Somewhere, Beavis and Butthead are Laughing

Loyal reader ST sends along this story with the spectacular headline: The North Face Sues The South Butt for Trademark Infringement. Here's the sordid tale...

The North Face Apparel Co. has filed a trademark infringement suit against a teen who started a company called The South Butt to help pay for college.

The North Face’s tag line is “Never Stop Exploring'' while The South Butt sells products with the tag line “Never Stop Relaxing,” according to the Associated Press. The South Butt’s founder, Jimmy Winkelmann, has said the fleece jackets and other clothing sold by his company are intended to mock people who wear brand-name clothing sold by outfitters like The North Face, the Missourian reports.

In The South Butt's online disclaimer, the company distances itself from The North Face, concluding: "If you are unable to discern the difference between a face and a butt, we encourage you to buy North Face products."

You know the headline writer enjoyed coming up with that line. I don't know whether I should be upset or happy that the South Butt didn't use North Face's actual tagline -- it would be far funnier but also a tad disturbing. I won't comment on the merits of the lawsuit, but I think the appropriate venue has to be Butte, Montana.

Warning: This Video Contains Language Unsuitable for a Parlimentary Body

I'm picturing John McCain saying this to Harry Reid next week (watch the language)...



(hat tip: Megan McArdle) What kills me is the line opens with the words, "With all due respect..." If you're going to say f--- you, it's really hard to say it with all due respect. Or any respect.

Roll This

I think football's important. I'm not convinced it's important enough that a lawyer should get to file a motion asking to postpone a trial so he can see Alabama play in the BCS Championship Game. If you don't anticipate your team making the title game, that's your damn fault. If it's within your control, you should list important sporting events in your calendar, on the off-chance that you schedule something that might conflict with your attendance at a big game. This is one reason why my wedding was scheduled for late July (which is a veiled way of getting around to the fact that one of my closest friends has somehow scheduled his destination wedding for the same weekend as Super Bowl Sunday -- I'd say something unkind about what I might do should the Eagles make the Super Bowl, but he's one of the five people who occassionally read this blog... besides, the phrase "Eagles make the Super Bowl" probably got most people laughing).

Anyway, if I'm the judge, I'd deny the motion. I'm just guessing, but these guys will likely reach a settlement so fast it will make their heads spin.

The Health Care Follies Continue

I think the idea of civil war in the Democratic Party is as overblown as the talk of civil war among the GOP earlier this year, but it's still entertaining to consider the thought. Plus Howard Kurtz turns a nice opening image into a pretty substantive commentary, before providing some links that are worth exploring...

That splashing sound you hear is liberals jumping off the health care ship.

For all the talk of a Republican civil war earlier this year, it is remarkable to watch the left wing of the Democratic Party splitting off and vowing to defeat the measure that has been President Obama's top priority.

Finger-pointing is common when legislation is teetering on the brink, but the level of vitriol that has erupted in the past couple of days is nothing short of stunning.

Some liberals are angry at Howard Dean for suddenly leading the charge against the Senate bill. Others are furious at Joe Lieberman for forcing his former party to drop the remnants of a public option and Medicare buy-in. Still others are blaming Obama for letting this thing turn into an increasingly unpopular morass.

It's not that the criticism is unfair. Dean has never been much of a team player. Lieberman keeps wavering to maximize his leverage. Obama let Congress write the bills without much pushback. The Democrats have a big majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate -- sort of -- and they still can't seem to get this done.

Harry Reid has drawn his share of criticism, but could LBJ or any other majority leader have cobbled together an acceptable compromise? When he adds something that liberals like -- the 27th iteration of a public option -- he loses moderate senators whose votes he needs to choke off a filibuster. When he makes concessions to the moderate side, the liberals get angry. Then there are the thorny side issues such as drug reimportation and abortion funding. The bill (which still must be reconciled with the House version, if the Senate gets that far) now has something for everyone to hate.

...Is it still worth passing? The president certainly didn't campaign for a public option. But to add, say, 30 million Americans to the health insurance system through a mandate -- a laudable goal, on the surface -- could really lead to soaring costs without a strong mechanism to keep prices under control. And that seems to be lacking, especially given Congress' record on calling for cuts in programs like Medicare but flinching when it's time to carry them out.

Joe Biden said on "Morning Joe" this week that health care reform would be dead for a long, long time unless this bill passes soon. And he's right. The Obama White House and the Congress made a mighty, yearlong effort in the face of near-unified GOP opposition. They're not likely to try again.

So the question for the Democrats is whether it's better to pass a flawed bill and claim victory -- even though most of the good stuff doesn't kick in for years -- or appear to be a totally dysfunctional party by failing to pass anything at all.

