I. can’t. stop. WATCHING!!!

Hilarious! I did not know that about Tommy the Wank Engine. Never fails, the biggest bullies always turn out to be the biggest pussies when it comes to putting their own asses on the line.

I’ve watched it several times. Each time is sweeter.

I just kind of toggle between this little exchange and the amazing Jon Stewart send-up of Glen Beck.

Somewhere down below, Robert “the Prince of Darkness” Novak is looking up at Tancredo with admiration.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…in amongst the screaming and yelling and lies and deceit proferred by the Gopppers, wingers and Freepers is the insistent waft *Jon Stewart does the ‘delicious aroma’ handwave* of ongoing, well-deserved, life-affirming schadenfrude.

You can see the wheels jam when Tancrudo is asked about Medicare.

Oooh, SNAP!

What a whiny-ass titty baby! He should indeed consider another line of work.

What is it Tancredo said over Shuster? Was it “nobody did that?”
To which Shuster says, “we can show it again.”

…I was watching this live and, when Kos played that ‘chicken hawk’ card, I thought “OK, then; let’s see what exploding wingnut heads actually look like in Hi Def.” Tancredo was a supreme disappointment, since he apparently had sufficient self-control to storm off-camera before his internal cranial pressure went out of control…

No Fair! I’m a fucked-up Republican.

It was even sweeter coming from a gay guy considering the Repugs hate of all things not money and little boy-diaper-Applicahian trail related.

What sucks is that this will probably be the last time Markos ever gets invited to appear on a cable news program. Tom Tancredo, on the other hand, will probably be getting his own gig on Fox by the end of the month.

I have lived and worked in Asia a good part of the last 11 years. And, you know what? People are people. Many are good, some are bad and too many are poor and neglected – just like in the US. Plus, many Asian countries have superior infrastructure and shock of shock to a cretin like Tancredo, the people don’t walk around bound in the chains of inferiority. Compare the airports in Hong Kong, SIngapore and Seoul to JFK and LAX. Compare public transportation and subway systems. Compare health care measured by a universal metric – life expectancy. It is clear that the myth of this great gap between American superiorty and global inferiority is just that, a myth. Little sniveling, frightened chickenhawks like Tancredo are drawn to that another myth, that of the 1050′s and Reagan (of course the myth of Reagan, not the real man) like people are drawn to the house of mirrors. They have to have a proxy for their own pitiful selves. So, they look in those mirrors of mythology, and they are ripped dudes with six-packs to kill rather than soft and pudgy keyboarder types. I don’t read Kos, but that he could so easily get under the skin of this wimp is proof that he is in fact a wimp.

Should have typed 1950′s instead of 1050′s, but thinking about it any neanderthal period will work.

Its been 40 years and he is STILL running away and hiding.

Well, at least Tancredo claimed to have a legitimate mental illness. It’s not like he had a pilonidal cyst, or got five deferments because he had “other priorities,” or joined a non-combat unit of the Texas Air National Guard and then never bothered to show up, or went on a Mormon mission, or something.

Oh heck.

Okay, I’ll admit it. I came.

What I love is that Markos had that one stored away, just in case, but only to be used if that racist no-neck chickenhawk fucker decided to pontificate about the VA.

This was ten kinds of awesome.

Tancredo is gay?

I don’t think so. He didn’t even look remotely cheerful to me.

Wait, what?

And……?????

If Tancredo pulled a fast one on the draft board, good job Markos. But if he was actually suffering from depression, this is not something to be high-fiving each other over. Mental illness is not a fucking joke.

I know, let’s give vouchers to the GOP Reps and Senators so they can choose to “opt out” of the single payer socialist health care system of which they are now a part. I’m sure thy’re dying (heh) to get out from under the government’s tyranny so they can buy their own health insurance.

And yes , mental illness is no joke, but Tancredo’s still fucked in the head. He should be in treatment, not on teevee.

You know, I’ve been borderline suicidal for nearly thirty years, and that’s with the meds my insurance company will pay for. I’m also schizophrenic and have been steadily hallucinating for months, again with the meds, and my insurance company decided long about September that I’d used up all my mental health care for the year, so no more visits to the guy who was trying to get the doses right (Hey, if your schizophrenia isn’t cured in twenty visits, then you don’t deserve help!). Personally, I could really use some goddamned universal health care, and you’ll forgive me if I’m preoccupied enough to not defend the jackass who’s determined to keep me from getting it when people make fun of him for having told the draft board for a war he supported that he had suffered from depression in the past.

