• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

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

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

When the time comes to make an endorsement, the pain of NYT editors will be palpable as they reluctantly whisper “Biden.”

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

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

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Let’s finish the job.

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

There is one struggling party in US right now, and it’s not the Democrats.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Mobile Menu

  • Four Directions Montana
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2024 Elections
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Politics / Good For Them

Good For Them

by John Cole|  March 15, 200811:22 am| 16 Comments

This post is in: Politics, War on Terror aka GSAVE®, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.

FacebookTweetEmail

They showed some spine for once:

After its first secret session in a quarter-century, the House on Friday rejected retroactive immunity for the phone companies that took part in the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, and it voted to place tighter restrictions on the government’s wiretapping powers.

The decision, by a largely party line vote of 213 to 197, is one of the few instances when Democrats have been willing to buck the White House on a matter of national security. It also ensures that the monthslong battle over the government’s wiretapping powers will drag on for at least a few more weeks — and possibly much longer.

It has been repeatedly demonstrated that Bush is simply lying about the impact this has on our security, and it is nice to see the Democrats stand up to him.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Atlanta Tornado
Next Post: I Agree With The DKOS »

Reader Interactions

16Comments

  1. 1.

    Chris Johnson

    March 15, 2008 at 11:26 am

    Now we gotta get the Senate to do likewise.

    If we have a working system of government with checks and balances it isn’t as soul-crushingly IMPORTANT who gets to be president…

  2. 2.

    ThymeZone

    March 15, 2008 at 11:32 am

    If we have a working system of government with checks and balances

    That might presuppose an executive of one party and a congress of another. Easier said than done.

    What we need is reforms that put the thing back into alignment with the Constitution. We could start with the declaration of war, that would be a great rollback of the damage done in the last 60 years.

  3. 3.

    Notorious P.A.T.

    March 15, 2008 at 11:37 am

    That might presuppose an executive of one party and a congress of another.

    I read it as presupposing a distinction between a Democrat who voted to invade Iraq and a Democrat who did not.

  4. 4.

    demkat620

    March 15, 2008 at 11:40 am

    Nice to be positively surprised for once.

    Good show, and all that.

  5. 5.

    Zifnab

    March 15, 2008 at 11:40 am

    Now we gotta get the Senate to do likewise.

    Not likely. A number of old-guard Dems – like Rockafeller – are completely bought and paid for by the telecomm companies. Notice how the last time the Senate voted on amendments, we only got upperdown votes on those we didn’t have the vote counts to win, but needed to break the filibuster threshold on all the votes we had 50+ on?

    Even TZ’s “it’s the votes that count” argument doesn’t hold up against serious leadership problems.

  6. 6.

    J. Michael Neal

    March 15, 2008 at 11:46 am

    In fairness, the House has been showing spine on this one for weeks now.

  7. 7.

    ThymeZone

    March 15, 2008 at 11:48 am

    It isn’t about leadership problems, it’s about the screenplay that directs the game. See my post to an adjacent thread, but …. the game being played behind the scenes is not the one they let us see.

    And by “they” I mean the entire machine, Dems plus GOP, the master machine of power, what antiwar.com calls “the War Party.”

    No players on either side will do anything that actually threatens the master machine of power. These kabuki moves in congress are mostly theatrical. I don’t take any of it at face value, except, as you point, that knowing the vote count as the vote approaches is the one and only way to understand the outcome of the vote. How those vote counts are arrived at …. that’s a process we are not allowed to see. Seriously, it is all kept out of view. You don’t hear the members talking about, ever.

  8. 8.

    ThymeZone

    March 15, 2008 at 12:30 pm

    Here I come to save the day!
    Mighty Mouse is on his way!

    your tax dollars at work …

    19 minutes ago

    WASHINGTON – President Bush on Saturday said the government must guard against going too far in trying to fix the troubled economy, cautioning that “one of the worst things you can do is overcorrect.” Democrats said Bush was relying on inaction to solve the problem.

    Bush, in his weekly radio address, said the recently passed program of tax rebates for families and businesses should begin to lift the economy in the second quarter of the year and have an even stronger impact in the third quarter. But he urged caution about doing more, particularly about the crisis in the housing market where prices are tumbling and home foreclosures have soared to an all-time high.

    “If we were to pursue some of the sweeping government solutions that we hear about in Washington, we would make a complicated problem even worse — and end up hurting far more homeowners than we help,” the president said

  9. 9.

    jake

    March 15, 2008 at 12:55 pm

    Bush, in his weekly radio address, said the recently passed program of tax rebates for families and businesses should begin to lift the economy in the second quarter of the year and have an even stronger impact in the third quarter.

    Yeah, $300 bucks. Whoo-hoo. That’s less than a quarter of our rent but we’ll spend it on a big old economy boosting paartay!

    “If we were to pursue some of the sweeping government solutions that we hear about in Washington, we would make a complicated problem even worse — and end up hurting far more homeowners than we help,”

    Specifically, his pals who own several homes in exotic locations.

