Category: Wanker

Mitt Picks a Running Mate

1 Comment

So, Mitt Rmoney has picked Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running.

Only in America could be someone who idolizes a virulently anti-religious atheist with the sexual morals of a rabid mink in heat could be considered the savior of the Republicans, and conservative politics.

Of sourse, it is America, so Paul Ryan, who is such a fan of hack writer Ayn Rand that he requires his staff to read every page of Atlas Shrugged.

He’s also the guy who put forward a budget that eliminated Medicare, which led to some very surprising losses in special elections for the GOP.

I can’t imagine that Willard needs to appease the party’s right-wing base this badly, so I gotta figure that this is a ploy to get Obama to stop talking about his tax returns, or lack thereof.

If you don’t know who Paul Ryan is, I would refer you to Charlie Pierce on what a contemptible piece or work he is.

BTW, Michael Moore had the tweet of the day:

Link

This might be unfair to Charles Manson.

Good Riddance

No Comments

In another Friday news dump, we discover that Cass Sunstein will be leaving his position as head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

The man has been a train wreck if you are interested at all in the idea of regulation being a way to protect the public welfare:

“Cass Sunstein is the most well-connected and smartest guy who’s ever held the job,” said Rena Steinzor, president of the Center for Progressive Reform and a professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law. “But he’s also done untold damage.”

…

Few proposed rules escaped his gaze or his editor’s pen. Of the hundreds of regulations issued by the administration as of late last year, three-quarters were changed at OIRA, often at the urging of corporate interests, according to an analysis from the Center for Progressive Reform, a liberal-leaning group that monitors federal regulation. For rules from the Environmental Protection Agency, the figure was closer to 80 percent, the group found. In virtually every case, the rule was weakened, the group claimed.

Professor Steinzor cited Mr. Sunstein’s role in the killing of the E.P.A.’s proposed tightening of the standard for ozone pollution, the indefinite delay of rules governing coal ash disposal and the withdrawal earlier this year of a proposed update of child agricultural labor standards.

And here is the money quote:

Mr. Sunstein’s recommendations carry extraordinary weight, White House officials said, but the ultimate decisions in those cases were made by the president, his senior political advisers or cabinet officers.

We also have these comments:

“It’s a glorious day,” said Frank O’Donnell, of the group Clean Air Watch. “Sunstein has been a blot on the landscape.”

And from an Obama adversary:

“The Chamber has enjoyed a good working relationship with Cass Sunstein and we wish him well in his return to Harvard Law,” said a spokeswoman for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Despite its happiness with Sunstein, the agency has spent millions of dollars attacking the president’s policies.

I think that the fact that the US Chamber of Commerce liked him is the best evidence about how harmful he was to the basic idea of regulations that protect the public.

The US Chamber of Commerce is to the idea of good governance and reasonable regulation as Colonel Sanders was to the life span of chickens.

And important thing to remember though is that the Cossacks work for the Czar.

As to the greater meaning to his departure, my guess is that Obama is looking to appeal to the base for the election.

I am Sick to Death of Right Wing Democrats

No Comments

Case in point, the Obama’s OMB chair turned overpaid Wall Street puke ( Vice Chairman of Global Banking at Citigroup) Peter Ortag, who is suggesting that the solution to the problems of the US Post Office is to let the financial industry to steal it from the American people:

Those who believe in the usefulness of government must be vigilant about making sure all its activities are vital ones, since the unnecessary ones undermine public confidence. With this in mind, Congress should now privatize the U.S. Postal Service.

Further evidence for why this should happen came last week, when the Postal Service announced that it would be unable to meet billions of dollars in payments that are coming due in August and September for future retiree health benefits. Privatization is not always the best way to improve efficiency, but the problems facing the Postal Service will be difficult to address if it remains within the government, and there is no longer any sound reason for it not to go private.

This ignores the fact that the US Post Office, one of the functions specifically mentioned in the Constitution, is actually running a primary surplus.
It is having money problems because, in 2006, the Republicans required them to fully fund their pension plan out to 75 years over a 10 year period.

Right now, the Post Office is on track to default on a $5.5 billion pension payment to the US treasury tomorrow:

The U.S. Postal Service affirmed it won’t make a required $5.5 billion payment due tomorrow to the U.S. Treasury for future retirees’ health care, an obligation the agency said must end for it to become financially viable.

