Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

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

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

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

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

In my day, never was longer.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Second rate reporter says what?

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

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

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

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Now They Are All About the Protocol

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I find it endlessly amusing that the usual suspects keep getting the vapors about what gifts President Obama gives people, but if the autographed Rodgers and Hammerstein songbook and IPod aren’t good enough for the Queen, that is just tough for her.

I will point out that all our Emily Posts of the right seem to think this is a major gaffe, but it could have been worse:

I guess it could have been worse, wingnuts. He could have given her a backrub.

*** Update ***

Via the comments, this is how it is done, Obama:

When you’ve just made it sound like the Queen is more than 200 years old, there may be a few ways of recovering from the gaffe. But turning to her and giving her a sly wink is probably not included in any book of royal etiquette.

That’s what happened yesterday after George Bush mangled his greeting to the Queen on her state visit to the US, reports The Daily Mail.

Stumbling over his words, he came perilously close to suggesting that the monarch had toured the States in 1776.

And although the President’s following wink was initially rewarded with a regal glare, the Queen did at least seem to see the funny side of the blunder.

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Smoking Tax

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There are so many things that are funny about this Red State rant about detergent in the state of Washington (I know), notwithstanding the fact that “federalism” really has nothing to do this, as this was a state and local issue. But what is really funny is that they seem to think this will be an issue, while they are ignoring a much larger issue that really could fuel populist outrage:

One of President Barack Obama’s campaign pledges on taxes went up in puffs of smoke Wednesday.

The largest increase in tobacco taxes took effect despite Obama’s promise not to raise taxes of any kind on families earning under $250,000 or individuals under $200,000.

This is one tax that disproportionately affects the poor, who are more likely to smoke than the rich.

To be sure, Obama’s tax promises in last year’s campaign were most often made in the context of income taxes. Not always.

“I can make a firm pledge,” he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12. “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

I was getting kitty litter today and I swear to God a man almost had a stroke when he went to purchase a pack of Marlboros. He dropped more f-bombs than a Dennis Leary routine as he ranted about the cost of the smokes.

Then he pulled out his wallet and paid for them. As a general rule, I can not stand sin taxes, but since I seem to have lost that debate long ago and our entire tax code is designed around placing incentives on desirable behavior, I am hard pressed to get upset about raising the tax on a product that kills you.

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Always the Victim

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Glenn has a great post up documenting the nonsensical whinging of the modern right about being victimized by, well, everyone and everything, that is well worth a read. A snippet:

The predominant attribute of the right-wing movement is self-victimizing petulance over the unfair treatment to which they are endlessly and mercilessly subjected. Last week, C-SPAN broadcast a Commentary Magazine event that almost certainly set a record for most tough-guy/warrior nepotism ever stuffed onto a single panel, as it featured William Kristol (son of Irv and Gertrude), John Podhoretz (son of Norm and Midge), and Jonah Goldberg (son of Lucianne). Jihadis around the world are undoubtedly still trembling at the sight of this brigade of Churchillian toughness.

Exemplifying the deeply self-pitying theme of the entire discussion, Jonah continuously insisted that conservative magazines are so very, very important to the political landscape — indispensably so — because conservative voices are frozen out of mainstream media venues by The Liberal Media, so that poor, lonely, stigmatized conservatives can only get right-wing opinion in places like Weekly Standard and National Review. In between Jonah’s petulant laments about how conservative opinion cannot be heard in The Mainstream Media, Bill Kristol talked about his New York Times column and his Washington Post column, John Podhoretz told stories about his tenure editing The New York Post Editorial Page and Charles Krauthammer’s years of writing a column for Time and The New Republic, and Jonah referenced his Los Angeles Times column. None of them ever recognized the gaping disparity between those facts and their woe-is-us whining about conservative voices like theirs being shut out of The Liberal Media. So important in conservative mythology is self-victimization that they maintain it even as they themselves unwittingly provide the facts which disprove it.

It is worth noting this is nothing new, and it is surprising how often they go to the well with the victim schitck. In response to a close election in NY-20 last night, Newsmax blares the following headline:

“NY GOP Moves To Block Franken-Style Vote Grab”

Got it? The incumbent Republican Senator of Minnesota, Norm Coleman, wasn’t just unpopular to such an extent that he could not win a three-way race. That would not be an acceptable frame for the permanent victims. Instead, we are alerted that the election was “stolen” in a “vote grab.” Also notice this sets the stage for Republicans doing whatever they want in NY, because they have to, otherwise they will be victims of the Murphy/Democratic cabal. Tedisco, with his dozens of years in the Assembly and huge network of supporters and insider knowledge of the system just doesn’t stand a chance against the Murphy machine. It would be funny if they weren’t serious.

Yesterday, the following piece circulated the right-wing blogosphere:

A lawyer involved with legal action against Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a “a game changer.”

