Condoleeza Rice, United States Secretary of State:
“It’s bad policy to speculate on what you’ll do if a plan fails when you’re trying to make a plan work.”
Some days I think they’re actually trying to give Greg Djerejian an aneurysm.
by Tim F| 76 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
Condoleeza Rice, United States Secretary of State:
“It’s bad policy to speculate on what you’ll do if a plan fails when you’re trying to make a plan work.”
Some days I think they’re actually trying to give Greg Djerejian an aneurysm.
by Tim F| 60 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
Try to read this without cursing. Jesus wept.
***Update***
The story in a nutshell:
Although the president was publicly polite, few of the key Baker-Hamilton recommendations appealed to the administration, which intensified its own deliberations over a new “way forward” in Iraq. How to look distinctive from the study group became a recurring theme.
As described by participants in the administration review, some staff members on the National Security Council became enamored of the idea of sending more troops to Iraq in part because it was not a key feature of Baker-Hamilton.
by Tim F| 22 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
Sad.
Conservatives who supported President Bush’s reelection have joined liberal groups in expressing outrage over his administration’s broad use of anti-terrorism laws to reject asylum for thousands of people seeking refuge from religious, ethnic and political persecution.
The critics say the administration’s interpretation of provisions mandating denial of asylum to individuals who give “material support” to terrorist groups is so broad that foreigners who fought alongside U.S. forces in wars such as Vietnam can be denied asylum on the grounds that they provided aid to terrorists.
[…] “It’s outrageous,” said Barrett Duke, vice president of public policy for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “I think it’s essentially a reaction of fear to the current terrorist danger.” The language in the laws, he added, is “a knee-jerk reaction.”
Gary L. Bauer, president of American Values, a conservative public policy group, said the anti-terrorism thrust of laws such as the USA Patriot Act and the Real ID Act is supported by most conservatives, “but the enforcement of it has lapsed into ludicrousy. The concept of material support is being distorted, and even the definition of the term ‘terrorism’ is being turned on its ear.”
Read the whole story to get a sense of the awful way that countless vulnerable individuals have been handled by our security beaurocracy. If there is any upshot, I guess that Gary Bauer now understands why some of us have always been skeptical of this government, even when they propose things which are not prima facie idiotic. It hurts that much more when the Michael Browns screw up something you like.
Naturally it gets worse. At least most refugees get a hearing; applicants from Iraq have virtually no chance because our government apparently prefers to pretend that the crisis doesn’t exist.
by John Cole| 77 Comments
This post is in: Politics, Republican Stupidity
It is nice to see the GOP is still the party of victimhood:
Thirty-one-year-old Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) is not a large man, standing perhaps 5 feet 3 inches tall in thick soles. But he packed a whole lot of chutzpah when he walked into the House TV gallery yesterday to demand that the new Democratic majority give the new Republican minority all the rights that Republicans had denied Democrats for years.
“The bill we offer today, the minority bill of rights, is crafted based on the exact text that then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi submitted in 2004 to then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert,” declared McHenry, with 10 Republican colleagues arrayed around him. “We’re submitting this minority bill of rights, which will ensure that all sides are protected, that fairness and openness is in fact granted by the new majority.”
Omitted from McHenry’s plea for fairness was the fact that the GOP had ignored Pelosi’s 2004 request — while routinely engaging in the procedural maneuvers that her plan would have corrected. Was the gentleman from North Carolina asking Democrats to do as he says, not as he did?
Even before officially relinquishing majority status today when the 110th Congress convenes, Republicans were protesting the Democrats’ heavy-handed leadership. But Republicans expecting Democrats to rule the House with an iron fist are likely to be pleasantly surprised: The incoming majority was having enough trouble keeping its own supporters in line.
But let’s cut these guys some slack, because let’s face it- we know that white Christian men and the GOP are the real victims in society. Everything is against them- the media is biased against the right, activist judges impose their will on a daily basis, gays want to ruin their marriages, liberals are trying to make sure their fetuses are aborted, schools want to indoctrinate their children, the government is taking their money, terrorists want to kill them- the list goes on and on. Hell-even math and STATISTICS are biased against the Republican party.
In all seriousness, this comment at Red State (of all places) about sums it up:
Once, just once, I would love to see the Republicans demonstrate the grace of consistency. Why is it that we have to raise crassness to the level of our highest principle?
They are being consistent. Crassness is the GOP’s highest principle. Or maybe that is political expedience.
BTW, for good clean fun, count the number of times the word socialist appears on the front page of Red State.
by Tim F| 66 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity, Science & Technology
Surprising maybe one catatonic person in outer Mongolia, political appointees won’t let the Park Service tell visitors the geologic age of the Grand Canyon. Apparently this controversial science known as geology conflicts with the unerring truth as-it-is-written in the Koran Bible.
