Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

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

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

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

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

T R E 4 5 O N

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

The revolution will be supervised.

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

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

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Archives for July 2008

Running Man

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Via the GOS, our authoritarian masters have a new idea for keeping us all safe while flying:

A senior government official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has expressed great interest in a so-called safety bracelet that would serve as a stun device, similar to that of a police Taser®. According to this promotional video found at the Lamperd Less Lethal website, the bracelet would be worn by all airline passengers.

This bracelet would:

• take the place of an airline boarding pass

• contain personal information about the traveler

• be able to monitor the whereabouts of each passenger and his/her luggage

• shock the wearer on command, completely immobilizing him/her for several minutes

The Electronic ID Bracelet, as it’s referred to as, would be worn by every traveler “until they disembark the flight at their destination.” Yes, you read that correctly. Every airline passenger would be tracked by a government-funded GPS, containing personal, private and confidential information, and that it would shock the customer worse than an electronic dog collar if he/she got out of line?

Hey- if you don’t have anything to hide, why not wear an eletroshock bracelet? Between the war on terror and the war on drugs, we are steadily creating a democratic paradise that would make the STASI green with envy.

This better get nipped in the bud quickly.

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Ross Douthat On Helms

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Folks on the right might want to listen to Ross on this issue:

But a specific ad is one thing; Helms himself is another. He simply was an awful bigot, and worse he was an awful bigot who never expressed a shred of remorse, so far as I know, for his toxic approach to issues ranging from civil rights to HIV to foreign affairs. Far from being the sort of politicians who conservatives ought to defend, out of a sense of issue-by-issue solidarity, he’s the sort of politician conservatives ought to carefully distance themselves from, because his political style brought (and continues to bring) intellectual disrepute to almost every cause with which he was associated. Inherent to conservatism is the responsibility to stand up and say to bien-pensant opinion: Just because a bigot opposes something doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. But the necessity (and difficulty) of making that case, whether the issue is affirmative action or “comprehensive” immigration reform or the NEA and Piss Christ, is all the more reason for conservatives to keep their distance from actual bigots, even (or especially) when they’re representing the great state of North Carolina in the U.S. Senate. Jonathan Rauch had it right in 2002: If Ronald Reagan and Helms had similar positions on countless issues, that doesn’t prove that Helms was good for conservatism; it only suggests that conservatives should look for more Reagans, and fewer Jesse Helms. I’m happy to defend Helms’ views on a variety of issues, but the man himself has no business in the right-wing pantheon, and the conservatives who have used his death as an occasion to argue that he does are doing their movement a grave disservice.

Is the era of Helms-like bigotry finally nearing an end?

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The Cost Of War

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Via the fire-breathing pinko commies at FDL, a reminder that the cost of war is more than just an unbalanced budget:

During the first week of the war in Iraq, a Military Times photographer captured the arresting image of Army Spc. Joseph Patrick Dwyer as he raced through a battle zone clutching a tiny Iraqi boy named Ali.

The photo was hailed as a portrait of the heart behind the U.S. military machine, and Doc Dwyer’s concerned face graced the pages of newspapers across the country.

But rather than going on to enjoy the public affection for his act of heroism, he was consumed by the demons of combat stress he could not exorcise. For the medic who cared for the wounds of his combat buddies as they pushed toward Baghdad, the battle for his own health proved too much to bear.

On June 28, Dwyer, 31, died of an accidental overdose in his home in Pinehurst, N.C., after years of struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. During that time, his marriage fell apart as he spiraled into substance abuse and depression. He found himself constantly struggling with the law, even as friends, Veterans Affairs personnel and the Army tried to help him.

Read the whole thing, as it is just heartbreaking. In a just world, people like me who cheerleaded this disaster would have to pay a price for our foolishness. As it is, I have learned a horrible lesson at the expense of thousands American dead and tens of thousands of American wounded and hundreds of billions of dollars. It isn’t right.

Meanwhile, those who have already paid a heavy price for this country continue to sacrifice:

Martin Onieal, 92, a patient at the Veteran Affairs medical center, registered to vote Monday, courtesy of the state’s chief elections official — Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz.

“There was nobody here to do this last year,” said Onieal, a World War II veteran of the Italian and North African campaigns, formerly of Hamden and a resident of the VA center since 2007.

Bysiewicz and state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal Monday registered Onieal and a handful of other VA patients, and threatened a lawsuit if they couldn’t come back to demonstrate how the new voting machines work.

Bysiewicz conducted the impromptu registration session outside the VA entrance after she said her office failed to get a written response to two letters seeking permission to go to the state’s VA centers, and was denied access in a follow-up phone call Friday.

Bysiewicz and Blumenthal were protesting a ban on registration drives issued by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs last month, which based its decision in part on the Hatch Act, which bans federal workers from engaging in partisan political activity.

“I believe that there is a concerted effort going on to suppress voter registration,” Bysiewicz, pointing to the department’s directive, and a separate ban issued for Indian reservations, because they are on federal property.

More here. It may very well be that there is no intentional malfeasance here in this case, and the VA is merely doing what they think the law requires them to do, but after all these guys have given (particularly when you consider that the Bush administration used the issue of military absentee ballots to aid them in the 2000 election), no expense should be spared getting every one of these guys who wants to vote registered. Period.

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Another Down Payment on Our Future Deficit Reduction

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Another suicide bombing:

A female suicide bomber has killed nine people and wounded 12 others in an attack on an Iraqi market, police said.

