Evidently, this lunatic is nowhere near where the president will be conducting his town hall address, but he is legally allowed to carry the pistol in New Hampshire. Live Free or Die indeed. Also worth noting:

the gun-toting protester was holding a sign referencing the Jefferson quote: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Needless to say, if this were a liberal protester, he’d be in jail now. The hard right just keeps getting creepier.

“The mood is sort of festive,” says this MSNBC talking head. Evidently hand guns, just like pinatas and pony rides, can turn any dull event into a party.

The AP is reporting that extensive smoking regulations may soon be enforced in Iraq, where packs run as little as 50 cents. If passed, there would be no lighting up in “government buildings, schools, movie theaters, sports facilities and on public transportation. It also bans the sale of cigarettes to anyone under the age of 18.”
Come again? Freakin’ Wyoming can’t even pass a statewide ban on smoking in your enclosed workplace, and last I checked there was no threat of federal schism, Iranian manipulation, bombed out infrastructure, and/or murderous insurgency in its last throes or otherwise anywhere near Pappa Cheney’s huntin’ grounds. If al-Maliki and co. think they can enforce a law this Giuliani, Broken Windows-esque even in Iraq, perhaps it’s time for Barack, or at least Petraeus, to start printing up some “Mission Accomplished” banners of his own.
Next up on Wheel Of Priorities, pooper-scooper crackdown in Kabul.

This is why our health care system is an epic fail. via cbs5.com

In late April, Shelly Andrews-Buta was scheduled to undergo treatment for breast cancer that had spread to her brain, threatening her life…. But instead of having doctors working to remove her brain tumors on the day the surgery was scheduled, she sat in a San Francisco hotel room… Blue Shield, decided it wasn’t going to pay for the treatment her doctors at UCSF Medical Center had recommended.
Andrews-Buta was stunned. “I mean this is my life, this is my life, this isn’t, gee, if we don’t do it you’re just going to have a cut that doesn’t heal, this is you’re going to die,” she said.
Without treatment, her doctor told her she in fact would die: tumors had invaded 15 separate areas in her brain…. But the doctor said when it came to getting Blue Shield’s approval for the procedure; she was surprised to learn that the company’s policy lays out that a patient who has more than three brain tumors, what doctors call lesions, would not be covered for the gamma knife procedure.
Dr. Sneed felt the policy was unreasonable. “What I was up against was just a rule: ‘Well, if it’s more than three lesions, that’s too many,’” Sneed said.

Meanwhile, Congress continues to pander to the insurers.

As always, Taibbi nails it

Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with Max Baucus, Bill Nelson, or anyone else. If the Obama administration wanted to pass a real health care bill, they would do what George Bush and Tom DeLay did in the first six-odd years of this decade whenever they wanted to pass some nightmare piece of legislation (ie the Prescription Drug Bill or CAFTA): they would take the recalcitrant legislators blocking their path into a back room at the Capitol, and beat them with rubber hoses until they changed their minds.
The reason a real health-care bill is not going to get passed is simple: because nobody in Washington really wants it. There is insufficient political will to get it done. It doesn’t matter that it’s an urgent national calamity, that it is plainly obvious to anyone with an IQ over 8 that our system could not possibly be worse and needs to be fixed very soon, and that, moreover, the only people opposing a real reform bill are a pitifully small number of executives in the insurance industry who stand to lose the chance for a fifth summer house if this thing passes.
It won’t get done, because that’s not the way our government works. Our government doesn’t exist to protect voters from interests, it exists to protect interests from voters.

Go read it all.

It’s (almost) official: Al Franken is Minnesota’s newest senator, says the state’s Supreme Court. Sure, it’s possible that Norm Coleman may appeal and keep his now 238-day-old fight going. And, yeah, the Dems having 60 votes in the senate probably won’t be quite the magic cure-all some hope it will be. Still, for any of you (fine, us) hoping to reduce monthly health care bills by, I dunno, 100 percent at some point in the future, this is some damn fine news.
Here’s to you, Al. You’re good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, voters like you.

