What Has Health Care Reform Ever Done For Us? To My Liberal "Bill Killer" Friends: Krugman (with the aid of Monte Python) Sums It Up.

In his Op Ed piece in today's New York Times, Nobel Prize winning economist and Princeton  professor of Economics and International Affairs  Paul Krugman notes that many people who've "made careers by righteously demanding entitlement reform" are "running away now that the real thing has made an appearance."  Krugman states:

Health care reform does nothing, they cry — except for covering 30 million people, ending overpayment on Medicare advantage, making the first real attempt to use medical evidence to guide health care spending, starting up a wide range of pilot projects on cost control while empowering an expert panel to put the results of those projects into effect, providing financial incentives to limit excess coverage, and so on (emphasis mine).
But aside from that, you see, it doesn’t do anything.

Krugman then goes on to wryly note:

And my thoughts turn, as they so often do, to Monty Python:

All right… all right… but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order… what have the Romans done for us?

 

Right on, Professor Krugman.

One Fruit of the Loom® Bomber, And Joe Lieberman Goes Nuts! Well, Nuttier.

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is already on a number of people's shit lists, mine included.

By stamping his feet and holding his breath, Lieberman (along with a few Blue Dog Dems) managed to strip a lot of the good out of the health care reform bill passed by the Senate last week.  Hopefully, some of the good can be restored in the conference committee.

Now, Lieberman has declared that we need a "preemptive action" in Yemen.

You know, like our "preemptive actions" in Iraq and Afghanistan?  In other words, another "preemptive" war and military occupation of another country.

Here's a quote from Lieberman this morning:

"Somebody in our government said to me in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, Iraq was yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If we don't act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war," Lieberman said, during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday". "That's the danger we face." (emphasis mine)

Yikes!

Yemen is planning on exporting an ARMY OF FRUIT OF THE LOOM BOMBERS!

We MUST ATTACK!

Be Afraid!  Be Very Afraid!

What makes this lunatic comment really bad is that this hawk senator still heads the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, and still wields incredible power in the Senate.  That was demonstrated during the debate on health care reform.

What Lieberman says on Fox News will make headlines around the world.  Even in Yemen.  They don't understand that Lieberman's credibility should be considered only slightly above that of Glenn Beck's.

Unfortunately, Lieberman will remain in a position of power for a while.  The balance of Democrats to Republicans in the Senate won't change much after the next election, and the Dems think they require his vote on procedural issues.

As a result, they bend to the will of this pompous little ass.

Can someone in the Senate please put the lie to Lieberan's LOUD NOISES?

Perhaps someone in the White House?

Please?

h/t to Sam Stein, Huffington Post

UPDATE
Apparently, another Nigerian man has been arrested today on the same flight number as the Christmas Day incident.  He "becoming verbally disruptive upon landing," and locked himself in the plane's restroom.

More information as it becomes available, but so far, no indication that this guy was another Fruit of the Loom Bomber®.
UPDATE 2
According to CNN, the latest "disruptive passenger" scare was declared 'non-serious' by federal authorities.  You may cease any freaking out.  That includes you, Lieberman.