Awhile back rightwingers reacted with outrage that I would paint George Deutsch, the anti-big bang jihadist at NASA, as an example of how the president staffs our government. Sadly, these retards truly are everywhere. Some are merely making life difficult for park rangers and confusing tourists. But like hungry squirrels released in a bomb silo others have found a way to screw up things that matter. I have only read portions of Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City (thanks to all of you who bought out the first printing) but I have seen enough to understand that our crucial early months of occupation ran on the same mix of naivete, inexperience and blind loyalty tests that fueled the appointment of underage nincompoops like Deutsch at NASA. If rebuilding Iraq is not too important to put experience before blind partisan loyalty then it is really, really hard to think of something that would make the cut.
Good luck to the next president in weeding out the George Deutsches and convincing professionals to come back. In the meantime we get to enjoy two more years of bright-eyed, ideologically pure squirrels in the wiring.
***Update***
Lots and lots of squirrels. via comments.
***Update 2***
The press release is bogus, according to this article in Skeptic magazine. Guess neither I nor they were skeptical enough the first time.
by Tim F| 22 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
Republicans see the ability to force tough votes — which they avoided in the majority by stifling Democratic alternatives — as having two potential benefits: It can put vulnerable Democrats on record with positions that might not be popular at home, or it can fracture the untested Democratic majority. Mr. Blunt noted that even senior Democrats who served in Congress when Democrats held control had no experience dealing with a relatively thin, 16-seat majority that will not allow many lawmakers to avoid tough votes.
Democratic leaders said that in the spirit of a new beginning, they have every intention of allowing Republicans the kind of legislative opportunities that Republicans regularly denied Democrats. “Democracy is a risk,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the incoming majority leader. “And democracy is about alternatives.”
This should hardly surprise anybody. The GOP behaved like children when in power and they show every sign of carrying right on with more of the same. If anything the Republicans’ minority position will inflame the victim complex which has fueled the worst aspects of rightwing behavior over the last umpteen years.
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
Today they are in a tiff because Ford had opinions on the Iraq War:
Ford told Woodward not to publish his views until after his death, but apparently said once he died they could be published at any time. It’s easy to understand the first part of the decision — why would Ford, at his age, want to participate in a contentious policy debate? But Ford has been criticized for not telling Woodward to wait until, say, the end of the Bush administration to reveal his views. Either Ford felt strongly enough about the matter that he wanted his opinion in the mix sooner rather than later (but not so soon that he would become embroiled in the debate) or he didn’t think things through very carefully.
JOHN adds: I would group this together with the Jeffrey Hart story Scott discusses below, under the heading “elderly apostates.” I find it interesting that many on the left who viewed Professor Hart’s work over his entire adult life with contempt, now cite him as a sort of sage when he criticizes President Bush. Likewise with Gerald Ford. Out of public life for a quarter-century and aged ninety, his views on the Iraq war are not especially noteworthy, except insofar as they can be used to discredit the present administration. If Ford had endorsed Bush’s Iraq policy in his interview with Bob Woodward, would we ever have heard about it? I doubt it.
Shorter Powerline: Ford’s opinions should be ignored, because, if in some alternate universe, he had favored the war, the liberal media would not have reported it.
Bill Bennett is also in a huff because Ford voicing his opinions was indecent:
Since “decency” seems to be the watchword of the day and the consensus modifier for Jerry Ford (a view with which I generally concur), may I nevertheless be permitted to ask this: just how decent, how courageous, is what Jerry Ford did with Bob Woodward? He slams Bush & Cheney to Woodward in 2004, but asks Woodward not to print the interview until he’s dead. If he felt so strongly about his words having a derogatory affect, how about telling Woodward not to run the interview until after Bush & Cheney are out of office? The effect of what Ford did is to protect himself, ensuring he can’t be asked by others about his critiques, ensuring that there can be no dialogue. The way Ford does it with Woodward, he doesn’t have to defend himself…he simply drops it into Bob Woodward’s tape recorder and let’s the bomb go off when fully out of range, himself. This is not courage, this is not decent.
Bennett then goes on to offer up some more “manly” options (paging the General, himself an 11 on the scale of manly), all of which are absurd. At any rate, the reason Ford did not speak out is because all of the aforementioned blowhards would have savaged him for not keeping his opinions to himself, as former President’s are ‘supposed to do’. I think we can all agree that had Ford come out against the war, these same knuckleheads would have called him Jimmy Carter Ford or the like.
As every day passes, it becomes clearer and clearer that the GOP needs to be destroyed, purged, and rebuilt from the ground up. Praise the lord and pass the ammunition, I say.
I Read The Powerline So You Don’t Have ToPost + Comments (228)