Category: Stupid

10 August 2010, 9:09 PM

I Don’t Know if Little Bobbie Gibbs Should Resign…

But the White House press secretary certainly should go f%$# himself after this outburst:

During an interview with The Hill in his West Wing office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers, whom he said would never regard anything the president did as good enough.

“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”

The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

……

As a bit of fact checking, Canadian healthcare is actually a good thing, it has lower prices and better outcomes than we in the US achieve, and I can’t find anyone who supports abolishing the Pentagon, not even Dennis Kucinich, whose supporters Gibbs excoriates later in the interview.

For a senior adviser to the president, this is stupid and regrettable. For the press secretary, whose sole job is to cast administration policy in the most positive way, it is inexcusable.

This is not just beneath the behavior of a sentient being serving as press secretary, it’s beneath Dana Perino at her most addle-headed.

That being said, Paul Krugman makes a very good point, that, “What’s good for Obama is not necessarily good for his aides.” He calls it the “Principal Agent Problem,” which is economist wonk-speak for saying that people who work for someone may frequently advance their own agenda at the expense of those of their boss.

A classic case is overpaid executives who are nominally, “working for the shareholders,” when they are actually working to maximize personal gain, even at the expense of the viability of the corporation.

Obama is not really harmed by criticism from his base, but this criticism might change just who Obama listens to, so this reaction is almost certainly a reflection of his staff’s insecurities more than it is a realistic concern for Barack Obama or his agenda.

I think that Krugman sees the point clearly, but that he does miss another one: This sort of reaction is a fairly common in the Obama White House, Google, “f%$#ing retarded,” for example, and it indicates a staff that is obsessed with their own positioning at the expense of the administration and Obama’s policy agenda (whatever the f%$# that is).

So, your press secretary probably deserves to be fired, and the counter productive venom expressed by your staff indicates that the staff are not being properly managed, which says something distressing about his chief of staff.

Here’s hoping that Obama won’t hang onto Rahm the way that Bush hung onto Rumsfeld, and yeah, dumping Vilsac and Salazar might be a good idea too.

10 August 2010, 8:07 PM

If There is the Slimmest Possibility of Making the Wrong Decision……

Then you can be certain that soon to be former New York Governor David Paterson will be in favor of it:

Gov. David A. Paterson said Tuesday that he would consider offering state-owned property to the developers of a $100 million Muslim center and mosque if they decided to build it farther from ground zero.

The governor, wading into a fierce national debate over freedom of religion, said “there is no reason why” the center, known as Park51, should not be built as planned, two blocks from the former World Trade Center.

Well, let’s see. We have:

Appealing to the basest of bigoted demagogues.
Just how far from ground zero do you have to be?
Why is it OK for a strip club to be located less than a block away from the mosque sites.
This a blatantly unconstitutional engagement of religion by the government. It’s both a subsidy, and a ban based on a the religion of those involved.
OK, I’m a Jew, when does my shul get its free real estate on Manhattan?

Seriously, this guy almost makes McConnell and Boehner look good.

9 August 2010, 10:19 PM

Your Moment of Eric Blair*

U.S. forces are staying in Iraq to prevent foreign powers from meddling with the new government Gen. Ray Odierno said Sunday.

Our occupation of Iraq will continue in order to prevent foreign interference in the ~~oil~~ nation.

Irony is dead.

^*George Orwell’s real name.

9 August 2010, 9:51 PM

If They Believe It, It’s Wrong

Because they are always wrong about everything:

The U.S. economy will improve slowly and another round of fiscal stimulus probably wouldn’t be effective, former Treasury secretaries Paul O’Neill and Robert Rubin said.

Truth be told, I haven’t followed Paul O’Neill closely, but Bob Rubin should be on trial for a long history of fraud, and should not be taken seriously since he drove Citi into the ditch.

Mo stimulus, Mo stimulus, Mo stimulus!

Seriously, these guys are the Washington Generals of finance.

9 August 2010, 6:33 PM

This is Not The Onion

E=mc²: Could it be ………… Satan?

Andy Schlafley, daughter of noted wingnut Phyllis, has declared that Einstein’s theory of relativity is a liberal conspiracy:

The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.

……

See, e.g., historian Paul Johnson’s book about the 20th century, and the article written by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe as allegedly assisted by Barack Obama. Virtually no one who is taught and believes relativity continues to read the Bible, a book that outsells New York Times bestsellers by a hundred-fold

Seriously, you cannot make this sh$# up.

5 August 2010, 10:23 PM

Why Yes, The Obama Administration is Paying to Offshore Your Job

It’s called the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO),and USAID is spending $30 million dollars to train workers in Sri Lanka in order to outsource IT jobs from the United States:

Under director Rajiv Shah [an Obama political appointee], the United States Agency for International Development will partner with private outsourcers in Sri Lanka to teach workers there advanced IT skills like Enterprise Java (Java EE) programming, as well as skills in business process outsourcing and call center support. USAID will also help the trainees brush up on their English language proficiency.

USAID is contributing about $10 million to the effort, while its private partners are investing roughly $26 million.

