Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

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

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

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

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

So many bastards, so little time.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

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

I really should read my own blog.

Fucking consultants! (of the political variety)

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

Find someone who loves you the way trump and maga love traitors.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

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

American history and black history cannot be separated.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

You are here: Home / Archives for Politics

This Is Interesting

by | 36 Comments

This post is in: 

Bob Novak points out something I missed:

Webb’s astringent comments contrasted sharply with Bush’s tone, which indicated he still has not shed illusions that he carried from Austin to Washington in 2001. Congressional Democrats are nothing like the tame Democrats in the Texas Legislature whom Bush dealt with as governor. On Tuesday night, Bush ignored issues dear to the conservative base such as embryonic stem cell research, abortion and same-sex marriage. Delivering his State of the Union on the day after the annual March for Life on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Bush did not see fit to mention the abortion issue, which is important to so many of his supporters.

Instead, the president talked about goals, though not methods, dear to Democratic hearts: expanded health insurance, energy independence and federal aid for local education. Bush was reminiscent of President Bill Clinton in sprinkling his speech with small proposals that might be popular. Yet Democrats immediately indicated that all such Bush plans have no chance of passage.

When was the last State of the Union address that did not mention abortion? When was the last SOTU by a Republican that did not mention abortion?

This Is InterestingPost + Comments (36)

Post SOTU Thoughts and the Idiotic and Bizarre Pledge

by | 82 Comments

This post is in: , ,

The Belgravia Dispatch pretty much sums up my opinion about the SOTU address (and I sorry for the delay posting this, but I have been busy):

This SOTU felt like something of a requiem. It was almost painful to watch. Like, say, Jacques Chirac, the President seemed a dead man walking. The domestic policy part, despite some initiatives of arguable import (energy conservation, health insurance), reeked of half-hearted delivery, a sense that little of it would come to fruition, in short, that is was mere filler/prologue. Put simply, Bush’s heart wasn’t in the domestic policy section (and Cheney even mischievously winked to the gallery during one of the reduction in energy usage parts). None of it was truly convincing, in the least.

Then Bush transitioned to foreign policy (after the obligatory homeland security boiler-plate), the linch-pin of his Presidency, and how his legacy will largely be determined. And of this section, what can one say? His tactical political goal was clear, stop the hemorrhaging in support of Republicans on the Hill. Might he have swayed a Norm Coleman, say, to stay on the reservation and support Plus-Up? Maybe, but it was weak fare, a recitation of much that had been said before, and nothing I heard tonight gave any additional faith that injection of 17,500 troops into a raging civil war in the capital city of Iraq will change the direction of the conflict absent massive crisis management with all the key neighbors via a diplomatic offensive led by a chief diplomat of real caliber (if one were available).

On the domestic issues, I heard a political version of the Peanuts teacher- “Waah wah wah Health care wah wah wah oil consumption waha wah wah.” My eyes just glazed over. I know none of that isgoing to happen. You know none of that is going to happen. The people applauding in the chamber know it is not going to happen. Bush and his speechwriters knew it was not going to happen. It was silliness, and even if the policies have merit and should happen, do you really trust this band of imbeciles to implement them? I sure as hell don’t, and Belgravia nailed it (although minor quibble- the title of his post should have been Dead Man Talking).

As to the foreign policy stuff, meh. The usual lofty rhetoric was present (although I didn’t see any axis of evil stuff):

In the sixth year since our nation was attacked, I wish I could report to you that the dangers have ended. They have not. And so it remains the policy of this government to use every lawful and proper tool of intelligence, diplomacy, law enforcement, and military action to do our duty, to find these enemies, and to protect the American people.

This war is more than a clash of arms — it is a decisive ideological struggle, and the security of our nation is in the balance. To prevail, we must remove the conditions that inspire blind hatred, and drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and come to kill us. What every terrorist fears most is human freedom — societies where men and women make their own choices, answer to their own conscience, and live by their hopes instead of their resentments. Free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies — and most will choose a better way when they are given a chance. So we advance our own security interests by helping moderates, reformers, and brave voices for democracy. The great question of our day is whether America will help men and women in the Middle East to build free societies and share in the rights of all humanity. And I say, for the sake of our own security … we must.

