Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

No one could have predicted…

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

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

It’s the corruption, stupid.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

When I was faster i was always behind.

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

People are weird.

T R E 4 5 O N

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Republicans do not trust women.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

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Reader Interactions

131Comments

  1. 1.

    Brian R.

    He just needs to lead! Be a leader, leader guy! Lead with leadership, leader!

  4. 4.

    cleek

    the Bully Pulpit is a mighty and powerful tool. but one must be exceedingly careful when using it. once, Pres McKinley tried to use it to kill the Kaiser, but mistimed his thumping and accidentally set fire to Buckingham Palace instead. since then, the Bully Pulpit has been stored in a lead and steel chamber in Fort Knox, and what we see on TV are non-functioning replicas.

  5. 5.

    Roger Moore

    I don’t know if Obama could stop the hearings by using the Bully Pulpit, but I’m 100% certain that he’s wrong either way.

  7. 7.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @cleek: Was that back when we had to use the word “dickety” because the Kaiser had stolen our zeroes?

  8. 8.

    Turgidson

    @cleek:

    since then, the Bully Pulpit has been stored in a lead and steel chamber in Fort Knox, and what we see on TV are non-functioning replicas.

    It’s being examined by top men. Top. Men.

    The House GOP is going to go for an impeachment on this, I think. And it’ll be absurd. But it’ll be breathlessly covered as if it’s something more serious than a bunch of braindead lollygaggers on an extended acid trip on a political witchhunt. And a fair number of morans will believe it all. But hopefully not enough to prevent the Hillary landslide in 2016.

  11. 11.

    Yatsuno

    Hey I figure if it keeps Issa from getting into too much trouble I say let his freak flag fly. This is just a tragic thing that has no real blame point except the actual rioters and plotters. Not to mention they died from smoke inhalation, so maybe we should blame the builfing designers. Jeez.

  13. 13.

    Trollhattan

    What would be great, although probably not enough for the Republicans, would be having a few of our planes shot down over Syria. Only in this way would Ben Gazzara MEAN something.

    Is it generally known “bully” meant “something excellent” in Teddy’s day? I swear 90% of folks using the term think it means the presidency is a great way to be a bully. (I also acknowledge we have a lot of examples of it being used, thusly, the last few decades.)

  15. 15.

    Chris

    No, he couldn’t. The media would turn it into a Nixonian abuse of power, far too many people would agree, and it would throw even more fuel on the right’s paranoid conspiracy theories than are already there.

    @Turgidson:

    It’s being examined by top men. Top. Men.

    I see what you did there.

    The House GOP is going to go for an impeachment on this, I think

    Yep, I wouldn’t be surprised. They couldn’t stop him from being reelected, so they’re going to take it all the way. If they were willing to do it with Clinton over a blowjob, they’d definitely be willing to do this.

  16. 16.

    gene108

    @Turgidson:

    And a fair number of morans will believe it all

    Isn’t the point of these hearings to keep the wing-nut wurlitzer going, so the wing-nuts stay at their furious frothing best?

  18. 18.

    the Conster

    Obama needs to Lead, then Fight! And make the bad men stay late and then come to see him every morning while Leading, then ??? Profit!

  20. 20.

    Roger Moore

    @C.J.:

    I mean constitutionally he can only be 3/5ths of a president, right?

    Does that mean you can override his veto with a 2/3*3/5=40% vote?

  22. 22.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    He should only participate if they let him testify in secret, swear on the Koran, and with a hand puppet who coincidentally has the name Barry leading to hours of confused hilarity!

  23. 23.

    MikeJ

    All the Arsenal fans are cheering for Chelsea right now, right? Certainly improves their chances of staying at number 4 and playing in the Champions League.

  24. 24.

    The Other Chuck

    @cleek:

    since then, the Bully Pulpit has been stored in a lead and steel chamber in Fort Knox

    Clearly it’s stored in Warehouse 13.

    Doh. Beaten to it by Belafon

  25. 25.

    Chris

    @gene108:

    Isn’t the point of these hearings to keep the wing-nut wurlitzer going, so the wing-nuts stay at their furious frothing best?

    Also to demonstrate to the wingnuts that you really are doing everything you can to remove the Kenyan Unconstitutional Usurper from office.

