“Pelosi said that, ‘We don’t have the votes for passing the Senate bill’ and that should have just ended it. Any discussion of another scenario is juvenile. … We’re absolutely in full fake cheerleading mode. I think Nancy Pelosi has absolutely no moves left. I think she knows that now," Lawrence O'Donnell, the Democratic Senate Finance Committee staff director during the ’93-’94 health care debate, on February 1 this year.
Category: Awards
Moore Award Nominee, Ctd
A reader writes:
As a pro-choice woman who has read you for many years, I have found that I can respect your anti-abortion views as they are based on your beliefs and your conscience. In fact, it is because of your clear, reasoned voice on the topic that I have found any understanding for the sanctimonious nerve of the pro-life movement.
That said, I find your choice of Moore Award Nominee for Katha Pollitt's words to be deeply hypocritical. When the Catholic church was holding DC humanitarian efforts hostage over gay marriage you were incandescent with rage — not just because you believe that the right to marry is fundamental but because using it as a political tool to jeopardize care and aid to those in need offends you, as well it should.
Despite your pro-life stance, you must certainly understand that the right to have single and final say in what happens to one's body feels as basic and fundamental to a woman like myself as marriage feels to you. Holding HCR hostage over this issue appears just as offensive and disgusting to me as what happened in DC.
Had HCR not passed, millions would have suffered and people would have died, and that is not Moore-esque rhetoric nor exaggeration, but simply the frightening state of affairs that makes HCR necessary. That pro-life political forces were willing to let that status-quo continue if they didn't get their way is also simply now a footnote in an important moment in history. There was a compromise and it was at the cost of rights for pro-choice women like myself. If a similar compromise had to be made over gay marriage you'd be making the same point as Pollitt and I'd wager you'd use language just as passionate.
That you disagree with Pollitt's view of the situation, I can understand as an extension of your existing belief system. That you dismiss her anger which speaks for many women like myself over what had to be sacrificed for HCR, however, and liken it to Michael Moore buffoonery should be beneath you.
Calling abortion opponents "big evil babies" isn't buffoonery?
Hathos Alert
White rapper + Jesus + autotune + ground effects + senior citizens = actually not bad.
Malkin Award Nominee
"What House Minority Leader John A. Boehner has called the Battle of Capitol Hill is over. I expect that the Battle of the Electorate is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of a nonsocialist America. Upon it depends our own American way of life and the long continuity of our institutions and our history. The whole fury and might of the media and the Democratic party must very soon be trained on the electorate. If they can stand up to the coming propaganda, America may be free, and the life of the wider free world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands," – Tony Blankley, NRO.
(Hat tip: Chait) Yes, that last metaphor was a Churchill rip-off.
Malkin Award Nominee
“[Stupak] folded like a cardboard suit in the rain,” – John McCain. He also lavishes praise on Sarah Palin.
Yglesias Award Nominee
"If you're trying to figure out why J Street, the left-wing pro-Israel group, came into existence, just take a look at the schedule for this week's AIPAC conference, at the Washington Convention Center. The list of speakers, apart from the usual suspects (Bibi, Hillary, and the like) includes analysts and advocates from such organizations as the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, CAMERA, and so on — the full range of conservative-leaning think tanks…. Most American Jews voted for Obama; most American Jews are liberal; and most American Jews understand the difference between the legitimate security needs of the State of Israel and the theological, political and economic needs of the small minority of Israelis who have settled the West Bank.
So would it hurt [AIPAC] to bring in speakers from the Meretz Party, from the kibbutz movement, from the New Israel Fund, from the Reform Movement, so that the AIPAC attendees could hear for themselves the views of Zionists who disagree with the policies of Israel's right-wing parties? Yes, I suppose it would hurt. AIPAC is interested mainly in presenting an oversimplified vision of the Middle East to its members," – Jeffrey Goldberg.
Moore Award Nominee
"[T]he Catholic bishops, Bart Stupak, Ben Nelson … were the big evil babies who were willing to let millions suffer and 45,000 people die every year unless they got to deprive women of their reproductive rights," – Katha Pollitt.
Von Hoffman Award Nominees
"The health care bill, ObamaCare, is dead with not the slightest prospect of resurrection…. Democrats have talked up clever strategies to pass the bill in the Senate despite Brown, but they won’t fly…. ObamaCare went into the emergency room in Massachusetts and didn’t make it out alive." – Fred Barnes, Jan. 20, 2010. Yglesias pokes fun.
Malkin Award Nominee
"For most of the 20th century people fled the ghosts of communist dictators. And now you are bringing the ghosts back into this chamber," – Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), during last night's health care vote.
Malkin Award Nominee
"When there is an anti-Semitic president in the United States, it is a test for us and we have to say: We will not concede. We are a nation dating back 4,000 years, and you in a year or two will be long forgotten. Who will remember you? But Jerusalem will dwell on forever," - Benjamin Netanyahu's brother-in-law Dr. Hagai Ben-Artzi in an interview with Army Radio.
Army Radio? Not good. But it's only a matter of time, I have learned, between anyone actually criticizing the policies of Israel and being deemed a you-know-what.
The Dish 