Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

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

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

“Alexa, change the president.”

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

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

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

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

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Books are my comfort food!

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Let there be snark.

You know he’s going to shit a cat.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

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

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Archives for 2005

Poll Idiocy

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I don’t know why I watch or read CNN anymore. I saw this story on the President’s speech and read the following:

In the post-speech sample, 70 percent of respondents said Bush’s policies on health care were positive, while 66 percent approved of the president’s plan for Social Security.

Bush showed almost as much improvement on Iraq, with 78 percent of respondents saying U.S. policy there is heading in the right direction, a 12 percentage point increase over pre-speech polling. Overall, 77 percent of respondents said Bush is taking the country in the right direction after the speech compared to 67 percent beforehand.

I thought that sounded unbelievable. Turns out it is, because in the next paragraph you read this:

The strong positives for the president’s policies may in part be a reflection of the poll’s sample. Of the 485 people surveyed, 52 percent identified themselves as Republicans, 25 percent as Democrats and 22 percent as independents. The poll was done by telephone interviews and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Ya think? Ya think that if you double the number of Republicans, it might skew the poll a touch?

Idiots.

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Frontline

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If you missed it, you need to go watch this Frontline last night on the history of credit card use in the United States.

My libertarian instincts eschew any regulation whatsoever, but it this show and my own personal experiences with credit card companies (inexplicably having my APR jump from 9.9% to 24.9%, when I have not been late or over my limit or anything) leads me to believe that some severe regulation needs to take place. The interest rates being charged in many cases are akin to loan-sharking, and it needs to be stopped.

I often villify Senator Chris Dodd, but he is right on this issue, and has repeatedly sponsored legislation (s. 2755) calling for modest reforms that should be embraced. I often wonder why the Democrats, instead of Quixotic attacks on the President and Republicans on issues they are wrong on don’t rally around issues in which they are right about- like this. It seems like the Democrats think the sole responsibility of the opposition party is to oppose- whether it makes sense or not. Why not offer an alternative with an alternative agenda?

What is more likely to get Democrats elected? Pissing all over the elections held in Iraq, or promoting something that would resonate with voters, like reform of the credit-card industry?

At any rate, it would be nice if the blog world would adopt this issue and push it to the front of the domestic agenda. If all of us start talking about it, linking about it, it will soon catch the agenda setters- mainly those in the MSM. A couple of months of us linking to horror stories and a couple of months of pressure from the people, the media, and the blogosphere might be enough to pressure even Republicans into doing something.

The way I see it, the main obstacle is House Republicans. This administration has shown its willingness to sign bills that it initially opposes, yet has popular support, and then declare victory. The Senate, likewise, would seem to be easier to influence. At any rate, it is worth a try. I would implore people to join me in this little crusade.

BTW- If you think this is a Republican/Democrat issue, you are wrong, and while the banks and credit card companies may not recognize it, it is in their long term interests as well. No one benefits when a third of the nation is defaulting on their credit card bills, declaring bankruptcy, and unwilling or unable to borrow for homes/cars because of bad credit ratings created by bad credit practices by credit card companies.

And, for what it matters, if you agreed with Bush’s rhetoric that no one should pay more than a third of their income to taxes, it seems to me you can also agree that no one should be charged interest rates 3-5 times the prime rate.

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SOTU

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I know this will get me kicked out of the good Republicans club, but I have no desire to watch the President gie the SOTU tonight. The whole event is so damned predictable- Republicans will gush, Democrats will groan, pundits will pedantically pick apart the speech and alternately gush and groan.

Plus, let’s face it- I hate listening to Bush give speeches.

I intend to watch Ray instead.

