Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

It’s a new day. Light all those Biden polls of young people on fire and throw away the ashes.

“They not like us!” (that’s for sure!)

No one could have predicted…

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

The US Supreme Court is on the ballot in november.

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

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

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

This fight is for everything.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

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

Glad to see john eastman going through some things.

with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

The willow is too close to the house.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

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What She Said

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A Small Victory (thanks to Bill for the link):

Is it really necessary to splash her divorce papers all over the internet? Is this anybody’s business? No, her personal life is NOT fair game. Her family is not fair game. And as much as it takes enormous balls of steel for Sheehan herself to pen a diary at Kos entitled Leave My Family Alone when she’s the one who brought this into the public eye, it takes a person with no semblance of common decency to start gloating over Sheehan’s divorce as this proves something, somehow. Do you know how common it is for couples who have suffered the loss of a child to separate? Do you think this is some win on your part, something to high five each other about? Woohooo, a family is falling apart, another point for our side! That’s sick. SICK.

Read the whole thing. And again, there is no reason not to stick to her statements, which provide ample fodder. Forget about the divorce, which is really none of your business. Forget all the Israel/PNAC/War For Oil stuff. This is what Cindy Sheehan said LAST NIGHT on Hardball with Chris Matthews:

MATTHEWS: Can I ask you a tough question? A very tough question.

SHEEHAN: Yes.

MATTHEWS: All right. If your son had been killed in Afghanistan, would you have a different feeling?

SHEEHAN: I don`t think so, Chris, because I believe that Afghanistan is almost the same thing. We`re fighting terrorism. Or terrorists, we`re saying. But they`re not contained in a country. This is an ideology and not an enemy. And we know that Iraq, Iraq had no terrorism. They were no threat to the United States of America.

MATTHEWS: But Afghanistan was harboring, the Taliban was harboring al Qaeda which is the group that attacked us on 9/11.

SHEEHAN: Well then we should have gone after al Qaeda and maybe not after the country of Afghanistan.

Those are the deep thoughts of the new patron saint of the anti-war movement. And I say ‘anti-war,’ and not ‘peace,’ because they are not the same thing. This is the message they have, and it is silly, irresponsible, and easily refutable. And this is AFTER she has spent time with media handlers.

There is no need to go rummaging through her personal life- even if it is ‘news.’ It is mean-spirited, unfair, and should be beneath most decent people. And it is irrelevant.

And just for the sheer comic hilarity of it, this excerpt:

MATTHEWS: Are you considering running for Congress, Cindy?

SHEEHAN: No, not this time. I`m a one issue person. I know a lot about what`s going on in Iraq but I don`t know anything about anything else. And I want to focus my energy on bringing the troops home.

So back off her divorce and other family matters. If her husband comes forward and makes public statements, that is another matter. The focus should be on the message she is spreading, her public statements, and the organizations promoting/using her. And that isn’t smearing her. That is merely examining the public record of a public actor.

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Clinton/Pirro Match-Up

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Via Kos, it looks like the 2006 Clinton/Pirro senate race is starting to look like the 2004 Obama/Keyes race. In other words, an outright debacle for the Republicans:

JEANINE PIRRO’S gaffe- marred announcement and her emphasis on liberal social positions has led to new unrest in some quarters of the state GOP, party insiders said yesterday.

“A lot of people were unhappy with her boatload of mistakes, and they’re starting to take another look at Ed Cox as a result,” said a prominent Republican lawmaker, referring to the son-in-law of former President Richard Nixon who hopes to challenge Pirro in the GOP primary for the right to run against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

It looks like the Clinton strategy for handling this ‘law and order’ Republican is to give her enough rope to hang herself.

Talk Left also notes this cheap shot by the NY Post. Cna we just leave families out of this stuff?

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Watching Out For Number One

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I mentioned the rant by Bob Schieffer about the TSA changing/relaxing the screening guidelines for airline passengers, and here (thank to Linda in the comments) is a writeup:

The federal agency in charge of aviation security is considering major changes in how it screens airline passengers, including proposals that an official said would lift the ban on carrying razorblades and small knives as well as limit patdown searches.

An initial set of staff recommendations drafted Aug. 5 also proposes that passengers no longer have to routinely remove their shoes during security checks. Instead, only passengers who set off metal detectors, are flagged by a computer screening system or look “reasonably suspicious” would be asked to do so, a TSA official said Saturday.

