Friday Political Mashup (2/29/08)

Yep, if I were McCain, I’d be fighting my gag reflex over the words of John Hagee also (and God help me, but Bill Donahue and I are on the same side here; yep, I’m sure those four horsemen are saddling up all right – now let’s see TImmeh badger McCain repeatedly and tell him to repudiate Hagee over and over, thus pulling the same act he did with Barack Obama and Louis Farrakhan the other night, as Jane sez here).

Update 3/1/08: Speaking of Russert above, this is the most thorough takedown of this freeper mouthpiece that I've ever read by Media Matters; there's a ton of information portraying what a shill he is for the Repugs. If you have a few minutes, I strongly recommend it.

Update 3/2/08: Forgot this from Will Bunch - great point here.

I wanted to mention this story about the Improper Payments Elimination and Recover Act of 2008, introduced in the U.S. House by Patrick Murphy and Brian Billbray of California (R, it should be noted).

As the Courier Times story tells us…

Item: This summer, a Government Accountability Office investigation found that the Agriculture Department gave out about $1.1 billion in farm payments to more than 170,000 dead people from 1999 through 2005.

Item: In 2004, the Federal Emergency Management Agency used hurricane aid funding to pay for funerals of more than 200 Florida residents whose deaths were not storm-related, according to a review by Florida's Medical Examiners Commission.

Item: In one month in 2003, a New York dentist billed Medicaid about $725,000 for 9,500 separate dental procedures and in just one day that month she charged for 991 individual procedures, a New York Times investigation found.

…

The bill, which could be voted on this spring, would require government agencies to report any improper payments involved in projects funded through those agencies that exceed $10 million or are 2.5 percent of total project funding. Currently, the White House's Office of Management and Budget requires agencies to report payment errors only when both those conditions are met.

The bill also would require agencies to recover overpayment if they spend more than $1 million in federal funding. Currently, agencies are required to recover overpayments only if they spend more than $500 million in a year, Murphy said.

The Courier Times story by reporter Brian Scheid notes that the otherwise odious Tom Carper of Delaware is going to attempt to justify his existence by introducing a similar bill in the Senate, though Carper has so much to atone for at this point that I don’t even know why he’s bothering to go through the motions of trying to do something right.

Finally, since there’s no Area Votes In Congress post because they were off last week, I found myself going through a bit of “Joe Pitts Withdrawal” because I couldn’t bust on him over yet more idiotic “No” votes.

So I did a bit of digging and found out that, among other things, Pitts is a decorated Vietnam War pilot, having earned an Air Medal with five oak leaf clusters after 116 combat missions. Nice work (as noted here).

Also…

In recent years, he has taken a leading role in advocacy for religious prisoners overseas and human rights crises, like Burma, Western Sahara, and Kashmir. Pitts has used his office to build relationships with ambassadors from other countries in hopes of building ties between people from those nations and his constituents. This has yielded shipments of aid to developing nations.

But it’s a funny thing; for someone who supposedly has lent a hand for causes related to human rights, this tells me that Pitts earned (?) a zero rating from the Human Rights Campaign for 2005-2006.

Why…just color me shocked!

Well, it turns out that the Human Rights Campaign (as noted here)...

...“represents a grassroots force of more than 700,000 members and supporters nationwide. As the largest national gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, HRC envisions an America where GLBT people are ensured of their basic equal rights, and can be open, honest and safe at home, at work and in the community.”

So just keep reminding yourselves, boys and girls, that Joe Pitts, the Republican representative of the U.S. House’s 16th congressional district in PA, is a paragon of advocacy and aid for those enduring hardship overseas including prisoners of conscience because of their religion and/or political opinion. And you may look to him as a champion on behalf of the ideals of this country that we (basically) practice but, more often than that, preach about every day.

Just as long as you’re straight (and lest we forget, click here to support Bruce Slater).