Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

T R E 4 5 O N

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

“They all knew.”

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

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

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

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Archives for 2004

Political Hack

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Thomas Kean, Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, had this to say about Clinton’s private meeting:

“A lot of what we talked to him about was actually the inner workings of presidency as well as many of the classified briefings we’ve been able to read,” [commission chairman Tom] Kean said in an appearance on Thursday evening on “Newshour” with Jim Lehrer. “We asked him some pretty detailed questions on those. And he was just totally frank – totally frank, totally honest, and forthcoming.”

Kevin Drum, while trying to pretend that this was actual sworn testimony from the former President (it was not), had this to say:

Isn’t that a refreshing change of pace? And he did it all without Al Gore there to help him along.

I would agree- Clinton being candid, honest, and forthcoming IS a refreshing change of pace. But really, despite Kevin’s veiled allegation that Rice was somehow dishonest, this is not a change of pace at all:

The administration has requested a second private session with Rice to clear up “a number of mischaracterizations” of her statements and positions about the attacks. She was interviewed by the panel behind closed doors on Feb. 7.

Rice was “very, very forthcoming in her first meeting with us,” said former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, a Republican named by Bush to lead the commission.

Yawn. Kevin is rapidly approaching Josh Marshall territory.

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9/11 Commission

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The shameless mugging, rude intteruptions, and over-all appalling behavior of Richard Ben-Veniste during the hearings (“Just answer my question,”) he siad- “If you will shut the fuck up for 5 seconds to let me,” should have been her response.) should put to rest any idea to what level Democrats will stoop for cheap partisan gain.

Whenever the Democrats claim something is ‘nonpartisan,’ they are only doing so to make it easier to slip the knife in between your shoulder blades.

And, for the record, I think Rice was brilliant.

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Please, Folks

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C’mon, people. In your feeble attempts to defend the indefensible, here is a quick suggestion. Recite what you have written in front of a mirror, and when you bust out in laughter at your own audacity halfway through, use that as a hint. The rest of us are going to laugh at you, too.

For example, Jeff Goldstein rightly takes Max Sawicky to task for his ludicrous defense of Chris Dodd’s remarks. Here is Max’s (spirited, albeit worthless) defense:

The effort to cook up an analogy between Chris Dodd/Robert Byrd and Trent Lott/Strom Thurmond needs a few sentences.

Robert Byrd is a great senator. His hands shake, but he is still sharp. Strom Thurmond was a great segregationist. In his final months as a senator, he was more out-of-it than in. Among other achievements, Byrd was a prime mover in blocking balanced budget amendments that would have screwed up the nation’s finances even more than the Bush Administration has. Thurmond evolved from a segregationist to a garden variety political hack. Byrd’s association with the KKK ended over fifty years ago. Trent Lott’s remark, not for the first time, reflected nostalgia for Thurmond’s glittering racist past. Comparison over. Can we please move on to the next canard?

Is Max speaking about this Robert Byrd?

At 9:51 on the morning of June 10, 1964, Senator Robert C. Byrd completed an address that he had begun fourteen hours and thirteen minutes earlier. The subject was the pending Civil Rights Act of 1964, a measure that occupied the Senate for fifty-seven working days, including six Saturdays. A day earlier, Democratic Whip Hubert Humphrey, the bill’s manager, concluded he had the sixty-seven votes required at that time to end the debate.

The Civil Rights Act provided protection of voting rights; banned discrimination in public facilities-including private businesses offering public services-such as lunch counters, hotels, and theaters; and established equal employment opportunity as the law of the land.

As Senator Byrd took his seat, House members, former senators, and others-150 of them-vied for limited standing space at the back of the chamber. With all gallery seats taken, hundreds waited outside in hopelessly extended lines.

Georgia Democrat Richard Russell offered the final arguments in opposition. Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, who had enlisted the Republican votes that made cloture a realistic option, spoke for the proponents with his customary eloquence. Noting that the day marked the one-hundredth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s nomination to a second term, the Illinois Republican proclaimed, in the words of Victor Hugo, “Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come.” He continued, “The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here!”

Never in history had the Senate been able to muster enough votes to cut off a filibuster on a civil rights bill. And only once in the thirty-seven years since 1927 had it agreed to cloture for any measure.

