Category: Wanker

This is Why You Clear the Bush Toadies Out of the Military

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Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld put their toadies in power, and Barack Obama has decided that it’s A-OK with him to keep them in place.

A natural result of this is that General Ray Odierno has officially and publicly requested an increase in the number of combat forces in Iraq after the withdrawal deadline:

In a move that could force President Obama to break his vow to get all combat troops out of Iraq by August of this year, his top commander in Iraq recently officially requested keeping a combat brigade in the northern part of the country beyond that deadline, three people close to the situation said Wednesday.

Gen. Raymond Odierno asked for a brigade to try to keep the peace in the disputed city of Kirkuk, but only got a polite nod from the president when the issue was raised during his recent meetings in Washington, according to two of the people familiar with the discussions. If the brigade in northern Iraq is indeed kept in Iraq past the deadline, there will be a fan dance under which it no longer will be called a combat unit, but like the six other combat brigades being kept past the deadline, will be called an advisory unit. I can imagine the press releases that will follow-“Three U.S. Army soldiers were killed last night in an advisory operation . . . .”

Enough is enough. It’s time to take an action which is reported in the press as “effectively ending his career.”

What a Bitch

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I am reverring to Kent Conrad (DINO-ND) who is saying that he’ll kill any attempt to use reconciliation to pass a fix to Senate’s awful healthcare reform bill unless the House passes that bill first:

The Senate Democrats’ top budget guy told reporters today that the Senate can’t pass a reconciliation package tweaking a comprehensive health care bill unless the House passes the Senate bill first. And if the House won’t do that, he says health care reform is “dead.”

“The only way this works is for the House to pass the Senate bill and then, depending on what the package is, the reconciliation provision that moves first through the House and then comes here,” said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) outside the upper chamber this morning. “That’s the only way that works.”

I guess that someone hurt his feelings.

Here is a message to almost everyone in the White House and Congress:
<Rant>

Get the F%$# Over Yourself!!!

</Rant>

Te Stoopid, It Burns US!!!!!

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This clusterf%$# comes with a poll

Atrios calls it, “A Great Contribution To The Art Of High Wanking,” but the Washington Post calls it Jeffrey Rosen’s article, “Supreme Court Justice Barack Obama?“

While there is precedent, William Howard Taft became a Supreme Court justice after being President, only the interval was 18 years between the two offices, and Rosen is suggesting that he cut a deal with Hillary Clinton, and that she agrees to appoint him, in exchange for his not running in 2012:

It would be unusual, but not difficult, for Obama to get himself on the Supreme Court. He could nominate himself to replace John Paul Stevens, for example, or he could gamble and promise Hillary Rodham Clinton that he won’t run for reelection in 2012 in exchange for a pledge of appointment to the next vacancy. And although as president, Obama has seemed haunted by the example of his political hero, Abraham Lincoln, on the Supreme Court he could take up the mantle of the greatest liberal justice of the 20th century, Louis Brandeis, another community organizer with a background in politics. In the end, Obama’s legacy on the court might surpass his legacy in the White House.

(emphasis mine)

Nominate himself? Is he out of his mind?

And a promise from Clinton would be crucial, because, of course, no one can successfully oppose a Hillary Clinton primary campaign; she is just unstoppable.

Jeebus, it’s like they have some sort of competition in front of Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt has some sort of bizarre audition in which they tell people to come up with the stupidest idea, and they get to go on to the next round.

It’s like some of kind of perverted American idol for stupid, and I think that my eyes are now bleeding as a result.

It Appears that $1,000,000.00+ a Year is not Enough to Do Your Damn Job

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Click for full size

Waiting for one of They Who Must Not Be Named to talk

At least not if you work in finance.

You see someone prominent gave a talk about personal transgressions, and they decided to take time off, and watch the TV.

You know, for the amount of money that you are making, I would suggest that you just Tivo it!

Seriously, I really need to go long on tarred and feathered bankers futures.

With the CPAC* Conference Going On

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The first rule of Investment Banking Club is,
you do not talk about Investment Banking Club.

You generally know where to look for selfishness and an immature sense of entitlement, but Moe Tkacik finds something that makes the folks at CPAC looking like Mahatma Ghandi.

Rather unsurprisingly, she finds it on wall street, where the bankers are, “As mad as hell,” about all the nasty things that people say about them ……… All while sucking down 7 figure salaries and bonuses.