Replying to myself, yeah, yeah, whatever.

Look, I agree mental illness is not a joke. But Tom Tancredo has done nothing in his public life to have earned himself the benefit of the doubt from me. He’s a cruel, selfish, dishonest person, and I can easily see him lying to a draft board. If nothing else, he was certainly happy enough to let other people who were probably depressed but hadn’t been treated for it–probably because they didn’t have health care even then–go off to fight the war he supported in his place. Now the veterans come home from another couple of wars he supports with PTSD and major depression, and he doesn’t think they deserve the health care they want, nor does he think civilians with major depressive disorders deserve any, now, either.

If he’d actually been depressed badly enough for it to be a legitimate reason to evade the draft, he’d probably understand that a lot of people simply can’t work under that burden, and therefore aren’t going to get their health care from their employers, which is apparently his preference.

He’s not showing much empathy, as far as I can tell never has, so either he was never that badly off or he’s just a nasty piece of work. And I’m mean enough to wish on him a serious intimacy with the issue in the hopes he’ll get a fucking clue and stop trying to make life worse for people whose situations he should already understand.

Absolutely mental illness is not a joke. But I’ll save my compassion for those whose lives with mental illness Tancredo is making worse.

I understand that’s harsh, but I honestly haven’t got the energy to provide emotional support for a bully who might be getting picked on unfairly.

I hope we all get good universal health care, and I hope you get all the care you need. I have zero interest in defending Tancredo. But making fun of someone’s mental illness is low, and making fun of it on national TV is unconscionable.

If Tancredo faked depression for chickenhawk purposes (and I have no idea either way), then his action was even worse than those making fun of him, because it reinforces the mistaken idea that mental illness isn’t “real”.

.

It was even sweeter coming from a gay guy

If you’re implying Kos is gay, he’s not. Just in the interests of accuracy.

I’m a vet, I use the VA, and I take mental illness very seriously. But Tancredo deserved that shot (and then some) for pretending that HE spoke for veterans in saying we all hate the VA. And for his racism and the other things he’s perpetrated.

The man’s a total puke. I don’t care if Kos was rude to him. About time someone was instead of smiling vacantly at his shit. I say we need a little more Graysonism in Dem politics.

I do see your point, and I’m sorry I went off on your comment.

At the time, though, mental illness, especially depression, was stigmatized even worse than it is now. The guys who got out of the draft by saying they were gay, remember, were mostly straight because gay men wouldn’t risk the consequences of the government knowing they were gay. Tancredo is not an honest person, and has never been. He doesn’t show any indication that he believes illness, let alone mental illness, is a serious problem that he should be required to do anything about.

I can’t say for sure that he was lying to the draft board, but I wouldn’t leave him alone in a room with a fifty dollar bill, either. I do not trust him to be a standup guy when he can benefit from misbehaving.

I’ve never met a war veteran yet who wasn’t horribly scarred by it, and I suspect that includes Markos. So if Markos doesn’t accept Tancredo’s depression as something he needs to respect, then I’m not going to argue with him. I imagine he’d be more sympathetic to others with depressive disorders.

There’s a lot of speculation in there, I admit. And I could be wrong about all of this. But in this case, I’m not willing to say it’s a clear cut incident of a mentally healthy guy making fun of a mentally ill guy just for kicks.

I agree that there’s collateral damage to other people with metal illnesses, and that in general we treat depression as though people should just get their shit together, like it’s that easy. And I do get that *that’s* what your objection is (and I tend to think that objecting on those grounds probably means you’re either a nicer or less-self-centered person than I am right now, or both.) But I sort of think that anything that shows Tancredo and his Let Them Eat Advil attitude to be utterly lacking in credibility will do more in the long run to help people with mental illness than Markos being insensitive will hurt.

Anyway, that’s where I’m coming from, and I am sorry I went off on you. Even my attempt at clarification wasn’t especially kind, which is why I’ve mostly been lurking the past few days because I probably can’t be trusted around human beings with feelings. I’ll go back to shutting up now.

