Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
This post is in: Excellent Links
Umar Farouk “When There’s Nothing Left To Burn, You Must Set Your Crotch On Fire” Abdulmutallab is currently detained in a federal prison in Michigan. For now! In a few days he’ll use his Muslim heat vision to escape and run amok in Ann Arbor, shortly after America is brought to its knees by the force of his oratory in open federal court.
Why haven’t the usual suspects wet their pants at the notion of a terrorist mastermind unleashed on the population… from his jail cell?
This post is in: Black Jimmy Carter, OBAMA IS WORSE THAN BUSH HE SOLD US OUT!!
Things I’ve learned in the last 48 hours from progressive blogs and Obama supporters:
Janet Napolitano should resign.
The Kaiser Foundation is needlessly shilling for Obama.
Despite what public watchdog groups state, Obama is just like Bush regarding lobbyists.
Peter Orzag getting married is proof the Obama team is nothing but beltway insiders.
Obama is playing 11 dimensional chess with his appointments to appeal to the base only to stab them in the back a year later.
Obama has let us down by failing to wave his magic wand and make Republicans and Ben Nelson confirm his appointees.
Obama is, literally, Judas.
I’m sure I’ve missed some other things, so make sure you too tell us how Obama has failed you today. Also, if any of you try to refute what I have said here or try to state something positive, you are an Obot incapable of critical thinking and unable to see the real truth.
This post is in: Dog Blogging
An email from a reader:
Hey John,
First off, I read your blog and like it a lot, though I don’t comment. Second, my grandmother’s looking to get a dog, partly because she’s been kind of lonely since my grandpa died, and I was wondering if you have any suggestions. We’re looking for a small dog, since she lives in an apartment and might want to be able to carry the dog in a bag onto public transportation, but we don’t want anything too yappy. Are there breeds that you’d recommend? If she picks up a mixed-breed puppy at a shelter, would she be able to make sure that it wouldn’t grow up into the Hound of the Baskervilles? If she does decide to go with a purebred I’ll push hard for her to get it from a breed rescue instead of a pet store.
She’s had dogs before, and is perfectly comfortable taking care of my aunt’s Golden now that he’s mellowed with age.
If you feel like it, I’d be fine with having this put up as a thread, since it’d be great to get input from the whole BJ crowd.
When my grandmother died about 15 years ago, my parents inherited her little Pekingese named Brandy, and she was just the sweetest little lapdog ever. I just don’t know that much about dogs to come up with a suggestion, but I would say avoid Jack Russell Terriers at all costs for a new dog owner. I also know that there are a lot of chihuahas that need to be rescued.
Your thoughts?
This post is in: Open Threads
This will upset some of the female commentariat here:
Rahm Emanuel once said of Peter R. Orszag, the bespectacled economist who is President Obama budget director, “He’s made nerdy sexy.” So perhaps the White House chief of staff won’t be surprised to learn that Mr. Orszag got engaged over lunch today to the ABC News correspondent he began dating six months ago, Bianna Golodryga.
Looks like “the Calculator” got himself engaged.
by DougJ| 189 Comments
This post is in: Good News For Conservatives, OBAMA IS WORSE THAN BUSH HE SOLD US OUT!!
This is disappointing, obviously:
Obama has wielded the power of the White House to craft an executive order that limited lobbyist hires in his administration, push federal agencies to share more of their data with the public and begin releasing visitor records for the executive complex on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
[….]“The greatest surprise is just how extensively these revolving door restrictions apply,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen. “Obama has ushered in the first-ever policy addressing ‘reverse’ revolving door abuses: screening potential nominees to the federal government and managing conflicts of interest among appointees so as to prevent special interests from ‘capturing’ the agencies that regulate them.”
[….]
Unlike past administrations, Obama’s White House has been unusually attentive to ethics and transparency and to the reform advocates who lobby for them. They were consulted during the transition and often talk with White House officials to this day.
Just words!
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Clown Shoes
It is really hard to not be cynical about our counter-terrorism efforts, especially as new details emerge about the Christmas day attempt emerge. I’ve always been of the mindset that it is going to be impossible to stop every attack- people are ingenious, and if they really want to attack us they will figure out a way. People are still able to escape from prisons, and we have hundreds of years of experience and have spent trillions on corrections over the years. The goal should be to balance our way of life with our attempts to be as safe as possible.
Having said that, I’m really not sure how we can ever expect much out of our security efforts if, eight years after 9/11, a disaffected Muslim from Nigeria whose father warned authorities can buy a one way trip to the United States, pay cash, and then board the plane with explosives sewn into his underwear. Maybe if he was wearing a t-shirt that said “I’m carrying a bomb” we would have had more success.
Shouldn’t the one way ticket purchased in cash be a warning sign alone? Have any of you paid for a one-way overseas plane ticket with cash? Who does that besides drug runners and terrorists? What have we spent all this money on? How does the DHS justify its existence?
by DougJ| 135 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity, Good News For Conservatives
It’s not just me, Matt Taibbi doesn’t like Niebuhrian realism either.
I tend to agree with this:
It’s because nebbishly little dorks like Brooks and Paul Wolfowitz and David Frum got their books dumped in high school that we end up dropping daisy cutters on Afghan sheep herds and shipping working class American kids halfway around the world to get their nuts blown off. That sounds like a simplistic explanation, but anyone who doesn’t have a keen ear for the pencil-pusher’s eternal quest for macho cred is going to have a hard time understanding Washington politics.
Also.
(title h/t TZ)