You see, the bankers had a get together, and they invited her:

Still, I had heard of no plan for any sort of public up-close-and-personal plutocrat-on-plutocrat spectacle to give voice to the inchoate counterrevolution, no Millionaire’s March offering group catharsis to the angry wealthy white. But on Tuesday, Jan. 26, I received a mass e-mail from Schwartz Communications with the subject: “Wall Street Strikes Back at White House.”

It was held the trading floor of John Thomas† Financial, and (yet again) it defies belief, but suffice it to say that there was a Republican candidate for the US Senate, the bald guy is the head of the firm, Anastasios (Thomas) Belesis, who is a piece of work all on his own:

Belesis’s FINRA profile is similarly alarming. Investors have accused him of churning, fraud, excessive trading, breach of contract and other violations. Regulators have ordered him to repay investors more than a million dollars.

So, he’s mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it any more.

Of course, in a just world, he would be banned from the securities industry for life.

This story continues with epic tails of sexual harassment and the disposal whipped cream.

Just go read it.

*Conservative Political Action Comittee
†Yes, “John Thomas” is a bit of slang in Britain for a portion of the male anatomy, and it’s very apt here, and yes, there is a real investment bank by that name.

Moron

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Chris Dodd, the senior Senator from Connecticut, is not running for reelection because he cannot win. He is too unpopular.

In fact, about the only person in the state that he might beat is Joe Lieberman, the junior Senator from Connecticut, who is currently polling behind a case of the clap.

Well, now that Dodd is not running, the new front runner in the state is Democratic Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

Unfortunately, he has decided to take his cue from Joe Lieberman:

Barack Obama shouldn’t expect an invitation from fellow Democrat Dick Blumenthal anytime soon: Blumenthal said in a New Haven stop that the president “may not want to come here” to stump for his U.S. Senate campaign, given how independent he claimed he’ll be if elected.

That turnabout in partisan loyalty emerged Monday night as Blumenthal continued tacking away from his liberal roots —including through newly expanded support for military tribunals for domestic terror suspects.

(emphasis mine)

The explanation is that Massachusetts changes everything.

No, it doesn’t. The election of a Republican in Massachusetts was all about voters disgusted with Democrats not getting stuff done when they had near historic majorities.

And who prevented anything from getting done?

Well, that would be Senators like Joe Lieberman.

I will leave Mr. Blumenthal with the words of Harry S Truman, “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, , people will vote for the real Republican all the time”

Insert South Carolina Joke Here

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No, this is not The Onion.

You have a Lt. Governor who thinks that nutritious lunches for poor children is like feeding strays, a governor who has forever ruined the idea of hiking the Appalachian trail, and is now asking for the stimulus money that he refused, and now the South Carolina lege has passed a law requiring that people who wish to overthrow the United States government pay a fee and get a license for the privilege:

Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina’s Secretary of State and declare their intentions — or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

The state’s “Subversive Activities Registration Act,” passed last year and now officially on the books, states that “every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States … shall register with the Secretary of State.”

There’s even a $5 filing fee.

By “subversive organization,” the law means “every corporation, society, association, camp, group, bund, political party, assembly, body or organization, composed of two or more persons, which directly or indirectly advocates, advises, teaches or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States [or] of this State.”

The interesting thing here is that it appears to me that this definition might very well apply to any number of the more rabid Confederate heritage groups.

The members of the South Carolina legislature had better find someone to cut their meat, because if we allow them to handle knives, it will get very ugly.

[on edit]
It appears that the definitive word on the state was made in 1860, following the vote for secession, by Congressman James Petigru, “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.”

Bipartisanship This!

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Richard Shelby is now placing holds on all Obama nominations he doesn’t think that the Obama administration is being friendly enough to Airbus/Northrop-Grumman on the tanker deal, and because they have not started constructed an FBI lab that he cut an earmark for in his district:

According to the report, Shelby is holding Obama’s nominees hostage until a pair of lucrative programs that would send billions in taxpayer dollars to his home state get back on track. The two programs Shelby wants to move forward or else:

– A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From CongressDaily: “Northrop/EADS team would build the planes in Mobile, Ala., but has threatened to pull out of the competition unless the Air Force makes changes to a draft request for proposals.” Federal Times offers more details on the tanker deal, and also confirms its connection to the hold.

– An improvised explosive device testing lab for the FBI. From CongressDaily: “[Shelby] is frustrated that the Obama administration won’t build” the center, which Shelby earmarked $45 million for in 2008. The center is due to be based “at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal.”

(emphasis mine)

Seriously, you cannot negotiate with these clowns.

Bipartisanship needs a plan B.

I would suggest stress positions, waterboarding, extreme sleep deprivation, and enforced nudity.

