Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

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

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Books are my comfort food!

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

I would gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Fucking consultants! (of the political variety)

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

To the privileged, equality seems like oppression.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

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

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

You would normally have to try pretty hard to self-incriminate this badly.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

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

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Archives for 2009

PUMA versus Wingnut

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I’ve got an idea for a new feature here. Compare a really stupid statement/post from wingnuttia with a really stupid one from the PUMAsphere, then debate which is stupider.

For our PUMA entry, let’s start with the “PUMAs are the new Jews” thing John alluded to earlier (from NoIQ, natch):

Is puma the new jew – a people persecuted for their beliefs, and eventually for their failure to fall in line, and follow the chosen one?

Now, I am not saying that PUMAS have been subjected to the horrors of the holocaust, or the years and years of persecution, but I thought it was a snappy intro that might grab your attention.

Since I’ve been going local today, I’m going with this from western New York’s premier wingnut blog:

It is believed that AlGore secretly met with Dr. Bittner and was immediately declared “The Saudi Arabia of Lipo Diesel”.

Update: This is the best PUMA-spoof I’ve seen in a while:

Or that a half-Kenyan British citizen/political fiction/Kaspar Hauser/blank-slate mannequin fabricated in the clanking, hissing bowels of the Daley family Chicago Corruption Machine is about to assume the Presidency, with the cowardly, tacit compliance of a bought-and-paid-for media, Electoral College, Supreme Court, Congress, 50 state Attorneys-General, both political parties, and 52% of American voters.

Or that this not-so-black changeling-child Obama/Soetoro/whoever is already assembling a cabinet loaded with Marxist hacks and terror-friendly apparatchiks hell-bent on delivering the United States into a Third World Hell of galloping Socialism.

Maybe none of that matters to this smug little back-slapping society of condescending, elitist political sachems. Maybe NOTHING matters to you.

In which case, please vote for Rumproast in the “Best Small Blog” category of the Weblog Awards.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t give you more of the flavor of MonroeRising with this link.

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Weblog Awards

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Voting for Rump Roast makes the baby Jesus smile.

And it makes PUMAs cry. And really, a firm argument could be made that making Puma’s cry makes the baby Jesus smile.

Speaking of PUMAs, I forget where I was (it was probably memeorandum), but I saw the headline (and I might be paraphrasing): “Are PUMAs the new Jew?” and I chuckled. I was going to write about it and link to whatever idiot wrote that, but then the trackback would bring a bunch of morons over here who would leave racist statements all over the comments, so I thought better of it. However, just as a side note to anyone who might want to make the PUMA/jew comparison, let me clear some things up:

You being mocked for making racist and insane ramblings during the election and joining a movement with Harriet Christian on the masthead IS NOT EQUAL TO THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF PERSECUTION.

Glad we cleared that up.

At any rate, go vote for Rump Roast.

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We have seen the bubble and it is us

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More specifically, it’s our government’s securities:

THE BIGGEST INVESTMENT BUBBLE TODAY may involve one of the safest asset classes: U.S. Treasuries. Yields have plunged to some of the lowest levels since the 1940s as investors, fearful of a sustained global economic downturn and potential deflation, have rushed to purchase government-issued debt.

The market also has been supported by comments from the Federal Reserve that it, too, may buy long-term Treasuries. – As a result, the benchmark 10-year Treasury note yields just 2.40%, down from 3.85% as recently as mid-November. The 30-year T-bond stands at 2.82%, and three-month Treasury bills were sold last week for a yield of just 0.05%. – Many investors argue it’s dangerous to buy Treasuries with such low yields.

A finance friend of mine explains succinctly:

and when inflation goes up, rates will go up.

Did you know that right now the us treasury 30 year, 4.5% yield, matures 5/15/2038 is trading at 128 (this is a yield of 3%). If that yield moves to, say, 6% (a more realistic yield), the price goes down to a shade over 79.

This means that 30 year yields going from 3% to 6% cause losses to investors of almost 40%. That, my friend, is a lot of money. After another trillion dollars of issuing, along with a few trillion out there already, that’s could easily be a trillion dollar loss for investors……….

I’m not sure what can be done about this, though eliminating capital gains taxes, deregulating bond markets, and going back on the gold standard would be a good start.

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Sometimes they don’t take the bait

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Perry Bacon today during an online chat:

Rochester, N.Y.: BlagoGate, BurrisGate, CommerceGate, PanettaGate….is is too early to declare the Obama presidency a scandal-ridden failure?

Perry Bacon: In a word, yes. We’ve made a big deal of the Commerce flub for instance, but how many people,even in Washington, could name the current Commerce Secretary? (Carlos M. Gutierrez) Burris has been an interesting story, but if the governor or the lt. governor of Illinois end up getting someone in that seat who they appointed, it will be a liberal Democrat who will vote with Senate Democratic leadership most of time, just like Obama did before. These are all interesting stories, but the most important thing happening in Washington is the debate over spending $800 billion, a very large amount of money, to help the economy.

Oh, well.

