Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

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

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

Our messy unity will be our strength.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

When we show up, we win.

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

Republicans in disarray!

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Bark louder, little dog.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

You are here: Home / Archives for 2009

Archives for 2009

Happy St. Patricks Day! And Go Steelers!

by | 55 Comments

This post is in: ,

This is something I can support:

President Barack Obama on Tuesday selected Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney to be U.S. ambassador to Ireland, turning to a lifelong Republican who provided the Democrat critical campaign support during the White House race.

The 76-year-old Rooney endorsed Obama over Hillary Rodham Clinton during Pennsylvania’s contentious Democratic primary; Clinton won the contest last April. Rooney later campaigned for him in Steelers country in western Pennsylvania, and Obama went on to win the state last November.

In the 1970s, Rooney helped found the American Ireland Fund, an organization that has raised millions for advocacy of peace and education in Ireland. His legacy is reflected in a Steelers-themed bar in a disused linen mill in one of the roughest parts of northwest Belfast.

I say this over and over again, but people never seem to understand just how much people around here love the Rooney family and love the Steelers.

Happy St. Patricks Day! And Go Steelers!Post + Comments (55)

The Ugly Smears of Michael Goldfarb

by | 85 Comments

This post is in: ,

David Duke is an asshole.

I feel pretty confident and comfortable saying that, because if there is an uglier human being on the planet, I don’t know who it is. An overt racist, member and founder of the Louisiana Ku Klux Klan, only to leave the organization to form the National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP), Duke is also an ugly anti-Semite who attributes the 9/11 attacks partially to Mossad, and who uses the “low” number of dead Jews as proof for his thesis.

If there was a scumbag Hall of Fame, David Duke would be the first initiate.

Why do I say all of this? Because of this little bit of free association from Michael Goldfarb the other day in what I consider one of the most disgusting smears I have seen or heard in a long time:

Elsewhere, David Duke has now weighed in on Freeman’s claim that it was the “Israel Lobby” — or what Freeman’s now calling the “Avigdor Lieberman Lobby” in a media blitz that seems designed to maximize the embarrassment this has all caused at the White House — that scuttled the appointment:

Charles W. Freeman…was forced to withdraw from his appointment as head of the National Intelligence Council because extremist Zionists were afraid he would put the interests of America over those of Israel.

Makes you wonder why Pincus didn’t just go straight to Duke rather than risk having his quotes garbled in translation from the original Arabic.

Did you follow that? Walter Pincus, a respected Pulitzer winning journalist, wrote a story that upset the folks at the Weekly Standard, so the first thing that must be done is to destroy him. What better way to do it than to smear him with David Duke? Putting aside the fact that there actually apparently is an “Avigdor Lieberman Lobby,” as that piece of human detritus was just appointed Foreign Minister in an agreement with Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, what Goldfarb is doing is clear- he is attempting to smear Pincus and Freeman with the ugly racist and anti-Semite David Duke. All Pincus did was report what was going on in the middle east from a viewpoint outside the AIPAC bubble, and he had to be destroyed for it.

And no one at the Weekly Standard even blinked. It didn’t even faze them. This is how they do business- just last week Goldfarb was attempting to smear Charles Freeman with the taint of the “pedophile lobby.”

But this latest offensive smear of Pincus made me wonder. Below are two statements:

Statement One:

Way back on Monday, Michelle Obama revealed that she felt no pride in her country prior to her husband becoming the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. Today she’s gone and done it again… And it strikes me that no candidate in history has benefited more from this country’s “uninvolved, uninformed” electorate than Barack Obama. Even his own supporters can’t name a single legislative achievement in the man’s record. If the American people had any idea how little Obama has done for his state and his country, they might have second thoughts. But they like his speeches, so they’ve gotten involved. They remain uninformed, and Michelle had better hope they stay that way.

Statement Two:

During the campaign, Mrs. Michelle Obama made a very revealing off-hand comment. The comment was so fundamental and natural to her sentiments that she couldn’t imagine that any negative response could come as a result of it… Let’s see. Michelle Obama was never proud of America when she read of the American Founding Fathers who heroically founded this nation and the wonderful rights and liberties they enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights.

She never had a moment of pride when she became aware that for the first time in history the footsteps of mankind were put on the surface of the moon, and that those incredible footsteps were made by Americans.

She has never felt pride in America for the thousands of scientific, technological and medical advancements that our people created and that she benefits from every day of her life.

There are thousands of things Michelle Obama could have felt pride in as an American, but she says she has never even once felt that pride until Barack found fame and fortune.”

Which one of those statements was from David Duke? And which one was from Michael Goldfarb?

And using the Michael Goldfarb standard for Walter Pincus and Charles Freeman, shouldn’t the Weekly Standard be a little bit embarrassed employing a hack who cribs from David Duke?

*** Update ***

Apparently the David Duke smear is a tried and true rhetorical strategy for these people.

The Ugly Smears of Michael GoldfarbPost + Comments (85)

How was anyone to know?

by | 76 Comments

This post is in: ,

As an aficionado of Richard Cohen stupidity I can’t believe I didn’t see this earlier (MM via Atrios):

What Jon Stewart needs is Jon Stewart. He could use a droll comedian to temper his ferocity and correct him when he’s wrong, as he was about the financial media, particularly CNBC and its excitable analyst Jim Cramer. They didn’t cover up the story of financial shenanigans. They didn’t even know it existed.