Blah blah blah. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Most silly of all is that his rhetoric about the severity and importance of this struggle does not even have any internal consistency, for a little bit later we learn:

One of the first steps we can take together is to add to the ranks of our military — so that the American Armed Forces are ready for all the challenges ahead. Tonight I ask the Congress to authorize an increase in the size of our active Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 in the next five years. A second task we can take on together is to design and establish a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps. Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them. And it would give people across America who do not wear the uniform a chance to serve in the defining struggle of our time.

Six years in to the greatest threat to our society EVAH, and the decider has chosen now is the time, over the course of five years, to increase the military by 92,000 men. That isn’t even enough to handle what is needed to address our losing affair in Iraq and our mission in Afghanistan, and those won’t be ready for five years.

Q: How serious is this struggle if we don’t have any sense of urgency about it?

***

A: About as serious as Hugh Hewitt and the Bush dead enders, I presume. Faced with the prospect of actual dissent and treason within the Republican ranks after Hagel’s well-deserved and passionate speech yesterday, brave bloggers worldwide created a bizarre and troubling pledge for everyone to ‘sign.’ The pledge:

If the United States Senate passes a resolution, non-binding or otherwise, that criticizes the commitment of additional troops to Iraq that General Petraeus has asked for and that the president has pledged, and if the Senate does so after the testimony of General Petraeus on January 23 that such a resolution will be an encouragement to the enemy, I will not contribute to any Republican senator who voted for the resolution. Further, if any Republican senator who votes for such a resolution is a candidate for re-election in 2008, I will not contribute to the National Republican Senatorial Committee unless the Chairman of that Committee, Senator Ensign, commits in writing that none of the funds of the NRSC will go to support the re-election of any senator supporting the non-binding resolution.

The current signatories include serious military thinkers such as Hugh “HARRIET MIERS IS THE BOMB” Hewitt and Dan “God hates fags” Riehl, and, of course Red State, which used to be conservative but now is little more than a sad exercise in Rovian doublespeak (but they hate Democrats, so that counts for something!). The whole list of signatories can be found here. It is hard to describe how creepy and, well, authoritarian this nonsense is, but Glenn Greenwald does an able job of it.

I tried to think of some other pledges to take the place of this exercise in lunacy, and this is what I came up with for all these Bush diehards:

“Follow Bush over a cliff or we will make sure that we are a Southern regional religionist party with 12 seats in the Senate!”

Not only is supporting Bush with this piddling surge a terrible idea for Iraq and for our troops, it is politically stupid. The deep thinkers on the Bush diehard right have decided, however, to double down. Now not only will the GOP be under assault in 2008 externally for their hideous decision-making, horrible leadership, and sickening fealty to the rotting Bush regime, but now we can set up some internecine warfare to boot. Sounds like a plan, guys.

And that is where we are. Iraq is a disaster, our military is strained, the administration is drained, under assault, worried about the Libby trial, and devoid of leadership and bereft of ideas. If that wasn’t clear before the State of the Union, it sure as hell should be now. It would be premature to call the Bush Presidency dead, as we still have two years of watching them slowly rot while spreading further their cancer into the body politic. Personally, I am going to hold my nose and try to pretend it is not partially my fault we are in this mess.

Post SOTU Thoughts and the Idiotic and Bizarre PledgePost + Comments (82)

Egregiously Simple Questions Answered Simply

by | 34 Comments

This post is in: ,

In a post about marriage trends, Ezra asks:

This may seem naive, and I’m sure there’s an obvious statistical explanation for it, but how are fewer women than men married? Presumably, they’re mostly married to each other, no?

There are more women than men in America. This kind of surprises me since Ezra knows more than I do about a lot of stuff.

