Yes, I’m the new poster John alluded to earlier. I’d like to thank the Lord Jesus Christ. Without Him, none of this is possible.
And the Winner Is
And the winner for comment of the year is…. Krista, in a runaway.
[poll id = 6]Congrats. Also, should have a new regular poster here shortly. You all will recognize him, and yes, just as with Tim, we have recruited our own talent from the comments section.
Speaking of- go vote for Tbogg.
Brother, Can You Spare a Bullet?
And while the Republicans continue to wallow in their flop sweat and hypocrisy, with the news of the Panetta pick for the CIA, the Democrats show that they are once again the unparalleled masters at fratricide:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who this week begins her tenure as the first female chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said today that she was not consulted on the choice and indicated she might oppose it.
“I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director,” Feinstein said. “My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.”
The choice of Panetta was seen as a sign that Obama considered it more important to have a steady political hand and astute manager at the helm of the agency, rather than someone with deep operational experience.
In picking Panetta, Obama risks raising anew questions about the politicization of the CIA, a concern cited by leading congressional officials.
A senior aide to Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), outgoing chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that the senator “would have concerns” about a Panetta nomination.
Rockefeller “thinks very highly of Panetta,” the aide said. “But he’s puzzled by the selection. He has concerns because he has always believed that the director of CIA needs to be someone with significant operational intelligence experience, and someone outside the political realm.”
Way to go, team. Feinstein, who had no problem voting yea for Porter Goss, George Tenet, and Michael Hayden, as well as Mike Mukasey, Robert Mueller, and Donald Rumsfeld, has deftly just knee-capped her own party’s nominee for CIA, and is now in the position of doing an about face and looking like a complete and total hack or denying the incoming President his selection, something she never did to any of Bush’s choices. Way to be, DiFi.
So glad the Democrats got over that winning streak in November so they could quickly get back to our regularly scheduled shit show fail parade. Can’t anyone play this damned game?
You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out, Kid
I am a little late to the game on this, but I just want to be on record mocking the new Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle Red State Strike Force. The Bradrocket made a really solid point today in an unrelated matter when he said the following:
Everything you guys write is tainted by the simple fact that you’re crazy assholes. If you’d like your work to be taken seriously by anyone who isn’t on your own personal LISTSERVs and Twitter accounts, the first step is to stop being crazy assholes. If you enjoy being crazy assholes and don’t want to give up the habit, that’s cool, but don’t expect to earn much respect from normal people. Make sense?
The key to electoral success for the GOP is not an elite strike force of blithering idiots spamming everyone’s email with bullshit about Obama’s birth certificate. The nation doesn’t need a trillion twitters about William Ayers, they need a Republican party that isn’t batshit insane. Spending all this time pretending the only problem is insufficient text message spam is going to get you nowhere, because the reason we elected a bunch of Democrats the last couple of years is because the Republicans and their ideas suck.
*** Update ***
More silliness at the RNC meet the candidate thing today:
For much of the 2008 campaign, Texas lawmaker and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul and his supporters served as a thorn in the side—or a punching bag—for the mainstream GOP establishment.
Yet today, the six men vying to run the Republican National Committee praised the grassroots enthusiasm Paul tapped into during his campaign—and discussed how they would like to capture that enthusiasm to expand the party’s appeal.
“Ron Paul certainly brought a whole new generation of voters and I think it’s important going forward that we recognize the strengths and the attributes of these individuals who are out there actively building the party and building a movement, a consensus if you will, on certain issues. We can’t look that in the eye and say ‘No, we don’t want that,’” said former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, adding that the RNC needs to find “creative ways” to work with candidates supported by Paul and his followers, and to work with Paul directly to that end.
“I think, at this stage at this party, everyone who can help us should be brought into the room to help us,” Steele said.
South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson recalled memories of Paul’s supporters campaigning during his state’s early primary.
“I witnessed early on the Ron Paul army in South Carolina,” Dawson said, stressing the importance of building new coalitions. “I want people involved in my party that will hang off bridges and paint on their cars and make up t-shirts. There was a passion that I saw of those people for him and his ideas. Do we agree with all of them? No, but we are a party that has to embrace differences.”