    Remember, to the freaks, all of this is real. Obama was born in Kenya and therefore ineligible for the presidency. Obama did get these people killed in Benghazi. Obama did give guns to Mexican drug cartels. Etc, etc, etc. So if Republican politicians fail to go after him for these things that their base believes really happened (as harshly as possible – after all, if these things were true, they would be grounds for serious legal action) – they’re exposing themselves to accusations from the base that they’re really in cahoots with President Obama, that they’re part of the conspiracy, or at least too scared to stand up for it.

    Elected Republicans have to do this if they want to protect themselves from a primary challenge from the right. Their entire political machine’s gone nuts like that so that they couldn’t stop it even if they wanted to.

  27. 27.

    quannlace

    the Bully Pulpit has been stored in a lead and steel chamber in Fort Knox, and what

    Next to the Ark of the Covenant from the ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ movies.

  28. 28.

    rikyrah

    Wed May 08, 2013 at 09:57 AM PDT.

    Issa accuses Benghazi commission chairman of refusing to testify, then refuses to let him testify

    byJed Lewison

    As today’s big Benghazi hearing gets underway, Republicans are saying Ambassador Thomas Pickering – the co-chairman of the State Department’s committee investigating of the Benghazi attack – has refused to testify today.
    The State Department says the opposite is true – that Pickering wanted to testify but Republicans would not let him.

    “Ambassador Pickering volunteered to appear,” a State Department official tells ABC News. “But [Government Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Darrell] Issa said no.”

    “That is 100 percent untrue,” says Issa spokesman Frederick Hill.

    Apparently, Pickering declined an earlier invitation to testify at a March hearing, but according to the State Department, wanted to appear in today’s hearing. Asked by ABC about Pickering’s offer, Hill said he could not testify:

    “If Ambassador Pickering has reversed himself and wants to testify, we would welcome him at a future date,” Hill said.
    How about today?

    Hill said it is too late.

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/08/1207746/-Issa-accuses-Benghazi-commission-chairman-of-refusing-to-testify-then-refuses-to-let-him-testify

  29. 29.

    beltane

    If Obama just had the leadership skills to open up the Overton Window and throw the bully pulpit onto the heads of the caterwauling Republicans, none of this would have happened.

  32. 32.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    Republican Rep. Dan Burton’s House Government Oversight Committee took 140 hours of testimony regarding then-President Clinton’s alleged misuse of the White House Christmas card list. That was more than a decade ago.

    If it wasn’t Benghazi it would be something else.

  33. 33.

    Trollhattan

    Quite possibly it’s all about Hillary, rather than our Kenyan president. Kilgore:

    But one thing that everyone ought to be able to agree on is that the latest Benghazi push is aimed at putting Hillary Clinton in the bullseye and doing something about her dangerous popularity. Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of VA nailed it in a quote appearing in The Hill today:

    “The meta message that they’re trying to get out there is that this is a failure in judgment that goes to character,” Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly, a senior Democrat on the Oversight and Foreign Affairs panels, told The Hill. “It didn’t work with Obama, so [they’re hoping that] maybe it’ll stick to Clinton.

    “They’re trying to bring her numbers down. That’s what this is all about.”

    Bingo. Recent polls have shown Clinton trouncing various Republicans in 2016 trial heats. Worse yet, they’ve shown her winning double-digit Republican support against all comers, and gaining positive job approval ratings from nearly a quarter of Republicans. That has to change, Republican pols believe, and even if most Democrats and independents have tuned out the Benghazi! show, they have the power to take down HRC a few pegs among their own rank-and-file, and then claim she’s “losing support” nationally.

    http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_05/the_new_hillarygate044631.php

    Also, too, Issa is REALLY trying to claim the title of House’s Greatest Tool. Tough competition, but he’s relentless in his toolosity.

  34. 34.

    liberal

    @Chris:

    Obama did get these people killed in Benghazi.

    Well, look, while the Republicans are hypocritical hawkish assholes, and in the big picture losing 4 guys in a dangerous part of the world isn’t a big deal, he really did get those people killed. No one forced him to get us involved there.

    None of which is to say, again, that the Republicans aren’t pond scum, but rather that wars have lots of unintended consequences, and we should think twice before getting involved in them.

