Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans in disarray!

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

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Let’s finish the job.

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

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

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

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

I’m more Christian than these people and I’m an atheist.

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

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself. We’re allowed to grow past that.

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

Nothing worth doing is easy.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

You are here: Home / Archives for 2008

Archives for 2008

The Times On Torture

by | 47 Comments

This post is in: ,

The Times finally gets around to the torture report from last week:

Now, a bipartisan report by the Senate Armed Services Committee has made what amounts to a strong case for bringing criminal charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; his legal counsel, William J. Haynes; and potentially other top officials, including the former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.

The report shows how actions by these men “led directly” to what happened at Abu Ghraib, in Afghanistan, in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in secret C.I.A. prisons.

It said these top officials, charged with defending the Constitution and America’s standing in the world, methodically introduced interrogation practices based on illegal tortures devised by Chinese agents during the Korean War. Until the Bush administration, their only use in the United States was to train soldiers to resist what might be done to them if they were captured by a lawless enemy.

The officials then issued legally and morally bankrupt documents to justify their actions, starting with a presidential order saying that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners of the “war on terror” — the first time any democratic nation had unilaterally reinterpreted the conventions.

But, but, but… According to John King, what is important is that Obama tell us if anyone on his staff talked with Blagojevich!

The Times On TorturePost + Comments (47)

I Have Decided

by | 271 Comments

This post is in: 

After reading the Warren thread from last night, I have come to the firm conclusion that anyone who uses the phrase “slap in the face” needs a swift kick in the ass.

Also, I hear that Rick Warren ALSO OPPOSES SCI-FI MOVIES. ZOMG, SLAP IN THE FACE, MAYBE I SHOULD HAVE VOTED FOR MCCAIN. WARREN TALKING FOR 90 SECONDS IS JUST AS BAD AS HAVING JAMES DOBSON RUN THE FCC.

Discuss.

I Have DecidedPost + Comments (271)

The Warren Invocation

by | 227 Comments

This post is in: ,

Obama is going to have Rick Warren give the invocation at his inauguration, and this has a lot of people upset. A sample:

This selection is clearly not about “change”—it’s about making a high profile decision to give the stage over to a known homophobe; choosing Rick Warren is tantamount to asking any of the professional anti-gay “Christian” set to stand up there. There is no excuse for this; given there are so many leaders of the faith community that are in alignment with equality for all.

I understand this sentiment completely. I really do. In fact, in large part, I agree. I would prefer someone else.

But I also understand that I would much rather have Warren given a few minutes to speak about religion at a time and manner appropriate for religious discussion than I would having Obama give a nod to the religious right by appointing the God squad to Justice, to the FDA, to NASA, and so on. When Rick Warren and folks like him are driving policy in an Obama administration, I will then muster the necessary outrage.

So while not my first choice, not a big deal. Let him speak for a few minutes and be done with them. I will spend the time pouring a drink or going to the bathroom.

*** Update ***

This makes sense:

If you followed the internal politics of evangelical and fundamentalist leaders, you’d see this for what it is—not an elevation of Warren, but a slap in the face of the old guard leaders like Dobson and LaHaye. They’ve been fighting to see who gets to be the spokesman for the movement, and lately it’s been a tie. Obama just broke it.

And let’s be clear, there is a difference between those groups. Warren may not be progressive on gay rights, but he’s been out front on a number of issues of global justice—traveling from Davos to Damascus, and working hard to get rank-and-file evangelicals invested in “creation care” environmentalism and the fight against global HIV/AIDS.

If he were put in charge of HHS or listened to on gay policies, I’d be pissed. But what Obama is doing here isn’t that. It’s a move that marginalizes the worst on the religious right, elevates a guy who’s more progressive than most religious leaders on a number of issues, and earns him some moderate cred at the outset.

If Obama sells out on the progressive promise in actual policy, I’ll be in the streets protesting with everyone else. But if his “selling out” is having a fairly moderate, popular evangelical give the invocation at the inaugural—when large sections of this country still worry Obama’s a scary evil Mooooslim—then who gives a flying fuck?

The Warren InvocationPost + Comments (227)

Blaming The Unions

by | 70 Comments

This post is in: 

Interesting segment on Larry King Live with Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford last night that I thought would get more attention today:

KING: What about the UAW in all of this?

FORD: Well, the UAW obviously has been our partner through all of this. Have they made mistakes and have we made mistakes? Of course. The UAW has come a long way. I think their leader, Ron Gettelfinger, is an excellent leader and he really understands our business. In this last contract, he gave up a lot. He’s also indicated they’re willing to come to the table to do more. And so for anybody to blame the UAW as the sole reason for this is frankly wrong.

One other thing is, when I look at the people who work in our plants, I don’t think of them as UAW. I think of them as Ford employees, Ford employees who take tremendous pride in building quality and safety into our products. If you ask someone in our plant, where do they work, they say I work at Ford. To me, everybody who works in our plant is part of our extended family.

So the stated position of Ford, the one company that may survive this with or without a bailout, is that the UAW has made concessions and is not the problem. I’d like to hear Bob Corker’s thoughts on that.

On second thought, no, I really wouldn’t.

Also, this Pat Buchanan quote scores an eleven on a scale of awesome:

Be it BMW, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Mitsubishi or Hyundai, the South has become a sanctuary for foreign assembly plants, for which Southern states have been paying subsidies.

Fine.

But why this “Let-them-eat-cake!” coldness toward U.S. auto companies? General Motors employs more workers than all these foreign plants combined. And, unlike Mitsubishi, General Motors didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor.

Blaming The UnionsPost + Comments (70)

This Seems To Be An Odd Response

by | 67 Comments

This post is in: 

Ian Welsh at FDL talking about Jesse Jackson, JR. cooperating with the feds:

Brownsox notes that Jackson worked with prosecutors on a prior case against Blagojevich, and it doesn’t look like he worked on this one. So, not out of the woods yet, and one wonders why he lawyered up so fast if he was in the clear.

That seems to be an odd statement, doesn’t it? Since when did progressives think that obtaining legal advice implied guilt? Personally, I think it would have been reckless for Jackson to not get lawyers, especially in the current political climate. This is the new America- just because you haven’t done anything wrong doesn’t mean the press can’t try to convict you anyway.

BTW- have been running new anti-virus software on some friend’s computers since they claimed they were running a little sluggish and because of the IE scare. It found 730 infections in the first two minutes of the scan. I have left it alone for a half hour and am afraid to look now. At any rate, if his computer was a person, it would be Jenna Jameson it would be a Craig’s Lister looking for a casual encounter.

This Seems To Be An Odd ResponsePost + Comments (67)

IE Explorer

by | 193 Comments

This post is in: 

Big security risk:

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is planning to release an out-of-band patch for Internet Explorer on Wednesday to address a critical security vulnerability that’s being actively exploited.

The company on Saturday warned that 1 in 500 Internet Explorer users worldwide may have been exposed to malware hosted at both legitimate Web sites and porn sites that exploit an unpatched vulnerability.

Yet another reason to use Firefox or Safari or Opera.

IE ExplorerPost + Comments (193)