Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

Republicans in disarray!

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Books are my comfort food!

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

It’s possible to be a liberal firebrand without crapping on the party.

We do not need to pander to people who do not like what we stand for.

People are weird.

All hail the time of the bunny!

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

White supremacy is terrorism.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

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Archives for 2004

Liar

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John Kerry has repeatedly made the following claim:

Thanks to some friends in New York, I was invited to come up and meet with the Security Council in the week prior to the vote, and I wanted to do that, because I valued my vote. And I wanted to know what the real readiness and willingness of our partners was to take this seriously.

So I sat with the French and British, Germans, with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein.

he says so to legitimize himself and to attack the President. Except, of course, despite repeating this statement hundreds of times, it is a flat-out LIE. More here.

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No Excuse

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I spent three hours last night trying to think of an acceptable excuse from the Bush administration about this, and I came up with nothing. Try to come up with an excuse for this and tell me how you do:

The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives – used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons – are missing from one of Iraq’s most sensitive former military installations.

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man’s land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.

You didn’t misread that. That is 380 tons. Let’s put this in persepctive. THis wasn’t just a big mound of c-4 sitting in the middle of the desert. For each pound of explosive, you can probably at least double the weight when you factor in crating. The logistics alone of carting off this amount of explosives is so daunting as to make it inexcusable.

Put it this way. This is akin to over the past two years, someone systematically dismantled every house on your block and carried it away, and when the NY Times asked you what happened, your response is: “Gee, I am not sure what happened.”

PS- I don’t care if we are looking into this and the explosives may be with appropriate authorities. Every niht that I was in the field as a soldier, my platoon sergeant and butterbar conducted a sensitive items check, and each person made sure that he has his weapon, protective mask, an/pvs-7’s, and other items. Every night. Business stopped if one boresight device or one set of night vision goggles was missing. In peacetime, if someone lost a weapon, the base closed.

We can’t check nightly on 380 frigging tons of explosives? Jeebus.

*** Update ***

I got the vapors because I actually believed the assholes at the NY Times. I don’t believe the Times story anymore, so read the rest of this post with that in mind.

*** Update #2 ***

Commenters have left some links that lead me to believe my initial reaction was correct.

I will have to check on this later, but my reaction now is that I was right the first go around. Regardless of what happened, not being able to provide a coherent response RIGHT NOW to the question “Where are the 380 tons of explosives?” seems to me to be inexcusable.

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Meanwhile, In the Fever Swamps

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Oliver is convinced the election is being stolen, and links to this dyspeptic update of right-wing shenanigans. Like this right-wing hijink:

A friend in the Dallas suburbs voted yesterday. They had him fill out his ballot WITH A PENCIL! He let them get away with it, but I told him this morning he needs to call both the local paper and the Dallas Morning News news desks to let them know this. Another Kerry vote stolen, I’d bet on it.

This is a breaking story – I’ve requested more information from Butch on it. If he and his friend come forward with details, I’m going to forward it on to the election protection legal team in Texas!

NO- not the old lead pencil #2 trick!! Why on earth would they force them to fill out their ballot with a #2 lead pencil? Anyone attend elementary or high school in the United states reading who might have a smidgeon of an idea why someone may be required to fill out a ballot in #2 lead pencil? Wait a minute, I think our intrepid scandalmongerer has an update:

*Update* False alarm. Butch dug into this and discovered that the precinct in question was using scanning technology that required a #2 pencil – so no fraud there!

No screaming eagle shit. Let’s check in on the next right wing attempt to suppres the vote:

Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, and member of the Bush-Cheney national campaign steering committee, decided that Ohio voters who show up at the wrong voting precinct will be turned away rather than be allowed to cast provisional ballots (as in most other states). The Democrats immediately sued the state over this issue, which will mostly effect the turnout of Kerry-leaning newly registered voters, and won a U.S. district court ruling allowing registered people to vote in the wrong precinct with a provisional ballot. Blackwell appealed; suppressing the liberal voter turnout is so critical to a reactionary win in Ohio that the misAdministration has submitted a friend-of-the-court brief attacking the lawsuit! Ken Blackwell earlier invoked an obscure law requiring that registrations be turned in only on 80-lb. paper stock, resulting in the destruction of thousands of presumably progressive voters!

My god! You mean voters are going to have to actually vote in the precinct in which they reside? The horror of it all. I hear in some states, you even have to prove you are who you say you are- the nefarious hijinks just don’t stop!

Idiots. This election can’t end soon enough.

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Blow Me!

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You know what, Sully? Go fuck yourself. You have now devolved into nothing more than Atrios with a vocabulary when you equate some silly commerical to the mainstream of conservative thought.

I can understand your angst- it must be pretty distressing going through life having your sexuality as the only salient feature of your existence.

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Iraqi Elections

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Speaking of elections, here is this welcome news:

With nationwide elections three months away, the senior United Nations official here says his office and the interim Iraqi government have assembled a list of nearly 14 million Iraqi voters, set up 550 voter registration sites around the country and hired 6,000 people to staff them.

Carlos Valenzuela, chief United Nations elections adviser here, said in an interview that the list of 13.9 million Iraqi voters, drawn from the country’s food’s distribution program, represented a tentative voter registration roll. It will form the basis of a more complete list of voters scheduled to be compiled when the official registration period begins on Nov. 1.

Mr. Valenzuela and Iraqi election officials said these developments marked significant steps toward holding the elections by Jan. 31, the deadline imposed by the Iraqi interim constitution and endorsed by the Americans.

Mr. Valenzuela said he believed the elections could indeed be held at that time and that although the United Nations team of 14 advisors is small, the large numbers of Iraqis involved in the process were helping the enterprise meet its schedule.

I am sure this will come as a surprise to the increasingly strident and equally cynical Andrew Sullivan, who the other day snarked:

Let’s review where we are. There aren’t even faintly enough U.N. troops to prepare for a legitimate election in January. The reason is the security situation. Will it improve enough by December to goad the U.N. into sending the hundreds of experts to make it work? The odds must be massively against it. The one major obstacle is Falluja, and a successful incursion there seems to be prompting some in the Sunni leadership to threaten to boycott the elections entirely. Could we simply police the elections ourselves? First question: with whom? We don’t even have enough troops to retake Falluja and keep Baghdad from blowing up. And if we did, our troops are now so unpopular they would themselves undermine popular legitimacy for the elections. What is Bush’s answer to this? He simply asserts that elections will take place. That’s it. Say after me: if Bush says it, it must be true. If Bush says it, it must be true. Feel better yet? This is what Republicans have to do every day. Faith, not facts. Faith, not facts. Believe … and you will be healed. All will be healed.

Nyah, nyah nyah. Today Sully notes:

At last, some positive news about the prospects for the elections.

I am getting a little tired of Andy’s breathless hysterics and he has become more prone to getting the vapors than getting his facts straight. I am glad there is some good news so the elections can continue on your timetable, Andy.

And, btw- Bush said it would happen.

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