Mister, calm down.

Obama's 'stupid' jab at Vegas - CNN.com

I heard what he said. And you know what, Mr. Jillette? Lighten up. Your Oasis in the sand has built it's reputation as a land of forbidden fruits. And I'm pretty sure some people actually spend money they shouldn't actually be spending there. I know you have a pretty big stake in this, and I'm sure you earn every dollar of your money. I love your performances. But the reality is, the whole point of your city is excess.

Most of the people who go to your city, though, have some money to burn. And if they don't, do you think it benefits their cities, their town, to go spending money in yours? What we need is a sustainable economy, where John and Jane Q. Public can on occasion head to your city to have a little fun, and not worry about depriving others of what they need.

And Obama's helping on your end. What an off-hand comment that maybe a few thousand people might have heard of, if nobody made a big f'ing deal about it, now has been blown up into a controversy way out of proportion to its actual import. And to what end? To embarrass the guy who's actually trying to ensure that the massive foreclosures and economic troubles that hit Nevada, and Las Vegas in particular, don't happen again anytime soon?

You talk of Obama as being a gamble. I don't think that way. Gambling is a game of chance, where you don't necessarily know how to attain an outcome, where you trust to fortune rather than skill. Gambling is what people did in the suburbs of your city, buying and flipping houses in real estate speculation that drove values sky high. Gambling is what people did on Wall Street, and in the big banks around the country, trying to make money through financial chicanery, rather than productive investments.

Now, I got nothing against gambling as a means of having fun, when people set limits and know when to call it a night. But for too long, folks have been taking up gambling as a way of doing ordinary business, taking the games of chance and pushing them out of the casino. Obama's trying to push those games back in, to make sure that more people can afford to show up at a casino and spend their money on your games, and see your shows.

So don't be concerned about an off-hand comment like that. Most people are not going to go running back to the bank or the travel agent because the President gave them second thoughts. They're going to do it because their mortgages are burdensome, because they've lost their job, because they've taken a cut in pay to keep their job. They're going to do it because their healthcare bills have bankrupted them, or this, that and the other thing. People will stop going to Vegas because they can no longer afford to have fun, not because one politician, even a good one, says, "spend it on college."

You would make more productive use of your time arguing against the BS manner in which this economy's been run, the smoke and mirrors that people have put up to make money they didn't earn, the practices that have left America's workforce more sidelined than it's been in thirty years.

Your comment was pennywise and pound foolish. Support the President in getting this economy back into shape so he can the real money flowing back to your town.

Senators Lieberman, McCain And Graham Ask Obama To Halt Transfer Of Yemeni Gitmo Detainees | TPMDC

This is rich.

Never mind that the guy was from Nigeria. Never mind if folks have already looked at these folks and found them not to be a threat.

Cuz that's what we do with terrorists: we react! Makes good political hay, and terrible sense if you really think about it.

We can distract ourselves with a bunch of poorly founded suspicions, or we can go after actual leads. Our choice.

Not what I was looking for

But funny anyways. ;-)

But the question is, do I want to friend her?

Sarah Palin wants to friend you - CNN.com

Sure, it might say something that she brought social media to the Republicans. But all the social media in the world will not help somebody make friends who so casually ticks people who aren't die-hard republicans off.

Sarah's problem is that when she gets close to the presidency, people start getting nervous. Barack Obama, while labelled a celebrity president (this from the party that brought us the first former actor as president) is nothing of the kind. He's got the kind of qualifications most of us marvel at when we're not considering them in the light of a political campaign, where everything gets turned into something evil.

She? She's a big deal because forces in the party want her to be a big deal, and her ambition complements that. But as far as the merits of this candidate go, she's lacking. She can't even say she consistently runs the direction of the party's principles.

Do Republicans seriously want people to think they are in the habit of running people in their election contests who are all hat and no cattle?

Swine Flu, Right Back at You!

Daily Kos: State of the Nation:

"'This weekend, President Obama declared a national emergency in response to the
growing threat of swine flu. ... In response to Obama's declaration, the
Republican leaders this morning came out in support of the swine flu.'
---Jimmy Kimmel"

The sad thing about this joke is how close the Real Republican party is to doing exactly this. Not much difference between doing that, and telling people not to take the Swine Flu seriously because Obama's just trying to scare people into passing healthcare reform.

Ironically, if something happens, and millions of people have to deal with the healthcare industry at once, that's probably going to make reform popular real fast.

But hey, can you really accuse the right of picking its battles these days, much less picking them well?

Mmmm, NAND Gates... Tasty....

Quote of the Day Mother Jones:

"If you find yourself chewing the memory card in your cellphone to destroy any
record of your misconduct, something has gone terribly wrong with your
character."

I agree with Kevin Drum on this one. I would venture to add, though, that SDHC cards are far more tastier than SIM Cards, though, especially with a nice Hollandaise sauce.

File Under "Physician, Heal Thyself".

GOP victory Tuesday won't erase party's problems - Yahoo! News:

"'Right now there's no central Republican leader to turn to, and there's no
central Republican message,' conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh told Fox
News on Sunday. 'The Republican message is sort of muddied. What do they stand
for? Right now it's opposition to Obama.'"

Really? And who's responsible for that?

People like you have taken opposition to Liberal to its limits. Unfortunately, that means that practically everybody to the left of Atilla the Hun is fair game for your rather influential, and fairly continuous liberal Bashing.

Bush made it worse, because he made it so difficult to defend him without ignoring the objective truth of what Bush was doing or saying.

And now you've got a party that spins on its own, hardly restrained by any sense that it can't get out of its current troubles simply by BSing people and turning the Democrat's criticisms of Bush around on their star Barack Obama.

The Republican's only chance at popularity is to mindlessly encourage fear and suspicion of Democrats. But that negative space of contempt cannot make the Republicans well loved by the American people again, cannot restore the trust they squandered over the last fifteen years.

Republicans, in order to come back, will need to define themselves by something that appeals to an audience that no longer buys free markets, free trade, or other various Republican ideologies as reliable defaults. They will have to become something else than the Conservatives, or Neoconservatives they once were.

Or maybe the just need to quiet down and get competent once again, generate some sort of useful, practical philosophy, and not simply be out to get Liberals.

But then again, Mr. Limbaugh, that isn't exactly your department now, is it?

Kind of knew this already.

Media Confirms: Obama a Jedi Master.

There's kind of a sliding scale here, fella

Sanford: I Shouldn't Resign Because "God Can Use Imperfect People To Perform His Will" TPMMuckraker

There's a range at work governor, and while it's certainly a nation or a states choice whether they accept your kind of imperfection, they don't have to tolerate things without limit. If they find your conduct objectionable enough, you're not making friends by invoking it as "imperfection" or by saying you're doing God's will, when you clearly and now openly have broken one of the commandments.

Stupid? Let me tell you what stupid is, mister.

The VO Stupid Facebook Meme Of The Day: "Stupid Facebook Meme Of The Day
A neat “progressive” meme is currently all the rage on Facebook. Stupid, but it sure sounds nice."

That's a Right Wing Blogger's take on things. But what's he calling stupid?

No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should
go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status
for the rest of the day.

That's what he thinks is stupid.

I seem to remember this little thing in the Declaration of Independence about Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Not dying because you couldn't afford healthcare seems to cover two out of three just on flat practical terms, and if you understand just how constricting the economic consequences of serious illnesses are, you'd see it covered all three.

Oh, I know, I know. Maybe you'd have to comply with some regulations, deal with some red tape to get it. But are you any more free with the current system? Are you free to switch jobs if you've had a stroke, or a heart attack? Are your kids free to move from home, if your illness leaves you dependant on them for their livelihood?

If it weren't for Medicare, or social security, how many old folks would have to have moved in with their children, becoming a burden on them? Part of the point of these programs is to free the young and healthy to seek out lives of their own, rather than have to support their parents in their old age.

But that's just the economic argument, really. If I really wanted to be a bleeding heart about it, poverty shouldn't mean a death sentence for those with serious diseases. Come on, you Christians out there, this is a two-fer, heal the sick and help the poor! Or do you not fear the big fella saying "Go away, I know you not."?

As for people going broke because they're sick?

