Lakers can't play worth a Jack

(Not in Houston, anyway...)

"Douchie" entries: Liz Cheney, Bill O'Reilly, Joe Barton again

Dick's little girl goes to bat for Dad:

Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz told Fox that she believes the Obama administration is only "interested in releasing things that really paint America in a negative light." In Cheney's view, the White House has decided "to side with the terrorists" by putting "information out that hurts American soldiers." Cheney also questioned whether the President really cares about American troops.

The apple fell right next to the tree. You stay classy, little lady.

It almost doesn't seem fair to include Billo the Clown in "Douchebag" competition since he is so overpowering on a daily basis. "Douchies" really ought to be for the occasional ignominious outburst by someone who generally knows precisely what they are prevaricating. But since he invoked Nazis (and thus Godwin's Law) he gets an honorable mention.

Here we link Keith Olbermann with the blow-by-blow smackdown of O'Reilly:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

There is a transcript here.

And finally, inaugural week runner-up Smokey Joe Barton gets in on the "Douchebag"action again this week, with his conflation that CO2 exhaled by people is the same thing as CO2 emitted by chemical plants (via Think Progress):

Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), known as “Smokey Joe” for his efforts on behalf of big polluters, is one of Congress’s most aggressive deniers of man-made climate change. For instance, in March, he said that the climate is changing “for natural variation reasons” and that to deal with it, humans should just “get shade.”

In a new interview with Newsmax, Barton continued his nonsensical approach to the issue, claiming that the Obama administration’s efforts to regulate carbon dioxide would potentially “close down the New York and Boston marathons“:

Barton says the average healthy adult exhales between four-tenths of a ton and seven-tenths of a ton of CO2 a year.

“So if you put 20,000 marathoners into a confined area, you could consider that a single source of pollution, and you could regulate it,” Barton says. “The key would be whether the EPA said that 20,000 people running the same route was one source or not.”

One indication that the EPA likely would consider 20,000 runners a single source of pollution is that the agency is trying to regulate waste-water runoff and emissions of drilling rigs in oil fields by attempting to define entire areas as a single source of pollution, Barton says.

A common conservative attack against addressing greenhouse gas emissions is to say that there are natural sources of CO2, so if we regulate industry we would have to regulate those sources as well. But this is straw man argument. As the the EPA notes, it is industrial sources of CO2, not natural sources, that “have increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere“:

Natural sources of CO2 occur within the carbon cycle where billions of tons of atmospheric CO2 are removed from the atmosphere by oceans and growing plants, also known as ‘sinks,’ and are emitted back into the atmosphere annually through natural processes also known as ‘sources.’ When in balance, the total carbon dioxide emissions and removals from the entire carbon cycle are roughly equal.

Since the Industrial Revolution in the 1700’s, human activities, such as the burning of oil, coal and gas, and deforestation, have increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. In 2005, global atmospheric concentrations of CO2 were 35% higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution.

In the interview, Barton mocked the EPA’s recent declaration that carbon dioxide was a pollutant that endangers public health and welfare. “There’s never been anybody who’s been treated in an emergency room for CO2 poisoning. It doesn’t cause asthma; it doesn’t cause your eyes to water; it doesn’t cause cancer.”

Of course, the EPA declared CO2 a threat to public health because of the catastrophic consequences of climate change, not because it is a carcinogen.

Who's your favorite Douchebag so far this week? Remember: no votes for Liz Cheney's pop; we want him to keep running his mouth.

Quackery in Obama's health care proposal

President Obama on Monday praised health care industry groups for coming together to try and cut $2 trillion in expenses over the next decade to slow the rising cost of medical care.

At a White House news conference flanked by industry officials, Obama called the meeting of officials "who often fought with each other" a "historic day, a watershed event in the long quest for health care reform."

Bullshit. $2 trillion can be "saved" in healthcare costs? What is being lost? Healthcare profits? Research?

"If these savings are truly achieved, this may be the most significant development on the path to health care reform," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, which advocates for expanded health care coverage. "It would cut health costs for families and businesses, and it would enable adequate subsidies to be offered so that everyone has access to quality affordable health care."

Six medical trade groups, including the American Medical Association and America's Health Insurance Plans, which represents health insurance companies, have agreed to the cost-cutting. Health care costs would continue to rise, just not as quickly.

