This week’s quote is from The Woman In White:
A locked door to me is no more than a ribbon, wrapping up a lovely gift.
And, of course, there’ll be other people’s baby skunks…
Aww.
Add comment October 8th, 2010 at 11:25am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Friday Quote & Cat BloggingShorter Felix Salmon: It’s the moral hazard, stupid.
The problem with TARP wasn’t the cost. The problem with TARP was that it rewarded bad (and probably criminal) behavior instead of punishing it. Which in addition to being morally wrong, will only encourage more of the same.
1 comment October 8th, 2010 at 07:17am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Corruption/Cronyism, Economy, Politics, WankersFox News: Credulous & Balanced.
Add comment October 6th, 2010 at 06:58pm Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Media, Weekly World NewsO’Donnell is definitely giving Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann a run for their money…
O’Donnell’s comments four years ago came as she and two other GOP candidates debated U.S. policy on China during the state’s Senate primary, The Associated Press reported. O’Donnell went on to lose the election.
When one of her opponents suggested the U.S. and China could benefit economically by becoming allies, O’Donnell accused him of appeasement.
“That doesn’t work,” she said. “There’s much I want to say. I wish I wasn’t privy to some of the classified information that I am privy to.”
China had a “carefully thought-out and strategic plan to take over America,” O’Donnell claimed.
“We have to look at our history and realize that if they pretend to be our friend it’s because they’ve got something up their sleeve,” she added.
When challenged about her access to top-secret information, O’Donnell suggested she had received it through nonprofit groups she worked with that sent missionaries overseas, the AP said.
Riiiight. Because nonprofit missionary groups are well-known for their access to (and generosity with) highly-classified intel. That sounds totally plausible.
As Mark Leibovich at the New York Times reports, the O’Donnell family’s past claims that her father Daniel O’Donnell had worked as Bozo sparked an uprising of online commenters who insisted that no, Daniel O’Donnell was not listed on Wikipedia as having been one of the many regionally licensed Bozo the Clown TV hosts.
But now Leibovich has sorted things out — Daniel O’Donnell was an occasional understudy Bozo, not a full-time holder of the Bozo mantle.
Awesome. Remember, this is the same woman who once explained that lying was such a grievous sin that she wouldn’t even resort to it to protect Jews from the Holocaust. That now appears to be the exception rather than the rule.
Add comment October 5th, 2010 at 11:33am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Elections, Politics, Republicans, WeirdnessApparently too many things are illegal:
Abner Schoenwetter, a Miami seafood importer, spent six years in prison, paid tens of thousands of dollars in fines and legal fees and is at risk of losing his home.
His crime? Agreeing to purchase lobster tails that federal prosecutors said violated harvest regulations — in Honduras.
Now Schoenwetter, 64, is a convicted felon with an ailing wife, no job or right to vote and three years of supervised release ahead of him. But he’s also a star witness for congressional efforts aimed at stemming what a growing number of legal experts and lawmakers consider “overcriminalization” — the federal government’s penchant for writing new laws to criminalize conduct that could be addressed with fines or other remedies.
“We must put an end to the notion that we need to prosecute every individual for every perceived offense,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat who chairs a House Judiciary subcommittee that last week held its second hearing on overcriminalization. “We continue to lock up people for offenses that should not even require incarceration.”
Legal experts say there are more than 4,450 federal crimes on the books and as many as 300,000 federal regulations that can be enforced criminally. From 2000 to 2007, Congress created 452 entirely new crimes, said Brian Walsh, a senior legal research fellow at the Heritage Foundation who focuses on overcriminalization.
So you can go to prison for importing dodgy lobster tails, but not for selling bogus securities that wipe out the economy? Fascinating.
Also interesting how the same conservatives who are so gung ho about law and order for, say, drug or immigration offenses are the same people who back torture and assassination, warrantless wiretapping, lax gun laws, tort reform, deregulation, and generally coddling white-collar criminals (the free market will sort it out!).
The problem isn’t overcriminalization, it’s selective criminalization.