Look, part of the reason people go broke on this crap is because nobody can reasonably pay these bills themselves. The market is simply not shaped in a sane fashion for the person without health coverage. But worse, the folks who run the system look for every possible opportunity to dump people out of the very system that's supposed to keep them from having to pay all those costs out of pocket.

I support the Public Option, because I know from bitter personal experience just how screwed up this healthcare system is. I know people dead and maimed because of medical mistakes. Medical bills burden even those in my extended family with the highest incomes, the best coverage and the best doctors.

Folks, the stupidity is waiting on this. The stupidity is indulging the policies of those who had fifteen years to get this right, an opportunity they got for themselves throught he same kind of concerted effort they're giving now, but never did much good. The reason this meme is bouncing around the internet so fast is that my experience is not uncommon, and like me, those many people were folks who could have been satisfied, if the Republicans had created a workable alternative instead of just shooting down everybody else's suggestions.

I don't do Facebook, but if I did, I would agree. As it is, that paragraph is up there, and I invite anybody with an account to post that just like folks suggested. It'd be the smart message to spread.

Smarter than the Republican's message: Poverty should be a fatal disease, and the sick deserve to go broke. Their fault, really.

I know, I know!

#zingfail

The intensity of the stupid burned away his aging process, that's how.

Obama on Death Panels

Well, if you're sincerely sorry,it's accepted, but...

I'm not sure how well an apology fixes things like this.

If you are sincerely apologetic, break ties to this kind of racism. If you really were unaware of how offensive this was, when you first saw it, then you should consider what that says about who you're listening to, who you're hanging around with.

Folks on the right in general are not making good judgments as to who or what they're hanging around with. They're hanging around with Secessionists, people who support the violent overthrow of our elected government, racists, and others whose reputations are deservedly low. That has an effect on what a person judges to be appropriate.

This episode, one way or another, helps to highlight the extremity to which the right has drawn itself. It's time for the Republican to reconsider their associations, before their associations lead even more people to reconsider their support for them.

On Empathy

Short comment, pretty simple: As far as empathy goes in law, the Republicans state that empathy eviscerates impartiality.

Merriam Webster defines empathy so:

the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner

If you think about it in those terms, then obviously, short of rendering yourself entirely ignorant of both cases being made and recusing yourself from any matter faintly related to your own experience, you can't be impartial unless you consider both sides of the story, both arguments, without bias. Considering the perspective of both sides is critical to quality judgments, especially when the law asks questions whose criteria involve fairness, equity, and equality.

After all, with Brown vs. the Board of Education, the critical point is whether Separate is Equal. Some White guy who doesn't have to go to the back of the bus might see it that way, but another person may argue, indeed, that the very act of separating a person out based on appearance or racial ancestry constitutes unequal treatment. If you only consider an argument from one side, how can you call yourself impartial?

No, no, it couldn't be.

Is That a Euphemism?

Among the names on the Stormy Daniels Exploratory Committee: Dick Johnson, Peter Rodman, Percy Hardwicke, and Long Min Hung. Apparently tabling measures is very popular, and everybody joins in on that intercourse.

What?

Insert Headline Here

Insert Headline Here

I'm just going to leave the defaults up. That's what folks at the LA Times did.

The thing to keep in mind here is this: Once upon a time, you did your best to be productive and earn a profit by drumming up business well. Then came the age of the dominance of finance and speculation in the markets, and so it became more important to consistently make profits. But of course, you had to pay executives a lot for their executiveness. So guess what they cut? the jobs of people who just did things, who could fit in nice neat little slots and be taken out and replaced.

And so, business has become a game of how close to the edge you can run a business, before you run it into the ground. The problem with operating what's essentially a low flying business is that there's little room for correction. When the ground comes up to meet you, as it does in tough financial times, you really feel it.

There's something pathological about running a business this way, something strained.

Let's speak of broad overgeneralizations...

Oh Noes! The Left is organizing a large organization of people do do things! It must be the Hitler Youth! Or at least a Left Wing Slush Fund.


Okay, let me explain this in rather unconfused terms. The Hitler Youth was Adolf's personal youth fan club. It was created during the rise of the Nazi Party. It was paramilitary. Kids were actually trained to become Nazi soldiers.

As for calling it a slush fund, isn't it kind of early to allege corruption?

Of course, this is just me being literal about things, using words for what they mean rather than inventing paramilitary corrupt organizations out of thin air when faced by anything that resembles new deal type programs.

This is what comes of what we could call a vicious cycle of overheated rhetoric combining with the excessive credulity that many on the far right have of each others claims. Fictions far outrun realities when nobody's factchecking themselves.

Oh, and folks: it's voluntary.

An intriguing angle on Bernie Madoff's "Ponzi" scheme

This makes Madoff's case all the more intriguing, if right. The author makes the case that Madoff's fund wasn't a Ponzi scheme, but in fact a very complex, sophisticated money laundering operation.

The connection the author makes that grabs my attention is the one with the groups and individuals who own GM and Chrysler. Have to wonder what comes of this.

Prince sends note to suicide couple's family - CNN.com

Prince sends note to suicide couple's family - CNN.com:

The insanity in one particular passage in this sad story speaks for itself:

"Had they had the option of an assisted death in this country they may
still be alive, as their physical ability to travel would not have been a
factor," said Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying.

Yes, if they could have killed themselves at home, they might still be alive today. Some people are actually arguing that killing yourself abroad is more dangerous than killing yourself at home. Me, I think both actions come with a strong chance of death. But that's just me, stuck in my old-fashioned ways.

Let's define irony.

This is what Rush really thinks about what he does:




This is what happens when Republicans don't agree with this guy.

The conservative movement is tearing itself apart over a guy who intentionally provokes an atmosphere of hostility on his program in order to attract viewers. There's a certain poetic irony in this turn of events. The GOP benefited from similar tactics to that which Limbaugh describes in the video, tactics that made the Republicans the center of attention, the party of ideas it seemed.

Ideas? To be honest, they were little more than talking points designed to sell policies that were discredited by history, by clothing them in attractive language and framing. Where they about being serious conservatives? No. There really was no way for them to be that. They could trot out all their truisms, though, and make Democrats look bad or capitulate to certain policy by essentially wrapping everybody in a world where Republicans had the good ideas that work. The problem came when their ideas had to work, and yet didn't. Beating up the press didn't win Iraq for Bush. The rejection of federalism didn't help the Gulf Coast after Katrina. The destruction of accountability and responsibility in the regulatory regime didn't help business avoid a repeat of the events that sent us into a great Depression last time.

The Republicans were different, and for a while, people thought they might be different to a good effect. Unfortunately for Americans, we were just repeating the same mistakes we made before as a country.

Hat tip to JL Finch on the video

This is absolutely no cause for worry!

Former Republican Senator leading watchdog has taken a seat on the board of a subsidiary of Bank of New York Mellon. How can it be? The Republicans are fully able to sort out their conflicts of interests for the good of the country. Just look at Halliburton and Dick Cheney!

Seriously, though, when are the people in that party going to shock me by not shocking me with their behavior?

One Question: Are They Now French?

Blackwater Founder Prince Steps Down As Xe Chief

Ond I salute you, Monsieur Prince! Truly you are Xe King of Xe worldz marssehnarees! Xe Hiztory books will prais yor actsheenz!

It's not dead. It's Pining. Pining, for the FJORDS!

Oh, how horrible. Another excuse for these folks to say that they never had a truly conservative set of leaders.

I'm not going to count conservatism out just yet. But I can't say I look at the morale boost these folks are looking for as the most constructive element of a recovery. It was the inability to admit defeat, or at least the lack of success, that led Republicans to this point.

When are they going to reconsider things? When will they see that you can clothe old principles in new policies, and that a failure to do so will only guarantee further removes from public opinion.

Republicans must realize that the strength of their own beliefs is not enough. They must convince other people of what they believe, and the way they're going about things, they're confirming the worse views of their party.

But with their tactics, they're only reminding people what stubborn, uncompromising, obnoxious political figures they are. The Republicans need humble statesmen, need people that encourage the party as a whole to make peace with the rest of the country. The Republicans neither do themselves nor the country a favor by heightening the volume and the anger of their politics. They failed to maintain the trust of the American people, failed to create the conditions to justify their ideology with results.

The Failure of the Market in Cute Cartoons!

A video that can help the layman figure out the way we got in our current economic mess.


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Moron.

