Today: The F-22 goes away and Senator Lieberman outstays his welcome.
Joe No!
Rachel started us off with a look at Senator Joe Lieberman (I — Connecticut), who has announced that he would cross party lines (he caucuses with the Democrats and owes his Homeland Security chairmanship to them) to filibuster any health care bill with a public option.
Lieberman’s threat to filibuster stems from a longstanding, deeply principled belief.
No, wait, the other thing.
Turns out Senator Evan Bayh (D – Indiana) is also a humongous weasel. He and his wife seem to have adopted the intriguing tactic of being so hilariously, cartoonishly corrupt that future fictionalized accounts will have to be toned down for believability.
How can steelworkers be getting laid off when by all rights they should be working round the clock to fashion the Bayhs’ nards?
Seriously: How can Joe Lieberman possibly still have a chairmanship? Of whom does he have compromising photos?
At this point, I’m guessing that it must be the Area 51 aliens soul kissing every last one of the Senate Democrats while exiting a limousine with no panties on and conspiring to take out the World Trade Center.
It’s the only explanation that makes sense.
One More Thing:
Fox News, which is totally an unbiased news organization and not a convenient bullhorn for Republican propaganda, hired John Stossel to objectively report the news.
Which he will do just as soon as he is done speaking at those Americans for Prosperity rallies against health care reform.
Big Poppy
As Rachel reported last night, the brother of Afghan President Karzai has been on the CIA payroll for years.
Which would only be counterproductive and awkward if he weren’t widely rumored to also be a drug lord.
And that would only be upsetting and scuzzy if it weren’t for the fact that the Afghan opium trade funds the Taliban.
Which means our intelligence agents may have been inadvertently funding the deaths of our soldiers.
Tim Weiner, the author of Legacy of Ashes, dropped in to talk about the fact that our military, diplomatic, and intelligence efforts in Afghanistan are not coordinated, and we seem to be using different strategies in different regions.
Other than that and the new death toll high, the war is going just swell.
Stimfrastructure
Rachel decided to terrify us all with graphics of collapsing streets and crumbling bridges because it’s been a little while since she gave us heart palpitations and she likes to stay in shape.
But then she had mercy on us and pointed out that spending money on infrastructure might not be such a bad thing.
Ms. Information
President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law on Wednesday. The act expands federal hate crimes law to include gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability. The act also sets aside funding to help local law enforcement agencies pay for the prosecution of hate crimes.
Rachel also reported that eBay refused to host the repellent planned auction of murderer memorabilia to benefit Scott Roeder, who is accused of killing Dr. George Tiller. Good.
LaWrong
Rachel served up a bit of political strangeness with the news that The Clifton Journal erroneously reported that women working for the Hoffmann–La Roche pharmaceuticals company were handing out anti-health reform leaflets portraying Obama as Hitler.
The women were in fact working for Lyndon LaRouche. For those of you who weren’t around or weren’t paying attention during the 80’s, he would be distinctly unfunny if he weren’t so entertainingly bizarre.
Or maybe I’m wrong and Queen Elizabeth really has been a drug dealer all these years.
Rachel Re: Catch F-22
Rachel gave us a fascinating Rachel: Re. The F-22 fighter jet was a classic (and depressing) study in how to pork up a project so thoroughly that it can’t be killed, no matter how big, dumb, expensive, and useless it is.
Amazingly enough, the story has a happy ending.
Well, almost.
Rachel Gets a Gingrich Gavel
You heard me. Enjoy.
