Random Information

Afghanistan Farce

2010-11-26T10:50:00.001-05:00

Daily Kos: Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Maureen Dowd:

And we wonder why we haven’t found Osama bin Laden.

Though we’re pouring billions into intelligence in Afghanistan, we can’t even tell the difference between a no-name faker and a senior member of the Taliban. The tragedy of Afghanistan has descended into farce.

Fight

2010-11-15T18:48:00.002-05:00

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

Paul Krugman:

In retrospect, the roots of current Democratic despond go all the way back to the way Mr. Obama ran for president. Again and again, he defined America’s problem as one of process, not substance — we were in trouble not because we had been governed by people with the wrong ideas, but because partisan divisions and politics as usual had prevented men and women of good will from coming together to solve our problems. And he promised to transcend those partisan divisions.

This promise of transcendence may have been good general election politics, although even that is questionable: people forget how close the presidential race was at the beginning of September 2008, how worried Democrats were until Sarah Palin and Lehman Brothers pushed them over the hump. But the real question was whether Mr. Obama could change his tune when he ran into the partisan firestorm everyone who remembered the 1990s knew was coming. He could do uplift — but could he fight?

So far the answer has been no.

like no other issue

2010-07-22T23:27:00.001-04:00

A Three-Ring Circus

First Read: "In Obama's first year and a half as president, there haven't been any sex scandals, any stories of widespread corruption, or any plans to wage war against a nation without WMD. But what does it say -- about the media, about Obama, and about us as a country -- that when the topic turns to race, Washington instantly transforms into a three-ring circus? As for the media, we've allowed this story over race bury one of the more consequential weeks of Obama's presidency thus far (the financial reform legislation becoming law, Senate passage of the jobless benefits, and Kagan clearing the Senate Judiciary Committee). Whether it's Sherrod, Gates, or Jeremiah Wright, the topic of race pushes the media's buttons like no other issue."

Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano says Bush and Cheney ‘should have been indicted.’

2010-07-12T22:02:00.001-04:00

Think Progress » Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano says Bush and Cheney ‘should have been indicted.’

NADER: What’s the sanction for President Bush and Vice President Cheney? [...]

NAPOLITANO: They should have been indicted. They absolutely should have been indicted for torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrants. I’d like to say they should be indicted for lying but believe it or not, unless you’re under oath, lying is not a crime. At least not an indictable crime. It’s a moral crime.

NADER: So you think George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should even though they’ve left office, they haven’t escaped the criminal laws, they should be indicted and prosecuted?

NAPOLITANO: The evidence in this book and in others, our colleague the great Vincent Bugliosi has amassed an incredible amount of evidence. The purpose of this book was not to amass that evidence but I do discuss it, is overwhelming when you compare it to the level of evidence required for a normal indictment that George W. Bush as President and Dick Cheney as Vice President participated in criminal conspiracies to violate the federal law and the guaranteed civil liberties of hundreds, maybe thousands of human beings.

only action will do

2010-07-11T21:22:00.001-04:00

Op-Ed Columnist - Clean the Gulf, Clean House, Clean Their Clock - NYTimes.com

The speech’s pans were inevitable, but in truth it was doomed no matter what the words or how cool or faux angry the performance. The president had it right the first time — this is a 9/11 crisis — and only action will do. The sole sentence that really counted on Tuesday night was his prediction that “in the coming weeks and days, these efforts should capture up to 90 percent of the oil leaking out of the well.” He will be judged on whether that’s true. The sole event that mattered last week was his jawboning of BP for a $20 billion down payment of blood money — to be overseen, appropriately enough, by Kenneth Feinberg of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.
That action could be a turning point for Obama if he builds on it. And he must. In this 9/11, it’s not just the future of the gulf coast, energy policy or his presidency that’s in jeopardy. What’s also being tarred daily by the gushing oil is the very notion that government can accomplish anything. The current crisis in that faith predates this disaster. In the short history of the Obama White House, two of its most urgent projects, reducing unemployment and pacifying Afghanistan, have yet to yield persuasive results. The dividends on the third, health care reform, won’t be in the mail for years.

Premise For Arizona Immigration Law 'A Fallacy'

2010-07-10T10:24:00.001-04:00

Dana Milbank Calls Premise For Arizona Immigration Law 'A Fallacy'

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank offers a solid debunk of Arizona-based illegal immigrant paranoia today, pointing out that "the entire premise of the Arizona immigration law is a fallacy."

Two months ago, the Arizona Republic published an exhaustive report that found that, according to statistics from the FBI and Arizona police agencies, crime in Arizona border towns has been "essentially flat for the past decade." For example, "In 2000, there were 23 rapes, robberies and murders in Nogales, Ariz. Last year, despite nearly a decade of population growth, there were 19 such crimes." The Pima County sheriff reported that "the border has never been more secure."

FBI statistics show violent crime rates in all of the border states are lower than they were a decade ago -- yet Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) reports that the violence is "the worst I have ever seen." President Obama justifiably asserted last week that "the southern border is more secure today than any time in the past 20 years," yet Rush Limbaugh judged the president to be "fit for the psycho ward" on the basis of that remark.

Without question, illegal immigration and Mexican drug cartels are huge problems. And there is a real danger that the alarming and growing violence in Mexico could spread north. But beyond anecdotes -- the slaying of a rancher and the shooting of a sheriff's deputy -- there is no evidence that it has.

Moving Fast

2010-06-23T07:45:00.001-04:00

Think Progress » ThinkFast: June 22, 2010

Moving at the speed of light while a nation is in crisis. Its only been 18 since Obama was elected. Lets maybe put people in place to run the government?

“The Senate approved a trio of district court nominees” last night, “making a small amount of headway in a nominations logjam that could get far greater attention this week.” Additionally, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) indicated that “an agreement might be reached on clearing a package of as many as 60 nominees,” which “would represent almost half of the more than 130 pending nominations.”

Cheap Real Estate

2010-06-20T21:35:00.001-04:00

When Manhattan Sold For $24 - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

The colonial era is full of subversive deal-making, but the world’s most notorious real estate coup occurred in 1626, when the energetic Dutch settler Peter Minuit, as an agent for the West India Company, purchased the unimproved woodland “island Manhattes,” covering 15,000 acres, for 60 guilders worth of goods (around $24 today). The 300 resident Native Americans, referred to in documents as the Manhatesen, were not aware they were selling their island paradise at all, thinking instead they were simply allowing the Dutch to share it. As related by Russell Shorto in The Island at the Center of the World, the chief, Sackimas, deemed that the Dutch access to Manhattan’s resources was a reasonable exchange for a valuable array of European items — knives, axes, hoes, awls, cloth, and coats, but probably not beads — and the additional promise of support by the Dutch against enemy tribes. For 40 years, the casual sharing arrangement worked well, with Indians still hunting and fishing in the forests and river-fronts. But then the Manhatesen were squeezed out to a less enviable site off-island — forests in the north, now known as the Bronx. Still, the Dutch were no visionary real estate geniuses: In 1644, they traded Manhattan for Surinam.

Sen Franken Still Funny

2010-06-20T09:53:00.001-04:00

Al Franken Slams Supreme Court For Dismantling Legal Protections (VIDEO)

So tonight I guess we'll finally get an answer to the question: "What do Stephen Breyer, Laurence Tribe, and Al Franken have in common?"

Other than: "They were all in the front row when the Dead played the Garden back in '71."

Tonight, we celebrate the rise of a new generation of progressive legal scholars and jurists.

Look to your left. Look to your right.

Odds are, at least one of the three of you will someday be filibustered by Senate Republicans.

Family Man

2010-06-16T21:29:00.002-04:00

Its a beautiful June day in 1964. Reagan is the commencement speaker at an exclusive prep school outside Scottsdale, Arizona. Reagan is standing with several of the seniors, who have been invited to pose for pictures with him. He chats up each of the graduates, and to one of the boys says: "My name is Ronald Reagan. What's yours?" The boy says, "I'm your son Mike." "Oh," says Reagan. "I didn't recognize you."

Micheal Reagan's autobiography, On the Outside Looking In. The adopted son of from Reagan's first marriage to Jane Wyman.

Al Franken's Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot.

