When you watch the pundits after the speech:
Who are you to going believe?
*** Update ***
We’ll just use this for the speech open thread.
When you watch the pundits after the speech:
Who are you to going believe?
*** Update ***
We’ll just use this for the speech open thread.
by John Cole| 50 Comments
This post is in: Clown Shoes
I’m watching CNN, and I am not making this up, someone paid to have a commercial state the following (and I paraphrase):
“Congress just spent 800 billion dollars. To get an idea how much that is, imagine if you spent a dollar every day since Jesus was born…”
I stopped what I was doing. I wonder how much it cost to air that commercial- should I start counting a dollar every day since Martin Luther was born? Or was it cheaper than that and I should start counting a dollar every day since Pope John Paul II was born?
*** Update ***
Not the only one to notice this:
Now, there’s a bit about this that renders it disingenuous…which is the whole thing. The American economy is massive – $14.28 trillion, in fact. If you started the day Jesus Christ was born and spent $1 million every day since then, you wouldn’t reach the size of the American economy by the year 10,000. Or 20,000. This is why we don’t measure the size of our economy in Jesus Money, despite the declaration of such in the RNC platform.
To put this in further context – over the course of Jesus’ life, at $1 million a day, and presuming his death at the age of 33 (including leap years), the value of Jesus’ life would have been $12.053 billion.
Microsoft’s yearly revenue last year was $60 billion, meaning they earned five Jesuses in a year.
Apparently the ad said a million a day, and not a dollar a day as I thought I had heard.
Peak Wingnut is a Unicorn, The Loch Ness Monster, and Bigfoot All In OnePost + Comments (50)
by DougJ| 54 Comments
George Packer on David Brooks:
David Brooks is going to be one of the best critics the Obama Administration will have, because his reservations and attacks are based on a world view that’s not only viable and thoughtful but almost always proved right: the view that we human beings overrate our ability to solve problems through the application of reason. The return of liberals to power has driven Brooks back down to his philosophical roots in Burkean caution toward rapid change based on abstract principles (he had lost touch with this inner self during the early Bush years, especially around the invasion of Iraq). Today’s column is just one of many recent examples, prompted by the fact that the Obama White House is taking on massive challenges in the economy, housing, banking, health care, energy, and education—all at once. It is, Brooks writes, “the biggest political experiment of our lifetimes.” Obama should do what Bush never did and make sure he talks to a critic like Brooks at least once every few months.
Why do these guys have to jerk each other off so much? It’s worse than a British boarding school.
I know, Assassin’s Gate was a brilliant book, George Packer is a serious guy, and blah blah blah blah. I don’t care.
This post is in: Clown Shoes
Wingnut Daily brings the goods:
A U.S. soldier on active duty in Iraq has called President Obama an “impostor” in a statement in which he affirmed plans to join as plaintiff in a challenge to Obama’s eligibility to be commander in chief.
The statement was publicized by California attorney Orly Taitz who, along with her DefendOurFreedom.us Foundation, is working on a series of legal cases seeking to uncover Obama’s birth records and other documents that would reveal whether he meets the requirements of the U.S. Constitution.
“As an active-duty officer in the United States Army, I have grave concerns about the constitutional eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama to hold the office of president of the United States,” wrote Scott Easterling in a “to-whom-it-may-concern” letter.
***Taitz told WND she had advised Easterling to obtain legal counsel before making any statements regarding the commander-in-chief, but he insisted on moving forward. His contention is that as an active member of the U.S. military, he is required to follow orders from a sitting president, and he needs – on pain of court-martial – to know that Obama is eligible.
I guess if he needs a lawyer, there is always Andy McCarthy. I was never an officer, and just an NCO, but this strikes me as an effective way to make sure you do not have a long and fruitful military career.
Soon To Be Former Soldier Raises Birth Certificate IssuePost + Comments (127)
by John Cole| 35 Comments
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Open Threads
For some reason today, I have just been exhausted all day. I slept well last night, woke up at around 6:30, and have just been dragging all day. You know the kind of day- every little task is an ordeal, and all you can think about is a nap. Just no energy whatsoever. Blerg. At any rate, it has been a few days, so, kitties:
I’m going to go make like Noah in the second picture there. Claim your pets, and I’ll be back later.
by John Cole| 65 Comments
This post is in: Clown Shoes
Eve Fairbanks discusses the theatrics and cunning stunts of the last few weeks from the GOP and asks a fair question:
Why are Republicans taking so many pages out of their failed candidate’s campaign playbook?
The Republican Party has been using a grab-bag of strategies to counter Obama’s policies over the past month. They rail against the stimulus package for its (supposed) pork. They hammer home their points with gimmicky videos and props. They speak in warrior rhetoric and revel in heroic, fighting-man stunts. But if there is one strand running through all these strategies, it is that they evoke a discomfiting feeling of deja vu. We’ve seen this stuff before: The GOP is currently reliving John McCain’s presidential campaign. The return to the strategies of their fallen candidate may be the saddest illustration of the current state of the party.
