Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I really should read my own blog.

Second rate reporter says what?

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

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

No one could have predicted…

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

We will not go back.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Finding joy where we can, and muddling through where we can’t.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Let there be snark.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

The revolution will be supervised.

Republicans in disarray!

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

You are here: Home / Archives for 2009

Archives for 2009

Trouble in South Carolina

by | 52 Comments

This post is in: 

For Gov. Sanford:

Republicans in the South Carolina state Senate are laying the groundwork to accept the stimulus funds Gov. Mark Sanford is likely to reject.

Sanford, a Republican, announced Wednesday that he’d accept $700 million in stimulus funds only if President Barack Obama granted him a waiver to use it toward state debts and liabilities. If the president refuses, which is likely, the governor said he’d reject the money.

That didn’t sit well with Republican state Sen. Hugh K. Leatherman, Sr., the Senate finance chairman, who introduced a resolution in the Senate Thursday to request the money if the governor refuses it.

“Being chairman of the finance committee, I too have concerns about annualization,” Leatherman said, referring to Sanford’s concerns that the stimulus money could create financial hurdles in the future. “But I am not willing to deprive our people of maybe creating a good job for them,” Leatherman said.

Again, the purely cynical play for Democrats is to just keep giving Sanford a microphone.

Trouble in South CarolinaPost + Comments (52)

The More Things Change

by | 92 Comments

This post is in: ,

The more they don’t really at all:

The Obama administration said Friday that it is abandoning one of President George W. Bush’s key phrases in the war on terrorism: enemy combatant. But that won’t change much for the detainees at the U.S. naval base in Cuba — Obama still asserts the military’s authority to hold them. Human rights attorneys said they were disappointed that Obama didn’t take a new stance.

The Justice Department said in legal filings that it will no longer use the term “enemy combatants’ to justify holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

“This is really a case of old wine in new bottles,” the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has been fighting the detainees’ detention, said in a statement. “It is still unlawful to hold people indefinitely without charge. The men who have been held for more than seven years by our government must be charged or released.”

One of the Cornerites quipped “Maybe President Bush should have just changed the name of Guantamo,” and the truth hurts. I wasn’t one of the wild-eye Obama supporters who thought everything was going to be different the moment he took office, and I still think it is far to early to judge the overall policy of Team Obama, but it sure looks like they are dropping the ball on many of these issues. It really is infuriating.

The More Things ChangePost + Comments (92)

Bacon popcorn

by | 42 Comments

This post is in: 

I’m a bit jetlagged and can’t get to sleep, hence this late night post.

I’d like to tell everyone about something new I had at dinner (or more accurately at a restaurant bar waiting for a dinner companion to arrive): bacon-flavored popcorn.  I had it at a restaurant near Hyde Park called Texture.  

It’s just as delicious as you would imagine.

Bacon popcornPost + Comments (42)

Glenn Beck Friday!

by | 116 Comments

This post is in: ,

Via the Library Grape, I see that it is Glenn Beck Friday at Fox, and I am sure it is just a coincidence that it is also Friday the 13th. At any rate, apparently the MSNBC folks were not the only folks getting notes from corporate HQ on what to and what to not talk about, as it is pretty clear Shep Smith was told to heavily promote Glenn Beck’s doom bunker or whatever. Apparently, he was not amused, and the result is this pretty entertaining montage of Shep openly mocking Glenn Beck all day long:

That is pretty excellent.

Glenn Beck Friday!Post + Comments (116)

Extending a Hand to Daniel Larison

by | 74 Comments

This post is in: ,

Larison reads the latest nonsense from James Pethokoukis, and remarks:

I’m not sure if Pethokoukis is kidding, but it seems as if he really doesn’t understand anything Stewart was saying on the show.

Daniel- James isn’t kidding, and there is a solid chance he didn’t understand one thing during the entire Cramer/Stewart interview.