The Rat Pack From Hell

2010-06-16T19:32:00.001-04:00

Op-Ed Columnist - Two Weddings, a Divorce and ‘Glee’ - NYTimes.com

THOSE of us left off the guest list could only fantasize about Rush Limbaugh’s nuptials last weekend. Now cruising into marriage No. 4 — an impressive total for a guy not quite 60 — Rush staged a lavish luau at the Breakers in Palm Beach. The revelers included what some might regard as the Rat Pack from hell — Sean Hannity, Rudy Giuliani, James Carville and Clarence Thomas. The scriptural readings remain a mystery. But we did learn the identity of the pop deity anointed as the wedding singer. That would be Elton John, whose last, albeit second-class, wedding was a civil union with David Furnish in 2005.

Why would America’s right-wing radio king hire an openly gay entertainer to star at his wedding? And why would one of the world’s foremost AIDS activists sing “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” for a gay-baiting provocateur who has trivialized AIDS speculated that same-sex marriage could lead people to marry dogs? Sir Elton’s fee was reported to be a cool $1 million. Which goes to show that pop music and cash have the power to make even stranger bedfellows than politics. and

June is America’s month for weddings, and were we so inclined, we could bemoan Limbaugh, an idol to the family-values crowd, for marrying a woman barely half his age. Alternatively, we could lament Al and Tipper Gore’s divorce, which has produced so many cries of shock you’d think they were the toy bride and groom atop a wedding cake rather than actual flesh-and-blood people capable of free will. But let’s refrain from such moralistic hand-wringing. The old truth remains: We never know what goes on in anyone else’s marriage, and it’s none of our business. Here’s a toast to happiness for the Gores and Limbaughs alike, wherever life takes them.

Obama's TR Moment

2010-06-06T11:11:00.002-04:00

Op-Ed Columnist - Don’t Get Mad, Mr. President. Get Even. - NYTimes.com

If Obama is to have a truly transformative presidency, there could be no better catalyst than oil. Standard Oil jump-started Progressive Era trust-busting. Sinclair Oil’s kickback-induced leases of Wyoming’s Teapot Dome oilfields in the 1920s led to the first conviction and imprisonment of a presidential cabinet member (Harding’s interior secretary) for a crime committed while in the cabinet. The Arab oil embargo of the early 1970s and the Exxon Valdez spill of 1989 sped the conservation movement and search for alternative fuels. The Enron scandal prompted accounting reforms and (short-lived) scrutiny of corporate Ponzi schemes.
This all adds up to a Teddy Roosevelt pivot-point for Obama, who shares many of that president’s moral and intellectual convictions. But Obama can’t embrace his inner T.R. as long as he’s too in thrall to the supposed wisdom of the nation’s meritocracy, too willing to settle for incremental pragmatism as a goal, and too inhibited by the fine points of Washington policy debates to embrace bold words and bold action. If he is to wield the big stick of reform against BP and the other powerful interests that have ripped us off, he will have to tell the big story with no holds barred.
That doesn’t require a temper tantrum. Nor does it require him to plug the damn hole, which he can’t do anyway. What he does have the power to fix is his presidency. Should he do so, and soon, he’ll still have a real chance to mend a broken country as well.

Learned Anything

2010-05-26T10:18:00.001-04:00

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

Ruth Marcus:

Has Sarah Palin learned anything since she was plucked from obscurity almost two years ago? Not that I can tell.

Follow the money

2010-05-24T08:58:00.001-04:00

Op-Ed Columnist - Obama Versus the Corporations - NYTimes.com

Look, for example, at the campaign contributions of commercial banks — traditionally Republican-leaning, but only mildly so. So far this year, according to The Washington Post, 63 percent of spending by banks’ corporate PACs has gone to Republicans, up from 53 percent last year. Securities and investment firms, traditionally Democratic-leaning, are now giving more money to Republicans. And oil and gas companies, always Republican-leaning, have gone all out, bestowing 76 percent of their largess on the G.O.P.
These are extraordinary numbers given the normal tendency of corporate money to flow to the party in power. Corporate America, however, really, truly hates the current administration. Wall Street, for example, is in “a state of bitter, seething, hysterical fury” toward the president, writes John Heilemann of New York magazine. What’s going on?
One answer is taxes — not so much on corporations themselves as on the people who run them. The Obama administration plans to raise tax rates on upper brackets back to Clinton-era levels. Furthermore, health reform will in part be paid for with surtaxes on high-income individuals. All this will amount to a significant financial hit to C.E.O.’s, investment bankers and other masters of the universe.
Now, don’t cry for these people: they’ll still be doing extremely well, and by and large they’ll be paying little more as a percentage of their income than they did in the 1990s. Yet the fact that the tax increases they’re facing are reasonable doesn’t stop them from being very, very angry.

Dont Lecture Me

2010-05-22T19:13:00.001-04:00

Daily Kos: Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Jack Conway via Weigel:

"Rand Paul has this tendency to get in public or get on national cable shows and feel like he wants to give me a lecture on constitutional law," said Conway. "I'm the attorney general of Kentucky. He didn't go to law school. I did. I don't need a lecture on Constitutional law from Rand Paul or Sarah Palin."

Rule the Majority, A new look at Napoleon

2010-05-20T15:10:00.001-04:00

WARS AGAINST NAPOLEON, THE: Debunking the Myth of the Napoleonic Wars: General Michel Franceschi, Ben Weider

August 1st, 1800, Napoleon before the Council of State:

My policy is to govern men in the manner that the majority wish to be ruled. This is a means to recognize the sovereignty of the people. When i won the battle of the Vendee I was Catholic; when I took over in Egypt I was Muslim; and when I succeeded in Italy I was ultramontaine. If I governed the Jewish people, I would reestablish the Temple of Solomon.

Fact-checking is popular!

2010-05-19T23:57:00.001-04:00

The Plum Line - Who woulda thunk it: Fact-checking is popular!

Has anyone else noticed that the Associated Press has been doing some strong fact-checking work lately, aggressively debunking all kinds of nonsense, in an authoritative way, without any of the usual he-said-she-said crap that often mars political reporting?

I asked AP Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier about this, and he told me something fascinating, if not all together unexpected: Their fact-checking efforts are almost uniformly the most clicked and most linked pieces they produce.

Journalistic fact-checking with authority, it turns out, is popular. Who woulda thunk it?

The AP, and Fournier in particular, have taken no shortage of lumps from the left, with some still accusing him of being in the tank for Republicans. That said, it's a fact that the AP has lately done some very aggressive work in knocking down some of the most pernicious misinformation out there, much of it coming from the right.

The AP, for instance, definitively knocked down claims that Elena Kagan is an "ivory tower peacenik." It called out GOP Senators for their bogus "judicial experience" assault.

The AP also did an extensive investigation into Obama's handling of the Gulf spill, and concluded it "shows little resemblance to Katrina." As Steve Benen noted in lauding this effort, the AP definitively debunked a key media narrative as "baseless."

a party coming unglued

2010-05-16T10:49:00.001-04:00

Dana Milbank - GOP's Utah and Maine conventions show a party coming unglued

Future historians tracing the crackup of the Republican Party may well look to May 8, 2010, as an inflection point.

That was the day, as is now well known, that Sen. Robert Bennett, who took the conservative position 84 percent of the time over his career, was deemed not conservative enough by fellow Utah Republicans and booted out of the primary.

Less well known, but equally ominous, is what happened that same day, 2,500 miles east in Maine. There, the state Republican Party chucked its platform -- a sensible New England mix of free-market economics and conservation -- and adopted a manifesto of insanity: abolishing the Federal Reserve, calling global warming a "myth," sealing the border, and, as a final plank, fighting "efforts to create a one world government."

The Most Dishonest Argument Ever Made In The History Of Politics

2010-04-25T21:57:00.002-04:00

Krugman: McConnell made ‘most dishonest argument ever’ | Raw Story

Pointing to McConnell's distortions of what Democrats intend to do with their bill, Krugman tore apart McConnell's political positioning on ABC Sunday morning.
"Anyone who says we need to be bipartisan should bear in mind that for the last several weeks, Mitch McConnell has been trying to stop reform with possibly the most dishonest argument ever made in the history of politics, which is the claim that having regulation of the banks is actually bailing out the banks," Krugman asserted. "Basically the argument boiled down to saying that what we really need to do to deal with fires is abolish the fire department, because then people will know that they can't let their building burn."

A normal hike

2010-04-25T16:33:00.001-04:00

Running into the President

The Asheville Citizen-Times explains what it was like for a hiker to run into the President of the United States on a small trail in the Blue Ridge mountains.

Karen Russell had seen the presidential security pass by and she thought, "Oh, they're just checking out the hill to make sure no one's going to snipe or something like that."