Add comment October 5th, 2010 at 07:32am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Corruption/Cronyism, EconomyFrom the Boston science museum; I was not actually in outer space.
1 comment October 4th, 2010 at 11:32am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: PhotobloggingGuns don’t kill people, uh uh. I kill people… with guns.
Not quite as good as Show Me Your Genitals, but still pretty damn funny.
(h/t Spear & Magic)
Add comment October 4th, 2010 at 07:20am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Monday Media BloggingYes, that is a giant locust.
Add comment September 30th, 2010 at 11:30am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: PhotobloggingThe bigshot Democratic supporters are sitting out too:
Democratic donors like George Soros, the bête noire of the right, and his fellow billionaire Peter B. Lewis, who each gave more than $20 million to Democratic-oriented groups in the 2004 election, appear to be holding back so far.
“Mr. Soros believes that he can be most effective by funding groups that promote progressive policy outcomes in areas such as health care, the environment and foreign policy,” said an adviser, Michael Vachon. “So he has opted to fund those activities.”
(…)
For donors, there is certainly an element of fatigue from giving cycle after cycle, as well as an economic squeeze brought on by the recession, the operatives said. But some more ideological donors are also upset that the Obama administration has not been more aggressive in pushing a liberal agenda. Big donors from Wall Street, including hedge fund executives and investment bankers, are also angry at the administration.
Shouldn’t Obama and Biden be scolding them to “get in gear”, or is that kind of bullying and scorn reserved for us commoners?
Add comment September 30th, 2010 at 07:25am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Biden, Democrats, Elections, Obama, PoliticsLike the title says…
Add comment September 29th, 2010 at 12:16pm Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: PhotobloggingThe whole Matt Taibbi story (much of which is about what a flaming dishonest hypocrite Rand Paul is, and what ignorant tools of corporate/Republican power the teabaggers are) is worth reading, but these are the money grafs:
A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can’t imagine it.
(…)
Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it’s going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I’ve concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They’re full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry’s medals and Barack Obama’s Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them.
(…)
The individuals in the Tea Party may come from very different walks of life, but most of them have a few things in common. After nearly a year of talking with Tea Party members from Nevada to New Jersey, I can count on one hand the key elements I expect to hear in nearly every interview. One: Every single one of them was that exceptional Republican who did protest the spending in the Bush years, and not one of them is the hypocrite who only took to the streets when a black Democratic president launched an emergency stimulus program. (”Not me — I was protesting!” is a common exclamation.) Two: Each and every one of them is the only person in America who has ever read the Constitution or watched Schoolhouse Rock. (Here they have guidance from Armey, who explains that the problem with “people who do not cherish America the way we do” is that “they did not read the Federalist Papers.”) Three: They are all furious at the implication that race is a factor in their political views — despite the fact that they blame the financial crisis on poor black homeowners, spend months on end engrossed by reports about how the New Black Panthers want to kill “cracker babies,” support politicians who think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an overreach of government power, tried to enact South African-style immigration laws in Arizona and obsess over Charlie Rangel, ACORN and Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Four: In fact, some of their best friends are black! (Reporters in Kentucky invented a game called “White Male Liberty Patriot Bingo,” checking off a box every time a Tea Partier mentions a black friend.) And five: Everyone who disagrees with them is a radical leftist who hates America.
Yep, I think that just about covers it.
Add comment September 29th, 2010 at 07:32am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Republicans, WankersFour or five years ago, I wrote: a post which I am completely unable to find, along the lines of “Democrats are never so weak as when they’re trying to look strong.” “For Republicans, pretending to be tough… conceals their cowardice. For Democrats, it illuminates it.” Peter Daou agrees, quoting himself in his latest piece on how the Obama administration has gone wrong:
It would be unfair and silly to portray all Democrat politicians as devoid of moral convictions, but it’s not inaccurate to state that there is a widespread phobia among Democrats of appearing “weak,” which paradoxically leads to behavior that further reinforces that impression. When you fret too much over what others think, you tend to contort yourself in an attempt to please, often at the expense of your core beliefs. When the specific complaint is that you’re weak, there is a tendency is to do whatever your critics characterize as strong – and in the case of Democrats, they tend to ignore the strength of their own values and emulate Republicans, ending up looking even weaker in the process.
