Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

I really should read my own blog.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

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

You know he’s going to shit a cat.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

You are here: Home / Archives for 2004

Archives for 2004

Groaner of the Week

by | 5 Comments

This post is in: 

This is fabulous:

Kerry said he writes in long hand, then cuts and pastes pieces of the speech to reorganize his thoughts. He uses old-fashioned scissors and glue, not the computer keystrokes modern writers are accustomed to.

It’s not that he’s opposed to keyboards – he said he uses computers and preferred to compose letters on a typewriter when he was fighting in the Vietnam War. He said it’s just that he writes more effectively on paper.

“I find that this” – he moves his fingers like he’s typing on an imaginary keyboard – “somehow becomes the concentration. … It interrupts the flow for me.”

Did you know that John Kerry served in Vietnam?

*** Update ***

Glen writes in the comments:

You’re starting to worry me: this was Freeperville petty. People work best the way they work best. They don’t always work best the same way all of the time. Hello?

I was not trying to poke fun at Kerry(other than the umpteen millionth Vietnam reference). I was really trying to poke fun at Nedra Pickler, the person who felt it necessary to write this idiotic speech. I guess I am the only one who remembers all the idiotic press in 2000 about “Gore writing his acceptance speech himself.”

Groaner of the WeekPost + Comments (5)

Bush and the NAACP

by | 35 Comments

This post is in: 

While John Kerry is out bad-mouthing the President for declining to speak to the NAACP, I thought it would be useful to take a trip down memory lane to the President’s last public contact with the NAACP:

The president has left Atlanta after a Thursday visit to lay a wreath at the tomb of Martin Luther King Jr. and to attend a campaign fund-raiser.

Hundreds of protesters greeted President Bush in Atlanta shortly before 4 p.m. as he placed a wreath on the grave of Martin Luther King Jr. on what would have been the slain civil rights leader’s 75th birthday.

The president walked slowly down Freedom Walk and crossed the bridge leading to the King crypt with King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, on his left, and the civil right leader’s sister, Christine King Farris, on his right.

Bush received the wreath from an Air Force soldier and walked over and placed it in front of the crypt and stood in silent prayer for about a minute.

In the background protesters could still be heard chanting, and their boos grew louder as the president stood before the crypt…

Charming.

At an NAACP press conference this morning at the Atlanta chapter’s headquarters, the group questioned the true motive for Bush’s visit.

Bush contacted the King Center late last week to say he’d be in Atlanta today and wanted to pay his respects by placing a wreath at King’s crypt.

“Did he come to raise funds for Republicans and stop by to lay a wreath as a secondary ploy or is he sincere about laying the wreath and the fund-raising secondary?” said Dr. R.L. White, president of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP.

“With a spoken position against what Martin Luther King Jr. stood for, the Bush administration has stood against — affirmative action [and refused] to meet with the national leadership of civil rights organizations, including the premier organization, the NAACP, which has been in existence since 1909.”

I am not going to rehash all of the Taliban references and outright hostility this President has received from Julian Bond, Kweisi Mfume, and the rank and file of the NAACP. In short, they do not deserve a visit from the President. Personally, I would have sent the Vice-President, who could promptly tell the crowd to go Cheney themselves.

Bush and the NAACPPost + Comments (35)

The New “It” Rumor

by | 11 Comments

This post is in: 

From the NY Times front page:

In the annals of Washington conspiracy theories, the latest one, about Vice President Dick Cheney’s future on the Republican ticket, is as ingenious as it is far-fetched. But that has not stopped it from racing through Republican and Democratic circles like the latest low-carb diet.

The newest theory – advanced privately by prominent Democrats, including members of Congress – holds that Mr. Cheney recently dismissed his personal doctor so that he could see a new one, who will conveniently tell him in August that his heart problems make him unfit to run with Mr. Bush. The dismissed physician, Dr. Gary Malakoff, who four years ago declared that Mr. Cheney was “up to the task of the most sensitive public office” despite a history of heart disease, was dropped from Mr. Cheney’s medical team because of an addiction to prescription drugs.

“I don’t know where they get all these conspiracy theories,” said Matthew Dowd, the Bush campaign’s chief strategist, who has heard them all. “It’s inside-the-Beltway coffee talk, is all it is.”