Then a woman "quickly walked up to Russell and asked her if it was OK for the agents to scan her with a metal detecting wand."

Said Russell: "They went through my pockets and my little waist pack and my camera, they checked to make sure it was a camera. And then I probably went 10 feet and I couldn't believe it. I just looked up and I said something really stupid, like 'Are you who I think you are? You are!'"

Lest We Forget

2010-04-19T15:04:00.001-04:00

Think Progress » Gov. Perry: Anyone Who’s Not A ‘Rank Political Hack’ Realizes That Bush Was A ‘Very, Very Good President’

Indeed, Presidents can and should be judged on the two metrics Perry outlines: “their safety and the economy.” And on both those scores, Bush was anything but a “very, very good President.”

In terms of keeping America safe, the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil — about which Bush was forewarned — occurred on his watch. His disastrous decision to invade Iraq — which “everyone” in Congress now agrees was a huge “mistake” — has resulted in almost 4,400 U.S. casualties.

As for his stewardship of the economy, Bush inherited a budget surplus of $127 billion and bequeathed a deficit of over $1 trillion median income fell, poverty rose, and two recessions occurred — one of which was a global financial meltdown. to Obama. During his two terms,

If Perry thinks this was “very, very good,” one wonders what classifies as very, very bad.

Amazing History

2010-04-17T09:57:00.003-04:00

David McMullough - 1776

Nothing like it had ever been seen in New York. Housetops were covered with "gazers"; all wharves that offered a view were jammed with people. The total British armada now at anchor in a "long, thick cluster" off Staten Island numbered nearly four hundred ships large and small, seventy-three warships, including eight ships of the line, each mounting 50 guns or more. As British officers happily reminded one another, it was the largest expeditionary force of the eighteenth century, the largest, most powerful force ever sent forth from Britain or any nation.

But it was also true that as big as the biggest ships were - and to Americans who had never seen anything like them, they were colossal - they could have been bigger still. Even the Asia and Eagle were small compared to other ships in the British fleet. HMS Victory, for example, mounted 98 guns. Concerned about the difficulties of clearing the shallows of Sandy Hook and negotiating the East River and the Hudson, Admiral Lord Howe had wisely chosen speed and maneuverability over size and massive firepower.

Still, the scale of things in the American colonies of 1776, it was a display of military might past imagining. All told, 32,000 troops had landed on Staten Island, a well-armed, well-equipped, trained force more numerous than the entire population of New York or even Philadelphia, which, with a population of about 30,000 was the largest city in America.

An Opportunist

2010-04-15T09:00:00.001-04:00

Daily Kos: Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Greg Dworkin

John McCain is having problems with his base (the media.) They like the maverick story, and this [McCain's distancing himslef from the term] spoils their image of McCain. But anyone who picked Sarah Palin for higher office , a candidate who stands against everything McCain was supposed to be for in politics (experience, bipartisan, country first), is no maverick. He’s an opportunist. I think his base is catching on.

Moving at its own pace

2010-04-12T22:26:00.001-04:00

Daily Kos: Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Maureen Dowd:

When I was in Saudi Arabia, I had tea and sweets with a group of educated and sophisticated young professional women.

I asked why they were not more upset about living in a country where women’s rights were strangled, an inbred and autocratic state more like an archaic men’s club than a modern nation. They told me, somewhat defensively, that the kingdom was moving at its own pace, glacial as that seemed to outsiders.

How could such spirited women, smart and successful on every other level, acquiesce in their own subordination?

I was puzzling over that one when it hit me: As a Catholic woman, I was doing the same thing.

Captain Greenspan

2010-04-12T19:25:00.001-04:00

Op-Ed Columnist - No One Is to Blame for Anything - NYTimes.com

“I was right 70 percent of the time, but I was wrong 30 percent of the time,” said Alan Greenspan as he testified last week on Capitol Hill. Greenspan — a k a the Oracle during his 18-year-plus tenure as Fed chairman — could not have more vividly illustrated how and why geniuses of his stature were out to lunch while Wall Street imploded. No doubt he applied his full brain power to that 70-30 calculation. But the big picture eludes him. If the captain of the Titanic followed the Greenspan model, he could claim he was on course at least 70 percent of the time too.

No Longer 2001

2010-04-11T01:42:00.003-04:00

Moderate Muslim Leaders Beat Extremists - Newsweek.com

Since 9/11, Western commentators have been calling on moderate Muslim leaders to condemn jihadist ideology, issue fatwas against suicide bombing, and denounce Al Qaeda. Since about 2006, they've begun to do so in significant numbers. In 2007 one of bin Laden's most prominent Saudi mentors, the preacher and scholar Salman al-Odah, wrote an open letter criticizing him for "fostering a culture of suicide bombings that has caused bloodshed and suffering, and brought ruin to entire Muslim communities and families." That same year Abdulaziz al ash-Sheikh, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, issued a fatwa prohibiting Saudis from engaging in jihad abroad and accused both bin Laden and Arab regimes of "transforming our youth into walking bombs to accomplish their own political and military aims." One of Al Qaeda's own top theorists, Abdul-Aziz el-Sherif, renounced its extremism, including the killing of civilians and the choosing of targets based on religion and nationality. Sherif—a longtime associate of Zawahiri who crafted what became known as Al Qaeda's guide to jihad—has called on militants to desist from terrorism, and authored a rebuttal of his former cohorts.

Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the oldest and most prestigious school of Islamic learning, now routinely condemns jihadism. The Darul Uloom Deoband movement in India, home to the original radicalism that influenced Al Qaeda, has inveighed against suicide bombing since 2008. None of these groups or people have become pro-American or liberal, but they have become anti-jihadist.

This might seem like an esoteric debate. But consider: the most important moderates to denounce militants have been the families of radicals. In the case of both the five young American Muslims from Virginia arrested in Pakistan last year and Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, parents were the ones to report their worries about their own children to the U.S. government—an act so stunning that it requires far more examination, and praise, than it has gotten. This is where soft power becomes critical. Were the fathers of these boys convinced that the United States would torture, maim, and execute their children without any sense of justice, they would not have come forward. I doubt that any Chechen father has turned his child over to Vladimir Putin's regime.

The data on public opinion in the Muslim world are now overwhelming. London School of Economics professor Fawaz Gerges has analyzed polls from dozens of Muslim countries over the past few years. He notes that in a range of places—Jordan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Lebanon, and Bangladesh—there have been substantial declines in the number of people who say suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets can be justified to defend Islam. Wide majorities say such attacks are, at most, rarely acceptable.

Pie Chart Says It All

2010-04-10T11:52:00.001-04:00

Working Group on Extreme Inequality » Homepage

The Genius of Jon Stewart

2010-04-10T11:15:00.000-04:00

Taking on Fox News -- Political Wire

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The Big Bang Treaty

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

Business Week: Public wrong, markets right, Obama plan working

2010-04-09T22:37:00.001-04:00

Business Week: Public wrong, markets right, Obama plan working | Raw Story

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index is up about 75 percent from its recession low in March 2009. Corporate bonds have been rallying for a year. Commodity prices have surged. International currency markets have been bullish on the dollar for months, raising it by about 10 percent since Nov. 25 against a basket of six major currencies. Housing prices have stabilized. Mortgage rates are around 5 percent, down from more than 8 percent in 2000, according to data from Freddie Mac, the McLean, Virginia-based mortgage buyer.

...

"We've had a phenomenal run in asset classes across the board," says Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak + Co., an institutional trading firm in New York. "If Obama was a Republican, we would hear a never-ending drumbeat of news stories about markets voting in favor of the President."

...

"With seven months to go before midterm elections, and more than two years before Obama reaches his own reelection day, there's still time for the President's policies to swing to his political advantage," Dorning writes. "Again, follow the money: Consumer spending has been rising for five straight months. That may not last, but it suggests Obama is already on the right track with voters' wallets. If the Clinton Administration is a trustworthy precedent—and job growth continues—their hearts and minds could follow."

Try Something!

2010-04-08T23:06:00.003-04:00

Newsweek Feb. 8th, 2010

Don't know if this accurate or not but i love the anecdote.

"We had more communists in this country than there were in the Soviet Union because" of rage against the so-called banksters. No one knew this better than the incoming president. Franklin D. Roosevelt. The story is told that a supporter warned FDR that if he failed now, with the nation in chaos, he'd be known as "our worst president," and Roosevelt supposedly replied: "If I fail, I'll be your last president."

