Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

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

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Giving up is unforgivable.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

A fool as well as an oath-breaker.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

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Archives for 2011

37 Trees

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I see that another wingnut voltron has formed over the fact that there are 37 trees in the White House, started by the loathesome former secretary for Barbara Bush, Andrew Malcolm. James Joyner handles this rather nicely:

For one thing, these Christmas trees aren’t for the Obamas. Rather, they’re for the tens of thousands of tourists who line up in the cold to tour the White House during the holidays. Indeed, precisely because of all the tourists running around, this is the part of the White House that the Obamas are least likely to use.

For another, the notion that the best thing one can do during a bad economy is to cut back on spending is remarkably counterproductive. If anything, the Obamas should be laying on more Christmas trees–and so should the rest of those fortunate to have jobs. That’s, after all, how people who sell and transport trees and ornaments put food on their tables. The last thing they need is for people to start cutting back in some bizarre show of solidarity.

I’m not sure if James meant to make the argument for expanded government spending and a second stimulus, but he just did.

By the way, I love how wingnuts can claim Obama is simultaneously waging a war on Christmas while also having too many Christmas decorations up.

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Not Just Some Dystopian Fantasy

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The new surveillance state and domestic drones.

Since that last thread had me as disgusted as I’ve ever been with the commentariat here, bonus points to the first commenter to come up with some variation of “If you haven’t done anything wrong” or “Nothing you do outside is private” to excuse this. Extra bonus points for the too cool for school kids who yawn and tell me “they’ll worry about it when they are arming them.”

*** Update ***

Maybe Charles Pierce can talk some sense into you.

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Tattooed love boys

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Steve M. thinks that, for all Roger Ailes’ supposed wisdom, Fox can’t settle down with Romney because they love the bad boys too much:

Fox and the party don’t want to cosset Romney because they still romanticize Republicans who are mad, bad, and dangerous to know. They claim they didn’t want this outcome, but as it was unfolding, it was too exciting to resist. It was too in tune with their deepest desires.

Republicans have a remarkable power to rationalize: a new Rasmussen poll shows that 49% of Republicans think that Gingrich would be the strongest general election nominee, while only 24% think Romney would be be the strongest. To put this in MoDo terms, Republicans haven’t just fallen for the tattooed motorcycle-driving smooth criminal, they’ve convinced themselves that he’ll be a better provider than that stable, mild-mannered accountant.

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I meant to introduce you to Josh Mandel, but he’s not here

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Josh Mandel is running against Sherrod Brown for the US Senate in Ohio. Well, sort of. Business interests from outside the state are running television ads against Brown, and Josh Mandel is giving interviews to far Right media outlets, but Josh Mandel himself is oddly absent:

Josh Mandel took several months beyond the required deadline to file his financial disclosure statement as a candidate for the U.S. Senate. He now has taken roughly as long to say no to the Akron Press Club, declining an invitation that Republicans and Democrats long have accepted, a chance to talk about his candidacy and take questions from people in the audience.
The refusal is cheeky given recent events in the emerging campaign, the state treasurer for 11 months challenging Sherrod Brown, the Democratic incumbent. Mandel has been hurling wild charges, most recently accusing Brown of siding with “fringe elements” (the Athens County commissioners?) in wanting to take care concerning oil and gas drilling in the Wayne National Forest.
At the same time, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been airing misleading ads attacking Brown for, among other things, wanting to raise energy taxes. One ad distorts a photo of Brown, seeking to portray him as nothing less than shady.
Throw cheap shots, watch others do the same in your cause, and then refuse to stand up in Akron to discuss your candidacy? A worthy candidate doesn’t choose such a moment to duck. The refusal is all the more galling in light of the Mandel schedule. The past six months he has been raising campaign money in Honolulu, San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Washington. No time for a luncheon talk at the Press Club in Akron?

