Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
by John Cole| 18 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity
Just because I have had a couple drinks, I have chosen to share with you my favorite email of the evening:
You are not God. I will meet my maker in heaven and account to Him and only Him. I highly doubt you will make it even to the gates. But luckily for you, it is not up to me. God is the only judge of human actions. You, sir, blaspheme, and I truly feel sorry for you as you await your judgment from the Most High. Fear the Lord.
I am not God and I blaspheme. So much for only God judging.
by John Cole| 30 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
That is it. I am done. I can’t take these lunatics anymore. Look at what Jim Sensenbrenner is up to now:
Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner has launched his next assault on freedom. The full House Judiciary Committee is set to vote as early as next week on H.R. 1528, which creates a new group of mandatory miniumum penalties for non-violent drug offenses, including a five year penalty for passing a joint to someone who’s been in drug treatment.
That’s right: Passing a joint to someone who used to be in drug treatment will land you in federal prison for a minimum of five years.
For those of you keeping score, in several weeks Sensenbrenner has championed the Schiavo legislation (while failing to learn how to pronounce her name), suggested that we criminalize ‘indecency’ and jail offenders who broadcast offensive material, and now is suggesting that if someone relapses, and you hand them a joint, you should go to jail for 5 years.
Some infor on drug treatment efficacy:
A great deal of variation exists in the degree of dependence among drug users. The teenager who smokes marijuana three times a week is not as dependent as the thirty year old who has smoked six joints a day for 15 years and has already relapsed after being in two rehabilitation centers. It’s obvious that these persons need different approaches to treatment. Similarly, among cocaine users are some who use it in binge fashion one or two days a month and others who use it several times each day. Again, different treatment approaches are required. Regardless of treatment, some drug and alcohol dependent persons repeatedly relapse after treatment. Relapse rates vary among drugs of abuse. While the relapse rate for heroin addiction approaches 90 to 95 percent during the first ninety days following treatment, the rate for alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, and cocaine is less, although precise figures are not available. Relapse should not necessarily be viewed as a failure of either the treatment program or the individual.
Relapsing is not a failure, but handing the person who relapsed a joint- even if it is your wife, best friend, whatevr- that can land you in jail for 5 years. MANDATORY.
And how are they going to classify drug treatment centers? I got a DUI in 1992 when I was in college. I was required to attend Alcohol Awareness classes at a local DRUG TREATMENT CENTER. Does that me anyone who hands me a joint should go to the big house?
I may have voted for my last Republican in a long time. These wingnut, know-nothing, fundamentalist creeps are scaring the shit out of me, and linberty is at stake when it comes to these law and order goons.
by John Cole| 19 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
Apparently, more bad news for the domestic auto industry:
In just the last few weeks, the grand plans that were supposed to carry General Motors and Ford Motor into their second centuries have crumbled.
Sales at G.M. have fallen, profits have tumbled to losses. Last week, Ford also warned of a drop in earnings. Thursday, in yet another blow, its union refused to give much ground on G.M.’s health care coverage. If that were not enough, G.M.’s stock hit a 12-year low.
The Big Two automobile giants offer plenty of explanations, from soaring health care costs to rising gas prices and creeping interest rates. But consumers and industry specialists say G.M. and Ford have swerved off course for a more basic reason: not enough people like their cars.
Here is the problem, geniuses. Your cars are ugly, they break down much more than they should, and you spent all your time opposing CAFE standards instead of researching AND implementing fuel efficiency.
Cry me a river. I would love to buy a domestically made vehicle- but you look at all the sedans on the market. What would you rather drive? The beautiful all-wheel drive Subaru Legacy, which for all intents and purposes is a luxury vehicle at economy pricing, or a Chevy Malibu?
Look at the Chevy lineup, if you can stomache it.
by John Cole| 4 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity
What is going on with this outing of a CIA agent? According to the NY Times, and contradicting mycorrection here, Lugar and Kerry DID out an agent:
We referred to this other analyst at the C.I.A., whom I’ll try and call Mr. Smith here,” Mr. Bolton said. “I hope I can keep that straight.”
Mr. Bolton could. But two senators – Richard G. Lugar, the Indiana Republican and committee chairman, and John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat – apparently could not. Both identified the analyst, Fulton T. Armstrong, in the hearing.
Though Mr. Armstrong had been identified in news reports two years ago about his dispute with other officials over intelligence involving Cuba, that was when he was the national intelligence officer for Latin America, and his name was no secret. When the Bolton nomination resurrected the old accounts, however, the C.I.A. asked news organizations to withhold his name.
Nice to know Kerry is still true to form:
Mr. Kerry defended himself. “Senator Lugar had already mentioned it,” he said, “and it had already been in the press.”
And on a slightly different note, we have this silliness:
Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee wrote Gonzales on Thursday asking him to “provide an explanation as to why no charges have been brought” against government officials who leaked the name of Valerie Plame.
It is illegal to reveal the names of covert operatives.