Yep, that’s pretty much exactly it, and it’s amazing that the Democrats still haven’t figured it out ever since it started to kill them with the AUMF in 2002.
Daou’s larger point is also very good, basically that Obama and his team have been caught completely off guard by the progressive blogosphere’s refusal to be as craven as the Democrats and refusal to abandon principle in the name of party loyalty. We still oppose the same things that we opposed when Dubya was president, which is too bad for Obama, since it turns out that he supports them.
Obama expected us to have a strict IOKIYAD (It’s Okay If You’re A Democrat) policy, and it just hasn’t happened. And now his brilliant strategy to get us on board for the midterms is to have Joe Biden tell us to “get in gear” and “stop whining”. We’ll stop “whining” when you give us a reason, not because you tell us to. And whatever you do, don’t scold us for a lack of enthusiasm and engagement that you so aggressively cultivated.
Add comment September 28th, 2010 at 07:59am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Democrats, Obama, Politics, WankersBuildings, and a pickup truck.
Add comment September 27th, 2010 at 11:39am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: PhotobloggingOK Go + Dogs = Awesome!
Add comment September 27th, 2010 at 07:05am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Monday Media Blogging
Tomorrow night! On SyFy at 9! The Most Awesome Movie Of All Time! SHARKTOPUS!!! Join bmaz and I at Emptywheel for the Exciting Sharktopus Liveblogging Adventure!
Also, The Second-Most Awesome Movie Of All Time, Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus, will be on at 11AM.
1 comment September 24th, 2010 at 10:18pm Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Coolness, MoviesTurns out it’s been staring us right in the face all this time. I could just kick myself for missing something so obvious:
Yesterday, [Republican West Virginia senatorial candidate John] Raese appeared on the Matt Lewis show, a conservative talk radio program. When Lewis asked Raese about his background and his life experience, Raese offered this straight-faced response:
LEWIS: Tell us a little bit about you and your business experience and how you got here.
RAESE: I made my money the old-fashioned way, I inherited it. I think that’s a great thing to do. I hope more people in this country have that opportunity as soon as we abolish inheritance tax in this country, which is a key part of my program.
See? All the people who are poor and out of work were just too lazy and unambitious to have rich parents! Stupid poor people and their lack of gumption.
(On a side note, after all this time thinking that “trickle-down economics” meant that wealth flows down from the rich to everyone else, now it turns out that it’s really about wealth flowing down from the rich to their heirs.)
2 comments September 24th, 2010 at 08:41pm Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Economy, Politics, Republicans, Unemployment, WankersThree great examples of Obama and the Democrats’ seeming determination to do everything they can to ensure their own slaughter in the midterm elections (and probably 2012 as well):
The damage that the health care bill was doing to Democrats in swing districts was so enormous and so patently obvious it was impossible to miss. Van Hollen had to know the same thing we did.
But instead of letting his members know they were in danger, he lied to them. He commenced a propaganda campaign to keep them from finding out the truth: that for many members, voting for the health care bill could very well mean the end of their political careers.
And so the Democratic leadership corralled them all in March, filled their heads full of shit and told them it would be a great thing for Obama, them and the Democratic Party when the bill passed.
The entire party leadership was in on it. It was a “Paths of Glory” moment, where the generals fired on their own troops in the bunkers and forced them into an unwinnable battle that many would not survive.
Funny that they were willing to apply so much pressure to pass a bill with no public option, no drug price negotiation, and no coverage for abortions that most voters hated, and unwilling to apply any pressure at all to pass a bill that most voters would have actually liked. If you’re going to force members to commit political suicide, you should do it for something that will help the party as a whole, not hurt it. Why, it’s almost as if their desire to claim the illusion of victory without angering their healthcare industry donors trumped all other considerations.