“To help fill workforce gaps in BPO and IT, USAID is teaming up with leading BPO and IT/English language training companies to establish professional IT and English skills development training centers,” the U.S. Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka, said in a statement posted Friday on its Web site.

“Courses in Business Process Outsourcing, Enterprise Java, and English Language Skills will be offered at no charge to over 3,000 under- and unemployed students who will then participate in on-the-job training schemes with private firms,” the embassy said.

Oh, I forgot to add, they are also doing this in Armenia.

I don’t think that Barack Obama really wants to send your jobs overseas, but I do think that there are people in his administration are “strongly free trade” and they think that being “strongly free trade” means that agencies of the US government have an obligation to move jobs out of the country in this manner, on the theory that one day, eventually, these countries will develop a middle class that will buy the sh%$ that we make.

Still, if this is not on the front page of some right wing blogger in the next 3 days, I would be very surprised.

It betrays a level of political incompetence and arrogance that positively boggles the mind.

I’m going to check and see if it is on Slashdot, and if not, I’ll do some blog whoring with the story.

5 August 2010, 9:58 PM

Summers and Geithner Rule the Roost

After being ignored for 18 months in favor of the disastrous policies of the Geithner/Summers tag team, Christina Romer is calling it quits.

The ones who understand what needs to be done leave, the incompetent stay, and the status quo remains.

Feeling mopey changey right now.

4 August 2010, 8:45 PM

Google and Verizon Hammer Nails in Net Neutrality’s Coffin

My guess is that Google has given up on the timid Obama administration, and Obama’s timid FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, who falls over when the incumbent players say “boo”, so Google is throwing in the towel, and is negotiating with Verizon to pay extortion money to insure that it doesn’t get shut out of the telcos last mile:

Google and Verizon, two leading players in Internet service and content, are nearing an agreement that could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege.

The charges could be paid by companies, like YouTube, owned by Google, for example, to Verizon, one of the nation’s leading Internet service providers, to ensure that its content received priority as it made its way to consumers. The agreement could eventually lead to higher charges for Internet users.

Why is Google throwing in the towel?

Well part of it may be because Verizon is a major player in mobile phones, and they don’t want to be locked out:

People close to the negotiations who were not authorized to speak publicly about them said an agreement could be reached as soon as next week. If completed, Google, whose Android operating system powers many Verizon wireless phones, would agree not to challenge Verizon’s ability to manage its broadband Internet network as it pleased.

Or maybe it’s because all this hopey changey crap is nopey change crap:

Since the court decision, involving Comcast, in April, the F.C.C. has been trying to find a way to regulate broadband delivery, and that effort has been the subject of a series of private meetings at the agency’s headquarters in recent weeks. At the meetings, officials from the nation’s biggest Internet service and content providers, including Google and Verizon, have tried to reach a consensus on how broadband Internet service should be regulated in light of the decision. Those meetings continued this week, apart from the talks between Google and Verizon.

Yes, you have a group of people doing bad things, and destroying a public resource, and even though you have the authority to regulate, all you have to do is redefine broadband, and you are good to go, you are working to, “reach a consensus on how broadband Internet service should be regulated.”

That’s like banks trying to reach a consensus with bank robbers.

The incumbents are not valued members of the community, they are parasites who use an accident of history to attempt to act as highwaymen.

It’s not tough to reregulate this sh%$. You can’t now because a few years back, your Bushco predecessor made it so:

The F.C.C., meanwhile, favors a level playing field, but it cannot impose one as long as its authority over broadband is in legal doubt. It has proposed a solution that would reclassify broadband Internet service under the Communications Act from its current designation as an “information service,” a lightly regulated designation, to a “telecommunications service,” a category that, like telephone service, is subject to stricter regulation.

It’s very simple. Make a new finding. The old one was a payoff to the telcos for campaign bucks, warrantless wiretapping, and a failed free market ideology.

Make that ruling, and then, when you have a big stick, you can get to the rule making.

First, get a firm grip on their balls, and then negotiate.

Remember, we are dealing with The Phone Company here, and to quote Lily Tomlin, “We don’t care, we don’t have to…we’re the phone company.”

They may be essential, but they aren’t allies.

Then again, I’m being an optimist. If you look at the Obama administration’s actions, whether they be healthcare, financial reform, the Employee Free Choice Act, etc., it’s clear that their MO is to talk about reform, and then to give the malefactors what they want, so this could be by design, rather than by incompetence or cowardice.

In either case, treating the Obama Administration, and their FCC Chairman as the enemy and a bad faith player still gives activists the best policy, so I would suggest that this is what net neutrality activists do.

Avoid the veal pen conference calls, and light fires under them.

4 August 2010, 8:05 PM

Michelle Maglalang Malkin, Anchor Baby

Yes, immigration hardliner, and frequent railer against immigrants having “Anchor Babies” to secure residency status, was anchor baby herself.

