Category: Politics

Shoot Me, I Agree With David Frum

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Who is a Canadian turned right wing former George W. Bush speech writer.

Frum takes Commentary magazine,* and staff writer Jennifer Rubin, over her article “Why Jews Hate Palin”, in which she suggests that Jews, or at least Jewish liberals, hate rural people, hunters, people who work with their hands (note here, Palin never really worked with her hands except for summer jobs when she was in school), people who have large families, the military and military families, and people who denigrate education.

Also she thinks that Jews find her too pretty, and hate her for that.

You know, her article could come from the mouth of Patrick Buchanan, it’s so full of stereotypes, and Frum is remarkably kind to her in his response, but he nails her to the last wall.

The last paragraph says it all”

But even this is not the worst of it. Just guessing, but I think the real and most fundamental problem Jews have with Palin is not her gleeful ignorance, but her willful divisiveness. More than any politician in memory, Palin seems to divide her fellow-Americans into first class and second class citizens, real Americans and not-so-real Americans. To do her justice, she has never said anything to suggest that Jews as Jews fall into the second, less-real, class. But Jews do tend to have an intuition that when this sort of line-drawing is done, we are likely to find ourselves on the wrong side.

Also, add the fact that she literally shared a stage with a professional witch hunter, one who had driven “witches” out of his community, at her church, and the juxtaposition of Christian witch-hunters and the Jewish community is………How to put this?………Most unfortunate.

That being said, Frum does miss a point: that Jews don’t view her more negatively than the general population:

The entirety of the Commentary article rests on the notion that Jews actually disproportionately dislike Palin. As her one piece of evidence, Rubin cites a 9/08 poll showing that only 37 percent of Jews approve of Palin. Is this really disproportionately low?

………………

So going by their partisan voting patterns alone, we would expect 36.5 percent of Jews to approve of Palin — almost exactly what that poll found.

Though to be fair to Mr. Frum, I found that blog post in his tweets, and the negative tags for this post apply to Ms. Rubin, and not him.

*No links to the magazine, ever. It got hijacked by the John Podhoretz Neocon insanity in the late 1960s, and no more link to them than I would link to Michelle Malkin.

Cracks in the Republican Façade

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Dick Lugar just called out Dick Cheney on his statements about terrorism:

Richard Lugar, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, defended President Barack Obama’s handling of recent terrorism threats, taking issue with former Vice President Dick Cheney’s criticism.

“It’s unfair,” Lugar said in an interview for Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend. “I think the president is focused.”

It’s either a sign of the apocalypse, or Senator Lugar is thinking about switching parties.

The Masque Slips

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Republican Congressional Candidate Allen Quist has just said that it’s more important to fight Democrats than it is to fight terrorism:

“It’s because I, like you, have seen that our country is being destroyed. I mean, this is — every generation has had to fight the fight for freedom. This is our fight. And this is our time. This is it. Terrorism, yes — but that’s not the big battle. The big battle is in D.C., with the radicals. They aren’t liberals, they’re radicals. Obama, Pelosi, Walz — they’re not liberals, they’re radicals. They are destroying our country. And people all over are figuring that out.”

Well, it’s nice that at least one of them is telling the truth, that they find the quest for power is more important than the well-being of the nation.

Here is the video, you can see that statement at about the 3 minute mark:

Speaking of Michelle Bachmann’s Frothing at the Mouth Lunacy on the Census

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Click for full size



The Crazy, It Burns US!!!!

She has stopped asking people not to fill out the Census over the past few months.

Why is this? Well, perhaps it’s because if Minnesota loses a Congressional district, it’s likely it will be her district that goes the way of those dinosaurs that she does not believe in:

State demographer Tom Gillaspy has been
warning for months that the next census
could result in the loss of one congressional s
eat in Minnesota. In fact, he confessed last
week that, until the recession hit, he was
almost resigned to the probability that
Minnesotans would be allowed to elect only
seven U.S. House members from newly
drawn districts in 2012.