On the participation of progressive organizations:
Independent group messages have far more credibility and clout than those from party and candidate committees- even groups with generic-sounding names no one has heard of. Republican strategists like Rove got this early, and went about methodically organizing a network of corporate money to get involved in independent expenditure ads in swing races all over the country. But the Obama White House, sure of its fundraising ability and organizing genius, has consistently sent the signal to Democratic donors to not support outside efforts. They did it after they won the primary in 2008; they did it when they set up OFA to operate solely inside the DNC in 2009; they did it during the health care fight when they felt HCAN was being a little too independent in pushing for a public option, sending a clear signal to donors not to give to them at crucial times during the fight; they did it when ACORN had some bad publicity, very quickly making the decision to distance themselves and let them die even though no group has registered more voters or turned out more people in the last 10 years than ACORN.
I can’t even think of any rationale for this other than actively wanting to lose. As the mention of HCAN suggests, I guess they didn’t want outside groups running around pushing policies that were too progressive for Obama. God forbid.
A senior Senate Democratic aide told TPM today there won’t be a vote on extending the Bush tax cuts in the upper chamber before the November election, a blow to party leaders and President Obama who believed this would have been a winning issue.
(…)
The aide said it’s already a winning message without a vote since Obama and Democrats have framed the debate as the Republicans being for the rich and Democrats wanting to help the middle class. Others have made similar arguments, but several lawmakers have said they think a vote is the only way to score a political victory. The senior aide doesn’t think so.
“We have a winning message now, why muddy it up with a failed vote, because, of course, Republicans are going to block everything,” the aide said.
Wow. So instead of forcing Republicans to go on record with a vote against middle-class tax cuts, the Democrats are just going to assume that voters will blame the Republicans for their own inaction. It’s a lot easier to campaign on actual votes than hypothetical ones. “I voted to extend your tax cuts”, or “my opponent voted against extending your tax cuts”, or “my opponent wants to hold your tax cuts hostage so Paris Hilton can keep hers” is a lot more effective than “there was no vote to extend your tax cuts because we knew my opponent’s party would vote no”.
They. Want. To. Lose. Or they value their cozy relationship with their corporate and wealthy donors more than they value their elected positions (and know that said donors have much more lucrative positions waiting for them if they get voted out for protecting those donors’ interests).
Add comment September 24th, 2010 at 07:39am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Democrats, Elections, Healthcare, Obama, Politics, Republicans, Taxes, WankersNow with a choice between portrait and landscape!
Add comment September 23rd, 2010 at 11:32am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: PhotobloggingI can only assume that Oklahoma Republican gubernatorial candidate Mary Fallin forgot that she wasn’t at one of those fake events where candidates get to pick the attendees…
Yesterday the Jim Thorpe Museum was host to the annual President’s Forum, a gathering of University and College Presidents, the Board of Regents, and a handful of other dignitaries and invited guests. Speaking before this distinguished audience were the two candidates for governor, Lieutenant Governor Jari Askins, and Congresswoman Mary Fallin. The format for the event was that Fallin would first deliver remarks, then take questions, and then Askins would do the same.
However, just before she was to begin, Fallin made a strange request of the event organizers; she didn’t want the Lieutenant Governor in the room while she spoke. Nor did she want any of Jari’s staff in the room. In fact, she even scanned the room for faces that might be unfriendly, to see who else she should have ejected. Apparently she didn’t like the look on State Senator Mike Morgan’s face, because she told the event organizers she would not take the podium until he had left the room.
Seriously? This is crazy batshit paranoid stuff. I guess Fallin wants to make sure she locks up that I-sure-do-miss-Dubya vote.
Add comment September 23rd, 2010 at 07:29am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Politics, Republicans, WankersThe Weekly World News does etymology!
“For many years, the expression ‘fancy shmancy’ was thought to be of Yiddish origin, uttered by tailors, mothers, and more mothers to describe someone who was unnaturally self-impressed,” philology Professor Gardner Broome of the Dover College of Origins told Weekly World News. “We now know that to be wrong.”