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A Waste of Trees

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No, Max. It isn’t political warfare. People who have viewpoints like this need to be attacked, vilified, and humiliated, and there is nothing wrong with sane people distancing themselves from them:

Train wreck of an election – By James Carroll | February 1, 2005

IN THINKING about the election in Iraq, my mind keeps jumping back to last week’s train wreck in California. A deranged man, intending suicide, drove his Jeep Cherokee onto the railroad tracks, where it got stuck. The onrushing train drew near. The man suddenly left his vehicle and leapt out of the way. He watched as the train crashed into his SUV, derailed, jackknifed, and hit another train. Railroad cars crumbled. Eleven people were killed and nearly 200 were injured, some gravely. The deranged man was arrested. Whatever troubles had made him suicidal in the first place paled in comparison to the trouble he had now.

Iraq is a train wreck. The man who caused it is not in trouble. Tomorrow night he will give his State of the Union speech, and the Washington establishment will applaud him. Tens of thousands of Iraqis are dead. More than 1,400 Americans are dead. An Arab nation is humiliated. Islamic hatred of the West is ignited. The American military is emasculated. Lies define the foreign policy of the United States. On all sides of Operation Iraqi Freedom, there is wreckage. In the center, there are the dead, the maimed, the displaced — those who will be the ghosts of this war for the rest of their days. All for what?

Tomorrow night, like a boy in a bubble, George W. Bush will tell the world it was for “freedom.” He will claim the Iraqi election as a stamp of legitimacy for his policy, and many people will affirm it as such. Even critics of the war will mute their objections in response to the image of millions of Iraqis going to polling places, as if that act undoes the Bush catastrophe.

The most disgusting thing said on the whole page is this:

James Carroll’s column appears regularly in the Globe.

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Sheer Idiocy

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Glenn links to this piece in the Washington Post arguing who gets credit for the Iraqi elections, but fails to mention the egregious final sentence of the story. In short, the piece discusses in detail who deserves the credit, and my short reaction is – the voters and the soldiers. Domestically, the Democrats will never give Bush credit, the Republicans will give him too much, and neither will be correct nor will either have the last word, as historians will be arguing about this 50 years after Bush is dead.

On the foreign scene, it is hard to imagine anyone giving to Bush, but rather, the axis of weasels will instead pretend that the elections were an event that was just going to happen one way or another, with or without any help from the US.

So, in short, the article is pretty boring. Until you come to the last sentence, which follows a discussion that intimates that the elections may pave the way towards an allied withdrawal:

“Will the new government demand that the occupying forces vacate Iraq, as many of the candidates were threatening to do,” asked the Dubai-based Gulf News. “And, if they do ask, will the United States, and others, really go?”

In a peculiar turn of political events, the elections that Bush welcomed may wind up being the best means of undoing his Iraq war policy.

Peculiar turn of events? Undo his war policy?

The clear implication is that Bush is unwittingly being duped again, and that Bush really wants to stay in Iraq ad infinitum. The reality of the situation is that Bush held the elections as part of a step to remove the US from Iraq.

How does someone get it so ass-backwards?

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The Daily Dish

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It appears that Andrew Sullivan is taking a break from blogging, so a major source of my material will soon dry up. Woe is moe.

But then again, maybe he isn’t leaving. Even his farewell post is riddled with the same lack of clarity we have grown to know and love:

After much hemming and hawing, I’ve decided to put the blog as you’ve known it on hiatus for a few months. The Dish will still exist, the site will be updated weekly with new feature articles, and I’ll still post when I feel like it. But it won’t have the regularity or content of the past four and a half years…

Besides, this is my fifth year of daily blogging – I was doing this when Clinton was president and Osama bin Laden was largely unknown – and I’ve always thought it’s a good idea to quit something after around five years or so…

And getting through the US and Iraq elections seems to me as fair a time to take a leave as any. So I’m going to turn this into a far more occasional operation for a while. I’ll keep posting when the feeling grabs me; but I’m no longer going to promise the kind of daily attention to the news that I have practised so far. I hope that after, say, nine months, I’ll return to blogging full-steam with perhaps a new direction or approach to refresh the material. A little distance from the blogosphere might be helpful in that as well.

So he is quitting, except for when it tickles his fancy, and then he will blog, but check back for new material and a site re-design, and he is not really quitting and will be back in nine months.

I, for one, am going to miss him.

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