HP Must Stand for Hair Pundit

From Ruth Marcus at Post Partisan at The Washington Post:

What is this, middle school? I was all set to sit down and write about women in politics, and applaud Tuesday’s results, when off pops the new Republican nominee for senator from California, Carly Fiorina, with a comment that takes you back to the cattiness of the school cafeteria.

Fiorina, all miked up but not yet ready to be on the air — and, I think it’s fair to suggest, perhaps not ready for prime time — described an aide who saw her opponent, Sen. Barbara Boxer, on television “and said what everyone says: ‘God, what is that hair? Sooo yesterday.'”

Original DVD cover

Not-So-Super Tuesday for Some People

From THE HILL:

It was a bittersweet night for Democrats as they won a House special election but saw one senator fall and another incumbent go to a runoff.

Meanwhile Republicans saw their favored Senate candidate lose in Kentucky to a darling of the Tea Party movement.

Most of all, Tuesday’s primaries were another sign of the anti-incumbent mood that has swept the nation and has lawmakers worried about their futures.

Bittersweet? Seriously?

Original DVD cover

The Wizards of Oil

From The Washington Post:

Three major oil industry executives agreed on one thing in a pair of Senate hearings Tuesday: Someone else was to blame for the drilling rig accident that triggered the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The senior executives from the oil behemoth BP, the offshore oil drilling company Transocean and the oilfield services contractor Halliburton pointed fingers at each other in seeking to explain what caused the accident that set afire and sank the Deepwater Horizon rig, killing 11 people.

…snip…

BP blamed the failure of Transocean’s blowout preventer and raised a new question about whether Transocean disregarded “anomalous pressure test readings” just hours before the explosion. Transocean blamed decisions made by BP and cited possible flaws in the cementing job done by Halliburton. And Halliburton said that it had faithfully followed BP’s instructions and that Transocean had started replacing a heavy drilling mud with seawater before the well was sealed with a cement plug.

To the tune of If I Only Had a Brain, written by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg, as performed by the fabulous Ray Bolger:

Lamar McKay:

I sit here, oh so coyly, don’t know why the gulf’s so oily,
But I’m here to proclaim,
That I couldn’t say for certain,
But I think that Halliburton,
Is the company to blame.

The Crock in Little Rock

Oh, kids, things are getting ugly in Arkansas. It seems that Blanche Lincoln is making up stories about her primary opponent, Bill Halter. She is intimating that he has a prescription drug problem, and that’s simply not true. Blanchipoo shouldn’t be making that kinda stuff up, especially when you see what’s she’s like when she’s not working!  Just look at the pictures given to me by my trusted anonymous source:

Original image

Batshit Bachmann Has a Farm, E-I-E-I-Uh-Oh!

From Yasha Levine at truthdig:

Michele Bachmann has become well known for her anti-government tea-bagger antics, protesting health care reform and every other government “handout” as socialism. What her followers probably don’t know is that Rep. Bachmann is, to use that anti-government slur, something of a welfare queen. That’s right, the anti-government insurrectionist has taken more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts thanks to corrupt farming subsidies she has been collecting for at least a decade.

And she’s not the only one who has been padding her bank account with taxpayer money.

Original DVD cover

Rethugs, I hope this gives you some cloture…I mean, closure

From POLITICS DAILY:

With no votes to spare, Democratic senators moved health care reform past its first major hurdle Saturday night, with a party-line, 60-to-39 vote to begin consideration of the 2,000-plus page bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid unveiled this week.

…snip…

The bill that senators will begin debating after Thanksgiving combines proposals passed by the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Committee Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP), and is designed to make health insurance more accessible and affordable. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would expand coverage to 94 percent of Americans at a cost of $848 billion over the next 10 years.

Original movie poster
(Shnooks and ninnies, from the top:  Chinless Mitch McConnell, Kit So-Not-James Bond, Orrin Down-The Hatch, Richard Who? Burr, Mean Mike Enzi,  Chuck Yer-Ass-Is Grassley, Captain Underpants, Limpy Snowe, Diaper David Vitter)

The Baucus Caucus

From The Washington Post:

Two amendments considered, and defeated, Tuesday by the Senate Finance Committee both aimed to get to the same place — creating a government-sponsored alternative to private insurance — but by different routes.

The first, sponsored by Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), proposed a program that would piggyback on Medicare for the first two years as it got underway.

Original DVD cover

(Clockwise from left corner:  Blanche Walmart Lincoln, Kent Co-op Conrad, Max Blue Cross Baucus, Tom Carping Carper, and Bill Lost In Space Nelson)

Banking to the Right

From the Los Angeles Times:

The financial services industry is in trouble over its role in crashing the world economy, but that doesn’t mean its lobbyists have lost all their muscle on Capitol Hill.

Exhibit A: The Senate delivered a stinging rebuff to President Obama and consumer advocates Thursday by rejecting a measure to help homeowners facing foreclosure.

The vote was 51 to 45, with 12 Democrats joining Republicans in opposing the proposal, under which bankruptcy judges could order lenders to reduce the principal on home mortgages.

The proposal, which sailed through the House in March, was a key part of Obama’s plan to reduce the tide of home foreclosures.

Damn! Even Evan Bayh voted yes! Not so these twelve, who…

Original DVD cover.