Go figure

4 August 2010, 6:50 PM

When Alan Keyes Calls You Crazy………

You are completely batsh%$ insane:

“The 14th Amendment is not something one should play with lightly,” Keyes said in response to a question from ThinkProgress at the Tea Party Express press event today. “Lindsay Graham used the term — as people have carelessly done over the years — referring to the 14th Amendment as something that has to do with ‘birthright citizenship’ and we ought to get rid of ‘birthright citizenship.'”

“Well, let me see,” Keyes added sarcastically, “If citizenship is not a birthright then it must be a grant of the government. And if it is a grant of the government, it could curtail that grant in all the ways that fascists and totalitarians always want to.”

This is like Keith Richards telling you that you do too much drugs.

3 August 2010, 7:59 PM

The FBI Gets Stupid

Click for full size

J. Edgar Hoover can bite my shiny metal ass!

This bit of FBI stupidity is a pretty good indication of how the current IP regime, and what people think the current IP regime is is a clusterf%$#:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has taken on everyone from Al Capone to John Dillinger to the Unabomber. Its latest adversary: Wikipedia.

The bureau wrote a letter in July to the Wikimedia Foundation, the parent organization of Wikipedia, demanding that it take down an image of the F.B.I. seal accompanying an article on the bureau, and threatened litigation: “Failure to comply may result in further legal action. We appreciate your timely attention to this matter.”

The problem, those at Wikipedia say, is that the law cited in the F.B.I.’s letter is largely about keeping people from flashing fake badges or profiting from the use of the seal, and not about posting images on noncommercial Web sites. Many sites, including the online version of the Encyclopedia Britannica, display the seal.

Other organizations might simply back down. But Wikipedia sent back a politely feisty response, stating that the bureau’s lawyers had misquoted the law. “While we appreciate your desire to revise the statute to reflect your expansive vision of it, the fact is that we must work with the actual language of the statute, not the aspirational version” that the F.B.I. had provided.

I can understand if it’s some smart ass blogger telling J. Edgar Hoover, “Bite their shiny metal ass,”^* but this is a post of the seal on a damn encyclopedia.

Morons.

^{*Somehow, I don’t think that the G-men are coming after me, and neither does the New York Times, who also reproduced the seal.}

3 August 2010, 7:44 PM

Wanker of the Day

Paul Krugman actually linked the Monty Python sketch and Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner OP/ED first.

Little Timmy Geithner just penned an OP/Ed today, “Welcome to the Recovery,” which is remarkably clueless.

While he admits that there is still a tough row to how, his he characterization of the recovery is positively Hooveresque.

I am surprised that he did not announce that “Prosperity is just around the corner.”

He declares, “We are on a path back to growth,” and that “The economy on the road to recovery”.

I understand the desire to paint this rosily, but it is a political loser: Americans do not respond well to claims of a robust recovery when ⅙ of the workforce (U6) is unemployed.

I think that the problem here is that Geithner does not see this unemployment level as a problem.

Why else would he suggest that at a time when there are 5 job applicants for every job opening, a record, that the problem is just that American workers need training:

The share of workers who have been unemployed for six months or more is at its highest level since 1948, when the data was first recorded, and we must do more to ensure that they have the skills they need to re-enter the 21st-century economy.

This is offensive and wrong on so many levels.

As Atrios notes:

The sentence that should have been written is:

The share of workers who have been unemployed for six months or more is at its highest level since 1948, when the data was first recorded, and we must do more to ensure that they have jobs.

But obviously that’s not what they’re thinking. Unemployment is a skills mismatch problem, unemployed losers don’t “have the skills they need to re-enter the 21st-century economy.”

We’re screwed.

Anyone who thinks that the problem is a temporary dislocation of workers, as opposed to a period of catastrophic job loss should be considered to lack the skills necessary to be employed in the 21^st century economy.

Fire Tim Geithner now.

3 August 2010, 6:22 AM

But This Isn’t The Onion

The Republicans are now looking at repealing the 14^th amendment, in effect repealing the Dredd Scott decision, which in addition to making slavery eternal, also declared that freed slaves were not US citizens.

<Facepalm>

31 July 2010, 9:44 PM

Goldman S@#54

We live in Bizarro World

Jon Stewart asks a question, “What is the appropriate response for a company that is selling its customers a sh%$ty deals, being caught on email calling them sh%$ty deals, and then being forced to pay a $550 million fine?”

Well if you are Goldman Sachs, the response is to ban profanity in employee email.

<Facepalm>

30 July 2010, 7:35 PM

The Teabaggers Oregon Chapter is Doomed

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.

28 July 2010, 8:21 PM

Spineless Weasels

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.”

27 July 2010, 9:22 PM

Blue Dog Dem Goes Chicken for MRIs

Stupid is as stupid does

Ben Chandler of Kentucky spoke approvingly of the days when people paid their doctors with chickens, and a constituent got it on tape.

He voted against the healthcare bill, because he’s a Blue Dog, and he kisses health insurer’s asses.

Obviously, this is not as bad as Sue Lowden’s doubling down on barter for MRIs, he was just being nostalgic, but it’s likely that his Republican opponent will hammer him for it anyway, and I, for one, am glad.

We need fewer faux Dems in the Congress.