The revelation came in a long-lost diary, found buried in the banks of the River Seine in Paris. It was written by the Fourteenth Vicomte of Shmancy, Luc Fancie, in the late 1780s.
“After bumming around Europe for years as a semi-professional rogue, Fancie married the wealthy Duchess Marie Shmancie and added her name – and her property – to his,” Broome explained. “Given that all he owned were his name and the clothes on his lazy back, he brought little to the union.”
According to the diary, after assuming his title, the new vicomte began dressing as befitted his lofty stature. He wore only the finest silks, the most outrageous plumage and the nattiest neckwear. His ostentation revealed a true lack of breeding and his true nature as a crass opportunist.
“After a few months of this, acquaintances of the couple privately referred to him by his compound name,” Broome went on. “Indeed, any person or thing that reminded them of the miserable pretender became known as ‘like Fancie-Shmancie.’ Eventually, this crossed the Channel and was anglicized as Fancy-Shmancy.”
Ironically, when last seen, the vicomte was every inch ‘himself.’
“Wearing his finest attire, the nobleman was torn from his carriage by an angry mob during the Reign of Terror,” Broome said. “The last entry was written in his own blood as he was taken to the guillotine.
“‘I am about to lose my head,’ he wrote. ‘Happily, I wore my finest hat this morning, so I shall go out in style.’
“He was Fancie-Shmancie to the last.”
The Weekly World News is a vastly underrated educational resource.
Add comment September 22nd, 2010 at 11:33am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Weekly World NewsWell, this seems promising:
White House officials expect Lawrence Summers to leave his job as the president’s National Economic Council director after November’s congressional elections, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Or not…
Administration officials are weighing whether to put a prominent corporate executive in the NEC director’s job to counter criticism that the administration is anti-business, one person familiar with White House discussions said.
Sigh. Because if there’s one thing wrong with Obama’s economic team, it’s that it’s not pro-business enough.
Add comment September 22nd, 2010 at 07:16am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Corruption/Cronyism, Democrats, Economy, Obama, Politics, WankersStill going…
Add comment September 21st, 2010 at 11:33am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: PhotobloggingFor a party that keeps insisting it’s not racist, it’s funny how racist e-mails and worse just seems to keep cropping up. This would definitely fall into the “or worse” category:
Jim Russell, a right-wing activist running against Congresswoman Nita Lowey in the 18th district mid-state, has a rather interesting past. Specifically, writing lengthy essays in support of white supremacy.
Russell wrote an essay entitled “The Western Contribution to World History,” which was published in the 2001/2002 issue of the magazine “Occidental Quarterly,” which has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “racist” and whose “editors and advisory board members have constituted a ‘Who’s Who’ of the radical right, and its regular publication of extremists’ articles has made it a favorite among academic racists in America.”
(…)
It lauds efforts of “scientists” like Arthur Jensen and others who have spent years trying to “prove” that whites are genetically more intelligent than black people. It describes an “optimal society” by quoting T. S. Eliot: “reasons of race and culture combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable.”…
(…)
It has been demonstrated that finches raised by foster parents of a different species of finch will later exhibit a lifelong sexual attraction toward the alien species. One wonders how a child’s sexual imprinting mechanism is affected by forcible racial integration and near continual exposure to media stimuli promoting interracial contact. The most serious implication of human sexual imprinting for our genetic future is that it would establish the destructiveness of school integration, especially in the middle and high-school years. One can only wonder to what degree the advocates of school integration, such as former NAACP attorney Jack Greenberg, were conscious of this scientific concept. It also compounds the culpability of media moguls who deliberately popularize miscegenation in films directed toward adolescents and pre-adolescents. In the midst of this onslaught against our youth, parents need to be reminded that they have a natural obligation, as essential as providing food and shelter, to instill in their children an acceptance of appropriate ethnic boundaries for socialization and for marriage.The sociobiological warfare that our youth is subjected to is likely to be even more diabolical since it appears to deliberately exploit a biological theory of sexual imprinting at the critical period of sexual maturity. Movies like this past year’s spate of miscegenationist titles, Save the Last Dance, Crazy / Beautiful and O, a parody of Othello, appear deliberately designed to exploit the critical period of sexual imprinting in their target audiences of white pre-adolescent girls and adolescent young women.