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Riots in Oakland

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I hadn’t commented on the Oscar Grant case because I figured everyone had already seen the video, and because what is there to say? The cop pulled a gun on an unarmed man who was pinned to the floor, and then shot and killed him. Twenty years ago, some ridiculous self-defense excuse would have been manufactured, and nothing would have happened. Fortunately, something will happen in this case.

At any rate, things are starting to get ugly:

Protesters angry over a deadly New Year’s Day shooting of a young black man by a transit police officer erupted into violence in downtown Oakland on Wednesday night while investigators struggled to determine what prompted the officer to fire his gun into the unarmed man’s back.

After an afternoon of peaceful demonstrations and a memorial service, protests turned chaotic after dark as a small clutch of protesters set trash cans and cars afire and busted windows on police cruisers and storefronts. Police in riot gear responded with tear gas and billy clubs and at least 14 arrests were made, according to local television reports. Several major downtown streets were closed, and helicopter footage showed small groups of protesters roaming through the city’s deserted center. There were no immediate reports of injuries, but sirens continued to echo into the late evening.

I have watched the video a number of times, and I just can not figure out what is going through the cops head. Did he mean to pull a taser? Did he mean to pull his gun but not fire? Why did he even pull the gun in the first place? And the best question, since Oscar Grant was described as the victim, why were they even restraining him?

The whole thing is awful, makes no sense, and I really hope Oakland calms down and justice is served.

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Intelligence Overhaul

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Looks like Team Obama is giving the intelligence apparatus a little overhaul:

President-elect Barack Obama is preparing to scrap the way President Bush oversaw domestic security in the White House and name a former Central Intelligence Agency official to coordinate counterterrorism, people close to the transition said Wednesday.

The plan being discussed would eliminate the independent homeland security adviser’s office and assign those duties to the National Security Council to streamline sometimes overlapping functions. A deputy national security adviser would be charged with overseeing the effort to guard against terrorism and to respond to natural disasters.

Democrats close to the transition said Mr. Obama’s choice for that job was John O. Brennan, a longtime C.I.A. veteran who was the front-runner to head the spy agency until withdrawing in November amid criticism of his views on interrogation and detention policies. His appointment would not require Senate confirmation.

There was quite a storm over Brennan as the possible head of the CIA, so I wonder how this will play out.

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Rereading the classics

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As some of you may know, I’m addicted to the Washington Post online chats. During a chat just before Xmas, Larry Sabato advised:

If you have even a few spare hours over the holidays, then read or re-read Robert Penn Warren’s ALL THE KING’S MEN. Its universal lessons apply to so many current events.

Normally, I don’t take advice from pundits who style themselves so closely after John Waters, but I went ahead and read the book and was glad I did. All the Kings’s Men is by far the best book about politics I’ve ever read.

So I’m going to advise you, if you have a few spare minutes today or tomorrow, then read or reread (I imagine many of you have already read it) the most important article about the Washington Establishment I’ve ever read. It’s Sally Quinn’s piece about Villager attitudes towards Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewisnky. The whole article is so edifying that it’s hard to know what to excerpt but here’s a try:

With some exceptions, the Washington Establishment is outraged by the president’s behavior in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The polls show that a majority of Americans do not share that outrage. Around the nation, people are disgusted but want to move on; in Washington, despite Clinton’s gains with the budget and the Mideast peace talks, people want some formal acknowledgment that the president’s behavior has been unacceptable

[…]

In addition to the polls and surveys, this disconnect between the Washington Establishment and the rest of the country is evident on TV and radio talk shows and in interviews and conversations with more than 100 Washingtonians for this article. The din about the scandal has subsided in the news as politicians and journalists fan out across the country before tomorrow’s elections. But in Washington, interest remains high.

“It’s much more personal here,” says pollster Geoff Garin. “This is an affront to their world. It affects the dignity of the place where they live and work. . . . Clinton’s behavior is unacceptable. If they did this at the local Elks Club hall in some other community it would be a big cause for concern.”

“The judgment is harsher in Washington,” says The Post’s Broder. “We don’t like being lied to.”

As I said before, many of you have likely read this before, but read it again. It is a timeless piece that never loses its power to shock. Think about this, for example: If they did this at the local Elks Club hall in some other community it would be a big cause for concern. Is that in any way true? I live a pretty staid life and off the top of my head I can think of four acquaintances who have had extramarital affairs much more sordid than this. My own State Senator (who belongs to all sorts of Elk Lodge type groups) was reportedly beaten to a pulp by a town sheriff when he was caught in flagrante delicto with the sheriff’s wife. And no one in his district (which is literally almost the same district in which Big Russ himself dwells) cared.

This is the no socks phenomenon all over again: Washington Insiders project their own stupidity onto the American public. There’s no evidence that voters care whether or not politicians wear socks (indeed the case of Sockless Jerry Simpson argues to the contrary) and there’s no evidence Elk Lodgers get their panties in a twist over extramarital affairs.

And how about this? We don’t like being lied to. I won’t bore you by enumerating the Bush lies about torture, WMD, Scooter Libby, etc. but how on earth could a Washington scribe claim he didn’t like being lied to?

Maybe I’ve been reading too much Bob Somerby lately. But I still don’t think the horror of this piece has really sunk in with many people yet, even eight years after it was written.

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