Category: Politics

A Few More People on the Right Side of 51 Park

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And they are Democrats.

Senator Al Franken:

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) is slamming conservative opposition to the Muslim community center project near Ground Zero in New York City — the city where he formerly resided for many years — calling the attacks against it “one of the most disgraceful things that I’ve heard.”

And Congressman Charlie Rangel:

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) came out in support of the proposed Cordoba House Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Zero yesterday, saying that he’s “kind of proud that they’re sticking to their guns and saying this is where they would want to worship.”

Also, lesser plaudits to Nancy Pelosi, who suggested that the anti-Islamic Center movement might be AstroTurf, though she walked it back a bit later in the day.

Deep Thought

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Dick Armey created an Army of Dicks.*

Jon Stewart does a good job teasing out the hypocrisy of the Congressman, former House Majority Leader, and über lobbyist Dick Armey casting himself as an anti-establishment foe of Washington .


Jon Stewart, Part 1 of 3


Jon Stewart, Part 2 of 3


Jon Stewart, Part 1 of 3

*The Teabaggers.

He’s Not the Wanker of the Day……

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But only because Howard Dean gets that honor today.

Once again, it’s Chris Dodd, who continues to audition for his 7-figure lobbying gig, because after sending out signals that she was a great candidate, but not confirmable, there has been a groundswell of support that appears to be dragging the Obama administration kicking and screaming into nominating her. (I still don’t think that they will)

So now Dodd has taking a new tack, saying that he is unsure if she is qualified:

“If the president wants to name her and it goes through the hearing process, then fine, she’ll have my support,” Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) told the Hartford Courant editorial board. “But she has to tell me more than just she’s a good consumer advocate or that’s she’s got a great campaign.

“It isn’t just a question of being a consumer advocate. I want to see that she can manage something, too.”

Dude, you ran for President of the United States, and you never managed anything bigger than a a Senator’s office.

<Facepalm>

Breaking: Obama Breaks Iraq Withdrawal Promise

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The news is out, and the State Department has announced that they have declared victory but we will not be leaving.

You see, there are no more combat troops, just, “50,000 advisers,” along with something like 85,000 mercenaries contractors, or about 1 per every 200 Iraqis.

And this is what these folks will do:

So will all the troops be coming home? Hopefully, but don’t bet on it. Recall that US troops remain in South Korea, six decades after the Korean War.

The 50,000 US troops left until 2011 will supposedly “advise and assist” and perform “anti-terrorism” missions and training. To this old war correspondent and military historian, that sounds an awful lot like the British Empires employment of native troops under white officers.

These remaining rebranded US “training” troops will likely be six armor-heavy combat brigades, backed by warplanes from US air bases in the Gulf. A US brigade withdrawn from Iraq will go to neighboring Kuwait. Most of the rest will transfer to Afghanistan.

You know, he doesn’t have to get through Congress, he can just do this, and he won’t.

I called this 2 weeks ago, and said that it would be a phony withdrawal.

Unfortunately, I was correct.

Well F%$# Me.

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Pat Buchanan taking the moral high ground
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?


Ted Olson says that Obama is Right


Howard Dean calls for the Islamic center to move

First, Pat Buchanan seizes the moral high ground, 7 words I never expected to say, when he takes Newt Gingrich to task for inappropriate Nazi references:

How do you get more attention than Sarah Palin, who’s very good at this, is to go two steps further. I mean, I think bringing the Nazis into the argument is always absurd in American politics because there is no valid comparison there. And secondly, you know, you bring that in and that’s all we start talking about.

Meanwhile, Ted Olson, Republican hatchet man, and survivor of a 911 victim, his 1st wife was on one of the planes, has said that Barack Obama was right to say that this is a matter of fundamental rights and values.

And while we are on the the matter of people taking counter-intuitive positions on this, we have Howard Dean calling for the Islamic center to move.

I’m not sure what brought on this uncharacteristic outburst of cowardice, but Dr. Dean is the individual here to whom the “wanker” tag implies.

We live in a world that resembles what The Onion would write, if they were on Bizarro World, and they dropped acid.

