Obama Defends Plan B Nonsense, Republicans Do Not Like This Whole 'Consumer Protection' Idea
NEW YORK—Virginia Tech was in everyone's thoughts yesterday after a gunman shot and killed a police officer before taking his own life in a nearby parking lot. Virginia Tech's Collegiate Times is "at a loss" over this "inexplicable shooting." Their special edition is online here (PDF).
President Obama formally endorsed HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius's calamitous ruling on the Plan B emergency contraceptive. "I will say this," he said , before saying that "as the father of two daughters: I think it is important for us to make sure that we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine." On the one hand we have to wonder if this means Tylenol will now require a doctor's note for everyone under seventeen with a headache. But on the other, you know, when every conservative in the country already derides you as the Daddy in Chief because of some actually very sensible public health initiatives (not eating Big Macs, say), it's probably not the best idea to make one of your biggest voting blocs (i.e. ladies) (and some gents!) feel kind of exactly the same way. Not hating, just saying, etc. (Nah, we're totally hating.)
So yes, Iran has our drone , and now they're proudly parading it all over state TV (well, wouldn't you?). Curiously, American officials, in a flurry of statements yesterday, first denied that it's our drone, then confirmed that it's our drone, then ultimately settled on the prudent choice to neither confirm nor deny that it's our drone. But regardless, it's probably our drone! Because as Robert Dreyfuss rather astutely laid out in The Nation yesterday, we're kind of basically already at war with Iran .
Republicans are finally reaching across the aisle on this middle class payroll tax cut business, reaching quite far across the aisle, in fact, halfway across the country and into the Nebraska water table by attaching a rider to the tax cut to speed up authorization of the Keystone XL pipeline. Thankfully, Obama yesterday pledged to veto that noise .
In a surprise to no one, really, Richard Cordray's nomination to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was blocked after Democrats failed to garner the necessary sixty votes it requires to accomplish anything in Congress.
Jon Corzine testified before Congress yesterday on the meltdown he oversaw at MF Global, and the US Congress learned something the British parliament was made aware of during Rupert Murdoch's testimony in July: CEOs aren't actually supposed know any of the gorey details about the company's they run. They just run them!
Recently ousted Medicare chief Don Berwick has hit the road to let everyone know how he really feels, and it's kind of great? On the subject of death panels he said "It is beyond cruelty to have subjected our elders, especially, to groundless fear in the pure service of political agendas," which, yes! But then he brought the high heat: "Maybe a real death panel is a group of people who tell health care insurers that is it OK to take insurance away from people because they are sick or are at risk for becoming sick." BOOM.
So not everyone on Rick Perry's staff was particularly pleased with that preposterous new gay-hatin' campaign ad of his. Good old Tony Fabrizio himself says it was "nuts." Now that people are calling for his head, Tony's defense is wait why should I have to go anywhere I objected to the ad! To which we say: the easiest way to not be forced into a disgraceful resignation is to just quit in the first place when the guy who writes your paycheck does something so profoundly disgusting.
Rick Santorum has officially outdone himself, or at least we think, because we're pretty sure that not one among this man's laundry list of horrendously stupid public statements can even come anywhere close to his remarks yesterday on the subject of the forty-eight million Americans on food stamps. "If hunger is a problem in America," he asked, "then why do we have an obesity problem among the people who we say have a hunger program?" Like, ok! That, that there, over and above everything else, THAT ought to be immediate disqualification for any form of public office. *SMDH* as they say.
Oh and lastly, today is the day the Euro has to fix itself before this scary man at UBS advises everyone to stock up on "small calibre firearms." Hooray capitalism!