Video - CNBC.com: "Santelli's Chicago Tea Party"

Yes, yes, you people just did a bang-up job before the government came in and interfered. I hope the regulations give people like this rectal exams. Not that I'm a proponent of invasive government. I just would like to see America safe from the insane, unhinged Wall Street Free Market Freaks, who can't see past the end of their noses much less past their Trading Screens.

There's more to an economy than just letting shitheads like him play all day in the financial sandbox. These brats need to grow up.

Small World, isn't it?

Source: Kevin Drum's Blog at Mother Jones- Quote of the Day - 02.17.09

What we're seeing can be a very good function, so long as we keep the information good. By this kind of small world network (you know, six degrees of separation), we can see information pass out to the public very quickly. It makes it harder to keep secrets.

And easier to spread lies quickly. But then again, telecommunications already did that. The beauty of the Internet is that it allows the correction to flow back along the same lines with incredible speed.

But can their be something better?

Yes. Figure it this way: Individuals who are better than average researchers, have better than average memories, who are close to different subject, can pass along information that folks otherwise wouldn't get. In this way, the intellectual and situational advantages of a few in gathering information become the advantages of those who read them, and who subsequently provide links to the blog or pass on the original sources.

So, ask not what the interwebz can do for you, but what you can do for the interwebz!

That's just Ridiculous

I was genuinely surprised to hear about this. I mean damn. If Hannity likes the Music, he ought to explain to his listeners what the lyrics actually mean.

First verse is about a rich guy sneering at an old lady for collecting welfare. "Just for fun, he says Get a Job!"

Just remember what the refrain says:

That's just the way it is
Some things will never change
That's just the way it is
But don't you believe them

Interesting that even Hannity's song of choice argues against his beliefs.

The 25 Best Conservative Movies of all time?

The 25 Best Conservative Movies of all time? Here's my commentary on their choices, and why this list is based on a faulty premise.

1) The Lives of Others- Didn't we try something like a surveillance state under the last administration? I know Republicans like to portray these things in terms of economic regulations, or government intervention of any kind, but there's nothing particularly conservative about resisting such totalitarian systems and their abuses.

2) The Incredibles- Again, the Republicans think they have a monopoly on resenting the "everybody's special" idea. They should remember, though, that the family makes the decision not to stand out in the end, to let others succeed and have the spotlight. Syndrome's plan (Syndrome being the villain) is wacked out and evil because he's not sharing technological power with everybody to their benefit, he's killing superheroes and acquiring their powers out of a twisted resentment of them. I'll tell you that I don't think much of awarding all participants in a competitive contest equally, but I think even less of the sort of twisted cultural resentment of intellectuals and scientists that the Republicans have stirred up in the past few years. As a party, they've been very resentful when power is granted to others, and have little compunction of fighting to nullify other's advantages, instead of developing their own.

4) Forrest Gump- When did having a moral compass and being critical of the excesses of the 60's and 70's become a purely Republican thing? The movie was more Clintonian than Republican.

5) 300- Given that they left the Spartan's penchant for institutionalized child molestation out of the picture (literally), I'll do the same in my critique of this choice. But let's discuss the institutionalized infanticide, the dependence of the Spartans and Athenians on slavery, and the funny idea of King Leonidas proclaiming the virtues of democracy. I guess they like the plentiful slaughter of Middle Eastern Hordes and the fact that the buff Spartans act so manly their masculinity's just about to detonate one of their testicles.

Right.

6) Groundhog Day- I guess they missed the part where he outs that young man as gay. Or the fact that the film is about breaking free from a routine and humbling himself.

7) The Pursuit of Happyness- Again, the Republicans think they have a lock on admiring a virtue. Of course we like self-made folks. If only most people in Wall Street were like this guy. Unfortunately, while this is probably the kind of portrayal they wished Hollywood would gift to Wall Street folks, circumstances have made the other portrayals far more appropriate.

8) Juno- Apparently, they never watch Scream. I think people liked it more for its snappy dialogue than its moral message. Which reminds me: Conservatives? Perhaps instead of holding protests and demanding bannings of films with points of view you don't like, why don't you folks make good movies which have moral and upright overtones to compete with them? It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

9) Blast From The Past- I think they must have missed Back to the Future, and a metric ton of other fifties-set movies. On that subject, I'd say this: good and bad. There's good and bad in every era, and I think this movie whitewashes some of it. I think it's better to understand different eras with a mix of realistic appreciation and forgiveness for the shortcomings of the era. We'll have to remember to do that when we reflect on this decade, no doubt. For each side there will be things to absolutely hate, and things to feel proud of.

10) Ghostbusters- Yes, the guy from the EPA is a dick. Or dickless. Yes, it's true, this man has no dick. But on the flip side, it can be argued that he reflects a universal problem: political officials not doing the science, but messing with technology against the advice of those familiar with it. The latter part of the story argues for timely intervention when it comes to crises, rather than last minute measures taken after the situations blown up into a full blown crisis.

I know. But why do Republicans have to hog all the subtext? We're just as good at rationalizing undertones into popular entertainment?

(honestly, though, I wouldn't be surprised if this was genuinely meant to be a conservative shot from the director. He is Arnold's favorite director, after all.)

11) Lord of the Rings- Power corrupts. Well, that's universal. Tolkien was obviously conservative in his sensibilities. But who can forget the portrayal of misrule with Denethor, the self-destructive military policy, the price of allowing dark despair to take over. Tolkien's mythic story has room for many in it, especially given it's notes of sympathy for enemies, its explicit environmentalism, and its aggressive military character. You can read different things into it, depending on your viewpoint. Sometimes when we try to politicize what we write, we deprive it of the depth that makes it appeal beyond such partisan sentiments. But other sentiments can be felt beyond the confines of stuffy partisanship.

12) The Dark Knight- Some folks, they just want to see the world burn. One should remember when Alfred recounts what he did to defeat the bandits. He said he burned down the forest. The impression left at the end of the movie is that Batman essentially wins a pyrrhic victory by going all out, with his efforts to defeat the Joker. He strains relationships, alienates allies, and ends up being manipulated into finishing the destruction of the bright light that was going to help end Batman's tortured time as Gotham's protector. The movie, as much as anything else, is about the dark price of escalating the fight against evil into a no-holds barred battle. The price of such expedience is often to lose the war for winning the battles.

13) Braveheart- The nice fantasy for the Republicans is that somehow Liberals don't like movies about violent wars for freedom. Never mind Spielberg's own violent opus, Saving Private Ryan. Hell, should I tell them that I liked The Passion of the Christ, too? If the Conservatives weren't so busy insulting us about how much we dislike fights for freedom and religion, perhaps they'd realize that not every Democrat fits their obnoxious strawman. If we weren't so into ass-kicking, then how did we win the last election?

On another note, let me say this: though some liberals dislike graphic or realistic violence, and I can understand that, I take the other view: if violence doesn't seem painful, people won't consider it's cost so well. Constant violence can be desensitizing. With Rambo, Stallone's recent opus, I got to the point where all the evisceration and bodily destruction just became an intellectual exercise (gee, that's a new way to separate somebody from a limb...) But it's good punctuation and good drama sometimes to emphasize that violence hurts and people suffer. It's a balancing act.

14) A Simple Plan- As I recall it, moral slip-ups ending up in tragic consequences is a universal basis for tragedies. Call it conservative. I call it human nature. The irony is, such tragedies happened right in front of the GOP, and they didn't even acknowledge them.

15) Red Dawn- Good heavens. Do you really think I'd try to argue with this one?

16) Master and Commander- They should really tell these people that law and order and military discipline are not uniquely celebrated among their own. They should, however, take note of the disdain in which superstition is held. After all, a major subplot of the film revolves around a nice little trip to the Galapagos Islands. They should have also picked up on an important lesson: as British officers, Aubrey and his crew were obligated to choose the lesser of two weevils. (that's not a typo, watch the film)

17) The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe - I first have to include the blurb the writer did on this film, just to make most of my point for me:

The White Witch runs a godless, oppressive, paranoid regime that hates Santa
Claus. She’s a cross between Burgermeister Meisterburger and Kim Jong Il. The
good guys, meanwhile, recognize that some throats will need cutting: no
appeasement, no land-for-peace swaps, no offering the witch a snowmobile if
she’ll only put away the wand. Underlying the narrative is the story of Christ’s
rescuing man from sin — which is antithetical to the leftist dream of perfected
man’s becoming an instrument for earthly utopia. The results of such utopian
visions, of course, are frequently like the Witch’s reign: always winter, and
never Christmas.