Strangely, I sympathize a lot with the progressive left. A lot of the best dreams of the right did not materialize during W.'s eight years, for various reasons. He compromised on school choice, for example, to get No Child Left Behind. He blew social security reform. But Obama's failures on health care are a glaring failure in a different way -- he refused to put up his political goodwill in the fight, and left the heavy lifting to Congress, which had competing priorities. The moderate Democrats in the center wanted one thing, while the liberal progressives on the left wanted something else. The President made it sound like he wanted everything, but never fully laid out where he would take a stand. This meant that people in his own party -- people who would like his Presidency to succeed -- didn't have a guiding principle to follow in the process. The question is why. Glenn Greenwald, of all people, does a great job laying the blame at the White House's feet, but seems to think this is all part of the White House strategy...

Of all the posts I wrote this year, the one that produced the most vociferous email backlash -- easily -- was this one from August, which examined substantial evidence showing that, contrary to Obama's occasional public statements in support of a public option, the White House clearly intended from the start that the final health care reform bill would contain no such provision and was actively and privately participating in efforts to shape a final bill without it. From the start, assuaging the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries was a central preoccupation of the White House -- hence the deal negotiated in strict secrecy with Pharma to ban bulk price negotiations and drug reimportation, a blatant violation of both Obama's campaign positions on those issues and his promise to conduct all negotiations out in the open (on C-SPAN). Indeed, Democrats led the way yesterday in killing drug re-importation, which they endlessly claimed to support back when they couldn't pass it. The administration wants not only to prevent industry money from funding an anti-health-care-reform campaign, but also wants to ensure that the Democratic Party -- rather than the GOP -- will continue to be the prime recipient of industry largesse.
As was painfully predictable all along, the final bill will not have any form of public option, nor will it include the wildly popular expansion of Medicare coverage. Obama supporters are eager to depict the White House as nothing more than a helpless victim in all of this -- the President so deeply wanted a more progressive bill but was sadly thwarted in his noble efforts by those inhumane, corrupt Congressional "centrists." Right. The evidence was overwhelming from the start that the White House was not only indifferent, but opposed, to the provisions most important to progressives. The administration is getting the bill which they, more or less, wanted from the start -- the one that is a huge boon to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry. And kudos to Russ Feingold for saying so:

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), among the most vocal supporters of the public option, said it would be unfair to blame Lieberman for its apparent demise. Feingold said that responsibility ultimately rests with President Barack Obama and he could have insisted on a higher standard for the legislation.
"This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place, so I don’t think focusing it on Lieberman really hits the truth," said Feingold. "I think they could have been higher. I certainly think a stronger bill would have been better in every respect."

Let's repeat that: "This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place." Indeed it does. There are rational, practical reasons why that might be so. If you're interested in preserving and expanding political power, then, all other things being equal, it's better to have the pharmaceutical and health insurance industry on your side than opposed to you. Or perhaps they calculated from the start that this was the best bill they could get. The wisdom of that rationale can be debated, but depicting Obama as the impotent progressive victim here of recalcitrant, corrupt centrists is really too much to bear.

Of course, this imagines that the President's allegedly brilliant maneuvering (although Greenwald seems to think the maneuvering has been a load of hooey as well) will produce a bill that passes, and that's in question. What's not in question is that the process of putting together the bill, in the face of mounting public opposition and an economic crisis, has put a severe dent in the Democrats' chances of maintaining control of the House and keeping a filibuster-proof Senate majority. I know I'm hoping for the failure of this bill, but both sides are now fully invested in getting Ben Nelson on their side in Nebraska. He seems to be the final vote that Harry Reid needs, but let's not forget Jim Webb as well. If Webb suddenly throws a wrench in the process, the Dems could be in for a depressing holiday break. I think Webb will actually vote for cloture and then against the bill, but I could be wrong.

There's a tight schedule by which Reid might get the bill approved before Christmas. Of course, now Mother Nature may screw with the schedule as well. And if this thing doesn't get passed before the New Year... well, it gets more unpopular by the minute. By President's Day, health care reform might be less popular than swine flu.

It's Only Real If You're On TV

There's a reason Jonah Goldberg is one of my favorite writers...

Culturally, this has been the decade of the reality show. And what do we have to show for it? Not much more than the contestants themselves.

Survey the wreckage. Richard Hatch, the first Survivor champion, was just released from prison (he didn’t pay taxes on his winnings). The marriage of the Octoparents, Jon and Kate, is a shambles. Richard and Mayumi Heene were so desperate to land a reality series, they concocted an enormous hoax, convincing the country their child had been carried away in a balloon. Michaele and Tareq Salahi tried to claw their way onto the sure-to-be-hideous series Real Housewives of D.C. by brazening their way into a state dinner. And alleged wife-killer Ryan Jenkins, a contestant on two VH1 shows, is a stark reminder that fame is not a reflection of good character.