Seems sensible enough, but this seems like something a smart populist seeking office might seize upon as a prime example of Washington being out of touch:

The Aug. 5 memo recommends reducing patdowns by giving screeners the discretion not to search those wearing tight-fitting clothes. It also suggests exempting several categories of passengers from screening, including federal judges, members of Congress, Cabinet members, state governors, high-ranking military officers and those with high-level security clearances.

It seems to me that the people responsible for the oversight of the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security should be the last people exempted from the sorts of invasive searches they think are fine for the rest of the country. In fact, many of the members of Congress seemed to agree with me, at least in spirit, back in 1993 and 1994:

On the first day of the 104th Congress, the new Republican majority will immediately pass the following major reforms, aimed at restoring the faith and trust of the American people in their government:

FIRST, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress…

I understand that most of the posturing and most of the claims about members of Congress and elected officials being just one of the people are nonsense, as they aren’t just like the rest of us, but it seems that this is one area where they should be treated just like one of us everyday average Joes.

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The DLC/Progressive Rift

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The progressive wing of the Democratic party better get these centrist DLC types back in line soon, or they are going to piss all over Operation Yellow Elephant and the wildly popular Chickenhawk meme:

After months of internal debate and closed-door discussions, Democrats have begun to develop a more aggressive foreign policy that focuses heavily on threats they say are being neglected by the Bush administration, while avoiding taking a contentious stance on Iraq.

Even Democrats who have been associated with liberal positions on international affairs are calling for more troops in uniform, proposing that threats of force be used to stop nuclear weapons programs in Iran and North Korea, and pressing for potential military intervention to ease famine and oppression around the world.

Democrats are also calling for better pay and benefits for soldiers and heightened efforts to protect mass transit and other potential terrorist targets.

The emerging message among Democrats reflects a recognition that winning congressional and presidential elections in the post-Sept. 11 era requires candidates to establish a willingness to use America’s military might and keep the nation safe, according to party leaders and strategists.

Despite pressure from liberal groups calling for a quick exit from Iraq, several of the party’s White House aspirants and congressional leaders are calling for the United States to intensify efforts to bring stability to the nation before troops come home.

Give it a read. Might be seeing the return of the Scoop Jackson wing.

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Big Government Conservatives

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The truth hurts:

THREE TIMES in the past quarter-century, conservative leaders have promised to restrain wasteful government spending. President Ronald Reagan tried it and showed he was at least half-serious by vetoing the pork-laden 1987 transportation bill. House Speaker Newt Gingrich tried it and risked his party’s electoral standing by battling to restrain the growth in programs such as Medicare. And President Bush has tried it, declaring on numerous occasions that he expected spending restraint from Congress. None of these efforts proved politically sustainable. As The Post’s Jonathan Weisman and Jim VandeHei reported Thursday, Mr. Bush’s attempt at spending discipline has been especially limp…

The nation is at war. It faces large expenses for homeland security. It is about to go through a demographic transition that will strain important entitlement programs. How can this president — an allegedly conservative president — believe that the federal government should spend money on the Red River National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center in Louisiana? Or on the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan? The bill Mr. Bush has signed devotes more than $24 billion to such earmarked projects, continuing a trend in which the use of earmarks has spread steadily each year. Remember, Republicans control the Senate and the House as well as the White House. So somebody remind us: Which is the party of big government?

And please spare me the attempts to justify this, I am not buying. And the light seems to have gone on (albeit, a couple weeks late to stop the latest spending orgy) even at Town Hall:

President Reagan often said it’s hard to recall that you came to drain the swamp when you’re up to your armpits in alligators. Republicans like Rep. Don Young of Alaska would rather use your tax dollars to build a scenic bridge to the swamp.

Hard as it is to believe, Young is more in tune with the GOP that rules Congress today than the former president who restored the party to national power in 1980 when he won the White House and a Republican Senate.

Their differences are nowhere more evident than on limiting government and reducing federal spending. Reagan said in his first inaugural speech that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Today, Young crows about the $286.4 billion transportation bill to The New York Times, saying he “stuffed it like a turkey.”

No excuse, so no excuses, please.

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