I turned 18 in 1965, so I am very familiar with that era and about avoiding the draft. Sneaking in a diabetic friend’s urine was popular, as was pricking your finger and letting blood drip into your own urine. I myself went out the night before, drank too much, showed up with no sleep and a hangover, and drank a lot of coffee and chain-smoked cigarettes. Although unplanned, I was rejected for high blood pressure. Getting a 4-F for depression is a new one on me. He could not have simply lied to the doctors at the physical; a note from a psychiatrist was necessary. There were some anti-war doctors who would have written that note, though. In any event, it is impossible to sympathize with that creep.

It is about time that more folks on the left started smacking down these rightard blowhards and not apologizing for it. What Markos said is absolutely true and needs to be shouted from the roof tops. Same for Rushbo and all the other chickenhawks. If you supported wars and “declined to serve” in them, then you need to STFU about going to war. Obviously, the same does not apply to those who oppose wars.

I was drafted in 1971 and was able to flunk the physical (I also opposed the war) with a doctor’s letter (for bad knees). It was always pretty easy to find a doctor who would write you a letter, especially if your family had money, even in Oklahoma where I grew up.

No, mental illness is not a joke. However, it really doesn’t matter whether Tancredo was clinically depressed or not. What matters is what he does. There are lots of depressed people (perhaps virtually all of them) who are not actively opposing decent health care. Tancredo is. Every day more than 100 people die simply because they have no coverage.

So what’s more important – being polite to a menace to public safety, or taking him down? I say Markos took him down perfectly by laughing at him, and Brave Sir Robin ran away. We can out-logic these people 24/7 and it won’t make a damn bit of difference. You can’t rationally debate someone who has arrived at his conclusion irrationally. 4 out of 5 historians agree: scorn, ridicule, satire and humor are the most effective weapons.

I’ve been treated for depression, and I also live in the Colorado district that this fucker Tancredo used to represent. The good thing is the guy who replaced that asshole can actually be called a Progressive on most issues; apparently my neighbors pulled their heads out of their asses.

As someone with “depression” now appended to my permanent medical record living in the land of the pre-existing condition and who has lived through Tancredo as their congressman, I have no doubt that this skeevy fucker bought himself a depression diagnosis to avoid getting his ass shot off in Vietnam while he was busy lobbying for many others to encounter that same fate. I can’t prove it, but I know ol’ Tommy and he’s just that level of disgusting. A typical Liberarian asshole who thinks he’s special and therefore gaming the system to save his worthless ass is just what Ayn would have wanted him to do; afterall, he was going to be a Producer.

Good comment dsidhe. Just a minor correction, regarding Markos’ Army service – he is an Army veteran, but not a combat veteran. From his Wiki bio:

…he served in the U.S. Army from 1989 through 1992. He completed training at Ft. Sill in Oklahoma and fulfilled his three-year enlistment as a Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) in the fighting 69th. Fire Direction Specialist. while stationed in Bamberg, Germany. By his own account, he “missed deploying to the Gulf War by a hair.” Moulitsas has described the Army as “perhaps the ideal society – we worked hard but the Army took care of us in return.”…

Yeah, that’s the point that so many seem to conveniently miss.

I will not mock those who served.

I will also not mock those who opposed the war and worked the system to avoid serving. (Edit: I was one who did this during the ‘Nam period although I eventually enlisted in the USAF and served 5 years 9 months)

I will most definitely mock those who supported the war but found all the ways to avoid serving. Chickenhawks all, whether Limbaugh, Cheney, Dan Qualye, Bush, or Tancredo

Exactly. What matters is whether you act in accordance with your stated convictions. If you are a militaristic hawk, then you damned well better have served if you had the opportunity or else have had a much better excuse than “depression” or an boil on your butt.

I am not mocking mental illness here (I have fought my own demons in the past), but this was one of the easiest cadges for doctors writing letters at that time as it was hard to disprove. Most doctors, even in ultraconservative Oklahoma where I grew up, would write letters for patients from upper middle class or wealthy families to help them get out of the draft.

From the website “On the Issues”, there is this item about Tancredo:

Voted NO on giving mental health full equity with physical health. (Mar 2008)

and this; Prohibit mandatory mental health screen for students. (May 2007)

I guess his strong feelings about mental health care kind of faded after his deferment.

Great catch.

Truly, donnah, great catch. Also a heads-up as to TT ever actually lived with depression. It’s awfully easy to pooh-pooh health care for maladies that one never has had.

But if he was actually suffering from depression, this is not something to be high-fiving each other over. Mental illness is not a fucking joke.

Tancredo is a freaking joke. I hope this asshole never gets any more airtime.