There is now afoot a conscious effort to de-Europeanize and to re-Judaize Christianity, through scriptural revision, internal treachery and external pressure.
The importance of applying eugenic measures in the West becomes evident from Richard Lynn’s recent work on Dysgenics and his just-released seminal work Eugenics: A Reassessment.
I don’t really have anything to add to this other than holy fucking crap. How many toxic crazies does it take to discredit the GOP? Will there ever come a time when they start rejecting instead of embracing them?
(h/t Phoenix Woman)
2 comments September 21st, 2010 at 07:06am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Elections, Politics, Racism, Republicans, WankersBorn To Hand Jive Edition:
Awesome.
(h/t Cheryl)
Add comment September 20th, 2010 at 11:35am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Monday Media BloggingLooks like the plan for the 2010 midterms is a mix of unconvincing vague happy talk:
President Barack Obama, seeking to fire up an important part of his support base ahead of November’s elections, told black leaders on Saturday he wanted their support to “guard the change” he was delivering.
“I need everybody here to go back to your neighborhoods, and your workplaces, to your churches, and barbershops, and beauty shops. Tell them we have more work to do. Tell them we can’t wait to organize. Tell them that the time for action is now,” he told the Congressional Black Caucus.
And fearmongering about how scary the teabagger Republicans are:
White House and Congressional Democratic strategists are trying to energize dispirited Democratic voters over the coming six weeks, in hopes of limiting the party’s losses and keeping control of the House and Senate. The strategists see openings to exploit after a string of Tea Party successes split Republicans in a number of states, culminating last week with developments that scrambled Senate races in Delaware and Alaska.
“We need to get out the message that it’s now really dangerous to re-empower the Republican Party,” said one Democratic strategist who has spoken with White House advisers but requested anonymity to discuss private strategy talks.
In other words, they got nothin’. Essentially their strategy is to say, “Yeah, we know we’re Republican sellouts, but at least we’re not crazy! So vote for us again in November!” I know I’m energized and inspired.
Add comment September 20th, 2010 at 07:32am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Democrats, Elections, Obama, Politics, Republicans, WankersToday’s entry comes from Harry Reid’s batnuts opponent, Sharron Angle:
In an interview at a Northeast Washington hotel, she claimed that her critics are using tactics of the late radical community organizer Saul Alinsky to try to discredit her.
“I think it’s right out of Saul Alinsky’s rulebook for radicals, those rules about your opponents,” she said of criticism that her views put her far out of the political mainstream. “Marginalize them. That means push off as far to the side as you can. Isolate them. Make it appear that they’re the only one thinking the way they do. And then demonize them. Make it look like their ideas are way out of the realm of thinking folks.”
Instead, she argued, it is the tea party movement that best represents mainstream America. The country is “nostalgic,” she said, for a return to Reagan Republicanism. “It’s mainstream America that’s finally awakened, and it really doesn’t have anything to do with party so much as the [constitutional] principles,” she said. “There’s an anxiety level, I guess, just among mainstream America that we may not be able to preserve those principles if we don’t get active.”
At the same time, Angle did not hesitate to label President Obama as a socialist, saying the path his administration is on would turn the United States into Western European-style government. “When he moves toward that big centralized government, that [is] what people see as the move toward socialism,” she said.
I guess it’s only okay when Republicans do it.
Add comment September 17th, 2010 at 11:27am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Politics, Quotes, Republicans, WankersThe Orlando Sentinel has a story about David Barton, a Glenn Beck/Tea Party favorite who is an America Fuck Yeah! evangelical who distorts history to claim that the Founders intended the US to be a Christian nation and that the First Amendment was only intended to protect religion from government intervention and not vice versa. But this is my favorite part:
Wednesday, Barton’s penchant for absolutes was on display. He told his audience that of the 192 members of the United Nation’s, America stood alone as a beacon of stability.
