Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

The willow is too close to the house.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

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

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

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

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Decision time: keep arguing about the last election, or try to win the next one?

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

Nothing worth doing is easy.

I really should read my own blog.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Fucking consultants! (of the political variety)

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

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

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

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Archives for 2009

Open Thread

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grendelkhan, Squirrel Profile.

squirrel-profile

Rob, Mustache Lizard. Phukradung National Park, Thailand.

mr-lizard1

Email me a link to your one or two favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put up favorites in open threads. Send a short caption if you want one.

Click on the photos for a link to the photographer’s website. To see all photo threads, click on ‘photo blogging’ at the bottom of the post.

If your computer cannot read our email links at top right, my email is (remove the zeroes): portus0jackson0ii at yahoo dot com.

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General Romney Speaks!

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It really is killing these guys that Obama isn’t just immediately plowing tons of troops and billions of dollars into something without any idea what we are trying to accomplish:

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney delivered a scathing criticism of President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy Friday night, accusing the president of delivering rhetoric and not action in the war-torn country.

Quoting from a speech Obama delivered in March, Romney agreed with the president “that ‘we are in Afghanistan to confront a common enemy that threatens the United States, our friends and allies.”‘ Romney continued on seconding the president: “I believe ‘that to succeed, we and our friends and allies must reverse the Taliban’s gains, and promote a more capable and accountable Afghan government.'”

But Romney went on to criticize Obama for not holding enough meetings with top generals, and inadequately preparing for the elections in Afghanistan.

Obama has met with his generals and national security team eight times in the past few weeks to understand the situation. Mitt Romney’s access to information has been limited to reading Sarah Palin’s facebook scribblings.

Why does anyone take these people seriously?

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God doesn’t like ugly

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From an interesting piece about substituting pop-Christianity for clinical treatment of war-induced psychological disorders (via Sully):

In 2008 the RAND Corporation put a number on the problem, reporting that one in five veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has suffered some form of mental illness, mostly PTSD and depression.

“God doesn’t like ugly,” one political appointee told Paul Sullivan, an analyst in the VA’s Veterans Benefits Administration, in a clumsy attempt to reduce the cost of caring for psychologically traumatized veterans. “You need to make the numbers lower.”

The whole article is well-worth reading. The passage Sully quotes is good too, particularly this disturbing bit from VA Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Michael McLendon:

The claims, he said, are “costing us too much money,” and if the veterans “believed in God and country . . . they would not come home with PTSD.”

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Where did the dithering start?

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I did some searchers on “dithering” in the New York Times and Washington Post archives. In the Times, there were eleven uses of the word post-Cheney out of a total of 47 in the past year. In the Post, there were 36 post-Cheney out of a total of 46 in the past 12 months.

Michael Gerson, Jackson Diehl, and David Broder have all accused the president of “dithereing” post-Cheney. Gerson also used the phrase about a week before Cheney’s speech. Ronald Krebs and Dana Milbank also wrote pieces accusing Obama of dithering before Cheney’s speech (Jim Hoagland also wrote a piece, praising the dithering). The phrase seems to have originated with Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” on October 4.

It’s interesting how these words take off and I think it’s likely that neocons settled on it and that Krebs, Gerson, and Cheney all using it within a week of each other was no accident (Diehl and Broder fall more in the category of useful idiots).

The word “dithering” appeared only once on the NYT’s editorial page, in a Maureen Dowd piece satirizing Cheney.

Update. This is apropos of John’s last post, for those to whom that isn’t obvious.

Update. Halperin fronts Broder channeling Cheney. The circle is complete. Tinkers to Evers to Chance.

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CBS Sunday Morning

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Here is a fun game for you while you watch the show. Go to the wingnut blogs, do a search for the word “dithering,” and count how many uses came before Dick Cheney’s speech and how many came after. I’ll be shocked if any of them ever used it before Darth Cheney gave them their talking points (22 October), but now it is the only word they know.

Automatons.

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Sunday Morning Open Thread: Music

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Truly, this blogoverse is an amazing space. Twenty four hours ago, I did not even know there was such a musical category as ‘paganfolk’, and yet a commentor’s request concerning the translation of Japanese katakana led to a discussion of medieavalist music which led me to spend way too much time on YouTube (and too much money at Dancing Ferret)…

So now I have a request: Can anyone here tell me where I can get a copy of Faun’s DVD Ornament without ordering it from Europe?

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Who would Jesus assassinate?

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I realize this is nut-picking but I was a bit surprised to see a local right-wing blog praying for Obama’s death (via).

Psalm 109:8 – May his days be few; may another take his office.

I guess I don’t get it, in a way, because Joe Biden would just become president then. Maybe they’re concurrently praying for his death.

But that would just make Nancy Pelosi president.

How far down do you have to go in the order of succession before a Republican becomes president?

Update. Via the comments, apparently they need to be praying for the deaths of Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Robert Byrd, Hillary Clinton, and Tim Geithner. That gets you to Robert Gates.

A metaphysical question: can God create a line of succession so long that He cannot kill everyone on it?

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