The attack took place in the al-Mafraq area west of Baquba in Diyala province, about 50 km (30 miles) north-east of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

The use of women to carry out suicide bombings has become a regular tactic of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The US military says there have been more than 20 suicide bombings by women this year in Iraq.

A BBC reporter in Baquba says women and children were among the casualties in Monday’s attack.

While it is true that violence rates are down in Iraq, it is worth remembering that on an almost daily basis, shitty, awful, terrible, horrible things are still happening in Iraq, years after we invaded, years after we pronounced mission accomplished, and almost a year and a half after the surge. Keep that in mind during the next round of blogger triumphalism about our impending victory in Iraq and how Obama wants to squander it.

Second, inevitably, it will be proclaimed somewhere that the fact the bomber is a woman is a sure sign that we are winning, as it points to the desperation of the opposition. Is it possible that sometimes when the enemy does something different, it isn’t a sign of desperation, but rather is merely a sign they have adopted new tactics? Not to mention, I think the very act of blowing oneself up for any reason falls under the broad category of desperation.

Finally, given that a balanced budget here in the US during a McCain administration hinges almost completely on victory in Iraq, does McCain view this suicide bombing as an assault on American taxpayers? And if we have an uptick in violence in Iraq, does that mean the budget will take longer to balance?

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Baffled

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Michelle Malkin is pissed:

Make sure you click on all those links and then be sure to leave the links in the comments section of this clueless CNN piece about Col. Day.

Why? Because you wouldn’t know about Col. Day’s extraordinary heroism if you only got your news from CNN, which falsely states in a reductionist hit job on Day: “McCain Truth Squad defender was Swift Boat Vet member.”

I understand that 99% of what I write here is snark and sarcasm, but I am being completely serious when I state I do not understand why she is so angry. I have read the CNN piece, and there really is nothing offensive there. Go read the entire thing and tell me if you can figure out what is so controversial.

I honestly have no idea what is so terrible about this CNN piece. It can’t be that he is being called a Swift Boat vet, as Michelle thinks they are truth-tellers and he clearly was in the Swift Vet commercial. It can’t be that they said anything offensive about Day, because they didn’t. Is it really because they did not inlcude a several paragraph summation of Day’s military background, as Jesse Taylor states?

Again, I am being serious- what is she so upset about?

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Just Making Shit Up

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Via Memeorandum, we see that John McCain has a “plan” to balance the budget:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) plans to promise on Monday that he will balance the federal budget by the end of his first term by curbing wasteful spending and overhauling entitlement programs, including Social Security, his advisers told Politico.

The vow to take on Social Security puts McCain in a political danger zone that thwarted President Bush after he named it the top domestic priority of his second term.

McCain is making the pledge at the beginning of a week when both presidential candidates plan to devote their events to the economy, the top issue in poll after poll as voters struggle to keep their jobs and fill their gas tanks.

“In the long-term, the only way to keep the budget balanced is successful reform of the large spending pressures in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” the McCain campaign says in a policy paper to be released Monday.

“The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit. Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction.”

Look, it is early Monday morning, and I don’t have the energy required to be appropriately derisive of the fantasy that “victory in Iraq” is going to solve our budget problems, so instead just go see James Joyner and Matt Yglesias. Keep in mind that McCain is promising to do all this while also promising to extend the Bush tax cuts AND ramping up military spending all during a bleak economic setting with current deficit projections hovering near 400 billion annually. Oh, and did I mention the aging population and rising health care costs, and the shrinking dollar, and our energy crisis?

There really is nothing else to say other than John McCain is just making shit up.

*** Update ***

Josh Marshall:

I think we may have come to that moment, that quick turn of events, that encapsulates the fact that there is apparently no limit to the howlers and nonsense that John McCain can throw out and still not generate collective guffaws or even scrutiny from the national political press.

Bear with me on this one because it’s genuinely mind-boggling.

Today John McCain is getting lots of press for his new plan to balance the budget during his first term — what can only be called an extraordinarily ambitious promise. The first pick was from Mike Allen’s piece late last night in The Politico.

Now, the general routine is the face of this kind of candidate announcement is that journalists and economists look at the numbers to see if they add up. In most cases, the exercises generates fairly unsatisfying contradictory opinions, with some experts saying one thing and other experts another.

But here’s the thing. McCain doesn’t have any numbers. None. Not vague numbers of fuzzy math. He just says he’s going to do it. Any other candidate would get laughed off the stage with that kind of nonsense or more likely reporters just wouldn’t agree to give them a write up. But this is all over the place.

The title of this post was not an accident. The McCain campaign is, quite clearly, just making shit up. It is really that simple and straightforward. they don’t have any numbers because, again, THEY ARE MAKING SHIT UP.

And the press is playing along.

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ILUVGOD

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This sort of silliness just makes no sense to me:

Unless a federal court intervenes, South Carolina drivers may soon be able to profess their Christian faith with a state-issued license plate.

The state plans to issue plates featuring a Christian cross and the words “I Believe,” but a group advocating the separation of church and state says that goes too far.

A similar design had been considered by Florida’s lawmakers, but it was rejected there because of concerns over separation of church and state.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which includes Christian, Jewish and Hindu clergy, filed a federal lawsuit last month. The group contends that the plates violate the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against government favoring one religion over another religion or non-religion.

I really, really do not understand this sort of thing. I just don’t get it. Assuming there is a God, and that God is all of the things we hear and read from various Christian texts and other assorted authorities on the matter, am I really supposed to believe that what really concerns an omniscient and omnipotent being is vanity plates?

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