“It will not be stayed or denied.” Despite Byrds’s best efforts. Or this Robert Byrd:

More American fascism is exemplified in a letter written in December, 1944 from Robert Byrd, US Senator from West Virginia, to Mississippi’s notoriously racist senator, Theodore Bilbo. “I am loyal to my country,” wrote Byrd, then age 27, “and know but reverence for her flag. But I shall never submit to fight beneath that banner with a Negro by my side. Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt, never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels.” Unlike the black soldiers with whom he would never submit to fight, Byrd didn’t serve in the military in World War II.

Youthful indisgression, I guess. Ancient history. But then again, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks:

Senator Byrd was interviewed by Fox News Sunday host Tony Snow in a segment that aired on March 4. While expanding on his comment that race relations are now “much, much better than they’ve been in my lifetime,” Byrd made reference to whites who are still opposed to equal civil rights by saying, “There are white niggers. I’ve seen a lot of white niggers in my time; I’m going to use that word.” He later issued a statement apologizing for his remark.

While NAACP President Kweisi Mfume denounced Byrd’s comments as “repulsive,” the comments have not generated the same degree of criticism previously reserved for conservatives.

“I couldn’t believe what I was reading,” said Project 21 member S. Kevin Washington. “Senator Byrd’s comments were first brought to my attention via voice mail from a personal friend. I had not heard it on a national news broadcast; not NPR; not outcries of disgust by well-known black faces around America. The same people who castigated Republicans – President Bush, in particular – as racist now give Byrd a pass for his using the word ‘nigger’ just because he’s a Democrat like them. What a bunch of nonsense.”

Please- as a lifelong West Virginian, please quit making excuses for Robert Byrd and tell me how he really isn’t racist, really never was, and how he has a good voting record. Not only does it make you look silly, but my ribs are sore from laughing at you.

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The Democrat Credo: Do as I Say

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The Dodd remarks have received no press other than Fox News, Roll Call, and the Washington Times, which, given the belated media response to the Lott comments, is surprising. Well, maybe it isn’t- that (D) at the end of an elected official’s name really can serve as a remarable shield.

What is surprising, however, is that I have not seen one liberal blogger comment on the affaiir, which leads me to pose this question:

If a liberal congrssman yells N—-R in the woods, would Atrios and Josh Marshall hear it?

Let’s do a quick rundown. Lott’s remarks about former Kluxer and separatist Presidential candidate Strom Thurmond:

“I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”

Dodd’s remarks about former Klan member and current Senator Robert Byrd:

“It has often been said that the man and the moment come together. I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia that he would have been a great senator at any moment. Some were right for the time. Robert C. Byrd, in my view, would have been right at any time,” said Senator Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.

I guess someone will have to explain the nuance and show me how these remarks are appreciably different.

Oh, and not that I am counting, but Mr. Talking Points penned not one, not two, but TWENTY-FIVE (25) pieces about the Lott affair (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25). Oh, and btw, those 25 pieces were written in an eight day period. To be honest, after 16 December 2002, I quit counting Marshall’s bloviating.

Fair and balanced, indeed. For extra giggles, here is a fun quote for you to chew on:

“If a Democratic leader had made [Lott’s] statements, we would have to call for his stepping aside, without any question whatsoever.” – Senator Chris Dodd, (D-CT)

Fair and balanced.

*** Update ***

More on the issue…

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Nice Try, Josh

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This is so transparent it is laughable:

A number of readers have written in to ask whether the “Joshua Marshall” who is the registered owner or registrant or whatever of ‘bushflipflops.com’ is this Josh Marshall.

Well, yes. It is.

About a month ago I registered the domain.

In large part, my immediate motivation was to make sure someone else didn’t get it who, shall we say, didn’t have a true and sincere interest in exposing the president’s long list of broken promises, changed positions, and highly disparate interpretations of the same facts.

My plan was either to set the site up myself or hand it off to some other organization or individual who was interested in setting up a site dedicated to the president’s distinguished record of flipfloppery.

I’m already so pressed for time that I’m really not going to have time to do anything with it myself. So if you’re that organization or individual, drop me a line. I’ll pass it on for the $35 registration fee or, just as likely, for nothing at all.

