Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

We still have time to mess this up!

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

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I’m not saying the Republican party is the Taliban

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Michael Kinsley’s definition of a gaffe:

A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.

Republican House Pete Sessions today:

Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban,” Sessions said during a meeting yesterday with Hotline editors. “And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person’s entire processes. And these Taliban — I’m not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that’s not what we’re saying. I’m saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with.

I guess it’s not technically a gaffe since he said “I’m not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban.” But it’s certainly something like one.

This is why Obama doesn’t stand a chance of beating the right-wing message machine.

Remember, though, there are a lot of serious, bipartisan-minded people in the Taliban.

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What Digby/Michael Hirsh said

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I’m not in full-on OBAMA IS TEH FAIL mode yet. Far from it. And I believe that a stimulus package not too different from the one he proposed will pass the Senate next week. Not bad for three weeks work. But I think that Michael Hirsh’s take (via Digby) on what’s going on is very smart:

Barack Obama began making his comeback on Wednesday, apparently aware that he has all but lost control of the agenda in Washington at a time when he simply can’t afford to do so. Obama’s biggest problem isn’t Taxgate—which resulted in the Terrible Tuesday departure of his trusted friend, Tom Daschle, and the defanging of his Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner. Nor is the No. 1 problem that the president can’t seem to win a single Republican vote for his stimulus package. That’s a symptom, not a cause. The reason Obama is getting so few votes is that he is no longer setting the terms of the debate over how to save the economy. Instead the Republican Party—the one we thought lost the election—is doing that. And the confusion and delay this is causing could realize Obama’s worst fears, turning “crisis into a catastrophe,” as the president said Wednesday.

Obama’s desire to begin a “post-partisan” era may have backfired. In his eagerness to accommodate Republicans and listen to their ideas over the past week, he has allowed the GOP to turn the haggling over the stimulus package into a decidedly stale, Republican-style debate over pork, waste and overspending. This makes very little economic sense when you are in a major recession that only gets worse day by day. Yes, there are still some very legitimate issues with a bill that’s supposed to be “temporary” and “targeted”—among them, large increases in permanent entitlement spending, and a paucity of tax cuts requiring immediate spending. Even so, Obama has allowed Congress to grow embroiled in nitpicking over efficiency when the central debate should be about whether the package is big enough. When you are dealing with a stimulus of this size, there are going to be wasteful expenditures and boondoggles. There’s no way anyone can spend $800 to $900 billion quickly without waste and boondoggles. It comes with the Keynesian territory. This is an emergency; the normal rules do not apply.

I don’t blame Obama for not realizing what douchebags the Villagers and Congressional Republicans were going to be. Someone who had as low an opinion of human nature as is realistic (and as I personally have) never would have run for president in the first place.

But I think that at some point he has to come to grips with the fact that a good proportion of the Villagers and Congressional Republicans (and probably more than one or two Congressional Democrats) would happily shove the entire country into one of Bob’s brick ovens if they thought that would get them a book deal or a better committee appointment or more face time on Morning Joe or what have you.

Let’s take a step back. There’s essentially a “best practices” approach to dealing with financial calamity: you max out your monetary policy, which we’ve already done, and then you spend as much money as you possibly can without actually setting the stuff on fire (I’m exaggerating, but you get the point). That’s not Obama’s plan or Democrats’ plan, that’s the mainstream economic plan. Not everyone agrees with it, but not everyone agrees that you should take antibiotics if you’ve got pneumonia or that you should stop smoking if you’re coughing all the time.

So let’s admit that what we have here is a media and Congressional Republican assault on economic common sense. No one expects an assault on common sense. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition either (link added). But when either comes, you’d better react.

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Q&A with Ruth Marcus

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Another lively Q&A with Villager Ruth Marcus today:

New York: I could care less about Daschle, who is a sleazy lobbyist in all but title, but this Killefer woman’s withdrawal over a $500 tax lien demonstrates conclusively how dishonest and worthless our Washington opinion makers are. Where was the outrage when Bush took millions from the crooks of Enron? When the FDA was turned into a criminal enterprise, and FEMA into a dumping ground for incompetent hacks? When Cheney conspired in secrecy with corporate crooks to design this disastrous energy policy? When Bush lied us into war? How about a president with a criminal felony conviction, by the way! This is our Ground Hog Press: our guardians of public morality fall asleep for eight years, and awaken when a Democrat is inaugurated. What person over six years old sees the logic in dwelling on minor technical departures from high standards, and saying nothing about leaders who immerse themselves in dishonesty and sleeze as a matter of policy?

Ruth Marcus: Sorry, I think you’re forgetting a huge amount of important reporting and critical commentary about the Bush administration over the last eight years. It feels different when the shoe is on the Demoratic foot but, really, not like there’s been a silent, complaisant press.

[….]

Get real, Ruth: The only political leaders you folks in the media ever want to see pay a price for wrongdoing are those who get caught in titillating sex scandals (Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer) or other fun and tawdry episodes that are easy and entertaining to report (Rod Blagojevich, Duke Cunningham). You firmly believe (and write!) that actual abuse of power and the commission of true felonies should be ignored and forgotten when committed by the Serious and Powerful leaders of the royal court you apparently think you serve.

Ruth Marcus: Sorry, but that’s ridiculous. Personally, I hope I never have to cover another sex scandal in my life. But “royal court”?–what, we just serve Bush & Co. in your view and then switch to Obama? I just don’t think that every bad action is the proper subject for criminal prosecution.

