Democrats Help the Middle-Class. Republicans Draw Rape Cartoons

What do you do in the wake of a crushing political defeat?

If you’re Jeff Goldstein, you declare yourself to be way cooler than everyone else; if you’re Darleen Click, you draw a cartoon in which the President rapes a woman, then tells her that he and friends will be back to rape her again later. In the clinical sense, Click is the more interesting case because she thinks that the only problem with her cartoon is that it’s racist. I repeat: she drew a cartoon in which the punch line is a gang rape and the only potential problem with it she can see is that it might be racist. Don’t misunderstand me: it’s plenty racist—plays into tropes as old as slavery and everything—but the punch line is that the President and his associates are going to gang-rape the Statue of Liberty with, I kid you not, immigration reform.

In service of the cheapest of laughs, Click asserts that the statue that symbolizes America’s commitment to the tired, poor, huddled masses of the world is about to be raped because of the President’s commitment to those selfsame masses-yearning-to-be-free. Talk about your industrial grade ideological incoherence—and I would, except for the fact that Goldstein, never one to be upstaged on his own blog, told a woman that the only way she would ever be cool was if someone raped her with an icicle.

Republicans give a lot of lip service to the words freedom and liberty, now we know what they really mean. The freedom to act like sleazy cretins while whining about historic legislation that will help tens of millions of American families.

Wyden: Health Care Lawsuits Moot, States Can Opt Out Of Mandate

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has a message for all the attorneys general and Republican lawmakers who are threatening lawsuits and claiming that an individual mandate for insurance coverage is unconstitutional: You don't have to abide by it -- just set up your own plan.

The Oregon Democrat isn't inviting opponents to defy the newly-enacted health care law. Instead, he's pointing out a provision in the bill that makes moot the argument over the legality of the individual mandate.

Speaking to the Huffington Post on Tuesday, Wyden discussed -- for one of the first times in public -- legislative language he authored which "allows a state to go out and do its own bill, including having no individual mandate."

It's called the "Empowering States to be Innovative" amendment. And it would, quite literally, give states the right to set up their own health care system -- with or without an individual mandate or, for that matter, with or without a public option -- provided that, as Wyden puts it, "they can meet the coverage requirements of the bill."