I honestly think it is because of the echo chamber, and because they simply have not had to think for so long that the echo chamber just rules. As far as I can tell these days, there are only three events Republicans remember throughout history, and those three events are the basis for every decision they make. The events are WWII (in which a damned furriner, Churchill, is the conservative hero), the Reagan administration, and the Republican take-over of Congress in Clinton’s first term. It doesn’t matter that they “misremember” those three cherished memories and don’t seem to have the ability to accurately assess those time periods. If you are wondering why the Bush administration and the past eight years is not one of those three memories, it is because they decided the day he left office that he is not a true conservative. Down the memory hole with you, George, and take those damned dogs with you!
Let’s just take one of these to prove the point. As WWII is one of the pivotal moments Republicans remember, every enemy is Hitler -Saddam Hussein? Hitler.
Putin? Hitler.
Kim Jong Il? Hitler.
Barack Obama? Hitler.
Likewise, anyone who does not do precisely what the wingnut crowd wants is instantly an appeaser and akin to Chamberlain.
Barack Obama- appeaser and Chamberlain.
Iraq War Critics- Appeasers.
Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Arlen Specter- Appeasers.
And on and on. So what you have is a movement centered on a fictional history based on three events they don’t remember too well, and they are completely at the mercy of the echo chamber, which has themcompletely dumbed down by talk radio and the circle jerk of self-referential pundits that tells them exactly what they want to hear. If you remember correctly, the wurlitzer was telling us after the last electoral drubbing that this is a center-right nation, despite the fact the GOP got hammered.
In other words, they think they won because “conservative values” still rule the day. Now what are they doing? Well, since they were told they won, they believe it, and they are continuing to do the same things they did during the “winning” election, spicing that up with their favorite memories from their three events- calling everyone an appeaser, feigning fiscal responsibility while pretending no one remembers the last eight years, chucking out tax cuts as a solution for everything while pretending Reagan balanced the budget and never raised taxes (Health care a mess? Tax cuts! Market melting down? Tax cuts! Need some economic stimulus? Tax cuts!), and unifying in opposition to the Democratic President just like the good old days of 1993.
Like I said- they aren’t very bright. Break out the celebratory tire gauges, bitches!
*** Update ***
And this.
*** Update #2 ***
I swear to FSM that I did not see this until someone linked it in the comments:
But in the warped fantasy of Transatlantic Neoconomia, the world in which every diplomatic challenge is another 1938 and all peaceful negotiation is “appeasement”, any snub of St Winston is sacrilege, a sign that the Atlantic bridge is crumbling.
It’s too early to judge the tenor of Obama’s foreign policy. His taste in Oval Office decor bodes well, however, especially given Bush II’s disastrous tendency to view the world in Churchillian terms of good and evil.
I’ll Take “They’re Not Very Bright” for 1000, AlexPost + Comments (65)
This post is in: Politics
Credit where credit is due, because the Republican Governor of Utah gets it:
The Republican governor of Utah on Monday said his party is blighted by leaders in Congress whose lack of new ideas renders them so “inconsequential” that he doesn’t even bother to talk to them.
“I don’t even know the congressional leadership,” Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. told editors and reporters at The Washington Times, shrugging off questions about top congressional Republicans, including House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “I have not met them. I don’t listen or read whatever it is they say because it is inconsequential – completely.”
***Unlike some of his Republican counterparts in other states, Mr. Huntsman said he will not turn back any of his state’s share of President Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus. But he said much of the spending is misdirected and more likely to bloat the government than boost the economy.
He said congressional Republicans failed to score political points for opposing the bill – only three Republican senators supported it – because the public saw them as objecting to being shut out by Democrats from helping write the bill rather than as taking a principled stand.
The governor said congressional Republicans are being frustrated by a lack of credibility on the party’s No. 1 tenet: fiscal responsibility.
“That’s why no one is paying any attention,” he said. “Our moral soapbox was completely taken away from us because of our behavior in the last few years. For us to now criticize analogous behavior is hypocrisy. We’ve got to come at it a different way. We’ve got to prove the point. It can’t be as the Chinese would say, ‘fei hua,’ [or] empty words.”
It still upsets me that this bill of a couple hundred billion in tax cuts (when did Republicans start opposing tax cuts?) and $4-500 billion in spending, mostly as stopgaps for state budgets and infrastructure spending, is characterized as wild spending, when the only reason for it is the horrible economy and there just isn’t a ton of “pork” spending in it. Regardless, it is nice to see that at least some Republicans out there get it- their problem is they simply have no credibility after the past eight years even if this WAS a larded up bill full of pork.
Put another way, it isn’t just dishonest, it is offensive. Having the party of Bush lecture you about out of control spending is like having a heroin addict chide you for putting too much sugar in your coffee.