  35. 35.

    Joseph Nobles

    What do you think Cheney burned in the VP residence right before the term was over? The Bully Pulpit, so the Democrats couldn’t use it.

  36. 36.

    liberal

    @Turgidson:

    The House GOP is going to go for an impeachment on this, I think.

    Maybe. In a way I wish they would, since it would make them look like bigger morans than they already do (as if that’s possible).

    OTOH, I would assume even as small-brained as they are they’d see that it would look bad to impeach the first Dem prez since the last one they impeached, but betting on rationality and a sense of fair play isn’t really a good idea with the knuckle-draggers.

  37. 37.

    J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford

    @MikeJ:

    I think a tie would suffice as well. Arsenal has two fixtures remaining against teams in/near the relegation zone and should be able to collect 6 points.

  38. 38.

    Southern Beale

    I don’t know why liberals have such a damn hard time getting control of the national narrative, but they do. But if the roles were reversed, we’d have GOPers on every gab show and news program talking about how the Left was “wasting time” and trying to play “wag the dog” and divert attention from “important issues” by trying to “drum up outrage” and anyway, “now is not the time to play the blame game” and “move on” and “get over it,” etc etc. Jesus, isn’t that what we heard for 8 years of the Bush presidency, every time we tried to get accountability for the Florida Recount and 9/11 intel failures and the nonexistent WMDs and Anthrax, Hurricane Katrina and the Wall Street meltdown, etc???

    So I don’t know what “Obama should do,” I just know that whatever Democrats WANT to do won’t happen because the media doesn’t give a shit unless it’s a Republican doing the talking.

  39. 39.

    Southern Beale

    @Turgidson:

    Oh the GOP has been trying to impeach Obama since he was first inaugurated. Damn, I wish they would try, too. Just reveal them for the petty, lying assholes we all know them to be.

  41. 41.

    jl

    More fun notes on Heritage Foundation research methodology.

    What?!?!
    Josh Marshall, TPM

    ” One of the co-authors of that Heritage Foundation immigration study argued that Hispanics had genetically based intellectual deficits which made it impossible for them ever to match the IQ of whites and that low IQs should be the basis for barring potential immigrants. ”

    http://editors.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/05/what_1.php

    I guess that explains some of the Heritage immigration repport’s methodology. I didn’t see it in the methods explicitly. But if Heritage wrote methods sections like other research institutions and journal editors do, I’m guessing there would be a sentence up top that would go something like:

    “We assume Hispanics are dumb and that their economic productivity will the same as other groups with the same level of low education. But silly liberals will waste the general population average of education expenditures on them.”

    That’s my best guess of how the educational spending / economic productivity relationship was handled.

    Edit: i should read up to the most current posts in blogs I am linking to. TPM has a post saying that Heritage had no idea, no clue, about what this guy said in past research. That is either funny or pathetic, depending on how you want to run with it.

  42. 42.

    ulee

    This Negro. This damn Negro. Bhengazi. Damn Negro. I’m angry at Hillary and that damn fucking Negro. Damnit.

  44. 44.

    Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)

    @jl: Smells like some bell curve to me.

  45. 45.

    Anya

    He has so many viable options but he refuses to take them. I won’t mention what they are but they’re available to him, if he wants to lead.

  46. 46.

    Roger Moore

    @Southern Beale:

    I don’t know why liberals have such a damn hard time getting control of the national narrative,

    The national media is largely owned by right wingers, or by corporations that tend to lean right. Faux News is only the tip of the iceberg.

  47. 47.

    gene108

    @Southern Beale:

    I don’t know why liberals have such a damn hard time getting control of the national narrative, but they do.

    Money.

    Right-wing billionaires are willing to spend their coin to control the media, whether or not they make a profit.

    There are no liberal billionaire equivalents.

    The closest you get are middle-of-the-road guys like Bloomberg or Soros, who have their pet causes, but aren’t willing to really try to tilt the political discussion in this country to the super-Lefty-Left.

  48. 48.

    Cassidy

    Nah. Obama won’t use the Bully pulpit because he doesn’t want it bad enough. And Ronald Reagan is his idol.