My take on it so far is that the ideological assumption the Chamber started with, that there’s been some massive popular shift to far-Right conservatism in Ohio, is just plain wrong. I don’t think that happened here. I know national pundits said that happened after the 2010 midterms, but if it was ever true it seems to have dissipated very quickly. I live in one of the most conservative counties in the state, and if I had to use one word to describe the mood of the local GOP political-types, after a two week round of attending Christmas parties with them, I’d say “deflated”, or even “conciliatory”. Not a lot of crowing or strutting going on. No one is waving the Gadsden flag. Since all of Mandel’s support comes from outside the state maybe that stale national ideological narrative is what Mandel, by way of the Chamber, is relying on when running his campaign. If so, I think that’s a mistake. I think Sherrod Brown’s career-long message of practical, grounded, middle class populism is a much better bet for this state than relying on the Tea Party fad.

As far as campaigning exclusively from 30,000 feet, I think that’s a mistake too. Ohio conservatives got away with that approach in 2010 because it was a very good year for Republicans nationally, but it was just a good year. It was not some seismic lasting shift in the statewide electorate, despite all the media hype about the Tea Party. Mandel is young, and he has no actual experience either in government or in running for anything. I think he eventually has to come out from behind the US Chamber of Commerce and when he does he’s going to encounter Sherrod Brown, who has a long history with the people in this state and deep knowledge of state and federal issues.

Brown works hard. He shows up. When he comes to this county, a county that is overwhelmingly conservative and didn’t support him in 2006, he doesn’t meet with local Democrats. He meets with local (GOP) government and business leaders and a broad range of ordinary people, because this really is a swing state, and an Ohio politician who wants to keep his seat has to meet with and listen to people who (sometimes) disagree with him and probably didn’t vote for him. Josh Mandel has never done that. He didn’t have to, in 2010. He just rode the wave. He ran a series of really vile attack ads against his opponent which were based on racial and religious bigotry, and walked to “victory”. No one knows if he’s any good at operating outside the conservative echo chamber, and he certainly isn’t getting much practice campaigning in Ohio because he’s fund-raising in Honolulu. He’s also not getting much practice acting as the state treasurer, but I think it’s clear to most people now that he never had any real interest in that job.

At this point, looking at the opposition, observing what I see as a misguided, somewhat stale approach premised on some truly out of touch national narratives, I feel pretty good about Sherrod Brown’s chances.

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Null Hypothesis

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James Fallows has been using the term “nullification” to talk the ways that Republicans in the Senate are using the filibuster to keep from appointing a director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. By doing so, they’re making sure that a law already passed by Congress simply doesn’t go into effect. The whole thing is worth a read.

In a follow-up, one of Fallows’ readers says this:

I believe what will happen will in some ways be worse, at least in the short term, if perhaps sadly better in the long term: if the GOP retakes the Senate after the 2012 elections, they’ll simply abolish the filibuster.

I think this is exactly right. The minute there are 51 Republicans in the Senate, we’re going to hear howls of “straight up or down vote”. They’ll be aided and abetted by the DC media, who will inform us that the filibuster is a relic of bygone days that has been abused by both sides, it’s high time that it was eliminated, it really is a scandal that it has persisted so long, and the nation is lucky that Republicans are patriotic enough to foster a reform that’s long overdue.

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Defamer

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David Carr has a thorough piece about a blogger named Crystal Cox, who was on the receiving end of a $2.5 million defamation judgment where the judge ruled that she wasn’t a journalist. Cox created an interlinked group of websites to attack attorney Kevin Padrick, who was a trustee in a property firm bankruptcy.

Carr does a good job running through the lies that Cox told, but it’s also worth noting two other facets in the ruling that Reuters mentions:

“Based on the evidence presented at the time of trial, I conclude that plaintiffs are not public figures, defendant is not ‘media’ and the statements at issue were not made on an issue of public concern,” the judge wrote in his ruling. “Thus, there are not First Amendment implications.”

When I first saw the headlines on this story I was concerned, because subjects of blog posts sometimes trot out the word “defamation” if they don’t like what we write about them. After reading Carr’s piece and the judge’s comment that Padrick wasn’t a public figure and didn’t do anything of public concern, I’m less worried that some noisemaker can extract a judgment from bloggers commenting on politics and who have at least a nodding acquaintance with the truth.

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