Which brings us to Jersey Shore. The show, which just started airing on MTV, follows a gaggle of barely literate bridge-and-tunnel steakheads and slatterns as they spend their summer at “the greatest meat market in the world.” One of the absurdly tanned gibbons goes by the moniker “the Situation” because it gives him the excuse to ask women, “Do you love the Situation?” as he lifts his shirt to show off his washboard abs. Even if they all put their heads together, it’s doubtful they could beat a carnival chicken at Tic-Tac-Toe.

You want to know the greatest thing about America? We're the only society that can survive having idiots like this as guiding lights of popular culture. Mind you, I'm not saying we will survive, but the mere fact that we might says a lot. Meanwhile, I'm sure folks in New Jersey are proud to have the stereotypes of Jerseyites reinforced.

As to Goldberg's greater point, I hate reality TV, even as I watch some of it, mostly because I am married and my wife likes some of these shows. Goldberg is spot-on regarding the fact that this is compelling TV, but no one stops to ask whether it's a good idea, including the fame-starved contestants.

V for Villanova...

The alma mater plays for a national title tomorrow night in FCS football (Division 1-AA for those who recall when the NCAA didn't come up with dumb acronyms to help cover for the lack of a legit playoff in the highest level of D-1). Cool story about Coach Andy Talley at philly.com today, which provides some real context to the fact that Talley is Villanova football, and he's done it the right way for a quarter-century, winning games while never compromising the integrity of his program and avoiding frustration despite working for a basketball school. Here's hoping they take down Montana tomorrow night and bring a title to a private school for just the third time (cool stat!). Go Cats!

Now, if someone can explain why the title game's being played in Chattanooga, it would keep me from putting up an Irrelevant Unsolved Mystery of the Day post later...

A Blast From The Past

Ta-Nehisi Coates was talking about John Madden this morning, and put up a link to an old NFL Today. I was watching it just to hear Brent Musberger say "You are looking live...", but then it broke into the story of how the Eagles almost left Philly when I was ten years old. To say that this would have killed a significant number of people in Philly is an understatement.



It's surreal watching Jimmy the Greek Snyder again as well. We definitely didn't hear the end of Phoenix as a landing site for an NFL team. And at the end of the day, this was definitely near the beginning of the obscene giveaways cities have made to sports teams.

But it's worth remembering for Philly fans that 25 years ago this week, we almost lost the Birds. For Eagles fans, as much as we complain about not having a title in forever, it's especially worth remembering that we almost lost them.

The Health Care Follies Continue

I don't know if the health care reform bills are going to die on the operating table or not. But Dr. Howard Dean, of all people, wants to administer euthanisia, in this editorial at the Washington Post...

If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers' monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.

Listen to that man -- he's a doctor! Ruth Marcus, who blogs for the same paper where Dean's editorial appeared, wants to know if Dean has lost his mind. Lady, did you watch his scream speech in 2004?



Seriously, all joking aside, I have no idea if this is the first person putting a nail in the coffin of Obamacare, or if it's just one irrelevant angry old guy complaining about the damn kids on his lawn. I don't think much of Howard Dean, but folks on the left almost nominated him to be the Democratic Presidential nominee, before deciding that John Kerry was the more intelligent choice (when viewed in hindsight, they clearly should have gone with Dean -- we would have gotten far more entertainment). Robert Gibbs also whacked Dean today, although I'm not sure if Ben Smith's spin that this shows Obama's independence from the liberal Dem establishment will actually work since (a) it's beyond stupid to claim he didn't have the support of labor, when SEIU endorsed him over Clinton, (b) the liberal Dems in the blogosphere spent most of 2008 writing about Obama like he's God, and (c) Obama's absence from the debate until now is equally likely to help push the theme that he likes to vote present and never makes a decision until push comes to shove.

Getting to the point, however... there's two important graphs regarding health care reform that should be considered. The first one is this one...



The longer it takes the Democrats to pass a bill, the longer that graph stays out there. As Jim Geraghty notes, it's hard to believe that huge government bureacracies will provide for lower costs...

I wonder how many senators could continue to claim the plan will work smoothly under the influence of, say, sodium pentathol. For starters, the aim of the legislation is to bring more patients into a system that already lacks enough general practitioners.

A poll of doctors by Investors Business Daily suggested that 45 percent of doctors would consider quitting if the bill passed. Let's presume that's an exaggeration by a factor of four. That would still mean that 11 percent of the nation's doctors would hang up their stethoscopes.