Mom: Son who threatened Pelosi got radical ideas from Fox News

2010-04-08T10:24:00.001-04:00

Mom: Son who threatened Pelosi got radical ideas from Fox News | Raw Story

"Greg frequently gets in with a group of people that have really radical ideas and that are not consistent with myself or the rest of the family, which gets him into problems," the 83-year-old mother of the accused man, Eleanor Giusti, said. "I say Fox News, or all of those that are really radical, and he, that's where he comes from."

Op-Ed Columnist - It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Obama! - NYTimes.com

2010-04-06T09:55:00.000-04:00

Op-Ed Columnist - It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Obama! - NYTimes.com

A Really Good Week

2010-03-28T22:02:00.001-04:00

Barack Obama gains steam, plows ahead - Carol E. Lee - POLITICO.com

The president began last week with a midnight victory on his top domestic policy effort – which also happens to be the most expansive revamp of the nation’s health care system since 1965. He ended it with a secret, 14-hour flight to Afghanistan to personally confront his top foreign policy challenge in his first trip to the war zone as president.

In between, Obama won reforms to the federal student loan system that had been stalled for decades. He negotiated a new nuclear arms treaty with Russia. And he defied Republican objections, as Democrats have long wished he would, to unilaterally appoint 15 of his nominees.

For now, it looks like Obama is turning a corner in his presidency, and the question is whether he’s able to gain on his gains – to have not just one good week but a series of them heading into what promises to be a difficult midterm election for the Democrats.

GOP Kristallnacht

2010-03-28T21:43:00.001-04:00

Op-Ed Columnist - The Rage Is Not About Health Care - NYTimes.com

How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. The weapon of choice for vigilante violence at Congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a window. So far.

...

Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935.

Meek Makes History

2010-03-28T11:50:00.001-04:00

Meek Will Make History in Florida -- Political Wire

AND I HELPED!!! a few hundred signatures and couple thousand entered into the database.

Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-FL) is expected to make history in Florida this week when he delivers more than 130,000 signed petitions to state election officials to secure a place on the U.S. Senate ballot, the Miami Herald reports.

No other statewide candidate has entered a race this way, as most simply pay a $10,000 fee to appear on the ballot.

Said Meek: "I thought it was very, very important that the people of the state of Florida place my name on the ballot to be the next U.S. senator."

GOP response to ‘burning of the Reichstag’

2010-03-28T11:48:00.001-04:00

Video: Threatened Dem compares GOP response to ‘burning of the Reichstag’ | Raw Story

MARK THOMPSON: Yeah, this is crazy. And they're suggesting ... the Republicans are defending themselves by saying this is happening on both sides. This is not happening on both sides.
REP. GRAYSON: Well, I think that's what they said about the burning of the Reichstag, if I recall correctly.

Obama Recess Appoints 15 Top Officials; In Your Face GOP

2010-03-27T17:00:00.001-04:00

Obama Recess Appoints 15 Top Officials, End-Running GOP Obstruction

RECESS APPOINT THEM ALL MR PRESIDENT! Keep governing no matter what the party of hell no does.

"The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disapprove of my nominees. But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis," Obama said in a statement.

"Most of the men and women whose appointments I am announcing today were approved by Senate committees months ago, yet still await a vote of the Senate. At a time of economic emergency, two top appointees to the Department of Treasury have been held up for nearly six months. I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government."

Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution gives the president the right to unilaterally fill any vacancy that would normally require Senate confirmation when the Senate is in recess.

Unlike appointments that are confirmed by the Senate, recess appointments only last until the end of the next session of Congress, which right now would mean until the end of 2011.
...
And some were being obstructed for particularly outrageous reasons. As Ryan Grim recently reported for the Huffington Post, the two trade nominees -- Bunke and Siddiqui -- were being blocked by Kentucky Republican Sen. Jim Bunning because he is opposed to a tobacco-related law passed by the Canadian Parliament.
...
That Obama would use his recess appointment powers isn't a surprise. According to the Congressiona Research Service, President George W. Bush made 171 recess appointments; President Clinton made 139.

Until Saturday, Obama hadn't made any -- despite Republican obstruction so intense that even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in early February essentially begged Obama to do and end run.

"Frankly, I think the President should recess all of them -- all of them," Reid said of Obama's stalled nominees. "There are scores of them being held up for reasons that have nothing to do with anything dealing with these people or how they will function once in office."

There are still about 200 judicial and civilian nominees being held up, some of them for some pretty amazing reasons. And the Senate is in recess until April 12.

Israel Needs To Listen

2010-03-27T09:48:00.002-04:00

Binyamin Netanyahu humiliated after Barack Obama 'dumped him for dinner' - Times Online

good.

“The Prime Minister leaves America disgraced, isolated and altogether weaker than when he came,” the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz said.

GOP Cant Reject Violence

2010-03-26T20:40:00.001-04:00

Daily Kos: Republicans Say No To Civility

Sad that Republicans would feel "forced" to sign something that advocated for civility and rejected violence, isn't it?

Go For It

2010-03-25T17:35:00.001-04:00

‘Go for it’: Obama dares GOP to repeal health law | Raw Story

"Leaders of the Republican Party, they called the passage of this bill Armageddon! The end of freedom as we know it," Obama said.
"So after I signed the bill, I looked around to see if there were any asteroids falling, some cracks opening up in the earth.
"Turned out as a nice day. Birds were chirping, folks were strolling down the mall, people still had their doctors."

Republican Voters Are Crazy

2010-03-24T20:49:00.002-04:00

Taegan Goddard's Political Wire

A new Harris poll that reveals some shocking things about how Republican voters view President Obama.

Key findings:

67% believe Obama is a socialist.
57% believe Obama is a Muslim.
38% believe Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did."
24% believe Obama "may be the Antichrist."
"It demonstrates the cost of the campaign of fear and hate that has been pumped up in the service of hyper-partisanship over the past 15 months. We are playing with dynamite by demonizing our president and dividing the United States in the process. What might be good for ratings is bad for the country."

Bill Clinton: "I found Rahm. I created him. I made him what he is today. I am so sorry."

2010-03-21T11:53:00.001-04:00

Bill Clinton Gridiron Dinner: Former President Jokes About Democrats, Republicans, And Himself

Clinton, who stood in for President Barack Obama, said Democrats are going to pass health care.

"It may not happen in my lifetime, or Dick Cheney's, but hopefully by Easter," he said referring to his and the former to vice president's heart ailments.

Obama, who's preparing for Sunday's probable House vote on health care reform, spoke to the dinner via videotape, saying that when he called Clinton to stand in for him, the former president said, "Let me clear my schedule for the next three years."

The dinner marked the 125th annual gathering of the Gridiron Club, whose members include Washington based reporters.

In another reference to his health, Clinton said his favorite cocktail now was "Lipitor on the rocks," referring to the widely prescribed cholesterol-lowering medicine.

He said that when Obama appeared recently on Fox News the president was "keeping his word about meeting with hostile leaders without preconditions."

In a poke at Obama's combative chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, the former president said, "I found Rahm. I created him. I made him what he is today. I am so sorry."

To Be True

2010-03-21T11:37:00.001-04:00

Obama Quotes Lincoln To House Dems: 'I Am Bound To Be True' (VIDEO)

But you know what? Every once in a while, every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made in all those town meetings and all those constituency breakfasts and all that traveling through the district, all those people who you looked in the eye and you said, you know what, you're right, the system is not working for you and I'm going to make it a little bit better.

And this is one of those moments. This is one of those times where you can honestly say to yourself, doggone it, this is exactly why I came here. This is why I got into politics. This is why I got into public service. This is why I've made those sacrifices. Because I believe so deeply in this country and I believe so deeply in this democracy and I'm willing to stand up even when it's hard, even when it's tough.

Every single one of you have made that promise not just to your constituents but to yourself. And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine. We have been debating health care for decades. It has now been debated for a year. It is in your hands. It is time to pass health care reform for America, and I am confident that you are going to do it tomorrow.

Thank you very much, House of Representatives. Let's get this done.

Modern GOP?

2010-03-20T23:07:00.001-04:00

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

Dana Milbank:

"This is the largest tax bill in history," the Republican leader fumed. The reform "is unjust, unworkable, stupidly drafted and wastefully financed."

And that wasn't all. This "cruel hoax," he said, this "folly" of "bungling and waste," compared poorly to the "much less expensive" and "practical measures" favored by the Republicans.

"We must repeal," the GOP leader argued. "The Republican Party is pledged to do this."