The service has said for months it couldn’t afford the payment, which was initially due last September, nor a $5.6 billion payment required by Sept. 30 for this year. Postal legislation passed by the U.S. Senate on April 25 would slow the schedule for those obligations. The House hasn’t acted on a different postal measure aimed at changes to help the service cope with declining mail volume.

“This has no effect on mail processing or delivery, no impact on post offices, and employees will continue to get paid,” Dave Partenheimer, a Postal Service spokesman, said today in a phone interview.

Just in case your wondering, the USPS is on a pace to lose about $12 billion this year, after taking into account paying for the retirement of people who haven’t been born yet.

Their pension is grossly over funded, (A true rarity in the US) and if they did not have to make these payments, then they would be turning something on the order of an $8 billion profit.

But according to Orzag, the real problem is that Post Office is not able to unleash its free market super-powers.

It’s really all about allowing his cow-orkers at Citi to generate the enormous fees that would be the product of any privatization this massive.

Wanker of the Decade

No Comments

Wisconsin State Senator Tim Cullen, who left the Democratic Caucus over a hissy fit about committee assignments.

While he’s not joined the Republican caucus, which would flip the Senate.

All reports are that he was Republican Governor Scott Walker’s favorite Democrat in the Senate, so I peg this as a case of Joe Lieberman syndrome, where they act like a complete prat if they feel that they have not received the requisite obsequious adulation.

Amity Shlaes is a F%$#ing Moron, Part LVMXXVII

No Comments

Here latest brain fart is the suggestion that the federal government place levies on the states, and to allow them to collect the taxes, because the Articles of Confederation were such a good idea.

I’m not being metaphorical here.  She literally extolls the virtues of the articles of confederation:

.There will be objections, of course. The first is that states’ collecting the money isn’t our tradition. It is, actually. Under the Articles of Confederation, the states, not individuals, owed payments to the federal government. The modern income tax, where citizens pay the federal government, came into being only a century ago. 

Which is not the same thing as saying that the federal government hasn’t had taxing authority for the past 223 years, though she is implying that the failed and rejected Articles of Incorporation is part of the American tradition of governance.

The Magna Carta, and the Marine Insurance Act of 1746 have more to do with the heritage and traditions of the United States than does the Articles of Confederation.

Just remember that she spent decade as a “senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations,” as well as being an adjunct (temp) prof at NYU’s Stern School of Business, despite making sh%$ up in her so called histories, and despite the fact that she her degree in is in English.

So if a representative from either of the above institutions claims that the sky is blue, find independent verification.

Any organization that hires her has no credibility.

Racist Diatribes from SB 1070 Sponsor

No Comments

In the challenges to Arizona’s immigration law, one of the claims made is that it was motivated by bigotry.

Well, the plaintiffs now have sponsor’s, former state senate majority leader Russell Pearce’s, emails, and we have the smoking gun:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona has released thousands of e-mails that it says proves Arizona’s controversial immigration law was racially motivated.

The e-mails, acquired through a public records request to the state Legislature, are to and from former senator Russell Pearce, who authored Senate Bill 1070.

The ACLU included dozens of those e-mails as part of a legal filing this week, asking U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton to prevent a key part of SB 1070 from going into effect.

The e-mails from Pearce in the court documents include statements like, “Can we maintain our social fabric as a nation with Spanish fighting English for dominance … It’s like importing leper colonies and hope we don’t catch leprosy. It’s like importing thousands of Islamic jihadists and hope they adapt to the American Dream.”

They include statistics such as “9,000 people killed every year by illegal aliens,” and “the illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that’s two-and-a-half times that of non-illegal aliens.”

Some quotes:

“Battles commence as Mexican nationalists struggle to infuse their men into American government and strengthen control over their strongholds. One look at Los Angeles with its Mexican-American mayor shows you Vincente Fox’s general Varigossa commanding an American city.”

“They create enclaves of separate groups that shall balkanize our nation into fractured nightmares of social unrest and poverty.”

I am not surprised at all that this guy is a bigoted ratf%$#, though I am surprised that he was stupid enough to reveal it on email.

What, You Mean the Money Won’t Only Go to Jeebus?