The plan is to cut costs by eliminating "unnecessary" tests, but the recent reaction to the recommendations about mammograms suggests that the public is wary about sudden redefinitions of what constitutes "unnecessary."

The plan is to cut waste, fraud, and abuse . . . of course, you don't need thousands of pages of legislation to do that, and we've been hearing that promise for as long as we can remember.

Perhaps you do need thousands of pages of legislation to cut costs and fraud, but no one's explained why it's necessary, and how it would. People fear that cost savings coming from a government program are as fictional as Santa Claus. You can explain that technology will let you cut some costs, but do people really believe making health care more accessible will make it less costly (particularly when tort reofrm seems to be ignored as part of the package)?

The other graph is this one...



That graph is why no deficit hawk can support this administration right now. Now, again, President Obama has tried to sell the plan as one that would cut costs. He did last night with Charlie Gibson, making this statement...

And last point I'll make on this: If we don't pass it, here's the guarantee, that the people who are watching tonight, your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you. Potentially they're going to drop your coverage, because they just can't afford an increase of 25 percent, 30 percent in terms of the costs of providing health care to employees each and every year. And the federal government will go bankrupt, because Medicare and Medicaid are on a trajectory that are unsustainable, and this actually provides us the best chance of starting to bend the cost curve on the government expenditures in Medicare and Medicaid.

So anybody who says that they are concerned about the deficit, concerned about debt, concerned about loading up taxes on future generations, you have to be supportive of this health care bill, because if we don't do this, nobody argues with the fact that health care costs are going to consume the entire federal budget.

Now, it might be easier to believe the President if he hadn't blasted the deficit with a $787 billion stimulus bill. But you can't sell this to deficit hawks when you have no credibility, and you can't sell the plan as one that won't change anything for people who have health insurance (especially seniors) when they hear you saying that we have to cut costs in the current system. You have to choose to be honest with people -- either say it may cost more, but it's worth it, or say that we need to reform the system because the costs related to it are far too great. Saying both makes you look duplicitous. Probably because you're being duplicitous.

If I had to place a bet, I'd still say the bill will probably pass. But it won't be good for Democrats, and it won't be good for the country.

Bringing Us All Together

Well, at least the health care plan is more popular than this...

Last May, Gallup asked poll respondents, "Do you think the Unites States should -- or should not -- close [Guantanamo] and move some of the prisoners to U.S. prisons?" At the time, 65 percent of respondents opposed the plan to close Guantanamo, while 32 percent supported it.

Fast forward seven months. The Obama administration has decided to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York and has just announced it will bring other Guantanamo inmates to a souped-up prison in Illinois. So Gallup has taken another poll. And the results are…virtually the same as in May.

In the new survey, 64 percent say they oppose bringing Guantanamo inmates here, while 30 percent support it.

The president doesn't even have a majority of his own party on his side. In the new poll, 50 percent of Democrats support bringing Guantanamo prisoners to the U.S., while just 28 percent of independents and eight percent of Republicans do.

Opposition to Obama's policy is spread evenly across the country. Gallup found that 65 percent of people in the East, 60 percent of people in the Midwest, 67 percent of people in the South, and 64 percent of people in the West oppose bringing the prisoners to the United States.

The President is bringing everyone together and unifying the country on this point. Granted, it's against him, but maybe it's all part of a secret plot on his part, and he'll switch sides at the last minute in a shocking turn against his own party base.

After all, Obama is now taping messages for the WWE. And you know, Hope and Change would be a pretty good 1980's tag team name.

Extreme Takeover

Just remember, those Tea Party folks are extremists...

Just how angry is the public with the country's two leading political parties? Angry enough that the conservative, libertarian-leaning Tea Party movement is more popular than either the Democratic or the Republican parties, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

The Republican Party maintains its net-negative favorable/unfavorable rating in the poll, with 28 percent viewing it positively and 43 percent seeing it in a negative light.

For the first time in more than two years, the Democratic Party also now holds a net-negative fav/unfav, at 35-45 percent.

By comparison, the NBC/WSJ poll shows the Tea Party movement with a net-positive 41-23 percent score.

(hat tip: Instapundit) To be fair, it's easy to be popular when you don't have responsibility for anything. But other protest movements haven't been this popular, so far as I can tell. The GOP and the Democrats have a serious problem on their hands.

I'm joking about the extremist tag -- except that the Law and Order franchise shows applied the tag to tea party activists this summer and again last week. Of course, someone would actually need to watch Law and Order to realize this, and we thank the folks who suffered through it to let us know.

If Law and Order is right, extremists seem to be taking over our politics. Why do I think this wasn't exactly the hope and change the President promised?

What Annoying Song is Stuck in My Head Today?