[….]

If these people kept their money in these companies — financial and insurance giants they had built and knew from the inside — how was even Jim Cramer to know these firms were essentially hollow?

I give you one other name: Richard Cohen. He who writes this column had some of his (extremely) hard-earned retirement funds in AIG stock. This was because I was a cautious investor, and what could be safer than an insurance behemoth? Who knew that in faraway London, a division of AIG was fooling around in stuff that virtually cratered the whole company? Not my broker. Not me. Not even Greenberg.

So many cliches in so few paragraphs. Media celebrity defends other media celebrity? Check. No one could have predicted? Triple check. Reference to how hard reporter works? Check.

This is awfully close to parody.

How was anyone to know?Post + Comments (76)

Freeze, baby, freeze

by | 155 Comments

This post is in: , ,

There’s an interesting back-and-forth between Ross Douthat and Michael Kinsley about stem cell research. Douthat writes (in a somewhat “sneery” reply to an earlier Kinsley piece on the issue, as Kinsley puts it):
 

As should be clear from other examples, at home and abroad, most pro-lifers would like to heavily regulate fertility clinics, and would support efforts to give every embryo a chance at life. 

Weirdly, Douthat’s links are to an old article about snowflake babies, an old article about a law in Italy, and something William Saletan wrote about the woman who had octuplets. So that’s “clear from other examples”? The NYT should be able to do better (note: the point of this post is not to bash Douthat, since there’s more evidence to support his claim in the end).

Kinsley replies:

In Bush’s original speech announcing his stem cell research restrictions eight years ago (now praised by conservatives as a masterpiece of moral reasoning the way liberals praise President Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia) Bush actually praised the work of fertility clinics, claiming—correctly—that in-vitro fertilization (IVF) has brought happiness to many.

Furthermore, if you’re going to draw a line to facilitate compromise, the line between embryos used for research and embryos simply destroyed is an odd one to draw—at least if your intention is to ban the research but allow the pointless destruction to continue. Why not the other way around? Also, while stem cell research involves the destruction of embryos, IVF involves the purposeful creation of embryos with the certain knowledge that many or most of them will be destroyed. Once again, it’s an odd compromise that saves the former by preventing scientific research while allowing the latter much larger and pointless slaughter to continue unmolested.

My own suspicion is that this fertility clinic anomaly hasn’t even occurred to most pro-lifers. And I think, or hope, that when they realize that their logic in opposing stem cell research would condemn all IVF as well, it will give many reasonable pro-lifers pause—maybe even about their pro-life position in general, certainly about their opposition to stem cell research. That’s why I keep harping on this analogy. And that is why the leaders of the pro-life movement keep avoiding it.

Now, here’s where things get interesting. The state of Georgia has in fact decided to wade into the IVF issue with a law I don’t know how to interpret:
 

Last Thursday, the Georgia House passed a bill that declares embryos are children and therefore can be adopted. Meanwhile, the Georgia Senate passed a bill that defines a living human embryo as a person and prohibits the destruction of an embryo for any reason, such as scientific research.

This might also criminalize abortion. Thus, it is probably unconstitutional.

But here’s my question: if the embryos can’t be used for research (as they would be under new laws) or destroyed (as they currently are in many cases), then do they have to kept frozen forever? Isn’t that even stranger and more science-fictiony (one argument people seem to make against stem cell research is that it’s strange and science-fictiony)?

I think Kinsley is right about the politics of this, that screwing with IVF will just piss off people who are trying hard to get pregnant and thus will further ghettoize the conservatives who push for it. But Douthat may be right that conservatives will push for it anyway.

Freeze, baby, freezePost + Comments (155)

He’s still big time in the Village

by | 121 Comments

This post is in: 

This is weird, though predictable. Beltway reporters are attacking Gibbs for his “I guess Rush was busy” comments about Dick Cheney.

Here’s Chip Reid (via TPM):

Reid: Can I ask you, when you referred to the former Vice President, that was a really hard-hitting, kind of sarcastic response you had. This is a former Vice President of the United States. Is that the attitude — is that the sanctioned tone toward the former Vice President of the United States from this White House now?

Here’s Rick Klein via Yglesias (and how scary is it that he’s made The Note worse than when Halperin was doing it?):

Gibbs on Chney critique: “I guess Rush Limbaugh was busy.” wow — we’re talking about the former vice president here

Cheney said that he’d “pay to see” a debate between Rush and Obama and has repeatedly said that Obama has left the nation open to attack. Why don’t we get a “wow, he’s talking about the sitting president” here?

Dick Cheney still has higher status in the Village than Barack Obama. It’s that simple.

He’s still big time in the VillagePost + Comments (121)

The Cavuto Mark

by | 55 Comments

This post is in: ,

DougJ pointed you to John King’s question yesterday, “Is the president of the United States trying to brazenly deceive the American people?” It is probably worth noting that this sort of question has always been addressed:

Nothing changes.

The Cavuto MarkPost + Comments (55)