That was Republican presidential nominee Alf Landon in a September 1936 campaign speech. He based his bid for the White House on repealing Social Security.

Crapping Out at the Subprime Casino | The Big Money

2010-03-20T11:56:00.002-04:00

Crapping Out at the Subprime Casino | The Big Money

Option One had popped onto Eisman’s radar screen seven months earlier, in June 2006, when the company announced a surprising loss in its portfolio of subprime mortgage loans. The loss was surprising because Option One was in the business of making loans and selling them off to Wall Street—they weren’t meant to be taking risk. In these deals, however, there was a provision that allowed Wall Street to put the loans back to Option One if the borrowers failed to make their first payment. “Who takes out a home loan and doesn’t make the first payment?” asked Danny Moses, putting the matter one way. “Who the fuck lends money to people who can’t make the first payment?” asked Eisman, putting it another.
When the CEO of Option One got to the part of his speech about Option One’s subprime-loan portfolio, he claimed that the company had put its problems behind it and was now expecting a (modest) loss rate on its loans of 5 percent. Eisman raised his hand. Moses and Daniel sank in their chairs. “It wasn’t a Q&A,” says Moses. “The guy was giving a speech. He sees Steve’s hand and says, ‘Yes?’”

“Would you say that five percent is a probability or a possibility?” asked Eisman.

A probability, said the CEO, and went back to giving his speech.

Eisman had his hand up in the air again, waving it around. Oh no, thought Moses, and sank deeper in his chair. “The one thing Steve always says is that you must assume they are lying to you,” said Daniel. “They will always lie to you.” Danny and Vinny both knew what Eisman thought of these subprime lenders, but didn’t see the need for him to express it here, in this manner. For Steve wasn’t raising his hand to ask a question. Steve had his thumb and index finger in a big circle. Steve was using his fingers to speak on his behalf. “Zero!” they said.

“Yes?” asked the obviously irritated CEO. “Is that another question?”

“No,” said Eisman. “It’s a zero. There is zero probability that your default rate will be 5 percent.” The losses on subprime loans would be far, far greater. Before the guy could reply, Eisman’s cell phone rang. Rather than shut it down, Eisman reached in his pocket and answered it. “Excuse me,” he said, standing up. “But I need to take this call.” And with that, he walked out of the speech. The caller was his wife.

“It wasn’t important at all,” she says with a sigh. “I was a prop.”

Jon Stewart's Best. 4 Minutes. Ever.

2010-03-19T15:29:00.002-04:00

CIA Disrupting Al-Qaeda

2010-03-18T11:17:00.001-04:00

CIA director says secret attacks in Pakistan have hobbled al-Qaeda - washingtonpost.com

So profound is al-Qaeda's disarray that one of its lieutenants, in a recently intercepted message, pleaded with bin Laden to come to the group's rescue and provide some leadership, Panetta said. He credited improved coordination with Pakistan's government and what he called "the most aggressive operation that CIA has been involved in in our history," offering a near-acknowledgment of what is officially a secret war.

"Those operations are seriously disrupting al-Qaeda," Panetta said. "It's pretty clear from all the intelligence we are getting that they are having a very difficult time putting together any kind of command and control, that they are scrambling. And that we really do have them on the run."

Human Corporations

2010-03-17T17:27:00.000-04:00

'Daily Show' Takes On Financial Regulatory Reform, Explains Dodgy Wall Street Practices (VIDEO)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

In Dodd We Trust

www.thedailyshow.com

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Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Reform

Today's Quote

2010-03-17T17:19:00.001-04:00

The Definition of Politics -- Political Wire

simply fantastic

"The art of taking money from the few and votes from the many under the pretext of protecting the one from the other."

-- Sen. Matthew Quay (R-PA), quoted in Realigning America: Mckinley, Bryan, and the Remarkable Election of 1896 by R. Hal Williams.

Dust Bowl

2010-03-17T16:53:00.001-04:00

Is California Becoming a Third World Nation? - Japhy Grant - California Stars - True/Slant

Michael Roston took a look at the state’s spectacularly bad unemployment numbers and saw nothing short of a Dust Bowl migration in reverse. The number of people unemployed is now equivalent to the total populations of Nevada, New Hampshire and Vermont combined.

Company Policy

2010-03-17T11:40:00.001-04:00

Insurer targeted HIV patients to drop coverage | Reuters

Previously undisclosed records from Mitchell's case reveal that Fortis had a company policy of targeting policyholders with HIV. A computer program and algorithm targeted every policyholder recently diagnosed with HIV for an automatic fraud investigation, as the company searched for any pretext to revoke their policy. As was the case with Mitchell, their insurance policies often were canceled on erroneous information, the flimsiest of evidence, or for no good reason at all, according to the court documents and interviews with state and federal investigators.

Republican Tactics

2010-03-16T18:15:00.001-04:00

Congress Matters ::

(House) Republicans think they deserve to have an up-or-down vote on the Senate bill, but the Senate doesn't!
Why are we going through this self-executing rule exercise in the first place? Because Senate Republicans won't allow an up-or-down vote on making the changes contained in the fix bill. If they'd agree to an up-or-down vote on that, then the House could drop the self-executing rule (scary!) plan and the use of reconciliation (nuclear!) completely, and we could just have a good ol' fashioned who's-got-the-most kind of vote.

Which Republicans would then lose.

Which is why they instead find themselves shamelessly screaming for up-or-down votes on healthcare, after all this time dedicating themselves to preventing exactly that.

You really can't make this stuff up.

Blank-Check Diplomacy

2010-03-16T11:52:00.001-04:00

Op-Ed Columnist - The Biden Effect - NYTimes.com

Peace is a vital American interest for many reasons, including its inalienable commitment to Israel’s long-term security, but the most pressing is that the conflict is a jihadist recruitment tool that feeds the wars in which young Americans die.
This is not rocket science. Yet over the past decade the United States has been facilitating the costly settlements enterprise by pouring $28.9 billion into Israel. America’s strategic goal of Israeli and Palestinian states living side by side in security has been undermined by its own blank-check diplomacy.
Well, goodbye to all that — maybe. Something shifted when Biden (“You need not be a Jew to be a Zionist”) was thanked for his unstinting support of Israel with a snub: The announcement that another 1,600 apartments for Jews will be built in east Jerusalem, a pure provocation when restarting peace talks is the core U.S. aim.
President Barack Obama was furious. In a top-down administration like this one, you don’t get Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lambasting Netanyahu for 43 minutes and David Axelrod, a senior White House adviser, speaking of “an affront” and “an insult” and a “very, very destructive” step if America’s measured leader is not immeasurably incensed.

C-Span Goes Viral

2010-03-16T10:07:00.001-04:00

C-SpanVideo.org

Researchers, political satirists and partisan mudslingers, take note: C-Span has uploaded virtually every minute of its video archives to the Internet.

The archives, at C-SpanVideo.org, cover 23 years of history and five presidential administrations and are sure to provide new fodder for pundits and politicians alike.

Vote yes!

2010-03-15T19:45:00.001-04:00

Lobbying Kucinich -- Political Wire

The Wall Street Journal: At a health care forum outside of Cleveland, "Obama began by thanking local dignitaries. When he got to Kucinich, someone in the crowd yelled, "Vote yes!" The president stopped and said, "Did you hear that, Dennis?" And the person in the crowd yelled again, "Vote yes!"

Rep. Alan Grayson, my hero

2010-03-15T15:25:00.001-04:00

Grayson goes for the jugular: ‘Alaskan chillbilly’ smartest GOP leader since W. | Raw Story

gotta love this man

Grayson's email reply was straight to the point. He began by referring to Palin as "the former half-term Governor, current-nothing and future-even-less," and snapped, "Atypically, Palin was wearing clothes that she had paid for herself."

The email continues: "In response to Palin's attack on Rep Grayson, Grayson actually complimented Palin. Grayson praised Palin for having a hand large enough to fit Grayson's entire name on it. He thanked Palin for alleviating the growing shortage of platitudes in Central Florida. Grayson added that Palin deserved credit for getting through the entire hour-long program without quitting. Grayson also said that Palin really had mastered Palin's imitation of Tina Fey imitating Palin. Grayson observed that Palin is the most-intelligent leader that the Republican Party has produced since George W. Bush."

