Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Trump should be leading, not lying.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Our messy unity will be our strength.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

So many bastards, so little time.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

They spent the last eight months firing professionals and replacing them with ideologues.

T R E 4 5 O N

Stand up, dammit!

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

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

How stupid are these people?

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

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Be a wild strawberry.

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Archives for 2009

What Avedon Said

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This:

In other news, it turns out the death penalty in Florida costs $51m a year more than just holding convicted killers for life. But, hey, that’s pocket change compared to the certainty that killing people is good.

Of course, I am sure you all know the response from the death penalty crowd- “Get rid of all those unnecessary legal protections for the obviously guilty!” I mean, sometimes, it takes decades of costly legal wrangling before you get to kill an innocent man. That shit gets expensive.

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Tough Times on the Wingnut Welfare Circuit

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Aww, shucks:

Palin’s bookers are said to be asking for $100,000 per speech, but an industry expert tells Page Six: “The big lecture buyers in the US are paralyzed with fear about booking her, basically because they think she is a blithering idiot.”

Maybe she, Carrie Prejean, and Joe the Plumber can go as a panel? Dan Quayle can emcee.

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A kinder, gentler coup

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Maybe I’m way off base on this, but in my opinion, the Conor Friedersdorfs and Nicole Wallaces of the right aren’t so different from coupmeister John L. Perry. The idea of David Petraeus sweeping in and becoming president in 2012 isn’t unethical or unconstitutional, but I can’t help but think that Friedersdorf and Wallace simply want an institution they see as Republican — the military — to depose a Democratic president they dislike. (Friedersorf’s other preferred candidate is Colin Powell.)

The desire to depose Obama runs much deeper on the right — even the so-called moderate right — than anyone is willing to admit. The Perry piece wasn’t any kind of outlier.

Update. To those who say Friedersdorf and Wallace are just rooting for a Republican to win, I quote commenter neil:

But David Petraeus is not, in fact, a politician, nor a candidate, nor even a Republican. So this isn’t just somebody rooting for his side.

Wanting Mitt Romney, a Republican and all-but-declared candidate, to win the election as a Republican in 2012 is nothing like wanting David Petraeus, who is not known to be a Republican and has not expressed interest in being a candidate, to come in and out of nowhere and become the new Republican president. It isn’t the same at all.

Supporting an actual candidate is very different from hoping that your favorite general will become the new president as a member of your party.

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Don’t call it a comeback

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Bret Stephens of the WSJ says neoconservatism is making come back…even though he can’t say what neoconservatism is:

None of this is to say that neoconservatism represents some kind of infallible doctrine—or that it’s even a doctrine. Neocons have erred in overestimating the U.S. public’s willingness to engage in long struggles on behalf of other people. They have erred also in overestimating the willingness of other people to fight for themselves, or for their freedom.

But as the pendulum has swung to a U.S. foreign policy based on little more than the personal attractions of the president, it’s little wonder that the world is casting about for an alternative.

I can tell you what neoconservatism is: it’s John Birchism with an intellectual veneer. It owes it’s political sense to the undeniable power of shouting “appeasement”, “Hitler”, “freedom”, “Munich” in Murdoch media while shouting “Burke”, “Thucydides”, “Mars” in the pages of the New York Times.

In some ways, this is understandable. When you read a serious piece about foreign policy, such as this one, there’s a lot to take in. It’s natural that some will take refuge in the simplistic pretension of neoconservatism.

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Georgia On My Mind

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No one could have predicted:

A nine-month European Union investigation into the 2008 war in the Caucasus has concluded that Georgia triggered the conflict, but that Russia prepared the ground for war to break out and broke international law by invading Georgia as a whole.

Conclusions to the roughly 1,000 page report, released on Wednesday by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, also found that Russia-backed South Ossetian militias committed atrocities and “ethnic cleansing” of Georgian villages during and since the war. It faulted Russian forces in control of the territory that either “would not or could not” control the South Ossetians.

Was the McCain/Palin campaign right about anything? It is probably worth remembering that Randy Scheunemann, a long time lobbyist for Georgia and agitator against Russia, was whispering in McCain’s ear during the crisis as one of his key advisors, and he has now moved on to position himself as the next Turdblossom in a future Palin administration. Remember, being wrong about everything is a key qualification for promotion in the current Republican party.

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Attention, “Fiscal Conservatives”

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You would think that this would be the topic of some debate:

In a bid to wrangle concessions from the Blue Dog Coalition on healthcare reform, House leaders Thursday released CBO estimates for liberals’ preferred version of the public option that show $85 billion more in savings than for the version the Blue Dogs prefer.

Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., a Blue Dog co-chair, said any possible new momentum toward a public option tethered to Medicare rates is, in part, “because of the cost issue” and the updated CBO score.

The original House bill required the public plan to pay providers 5 percent more than Medicare reimbursement rates. But as part of a package of concessions to Blue Dogs, the House Energy and Commerce Committee accepted an amendment that requires the HHS Secretary to negotiate rates with providers. That version of the plan will save only $25 billion.

In total, a public plan based on Medicare rates would save $110 billion over 10 years. That is $20 billion more than earlier estimates, a spokesman for House Speaker Pelosi said.

You know, sometimes it almost seems like fiscal conservatives are full of shit, and it is just a ruse to get elected. Kind of like how the “fiscal conservatives” in the GOP have done a complete and total about face on Medicare.

I bet the folks at Reason could explain all this too me.

(via)

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How The Village Thinks

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I know I always put my health at risk when I read the Moustache of Understanding, but sometimes I can not resist. Like today:

Sometimes I wonder whether George H.W. Bush, president “41,” will be remembered as our last “legitimate” president. The right impeached Bill Clinton and hounded him from Day 1 with the bogus Whitewater “scandal.” George W. Bush was elected under a cloud because of the Florida voting mess, and his critics on the left never let him forget it.

And Mr. Obama is now having his legitimacy attacked by a concerted campaign from the right fringe. They are using everything from smears that he is a closet “socialist” to calling him a “liar” in the middle of a joint session of Congress to fabricating doubts about his birth in America and whether he is even a citizen. And these attacks are not just coming from the fringe. Now they come from Lou Dobbs on CNN and from members of the House of Representatives.

Got it? Clinton and Obama are not legitimate because the lunatics say they aren’t.

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