Good heavens, man. Could you be any more hilariously off-base? Maybe you should watch the next movie, which is about how even those with the best intentions can screw up. Major subplot at least. This War on Christmas crap just makes me want to throw things. All because we're trying to be a little more inclusive while we celebrate our own particular holiday, these wingnuts (and I pick my use of that term with particular care) act like we're trying to destroy it, like we hate it. As for land for peace details, should we remind these folks just whose land it was originally when the Israeli's took it? They're called the occupied territories for a reason.

Sigh. I love when folks tell me what I really think. I really do need help figuring out what I'm thinking for myself.

18) The Edge- Otherwise known as an allegory for the Obama story. Brains beats hostility. Obama the rabbit smokes the pipe on the other side of the paddle because he knows he's safe from the Panther.

Or we could look at this as a tale of the self-made man winning out over an opportunistic, dishonest thief, which as I reminded y'all folks earlier, is not restricted as an admired virtue to the Right.

19) We Were Soldiers- I let you guys have this one.

20) Gattaca- First, there are no calamitous results. Spoiler: Ethan Hawke's character succeeds in his ambitions. Further spoiler: Liberals love stories of people overcoming adversity and discrimination. Don't they remember that the guy who wrote and directed this also directed Lord of War, one of perhaps the most harrowing critiques of American foreign policy in recent times?

21) Heartbreak Ridge- "A welcome glorification of Reagan’s decision to liberate Grenada in 1983". Glorification is the right word to describe any movie about the invasion of Grenada. Not to knock the soldiers who did their job there, but that wasn't an earthshaking triumph. We should fight wars to practical ends, not as therapy for lost battles. War is not a safe, touchy-feely thing that can be so casually employed. I haven't seen it, to be sure, and I'm sure Eastwood is a hoot, but Grenada is a footnote in history, which could have almost been fictionalized as some other battle had Grenada not come along.

22) Brazil- A good Liberal movie for the same reason it's a good Conservative movie.

23) United 93- Hollywood has a tendency to seek commercially sound melodramatic balance, whether the movie tries to be Conservative or Liberal. They could have made the movie go either way. Instead, they portray both sides with humanity, without making the fatal mistake of using that humanity to excuse obviously heinous acts. Republicans need to realize that lowest common denominator jingoism is both unnecessary and unhelpful. This movie make the point of what evil the Terrorists did, and what heroism the passengers employed to challenge their captors, without resorting to cliche or lowest common denominator stereotyping.

24) Team America: World Police- The Liberal Hollywood Left is the two dollar senior citizen prostitute of Republican cliches about Democrats. Yes, sometimes folks like that say amazingly stupid shit. That's what happens when you have people with lots of money and few people to tell them "no" or "shut up". But they've frequented this stereotype so much and for so long that it probably excites next to no attraction for folks besides those desperate enough to try it. Worse, they take the stereotype of the stereotype, which is essentially like making an out of focus porno movie in the dark with that old two-dollar whore. As easy as it is, one just has to wonder "Why?"

25) Gran Torino- Encouraging understanding and assimilation of immigrants. Realizing that racism is bad. Gee, what a concept. I'll acknowledge the Republicans got to it first, during the civil war, but for some odd reason, the Republicans of today took up the political banner of those who they beat in that past century, and became the party of States Right, rationalized racism, and recalcitrant hatred of the the old Union States.


I don't know. The public voices of the Republicans seem unwilling to admit that they live in the same country, admire many of the same values, and fight against many of the same evils as everybody else. It's kind of sad to see the way the Republicans have convinced themselves that the rest of the country is all against them. They seem to be trapped in a world where they can't rely on anybody outside of the redstate tribe. They need to open themselves up to the world beyond their politics.

I Would Just Like to Remind These People...

That it takes two to tango, and they're stomping on our feet.

Room to Manuever...

What I think Kos misses here is that we had to get folks on our side first.

Let me put it this way: If the Republicans had gone along, we would have won, created a governing majority, and healed the wounds of division. All good for us. Well, the Republicans weren't game. They banded together, as a party and essentially proved to everybody who wasn't a Republican how recalcitrant they were.

Look at your own poll results: nobody's getting fooled here by the Republican's rhetoric but the Republicans. In the meantime, to keep this charade up, they'll have to pressure themselves into ever-escalating triumphs of obstruction and partisanship, which will likely go over as well with the voters as they did the last two times. And of course, as many of the quotes out there are saying, the Obama administration's not going to be so gentle with them this time around. They wanted a war? Unfortunately, perhaps, now they have one. And with Barack Obama, of all people. Why do they want to pick a fight with a guy who beat the Clintons and beat McCain?

A quick way to reduce the sixty vote "requirement"...

I don't think we need to eliminate the filibuster. I think we just need to force them to be good as their word everytime. You want to filibuster? Okay. Then talk, and talk and talk. And let everybody know who you are, and why you're getting in the way. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and the Senate's a refrigerator that hasn't been cleaned or emptied in a decade. It's even got its own ecosystem for heaven's sake.

A modest suggestion

Disgraced 'Blackwater' Rechristens Itself With Unpronounceable 'Xe'

They should add a particular greek letter to their name both to raise unpronounceability and appropriateness.

Neither is it CNN's.

Digital TV conversion 'not finest hour'

That's the title of this report, and unfortunately, the report misses some critical points.

First, yes, it's not government's finest hour, but then, that was par for the course with the Bush Administration, which slow-rolled and postponed this time and again. What the Obama Administration is doing is correcting a mistake by the Bush Administration. But that costs money. Unfortunately, that's a point which the right-wing CAGW is unlikely to compromise on. They claim to be non-partisan, but they're more like Libertarian/ Republicans. They say "Citizens Against Government Waste has long argued that out-of-control spending, not tax cuts, is the root cause of deficit spending." If that sounds non-partisan to you, maybe you should follow the link and tell me why George Soros, Barbara Streisand, Michael Moore, and other darlings of the right are singled out for criticism.

The message always is "Guvment SpNd'n is teh sux0r!!111!1!", and "Tax cutz pwn!!11!1!!1!" with them. Also pork has considerably flexible definitions for those on the right.

They're missing some critical issues. I'm not going to go into the Stimulus package issues, but let's just get something straight here: government efficiency doesn't always go up when spending goes down, nor have, in the past few decades, the big tax cuts done anything but create large deficits.

What hindered the ability of the program in question to work, the coupon program for the recievers, was its insufficient funding. Let me repeat that: they couldn't pass out more coupons quickly enough because they didn't have the money to do so.

It pisses me off. I want to call these people morons and idiots, but to be kind to them, they're probably just particularly entranced with an idea they're in love with. The idea being that you can make anything more efficient by being cheap. That all extra spending is bad. That all government investment gets in the way of private investment. That government screws up as a matter of course.

The irony is, often enough, you get situations like with the SEC and Madoff, where you have both a culture of laissez faire permissiveness, and even protection of jackasses like Madoff (You know, because it would be evil for the government to interfere with the market.), and where the agency has too little funds and too little manpower to do its job. But hey, the SEC, according to people like that, is supposed to be capable of pulling magic rabbits out of its ass to grant wishes regarding enforcement. Vulgarity aside, these people want the impossible: something for nothing.

So lets be clear on this: sometimes you need to spend money to make money. That 650 billion is not a waste if it prevents further delays in reclaiming the spectrum. It also isn't a waste for all those broadcasters who are looking to dump the expense of having to keep their analog stations going at the same time they move to their digital stations. Do these people understand, either at CNN or these "watchdog" groups that without expediting this particular transition through such funding that the government is essentially going to end up costing taxpayers more?

We've got away from a sensibility in government that focuses on getting things done. Instead, we salute triumphs of the balance sheets, by beancounters extraordinary. Look, getting budgets balanced, taxes low as manageable, and preventing government waste are fine goals. But when government's priority should be doing its job first, with balanced budgets, sustainable tax rates, and preventing government waste as goals in service of that, not competition with it.

I mean, look at World War II. Was balancing the budget more important than winning the war? By deficit spending there, we succeeded in removing a threat to both our way of life, and our economy. We freed millions, and they enjoyed shared prosperity with us because we subsequently poured billions into propping up Europe's economy.