Blago: A Swing and a Miss

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A hung jury on 23 of the 24 counts, and a conviction on lying to an FBI agent:

The jury is finally in on Rod Blagojevich — and the verdict is decidedly undecided.

A federal jury of six men and six women just returned a split verdict against the former governor, convicting him on only one of the 24 criminal corruption counts he faced.

Verdict reached: Blagojevich brothers arrive in court The Blago blog: Latest updates Complete coverage of the Blagojevich trial

The governor was found guilty of giving a false statement to federal agents.

In a courthouse where prosecutors win more than 90 percent of the time and after listening to a treasure trove of secretly recorded conversations, the jury couldn’t reach a unanimous decision on the other 23 counts.

So, the lesson here is that maybe US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is not all that, which I kind of figured when all he got out of Plamegate was Scooter Libby lying to federal officers (funny similarity there).

Actually, there is a broader lesson: Don’t talk to law enforcement if you think that there is the vaguest possibility that you are a target, even minor misstatements get thrown into the mix.

FWIW, I don;t think that Rahm will testify at the inevitable retrial, there is simply no “there” there.

I still cannot figure out how the prosecution screwed the pooch this badly, but I haven’t followed the minutiae, and most of what I have heard have been prosecution statements, so I won’t 2ndguess the jury.

Our Man in Afghanistan

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Afghan President Hamid Karzai is attempting to seize control of the anti-corruption probes in Afghanistan (also here):

Obama administration officials fear that a move by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to assert control over U.S.-backed corruption investigations might provoke the biggest crisis in U.S.-Afghan relations since last year’s fraud-riddled election and could further threaten congressional approval of billions of dollars in pending aid.

I wonder why? It couldn’t be that anyone that he knows, or is close to him, is corrupt, could it?

For this puke, we lost 3 soldiers today.

I Love General J. C. Christian*

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He has come up with Burn the Confederate Flag Day, to be held on September 12:

Burn The Confederate Flag Day


Burn the Confederate Flag Day is a protest against the right’s exploitation of racial prejudice for political gain. We urge you to burn the Confederate flag, a long-time symbol of racial hatred, on Sept 12, the date when the racially-divisive Tea Party holds its annual hate fest.

Brilliant.

*In a 110% purely heterosexual kind of way, of course, as the General would say.

Kidnapped, Made to Smoke a Bong, and Worship Aqua Buddha?

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We have a report that as a some sort of twisted college prank, while an undergraduate at Baylor, Rand Paul and his friends kidnapped a coed, and then made her take bong hits worship “Aqua Buddha” in a stream.

This is whack, and I hope that Paul doesn’t do drugs any more, but it raises a question: If he was into this, why did he go to Baylor, where they ban premarital sex because it might lead to dancing.

This is a weird news day.

OK, This is a Harsh Takedown

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Stephen Colbert, playing along with Laura Ingram’s literary conceit that her book, The Obama Diaries, is real, absolutely destroyes her and her book.

When he says, “I’ve read a fair amount of this book, and I know he’s not supposed to be a dumb guy, he’s a great orator, but this writing is terrible,” he’s telling Laura that she cannot write for sh%$, for example.

Ouch.

The Teabaggers Oregon Chapter is Doomed

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Click for full size

The Stupidity, shortly followed by


The Groveling Apology

The Oregon division of the teabaggers, AKA the “Oregon Tea Party,” decided to steal the slogan of Anonymous on 4chan.

Anonymous is/are a group of people who took on the Church of Scientology, and pretty much won.

Anonyous took action: There was a flood of pr0n links and the like on the Oregon Teabaggers’ Facebook page, which has now been taken down, though not before the Teabaggers posted a sycophantic apology (see pic).

Heh.

Stuff like this is why 4chan is firmly on my list of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off.

A Clarification on Yesterday’s Post

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On the whole, I think that Barack Obama’s administration is immeasurably better than George W. Bush’s. It is on the specific areas of immigration, the jihad against whistleblowers, the national security state, and Afghanistan where he is by all objective measures much worse.

