Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Dear legacy media: you are not here to influence outcomes and policies you find desirable.

The revolution will be supervised.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

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

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

People are weird.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

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Archives for 2009

Rhetoric v. Reality

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Bill Kristol sees an opportunity for the GOP in the backlash over the inexcusable AIG bonuses:

But if capitalism is to survive, shouldn’t the Republican party, the party that defends democratic capitalism, be particularly vehement in denouncing its excesses? Isn’t this a pretty spectacular one? And isn’t this a moment for the GOP to separate itself from the Bush administration as well as the Obama administration, who together have been responsible for an incompetent and improvident bailout? Figuring out the right policy going forward with respect to toxic assets and the rest is, of course, a major intellectual task. But being on the side of a healthy populist reaction to the AIG situation is at least a good political start.

Good luck with that:

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) blamed the “tone deaf” bankers for creating the political environment that allows Obama to call for a cap.

“Because of their excesses, very bad things begin to happen, like the United States government telling a company what it can pay its employees. That’s not a good thing in America,” Kyl told the Huffington Post.

“What executives have done is troubling, but it’s equally troubling to have government telling shareholders how much they can pay the executives,” said Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL).

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) said that he is “one of the chief defenders of Obama on the Republican side” for the president’s efforts to reach across the aisle. But, said Inhofe, “as I was listening to him make those statements I thought, is this still America? Do we really tell people how to run [a business], and who to pay and how much to pay?”

Up next, Bill Kristol proposes the GOP get in front of the populist rage over the War in Iraq.

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The sun is up, the sky is blue

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Lots o’ fun at the WaPo chats today. Tucker Carlson is still whining about the time Jon Stewart dissed him:

Falls Church: Tucker: saw you on Reliable Sources talking about Cramer v. Stewart. You know, the whole world is not divided up into the vast left-wing conspiracy and the brave moral right that fights against it.

There are legitimate journalistic questions about the role of a financial channel and how much cheer leading it should do or if the interviewers sometimes treat business leaders like Access Hollywood treats celebrities or if they should be in the business of investigating corrupt businesses and business practices.

But to dismiss those questions as an Obama surrogate hit job… No wonder the majority of the country thinks the right is out of touch with reality.

Tucker Carlson:
……Stewart’s answer invariably is: I’m a comedian. That’s not my job. But that’s a dodge, and increasingly unsustainable. In fact, Stewart is a player in the national conversation. He seeks to influence politics and policy, and he succeeds. It’s time for him to admit that, and be held to the same standards everyone else at his level (including Jim Kramer) lives by.

and

Jon Stewart: Methinks Jon does a much better job than the traditional media in holding folks accountable for what they put out there. He is right, he is a comedian – and he tries to show (in my opinion) how easy it is to debunk most of what is presented if one wanted to. Most MSM shows, now that Russert is no longer in the gotcha game, rarely calls the so-called experts and politicos on anything. They just listen, over maybe a partial debate and move on. Rather than saying and presenting the facts from their own mouths that say – uh… wait a minute here you’re wrong and misleading.

Tucker Carlson: I agree with you to this extent: If a phony like Jon Stewart is conducting the best interviews out there, the mainstream press is in deep trouble.

Stewart a is “phony” who doesn’t live up to “his own standards”? Is a a political discussion or “Catcher In the Rye”?

But Tucker Carlson makes a fool of himself all the time, so that’s hardly news. What’s most exciting to me is that Emily Yoffe of “Dear Prudence” is on at 1. She wrote what may be the most absurd piece in the history of the Washington Post, a hit piece on Al Gore about global warming. The beauty of this — and what makes it so absurd — is that she has admitted that she tests a first-grade level in math, yet she saw fit to comment on a largely quantitative theory (see Somerby for more).

There’s very little chance she’ll take my question, but I thought I’d give it a try:

Dear Prudence,

An advice columnist I know wrote an absurd piece attacking Al Gore for his research of global warming (“Gloom and Doom in A Sunny Day”, Washington Post, Monday, June 25, 2007). She did this despite the fact that global warming arguments are quantitative and she is a self-described math moron. What should I tell her?

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Open Thread

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Here is a pic of a recently departed pooch who died last week, so I thought I would throw this up to cheer up the owner:

Just try to move a Great Dane off a couch. I challenge you. In other news, I apparently did not put my toothbrush in the holder last night after I brushed my teeth, and when I woke up this morning I walked into the bathroom and saw Tunch sitting squarely with his butt right on the business end of the toothbrush while he was drinking out of the sink (despite having a water fountain in the kitchen). I’m not sure people understand that once you get a pet, you simply don’t own anything anymore. They own it all. Sometimes they let you use it.

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The Market is a Six Year Old on a Sugar High

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With all this talk about investor confidence and confidence in the market and confidence in the future, you know who doesn’t have much confidence? Me.

I’m listening to the “market analyst” on CNN, and she assured me the market is going to rally today because, and I’m paraphrasing, “they were reassured by Ben Bernanke’s appearance on 60 Minutes.”

Really. No wonder we are in this mess. That is how my ex-girlfriend picked restaurants- “Let’s go here. I liked the look of their greeter.” If this is how the market really operates, I would not be surprised if this is just another short-term rally before the next plunge to the bottom.

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Fareed Zakaria is very shrill

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This is strange coming from such a serious commentator:

In fact, though consumed by the economic crisis in its first 50 days, the Obama administration has nevertheless made some striking moves in foreign policy.

[….]

These are initial, small steps but all in the right direction— deserving of praise, one might think. But no, the Washington establishment is mostly fretting, dismayed in one way or another by most of these moves. The conservative backlash has been almost comical in its fury. Two weeks into Obama’s term, Charles Krauthammer lumped together a bunch of Russian declarations and actions—many of them long in the making—and decided that they were all “brazen provocations” that Obama had failed to counter. Obama’s “supine diplomacy,” Krauthammer thundered, was setting off a chain of catastrophes across the globe. The Pakistani government, for example, had obviously sensed weakness in Washington and “capitulated to the Taliban” in the Swat Valley. Somehow Krauthammer missed the many deals that Pakistan struck over the last three years—during Bush’s reign—with the Taliban, deals that were more hastily put together, on worse terms, with poorer results.

Many normally intelligent commentators have joined in the worrying. Leslie Gelb, the author of a smart and lively new book, “Power Rules,” says that Hillary’s comments about China’s human-rights record were correct, but shouldn’t have been said publicly. Peter Bergen of CNN says that “doing deals with the Taliban today could further destabilize Afghanistan.” “It’s change for change’s sake,” Gelb writes ruefully. Ah, if we just kept in place all those Bush-era policies that were working so well.

I guess Zakaria has finally let anti-Semitism get the better of him. That or he’s spent too much time in the fever swamps of the angry left-wing blogs.

Or maybe both.

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