse. At the time, there was still a riding stable in Manhattan, and I spent every extra dollar I could earn on lessons. Then the stable closed and I bid a tearful farewell to the horses who had bitten me, stepped on me, thrown me, and otherwise made me google-eyed with adoration for the equine. That includes the one who broke my knuckle. But it never occurred to me to own one.

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A year later, I met Cosmo at a trail-riding stable in Queens. There’s no rhyme or reason to why you like one horse and not another (or why one horse likes you and another doesn’t), but I can point to two moments with Cosmo. On my 36th birthday, I took Cosmo out alone for a ride. I was depressed about this birthday, my career, my life, and I moped through the first half of the ride. And Cosmo, who hates not being in the company of another horse, moped along with me. The second half of the ride, he turned into a thousand-pound cannonball, determined to get home to his friends, ideally at a full gallop. So we fought the rest of the ride- I wanted to walk; he wanted to run. And not once did I mope about where my life was going, because I was terrified I was going to die. When we finally got back, both of us covered in sweat, everything I’d been depressed about seemed idiotically trivial and I had a lovely rest of my birthday. And made a pledge to never, ever, make Cosmo go out alone again.
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The second moment was on the sad day I showed up for a ride to find out this stable, too, was closing. My husband, who is not a rider, but will try his best because he knows I love it (if he were a horse, you’d call him “willing”), went along on a last ride, me on Cosmo, him on another horse. When we stopped for a break Cosmo sidled over and laid his head on my husband’s knee. My husband looked down, delighted at the spontaneous affection, and Cosmo then wiped his mouth on my husband’s jeans, leaving a trail of spit from thigh to ankle. You’ll never convince me horses don’t have a sense of humor.

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Rescue Dog Update

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The last time I mentioned rescuing a dog a couple of you mentioned that Dobermans make great family pets. That sounded kind of fishy to me, but I’m a data-and-logic guy rather than an anecdote guy (everyone thinks their pet is adorable and harmless) so I looked it up.

The publication Animal People maintains what many regard as the most comprehensive table of dog breeds and serious attacks out there. According to their chart Dobermans have taken part in many fewer serious attacks than comparable dogs like Boxers and German Shepherds and even Labs (!), although Doberman attacks are more likely to be fatal. Attack numbers for Rottweilers and Pit Bulls were off the charts. The CDC report here puts Dobermans closer to the middle of medium-sized dogs, although I couldn’t tell whether the CDC’s attacks numbers included working dogs doing their job (Animal People excluded those).

So far “safe dog” and “maybe kind of dangerous” are tied at one each. The situation called for a tie-breaker, so I applied the Randall Munroe Google technique. Here are the number of Google hits for the search string “killed by a X” (with quotes), where ‘X’ is a breed of dog. Note that Dachshund numbers are almost certainly understated because nobody knows how to f*cking spell Dachshund.

Pit Bull: >5,000,000
German Shepherd: >4,000,000 (apparently Shepherds hate cats and rabbits)
Rottweiler: >750,000
Boxer: 130,000
Poodle: 78,000
Labrador: 73,000
Doberman: 10 (two actual incidents)
Dachshund: 4
Airedale: 1 (a duck)

QED? Discuss.

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Jon Chait is Shrill

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More of this, please:

Jesus Christ, Mike Allen, Reconciliation Is NOT THAT COMPLICATED

When I read the op-ed, I figured it had to be totally redundant. What sentient being who’s following this closely could not understand it by now? I give you Politico’s Mike Allen, writing Saturday:

    When Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) made this confusing argument last week on “Face the Nation,” we weren’t sure he was being deliberately disingenuous. It was, in fact, spin. Now, he’s made the same case in a similarly obtuse WashPost op-ed, “Reconciliation is not an option for health-care reform.” Don’t misread it: It’s an Alice-in-Wonderland argument FOR the use of reconciliation as part of the recipe for getting comprehensive health reform to the president’s desk

Confusing? Obtuse? Does Conrad need to stop by Politico’s offices with a picture book and some finger puppets? I understand perfectly well how intelligent people who don’t follow this debate closely might not catch on to the distinction. But this is what Mike Allen does all day — and, as I understand it, much of the night and the wee hours of the morning as well. How can anybody still not understand this? I’m at a loss here. Look, there’s an endless list of topics I don’t understand at all. I went through an entire semester of pre-Calculus in high school and was never able to understand what a function is. I still don’t. It’s a complicated subject and I was a lazy student. But this reconciliation distinction is easy, and Mike Allen is (legendarily) not lazy. So, what the hell is going on here?

Mike Allen, dishonest right-wing hack, or complete moron?

I vote both. And how much better would our media be if everytime someone was as bad as Allen, someone like Chait would call them on it?

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