Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Stand up, dammit!

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

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

A fool as well as an oath-breaker.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

Optimism opens the door to great things.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

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Archives for 2014

Thursday Morning Open Thread

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Here’s a picture of some cookies from the Cracker Sisters’ Annual Drunken Christmas Cookie Bake-a-Thon last weekend:

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The coconut macaroons are my favorite, though the kids insist the buckeyes (top left) are the best. Sis and I had to impose rules on buckeye size because the rugrats kept rolling ever larger spheres of the peanut butter mixture, creeping up past marble size toward golf ball girth. They would have been dipping bowling ball-sized buckeyes in chocolate if we hadn’t put a stop to it.

The sugar cookies turned out pretty well this year. They’re mostly a canvas for decorating, but it’s important to have a tasty canvas. I’m reasonably proud of my dragonfly. I’m not sure who decorated the dinosaur.

I’ve got roofers coming today, so my home office will be a cacophonous hell. I’m hoping the dogs bark themselves hoarse early.

Please feel free to discuss whatever.

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Help A Brother Out

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thecrewbackintheday

Friend of the blog, Larime, whom many of you know as the fellow who, disabled, can draw better than most of us, is having a tough go of it. His wife has been diagnosed with cancer and they don’t have the means to adequately deal with it, and I just learned that it is malignant and she will be needing all of the horrible things we associate with cancer- radiation, chemo, etc. They’ve set up a gofundme site, so if you have some extra scratch lying around, please do pitch in. I’m sure he’d also love to do some work for you should you want to commission a piece like the one above.

Additionally, I upgraded my video card because my pc (I picked it up in 2010) was getting long in the tooth so I added some RAM and upgraded the video card, so I now have an Nvidia GeForce 660 ti lying around that I will give away for a 50 dollar donation to Larime. Any takers?

Finally, some Christmas Tunch, since you have been asking.

tunch_desk

I miss the fella always sitting at my desk with me all day every day helping me (knocking things off my desk, sitting on my keyboard, attacking my hand, or silently sitting there staring at me until I paid attention to him). Steve doesn’t do that like Tunch did, but Lily is now always by my side on the couch in my home office.

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One Step Forward: Counting the Bodies

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Mother Jones, from the link:

… Last week, Congress passed the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013. Currently awaiting Obama’s signature, it mandates that states receiving federal criminal justice assistance grants report, by gender and race, all deaths that occur in law enforcement custody, including any while a person is being detained or arrested. This would include events like the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, says Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a sponsor of the bill, in an interview with Mother Jones.

The bill also mandates that federal law enforcement agencies annually gather and report these deaths to the US attorney general, who in turn has two years to analyze the data, determine if and how it can be used to reduce the number of such deaths, and file a report to Congress.

The bill is backed by groups like the NAACP, which argue that it will increase accountability and transparency. The process it envisions would collect more data than the FBI’s existing Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which only tallies what are considered “justifiable” homicides by police, a designation that can criminalize victims of police killings. As DIY databases have cropped up—the Killed by Police Facebook page, for instance, gets its stats by aggregating news stories—the bill could establish a more accurate and official repository…

The bill that passed last week aims to force reporting by tying law enforcement funding to cooperation: States that fail to report police-involved killings can lose up to 10 percent of their federal law enforcement grants. However, it’s up to the attorney general to mete out fines. “Hopefully there will be better compliance and enforcement than existed then, and also more cooperation,” Blumenthal says. “There’s certainly more awareness now about the importance of this data, and much more focus on it.”

More detail at the link.

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The Sony Hacking

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First off, let me first disagree with the esteemed Cracker– I was fully looking forward to seeing the Interview, because I am hopelessly immature and I think Seth Rogen and James Franco are hysterical. I bet I have watched This is the End a dozen times. Say what you will, but I like a cheesy comedy every now and then.