But we ran up debts in Vietnam, poured money into Iraq. What was the difference? Why did the first lead to success, and the second two wars precipitate their own little catastrophes? Well, lets put this plainly: in the latter two wars, practicality yielded to ideology. People wanted to win, sacrificed and sacrificed to win, but did not consider that the results of their failures could make the problem worse, and that they should get out of their own way.

Bush pushed the tax cuts, with the Republicans, even as the deficits skyrocketed. He raised government spending almost without limit. It's a point of irony that CAGW lambasted the Congress for raising the debt ceiling while refusing to acknowledge that tax cuts forced this to occur. The truth of the matter is, the Bush administration should have left taxes alone. Even doing nothing would have meant a lower increase in our debt burden, and brought fiscal sanity closer within arm's reach. But they didn't let practical realities get in the way of what they wanted. They thought they could ignore the signs that their policy might not work, or didn't work in the past, and just insisted on doing things their way, towards their goal.

It's not that certain Republican ideas don't make sense. It's just that it seems that those from the right have made up their minds as to what works, rather than looking at the world around them, studying how things actually work, and moving after their goals down those particular pathways, with those particular solutions. Yes, one can still be wrong, but if you take the right approach, with the right attitude, then you can learn from being wrong, and not just keep on trying to force your error to work as you desire it to.

Obama's trying to get this digital TV transition right, and all CNN and these "watchdogs" can do is sneer at him. Well, yes, sometimes (all too often, really) government screws things up. The question is, do the people in question try to make things right, do things right?

Proof and Vindication

Much has been made of the failures of bipartisanship in Washington, and News analysts have made a point of questioning the wisdom of Obama's approach. But was it ever his failure to begin with? The Republicans don't seem to have changed their politics to suit their new even more minor minority status. They're behaving little different than they did before the 2008 elections, when their party had been kicked out to the doghouse, and little different than they did before the 2006 elections.

There are times when staying the same is a decisive act, and nobody can say that being obstructive in these times, with their minorities is not decisive. At least not in terms of behavior. But decisive in character isn't necessary decisive in effect, at least as desired. For a country that believes something else must be done than what we have been doing, the definitive statement made by enduring obstruction is not exactly reassuring, and the fearmongering doesn't help.

The Republicans dig in their heels, obviously, to avoid looking like they've lost the battle, to look at least like they're fighting the coming wave of liberalism. For many conservative voters, this might be a heartening development, but for the interests of the Republicans and their voters, it's not. The Republicans are faced with a situation in which moderates are becoming more and more alienated from their party. It doesn't help that the party enforces its discipline even at its member's political expense. If they primary their moderates, the likelihood has grown that they will end up with moderates again in the offices, but this time with a "D" by their name.

The right has surrendered the moderate middle, and now defends it's radical flank at all costs. Do they fear that if they give up that, they'll be even more irrelevant? Could be. But long term, the tension of the pull towards the Right is tearing the Republicans away from those who could support their return.

What they might be counting on is riding to the rescue after Obama fails, blaming him for a worsening economy. Could work, to be honest. That sliver of hope may be what drives Republicans. I also wouldn't dismiss the notion that the Republicans are so ingrained with their philosophy, that they have trouble seeing the stimulus as anything else than a potential failure. In which case, of course, they see no alternative to opposing it, if they want to do the right thing.


So be it. That seems to be the Republican's plan. The trick to all this, though, is that it's been their plan for the last eight years and has not worked yet. Even if the Stimulus doesn't work as planned, Obama's both lowered expectations for instant and spectacular success, and seems to be willing to go further than just this initiative in changing the economic situation. This won't be the last time Americans see Obama working long hours on their behalf.

Just speaking from a coldbloodedly political standpoint, the Republicans should recall that this was the exact same approach they took in the thirties, and that even recently, President Clinton made the Republicans look petty when they tried to impose their agenda after their seizure of the majority in 1994. They should recall that their obstructionism on the war cost them the majority in 2006, and even more in 2008 after the economic collapse, and their stunt against the TARP legislation wasn't that politically helpful to them either.

If you're not a Republican or a fellow traveller, it's not going to look much different now than it has, even if the Republicans are right. And the indications are that they aren't. The Republicans are making it very difficult for people to believe that they've learned their lessons.

It's unlikely people have forgotten enough about the past few years that what they do now will seem unconnected to what they did before. It's also probably unlikely that the Republican's ardent, partisan hostility towards liberalism has been forgotten either. There is a clear, logical explanation for the Republicans actions, true or not, that indicates less than selfless, partisan motivations for their actions.

And lets not forget: Obama won on people's hostility to that.

Even if the Republicans are right, the manner in which they are conducting their political manuevers is not helpful to their cause or their reputations. Unfortunately, the Republicans have made a point of only considering their own people, their own fellow travellers as reliable sources. The rest of America is asking, perhaps not without sympathy, "How do we get through to these people?"

One of the most frightening videos you will ever see

If this doesn't drop your jaw to your computer table and your heart into your stomach, you should be checked for a pulse

Personal Stakes

I can wear a number of hats concerning this issue. I'm diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, so I have a personal interest. I'm a science nerd, especially concerning neuroscience, so I wear the hat of somebody interested in the facts of the case. I'm also a political wonk, with a particular interest in how science translates to policy.

My opinion comes down to this: we're using the science to clear the B.S. explanations for why this happens out of the way. It's difficult, because taking a real world issue like this and plopping it down in a lab is impossible. You get likelihoods more than absolute laws and rules. It's not even clear here that Autistic conditions necessarily have to have just one cause or kind of cause, any more than heart conditions can be explained by just one etiology. There could be metabolic disorders, environmental exposures, genetics involved, and what for one person might be a good treatment could be useless or worse. For some, there may not fundamentally BE a treatment, other than learning to live with the pathology at hand.

Was it wise to investigate the Vaccine connection? By all means. But nobody has found any indication that Thimerosal or anything else in them is causing the epidemic increase. Even worse, the numbers have risen as vaccines with this mercury-based compound have been phased out. Simple inductive logic tells you that A cannot be the sole cause of B, if B continues to increase as exposure to A decreases.

If a negative relationship had been discovered, we would have been obligated in good conscience to change how we produce and use vaccines. But it has not, and until we've used the B.S. detector of science to clear away the misleading hypotheses, targeting vaccines as a cause is not only bad, but potentially counterproductive. Measles and other illnesses we vaccinate for are known to have potential neurological complications. From a speculative point of view, we could even pose infectious diseases as potential causes, but from a purely factual point of view, having a child dealing with the after-effects of such neurological complications is no picnic.

I understand the impulse people have to fight for their children. I understand that it can sometimes seem like corporations are just out to cover their asses. But at some point, we have to humble ourselves before the facts, and let the unsupportable explanations drop.

We need to know more about what can cause autistic disorders, not become fixated on explanations for personal and emotional reasons. With limited resources and the scientific uncertainties that come with investigating phenomena beyond the lab, we must sometimes make the difficult choice to look beyond our preferred explanations, and seek out the right ones, because the truth, preferred or not, is all that can set us free here.

And you thought your job was difficult!

Obama's featured on the cover of Mad Magazine, in what might be a realistic portrayal of how Obama's feeling on the inside.

He's sort of like Madonna, or Prince...

Somebody should tell this fellow that if Rembrandt had a brother named Murray, he'd be named Murray van Rijn.

As the great Austin Powers once asked...

Who throws their shoe?

Just like old New York, Was once New Amsterdam

"Why they changed it, I can't say, people just liked it better that way!"

With apologies to They Might Be Giants, of course.

Seems like you might be familiar with Mumbai's previous name: Good old fashioned Bombay. Can't say I blame them. I believe the former name was the product of the name given to it by Portuguese Traders. So remember, it's Mumbai, not Bombay, and it's Istanbul, not Constantinople.

So why did Constantinople get the works? That's nobody's business but the Turks.

Sorry, couldn't resist. :-)

This Political Cartoon Is Just Too Perfect For Words.

Just follow the link and you'll see why.

What a difference a month makes...

