Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Not all heroes wear capes.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

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

Trump should be leading, not lying.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

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

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

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

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

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

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Fucking consultants! (of the political variety)

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

This fight is for everything.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

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Archives for 2005

Blatant Dishonesty

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Teddy Chappaquiddick sure is a predictable old womanizing drunk, because the blogosphere has him nailed dead to rights:

ON JANUARY 30, TOM MASON BLOGGED THIS:

I want to point out something to everyone who is bashing Senator Kennedy for calling for an immediate withdrawal of 12,000 troops following the elections. That was the Bush administration plan all along, except for the “immediate” part. U.S. forces were increased by 12,000 in the last month or two in order to help with security for the elections. So we will see the troop levels decrease by 12,000 in the very near future. I wonder if when the troops start coming home, the MSM will say that Bush realized that Kennedy was right after all?

Senator [Kennedy] is not stupid. He made a prediction on an event he knew was going to happen. Now he’s hoping that everyone will be too stupid to notice.

And voila! Kennedy’s plan works.

Today, the old drunk was on Meet the Press:

MR. RUSSERT: But, Senator, there is a difference. I asked him, “Do you agree with Senator Kennedy…”

SEN. KENNEDY: That’s right.

MR. RUSSERT: “…on a fixed timetable?” He said no.

SEN. KENNEDY: I agree that he doesn’t agree with my call for the immediate troop withdrawals, although we’ve had, as we saw in the Armed Services Committee just this last week, that–General Myers effectively announcing the withdrawal of some 15,000 troops, like I had suggested.

In other words: “I was right, I was right!” What a cynical, deceitful jerk. Then there was this bit:

MR. RUSSERT: Senator, John Kerry, your colleague from Massachusetts, has called on the secretary of defense to resign. Do you agree with Senator Kerry?

SEN. KENNEDY: Well, I had asked for his resignation previously at the time of Abu Ghraib. But the issue really isn’t his resignation. It’s about changing of policy. And I think what we just heard in the last half-hour is why we need a strategy and why we need a policy that is going to permit the American to bring our troops home with honor.

Hrmm. Peace with honor. Where have I heard that before? Ted Kennedy is the modern Pied Piper, singing the same old tune as he leads these rats down the path to complete irrelevance.

Good riddance.

*** Update ***

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Go, Victor, Go

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Just because it needs to be said again:

Do we even remember “all that” now? The lunacy that appeared after 9/11 that asked us to look for the “root causes” to explain why America may have “provoked” spoiled mama’s boys like bin Laden and Mohammed Atta to murder Americans at work? Do we recall the successive litany of “you cannot win in Afghanistan/you cannot reconstruct such a mess/you cannot jumpstart democracy there”? And do we have memory still of “Sharon the war criminal,” and “the apartheid wall,” and, of course, “Jeningrad,” the supposed Israeli-engineered Stalingrad

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Move Over Hitler

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Tired of Nazi references when talking about Bush? Me, too. That is why this idioitic piece by Jack Shafer was so refreshing:

If “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il of North Korea and George W. Bush ever meet, I suspect the two will bond like long-lost brothers. Both men are first-born sons of powerful fathers who partied like adolescents well into their adult lives, after which they submitted to their dynastic fates as heads of state.

Both avoid critical thought, preferring to surround themselves with yes men and apply propagandistic slogans to the onrushing complexities of justice, culture, economics, and foreign policy. Bush churns out buzz phrases with the best of them: He believes in “compassionate conservatism” and fancies himself part of the “army of compassion.” He’s the “reformer with results” who embraces the “culture of life.” He shouts his paeans to “liberty” and “freedom” (a combined 27 times during last night’s State of the Union speech, according to today’s Washington Post) while reducing civil liberties at home.

Tell me again why Slate isn’t making a profit?

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Sheer Idiocy

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Must be a full moon or something, because I find myself in full agreement with Jesse on this issue:

Legislation is pending in Georgia. And in his State of the State speech yesterday, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) proposed making it illegal for anyone younger than 18 to buy violent or sexually explicit games.

“For the same reason we don’t allow kids to buy pornography, for the same reason we don’t allow kids to buy cigarettes, for the same reason we don’t allow kids to buy alcohol, we shouldn’t allow them to go to stores and buy video games,” Blagojevich said.

Jesse states:

Any video games? It’s not like there are alcoholic beverages which are okay for children to drink, or cigarettes it’s okay to smoke, but there are video games that are, in terms of content, perfectly okay for children. Can I get charged with distributing Mario to a minor? There are movies which are totally inappropriate for children, but that doesn’t mean we prohibit children from watching Bambi.