That last sentence still isn't a satisfactory explanation. Jeffrey Young at The Atlantic shares my skepticism:

Organizations representing the biggest players in the health care market promised President Obama on Monday that they'd find ways to cut national health spending by an astonishing $2 trillion over the next 10 years. Later that day, executives from these industries told the press that their companies' bottom lines would not suffer as a result. Whatever happened to Alfred E. Neuman's Cosmic Health Care Equation?

Among other things, this seems to be the latest example of health care industry lobbyists and executives trying to reassure investors that the sweeping reform plan being assembled by the Obama administration and the Democratically controlled Congress isn't going to put them out of business.

I'm still a great deal less concerned about the impact of this on the companies' stock prices, but that's just me.

At a press briefing in Washington Monday, health care executives were asked to explain how, for example, physicians and hospitals could maintain their incomes if spending were $2 trillion less over 10 years.

"I do believe that these savings can be achieved without detrimental impact on all of the groups that you described," Thomas Priselac, the president and CEO of Cedars-Sinai Health System said. "It will be important as we go through this reform that the payments that are provided be adequate for people to do what it is we're talking about in a new and different system."

Here's what Jay Gellert, President and CEO of the insurance company Health Net said: "I think we believe that we can do it without undermining the viability" private health care companies, he said. "The unique opportunity that we have now is to provide care to 40 or 50 million people if we successfully do this."

"I think that overall, that the efficiencies we'll bring will more than make up for the cuts, for the savings that we gain," Gellert said.

There's that smell of feces again. Besides the two corporate titans listed above, the assembled participants included PhRMA President (and former Congressman) Billy Tauzin, the heads of Merck, Kaiser, and the AMA, and SEIU chief Andy Stern.

I'm almost as disappointed in Stern helping peddle this crock as I am Obama.

Gene Green: still scared of progressives

Every time I start to like ol' Gene, he screws it up:

Representatives from a number of Houston organizations held a press conference and rally near Congressman Gene Green's east Houston office, after being prevented from doing so on the property where his office is located.

The group at the press conference today included religious, community, educational, and labor leaders, teachers and students, environmentalists, scientists, health professionals, and small business owners. ...

Following the event, one of the attendees tried to deliver a letter to Rep. Green's office stating her concerns, but was prevented from even going up to the office by the building security guard.

The group had tried to meet with Green or his chief of staff on March 2, when Green was in town, but he told the group something had come up and he had to leave town the morning of the meeting, and a substitute meeting with his chief of staff was canceled because that person was not available either.

Before the press conference yesterday, Bill Crosier and Ron Hayden went up to Green's office on the 4th floor at 11811 East Freeway to let his staff know they were here and invite them to attend, but found the door locked. Rep. Green had been previously invited to join the group at the press conference. A note on the door said the office was closed today because the staff was at a senior activity.

Crosier and Hayden were met by a security guard who asked if they were there for the "protest". They replied they were there for a press conference, not a protest, and hoped representatives of Rep. Green's office would be in attendance because his constituents wanted him to know how they felt about impending climate change legislation. They asked if the press conference could be held in the atrium of the building and were told no. They then asked if it could be held outside the building on the east or west sides, and were told no. The guard said the building management had been contacted by Green's office and the management said they could not hold the press conference anywhere on the property, not even on the parking lot.

Once outside, the guard and Officer Joseph C. Cram, with the Criminal Intelligence Division of the Houston Police Department, both told the group that they could not hold the press conference or any event anywhere on the property. Other police also arrived, apparently concerned about the event as well.

The group then moved to the parking lot of an adjacent property.

Good ol' boy Gene is on the House Energy and Commerce committee (chaired by Henry Waxman of California). The committee is holding hearings regarding climate change legislation under consideration by Congress.

So you would think ol' Gene might be interested in some input from some of his constituents. Well, he is, it's just that he thinks his only constituents are five refineries and "more chemical plants than (he) can count":

"I’d like to vote for a bill,” Green said. “But I’m not going to vote for one unless I think it’s going to be good for the area I represent.”...

Green has told congressional leaders and President Barack Obama that some carbon dioxide emission allowances will have to be given for free to refiners in order to win his support.

Green has become the main lawmaker pushing for free allowances for refiners, as one of just four Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee representing states with big refining operations. The others are Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-La., Charlie Gonzalez, D-Texas, and Jim Matheson, D-Utah.

Maybe we should let ol' Gene know that there are some concerned citizens who have to breathe the air that comes out of his district.

Ol' Gene is just one of those old-timers who's a little bit scared of "libruls". It's a mild, moderate case of fear and loathing, the kind you see more often in acute and chronic conservatism.

Maybe a dose of contested primary could cure that.