If I need to suffer with a song stuck in my head, why shouldn't you have to do the same? Sometimes they're good, most times they're bad... but no matter what, they make you suffer. So I like to share the suffering whenever it happens.

Trust me when I say that having children has its upside. The downside is when a song like this gets stuck in your head. My daughter likes watching the video because pacifiers and gummi bears are prominently involved. I find the video almost as disturbing as the song, even though the Beavis and Butthead part of my psyche secretly laughs at the title. If someone could arrange for the beating of the person who came up with the song, I'd appreciate it.



You're welcome.

The Health Care Follies Continue

Tom Coburn just added to the list of things I love about him. Bernie Sanders, the socialist Independent Senator from Vermont, has proposed an amendment to the health care bill pushing for a single-payer system. Coburn is objecting, and doing so in a way that bottlenecks the process even more...

Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) has forced Sanders’s single-payer amendment — all 767 pages – to be read aloud. It took the clerk nearly 20 minutes to get through the table of contents. It's still being mumbled as we speak. And we thought the Democrats were playing hardball on health care. If they really wanted to torture Joe Lieberman, they'd make him read it.

Sounds like the type of waiting lines we'll get at doctor's offices udner Obamacare.

Copenhagen Not Coping So Well

Oh, goody. Things at the climate change conference are getting a little, um, hot...

The Copenhagen climate change conference appeared to be imploding from within and exploding from without on Wednesday.

Police fired tear gas, brandished batons and detained more than 200 protesters who tried to push through the security cordon around the Bella Center, as negotiations inside bogged down, for the second time this week, over differences between China and the West over emissions, funding issues and transparency.

"People around the world [are] actually expecting something to be done from us,” red-faced Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen lectured delegates from nearly 200 nations.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the highest-ranking American yet to appear at the talks, urged attendees to put aside their differences and “make Friday our day of success.”

Minutes earlier — in a surprise move that captured growing uncertainty over conference — Denmark’s climate minister, Connie Hedegaard, stepped aside as president of the conference, handing the gavel to Rasmussen, as head of the host country.

Outside, Danish police — who have been accused of heavy-handedness by human rights groups — clashed with thousands of environmental activists who descended on the complex from a nearby train station and demanded entry to the Bella Center.

...On Tuesday, Hedegaard made an emotional appeal for countries to put aside their differences to finalize a deal — after the G-77 bloc of developing nations accused her of trying to ram through an agreement amenable to the U.S. and other big industrialized nations.

But no sooner had Rasmussen assumed the presidency than those tensions burst out in the open again, with China, India, Bolivia, South Africa and Sudan saying they would block attempts by the Danish delegation to produce a draft text favored by most Western countries.

Minutes after taking the gavel, Rasmussen angrily denounced developing countries for seeking to delay consideration of the text, accusing them of focusing on "procedure, procedure, procedure."

He was immediately rebuked by a representative of China, a member of the G-77 bloc, who said moving forward too quickly was tantamount to "obstructionism" and a bullying attempt by the West.

This thing was bound to have problems, if John Kerry was involved. And that's before we consider the implications of Climategate, where the evidence keeps piling up that data was being manipulated, and the integrity of the data sets worldwide is now open to serious question. Indeed, Charlie Martin does a pretty good job explaining how access to the full set of data has already cast doubt on the controversial "hockey stick" graph. As he notes, the trick that was used to "hide the decline" actually looks much worse when we have all the data placed into the graph.

Brian Micklethwaite sums up the situation...

I've just been watching this video, of Lord Monkton laying into the Climategate gang. What makes it so potent is that he is quite bluntly calling them crooks, and calling anyone who still follows their fraudulent prophecies dupes and fools. He names names, and crimes. Yes, crimes. And yes, criminals. Criminals with names. Monkton does all this in his posh British public school voice. Nevertheless, you can almost see him doing that thing that fist fighters do, but with their beckoning hands rather than with their mouths, and pointing at their own chins. Come and get me! Give me your best shot! I say you are a pack of scoundrels. Prove me wrong! I say that the logical thing to do about "climate change" is: nothing. Nothing. Why on earth do you still have the damned nerve to think anything else? Such pugilistic vulgarities are not to be found in the text of the talk. Monkton is too canny, too cool, to get that excited. But that is the subtext.
...You can feel that most crucial of propaganda processes happening with Climategate: the reversing of the burden of proof. Unfair to all the fraud detectives (Watts, McIntyre, and the rest of them, including Monkton himself) though it undoubtedly was, those noble toilers, until the Climategate revelations erupted, had to prove everything, in defiance of the default position. Their every tiny blemish was jumped upon. Their major claims were ignored. Now the default position is slowly mutating into: It's all made-up nonsense. And the burden of proof is shifting onto the shoulders of all those who want to go on believing in such ever more discredited alarmism. In short, our side is winning this argument, big time.