  49. 49.

    the Conster

    @Anya:

    He doesn’t want to lead – he wants to slap us in the face, stab us in the back and throw us under the bus.

  50. 50.

    patroclus

    I’ve actually been watching the hearings and, to put it mildly, they are rather boring. The witnesses are foreign service officers and they aren’t really saying anything explosive or outrageous. “The ARB’s recommendations seem reasonable;” “yes, I talked with them for two hours;” “no, I haven’t read the final report;” “Yes, I kept my superiors notified;” “yes, more security would have been helpful;” “no, there was no request for a machine-gun nest;” “yes, I disagree with Ambassador Rice’s first TV explanation;” “yes, my staff was upset.”

    If these are impeachable offenses, the bar is really low. All of the Congressscritters are falling all over themselves to express sympathy to the families and to thank the FSO’s for their service. It’s a wankfest, as one might expect.

    (Oh wait…Gregory Hicks just said that he wanted to go back to Libya, but didn’t and that his new job is a demotion!) Impeach Now!

  51. 51.

    jl

    @rikyrah:

    Well, one problem the GOP has with ginning up an impeachment on this, is that Issa is in charge of the tumbrel brigade. Issa’s track record at executing a competent frame-up is not too good so far.

    Only halfway accurate GOP charges I can think of are that political considerations may have played a role in some administration talking points that were circulated and used on a worthless Sunday news BS talk show, and that the administration did not immediately believe everything the Libyan government said right after the attack was necessarily 100 percent true.

    Not sure those are impeachable offenses, at least for sane people.

  52. 52.

    MikeJ

    @liberal:

    but rather that wars have lots of unintended consequences, and we should think twice before getting involved in them.

    This didn’t happen in a war, this happened in peacetime. It happened in a place where the United States has had no diplomatic presence for decades when Obama put diplomats back in.

    Diplomats work in dangerous parts of the world, but these people weren’t killed because the US helped the Libyan people get rid of Gaddafi.

  54. 54.

    Roger Moore

    @jl:

    TPM has a post saying that Heritage had no idea, no clue, about what this guy said in past research.

    Hey, it was in his doctoral dissertation, and we all know nobody outside of the student’s committee ever reads that.

  56. 56.

    ulee

    Eric Holder is another negro that makes me furious. Why doesn’t he cover up the breasts of those obscene statues…why?…I hate him and his negro bretheren. And Michelle, why is she a negro? Can someone tell me how this negress ended up in the White House. If you think I’m kidding, go to Weasel Zippers or Gateway Pundit. It’s sickening.

  57. 57.

    rikyrah

    Longtime ‘Young & the Restless’ star Jeanne Cooper dies at 84
    by Lynette Rice

    Jeanne Cooper, who played matriarch Katherine Chancellor on CBS’ hit soap The Young and the Restless, has died. She was 84.

    Cooper, who has starred in the daytime series since its first year in 1973, had been in and out of a Los Angeles hospital recently due to an undisclosed illness. Her actor/son Corbin Bernsen had been informing fans of her condition via Facebook, where he confirmed her death today. “My mother passed away this morning just a short time ago, peaceful with my sister by her side, in her sleep. I was going to visit this afternoon, thought I had time. Reminder to self – time is a precious thing. I too am at peace however. I said my goodbyes several times over during the last few weeks.

    No cause of death was revealed

    http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/05/08/young-the-restless-star-jeanne-cooper-is-dead/

  60. 60.

    jl

    @MikeJ:

    ” It happened in a place where the United States has had no diplomatic presence for decades when Obama put diplomats back in. ”

    If the administration did play some politics with some talking points, I think that was foolish. You need to think Soviet secret police with the House GOP, and as Beria said “Give me the man and I’ll give you the case against him” (which is a paraphrase from memory).

    Remember the hoo haw about Obama’s nefarious plot to foment revolution under the guise of bringing democracy to the Mideast in order to put Islamic radicals in charge?

    If there had been solid evidence that the attack had been a locally grown terrorist effort connected to demonstrations, they would be going at Obama for that.

    Anyway, against my will, I inadvertently heard a clip of the vile Issa lying away on some Sunday talky. The guy is not even a competent liar, using quotes that on their face do not support what he says they do. The guy is a brutal arrogant conceited fool.