Efficient Govt vs Incompetence

2010-03-14T10:36:00.001-04:00

CFPA-CHART

Corporate entity becomes ‘candidate’, kicks off bid for Congress | Raw Story

2010-03-13T21:47:00.001-05:00

Corporate entity becomes ‘candidate’, kicks off bid for Congress | Raw Story

Meet Murray Hill, Inc., the first corporation to run for Congress in the United States.
"Until now, corporations only influenced politics with high-paid lobbyists and backroom deals," the company's YouTube account declares. "But today, thanks to an enlightened supreme court, corporations now have all the rights the founding fathers meant for us. That's why Murray Hill Incorporated is taking democracy's next step-- running for Congress."

Elections Matter

2010-03-13T15:43:00.002-05:00

Vast F.C.C. Plan Would Bring Net to More in U.S. - NYTimes.com

The blueprint reflects the government’s view that broadband Internet is becoming the common medium of the United States, gradually displacing the telephone and broadcast television industries. It also signals a shift at the F.C.C., which under the administration of President George W. Bush
gained more attention for policing indecency on the television airwaves than for promoting Internet access.
According to F.C.C. officials briefed on the plan, the commission’s recommendations will include a subsidy for Internet providers to wire rural parts of the country now without access, a controversial auction of some broadcast spectrum to free up space for wireless devices, and the development of a new universal set-top box that connects to the Internet and cable service.
The effort will influence billions of dollars in federal spending, although the F.C.C. will argue that the plan should pay for itself through the spectrum auctions. Some recommendations will require Congressional action and industry support, and will affect users only years from now.
Still, “each bullet point will trigger its own tortuous battle,” said Craig Moffett, a senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.

Glove Slap

2010-03-12T20:41:00.001-05:00

Harry Gives ‘Em Hell - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

As you know, the vast majority of bills developed through reconciliation were passed by Republican Congresses and signed into law by Republican Presidents – including President Bush’s massive, budget-busting tax breaks for multi-millionaires. Given this history, one might conclude that Republicans believe a majority vote is sufficient to increase the deficit and benefit the super-rich, but not to reduce the deficit and benefit the middle class. Alternatively, perhaps Republicans believe a majority vote is appropriate only when Republicans are in the majority. Either way, we disagree.

33,000%

2010-03-12T16:34:00.001-05:00

The Big Short - The Barnes & Noble Review

Michael Lewis uncovers what could possibly be the single greatest trade that any Wall Street banker ever made: in December 2006 and January 2007, Deutsche's Greg Lippmann paid an insurance premium of 0.28 percentage points to take out insurance on $4 billion of triple-A-rated bonds from Morgan Stanley's Howie Hubler. Less than a year later, that $11 million bet paid off to the tune of a whopping $3.7 billion. I'll save you the math: that's an annual return of more than 33,000%.

Democrats To Upend Seniority System In Senate: Brown

2010-03-10T21:59:00.000-05:00

Democrats To Upend Seniority System In Senate: Brown

Shame

2010-03-09T12:16:00.001-05:00

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

Eugene Robinson

The word "McCarthyism" is overused, but in this case it's mild. Liz Cheney, the former vice president's ambitious daughter, has in her hand a list of Justice Department lawyers whose "values" she has the gall to question. She ought to spend the time examining her own principles, if she can find them. [...]

Liz Cheney is not ignorant, and neither are the other co-chairs of her group, advocate Debra Burlingame and pundit William Kristol, who writes a monthly column for The Post. Presumably they know that "the American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients is at least as old as John Adams' representation of the British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre" -- in other words, older than the nation itself. [...]

But maligning is apparently the whole point of the exercise. The smear campaign by Cheney, et al., has nothing to do with keeping America safe. It can only be an attempt to inflict political damage on the Obama administration by portraying the Justice Department as somehow "soft" on terrorism. Even by Washington's low standards, this is unbelievably dishonest and dishonorable. [...]

This time, obviously, they went too far. But the next Big Lie is probably already in the works. Scorched-earth groups like Keep America Safe may just be pretending not to understand our most firmly established and cherished legal principles, but there is one thing they genuinely don't grasp: the concept of shame.

Not That Memoir

2010-03-09T11:52:00.001-05:00

Not the Book Rove Could Have Written -- Political Wire

Walter Shapiro: "Maybe someday Karl Rove will write a thoughtful and candid account of how he helped guide George W. Bush downward from the national-unity president of the months after 9/11 to the derided figure who left office with a 34 percent approval rating in the Gallup poll, on par with the exiting Jimmy Carter and Harry Truman. Rove, who had once dreamed of launching a new conservative era much as his hero William McKinley did in 1896, certainly has the intellect and the appreciation of history to write such an anatomy of a political disaster. Unfortunately, Courage and Consequence is not that memoir."

Closet Commie

2010-03-08T09:06:00.001-05:00

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

Frank Rich:

Those who are unsympathetic or outright hostile to Obama frame his failures as an attempt to impose "socialism" on a conservative nation. The truth is that the Fox News right would believe this about any Democratic president no matter who he was and what his policies were. Obama, who has expanded the war in Afghanistan and proved reluctant to reverse extra-constitutional Bush-Cheney jurisprudence, is a radical mainly to those who believe a conservative Republican senator like Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas is a closet commie.

Post Correction

2010-03-06T21:56:00.001-05:00

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

Dana Milbank on Karl Rove's book:

As a White House reporter during the Bush presidency, I often worried that I wasn't getting the whole story. Now, Karl Rove has finally given it to me...

Heckuva job, Architect. In fact, these new disclosures call for a correction of some of my past reporting:

CORRECTION

Every article about George W. Bush ever written by Dana Milbank was wrong. The Post regrets the error.

The Genius of Sen. Byrd

2010-03-05T17:29:00.001-05:00

Daily Kos: Byrd: Right-wing reconciliation freakout straight out of "Glennbeckistan"

With all due respect, the Daily Mail's hyperbole about "imposing government control," acts of "disrespect to the American people" and "corruption" of Senate procedures resembles more the barkings from the nether regions of Glennbeckistan than the "sober and second thought" of one of West Virginia's oldest and most respected daily newspapers.

Republican Gridlock

2010-03-05T09:20:00.001-05:00

Daily Kos: Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Clarence Page:

Bunning, a former baseball star from Kentucky, objected to a request from fellow Republican, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, to pass a 30-day extension of jobless benefits and other expired measures included in a $10 billion spending bill.

By blocking the measure, which also would extend health insurance benefits, highway funding and Medicare payments to doctors, Bunning vividly illustrated a point Democrats have been trying to make: That Republicans are "the party of ‘No'" and the real reason for congressional gridlock on other issues like health care.

Bunning, who finally relented Tuesday, said he was fed up with Congress' Wall Street bailouts and other big-spending ways, without finding ways to pay for it. That's a laudable principle. It's just too bad that he decided to take out his anger at Congress by holding up help to jobless Americans.

Sentate Reform

2010-03-03T13:11:00.001-05:00

Think Progress » ThinkFast: March 3, 2010

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) “will announce an ambitious set of reforms” today to “change many of the rules under which” the Senate works, “including an effort to restrict earmarks and limit the filibuster.” Bennet “will propose eliminating anonymous holds, banning private-sector earmarks, freezing pay and budgets for members of Congress, and barring lawmakers from lobbying for life.”

SNL Actors Push Financial Reform -- Political Wire

2010-03-03T12:56:00.000-05:00

SNL Actors Push Financial Reform -- Political Wire

Funny or Die's Presidential Reunion from Will Ferrell

Colbert’s advice to GOP

2010-03-02T18:21:00.001-05:00

Colbert’s advice to GOP on the uninsured: F*ck ‘em! | Raw Story

Comparing the summit to a "seven-hour marriage counseling session," Colbert said that one of the parties -- the GOP -- was "not being emotionally honest" and should fess up and admit it doesn't want a health care baby.
"Don't hide your true feelings, guys, repeat after me: fuck 'em!" Colbert said. "If those 30 million people want health care, let them get a better job or join the Army or go to Canada or eat Flintstones vitamins ... stop faking care-gasms."

Very Scary Things - Paul Krugman

2010-03-02T15:00:00.002-05:00

Very Scary Things - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

Add these two points of information together and you get one scary possibility.

The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, when temperatures rose about 6 degrees C over 20,000 years, and there were mass extinctions.

The MIT Integrated Global System Model is used to make probabilistic projections of climate change from 1861 to 2100. Since the model’s first projections were published in 2003 substantial improvements have been made to the model and improved estimates of the probability distributions of uncertain input parameters have become available. The new projections are considerably warmer than the 2003 projections, e.g., the median surface warming in 2091 to 2100 is 5.1°C compared to 2.4°C in the earlier study.