……………

It’s ironic that a Minnesota member of Congress, Republican Michele Bachmann, went so far last summer to declare her intention to only partially complete her census forms, and to suggest reasons for others not to comply with the census law. If Minnesota loses a congressional seat, Bachmann’s populous Sixth District could be carved into pieces. She likely would have to battle another incumbent to hang on to her seat. We’ve noticed that her anticensus rhetoric has lately ceased. We hope she got wise: Census compliance is not only in Minnesota’s best interest, but also her own.

As Eric Kleefeld notes at TPM:

The really fun fact, as I’ve learned from Minnesota experts, is that Bachmann’s district would likely be the first to go if the state lost a seat. The other seats are all fairly regular-shaped, logical districts built around identifiable regions of the state (Minneapolis, St. Paul, the Iron Range, and so on). Bachmann’s district is made of what’s left over after such a process, twisting and turning from a small strip of the Wisconsin border and curving deep into the middle of the state. As such, the obvious course of action if the state loses a seat is to split her district up among its neighbors.

Basically, her district is made up of all those areas left over after they did the first 7, which are made up, in classic “Minnesota Nice” manner to be contiguous and to represent regions accurately and fairly.

I’d say that Karma was a bitch, but that would probably make Brit Hume angry.

What Do Alan Grayson and Church Lady Have in Common

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Could it be ………… Satan?

Well, first, they are both very funny, and they both present an aggressive take on truth and hypocrisy.

Now we have a 3rd thing, they both think that Satan has something to the darkness at the core of our society:

The Prince of Darkness himself might be best-suited to write the foreword to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s forthcoming book, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) suggested Monday.

Grayson, during an appearance on MSNBC, blasted the former Republican vice president for having attacked President Barack Obama’s handling of defending the U.S. from terrorist attacks.

Cheney’s attacks, Grayson argued, were only a tactic to gin up sales for his memoir, which is expected to be released this year.

“I wonder who’s doing the introduction to his book?” Grayson said. “Maybe it’s Mephistopheles; maybe it’s Satan.“

Somehow I doubt that Satan would want to be associated with Dick Cheney, it would be bad for his image, but Grayson’s underlying point, that the Republicans used security as political theater, rather than making a good faith attempt to keep us safe, is valid.

One note to the morons who compare Grayson to people like Michelle Bachman: There is a difference.

Grayson uses hyperbole to make his point, and he knows it, while when Bachmann says, for example, that US Census data will be used for Kommie Koncentration Kamps™, she actually really believes it.

Rep. Parker Griffith’s Staff Quits En Masse

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This is not a big surprise, first, they know that they won’t find work with Republicans, and second, they know that if they don’t quit, they won’t ever work for a Democratic Congressman again:

In a sternly worded statement, Griffith Chief of Staff Sharon Wheeler announced the exit of herself, along with legislative director Megan Swearingen, senior legislative assistant Brian Greer, legislative assistant Will Crain, press secretary Sean Magers, legislative correspondent Arinze Ifekauche, legislative correspondent Chase Chesser, staff assistant Mary Lou Hughston, congressional fellows Anjali Shah Kastorf and Leslee Oden and intern Andrew Menefee.

Griffith’s political consulting team has already parted ways with him since he announced over the holiday break that he would switch parties.

(emphasis mine)

The intern quit? The intern?

Dude, when your intern felt compelled to quit, you just got yourself seriously dissed.

What 10 Years of Conservatives Getting What They Wanted Got Us

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Click for full size

Note that private employment rolls actually fell


And in handy bar graph form

The Washington Post correctly called the “Aughts” a lost decade, inflation adjusted median income fell (for the first time on record), non-farm payroll experienced no growth (for the first time on record), household wealth fell (for the first time on record), GDP rose by the lowest number since at least the Great Depression.

The same goes for the stock market, only in this case, the records go back 200 years.

We have had a grand experiment of embracing conservative philosophy, with a highly right wing executive and a compliant legislative branch, since 2001 and the result has been miserable failure.

The past decade may not be as bad as the Great Depression, but it beats anything else in the 20th or 21st century, and it is not over yet.

Franken Rape Amendment Becomes Law

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The 2010 Defense Authorization Bill was signed into law by Barack Obama about 2 weeks ago, and the bill included Al Franken’s prohibition on defense contractors using binding arbitration to keep things like the rape of their employees by their employees out of court.