    If there is some serious scandal fodder here, I think Issa will stumble on it in spite of his own efforts.

  61. 61.

    ulee

    And the Moors. They did so much fucking of Sicilian women, they changed the bloodline forever.

  62. 62.

    srv

    A spiteful Obama is working with Republicans to help them tear down Hillary for 2016. She throws herself on the sword and they stab her in the back.

  63. 63.

    Suffern ACE

    @MikeJ: Nope. And of course the hearings will never deal with the matter of why those “terrorists” were so worked up. No CIA operatives will be asked to testify. Because it isn’t a question of whether or not the CIA should be reigned in and we should work more openly. Nope. Its why we don’t turn our embassies into extensions of military bases capable of their own violent diplomacy.

  64. 64.

    Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)

    @scav: Oh, I wasn’t saying that it originated with Murray’s Bell Curve, but that’s been sort of their touchstone of late, egged on by that shitheel tory bastard Andrew Sullivan.

    I’d be curious if this dissertation contained any cites from Murray.

  65. 65.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    @Southern Beale:

    Democrats seem incapable of framing issues in short, memorable phrases. By the time they get through explaining things Joe Average has either forgotten what they were talking about or changed the channel.

    My late father gave me a piece of advice; “When a bar fight breaks out, grab a stool or a pool cue.” There are some situations where sweet reason is useless.

  66. 66.

    Bruce S

    Jeeezus K Rist – I read some stuff by Fallows and Coates in The Atlantic and think it’s a pretty good magazine and then they go and publish this whitewash of Henry Kissinger by Robert Kaplan:

    http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/the-statesman/309283/

    That’s the most schizophrenic magazine I’ve run across. The Kaplan article is a remarkable example of apologia – full of crap like this:

    “…Nixon and Kissinger encouraged a military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet, during which thousands of innocent people were killed. Their cold moral logic was that a right-wing regime of any kind would ultimately be better for Chile and for Latin America than a leftist regime of any kind—and would also be in the best interests of the United States. They were right—though at a perhaps intolerable cost.”

    We’re treated to a defense of the bombing campaigns against Vietnam and Cambodia and all of the rest of it. Truly a disgusting piece of apologia – including analysis lifted from “historian” Victor Davis Hanson, who is a full-fledged Neo-Con NRO wingnut. Thankfully the comments are filled with vilification of Kaplan and his stunning bit of BS.

  67. 67.

    Davis X. Machina

    @Roger Moore: People, however delightful individually, taken in the aggregate are shits.

    So predicating your political party on appeals to the worst in people is always going to work better than the alternatives.

    @MikeJ: What do you mean “This didn’t happen in a war, this happened in peacetime.’ It was Libya, wasn’t it? And there’s oil in Libya, isn’t there? What else do you need to know? Imperialism is indivisible, eternal and invariable.

    Hence our upcoming invasion of Syria. They’re the world’s 31th largest producer of oil, tied with Australia. We’d be invading them too, if they weren’t so…. white.

  70. 70.

    jl

    I cannot believe the House GOP even wants to actually remove Obama. Unless they can remove Biden at the same time. Sure, Obama being removed would be very damaging, but Biden would not be a placeholder, and he would be totally “apeshit payback time” Biden, who would cause a lot of trouble.

    So, I guess they want to do it to rile up the GOP base and get attack lines “out there” for voters on the fence for the next two elections.

    But that worked so well with Big Dawg, right?

    The GOP is run by incompetent, vicious, self destructive idiots. Only question is how much damage they do to others before they self destruct.

    Edit: I noticed srv’s comment. I forgot, this is really aimed at HRC. Probably so. I will not comment on this topic anymore. The politics is way too Byzantine and over my head.

    Edit2: and just noticed trollhatten’s comment too. But I don’t think it will work. But nice to know the GOP is so skeeered of HRC.

  72. 72.

    ulee

    Enough of that. I’m just pissed off that these whitebread racists pretend that they are concerned with national security. The Republicans could run Mark Sanford for president and he’d gather 47% of the vote.