And it turns out that the rich countries do indeed wish to remain rich, as I merely hoped was the case a week ago. The underlying point being: nobody is actually as scared about climate change as they were a few months back. Doubters who feared that there might have been "something in it", "no smoke without fire", etc., now doubt far more completely. All but the craziest warmists are now going rather quieter. The people who matter no longer feel deep in their guts, those of them who ever did, that there has to be a deal, or the earth will fry. All potential parties to it are now more willing than they were to walk away from Copenhagen with no deal, because the fear of being blamed for not reaching a deal is now (in the nick of time) being replaced by the fear of being accused of having reached a bad deal.

(hat tip: Instapundit) Sounds a bit like (a) the health care debate, and (b) a tipping point on climate change debate. The real problem for folks who believe that global warming is a real problem is that their credibility is in doubt, and that's going to be difficult to re-establish now.

Chuck Schumer's Middle Name? Dick

Senator Schumer should know better than to tick off a flight attendant, let alone do it in front of a GOP aide...

Sen. Chuck Schumer loves the sound of his own voice, but it carried a bit farther than he might have liked on the US Airways shuttle from New York to Washington on Sunday.

According to a House Republican aide who happened to be seated nearby, the notoriously chatty New York Democrat referred to a flight attendant as a “bitch” after she ordered him to turn off his phone before takeoff.

Schumer and his seatmate, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), were chatting on their phones before takeoff when an announcement indicated that it was time to turn off the phones.

Both senators kept talking.

According to the GOP aide, a flight attendant then approached Schumer and told him the entire plane was waiting on him to shut down his phone.

Schumer asked if he could finish his conversation. When the flight attendant said “no,” Schumer ended his call but continued to argue his case.

He said he was entitled to keep his phone on until the cabin door was closed. The flight attendant said he was obliged to turn it off whenever a flight attendant asked.

“He argued with her about the rule,” the source said. “She said she doesn’t make the rules, she just follows them.”

When the flight attendant walked away, the witness says Schumer turned to Gillibrand and uttered the B-word.

“The senator made an off-the-cuff comment under his breath that he shouldn’t have made, and he regrets it,” Schumer spokesman Brian Fallon told Shenanigans.

Ironically, Schumer has been a friend of US Airways flight attendants of late, lobbying company CEO Doug Park on their behalf after several of them asked the senator to help keep them based at LaGuardia.

Through her office, Gillibrand said Schumer was “polite” with the flight attendant Sunday and “turned off his phone when asked to.”

But moments after the flight attendant had told Schumer to shut it off, the phone rang again.

“It’s Harry Reid calling,” the source quoted Schumer as saying. “I guess health care will have to wait until we land.”

Any chance we can keep that plane in the air for another 400 days or so?

Smithers, Have The Other Voters Killed

Loyal reader ST felt morally obligated to share this...

"Charles Montgomery Burns, better known as Mr. Burns in the hit animated TV series The Simpsons, got the most votes of any write-in candidate during last month's mayoral election in New York City," CNN reports. "According to records released by the New York City Board of Elections, the cartoon billionaire received 27 write-in votes out of the 299 that were cast.

Excellent.

The Healthcare Follies Continue

The left is trying to get Joe Lieberman's wife fired? What's next, poisoning the family dog?

Dude, there's a reason you're losing the healthcare debate, but I'm relatively certain it has nothing to do with the wife of any particular Senator. But attack his wife -- I'm sure that will make him much more likely to vote for any bill. It'll also allow me to refer to the left as McCarthyite.

Meanwhile, Steve Benen realizes a tactical error by the left, noting that the Dems' enthusiasm for the Medicare buy-in clued in Lieberman that it was yet another Trojan horse for nationalized health care. Of course, Benen thinks this makes Lieberman a bitter guy intent on screwing the Left. Perhaps it just makes him smart enough to realize he should not give them something they'll make more awful in the future.

The Golf Digest Editor Probably Won't Be Getting a White House Christmas Card

Greatest magazine cover ever. I'm guessing the President is telling Michelle, "No, I won't be taking any tips from Tiger."

This Is Why You Should Always Start By Reading The Sports Section

Tom Maguire notes that the left-wing dishrag's frontpage doesn't look good for the President. Maybe that tipping point has been reached. The President is probably hoping the Times and the press will get back to important issues, like finding Tiger Woods' 17th mistress.

The Health Care Follies Continue

Hey, we've finally got a good explanation of the public option...



