Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

T R E 4 5 O N

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

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

Consistently wrong since 2002

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

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

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

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

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

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

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Archives for 2009

Why the Senate Sucks

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This:

An amendment that would prevent the government from working with contractors who denied victims of assault the right to bring their case to court is in danger of being watered down or stripped entirely from a larger defense appropriations bill.

Multiple sources have told the Huffington Post that Sen. Dan Inouye, a longtime Democrat from Hawaii, is considering removing or altering the provision, which was offered by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and passed by the Senate several weeks ago.

Inouye’s office, sources say, has been lobbied by defense contractors adamant that the language of the Franken amendment would leave them overly exposed to lawsuits and at constant risk of having contracts dry up. The Senate is considering taking out a provision known as the Title VII claim, which (if removed) would allow victims of assault or rape to bring suit against the individual perpetrator but not the contractor who employed him or her.

“The defense contractors have been storming his office,” said a source with knowledge of the situation. “Inouye either will get the amendment taken out altogether, or water it down significantly. If they water it down, they will take out the Title VII claims. This means that in discrimination cases, they will still force you into a secret forced arbitration on KBR’s (or other contractors’) own terms — with your chances of prevailing practically zero. The House seems to be very supportive of the original Franken amendment and all in line, but their hands are tied since it originated in the Senate. And since Inouye runs the show on this bill, he can easily take it out to get Republicans and the defense contractors off his back, which looks increasingly likely.”

A supermajority voted for the amendment, as it passed 68-30, but big business can come in and grease the palms of one Senator and the will of the people is thwarted. And politicians wonder why people have no faith in government or think the government isn’t looking out for the little guy.

Who needs Republicans with folks like this?

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Four Hours into the Upgrade

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And I now have my desktop running Vista at half the functionality it was working at before the “upgrade.” I have no video card drivers and am looking at everything in 800×600 on a 24″ lcd, no virus protection, and for some reason or another, my secondary monitor is now recognized as my main monitor. Why?

Why the fuck not? This is Microsoft!

I have a local Italian deli that delivers that is a lot like a Microsoft product. Sure, you can order whatever you want, but you never know what you are going to get. I’ve had an order of wings and blue cheese come as chicken tenders with ranch and a large fry, an order of lasagne and a salad show up as stuffed shells and cheese sticks, and so on. If you point out they have made a mistake, they get huffy and then take two hours to get you the right order. By then you are full on the cold cereal you ate while waiting the three hours for your food to show up.

At any rate, the new plan is to just put everything on my external hd, take this upgrade back to the Best Buy people and throw it at them, and then do a full install of Seven tomorrow.

If any of you rocket scientists at Microsoft want to try and fix this disaster you have created, feel free to email.

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This Will Surprise No One

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Did precisely what I was asked, uninstalled my antivirus, uninstalled itunes, and uninstalled my ati drivers, followed all the instructions, and now my desktop PC is in an infinite loop with Microsoft 7 halfway installed. It restarts, boots to the Windows 7 install screen, sends me an error message that the “install can not be located,” and then reboots. Rinse and repeat.

Heckuva job, guys. I now have a several thousand dollar paperweight.

BTW- That Windows Upgrade Advisor was teh awesome. I like downloading shit that tells me stuff will be fine before installing software that kills my computer.

And not to reignite the Mac v. Windows flame wars, but I am writing this on my MacBook because my windows “upgrade” has left my PC worthless as breasts on men.

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Shocking Barack

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Have any of you heard of this before:

Our plan is to retrace the route of the automotive CEOs who went to Washington DC asking for government loans. But instead of looking for aid, we’d like to present President Obama with a homegrown solution to the transportation crisis. And instead of flying in a corporate jet, we’re riding Brammo Enertia powercycles. We’re just a couple of guys who work for Brammo, but we want to show that there’s a better way to get from Point A to Point B. And we want to have a little fun while we’re doing it. So join us as we surf from plug to plug in a quest to meet Obama, fueled by nothing more than electricity and the kindness of everyday Americans.

I honestly don’t think I have ever heard of an electric motorcycle before. At any rate, looks like they are having fun, although I would think it would be a touch chilly to be on a bike in Michigan. Apparently the bike can travel 15,000 miles on 100 bucks worth of electricity.

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Even liberal NPR

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If you ever give another cent to NPR, you are a stooge. Here’s their political editor, Ken Rudin (joined here by sob-story memoirist David Carr) with the whole kit-and-kaboodle — Obama is Nixon, if Bush had done this, imagine how the media would haver reacted, etc. (via Steve Benen)

The problem, of course, is that Bush did do this, and no one in the media (except the specific journalists being attacked) said a word. They don’t even remember it happened.


There was the time the Bush administration attacked Newsweek over a controversial story about the treatment of the Koran at Gitmo. Newsweek backed down.

There was the harsh criticism of NBC news, noted here by Dan Froomkin.

There was the time they included a picture of journalist Ron Suskind in a Republican National Committee email.

There was the time Ari Fleischer told Houston Chronicle reporter Bennet Roth that his question had been “noted in the building”.

Let’s be honest: part of the difference here is that the national media simply doesn’t fear Obama the way it feared Bush. In the end, they’re probably right: Ken Rudin can call Obama “Nixonian” all day without fear of repercussion. If he had said this about Bush, you’d better believe he’d be afraid he’d lose his job.

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Fair Weather Fiscal Conservatism

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This made me wonder:

Yesterday saw some rare good news on the health-care front, with the stealth Democratic plan to move $247 billion in ObamaCare costs off the books collapsing in the Senate on a procedural vote of 47 to 53. Maybe there’s more anxiety among Democrats about a huge permanent increase in government health spending than the White House is willing to let on.

A dozen Democrats (plus independent Joe Lieberman) voted against Majority Leader Harry Reid’s gambit, which would have superseded automatic cuts in Medicare payments to doctors scheduled for 21% next year and higher after that. Democrats had included this fix as part of “comprehensive” reform but that pushed costs too high, while President Obama is insisting on a bill that doesn’t increase the deficit on paper.

So Mr. Reid’s inspiration was to decouple these payments from ObamaCare as stand-alone legislation, while hoping everyone ignored the phony budget math. The media did mostly ignore this subterfuge. But enough Republicans developed enough backbone that they spooked Democrats like North Dakota’s Kent Conrad, who for once stood by their supposed deficit-hawk convictions. Notwithstanding the anesthetizing effect of Congress’s now-routine trillion-dollar cost estimates, more than a few Democrats are still capable of sticker shock.

Does anyone remember any op-eds from the WSJ regarding sticker shock for the war in Iraq or the prescription drug plan? I’m honestly asking, because there may have been.

It just sort of cracks me up that one party is basically allowed to do whatever they want, no matter the damage it does to the budget, while another party tries to do the right thing budget wise, and it is continuously used against them.

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