  73. 73.

    patroclus

    @MikeJ: The concepts of “war” and “peace” are both a little murky in the post-Gaddafi Libyan context. There is no real security anywhere and what little there is is provided by militias whose allegiances are not always clearly defined. One could easily argue that the civil war is still ongoing; albeit only in spurts here and there. One could also just as legitimately claim that peace has been more or less established, with occasional violent flair-ups. It was Ambassador Stevens who wanted to establish a firmer presence in Benghazi despite the attempted assassination of the British ambassador a few months prior. These hearings have not really established any evidence that higher-ups like Obama and Clinton were involved other than some communications that nominally has Clinton’s name on them.

    FWIW, even Fox has switched to the Jodi Arias verdict.

  75. 75.

    burnspbesq

    @MikeJ:

    All the Arsenal fans are cheering for Chelsea right now, right?

    Yes, but not with nearly the fervor of the Everton fans. Toffs need an epic collapse from Spurs to have any shot at fifth.

  76. 76.

    burnspbesq

    @Chris:

    Elected Republicans have to do this if they want to protect themselves from a primary challenge from the right.

    I’m trying to imagine what a primary challenge to Darrell Issa from the right might look like.

  77. 77.

    Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)

    @jl: @scav: It gets even better:

    One of the co-authors of the Heritage Study claming immigration reform would add $6.3 trillion to the deficit, Jason Richwine,

    Jason Richwine?!?

  78. 78.

    gene108

    @Davis X. Machina:

    Hence our upcoming invasion of Syria. They’re the world’s 31th largest producer of oil, tied with Australia. We’d be invading them too, if they weren’t so…. white.

    If we’re going to be invading a country for natural resources, I say go for Canada.

    The logistics are easier.

    Once we rid them of socialized medicine, they will thank us and greet us as liberators :-)

  79. 79.

    Davis X. Machina

    @jl: Impeachment must be taken out periodically and turned into a punchline (1998-99, Clinton’s dick), so that when we get another Republican president, and really need it (2003-2006, Iraq, and god only knows what else), it’s unavailable for the purpose for which the founders intended.

  81. 81.

    patroclus

    C-SPAN 3 is now taking calls from a bunch of Republicans pretending to be Democrats and Independents and complaining about the media and Obama and Clinton and the media and Obama and Clinton and the media and Obama and Clinton.

  83. 83.

    different-church-lady

    If he’s serious about bipartisan compromise, he should just resign and turn himself in for war crimes. That would satisfy both the far right and the far left.

  84. 84.

    KG

    @burnspbesq: a 1% income tax is too high! we need more military toys to blow shit up with! Speaking off, it’s been almost a decade, let’s pick a country and blow it up to remind everyone that we can! Abortion is murder, therefore we should put doctors (and maybe women) to death for even talking about them! The bad economy is because of too much regulation, let’s get rid of all the bureaucrats (spit)! Get the government out of medicare and social security! privatize everything!

    I’m sure I’m missing something else, but that is probably what it would look like.

  86. 86.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @burnspbesq:

    If there’s a team capable of an epic collapse, it’s Spurs. Gareth Bale deserves better.

  87. 87.

    jl

    @Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):

    Richwine is the guy TPM is talking about. I guess that is why the methods section is so odd, and never gives any simple short explanation of what principles guided all the details of the analysis.

    Seriously: I think a good chunk of the results boil down to “Hispanics are genetically inferior and will never be as productive as Europeans, but we will throw money at them trying to smarten them up and affirmative action them into something decent.”

    Seriously, that basic principle explains some of the choices they made on how to model social spending and productivity of new Hisapnic immigrants, IMHO, from reading through the unexplained swamp and morass of the report’s methods section.

  89. 89.

    Pokeyblow

    Obama could have allowed prosecutions for Iraq war crimes.

    Instead, trying to make friends, he decided justice wasn’t all that important.

    Now the friends he made are showing their gratitude.

  90. 90.

    Another Halocene Human

    @jl: I wonder if DNC is preparing to run Hilary for Veep.

    I don’t think she’s in good enough physical condition to be prez even one term, and running a campaign will destroy those favorables she built up as SoS. They want her campaigning. And they’ll get it.

  91. 91.

    ruemara

    @ulee: You’re not kidding, it is sickening and no, I will not go to those sites. You can barely read an article on Yahoo, or any major news outlet’s FB or G+ feed without comments quite like those.

  92. 92.