(hat tip: Randy Barnett at Volokh)

Too bad this explanation wasn't available earlier -- it might have eased passage of the public option, as we'd all be too distracted by the cartoon. That might be the most effective way to pass the bill, now that I think about it -- pass it, then pretend nothing happened.

I should stop now, before I give Harry Reid any ideas.

The Phillies Did What?

Even I don't know if this is a good deal or not. Andy Martino's analysis is worth reading.

I have no quibble with getting prospects for Lee and dealing for halladay, in light of what appears to be a pretty good deal on Halladay's extension. I hate giving up Kyle Drabek, but there's a principle that no pitching prospect is a sure thing, and the Phils may end up regretting sending our Michael Taylor more than Drabek in the long run. I only wonder about whether the Phils got enough value for Lee, as Rob Neyer notes, because the Mariners seem to be getting one hell of a deal. But then again, the Phils have now obtained Roy Halladay, Ben Francisco, and three decent prospects by giving up seven decent prospects, and gotten Halladay inked to a deal that will keep him a Phillie through 2013. I can't argue with those results.

Now, can you fix the bullpen, Ruben?

What Annoying Song is Stuck in My Head Today?

If I need to suffer with a song stuck in my head, why shouldn't you have to do the same? Sometimes they're good, most times they're bad... but no matter what, they make you suffer. So I like to share the suffering whenever it happens.

Having kids has tangible benefits, beyond staying up all night with fever-ridden children who think it's cool to make Daddy or Mommy sleep on the floor of their room before they'll go to sleep. One of those tangible benefits is reliving the Muppets. I'd forgotten how much I liked their version of the 12 Days of Christmas. Ba-dum, dum, dum...



You're welcome.

Five Thoughts on... Barack Obama's B-Plus

Jim Geraghty does a nice job breaking down President Obama's self-grading exercise. The One apparently delivered at a B-plus clip last year. My five thoughts:

1. I knew we had dropped our educational standards, but I didn't know it was this bad.
2. Maybe the President is expecting the same level of grade inflation we both saw in law school in Cambridge. Memo to the President -- I don't think even HLS could justify a B-plus for this performance (although they might be able to justify a B).
3. Similar to Geraghty, I'm guessing a coup d'etat by the reverse vampires would probably lead to a C-minus. Or maybe a C, depending on whether the vampires succeeded in their fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner.



4. Remember when you were in grade school and your parents gave you ten dollars for an A, five dollars for a B? Granted, this didn't happen to me (for a B, my parents asked, "Why isn't his an A?"), but maybe the President is getting his allowance the same way.
5. Maybe he's grading just a portion of his performance as a B-plus. I mean, if you look at his wardrobe, he's done a heck of a job picking the right suits. I might even give him an A-minus in that department.

The Health Care Follies Continue

Back from being busy, and ready to declare Joe Lieberman a hero...

In a surprise setback for Democratic leaders, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, said on Sunday that he would vote against the health care legislation in its current form.

The bill’s supporters had said earlier that they thought they had secured Mr. Lieberman’s agreement to go along with a compromise they worked out to overcome an impasse within the Democratic Party.

But on Sunday, Mr. Lieberman told the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, to scrap the idea of expanding Medicare and abandon any new government insurance plan or lose his vote.
On a separate issue, Mr. Reid tried over the weekend to concoct a compromise on abortion that would induce Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, to vote for the bill. Mr. Nelson opposes abortion. Any provision that satisfies him risks alienating supporters of abortion rights.

In interviews on the CBS News program “Face the Nation,” Mr. Lieberman and Mr. Nelson said the bill did not have the 60 votes it would need in the Senate.

I have no idea whether Lieberman is doing this in a fit of pique, is carrying the water for home-state insurance interests, or if he's simply voting on principle. My guess is that it's a combination of all three. Ezra Klein, in a hilariously partisan spew, seems to think it's all pique...

To put this in context, Lieberman was invited to participate in the process that led to the Medicare buy-in. His opposition would have killed it before liberals invested in the idea. Instead, he skipped the meetings and is forcing liberals to give up yet another compromise. Each time he does that, he increases the chances of the bill's failure that much more. And if there's a policy rationale here, it's not apparent to me, or to others who've interviewed him. At this point, Lieberman seems primarily motivated by torturing liberals. That is to say, he seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.

I'm all in favor of torturing liberals, if this qualifies as torture (and if it does, then I admit it -- waterboarding is also torture... and based on this standard, so is listening to Styx. But I digress.). This is ridiculous hyperbole, especially from the side of the aisle that had an apoplectic fit when Sarah Palin brought up death panels. I have no clue what fully motivates Lieberman. On substance, though, Megan McArdle makes a key point...