1 Comment

Legislators in Louisiana have just realized that when they voted for Governor Bobby Jindal’s school voucher program, that they voted to fund Muslim schools as well:

Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Watson, says she had no idea that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s overhaul of the state’s educational system might mean taxpayer support of Muslim schools.

“I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools,” the District 64 Representative said Monday.

“I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school,” Hodges said.

Hodges mistakenly assumed that “religious” meant “Christian.”

So I guess that she opposes giving vouchers to Yeshivas as well.

Also, this is a very, VERY stupid person.

H/T Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

This Is The World’s Violin, and It’s Playing Just For You

No Comments

Yes, the rat F%$# made this Ad

Republican political adman Fred Davis, the man who created Carly Fiorina’s infamous “Demon Sheep” ad, is sad because he’s caught flak for the fact that he’s a contemptible human being:

He’s not a witch.

Nor, Fred Davis wants the world to know, is he a racist.

Humbled, humiliated, saddened and chagrined, the Republican ad maker recently sagged into a chair in a noisy Las Vegas restaurant and for more than an hour talked about May 17, a date that will forever be ringed in red as one of personal infamy.

That day the New York Times published on its front page details of a proposed Davis-run campaign against President Obama, focusing on the incendiary Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., the president’s former pastor, “in a big, attention-arresting way.”

The intent, a do-over of sorts, was to “inflame … questions” about Obama’s character and competence. A 54-page outline, leaked to the newspaper by someone apprehensive of the plan, was very much like Davis himself: jokey, irreverent and a bit out there.

Obama was described, and demeaned, as a “metrosexual black Abraham Lincoln.” Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee for whom Davis worked, was derided as “a crusty old politician who often seemed confused” and failed to exploit the target-rich opportunity presented by the venomous Wright.

………

Two of his commercials were among the most widely noticed of the 2010 campaign: the infamous “demon sheep” ad for California’s Carly Fiorina and his meet-the-candidate spot for Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell, with its indelible opening, “I’m not a witch.” Both U.S. Senate hopefuls lost their elections, though Fiorina made it through a combative primary and, hey, Davis made you look, didn’t he?

………

But when it comes to the proposed super PAC campaign, Davis insisted, it was never his intention to use race as an incitement. “I am maybe the only person in America who didn’t see that as racist,” he said of juxtaposing the president with the fiery rants of his longtime pastor, who Obama disavowed in the heat of the 2008 primary. “I saw it as an interesting fact in a guy’s upbringing and the way he’s formed his opinions.”

No, you’re not a racist, and you’re not an asshole, because your previous oeuvre has been so uniformly positive and nice.

Listen while I say this slowly: If you did not see that as racist, it is because you are not only racist, but because you are a stupid racist.

Your presentation was too racist for a Republican billionaire, OK?

You f%$# with the bull, you get the horns.

Perhaps you want some cheese with your whine?

Quote of the Day

No Comments

If a 14 Year-Old Can Deliver Your Message, It’s Not Because He’s Gifted, It’s Because Intellectually You’re a Child

— Bill Maher

He is referring to the fact that 14-year old Caiden Cowger’s hate filled screed against gays:

When 14 year-old boys sound exactly like you [Rush Limbaugh] do and can produce radio shows and books and speeches that sound exactly like yours, maybe you should rethink the sh%$ that’s coming out of your mouth.

Video:

H/t Cthulhu.*

*No, not the unspeakably malevolent super-being, the contributor to the Stellar Parthenon BBS.†
†OK, I’ve never seen the two of them together, so Cthulhu might actually be the Cthulhu, but the mere fact that he is on a BBS, interacting with humans‡ would seem to mitigate against this.
‡Yes, I know, this is the internet, where no one knows if you are a dog.

Another Wanker of the Day

1 Comment

Chuck Schumer:

One week after Apple announced it was booting Google Maps from iOS and photographing the world with its own aerial fleet, a top US Senator has written to both companies expressing concern over their “military-grade spy planes.”

“Barbequing or sunbathing in your backyard shouldn’t be a public event,” said Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) in a statement on Monday. “People should be free from the worry of some high-tech peeping Tom technology violating one’s privacy when in your own home.”

Schumer noted that although Google Maps and Google Earth have used satellite imagery in the past, “reports have suggested” that both Google and Apple have upgraded their capabilities to aircraft-based photography that can see through windows and capture detailed images with four-inch resolution.

