Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

People are complicated. Love is not.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

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

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

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

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

We do not need to pander to people who do not like what we stand for.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

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

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

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

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

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Archives for 2009

Can We Make A Trade?

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DiFi, up to no good:

US Senator Dianne Feinstein hopes to update President Barack Obama’s $838bn economic stimulus package so that American ISPs can deter child pornography, copyright infringement, and other unlawful activity by way of “reasonable network management.”

Clearly, a lobbyist whispering in Feinstein’s ear has taken Comcast’s now famous euphemism even further into the realm of nonsense.

According to Public Knowledge, Feinstein’s network management amendment did not find a home in the stimulus bill that landed on the Senate floor. But lobbyists speaking with the Washington DC-based internet watchdog said that California’s senior Senator is now hoping to insert this language via conference committee – a House-Senate pow-wow were bill disputes are resolved.

“This is the most backdoor of all the backdoor ways of doing things,” Public Knowledge’s Art Brodsky told The Reg. “Conference committees are notorious for being the most opaque of all legislative processes.”

As baseball season is getting close, I would like to propose a trade. We give the Republicans Dianne Feinstein and a PTBNL and they give us Olympia Snowe. This is a solid trade for us. With Judd Gregg at commerce, we would almost complete the New England rout, and Feinstein, as a newly minted Republican, will go down to certain defeat in California. Additionally, there is nothing in this agreement that says the PTBNL can’t be Nelson or Lieberman.

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Cantor what, Cantor who

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If you haven’t seen this yet at Greg Sargent’s, check out this crazy video Eric Cantor’s office put out about AFSCME.

<object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/_3mw49mk_x0&hl=en&fs=1″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/_3mw49mk_x0&hl=en&fs=1″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>

It’s actually kind of funny in a way, but it’s (a) profanity-laced and (b) doesn’t make AFSCME look particularly bad.

I’m beginning to agree with Matt Yglesias that the only reason anyone thinks Cantor is smart is because of ethnic profiling.

Update: Ben reminds us that Cantor once said:

The use of obscenity…should not and cannot be tolerated. As a parent, I share the concerns of many regarding the level of offensive television and radio programs that are transmitted into our homes. The recent violations that have occurred disgusted not only me, but damage our society.

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Miracles and Sacrilege

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Spent some time in a waiting room this morning (it is a beautiful day here, btw), and while there I read the Jan/Feb edition of the AARP magazine, which had an interesting piece on miracles. There was a religious bit to it, which I won’t discuss, because my thoughts on that sort of thing are pretty well known and just piss people off, but one portion of the piece was the best description of statistics using common language that I have seen in a long while:

Consider the survey results: of those who believe in miracles, 84 percent say they happen because of God. About three quarters further identify Jesus and the Holy Spirit as sources of miracles, while lesser numbers attribute them to angels (47 percent), saints (32 percent), deceased relatives or others who have passed on (19 percent), and other spirits (18 percent).

So what’s going on? Wouldn’t the Creator of the universe have better things to tend to than pulling off the occasional miracle? It depends, of course, on whom you ask.

To a scientist, events that many would consider miracles are not only explainable, they’re inevitable—because in a universe of nearly infinite possibilities, outrageously unexpected things have to happen at least occasionally.

“The Law of Large Numbers shows that an event with a low probability of occurrence in a small number of trials has a high probability of occurrence in a large number of trials,” says Scientific American columnist Michael Shermer, author of Why People Believe Weird Things (W.H. Freeman, revised, 2002). “Events with a million-to-one odds happen 295 times a day in America.”

Enough with the miracles, and on to the sacrilege. Was it really necessary for someone to remake Drive by the Cars? Really?

BTW- get used to conspicuous product placement such as the link above. At least I am not asking you to send silly putty to Nancy Pelosi.

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Tweet, tweet

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No one could have anticipated that the Republican Twitter revolution would go so horribly awry:

Witness New York Republican Jim Tedisco’s attempt to incorporate the Age of Twitter onto his website. Tedisco, running for the vacant old seat of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in New York’s 20th District against Democrat Scott Murphy, has a nifty little feature on his website which incorporates all #NY20 messages from Twitter.

Seems that this includes all messages from, say, his opponent’s campaign, or the DCCC, as well. In this case, Jimmy T. highlighted a DCCC story on his website which references Tedisco’s having burned $21,000 of taxpayer money on gas expenses in just seven short years…despite living 20 minutes from the state capital. (via)

And this:

Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top-ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters about the trip days before the group departed and then posted updates on the delegation’s approximate location every few hours using the Twitter social networking service.

