This Will Makes for Some Fireworks

"This should make life lively as Sessions is hardly known as a wall flower."
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Really? That's all you can muster.

Well you wouldn't expect him to be a traitor to his race, would you?
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This could be fun.

According to thinkprogress.org...
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Sessions called a white civil rights lawyer a “disgrace to his race” for litigating voting rights cases.
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During a 1981 murder investigation involving the Ku Klux Klan, Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he “used to think they [the Klan] were OK” until he found out some of them were “pot smokers.” Sessions claimed the comment was clearly said in jest. Figures didn't see it that way. Sessions, he said, had called him “boy” and, after overhearing him chastise a secretary, warned him to “be careful what you say to white folks.
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http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/05/lott-sessions-poetic/
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It looks like the GOP is doubling down on stupid with the appointment of the racist Jeff Sessions as the ranking republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee just in time to vote on Obama's Supreme Court nominee. How did Sessions' confirmation hearing go when he was appointed to the federal bench? Not so well I guess.

Jay, "This Will Makes for Some Fireworks" will makes for some grammatical revision... Yet our pure, unadulterated glee at this wonderful Sessions news acquits you from further snark on this fine day.

Jay Newton-Small:
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Given Jeff Sessions' chequered past

Jeff Sessions's chequered past
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* Sarah Wildman
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 May 2009 19.00 BST
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Sessions's first national exposure was, surely, mortifying for the would-be federal judge. It was 1986, and the then-39-year-old US attorney for the Southern District of Alabama was a Reagan nominee to the federal bench. Sessions had good reason to believe he'd be rubber-stamped through to a judgeship – some 200 of the Gipper's judges had already been heavily sprinkled throughout the federal judicial system. But Sessions stopped up the works. The young lawyer became only the second man in 50 years to be rejected by the Senate judiciary committee.
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As the Senate judiciary committee mulled [Sessions's prosecution of three civil rights workers over what he perceived as voting fraud] over, several other worrisome notes about the nominee came to light. As [the reporter] wrote in 2002:

Senate Democrats tracked down a career justice department employee named J Gerald Hebert, who testified, albeit reluctantly, that in a conversation between the two men Sessions had labelled the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) "un-American" and "communist-inspired". Hebert said Sessions had claimed these groups "forced civil rights down the throats of people."
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In his confirmation hearings, Sessions sealed his own fate by saying such groups could be construed as "un-American" when "they involve themselves in promoting un-American positions" in foreign policy. Hebert testified that the young lawyer tended to "pop off" on such topics regularly, noting that Sessions had called a white civil rights lawyer a "disgrace to his race" for litigating voting rights cases.

, life should be lively, indeed.

JNS
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You are about 6 hours and 115 comments late.
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http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/05/05/two-for-tuesday-repeal-and-race-disgrace/

Judging by Obama's recent moves, I'd say that Obama is getting ready to run Sessions the f*ck over.
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Does anyone here believe that Rush Limbaugh get behind Sessions' nomination? He's the kingmaker, now.
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I wonder what Micheal Steele thinks about Sessions.
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Does anyone believe that Barak Obama plans to open any kind of dialog with him? I doubt that, too. Any more than he did when Rush was inserting foot firmly in mouth a couple months ago.
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This is gonna be good...

"You are about 6 hours and 115 comments late."
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And I'm totally tired of it, too!

OT: But, did everyone get a chance to read this? This is:
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Yvette Kantrow has been combing Tim Geithner's datebook, from his New York Fed days, not for meetings with bankers but rather for meetings with journalists. And it turns out that there were a lot of them, the vast majority completely off the record. Kantrow concludes:
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The Times' page 1 opus on April 27, co-written by lunchmate Morgenson, faulted Geithner for being too close and clubby with the financiers he was supposedly monitoring. But looking at his schedule, you can just as easily argue that the media was too close and clubby with him. And a club it was.
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Most readers of the press I think are unaware of just how much off-the-record schmoozing of journalists goes on at the very highest levels of government. Geithner was by no means exceptional in this respect: if you're a senior editor at a major news publication, you can expect regular meetings with VIPs up to and including heads of state, substantially all of them off the record.
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The journalists are excited and flattered by all this attention, which amounts to capture of key opinion-formers by the very people being covered. (The VIPs wouldn't do it if it didn't work.) But of course no FOIA request will ever uncover the list of officials invited to lunch with the NYT editorial board, and the NYT itself keeps such information very close to its chest.
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There's a lot of complaining about “anonymice” in the media — people who are quoted but not named. My feeling is that if the war on anonymous sources continues, we'll just see even more of this kind of thing: regular meetings with journalists which result in no direct quotations or attribution at all. Which would not be much of an improvement.
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http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/05/04/the-power-journalism-nexus/

Well now this is special indeed.

Crypto-segregationist = "hardly known as a wall flower".
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I can't tell if this is a double standard, or the soft bigotry of the low expectations that the GOP has worked so hard to earn.
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The media will present him as merely the other side of the coin to Charles Schumer.