Second, I find this over-reaction to be completely and totally absurd and yet entirely predictable after the American public has spent the last several decades being trained to be terrified of every damned thing. This is the logical conclusion of the War on Drugs and the War on Terror- a pants wetting population that soils it britches at the slightest hint of danger that even baseless threats will keep us from doing what we do best, which is sit on our fat asses eating candy and popcorn while watching tv. So ingrained is our newly created tradition of cowardice that corporate America, the sociopaths who will rob your pension and ship your jobs oversees while ignoring work safety issues and sell you faulty ignition systems for your car and processed food created in unsanitary conditions, all without so much as batting an eye in the chase of the almighty dollar, is now basically shutting down a sure money winner because they know when the cattle are truly spooked.

The hacking was embarrassing, as it exposed many of the people for exactly who we thought they were, but there was nothing really scary at all, and we have nothing to worry about as far as a bunch of hackers issuing menacing threats. The only scary thing about this is the fact that the Sony network is probably more secure than our power grid, but we all know we can’t do anything about that because austerity uber alles and the fact that it would be unseemly to make free market jeebus cry around his birfday.

So there is that, I guess.

Home of the free and land of the brave, my arse.

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Speaking of Jeb

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Someone else has some not so kind words for him:

In his announcement Tuesday that he would explore a 2016 presidential bid, former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) promised to focus on “ideas and policies that will expand opportunity and prosperity for all Americans.” But he made no mention of his most controversial act during his two terms in office: his attempts to take custody of Terri Schiavo and overrule her husband Michael’s decision to remove her feeding tube, fifteen years after cardiac arrest had left her in a vegetative state.

ThinkProgress spoke with Michael Schiavo and the attorney who represented him in the matter, George Felos, about Bush’s presidential candidacy. Both expressed concern that Bush’s record was one of government interference and opposing individual liberty.

“If you want a government that’s gonna intrude on your life, enforce their personal views on you, then I guess Jeb Bush is your man,” Schiavo explained, adding, “We really don’t need another Bush in office.”

Felos described Bush’s actions interference in Schiavo case as, “An egregious example of the fat hand of government inserting itself into a family’s medical decision and the obtrusive hand of government trying to override their decision.”

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Though Bush, then-U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), and social conservative activists protested that Terri Schiavo was not in a persistent vegetative state, an autopsy confirmed that she had been.

“It’s one thing to have your own personal beliefs,” Felos said, “It’s quite another to use your official powers and your official office to subvert the court and the lawful process.”

He also recalled that after Schiavo’s death, Jeb Bush went after Michael Schiavo personally, asking the state’s attorney to investigate whether he had called 911 fast enough. “It was very odd, almost like a personal vendetta the governor had towards Michael Schaivo.” The state’s attorney found no evidence against him and closed the case. “The propriety of using your office to hunt and harass people, as the governor did to Mr. Schiavo after his wife’s death, I think raises significant questions about his judgment and his character,” Felos said.

Michael Schiavo, nearly a decade later, said he believes Jeb Bush’s intervention was a purely political move and an act of buffoonery. “If you want a government that’s gonna be intrusive and interfere in your personal life, vote for Bush. If you want to live like that, want people to interfere in your personal lives, then vote for him,” he said.

Longtime readers will remember that this was, for me, on the heels of torture and the lies about the war and the general nastiness and lack of concern for people displayed by Republicans, the last straw. So I guess Jeb Bush has done one good thing. He made me a Democrat.

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Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Sucks to Be Jeb (As Usual)

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Jeb to the President: MY PARADE, STOP RAINING ON IT!!!…

And it’s not like there weren’t plenty of Republicans ready to shiv “the Smart Bush Brother”. Bloomberg Politics looks to be a rich source for quotes — here’s Dave Weigel, explaining why “The right is not ready for Jeb“:

… A little more than a week ago, in a profile of his For America organization, [Media Research Center’s Brent] Bozell told National Journal‘s Shane Goldmacher and Tim Alberta that “if Jeb Bush gets religion on deficit spending and champions a real deficit reduction program, we’re going to promote Jeb Bush,” but “not for president.” Bozell knows where conservative sentiment is, and it’s not with the Bushes. It’s not with anyone seen to support immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship, not with anyone who has defended Common Core, which in 2013 and 2014 became a litmus test on the right…

There’s a lot of discussion, when Hillary Clinton’s name comes up, about whether the Left actually wants her to return—whether it trusts her. The bitterness and doubts about her are a figment of a shadow of what exists on the right when it comes to Jeb Bush.

