Alan Grayson

The video above, by the head of the Old Skool fringe group the John Birch Society, is the kind of thing right-wing voters are hearing more and more about lately. Very few people listen to this nut. But they do listen to Donald Trump, who is ready to exploit legitimate concerns as well as confusion and turmoil around the TPP for his own purposes. Fine.Once word started leaking out yesterday that the secret negotiations on the TPP were basically done, the first congressional reaction I saw was from Alan Grayson, an implacable foe of trade agreements that ship American jobs overseas.

Over the weekend, one of the most talked-about pieces from the mainstream press was Patrick Healy's NY Times report on dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party establishment, "Democrats Find That Anti-Establishment Isn’t Just a G.O.P. Theme." "Anger at the political establishment," Healy wrote,

Yesterday the Senate-- and then the House-- voted to pass a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open at least until December 11. Every Democrat in the Senate and every Democrat in the House voted yes, of course. And in the Senate, where it passed 78-20, all but 20 extreme right nihilist Republicans and infantile anarchist Republicans voted in favor, despite Ted Cruz's lament about shutting the whole thing down.

Ted Cruz and his fascist-oriented wing of the Republican Party are still determined to shut down the government again, despite the overwhelming majority of Americans opposing it. The Americans who support the idea are in the backward, mostly Confederate districts represented by these ass-clowns. They haven't done it yet, and McConnell is ignoring their bellowing, so it's something that may be put off... till right before Christmas time! Fortunately, Democrats are pretty united against the crackpot scheme and Cruz's infantile blackmail strategy.

Long Island GOP crackpot Peter King went further than just calling the Liberty Caucus members who forced Boehner to retire "the crazies." He also told CNN's Dana Bash that "the time for appeasement is over." And who he's talking about appeasing are the Confederate slime and their allies who have taken over the Republican Party.

Would you trust an organization asking you for contributions if you knew they had endorsed Joe Lieberman and Blanche Lincoln? Council for a Livable World has been around for a long time and they've done some very good work, but they've also asked their followers to contribute to those two and to reactionaries like John Sparkman of Alabama, a racist and a signatory to the Southern Manifesto in opposition to the 1954 U.S.

Last October-- a month short of a year ago-- I started treatment for a rare form of cancer. The treatment ended, successfully, about a month and a half ago after a month in the hospital for stem-cell transplants. Today I spent the entire day at City of Hope's day hospital getting maintenance treatment, something I'll probably be doing every few months for the rest of my life. I've kept a sporadic running diary of my adventures in the world of medicine that you can check out here if you'd like.

Recently Jim DeFede interviewed Patrick Murphy on WFOR-TV. He's a solid interviewer, and his questions helped bring out not just Murphy's despicable voting record but what he's all about. A couple of minutes into this segment DeFede asks Murphy, best known as Wall Street's most dedicated handmaiden on the Democratic side of the aisle, about greed. "Wall Street is going great," DeFede says. "Through the roof.

When Schumer calls Democratic donors to demand they not help fund Alan Grayson's campaign for the open Florida Senate seat, he never says, "We need another Wall Street whore like me, not someone with a record of holding banksters accountable like that damn Elizabeth Warren." No, he never says that. Instead he says, "Grayson is not electable in a purple state like Florida. We need someone more middle of the road...

As "journalists" go, Josh Kraushaar is certainly well-known as a major Beltway asshole, but his headline writer at National Journal did a piss-poor job on a relatively (for him) decent article, despite a few ridiculous assertions on his part that his readers have come to expect.