So Popeye the Sailor Man is now working as a headline writer for Swampland...
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And Sessions isn't known as a wallflower, but as a racist.

Next week JNS can explain how Sessions is a moderate.

Elvis: Interesting observation about the soft bigotry of the low expectations that the GOP has worked so hard to earn. When you put it that way it does look the GOP gets a pass on their representatives because they have fallen so low that we don't expect anything better from them. What if that is the best they have to offer? The democrats have some nitwits, scumbags and goofballs too, but the republicans are sweeping the medal rounds.

"Crypto-segregationist = "hardly known as a wall flower"."
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Back in the good ol' days of the "Angry White Male", Sessions would be known as "shoot from the hip", "straight talker", "honest" and "controversial".
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Now?
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I'm enjoying every last smidgeon of discomfort suffered by their ilk! They deserve extinction...

Oh, FYI:
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Back then, I would be "divisive"...

Back then, I would be a long haired, pot smokin', sex crazed hippy freak. God, I miss those days.

So they just made Jeff Sessions the face of the party over the SCOTUS hearings? And the GOP wonders why it's losing...

http://www.political-buzz.com/

It's like the Republican Party is consciously trying to commit suicide.

And most of us are Kevorkians.

The GOP is suffering from post traumatic stress. Now, please accept my word that I am not trying to minimize the experience of our military personnel who suffer from PTSD. However it is clear from what we perceive as nonsensical behavior that these folks are responding like someone who has been traumatized. It seems to me that they are acting as if the last election did not take place. A behavior we often see in trauma victims whose minds protectively block out details to painful to deal with.
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Their unwillingness to acknowledge that most Americans no longer support their positions, their inability to accept that they are no longer in charge, and their lack of capacity to adapt to a new set of circumstances explains a lot. These people go on the attack when they should be quaking in their boots -- this is fear aggression. These people turn on their own members just as individuals suffering PTSD often hurt those closest to them, those trying to help them. And lastly, their inability to recognize they even have a problem coupled with viewing any gestures resembling trying to seek help as weakness and betrayal, Is the final clue for me to draw the conclusion that in their current mental state none of these folks should be in proximity to the power to affect our lives.

Here is the American Medical Association's position:

2009 National Health Care Policy Agenda

The American Medical Association (AMA) believes that all Americans are worthy of a fair and affordable health system.

Today, Americans are faced with a fragmented health system. Millions don't visit a doctor until their illness reaches a serious stage. As a nation, we can and should do better.

At the center of the AMA's vision is the concept that every American, regardless of means, has health insurance. And every patient maintains the freedom to choose his or her own doctors and health plans, and maintains control over his or her own care. For a senior, this includes having ready access to doctors in the Medicare program. For a pregnant woman, it means finding a physician who hasn't been forced out of business by high liability insurance rates. And for everyone, it means receiving the best care possible. Specifically:

* The AMA urges lawmakers to implement a system of tax credits to enable individuals to buy health insurance. We have a detailed proposal for this system.
* Under current law, Medicare will make deep cuts in payments to doctors every year until 2015. This policy erodes patient access to care and is a barrier to practice innovations. Congress and the next Administration need to permanently replace the flawed payment formula.
* Medical lawsuits are driving up health costs for everyone and making it hard for many to find a doctor. The AMA seeks reasonable limits on the non-economic damages juries can award so that doctors aren't forced to move, cut services or go out of business.

Physicians and other health providers must work with government and private payers on strategies to restrain rising health care costs while maintaining quality of care. Medical science and technology have moved forward at a lightning pace. Patients are ready for the American health system to follow suit. The AMA is committed to:

* Finding new ways to enable doctors to use promising new technology
* Pioneering new methods to measure and improve the quality of care
* Preventing errors by studying ones that have happened, without the threat of lawsuits
* Directing more resources and effort toward disease prevention
* Helping Americans lead more healthful lifestyles
* Eliminating gaps in care, particularly for racial and ethnic minority patients, the elderly, and low-income families
* Preparing better for large-scale health care emergencies

Today, patients are forced to endure miles of insurance company red tape and piecemeal policy attempts to solve one problem or another. America's patients will be best served when our country eliminates the disproportionate influence of insurers and government into medical decision-making. These important decisions must be placed in the hands of the patient and the physician.

Our nation needs a well-trained medical work force, and more doctors in primary care. We must make sure our medical education stays the best in the world, and make paying for it less burdensome. So too must we address the barriers that threaten the viability of many physician practices, such as:

* Payments that fail to reflect the true cost of providing care
* Health insurers' deceptive business practices
* Antitrust rules that restrict doctors from negotiating with health insurance companies

As physicians and medical students, we see firsthand every day how urgently our patients need a better health system. Together, we can shape one America truly deserves.

Oops posted on wrong blog. Sorry.