OK, I Might Consider Donating to Fiorina

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Rachael Maddow’s take


Full ad

If just because she is an even bigger disaster as a candidate than she was as CEO of HP, where staffers broke out into “Ding, dong, the witch is dead” upon announcement of her firing.

You see, she has followed up the worst political website ever with the worst political ad ever.

I’m beginning to wonder if former HPers are working on her campaign ad just to f%$# with her.

In any case, when one considers her history at HP, where she demoralized and hurt the company but got pay increases, or her history at AT&T, where her staff falsified sales data, she is a poster child for over-privileged senior management, and so would be dead meat on the table in the general.

But right not, she is flinging sheep at Republicans, so she’s doing “God’s work.”

We Are F%$#ed

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It appears that according to Robert Gibbs, Obama’s press secretary, nothing can be done with the largest majorities in a generation:

This is the emerging talking point from the White House and Congessional leadership: It is a mathematical impossiblity that Dems will ever be able to get anything done without cooperation from Republicans.

Ignoring the fate of supermajority requirements for ordinary business (see taxes, raising, budget, California, f%$#ed), the voters hate weakness.

They hate it even more when you are the ones who are supposed to be in charge.

Why bother voting for a Democrat when they are unwilling to do anything, because the tiny minority in the corner is saying nasty things.

Let me refer you, once again to Josh Marshall’s bitch slap theory of electoral politics:

Let’s call it the Republicans’ Bitch-Slap theory of electoral politics.

It goes something like this.

On one level, of course, the aim behind these attacks is to cast suspicion upon Kerry’s military service record and label him a liar. But that’s only part of what’s going on.

Consider for a moment what the big game is here. This is a battle between two candidates to demonstrate toughness on national security. Toughness is a unitary quality, really — a personal, characterological quality rather than one rooted in policy or divisible in any real way. So both sides are trying to prove to undecided voters either that they’re tougher than the other guy or at least tough enough for the job.

In a post-9/11 environment, obviously, this question of strength, toughness or resolve is particularly salient. That, of course, is why so much of this debate is about war and military service in the first place.

One way — perhaps the best way — to demonstrate someone’s lack of toughness or strength is to attack them and show they are either unwilling or unable to defend themselves — thus the rough slang I used above. And that I think is a big part of what is happening here. Someone who can’t or won’t defend themselves certainly isn’t someone you can depend upon to defend you.

Demonstrating Kerry’s unwillingness to defend himself (if Bush can do that) is a far more tangible sign of what he’s made of than wartime experiences of thirty years ago.

Hitting someone and not having them hit back hurts the morale of that person’s supporters, buoys the confidence of your own backers (particularly if many tend toward an authoritarian mindset) and tends to make the person who’s receiving the hits into an object of contempt (even if also possibly also one of sympathy) in the eyes of the uncommitted.

This is certainly what Bush’s father did to Michael Dukakis and, sadly, it is what Bush himself did, to a great degree, to Al Gore.

In other ways, Bush’s bully-boy campaign tactics play to his strengths, albeit unstated and unlovely ones. Many of the polls of the president have shown that while people don’t necessarily agree with the specific policies he’s pursued abroad many also intuitively believe that there’s no one who will hit back harder. There’s some of that ‘he may be a son-of-a-bitch but he’s our son-of-a-bitch’ quality to the president’s support on national security issues.

This meta-message behind the president’s attacks on Kerry’s war record is more consequential than many believe. So hitting back hard was critical on many levels.

All the silly little political orgasms over who stood and who didn’t at the SOTU speech, or how Barack Obama came off better in his tête-à-tête with Republicans does not matter.

If you cannot be trusted to fight for yourself , you cannot be trusted to fight for us.

Are these guys trying to lose both houses in 2010?

Funny Headline of the Day

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EU-funded think tanks defend their credibility

It’s not just that they are government funded, it’s the whole idea of think-tanks and credibility being juxtaposed.

Maybe the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Manhattan Institute, and of course the original wanker think tank, the Brookings Institution, have soured me on the whole concept.

I just see them as exercises in cronyism.

Think tanks have no credibility.

[on edit]
There are any number of advocacy organizations that do good things, but they aren’t think tanks, they actually work in the context of the regulatory process to get things done, rather than just crank out paper for whoever pays their bills.

A good example is Public Knowledge, where they spend a lot of time actually doing things like making arguments before the FCC on regulatory issues.

There are good people in think tanks, but they do their good work elsewhere.

