Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

“They all knew.”

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

How stupid are these people?

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

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

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

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

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

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

The world has changed, and neither one recognizes it.

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Archives for 2009

The Mafia Has More Shame

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And no, it is not hyperbole to say that the banksters are worse than America’s most celebrated crime families:

Had AIG proceeded to an ordinary bankruptcy, had the company’s downfall happened via normal market procedures, Goldman might have gotten 40, 50, maybe 60 cents on the dollar. If that! Instead it got completely paid off, among other things because its connections to the government actually incentivized it to cripple a company to which it was exposed to the tune of billions.

Second, the non-punishment of Friedman just stands out like a hairy, golf-ball-sized mole on the face of the American capital markets. No question about it, it’s interesting that Galleon and Raj Rajaratnam are getting perp-walked by the FBI (note that it’s the FBI, and not the castrated and seemingly completely captive SEC, that’s going to be pushing these enforcement actions). Galleon isn’t small potatoes and from what I understand there are other hedge funds with even higher profiles that may fall later on. These are surprising and meaningful moves and and it suggests that the enforcement community is not yet completely corrupted.

But Goldman’s continued impunity leaves a mighty stink-cloud over American business, no matter how many Raj Rajaratnams get dragged off to jail.

Gambino and Lucchese got nothing on these guys.

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This is Depressing

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I’m surprised the hypocrites on the right aren’t making a bigger deal out of this:

The Obama administration has, yet again, asserted the broadest and most radical version of the “state secrets” privilege — which previously caused so much controversy and turmoil among loyal Democrats (when used by Bush/Cheney) — to attempt to block courts from ruling on the legality of the government’s domestic surveillance activities. Obama did so again this past Friday — just six weeks after the DOJ announced voluntary new internal guidelines which, it insisted, would prevent abuses of the state secrets privilege. Instead — as predicted — the DOJ continues to embrace the very same “state secrets” theories of the Bush administration — which Democrats generally and Barack Obama specifically once vehemently condemned — and is doing so in order literally to shield the President from judicial review or accountability when he is accused of breaking the law.

Regardless, this is a definite failure on the part of Obama. After the FIRE crew, I would say the #2 threat to this nation are the “You can’t handle the truth” goons in the security apparatus.

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More on Health Care

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The NY Times:

After months of plodding work by five Congressional committees and weeks of back-room bargaining by Democratic leaders, President Obama’s arms-length strategy on health care appears to be paying dividends, with the House and the Senate poised to take up legislation to insure nearly all Americans.

Debate in the House is expected to begin this week, and the Senate will soon take up its version. Democratic leaders and senior White House officials are sounding increasingly confident that Mr. Obama will sign legislation overhauling the nation’s health care system — a goal that has eluded American presidents for decades.

But will the final bill be any good? I’ve seen no consensus on that.

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Mugwumps, bitches

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Like John, I’ve always thought that third parties were like the XFL. In fact, if it were up to me, all third-party candidates would have to wear a He Hate Me starter jersey on the campaign trail.

Not surprisingly, chunky David Brooks feels differently:

Imagine if Bloomberg, instead of using New York’s Republican Party as a flag of convenience, had spent his mayoralty building up a permanent third force in city politics — a good-government party, modeled after the 19th-century Mugwumps, that could provide a civic-minded counterweight to the Democratic machine.

Or imagine if California’s famously polarized legislature included several smaller parties — Libertarians, Socialists, Social Conservatives — capable of forming coalitions with either the left or the right, so that every budgetary debate didn’t pit a bloated Democratic majority against an intransigent Republican rump.

I’m going to forgive the gratuitous “I’ve heard of a political party you’ve never heard of” reference, because I understand the iatropoic excitement that comes from talking about obscure historical events.

But Libertarians, Socialists, Social Conservatives solving California’s perennial budget crisis? Is he not aware that the problem is the 2/3 vote required on budget votes? How on earth would more political parties help with that?

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Open Thread: Happy Birthday, Zevon

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zeev_lounge3
He’s eight years old today, and has been living with us for the last three. When the Spousal Unit picked him up from the nice breed-rescue foster family in Pennsylvania, they told him [name redacted] was the “perfect” Papillon — good-looking, not noisy, reliably housebroken, used to leashes & crates, friendly with cats and other dogs. They couldn’t understand how his original family could ever have given him up! Forty-eight hours after arriving at our house, the New Guy jumped out an open window into a cold, drizzly November twilight, landed on gravel six feet

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Don’t forget old and rich

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Matt Yglesias produces a map (from Open Left) showing how Republican white men are and writes, smartly:

I would say that another message is that progressive politics is badly disadvantaged by a situation in which the overwhelming majorities of political leaders and prominent media figures are white men. There are plenty of white men with progressive views, but in general the majority of white men are not progressive and the majority of progressives are not white men. Drawing from the relatively small pool of white male progressives means drawing from a shallow talent pool.

Let’s not forget that prominent media figures are also disproportionately old and rich. The idea that a bunch of rich, old, white, men have teh librul bias has always been laughable to me. Obviously, anyone with a brain who follows modern politics and wants to avoid the apocalypse is going to favor Democrats in federal elections. And it’s possible that a reasonable proportion of prominent media figures are sentient, apocalypse-fearing beings. But that doesn’t make them liberal.

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The blue and the red gray

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Leave it to the managing editor of a little newspaper, Bob Gorman of the Watertown Daily Times, to nail NY-23 in a way that the national media never could:

Despite the national media attention on Northern New York right now, we should all remember that the 23rd Congressional District has no great significance. And neither did Gettysburg. It’s just the place where the great armies met.

[…..]

If Hoffman wins Tuesday, political analysts suggest there could be a 23-skiddoo, and our district might very well morph into the envisioned 33rd District in Texas.

The Watertown Daily Times in its stories and editorials has been trying to suggest there is an actual link between federal and local issues. But instead of learning about water level issues, for instance, Hoffman keeps channeling Ronald Reagan, while Armey says that local issues are “parochial,” and really not what Hoffman should be worrying about.

The Republican party has survived in New York State by focusing on local issues and eschewing most of the right-wing ideology that afflicts the national party. As a more-or-less lifelong New York State Democrat, I’ve nevertheless never had any great love for New York State Republican; they’re at least as corrupt as the state’s Democrats and, at least upstate, they’re a great deal nastier. But they’re not wingers, for the most part.

What happened in NY-23 is that a bunch of confederate pukes came in and told a perfectly nice, socially moderate, Republican Albany hack (and I mean that affectionately) to go get bent.

And, and as a New Yorker, that pisses me off.

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