Since it’s attached to an appropriations bill, it only runs for a year, so I would suggest a stand alone bill, timed to hit the floor in the June-July time frame to permanently close the loophole.

We’ll see how many ‘Phants want to vote pro-rape a few months prior to elections, particularly given the outrage over the pro-rape Republicans over Franken Amendment in the first place.

A Christmas Gift for the Goyim*

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Rudolph “I made a Mobbed Up Corrupt Cop My Police Chief” Giuliani has decided against running for Senate.

I think that he realizes that under the stress of a campaign, the real Rudy, as opposed to the one who existed for about 18 hours on 9/11/01, comes out, and that the voters hate the real Rudy.

*From the Hebrew. Literally it means “foreigner” of “alien”, but it is generally used to mean non-Jew.

Talk About the Odd Couple

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I’m talking about Jane Hamsher Grover Norquis. who have jointly penned a letter calling for the Attorney General to investigate Rahm Emanuel’s activities at Freddie Mac, as well as his role while in congress in obstructing investigations there, with the likely goal of pushing any revelations about his activities beyond the 10 year statute of activities.

Her bill of particulars:

  • That while on the board at Freddie Mac, Emanuel signed off regarding gross financial irregularities.
  • Participating in actions by Freddie Mac to make illegal in-kind contributions to politicians in the form of hosting fundraisers, including one Rahm Emanuel.
  • Writing a law allowing the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) to fire its inspector general by dissolving the organization and replacing it, as well as the the Federal Housing Finance Board (FHFB), with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA).
    • It should be noted that the Obama administration has refused to appoint a new IG to its successor organization, and the Obama administration has refused a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on Freddie claiming that, the report from the fired IG was “commercial information”.

Now, I understand that Grover Norquist is an bad guy, but you get coverage by getting a diverse coverage for such things, as Hamshire makes clear when she looks at some similar efforts, such as the CAF letter to delay confirmation of Bernanke until there was an audit of the Fed, which was signed by a diverse group of people including, Chris Bowers, Dean Baker, Mark Calabria, James Kenneth Galbraith, Matt Kibbe, Grover Norquist, Phyllis Schlafly (WTF?!?!?), Robert Weissman, and John Whitehead. (Neanderthals in italics)

I’ve always known that Rahm is intellectually corrupt, his actions. During the Obama and Clinton administrations, as well as his time head of the DCCC show a real hostility to anything but the most corporate of corporatist Democrats, and he has always exhibited a tremendous hostility to liberals.

Now appears that he may be legally corrupt too, but I don’t think that Obama would get rid of him short of an indictment, because the President thinks that he needs Rahm to keep the DFHs* in line.

*Dirty F%$#ing Hippies
Full letter after break:

December 23, 2009

Attorney General of the United States of America
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

Dear Attorney General Holder:

We write to demand an immediate investigation into the activities of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. We believe there is an abundant public record which establishes that the actions of the White House have blocked any investigation into his activities while on the board of Freddie Mac from 2000-2001, and facilitated the cover up of potential malfeasance until the 10-year statute of limitations has run out.

The purpose of this letter is to connect the dots to establish both the conduct of Mr. Emanuel and those working with him to thwart inquiry, and to support your acting speedily so that the statute of limitations does not run out before the Justice Department is able to empanel a grand jury.

The New York Times reports that the administration is negotiating to double the commitments to Fannie and Freddie for a total of $800 billion by December 31, in order to avoid the congressional approval that would be needed after that date. But there currently is no Inspector General exercising independent oversight of these entities. Acting Inspector General Ed Kelly was stripped of his authority earlier this year by the Justice Department, relying on a loophole in a bill Mr. Emanuel cosponsored and pushed through Congress shortly before he left for the White House. This effectively ended Mr. Kelly’s investigation into what happened at Fannie and Freddie.

Since that time, despite multiple warnings by Congress that having no independent Inspector General for a federal agency that oversees $6 trillion in mortgages is a serious oversight, the White House has not appointed one.

