Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

This fight is for everything.

I really should read my own blog.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

Reality always gets a vote in the end.

Find someone who loves you the way trump and maga love traitors.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Giving up is unforgivable.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

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

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

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

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Archives for 2009

Always Picking The Losing Battle

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I really don’t get these guys:

It’s OK for Republicans to want President Obama to fail if they think he’s jeopardizing the country, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told members of his political party Tuesday night.

Jindal described the premise of the question — “Do you want the president to fail?” — as the “latest gotcha game” being perpetrated by Democrats against Republicans.

“Make no mistake: Anything other than an immediate and compliant, ‘Why no sir, I don’t want the president to fail,’ is treated as some sort of act of treason, civil disobedience or political obstructionism,” Jindal said at a political fundraiser attended by 1,200 people. “This is political correctness run amok.”

They just seem so dead set on picking battles that have no upside for them whatsoever. Is it honestly their number one priority to fight for their right to hope the President fails? And anything less is political correctness? How tone deaf and offkey can these guys get? Even if you win the argument about it being acceptable to want the President to fail, you are now on record HOPING THE PRESIDENT FAILS. Why? And that isn’t even going into the last couple of years in which any objection to Bush’s policies was met with catcalls regarding treason and whatnot.

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So Close, But Yet So Far

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Secretary of State Clinton, today in Mexico:

“Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade,” she said, using unusually blunt language. “Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians.”

So far, so good. An honest recognition of the problem. Next:

For instance, Mrs. Clinton said, the United States will help supply Mexican law enforcement officers with helicopters and night-vision goggles and other equipment to take on the cartels, which are armed to the teeth.

“We’ve got to figure out how to stop these bad guys,” she said. “These criminals are outgunning the law enforcement officials.”

American guns are part of the problem. Here are some bigger guns.

I guess everyone in DC managed to completely ignore that editorial from all the former heads of state whose countries we have helped to throw into chaos. If you are interested in some reading, head here.

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Now That’s Entertainment

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Eric Cantor’s crew wasn’t going to waste their time listening to boring old professorial talk last night:

And you all thought Washington wasn’t sexy: the office of ambitious young House Republican Whip Eric Cantor has confirmed to your Wonkette that instead of watching President Obama’s boring press conference last night like the rest of us dingbats, Cantor and a bipartisan group of legislators attended the Show Of The Century at downtown’s Verizon Center: a Britney Spears concert. If our children weren’t so concerned about future deficits, what would they think of this!

While we only asked Cantor’s office if Cantor himself attended, they were sure to include in their response that vulnerable Senate Democrats were also there, plus regular Democrats, and that Obama has also been to the Verizon Center before for a night of leisure.

No idea if this is true, but if it is, it would be pretty funny. Also, family values!

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History repeats the old conceits

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Ezra Klein has a pretty good summary of the “Wall Street is back, beyotches” stuff that’s hitting the presses this week (for an extensive list of what I’m talking about, see this).  The common theme here is that bankers hate Obama despite the fact that he’s propped up their industry on more or less the bankers’ terms.  Justin Fox recounts a story of:

a dinner party a couple of weeks ago with a Wall Street friend who complained that Barack Obama was out to get him and his kind. “What?!?!” I said. “He’s doing what he can to protect you from the baying wolves.”

Eric Rauchway recounts how things weren’t so different for FDR:

He was surprised and wounded at the way the upper classes turned on him…. Consider the situation in which he came to office. The economic machinery of the nation had broken down…. People who had anything to lose were frightened; they were willing to accept any way out that would leave them still in possession…. Although he had adopted many novel, perhaps risky expedients, he had avoided vital disturbances to the interests. For example, he had passed by an easy chance to solve the bank crisis by nationalization…. His basic policies for industry and agriculture had been designed after models supplied by great vested-interest groups. Of course, he had adopted several measures of relief and reform, but mainly of the sort that any wise and humane conservative would admit to be necessary….

Nothing that [he] had done warranted the vituperation he soon got in the conservative press or the obscenities that the … maniacs were bruiting about in their clubs and dining-rooms. Quite understandably he began to feel that the people who were castigating him were muddle-headed ingrates.

One should remember that wealthy interests have never stopped re-fighting the war against the New Deal. Anything short of a tax holiday and another round of deregulation is communism. It’s the Rick Santelli rule.

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Red State and Blue Dogs

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This just came in from the Red State Strike Force email list.

Dear XXXX:

We need to get the Blue Dog Democrats to slow down budget approval in the House of Representatives. The vote in committee is tonight.

STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING.

PICK UP THE PHONE.

CALL 202-224-3121.

Ask for Rep. John Yarmuth’s Office.

Please ask Congressman John Yarmuth to vote no on the budget tonight. We can stop the budget if you will pick up your phone right now. The vote is tonight.

Sincerely yours,


Erick Erickson
Editor, RedState.com

Update: I seem to have gotten an email about Yarmuth because one of my Red State Strike Force personae lives in Louisville.

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Memewatch: Obama is really a poor communicator

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It’s not an accident that so many righties settled on the “Obama is boring” meme this morning. The idea of attacking what is perceived to be Obama’s greatest strength — his ability as a communicator — has been brewing for a while. It’s what all the yammering about the teleprompter is about. It’s what all the hand-wringing about Obama’s jokes is about. And they’ve already phrased it in the convenient Slate/TNR contrarian “myth-busting” form that media types love so much (Ben Smith gushed over this piece):

2. Obama is a great communicator. Cut away the soaring rhetoric in his speeches, and the resulting policy statements are often vague, lawyerly and confusing. He is not plain-spoken: He parses his language so much that a casual listener will miss important caveats. That’s in part why he uses teleprompters for routine policy statements: He chooses his words carefully, relying heavily on ill-defined terms like “deficit reduction” (which means tax increases, rather than actual “savings”) and “combat troops” (as opposed to “all troops in harm’s way”).

[…..]

4. Obama is smooth. Despite being deliberate, Obama is surprisingly gaffe-prone. Reporters on my e-mail lists last year know he consistently mispronounced, misnamed or altogether forgot where he was. (In one typical gaffe in Sioux Falls, S.D., he started his speech with an enthusiastic “Thank you, Sioux City!”) His geographic gaffes are not just at routine rallies but at major events, including the Democratic National Convention and his first address to Congress. Any politician occasionally misspeaks, but the frequency of Obama’s flubs is notable.

This is a classic Rovean technique — attacking your opponent where he is strongest. I happen to think it is a smart technique in many cases. I’m skeptical whether “Obama is teh boring” will work right now, because the public is more focused on the next paycheck than on whether or not they find Obama’s pressers entertaining.

But make no mistake: right-wing media types will be pushing this hard over the next few months. And when even a pretty good reporter like Ben Smith is eating it up, you can bet we’ll be hearing a lot about it in the media.

(By the way, while Michael Wolff probably doesn’t qualify as a right-wing hack (although he certainly does enjoy fellating Rupert Murdoch), this piece is pretty remarkable.)

Update. This weirds me out a little:  Michael Scherer of all people nails the teleprompter “issue”.

I don’t really get all this gabbing about Obama and his teleprompter. Does anyone really doubt Obama’s ability to speak cogently and in detail without notes, after winning three presidential debates and slaying just about every press availability he gets? So he likes reading from a screen and not a piece of paper. But this whole line of attack, promoted widely by conservative blogs, sort of baffles me. And does anyone stop to think about how all this back and forth is effecting the feelings of the computer that powers Obama’s teleprompter? Well, I have, but that’s only because I have been reading the teleprompter’s blog and Twitter feed.

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