Although Schumer specifically mentioned sunbathing – and we never even knew he was a Reg reader – his remarks suggest that his main concern isn’t high-flying voyeurism, but rather intelligence that could aid terroists and other miscreants.

“Detailed photographs could also provide criminals and terrorists with detailed views of sensitive utilities,” he wrote to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Larry Page, noting that although there are online sources which currently show such potential targets as power lines, substations, and reservoirs, those images are in low resolution.

“However,” Schumer surmised, “if highly detailed images become available, criminals could create more complete schematic maps of the power and water grids in the United States. With the vast amount of infrastructure across the country, it would be impossible to secure every location.”

So, we have yet another participant in the war against maps.

Let’s keep everyone ignorant, because someone might do something bad with information someday.

Dumbass.

Wanker of the Day

No Comments

Senator Scott Brown:

Senator Scott Brown today rejected a debate proposed by Victoria Reggie Kennedy, after the widow of Senator Edward M. Kennedy refused his precondition that she not endorse a candidate in his reelection campaign against Democrat Elizabeth Warren.

“We respect Vicki Kennedy’s decision but we regret that we cannot accept a debate invitation from someone who plans to endorse Scott Brown’s opponent,” Brown Campaign Manager Jim Barnett said in a statement. “The Kennedy Institute cannot hold itself out as a nonpartisan debate sponsor while the president of its board of trustees gets involved in the race on behalf of one of the candidates.”

The announcement came shortly after representatives of Vicki Kennedy said she would not agree to Brown’s demand that she remain neutral in the race, in exchange for the senator’s participation in a late September debate she had proposed be hosted by the University of Massachusetts Boston and Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.

Barnett had said Monday that Brown would participate only if Kennedy, president of the board at the Kennedy Institute, not endorse in the race and that MSNBC not be the broadcast sponsor of the debate.

What a whiny bitch.

He’s (rightly) terrified that Elizabeth Warren will have his sorry ass for lunch, so he’s making up excuses.

Snark of the Day

No Comments

Jonathan Chait, writing in the New York Magazine, has an article, titled, “Beltway Sleazeoids Concerned About Partisanship, about Howard Kurtz’s puff piece on the joint venture between Michael Steele (Mr. Foot in Mouth), and Lanny Davis (Lobbyists for brutal dictators).

His criticism is that Kurtz is far to credulous, and far too laudatory, of their efforts.

I agree. Even on a cursory examination, this is clearly concern trolling for lobbying dollars.

What stands out though is his slam against Howie for his lack of journalistic integrity:

There’s an old saying, “patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels,” but patriotism’s scoundrel-cleansing abilities have worn off with time. The newest refuge is surely bipartisanship. Thus, deposed Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele and disgraced lobbyist Lanny Davis have formed their own firm. Howard Kurtz reports — or, at any rate, writes down — that Steele and Davis are pitching their firm dedicated to urging people to “tone down the negativity and personal attacks.”

(emphasis mine)

The criticism for years about Kurtz has been two fold, that he has a conflict of interest because his wife is a paid political operator, and that he is little more than a stenographer for the conservative side of the Beltway consensus.

As to the stenography allegation, Chait must be commended for being clever, clear, and original in his statements.

Heh.

Quislings

No Comments

A number of West Virginia “Democrats” who qualify as super delegates have announced that they won’t be attending the convention because they do not want to be supporting Barack Obama:

Democratic West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin says he won’t attend the party’s national convention, citing serious problems with President Barack Obama.

A Tomblin spokesman, Chris Stadelman, said Monday that the governor has serious problems with Republican Mitt Romney, too.

Tomblin is an automatic superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention. He says his time is best spent working in West Virginia, not attending the four-day political rally in Charlotte, N.C.

In West Virginia’s presidential primary, Tomblin refused to say whether he voted for Obama.

Tomlbin isn’t alone in sitting this one out — West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin and congressman Nick Rahall say they don’t plan to attend the convention, either.

What they are really saying is that they don’t want to be seen as supporting Barack Obama, because their voters are from West Virginia, and he’s a Ni*bong*. (Blazing Saddles reference)

Wankers.

There is a level of sacrifice to be made by people in leadership positions, and this ain’t it.

I’m not saying that you have to go, but as a person in a leadership position in the party, you don’t advertise the fact.