This Ross Douthat piece will be an instant classic.
Ahh, the liberal media. Savor it.
by John Cole| 60 Comments
This post is in: Media, Clown Shoes, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
This Ross Douthat piece will be an instant classic.
Ahh, the liberal media. Savor it.
This post is in: Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
Thursday’s annual Census Bureau report on income, poverty and access to health care-the Bureau’s principal report card on the well-being of average Americans-closes the books on the economic record of George W. Bush.
It’s not a record many Republicans are likely to point to with pride.
On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush’s two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country’s condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton’s two terms, often substantially.
On the upside, teen pregnancy is through the roof in Red States. Wolverines!
Who will be the first wingnut to attempt to discredit the census findings as an Acorn plot to damage Republicans? I’m going to go with Malkin, as always.
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*** Update ***
by John Cole| 74 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity, Assholes, Clown Shoes, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
The newest wingnut endeavor:
Rep. Jack Kingston’s (R-Ga.) has rapidly signed up 99 co-sponsors for his Czar Accountability and Reform Act of 2009, which I wrote about last week. All but one of them are Republicans: the member of the majority party backing Kingston’s crusade to prevent presidential advisers who haven’t been approved by the Senate from collecting salaries is Rep. William Clay (D-Mo.).
From wikipedia:
Also according to wikipedia, this:
Turdblossom wasn’t the only nickname Karl Rove had. Another nickname for him was “Domestic Policy Czar.”
I understand that consistency is not the Republican strongpoint. But would it have really hurt for them to wait a year before going batshit insane? Even most of America still remembers the last eight years, but they are going to the full monty with the nonsense anyway. I mean seriously, what is left for them to do? How do you top the last couple of months? Release a competing budget with no numbers?
Oh, nevermind.
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*** Update ***
If the Republicans really were concerned with fiscal responsibility, they would stop making up so much shit that someone has to be employed full time by the White House refuting their lies.
*** Update #2 ***
Apparently Clay’s inclusion on the list was a clerical error.
by DougJ| 104 Comments
This post is in: Politics, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
A Cheney nomination “would be a serious consideration because he really has been a defender of policies that the majority of people now think are successful,” McLaughlin told the Huffington Post. “Although right now a lot of people are focused on the economy, if there ever was some sort of foreign policy crisis people will look to Dick Cheney and say he had it right.”
Pointing to Cheney’s strong favorability rating among Republicans (66 percent in a May 2009 poll compared to Colin Powell’s 64 percent), McLaughlin also noted that the former vice president has a strong political platform from which to test the electoral waters.
“Right now he is writing a book, and I’m sure it will be very interesting to see how that book positions him,” McLaughlin said. “I always thought that Senator [Hillary] Clinton’s book positioned her for a run for the White House and I think it could be the same way with Dick Cheney.”
I don’t know if he frightens me more or less than Palin. And while I think either would almost certainly lose to Obama, there’s still something to the On Any Given Tuesday theory of general elections. It’s hard for me see a Cheney or Palin presidency as anything other than a sign of the apocalypse.
by John Cole| 43 Comments
This post is in: War on Terror aka GSAVE®, Assholes, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin., The Dirty F-ing Hippies Were Right
DougJ’s earlier post today on Cheney reminded me of this article from Walter Pincus the other day:
Morale has sagged at the CIA following the release of additional portions of an inspector general’s review of the agency’s interrogation program and the announcement that the Justice Department would investigate possible abuses by interrogators, according to former intelligence officials, especially those associated with the program.
A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard, the third-ranking CIA official at the time of the use of harsh interrogation practices, said that although vigorous oversight is crucial, the public airing of once-classified internal assessments and the prospect of further investigation are damaging the agency. “Morale at the agency is down to minus 50,” he said.
At the same time, former inspector general John L. Helgerson, whose review of the program was largely declassified Monday, said that the release, though painful, would ensure that the agency confronts difficult issues head on, instead of ignoring or trying to bury them.
Unlike virtually everything else in Fred Hiatt’s fishwrap, I tend to trust Pincus and his body of work, so I have no doubt that morale might be low.
What astounds me, though, is that morale might be low at the CIA because the Justice department might prosecute people who- get this- BROKE THE LAW. Imagine that- the Justice department has duties other than politically motivated prosecutions, micromanaging US Attorneys, and stocking the department with religious nuts and gay-bashers.
And what I find even more astounding is that the Republicans and Dick Cheney are, so far, successfully pivoting and presenting themselves as the defenders of the CIA, when it has been Dick Cheney and the neocon establishment that has spent the last four decades undermining, attacking, and debasing the CIA. It wasn’t the liberals who cooked up Team B– that would be George Herbert Walker Bush who approved it, Paul Wolfowitz who was part of the team, and Richard Perle who was instrumental in making it happen. It wasn’t Ted Kennedy and the liberals who spent the entire last decade undermining the CIA and basically making George Tenet say whatever the hell Dick Cheney wanted them to say, that would be the Republicans. It wasn’t Dennis Kucinich who ignored the August 6th CIA memo about bin Laden, setting the stage for the largest intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor. It wasn’t the dirty hippies at the DNC who created the Office of Special Plans to create an excuse to attack Iraq and directly undermine the intelligence from the CIA, that was Dick Cheney and Doug Feith and company.
And let’s not forget that it wasn’t Russ Feingold and Barbara Boxer who outed a covert CIA agent and then conducted a full-on media jihad against her and her husband. No, again the honors for that go to Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, and Bob Novak.
So if morale is low at the CIA and they are feeling a little butthurt, they might want to think about how things have happened the last few decades. They aren’t in the position they are in because of Eric Holder. Far from it. And if they can’t figure this out on their own, and need me to point this crap out, then quite frankly, I don’t think they are smart enough to be handling classified intelligence in the first damned place.
The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale ImprovesPost + Comments (43)
by DougJ| 67 Comments
This post is in: Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
For someone so enamored of enhanced interrogation techniques, Dick Cheney sure is a sensitive guy:
“I guess the other thing that offends the hell out of me, frankly, Chris, is we had a track record now of eight years of defending the nation against any further mass casualty attacks from Al Qaeda. The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, ‘How did you do it? What were the keys to keeping this country safe over that period of time?'”
They disabled the embed on the YouTube video that describes this perfectly.
by John Cole| 52 Comments
This post is in: War on Terror aka GSAVE®, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
This is depressing because it is such a realistic portrayal of our discourse:
I’m surprised I didn’t see Captain Ed in there.
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