Heather Heidelbaugh, who represented the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee in the lawsuit against the group, recounted for the ommittee what she had been told by a former ACORN worker who had worked in the group’s Washington, D.C. office. The former worker, Anita Moncrief, told Ms. Heidelbaugh last October, during the state committee’s litigation against ACORN, she had been a “confidential informant for several months to The New York Times reporter, Stephanie Strom.”

This is the mother lode, isn’t it? It is the whine equivalent of the superfecta. The liberal NY Times, ACORN, the Democrats, and Obama all conspired to steal the election from John McCain. John McCain wasn’t doomed by the fallout of decades of Republican rule. He wasn’t doomed by his poor performance in the debates, his choice of an idiot for a running mate, or his ridiculous response to the financial meltdown. No. Instead, we learn that the Republicans lost because a “game-changer” was suppressed by a liberal cabal of evildoers designed to keep the man down.

You are probably laughing, but what you don’t understand is that these guys actually believe this.

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Pity the Jealous Eyebrow

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Watch this Bob Wright/Mickey Kaus bloggingheads discussion about JournOlist, and tell me there is something principled in his argument, because I am not seeing it. All this is was Mickey Kaus being upset and jealous that he was not invited to the group, and Kaus gives up the game with the Felix Frankfurter analogy. Mickey wanted an invitation to dinner, he didn’t get one, and so he had to trash things.

For the record, I am starting a secretive email list called the “Johnolist.” Everyone is invited, except for Mickey Kaus. I expect to talk a good bit about sex with barn animals and the management of TNR.

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Seventy years of solitude

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I’m not so much in the mood to make fun of Congressional Republicans today, but I’d be remiss if I let this pass:

JMM writes:

This is the scoring the House Republicans have provided, tracking Democratic budget policy and theirs over the next 70 years. As you can see, predicting ideological stances over as yet unborn Democratic members of Congress, the GOP scoring appears to have us on track for the government owning about 90% of the economy in the early-mid-22nd century, which if I remember is about the time period of the invention of the warp drive. So I don’t know if they’ve figured that in too.

Even the Politico gets in on the act a bit:

“If you expected a GOP alternative to the failed policies of the past that got our country into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, then I have two words for you: April Fool’s,” said Kenneth Baer, communications director for the Office of Management and Budget.

Indeed, many of the tax ideas show no effort to temper those tax breaks — under the Bush Administration—which most benefit upper income families. And Ryan would add on top of this a cut in the corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent and temporarily suspend all capital gains taxes for 2009 and 2010.

This is just embarrassing. It’s like watching a Pauly Shore movie.

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More rare candor

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Here’s hoping it’s getting less rare (from today’s WaPo reporter chat):

Scranton, N.J.: Yeah, he’s taking hits in Washington and yet your own poll suggests he’s not taking hits with the American people. Everyday on cable news and in the Browser I read something to the effect of “will announcing this (some policy) affect Obama’s popularity? That is the big test?” And then it doesn’t. Kinda amusing; you guys keep waiting for him to fail in a way that I never saw with Bush (and for the record, I don’t agree with all of Obama’s policies so far)

Alec MacGillis: I know what you’re getting at here. There seems to be two different levels of evaluation going on — inside the Beltway, where expectations may have been out of proportion, and where many political reporters want to show that they’re going to give the rock star president a tough going-over; and around the country, where people seem willing to give the new guy some time to fix problems that preceded him.

One point I’d like to make, though, is that what we’re seeing is not a “tough going over” so much as an attempt at hazing. The questions Chuck Todd and Ed Henry asked Obama about “sacrifice” and his response to the AIG bonuses were not tough questions. Obama handled them easily and made the questioners look stupid in the process.

There’s a big difference between asking difficult questions about legitimate issues and trying to make the president look bad so that you can get a chest bump from Rick Santelli at the NBC commissary.

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Makers and takers revisited

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Sully has an explanation of what he meant by “makers and takers”:

I should unpack a little (and maybe at some point, a lot). The divide I’m talking about is not a hackneyed distinction between God-fearing entrepreneurs and parasitic welfare queens. It’s about those who contribute their labor to produce something of value, and those who primarily rely on government, directly and indirectly, to get them through their lives. This is not about rich and poor as such. It’s clear at this point that the rich and privileged often get as much from government as anyone else. Nor is it about ending a welfare state that provides a core level of health and retirement security. Conservatives should be very comfortable in backing such a safety net – and working hard to make it more efficient and effective. It’s about work vs. welfare broadly conceived. What I think conservatism has to do is recover its core sense of itself as the movement that values work over wealth, individual effort over collective action, and a system that is transparent and fair enough for ordinary folk with lives to live and families to take care of to keep tabs on.

“Work versus welfare broadly conceived”? It’s the latest variation on compassionate conservatism and “Sam’s Club conservatism”, some nonspecific crap about how you don’t want to screw the poor, you just want to make sure they’re really sweating for the scraps you throw to them.

Really, this kind of thing is so contentless that it it should be explained with Boehner-style bubble diagrams.

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