Michael C. Bender, “Can Florida’s former governor appease the new right wing of his party?“:

… In Iowa—the first state to hold a presidential nominating contest—just 2 percent of caucusgoer respondents aligned with the Tea Party (and 4 percent in all) say Bush would be their first choice, according to a Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register poll in October. Sixty percent of moderate Iowa Republicans say they have a favorable view of Bush, second only to the 72 percent favorable rating for Representative Paul Ryan, according to the poll.

“I don’t think we need another Bush, period,” Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican and one of the most conservative members of the chamber, told reporters Tuesday…

There’s a certain irony to Bush’s clash with his party’s activist base. His conservative successes as governor made it more likely that Tea Party candidates would be competitive in Florida, where the movement has had some of its biggest victories, North Florida political science professor Matthew Corrigan writes in his new book, Conservative Hurricane: How Jeb Bush Remade Florida. Bush helped launch the political career of Senator Marco Rubio, who was perhaps the Tea Party movement’s top triumph in 2010, and has raised money for Tea Party governors, including Maine’s Paul LePage…

Bush banned partial-birth abortion and required parental notification before terminating some pregnancies. He outsourced the state foster care and adoption functions and signed the National Rifle Association’s first stand-your-ground law allowing deadly force in self-defense. Mother Teresa’s attorney advised him in end-of-life issues and, in a 2003 showdown with the state court system that received national attention, he pushed for a law to reinsert feeding tubes for Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged St. Petersburg woman….

“Most of us believe in less federal government and more decentralized government, particularly with education,” Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican eyeing his own presidential campaign, said Tuesday on Fox News. “For Jeb Bush to run in the primary will be very, very difficult. Because if you’re going to be for a national curriculum and for Common Core and for No Child Left Behind—this accumulation of power in Washington—that’s not very popular.”…

Fortunate Son Rand to Fortunate Son Jeb: Yeah, but what have you done for us LATELY?

Last week, Joshua Green & Miles Weiss, “Jeb Bush Has A Mit Romney Problem“:

… Documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Nov. 27 list Bush as chairman and manager of a new offshore private equity fund, BH Global Aviation, which raised $61 million in September, largely from foreign ­investors. In November the fund ­incorporated in the United Kingdom and Wales­—a ­structure, several independent finance lawyers say, that operates like a tax haven by allowing overseas investors to avoid U.S. taxes and regulations. BH Global Aviation is one of at least three such funds Bush has launched in less than two years through his Coral Gables, Fla., company, Britton Hill Holdings…

“Running as the second coming of Mitt Romney is not a credential that’s going to play anywhere, with Republicans or Democrats,” says John Brabender, a Republican consultant and veteran of presidential campaigns….


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Apart from enjoying the spectacle as our enemies turn on each other, what’s on the agenda for the evening?

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The End of an Error

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I knew as soon as I saw the news that Obama was going to move away from our awful, stupid, evil, counter-productive cold war era policy with Cuba (a policy that has done nothing but hurt the good people of Cuba and fuck up politics in Florida for decades) that the wingnuts would go insane. And boy howdy, have they delivered, but we’ll just go with the boy blunder from Floriduh himself, Marco Rubio:

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) laid into President Barack Obama’s impending normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba on Fox News Wednesday morning, saying Obama had traded away concessions for “symbolic gestures,” and that Obama was “the worst negotiator that we’ve had as president…maybe in the modern history of the country.”

“My interest in Cuba has been the furthering of democracy and freedom,” Rubio said. “Nothing the president will announce today will further that goal…It’s part of long record of coddling dictators and tyrants this administration has.”