[…..]
A former Armed Services aide who is a Republican and a military veteran was more blunt. “By relaying that information and telegraphing what they were doing, he probably placed people in harm’s way,” said the aide, who requested anonymity because his company deals with Hoekstra’s office. “It’s just common sense.”

And this:

Apparently Senator Ralph Northam had agreed with Minority Leader Tommy Norment to vote to give Republicans power sharing in the Virginia Senate today.

Before it was announced on the floor and finalized, RPV Chairman Jeff Frederick tweeted about it.

Majority Leader Dick Saslaw adjourned before it could happen.

The Democrats got into a room and pounded into Northam what would happen if he did this.

Northam backed down.

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Call Mike

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Michael Moore is working on a film about the banking crisis (sound effect: expensive pants shat). If you work in the biz he could use your input.

I will admit that some of Moore’s appeal comes from the same perverse feeling that drives wingnuts to idolize anyone who pisses off liberals, no matter how nutty. That said, Michael Moore is just not that nutty. The wiretapping abuses, torture and insane ideological failure of everything from Iraq reconstruction to the DoJ that have come out since the premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11 make that film look if anything restrained and understated. Major media figures who picked accuracy fights over details in Sicko usually lost. Kvetch about his tone all you want, but it is hard to describe Moore’s attitude towards recent targets as unfair.

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Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right

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You have to love the position that Obama has the Republicans in right now. First, this:

The labor-backed, pro-stimulus group Americans United for Change and the public workers’ union AFSCME are going up with a national cable spot, also airing in Washington D.C., with the sharpest attack yet on Republican leaders in the House and Senate.

“Our economy in crisis. Millions out of work. That’s why 80 percent of Americans support a plan like President Obama’s to create jobs. But Republican leaders? They’re ‘just saying no,'” says the ad’s narrator. “No to changing the failed economic policies of the past 8 years. We’re in an economic crisis and Republican leaders are playing politics instead of doing what’s right. Call the Republican Leadership – Tell them NO is not an option.”

The group is also airing regional radio spots targeting 18 House members of both parties and three GOP senators and offering them “second chance” to vote for the plan. Its targets include House Minority Whip Eric Cantor and Blue Dog Tennessee Democrat Jim Cooper.

And then there is this:

An influential conservative political action committee is pledging to support primary challenges to any Republican senator who backs the economic stimulus package — the latest public show of dissatisfaction from the right over the massive measure before Congress.
GOP Sens. Arlen Specter and Susan Collins are two of the three Republicans who voted for the stimulus bill.

Three GOP senators voted for the $838 billion compromise version of the package that the Senate approved Tuesday, but all three have said they might not vote for the final version.

“The American people don’t want this trillion-dollar political payoff that will just line the pockets of non-governmental organizations who supported [President Barack] Obama in the election,” said Scott Wheeler, the executive director of The National Republican Trust PAC, an organization that calls for less government spending and lower taxes.

Not a good time to be a Republican.

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You Are Kidding, Right?

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Jay Cost, arguing in Real Clear Politics that Obama was attacking straw men in his press conference:

Who’s arguing that “tax cuts alone” will solve this problem? Even if some are, is this the median position on the Republican side? Is this the position of the more moderate members of the GOP Senate caucus like Lugar, Voinovich, and Murkowski? How about moderate House Republicans like Kirk, LoBiondo, and Castle? We might count it as bipartisanship if Obama had picked up a few of them, but he didn’t.

Yeah. About that:

Thirty-six out of 41 Republican Senators voted for the proposed DeMint amendment to the stimulus bill — a massive package of permanent tax cuts that would create a huge hole in the budget, while doing very little to help the economy.

There isn’t much room for bipartisanship when 87.8% of the other party is totally irresponsible.

Any math men out there want to let me know if 87.8% counts as the “median position?” And it would be irresponsible not to remind everyone exactly what was in the Demint Amendment:

o Permanently repeal the alternative minimum tax once and for all;
o Permanently keep the capital gains and dividends taxes at 15 percent;
o Permanently kill the Death Tax for estates under $5 million, and cut the tax rate to 15 percent for those above;
o Permanently extend the $1,000-per-child tax credit;
o Permanently repeal the marriage tax penalty;
o Permanently simplify itemized deductions to include only home mortgage interest and charitable contributions.
o Lower top marginal income rates from 35 percent to 25 percent.
o Simplify the tax code to include only two other brackets, 15 and 10 percent.
o Lower corporate tax rate as well, from 35 percent to 25 percent.

The problem for the Republicans is not that President Obama is making things up about them or unfairly representing their position. The problem is that they are crazy, and Obama is pointing that out. Hell, the only thing Republicans are allowed to vote for are tax cuts, otherwise the Club For Growth or other fringe groups will come after them.

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