From NY Times

Obama’s inaction on gay civil rights is striking. So is his utterly uncharacteristic inarticulateness. The Justice Department brief defending DOMA has spoken louder for this president than any of his own words on the subject. Chrisler noted that he has given major speeches on race, on abortion and to the Muslim world. ‚”People are waiting for that passionate speech from him on equal rights,” she said, ‚”and the time is now.”
Action would be even better. It’s a press clich√© that ‚”gay supporters” are disappointed with Obama, but we should all be. Gay Americans aren’t just another political special interest group. They are Americans who are actively discriminated against by federal laws. If the president is to properly honor the memory of Stonewall, he should get up to speed on what happened there 40 years ago, when courageous kids who had nothing, not even a public acknowledgment of their existence, stood up to make history happen in the least likely of places.

British bank Barclays has put in a bid to rename Atlantic Avenue something much more proper than our Yankee rubbish:

If a $4 million deal is approved on Wednesday, the nexus of subway stops at Atlantic Avenue, Pacific Street and Flatbush Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn will add an additional name to its already lengthy title: Barclays.

But hey, what about naming things after great American corporations?

‚”It’s not like Taco Bell saying it wants Grand Army Plaza or something like that,” said John H. Banks III, a board member since 2004.
Would Mr. Banks oppose that idea?
‚”A year and a half ago? Yeah,” he said. ‚”Tomorrow? No.”

Looking forward to Taco Bell Muy Grande Army Plaza.
via NYTimes

via Brooklyn Vegan

Tired of giggling about South Carolina governor Mark Sanford’s dalliance in Buenos Aires but still hungry for more political slapstick? Well look no further than the Times’ latest attempt to ascertain what exactly our esteemed doucheba…er…state senators have been up to of late. In short, since one of the two Democrats who defected to the Republican side of the aisle returned to the fold, the two parties have been tied at 31 members each, both claiming leadership, forcing Governor Paterson to call a mandatory special sessions in order hold votes on gay marriage and, oh, every other issue needed to run New York. The parties “feuding junior high schoolers refusing to acknowledge each other, began holding separate legislative sessions at the same time,” complete with dueling gavels. Here are some zingers from what must be the funniest vaudeville act in Albany:
“Democrats gaveled the session to order at 3:02 p.m. After a few short speeches in which they said the governor’s proclamation for a so-called extraordinary session had constitutional and legal problems, they adjourned at 3:07 p.m. ‘Our members will be going home,’ said Malcolm A. Smith, one of the leaders of the Senate Democratic conference.”
“[State Supreme Court] Justice McNamara..continued to implore the sides to resolve their dispute on their own. ‘This has to be resolved by you, no matter what I do or don’t do on Friday,” he told the sides in court, adding: ‘I guess I’m talking like a human being, but I don’t understand what’s going on. You guys have to resolve this.’”
“Senator Dale M. Volker, 68, a Republican from the Buffalo area who is a former police officer, joked while he was riding up an elevator, ‘I might have to start carrying my sidearm again.’”
“‘This is turning into the worst reality TV show ever: ‘I’m a Senator, Get Me Out of Here,’ said Thomas R. Suozzi, Nassau County executive and former Democratic candidate for governor. ‘Jon and Kate are fighting less than these guys.’”

Photo of turncoat Pedro Espada Jr., now a Republican, care of Village Voice

This is just horrible:

partial transcript via

They tried to beat everyone on Saadi bridge and throwing them off of the bridge…. And everyone also on the sidewalks. They beat a woman so savagely that she was drenched in blood and her husband, who was watching the scene, he just fainted. I also saw people shooting, I mean the security forces shooting on people, on Lalezar. Of course were afraid….
They were beating people like hell. It was a massacre. They were trying to beat people so they would die. They were cursing — saying very bad words to everyone. They were beating old men. And this was exactly a massacre.