Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

No Justins, No Peace

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

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

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

White supremacy is terrorism.

Bark louder, little dog.

Please don’t feed the bears.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Cole is on a roll !

Republicans do not pay their debts.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

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

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

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

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Archives for June 2009

A Comparison

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James Joyner thinks the coverage of MJ’s death is over the top, and I completely agree. I will, however, note that while the MJ coverage is over the top, it still pales in comparison to the three day self-absorbed wankfest that followed Tim Russert’s death.

Also, via Michael Calderone, we learn that Meet the Press is bleeding out, losing close to a half million viewers since MC Rove’s dance partner took over from the late Russert. Clearly the bizarre strategy of packing every show with right-wing pundits and spewing right-wing talking points immediately following an election where the country told the Republican party to go to hell is paying dividends. Clearly what Meet the Press needs is more appearances by President Gingrich.

*** Update ***

This week’s guests- Mitt Romney and Lindsey Graham. Atta’ boy, Stretch. You can lose another half million if you try.

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Friday Beer Blogging: Trippel Threat

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Last month I decided to brew two batches more or less at the same time so that I’d have something with which to welcome some friends to their new house and new position in Michigan. As soon as the pale ale went into secondary fermentation, I rinsed the primary tub and put a Belgian Trippel in it. With the ale I basically wanted to brew my own Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA. Not that I looked up the recipe or anything, I just guessed that medium-light crystal malt, British Ale yeast and continuous hopping would get me close enough. Lacking a giant sieve to continuously filter chopped fresh hops flowers into the wort, I added small amounts of pelleted Bicentennial, Cascade and Argentine Cascade hops at 10 minute increments over a 90 minute boil.

For the Belgian I essentially brewed a nut brown ale but with Trappist ale yeast, heavier crystal malt, Cara-Munich malt and a 1-pound bag of brown sugar. To go trippel I boiled another pound of mixed light and dark dry malt with some hops and added it when I transferred the brew to secondary.

As always I made up a starter culture with some dry malt and hops in a growler bottle. Any newer brewers out there should make sure to do this – pitching a lot of vigorously growing yeast makes the beer taste better and also protects it, since the wort will reach 5% alcohol before bacteria can get its pants on.

Continuous hopping came out just as awesome as Sam Calagione said it would. The trippel, meanwhile, tastes Belgian enough for me, although a bit hoppier than you would usually find in Flanders. I’m a bit new at this to say whether it was the triple fermentation of the unusual sugars or the yeast that worked so well. Whatever the answer I’m doing it again soon.

Cheers!

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Another Crooked Detroit Democrat

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And this time a well-connected one:

Detroit City Council President Pro Tem Monica Conyers pleaded guilty this morning to conspiring to commit bribery and is free on personal bond.

U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn said, “The defendant now stands convicted.”

The one count of conspiring to commit bribery is punishable for up to five years in prison.

No sentencing date has been set and it is not immediately clear if the plea deal requires Conyers to cooperate with the feds in the ongoing probe of city corruption.

Conyers, the wife of powerful Democratic congressman U.S. Rep. John Conyers, appeared before Cohn to answer charges in connection with the wide-ranging probe of wrongdoing at Detroit city hall.

I wonder if she will get any time.

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Good news for Mitt Romney

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It always is, in Marc Ambinder’s world:

John Ensign and Mark Sanford are revealing TMI. Sarah Palin is struggling with her state legislature. John Huntsman, Jr. is headed to China. Mike Huckabee is ubiquitous. Haley Barbour is meeting with strategists in smoky back rooms. Tim Pawlenty has to get through the rest of his term.

[….]

1. Romney is picking and choosing his battles. He shares an Obama-esque disdain for the superficial daily scrum that cable channels whip up. It’s a credit to his communications team that he can appear on television once every two or three weeks and seem to be part of the dialog. When Romney has something to say, he’ll find a venue to say it. On auto restructuring, on the Republican stimulus plan, on a free market approach to health care, on the Employee Free Choice Act, and on missile defense, Romney matches his opinions to key constituencies, and he always draws respectful news coverage. What’s Romney saying about Mark Sanford? Nothing. (Mike Huckabee called into Fox. He’s pursuing a different communications strategy.)

2. He’s not consumed by anger or sarcasm. Romney can get angry, and he can be sarcastic. But his public appearances today are calm, measured; his interviews are given in dignified settings. Romney’s political team believes that the public has no appetite for presidential adversaries who are driven by personal dislike. To Romney, this dignifies the office of the presidency.

(via Sully)

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Any Day Now

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I understand that the wheels of justice grind slowly, but for the love of everything holy could the delicate and genteel members of the Minnesota court please get off their asses and issue a ruling in the Coleman/Franken case? It has now been almost a month since they heard the case, and the state and the citizens of the state have been without adequate representation in the Senate for seven months.

It is a damned disgrace, and the only reason I can think of that this ruling is taking so long to make is the supreme arrogance of these judges. I can’t find any legitimate reason from any news sight explaining why they have not ruled yet, so I’m sticking with my hypothesis- arrogance. Just issue a damned ruling so we can get on with the Republicans next level of obstruction.