Yesterday’s post, was about those specific areas, and in other areas he compares favorably:

  • On healthcare, Obama is head and shoulders above Bush and His Evil Minions™. (But still pretty lame and timid)
  • On Labor, Obama is head and shoulders above Bush and His Evil Minions™. (But still pretty lame and timid)
  • On financial regulation, Obama is head and shoulders above Bush and His Evil Minions™. (But still pretty lame and timid)
  • On the budget and taxation, Obama is head and shoulders above Bush and His Evil Minions™. (But still pretty lame and timid)

Huh, there appears to be a pattern.

Obama is Objectively Worst than Bush

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In addition to increasing deportations of illegal aliens to a pace only dreamed of by the Bush administration, Barack Obama is looking to expand the FBI’s extrajudicial, and much abused National Security Letters beyond what Dick Cheney wanted in his most paranoid fantasies:

Today, The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration wants Congress to expand the type of data that can be gained through the use of National Security Letters:

The administration wants to add just four words — “electronic communication transactional records” — to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge’s approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user’s browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the “content” of e-mail or other Internet communication.

This is on the heels not only of the administration blocking reasonable restrictions on what has objectively been widespread misuse of NSLs, but of the FBI recently beginning to investigate whether or not “hundreds” of agents cheated on the exam meant to “ensure that they could follow aggressive investigative guidelines without intruding on Americans’ privacy rights.” That’s on top of threatening to veto the meager intelligence-oversight reforms being proposed by Congress. As Gene Healy wrote yesterday, “Our interminable war on terror sometimes seems designed to justify every bad thing libertarians have ever said about government.” Having acted irresponsibly with the surveillance power it already has, and blocked reform that would have made the government more accountable, the Obama administration now wants even more power to violate the privacy rights of American citizens. When it comes to national security, there’s nothing like failed government performance to justify giving the government more power.

My sense on these matters is that there are a number of issues which are driving this:

  • Barack Obama feels that he and his administration are good people who can responsibly handle this authority, and so he, and his administration, do not need to constrained by constitutional checks and balances.
    • Which would put former adjunct Professor Obama in serious running for “Worst Constitutional Law Professor ever.”
  • Barack Obama has been successfully cowed by the professional state security apparatus in the United States, which is doubtless feeding him alarmist horror stories, and so he is giving them their wish list.
  • That, much like he is in the case of expanded deportations, and the war in Afghanistan, he sees this as a way to inoculate himself against attacks from the right in 2012.
    • If this one is true, it means that Dick Cheney has more ideological integrity than does Barack Obama, as scary as that sound.
  • Because he can, which, as former President Bill Clinton noted is the worst possible reason.

It is really remarkable how despite my low expectations, he continues to manage to disappoint.

To a large degree I blame those who protested the excesses of Bush and His Evil Minions™ who are not largely silent, because Barack Obama is the leader of their party.

I’m Buying Futures in Fig Newtons and Ice Cream Sammiches

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It appears that California’s Proposition 19, which would legalize and tax marijuana in the state has support fairly consistently polling ahead of opposition.

It should be noted that on human mediated polling, the initiative is down by between 1% and 4%, while in automated polling it is ahead by 10% and 16%, which Nate Silver thinks this is largely because people do not want to tell another person that they are voting for pot, though automated polls might miss minorities who tend to be more opposed to legalization.

I think that it will pass, because it is being sold on unrealistic magical thinking: If you vote for pot, and it is taxed, then California’s fiscal crisis is washed away by a font of “potro-dollars”.

This argument has a grain of truth, reduced costs of enforcement and the resulting criminality, along with the tax revenue, are not insignificant, but it’s not enough to fix the state that was ruined by the California voters and their initiative petition process.

Spineless Weasels

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So, because of the threat that Republicans will not say nice things about them, Democrats are preemptively taking the possibility of any meaningful legislative activities following the elections, during the lame duck session:

The head of House Democrats’ campaign committee tried Tuesday to tamp down speculation that the party would try to push through major legislation during a lame-duck session of Congress this fall.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the assistant to the Speaker and chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), said “no one should think there’s some secret plan for after the election on big issues.”

Yeah, like rolling over and exposing your belly will keep them for going for your throat.

I’m with Howard Dean, when he says, “No More Apologies — It’s Time to Stand Up for Our Convictions.”