Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

In my day, never was longer.

This fight is for everything.

Fear and negativity are contagious, but so is courage!

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Accountability, motherfuckers.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

He really is that stupid.

Most of you should go to bed and try to be better Jackals in the morning.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Giving up is unforgivable.

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

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Archives for 2003

Another One Bites the Dust

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More good news in Iraq, as the de-Ba’athification continues in earnest:

American forces have captured Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein’s presidential secretary and No. 4 on the U.S. most-wanted list of Iraqi leaders, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

U.S. forces captured Mahmud on Monday in Iraq, a statement from U.S. Central Command said. It did not say where in Iraq he was captured.

Third in power only to the former Iraqi president and his younger son, Qusai, Mahmud controlled access to Saddam and was one of the few people he is said to have trusted completely, a U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

For those keeping track, he was the Ace of Diamonds.

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She Learned From the Best

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Go Hillary, go:

A federal inquiry into the activities of celebrity fund-raiser Aaron Tonken is examining his involvement with a $1-million Hollywood political event for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The inquiry raises the stakes in a longstanding controversy that has pitted Bill and Hillary Clinton against some of their most dogged critics who have publicly questioned the source of underwriting for the gala. For Tonken, it also opens the prospect of cooperation with authorities in return for a possible plea deal.

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John Edwards- Race Baiter?

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What does John Edwards really think of Miguel Estrada? He is only the nominee because he is Hispanic:

The obstructionists include Edwards. While claiming that he supports diversity, he apparently doesn’t think we should push the concept too far by encouraging diversity of thought, ideology or political views.

“We need more Hispanics on the federal bench, but we should choose people because they have the right record, not just the right last name,” Edwards said.

The implication is that, now that it is hip to be Hispanic, a person named “Estrada” or “Gonzalez” or “Rodriguez” can write his or her own ticket.

I can’t wait to call my parents and give them the good news. In light of the way that their generation was denied opportunities because of their ethnicity, it is worth taking a moment to contemplate The World According to John Edwards, where apparently being Latino is like winning the lottery.

OK, I’ve contemplated. And Edwards doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It was foolish, and a tad racist, for the senator to imply that someone with Estrada’s credentials — Honduran immigrant, honors graduate from Harvard Law School, clerk for a Supreme Court justice — received an appellate court nomination simply because he is Hispanic.

I will await the uproar and condemnation from the usual suspects on the left. I will be waiting a while- Edwards is a Democrat, after all.

(via Hanks)

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Free Markets

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Via Matthew Yglesias, we see this tibit of idiocy:

The Bush administration ruled today that United States computer chip makers and catfish farmers were subjected to unfair foreign competition and ordered stiff tariffs on imports of South Korean computer chips and Vietnamese catfish.

The Commerce Department rulings upheld, with minor adjustments, preliminary tariff determinations that the agency issued earlier in the year.

In the computer chip case, the department ruled that the South Korean government unfairly subsidized two big South Korean manufacturers. The department ordered tariffs as high as 44.71 percent.

In the catfish case, the department determined that Vietnam had dumped catfish on the American market at unfairly low prices. It said that catfish imports from Vietnam would be subject to anti-dumping tariffs ranging from 44.66 percent to 63.88 percent.

I have mentioned how much I hate tariffs, haven’t I?

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The Worst Part of Iraq

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This was the worst part of Iraq/Kuwait when I was there:

In the back of a Bradley fighting vehicle, the still air soars to 130 degrees and sweat stains the soldiers’ desert camouflage uniforms as they patrol central Iraq, hunting for insurgents.

When the ramp door drops, the soldiers scramble into the blinding sun and a hot wind fails to cool them through body armor and helmets. The only thing cold is the reaction of Iraqis whose cars they search.

The unrelenting heat, the ambiguity of their mission, the longing for home and the indefinite duration of their deployment has crushed morale, the soldiers say.

I was a tanker on an M1A1, so to add insult to injury, I got to wear this gem, the scratchy CVC suit. It was so damned hot that while we were there, we initially had a buddy system for when soldiers wanted to urinate. Your buddy had to watch, and if your urine was yellow, you were put aside to drink more water, because you could overheat that quickly. Maintenance was miserable, too, because your tools would get so damn hot you would burn your hand if you did not wear gloves. It was also so dry that perspiration dries immediately, and at the end of the day you would have salt caked all over your body. Since showers were sparse or non-existent, this would build up in your armpits and other areas, and you would get rashes if you didn’t wash carefully. The best description I have for what it is like:

Close all your windows. Turn the heat on in your house. Turn your oven up to 500, sit right in front of it, and then occasionally have a friend throw sand in your face. Enjoy.

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Logical Fallacies

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Arthur Silber has a thoughtful post on the debasement of the debate that is worthy of your time. Arthur views the War in Iraq through a different lens than I do, but he is correct in many of his assessments about the problems with the current discussion:

The state of intellectual debate about political/ethical isues, and related policy concerns, has been coarsening for a number of decades. But now, certain vices and failures of thinking have become very, very widespread, and almost everyone seems to engage in them. As a very good friend of mine described it recently in an email, these problems (which he calls “insanity” with considerable justification) have truly become a “pandemic.” And so they have. In the course of identifying several elements of what I consider the major flaws in most analysis and discussion of current events, I will offer a few examples related to the war with Iraq, which has unfortunately provided a number of especially virulent expressions of these problems.

You should go read the examples Arthur lists, pay attention to them, and make sure you are not engaging in these tactics. One interesting thing about the discussion Arthur provides is that all of his anecdotes are from an anti-war perspective, in that all of the examples of people engaging in fallacious thinking is from the pro-war perspective. Let me give an example:

I have not seen a better description of the causes and manifestations of the tribal mentality — and it perfectly captures, as just one example, why many supporters of the war will engage in the most complicated mental gymnastics to explain the growing questions about our intelligence regarding Iraq’s WMDs (whether one regarded that as crucial to supporting the war or not), when they condemned the same kinds of mental trickery when Democrats used them in defense of Bill Clinton. The message clearly is: “Bush is always right, at least on everything important and everything related to the war. How dare you question him in this manner? You must be a monster. Why, you must be a…a…a Saddamite!” And thus we see how the tribal mentality oozes out to include the Argument from Intimidation: if you dare even to ask certain questions, you must be profoundly morally deficient, at the very least — and you are certainly not a member of our gang. Once again, this tactic seeks to end the debate before it has even begun — and it seeks to avoid ever having to answer the questions that have arisen, even though the same people would be only too happy to raise identical questions if the president in question happened to be a Democrat (as most of them did, in fact).

What Arthur fails to acknowledge is that many of the people who are raising these accusations are so fiercely partisan, obnoxious, and vindictive that every question comes across as a personal attack on the individual and President Bush. Go read the comments boards on the left. Hell, read some of the things commenters say here. There is a significant portion of the Democrat left who is so violently and reflexively anti-Bush, that in manyinstances, particularly those when I would usually be sympathetic to the Democrat position, that I find myself defending Bush even when I disagree with him. This debases the debate (both the mindless and incessant accusations leveled at Bush, and my reflexive defense of Bush) just as much as anything else.

Another point- just because you were against the war does not make you a traitor or a Saddamite. It would be refreshing for people on the other side of the spectrum to remember that those in favor of the invasion of Iraq are not necessarily kncukle-dragging, mouth-breathing war-mongerers.

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