Seriously, This is What is Wrong with America

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Ben Bradley’s wife, otherwise known as Sally Quinn, is a fixture in Washington, and Jamison Foser has a good rundown on just what exactly she is:

You cannot caricature Sally Quinn. Don’t even try. It simply can’t be done. No matter how hard you try to exaggerate her preening self-regard and utter frivolity, she comes right along and shows herself to be worse than you could possibly imagine.

Quinn — who gained fame when The Washington Post was forced to retract her false claim that Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser unzipped his fly during an interview — makes the extraordinary claim in her January 26 column that Carter lost his re-election campaign due to his failure to attend Washington dinner parties. Not only that — according to Quinn, Ted Kennedy ran against Carter because of it:…

She is a failed newspaper reporter (see above), a failed TV reporter, I saw her on the CBS Morning News in the 1970s, and a failed novelist, and is now a serial party girl and hostess.

As was noted some years back in Salon Magazine, “She would go to the opening of an envelope.”

Basically, she married into Washington, DC royalty, in the person of former Post Editor-in-Chief Ben Bradlee, and then did her best to become the queen bee of the Washington social circle.

So, what does this mean? It means that when she writes about why things happen in Washington, DC, it’s because they don’t kiss the ass of the party crowd:

  • Carter lost his bid for reelection, and got a primary challenge from Ted Kennedy, because he and Rosalynn didn’t go to the the Washington parties.
  • Watergate took down Nixon because he didn’t go to the the Washington parties, so he had no support from people like Sally Quinn.
  • The Republicans attempted coup masquerading as an impeachment investigation against Bill Clinton because he and Hillary didn’t go to the the Washington parties.
  • George W. Bush was bad, because, “The Bushes almost never went out and the president was in bed by 9:30, even when they entertained, which was rare,” so they did not go to the the Washington parties.
  • That Barack Obama is icky, because he’s making people work so hard that they do not have time to go to the the Washington parties.

Beginning to see a pattern?

I am beginning to pine for Madame la Guillotine.

Can We Please Give Texas Back to Mexico?

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There is an author named Bill Martin, who wrote a political treatise called Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation

There is another author named Bill Martin, who wrote a children’s book called, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

They are different authors, but it appears that the the right wing morons who control the State Board of Education did not realize this:

What do the authors of the children’s book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and a 2008 book called Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation have in common?

Both are named Bill Martin and, for now, neither is being added to Texas schoolbooks.

In its haste to sort out the state’s social studies curriculum standards this month, the State Board of Education tossed children’s author Martin, who died in 2004, from a proposal for the third-grade section. Board member Pat Hardy, R-Weatherford, who made the motion, cited books he had written for adults that contain “very strong critiques of capitalism and the American system.”

Trouble is, the Bill Martin Jr. who wrote the Brown Bear series never wrote anything political, unless you count a book that taught kids how to say the Pledge of Allegiance, his friends said. The book on Marxism was written by Bill Martin, a philosophy professor at DePaul University in Chicago.

You see the phrase, “Brown bear, brown bear, what do I see?” is just so similar to, “that would in effect overturn the imperialist system, and that would depend on creating, as Mao saw, self-reliant economies, not liable to exploitation.“

The stupid, it burns us!!!!!

H/t La Figa

Just Primary Her

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Yes, once again, another Senate “sentrist” appears to be determined to ensure that nothing good will pass the senate:

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D[INO]-AR) will oppose Dem efforts to move health care legislation through Congress using budget reconciliation, hurting Dems’ chances for using the controversial parliamentary maneuver to pass a reform bill.

“I am opposed to and will fight against any attempts to push through changes to the Senate health insurance reform legislation by using budget reconciliation tactics that would allow the Senate to pass a package of changes to our original bill with 51 votes,” Lincoln said in a statement on Tuesday. “I have successfully fought for transparency throughout Senate deliberations on health care, and I will continue to do so.”

“I will not accept any last-minute efforts to force changes to health insurance reform issues through budget reconciliation, and neither will Arkansans. We have worked too long and too hard on this reform effort – we need to get it right,” she said.

By “We”, of xourse, she means “her”, and she does not want a process that diminishes her ability to f%$# with people’s lives, because she wants someone kissing her ass.

Matthew Yglesias is right when he calls out the Senate “centrists”, and notes that they “seem prepared to resume their customary role as the villains whose consistently egomaniacal and self-destructive behavior has badly damaged the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans.”

Oh, For Pete’s Sake!!!!

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Well, I’m listening to Olbermann, and Barack Hoover, or maybe it’s Herbert Obama, I’m not sure which, is suggesting his latest bold initiative: A domestic spending freeze, which means that, with inflation, it’s a domestic spending cut.

So, is actually trying to screw up the economy and get a Republican House, Senate and White House in 2012?