We recognize that these are extremely serious accusations, but the stonewalling by Mr. Emanuel and the White House has left us with no other redress. A 2003 report by Freddie Mac’s regulator indicated that Freddie Mac executives had informed the board of their intention to misstate the earnings to insure their own bonuses during the time Mr. Emanuel was a director. But the White House refused to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request from the Chicago Tribune for those board minutes on the grounds that Freddie Mac was a “commercial” entity, even though it was wholly owned by the government at the time the request was made.

If the Treasury approves the $800 billion commitment to Fannie and Freddie by the end of the year, it will mean that under the influence of Rahm Emanuel, the White House is moving a trillion-dollar slush fund into corruption-riddled companies with no oversight in place. This will allow Fannie and Freddie to continue to purchase more toxic assets from banks, acting as a back-door increase of the TARP without congressional approval.

Before the White House commits any more money to Fannie and Freddie, we call on the Public Integrity Section in the Justice Department to begin an investigation into the cause of Fannie and Freddie’s conservatorship, into Rahm Emanuel’s activities on the board of Freddie Mac (including any violations of his fiduciary duties to shareholders), into the decision-making behind the continued vacancy of Fannie and Freddie’s Inspector General post, and into potential public corruption by Rahm Emanuel in connection with his time in Congress, in the White House, and on the board of Freddie Mac.

We also call for the immediate appointment of an Inspector General with a complete remit to go after this information.

We both come from differing political ideologies. One of us is the conservative head of a transparency foundation, and the other is the publisher of a liberal political blog. But we make common cause today out of grave concern for the future of our country in the wake of corruption-riddled bailouts. These bailouts continue to rob Main Street to benefit Wall Street, and, because of that, we together demand the resignation of Mr. Emanuel, a man who has steadfastly worked to obstruct both oversight and inquiry into the matter. Rahm Emanuel’s conflicts of interest render him far too compromised to serve as gatekeeper to the President of the United States.

We will lay out the details further below, and are available at your earliest convenience to meet with you directly.

Sincerely,

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

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Remember Parker Griffith, the DINO Congressman who turned ‘Phant today? (link)

Well he, donated $1,500.00 to Howard Dean in 2004.

He also donated a grand to Harry Reid in 2003, and $500 to Evan Bayh in 2006, and $500 to Harold Ford in 2005.

And yes, I am banging my head against the keyboard over this.

For the other three, I can kind of get, but for Howard Dean, the candidate from the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party?

I is confused.

Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish

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What Republicans Said About Griffith in 2008

So, a DINO who said that he would not vote for Pelosi as speaker in 2010, Representative Parker Griffith (AL-5), just made it official and declared himself a Republican.

My guess is that he expects the ‘Phants to win in 2010, and in any case, he won a 52-48 bright red district, and so his reelection is easier.

The Democrats should run the ads that the Republicans ran against him in 2008……over……and over……and over again.

Now to get the rest of the Blue Dog coalition and New Democrats to leave the party……If only 1/3 of them lose reelection as ‘Phants, the Dems stay in control, and the party doesn’t have to deal with those reactionary corporatist whores.

[on edit]
It looks like the Republican running for the seat,Les Phillip, is staying in the race too, so expect a primary fight.

[another edit]It looks like the DCCC dropped $1,076,370 on this moron in 2008.

Seriously, nice job Rahm Emanuel and Chris Van Hollen, this one stinks almost as bad as spending millions to muscle out Christine Cegelis and run the hapless Tammy Duckworth up against Pete Roskam in 2006.

What John Said

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John Aravosis, that is:

President Obama doesn’t seem to lack the will to fight on matters of principle, rather, he seems to lack the will to fight on anything.……

…

…We know that when you fight for something in politics, you can very often win. But if you don’t fight, you’ll never win. We are upset at the President and the Congress because no one fought for the public option, for the President’s own campaign promise. (As David Gregory rightly noted to David Axelrod during the same broadcast.)

(emphasis mine)

We are not angry because he refused to fight for our own values, we are angry because he has refused to fight, period, full stop.

It’s not the morals, or lack thereof. It’s the cowardice.