In response to the Democrats, Gonzales said he is confident that Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney from Chicago who is the lead prosecutor on the case, is “proceeding on a basis that he thinks is appropriate and that at the appropriate time the matter will come to a head.”
Could it be there was nothing criminal done?
At any rate, I am interested in the Lugar/Kerry flap if you have info. The indefatigable Tom Maguire has more.
by John Cole| 20 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity
This is sickening, as well. Via Atrios, we learn that Sean Hannity was coaching the ‘witnesses’ who claimed Terri Schiavo was still mentally aware:
If the conservative guests on Fox News’ “Hannity and Colmes” sound especially on-message, that’s because they’re being coached by the best:
Sean Hannity himself.
On the March 31 installment of the shouting-head show, the guests included two of the late Terri Schiavo’s former nurses, Trudy Capone and Carla Sauer Iyer, arguing that their patient wasn’t brain-dead.
Between commercials, according to an off-air audiotape obtained by investigative comedian Harry Shearer for last Sunday’s episode of his weekly radio program, “Le Show,” Hannity coached the women on exactly how to respond when liberal co-host Alan Colmes cross-examined them.
“Just say, ‘I’m here to tell what I saw,'” Hannity can be heard instructing his guests. “No matter what the question, ‘I’m here to tell you what I saw. I’m here to tell you what I saw.'”
Hannity adds helpfully: “Say, ‘I’m not going to be distracted by silliness.’ How’s that? Does that help you? Look into that camera. Look at me when I’m talking.”
On the air, Iyer performs beautifully. “I don’t have any opinions or judgments. I was there,” she declares
After the segment ends, Hannity gushes off the air to the nurses: “We got the points out. It’s hard, this isn’t easy. But you did great, both of you. Thank you, guys. Those nurses are powerful, aren’t they?”
One reason I sided with the medical community, the courts, and TErri and Micahel Schiavo, and not Sean Hannity, Randall Terry, and Tom Delay.
by John Cole| 6 Comments
This post is in: Media
For most useless article of the week goes to Robin Givhan, for this gem:
John Bolton, President Bush’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, desperately needs a haircut. It does not have to be a $600 Sally Hershberger cut. Bolton simply needs the basics. Tidy the curling, unruly locks at the nape of his neck, tame the volume at the crown, reel in the wings flapping above his ears, and broker a compromise between his sand-colored mop and his snow-colored mustache.
He needs to do this, not because he should be minding the recommendations of men’s fashion magazines or grooming experts but because when he settled in before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week to answer questions about his record, his philosophy and his intentions at the U.N., he looked as though he did not even have enough respect for the proceedings to bother combing his hair — or, for that matter, straightening his tie, or wearing a shirt that did not put his neck in a chokehold. Bolton was one wrinkled suit away from being an insolent mess.
I suppose I should get some sort of Razzie for reading it.
by John Cole| 74 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
This is so patently offensive that I don’t have adequate words to describe how truly wrong this is:
As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as “against people of faith” for blocking President Bush’s nominees.
Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day “Justice Sunday” and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading “the filibuster against people of faith,” it reads: “The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith.”
If you don’t share our politics, you hate the baby Jesus.
If you don’t share our politics, you hate religious people.
If you don’t share our politics, you are evil.
Congrats, Republicans. Our leaders have now taken the traditional rhetorical demonization of our opposition and elevated it to heavenly heights. I assume my friends on the right are going to spend the week-end attacking me for being a ‘religious bigot’ because I rightly point out the inappropriateness of this behavior. The usual suspects are front and center:
Some of the nation’s most influential evangelical Protestants are participating in the teleconference in Louisville, including Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; Chuck Colson, the born-again Watergate figure and founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries; and Dr. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
But why are you reading me? I hate religious people because I respect the role of religion in people’s lives, but don’t want religious texts or leaders dictating our domestic and foreign policy. And I really don’t want them using God and religion as a weapon for petty partisan gain.
*** Update ***
I read this three times to make sure I wasn’t missing a self-parody or an inside joke. I wasn’t:
Is it the position of Frist’s critics that it is illegitimate for the Majority Leader to give a speech to mainstream Christians? If so, then that is about as radical a tactic as we have seen in a long time –urging elected officials not to even speak to gatherings of the 40% of the country that attends church weekly. This is another outbreak of “religousrightitis”, one that underscores the ongoing effort to delegitimize the right of people to vote their values if those values are based on a religious worldview, and it makes a mockery of the idea that Dems want to appeal to “values voters” when they are encouraging the equivalent of “shunning” by electeds.
Hugh Hewitt, at his best.
A.) He can talk to them all he wants. What frightens me is that you consider them mainstream Christians and that Frist agrees with their radical viewpoint that Democrats are voting the way they are because of anti-religious views.
B.) They can vote their values all they want. I vote mine. I just don’t demand that their values be given the weight of law.
C.) How can they appeal to value voters? By your standards, there are none, because if you vote Democrat, you hate religion.
Vote Republican Or You Hate the Baby JesusPost + Comments (74)