Unemployment is still rising, and he’s so eager to pander to Republicans, who would hate him even if he were white, that he’s determined to play Herbert Hoover, and cut the budget in the middle of a recession.

I’m beginning to think that he’s actually Mitch McConnell’s evil twin.

[on edit]


Original Courtesy of Quentin Tarantino, with typography by mdaisey

This has been confirmed by the Washington Post, and Maddow had White House advisor Jared Bernstein on, he said that they won’t freez/cut everything, just the bad and wasteful stuff ………… During a recession……… With unemployment still climbing ……………

And they are going to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff because it works so f%$#ing well in Congress today.

Seriously, I have to evoke Samuel Jackson from pulp fiction again, because the idea that they will “only” cut the wasteful stuff projects the idea that they are trying to f%$# me like a bitch because they think that I am stupid.

Hell, it’s an insult to the intelligence of Sarah Palin.

The Senator from the State of Oil Wants to Overturn EPA Regs on CO2

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It appears that Lisa Murkowski is trying to overturn the EPA’s notice of proposed rule making on carbon emissions:

Sen. Lisa Murkowski on Tuesday left open the possibility that she would seek a vote next week on stopping the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from going forward with regulations to limit greenhouse-gas emissions.

“I do not believe and I don’t believe that most of my colleagues in the Senate believe that the EPA is the entity that is the best suited to develop climate-change policy for this country,” Ms. Murkowski (R., Alaska) told reporters. “I’m trying to get a time-out. I’m trying to allow the legislative process to proceed. I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to have a vote that will allow for that discussion.”

You know, somehow I think that the folks who don’t come from oil (and coal) producing states might be a wee bit receptive, and there’s also the whole veto thing to deal with.

The Culture at the Fed is Broken

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Charles Plosser, president of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank, is now on record saying that the Federal Reserve should raise interest rates before there is any meaningful recovery in employment:

Federal Reserve policy makers must raise the benchmark interest rate “well before” unemployment falls to an acceptable level in order to keep inflation in check, Fed Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser said.

Plosser forecast the economy will expand 3 percent to 3.5 percent this year and next, faster than the 2.75 percent that he sees as the underlying potential pace. As growth pushes up market interest rates, the Fed’s target for overnight lending among banks should also rise “as long as inflation is near its desired level and inflation expectations are well-anchored,” he said today in a speech in Philadelphia.

I would note that Ben Bernanke has made statements in the same vein: that notwithstanding the charge to the central bank to both control inflation and maintain full employment, the second part means nothing.

Note that Plosser is not a regular voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), though he will get his turn to vote next year.

I lay a lot of this at the feet of Paul Volker (I bet you expected me to say, “Alan ‘Bubbles’ Greenspan”) because he is the modern standard carrier for a Fed chairman: He created the worst recession in 40 years in 1979-81 in order to wring inflation out of the economy.

He was probably right then, though I think that a lot of the inflation was caused by increases in commodity (oil) prices, but now we have Federal Reserve staff who see this, and want to repeat the disastrous tightening of money that caused the 1937 recession.

This is non-sensical, and this, along with the Fed’s repeated role as protector of large investment firms (that one is Alan ‘Bubbles’ Greenspan’s fault) are why reform, and significant turnover, in the management of the Federal Reserve is essential.

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.

Barack Obama Lobbies for Tax on Elderly and Labor Unions

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Yes, Barack Obama is finally taking a stand in the healthcare bill, and he is lobbying for a tax on high cost healthcare plans, as opposed to a tax on the wealthy. This means that older people, who have to pay more for health insurance, and labor unions, who literally shed blood for their health care, are getting completely screwed.

It’s also horrifically bad policy:

  • It will target a much larger swath of the population than is promised.
  • It will do little to reign in healthcare costs, just look at the Health Savings Account debacle, and the “Rand study from the 1970s found that higher co-pays and deductibles led patients to limit medically necessary care as much as wasteful care, possibly leading to more costly health-care needs later.”
  • Much of the tax revenue from this is from the completely delusional assumption that the money taken out of insurance will be returned to employees as wages by their employers.

Seriously, I knew that we had elected a center-right Democrat as president, but I am surprised that we apparently elected a Republican.

Unsurprisingly, Obama is getting some pushback from the liberals in the House, most notably Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), who is saying that this clusterf%$# is his baby now, and he needs to work to make the bill better, and that this tax proposal violates Obama’s campaign promise not to raise taxes on the middle class.

Of course, whenever a politician promises not to raise taxes on the middle class, he’s lying.