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The Family

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Here’s a bit more about the group that funds C Street, from Jeffrey Sharlet:

Ivanwald, which sits at the end of Twenty-fourth Street North in Arlington, Virginia, is known only to its residents and to the members and friends of the organization that sponsors it, a group of believers who refer to themselves as “the Family.” The Family is, in its own words, an “invisible” association, though its membership has always consisted mostly of public men. Senators Don Nickles (R., Okla.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), Pete Domenici (R., N.Mex.), John Ensign (R., Nev.), James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), and Conrad Burns (R., Mont.) are referred to as “members,” as are Representatives Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), Frank Wolf (R., Va.), Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.), Zach Wamp (R., Tenn.), and Bart Stupak (D., Mich.). Regular prayer groups have met in the Pentagon and at the Department of Defense, and the Family has traditionally fostered strong ties with businessmen in the oil and aerospace industries. The Family maintains a closely guarded database of its associates, but it issues no cards, collects no official dues. Members are asked not to speak about the group or its activities.

[…]

The Family’s only publicized gathering is the National Prayer Breakfast, which it established in 1953 and which, with congressional sponsorship, it continues to organize every February in Washington, D.C. Each year 3,000 dignitaries, representing scores of nations, pay $425 each to attend. Steadfastly ecumenical, too bland most years to merit much press, the breakfast is regarded by the Family as merely a tool in a larger purpose: to recruit the powerful attendees into smaller, more frequent prayer meetings, where they can “meet Jesus man to man.”

I also liked this incredibly creepy soliloquy from one of the guys at Ivanwald:

He walked to the National Geographic map of the world mounted on the wall. “You guys know about Genghis Khan?” he asked. “Genghis was a man with a vision. He conquered”—David stood on the couch under the map, tracing, with his hand, half the northern hemisphere—“nearly everything. He devastated nearly everything. His enemies? He beheaded them.” David swiped a finger across his throat. “Dop, dop, dop, dop.”

David explained that when Genghis entered a defeated city he would call in the local headman and have him stuffed into a crate. Over the crate would be spread a tablecloth, and on the tablecloth would be spread a wonderful meal. “And then, while the man suffocated, Genghis ate, and he didn’t even hear the man’s screams.” David still stood on the couch, a finger in the air. “Do you know what that means?” He was thinking of Christ’s parable of the wineskins. “You can’t pour new into old,” David said, returning to his chair. “We elect our leaders. Jesus elects his.”

He reached over and squeezed the arm of a brother. “Isn’t that great?” David said. “That’s the way everything in life happens. If you’re a person known to be around Jesus, you can go and do anything. And that’s who you guys are. When you leave here, you’re not only going to know the value of Jesus, you’re going to know the people who rule the world. It’s about vision. ‘Get your vision straight, then relate.’ Talk to the people who rule the world, and help them obey. Obey Him. If I obey Him myself, I help others do the same. You know why? Because I become a warning. We become a warning. We warn everybody that the future king is coming. Not just of this country or that, but of the world.” Then he pointed at the map, toward the Khan’s vast, reclaimable empire.

Update. And inevitably:

“It’s called a covenant. Two, or three, agree? They can do anything. A covenant is . . . powerful. Can you think of anyone who made a covenant with his friends?”

We all knew the answer to this, having heard his name invoked numerous times in this context. Andrew from Australia, sitting beside Doug, cleared his throat: “Hitler.”

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Another SCOTUS Ruling

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This is interesting:

Crime laboratory reports may not be used against criminal defendants at trial unless the analysts responsible for creating them give testimony and subject themselves to cross-examination, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a 5-to-4 decision.

The ruling was an extension of a 2004 decision that breathed new life into the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause, which gives a criminal defendant the right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.”

Four dissenting justices said that scientific evidence should be treated differently than, say, statements from witnesses to a crime. They warned that the decision would subject the nation’s criminal justice system to “a crushing burden” and that it means “guilty defendants will go free, on the most technical grounds.”

***

Noting that 500 employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation laboratory in Quantico, Va., conduct more than a million scientific tests each year, Justice Kennedy wrote, “The court’s decision means that before any of those million tests reaches a jury, at least one of the laboratory’s analysts must board a plane, find his or her way to an unfamiliar courthouse and sit there waiting to read aloud notes made months ago.”

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, scoffed at those “back-of-the-envelope calculations.”

In any event, he added, the court is not entitled to ignore even an unwise constitutional command for reasons of convenience.

“The confrontation clause may make the prosecution of criminals more burdensome, but that is equally true of the right to trial by jury and the privilege against self-incrimination,” Justice Scalia wrote.

“The sky will not fall after today’s decision,” he added.

But that is not how prosecutors saw it. “It’s a train wreck,” Scott Burns, the executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, said of the decision.

“To now require that criminalists in offices and labs that are already burdened and in states where budgets are already being cut back,” Mr. Burns said, “to travel to courtrooms and wait to say that cocaine is cocaine — we’re still kind of reeling from this decision.”

DA’s will just have to prioritize. Also, dissenting were Roberts and Alito. It will be interesting to see how many years it takes before Roberts fails to side with the government. A thoroughly modern Bush-era “conservative,” with total deference to the government in almost every regard. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he has a tattoo that says “If you haven’t done anything wrong…”

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