Dredging up the Israel/apartheid question - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

2010-03-02T11:10:00.001-05:00

Dredging up the Israel/apartheid question - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

Israel's defense minister warned Tuesday that if Israel does not achieve a peace deal with the Palestinians, it will be either a binational state or an undemocratic apartheid state. . . .

"The simple truth is, if there is one state" including Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, "it will have to be either binational or undemocratic. . . . if this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."

The Record Belies Their Rhetoric

2010-03-01T14:42:00.001-05:00

The Facts About Reconciliation -- Political Wire

Ezra Klein notes that Republicans are arguing that the budget reconciliation process "has never been used for major legislation, and so any attempts to use the process to modify the health-care reform bill would be a sharp break with precedent. That's wrong on two counts."

"First, reconciliation has been used for major legislation almost constantly, particularly on health-care reform...

"Second, Democrats are not proposing to create the health-care reform bill in reconciliation. Rather, they're using the process for a much more limited purpose: passing the 11 pages of modifications that President Obama proposed to reconcile the House and Senate bills with each other. This is not a particularly ambitious use of the reconciliation process, and it's certainly not unprecedented. Republicans are arguing otherwise, of course, but the record belies their rhetoric."

The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged - Frank Rich

2010-02-28T11:49:00.001-05:00

Op-Ed Columnist - The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged - NYTimes.com

Another fantastic, amazing column by Frank Rich.

The distinction between the Tea Party movement and the official G.O.P. is real, and we ignore it at our peril. While Washington is fixated on the natterings of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Michael Steele and the presumed 2012 Republican presidential front-runner, Mitt Romney, these and the other leaders of the Party of No are anathema or irrelevant to most Tea Partiers. Indeed, McConnell, Romney and company may prove largely irrelevant to the overall political dynamic taking hold in America right now. The old G.O.P. guard has no discernible national constituency beyond the scattered, often impotent remnants of aging country club Republicanism. The passion on the right has migrated almost entirely to the Tea Party’s counterconservatism.
The leaders embraced by the new grass roots right are a different slate entirely: Glenn Beck, Ron Paul and Sarah Palin. Simple math dictates that none of this trio can be elected president. As George F. Will recently pointed out, Palin will not even be the G.O.P. nominee “unless the party wants to lose at least 44 states” (as it did in Barry Goldwater’s 1964 Waterloo). But these leaders do have a consistent ideology, and that ideology plays to the lock-and-load nutcases out there, not just to the peaceable (if riled up) populist conservatives also attracted to Tea Partyism. This ideology is far more troubling than the boilerplate corporate conservatism and knee-jerk obstructionism of the anti-Obama G.O.P. Congressional minority.
In the days after Stack’s Austin attack, the gradually coalescing Tea Party dogma had its Washington coming out party at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), across town from Capitol Hill. The most rapturously received speaker was Beck, who likened the G.O.P. to an alcoholic in need of a 12-step program to recover from its “progressive-lite” collusion with federal government. Beck vilified an unnamed Republican whose favorite president was the progressive Theodore Roosevelt — that would be McCain — and ominously labeled progressivism a cancer that “must be cut out of the system.”
A co-sponsor of CPAC was the John Birch Society, another far-right organization that has re-emerged after years of hibernation. Its views, which William F. Buckley Jr. decried in the 1960s as an “idiotic” and “irrational” threat to true conservatism, remain unchanged. At the conference’s conclusion, a presidential straw poll was won by Congressman Paul, ending a three-year Romney winning streak. No less an establishment conservative observer than the Wall Street Journal editorialist Dorothy Rabinowitz describes Paul’s followers as “conspiracy theorists, anti-government zealots, 9/11 truthers, and assorted other cadres of the obsessed and deranged.”
William Kristol dismissed the straw poll results as the youthful folly of Paul’s jejune college fans. William Bennett gingerly pooh-poohed Beck’s anti-G.O.P. diatribe. But in truth, most of the CPAC speakers, including presidential aspirants, were so eager to ingratiate themselves with this claque that they endorsed the Beck-Paul vision rather than, say, defend Bush, McCain or the party’s Congressional leadership. (It surely didn’t help Romney’s straw poll showing that he was the rare Bush defender.) And so — just one day after Stack crashed his plane into the Austin I.R.S. office — the heretofore milquetoast former Minnesota governor, Tim Pawlenty, told the audience to emulate Tiger Woods’s wife and “take a 9-iron and smash the window out of big government in this country.”
Such violent imagery and invective, once largely confined to blogs and talk radio, is now spreading among Republicans in public office or aspiring to it. Last year Michele Bachmann, the redoubtable Tea Party hero and Minnesota congresswoman, set the pace by announcing that she wanted “people in Minnesota armed and dangerous” to oppose Obama administration climate change initiatives. In Texas, the Tea Party favorite for governor, Debra Medina, is positioning herself to the right of the incumbent, Rick Perry — no mean feat given that Perry has suggested that Texas could secede from the union. A state sovereignty zealot, Medina reminded those at a rally that “the tree of freedom is occasionally watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots.”
In the heyday of 1960s left-wing radicalism, no liberal Democratic politicians in Washington could be found endorsing groups preaching violent revolution. The right has a different history. In the months before McVeigh’s mass murder, Helen Chenoweth and Steve Stockman, then representing Idaho and Texas in Congress, publicly empathized with the conspiracy theories of the far right that fueled his anti-government obsessions.
In his Times article on the Tea Party right, Barstow profiled Pam Stout, a once apolitical Idaho retiree who cast her lot with a Tea Party group allied with Beck’s 9/12 Project, the Birch Society and the Oath Keepers, a rising militia group of veterans and former law enforcement officers who champion disregarding laws they oppose. She frets that “another civil war” may be in the offing. “I don’t see us being the ones to start it,” she told Barstow, “but I would give up my life for my country.”
Whether consciously or coincidentally, Stout was echoing Palin’s memorable final declaration during her appearance at the National Tea Party Convention earlier this month: “I will live, I will die for the people of America, whatever I can do to help.” It’s enough to make you wonder who is palling around with terrorists now.

Slander and Misdirection

2010-02-27T10:39:00.001-05:00

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

Paul Krugman:

If we’re lucky, Thursday’s summit will turn out to have been the last act in the great health reform debate, the prologue to passage of an imperfect but nonetheless history-making bill. If so, the debate will have ended as it began: with Democrats offering moderate plans that draw heavily on past Republican ideas, and Republicans responding with slander and misdirection.

Hillary Clinton blasts Greenspan on deficit - Yahoo! News

2010-02-26T09:35:00.002-05:00

Hillary Clinton blasts Greenspan on deficit - Yahoo! News

Greenspan once spoke of Budget Surpluses as SOCIALISTIC !?! what a moron - keep drinking the Friedman Kool-Aid!!!

"I served on the budget committee in the Senate, and I remember as vividly as if it were yesterday when we had a hearing in which Alan Greenspan came and justified increasing spending and cutting taxes, saying that we didn't really need to pay down the debt -- outrageous in my view," she said.

Food Inspection is a Govt Takeover of The Food Industry?!?

2010-02-25T23:15:00.001-05:00

President Obama to Eric Cantor: We could make food and drugs cheaper but we don't want to kill people | Crooks and Liars

Obama: We could set up a system where food was cheaper than it is right now if we just eliminated meat inspectors, and we eliminated any regulations on how food is distributed and how it's stored. I'll bet in terms of drug prices we would definitely reduce prescription drug prices if we didn't have a drug administration that makes sure that we test the drugs so that they don't kill us, but we don't do that.

Memo to Sen. McCain = YOU LOST

2010-02-25T17:01:00.001-05:00

"The election is over" Obama reminds McCain | Raw Story

"We're not campaigning anymore," the president said. "The election's over. So, we can spend the remainder of the time with our respective talking points, going back and forth. We were supposed to be talking about insurance."
"The way you characterized it obviously would get some strong objections from the other side. We can have a debate about process or we can have a debate about how we're actually going to help the American people at this point."

A Socialist Plot

2010-02-25T16:09:00.001-05:00

Extra Bonus Quote of the Day -- Political Wire

"If you think it's a socialist plot, then please drop out of the federal employees health program."

-- Sen.Richard Durbin (D-IL), to Republican lawmakers at today's health care reform summit.