I know it isn’t polite to say these sorts of things in the cyber village, but I have yet to see Pethokoukis write anything about politics that would suggest his IQ on that subject is higher than room temperature in Wasilla in the winter. Here he is wondering whether Obama’s interaction with Joe the Plumber had cost Obama the election. Here is Pethokoukis expanding on the Goldberg theorem, guessing that the market downturn last October was based more on the (and I quote) “tax-hiking and regulatory reign of terror” of a possible Obama presidency than the fact that financial institutions worldwide were experiencing massive losses in the aftermath of the housing bubble. Here is Pethokoukis telling us to scrap the stimulus package and instead, to revive the economy, pass a series of capital gains tax cuts and award a technology prize. I’m not kidding.

My all time favorite Pethokoukis is this bit, which most everyone here will recognize as a piece of prime wingnuttery:

I was pretty sure Sarah Palin would do well in last night’s debate after watching Tina Fey try to make her look like an idiot on SNL. Despite Fey’s best efforts, even her faux-Palin still came across as extremely likable. (I sense that Joe Biden, another likable candidate, kind of dug her, too, in a father-daughter sort of way.) Like President Reagan, Palin is Teflon. Now, anyone who loves policy like I do isn’t going to be satisfied with her thin answers. (She was actually much stronger on foreign policy than on taxes and spending and energy. Hungry markets!) Like McCain in his debate, she spoke too much in generalities. I mean, I find it strange, for instance, that neither McCain nor Palin ever notes that 70 percent of the burden of the U.S. corporate tax, the second-highest on the planet, comes down on workers. Not once have I heard a cogent critique of Obama’s tax-cut plan by this ticket.

Bottom line: Palin easily moved back to being a strong asset for McCain and has to be considered the far-and-away front-runner for the 2012 Republican nomination if McCain loses.

I have spoofs and trolls in the comments who would kill to be able to write laughable nonsense like that.

Maybe in the field of finance and business he has a genius I just don’t understand, but when it comes to anything regarding politics, I would pay more attention to any random user at the Free Republic or Red State before listening to anything from Pethokouis.

*** Update ***

From the comments:

1. Tina Fey made Sarah Palin look like an idiot
2. THEREFORE, Sarah Palin would do well in a debate

Say WHAT?

This isn’t even bad thinking. It’s magical thinking: take two things completely unrelated and uncorrelated and toss ‘em together to puke out a sentence.

Read him a bit, and you will discover that he sort of specializes in magical thinking.

Also from the comments:

I’m pretty sure it was Pethokoukis, who on the Monday night before the election quoted “senior McCain officials” that the polling was tracking hard for Mac and concluded rather authoritatively that McCain would win a closely contested victory. I only come across his writing occasionally but he seems to be a permanent resident of bizarro world.

Why, yes, that was Pethokoukis:

I just talked to one of my best Team McCain sources who told me that heading into today all the key battleground polls were moving hard and fast in their direction. The source, hardly a perma-optimist, thinks it will be a long night, but that McCain is going to win. So add this with the new Battleground poll (Obama +1.9 only) and the rising stock market…

Not only did he buy the spin from the McCain campaign in the face of OVERWHELMING contradictory polling evidence by EVERY pollster in the country, but he also supplemented the McCain spin with his own nonsensical belief in the Goldberg Theorem that the day to day fluctuations in the stock market were a solid indication of who was going to win the election.

Extending a Hand to Daniel LarisonPost + Comments (74)

Friday Scenes from the TunchCam 2009

by | 149 Comments

This post is in: ,

Some almost live action shots (from the last five or so minutes):

An explanation for the series. I turned around and saw him cleaning himself and decided to take a picture or two. He then noticed that I was paying attention to him, stood up and shifted himself and proceeded to stare me down.

At any rate, what are the big Friday night plans for you all?

Friday Scenes from the TunchCam 2009Post + Comments (149)

Mainstreaming birtherism

by | 180 Comments

This post is in: 

This important piece of legislation was just introduced in the House:

H.R. 1503. A bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require the principal campaign committee of a candidate for election to the office of President to include with the committee’s statement of organization a copy of the candidate’s birth certificate, together with such other documentation as may be necessary to establish that the candidate meets the qualifications for eligibility to the Office of President under the Constitution; to the Committee on House Administration.

The big birther question is this: who will be the first “serious journalist” to embrace birtherism? The obvious candidates are Michael Barone and Fred Barnes, but don’t be shocked if it’s someone with more clout.

Mainstreaming birtherismPost + Comments (180)