Rachel started us off with an update on the fight over health care reform.

Liberal pressure to reform health care so people can get a broken arm set without selling a kidney to be able to afford it seems to be working, which means the opposition is heading for Crazytown.

I would say “straight to Crazytown,” except it wouldn’t be accurate. At least one corporation may be taking a detour through Illegalville, and the Republican Senatorial Committee has stopped for a picnic in Highly Unethical Flats.

Summit of All Fears

Next Rachel took us on another visit to the Values Voter Summit and good lord, are you kidding me, Representative Roy Blunt (R – Missouri)?!

Great jumping fireballs, “values” people, racism is not code. We can tell when you’re doing that.

And yes, when you do it in public Mean Ol’ Media People will put it on television and call you out for being awful and probably make it harder for you to get elected next time.

One hopes the media will also call out all the jerkbags in the crowd who laughed delightedly at Blunt’s attempt at “humor”.

How stupid can you be, Values Speakers? Just in the interest of not having to hear this dreck anymore, I’ll explain how you can avoid this: Hire one person – one person between you – to suggest times when maybe you shouldn’t tell that particular racist joke (hint: always). Or to gently point out when you’re being a racist turnip-for-brains instead of a subtle and hilarious after-dinner speaker.

Oh, and P.S. the Values folks have discovered what turns people gay. I’m glad we’ve conclusively put that scientific controversy to rest.

Playboy: Turning straight men supergay for more than 50 years.

How do you suppose it has managed to keep an audience? Are there secret instructions inside that say “When this turns you gay, please exchange your subscription with a woman that Playgirl has turned into a lesbian”?

There must be some sort of message board.

Life During Wartime

Rachel reported that General McChrystal’s review of the situation in Afghanistan is bumming out people across at least two continents.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post stopped in to try to help Rachel figure out what exactly “winning” in Afghanistan would be and why we’re trying to make the Afghanis confident about a government that concerns itself almost entirely with voter fraud, bribery, and the opium trade. (Which is, yes, still a clearer agenda than the Republicans currently have, but that’s not the point.)

Ms. Information

Rachel noted that the journal Trends in Cognitive Science has published a study on the effects of torture on the brain and memory.

Amazingly enough, that kind of pain and stress makes it harder to remember things accurately and easier to confabulate false memories and information with the truth. The report said that torture is “biologically counterproductive to eliciting quality information.”

But that simply can’t be, because Dick Cheney told us that torturing people yielded buckets and buckets of information that was totally, unimpeachably accurate and incredibly valuable.

Those scientists must have misplaced a decimal or something.

Rachel also reported that Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan is a huge Dallas Cowboys fan and proved it by having his personal jet painted in the Cowboys colors. Turns out the jet may also prove that the Prince is a fan of corruption.

Dude. You have to hide giant bribes. Next time paint it to look like an old Gremlin.

Moment of Geek

Monday night’s Moment of Geek was an impressive illustration of why the government pushing regulations on industry can be a very good thing.

Yikes. Click the link and prepare to stop lusting after beautiful classic cars.

(Wait a minute. If straight porn makes you gay, does wanting to own classic cars turn you into a pilot?)

Stuck in the Middle with You

Speaking of regulations, President Obama wants to protect American consumers and prevent the formation of another financial hellmouth by establishing a Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

Well, that sounds reasonable. Who would be against such a thing?

Yes, of course that’s who. I keep expecting the Blue Dogs to start showing up in their own jets.

Just Enough

George Takei and his husband Brad Altman will be contestants on The New Newlywed Game. Kent had a full report, a bunch of Star Trek references, and some gratuitous but funny Newlywed footage.

I am faintly annoyed with Takei and Altman because now I am going to have to watch at least one episode of a show I had hoped to thoroughly ignore. They’re going to be adorable, damn them.

Takei, 71, and Altman, 54, were married Sunday in a multicultural ceremony at the Japanese American National Museum that featured a Buddhist priest, Native American wedding bands, a Japanese Koto harp and a bagpipe procession.

The couple, both clad in white dinner jackets with black pants, made a grand entrance to the tune of “One Singular Sensation” from the Broadway musical “A Chorus Line.” They stepped into a circle of yellow roses and lilies, where they shared a traditional Japanese tea ceremony and were wed by a Buddhist priest.

The couple, who have been together for 21 years, wrote their own vows.

Altman said that he had called Takei many things during their two decades together – “life partner, significant other” – but that their marriage represented “a dream come true for me.”

“I can add ‘my husband’ to the list of things I call you,” he said.

Takei called his longtime partner an “organized, detail-obsessed, punctuality-driven control freak.”

“I’m easygoing with details, so we’re a good fit,” he said in the trademark baritone recognizable to all “Star Trek” and Howard Stern fans.

“I vow to care for you as you’ve cared for me … and to love you as my husband and the only man in my life,” Takei said as he held Altman’s hands.

The priest then pronounced them “spouses for life.” A bagpiper played as the newlyweds walked out, followed by friends, family and a few members of the press.

Takei said he and Altman chose to make their wedding public – and have been outspoken gay-rights advocates for years – for the sake of democracy.

“We have a relationship that’s been stronger and longer-lived than some of our straight friends, and yet we were not equal,” Takei told The Associated Press before the ceremony. “What this does is give us that dignity; (it’s) being part of the American system and being whole. We’re making the American system whole as well, as America is becoming more equal.”

Such activism is nothing new for Takei. He participated in the civil rights movement, served as a Democratic delegate in 1972 and fought for redress for those – like his own family – who were forced into internment camps after World War II.

“I grew up determined not to be marginalized,” he said. “That served as an incentive for me to be proactive.”

He and Altman were among the first couples to receive a marriage license in West Hollywood when the state began granting licenses to gay couples on June 17.

“A quarter century ago, when I first met Brad, (marriage) was the farthest thing from our imagination,” Takei said. “But what seemed impossible at one time becomes, over the passage of time, more and more ‘what if’ and ‘why not.’ We have to participate in moving society along to be a better democracy.”

Wedding guests included “Star Trek” stars Walter Koenig and Nichelle Nichols, who served as best man and best lady, Hollywood executives, local and national government officials and the couple’s relatives from around the world.

Keeping with the multicultural theme, guests dined on Asian/Baja Californian fusion cuisine and took home Japanese tea-ceremony treats in boxes printed with the phrase: “May sweet equality live long and prosper.”

The “Star Trek” star and his manager plan to honeymoon in Argentina and Peru.