What party are these guys trying to become the chairman of, because it sure as hell isn’t the Republican party if they are praising Ron Paul. Christ on a crutch, if the GOP is all into the newfangled intertrons, what with these alien inventions of facebook and twitter, they might try out the google, too. I would suggest doing a search for the term “Paultard,” and see what the Republican base thinks of Ron Paul and his supporters.
So the future for the GOP lies in twitter and attracting the support of people they declared all out war on for the past year. Good luck with that.
Profiles In Chutzpah, Round Two
Andrew McCarthy, who spent the entire fall writing unhinged screeds about Ayers and Obama’s birth certificate, doing his best Col. Jessep imitation at the Corner. Should this guy be discussing the intelligence and understanding of anyone?
Is today a banner day for wingnuttiness, or was I just lulled into a false sense of serenity over the holidays, and now the stupid is churning around at full speed once again?
Banana Republicans
Looks official to me:
The Minnesota Board of Canvassers certified Democrat Al Franken as winner of the state’s Senate race, but incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman’s attorneys have vowed to challenge the decision.
After two months of political and legal wrangling by both campaigns since Election Day, the board officially recognized Franken as the victor, marking the latest in a number of dramatic turns of events that have characterized the state’s Senate election.
The board certified Franken’s 225-vote lead over Coleman, moving the Democrat one step closer to unseating the first-term lawmaker. That tally includes both the hand recount of votes throughout the state, as well as hundreds of absentee ballots that had previously been disqualified for no stated, legal reason.
True to form, the GOP is pissed. CNN is reporting that the Governor refuses to sign the certification, and John Cornyn is promising a filibuster in order to stymie the seating of Franken. One last gasp from the whinging, wheezing GOP- a fitting tribute to the end of a disastrous eight years that began in the electoral chaos of Florida. They don’t like the results, so they will do what they can to get their way.
But don’t worry. In a few years, when the tables are turned, John Yoo will be around to provide the legal reasoning for the seating of a Republican in the exact same situation, the NY Times will give him premier space to spread the message, and Cornyn will forget all about his noble stand in this little Franken unpleasantness. That is just how they roll.
And let me just add- given how difficult it is to unseat an incumbent Senator, and given that Coleman lost to an SNL actor/writer in a three-way race, it gives you an idea how much he must suck. A smart person would just go away and lead a quiet life, given that repudiation.
*** Update ***
I stand corrected:
To be fair to Gov. Timmy, he’s not refusing to sign the certification. Under Minnesota law, there’s a 7-day wait period between certification and signing the certification so that challengers have time to file a challenge. This is part of the system that’s been so horrible and anti-Norm that we’ve been counting ballots live on the internet, where everyone can see ‘em.
I blame CNN. I will beat Wolf Blitzer with a transcript of his lies.
So Screwed
There is so much going on, what with the economy, multiple wars, the crisis in Gaza, and the terrible threat posed to America by Rick Warren’s minor speaking role at the inauguration, that it is easy to forget how deeply and utterly screwed we are right now, and that every portion of our government has been infected with the Bush rot:
After 29 years enforcing the civil rights laws at the Department of Justice, in 2002 Richard Ugelow was abruptly transferred from his position as deputy chief of employment litigation to an administrative job in the civil division, which defends the government against, among other things, claims of civil rights violations. Ugelow was just one of many highly experienced justice department lawyers who, beginning in the early years of the Bush administration, were transferred, demoted or otherwise pushed out of their positions at Justice because their aggressive enforcement of federal laws didn’t match the new administration’s conservative ideology.
That’s just one of the many serious problems at the Department of Justice that the incoming Obama administration will have to rectify, say former Justice Department employees, law professors and civil rights advocates. As internal government reports and congressional hearings have documented, the Bush Justice Department over the last eight years expelled or ignored attorneys that it didn’t agree with and replaced them with inexperienced lawyers hired more for their ideology than their qualifications. Many of those promoted and implemented conservative agendas that in some cases turned out to be illegal. Those lawyers who were given career positions can’t simply be pushed out by a new administration, however – and they could make it difficult for Obama to implement a new agenda.