Despite what at least one of our commenters thinks, it’s important to push back against these shitheads. I’m glad to see some readers doing that here.

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Revenge of the Village

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Obama has been humbled! Obama can not live up to his ethical standards! Obama is fleeing the White House! A scalp is claimed, and the Victor Davis Hanson at the NRO predicts the end of the Obama administration:

We are quite literally after two weeks teetering on an Obama implosion—and with no Dick Morris to bail him out—brought on by messianic delusions of grandeur, hubris, and a strange naivete that soaring rhetoric and a multiracial profile can add requisite cover to good old-fashioned Chicago politicking.

***

At home, Obama is becoming laughable and laying the groundwork for the greatest conservative populist reaction since the Reagan Revolution.

Abroad, some really creepy people are lining up to test Obama’s world view of “Bush did it/but I am the world”: The North Koreans are readying their missiles; the Iranians are calling us passive, bragging on nukes and satellites; Russia is declaring missile defense is over and the Euros in real need of iffy Russian gas; Pakistanis say no more drone attacks (and then our friends the Indians say “shut up” about Kashmir and the Euros order no more “buy American”).

This is quite serious. I can’t recall a similarly disastrous start in a half-century (far worse than Bill Clinton’s initial slips). Obama immediately must lower the hope-and-change rhetoric, ignore Reid/Pelosi, drop the therapy, and accept the tragic view that the world abroad is not misunderstood but quite dangerous. And he must listen on foreign policy to his National Security Advisor, Billary, and the Secretary of Defense. If he doesn’t quit the messianic style and perpetual campaign mode, and begin humbly governing, then he will devolve into Carterism—angry that the once-fawning press betrayed him while we the people, due to our American malaise, are to blame.

Let me first note that considering the NRO and VDH have proclaimed victory in Iraq so many times and for so long all while screaming that removing the troops will “lose” Iraq that I think the Democrats don’t have much to worry about here, and that they are safe and secure for a long, long time.

But on to the more important point- I find it absolutely mind-boggling that the village and the GOP are now actively and openly rooting for this administration to fail. I admit that Daschle sure looked to me like he was committing tax evasion, and he never should have put his name in the mix knowing full well that this could be a problem. You all can call him a nice guy all you want, but he screwed Obama. President Obama, for his part, stood by him for too long, and while it is nice to see loyalty in the face of right-wing criticism, this was a bad place to spend political capital. I would also note that it sure is refreshing to see President Obama do what Bush never in eight years could- acknowledge the obvious and admit to and take responsibility for a mistake.

Second, I find this “gotcha” nonsense on the ethics question maddening. Has anyone pointed out that the point of high ethical standards is not just publicly setting them, but it is setting them and living up to them. In the Geithner case, I think Obama failed, as did the Senate when they confirmed him. I was ambivalent at the time (and my judgment may have been shaded by knee-jerk opposition to the frothing nutters on the right), but now, looking back, they should have put the kaibosh on him. But with the Daschle issue, even though Obama is admitting a mistake, this was not an ethical lapse.

Let me be clear. Tom Daschle was never in the administration. He was never confirmed. This was not failing to adhere to ethical standards, this WAS adhering to them. Same with that woman who withdrew her name yesterday for not paying a couple hundred taxes (and the stupidity of that can be covered some other time and place- our tax laws make no damned sense whatsoever). But again- this wasn’t a failure to follow ethical standards, this was adherence to them. Say it again- Tom Daschle never was confirmed. Obama set ethical standards, and Daschle did not meet them. Obama’s mistake was supporting him, but in the end, we had the ethical outcome- no Daschle in the administration.

And for some perspective, this was not an administration official outing a CIA agent and then engaging in perjury and obstruction of justice for several years, all with numerous willing accomplices high in the WH power structure. This was not an administration pursuing illegal firing of justice department employees for ideological reasons. This was not, well, do I really need to go through all of them again?

I really can not wait to see what happens on Friday when the unemployment numbers hit 8%, and the Republicans have spent the week blocking the stimulus package and lying about government spending not being stimulus all while getting their economic advice from a plumber, and the village has spent two weeks playing the same old games- “Is he smoking again? Did they break their word on transparency by only having five members of the media present for the second oath?”

Just shoot me now. DougJ, a couple of weeks ago when discussing the Broders and the Milbanks and the rest of the crowd noted the following:

I’m watching Monica Crowley and Pat Buchanan on the McLaughlin group and so help me God, I am praying for a dirty bomb in Georgetown.

These people will destroy us all.

Don’t be fooled by Obama—we are fucked.

Go read the op-ed pages today at the WaPo and the NYT and tell me he is wrong. Watch CNN or MSNBC or Fox News for 15 minutes and tell me you come away with a different opinion.

Quite literally, everything in this country is melting down, we are in two wars we can not afford, the market is dead, the jobs market is horrible, we are probably going to foolishly dump trillions into more bad banks, no one has any money and the economy is so bad that IBM is working to send out-of-work employees to India to find jobs, large portions of Appalachia are still frozen over and without power, and, it turns out that for the past eight years our entire food system in the United States has been completely and wholly unregulated, and the village and the GOP are back to business as usual.

So just blow it out your ass if you think I am shirking my “responsibilities” as a blogger by posting pet pics and talking about the Steelers all the time. I have to keep sane somehow.

*** Update ***

This got rantier and disjointed as I wrote it. Sorry. I am smacked up on coffee and the idiots on CNN were giving me chest pains while I wrote it.

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