The rest of the post merits a read. I don’t know whether there’s anything significant to pick up from the observation that people tend to marry people similar to themselves, except as a reminder that opportunities for class mobility are especially important during the pre-marriage years. Quality public education and access to universities should top pretty much anyone’s list, but I would add at least two more. Fair wages for the lowest tier of the workforce and universal healthcare play a key role since the children of families which lack either face dramatic roadblocks that privileged children do not. Stepping back into the realm of party politics, it is hardly an accident that the GOP stands against virtually everything that increases social mobility and the Dems in favor. Feature, not a bug.

***Update***

Thanks to the thousands of readers who have not pointed out what a complete pedant I am. But as long as I’m pedanting away, Ezra corrected in an update. Now I feel slightly dirty for using good blog space to snag low-hanging fruit rather than insanity like this.

***

About that link (yes, this is more or less an open thread) – does Hugh Hewitt serve any purpose other than to confirm Glenn Greenwald’s thesis about insane authoritarian rightwingers? Discuss.

Egregiously Simple Questions Answered SimplyPost + Comments (34)

SOTU Notes

by | 181 Comments

This post is in: 

Like Josh Marshall the opening caught my attention. First an up note:

Tonight, I have a high privilege and distinct honor of my own — as the first President to begin the State of the Union message with these words: Madam Speaker.

Five paragraphs later:

Some in this Chamber are new to the House and Senate — and I congratulate the Democrat majority.

The text, of course, records the correct use of Democratic. Pretty hard to explain. Either he consciously slipped in a little reminder of the contempt in which he holds his political opponents or he lacks the self-discipline to keep it from getting through anyway.

Generally I just used the Pelosi Meter to judge whether this speech will be the last time we ever hear about a given proposal. If Pelosi sat still it will probably disappear into the memory hole. If Pelosi applauded politely then it might appear in some Democratic bill in a form that the president won’t like. If she put some force into it then there’s room for compromise and if Pelosi stood up then there’s a distant chance that everybody but Tom Tancredo will come away satisfied.

It goes without saying that we won’t hear anything about Social Security “reform” until next year’s SOTU, if then. Some variety of immigration reform seems likely and I see an opportunity for alternative energy, although strangely not for ethanol (guess she doesn’t want to be president someday). 80% or more of the president’s healthcare plan looks DOA, which is fine by me. Neither health savings accounts nor the new tax proposals do a blessed thing to fix our mangled system. They’re like some funhouse parody of ideology over practicality.

In foreign policy there just wasn’t much meat on the bone. The president’s own party gave only polite applause to escalation talk. I guess we’ve all heard the rhetoric about how supporting American kids dying in Iraq means supporting George Bush too many times already for it to have much of an impact. Weirdly the president seems to think that we’re fighting every major ethnic group in the mideast, which must have made the Joint Chiefs feel good about escalating our presence there. At least he can now tell Sunni from Shia.

Regarding Iran, what is there to say? If we won’t talk to them and we won’t attack them (or so says the administration, unconvincingly) then it’s hard to see what there is to do. Apparently the president, whose base considers the UN useless, plans to stake the future of the mideast on more sanctions. That should go over well. We could go on attacking Iranian interests in Iraq, even though the Iraqis seem violently opposed to the idea and evidence of actual Iranian meddling appears slim to none. Could be Iran will take the bait and retaliate, though I doubt it.

Bush registered pro forma dissatisfaction with genocide in Darfur and AIDS in Africa without proposing to do anything about it. Sadly that actually counts as an improvement when doing something has meant assuaging the theocratic base by cutting condoms and safe sex counseling out of our aid packages.

In general the speech left me lukewarm, like he’s treading water. He came, he went and my guess is that the event will disappear into the pond of history without leaving many ripples.

***Update***

The New York Times seconds my feeling about Bush’s speech. Also, I forgot to bring up Jim Webb’s reply – it was a great speech. At the time it seemed to me like Webb was basically declaring that the policy apparatus isn’t a one-way street anymore. Meaning, if the president doesn’t soon get America out of this Iraq mess then the Democrats will find a way to do it for him. By itself that’s a pretty ballsy move, on top of which his delivery was pretty good. I would prefer if media outlets had swooned over the substance rather than the delivery, but as long as they’re swooning… It seems likely that Webb’s response will leave ripples.