One of the hazards of being involved in three blogs at once is that you concentrate your efforts unequally most of the time. This blog was meant to be something of an overflow blog to deal with the items too minor to be dealt with on my once daily blogs. So, if you missed me here, in that unlikely event, I'm over at Watchblog, and Daily Kos on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, history passed me by on this blog, but fortunately enough, I was able to mark the occasion at Watchblog.

I certainly feel better, now that Obama won. And he didn't win by a slim margin, he won it walking away. You know, like those people in the movies who walks away from an explosion without flinching. That cool. And now we begin to see how his cabinet takes shape. Am I excited? Not yet. Too many years under Bush have darkened my perspective on government. Hopefully, Obama will make good on his promise and make me proud of how we govern in America again.

Don't be a stranger here, I won't be, if I can help it.

The Right Wing Biting It's Own Tail:

Bill Kristol: NYT iz teh stupid!|!1!!
Jon Stewart: NYT iz ur base.

Pwn3d.

In the interest of bipartisanship...

see Sarah Palin pictures

I know. Unfair, but I couldn't resist.

see Sarah Palin pictures

Another Good One

see Sarah Palin pictures

I liked this.

see Sarah Palin pictures

(h/t) to Pundit Kitchen

Oh, oh, no, no, no.

Relax, please. Take your time. You've done quite enough to help us, thank you very much.

A good article on Credit Default Swaps

AKA, the crap that got us into this whole mess in the first place.

Keating Economics

I think this is like the skinny kid with glasses cold-cocking the bully when he pokes his fingers into the nerd's chest one too many times.

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign is in full-on flail mode.

Apparently, nobody told him about this called "The Spirit of the Law"

There is more to law than mere letters on a page. Bush has some nerve making a statement like this, given his habit of making signing statements where he announces his intention to ignore what's written in the law.

The truth is, there are larger purposes to the law, its interpretation, and its enforcement. Judges should be allowed the flexibility to determine the best way of interpreting the law.

Judges ultimately can be held accountable by other judges, if they overstep their bounds, but tying their hands with narrow interpretions don't do people much good.

What is it that offends us about this?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not on this guy's side. But let's not delude ourselves: throwing a puppy over a cliff is probably neither the worst thing he's ever done, nor is it likely to be the worst abuse inflicted on an animal in this war or any other.

To be honest, I don't see what reason, besides negative publicity, this guy's getting kicked out. Under most circumstances, I would think this might be a minor or even ignored offense.

It was seen, though, and there are legitimate concerns for Armed Services who are likedly not to popular as it is at the moment. To put it plainly, the callous nature of the act is what's giving it the most condemnation.

Psychologists following sociopaths list this kind of callousness towards human and animal life as one of the major signs of the disorder, a hallmark of an evil attitude in general. As appealing as it might be to watch folks become heroic killing meachines in movies, the reality of that rightly scares us.

We think, when we see a guy calmly and callously chuck the dog off the cliff, we have to wonder, is he going to gravitate as callously towards people?

Now I know, logically speaking, that some will make the point that soldiers are supposed to be like that. That, though, is a problematic point if you depart from the notion that the ideal for a soldier is to be mindless killer.

Soldiers kill by the very nature of their profession, but they are supposed to know the sharks from the guppies and act accordingly. In a war like this, where such fish don't exactly swim separately, some suggest that a callous disregard for innocent life is a necessity. However, given the damage this attitude does and has done to our strategic aims in Iraq and elsewhere, we have to ask whether such cold-bloodedness is really what we want.

Undoubtedly for many soldiers, the killing of others will break down certain normal inhibitions, and certain actions that would be difficult for a civilian will become easier, less thought upon. Nonetheless, we hope and pray, and usually see our soldiers come back having resisted the temptations of needless infliction of pain and suffering, rather than given in to it.

Point is, when we see some guy throw a puppy off a cliff, we worry that this person has gone over the edge, or has already or maybe even always been over that edge. We don't want to entertain the notion that in fighting to defend ourselves or our principles, that we've turned ourselves into folks little better than the badguys.

That's why this guy's getting sent home: not political correctness, but distinctly scary, callous behaviors.

Define Irony...

Gas Prices are so bad that even the world's most profitable oil company doesnt' make enough money selling it to justify remaining in the gas station business.

From The Files Of "You Know You're In Deep S*@# When..."#2

You know you're in deep S@*! when you know the answer to the question "What if we gave a fundraiser and nobody came?"

Cast of Thousands: Obama Rally attended by 75,000

This could be going somewhere.

A Triumph of Rhetoric over Education

I watched the following clip in amazement:



I have a theory that often ideas get their facts worn off as people use them and overuse them. People simply grab on to convenient pop culture moments and pop off. Munich has become the Right Wing's convenient handle for alleging that the left will talk the country into further danger, rather than act to head off danger.

But like others have pointed out, it wasn't talk that was the problem with the European's actions at Munich, it was believing that by giving away territory and claims to Hitler, they'd satiate his hunger for power. That didnt' work, obviously. There's something more to this, though. The Republicans neglect what lead to Munich. They neglect the aftermath of World War I.

The Allies defeated the Germans and decided to get tough with them, to create this no-tolerance kind of policy. They imposed such draconian consequences on them that it caused a backlash among the German people, lending popular within Germany and even international support to the rise of Hitler's regime.

The horrors of the previous war were not ones people were keen on repeating. For the Europeans, who sent millions of poor souls to die in the trenches, the desire to repeat that horror was low indeed. Faced with Germany's resurgence, with deep-seated repugnance towards new wars, their hawkish attitudes were hollow at best. They had some choices. They could have stood up to them and said "This Far, No Further". They could have simply refused. Instead, they appeased, and got little for it in terms of peace.

My point is two-fold here: Talking isn't appeasement. Giving problematic regimes incentives for good behavior isn't appeasement. If we have control over the situation, if we're not simply desperately offering something to keep them from attacking us, it's not appeasement. If, for example, we offer them something positive, and they fail to do what they're supposed to do, we can take whatever we were giving back. Appeasement would be Iran threatening to roll into Israel unless we give them a territorial claim somewhere around them. Then and only then would we be truly trying to appease them. Remember where you've heard the world elsewhere: you appease a God through sacrifice, a conqueror through obedience and capitulation. The Dragon asks for virgins, and you give them that so it doesn't burn down your village.

Republicans want to pose Iran as a threat, but they're not mobilizing for war. Hell, they dismantled their nuclear weapons program five years ago. The threat we face is purely speculative, and as hard as it would be at this point, we could handily muster up the forces to defeat them. We're not nervously waiting for an army parked at our border to roll over it in their tanks.

We're doing just fine, thank you. If anybody is leading us down the path to Munich, it's those who are so hawkish, so intent on exhausting this country through unnecessary wars that we will have to capitulate on our interests to maintain our own defenses at some point.

It is useful at the end of the day to recognize that we're not infinite in our power, and that our best strategy is to be effective in choosing where we use the sticks, and judicious in where we give the carrots, to understand that the credibility of both lies in our selective use of both.

In other words, if you really want to avoid appeasement, don't get so full of bluff and bluster, so quick to pick fights and get caught up in endless quagmires, that you come to a point where somebody is stronger than you and knows it, and can wring this kind of capitulation out of you. Keep yourself strong and your powder dry.

On The Reverend Wright Interview with Bill Moyers

Here's a link to my thoughts on the media reaction, the transcript, and video of the interview.

Corleone Family Tactics... Or Montana?

The question is, after she's done wiping out the disloyal, freezing out the interest groups who betrayed her, who's left to elect her in November? This is less like The Godfather, and more like Scarface, even if it works out for her. Unfortunately for her, just about everybody recognizes that whatever she says about Barack Obama's electability, she's kneecapped herself with major constituencies of the party, and many find her politics against her own party distasteful.

And that really is the heart of it: It isn't just that she attacked Obama. That's to be expected; politics ain't beanbag. It's that she's attacking her own party in a certan fashion. She's cooperated with folks on the right to do this(even folks that hounded her in the past), folks looking for strategic advantage on their own side who won't vote for her. She's taken up many of the Republican standards against her own party, with a party that no longer has any patience for the demonization of the left, and which can get independents and disaffected Republicans without having to sell themselves out.

So, in the end, she's dug her own electoral grave, and pretty soon the party's going to start burying her candidacy with no small sense of relief.

From the Files of "You know you're in deep s*** when..."