Canadian Premier comes to US for heart surgery | The Barr Code

2010-02-15T17:39:00.000-05:00

Canadian Premier comes to US for heart surgery | The Barr Code

if you have insurance the system will pretty much work for you (sometimes if death panels, i mean insurance companies, don’t decide that your life saving treatment is experimental) but if you are like me without health insurance you have 1 option. ER. and that is something i cant afford and a bill i wont pay. that taxes everybody. i am in my 20s and the prime of my life health wise. the system needs me to buy into it, but with health insurance from my work totaling $200 a month i simply cannot pay that. the system will get worse without 30 million people paying into it. a mandate is needed for all citizens to buy health insurance, without one i currently will not partake.

as to the situation in Canada. those who can afford it can skip the line NO MATTER WHAT COUNTRY THEY ARE FROM OR IN. MONEY TALKS as the saying goes.

the majority of Canadians (poor and middle class) cannot afford instant care and thus have a collective govt health care to keep costs down. provided it is not emergency care they wait for care. Americans have a tiered system of insurance based on who can PAY. high priced insurance plans in America allow the rich to get great care, private doctors that make house calls that the majority of Americans will never afford… the system is great in both countries IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT…

Bloggers Blast Bayh Retirement

2010-02-15T17:00:00.001-05:00

Bloggers: Bayh retirement will ’screw progressives’ yet again | Raw Story

"Apparently, Evan Bayh wants to spend more time scolding his family for moving too far to the left," said Washington Post's Ezra Klein.
Salon's Glenn Greenwald, who in November labeled Bayh "[t]he face of rotted Washington," jested, "How long will it be before Evan Bayh joins Dan Coats' lobbying firm? Maybe Bayh and Coats can switch jobs."
Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly said, "To hear Evan Bayh tell it, Republicans have made it impossible for Congress to work on issues important to him ... so he's decided to make it easier for the Republican caucus to have more power."
"When the going gets tough, the conserva-Dems pack up and go home?" Benen added.
Firedoglake's David Dayen called Bayh a "pathetic child," summarizing his explanation for retiring as, "Nobody likes my bold ideas to cut taxes for billionaires and force seniors onto cat food, so… buh-bayh."

Evan Bayh Not Running For Re-Election

2010-02-15T12:26:00.001-05:00

ABOUT TIME AND GOOD RIDDANCE YOU CORPORATE CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRAT IN NAME ONLY!!! GO CONTINUE YOUR WORK FOR THE CORPORATIONS YOU HELPED MORE THAN YOUR CONSTITUENTS!!!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Modern Warfare in Afghanistan

2010-02-15T07:58:00.001-05:00

Troops face gunfights and minefields in offensive against Taliban in Afghanistan - washingtonpost.com

But even with those measures, the troops encountered 15 roadside bombs on a three-quarter-mile route from the command post to the canal. Each had to be defused or destroyed.
"It's painstaking," said Lt. Col. Cal Worth, the battalion commander.

Frank Rich, Another Great Column

2010-02-11T22:50:00.001-05:00

Op-Ed Columnist - Smoke the Bigots Out of the Closet - NYTimes.com

A funny thing happened after Adm. Mike Mullen called for gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military: A curious silence befell much of the right. If this were a Sherlock Holmes story, it would be the case of the attack dogs that did not bark.

John McCain, commandeering the spotlight as usual, did fulminate against the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But the press focus on McCain, the crazy man in Washington’s attic, was misleading. His yapping was an exception, not the rule.

GOP Blinks, Obama Wins Showdown With Senate, 27 Nominees Confirmed

2010-02-11T22:03:00.001-05:00

Think Progress » Obama ‘wins showdown’ with Republicans as the Senate confirms 27 of his high-level nominees.

While this is a good first step, there are still dozens of nominees on hold who deserve a similar vote, and I will be looking for action from the Senate when it returns from recess. If they do not act, I reserve the right to use my recess appointment authority in the future.

Sen. Brown Slams the GOP for stalling on Obama's nominee for chair of the National Labor Relations Board

2010-02-10T09:38:00.003-05:00

Sarah Palin is a "Fucking Retard"

2010-02-09T17:12:00.001-05:00

Colbert: ‘Sarah Palin is a f**king retard’ | Raw Story

"Sarah Palin knows that it's okay to call someone a retard if like rush you clearly don't mean it which is why we should all come to her defense and say: Sarah Palin is a fucking retard," Colbert quipped.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Sarah Palin Uses a Hand-O-Prompter

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Economy

Obama admin. demands justification for health insurer’s 39 percent rate hike

2010-02-08T23:18:00.001-05:00

Obama admin. demands justification for health insurer’s 39 percent rate hike | Raw Story

Insurer spent nearly $9.5 million lobbying against health reforms; CEO's annual salary tops $10 million

Palin's Tea Party Crib Notes

2010-02-07T13:20:00.005-05:00

Palin's Tea Party Crib Notes

Hard to believe that this woman was incapable of giving a speech without cheating. Check Her HAND!

GOP Owes FBI Apology

2010-02-07T13:07:00.001-05:00

Think Progress » Podesta Calls On McConnell To Apologize For Denigrating FBI Interrogation Of Abdulmuttalab

PODESTA: Maybe if all those politicians stopped attacking the FBI – Mitch McConnell likened the FBI to a Larry King interview – maybe if they stopped with the politics –

RUTH MARCUS: Now that’s cruel.

PODESTA: Well, no, I think he owes the FBI an apology. But if they’d stop with the politics, maybe they wouldn’t have to respond.

Sen. Al Franken Blasts Comcast CEO Brian Roberts

2010-02-05T10:20:00.001-05:00

Now THAT IS A SENATOR AT WORK!!! WE NEED MORE OF THIS.. AIRED ON PRIME TIME NATIONAL PBS, NBC, FOX

GOP Sen. Shelby Blocks All Obama Nominations In The Senate Over Alabama Earmarks

2010-02-05T08:57:00.001-05:00

Report: Shelby Blocks All Obama Nominations In The Senate Over AL Earmarks | TPMDC

Richard Shelby is a complete piece of shit.

A San Diego State University professor and Congressional expert told the Mobile paper "he knew of no previous use of a blanket hold" in recent history.

Republicans Favor Budget Deficits Over Tax Increases -- Political Wire

2010-02-04T21:03:00.001-05:00

Republicans Favor Budget Deficits Over Tax Increases -- Political Wire

A Rasmussen Reports survey finds that while 50% of Republicans would rather see the United States run a budget deficit by keeping tax cuts in place, a plurality of Democrats (46%) favor the opposite approach -- a balanced budget with higher taxes. Voters not affiliated with either party are evenly divided on the question.

Interestingly, TPM notes that only a very small minority knew the correct answer to this question: "Is the following statement true or false? Most federal spending is spent on only three programs -- Social Security, Medicare and national defense."

The correct answer is "True," but only 35% got it right with a 44% plurality saying it was false.

And The Band Played On

2010-02-04T09:26:00.001-05:00

Think Progress » ThinkFast: February 4, 2010

Health care spending grew to be 17.3 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product in 2009 — a 1.1 percentage point rise — despite the economic recession. The increase was the largest in a single year since 1960, according to the new report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. By 2019, health care spending is anticipated to be represent 19.3 percent of the economy.

State Farm IS Not There For FL.

2010-02-04T09:03:00.001-05:00

State Farm cancels thousands of Fla. policies - Personal finance- msnbc.com

Revoke their corporate charter, fire their management and board, and have the government take it over.

Political Moderation

2010-02-03T08:59:00.001-05:00

Daily Kos: Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Matt Sussman: What's the old saying? Stereotypes exist because they're true?

One has to wonder if Republicans really believe that Obama stole the election, was born in Kenya, and that all non-Christians are going to hell. Naw, it couldn't be.

Sam Stein: A new poll of more than 2,000 self-identified Republican voters illustrates the incredible paranoia enveloping the party and the intense pressure drawing lawmakers further and further away from political moderation.

Insane or Mind-Numbingly Stupid

2010-02-03T08:51:00.001-05:00

Why I Am Not a Republican | Capital Gains and Games

I can only conclude from this new poll of 2003 self-identified Republicans nationwide that between 20% and 50% of the party is either insane or mind-numbingly stupid.

Budgets and Deficits

2010-02-02T23:03:00.002-05:00

President Obama Largely Inherited Today’s Huge Deficits — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

says it all.

Krugman vs Ailes

2010-02-01T08:22:00.000-05:00

Krugman confronts Ailes with Fox News' "deliberate" health care "misinformation" documented by Media Matters | Media Matters for America