SOTU NotesPost + Comments (181)

Tear ‘Em A New One, Scooter

by | 70 Comments

This post is in: 

I swear the schadenfreude is going to kill me.

And to answer Atrios, Norah O’Donnell is the same old Noron. Cheney doesn’t care if people like him and the president doesn’t care if anybody likes Cheney. Maybe the GOP Congressional delegation, who need another albatross like they need one more hole in the head, can convince Bush to do the right thing. That would work if, say, the president believed in party loyalty. He doesn’t. The president believes in fealty, which looks like loyalty as long as Bush doesn’t have to give anything in return.

Now, I could see Cheney resigning in exchange for an instant pardon, assuming some other things happen first. But that’s not what O’Donnell was talking about.

***Update***

I am a very lazy busy blogger so I can’t give this nearly the pixels it deserves. Steve Benen has (as always) an excellent rundown; look to FDL , Slate and MSNBC for liveblogging.

To add one cautionary note, like at least one commenter I consider the testimony of a guy who is on trial for perjury to be a bit short on credibility. If Scooter is smart he kept some substantiation for these allegations. Otherwise it’s his word against the vice president’s, and the veep isn’t the one on trial for lying.

Yep, I’m looking forward to the discovery phase…

***Update 2***

Um, yeah. Naturally I meant that I can’t wait to see what the defense turned over in discovery. Which already happened.

The many lawyers in my family are crying right now.

Tear ‘Em A New One, ScooterPost + Comments (70)

Breaking 30

by | 185 Comments

This post is in: 

Moving in the wrong direction.

Mr. Bush’s overall approval rating has fallen to just 28 percent, a new low, while more than twice as many (64 percent) disapprove of the way he’s handling his job.

Two-thirds of Americans remain opposed to the president’s plan for sending more than 20,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq — roughly the same number as after Mr. Bush announced the plan. And 72 percent believe he should seek congressional approval for the troop increase.

This ought to be a fun State of the Union. Will the GOP Congress stand and applaud? Their president just lost them both houses of Congress and his constituency is smaller than the human papillomavirus. Republicans who have to face the voters in ’08 are terrified of getting photographed too close to president plutonium. But sitting on their hands, like they did in the Clinton years, would telegraph weakness and embolden the terrorists Democrats.

I might tune in after all.

***Update***

Some think that Bush didn’t lose Congress. Interesting. Some relevant data points:

* Who masterminded the idiotic Stay the Course parade in Congress during summer ’06? Oh yeah, Karl Rove. Way to use dying Americans as a partisan wedge.
* #1 issue for many voters: Iraq.
* By November ’06 stay the course had become a humiliating albatross for the GOP.
* Somebody decided to dump GOP resources into Senate races in deep-blue Maryland and New Jersey. The idea was apparently to fake out the Dems, who ignored it and instead knocked off three conseravtive-state GOP Senators in nailbiters. Who was that strategic genius? Why, Karl Rove. It’s one of his tics (see, Bush in California).
* Karl Rove answers to George Bush.
* Karl Rove does not answer to anybody in Congress.
* Photo ops with Bush proved to be campaign-killers. Jim Talent.

The GOP would have lost Congress no matter what, maybe even if Abramoff (speaking of which) hadn’t taken out several before the ballots opened. The Senate, however, was a tossup. If I had bet money I would have wagered on the GOP keeping it. Losing that house took work, and I don’t doubt that most Republicans know whose brainy little turd of a strategist is responsible.

Breaking 30Post + Comments (185)

Quote of the Day

by | 93 Comments

This post is in: ,

Erick at Red State wins it:

I’ve been on record saying I’m backing Romney, for now, but with Hillary’s official announcement this weekend, I am forced to wonder if a Romney nomination dilutes too much the accusation that Hillary Clinton is a political opportunist when, by all indications, he is too.

Not, “I can’t support this guy because he is an opportunist hack,” but rather the more nuanced “I can’t support this guy because he is such a hack it makes it hard to attack Hillary.”

Precious. I recommend Sam Brownback. He has an unblemishd record when it comes to being crazy on social issues.

Quote of the DayPost + Comments (93)