For the Republicans, you know you're in deep s*** when the Democrats beat you in Mississippi.

Should we call it Mississ-hippy now? Damn dirty hippy Southern States.

This is just Disgusting.

Read this for yourself.

This is the nightmare our government's become.

Loyalty Defined Down

I will have serious reservations about backing the Clintons in future contests because of this one. This article in the New York Times isn't what pushed me over the edge, I think their behavior over the past few weeks has been more the cause of that.

I'm really sick of politicians who define loyalty one way, towards themselves, but don't give back. It would be easier for the Clintons to keep friends if they acted like friends; friends of the party, friends of the middle class, friends to those who helped them, supported them, but have had differences of opinion.

If they took these things more maturely, if they accepted that they weren't entitled to win every contest, and that letting a few fights go might help keep them in the running for future candidacy, they might not have screwed themselves so royally. As it is, now, they've turned a huge portion of their party against them. What the hell now makes them the better candidates? Obama's not going to punish people for supporting Clinton. They won't be so forgiving, but as they decline, Obama's open arms are going to look a lot more welcoming than their turned backs.

Sorry no embedded video on this one, but...

...This is freaking Hilarious. (John Edwards doing The Word on The Colbert Report, for the click through challenged)

I want a jet-ski, too.

THE ANGER JUST COMES OFF PENNSYLVANIANS IN...

...RIVULETS.

Turns out nobody's bitter about Obama saying they were bitter, and even some really are bitter. Except they're not.

Excuse me, I've got a headache.

Gibson and Stephanopoulous Are angling for his Job...

The Brush-Off

Yes sir, brush that dirt off.

Barack Obama's Speech in Steelton

Further asskicking commences!

New Video: Obama's response to the "Bitter" controversy

I went off walking the dogs after seeing this with a sense of hope I've rarely had in the last few years. I have rarely seen a candidate I've support so quickly and powerfully demolish that kind of attack, and so elegantly.



I hope to do my part to get as many people to see this as possible. The "bitter" controversy needs to be shot down as quickly as possible. It's good to have a candidate who makes support this easy!

Street Money

Found a video in this comment on DailyKos that should interest you all out there.



Word is, Barack Obama has refused to do this Pennsylvania, just like he refused to do it in South Carolina. In fact, that was the news in this Kos Diary.

This is one more reason why I like Obama. It takes a lot of balls to refuse to kowtow to the system, to not play the machine game.

I think I know what lead up to this bizzare commercial.

A bottle of tequila, shared between the political director of the McCain Campaign, and an eager young media student who can't wait to try out his new video effects program. (original link to article where I found this.)



Hey, I'm not judging, I've been there. Only I've never put out anything this... original. Yeah. That's the word for it.

Strategic Credibility

Here's how I think McCain gains his credibility. He publically arranges to do something substantially different from the party line, or makes some statement critical about a policy, and then makes sure the media covers it as if he's what he says he is.

The rest of the time, he does the standard things. The trick is to have those moderate, bipartisan things (or things that seem that way) be the face of his political career, rather than the stuff he actually does.

The key is to get the maverick, bipartisan, moderate stuff out in front, so when he backslides in private, he still appears like he's got the potential to do something surprising.

The Problem is not that we're pulling troops out...

...too fast or not fast enough. The real problem here is that regardless of what we've been doing, we've had no real control over the situation in Iraq, which right now seems to be worsening.

Last year, we benefited from the cooperation of the Sunnis, and the cooperation of the al-Sadr in reaching a ceasefire. The way things are arranged, though, even with the numbers of soldiers we had at the height of the surge, it's not enough to smackdown the insurgents if they want to get rowdy. Meanwhile, we stand in the way of the Iraqis and their government coming to a modus vivendi, which they'd pretty much have to reach if they didn't want things to utterly fall apart.

Withdrawal was the best of bad options in 2006. Now it's the best of genuinely terrible options now, and things have become quite a bit more complicated now that we've been arming sides. The best we may have done is allowed certain groups to consolidate at the expense of others, making them stronger in comparison to the weak central government. I know some might say, but isn't that the best government? But looking at a failed state, I say, no, not really. You need a government that people actually listen to. It doesn't help the Iraqis that they're living in this kind of system of de facto tribal feudalism, unmanaged, unchecked by a strong modern government.

Bad Idea. Terrrrrrrible Idea.

I'll tell you what the problems with holding a Superdelegate convention before the real one to decide who gets them are:

1) It won't prevent a nasty public fight, it will likely just relocate it.

2) It would have all the elitist charm, if it's results went a certain way of somebody trying to appeal to the superdelegates at the convention.

3) Mathematically, we already have a decent standard on hand: pledged delegates. And that has the bonus of having a winner ready made, even if some in the party don't like it.

4) There's already a way for the superdelegates to decide what to do on their own. Follow the general state of the primary. If some catastrophe happens, you can always turn around and goe the other way.

At the end of the day, if the Superdelegates weren't so craven, we'd have a candidate already. And if we didn't have them at all, we'd hardly be having this conversation. We'd have a candidate. But that would be doing things the easy way, and the Democratic Party's hardly been interested in that for the generation or two before this one. Oh well, said the hydrologist.

The Long and Short of this...

Is that if they're being this reckless with letting Bill out to do damage, they are really desperate.

Bill's problem is that he's not merely a loose cannon on deck, but essentially a second captain on a ship that should only have one. Ideally, he should have have remained in the background, because he's hardly the kind to stay on the bench and let Hillary shine for herself.

Reality Call for Evan Bayh, Steve Daugherty on the Line...

I know the Indiana senator's just trying to back his candidate, but it's a little too early to start calling these states for Hillary in the General Election.

Here's how it breaks down: she's a long shot in the general election if she can't unite her party behind her. No matter what the poll results say now, they will say something else entirely eight months from now.

Senator Clinton has a chance to beat McCain that's better than even odds, but she will depend upon and campaign mainly in the swing states, and in the safe states that form our core constituency. This will make for a fragile set up, where local victories by McCain will make more of a difference.

Obama has the skills and organization to move past this, to make our victory more robust. Every time we've depended on swing states to win, we've lost. We need to move into new territory to win. Obama can take on challenges in both the Swing States and the Red States, and by doing that lead us to a comfortable win and mandate, as opposed to a weak 50+1 victory that only benefits Clinton politically, and that, by getting her into office.

Gee, I don't know. Will he reconsider that Endorsement Now?

According to Mark Penn, Bill Richardson has joined the ranks of the insignificant.

Mark Penn. Being paid millions of dollars by Clinton and worth every penny of it...
...to Obama.

Warning Signs

McCain is the only Senator, much less presidential candidate, to get an incomplete on a recent survey about Middle Class Responsiveness.

Stroke patient Tim Johnson, debilitated from serving until September of last year, showed up to vote, good or bad, fifty percent more of the time.

I'm afraid I can't say I share this guy's pessimism

There needs to be some confrontation, I think, so Obama has a chance to shine once again, and Hillary has the chance to announce that's she's returned to her senses and has ditched the advisors who are sinking the Clinton's popularity.

They Won't Dance Because of Obama...

...They'll dance because of that crazy Casssbaah Sooooound!

Seriously, folks, the racism and fearmongering doesn't get any more obvious than this.

This ranks right up there with concerns that electing Kennedy would put America under the control of the pope.

Clinton's Experience?

She goes around, talks with people, gets people organized, makes strong statements on moral matters.

So says the Chicago Tribune.

Which means the only real thing she has on Obama is a couple of years in the Senate. And he has six years on her in elected office.

Experience might count, if you have it, and have learned properly from it. Otherwise, all experience is a collection of bad habits made more confidently.

Support the Troops*

*Just not their education.

ThisDudesArmy tells us about the brilliant reasoning faculties of the college-educated Defense Department, who in their infinite wisdom have decided it's a bad idea to back an updated GI Bill to reward those who will put their life on the line for their country, since folks might leave after one tour to attend college.

Well, gee, that shouldn't be their problem. You might consider that people might be attracted by the idea of free college to serve their country. It's probably better for the economy in the long run than a recruitment bonus.

Besides the fact that this was one of the most successful government programs in history, laying the foundation of our economic dominance, making education a middle class reality, I think their real concern might just be that if our soldiers get educated, those folks might have to compete with people who actually know how wars really are run. And we just couldn't have that, could we?

