Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Dear legacy media: you are not here to influence outcomes and policies you find desirable.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Books are my comfort food!

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

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

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

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

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

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Stay strong, because they are weak.

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

One way or another, he’s a liar.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

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Archives for 2008

The Times On Torture

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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!

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I Have Decided

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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.

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The Warren Invocation

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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?

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Blaming The Unions

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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.

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This Seems To Be An Odd Response

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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.

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IE Explorer

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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.

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