    Another Halocene Human

    @gene108: No need, they put in the Canadian version of Maine’s LePage in a three-way twice.

    The plutocrats are pleased.

  93. 93.

    jl

    During one of my nerdier stages as a youngin’, I enjoyed reading about the hilarity and tragedy of minor political parties in US history.

    So, IIR that C, forget about comparing the GOP to the Whigs. That is a total insult to the Whigs.

    It’s like the Know Nothing Party and the most deranged of the High Federalists got together and had a love child. Something like fundamentalist Katzenjammer Kids on bad speed with lots of money. (Another nerd phase was reading ancient comix strips. Go, Krazy Kat!)

  94. 94.

    Chris

    @Southern Beale:

    The people who get to shape “the national narrative” (politicians, businessmen, big media, “public intellectuals”) tend to be disproportionately white, male, and well off. In other words, primed to tilt towards the conservative message.

    That’s why people say “DC is wired for Republicans” (and in my opinion that was probably true even in the “liberal consensus” years to some extent).

  95. 95.

    jl

    @Another Halocene Human:

    If the GOP is aiming at HRC, she will certainly be in the mood to play the veep role in a campaign.

    If that is the course of the events, then the GOP is expert at blowback and incapable of any self awareness. The RomneyBorg has infected their minds!

  96. 96.

    Roger Moore

    @jl:
    I notice that they’re not even giving a non-apology apology about it. They’re saying his previous work was not theirs, and standing pat on the conclusions. I guess as long as the study doesn’t explicitly say that Latinos are worthless bums but just implies it, they’re happy.

  100. 100.

    gene108

    @Another Halocene Human:

    No need, they put in the Canadian version of Maine’s LePage in a three-way twice.

    As I consider Canada the greatest single threat to U.S. security, I disagree.

    (1) They still bow with bended knee to the Queen of England.
    (2) They invaded the U.S. and burned down the White House
    (3) They can easily pass for American. The ability to set-up terrorist cells in the U.S. is alarming.
    (4) Our border with them is the largest unguarded border in the world. We are just asking for trouble.
    (5) They gladly accepted French Imperial hegemony in weights and measures, i.e. the metric system.

    The only tolerable thing they do to be civilized is drive on the right-hand side of the road, unlike their British overlords.

  101. 101.

    gene108

    @Roger Moore:

    Folks do realize that 99.999999% of Heritage Foundation publications and “scholarly” articles are pretty much based on pulling numbers out of thin air and dressing them up with fancy words to make it sound like work was actually done?

    Everything they put out is fiction, dressed up as serious material.

  102. 102.

    Burnspbesq

    @KG:

    I think you forgot “California, and especially San Diego County, should get more Federal aid, even as taxes are going down, because shut up! that’s why.”

  103. 103.

    Burnspbesq

    Imagine my surprise: another wing nut talking point dies a horrible death in a head-on collision with empirical data.

    In a study published this month, Atif Mian of Princeton and Amir Sufi of the University of Chicago pointed out that if uncertainty about prospective government regulation and taxes is the primary reason for the sluggish recovery, then states where policy uncertainty is high should tend to have lower job growth. Using state-level data from National Federation of Independent Businesses, however, they found almost no relationship between job growth and the share of small businesses that cite regulation and taxes as their top concern

    http://owenzidar.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/labs-of-democracy-lessons-for-todays-fiscal-policy-debates/

  105. 105.

    Calouste

    @jl:

    As if the Niall Fergurson brooha wasn’t enough for Harvard, this Jason Richswine got his PhD from there as well. In 2010.

  106. 106.

    priscianus jr

    @Bruce S: That’s the most schizophrenic magazine I’ve run across.

    Yes, I’ve noticed that too. I stopped reading it regularly well over a decade ago, even though I admit they have a lot of good articles too.

  107. 107.

    Joel

    I saw this posted on my Facebooks and I have to say, this is a remarkable piece from an anti-GMO activist who is re-evaluating some of her views. I say that it is remarkable because you rarely see someone who has taken sides in such a charged issue write something that is so candid and honest while admitting past mistakes.

  110. 110.