“They’ve created no economic openings, no concessions on freedom of speech, no concessions on elections, no alternative political parties. …The idea that this leads to democratic opening is absurd, but it is par for the course for an administration possibly giving away unilateral concessions for Iran or Cuba in exchange for nothing.”

Why, he’s so hopping mad he’s pissed at the Pope:

“My understanding is that the influence that His Holiness had was on the release of Mr. [Alan] Gross, which I’ve not criticized. As I said, I’m happy that he’s with the Cuban people [sic]. I would also ask His Holiness to take up the cause of freedom and democracy, which is critical for a free people — for a people to truly be free,” Rubio, a Catholic whose parents immigrated from Cuba to flee an oppressive regime, told reporters.

“I think the people of Cuba deserve the same chances to have democracy as the people of Argentina have had, where he comes from; as the people of Italy have, where he now lives. Obviously the Vatican’s its own state, but very nearby,” the senator and rumored 2016 presidential hopeful continued. “My point is I hope that people with that sort of prestige on the world stage will take up the cause of freedom and democracy. The Cuban people are the only people in this hemisphere that have not been able to elect a leader in more than 55 or 60 years. That’s outrageous.”

Republicans only like the Pope when Catholic dogma can serve as cover for the Republican fetus fetish and gay hate. When dealing with actual living humans, not so much.

I’m personally thrilled we are hopefully seeing the end of this idiotic policy which really is one of the last vestiges of the Cold War. So it is not surprising, albeit still depressing, that the troglodyte party is responding with their typical Cold War mindset- it’s really all they know. History and modern civilization for wingnuts started with Hitler, reached its apex during the lily white and repressive fifties where the colored and the womenfolk knew their place and the jello salad and Leave it to Beaver were the height of culture, and ended when St. Ronnie personally took a pick axe to the East German wall while accompanied by his trusty blue ox. Since then, it’s been all queer eye for the straight guy, coloreds being all uppity, and women in the workplace. So it is not surprising to see them lash out like this as “CUBA BAD” was one of the last few things they could hold on to- that blanket and binky they could clutch while rocking themselves to sleep because it’s the end of the world as they know it, and the rest of us feel fine.

In the defense of Republicans, there used to be a train of thought that the way to liberate the world was through trade and travel, but that notion on the right is as dead as Dick Cheney’s dark heart after 70 years of eating cheesy Freedom Fries. So when you watch all these guys freak out, and seriously, they are freaking the fuck out, just realize that they are exhibiting all they know, which is the old way of thinking and viewing the world. Think back to not so long ago, when Putin was the man of their dreams and the ho yay was in full bloom- he was a real leader, riding shirtless on a bear as he annexed everything to the east of the Rhine while our waffler in chief just stood by. We’re all Georgians and Ukrainians and Romney was Right or whatever the cry du jour was from Johnny Get Your Guns McCain (another Cold War relic who needs to be put down) all while Lindsey Graham wearily lifted himself from the fainting couch long enough to emit a plaintive wail on Hardball. New Cold War! He wants to create a new greater Russian empire! We have to meet force with force! That’s all Putin understands!

Meanwhile, our Kenyan appeaser in chief had different plans, and worked with the international community to put in place a sustained series of sanctions aimed at punishing Putin for his aggression, and where are we now? Without a shot fired, without one casket wept over in Arlington, Russia’s economy is near collapse if it hasn’t already. The ruble is as worthless as Sarah Palin’s diploma, there is an astounding brain drain as the educated emigrate at astonishing levels, Ukraine and pro-Russia rebels have agreed to resume peace talks, and just the other day, Obama supported another round of sanctions. Our President knows when and how to stick the shiv in, and it’s much more effective than the wingnut plan of launching a thousand tanks and tens of thousands of men eastward through the Fulda Gap.

And now, along with all of that, Putin is now the man who lost Cuba.

But the Cuba news is more important than just that. It means that millions of people may begin to enjoy all the wonderful things the 20th century has to offer, including the ability to see their loved ones. We’ll see how the negotiations go, and what happens in the long run, but this is most certainly a good thing, a great thing. This is the kind of thing Presidential legacies are made of…

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