On our plate we currently have a number of disasters, near disasters, and emerging disasters we have to deal with immediately. The hurdles for the incoming administration are mind-numbing, notwithstanding the infighting among the rival factions within the Democratic party, and that is without factoring in the Republican party, who can be counted on to sabotage anything and everything if there is the slightest hint of electoral gain to be had. As an example of the sort of nonsense we will be expected to swallow (on top of the Yoo/Bolton bit in the post below this), just today we learn from Mitch McConnell that the Republicans are fiscal conservatives! Who would have thunk it! When did this happen?
November 4th, at around 11 o’clock, to be exact. We all knew they were going to have to re-write history, to re-invent themselves as fiscal conservatives, we just didn’t realize how clumsy and silly they were going to sound while doing it. I thought they would at least be quiet for a few months, lurk in the shadows, and then re-invent themselves. Instead, they are just pretending that yesterday didn’t happen. Check out Cheri Jacobus on LKL:
JACOBUS: Obviously, I think that — Hamas, dealing with Hamas and what’s going on in Gaza is going to be first on his list whether he wants it to or not. What he wants to do, Larry, is to have this big kind of dog and pony show. They want to have this big stimulus package, this huge spending bill on his desk ready for him to sign the moment he’s inaugurated on the 20th.
And — you know the Republicans don’t want that to happen. We want them hearings. We want to look at what’s in the bill because this could potentially be the largest spending bill ever in the history of the United States.
So I think the Obama folks are going to have to ratchet back sort of what they want to do with the — with the big sort of dog and pony show, the big circus, and get real and — take these priorities the way they need to be taken, rather than…
KING: Cheri, don’t — don’t many Republicans support that stimulus package?
JACOBUS: Well, we don’t know what’s in it. And what we want are hearings. We want to take a look at this because this has such a huge potential for pork, quite frankly. And that’s not something we want to happen. Republicans let that happen before. We’re not going to let it happen again. So we want some time to take a look at it, to make sure that the money…
KING: James?
JACOBUS: … is going to the right places.
CARVILLE: I’m just — I’m flabbergasted by this thought of Republican concern with the fiscal things. There was an article by (INAUDIBLE) who won the Nobel Prize that the Republican administration left a deficit by $10 trillion.
Join the club, James. The next few years are going to be a real PITA.
*** Update ***
And I don’t know how Republicans can even write stuff like this:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to re-write House rules today to ensure that the Republican minority is unable to have any influence on legislation. Pelosi’s proposals are so draconian, and will so polarize the Capitol, that any thought President-elect Obama has of bipartisan cooperation will be rendered impossible before he even takes office.
Pelosi’s rule changes — which may be voted on today — will reverse the fairness rules that were written around Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America.”
We can debate whether or not Pelosi should make those rule changes, and whether or not the rules changes are a good idea or not. I can handle that. What I find absurd is the notion that the the House GOP has any desire to work with the Democrats and the incoming administration. A quick reminder of who we are dealing with here:
Pelosi is most likely rewriting the rules so the Republicans can not use them as tools of obstruction. They simply don’t know how to act in good faith. Period.
*** Update #2 ***
What I thought:
According to Republicans aides familiar with the rules package, the change being considered would prevent members of the minority from effectively killing legislation by sending it back to the committee of jurisdiction.
Republicans used this tool repeatedly over the last two years to stymie Democrats on the floor, particularly during an extended debate over domestic oil drilling, when the GOP embarrassed the majority week after week and forced Democrats to suspend the annual spending process by threatening to offer a measure repealing a 27-year ban on offshore oil and gas drilling.
Given that dynamic, GOP leaders expected Democrats to make these changes to limit their ability to engage in these political stunts. Still, Boehner and his colleagues insist in their letter that Democrats are already failing to deliver on “the kind of openness and transparency that President-elect Obama promised.”
Petulant brats.