    Bruce S

    @Another Halocene Human:

    I don’t know that – except in the sense that all true-blue Neo-Cons are “Western” hegemonists, which is implicit white supremacy. Most of the Klowns who openly espouse white supremacy as such are, to my knowledge, closer to an extreme version of the paleo-con persuasion and don’t have much love for Neo-Con global adventurism. That said, Victor Davis Hanson is about as godawful an obsessive and vile Obama-hater as they come. If you’ve got some overt white supremacist goods on him, it would definitely make my day…

  111. 111.

    Chris

    @Bruce S:

    White supremacy’s gotten toxic enough that a lot of people know not to say it openly or at least to say it in a way that makes it deniable.

    The Bill Whittle turn of phrase was “it’s not hardware, it’s software” – meaning “we don’t care about skin color, we care about culture,” which still allows them to be Western hegemonists. (They welcome people from “other” backgrounds with open arms – as long as these people recognize Our Heritage as the superior one. From there you get people from Herman Cain to Dinesh D’Souza who find a place in the party validating the superiority of white culture). So, you know, how could they possibly be racist? Etc.

  112. 112.

    Keith G

    The communications and messaging efforts know as the Bully Pulpit do not work in all applications, but that doesn’t mean they work in none.

  113. 113.

    burnspbesq

    @Dr. Mantis Toboggan:

    In case you’ve forgotten, the Stored Communications Act is a validly enacted and in-force Federal statute, and decisions of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals are only binding authority in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

    I am a long-standing and proud member of the ACLU, but I do wish that they would stop pretending that the law is what they wish it were.

  115. 115.

    muddy

    @Bruce S: I don’t know if it’s white supremacist, but VDH is definitely not in favor of teh brown. I’ve met him and he was going on about how he had to build a defensive wall around his house in the raisin empire, and stand on the porch racking his shotgun at night to frighten off the Mexican hordes. Then he went after his neighbor, who came from India. He called him Punjabi, altho he was a Sihk, and made a really terrible imitation of his accent to prove how awful the guy was. His sin was to buy property from VDH brother, which the brother had previously purchased from VDH. Sliding in a taking stealing our American raisins….

    That dinner party was basically a one-man show. Aside from the food, which was exquisite.

  117. 117.

    Dr. Mantis Toboggan

    @burnspbesq: That has nothing to do with anything. The FBI believes it can violate the fourth amendment; their boss could tell them otherwise, regardless of what any particular court says, but he does not care to.

  118. 118.

    jl

    @muddy:

    Oh hell yeah. I arm up every time I visit my cousins in Fresno. Lock and load and get ready to rock ‘n’ roll before you venture up the Van Ness Extension!

    Hell, I done seen things. I’ve done humped the Blackstone and Shaw run.

    Don’t ask me about it. I try not to remember.

  121. 121.

    David Koch

    @Citizen_X: “under the bus” — oldie but a goodie

    funny how we don’t hear that anymore, how it died-out so abruptly.

  122. 122.

    David Koch

    U guys are slipping.

    Gawd! 120 comments in and no one has mentioned “hippie punching”

  123. 123.

    JWL

    Jesus, what is it with you and those who dare criticize Obama? The content most criticisms of Obama from the democratic rank-and-file more often than not ignore his use of the “bully pulpit” altogether, and by a mile. But not to hear your broken record of a snide whine, it’s not.

  125. 125.

    burnspbesq

    @Dr. Mantis Toboggan:

    The FBI believes it can violate the fourth amendment;

    Horse-pucky. Unlike you, the FBI and the IRS know what the law is with respect to warrantless access to stored emails, and follow it. You want the law to be something other than it is, and wish they would do what you think is right. Not the same thing. Your beef is not with the FBI or Obama, it’s with Congress.

    I happen to believe that the Stored Communications Act is a bad law and should be modified. Unlike you, I refuse to pretend that it doesn’t say what it says.

  127. 127.

    Howard Beale IV

    @gene108:

    Hey-you’re forgetting that we drove that verminous Tim Horton’s out of our country, no thanks to that ill-timed acquisition by Wendy’s.

  128. 128.

    LeftCoastTom

    @liberal:

    he really did get those people killed. No one forced him to get us involved there.

    Yeah, how dare Obama have diplomats stationed in consulates! Doesn’t he know that consulates should only be staffed with unicorns?

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