    Looks like George Bush is applying his Katrina Doctrine (Helping is Hurting) to you all!

  10. 10.

    LiberalTarian

    March 15, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    I saw a pretty good DKos discussion on how Reid and Pelosi foiled the procedural moves of the Bushbots … um, here.

  11. 11.

    Jay C

    March 15, 2008 at 1:39 pm

    “If we were to pursue some of the sweeping government solutions that we hear about in Washington, we would make a complicated problem even worse — and end up hurting far more homeowners than we help,”

    Yeah, God forbid any of those homeowners swamping in debt should be able to get out from under… although I’m sure that if Congress came up with some scheme to bail out banks, brokerages and finance companies, too (or better yet, instead)- he’d be fine with that.

    Seriously, who comes up with this shit? Channeling the ghost of Herbert Hoover?

  12. 12.

    Chuck Butcher

    March 15, 2008 at 2:07 pm

    Housing is my industry, not the retail end, the building end. I’ve watched over the past 7 years or so as the average size of a mid-value house climbed. A couple hundred feet here and there adds up, especially with costs running $100 per sq ft and much higher. I also watched as people with moderate incomes went into McMansions. Appreciation is a real thing, to a limit. When it explodes warning signs should go up all over.

    It is very realistic to ask where and who do you help? The fast profit players are already out and doing something else with their profits. Now you’ve got various invesment bank holding junk and homeowners with payments they can’t make. I’m not in that boat if I can keep my company limping along but who gets help and how? This is not a period of sky rocketing rates, I’ve been through that.

    There has been about every sort of behavior going on in this market, from wishful thinking to outright fraud. How do you actually address it? This question doesn’t begin to touch on an idea of equitably addressing it.

    Sitting on your hands sure isn’t a solution.

  13. 13.

    Randolph Fritz

    March 15, 2008 at 2:26 pm

    Chuck, nothing is going to happen until Bush is out, that’s for sure. Or nothing useful, anyway. Afterwards, it’s hard to say. It’s going to depend on the subsequent administration and Congress. We could take this as an opportunity to improve the energy efficiency of our housing stock, perhaps.

  14. 14.

    NR

    March 15, 2008 at 4:15 pm

    Now we gotta get the Senate to do likewise.

    Actually, we don’t. The House passed a good bill, but FISA is just fine as it is, so the important thing isn’t that the House’s good bill passes, it’s that the Senate’s bad bill doesn’t pass.

    My hope now is that we can just run out the clock on this and let the next president and Congress deal with it.

  15. 15.

    Conservatively Liberal

    March 15, 2008 at 5:10 pm

    So the ‘rabble’ in the House were able to do what the ‘gentlemen’ of the Senate could not? Go figure. I only hope that they stand their ground in the house, and in doing so they will make the Senate look like the weak fools they are. We need to ditch Reid and get someone who was born with a spine in his place. I would love to see Chris Dodd get it as he is one of the few Democrats who still have some spine left.

    There would be no need for immunity if nobody broke the law. If the law was broken, then someone needs to be held accountable for it. The purpose of granting immunity is to prevent anyone from being held accountable for their actions (read: Bu$h). This immunity is more for him and Darth Cheney than it is for the telecoms.

    As the right is so fond of saying, if you did nothing wrong then you have nothing to be afraid about.

  16. 16.

    Punchy

    March 15, 2008 at 5:26 pm

    Yeah, $300 bucks

    It’s $600. Unless you make less than about $3500.

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

Recent Comments

  • WaterGirl on Henry Would Like His Lunch Right Now, Please (Open Thread) (Apr 15, 2024 @ 2:45pm)
  • Sister Golden Bear on Henry Would Like His Lunch Right Now, Please (Open Thread) (Apr 15, 2024 @ 2:44pm)
  • Frank Wilhoit on Take the Fucking Win (Apr 15, 2024 @ 2:44pm)
  • zhena gogolia on Henry Would Like His Lunch Right Now, Please (Open Thread) (Apr 15, 2024 @ 2:43pm)
  • David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch on Late Night Weekend Wrap-Up Open Thread: Journamalism, Not A Dependable Profit Center (Apr 15, 2024 @ 2:42pm)

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Balloon Juice Meetups!

All Meetups
Talk of Meetups – Meetup Planning
Proposed BJ meetups list from frosty

Fundraising 2023-24

Wis*Dems Supreme Court + SD-8
Virginia House Races
Four Directions – Montana
Worker Power AZ
Four Directions – Arizona
Four Directions – Nevada

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
Positive Climate News
War in Ukraine
Cole’s “Stories from the Road”
Classified Documents Primer

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)

Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Balloon Juice for Ukraine

Donate

Twitter / Spoutible

Balloon Juice (Spoutible)
WaterGirl (Spoutible)
TaMara (Spoutible)
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
ActualCitizensUnited

Political Action 2024

Postcard Writing Information

Balloon Juice for Four Directions AZ

Donate

Balloon Juice for Four Directions NV

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2024 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!