The progressives are, of course . . . well, livid is probably too weak a word. At this point it's hard to see them getting to sixty votes on anything. Frankly, I'm not sure that a majority of legislators want them to get to sixty votes on anything. Every time health care makes the news, its poll numbers drop further, and at 54-38 against, it's already dangerously close to "Republican landslide if you pass it" territory. Outside of coastal enclaves, Democrats cannot win the next round of elections with no one but their base. And independents, already against the plan, especially hate partisanship. This makes it especially unhealthy to pass a bill they don't like on a straight party line vote.

That inability to pass a bill is the nightmare facing the left; as indicated by the poll numbers, the bill is seemingly getting more unpopular by the minute.



(hat tip: Instapundit) In the face of polls, why are the Dems continuing on this path? Byron York clues us in to the thinking...

Just look at the RealClearPolitics average of polls, which shows that Americans oppose the national health care bills currently on the table by a margin of 53 percent to 38 percent. That's not just one poll that might tilt right or left, it's an average of several polls by several pollsters. And the margin of opposition seems to be growing, not diminishing. And yet Democrats seem determined to defy public opinion. Why?

I put the question to a Democratic strategist who asked to remain anonymous. Yes, Democrats certainly understand that voters don't like the current bills, he told me, and they are fully aware they will probably pay a price next year. But they have found a way to view going ahead anyway as the logical thing to do, at least in their eyes.

You have to look at the issue from three different Democratic perspectives: the House of Representatives, the White House and the Senate.

"In the House, the view of [California Rep. Henry] Waxman and [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi is that we've waited two generations to get health care passed, and the 20 or 40 members of Congress who are going to lose their seats as a result are transitional players at best," he said. "This is something the party has wanted since Franklin Roosevelt." In this view, losses are just the price of doing something great and historic. (The strategist also noted that it's easy for Waxman and Pelosi to say that, since they come from safely liberal districts.)

"At the White House, the picture is slightly different," he continued. "Their view is, 'We're all in on this, totally committed, and we don't have to run for re-election next year. There will never be a better time to do it than now.'"

"And in the Senate, they look at the most vulnerable Democrats -- like [Christopher] Dodd and [Majority Leader Harry] Reid -- and say those vulnerabilities will probably not change whether health care reform passes or fails. So in that view, if they pass reform, Democrats will lose the same number of seats they were going to lose before."

All those scenarios have a certain logic (even if the Senate calculation undercounts the number of potentially vulnerable Democrats). But each scenario is premised on passing an unpopular bill that hurts the party. Even if there's a strategic rationale for doing it, why are Democrats dead-set on hurting themselves?

"Because they think they know what's best for the public," the strategist said. "They think the facts are being distorted and the public's being told a story that is not entirely true, and that they are in Congress to be leaders. And they are going to make the decision because Goddammit, it's good for the public."

Of course, going forward has turned out to be harder than many Democrats thought. And now, with various proposals lying wrecked along the road, the true believers are practicing what the strategist calls "principled damage control."

But still, does it make sense? In the end, perhaps the most compelling explanation for Democratic behavior is that they are simply in too deep to do anything else. "Once you've gone this far, what is the cost of failure?" asks the strategist.

At that point -- Republicans will love this -- he compared congressional Democrats with robbers who have passed the point of no return in deciding to hold up a bank. Whatever they do, they're guilty of something. "They're in the bank, they've got their guns out. They can run outside with no money, or they can stick it out, go through the gunfight, and get away with the money."

Two thoughts. One, the "this is good for you" school of thought barely works as an explanation when we tell our kids to take their medicine. It's asinine as an argument to make to a body politic. The better argument is to explain to the public why the opponents of health care reform are wrong, and why you're right. The Democrats, even with the allegedly brilliant communicative gifts of Barack Obama coming from the bully pulpit and a compliant mainstream media, have failed to do so. When that happens, one should wonder about the substance of the message and whether the public simply won't buy it because it's not any good.

Second, the Dems as bank robbers analogy is way too good to pass up. Maybe Joe Lieberman is the only one trying to hold them back from robbing the public fisc, but my guess is that some of the other potential robbers are experiencing pangs of guilt.

At the end of the day, Obamacare isn't dead yet (although even Klein seems to admit the public option will need an obituary). The President is trying to call one more emergency meeting today to pull resusucitate the bill, and he may succeed. As Rich Lowry notes, Lieberman and Ben Nelson do support many core elements of the bill, and may still be brought into the fold.

Healthcare reform's going to be an albatross around the necks of the Democrats either way. The only real question is whether passing it makes it worse or better in 2010 -- I'm guessing worse for them, and worse for the country. Instead of slamming Joe Lieberman, they should thank him. But that's one thing I know won't happen.