Well, the least you can say is that she's got guts...

...because otherwise, I don't know how you can say this after your campaign has done this, otherwise.

More to the point, what Powers said actually makes some kind of sense. You want somebody in the loop when they're hashing out the details of the plan. You could make claims taking certain words out of context, of course, if you were inclined to do that, but as a whole she's saying that the Obama campaigns committed to getting us out, just not doing it in some ideologically imposed way. An ideologically imposed entrance into the war is what got us into trouble in the first place. Why should we allow ourselves to make the same mistake going out?

Michigan and Florida: A Path to Forgiveness (or how to pay for new primaries)

If both states are willing to do new elections in order to leave the illegitimate first tries behind, but neither is willing or able to pay for it, then I have a suggestion.

We've seen both candidates raise massive amounts of money to fund their presidential efforts. We've proven that this can be done within a matter of weeks.

So here's what we do: we set up a fund for these primaries, and both candidates implore their supporters to donate to it, the same way they've donated to their campaigns.

The advantages of this approach is that we have no one candidate funding the election, with the conflict of interest that brings, no drain of Party or candidate funds currently going to win races. If distributed widely enough, it would hardly have an effect on what people give to the candidates.

If we all give to the fund with the same commitment we've given to our respective candidates, we can easily pay for these new primaries. But that's not all.

The funding drive, if successful, would show that the Democratic Party is more united than it seems at the moment. It would show that our party is committed to keeping voters enfranchised. It would allow us to do this within the party's rules, maintaining their integrity.

Last, but not least, it would welcome Michigan and Florida back into the fold in a way sure to improve party morale. The national party, this drive would say, came together to give these two states their voice. All is forgiven. It would also reflect positively upon the party in those states, which might give our candidate an advantage in November.

MAGIC MARKET FAIRY MAKE PONY!1!1!! LOL

Not only does Atrios' entry at Eschaton contain the funniest snark I've read all day, it also contains the most astute economic analysis of the matter I've seen in a long time.

Now where's that pony?

Maybe it don't mean a thing...

But could Texas have that Swing?

Do wop do wop do wop do wwwwooooop!

Burnt Orange Report is reporting that poll results indicate that Obama might be within striking distance of winning Texas this next election.

When one decides to throw bombs at others...

...one is advised not to be within the radius of the blast when it goes off.

This is further evidence of how disorganized and ill-informed this campaign is.

If she tries to push this point in a debate, It will be all too easy for the Obama to say, "according to these reports, your own campaign was making such assurances as you described."

Don't throw razor boomerangs without padded gloves.

She might not be ready for the fork to be stuck in...

But the timer on the oven says she's close to being done.

Diminished Returns

I would like somebody in the Bush White House to explain to me how we can be spending the most money for our military since WWII, and yet still be losing the war we're currently fighting. A big defense budget doesn't add up to success.

We're paying mostly to outsource things we could do more cheaply, and do better internally. We're paying mostly to run an unsuccessful war into the ground, rather than admit we screwed up. We're paying mostly to fund cold-war style projects for an international situation that has rendered them obsolete. American needs a sustainable defense, not an unsustainable war in Iraq or corporate welfare program for defense contractors.

This Guy Makes Don Imus Look Like...

...Rosa Parks.

I mean, first there was George Allen's Macaca, and now...

There's Michael Savage's Machete.

To those who think foregoing torture makes us weak...

I give you the story of how we got Zarqawi without raising a hand against one Iraqi prisoner.

Work smarter, not harder.

What I Really Think is Pathetic About The Republican Party at This Point...

Romney and McCain are hacking each other to pieces trying to make the other candidate look like they're a quitter, a yellow, white flag waving coward who wants to tell the enemy everything we're doing by giving ourselves a timetable for leaving.

Or, put another way, the Republicans are fighting to see which one of them can, with the most conviction, tell the American people they're wrong and contradict their wishes.

Yeah, I thought the De-Baathification Reform was a good idea...

But I was sort of counting on them getting it right.

Spencer Ackerman's saying it got screwed up.

I know the Bush Adminstration likes to talk about milestones reached, but it helps if you're not celebrating empty victories, such as loophole-laden laws that might lead to even greater disenfranchisement.

Repeat after me: results matter.

That's Why This Man Scares Me

Apparently, Bush has decided to ignore another inconvenient truth.

Fortunately, this one only has the potential to embroil the Middle East in near-perpetual warfare, not cook the planet on HI.

Do any of these people get that provoking needless conflict will make defending Israel more difficult than plain Diplomacy will? So many people out there think of war as being the Gordian knot strategy cutter of all time, but many times, it can entangle the knot even more.

The problem with the Neocons is that they nearly always underestimate the complexity of military force and its consequences. They are accustomed to being the stinging gadflies of tough foreign policy, but in practice, they've become blusterers and bluffers who who hope for the best and blunder after it. Their policies, in both Israel and America, have made us less safe rather than more, as they'd desire.

The sooner these people lose power, the better.

Fascio-Fascism

I kind of shake my head at calling Jonah Goldberg "the doughy pantsload", but I've already had the privilege of taking shots at his previous pronouncement on his fascism.

Well, I think he just robbed a bakery, because this takes the cake.

Mussolini got labelled a fascist because he supported WWI.

Just one problem: Mussolini WAS the original Fascist. He founded the party that gave the 20th century a name for totalitarian, brutal governments.

The real problem here is that some people identify fascism with any political cause that steps on their toes by preventing them from indulging whatever impulse they want, or does something they can't keep them from doing. Hence, Jonah's previous equation of Ivy-League educated school teachers with Nazi brownshirts.

At the end of the day, what Jonah can't tolerate, is somebody teaching or advocating what he disagrees with, in a way where he or others can come back in and reverse the "damage". He wants control, and fears the Left's influence on all levels.

And this is how, Ironically enough, they justify indulging in the paranoia and political acts that get them defined as fascists. Fascism, more than anything else, is defined by the impulse towards authoritarian control of society. Now, bureaucracy and government intrusion can be part of this, when not balanced by civil liberties, but what truly defines fascism is the vicious will to employ violence and other abuses of power to maintain power over the society, and the impulse to use violence to untie the Gordian knot of problems both internal and external.

Are the Republicans Fascists? No. But the party's become the closer of our two to that. The Democrats once strayed in that direction, and paid the price for it.

If we wish to stay clear of this problematic kind of politics, we must realize one thing: at the end of the day, we may have adversaries in politics, but we have very few true enemies.

While we're on the subject of charming...

Let's try the new catchphrase in the war: Iraqi Solutions. Which more or less amounts to saying, we're not going to force policy changes on unwilling Iraqis, we're just going to let them sort out things for themselves.

Naturally, it should beg the question: if we're going to let them sort out things for themselves, why are we keeping tens of thousands of soldiers in Iraq? Oh, that's right, so they don't kill each other sorting things out. Brilliant!

But should that be our job, for the indefinite future, especially given the fact we're running low on referees- sorry, peacekeepers- to send over there?

If they're going to sort things out themselves, eventually it's going to come down to them sorting it out between themselves, and that's either going to happen with us in the middle and in the way, or with our presence minimal. I don't think we should suffer from the illusions that this is going to be pretty whatever course we pick. We should also, though, not suffer from the illusion that staying in Iraq will do anything but continue to aggravate the problem, and get Americans killed for the sake of procrastinating, ass-covering politicians.

You know, those likeable fellows. How many Americans have to die so that Congress and the President can save face and avoid political risks?

Are they naturally charming, or do they have to work at it?

In Blackwater's distinguished career, this has to rate as one of their more beautiful foul-ups, probably highly appreciated by our men and women in uniform: dropping tear gas on our own troops, not to mention a bunch of Iraqis, at an intersection in Baghdad.

The blog this links to notes that both the Helicopter in the air and the vehicle on the ground released this stuff, so it begs the question, not only why this was released, but why they had it to release in the first place.

Update: For those considering the innocent mistake defense for Blackwater, This Wired Blog entry on the matter should put that bad idea to rest. Repeat after me: Smoke grenades are yellow on green, CS grenades are red on grey. Unless Blackwater is employing visually impaired people just for the purpose of confusing these two different kinds of grenades, they ought to know the difference, and they ought to have people with the sense not to inflict tear gas on friendly forces.

Here endeth the lesson.