“We’re a very blessed nation,” he said. “We happen to be the only nation that does not average a revolution every 30 to 40 years. Of 192 nations, we’re the only one with that type of stability.”
Asked later about the accuracy of that – after all, Canada and England had pretty stable 20th Centuries – Barton said he was speaking “figuratively.”
It sure is a shame that so many of his teabagger fans are so eager to spoil our awesome revolution-free streak. I’m sure it makes him very sad, and he probably urges them to give such talk a rest all the time.
Add comment September 17th, 2010 at 07:27am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Politics, Religion, Republicans, WankersSo let’s see:
The Democratic base overwhelmingly wants Elizabeth Warren to be the head of the CFPB. Wall Street, Republicans, and conservadems overwhelmingly want her not to be head of the CFPB.
Solution: Give her absolutely no power over the CFPB, but pretend that you have. Surely that will fool all the rubes on the left, right?
As Matt Yglesias tweeted:
With Warren, Obama showing real innovation in developing odd, satisfying to nobody compromises.
Sigh. I’m almost rooting for impeachment at this point – I’m not sure I can take another 2-6 years of being treated like an irrelevant simpleton.
Add comment September 16th, 2010 at 11:34am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Corruption/Cronyism, Economy, Obama, Politics, Polls, Wankers
Here is a snippet of transcript from CNN on September 10:
MALVEAUX: Hundreds of people in Cologne, Germany, have been watching this story unfold with special interest, because they are members of Jones’ former church.
(…)
HEINZ KOOP, FORMER JONES FOLLOWER: He was a charismatic leader. I think he was — the preference was very strong for us.
BLACK: Jones’ church, the Christian Community of Cologne, became the focus of their lives. Jones insisted on it, borrowing an infamous Nazi motto. . . .
H. KOOP: And we worked the whole week, also Sunday and Saturday.
BLACK (on camera): For the church?
ELKA KOOP, FORMER JONES FOLLOWER: Yes.
H. KOOP: For the church, yes.
E. KOOP: Work made free.
BLACK: Is that what he said?
E. KOOP: Yes.
BLACK: Work makes you free?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
That’s right, Terry Jones adopted the motto of the Dachau concentration camp. In Germany. But that’s not all:
Outside contact, even with family for weddings and funerals, is prohibited for students who attend the Dove World Outreach Academy in Gainesville. The academy members live on property owned by TS and Company, work in the selling, packing and shipping of furniture and are unpaid.
So not only does Jones think the Dachau motto was just swell, but he has actually convinced parents to pay him to put their kids in an honest-to-God work camp. This guy truly makes my skin crawl.
Add comment September 16th, 2010 at 07:30am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Religion, WankersThe Democrats seem to hate her almost as much as the Republicans do…
Banking Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who has been vocal in his opposition to selecting Warren, said Tuesday that he was “not enthusiastic” about Obama potentially appointing Warren to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Dodd has said that the agency needs a leader and that the nominee should go through the full Senate confirmation process and be subject to a floor vote. He said he particularly recommended against making a recess appointment, saying it would “be met with a lot of opposition.” Some Warren supporters had urged Obama to appoint her to the position while Congress was adjourned for the August recess.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), a central player in the financial regulatory debate that eventually led to the creation of the consumer agency, also said naming Warren would be a harmful exercise.
“I would prefer someone who was not going to stir as much controversy in this first round as we establish this new consumer entity,” he said. “We should get off on a strong foot.”
Obama has every right to appoint Liz Warren to CFPB, but he should show sensitivity to the feelings of Republicans, conservadems and Wall Street and appoint her somewhere else.
1 comment September 15th, 2010 at 11:20am Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under: Corruption/Cronyism, Democrats, Dodd, Economy, Obama, Politics, Wankers