The problem with prohibition is that it’s almost always enacted by people who don’t understand what it is they’re prohibiting. Instead of making sure that that controversial classes of items stay out of the hands of the people they’re supposed to stay out of, it creates massive incentives and cachet around getting the prohibited items. In this case, it’s even dumber, because there’s such a large used market for games that it’s virtually impossible to regulate them out of the hands of people who want them.

Jerks. Hands of my Playstation. I better go buy Mercenaries and GTA while I still can.

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Congrats Where It Is Due

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I think we owe a big hand to Reporters Without Borders, who have done the right thing and taken a firm stand on an important issue:

Reporters Without Borders today deplored the “continuing farce” of “leading repressive countries” – this year China, Cuba and Zimbabwe – being chosen by the United Nations to decide which cases its Human Rights Commission will consider at its annual meeting.

“We know for sure that no case about violations in any of these three countries and their allies will be heard,” the worldwide press freedom organization said. “This is a very grave matter and we don’t understand why the United Nations allows it. It would be comical if it wasn’t so serious.”

The sub-commission working group the three countries have been named to along with Hungary and the Netherlands will meet on 7 February to sift through cases submitted over the past year and decide which to pass on to the Commission, which will sit between 14 March and 22 April to consider them and possibly condemn countries for violations.

The Commission has steadily lost credibility in recent years. The naming of Libya to chair it in 2003 caused an uproar. Last year, Reporters Without Borders pointed out that 25 of its 53 member-countries had not even ratified all international human rights agreements, treaties and conventions.

Reporters Without Borders has proposed reforming the Commission by requiring member-countries to have ratified all these accords. It has also called for abolition of the device of “no-action motions” used to block all discussion about countries that are large-scale human rights violators.

Good for them.

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A Growing Trend

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Interesting story in the CS Monitor:

Since starting college three years ago, Katherine Toy has developed a new habit: reading a daily newspaper. But the paper that has become her regular companion on the Boston subway isn’t a traditional daily. For one, the Boston Metro doesn’t have the wingspan of a broadsheet. Its stories, mostly wire copy, follow the Sgt. Joe Friday School of Journalism (“just the facts, ma’am”) by providing succinct summaries of the news. Most significant, the tabloid is free, given away at the city’s “T” stations.

“There are Metro men everywhere passing out newspapers,” says the ski-jacketed Ms. Toy, huddled inside a subway car. “You don’t even have to look for it – they find me.”

That’s no coincidence. The student represents a prize demographic for newspapers: the 18- to 30-year-old set. This group is also least likely to pay for news, accustomed to getting timely information for free from the Internet or TV. The Metro, an international franchise that has also taken root in Philadelphia and New York, has discovered that it can reach this age group with a fresh-format freebie.

Older newspapers, faced with declining circulation, are now jumping into the fray. The New York Times Co., which owns The Boston Globe, recently declared its intention to buy a 49 percent stake in the Boston Metro. Several metropolitan dailies, including The Washington Post and Chicago Tribune, have already created their own spin-off freebies.

Last week, the Knight Ridder newspaper corporation announced that it, too, may launch a free daily. In each instance, the companies hope to nurture a future demand for their flagship publications by getting the iPod generation accustomed to a newspaper.

Information wants to be free.

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Gonzalez Confirmed

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Judge Gonzalez was confirmed by a vote of 60-36. Voting with the Republicans were Salazar, Lieberman, Nelson, Landrieu, Pryor, and Nelson (with both Nelson;s voting yea, does that make it a full nelson?).

For those of you foolish enough to think that this was about torture, I would recommend you remember the real memogate, as discussed here by Dahlia Lithwick. This wasn’t about torture, and it never was. This was about damaging Bush at all costs, and this was about the Supreme Court.

As the Democrat’s own secret memos stated, Judge Gonzalez, because he is Latino AND conservative, is ‘especially dangerous.’ This wasabout damaging an innocent man’s reputation to make any possible future nomination to the Supreme Court untenable. If you don’t believe me- ask Kos:

A few short weeks ago, Gonzales looked to sail through the nomination process unscathed, with the barest of opposition logdged against him.

Armando was a lonely voice of dissent, but amazingly, it grew. And I still can’t believe the entire Dem Senate leadership, and 36 Dems in total, made a principled stand against torture and voted “no”. That’s a huge victory, and yet additional evidence of that spinal transplant we’ve been hoping for.

This wasn’t about torture- if it were, they wouldn’t care to ‘scathe’ him. They, and I, would fight to keep the man from being confirmed. This was about partisan politics at its worst. Not that I expected any better.

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