Comments?

(cross-posted at Red State)

The New “It” RumorPost + Comments (11)

Rangel and Sudan

by | 18 Comments

This post is in: 

Maybe the situation in Sudan is finally going to become a real issue that gets attention:

Representative Charles Rangel (Democrat of New York) was arrested July 13 as he blocked the entrance to the Sudanese Embassy to protest the Khartoum government’s support for militia groups that have killed between 15,000 and 30,000 people in Sudan’s Darfur region while making a mockery of international efforts to stop what the lawmaker termed “genocide.”

Standing with crossed arms in front of the embassy’s door on Washington’s Massachusetts Avenue at high noon, Rangel and a band of about 50 protesters sang the defiant civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome,” evoking similar protests against racism in America during the 1960s and against apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s.

The UN refuses to use the “G” word, but Rangel sure isn’t:

According to the influential lawmaker: “The situation in Sudan has clearly reached the level of a genocide. U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Andrew Natsios has declared that at least 300,000 people will be dead by year’s end in the best-case scenario, and over a million will perish if things continue on their present course. We must take immediate actions to condemn the government of Sudan for their complicity and save the lives of these innocent people.”

Rangel warned: “We acted too late to save million of Jews during World War II. We didn’t act at all when hundreds of thousands of innocents were slaughtered in Rwanda. We have the opportunity now to stop a genocide and we must act.”

Good for him. How much of the western world’s refusal to act simply boils down to good old fashioned racism? Why are the UN and the United States simply willing to sit by while people are slaughtered like this? And where the hell has Bill Clinton been? Cripes, he just recently told us all that his greatest mistake while in office was not doing anything in Rwanda.

Rangel and SudanPost + Comments (18)

Good Grief

by | 2 Comments

This post is in: 

What do you have to do to get good press ifyou are the Bush Administration. This story reads like an indictment- until you get to the facts:

The Bush administration did not consult with Mozambique last year before designating the country as a beneficiary of its emergency AIDS plan. Mozambique was simply informed that it would be one of 12 African nations, and 15 countries overall, awarded substantial financial assistance.

The pledge of big money was certainly welcome, said Francisco Songane, the Mozambican health minister; AIDS has lowered life expectancy in Mozambique to 38. But the approach, perceived by many Mozambicans as arrogant and neocolonial, was not.

Mozambique, in southeastern Africa, had spent considerable time developing a national strategy to combat its high rate of H.I.V. infection. Other international donors had agreed to pool their contributions and let the Mozambicans control their own health programs. Thus, Mozambican officials recoiled when the Americans said earlier this year, “We want to move quickly, and we know that your government doesn’t have the capacity,” Mr. Songane said.

The Bush administration wanted the bulk of its funding to go toward more costly brand-name antiretroviral drugs for treatment programs run by nongovernmental organizations. But Mozambique had already decided to treat its people with 3-in-1 generic pills, which were cheaper and simpler to take. Also, Mozambique did not want an American program dependent on costly foreign consultants, N.G.O.’s and the largesse of foreign political leaders, that would run parallel to its own.

There were confrontational meetings in Washington and in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. And in the end, to the surprise of many, the Bush administration agreed to give Mozambique the kind of help it really wanted, by strengthening its laboratories, blood-transfusion centers and the Health Ministry itself – albeit indirectly, through a grant to Columbia University.

“What I witnessed in Mozambique was a disaster averted,” said Dr. Steven Gloyd, an international health specialist at the University of Washington who works with Mozambique. “So, for countries like Mozambique, this may turn out to be a positive intervention, even though it could be a lot more.”

Seventeen months after President Bush announced his five-year, $15 billion emergency AIDS initiative, the program is belatedly getting under way, and surprising some critics of what is seen as its go-it-alone approach. In some cases, the plan is proving to be more adaptive and collaborative than had been expected, especially when countries are strong enough to stand their ground.

Sounds to me like two groups who were not used to working with each other had different ideas until they put their heads together. Instead, this is presented as indictment of the Bush administration’s arrogance.

Good GriefPost + Comments (2)