I really love what you all are doing with the site!
And after you put all them pesky faggots in their place, could you move on to the colored people?
by John Cole| 57 Comments
This post is in: Assholes, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
I really love what you all are doing with the site!
And after you put all them pesky faggots in their place, could you move on to the colored people?
by John Cole| 72 Comments
This post is in: Media
And the Limbaugh controversy continues on, and the thing I don’t get is why they are denying he called them phony soldiers. The transcript shows that he pretty clearly didn’t refer to Jesse MacBeth until way late in the conversation, although that in and of itself is meaningless when you consider that those on the right have been questioning the patriotism of EVERYONE for years.
They do it with everyone. Murtha- traitor, Kerry-traitor, Durbin-traitor, Pelosi-traitor, and so on and so forth. Hell, any time I take a position that goes against the Republican talking points, I will have some jackass in the comments tell me I was a shitty soldier (like this clown at Neptunus Lex) and questioning my patriotism.
So back to my point- why the outrage on the right about the attacks on Limbaugh? Why defend him? Isn’t calling people a traitor and questioning their patriotism the new standard for discourse? And aren’t the Democrats just doing what you all perfected?
by John Cole| 55 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity, War on Terror aka GSAVE®, Democratic Stupidity
Appears to be the newest new thing the Democrats will try and fail (someone, probably Joe Lieberman, will call them troop haters and they will fold):
Three senior House Democrats are proposing a new tax to pay for the Iraq war, as well as vowing to oppose any funding bill for Iraq that does not include a policy for ending the conflict.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.), Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the Defense subcommittee on House Appropriations, and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), will soon unveil a “surtax” on taxes owed by Americans to help cover the cost of the war, the trio announced this morning.
The tax is designed to raise $140 billion to $150 billion annually, and would range from a 2% surtax on low-income Americans to as much as 15% for wealthy taxpayers.
Obey and Murtha also said that they would not move an Iraq supplemental funding bill, needed to pay for combat operations in 2008, unless a “goal” of having all U.S. combat troops out of the country by January 2009, troop deployment times are shortened, and President Bush demonstrates that will engage in “an intensive, broad scale diplomatic offensive involving other countries in the region.”
I never met a tax I liked, but I do like the fact that I will get to watch the Patriots (and I don’t mean Tom Brady and Randy Moss) in the right blogosphere go BALLISTIC over this proposal. I mean, come on- when they spent the last five years telling you, me, and everybody that this is the greatest struggle of our lifetime and we have to win or Muslim radicals are going to force us to wear burkhas, they didn’t mean it was so fucking serious we had to have a tax increase.
Let’s have some god damned perspective, Democrats. Sure- the war is super important, but when we said sacrifice we meant defacing your car with a patriotic bumper sticker. Not raising taxes. Jesus. It isn’t THAT important.
*** Update ***
As to why the war has not paid for itself, as Wolfowitz claimed it would, the editorial position here at Balloon Juice is that it is Scott Beauchamp’s fault.
*** Update #2 ***
All told, the Democratic proposal for an “Iraq tax” lasted about four hours. That’s roughly the amount of time from when House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) gave life to the idea with his endorsement to when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) strangled it.
“Just as I have opposed the war from the outset, I am opposed to a draft and I am opposed to a war surtax,” Pelosi said in a statement issued this afternoon.
We’ll file this under “why I am not afraid of a Democratic majority.” They don’t even need the Republicans as an opposition party. They have themselves.
*** Update #3 ***
Red State delivers teh GOODS:
These guys continue to bypass reality. Hey Obey? If we’re all dead and the country is run by Radical Muslims, will your grocery list of handouts matter? Will there even BE any children to make pay for the war we’re fighting to keep them safe and secure?
Of course not. We are going to abort them all.
by John Cole| 99 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
Memeorandum is filled with charge/counter-charges, mostly about that idiot Rush Limbaugh, and I have meetings all morning.
The blogosphere seems less and less relevant every day. I can count on one hand the number of sites where I learn something- the rest are just braying sheep (media bias! media bias! BAAA!) and vicious partisans (democrats cause cancer!).
Consider this an open thread.
by Tim F| 47 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
Even members of Mr. Giuliani’s own staff are appalled at how he handled the incident in which he answered a phone call from his wife, Judith, right in the middle of a nationally televised speech to the National Rifle Association.
[…] I’ve been told of many other incidents, from a California fund-raiser to a Florida speech to a gathering with top donors at Bear Stearns in New York. At the Bear Stearns meeting, Mr. Giuliani took a call from his wife and then noting the strained faces of his supporters, he sheepishly tried a joke. “I’ve been married three times,” he explained. “I can’t afford to lose another one. I’m sure you understand.” (Mr. Giuliani’s media office didn’t return a call I made to them on Friday afternoon.)
That last part should play well with conservative Christians. It is hard to describe how much I look forward to watching Rudy Giuliani sabotage his campaign with arrogant little gestures like this. The New York mayor’s hubristic nature runs too deep to ever change, making it likely that by the RNC ’08 convention America will feel about as sick of him as most New Yorkers became by 2001. He’s so personally unlikable that it doesn’t even feel like going out on a limb to predict that the GOP will secretly pay people to fill seats at the nominating convention.
On the downside, if Giuliani self-destructs too soon he could put the race within reach of a real candidate like Huckabee. Go Rudy go.
by John Cole| 17 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity, Assholes, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
AJ Strata is blaming Democrats for Iraqi civilians who WERE NOT killed:
If the Democrats in Congress had done what their BDS crazed base had desired the killings and repression of Iraqis would NOT be going down. It would have gone up as al-Qaeda attempted to take over the country we were abandoning.
Up Next: How Democrats are to blame for the cold you don’t have.
by Tim F| 31 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Republican Stupidity
Sullivan quotes Hannah Arendt:
“All debate about the truth or falsity of a totalitarian dictator’s prediction is as weird as arguing with a potential murderer about whether his future victim is dead or alive-since by killing the person in question the murderer can promptly provide proof of the correctness of his statement. The only valid argument under such conditions is to promptly rescue the person whose death is predicted. Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of the man who can fabricate it. The assertion that the Moscow subway is the only one in the world is a lie only so long as the Bolsheviks have not the power to destroy it.”
Interesting. Guess which context Sullivan was referencing!
A:
B:
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
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