A novel way to get your hatchet jobs implemented while maintaining your ‘journalistic integrity,’ Josh.

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Useful Idiots

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By now you have heard Teddy Chappaquiddick’s speech blasting President Bush, which, I must admit, was rather uneventful for me. it contained the same rhetoric the senior drunk driver from Masachussetts has employed for about the last two years, and was in my mind rather unremarkable except that it inspired the folks over at Tacitus’s site to come up with a minor quip, as they labeled the speech the Ted Offensive. If you have not seen or heard the speech, here is a bit, with the relevant part in bold:

By going to war in Iraq on false pretenses and neglecting the real war on terrorism, President Bush gave al-Qaeda two years — two whole years — to regroup and recover in the border regions of Afghanistan. As the terrorist bomings in Madrid and other reports now indicate, al-Qaeda has used that time to plant terrorist cells in countries throughout the word, and establish ties with terrorist groups in many different lands.

By going to war in Iraq, we have strained our ties with long-standing allies around the world — allies whose help we clearly and urgently need on intelligence, on law enforcement, and militarily. We have made America more hated in the world, and made the war on terrorism harder to in.

The result is a massive and very dangerous crisis in our foreign policy. We have lost the respect of other nations in the world. Where do we go to get our respect back? How do we re-establish the working relationships we need with other countries to win the war on terrorism and advance the ideals we share? How can we possibly expect President Bush to do that. He’s the problem, not the solution. Iraq is George Bush’s Vietnam, and this country needs a new President.

Predictably, the Vietnam reference has created quite a stir, and when I heard the Vietnam line- it was immediately clear what Kennedy was attempting to do. Kennedy wanted to call Bush a liar, and Kennedy wanted to invoke the failure, humilation, and loss of America’s worst debacle. With a reference to Vietnam, he accomplished both.

Not so, says Mark Kleiman– he was just trying to say that Bush was deceiving the country in the manner that LBJ and others did during the Vietnam era. Now granted- Mark typed this, so I don’t know if he did so with a straight face, or maybe he just wanted another chance to join the chorus of those attacking the Instapundit at every opportunity, but the notion that Kennedy invoked Vietnam simply to raise the notion of a credibility gap is just absurd.

Vietnam wa/is a complex era, and for a Senator of Kennedy’s prominent stature (pun intended) to invoke Vietnam is to conjure up a large number of memories. Chief among them is not deceit. Chief among them is the loss of 50,000 Americans in a war that many later came to believe was wrong (as many believed it was wrong at the time, as well). If kennedy wanted to conjure up the image of deceit, betrayal, and dishonesty, there is another standard-bearer that he could have chose from the same era:

Watergate.

But he chose the words he used for a reason, and despite the best efforts of his spinmeister’s in the blogosphere, people understood what he meant. And, I might note, others overseas understood what he meant:

Muqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand anti-U.S. Shiite Muslim cleric, warned the United States on Wednesday that Iraq would become another Vietnam-like conflict if Washington did not transfer power to ”honest Iraqis.”

The cleric whose militia followers have battled coalition and Iraqi security forces across the country for days accused members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council of being ”collaborators” and said ”they do not represent the Iraqi people.”

”I call upon the American people to stand beside their brethren, the Iraqi people, who are suffering an injustice by your rulers and the occupying army, to help them in the transfer of power to honest Iraqis,” al-Sadr said in a statement issued by his office in the southern city of Najaf.

”Otherwise, Iraq will be another Vietnam for America and the occupiers,” the statement said.

Kennedy’s careless rhetoric is now being used as a rallying cry for a despicable Islamo-fascist who represents the opinions of an extremely small minority of the population of Iraq, and whose troops are currently engaged in hostilities with our men abroad. Of course, I fully expect that by pointing this out, I will be accused of trying to ‘stifle dissent.’

Hardly- Kennedy had his say, he said what he meant and presumably meant what he said, and now it is being used as agitprop in a battle against our men and women. No number of excuses from Kleiman and Kennedy can evade that.

*** Update ***

I just finished typing this- and then the Fox News panel has the same discussion.

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